Rachel Abrams

“This is a place,” says Columbia University president Lee Bollinger of his Ivy League institution,

Maureen Dowd screens “Fair Game,” the new Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson bio-pic, and gives us an account: if we are to rely upon her (a riskyish venture), the flick peddles a glammed-up Vanity-Fairy-tale of a damsel in distress defended against the forces of evil bravely if perhaps overbearingly by her…

It’s been a rough seventeen months for Americans whose calling is to fight for the rights of people who’ve been stripped of them by force—young men and women beaten to death in full view of the world by the agents of their oppressors for daring to demand that their votes be counted; others hacked…

There weren’t any before Mr. Biden’s visit to Israel and Mrs. Clinton's rolling-pin harangue, and there aren’t going to be any when George Mitchell shows up this week to start his “proximity talks,” because the talking Palestinians—that is, as opposed to the doing Palestinians, either of the…

Because we need agrément from the man who is Ahmadinejad’s closest ally in the world, who stands by grinning as the Iranian madman threatens the “demise and annihilation” of the “Zionist regime,” and who himself calls America’s position on Iran (such as it is) “a new situation of colonialism in the…

The Dubai police have exposed the “identities” of the people who did it—pointing the finger not only at the Mossad, but also at Palestinian “collaborators” (who may be traitorous members of Hamas, or Hamas-despising members of Fatah, depending on which fork of the tongue you care to believe, if you…

From the AP : “Saudi Official Cool to New Sanctions on Iran.”

We’ve shaken our heads in disgust often in the last year over the Obamic decision to permit a bunch of Chicago political hacks and the U.S. attorney general--the CPH Plus One--to run much of foreign policy out of the White House. It’s had real-world consequences, not least that the tension between…

New York Times “public editor” Clark Hoyt searched the conscience of the New York Times the other day and found it wanting. (His own came up clean as a whistle, though.) Is retaining the services of Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner moral, he wondered—spurred by protests from Electronic Intifada…

Alan Dershowitz has ventured where very few—if any—on either side of the furor over the Goldstone Report have gone: With his virtuoso lawyer’s searching eye he has combed every word of the 500-some-odd pages, the long appendices, and the 1223 footnotes in pursuit of the evidentiary basis for the…

The hermit whose Catcher in the Rye was the Bible for generations of miserable, disaffected teenagers—especially boys—has died in his self-imposed New Hampshire isolation at the age of 91. Are we going to see another round of dirty-laundry airing from Joyce Maynard, who had an affair with the…

It seems the Israeli settlement-freeze scheme, which in its most recent, Obamic, incarnation began to flounder almost as soon as it was born last October, is lingering like an aqueous floater in the mind's eye of Mr. Obama’s Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell. The other day, exchanging…

I leave it to others to parse Mr. Obama’s self-adulatory answers to the “questions” put to him by Joe Klein in this week’s Time. But one instance of Mr. Klein’s classic and bodacious obamasequiousness cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed:

Arise, oh you underemployed therapists of America, and rejoice! For relief is at hand: Not only can you anticipate a profitable surge in gay-couples-therapy sessions, as gay marriage, and divorce, become commonplace—nay, even humdrum (and by the way, thank you, Ted Olson!)—but you can also expect…

Who, exactly, is it the misogyny-frenzied brutes in charge of administering “justice” to the Saudi distaff side are protecting—and from what?  When they condemn a woman who’s been gang-raped to 200 lashes for “having sex outside marriage,” or give a destitute 75-year-old widow 40 lashes for…

Israeli doctors and rescuers, who have been doing heroic work on the ground in Haiti since the earthquake, have decided they must stay put to help for another month. Donations have been pouring in from the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and poor Lebanon, as well. Even the butchers of Iran have risen…

We have already learned to our sorrow just how little President Obama and his dogsbody Hillary Clinton are interested in China’s dismal record on the rights of its citizens or the brutalizing of demonstrators in Iran. Now, an internal memo circulating around the State Department’s Human Rights…

The uproar sparked by the decision of Israeli deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon to treat the Turkish ambassador to a public tongue-lashing this week has been painful to behold. The Turkish Jewish community is quaking in fear of a new round of anti-Semitic violence, Shimon Peres has grovelled,…

Haaretz reports that “Washington is now considering the possibility of launching ‘proximity talks’ between Israel and the Palestinians, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas continues to object to direct talks.”

The Hamas terrorists who rule Gaza see negotiations for Gilad Shalit’s release as a nerve-racking game which Israel is bound to lose. And they are right: It is a nerve-racking game, and Israel will lose, no matter how things turn out. Either the Jewish State will release a thousand terrorists in…

Middle-East commentators—including the sensible ones—have spilled mucho ink congratulating Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad on his “bottom-up” approach to preparing for the Palestinian state-to-come. And indeed, with the aid of Israeli investment and cooperation, his economic policies have…

If you are a heroin addict in New York, and you want to learn how to shoot up “safely,” there’s a free flier, “Take Charge, Take Care,” produced on the taxpayers’ dime by the health department of the City of New York that will come in handy. Tip #6: Take Care of Your Veins:

The Shmavens (apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) When the air about him thickens, a sweet sensation rises, quickens-- Heart a-quiver, Chris feels words Obamunist deliver legthrills he's not able to ignore. It's all New Testamenty, really, churchy Super-Tuesday zealy, He teeters on the edge of torpor,…

President Obama and his players have spent six months praying for the nascent revolution in Iran to go away, pursuing what Fouad Ajami describes today as a cold-blooded foreign policy. Some of them who should know better have likely admitted the truth to themselves during 2 AM night-sweat sessions:…

Save a "specialist in sustainable living" or the dog? No contest. Even if it turned out to be not the usual ginned-up bogus climate pre-apocalypticism being peddled as science by the world's eco-terrorists (in this case, two sustainable-living specialists from New Zealand), but rather a true fact…

Nidal Hasan's lawyer complains his client's religious rights are being violated by a requirement that "all communication during visits be in English or be delayed until an interpreter is present." The Fort Hood jihadi was engaging in an Arabic prayer session over the phone--something we assume (or…

What becomes of the end-of-year sanctions deadline, set down--together with all of brave UN-ified Europe--by Mr. Obama's towering foreign-policy geniuses to incentivize the Iranians to lay down their arms, now that that country's illegitimate president has thrown down the gauntlet instead? "We told…

Last March the interior ministry of the Kingdom of Sand and Oil convicted a destitute 75-year-old widow, Khamisa Sawadi, of "prohibited mingling," which is to say, she was caught by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice "mingling" with two men young enough to be her…

By the end of the first week the climate confabulation was in Marx Brothers territory. Today, as it comes to an end, it sounds more like the hellscape of eternal damnation in the right-hand triptych of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. And this despite the arrival of the young anointed…

Mr. Gore has sported many hats throughout his three-score-some: As congressman, as senator, vice president, and Nobel laureate. Now, as Andrew Malcolm tells us, he can wear versificator of climatic dread beret upon his balding pate. His output is elegiac, his set of seven haiku may be read as…

U.S. relations with Syria are "more normal than before, and on more than one level," declares Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, by which presumably he means to say that we and they have emerged from Eight Years of Darkness (EYD) to forge new ties in a new spirit…

It would look like this: First, there'd be a mile-long line to get in. Once everybody was inside, the Group of 77, a coalition of "developing" countries, would walk out in protest over "the slow pace of negotiations." Then they'd come back. But the Group of 77 would actually be made up of 130…

Not only is Finnish-born conductor-composer Esa-pekka Salonen the music world's It Boy Of The Moment, conducting his farewell as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and his debut at the Metropolitan Opera to raves of ecstasy, he is also something of a maven of greenitudinousness. And it…

That's the grade the president awards himself for his first year in office. His constituents, the American people, beg to differ. They've given him a D- today, according to Rasmussen. obama_approval_index_december_14_2009.jpg

For a primer on why the European Union is likely doomed to shrivel on its own very sorry vine, you will not do better than this amazing piece of weekend analysis from Deutsche Welle. After a delay of five years owing to the objections of some member states to forging a partnership with the…

There'll be enough gas in the conference room to float a climate balloon over Copenhagen next week, but just in case the Scandinavian winter still proves too chill for them, global warmers will have the chance to get heated up during the breaks: The Copenhagen prostitutes' union, up in arms after…

What would Palestine look like today if the Arabs hadn't rejected the 1947 partition plan that assigned to them most of the arable land and to the Jews most of the desert; hadn't continued to dream of being restored to the puppethood of a resurgent Third Reich; hadn't set upon the Jews with their…

There'll be joyous dancing in the streets of Israel when-if-Gilad Shalit is freed by his Hamas kidnappers in the coming weeks, most especially in the vicinity of the tent set up in March across from the prime minister's official Jerusalem residence and occupied since then by Noam and Aviva Shalit…

I haven't been to Miami in a while, but it used to be that you could launch World War Three by stopping at a coffee stand in Little Havana and asking patrons sipping their cafecitos in peaceful harmony there, "Who's worse: Fidel or Raul?" Whether they'd been comrades-in-arms or fellow travelers of…

What's become of Captain Silvertongue Goldenvisage, bewitcher of men, mascot of children, icon of fools, fetish of knaves? His ship's afloat, but barely. His sextant's faulty. His rudder's sluggish. His port side's taking on water. His officers await his orders, flirt with mutiny. His crew is…

The president of the United States has expressed his displeasure with Israeli government plans to build 900 new housing units in Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhood of Gilo. Glad to know Mr. Obama, with all he has to occupy him, is able to maintain so deep an interest in city planning. But just how…

Where lie the sympathies of the UN nuclear watchdog agency's chief dog has been no secret: Mohammed El Baradei earned his 2005 Nobel Peace Prize not for shepherding rogue states to denuclearization-on the contrary, North Korea and Iran spent his (soon-to-be-over) watch as head of the IAEA in a…

Though it is a piece of superficiality worthy of People magazine, the Washington Post's account of the process by which Eric Holder came to make his decision to try war criminals in federal court is a remarkable--if inadvertent--revelation of just how much, despite their vastly disparate…

A friend emails: CAIR is trying to score some cash off of Fort Hood. Classy. Urgent Action: Help CAIR Defend Your Community in Times of Crisis Dear XXX, As-salaamu alaykum(Peace be with you), When a crisis such as the Fort Hood attack and now the government's move to seize four American mosques…

A friend emails: CAIR is trying to score some cash off of Fort Hood. Classy. Urgent Action: Help CAIR Defend Your Community in Times of Crisis Dear XXX, As-salaamu alaykum(Peace be with you), When a crisis such as the Fort Hood attack and now the government's move to seize four American mosques…

No serious student of the UN's three decades of post­­-Zionism-is-Racism Israel-hatred could have been surprised last week to see the General Assembly endorse the Goldstone Report via Resolution A/64/L.11 and refer it to the Security Council by a vote of 114 to 18, with 44 abstentions (including…

What's the honorable thing for a father to do after he's murdered his daughter in an "honor killing?" Faleh Hassan Almaleki, an Iraqi immigrant to the U.S., ran his 20-year-old daughter down with his car a couple of weeks ago because she'd become "too westernized," and then tried unsuccessfully to…

And stop talking about what a lousy hand you were dealt by your predecessor. You're the president of the greatest nation on earth, now, not he. "One year ago Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see." You don't happen to be the future I…

The cargo, en route to Syria: · 566,220 7.62 calibre rifle bullets · 20,100 F1 fragment grenades · 5,680 60 mm mortar shells · 2,316 81 mm mortar shells · 774 120 mm mortar shells · 690 122 mm rockets · 106 artillery shells · 2,125 107 mm rockets · 685 rocket fuses

Hillary Clinton has arcked pendulously between Israel and the Arabs, the Arabs and Israel in her various incarnations -- as far back as 1998, with the blood-soaked Arafat at the helm of the PLO, the then-First Lady's call for a Palestinian state was quickly walked back by the White House, and she…

If you're a foreign aid worker with twenty bucks to blow in Gaza City -- something, by the way, few Gazans can do on account of their being totally immiserated by Hamas -- you can buy this commemorative Richard Goldstone keffiyeh at the President Arafat souvenir shop. But you better act fast --…

Not so hot, according to today's Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Mahmoud Abbas's official newspaper (translation by Palestinian Media Watch), which asks, among other things, "Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists pay you as a bribe?" and, just in case anybody has any illusions about the beliefs of our…

"Palestinian" "leaders" are afloat in a sea of anti-Zionism and self-pity so deep and so wide, so intractable and so paralyzing, they have made bedfellows -- odd as they may be --- of Bibi Netanyahu and the U.S. secretary of state. Only a few months ago Mrs. Clinton was pursing her prissy…

There's a profile of the Obama marriage by Jodi Kantor coming out in this Sunday's NYT Magazine which, while I can't recommend it due to the incredibly high stultification factor of its subject and prose, I did find compelling on account of a) its confirming what I have thought about the two of…

The "kings" and "princes" of sand and oil who rule Saudi Arabia may have signed on to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1997, but the daughters of their subjects-and no doubt some of their own, as well-still live under the sick tyranny of shariah-interpreting that endorses the…

A former State Department official who is a completely reliable source on the subject tells me that when you were in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s seeking out human rights activists, Helen Suzman was the person you went to see; the name Richard Goldstone was never uttered. So it's not exactly…

A young eastern European girl survives the Holocaust, but she has lost all. First, perhaps, like so many countless others, her father is shot in the street before her eyes among scores of men rounded up in the ghetto in which her family has been living in starvation and rising terror; next,…

Close on the heels of his shock over the resolution issuing from the Human Rights Council last week that ignores Hamas's cowardly barbarity and demands a referral to the International Court of Justice of a non-cooperative Israel, Richard Goldstone materializes in the pages of the Jerusalem Post to…

The Washington Post runs a depressing piece in Outlook today by Patrick Welsh, an Alexandria, Virginia high school English teacher who is struggling with the academic failures of his "virtually all-black class of 12th-graders." Mr. Welsh, who may risk being dismissed as a racist by the mafia of…

'Twas bitter cold/And Tina was sick at heart, to paraphrase the Bard. "All over the country," she caviled in Newsweek last year from Hillary Clinton's campaign trail, there are vigorous, independent, self-liberated boomer women . . . who possess all the management skills that come from raising…

Tom Brokaw is worried about the controversy that "will dog [Obama] all the way to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony," and he's got a proposal that, in his cunning formulation, "may lift this discussion out of the partisan soup that is now the main course on our national agenda . . . ." To…

Meanwhile, the mill of ludicrousness elsewhere in Europe grinds on unrelenting. "I got into the habit of paying for boys. . . . All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously . . . the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a…

Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. This is too perfect. Obama could turn it down on the grounds that not all his peace plans have come to fruition yet, but why should he? And the Swedes could have waited a year on the same grounds, but why should they? Update: It's the Norwegians, not the…

For Yankee fans, the pleasures of the regular season were manifold: Derek Jeter played ball with all the joy of the little guy who dreams of playing for the Yanks all his life, then finds he's doing just that! (Which in Jeter's case happens to be the true story.) But his teammates were right behind…

This is a must-watch video by Eye on the UN's Anne Bayefsky of responses to the Goldstone Report by Human Rights Council members Iran, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, and Sudan. Do not miss her j'accuse moment at the end, nor the disgusting pusillanimity of the Council's president, Alex Van Meeuwen.

Carefully, and with moral equivalence. In August we took note of the fury of Gazans over the possibility their children would be learning about the destruction of European Jewry-for the first time ever-in classes on human rights at their UNRWA-run schools; we were treated, as well, to a cringing…

As John Noonan notes below, Iran's favorite nuclear watchdog, IAEA director general and Nobel laureate Mohamed Elbaradei announced yesterday that the greatest threat to the Middle East is Israel. Though he is due-long overdue-to retire from the UN agency in November, the Cairo native told Spiegel…

They're not even pretending any more, and why should they? Brandishing the Goldstone Report that correlates their own barbarous behavior-waging war from behind the skirts and cribs of Gazan women and children and the hospital beds of the sick and dying-with that of Israel, Hamas has devised a plan…

Your foreign policy is in such nerve-racking disarray that even the president of France is horrified; your public relations outfit at the New York Times has begun to reconsider signing you as a client; every step you take heightens tensions with your opposition; you're a war-time president with a…

The Van Jones flameout was spectacular, but keep watching for the Kevin Jennings conflagration, which could be just as brilliant. Jennings's June appointment as Obama's school-safety czar was greeted by the vast right-wing conspiracy with some outrage, as members of its bullying anti-gay homophobic…

A particularly cruel and clever stroke by the fiends who have held him prisoner for 1,195 days, to release a video of a very much alive-as of September 14-Gilad Shalit addressing a plea to Bibi to make the deal that will set him free, and a loving message to his family. Now that we've seen the…

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Mrs. Huffington visits Israel -- a lifelong dream -- and a disappointingly boring series of sketches is all she manages to wring out of her visit. The "progressive populist," who laughably tells the Jerusalem Post that "At The Huffington Post we really avoid looking at American politics with the…

Palestinians used to be considered the best educated and most cultivated-and secular-of all the Arabs, before the gore-spattered Arafat and his bloody-handed cronies returned from Tunis in the mid-90s to murder their opposition, immiserate their brethren, and destroy the Palestinian civil-society…

The way Hollywood is closing ranks around Roman Polanski, you'd think he was Alger Hiss come back to life and sent back to prison--instead of a convicted pedophile who drugged and raped a little girl three decades ago and then fled to France to escape punishment. The list of celebrities outraged…

Leslie Gelb: Are we now to understand that he made all those previous declarations and decisions without a strategy he was committed to? Prior to his recent statements, it seemed clear that the president and his advisers had adopted a strategy already-the counterinsurgency one-and that Gen. Stanley…

Wait a minute: Do 8 months of self-mortification and public pleading -- to the point of swallowing whole its bloody brutality to its own people -- on behalf of the peaceful applications of the Iranian nuclear program while in full possession of intelligence on its hidden nuclear facility not make…

I can't really tell what Qaddafi is saying to scattered applause from members of the U.N. General Assembly right now because his interpreter is speaking a dialect of Arablish I don't recognize. But I'm hoping against hope he beats Fidel Castro's 1960 record of four-and-a-half-hours, and heads…

Irving Kristol, 1952, writing about Leo Strauss in the pages of Commentary: No doubt, there will be scholars who will respectfully dispute Professor Strauss on just about every point. They will find, as many already know, that he is a most formidable opponent. And if in time the victory goes to…

From a deliciously wicked Dana Milbank item in today's WaPo: Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do? Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon: The Secret Service and the D.C.…

Have you noticed that with every passing, depressing day, with each new demoralizing revelation of Obamic foreign-policy malpractice, our secretary of state comes more and more to resemble the "telescopic philanthropist" of Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby? Yes, the modern version's a…

March 20, 2009. Obama, obsequious, greets the leaders of "the Islamic Republic of Iran," who have the blood of Americans on their hands, on the eve of the Iranian New Year: So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders. We have serious differences that have…

We slouch ever closer toward Obama's waiting room, where the sick sicken further and the frail and elderly are hastened with all dispatch to their demise. And all the while, medical advances are expanding the universe, explosion by explosion. Inserting a plastic lens into one of her teeth-her…

Something more than impoverishing small businesses and knocking off old people hangs in the balance of the president's speech tonight. The fate of Maureen Dowd's imaginary Obamic love life may rise or fall with it, as well. She knew from the start her fling with him would be tricky: He was going to…

No, not that kind of page! The disgraced former congressman's got a brand new bag: he's been hired as a commentator by a North Palm Beach radio station. His show will be called "Inside the Mind of Mark Foley." (Errggg?) Says station manager Joe Ranieri: It will be general public interest, and…

When it comes to 9/11, Richard Cohen is all about the revenge. Sort of. "The horror of Sept. 11 resides in me like a dormant pathogen. . . . I vowed vengeance that day -- yes, good Old Testament-style vengeance -- and that ember glows within me still," he has written, and he's still burning today.…

With more politesse than is perhaps warranted, a "senior Whitehall aide" (Prime Minister Gordon Brown? Foreign Minister David Miliband?) has dubbed the U.S. government's ire over the release of the Lockerbie bomber "disingenuous," the Daily Mail reports. Statements issuing from Washington -- Mr.…

Energy-saving light bulbs-you know, those squiggly-looking things that say "Earth Friendly" and "Lasts 13 Times Longer" and "Uses 75% Less Energy" on their packages-don't actually give off very much light, as anyone who is forced to use them because they cannot find incandescent bulbs at Safeway…

The details of the Tate-La Bianca slaughters are too gruesome to repeat here-for those who weren't around and would like to know, there's the condensed version from Wikipedia; the full account, Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi, the man who prosecuted Charles Manson and three of his ghouls for…

In a fascinating profile of Linda Abu-Aziz Menuhin, an Iraqi-born Israeli forced to flee her native Baghdad in the paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence that erupted there after the Six Day War, the Jerusalem Post's Lela Gilbert reminds us that Palestinians weren't the only refugees created by the 1948…

In a fascinating profile of Linda Abu-Aziz Menuhin, an Iraqi-born Israeli forced to flee her native Baghdad in the paroxysm of anti-Semitic violence that erupted there after the Six-Day-War, the Jerusalem Post's Lela Gilbert reminds us that Palestinians weren't the only refugees created by the 1948…

And here it is: 0_61_090109_molecule.jpg Is science glorious, or what?

Obama National Security Adviser James Jones has an idiosyncratic view of what constitutes a successful defense against a foe with blood on his mind. In an interview with ABC yesterday, General Jones disputed Dick Cheney's charge that we are at vastly greater risk because of actions taken by the…

From a not-to-be-missed takedown of Richard Cohen by Jennifer Rubin at Contentions today: This is roughly the state of the argument now: the Left can't claim with much (if any) credibility that we will get anything of value with the Obama interrogation rules or that the pre-Obama interrogation…

An open letter to the president in the Claremont Review of Books summer issue from political philosopher Harry Jaffa: President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Sir: In your Cairo speech [June 4, 2009] you referred to the West Bank as "occupied" by…

Israel's education minister, Gideon Sa'ar, yesterday announced that when third-graders file into their classrooms for the first day of school tomorrow and open their Arabic-language textbooks, they will no longer find "al-naqba" in their pages. The phrase, which roughly translates as "devastation…

It's Ramadan, and 90,000-got that? 90,000-Muslims worshipped today at the Al Aksa mosque in Jerusalem. Will we hear all about it from Human Rights Watch? Will they find a minute to stop fronting for Hamas over there to acknowledge this fact? Will the Israel-bashing Amnesty International take note?…

Seven months of importuning Arab dictators and "monarchs" to toss something passing for a bone to Israel -- an overflight right or a couple of visas, maybe -- in exchange for "positive Israeli steps" such as freezing all settlement activity even where no Arab has ever lived or ever expects to live,…

After months of deliberation, the president's task force on interrogation and detention policies has recommended the formation of an "elite interrogation unit" to question "key terror suspects," the Washington Post reports."[S]hifting the center of gravity away from the CIA and giving the White…

Military defense attorneys are under investigation by the Justice Department for showing photographs of covert CIA operatives -- secretly shot by "researchers" hired by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers -- to Gitmo detainees in preparation for potential trials, the…

"I am a family man: first and foremost I am a son, husband, father and grandfather." Thus said Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in his appeal to the Scottish authorities for compassionate release. And thus Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill on Scotland's decision to comply:…

Biden:

More trouble in Paradise for the president, and not just from the storm brewing off Martha's Vineyard that threatens to interfere with his vacation. At a fundraiser for the Lambda Legal Defense Fund held last month by a wealthy gay couple at their ocean-front Fire Island home, Obama's name invoked…

Having spent ten days mostly out of news range, I missed watching as it happened the fabulous Sarah Palin takedown of the Obamacare "death panels." But am now all caught up, thanks to Richard Cohen's column of today attacking her.

It could be a meeting of the heads of the Five Families, the Cavalcantes, the Chicago Outfit, the Patriarcas, and the Detroit Partnership. But these murderers are Fatah terrorists, ex-terrorists (some, anyway), and a few who are just so old and infirm they're now terrorists in spirit only. They've…

It's almost breathtaking how little connected the Obami seem to what Americans really believe about their best interests and their country's. It's hard to think of a single subject on which they've gotten it right: Stimulus, no; health care, no; Iran, no; Israel, no; North Korea, no; even outreach…

He played Che in the movies, to the acclaim of the few who actually sat through the 4-hour eponymous flick (most of them in Cuba). Now his portrayal of the famous poet, physician, lover of Beethoven, and murderer has garnered Benicio del Toro Cuba's International Tomas Gutierrez Alea Prize, named…

I think there should be a new reality show called "America's Worst Senators at Town Hall Meetings." No more hearings on C-Span to lull citizens into thinking members of Congress are merely stultifying blowhards. This way they could get to know how really cringe-inducingly awful their legislators…

Boston ranks fourth, after the Obami, Upper-Northwest (and Upper-West Side) liberals, and Patrick Fitzgerald, on this die-hard Yankee fan's most-loathed-Americans list. (Did I mention that world peacemaker George Mitchell is a team director?) But even I--who curse the Bosox with the fury of a…

Okay, fine. I'll pay for the privilege of lunch with the president. (Hope he's got the Bud Light on tap.) But please-don't make me eat Michelle's sludgetables!

We knew it was coming. Once there was a knighthood, could America's highest civilian honor be far behind? Indeed not: the White house announced today that Ted Kennedy, Lion of the Senate and driver extraordinaire, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In presenting the complete list of…

It's true, for the longest time it was only shlub morons like the rest of us who knew it might not be kosher to claim domiciles in two separate states as our primary owner-occupied residences, and if we wanted to refinance the mortgages on them both with sweetheart loans and special discounts on…

You end up 400 miles away, in beautiful downtown Carpi.

The Vineyard Gazette ("Martha's Vineyard's Newspaper of Record Since 1846") is reporting that the Obamas have chosen Blue Heron Farm, a 28-acre property in Chilmark, MV, for their holiday this summer. Of course it's got to be a bit of a thrill for the vastly rich lefties who own properties on the…

Just a little note to the president who told ABC news that "victory" is not the goal in Afghanistan because "I'm always worried about using the word ‘victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur." Apparently your…

In a stomach-turning piece in Time today, former White House counsel Fred Fielding proudly unmasks himself as the person chiefly responsible, after the former president himself, for preventing Scooter Libby from receiving a presidential pardon in the Plame leak case-a pardon that ought to have been…

You'd think it would be hard to come up with a more shameful example of cravenness than the Bush administration's pandering to North Korea over years of fruitless negotiating in the Six-Party Talks. But the Obama administration has surely trumped it. Just days after a sickening piece appeared in…

Radical Islamists of the world, rejoice! Your cause is protected speech here in America. On Sunday, Obama's adopted home town played host to a conference titled "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," which was put on by Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), a world-wide Sunni network devoted to the…

Michael Oren, the new Israeli ambassador to the U.S., was issued a summons by the State Department "over the weekend," as news reports are putting it, and given a message to send back home: The government of the United States of America requires you to halt plans for construction of a housing…

Thank you and et cetera. Clichés and truisms. Many. Platitudes, plus a definition of our mission: "And with more states facing common challenges, we have the chance, and a profound responsibility, to exercise American leadership to solve problems in concert with others. That is the heart of…

The dinner at the White House took place June 30th, and was kept secret for some reason that remains unexplained by the U.S. News and World Report story. Maybe it was because Obama was still riding high enough in the polls that he didn't need flacks in the press to tout his intellectual prowess.…

There's good news coming out of Ramallah for a change: Thanks to some occasionally successful efforts by the "Palestinian Authority" to control the security situation, and some real interest on the part of Bibi Netanyahu in establishing an "economic peace" with the Arab denizens of Judea and…

Jen Rubin takes her down: It is perhaps not surprising that Sotomayor would see the need to finesse or distance herself from past positions. Her speeches and advocacy for the left-wing PRLDEF might incline significant numbers of senators to vote against her. But it is quite another thing to…

It's bad enough we're forced to listen to him pitching a domestic policy derived from Alinskyesque community-organizing principles and a foreign policy based on plain old appeasement. It's bad enough he's threatening to hurl us tailspinning back into the malaiseous 1970s with his Carteresque…

And as ever, she takes no prisoners when it comes to our national security: There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week. The Obama administration does seem to…

Tom Friedman is at it again, igniting a bunch of worn-out clichés and drowsy aphorisms to launch another one of his hot-air balloons. This time he's getting his consciousness raised (and his "clock cleaned," as he might say) by the Chinese--of all people!! Doesn't that just beat all?--about energy…

President Obama says the pie at the White House is "the best pie I have ever tasted, and that has caused big problems with Michelle and I." (Note to lefty grammarians and literary critics: can we assume you will be parsing this president's errors with the same strict and offended attention with…

(To the tune of "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp") You know it's hard out here for the Post (cash flow slowin') We just tryin' to get some money from the folks (not much showin') cause without it our reporters will be toast (money owin'). Cause the 'net an' all the bloggers got the poop and the…

Hillary Clinton was caught off guard when her boss claimed at his June 23 press conference that he was "appalled and outraged" after days of watching the Iranian regime brutally cracking down on protesters, because she didn't know he was going to use language she'd been urging him to use from the…

Kfar Adumim Settlement, Judea (West Bank) We stand on a promontory gazing at the bleached beauty of the Judean Desert. We could be looking at hills on the moon with a few human outcroppings: just down and to the left is the village of Anatot, birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah. Eleven miles to the…

Undivided Jerusalem My Israeli seatmate on the flight to Israel turns to me and says "Obama." My heart sinks. "What the hell he does now?" he demands to know. "Why he hates us and he doesn't care about us? And what he is doing with Iran? He is crazy?" If he's expecting a defense, or even a coherent…

Elliott Abrams has an important piece in the Wall Street Journal on U.S.-Israeli agreements about natural growth of West Bank settlements.

The newspaper of record explains why it's just so hard for the president and his advisers to know how to react to events in Iran: . . . the paucity of information from Iran adds another layer of complexity to Mr. Obama's challenge as he wrestles with how to respond publicly to the crackdown on…

Jen Rubin has an exclusive story at Pajamas Media that should horrify every law-abiding American: the Department of Justice is seeking volunteers for the "unique opportunity" of manning a booth at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Convention, which will take place in Washington, D.C. over…

North Korea threatens the United States of America. But we're not worried, because President Obama warns the Norks via CBS that "the T's are crossed and all the I's are dotted in terms of what might happen." Harry Smith briefly departs from drooling MSM slavishness to argue with him, albeit weakly,…

North Korea threatens the United States of America. But we're not worried, because President Obama warns the Norks via CBS that "the T's are crossed and all the I's are dotted in terms of what might happen." Harry Smith briefly departs from drooling MSM slavishness to argue with him, albeit weakly,…

Egypt's state-run newspaper Al-Ahram yesterday took the "international community" to task for its cautious response to the Iranian uprising. Between the mass demonstrations [of the reformists] decrying electoral fraud, and the counter-demonstrations accusing the reformists of allegiance to the…

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel (that's the extreme anti-Israel branch), who has served time in jail for providing financial support to Hamas, who in a 2007 sermon "urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to ‘save al-Aksa Mosque, free…

In a slapdown not all that unlike the one furnished by the Iranian regime in reply to his March Nowruz message, our appeasing fly-vanquisher of a president has received an answer to his placatory toe-dipping on the stolen election. The foreign ministry, in "protest and displeasure," has hauled in…

Egypt and Syria are up in arms about Bibi's speech, with Hosni Mubarak declaiming "Netanyahu's demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state is ruining the chance for peace," and the state-run Syrian newspaper Tishrin editorializing that "The Zionist government . . . according to…

"Two names on doomed Air France Flight 447's passenger list also appear on a list of radical Muslims considered a threat to France, according to French investigators," Sky News reports, adding: There is a possibility that the name similarities are simply a "macabre coincidence," the source added,…

The Obama daughters are having a lovely European tour in the manner of the American upper class, with educational stops at Towers both Eiffel and London, Notre Dame Cathedral, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, and, of course, the requisite shopping spree-with maman, nanny grand-mère, and motorcade in…

According to news reports coming out of Saudi Arabia, "King" Abdullah warned President Obama during his pre-Cairo visit to Riyadh that "Arab patience is running out." "We want from you a serious engagement to solve the Palestinian question and impose a solution if necessary," Abdullah reportedly…

Thus a neighbor of retired State Department intelligence analyst Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, on the "frustration with U.S. policies" shared by all right-thinking people in the upper-Northwest D.C. bastion of liberalism in which they reside. Still, a little shiver of shock has run…

And he looks a whole lot like Obama in Cairo to them. And this is without peyote. Presumably. Also see the new Newsweek at the Corner.

"It was a wonderful speech, carefully prepared, well-balanced, between interests of different listeners," intones the author of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, praising Obama's Cairo address beyond all warrant in an interview with Reuters, and particularly approving his willingness "to move toward…

At a joint press conference with Angela Merkel in Dresden today, Barack Obama spoke of many things, like "why the sea is boiling hot" ("In terms of climate change . . . We're going to have to make some tough decisions and take concrete actions if we are going to deal with a potentially cataclysmic…

Our secretary of state, fresh from her didactic ruler-smacking session with Israeli knuckles, put on her goody two-shoes habit yesterday and suggested to Beijing that it could mark the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre by publishing the names of those mowed-down--hundreds of…

I think the two most significant things about that speech were these: first, the hour-long spectacle of pandering anodynity limning the whole "we are the world" catalogue was delivered from a platform in a police state whose own citizens are routinely imprisoned for saying less; and second, aside…

And it's not how we Americans have maligned the greatness of Islam for far too long, or the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." Pressuring Israel is something he can do on his own time, they seem to be suggesting by omission. What they want to hear about is freedom: freedom to…

Casablanca, Morocco This is not your father's (OK, this is not your grandfather's) Casablanca. The bougainvillea, wisteria, roses, orange trees, eucalyptus, and date palms that adorn Marrakech-so plentiful are Marrakchi palm trees, in fact, and so revered, that some have been left to grow up…

Marrakech, Morocco In beautiful Marrakech, we admire the towering Atlas Mountains in the distance from our bougainvillea-laden terrace. Nork nukes and Sotomayor feel blessedly far away. Moroccans care not at all about our Supreme Court nominee, and only slightly more about the North Korean missile…

In the not too distant future President Obama will outline his "peace plan" for the Middle East. Perhaps as early as next month, when he travels to Cairo to address the Muslim world, he'll mention to Israel and the Arab states surrounding her how he thinks they can all work together to solve the…

Friends of Nan swept her off the grill today, voting 252-172 (Ron Paul, of course, and Walter Jones of North Carolina voted with the Dems) to block an effort to investigate her assertion that she never heard of waterboarding, but if she did, she didn't know it was gonna be used, but if she did know…

In an interview yesterday Hillary Clinton chillingly suggested it is now U.S. policy to demand not only that Israel dismantle "illegal outposts" and stop any further settlement expansion in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, but also--and no distinction made here--to put a halt to "natural…

In answer to Barack Obama's prayers for a "positive response to his outreach for opening a dialogue with Iran by the end of the year," some withering disapproval from Leon Panetta, who calls Iran a "destabilizing force in the Middle East," and a really scary warning from Hillary Clinton that the…

The Hill reports that "A massive amount of sensitive, national security-related information from the Clinton administration has gone missing from the national archives." The Inspector General of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) told congressional committee staffers Tuesday…

So, after a brief interruption during which George W. Bush reversed generations of American policy and put pressure on the Palestinians before making demands of the Israelis, it's back to business as usual for U.S.-Israel relations. What happened at yesterday's meeting between Bibi Netanyahu and…

Seventy-three percent of applicants for Massachusetts teaching licenses failed the math test. On second thought, not so shocking-not if you've had any experience with public school recently. Can't wait to here how they done on the English egzam.

David Attenborough and friends say they've found the Missing Link, and her name is Ida. She looks like a lizard to me, but maybe Bill Clinton would like to date her.

Seventy-three percent of applicants for Massachusetts teaching licenses failed the math test. On second thought, not so shocking--not if you've had any experience with public school recently. Can't wait to here how they done on the English egzam.

You'll find yourself in jail if you've the effrontery to fail to hold the escalator rail, says Toronto's Globe and Mail.

After reading Obama's speech at Notre Dame on abortion as well as the media coverage of it, a couple things stand out. First, almost every outlet--from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times to the Washington Post and the New York Times--reports that Obama "directly" confronted the…

Obami scouts, reconnoitering this week in Cairo, have narrowed the field to three possible venues for the U.S. president's address to the Muslim world next month, the AP reports; most highly recommended is the Al Azhar Mosque, . . . one of the oldest, most prestigious and most influential…

He's all net: "I think this is the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I've seen in my lifetime. . . . She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior."

Scientists at the University of Manchester (England) in pursuit of the origins of life--as all good chemists, molecular biologists, and prebioticists ought to be--believe they have hit upon the answer to a question that has long vexed them: if DNA and RNA are both too complicated to have "emerged…

The world's best illusions throw you a curve ball.

Jonathan Tobin at Contentions argues that the Israelis' ire at Pope Benedict XVI, and particularly their disappointment with his address at Yad Vashem on Monday, is misplaced. True, he says, "many Israelis on both the left and the right expected the first post-Holocaust German Pope to apologize for…

Sometimes when you are a world-famous rock star (or his wife) and you're in a hot hurry to get somewhere--say, for instance, the White House Correspondents Association has invited you to worship with them at the altar of the One--you just gotta jettison your deeply held carbon footprint principles…

And are they gonna swear her in?

The Jerusalem Post reports: A leading Palestinian cleric commandeered an evening devoted to interfaith dialogue with Pope Benedict XVI on Monday to rant against Israel for "killing Gaza's children," "bulldozing Palestinian homes" and "destroying mosques." In an impromptu speech, delivered in Arabic…

In an interview with TimesOnline on the eve of Bibi Netanyahu's visit to the U.S., Abdullah declares he will act as the peace broker between the Arab states and "Fortress Israel," as he calls it, as long as U.S. pressure forces Israel to agree to the terms of the Arab "peace" proposal: full…

Tom Friedman's amazing facility for unembarrassedly stating the obvious and spouting globaloney in the pages of the New York Times and between the covers of bestselling books-What? Are we running out of Sleep Ease?-has generated enough hot air over the years to put a dent in the polar ice cap.…

That's what doctors fear, as 61 high school girls were hospitalized today in Parwan suffering the same symptoms that afflicted girls just two weeks ago in the same town. As they await the results of blood tests, we can wonder along with them whether somebody-the Taliban or their ilk, maybe, who…

Iran→Egypt→Gaza→the U.N.→Iran . . . ad infinitum.

When reporters rose en masse Friday as their president entered the briefing room, it wasn't out of devotion to him or anything, explains CBS's Mark Knoller. If they never did the same for his predecessor, that was because they didn't want "to block the shot of TV cameramen and still photographers…

At the Wikipedia 2009 Conference in Tel Aviv Sunday, Israeli researchers delineated for Wikimedia director Sue Gardner the variety of ways in which the encyclopedia's treatment of Israel-related issues is objectionable. Among the problems - maybe chief among them - is Wikipedia's Hamas entry: Hamas…

Detroit Free Press columnist Laura Varon Brown complains about the impossibility of free discourse when Obama's the subject and her comrades-in-liberalism are the discussants. Well guess what, Laura: you can pat yourself on the back ad infinitum for being open-minded enough to admit it, but you…

Read this beautiful account of his heroics, modestly undertaken. And remember while you're reading that this could easily be a story about any other ordinary Israeli-as the next Israeli ambassador to the U.S. would be the first to tell you himself.

Swiss President Hans-Rudolph Merz defended his get-together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during last month's Durban II racism-fest in Geneva on the grounds that he raised Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial and threats against Israel during their meeting, and anyway, his is a neutral country maintaining…

Marie Antoinette Obama, shod in Lanvin, dishes out food to D.C.'s homeless. Editor's note: Remember the outrage at the Huffington Post about McCain's loafers?

Doesn't a single Dem member of congress remember this fascinating colleague? What about the president? Though a McCain supporter, Kemp publicly rose to Obama's defense during the campaign. Not a word has been heard from those precincts so far. That's some non-partisanship. Update: Obama offers his…

Michelle and Barack take a walk, thrill AP reporter: As the Obamas walked behind shrubbery and out of sight, the unscripted moment left reporters guessing where they were going. To the vegetable garden? The basketball court? No final word, but they eventually came back the same way from where they…

As Israel celebrates its sixty-first year of existence, it marks a growth spurt as well: its population has risen from 7.3 million a year ago to 7.4 million today. The breakdown: 75.5 percent Jews; 20.2 percent Arabs; 7.5 percent foreigners. Again: 20.2 percent of the citizens of the Jewish state…

Joe Biden has been pressuring Arlen Specter to switch parties for six years, FOX News's Major Garrett reports: "I have been working on [Specter's party switch] in earnest for the past four years and double time for the past 100 days [as vice president]," the vice president said yesterday. Well,…

Fatah Party member Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, and "peace" partner extraordinaire-or, otherwise put, chief administrator of the corrupt and useless body that is "governing" parts of the West Bank and will continue to do so until the inevitable Hamas takeover…

Harry Reid turned his Searchlight on Barack Obama in 2006, he says in a new epilogue to the paperback version of his 2008 auto-bio, The Good Fight, and, listening to the senator from Illinois speak, he was struck by the Obamic brilliance. But more wonderful still was the modesty of The One:…

You can rename an "F" whatever you want-call it an "A" if you like-but guess what? Nobody's gonna be fooled. Especially not the failing student whose history you think you are rewriting by calling his "F" an "H." That's "H" for "Held." School districts all over the country are experimenting with…

Henry Waxman (anthem below)* is so passionate about saving us, and our tainted air, from ourselves that he will brook no opposition. Every cause needs its Savonarola (Republicans=evil Medici)-why not our melting globe? Yet do we sense a blackening effluence emanating from the pure, unstained…

The arrival of six-month-old Portuguese Water Dog Bo at the White House--and especially the first photograph that was making the rounds of the Obama family, which has never had a dog, greeting him in a rather strained-looking pose--has put me in mind of my own checkered history with dogs, and that…

In a powerful op-ed in today's Washington Post, the former House intelligence committee chairman and CIA director slams the administration and his former colleagues on the Hill: I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national…

Never mind pressing Israel for concessions in pursuit of "peace." The Palestinians themselves are incapable of making the necessary concessions to one another to provide the Israelis with an interlocutor. "The past week has seen an escalation in the confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, both in…

Secretary of State Clinton yesterday issued a warning to Israel: negotiate "peace" with the "Palestinians" or risk losing the support of the Arab world in your efforts to counter the Iranian threat. At the same time, she suggested the Obama administration's diplomatic outreach to Tehran was the…

Captain's Log, Stardate -313696.7861491628 (Earthdate April 21, 2009), Starship USS Too Many Red Bulls: Met today with UFOlogists from the Paradigm Research Group (PRG) in the National Press Club's First Amendment Room. Our subject: We Are Not Alone. Addressing the gathering were three powerful…

Lebanon's parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for June and which will essentially be a showdown between Hezbollah's patrons in Damascus and Tehran and a coalition of pro-Western-or at any rate anti-Iranian-actors including Saudi Arabia, will likely hinge on who among the crowded field of…

A new AP survey finds that despite worries about jobs, job losses, the economy, and the federal debt, Americans are feeling good about the president and the direction of the country: 64 percent of those polled approve of Obama's job performance, down just slightly from 67 percent in February, and…

Congressman Pete Hoekstra writes in the Wall Street Journal: "It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be…

Congressman Pete Hoekstra writes in the Wall Street Journal: "It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be…

Nancy Pelosi knew three years ago her fellow California Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman was being wiretapped by the NSA and didn't lift a finger to let her know. "When you are briefed on something, it isn't your information to share with anybody else," she says. "Even if I wanted to share it…