Honduras: Zelaya's Return Is Thwarted

Credit must be given to the Honduran congress, supreme court, and military. They smell yet another rotting banana republic in their future at the hands of Zelaya, and after ample warning after warning, they use their own constitution against a sitting president to shield themselves from the nightmarish reality of their neighbor Venezuala, where the tin pot dictator Chavez inflicts “referendum” after “referendum” to tighten his communist grip upon their throats.

Zelaya is in NO position to bargain, yet he preens and gestures as if he is a leader in exile. I only wish that the communist cabal of Chavez, Castro, Zelaya, Ortega and Obama would wade out into the Honduran streets where angry mobs wait to tear them from limb to limb.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AFP) - - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya headed back to crisis-gripped Honduras on Sunday, one week after he was kicked out of power and as interim leaders' threats to block his arrival sparked bloodshed.

The decision by Zelaya -- ousted by the military one week ago -- to return brought the political dispute over his plans to change the constitution to a dramatic climax.

Fears of bloodshed were confirmed as police said two people had been killed and two injured in clashes with soldiers who sought to break up tens of thousands of Zelaya supporters trying to enter Tegucigalpa's main airport.

After Zelaya set off from Washington with a UN official, Honduran aviation officials said they had ordered his plane to divert to neighboring El Salvador.

Zelaya ordered Honduran armed forces to open the capital's airport, he told Venezuela's Telesur television.

In Washington, senior US officials said they had urged Zelaya not to return to his home country.

"A variety of countries spoke out in quite forceful fashion... against the wisdom of president Zelaya's effort to return to Honduras," an official said, commenting on a meeting of American nations that included the United States.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Zelaya would travel to El Salvador and return to Washington if his arrival was blocked.

Meanwhile, interim leader Roberto Micheletti ramped up tensions by claiming that Nicaraguan troops were moving toward the countries' joint border, a claim Nicaraguan military immediately denied.

"We have been informed that in the sector of Nicaragua, some troops are moving toward the border," Micheletti said in a televised news conference.

In Managua, Nicaraguan general Adolfo Zepeda shot back that the information was "totally false."

A defiant Zelaya left Washington in a Venezuelan plane accompanied by UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro.

The plane was due to land in Tegucigalpa at around 2300 GMT, Maduro said.

At the same time, another plane traveled to El Salvador carrying Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), which suspended Honduras in an emergency session late Saturday.

The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay were traveling with the OAS chief.

Interim leaders said they had put forward an offer for dialogue in "good faith" with the OAS, after they previously said they were pulling out of the body ahead of the suspension.

The interim government has proposed to the OAS "the start of a dialogue in good faith," interim deputy foreign minister Martha Lorena Alvarado said.

Micheletti also said that no one would pressure him, and still insisted he had taken power in a "constitutional succession."

The OAS suspended Honduras late Saturday for failing to reinstate Zelaya, in the first such move since the exclusion of Cuba in 1962.

Members of the pan-American body slammed the leaders of the coup which saw the army remove Zelaya in his pajamas a week ago at the height of a dispute with the courts, politicians and the army over his plans to change the constitution.

Night time curfews -- which suspend some freedoms guaranteed by the constitution -- and media blackouts have increased tension in one of Latin America's poorest countries.

A freezing of millions of dollars of international aid, regional trade blockades and recalls of foreign ambassadors have hit the country in the past week.

Chavez, Zelaya's main backer, has said that Venezuela would suspend key shipments of oil to Honduras, which he said would drive up gasoline prices.(source)

Iran: After The Riots Are Over (mullah calls for UK embassy workers to be persecuted for "starting riots")

The EU decided today to summon all Iranian ambassadors in capitals across Europe in a co-ordinated protest over the detention of UK embassy staff. The move came after a senior cleric said some of the staff accused of inciting protests following last month's disputed presidential election would be put on trial.

The head of Iran's guardian council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, said the detained staff members had "made confessions" in connection with the unrest.

The surprise move by the council, Iran's top legislative body, will cause relations between London and Tehran to deteriorate further after tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions last week.

Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said in a statement: "It's not acceptable to file charges against the ones released or to the ones still in custody."

Jannati, a hardliner who is close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said during a Friday prayer sermon: "Following the election, the enemy couldn't bear to see the people's happiness and tried to pour poison down their throats.

"They had plotted the velvet revolution prior to the election, and even on the British foreign ministry website in March it was announced that Iran's election might be accompanied by some unrest and that British citizens were warned to be careful.

"What is the meaning of these predictions?"

His comments are not an official announcement from Tehran – Jannati does not hold a position in the government or judiciary.

But his status as the head of the guardian council, a powerful body of clerics that stands above the elected government, gives him a degree of authority.

Jannati did not say how many embassy staff members would be tried, or on what charges.

The threat of a trial came as the 27 EU countries examined potential steps to protest against Iran's crackdown on dissent. Future measures could include visa bans on Iranian officials, diplomats said.

Earlier, Iranian officials said all but one of the nine embassy personnel arrested on 27 June had been released, but EU officials said they believed more than one was still being held.

Downing Street said it was seeking urgent clarification from the Iranian government as the Foreign Office again rejected Iranian accusations against its staff.

"All we can say is that two of our staff remain in detention," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

"I would reiterate what we said earlier this week, that the accusations against them are without foundation."

Iran arrested the embassy workers in a co-ordinated operation last weekend.

The matter seemed to be winding down after most were released in the face of a strong response from the EU.

The brutal response by Iranian security forces against demonstrators who claimed the election had been rigged in favour of the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, drew western condemnation. At least 20 people were killed.

Iran said the vote was fair and has made Britain the target of some of its fiercest rhetoric.

Iranian hardliners continue to harbour resentment at Britain for its role in toppling the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. (source)

Islamofile: Christian Persecution By Muslims; Domestic Terrorists

MSM Diary: A Reporter's Life Is More Precious Than An American Soldier's

To hear idiots cry out that we don't have a left-biased mainstream media brings up the same emotions you would encounter while hearing a member of Germany's SS claim that Hitler didn't dislike Jews.

But, then again, most Americans are products of public education, and are therefore taught by agents of indoctrination themselves. The poor lads can't think critically, so these nuances and slight-of-hands by the MSM go largely unnoticed.

Here's the latest example: Just two weeks ago we learn that the NYT went to great lengths to hide the news for 7 months that the Taliban had kidnapped an American reporter working for them. The executives/editors went so far as to not only call all other MSM outlets to suppress this news (which they all willingly complied), but also sought out ways to doctor up Wikipedia's bio page of this reporter to make him appear more sympathetic to Muslims, thereby hoping to forestall torture or death to him by his captors.

All very valiant, wouldn't you say? The NYT must really care about us Americans.

Contrast that with their story posted today by the NYT that an American GI was kidnapped by the same Taliban that captured one of their own seven months ago. The point is inescapable, even among the most dull-witted of liberals.

First, the NYT's proud article proclaiming their heroic efforts at keeping a kidnapped Times reporter alive while held captive by the Taliban:

For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban.

But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia.

Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times.

But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world.

A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia’s page on Mr. Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping.

Even so, details of his capture cropped up time and again, however briefly, showing how difficult it is to keep anything off the Internet — even a sentence or two about a person who is not especially famous.

The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given.

“We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”
Mr. Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan on Nov. 10, along with his interpreter and their driver. Two days after the kidnapping, a Wikipedia user altered the entry on Mr. Rohde to emphasize his work that could be seen as sympathetic to Muslims, like his reporting on Guantánamo, and his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims. Mr. Rohde won a Pulitzer Prize for his Bosnia coverage in 1996, when he worked for The Christian Science Monitor.

The Wikipedia editor in that case was Michael Moss, an investigative reporter at The Times and friend of Mr. Rohde who has written extensively about groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Like many Wikipedia editors, he adopted a user name that hid his true identity.

“I knew from my jihad reporting that the captors would be very quick to get online and assess who he was and what he’d done, what his value to them might be,” he said. “I’d never edited a Wikipedia page before.”

With his editors’ blessing, Mr. Moss had already made similar changes to Mr. Rohde’s “topic page” on The Times’s Web site, and in both cases he omitted the name of Mr. Rohde’s former employer, because it contained the word Christian.

The Wikipedia page history shows that the next day, Nov. 13, someone without a user name edited the entry on Mr. Rohde for the first time to include the kidnapping. Mr. Moss deleted the addition, and the same unidentified user promptly restored it, adding a note protesting the removal. The unnamed editor cited an Afghan news agency report. In the first few days, at least two small news agencies and a handful of blogs reported the kidnapping.

Around that time, Catherine J. Mathis, the chief spokeswoman for the New York Times Company, called Mr. Wales and asked for his help. Knowing that his own actions on Wikipedia draw attention, Mr. Wales turned to an administrator, one of several who would eventually become involved in monitoring and controlling the page.

On Nov. 13, news of the kidnapping was posted and deleted four times within four hours, before an administrator blocked any more changes for three days. On Nov. 16, it was blocked again, for two weeks.

“We didn’t want it to look unusual in some fashion that would draw speculation, so we would protect it for three days, or up to a month, which is pretty normal,” Mr. Wales said. He added, “Weeks would go by before there was a problem.”

On Feb. 10 and 11, two users added the kidnapping information several times to Mr. Rohde’s page, only to see it removed each time, and they attached some heated notes to their additions. “We can do this months,” one said.

An administrator put a rare indefinite block on the page, then changed that to a temporary freeze. One of the would-be editors posted a note saying: “Not gonna work boy genius. Should have stuck to indefinite.”

Most of the attempts to add the information, including the first and the last, came from three similar Internet protocol addresses that correspond to an Internet service provider in Florida, and Wikipedia administrators guessed that they were all the same user.

“We had no idea who it was,” said Mr. Wales, who said there was no indication the person had ill intent. “There was no way to reach out quietly and say ‘Dude, stop and think about this.’ ”

Last Saturday, after Mr. Rohde and the translator, Tahir Ludin, escaped from a Taliban compound in Pakistan, Ms. Mathis e-mailed Mr. Wales before making a public announcement, and Mr. Wales, himself, unfroze the page.

When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”

Joseph M. Reagle, an adjunct professor of communications at New York University who studies Wikipedia, said he was not sure whether its role in suppressing news about Mr. Rohde would prompt an outcry among longtime editors, because in the Rohde case, lives were at stake.

“Wikipedia has, over time, instituted gradually more control because of some embarrassing incidents, particularly involving potentially libelous material, and some people get histrionic about it, proclaiming the death of Wikipedia,” he said. “But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.” (source)

Now, in today's NYT, we find an unexcited article proclaiming that *yawn* another militant American got what he deserved:

U.S. Soldier Captured in Afghanistan

Filed at 11:38 a.m. ET

KABUL (AP) -- An American soldier, who disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts, is believed captured, officials said Thursday.

Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier disappeared Tuesday.

''We understand him to be have been captured by militant forces. We have all available resources out there looking for him and hopefully providing for his safe return,'' Mathias said.

Mathias did not provide details on the soldier, the location where he was captured or the circumstances.

The news broke as thousands of U.S. Marines launched a major anti-Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan. The missing soldier was not part of that operation.

''We are not providing further details to protect the soldier's well-being,'' she said.

Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in the Mullakheil area of eastern Paktika province, where there is an American base.

The soldier was noticed missing during a routine check of the unit on Tuesday and was first listed as ''duty status whereabouts unknown,'' a U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity.

It wasn't until Thursday that officials said publicly that he was missing and described him as ''believed captured.'' Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

Initial reports indicated that the soldier was off duty at the time he went missing, having just completed a shift, the official said on condition of anonymity because details are still sketchy.

The missing man is an enlisted soldier, and his family has been notified.

Two U.S. defense sources said the soldier ''just walked off'' post with three Afghan counterparts after he finished working. They said they had no explanation for why he left the base. He was assigned to a combat outpost, one of a number of smaller bases set up by foreign forces in Afghanistan, the officials said.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a spokesman for the Taliban, could not confirm that the soldier was with any of their forces. A myriad of insurgent groups operate in eastern Afghanistan, and the Taliban is only one of them.

The most important insurgent group operating in that area is known as Haqqani network and is led by Siraj Haqqani, whom the U.S. has accused of masterminding beheadings and suicide bombings. (source)

You see, when one of their own right-thinking, liberal-bred, anti-war reporters gets captured by the enemy it's time to stop the presses, but when it’s just some American GI who probably came from a West Virginia family of Bible-totin’ Neanderthals the MSM have no reason to worry about the safety of his life.

Death By 1,000 Cuts: The Bush Deficit Vs. The Obama Deficit

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious.

The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:
President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.

President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.

President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.

President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.



UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers.

While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added.

CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years. (source)

Barry In Charge: Allied With Chavez Until The Bitter End

Let's see: a socialist president in Honduras is coming to the end of his 4-year term, and according to Honduran constitutional law he cannot run for a second term.

But he wants power anyway. Badly.

So he tries to force a referendum on the people, breaking the laws of the constitution, to have the constitution ammended for his sake.

His name is Zelaya, and his popularity has been waning in the last couple of years, leaving him desperate to accomplish his quest for power. And desperate times call for desperate measures.

Knowing that it is illegal for a president to seek longer terms by this means, Zelaya at first disguises the referendum as some benign proposal, but then, at the last moment, alters the wording of the plebiscite to allow for him to run again.

Leftists have no respect for the rule of law, as demostrated time and time again. Our own Zapatistas in Congress recently performed a similar coup when they slipped 300 pages into the cap and trade bill only hours before it was to be voted upon.

How else are you to slip a noose around an animal's neck if you don't sneak it on him?

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Honduras' interim leader warned that the only way his predecessor will return to office is through a foreign invasion - though a potential showdown with the ousted president was delayed due to action Wednesday by the Organization of American States.

A defiant Roberto Micheletti said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday that "no one can make me resign," defying the United Nations, the OAS, the Obama administration and other leaders that have condemned the military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya.

The U.N. General Assembly voted by acclamation Tuesday to demand Zelaya's immediate restoration, and the Organization of American States said Wednesday that coup leaders have three days to restore Zelaya to power before Honduras risks being suspended from the group.

That period for negotiation prompted Zelaya to announce he was putting off his plans to return home on Thursday until the weekend.

Micheletti vowed Zelaya would be arrested if he returns, even though the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador have signed on to accompany him along with the heads of the Organization of American States and the U.N. General Assembly.

Zelaya "has already committed crimes against the constitution and the law," said Micheletti, a member of Zelaya's Liberal Party who was named interim leader by Congress following the coup. "He can no longer return to the presidency of the republic unless a president from another Latin American country comes and imposes him using guns."

Soldiers stormed Zelaya's residence and flew him into exile early Sunday after he insisted on trying to hold a referendum asking Hondurans if they wanted to reform the constitution. The Supreme Court, Congress and the military all deemed his planned ballot illegal.

Zelaya, who is an ally of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, backed down from the referendum Tuesday, saying at the United Nations that he would no longer push for the constitutional changes he wanted.

One of several clauses that cannot be legally altered in the Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single, 4-year term. Congress claims Zelaya, whose term ends in January, modified the ballot question at the last minute to help him eventually try to seek re-election. Chavez has used referendums in Venezuela to win the right to run repeatedly.

"I'm not going to hold a constitutional assembly," Zelaya said. "And if I'm offered the chance to stay in power, I won't. I'm going to serve my four years."

OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza delivered what he called "an ultimatum" during a marathon session in Washington. "We need to show clearly that military coups will not be accepted. We thought we were in an era when military coups were no longer possible in this hemisphere," he said.

Spain's Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that it is recalling its ambassador from Honduras as part of international efforts to reinstate Zelaya.

Micheletti said he would not resign no matter how intense the international pressure becomes. He insisted Honduras would be ready to defend itself against any invasion.

He did not name any specific countries, but Chavez has vowed to "overthrow" Micheletti and said earlier Tuesday that any aggression against Zelaya by Micheletti's government should prompt military intervention by the United Nations.

"No one can make me resign if I do not violate the laws of the country," Micheletti said. "If there is any invasion against our country, 7.5 million Hondurans will be ready to defend our territory and our laws and our homeland and our government."

Micheletti said it was too late for Zelaya to avoid arrest.

His foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, threw a wild card onto the table, telling CNN en Espanol that Zelaya had been letting drug traffickers ship U.S.-bound cocaine from Venezuela through Honduras. Ortez said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was aware of Zelaya's ties to organized crime.

DEA spokesman Rusty Payne could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation.

The U.S. government stood firmly by Zelaya, however. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Washington saw no acceptable solution other than Zelaya's return to power. He said the United States was considering cutting off aid to Honduras, which includes $215 million over four years from the U.S.-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Micheletti said he had no contact with any U.S. official since assuming the presidency.

The interim leader, who now occupies the same office in the colonial-style presidential palace that Zelaya did, insisted he was getting on with the business of governing.

He and his newly appointed Cabinet ministers were settling in, even as soldiers wandered the ornate hallways and manned barricades outside to keep Zelaya's supporters away.

Micheletti, who promised he would step down in January and had no plans to ever run for president, said a key goal of his short term in office would be fixing the nation's finances. Zelaya never submitted the budget to Congress that was due last September, raising questions about what he was spending state money on.

Zelaya's popularity has sagged at home in recent years and his fiery brand of populism is similar to the kind that often irks Washington. Still, some of his policies, including raising the minimum wage, have earned him the loyalty of many poor Hondurans, and thousands have rallied to demand his return.

Asked if Zelaya could one day return to power stronger than ever, Micheletti said that "it's not about sympathy, it's not about being a martyr, but simply that we are following the letter of the law which he did not respect." (source)

The Tide Is Changing

More Americans See Democratic Party as “Too Liberal”

PRINCETON, NJ -- A Gallup Poll finds a statistically significant increase since last year in the percentage of Americans who describe the Democratic Party's views as being "too liberal," from 39% to 46%. This is the largest percentage saying so since November 1994, after the party's losses in that year's midterm elections.

Most major demographic and attitudinal subgroups show at least a slight uptick since 2008 in perceptions that the Democratic Party is too liberal. The increasing perception of the Democrats as too far left comes as President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have expanded the government's role in the economy to address the economic problems facing the country. Additionally, the government is working toward major healthcare reform legislation and strengthening environmental regulations.

Notably, there has been no change over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say the Republican Party is "too conservative," though the 43% who say the party leans too far to the right matches the historical high mark set last year.

As a result, now slightly more Americans perceive the Democratic Party as being too liberal (46%) than view the GOP as being too conservative (43%).

But the Democratic Party still compares favorably to the Republican Party from the standpoint that more Americans say the Democrats' ideology is "about right" (42%) than say this about the Republicans' ideology (34%).

In fact, the 34% who say the GOP is about right is a new low since the question was first asked in 1992, and a far cry from November 1994 and November 2002, when majorities thought the Republicans' views were appropriately balanced.

Independents' Views of the Parties

Political independents' perceptions of the two major parties' ideological orientation are important since both parties need to appeal to the political center in order to win elections. (The vast majority of partisan identifiers predictably view their chosen party's views as being about right and the other party's as being too extreme.)

Currently, independents are more likely to view both parties as being too extreme in either direction than to believe they are about right. But more independents say the Democratic Party (38%) than the Republican Party (25%) is about right.

Independents are a little more likely to say the Republican Party is too conservative than to say the Democratic Party is too liberal, in a slight departure from the results among all Americans.

Since last year, there have been declining perceptions among independents that each party is about right in its ideological orientation -- from 31% to 25% for the Republican Party and from 43% to 38% for the Democratic Party. Most of the decline in regard to the Democratic Party has been associated with in an increase in seeing the party as "too liberal."

Implications

The Democratic Party continues to hold the upper hand over the Republican Party in the current U.S. political environment by a variety of measures, including party identification and party favorable ratings. However, compared to last year, Americans are significantly more likely to see the Democratic Party as too liberal, and as a result, they are somewhat more likely to view the party as being too far left than to perceive the Republican Party as too far right. That may expose a bit of a vulnerability for the Democratic Party, and if perceptions of the Democratic Party as being too liberal continue to grow, the GOP may be able to win back some of the support it has lost in recent years. But that may be possible only if the Republicans are at the same time able to convince the public that they are not too far to the political right.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,011 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted June 14-17, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls. (source)

SCOTUS Gets It Right: The Case Of Discrimination Aginst The White Firefighters In Connecticut

As reported here a few months ago, the stench from this case proved too foul for even wishy-washy Justice Kennedy. Justice has been served in this case of reverse discrimination against Frank Ricci, the other Ct. firefighters, and everyone who stands against racism.

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could give Sotomayor's critics fresh ammunition two weeks before her Senate confirmation hearing. Conservatives say it shows she is a judicial activist who lets her own feelings color her decisions. On the other hand, liberal allies say her stance in the case demonstrates her restraint and unwillingness to go beyond established precedents.

Coincidentally, the court may have given a boost to calls for quick action on her nomination.

The court said it will return Sept. 9 to hear a second round of arguments in a campaign finance case, and with Justice David Souter retiring there would be only eight justices unless Sotomayor has been confirmed by then.

In Monday's ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions." He was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Souter, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday. Speaking dismissively of the majority opinion, she predicted the court's ruling "will not have staying power."

Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.

But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Sotomayor should not be criticized for the unsigned appeals court decision, which he asserted she did not write. "Judge Sotomayor and the lower court panel did what judges are supposed to do, they followed precedent," said the Vermont Democrat who will preside over Sotomayor's confirmation hearings next month.

Leahy also called the high court decision "cramped" and wrong.

In New Haven, Nancy Ricci, whose son, Frank, was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit, carried a large cake decorated with red, white and blue frosting into the law office where the firefighters were celebrating their victory.

The ruling is "a sign that individual achievement should not take a back seat to race or ethnicity," said Karen Torre, the firefighters' attorney. "I think the import of the decision is that cities cannot bow to politics and pressure and lobbying by special interest groups or act to achieve racial quotas."

At a press conference on the steps of city hall in New Haven, firefighter Frank Ricci said the ruling showed that "if you work hard, you can succeed in America."

Monday's decision has its origins in New Haven's need to fill vacancies for lieutenants and captains in its fire department. It hired an outside firm to design a test, which was given to 77 candidates for lieutenant and 41 candidates for captain.

Fifty-six firefighters passed the exams, including 41 whites, nine blacks and six Hispanics. But of those, only 17 whites and two Hispanics could expect promotion.

The city eventually decided not to use the exam to determine promotions. It said it acted because it might have been vulnerable to claims that the exam had a "disparate impact" on minorities in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The white firefighters said the decision violated the same law's prohibition on intentional discrimination. The lawsuit was filed by 20 white plaintiffs, including one man who is both white and Hispanic.

Kennedy said an employer needs a "strong basis in evidence" to believe it will be held liable in a disparate impact lawsuit. New Haven had no such evidence, he said.

The city declined to validate the test after it was given, a step that could have identified flaws or determined that there were no serious problems with it. In addition, city officials could not say what was wrong with the test, other than the racially skewed results.

"The city could be liable for disparate-impact discrimination only if the examinations were not job related" or the city failed to use a less discriminatory alternative, Kennedy said. "We conclude that there is no strong basis in evidence to establish that the test was deficient in either of these respects."

But Ginsburg said the court should have assessed "the starkly disparate results" of the exams against the backdrop of historical and ongoing inequality in the New Haven fire department. As of 2003, she said, only one of the city's 21 fire captains was African-American.

Until this decision, Ginsburg said, the civil rights law's prohibitions on intentional discrimination and disparate impact were complementary, both aimed at ending workplace discrimination.

"Today's decision sets these paired directives at odds," she said. (source)

Death By 1,000 Cuts: Cap And Trade Passes In Congress

Roll Call Vote On This Bill

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.

Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.

Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman's co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.

For starters, the CBO estimate is a one-year snapshot of taxes that will extend to infinity. Under a cap-and-trade system, government sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally; companies then buy or sell permits to emit CO2. The cap gets cranked down over time to reduce total carbon emissions.

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn't take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others -- manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality.(source)

Obama's Failed Diplomacy: North Koreans Cry, "Let's Smash The US"

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Tens of thousands of North Koreans shouted slogans to denounce international sanctions at a rally in central Pyongyang on Thursday, as the communist country vowed to enlarge its atomic arsenal and warned of a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation" in the event of a U.S. attack.

The rally to mark the anniversary of the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War came a day after President Barack Obama extended U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea for another year, saying the North's possession of "weapons-usable fissile material" and its proliferation risk "continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the United States, according to the White House Web site.


The U.S. measures are on top of U.N. sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear test in May. The U.N. sanctions bar member states from buying weapons from or selling them to North Korea. They also ban the sale of luxury goods to the isolated country and financial transactions.

In Pyongyang, an estimated 100,000 packed the main square, shouting "Let's smash!" in unison while punching clenched fists in the air, footage from APTN in North Korea showed. A placard showed hands crushing a missile with "U.S." written on it.

The isolated, totalitarian regime often organizes such massive rallies at times of tension with the outside world.

North Korea's "armed forces will deal an annihilating blow that is unpredictable and unavoidable, to any 'sanctions' or provocations by the US," Pak Pyong Jong, first vice chairman of the Pyongyang City People's Committee, told the crowd.

State-run newspapers ran lengthy editorials accusing the U.S. of invading the country in 1950 and of looking for an opportunity to attack again. The editorials said those actions justified North Korea's development of atomic bombs to defend itself.

The North "will never give up its nuclear deterrent ... and will further strengthen it" as long as Washington remains hostile, Pyongyang's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

The new U.N. resolution—passed to punish Pyongyang after its May 25 nuclear test—seeks to clamp down on North Korea's trading of banned arms and weapons-related material by requiring U.N. member states to request inspections of ships carrying suspicious cargo.

North Korea has said it would consider any interception of its ships a declaration of war.

The U.S. Navy is currently following a North Korean ship suspected of carrying weapons in violation of the resolution, but Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Wednesday that the U.S. and its allies have not decided whether to contact and request an inspection of the ship.

The Kang Nam left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago and is believed bound for Myanmar, South Korean and U.S. officials have said. A senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday that the ship had already cleared the Taiwan Strait.

Another U.S. defense official said he tended to doubt reports that the Kang Nam was carrying nuclear-related equipment, saying the information officials had received seemed to indicate the cargo was conventional munitions.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing intelligence.

Adding to the tensions, anticipation is mounting that the North might test-fire short- or mid-range missiles in the coming days. The North has designated a no-sail zone off its east coast from June 25 to July 10 for military drills.

A senior South Korean government official said the ban is believed connected to North Korean plans to fire short- or mid-range missiles. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

The North has also been holding two U.S. journalists since March. The reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal border crossing and hostile acts earlier this month.

Ling's husband, Iain Clayton, said Wednesday that his wife called him on Sunday night and she sounded scared. He also said Ling's medical condition has deteriorated and Lee has developed a medical problem. Ling reportedly suffers from an ulcer. (source)