Justice Alito

Today Judge Alito became Justice Alito on a 58-42 vote. A few months ago Republicans were at their worst. The nomination of Harriet Meyers represented everything conservatives hate about the GOP: spineless incompetence after a stunning electoral victory. However, credit must be given where credit is due. The GOP responded to the groans of those people that form the vibrant base of the party with the nomination of Alito. From everything I've seen so far, Alito is exactly what conservatives have hoped their President would give them: a person who values the Constitution for what it is rather than for what it could grow into if we were to read it in light of the changing desires and expectations of society.

Had the Republicans have had the bare majority of 51 or 52 votes, it's much more likely the Dems would have been emboldened enough to actually succeed in stopping the nomination. Simply put, elections do matter. Roberts and Alito are the proof. The success of the Roberts and Alito nomination is enough reason to continue supporting the Republican party, no matter how gutless and inept they can be at governing as the majority party. You can support the GOP by donating here. Maybe a donation of $58.58 would help reinforce the message.

Raising of the flag

The new Palestinian government.

Palestinians choose terror

In 2000 Bill Clinton gathered Ehud Barak and Arafat together at Camp David in order to agree on acceptable terms for a lasting peace in the Middle East. During the Camp David negotiations, Israel made unprecedented concessions to the Palestinian authority. Among other things, Israel offered more than 93% of the West Bank as well as Arab east Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. The Palestinians categorically rejected these offers and refused to put forward any plausible ideas on their own. Dennis Ross, Clinton's top negotiator, talks extensively about this in his book, The Missing Peace.

For years, all sides in the peace process have been talking about their hopes for establishing a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Politicians and diplomats in every party from every country concerned about the Middle East have waxed eloquent about continuing the pursuit of peace. But as we learned from 2000, the only way the two sides can reach an agreement is if BOTH sides put offers on the table that contain reasonable concessions on both sides.

If there was any question left as to how serious the Palestinians are about peace with Israel, the answer came yesterday. Hamas, officially sanctioned by the US State Department as a terrorist organization, won a majority of the vote in the Palestinian election. In all seriousness, I would love for someone to tell me how you can have peace negotiations with a people whose government is ruled by a terrorist organization that has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel.

As one columist has written, this election was an earthquake. The secularists have been outed. The Islamists now control.

Backed against a wall

J. R. Dunn writes at The American Thinker about the position Israel now finds itself in with regards to Iran:

An acute observer might well think that everyone involved was trying to ease the way for a strike to be carried out – by the U.S. or Israel or both. It really wouldn’t matter so long as the EU and the UN were not involved. (The French nuclear threat only highlights this point – it’s best read as a statement intended to direct Iranian intentions elsewhere.) Israel, after all, does have a history of the coup de main, the all-or-nothing strike such as occurred in 1956, 1967, and 1981. Look at the situation from Israel’s point of view to grasp how far it may be forced to go. This is the state founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, as a lifeboat for [the] oldest surviving nation on Earth. The only people the world ever consciously tried to destroy.

It's very easy for doom and gloomers to overstate the horrors of what could happen. But I don't see how the situation with Iran isn't extremely serious. And, given the diplomatic brick walls that Europe and the US have been running into, I don't see how Iran can be peaceably disarmed. The only questions are when will action be taken, who will act, and what will be Iran's response.

King of Pop

I don't know why this amuses me so much:

MANAMA, Bahrain - Michael Jackson visited a mall in Bahrain’s capital Wednesday, covering himself in a black abaya robe traditionally worn by conservative Bahraini women and a veil hiding his face.

Here's the link.

Support the troops

Joel Stein's op-ed in the LA Times has been blasted by conservative blogs all across the internet. His piece begins with the words "I don't support our troops." My thoughts on his position are a bit mixed. He doesn't support the troops because he doesn't support the war in Iraq. Here are his words:

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition.

There's something to this--although his analysis is dangerously simplistic. I believe that there are many people who would not have gone into Iraq but, now that we're there, support a successful end to the mission and, of course, support those soldiers who will carry out the mission. On the other hand, I think some of the rhetoric against the war by many Democrats has been so harsh that it's very difficult to reconcile the comments with a position of supporting the troops. I have a hard time understanding how you can support the troops and not support what they are doing now. And I recognize that there is a huge difference between supporting what they are doing (something all Americans should do) and disagreeing with the decisions that led to their deployment (something we should vigorously debate).

All this brings me to another statement Mr. Stein makes:

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.

The idea that the soldier pulling the trigger is ultimately responsible for whatver death or injury might result is ludicrous. Assuming the soldier is acting under command (which is almost always the case) the buck stops with the Commander in Chief. In other words, the commanding officers are "ultimately" responsible. The soldier is bound to follow orders and do everything within his ability to carry out the mission assigned to him. Any moral outrage should be directed towards those who give the orders--not the one's who are bound by law and duty to carry out those orders. Mr. Stein then assumes that all of our troops are "ignoring their morality." This is an odd statement. It presupposes that all the troops are (or should be) morally opposed to what they're doing. This in turn presupposes that they're all bound by the same moral code, which raises the entirely serarate issue of whether we are bound to a universal morality. His statement also seems to suggest that soldiers and not their COs should be the ones to decide what they do. This begs, as he acknowledges, ineffeciency. It also begs chaos--a state that would lead to an America left protected by a military armed more with moral autonomy than with might. But I suppose that this would be a liberal's dream: a military that favors moral pontification more than the use of force to advance American "imperialism"--as Mr. Stein calls it.

In response to this column, Michelle Malkin has proposed 25 ways to ignore Joel Stein and support our troops.

Comatose

More posturing from Iran: "We'll put Israel in eternal coma."

Chocolate

Linda Chavez blasts New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin for being the rascist that he is.

And here's CNN's article about Nagin's "I'm-really-sorry-that-some-people-took-that-the-way-they-did" apology.

Public schools

I'm sure John Stossel wasn't surprised to see that the NEA flipped out over his 20/20 piece documenting the massive amounts of money public schools waste.

Defeat

A great column by Barry Casselman: The jaws of defeat.