Rightank

Ahhh, it nice to be back.

I love Ohio State football. I received my law degree from Ohio State. I love alot of things about Ohio State. Yet, despite all I love, the incessant liberal tripe that cascades into the classrooms of its scarlet and gray halls has once again reared its head.

Evidently, an Ohio State librarian who decided to recommend four conservative books for freshman students to read is being accused of sexually harassing three Ohio State professors by virtue of his book recommendations alone.

How excruciatingly despicable. Let me say it more directly: Professors Kennedy, Buckley and Jones–you are an embarrassment to academia and to Ohio State. How condescending of you to deem your personas to be of such infinite worth that a recommendation of a conservative book which happens to disagree with homosexuality offends you to the point of feeling sexually harassed. I would hope that being part of the “educated” class, you might have learned to deal or handle opposing views. Perhaps, you have lived inside warm, academic cocoons to long that you have been insulated from thoughts, ideas, arguments and theories that are different from the stream of conscience you like to talk about in your classrooms and pontificate about in “scholarly” journals.

To the Ohio State administration: How idiotic of you to continue your pursuit of such a ridiculous, uninformed, and illegal complaint. Do you really believe that a book recommendation is an act of sexual harassment? Why in the world are you taking this complaint seriously? Do you not realize that many of your alumni are conservative and who do not donate to the University precisely because they have no desire to support such incorrigible and baby-like decision-making?

I hope this idiocy stops soon. At least the profs (and hopefully the adminstriation) at Ohio State can’t ruin the football.

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court handed all the law professors engaged in homosexual activism a lesson in humility–and the law. In Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., CJ Roberts wrote the unanimous decision informing Eskridge et al. to take a hike and put your money where your mouth is.

It must be exasperating for liberal law professoriat to come to grips with reality–the reality of losing big time on a gay rights issue. In most lawschools, gays and lesbians tout their agenda brazenly and openly. At my alma mater, roughly 95% of the professors sent around a letter decrying the military’s policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and puffed out their chests exclaiming their dismay while chastizing the troops from their incubated office spaces. It was rather patronizing of them, but heck, law school is about promoting an agenda and not about teaching law.

Similiarly, the homosexual agenda isn’t about “equality.” Rather, it is the design of a tiny minority to overthrow the moral tradition of America by undermining through litigation and fearmongering the traditional family unit, particularly heterosexual marriage. You see, everyone who opposes gays and lesbian “rights” is a homophobe and the root of his or her opposition is seething hatred. Homosexual proponents believe that any logical argument contra same-sex marriage simply cannot exist and any argument proffered against gay adoption, gay marriage, etc., is vacuous and meritless–which, of course, is absolutely false.

Rumsfeld is great for America and for our military. I give it 8 thumbs up.

I apologize (again) for not posting as regularly as I have in the past. It has been sheer agony not being able to blog. I haven’t been able to put in my two bits on VP Cheney’s hunting accident or the Dubai contract ports debacle. Nonetheless, I think things are beginning to settle down and I’ll try to post a couple of times this week. Thanks for your patience.

Tank

It isn’t hard to understand why many Americans distrust government officials.  Take the recent case of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (”DIA”) stonewalling attempts by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, to obtain thousands of documents and tape recordings of the Hussein regime:

“WHERE WAS THE NUCLEAR material transported to?” asks an aide to Saddam Hussein, in a taped conversation released last week. He answers his own question: “A number of them were transported out of Iraq.” This provocative snippet is part of 12 hours of taped exchanges between Saddam Hussein and his advisers. The tapes were found in Iraq after the war and were released last week by their American translator. The tapes are authentic. And they are seemingly of little interest to the U.S. government. A spokesman for John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence (DNI), downplayed their importance: “Analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs.”

The Weekly Standard’s editorial scathingly decries the DCI’s intention to lock up the documents until further notice.  What good reason, particularly if the documents are stale, is there that would prevent the DCI handing over the documents to Rep. Hoekstra and in short course thereafter to the American public?

Two reasons come to mind: power and prewar not postwar analysis.  First, the DCI is trying to define its turf amongst the different Washington bureaucracies.  The DCI and Negroponte want to take credit for any big nugget of information obtained from the tapes or documents.  Because much of the information has not been looked at, they want to preserve their bureaucratic stamp on the Hussein documents and recordings before someone else takes their gold medal.

Second, while any post-war analysis in 2006 of Iraq’s weapons capability might not be gleaned from the documents and tapes (the assertion is a bit tenuous because much of the data has not been reviewed), the pre-war analysis is likely to be affected.  Why the DCI would rather hide the mere historical information is perplexing–is the DCI an agent of the Hussein regime or of the American people?  If the former, then keeping the documents and tapes under lock-and-key is understandable.  If the latter, the DCI’s current stance against releasing the Hussein regime information is disgustingly inept.

I’m sorry I have not been posting the past few days.  Frankly, I’ve started a new job which has sucked up much of my blogging time.  Nonetheless I do hope to continue blogging away, but, I might post on a more infrequent basis (2 to 3 times a week instead of 5 to 6 times).

Many thanks to all my readers for supporting Rightank.

Recently, Russia’s President Vladmir Putin said that he (and Russia) welcomed Hamas as the “legitimate” electoral “choice of the Palestinian people.” The choice that the Palenstinians made was to elect a terrorist organization hell-bent on destroying Israel and imposing Islamic law. The election of a party of Islamofacists does not legitimize the election for freedom-loving democracies. Heck, even South Korean’s Kim Jong-il is the “democratically” elected President of North Korea. Does Putin also believe that the spectacled Jong-il is the leader of a “legitimate” government?

Unfortunately, is some countries representative democracy, instead of empowering the citizens with freedom of religion, movement, and dignity, has metamorphised into an aegis of the dictator state that repels critcism from true representative democracies (e.g., United States, Great Britain, and Australia). For many dictators, creating a democratic republic is a form of legitimatizing their totalitarianism among their own people as well as in the eyes of the United Nations. The democratic emphasis, especially at the United Nations, is placed on the voting “process” rather than the outcome of that process. The election of terrorists and dictators is not a democratic victory for freedom–it is a triumph of oppression.

Democracy does not always produce freedom. However, freedom can only be found in democracy. This is moralistic quandry that the United States (and the coalition allies) have seen in Iraqi elections. The democratic transition in Iraq had gone remarkably well. However, if Islamic law is allowed to predominate in any fashion–particularly in the Iraqi constitution–the effort to democratize Iraq could turn out poorly in the long run. Because of that possibilty, it is essential to for the United States to support factions within Iraq that allow freedom of religion and speech and who openly oppose the radicial Iraqis who would rather blow up children than express their opposing viewpoint in a more humane manner.

The mosque that housed the one-armed Islamofacist Abu Hamza–recently convicted in England of “inciting his followers to murder non-Muslms and Jews”–was home to a terror weapons cache (HT: Powerline). You know what they say, when emergency strikes always have your 72-hour terrorist kit handy. The items found in the mosque include:

• Chemical warfare protection suits (great for playing paintball)
• Three pistols (not so great for playing paintball)
• Stun gun
• Handcuffs
• Counter-strike spray
• Hunting knifes
• 100 stolen or forged passports

If mosques in England are home to weapons caches then what about American mosques?  How many guns or chemical warfare protection suits are being stored right now in preparation for a terror attack here?

The Department of Defense recently released yesterday its Quadrennial Defense Review Report. In a nutshell, it sets forth the strategic planning for the next four years and beyond for the War on Terror.

As I stridently support the War on Terror and would like nothing else than seeing the complete oblieration of Al Qaeda, I found the section entitled “Defeating the Terrorist Networks” particularly interesting. Terrorist networks, like Al-Qaeda, are described as having the following characteristics:

• Multi-national and multi-ethnic
• Use “intimidation, propaganda, and indiscriminate violence in an attempt to subjugate the Muslim world under a radical theocratic tyranny”
• Operate in 80 countries
• Seek biological, chemical, nuclear, and other weapons of mass destruction

From these characteristics alone, it is evident that destroying Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks will take many years. It will not be a quick fight, because of their use of technology to communicate in various continents and collocation in small, disparate pockets within terrorist-supporting states or unsecure nation-states incapable of preventing their presence. The Democratic litany, repeated continually, that the Bush Administration is losing the War on Terror because Osama is still out there misses the whole point of the Terror War. We have stabilized Afghanistan and Iraq is beginning to prosper democratically but more importantly, removed the two terrorist-supporting states from Al Qaeda’s operating table. We are squeezing Osama like a grape, stretching his network and capabilities thinner and thinner until he implodes. Unlike Hitler’s Germany, the death of Osama will not destroy Al Qaeda–its hateful ideology of radical Islam will exist until the entire network is destroyed. Strategically, the Bush Administration is fighting the War on Terror by going after the terrorist networks, not (as the John Kerry Democrats would have us fight) by allocating resources exclusively on individual manhunts.

I also found interesting the QDRR’s emphasis on developing, maintaining, and collaborating with allied governments and members of the international community to achieve victory:

Just as these [terrorist] enemies cannot defeat the United States militarily, they cannot be defeated solely by military force. The United States, its allies and partners, will not win this long war in a great battle of annihilation. Victory can only be acheived through the acculmulation of quiet successes and the orchestration of all elements of national and international power. U.S. military forces are contributing and will continue to contribute to wider government and international efforts to defend the homeland, attack and disrupt terrorist networks, and counter ideological support for terrorism over time. But broad cooperation, across the entire U.S. Government, society, and with NATO, and other allies, is essential.

Glaringly, the United Nations is not an explicit part of the broad cooperation of international allies. Good. Why attempt to plan for the security of the United States relying on a body composed of terror-havens like Iran and Syria? The military’s message seems to be that the United States will ally itself only with countries, organizations, and localities friendly to our mission. Encouragingly, this signifies that our military leaders desire that we act exclusively in our own self-interest in protecting our country. Nations who we seek as allies will support this interest while other nations who oppose us on the international level (e.g., Russia and China) will be prevented from hamstringing our efforts to combat terror.

President Bush has stated more than once that the United States does not need a permission slip to protect itself. The QDRR details that military is implementing the Commander-in-Chief’s message. Every American should read it.

The unending Muslim conniption over a Danish newspaper’s initial publication of a cartoon characteriture of the Muslim prophet Muhammed is outlandish. A father’s killing of a daughter because she refuses to marry her cousin receives Muhammed’s praise yet when someone not of Muslim faith–an infidel–dares to draw Muhammed violent, fiery protest and threats of death are warranted.

Much of the blog commentary has centered on the Muslim response of fire, destruction, and hate-filled rhetoric. What seems missing, however, is any discussion of the Muslim imposition of a specific religious tenet of their faith upon the nations of Europe. Adherents of the Muslim faith are forbidden to draw a picture of Muhammed because of clerics who fear such a picture would become worshipped idolatrously. Anyone who is not a Muslim would not be prohibited from drawing a representation of Muhammed (including a political cartoon) unless that person is a dhimmi–a person who is forcefully subjugated to Islam.

The underlying presumption or condition necessary for any justifiable Muslim outrage is that the Danish cartoonist is bound by the religious commandments of Islam. The issue is not the cartoonist’s depiction of Muhammed as a terrorist–the radical Islam espoused and preached by Osama bin Laden validates the portrayal of Muhammed as a bomber. Individuals, in a free society, are allowed to be as religiously bigoted as they want. The other members of the polity can decide for themselves whether to agree or disagree with the bigot’s opinion.

In Dhimmi societies, Muslim critics are not tolerated. It is heartening that the EU defended the newspaper’s right to publish the cartoon. However, the recent Muslim pillaging of all things European suggests that many Muslims, particularly the radical community, do not view Europe as a free society–at least a free society that is capable of criticizing the religious doctrine of Islam.

Former Senator John Danforth is yet another “moderate” (aka liberal) Republican who is disgusted with the Christian religiousity of the Republican Party and their opposition to gay marriage. Interviewed by the Washington Post, Danforth insinuates that Republicans who oppose same-sex marriage are mean-spirited bigots devoid of rationality:

“I think a marriage is between a man and a woman, but it’s beyond me how the whole thing has become so politicized and people have become so energized by it. Because, what difference does it make? How does it constitute a defense of marriage to legislate in this area?”

In Missouri, where Danforth won five statewide elections, a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage passed overwhelmingly last year. Yet he believes most people would say no if asked, “Do you believe we should just be nasty and humiliate people and degrade them because of sexual orientation?”

Danforth’s belief that denying same-sex couples the right to “marry” is “nasty” or “humilliating” or “degrading” is mistaken and frankly moronic. His belief or regard for the tradtional definition of marriage sounds alot like John Kerry’s presidential campaign prattle–I believe marriage should be between a man and a women but x, y, and z. Contra Danforth, a Republican’s opposition to same-sex marriage does not mean that he or she is a bigot. There are many good reasons why marriage should be limited to male/female couplings. Apparently, Danforth would rather slur the 71% of Missourians who supported an constitutional amendment protecting marriage rather than verbalizing any arguments why they were wrong.