Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Jennifer Rubin posts more on the Jewish organizations meeting with Obama.
Was there any dissent? Well, just a smidgen:
The only signs of contention — from Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, and Malcolm Hoenlein, the Presidents Conference’s executive vice chairman — had to do with how Obama was handling his demand for a settlements freeze, not with its substance.
Hoenlein said that peace progress was likelier when there was “no daylight” between Israel and the United States. Obama agreed that it must always be clear that Israel has unalloyed U.S. support, but added that for eight years there was “no daylight and no progress.”
Hmm. Could there have been no progress because the Palestinians, after being offered their own state by Hillary Clinton’s spouse, have chosen rejectionism and violence? No one in attendance raised that possibility, it appears.
Rick Richman reviews the past eight years of Israeli concessions and Palestinian belligerence.
… After the Palestinians rejected an offer of a state at Camp David in 2000, rejected the Clinton Parameters in 2001, and conducted a terror war against Israeli civilians from September 2000-2002, Israel nevertheless agreed in 2003 to the “Performance-Based Roadmap” for the creation of a Palestinian state, despite reservations about the manner in which that plan would actually be implemented.
In 2003 and thereafter, Israel ceased all settlement activity — as it understood that Phase I Roadmap obligation (no new settlements; no building outside settlement boundaries; no financial incentives for Israelis to move to settlements) — and believed American officials agreed with its interpretation of that obligation.
In 2004, after the Palestinian Authority failed to meet its own Phase I Roadmap obligation (sustained efforts to dismantle terrorist groups and infrastructure), Israel nevertheless proposed to dismantle every existing settlement in Gaza (not just “outposts”), remove every Israeli soldier, and turn over the entire area to the Palestinian Authority — in exchange for a written American commitment to defensible borders and retention of the major settlement blocs necessary to insure them. …
Abigail Thernstrom voices concerns about Sotomayor.
America is supposed to be a land in which individuals are seen as … individuals. Too many, too few: that is the language of un-American quotas.
Sotomayor has suggested that race and ethnicity, to a substantial degree, define individuals.
“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences … our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging,” she said in a 2001 speech.
At her confirmation hearings, she will undoubtedly dance away from such ethnic determinism. But it would appear to be what she believes, since she has reiterated the point several times in different venues.
Andy McCarthy has a rundown of the presidential first pitch.
Though it’s not a widely appreciated fact, we right-winger sports nuts have long known that the sports press is among the media’s leftiest precincts. So I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at how little was said (as in nothing at all) about the reception President Obama received last night when he came out on the field to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the baseball all-star game in St. Louis. It was a packed house (over 50,000 in attendance), and the jeers were easily discernible.
Don’t get me wrong: there was more cheering than booing. But that’s to be expected: It was a festive national occasion, and most of us who disagree intensely with Obama’s policies would be more apt to stand and cheer our president respectfully. That’s what made the booing all the more noticeable to anyone — other than a sports journalist — who heard it.
The media fawning really is so shameless it’s become self-parody.
Mark Steyn recounts the White House response to Senator Kyl’s comments that the stimulus isn’t working.
Heather Mac Donald takes an in-depth look at crime and New York City.
…The cause of this bust-to-boom revival is largely uncontested: the city’s victory over crime. If New York’s lawlessness had remained at its early 1990s levels, the city by now would be close to a ghost town. But the cause of the crime rout itself remains hotly contested. Though New York policing underwent a revolution in 1994, vast swaths of the criminology profession continue to deny that that revolution was responsible for the crime drop. They are wrong—and dangerously so. The transformation of New York policing is the overwhelming reason why the city’s crime rate went into free fall in 1994. And that transformation, in turn, was aided by an increase in the size of the police department.
This truth means that government budget woes must not be allowed to jeopardize the department’s ability to keep crime rates low. The FBI’s designation of New York as the safest big city in the country is an economic marketing tool of immeasurable worth. Lose that designation, and Gotham’s ability to climb out of the recession and retain and attract businesses and residents will be dealt a severe blow.