Judicial reform process delayed

This was probably to be expected, sadly enough, all because some leftists in establishment took it upon themselves to do everything they could to bring the country to a standstill:

The head of one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Coalition partners, Otzma Yehudit, said on Monday he had agreed to delay the government's overhaul of the judiciary in exchange for a promise it would be brought after the upcoming parliamentary recess.

"I agreed to remove the veto to reject the legislation in exchange for a commitment by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the legislation would be submitted to the Knesset for approval in the next session," National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a statement. The statement also said that Netanyahu vowed that Ben-Gvir would get to head a new National Guard unit that would complement that Israel Police, for which he has no official jurisdiction over.

The statement said the legislation would be pushed to the next session of Israeli parliament in order to "pass the reform through dialogue," the statement said. Parliament will go on recess next week for the Passover holiday.

[...] As opposition spread, the head of the Histadrut labor union called for a general strike if the proposals were not halted.

Take-offs from Ben Gurion airport were suspended, while Israel's main seaports, banks and hospitals, and medical services were set to strike. Branches of Mcdonald's were also closed.

That the airport staff would allow this is severely disturbing. It just shows how the left has such astonishing influence here for the worst. One of the coalition MKs is furious over the situation:

MK Tally Gotliv (Likud) on Monday expressed outrage over the decision to pause the legislation of the judicial reform, but made clear she would not disband the coalition because of it.

"The decision to stop the legislation is shameful and disgraceful, it's shameful in several aspects," Gotliv told Israel National News. "Perhaps all my friends from the right should remember the words of the sages, 'Say little and do much' and not the other way around, and it is unthinkable that after we unilaterally surrendered last week [by agreeing to a softened version of the bill on the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee], and I said that the entire reform would be taken off the table, [that we agreed to postpone the legislation]. I also said that the demonstrations would not stop and I that it was a protection payment for violence and extortion through threats."

"After all, all that is on the agenda is changing the structure of the Judicial Selection Committee, which may affect the appointment of two judges in the next two years – 12 percent of the judges of the Supreme Court, and for that they are setting the Ayalon Highway on fire? So what do we say in response? That we surrender to domestic terrorism. We don't know how to govern," she added.

Gotliv is not convinced by the promise that this is only a short-term stoppage and claimed that it is a "one-sided surrender, a surrender to actual terror, to all this promiscuous anarchism. I prefer that they tell me that to my face and not shame the people of Israel."

She's right that it's not going to stop here. There will doubtless be more obnoxious demonstrations by the left, along with potential strikes to paralyze the country, and this cannot be allowed to go unopposed.

Update: David Harsanyi says the judicial system as it currently stands in Israel is exactly what the American left wants too. He also cites some of the country's unfortunate history:

But the nation’s judicial system is even worse. Israel’s political system was created by leftists who envisioned a one-party state. From its inception, the nation’s socialists suppressed — sometimes violently — political opposition. And in the 1950s, a ruling Labor Party preempted the opposition from infiltrating the courts by empowering judges to veto appointees to the bench. This created a self-perpetuating, generationally cocooned judiciary that functions without any set of cohesive legal principles or oversight.

That's the tragedy that's been around for much longer than one may think, and has damaged this country's modern inception, easily for years to come.

LEFTIST LOONS, SEX SLAVE HOLDERS

From the Daily Mail:

Couple 'who held three women as slaves for 30 years' were leaders of Maoist communist sect based in Brixton bookshop

The couple accused of keeping three women as slaves for more than 30 years ran a communist sect worshipping Chinese leader Mao Zedong, it was revealed today.

The pair, of Indian and Tanzanian origin, are reportedly Aravindan Balakrishnan, 73, and his wife Chanda, 67, whose far-Left activities allegedly led to them being arrested and jailed in the 1970s.

They were held by police last Thursday after three alleged victims - a 30-year-old Briton called Rosie, a 57-year-old Irishwoman and a 69-year-old Malaysian - accused them of years of 'physical and mental abuse' and keeping them in servitude for decades.

It emerged today that the couple had helped organise a Maoist squat in a Brixton bookshop, which was shut down in 1978 when police raided and arrested 14 people there, including the couple.

It is alleged the suspects, known as Comrade Bala and Comrade Chanda to other members, both later served a prison sentence after a conviction for assaulting a police officer involved in the raid.

Scotland Yard and the secret services are believed to have been aware of the couple's far-Left views....

Even more surreal:

Lambeth Council 'were told about youngest victim Rosie, 30, 15 years ago'.

Yet, the Left constantly portrays themselves as caring about the well being of oppressed people.

STARVE OUT THE RED STATES?

Thugocracy (hat tip to The Public Cause):



Obama and his cohorts will stop at nothing in their drive to get Obama re-elected in 2012.

This Way Lies Madness

The Left's grasping at opportunism is mind-boggling (first example) and disgusting (second example).

From Jonathan Alter's essay in Newsweek (hat tip to Weasel Zippers):

Can Obama Turn Tragedy Into Triumph?

Saturday’s shooting spree could prove a turning point in the Obama presidency. How the White House should talk about the tragedy.

...This horrific event offers the president a chance to show leadership qualities that he’s inexplicably hidden away in some blind trust. The shootings and the resulting debate over the climate of incivility play to his strengths as a calm and rational leader. Just as Bill Clinton’s response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings helped him recover from his defeat in the 1994 midterms, so this episode may help Obama change—at least in the short term--the trajectory of American politics.

[...]

Whether or not he attends the funerals for the Tucson victims, Obama’s big chance to lead will come in his State of the Union address on January 25. He can both to speak to the moment thematically and confront the substantive concerns raised by the tragedy....

Some biographical information about Jonathan Alter, author of the above-cited essay, is HERE.

And more lunacy — or downright evil, if you prefer that term! Westboro Baptist Church (so-called church but really a hate group led by Democrat Fred Phelps) plans to picket the funeral of Christina Taylor Green, the youngest shooting victim of Saturday's murderous shooting spree in Tucson:

Christina Taylor Greene
September 11, 2001 - January 8, 2011

Yes, the Right can be shrill. I won't deny that fact.

But for downright insanity and meanness, the Left cannot be outdone.

LAST FRIDAY ON "THE GATHERING STORM RADIO SHOW"

Our guest for most of the hour was Robert Spencer. WC and I discussed with him his new book Stealth Jihad, which should be required reading for students in upper high school and beyond. And for all who love America and our wonderful culture here in the United States.

The interview is HERE. Mr. Spencer joined us at the marker 7:50.

Skeletons in the Left's Closet

Author Daniel J. Flynn resurrects the skeletons in the left's closet. A choice selection...

10. Ayatollah Khomeini, Leftist Hero

Reflexive anti-Americanism initially moved the Left to embrace the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Mother Jones, for instance, in 1979 predicted that “if Khomeini or his followers take power” then “democratic reforms, freedom for political prisoners, an end to the astronomical waste of huge arms purchases, and a constitutional government” would follow. The Nation, Michel Foucault, and other pillars of the Left similarly projected their ideals upon Khomeini and company...

8. Gay Activists Sue to Block AIDS Test

Today, homosexual activists blame Ronald Reagan and the clergy for the spread of AIDS. But in the mid-1980s, the National Gay Task Force and the Lambda Legal Defense, citing civil-liberties concerns, actually sued the federal government to stop the AIDS test. Thankfully, they lost and scores of lives have been saved as a result...

6. Jonestown Kool-Aid

Before orchestrating the murder/suicides 900+ people in Guyana, Jim Jones was the darling of the San Francisco Left. Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and Willie Brown embraced a man who killed more blacks than the KKK. Democrats Rosalynn Carter, Walter Mondale, and Gerry Brown made campaign visits to the Peoples Temple’s “comrade leader.” The mayor of San Francisco even rewarded Jones for his activism by appointing him chairman of the city’s housing commission. “The temple was as much a left-wing political crusade as a church,” The Nation reported in 1978. Unfortunately, as the years progressed, more Americans gulped down the Left’s Kool-Aid that Jones was of the religious Right and not an atheist leftist.

5. Concentration Camps, American Style

A year before Hitler came to power in Germany, Margaret Sanger called for a vast system of concentration camps for the United States. The Planned Parenthood founder demanded “a stern and rigid policy of segregation or sterilization” for “dysgenic” Americans who “would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.” The 1932 speech concluded that “fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense—defending the unborn against their own disabilities.”

4. Heaven on Earth

American intellectuals looked upon the hell on earth that was post-revolutionary Russia and saw a heaven on earth. The New Republic credited the Russian Revolution with providing “the most democratic franchise yet devised in our world,” while The Nation found that “the franchise is more democratic in Russia than in England or in the United States.” Lincoln Steffens marveled after a visit to the Soviet Union, “The revolution in Russia is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth...”

1. Nazi-Soviet Pact

The Left switched from pacifists to warmongers overnight once the Nazi attack upon the Communists dissolved the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Communist Party USA chief Earl Browder, who had dubbed WWII “the second imperialist war” during the pact, so thoroughly switched course when the Nazis attacked the Communists that he embraced conscription (after his opposition to it led to jail in WWI), endorsed a ‘no-strike’ pledge for labor unions (after encouraging strikes to impede the war effort), and kicked out Japanese Americans from the CP (after ostensibly championing civil rights). The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League ceased operations during the pact. The Communists’ New Masses panned the anti-Nazi Watch on the Rhine when it appeared as a play during the pact only to praise it when it appeared as a movie when Hitler and Stalin were again enemies.

Read the whole thing.

WHY THE LEFT IS UTTERLY USELESS: THEIR PRIORITIES ARE BASED ON A BUNCH OF HOOEY

• EVERYTHING THE LEFT FEARS, EVERY PROBLEM THEY THINK NEEDS URGENT, URGENT, URGENT FIXING IS, WELL... A BUNCH OF HOOEY.

• EVERYTHING. THEY AREN'T REALISTS; THEY ARE SURREALISTS!
  

• THE LEFTS' WHOLE ENTIRE "POSITIVE" PLATFORM IS BASED ON FANTASY - PURE UNADULTERATED BS.

• THAT'S WHY THEIR PRIORITIES ARE ALL WRONG. AND WHY THEIR POLICIES ARE A REAL THREAT TO OUR SECURITY, POUR PROSPERITY AND OUR SACRED WAY OF LIFE.
  

LET'S LOOK AT THE RECORD:

1) "ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING" (AGW) - They call this the most serious most dire and most urgent threat humanity and the planet Earth face. They blame humanity and CO2 for climate change despite the fact that the ice core record proves it's a lagging indicator. OH AND BY THE WAY: Europe is having its SNOWIEST Winter in 51 years.

DISPOSITIVE FACTS HERE.

SO WHY WOULD THEY PROMOTE AGW?

Because it's a way for them to demagogue against industry and free-markets and get us top raise taxes and increase regulations - which just happen to be their long-held policies. NOW THAT'S CONVENIENT!

2) "GROWING INCOME DISPARITY" - Well, this is simply class-baiting; the Left has been trying to ignite a class war since 1848. The truth is there is still tremendous upward mobility ion the USA; people are still getting richer every year.

And if we want to adopt policies to make more people richer faster all we need to do is reduce taxes. A rising tide lifts all boats. (The trouble is the Left wants to sink your boat if your richer than they are!)

3) "THE USA HAS A HEALTHCARE CRISIS" - (AND THE CURE IS MORE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION) - Well, the truth is we have the best healthcare in the world. And our cousins in Europe - with socialized healthcare have worse care and it's bankrupting them.

We do have many uninsured people about 44 million: 10 million are illegal immigrants (who get free care in emergency rooms - courtesy of us taxpayers!); 10 million are younger people who choose not to buy health insurance; 10 million are temporarily out of work and between coverages. And 10 million need public/taxpayer assistance, which is available through Medicaid and S-CHIP, as it is currently formulated.

This is not a CRISIS.

We can improve our system. But Having the government run it is not the answer.

4) "OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES ARE UNDER UNPRECEDENTED AND MASSIVE ASSAULT", (BY BUSHITLERCHENEYHALLIBURTION) - I hear this one a lot from my Leftie friends. As if Bush was reading their e-mails, listening to their phone-calls, reading their mail, and getting ready to heard every registered Democrat into a concentration camp. Er um... their HERO FDR did just that - to 50,00 US citizens, but that hasn't stopped them from LOVING FDR and hating/fearing Bush. Go figure.

Bush has endured the worst type of personal attacks, not one of the attackers has been punished. (And don't give me any of that Plame crap: She was outed by ARMITAGE, not the White House, and he told Novak about her to BOLSTER her hubby's import, not to intimidate her and future "whistle-blowers.)

Most have gotten RICH: Michael Moore, Rosie; Joe and Valerie - they've all cleaned up - to the tune OF MILLIONS $. Is that what happens when you attack the fuhrer!? Sheesh.

THE TRUTH IS THAT THE NSA INTERCEPT PROGRAM AND RENDITION HAVE NOT INFRINGED ON ANYONE'S RIGHTS, AND THEY HAVE HELPED KEEP US SAFE.

5) "GUNS ARE THE ROOT OF GUNS VIOLENCE", and we need more gun control - they've calmed down a bit on this but in their heart of hearts you know that they want the sate to make it harder for EVERYONE to buy a gun. And they FEEL this way despite the fact that there is demonstrably NO RELATION between the prevalence of gun ownership in a state and gun crime. And despite PROOF that restrictive gun laws DO NOT LOWER GUN CRIME OR VIOLENT CRIME - THEY MAY EVEN RAISE IT. (MORE HERE.)

BOTTOM-LINE: It is absurd to believe that you can take guns away from law-abiding citizens and male the nation at large more safe. It is wrong to punish uninvolved third parties for crimes they did not commit.

6) "AIDS IS THE MOST SERIOUS DISEASE, and we must spend billions to combat it worldwide!". Well, today's headlines show that AIDS has about 20% fewer victims than they've been ranting about for the last decade.

Malaria kills more people each year.

There are better way for the world to be spending our public health dollars - even in the Third World.

Malaria kills more people each year.

It's time we reassessed how we are spending our international health aid dollars.

7) "THE SERIOUS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION PROBLEM IS THE ONE SUFFERED BY THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS" - and to the Left, the cure is making them legal and making it easier for them to come here and not have to assimilate.

The Left just has this one bass ackwards. The illegal immigration crisis is one suffered by LEGAL immigrants and US citizens. We need to end illegal immigration.

8) "THE WAR ON TERROR IS A BELLICOSE BUMPER STICKER" - and the Left would have us revert to treating it as a law enforcement issue, and by appeasing and/or retreating from the jihadists in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon. And by doing LESS for our allies in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Ethiopia. Turkey, etc.

If the Left gets its way, then the enemy gets a DOUBLE BONUS: we appease them and punish our allies.

That will make the war EVEN WORSE, and even less likely to be "won" by using the FBI.

And oh yeah, don't forget these surreal Leftist gems:

• According to the Left that we lost Iraq MONTHS AGO - you;d better ignore all the positive news FINALLY coming out in the MSM. (Just like you have to ignore all the reports of the HEAVIEST SNOWFALL IN EUROPE IN 51 YEARS!)

• And Saddam was benign at worst and certainly "containable" - (though al Qaeda somehow isn't.)
  

• And it doesn't matter if Iran gets nukes because we have deterrence.

9) "THE WORLD HATES US; WE NEED TO BE LOVED, LIKE DURING CLINTON'S ERA" - Well, I'm old enough to remember that Reagan got far far FAR worse treatment from the anti-America crowds in Europe than Bush ever did. Which is to say that we are NOT now hated more worldwide than at earlier times. It's a bogus charge. And the cure that the Left proposes is - CONVENIENTLY - another tired old long-held dream of theirs: having US foreign policy controlled by the UN and the EU. They Left wants more multi-lateralism, as if that was an end in and of itself.

THEY ARE WRONG.

Our foreign policy must be on the side of the right. Together when possible, alone when necessary.

Bush has done this very well, using multi-lateralist efforts to get a good agreement with North Korea, and bilateralist effort to reign in Libya, for example. CALLING BUSH A UNILATERALIST IS BEYOND SURREAL; IT'S HYPER-SURREAL.

But we should ignore what the Left says about unilateralism, and remember that unilateralism is not always bad.

Churchill stood ALONE from 1940 through Pearl harbor. ALONE: NOT A SINGLE ALLY IN EUROPE OR THE WORLD. Churchill's solitude - the lone heroism of the British Empire should be forever remembered as their finest hour, and not a symbol of his political incorrectness, as the Left says today of Bush - (despite the FACT that he is not as hated as Reagan was, and that Europe has become more LIKE the USA and closer to Bush in the last five years; Merkel and Sarkozy are mush more pro-USA than their predecessors.).

OKAY. I could go on but I will stop here - for now.

TIME FOR A QUESTION:

DO YOU SEE A PATTERN HERE!? I do: The Left fears things that are not real, that are phantoms.

As if that was not bad enough, the Left also DOESN'T FEAR things that they should - like global jihad. Global meaning over 10,000 attacks SINCE 9/11 worldwide. Thousands killed - by admitted jihado-terrorists.

And what is the Left's response: retreat and denial and appeasement.

Many people in the USA are tired of Bush and tired of the Iraq War and tired of our oil dollars going overseas to people we don't have much in ciommo9n with - to say the least.

And in their fatigue, the Leftist platform has some appeal.

WHICH MEANS: AMERICA COULD ELECT A DEMOCRAT AS PRESIDENT IN 2008.

NOW THAT IS SOMETHING TO BE AFRAID OF!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

But don't give into fear. Not of the left. Unlike the Left, you can do something constructive about it. VOTE GOP.

CHURCHILL: ALL EUROPE WILL SUFFER FROM YALTA

In a review in the London Times Online of the memoirs of Sir Winston Churchill's bodyguard, Brian Moynahan reveals a chilling insight that Walter Thompson recorded:

He saw Churchill at his lowest points, a frustrated "kicker of wastepaper baskets" during his wilderness years in the 1930s, weeping over the concessions Roosevelt made to Stalin at Yalta in 1945. "Why, Thompson, did they allow the president, almost dying on his feet, to be there?" he asked. "All Europe will suffer from the decisions made at Yalta."

Had Churchill only known that the more relevant question should have been:

Why did the American State Department allow a Soviet spy to serve as President Roosevelt's foreign policy adviser at Yalta?

That's a question that still deserves an answer.


UPDATE: First, read Reliapundit's excellent points in the comments. Then consider the following:

In my original post, I didn't spell out exactly why I thought that Walter Thompson's recollection of Churchill's despair after Yalta is so important. Here's why:

1)Churchill's reaction to the disaster of Yalta was immediate. He knew right at that time what a disaster it was.

2)Churchill knew that it didn't have to be that way. Despite what Soviet spy Alger Hiss later had to say about it, giving the Soviets hegemony over Eastern Europe was not a done deal before Yalta.

3) Churchill knew that it was up to the Americans to stand up to Stalin, and when FDR didn't do it, he knew that Western Europe wouldn't be in any position to stop the communist juggernaut.

4) Churchill mistakenly attributed FDR's surrender to Stalin to FDR's debilitated condition. Actually, as we know now from the Venona transcripts and information from KGB files, the State Department's top man in Yalta, Alger Hiss, was a committed communist and a conscious agent of the Comintern and Soviet intelligence. The State Department's interpretation of the situation undoubtedly played a major role in influencing FDR's decisions. And we now know that communicating the State Department's position to FDR was in the hands of a traitor.

SHOCKER: ACADEMIA IS EVEN MORE BIASED THAN THE MSM

FACTS AND FIGURE AND GRAPHS HERE.

VIA GATEWAY.

I bet the %'s would be the same for the bureaucratic apparachiks in the State Dept and CIA...

After all, these institutions are closed networks just like academia and the MSM: they hire and promote their own.

And, if you don't toe the party line you don't get hired - (or don't get promoted/tenured if you slip through the hiring process).

LA TIMES ARE TRAITORS: THEY WANT AN AMERICAN TALIBAN MEMBER RELEASED

Those still subscribing to the newspaper would be well advised to cancel their subscriptions, because the Los Angeles Times is clearly determined to undermine justice in the war on terrorism, as they show with this latest hogwash (Hat tip: Rhymes With Right). They say:

John Walker Lindh broke the law. But 'the American Taliban' wasn't a terrorist, and he deserves clemency.

What?!? Excuse me? Seperating between just about anything he actually did and the descriptions that fit the crimes is unforgivably obscene. He should be sent to chair, pure and simple. This is propaganda and denial of the worst kind.

CHUCK SCHUMER TARGETS THE SUPREME COURT

New York Senator Chuck Schumer is one of the MOST repugnant members of the United States Senate. He is, in fact, an Authoritarian, if not a Stalinist. He would be very happy if we had a form of government where we could get rid of elections and the people are governed by a ruling elite...the kind of government Plato and Marx wrote about.

Schumer is angry that the new conservative members of the Supreme Court have made some decisions that have gone against precedent. In fact, one of the court's liberal members, Stephen Breyer, is actually lobbying members of Congress to look at the recent decisions. Naturally, he was able to persuade the Senate's biggest eunuch, Arlen Specter; [see LMC's post.]

Breyer has publicly raised concerns that conservative justices were violating stare decisis, the legal doctrine that, for the sake of stability, courts should generally leave precedents undisturbed.

"It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Breyer said, reading his dissent from the bench in June to a 5-4 ruling that overturned school desegregation policies in two cities.

Okay, so the court shouldn't ever go against precedent. What is established now is absolutely, Constitutionally correct and not even debatable. What is this, Global Warming?

I'd like to ask Justice Breyer if how he feels about the precedent of the Dred Scott decision. "Oh well, that's was an obvious mistake," he'll say. So what? It's precedent, isn't it?

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Chuck Schumer has declared that Bush will not be allowed to put another conservative on the Supreme Court. Well, democracy was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

There's another story out today about how Daily Kos and Moveon.org are going to start targeting advertisers on Fox News. Their argument:

"We're not trying to silence anybody," Green said. "Rush Limbaugh has a right to be on the air—he admits his point of view. Fox doesn't."

I'm making a similar call to the Democrat Party. Admit who you really are.

Relipaundit adds: Great post! I just love how the Lefties say the Constitution is written in stone when it comes to decisions it LIKES (like Roe v Wade - which BTW is based on entirely vestigial science!), but when it comes to things they don't like, then their favorite refrain is, "IT'S A LIVING CONSTITUTION!"

The Democrats have become complete freakin' hypocrites. They have NO PRINCIPLES, only demagoguery and fear-mongering and class-warfare.

That's who I think they are at least - and was raised by Democrats, and first registered as a Dem in 1974 - AND I LIVE AMONG THEM IN NYC! So I know of what and whom I speak!

I voted Bush in 2004, and will probably never ever vote Dem again. This post explains another reason why.