Last September, Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi Sunni MP, arrived in Israel to attend an annual counter-terrorism conference. He forcefully cried, “In Israel, there is no occupation; there is liberalism,” to the sound of roaring applause from Israelis and foreign diplomats. Upon his return to Iraq, the National Assembly of Iraq voted to remove his parliamentary immunities and banned him from travelling. He was arrested and threatened with the death penalty. This was not his first visit; in 2004 he made a public visit to Israel. Consequently, five months later, both his sons were murdered. He was sacked from his job at the De-Baathification Commission and was expelled from the Iraqi National Congress.

Al-Alusi recognises that Iraq and Israel share similar challenges, namely the murderous Iranian-funded terrorism that has taken so many lives in both countries. Al-Alusi has lauded Israel as a beacon of hope and liberalism. The Israeli elections on Tuesday were crucially important because it is vital that the future Israeli government seeks to uphold the equality and the civil liberties for all its citizens – Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Druze – that she has attempted to keep implemented since her foundation sixty years ago. She must continue to be the model of a liberal democracy in the despotism-riddled Middle East, despite the very opposite image peddled by the Western Left, the media and the Islamists. It is easy for much of the West to forget that Israel has many Arab politicians, several serving in the cabinet.

The Israeli exit polls show that Kadima, the current ruling party, has won the most seats. But Israel suffers the proportional representation system that is used so widely across Europe; this means that a Kadima politician may not necessarily take the position of Prime Minister. What will happen? And what are the implications for Israel, the region and the world?
Last Tuesday’s election was a year earlier than necessary because the current Prime Minister Olmert resigned after continuous public pressure and police investigations into tales of corruption, and the new leader of Kadima, Tzipi Livni, was unable to form a new coalition.

The Knesset is a unicameral parliament. Its 120 members, known as MKs, are elected to four-year terms in a secret ballot whereat the public will vote for a party and not an individual MK. Seats are allocated in proportion to the number of votes each party receives beyond a threshold of two percent. The 120 seats are apportioned through party-list proportional representation using the d’Hondt method – a widely used system that employs a highest averages method. Once the official results are published, the President of Israel gives the task of forming a majority coalition to an MK whom he believes to have the best chance of succeeding. That MK is then given up to 42 days to negotiate a working coalition with other parties and present his government to the Knesset for a vote of confidence. If the government is approved, the MK then becomes Prime Minister.

The numbers and distribution of Knesset seats in the February elections are as follows: Kadima 28; Likud 27; Yisrael Beitenu 15; Labor 13; Shas 11; United Torah Judaism 5; Hadash 4; United Arab List-Ta’al 4; National Union 4; Meretz 3; Habayit Hayehudi 3; Balad 3.

The politics of Israel is an extraordinary maelstrom of differing ideals, religions and methods. Muslim voters have supported right-wing Zionist parties and religious Jews have voted for Arab parties. In the disorder of the system there is hope and wonderment at the extraordinary examples of different cultures and religions campaigning peacefully and democratically together to sustain hope and achieve peace; a possibility that cannot be found elsewhere in the Middle East.

There are a huge number of different parties that represent all walks of life, but this election showed huge gains for the Right. The Centrist Kadima was a party that sprang out of a squabbling Likud because of disagreement over the disengagement plan from Gaza. Kadima’s win was a surprise to many – especially the pollsters, who had projected Likud to top the results. Kadima’s decision to withdraw from Gaza was highly criticized at the time and now there is little success to show for it – Gaza has become a terrorist state with regular pogroms against its own people and regular attacks against the civilians of Israel. Kadima’s leadership has been weak in times of war, and its dithering in Lebanon is arguably accountable for the deaths of Israeli soldiers. The decision to release Samir Kuntar – a Lebanese terrorist who beat a little blonde four-year-old Jewish girl to death by smashing apart her head with a rock – provoked huge condemnation and dismay from the media and the public. Kadima has been regarded as an ineffectual, weak government – a feeble image that the Israelis have known hostile Arab states to prey upon. Thus Kadima’s decision finally to respond to the constant barrage of rocket fire from Gaza caused some surprise among the government’s detractors. The attempt to destroy Hamas’ weapon caches in December – Operation Cast Lead – may have changed the minds of many Israelis. The operation certainly sapped Likud’s criticism and its accusations of Kadima’s apparent apathy to the vicious attacks by Hamas.

Despite Kadima winning the largest number of seats, it does not have the support from the other large parties and given the current stances of Likud, Yisrael Beitenu and Shas, it is highly unlikely that Tzipi Livni will be able to secure a working coalition. In this case, President Shimon Peres may ask Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud to form a coalition from the Right-wing parties that dominate the election results.
The large gains by the right can be explained by the realisation among Israelis that their doves have been met with rockets and that their concessions have been met with violence. In 2001, the then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians all of Gaza and 97% of the West Bank with border compensations to make up for the other 3%. Furthermore, Jerusalem would be a shared capital for both countries. When the Palestinians shot down this offer, so fell the appeal of the Left. Further failures to respond properly to terrorist attacks resulted in more support manifesting for the Right. The South of Israel, especially around towns such as Sderot, which has endured thousands of rockets and mortar attacks, almost entirely voted for the Right. The residents want military action to end the indiscriminate attacks on their town – rockets are fired when school is starting or finishing and the children are out on the streets. Suliman Qadia – a Palestinian from Gaza from where the Israeli intelligence service, Shin Bet, helped him escape, said of Hamas: “Nothing else will work, we just need to go into Gaza, full force, and pound them, erase them completely, until it’s over. That’s the only language they understand and believe me – I know what I’m talking about. After all, I lived with them.”

The Northern Arab town Haifa and Tel-Aviv voted for the Left and Centrists; in the South the persistent attacks and a demand for their end necessitated an almost entirely Right-wing stronghold. In other words, the rockets voted.

Obama’s Presidency is also a cause for concern among Israelis. There is a real fear that he would not act to stop a nuclear-armed Iran. In response to an American President perceived as Left-wing, a more hawkish Prime Minister feels like a necessary choice to many Israeli voters.

The reason Likud could not strongly capitalise on the Left’s decline was the belief that Netanyahu’s previous term as Prime Minister in the late nineties was considered by-and-large a failure – he had made similar profitless concessions to the Palestinians that Kadima has made. Netanyahu has also failed to provide a direction for Israel that differs from Kadima’s. Thus, many Israelis that wished to respond to the Palestinian attacks – not to turn the other cheek but to clench their fists – voted for the further-Right parties, such as Shas or Beitenu.

Among the political parties there is a great deal of squabbling. The main issue that divides them so, is of course the path to peace with the Palestinians. There are those that would appease and there are those that would defend themselves at all cost. What is clear however is that Proportional Representation (PR) is disastrous for Israel. This tiny country is at war, and has been so for the last sixty years. It cannot afford to have chaos in the government at a time when order has never been so important. It can be argued that PR does help to unify the country – every party represents all Israelis regardless and so there is no chance of segregation through politics and race. But what of the small Bedouin tribe who needs representation in Knesset and has no MK to do so? Israel needs strength, equality and democracy, and PR does not sustain these values effectively.

One prospect is certain – whoever becomes Prime Minister will have to use a coalition of Right-wing parties. This would suggest – unless the Iranian elections in June provide a reformist candidate that would halt their nuclear programme – that a future Israeli government will take military action against Iran. Hezbollah’s steadily growing supply of rockets in the South of Lebanon and the large-scale Syrian troop movements to the border with Israel, suggests it is possible that a large conflict may break out across the region, a danger exacerbated by Iran’s increased missile capability and promises of retaliation. When Israel’s security is directly threatened, there is little argument among her political parties. Even the far-left parties supported Israel’s recent defensive campaign against Hamas, and in the face of Iran, there is strong unity. Military action is seen as a last resort but recognized as a very possible outcome.

Furthermore, the build-up on the Right would mean that the destruction of the Jewish West Bank settlements would seem unlikely as a means of concession. The idea of displacing almost half a million Jewish settlers is unthinkable to the Right, especially after the ruinous withdrawal from the Gaza Strip that just brought more attacks and death to Southern Israel.

The truth is that Israel’s future has never been so uncertain. There is much speculation as to from whom and from which parties a coalition will be formed. Some American commentators have suggested Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu will be given the foreign office portfolio, and there are even rumours that Livni and Netanyahu might share the position of Prime Minister. It is impossible to know or understand what bargaining and comprising is going on by the political parties behind the scenes. And in some ways, the choice of government may not matter. In foreign affairs, the actions of Israel can only be dictated by the hostile states surrounding it. Every government must protect its people, and Israel’s actions – while perhaps varying in strength – will be unchanged no matter what current party is in power. In times of war, Israel does not want an attempt at government, but definite ordered rule – an effective government is needed.

The results of the elections have reacted little to domestic affairs but largely to the changing world. Reasons such as Obama’s Presidency, a Turkish government that is arguably no longer secular, the Iranian elections in June, the undeniable attempts by Hamas to destroy Israel and her people, are all reasons for many Israeli voters to have demanded a stronger, more hawkish government. But uncertain times have bred uncertain results – now Israel must bring order out of the chaos if she wishes to succeed and survive.

 Jonah Goldberg writes – and we agree with most of what he says:

Now, to be honest, I think President Obama’s stimulus bill is a monstrosity, a bloated behemoth unleashed on America with staggering dishonesty. The centrist "improvements" are like throwing a new coat of paint on a condemned building.

It’s being sold as an emergency stimulus to deal with an immediate problem – the economic downturn – despite being more like a welfare-state wish list festooned with fiscal nonsense. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid touts a whopping 58 percent of the bill as job-creating. No doubt that number is inflated. Even so, what’s the argument for the other 42 percent?

For instance, why is an emergency spending bill weighted down with an authorization for $198 million in payments to Filipino World War II veterans, many of whom live in the Philippines? We owe them the money, but how does sending millions to Manila fend off the American "catastrophe" that Obama says is the price of inaction?

Principled liberals defend the bill while conceding that roughly half the discretionary "emergency" spending won’t even start until two years from now. (Funny coincidence: That’s right around the time Obama’s re-election campaign will kick off.) Good social policy is good social policy, no matter how you get it enacted, they say.

Putting aside the question of whether the ornaments dangling from every branch of this legislative Christmas tree amount to good policy, there’s still the matter of why Democrats are afraid of the normal process. Sneaking into the package hundreds of millions for, say, sex education, the National Endowment for the Arts and sod for the National Mall doesn’t suggest a lot of confidence that Americans support such liberal priorities.

If they don’t, what did they expect when they voted the Democrats into power? 

 Star Parker writes a scathing indictment of the socialist policies that have kept the black poor in misery and predicts that the whole country may now be subjected to them.  The column is worth reading. Here’s an extract:

Socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation. In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus. "This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending-it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care, and education." Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place "with unprecedented transparency and accountability." Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education. Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 – The War on Poverty – which President Johnson said "…does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty." Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single parent homes and out of wedlock births. It’s not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama’s invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom. Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?

 … with disappointing reality; gets no stimulating massage from the stimulus message.

Jennifer Rubin writes at Commentary’s ‘contentions’ website:

It seems that the Obama team is losing all sorts of things. Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh sounds panicky as he warns the President “has all but lost control of the agenda in Washington at a time when he simply can’t afford to do so.” We are told:

The decisive issue here is leadership. The lack of it is what is plaguing the Obama administration. Every war needs a successful general, and this administration doesn’t have one yet.

Hirsh thinks the problem is giving in to those tiresome Republicans who don’t want to lard up a “stimulus” bill. But, of course, the real problems started when the President ceded the floor to Nancy Pelosi and in return got what virtually everyone agrees is an embarrassing, unworkable bill.

Politico says he’s “losing the stimulus message war.”

And Chris Matthews may have lost the tingle:

You knew Kennedy wanted the Peace Corps; wanted to put a man on the moon, wanted civil rights. You knew Reagan was out there cutting taxes to make government smaller. What’s Barack Obama doing? He keeps talking about his stimulus package like it’s some big Santa’s bag filled with all sorts of sundry items: extended unemployment benefits, “green” jobs, aid to states. But how on earth does this trillion-dollar grab bag work? How does spending this money—all of it borrowed—repeat, all of it borrowed, going to help the country get moving again?

But all of this “losing” raises a question about temperament. Remember how critical that was, how impressed everyone was with Obama’s temperament during the campaign? Well, some ofus questioned ”the Zen-like benefits of inactivity.” And sure enough it seems that vaunted temperament has manifested itself as passivity or cluelessness. Yes, he’s very calm — as he’s losing control and losing influence.

Granted, calm is good. Focus, decisiveness, good judgment and leadership would be better.

 In her column in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick discusses the new US President’s prompt outreach to the Islamic world, as described in our post below, and finds that it portends an ominous change in US policy. Unlike other commentators who indulgently regard Obama’s interview with al-Arabiya as merely naive, she reads it as a distinct signal of that change. ‘We are ready to initiate a new partnership,’ with the Muslim world, he said, and she believes he means it. She points out:

Obama implied that the US may be willing to overlook Teheran’s support for terrorism when he referred to Iran’s "past" support for terrorist organizations. Obama placed a past tense modifier on Iranian sponsorship of terrorism even through just last week a US Navy ship intercepted an Iranian vessel smuggling arms to Hamas in Gaza in the Red Sea. Due to an absence of political authorization to seize the Iranian ship, the US Navy was compelled to permit it to sail on to Syria.

Ahmadinejad has made his preconditions for negotiations with the US explicit. They are: one, that the US must abandon its alliance with Israel; and two, that the US must accept a nuclear armed Iran.

 She writes: 

It is apparent that Obama remains convinced that the US is indeed to blame for the supposed crisis of confidence that the Islamic world suffers from in its dealings with America. By this reasoning, it is for the US, not for Teheran, to show its sincerity, because the US, rather than Teheran, is to blame for the dismal state of relations prevailing between the two countries.  

If in fact Obama truly intends to move ahead with his plan to engage the mullahs, then he will effectively legitimize – if not adopt – Teheran’s preconditions that the US end its alliance with Israel, which Iran seeks to destroy, and accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

In other words, Obama may well be willing to pay the price Iran, the Arabs, and the whole of the Islamic world demand for peace with America. If America pays that price, no more ‘war on terror’;  no more need to protect America from Islamic terrorist attacks, so no more Gitmos, no more wire-taps. No more burning of the American flag by protestors in Muslim lands (including Europe). America – and its President – will be universally loved. And what is that price? Only the abandonment of Israel. A small price to pay for such gains. 

All that America has done for Muslims, listed by Charles Krauthammer (see the post below), weigh nothing against the US’s biggest insult to Islam: its alliance with Israel. That is what Ahmadinejad was referring to when he said in the letter he wrote to Obama on November 6: ‘The expectation is that the unjust actions of the past 60 years will give way to a policy encouraging the full rights of all nations.’ 

What now can Israel rely on to save it from annihilation? Only what it has always had since it’s founding 60 years ago: the strength of its own right arm. If it fails to use it, there is nothing else. 

 Before he did anything else, newly elected President Barack Hussein Obama reached out to Islam.

His first phone call as President of the United States to a foreign leader was to Ahmoud Abbas, head of the impotent and kleptocratic ‘Palestinian Authority’ (and of the terrorist organization Fatah).

His first executive order was to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay where Islamic terrorists are held.

His first dispatch of a diplomatic mission was the sending of George Mitchell to the Middle East to reprise his tired old act of trying to broker peace between Israel and its Arab attackers while the fighting rages. What can Mitchell possibly say to Hamas that will stop that gang of murderous criminals trying to kill as many civilians as possible on both sides of the Gazan border, or induce them to abandon their aim of annihilating the State of Israel? What can be said to the Israelis that would persuade them to give up defending themselves?    

His first TV interview was with Dubai’s al-Arabiya. He offered it to them as the medium of his choice. In it he announced to the Muslim world that he was going to ‘restore’ the ‘respect’ and ‘partnership’ that America had with the Muslim world ‘20 0r 30 years ago’ – displaying not just abysmal ignorance, but surely also a breathtaking lack of loyalty to the country of which he is now supreme leader.    

Charles Krauthammer comments justly:    

‘Astonishing. In these most recent 20 years – the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world – America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved – and resulted in – the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The two Balkan interventions – as well as the failed 1992-93 Somali intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) – were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on earth. Why are we apologizing?

And what of that happy U.S.-Muslim relationship that Obama imagines existed "as recently as 20 or 30 years ago" that he has now come to restore? Thirty years ago, 1979, saw the greatest U.S.-Muslim rupture in our 233-year history: Iran’s radical Islamic revolution, the seizure of the U.S. embassy, the 14 months of America held hostage.

Which came just a few years after the Arab oil embargo that sent the United States into a long and punishing recession. Which, in turn, was preceded by the kidnapping and cold-blooded execution by Arab terrorists of the U.S. ambassador in Sudan and his charge d’affaires. This is to say nothing of the Marine barracks massacre of 1983, and the innumerable  attacks on U.S. embassies and installations around the world during what Obama now characterizes as the halcyon days of U.S.-Islamic relations.

Look. If Barack Obama wants to say, as he said to al-Arabiya, I have Muslim roots, Muslim family members, have lived in a Muslim country – implying a special affinity that uniquely positions him to establish good relations – that’s fine. But it is both false and deeply injurious to this country to draw a historical line dividing America under Obama from a benighted past when Islam was supposedly disrespected and demonized… Every president has the right to portray himself as ushering in a new era of this or that. Obama wants to pursue new ties with Muslim nations, drawing on his own identity and associations. Good. But when his self-inflation as redeemer of U.S.- Muslim relations leads him to suggest that pre-Obama America was disrespectful or insensitive or uncaring of Muslims, he is engaging not just in fiction but in gratuitous disparagement of the country he  is now privileged to lead.’

Just as astonishing is his saying on al-Arabiya that his job as President of the United States is ‘to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language has to be the language of respect’; and ‘to communicate that the Americans [notice he does not say ‘we’] are not your enemy.’

ISN’T IT HIS JOB TO ‘PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES’?

It was also his job, he said, ‘to promote the interests of the Arab world’ as well as the interests of the United States. Interests that are mostly in opposition to each other? How? And above all, why?

And was he not positively denigrating the country of which he is president when he said in the interview that ‘all too often’ the United States ‘starts by dictating’? 

A few hours after Obama made these remarks, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the half-mad and altogether evil President of Iran, demanded a formal apology for ‘US crimes’ against Iran and the Islamic world.

Obama never mentioned the oppression in Iran and other Islamic regimes; the imprisonment, torture, stoning, hanging of women, homosexuals, dissidents, converts, Christians and other non-Muslims. He had no word for the Lebanese being crushed between Iran’s Hizbullah and Syrian expansion; no word for the African Muslims of Darfur being systematically murdered by the Arab Muslims. 

Twenty or thirty years ago? In addition to the horrors being enacted in the Muslim world that Krauthammer lists, Iran was training Hizbullah; the Muslim Brotherhood was founding Hamas; Saudi Arabia was (and still is) financing institutions all over the Western world that train rising generations to spread Islam and its fearsome sharia law; Libya was murdering American soldiers in Europe and bombing American commercial aircraft; Iraq and Iran were waging a war in which millions died, including young children who were sent walking through minefields to explode the mines and clear the way for the armies; Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds, and invaded Kuwait;  Syria was taking over Lebanon; President Sadat of Egypt was  assassinated; Islamists were slaughtering Algerian civilians; military rule was imposed in Pakistan; a CIA chief was kidnapped in Beirut and tortured to death in Iran. Where is cause for respect in all this?     

In the period that Obama apparently regards as shameful for his country, Bush senior liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Bush junior freed the whole Iraqi nation from his tyranny, lifted the cruel hand of the Taliban from the necks of Afghans and gave them schools that even their downtrodden women could attend. As a result of his policies and actions, a number of Arab states began to introduce democratic practices. Libya disarmed and abandoned its nuclear program. Were these negligible achievements? Should George W Bush’s successor apologize for them to the Muslims?  

It is the American people who are owed apologies and gratitude by the Muslims. As they are never likely to get either, one may ask:  was America right, politically or morally, to have expended blood and treasure for the Muslims?

With what have they actually been repaid? It looks very much as if the more Americans give to Islam, the more Islam hates and attacks them. Is there no connection between America’s benevolence and the rise of jihad violence? Did the Muslims interpret American compassion as weakness? If so, isn’t it clear that weakness is provocative to Islam? Isn’t the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay also likely to be interpreted by the Islamic terrorists as weakness? Is it not probable that this will invite more terrorist violence against America?

What, we must wonder, does all this immediate and urgent wooing of Islam by President Obama mean?

It would be too farfetched, wouldn’t it, to suspect that Obama wants to promote the ambitions of militant Islam? That deep in the part of him that is proud to be Muslim he wants the jihad to succeed? Wants Islam to realize its goal of world conquest?  Wants an Islamic world ruled by a Caliph? Wants – how absurd! – to be that Caliph?

No, no. Perish the thought! It’s bad enough that at present he has cast himself in the role of  broker between the country he has been elected to lead and its worst enemy.  

Yes, that is what the President of the United States has said he is. A broker. A go-between. A pander! 

The New York Times claims that President Bush turned down an Israeli request for bunker-busting bombs and permission to overfly Iraq so that the Israeli Air Force could disable or destroy Iran’s nuclear-bomb production.

The NYT cannot be trusted to report the truth, but in this instance it’s not easy to see how lying would be in the interests of that traitorous newspaper.

If the report is true, then Bush has imperiled the world. By letting Iran become a nuclear power, he becomes a co-author of the terror and destruction Iran will inflict on Israel and all of us.  

We praise President Bush for eliminating the tyrant Saddam Hussein, for leading America to victory in Iraq, and for keeping Americans safe from more terrorist attacks after 9/11.

But if he is now tolerating Iran’s arming itself with nuclear bombs, he is undoing the good he has done. A nuclear armed Iran is a far greater threat to America than Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden ever were.

President Clinton had a number of opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden and each time made the bad judgment not to do so. If President Bush has really stopped Israel from destroying Iran’s bomb-producing sites,  he has made a worse misjudgment. America will pay dearly for it.

All hope that the US itself will act effectively to stop Iran ends, we believe, with the Bush presidency. It seems to us most unlikely that Obama will do anything but make futile attempts to appease that evil regime.

 We greatly enjoy Ann Coulter’s wit, and share her conservatism and her contempt for the shamelessly leftist mainstream media and their toadying to Obama.  

A part of her latest column:

Months before network anchors were interrogating vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the intricacies of foreign policy, here is how NBC’s Brian Williams mercilessly grilled presidential candidate Barack Obama: "What was it like for you last night, the part we couldn’t see, the flight to St. Paul with your wife, knowing what was awaiting?"

Twisting the knife he had just plunged into Obama, Williams followed up with what has come to be known as a "gotcha" question: "And you had to be thinking of your mother and your father." Sarah Palin was memorizing the last six kings of Swaziland for her media interviews, but Obama only needed to say something nice about his parents to be considered presidential material.

The media’s fawning over Obama knew no bounds, and yet, in the midst of the most incredible media conspiracy to turn this jug-eared clodhopper into some combination of Winston Churchill and a young Elvis, you were being a bore if you mentioned the liberal media. Oh surely we’ve exploded that old chestnut. … Look! Look, Obama just lit up another Marlboro! Geez, does smoking make you look cool, or what! Yeah, Obama!. 

Read it all here.

 From Power Line:

Professor [Frank] Tipler notes the discreditable role played by Obama’s chief science adviser, the left-wing partisan John Holdren:

 AGW supporters are also bringing back the Inquisition, where the power of the state is used to silence one’s scientific opponents. The case of Bjorn Lomborg is illustrative. Lomborg is a tenured professor of mathematics in Denmark. Shortly after his book, "The Skeptical  Environmentalist," was published by Cambridge University Press, Lomborg was charged and convicted (later reversed) of scientific fraud for being critical of the "consensus" view on AGW and other environmental questions. Had the conviction been upheld, Lomborg would  have been fired. …

 I find it very disturbing that part of the Danish Inquisition’s case against Lomborg was written by John Holdren, Obama’s new science advisor. Holdren has recently written that people like Lomborg are "dangerous." I think it is people like Holdren who are  dangerous, because they are willing to use state power to silence their scientific opponents.

Finally, he points out how toxic the combination of government (which is to say, politics) and science can be:

 I agree … that the AGW nonsense is generated by government funding of science. If a guy agrees with AGW, then he can get a government contract. If he is a skeptic, then no contract. 

 This is why I am astounded that people who should know better, like Newt Gingrich, advocate increased government funding for scientific research. We had better science, and a more rapid advance of science, in the early part of the 20th century when there was no  centralized government funding for science. Einstein discovered relativity on his own time, while he was employed as a patent clerk. Where are the Einsteins of today? …  

 Science is an economic good like everything else, and it is very bad for production of high quality goods for the government to control the means of production. Why can’t Newt Gingrich understand this? Milton Friedman understood it, and advocated cutting off government  funding for science.

 Michael Isikoff has questions for Obama. The odd thing is he asks them in Newsweek – not the first publication that springs to mind when you think of questioning the One. 

 We could think of better questions, but answers to these would be interesting and we too would like to hear them. We don’t, however, expect a swift reply.    

1. Define " inappropriate, " make good on your pledge of transparency and show us the internal report. All of it.
Mr. President-elect, you have said that nobody on your staff was "involved in inappropriate discussions" with the governor or his aides about his apparent plans for your Senate seat. Please define "inappropriate." And, in light of your pledge for greater transparency in government, will you also turn over a full, unedited copy of the internal report conducted by transition lawyers into this matter, including the notes of all interviews they conducted with your staff members, as well as all phone records and e-mails documenting the contacts between your staff, Blagojevich and his team?

2 Explain what happened with Senate " Candidate 1. "
In the criminal complaint released by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Blagojevich is quoted in a Nov. 11 tape recording as saying that you wanted him to name Senate Candidate 1 (since identified as your close adviser Valerie Jarrett), but that you and your aides were "not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them." How would Blagojevich have gotten the idea that this was your view? Were you or any of your aides aware, at any point, that Blagojevich wanted more than "appreciation"—such as contributions to his campaign fund or a seat in your cabinet—in exchange for appointing Jarrett? And why did she withdraw from consideration right after this conversation?

 

3 What did you know about Blago ’ s exit strategy?
In other parts of the complaint, Blagojevich is quoted as saying that he wanted you to tap wealthy "Warren Buffet types" and put up "10, 15 million" for a political advocacy group that the governor could then head up, and draw a salary from, after he leaves office. Were you ever told of Blagojevich’s interest in creating such an organization?

4 Have you shared everything you have on Rezko?
The criminal complaint makes a number of references to Tony Rezko, a convicted Blagojevich fundraiser who also raised money for your campaigns and who, on the same day that you bought your South Side Chicago home in June 2005, purchased property from the same owner right next door. Are there any records in your possession relating to your contacts with Rezko that you have not publicly released?

5. Will you promise to leave Fitzgerald alone?
Will you pledge to keep Patrick Fitzgerald as your U.S. attorney in Chicago and guarantee that he will face no impediments to completing his investigation by your Justice Department—wherever it might lead?