Since the start of the Israeli campaign against Hamas (and the propaganda blasts from Hamas that followed), the emergent administration’s only comment  has come from Obama’s chief national security spokesperson Brooke Anderson, who said, “President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time.”

Jake Tapper of ABC/Political Punch presents today a summary of Obama’s discussions of Hamas during the campaign:  In his visit to Israel last July, Obama was asked about Hamas and replied in part:

“[I]f somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing. In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries.”

He went on to urge Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist, which of course would be nice.  The real question is how he will respond when they don’t.

This March, Obama reiterated the theme:

“The violence in Gaza is the result of Hamas’ decision to launch rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and Israel has a right to defend itself,” then-Sen. Obama said. “I remain very concerned about the fate of civilians and urge Israel to do all it can to avoid civilian deaths and to keep its focus on Hamas, which bears responsibility for these events.”

That’s all Tapper chose to share with us and it is reassuring.  A Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama in Atlantic went a lot deeper on the subject and included this from the PEOTUS:

“When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.”

Of course that was Obama’s paraphrase of the statement, given during an interview targeted at Florida Jewish voters concerned about Obama’s position.  In the interview, he also says this:

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.

I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now ….

I wrote yesterday in Sunday Scan that the Israel/Hamas problem is shaping up to be that test Joe Biden said would come in the early days of the Obama administration.  If it is still going on then, it will be the first test not just of Obama’s position on Israel, but also on whether we can trust what he said on the campaign trail about Israel.

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oming in just a few days under the wire in C-SM’s Most Ridiculous Story of the Year competition is a story on a subject that I’m sympathetic to – the difficulty women who’ve stayed home with their children have coming back to work.  But it still clearly earns a spot on the “most ridiculous” list.

Kids most decidedly do better when mom stays home, and nearly as important, moms do better, too. I saw Incredible Wife’s guilt and anxiety amp up considerably when she worked – first, because we needed her income, then so she could make her Voice of the Victims films – then wind back down when she once again was “there for the girls.”

So why is Anne Glusker’s “Personal Business” column on the subject in Sunday’s WaPo so ridiculous? The title tells the story: She’s a Kennedy, But She’s a Lot Like Us.

Yes, Kennedy, who is worth $100 million, is just another mom who decided to stay home with the kids, and now wants to go back to work!  Really:

Amid all the recent buzz about Caroline Kennedy’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat, there has been a great deal of talk about her connections, her power, her wealth. But the way I see it, if you strip away the glamour, the name and the money, then Caroline is . . . me. And many of my friends. Maybe even you. If, that is, you happen to be a midlife woman raising kids and returning — or thinking of returning, or hoping one day to return — to the full-time workforce.

Yes, I’ve heard the buzz about connections, but I call it dynasty stuff.  And power, and wealth.  But what I’ve also heard that Glusker is afraid to put in her lead is Kennedy’s inexperience.  You strip away the glamour, the name and the money and you’ve got one inexperienced rich gal.  But that most definitely isn’t how Glusker sees it:

A great deal of the criticism around Kennedy’s interest in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat sounds an alarm for women like me. We’ve been at home with the kids, sure, but we’ve also been busy with lots of other things. We’ve been working part-time, consulting, freelancing. Like Kennedy’s, our resumes don’t conform to the conventional, one-job-after-the-other sequence that recruiters expect. When I read a sniping post on Gawker.com that “Caroline has been a happy housewife since getting her law degree, published a few ghost-written books and sat on a few boards that used her celebrity to draw donations,” I thought, hmm, wait a minute. Couldn’t there be a more inventive way to look at her CV?’

Yep, that’s what we need for our incoming U.S. Senators:  A more inventive way to look at their CVs.  Lord knows, she needs it: She hands out the Profiles in Courage award, she worked part-time for the NYC Dept of Education, she’s been on a private school’s board, she’s currently vice-chair of an education foundation and a couple Kennedy-legacy positions.  It’ll take considerable creativity to turn that into a CV for one of the most exclusive and powerful political positions in the world.

Glusker has the creativity:  She calls Kennedy’s experience “diverse”‘ and her resume “unconventional.”  Too bad non of that unconventional and diverse experience has anything to do with the business of running a country via our complex political machinery.

It’s clear she’s using Kennedy as a symbol for her agenda:

Rather than a privileged aberration, I prefer to view Kennedy as a bellwether, a case study in how things could be if only the workplace were more accepting of an unconventional CV, one that may brim with great experience and skills and talent but is also peppered with gaps and one-off projects and volunteering.  …

When we talk about women going back into the workforce, it’s illuminating to consider the circumstances under which they left it in the first place. For many women, it was never truly a choice, never truly voluntary. As Pamela Stone, author of “Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home,” points out, many are pushed out by jobs with long hours, rigid workweeks and inflexible demands. “These women haven’t opted out,” says Stone. “They’ve been shut out, by workplaces that don’t pair well with family life.”

Of course none of that applies to Kennedy; she’s a “privileged aberration” to Glusker’s model, and somehow I find it hard to accept that stay at home moms desirous of a return to the workplace will join Glusker in seeing Kennedy as the personification of their cause. But Glusker is undaunted:

… Kennedy … is running smack into what social psychologists call the potential vs. performance split. It works this way, according to Kathie Lingle of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress: “The guys in charge say, ‘Oh, John can do it, we know he can.’ They’re assessing his potential.” Whereas, when looking at a female job candidate, they’re likely to say: ” ‘Oh, Sue can’t do it; she’s never done it before.’ ” They’re basing their evaluation on her past performance.

Yep, that’s what’s holding Kennedy back from open-armed acceptance of Her Senatorship: the potential vs. performance split, entirely a guy/gal prejudice thing.  We just know that Gov. Patterson is going to judge her differently than he would judge, say, Andrew Cuomo.  Patterson would just look at Cuomo as a guy … not a former HUD secretary, not a current NY Atty Gen, but just a guy ‘cuz a guy can do it.  (And he’s ex-hubby to a Kennedy!)

Of course the flaw in all of Glusker’s supposition is that Kennedy isn’t angling for a job as a copywriter at an ad agency or a software exec in the Silicon Valley; she’s asking for a free ride to the U.S. Senate, where she’ll have committee assignments that matter to the nation and the world, and will be expected to represent her state during one of the most troubling times in U.S. history.  Glusker attempts to deal with this little matter:

Even though the job Kennedy is trying to nab is a far cry from the account executive or publicist positions that my friends might go after, the phenomenon at work is the same. The reaction seems to be: If she hasn’t followed a straight-and-narrow, logical path, we simply can’t imagine her in the role under discussion.

There’s nothing ridiculous in the statement; we simply can’t imagine Caroline Kennedy in the job given her anything but logical path towards it.  What’s ridiculous is that Glusker ridicules us for not accepting Kennedy as just another housewife wanting to return to work.

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South Ossentia: It’s Just More Russia

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t’s been six months since Russia pried South Ossentia out of Georgia’s hands, supposedly out of grave concern for the well-being of the South Ossentians. So, as Dr. Phil would say, how’s that workin’ for ya?

Not too good, according to Spiegel.

Besides Russia, so far only Nicaragua has recognized the separatist republic. Foreign journalists are only permitted to travel in the tiny country when accompanied by officials from the foreign ministry in Moscow. Even the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union, which brokered the cease-fire between Russia and Georgia, are being denied entry by the South Ossetians and their protective power, Russia. For this reason, very little reliable information makes it out of the region.

This makes what recently appeared in Russian newspapers all the more surprising: that the republic is on the brink of social unrest, just as winter is beginning, because the government has allegedly embezzled Russian reconstruction aid funds, as the former South Ossetian defense minister and head of the security council, a Russian lieutenant general, explained; or that South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity fled spinelessly during the war; and that millions of rubles deposited in the safes at the national bank in Tskhinvali had gone missing and that Russian businesspeople are refusing to invest in South Ossetia while its brawny separatist leader remains in power.

In South Ossentia, any controversy is squelched by “state secrets.”  Any homes that are rebuilt are rebuilt through EU or American efforts, not Russian.  Money disappears.  Leaders flake.

In other words, Russia happens. Continue Reading »

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ince November, Hamas rockets have slammed into Israel. Israel countered with diplomacy and incursions into Palestinian territory, but still the rockets came. Today, Israel responded with massive airstrikes, raining tons of explosives on Hamas security facilities. This much the Mainly Marginalized Media can report pretty decently. Then the pro-Palestinian fun begins: Here’s the decidedly anti-Israel NYT, in paragraph three of its report story:

A military operation against Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, had been forecast and demanded by Israeli officials for weeks, ever since a rocky cease-fire between Israel and Hamas broke down completely in early November and rocket attacks began in large numbers against Israel. Still, there was a shocking quality to Saturday’s attacks, in broad daylight on about 100 sites, as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at the outdoor market and children were emerging from school.

Just another day in Palestinian, with those nice Palestinians doing what nice people do – supporting a government that just can’t stop itself from lobbing rockets into Israeli towns. Meanwhile, at AP, it’s much the same: A couple introductory paragraphs do a good job of establishing that Palestinian rocket fire is legitimately the reason for the attack, but then takes off on Palestinian sympathy, which is necessarily anti-Israeli:

The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion in Gaza, as black clouds of smoke rose above the territory, ruled by Hamas for the past 18 months.

Some of the Israeli missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school, and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children. Most of those killed were security men, but civilians were among the dead.

Said Masri sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, close to a security compound, alternately slapping his face and covering his head with dust from the bombed-out building. “My son is gone, my son is gone,” wailed Masri, 57.

The shopkeeper said he sent his 9-year-old son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. “May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn,” Masri moaned.

And how about Hamas, Masri? Should Hamas burn for refusing to allow Israel to exist, for firing off rockets that led directly to the loss of your son?

Nope. Fawzi Barhoum, the Palestinian spokesman, said Hamas will “continue resistance until the last drop of blood,” a position dutifully reported, saying the Palestinians “retaliated” for the air strikes with more rockets.

A more straightforward report would have said that despite the air strikes, Hamas stubbornly continued firing rockets into Israel. In paragraph 15, AP gets around to telling us over 200 mortars and rockets have struck Israel from Hamas territory in the last week – part of 3,000 such attacks in the last year … “according to the military’s count.”

After dutifully reporting the outrage from Lebanon, Jordan and other locales noted for their openness and tolerance, the stories wrap up. Another military vicory for the Israelis; another media victory for Hamas.

Photos: Top AP, Middle Reuters

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We’re told today by a somewhat dubious USA Today survey that Barack Obama is more than six times more popular by George Bush.  I wonder how long that will last as Obama’s closest friends become popular with Ed Genson, attorney for Rod Blagojevich:

An attorney for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) has asked the legislative panel considering impeachment of the governor to subpoena more than a dozen witnesses, including President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff.

Ed Genson wants the committee to subpoena Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), longtime Obama friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett, and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), said state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie. …

Genson told the Chicago Sun-Times that testimony from Emanuel, Jarrett and Jackson would help prove the governor’s claim that he did nothing wrong in his handling of Obama’s Senate seat, the newspaper said Thursday.

Genson may not succeed in this request; Rep. Currie doesn’t have to allow it, but with all eyes on Springfield (and Chicago’s south side), can she really deny a full investigation? And as we see a parade of sleezeballs who are long-time Obama associates, will he see his popularity crest just as he takes the oath of office?

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ifty-eight December twenty-sixes this body has seen, but only fifty-seven December twenty-fifths … why, It’s my birthday!  But the Watcher’s Council put no birthday presents this year under my birthday tree – and yes, I have a birthday tree.  Eat your hearts out.

I got just a third of a vote for my piece on Rick Warren and the gays, but fair’s fair:  The other pieces were better.

Winning the competition this week was my vote for first, The Razor’s The Symbol of Oppression, a history of the peace symbol:

The roots of this symbol are soaked in the blood of innocents. The group credited for popularizing the symbol, a stylized combination of the semaphore signals for ‘N’ and ‘D’ (for nuclear disarmament), is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The CND was founded in 1958 by supporters of the Soviet Union including a spy for the East German Stasi, Vic Allen, and Michael Foote, later accused by KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky as being a KGB spy (Foote challenged the claim in UK court as libel and won.) Another member of the CND Granny Melita Norwood was the KGB’s top spy in the UK, passing secrets to them until she was arrested in 1999 at the age of 87 . She died unrepetant and free in 2005. The Mirror wrote at the time “she never regretted her betrayal and was committed to the Soviet cause and to ‘peace and socialism’ up to her death.” In 1982 Deputy CIA Director John McMahon testified before Congress that the Soviet Union had provided $100,000,000 to anti-nuclear groups including the CND.

There’s much more to this fascinating piece, and any student of recent history should read it all.

There was a tie for second among two entries I thought worthy of winning, Joshuapundit’s appreciation of Dick Cheney, Cheney Slaps Biden Upside The Head and Mere Rhetoric’s Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions.

On the Non-Council side, John Stossel’s Arrogance and Conceit Won’t Fix the Economy came in first, followed by Larrey Anderson’s American Thinker piece Climate Crisis = Logic Crisis and Dhimmi Watch’s Fitzgerald: If we cut off the jizya, could things become even worse?
See all the winners at Watcher of Weasels. Thanks, Watcher, for taking care of all this on Christmas and my birthday – an extra cup of eggnog for you!

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n Luke, Chapter 1, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and lets her in on God’s plan for her. As relayed in the King James:

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

We live still in an era where the impossible is exactly what we need, so this assurance that nothing is impossible for God still rings as true and hopeful today as it did 2,000 years ago. We can only hope that we might be as willing to participate in God’s possibilities as this young girl, Mary, was:

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone. Think today on the impossible gift God gave us: God in man, infinite power, love and purity in human flesh, ready to give his all to us. Think of the impossible possibilities.

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reetings, those of you who have a moment on this Christmas Eve to read Cheat-Seeking Missiles.  In nine hours, our home will be full of people – two or three dozen – who are expecting turkey, ham, fixings, pies and all manner of thing that will keep us busy today … but in this last quiet moment, I bring you glad tidings:  The media remains a holy mess for our amusement.

The Media Research Center has presented its list of the most embarassingly awful quotes from the upper echelons of the Fourth Estate, and while it’s troubling to see just how damaged the media have become, these are so bad you have to laugh.

The winner of MRC’s Worst Reporting Award – no surprise here – is Chris Matthews.  There were so many notable quotes this year from the wannabe future senator, but one stood out above all the other quotes of all the other reporters, himself included:

I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often….And that is an objective assessment.

Best to be a little less public in that sort of assessment, Chris.

And the award for best headline goes to Reuters for this post-election piece of fiction:

Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race.

Here are a few more for your enjoyment:

The Obamagasm Award
“Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.” — Time’s Nancy Gibbs in the November 17 cover story.

The Irrelevant Reverend Wright Award
“To see his [Jeremiah Wright’s] career completely destroyed by three 20-second soundbites, all of the work he has done, his entire legacy gone down the drain, has been absolutely devastating to me — to him, sorry….We are still a racist country.” — Washington Post writer Sally Quinn on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 30.

From Camelot to Obamalot Award
“Today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny….Obama is now an adopted son of Camelot. His candidacy blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, patriarch of the clan, but by JFK’s daughter.” — David Wright on ABC’s Nightline January 28. And for this, she gets a senate seat?!

Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis
“Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.” — CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1.

Admitting the Obvious Award
“When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit….I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice.”
— NBC reporter Lee Cowan in an article for NBC’s “The Peacock” advertising supplement, March 23-29.

Uh-huh. Well, we wonder no more. The media was most definitely not up to the job of covering the Obama campaign as objective third-party observers toting a nasty dose of skepticism.

There are plenty more awards handed out at MRC’s Web site, so check them all out.

Meanwhile, the Watcher of Weasels has posted the best o’ the blogs for this Christmas week. Watcher’s Council members will try to find time to read them between now and Christmas evening, and the results of our votes will be posted by the Watcher on Friday morning.

Council Submissions

• The Provocateur - Obama Engulfed By Pay to Play?
• Rhymes With Right - Impeach Jerry Brown
• Joshuapundit - Cheney Slaps Biden Upside The Head
• Bookworm Room - Destruction of Property
• The Glittering Eye - How to Give a Bonus
• The Colossus of Rhodey - *Yawn* Lincoln “parallels” for Obama
• Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Gay Anger At Warren Unwarranted
• The Razor - The Symbol of Oppression
• Soccer Dad - Don’t get too chummy with that flaming dummy
• Right Truth - Re-evaluating America’s Biggest Threat
• Mere Rhetoric - Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions

Non-Council Submissions

• Submitted By: The Provocateur – John Stossel - Arrogance and Conceit Won’t Fix the Economy
• Submitted By: Rhymes With Right – Discriminations - Are Constitutions Unamendable?
• Submitted By: Joshuapundit – Larrey Anderson/American Thinker - Climate Crisis = Logic Crisis
• Submitted By: Bookworm Room – Jewcy - Madoff the Jew: The Media’s Hypocritical Obsession With the Fraudster’s Faith
• Submitted By: The Glittering Eye – Pajamas Media - The Op-Ed the New York Times Wouldn’t Run
• Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey – Dhimmi Watch - Fitzgerald: If we cut off the jizya, could things become even worse?
• Submitted By: Cheat-Seeking Missiles – The American Spectator - Coffee and Closure
• Submitted By: Bookworm Room – Babalu Blog - A Message for Cathy del Castillo
• Submitted By: Soccer Dad – Counterterrorism blog - Jihad by the Shoe: Who Was Behind it and why?
• Submitted By: Right Truth – Mideast Youth - Hamas, Take your hands off the people!
• Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric – Counterterrorism Blog - OIC’s “Defamation” declaration could be used by Jihadi Terror networks
• Submitted By: The Watcher – Simon Deng – Hudson New York - Bishop Tutu and “Israeli Apartheid”

Bad journalism hat-tip: Jim

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he amazing ineptness of the media and the left in processing Pastor Rick Warren’s beliefs reveals the deep divides that exist in our society, and the emotional alliance between the media and the radical left and gay activists.  Here’s just a sampling of what’s being written about Warren this morning.

Here’s DeWayne Wickham writing in USA Today: “Recently, Warren — who, like most evangelical leaders, disagrees sharply with Obama on social issues such as … gay rights …”

Richard Cohen, writing in WaPo: “Warren is anti-gay.”

Also in WaPo, E.J. Dionne:  “[Warren] would do well to apologize for comparing gays to pedophiles.”

Here’s Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe:  “Obama seems compelled to close his eyes to one of the most powerful forms of conservative-driven bigotry left in this country.”

And Katha Politt in the LA Times:  “Warren doesn’t just oppose gay marriage, he’s compared it to incest and pedophilia.”

As I’ve written previously, you can be opposed to gay marriage and for gay rights, you can be opposed to gay marriage and not be anti-gay, and from a Christian worldview, all sin is just plain sin, wether it’s homosexuality, adultry, materialism – or incest or pedophelia.

I’m not going to write about it again.

Instead, I’m going to give you the chance to hear Warren answer these charges in his own words, in video clips embedded in his “Pastor Rick’s News & Views” newsletter that goes to members of Saddleback Church.

In the first video, Rick confronts the “incest and pedophelia” challenge head-on and restates his view on marriage, as defined in the Bible and by virtually every other religion, worldwide for all time.  In this clip, Rick says:

I am opposed to forcing people to act the way I want them to act.  … I have to love everybody regardless of the choices they make.  I am not free to hate anyone.

In the second video, Rick discusses civil rights, free speech and the role of the Christian to be a champion of civility – something that’s been missing from many of his accusers.  It’s pretty straightforward (gayforward?):

No Americans should ever be discriminated against because of their beliefs. Period.  Because we are Americans.

Finally, in the third video, Rick discusses how he will respond to the attacks and accusations – by returning love to hate:

How will we respond to these people who attack Saddleback?  We will love and we will love and we will love, and we will pray and we will care.

If you’ve come to this site full of anger over Obama’s designation of Rick Warren as prayer-leader for the inauguration, I invite you to listen to these clips and understand the man and the faith.  You will feel better, I guarantee you.

And I also encourage you even more to read Melissa Ethridge’s piece at HuffPo.  She came to Warren with the same sort of anger:

I hadn’t heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same ‘ole thing.

But after talking with him, came away with a very different view and great hope for a more reconciled, less angry future:

On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn’t sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn’t want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife’s struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

That’s what can happen when people move beyond mere posturing.  Will the issues be resolved?  Who really cares. Right now it would just be good if we could just dial down the volume.

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aroline Kennedy wants to be senator, but she doesn’t want to be bothered with disclosure.  We are left to assume that financial disclosure, to quote another famous New  York doyenne, is for the little people.

According to today’s rather scathing NY Times article, Kennedy refused the paper’s request for even the most basic disclosure, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Not deigning to speak to reporters herself, Her Worshipfulness’ spokesminion said Kennedy would not disclose that kind of information “unless and until” she becomes a senator.

In other words, New Yorkers are being asked to accept a nicely lipsticked pig in a poke.  Presumably, Kennedy would disclose the information in mid-May when the Senate ethics rules (oxymoron, anyone?) require financial disclosure forms to be filed.

NY Gov. David Patterson has said she would have to file the same info with him any cabinet-level appointee must file.  Of course, that system of disclosure allowed Patterson to appoint a guy who hadn’t paid any taxes in several years.  Some system.

Other contenders for the job all have previous government experience and therefore have filed financial disclosure forms.  Kennedy, with Obama-like boldness, is trying to convert her lack of experiences into a plus, precluding her need to tell us about her financial background.

The simple matter of fact here is that Kennedy appears to fear disclosure more than she craves the senatorial position.  Unless she’s psychotic, her fear has a rational base; it is there for a reason.  And if that’s so, then the people have a right to know what’s in Kennedy’s background that she doesn’t want released prior to her appointment to the Senate.

So we are supposed to take her without knowing her.  Victor Davis Hansen says that’s exactly the point:

Caroline Kennedy is no doubt a fine individual who by all accounts has led an exemplary life. But her proposed appointment to the US Senate is a rare reflection of ourselves—the glittering of the aristocracy in the left’s vision of an otherwise egalitarian America, the notion that blue-chip certification conveys status and wisdom rather than proven excellence through the life-school of hard knocks, and the ethical bankruptcy of the media that has no principled notion of disinterested inquiry, but now serves as an fawning appendage of the Left.

In short, appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate from New York tells us a lot more about ourselves than it does even her.

Art: Tennyson Hayes via Michelle Malkin

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