Irshad Manji: Islam the problem

The irrational response to Salman Rushdie's knighthood is sadly typical

The Australian
June 21, 2007



Salmon Rushdie and his wife, actress Padma Lakshmi

GROWING up in Vancouver, I attended an Islamic school every Saturday. There, I learned that Jews can't be trusted because they worship "moolah, not Allah", meaning money, not God. According to my teacher, every last Jew is consumed with business.
But looking around my neighbourhood, I noticed that most of the new business signs featured Asian languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Punjabi and plenty of Urdu. Not Hebrew, Urdu, which is spoken throughout Pakistan.

That reality check made me ask: What if my religious school isn't educating me? What if it's indoctrinating me?

I'm reminded of this question thanks to the news that Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and 10 other works of fiction, will be knighted by the Queen.

On Monday, Pakistan's religious affairs minister said that because Rushdie had blasphemed Islam with provocative literature, it was understandable that angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood.

Members of parliament, as well as the Pakistani Government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offence to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.

As a Muslim, you better believe I'm offended - by these absurd reactions.

I'm offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. In 1979, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam became the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in science. He began his acceptance speech with a verse from the Koran.

Salam's country ought to have celebrated him. Instead, rioters tried to prevent him from re-entering the country. Parliament even declared him a non-Muslim because he belonged to a religious minority. His name continues to be controversial, invoked by state authorities in hushed tones.

I'm offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family's honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Muslims have rightly denounced the mistreatment of Gitmo prisoners. But where's our outrage over the murder of many more Muslims at the hands of our own?

I'm offended that in April, mullahs at an extreme mosque in Pakistan issued a fatwa against hugging.

The country's female tourism minister had embraced - or, depending on the account you follow, accepted a congratulatory pat from - her skydiving instructor after she successfully jumped in a French fundraiser for the victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. Clerics announced her act of touching another man to be "a great sin" and demanded she be fired.

I'm offended by their fatwa proclaiming that women should stay at home and remain covered at all times.

I'm offended that they've bullied music store owners and video vendors into closing up shop.

I'm offended that the Government tiptoes around their craziness because these clerics threaten suicide attacks if confronted.

I'm offended that on Sunday, at least 35 Muslims in Kabul were blown to bits by other Muslims and on Tuesday, 80 more in Baghdad by Islamic "insurgents", with no official statement from Pakistan to deplore these assaults on fellow believers.

I'm offended that amid the internecine carnage, a professed atheist named Salman Rushdie tops the to-do list.



A demonstration in 1989 brought thousands of British Muslims to London's Hyde Park to protest against Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses".

Above all, I'm offended that so many other Muslims are not offended enough to demonstrate widely against God's self-appointed ambassadors. We complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet when reckoning with the opportunity to resist their clamour en masse, we fall curiously silent.

In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

I'm not saying that standing up to intimidation is easy. This past spring, the Muslim world made it that much more difficult.

A 56-member council of Islamic countries pushed the UN Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution against the "defamation of religion". Pakistan led the charge. Focused on Islam rather than on faith in general, the resolution allows repressive regimes to squelch freedom of conscience further - and to do so in the guise of international law.

On occasion, though, the people of Pakistan show that they don't have to be muzzled by clerics and politicians.

Last year, civil society groups vocally challenged a set of anti-female laws, three decades old and supposedly based on the Koran. Their religiously respectful approach prompted even mullahs to hint that these laws are man-made, not God-given. This month, too, Pakistanis forced their Government to lift restrictions on the press. No wonder my own book, translated into Urdu and posted on my website, is being downloaded in droves. Religious authorities won't let it be sold in the markets. But they can't stop Pakistanis - or other Muslims - from satiating a genuine hunger for ideas.

In that spirit, it's high time to ban hypocrisy under the banner of Islam. Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.

After all, the very first bounty on Rushdie's head was worth $US2 million. It rose to $US 2.5 million.

Then came higher reward numbers. The chief benefactor, Iran's government, claimed that the money had been profitably invested. Looks like Jews are not the only people handy at business.

Irshad Manji is creator of the new documentary Faith Without Fear. She is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (Random House Australia).

Ann Coulter: Duke and Marmaduke

http://www.AnnCoulter.com
June 21, 2007

There is nothing so dangerous as a Southern liberal hoping to be invited to a Graydon Carter party.

As is now well-known, Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong falsely accused three white Duke lacrosse players of gang-raping a stripper, even as evidence piled up proving it never happened. In the weeks after an unstable stripper – or, since this is not a Hollywood movie, "a stripper" – accused the players of rape, Nifong stated on national TV: "I am convinced that there was a rape." He called the players "hooligans," contemptuously sneering that their "daddies could buy them expensive lawyers."

Envy is an emotion well-known for producing model behavior.

Revealing his own motives, Nifong said defense attorneys for the non-indicted players "were almost disappointed that their clients didn't get indicted so they could be a part of this spectacle here in Durham." Hello, Vanity Fair? Did you see where I talked about their "daddies"?

The Arianna Huffington of the legal profession might still have made his star turn at a Vanity Fair party, but for the fortuity of the defense lawyers discovering he had tried to hide DNA evidence from the defendants, revealing that the stripper, Crystal Gail Mangum, had the DNA of four different men in or on her person, including the driver who took her to stripping gigs and enough other men to bring a class-action suit against her.

None of the DNA matched any Duke lacrosse players, who are starting to look like the only adult males in the Durham area who haven't had sex with Mangum.

Nifong has tried to portray himself as simply making "mistakes." This is absurd. Not even a half-wit like Nifong could have believed "something happened in that bathroom," as he said during his disbarment hearing last weekend. He was willing to send three innocent men to prison to improve his electoral viability in a heavily black district and to become a liberal hero in Manhattan salons.

Admittedly, Nifong studiously refused to take a peek at the evidence. On March 29, 2006, he told reporters he knew a rape had occurred based on – I quote – "my reading of the report of the emergency room nurse." That report was not given to the police until April 5, 2006, making it the equivalent of the forged Nigerian letter Joe Wilson claims to have debunked eight months before it surfaced at the CIA.

But there were some facts even Nifong couldn't have missed.

He knew, for example, that the cabdriver who picked up accused "rapist" Reade Seligmann had signed a sworn statement attesting to the fact that the accused was in his cab when the rape was allegedly taking place.

We know Nifong's office knew about the cabdriver because the police soon picked him up on a 3-year-old shoplifting charge. The cabdriver claims when the police came to arrest him, they asked "if I had anything new to say about the lacrosse case." When he said no, they arrested him. He was tried on the 3-year-old case and acquitted.

Nifong also knew the second "exotic dancer" at the party called the rape allegation a "crock" and said she had been separated from Mangum for no more than five minutes all night. In other words, another stripper knew Mangum wasn't credible, but Nifong based his entire case on her – or rather on one version of her multiple stories.



Kim Roberts

We know Nifong knew about the second stripper's statement because his office was soon offering her favorable bail treatment for violating probation. She took the deal – and suddenly decided it was possible a rape had occurred.

Mangum had made similar accusations of gang rape 10 years earlier, but her own father denied it had happened and no charges were ever brought. We know Nifong knew about Mangum's prior false accusation because when he was asked about it, he responded: "All the facts are not yet known, and many of the so-called 'facts' that have been reported and commented on are simply wrong." As we now know, the only "wrong" facts circulating in the press were the ones Nifong had put there.

Nifong knew that Mangum made Tawana Brawley look like Billy Graham: She kept changing her story, altering the number of men who raped her and was unable to identify her attackers.

Except one. Mangum confidently and repeatedly identified only one lacrosse player as one of her rapists: Brad Ross. Nifong knew this because Brad Ross promptly gave the police proof that he was at North Carolina State University with his girlfriend the night of the party.

This investigation wasn't a mistake – it was malice.

The media love to drone on about the explosive combination of "race and sex" – and they'll wait forever for a single non-hoax case to prove it! In fact, the truly explosive combination is "liberal" and "mediocrity."

Half-bright liberals think Hollywood fantasies are real life. And in Hollywood, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are never fabulously rich and successful. Conservative Christians like Tom DeLay are never savvy, influential congressmen. And handsome boys from good families are never nice.

Nifong was supposed to look like Gregory Peck – not like Bob Wexler! But it's the lacrosse players who look like Gregory Peck.

Second-rate liberals who went to mediocre schools and married mediocre women are burning with jealousy from their nondescript, mediocre jobs. So they use their government jobs to attack their betters and sneer about the players' "daddies."

Like so much injustice in America, this whole sick spectacle was the revenge of the mediocre against the successful. Stupid and envious is a bad combo platter.


Ann Coulter is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Her most recent book is Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

Jessica Gavora: Sex Games

Coming to a high school near you.

http://www.nationalreview.com

June 20, 2007 6:00 AM



Sen. Patty Murray, shown with Olympic gymnast, Dominique Dawes and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), joined a bipartisan group of Senators, athletes and women's sports activists at a 2003 press conference supporting existing Title IX policies.


Title IX turns 35 this month and the bad gals have officially won. Sex quotas in sports under the anti-discrimination law are de rigeur on college campuses. And the Bush administration’s failure to even challenge this perversion of the law — concocted, for the most part, by and during the Clinton administration — means that eliminating men’s sports opportunities in the name of “creating” opportunities for women now has bipartisan blessing.

The war for how Title IX will be enforced in the nation’s colleges and universities is won. So where do aging, feminist, rent-seeking practitioners of gender politics go next? Why, to our high schools of course.

Title IX — the good parts, that is — has long and rightly been enforced in high schools. The law has protected high-school girls’ right to equal athletic facilities with boys, their right to equivalent practice times and all the other uncontroversial indices of equality before the law.

But the question of what constitutes sex discrimination under Title IX when it comes to participation in high-school sports has never been answered. And now the same coalition of activists, bureaucrats, and trial lawyers that brought us Title IX quotas in intercollegiate athletics is turning its attention to interscholastic athletics. And their version of what constitutes discrimination under Title IX is very specific and very narrow — anything less equal rates of participation by the sexes in athletics, even if that equality has to be achieved by limiting opportunities for boys.

This spring, as part of the festival of identity politics that is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, chick sports luminaries like Billie Jean King and Dominique Dawes fanned out across Capitol Hill as part of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s effort to lobby for increased Title IX enforcement in high schools. Because they’re nothing but canny and adaptable, Title IX quota advocates are now using the catch-all excuse of the so-called “epidemic of obesity” as their rationale for forcing teenage boys out of the chance to play lacrosse. Their message: “Get your girls involved in sports; their lives depend on it!”

Leaving aside for the moment the boys who will be reaching for the Doritos and the remote after their athletic opportunities are inevitably slashed as the result of Title IX quotas in high schools, the gals from the Women’s Sports Foundation need not have resorted to such alarmist rhetoric. Undisguised scare tactics, after all, are not necessary for members of Congress — be they Republican or Democrat — to stand by and allow Title IX to become the agent of the very discrimination it was passed to end.

At the center of the pro-quota activists’ marching orders for Congress today is something called the “High School Sports Information Collection Act.” It’s modeled after the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), which for a dozen years has forced colleges and universities to annually report their athletic participation and expenses — broken down by sex — to the feds. The EADA was meant to be, and is, a one-stop-shopping list for trial lawyers and activist groups looking for schools to sue for failing to meet the Title IX quota. Now, courtesy of Senators Olympia Snowe and Patty Murray, they are about to have the same litigation hit list of high schools.

In a year in which Rutgers, James Madison, Ohio University, Butler, Clarion, Slippery Rock, and Syracuse have eliminated hundreds of men’s roster spots in full or in part due to Title IX, we have yet to see — thankfully — boys’ high-school teams eliminated under the law. But we are beginning to see boys athletic opportunities be limited due to Title IX quota creep in high schools.

Students, parents, coaches, fans, and administrators at South Sumter High School in Bushnell, Florida want desperately to add a boy’s soccer team. The athletic talent is available, coaching is available and financing is available. But what stands in the way is Title IX. School boards and administrators are increasingly concerned that if they add a boys’ sport, they have to add an equivalent — or more – girls’ sports.

But ginning up interest in additional girls sports is often difficult. Across Florida high schools, boys are prevented from playing sports like soccer, lacrosse, and volleyball despite the sports’ huge popularity because finding girls to balance out the boys has proved all but impossible.

Federal fiat, it turns out, can provide for the additional sports for girls, but it can’t make them come out and play. When gender bean counters told Martin County high schools that they “didn’t have enough” girls playing junior varsity sports, the county instituted a full court press to lure more freshman and JV female athletes. But response was so poor that one school had to cancel plans for girls’ varsity soccer, another couldn’t get enough players for JV basketball. At Martin County High School, the athletic director had trouble getting four girls out of a female student body of over 800 to come out for the new bowling team.

The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated.

The implication of this is clear: If high schools follow colleges and universities in instituting gender quotas in athletics, boys will be forced to pay the price in limited or eliminated opportunities. Girls are too busy doing other things after school to turn out at the same rate for sports.

But before the spectacle of boys’ high-school teams being cut for Title IX becomes as common as men’s college teams being sacrificed for gender equity, the Bush administration has an opportunity to act.

Apart from issuing toothless guidance on using student surveys to comply with Title IX in 2005, the Bush administration has been a crushing disappointment to supporters of endangered men’s sports. The administration had an opportunity to enact real reform when President Bush’s own Commission on Opportunity in Athletics heard months of testimony of discrimination against boys and men under Title IX. But the White House balked and allowed itself to be intimidated into inaction by pro-quota women’s groups. And last year, a political appointee in the Bush Education Department tried — ultimately unsuccessfully — to expand Title IX quotas into math and science programs.

But with record-low approval ratings comes the opportunity for redemption. President Bush should direct his secretary of Education to issue a clarification stating unambiguously that the regulation that has given rise to Title IX quotas in colleges and universities does not apply in high schools. If protecting the ability of a twenty-something man to run track in college isn’t worth the political pain of offending the pro-quota women’s groups, defending the right of a 13-year-old boy to play baseball for the sheer love of the game should be.

The battle for intercollegiate athletics may be over, but the Title IX war rages on. It’s time to draw the line at our high schools.

— Jessica Gavora is vice president for policy of the College Sports Council, which has joined with the Pacific Legal Foundation in petitioning the Department of Education to prohibit Title IX quotas in high-school sports.

Tony Blankley: Journey into Islam

Akbar Ahmed

Washington Times

June 20, 2007

I have just finished reading a deeply disheartening book by my friend Professor Akbar Ahmed. Dr. Ahmed is the former Pakistani high commissioner to Britain and member of the faculties of Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge, current chair of Islamic Studies at American University -- and is in the front ranks of what we Westerners call the moderate Muslims, who we are counting on to win the hearts and minds of the others.

I first met Professor Ahmed shortly after Sept. 11. He, his friends and I broke bread several times and discussed the condition of Islam and the West. He graciously agreed to share a stage with me at the National Press Club to debate with me the merits of my book, "The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilization?" As my book was very harshly received by many Muslims around the world, I don't doubt that Dr. Ahmed shared that stage with me at some risk at least to his reputation -- if not more.

We even considered doing a weekly cable TV show on the clash of civilization from our different (but respectful) points of view -- although nothing came of it. Dr. Ahmed is a worldly man of letters who profoundly believes that collective good can be accomplished by individual acts of good conscience -- that each of us (Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu) must connect with others and live out our convictions for our common humanity in the face of tribalism, religion and other dividing forces. Thus, his reach out to me, a fiery American nationalist TV commentator and editor to find if not complete common ground, at least common friendship.

His new book, "Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization," is thus particularly heartbreaking for me. As a trained anthropologist, he took three of his students on a six-month journey around the Muslim world to investigate what Muslims are thinking.

His conclusion: Due to both misjudgments by the United States and regrettable developments in Muslim attitudes, "The poisons are spreading so rapidly that without immediate remedial action, no antidote may ever be found." And Dr. Ahmed has always been an optimist.

He divides Muslim attitudes into three categories named after Indian Muslim cities that have historically championed them: Ajmer, Aligarh and Deoband.

Ajmer represents peaceful Sufi mysticism, Aligarth represents the instinct to modernize without corrupting Islam, Deoband represents non-fatalistic, practical, action-oriented orthodox Islam. It traces to Ibn Taymiyya, a 14th-Century thinker who lived when Islam was reeling from the Mongol invasions. He rejected Islam's prior easy, open acceptance of non-Muslims.



In short, Dr. Ahmed is an Aligarth. As a young man he was one of new Pakistan's best and brightest, led by Pakistan's founding father and first president, Dr. Jinnah. They hoped to build a modern democracy, overcome tribalism and the more obscurantist aspects of Islam while still being "good Muslims." The Deobands are the Bin Ladens and all the other Muslims we fear today.

Even one or two years ago, I think Dr. Ahmed was reasonably hopeful that his views had a fighting chance around the Islamic world. So, my jaw dropped when I got to page 192 of his new book and he described his thoughts while in Pakistan last year on his investigative journey: "The progressive and active Aligarth model had become enfeebled and in danger of being overtaken by the Deoband model ... I felt like a warrior in the midst of the fray who knew the odds were against him but never quite realized that his side had already lost the war."

He likewise reported from Indonesia -- invariably characterized as practicing a more moderate form of Islam. There, too, his report was crushingly negative. Meeting with people from presidents to cab drivers, from elite professors to students from modest schools (Dr. Ahmed holds a respected place in the Muslim firmament around the globe), reports that 50 percent want Shariah law, support the Bali terrorist bombing, oppose women in politics, support stoning adulterers to death. Indonesia's secular legal system and tolerant pluralist society is being "infiltrated by Deoband thinking ... Dwindling moderates and growing extremists are a dangerous challenging development."

Although I dissent from several of Dr. Ahmed's characterizations of the Bush Administration, Washington policymakers and journalists should read this book because it delivers a terrible message of warning both to those who say things aren't as bad as Bush says, and we can rely on the moderate voices of Islam -- with a little assist from the West -- winning; and for those who argue for aggressive American action to show our strength to the Muslims (because, in Bin Laden's words, they follow the strong horse).

To the first group he says that the "moderate" voice is in near hopeless retreat across the Muslim world. Don't count on them. To the second group he says, whatever Bush's intentions, our aggression only strengthens our enemies.

I think he knows his solution is forlorn: "Although the planet's societies are running against time ... [we must] transcend race, tribe and religion and cherish our common humanity, every individual must become the message." Let us pray.

But for those of us who don't expect the milk of human kindness to suddenly start flowing, it behooves us to read Professor Ahmed's honest assessment of the real state of Muslim world attitudes and coldly re-assess our various policy prescriptions in its light.

These are grim times, but we must resist indulging ourselves in hopeful fantasies. Every piece of our national security calculations must be realistically assessed against the available facts. What is working, what isn't, what to do?

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Michelle Malkin: Rushdie Rage from 'Moderate' Muslims

The New York Post
June 20, 2007

Jihadi's Guide to Etiquette Rule 11: Never leave home without your matches, effigy-hanging sticks and death threat placards. You never know when they'll come in handy.

In Pakistan, dutiful followers of the jihadi guide have found a new pretext this week for an anti-Western bonfire party: the knighting of author Salman Rushdie in Britain. Muslim groups are burning Queen Elizabeth and Rushdie in effigy. The Union Jack is in flames. The Religion of Perpetual Outrage strikes again.

It's not just some obscure spokesman for a "tiny minority" objecting to Rushdie's knighthood and leading the renewed calls for Rushdie's death and Britain's submission. Pakistan's religious affairs minister, Mohammed ljaz ul-Haq, bellowed: "If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?" He says he was misunderstood, but the message is as loud and clear as the inscriptions on the infamous placards British Muslims waved around during last year's conflagration over the Danish cartoons:

"Behead all those who insult Islam. Slay those who insult Islam. Butcher those who mock Islam."

Pakistan's parliamentarian affairs minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi piled on: "I demand the British government immediately withdraw the title as it is creating religious hatred." On Monday, Pakistan's Parliament passed a unanimous resolution "deploring the honor as an open insult to the feelings of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims." Mufti Muhammad Basheer-u-Din, Grand Mufti of Kashmir, didn't mince words: "Because of his blasphemy, Salman Rushdie remains an apostate and aggressor on Islam and punishment for such offences is death." Lord Ahmed, the first British Muslim member of the House of Lords, blamed Rushdie for violence past and violence to come:

"This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world. . . . Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far."

Sort of?!

Yes, you see, it's always the fault of the accused insulter. Never the fault of the sword-wielders, fatwa-issuers, fire-setters and blood-lusters.

It's always the fault of the Western "extremists." Never the fault of the "moderate" followers of jihad.

The deaf and blind will dismiss this latest episode of manufactured Muslim outrage as a marginal outburst. But Rushdie, the target of death threats dating back to 1988 over his book "The Satanic Verses," has seen enough performances of Jihad Theater to take proper precautions. He has requested police protection after an Iranian group put a $150,000 bounty on his head. Forouz Raja'ee-Far, secretary general of the Headquarters for Honoring the Martyrs of Islam World Movement, offered the prize because, after all, "it is an obligation for all Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie even if he repents from the bottom of his heart and becomes the pious man of the time."

What does the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to say? Their website has a special "incitement watch" and "action alerts" section for its (dwindling number of) members -- but as of Tuesday afternoon, not a peep about the incitement of hatred and violence against Rushdie. They'll eventually pay lip service to The Religion of Peace, but do not forget Rule No. 5 in the jihadi's guide to etiquette: "You can lie if you do this for jihad."

Pakistani government officials are bleating about the need for "interfaith understanding" and sensitivity. In Washington for meetings with the Bush administration, Pakistan's foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri cooed: "When we talk of a globalized world, we have to be sensitive to each other's concerns."

As anyone with their eyes open through Rushdie's ordeal, the deadly Mohammed cartoons riots, the calls for beheading the Pope, Oriana Fallaci, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and defiant, ex-Muslim apostates around the world knows: "Sensitivity" in the jihadi world is a one-way, dead-end street.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Kathleen Parker: Nifong's Legacy, Feminism's Shame

The Orlando Sentinel

June 20, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Mike Nifong, the Durham County, N.C., district attorney made infamous by his own hand, has been shamed, disbarred and let out the back door for his unethical conduct of the so-called Duke University lacrosse team rape case.

It couldn't have happened to a more-deserving fellow, but the case doesn't end here. Nifong's legacy, which ultimately may hurt women more than the falsely accused men, will be long-lived. And the politically correct culture that allowed his charade to persist remains securely in place, while those who enabled Nifong walk scot-free.

Which is to say, before we applaud the tragedy's finale, we might ask Lady Macbeth if she can recommend a good soap.

It is tempting to convince oneself that Nifong's banishment means that all is right in the Dukedom. Doubtless, many among Duke's faculty and administration, as well as random race-baiters, campus feminists, various reporters, commentators and assorted armchair prosecutors would prefer that no one remember their roles in advancing the Nifong farce. (KC Johnson, Brooklyn College history professor, has it all on his Durham-in-Wonderland blog.)

But they shouldn't get off so easily. All were participants in the scurrilous witch hunt that unfolded during the past year. All were congregants in the PC Church that sanctifies certain groups as unassailable victims (all minorities and females) and others as condemnable perps (all males, but especially descendants of history's white oppressors).

From the beginning, when an African-American stripper -- alternately known as a "working mother and college student'' -- claimed that three lacrosse players had raped her, few questioned whether she might be lying or that the men might be telling the truth. A spirit of retributive justice prevailed while feminist law professor Wendy Murphy summarized the zeitgeist on CNN's "The Situation Room'': "I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth.''

Really. Even after it became clear that there were problems with the case -- no DNA match, no witnesses, logistical impossibilities, a "victim'' who couldn't get her story straight and contrary evidence impugning her claims -- rape victim advocates continued their defense.

Thanks to these activists and Nifong -- and the dancer who cried wolf -- real rape victims may be reluctant to come forward. Others may not get their day in court as intimidated prosecutors anticipate defeat before jurors jaded by the Duke spectacle.

Already we may be witness to Nifong's dubious offspring in Cupertino, Calif., where a nearly unconscious 17-year-old girl was sexually ravished at a party by a De Anza College baseball player while several teammates stood by watching. The girl's face was covered with vomit -- not her own -- by the time three other young women burst into the room, rescued her from a mattress on the floor and took her to the hospital.

To any sane mind, a drunk, semi-conscious girl on the receiving end of sexual intercourse doesn't sound like consensual sex, yet the Santa Clara County district attorney has decided not to pursue charges. The problem, she says, is that everyone involved was drinking, including witnesses -- and the girl remembers nothing -- making it difficult to prove lack of consent.

What any reasonable person knows, of course, is that anyone too drunk to wipe someone else's vomit from her face is too drunk to give consent. We also can assume that Nifong, given a similar scenario, would have prosecuted this case (with our blessings) and been declared a hero.

Instead, his abuse of the justice system, indicting three innocent men for his own political gain, may have set the stage for other guilty parties to walk free and at least one 17-year-old girl, thus far, to be denied access to justice. California Attorney General Jerry Brown is investigating the case to determine whether charges should be brought.

Meanwhile, as feminists try to repair the damage they and Nifong have done to the cause of real rape victims, other co-dependents in this folie a plusieurs should avoid feeling smug as the curtain drops in Durham. A little self-examination would seem to be in order, beginning with Duke.

The university recently settled with the three accused lacrosse players for an undisclosed sum in a move that insulates faculty from any claims of liability. Such is cheap grace. If the university really wants to redeem itself, a better remedy would be for university President Richard Brodhead to institute a new academic program to examine how totalitarian, politically correct groupthink is destroying America's institutions of higher learning.

Duke can write the textbook.

kparker@kparker.com

Thomas Sowell: The Duke Case's Unfinished Business

Duke "potbanger", visiting political science professor Kim Curtis.

June 19, 2007

http://www.townhall.com

The disbarment of Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong should be just the first step in remedying the gross and cynical fraud of last year's "rape" case against Duke University lacrosse players.

Not only is Nifong still liable to civil lawsuits from the three young men whose lives he tried to ruin, and criminal prosecution for his obstruction of justice and making false statements to a judge, there are many other people who disgraced themselves in hyping a lynch mob atmosphere when this case first broke last year.

The New York Times, which splashed these Duke students' pictures on the front page, along with inflammatory charges against them, and went ballistic on its editorial page, carried the story of Nifong's disbarment for prosecuting them on page 16.

The 88 Duke University faculty members who took out a hysterical ad, supporting those local loudmouths who were denouncing and threatening the Duke students, have apparently had nothing at all to say now.



Click to enlarge

Not only did many Duke University professors join the lynch mob atmosphere, so did the Duke University administration, which got rid of the lacrosse coach and cancelled the team's season, without a speck of evidence that anybody was guilty of anything.

This is one of the few times when Jesse Jackson is speechless, even though he was loudly supporting the bogus "rape" charges last year.

A local civil rights activist even had the gall to accost the mother of one of the accused students at Nifong's disbarment hearings to say that she still believes they were guilty.

The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against.

Although the committee that disbarred Michael Nifong said many things that needed to be said, they muddied the waters by saying that Nifong may have deceived himself before he deceived others.

Nothing that District Attorney Nifong did suggests that he ever thought these players were guilty or that he ever intended to bring them to trial.

The photo lineup presented to the stripper was so completely different from standard procedure that it was virtually an invitation for a judge to throw out any identification resulting from it -- and without that identification, there was no case.

This was not about winning a case. It was about winning an election.

Nifong could not allow a standard lineup to be used to have the accuser identify her alleged attackers, or else her unreliability would have been exposed early on, depriving him of a case to use to get the black vote in his election.

There is not the slightest reason to believe that Nifong was deceived or mistaken. He was not some kid fresh out of law school. He had decades of experience as a prosecutor. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Nor was the New York Times a naive ingenue in these matters. It had backed Al Sharpton's fraudulent accusations of rape in the Tawana Brawley case, which had the same politically correct elements of a black woman accusing white men of rape.

Nor were the 88 Duke faculty members who promoted a lynch mob atmosphere naive. Most were from departments promoting the "race, class, and gender" vision of victimhood.

This case served their purposes. That trumped any question about whether the charges were true or not.

Don't expect any of these people to recant or apologize. But be aware of how wide and how deep the moral dry rot goes.

That such people are teaching students at an elite university is a chilling thought. That they promote a campus atmosphere where political correctness trumps the search for truth is painful.

That such attitudes and such atmospheres are not peculiar to Duke University, but are common on elite college campuses from coast to coast is a time bomb with the potential to destroy individuals and ultimately undermine the whole society.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Scott Johnson: What About Duke's Gang of 88?

June 17, 2007

http://powerlineblog.com/

Mike Nifong

As John notes below, the organized bar of North Carolina has roused itself to administer justice to Durham Country District Attorney Michael Nifong. In disbarring him, the disciplinary committee imposed the maximum punishment available. Disbarment is the professional equivalent of capital punishment. Professor K.C. Johnson has been the indispensable chronicler of the case at Durham-in-Wonderland. Professor Johnson concludes his Sunday roundup on the disciplinary proceeding with the statement of Steven Michael, the president of the North Carolina state bar:

In my experience, misconduct of the sort Mr. Nifong engaged in is very rare and not at all typical of prosecutors in our state. We deeply regret the serious harm caused to these young men and their families. We hope the decision today will lessen the likelihood that anything like this will happen again.

The Bar’s strong response to this situation made clear that the ethical rules restricting pretrial public comment and requiring prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence will be strictly enforced. Those rules are important because they ensure the fundamental right to a fair trial that every citizen is guaranteed in our constitution.

And yet Nifong's misconduct was not the only professional misconduct that occurred in connection with the case. Who can forget Duke's Gang of 88 radical professors that supported the on-campus lynch mob that issued "wanted" posters of the lacrosse players? In good postmodern style, the Gang of 88 has attempted to put its past under erasure (Professor Johnson commented here), but Duke students who exceed the Gang in maturity and responsibility remember. When he checked in with one member of the Gang of 88 last fall, Professor Johnson reported:

I e-mailed Professor Curtis last week, to ask if in light of the many facts that have emerged since April 6 she entertained any second thoughts about signing the Group of 88's statement. I also asked if she had considered making a public statement supporting due process for the accused students.

She did not reply.

It is a remarkable fact of the Duke case that the legal profession has acquitted itself with greater honor than the professoriate.

To comment on this post, go here.

Posted by Scott at 07:08 AM

Mark Steyn: Immigration bill is a fraud

Chicago Sun-Times

June 17, 2007

I forget where I was when I first heard the phrase ''undocumented worker.'' Possibly it was after swimming the Rio Grande and emerging dripping on the northern shore to be handed a fake Social Security number and a driver's license. But I assumed, reasonably enough, that this linguistic sleight of hand was simply too ridiculous to fly even with the American media. I underestimated my colleagues, alas.

The ''undocumented'' are, as it happens, brimming with sufficient documents to open bank accounts or, on the other hand, rent a Ryder truck, as Mohammad Salameh did in 1993 when he and his pals bombed the World Trade Center first time round. Being ''undocumented'' means being documented up to the hilt as far as everyone else is concerned but ''undocumented'' only to the U.S. government. Which, when you think about it, is a very advantageous status to have.

Anyway, about five years or so back, I started making references in columns to ''fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community.'' But from the lame Steyn joke of yesteryear to the reality of tomorrow is a mere hop and a skip. A few days ago, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, declared: ''This week we will vote on cloture and final passage of a comprehensive bill that will strengthen border security, bring the 12 million undocumented Americans out of the shadows, and keep our economy strong.''

Talk about ''a fast track to citizenship''! Never mind probationary visas, Z-visas and green cards, in the eyes of the Democrat steering ''comprehensive immigration reform'' through Congress, these guys are already ''undocumented Americans.'' Was it simply a slip of the tongue? (Speaking of which, I thought thanks to George W. Bush we had ''the worst economy since Herbert Hoover.'' When did it get ''strong''?) Or did Sen. Reid mean it?

If he did, the very concept of citizenship is dead, and the Senate might as well opt for ''really comprehensive immigration reform'' and declare everyone on the planet a U.S. citizen with backdated Social Security entitlements. As Le Monde's famous headline of Sept. 12, 2001, put it, ''Nous sommes tous Americains.'' Literally.

I don't know whether this sham of a bill is dead or just resting ''in the shadows'' like a fine upstanding member of the Vampiric-American community. But, if it rises on the third night to stalk the land once more, I would advise its supporters to go about their work more honestly. First of all, the only guys ''living in the shadows'' are the aides of American senators beavering away out of the public eye to cook up this legislation and then present it as a fait accomplis to the citizenry (if you'll forgive the expression). That is an affront to small-r republican government, and, if intemperate hectoring mediocrities like Trent Lott and Lindsay Graham don't understand that, then their electors should give them a well-deserved lesson.

Second, the bill's supporters should stop assuming the bad faith of their opponents. On Fox News the other night, I was told by NPR's Juan Williams, ''You're anti-immigrant!'' Er, actually, I am an immigrant -- one of the members of the very very teensy-weensy barely statistically detectable category of ''legal immigrant.'' But perhaps that doesn't count anymore. Perhaps, like Colin Powell's blackness, it's insufficiently ''authentic.'' By filing the relevant paperwork with the United States government, I'm not ''keepin' it real.''

I wouldn't presume to speak for the millions of Americans who oppose this bill, but it's because I'm an immigrant myself that I object to the most patent absurdity peddled by the pro-amnesty crowd. The bill is fundamentally a fraud. Its ''comprehensive solution'' to illegal immigration is simply to flip all the illegals overnight into the legal category. Voila! Problem solved! There can be no more illegal immigrants because the Senate has simply abolished the category. Ingenious! For their next bipartisan trick, Congress will reduce the murder rate by recategorizing murderers as jaywalkers.

Back in the real world far from those senators living in the non-shadows of their boundless self-admiration, the truth is that America's immigration bureaucracy cannot cope with its existing caseload, and thus will certainly be unable to cope with millions of additional teeming hordes tossed into its waiting room. Currently, the time in which an immigration adjudicator is expected to approve or reject an application is six minutes. That's not enough time to read the basic form, never mind any supporting documentation. It's certainly not enough time for any meaningful background check. Under political pressure to ''bring the 12 million undocumented Americans out of the shadows,'' the immigration bureaucracy will rubberstamp gazillions of applications for open-ended probationary legal status within 24 hours and with no more supporting documentation than a utility bill or an affidavit from a friend. There's never been a better time for Mullah Omar to apply for U.S. residency.

America has an illegal immigration problem in part because it has a legal immigration problem. Anyone who enters the system exposes himself to an arbitrary, capricious, whimsical bureaucracy: For example, one of the little-known features of this bill is that in order to ''bring the 12 million undocumented Americans out of the shadows,'' millions of legal applicants are being hurled back into outer darkness. Law-abiding foreign nationals who filed their paperwork in the last two years would be required to go back to their home countries and start all over again. Not only does this bill reward law-breaking, it punishes law-abiding.

The people who are truly ''anti-immigrant'' are the folks who want to send that immigrant from Slovenia or Fiji who applied in May 2005 back to the end of the line. But then ''comprehensive immigration reform'' is about everything but immigration, including subverting sovereignty and national security. Remember the 1986 amnesty? Mahmoud abu Halima applied for it and went on to bomb the World Trade Center seven years later. His colleague, the aforementioned Mohammad Salameh, was rejected but carried on living here anyway. John Lee Malvo was detained and released by U.S. immigration in breach of its own procedures and re-emerged as the Washington sniper. The young Muslim men who availed themselves of the U.S. government's ''visa express'' system for Saudi Arabia filled in joke applications -- ''Address in the United States: HOTEL, AMERICA'' -- that octogenarian snowbirds from Toronto who've been wintering at their Florida condos since 1953 wouldn't try to get away with. The late Mohammed Atta received his flight-school student visa on March 11, 2002, six months to the day after famously flying his first and last commercial airliner.

All the above passed through the U.S. legal immigration system. And, whether they were detained, rejected, approved or posthumously approved, in the end it made no difference. Because U.S. immigration had no real idea who these men were.

But, don't worry, they'll be able to handle another ''12 million undocumented Americans'' tossed in for express processing.

The real ''immigration fraud'' is not Mahmoud abu Halima's or John Lee Malvo's or Mohammed Atta's, but that of the politicians who attempted to foist this sham bill on the nation.

© Mark Steyn 2007

Terence P. Jeffrey: Reagan's other words in Berlin

The Washington Times

June 16, 2007


Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, 1987.

Western leaders searching for a long-term strategy to defend our civilization from fundamentalist Islam ought to reread the speech President Reagan delivered at the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month.

It was neither democracy nor capitalism Mr. Reagan foresaw bringing down the wall. It was Christianity.

Mr. Reagan's demand that Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall was the defining sound-bite of that speech, but it was another passage that defined the core meaning of the Cold War.

Pondering what sustained Berliners, surrounded as they were by the Soviet menace, Mr. Reagan concluded: "Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront.

"Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere — that sphere that towers over all Berlin — the light makes the sign of the cross."

In Mr. Reagan's mind, their defining symbol was the wall, while ours was the cross. In any battle of faith and reason, our side would win.

"As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: 'This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality,'" said Mr. Reagan. "Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth." And the wall did fall — at the foot of the cross.

Even as Mr. Reagan spoke that day in Berlin, the forces of faith and reason were laying siege to Gdansk, Poland. On one side were Polish police, on the other, a Polish priest. The former came to intimidate the masses; the latter to say a Mass. "A crowd of more than 1 million people chanted, 'Solidarity, Solidarity,' as Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass today amid a massive show of police force in this city where the labor movement was born," the Associated Press reported.

The Protestant president and Catholic pope won the Cold War in Eastern Europe without ever firing a shot there because Christianity had a more powerful and enduring grip on the soul of that region than communism could ever have. Eastern Europe is now free and at peace.

But the Cold War went differently in the Islamic world. In Afghanistan, U.S.-armed mujahideen drove out the Soviets, but also begat the Taliban and al Qaeda, groups quite different from Poland's Solidarity. Even after U.S. forces threw the Taliban from power and established an Afghan democracy, a man named Abdul Rahman was threatened with prosecution and execution for the crime of converting to Christianity. He fled Afghanistan — for Rome.

In nations where Islam is the dominant religion, conversion remains a one-way street. Non-Muslims may convert to Islam, but Muslims may not convert to any other religion. Freedom of conscience, the very core of liberty, is not merely denied, it can be a capital offense.

Nonetheless, President Bush's policy holds that the long-term key to countering the threat of fundamentalist Islam is to import our secular democratic political processes to the Islamic world — as we have in Afghanistan and Iraq. In defense of this policy, he has ridiculed those who express doubts that these secular political processes alone can transform those cultures.

"We also hear doubts that democracy is a realistic goal for the greater Middle East, where freedom is rare," Mr. Bush said in his 2004 State of the Union address. "Yet it is mistaken and condescending to assume that whole cultures and great religions are incompatible with liberty and self-government." Did someone produce a National Intelligence Estimate — like the one on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction — advising Mr. Bush this was so?

When President Bush met Pope Benedict last week, they discussed the fate of Iraq's Chaldean rite Catholics. Targeted by Muslim terrorists and unprotected by Iraq's Islamist — yet democratically elected — government, Chaldeans are fleeing a land where their ancestors kept the faith for 2,000 years.

In the clash of civilizations, the current strategy has the wrong side retreating.

Terence P. Jeffrey is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Final Opinion: Made in America

Posted by Alan Sepinwall

The Newark Star-Ledger

June 15, 2007 7:50AM

Categories: The Sopranos

First things first on what looks to be the final day for this here Sopranos blog:

Thank you.

Over the last few days, I've arrived at the office hoping to spend a good part of the day writing back to each person who's written me over the last few weeks, but the e-mails and comments kept coming in so fast and in such detail that I could barely find the time to read all the new ones, let alone start writing back to everybody. So, unless I want to be like Ringo Starr in that "Simpsons" episode where he was still replying to 25-year-old fanmail, my only choice is to say one blanket thank you to everybody.

The response to these columns has been tremendous, and speaks not only to the popularity of "The Sopranos," but the depth of it. There's so much going on in each episode -- especially this last batch of nine, I think -- that we could spend a lifetime trying to discuss it all. And when I've missed out on certain items, one or many of you have been there to point them out to me. Your passion and enthusiasm for discussing this show has been really gratifying, and proof that TV doesn't have to just be that thing you turn off your brain to watch.

Doing these columns has been a lot of work, but all your responses have made it worth it.
End schmaltzy farewell. Moving on, I want to address some leftover theories and complaints about "Made in America":

The myth of the shirt

The e-mails keep pouring in with people convinced that Tony switched shirts in between his visit to Junior and his trip to Holsten's, or even in between when we see him enter Holsten's and when he sits down, and they've taken that as proof that the final scene is some kind of dream sequence.

I've rewatched both scenes in high-definition several times, and while I can't say with 100 percent certainty that he has the same shirt on at the mental hospital that he does at Holsten's, I would bet the cost of moving Vito's widow and family to Maine on the fact that Tony's shirt is the same for the entire Holsten's sequence. (Confusing matters is the fact that, in some of the publicity photos -- including the one that accompanied my review in Monday's paper -- Jim Gandolfini is wearing a different shirt in the Holsten's booth, but I expect they snapped the pictures early and that David Chase or someone else decided he'd look better in something else.

(Episodes aren't shot in sequence, so the Junior scene could have easily been filmed after the Holsten's trip.) Even if the shirt's different between the hospital and the restaurant, I don't think it's a big deal. As with Tony going to sleep on a bare mattress at the end of last week and waking up on a made bed this week (which suggested Tony had been hiding out for a while), there's no deeper meaning. He may have just changed before dinner (he was already wearing a different jacket before he went to the hospital).

And I've now just devoted nearly 200 words to discussing the implications of Tony's shirt.

The myth of "everything goes to black"

I feel like I dealt with this in the blog a couple of days ago, and yet unlike the Nicky Leotardo theory, this one keeps gaining credence, to the point where even an HBO spokesman suggested it might be right.

One rather large problem, which I feel I must repeat: Bacala never says anything about it all going to black. The exchange is:

Bobby: "You probably don't ever hear it when it happens, right?" Tony:" Ask your friend back there. On the wall."

That's it. You can check yourself if you don't believe me. I think Quentin (the HBO spokesman in the article) is just having some fun with what I'm sure are hundreds and hundreds of media requests for an explanation of what happened.

I'm not saying that the Tony Is Dead people are wasting their time. It's as valid an overall theory as any, even if the evidence is sketchy. But argue your point only with the evidence that exists, not the evidence that you wish existed.

The myth of the non-closure

It seems from reading the e-mails and comments that a decent portion of the people who hated the finale on Sunday night or Monday morning have come around throughout the week. For those of you who still hate it, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. Art is subjective. We like what we like, you know? But the one reason for hating it that I'm having a trouble abiding is this notion that David Chase screwed everyone over by leaving us hanging.

Let's take the Holsten's scene out of the equation for a minute, okay? Now what's left hanging? The war's over, and Phil is dead. Paulie takes over the old Altieri/Aprile/Ciffaretto/Spatafore/Gervasi construction crew. Sil's in a coma, never to recover (though, shockingly, his hair turns out to be real). Butchie runs New York, Tony runs what's left of New Jersey, and while Carlo is probably talking to the feds, plenty of captains and high-level hangers-on have cooperated before with little consequence (see Jimmy Altieri, Pussy, Ray Curto, Jack Massarone, Adriana, Eugene, etc.).

On the lower-case family side, Janice is preparing to "make it work" with Bobby's kids, even if they have no interest in that. Carm's real estate business is going well. Meadow's engaged to Patrick Parisi and preparing to sell her soul to a big-ticket law firm. AJ has already sold his soul for a dual-exhaust BMW and the promise of a career in showbiz or club management. (And I like how Tony's real son has now taken part of the career path of Tony's surrogate son Chris.) Junior is locked away from both the civilized world and his own memories.

That's more closure than any "Sopranos" finale has ever provided, by a long stretch. There are some loose ends here and there, mainly having to do with Carlo and the feds, but everything else is as wrapped up as this show has ever done, since Chase usually hates wrapping things up into tight, neat packages.

So that only leaves the question of what, if anything, was happening at Holsten's, and we can have fun debating that for the next few decades -- or at least until Chase or one of the writers gets fed up with all the speculation and breaks omerta on it.

Feel free to keep discussing all of this on any of the blog entries, or in e-mails to me -- so long as, in both places, you keep things civil -- but I'm a little talked out on the subject right now. Again, thank you all.

Alan Sepinwall can be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com

Roger's history entwined with tonight's foe

Friday, June 15, 2007

By PETE CALDERA
BERGEN COUNTY RECORD
STAFF WRITER



AP
New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, making his season debut with the Yankees, delivers a pitch against the Pittsburgh Pirates in New York on June 9.

NEW YORK -- Maybe Roger Clemens has intentionally submerged some of his most indelible moments against the Mets.

There was the heartbreak of the 1986 World Series, Clemens high-fiving Red Sox teammates in Game 6, waiting for a final out that never came.

There was that awful moment when Mike Piazza took Clemens' best fastball square in the helmet.

And, of course, Clemens still can't explain why he fired that broken bat at Piazza in the 2000 World Series.

Ask Clemens about what thoughts the Mets inspire, and he brings up fellow Texan Nolan Ryan's formative years and Tom Seaver's dominating days.

Well, these aren't Piazza's Mets anymore, either.

Tonight at Yankee Stadium, Clemens will face a better-balanced Mets lineup -- but one that is suddenly struggling as badly as the Yankees did in May.

Clemens has done his video homework on the Mets. But he's also spent his first full week back in pinstripes getting to know the 2007 Yankees.

"I've been visiting with teammates, both young and old," Clemens said. "They're getting to know me a bit, my routine, and getting to see what I'm about."

Now Clemens goes for career win No. 350, nearly a week after his successful re-debut with the Yankees.

"Performance-wise, I expect to get stronger and stronger," Clemens said. "I just hope to go a little longer each time out."

Saturday, Clemens, 44, lasted six innings and 108 pitches in a 9-3 win over Pittsburgh. But the way his arm felt, "I could throw 110-120 pitches and not be too fatigued," Clemens said.

His "fatigued" right groin came through fine, and Clemens attributed that setback to having altered his famous workout regimen. "And that's why the scar tissue gave way," he said.

"I was in hurry-up mode to pitch as soon as possible," Clemens said, but the Yankees kept the reins on a little longer, despite their desperate state.

"I know what's going on," Clemens said, as he interrupted his weight-room session to talk with reporters, a water bottle dangling from his back pocket. "There's nothing more disappointing to me than not holding up your end of the deal.

"There's a lot of expectations [for me] to do that," Clemens said. "I really enjoyed working here. That's why I'm back."

But how much of the vintage Clemens can the Yankees' expect for $18 million?

Since he left the Yankees in 2003, Clemens compiled a 2.49 ERA in the NL with Houston (he had a 3.99 over his first five Yankee seasons).

Though intimidation was just part of his Hall of Fame package, it was a factor that might not be as present this time around.

Jim Leyritz recalled that as far back as 1999, he told Clemens that "guys are getting a little too comfortable in the box against you."

The Piazza incident was seen as an attempt to come up and in against a player who had wild success against Clemens (8-for-19, .421, four HR, 10 RBI lifetime) with unintended consequences.

Nowadays "it's intimidation by his ability, not for anything else," manager Joe Torre said of Clemens' fear factor.

It's about "his track record, what he's accomplished, what he's continued to do -- all that," Torre said. "What you lose with age, you pick up in experience."

On the all-time hit-batsmen list, Clemens is tied with Don Drysdale for 12th place, with 154.

But Drysdale had a more defined career as a pitcher who would brush back hitters, or worse. And Clemens has pitched roughly 1,400 more career innings than Drysdale.

"The one thing about Clemens is that it's him against everybody," said Yankees first base coach Tony Pena, who caught Clemens in his prime. "He doesn't let anyone get to him. He means business."

Asked if he was still menacing after all these years, Pena said, "Why not? It's part of his game. Look at how mean he looks.

"Right now he looks even tougher than when I caught him in 1990," Pena said. "No one's going to take both sides of the plate against him. No way."

Yanks hope to make a couple of Subway statements

1. Roger Clemens is worth every penny

The Pirates were a good starter lineup for Clemens’ 2007 debut. Now the ante is a lot larger, and the stakes only get bigger.

2. They can keep the pressure on

Having the designated hitter available should assist the Yankees’ quest to maintain an offense that has recently lived up to expectations, despite Jason Giambi’s absence.

3. The best is yet to come

Joe Torre isn’t a fan of interleague play, but the Pirates and Diamondbacks have allowed the Yankees to fatten up. They certainly don’t want the oddity of a Subway Series to derail that streak.

E-mail: caldera@northjersey.com

McCartney, Almost Within Touching Distance

Paul McCartney performing at the Highline Ballroom.


Music Review Paul McCartney

By BEN RATLIFF
The New York Times
Published: June 15, 2007

“I love you, Paul,” someone shouted, halfway through Paul McCartney’s unadvertised set at the Highline Ballroom on Wednesday night. Well, more than one: A lot of people were shouting that. They couldn’t help themselves. He was right in front of them.

Mr. McCartney struck a formal facsimile of intimacy: 90 minutes on stage in a 700-capacity room full of reporters, assorted V.I.P.s, contest winners and stand-in-line-for-a-long-timers who heard about the show only a day or two before.

“I love you too,” Mr. McCartney answered, but almost as a defensive block. He put on a Tony Soprano accent, and he kept a straight face. “It’s the beauty of these intimate shows, you know,” he followed, dryly. “You get to have intimate conversations with the audience. How ya doin’? You’re the man! Naw, you’re the man!”

Cheery, but essentially trying to get his work done, Mr. McCartney presided over a formal facsimile of intimacy: 90 minutes long, in a 700-capacity room full of press, assorted V.I.P.’s, contest winners and stand-in-line-for-a-long-timers who had heard about the show only a day or two before.

The gig was a promotion for his new album, “Memory Almost Full” (Hear Music), and he put on a similar show at the Electric Ballroom, a slightly larger club, in London last week. (He has not announced plans for a proper tour.) It’s not unusual these days for big acts to play a promotional show at clubs they’ve outgrown; the same night in New York Franz Ferdinand played a secret gig at the Bowery Ballroom, and ditto with Interpol last week.

But for Mr. McCartney, who can sell out stadiums at hundreds of dollars a ticket, this was unusual. He used no pyro or video backdrop, and the audience stood close enough to its hero that it could hold nonconversations with him. He played beautifully, in tight control of his voice (even in high range) and his musicianship, through a clutch of new songs and some of the oldest Beatles repertory.

But some of what was special about hearing Paul McCartney in a place like this was counteracted by the glibness of his touring band, almost the same crew that backed him on his stadium tour last year. These musicians — two guitarists, a keyboardist and a drummer — were accurate, reliable, in the pocket and kind of flavorless.

Mr. McCartney is a fascinating alloy of raw and slick, eccentricity and efficiency. When you hear the tracks on “Memory Almost Full” in which he plays all the instruments — his drumming one step ahead of primitive, his bass lines so melodically inventive they’re almost evil — you wish he could just multiply himself for performances. When the band replicated old parts, touching on the tiniest details of Beatles songs like “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Lady Madonna” and “Hey Jude,” the show felt something like a homage to composition and production, rather than the great thing that performances can be: two-way rituals between band and audience.

But something about the joy and simplicity of the new songs buoyed the set. There were five of them, including “Dance Tonight,” a naïvely sweet call for fun, with Mr. McCartney’s mandolin strumming as the through line; “Nod Your Head,” a slow, chugging rock song; and “That Was Me,” full of spry astonishment at looking back on a strange and notable life. (It went over big in the V.I.P. section, where people are often prone to similar thoughts.)

The onlooker’s stupid reflex, after decades of Beatleology and Paul-versus-John studies, is to scrutinize Mr. McCartney for honesty, whatever that is. But all he had to do was play two songs alone with guitar — “Blackbird” and “I’ll Follow the Sun” — and he seemed as guileless as the next guy. Later, alone at the piano, he sang “Here Today,” an elegiac song he wrote after John Lennon’s death, and dedicated it to “our fallen heroes: John, George and Linda.”

When he finished, he stopped the flow of his own efficiency and thought out loud. “It’s good to play that song in the town John loved,” he said. “And where Linda was born in. And where we played the Ed Sullivan show.”

Fundamentalists threaten Israel from all sides

By Con Coughlin
http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/06/2007

Welcome to the new Islamic Republic of Hamas-stan, where every Palestinian woman is obliged to wear the veil and all traces of corrupting Western influences, from pop music to internet cafés, are strictly banned.

The creation of a mini Islamic state in Gaza now appears the most likely outcome as the militant Palestinian group Hamas strikes against the more secular-minded government of President Mahmoud Abbas.

And with fighters loyal to Mr Abbas's Fatah movement either surrendering or fleeing, it seems that not even the might of Israel can prevent Hamas from fulfilling its long-held ambition of establishing an Islamic state within the Palestinian territories.

advertisementThe Gaza Strip, the 20-mile stretch of desert scrub wedged between Israel and the Sinai Desert, has never been a happy place. The majority of the 1.4 million Palestinians who live there are mainly refugees from Israel's 1948 war of independence and have rarely seen their living standards rise above subsistence level. But the addition of religious fanaticism to economic privation has severely worsened their plight.

Even before this week's violence, activists had been busy attacking cafés, video shops and restaurants that serve alcohol or sell what are regarded as subversive Western films.

An internet café at the Jabaliyah refugee camp was bombed because zealots believed its customers might be exposed to pornography or pop music. The desire to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law even resulted in a gunman attacking a UN primary school because it allowed young boys and girls to mix together in the playground.

And all this with Ismael Haniyeh, the Palestinian Prime Minister who came to power on the back of Hamas's surprise election victory in the 2006 elections, yet to establish his de facto Islamic state. Even if Gaza remains under Mr Abbas's nominal control, the implications of it becoming a self-contained Islamic entity are alarming not just for Israel, but for the wider region.

Hamas makes no secret of the fact that it now receives most of its financial and military support from Iran. The Iranian government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hamas leadership in June last year, in which it agreed to fund the militant group to the tune of £400 million.

Until then, most of the Palestinian Authority's funding came from the EU and America, but this dried up when Hamas came to power and refused to give up its long-standing policy of seeking Israel's destruction or to renounce its terrorist past.

In addition to financial support, Iran provides training to members of the military wing of Hamas by sending them to camps in Lebanon and Iran run by the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards.

Past Iranian attempts to supply the Palestinians with military hardware have been less successful, with the Israeli navy intercepting a ship laden with explosives destined for Gaza in early 2002. But earlier this year, the Iranians sought to establish new supply lines to Gaza.

On February 24, Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's supreme leader, travelled to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where he met senior Quds Force officials and Sudanese politicians who are broadly sympathetic to Hamas's political objectives.

The main topic of conversation was setting up a supply route that would enable Iran to smuggle rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles, guns and explosives through the porous border between Gaza and Egypt.

The dispute over tightening the border is now one of the issues at the heart of the current violence; Hamas refuses to countenance the deployment of an international force that would seriously curtail the activities of the arms and money smugglers who use a sophisticated network of tunnels to transport their contraband into Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners frequently claim that the main reason Gaza is in crisis is that the economic blockade imposed by America and Israel following Hamas's election victory has reduced the civilian population to penury. This was the essence of the argument advanced by Alvaro de Soto, until recently the UN's special co-ordinator for the Middle East, who seems happy to blame anyone for the Palestinians' plight except the Palestinians themselves.

Ordinary Palestinians, it is true, in both Gaza and the West Bank, are suffering hardship. But this is not because of a lack of funds entering the Palestinian territories: it is because successive Palestinian administrations have made no effort to distribute the resources available equably among the population.

Hamas, on the other hand, sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves.

The bonus for Hamas is that, by forcing the majority of Palestinians to exist in dire poverty, it succeeds in attracting widespread sympathy from international do-gooders who do not understand the sadistic economic manipulation that is taking place.

Not surprisingly, many Palestinians who were previously agnostic about their Muslim heritage have found themselves embracing the Hamas cause, more out of economic necessity than religious obligation.

Hizbollah - another Iranian-funded militia - used similar tactics to establish its power base in southern Lebanon during the 1980s. Hizbollah, of course, has now become a dominant force in Lebanese politics.

Hamas is trying to replicate Hizbollah's success in Gaza, not a pleasing prospect for Israel, which now faces the threat of having two Iranian-backed, Islamic fundamentalist organisations dedicated to its destruction camped on its northern and southern borders. It is not a thought that will help Israelis sleep easy.

Yankees keep Moose loose

Three homers and seven Ks help drop deficit to 8 1/2

BY MARK FEINSAND
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Thursday, June 14th 2007, 4:00 AM



The Yankees claim they're not doing much scoreboard-watching these days. It's hard to doubt them, since it's been so much fun for them to watch their own scoreboard on a nightly basis.

Last night was no exception, as the Bombers crushed the Diamondbacks, 7-2, extending their season-high winning streak to eight games.

"Seasons are usually full of streaks," Joe Torre said. "You need to have the good ones outnumber the bad ones. Right now, we're going to try to get the most out of this."

The Yankees broke out the big bats, bashing three home runs as part of a seven-run outburst against Livan Hernandez. Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada each went deep, giving the Stadium crowd plenty to cheer about on a chilly June night.



Jorge Posada strokes a solo homer in the second inning last night.

More important was the performance of Mike Mussina, who evened his record at 3-3 with 7-2/3 solid innings. Mussina won his first game in more than a month, giving up two runs on six hits and striking out seven without issuing a walk.

"It's a big win for us because of Mike," Torre said. "He was in command the whole game."

The Yankees (32-31) moved over the .500 mark for the first time since April 20, when they were 8-7. They also sliced another game off Boston's lead in the American League East, moving within 8-1/2 games of the first-place Red Sox, who lost to the Rockies. The Yanks also pulled within 4-1/2 games of the Tigers in the wild-card race.

Since trailing the Red Sox by 14-1/2 games on May 29, the Yankees have gone 11-2 to Boston's 5-8, picking up six games in the standings. Still, the party line remained the same following the win, as one Yankee after another preached the importance of worrying about their own record instead of the distance between them and the rival Bosox.

"I'm not there yet," Torre said. "I'm not saying we don't notice that Boston loses, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm going to continue to nag these guys about our record. Just go out there, try to win every game and see how far we can take this thing right now."



Bobby Abreu congratulates Alex Rodriguez after A-Rod hit his majors-best 25th homer.

"The numbers are shrinking, but it's been 10 days that we've done all of this," Mussina said. "If you don't pay attention to what you're doing, if you take things for granted, the next 10 days can be the exact opposite."

With Arizona leading 1-0 in the second, Posada tied it up with a blast to right field, his eighth of the season.

A-Rod snapped the tie an inning later, crushing a colossal two-run homer to left field. The ball hit off the facing of the upper deck, a spot rarely reached in the Bronx. It was A-Rod's 25th homer of the year, tops in the majors.

"I didn't see where it landed, but I knew I hit it well," Rodriguez said. "It felt good off the bat."

"You never have to look twice," Torre said. "He killed that ball."

A-Rod added to the lead with an RBI single in the fourth, as he continued to make June look like a carbon copy of his incredible April. Rodriguez is hitting .393 (11-for-28) with five homers and 19 RBI during the Yankees' winning streak, but this month has been more satisfying for the third baseman because his team is surging.

"It felt good to get out to a good start, personally, but it felt terrible that we weren't winning," Rodriguez said of April. "This is night and day. There are so many guys playing at a high level; I'm just one of those guys."



Hideki Matsui connects for a three-run blast in the fourth inning.

Matsui tacked on a three-run shot in the fourth, giving Mussina a 7-1 lead and plenty of breathing room. Mussina sat down 13 of 14 D-Backs from the second through the sixth until Conor Jackson hit a solo shot to make it a 7-2 game.

Unlike Mussina's last outing, when Torre yanked him after 79 pitches in the seventh when he got into some trouble, the righty breezed through a 1-2-3 seventh with his comfortable lead, then came back out for the eighth for the first time this season.

Mussina got the first two hitters in the eighth, but Eric Byrnes singled on his 101st pitch, bringing Torre out of the dugout. Torre got to the mound, but before taking the ball, he told Mussina, "I got you a little tired this time." Mussina walked to the dugout as the 53,891 saluted him with a standing ovation.

"It's going in the right direction," Mussina said. "You want to go out and do it every time."

The same can be said for the Yankees, who will try to complete their second straight series sweep today when they send Andy Pettitte to the mound against Doug Davis.

"We're looking forward to hopefully keeping this feeling we have," Torre said. "We have a lot of confidence right now."

James S. Robbins: Freedom’s Flag

Today and every day.

http://www.nationalreview.com

June 14, 2007 7:00 AM

On June 14, 1777, John Adams introduced a resolution to Congress “that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” The measure passed unanimously. Word was rushed to Middlebrook Heights, N.J., where General George Washington was encamped with the Continental Army, which coincidentally was exactly two years old that day. The next morning Washington raised a flag that met congressional specifications over his headquarters.

Rather, it seems that Congress followed the general’s specs. The initial design was conceived by Washington a year earlier, based on the Grand Union Flag but replacing the Union Flag in the canton with a blue field with 13 stars. The traditional story has it that Philadelphia seamstress Betsy Ross made some improvements on his original sketch, such as arranging the stars in a circle, and making them five-pointed, instead of the six-pointed stars Washington had suggested. He believed the six-pointed star was easier to cut from cloth, but Betsy demonstrated she could as easily make one five pointed. Imagine the added difficulty we would face in the Middle East today had Betsy been less dexterous.

This was one story of the flag’s origin. Francis Hopkinson of N.J. is another claimant to the title of flag designer. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a poet, musician, and bon vivant. In 1780 he wrote a letter seeking compensation for his work, asking for “a Quarter Cask of the public Wine.” A spirited petition. But being a member of Congress he was already on the payroll, so his request was turned down. Of course both accounts may be true — Betsy Ross could well have crafted the prototype flag and Hopkinson may have then drafted the official design based on it, from which other flags were made. History and legend need not always be obliged to duel to the death.



Flag Day has had a fitful history, never quite rising to the level of other holidays, either officially or in the public mind. It is a legal holiday only in Pennsylvania. As a patriotic commemoration it is overshadowed by Independence Day, which is reasonable; July 4 saw the codification of the ideals for which the flag is but the symbol. The notion of a holiday for the flag had waxed and waned in various localities in the 19th century. Credit for Flag Day as we know it usually goes to Bernard J. Cigrand, a 19-year-old school teacher at Stony Hill School in Fredonia Wisconsin. On June 14, 1885, he asked his students to write essays on the meaning and significance of the flag on what he called “Flag Birthday.” In subsequent years he and others campaigned energetically for a national flag-day observance.

President Woodrow Wilson issued the first Flag Day proclamation on June 14, 1916, after leading a “preparedness parade” in Washington, D.C. His speech at the base of the Washington Monument highlighted the dangers of disunity in the country, and the threat of the “hyphenated-Americans,” particularly with Europe at war. The occasion was more than a little political. The Democratic National Convention opened that same day in St. Louis, with incumbent Wilson the only name nominated, and the speakers sounding the same incendiary themes. Wilson’s second Flag Day speech in 1917, after the United States had entered the war against Germany and its allies, had something of an “I told you so” quality.

The holiday was observed intermittently in subsequent decades. One of the stalwarts in promoting flag awareness in the interwar period was Colonel James Alfred Moss, U.S. Army (ret), who founded the United States Flag Association in 1924. Moss, who graduated at the bottom of his West Point class of 1894, was one of the most prolific authors in the Army. His book The Flag of the United States: Its History and Symbolism, and other related titles on the same theme, instructed many generations on proper flag etiquette. The Association also engaged in flag-related activism, such as warning Americans not to buy cheap foreign-made flags. Those made in Japan, for example, were particularly unsuitable because the colors ran when the flag got wet — something we of course know these colors just don’t do.

Flag Day was finally made a national holiday by act of Congress in 1949. But what does the holiday mean? Rather, what is the meaning of the flag? We know its visceral effect, its power as a symbol. The “rally around the flag” effect in times of crisis is more than a slogan. We saw that response after the 9/11 attacks, a proliferation of stars and stripes, as Americans instinctively sought a way to express their solidarity in the face of a foreign threat to our way of life. For a time, Old Glory was omnipresent. Too brief a time.



But the flag is always on hand to inspire, to motivate, to stir our sense of something larger than ourselves. It is an emblem of ideals, and of our history. We fly the flag, we honor it, but not from blind patriotism, not allegiance without reflection. In Wilson’s 1917 speech he observed that the flag “has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours.” We define what the flag means, to the United States, to the rest of the world. The flag absent the ideals of the Founders, lacking citizens who uphold those ideals, has no meaning at all. The active engagement of those ideals, their concrete expression, is what gives the flag its strength. Through our actions, the policies of our government, the way we lead our daily lives, we give the flag its meaning and purpose. The flag is a call to duty, to the country, our communities, ourselves. It is a marker laid down by a people, by a nation, engaged in the greatest experiment in freedom in human history.

Every day is Flag Day.


— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.