Wilders’ Best Witness

by John C. Zimmerman on Mar 3rd, 2010
http://www.frontpagemag.com/

As the trial of Geert Wilders for insulting Islam moves forward in the Netherlands, the one witness that could clear him of these charges will not be called.

Muhammad Taqi Usmani is a highly respected and well-known expert on Islamic law who served for 20 years as a Sharia judge on Pakistan’s Supreme Court. He is quite possibly the world’s most influential Islamist thinker and writer outside of the Middle East. Usmani is a frequent visitor to Britain, where his monograph Islam and Modernism caused a great deal of controversy.


Muhammad Taqi Usmani

Why is Usmani so important for the purposes of Wilders’ trial? Simply put, Usmani’s interpretation of Islamic doctrine as it concerns non-believers is the same as Wilders’. Indeed, the critical lesson to be gleaned from Usmani’s work bolsters the very argument that Wilders is on trial for making – namely, that the doctrine of jihad, as expounded in Islamic texts, inherently poses a threat to Western civilization. In fact, Osama Bin Laden made the exact same point in a lengthy essay entitled “Moderate Islam is a Prostration to the West” (reproduced in Raymond Ibrahinm’s The al Qaeda Reader).

I don’t know if Wilders is familiar with Islam and Modernism. However, the reader of this work will be struck by the similarities between it and Fitna, the short film that has played a significant role in landing Wilders in court. The critical difference between the two is that no one – especially no Muslim thinker, writer or the Organization of Islamic Countries – has ever accused Usmani of hate speech or of insulting Islam. And yet, consistency of treatment would mandate that if Wilders must go to trial, so should Usmani. At the very least, Usmani should be publicly condemned and ridiculed by prominent Muslim thinkers in Muslim countries.

Consider the nature of his work. Islam and Modernism is broadside attack against modernist Muslim thinking and Western civilization. Usmani is critical of modern practices such as charging interest, women and men working together, birth control, and science that it is not used to further religious thinking. Even America’s moon landing in 1969 is described as an “international crime.”

However, it is his chapter on offensive jihad, which he calls aggressive jihad, that is most significant for purposes of Wilders’ trial. Offensive jihad is the Islamic doctrine that requires Muslims to subjugate unbelievers to Islamic rule by imposing a number of restrictions, including paying a special tax known as the jizya. Usmani categorically rejects the idea, stated by some modern Muslim thinkers, that offensive jihad can be abandoned if Muslims are freely allowed to proselytize among non-Muslims (though non-Muslims can never freely proselytize in Muslim countries). He states that “in my humble knowledge there has not been a single incident in the entire history of Islam where Muslims had shown their willingness to stop jihad just for one condition that they be allowed to preach Islam freely.” He cites the Quran to the effect that “killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay jizyah after they are humbled and overpowered.”

The jizya is important in Usmani’s eyes because it is the necessary precondition for non- Muslims to convert to Islam. He asks:

“How can the efforts of Muslim missionaries be effective in an atmosphere where anti-Islamic doctrines [are] being spread on the strength of political power with full vigor, and their propagation carried out with means not possessed by Muslims?”

Essentially, Usmani is arguing that Islam cannot compete on an equal footing with non-Islamic doctrines and that it is the subjugation of the non-believers to Islamic rule that is needed before they will convert. Hence, Islamic rule must precede conversion efforts. He approvingly cites the view that “[b]y commanding jihad Allah does not mean that the unbelievers be killed outright, but the aim is that the religion of Allah should dominate the world…”

Usmani is a “moderate” in that he does not favor waging offensive jihad until Muslims are strong enough. Thus, peace agreements “along with all efforts to accumulate the sources of power [by the Muslims] are indeed lawful…If Muslims do not possess the capability of ‘Jehad with power’ agreement may be made till the power is attained.” However, once that strength is attained, offensive jihad must be launched. Though he does not mention it, Usmani appears to be basing this tactic on Muhammad’s temporary treaty with the Quraysh tribe known as “The Treaty of Hudabiyyah”. He made this treaty at a time when Muslims were too weak to fight the Quraysh.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Wilders’ and Usmani’s interpretation of Islam is beside the point. The real question is: How can Wilders be prosecuted for agreeing with the interpretation of a world-renowned Islamic thinker and scholar – a scholar who has never been accused of hate speech or insulting Islam? At the very least, Islam and Modernism should be submitted as a defense exhibit at Wilders’ trial.

- John C. Zimmerman is author of Holocaust Denial: Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies, and has also published on jihad and Islamism.

Voyeurism Dressed Up as a Public Service

The president’s resting heart rate is none of our business.

By Mona Charen
http://www.nationalreview.com
March 2, 2010 12:00 A.M.

It’s none of my business what Pres. Barack Obama’s LDL cholesterol level is. I don’t have to know that he is using nicotine therapy to help kick his smoking habit. But all of this and more is dutifully passed along after the president’s annual physical. Want to know his resting heart rate? It’s available. And we’ve been told that President Obama has been instructed by his physicians to “eat healthier” and to “moderate his alcohol intake.”

What to make of this annual invasion of privacy? We’ve been privy to similar details about other presidents — sometimes to an excruciating degree (President Carter revealed his troubles with hemorrhoids). In part, this may be a response to President Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack. Treatment was less sophisticated then, and the president spent seven weeks in the hospital. That was discomfiting enough, but with the advent of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and the “football,” anxiety about the possibility of a debilitated president led to passage of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which provided for the smooth transition of power in the event the sitting president should become incapacitated.

But a Cold War sensitivity to the president’s health is not the whole explanation for our current fetish for private health information. After all, Bill Clinton’s refusal to release his medical records didn’t undermine confidence in his ability to fulfill his term. So something else must be going on.

Surely it’s one part voyeurism. They dress it up as a public service, but it’s gossip all the same. Whenever a public figure undergoes a medical test or surgery, we get minute-by-minute updates on his condition and full-color graphics of the affected part of the poor sop’s body. When former president Clinton checked into a New York hospital to have a stent placed in one of his arteries, CNN and the other cable channels were ready with easels and experts to walk us through it as if each of us were a family member. It was the same when Dick Cheney suffered his recent heart attack.

Concern for the smallest details of someone’s health is the proper realm of family and close friends, don’t you think? To broadcast your stent operation or upper GI series or whatever on MSNBC would be undignified — or what the 18th century would probably have called too “familiar.”

Besides, there lurks beneath all of this professed concern another sentiment, one less noble. In the case of Cheney, several news types expressed the “hope” that the former vice president was sticking to his diet and exercise regimen. When Clinton became ill, the AP reminded us of his eating habits: “Clinton’s legend as a voracious and unhealthy eater was sealed in 1992, when the newly minted presidential candidate took reporters on jogs to McDonald’s. He liked hamburgers, steaks, French fries — lots of them — and was a sloppy eater who could gobble an apple (core and all) in two bites and ask for more.” It surfaces again and again — a bossy smugness about other people’s health.

We have arrived at a cultural moment when no one would dream of waxing judgmental about your sexual life or your manners, but we feel free to place you in metaphorical stocks for offenses against health. To prove yourself, show us your HDL-to-LDL ratio!

The busybodies who ask about the health habits of prominent people must imagine that they are performing a public service of some sort. Don’t we hear incessantly about the obesity crisis and Americans’ sedentary habits? But while it makes sense to encourage society as a whole to curb its outsized appetite for red meat, fried potatoes, and sugary sodas, it’s hardly fair to single out individuals for scolding. In the first place, it’s none of our business. And secondly, it’s completely unfair. Nature is unpredictable. Some who exercise and eat a low fat diet nevertheless have high cholesterol levels. And the reverse is often true as well.

But finally, it comes down to this: We are mortal. We sicken and die. This is a problem that not even Barack Obama has ever claimed to be able to solve. Ailing people need sympathy and support. But Americans are veering awfully close to treating illness as a character flaw.

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Alice in Health Care

Almost everything they claim will lower costs would, in fact, raise them.

By Thomas Sowell
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 2, 2010 12:00 A.M.

Most discussions of health care are like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

What is the biggest complaint about the current medical-care situation? “It costs too much.” Yet one looks in vain for anything in the pending legislation that will lower those costs.

One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians’ answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government.

Back when the “single payer” was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But, when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets overused — and bureaucratic rationing is then imposed, to replace self-rationing.

Money is just one of the costs of people seeking more medical care than they would if they were paying for it with their own money. Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting.

In country after country, the original estimates of government medical-care costs almost always turn out to be gross under-estimates of what it ultimately turns out to cost.

Even when the estimates are done honestly, they are based on how much medical care people use when they are paying for it themselves. But having someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used.

Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen.

One of the big costs that have actually forced some hospitals to close is the federal mandate that hospitals treat everyone who comes to an emergency room, whether they pay or not. But those who talk about “bringing down the cost of medical care” are not about to repeal that mandate. Many of them want to add more mandates.

The most fundamental issue is not whether treating everyone who comes to an emergency room is a good policy or a bad policy in itself. If it is a good policy, then the federal government should pay for what it wants done, not force other institutions to pay for it. Then let the voters decide at the next election whether that is what they want their tax money spent for.

Confusion between costs and prices add to the Alice in Wonderland sense of unreality.

What is called lowering the costs is simply refusing to pay all the costs by having the government set lower prices, whether for doctors’ fees, hospital reimbursements, or other charges. Surely no one believes that there will be no repercussions from refusing to pay for what we want. Some doctors are already refusing to accept Medicare or Medicaid patients because the government’s reimbursement levels are so low.

Similarly, if it costs a billion dollars to create one new pharmaceutical drug, then either we are going to pay the billion dollars or we are not going to keep on getting new pharmaceutical drugs produced. There is no free lunch.

Virtually everything that is proposed by those who are talking about bringing down the costs of medical care will in fact raise those costs. Mandates on insurance companies? Why are insurance companies not already doing those things that new mandates would require? Because those things raise costs by an amount that people are unwilling to pay to get those benefits.

If not, it would be a slam dunk for the insurance companies to add those benefits to their policies and then raise premiums to cover them. What politicians want to do is look good by imposing mandates, and then let the insurance companies look bad by raising the premiums to cover the additional costs.

It is a great political game, but it does nothing to lower medical costs.

Politicians who want a government monopoly on health insurance can easily get it, just by making it impossible for private insurance companies to charge enough to cover the costs mandated by politicians. The “public option” will then be the only option — which is to say, we will no longer have any real option.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Guns Before the Court

Constitutional Opinions

By Douglas Smith on 3.2.10 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

Today the Supreme Court will hear argument in a case that is likely to result in a landmark decision. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court will consider whether the individual right to bear arms it recognized in District of Columbia v. Heller can be enforced against State and local governments. In doing so, it may address more broadly the way in which individual rights are enforced against the States and the extent to which State and local governments can regulate or restrict those rights.


Statue of Captain John Parker of the Lexington Militia on Lexington Green, Massachusetts

The case involves a challenge to a City of Chicago ordinance essentially prohibiting the possession of handguns. In Heller, the Supreme Court held that a similar handgun ban enforced by the District of Columbia violated the Second Amendment. However, the Court did not address whether the Second Amendment prohibited States and local governments from enacting similar restrictions. The Court considered only whether the federal government, through its supervision of the District, could be prohibited from taking such action.

The Supreme Court's decision in Heller is a resounding affirmation of the fundamental right to bear arms. The Court analyzed the plain language and history of the Second Amendment at length, and concluded that it plainly guaranteed an individual right to own and possess firearms. However, the Court's decision in Heller left several questions unanswered, including the extent to which that right to bear arms could be regulated and whether it could be enforced against State and local governments.

While the Heller decision strongly supported an individual right to bear arms, the Court was deeply divided, issuing a 5-4 decision split largely on ideological lines. Accordingly, the outcome in McDonald is far from clear.

Adding to the drama is an emerging controversy among gun right proponents. The sole issue in McDonald is whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms is "incorporated" through the Fourteenth Amendment so that it applies to the States and local governments. That question should have a straightforward answer based on decades of Supreme Court precedent. The Court has incorporated numerous provisions of the Bill of Rights through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Nonetheless, the petitioners in McDonald seek to advance a somewhat novel theory that is supported by recent academic commentary -- that the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment are derived from the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the amendment, and not the Due Process Clause. This approach is supported not only by those on the right who believe that the Privileges or Immunities Clause will provide stronger protection for the individual right to bear arms, but also some on the left, who believe that incorporation through the Privileges or Immunities Clause will result in greater protection for individual rights more generally. However, adopting this approach would require the Court to overrule existing precedent, specifically its decision in the Slaughter-House Cases -- a decision issued over one hundred years ago that severely restricted the scope of the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Petitioners' approach has generated significant controversy. The National Rifle Association, which submitted a brief in the case, also took the unusual step of seeking to participate in oral argument. In doing so, it seeks to advance the more traditional view of incorporation, focusing on the Due Process Clause and the Court's precedent incorporating similar Bill of Rights provisions.

At the end of the day, McDonald is likely to be a repeat of the Heller decision, incorporating the Second Amendment in a narrow 5-4 decision. However, the decision presents the thorny question of how far lawyers should go in advocating particular ideological views that may detrimental to their clients. The most clean-cut and powerful argument for incorporation of the Second Amendment is undoubtedly based on the decades of Supreme Court precedent incorporating various Bill of Rights protections under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, application of the Privileges or Immunities Clause might result in a broader and more unrestricted right to bear arms. This is the tension at the heart of the McDonald case. Those supporting broad Second Amendment rights can only hope that this tension does not undermine their position seeking enforcement of the Second Amendment against the States and local governments.


- Douglas Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively on the Second and Fourteenth Amendments and filed a brief in support of respondents in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Penn State's Paterno is priceless

Tuesday, March 02, 2010
By Ron Musselman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/


Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

Penn State coach Joe Paterno.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno's trademark Coke-bottle glasses recently sold for $9,000 in a charity auction.

So if his signed glasses are worth that much, then what price tag can be placed on the 83-year-old Paterno's value to the school in his 44 seasons at the helm of the football program?

Not even the university can answer that question, although it has reaped the profits and benefits of Paterno's high profile to become the third-most valuable football program in the country.

"I couldn't even imagine putting a dollar value on Joe Paterno," said Rick Kaluza, Penn State's associate athletic director for finance.

Forbes magazine recently rated the Nittany Lions' football program No. 3 with an overall team value of $99 million, based on revenue and profits. It trailed only Texas ($119 million) and Notre Dame ($108 million) in the national rankings, and was significantly higher than No. 8 Ohio State ($85 million) and No. 11 Michigan ($81 million) in the Big Ten Conference.

Forbes also reported that Penn State generated $66 million in revenue and earned a profit of $50 million for the 2008 season, although Kaluza said those numbers are a bit high. He said Penn State generated $61,767,717 in revenue and $42,635,760 in profit. One of the major discrepancies is that Forbes' numbers include seat donations from the Nittany Lion Club -- the booster club -- as part of its overall revenue, while Penn State's figures do not.

Penn State president Graham Spanier agrees: Paterno is the patriarch of the franchise. He also is the winningest coach in Division I-A history with 394 victories.

"The success of our program can be attributed to Joe Paterno's great leadership, the commitment of his staff and the support of the administration of Intercollegiate Athletics, our ability to make improvements in facilities, loyal fans, the revenue stream from the Big Ten associated with our television contracts and the national interest in our program," Spanier said.

Penn State's football program has not always been so profitable.

"When I first took over as the head coach at Penn State [in 1966], we were raising $20,000 to $25,000 a year," said Paterno, who has been a member of the Penn State coaching staff since 1950. "We had a guy named Cecil Spadafora from Indiana, Pa., who would give us a car and we would raffle it off and that would get us, 10, 12, $15,000 bucks.

"We needed better facilities, so I'd go around trying to raise some money. I would go to different groups and say, 'I want your money, but I don't want your two cents.' "

Make no mistake, football is the power broker for the majority of Penn State's other varsity sports.

On a typical football Saturday at Beaver Stadium, Kaluza estimates the school makes approximately $6 million through ticket sales, parking and concessions. Penn State also earns $14 million a year through its various TV contracts, including $10 million for football.

This past season, 856,066 fans made their way to Beaver Stadium, an average of 107,088 for the eight home games. It was the second-highest attendance total in school history.

The Lions have finished among the top four schools in attendance in Division I for 19 consecutive seasons. And the Lions have played in front of more than 1 million spectators in 10 of the past 12 years.

"Penn State football brings tremendous revenue to our athletic programs and visibility to the university," Spanier said. "I am very pleased with our program's success. Since we are a not-for-profit enterprise, we don't make a profit per se.

"All of the revenues from football are used to support 27 other intercollegiate athletic programs at Penn State. Men's basketball is the only other self-supporting sport."

A good portion of Penn State's profits from football are used for travel, capital projects -- such as a new softball field -- sports medicine, academic support and scholarships.

"In terms of a headline, 'Most-valuable teams,' there's good and bad to that," Kaluza said. "Being up there with Texas and Notre Dame, two highly successful football programs with great traditions like ours, is nice for all of us.

"But, on the flip side, if we're so valuable, then our fans are asking, 'Why are we raising ticket prices?' It's kind of a catch-22 situation."

Penn State's much-talked about new ticket plan, which takes affect in 2011, the year Paterno's contract expires, reportedly could generate another $24 million annually.

The new pricing guideline begins at $100 per year for each ticket, primarily around the end zones. There are $400 and $600 seats from the 10-yard lines to the 50. For a much smaller section at midfield, there is a $2,000 charge for seats with backs.

The athletic department said the $55 price of a ticket would not change. Nittany Lion Club members must pay at least $100 per seat to renew their season tickets, regardless of where they sit.

The Seat Transfer and Equity Plan also gives booster club members "a first-time opportunity" to transfer those tickets to someone else -- for a one-time donation ranging from $500 to $2,000 per seat in one of the four new pricing zones. Season ticket-holders who do not pay the new charge could have their seats moved. Student tickets would not require an annual fee.

"When we first rolled the new ticket plan out, we got lots of feedback on it, and most if it wasn't good, which was understandable," said Greg Myford, Penn State's associate athletic director for business relations and communications. "But it's very quiet right now. There's no urgency; there's nothing going on. The new ticket plan doesn't impact this coming season.

"The one thing that I want to be clear on is, I think some people erroneously think Penn State is doing this without a lot of thought put into it, or believing that there is no risk to us. That's far from the truth.

"If there was no risk in it, it would not be so controversial and we would have done it a long time ago."

Penn State officials also worry what will happen to the school's fundraising and budget once Paterno is no longer leading the program. He has two years remaining on his contract.

"Some people walk up to Joe now and just hand him a check, but we have no idea what's going to happen once coach Paterno is gone," Kaluza said. "It's the great unknown. Everyone knows he is a real bargain."

Paterno earned more than $1.03 million in 2008 in salary and bonuses, according to records released by the university, but that did not include outside compensation.

"If we go outside to hire a coach, we know what Mack Brown of Texas makes [$5.1 million] and we know what Nick Saban [$4.7 million] of Alabama makes," Kaluza said. "So, is that where we'll need to be? Probably. And that figure doesn't even include the assistant coaches.

"If we stay inside and [defensive coordinator] Tom Bradley is the new coach, then we can probably keep things a little closer to where we are now."

Kaluza said Paterno rarely has used the university's jet for recruiting purposes, but that could change, too, if the university hires a coach from the outside.

"If a new coach comes in, he's going to want to be on the university jet all the time, going here and going there to see these high school recruits play their games," Kaluza said. "Every time he hops on that university jet, it's going to be another $6,000 or $7,000."


By the numbers

Penn State's football program is one of the most valuable in the nation (figures in millions):

• $1.03M: Joe Paterno's salary in 2008.

• $6M: Penn State's estimated earnings from ticket, concessions and parking sales on a typical football Saturday.

• $14M: The Nittany Lions' yearly earnings through various TV contracts, including $10 million for football.

• $99M: Forbes magazine's value of the Penn State football program ranked third behind Texas ($119 million) and Notre Dame ($108 million).


For more on Penn State, read Ron Musselman on Penn State at post-gazette.com/plus: Ron Musselman: rmusselman@post-gazette.com.

Ron Musselman's Penn State blog and videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.

First published on March 2, 2010 at 12:00 am

Muslim leader implodes on air

Key critic of Rep. Sue Myrick exposed as radical by radio jock

http://www.wnd.com
Posted: February 28, 20103:30 am Eastern
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A Muslim leader who has tried to portray the founder of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus in Washington as an extremist "hatemonger" was himself exposed as an extremist on a popular radio program.

For years, Jibril Hough has represented himself and his North Carolina mosque as "moderate," while putting Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., on the defensive as an anti-Muslim fanatic who "shoots from the hip" when sounding the alarm about homegrown Islamic terrorism. Myrick, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, co-founded the Capitol Hill caucus after 9/11 to educate Americans about the growing threat from jihadists.


Jibril Hough

But during an in-studio interview Friday with Charlotte radio personality Keith Larson of WBT-AM, Hough was confronted with documents revealing his mosque – the Islamic Center of Charlotte – is owned and controlled by an organization connected to a plot to funnel millions of dollars to Islamic terrorists.

The North American Islamic Trust holds the deed to ICC, an 800-member Sunni mosque located on five acres at 1700 Progress Lane in Charlotte. The U.S. Justice Department recently blacklisted its owner NAIT as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror finance case in U.S. history.
The government also identified NAIT as a front for Hamas and the radical Muslim Brotherhood in America.

Saudi-funded NAIT owns the title to hundreds of radical mosques across the country, including the notorious 9/11 mosque in Northern Virginia – Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center (deed) – which helped some of the hijackers obtain housing and IDs and also counseled the Fort Hood terrorist and several other known terrorists.

Hough, ICC's spokesman, at first expressed surprise when confronted with the information, claiming he'd never before seen the deed and did not know NAIT was named in a federal terror probe.

"I'm not aware of this information here," he said, reviewing the documents.
Pressed by Larson, the ICC spokesman later admitted NAIT is the "parent" of his mosque, but quickly added that he was not a member of the mosque when NAIT took control in 1992.

"I was not involved in the decision to allow NAIT to be the (title) holder," he said.

Asked if he were a member of NAIT, Hough paused before answering: "Not necessarily."

Larson said it looked as if his mosque was acting as a "front" for an organization tied to terrorism, and wondered why Hough was not more concerned.

"It's concerning, yes," Hough conceded.

"To everybody else it looks not just concerning but absolutely damning," the host responded. "Do you understand that?"

"What else can I say?" Hough said.

"Will you disassociate yourself" from NAIT? Larson asked.

"I told you I was going to look into it and was going to take it to my board," Hough snapped.

As reported in the bestselling book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," current NAIT trustee Gaddoor Saidi also shows up on the Justice Department's list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation scheme to fund Hamas terrorists. The Holy Land case ended in 2008 with guilty verdicts on all 108 counts.

A Muslim convert, Hough [pronounced: Huff] denied being affiliated with Hamas, but then proceeded to defend the terrorist group, claiming "they haven't attacked Americans."

In fact, Hamas has murdered 17 Americans and injured hundreds of other U.S. citizens in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks in Israel. The U.S government designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1995.

Hough also said he had a problem with the definition of "terrorism," and suggested that the U.S. and Israel are committing the only real terrorism by retaliating against Muslim terrorists and extremists.

"What is 'terrorism?'" Hough said. "Terrorism against Iraqis, Palestinians, Afghanis?"

Hough also denied affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based worldwide jihadist movement which gave rise to Hamas and al-Qaida.

However, current NAIT Chairman Muzammil Siddiqi appears in secret Brotherhood documents as a high-ranking member of its shura council in America, according to documents cited in "Muslim Mafia."

"Within the organizational structure of NAIT, there have been numerous groups and individuals identified as being part of a covert network of revolutionaries," the FBI warned in a previously classified internal memo about the Muslim Brotherhood.

"This faction of Muslims have [sic] declared war on the United States, Israel, and any other country they deem as an enemy of Islam," the memo continues, as quoted in "Muslim Mafia." "The common bond between these various organizations is both religious and political, with the underlying common goal being to further the holy war (Islamic jihad)."

Justice recently declassified a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood manifesto that lists ICC's owner NAIT among Brotherhood front groups participating in a seditious conspiracy of "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within" through a "grand jihad," with the ultimate goal of making Islam "victorious over all religions."

The secret manifesto was found in a terrorist suspect's home in Northern Virginia and entered as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

According to "Muslim Mafia," NAIT was founded in 1973 with massive funding from the Saudis. It was formed as an investment vehicle for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America, acquiring title to more than 300 mosques and Islamic schools in the U.S.

ICC also runs an Islamic school called the Charlotte Islamic Academy.

Hough's radical ties are not limited to ICC and NAIT. He once headed a Jew-bashing organization called the Islamic Political Party of America.

IPPA issued a press release in 2003, when Hough was identified as the chairman of the group's national board, that suggests the Jews were behind 9/11, a rumor that first appeared in the Arab press and was summarily discredited.

"But the biased Western media would not cover this story, yet they also neglected to report that 4,000 Jews employed at the World Trade Center were absent at (the) WTC on 9/11," Hough's organization wrote in the press release. "Nor did they report on the thousands who saw WTC Building Seven fall without a plane hitting it."

The same press release also defended convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian, among other convicted terrorists, such as cop-killer Jamil al-Amin.
As of 2008, Hough was identified as president of the IPPA of North Carolina.

The revealing radio interview with Hough took place the day after Myrick agreed to meet with local Muslims in a local town hall meeting to hear their complaints. Hough demanded she meet at his mosque, but the venue was changed to a government building to accommodate Shiite and Sufi Muslims as well.

Myrick said she was open to meeting at a mosque at a future date.

In the first part of the WBT interview, Hough took the opportunity to criticize Myrick, who planned to join him in the interview but had to fly back to Washington for a hearing and could not participate.

"Sometimes when she shoots from the hip, it looks like she's painting with a broad brush," Hough told Larson.

"People with an [anti-Muslim] agenda are whispering in her ear," he claimed.

"I doubt some of the information she's been fed is correct," Hough continued. "It's clouded her judgment."

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Myrick receives highly classified briefings from the FBI, CIA and National Counter Terrorism Center.

Hough named bestselling author and JihadWatch.com director Robert Spencer as one of the people he believes is "whispering" in Myrick's ear.

"Spencer clearly has an agenda against Muslims," Hough insisted.

Related offers:
Get "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," autographed, from WND's Superstore.

Previous stories:
Desperate Muslims launch 'Hail Mary'
Federal judge rules against 'Muslim Mafia'
The First Amendment case the media refuse to cover
Senator's call to profile angers 'Muslim Mafia'
FBI gets 'Muslim Mafia' 'smoking-gun' documents
Hear 'Muslim Mafia' lawyer on CAIR case
CAIR admitted fundraising for convicted terror group
Muslim group asks Obama for protection
Experts: Lawsuit could end 'cancerous pro-jihad group'
'Muslim Mafia' lawsuit response: Legally, CAIR doesn't even exist
FBI swoops in to halt return of 'Muslim Mafia' documents
Lawmakers ask IRS to investigate CAIR
CAIR boasts of influence on media after Fort Hood
CAIR speaker to Muslims: OK to attack Fort Bragg
Army shooter's mosque run by Muslim Mafia
Judge orders: Return 'Muslim Mafia' docs
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Patrick's miraculous ride

By Ron Cook
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
Sunday, February 28, 2010

To listen to the silence on the other end of the telephone, you would have thought I asked Craig Patrick to pick the favorite of his four kids and four grandchildren.

In a sense, I guess I did.

"Would you rather have that miraculous Olympics hockey gold medal from 1980 or the two Stanley Cups with the Penguins in '91 and '92?"

"You can't pick between the two," Patrick finally said.

Who would want to?

"All I know is I've been a very lucky man," Patrick said.

No, it hasn't been a perfect career ride. The Penguins didn't renew Patrick's contract in 2006 after the franchise took a long, hard fall from those glory days of the early '90s. He hasn't been able to find work in the sport since. "I keep looking every day," he said. "I'm a young 63. I can make a difference someplace."

Patrick is a great hockey man, a Hall of Famer. At the very least, any organization should want him on its payroll so his eyes can evaluate its players and the competition's. But if it doesn't work out again for Patrick, he hardly can complain. There are those two Cup teams he built after inheriting Mario Lemieux. There is his sizable role in the Penguins' Cup win last summer. "Our staff did an absolutely wonderful job in helping to put that team together," he said of drafting Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, among others. And, of course, there's his role as coach Herb Brooks' top assistant on that '80 U.S. team that beat the powerful, hated Russians and went on to win the gold medal by beating Finland.

"Thirty years later, it's still a big deal. That just amazes me," Patrick said.

It's a big deal because Team USA's gold at the Lake Placid, N.Y., Games is widely considered the greatest sports moment of the 20th Century. It seems like an especially big deal today because they will pass out another hockey gold medal today at the Vancouver Olympics. And, let's face it, we just love to celebrate the anniversaries of our feel-good sports moments.

That '80 team of young amateurs and college kids provided the best one of all time.

"I've believed in miracles ever since," Patrick said.

Patrick, who lives in Fox Chapel, played a huge role despite being Brooks' second choice for the job behind a man Brooks never identified to him. The two had been tight since they played on the U.S. national team in 1970.

Brooks' brilliant plan -- remember, he was a psychology major at the University of Minnesota -- was to bring the Team USA players together by getting them to, quoting Patrick, "universally dislike him." He drove them relentlessly during the seven months leading up to the Olympics. Patrick was there to be their friend, a soft shoulder to lean on in their toughest, most frustrating moments.

"I had heard of good-cop, bad-cop in situations with suspects, but not with a hockey team," Patrick said. "But Herb was a brilliant man. He had the whole thing planned out a year in advance. He knew what players he wanted. He knew what approach he had to take. He knew what he had to teach them.

"That was the most prepared team of my lifetime."

Still, Patrick acknowledged, the gold medal didn't seem realistic. The Russians had beaten the Americans, 10-3, in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden only days before the Olympics. A year earlier, they had beaten an NHL All-Star team, 6-0. A year later, they would beat a Canadian team led by Wayne Gretzky and loaded with future Hall of Famers, 8-1, to win the Canada Cup.

What chance did those American kids have?

Do you believe in miracles? Yes!

There never has been a bigger upset than Team USA's 4-3 victory. There never has been a more meaningful sporting event. That was a troubled time for America, coming off a decade with a frustrating ending to the Vietnam War and the Watergate fiasco. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage in Iran. The Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan. The Cold War was raging.

Brooks' hockey team came along at the perfect time. Suddenly, America felt good about itself again.

Not that Brooks allowed himself, Patrick or their players to feel good. Not just yet, anyway. There still was that game against Finland.

"The practice the next day was our hardest at the Olympics," Patrick said. "Herb totally stayed on those guys all of the time."

The U.S. team trailed, 2-1, after two periods but scored three times in the third period to beat Finland, 4-2, and win the most remarkable gold medal in Olympics history.

Even then, Brooks didn't allow the players' celebration to get out of control.

"I remember we went to some really nice lodge outside of town," Patrick said. "We're all there having a good time and Herb says, " 'OK, let's go. Back to the trailers.' We were sequestered in trailers during the Olympics.
Anyway, we were going to the White House the next day and Herb wanted the team at its best for that, too. That was Herb."


Herb Brooks and Craig Patrick after Brooks was named the head coach of the New York Rangers in 1981.

Patrick knew something was up when President Jimmy Carter sent Air Force One to Lake Placid to pick up the team along with speed skating hero Eric Heiden. But it wasn't until the bus ride from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House that the team's accomplishment fully hit him.

"People lined the streets on both sides for miles, waving American flags," Patrick said. "That's when it was like, 'Wow! We did something.'"

Thirty years later, we're still saying "Wow!"

We'll be saying it about that amazing hockey team for a long, long time.

Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com. Ron Cook can be heard on the "Vinnie and Cook" show weekdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.

Penguins Plus, a blog by Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson, is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.

First published on February 28, 2010 at 12:00 am

A man of rare courage

By Melanie Phillips
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
Thursday, 25th February 2010
http://www.melaniephillips.com/

I have been following for some time the remarkable journey of Mosab Hassan Yousef, about whom I wrote here last year. Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader, renounced not just terrorist violence but his family and his faith to become a Christian and move to California. Since apostasy from Islam carries a death penalty, this in itself was an act of extreme courage. The Telegraph ran an interview with him which set out starkly the extreme risk he was running, along with the principled reasons for his actions:

Mosab Hassan Yousef, 30, said that his decision to abandon his Muslim faith and denounce his father's organisation had exposed his family to persecution in his home town of Ramallah and endangered his own life.

... ‘I’m not afraid of them, especially as I know that I'm doing the right thing, and I don't see them as my enemies,’ he said. ‘I do think about this a lot. But what are they going to do? Are they going to kill me? If they want to kill me, let them do it. I'm not going to stop anyone. It's going to be my freedom.’

... Mr Yousef said that his doubts about Islam and Hamas crystallised when he realised not all Hamas leaders were like his father, a moderate who he describes as ‘open-minded, very humble and honest’. Mr Yousef said that he was appalled by the brutality of the movement, including the suicide bombers seeking glory through jihad. ‘Hamas, they are using civilians' lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate,’ he said.


Mosab Hassan Yousef

But now we learn that his courage and his principles extended far further than this. As Ha’aretz reports, for ten years Yousef worked for the Israeli security service Shin Bet for whom the intelligence he provided saved countless lives from human bomb attacks:

During the second intifada, intelligence Yousef supplied led to the arrests of a number of high-ranking Palestinian figures responsible for planning deadly suicide bombings... Loai [Yousef’s Shin Bet handler] makes no secret of his admiration for his former source. ‘The amazing thing is that none of his actions were done for money,’ he says. ‘He did things he believed in. He wanted to save lives. His grasp of intelligence matters was just as good as ours - the ideas, the insights. One insight of his was worth 1,000 hours of thought by top experts.

Loai recalled one time when the Shin Bet received information that a suicide bomber was going to be picked up at Manara Square in Ramallah and be given an explosives belt. ‘We didn't know his name or what he looked like - only that he was in his 20s and would be wearing a red shirt,’ he said. ‘We sent the Green Prince to the square and with his acute sense, he located the target within minutes. He saw who picked him up, followed the car and made it possible for us to arrest the suicide bomber and the man who was supposed to give him the belt. So another attack was thwarted, though no one knows about it. No one opens Champagne bottles or bursts into song and dance. This was an almost daily thing for the Prince. He displayed courage, had sharp antennae and an ability to cope with danger. We knew he was one of those who in any situation - rain, snow, summer - give their all.'

Even more amazingly:

Yousef was also responsible for thwarting Israel’s plan to assassinate his father.

Not surprisingly, Yousef has trenchant views about Israel releasing the very terrorists he helped put in jail, indeed, in this he shows rather more backbone than many Israelis:

‘I wish I were in Gaza now,’ Yousef said by phone from California, ‘I would put on an army uniform and join Israel's special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Shalit. That must not be done.’

And on Hamas, Yousef says this:

‘Hamas cannot make peace with the Israelis. That is against what their God tells them. It is impossible to make peace with infidels, only a cease-fire, and no one knows that better than I. The Hamas leadership is responsible for the killing of Palestinians, not Israelis,’ he said. ‘Palestinians! They do not hesitate to massacre people in a mosque or to throw people from the 15th or 17th floor of a building, as they did during the coup in Gaza. The Israelis would never do such things. I tell you with certainty that the Israelis care about the Palestinians far more than the Hamas or Fatah leadership does.’

All those foolish Brits and others who want Hamas brought in from the diplomatic cold, take note.

Israel should surely make this man a roving ambassador, to fight for the truth and justice in the Middle East to which he has so remarkably dedicated – and for which he has endangered -- his life.

Toyota and the price of modernity

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
Friday, February 26, 2010; A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Amazingly, the congressional hearings on Toyota were relatively civilized. Apart from some inevitable theatrical hectoring, the questioning was generally respectful, the emotions controlled. This was all the more remarkable given the drama of some of the testimony, such as that offered by a tearful Rhonda Smith, who recounted how, in her runaway Lexus, she had called her husband because "I wanted to hear his voice one more time."

Such wrenching and compelling stories might impel you to want to string up the first Toyota executive you find. But the issue here is larger and highly complex.

Industrial society produces an astonishing array of mass-produced products -- cars, drugs, medical devices -- that are at once wondrous and potentially lethal.

The wondrousness sometimes eludes us. Even the lowliest wage earner has an automobile that conveys him with more luxury, more freedom, more comfort than any traveling king ever experienced in all the centuries before the 20th. And modern medicines -- why, vaccines alone -- have prevented more suffering, more debility and more death than anything ever conceived by man.

But these wonders can be lethal. And sorting out the endless complaints about these products is maddeningly difficult -- though sort you must, otherwise every complaint would require shutting down the factories, and we'd have no industrial society at all.

The question is: How do you distinguish the idiosyncratic failure from the systemic -- for example, the single lemon that came off the auto assembly line vs. an intrinsic problem inherent in that model's engineering? How do you separate one patient's physiology producing a drug side effect vs. an intrinsic problem with a drug that makes it unacceptably dangerous?

Consider the oddity of those drug commercials on television. Fifteen seconds of the purported therapeutic effort, followed by about 45 seconds of a rapidly muttered list of horrific possible side effects. When the ad is over, I can't remember a thing about what the pill is supposed to do, except perhaps cause nausea, liver damage, projectile vomiting, a nasty rash, a four-hour erection and sudden death. Sudden death is my favorite because there is something comical about its being a side effect. What exactly is the main effect in that case? Relief from abdominal bloating?

And how many sudden deaths does it take until we say: "Enough," and pull the drug off the market?

It's not an easy calculation. Six years ago, Vioxx, a powerful anti-inflammatory, was withdrawn by the manufacturer because it was found to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke from 0.75 percent per year to 1.5 percent. The company was pilloried for not having owned up to this earlier, but some rheumatologists were furious that the drug was forced off the market at all. They had patients with crippling arthritis who had achieved a functioning life with Vioxx, for which they were quite willing to risk a long-shot cardiac complication. The public furor denied them the choice.

And don't imagine that we do not coldly calculate the price of a human life. In 1974, the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to conserve oil. That also led to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities -- approximately 3,000 lives every year. This didn't stop us, after the oil crisis, from raising the speed limit back to 65 and beyond -- knowing that thousands of Americans would die as a result.

The calculation was never explicit but it was nevertheless real. We were quite prepared to trade away a finite number of human lives for speed, and for the efficiency and convenience that come with it.

This is not to let Toyota off the hook simply because all products carry risk. Toyota executives have already admitted that they had underplayed the reports of sticking accelerators. They seem finally to have made a very serious, almost frantic, effort to correct what can be corrected -- the floor-mat and sticky-accelerator problems -- while continuing to investigate the more elusive possibility (never proved, perhaps never provable) of some additional electronic glitch.

But it is no disrespect to the memory of those killed, and the sorrow of those left behind, to simply admit that even the highest technology produced by the world's finest companies can be fallible and fatal, and that the intelligent response is not rage and retribution but sober remediation and recognition of the very high price we pay -- willingly pay -- for modernity with all its wondrous, dangerous bounty.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

America's future could be all Greek to us

By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
February 26, 2010

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care "summit," thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.

What's happening in the developed world today isn't so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they've reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 – or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids – i.e., the family tree is upside down.
Demographers call 1.3 "lowest-low" fertility – the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared with Spain and Italy, Greece has the least-worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

Police clashes with protesters in Athens on Wednesday Feb. 24, 2010. Police fired tear gas and clashed with demonstrators in central Athens on Wednesday as violence broke out after a large protest march against government austerity measures intended to fix the country's debt crisis.

Associated Press photo
MORE PHOTOS »

So you can't borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don't have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?

By the way, you don't have to go to Greece to experience Greek-style retirement: The Athenian "public service" of California has been metaphorically face down in the ouzo for a generation. Still, America as a whole is not yet Greece. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my book "America Alone," I put the Social Security debate at that time in a bit of perspective: On 2005 figures, projected public pensions liabilities were expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of GDP. In Greece, the figure was 25 percent: in other words, head for the hills, Armageddon outta here, The End. Since then, the situation has worsened in both countries. And, really, the comparison is academic: Whereas America still has a choice, Greece isn't going to have a 2040 – not without a massive shot of Reality Juice.

Is that likely to happen? At such moments, I like to modify Gerald Ford. When seeking to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, President Ford liked to say: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." Which is true enough. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you to give any of it back. That's the point Greece is at. Its socialist government has been forced into supporting a package of austerity measures. The Greek people's response is: Nuts to that. Public sector workers have succeeded in redefining time itself: Every year, they receive 14 monthly payments. You do the math. And for about seven months' work: for many of them the work day ends at 2:30 p.m. And, when they retire, they get 14 monthly pension payments. In other words: Economic reality is not my problem. I want my benefits. And, if it bankrupts the entire state a generation from now, who cares as long as they keep the checks coming until I croak?

We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government: Once a chap's enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest; he's got his, and to hell with everyone else. People's sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.

The perfect spokesman for the entitlement mentality is the Deputy Prime Minister of Greece. The European Union has concluded that the Greek government's austerity measures are insufficient and, as a condition of bailout, has demanded something more robust. Greece is no longer a sovereign state: It's General Motors, and the EU is Washington, and the Greek electorate is happy to play the part of the UAW – everything's on the table except anything that would actually make a difference. In practice, because Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are also on the brink of the abyss, a "European" bailout will be paid for by Germany. So the aforementioned Greek Deputy Prime Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, has denounced the conditions of the EU deal on the grounds that the Germans stole all the bullion from the Bank of Greece during the Second World War. Welfare always breeds contempt, in nations as much as inner-city housing projects: How dare you tell us how to live! Just give us your money and push off.

Unfortunately, Germany is no longer an economic powerhouse. As Angela Merkel pointed out a year ago, for Germany an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. Over 30 percent of German women are childless; among German university graduates, it's over 40 percent. And for the ever-dwindling band of young Germans who make it out of the maternity ward there's precious little reason to stick around. Why be the last handsome blond lederhosen-clad Aryan lad working the late shift at the beer garden in order to prop up singlehandedly entire retirement homes? And that's before the EU decides to add the Greeks to your burdens. Germans, who retire at 67, are now expected to sustain the unsustainable 14 monthly payments per year of Greeks who retire at 58.

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less-profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn't pay. You'll wind up bailing out, anyway. The problem is there are never enough of "the rich" to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they've run out Greeks, so they'll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick Americans with their defense tab. And, in America, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

©MARK STEYN

A cynic's view of HGH issue

By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
Thursday, February 25, 2010

That grinding sound you're hearing in the far political distance is the sound of two unions digging in their heels against the next wave of drug testing, triggered this week by the news that a British rugby player tested positive for Human Growth Hormone, something previously thought to be merely impossible.

Among the many dubious benefits of HGH, the one that baseball players such as Andy Pettitte and Jason Grimsley and doubtless some football players seemed to like best was that it was undetectable. Olympic athletes have been screened for HGH for most of this century without anyone coming up positive, and since the plausibility that no Olympic athletes -- none -- in all that time were using HGH is so implausible as to be laughable, the assumption was that the tests simply didn't work.

Enter Terry Newton.

In November, Newton provided a blood sample that this week got him banned from English rugby for two years by the United Kingdom Anti-Doping Agency, thus violating one of the sport's cardinal rules -- illegal substances should be restricted to the hooligans.

"It doesn't wash," Chuck Yesalis said on the phone from State College Wednesday. "I mean I'm skeptical. They've said in public for at least six years, if not 10, that they have this test, and this is all they've got? One person? A rugby player? That's not like catching some big fish. I want to see it challenged in court. I want people to talk about it.

"I'm an epidemiologist, not a biochemist, but this is not a black or white thing. It's like the testosterone ratio thing -- what's normal, what's not normal. It's not a big line in the sand."

Yesalis, professor emeritus of exercise and sport science and one of the world's leading anti-doping experts, remains reliably if amiably cantankerous not only on where the lines are drawn, but on the interminable doping question of who's fooling whom.

Still, if there is no line in the sand, there will be a thick line not easily crossed in the offices of the Major League Players Association and the National Football League Players Association, especially after management spokespersons leaped into the media pool at the first mention of Newton's positive test.

Someone in Bud Selig's office immediately told the New York Times that baseball would test its minor leaguers for HGH as soon as this summer, with an eye toward implementing testing on the major league level in the next round of collective bargaining. The union said it would consult its experts on the matter, and you have to wonder if these will be the same experts who advised players to resist urine testing for steroids until the game's very integrity was in the urinal.

The NFL, where it's obvious no one is using HGH because offensive linemen average only 315 pounds, greeted the positive HGH test with equal enthusiasm, but its union kicked back pretty hard.

"There is no reason to forcefully implement any blood testing at this time," NFLPA spokesman George Atallah told the Washington Post. "There is no reason to believe a blood test for NFL players will or should be implemented."

That's a matter for collective bargaining as well, and likely to complicate an already dismal labor forecast beyond 2010.

Neither union, obviously, has learned a thing from baseball's experience. Obviously, privacy issues have to be weighed heavily when it comes to testing, but, in the current climate, where suspensions for steroids and HGH are an annual occurrence and suspicion is a malignant constant, the prudent public posture isn't, "Oh no you don't!"

That said, Newton's test probably clears up little.

"All of us who have helped develop the test wouldn't put it in place if it wasn't forensically sound and reliable," the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's Travis Tygart contended in news accounts Tuesday. "Particularly in Newton's case; it's proof positive the test works."

I'd love to believe that, just as I'd love to believe that baseballers and footballers would, as a sincere gesture to the fans who make their opulent lifestyles possible, embrace any testing that makes the games 100 percent believable again.

Yet I defer to Yesalis, who until he retired a few years ago, taught a generation of students and reminded a good portion of the nation's sports media that skepticism never atrophies. From Yesalis we all learned that the cheaters are constantly accelerating the game faster than the testers.

"I see no reason whatsoever to change my mind on it," he said Wednesday. "Collectively, there's way more money involved to help circumvent the tests than the amount of money available to catch the cheaters. Look at all these multi-gazillion-dollar athletes and these sports federations, all with a strong, vested interest in being bigger, faster, stronger, and compare it to the paltry couple of million to develop new tests.

"Does this [Newton positive] really change things? If I had to bet my house, all I could do is use the past to predict the future. I have heard for 30 years stuff like, 'We had a problem with drugs in this sport, but now it's solved.' Thirty years. If it's a roulette wheel and you're asking me to put my bet on the drug cheaters or the drug testers, I know what to do."

Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com. More articles by this author

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First published on February 25, 2010 at 12:00 am

Today's Tune: Johnny Cash- Ain't No Grave

Johnny Cash’s final chapter is the most compelling

By James Reed, Boston Globe Staff
http://www.boston.com/
February 21, 2010



Johnny Cash started out as country music's brash outlaw (left) while his final years making "American Recordings" with Rick Rubin saw him become a lion in winter facing down mortality with the same determined spirit. (Thurston Moore Collection (Left); Martyn Atkins / File 2002)

“Delia’s Gone’’ was the opening salvo on “American Recordings,’’ Johnny Cash’s landmark 1994 album recorded with Rick Rubin, and it was very much in synch with Cash’s dark-hearted mythology: an old murder ballad about a man unrepentant for killing his lover.

Except the song wasn’t shrouded in the signature sounds we associated with Cash. Gone were Luther Perkins’s boom-chicka-boom guitar melodies and the winking hell-raising apparent in Cash’s performances at Folsom and San Quentin prisons. You could tell it was Johnny Cash singing, but his voice - once so virile you’d expect to hear it taming a wild bear on a mountaintop - was now grizzled, more expressive than imposing.

The album featured Cash with just an acoustic guitar, yet no one could have predicted the profound impact it would have on his legacy, not even the men who made it.

On Tuesday, the final installment in the “American Recordings’’ series will be released, leaving in its path six studio albums and a box set that enshrined Cash in the last stretch to the finish line. “American VI,’’ which arrives more than six years after Cash’s death at 71, carries the gravitas of a swan song, too, starting with its subtitle: “Ain’t No Grave.’’

Sixteen years since the series’ inaugural album, this is how an entire generation of music fans know him. They remember Cash not as a brash outlaw who once bragged about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, but rather as a lion in winter staring down his mortality with a spirit as determined as his body was broken.

“Johnny had been discarded by his former record company at that point and probably felt he had nothing to lose,’’ Rubin writes in an e-mail to the Globe, explaining why Cash agreed to record that first album with him. “Also, we hit it off fairly quickly, and he seemed excited that someone cared.’’

Their rapport was apparent from the beginning. Rubin’s touch was often so light, it’s easy to underestimate the paramount role his austere production played. By allowing Cash to interpret the songs simply and directly, he separated him from the Man in Black iconography so entrenched in his persona.

His collaboration with Cash, in fact, became a blueprint for how younger musicians and producers could extract the essence of legends long past their prime, thereby reinventing them for the blogosphere. Rubin gave Neil Diamond a similarly stripped-down treatment, starting with 2005’s “12 Songs,’’ and when Jack White produced Loretta Lynn’s “Van Lear Rose’’ in 2004, the antecedent was obvious.

“American Recordings’’ was exactly what Cash, who deftly manipulated the machinery to redefine himself like few other veteran musicians could, needed to resurrect his critical and commercial clout. We suddenly remembered that Johnny Cash wasn’t just that guy who sang “Ring of Fire’’ over a blast of mariachi horns or got us to laugh about a poor boy named Sue. “I Walk the Line’’ might have made Cash an icon, but his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt’’ made him human. That’s the greatest legacy of “American Recordings,’’ that it revealed Cash was a mere mortal whose music confronted his triumphs and demons.

Cash could have coasted for his last two decades and he still would have died a towering figure in American music, beloved by everyone from Bob Dylan to Bono. Instead, Cash decided to push himself in his final decade and produce the most haunting music of his career. Listen to his stately rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,’’ his voice miked so intimately it sounds like he’s sitting next to you, and it’s hard to recall how Roberta Flack’s version goes. Other times his voice was so weak that the heartache was tangible, nearly unbearable. We’re not accustomed to our idols letting us get so close to them.

With “Unchained,’’ the second installment, the series got more ambitious. Rubin brought in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, goading Cash into rowdy country-rock territory, and that album sent a pointed message to the country music establishment, which had written off Cash to make way for rising pop-oriented musicians.

“When you have a record like ‘Unchained’ and it wins the Grammy for best country record, it says something about the way the rest of the world relates to country music,’’ John Carter Cash, Johnny and June’s only child together, says from his home in Tennessee.

The series hit its pop-culture zenith with 2002’s “American IV: The Man Comes Around,’’ featuring that celebrated Nine Inch Nails cover and a poignant video that became a hit on MTV. But as the “American’’ series progressed, something unseemly started to take shape. The song selections unintentionally played out like an obituary: “Meet Me in Heaven,’’ “I’m Leavin’ Now,’’ “I’m Free From the Chain Gang Now.’’ It smacked of cultural necrophilia, a morbid preoccupation with Cash’s failing health. He often recorded just days after being released from the hospital, and you could hear the struggle and strain in his performances.

“ ‘Hurt’ is an example of a song that was accused of that, but it was written by someone in his early 20s as a purely autobiographical song,’’ Rubin writes. “People can read what they want into these songs. When Johnny sings, it rings with truth regardless of who wrote the words.’’

Carter Cash, who was involved with editing the “American’’ series, agrees with that defense but also understands the criticism of releasing his father’s music well after his death. “I think some people may question whether this is the right thing to do - some people may even say, ‘Is this exploitive?’ - but it’s not, because it’s exactly what he intended,’’ he says.

Smokey Hormel, the esteemed guitarist who played on three of the “American Recordings’’ albums, remembers the symbiotic nature of the relationship between Cash and Rubin.

“That first record was so great that [Rubin] just left it alone, as Johnny solo, because it really gave Cash all the room he needed to show what he could do. No one had really given Cash that chance before,’’ Hormel says. “On Mr. Cash’s part, he was really looking for a chance to tell the stories that were in these songs without all the added stuff.’’

Hormel also dismisses the notion that Cash didn’t always comprehend the contemporary pop and rock songs Rubin suggested he cover, from U2’s “One’’ to Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.’’

“I was blown away when I heard his vocal performance on ‘Hurt,’ ’’ he says. “Before we recorded it, I remember Rick put on the Nine Inch Nails’s live version of it, which ends with this crazy wall of sound. We were all sitting around feeling a little nervous about how Cash was going to react. The song ended, and there’s this silence. And then he looks up and says, ‘Well, that sounds like me about 20 years ago.’ And you knew that something clicked for him. He totally got it.’’

Cash sounds especially engaged on “American VI,’’ but sometimes it’s almost too chilling to hear a man who’s on his deathbed sing songs such as “Ain’t No Grave’’ (“There ain’t no grave/ Can hold my body down’’) or “For the Good Times’’ (“Don’t look so sad/ I know it’s over’’). Rubin’s production, though, is simply elegiac, couching Cash’s voice in pastoral arrangements that imply the artist is at peace, finally.

“I truly believe that this record - which was mostly recorded after my mother died - was his greatest life’s work,’’ Carter Cash says. “I think you get a good insight into his determination. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the frailty, the weakness. You get a final snapshot of who my dad was.’’

Now that it has come to an end, Carter Cash says he sees the “American Recordings’’ series more as a reflection of his father’s lifelong mission statement.

“He would not quit or give up,’’ he says. “Even though he was heartbroken and he was sad, it was his body that gave up, not his heart.’’

James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.