NRO Interview: Stanley Kurtz

Radical in the White House

Stanley Kurtz didn’t have to go to Kenya to figure out who Barack Obama really is.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com/
October 28, 2010 4:00 A.M.


Stanley Kurtz hit an Organizing for America nerve during Barack Obama’s campaign for president. Stanley, a Harvard-educated social anthropologist, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and has written for National Review and National Review Online for over a decade. When he started not only asking questions but digging into Barack Obama’s academic and activist past, the campaign tried to shut him down — literally, organizing a phone slamdown on Chicago radio.

Well, this still is America. And so Stanley has done what he is trained to do — research and present evidence to present a complete picture, in this case of the man who is currently president of the United States. The fruit of that project is a gripping, meticulous new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, which he discusses with me here.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What is so bad about being a Radical-in-Chief?

STANLEY KURTZ: There are two key problems. First, Obama’s slow-motion socialism undercuts liberty and prosperity on behalf of a highly questionable view of fairness. Second, and at least as disturbing, Obama’s practice of disguising his ideological views is bad for democracy, which depends upon informed public choice.


LOPEZ: “Community organizing is a largely socialist profession.” How does one back that up? A lot of faith-based types could be described as community organizers, couldn’t they? And they’re not necessarily socialists. They certainly needn’t be.

KURTZ: If you define community organizing very broadly, you could include even conservative groups under its banner. From some perspectives, the Tea Party is a form of community organizing. But the community organizing I discuss in the book is a self-consciously radical tradition that flows from the early achievements of Saul Alinsky, along with the work of Students for a Democratic Society and the National Welfare Rights Organization in the early-to-mid 1960s. The leadership of these groups was largely socialist, and remained so as they moved into community organizing in the 1970s and beyond. More to the point, the community organizers who trained and worked with Obama were largely socialist, although they made a point of not advertising that fact. Even the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a faith-based group that has done much to support community organizing (including Obama’s own early work), is an effectively socialist group, although it doesn’t say so directly. My book carefully unpacks a great deal of archival evidence to substantiate these claims.


LOPEZ: You wrote, “When I began my post-campaign research for this book, my inclination was to downplay or dismiss evidence of explicit socialism in Obama’s background. I thought the socialism issue was an unprovable and unnecessary distraction from the broader question of Obama’s ultra-liberal inclinations. I was wrong. Evidence that suggests Obama is a socialist, I am now convinced, is real, important, and profoundly relevant to the present.” Explain.

KURTZ: It takes a whole book to explicate that statement. But to be brief, when I first found programs from the Socialist Scholars Conferences Obama attended in New York in the 1980s, I saw a number of people who were later part of his political circle. I was particularly struck by the name James Cone, who was Jeremiah Wright’s theological mentor and the founder of black liberation theology. There were other talks on black liberation theology at those conferences as well. That meant Obama would very likely have known about Wright’s theology even before he met Wright, and would have recognized its socialist content. Following this trail, I discovered that many of Obama’s organizing mentors and colleagues in Chicago were prominent socialists, with ties to the group that had sponsored those early socialist conferences. The policy preferences, tactics, and strategies of these socialist organizers are recognizable in the administration’s conduct today. In fact, the Obama administration continues to coordinate its grassroots support through many of the same socialist organizers he worked with in previous years.

LOPEZ: Why was the 1983 Socialist Scholars Conference “so formative an influence on Obama’s political career”?

KURTZ: I argue that it was Obama’s attendance at that first Socialist Scholars Conference in 1983 that made him decide to become a community organizer. At that point, I maintain, Obama was already a socialist. But that 1983 conference exposed him for the first time to the socialist world’s newfound emphasis on community organizing as part of a long-term political strategy to realign the parties along class lines. The goal was to inch the country toward socialism through multicultural “rainbow” coalitions led by minority politicians on the model of Chicago’s Harold Washington, who became Obama’s political idol. This gave Obama a solution to his identity crisis and drove him off the path to a career in international relations, which is where he’d been up till then. My argument for all this unfolds a bit like a detective story in the second chapter of the book.


LOPEZ: What actual evidence do you have that Obama attended the annual Socialist Scholars Conferences in New York between 1983 and 1985?

KURTZ: Obama tells us himself in Dreams from My Father that he attended socialist conferences at the Cooper Union. Detailed evidence from socialist archives shows that there was only one socialist conference at the Cooper Union, and that was the Socialist Scholars Conference of 1983. Obama’s name also appears on a list of pre-registrants for the 1984 Socialist Scholars Conference. There is less evidence that he attended the Socialist Scholars Conference of 1985, although I think it’s likely that he did. Not only did Obama attend the previous two conferences, evidence indicates that in 1985 he was studying the writings of Harry Boyte, an important theorist of community organizing who spoke at the 1985 conference. Boyte, by the way, advised Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. I carefully dissect the evidence for Obama’s conference attendance in the book.


LOPEZ: What is socialism? What is socialism to Barack Obama? How has that changed since 1983? How has it stayed the same?

KURTZ: These are the big questions. In the 1980s, the failure of Sixties and Seventies radicalism and the ascent of Ronald Reagan forced America’s socialists to take another tack. They de-emphasized strategies of nationalization and focused instead on local organizing as the way to move the country toward socialism. Now, instead of nationalizing a company, the idea was to get community organizers onto boards of directors, or to force banks to run loans through groups like ACORN. This was socialism “from below,” and it is the strategy that captivated Obama.

Obama’s socialist community-organizing colleagues followed French Marxist theorist André Gorz. Gorz advocated a strategy he called “non-reformist reforms,” proposing a series of seemingly minor tweaks to the system that were in fact designed to undermine capitalism and usher in socialism over time. This led Obama’s socialist mentors to devise an early version of the “public option,” although at the time they applied the idea to the energy sector, not health care. The socialism of Obama’s mentors was incremental and intentionally disguised. In the book, I argue that Obama follows many of his socialist mentors’ ideas to this day.

LOPEZ: How important is black liberation theology to understanding Barack Obama? And where does Jeremiah Wright fit in here?

KURTZ: The important thing about black liberation theology for Obama at the beginning was that its practitioners had just struck up an alliance with the Democratic Socialists of America. That gave Obama a way of bringing together his leftist political inclinations with his quest for an African-American identity. Obama surely disagreed with Reverend Wright’s crazier ideas, like the absurd notion that the AIDS virus is the product of a racist plot against blacks. Obama put up with Wright’s extremism because they shared a socialist outlook. Obama very much hoped to use radical preachers like Wright to help build a leftist political movement. In the book, I present a great deal of new evidence on Obama’s relationship with Wright, and on Wright’s own fascinating political history.


LOPEZ: Was Bill Ayers his mentor or not?

KURTZ: Ayers certainly gave Obama a leg up when he helped elevate Obama to the head of a foundation Ayers created, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. But I’d prefer to call the relationship an extended political partnership. In the book, I show that Obama eventually returned the favor and brought Ayers onto the board of the Woods Fund, which no one has pointed out until now. Obama also helped fund the work of Ayers’s wife, former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn. I’ve discovered that Obama even had longstanding ties to Bill’s brother, John Ayers. But the big picture is that Ayers and Dohrn were just a part of Chicago’s larger socialist world. Obama was also deeply immersed in that world, and it just so happens that, in 2008, the infamy of Ayers and Dohrn gave us a tiny peek into Obama’s larger radical political environment.


LOPEZ: How important is ACORN to understanding Barack Obama and the Democratic party today? Is ACORN still a factor?

KURTZ: I present a great deal of new documentary evidence detailing Obama’s longstanding relationship with ACORN. When you compare all this new material with Obama’s statements in 2008, it’s obvious that he lied about his relationship with ACORN. That’s important because it calls into question Obama’s credibility on the matter of his radical beliefs and associations. To this day, Obama and the Democrats blame the financial crisis exclusively on deregulation. The contribution of ACORN and the Democrats to the origins of the subprime-lending crisis is not as widely known as it should be. The book uncovers archival documents that allow us to recover ACORN’s extensive role in the origins of the financial crisis. Fascinating documents with ACORN’s inside account of its meetings with President Clinton and his officials tell us everything about the financial crisis that Obama and the Democrats don’t want us to hear. The mentality that got us into the crisis is still at play, with both Obama and the Democrats. That is the big lesson. But ACORN itself hasn’t disappeared. ACORN is a kind of giant organizational shell game, and the recent change of name is just another move in that game.

LOPEZ: Barack Obama wrote in Dreams from My Father: “Political discussions, the kind that at Occidental had once seemed so intense and purposeful, came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union or the African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem and Brooklyn during the summers — a few of the many diversions New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center.” You read a lot into “diversions.” How? Why? Is he really that smart?

KURTZ: If all we had was Dreams from My Father, we couldn’t make much of those conferences. But after a painstaking reconstruction of what actually happened at those socialist conferences, the outlines of Obama’s entire political career emerge. It’s amazing how careful organizers are about both disguising and, on rare occasions, revealing their socialism. This goes back to Alinsky, but in the book I show socialists explaining to other socialists that the group Obama worked with, the Midwest Academy, was quietly socialist. Midwest Academy organizers made a practice of thinking through every little signal they gave about their socialist views with enormous care. Obama learned his craft from them.


LOPEZ: If Obama is so smart, why are the Democrats going to lose big on Tuesday?

KURTZ: Most people don’t realize that community organizers fail a lot more often than they succeed. That’s not because they’re dumb, but because, fundamentally, they are trying to manipulate people into following the organizer’s own political path. It isn’t easy to get people to travel down a political path that is not truly their own, but that is what community organizers try to do. Smarts alone can only get you so far along that road. Having said that, I argue in the book that Obama isn’t in quite as hopeless a position as he may seem to be right now. Obama has adopted a high-risk strategy. His long-term goal is to polarize the parties along class lines, thereby driving the country substantially to the left. He’s taking big chances to get there, but there is a plausible long-term scenario for success. I go into this in some detail in the final chapter.


LOPEZ: So is Saul Alinsky really, truly important to understanding our president?

KURTZ: He is, but in the book I focus on Alinsky’s method as adapted and transformed by an extraordinary community-organizer-training institute called the Midwest Academy. Barack and Michelle Obama both had close ties to the Academy, and it is the Midwest Academy’s version of organizing — and of socialism — that deeply stamped Obama, I believe. I would call Obama, a “Midwest Academy socialist,” and one way to read the book is as a long explanation of exactly what Midwest Academy socialism is.


LOPEZ: What does the Midwest Academy have to do with the milestone health-care legislation the president signed this March?

KURTZ: The Midwest Academy virtually invented the “public option” idea, although in those days they wanted a public energy corporation to “compete” with private oil and gas companies (in the unspoken hope of driving them out of business). I believe that Obama’s support for a public option and his willingness to trade it away were both based on the Midwest Academy’s strategies of gradualism and “non-reformist reforms.” Even without the public option, the health-care bill as written is designed to drive the system toward single-payer over time. The president’s way of selling health-care reform, chiefly as a pragmatic fix rather than a matter of principle, also goes back to Alinskyite techniques as filtered through the Midwest Academy.

LOPEZ: You write about a “strategic patience” in Barack Obama’s socialism. He doesn’t sound patient, though. He sounds shrill and out of patience, especially with his condescending, dismissive Slurpee lines.

KURTZ: I agree that the president is losing a bit of his cool under pressure. More broadly, I think Obama was ready to move more incrementally before the financial crisis gave him a large Democratic majority in Congress. At that point, Obama decided to take advantage of what seemed at the time like a unique opportunity to grasp for a great deal of “change” at once. Even so, from the perspective of many on the left, Obama has gone slowly, say, by giving up the public option. I also think Obama is ready for slow trench warfare with a Republican Congress. To prepare for that, he first needed to get in place programs the Republicans would try to repeal. Out of that polarizing battle, Obama hopes to jump-start a movement of have-nots angry about efforts to peel back their new entitlements. He may fail, but that is his long-term play. And it follows a well-worn community-organizing model, as I show in the book.


LOPEZ: Do you have insights into what exactly Barack Obama makes of the abortion debate and where that fits into a full picture of him? Despite a radicalism there, he’s been stealth about it, somewhat consistently, in his national career.

KURTZ: Midwest Academy founder Heather Booth began as a socialist feminist with an intense interest in abortion. Yet she ultimately downplayed that issue in an effort to assemble a populist anti-business coalition that united culturally conservative blue-collar workers with the descendants of the Sixties left. Midwest Academy strategy is to downplay cultural issues and foreign policy in order to avoid dividing a broad-based, economically focused, populist coalition of the Left. I think Obama follows this program. He’s a leftist on cultural issues, but he doesn’t want to emphasize it any more than he absolutely has to, because that will split his coalition on economic issues, which is what he really cares about.


LOPEZ: Do you think there is anything to the Dinesh D’Souza thesis about Obama?

KURTZ: I’ve read his Forbes article, not the book, so my reaction has to be provisional. I think D’Souza takes kernels of truth and overloads them with significance. Was Obama attracted to postcolonial theory? Yes, he tells us so himself. Were Obama’s socialist inclinations inspired, in part, by his father’s socialism? They very likely were. But none of that substitutes for a careful attempt to reconstruct Obama’s adult political career. That is what I have tried to do. D’Souza is squeezing all the controversy he can out of the public record. But the heretofore hidden history I recover is ultimately more interesting and important.


LOPEZ: Why is this important now? I know many of the policies are harmful to the country, and I want to see his party’s power depleted come January and someone else in the White House after the next presidential election. Why should I care what he wrote in Dreams from My Father and what conferences he attended in the Eighties?

KURTZ: The final chapter of the book shows how deeply Obama’s past still influences his present. More broadly, electing and reelecting a president is, in substantial measure, a matter of trust. Obama has misrepresented who he was and is, both during the 2008 election and since. In that sense, he has broken trust with the public. Only if the American people know the truth about their president’s political beliefs can they make an informed decision about his reelection. That is how democracy works. The mind of the president means a great deal. The health-care and financial-reform bills are largely unfinished projects. What they will become depends on how the massive regulatory apparatus of each is shaped by the administration. A number of Obama’s supporters still believe his claims of post-partisan pragmatism. Showing that this is not the true picture could have a very significant effect on whether the country decides to throw in its lot with Obama or his Republican opponent two years from now.

LOPEZ: Beyond this Tuesday, how can those who want to defeat Obama and his agenda make use of your book?

KURTZ: I do think the book makes Obama’s strategic moves more understandable, and therefore easier to counter. But simply exposing the president’s lack of frankness about his political past and present could do more than anything to deplete his public appeal. Setting the socialism question aside for a moment, just knowing that Obama’s colleagues and mentors made a regular practice of disguising their real political views is going to disturb a lot of voters.

LOPEZ: Why do you think your argument is compelling? Why would you urge those who don’t already think Obama is radical to read your book?

KURTZ: The whole socialism argument kicked off by Obama’s candidacy and presidency has been off-base. It is grounded in ignorance of what modern American socialism really is. Agree or disagree with my argument about Obama, my book shows what much of contemporary socialism has become. It proves that stealth socialism is a real phenomenon, whether you think Obama embraces that view or not. It gives readers access to an important but almost totally unknown political world. It is a world Obama lived in for years. All that may not resolve our arguments about the president’s political views, but it puts the debate itself on an entirely new footing.


LOPEZ: What did you learn that most surprised you during the course of your research?

KURTZ: During campaign 2008, I debated a prominent community organizer and Obama advisor named Harry Boyte. He presented himself during that debate as a slightly left-leaning cousin of communitarian conservatives. When I learned that he was a prominent and powerful socialist, I was shocked. When I discovered that he had been the leader of a socialist faction that believed in using the word “communitarian” to disguise its socialist convictions, I was amazed. When I realized that Boyte had been the leading thinker of the faction of socialist organizers who trained Obama, I was stunned.


LOPEZ: Have you been surprised about various reactions to your book?

KURTZ: People are sometimes taken aback (in a good way) when they interview me and realize that I have a whole new approach to the socialism argument. A number of people who are just now moving through the book are writing to tell me it’s gripping in the way a murder mystery is. The book is scholarly, but the process of peeling back Obama’s self-presentation and unearthing the hidden story beneath it is exciting.


LOPEZ: If there’s one thing you could drive home to Americans about the president, what would it be?

KURTZ: He hasn’t been telling us the truth about his political convictions.


LOPEZ: What does it mean for American history that we have a socialist as president right now?

KURTZ: The liberalizing changes of the Sixties have borne fruit in a new generation, yet they have been incomplete. The Democrats have moved left, but resistance to those changes has driven Republicans to the right. The government sector is so large now that the fundamental character of the American system is at stake. We will either move incrementally over the line toward European-style socialism, or pull substantially back. The battle will be fought out over the next two years, with the coming presidential election determining the winner. A Republican victory next week does not decide the question. It only sets up the larger battle Obama has been planning all along. We don’t yet know who will win.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is an editor-at-large of National Review Online.

A Referendum on the Redeemer

Barack Obama put the Democrats in the position of forever redeeming a fallen nation rather than leading a great one.

By SHELBY STEELE
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/
October 28, 2010

Whether or not the Republicans win big next week, it is already clear that the "transformative" aspirations of the Obama presidency—the special promise of this first black president to "change" us into a better society—are much less likely to materialize. There will be enough Republican gains to make the "no" in the "party of no" even more formidable, if not definitive.

But apart from this politics of numbers, there is also now a deepening disenchantment with Barack Obama himself. (He has a meager 37% approval rating by the latest Harris poll.) His embarrassed supporters console themselves that their intentions were good; their vote helped make history. But for Mr. Obama himself there is no road back to the charisma and political capital he enjoyed on his inauguration day.

How is it that Barack Obama could step into the presidency with an air of inevitability and then, in less than two years, find himself unwelcome at the campaign rallies of many of his fellow Democrats?

The first answer is well-known: His policymaking has been grandiose, thoughtless and bullying. His health-care bill was ambitious to the point of destructiveness and, finally, so chaotic that today no citizen knows where they stand in relation to it. His financial-reform bill seems little more than a short-sighted scapegoating of Wall Street. In foreign policy he has failed to articulate a role for America in the world. We don't know why we do what we do in foreign affairs. George W. Bush at least made a valiant stab at an American rationale—democratization—but with Mr. Obama there is nothing.

All this would be enough to explain the disillusionment with this president—and with the Democratic Party that he leads. But there is also a deeper disjunction. There is an "otherness" about Mr. Obama, the sense that he is somehow not truly American. "Birthers" doubt that he was born on American soil. Others believe that he is secretly a Muslim, or in quiet simpatico with his old friends, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, now icons of American radicalism.

But Barack Obama is not an "other" so much as he is a child of the 1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new "counterculture" American identity. And this new American identity—and the post-1960s liberalism it spawned—is grounded in a remarkable irony: bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better America. So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen grounded in this counterculture American identity. When he bows to foreign leaders, he is not displaying "otherness" but the counterculture Americanism of honorable self-effacement in which America acknowledges its own capacity for evil as prelude to engagement.

Bad faith in America became virtuous in the '60s when America finally acknowledged so many of its flagrant hypocrisies: the segregation of blacks, the suppression of women, the exploitation of other minorities, the "imperialism" of the Vietnam War, the indifference to the environment, the hypocrisy of puritanical sexual mores and so on. The compounding of all these hypocrisies added up to the crowning idea of the '60s: that America was characterologically evil. Thus the only way back to decency and moral authority was through bad faith in America and its institutions, through the presumption that evil was America's natural default position.

Among today's liberal elite, bad faith in America is a sophistication, a kind of hipness. More importantly, it is the perfect formula for political and governmental power. It rationalizes power in the name of intervening against evil—I will use the government to intervene against the evil tendencies of American life (economic inequality, structural racism and sexism, corporate greed, neglect of the environment and so on), so I need your vote.

"Hope and Change" positioned Mr. Obama as a conduit between an old America worn down by its evil inclinations and a new America redeemed of those inclinations. There was no vision of the future in "Hope and Change." It is an expression of bad faith in America, but its great ingenuity was to turn that bad faith into political motivation, into votes.

But there is a limit to bad faith as power, and Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party may have now reached that limit. The great weakness of bad faith is that it disallows American exceptionalism as a rationale for power. It puts Mr. Obama and the Democrats in the position of forever redeeming a fallen nation, rather than leading a great nation. They bet on America's characterological evil and not on her sense of fairness, generosity or ingenuity.

When bad faith is your framework (Michelle Obama never being proud of her country until it supported her husband), then you become more a national scold than a real leader. You lead out of a feeling that your opposition is really only the latest incarnation of that old characterological evil that you always knew was there. Thus the tea party—despite all the evidence to the contrary—is seen as racist and bigoted.

But isn't the tea party, on some level, a reaction to a president who seems not to fully trust the fundamental decency of the American people? Doesn't the tea party fill a void left open by Mr. Obama's ethos of bad faith? Aren't tea partiers, and their many fellow travelers, simply saying that American exceptionalism isn't racism? And if the mainstream media see tea partiers as bumpkins and racists, isn't this just more bad faith—characterizing people as ignorant or evil so as to dismiss them?

Our great presidents have been stewards, men who broadly identified with the whole of America. Stewardship meant responsibility even for those segments of America where one might be reviled. Surely Mr. Obama would claim such stewardship. But he has functioned more as a redeemer than a steward, a leader who sees a badness in us from which we must be redeemed. Many Americans are afraid of this because a mandate as grandiose as redemption justifies a vast expansion of government. A redeemer can't just tweak and guide a faltering economy; he will need a trillion- dollar stimulus package. He can't take on health care a step at a time; he must do it all at once, finally mandating that every citizen buy in.

Next week's election is, among other things, a referendum on the idea of president-as- redeemer. We have a president so determined to transform and redeem us from what we are that, by his own words, he is willing to risk being a one-term president. People now wonder if Barack Obama can pivot back to the center like Bill Clinton did after his set-back in '94. But Mr. Clinton was already a steward, a policy wonk, a man of the center. Mr. Obama has to change archetypes.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Photo Credit: Associated Press

The Giants tug on Superman's cape, and Cliff Lee is brought down

By Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 2:07 AM


SAN FRANCISCO -- Cliff Lee's earned run average in eight postseason games over the past two years was 1.26 heading into this World Series. As such, he was quite rightly the focal point, the fulcrum and the fascination of everyone who analyzed this battle between San Francisco's "misfits and castoffs" and the Claws and Antlers of Texas.

After Game 1 of this 106th Series, Lee's ERA is 11.57.

Put that in your MIT baseball simulation formula, make the computer whir through a million permutations and tell me how that changes your seam-head view of who's going to win this Series.

SAN FRANCISCO - OCTOBER 27: Cliff Lee of the Texas Rangers pitches against the San Francisco Giants in Game One of the 2010 MLB World Series at AT&T Park on October 27, 2010 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

San Francisco didn't just bash Lee for seven runs in 42/3 innings in an 11-7 victory. They bashed him for five ringing doubles, three singles, a walk and a hit batter. One run was unearned, but the evening's cumulative effect was conclusive - the Giants' lineup, full of right-handed batters and low on macho free swingers - seems as well suited as any team to dealing with the superb lefty.

They don't own him. But they might hold a lease.

"Baseball, it's a crazy game," said little Freddy Sanchez, a former batting champion and punch-hitting pest personified who doubled to right, doubled to left, then doubled to center in his three at-bats against Lee.

How on earth did the Giants manage to rout a pitcher who had dominated the Yankees (three times), as well as the Rockies, Dodgers and Rays in the last 13 months? How could Lee need 104 pitches to get just 14 outs when, in some postseason games, that's all he's needed for 27 outs.

For starters, Lee couldn't control his slow curveball, constantly leaving it high. So, that one mechanical glitch limited his ability to establish a speed differential of more than 15 mph between his fastest and slowest pitches. But, for a man with a six-pitch arsenal, that's like complaining about a hangnail.

Otherwise, everything was lined up for Lee. He didn't get squeezed on ball-strike calls, had little if any bad luck, was staked to a 2-0 lead over Tim Lincecum and was working on a balmy Bay night in a vast park that eats hitters alive.

Yet the Giants well and truly bashed him. How?

Most teams, especially those full of high-priced sluggers and free swingers, seldom force Lee to throw many pitches. He feasts on their greed. But the Giants are humble. Not one of them had more than 26 homers or 86 RBI. Some, like Sanchez are pesky all-fields slap hitters. Buster Posey, a rookie, hits to all fields, stays back on off-speed pitches and got a crucial RBI single on an almost perfect Lee change-up. Inning after inning, Lee found himself needing five, six or even more pitches to get a single out.

"We've added a lot of patient hitters as the season has gone on. It adds up. Now [we have] Pat Burrell, Posey, [Aubrey] Huff, Sanchez, Andres Torres," said Giant Manager Bruce Bochy.

Added Rangers Manager Ron Washington: "I saw the the Giants work him pretty good - 32 pitches in the [two-run] third inning. He ran out of gas there [in the fifth]. They got to Cliff. We didn't get to Lincecum."

Cliff Lee walks into the dugout after being pulled during the fifth inning of Game 1 of baseball's World Series against the San Francisco Giants Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010, in San Francisco. (AP)

So, we add this conundrum to the long list of question about baseball that may never be answered: How is it that the Yankees, who are famous for running up pitch counts on everybody, can't do it against Lee, but the low-offense Giants, apparently can?

Now, in a blink, it is the Giants who have home-field advantage. And another trend has jumped up squarely in our faces. Both the Rangers and Giants are predominantly right-handed hitting teams. The only fearsome Ranger lefty is Josh Hamilton and Aubrey Huff is as close to a scary lefty as the Giants can summon. To beat either team, you want top right-handed pitchers, not lefties.

Yet everybody seemed to overlook the fact that the first two Giant starters in this Series are power-pitching right-handers while Texas is opening with a pair of lefties, Lee and C.J. Wilson, who is sometimes seen as Lee Lite. If Game 2, with Matt Cain working against Wilson, bears any similarity to Game 1 the favored Rangers will return to Texas with a world of work to do.

The hidden hero for the Giants was starter Lincecum. His pitching line will look homely, allowing four runs in 52/3 innings on eight hits and two walks. But he persevered after being hit in the foot by a first-inning, one-hop smash and later after being drilled in the back of the right thigh by a line drive.

Lincecum could have folded. He not only fell behind, 2-0, but suffered the indignity of an RBI double by Lee on a fake-bunt swing away. And he botched a simple run-down play with a brain-freeze blunder. Yet Lincecum settled down long enough for the Giants to mount a stunning six-run fifth inning which was capped by a three-run homer by Juan Uribe off of reliever Darren O'Day.

Yes, that would be the same Uribe who bats seventh, yet had a walk-off sacrifice fly and a game-winning homer in the NL Championship Series against the Phillies.

"My team came back [with a two-run third] and gave me a chance to settle down there for a few innings," Lincecum said.

Said Sanchez, who finished 4 for 5 with 3 RBI: "We weren't too worried. That's our team. When we're down, we're fighting."

San Francisco Giants' Freddy Sanchez hits an RBI single to score Travis Ishikawa during the eighth inning of Game 1 of baseball's World Series against the Texas Rangers Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010, in San Francisco. Sanchez became the first player in history to collect doubles in his first three World Series at-bats. (AP)

Perhaps the core quandary of this Series is whether Lee can continue to stay on a par in post-season with Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson. Or does Lee revert to the mean of an excellent, but hardly immortal career?

Lee has a Cy Young award and precise control that equals any pitcher in modern history. But he's never fanned more than 185 men in a season and only had one season ERA under 3.14. His career ERA of 3.85 isn't a typo either. His record the last two seasons is 26-22, not 46-2 and his ERA is a combined 3.20 - very fine, but not sublime.

However, until this game, Lee has reached a level of focus in postseason that allows him to achieve a higher level of performance. In an atmosphere of tension and impatience that unnerves many hitters, his strikeout totals skyrocketed.

All baseball games would, ideally, be watched under the same microscope we apply to the Series; how much more dramatic, strategic and constantly shifting the sport would seem. But that's not the real world. However, at this time of year, we do.

So we get to see how, bit by bit, the nervous Giants got their feet under them, bedeviled Lee into deep counts, built several rallies and finally drove him from the mound.

That fifth inning arose out of nothing. With one out and nobody on base, all hell broke loose. By the time Uribe's three-run homer landed, Lee was watching, blank-faced in the Rangers' dugout.

That made the score 8-2. In a blink we realized again how little a 2-0 lead really is, even when it's in the hands of Cliff Lee, a pitcher whose illustrations need no longer be drawn by Stan Lee.

When this Series gets to Texas, the Rangers will send Lee to the mound again. He may have his curveball. But the aura that he somehow turns himself from an outstanding pitcher into an utterly invincible superhero in the postseason will be gone. Forever?

boswellt@washpost.com

New Zealand Bends and ‘Hobbit’ Stays

By MICHAEL CIEPLY and JEREMY ROSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
October 27, 2010

In this photo taken June 28, 2010, a sculpture of Gollum, the villainous "Lord of the Rings" hobbit, stands in front of a welcome sign, in Hobbiton Town, Matamata, New Zealand.
(AP Photo/New Zealand Herald, Christine Cornege)

LOS ANGELES — New Zealand will remain the middle of Middle-earth, at a price.

After meeting in Wellington with visiting Hollywood studio executives, New Zealand officials, led by the prime minister, agreed to an extraordinary deal on Wednesday under which they will contribute special financing and introduce new labor legislation to keep the filming of Warner Brothers’ two movies based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” on their shores.

It may seem that New Zealand has grown sentimental over its Hobbits — or rather the filmmaker Peter Jackson’s Hobbits. It has built a tourism industry and no small amount of national pride around the creatures, dating to when Mr. Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” franchise established a growing movie industry sometimes called Wellywood there.

But behind the agreement is a hard economic reality. Hollywood has the upper hand in deciding where to film its big-budget extravaganzas, and there are many places willing to pay to attract filmmakers. And so the negotiations found executives of a giant American studio sitting across the table from the chief executive of a sovereign nation, population 4.4 million, wrangling over the fate of a pair of films and, with it, a not insignificant part of that nation’s economy and public image.

Prime Minister John Key announced the agreement at a news conference late Wednesday in Wellington, after a week in which thousands of film workers had taken to the streets in support of efforts to save the movies after a labor dispute had stalled production.

“This will guarantee the movies are made in New Zealand,” Mr. Key said.

Reaction was predictably ecstatic at http://www.theonering.net/, a fan Web site that has closely followed the Middle-earth movies over the years. “Well, John Key has probably just won next year’s election,” said one post.

“We’re all feeling much happier today,” said Graeme Mason, the chief executive of the New Zealand film commission. Mr. Mason said government incentives and the expertise of local workers would probably have held the country’s film industry together even if the Hobbit films had left.

“But where it was apocalyptic, potentially,” Mr. Mason said, “is that New Zealanders are so invested” in the work done by Mr. Jackson and his colleagues on those films.

In a statement, Mr. Jackson said he was grateful to the government for introducing legislation and added, “I feel enormous gratitude to the film technicians, actors and fans who came out in support of making these films in New Zealand. To the thousands of people who took the time to write and let us know they were with us — thank you.”

Some in New Zealand and elsewhere questioned whether the politicians had gone too far in kowtowing to Hollywood. Trevor Mallard, a spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, told Parliament that Mr. Key, who leads the National Party, had been taken in by Warner, “and as a result of that, they will be laughing all the way to the Bank of America.”

Keith Locke, a spokesman for the smaller Green Party, said overseas investors should have no say in changing New Zealand laws.

“Yes, New Zealanders are proud of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ the achievements of Peter Jackson and the prospect that ‘The Hobbit’ will be filmed here, but pride should also stop us selling our soul,” Mr. Locke said.

A pro-'Hobbit' supporter is seen during the protest at Civic Square Monday in Wellington, New Zealand. (Melville/Getty Images)

The legislation is expected to require workers to designate their status as an employee or a freelance worker when beginning a project, then stick with it, according to one person who was briefed on the talks but spoke anonymously because the agreement was not complete. Thus, anyone who contracted individually with producers of “The Hobbit” as a freelance worker at the beginning of the film could not change status later and claim the rights of a permanent employee.

The future of the back-to-back productions, with a combined budget of about $500 million, came into question when a small actors’ union, New Zealand Actors Equity, demanded that producers bargain collectively with actors on the films. Mr. Jackson, who is a producer and the director, had joined Warner executives and New Zealand officials in insisting that such bargaining was prohibited by New Zealand law.

Perhaps just as important, Wednesday’s agreement also calls for New Zealand to increase its contribution to each film by $7.5 million, in addition to a standing government incentive that reimburses up to 15 percent of the spending in New Zealand by a high-budget production like “The Hobbit.” In a further twist, Mr. Key told reporters, in a commitment to Time Warner and its global media group, New Zealand would contribute $10 million to a marketing campaign that would tie the films to tourism in the country.

So when Wellywood meets Hollywood, does Wellywood come out on the losing end?

Warner won the agreement after an unusual bit of cinematic gunboat diplomacy. On Sunday evening, a contingent of high-level studio executives flew to New Zealand with a mandate to move the films if the cloud of labor trouble did not lift.

Already, the production, which was to begin in January, had been delayed for at least a month by the dispute — a factor that apparently contributed to the bargaining for extra incentives.

“The lesson is that everybody is pandering to the film industry,” said Schuyler M. Moore, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer. Mr. Moore cautions that state subsidies for film production often amount to picking money from one pocket of an economy to fill another — and that producers are quick to side with a higher bidder.

“It takes a minute for an executive to say, ‘Let’s wrap and go somewhere else,’ ” Mr. Moore said. He pointed out that a weak dollar, and aggressive subsidy programs in states like Michigan and Louisiana, had made production in countries like New Zealand less attractive.

Even as New Zealand was scrambling to keep the “Hobbit” films, Warner was exploring ways the movies could be made elsewhere, again with government support.

Mr. Jackson was not present in the meetings with New Zealand officials, though his manager, Ken Kamins, who is also an executive producer of the film, was, along with Toby Emmerich, New Line’s president, and John A. Rogovin, Warner’s general counsel. The discussions were generally smooth, according to the person who spoke anonymously. That person said both Warner executives and government officials agreed from the outset that New Zealand was the preferred location, if the union question could be resolved, and if Warner could recoup some of the money it had lost in the delay, partly from a strengthening of the New Zealand currency. Canada, Germany and Britain had all surfaced as viable alternative locations.

The films are scheduled for release in December 2012 and December 2013, and provide a pair of much-needed, large-scale films for Warner and MGM.

New Zealand’s film industry received an enormous boost from the production of Mr. Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong” films, and has continued to be a center for special-effects work on other movies, including James Cameron’s “Avatar.” The industry had revenue of 2.8 billion New Zealand dollars in 2009, or $2.1 billion — roughly 2 percent of the gross domestic product, according to Statistics New Zealand, an agency that monitors the country’s economy.

In announcing the proposed settlement on Wednesday, the prime minister expressed relief that the cinematic crisis appeared to have passed.

“It’s good to have the uncertainty over and to have everyone now full steam ahead on this project,” Mr. Key said.


Colin Peacock contributed reporting from Wellington, New Zealand.

Television review: 'Friday Night Lights'

The journey continues for Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and wife Tami (Connie Britton) on a show that proves TV quality can triumph.

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
http://www.latimes.com/
October 27, 2010

Like AMC's " Mad Men," "Friday Night Lights" has an industry resonance, and social significance, that far outstrips the size of its audience. A critical darling from the get-go, NBC's adaptation of the book/film of the same name elbowed its way among the urban cop dramas and upscale family shows four seasons ago, offering Dillon, Texas, instead of a coastal city or moneyed suburb, modest single-stories instead of Craftsman or lofts, and folks living lives that included church, Sunday dinner and, of course, high school football.

The numbers weren't good, but the fans and the critics remained stalwart and for once the network listened. After the writers strike cut Season 2 in half, NBC made a deal with DirecTV, which now shares costs and airs episodes a half-season before they appear on NBC.

Did the experiment work? Well, stars Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton got their — and DirecTV's — first Emmy nominations this year, which shocked even those who felt they were long overdue. Subsequently, "Friday Night Lights" moved out of bubble-show-turned-distribution experiment and back onto the magazine covers just in time for the fifth, and final, season.

Dillon, of course, remains oblivious. Much, and nothing, has changed under that wide, flat Texas sky. Time has passed, of course, but the mood remains one of struggle. The season premiere opens not with the exultation of Coach Eric Taylor's (Chandler) scrappy East Dillon Lions beating his former team, now the Dillon Panthers, but with the grim realization that he's going to have to build this team up from scratch. His wife, Tami (Britton), is on a similar journey — having been forced out of her job as principal of Dillon High, she is now a guidance counselor at East Dillon, coping with the school's poverty and her own lack of authority. Many of the young folk who have not already left town are on their way out, including the Taylors' older daughter Julie ( Aimee Teegarden) and the stalwart Landry ( Jesse Plemons).

Meanwhile, Tim ( Taylor Kitsch) is doing the time that should be his brother's, and coming to terms with the small print of his decision — perpetual gratitude is not a comfortable state for either party. Vince (Michael B. Jordan) is using his own father issues to help Jess ( Jurnee Smollett) care for her two young brothers while Becky (Madison Burge) is stuck with her stepmother, who is so horrible she smokes in front of her baby.

Indifferent to renewed recognition or the knowledge its own demise, the show proceeds at its own quiet but determined pace. The characters are allowed to converse rather than banter, and their manner is awkward as often as it is revelatory. And the camera noses its way into the action from all angles — focusing on Coach Taylor's hands one moment, later peering through curtains and up from the foot of the bed like a mildly curious and utterly nonjudgmental hound dog.

Only on the football field do executive producer Peter Berg and his team give way to sentimental formula; as in the season finale and so many episodes before it, the premiere features a game dominated by one- and two-play touchdown drives that is won in the final seconds.

But considering that this is precisely how "Friday Night Lights" has lived most of its life — last-minute reprieves born of deep personal devotion — it is a flaw that is easily forgiven. The show, and its survival, offers proof that quality can triumph in an industry driven by quantity and that even though necessity is the more fertile of the two, poetry can also be a fine mother to invention.

mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times



Brilliant ‘Lights’

Television’s best drama begins its final season in winning fashion

By Mark A. Perigard
The Boston Herald
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
http://www.bostonherald.com/

Friday Night Lights: A

You can tell a series has achieved a certain measure of popularity when viewers start to consider the characters as people they’d like to hang with - think “Lost’s” Sawyer or “Chuck’s” super-spy Sarah.

Then some characters become like family.

So it is with “Friday Night Lights,” which opens its fifth and final season on DirecTV tonight. (Don’t worry, NBC will air the episodes in January as part of the series’ production deal.)

In “Expectations,” written by David Hudgins and directed by Michael Waxman, it’s August, and coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) and guidance counselor wife Tami (Connie Britton) brace themselves for the departure of oldest daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) to college.

For Julie, it’s no big deal. She’s impatient to start the rest of her life. For her parents, it’s a major upheaval.

The usually taciturn Eric becomes nostalgic, dragging out the family pingpong table for one last “championship game.” He finds Julie’s Girl Scout sash and says, “I’m gonna miss getting sick eating all those cookies with you.”

(Story continues below)On any other show, this would go down like a glass of cola mixed with honey. Here it feels as if you’re eavesdropping on a family’s most intimate moments.

Also heading off to college: Landry (Jesse Plemons), who makes a pit stop that will resonate with longtime viewers.

There’s always a new season of high school football just around the bend. Eric hunts for new recruits, even if it means poaching the school’s top basketball prospect, a brainy transfer student named Hastings Ruckle (Grey Damon), who believes football “celebrates the worst instincts of American culture.”

Chandler, who deserves an Emmy for just his facial expressions, reacts as if he heard someone pledge allegiance to Satan.

“You live in Texas now. You love the game of football. You just don’t know it yet.”

Tami gets off to a rocky start as East Dillon High’s newest counselor by suggesting improvements to a jaded faculty.

Meanwhile, Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) languishes behind bars, with three months left on his sentence, assuming he can stay out of trouble. His guilty brother Billy (Derek Phillips) turns to an unlikely source for help. With her father working out of town, Jess (Jurnee Smollett) struggles to take care of her younger brothers.

As part of the show’s final season, expect appearances from several longtime favorites, including Jason (Scott Porter), Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) and Matt (Zach Gilford).

“Friday Night Lights” used high school football as a vehicle to explore plainly and authentically the way in which people live, struggle and thrive in small towns. It just might be the finest scripted series on prime time.

Regardless of how the coach’s team performed, fans have always been able to say, well, there’s always next season.

No longer. That final farewell looming ahead already looks to be the hardest. Who wants to say goodbye to family?

Season premiere tonight at 9 on DirecTV.


A Swan Song To Great Television

Scott Tunstall
http://flicksided.com/
Oct 27, 2010

Friday Night Lights, the little show that could, will begin its fifth and final season tonight on DirecTV’s 101 Network. For the small, yet dedicated, fanbase who have followed the series from its inception in 2006, it comes as bittersweet news that the long, strange journey will reach an end in a few short months.

On the surface, FNL was about high school football, which may have had something to do with its less than positive reception. Sports, in general, has never been the most appealing subject matter for serialized television. Sadly, some avid TV watchers dismissed the series without ever giving it a real chance. It would be their loss.

NBC tried to find an audience in 2006 and 2007 by shifting it around the schedule, but it was all for naught. No amount of jockeying worked, so the Peacock partnered up with DirecTV and shipped the show to the fledgling 101 Network, where it managed to carve out a niche for itself, before being rebroadcast on NBC. The deal saved Friday Night Lights and those fortunate enough to see all four seasons were treated to some truly great episodic storytelling.

Football merely served as a launching point for the everyday goings-on in a small fictional Texas town. Marital struggles, family squabbles, troubled friendships, fading first love, broken dreams, careers at a crossroads and the pitfalls of adulthood defined a group of complex characters living simple lives devoid of artifice.

For the most part, the series eschewed melodrama and preachiness. Instead, it focused on relatable problems common to everyone, no matter their socioeconomic background. Lower, middle and upper class existence was placed under the microscope, as was cultural and educational inequality. The writers left no stone unturned in their attempt to create disparate personalities united by one central theme — high school football.

The sport played on a 100-yard field with an odd looking ball was not only critical to the plot, but it also affected each and every character. It was used to teach, motivate and shape, young and old alike. Its inherent drama paralleled the trials and tribulations of those who played it, coached it, cheered for it and condemned it. The game represented the passion and hope of a community. A community divided by politics, race and what side of town a person called home.

Football remained the one constant throughout. While names, faces and relationships changed, the game stayed exactly the same. It kept families together and provided a safe haven for those in need. It offered an opportunity to be extraordinary for those destined to be ordinary. It was a chance to achieve greatness when greatness was in short supply. It created lasting memories for those who stepped on its field, paced on its sidelines and sat in its bleachers.

Friday Night Lights was about football, but it was also about people. A husband and wife who loved and supported one another in the darkest of times. A rebellious daughter eager to spread her wings. A quiet outcast forced to grow up too soon. A brooding loner struggling to walk the straight and narrow path. And a host of others who made the tiny hamlet of Dillon, Texas an endearing place to inhabit for the last five years.

Smart, thought-provoking, well-intentioned television is hard to find these days. There are plenty of good shows to go around, but very few included such a detailed and authentic view of small town America as did Friday Night Lights. It showed the best and worst in all of us and did so in a natural, unapologetic style. We cared about the characters and shared in their moments of joy, laughter, heartache and sadness. It might not have been the most watched series, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be missed.

Introducing the old Josh: a local star steps to the plate

BY JOSH SHAFFER - Staff Writer
The Raleigh News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/
October 27, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO - OCTOBER 26: Josh Hamilton walks on the field prior to a workout session at AT&T Park on October 26, 2010 in San Francisco, California. The Texas Rangers will face off against the San Francisco Giants in Game One of the 2010 MLB World Series on October 27. (Getty Images)

RALEIGH -- When No. 32 steps to the plate tonight in size 19 cleats, a World Series crowd rumbling in his ears, a thousand eyes in Raleigh will see the polite kid from Athens Drive High School - the star who said "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am," the slugger with eye-popping power.

They'll recall a hitter so natural he took swings with the varsity squad as a seventh-grader, the pitcher who threw so hard catchers padded their mitts with tape, and the kid who knew he was bound for the majors by age 14, yet never bragged or swaggered.

But mostly, when they tune in tonight, fans in Hamilton's hometown will cheer for second chances. They'll wait for Josh Hamilton the champion to finally stamp out Josh Hamilton the drug-addicted, tattoo-covered mess who nearly drove his career off a cliff - a man who once pawned his wife's wedding ring to buy cocaine.

They'll hope the world gets to see the Josh Hamilton they knew.

"There's going to be some high TV ratings in North Carolina, that's for sure," said Clay Council, a coach who once tossed him batting practice. "Everyone has some kind of association with Josh Hamilton. 'Oh, I went to the same church he did,' or 'Oh, I knew his grandma, who worked with my mother.' Everybody associated with Josh Hamilton is big time."

96 mph fastball

The Hamilton who Raleigh remembers batted .629 as an Athens Drive junior and could throw a 96-mph fastball. By the time he was a sophomore, Coach Stan Mozingo wouldn't play catch with him anymore. His throws had a second gear. Mozingo witnessed two superhuman moments: the double off a curve ball that bounced to the plate and six shutout innings Hamilton pitched in the playoffs, his first outing on the mound after a season-long arm injury.

"His dad said, 'Josh can only throw 50 pitches,'" Mozingo recalled. "Josh kept coming back between innings asking, 'How many was that?' He shut them out on 50 pitches. That was the most unbelievable pitching effort I've ever seen."

Josh the student

But even when he was a senior with the class of '99, days away from being named Major League Baseball's No. 1 draft pick and handed millions of dollars, he kept the grounded outlook of an Athens Drive Jaguar.

"People would come and bring him baseballs to sign," said Shari Frederick, Hamilton's math teacher. "I would turn them away. Once he was in my room, he was Josh the math student. He was not Josh the baseball player, and he was cool with that."

Maybe the most avid fan tuning in tonight will be Ashley Pittman, one-time manager of the Athens Drive team.

A friend indeed

The story most often told about Hamilton's friendship with Pittman, who has Down syndrome, was the time the star hitter ran all the way to the team bus to console his friend, who was alone and crying about a team loss.

By the time Ashley's family reached the bus, Hamilton had perked him back up with some can't-win-them-all wisdom.

"Ashley came downstairs the other night and said, 'Daddy, pack your bags, we're moving to Texas,' " Ashley's father, Lacy Pittman, said.

"Every time Josh hits a home run, he's hollering and yelling and texting his friends. Josh is a good person. He's just gone through some of the valleys we all go through. With him being in the limelight, you're just going to notice more."

Hamilton left Raleigh looking too good to fail. He came back a few years later asking his father for $2,000 to pay a drug debt. Starting tonight, he gets his chance to be The Natural everybody always called him - to be the kid from Athens Drive, at bat in the world's biggest show.

josh.shaffer@newsobserver.com or 829-4818

Author favored by presidents speaks at Reagan Library

Books read by professionals around world

By Michele Willer-Allred
Ventura County Star
http://www.vcstar.com/
October 21, 2010

Vince Flynn greeted President George W. Bush when Bush arrived by Air Force One in Bloomington, Minn., in February, 2006. / Minneapolis Star Tribune photo by Renee Jones Schneider.

Shortly after 9/11, then-White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin reportedly dumped copies of best-selling author Vince Flynn’s novel “Transfer of Power” onto the table in the White House Situation Room in front of his staff.

“‘Everyone needs to read this. We need to come up with a plan,’” said Flynn, recalling the story he was told by Hagin about how his book about terrorists violently raiding the White House and penetrating the West Wing inspired a real-life White House evacuation plan.

Flynn, whose 11th novel, “American Assassin,” was released last week, told an audience Wednesday night in Simi Valley that he likes when his books inspire others to think outside the box, especially when it comes to fighting terrorism.

That’s why, he said, some of the information in his books is not off-limits.

“If (the terrorists are) thinking of it, we need to be thinking about it. What these books have done is that they’ve opened a lot of people’s eyes in Washington,” said Flynn at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

Melissa Giller, director of communications and programs for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation, said the 44-year-old Flynn is the first author the library has hosted who didn’t work for Reagan and who’s not in the political or military arena.

His books are read by most of the presidents, foreign heads and intelligence professionals around the world and are taken very seriously because of their thorough research, she said.

Flynn’s books feature CIA super-agent Mitch Rapp, and they are known to carry prescient warnings about the rise of Islamic radical fundamentalism and terrorism.

“American Assassin” discusses the issue of torture, targeted assassinations and the need for America to take an aggressive stance in fighting its enemies.

Flynn said he grew up as a teenager admiring Reagan, and it was a huge honor to be speaking at the library.

“I have always wanted to be a New York Times best-seller, and I’ve accomplished that and it feels great. But there are a lot of things in my life along that journey that I couldn’t have predicted that are also great. One of them is this evening, right here,” Flynn said.

Flynn talked about how former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush told him they were big fans of his work, and that Bush has jokingly asked him how he really knows so much inside information, which often comes from interviewing CIA and Secret Service agents.

Flynn said he is currently collaborating on a television series about a NYPD counterterrorism detective with Brian Haig, son of Alexander Haig, who served as secretary of state under Reagan.

A casting call is currently being conducted to choose an actor to play Mitch Rapp on the big screen.

“(A movie) is finally going to happen,” Flynn said.

Vince Flynn appears at 7:30 tonight at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina.

http://quailridgebooks.com/

Unindicted Coconspirators

The issue isn’t the coconspirator list, it’s the evidence.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com
October 27, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Much has been made of an appeals-court decision to expunge references to several U.S. Muslim groups from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism-financing case. Too much, in fact.

It was never about the list. It was about what evidence unmistakably tells us: The Muslim Brotherhood and its American satellites are working to undermine the United States from within and to destroy Israel by any possible means, including terrorism. The Brotherhood can hide the list. After all, we should never have seen it in the first place. They can’t hide the evidence — no matter how much help they get from their friends in and out of government. That bell can’t be unrung.

That is the main takeaway from a federal appeals-court ruling last week that has caused plenty of confusion. Sympathizers of various Islamist groups were quick to claim, falsely, that a Fifth Circuit panel had ordered the expunging of all references to those organizations as “unindicted coconspirators” in an important terrorism-financing case. The label had first been applied to them by the Justice Department, which had placed the groups — including CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America), and NAIT (the North American Islamic Trust) — on a list of unindicted coconspirators provided to the judge and defense counsel prior to a 2007 trial.

The inaccurate reports about the appeals-court ruling prompted consternation from commentators who, for years, had been citing the Justice Department designation. Though it was useful for attacking the groups — a worthy end — the commentators had obviously done that without really understanding what the list was and, more significant, what the Islamist organizations had done to merit being listed. The label “unindicted coconspirator” had always been good enough for them — but what to say now that it has been purged?


Ghassan Elashi, CEO of the Holy Land Foundation speaks with the media December 5, 2001 during a press conference in Richardson, Texas. The Holy Land Foundation disputes claims made by the U.S. government that it used charitable donations to fund Hamas and their goal to destroy Israel.

Everyone ought to relax. The ruling didn’t actually expunge anything, and the list — however useful it may have been — was never important. In fact, its contents should never have been disclosed in the first place; CAIR & Co. are actually right about that. But it is the only thing they and their apologists have been right about and, despite what they’d have you think, it is nearly irrelevant at this stage of the game.

A little background is in order. As its charter brays, the terrorist organization Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Like the Brotherhood, Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist and considers the Jewish state’s destruction to be a divine calling. The Brotherhood is a global organization that — with Saudi financial backing — has spent over half a century building an Islamist infrastructure in the United States. Once Hamas was created in 1989, at the start of the Intifada, support for its jihad against Israel became a top Brotherhood priority. Consequently, it mobilized its tentacles in the United States to back Hamas financially and in the court of public opinion.

To make a long story short, the Brotherhood set up an ostensible Muslim charity in Indiana, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), to funnel money to Hamas, primarily in Gaza. Over the years, HLF duly channeled millions of dollars. Finally, the Bush Justice Department indicted top HLF officials for a massive conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

In conspiracy cases, courts order the government to give the defense a list of unindicted coconspirators. The reasons for this have to do with the rules of evidence and the Justice Department’s guidelines for drafting charges.

Usually, big conspiracies involve many more people and entities than the handful of defendants who are standing trial on the indictment. Sometimes the prosecution does not know who all of the bad actors are, sometimes it knows them but hasn’t gathered enough evidence to charge them yet, and sometimes it has enough evidence but hasn’t charged them publicly for various strategic reasons (e.g., they’re likely to go on the lam if they learn they are suspected). The existence of these unindicted coconspirators is important. Let’s say one of them told an undercover agent that the defendant was involved in the plot. That statement is admissible under evidentiary rules. That is, a defendant can be convicted of conspiracy based on the statements of a coconspirator, even if that coconspirator has not been charged in the case.

But who are the coconspirators? It is often not possible to tell by reading the indictment.

To avoid tainting people whom DOJ is not ready to charge with a crime, the department’s guidelines forbid identifying uncharged coconspirators by name in a publicly filed indictment. (That’s why you often see oddities like “coconspirator A” or “company B” in indictments or arrest complaints.)

That’s all well and good, but it does not help a defense lawyer prepare for trial — he must know the names of people whose statements might be used to prove his client’s guilt. To solve this dilemma, the court directs the prosecutor to tell the defense lawyers the names of all the coconspirators about whom the government anticipates offering evidence. It’s called a “coconspirator list,” though that is something of a misnomer, since at least some of the people and entities on it may actually be innocent — because the government hasn’t charged them, they haven’t been formally accused and don’t have an opportunity to clear their names.

That seems awfully unfair, for the same reasons that cause DOJ to refrain from mentioning the names in the indictment. But there’s a salient difference: Indictments must be publicly disclosed once arrests are made; coconspirator lists should not be disclosed. The point of them is not to smear people as evildoers. It is strictly to alert defense counsel about what evidence they may have to confront once the trial starts. So the lists are usually exchanged informally, in a non-public letter from the prosecutor to the defense lawyers or in a sealed court filing.

In the HLF case, the Justice Department goofed — big time. Prosecutors filed the coconspirator list publicly, as an appendix to a pretrial submission that explained the theory of the case to the court and addressed some legal issues. As a result, it became publicly known that the Muslim Brotherhood was the hub of the terrorism-financing scheme and that it claimed as its confederates several well-known Islamist groups — some of which were alleged to have advanced the scheme in various ways. Among the 200-plus names on the list were CAIR, ISNA, and NAIT.

The organizations naturally cried foul, and they had a point. But it was a point of diminishing returns. Due-process principles arguably give one a right not to be tarred by the government in a court filing that could easily be kept under wraps. But a trial is another matter entirely. The trial must be public. That is a big part of why we have trials. A criminal trial is a demonstration of why society should take away a person’s liberty. It must be public so we can be assured of its integrity.

At a trial, a coconspirator is not entitled to be kept anonymous. The jury and the public get to learn the unabridged basis for the government’s accusations. Thus, at the Holy Land Foundation trial, abundant evidence was introduced — much of it in the form of internal documents seized from Muslim Brotherhood officials — proving that the Brotherhood sees its mission in the United States as a “grand jihad” to destroy the West from within by “sabotage.” The Brotherhood formed a Palestine Committee whose mandate was to support Hamas. Palestine Committee members included HLF and, later, the Brotherhood’s new creation, CAIR. Meantime, Brotherhood documents named ISNA and the NAIT as partners in its “grand jihad.” In fact, HLF was housed for a time at ISNA’s Indiana offices, and checks were often routed to Hamas through a joint ISNA/NAIT bank account.

That was what the prosecution’s evidence showed. You can hide the coconspirator list, but the evidence doesn’t go away. That’s why there are diminishing returns for the Islamist groups in grousing about the list. That only calls attention to the fact that the Justice Department cited them in the first place and then, critically, backed it up with evidence.

In that light, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is mostly a non-event. The court merely pointed out the government’s admission that it was wrong to file the coconspirator list publicly — although, interestingly, the judges did not seem as convinced as the Justice Department that this faux pas rises to the level of a constitutional due-process violation. More significantly, though, the Fifth Circuit declined to expunge names from the list or the trial proof. All it agreed to do was unseal a lower court ruling. That, however, is a double-edged sword for the Brotherhood satellites: Yes, the ruling says their Fifth Amendment rights were violated — a fact they obviously see as a PR coup — but it also reportedly describes the proof of their ties to the Brotherhood. (The lower-court ruling has not yet been unsealed but the Fifth Circuit decision clues us in on what it says.)

CAIR, ISNA, and NAIT do not have a branding problem. They have a substance problem. They may be able to falsely frame people as “Islamophobes.” It’s tough to frame facts.

Smug Democrats

By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist
http://www.boston.com/
October 27, 2010

THE HILLS are alive with the sound of liberal Democratic contempt for the electorate. So are the valleys, the prairies, and the coasts. For months, voters have been signaling their discontent with the president, his party, and their priorities; in less than a week, they appear poised to deliver a stinging rebuke. Yet rather than address the voters’ concerns with seriousness and respect, too many Democrats and their allies on the left have chosen instead to slur those voters as stupid, extremist, or too scared to think straight.

At a Democratic fundraiser in Newton this month, offering what he called “a little bit of perspective from the Oval Office,’’ President Obama gave this diagnosis of the American political scene:

“Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.’’

The smug condescension in this — we’re losing because voters are panicky and confused — is matched only by its apparent cluelessness. Does Obama really believe that demeaning ordinary Americans is the way to improve his party’s fortunes? Or that his dwindling job approval is due to the public’s weak grip on “facts and science’’ and not, say, to his own divisive and doctrinaire performance as president?

Perhaps he does. Or perhaps he just says such things when speaking to liberal donors. It was at a San Francisco fundraiser in 2008 that Obama described hard-pressed citizens in the small towns of Pennsylvania as “bitter’’ people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them . . . as a way to explain their frustrations.’’

Obama is far from alone in looking down his nose at the great unwashed. Last month, Senator John Kerry explained that Democrats are facing such headwinds these days because voters are easily swayed dolts: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth.’’

Meanwhile, the rise of the Tea Party movement, one of the most extraordinary waves of civic engagement in modern American politics and a major driver of the 2010 election season, has drawn no end of scorn from Democrats and their cheerleaders in the media.

Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray calls Tea Party members “nutcases,’’ while ABC’s Christiane Amanpour is aghast that the grassroots movement has “really gone to the extreme’’ and is “not conservatism as we knew it.’’ Rob Reiner even smears the Tea Party as Nazi-esque: “My fear is that the Tea Party gets a charismatic leader,’’ the Hollywood director said last week. “All they’re selling is fear and anger and that’s all Hitler sold.’’ And the crop of citizen-candidates running for Congress this year, many of them with Tea Party backing? A “myriad of wackos,’’ sneers the influential liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas.

Trashing conservatives as “nutcases’’ and “wackos’’ — or worse — is all too common among left-wing pundits and politicos. But the electorate isn’t buying it. “Likely voters in battleground districts,’’ reports The Hill in a recent story on a poll of 10 toss-up congressional districts across the country, “see extremists as having a more dominant influence over the Democratic Party than they do over the GOP.’’ Among likely voters, 44 percent think the Democratic Party is overpowered by its extremes (37 percent say that about the Republicans). Even among registered Democrats, 22 percent think their party is too beholden to its extremists.

Heading into next week’s elections, Americans remain a center-right nation, with solid majorities believing that the federal government is too intrusive and powerful, that it does not spend taxpayer’s money wisely or fairly, and that Americans would be better off having a smaller government with fewer services. Nearly halfway through the most left-wing, high-spending, grow-the-government presidential term most voters can remember, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that so many of them are rebelling. The coming Republican wave is an entirely rational response to two years of Democratic arrogance and overreach. As the president and his party are about to learn, treating voters as stupid, malevolent, or confused is not a strategy for victory.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

Josh Hamilton: local high school star to MVP

By Tim Stevens
The Raleigh News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/
October 26, 2010

Writing about the career of Josh Hamilton has been joyous and sad. From baseball phenom derailed by substance abuse to major league star and playoff MVP, his life has been filled with moments of candor and deception.

Texas Rangers' Josh Hamilton watches his two-run home run off of New York Yankees starting pitcher Andy Pettitte as New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada waits for the pitch in the first inning of Game 3 of their Major League Baseball ALCS playoff series in New York, October 18, 2010. (Reuters)

Some of the moments I remember best:

Sitting on the lawn mower: During a break in mowing his parents' lawn in the summer of 1998, Hamilton talked about his goals before his senior year at Athens Drive High School. He said he wanted to become the best baseball player that he could be. His summer was filled with games, practices, showcases and trips. He said he had been to Walt Disney World to play baseball several times but had never set foot in a theme park.

His room: Josh's room was the haven of a baseball fan. There were home run balls, newspaper articles, posters, bats, cleats and baseball cards. His room seemed to be a place to dream.

The home run: Athens Drive was playing at Garner in a tournament when Hamilton launched an incredible home run. It never seemed to rise more than 10 feet off the ground and disappeared from the park instantly. The ball could be heard ricocheting through the trees in right field.

Big Ash: Hamilton befriended Ashley Pittman, a special-needs student who helped with baseball. Hamilton often ate lunch with Pittman. When Ashley was upset after an Athens Drive loss, Hamilton hugged him and sat with him on the bus. "Hambone," Ashley would say. "Big Ash," Hamilton would reply.

1999 MLB draft day: The family had set up tents in the yard for the media. His father Tony paced. Eventually, Josh came to the door and said he had been drafted. When asked, he said he had been taken No. 1 by Tampa Bay. He signed quickly, saying he was more interested in playing than holding out for more money.

Autographs in Greensboro: Hamilton was playing for Princeton, W.Va., when he came for a series in Greensboro. A couple of folding chairs were set up on the field for interviews. He laughed and talked about his love for baseball. A couple of teammates marveled at his talent and also about how accommodating he was signing autographs for fans. Years before, he had been denied an autograph by a major leaguer. He had not forgotten how much that hurt.

The wreck: The Hamiltons, Josh, Tony and mom Linda, were in a horrific traffic accident near Tampa, Fla., in 2001. Josh Hamilton's injuries knocked him out of baseball for a while. Looking back, it was the beginning of Hamilton's off-the-field problems.

Time and trouble: Without baseball, Hamilton had time on his hands. He later said he drank his first alcohol and used his first cocaine in a period of a few hours. He candidly told the club psychologist that he was experimenting with drugs and was sent immediately on the first of a series of rehab trips.

Tattoos: Hamilton came to lunch at a fried chicken place driving a car with his initials stenciled on the side. The sports car wasn't the only thing monogrammed. His arms and legs were covered in tattoos. Asked if they were temporary, he said he wouldn't have a tattoo unless it was permanent. He said, other than the tattoos, that he was the same guy he had always been. That wasn't true. He had already denied he had any substance abuse problems several times.

Fighting back: After nearly hitting bottom, Hamilton began a comeback. He married Katie Chadwick in 2004, and they had a child. He invited me to his home and unveiled every secret, all the details of his battle with addiction. He played catch in the backyard with his daughter. He was trying to get back in baseball. Katie, who had never seen him play, said she wanted Josh to be a good father and husband. But amid all the hope for the future was Hamilton's haunting statement that he often wanted to stop for a beer when he drove past a local convenience store, even though he knew one drink could ruin his life.

Rock bottom: Hamilton was charged with assault after drinking. As revealed in his book, "Beyond Belief," he descended deeper into drug and alcohol addiction.

Recovery: Somehow, and it could not have been easy, he broke his drug habit and was able to return to baseball. He played a few games in Hudson Valley, N.Y. Katie was amazed to see how good her husband was at baseball.

A second chance: Hamilton was cutting lumber when he learned the Cincinnati Reds had traded with the Cubs to obtain him after the Rule 5 draft in 2006. It meant a chance to make it to the major leagues.

All-Star Game: Hamilton put on a memorable home run-hitting demonstration during the 2008 All-Star Game. He brought in local youth coach Clay Council to pitch for him. Years before, Hamilton told me that he wanted to tell people about his faith if he ever had a national platform. He did. He didn't win the All-Star home run contest, but he said he had accomplished his bigger goal, which was telling people about his faith.

Giving back: Hamilton raised a lot of money for charity two years ago. He auctioned his All-Star jersey, saying he had his memories and that he didn't need a shirt. He gave away thousands of dollars in support of an orphanage. Katie said that Josh knew money couldn't buy his happiness. He had been a multimillionaire when he was in his early 20s, and he had been miserable.

The MVP: Watching Hamilton play with the Texas Rangers in the American League Championship Series was remarkable. He is bigger and stronger, but the curly hair looks the same and so does the grin that comes naturally. The joy that he has always shown playing baseball glows from him. He led the American League in batting. He was the ALCS most valuable player and begins his first World Series on Wednesday night against the San Francisco Giants.