June 25, 2003

Hamas Has Made the Same Claims Before

An excellent post on Shark Blog:

Today’s hopeful news : Palestinian officials say Hamas is on the verge of accepting truce
Oh, wait…

June 18, 2003 : Palestinians and Hamas near truce
June 16, 2003 : Palestinian FM -Hamas ceasefire possible on Tuesday
June 15, 2003 : Egyptian mediators work to reach ceasefire deal with Palestinian militants
June 8, 2003 : Hamas Expected to Rejoin Truce Talks
June 3, 2003 : Hamas Official Says Truce Possible with Guarantees
June 1, 2003 : Palestinians confident on ceasefire deal
May 31, 2003 : PNA to meet with Hamas as soon as truce is ready

There’s more, and he’s got links documenting all of it. Check it out.

Dem’s End-Run Around the Constitution: Blocked

You gotta love this. For months we've been reading about how Democrats have been blocking Bush's judicial nominations via filibuster.

The Senate Rules Committee just met and changed the rules so as to limit those filibusters. It so happened that no Democratic members of the Committee showed up for the meeting.

"It's hard to get people to a meeting between 9:30 and 10," Lott said. "We got ours here. The others were going to come but didn't get here by the time we finished our work."

The whole article is here - but Rush has the right take on it.

The Constitution sets out that the president nominates judges and the Senate evaluates them in a simple majority vote - 51 votes - based on the candidate's judicial qualifications, not on their political views. Yet a few extreme Democrats have set out to block President Bush's judicial candidates who have the votes to win confirmation in the full Senate. They do this by filibustering.

Since you need 60 votes to break a filibuster, Democrats have now required far more votes to confirm judges than the Constitution itself does! Well, if the Democrats can illegally amend the Constitution's provision on how many votes are needed to confirm a judge, then the Republican Party can and should do all it can to set things right. Shockingly, the GOP Senate has done just that.

The Associated Press: "A Senate committee with all its Democratic members absent voted to limit filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees Tuesday, a move Republicans hope will usher future federal judges through the Senate faster, even if Democrats want to stop them." Good job, guys. Way to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Fantastic.

Where There’s Smoke… There’s People on the Left Blowing Smoke

For over a month the Left has been accusing Bush of lying to the public. No evidence has yet been found to support the accusation.

The Left purposely conflates being mistaken with lying. And given that Hussein previously admitted possessing WMD, it isn’t even likely Bush was mistaken.

The argument is just a distraction thrown up by the Left to make people forget that Hussein was supporting terrorists who are trying to nuke us.

Why the Left would oppose efforts to halt terrorism—merely in order to get themselves into power—is a question they carefully avoid discussing.

The absence of any proof that Bush lied is beginning to be an embarassment to the Left. The latest thing is that the Left is attempting to avoid embarassment by claiming that, as both Judge and Jury, it has decided to convict Bush of lying, even without any evidence.

Witness this opinion piece from the LA TIMES:

WITH SO MANY PINOCCHIOS IN POWER, WHAT’S A KID TO THINK?

By Susan E. Tifft
When I began teaching at Duke, I was pleased to find that the university had an honor code exhorting students to promise they wouldn’t “lie, cheat or steal” in their academic endeavors. But now I regard the pledge as a quaint artifact.

How can young people take seriously such a vow when everywhere they look they see successful grown-ups getting ahead by playing fast and loose with the truth?

Every day brings fresh accusations that President Bush and his advisors stretched intelligence to get the United States into a war in Iraq, while the one feel-good story of the conflict—the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch—is looking increasingly phony. At least three independent media investigations (the British Broadcasting Corp., the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post) have cast doubt on the initial heroic narrative and questioned whether the military manipulated the episode for propaganda purposes.

See? It doesn’t matter that there’s no proof. It’s enough that “Every day brings fresh accusations.” Never mind that all the accusations are from the Left, which has appointed itself not only Judge and Jury, but also the sole lawyer in their kangaroo court.

Or how about this, from ultra-leftwing madman Robert Scheer, who disgraces the pages of the LA TIMES weekly with his tirades:

THE FACT THAT HUSSEIN’S GONE DOESN’T MAKE LYING RIGHT

...It was OK to lie about the nonexistent evidence of ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda. It was OK to lie about the U.N. weapons inspectors, claiming they were suckered by Hussein. It was OK to lie, not only to Americans but to our allies in this war, about “intelligence” alleging that Iraq’s military had chemical and biological weapons deployed in the field.

Of course, Scheer has no evidence that there were any such lies. It’s the latest tactic of the Left to figure that if they blow enough smoke, pretty soon somebody will think there was a fire.

Doesn’t the Left have anything to offer that can help build up America? Can they do nothing better than to attack actions by the Right intended to defend America from terrorists?