MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Tony Thomas From Ragged Centre to Flush Left

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

The Australian has largely resisted the smothering green/left orthodoxy that banished all dissenting perspectives from the Fairfax rags and ABC. When age or ailment sees Rupert Murdoch’s guiding hand lifted from his paper’s helm, don’t expect things to stay that way. The Weekend Review is the sad preview.

The Australian is normally a voice for sanity in this country’s political debate. But Editor-in-Chief Paul Whittaker really ought to take a look at what goes into the Review magazine inside The Weekend Australian – editor Michelle Gunn.

On the same day the paper hit the streets on Saturday, July 29, Sydney counter-terror operatives were arresting four Islamists over an alleged plot to bring down a domestic airliner with an explosive device. This alleged plot was the thirteenth thwarted in the past three years. Had it succeeded, hundreds of deaths would have traumatised the country .

Now turn to page 22 of Review (editor Tim Douglas, and Literary Editor Stephen Romei, who staff say selects the book reviewers)), in which fantasy novelist and journalist Claire Corbett reviews three books on counter-terror units, including Sons of God about the Victorian Special Operations Group and two about the US Navy SEALS, The Killing School and The Operator. She writes,

“As historian Yuval Noah Harari points out in his 2015 book Homo Deus terrorists have almost no capacity to threaten a functioning state. The danger comes most from our over-reactions.

‘Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about three million people,’ Harari writes,’ terrorists killed a total of 7697 people across the globe , most of them in developing countries.’[1] He notes that for the average person in the affluent West, soft drinks pose a far deadlier threat than terrorists.” (My emphases).

Thanks for that, Claire Corbett, and thanks for your second-hand imbecility about soft drinks’ deadly threat. But no thanks, Review editors, for allowing Corbett/Harari to trash The Australian’s reputation for intellectual rigor, let alone common sense.

Let’s see what else Harari’s on about (not mentioned by Corbett) besides deadly soft drinks. He’s a history professor of repute and celebrity at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, “probably the most fashionable thinker on the planet right now,” according to the Daily Mail.

Writing only a month ago, after the Manchester slaughter, he claims that Britons need to accept that terrorists may kill a few people a year.

‘The most dangerous thing about terrorism is the over-reaction to it. I mean, the terrorist attacks themselves are of course horrific, and I don’t intend to minimise the tragedy of the people who are killed, but if you look at the big picture it’s a puny threat…

For every person who is killed by a terrorist in the UK there are at least 100 who die in car accidents. Nevertheless, terrorism manages to capture our imagination in a way that car accidents don’t. You kill 20 people and you have 60 million people frightened that there is a terrorist behind every tree. That causes them to over-react. To do things like persecute entire communities, invade countries, go to war, change our way of life in terms of human rights and privacy, because of a tiny threat…

We have to give up this idea that we can completely abolish terrorism and that even the tiniest attack is completely unacceptable. You have domestic violence or rape and we don’t say, “Let’s have a curfew: men are not allowed on the street after eight o’clock.” If we could have such an attitude towards terrorism – “OK, every year there are two, three or four incidents of terrorism, a couple of dozen people get killed, it’s terrible, but OK, we get on with our lives” – it will be a far more effective response.’

In 2015, he was saying “Most terrorist attacks kill only a handful of people.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

David Archibald: Tempting the Dragon

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

China’s grim determination to claim the South China Sea as its private lake needs an incident to demonstrate Beijing’s resolve. The US is problematic, given its undoubted willingness to respond, but the British warships Boris Johnson is dispatching, well they will make the perfect targets.

Bhutan is considered by some to be the world’s happiest country. Recently Chinese troops entered that happy country to construct a road and are currently in a face-off with Indian troops sent to stop them. It appears that it all has to do with internal Chinese politics.

There is to be a 19th Party Congress in China in 2017. The year is more than half over but no date has yet been set for it. The Congress is supposed to be in autumn, so thousands of high level Chinese officials will have their schedules disrupted at short notice. It seems that President Xi needs to shore up his position and, with the failure of the Henry Kissinger-aided effort to sell Taiwan down the river, military antics at the other end of the Middle Kingdom are being used to demonstrate what a tough guy President Xi is. Perhaps we will know if China’s military adventurism has been deemed successful when a date is set for the 19th Party Congress.

The UK has entered the fray with an undertaking made by Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, that the UK’s two new aircraft carriers will undertake a freedom-of-navigation exercise in the South China Sea. The first of these, HMS Queen Elizabeth, has started sea trials. The second carrier isn’t expected to enter service until 2020. So the UK has plenty of time to change its mind about sending under-armed warships into the South China Sea without air cover. The last time the UK tried that did ended badly. In December, 1941, the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse were sent north from Singapore to interdict the Japanese fleet. The Japanese sunk both almost effortlessly.

There is another parallel from earlier in the 20th century. In February, 1904, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet in Port Arthur. Russia responded by sending part of its Baltic fleet to Vladivostok. After setting off in October 1904, the Russian fleet sailed 25,000 km and reached the Straits of Tsushima in late May 1905, where most of it was sunk by the Japanese in a two day battle.

The modern UK sacrificial offerings to Mars may be aircraft carriers but they will be carrying the F-35B (perhaps) and be facing Chinese shored-based anti-ship missiles at point blank range. The UK is operating under the assumption that China won’t sink their shiny new ships, but China might. Consider that when Australia made similar noises last year about conducting freedom-of-navigation exercises, China concluded that Australia would “be an ideal target for China to warn and strike” — as it would from the Chinese perspective because it would demonstrate resolve and not necessarily lead to a war. The result would be to reinforce China’s position. The same would be true of the UK losing a few warships. The Chinese population is continually reminded of the Century of Humiliation which started with the Opium Wars instigated by the UK. There would be trade sanctions for a while if British warships were sunk but President Xi’s position would be reinforced and become unassailable.

If China attacked ships, aircraft or bases of Vietnam, the United States and Japan then the result would be a war in which all parties became involved. The opportunity to sink anybody else’s ships would be welcomed by China because President Xi would see off any challengers to the throne.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Rising Tides And Higher Stakes. Cybersecurity Thought-Leader Chuck Brooks In Interview

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

What are the new Cybersecurity stakes – what are the vulnerabilities and risks?https://highperformancecounsel.com/new-cybersecurity-stakes-interview-cybersecurity-thought-leader-chuck-brooks/

We live in world of algorithms; x’s and o’s. Our digital world is ripe for access and compromise by those who want do harm from just a laptop and server. A myriad of recent breaches have demonstrated that as consumers we are becoming more and more dependent upon digital commerce. Our banking accounts, credit cards, and financial daily activities are interconnected. We are all increasingly vulnerable from hackers, phishers, and malware proliferating across all commercial verticals.

In the past year, the employment of ransomware has become a method of cyber-attack choice by hackers. This is because many networks (especially hospitals, utilities, universities, and small businesses) are comprised of different systems, devices and often lack required patching and updating necessary to thwart attacks. The recent Wannacry, and Petya attacks were certainly wake up calls to the disruptive implications of ransomware. We can expect to see more such attacks because of the ease of infection and because the vulnerabilities to networks still remain.

Ransomware is not a new threat, it has been around for at least 15 years, but it has become a trending one. Experts estimate that there are now 124 separate families of ransomware and hackers have become very adept at hiding malicious code. Success for hackers does not always depend on using the newest and most sophisticated malware. It is relatively easy for a hacker to do. In most cases, they rely on the most opportune target of vulnerability, especially with the ease of online attacks.

More ominous are the Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS). Tech Target provides a succinct definition of A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attack in which multiple compromised computer systems attack a target, such as a server, website or other network resource, and cause a denial of service for users of the targeted resource. The flood of incoming messages, connection requests or malformed packets to the target system forces it to slow down or even crash and shut down, thereby denying service to legitimate users or systems. The connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its billions of connected devices is conducive for DDoS activities. In 2016 a DDoS attacks were launched against a Domain Name System (DNS) called Dyn. The attack directed a variety of IoT connected devices to overload and take out internet platforms and services.

Consider the dire and eye opening facts: Hackers attack every 39 seconds and around one billion accounts and records were compromised worldwide last year. There are estimates that global Cybercrime damage costs will reach $6 trillion annually by 2021. Cybercrime is growing exponentially and so are the risks.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

World Pence Delivers Tough Speech on ‘Unpredictable’ Russia He tells audience in Estonia that impending U.S. sanctions won’t be lifted until Moscow changes its ways By Peter Nicholas

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

TALLINN, Estonia—Vice President Mike Pence issued one of the Trump administration’s toughest attacks to date on Russia, coming to a nation on Russia’s border to warn against aggression from the “unpredictable neighbor to the east.”

Mr. Pence said Monday that President Donald Trump would sign a bill passed by Congress that imposes new sanctions on Russia, despite earlier reservations from the White House and a promise from Moscow to expel hundreds of U.S. diplomats in return.

Mr. Pence said the Russia must be held accountable for its actions, saying the U.S. wouldn’t lift sanctions until it sees as a reversal of “the actions that caused the sanctions in the first place.”

“At this very moment, Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force, undermine the democracies of sovereign nations, and divide the free nations of Europe one against another,” he said.

Mr. Pence is in the midst of a three-day overseas trip that includes stops in two other countries that Moscow has seen as its traditional sphere of influence: the former Soviet state of Georgia and the Balkan state of Montenegro. His repeated message is that the U.S. won’t abandon allies living in Russia’s shadow.

The vice president delivered his remarks outside Estonia’s defense headquarters, surrounded by symbols of military resolve. Flanking him were armored tanks and standing in front of the stage were hundreds of U.S., British, French and Estonian troops, hands clasped behind their backs.

Moscow has accused the U.S. of threatening Russia by pushing for the expansion of NATO up to its borders through the admittance of the Baltic states and the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia.

Before the speech, Mr. Pence and the presidents of the three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, received a private military briefing that opened with an officer referencing the “eastern flank of NATO.”

Mr. Pence praised Estonia for being one of just five in the NATO alliance to devote 2% of its gross domestic product to defense. The country of 1.3 million has pushed for more U.S. air cover for the region, but NATO officials say its 183-mile border with Russia would be hard to defend against a determined Russian assault. A Rand Corp. study last year showed that Russia could beat back NATO forces reach the outskirts of Tallinn, the capital, in just a few days.

In his 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump often spoke of more cooperative dealings with Russia, and described NATO as obsolete. But he has since toughened his line on Russia, and Mr. Pence’s remarks signaled again that the U.S. supported NATO’s common-defense provision, known as Article 5.

“The United States rejects any attempt to use force, threats, intimidation or malign influence in the Baltic States or against any of our treaty allies—and under President Donald Trump, the United States of America will stand firmly behind our (NATO) Article 5 pledge of mutual defense—and the presence of U.S. Armed Forces here today proves it,” Mr. Pence said. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

14 Dead After Suicide Bombing in Northeastern Nigeria Bombing blamed on the Boko Haram extremist group

Posted By on August 1st, 2017

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Authorities in northeastern Nigeria say at least 14 people are dead after a suicide bombing blamed on the Boko Haram extremist group.

Bello Dambatta, head of the rapid response team for the State Emergency Agency SEMA, said a female suicide bomber sneaked into a building late Friday in Dikwa, east of the city of Maiduguri, and detonated her explosives.

Volunteers said at least two dozen others were wounded and had to wait until Saturday morning to be evacuated because of safety concerns and the lack of phone service.

Meanwhile, three geologists abducted in an ambush attack Tuesday by Boko Haram insurgents have appeared in new video calling on the Nigerian government to negotiate the workers’ release. Authorities say at least 48 people were killed in that attack near Lake Chad.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Women’s Studies Prof: ‘I Wish Someone Would Just Shoot’ Trump By Tom Knighton

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

I get it. Donald Trump isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Some people love him, some people hate him, and some of us just watch the left howl over the guy while personally feeling kind of “meh” about him as president.

But some Leftist academics, for example, hate him so much they wish for assassination. Here’s the latest example, as reported by The College Fix:

“Trump is a f*cking joke. This is all a sham. I wish someone would just shoot him outright,” tweeted educator Kevin Allred from his personal account Friday night.

Earlier that day, Allred also tweeted the infamous picture of comedian Kathy Griffin holding a decapitated model of Trump’s bloody head under the word “mood.”

Allred, who has a history of controversial tweets, was listed as an adjunct instructor in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program at Montclair State University as recently as July 29, according to a screenshot of the university’s website.

..

After Allred tweeted his presidential assassination sentiments on Friday, he received reaction — and some backlash. He quickly deleted the tweet, but continued to defend it, asserting just 25 minutes later in a tweet: “saying you wish donald trump was dead is different than making a direct threat against him. just saying … ”

In 2008, before Obama was even president, a Fox News contributor was forced to apologize for a joke regarding the then senator that was, at its worst, a similar kind of remark.

In 2010, blogger Solomon “Solly” Forrell was blasted by the left after tweeting that the country had gotten over the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy and would get over Obama being assassinated, too. The left was furious over it.

These were just two examples of liberal outrage over similar remarks. Why is it only wrong when the right does it?

CONTINUE AT SITE

BOOKS Comments turned off

The First Republican Candidate A dashing explorer before his nomination, John C. Frémont spent the 1856 presidential campaign fencing, riding his horse and strolling in New York. Robert K. Landers reviews ‘Lincoln’s Pathfinder’ by John Bicknell.

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

Accepting the Republican Party’s first presidential nomination in July 1856, John C. Frémont declared that the very “design of the nation, in asserting its own independence and freedom,” made it imperative “to avoid giving countenance to the extension of slavery.” This assertion about the hottest issue of the day would be Frémont’s “only substantive statement of the campaign,” John Bicknell notes in “Lincoln’s Pathfinder.” At the time, candidates for president customarily chose not to stoop to speechifying or actively seeking the voters’ favor.

That was fine with Frémont, a dashing explorer (nicknamed “the Pathfinder”) whose best-selling reports on his expeditions in the American West had made him famous. Though he had served briefly in 1850-51 as one of California’s first U.S. senators, the 43-year-old former Democrat was “a babe in the woods when it came to politics,” Mr. Bicknell says. Residing in New York City, the Republican candidate spent most of his time “fencing, riding his horse, and taking long walks through what was then still not an entirely urban landscape.”
American explorer, army officer and politician John C. Frémont.
American explorer, army officer and politician John C. Frémont. Photo: Getty Images
Lincoln’s Pathfinder

By John Bicknell
(Chicago Review, 355 pages, $26.99)

The campaign for Frémont was left to others, chiefly his wife, Jessie, the daughter of former Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Besides organizing the campaign, she made the case for Frémont to newspapermen and influential public figures whom she received in her New York home. Though women couldn’t vote, Mr. Bicknell notes, “Republicans were not shy about making direct appeals to women”—presumably hoping they would sway the men in their lives. Next to Frémont’s heroic but taciturn persona, Jessie’s own appeared “beautiful, graceful, intellectual, and enthusiastic,” as Frank Leslie’s Weekly described her. Women’s clubs sprang up in the North in her name. Women imitated her hairstyle, adopted her favorite color (violet) for their outfits, named their newborns after her—and turned out “in huge numbers” for Frémont rallies, which had banners hailing “Jessie’s Choice.”

Frémont faced strong opposition in the general election. Even his famous father-in-law, believing that preserving the Union was more urgent than containing slavery, was voting Democratic. Though candidate Frémont is the leading character in “Lincoln’s Pathfinder,” his opponents and the forces arrayed against the nascent, anti-slavery Republican Party necessarily play large roles, too.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Unused Bully Pulpit As Reagan proved, there’s nothing as powerful as an Oval Office address.By William McGurn

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

Not yet a week after the most extravagant Republican Party botch since the Bill Clinton impeachment, Beltway fingers are still pointing. And why not? The failure to make good on seven years’ worth of ObamaCare repeal promises has many fathers.

Take your pick. Sen. John McCain’s pique. The squishiness of those such as Sen. Rob Portman who voted for repeal when it didn’t matter, and then voted nay when it did. Behind-the-scenes undermining by governors such as Ohio’s John Kasich. A GOP bereft of party discipline.

There is truth to all these. Even so, perhaps the most obvious reason goes almost unmentioned: The Republican bills were unpopular.
This does not mean they were bad bills, notwithstanding the many compromises lawmakers included. It does mean that their merits went mostly unsold to the public. This allowed Democrats and their allies to paint the bills as but the latest Republican attempt to rob from the poor ($800 billion in Medicaid cuts) to give to the rich ($600 billion in tax cuts).

Even more astounding is that as this narrative took hold the president of the United States neglected the greatest bully pulpit of all: the Oval Office.

Notwithstanding his flaws, Donald Trump has proved himself able to connect with voters, especially those who voted for Barack Obama, in a way other Republicans have not. But the Trump White House has yet to recognize the unique punch a formal, televised address from behind the desk of the Oval Office still carries, even in the age of Twitter .

Ronald Reagan’s use of the Oval to push his tax cuts through in 1981 is a textbook example. Yes, the Gipper schmoozed those on the opposite side of the aisle. He had to, given that Democrats controlled the House. But as likeable as he was, folks on both sides of the political aisle were skeptical about his proposed tax cuts.

In a July 27 Oval Office address, Reagan made his pitch. In simple language, he gently mocked the Democratic leadership claims that their bill “gives a greater break to the workers than ours.” He said the whole controversy came down to whose money it was—the people who earned it or the government that wanted to spend it. And his call for Americans to “contact your senators and congressmen” to urge them to vote for his tax cuts touched off what Speaker Tip O’Neill described as a “telephone blitz like this nation has never seen.”

Though it’s now popular to reminisce about the warm cuddly Reagan who put partisanship aside, that’s not the way it was seen at the time. The day after his speech, the New York Times reported Reagan had “engaged in a series of partisan attacks on his opponents on Capitol Hill.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Roanoke College will launch a new Center for Economic Freedom

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

Roanoke launches new Center for Economic FreedomRoanoke College will launch a new Center for Economic Freedom with a special event in September.

Inspired by economist Milton Friedman and his passion for free markets and individual choice, the Center for Economic Freedom’s mission is to educate students and the community on the freedom of markets and individual choice in a liberal arts setting. Dr. Alice Kassens, the John Shannon professor of economics, will direct the Center, which will be funded by grants from several foundations.

Through the Center’s programs, the goals are to:

Promote an environment of educated discourse and discovery
Explore the role of economic freedom and individual rights in prosperous societies
Motivate students to actively seek opportunities in classically liberal minded scholarship and service
Develop a network of alumni and friends that remain active in the Center for Economic Freedom

The first event will be a public lecture to mark the opening of the Center for Economic Freedom Lecture Series on September 1 with featured speaker Dr. Chris Coyne. He is the associate director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Coyne has written several books, including Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails. He is a prolific writer of articles for scholarly journals, has published numerous policy briefs, and also has written for the Daily Caller, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and others. Coyne is the co-editor in chief of the Review of Austrian Economics, the coeditor of the Independent Review, and the book-review editor of Public Choice. He is a member of the Board of Scholars for the Virginia Institute for Public Policy.

“I have admired Milton Friedman, both his work and style, since I first studied economics,” Kassens said. “The Center for Economic Freedom is a way to bring his ideas to students and the Roanoke College community to expand the public discourse regarding markets and regulation. I am thrilled to open the Center officially in September with a lecture by Chris Coyne.”

In addition to the annual lecture series, the Center will host a variety of events and activities for students, both those majoring in economics and those studying other disciplines. Opportunities for students include an economics reading group, a research assistantship, an economic freedom group and library of materials related to economic freedom. The center also will have a seminar travel fund to help support student travel. The center also will sponsor a faculty reading group and will hold Milton Friedman Remembrance Day each year on November 16, the anniversary of his death.

For more on the Center for Economic Freedom, visit the center’s web page, follow the center on Facebook
and Twitter @CEFreedomRC for the latest information. The email address is freedom@roanoke.edu.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Pakistani Hackers Working for the DNC By Roger Kimball

Posted By on July 31st, 2017

At last, I am in a position to help the New York Times. It’s a good feeling. As anyone who has stumbled upon their website knows, our former paper of record, underscoring its insatiable appetite to provide the public with all the news that fits its agenda, prominently features a solicitation for hot tips: Got a confidential news tip? it asks. Click and amaze the world.https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/30/pakistani-hackers-working-dnc/

I have a tip, an important one, though I cannot in truth call it “confidential.” Over the last few days, in fact, it has been blazoned across the samizdat press, outlets that your typical Times reader may never have heard of, or, if he has, that he reflexively discounts.

What’s it all about, Alfie? Computer hacking. A senior political figure threatening law enforcement officials. Destruction of evidence. Collusion with foreign powers. Financial corruption. Incompetence. Maladministration. Hot stuff.

Russia? Trump, Sr., Jr., or both? Nope.

It’s U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), former head of the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton groupie, and, right now, the Barbie Doll in the center of (at last!) a real scandal involving a Pakistani computer guru called Imran Awan, his wife Hina Alvi, various other family members, and the computer servers of various Democratic congressmen, including Schultz.

Last week, Awan was nabbed by the FBI at Dulles Airport trying to flee to Pakistan. His wife had already flown the coop for Lahore in March, taking $12,400 with her. (The poor thing forgot to read the fine print you see in all those travel advisories that it is a felony to transport more than $10,000 in currency without reporting it.)

Sunday is a big day of the week for The New York Times. Were you or (per impossible) I the editor of the Gray Lady, this story would have occupied a prominent place on the front page of Sunday’s edition. And sure enough, there it was, above the fold . . . Oh, wait, I was mistaken. It was not DWS after all. Silly mistake. It was actually an African herder surrounded by a bunch of goats. Also above the fold was a rare Times story lambasting Donald Trump. About Wasserman Schultz and the Iwan scandal there was precisely . . . nothing.

Not that the Times has totally ignored the story. On Thursday, the paper ran a deflationary column under the headline, “Trump Fuels Intrigue Surrounding a Former I.T. Worker’s Arrest.”

Isn’t English wonderful? “Trump fuels intrigue” is almost neutral-sounding (almost). But what does it mean to your averageTimes reader? “Trump fuels,” i.e., forget about it. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Savor the opener:

For months, conservative news outlets have built a case against Imran Awan, his wife, two brothers and a friend, piece by piece.

To hear some commentators tell it, with the help of his family and a cushy job on Capitol Hill, Mr. Awan, a Pakistani-American, had managed to steal computer hardware, congressional data and even—just maybe—a trove of internal Democratic National Committee emails that eventually surfaced last summer on WikiLeaks. It helped that the story seems to involve, if only tangentially, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman who is the former chairwoman of the committee and an ally of Hillary Clinton’s.

I add the boldface to highlight the tilt. Further along in the story, the Times goes full bromide: “few if any of the fundamental facts of the case have come into focus. The criminal complaint against Mr. Awan filed on Monday alleges that he and his wife conspired to secure a fraudulent loan, not to commit espionage or political high jinks.”

“Political high jinks,” eh? Cute. I think that qualifies as an example of (wait for it) floccinaucinihilipilification, “the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.” Neither espionage nor high jinks. Really, nothing but the usual noxious pabulum served up by conservative news outlets trading in fuzzy “fundamental facts.”

Right.

Yesterday at National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy laid out the case with his usual thoroughness and precision. McCarthy is the former federal prosecutor who put the Blind Sheik, the chap responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing, behind bars, a fact a I mention lest you think he was just another knuckle-dragging right-wing neanderthal whom you can ignore with impunity.