Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America’s first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. He was 49 years old when he died.
No single figure was ever a stronger advocate of our Constitution; and only a few people have made a comparable contribution to the substance of American government. To this day, his importance remains unsurpassed in the areas of sharp finance, principled politics, romantic scandal, hard work, intellectual acuteness, and bravery. Hamilton’s visage on the $10 bill is the only non-presidential face besides Benjamin Franklin to appear on our common currency.
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Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (Mar 29, 2005)
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/yonatan-silverman/the-palestinians-create-a-virtual-state/print/ Bethlehem 7 July 2012 – Following UNESCO’s decision to recognize the Church of the Nativity as a world heritage site in “Palestine,” the Palestinians celebrated the event with the greatest false pomp and hyperbole. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the inclusion is “the most remarkable event on the path of Palestinian state-building since […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/robert-spencer/%e2%80%98adulteress%e2%80%99-slaughtered-in-afghanistan/ A video of a woman, Najiba, being shot dead in Afghanistan while a cheering crowd yells “Allahu akbar,” “Long live Islam,” and “Long live mujahideen” has provoked international outrage. Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, called the shooting “a barbaric attack on a defenceless woman and another stark reminder of the brutalities that were […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1395/barroso_and_van_rompuy_compete_for_clown_of_europe_title For quite some time, I’ve thought of Herman van Rompuy as the poster child of Europe’s incompetent political elite. Virtually unknown to people in the real world (his sole claim to fame is that a British MEP, in a speech that went viral on YouTube, said he resembled a “low-grade bank clerk”), the President […]
http://times247.com/
DNC chair’s hypocrisy on foreign investments
Newsmax
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
News
Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has criticized Mitt Romney’s investments outside the U.S., but financial disclosure forms indicate she held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz20JJFyR00
Hamas summer kids’ camp gives feel for prison
Ynet
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
News
Hamas summer kids’ camp gives feel for prison
Narrow hallways, interrogation rooms painted black, isolation cells and handcuffed mannequins: this is all part of the setting of a new summer camp operated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz20JJhoQWB
Times News
Social Security payouts going to more than 1 million deceased
Stephen Dinan
More than a million dead people are still listed as being alive on Social Security’s master list, according to an inspector general’s audit released this week that found the agency still recorded hundreds of people as having earned wages — even after they’d been dead for more than a year. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz20JJxeLMH
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/07/10/further-those-signs-of-hope-among-america%e2%80%99s-political-class/?singlepage=true A week or two ago, I wrote a brief column about some signs of hope among America’s political class — a perverse undertaking, you might think, given the tawdry, preening, grasping character of most American politicians of both parties today. But there are, thank God, some exceptions. In that earlier column I mentioned in […]
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0712/postpone_hearings_ramadaan.php3?printer_friendly
Lawyers for accused Sept. 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four co-defendants are seeking to postpone their Aug. 8-12 hearing at Guantanamo, noting it falls toward the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The trial judge, Army Col. James Pohl, set the date for the hearing in May and specifically ruled out an extension on grounds that it coincided with Islam’s fasting month. He noted in his order then that no defense lawyer at that point had raised objection to a hearing that coincided with Ramadan. But the attorneys do just that in a June 21 filing currently under seal on the Pentagon’s war court website entitled “Joint Defense Motion for the Military Commission to Respect the Religious Observances of Enemy Prisoners under Common Article 3.”
Pohl is hearing motions in another Guantanamo case next week. But that hearing ends by July 19, before Ramadan starts. The 9/11 case pre-trial motions would be heard toward the end of Ramadan.
“The last 10 days of Ramadan commemorate the night God – Allah – revealed the Holy Quran to the Prophet Mohammed,” said James Connell, the Pentagon-paid defense counsel for Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. “These 10 days are the most holy period of the Muslim calendar and are typically observed by fasting, prayer, and seclusion.”
The Sept. 11 prosecutor opposes delay in a separate motion, also under seal at the war court website:
http://www.mc.mil/CASES/MilitaryCommissions.aspx
Next month’s would not be the first Ramadan war court appearance by Mohammed and the four men accused of orchestrating, funding and training the 19 terrorists who hijacked the four aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, killingly nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
The five men were brought to war court for hearings in September 2008, as Ramadan was reaching its conclusion that year on the Muslim calendar during a since-aborted Bush effort to try the men before a different judge, a U.S. Marine Corps colonel. Mohammed objected to the timing of that 2008 session during his appearance on behalf of the five men who face the death penalty if convicted at their capital murder trial.
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/07/10/who-cares-about-libya-republicans-should-stay-on-message/?singlepage=true
So far, the Arab ballot box has given us Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a supposedly moderate Islamist party in Tunisia, an Iranian-allied regime in Iraq, and… a putative success in Libya, celebrated by the Wall Street Journal editorial page with the pronouncement, “Once again, Arabs demonstrate their desire for self-government.”
The “once again” part is dubious, for the WSJ does not mention where else this “desire for self-government” has produced the desired result. But the Republican establishment, having signed on to the Bush Freedom Agenda and its gigantic cost in blood and treasure, cannot gracefully back away from a discredited ideological commitment. While the obnoxious military and the unspeakable Muslim Brotherhood square off in Egypt, and the tech-savvy democrats of Tahrir Square disappear, the WSJ praises the one Arab election that appears to justify the grand enterprise of exporting democracy. Why beat up on other conservatives? Because focus on the supposed Libyan success lets the Obama administration off the hook at a moment when Republicans should pillory the president for coddling a terrorist nest like the Muslim Brotherhood.
The WSJ editors wrote:
It’s fashionable these days to say that NATO’s intervention in Libya left that Arab country no better off, but tell that to the Libyans who joyously voted in free elections on Saturday. An election alone does not a democracy make, but Libyans understand it’s better than the tyranny of Gadhafi & Sons, Inc.
The vote for a new legislative body wasn’t perfect but went off better than expected. Armed groups in the eastern, oil-rich region around Benghazi stormed a couple of polling stations, and tribal groups in the south tried to sabotage the vote. Yet a majority—with an estimated turnout of 60%—defied the threats. The post-election celebrations around Libya were the most spirited since Moammar Gadhafi’s demise in October.
Preliminary results indicate a strong showing by a secular alliance headed by a former rebel leader, Mahmoud Jibril. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists may also claim a large share of seats in the 200-member General National Congress once official results come out this week.
Libya has twice Egypt’s GDP per capita (about $6,000 vs. $3,000). It has no shortages of fuel or food. It has the world’s 10th-largest proven petroleum reserves. If there is a pie to divide, it is at least possible for sectarian and political factions to agree to divide it, and there is less incentive to extreme risks. Libya, moreover, has only 6.4 million people, less than half the population of Cairo. Its capital, Tripoli, has only 1.7 million, a tenth the size of Cairo. Libya is no more typical of the Arab world than is the Saudi monarchy, which remains in power because it has enough money to buy off any prospective opposition, at least for the time being.
With massive NATO intervention and a lot of money to spread around, it is not difficult to stabilize Libya (or, for that matter, Tunisia, with $4,300 GDP per capita and 10.4 million people). It is also easy to keep Saudi Arabia stable because the regime has enough money to buy off prospective opponents, at least for the time being. To compare Libya to Egypt is inappropriate. It is the sort of thing that “political scientists” who think in terms of “political models” might do. I avoid contact with such people in case whatever ails them might be contagious.
Egypt has some 82 million people of whom perhaps 40 million live on $2 a day. Nearly half of all Egyptians are functionally illiterate and perhaps two-fifths are unemployed or marginally employed. They live on subsidies from a government that is on the verge of bankruptcy, and (as I posted yesterday) have been kept from catastrophe by droplets of Saudi help. The Obama administration’s ideological obsessions and incompetence are driving the largest Arab country into a disaster. Republicans need to stay on message here.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/the_west_bank_may_never_be_the_same.html A legal tsunami gathering strength in Israel will soon engulf the region. An official report is soon to be released that says the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) does not apply to Judea and Samaria aka West Bank and that Israel has every right to build settlements there. In January of this year, PM Netanyahu […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
Say that you get a tempting offer from a Nigerian prince and decide to invest some money in helping him transfer his vast fortune from Burkina Faso or Dubai over to the bank across the street. The seemingly simple task of bringing over the 18 million dollars left to him by his father hits some snags which require you to put in more and more of your own money.
Eventually you have invested more than you ever would have ever done up front, just trying to protect the sunk cost, the money that you already sank into Prince Hussein Ngobo’s scheme. And to protect your self-esteem, you must go on believing that, no matter what Prince Ngobo does, he is credible and sincere. Any failings in the interaction are either your fault or the fault of some third party. Anyone who tells you otherwise must be a Ngobophobe.
Now imagine that Prince Ngobo’s real name is Islam.
That is where Western elites find themselves now. They invested heavily in the illusion of a compatible Islamic civilization. Those investments, whether in Islamic immigration or Islamic democracy or peace with Islam have turned toxic, but dropping those investments is as out of the question as writing off Prince Ngobo as a con artist and walking away feeling like a fool. Western elites, who fancy themselves more intelligent and more enlightened than the wise men and prophets of every religion, and who base their entire right to rule on that intelligence and enlightenment, are not in the habit of admitting that they are fools.
The Arab Springers who predicted that the Muslim uprisings would bring a new age of secularism, freedom and an end to the violence between Islam and the West; are busy writing up new checks. Thomas Friedman is penning essays explaining why the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood will mean regional stability and peace with Israel (and if it doesn’t, it will be our fault.)
It’s not insanity; it’s the term that rhymes with a certain river in Egypt. The Brotherhood’s victory discredits the Arab Spring, which discredits the bid for Arab Democracy, which discredits the compatibility of Islam and the folks on Fifth Avenue. Follow the river back along its course and suddenly the Clash of Civilizations becomes an undeniable fact. It’s easier to give up and let the river of denial carry you further along until, five years from now, you find yourself explaining why Al-Qaeda ruling Libya is actually a good thing for everyone.
