Displaying posts published in

October 2016

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Alaska 2016: Comeback Kid vs. Most Liberal Republican in the Senate By Fritz Pettyjohn

By on October 8th, 2016

In 2010, incumbent and write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski defeated the Republican nominee for Senate, Joe Miller, with 40% of the vote (100,000 votes) to Miller’s 35% (90,000 votes) and Democrat Scott McAdams’s 25% (60,000 votes). The poor showing of McAdams was a result of underfunding ($100,000 total) and a realization by Alaskan Democrats, led by Democratic U.S. senator Mark Begich, that the race was really between Miller and Murkowski. For his own purposes, principally his chances of winning re-election in 2014, Begich preferred Murkowski to Miller. He had served with her in the Senate for two years and had developed a mutually beneficial relationship with her. As a liberal Republican, she was close to Begich, a moderate Democrat, ideologically, and they shared many common political interests in Alaska. When he ran for re-election in 2014, Begich touted their close working relationship to such an extent that Murkowski was forced to publicly distance herself from him. In 2010, Murkowski was able to assemble 40% of the electorate because of an ad hoc coalition with the Democratic Party, or at least the Begich wing of that party.

Recreating that coalition is her path to victory again in 2016, but Begich Democrats now prefer Miller. Begich wants to return to the Senate, as evidenced by his flirtation with the idea of running as a write-in this year. Two years ago, as an incumbent, he lost to Dan Sullivan, and if he challenges him in 2020, the situation will be reversed. He will be the challenger, Sullivan, a savvy politician, the incumbent. But if Miller is elected, he’ll be up for re-election in 2022. This is a much more winnable race in Begich’s eyes. He thinks Miller is a wild-eyed extremist who will embarrass himself in office. Begich will run against him, and also arrange for an independent candidacy to draw moderate Republican support away from Miller. In 2022, Begich will be a vigorous 60 years old, with an empty nest and a burning desire to redeem himself and the Begich brand. He wants Miller, not Murkowski, as his opponent.

The Begich wing of the Alaska Democratic Party is supporting the independent candidacy of political newcomer Margaret Stock, an idealistic environmentalist, a woman who believes, with a good showing, that she has a future in Alaska politics. She has reportedly assembled a war chest of $250,000 and has the resources to conduct a serious campaign. She will attend all of the debates, including Kodiak on October 12 and Barrow on October 26. She’s a good government mainstream liberal Democrat and a far superior candidate to the 2010 Democratic nominee, Scott McAdams, who was a sacrificial lamb. She could easily exceed the 25% of the vote gathered by McAdams, except for the wild card in this Senate race, the Democratic nominee, former Republican state legislator Ray Metcalfe.

Metcalfe founded the Republican Moderate Party of Alaska in 1986, and in the 1998 governor’s race he won 13,000 votes, 6% of the total, as its candidate. He’s a reform candidate and has attempted for years to expose the corruption of the Ted Stevens political machine, which included not only Frank and Lisa Murkowski, but Stevens’s son, former State Senate president Ben Stevens. Metcalfe’s Alaska Public Offices Commission complaint against Ben Stevens led to a raid on Stevens’s offices by the FBI and his abandonment of a career in politics. In Metcalfe’s mind, and in truth, Lisa Murkowski is the illegitimate heiress of the corrupt Stevens organization. The political power of Stevens, and now Lisa Murkowski, depended on “Stevens money” – as much as $1 billion and more in federal pork projects each year. That money is no longer available, and thus the glue that held the Stevens machine together no longer exists.

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

ISIS Already Is Here By James Lewis

By on October 8th, 2016

If this article by Adm. James Lyons (USN, ret) is correct, and I believe it is, ISIS will start to stage attacks on US home territory. 9/11/01 was one example of a Jihadist attack, backed by the same Sunni Wahhabi forces that has now declared that ISIS is conducting Islamic warfare following the “proper” war theology, including suicide-murders, genocide against civilians, horrific abuse of women and children, etc., all for the sake of Allah. Admiral Lyons has claimed high-level government penetration by Jihadists for years. Earlier this year the European Union was incapable of resisting a tide of Jihadi “Syrian refugees,” aided and abetted by Turkey’s neo-Ottoman Jihadist, Recip Erdogan. (Many of the “refugees” had been settled in Turkey).

More than 30 million potentially radical Muslims have been imported over the years into Europe, constituting an enormous Fifth Column. The Saudis have built mosques for them, and staffed them with Wahhabi imams, who take their orders from a command structure with roots in the Middle East. The Sunni Muslim Brotherhood coordinates with the Wahhabi priesthood in Saudi Arabia, but when it comes to Jihad against the West, Iranian mullahs are involved as well.

Swedish politician Cecilia Hagen called parties opposed to mass Muslim immigration “brown rats” – brown being the color of WWII fascism. Since the police in Malmoe, the rape capital of Sweden, just called for help to investigate and control the city murder rate,, it is clear that an atmosphere of Jihadist terror now prevails in parts of Sweden and Denmark. Jihadist “no go” zones have been reported in Germany, France and Britain.

Because the European Union is all on the side of Muslim infiltration, the widespread rebellion against EU commands is also part of the emerging anti-Jihad resistance movement.

Western governments are reacting to the war of aggression waged against them with almost suicidal slowness and reluctance. Obama may be the worst example of a pro-Jihadist politician who is doing everything possible to undermine US defense. Jihadist infiltration and propaganda, large-scale bribery and probable widespread blackmail have been used, according to Adm. Lyons, since the late Sixties to early Seventies, when OPEC brought immense wealth and power to both Sunni and Shi’ite Gulf regimes.

This election is really about Jihad more than any other issue. Trump is openly anti-Jihad, while the Clinton Foundation has been funneling Jihad money to US politicians for years. Huma Abedin is from a Muslim Brotherhood family, and Hillary’s email breach of normal State Department security procedures is only one of several massive USG leaks. Apparently Huma and Cheryl Mills had free access to high-value US intelligence communications, and were able to spread it with little concern for security.

Hillary’s email scam made it possible to negotiate quid-pro-quos with anti-American forces around the world, with huge money flows to fund the Hillary campaign. Trump’s low-funded but successful campaign (so far) came as a big surprise to Hillary, I believe. Trump’s use of cheap but effective mass media like twitter is unprecedented, and balances Hillary’s vastly larger financing.

This Presidential campaign is therefore a component of the emerging world war, which has been planned and implemented by Jihadists since about 1970, according to Admiral Lyons. Obama’s refusal even to utter the word “Jihad” as the name of the enemy suggests collusion with hostile forces.

Given the war theology of Jihad, the “silent war” of infiltration and sabotage could explode into violence at any moment. For example, Trump could be targeted for assassination — which would be quite within the scope of Jihad doctrine. This is totalitarian warfare, and theoretically it has no limits.

The current warning from Admiral Lyons and others suggests an ISIS attempt to flood the Western world with jihadis, who, like the rape invaders in Germany, go to earth quickly, aided by existing Saudi and Iranian Jihad networks.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Disinformation Campaign of Islam By William Kilpatrick

By on October 8th, 2016

Many people believe that the more you understand another culture or religion, the more you will appreciate it.

That seemed to be the assumption of a Massachusetts district court judge when he ordered the Reverend Daisy Obi, age 73, to learn about the Islamic faith as part of her probation. Reverend Obi was found guilty of pushing her Muslim tenant down a flight of stairs and was sentenced to 6 months in jail, and 18 months suspended provided she take a course on Islam.

In sentencing her, Judge Paul Yee Jr. said, “I want you to learn about the Muslim faith. I want you to enroll and attend an introductory course on Islam. I do want you to understand people of the Muslim faith, and they need to be respected.”

There is no evidence that the Reverend Obi was prejudiced against Muslims. She had other Muslim tenants with whom she had no quarrel. And ironically, she had, in a sense, already had her introductory course on Islam. Since she comes from Nigeria, a country near a Muslim majority, she probably knows more about Islam than does Judge Yee.

Nevertheless, his ruling was upheld last month by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Reverend Obi, they agreed, needed to be educated about Islam — presumably on the assumption that once she learned about Islam, her “prejudice” would melt away.

Meanwhile, about the same time that the Massachusetts court was deliberating Obi’s case, in Turkey another court was deciding another case. Before them stood a 35 year-old man who was accused of assaulting a young nurse and kicking her in the face because she was wearing shorts.

Did the court sentence him to six months in jail, and admonish him for misunderstanding Islam? Er, no. They released him on the grounds that he had done nothing wrong. The man argued that the shorts were inappropriate, and apparently, the court agreed.

It’s a common cliché among liberals that the more we learn about a belief system, the less we will fear it. That’s true some of the time, but in some instances it’s not. The more that Jews in Germany learned about the Nazis, the more they justifiably feared them. The ones who fully understood the Nazi mentality left Germany while there was still time. Jews are again leaving Europe to escape the threat of anti-Semitism. This time they are faced with Islamic anti-Semitism — an anti-Semitism that is rooted in Islamic scripture and tradition. Will Reverend Obi learn about that tradition in her introductory course on Islam? It seems doubtful.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

How to Prevent a Hurricane…No, Really By Brian C. Joondeph

By on October 8th, 2016

Perhaps President Obama can explain exactly how his climate accord will prevent hurricanes.

Hurricanes, similar to tornados, volcanos, and earthquakes, are natural disasters which have plagued the planet long before humans drove gas guzzling SUVs or used air conditioning. The earliest recorded hurricane in Florida occurred in 1523. Note the word “recorded”, as 16th-century Florida was a bit less populated compared to today with accurate weather recording still centuries in the future.

Flash forward to 1900 when Floridians were more adept at recording their weather. By that time there had been 159 Florida hurricanes with 6500 fatalities. In 1900, William McKinley was president and not using his bully pulpit to fight climate change as is our current president. Did President McKinley ever utter these words? “No challenge poses a greater threat to our children, our planet, and future generations than climate change.”

As the 11-year-long Florida hurricane drought comes to an end, it seems newsworthy to ask why no hurricane has made landfall in Florida for over a decade. Until this week. What happened to the dire predictions of Al Gore and other global warming alarmists? Ten years ago we were facing a “true planetary emergency” requiring “drastic measures” to avoid a “point of no return.” Why aren’t intrepid reports asking the climate doomsday gang to explain themselves?

Instead, as predictable as sunrise and sunset — but not hurricanes — one such reporter, NBC’s Ron Allen has conveniently forgotten the last decade as if it never happened, resurrecting the global warming bogeyman in the face of Hurricane Matthew. Allen attempts to tie the current hurricane into the UN Climate Accord by saying that the hurricane threat is what, “this whole climate agreement signed by 190 nations and now ratified by 60 or so is designed to stop.”

Wow! So easy! Countries agreeing to a UN proposal can stop a hurricane. If I was living along the Florida coast, I would have wanted this agreement signed decades ago, avoiding hurricanes Camille, Katrina, and Andrew, and the death and destruction they brought.

If only it was that simple. Hurricanes, like weather and climate, are predicted based on computer models. How accurate are the models? Look at the models of Hurricane Matthew’s path. Some tracks have the hurricane heading harmlessly out into the Atlantic. Others have it crossing the state heading into the Gulf of Mexico. Most have it heading up the U.S. coast in some fashion, possibly making landfall anywhere between Florida and the Carolinas. Each of the myriad lines is generated by a computer model.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

WikiLeaks Stirs Up Trouble for Hillary Clinton Email correspondence is said to show excerpts of paid speeches before her presidential bid By Rebecca Ballhaus

By on October 8th, 2016

The organization WikiLeaks on Friday released what it claimed to be Clinton campaign email correspondence revealing excerpts from paid speeches that Hillary Clinton gave in recent years, before her presidential bid.

A Clinton campaign spokesman declined to verify whether the documents are authentic.

The emails appear to show Mrs. Clinton taking a tone in private that is more favorable to free trade and to banks than she has often taken on the campaign trail. The emails also suggest she was aware of security concerns regarding electronic devices, which could feed into criticism that Mrs. Clinton was careless with national secrets when she was secretary of state.

The release marks the latest time WikiLeaks has inserted itself into this year’s presidential campaign, and it came the same day the U.S. intelligence community accused the Russian government of trying to interfere in the U.S. elections by purposefully leaking emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and other entities. The intelligence agencies alleged the hacks were directed by the most senior officials in the Russian government, with WikiLeaks one of the entities whose methods are consistent with those of a Russia-directed effort.

“Earlier today the U.S. government removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized WikiLeaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin in a statement. “We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange who has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were WikiLeaks’s primary target, sent several tweets on the subject late Friday.

“I’m not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump,” he wrote. “Don’t have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked.” He added that the organization’s claim on its website that he owns the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm headed by his brother, Tony, was “completely false.”

Some of the documents in the most recent WikiLeaks release are similar in their design to documents released in recent days by DCLeaks.com, another entity that the U.S. intelligence community says has published documents stolen by the Russian government. The documents have proven difficult to authenticate.

In the two years between her time at the State Department and her presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton earned millions on the paid speech circuit, including $4.1 million from financial institutions, according to financial disclosures. This became an issue during Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic primary campaign when Sen. Bernie Sanders called for her to release the speech transcripts, particularly for speeches she gave to major financial firms. At the time, Mrs. Clinton said she would “look into” releasing the transcripts but hasn’t provided them.

This past January, the WikiLeaks documents suggest, Clinton campaign research director Tony Carrk emailed excerpts of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches to senior campaign officials, including Mr. Podesta and communications director Jennifer Palmieri, calling them the “flags from HRC’s paid speeches.”

Mr. Carrk said he had obtained the transcripts from “HWA,” an apparent reference to the Harry Walker Agency, which arranged Mrs. Clinton’s paid speeches after she left the State Department in 2013.

“I put some highlights below,” Mr. Carrk wrote. “There is a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub with Policy.”

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

The Roots of America’s Mideast Delusion Our history of failure in the Middle East goes all the way back to Eisenhower. James Traub on “Ike’s Gamble” by Michael Doran.

By on October 8th, 2016

From the moment he took office in 2009, President Barack Obama tried to repair America’s standing in the Middle East by demonstrating his sincere concern for the grievances and aspirations of Arab peoples. He gave interviews to Arab news outlets. He issued New Year’s greetings to the people of Iran. He delivered a speech in Cairo in which he acknowledged America’s past wrongs, and he called on Israel to accept the legitimacy of Palestinian demands for a state. Mr. Obama did almost everything liberal critics of the policies of George W. Bush wished him to do. And he failed. Or rather, he found that the Arab world was afflicted with pathologies that placed it beyond the reach of his words and deeds.

Had Mr. Obama had the chance to read “Ike’s Gamble,” Michael Doran’s account of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s statecraft before, during and after the Suez Crisis of 1956, he might have saved his breath. Mr. Doran, a scholar and former State and Defense Department official in the George W. Bush administration, describes a seasoned, wily and prudent president who aligned the United States with what he understood to be the legitimate hopes of Arab peoples, even at the cost of damaging relations with America’s closest allies—and made a hash of things.
Ike’s Gamble

By Michael Doran

Free Press, 292 pages, $28

Mr. Doran illuminates a narrative with which very few non-specialists will be familiar. His tale begins at the moment in the early 1950s when America was reaching its zenith. The United Kingdom was reluctantly acknowledging the end of empire, and the United States was filling the vacuum in the Middle East. Neither Eisenhower nor his fervently anti-communist secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, understood this transition in strictly geopolitical terms; both believed that the liberating American faith in national self-determination and consent of the governed would supplant Britain’s self-aggrandizing colonialism. Both morality and national interest dictated such a course. As Dulles said in a prime-time televised address in 1953: “We cannot afford to be distrusted by millions who could be sturdy friends of freedom.”

The familiar story—and it is all too true—is that Cold War competition led the United States to side with friendly but despised dictators in the region like Iran’s Reza Shah Pahlavi. Yet at the same moment that the U.S. was plotting to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader in favor of the shah, leading policy makers were infatuated with Egypt’s immensely popular revolutionary leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Eisenhower and Dulles saw in Nasser the kind of nationalist leader whom America needed to recruit to its side in order to demonstrate that postcolonial nations were better off in the democratic than in the communist camp.

The problem was that in order to do so, they had to sell out their closest ally. To British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Britain’s 80,000-man garrison in Suez was irrefutable proof that his nation remained an imperial force. But Eisenhower and Dulles took Nasser’s side in 1953-4 as he whittled away at British influence and demanded that Britain withdraw its forces. Unintimidated by his former wartime ally, Eisenhower brusquely advised Churchill to defer to “the very strong nationalist sentiments of the Egyptian Government and people” by agreeing to hand over control of the base. Churchill had loudly declared that he had not been elected prime minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire; having no choice, he now agreed to do just that.

Britain was one impediment to America’s grand bargain with Nasser; Israel was the other. Eisenhower, Dulles and State Department officials feared that the United States would never win Arab hearts and minds if it was seen as the ally of a nation that almost all Arabs reviled. The problem has hardly gone away over the past six decades. But while the American response today is to gently prod Israel to rein in the growth of illegal settlements, the answer in 1955 was to push Israel to make unilateral territorial concessions—and, remarkably, to present the plan to Nasser for his approval before disclosing it to the Israelis. Mr. Doran makes it clear that the anti-Semitism of the Washington elite converged with what seemed at the time to be perfectly sound strategic calculations.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kerry Says Russia and Syria Should Be Investigated for War Crimes Aleppo bombardment ‘hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women,’ he says By Felicia Schwartzsee note please

By on October 8th, 2016

Cretin Kerry once accused the American soldiers of commuting war crimes in Vietnam- a “deplorable” lie ….so his words are hollow and hypocritical…..rsk

WASHINGTON—Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia and Syria should be investigated for war crimes because of their continued attacks on hospitals and civilians in Aleppo.

Mr. Kerry, speaking to reporters at the State Department on Friday ahead of a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, said such attacks were not accidental and part of a strategy to terrorize civilians.

“Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women,” Mr. Kerry said. “These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes.”

Mr. Kerry did not specify how the investigation should occur and did not formally request one. War crimes prosecutions typically go through the International Criminal Court, which functions under an international treaty. The U.S. has not ratified the treaty, though the Obama administration generally supports the court’s prosecutions and has provided assistance t o it.

Mr. Ayrault, appearing with Mr. Kerry, said France had prepared a draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an end to bombing in Aleppo and a ban on military aircraft flying over the city.

“We’re not giving up and we cannot accept that Aleppo will be totally destroyed by Christmas,” Mr. Ayrault said.

Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, on Friday threatened to veto the measure. The council met Friday, but announced no action. Russian and Syrian officials did not immediately respond to Mr. Kerry’s war crimes comments. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Obama’s Russia Epiphany The U.S. blames the Kremlin for attacks on U.S. elections. And then?

By on October 8th, 2016

It took seven and a half years, but the Obama Administration is finally awakening to the nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. On Friday John Kerry said the Syrian and Russian governments should face a war-crimes probe for bombing civilians in Syria, while the U.S. intelligence community announced its belief that the Russian government is behind the cyberattacks on the Democratic Party.

Many readers will recall how President Obama mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for saying in a presidential debate that Russia is America’s main adversary. And don’t forget Mr. Obama’s private whispers to then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, caught unaware on a microphone, that he’d be ready to wheel and deal with Russia again after his 2012 re-election.

The wheeling has all been done by Mr. Putin, who returned as Russian President and proceeded to roll over Mr. Obama as if he were the president of Azerbaijan. The Russian’s affronts include his conquest of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine, his military intervention in the Middle East, and now his attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election.

Secretary of State Kerry’s moral dudgeon about Syria reflects his frustration at being gulled by the Kremlin’s fake diplomacy one more time. But it won’t amount to much because Mr. Obama’s abdication in Syria has left the U.S. with little leverage on the ground. If Mr. Kerry took the war-crime issue to the United Nations, Russia and probably China would veto in the Security Council.

The meddling in U.S. elections is another matter. In an unusual joint statement Friday, the Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence said that “the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

The U.S. spooks added that “the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia,” and that given the “scope and sensitivity” of these efforts “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” Senior-most is a euphemism for Mr. Putin.

One question is why the Obama Administration has gone public with this hacking news now. One reason might be to warn Russia against dumping more of the U.S. documents it almost certainly has before Election Day. But then Russia’s hacking habits are hardly new, and Mr. Putin is still harboring the national-security thief Edward Snowden. The timing suggests the White House may also be trying to help Hillary Clinton given her campaign’s portrayal of Donald Trump as a Putin apologist. Sure enough, her campaign issued a statement linking Mr. Trump to the news almost on cue Friday. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Resilient Decency Despite Extreme Terrorism by Noah Beck

By on October 8th, 2016

U.S. citizens got a small taste of the Islamist terror threat that hounds Israelis on Sept. 17, with four bombings or bombing attempts in the New York metropolitan area and a Minnesota stabbing attack.

Israel, a country about the size of New Jersey, endured eight terrorist attacks in a four-day period overlapping the American incidents. Even that frightening frequency does not represent “the scale of the attacks during the previous wave” of terror, according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli think tank.

Israel’s experience shows that the war against Islamist terror is a long and difficult one, but it can be managed while maintaining a democracy’s core values.

Whereas the U.S. experienced about a dozen attacks during the 21 months from the start of 2015 through last month, an Israeli government list of terror attacks covering 12 months from 2015-16 totaled 407 attacks, including 165 stabbings, 87 attempted stabbings, 107 shootings, 47 vehicular (ramming) attacks, and one bus bombing. Those attacks killed 40 people and injured 558 others.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Clarence Thomas: Disappeared by the Smithsonian The curious case of The Smithsonian v. Clarence Thomas By Kevin D. Williamson

By on October 7th, 2016

What is the Smithsonian Institution?

It is a depository of national treasures and a national treasure in and of itself. It is the world’s largest system of museums — 19 museums, nine research centers, 138 million items in the archive, etc. — and it is a trust established by Congress, the original bequest from the British scientist James Smithson having been squandered through — one suspects this history will repeat itself — a bum investment in Arkansas bonds, which the state defaulted on.

It is also corrupt.

The Smithsonian has opened a new National Museum of African American History and Culture, a long overdue addition to its offerings. And in this version of African-American history and culture, black conservatives do not exist.

Specifically, the life and career of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas have been — forgive the term — whitewashed from the record. Anita Hill, an obscure functionary who achieved for herself a moment of fleeting fame when she advanced the interests of the Democratic party by smearing Clarence Thomas with lurid, flimsily documented allegations of sexual harassment, is presented as a major figure of the 20th century.

The scholar and jurist who actually sits on the Supreme Court? Clarence Thomas is an invisible man, so far as the Smithsonian is concerned.

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is the Hanlon’s-razor (never attribute to malice what may be adequately accounted for by stupidity) explanation: The dons of American history simply goofed and overlooked Justice Thomas, as though the new museum were a picnic and each of its curators thought the other guy was bringing the potato salad. Because we tend to have warm feelings toward the Smithsonian, we may extend maximum charity in our analysis here. But even at the limit of that charity, we could conclude at best that the Smithsonian is managed by incompetents, that its management should be decimated or more than decimated, and that Congress should use its purse-string powers to effect this.

The second and more likely explanation is that the Smithsonian is corrupt.

This would not be surprising. The Left is committed to its Long March through the Institutions, with a special emphasis on cultural and educational institutions, the commanding heights of public discourse. The Left corrupts everything it touches, and it subordinates everything it touches to politics. That is true of everything from the public schools to labor unions to Catholic seminaries. If you are a high-school sophomore in Lubbock, Texas, that might mean receiving an account of American history which consists almost exclusively of the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, as I did. If you are a family of modest means that has saved its pennies for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to our nation’s capital with the intent of exposing your children, however briefly, to the best that has been thought and written in the American context, that means a museum of African-American history in which a major figure in African-American history has been airbrushed away like a Soviet apparatchik fallen into disfavor.

Continue reading →