http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/swirsky/130114 The kindness of strangers Joan Swirsky, RenewAmerica.com When Sandy hit, my husband Steve and daughter Karen and I spent day after day after day freezing in our ordinarily-cozy home, unable even to leave the premises, as police tape cordoned off every means of egress to protect all the shivering residents of our block from […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324734904578241561480345042.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Colin Powell thinks Chuck Hagel’s use of the term “Jewish lobby” was an innocent mistake, for which he should atone by writing “Israel lobby” 100 times on a blackboard.
“That term slips out from time to time,” the former secretary of state told David Gregory on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” Mr. Powell also thinks that when Mr. Hagel’s critics “go over the edge and say because Chuck said ‘Jewish lobby,’ he is anti-Semitic, that’s disgraceful. We shouldn’t have that kind of language in our dialogue.”
OK, I get it. An errant slip of the tongue isn’t proof of prejudice. We have all said things the offensiveness of which we perhaps didn’t fully appreciate when we opened our mouth.
Like the time when, according to Bob Woodward, Mr. Powell accused Douglas Feith, one of the highest-ranking Jewish officials in the Bush administration and the son of a Holocaust survivor, of running a “Gestapo office” out of the Pentagon. Mr. Powell later apologized personally to Mr. Feith for what he acknowledged was a “despicable characterization.”
Or the time when, according to George Packer in his book “The Assassins’ Gate,” Mr. Powell leveled another ugly charge at Mr. Feith, this time in his final Oval Office meeting with George W. Bush. “The Defense Department had too much power in shaping foreign policy, [Powell] argued, and when Bush asked for an example, Powell offered not Rumsfeld, the secretary who had mastered him bureaucratically, not Wolfowitz, the point man on Iraq, but the department’s number three official, Douglas Feith, whom Powell called a card-carrying member of the Likud Party.”
Anyway, on this business of hypersensitivity to prejudicial remarks, real or perceived, here is Mr. Powell in the same interview talking about what ails the Republican Party:
“There’s also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that? When I see a former governor [Alaska’s Sarah Palin] say that the president is shuckin’ and jivin,’ that’s a racial-era slave term. When I see another former governor [New Hampshire’s John Sununu] say after the president’s first debate when he didn’t do well, he said he was lazy. Now it may not mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are African-Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with it.”
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5810 Barack Obama is laying out a revolutionary agenda for his second term, and he’s calling up his heaviest artillery to enforce the transformative presidency delayed in the first. The campaign to confirm Chuck Hagel will be no campaign for the faint-hearted summer soldiers who know only small-caliber combat. The emerging White House strategy is […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3542/fatah-armed-gangs The US and the EU, which have been funding and training the the Palestinian security forces, need to bang on the table — now — for Abbas to rein in the Fatah militiamen, before scenes of anarchy, violence and lawlessness return to the West Bank. After keeping a low profile for the past few […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3540/victimology To question or discuss Islam, or any religion, is not racism, it is not hate, it is not necessarily meant to “victimize” anyone. One is often left with the impression that if anyone ever felt that Mohammed, or Islam, even might have been insulted, no freedom-loving person can expect to be left in peace […]
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/01/14/why-republicans-should-reject-jack-lews-nomination-and-why-we-wont/ Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, some observers suggest, qualified himself for the nation’s top law enforcement position by ramming through a presidential pardon for fugitive tax cheat Marc Rich in the final hours of the Clinton Administration. A lawyer who will take the blame for one of the ugliest acts of political patronage in […]
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/01/14/the-unserious-gun-control-deba The fix is in that won’t fix anything. Vice President Biden’s gun violence task force is reportedly going to give its recommendations to President Obama tomorrow, kicking off the next stage of the gun control debate. President Obama — aided eagerly by his media cohort — will try to convince people that this is […]
http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2013/1/12/70-years-later-recalling-the-first-battle-against-the-nazis.html Moshe Phillips is the president of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI. Seventy years ago this month, the Nazis began their second deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. In response, on Jan. 18, 1943, the first organized and armed Jewish/Zionist resistance action in the Ghetto was launched. The fighters […]
http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2013/01/chuck-hagel—its-the-anti-ame.php?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Chuck+Hagel+-+It%27s+the+anti-Americanism%2C+stupid&utm_campaign=20130114_m114928819_Chuck+Hagel+-+It%27s+the+anti-Americanism%2C+stupid&utm_term=Continue+reading___ Chuck Hagel hates Jews. Or should I say, he hates Jews who think that Jews have rights and that their rights should be defended, in Israel by the government and the IDF, in America by Israel’s supporters. As I mentioned before, it is not at all surprising that Obama appointed Hagel, and I see […]
http://times247.com/
Obama to push comprehensive immigration bill
GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, ANYONE WHO BREAKS THE LAW….RSK
Townhall
Sunday, January 13, 2013
News
Obama to push comprehensive immigration bill
Obama and Senate Democrats will propose immigration changes in one comprehensive bill, resisting efforts by Republicans to break the overhaul into smaller pieces which might be easier for reluctant members of their party to accept. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2Hx9Jinxt
Karzai suggests U.S. soldiers under Afghan law…..
Associated Press
Monday, January 14, 2013
News
President Hamid Karzai says a national meeting of elders should be called to decide whether U.S. troops staying in Afghanistan after 2014 would be immune from prosecution under Afghan law. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2Hx8pDqn4
Report: North Korea planning nuclear test
Agence France-Presse
Saturday, January 12, 2013
News
A North Korean official has apparently told Chinese authorities that the communist state is planning to conduct a third nuclear test in the coming week, a news report said today. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2Hx94ukG8
