Just Another Injustice

Constitution, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law

* “Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said in an interview published on Sunday that he believes the Pentagon could be behind a rape accusation against him that was later dropped by Swedish prosecutors.”

Exactly my thoughts.

* CONRAD BLACK. “The U.S. Supreme Court had asked the appellate panel in Chicago to reconsider the 2007 jury finding [against Conrad Black] in light of the high court’s June decision to limit the federal ‘honest services’ fraud statute to instances of bribery and kickbacks not present in the Black case,” reports Bloomberg.com.

Better late than never.

From “Crucifying Conrad (Black)”: “The SEC operates on an unconstitutional ex post facto basis; its victims have no way of foreseeing or controlling how vague law will be bent and charges changed in the course of seeking the desired prosecutorial outcome.

Propelling the SEC are politically voracious prosecutors. Aided by George Bush’s latest legislative abomination—the Sarbanes-Oxley Act—they can pursue any business executive as long as a lay jury can be convinced the unfortunate chap intended to mislead or stiff shareholders. This is as easy as pie, given the common man’s affinity for wealth creators. As America’s regulators run out of entrepreneurs to eliminate, so they seek fodder from among foreign investors, hence Black.”

* Justice Department Überbloodhound Patrick Fitzgerald is the worm who used the full power of the state to pursue Black, and now Blago, Gov. Milorad Blagojevich (Fitzgerald has many more scalps under his judicial belt, involving abuse of power, such as the Lewis Libby prosecution). The latter may not be a pleasant person, but I doubt he has done anything that is naturally elicit: “The prosecution has failed to show that the Blagojeviches did anything more than shoot the breeze.”

UPDATE II: Hamasnik Joins hands With B. Hussein (No Faith In Islam)

Barack Obama, Islam, Palestinian Authority, Private Property, Terrorism, The West

“With the president’s intervention,” writes Pat Buchanan, “the issue [of the mega-mosque at Ground Zero] has metastasized into a major clash in America’s religious and culture war. It has gone global, as Hamas has now weighed in on the side of building the mosque near Ground Zero.” Dah.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.
“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC. “We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

B. Hussein is seconded by Hamas. The mega-mosque affairs has gone from farce to burlesque. What next in the theater of the absurd?

UPDATE I: SHALOM SHARIA. Writes Diana West:

“Since 2006, Rauf [“of the ground zero mosque”] has coordinated a series of international meetings with Shariah experts ranging from Muslim Brotherhood associates to Iran’s Mohammad Javad Larijani, ‘who,’ as Brim reports, ‘has justified torture of Iranian dissidents as legal punishments under Shariah law.'”

“That’s not all Larijani, who heads Iran’s Human Rights Council (for real), has justified. He has also justified Shariah-sanctioned stoning. As Anne Bayefsky recently reported, Rauf’s picture with Larijani (and former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Sada Cumber) disappeared from the Cordoba Initiative Web site, too.”

“So much to hide – but the Shariah is out of the bag.

What would expanding Shariah mean here? More halal-butchered livestock leading, as in Europe, to halal-only menus?

More midnight football practice during Ramadan? More sex-segregated swimming pools?

More incitement to jihad in ‘radical’ mosques? More ‘apostates’ living in fear? More self-censorship, I mean ‘respect,’ when it comes to discussing Islam?

An excellent benchmark of Shariah’s remarkable and, think of it, post-9/11 progress is that none of the above manifestations of Islamic law – all designed to synchronize society with Islamic practice – are shocking to us.” …

UPDATE II (Aug. 23): No Faith In Islam. Another community, this time in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, does not wish to see a mosque rise up in its midst.

“The Murfreesboro mosque is hundreds of miles from New York City and the national furor about whether an Islamic community center should be built near Ground Zero. But the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida,” writes WaPo correspondent, Ann Gowen.

“So many things about Islam are disconcerting,” [another resident] said. “As they get bigger, there will be concerns about the ideology, what they preach and what they believe.”

And it is as I said in “Dhimmis At Ground Zero?” “It’s in the faith of Islam and its adherents that Americans have no faith.”

If Christians raised a cathedral at Liberty St. and Church St., most Americans would not mind. If the Hari Krishna set up a place of worship in the vicinity, and bobbed up and down the exact complex in Lower Manhattan, Americans would smile benignly. Ditto if a Jewish tabernacle were to be erected around the corner; this reaction would not have occurred.

I’ve had it with the incoherent, emotional, asinine refrains I keep hearing from Ground-Zero activists: “I love Muslims; it’s just this one mosque I hate.” Come out with what you mean, already.

UPDATE III: Oz Is Alright, Economically (Electorally? Now That's Another Matter)

Debt, Elections, Inflation, Political Economy

PBS reporter Stuart Cohen “thinks” that what has kept Australia’s “unemployment rate just over 5 percent,” and that country’s economy still humming,” is, in part, “government spending”—that has “helped keep Australia out of recession.”

“PETER HARTCHER, political editor, of he Sydney Morning Herald,” believes the same: “The big and searing experience out of this was that, when there was a global financial crisis, and suddenly countries everywhere were in trouble, the Australian government had enough money in the kitty that it was easily able to enact a massive stimulus massive at least in proportion to our economy.

The consequence is one of the only countries in the world that didn’t have a recession. And this experience has now been burnt into the national consciousness, and it’s put a real premium on getting back to surpluses as quickly as possible.”

[SNIP]

HARTCHER’s right about not overspending. Most people outside Washington DC would think of this as stating the obvious. But it is despite the pursuit of porkulus policies that Oz is not looking as bad as the US. The relative prudent financial management of the country’s affairs has meant that the economy can shoulder some Keynesian mischief without buckling under.

UPDATE I (Aug. 21): For those of you who are interested in events outside the USA (not a common occurrence among Americans, in my experience), here is a dispatch from the frontlines of the Australian election. I’ll provide the name of our lively correspondent, whose style you probably recognize, pending his say-so. UPDATE III (Aug. 22): He is no other than R. J. Stove (read his comment and corrections hereunder):

I woke up this morning to the news that yesterday’s election seems to have resulted in a hung parliament (the first at national level since 1940-1943).

The obnoxious Gillard – “Sickening Excuse For A Woman” (SEFAW for short), as Paul Gottfried calls her – has been given a kick in the teeth, but Tony Abbott’s Liberals (despite gains in Queensland and New South Wales) appear unable to form a majority.

It’s the Green party which is cock-a-hoop, with, I believe, nine senators now (as opposed to five previously) and with gains in the House of Reps (where it had lacked any members at all since the
1990s, if memory serves me).

Last night on TV we had the diverting spectacle of Gillard’s vile Environment Minister Penny Wong, who owes her political clout entirely to being a Chinese lesbian, being upbraided by a Greens candidate for “homophobia.” Frankly, to me the Greens are such cartoonish villains that I can’t work up all that much indignation against them.

If we absolutely must have pro-abort, pro-Third-World-immigration and pro-homosexual-“marriage” politicians at all, I prefer them to be outside rather than inside the Catholic Church or “movement conservatism.”

This is some of the latest media coverage of the poll (complete with a recording of Gillard’s cement-mixer speaking
voice).

[SNIP]

UPDATE II: By comparison, “the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased by 12,000 to 500,000 last week, taking economists and the White House by surprise. President Obama, on his way to a 10-day vacation with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, said the report underscores the need for”… yes, more government deficit spending.”

UPDATE III: Oz Is Alright, Economically (Electorally? Now That’s Another Matter)

Debt, Economy, Elections, Inflation, Political Economy

PBS reporter Stuart Cohen “thinks” that what has kept Australia’s “unemployment rate just over 5 percent,” and that country’s economy still humming,” is, in part, “government spending”—that has “helped keep Australia out of recession.”

“PETER HARTCHER, political editor, of he Sydney Morning Herald,” believes the same: “The big and searing experience out of this was that, when there was a global financial crisis, and suddenly countries everywhere were in trouble, the Australian government had enough money in the kitty that it was easily able to enact a massive stimulus massive at least in proportion to our economy.

The consequence is one of the only countries in the world that didn’t have a recession. And this experience has now been burnt into the national consciousness, and it’s put a real premium on getting back to surpluses as quickly as possible.”

[SNIP]

HARTCHER’s right about not overspending. Most people outside Washington DC would think of this as stating the obvious. But it is despite the pursuit of porkulus policies that Oz is not looking as bad as the US. The relative prudent financial management of the country’s affairs has meant that the economy can shoulder some Keynesian mischief without buckling under.

UPDATE I (Aug. 21): For those of you who are interested in events outside the USA (not a common occurrence among Americans, in my experience), here is a dispatch from the frontlines of the Australian election. I’ll provide the name of our lively correspondent, whose style you probably recognize, pending his say-so. UPDATE III (Aug. 22): He is no other than R. J. Stove (read his comment and corrections hereunder):

I woke up this morning to the news that yesterday’s election seems to have resulted in a hung parliament (the first at national level since 1940-1943).

The obnoxious Gillard – “Sickening Excuse For A Woman” (SEFAW for short), as Paul Gottfried calls her – has been given a kick in the teeth, but Tony Abbott’s Liberals (despite gains in Queensland and New South Wales) appear unable to form a majority.

It’s the Green party which is cock-a-hoop, with, I believe, nine senators now (as opposed to five previously) and with gains in the House of Reps (where it had lacked any members at all since the
1990s, if memory serves me).

Last night on TV we had the diverting spectacle of Gillard’s vile Environment Minister Penny Wong, who owes her political clout entirely to being a Chinese lesbian, being upbraided by a Greens candidate for “homophobia.” Frankly, to me the Greens are such cartoonish villains that I can’t work up all that much indignation against them.

If we absolutely must have pro-abort, pro-Third-World-immigration and pro-homosexual-“marriage” politicians at all, I prefer them to be outside rather than inside the Catholic Church or “movement conservatism.”

This is some of the latest media coverage of the poll (complete with a recording of Gillard’s cement-mixer speaking
voice).

[SNIP]

UPDATE II: By comparison, “the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased by 12,000 to 500,000 last week, taking economists and the White House by surprise. President Obama, on his way to a 10-day vacation with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, said the report underscores the need for”… yes, more government deficit spending.”