"Why Well Leave L.A."

Rick Newcombe, founded Creator's Syndicate in Los Angeles in 1987, and is its President. On tooday's Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Mr. Newcombe relates how the anti-business climate created by the City Government's bureaucrats is driving his business out of the City. Some choice quotes:
"This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It's no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing."
"The city's bureaucrats rival Stalin's apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place."
"As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?"

Very smart donkey

HAVE A GLORIOUS 4TH OF JULY!

Obama's EPA Silences Global Warming Skeptic

Remember all that talk from President Obama, during the election and afterward, regarding how his administration would respect science and institute transparency. Apparently, those policies do not extend to those who would question, on a scientific basis, the Administration's policy on global warming. Kimberly Strassel, in the Wall Street Journal, exposes the Administration's silencing of EPA senior analyst Alan Carlin.

NY Times Reporter Roger Cohen Recants on Iran, to his Credit

If the Hedgehog Blog excoriates someone when he goes astray, we will praise him if he veers back onto the right path. Back on March 23, I righteously raked New York Times reporter and columnist Roger Cohen over the coals for his fawning coverage of the Iranian mullah regime. I compared him to Walter Duranty, the New York Times apologist for Josef Stalin in the 1930s.

Now, praise God, Roger Cohen has seen the light. As noted in this week's Jewish Journal, the fraudulent presidential election in Iran and the repressive crackdown on protest demonstrations opened Mr. Cohen's eyes to the true nature of the Iranian Islamist regime. Until forced to leave the country, he produced some of the most fearless and moving reporting of the protest movement. On June 14, the day after the election, Cohen even publicly confessed his prior errors, writing, "I’ve also argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards. I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness."

Which is what we tried to tell him. Welcome back from the Dark Side, Mr. Cohen.

Murray Kostant, Of Blessed Memory

My Uncle Murray, Moshe ben Chaim Shmuel, died this past Sunday, 6 Tammuz 5769 [June 28, 2009], at age 89. Murray was my father's younger brother, the last surviving member of "the Greatest Generation" in our family, both on my wife's side and my own. He was always my favorite uncle. My wife Laura loved him dearly as well.

Murray was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx. He and his high school buddies at Dewitt Clinton High School formed a sports and social club, called the Spartans, and they continued to meet annually until only very recently, when time, distance and mortality combined to discontinue their reunions. One member of the group was the late Marty Balsam, a talented actor who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1966 for his role in A Thousand Clowns.

My grandfather, Benjamin Kostant, owned a haberdashery in the Bronx in the 1930s, Kostant Hats, and my grandmother Esther, my father Eli and Murray all worked there. Benjamin Kostant died in August 1941. Four months later came Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered World War II. Murray and my father reasoned that if Murray enlisted in the Navy, my father would not be drafted, because he was the sole support for my mother and ran the family business. So Murray enlisted, but Eli was drafted anyway. They sold the family business at a fire sale price. Murray served on a destroyer throughout World War II. After the war ended in Europe, his ship was slated for duty in the Pacific. Murray used to joke that the Japanese surrendered not because of the atomic bomb, but because they heard he was coming to the Pacific.

After the war, Murray lived with his mother for the next 30 years or so, in the Morris Avenue apartment where he had grown up. The neighborhood, which once had been almost entirely Jewish, became almost entirely Puerto Rican. Murray and Grandma were the last Jewish family in their building. Happily, the Puerto Rican families in the building were repectful and caring of their elderly, Yiddish-speaking neighbor, my grandmother Esther. There were still two synagogues in the neighborhood in 1976, but they both shut their doors within a few years thereafter. Murray stayed in the old apartment until my grandmother had to enter a nursing home in the 1970s. Murray worked in the garment industry, always for someone else. The sale of Kostant Hats in 1941 spelled the end of Kostant family entrepreneurism until I opened my law office in 2002.

As a youngster, I always imagined Murray, my bachelor uncle, to be some sort of a playboy, and indeed he was a favorite with the ladies. (In his last years living in an Upper East side apartment, when my daughters, his grandnieces, Esther and Elise would visit him and go out with him for dinner, he would proudly walk up the street with one beautiful girl on each arm.) But the truth was that he had fallen in love in the 1960s with a beautiful woman, Marta Kovacs, who had married someone else. Marta was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor. As a young woman in Budapest before World War II, she had won a beauty contest, and she was still a head-turner when I met her some 40 years later. Like many Hungarian Jewish women of her age and class (she knew the Gabor sisters, Magda, Eva and Zsa Zsa, and their Mama Jolie), she loved the finer things in life, and could not see herself marrying a working class guy like Murray who could not provide her with the comforts she felt she needed. Then Marta's marriage ended in a divorce and a financial settlement, but she would have lost her income if she had remarried. So Marta and Murray reunited, and lived together for over 35 years until Marta passed away in 2007. On Sunday, Murray was buried next to his long-time love.

Marta was very good for Murray. During their time together they traveled to Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and even took a trip to Israel. They had an apartment in Miami and spend months there each winter. If it had not been for Marta, Murray probably would never have left New York City except for summer weekends at the Concord golf and tennis resort in the Catskills.

Around 2005, Marta had a series of strokes that so decapacitated her that she descended into nearly a vegetative state, and she entered a nursing home some blocks away from their Upper West Side apartment. Murray visited her every day--his life consisted almost entirely of his visits to see her, shopping and running errands. At the same time, Murray's own health began to decline and he began to show symptoms of dementia.

Two of my daughters lived in New York at the time, and called me to express concern over Murray's mental and physical health, and his living conditions. I visited him, made legal arrangements to assume responsibility for his financial affairs, but found he was still capable of living independently. Then, near the end of February 2007, while walking on an icy street on his way to visit Marta, Murray slipped and fell, injuring his shoulder.

The paramedics who took him to the hospital found him dazed and confused, and unable to say who should be called on account of the emergency. Eventually they contacted a friend in his apartment building, who had the phone numbers of my daughters for emergencies. Fortunately, my wife Laura was in New York City at the time, visiting my daughters. She took up residence in Murray's apartment for about the next 5 weeks, setting up home nursing care and meals on wheel, and enrolling Murray in a emergency call button program. That stabilized Murray's situation for some months, but then he fell ill and was hospitalized again, and at that time the hospital physicians informed us that due to his advancing dementia, he should have full-time nursing care. Laura was in New York again--she always seemed to be in town for Murray's crises--and arranged for him to enter the Manhattan campus of the Jewish Home and Hospital on 106th St., where he resided until his death.

Murray was quite a guy, always ready with a joke, always laughing at our jokes. Just a regular guy, who never attained fame or fortune, he is nonetheless one of the most memorable characters of my life. In particular, I will remember his love and devotion for Marta. Despite the rocky start to their relationship, they grew old together. Although they never married, their relationship could serve as a role model for many married couples. Now they are together again.

Iranian Government Charges Family for Bullets That Killed Son

Ha'Aretz reports: Kaleh Alipour, age 19, died Saturday after he was shot in the head by Iranian security forces during an anti-government demonstration. Iranian authorities later told the family they would not turn over the slain man's body for burial until they received compensation for the bullets security forces used to shoot him. Shades of Josef Stalin, whose terror regime also charged families for the cost of the bullets used to execute their family members.
(AFP Photo: Protester in Paris displays victory sign in colors of Iranian flag.)

Father's Day 2009: Hallelujah: A Sestina

Here's my annual Father's Day post. Power Line posted this poem several years back. It's a by the American poet Robert Francis in a form called a sestina. I loved it so much that I think of it every Father's Day:

Hallelujah: A Sestina

A wind's word, the Hebrew Hallelujah.
I wonder they never give it to a boy
(Hal for short) boy with wind-wild hair.
It means Praise God, as well it should since praise
Is what God's for. Why didn't they call my father
Hallelujah instead of Ebenezer?

Eben, of course, but christened Ebenezer,
Product of Nova Scotia (hallelujah).
Daniel, a country doctor, was his father
And my father his tenth and final boy.
A baby and last, he had a baby's praise:
Red petticoat, red cheeks, and crow-black hair.

A boy has little to say about his hair
And little about a name like Ebenezer
Except that he can shorten either. Praise
God for that, for that shout Hallelujah.
Shout Hallelujah for everything a boy
Can be that is not his father or grandfather.

But then, before you know it, he is a father
Too and passing on his brand of hair
To one more perfectly defenseless boy,
Dubbing him John or James or Ebenezer
But never, so far as I know, Hallelujah,
As if God didn't need quite that much praise.

But what I'm coming to--Could I ever praise
My father half enough for being a father
Who let me be myself? Sing Hallelujah.
Preacher he was with a prophet's head of hair
And what but a prophet's name was Ebenezer,
However little I guessed it as a boy?

Outlandish names of course are never a boy's
Choice. And it takes time to learn to praise.
Stone of help is the meaning of Ebenezer.
Stone of Help--what fitter name for my father?
Always the Stone of Help however his hair
Might graduate from black to Hallelujah.

Such is the drama of boy and father.
Praise from a grayhead now with thinning hair.
Sing Ebenezer, Robert, sing Hallelujah!

Happy Father's Day.

What Wakes President Obama at 3 A.M.?

Remember the infamous television ad during Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Who do you want answering the White House crisis phone at 3:00 a.m., the ad asked. Now Dry Bones takes a wry look at what kind of crisis it takes to disturb President Barack Obama's sleep.

Obama Administration Demands That Israel Open Gaza Crossings; Contests Linkage to Release of Gilad Shalit

Ha'Aretz reports:

"The United States has stepped up pressure on Israel regarding the Gaza Strip: Three weeks ago it sent Jerusalem a diplomatic note officially protesting Gaza policy and demanding a more liberal opening of the border crossings to facilitate reconstruction.

U.S. and Israeli sources say the note was followed by a verbal communication clarifying that the Obama administration thinks Israel's linkage of the case of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit and the opening of the crossings was not constructive.

The note was delivered to Israel after a decision by senior U.S. officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special Mideast envoy George Mitchell.
The latter discussed the contents of the note during his visit to Israel last week. "

So let's get this straight. On June 26, 2006, almost three years ago, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists tunneled under the border between Israel and Gaza and attacked an Israeli army post on the Israeli side of the border. They killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Shalit (photo above right), a 19-year old Corporal who had been wounded in the attack. He has been held hostage by Hamas thugs ever since. Hamas has barred the International Red Cross from seeing Shalit, and has demanded the release of 450 Palestinian prisoners--many in prison for terrorist attacks in Israel--as ransom for his return.

Those who hold him hostage are the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip. Israel's control of the Gaza crossings helps prevent the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists from launching more murderous assaults inside Israel. Israel interdicts money bound for the terrorist coffers, weapons, and the raw materials for manufacturing weapons. It is not enough effort to free Shalit and rid Gaza of the terrorist gangs, but at least it is something. However, the United States, under President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Special Envoy George Mitchell feel that Israel is being unhelpful.

I now feel great concern for the citizens of the United States who live near the Mexican border. Apparently, if drug cartels were to complete their current efforts to take over Sonora, Baja California and other northern Mexican provinces, and then launched a campaign to kidnap U.S. citizens, demanding as ransom the release of convicted narco-criminals, the Obama Administration would consider efforts to police the border and control infiltration of money and weapons into Mexico to be unhelpful.

Bibi Got It Right!

In the opinion of the Kosher Hedgehog, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu got it exactly right in his Bar Ilan University policy speech on Middle East peace. In other words, his opinions conform with my own.

There has been criticism of Netanyahu's approval of a two-state solution, on the grounds that one of his key conditions--that the Palestinian state would be demilitarized--is unenforceable under international law and practically unenforceable as well. The critics include columns in the Jerusalem Post by Martin Sherman, Louis Rene Beres and even a longtime Netanyahu advisor, Caroline Glick. They are mainly concerned that by approving the concept of a Palestinian state, on the condition that it remain demilitarized, Israel will end up with the Palestinian state, but without the condition.

I suspect that Prime Minister Netanyahu views the situation this way: The reason for continuing strife between Israel and the Palestinians (and other Arab states as well) has never been settlements, or occupation (unless one considers the mere existence of Israel on any territory to be occupation). Rather, it has been the continuing rejection by the Arabs of the legitimate existence of Israel as a Jewish State. The world has lost sight of this fact, or perhaps has simply chosen to focus its sight elsewhere, preferring, especially in the case of the United States and the European Union, to blame Israeli settlers who add a bedroom or bath onto their homes.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech refocused the debate on the real issue. He knows that the Palestinians will reject his conditions of recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and demilitarization of any emergent Palestinian state--indeed, they immediately did so in their reactions to his speech. That rejection is itself instructive to the world, if the world is willing to pay attention. Either Palestinian rejectionism will continue, in which case there will not be a Palestinian state, or (perhaps only after a long time) the Palestinians will come around to accept Netanyahu's conditions on the creation of a Palestinian state, in which case the new Palestinian state would cease to be a threat to Israel.

I mentioned Caroline Glick's critique of the speech above. She also found aspects of it to praise. However, her most strident criticism was reserved for President Barack Obama. Both she, and Charles Krauthammer in an excellent column also appearing in the Jersusalem Post, identify Obama's moral relativism as the flawed foundation of his administration's foreign policy. Glick writes:

"But it is hard to see how [Netanyahu's speech] could have possibly had any lasting impact on Obama or his advisers. To be moved by rational argument, a person has to be open to rational discourse. And what we have witnessed over the past week with the Obama administration's reactions to both North Korea's nuclear brinksmanship and Iran's sham elections is that its foreign policy is not informed by rationality but by the president's morally relative, post-modern ideology."

She concludes by warning Netanyahu not to assume that his Bar Ilan speech has bought a permanent respite from American presssure to make dangerous concessions:

"On the other hand, if Netanyahu sits on his laurels, he will be surprised to see how quickly Obama - desperate for a foreign policy achievement after being laughed out of Teheran and Pyongyang - forgets his happiness at his address. In no time flat, Obama will try to force Israel make him look like he knows what he is doing. At that point, an open confrontation with the White House will become unavoidable."

Krauthammer notes to similar effect:

"Obama undoubtedly thinks he is demonstrating historical magnanimity with all these moral equivalencies and self-flagellating apologetics. On the contrary. He's showing cheap condescension, an unseemly hunger for applause and a willingness to distort history for political effect. Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies. Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication."

Iranian Protesters Charge that Hamas Members are Assisting Government in Crushing Dissent

Two protesters tell Jersusalem Post reporter that Palestinians from Hamas are participating in the violent suppression of anti-government protests in Teheran.

Judea Pearl: Why Israelis Are Cool on the Obama Speech

On Wednesday, on this blog, I said the following about President Obama's Cairo speech: "[I]t took considerable courage to tell a predominantly Moslem audience in Egypt that the Holocaust occurred and any attempt to deny it discredits Israel's critics. Would that he had said the same thing regarding the historical ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel!"

UCLA Professor of Computer Science Judea Pearl is the father of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, who was murdered by Islamist terrorists. Professor Pearl is the President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding. In today's Wall Street Journal, he makes essentially the same comment about President Obama's speech, and identifies it as one of two factors that have caused such a cool reception to the speech in Israel.

Professor Pearl first notes that while demanding that Israel end settlement activity, the speech made no demands on the Palestinians. In particular, President Obama did not call for the Palestinians to stop anti-Israel incitement in their media and schools.

But even more telling was President Obama's approach toward the legitimacy of Israel's existence. Like other commentators, Professor Pearl criticizes the implication in the speech that the sole historical rationale for the creation of the State of Israel was the Holocaust, as opposed to the millenia-old ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Professor Pearl writes, "Who else defines Israel's legitimacy that way? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does. Iran sees Israel as a foreign entity to the region, hastily created to sooth European guilt over the Holocaust. Israelis consider this distortion of history to be an assault on the core of their identity as a nation."

Professor Pearl views the failure of President Obama to publicly recognize the historical legitimacy of the existence of Israel to be a lost opportunity:

An affirmation of "Israel's historical right to exist," based on a 2,000-year continuous quest to rebuild a national homeland, is what the region needs to hear from Mr. Obama. The magic words "historical right" have the capacity to change the entire equation in the Middle East. They convey a genuine commitment to permanence, and can therefore invigorate the peace process with the openness and goodwill that it has been lacking thus far.

Doug Feith on the Obama Cairo Speech

Another must-read analysis, in today's Washington Times.

Are Settlements an Obstacle to Peace? And Just Who is Advocating Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing?

If one listens to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, or even to spokespersons in the George W. Bush Administration, to say nothing of the mainstream media, one might well conclude that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") are the main obstacle to an Arab-Israeli peace agreement. The truth about what really prevents Middle East peace is exposed by a story that appeared in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles last week, reporting on a ruling by an Egyptian Administrative Court that the Egyptian government must strip Egyptians married to Israelis of their Egyptian citizenship. This ruling is not aimed just at Egyptians who marry Jewish Israelis, but also at Egyptians who marry Arab Christian or Moslem Israelis. And the ruling was wildly popular in Egypt.

Now Egypt is an Arab nation that has been at peace with Israel for over 30 years. Israel does not occupy a single square foot of Egyptian territory. Indeed, it even gave back land in the Sinai that arguably was never part of Egypt in the first place. In doing so, it dismantled the Israeli settlement of Yamit and other Sinai settlements and displaced their Jewish population. (Some of the displaced Israelis moved to towns in Gaza, only to be thrown out again by their own government in 2005.) Yet Egypt is rife with hatred of Israel. Its press is virulently anti-Semitic, and attributes all sorts of conspiracies to Israel, including the 9/11 attacks. The Jew-hatred openly displayed in the Egyptian media is rivaled only in the Palestinian press. One Egyptian pop singer made his career with the hit song "I Hate Israel."

Please don't tell me that this all reflects Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Egypt itself occupied Gaza from 1948 through 1967, and never made any effort during that time to create an independent Palestinian state. Indeed, it ruthlessly quashed Palestinian restiveness unless it was directed against Israel, in the form of fedayeen attacks.

Actually, I take it back. Egyptian hostility does stem from Israeli occupation of Palestine, but the "occupied lands" in question are all of Israel. As George Will has repeatedly quipped, "The problem is not that Israel is being provocative. The problem is that Israel's being is provocative."

The official policy of the United States is that Israel should stop even "natural growth" of existing settlements within their existing borders. In other words, if an Israeli family living in Efrat has, thank God, two more children, and wants to add on an additional bedroom to their house, or perhaps wants to make room for their aging grandparents to live in their home, that represents an obtacle to peace. Oh, please!

Both inside and outside Israel, talk of transferring any part of Israel's Arab population is quickly branded as racist, ethnic cleansing. Moreover, Israel's critics, including former President Jimmy Carter, accuse Israel of being an "apartheid" state. This despite the fact that Israeli Arabs live and work and prosper in Israel, with full civil rights that are in fact, and not just in theory, enforced by the Israeli courts.

In contrast, real apartheid and ethnic cleansing is both advocated and practiced by the Palestinians, and by the U.S. State Department. The life expectancy of a Jew who finds himself in an Arab village may be measured in minutes. The anti-settlement policy is predicated on the assumption that any future Palestinian state must be (to use the Nazi German term) "Judenrein," free of any Jews. All Jewish settlements must go. Yet what would be the reaction of the U.S. State Department if Israel were to state that in return for a withdrawal to its pre-June 1967 borders, all Arabs residing within those borders must leave?

This irony was illustrated (literally) by Yaakov Kirschen in a recent Dry Bones cartoon. The cartoon may disturb some who would wrongly assume that Kirschen's character is happily advocating expulsion of Israel's Arab population. However, what Kirschen is really doing is revealing the true nature world's anti-settler sentiments.

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's Cairo Speech an Insult to Jews, Israel and Human Rights Victims in the Arab and Muslim Worlds

Our readers may have noticed the absence of analysis on my part of President Obama's Cairo speech to the Muslim world. I frankly was biding my time, waiting for columnists who would write about it better than I could. I have already posted one such column, by my friend Jay Shapiro, in the previous entry.

Now I have come across another such column, this one by Anne Bayefsky, entitled "Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people," which appears in Jewish World Review. I urge you to read the entire article.

However, I do have one quibble with Ms. Bayefsky's column. While she does not state that President Obama bears any ill will toward Israel, one might draw that inference from her litany of objections to the speech. Call me naive if you will, but I do not ascribe to President Obama any malevolent intent toward Israel. Indeed, it took considerable courage to tell a predominantly Moslem audience in Egypt that the Holocaust occurred and any attempt to deny it discredits Israel's critics. Would that he had said the same thing regarding the historical ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel!

The History That President Obama Left Out of his Cairo Speech

Jay Shapiro lives in Karnei Shomron, Israel. He is an amateur historian, author and political commentator. He has a weekly online radio program at Israel National Radio, Arutz 7. Jay e-mailed me a column (which he has submitted to the Jerusalem Post)that provides an interesting historical perspective on one aspect of
President Barack Obama's Cairo speech. Here is the column:

Plus ça change plus c’est la mĕme chose
[The More That Changes The More That Remains The Same]
In his Cairo speech, President Obama noted that in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797, Morocco was the first nation to recognize the newly established United States . This is historically incorrect and President Obama also neglected to describe the interesting background to this treaty that has implications for 21st century dealings between Moslem nations and the West.

In the late 18th century, piracy was one of the many risks associated with foreign trade. After gaining independence, American shipping was no longer protected by the powerful British fleet and many vessels fell victim to the Barbary pirates of North Africa who stole goods and sold seamen and passengers into slavery. Agreements were reached between the United States and rulers of the Barbary Coast in which in exchange for cash payments, the rulers pledged to guarantee the safe passage of American ships and to put a stop to the practice of maritime kidnapping. Before signing the treaty, the Pasha of Tripoli demanded and received a payment of "forty thousand Spanish dollars, thirteen gold watches, silver & pinsbach,five rings, of which three of diamonds, one of saphire and one with a watch in it, One hundred & forty piques of cloth, and four caftans of brocade,and these on account of the peace concluded with the Americans".

Indeed, Article 10 of the treaty explicitly states "The money and presents demanded by the Bey of Tripoli, as a full and satisfactory consideration on his part, and on the part of his subjects, for this treaty of perpetual peace and friendship, are acknowledged to have been received by him previous to his signing the same, according to a receipt which is hereto annexed, except such as part as is promised, on the part of the United States, to be delivered and paid by them on the arrival of their Consul in Tripoli; of which part a note is likewise hereto annexed. And no pretense of any periodical tribute of further payments is ever to be made by either party".

However, the amount of goods stipulated in the treaty was still deemed insufficient according to the Pasha of Tripoli and an additional $18,000 dollars had to be paid by the American Consul upon his arrival in April, 1799. It was not until this final payment was made that the Pasha recognized the Treaty as official.

In 1801, the Pasha demanded an additional $225,000 from the new Jefferson administration which, unlike the previous Adams administration, refused to pay any additional amount. Consequently, in May 1801, the Pasha declared war on the United States . Algiers and Tunis soon followed their ally in Tripoli . In response, Jefferson sent a fleet to defend American interests in the Mediterranean including the USS Constitution, famously known as "Old Ironsides," berthed until today in Boston harbor. The USS Constitution supported the landing of Marines “on the shores of Tripoli ” in an action that was subsequently immortalized in the Marine Corps Hymn. The Americans destroyed the harbor that served as the headquarters for the pirates and the Pasha signed a treaty which effectively ended the First Barbary War.

Michael Oren provides further background on the events leading up to the 1797 treaty in Power, Faith, and Fantasy, a study of relations between the United States and the Middle East since 1776. He describes a meeting held in Paris several years before the treaty was signed, attended by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams who met with a representative of the Bey of Tripoli in an attempt to resolve the piracy problem. The emissary repeated his demand for one million dollars and further declared It was…written in the Koran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their [the Muslims] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

George Washington's attitude toward the Barbary blackmail was expressed in a statement made to Lafayette "Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind or crush them into nonexistence". He is further recorded as having said that "..he felt the highest disgrace" in seeing America "become tributary to such banditti who might for half the sum that is paid them be exterminated from the earth."

Those with some knowledge of American history can appreciate the fact that Mr. Obama’s reference to the Tripoli Treaty is even more appropriate to today’s situation than most people realize – including, perhaps, Mr. Obama himself. One can only hope that the Jeffersonian determination in the face of piracy and financial blackmail will serve as a model for the way to deal today with terrorism and nuclear blackmail.

Iran's Potemkin Election

In the Wall Street Journal, Con Coughlin explains why it does not matter who wins this Friday's Presidential Election in Iran.

Senator Joe Lieberman on How the U.S. Should Deal with the Iranian Nuclear Threat

Hello from beautiful Omaha, Nebraska. (I really do mean that--Omaha is a lovely city with incredibly friendly people. Go Huskers!) I am here visiting on the occasion of my daughter Sara's completion of her 4-year OB/GYN residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Allow me to "shep nachas" as we say in Yiddish. (It means deriving some proud joy in the achievements of one's children.) Sara's next stop is Chicago, where she will be engaged in a 3-year post-residency fellowship in Urogynecology, an emerging surgical specialty that I probably am misspelling.

But enough about my family. In the May 30 Wall Street Journal, Senator Joe Lieberman published an excellent column on how the U.S. should confront the Iranian nuclear threat, discussing in particular the bill introduced in the Senate by Senators Lieberman, Jon Kyl and Evan Bayh. I urge our readers to read Senator Lieberman's column and urge your Senators to support the bill.

Gay Marriage: The Crux of the Debate

[Note from Lowell: The following is a post from a brand-new blog, True North, where I'll be posting about subjects outside the scope of this blog. This particular post, however, seems like a cross-over to typical Hedgehog subjects.]

The crux of the debate, huh? I know, that's a fairly grandiose title for this post; the gay marriage debate is about many things. For one thing, gays want acceptance, and that basic human desire looms large in the discussion. So does the desire of traditional marriage proponents to uphold the ideal of a family that includes both a father and a mother.



All those important elements aside, I think the crux of the public debate in the coming years will be this question: In the context of marriage, is sexual preference the same as race? In other words, is opposition to gay marriage the same as opposition to interracial marriage?

Understanding the two principal competing answers to that question is crucial to understanding the nature of the national conversation that is under way right now.

Yes: Gay marriage proponents think the answer is clearly and unequivocally yes, and that anyone opposing same-sex marriage occupies the same moral ground as those who opposed interracial marriage decades ago. In this view, reserving marriage for a man and a woman, on the one hand; and civil unions for gay couples, on the other, is no different from the "separate but equal" doctrine that once applied to public education.

As much as I disagree with it, this position is a principled one. I am not attacking it; I am trying to describe it.

No: Traditional marriage supporters like me think the answer to the question is no, because we are talking about the definition of an institution - marriage - as between a man and a woman. Interracial marriages are still between a man and a woman. Such marriages do not test the fundamental definition of the institution. In this view, reserving traditional marriage for male-female unions, and domestic partnerships for same-sex unions is not a "separate but equal" arrangement, it is "different but equal."

The two views can collide in ugly ways, depending on who is making the argument. Those in the "separate but equal" camp too often want to cast their opponents as little better than Ku Klux Klan members, circa 1950. That is not an exaggeration. Consider Sean Penn's comments on receiving the Academy Award as Best Actor for his portrayal of gay activist Harvey Milk:

I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage [Proposition 8] to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support.

In other words, those who voted for Prop 8 will, in time, be seen much like those who opposed civil rights for African- Americans: their grandchildren will be ashamed of them.

That is pretty strong stuff. It also grossly distorts the debate by seeking to marginalize those who take the "no" position on the "separate but equal" question. Suddenly their position is not principled, but simply bigoted and shameful.

What will happen over the next 5-10 years? I think we as a society (through our political-legal system) will eventually decide which view is correct. Make no mistake: That will be the battle, and the entire country the battleground.

This is an emotional and heart-breaking issue. Anyone who knows and cares about any gay people knows this. That's why I really have no patience for the people on either side who can only see their opponents as moral poison. Maybe amid all the usual messy screaming and yelling that occurs when Americans tackle an issue like this, we can actually have a national conversation about what marriage means, and whether we should adhere to the traditional definition or change it.

Then maybe we can start talking about what it might actually mean to make such a change in definition, and whether it is really a good idea. More about that in future posts.