Tag Archives: moral equivalence

The Failed Nuclear Deal

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This is what President Barack Obama and his State Department Secretary, John Kerry, have foisted off on us in an allegedly interim deal with the Iranians concerning the latter’s nuclear weapons program:

Iran committed to:

  • halt enrichment above a 5% threshold
  • dismantle the technical connections required to enrich uranium above 5%
  • neutralize its stockpile of near 20% enriched uranium
  • halt progress on its enrichment capacity
  • construction on the plutonium reactor at Arak will “halt”
  • increased transparency and intrusive monitoring

What Iran has in place:

  • 18,000 centrifuges installed
  • more than 10,000 operating
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Our Offensive Constitution

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So says the city of Seattle.

An internal memo at Seattle City Hall is causing quite a stir.  It suggests government workers no longer use the terms “citizen[….]”  According to the Office for Civil Rights, the terms are potentially offensive….

Our Constitution has this, though:

Article I, Sect 2: No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

And

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YGTBSM

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In another demonstration of the Obama administration’s support for our Middle East allies, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy last Friday that Israel is suspicious of Palestinians and doesn’t care enough about their plight.

Passing up no opportunity to demonstrate the administration’s support, Clinton added

I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion….  So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished[.]

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Obama’s Hypocrisy

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This from Bret Stephens, in The Wall Street Journal [emphasis mine].

“Hasa Diga Eebowai” is the hit number in Broadway’s hit musical “The Book of Mormon,” which won nine Tony awards last year.  What does the phrase mean? I can’t tell you, because it’s unprintable in a family newspaper.

[I]f you can afford to shell out several hundred bucks for a seat, then you can watch a Mormon missionary get his holy book stuffed—well, I can’t tell you about that, either….

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Who Has Israel’s Back?

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Not the Obama administration.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lately pressed Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama to make clear what—if anything—would trigger a concrete response to Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons—an effort that is very near to success.  Netanyahu also said that the Obama administration and other Western “allies,” by failing to draw a bright red line, lack the moral authority to press Israel not to preemptively attack Iran.

If Iran knows that there’s no deadline, what will it do?  Exactly what it’s doing: it’s continuing without any interference towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there nuclear bombs[.]

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Culture and Badminton

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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that four(!) doubles teams of badminton players were thrown out of the Olympics for deliberately attempting to throw their first-round round robin matches in order to gain a better seeding in the next, elimination round.

Cheating in the Olympics—or in any sport or any sport’s tournament—isn’t new, and it’s no less reprehensible for that.  But what are the players saying about this?  Many—most?—favor the disqualifications.  But the People’s Republic of China’s Lin Dan, one of their top male badminton players, said he didn’t think the players were at fault, saying the sporting body

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Some More Thoughts on the Campaign

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This time in the area of moral equivalence.  Governor Mitt Romney, Republican Candidate for President, said this in Israel the other day:

As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality….  And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture….

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A Thought on Morality

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In late February, Archbishop Francis Cardinal George summarized the choices President Obama’s contraceptives mandate presents to Catholic service organizations—and by extension, to all faith-based service organizations.  Under the existing Health and Human Services regulations (which remain unchanged, despite Obama’s promised “accommodation”—an adjustment that only pushes the contraceptives-for-free mandate onto faith-based insurance organizations like GuideStone Financial Services, anyway), the choices are these:

  • abandon church teachings and oversight, or
  • pay annual fines that are “not economically sustainable” [which is the point of the fines—to coerce the organization into contravening its own conscious and religious teachings], or
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Religious Freedom, Government, and Moral Equivalence

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The Daily Caller reports on a series of meetings between our government and representatives from several Islamic governments that have pressed us for years to terminate our ability to speak freely about Islam’s history and obligations.  We might think it’s entirely appropriate that we should engage those governments on the matter of religious and speech freedoms, the United States Constitution, and what must occur within our borders regarding our acknowledged inalienable rights.

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Apologies

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The US ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, made some truly appalling remarks the other day, but what followed is even more so.  Gutman’s remarks were these:

There is and has long been some amount of anti-Semitism, of hatred and violence against Jews, from a small sector of the population who hate others who may be different or perceived to be different, largely for the sake of hating. Those anti-Semites are people who hate not only Jews, but Muslims, gays, gypsies, and likely any who can be described as minorities or different.

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