Hate to say it

Michael Coren:

According to a new Toronto police report the number of hate crimes rose in the city last year by almost 18%, increasing from 130 to 153. The Jewish population was top of the list of targets with the “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community” coming in at a respectable second place. So, at least, says the 2008 Annual Hate/Bias Crime Statistical Report. We’re told the trend is replicated across the country.

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What these so-called hate crimes really are is open to debate. That they include the ludicrous concept of “bias” says a great deal. If it’s now a felony to show bias we may all be in quite a lot of trouble, which I suspect is the intention of those people who want the state to be able to control as much individual freedom as possible.

Many of the reports involve perceived hatred and some of them are by no means conclusively accurate. In other words, the person feels they have been hurt because of their race or sexuality — and the sort of people who most complain about these things tend to be, with exceptions, people who see hatred everywhere

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Interrogations and Presidential Prerogative

By WALTER BERNS, WSJ:

Recently, an Episcopal church in Bethesda, Md., displayed a banner with the following words: “God bless everyone (no exceptions).” I confessed to the rector of my own church that, try as I might, I simply could not obey this injunction. Judging by what he had to say about “enhanced” interrogations, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., N.C.) seems not to share my difficulty.

Mr. Graham believes that we’re either a rule-of-law nation or we’re not, and no exceptions. “I don’t love the terrorists. I just love what Americans stand for,” he said in an interview with Newsweek in 2006. His point was that our definitions of torture should not vary with the sort of person being questioned — terrorists, for example, or merely prisoners of war.

Mr. Graham’s position is similar to the one taken by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney during the Civil War. In 1861, Confederate sympathizers in Maryland were burning railroad bridges, tearing up their tracks, and attacking federal troops so as to prevent them from reaching the national capital. Since local officials did nothing about this, Abraham Lincoln did. He ordered the military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of John Merryman, a leader of the sympathizers.

Chief Justice Taney ruled in Ex Parte Merryman (1861) that only Congress could suspend the writ of habeas corpus and ordered Merryman released. Lincoln disobeyed the order, believing that the executive must sometimes do things it would not do in ordinary times. Would he have done this if the issue had been the interrogation of terrorists? Does the law have something to say about this?

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The UN speaks, and the world listens. Are we nuts?

Robert Fulford, NP:

“Having no authority with loftier credentials to turn to, we habitually and foolishly believe what the UN says”

With Gaza quiet and the civil war ended in Sri Lanka, the United Nations has put its investigators on the job, assigning them to produce official reports that will almost certainly add to the world’s store of duplicity and hypocrisy.

Next month a team from the UN Human Rights Council will hold hearings in Gaza on war crimes possibly committed during the Israel-Hamas fighting. In Geneva on Monday the Council will begin studying Sri Lanka because (as its typically pompous statement declares), “The international community must strive to deliver justice to victims of human rights violations wherever they occur and ensure that those found guilty of such crimes are held accountable for their actions.”

One of the wonders of the world is the reputation of the United Nations. There are many people in many countries who believe (or claim to believe) that it can be relied on for fairness, honesty and competence. Year after year it embarrasses itself through everything from deep bureaucratic corruption to utter failure in dealing with global crises like the genocide in Darfur. Yet somehow its opinions and “facts” still carry weight.

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Statism the only thing being stimulated

Mark Steyn:

I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department’s special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a “nonprofit agency,” just like The New York Times, General Motors and the state of California. And it stands for “South-Eastern Vermont Community Action.”

Why, they’re “community organizers,” just like the president! The designated “anti-poverty agency” is taking out quarter-page ads in every local paper because they’re “seeking applicants for several positions funded in full or part by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)” – that’s the “stimulus” to you and me. Isn’t it great to see those bazillions of stimulus dollars already out there stimulating the economy? Creating lots of new jobs at SEVCA, in order to fulfill the president’s promise to “create or keep” 2.5 million jobs. At SEVCA, he’s not just keeping all the existing ones, but creating new ones, too. Of the eight new positions advertised, the first is:

“ARRA Projects Coordinator.”

Gotcha. So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job “coordinating” other programs funded by the stimulus. What’s next?

“Grantwriter.”

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Obama Narcissist: Spiritually Empty, Ideologically Bereft, Emotionally Infantalized