Sotomayor Rebuked By Supreme Court

The Supreme Court today “invalidated a Connecticut city's decision to scrap the results of a firefighter promotion exam in which the white candidates scored better than their black peers,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

The ruling in the case of Ricci v. DeStafano is a blow against Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and, more importantly, a national victory for merit and competence over racial sensitivity.

For too long, affirmative action has denied the most qualified people the positions they’ve won through hard work and knowledge. The Ricci case is no different but the fact that it was emergency services being tampered with by affirmative action rather than education put it in a different emotional and political light.

I don’t care whether a firefighter is black, white, brown or red as long as he is competent. But the city of New Haven and Judge Sotomayor both placed more value on the race of the individuals up for promotion than they did on their qualifications.

The Supreme Court’s rebuttal to Sotomayor should invigorate Senate opposition to her nomination. Her thinking is an outmoded product of the 1970s when identity politics and multiculturalism were just gaining prominence in American political and intellectual life.

The American Left can’t have it both ways. Either Obama’s election transcended identity politics and ushered in a new post-racial age or racial minorities still need to be protected by the federal government.

Religious Groups Convene in Health Care Reform Spectacle

Obama’s healthcare putsch has always been characterized by a total disconnect with reality. But none of the town hall meetings, staged press conferences and ABC infomercials could quite sum up the glib nature of Obama’s health care plan like the Interfaith Week of Prayer for Health Care.

An act of interdenominational public theater in Washington’s Freedom Plaza, the prayer week was kicked off on Wednesday with the participation of 40 religious groups, three Obama Administration officials and a few Congressmen, Slate reported.

The week was organized back in April by Ted Kennedy who apparently no longer cares about the separation of church and state or the fact that tax-exempt religious organizations aren’t legally allowed to campaign on political issues.

Totally disregarding the nation’s tax laws, these groups representing Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews and Buddhists met to pray for universal health care but still didn’t have a way to pay for it.

I suppose that just like religion, Obama’s health care plan isn’t based on attention to detail. We still don’t have a solid proposal for how to pay for health care reform and the Senate bill that did include such information was scrapped because the costs were astronomical.

I’d have a lot more respect for Obama if he and his party abandoned the smoke and mirrors and made an honest attempt at health care reform building from the details up. Instead, the Administration and their allies in Congress have pushed reform based on rhetoric with scant details on who will make the decisions and how it will be paid for.

The Interfaith Week of Prayer just highlights how ridiculous the health care debate has become.

Obama Protests Chinese Censorship ... Tepidly

China is still going forward with its plan to require that all PC manufacturers pre-install Green Dam, software purportedly meant to shield children from porn online, on all computers sold in China. In reality, Green Dam is a deeply flawed software with "serious security vulnerabilities" that would allow the Chinese government to block an array of websites and monitor what the Chinese People are viewing online.

With the July 1^st deadline quickly approaching, the Obama Administration finally took action … sort of.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and trade representative Ron Kirk sent a strongly worded letter of protest, the contents of which have not been made public, to the Chinese government. The letter framed the dispute as a trade issue and complained that American companies were not given enough time to comply with the Chinese demand.

The letter even suggested that the Chinese plan violates World Trade Organization rules and insinuated that the US might complain directly to that international body about the new censorship requirements.

And although some heralded this as a bold shift in policy initiated by the Obama Administration, all I see is one tepid move in support of liberty abroad. But approaching authoritarian regimes like China and Iran with somewhat scathing rhetoric and formal protests accomplishes nothing and in the end leaves the citizens of these despotisms out in the cold.

The recent upheaval in Iran demonstrates that totalitarian governments regard open-access to the web as a defining threat to their power. Shamefully, Western corporations are often complicit or actively cooperative in this censorship.

Rather than sending strongly worded letters to the Chinese government, the Obama Administration should make global cyber liberty a priority and work with American corporations to limit their cooperation with authoritarian regimes.

If reason fails, the Obama Administration should move to impose harsh penalties on American corporations facilitating censorship abroad.

Obama Plants Question, Undermines Freedom of the Press

President Barack Obama planted two questioners in his press conference on Tuesday making a mockery of this nation’s free press. The “journalists” in question, Nico Pitney of the The Huffington Post and Macarena Vidal of the Spanish-language EFE news agency, were contacted by White House staff and asked to attend yesterday’s press conference, the Washington Post reported.

Pitney was even escorted into the press briefing room by White House staff who “asked him to come up with a question about Iran proposed by an Iranian.”

This is something that the Left and members of liberal media outlets often accused the Bush Administration of doing in order to control the debate and receive favorable coverage. Of course, for all his failings, Bush never actually planted reporters in a briefing and called on them to ask him prepared questions.

The American press is meant to serve as a watchdog protecting the interests of the American people within the halls of power. By subverting the watchdog nature of the press and seeking to turn a press briefing into a managed stunt, the Obama Administration is attacking the very foundations of this country’s liberty.

It’s countries like Russia and Iran that have state-owned media, not the United States. But as disgusting as Obama’s conduct was, it’s the actions of the questioners that was most shameful.

Obama only carried this off with the cooperation of Pitney and Vidal and their willingness to go along with such a sham demonstrates their total lack of journalistic ethics.

This is a warning to the American press and the people they serve that the Obama Administration knows no bounds in attempting to manage public perception. The Administration’s actions Tuesday were duplicitous and categorically un-American.

Obama should personally apologize for this stunt and the aides who arranged it should be immediately fired. The “reporters” who took part in this Soviet-esque public theater should be dismissed by their employers and shunned by their profession.

Most importantly, the American press should be vigilant and refuse to participate in any future press conferences where these tactics are utilized.

Obama Administration Sides With Saudis Over 9/11 Families

The Obama Administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court to shield Saudi terrorist financiers from a U.S. lawsuit more than two weeks ago. Almost 600 family members of 9/11 victims filed the suit in 2004 alleging that five Saudi princes financed the attacks that killed almost 3,000 civilians.

The lower courts rejected the case arguing that the U.S. has no jurisdiction over the Saudi princes because they were not “primary wrongdoers” but a recent federal case against an Islamic charity that financed Hamas has established a precedent whereby financiers are considered primary wrongdoers alongside the terrorists themselves and thus can be sued under U.S. law.

The 9/11 families are relying on this precedent as well as that established by the families and victims who sued the Libyan government for the terror attacks on UTA 772, Pan Am 73 and Pan Am 103.

But the Obama Administration is ignoring these precedents in an assertion that the national interest of the United States is best served by maintaining a cordial relationship with Saudi princes rather than holding autocratic royals accountable for their ties to terrorists.

This assertion is emotionally and intellectually offensive and should be brought to the attention of the American people but beyond a report filed by CBS, the case has received little national attention.

The Bush Administration demonstrated a similar preference to protect the sensibilities of Saudi royals over the interests of American citizens but Obama was supposed to be different. Instead, American policy toward Saudi Arabia continues to be dominated by a misguided real politik that has not yet adjusted to the post 9/11 environment.

The last eight years of the War on Terror have proved what an important factor finances play in terrorist activity. For this reason, the federal government has pursued cases against charities funneling money to terrorists and frozen the bank accounts of prominent terrorist financiers.

This lawsuit brought by 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism is suing five Saudi princes who directly financed al Qaeda and operated charities fronting for them. But they shouldn’t even have to go after these individuals. The U.S. government should have already acted to freeze their accounts and confiscate their U.S. property.

As important as the U.S.-Saudi relationship is, the Saudis need to understand that they no longer have carte blanche to facilitate the spread of terrorism and the radical Islam that justifies it. Eradicating terrorism and holding both its perpetrators and their benefactors accountable both financially and criminally should be considered our foremost national interest.

It’s time to stop coddling Saudi Arabia’s outmoded royal family and hold them to the same standards as the rest of the Muslim World. This lawsuit is a good start and, even if the Obama Administration doesn’t reverse its position, I hope that the Supreme Court hears the case.