We are taking this grand holiday off from blogging to celebrate the birth of our wonderful country and the freedoms it fosters.
Have a wonderful holiday, thanks for being a loyal Publius Forum reader and God Bless America.
The Publius management
History
Let’s Not Celebrate July 4th
-By Warner Todd Huston
It is well known that John Adams had imagined that July second would be the day that future generations of Americans would remember as their day of independence from England, the nation’s birthday, if you will. It was, after all, on the second that it was proclaimed “(T)hat these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
But it was two days later that those gathered in defiance to the King declared a “Declaration of Independency” thereby adopting the famed document that carefully delineated the natural rights by which they claimed independence followed by a list of grievances that would explain why they invoked those rights.
So what are we celebrating? Is it our birth as a nation or are we celebrating the document of Independence? Early celebrations were mixed and a bit confused on that point. Additionally, celebrations on July fourth weren’t that common for a time after the Revolution was over. At first, not many felt a need to celebrate something that had happened and was over. It was time to move on from war in many American’s eyes.
Let’s Not Celebrate July 4th”
Michelle Thinks She Was Elected Empress
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Washington Post had an interesting article on June 25 headlined, “A First Lady Who Demands Substance.” I think it was meant to highlight that fact that Michelle Obama is more than a mere first lady but is a strong, substantive person — which is, by the way, without question. Unfortunately, though, it ended up revealing a Michelle Obama that is an angry, arrogant, martinet that isn’t aware that “first lady” is an honorary title that has no proper, Constitutional role and is not an elected position with legal, legitimate powers of its own.
The story penned by Lois Romano comes on the heels of Michelle’s dismissal of her chief of staff, Jackie Norris, who was replaced by 61-year-old Susan Sher. Apparently, this switch is supposed to mark the arrival of the new Michelle Obama, the one that will have “impact” at the “fulcrum of power and policy.” To pursue this new “power” Michelle has hired a full-time speech writer and has told her staff to think “strategically.”
Impact? Power? Strategically? I have but one question: who elected you to this “power,” Michelle? I also have an answer: no one.
Michelle Thinks She Was Elected Empress”
Genocide or Massacre, US Repeating Mistakes of the Past
-By Frank Salvato
“We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred…All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.”
– Pres. Bill Clinton in his apology to the Rwandan people for his lack of intervention during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
“It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling — the US president, meddling in Iranian elections.”
– Pres. Barack Obama commenting on Iran’s stolen 2009 election.
Reports coming out of Iran, limited though they are, state that a massacre took place on June 24, 2009, in Tehran’s Baharestan Square. Iranian basij, club-wielding militiamen, savagely attacked pro-freedom protesters, throwing some of them off a pedestrian bridge. They attacked them with batons, tear gas, bullets and, in at least one location, axes. What was the catalyst for this slaughter? Their desire for liberty and freedom, rights guaranteed to every human being under Natural Law.
Genocide or Massacre, US Repeating Mistakes of the Past”
Busby Burqa’s Fashion Follies
-By Ann “Babe” Huggett
The French definitely know fashion. From the elegance of Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent to the theatricality of Jean Paul Gaultier, they know how to dress the female form. Even their First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was a fashion model and earned up to $7.5 million a year during the ‘90s for strutting the catwalks of such designers as Sonia Rykiel, Christian Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Givenchy and Christian Lacroix.
So it should come as no surprise then that France’s President, Nicholas Sarkozy, has gone on the offensive against a growing trend among France’s female Islamic population of donning the totally enshrouding, personality obliterating, head-to-toe garment with mesh over the eyes known as the burqa or it’s “kinder” slits-for-the-eyes cousin, the niqab.
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Busby Burqa’s Fashion Follies”
Ivy League Realism
-By Thomas E. Brewton
The social justice views of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor have deep roots.
Several recent articles in both liberal-progressive and conservative media attributed Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s interpretation of the law to the doctrine of legal realism. Specifically mentioned in that connection was 1920s and 30s legal scholar Jerome Frank.
In fact, Mr. Frank was just one voice, although a prominent one, among many legal scholars who articulated the doctrine of legal realism. That doctrine’s genesis goes back to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s 1881 lectures at Harvard law School, later published as The Common Law. Holmes in 1902 was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt, a Harvard graduate and early member of the Eastern liberal-progressive establishment.
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Ivy League Realism”
The Path to the Future Requires a Return to the Roots
-By Frank Salvato
As President Obama thunders ahead with his liberal agenda, unencumbered by any significant opposition in either chamber of Congress, the focus for the Right has been on how to re-invent the Republican Party so as to be competitive in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. This renewed and urgent focus is more akin to a meeting of rival mafia families, each faction unwilling to cede influence, power, control or status to another, than it is a quorum of individuals dedicated to true and original Republican principles. In light of this it is appropriate to revisit the founding platform of the party.
In the immediate aftermath of the inaugural 1856 Republican Convention in Jackson, Michigan (the party was founded in Ripon, WI, in 1854), the Republican Party declared as their founding platform commitments and allegiances to:
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The Path to the Future Requires a Return to the Roots”
This Isn’t The Future We Were Promised
-By Ann “Babe” Huggett
Way back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, way back before personal computers, way back before cyberspace became the new frontier, there was Science Fiction and I was addicted to it. I read everything that I could get my hands on. I cut my baby teeth on Jules Verne and H.G. Wells but came to love all of Isaac Asimov’s works, read Heinlein until dizzy, lingered over Ray Bradbury’s prose-poetry, consumed A. E. Van Vogt, enjoyed Kurt Vonnegut’s quirky extrapolations, got into compare-and-contrast mode between Aldous Huxley and George Orwell’s dystopias, fantasized my way through Tolkein and C.S. Lewis and always made a beeline for anything written by Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison and Larry Niven. I was the first in line at the local news agent for the latest monthly editions of Amazing Adventures, Analog, and Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.
At Disneyland, while other kids raced up Main Street to enter Fantasyland or Adventureland, I would always hit Tomorrowland first. Specifically, I headed straight for the “Rocket to the Moon” ride with its imaginative walk-through area showing an audio-animatronics mock-up of NASA’s Houston Control Center, where my father had been responsible for the real-life computer installation and set-up. Then it was into the ride’s circular rocket chamber amphitheater with in-the-middle movie screens on floor and ceiling “showing” your out-of-this-world flight to around the Moon and back. The seats were on a hydraulic system so that when you “blasted off”, you would “sink down” from the force of acceleration then lightly “lift up” to simulate a floating feeling of anti-gravity.
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This Isn’t The Future We Were Promised ”
With All Things, Facts & Truth Matter
-By Frank Salvato
“Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” – Samuel Johnson
Few things are more important in life than the facts and the truth. Ironically, the quest for both has waned over generations. Today, fact and truth suffer the narcissism of a generation of self-indulgent ideologues who have sought to shape the world to their belief system, doing so armed with little more than falsely elevated self-esteem. The result has been to bring our great nation to a divide not seen since the US Civil War; a divide of politics, ideology and culture; a divide that threatens our Republic’s very existence.
Samuel Johnson’s adage about truth being a casualty of war is not exclusive to wars of nations, it is applicable to wars of all breeds: cultural, violent, ideological and political. In fact, today’s American culture places more worth on the delivery of words than on the credibility of words. A gifted orator can mesmerize the citizenry into reacting to a melodic tone and artful inflection and into caring little for the accuracy of the statements being made. He can pass impossibilities as realities using hollow promises, promises that serve as distractions to truth and fact. Truth be told, today, the American public is more interested in being captivated by the “bright shiny” distraction, being entertained by the slickly delivered sleight-of-hand rhetoric of “hope” and “change,” than they are in gathering the facts in an effort to better understand reality.
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With All Things, Facts & Truth Matter”
More Stupid Feminazi Tricks
-By Warner Todd Huston
Not long ago, I wrote of how the English language is being destroyed by the stupidity of feminism. Well, today I’ve found another perfect example of how feminism is making our language trite and silly.
The example turns up in a report on new prehistoric discoveries near Stonehenge, in Hampshire, England. Apparently, a pair of Neolithic tombs was discovered in the English countryside and researchers are all excited. I can’t say I blame them for this is very interesting news.
It isn’t the discovery that served as a vehicle for a stupid feminazi trick, though, but the coverage. Tucked into the story about the discovery is this line (my bold):
More Stupid Feminazi Tricks”
Kansas High School Teacher Fired for Being Conservative?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Early in May, Lawrence High School of Lawrence, Kansas fired government and history teacher Tim Latham. Latham charges that District 912 fired him because he is a conservative and many of his students have since rallied to his defense. Some 200 of them joined a FaceBook page in support and four appeared at a school board meeting on June 8 to advocate for their favorite teacher.
One reason given for the firing is that Mr. Latham did not show Obama’s inauguration live in his class and another is that staff members disparaged him for supporting Republicans during the late presidential race, most especially then vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin.
On June 8, an advocacy group, Kansas 9.12 Project also attended the school board meeting and spoke on Mr. Latham’s behalf.
Kansas High School Teacher Fired for Being Conservative?”
On D-Day Anniversary, Google Memorializes… Tetris?
-By Warner Todd Huston
It was June 6, 1944 that the crucial Normandy Landings occurred that formed the spearhead of the Allied invasion of Nazi held Europe. D-Day ultimately led to the victory of the Allies over the despotic Nazi regime. Now here we are on June 6, 2009 and, in its inimitable way, Google has decided to memorialize the important occasion by adding an image on its homepage depicting… the computer game Tetris.
Yes, it’s far more important to Google to celebrate the anniversary of the invention of the video game Tetris than to memorialize D-Day. It just warms the heart, doesn’t it?
I have to say, though, that this is no departure for Google, a firm that finds it nearly impossible to post images celebrating any American holidays or important milestones in American history. So, what we have here is just one more example of Google’s essentially anti-American policies.
On D-Day Anniversary, Google Memorializes… Tetris?”
Another Entertainer Shows Historical Ignorance
-By Warner Todd Huston
Rob Thomas, singer/songwriter and front man for the band Matchbox 20, has successfully proven an old adage: Don’t Keep quiet and let people think you’re a fool. Open your mouth and remove all doubt. He has also shown us all that the American system of education is in pretty sorry shape. But, one thing is sure, Mr. Thomas “feels good” about himself, so he’s got that whole self esteem thing down nicely. Sadly, he lacks some basis for the conceit.
In a Huffington Post entry from May 27, Thomas made to ingratiate himself with the cool, the hip, and the terminally liberal by tooting his I-love-me-teh-gay horn. Most of his entry is banal, uninventive, and prosaic, but the part that most needs to be addressed is his horrible understanding of American history. Of course, his lack of historical understanding is also pretty commonplace for his ilk: those in the Hollyweird/entertainment field. Unfortunately, it is also common among far too many other Americans, ones not trying to sound perpetually hip because they loves them teh gays.
Another Entertainer Shows Historical Ignorance”
An Open Letter to Sonia Sotomayor
-By John Armor
Dear Sonia, May I call you Sonia? We’ve just met but I feel I’ve known you forever, because of your “compelling story.” I’m an elderly, white male who’s a lawyer. But wait, I’m not that dull and dismissible. I’ve had my “story” moments.
Remember that psychologists’ list of the ten worst things that can happen to a person? Losing your job, or house, getting divorced, going bankrupt, facing death, burying a child. You know, nasty stuff. I’ve been through almost everything on that list, some more than once. You pick yourself up and continue on as best you can. Big whoop.
Having a “story” does not qualify anyone for the Supreme Court (or other high offices). Here are some examples. There have been four men who fit the following definition: They were born in humble circumstances, far from the centers of power in their nations. They suffered many losses and defeats in their early careers. Still, each of them became the leaders of their nations at a time when their nations faced potentially fatal wars.
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An Open Letter to Sonia Sotomayor”
Penn. Paper Didn’t Know Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK Were Assassinated?
-By Warner Todd Huston
This little report is interesting in a few ways, but the most important is that it seems to show that the publishers of at least one American newspaper are wholly ignorant of American history. It seems that early last week the Warren Times Observer of Warren, Pennsylvania published an ad that basically expressed a desire to see President Barack Obama assassinated and they didn’t even know it.
The small town paper published an ad that read as follows: “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!” Sadly, the paper’s editors completely missed the salient fact that all these historical presidents — except for Obama — were assassinated in office!
Penn. Paper Didn’t Know Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK Were Assassinated?”
Obama’s Confederate Memorial the Right Move to Make
-By Warner Todd Huston
President Obama sent a wreath to the Confederate memorial at Arlington cemetery during the memorial services to recognize the sacrifices and service of the members of our armed forces this week. It has been a tradition since Woodrow Wilson offered a wreath to memorialize Confederate dead at Arlington and a tradition that many on the American far left wanted to see ended. They have been disappointed.
But the president also started a new tradition, one that everyone should welcome and one that we should all hope is continued by every succeeding president that comes after Obama. President Obama also laid a wreath at the African-American Civil War Memorial at Vermont Avenue and U Street Northwest in Washington D.C.
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Obama’s Confederate Memorial the Right Move to Make”
Christian University Decertifies Democrat Club, Why it is the Right Decision
-By Warner Todd Huston
Tell me President Obama, how many babies would Jesus kill?
Liberty University, a Christian college situated near Lynchburg, Virginia and founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell, has this week decertified its college Democratic Party club over the singular fact that the National Democratic Party is a supporter of abortion. After the debacle of allowing a president that is a supporter of infanticide being invited to speak at the leading Catholic University in the nation, I can only say that Liberty University should be congratulated for standing up for its principles. At least these Baptists actually believe in something unlike the putative Catholics at Notre Dame.
But is this a violation of political free speech in a nation where the Democratic Party is a long-standing, historically important political force that is followed by half the electorate and currently holds a majority of the seats in our national government? Are these students having their speech illicitly quashed by Liberty University?
The simple answer is a resounding “no.”
Christian University Decertifies Democrat Club, Why it is the Right Decision”
If you Don’t Like Your Uncle Sammy… Get OUT!
1915 was about the last time America had the right idea about its immigrants and this song from that era is emblematic of that: assimilate or get lost. Don’t Bite the Hand That’s Feeding You, words by Thomas Hoier and music by Jimmie Morgan, first became popular in 1915 and expresses just that theme. This version was recorded on Edison Records by Walter Van Brunt aka Walter Scanlon.
The basic theme of the tune tells ungrateful immigrants that if they’ve come to hate the United States, their adopted home, then they can get the heck out and go back to the armpit nation from which they came. We don’t need them here.
Unfortunately, too many Americans are afraid to tell ungrateful whiners that want to complain about the U.S.A. to take a hike these days. It’s all about being afraid of immigrants, now. Well, I say we should play this song and takes its message to heart.
So, here it is Don’t Bite the Hand That’s Feeding You.
The sad thing is one of our national parties has built itself on refashioning its members as American ingrates. If this theme were to be applied every Democrat in the country would have to leave!
Library at Oxford Shows Its More Stoopider Side
-By Warner Todd Huston
Before we begin today’s lesson, let us review the purpose of a library, shall we? Are libraries not a compilation of knowledge in the form of books and visual aids brought together for the edification of students of humanity to be used a s a tool for their growth and enrichment? If it is, the earnest curators of the Oxford Library have somehow missed that definition.
Apparently, the librarians at Oxford, however, have been misled to believe that a library is more like a static piece of art. They must think that a “library” is a permanent arrangement of book-like objects, pleasingly arranged, yet immovable, set up to fill a particular space for the purpose of a sort of permanent exhibit. But, please, while you are staying reverently quiet as is traditional in a “library” setting, please remember not to actually touch anything, won’t you? After all, we have your safety to consider.
Library at Oxford Shows Its More Stoopider Side”
Did Sessions Say Abortion is Not a Problem for Judicial Candidates?
-By Warner Todd Huston
Michael O’Brien over at The Hill reports that Senator Jeff Sessions (R, Ala.) told Fox News recently that he had no litmus test on abortion for judicial candidates and that a judge that had pro-abortion views could get his vote for confirmation.
This might alarm anyone that is vehemently anti-abortion. It should also alarm all those conservatives that pushed for Senator Sessions to be made the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
…but hold your outrage for just a minute. Let’s more closely look at what he said.
Did Sessions Say Abortion is Not a Problem for Judicial Candidates?”
New Yorker: Obama a Better Churchill than Churchill? (Or Bush)
-By Warner Todd Huston
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker should take up bowling or gardening because history doesn’t seem to be her thang, if you will. In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s own false historical reference, made during a Wednesday press conference, of famed WWII era English Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Davidson jumped to her keyboard to further garble history with an April 30 blog post on her Close Read blog at the New Yorker website.
On Wednesday, Obama made a reference to an “article” he was reading “the other day” wherein he discovered that during WWII Prime Minister Winston Churchill supposedly said “We don’t torture.” (Transcript of Obama’s remarks)The following morning, Davisdon praised Obama for his sentiment and waxed envious over the “very good” article from which Obama gleaned the tale.
New Yorker: Obama a Better Churchill than Churchill? (Or Bush)”
My Latest Video: I am a Tired American
-By Warner Todd Huston
Are you sick and tired of the anti-Americanism that surrounds you? Watch this and know you aren’t alone.
Hillary Clinton, Racist Fellow-Traveler
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Secretary of State Clinton’s praise of Margaret Sanger was an endorsement for the doctrine that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust.
One of the most horrendous doctrines to emerge from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis was the eugenics movement, instituted by his cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Today’s birth control and abortion, according to apologists for abortion, are merely eugenics updated.
Eugenicists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, denying God as the creator and designer of the universe, asserted that evolution of species was, according to the Darwinian hypothesis, without design. Unstructured evolution among humans, however, could result in mongrelization of the human race, they said. Eugenics thus may be described as Darwinian evolution in a hurry.
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Hillary Clinton, Racist Fellow-Traveler”
Condi Rice Schools a College Punk
-By Warner Todd Huston
She nailed him to the floor. Whoever this kid was he was filled with generalities and naivete.
Some highlights:
“You don’t have the luxury in foreign policy of saying ‘alright I won’t deal with that country because I don’t like its human rights record.'”
“Foreign policy is full of tough choices, very tough choices. The world is not a bunch of easy choices in which you get to make ones that always feel good.”
“(We did) nothing that violates our obligations against torture. By definition, if it was authorized by the president it did not violate our obligations against torture.” (as defined by the Justice Department)
(H/T Bob Parks of BlackAndRight.com)
He Loves His Wife… if ONLY She’d Change!
-By Warner Todd Huston
Can a liberal really love the USA? A perfect allegory explains.
I was sitting in a local bookstore not long ago and overhead a conversation that seemed emblematic of so much of what is going on in this country today. A young man lamented his choice of a mate but insisted he loved her dearly. But every effusive claim of undying fealty came coupled with a “but” that amounted to how he wanted her to change so she would be even better.
The two young men in their late 20s or early 30s sat sipping latte and talking of their world and I could not help but hear as they sat immediately behind me. One was a perfectly representative slacker type. Baseball cap on backwards, sports jersey, reedy mustache, and the newest sports gym shoes revealed his personae. His friend was a backpack sporting, ponytailed wearing, be-speckled type with sandaled feet poking out of the bottom of his torn jeans. They were both pretty representative of generation now with their talk of video games, their admiration of Obama — though without any factual knowledge from which to justify that admiration — as well as their PDAs, cell phones and laptops computers all glowing with use.
He Loves His Wife… if ONLY She’d Change!”
Why the Law is Foreign to Ginsberg
-By Selwyn Duke
There is an old saying, “A man who is capable of deceiving only others is not nearly as dangerous as a man who is capable of deceiving himself.” Truer words were never spoken. When a person lies, he is deceiving others about reality, but at least knows he is engaging in deception. But when someone rationalizes – which is when you lie to yourself – he is truly lost. He then not only bends reality for others as a by-product of bending it for himself, but he can render untruths without having to lie. This is because a lie is when you tell an untruth knowing it’s untrue. It’s much like when the ever-prevaricating George Costanza character on Seinfeld gave his advice for beating a polygraph machine, “just remember . . . it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
I think of this when I hear Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg tout the use of foreign law by American judges sworn to uphold the Constitution – that would be our constitution. Speaking about this recently at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, she said,
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Why the Law is Foreign to Ginsberg”
Today’s History Lesson: Lincoln’s Disagreement with Obamaism
-By Warner Todd Huston
Barack Obama’s new way socialism is really just as no way as it’s always been. But, regardless of the central American spirit that Obamaism attempts to defeat, it is proclaimed that he is only interested in fixing America. So, because he is only here to help, Obama is deemed a savior by his acolytes.
Another of Obama’s false fronts is his claim to be “just like” Abraham Lincoln, a facade he wears with relish. The claim is, after all, a perfect cover for his essentially anti-American agenda. What could be more American than the fulfillment of Lincoln’s efforts to free the slaves but a black man being elected to the presidency? The mere fact of his election seems to affirm the better angels of our nature.
But, here I’d like to report a quote that tends to show that Lincoln would not have approved of a president Barack Obama. Not because Obama is a black man, but because he is a socialist.
Today’s History Lesson: Lincoln’s Disagreement with Obamaism”
An Intolerance for Southern Culture
-By Warner Todd Huston
In July of 2008 a national hotel chain manager had a man arrested for displaying a Confederate flag in his hotel room window in Concord, North Carolina. It happened that Concord’s Wingate Inn had booked guests that had come to participate in the annual convention for an organization known as the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a group that celebrates family ties to that Confederate service of 145 years ago. To be sure the hotel manager knew full well that every guest would be displaying Confederate flags everywhere they went. On shirts, on book bags, on posters, on their cars these dozens of guests had Confederate flags on display. Little flags, medium sized flags, and big flags filled the hotel.
Yet hotel management called the cops on this one guy.
So, what happened? Why did this hotel manager imagine he had the right to force just this one guy, Basil D. Childress of Kentucky, to pull down his flag while ignoring all the others? Why were the police idiotic enough to actually arrest the non-violent and perfectly compliant hotel guest instead of telling the hotel manager that he was acting foolishly?
An Intolerance for Southern Culture”
Ideological Civil War
-By Thomas E. Brewton
Democrat/Socialists started the ideological warfare in Congress with their slanderous attacks that blocked the 1987 Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert Bork. Now they are upping the ante by considering criminal prosecutions against Bush administration officials for legal and policy opinions about interrogating captured Islamic terrorists.
The Wall Street Journal reports (Obama Open to Probe of Bush Officials Who Devised Interrogations, April 21, 2009):
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Ideological Civil War”