From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Crying
Wolf
While normal Americans are cheering the detention of Abdullah al Muhajir, né
Jose Padilla, as an enemy combatant, the Washington Post editorial page raises
the specter of jackbooted government thugs:
The government's actions in this latest case cut against basic elements of life under the rule of law. If its positions are correct, nothing would prevent the president--even in the absence of a formal declaration of war--from designating any American as an enemy combatant. Without proving the correctness of the charge before a court, the military could then detain that person forever. And having done so, it could prevent that detainee from hiring a lawyer to argue that the government, in fact, has it all wrong. If that's the case, nobody's constitutional rights are safe.
United Press International reports that, unsurprisingly, the American Civil Liberties Union also wasted no time before fretting over al Muhajir's rights: "If a non-citizen like Zacarias Moussaoui can be tried in a regular court of law, surely a United States citizen can be afforded the same access to justice," the ACLU declared in a statement just hours after Attorney General John Ashcroft announced al Mulahir's detention.
UPI also quotes "human rights expert" Douglass Cassell of Northwestern University, who demands: "Why do Mafiosi get treated as criminals and on the other hand Mr. Padilla gets labeled as an unlawful combatant not entitled to a trial?"
Uh, gee, Doug, maybe it's because we're not at war with the Mafia?
This kind of knee-jerk antigovernment rhetoric is profoundly irresponsible. As Glenn Reynolds points out, war does pose the risk of genuine infringements on civil liberties, and "those who have cried wolf over unimportant issues . . . have done a lot of harm, by making it harder for those who point out real problems to be taken seriously."
Morocco
Nabs Three Saudis
A trio of Saudi nationals who allegedly were part of an al Qaeda cell are behind
bars in Morocco, charged with "planning suicide operations against American
and British warships patrolling the Strait of Gibraltar," the Associated
Press reports. Moroccan authorities picked the men up last month. Yesterday,
Reuters
reports, the Moroccans also arrested two of the Saudi men's wives.
Whatever
Happened to Zero Tolerance?
"The New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund . . . gave $25,000 to
the Jewish Museum for a program on tolerance for Islam in two high schools near
the World Trade Center," the Washington Post reports. Isn't intolerance
by Muslims a much bigger problem than intolerance for Muslims?
The
Infidel Boom
Osama bin Laden may be able to kill infidels, but he can't stop us from producing
new little infidels. "Obstetricians and staffs at some hospital delivery
rooms nationwide are gearing up for a summer baby boom that many say was sparked
by the September 11 terrorist attacks," the Associated Press reported last
month. The Sept. 11 atrocity "was kind of a wake-up call for people," obstetrician
Paul Kastell tells the AP. "They saw the towers burning. And when they got home
they said, 'You know, it's never going to be the right time. We should start
now.' "
The killjoys at the New York Times, however, are throwing cold water on the idea.
The
EU-niks Preen
Germany is "balking" at turning over to the U.S. evidence against
alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, the Washington Post reports.
"At issue are original documents, held by German authorities, detailing
alleged money transfers to Moussaoui from a member of the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg
that led the Sept. 11 attacks." The objection is the central object of
European Union moral vanity: capital punishment. The death penalty "does not
correspond to the ideals of our legal system," sniffs Thomas Weber, a spokesman
for the German Justice Ministry.
The Associated Press reports that two more Palestinians who "were suspected of providing information to the Israelis about the movements of the militia leader Marwan Zalloum" have been killed. "When Zalloum was killed [by the Israelis], vigilantes from his militia broke into a jail and dragged out three other suspected collaborators, shot them dead and threw them into a street, where a mob mutilated their bodies." The Media Line adds that the bodies of the two men just found showed evidence of torture. "From the pictures aired on Arab television, it seemed that at least one of the men had been beaten and one [had] his eyes gouged out."
Unless we've missed something, the EU-niks have not issued any condemnation of the Palestinians' summary executions. So we should say the central object of EU moral vanity is the American death penalty.
Here's a sign of progress, though: The Jerusalem Post reports that "the European Union, under pressure from the US, is considering expanding its list of terror organizations to include Hizbullah, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)." These groups, of course, impose the death penalty on people whose only "crime" is to be a Jew in Israel. Just this evening, Ha'aretz reports, a young girl was seriously injured in a suicide attack at a restaurant in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv.
More
Suicide Subsidies
Iran is increasing its funding for suicide bombings against Israel, the Middle
East Media Research Institute reports. At a recent "symposium held in Tehran
in support of the Intifada," Iran's "supreme leader," Ayatollah
Ali Khameini, promised the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group "that
his movement's budget would be separated from the Hizbullah budget, and would
be expanded by 70% to cover the expense of recruiting young Palestinians for
suicide operations."
Moral
Unequivalence
"Israel will cover the cost of cancer treatments for an ill Palestinian
child if the Palestinian Authority is unable to do so," the Jerusalem Post
reports. Israeli officials "acceded to the claim" that "Israel
was responsible for the health and wellbeing of Palestinians in areas it entered."
Meanwhile, "in the Gaza Strip, soldiers arrested a wanted militant who was traveling in a Palestinian ambulence [sic]," Ha'aretz reports. Thirty other terrorists, including two who were about to perpetrate suicide attacks, were picked up in Ramallah.
Capital Loss
An MSNBC map
of the Middle East has stars designating the capitals of Egypt, Iran, Iraq,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. One capital, however, is not designated
as such: Jerusalem, capital of Israel, which is shown on the map as a mere dot,
along with the noncapital of Dharan, Saudi Arabia.
Progress
on West 43rd Street
The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof reports on the thaw between Harvard and
the military. He notes:
At Harvard, many students and faculty members are hostile to military and R.O.T.C. training because the military discriminates against gays. It's a fair point, and the discrimination is worth fighting. But it was the American military that deposed the Taliban, the most viciously anti-gay regime in the world, one that executed gays by knocking over walls on top of them. America's military does discriminate against gays and is a bastion of anti-gay attitudes, but it has also done more for gay rights--albeit in Afghanistan--then all the gay organizations in the Ivy League put together.
Hmm, where have we heard this before?
Mushroom-Cloud Multiculturalism
OK, so India and Pakistan are on the brink of nuclear war, and you're the editor
of a major metropolitan daily newspaper. What do you do? Well, naturally, you
assign a reporter to cover the "diversity" angle. Seriously. The San
Francisco Chronicle quotes a Pakistani merchant as saying that Indians and
Pakistanis "are more similar than different, as minorities in the U.S."
And the Seattle Times quotes a son of Indian immigrants: "I was born in Cincinnati,
raised in New Jersey and Texas. But I don't see myself as Indian-American. I
see myself more as South Asian. That makes more sense to me."
Then again, maybe there's something to the idea that Indians and Pakistanis aren't as different as they like to think. The News International, a Pakistani paper, carries a column blasting Pakistanis' fondness for Indian music and movies. "How long will we take to start taking pride in being a Pakistani?" author Farhan Siddiqui asks plaintively.
Eat,
Drink and Be Humanitarian
"The opening day of the UN World Food Summit, dedicated to combating global
hunger, was marked yesterday by a sumptuous lunch for the 3,000 delegates served
by 170 Italian waiters," the Times of London reports. "The summit
leaders were offered foie gras, lobster, and goose stuffed with olives, followed
by fruit compote." Now that's what we call combating global hunger!
In a similar vein, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that sixth-graders at Camelot Elementary School in Auburn, Wash., conducted a "study" of how to solve the state's "school money problem." The crisis is serious, the kids say: "We have budget cuts and problems," according to 12-year-old David Pavone. "We don't have a lot of paper in our school. And we need a bucket of pencils."
The P-I reports that the class "sent 450 surveys to homes in the Camelot school's neighborhood, which is close to Auburn but in the Federal Way School District." The kids' conclusion? The state should raise money for schools by levying a 50-cent tax on movie tickets. We have a better idea: Why not cut out the market research and use the money to buy paper and pencils instead?
Ewww!
CBS News reports that Janet Reno, the former attorney general and now candidate
for governor of Florida, kissed Martin Sheen, who plays "President Bartlet"
on TV's "The West Wing," on the lips. Fortunately, this was a low-risk
osculation, since both Reno and Sheen already have the cooties.
Jihad
vs. Elijah
"The city Democratic committee's reorganization meeting ended in a knife
fight Monday," the Press of Atlantic City reports. "Jihad Callaway"--we're
not making this up--"brother of Craig Callaway, pulled a knife on Elijah
Steele, a supporter of Mayor Lorenzo Langford, in front of Local 54's headquarters,
witnesses said. Steele reportedly responded with his own blade." No one
was hurt.
Zero-Tolerance
Watch
The San Jose Mercury News has still more information on the background of the
spitwad brothers, Stephen and Jeffrey Figueroa:
Stephen, 14, had been disciplined 49 times at Walnut Creek Intermediate School. Jeffrey 28 times. Neighbors were so terrorized they held meetings to decide what to do.
The boys threw firecrackers over a fence, just missing a little girl. They reportedly grabbed an elderly woman's water bottle and poured the liquid on her head.
The spitwad incident occurred after Stephen had been slapping and hitting kids who dissed the Raiders.
We knew none of this last month, when we first noted that Jeffrey could end up behind bars for as long as eight years for injuring another boy's eye with a spitwad. (In the event, Jeffery's sentence was six days, Stephen's five days.) It begins to seem as if this case highlights the ineffectuality, not the overzealousness, of zero tolerance. What took the authorities so long to do something about these rotten kids?
At Least They Have
a Sense of Yuma
On Friday we noted
that at least three schools have sports teams named the Vandals. It turns out
Yuma High School, in the southwestern corner of Arizona, is the "home of
the Criminals."
A
Racist Dog?
Aren't dogs colorblind? No, according to Prof. Paulette
Clancy of Cornell University. "Cats and dogs can see some colors but
not all of them."
In McKees Rocks, Pa., Fox News reports, Wanda Jones Dixon, a member of the city council, "has accused her borough's lone police dog of racial profiling":
Councilwoman Dixon told the city council she has received six complaints about Dolpho in the past year. Three of the people who complained were involved with drugs. Three others were blacks who believe the dog jumped at or attacked them because of their race.
"I had received complaints from African-Americans saying they believe the dog only attacks African-Americans," councilwoman Dixon said Monday. "I think the dog makes the distinction."
Lorraine Livingston, whose nine-year-old son was bitten by Dolpho while the dog's master, Schawn Barger, was scuffling with a drug suspect, says: "That dog should be put to sleep." Expect protests from the EU's K-9 unit.
The
SAT Goes PC
Although reading exercises on the New York State Regents Exam, as we noted
Wednesday, are no longer censored to conform to "sensitivity review
guidelines," the same isn't true of the SAT. "The SAT is not meant to test
people's ability to confront controversial material, or challenge their beliefs,"
Ed Curley of the Educational Testing Service, which publishes the college-entrance
exam, tells the New York Times. "This is a test to measure their reading and
analysis skills, so we try to eliminate anything that would muddy the waters.
Examples:
"We might have a perfectly good passage about Renaissance painting that might say something like, 'in all of art,' when that author means you to understand `in all of Western art,' " he said. "So we'd make that change. Or there might be something that said `throughout history,' when it means `throughout United States history.' " . . .
"Unless it's something we're presenting as a historic passage, we update material published 10 or 20 years ago, so that instead of Negro or Afro-American, we make it African-American," he said. "And if it changes again, we'll change with it."
But what to do with the Iroquois, who refer to themselves as the Haudenoshonee?
"Iroquois is a European term," he said, "so we use the name they prefer, but put the more familiar term in parenthesis, so as not to disadvantage people who don't know the other word."
Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that "irked Milwaukee sewer officials spewed their annoyance Monday over news stories about sewage dumping, insisting that they acted properly last week in releasing some 21 million gallons of partially treated sewage into Lake Michigan." The proper term for the practice, insist officials of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, is not dumping but "blending."
Metric Football
Our item
yesterday in which we said 5-1 is an impossible score in football brought
a flurry of letters--more than 250 in all--pointing out that in countries that
use the metric system, they play an entirely different game and call it "football."
In metric football, our readers assure us, a score of 5-1 actually is possible.
Why a metric game would be named after a nonmetric measure of length is beyond
us, but then the whole metric system is maddeningly complex and confusing.
Meanwhile, it turns out that there has been an actual football game in which one team scored a single point. On Dec. 4, 1921, the Rochester Jeffersons were to play the Washington team, which was known as both the Pros and the Senators. The Professional Football Researchers Association reprints an article from the next day's Washington Post:
Tim Jordan's local professional football team was awarded yesterday's contest by Referee C.A. Metsler when the Rochester Jeffersons refused to take the field on account of weather conditions. Manager Lyons, of the visiting team, had all of the advertised stars on hand, but would not risk their injuring themselves on account of slipping on the snow-covered field.
The contract signed by the visitors contains a clause to the effect "that if both teams have arrived on the field of play, and it is found that said field is too wet for play, the question of cancellation shall rest solely with the manager of the home team."
As Manager Jordan had his Washington team on hand, and felt that he should not disappoint the 400 or so faithful fans who were on hand. In view of the Jeffs' refusal to take the field, there was nothing left for Referee Metsler to do but give the locals the game, 1 to 0, which he did after 40 minutes of argument.
The NFL has since changed its rules, however:
A forfeit occurs only when a game is not played because of the failure or refusal of one team to participate. In that event, the other team, if ready and willing to play, is the winner by a score of 2-0.
What we really want to know, though, is this: In the Rochester-Washington clash, who covered the spread?
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to S.E. Brenner, Jerome Marcus, Natalie Cohen, Michael Segal, Raghu Desikan, C.E. Dobkin, Andrew Cooper, Yehuda Hilewitz, Gershon Dubin, Elliot Ganz, Harold Moskowitz, Howard Weiser, John Affleck, Carl Sherer, Robert LeChevalier, Darren Gold, Randy Schwartz, Doug Levene, Monty Krieger, Daniel Goldstein, Romesh Chandler, H.J. Farmer, Chuck Miller, Justin DelPrince, Marie Bourgeois, Jim Orheim, Michael Williamson, Jonathan Rothenberg, Jill Singleton, David Krause, David Carver, Steve Prestegard, Aviva Ross, Robert Owen, Steven Getman, George Mellinger, David Simon, Gregory Brunt, Dayn Perry, Jason Levine, Tricia Stevenson and Chuck Gitles. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- William McGurn: The State Department is complicit in a Saudi kidnapping.
- Tunku Varadarajan: Is a snuff film news?
- Tom Bray: Golf is America's most democratic sport.
