Free Frank Warner

‘I ran’: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes out of the closet on ‘Saturday Night Live’

Andy Samberg sings a love song to Mahmoud “no gays in Iran” Ahmadinejad on “Saturday Night Live,” and the love seems requited.

“And I ran. I ran so far away.
You’re home, but in my heart you’ll stay.

“I know you say there’s no gays in Iran,
But you’re in New York now, baby!”

Ahmadinejad ends up in a dress, and stretched across a piano as he is serenaded.

Lee Bollinger and Samberg sure know how to introduce a tyrannical lapdog to himself. What can beat honesty and humor when faced with a walking, talking tool of oppression?

OK, maybe a citizen’s arrest would have been an improvement. But this was an impressive start.

Frank Warner

How about them Phillies!

The game isn’t over, but hold your cheesesteaks, the Phightin’s seem to be winning!

Could the Phillies phinally be heading for the playoffs?

Frank Warner

Update: YES!

BBC: Here’s our guest, a guy named Guy

Take a look at this video, if you haven’t seen it. Last year, the BBC Television in London was trying to interview a computer industry expert named Guy Kewney.

Coincidentally, the BBC had a man waiting in the studio for a computer job interview. His first name also is Guy. He is Guy Goma, not Guy Kewney, and the producer accidentally brought Guy Goma in before the TV cameras.

“You’re Guy, right?”

Before anyone noticed the switch, the news anchor was interviewing Guy Goma live about a complicated Apple music-Apple Computers court decision.

Mr. Goma took three questions and gave some general answers, which were a little hard to understand in his thick French-Congo accent. But he made it!

The BBC called the goof-up a “genuine misunderstanding.” Goma later said the interview was “very stressful,” but he’d do it again if asked.

Frank Warner

They’re Burmese, not Myanmartians, calling for freedom

CNN continues to call Burma “Myanmar,” simply because the thugs in charge call it Myanmar. But the thugs in charge know they are clubbing and killing the people of Burma.

Led by General Than Shwe, this military dictatorship has been beating up on Burma for 15 years. The Burmese people are lashing back, with Burmese demonstrations led by Burmese Buddhist monks.

While the Burmese show courage, crying “Democracy! Give us freedom!” they are told by CNN and other news media that they are in Myanmar. It’s as if CNN is saying wise up and whistle the Myanmartian (or what is the adjective?) tune.

Bush and Burma. CNN actually sneered at President Bush’s reference to Burma as “Burma” in his address three days ago calling for U.N. support of Burma’s democratic hopes.

Why should CNN call Burma “Myanmar”? A pack of abusive and unelected generals have no right to maim a nation and name it, too. As James Fallows says,

There is no reason to humor them. Say Burma, as George Bush did. And CNN, grow some backbone when it comes to terminology!

Frank Warner

NRG applies for license to build Texas nuclear plant

NRG Energy Inc. of Princeton, N.J., on Sept. 25 applied for a license to build a twin-reactor, 2,700-megawatt nuclear power plant in Matagorda County, Texas.

It’s the first nuclear plant license application in 29 years. The proposed nuclear reactors would sit next to two other reactors, which have been producing electricity at the South Texas Project site for decades.

Nuclear power isn’t perfectly safe. But even with its faults, its safety record has been good for decades, good enough to justify doubling its capacity in the United States, where our dependence on fossil fuels is not only perilous politically and economically, but risky to the environment.

Security challenge. If NRG builds its two new reactors and if others follow, our major concerns for those plants will be protecting them from terrorists and safely disposing of their nuclear waste. If we can manage those safety matters with the 104 power-generating reactors in the U.S. today, we can do that with 104 more.

For 34 years, we’ve asked with varying degrees of urgency how we might produce more domestic energy supplies. For 10 years or so, we’ve asked with varying degrees of urgency how we might reduce our man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

For the next 20 years, expanded nuclear power can be part of the answer.

Frank Warner

Lee Bollinger: Free speech is not simply allowing someone to speak

Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, four days ago introduced a speech by Iranian dictator’s puppet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an indictment of Ahmadinejad in particular and his repressive regime in general.

In that introduction, Bollinger said to Ahmadinejad’s face, “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”

Too harsh? Two days ago, Bollinger was asked: “Were you too harsh on Ahmadinejad?” His answer:

[O]ne of the problems you can encounter with a speech and question-and-answer is that the kind of norm of civility that we all love can make it extremely difficult in the context of a speaker such as this to express fully the sense of disagreement and put the issues on the table. And that’s why I wanted to speak at the beginning and I wanted to lay out the concerns and the disagreements and the objections and the sense of moral and ethical outrage. Because it is crucial to how this would go that there be a full opportunity for that.

These are not small matters, questioning or denying the Holocaust, holding conferences on that subject, making threats against the state of Israel, dealing with the question of nuclear weapons in the way that they do, other things that I raised and that you all know about. These are not small matters that you can simply talk about in an ordinary sense. You need to have an opportunity in a true exchange to express as fully as you possibly can with as much emotion as is required for this. You need that opportunity and its crucial to the event.

I believe very strongly that this is free speech at its best. This is free speech. It’s not simply allowing someone to speak. It is how the discussion or the debate or the dialogue goes.

I think this Bollinger is onto something.

Frank Warner

19,000 militants, 80,000 civilians killed in Iraq since U.S.-led invasion

Some 19,429 militants have been killed since the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq, and about 4,882 of them died this year, according to military statistics obtained by USA Today.

Meanwhile, Iraq Body Count puts the number of civilian dead since the invasion at 74,000 to 80,000. About 4,000 American troops have been killed. So who has been killing most of these innocents and liberators? Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab extremists, local and foreign, with support from mafia-like militias, Iran, Saudi Arabia and al-Qaida.

U.S. forces certainly aren’t killing all those innocent civilians, though some have been killed accidentally by Americans. Those U.S.-caused civilian casualties probably were highest during the initial six-week invasion, but a large majority of civilian casualties now are intentionally inflicted by the enemy.

Stirring up hatred. For years, this enemy has relied on civilian deaths to forment chaos and intimidate opponents. Car bombs, mortar attacks and terrorist executions have been taking around 1,000 civilian lives a month. Americans aren’t doing that.

The same enemy that American forces are trying to subdue are doing most of the killing. If they’d simply let the Iraqi people have the democracy that is their right, the war would be over. But fascism and fanaticism have strung out the violence.

The defeatists don’t like to hear President Bush say it, but terrorists and insurgents in Iraq really don’t like freedom. And the militants will keep killing for as long as they believe mass murder has a chance of achieving their fascist or fanatical aims.

Dying for nothing. Army Gen. Tommy Franks once said “We don’t do body counts” on the Iraq war. Well, it looks like someone was counting enemy dead after all. If that number tells the extremists they’re wasting they’re time, it’s worth reporting.

Frank Warner

Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Newest example of failed price controls

I call myself a liberal because I believe in the power of liberty and the right to be free, and I know there is no higher cause then defending the defenseless and freeing the oppressed.

Some people have called me a classical liberal, but it’s a label I don’t accept. I don’t accept it, because I don’t limit my philosophy to economics, and I don’t believe in laissez-faire economics (pure capitalism).

I believe in free markets regulated only as much as prudence demands. In other words, I recognize that a free economy has to be regulated just enough to guard against the exploitation and abuse of the imperfect flow of information to investors and consumers.

Mugabe’s mistake. Where does regulation go to far? Well, it went too far in the Soviet Union, and it went too far in Mao’s China. Now it’s too loose in Russia and China, and it’s gone too far in Zimbabwe.

Take a look at Zimbabwe’s empty store shelves.

President Robert Mugabe reacted to runaway inflation (6,600 percent per year!) by imposing price controls. What did that do? It stopped producers from producing, and it shut down wholesalers and retailers. It just didn’t pay to market goods for less than their local cost.

We in the United States had the same problem in the early 1970s, when the Arab Oil Embargo (yeah, that lingering oil problem) doubled, then tripled, gasoline prices, and every other cost started climbing.

Inflation punished. President Nixon slapped on wage and price controls. He even created a Cost of Living Council to monitor compliance and punish violators. The program was well-intentioned. It made lots of us feel better. But I doubt the wage and price controls helped, and they may have slowed our economic recovery.

I was working for Ralph Nader at the time. Nader, whom I marveled at then and still admire today, vehemently opposed the deregulation of natural gas prices, which the industry was lobbying for. But now I think he was wrong.

I, too, made the argument at various political debates in Washington that, if we deregulated natural gas prices, they would instantly rise to the inflated price of equivalent quantities of oil. To be specific, Nader and I and others of our ilk were saying that, if left up to the industry’s free choice, the price of natural gas would quadruple.

Carter’s good call. Well, Jimmy Carter got elected president in 1976 and one of the first things he did in 1977 was to deregulate the price of natural gas. What happened? The price bumped up. But then the industry vastly expanded its supplies of natural gas, and the price quickly went down -- way down.

It was one of the bigger surprises of my life. It is a constant reminder that a free economy, with limited regulation, is far more responsive to consumer demands than is a controlled economy, with limited freedom.

Ask Zimbabwe.

Frank Warner

U.S. city murders were up 1.8% in 2006

In January, I compiled a list of 27 of America’s largest cities and the murders committed in 2006. I found that, among those cities, murders were up 3.3 percent over 2005. With that increase, 2006 still would have been among the five safest years of the last four decades.

Now, the FBI finally has released its 2006 Crime in the U.S. report, revealing that, overall, “big-city murders” last year increased just 1.8 percent.

Of course, my city list was not complete. I used the top 10 U.S. cities, and I made sure to include other cities known to have a homicide problem. So it should be no surprise I calculated a slightly higher increase in murders.

Relatively low crime. The good news is that, with the exceptions of a few cities like Philadelphia and Oakland, America still is doing fairly well on the crime front. 2006 crime bumped up slightly, but still was relatively low. In fact, not all violent crime was up last year. The rape rate actually fell 2 percent.

Why did violent crime drop so fast after 1990, and why has the crime rate remained relatively low over the last 10 years? Those remain largely unanswered questions.

An economy that has expanded almost non-stop since 1982 seems to have been the big factor. Even in politically turbulent times, a quietly steady economy gives Americans just enough confidence to avoid crime and seek an honest living.

Frank Warner

Did Ahmadinejad deserve ‘respect’ simply because he was invited to speak? Respect for what?

I’m amazed at the varied responses to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia University and, of course, to Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s introduction of the “petty and cruel dictator.”

Some commentators are reacting to Bollinger’s brilliant indictment of Ahmadinejad as if it were bad manners to call a tyrant a tyrant to his face. Isn’t Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator”?

Some are reacting as if Ahmadinejad (A) was silenced, which he wasn’t, or (B) had something worthwhile to tell us, which he didn’t.

Still others are angry that Ahmadinejad was invited at all. Get over it.

‘Lack of culture.’ Go to the BBC Web site to see the mental gymnastics the hate-America-first crowd is applying to the Ahmadinejad show.

Respecting guests -- whoever they are is a universal principle. Either you invite somebody or if you do you have to respect them. Bollinger’s violation of this etiquette was nothing but lack of culture in a professor, hopefully not in good people of America.

Farzad, Iran

Farzad, would you respect a guest who had killed your sister or imprisoned your brother? If you ask someone to speak, does that mean you must be silent? What if your guest clearly is ignorant about a few things?

‘Democratically elected’:

I was appalled at the ad hominem attacks on Mr. Ahmadinejad by the president of Columbia University. This was not the intelligent debate expected from a leader of an ivy league institute. The insults must have been influenced by all the noise from those who did not want Mr. Ahmadinejad invited to the university. And by the way, the man was democratically elected, and he is frequently criticised in Iran. Iran and Israel are the only two democracies in the Middle East.

nya, US

Exactly how was Ahmadinejad democratically elected? He was “elected” after the religious thugs who run the Iranian regime disqualified 1,000 relatively normal candidates. Even with the pretend election, he’s not Iran’s chief executive. Ayatollah Khamenei is the unelected, appointed-for-life “Supreme Leader,” dictator in chief. Ahmadinejad is just an arm of the totalitarian machine. A democracy … not.

Beyond that, when you’re talking about someone like Ahmadinejad, who is a large part of Iran’s problem today, the argument naturally is ad hominem. Bollinger was arguing about the man. That’s what ad hominem is. In this case, it was the perfectly proper approach.

‘Open doors’:

It could have opened a door to Iran-US relations, but any chance of that was destroyed by the pre-speech insults. It looks like the intention never was to open doors, rather just hurl abuse at him.
I seriously doubt many will have heard or read the full speech for themselves, and instead will rely entirely on the media to tell them what they should hear and what they should think about it... and we all know what mainstream US media is like, might as well be living in... well ... Iran.

CF, UK

On one level, CF is right. Much of the American mainstream media does sound like Ahmadinejad, especially in its opposition to the democratization of Iraq. If, on the other hand, CF is arguing that the American press corps walks in lockstep with President Bush, then CF doesn’t read the U.S. press or doesn’t remember what he’s read.

Was it an insult too call Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator”? Not really. It’s a fair description, and leaves out a lot of the bad stuff.

‘Had the balls.’ Oh, but the BBC did have a few compliments for Columbia’s Lee Bollinger. Here’s one:

Right on! Someone finally had the balls to give him a taste of “Freedom”.

Brent, San Francisco

Ahmadinejad really was treated too well, considering his role in a bloody dictatorship, and his flacking for a police state intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. He is part of a regime that hangs Iranians whose only offense is demanding their rights to democracy and freedom. He is part of a regime that supports terrorists and trains children for suicide missions in the name of religious repression.

Columbia held hostage. Keep in mind that, while Ahmadinejad was enjoying the freedom to speak in New York City, Kian Tajbakhsh, a Columbia University graduate, was being held under house arrest for no good reason back in Tehran. Does Ahmadinejad or the rest of his regime deserve respect for that?

Simply by not spitting on Ahmadinejad, Bollinger gave the dictator more courtesy than he deserved. He was allowed to speak longer than his originally allotted time. He was not assaulted, not even heckled, unless a few derisive laughs and boos count as heckling.

That’s pretty soft handling, for a murderer. As I said before, Ahmadinejad should have been arrested on the spot. What was the International Criminal Court doing Monday?

Frank  Warner

Iraq and Afghanistan: ‘The political problem of hindsight bias’

Arnold Kling has an interesting piece on the difference between what we know now, and what, in a year or 10 years, we will think we knew now.

Kling applies the idea to several phenomena, but his points are most vividly applied to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In hindsight, most people made the right decision about Afghanistan and Iraq. That is, in hindsight, most people are in favor of invading the former and against invading the latter.

However, go back to 2001. Which country is going to pose more long-term problems for an invader -- Afghanistan or Iraq? Afghanistan, with its mountainous territory and history of rebellion against the Soviets, probably would have been viewed by many experts as posing the greatest difficulty. At the time of the invasion, many feared that it would prove disastrous, and in fact in October of 2001 the New York Times pronounced it a quagmire.

In fact, the unexpectedly low cost of invading Afghanistan may have been one of the reasons for the unexpectedly high cost of invading Iraq. The Bush Administration probably based its expectations of the latter on the outcome of the former.

For now, it is not clear what is the best strategy in Iraq. Some argue that the larger the role that Americans take in the war, the less incentive for the Iraqi government to address difficult issues. Others argue that without a major American presence, security will deteriorate and the country will sink into sectarian violence. Years from now, we may know the answer to these and other questions. And with hindsight bias, we will wonder how those who were on the wrong side of the issue could have been so blind. Meanwhile, real decisions have to be made with imperfect information.

Unpredictable events. No important war will go well. There always is an enemy trying to counter your every move. There are inevitable setbacks and humiliations. There is politics. There is religion. There are ethnic divisions and ancient animosities. There are thousands, possibly millions of people making independent and unpredictable choices, with you and against.

You can know how powerful your weapons are, but you can’t know everything about your enemy’s weapons. And ultimately, you can’t know which measures, short of annihilation, will break the will of a zealous foe fighting for an fanatical ideology.

On the side of democracy and freedom, the only really good day of a war is the day it is won. And sometimes you don’t even know which day that was.

Frank Warner

Defeatist Democrats try to ignore Ahmadinejad; he sounds too much like them

I noticed yesterday that many of the partisan Democratic blogs ignored Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University.

It’s probably because it’s almost impossible to distinguish between Ahmadinejad’s dangerous ideology and the irresponsible ideas of America’s freedom-weary defeatists.

The popular subject yesterday among the pseudo-liberal bloggers? Newt Gingrich. Ahh, the nostalgia.

Frank Warner

For the Iran homosexual deniers

For those who believe everything Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says, here is a picture of homosexuals in Iran. In fact, this is a picture of homosexuals in Iran being hanged from the neck until they are dead, simply for being gay.

And some thought Lee Bollinger should have been more courteous to Ahmadinejad.

Frank Warner

Ahmadinejad is not Iran’s top leader

The New York Times has a little primer on who holds the real political power in Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was “elected” president in June 2005 after about 1,000 reform candidates were disqualified from running, is really only a figurehead, with a few duties.

The real power in Iran is the appointed-for-life Supreme Leader. Right now, the Supreme Leader is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and if Ahmadinejad disagrees with Khamenei about any policy of the regime, Ahmadinejad loses the argument.

The Times says:

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up….

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, and some hard-line leaders, to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible. There are plenty of conservatives and hard-liners who take a more pragmatic view, wanting to retain “revolutionary values” while integrating Iran with the world, at least economically. But they are not driving the agenda these days, and while that could change, it will not be the president who makes that call.

Religious dictatorship. Keep in mind, the Islamic “Republic” of Iran is not a republic, in the sense that its government is elected freely by the people to represent the people. The government is a dictatorship, representing a small clique of power-mad clerics.

Frank Warner

Lee Bollinger’s Columbia intro to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Here is a transcript of Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s words yesterday to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as the petty and cruel dictator waited to speak to the university audience.

How often does a tyrant hear the truth so clearly?

Full text:

I would like to begin by thanking Dean John Coatsworth and Professor Richard Bulliet for their work in organizing this event and for their commitment to the School of International and Public Affairs and its role -- (interrupted by cheers, applause) -- and for its role in training future leaders in world affairs.

If today proves anything, it will be that there is an enormous amount of work ahead of us.

This is just one of many events on Iran that will run throughout the academic year, all to help us better understand this critical and complex nation in today's geopolitics.

Before speaking directly to the current president of Iran, I have a few critically important points to emphasize.

First, in 2003 the World Leaders Forum has advanced Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues.

It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas or our weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naivety about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas.

It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open our public forum to their voices; to hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

Second, to those who believe that this event should never have happened, that it is inappropriate for the university to conduct such an event, I want to say that I understand your perspective and respect it as reasonable.

The scope of free speech in academic freedom should itself always be open to further debate.

As one of the more famous quotations about free speech goes, it is an experiment as all life is an experiment.

I want to say, however, as forcefully as I can that this is the right thing to do, and indeed it is required by the existing norms of free speech, the American university and Columbia itself.

Third, to those among us who experience hurt and pain as a result of this day, I say on behalf of all of us that we are sorry and wish to do what we can to alleviate it.

Fourth, to be clear on another matter, this event has nothing whatsoever to do with any rights of the speaker, but only with our rights to listen and speak.

We do it for ourselves.

We do it in the great tradition of openness that has defined this nation for many decades now.

We need to understand the world we live in, neither neglecting its glories nor shrinking from its threats and dangers.

It is inconsistent with the idea that one should know thine enemy -- I’m sorry -- it is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil, and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament.

In the moment, the arguments for free speech will never seem to match the power of the arguments against, but what we must remember is that this is precisely because free speech asks us to exercise extraordinary self-restraint against the very natural but often counterproductive impulses that lead us to retreat from engagement with ideas we dislike and fear.

In this lies the genius of the American idea of free speech.

Lastly, in universities we have a deep and almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth.

We do not have access to the levers of power, we cannot make war or peace, we can only make minds, and to do this, we must have the most fulsome freedom of inquiry.

Let me now turn to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

* First, on the brutal crackdown on scholars, journalists and human rights advocates:

Over the past two weeks, your government has released Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and Parnaz Azima and just two days ago, Kian Tajbakhsh, a graduate of Columbia with a PhD in Urban Planning. While our community is relieved to learn of his release on bail, Dr. Tajbakhsh remains in Tehran under house arrest, and he still does not know whether he will be charged with a crime or allowed to leave the country.

Let me say this for the record, I call on the president today to ensure that Kian will be free to travel out of Iran as he wishes. (Applause.)

Let me also report today that we are extending an offer to Kian to join our faculty as a visiting professor in Urban Planning here at his alma mater in our Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and we hope he will be able to join us next semester.

(Applause.)

The arrest and imprisonment of these Iranian Americans for no good reason is not only unjustified, it runs completely counter to the very values that allow today's speaker to even appear on this campus, but at least they are alive.

According to Amnesty International, 210 people have been executing In Iran so far this year, 21 of them on the morning of September 5th alone.

This annual total includes at two children, further proof, as Human Rights Watch puts it, that Iran leads the world in executing minors.

There is more.

Iran hanged up 30 people this past July and August during a widely reported suppression of efforts to establish a more democratic society.

Many of these executions were carried out in public view, a violation of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a party.

These executions and others have coincided with a wider crackdown on student activists and academics accused of trying to foment a so-called "soft revolution." This has included jailing and forced retirement of scholars.

As Dr. Esfandiari said in a broadcast interview since her release, she was held in solitary confinement for 105 days because the government believes that the United States is planning a velvet revolution in Iran.

In this very room, last year we learned something about velvet revolutions from Vaclav Havel, and we will likely hear the same from our World Leaders Forum speaker this evening, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile.

Both of their extraordinary stories remind us that there are not enough prisons to prevent an entire society that wants its freedom from achieving it.

We at this university have not been shy to protest the challenge -- and challenge the failures of our own government to live by our values, and we won't be shy about criticizing yours.

Let's then be clear at the beginning.

Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.

And so I ask you -- (applause) -- and so I ask you, why have women, members of the Baha'i faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?

Why, in a letter last week to the secretary-general of the U.N., did Akbar Ganji, Iran’s leading political dissident, and over 300 public intellectuals, writers and Noble Laureates express such grave concern that your inflamed dispute with the West is distracting the world's attention from the intolerable conditions in your regime within Iran, in particular the use of the press law to ban writers for criticizing the ruling system?

Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?

In our country, you are interviewed by our press and asked to speak here today.

And while my colleagues at the law school -- Michael Dorf, one of my colleagues, spoke to Radio Free Europe, viewers in Iran a short while ago on the tenants of freedom of speech in this country -- I propose further that you let me lead a delegation of students and faculty from Columbia to address your universities about free speech with the same freedom we afford you today. (Applause.)

* Secondly, the denial of the Holocaust:

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as "a fabricated legend."

One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers.

For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda.

When you have come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous.

You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.

You should know -- (applause) -- please -- you should know that Columbia is the world center of Jewish studies -- us a world center, and now in partnership with the -- Institute of Holocaust Studies.

Since the 1930s, we provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history.

Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the debate over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity's capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue's first line of defense.

Will you cease this outrage?

* The destruction of Israel:

Twelve days ago you said that the state of Israel cannot continue its life.

This echoed a number of inflammatory statements you have delivered in the past two years, including in October 2005, when you said that Israel "should be wiped off the map", quote-unquote.

Columbia has over 800 alumni currently living in Israel.

As an institution, we have deep ties with our colleagues there.

I have personally spoken -- personally, I have spoken out in most forceful terms against proposals to boycott Israeli scholars (in/and ?) universities, saying that such boycotts might as well include Columbia. (Applause.)

More than 400 -- more than 400 -- more than 400 college and university presidents in this country have joined in that statement.

My question then is, do you plan on wiping us off the map too? (Applause.)

* Funding terrorism:

According to reports of the Council on Foreign Relations, it’s well-documented that Iran is a state sponsor of terror that funds such violent groups as Lebanese Hezbollah, which Iran helped organize in the 1980s, Palestinian Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

While your predecessor government was instrumental in providing the U.S. with intelligence and base support in the 2001 campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, your government is now undermining American troops in Iraq by funding, arming and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces. There are a number of reports that you also link your government with Syria's efforts to destabilize the fledgling Lebanese government through violence and political assassination.

My question is this:

Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and the civil society of the region?

* The proxy war against the United States troops in Iraq:

In a briefing before the National Press Club earlier this month, General David Petraeus reported that arms supplies from Iran, including 240- millimeter rockets and explosively formed projectiles, are contributing to, quote, "a sophistication of attacks that would by no means be possible without Iranian support."

A number of Columbia graduates and current students are among the brave members of our military who are serving or have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They, like other Americans with sons, daughters, fathers, husbands and wives serving in combat, rightly see your government as the enemy.

Can you tell them and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shi'a militia targeting and killing U.S. troops?

* And finally Iran’s nuclear program and international sanctions:

This week, the United Nations Security Council is contemplating expanding sanctions for a third time, because of your government’s refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

You continue to defy this world body by claiming a right to develop a peaceful nuclear power, but this hardly withstands scrutiny when you continue to issue military threats to neighbors.

Last week, French President Sarkozy made clear his lost patience with your stall tactics, and even Russia and China have shown concern.

Why does your country continue to refuse to adhere to international standards for nuclear weapons verification, in defiance of agreements that you have made with the U.N. nuclear agency?

And why have you chosen to make the people of your country vulnerable to the effects of international economic sanctions, and threaten to engulf the world in nuclear annihilation?

(Applause.)

Let me close with a comment.

Frankly -- I close with this comment frankly and in all candor, Mr. President. I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions. But your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us.

I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do.

Fortunately I am told by experts on your country that this only further undermines your position in Iran, with all the many good-hearted, intelligent citizens there.

A year ago, I am reliably told, your preposterous and belligerent statements in this country, as at one of the meetings at the Council on Foreign Relations, so embarrassed sensible Iranian citizens that this led to your party's defeat in the December mayoral elections. May this do that and more.

(Applause.)

I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for.  I only wish I could do better.

Nice job, Bollinger. You shamed a despot. For that, it was worth bringing him in.

Frank Warner

Ahmadinejad says Iran has no homosexuals

I can’t wait for the Daily Kos response to this! Asked why the Iranian theocracy executes homosexuals, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran has no homosexuals.

“In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that like in your country. ... In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have this.”

Ha! And he’s the Kos crowd’s hero.

Frank Warner

Ahmadinejad is scorned -- Bravo, Columbia U. President Lee Bollinger!

The Daily Kos crowd won’t like this!

Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, just opened the forum for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by telling him, “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and brutal dictator.”

Ahmadinejad later complained that Bollinger had interfered with freedom of speech and freedom of thought by issuing insults and giving “unfriendly treatment” to a guest speaker.

Hanging democrats. To Ahmadinejad’s face, Bollinger protested of the Iranian regime’s unjustified imprisonment and then house arrest of an Iranian-American, a Columbia alumnus, and asked that the man be allowed to leave Iran. Bollinger also called for an end to the Iranian theocracy’s hangings of dozens of pro-democracy activists.

“Why are you so afraid of Iranian citizens expressing their opinions for change?” Bollinger asked as Ahmadinejad sat still, looking supremely stupid.

Bollinger went on.

* He said Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews makes the dictator “simply ridiculous.”

* He said Ahmadinejad is leading a “proxy war” in Iraq, sending weapons to kill Americans.

* He said Ahmadinejad is presiding over a nuclear arms program and breaking international law in the process.

Face of repression. I had wondered what the point was in inviting Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia. Obviously, he wasn’t going to say anything new. Columbia would attract publicity, but would anything really happen?

Well, Bollinger made it happen. He held a mirror up to a dictator, and the dictator trembled at the ugliness.

The only thing that could have topped Bollinger’s speech would have been Ahmadinejad’s arrest as an illegitimate tyrant. Couldn’t someone call the police?

Frank Warner

Update: Several other bloggers are noting that, while the Columbia audience applauded wildy for Bollinger, many of them also applauded shamefully for Ahmadinejad’s claims that Israel should not exist (or should move to Europe). That reaction was the sad side of the dictator’s appearance. But unfortunately, these weren’t people whom Ahmadinejad brought along. They were America’s own toadies to totalitarianism.

Daily Kos says CBS’ Scott Pelley was too tough on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Is it possible for a news interviewer to be too tough on the Iranian dictatorship’s puppet president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Daily Kos thinks so. The fascist-friendly Kos gang believes that if American soldiers say they’ve found Iranian weapons being smuggled into Iraq, the Americans are lying. And so it was an insult, to the Kos way of thinking, for CBS’ Scott Pelley to ask Ahmadinejad why Iran is allowing missiles and bombs into Iraq to kill the Americans who are trying to secure Iraq’s first-ever democracy.

I have to wonder if the Kos crowd was satisfied with Ahmadinejad’s evading the subject yesterday on “60 Minutes.” Did Ahmadinejad ever say no, Iran has sent no weapons into Iraq? In the interview, taped on Sept. 20, how many chances did Pelley give Ahmadinejad to answer that question?

‘Is that a ‘No’?’ CBS News summarizes:

Ahmadinejad told Pelley the U.S. and Iran could be friends, but 60 Minutes wanted to know about the growing evidence that Iranian weapons and bomb components are being used against U.S. forces in Iraq.

“It is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and Iranian know-how are killing Americans in Iraq. You have American blood on your hands. Why?” Pelley asked.

“Well, this is what the American officials are saying. Again, American officials wherever around the world that they encounter a problem which they fail to resolve, instead of accepting that, they prefer to accuse others,” the president replied. “I’m very sorry that because of the wrong decisions taken by American officials, Iraqi people are being killed and also American soldiers. It’s very regrettable.”

“The American Army has captured Iranian missiles in Iraq. The critical elements of the explosively formed penetrator bombs that are killing so many people are coming from Iran. There’s no doubt about that anymore. The denials are no longer credible, sir,” Pelley pointed out.

“Very good. If I may. Are you an American politician? Am I to look at you as an American politician or a reporter? This is what the American officials are claiming,” Ahmadinejad replied. “If they accuse us 1,000 times, the truth will not change.”

“Are you saying that it is not the policy of this government to send weapons into Iraq? Sir, forgive me, you’re smiling, but this is a very serious matter to America,” Pelley said.

“Well, it’s serious for us as well. I daresay it’s serious for everyone,” Ahmadinejad told Pelley. “It seems to me it’s laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn’t help. And the reason that I’m smiling, again, it’s because that the picture is so clear. But American officials refuse to see it.”

Asked if he could very simply and directly say that Iran is not sending weapons to Iraq, Ahmadinejad said, “We don’t need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity…”

“Is that a ‘No,’ sir?” Pelley asked.

“…by Iraq. It’s very clear the situation. The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests,” Ahmadinejad said.

* * *

Ahmadinejad: We have more than 1,000 kilometers of common borders with Iraq. Each year, many millions of Iranians go to Iraq and millions of Iraqis come to Iran. So we are very unhappy with the insecurity. We are doing our very best to help with security. For security, we decided to sit down and talk with Americans in Iraq.

Pelley: As a goodwill gesture, will you say right now in this interview that you will do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq?

Ahmadinejad: Well, Iranian forces are not inside Iraq. Can you show me one?

Pelley: No sir, Iranian arms, sir….

Mr. President, we appreciate your thoughts. Some people watching this interview, frankly, will think that you're dodging the questions because many of the questions that I ask you are fairly straightforward “yes” or “no” questions. And let me try this one again, if I may. Will you pledge tonight to do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq? Can you make that pledge?

Ahmadinejad: Well, I think you have been charged with a mission to repeat a sentence over and over again. My comments are very clear. I think that you should go back and take American officials to task. Use the same force you're using right now so that they take the troops out.

Pelley: Was that a “yes” or a “no,” sir?

Ahmadinejad: If you are to take sides, well, I don’t know. Well, you shouldn’t tell me what kind of answer I should give to you. You're free to ask me questions. I didn’t put any limitations on your questions.

Pelley: True.

Ahmadinejad: I’m free to give my own answers. I think that all of us should go to American officials and ask them: “What are you looking for in Iraq? Let’s be clear. Why have you stayed behind? Why are you accusing others?”

Sanity check. Ahmadinejad could have said no, but then he doesn’t want to discourage Moktada al Sadr and his Mahdi militia, [or the Badr Brigades,] which hope to take control of Iraq, using Iranian arms, and turn Iraq into a clone of the repressive Iranian theocracy.

After hearing Ahmadinejad’s evasions, how did the Kos crew respond? On the Daily Kos blog, Richard Cranium said he was “stunned” and “scared,” by Pelley, not by Ahmadinejad. Cranium wrote:

Reporter Scott Pelley was unbelievably scary in asking the questions he asked.

At the moment, I’m at a loss for words, but if you watched it, and were as stunned as I was, please let me know. I need a sanity check.

I’m going to have to wait for a transcript, but here's what immediately scared me:

* Pelley’s “questions” (allegedly from George Bush)
* Pelley’s declarations that the U.S. had “proof of Iran firing missiles at Americans in Iraq”
* Pelley’s assertations that “Iran is providing material support to Iraq insurgents.  We have proof. What do you say?” ... or something like that. Very close.

It was a masterful Goebbel-esque performance by 60 Minutes,  on behalf of Dick Cheney and the drums of war.

I’m telling you, it was scary beyond belief….

In the end, it’s clear that this ambush of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (and believe me, I’m not defending him for a moment) was cleared, vetted, and suggested by either Cheney or Bush himself.

The Kos cause. This is how the Kossacks are “not defending” Ahmadinejad and other totalitarians.

Earlier in the day, Sally Kohn, another Daily Kos contributor who says she is a Jewish lesbian, revealed she has a “little crush” on Ahmadinejad because of his “frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of U.S. foreign policy preceding.”

As long as you oppose freedom, you’ll have a friend at Daily Kos. The Kossacks don’t even mind if you want to kill them.

Frank Warner

‘What happened in Jena?’

As Andrew Sullivan asked, “What the hell happened in Jena?”

The press seems reluctant to describe the central allegations in the case of Jena, Louisiana, where racism has tainted all the central characters, with the possible exception of one high school principal.

The string of events started last year, after Kenneth Purvis, a black student at Jena High School, asked the school Principal Scott Windham on Aug. 31 for permission to sit during breaks under one specific oak tree, in courtyard space normally reserved for white students. The principal said Purvis could sit where he wanted, and later that day Purvis and a few other black students stood under the tree.

Nooses on the oak. On Sept. 1, 2006, in reaction to the black students’ move, three white students strung two or three hangman’s nooses on the oak -- the nooses symbolic of a time when white people lynched black people without trial in the South. Initially expelled, the three white students eventually were suspended for just three days.

On Nov. 30, 2006, the main academic building at Jena High was burned. No one was charged with the arson.

Tensions rose in Jena. At a private party on Dec. 1, Robert Bailey, a black student, was struck by a beer bottle or a fist or an open hand -- the details are in dispute. Bailey did not seek medical attention, but Justin Sloan, a white man (or was he a student?), was charged with battery, fined $250 and put on probation for a year.

The next day, Dec. 2, Matt Windham, a young white man and former Jena High student, grabbed a shotgun from his car when he saw Bailey and two other black students at a gas-station convenience store. The black students took the gun from Windham, and Bailey was charged with theft of the gun. Windham wasn’t charged.

Justin Barker. On Dec. 4, Justin Barker, a white student who may have taunted Bailey during lunch about the party beating, was attacked later in the day as he left the Jena High School gymnasium.

Six black students -- now called the Jena 6 -- allegedly slugged and kicked Barker until he was unconscious, and possibly after he was conscious. Barker suffered a concussion, cuts and bruises, including a black eye, and he bled from both ears. He was taken away by ambulance, but was released from a hospital within three hours.

The six black students initially were charged with attempted second-degree murder. Local residents and others protested the murder charged as excessive.

Guilty, then not. The first and only Jena 6 trial started on June 26 this year. It was the trial for Mychal Bell. On that day, the charges to all six defendants were reduced to second-degree battery and conspiracy. Bell, who was 16 at the time of the incident, was tried as an adult. He and his lawyer put up little defense, and on June 28 Bell was found guilty by an all-white jury of second-degree battery and conspiracy.

On July 23, a school district contractor cut down the oak tree where the nooses had been strung.

Then on Sept. 14 this year, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Bell’s conviction, saying he should not have been tried as an adult in Louisiana, where 17 is the legal age of consent. The ruling doesn’t affect all five other defendants, some of whom were 17 at the time.

Protest march. Bell still has not been released from prison. His continued imprisonment may have to do with his violating probation related to earlier offenses, including an incident in which he punched a 17-year-old girl in the face.

The other members of the Jena Six are Jesse Ray Beard, who was 14 at the time of Barker’s beating, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw.

Considering the racism and racial divisions that permeate the case, some civil rights leaders have called for fairness for the Jena 6. A Sept. 20 rally in Jena brought as many as 50,000 marchers demanding that charges be reduced or dropped.

Frank Warner

* * *

Update: Commenter Neo provided this link to a related Jason Whitlock column at The Kansas City Star. Among other things, the column says:

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

* * *

Update: Media myths about the Jena 6. There was no "whites only tree"? The nooses were aimed at white students?

Last hurdle to Iraq victory? Bush’s $200 billion challenge

President Bush plans to ask for nearly $200 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, about $47 billion more than previously predicted. Covering the final year of his presidency, this may be the most important request of his presidency.

Since they took charge of Congress in January, and even before, Democratic leaders have been trying to derail the U.S.-led democratization of Iraq. They’ve even made it clear that they don’t care if a hasty pull-out of American troops led to genocide, a bloodier war or a fascist takeover in Iraq.

The Democrats have been pandering to American frustration with the length of the war. Though most Americans still hope for the victory of freedom, the Democrats, eager to see the failure of a Republican president’s central cause, will continue to play on frustration to hobble the war effort.

Costs, benefits. That’s why this $200 billion request is critical. It represents a significant increase in the estimated cost to win the war. The Democrats certainly will remind everyone of the high pricetag, but ignore, as usual, the potential giant benefits of a democratic Iraq.

Let’s hope that $200 billion includes a healthy appropriation to speed the expansion of Iraq’s army. Once that has expanded close to 300,000 troops, significant numbers of American troops can start coming home.

Frank Warner

New York Times falsely explained ‘General Betray Us’ ad

The New York Times initially told us that MoveOn.org, the group financed by billionaire George Soros, got a discount on the “Petraeus … Betray Us” ad because it was a standby ad.

Well, now the Times admits the ad wasn’t on standby. It was guaranteed to run on Sept. 10, the day that Petraeus first appeared before Congress with his update on the Iraq war “surge.”

Yet instead of the full $142,083 price for the full-page ad, MoveOn paid only $64,575.

“We made a mistake,” Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, told the newspaper’s public editor.

Now all advertisers in The New York Times will ask why a similar “mistake” isn’t made for them.

Frank Warner

* * *

Here are the other advertisers who placed ads in the first section of the Sept. 10 New York Times:

Neiman Marcus
Lord & Taylor
Hospital for Special Surgery
CNN
Delta
St. Francis Hospital
Pastor Patrick Ock Soo Park
Verizon Wireless

Now, if these advertisers just happened to push surrender to the fascists in Iraq, would they get half off, too? Heck, does CNN get a 90 percent discount?

* * *

Back to Dan Rather, Mary Mapes and the faked documents

Mary Mapes, the former CBS producer responsible in 2004 for giving Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, false documents on President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service, continues to imply those documents were authentic.

Mapes says:

It has been three years since we aired our much-maligned story on President Bush's National Guard service and reaped a whirlwind of right-wing outrage and talk radio retaliation. That part of the assault on our story was not unexpected. In September 2004, anyone who had the audacity to even ask impertinent questions about the president was certain to be figuratively kicked in the head by the usual suspects....

Instantly, the far right blogosphere bully boys pronounced themselves experts on document analysis, and began attacking the form and font in the memos. They screamed objections that ultimately proved to have no basis in fact. But they captured the argument. They dominated the discussion by churning out gigabytes of mind-numbing internet dissertations about the typeface in the memos, focusing on the curl at the end of the "a," the dip on the top of the "t," the spacing, the superscript, which typewriters were used in the military in 1972.

It was a deceptive approach, and it worked.

These critics blathered on about everything but the content.

Center of controversy. There was no news content, but Mapes pretends there was. And conservatives were not the only ones to see through the hoax.

Let’s start with the evidence, the basis in fact. The return address at the top of the fake May 4, 1972, letter to Bush from the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron was the dead give-away. It was perfectly centered, centered exactly as a 21st century word processor would center it. We had some great typists back in 1972, but they didn’t type exactly like computers.

In other words, that letter and the other Mapes-Rather “60 Minutes II” documents were faked more than 30 years after 1972.

Anachronisms and errors. Captain’s Quarters reminds us:

And typography was the least of the issues with the memos. The signatures of Jerry Killian turned out to be forged, for one thing, not unexpected when [Bill] Burkett created them out of thin air. The format of the memos didn’t match the Air Force standards in place at the time. They referenced military standards that didn’t exist. They demanded that Bush take a physical exam well before his requirement date. The story they reported was that a general pressured Bush’s commander to deep-six his concerns, when the general with supposed Bush connections had retired eighteen months before these memos were written. And so on, and so on.

Beyond that, the Sept. 8, 2004, “60 Minutes II” “news” story wasn’t new. It was a rehash of a Boston Globe story, published days before the 2000 election, suggesting that Bush avoided Vietnam War service by joining the National Guard, but then ignored his National Guard duties. The story might have been true, askew or not true. But in 2004, it wasn’t new.

Nothing but partisanship. Mapes implies she was telling the story for the first time. The only thing remotely new in her account was the falsified National Guard document telling Bush to report for a required physical. That’s hardly worth a mention, and it almost certainly was false anyway.

Though the faked documents said little, they looked just scandalous enough to persuade Mapes and Rather to go with an attack on Bush two months before Election Day 2004. They had no news, nothing confirmed, but they went with it. And now they say someone else destroyed their reputations.

Frank Warner

Dr. Randy Pausch’s lecture of a lifetime

Power Line suggests we take a look at a moving column on the “last lecture” of Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor.

Pausch, 46, has been told he will die soon of pancreatic cancer. His Sept. 18 lecture (Click here to see it) is full of wisdom, and the Jeffrey Zaslow column about it is a gem:

Dr. Pausch’s speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months. His lecture, using images on a giant screen, turned out to be a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life.

He began by showing his CT scans, revealing 10 tumors on his liver. But after that, he talked about living. If anyone expected him to be morose, he said, “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” He then dropped to the floor and did one-handed pushups.

Clicking through photos of himself as a boy, he talked about his childhood dreams: to win giant stuffed animals at carnivals, to walk in zero gravity, to design Disney rides, to write a World Book entry. By adulthood, he had achieved each goal. As proof, he had students carry out all the huge stuffed animals he’d won in his life, which he gave to audience members. After all, he doesn’t need them anymore.

He paid tribute to his techie background. “I’ve experienced a deathbed conversion,” he said, smiling. “I just bought a Macintosh.” Flashing his rejection letters on the screen, he talked about setbacks in his career, repeating: “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.” He encouraged us to be patient with others. “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.” After showing photos of his childhood bedroom, decorated with mathematical notations he’d drawn on the walls, he said: “If your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favor to me, let ’em do it.”

While displaying photos of his bosses and students over the years, he said that helping others fulfill their dreams is even more fun than achieving your own. He talked of requiring his students to create videogames without sex and violence. “You’d be surprised how many 19-year-old boys run out of ideas when you take those possibilities away,” he said, but they all rose to the challenge.

He also saluted his parents, who let him make his childhood bedroom his domain, even if his wall etchings hurt the home’s resale value. He knew his mom was proud of him when he got his Ph.D, he said, despite how she’d introduce him: “This is my son. He’s a doctor, but not the kind who helps people.”

He then spoke about his legacy. Considered one of the nation's foremost teachers of videogame and virtual-reality technology, he helped develop “Alice,” a Carnegie Mellon software project that allows people to easily create 3-D animations. It had one million downloads in the past year, and usage is expected to soar.

“Like Moses, I get to see the Promised Land, but I don't get to step foot in it,” Dr. Pausch said. “That’s OK. I will live on in Alice.”

Many people have given last speeches without realizing it. The day before he was killed, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke prophetically: “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place.” He talked of how he had seen the Promised Land, even though “I may not get there with you.”

Dr. Pausch’s lecture, in the same way, became a call to his colleagues and students to go on without him and do great things. But he was also addressing those closer to his heart.

Near the end of his talk, he had a cake brought out for his wife, whose birthday was the day before. As she cried and they embraced on stage, the audience sang “Happy Birthday,” many wiping away their own tears.

Dr. Pausch’s speech was taped so his children, ages 5, 2 and 1, can watch it when they’re older. His last words in his last lecture were simple: “This was for my kids.” Then those of us in the audience rose for one last standing ovation.

Life and death. What a wonderfully written story about a wonderful teacher. It’s so hard to believe that, there he is, doing push-ups, and we still can do nothing to save his life.

Some day soon, I hope, we won’t let a few cells kill the rest of us. We all could use more time to get things right.

Frank Warner

Click here for a full transcript of Dr. Paush's speech.

Why aren’t we finding more early humans in melting snow?

Remember the Ice Man, “Otzi,” the Copper Age traveler from 3300 B.C. whose fairly well-preserved body two German tourists found in 1991 in the melting snow of the Italian-Austrian Alps?

I’m wondering, if the Earth’s glaciers and snow caps are melting so quickly today, and I believe they are, why aren’t we finding more of these ancient hunters and hikers?

My guess is, we’d learn a ton about pre-Columbus American history if we could find examples of the humans who traveled from Asia to America 25,000 years ago. They wandered from Siberia into Alaska across the Bering “land bridge,” which really was a massive wilderness about 1,000 miles wide, its exposure the result of lower ocean levels when the Ice Age was sucking up so much water for glaciers.

Truth is out there. Who were those first Americans? We often ask today. It seems that, with global warming and DNA analysis, we have a real chance to find out. Is anyone looking?

Frank Warner

Fearing MoveOn.org, Hillary Clinton votes no to condemning ‘Petraeus … Betray Us’ ad

The U.S. Senate voted 72-25 today to condemn MoveOn.org’s New York Times advertisement that on Sept. 10 called Gen. David Petreaus “General Betray Us” because he wants to beat the fascists in Iraq.

As you know, 72 plus 25 doesn’t equal 100, so some senators obviously didn’t vote on the resolution. One who didn’t was Sen. Barack Obama, who was in Washington, but just couldn’t decide what to decide. There’s a profile in ambivalence. Sen. Joe Biden, who wasn’t around, didn’t vote either.

Sen. Hillary Clinton did cast a vote. She joined 24 others -- 23 Democrats like herself and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Independent -- who were too scared to rebuke MoveOn.org. She made her inexcusable choice because she fears the friends of fascism more than she wants the victory of freedom in Iraq.

For him before against him. This was on a resolution defending Petraeus, a wartime general that the Democratic Senate on Jan. 26 confirmed 81-0 for the military leadership job in Iraq.

And yet, Clinton, Dodd, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, Levin, Reid, Rockefeller, Schumer and the other usual defeatists voted for the selfish partisans who demand that we lose the war. Twenty-two Democrats and Joe Lieberman voted with 49 Republicans to rap MoveOn’s knuckles.

Something more important took shape, too. I think this vote -- the 72 votes for Petraeus and his cause -- finally indicates the war is won for a secure democracy in Iraq. It’s really been won for some time, but we’ve also had the means to lose it if we tried.

Ending by winning. The anti-victory forces are simply too unprincipled to organize a defeat. They know they’re not anti-war; their demands might take the U.S. out of Iraq, but they would enlarge the war and invite genocide, generations of new oppression and a totalitarian arms race.

So MoveOn.org really has nothing to offer but hope for our enemies and bad poetry.

The American people, on the other hand, want to end the war, to really end it, by winning it for democracy. That’s why General Petraeus’ poll ratings are rising, and MoveOn can’t even count those 25 cowardly senators as real friends.

Frank Warner

Fred Thompson is attacked for saying the U.S. has sacrificed most to free others

The Washington Post made a fool of itself yesterday pretending to correct Fred Thompson’s argument that the United States has sacrificed more than any other nation to free other people.

What was The Post’s counterpoint? That the Soviet Union lost 8 million troops doing its part to defeat Adolf Hitler in World War II. The U.S. lost “only” 400,000 in that war. Unfortunately, The Post didn’t bother to point out that, in the process, the Soviet Union didn’t liberate any other nation. It didn’t even liberate itself.

In World War II, the United States beat the Germans in Western Europe and exacted the surrenders of fascist Italy and imperial Japan. The U.S. not only liberated France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, the Philippines and other Allies -- even giving China a chance to embrace democracy -- it also liberated former enemies Japan, Italy and west Germany.

Soviet liberators? Instead of spreading freedom at the end of World War II, the Soviets strung an Iron Curtain across the middle of Europe, sabotaged democracy in China, and for another 45 years, tried to spread its totalitarian cruelty all the way around the world.

Then how about the British Commonwealth? The Post asks. It lost more lives in World Wars I and II than did America. Trouble is, the British empire was fighting almost exclusively for the freedom of the British empire, not for the freedom of other nations.

Ignore the ignorant Post. On the liberation front, the United States is No. 1.

Frank Warner

Cure for cancer may be in transfusions

Working on the assumption that some people have cells that are 50 times better at fighting cancer than others, scientists are experimenting with transfusions to kill cancer.

The Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina has received FDA approval to inject the immune cells, called granulocytes, into 22 cancer patients to measure the possible benefits.

The (London) Telegraph says this treatment might be curing half or more of all cancers within two years.

Frank Warner

Ahmadinejad asks for Ground Zero tour?

Mamoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian theocracy’s puppet, actually has asked for a guided tour of Ground Zero during his New York City visit next week. So far, it appears he has been denied the visit, but the talks aren’t over completely.

He wants lay a wreath?

It’s further proof this dangerous man and the diabolical regime behind him are completely out of touch with reality. They will do anything, from bad jokes to genocide, to accomplish their faith-tinged sociopathic dream.

Frank Warner

‘I Like a Boy’ sings to American troops

In a new music video that has to be No. 1 with the U.S. armed forces, “Obama Girl” Amber Lee Ettinger pours out her admiration for the liberators of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s called “I Like a Boy”:

“I like a boy who rocks a doggie tag/ Holding it down for the U.S. flag.”

“Not many men can combat insurgencies/ So come on and be my sugar Baghdaddy.”

Leah Kauffman, the songwriter, supplies Ettinger’s voice.

And rapper Mims drops in to give the man’s view of today’s woman in uniform:

“Honey I’m in search of my G. I. Jane/ I need a woman who can work that truck or that chopper”

A different tune. Already, the Democratic defeatists are complaining the song makes them look weak and unattractive. I guess they’d rather see a music video praising Saddam Hussein’s troops for putting 400,000 people in mass gr