Free Frank Warner

Bad days for Charlie Rangel

The Buffalo News:

It’s the same old story for Rangel, who last year reluctantly acknowledged what he described as an inadvertent failure to report $75,000 in rental income for a beachfront property in the Dominican Republic. Then, many critics—including this page—called on him to step down from his chairmanship, at least until his professed innocence could be established. He didn’t.

Now, it gets worse. Newly-filed disclosures show that Rangel failed to report at least half a million dollars in assets in 2007. They also show that his net worth is between $1 million and $2.5 million, or about twice what he claimed in 2008.

There's no uproar at all about this. In a culture of corruption, vice is virtue.

Frank Warner

Ted Kennedy and the evil empire

As Ted Kennedy was praised and buried over the weekend, little was said about his May 1983 offer to Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov to undermine President Reagan’s campaign against Communist oppression.

The offer, recorded in a Soviet memorandum and uncovered by The London Times in 1991, was no doubt influenced by Kennedy’s intense partisanship, but it was disgraceful (and probably illegal) all the same.

Kennedy’s bold overture was made just two months after Reagan, in the style of President John Kennedy, shamed Communism and gave hope to its imprisoned masses by declaring the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”

Useful idiocy. The Massachusetts senator, through John Tunney, offered Andropov help to brush up on his propaganda and counter Reagan’s moves with clever rhetoric. That and Chappaquiddick have to be Ted Kennedy’s two lowest points.

Frank Warner

Eclipse: Day turns to night over the Pacific

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Power Line just ran this remarkable picture of the July 22 total eclipse of the sun. It was taken from a cruise ship in the Pacific Ocean.

The sunlight on the horizon is just beyond the moon’s shadow.

Frank Warner

Boston Globe says coast is clear for Cape Cod wind farm

The death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy removes the biggest obstacle to the Cape Wind windmill farm planned on Nantucket Sound, near Cape Cod. Now even the Boston Globe says it’s time that President Obama move ahead with the project.

The Globe editorializes:

Neither Obama nor his administration has yet weighed in on Cape Wind, the controversial 130-turbine wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound that could supply the electricity needs of more than 300,000 homes on the Cape and Islands. If Obama’s pledges for a greener economy are to be kept, his administration should not delay any longer the arduous process that began in 2001 to develop this clean energy source.

It’s one of the few alternative power proposals likely to produce new energy relatively fast and relatively cheap. And since we’re doing nothing to encourage more CO2-free nuclear plants or more domestic oil and gas, we’d better try and catch the wind.

Frank Warner

Shoe-throwing fascist with bad aim to be released

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Baathist fascist who later joined Moktada al-Sadr’s anti-democratic movement, will be released next month after serving prison time for throwing two shoes at -- and missing -- President Bush on Dec. 14.

Zeidi became a hero to those who wanted to preserve fascism in Iraq forever. It’s so sad they’re so short of role models they have to admire someone who, even at point-blank range, couldn’t hit his target -- twice.

Iraq’s dunk-booth carnies can’t wait till Zeidi’s out.

Frank Warner

Blowing in the wind

From commenter George:

Can we install those windmills off the coast of Massachusetts now?

If the question is, has the Massachusetts political power structure completely and suddenly changed, I think the answer is yes.

Frank Warner

Scotland surrendered for Libyan oil

Note that the United States was not rewarded with one drop of Iraqi oil for the liberation of Iraq. For the first time in history, Iraq’s oil belongs to the Iraqi people.

But Great Britain does expect to be rewarded with Libyan oil for freeing the Libyan murderer of 259 people flying over Lockerbie, Scotland, back in 1988.

The [London] Sunday Times:

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

The letters were sent two years ago by Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to Kenny MacAskill, his counterpart in Scotland, who has been widely criticised for taking the formal decision to permit Megrahi’s release.

A whole nation surrendered in the name of BP. Remember, when the plane crashed in Lockerbie, it killed 11 Scots on the ground. This “humanitarian” nightmare has dishonored their memory and the name of Scotland itself.

I’ll never buy BP again. There’s blood and shame in that oil.

Frank Warner

Ted Kennedy and Teddy Jr.: ‘The last ones on the water’

Ted Kennedy Jr. today gave a moving tribute to his father:

When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with bone cancer. A few months after I lost my leg, there was a heavy snowfall over my childhood home outside of Washington D.C. My father went to the garage to get the old Flexible Flyer and asked me if I wanted to go sledding down the steep driveway.

I was trying to get used to my new artificial leg and the hill was covered with ice and snow and it wasn’t easy for me to walk. The hill was very slick and as I struggled to walk, I slipped and I fell on the ice and I started to cry. I said, “I can’t do this.”

I said, “I’ll never be able to climb that hill.”

And he lifted me in his strong, gentle arms and said something I’ll never forget. He said “I know you’ll do it, there is nothing you can’t do. We’re going to climb that hill together, even if it takes us all day.”

Sure enough, he held me around my waist and we slowly made it to the top, and, you know, at age 12 losing a leg pretty much seems like the end of the world, but as I climbed onto his back and we flew down the hill that day I knew he was right. I knew I was going to be OK.

You see, my father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable and it is what we do with that loss, our ability to transform it into a positive event, that is one of my father’s greatest lessons. He taught me that nothing is impossible.

During the summer months when I was growing up, my father would arrive late in the afternoon from Washington on Fridays, and as soon as he got to Cape Cod, he would want to go straight out and practice sailing maneuvers in anticipation of that weekend’s races.

We’d be out late, and the sun would be setting, and family dinner would be getting cold, and we’d still be out there practicing our jibes and spinnaker sets long after everyone else had gone ashore.

Well one night, not another boat in sight on the summer sea, I asked him, “Why are we always the last ones on the water?”

“Teddy,” he said, “well, you see, most of the other sailors we race against are smarter and more talented than we are. But the reason why we are going to win is that we are going to work harder than them and we will be better prepared.”

And he just wasn’t talking about boating.

That is a good way to remember your father.

Frank Warner

Washington Post: Waterboarding made Khalid Sheik Mohammed spill al-Qaida’s secrets

The Washington Post:

“KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete,” according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA’s then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.

[F]or defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.

Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.

“What do you think changed KSM’s mind?” one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. “Of course it began with that.” …

Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda’s strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in “considerable detail the traits and profiles” that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.

Tortured question. I don’t think there’s any doubt that pressure can persuade someone to reveal a secret, especially if there is a way to check on key elements of the story. The only real controversy is whether the waterboarding that U.S. interrogators applied to three terrorists, with the full knowledge of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was torture.

It sure looks like torture, but KSM reportedly is fine today, and the interrogation method remains in a gray area. If most of us agree it is torture and that it should be illegal, why doesn’t Congress pass a law clearly making it illegal?

Frank Warner

Ed Klein: ‘One of Ted Kennedy’s favorite topics of humor was Chappaquiddick’

Ed Klein, former Newsweek foreign editor and friend of Ted Kennedy, recalls how Kennedy was so “amazing” he could joke about his 1969 car crash at Chappaquiddick:

“I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself.

“And he would ask people, ‘Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?’ I mean, that is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.”

I have better memories of Ted Kennedy. I must say I am sickened by the alternately gushing and ghoulish way his closest friends are remembering him this week.

Frank Warner