Powerline has some great info and insights on the two judges who will be brought for confirmation before the Senate.

So it will be interesting to see if the Democrats play the filibuster game again. There is no reason these judges should not be confirmed. The lies the Dems and media are spreading don’t hold up, and the debunking by Powerline of the CSM article is but the latest example.

No one has shown me one shred of evidence that these judges are not qualified to serve on the courts as desired by President.

I love it when the only response Europeans can make to the weakness of their own society is to say “oh yeah, well America sucks worse”. No one denies that we have our own issues to deal with here, but I don’t see the same kind of emigration statistics like the brain drain occuring in the old world. What is really hilarious is the mantra that the European economy is stronger than ours. I guess if you keep telling yourself that long enough you might actually start to believe it.

Of course, that does not make it true. No less authority than that liberal bastion called the New York Times has an article dispelling the myth of a higher standard of living  in Europe.

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro’s statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.

Contrasting “the American dream” with “the European daydream,” Mr. Norberg described the difference: “Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 – and the gap is constantly widening.”

Can you imagine how bad it would be if the Euros actually paid for their own defense? Whatever. I stand by the assertion that Europe as we have known it is unlikely to survive the 21st century. If they weren’t so damn arrogant I might even feel some pity as their pathetic society goes the way of the dinosaur. Godless socialism, declining birthrates, staggering Muslim immigration, and an economy in the toilet. All hail the brilliance of our betters for creating a perfect storm of destruction.

Meanwhile, as we watch the former powers of Europe fade into oblivion, the Chinese are making noises. China will be America’s challenge in the coming years. I expect we will prevail but we won’t have the time or resources to bail out our feckless former allies for a third time.

Oh well.

George Will has an excellent column noting that Europe may well be in a death spiral. While Mr. Will’s contention that this can be traced to Europe’s embrace of secularism may or may not be entirely correct, there is no denying these demographics:

Europe itself is withering. On the day of John Paul II’s funeral, the European Union’s statistics agency reported that the decline of birthrates means that within five years deaths will exceed births in the European Union. By 2013 Italy’s population will begin to decline; the next year Germany’s will begin to drop. After 2010 Europe’s population growth will be entirely from immigration. By 2025 not even immigration will prevent declining fertility from accelerating what one historian calls the largest “sustained reduction in European population since the Black Death of the 14th century.”

In his new book “The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God,” George Weigel, biographer of John Paul II, argues that Europe’s “demographic suicide” will cause its welfare states to buckle and is creating a “vacuum into which Islamic immigrants are flowing.” Since 1970 the 20 million legal Islamic immigrants equal the combined populations of Ireland, Denmark and Belgium.

“What,” Weigel asks, “is happening when an entire continent, wealthier and healthier than ever before, declines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation?” His diagnosis is that Europe’s deepening anemia is a consequence of living on what he considers the thin gruel of secular humanism that excludes transcendent reference points for cultural and political life. Such reference points are, he thinks, prerequisites for freedom understood as “the capacity to choose wisely and act well as a matter of habit.”

The sad thing is, the Euros think they are perfectly healthy. And they delight in feeling superior to us ignorant Americans. Hmm, maybe being delusional is but one symptom of their illness. Still, since they appear clueless as to their peril it is unlikely they will wake up and take some much needed medicine before its too late. No doubt when the Islmofascists take control, they will expect us to come riding to the rescue (again). But I expect we are going to have our hands full with China.

Well, thanks for the memories Europe. Before you all became pussies and wimps, you had some glory days. Perhaps we can take lessons from your coming demise and avoid your self-inflicted fate. As I recently told someone who was talking about the useless French: “No nation is entirely worthless. It can always serve as a bad example.”

Via The Anchoress

Why?

This transcript from Brit Hume’s Wednesday night interview with law professor Jonathan Turley confirm how dishonest the Democrats are being when it comes to explaining their efforts to deny an up-or-down vote on ten of the president’s judicial nominees. The Democrats claim that these nominees are extremists, outside the “conservative mainstream,” as Senator Schumer has said. However, Hume asked Turley, who is a moderate to liberal, to assess the four most prominent judges being blocked.

With respect to Janice Brown, Turley was “a little bit mystified as to why [she] has attracted so much criticism.” He does not consider her an extremist, and he commended her for rooting her decision in a philosophy of the law.

Next up was William Pryor. Turley knows Pryor personally from their days as appeals court law clerks, though they are not friends. Turley’s view — “I think he’s gotten a raw deal, quite frankly.” Turley explained that (as we have pointed out), though Pryor is conservative he ignores his own views when necessary to follow the law. Maybe the Democrats have become so addicted to the unprincipled rulings of their favorite liberal judges that they cannot give credit to principled conservative jurists.

As to Priscilla Owen, Turley stated, “My view is that she was interpreting things like the parental notification law in a way that was plausible. I don’t agree with it. But she’s not some wild-eyed extremist.”

Last up was Terrence Boyle, who has served for years as a United States district judge. Turley does not consider Boyle an extremist, but he noted that Boyle is often reversed by his appeals court (which is conservative) for “plain error.” In other words, the Democrats stated reason for opposing Boyle lacks merit, but there may be a case that he’s simply not a good judge. The Democrats should make that case and then let the Senate vote.

Turley was back on Fox last night to discuss the other six stalled nominees. The transcript isn’t up yet, but it was basically more of the same. Turley thought that two of the six (Haynes and Myers)arguably had taken extreme positions in their capacity as Bush administration lawyers. As to the other four (Neilson, Saad, McKeague, and Griffin), Turley could not even get Democratic staffers to give him a basis for finding them to be extremists, and Turley knew of none. His view was that the Dems have no substantive arguments against these four, and that they are being blocked by the two Democratic Senators from Michigan as some form of retribution.

So, let’s have a vote. It’s the American way.

Via PowerLine

As we move into the final stages of the power play to end Senate filibusters on judicial nominees, it is interesting to note that rather than attempt to defend the indefensible, Democrats instead seek to silence the opposition through demonization and disrespect of beliefs they cannot comprehend.

I am not a particularly religious person, but I strongly believe that people of faith have as much right to be heard as anyone else in this debate. When did holding religious values become something to be feared and mocked? Why shouldn’t people have the right to have their moral convictions represented through the democratic process?

Ann Althouse has a great post that makes this point much better than I can. Please go have a read. Here’s a taste:

Religious advocacy groups have as much right to engage in political speech as anyone else, and religious people have plenty of reason to be concerned about who gets onto the courts and who is kept off. Here, they profess concern that the filibuster is being used to discriminate based on religious beliefs.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is contributing a 4-minute videotape to the program. Is it wrong for a politician to associate with religious leaders who are advocating a political position? I can see worrying that a particular group has a lot of political influence, but that is ordinary politics, not a reason to silence people who are speaking out on matters of public concern and who identify with or are motivated by a particular religion. And Frist agrees with them in opposing filibustering judicial nominees. He’s not obligated to shun them because of their religious affiliation.

So what is the response from Democrats?

“Our debate over the rules of the Senate and the use of the filibuster has nothing to do with whether one is religious or not,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said at a news conference with Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader from Nevada. “I cannot imagine that God – with everything he has or she has to worry about – is going to take the time to debate the filibuster in heaven.”

The first sentence of that statement is simple disagreement about the basis for opposing the nominees, and of course, one would expect people like Durbin to say they are not discriminating on a religious ground. That second sentence subtracts from the credibility of the denial, however, because it’s little more than a mockery of religion.

Democrats seized on Dr. Frist’s participation in an effort to portray Republicans as intolerant extremists. “In America, we are in a democracy, not a theocracy,” Mr. Reid said, urging Dr. Frist to back out of the event. “God does not take part in partisan politics.”

I don’t see the sense of this statement. Religious people fighting for a cause they believe in do not make the government a theocracy. Many prominent and highly respected political activists — notably Martin Luther King, Jr. — have operated from a religious foundation. It’s nothing new, and it doesn’t deserve to be demonized. There’s a tone of mockery toward religion in what Durbin and Reid are saying, as they twist the Council’s political activity into the idea that God is somehow debating about or participating in partisan politics. I’m sure that draws easy laughs and gasps from people who scoff at religion, but it’s quite unhelpful.

There’s an important and serious argument going on now about who should be on the federal courts. The Senate Democrats are using the filibuster to block a small number of the nominees, ones they consider way too deeply embedded in social conservatism and thus at odds with the moral values they represent. The socially conservative Christians want these people on the courts because they want their moral values expressed through courts. It’s a very important stand-off, but making it all about religion is a distraction. A person’s fundamental moral beliefs play a role in his or her decisionmaking, even if that person is a judge and is trying mightily to follow orthodox interpretive methodology. So the Senators are right to fight about the nominees the way they do, and they will have to work out this issue of majority rule and the filibuster device. But these recent comments by Durbin and Reid are offensive, inflammatory, and manipulative.

You know, I see liberal commenters expressing great fear of an American theocracy, complete with comparisons of conservative Christians to the Taliban. While I certainly would not care to have someone else’s religious beliefs imposed on me, it seems the greater danger is the blatant attempts of the left to silence those voices to which they disagree. I see this as a clear and present danger to the freedoms we most cherish. For if the views of the Christians are unworthy of being heard, who will be next?

I do not believe that in the marketplace of ideas any extreme view will survive. Let the Senate vote on the President’s judicial nominees as the Constitution intended. Then hold the elected leaders accountable for those votes. There’s a name for that. It’s called democracy.

Cross posted at The Wide Awakes

The NY Times gives Kofi Annan a soapbox and he presumes to lecture us on Sudan. He who steadfastly refused to call what is happening there genocide and has stood idly by while Sudan-supported militias have murdered thousands for the crime of not being Arab. The man apparently has no shame and the depths of his hypocrisy appear bottomless.

Captain Ed provides a much deserved rhetorical boot to Kofi’s ass:

Kofi Annan takes to the opinion pages of the New York Times today to preach accountability to Americans, a stunning and laughable assertion from the man who has led the United Nations to its nadir of credibility at least partially based on his own lack of accountability…

Annan makes it sound as if the civil war came as a result of a famine, and that the deaths could not have been prevented. He has it backwards. The famine came as a result of the war, and the failure of Annan himself in designating the Darfur atrocities as a genocide — which would have obligated him to act to stop it — contributed to hundreds of thousands of those deaths. For Annan to use those figures as a scold against the Western nations that had all but demanded Annan to acknowledge the Darfur genocide is akin to Marshal Petain standing on the grounds of Bergen-Belsen in 1945 and demanding food aid to Jewish victims of a “famine”.

Hey, I’ll go Annan one better. Annan set up a famine-relief program for Iraqis called Oil-For-Food, into which went at least $64 billion dollars. Somewhere between $10B and $21B of that money disappeared into the pockets of the genocidal dictator it was meant to bypass, meaning that up to a third of the money never made it to the starving people it intended to feed and heal. Millions more of the money went into the pockets of UN personnel, such as his own right-hand man, Benon Sevan, and his own son, Kojo Annan. Kofi never bothered to ensure that the program, the largest aid program he ran, was properly audited.

The last person to lecture the US, the West, and the world on accountability should be Kofi Annan. Had he any shred of honor, he long ago would have resigned his post in the face of the collapse of his credibility on this point alone. The editorial board of the New York Times should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this abomination on its pages, and its tacit endorsement of Annan as global scold should cement its reputation as a clueless, inept, and outrageously biased media outlet which has no further credibility to speak on international affairs. There may be more disgusting examples of hypocrisy and shameless propaganda in media — the Times’ Pulitzer for Walter Duranty’s Stalin apologias come to mind — but few reach this standard.

Well Kofi, get ready to meet Ambassador Bolton. There’s gonna be a new Sheriff in town, but frankly I think the UN may be broken beyond repair.

Well, I guess that ain’t exactly news, is it? You would think my capacity for outrage at the moral equivalence that is the foundation of the Left’s hypocrisy would be maxed out by now. But no, the Left finds new and astounding ways to boggle my brain with repulsive behavior in a fashion that appears limitless.

And as much as I despise all that is France, it appears that the Germans are looking to defeat them yet once again, this time in the battle of dubious thinking. Two salvos from the German left appear to be a powerful blitzkrieg like stroke of madness that other contenders on Left may find hard to best. As reported at Davids Medienkritik :

Few places symbolize the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of the German left more clearly than Chechnya. When US President George W. Bush visited Germany last February, tens-of-thousands of angry demonstrators turned out in Mainz and all across Germany to vent their outrage at the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Now, less than two months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin is in Germany. And a whopping 30 protesters showed up to demonstrate the bloody Russian war and widespread human rights violations in Chechnya. Putin and Schroeder were all smiles as they tipped champagne glasses and signed multi-billion dollar business deals for everything from Russian natural gas imports to German bullet train exports in Schroeder’s hometown of Hannover. Naturally, with the cash registers busily ringing away, Chechnya never came up and the German media has all but ignored the topic…

…The entire charade clearly demonstrates how the so-called German “peace movement” has changed little since the days of the Cold War when thousands protested in outrage over US involvement in Vietnam, but gave the Russians a free pass during the brutal Soviet war of occupation in Afghanistan. The movement’s unending attempts to seize the moral high ground have been repeatedly undercut and exposed by the same sort of left-leaning Doppelmoral time and again…

Once again: Where are the hoards of angry anti-war protesters now that Vladimir Putin is in Germany? Why aren’t they out waving rainbow PACE flags, beating drums, burning Putin effigies and pounding the pavement in mass protest by the thousands? Where are the shrill cries of “no blood for oil?” Where are the concerned friends of oppressed Muslims with their Palestinian flags? Where is the outrage at the violation of the Geneva Conventions and international human rights? Where are the mock funeral processions and empty coffins? Where are the candle-light vigils and the portraits of the dead and missing? Why has the German left sold out in the interest of selling trains and securing the rights to import oil and gas?

Clearly: As long as this double standard in the handling of Iraq vs. Chechnya remains, the German left will continue to suffer a massive credibility gap. It is hard to lend any credibility to a movement that is so obviously biased and motivated by a one-sided hatred of America.

Hmm, and to think this is happening in that bastion of moral superiority, Europe. No wonder Michael Moore is so popular over there. As loathe as this ignorant hick is to critisize my betters, in this case those enlightened Germans (you know, the fun bunch that brought us two world wars and the holocaust), I feel compelled to share some of Davids other post exposing just how sick and jaded German thinking has become:

Hard to beat the idiocy of this wacko conspiracy theory: A top member of the German Green party – Antje Vollmer, the highest ranking woman in Germany’s parliament (and a real beauty by any definition) – accuses the U.S. government of an underhanded campaign against pedophile Catholic priests aimed at punishing the pope for his opposition to the Iraq war.

Poland’s participation in the Iraq war an attempt to weaken the Pope’s “hinterland”? An anti-pedophile campaign as a veiled attempt to attack the pope’s position against the Iraq war?

Oh, those evil neocons…never shy about hatching dark conspiracies. This probably means they are behind the Michael Jackson pedophile accusations as well…probably to discredit him for being such a macro-pacifist. This all just makes one wonder: How long will it be before the US government hauls in Michael Moore on child molestation charges and ships him of to Gitmo? Who will be the next victim of this vast conspiracy? Have the neo-cons no shame? If they are willing to take the pope down, they could be willing to take anyone down.

It gets worse, read the whole thing if you have the stomach for it.

Meanwhile, I’ll just step back real quietly. I wouldn’t want to provoke these lunatics too much. It’s best that they be left to rage against the awesome evil of BusHitler while we go on about our business of deposing tyrants.

Still, watching the wackiness of the Left is sorta like a visit to the zoo, isn’t it? The antics of the silly monkeys can be quite entertaining at times I suppose.

Via Vodka Pundit