Bikini Bandits

Call them the bikini bandits.

Surveillance cameras at a Lafayette, La., apartment complex captured two bikini-clad babes stealing items from several cars parked outside.

The klepto-chicks stole a GPS, a wallet and sunglasses, then and fled on foot.

America, A Nation Of Religious Illiterates

WHAT do President Obama and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have in common? Both were embroiled in religious controversy during the last few weeks.

Some were scandalized to see Obama honored by Notre Dame, a Catholic university, given his views on abortion. Meanwhile, some objected to Rumsfeld's apparent use of biblical references in daily military-intelligence briefings, as was detailed in an article in GQ magazine.

Beyond the particulars of those events is a broader issue: The great bulk of the American public lacks the religious literacy to put these and many other controversies into a meaningful context.

Recent surveys of religious knowledge by the Gallup Organization and others have found that barely 10 percent of US teenagers can name the five major religions. About one-half of adults can name just one of the four gospels.

Many students apparently think that Joan of Arc is the wife of Noah. Only one-third could identify Jesus as the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. George Gallup once rightfully called America "a nation of biblical illiterates."

Many issues have religious dimensions, including Gov. Paterson's proposal to allow same-sex marriages, Mayor Bloomberg's support for stem-cell research, the debate over whether Islam is a violent or peaceful religion, the fate of Jerusalem in Mideast talks, voucher initiatives to allow public funding of religious schools and so on.

Americans casually throw about such phrases as "the golden rule," "Good Samaritan," "Promised Land," "olive branch" and "an eye for an eye" with little, if any, understanding of their biblical context.

While many know that the US Constitution bans the government from establishing a religion, fewer know that it also guarantees the free exercise of religion. Hardly anyone knows that the phrase "separation of church and state" doesn't appear in the Constitution; it is from a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson.

The inclusion of religious references in public pronouncements isn't new. For example, 46 years ago in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. likened his presence in Birmingham to the Apostle Paul leaving Tarsus to preach "the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world."

Today, how many students understand the religious references in this seminal letter or appreciate the role of his faith in motivating his leadership of the civil-rights movement?

Just as E.D. Hirsch made the case in the '80s for a broader cultural literacy, one now can be made for taking steps to ensure a basic religious literacy, starting with our nation's schools. The outlines of what this religious literacy might look like are set forth in an interesting book by Boston University's Stephen Prothero, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- and Doesn't."

Contrary to what some educators believe, the US Constitution doesn't ban the teaching of religion in public schools. In fact, the US Supreme Court has upheld the teaching of the Bible and other religious texts as long as they aren't taught in a sectarian or devotional way. In colloquial terms: "Teach it, don't preach it."

School-district officials are understandably shy about entering a broader debate on religion. But we can no longer pretend that this conflict-avoidance stance comes without a steep price.

James Madison spoke of "an intelligent and educated citizenry" as the cornerstone of self-government. When it comes to religion, that's not what we have now.

At a recent conference, I set forth options for starting down the path toward religious literacy, including the broader teaching of languages that make religious texts more accessible (including Hebrew and Arabic); the balanced re-insertion of religion into instruction about world and American history, culture, literature, geography and the visual and performing arts; the creation of religious charter schools, and an expansion of school-choice measures like vouchers and education tax credits.

Reasonable people can disagree on where we draw the line on these options, but standing still amid widespread ignorance isn't a real choice.

Thomas W. Carroll is president of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, NY Post, 5/28/09

Sonia Sotomayor From The South Bronx to Supreme Court

President Obama made history yesterday when he nominated Bronx-born federal appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court.

"What you've shown in your life is that it doesn't matter where you come from, what you look like or what challenges life throws your way," Obama said as Sotomayor, 54, stood at his side in the packed White House East Room.

The president called Sotomayor "an inspiring woman who I believe will make a great justice," and said his nominee had "an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live."

Fighting off nervousness, Sotomayor recalled getting a private White House tour 11 years ago.

"It was an overwhelming experience for a kid from the South Bronx," she said. "Yet, never in my wildest childhood imaginings did I ever envision that moment, let alone did I ever dream that I would live this moment."

Sotomayor is best known for her decision as a trial judge in 1995 to bar Major League Baseball from using replacement players, ending a nearly yearlong strike.

"Some say that Judge Sotomayor saved baseball," Obama said.

The announcement ended a guessing game that began May 1, when Justice David Souter announced he was retiring.

Obama aides said that the White House narrowed the list of possible successors to four people, all women: Sotomayor, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal Judge Diane Wood.

Sotomayor, whose parents came to New York from Puerto Rico during World War II, was interviewed by Obama under high secrecy Thursday night.

She spent seven hours at the White House -- and one hour in the Oval Office with Obama -- without word slipping out. The president, who was said to be greatly impressed during the interview, offered her the post in a phone call at 9 p.m. Monday.

Sotomayor, who would be the third woman to serve on the high court, is expected to quickly begin making the rounds of senators who will be key in her confirmation fight.

Democrats are hoping for a vote before the Senate's August recess.

For the most part, Republicans held their fire yesterday, saying that her record would be thoroughly vetted during the confirmation process, although some charged that she was the most liberal of the four women on the short list. But Obama stressed she had been nominated to her first federal judgeship by a GOPer, President George H.W. Bush.

When President Bill Clinton nominated her to a higher court in 1997, Republicans dragged her confirmation out for a year -- partly out of fear that she was a natural for the high court.

Conservatives admitted yesterday that the solid Democratic Senate majority makes confirmation all but inevitable.

"I doubt that Sotomayor can be stopped. She should be," said radio host Rush Limbaugh, who added, "She is a horrible pick."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said his colleagues will be fair, "but we will thoroughly examine her record to ensure that she understands that the role of a jurist . . . is to apply the law evenhandedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, said he, too, had promised a fair shake.

"I'd like it to be a hearing that people can be proud of," he said.

Obama stressed Sotomayor's up-from-poverty life story -- how, after her father died when she was 9, "her mother worked six days a week as a nurse," how Sotomayor won scholarships to Princeton and Yale, and served as a Manhattan prosecutor under "the legendary Robert Morgenthau" before becoming a judge.

"Along the way, she's faced down barriers, overcome the odds, and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago," Obama said.

Sotomayor thanked her tearful mother, Celina, who was at the White House -- "I am only half the woman she is" -- and said, "I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences."

Sen. Charles Schumer, who is expected to play a key role in guiding the nomination through the Senate, called Sotomayor's biography "beyond compelling."

"It's a great New York story and a great American story," he said.

Mayor Bloomberg said he had pressed the case for Sotomayor when he met with Obama earlier this month.

"Judge Sotomayor was first recommended to the federal bench by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and, of all his great legacies, she may prove to be one of the most important," Bloomberg said.

Obama aides said Sotomayor had been fully vetted and had no problems that would complicate her confirmation. The White House even interviewed her doctor to verify that the Type 1 diabetes she's had since 8 is under control.

Andy Soltis, NY Post, 5/27/09

Give Up The Smokes, Bud

He must have thought a nylon stocking over his head wasn't manly enough.

Police in Nebraska are hunting for a man who stole cigarettes from a convenience store while wearing a Bud Light carton on his head.

The man made off with $50 worth of smokes, but dropped the box in the parking lot.

Officers dusted it for prints, but no match was found.

N. Korea Taunts Obama Test Fires Nuclear Bomb

North Korea claimed it carried out a powerful underground nuclear test Monday — much larger than one conducted in 2006 — in a major provocation in the escalating international standoff over its rogue nuclear and missile programs.

Pyongyang announced the test, and Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed an atomic explosion at 9:54 a.m. (0054 GMT) in northeastern North Korea, estimating the blast's yield at 10 to 20 kilotons — comparable to the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The regime also test-fired three short-range, ground-to-air missiles later Monday from the same northeastern site where it launched a rocket last month, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing unnamed sources. The rocket liftoff, widely believed to be a cover for a test of its long-range missile technology, drew censure from the U.N. Security Council.

North Korea, incensed by the condemnation of the April 5 rocket launch, had warned last month that it would restart its rogue nuclear program, conduct an atomic test and carry out long-range missile tests.

On Monday, the country's official Korean Central News Agency said the regime "successfully conducted one more underground nuclear test on May 25 as part of measures to bolster its nuclear deterrent for self-defense."

President Barack Obama said a nuclear test would constitute an act of "blatant defiance" of the U.N. Security Council and a violation of international law, and only further isolate North Korea.

North Korea's claims "are a matter of grave concern to all nations," he said, calling for international action in a statement from Washington. "North Korea's attempts to develop nuclear weapons, as well as its ballistic missile program, constitute a threat to international peace and security."

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said the U.N. Security Council will meet at 4:30 p.m. Monday in New York (2030 GMT).

"North Korea's nuclear test poses a grave challenge to nuclear nonproliferation and clearly violates U.N. Security Council resolutions," he said in Tokyo. "We are not tolerating this at all."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the test as "erroneous, misguided and a danger to the world. This act will undermine prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula and will do nothing for North Korea's security," he said. "The international community will treat North Korea as a partner if it behaves responsibly. If it does not, then it can expect only

South Korea, meanwhile, was grappling with the suicide two days earlier of President Lee Myung-bak's liberal predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, whose death drew condolences from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Kim held a 2007 summit in Pyongyang with Roh, who championed reconciliation with North Korea.

The rise in tensions over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs comes amid questions about who will succeed the authoritarian Kim, 67, who is believed to have suffered a stroke last August. North Korea also has custody of two American journalists — accused of entering the country illegally and engaging in "hostile acts" — who are set to stand trial June 4.

Monday's atomic test was conducted about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of the northern city of Kilju, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky said, speaking on state-run Rossiya television.

Kilju, in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, is where North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006 in a surprise move that angered even traditional ally China and drew wide-ranging sanctions from the Security Council.

An emergency siren sounded in the Chinese border city of Yanji, 130 miles (200 kilometers) to the northwest. A receptionist at Yanji's International Hotel said she and several hotel guests felt the ground tremble.

North Korea boasted that Monday's test was conducted "on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control" than in 2006.

Ten to 20 kilotons would be far more than North Korea managed in 2006. U.S. intelligence officials said the 2006 test measured less than a kiloton; 1 kiloton is equal to the force produced by 1,000 tons of TNT. However, Russia estimated the force of the 2006 blast at 5 to 15 kilotons, far higher than other estimates at the time.

Radiation levels in Russia's Primorye region, which shares a short border with North Korea, were normal Monday several hours after the blast, the state meteorological office said.

In Vladivostok, a city of 500,000 about 85 miles (140 kilometers) from the Russian-North Korean border, translator Alexei Sergeyev said he wasn't concerned about the test and doesn't fear North Korea.

"Their nuclear program does not have military aims — their only aim is to frighten the U.S. and receive more humanitarian aid as a result," said Sergeyev, 24.

The reported test-firing of short-range missiles took place at the Musudan-ri launchpad on North Korea's northeast coast, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the nuclear test site, Yonhap said. Unnamed sources described it as a ground-to-air missile with a range of 80 miles (130 kilometers).

Japan's coast guard had said Friday that North Korea warned ships to steer clear of waters off the coast near the launch site, suggesting Pyongyang was preparing for a missile test. Yonhap also had reported brisk activity along the northeast coast last week.

South Korean troops were on high alert but there was no sign North Korean soldiers were massing along the heavily fortified border dividing the two nations, according to an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff headquarters in Seoul. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing agency policy.

The two Koreas technically remain at war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. Tensions have been high since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul in February 2008 saying Pyongyang must fulfill its promises to dismantle its nuclear program before it can expect aid.

North Korea is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen atomic bombs. However, experts say scientists have not yet mastered the miniaturization needed to mount a nuclear device onto a long-range missile.

The 2006 test prompted North Korea's neighbors and the U.S. to push for a pact that would give Pyongyang 1 million tons of fuel oil in exchange for disabling its nuclear facilities.

North Korea signed the accord in February 2007 and began disabling its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that November. Pyongyang destroyed the Yongbyon cooling tower in June 2008 in dramatic show of its commitment to the process, but then abruptly halted the process weeks later over a dispute with Washington over how to verify its 18,000-page list of past atomic activities.

Talks hosted by Beijing in December failed to resolve the impasse, and North Korea abandoned the six-nation negotiations last month in anger over the U.N. condemnation of its rocket launch.

North Korea claims it launched the rocket to send a satellite into space; South Korea, Japan and other nations saw it as a way to test the technology used to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, one capable of reaching the U.S.

The Security Council called the launch a violation of 2006 resolutions barring the regime from ballistic missile-related activity.

Fox News.5/25/09

Topless Coffee Shop

A waitress at a topless doughnut shop in Maine was spotted "in uniform" -- meaning out of her shirt -- away from the business, authorities said.

A state trooper was sent to the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro after someone called in a complaint. No one was charged, but the matter has been turned over to the DA for review.

Gen Ray Odierno, The Kick-Ass General Who Got It Right in Iraq

This Memorial Day Weekend, between the hotdogs and the potato salad, pause to remember the immense sacrifices those in uniform made to defend our freedom.

In prairie towns and great cities, ceremonies honor those who fell under our flag. Some events are well attended. Others merely draw puzzled looks from passers-by. But those who served know what Memorial Day means. It isn't some horse-and-buggy-era custom, quaint and outdated. This holiday is ever renewed by the soldiers' blood that transfuses the body politic.

This year, in addition to honoring those who gave all or suffered grievous harm, I want to go a little way toward righting a grave wrong done to a courageous warrior, Rockaway's own General Ray Odierno.

In the early days of our engagement in Iraq, when too few troops struggled with a confused mission, the best commanders stepped up and did what needed to be done.

Among those who made the hard calls and damned the consequences, no one was more wronged by the media and the pundit platoon than Odierno.

As commander of the 4th Infantry Division in the first year of our "non-occupation," Odierno and his soldiers were assigned to the Sunni-Arab heartland from which Saddam Hussein's regime had drawn its strength.

Based in Tikrit - Saddam's home town - and other hotbeds of resistance, Odierno and his subordinates understood that bitter regime sympathizers had to understand that we meant business. So he showed them how tough American troops can be when violently challenged.

The result was an outcry from journalists: Odierno was too harsh, he was alienating the population. The model was supposed to be the kinder, gentler approach taken by the British, or by US commanders in areas that welcomed Saddam's removal.

But the Baathist heartland that backed Saddam had never felt the war, which was fought down south, in the Shia provinces. The Sunni-Arabs didn't feel defeated. They just felt cheated.

Ray Odierno fixed that.

His reward was to be pilloried as an uncomprehending brute who didn't understand the new age of conflict. One bestseller cast him as the prime villain in our mission in Iraq.

But journalists think tactically - the news business just wants to get the headline out. Few paused to analyze long-term strategic effects - nor was the press equipped with the experience to do so.

Fortunately, our defense establishment recognized Odierno's worth and ignored the clamor, promoting him from two stars to three, then to four. Today, he's our senior commander in Iraq. And events have fully vindicated him.

Where did Iraq's turnaround begin? Precisely where Odierno had demonstrated that America's soldiers can't and won't be defeated, as well as in the areas occupied by our Marines - who were also condemned for being "heavy-handed." When they wearied of al Qaeda, the Sunni Arabs needed to know they could count on the combat skills and grit of our troops. They knew it because Odierno and his 4th ID had taught them that painful lesson.

And where are Iraq's remaining problems today? Centered on the city of Mosul, where another commander's soft touch and vaunted "understanding" allowed the insurgents and terrorists to put down roots.

Things also went to the dogs down south, around Basra, whence the British had lectured us about "the right way to do this sort of thing," while hiding in a base they feared to leave. While the Sunni tribes "flipped" to our side, not a single Shia tribe went over to the Brits.

Because they didn't believe the Brits could or would fight beside them. Basra, which had fallen under the sway of Iranian-backed militias, was only freed of terror when the Iraqi army went in and did the job.

Far from being the clumsy giant caricatured by journalists who never served in the military, Odierno was the gut-instinct, hard-charging commander who did what needed to be done. He laid the groundwork for the success of the surge three years before Washington grasped the essentials.

Many other soldiers and Marines had a hand in the ultimate turnaround in Iraq. And the Iraqis themselves still have a long way to go to make the most of the gift of freedom they've been handed. But when all of the snap judgments have been exposed as wrong and unjust, history will remember Gen. Ray Odierno as the soldier who got it right.

If you're one of the diminishing number of Americans who visit our military cemeteries or the local graves with miniature flags on Memorial Day, be proud, as you honor the fallen, that we still have a few fighting generals who would rather kill our enemies than bury their own.

Ralph Peters, NY Post, 5/24/09

President Barack Obama: Portrait of a Self-Hating American

Prior to the election of Barack Obama, a bomb exploded as to the real mindset of the community organizer from Chicago.

“I want to spread the wealth around,” Obama said.

KA-BOOM!

There wasn’t any rubble left behind. There was no cloud of dust billowing from the spot where Obama stood. Nor a single life was lost either that day. Yet it was a mega-ton detonation just the same. But, thanks to a compliant main stream media that covered the event like wide-eyed, lovesick, teenage, schoolgirls, no examination of the impact of those seven words uttered by the Democrat nominee was put forth to the American people.

The only thing that was important was that he was young, vibrant, eloquent, attractive, Black and was not George W. Bush. That was all the press needed to know and 68 million voters bought the lie.

They were not hoodwinked or deceived.

What was on the surface was acceptable to them, and Barack Obama won the election.

Voters ware warned by voices outside the main stream media that Barck Obama wanted to take this country down a failed socialistic path. And what has been the result thus far? President Barack Obama has taken over GM and Chrysler Motors and now will decide what kind of cars the American people should drive. He has effectively taken over the banking industry and wants to decide how much all banking employees should be paid, and who gets loans and who does not.

President Obama wants to run the Health Care industry and have government bureaucrats, not doctors and patients, decide when you can see a doctor, who gets to have surgery, and how long you have to wait for service.

President Obama loves to talk about “Green Jobs’. But what he does not tell you is that so-called green energy is not economically viable and would quadruple everyone’s energy bills.

Why do you think President Obama likes to bad mouth Wall Street, Oil Companies, Hedge Funds, Big Banks, and any industry not under his thumb? Its because he wants to give the American people the false impression that government can do a much better job running these businesses.

And at all times he sells the idea with a smile and a hypnotic and melodic voice that gets the people mesmerized enough to say, “Yes We Can!”, without a clue of the ramifications that would follow.

Why would Obama do this?

He gave himself away with those 7 words. Spreading the wealth means taking from the Haves and giving it to the Hav- Nots. The wealthy become the demons in Obama’s world. Achievement is punished because not everyone gets to be rich, and you should feel guilty if you are.

This is not American!

The United States is the place where people from all over the world come and prosper. No place in the world can anyone reach the for the stars because here in this country, the sky is the limit. But it takes individual achievement to make it happen. It has to be earned with sweat and determination.

Obama hates that because he has a Leftist mentality that believes in the collective, not in individual freedom to pursue the American dream. He believes that the United States is the center of all the world’s evil because of our wealth. He lives in state of perpetual guilt because that is the way all Leftists thinks.

This is the reason why every time Obama visits a foreign country, he feels compelled to apologize, apologize, and apologize some more as if he would vomit if he hadn’t done so.

This is the real Barack Obama!

This is the self-hating American who decided to release top secret memos concerning CIA enhanced interrogation techniques of terrorists. Now, as a result of his actions, our enemies who want to kill as many Americans as they can will learn from these documents and train their Judaists operatives accordingly.

This is the real Barack Obama!

He likes to say that America has lost its moral footing because water boarding was used on terrorists. He has a problem putting water up terrorists’ noses, yet he has not met an abortion he didn’t like.

But, what he conveniently leaves out is that water boarding was used on only 3 terrorists who provided specific, actionable intelligence that helped to successfully prevent planned terrorists attacks that would have made Sept 11 look like a Sunday barbecue.

All this information was contained in the memos that Obama sought fit to release. However, President Obama, who likes to throw the word “transparency” around like he's giving away free government cheese, willfully, dishonestly, and shamelessly crossed out pertinent sections of these memorandum that showed the successes as a result of using enhanced interrogation and thus saved American lives.

This is what really lies beneath the smile and the smooth rhetoric.

Barack Obama, the first president of the United States who really hates his own country!

Samuel Gonzalez, The Last Tradition, May 23, 200

Prez Obama Morphing into Bush-Lite

PUT Barack Obama in front of a Tele PrompTer and one thing is certain -- he'll make himself appear the most reasonable person in the room.

Rhetorically, he is in the middle of any debate, perpetually surrounded by finger-pointing extremists who can't get over their reflexive combativeness and ideological fixations to acknowledge his surpassing thoughtfulness and grace.

This is how Obama, whose position on abortion is indistinguishable from NARAL's, can speechify on abortion at Notre Dame and come away sounding like a pitch-perfect centrist.

It's natural, then, that his speech at the National Archives on national security should superficially sound soothing, reasonable and even a little put upon (oh, what President Obama has to endure from all those finger-pointing extremists).

But beneath its surface, the speech -- given heavy play in the press as an implicit debate with former Vice President Dick Cheney, who spoke on the same topic at a different venue immediately afterward -- revealed something else: a president who has great difficulty admitting error; who can't discuss the position of his opponents without resorting to rank caricature, and who adopts an off-putting pose of above-it-all righteousness.

Obama has reversed himself since becoming president on detaining terrorists indefinitely and trying them before military commissions. Once upon a time, these policies were blots on our honor; now they are simple necessities.

Between the primary and the general election, candidate Obama changed his mind and embraced President George W. Bush's terrorist-surveillance program. In recent weeks, he countermanded his own Justice Department's decision not to contest a court decision that would have led to the release of photos of detainee abuse.

A less self-consciously grandiose figure might feel the need to reflect on how his simplistic prior positions didn't fully take account of the difficulties inherent in fighting the War on Terror.

Not Obama. On the commissions, he explicitly denied changing his view and trumpeted cosmetic changes he's proposed as major reforms that would bring them in line "with the rule of law."

For all his championing of nuance, Obama comes back to one source for every dilemma: Bush. As if without his predecessor, every answer to how a nation of laws protects itself from a lawless enemy would be easy.

Under Bush, according to Obama, we set our "principles aside as luxuries we could no longer afford." Even now, there are those -- are you listening Mr. Former VP? -- "who think that America's safety and success require us to walk away from the sacred principles enshrined in this building." What a shoddy smear.

Consider Obama's breaks with Bush: We stopped using enhanced interrogation techniques for now, but Obama reserves the right to use them again; we will have military commissions, but with four procedural changes; we're going to close Gitmo but find some equivalent detention facility for that category of detainees who, Obama says, are dangerous but can't be tried or released.

These are matters of degree and therefore questions of prudence, not principle. If Bush violated our fundamental beliefs, then Obama is violating them, too, only a little less so.

Excoriating Bush is good politics for Obama, which is what makes his repeated exhortations to look ahead so disingenuous. In his speech, he rued that "we have a return of the politicization of these issues." In other words: Dick Cheney, please shut up. But when did the politicization of these issues end? Has the left ever stopped braying about Bush's war crimes?

Obama bracingly politicized these very issues on the stump, staking out unsustainably purist positions because they suited his momentary political interest. Now that's he's president, he wants the debate to end. He's above the grubbily disputatious culture of partisans and journalists.

And he's above contradiction because, as ever, he occupies the middle ground, one "obscured by two opposite and absolutist" sides: those who recognize no terrorist threat and those who recognize no limits to executive power.

And there Obama stands, bravely holding his flanks against straw men on all sides.


Rich Lowry, NY Post, May 23, 2009

Obama Risks Jihadist Released By Lib Judges

PRESIDENT Obama is attacking a red herring when he defends his decision to send the worst terrorists at Guantanamo to United States prisons by saying the likelihood of escape from secure federal facilities is very low.

Of course it is. No rope ladder or prison laundry truck is likely to do the trick.

But when it comes to federal judges, we can't be so sure.

The reason we sent the terrorists to Guantanamo in the first place, rather than bring them onto US soil, was never really connected to worries that they might escape. The Bush administration feared, quite correctly, that if the inmates were in federal prisons on US territory, federal judges would take their pleas for constitutional rights more seriously.

That argument is still true, and bringing the terrorists to the United States puts us at risk that they could be freed by court order.

Some detainees will be tried in US courts on US soil. The first will be tried in New York.

This raises two problems: First, if he is acquitted, where will he be released? Likely, he'll just be invited to walk out the door and onto the streets of New York. Second, is there a danger of terrorist retaliation or attempts to interdict the trial with violence?

Trying a terrorist in the Big Apple serves to paint a bull's-eye on the courthouse. The recently foiled plan to attack New York City synagogues demonstrates that terrorists have the city in their sights, as they have since the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Could Obama find a worse place to conduct a trial?

The very concept of trying terrorists under US law is a slippery slope. We specifically allow our military and intelligence operatives to proceed without the procedural safeguards enumerated in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. Why? Because we didn't plan for trials in civilian courts, we didn't take care to see that the evidence was obtained so as to be admissible in civilian courts.

If Obama is now to reverse field and try these terrorists, the results might be disastrous. It's unlikely that the prosecutors would be able to use all the evidence against them because it wasn't gathered with an eye to its admissibility in a criminal trial. The best evidence couldn't be used against the 20th hijacker, Zacharias Moussaui, so he did not get a death sentence or even life in prison.

If terrorists are acquitted or released by a federal judge's ruling, the odds are good that they will go right back to fighting against us. In our book, "Fleeced," we describe some of the most egregious examples of freed terrorists' returning to their wicked ways. And former Vice President Dick Cheney in his address Thursday said that one in seven of the detainees freed from Guantanamo has rejoined the terrorists.

Consider the case of Abdullah Mehsud, who was captured in Afghanistan and, after hiding his identity as second-in-command of a Pakistani Taliban group, was freed after two years at Gitmo. Once free, he kidnapped two Chinese engineers who were working on a hydroelectric dam and killed one of them.

Obama's plans will put his kind right in our midst, awaiting either a trial they may win or a federal court ruling that may spring them.

DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN, NY Post, 5/23/09

It’s Obama Who Wants To Create More Terrorists By Closing Gitmo

President Barack Obama is fond of saying that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay helped create more terrorists that it has detained. Of course, he never provides evidence of this claim to the American people who are expected to take his word for it. His reckless and utterly foolish plan to close Gitmo and transfer the world’s most dangerous terrorists into our civilian prisons in the United States may indeed lead to the creation of more terrorists on America soil. President Obama very conveniently failed to note real evidence of inmates converting to radical Moslem Jihadists, and he wants to make the problem worse.

Michelle Malkin writes:

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S speech on homeland security was 6,072 words long. Curiously, he chose not to spare an "a," "and" or "uh" on the New York City terror bust that dominated headlines the morning of his address yesterday.

Did the TelePrompTer run out of room?

After a yearlong investigation launched by the Bush administration, the feds cracked down on a ring of murder-minded black Muslim jailhouse converts preparing to bomb two Bronx synagogues and "eager to bring death to Jews."

Not one word from the president on the jihadists' intended victims, motives or means. No comfort for the reported targets in the Big Apple, still raw from the Scare Force One rattling that so vainly and recklessly simulated 9/11.

No condemnation for the accused plotters. Why? Because doing so would force Obama to abandon his cottony "extremist ideology" euphemisms and confront the concrete truth.

To borrow one of our obtuse president's favorite clichés, "let me be perfectly clear" about the reality Obama won't touch: America faces an ongoing Islamic jihad at home and abroad not merely "man caused" but Koran inspired.

Yet Obama refuses to spell out the centuries-old roots of the war that he claims he'll win faster, better and cleaner than any of his predecessors.

Moreover, his push to transfer violent Muslim warmongers into our civilian prisons -- where they have proselytized and plotted with impunity -- will only make the problem worse.

A brief refresher course for the left's amnesiacs about the festering jihadi virus in our jails and overseas: In 2005, Bush administration officials busted a terrorist plot to attack infidels at military and Jewish sites in Los Angeles on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 or the Jewish holy days. It was devised by militant Muslim converts of Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam") who had sworn allegiance to violent jihad at California's New Folsom State Prison.

Convicted terror conspirator José Padilla converted to Islam during a stint at a Broward County, Fla., jail.

Convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid converted to Islam with the help of an extremist imam in a British prison. Aqil Collins, a self-confessed jihadist turned FBI informant, converted to Islam while doing time in a California juvenile detention center.

In East Texas, inmates were recruited with a half-hour videotape featuring the anti-Semitic rants of California-based Imam Muhammad Abdullah, who claims that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually carried out by the Israeli and US governments.

Federal correction officials told congressional investigators during the Bush years "that convicted terrorists from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were put into their prisons' general population, where they radicalized inmates and told them that terrorism was part of Islam."

Despite the insistence of Obama and the Jihadi Welcome Wagon that our civilian prisons are perfectly secure, convicted terrorist aide Lynne Stewart helped jailed 1993 World Trade Center bombing/NY landmark bombing plot mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers, in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client's court-ordered isolation.

As I've reported previously, US Bureau of Prison reports have warned for years that our civilian detention facilities are major breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists.

There are still not enough legitimately trained and screened Muslim religious leaders to counsel an estimated 9,000 US prison inmates who demand Islamic services.

What's Obama's plan to prevent the jihadi virus from spreading? Washing hands and covering mouths won't work for this disease

Michelle Malkin, NY Post, 5/22/09

Don’t Tell Me to Turn Down My Stereo

A Kansas man drove his car through the front of Wichita's City Hall -- because cops had asked him to turn his stereo down.

Marcus Johnson, 33, smashed his car through the glass front doors, careened down a hallway and nearly ran over people getting into an elevator.

Now he must face the music -- he's been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Blame It On the Bombs

A soldier has gotten out of bigamy charges after claiming that he suffered posttraumatic-stress disorder in Iraq -- and forgot that he was married when he got home.

William Rivera got a new bride in Missouri after the war -- and his original wife found out about it when she saw a feature story about his second marriage on TV.

Rivera told officials he was so haunted by the war, he thought he had been divorced.

All charges against him were dropped.

He Helped Keep America Safe!

VP Dick Cheney Defends Bush Policies That kept America Safe

Unlike naive academic theories and Chicago community organizing (see Barack Obama) VP Dick Cheney had to operate in the real world where terrorists wanted to inflict death upon as many Americans as they could. He along with President George W. Bush kept the United States free from horrific attack for 7 ½ years since September 11, 2001.

Here is the text of his speech given May 21, 2009.

Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for that introduction. It's good to be back at AEI, where we have many friends. Lynne is one of your longtime scholars, and I'm looking forward to spending more time here myself as a returning trustee. What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees, and they asked me to head up the search committee.

I first came to AEI after serving at the Pentagon, and departed only after a very interesting job offer came along. I had no expectation of returning to public life, but my career worked out a little differently. Those eight years as vice president were quite a journey, and during a time of big events and great decisions, I don't think I missed much.

Being the first vice president who had also served as secretary of defense, naturally my duties tended toward national security. I focused on those challenges day to day, mostly free from the usual political distractions. I had the advantage of being a vice president content with the responsibilities I had, and going about my work with no higher ambition. Today, I'm an even freer man. Your kind invitation brings me here as a private citizen - a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek.

The responsibilities we carried belong to others now. And though I'm not here to speak for George W. Bush, I am certain that no one wishes the current administration more success in defending the country than we do. We understand the complexities of national security decisions. We understand the pressures that confront a president and his advisers. Above all, we know what is at stake. And though administrations and policies have changed, the stakes for America have not changed.

Right now there is considerable debate in this city about the measures our administration took to defend the American people. Today I want to set forth the strategic thinking behind our policies. I do so as one who was there every day of the Bush Administration -who supported the policies when they were made, and without hesitation would do so again in the same circumstances.

When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President's understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.

Our administration always faced its share of criticism, and from some quarters it was always intense. That was especially so in the later years of our term, when the dangers were as serious as ever, but the sense of general alarm after September 11th, 2001 was a fading memory. Part of our responsibility, as we saw it, was not to forget the terrible harm that had been done to America … and not to let 9/11 become the prelude to something much bigger and far worse.

That attack itself was, of course, the most devastating strike in a series of terrorist plots carried out against Americans at home and abroad. In 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, hoping to bring down the towers with a blast from below. The attacks continued in 1995, with the bombing of U.S. facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the killing of servicemen at Khobar Towers in 1996; the attack on our embassies in East Africa in 1998; the murder of American sailors on the USS Cole in 2000; and then the hijackings of 9/11, and all the grief and loss we suffered on that day.

Nine-eleven caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated. Throughout the 90s, America had responded to these attacks, if at all, on an ad hoc basis. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact - crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.

That's how it seemed from a law enforcement perspective, at least - but for the terrorists the case was not closed. For them, it was another offensive strike in their ongoing war against the United States. And it turned their minds to even harder strikes with higher casualties. Nine-eleven made necessary a shift of policy, aimed at a clear strategic threat - what the Congress called "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." From that moment forward, instead of merely preparing to round up the suspects and count up the victims after the next attack, we were determined to prevent attacks in the first place.

We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in. We'd just been hit by a foreign enemy - leaving 3,000 Americans dead, more than we lost at Pearl Harbor. In Manhattan, we were staring at 16 acres of ashes. The Pentagon took a direct hit, and the Capitol or the White House were spared only by the Americans on Flight 93, who died bravely and defiantly.

Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and our job was to stop it. We didn't know what was coming next, but everything we did know in that autumn of 2001 looked bad. This was the world in which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear technology, and A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear technology on the black market. We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

These are just a few of the problems we had on our hands. And foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass - a 9/11 with nuclear weapons.

For me, one of the defining experiences was the morning of 9/11 itself. As you might recall, I was in my office in that first hour, when radar caught sight of an airliner heading toward the White House at 500 miles an hour. That was Flight 77, the one that ended up hitting the Pentagon. With the plane still inbound, Secret Service agents came into my office and said we had to leave, now. A few moments later I found myself in a fortified White House command post somewhere down below.

There in the bunker came the reports and images that so many Americans remember from that day - word of the crash in Pennsylvania, the final phone calls from hijacked planes, the final horror for those who jumped to their death to escape burning alive. In the years since, I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that. But I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.

To make certain our nation country never again faced such a day of horror, we developed a comprehensive strategy, beginning with far greater homeland security to make the United States a harder target. But since wars cannot be won on the defensive, we moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks. We decided, as well, to confront the regimes that sponsored terrorists, and to go after those who provide sanctuary, funding, and weapons to enemies of the United States. We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists.

We did all of these things, and with bipartisan support put all these policies in place. It has resulted in serious blows against enemy operations … the take-down of the A.Q. Khan network … and the dismantling of Libya's nuclear program. It's required the commitment of many thousands of troops in two theaters of war, with high points and some low points in both Iraq and Afghanistan - and at every turn, the people of our military carried the heaviest burden. Well over seven years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive - and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed.

So we're left to draw one of two conclusions - and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event - coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

The key to any strategy is accurate intelligence, and skilled professionals to get that information in time to use it. In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our Administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information. We didn't invent that authority. It is drawn from Article Two of the Constitution. And it was given specificity by the Congress after 9/11, in a Joint Resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force" to protect the American people.

Our government prevented attacks and saved lives through the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which let us intercept calls and track contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and persons inside the United States. The program was top secret, and for good reason, until the editors of the New York Times got it and put it on the front page. After 9/11, the Times had spent months publishing the pictures and the stories of everyone killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. Now here was that same newspaper publishing secrets in a way that could only help al-Qaeda. It impressed the Pulitzer committee, but it damn sure didn't serve the interests of our country, or the safety of our people.

In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations.

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.

Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.

By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

Over on the left wing of the president's party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they're after would be heard before a so-called "Truth Commission." Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted, in effect treating political disagreements as a punishable offense, and political opponents as criminals. It's hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors.

Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security, and what it requires. I would advise the administration to think very carefully about the course ahead. All the zeal that has been directed at interrogations is utterly misplaced. And staying on that path will only lead our government further away from its duty to protect the American people.

One person who by all accounts objected to the release of the interrogation memos was the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta. He was joined in that view by at least four of his predecessors. I assume they felt this way because they understand the importance of protecting intelligence sources, methods, and personnel. But now that this once top-secret information is out for all to see - including the enemy - let me draw your attention to some points that are routinely overlooked.

It is a fact that only detainees of the highest intelligence value were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation. You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Muhammed - the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl.

We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country. We didn't know about al-Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we didn't think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

Maybe you've heard that when we captured KSM, he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.

In public discussion of these matters, there has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened at Abu Ghraib prison with the top secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.

Even before the interrogation program began, and throughout its operation, it was closely reviewed to ensure that every method used was in full compliance with the Constitution, statutes, and treaty obligations. On numerous occasions, leading members of Congress, including the current speaker of the House, were briefed on the program and on the methods.

Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.

I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about "values." Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.

Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation methods in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.

The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the President is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States. Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy. When just a single clue that goes unlearned … one lead that goes unpursued … can bring on catastrophe - it's no time for splitting differences. There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance.

Behind the overwrought reaction to enhanced interrogations is a broader misconception about the threats that still face our country. You can sense the problem in the emergence of euphemisms that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy. Apparently using the term "war" where terrorists are concerned is starting to feel a bit dated. So henceforth we're advised by the administration to think of the fight against terrorists as, quote, "Overseas contingency operations." In the event of another terrorist attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, "man-made disaster" - never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.

And when you hear that there are no more, quote, "enemy combatants," as there were back in the days of that scary war on terror, at first that sounds like progress. The only problem is that the phrase is gone, but the same assortment of killers and would-be mass murderers are still there. And finding some less judgmental or more pleasant-sounding name for terrorists doesn't change what they are - or what they would do if we let them loose.

On his second day in office, President Obama announced that he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation and no plan. Now the President says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries. But so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists. So what happens then? Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept a number of the terrorists here, in the homeland, and it has even been suggested US taxpayer dollars will be used to support them. On this one, I find myself in complete agreement with many in the President's own party. Unsure how to explain to their constituents why terrorists might soon be relocating into their states, these Democrats chose instead to strip funding for such a move out of the most recent war supplemental.

The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America's national security. Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low-risk were released a long time ago. And among these, we learned yesterday, many were treated too leniently, because 1 in 7 cut a straight path back to their prior line of work and have conducted murderous attacks in the Middle East. I think the President will find, upon reflection, that to bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger and regret in the years to come.

In the category of euphemism, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we've captured as, quote, "abducted." Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims, picked up at random on their way to the movies.

It's one thing to adopt the euphemisms that suggest we're no longer engaged in a war. These are just words, and in the end it's the policies that matter most. You don't want to call them enemy combatants? Fine. Call them what you want - just don't bring them into the United States. Tired of calling it a war? Use any term you prefer. Just remember it is a serious step to begin unraveling some of the very policies that have kept our people safe since 9/11.

Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a "recruitment tool" for the enemy. On this theory, by the tough questioning of killers, we have supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left, "We brought it on ourselves."

It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so. Nor are terrorists or those who see them as victims exactly the best judges of America's moral standards, one way or the other.

Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.

As a practical matter, too, terrorists may lack much, but they have never lacked for grievances against the United States. Our belief in freedom of speech and religion … our belief in equal rights for women … our support for Israel … our cultural and political influence in the world - these are the true sources of resentment, all mixed in with the lies and conspiracy theories of the radical clerics. These recruitment tools were in vigorous use throughout the 1990s, and they were sufficient to motivate the 19 recruits who boarded those planes on September 11th, 2001.

The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world - for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences - and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for - our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

What is equally certain is this: The broad-based strategy set in motion by President Bush obviously had nothing to do with causing the events of 9/11. But the serious way we dealt with terrorists from then on, and all the intelligence we gathered in that time, had everything to do with preventing another 9/11 on our watch. The enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees and the terrorist surveillance program have without question made our country safer. Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place.

This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It's almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.

Releasing the interrogation memos was flatly contrary to the national security interest of the United States. The harm done only begins with top secret information now in the hands of the terrorists, who have just received a lengthy insert for their training manual. Across the world, governments that have helped us capture terrorists will fear that sensitive joint operations will be compromised. And at the CIA, operatives are left to wonder if they can depend on the White House or Congress to back them up when the going gets tough. Why should any agency employee take on a difficult assignment when, even though they act lawfully and in good faith, years down the road the press and Congress will treat everything they do with suspicion, outright hostility, and second-guessing? Some members of Congress are notorious for demanding they be briefed into the most sensitive intelligence programs. They support them in private, and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy.

As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I've formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected. It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.

I believe this information will confirm the value of interrogations - and I am not alone. President Obama's own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, has put it this way: "High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." End quote. Admiral Blair put that conclusion in writing, only to see it mysteriously deleted in a later version released by the administration - the missing 26 words that tell an inconvenient truth. But they couldn't change the words of George Tenet, the CIA Director under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who bluntly said: "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us." End of quote.

If Americans do get the chance to learn what our country was spared, it'll do more than clarify the urgency and the rightness of enhanced interrogations in the years after 9/11. It may help us to stay focused on dangers that have not gone away. Instead of idly debating which political opponents to prosecute and punish, our attention will return to where it belongs - on the continuing threat of terrorist violence, and on stopping the men who are planning it.

For all the partisan anger that still lingers, our administration will stand up well in history - not despite our actions after 9/11, but because of them. And when I think about all that was to come during our administration and afterward - the recriminations, the second-guessing, the charges of "hubris" - my mind always goes back to that moment.

To put things in perspective, suppose that on the evening of 9/11, President Bush and I had promised that for as long as we held office - which was to be another 2,689 days - there would never be another terrorist attack inside this country. Talk about hubris - it would have seemed a rash and irresponsible thing to say. People would have doubted that we even understood the enormity of what had just happened. Everyone had a very bad feeling about all of this, and felt certain that the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville were only the beginning of the violence.

Of course, we made no such promise. Instead, we promised an all-out effort to protect this country. We said we would marshal all elements of our nation's power to fight this war and to win it. We said we would never forget what had happened on 9/11, even if the day came when many others did forget. We spoke of a war that would "include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success." We followed through on all of this, and we stayed true to our word.

To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.

Along the way there were some hard calls. No decision of national security was ever made lightly, and certainly never made in haste. As in all warfare, there have been costs - none higher than the sacrifices of those killed and wounded in our country's service. And even the most decisive victories can never take away the sorrow of losing so many of our own - all those innocent victims of 9/11, and the heroic souls who died trying to save them.

For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings. And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you they were neither innocent nor victims. As for those who asked them questions and got answers: they did the right thing, they made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

Like so many others who serve America, they are not the kind to insist on a thank-you. But I will always be grateful to each one of them, and proud to have served with them for a time in the same cause. They, and so many others, have given honorable service to our country through all the difficulties and all the dangers. I will always admire them and wish them well. And I am confident that this nation will never take their work, their dedication, or their achievements, for granted.

Thank you very much.

Obama’s Buffoonery Concerning Gitmo

A British Middle East Expert takes President Barack Obama to task concerning his foolish decision to close Gitmo. Who said Obama is loved overseas?



MY ADVICE TO OBAMA ON GUANTANAMO: WHEN IN A HOLE STOP DIGGING

I can't help feeling a sense of "told-you-so" the deeper American President Barack Obama digs himself in the mire over Guantanamo. I always thought his knee-jerk promise to close Guantanamo Bay detention facility was cheap politics and displayed a profound lack of understanding about the very real security issues relating to Guantanamo and its remaining inmates.

And so it has proved. When even the Democrats refuse to approve the $80 million budget to relocate the remaining detainees to the American mainland on security grounds, you can see that Mr Obama has made a complete mess of the Guantanamo issue.

It is all very well for the American president - as he did yesterday - to bemoan the fact that Guantanamo should never have been set up in the first place. The fact remains that it was, and it now contains the hard core of the al-Qaeda activists picked up following the September 11 attacks - including Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks.

Given that one-in-seven former Gitmo detainees have returned to terror activity following their release, you can understand that Mr Obama has succeeded in the seemingly impossible task of uniting Republicans and Democrats against him over his plans to close the facility without having any workable plan of what to replace it with.

Perhaps there is an important lesson the president can learn for the future: think through the consequences before making cheap political points.


Con Coughlin, London, UK Telegraph, 5/21/09

Why Evolution Is False

Why Darwinism Is False

It turns out that no series of fossils can provide evidence for Darwinian descent with modification. Even in the case of living species, buried remains cannot generally be used to establish ancestor-descendant relationships. Imagine finding two human skeletons in the same grave, one about thirty years older than the other. Was the older individual the parent of the younger? Without written genealogical records and identifying marks (or in some cases DNA), it is impossible to answer the question. And in this case we would be dealing with two skeletons from the same species that are only a generation apart and from the same location. With fossils from different species that are now extinct, and widely separated in time and space, there is no way to establish that one is the ancestor of another—no matter how many transitional fossils we find.

In 1978, Gareth Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History wrote: “The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion.”13 Nature science writer Henry Gee wrote in 1999 that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate.” When we call new fossil discoveries “missing links,” it is “as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Gee concluded: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”14

Embryos

So evolutionary theory needs better evidence than the fossil record can provide. Coyne correctly notes: “When he wrote The Origin, Darwin considered embryology his strongest evidence for evolution.” Darwin had written that the evidence seemed to show that “the embryos of the most distinct species belonging to the same class are closely similar, but become, when fully developed, widely dissimilar,” a pattern that “reveals community of descent.” Indeed, Darwin thought that early embryos “show us, more or less completely, the condition of the progenitor of the whole group in its adult state.”15

But Darwin was not an embryologist. In The Origin of Species he supported his contention by citing a passage by German embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer:

“The embryos of mammals, birds, lizards and snakes, and probably chelonia [turtles] are in their earliest states exceedingly like one another.... In my possession are two little embryos in spirit, whose names I have omitted to attach, and at present I am quite unable to say to what class they belong. They may be lizards or small birds, or very young mammals, so complete is the similarity in the mode of formation of the head and trunk in these animals.”16

Coyne claims that this is something von Baer “wrote to Darwin,” but Coyne’s history is as unreliable as his paleontology. The passage Darwin cited was from a work written in German by von Baer in 1828; Thomas Henry Huxley translated it into English and published it in 1853. Darwin didn’t even realize at first that it was from von Baer: In the first two editions of The Origin of Species he incorrectly attributed the passage to Louis Agassiz.17

Ironically, von Baer was a strong critic of Darwin’s theory, rejecting the idea that all vertebrates share a common ancestor. According to historian of science Timothy Lenoir, von Baer feared that Darwin and his followers had “already accepted the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis as true before they set to the task of observing embryos.” The myth that von Baer’s work supported Darwin’s theory was due primarily to another German biologist, Ernst Haeckel.”18

Haeckel maintained not only that all vertebrate embryos evolved from a common ancestor, but also that in their development (“ontogeny”) they replay (“recapitulate”) their evolutionary history (“phylogeny”). He called this The Biogenetic Law: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

In Why Evolution Is True, Coyne writes that “the ‘recapitulation’ of an evolutionary sequence is seen in the developmental sequence” of various organs. “Each vertebrate undergoes development in a series of stages, and the sequence of those stages happens to follow the evolutionary sequence of its ancestors.” The probable reason for this is that “as one species evolves into another, the descendant inherits the developmental program of its ancestor.” So the descendant tacks changes “onto what is already a robust and basic developmental plan. It is best for things that evolved later to be programmed to develop later in the embryo. This ‘adding new stuff onto old’ principle also explains why the sequence of developmental stages mirrors the evolutionary sequence of organisms. As one group evolves from another, it often adds its developmental program on top of the old one.” Thus “all vertebrates begin development looking like embryonic fish because we all descended from a fishlike ancestor.”19

Nevertheless, Coyne writes, Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law “wasn’t strictly true,” because “embryonic stages don’t look like the adult forms of their ancestors,” as Haeckel (and Darwin) believed, “but like the embryonic forms of their ancestors.” But this reformulation of The Biogenetic Law doesn’t solve the problem. First, fossil embryos are extremely rare,20 so the reformulated law has to rely on embryos of modern organisms that are assumed to resemble ancestral forms. The result is a circular argument: According to Darwin’s theory, fish are our ancestors; human embryos (allegedly) look like fish embryos; therefore, human embryos look like the embryos of our ancestors. Theory first, observation later—just as von Baer had objected.

Second, the idea that later evolutionary stages can simply be tacked onto development is biologically unrealistic. A human is not just a fish embryo with some added features. As British embryologist Walter Garstang pointed out in 1922, “a house is not a cottage with an extra story on the top. A house represents a higher grade in the evolution of a residence, but the whole building is altered—foundations, timbers, and roof—even if the bricks are the same.”21

Third, and most important, vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their earliest stages. In the 1860s, Haeckel made some drawings to show that vertebrate embryos look almost identical in their first stage—but his drawings were faked. Not only had he distorted the embryos by making them appear more similar than they really are, but he had also omitted earlier stages in which the embryos are strikingly different from each other. A human embryo in its earliest stages looks nothing like a fish embryo.

Only after vertebrate embryos have progressed halfway through their development do they reach the stage that Darwin and Haeckel treated as the first. Developmental biologists call this different-similar-different pattern the “developmental hourglass.” Vertebrate embryos do not resemble each other in their earliest stages, but they converge somewhat in appearance midway through development before diverging again. If ontogeny were a recapitulation of phylogeny, such a pattern would be more consistent with separate origins than with common ancestry. Modern Darwinists attempt to salvage their theory by assuming that the common ancestry of vertebrates is obscured because early development can evolve easily, but there is no justification for this assumption other than the theory itself.22

Although Haeckel’s drawings were exposed as fakes by his own contemporaries, biology textbooks used them throughout the twentieth century to convince students that humans share a common ancestor with fish. Then, in 1997, a scientific journal published an article comparing photos of vertebrate embryos to Haeckel’s drawings, which the lead author described as “one of the most famous fakes in biology.” In 2000, Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould called Haeckel’s drawings “fraudulent” and wrote that biologists should “be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks.”23

But Coyne is not ashamed. He defends Haeckel’s drawings “Haeckel was accused, largely unjustly,” Coyne writes, “of fudging some drawings of early embryos to make them look more similar than they really are. Yet we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”24 The “baby” is Darwin’s theory, which Coyne stubbornly defends regardless of the evidence.

Vestiges and Bad Design

Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that the widespread occurrence of vestigial organs—organs that may have once had a function but are now useless—is evidence against creation. “On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility… should so frequently occur.” But such organs, he argued, are readily explained by his theory: “On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance with the views here explained.”25

In The Descent of Man, Darwin cited the human appendix as an example of a vestigial organ. But Darwin was mistaken: The appendix is now known to be an important source of antibody-producing blood cells and thus an integral part of the human immune system. It may also serve as a compartment for beneficial bacteria that are needed for normal digestion. So the appendix is not useless at all.26

In 1981, Canadian biologist Steven Scadding argued that although he had no objection to Darwinism, “vestigial organs provide no evidence for evolutionary theory.” The primarily reason is that “it is difficult, if not impossible, to unambiguously identify organs totally lacking in function.” Scadding cited the human appendix as an organ previously thought to be vestigial but now known to have a function. Another Canadian biologist, Bruce Naylor, countered that an organ with some function can still be considered vestigial. Furthermore, Naylor argued, “perfectly designed organisms necessitated the existence of a creator,” but “organisms are often something less than perfectly designed” and thus better explained by evolution. Scadding replied: “The entire argument of Darwin and others regarding vestigial organs hinges on their uselessness and inutility.” Otherwise, the argument from vestigiality is nothing more than an argument from homology, and “Darwin treated these arguments separately recognizing that they were in fact independent.” Scadding also objected that Naylor’s “less than perfectly designed” argument was “based on a theological assumption about the nature of God, i.e. that he would not create useless structures. Whatever the validity of this theological claim, it certainly cannot be defended as a scientific statement, and thus should be given no place in a scientific discussion of evolution.”27

In Why Evolution Is True, Coyne (like Darwin) cites the human appendix as an example of a vestigial organ. Unlike Darwin, however, Coyne concedes that “it may be of some small use. The appendix contains patches of tissue that may function as part of the immune system. It has also been suggested that it provides a refuge for useful gut bacteria. But these minor benefits are surely outweighed by the severe problems that come with the human appendix.” In any case, Coyne argues, “the appendix is still vestigial, for it no longer performs the function for which it evolved.”28

As Scadding had pointed out nearly thirty years ago, however, Darwin’s argument rested on lack of function, not change of function. Furthermore, if vestigiality were redefined as Coyne proposes, it would include many features never before thought to be vestigial. For example, if the human arm evolved from the leg of a four-footed mammal (as Darwinists claim), then the human arm is vestigial. And if (as Coyne argues) the wings of flying birds evolved from feathered forelimbs of dinosaurs that used them for other purposes, then the wings of flying birds are vestigial. This is the opposite of what most people mean by “vestigial.”29

Coyne also ignores Scadding’s other criticism, arguing that whether the human appendix is useless or not, it is an example of imperfect or bad design. “What I mean by ‘bad design’,” Coyne writes, “is the notion that if organisms were built from scratch by a designer—one who used the biological building blocks or nerves, muscles, bone, and so on—they would not have such imperfections. Perfect design would truly be the sign of a skilled and intelligent designer. Imperfect design is the mark of evolution; in fact, it’s precisely what we expect from evolution.”30

An even better example of bad design, Coyne argues, is the prevalence of “dead genes.” According to the modern version of Darwinism that Coyne defends, DNA carries a genetic program that encodes proteins that direct embryo development; mutations occasionally alter the genetic program to produce new proteins (or change their locations); and natural selection then sorts those mutations to produce evolution. In the 1970s, however, molecular biologists discovered that most of our DNA does not encode proteins. In 1972 Susumu Ohno called this “junk,” and in 1976 Richard Dawkins wrote: “A large fraction of the DNA is never translated into protein. From the point of view of the individual organism this seems paradoxical. If the ‘purpose’ of DNA is to supervise the building of bodies, it is surprising to find a large quantity of DNA which does no such thing.” From the point of view of Darwinian evolution, however, there is no paradox. “The true ‘purpose’ of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA.”31

Like Dawkins, Coyne regards much of our DNA as parasitic. He writes in Why Evolution Is True: “When a trait is no longer used, or becomes reduced, the genes that make it don't instantly disappear from the genome: evolution stops their action by inactivating them, not snipping them out of the DNA. From this we can make a prediction. We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silenced, or ‘dead,’ genes: genes that once were useful but are no longer intact or expressed. In other words, there should be vestigial genes. In contrast, the idea that all species were created from scratch predicts that no such genes would exist.” Coyne continues: “Thirty years ago we couldn't test this prediction because we had no way to read the DNA code. Now, however, it’s quite easy to sequence the complete genome of species, and it’s been done for many of them, including humans. This gives us a unique tool to study evolution when we realize that the normal function of a gene is to make a protein—a protein whose sequence of amino acids is determined by the sequence of nucleotide bases that make up the DNA. And once we have the DNA sequence of a given gene, we can usually tell if it is expressed normally—that is, whether it makes a functional protein—or whether it is silenced and makes nothing. We can see, for example, whether mutations have changed the gene so that a usable protein can no longer be made, or whether the ‘control’ regions responsible for turning on a gene have been inactivated. A gene that doesn’t function is called a pseudogene. And the evolutionary prediction that we’ll find pseudogenes has been fulfilled—amply. Virtually every species harbors dead genes, many of them still active in its relatives. This implies that those genes were also active in a common ancestor, and were killed off in some descendants but not in others. Out of about thirty thousand genes, for example, we humans carry more than two thousand pseudogenes. Our genome—and that of other species—are truly well populated graveyards of dead genes.”32

But Coyne is dead wrong.

Evidence pouring in from genome-sequencing projects shows that virtually all of an organism’s DNA is transcribed into RNA, and that even though most of that RNA is not translated into proteins, it performs essential regulatory functions. Every month, science journals publish articles describing more such functions. And this is not late-breaking news: The evidence has been accumulating since 2003 (when scientists finished sequencing the human genome) that “pseudogenes” and other so-called “junk DNA” sequences are not useless after all.33

Why Evolution Is True ignores this enormous body of evidence, which decisively refutes Coyne’s Darwinian prediction that our genome should contain lots of “dead” DNA. It’s no wonder that Coyne falls back again and again on the sort of theological arguments that Scadding wrote “should be given no place in a scientific discussion of evolution.”

Biogeography

Theological arguments are also prominent in The Origin of Species. For example, Darwin argued that the geographic distribution of living things made no sense if species had been separately created, but it did make sense in the context of his theory. Cases such as “the presence of peculiar species of bats on oceanic islands and the absence of all other terrestrial mammals,” Darwin wrote, “are facts utterly inexplicable on the theory of independent acts of creation.” In particular: “Why, it may be asked, has the supposed creative force produced bats and no other mammals on remote islands?” According to Darwin, “on my view this question can easily be answered; for no terrestrial mammal can be transported across a wide space of sea, but bats can fly across.”34

But Darwin knew that migration cannot account for all patterns of geographic distribution. He wrote in The Origin of Species that “the identity of many plants and animals, on mountain-summits, separated from each other by hundreds of miles of lowlands, where Alpine species could not possibly exist, is one of the most striking cases known of the same species living at distant points without the apparent possibility of their having migrated from one point to the other.” Darwin argued that the recent ice age “affords a simple explanation of these facts.” Arctic plants and animals that were “nearly the same” could have flourished everywhere in Europe and North America, but “when the warmth had fully returned, the same species, which had lately lived together on the European and North American lowlands, would again be found in the arctic regions of the Old and New Worlds, and on many isolated mountain-summits far distant from each other.”35

So some cases of geographic distribution may not be due to migration, but to the splitting of a formerly large, widespread population into small, isolated populations—what modern biologists call “vicariance.” Darwin argued that all modern distributions of species could be explained by these two possibilities. Yet there are many cases of geographic distribution that neither migration nor vicariance seem able to explain.

One example is the worldwide distribution of flightless birds, or “ratites.” These include ostriches in Africa, rheas in South America, emus and cassowaries in Australia, and kiwis in New Zealand. Since the birds are flightless, explanations based on migration over vast oceanic distances are implausible. After continental drift was discovered in the twentieth century, it was thought that the various populations might have separated with the landmasses. But ostriches and kiwis are much too recent; the continents had already drifted apart when these species originated. So neither migration nor vicariance explain ratite biogeography.36

Another example is freshwater crabs. Studied intensively by Italian biologist Giuseppe Colosi in the 1920s, these animals complete their life cycles exclusively in freshwater habitats and are incapable of surviving prolonged exposure to salt water. Today, very similar species are found in widely separated lakes and rivers in Central and South America, Africa, Madagascar, southern Europe, India, Asia and Australia. Fossil and molecular evidence indicates that these animals originated long after the continents separated, so their distribution is inconsistent with the vicariance hypothesis. Some biologists speculate that the crabs may have migrated by “transoceanic rafting” in hollow logs, but this seems unlikely given their inability to tolerate salt water. So neither vicariance nor migration provides a convincing explanation for the biogeography of these animals.37

An alternative explanation was suggested in the mid-twentieth century by Léon Croizat, a French biologist raised in Italy. Croizat found that Darwin’s theory did “not seem to agree at all with certain important facts of nature,” especially the facts of biogeography. Indeed, he concluded, “Darwinism is by now only a straitjacket… a thoroughly decrepit skin to hold new wine.” Croizat did not argue for independent acts of creation; instead, he proposed that in many cases a widespread primitive species was split into fragments, then its remnants evolved in parallel, in separate locations, into new species that were remarkably similar. Croizat called this process of parallel evolution “orthogenesis.” Neo-Darwinists such as Ernst Mayr, however, pointed out that there is no mechanism for orthogenesis, which implies—contrary to Darwinism—that evolution is guided in certain directions; so they rejected Croizat’s hypothesis.38

In Why Evolution Is True, Coyne (like Darwin) attributes the biogeography of oceanic islands to migration, and certain other distributions to vicariance. But Coyne (unlike Darwin) acknowledges that these two processes cannot explain everything. For example, the internal anatomy of marsupial mammals is so different from the internal anatomy of placental mammals that the two groups are thought to have split a long time ago. Yet there are marsupial flying squirrels, anteaters and moles in Australia that strikingly resemble placental flying squirrels, anteaters and moles on other continents, and these forms originated long after the continents had separated.

Coyne attributes the similarities to “a well-known process called convergent evolution.” According to Coyne. “It’s really quite simple. Species that live in similar habitats will experience similar selection pressures from their environment, so they may evolve similar adaptations, or converge, coming to look and behave very much alike even though they are unrelated.” Put together common ancestry, natural selection, and the origin of species (“speciation”), “add in the fact that distant areas of the world can have similar habitats, and you get convergent evolution—and a simple explanation of a major geographic pattern.”39

This is not the same as Croizat’s “orthogenesis,” according to which populations of a single species, after becoming separated from each other, evolve in parallel due to some internal directive force. According to Coyne’s “convergent evolution,” organisms that are fundamentally different from each other evolve through natural selection to become superficially similar because they inhabit similar environments. The mechanism for orthogenesis is internal, whereas the mechanism for convergence is external. In both cases, however, mechanism is crucial: Without it, orthogenesis and convergence are simply words describing biogeographical patterns, not explanations of how those patterns originated.

So the same question can be asked of convergence that was asked of orthogenesis: What is the evidence for the proposed mechanism? According to Coyne, the mechanism of convergence involves natural selection and speciation.

Selection and Speciation

Coyne writes that Darwin “had little direct evidence for selection acting in natural populations.” Actually, Darwin had no direct evidence for natural selection; the best he could do in The Origin of Species was “give one or two imaginary illustrations.” It wasn’t until a century later that Bernard Kettlewell provided what he called “Darwin’s missing evidence” for natural selection—a shift in the proportion of light- and dark-colored peppered moths that Kettlewell attributed to camouflage and bird predation.40

Since then, biologists have found lots of direct evidence for natural selection. Coyne describes some of it, including an increase in average beak depth of finches on the Galápagos Islands and a change in flowering time in wild mustard plants in Southern California—both due to drought. Like Darwin, Coyne also compares natural selection to the artificial selection used in plant and animal breeding.

But these examples of selection—natural as well as artificial—involve only minor changes within existing species. Breeders were familiar with such changes before 1859, which is why Darwin did not write a book titled How Existing Species Change Over Time; he wrote a book titled The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. “Darwin called his great work On the Origin of Species,” wrote Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr in 1982, “for he was fully conscious of the fact that the change from one species into another was the most fundamental problem of evolution.” Yet, Mayr had written earlier, “Darwin failed to solve the problem indicated by the title of his work.” In 1997, evolutionary biologist Keith Stewart Thomson wrote: “A matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of evolution's smoking gun,” and “the smoking gun of evolution is speciation, not local adaptation and differentiation of populations.” Before Darwin, the consensus was that species can vary only within certain limits; indeed, centuries of artificial selection had seemingly demonstrated such limits experimentally. “Darwin had to show that the limits could be broken,” wrote Thomson, “so do we.”41

In 2004, Coyne and H. Allen Orr published a detailed book titled Speciation, in which they noted that biologists have not been able to agree on a definition of “species” because no single definition fits every case. For example, a definition applicable to living, sexually reproducing organisms might make no sense when applied to fossils or bacteria. In fact, there are more than 25 definitions of “species.” What definition is best? Coyne and Orr argued that, “when deciding on a species concept, one should first identify the nature of one's ‘species problem,’ and then choose the concept best at solving that problem.” Like most other Darwinists, Coyne and Orr favor Ernst Mayr's “biological species concept” (BSC), according to which “species are groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.” In Why Evolution Is True, Coyne explains that the biological species concept is “the one that evolutionists prefer when studying speciation, because it gets you to the heart of the evolutionary question. Under the BSC, if you can explain how reproductive barriers evolve, you’ve explained the origin of species.”42

Theoretically, reproductive barriers arise when geographically separated populations diverge genetically. But Coyne describes five “cases of real-time speciation” that involve a different mechanism: chromosome doubling, or “polyploidy.”43 This usually follows hybridization between two existing plant species. Most hybrids are sterile because their mismatched chromosomes can’t separate properly to produce fertile pollen and ovaries; occasionally, however, the chromosomes in a hybrid spontaneously double, producing two perfectly matched sets and making reproduction possible. The result is a fertile plant that is reproductively isolated from the two parents—a new species, according to the BSC.

But speciation by polyploidy (“secondary speciation”) has been observed only in plants. It does not provide evidence for Darwin’s theory that species originate through natural selection, nor for the neo-Darwinian theory of speciation by geographic separation and genetic divergence. Indeed, according to evolutionary biologist Douglas J. Futuyma, polyploidy “does not confer major new morphological characteristics… [and] does not cause the evolution of new genera” or higher levels in the biological hierarchy.44

So secondary speciation does not solve Darwin’s problem. Only primary speciation—the splitting of one species into two by natural selection—would be capable of producing the branching-tree pattern of Darwinian evolution. But no one has ever observed primary speciation. Evolution’s smoking gun has never been found.45

Or has it?

In Why Evolution Is True, Coyne claims that primary speciation was observed in an experiment reported in 1998. Curiously, Coyne did not mention it in the 2004 book he co-authored with Orr, but his 2009 account of it is worth quoting in full:

“We can even see the origin of a new, ecologically diverse bacterial species, all within a single laboratory flask. Paul Rainey and his colleagues at Oxford University placed a strain of the bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens in a small vessel containing nutrient broth, and simply watched it. (It’s surprising but true that such a vessel actually contains diverse environments. Oxygen concentration, for example, is highest on the top and lowest on the bottom.) Within ten days—no more than a few hundred generations—the ancestral free-floating ‘smooth’ bacterium had evolved into two additional forms occupying different parts of the beaker. One, called ‘wrinkly spreader,’ formed a mat on top of the broth. The other, called ‘fuzzy spreader,’ formed a carpet on the bottom. The smooth ancestral type persisted in the liquid environment in the middle. Each of the two new forms was genetically different from the ancestor, having evolved through mutation and natural selection to reproduce best in their respective environments. Here, then, is not only evolution but speciation occurring in the lab: the ancestral form produced, and coexisted with, two ecologically different descendants, and in bacteria such forms are considered distinct species. Over a very short time, natural selection in Pseudomonas yielded a small-scale ‘adaptive radiation,’ the equivalent of how animals or plants form species when they encounter new environments on an oceanic island.”46

But Coyne omits the fact that when the ecologically different forms were placed back into the same environment, they “suffered a rapid loss of diversity,” according to Rainey. In bacteria, an ecologically distinct population (called an “ecotype”) may constitute a separate species, but only if the distinction is permanent. As evolutionary microbiologist Frederick Cohan wrote in 2002, species in bacteria “are ecologically distinct from one another; and they are irreversibly separate.”47 The rapid reversal of ecological distinctions when the bacterial populations in Rainey’s experiment were put back into the same environment refutes Coyne’s claim that the experiment demonstrated the origin of a new species.

Exaggerating the evidence to prop up Darwinism is not new. In the Galápagos finches, average beak depth reverted to normal after the drought ended. There was no net evolution, much less speciation. Yet Coyne writes in Why Evolution Is True that “everything we require of evolution by natural selection was amply documented” by the finch studies. Since scientific theories stand or fall on the evidence, Coyne’s tendency to exaggerate the evidence does not speak well for the theory he is defending. When a 1999 booklet published by The U. S. National Academy of Sciences called the change in finch beaks “a particularly compelling example of speciation,” Berkeley law professor and Darwin critic Phillip E. Johnson wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble.”48

So there are observed instances of secondary speciation—which is not what Darwinism needs—but no observed instances of primary speciation, not even in bacteria. British bacteriologist Alan H. Linton looked for confirmed reports of primary speciation and concluded in 2001: “None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of twenty to thirty minutes, and populations achieved after eighteen hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another.”49

Conclusions

Darwin called The Origin of Species “one long argument” for his theory, but Jerry Coyne has given us one long bluff. Why Evolution Is True tries to defend Darwinian evolution by rearranging the fossil record; by misrepresenting the development of vertebrate embryos; by ignoring evidence for the functionality of allegedly vestigial organs and non-coding DNA, then propping up Darwinism with theological arguments about “bad design;” by attributing some biogeographical patterns to convergence due to the supposedly “well-known” processes of natural selection and speciation; and then exaggerating the evidence for selection and speciation to make it seem as thought they could accomplish what Darwinism requires of them.

The actual evidence shows that major features of the fossil record are an embarrassment to Darwinian evolution; that early development in vertebrate embryos is more consistent with separate origins than with common ancestry; that non-coding DNA is fully functional, contrary to neo-Darwinian predictions; and that natural selection can accomplish nothing more than artificial selection—which is to say, minor changes within existing species.

Faced with such evidence, any other scientific theory would probably have been abandoned long ago. Judged by the normal criteria of empirical science, Darwinism is false. Its persists in spite of the evidence, and the eagerness of Darwin and his followers to defend it with theological arguments about creation and design suggests that its persistence has nothing to do with science at all.50

Nevertheless, biology students might find Coyne’s book useful. Given accurate information and the freedom to exercise critical thinking, students could learn from Why Evolution Is True how Darwinists manipulate the evidence and mix it with theology to recycle a false theory that should have been discarded long ago.

By: Jonathan Wells
Discovery Institute
May 18, 2009