hilzoy

Settlement Freeze

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by hilzoy From the NYT: "Senior Israeli officials accused President Obama on Wednesday of failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement "freeze." (…) The Israeli officials said that repeated discussions … Read more

Koko Taylor

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by hilzoy Koko Taylor has died. She was eighty years old, and was an astonishing blues singer. Here she is at nearly eighty. May she rest in peace.  

How Far Does This Go?

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by hilzoy Jack Balkin thinks, as I do, that the person who killed George Tiller is a terrorist. And he has some excellent questions about what that implies. Here are some of them: "(1) Should the United States be able to hold Roeder without trial in order to prevent him from returning to society to kill more … Read more

“They Just Poke, Poke, Poke”

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by hilzoy It's worth bearing in mind the alternative to legal abortions: "BEREGA, Tanzania — A handwritten ledger at the hospital tells a grim story. For the month of January, 17 of the 31 minor surgical procedures here were done to repair the results of "incomplete abortions." A few may have been miscarriages, but most … Read more

In Which I Disagree With Megan McArdle

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by hilzoy Earlier, I argued that we ought to take steps to assure that late-term abortions are available to people who need them, and that one reason to do so was to make it clear that terrorism does not pay. In response, Megan McArdle writes: "Still, I am shocked to see so many liberals today … Read more

Terror Should Not Pay

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by hilzoy Ezra Klein, about the murder of George Tiller: "As The American Prospect's Ann Friedman writes, this has to be understood in context. It is the final, decisive act in "an ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment against someone who was providing completely legal health-care services." That campaign stretched over decades of protests, lawsuits, … Read more

Operation Rescue

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by hilzoy Here's an article on the kinds of things other than assassination attempts, vandalism, and break-ins that Dr. Tiller and his staff have had to endure for years. It's about Troy Newman, the head of Operation Rescue (once Operation Rescue West; the group split), who moved to Wichita in order to shut George Tiller's … Read more

Dr. George Tiller

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by hilzoy My thoughts are with the family of Dr. George Tiller, who was killed today.  I'm not sure how many doctors still perform late-term abortions in this country — one and two seem to be the most common estimates. This is, of course, due to the campaign of terrorism that has been waged against … Read more

Ugly

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by hilzoy Matt Yglesias: "As anyone who knows me can attest, I don't have what you'd call a strong "Hispanic" identity. (…) But for all that, I have to say that I am really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor. The idea that any … Read more

Shameful

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by hilzoy From the Washington Post: "The Obama administration, picking up the argument of its predecessor, is opposing the release of Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay into the United States. In papers filed with the Supreme Court late Friday, the administration says a group of Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz) are being lawfully held at the … Read more

Barbarians At The Gate, Barbarians In Your Heart

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by hilzoy A couple of weeks ago, Rod Dreher wrote an article about what he calls our "astonishing, and astonishingly rapid, cultural collapse" in the face of "a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values": "Conservatives have worked so hard over the past few decades to fight for civilized standards against … Read more

Sotomayor: Actual Facts!

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by hilzoy As more or less everyone has already noted, a lot of people have been claiming that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist, would decide cases based on racial solidarity rather than on the law, and so forth. One natural way to check this would be to examine her actual record. She has, after all, … Read more

They Can’t Help Themselves

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by hilzoy Even by Republican standards, the Sotomayor meltdown is pretty impressive. Tom Tancredo calls La Raza, which is a pretty ordinary advocacy group, "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Newt Gingrich writes that we cannot accept Sotomayor's rather anodyne remarks about experience being helpful in judging "if Civil War, suffrage, and … Read more

Eat Your Spinach!

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by hilzoy This is one of those dull bills that really matters: "The nation's complex food supply chain would become more transparent, inspections of food facilities would become more frequent and manufacturers would be required to take steps aimed at preventing food-borne illnesses under legislation proposed yesterday by key House leaders who have pledged to … Read more

Historical Amnesia

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by hilzoy This is a very silly thing to say: "Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is a historic milestone for Latinos, but it resonates well beyond Hispanic pride. It is perhaps the most potent symbol yet of a 21st century rapprochement between the U.S.'s two largest minorities, Latino Americans and African … Read more

The Ricci Case

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by hilzoy One of the criticisms of Sonia Sotomayor is that she was part of a panel that affirmed a district court ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano. Here are the basics of the case: "In 2003, the New Haven Fire Department decided to base promotions to the positions of captain and lieutenant primarily on a … Read more

Sotomayor: Reactions

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by hilzoy Sen. James Inhofe on Sotomayor (h/t): "In the months ahead, it will be important for those of us in the U.S. Senate to weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undue influence from her own personal race, gender, or political preferences." Strange to say, Senator Inhofe … Read more

Sotomayor: The Record

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by hilzoy This is one of the things I love most about blogs: Barack Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; I, a non-lawyer, wonder what her record is like, and find the summaries in newspapers much too shallow and focussed on the politics of her appointment rather than her record; but voila! SCOTUSBlog … Read more

Memorial Day

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by hilzoy To all those who died in combat operations — the 4300 reported dead in Iraq, the 687 reported dead in Afghanistan, those who killed themselves during or because of their service, or whose deaths are in some other way attributable to their service in combat: we honor you, and we will not forget. … Read more

Just Shoot Me Now

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by hilzoy I liked most of Obama's speech. If it weren't for that one little bit about preventive detention, I'd be as happy as a clam. But there it was: "But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, in some cases because … Read more

We’re Doomed!

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by hilzoy From the New York Times: "Four men from upstate New York were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at Stewart Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. The men were arrested around 9 p.m. after planting … Read more

We Dodged A Bullet!

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by hilzoy From CNN: "A top Mexican drug cartel suspect has been arrested along with 12 accomplices, including five women, federal authorities said. (…) Rodolfo Lopez Ibarra, known as El Nito and believed to be a top lieutenant in the Beltran Leyva cartel, was arrested Monday at an airport in Nuevo Leon state, said the … Read more

Coward

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by hilzoy Oh, and Harry Reid? Try showing some courage. Try leadership. You never know; it just might suit you. This certainly doesn't: "QUESTION: If the United States — if the United States thinks that these people should be held, why shouldn’t they be held in the United States? Why shouldn’t the U.S. take those … Read more

The Uighurs: Coda

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by hilzoy Newt Gingrich talking to Chris Wallace on Fox News (h/t): "WALLACE: Well, let me get — let' take one example, the Chinese Uighurs, Chinese Muslims… GINGRICH: Right. WALLACE: … who were arrested in Afghanistan, brought to this country. The Pentagon says they're not enemy combatants. At least one federal judge has said they're not … Read more

The Uighurs: Compilation

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by hilzoy

This is a post compiling the questionable and/or false claims that have been made about the Uighurs. It contains a few things I have not said in any of my earlier posts, but its main purpose is to collect these points in one convenient location. I have tried to be thorough; those of you who are already bored with this topic might want to skip this one. 

As before, I'm taking Newt Gingrich's column as my starting point, since it conveniently collects these false or questionable claims in one piece of irresponsible prose. Here are the claims Gingrich makes; I've added numbers to his claims for convenient reference.

"Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups. (1) The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state. (2) (…)

At Guantanamo Bay, the Uighurs are known for picking up television sets on which women with bared arms appear and hurling them across the room. (3) (…)

By their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) (4), an al Qaeda-affiliated group designated as a terrorist organization under U.S law. (…) (5)
 
Prior to 9/11, the Uighurs received jihadist training in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a known al Qaeda and Taliban training ground. (6) What's more, they were trained, most likely in the weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing, by Abdul Haq, a member of al Qaeda's shura , or top advisory council. (7) President Obama's own interagency review board found that at least some of the Uighurs are dangerous. (8) (…)

Even if you accept the argument made by their defenders that the Uighurs' true targets are Chinese, not Americans, it does nothing to change the fact that they are trained mass killers instructed by the same terrorists responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. (9)"

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The Uighurs: 5

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by hilzoy Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post talks to the Uighurs' translator, Rushan Abbas, about their reaction to Newt Gingrich's column: "Gingrich pushed further in an op-ed, claiming that '[b]y their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al Qaeda-affiliated … Read more

Picking Up The Trash

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by hilzoy This is a wonderful story: "A group of young Pakistani friends, sick of hearing their families complain about the government, decided to spite them by taking matters into their own hands: every Sunday they would grab shovels, go out into their city, and pick up garbage. It was a strange thing to do, … Read more

Emissions Standards

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by hilzoy This is wonderful: "The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases. It will also raise fuel efficiency targets to 35.5 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2016, four years earlier than required under … Read more

The Uighurs: 4

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by hilzoy I'm continuing to try to track down the truth behind the various claims made about the Uighurs. (Previous posts: 1, 2, 3.) This time, I want to consider this one: "President Obama’s own interagency review board found that at least some of the Uighurs are dangerous." The original (and, to my knowledge, only) … Read more

The Uighurs: 3

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by hilzoy I'm trying to track down the truth behind the various claims that are being made about the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo. (Previous posts: 1, 2.) One that keeps coming up is this: "At Guantanamo Bay, the Uighurs are known for picking up television sets on which women with bared arms appear and hurling … Read more

Sri Lanka

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by hilzoy After twenty five long horrible years, one of the longest-running civil wars on earth might just have come to an end: "The ethnic Tamil separatist rebels of Sri Lanka, one of the world's most feared and enduring guerrilla movements, acknowledged Sunday that their war of more than a quarter-century for a homeland had … Read more

Keeping Us Safe

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by hilzoy I wanted to highlight one other bit of the GQ story on Rumsfeld. The author writes: "What Rumsfeld was most effective in doing," says a former senior White House official, "was not so much undermining a decision that had yet to be made as finding every way possible to delay the implementation of … Read more

“The Righteous Nation”

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by hilzoy GQ has a fascinating article about Donald Rumsfeld. You should really read the whole thing. I just thought I'd highlight this bit, about the Biblically-themed cover sheets that Rumsfeld attached to the President's daily intelligence briefings on Iraq: "In the days before the Iraq war, Shaffer's staff had created humorous covers in an … Read more