This Week's 66/40 Radio Broadcast

Articles and Commentary

• Elena Kagan The Luke Warm Nominee - (Read)
• Ahmadinejad Straining Iran's Confidence - (Read)
• Russia Cooperating With Syria, West, But Not Israel - (Read)

Important News Headlines

ELENA KAGAN THE LUKE WARM NOMINEE - (Print)

Conservatives and liberals alike have expressed reservations about President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, the former dean of Harvard Law School and current Solicitor General. That Kagan is a bright woman is certain, but some liberals are concerned that she's too much of a "blank slate" about whom the public knows very little. Conservatives, on the other hand, feel that the public knows plenty - that Kagan is a staunch liberal with strong pro-abortion and pro-gay rights views.

US Supreme Court nominees generate a lot of press for two important reasons. First, these nine men and women make the ultimate decisions on cases that can affect US law for centuries to come. The second reason is that Supreme Court justices stick around awhile. Senators can get kicked out after six years, but Supreme Court justices are like the Energizer Bunny - their careers just keep going and going. A good example is Justice John Paul Stevens whom Elena Kagan has been nominated to replace; Stevens took his Supreme Court seat clear back in 1975.

It is therefore important for Americans to know a lot about the folks the Senate might confirm to the nation's highest court. Elena Kagan just turned 50 years old in late April, giving her a potential 30 year career as a Supreme Court justice.  The fact that people know very little about Elena Kagan's actual constitutional philosophy or legal views causes concern. She also does not have much court experience. She did serve as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall early in her career, but prior to her taking on the role of Solicitor General last year, Kagan had never argued a case at trial, let alone served as a judge.

Kagan does appear to be a highly intelligent, capable person. She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Kagan considers herself a teacher at heart, the daughter of a teacher with two brothers who are teachers. She's served as a professor both at the University of Chicago Law School and Harvard Law School, and in 2003 was named dean of Harvard Law School - the first woman to hold that post. As dean, Kagan was known for her consensus-building leadership and her willingness to reach out to people of opposing viewpoints.

Kagan does have a decidedly liberal political worldview. She's served in the administrations of two Democratic presidents and has showed signs of supporting basic Democratic and liberal political positions. While the dean at Harvard Law, Kagan banned military recruiters from the school because she considered the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy to be a "moral injustice" of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Kagan also has shown disapproval for pro-life causes and her nomination has the full support of Planned Parenthood. According to LifeNews.com, Kagan wrote an article for the Daily Princetonian in which she disparaged pro-life candidates after Reagan won the 1980 election, calling them, "avengers of ‘innocent life’" who were "beneficiaries of a general turn to the right and a profound disorganization on the left." She placed the term 'innocent life' in quotes, indicating that she did not agree with the view that unborn children are 'life'.

Dr. Kevin Roberts, executive director of Catholic Families for America, related Kagan's nomination to an anti-family presidential agenda, describing Kagan as someone, "actively hostile to traditional marriage and to the unborn."

Liberals are not entirely pleased with Kagan, however. Not only is she untried and unexperienced in the courtroom, but she has argued in support of holding prisoners of war, like Al Qaida terrorists, and detaining them without trial for an indefinite amount of time outside the traditional field of battle.

In 1997, when Kagan served as Associate While House Counsel to Bill Clinton, Kagan and her boss Bruce Reed urged the President to sign a weaker Democratic version of the partial birth abortion ban lest the Republican Congress pass something stronger and override his veto. Their memo read, "We recommend that you endorse the Daschle amendment in order to sustain your credibility on HR 1122 and prevent Congress from overriding your veto."

Some have pointed to this memo as evidence that Kagan's pro-abortion position is not solid. However, rather that demonstrating any pro-life leaning, it shows that Kagan is dedicated to consensus and uses compromise as a way to reach agreements. This characteristic alone tells a great deal about how she would work as a Supreme Court justice.  On one hand she will likely work to bring balance to a divided court and reach across the ideological aisle to work through tough decisions.  On the other hand, her decisions may turn out to be luke-warm and full of compromise when the Court needs a strong, solid legal voice.

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AHMADINEJAD STRAINING IRAN'S CONFIDENCE - (Print)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the "people's friend" of Iran, has been facing more than a little rejection lately, and not just at the United Nations. As the anniversary of the highly controversial Iranian elections approaches June 12, Iran has been taking a variety of precautions to keep down anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations. More than 1,000 students at Shahid Beheshti University gathered to protest a visit by Mr. Ahmadinejad on Monday after five Kurds were executed in prison. Ahmadinejad also faced large crowds of disapproving students on May 1 when he visited Tehran University.

Whether or not he's a "regular guy", Ahmadinejad has proven himself as much a tyrant as any Islamic cleric. Freedom of the press is a right hardly taken for granted in Iran anymore, and journalists face serious hazards when reporting anything the mullahs do not consider politically or religiously correct. Rudi Bakhtiar, a spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, noted recently that Iran has surpassed China to become, "Number 1 in the world when it comes to journalists in prison."

Ahmadinejad is infamous for his incendiary anti-West and anti-Israeli comments, his sometimes self-contradicting public statements regarding Iran's international relations policies and views on terrorism, and his insistence on developing Iran's nuclear program despite strong words of warning from America, Canada, and a host of European countries.

Ahmadinejad and the People:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did come from the common people, but his exploits early on present him as anything but your basic Joe. He was born to a relatively poor, working-class blacksmith and jack-of-all-trades in the village of Aradan, Iran. Before taking political office, he worked as a civil engineer and schoolteacher. There is scant public record about his early career of the 1980's, and even conjecture that he was a revolutionist participating in the Islamic Revolution in 1979, after which 52 Americans were held hostage in the US Embassy in Iran. According to claims by many of those Americans, Ahmadinejad was among their captors, though he firmly denies this. He eventually rose to the position of (unelected) Mayor of Tehran for two years and was still largely a political unknown when, in 2005, he became the sixth president of Iran.

Ahmadinejad supports the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and apparently called upon them both to vote for him during the presidential campaign and to encourage others to do the same. Ahmedinejad joined the Corps during the 1980's. According to the BBC, "the Revolutionary Guards' power and influence are such that the US government has designated it a 'proliferator of weapons of mass destruction' and its elite overseas operations arm, the Quds Force, a 'supporter of terrorism.'"

Ahmadinijad is the first non-cleric president of Iran in more than two decades. The real legislative power in Iran belongs to the country's unelected Shi'ite religious clerics- the mullahs- and their Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah. The current Ayatollah Al Khamenei is a former Iranian president himself. In the wake of Ahmadinejad's controversial re-election, Khamenei preempted the usual three-day waiting period allowed for contesting the vote and officially approved Ahmadinejad as President of Iran as soon as the votes were tallied. His refusal to allow political parties to dispute the election result further fueled accusations that Khamenei rigged the election to assure Ahmadinejad the presidency. Even those who accepted the election results are not confident the election was fair. One senior member of a group opposing Ahmadinejad, Mahdi Karroubi, was quoted in the Tehran Times as saying, "I still strongly believe that the election was massively rigged. I stand by my word. But since Mr. Khamenei endorsed Ahmadinejad, I recognize him as the head of the government."

Ahmadinejad has fallen from grace in the eyes of many, but he has been greatly admierd among certain sectors of Iran, especially the poor. Among the Iranian public, at least by his own description, he is known as "the people's friend." His lifestyle is purportedly modest; he donated the priceless antique carpeting of the presidential residence to a museum and opted for inexpensive carpeting for the dwelling; he has replaced the official presidential jetliner with a cargo plane and humbler flight accommodations. He claims to be leading a class revolution among the people - supporting the poorer classes in a vie to overthrow the corrupt, wealth-amassing, power-hungry bourgeoisie.

Ahmadinejad and Israel:
"Israel's days are numbered," Ahmadinejad said in a speech before a group in Gorgan, northern Iran, in May of 2008. He continues to lead Iran in backing Hezbollah and Hamas against the Israeli people, and analysts speculate that Iran will take a definite antagonistic action against Israel and her allies in the future if the country is in a position to do so. Experts have warned for years that a nuclear arsenal in Iran is imminent.

Ahmadinejad often talks about the injustices committed by Israel, but in the end, he just does not want the Jewish state to exist, period. The Iranian magazine Emrooz quoted an Ahmadinejad speech to Majlis members on May 10, 2008 when he said, "The [very] basis for the existence of the Zionist regime is in question. This oppressive and false regime is about to fade and collapse... Those who think that they can revive this stinking corpse by celebrating its anniversary are totally wrong. The [leaders] who attend these celebrations should know that they will go down [in history as accomplices] of the Zionist criminals... Having received a slap in the face from the Lebanese people, this regime is now coming to its end like a dead fish."

Ahmadinejad and Obama:
Obama would like to end the Bush-era policies of sanctions and disagreement between the US and Iran and start anew. He has expressed a desire for friendly relations with Iran, but Obama's efforts can hardly be fruitful with Ahmadinejad and the mullahs running the country. As children in Iranian public education are taught that the United States is the "Great Satan," and friendly overtures between the two countries is considered heresy, it is clear that Iran needs fair elections and the Persian people would do well to elect somebody with far more willingness to make peace with the West than the tyrannical Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. America and its allies must continue to keep a watchful, wary eye on Iran's current president and his nuclear and political pursuits.

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RUSSIA COOPERATING WITH SYRIA, WEST, BUT NOT ISRAEL - (Print)

For the first time, US and European troops marched beside Russian forces as Moscow celebrated the end of World War II with its annual military parade on Sunday. According to The Wall Street Journal, Russia is looking at increasing its cooperation with the West, and a confidential report from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to President Dmitry Medveded outlines a program to improve Russia's economy by embracing Western technology. Yet, Medvedev's recent visit to Syria reveals that Russia is willing to make a wide variety of friends, whether America and Israel like it or not.

Medvedev's visit to Syria early this week was ground breaking as the first visit of a Russian or Soviet head of state to that country, and it comes just days after the US renewed its sanctions against Syria for supporting terrorist groups and pursuing WMDs. Moscow has already agreed to provide Damascus with an advanced anti-aircraft defense system, and Russia may build power plants for Syria, including nuclear powered ones. "Cooperation on atomic energy (with Syria) could get a second wind," Medvedev said at a press conference with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Russia has held to its position that all nations should be free to pursue peaceful nuclear power.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone to Moscow to try to persuade Russia from providing Syria with weapons, but Medvedev could only be convinced to delay the weapons sale and not stop it altogether. In a time of global economic struggles, Russia is looking for ways not only to exercise more influence in the Middle East, but also to strengthen and modernize its anemic economy.  Medvedev justified the arms sale to Syria by saying the weapons were defensive and not offensive.

Medvedev also met with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal while in Damascus, and in the interest of creating a Palestinian state urged Hamas to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.  Russia has comfortable relations with Hamas, even while America and other Western nations refuse to deal with the terrorist group.

While these unsavory friends may cause Western nations some consternation, Russia's desire to improve itself has given Moscow the impetus to do more to link arms with America and Europe. Obama's peace overtures along with his willingness to drop the missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic and weaken America's support for Georgia have cheered the Moscow government. In a cover letter to his confidential report, Lavrov calls for Russia's creating "alliances of modernization" with European countries, especially Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Lavrov also wrote that, "It is necessary to find opportunities to use American technological potential."

As Vyacheslav Nikonov, a foreign-policy analyst noted, "The sources of modernization and innovation are in the West, not the East."

Nikonov sees things improving in Russia's foreign relations with the West. "The overall climate is better than it has been since the time of Perestroika," Nikonov said. "Russia has started to react to the more cooperative policy from the West."

Friendly relations with America and Europe, Syria and Iran, not to mention China, are all well and good, but Russia has been leaving one extremely important country out of the circle of peace and cooperation: Israel. Instead, Israel faces a host of antagonism from around the world. President Obama has expressed support for Israel, but it is clear that Israel-US relations are not as warm as they have been in the past. The world's willingness to turn against Israel may eventually leave the small Jewish nation alone in a sea of Islam - alone except for the protective power of God Almighty.

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David Cameron Is New British PM - May 11, 2010
Conservative leader David Cameron has become the new prime minister after the resignation of Gordon Brown. Mr Cameron, who at 43 is the youngest PM in nearly 200 years, vowed to set aside party differences and govern "in the national interest". His party won the most seats in the general election last week, but not an overall Commons majority. The Lib Dem parliamentary party and its federal executive endorsed the coalition agreement by the required three-quarters majority at a meeting that broke up just after midnight. BBC News

Pope Accepts Catholic Church Responsibility For Sex Abuse - May 11, 2010
The Pope has laid the blame for the "truly terrifying" clerical sex abuse crisis squarely on the Catholic Church for the first time as he arrived in Portugal for a four-day visit. Benedict XVI said that "the greatest persecution of the church does not come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church." His remarks were a repudiation of a string of senior figures of Vatican who in recent months have attributed the scandal to a shadowy conspiracy mounted by outsiders, ranging from a hostile media to liberals within the Church. Telegraph.co.uk

Netanyahu Tells Iran Israel Has No War Aspirations - May 11, 2010
As Iran's military conducted military drills in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blamed Iran for provoking a war between Israel and Syria, and said Israel has no intention of attacking its neighbors. This is Iran's fifth year of holding annual war games in the Persian Gulf, which are intended both to train Iranian soldiers and to intimidate its potential enemies. It is Iran's second large-scale military exercise this year. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow and highly strategic waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran has previously threatened that if attacked, it would shut down the strait, halting oil traffic. Arutz Sheva

Teen Pregnancy Down But Single Mom Births Up - May 11, 2010
Compared with 20 years ago, today's mothers of newborns are older, more educated, less often white, more often Hispanic - and less often married. A record 41 percent of American births in 2008 were to single mothers, according to a new study of census and other data released by the Pew Research Center in time for Mother's Day. That's an increase from 28 percent in 1990. That does not bode well for the kids. Traditional marriage is better for kids emotionally, academically and economically. But, after disturbing surges in the 1980s, teen birthrates and pregnancy rates are down to their lowest level in 20 years. Chicago Tribune

UK: Flag of Jesus Frowned On As Religious 'Advertising' - April 29, 2010
Rev Mark Binney, vicar of St Andrew's Church, Hampton, Worcs, said he had been told he needed planning permission if he wanted to fly a flag "advertising Christianity" in future. The flag was put up outside the church in the week preceding Easter Sunday displaying the words 'This is Holy Week' and an image of Jesus on the cross. Mr Binney said the warning was "appalling", and he felt it was part of a gradual erosion of Christianity in Britain. Telegraph.co.uk

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Mojave Cross - April 29, 2010
The Supreme Court yesterday said a lower federal court was wrong to order the removal of a cross on government land in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and said separation of church and state "does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm." The case, which involved a white cross erected by veterans more than 75 years ago to honor the dead of World War I, splintered the court, 5 to 4. The court's conservative members prevailed, but six of the nine justices wrote to explain their views. The Washington Post

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32

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