Free Republic

As much as we like to think otherwise, human behavior is fairly predictable, and sometimes ironically so. Muslims reacting to depictions of violence within the Muslim world (during the Danish cartoon controversy) with, well, violence, comes to mind. This time around, it's been Obama supporters responding to my SFGate column on Palin Derangement Syndrome with, well, Palin Derangement Syndrome. The avalanche of e-mails I received (not to mention the 913 comments at SFGate) was evidence of the collective nervous breakdown that has met Sarah Palin's arrival on the political scene. It was all there: the condescension, elitisim, sexism, paranoia, personal...

Ingrid Mattson, director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary and president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), has been all over the news lately. Mattson was one of the speakers at an interfaith gathering at the Democratic National Convention in August, and now word comes that she's a member of the "leadership group" for the U.S. Muslim Engagement Project. The latter consists of a bipartisan coalition of American leaders from a variety of backgrounds, which, as described at its website, seeks to form "a clear and strong consensus on...

Georgetown University's Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) will be hosting a conference on October 23 that asks the loaded question: "Is There a Role for Shari'ah in Modern States?" The Saudi-funded ACMCU and its founding director, John Esposito, one of the foremost apologists for radical Islam in the academic field of Middle East studies, have certainly been doing their bit to make the idea more palatable. The Saudi prince for whom ACMCU was named has been pumping millions of dollars into Middle East studies at Georgetown, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and beyond, and as the case of Esposito demonstrates,...

There's a new affliction sweeping the nation, and it's known as Palin Derangement Syndrome. The phenomenon is similar to Bush Derangement Syndrome, a term coined by political columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe the personal animosity and irrational hatred directed at President Bush by his leftist opponents. But this time, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is the object of wrath. The feeding frenzy began with the news of Palin's selection, but it was her electrifying speech at the Republic National Convention last month that really set it off. In one fell swoop, Palin managed to energize the...

Hello Free Republic. Add 6 votes to the McCain/Palin vote tally from Connecticut from this disgruntled family of traditional Democrats. I'll spare you the details on our politics, suffice to say we are, generally, left leaning libertarians. We disagree on probably 55% of issues with you, and agree the rest of the time, but we have made a decision as a family to vote Republican this election. If you're curious, this is my personal reasoning(here I speak for myself, not for the clan) 1) Obama is the emptiest candidate I've seen in my lifetime (I'm only 25 so that isn't...

This weekend, the "Popular Palestinian Conference 2008" will be held in Chicago, and if past is prologue, a slew of anti-Israel propaganda will be part of the repertoire. The organizers make no effort to conceal their nefarious intentions, titling one of the workshops [emphasis added], "Inserting Palestine into High School Curricula in the US & Empowering Students to Challenge Dominant Narratives" and subtitling the conference, "Palestinians in the US: Reclaiming Our Voice, Asserting Our Narrative." Unfortunately, this "narrative" is a false one in which Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians its perpetual victims, and the United States an accomplice in...

San Francisco's political establishment has long prided itself on providing a haven for illegal immigrants. Mayor Gavin Newsom even launched a taxpayer-funded $83,000 "public awareness campaign" earlier this year assuring illegal immigrants that the "sanctuary city" by the bay was in their court. And indeed it is. Under the city's 1989 voter-approved sanctuary ordinance, police officers and other city employees are prohibited from inquiring into immigration status. In addition, the city will not direct municipal funds or employees towards assisting federal immigration enforcement, unless such assistance is required by federal or state law or a warrant. No doubt such protections...

While the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has long dominated the field, its highly politicized leadership's inability to withstand criticism, inattention to radical Islam, and apologetic approach towards the West's foes has left many Middle East studies scholars feeling unwelcome by their umbrella professional organization. Enter the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). Founded last year by Professors Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, ASMEA offers an alternative to MESA's post-colonialist biases and a venue for studying those elements of Islam and the Middle East that MESA's leaders ignore or downplay.ASMEA's emergence is cause for optimism....

Hot on the heels of my column yesterday, "Islam in America's Public Schools: Education or Indoctrination?," which included mention of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Fairfax, Virginia, comes news that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has released its findings from a review of the school's textbooks and found that they promote hatred, intolerance, and violence. As reported by the Associated Press: -The authors of a 12th-grade text on Koranic interpretation state that apostates (those who convert from Islam), adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed. -The authors of a 12th-grade text on monotheism write...

With fatal terrorist attacks on the decline worldwide and al Qaeda apparently in disarray, it would seem a time for optimism in the global war on terrorism. But the war has simply shifted to a different arena. Islamists, or those who believe that Islam is a political and religious system that must dominate all others, are focusing less on the military and more on the ideological. It turns out that Western liberal democracies can be subverted without firing a shot. Nowhere is this more evident than in the educational realm. Islamists have taken what's come to be known as the...

On June 15-16, a conference will take place at the University of Southern California titled, "How Free is the University?" Sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance, the conference features an impressive lineup of speakers, all addressing the subject of academic freedom in higher education. As Northern California Representative for Campus Watch - a conference co-sponsor - I will be speaking on a panel titled, "Middle East Studies Departments: Who influences and controls them?" In doing so, I hope to shed light on the crucial part played by Middle East studies in the ongoing politicization of the classroom. On a related...

I returned to my apartment building last Saturday night to an unsettling sight. A young, seemingly Arab-American man was sitting smack dab in the middle of the doorstep, accompanied by a bulky backpack and all the while talking to himself and gazing at the cover of the large, leather-bound Koran on his lap. He appeared to be drunk or under the influence of something and when I tried to get past him with a careful, "excuse me," he merely mumbled incoherently. Keeping a watchful eye on him and making sure he wasn't watching back, I managed to get into my...

There's definitely something fishy about 25-year-old, Saudi, female, dissident blogger Hadeel Alhodaif's untimely death. Via the Arab News, we learn that Alhodaif "unexpectedly" fell into a coma and 25-days later, simply "passed away." But considering her legacy of activism, both within the blogosphere and without, and the fact that she insisted on blogging under her real name, it's more likely she was targeted for death by Saudi authorities. That she was a proponent of women's rights in this most backward of nations (and regions) is even more reason the enemies of progress would want her out of the way. The...

It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue. The sixth novel in the series, Prince of Fire, begins with a horrific terrorist attack at the Israeli embassy in Rome, explores the origins of the modern state of Israel, and ends in an archaeological excavation trench in Provence. Figuring throughout is the handsome and mysterious Paul Martineau,...

According to the Mount Vernon Gazette, twenty-two soldiers from Fort Belvoir in Fairfax, Virginia just graduated from the nearby Islamic Saudi Academy's "Arabic as a Second Language" program, where they also learned about "Middle Eastern culture and traditions." While this would sound fairly harmless on the surface (and Arabic language instruction is certainly needed in the U.S. military), it turns out this school has Wahhabi skeletons in its closet. This would be the same Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) that came under scrutiny last year over its Saudi-produced textbooks. As reported by the Washington Post at the time: In a report...

As further evidence of the not-so-great minds inhabiting higher education, political science professor and director of the UCLA Globalization Research Center on Africa, Edmond J. Keller, recently made the following statement about Zimbabwe's destructive dictator, Robert Mugabe: Mugabe has tried to start programs that would increase indigenous business opportunities, but the high inflation rate, the worthless Zimbabwe currency; and a vibrant civil society which has become anti-government make it impossible for him to hold on to power.That's funny, last I checked, Mugabe had been in power for 28 years. And he's been destroying the country (once labeled the "bread basket...

In his 2002 Commentary article, "Jihad and the Professors," Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes makes a compelling case for "the nearly universal falsification of jihad on the part of American academic scholars." Rather than acknowledging the aggressively military nature of jihad (otherwise known as "holy war"), such academics would have us believe that it consists either of defensive warfare, a struggle for spiritual and personal improvement, or the promotion of social justice. Here are a few of the quotes he cites in the article: Jihad as "usually understood" means "a struggle to be true to the will of God...

As I noted in a recent column on the perils of ethanol and other biofuels, using food for fuel is wrought with difficulties. One of them is hunger, which is on the rise throughout the Third World, largely due to biofuel production. As a result, discontent is brewing, food riots and hoarding are becoming the norm, and governments are finding themselves facing an increasingly hostile and hungry populace. An International Herald Tribune article (linked at Drudge) spells out thelooming disaster in startling detail (emphasis added): "It's the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years," said Jeffrey Sachs,...

In the pantheon of well-intentioned governmental policies gone awry, massive ethanol biofuel production may go down as one of the biggest blunders in history. An unholy alliance of environmentalists, agribusiness, biofuel corporations and politicians has been touting ethanol as the cure to all our environmental ills, when in fact it may be doing more harm than good. An array of unintended consequences is wreaking havoc on the economy, food production and, perhaps most ironically, the environment. Biofuels are fuels distilled from plant matter. Ethanol is corn-based, but other common biofuel sources include soybeans, sugar cane and palm oil, an edible...

Obama fever has overtaken San Francisco. Undeterred by the conspiracy theories, hatred, and vitriol spewed by Obama's 20-year "like an uncle to me" pastor, Jeremiah Wright, local liberals are in thrall to their perceived savior. They seem to think that every problem, no matter how trivial, can be solved by Saint Obama. As a case in point, an elderly man I was chatting with yesterday at a city bus stop about MUNI delays (a time-honored tradition in San Francisco) concluded by stating, "I hope Obama gets elected so these things will be fixed." So, along with ending poverty and creating...

When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom initiated a program in conjunction with Google last month to provide phone and messaging facilities to the homeless, it was the latest chapter in the city's seemingly never ending quest to tackle homelessness. While the program may prove useful for those inclined to better their situation, it is unlikely to have an impact on the chronically homeless. San Francisco has the highest per capita number of homeless in the nation, and city officials have quite a challenge on their hands. And to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom or Angela Alioto, his appointee to chair the...

The proliferation of dubious conferences on "academic freedom" continues unabated. And, in each case, biased and politicized Middle East studies academics are a major component.In October, 2007, the University of Chicago hosted, "In Defense of Academic Freedom," an event whose unifying theme was "the notion that Jewish groups have degraded the quality and breadth of discussion in the media and in Washington." Hardly the stuff of self-described progressives, but such is the state of discourse in the corridors of academia today. Then there was the "DePaul Academic Freedom Conference" earlier this month. It featured the usual suspects, all alleging "academic...

History professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Joel Beinin, went on "extended leave" from Stanford in 2006 due to what he described as the university's "minimal institutional interest in the study and teaching of the modern Middle East." Since that time, Beinin has been serving as director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. But was it scholarly concerns or mounting criticism that caused Beinin to leave Stanford for AUC? In a 2006 interview with Egypt Today, Beinin was portrayed as a victim of "conservative reaction" on the part of Middle...

Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it's one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, "Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam." Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, "occupation" on the part of "neo-colonial powers." This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.When an attendee asked him why...

Like most of us here in the Bay Area, I've been following the brouhaha over the Berkeley City Council's latest anti-military shenanigans involving a U.S. Marines recruiting office and the "anti-war" (translation: pro-terrorist and pro-dictator) group, Code Pink. In reading Melanie Morgan (of Move America Forward)'s report from the frontlines of yesterday's patriot protest/lefty counter-protest in Berkeley, I couldn't help but notice her description of the Berkeley Police Department's behavior. Here's what she had to say: ...The cops were openly hostile toward the people who showed up at 5:00 a.m., never stepping in to protect the patriots from the assaults...

Public school children in grades K-12 are being assigned textbooks that misrepresent and, in some cases, glorify Islamic beliefs and history – often at the expense of other religions and cultures. The apologetics and indoctrination common in university Middle East studies programs is being carried into public schools by contentious, ahistorical, and inaccurate textbooks written by those same Middle East studies professors. History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, a textbook published by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute, was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district in 2005 for this very reason. The textbook is now causing controversy in California and...

Like many others on the right, I have been a consistent critic of the Western feminist movement's veritable silence on the oppression of women in Muslim culture. Putting multiculturalism and leftist political preoccupations such as being anti-American and anti-Israel ahead of women's (and, indeed, human) rights, the movement is out to lunch on the great feminist calling of our time. In a recent SFGate column on the rise of so-called honor killings in the West, I elaborated on the subject: Fearful of giving offense or being branded with the ubiquitous "Islamophobia" label, law enforcement, journalists, social workers, government officials and,...

When it comes to off-the-wall commentary on the Middle East conflict, University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole is the gift that keeps on giving. If there's anti-Israel propaganda to be found, one can be sure Cole will be peddling it at his ironically named blog, Informed Comment. His labeling of Gaza in September, 2007 as "the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo" is a case in point. As noted by Noah Pollack at Contentions, Cole's latest blog ramblings ratchet up the hysteria another notch. Not content with alleging persecution of the self-defeating...

In the months since once-presidential contender Al Gore's documentary (otherwise known as "docu-ganda") "An Inconvenient Truth" came out, we have seen the Powerpoint progenitor transformed into a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a veritable object of worship. Not to mention his film, which did for global warming acolytes what the 2000 election did for George W. Bush's opponents: induced mass hysteria. I forced myself to sit through Gore's tedious, overwrought, and stunningly inaccurate film in order to write an SFGate article on the subject. In said article, I came to the conclusion that Gore's brand of fear mongering was based...

SFGate printed a rebuttal from CAIR to my column, "Savage vs. CAIR: The Battle over Free Speech" today titled, "Free Speech vs. Hate Speech." It consists of the usual CAIR talking points and obfuscation and the author, CAIR-San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Safaa Ibrahim, demonstrates a marked lack of understanding (whether purposeful or not) of the concept of free speech. In addition, she doesn't disprove any of the allegations made in my article. And, if the reader comments are any indication, the American public isn't buying it. Update (1/5): Conservatarian weighs in on CAIR's "dissimulation" here and Douglas Hagmann...

Cinnamon Stillwell's recent column in SF Gate, "Savage vs. CAIR: The battle over free speech" on Dec. 19 offers a holiday assortment of misleading truths and omissions of facts. In her misguided defense of the "Savage Nation" radio show, Stillwell essentially defends anarchistic hate against minority groups including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, immigrants and women. She does so under the pretense of defending free speech. Of course, most elementary school students will tell you that hate speech is not to be confused with free speech. CAIR, the California Council of Churches, Rabbi Haim Dov Beilak and other...

Conservative talk radio show host Michael Savage is no stranger to courting controversy. Savage is known for his blunt commentary which at times goes beyond the realm of the politically incorrect into the confrontational. It is a style Savage describes as "psychological nudity" and the opening to his show warns overly-sensitive listeners as much. But, in the process, Savage touches on some fundamental truths that hit home with his fans, while simultaneously motivating his opponents. Whether they love him or hate him, 8 million listeners tune into "The Savage Nation" each week. The fact that the show originates in left-leaning...

Amidst all the hoopla in recent years over the "War on Christmas" or, rather, the campaign to erase Christmas, and, therefore, Christianity from the public square, the idea that Jews are somehow oppressed by Christmas continues to be pushed. Indeed, much of the stated impetus for the use of the bland catchphrase, "Happy Holidays," over the dreaded utterance, "Merry Christmas," is to protect the allegedly delicate sensibilities of Jews celebrating Hanukkah in December. Muslims, Hindus, and Pagan practitioners of Winter Solstice are thrown into the mix for good measure. But the "holiday season" in America has always been about Christmas...

At the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in Montreal earlier this month, fear and trembling were the order of the day. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Mideast Scholars, Meeting in Montreal, Worry About a Splinter Group and Academic Freedom," the leading lights of Middle East studies are feeling both "besieged" and "blessed" by the post-9/11 increase in attention to their field. Being forced to contend with the twin horrors of outside criticism and competition from groups such as the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) must indeed be...

A judge who for much of his career has tried to fight crime became a victim Tuesday night when he and two family members were robbed at knife point outside a downtown Santa Fe hotel. New Mexico Court of Appeals Judge Ira Robinson, a former district attorney for Bernalillo County, was mugged after leaving La Fonda, 100 E. San Francisco St., with two cousins about 10:30 p.m. "This was the first time in all my life that I've been a victim," Robinson said Wednesday. "And it's a whole 'nother education when you're on the receiving end instead of prosecuting it....

During the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton found out firsthand just how contentious a subject illegal immigration is likely to be in the 2008 election. Expressing support, however equivocal, for New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's proposal to provide drivers licenses for illegal immigrants put Clinton in her most perilous position to date. It also shed light on her propensity for pandering, considering that in 2004 she fashioned herself a hard-liner on illegal immigration. Clinton soon backed off from her debate stance and, not long after, Spitzer did the same, dispensing with the driver's license plan...

Following San Francisco's Veteran's Day Parade earlier this month, I wondered aloud whether the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps) would continue participating due to the anti-military Board of Education's dictatorial decision to phase out the popular program. There was a brief moment of hope when it was announced that the board would consider a proposed resolution approving a one-year extension of the program through the 2008-09 school year. But even then, it was clear that the decks were stacked against the JROTC. The resolution, as described by the San Francisco Chronicle, consisted of the following: The measure before the...

In the latest issue of City on a Hill Press, the student newspaper for the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), reporter Marc Abizeid spins a bone-chilling tale of silenced professors and a Middle East studies field threatened by a shadowy network of "radical pro-Israel interest groups." At the helm of this nefarious conspiracy is of course Campus Watch, which Abizeid paints as a ruthless organization bent on censoring anyone who strays from the straight and narrow. The problem is none of it's true.Much like the disaffected academics he profiles in the ominously titled, "Silencing Debate on the Middle...

San Francisco's anti-military shenanigans are legion and have been commented on by yours truly on many an occasion. Earlier this year, for instance, I noted the decision by the San Francisco Board of Education to phase out the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps)from the city's public schools, despite the protestations of students and their families. So when this year's Veteran's Day Parade rolled around, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not the JROTC would be making an appearance. Sure enough, the usual contigent of JROTC cadets marched in the 2007 parade, but, according to this SFGate article, it...

Earlier this year, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. It was founded in 1957 by Gustave E. Von Grunebaum, a scholar at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and the first president of the Middle East Studies Association. Grunebaum sought to establish at UCLA a groundbreaking Middle East and Islamic Studies program featuring an array of experts in languages, culture, and history. Unfortunately, the best-known UCLA professors specializing in the region today, far from embodying the classical approach to the discipline in which knowledge is the overriding goal, exemplify...

As I noted yesterday at the Campus Watch blog, a mural has been erected at San Francisco State University (SFSU) honoring the late Columbia University English and comparative literature professor Edward Said. Said was the author of the 1978 book, Orientalism, which posited that Western Middle East studies scholars were motivated solely by colonialist sympathies and racist attitudes. The rhetoric of post-colonialism inspired by Orientalism took hold in the field of Middle East studies and, from that point on, the historical and political narrative was framed in terms of colonialists vs. subjects, oppressors vs. victims, occupiers vs. resistance movements, white...

In a revealing, and nasty, example of the sort of hatemail conservative columnists like myself receive on a regular basis (further examples here and here), I thought I'd share the following missive. It seems that "liberal" tolerance, diversity, and protection of free speech stops at the ideological border, and those of us unlucky enough to fall on the other side had better start packing for the reeducation camps. Something tells me this guy has a future as a speechwriter for the Democrat Party... I hope you rot with your friends Bush and Cheney. Get out of San Francisco you do...

Fresh on the heels of my SFGate column on San Francisco's Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and their juvenile and disrespectful publicity stunt involving receiving Communion in full drag at Most Holy Redeemer Parish comes word of local anti-Christian sentiment taken to the highest degree. It seems that San Francisco "performance artist" Paul Addis (formerly known as the arsonist who couldn't wait to torch the Burning Man festival's large wooden icon) decided to set his sights on San Francisco's historic Grace Cathedral. Addis was arrested last Sunday night on the steps of the cathedral wearing an explosives belt and, according to...

Parents are aghast at the racy selection of Halloween costumes being sold to their pre-teen daughers, and understandably so. As laid out in a Washington Post article on the subject, this year's selections include: ...the Sexy Super Girl ...the Aqua Fairy, a vampy get-up with a black ripped-up skirt, black fishnet tights and blue bustier that comes in medium, large and preteen. A medium fits a child of 8. ...the Funky Punk Pirate Pre-Teen, with an off-the-shoulder blouse and bare midriff. ...the Fairy-Licious Purrrfect Kitty Pre-Teen, which, according to the package, includes a "pink and black dress with lace front...

The hysteria that met David Horowitz and various campus speakers as part of last week's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week was, unfortunately, all too common. College campuses, far from being a setting for the free exchange of ideas once imagined, have now been overtaken by leftist and Islamist student (and otherwise) groups bent on silencing all viewpoints that don't match their own. Hiding under the banner of moral superiority, these group's have adopted the fascistic tactics of Brown Shirts. While much has been written at Frontpage Magazine and, to a lesser extent, college publications about last week's disruptions, the mainstream media continues...

In the growing list of acceptable bigotries proliferating among those who inhabit the ever-so-progressive Ivory Tower, it seems that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans are fair game. Just ask University of Delaware political science and international relations professor Muqtedar Khan (also a Pentagon consultant and Brookings Institute Fellow), who refused to share an academic panel yesterday at the University of Delaware with Campus Watch Associate Fellow Asaf Romirowsky. My Campus Watch colleague, Director Winfield Myers, references the story at the Campus Watch blog and Michael Rubin has all the details at NRO's The Corner. I've been given permission to post...

While the famously liberal city of San Francisco is known for its anti-military shenanigans, it's the anti-Christian and, in particular, anti-Catholic sentiment emanating from activist elements of the city's gay population that's been getting all the attention as of late. Most notably, it's been coming from the Fox News Channel, where "The O'Reilly Factor" host Bill O'Reilly, a practicing Catholic, is sick and tired of those who target his religion not only for ridicule, but outright hostility. The latest instance of such sentiment originated with an all too familiar source: San Francisco's notorious Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The "sisters" are...

As part of the "Islam Awareness Week" currently taking place at the University of Pennsylvania, a discussion titled, "Don't Believe the Hype: How the Media and Hollywood Portray Muslims and their Faith" will take place on October 24. Looking at the description of the event, it's clear that the usual platitudes about "Islamophobia," "racism," and "misconceptions" will be employed to mask the need for honest examination and, ultimately, reform in combating Islamism: This event will seek to address the way Western media has created an unwarranted sense of fear towards Muslims. This speaker panel will address the heavy-hitting issue of...

When the news arrived that former vice president and prophet of environmental doom Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his film, An Inconvenient Truth, it resulted in little more than a cynical shrug from those of us long accustomed to the politicization of award-giving. The fact that the Nobel was shared with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only added to the air of predictability surrounding it all. Indeed, I wrote about the topic earlier this year in an SFGate column titled, "When Awards Become Politicized" and, in the process, made the case that...

I've long admired the work of investigative journalist Jack Cashill, whose series of articles on the Sandy Berger affair (a certain Clinton administration holdover with classified documents literally coming out of his ears, and his socks, and his pants) I blogged about earlier this year. While the incident in question certainly had an air of the ridiculous, far more serious issues surrounding the war on terrorism may have been at stake. In light of the disclosure that 2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has, once again, brought Berger into the fray, the information contained in these articles is more relevant than...