Kennedy vendetta's price

Boston Herald ^ | 8/27/03

[kattracks]

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has won another little personal vendetta and the nation is the worse off for it.

President Bush decided to make a recess appointment of Middle East expert Daniel Pipes to the board of directors of the Peace Institute, a small government think-tank of about 70 researchers. That means Pipes does not have to face Senate confirmation but must leave at the end of the Senate's term next year. In other words, the nation gets his services for about 15 months instead of a normal four-year director's term.

Kennedy has led opposition to Pipes on the grounds that his record did not ``reflect a commitment to bridging differences and preventing conflict,'' a comment of the purest balderdash. Other liberals have called Pipes a bigot, which is a simple lie.

To bridge differences and prevent conflict, to say nothing of prompting and evaluating research on conflict resolution, it helps to know what the differences are, between whom, and where and how conflict may arise. In his scholarly work, at the think-tank in Philadelphia he leads and in his articles (which this newspaper has been proud to publish, including today), Pipes has called attention to the threat of militant Islam, the dangers of which he was among the first in public life to see.

Islam is a vast tapestry of many threads, and is now a battleground between militants who claim its backing for terror and oppression and the majority who find no support in the faith for such crimes. It is vital for civilization that the majority prevail.

Pipes' warnings do not make him anti-Islamic at all. We suspect Kennedy has not himself read much if any of what Pipes has actually written. If he had, the senator would not have been so foolish.

[Hank Rearden]

Can't he just be renominated when the recess-appointment term expires? Just keep appointing him over and over until drunken-gasbag-killer Teddy strokes out.

I'd pay to see that.

[nightdriver]

"We suspect Kennedy has not himself read much if any of what Pipes has actually written. If he had, the senator would not have been so foolish."

But then, since when has a democRAT, especially a Kennedy, ever been afraid of being foolish?

The hero of Chappaquiddick could not even carry a very simple one-on-one with Robert Bork during Bork's confirmation hearings. He knew nothing that his staff hadn't written down for him.

Pathetic.

[Russell Scott]

I have a hunch Islamic nations, either directly, or through surrogates in America, may have taken up where the Chinese left off in donations to the National Democratic party. Who would want to see President Bush lose more than the Islamofacist and the Demorats.

[GUNDEK]

Unfortunatly Kennedy and his ilk will be never realized that there is a war between Islamic fascists. Because of there practice of political correctness anyone who tells the truth about the global war on Islamic terrorism must be a racist and against peace. I have read Mr. Pipes and he seems extremely reasonable and well informed on Middle Eastern matters.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

We suspect Kennedy has not himself read much if any of what Pipes has actually written. If he had, the senator would not have been so foolish.

Democrats not infrequently make ignorance a point of pride--and call it common sense.

But then, the rules of successful commercial journalism--"If it bleeds, it leads," "'Dog Bites Man' isn't news but Man Bites Dog' is, "and "There's nothing more worthless than yesterday's newspaper"--have demagoguery as a planted axiom. In that world everything is "important"--and nothing is important.

[FreedomPoster]

>>I have a hunch Islamic nations, either directly, or through surrogates in America, may have taken up where the Chinese left off in donations to the National Democratic party.

I don't know about the national party, but I do know there were an awful lot of from-out-of-the-District contributions from Muslim-named individuals to Cynthia McKinney, which is one of the reasons we FReeped her in May 2002. The Muslim population in this District is quite small.

Contributions thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/687739/posts

FReep report thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/685634/posts

It would be an interesting research project for someone to cross-reference those donors and see just how much they're giving in how many races.

[tkathy]

I, too, think there is going to be a lot of Islamofascist money going to Dean type candidates.