Friday, March 25, 2005

Breaking our radio silence

Wongdoer seems out of pocket today, and I've been sleeping off the after-effects of yesterday's surgery. Here are some items of interest.

First, on the Terri Schiavo mess, Andy McCarthy describes most of my distaste by noting how Ms. Schiavo has not received anything approaching due process in this matter. I'm disgusted by the fact that Congress became involved, but I understand the impulse; read McCarthy's piece to see how the deck has been stacked against her from the start. In addition, read Denis Boyles' report on European press reactions.

Next, Peter Brown discusses why Republicans quietly WANT Hillary Clinton to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008 and why the media are fools for pumping up her candidacy.

Also, in case you haven't noticed, another former Soviet Socialist Republic has been rocked by a voting scandal that resulted in a popular uprising against a benign dictator. The ex-SSR in question, Kyrgystan. This situation bears watching as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes.

Speaking of revolutionary situations, this time of the Cedar variety, a preliminary UN report on the Rafik Hariri assassination came out and actually calls for deeper inquiry into the actions of a totalitarian Arab state:
Syrian President Bashar Assad threatened former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri with "physical harm" last summer if Hariri challenged Assad's dominance over Lebanese political life, contributing to a climate of violence that led to the Feb. 14 slayings of Hariri and 19 others, according to testimony in a report released Thursday by a U.N. fact-finding team.

The report, which calls for an international investigation into Hariri's death, describes an August meeting in Damascus at which Assad ordered the Lebanese billionaire to support amending Lebanon's constitution, according to testimony from "various" sources who discussed the meeting with Hariri. The amendment, approved Sept. 3, allowed Emile Lahoud, the Syrian-backed Lebanese president, to remain in office for three more years.


Enjoy.

HT for the UN report article = The Capt.

No comments: