The Norway Attacks at 'The Big Picture'

An amazing photo-essay, at Boston Globe's, "The Big Picture."

Also, at New York Times, "Norway Displays Unity at Attack Victim’s Funeral."

Michael Coren Interviews Robert Spencer

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

Pat Condell: 'Violence Is Not the Answer'

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Pat Condell on Anders Behring Breivik."

New York Times Reader Kills Dozens in Norway

A classic piece from Ann Coulter, at FrontPage Magazine.

And speaking of New York Times, see Timothy Egan's desperation, "A Madman and His Manifesto."

RELATED: Anders Breivik is explained — indeed, he's all boxed up and ready to go — at Los Angeles Times, "Norway attacks: The Breivik-McVeigh connection," by Andrew Gumbel.

Norway Killings Shift Immigrant Debate in Europe

At New York Times, "Shift in Europe Seen in Debate on Immigrants":

BERLIN — Less than a week after the mass killings in Norway, evidence of a shift in the debate over Islam and the radical right in Europe already appeared to be taking hold on a traumatized Continent.

As the police in Norway and abroad continued to search for potential accomplices, expressions of outrage over the deaths crossed the political spectrum. Members of far-right parties in Sweden and Italy were condemned from within their own ranks for blaming multiculturalism for the attack. A member of France’s far-right National Front was suspended for praising the attacker.

Lurking in the background is the calculation on all sides that such tragedies can drive shifts in public opinion. Nonviolent political parties can hardly be blamed for the violent actions of a terrorist or a homicidal person. But politicians have begun to question inflammatory speech in the debate over immigrants, which has helped fuel the rise of right-leaning politicians across Europe in recent years.

More at the link above.

I'm kinda shocked to see right parties endorsing the killings, or at least defending Breivik. What he did is indefensible. More at the Right Perspective, "European Far Right Cautiously Stands With Brievik."

And at Telegraph UK, "National Front member suspended for defending Anders Behring Breivik."

Diagnosing the Left

A must-read, from David Solway, at FrontPage Magazine, "Diagnosing the Left."

It should be clear by this time that there is no medium of intellectual exchange with the left, that facts do not matter, that logic is helpless to convince or to prompt even the slightest reconsideration, and that practically every counter-argument can be turned on its head and interpreted as confirmation of the original idée fixe. As I wrote in The Big Lie, this is a tendency or disposition that bespeaks the resurgence of a political romanticism wedded to motives rather than consequences, unachievable ideals rather than practical values. It consists largely of the cryogenized remnants of an antique crusade for unperturbed happiness and tranquility, actuated by a child-like desire for transcendence that is the curse of liberal political civilization, and that, in various spiritual and revolutionary forms, has caused untold harm and suffering in the past.

Ultimately, it amounts to a prepossession that resembles a species of clinical paranoia, associated with symptoms like unbridled hostility where disagreement is perceived, extreme sarcasm often rising to livid vulgarity, an intense need for control and the belief in personal infallibility. It is, in effect, a squalid amalgam of hubris and the herd mentality. Obviously, the disorder is not exclusive to the left, but it is on that side of the political spectrum where it manifests most prominently and insistently.

RELATED: "W. James Casper is a Coward, a Fraud, and a Liar."

And a perceptive reader, from out of the blue, comments on clinical progressive W. James Casper:

Suzie Q said...

Has it occurred to you ... that you are a stalker??

Seriously. This is pure sickness.

RELATED: "British Progressives Allege Melanie Phillips Took 'Part in the Norway Massacre'."

Lawyer Says Anders Behring Breivik 'Insane'

At Telegraph UK, "Norway killer: Anders Behring Breivik 'insane'."

Anders Behring Breivik was “surprised” he was able to carry on shooting students on Utoya island for 90 minutes before police eventually caught up with him, his solicitor said, as he made clear he regarded his client as “insane”.

'The Left hasn't been this giddy since Rep. Giffords was shot'

That's Darleen Click, at William Jacobson's entry, "My challenge to Charles Lemos."

Along the same lines, Darleen has her interesting entry at Protein Wisdom, "Kind of sums up what passes for principle on the illiberal Left."

And more of this at POH Diaries, "Tragedy In Norway Compounded By Left-Wing Glee."

Plus, Mollie Hemingway writes a beautiful essay, "The Atlantic has this terrorist all figured out."

And then check this post from Power Line, "IN DEFENSE OF BLOND NORWEGIANS":

The relief–not to say glee–with which many liberals greeted the news that the Oslo mass murderer was a “tall, blond Norwegian” was palpable. Liberals pilloried those who ostensibly leaped to the conclusion, in the first minutes after the massacre began, that it was probably the work of Islamic jihadists. Scott noted earlier such attacks on Jennifer Rubin.

As far as I know, liberals haven’t attacked me for the post I did while the attacks were in progress. But what I wrote was, I think, typical:

The perpetrators of these attacks have not yet been identified, but they likely were Muslim terrorists.

Was that wrong? Not at all. Any time mass murder attacks take place, it is not just likely but highly probable that they are the work of Muslim jihadists. Over the last several decades, jihadists have launched hundreds if not thousands of terrorist attacks. They dwarf, in numbers, similar outrages perpetrated by anyone else. That is why, whenever a bomb kills innocent bystanders or an armed man guns down children, the first thing everyone thinks is that it likely will prove to be another instance of Islamic terrorism.

See also: "SOMEONE IS PUTTING WORDS IN JEN RUBIN’S MOUTH." (Via Memeorandum.)

'Heck of a First Week for Bill Lueders'

According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism on Twitter:

Well, as I reported earlier, Lueders may be the one who "should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack," according to Ann Althouse.

And that's because not only is Lueders the author of the main hit piece against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, but he's also now basically pulled his initial report on the alleged altercation, replacing it with a version featuring a disclaimer:

10:15 p.m.: This story is updated to reflect reports of a statement from Prosser denying the allegations.

Yet there is no "update" at the bottom of the report. It's been airbrushed, and Althouse is demanding answers this morning, "How stupid/evil was Bill Lueders's attack on Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser?"

The first thing I want to note is the common sense angle. The story's extremely fishy, mainly because it's impossible to envision Prosser administering a deadly choke-hold to Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. As I noted before, "The idea that Prosser got Bradley in a 'choke hold' is outlandish, and perfectly suited to the left's progressive thuggery agenda." And as Althouse writes today, agreeing with progressives that Prosser should resign if the allegations were true:

But I wanted to know the whole story. It seemed to me that Lueders had given us "just the snapshot of one hard-to-comprehend instant within the longer event." I was skeptical about the version of the story Lueders had put out, because there had been no arrest and because I found it hard to picture an elderly, dignified man suddenly grabbing a (somewhat less elderly) woman by the neck.

That's a big point for me, because it's not just an age thing, but that here are two people who essentially represent the epitome of the legal profession at the state level. It's inconceivable to me that a sitting judge would try to choke a judicial colleague in her chambers, but again, leftists don't think logically, despite endless claims to being "reality-based."

Another thing to note is that the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is funded by George Soros, the messianic multi-billionaire behind such neo-communist attack outfits as the Center for American Progress. These people do not "report." They destroy. And that's the context for understanding Bill Lueders, whose deed pushes the evil meter way over to the right.

But read Althouse's entire indictment. For example, Althouse reads the various news reports and determines that two independent sources say Justice Bradley came at Justice Prosser with "fists raised." That's a lot of information to be left out of initial reports, and Althouse notes:

Now, we've just reviewed the stories of various unnamed sources, as reported by Lueders and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. What I want to know is: What is the total number of sources? Is it 6? 5? 4? Or is it 3? It could be only 3! That is, 2 of Lueders's sources could have been the sources who gave the fuller context, with Bradley as the aggressor. What did Lueders know and when did he know it? Did Lueders have the fists-of-fury version of the story and deliberately leave it out? Did he leave it out when he contacted Prosser for a response and recited "the particulars of the story," the "reconstructed account" that he referred to in his article.

I told you this was going to be a little journalism class. Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, will you investigate your own journalism?

More discussion, and then she continues:

In my last post of the day, commenting on the Journal Sentinel article, I said:

I want to know not only what really happened at the time of the physical contact (if any) between the 2 justices, but also who gave the original story to the press. If Prosser really tried to choke a nonviolent Bradley, he should resign. But if the original account is a trumped-up charge intended to destroy Prosser and obstruct the democratic processes of government in Wisconsin, then whoever sent the report out in that form should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack.

When I wrote that, it did not cross my mind that the "truly evil" person might be Lueders himself. That's something occurred to me when I woke up this morning and began thinking about the possibility that the total number of unnamed sources was only 3.

Well, actually that did occur to me when I quoted Althouse last night, and I went to sleep knowing that truth would come out. And the truth is still coming out, but of course it's no surprise that we're finding apparently evil deeds here: Progressives are evil!

And more at Althouse:

Lueders needs to tell us whether or not he knew the Bradley-as-the-aggressor story when he presented his original work of investigative journalism under the name of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. If he knew it, why didn't he present the whole context at first? And what was in the "reconstructed account" that got Prosser to decline comment? If Lueders didn't know the alternate version of the story, in which Bradley was the aggressor, why on earth didn't he know? The story he presented is so weird that any thinking person would demand to know more of the context. Did Lueders keep himself willfully ignorant of the more complicated version of the story, and if he did, why? What kind of journalism is that? Truly evil?

Precisely.

And again, read the full post, because Althouse is going Alinsky on the left, especially Ian Millhiser's, "Four Ways Justice David Prosser Can Be Removed From Office." Check the link, but Althouse turns the table:

Finally, it must be said: If Lueders had the larger context of the story — including the allegation that Bradley was the aggressor — and he suppressed it in his original account, what he did was not only evil, shameful journalism, it was freaking stupid. All sorts of bloggers and tweeters like Millhiser committed themselves to the firm, righteous position that if Prosser did what is alleged, he must leave the court. Lueders's article lured them into stating a firm and supposedly neutral principle about physical aggression. With that principle in place, they are bound to call for Bradley's ouster, if Bradley really did take the offensive and transform the verbal argument into a physical fight.

More at Memeorandum. And Instapundit.

Islamic Supremacists and Pro-Terror Thugs Protest King Hearings in New York

Okay, here's an update to my previous entry, "Barack Hussein Works to Reassure Muslims Ahead of House Hearings on Homegrown Islamic Terrorism."



See the reports at Atlas Shrugs, "How about .... "I am an American!" Rally Islamic Supremacists and Useful Tools Protest Counter Terror Efforts," and Vigilant Squirrel, "Imam Rauf Rally Times Square."

Check Jihad Watch as well, "Useful idiots rally against King hearings," and "More protests on King hearings: Muslims feel "unfairly singled out" over jihadist terrorism."

Barack Hussein Works to Reassure Muslims Ahead of House Hearings on Homegrown Islamic Terrorism

Folks should be reading my friend Gary Fouse's blog, Fousesquawk. Gary teaches at UCI and his blog specializes in countering jihad on campus. Despite the backlash against Irvine's Muslim Student Association, the campus will once again hold Israeli Hate Week in May. I'm planning some coverage of that myself, which will augment my recent investigation into pro-terror Islamic radicalism at UCLA. It's never a dull moment with these thugs. Right here at home we have an anti-Semitic fifth column, and of course the White House is doing all it can to strengthen these forces and enable the progressive left's Islamization of America. At LAT, "White House seeks to reassure Muslims":

The White House took a preemptive step to defuse an emerging controversy Sunday, sending out a top aide to reassure American Muslims that the U.S. government doesn't see them as a collective threat.

Denis McDonough, deputy national security advisor to President Obama, addressed a largely Muslim audience days before congressional hearings into homegrown Islamic terrorism. The hearings, which sparked protests in New York on Sunday, will be led by Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

In his speech to members of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, McDonough said, "The bottom line is this: When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem; you're part of the solution."

Earlier Sunday, King told CNN's "State of the Union" that Al Qaeda terrorists were "attempting to recruit within the United States. People in this country are being self-radicalized."

The Obama administration is clearly worried that the hearings, which begin Thursday, could open a rift with Muslim leaders, whose cooperation is needed to foil terrorist recruitment. A message from McDonough's speech was that the Muslim community is vital to a larger strategy of preventing the radicalization of American youths.

Progressive Bullies Threaten Workplace Harassment

This is what progressives do.



The despicable low-life Charles Johnson published a deliberately vague hit piece on Patterico and his brain dead commentariat went straight to work on plans to threaten Patrick Frey's job at the L.A. County District Attorney's Office.



See, "Charles Johnson Impotently Tries to Threaten My Job":

Here is how much I am frightened and silenced:

Charles Johnson, you are a hypocritical, dishonest lowlife punk. This post of yours guarantees that I’ll be doing a new post about you every single time I find out about another lie of yours.

Every. Single. Time.

In doing so, Charles Johnson, I will metaphorically crush you. I will metaphorically disembowel you and eat your innards. But I will not do a single physical thing to you. Nor will I encourage others to.

I will simply laugh and laugh as your reputation continues to shrink into nothing.

I have, of course, had people do this exact sort of thing to me many, many times before — and it’s not purely a tactic of the left, either. (In fact, there is one certain “classical liberal” site that did almost precisely the same thing a little more than a year ago.) Tbogg, Sadly No, Brad Friedman, his partner the convicted bomber, the aforementioned “classical liberal” site, and several disgraced reporters and columnists for the Los Angeles Times have all learned that the best way to get me to stop pointing out their dishonesty is to stop engaging in dishonesty.

You stop lying, I stop pointing it out. Simple as that.

UPDATE: It just gets better and better. Here is a Twitter message Johnson just republished:

This is classic. I've had E.D. Kain contact my college, not once, but twice, and during the recent Elizabeth Edwards nihilism episode my department chair received two outraged e-mails claiming that I didn't deserve to be teaching at a public college. And that's to say nothing of Libel Blogger David Hillman, who mounted a campaign of workplace harrassment last year, specifically launched to get me fired.



Leftists can't win on the merits. They instead mount campaigns of retaliation. For the longest time Racist Repsac3 hosted this call to workplace harrassment at his blog: "If the Coward or any of his followers harass you online you, contact Vice President Donald Berz" at Long Beach City College. All the phone numbers and e-mail contacts were included. It was only after being repeatedly slammed for his sponsorship of such hatred and intimidation did RepRacist3 remove the contact information, but the post is still up. After reading that, folks should see this recent thread where RepRacist3 remorselessly attacks me as a bully --- a bully?



Right. Conservatives are bullies when they win arguments on the merits. It really has come to this. But they're progressive dumbfucts, so what can you do? They're pure evil. Threats to a blogger's livelihood are beyond reprehensible. E.D. Kain, the atheists, David Hillman, and RepRacist3 have all engaged in attacks on my personal livelihood, and they then have the audacity to allege bullying.



It's shameful, I know. But that's what folks of good morals have to deal with these days.



RELATED: Jeff Goldstein calls out Patrick Frey: "I never once tried to go after your job." I'm with Goldstein on that, actually. And I've called out Patterico myself, over his attacks on The Other McCain. It's hard out there. That said, I think I'll stay focused on the progressives. They provide enough death-chants and intimidation to last a lifetime. Freakin' asshats.

Jared Loughner Pleads Not Guilty to Attempted Murder Charges

At LAT, "Suspect in Ariz. shooting pleads not guilty to charges he tried to kill Giffords, 2 aides."

And at New York Times, "Suspect Pleads Not Guilty in Tucson Shooting":

PHOENIX — Jared L. Loughner, who the police said was responsible for the shooting rampage outside a Tucson supermarket on Jan. 8, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that he tried to murder Representative Gabrielle Giffords and two of her aides.

Appearing in Federal District Court alongside his defense lawyer, Judy Clarke, Mr. Loughner entered a written plea to Judge Larry A. Burns of San Diego without uttering a word.

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and wearing glasses, Mr. Loughner, 22, smiled through most of the proceedings and chuckled when a clerk read out the name of the case: the United States of America v. Jared Lee Loughner.

Ms. Clarke offered no objection to a request by Wallace Kleindienst, an assistant United States attorney, to move the court proceedings to Tucson. But Mr. Kleindienst, who is considered an expert in murder cases, indicated that additional charges were likely to be filed and that Ms. Clarke would have additional opportunities to push for the trial to be held elsewhere.

During the arraignment, which was conducted under high security, Judge Burns asked Ms. Clarke whether she had any concerns about her client’s ability to understand the case against him. “We are not raising any issues at this time,” she said.

The prosecution on Monday turned over to Ms. Clarke records from Mr. Loughner’s computer and transcripts of 250 witness interviews.

Kermit Gosnell and Roe v. Wade

The video features Lila Rose from LiveAction.org (via The Blog Prof). It's powerful:

As I keep learning, there are few things greater than abortion that more fundamentally separate normal, life-loving Americans from the death-loving dregs of progressivism. Scott Lemieux is simply a vile man. As a college instructor he's made abortion politics one of his pet projects. Rarely is the conventional evil of Democrat-progressive politics better represented than in Lemieux's posts at LGM. See for example, "Once You Get Your Position Sorted Out, Perhaps We Can Talk." There's no need to quote it. He's attacking Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom. As can be seen at the title, Lemieux's all about elaborating all the tired public policy explanations for the enormity of the Kermit Gosnell murders. And that's the thing: It's just superfluous. No explanation is needed. As Michelle wrote previously:

Deadly indifference to protecting life isn’t tangential to the abortion industry’s existence – it’s at the core of it. The Philadelphia Horror is no anomaly. It’s the logical, blood-curdling consequence of an evil, eugenics-rooted enterprise wrapped in feminist clothing.

This is how mass murder gets a pass from progressives like Scott Lemieux and his evil hordes at LGM. And there's yet more here. It's all very clinical. What never comes into the picture --- never, ever --- is the idea that killing the unborn is an enormity of world historical evil. To commit abortion is to violate the command of the absolute truth of goodness: honor life. Our own Declaration of Independence bears this, that governments are established to preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All progressives want is more death, destruction, and desperation. I find it horrifying. But then, I look at politics from a stance of fundamental morality, and that separates me --- and my allies like Darleen, Lila, and Michelle --- from the heathen left. And where I may differ from others is that I don't question the civil liberties of abortion, and frankly I'm not necessarily down with the greater criminalization that's alleged by pea-brained progressives. The question is of moral agency. Of moral choice. People of goodness have to persuade women to choose life. That's the imperative, because whatever happens in the law --- whether the remote possibility exists for vacating Roe v. Wade, for example --- the final foundation of both moral right and popular will is in the realm of ideas, popular ideas. So in this sense, it's no contest. Progressive can't win on the merits, they can't win the debate, because they've got no case for life. When you see people like Barbara O'Brien claiming that the system worked in Philadelphia, you know how deep are the evils of these ghouls who are unfortunately fellow Americans.

RELATED PROGRESSIVE DEBAUCHERY: From American Prospect, "A Response to Saletan on Late-Term Abortions."

The Tolerant, Compassionate Non-Violent Left

Here's a couple of interesting posts, from Nice Deb, "Leftism Really is a Mental Disorder." And at Kathleen McCaffrey at Legal Insurrection, "Evil Schmevil." Kathleen examines the question of whether Jared Loughner is "insane or just evil?"

At the comments, I suggested that Loughner's crazy. The left's exploitation of him is evil.

The System Worked: Mahablog Cheers 'House of Horrors' Abortion Doctor Who Killed Seven Babies by Severing Their Spinal Cords With Scissors

The main story is at Wall Street Journal, "Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Charged With Murder":

Warning: The following will likely be the most disturbing story you read here all day all month.

With that disclosure, here goes.

A Philadelphia doctor who provided abortions for minorities, immigrants and poor women has been charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday. Click here for the AP story; here for the Philadelphia Inquirer story.

Working out of his Philadelphia office (pictured), Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said.

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Nine of Gosnell’s employees also were charged ...

And at Lonely Conservative, "Abortionist Charged With Multiple Murders":

This has to be one of the most horrific things I’ve ever heard .... Ghastly doesn’t begin to describe it. Good Lord.

And it's true. Here's this from the Grand Jury report:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

Let us say right up front that we realize this case will be used by those on both sides of the abortion debate.We ourselves cover a spectrum of personal beliefs about the morality of abortion. For us as a criminal grand jury, however, the case is not about that controversy; it is about disregard of the law and disdain for the lives and health of mothers and infants. We find common ground in exposing what happened here, and in recommending measures to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

I'm glad the Grand Jury placed that disclaimer at the beginning of the report, because for me, this isn't so much about abortion politics as it is the normalization of evil. I wish women didn't have abortions, although I'd never deprive a woman her right to make the decision. But this isn't about that. What happened in Philadelphia, over a period of years, it turns out, is what happens when life itself becomes cheapened and coarsened at the altar of civil liberties. Just because one has the right to do things doesn't mean they ought to do them. And here the case could be made that that right itself is illegitimate if not exercised with the same kind of common sense and professionalism that we'd expect of those providing any kind of medical service, from routine doctor visits to open-heart surgery. That is to say, if one's going to perform this service, shouldn't it be treated with the same kind of dignity as any other operation? Instead what's revealed here is the production of death, and for what reason I can't possibly fathom. It's not so that women can exercise "choice." If someone is on the fence on the question of abortion, here's a case study of how badly things not only can go wrong but will go wrong, since taking scissors to just-born babies is the next logical step in the agenda of moral annihilation at the center of the pro-choice movement. And I think the point is illustrated at The Mahablog, where not once do we witness Barbara O'Brien's condemnation of the slaughter, but we instead gasp at her first impulse, which is to blame the right: "It appears to me this is not a bogus charge concocted by 'Right to Life' operatives." Seriously. Read the whole thing, especially this jaw-dropping conclusion:

This is the system working. If abortion is criminalized, thousands of clinics like this will spring up like mushrooms, operating underground, out of sight of the law.

No, Barbara, the system didn't work. But I will pray. I'm saddened by the industrial-scale death that you promote with your radical pro-choice ideology. And I'll pray for those babies --- and for you as well.

See also, The Other McCain, "Abortion Is Murder, and Sometimes We Are Brutally Reminded of That Fact." And Dr. Melissa Clouthier, "Abortion Abomination - Murder. Vile, evil, disgusting, loathsome murder." (Via Memeorandum.)