Bill negotiating for free women.
===
Why I faked OzCar email: Grech
GODWIN Grech has admitted he created the "fake email" at the heart of the OzCar affair and claimed that he passed the contents of that email to Malcolm Turnbull under "enormous pressure". - it still takes the pressure off Rudd, Swan, Gillard and Tanner who have mislead the parliament over the affair. Turnbull has done the right thing in championing the issue and the partisan press have had to attack him because they don't want to examine Rudd's role. - ed.
'Imminent attack' sparked terror raids
Police believe they have foiled an 'imminent terror' attack on an Australian army base, with four alleged plotters arrested in Melbourne.
Court to keep rapist cabbie's secret
Confidential material about a Sydney cabbie who raped three passengers will remain secret.
'Family show' Idol dumps Kyle
KYLE Sandilands has been dumped from Australian Idol, while the future of his radio job remains uncertain.
Bomb threat rocks third Ashes Test
THE final day of the Ashes has been hit by a security scare with English police alerted of a bomb threat at Edgbaston.
Rotting drug put cops in hospital
A POLICE officer is in a coma and another has lost almost 30 per cent of his lung capacity after inhaling rotting drug fumes.
Schapelle gone mad? Her family thinks so
A DEPRESSED Schapelle Corby had to be coaxed to safety after climbing a water tower near her Bali prison cell block.
Son 'changed' as he stabbed his parents
A woman has told a Sydney court she didn't recognise her son or his voice when he attacked her and......
New Zealand jogger mauled by eight dogs
A NEW ZEALAND jogger who was attacked by eight pig hunting dogs "looked like a blob of blood" from the multiple bite wounds, her husband says.
Woman 'unidentifiable' after hit by car
An elderly woman who died when hit by a car and dragged 20 metres along a Sydney street crossed the......
Paris desperate for a mum to love her
MICHAEL Jackson's daughter Paris has been pining for a "real" mum all of her life, her estranged natural mother claims.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Will Israel make a military move, how long do we have...
And what other options are on the table? Shocking answers from John Bolton on Iran's nuclear threat.
===
The DOW Goes Up!
But will new Washington policies mean a down turn in the markets? Neil gets answers!
===
Hot, Dirty Dam!
We expose the truth about the capital of drugs, sex and sleaze. The Culture Warriors debate Europe's sin city!
===
Losing Lefties?
The blue dogs compromised on healthcare, but did it put the bill in the doghouse with the far left?
=== Comments ===
When convenience and distraction unite
Piers Akerman
THE ALP’S national conference was well positioned within the architectural blight that is Sydney’s convention centre at the weekend.
The centre, part of former NSW State Minister Laurie Brereton’s Darling Harbour precinct and one of the NSW Labor Right’s few legacies, desecrates a chunk of waterfront real estate in the heart of the city.
It is an ugly monument to Labor’s grandiose vision but underscores the lack of a latter-day Albert Speer to bring anything approaching splendour to an arrogant dream.
The same could be said for the sad parodies of debate which took place throughout Labor’s conference.
With Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sending the nation into a debt spiral unknown since the last world war, dumbed-down delegates found major topics of the day sidelined by an issue of borderline insignificance to all - homosexual marriage.
Welcome to the brave new world of Kevin Rudd’s Labor. - The issue is an ALP one and one they are keen to keep for the future. Were the ALP to settle the gay marriage issue then they might have to do something worthwhile next. Thing is, the ALP are seen to be the friends of the gay community, so all they have to do is nothing and they retain the gay vote. In comparison many on the conservative side are willing to settle the matter, but the gay community activists won’t stomach that. I recognize the religious aspect and would be unhappy if the law was changed to force churches to marry gays against articles of faith. On the other hand, I have no problem with civil unions as I think domestic arrangements must be recognized by the law if they are to protect the rights of individuals in union. Property rights must be clear or one ends up with any of many lousy outcomes .. like that of the murders following the fortune of a Sydney gay millionaire a few years ago.
ever notice how as it becomes more clear that Rudd has done something wrong that the media decry the conservative leader. As with the Ozcar scandal, we have a clear admission that Rudd mislead parliament in support of Swan .. but because of the single fake email the entire case is derailed and Turnbull accused. It has gotten so bad that the actual case will be ignored .. police will be removed from investigating the actual crime, Rudd won’t be questioned, Turnbull will be smeared .. Imagine if the situation were reversed, and Howard and Costello had been found doing what Rudd and Swan did. Would anyone care that Rudd had exposed the affair thanks to a public servant?- ed.
===
OZBAMA
Tim Blair
The latest evidence presented by the colourful and creative birther community is Kenyan birth certificate proving – proving! – that Barack Obama was born in Mombasa. It’s a forgery, of course, based on an Australian birth certificate issued in 1964:
The design is identical, down to the seal at the top and the classifications ("Christian name,” etc) used for identifying the baby.
The “registrar” on the Bomford document is G.F. Lavender. On the Taitz document, it’s E.F. Lavender.
The “district registrar” on the Bomford document is J.H. Miller. On the Taitz document, it’s M.H. Miller.
Inevitably, the next birther claim: Barack is Australian.
===
SHABAABS NABBED
Tim Blair
An alleged terror plot is foiled:
Police this morning arrested four suspected Islamic extremists who they believe were plotting to kill soldiers in a suicide attack on an Australian army base.
Cops swooped about 4.30am, executing 19 warrants on homes in the Melbourne suburbs of Glenroy, Carlton, Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Westmeadows, Preston, Epping and Colac.
The four men are of Somali and Lebanese background. All hold Australian citizenship. They are said to be followers of Islamist terror organisation al-Shabaab, about whom warnings have previously been issued:
Somali Community in Victoria spokesman Abdurahman Osman says he’s been warning about the rise of terror groups in Australia for years.
He told Radio 3AW this morning that he had raised the prospect of a terror attack in Australia at least 10 times over the past three years on community radio broadcasts, because of the activities of al-Shabaab around the world.
One of the four arrested men has now been charged with terrorism offences.
===
WARMING CURED
Tim Blair
In India:
Annual mean temperature for the country as a whole has risen by .52 degree Celsius in the past 107 years since 1901 …
They just need more Gore:
Global temps have fallen .74F since Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2006.
Meanwhile, in Africa:
Desertification, drought, and despair—that’s what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.
Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.
If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.
===
EFAIL
Tim Blair
Yes, it was fake, and Godwin Grech was the source:
Godwin Grech has admitted he created the “fake email” at the heart of the OzCar affair and claimed that he passed the contents of that email to Malcolm Turnbull under “enormous pressure”.
The senior Treasury official, speaking from a psychiatric ward in Canberra last night, admitted to an error of judgment in creating the email.
But he said he still believed there had been an original email from Kevin Rudd’s office, urging help for Ipswich car dealer and Labor donor John Grant, but conceded it could not be found.
Grech is seriously unwell, currently battling a range of health problems.
===
METHOD NOT ADVISED FOR ISLAMIC NEGOTIATIONS
Tim Blair
Jim Treacher listens in on Barack Obama’s historic racially-healifying beer summit.
===
CRISIS DELAYED
Tim Blair
“Is America on its way to becoming a boiled frog?” asks New York Times amphibian warmenist Paul Krugman:
Climate change is a creeping threat rather than an attention-grabbing crisis. The full dimensions of the catastrophe won’t be apparent for decades, perhaps generations.
In fact, it will probably be many years before the upward trend in temperatures is so obvious to casual observers that it silences the skeptics. Unfortunately, if we wait to act until the climate crisis is that obvious, catastrophe will already have become inevitable.
Wasn’t a “climate crisis” meant to be happening right now? Apparently not:
This summer has been conspicuously different in New York City. Not one 99-degree day in Central Park. Not a single day that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperature failed to reach 90 in either June or July.
The daily average last month was at or below normal every day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York — one more day than in Fairbanks, Alaska … this could be the coolest summer on record.
Cool your frogs, Krugman.
===
PRIZE PILGED
Tim Blair
A prize for nuke-tanned slowtalker John Pilger:
Crusading journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who has uncovered stories in trouble spots and war zones around the world, has won the Sydney Peace Prize for his extensive career …
Sydney Peace Foundation director Professor Stuart Rees said Pilger had enjoyed a stellar career.
“The jury was impressed by John’s courage as well as by his skills and creativity,” Prof Rees said.
His creativity is a matter of record. Pilger once created one million Australians from a quantity of just 200,000. And then there are his creative responses to questions about East Timor. Pilger is also creative in his views of Australian troops overseas.
===
The fraud of wind power
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann:
THE Rudd Government’s ‘green power’ strategy has been utterly shredded by detailed analysis which shows the total uselessness of the one form of power on which it is almost entirely based - wind....
When the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow. Even more devastatingly, as this analysis shows, the wind not only don’t blow an awful lot of the time. It tends to not blow ‘everywhere’ at the same time… This utterly shreds the claim that if we build enough of the so-called ‘wind farms’ across southern Australia, the wind will always be blowing somewhere....
Their damning evidence is shown in the graph which measures ... the actual performance of all the farms in the four states through every minute of June… And when you put all the wind farms in the four states together you get a devastating image of practical uselessness - that would require you to keep almost the equivalent capacity of coal-fired stations on and operating pretty much at full power all the time.
Two huge and unmistakable messages leap out of the graph. Wind farms spend most of their time not generating power, or not generating very much. They can move quickly from producing a lot or quite a lot of power to zero… Second, even though spread right across southern Australia, they tend to produce or not produce at much the same time.
A second analysis, from engineer and power industry authority Peter Lang, shows three equally devastating and simple conclusions.
Wind power does not avoid significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. It is a very, very high-cost way to avoid such emissions - costing between $830 and $1149 to avoid one tonne of CO2 emitted per MWh as against just $22 with nuclear power. And wind power, even with high capacity penetration, could never make a significant contribution to reducing those emissions.
===
It’s different when you’re in charge
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd in 2009 rejects arguments that fighting wars overseas against sponsors of terrorism just encourages extremists at home:
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, what do you say to Australians who now say this is strong evidence that we should not be in Afghanistan, that our fighting there is a war where we have no place and we inspire hatreds that could come back to haunt us?
PM: As I reflect most recently on terrorist attacks in Indonesia, and terrorist attacks elsewhere in world, as you know, in the history of events since 2001, many of those who have been responsible for terrorist attacks around the world have in fact been trained in Afghanistan.... This is a difficult and ongoing fight in Afghanistan, I accept that. I accept also that it is unpopular. But if we are to deal with the threat of terrorism at its various levels, we must be dealing with where terrorists are trained, we must be dealing with those who support them, as we must be dealing with the current, practical challenges which confront our law enforcement agencies here in Australia.
Kevin Rudd in 2004 supports arguments that fighting wars overseas against sponsors of terrorism just encourages extremists at home:
The Government should follow the lead of its intelligence chief and confirm that the Iraq war had increased the risk of terrorism, says the Federal Opposition.
Labor’s foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, said it was time for Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to acknowledge the obvious truth.
“The Director-General of ASIO (Dennis Richardson) stated last night that the Iraq war has had a potential impact on the terrorist threat to Australia,” Mr Rudd said - similar to what Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said earlier, which earnt him a rebuke.
===
Climate models predict everything
Andrew Bolt
The climate models that predict we’ll all fry have now predicted Australia’s rainfall, too, and with uncanny accuracy:
AUSTRALIA’S annual rainfall will increase by an average 8.4mm by 2099, according to results from computer models that have been brought under the one roof for the first time. …One Japanese model predicts 149.7mm more rain by 2099 across Australia and one German model predicts 128.1mm less per year.
One way or another those models will be bang on the money. By 2099, we’ll either have less rain, more rain, or about the same.
And these are the models on which Kevin Rudd relies when he says we must vote for his colossal job-killing emissions trading scheme or die.
===
Top end turmoil
Andrew Bolt
I doubt Labor would survive an election:
RENEGADE MP Alison Anderson has quit Labor and thrown the Northern Territory Government into crisis. Territorians could now go to the polls within weeks after the former indigenous affairs minister acted on threats to walk out on her party over its handling of remote Aboriginal housing…
Labor lost its one-seat majority in the NT last month following deputy chief minister Marion Scrymgour’s shock resignation which left the party with only 12 seats in the 25-member parliament.
===
No idea what motivated them
Andrew Bolt
If the ABC’s online service were to publish a long piece on the anti-terrorist raids in Melbourne this morning, which one word would it scrupulously omit?
===
Terror raids
Andrew Bolt
Terrorist raids are reported this morning in Melbourne, involving allegations of planned suicide attacks on army installations.
Yes, allegedly followers of that faith.
UPDATE
Hundreds of police are said to be involved.
UPDATE 2
Cameron Stewart:
Federal and state police, armed with search warrants, swooped on members of the suspected terror cell this morning, as they seek to arrest Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese background in what will be the second-largest counter-terrorism operation in the nation’s history.
The men are expected to be charged with a range of terrorism-related offences.
Authorities believe the group is at an advanced stage of preparing to storm an Australian Army base, using automatic weapons, as punishment for Australia’s military involvement in Muslim countries. It is understood the men plan to kill as many soldiers as possible before they are themselves killed.
Members of the group have been observed carrying out surveillance…
Search warrants for at least 19 properties across Melbourne have been prepared to allow authorities to obtain more evidence against the group, which is believed to number about 18, with a smaller, hardcore element. The suspects include Australians of Somali and Lebanese decent, most of whom are labourers employed in Melbourne’s construction industry, or taxi drivers.
It is understood that several members of the group also wanted to travel to Somalia to fight with al-Shabaab, but when travel became difficult, they turned their attention to carrying out a terrorist attack in Australia.
UPDATE 3
More on al-Shabaab:
In the summer of 2007, a 28-year-old father of three from Houston, Texas, shocked his country when he became the first American ever to be convicted of receiving military training at a terrorist camp in Somalia. Daniel Maldonado, an offbeat, outspoken young man who sported tattoos and dreadlocks, committed himself to wage jihad outside the United States and went to Somalia to receive training… Maldonado’s training in jihad came from Shabaab al Mujahideen, a group the State Department on Feb. 29, 2008, designated as a highly dangerous foreign terrorist organization.
Shabaab al Mujahideen, which espouses radical Islamic rule and has close ties to Al Qaeda, is best known for operating training camps for people seeking a more extreme form of Jihad. It also has been forging relations with Somali pirates who have recently been intercepting and holding for ransom several international shipping vessels.
UPDATE 4
Indeed, the senior leadership of Shabaab al-Mujahideen—including Shaykh Mukhtar Abu az-Zubair, Abu Mansour Mukhtar Robow, and others—have all clearly and publicly endorsed the idea of foreign fighters “migrating” to Somalia in order to seek specialized terrorist training and battlefield experience fighting the “crusaders.” ...
Support for the recruitment and training of foreign fighters has reached all the way up through the ranks of Shabaab, to the emir of the organization, Shaykh Mukhtar Abu az-Zubair. In an audio recording released on June 1, 2008, Shaykh Mukhtar boasted of how “the Muslim people of Somalia have merged with the most elite fighters from the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement… Allah willing, international jihadi units will be launched from the Land of the Two Migrations [the Horn of Africa] to haunt and destroy the infidels and their interests around the world… We are an integral part of the vanguard of the global jihad.”
UPDATE 5
From December:
Dozens of young Somali men in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have disappeared in recent months, causing community members and U.S. intelligence officials to fear that they are joining jihadist groups in Somalia… A senior American intelligence source confirms that Somalis have vanished in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, adding that some people from the Caribbean also appear to have left for Somalia. And not all of the people bound for training or jihad in Somalia have a Somali background, the source said.
UPDATE 6
Victoria Police:
Several people are in custody and a number are assisting with inquiries as a result of a joint counter-terrorism operation in Melbourne this morning involving the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Victoria Police, NSW Police, the NSW Crime Commission and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
Police executed 19 search warrants across Melbourne at around 4.30 this morning. Warrants were executed on homes in Glenroy, Carlton, Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Broadmeadows, Westmeadows, Preston, Epping and Colac.
Today’s operation involved approximately 400 officers from the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and NSW Police.
Police believe members of a Melbourne-based group have been undertaking planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia and allegedly involved in hostilities in Somalia.
UPDATE 7
From December 2007:
FEDERAL police are investigating local Muslim leaders over suspicions they are encouraging dozens of young men to return to their homeland to join Islamic jihadis against the Ethiopian-backed Somali forces…
It is understood that the investigation has widened following revelations in The Australian that a Somali from Melbourne, Ahmed Ali, who travelled to Somalia in December to fight alongside the Islamic Courts movement, was believed to be working as an interpreter with al-Qa’ida. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported in January that Mr Ali had been killed in the fighting…
Somali community figures said Mr Ali was one of 30 or 40 Australian Somalis who have returned to fight since last December…
The Australian revealed in October that Mr Ali had been radicalised by Melbourne-based hardline clerics.
His mother accused Mohammed Omran - the head of the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jammah association who describes Osama bin Laden as a “good man” - of turning Mr Ali into a hardliner… Mr Ali was working as an imam at Eight Black, a prayer hall mainly attended by Somalis in north Melbourne, before he travelled overseas last year.
UPDATE 8
From 2007:
YOUNG Somali refugees in Melbourne are being seduced by Muslim extremists, a Somali community leader has warned. Herse Hilole, a Sydney community leader and Islamic scholar, fears the recruits could be used in terrorism attacks in Australia.
He said some Somalis were being influenced by radical Lebanese from a hardline Wahhabi group…
He told The Age extremists from Somalia visited last year to gather money and support and that one of their most important allies was the Somali mosque in North Melbourne. Leaders at the mosque declined to speak to The Age but worshippers say the mosque, in Racecourse Road, is a community centre…
Other Melbourne Somali leaders denied that Australian Somalis were engaged in jihad, in Somalia or Australia… Somali Council of Australia president Salaad Ali Ibrahim said the claims were misleading. Mr Ibrahim said most Australian Somalis — more than 10,000 — lived in Melbourne. There was no danger from them, he said…
Dr Hilole told The Age that Muslim extremists fell into two groups in Australia: those promoting political Islam, such as Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, and those who supported jihad, such as Salafis (ultra-conservatives), who controlled some mosques and schools. He said Somalis who supported the Islamic Courts movement, and there were many, did not want to integrate with Australian society.
UPDATE 9
Kuwait Times, last month:
Somalia’s hardline Islamist rebels beheaded seven people yesterday for being ‘Christians’ and ‘spies’ in the latest imposition of strict sharia, Islamic law, by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab group, witnesses said.
UPDATE 10
From last month:
The mother and a friend of an Australian man held hostage in Somalia for almost a year have confronted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to express their frustration over his plight. Bundaberg photojournalist Nigel Brennan was kidnapped in Somalia along with a Canadian journalist 11 months ago.
UPDATE 11
A reminder, too, how you were once misled:
CHRISTINE Nixon yesterday confirmed it. She did mislead us on crime rates of African refugees. It’s actually four times worse than she’d claimed. ..
Just before last year’s federal election, (the then Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police) embarrassed the Howard government’s immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, by contradicting his warnings that the crime rates among Somali and Sudanese refugees were high.
Not so, said Nixon: “Those Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics.”
She was silent on the crime rate among Somalis, but repeated: “The young Sudanese who actually come into custody or dealt with us, only really make up about 1 per cent of the people we deal with . . . (W)hat we’re actually seeing is that they’re not, in a sense, represented more than the proportion of them in the population.”
===
Breed ‘em and leave ‘em
Andrew Bolt
What was billed as help for poor working women turns into a taxpayer-funded abrogation of parental duty:
ONE third of kids are placed in childcare even though their parents are not working...
Speaking of slack or absent parents, here are two more stories just from today:
...a third of high school students say they have experienced unwanted sex.
And:
HUNDREDS of vulnerable Victorian children known to child protection authorities are not getting sufficient attention because they have not been allocated a dedicated case worker, Child Safety Commissioner Bernie Geary says.
UPDATE
Another:
THIS is little Hayley… The two-year-old died in hospital on Sunday, four weeks after being admitted with critical brain injuries from an attack at her home. (Her grandfather) Neil defended his stepson Robert, who took his own life last month on the day he was due to face court charged over the bashing of Hayley.
===
Two more?
Andrew Bolt
Would this government ad make you drink less - or more?
I’d bet a round of drinks it’s the work of a bloke, and one who wouldn’t say no if it’s the taxpayers’ shout.
===
Clue: what’s borrowed must be repaid
Andrew Bolt
Those “no new taxes” promises are always a killer:
BARACK Obama’s election promise to Americans that he would not increase taxes looks increasingly shaky, after two of his administration’s most senior officials left the door open on how to tackle a massive federal budget blowout.
===
Speaking from a psychiatric ward…
Andrew Bolt
But in Malcolm Turnbull’s defence, what were the odds?
GODWIN Grech has admitted he created the “fake email” at the heart of the OzCar affair and claimed that he passed the contents of that email to Malcolm Turnbull under “enormous pressure”.
The senior Treasury official, speaking from a psychiatric ward in Canberra last night, admitted to an error of judgment in creating the email.
But he said he still believed there had been an original email from Kevin Rudd’s office, urging help for Ipswich car dealer and Labor donor John Grant, but conceded it could not be found.
And in that lies all the difference.
But if Turnbull was mad to rely on such a fragile man for an email, who was so mad as to rely on him to run a $2 billion scheme?
GODWIN Grech’s health remains fragile and he has been hospitalised with depression for more than a month in the wake of the OzCar affair. Mr Grech has been a patient in the psychiatric ward of a Canberra hospital since late June…
Mr Grech said he had stage three kidney disease and was told last week he had pre-renal failure. The Treasury bureaucrat has a long history of ill-health and was hospitalised several times this year suffering from small bowel obstruction at a time when he was working 75-85 hours a week running the OzCar program. Mr Grech has lost weight and now weighs around 44kg.
He believes senior Treasury officials overlooked his precarious state of health in relying on him to deliver the Rudd government’s OzCar program almost single-handedly… He has since developed metabolic bone disease, including osteoporosis, and fears his next major health episode could prove fatal. - but we still know that Swan acted inappropriately and was protected by Rudd, Gillard and Tanner in parliament from telling the truth to the parliament. - ed.
===
Go the sponsors
Andrew Bolt
Late, but at least they figured they couldn’t get away with keeping him:
The Ten Network is set to announce today that embattled host Kyle Sandilands has been stood down as a judge on Australian Idol.
This decision was reached after consulting the true moral arbiters, in order…
Senior executives from the Ten Network have spent the weekend deliberating whether they should act in response to mounting pressure from sponsors, viewers and listeners ...
Note that order, the next time you want a TV station to do the right thing.
===
Ann Coulter: Racial Profiling Is a Hoax
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," July 31, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
LAURA INGRAHAM, GUEST HOST: And now for the top story: What exactly is that "teachable moment" in all the recent racial banter? Joining us from us Florida with her provocative take as always is Ann Coulter, author of the huge best-seller "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America."
And Ann, I have to say I watched a competing cable channel, I had it DVR'd somewhere. I watched you last night with Sharpton, OK? And just the look on his face when you came out and said well, what racial profiling? And I'm sure African-Americans across the country were saying what is this woman talking about? Explain.
ANN COULTER, CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: It's not that it's never happened. I've just been watching, you know, the gusher of cliches on television about this. I mean, this — clearly there was no racial profiling in this case in Boston unless you're talking about Professor Gates racially profiling an Irish cop and assuming he must be a racist. There was some racial profiling that way. But you know, I write about this in "Guilty," and I only give an abbreviated list in "Guilty," although it goes on for pages and pages of all of the alleged acts of racism or racial profiling that turn out to be hoaxes.
And I mean, as far back in our lifetime as the Tawana Brawley case there was the case with the Exeter kid. And at first, you have to read all the headlines at first. You know, why would this Exeter have mugged an undercover cop. And then, you know, all the facts come out. They got witnesses. They got — have the autopsy. Yeah actually, the Exeter honor student on his way to Stanford did mug an undercover cop and the grand jury acquitted. You have the one with a black kid who was carrying a machete. The cop thought it was a gun. Again acquitted by the grand jury after hysterical headlines throughout The New York Times. You got the Clermont and the kennel woman. A white woman. A lot of these times, these are whites who are…
INGRAHAM: Yeah.
COULTER: …seeking racial reconciliation, and they claim they come under attack. The Claremont professor who vandalized her own car with anti-Semitic and racist graffiti. There are witnesses who saw her doing it.
INGRAHAM: Right.
COULTER: You bring it right up to recently, Columbia University, the black professor who hung the noose, suspiciously, it seems that she's probably the one who hung the noose.
INGRAHAM: Yeah, I remember that one.
COULTER: And the case quietly goes away to the Duke lacrosse case where, yeah, there was racial profiling. There was athletic profiling of the allegedly rich young frat boys. So I'm just saying, you know, before — every time one of these comes up, you have liberals saying well, OK, it wasn't true in this case, but we still have an epidemic of racial profiling. Well, they got to start having their cases not turn out to be hoaxes before they can say that. What we seem to have a rash epidemic of…
INGRAHAM: What about the ACLU lawsuit, Ann, yeah, what about the ACLU lawsuit against Maryland state police? And the ACLU sued and there was a settlement. An out of court settlement, essentially an admission…
COULTER: Right.
INGRAHAM: …on the part of Maryland that they do stop African-American drivers in some type of pattern that I guess some people believe is profiling.
COULTER: Right. What they compare these thoughts to is the percentage of blacks in the population, which if you know, if think about it is obviously absurd. I mean, just to take one example in another category, shootings, in an article by Heather McDonald this week. She releases the astonishing statistic that 82 percent of the shootings in New York City, the shooter is black. Less than 1 percent is the shooter white. And that's with more whites than blacks in New York City. So cops are looking for if there's been a shooting, the witnesses are probably very likely to say it was a black who did the shooting. It turns out it's the same thing with these highway patrols. There is an absolute scientific study in New Jersey. And I don't think blacks are slowing their cars down when they get from New Jersey to Maryland, where they did the same thing. They compared the black numbers in the population to the number of blacks speeding.
INGRAHAM: Finally.
COULTER: Finally, the highway patrol got so fed up with being called racist and by everyone, especially the Clinton administration, they encouraged the attorney general of New Jersey to conduct a scientific survey of this. So what the scientific survey did, rather than just comparing numbers in the population, they set up a camera. And they clocked cars, photos of the drivers as they are going by and what the speed was. They had one group of people determine what the race of the driver was. They — without knowing what the speed was. And it turns out if anything, the New Jersey highway patrol was stopping not enough blacks. Blacks speed more. Now, you know, it could be because blacks tend to be a younger demographic and you get younger people…
INGRAHAM: Yeah.
COULTER: ...who speed more.
INGRAHAM: Yeah.
COULTER: But the point is it wasn't racial profiling.
INGRAHAM: There is a disparity though, right. And it's so explosive even to have this conversation because once you start having this conversation, people, you know, people from, you know, all, you know, walks of life start to say oh, you can't believe this, you can't really belief what you're saying because my black friends say they have been stopped and they've been stopped unfairly. So there is a perception issue even if it's not grounded I think what you're saying in the reality of what the cases are.
Can I ask you about the Crowley issue, yesterday the big beer summit and so forth? He didn't get apology from either. Gates — apparently Gates wanted an apology from Officer Crowley. Crowley didn't give it. Gates didn't give it. And Obama didn't give it. So what was the teachable moment very quickly?
COULTER: Right. I think the teachable moment should be applied to the cop who did send an e-mail in intemperate moment, exploding at a journalist. I mean, he turns out to be the Emanuel Goldstein for the week. Liberals are bitterly disappointed that Sergeant Crowley — they couldn't find anything on him suggesting he's a racist. So they get this one cop who sends a stupid, immature intemperate e-mail.
INGRAHAM: Right.
COULTER: And now he's apologizing all over the place. If Gates isn't going to apologize, how about a little fairness for this guy doing something immature and irrational, too?
INGRAHAM: Ann, thanks a lot. Good to see you.
No comments:
Post a Comment