Insider Report
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. US Fails to Thwart Iran’s ‘Serious Threat’ to Women’s Rights
2. NRA Still Loves Harry Reid
3. Jews for Sarah Palin Website Launched
4. Obama Reaches Out to American Jews Over Israel
5. Wiretaps Soar in ’09 — No Requests Denied
6. Rangel Vows to Regain Ways and Means Chair
7. We Heard: John Boehner, National Journal
1. US Fails to Thwart Iran’s ‘Serious Threat’ to Women’s Rights
Just days after Iranian clerics attacked “immodest dress” by women and threatened suntanned women with arrest, Iran won a seat on a United Nations women’s rights commission.
The American delegation could easily have thwarted the move by raising an objection. But U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was not on hand for the vote. In fact, she wasn’t even at the U.N.
“Wouldn’t you think that a female American ambassador would understand the importance of standing up against a country that has some of the world’s most hostile laws toward women?” Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman for four U.S. ambassadors to the U.N., wrote in National Review. “Shouldn’t Rice want to use the opportunity to highlight the regime’s record on women’s rights?”
Iran has become infamous for its treatment of women. On April 19, Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi, a leading cleric in Tehran, said that immodest dress and behavior by women disturbed young men and was to blame for an increase in earthquakes.
Shortly thereafter, Tehran’s police chief, Hossein Sajedinia, warned that suntanned women will be arrested as part of a new drive to enforce the Islamic dress code, The Telegraph in Britain reported.
Then at an April 28 meeting of the U.N.’s 54-member Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Iran was nominated for a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). If the United States or any other Western country in the ECOSOC protested, a secret ballot would have been required and Iran might well have not received a majority of 28 votes.
But the United States, Canada, Australia, and 10 European nations raised no objection, and Iran was therefore given the seat “by acclamation,” according to CNS News.
Beginning in 2011, Iran will help set U.N. policy on gender equality and women’s rights.
Iranian women’s rights activists sent a letter to the U.N. saying that Iranian membership in the CSW would pose a “serious threat” to the body’s “goals and mission,” and warned that the Iranian government would use it “to curtail progress and the advancement of women.”
A U.S. State Department report released in March stated that “provisions in the Islamic civil and penal codes, particularly sections dealing with family and property law, discriminate against women.” And CNS reported that members of the National Iranian American Council charged that the Iranian government “has taken every conceivable step to deter women’s progress and institute a regressive regime against gender equality.”
According to Grenell, Rice’s failure to act is not surprising. “For Rice, this silence is becoming a pattern,” he wrote. “Rice has been routinely unavailable to reporters, absent from daily U.N. meetings, and all too often silent when the American people needed a strong voice to speak out on an important issue. From Iran to Zimbabwe to Sudan to Cuba, Rice consistently stays silent.
“It’s no wonder other countries at the U.N. think the Obama administration is so easy to work with. And it also explains why we haven’t had one single Security Council resolution on Iran since Rice arrived.”
Editor's Note:
2. NRA Still Loves Harry Reid
The National Rifle Association has a record of supporting far more Republicans than Democrats, but there’s one powerful Democrat who has a not-so-secret admirer in the NRA — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The NRA hasn’t officially endorsed Sen. Reid, who is facing a tough re-election battle in Nevada, but the gun rights group “really loves” Reid, an NRA insider tells Newsmax.
Even as tea partyers rallied against Reid in his hometown of Searchlight, Nev., on March 27, Reid was joined by NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre at the official grand opening of a $60 million shooting range Reid helped build north of Las Vegas.
“I know how you worked,” LaPierre said to Reid at the opening. “[This] would not have opened without the work of Sen. Reid.”
Reid’s re-election campaign describes LaPierre as “one of the senator’s supporters,” according to CNN.
Since his election to the Senate in 1986, Reid has consistently voted to protect the rights of gun owners and manufacturers:
- In 1993, he was 1 of only 8 Democrats to vote against an assault weapons ban.
- The following year he voted in favor of a bill preventing third-party lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors when their weapons are used illegally.
- He voted against legislation that would have made it a federal crime to keep a gun unlocked and loaded for personal protection in the home.
The NRA sent a letter to its members in July 2009 stating that “for many years, Harry Reid has been supporting our Second Amendment rights in the U.S. Senate.”
At the opening of the shooting range, Reid donned ear plugs to test out his 12-gauge shotgun, Politics Daily reported. After the ribbon cutting, he autographed shell casings.
Editor's Note:
3. Jews for Sarah Palin Website Launched
With American Jews concerned about President Barack Obama’s stance on Israel, a new Jewish group has been formed to express support for Sarah Palin, an outspoken backer of Israeli policy.
While Obama has protested Israel’s construction in annexed East Jerusalem, Palin has said she opposes a freeze on settlement growth.
“I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand,” the former Alaska governor told Barbara Walters.
Now Benyamin Korn, a former editor of the Jewish Exponent, has founded Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, “and his efforts are part of some recent Jewish support that has been trickling in the direction of the hockey mom from Wasilla,” the Jewish publication Forward observed.
Korn has also launched a website, JewsforSarah.com. According to the site, “Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin is an independent group of academic, religious, and political leaders, dedicated to promoting consideration of Sarah Palin’s political positions in the wider Jewish community.”
The site went live in mid-April, shortly after Obama suggested the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute was endangering American troops in the Middle East.
Jewish support for Palin is gaining traction. Shortly before the 2008 election, Republican vice presidential candidate Palin garnered an approval rating of just 37 percent among Jewish voters in one poll. But Forward observes: “Even though American Jews have repeatedly disapproved of her in large numbers in poll after poll, giving her abysmally low approval ratings, her recent high-profile jabs at the president have earned her support from some of the most prominent Jewish conservatives today.”
One of those conservatives, Norman Podhoretz — former editor of Commentary — went so far as to say in a March Op-Ed piece for The Wall Street Journal that he would “rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.”
Korn faces a tough challenge in gathering support for Palin among American Jews, considering that she has referred to the United States as a “Christian nation” and questioned the separation of church and state.
But Forward notes that “with an increasing number of American Jews anxious about what they see as the undue pressure that Obama is applying to Israel, Korn thinks that more of them will come to see Palin’s value.”
Editor's Note:
4. Obama Reaches Out to American Jews Over Israel
The same concerns over President Barack Obama’s relationship with Israel that led to the creation of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin has spurred Obama to reach out to the Jewish community in America.
Obama had lunch at the White House on Tuesday with Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, a staunch supporter of Israel, “as part of an effort to mend fences with American Jews upset by the administration’s stance against the Israeli government’s construction of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem,” The New York Times reported.
Obama won about 77 percent of the Jewish vote in the 2008 presidential election.
The lunch meeting came three weeks after Wiesel put his name to ads in a number of U.S. newspapers criticizing the administration for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the Jewish construction.
“Pressure will not produce a solution,” Wiesel wrote in the ad. “Jerusalem is the heart of our heart, the soul of our soul.”
The ad followed similar ones from the World Jewish Congress and complaints from members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to the Times.
After emerging from Tuesday’s lunch, Wiesel pronounced that recent tensions between Obama and Israel were over. “There were moments of tension,” Wiesel told reporters. “The tension, I think, is gone.”
The night before the lunch, senior White House officials had spoken before the national leadership conference of the Anti-Defamation League. And Obama called Netanyahu on Monday to discuss plans for indirect American-mediated talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But it “remains unclear” whether Obama’s outreach will reassure American Jews and Israelis, the Times observed.
Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said: “The real charm offensive needs to take place in Israel. I would accept it was a charm offensive if he caught a plane and went over there, which he needs to do.”
Editor's Note:
5. Wiretaps Soar in ’09 — No Requests Denied
The number of wiretaps authorized by federal and state judges in criminal probes rose sharply during the first year of the Obama administration, increasing 26 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a new report from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
Federal officials requested 663 wiretap orders and states sought 1,713 orders, for a total of 2,376 criminal wiretap orders last year — with 96 percent of wiretaps targeting mobile phones in drug cases.
Not a single request for a wiretap was turned down.
On average, each wiretap intercepted the communications of 113 people, meaning that 268,488 people had phone calls or text messages monitored, a new record, according to an analysis of the report by Wired.com.
A single wiretap related to a drug investigation in Arizona intercepted 31,062 messages over 71 days.
Each wiretap costs an average of $52,200, bringing the total bill to over $124 million for the year. But while the taps led to the arrest of 4,537 people, they resulted in just 678 convictions.
“Law enforcement officials have long warned that encryption technology allows criminals to hide their activities, but investigators encountered encrypted communications only one time during 2009’s wiretaps,” Wired.com reported.
The number of wiretaps in the report does not include wiretaps ordered in terrorism probes, which go through a special court in Washington, D.C., nor does it include communications intercepted by the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.
Created in 1939, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts provides a wide range of administrative, legal, financial, management, and information technology services to the federal courts.
Editor's Note:
6. Rangel Vows to Regain Ways and Means Chair
Rep. Charles Rangel has vowed to return to his post as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee after an ethics panel concludes an investigation into his finances.
The New York Democrat, who voluntarily stepped aside as committee chairman in March, said on Fox Business Network on Wednesday: “As soon as the ethics committee completes its work, I will be back sitting in the seat.”
Rangel said in March that he stepped aside "in order to avoid my colleagues having to defend me during their elections.”
The ethics committee has admonished Rangel for accepting corporate-sponsored trips and is also looking into allegations related to his tax and real estate dealings, The Hill reported. One allegation maintains that Rangel failed to disclose rental income from an apartment in the Dominican Republic.
Rep. Sandy Levin of Michigan has been acting chairman of the committee in Rangel’s absence.
Despite Rangel’s vow, The New York Times reported when he stepped down: “Republicans and Democrats said that given the political climate and the slap by the ethics committee, he [is] unlikely to be able to reclaim his leadership post.”
Editor's Note:
7. We Heard . . .
THAT House Minority Leader John Boehner has received the 2010 Henry J. Hyde Defender of Life Award for his leadership in the fight to prevent taxpayer-funded abortions.
The Ohio Republican was feted Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., with the award from Americans United for Life (AUL), which honors the legacy of Rep. Henry Hyde, chief sponsor of the 1976 Hyde Amendment barring the use of certain federal funds for abortions.
AUL, the first national pro-life organization in the United States, noted in a release that it “has been committed to defending human life through vigorous judicial, legislative, and educational efforts at both the federal and state levels since 1971.”
THAT National Journal is retooling to challenge Politico, another media entity targeting Washington insiders,.
National Journal, founded in 1969, took a hit when Politico was launched in January 2007. Now Justin Smith, president of National Journal’s parent Atlantic Media Company, has reorganized the magazine’s staff and plans to place more emphasis on its website. The new site is scheduled to debut in September.
“The first phase of the counteroffensive against Politico is now under way,” The New York Observer reports.
Much of National Journal’s original news is currently available only to paid online subscribers, but the new website will offer free access to much of its material.
Editor's Note:
Editor's Notes:
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.