Meet the new culture of corruption.

Not the same as the old culture of corruption…

The Islamists want to roll the world back to the seventh century. Fortunately, the Congressional Democrats only want to revert back to 1993. It’s bad enough, though:

After decades of Democrat control of the House of Representatives, gross abuses to the legislative process and several high-profile scandals contributed to an overwhelming Republican House Congressional landslide victory in 1994. Reforms to the House Rules as part of the Contract with America were designed to open up to public scrutiny what had become under this decades-long Democrat majority a dangerously secretive House legislative process. The Republican reform of the way the House did business included opening committee meetings to the public and media, making Congress actually subject to federal law, term limits for committee chairmen ending decades-long committee fiefdoms, truth in budgeting, elimination of the committee proxy vote, authorization of a House audit, specific requirements for blanket rules waivers, and guarantees to the then-Democrat minority party to offer amendments to pieces of legislation.

Pelosi’s proposed repeal of decades-long House accountability reforms exposes a tyrannical Democrat leadership poised to assemble legislation in secret, then goose-step it through Congress by the elimination of debate and amendment procedures as part of America’s governing legislative process.

I was always grimly amused when I heard Democrats fulminating about how power-hungry Bush and the Republicans were. But this is what fascists do. Even “liberal” ones. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

I wonder how (or even if) the media will cover this?

Ron Rosenbaum says don’t compare them with Hamas.

[Update a while later]

The reaction among the left to Gaza seems passing strange to me, given that so-called liberals tend to elevate intentions over actual results when evaluating policies.

Raising the minimum wage increases lower-class unemployment? Who cares, our hearts were in the right place in wanting them to have a living wage.

Raising capital gains taxes reduces government revenue? That’s all right, it’s what’s necessary for “fairness.”

Welfare creates dependency on the government? Hey, we’re just trying to help the poor. Who are you to criticize us, you cold-hearted right wingers?

Disarming people leaves them defenseless? You gun nuts are just trying to stop us from trying to reduce needless slaughter with guns.

Green policies are helping bankrupt California? How can you complain about us when we’re trying to save the planet?

But somehow, all this gets turned on its head when it comes to their analysis of the Middle East. What are the Israeli intentions? To live in peace, without a threat to their lives and nation, and to minimize casualties, on both sides, in any war waged against them.

What are Hamas’ intentions? Their intentions (and not secret ones, but stated openly and proudly, as Ron Rosenbaum points out) are the most evil imaginable (other than the extinction of the human race itself). Their explicit goal is the extinction of all Jews in creation. They are prevented from achieving this goal only by their lack of military weapons with which to do so. If their capabilities matched their intentions, Israel would be no more, as would Jewry (and other infidels, eventually) everywhere.

But somehow, their vile intentions, which should be condemned, by the traditional values of these “liberals,” become irrelevant to the discussion. No matter that their intentions (to create as many casualties on both sides as possible) are often partially achieved — they are completely ignored. The focus is not on intentions at all, of either party, but only on outcomes. And since, by Hamas’ design, the vast number of casualties occur in Gaza, by Israeli weapons, and despite the life and treasure they expend to minimize them, the Israelis are viewed as the problem, and their intentions be damned.

It is a “liberal” Bizarro world.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some thoughts from Caroline Glick:

Q: Is the media here in the U.S. or internationally remotely fair?

A: When the media are only interested in what is going on when Israel defends itself, the answer is no, they aren’t fair. They don’t pay any attention when hundreds of thousands of Israelis are relegated to bomb shelters for weeks and months on end. They don’t care that Israeli children can’t go to school or day care because Hamas is targeting schools and day-care centers. They only cover the story when Israel finally decides to put an end to this crazy situation where our children are growing up underground. And this is appalling.

From CNN’s coverage of events here, for instance, you could easily come away from the news thinking that Israel is attacking Gaza for no reason. The European media, and much of the U.S. media dismiss the significance of Hamas’s missile, rocket, and mortar campaign against Israel by noting that these projectiles are relatively primitive and have no guidance systems. But this misses and indeed distorts the entire point. Hamas doesn’t need advanced weapons. Its goal is not to attack specific military targets. Its goal is to attack Israeli society as a whole and terrorize our citizens. That’s what makes it such an outlaw.

In fact, this random bombing of civilian targets is the very definition of war crimes. Due to their random nature, every projectile launched against Israel by Hamas is a separate war crime. And that’s the real story. But again, outside of publications like National Review and the like, the Western media have ignored this basic truth and worse, they have turned the criminal nature of Hamas’s campaign into a justification for it.

…Q: A lot of critics say that Israel is just going too far in its attacks. What do you make of the charge?

A: The interesting aspect of this claim is what it tells us about the success of anti-Israel propaganda. For instance, Richard Falk, the Jewish anti-Semite who the U.N.’s Human Rights Council appointed to act as its rapporteur against Israel began accusing Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza the moment Israel began its campaign. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch systematically fabricate international “law” backed by “eyewitness” reports from Hamas supporters in order to accuse Israel of breaking it every single time it takes any steps to defend itself, no matter how restrained.

Israel has done nothing in its campaign against Hamas that could be considered going “too far.” It has done nothing in its campaign that could be considered “disproportionate.” It has targeted military targets and terror operatives.

The fact of the matter is that Israel is held to standards that are discriminatory while its enemy — an illegal, openly genocidal terrorist organization — is defended and shielded from attack by the media, by self-proclaimed human-rights activists and by hostile foreign leaders like British Foreign Minister David Miliband and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan.

It’s what they do. Read the whole thing.