CARACAS, Venezuela — President Barack Obama’s sharp criticisms of Venezuela’s human rights record and its ties to Iran are heightening tensions with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who on Monday responded by calling Obama a “clown” and telling him to mind his own business. (more)
This week two organizations, the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigration Justice Center and the National Coalition for Human Rights, issued a joint report entitled “Not Too Late for Reform” calling on the Obama administration to close several immigration detention facilities. The two organizations are advocacy groups that assist immigrants (they don’t use the term “illegal” on their websites) by several methods, including by providing direct legal services. (more)
BERGEN, NORWAY — General Yoweri Museveni has ruled Uganda for more than 25 years. Since taking power in a 1986 military coup, he has stacked this Central African country’s voting commission with his henchmen and stolen its elections. Having abolished presidential term limits in 2005 in a sham referendum, he plans to rule for life, and is grooming his son for succession. (more)
America is in need of leadership. Between Congress’s abysmal approval ratings and the president’s ever-sliding popularity, America has no voice of strength and conviction. This is particularly dangerous to our standing in the world. At such a critical time in history when a strong American voice is needed to guide the world on democratic transition in the Arab world, on human rights in Asia and Africa, and religious freedom throughout the globe, it is disheartening that there is no leadership in the White House, Senate, or House to advance the values upon which our country was founded. (more)
A few years ago, I began assembling a doom and gloom file. Lickety-split it was filled with newspaper and magazine articles lamenting the “grim times” and “dark days,” the “hopeless epoch” we were being fated to live through. And none of these writers were fundamentalist Christians. (more)
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is calling on the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay to condemn and remove the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, from his position for posting an anti-Semitic cartoon – depicting Jews as unjust, bloodthirsty dogs – on his blog. (more)
California is putting itself in position to lead the fight for increased online privacy by trying to pass the country’s first so-called do-not-track law to keep personal data from being grabbed off the Internet. (more)
Do elections matter? You bet they do! Until last November, there was a real threat that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) would be ratified by a liberal U.S. Senate majority. And we’re still not out of the woods on this one. But thanks to timely action by Sen. Jim DeMint, effective action is being taken to blunt this threat. (more)
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s interior minister on Tuesday dissolved the country’s widely hated state security agency, which was accused of torture and other human rights abuses in the suppression of dissent against ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule. (more)
In China, peasants with cell phones can now air grievances, and the authorities often respond. Is this a good thing (because responding to grievances is the basic function of government) or a bad thing (because it allows the unelected Chinese party oligarchy to buy off enough dissent to stay in power)? Bob Wright says good, I say bad in what I thought was the most interesting segment of Monday’s bloggingheads. …It seems to me Bob a) has a shallow idea of what democracy is all about–as if it’s only about being responsive to citizen demands and can be rendered otiose by an efficient complaints bureau; b) characteristically constructs a sliding scale in which the U.S. is only quantitatively ahead of Communist China in this all-important ‘responsiveness’ index–but hey, neither country is perfect, so who are we to lecture!; and c) ignores the possibility that some forms of incremental progress may actually lead to a larger lack of progress–if, for example, they allow a dictator to maintain just enough support to stay in power for decades. But that’s just me. You make the call! … (more)
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s government says it is urgently reviewing arms export licenses to Bahrain in light of violence in the Persian Gulf kingdom . (more)
The too-long-tolerated crime of leftist university students depriving invited speakers of their freedom of speech by drowning them out with shouts and threats of violence is finally getting its day in court. And, true to form, that great defender of freedom of speech, the American Civil Liberties Union, is defending the very students who showed no appreciation whatsoever of others’ freedom to express views contrary to their own.
Don’t think for a minute that Jim Gilchrist of The Minutemen is finally getting long-delayed justice for being shouted down and physically assaulted by Columbia University student radicals in 2006. No, it doesn’t look like prosecutors in New York are ready yet to bring charges against liberals who silence conservatives. But in California’s Orange County, things are different, and DA Tony Rackauckas has refused to drop charges against eleven Muslim student radicals who are charged with conspiracy and disrupting a public event when they forced Israel’s soft-spoken ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, from the stage on Feb. 8 of last year. The students all have been charged with two misdemeanors, and face only minor penalties — probably a few months of probation and a few days of community service or, at worst, six months in jail. (more)
While abortion is a hotly debated issue in our nation today, the history of abortion in the U.S. is rarely discussed. Yet understanding this background, especially the historical views of American physicians toward abortion, is important to the current debate because it provides us with a context and a framework for discussing this critical issue. (more)
There was much speculation coming into Chinese President Hu Jintao’s appearance at the White House on Wednesday about how he would handle the inevitable questions about human rights in China during a rare appearance in front of U.S. reporters. (more)
On December 29, Scandinavian authorities arrested five terrorists planning an attack in Denmark. Almost as interesting as what they targeted is what they spared and the lessons it holds for future counterterrorism efforts. (more)
Now that John Bolton’s not there constantly reminding the UN how dysfunctional it is, it can be easy to forget, so here’s an end-of-year refresher in the form of the top 10 UN-believable moments of 2010. (more)
It’s Christmastime, so the ACLU is doing what it does best — hounding public officials to turn observance of this Christian (and federal) holiday into a winter solstice thingy — or else. (more)
Small farmer advocacy groups disagree over what the Food Safety Modernization Act (SB 510), a measure that would substantially increase the power and reach of the Food and Drug Administration, will mean for small farmers if passed by the Senate Tuesday. (more)
The United States has long stood for democracy and freedom, but in Cuba, a dissident who opposes Fidel and Raul Castro’s communist regime tells The Daily Caller that he and his compatriots are feeling an icy breeze from the Obama administration. Democracy advocates say the lack of support can be attributed to the Obama administration’s strategy of “aggressive niceness” toward the communist country. (more)
