The Washington Times has an article by Amanda Carpenter about a hit piece on Sarah Palin written by Todd Purdum for Vanity Fair. Purdum's piece is mostly a bunch of allegations supposedly anonymous McCain staffers, or Purdum could have just made them up for all we know. The Times piece has a bunch of campaign aides who say the Vanity Fair piece is garbage. Curiously, Jason Recher, one of Palin's closer advisors, says that Purdum did not bother to talk to him. No matter. The attacks on Palin pretty much tell us that the left is afraid of her. Purdum's attack is worth noting only for the kind of sleaze it peddles. Three illustrations. The first is idiotic hyperbole.

The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection.

The second is shock, pure shock.

The second thing McCain could have discovered about Palin is that no political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition.

The third moves beyond slime.

Recently, Palin did star in a week-long seriocomic feud with David Letterman over some of his borderline jokes. . . . But the biggest headlines the trip [to New York in Juner 2009] produced were those about Palin’s feud with David Letterman, who joked that Palin had gone to Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight-attendant look” and made a tasteless sexual jibe about one of the Palin daughters. Letterman eventually apologized, though Palin fanned the flames in ways that were not necessarily to her advantage.

Anne Frank would have turned 80 this month, on June 12^th. The Washington Post carries a piece by George Stevens, Jr., on his father, the director of The Diary of Anne Frank, and the making of the film.

Otto Frank described the day the Gestapo broke through the bookcase door that concealed the entrance. It was determined later that Gestapo Oberscharfuhrer Karl Silberbauer was the man in charge. He snatched Mr. Frank's briefcase and emptied the contents on the floor. He gathered up the silverware and a Hanukkah menorah and left behind papers and other contents as they herded the two families down the stairs.

Anne's diary remained on the floor.

On that day the normally efficient German war machine failed. Silberbauer left behind evidence -- a document that would one day make Anne Frank's voice and spirit an important part of world literature, a voice for humanity and tolerance. Her memory became an enduring presence that would grow in importance as the once-powerful voice of Adolf Hitler faded into ignominy.

In a blog post on Ahmadinejad's wild claim that he will put Obama on trial, Daniel Pipes has a photoshopped picture that perfectly captures Obama's Iran policy.

The Washington Post offers more on the monsters of Beijing. It has long been known that their one-child policy has produced orphanages full of abandoned girls, as well as girls and young women kidnapped into marriage. It turns out there is more.

In the quiet village of Shang Di, wedged among factory towns in southern China, Deng Huidong wheels out a dusty two-seater tricycle that her 9-month-old son rode the day he was abducted outside her family house in 2007.

Little Ruicong, who was snatched by men in a white van as he played in an alleyway, hasn't been seen since.

He is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of children who go missing in China each year, victims of roving criminal gangs preying on vulnerable areas.

"My heart is bleeding," said Deng as she cried beside a framed photograph of her son splashing in a bath tub.

"I just want to find my son. Every time I see a child, it reminds me of my son and I wonder whether I will see him again."

While China has made giant economic and social strides over the past few decades, the number of abducted children remains alarmingly high in a nation whose wrenching one-child policy and yawning income disparities have fueled demand for children particularly male heirs, trafficked by underground syndicates.

I remember someone telling me about his year in Australia. He was on a bus when a guy said to him, as best as he could render it, as "tie-may". He would have had no clue what the guy meant except that at the same time he pointed to his wrist, as in, "what time is it?". The guy was saying "time, mate?". In the Guardian, Ariane Sherine explains the downside of refusing to show someone her warts.

Four years later, I was playing piano in hotels part-time, and it was obligatory to ask the mostly-not-listening clientele: "Any requests?" This was often a mistake, as the most common request was usually "Can you stop playing?", along with other assorted jibes.

On the occasion in question, a man at the back yelled out: "Can I see warts?"

Deciding to ignore the strange insult, I repeated: "Any song requests?"

"Can I see warts!" the man shouted again indignantly.

"No, you can't," I replied, and launched back into playing, shooting him a withering look.

I was pleased at how smoothly I had dealt with the situation. I maintained this sense of pride until the manager stormed over and asked why I had refused to play Tennessee Waltz for the man at the back.

I have been in academic life long enough to have seen the little nudges. The athlete whose grade suddenly shows up as a C instead of a D. The little nudges about why influential A thinks his friend B should get the admissions nod. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I am deeply suspicious about academic corruption: political, personal, ideological, intellectual. The University of Illinois scandal has, I admit, floored me. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune explains.

In exchange for corrupting his law school's admissions policy, Herman wanted to get jobs for five of his law school graduates. University officials considered the law grads so far at bottom of their class that they needed political clout to get a decent salary at a good law firm. If that wasn't possible, the U. of I. was willing to place them in government jobs.

"Yeah, I'm betting the Governorship will be open," Heidi M. Hurd, then dean of the university's College of Law, wrote in an e-mail to Herman on April 29, 2006, perhaps joking that Blagojevich's time in public life was coming to an end.

What followed in her e-mail was worse.

"Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don't pass the bar and can't think are close enough for government work," Hurd wrote. In another e-mail to other U. of I. officials, Hurd wrote:

"FYI: The deal is supposed to be that WE get to pick the students -- and they are supposed to be bottom-of-the-class students who face a hell of a time passing the Bar and otherwise getting jobs!"

Under her Deanship, the College of Law significantly increased incoming student credentials to place them among the nation's Top 15 based on LSAT scores and median GPA . . .

For the couple dozen rubes left out there who think Obama cares in the slightest about human rights, the Washington Post reports on a snub to Cuban dissidents.

Five Cuban dissidents who have collectively spent decades in jail for their pro-democracy activities were given a top award by the National Endowment for Democracy last night. But, unlike in past years, their representative was not invited to the White House, organizers said.

Carl Gershman, president of the endowment, said the organization asked two weeks ago whether President Obama could meet with Bertha Antúnez, the sister of one of the dissidents, who was picking up the award on their behalf. Gershman said he never got a response. It was the first time in five years that the president had not met with the winner of the Democracy Award, according to the endowment, which is funded by Congress.

"I am disappointed, and also surprised since the President said in the campaign that Libertad would be the touchstone on his Cuba policy," Gershman said in an e-mail, using the Spanish word for "liberty."

Back in April, I noted an incident involving a sociology professor at UC-Santa Barbara behaving like a jackass. He sent out a big email full of pictures to his students comparing Israelis to Nazis. Students complained, and the complaint struck me as serious, if true. The charges officer at the university sent Robinson a summary of the complaint:

You, as professor of an academic course, sent to each student enrolled in that course a highly partisan email accompanied by lurid photographs. The e-mail was unexpected and without educational context. You offered no explanation of how the material related to the content of the course. You offered no avenue to discuss, nor encouraged any response, to the opinions and photographs included in the e-mail. You directly told a student who inquired that the e-mail was not connected to the course. As a result, two enrolled students were too distraught to continue with the course. The constellation of allegations listed above, if substantially true, may violate the Faculty Code of Conduct.

[Robinson] noted that he is Jewish and said that he abhors anti-Semitism, and that his academic freedom is being violated by the university taking seriously charges that link his e-mail criticisms of Israel's government with anti-Semitism. "This is all because I have criticized the policies of the State of Israel.

Says something interesting. Two rabid Jews haters, one a left-wing sociology professor and the other the BNP, use the same line to lie about their bigotry.

The Guardian has an interview with Martha Reeves, with lots of reminiscences, both good and bad.

During the summer of 1965, an epoch-defining precursor to the pop video was shown on US television. In it, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, one of Motown's most successful singing groups whose hits include Jimmy Mack and Dancing in the Street, skip like unruly schoolgirls along a Ford car production line in Detroit. Followed by her two backing singers, Reeves hops in the back of a half-assembled Mustang - the vehicular symbol of rebellious youth at the time - and all three continue singing Nowhere to Run as the car glides forwards and a gleaming engine is lowered on to the chassis.

The founder of Motown, Berry Gordy, had based his business model on the Ford assembly line on which he had once worked, and according to Reeves, the resulting "pace, urgency and pressure" of the recording process was precisely what allowed her to deliver the song with such oomph.

Maybe it is just me, but I always thought Dancing in the Street was an even better song.

Walter Williams has a column up on systemic racial discrimination by American universities against Asian students. The purpose of the column is mostly to bring attention to an article by Ward Connerly on the website, Minding the Campus, run by the Manhattan Institute. Connerly brings attention to the egregious case of the University of California.

About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic preferences.

As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, "What would be wrong with that?" I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment.

The UC administrator told me that Asians are "too dull - they study, study, study." He then said, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it."

The Times reports that Benny Andersson's and Björn Ulvaeus, the songwriting duo of Abba, have a new song out. I wonder how it will compare to this:

It is left to the neo-conservatives to defend freedom.

Charles Krauthammer:

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

Paul Wolfowitz:

the reform the Iranian demonstrators seek is something that we should be supporting. In such a situation, the United States does not have a "no comment" option. Coming from America, silence is itself a comment -- a comment in support of those holding power and against those protesting the status quo.

It would be a cruel irony if, in an effort to avoid imposing democracy, the United States were to tip the scale toward dictators who impose their will on people struggling for freedom. And if we appear so desperate for negotiations that we will abandon those who support our principles, we weaken our own negotiating hand.
.        .        
Like the rest of the world, President Obama must have been surprised by the magnitude of the protests in Iran. Iranians are protesting not just election fraud but also the growing abuses of the Iranian people by a dictatorial regime. Now is not the time for the president to dig in to a neutral posture. It is time to change course.

Obama's attempted smear of Gerald Walpin, the inspector general he fired for looking too closely at his corrupt associates, should come as no surprise. Obama learned not only from the Chicago mob but also from the Clintonistas. Remember how Hillary Clinton smeared the White House travel office to cover up putting her flunkies in? Remember how the racist Brad "Ankles" DeLong, a Clinton era deputy assistant secretary, tried to smear the Hoover Institution perhaps because he wanted to cover up the fact that he has happily worked for over a decade in a place that does not let descendants of slaves teach, even though he pretends to be a big supporter of affirmative action in universities. Oh yeah, Obama has learned his thuggery from the best, from the Chicago mob and from the Clintons.

It has been boring watching Obama's ankles brigade in the press and blogosphere having orgasms because Obama . . . swatted a fly. It is, however, hugely entertaining to see the video turned into a bad ninja movie.

The great P.J. O'Rourke explains why the car is an important element of freedom, which probably explains why greens hate cars so much.