Sure it’s sickening that AIG officials such as AIG CEO Charles Liddy are getting bonus money, but perhaps not for the reason you’d think.

First thing to note: these weren’t performance bonuses, but retention bonuses. That’s a whole different ball game, based on promises made long before anyone knew the terms TARP or bailout, and it has a very legal implication to it — you try to withhold it, and you’re going to lose in court, period. Comparing the Liddy bonus to performance bonuses, such as at Citi, are well off the mark.

Next, let’s not lose sight of where our true righteous anger should be aimed — CONGRESS!

Charles Krauthammer and Stephen Moore elaborate:

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer: “The morning and afternoon of the interrogation of the head of AIG was Congress at its absolute demagogic worst. I mean, let me count the ways. Here’s a guy who comes out of retirement to work for a dollar a year, who is not even in AIG at the time of the take over by the government, who’s being attacked by members of Congress earning $175,000 a year, who have just received in January a raise of $4,700. Secondly, the Democrats are the ones who passed the stimulus package, which had this provision in it.”

More Krauthammer: “Lastly, the money here involved in the scheme of things is absolutely trivial; it’s $165 million. That’s what CC Sabathia is getting to front the Yankees for his left-handed changeup. If Bill Gates, out of the goodness of his heart were to pay the bonuses for 100 years, he would still have half his fortune left. … It’s a distraction and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are using it for political advantage, and nothing else” (“Special Report,” FNC, 3/18).

… Wall Street Journal‘s Moore: “This guy [Liddy] is being totally scapegoated here. He was not the CEO when AIG took the fall. He’s actually a patriot. This is a guy who’s come in and almost no salary … to try to turn this thing around. So he was dealt a bad hand. Now, watching those scenes from that hearing, listening to people like Barney Frank bloviate against this guy — the people who are really the villains here are the members of Congress. They’re the ones who approved this bill that did not block this compensation package” (“On the Record,” FNC, 3/18).

Exactly. It’s just another reminder why government shouldn’t have gotten involved in the private market (at least not in this manner) to begin with.

Companies like AIG, Congress told us, were “too big to fail.” That’s manure wrapped in garbage surrounded by excrement. Indeed, the most important philosophy of capitalism is that it has a cruelly impartial self-correction mechanism. Companies that don’t perform should fail, as it forces restrucuring and better leadership. Even if bankruptcy had occurred at AIG, the businesses most profitable portions would have been sold off. Sure it can be painful, but that’s the point. And, it’s also a great deal for the smart and effective companies that can gobble up the remains. Lastly, one can’t argue that the government saved the jobs of the little guys working there — with an 8+ percent unemployment rate, clearly these sectors have laid off employees, even as they’ve accepted bailout money.

Last week National Intelligence Council chairman nominee Charles Freeman withdrew his name, blaming “the Israel Lobby” for his lack of support to the post. Curiously, this would then define some leading Democrats — including Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and Barack Obama himself — as persons beholden to “the Israel Lobby,” as they were either vocally opposed or noticably silent and unsupportive of the appointment (his appointment came not from Obama, but Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence.)

The Washington Post editors (who must also thus be members of “the Israel Lobby”) describes Freeman’s empty and ridiculous assertion. Indeed, why not blame “the China Lobby?” But that’s not so sexed up, is it?

FORMER ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the Obama administration’s National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King “Abdullah the Great,” Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company. It was only reasonable to ask — as numerous members of Congress had begun to do — whether such an actor was the right person to oversee the preparation of National Intelligence Estimates.

It wasn’t until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister “Lobby” whose “tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency” and which is “intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.” Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel — and his statement was a grotesque libel.

For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman’s appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a campaign, its leaders didn’t bother to contact the Post editorial board. According to a report by Newsweek, Mr. Freeman’s most formidable critic — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — was incensed by his position on dissent in China.

But let’s consider the ambassador’s broader charge: He describes “an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics.” That will certainly be news to Israel’s “ruling faction,” which in the past few years alone has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map. Two Israeli governments have been forced from office since the early 1990s after open clashes with Washington over matters such as settlement construction in the occupied territories.

What’s striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that “it is not permitted for anyone in the United States” to describe Israel’s nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges — and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

Although only a small fraction of the supposedly countercyclical stimulus will be spent by the end of the year, the budget assumes that by then the economy will have perked up, and that it will grow robustly — 3.2 percent, 4 percent and 4.6 percent — in the next three years. Growth supposedly will cut the deficit in half — growth and the $1.6 trillion “saved” by first assuming, and then “canceling,” a 10-year continuation of the surge in Iraq. Why, one wonders, not “save” $5 trillion by proposing to spend that amount to cover the moon with yogurt and then canceling the proposal?

– George Will.

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

– Charles Krauthammer.

30 year low of hurricane activity.

51 days in office and President Obama has already broken his promise on earmarks, under the guise of “but this time it’s an emergency.” Mind you, earmarks were all the rage while Mr. Obama was running for president. It appears the one wearing the presidential pants is Nancy Pelosi.

WASHINGTON – Calling it an “imperfect” bill, President Barack Obama signed a $410 billion spending package Wednesday that includes billions in earmarks like those he promised to curb in last year’s campaign. He insisted the bill must signal an “end to the old way of doing business.” The massive measure supporting federal agencies through the fall contains nearly 8,000 pet projects, earmarked by sponsors though denounced by critics.

Obama defended earmarks when they’re “done right,” allowing lawmakers to direct money to worthy projects in their districts. But he said they’ve been abused, and he promised to work with Congress to curb them.

Well that’s a rather vague and subjective measure. And who determines when an earmark is “done right”? Why, Democrats feeding on the pork trough of course!

So much for campaign promises. So much for Hope-N-Change.

“I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it’s necessary for the ongoing functions of government,” Obama declared. “But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change.”

In a sign of his discomfort with the bill, Obama signed it in private. He declined to answer a shouted reporter’s question about why.

Obama also released a “signing statement” in which he said several of the bill’s provisions raised constitutional concerns. This week, Obama criticized his predecessor, George W. Bush, for frequently issuing such statements upon signing bills into law. Bush attached the statements to legislation he viewed as placing unconstitutional limits on executive power.

Got that, folks? Signing statement by Bush = BAD. Signing statement by Obama = A-OKAY.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Obama.

Running for president, Obama denounced the many pet projects as wasteful and open to abuse — and vowed reform.

He said Wednesday that future earmarks must have a “legitimate and worthy public purpose” and that any earmark for a private company should be subject to competitive bidding rules. He said he would “work with Congress” to eliminate any the administration objects to.

He acknowledged that the system of influential lawmakers inserting earmarked projects has bred cynicism, and he declared, “This piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business.”

Yes, yes… next time just you wait and see! Next time I’ll veto that pork-laden bill. Next time. Next time. Next time. And next time, I’ll mean it!

Great stuff by Evan Coyne Maloney:

As this chart shows, 40% of American households are working to support the other 60%. If you make $65,000 or more per year, you’re effectively a slave for the portion of the year that you spend earning the money that the government takes in taxes.

… What we have now is a tyranny of the majority. Because 60% of America benefits from the labors of the other 40%, it’s a winning electoral formula, one that Democrats exploit at every election cycle when they ramp up the class warfare rhetoric demanding that “the rich” pay their “fair share.”

What is a fair share? Is it fair when a 40% minority is robbed to benefit the 60% majority? Would be more fair if 30% of people were robbed to benefit a 70% majority?

Taxing a smaller share of higher earners even more in order to subsidize the rest of the country is not only economically unworkable, it’s morally repugnant. At what point do people get fed up and say they’re not going to put in that extra effort, those additional hours of work so that their slave masters can reap the benefits of their labor?

Between Rick Santelli’s rant, the skyrocketing sales of Atlas Shrugged, and the tea parties popping up all over the country, I suspect we’re going to reach a tipping point real soon.

Perhaps Chas Freeman should subscribe to MEMRI.org?

A textbook for 8th grade students explains why Jews and Christians were cursed by Allah and turned into apes and pigs.Quoting Surat Al-Maida, Verse 60, the lesson explains that Jews and Christians have sinned by accepting polytheism and therefore incurred Allah’s wrath.To punish them, Allah has turned them into apes and pigs.[25]

A schoolbook for 5th grade instructs the students: “The religions which people follow on this earth are many, but the only true religion is the religion of Islam.As for the other religions, they are false as mentioned in the Koran (the Sura of Aal ‘Umran Verse 85): ‘And whoever follows a religion that is not Islam, it will not be accepted from him and in the Hereafter he will be of the losers.”The religion of Islam we know from the Koran and the Hadiths about the Prophet. The whole world should convert to Islam and leave its false religions lest their fate will be hell. As mentioned in the Koran (the Sura of Al-Nihal Verse 125): ‘[I swear] by Him who holds Muhammad’s soul in his hand that not one Jew or Christian who had heard me and did not believe in the message that I was sent with shall die without being one of those whose fate is hell.’”

The students are then asked to mark “yes” or “no” to the following questions:

*”The Islamic religion is the road to heaven…”

*”Other religions bestow eternal damnation on their adherent…”[26]

“There is a Jew Behind Me, Come and Kill Him!”

A schoolbook for the 9th grade on Hadith introduces a famous narration known by the name, “The Promise of the Stone and the Tree.”It tells a story about Abu Hurayra, one of the Prophet’s companions who quoted the Prophet as saying: “The hour [the Day of Judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.A Jew will [then] hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will call upon the Muslim: ‘O Muslim, O slave of Allah! there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’ – except for the gharqad tree, for it is one of the trees of the Jews.”[27] The Hadith is accompanied by a number of statements:

1. “It is Allah’s wisdom that the struggle between Muslims and Jews shall continue until the Day of Judgment.”

2. “The Hadithbrings forth the glad tidings about the ultimate victory, with Allah’s help, of Muslims over Jews.”

3. “The Jews and the Christians are the enemies of the believers.They will not be favorably disposed toward Muslims and it is necessary to be cautious [in dealing with them] .”

The book asks questions for class discussion:

1. “Who will be victorious in the Day of Judgment?”

2. “With what types of weapons should Muslims arm themselves against the Jews?”

3. “Name four factors leading to the victory of Muslims over their enemies.”[28]

In a textbook for 5th grade on the “History of the Islamic State” the students are told that the Prophet Muhammad had concluded an agreement with the Jewish tribes in Medina so that they would not commit treacheries against Muslims. “The Jews (then) broke their promise because they were known for treachery, and the Prophet had expelled them from Medina to their relatives in Khaibar where they started plotting (again).”It is then that the Prophet had decided to invade them, destroy their fortifications and bring them under submission.[29]

A subject of discussion in the classroom is the case of Abdullah bin Saba, a “hypocrite Jew” who converted to Islam fraudulently and caused sedition among Muslims which resulted in the martyrdom of the third Khalifa, Othman ibn ‘Affan.[30]

UPDATE: Freeman withdraws his name for the nomination, and not a moment too soon. He was so bad, even Nancy Pelosi didn’t want him.

Well, it gets worse. Chas Freeman isn’t just misinformed (post below), he’s an apologist for Saudi Jew bashing too. Say… I recall for the past 8 years all the Left’s Micheal Moores and Keith Olbermanns and so on absolutely vilifying the Bush administration for its coziness with Saudi Arabia. Shoes on the other foot now, folks. But all you’ll hear is silence from them.

[Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal] On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a letter from 17 U.S. ambassadors defending the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council. The same day, the leaders of the 1989 protests that led to the massacre at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square wrote Barack Obama “to convey our intense dismay at your selection” of Mr. Freeman.

If moral weight could be measured on a zero to 100 scale, the signatories of the latter letter, some of whom spent years in Chinese jails, would probably find themselves in the upper 90s. Where Mr. Freeman and his defenders stand on this scale is something readers can decide for themselves.

So what do Chinese democracy activists have against Mr. Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia? As it turns out, they are all, apparently, part-and-parcel of the Israel Lobby.

In a recent article about Mr. Freeman’s nomination in the Huffington Post, M.J. Rosenberg of the left-wing Israel Policy Forum writes that “Everyone involved in the anti-Freeman effort are staunch allies of the lobby.” Of course: Only the most fervid Likudnik mandarins could object to Mr. Freeman’s 2006 characterization of Mao Zedong as a man who, for all his flaws, had a “brilliance of . . . personality [that] illuminated the farthest corners of his country and inspired many would-be revolutionaries and romantics beyond it.” It also takes a Shanghai Zionist to demur from Mr. Freeman’s characterization of the Chinese leadership’s response to the “mob scene” at Tiananmen as “a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership.”

Mr. Freeman knows China well: He served as a translator during Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to Beijing. More recently, Mr. Freeman served on the advisory board of CNOOC, the Chinese state-owned oil giant. Is this also a qualification to lead the NIC?

But the Far East is by no means Mr. Freeman’s only area of expertise. For many years he has led the Middle East Policy Council, generously funded by Saudi money. It’s a generosity Mr. Freeman has amply repaid.

Thus, recalling Mr. Freeman’s special pleading on behalf of Riyadh during his stint as ambassador in the early ’90s, former Secretary of State James Baker called it “a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats.” Mr. Freeman has also been quoted as saying “It is widely charged in the United States that Saudi Arabian education teaches hateful and evil things. I do not think this is the case.” Yet according to a 2006 report in the Washington Post, an eighth grade Saudi textbook contains the line, “They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied.” Maybe Mr. Freeman was unaware of this. Or maybe he doesn’t consider it particularly evil and hateful.

Whatever the case, Mr. Freeman has been among the Kingdom’s most devoted fans, going so far as to suggest that King Abdullah “is very rapidly becoming Abdullah the Great.” No sycophancy there.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Freeman was a ferocious critic of the war on terror. Not surprising, either, was his opinion about what started it: “We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel’s approach to managing its relations with the Arabs,” he said in 2006. “Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home.”

This is not a particularly original argument, although in Mr. Freeman’s case it becomes a kind of monomania, in which Israel is always the warmonger, always slapping away Arab hands extended in peace. Say what you will about this depiction of reality, there’s also a peculiar psychology at work.

Then again, as Middle East scholar Martin Kramer points out, Mr. Freeman’s recent views on the causes of 9/11 contradict his view from 1998, when he insisted that al Qaeda’s “campaign of violence against the United States has nothing to do with Israel.” What changed? Mr. Kramer thinks Mr. Freeman was merely following the lead of his benefactor, Citibank shareholder Prince Al-Waleed, who opined that 9/11 was all about U.S. support for Israel, not what the Kingdom teaches about the infidels.

Is Mr. Freeman merely a shill? That seems unfair, even if it’s hard to square his remorseless “realism” in matters Chinese with the touching solicitude he feels for Israel’s victims (who, by his count, must be numbered in the tens of millions). James Fallows of the Atlantic has argued that Mr. Freeman’s “contrarian inclination” would serve him well in the NIC post. But the line between contrarian and crackpot is a thin one, and knowing the difference between the two is a main task of intelligence.

Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence who asked Mr. Freeman to serve, is testifying today in Congress. Somebody should ask him if any of Mr. Freeman’s views quoted above meet the definition of “crackpot,” and, if not, why?

Surprise, surprise: Another Obama intelligence community leader doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about:

Former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and likely chair of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), Chas Freeman in 2002:

“I’m a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel.”

Read the rest of the quote. Then note this by Thomas Joscelyn’s:

Freeman’s more noteworthy analytical error, in my view, is his description of the recent past. Read again the lines underlined above. How could Freeman claim — in 2002 — that Hezbollah has “not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel” in “recent decades”?

In June of 1996, just six years prior to Freeman’s comments (that is, not even one decade in the past at the time), Hezbollah was directly responsible for the Khobar Towers bombing. There is no doubt over Hezbollah’s and Iran’s role in the attack. The Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the 9/11 Commission, the DOJ, and everyone else that I am aware of are in agreement: Iran was responsible for the attack. Al Qaeda may have also played a role, per the 9/11 Commission’s final report and other evidence. But this does not diminish the fact that Iran and Hezbollah were principally responsible.

The 2001 indictment of the Khobar Towers conspirators makes Hezbollah’s and Iran’s role clear. And, as former Clinton administration officials have repeatedly said, this was clear long before 2001 as well.

19 U.S. servicemen were killed at Khobar Towers. More than 370 others, including some Americans as well as civilians and workers of various other nationalities, were wounded. Yet, Chas Freeman was apparently unaware that the attack was executed by Hezbollah. He was evidently ignorant of this fact even though it took place inside the Saudi Kingdom, home to his controversial patron, the Saudi royal family.

The attack on Khobar Towers was not some minor blimp on the national security screen. It was a direct assault on the American forces that were stationed in the Gulf to maintain the Clinton administration’s dual containment of Saddam’s Iraq and the mullahs’ Iran.

Our intelligence professionals, especially those charged with stopping the terrorist threat, were certainly aware of all this in 2002. Chas Freeman apparently was not.