NOTE FROM CONGRESSMAN FRANK WOLF

This letter arrived today from esteemed Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA-10th District). We very much appreciate his continued advocacy for local safety issues, human rights around the globe, as well as his repeated efforts to inspire the current administration to remember its promise for transparent government, promised by the candidate, and often touted by the new president with little or no change from the business as usual model Americans have come to loathe from both parties.

The congressman's report:

Dear Friends,

Congress is deep into the appropriations season. The House has passed seven of the 12 FY 2010 spending bills, with five more on course for consideration before the annual August congressional recess. This week the House will vote on the Energy and Water, and Financial Services appropriations.  The Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations subcommittee on which I serve approved the THUD bill Monday evening, and that bill should be on the House floor later this month.

Transportation Improvements

The transportation spending bill approved by the subcommittee includes another $85 million for the Dulles Corridor Metrorail extension project.  This latest installment would bring the total federal share for the project to date to over $440 million. I am hopeful that both the full House and Senate will include this funding in the final version of the spending bill to continue the federal share for this critical project.  A national report earlier this month ranked the Washington, D.C., metro area as having the second worst traffic congestion in the nation, a dubious distinction that the area has held for a number of years.  Mass transit in the Dulles corridor is critical to relieving congestion on busy roads and will connect the nation‚s capital to one of the world‚s leading international airports.

My recent efforts also have focused on two transportation safety issues.  In light of the tragic accident that occurred on June 22 on Metro's Red Line, the Washington region‚s congressional delegation has worked together to secure $150 million in the FY 2010 transportation spending bill for Metro safety and maintenance improvements.  This funding would be matched by Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

The state's decision to close a number of rest areas on interstate highways in the Commonwealth is also of deep concern, and my letter to Governor Kaine urges the state to reconsider the decision. I fear that fatigued drivers, especially long-haul truckers, without convenient places to pull off the highway could increase the risks for accidents. This is a safety issue and the state has a responsibility to the hundreds of thousands of drivers on Virginia's highways to resolve this matter.

Attorney General Is Stonewalling

Earlier this year, President Obama stated that he ran "for president promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable. My intention is to hold him and his appointees to his word.

As you will recall, I have been trying to get answers from Attorney General Eric Holder on the Justice Department‚s (DOJ) plans for the disposition of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  After waiting 118 days for a response to my letters of March 13, April 23, and May 13, my office received only a cursory acknowledgment from the department on July 7 that failed to answer a single question.  Similar questions from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have similarly been dismissed or gone unanswered.  The attorney general's blatant obstruction of this most basic responsibility leads me to question this administration's commitment to transparency and accountability.

Mr. Holder's failure to explain his decision to dismiss a recent voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party is also of great concern. Both the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and I have sent letters to the department seeking an explanation. My office has also called on the House Judiciary Committee and the DOJ inspector general to investigate this matter.

Disappointing Effort on Human Rights

My concerns are growing regarding the Obama administration's failure to date to champion human rights as a central part of American foreign policy.  My statement in the *Congressional Record* highlights those concerns, specifically with the administration's dealings with China, Cuba, Sudan, Egypt, North Korea, Vietnam, Iran and Russia. I was quick to criticize the Bush administration when its public rhetoric in the human rights arena failed to match its action. But in this new, young administration, it seems even the rhetoric is absent. 

I hope this information is helpful. For more on these and other issues, please visit my website. Please continue to share your views on matters of interest to you.

Best wishes,

Frank Wolf

REVOLUTION IN THE SOIL

STIRRING SPEECH. But is it meant to be taken seriously?

KICKING THE UNITED NATIONS OUT

We must quit the United nations. Then we must nationalize the UN properties, and send those carpetbagger delinquents, I mean delegations of Islamic appeasement, packing. Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post discusses the dire implications of the UN's willingness to throw freedom of speech overboard to placate the Islamic world.

The West stands by idly as its foundations are rent asunder. Last Friday the UN's Human Rights Council took a direct swipe at freedom of expression. In a 32-0 vote, the council instructed its "expert on freedom of expression" to report to the council on all instances in which individuals "abuse" their freedom of speech by giving expression to racial or religious bias.
The measure was proposed by paragons of freedom Egypt and Pakistan. It was supported by all Arab, Muslim and African countries—founts of liberty one and all. European states abstained.

The US, which is not a member of the Human Rights Council, tried to oppose the measure. In a speech before the council, US Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Warren Tichenor warned that the resolution's purpose is to undermine freedom of expression because it imposes "restrictions on individuals rather than emphasiz[ing] the duty and responsibility of governments to guarantee, uphold, promote and protect human rights."

By seeking to criminalize free speech, the resolution stands in breach of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 of that document states explicitly: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

The Europeans' decision to abstain rather than oppose the measure seems, at first glance, rather surprising. Given that the EU member states are among the UN's most emphatic champions, it would have seemed normal for them to have opposed a resolution that undermines one of the UN's foundational documents, and indeed, one of the most basic tenets of Western civilization.

But then again, given the EU's stands in recent years against freedom of expression, there really is nothing to be surprised about. The EU's current bow to intellectual thuggery is of course found in its response to the Internet release of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders' film Fitna.

The EU has gone out of its way to attack Wilders for daring to exercise his freedom of expression. The EU's presidency released a statement condemning the film for "inflaming hatred." Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende issued statements claiming that the film "serves no other purpose than to cause offense."

Then, too, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon blasted the film as "offensively anti-Islamic."

These statements follow the EU's quest to restrict freedom of speech following the 2005 publication of cartoons of Muhammed in Denmark's Jyllands Posten newspaper. They also come against the backdrop of the systematic silencing of anti-jihadist intellectuals throughout the continent. These intellectuals, such as Peter Redeker in France and Paul Cliteur in the Netherlands, are threatened into silence by European jihadists. And the governments of Europe either do nothing to defend the threatened thinkers or justify the intellectual blackmailers by sympathizing with their anger.

IT IS axiomatic that freedom of expression is the foundation of human freedom and progress. When people are not allowed to express themselves freely, there can be no debate or inquiry. It is only due to free debate and inquiry that humanity has progressed from the Dark Age to the Digital Age. This is why the first act of every would-be tyrant is to take control of the marketplace of ideas.

Yet today, the nations of Europe and indeed much of the Western world, either sit idly by and do nothing to defend that freedom or collaborate with unfree and often tyrannical Islamic states and terrorists in silencing debate and stifling dissent.

So why is the UN still in the US? The original headquarters is old. It was built when membership was half (at least) what it is now. The UN expects the US taxpayer to foot the bill for a new HQ in NYC. Why aren't the wealthier nations of the world paying up? It's not 1945. The US shouldn't need to pay 25% of the UN's operating costs. It shouldn't need to pay 15%. Even 10% is high, but it's acceptable. Journalist Fareed Zakaria describes this as a post-American world. Let's move the UN to a post-American locale. How about somewhere in Asia?

Read it all.

THE PLIGHT OF LAURA BUSH

The following commentary comes to us by Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post. Her poignant reportage once again shows those of us paying attention how sadly entrenched the Bush administration is with the Saudi royal family. This insult to America's own recent history in standing up to the human rights violations of global despots wherever we find them (okay, not entirely true) seems lost on our present leadership.

Or closer to the truth, and far worse in terms of the economic and other strategic ramifications is that the American presidency is simply "owned" by the Saudis, and thus are behaving like obedient dhimmi slaves to the oil masters who threaten us with painful economic sanctions if we do not abide their every request. Respect is one thing. Submission quite another. Let us not forget that the word "Islam" itself translates from the Arabic as submission.

On the surface, wearing the scarf is no big deal. Male gentile visitors to a Jewish synagogue are usually asked to don the yarmulka. But lntuit the striking difference of garb here in the first picture when compared to the second picture taken of the First Lady in the scarf, just below. The difference is visceral. Then finish reading Glick's essay:

Women in Saudi Arabia do not have human rights. As Amnesty International puts it, "The abuse of women's rights in Saudi Arabia is not simply the unfortunate consequence of overzealous security forces and religious police. It is the inevitable result of a state policy which gives women fewer rights than men, which means that women face discrimination in all walks of life and which allows men with authority to exercise their power without any fear of being held to account for their actions."For instance, women in Saudi Arabia cannot choose whom they marry and they have no real power to divorce their husbands. Men on the other hand can lawfully marry up to four women and divorce any of them simply by announcing that they have divorced them. And once they are divorced, they are by law and practice denied custody of their children.

Marital rape and physical abuse are not generally considered crimes and therefore women have no legal recourse for dealing with abusive husbands, or fathers or brothers. Since they are legally barred from serving as lawyers, and Islam weighs a woman's court testimony as worth half the testimony of a man, even if they were able to press charges against their male tormentors, Saudi women are effectively denied recourse in the local courts.

Women of course are not the only victims of the Saudi regime. Non-Muslims are denied the right to worship. Shi'ite Muslims' right to worship is subject to draconian limitations. Jews are officially barred from entering the kingdom. Then too, there are no real elections in Saudi Arabia, no press freedom, no freedom of assembly. Yet even against this totalitarian backdrop the position of women stands out in its severity.

Take education for example. As the State Department's 2006 Human Rights report notes, there is little academic freedom in Saudi Arabia. For instance, "The government prohibited the study of Freud, Marx, Western music, and Western philosophy." Yet women's educational opportunities are even more constrained. Due to gender apartheid, women may only study in all female institutions. There they are prohibited from studying fields like law and engineering and petroleum sciences. In 2005 the BBC reported, "Although women make up more than half of all graduates from Saudi universities, they comprise only 5 percent of the kingdom's workforce."

Saudi women have no freedom of movement. They may not drive. And they may not move around in public unless escorted by their husband, father or brother. Women found in public unescorted by suitable males are subject to arrest and corporal punishment.

The limitations placed on public appearances are mind boggling. As Freedom House reported in 2005, "Visible and invisible spatial boundaries also limit women's movement. Mosques, most ministries, public streets, and food stalls (supermarkets not included) are male territory. Furthermore, accommodations that are available for men are always superior to those accessible to women, and public space, such as parks, zoos, museums, libraries, or the national Jinadriyah Festival of Folklore and Culture, is created for men, with only limited times allotted for women's visits."

To the extent that women in Saudi Arabia are allowed leave their homes, they are prohibited from actually being seen by anyone through the rigid enforcement of Islamic dress codes. As the State Department 2006 report explains, "In public, a woman was expected to wear an abaya (a black garment that covers the entire body) and also to cover her head and hair. The religious police generally expected Muslim women to cover their faces and non-Muslim women from other Asian and African countries to comply more fully with local customs of dress than non-Muslim Western women. During the year religious police admonished and harassed citizen and noncitizen women who failed to wear an abaya and hair cover."

Perhaps it is because it is so offensive to the Western eye to see women covered like sacks of potatoes, the abaya has become a symbol of Islamic oppression and degradation of women. Although outlawing their use, as the French have attempted to do in recent years, is itself a form of religious oppression, the sentiment informing their ban is certainly understandable. The fact is that a free society should not be able to easily stomach the notion that women should be encouraged, let alone obliged to wear degrading garments that deny them the outward vestiges of their humanity and individuality.

Due to the fact that the abayas convey a symbolic message of effective enslavement of women, Mrs. Bush's interaction with women clad in abayas was the aspect of her trip most scrutinized. In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn't have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.

The image told the world that she—and America—is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.

But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn't have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies). Understanding this, conservative media outlets in the US criticized her angrily.

Sunday morning, Mrs. Bush sought to answer her critics in an interview with Fox News. Unfortunately, her remarks compounded the damage. Mrs. Bush said, "These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That's their culture. That's their tradition. That's a religious choice of theirs."

It is true that this is their culture. And it is also their tradition. But it is not their choice. Their culture and tradition are predicated on denying them the choice of whether or not to wear a garment that denies them their identity just as it denies them the right to make any choices about their lives. The Saudi women's assertions of satisfaction with their plight were no more credible than statements by hostages in support of their captors.

As the First Lady, Laura Bush is an American symbol. By having her picture taken wearing an abaya in Saudi Arabia—the epicenter of Islamic totalitarian misogyny—Mrs. Bush diminished that symbol. In so doing, she weakened the causes of freedom and liberty which America has fought since its founding to secure and defend at home and throughout the world.