www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4 • Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Corinth, Miss.
Living life leashed to the electronic whipping post BY ROGER SIMON I woke up, fell out of bed and brought my iPhone to my head. I had to learn whom to hate today. In olden times, this was a laborious process. You had to go down to the village square to see who had been put in the stocks. Today the despised are far more numerous, but the Internet both creates and keeps track of them. MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry was a target recently for ridiculing Mitt Romney’s black grandchild. Romney, who has a Twitter account with more than 1.5 million followers, had tweeted a Christmas card with a family photo of him and his wife, Ann, surrounded by their 22 grandchildren. Harris-Perry assembled a panel on TV to make fun of the card, pointing out the one black Romney face in a sea of white Romney faces. This was kind of stupid and kind of cruel — which meant it was perfect. Twitter lit up like a pinball machine, with Harris-Perry as the ball. Harris-Perry apologized. On Sunday, Romney accepted Harris-Perry’s apology, a “news” item that led Google News and was one of the most read political stories in The Washington Post. Also at the electronic whipping post was Michael Scheuer — a former CIA intelligence officer, a TV talking head and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University — who wrote a blog that harshly attacked President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. This led to a headline on Daily Kos, “Georgetown University Professor/Fox News Expert Calls For Obama’s Assassination,” and an article by David Frum on The Daily Beast that stated: “In the modern media environment, it’s pretty hard to go too far. Advocacy of murder, however, does cross one of the last remaining lines.” Actually, I would argue that in the modern media environment, it’s very easy to go too far. All you have to do is shoot your mouth off and wait for it to ricochet around the Web. Scheuer’s alleged threat amounts to his writing: “Messrs Obama and Cameron and their supporters in all parties would do well to read the words of the great 17th century English republican Algernon Sidney ... (who wrote), ‘every man might kill a tyrant; and no names are recorded in history with more honor, than of those who did it.’” Personally, I would imprison for life anybody who uses “Messrs” in his writing. Sidney was executed for treason, by the way, Dec. 7, 1683, which brings us, somehow, to Pearl Harbor and SpaghettiOs. On New Year’s Eve, NBC’s Carson Daly hosted a show from Times Square in which he attacked SpaghettiOs for weeks earlier tweeting a picture of a large SpaghettiO holding an American flag, with the caption, “Take a moment to remember #PearlHarbor with us.” “It offended a lot of people, corporations glomming onto, you know, sentimental American historic traditions,” Daly said. To which comedian Natasha Leggero replied, “I mean, it sucks that the only survivors of Pearl Harbor are being mocked by the only food they can still chew.” SpaghettiOs already had been forced to apologize for its unpatriotic use of pasta, but Leggero wrote on her Tumblr account: “I wish I could apologize, but do you really want another insincere apology that you know is just an attempt at damage control and not a real admission of guilt?” Well, yes, of course we do. We appreciate it when people fake sincerity. So I’d like to issue blanket and solemn regret for anything I might write in the future. The Koch brothers are the spawn of an ancient alien race sent from the cosmos to take over the Earth. My sincerest apologies. (Roger Simon is chief political columnist of politico.com, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times best selling author.)
Prayer for today Almighty God, help me to appreciate the sacredness of work while I have it to do. Grant that I may be spared the wretchedness that comes from working with fragments from idleness. May I do my part, even if it be in obscurity and the night overtakes me before it is done. Amen.
A verse to share “And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” -- Exodus 14:13-14v
Alligator suit before state’s high court BY JACK ELLIOTT JR. JACKSON — State wildlife officials want the Mississippi Supreme Court to throw out a dispute between a Wilkinson County couple and ExxonMobil Corp. over an alleged alligator infestation. In a friend-of-the-court brief, the wildlife agency argues “because wild alligators are the property of the state, and not subject to private ownership, private landowners have no duty to prevent them from causing damage to the land of neighboring property owners.” Tom and Cassandra Christmas disagree. They will present their case to the Supreme Court in oral arguments scheduled for Feb. 4 in Jackson. The case began after the Christmases bought 35 acres between Centreville and Woodville in December 2003. Next door to their property was a refinery waste disposal site owned and maintained by ExxonMobil — a site that’s home to dozens of alligators. The Christmases say they didn’t know what was
across the fence until they cleared the property and moved there in 2007. The couple sued the oil company in August 2008, seeking damages for permanent depreciation of their land. A judge threw out the lawsuit in 2011. Exxon appealed a state Court of Appeals ruling in May that returned the case to Wilkinson County Circuit Court. The Christmases argue that jurors should determine whether the alligators are a nuisance. The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks says between 32,000 and 38,000 wild alligators live in Mississippi, with about 408,000 acres of habitat. In its brief, the department argues that the Legislature gave it domain over wild alligators and, contrary to what the Christmases say, wild alligators living in their natural habitat do not constitute a nuisance that should be abated. “Rather, the wild alligator is a protected species that needs to be managed and regulated by the depart-
ment, not private landowners,” the MDWFP said in court documents. The agency said allowing such broad private nuisance suits such as the Christmases’ creates a separation-ofpowers issue. “Private nuisance suits are incompatible with the department’s exclusive authority to determine whether a wild alligator constitutes a nuisance and to take the appropriate action when it makes such a finding. Allowing such suits to proceed would result in a transfer the department’s regulatory authority over ‘nuisance’ alligators to the courts, which lack the expertise to make these types of decisions,” the agency said. A company had shipped refinery waste from Louisiana to the Wilkinson County disposal site beginning in 1980. The site stopped taking waste in the 1990s. Exxon bought the property in July 2001. Alligators were allegedly introduced to the site from Louisiana as early as 1984 as “canaries” to warn of hazardous contamination in the retention ponds. Ex-
actly who put the reptiles there is a matter of dispute. ExxonMobil argues the Christmases’ real estate agent told the couple about the alligators as far back as 2003. Exxon says the couple waited too long to file a lawsuit claiming the gators robbed them of enjoyment of their land, and the threeyear statute of limitations has passed. Court records say state wildlife officials conducted an alligator census of the property in 2007 and counted about 84 alligators but officials said not all may have been counted. The Christmases said they had occasionally seen alligators after they bought the land, according to the court records. The couple said they first learned where the alligators were coming from in 2007, when Tom Christmas was allowed on the ExxonMobil property to search for a lost hunting dog. (Daily Corinthian columnist Jack Elliott Jr. covers Mississippi politics and legal affairs for The Associated Press based in Jackson.
The enemy of our enemy In the wars she has fought, America has often allied with regimes that represented the antithesis of the cause for which we were fighting. In our Revolutionary War for freedom and independence from the tyrant King of England, our indispensable ally was the King of France. In World War I, Woodrow Wilson said we were fighting to “make the world safe for democracy.” Yet our foremost allies were five avaricious empires: the British, French, Italian, Japanese and Russian. In World War II, the ally who did most of the fighting against Hitler was Josef Stalin. Enough said. In America’s wars, the enemy of our enemy has often been our ally, if not our friend. And that is the question of the hour in the Middle East. The region seems to be descending step by step into a war of all against all. And at its heart is the civil-sectarian war to overthrow the Syrian Alawite regime of Bashar Assad. Now that war has spilled over into Lebanon and Iraq. And in Syria and Iraq our principal enemies are the jihadists of the al-Nusra Front and ISIS, the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant. Implacably anti-Ameri-
can, these Islamist fighters control enclaves in northern Syria and appear to Pat have capBuchanan tured Fallujah and Columnist perhaps Ramadi, crucial cities of Iraq’s Anbar province for which hundreds of Americans died. And who are the foremost fighting foes of the Nusra Front and ISIS? In Syria it is Bashar al Assad, whom Obama said two years ago must leave, and a Syrian army, which Obama was about to attack in August, until the American people rose up to tell him to stay out. Who are Assad’s allies against the al Nusra Front and ISIS? Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah whose forces helped turn the tide back last year against the rebels. In Iraq and Syria, al-Qaida jihadists and Sunni terrorists, our enemies, are also the enemies of Iran, Hezbollah and Assad. Indeed, Iran has offered to join us in sending military assistance to Baghdad in its fight against the al-Qaida-backed rebellion in Anbar.
Yet, there are other vantage points from which this widening war is being seen, and one is Riyadh. While Saudi Arabia has come to recognize the menace of ISIS and sent aid to Syria, the larger and longerterm threat Riyadh sees is Tehran. And understandably so. Saudi Arabia is the Sunni and Arab power in the Persian Gulf. But Shia and Persian Iran is almost twice as populous and at the heart of a Shia Crescent of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah. Moreover, Riyadh in 2013 saw her superpower patron, America, back away from an attack on Syria, negotiate in secret with Iran, and begin talks with the Ayatollah’s regime on limitations to its nuclear program — in return for a lifting of U.S. sanctions. To the Saudis, what appears to be an emerging detente between Tehran and Washington looms as a strategic disaster. From Israel’s vantage point, the overthrow of Assad would mean the isolation of Hezbollah, which would no longer receive weapons from a Syrian regime that Hezbollah had fought to keep out of power. But what about America’s point of view? “Sooner or later,” The
Washington Post writes, “the United States will have to face the threat to its vital interests emerging across the Levant.” But, with due respect, there are no U.S. “vital interests” in the Levant. The vital interest America has in that region is to keep the oil flowing out of the Gulf, upon which the global economy depends. The greatest threat to U.S. interests there is not autocrats, Sunni or Shia, interested in getting rich, but radicals with the mindset of suicide bombers taking over a state and spreading revolution down the Gulf. War is the clear and present danger, and peace the necessary condition of securing those interests. The defeat of ISIS in Anbar and Syria and peace in the region should be our primary goal. And if Iran is willing to assist Damascus and Baghdad in defeating al-Qaida, Iran should be treated as a temporary ally in a common cause. After all, FDR and Truman got on famously with “good old Joe” Stalin. (Daily Corinthian columnist Pat Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.)