But on 4 July it emerged that The News Of The World had also hacked into the telephone of a missing schoolgirl subsequently found dead, as well as those of family members of the July 7th Tube bombing victims and of British servicemen killed in Afghanistan. Nobody much cares if the Aussie supermodel Elle Macpherson and other denizens of the demimonde get their voice mails intercepted, but dead schoolgirls and soldiers changed the nature of the story, and events moved swiftly. On 7 July, Rupert Murdoch’s son and heir announced the entire newspaper would be closed down. The whole thing. Gone.

The News Of The World wasn’t any old fish-wrap. Founded in 1843, it was by the mid-twentieth century the most-read newspaper in the English-speaking world, selling nine million copies a week. Even in today’s emaciated market, every week more than 2.6 million Britons bought “The News Of The Screws” (as it was affectionately known). Sunday, 3 July, it was the biggest-selling newspaper in the United Kingdom and Europe. Sunday, 10 July, it’s history. To put it in American terms, consider those George Soros-funded websites claiming they pressured Fox into “firing” Glenn Beck. This is the equivalent of pressuring Mr. Murdoch into closing down the entire Fox News network.

I confess to feeling a little queasy at the sight of bien pensant liberal opinion gloating at having deprived four million people of their preferred reading matter. If one were so inclined, one might be heartened by the swift responsiveness to pressure of the allegedly all-powerful bogeyman Murdoch. But you can’t help but notice that this supposed public shaming is awfully selective.

In the week of The News Of The World revelations, it was reported that the Atlanta Public Schools system has spent the last decade systemically cheating on its tests. Not the students, but the Superintendent, and the union, and 38 principals, and at least 178 teachers — whoops, pardon me, “educators,” and some 44 of the 56 school districts. Teachers held “changing parties” at their homes at which they sat around with extra supplies of erasers correcting their students’ test answers in order to improve overall scores and qualify for “No Child Left Behind” federal funding that could be sluiced into maintaining their lavish remuneration. Let’s face it, it’s easier than teaching, right?

The APS Human Resources honcho Millicent Few had an early report into test-tampering illegally destroyed. So APS not only got the federal gravy but was also held up to the nation at large as a heartwarming, inspirational example of how large urban school districts can reform themselves and improve educational opportunities for their children. And its fake test scores got its leader, Beverly Hall, garlanded with the National Superintendent of the Year Award, the Administrator of the Year Award, the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Keystone Award for Leadership in Education, the Concerned Black Clergy Education Award, the American Association of School Administrators Effie H. Jones Humanitarian Award and a zillion other phony-baloney baubles with which the American edu-fraud cartel scratches its own back.

In reality, Beverly Hall’s Atlanta Public Schools system was in the child-abuse business: It violated the education of its students in order to improve its employees’ cozy sinecures. The whole rotten stinking school system is systemically corrupt from the Superintendent down. But what are the chances of APS being closed down? How many of those fraudulent non-teachers will waft on within the system until their lucrative retirements?

Or consider “Operation Fast and Furious,” about which nothing is happening terribly fast and over which Americans should be furious. The official explanation is that the federal government used stimulus funding to buy guns from Arizona gun shops for known criminals to funnel to Mexican drug cartels. As I said, that’s the official explanation: As soon as your head stops spinning, we’ll resume the narrative. Supposedly, United States taxpayers were picking up the tab for Mexican drug lords’ weaponry in order that the ATF could identify high-up gun-traffickers. But, as it turns out, these high-up gun-traffickers were already known to other agencies — FBI, DEA and other big-spending acronyms in the great fetid ooze of federal alphabet soup in which this republic is drowning. And, indeed, some of those high-ups are said to have been paid informants for those various federal agencies.

So, in case you’re wondering why Obama’s second annual Recovery Summer is a wee bit sluggish at your end, relax: Stimulus dollars went to fund one federal agency to buy guns for the paid informants of another federal agency to funnel to foreign criminals in order that the first federal agency might identify the paid informants of the second federal agency.

Meanwhile, what did the drug cartels, the recipients of the guns, do with them? Well, they used them to kill at least one member of a third federal agency: Brian Terry of the United States Border Patrol. If that doesn’t bother you, well, they also killed not-insignificant numbers of Mexican civilians. If, by this stage, you’re wondering why U.S. stimulus dollars are being used to stimulate the Mexican coffin industry, consider the dark suspicion of many American gun owners — that the real reason the feds embarked on this murderous scheme was to plant the evidence that the increasing lawlessness on the southern border is the fault of the gun industry and the Second Amendment, and thereby advance its ideological agenda of ever-greater gun control.

We’re not talking about hacking a schoolgirl’s cell phone here. Real people are dead. Yet nobody’s going to close down any wing of the vast spendaholic DEATFBI hydra-headed security-state turf-war. And while Eric Holder, the buccaneering Attorney-General at the center of this wilderness of mirrors, doesn’t yet have as many Distinguished Public Servant of the Year awards as Beverly Hall, judging from his cheerfully upfront obstruction of the Congressional investigation, he’s not planning on going anywhere soon.

So, at The News Of The World, every single employee is clearing out his desk. But, at the Atlantic Public Schools, at the DEATFBI, life goes on — a curious contrast. The striking feature of Big Government, from Athens to Sacramento, is its imperviousness to any kind of accountability — legal, fiscal, electoral, popular. A media mogul, a bank chairman, an oil executive, a corporate-jet depreciation-claimant are easily demonizable: As President Obama cautioned CEOs a couple of years back, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

More fool us. Our pitchforks are misdirected.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism might seem to be something that would sober up even the most giddy members of the chattering class. But that chilling prospect cannot seem to compete for attention with cheap behavior by an immature Congressman, infatuated with himself.

A society that cannot or will not focus on matters of life and death is a society whose survival as a free nation is at least questionable. Hard as it may be to conceive how the kind of world that one has been used to, and taken for granted, can come to an end, it can happen in the lifetime of today’s generation.

Those who founded the United States of America were keenly aware that they were making a radical departure in the kinds of governments under which human beings had lived over the centuries — and that its success was by no means guaranteed. Monarchies in Europe had lasted for centuries and the Chinese dynasties for thousands of years. But a democratic republic was something else.

While the convention that was writing the Constitution of the United States was still in session, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what the delegation was creating. “A republic, madam,” he said, “if you can keep it.”

In the middle of the next century, Abraham Lincoln still posed it as a question whether “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Years earlier, Lincoln had warned of the dangers to a free society from its own designing power-seekers — and how only the vigilance, wisdom and dedication of the public could preserve their freedom.

But, today, few people seem to see such dangers, either internally or internationally.

A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians — risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has — is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic.

The ease with which people with wealth can ship it overseas electronically, or put it in tax shelters at home, means that raising the tax rate on wealthy people is not going to bring in the kind of tax revenue that would enable wealth redistribution to provide the bonanza that some people are expecting.

In other words, people who are willing to give government more arbitrary power can give up their birthright of freedom without even getting the mess of pottage. Worse yet, they can give up their children’s and their grandchildren’s birthright of freedom.

Free and democratic societies have existed for a relatively short time, as history is measured — and their staying power has always been open to question. So much depends on the wisdom of the voters that the franchise was always limited, in one way or another, so that voting would be confined to those with a stake in the viability and progress of the country, and the knowledge to cast their vote intelligently.

In our own times, however, voting has been seen as just one of the many “rights” to which everyone is supposed to be entitled. The emphasis has been on the voter, rather than on the momentous consequences of elections for the nation today and for generations yet unborn.

To those who see voting as more or less just a matter of self-expression, almost a recreational activity, there is no need to inform themselves on both sides of the issues before voting, much less sit down and think beyond the rhetoric to the realities that the rhetoric conceals.

Careless voters may be easily swayed by charisma and rhetoric, oblivious to the monumental disasters created around the world by 20th century leaders with charisma and rhetoric, such as Hitler.

Voters like this represent a danger of terminal frivolity for freedom and democracy.

Editor’s note: Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, CA, and served in the USMC as an instructor in pistol shooting.

Reactions from scores of U.S. and NATO personnel and Afghan soldiers and police officers with whom my Fox News’ “War Stories” team has spoken run the gamut from “It’s a deeper, faster cut than I expected” to “I guess we all knew this day was coming.” However, there is one opinion that is nearly universal: “We’d better not lose this war.”

Obama says we won’t. He insists that we can safely “remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year” and “bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer,” because “in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance.” He describes his date-driven withdrawal plan as a way to bring the war here “to a responsible end.”

That’s far from certain. Everyone here — U.S. and NATO forces, Afghan allies and our enemies — knows that the schedule for bringing our troops home next summer was set by the timing of a presidential election, not by the situation on the ground. Obama says the surge here has “inflicted serious losses on the Taliban and taken a number of its strongholds.” That is certainly true. But he has now confirmed a date certain for withdrawing the very combat power that made it possible to “reverse the Taliban’s momentum.” Worse, it eliminates any incentive for the Taliban to participate honestly in what he calls a “political solution” and “initiatives that reconcile the Afghan people.” Unfortunately, these aren’t the only logical disconnects in the course of action the President has chosen.

Obama claims that we will do what we must to “strengthen the Afghan government and security forces.” He also says, “Over the last decade, we have spent $1 trillion on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times.” Yet he wants to spend more on “innovation” and to “rebuild our infrastructure and find new and clean sources of energy.” And he pointedly adds, “America, it is a time to focus on nation building here at home.” Of course, all this must be done “while living within our means.”

To some, this sounds like hollow campaign rhetoric. It’s not. On 22 June, the Commander-in-Chief made clear that he is determined to not only withdraw our forces from Afghanistan but also dramatically reduce the role of our military as an instrument of national power.

That’s why he insists that when “innocents are being slaughtered and global security” is endangered, “we must rally international action.” And that’s why he must claim that the U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign in Libya is somehow “protecting the Libyan people.” It’s doing no such thing, but that’s not going to change Obama’s apparent conviction that “good wars” in the future should be fought without putting “a single soldier on the ground.” And all this means a much smaller U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Whether the looming cuts in funding also will mean a reduced commitment to building Afghanistan’s national security forces — the army, police and air force — remains to be seen. The U.S. and allied trainers, mentors and advisers we have spoken with here at NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan point to the five-year ANSF building and sustainment plan, which was approved in the capitals of 49 nations, and say, “These programs can’t be cut; they are essential to winning here.”

And they are. Without literate and well-trained, -led and -equipped security forces, Afghanistan will once again become a failed state in the midst of a very dangerous neighborhood. Today 33 countries have personnel on the ground helping to recruit, train, mentor and field good cops, soldiers and airmen. The NTM-A budget request to continue this process is more than $1 billion per month.

Over the course of the next 90 days, the United States will have a new secretary of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, International Security Assistance Force commander, CIA director and NTM-A commander. Given all these changes and the President’s apparent intent to put the U.S. military on an austerity budget, there are questions as to whether Congress and our allies will continue to fund the NTM-A effort through 2016.

While they ponder this financial commitment, they should know the commitment in blood being made by the Afghan police and soldiers. They are losing an average of 115 policemen and 57 soldiers killed in action every month.

Editor’s note: Oliver North is a combat-decorated Marine. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served 22 years as a Marine. His service awards include the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valor and two Purple Hearts for wounds in combat.

Editor’s note: Oliver North is a combat-decorated Marine. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served 22 years as a Marine. His service awards include the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valor and two Purple Hearts for wounds in combat.

This is an unusual investigation that does not primarily involve Islamists. Instead, it is focused on elements of the old international communist networks that many people mistakenly thought had faded away with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those under investigation are suspected of providing support to foreign terrorist organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the Middle East, a Marxist group. The Post called them “Colombian and Palestinian groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorists.”

The investigations came into public view last September when the FBI raided the homes of several “activists,” as the Post called them. Some lived in Chicago.

One of the targets, Tom Burke, was a union organizer for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). He was so confident he would get a fair shake from the Post that he provided the paper with a photo of himself shaking hands with Barack Obama. The other apparent intention was to send a message to the President and Attorney General Eric Holder that any investigation of Burke might lead to Obama.

The Post suggested that investigations of labor union activists might jeopardize their support for Obama’s 2012 presidential run. Indeed, it could therefore threaten his re-election bid, if investigations determine that the activists did more than “cross paths” with the President.

Deep inside the article, in the 29th paragraph, we find out that some of the “activists” are associated with a group known as the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a Marxist-Leninist organization. Burke is a member of the FRSO, which the Post admitted was “far left.”

The obvious question is why Obama, as a state senator in Illinois, would ever have “crossed paths” with such people. The answer goes beyond just union support for the candidate. The “far-left” networks that include the FRSO, the Communist Party USA, the New American Movement, and the Democratic Socialists of America backed and even spawned Obama’s political career. Don’t forget that Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn hosted a fundraiser for his first run for political office. The same networks also backed CIA Director Leon Panetta’s career when he was a congressman from Santa Cruz, California. This helps explain why Obama would pick Panetta, with no intelligence background, to run the intelligence agency. They are cut from the same cloth.

Nevertheless, on 21 June, the Senate voted 100-0 in favor of Panetta’s nomination as Secretary of Defense. It was a classic case of “head in the sand” politics, ignoring not only Panetta’s long-time relationship with Communist Party member Hugh DeLacy but his record as a congressman in undercutting then-President Reagan’s pro-defense policies at every turn.

Obama and Panetta were players in the “progressive” community, which since the days of Henry Wallace, presidential candidate of the Progressive Party, has had a red tint. Obama had his own communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party member under FBI investigation for 19 years, while Panetta gave DeLacy, who had traveled to China to meet with Soviet and Chinese intelligence agents, sensitive reports on U.S. military matters. Any notion that Panetta had no awareness of DeLacy’s Communist affiliation was obliterated when Panetta in 1983 inserted a tribute to DeLacy into the Congressional Record, praising his resistance to “McCarthyism.”

Former FBI agent Max Noel once told me that the Bureau used to investigate candidates for federal employment by analyzing Character, Associates, Reputation and Loyalty to the United States. The first letters in those words make up the acronym CARL. By the standard of “A”—Associates—Panetta flunks. But so does Obama.

Another sensitive case involves Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and wife of disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner. Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack have reported that Arab newspapers have revealed that Huma Abedin’s mother is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose goal is to subvert Western civilization. Jamie Glazov of Front Page Magazine asks Robert Spencer, “There is a remote possibility that Abedin is actually being deceptive in her marriage to Weiner to follow Muslim Brotherhood instructions and to infiltrate the U.S. government, correct?” Spencer replies, “Certainly. That is a very real possibility, and it should be investigated. But the only ones who have the means to do so are mainstream media journalists who are either clueless or complicit.”

It may also be the case that the FBI never investigated Abedin’s background.

As the FBI does not vet presidential candidates for national security purposes, we know there would have been no FBI investigation into Obama’s own background, associations, loyalty and overall fitness for office. The FBI only probes those being considered for some federal positions under the president. They should have therefore investigated Panetta. But there is no indication that he was ever properly vetted. Now he is confirmed as Secretary of Defense because conservative Republican Senators were apparently afraid of being accused of McCarthyism for questioning his past associations.

On the other hand, the “progressives” are raising hell with Obama and want him to rein in the FBI. They want to further emasculate the agency charged with ferretting out subversives and terrorist support networks.

As the Post noted, “nine members of Congress have written letters to the administration” complaining about the FBI probe of Burke and other activists. The Post even noted that another one of the targets of the investigation, a union organizer named Tracy Molm, managed to arrange a meeting with Holder himself.

One of these congressional members is Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison, the foremost critic of Rep. Peter King’s hearings into radical Islam in America. “Shortly after the raids,” Ellison said, “I made inquiries to the FBI field office for more information. FBI Special Agent Boelter confirmed that an investigation was ongoing. He informed me that due to the pending nature of the investigation, he was prohibited from sharing any further information. However he gave me assurance that the purpose of the searches and service of subpoenas was not to punish or to suppress protected First Amendment activity.”

Pro-Marxist activist Medea Benjamin has said she managed to have a few words with Holder as well to complain about the probes. She is with the Code Pink group that travels to Gaza to meet with the terrorist group Hamas. She is also a staunch ally of Adam Kokesh, the “Russia Today” TV star who openly admits that he functions as a paid Russian agent of the Vladimir Putin regime.

Holder is receptive to this kind of appeal because of his friendship with Obama and record as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration for facilitating pardons and clemency for terrorists from the Puerto Rican FALN and Weather Underground. It is this record that puts the current investigations by the FBI in serious jeopardy.

The Post article has to be seen as a signal to Holder from those around Obama that he must act quickly to close down these investigations before they get too close for comfort to the Oval Office. First, however, he has to make sure that the congressional investigations don’t get too close to Holder himself. It won’t look good for the Attorney General to be personally implicated in knowledge of the federal gunrunning schemes now under Congressional investigation that provided weapons to Mexican narco-terrorist cartels. The evidence already shows that federal authorities let guns fall into the hands of known criminals.

From the AIM Syndicate, 4455 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Ste. 330, Washington, DC 20008; www.aim.org