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2007-01-13T05:05:00.001-06:00

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Sec. Rice Attacked by Sen. Boxer Over Childlessness

2007-01-12T11:46:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Is it not outrageous that Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem, Cal) verbally attacked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for not having children as Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday to discuss the Administrations position on Bush's Iraq military "surge" plans? Is this an acceptable criticism of a political official? Is the fact that an official might not have children reason to doubt their capacity for policy making or ability to advise an administration?

Is this the Democrat's new era of niceness, their less rancorous way of governing?

I was shocked to see this intemperate verbal assault by Boxer in the New York Post, but I became curious to see how other MSM sources treated the outrageous comments of the unbalanced Boxer. So, I did a little search of the reactions of the press.

(Full excerpts of the sections in each story that detailed Boxer's outrageous behavior follows)

CBS News- *AP report (Lawmakers Grill Rice Over the Iraq War )

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., noted Rice has no children of her own to lose overseas. "Who pays the price?" Boxer repeatedly demanded. "You're not going to pay a particular price," she told Rice, because the secretary has no "immediate family" at risk.
Miami Herald- **AP report (Congress treats Gates with kid gloves)

But the gloves came off for Rice.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., noted Rice has no children to lose overseas. "Who pays the price?" she repeatedly demanded. "You're not going to pay a particular price," she told Rice, because the secretary has no "immediate family" at risk.

I said "full excerpts" as if there would be a lot of stories about Boxer's attack, didn't I? In fact, few of the dozens of stories of Rice's appearance before the committee even mentioned Boxer's foolish attack.

As you can see, only the New York Post seemed too interested in the outrageous Boxer. The rest of our "News" sources barely mentioned it and it seems that no original writing was spent on the issue with every major news source just aping the AP's two subdued accounts.

As contrasted with the above AP reports, here is how the Post started off their report on the exchange:

WASHINGTON - Condoleezza Rice came under a shocking Democratic attack yesterday - as a childless woman who can’t understand the sacrifices made by families of U.S. troops in Iraq. In a bitter personal assault on the secretary of state during her appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, anti-war Sen. Barbara Boxer fumed that Rice didn't comprehend the "price" of the war.

Only the Post, so far, seems willing to highlight Boxer's unsuitable comportment as a Senator.

It was also curious to me that most of these stories about Rice being "grilled" before the Senate committee -- even the ones that did not mention Boxer -- also went on to describe how well received Defense Secretary Robert Gates was as if to assure the reader that Rice's mistreatment was some how "balanced" by Gates' easy day on the Hill.

Still, it is amazing how Boxer has basically gotten a pass by the MSM for her boorish, uncivilized, and completely illogical attack on Secretary Rice's childlessness.

This must be just another example of how the Democrats are going to be more bi-partisan and less rancorous and how the MSM is going to help them achieve that... or, rather, how they aren't and how the MSM is going to help cover it up for them?

Sadly, the American public is ill served by the MSM, once again.

*This same AP report showed up in several sources. For instance CBS News, The Guardian Unlimited and the Kansas City Star, among others, used this AP report.

**This same AP report showed up in several sources. For instance, the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, and the Guardian Unlimited, among others, all used this report.

More Of Jimmy Carter's Advisers Quit Over Book

2007-01-12T11:45:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

I reported a few days ago that one of ex-president Jimmy Carter's aides quit after his recent book was published. That aide called the book "filled with errors".

Now, fourteen more have ended their association with the disgraceful ex-president over the book's lies, distortions and fantasies.

Carter Center Advisers Quit to Protest Book

Fourteen of the city’s business and civic leaders resigned from the Carter Center’s advisory board on Thursday to protest former President Jimmy Carter’s recent criticisms of Israel and American Jewish political power.

Their joint letter of resignation denounced Mr. Carter’s best-selling book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” for its criticisms of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The letter also took issue with comments Mr. Carter has made suggesting that Israel’s supporters in the United States are using their power to stifle debate on the issue.

They are not very happy and who can blame them?

To those who really knew him or had close associations with him in the world of politics in the early days, he was well known to have been a mean and vicious operator. He is also widely known for being far from the God fearing, religious man he pretends to be in public. And he is at last unable to disguise his anti-Semitism in public with the publication of this anti-American and anti-Jewish book of his.

His resigned advisers went on to say:

“It seems you have turned to a world of advocacy, even malicious advocacy,” the letter said. “We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support.”

Carter was a disgrace as president, a traitor as ex-president, and a racist who takes money from those who wish to destroy this country. It's about time people wise up about this horrible man.

Senator Obama and the Social Gospel

2007-01-12T11:32:00.000-06:00

-By Dan E. Phillips

All the fuss over Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and his possible presidential candidacy is hard to explain. He is a recently elected junior Senator. Under normal circumstances his candidacy would be considered premature at best and hubristic at worst. So why the fawning treatment, especially by the media?

Well, I have to admit the guy is smooth. I saw him on Jay Leno, and I was very impressed with his persona. He was funny, self-deprecating, and able to banter back and forth with Leno. He is able to engage in small talk without immediately mounting the bully pulpit as many politicians are prone to do. In this respect he reminds me a lot of Bill Clinton. He seems like a regular guy. How much of that is an act, I have no idea. He did graduate from Harvard Law which tends to tarnish your regular guy credentials. But much of politics is an act, and he seems pretty good at it.

A big question is how long he will be able to pull off the "can't we just all get along?" act. Will the Democratic primary voters tolerate that shtick in the hope of victory, or will they force him to more clearly articulate where he stands on the issues? Despite all the talk that he is a bridge between left and right, his positions are cookie-cutter liberal. If the Democratic primary voters don't force him to reveal his hand, I'm sure the Republican campaign machine will if he becomes the Democratic nominee..............
Click HERE To Read On

Bush This Step in the Right Direction Could be his Last Chance

2007-01-11T12:51:00.001-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

"Imagine this war as a sort of grotesque race. The jihadists and sectarians win if they can kill enough Americans to demoralize us enough that we flee before Iraqis and Afghans stabilize their newfound freedom. They lose if they can't. Prosperity, security and liberty are the death knell to radical Islam. It's that elemental."
---Victor Davis Hanson

A "new plan" for Iraq, at last some sense... Bush's plan revealed

Bush finally acts as if he truly wants to win this battle to give Iraq a chance to stabilize its foundling government by desiring to send in 20,000 more troops to "clear, hold, and build", as the phrase has it. Clear out the insurgent and terrorist's cells, hold the territory taken and then give the nascent Iraqi government a chance to establish itself as well as give the common Iraqi citizen the feeling of safety that befits a civilized society.

Sadly, Bush should have done this at least two years ago. In fact, many said from the beginning that we hadn't enough troops to win the peace from the beginning. Those who made that claim were 100 percent right. But, that he has seen the sense of it and is proposing it now is a good thing. Better late than never.

The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.

Not just for the safety of the USA, Mr. president, but for the very lives of the people in Iraq for whom we have accept charge. And this is the one area that unfeeling Democrats and Paleocons wish to ignore. What happens if we precipitously leave Iraq? A blood bath as Iran tries to seize control (using the Syria/Lebanon model) and then fights with Al Qaeda and Saddam loyalists for territory. But, Paleocons and leftists have already decided that Iraq's citizens are not worth their effort to care about, they have already written the Iraqi people off. (And, were I a Paleocon, I'd feel very uneasy about being on the same side as the anti-American left and leading Democrats)

It is also good that Bush is focusing on the region around Baghdad. If the Iraqi government cannot hold their own capitol, they have an immediate face of weakness. Baghdad must be cleared and held.

The most urgent priority for success in Iraq is security, especially in Baghdad. Eighty percent of Iraq's sectarian violence occurs within 30 miles of the capital. This violence is splitting Baghdad into sectarian enclaves, and shaking the confidence of all Iraqis. Only the Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people. And their government has put forward an aggressive plan to do it.

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

Bush goes on to explain what will be different this time.

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Here are the differences: In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents -- but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods -- and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.

Here is the "clear, hold, and build" strategy I was referring to in the first half of this analysis. We have cleared out the insurgents many times in various places in Iraq. But, since we never had the troop strength to hold the area, we left as soon as the immediate mission was accomplished -- and it was usually pretty quickly accomplished. However, clearing them and then leaving the area was counter productive. When you turn on the lights in a cockroach-infested kitchen, for instance, you see, the roaches scamper away, but the second the light is off again, they come out once more. Similarly, by clearing and leaving we allowed the cockroaches to come back as often as we left. This prevents any stability from visiting the area and keeps the local populace on the side of the insurgents and terrorists.

Here is the single most salient point the president made.

The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life. In the long run, the most realistic way to protect the American people is to provide a hopeful alternative to the hateful ideology of the enemy -- by advancing liberty across a troubled region. It is in the interests of the United States to stand with the brave men and women who are risking their lives to claim their freedom -- and help them as they work to raise up just and hopeful societies across the Middle East.

When this war first began many of us, myself and the president included, wanted to steer as far clear of the talk of the "clash of civilizations" business as possible. We aren't at war with all of Islam, we stressed. It is still true that we aren't at war with Islam per se. But it is gallingly obvious that we are, indeed, in a clash of civilizations. On one hand is western liberty, democracy and freedom led by the USA and on the other is oppression, murder, and anti-modernity represented by radical Islam. The key problem is that the so-called moderates in the Islamic world are not opposing radical Islam. In fact, many of these moderates give tacit support to the radicals imagining that it merely won't hurt the moderates to turn from their responsibilities of peaceful conduct and give a wink and a nod to the radicals. The moderates console themselves that the radicals are going after the west and just might leave them alone. It is a mistaken conception.

Yet, what reason besides a basic responsibility to a greater humanity compels moderates to speak out against the radicals? Should they do so, will they get the support of the west? It seems no is the answer to that. America stands alone in giving succor to any moderate who might find it in his soul to work against radicals and if we falter we offer moderates no support at all and leave them naked to radical aggression. We but show them it's best to keep their heads down and hope the storm passes them by.

It will not pass them by without American opposition. The president knows that and I predict he will go down in history as one leader in the west who was right about what we face.

In one of his closing paragraphs, Bush said the following:

From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence, and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children. And they are looking at Iraq. They want to know: Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists -- or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom?

I add this. Democrats and anti-Americans are not "sick of the violence". They could not care less about "the violence". If they were truly sick of the violence they'd want to find a way to stop it. But, they only care about defeating the GOP and bringing down Bush's administration and they merely want the USA out of the Middle East entirely quite without any consideration of the consequences. The violence that would escalate after we leave is of no interest to them. The violence that would engulf the entire Mideast is not something they care anything about.

Theirs is an inhumane, narcissistic blindness to the lives of millions of Middle Easterners.

But, they'll suddenly scream bloody murder if they find their oil spigot turned off and waves of suicide bombers appearing on our shores trained and equipped in the lost regions of the Mid East that they advocated we leave, wouldn't they?

Naturally, they'd blame everyone else, too.

Still, this is probably Bush's last chance to make Iraq work. And the way the left is lining up to defeat even this attempt to solve the issues facing Iraq it may come to pass that he waited too long to propose this. Bush has a fight in Congress before the first boot touches the ground in Iraq and, for all our sake; I hope it is a battle he wins quickly and decisively.

A WONDERFUL DEATH -- And Still the NYT Doesn't Get It

2007-01-11T12:45:00.000-06:00

- Resa LaRu Kirkland

There's something about hope. No matter how bad things get, man still clings to the tiniest shred of faith that things can change. It is innate within all humanity, a truly glorious thing.

Unless it's applied to Islammunism and its co-conspirator the New York Times. That is when hope is pointless and dangerous.

Something wonderful happened on December 30, 2006. It was the perfect way to end the year. They hung one of the most vile human beings to ever walk the planet, and that's saying a lot given mankind's wicked past. Yep, snapped his neck like a twig, which was tremendously merciful considering what that narcissistic SOB did to millions of innocent people. In the end, the victims gave mercy to he who had never shown any…ever.......................
Click HERE To Read On

Pizza Place to Take Mexican Pesos For Pizza

2007-01-10T08:43:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

You may have heard the story kicking about the talk shows and the internet about the South Western Pizza chain that has announced that they will be taking US dollars as well as Mexican Pesos as payment for their pizzas?

In some circles this is causing quite a nativist outrage. Upstanding Americans are crying "anti-Americanism" against this pizza chain, Pizza Patron, which has stores in Southern Arizona, Southern California and other areas of the USA close to the Mexican border.

It seems the natural charge to make against the chain in this day of heightened sensitivity against illegal immigration. But, if one takes a little bit of time to think about this with a bit of reason, one might come to feel this story is just a humbug of a story.

The Pizza chain folks, for their part, are claiming they are surprised at the attention they are getting. I find TAHT claim a bit disingenuous. As I said, we ARE in a heightened sensitivity over immigration, after all. Still, I heard the public info office of the chain on the radio yesterday wondering what all the hullabaloo was about?

Reuters, reporting in a story titled "Texas-based pizza chain accepts Mexican pesos", gives us the public stance of Pizza Patron.

"Unlike many other businesses for us it makes sense. Our stores are located in predominately Hispanic communities and so the majority of our customers are Hispanic," said Andrew Gamm, director of brand development for Pizza Patron.

"We know that a large number of them travel back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico and consequently have some pesos left over in their pocket. The pizza business is extremely competitive and we thought this was a way to position ourselves in relation to our competitors," he told Reuters.

OK, not a delicate promotion they have, to be sure. But, let's think about this for a second.

Many countries, for instance, have business that accepts several different currencies. Especially when they are near border areas or cater to a specific foreign clientele. It isn't unusual... though it is a tad unusual in the United States. (Since our currency is often considered a world currency, it isn't common for Americans to accept foreign money, to be sure. And, I don't want to speak out of turn, but there may even be some laws against usage or foreign currency for debts in the USA.)

Point two: is that this is purely a business decision. i support business more often than not and feel this company has a right to adopt this practice if they feel it will improve their bottom line.

Point three: I'd bet that they stop doing this after a time. Consider that it takes nearly 12 Pesos to make up one US Dollar. That mean a 9 dollar pizza will cost nearly 100 Pesos! That means these stores will have giant buckets of these practically worthless Pesos that they will have to handle and take to exchange. I think this company will find it way more trouble than it is worth to take these Pesos. So, in the end, all the notoriety they get will be for naught.

I have to end up coming down on this story with a big "so what"?

Some Funny Globaloney News

2007-01-10T08:41:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

I love to see it when the Global Warming crowd makes themselves look like the clowns they are. And here is two stories that made me laugh about the Globaloney nuts.

Story #1 :Monument to the Planet Suffers a Hard Fall to Earth

An artist who hoped to stir debate over global warming with his 175-ton quartzite and bronze sculpture “Spaceship Earth” is instead struggling to solve the mystery of its spectacular crash at Kennesaw State University last week.

Questions abound over whether vandals destroyed the sculpture, made by a Finnish-born artist known as Eino, or whether a combination of substandard adhesive and rain caused it to crumble in the middle of the night on Dec. 29 in a collapse the campus police said they felt from their offices around the corner.

The pictures were hilarious. One of this ridiculous giant world sculpture with some figures of kids walking on the top of it and the other picture was the jumbled mess of materials collapsed on the ground.

It's great for a laugh.

Story 2: Ancient global warming was jarring, not subtle, study finds

This one was less funny and more revealing of how intellectually empty the Globaloney crew is.

Foreshadowing potential climate chaos to come, early global warming caused unexpectedly severe and erratic temperature swings as rising levels of greenhouse gases helped transform Earth, a team led by researchers at UC Davis said Thursday.

The global transition from ice age to greenhouse 300 million years ago was marked by repeated dips and rises in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and wild swings in temperature, with drastic effects on forests and vegetation, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

"It was a real yo-yo," said UC Davis geochemist Isabel Montanez, who led researchers from five universities and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "Should we expect similar but faster climate behavior in the future? One has to question whether that is where we are headed."

OK. So WHERE were all the humans on Earth 300 million years ago that caused all this catastrophic global warming? There WEREN'T any, that's where.

So, if this has happened many times before and there was no man about the globe to "cause" it... WHY is man blamed for it now?

I'll tell you why. Because blaming man means blaming capitalism and growth. And which country has the most of that? The USA. Therefore, Globaloney is but a replacement ideology for failed socialists and communists with which they can use to attack the USA and capitalism.

Hence, the Globaloney movement.

Marx would be proud of the pseudo science used to bash capitalism.

UPI Report is Just a Muslim 'Leaders' Press Release

2007-01-10T08:10:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is always amazing when a "news report" is merely just a rehash of some press release, or is, at the very least, a completely one sided report.

Such is the case with a recent UPI "report", "Fight anti-Arab bigotry, Gonzalez told".

UPI is wagging its finger at U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez via a group of "Arab leaders" who are warning the government "to fight anti-Arab bigotry." The whole UPI "report" is nothing but the warnings of these so-called leaders about how filled with bigotry the USA is and how the government must fight it.

With all this hooplah, one would imagine that Arabs are being attacked, mistreated and discriminated against all across the country at an alarming rate. Arab "leader" James Zogby even makes the claim that the government must "reverse this disturbing and increasingly accepted trend of anti-Arab and Muslim bias".

However, recent statistics of the hate crimes committed in 2005, show that only 11 percent represented anti-Muslim crime according to the FBI. By contrast, 68 percent was anti-Jewish. further, anti-Muslim crimes total less than 1,000 cases in the entire country whereas attacks on blacks and Jews as a result of bigotry number in the many thousands. So, claims of anti-Muslim crime being an "increasingly accepted trend" is overblown, nonsense.

Yet, UPI gives us the unvarnished claims of rampant anti-Muslim bigotry by these so-called leaders and gives us NO balanced view of the absurdity and outrageousness of their claims.

In other words, UPI was just a mouth piece for lies told by activists.

We should expect more from a "news" wire agency. It seems doubtful if we'll ever get it, these days.

John Edwards and universal health care

2007-01-10T08:08:00.000-06:00

- By Michael M. Bates

Taking a much needed break from primping, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards launched his 2008 presidential bid the other day. A campaign cornerstone is the promise of universal health care.

The emphasis here is on the word promise. Although he's had literally years to work out the details, Edwards has few specifics, if any, that he wishes to disclose.

During a blog session on the liberal Daily Kos website last week, the Democrat said:

"I believe we need a universal health care system where ALL Americans have health care coverage. I'm working on a plan right now for universal healthcare, and if you have ideas I would love to hear them."

Hold it. I thought HE was the guy with the ideas. Maybe not, at least when it comes to the tar baby (if you'll pardon the expression) of universal health care.

We're close enough to easily see the experience of our friends to the north in Canada. And what an experience it has been............................................
Click HERE To Read On

Nock on Shaw's Socialism

2007-01-09T08:42:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Celebrated libertarian analyst Albert Jay Nock's 1945 review of George Bernard Shaw's Everybody's Political What's What exposes the fundamental flaw in socialism and its American liberal-progressive doctrine. As we begin a new Congress dominated by liberal-socialist-progressives, it is useful to have Mr. Nock's perspective.

The Mises.org website posting titled The Socialism of Mr. Shaw is a reminder to us elderly, and a notice to the young, that however delightful Shaw was as a playwright, he was very far out in left field with regard to politics and economics. Not surprisingly, just as is true today of the media and theatre today, Shaw's plays project pro-socialist views.

Most people today who know of Shaw at all probably acquired that acquaintance indirectly via the hugely successful Broadway musical My Fair Lady, which was an adaptation of Shaw's Pygmalion. To appreciate Shaw's role outside the literary field, it's necessary to understand a bit more about the late Victorian period in England and its impact upon political and economic doctrine in the United States..........................
Click HERE To Read On

We Must Negotiate with Iraqi Terrorists and Insurgents Say 'Experts'

2007-01-08T08:32:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Chronicle staff writer, Robert Collier, wants the US to "negotiate" with the radical, Islamist, terrorists and the old guard Saddamists that are vexing Iraq's attempts to move into the 21st century preventing them in their laudable attempt to build a nation answerable to Iraqis of every stripe.

"U.S. must negotiate with insurgents and militias, experts say", Collier breathlessly informs us. His "experts", though, leave much to be desired for reliability.

Collier seems to think the insurgents and terror outfits should be treated as if they are merely interested parties, as if they were the same kind of political party or faction we are used to in the west. Someone has not taken the time to inform Mr. Collier about exactly what these factions want in the Middle East, sadly.

Collier brings up what seems an interesting point in how to get people to the negotiating table he so wants to set.

In interviews with Chronicle correspondents in Iraq and by telephone with a Chronicle reporter in San Francisco, two dozen Sunni and Shiite hard-liners revealed a paradox. None could fully explain how to bring his side's sectarian killings under control, yet all emphasized that peace cannot take hold without the approval of those holding the weapons.

Unfortunately, as he moves forward with his piece he proves he doesn't understand the situation at all. He fails to realize that the parties who are funding the radical Islamists come from sources that have neither the desire, nor the ability to come to any negotiating table in Iraq. The people funding and driving the terrorists are not generally even Iraqis. They are often foreigners and ideologues that require that their enemies fall without any "negotiations" to the matter. And, those who are pushing the internal insurgency are out of power Saddamites who similarly aren't interested in "negotiating" but just simply want all their power back and do not care a fig how they do it. Or they are local militias and warlord leaders who have little interest in national political discussions.

In other words, the factions are varied, but few are interested in any negotiations.

Worse, nearly every person he quotes or relies on to inform him of the situation in Iraq are either "name withheld for security reasons" or people who cannot be officially linked to any power base or group. So, it is curious why Collier seems to think they represent anyone or should be relied upon for solid intel on the situation in Iraq... at least solid enough to base policy upon?

Collier introduces us to the pontifications of, in the Paper's words, "Two Iraqi correspondents for The Chronicle, who asked not to be identified for security reasons". He also quoted a former Saddam era functionary who has been out of power for years: "Mudafar al-Amin, who was Iraq's ambassador to Britain from 1999 until the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003..."

After reading the entire, long report by Mr. Collier one cannot help but be struck with the fact that this "former Republican Guard general" that Collier is so taken with is merely angling to regain his own lost power.

The former Republican Guard general, for example, estimated that al Qaeda's attacks represent "only 10 percent of the resistance," and he said that if the Hussein-era army were remobilized, it could "easily" stamp out al Qaeda and other terrorists.

In fact, nearly everything this "general" says is calculated to bring back Saddam's former army officers to a position of power. It's amazing that Collier was so bamboozled by this supposed insider.

Collier doesn't seem to understand the success of the clear and hold strategy that US forces have employed a policy that should be first considered to set the groundwork for building the nation's political infrastructure before moving to any kind of "negotiations". Every place that the US military has brought overwhelming force into play, and then firmly held, has stabilized allowing the stage to be created for local parties to come with a newfound desire to negotiate.

The purpose of the clear and hold strategy is to promote stability. Once an area has been cleared of insurgents, the people of a community may begin to expect a certain amount of personal safety in their daily activities and will, then, be more able to accept their national government and their political processes, giving them the credence and legitimacy that a populace must invest to sustain a working government.

Instead, Collier seems to be suggesting we give all insurgents upfront legitimacy without even determining if they do, indeed, have any standing from which to negotiate. He seems to think we should just accept to his negotiating table any former general who claims to still represent an army. This would not promote unity but would only increase fractionalization.

He also relies on the proclamations of an NGO created in 1994 that claims to want to spread peace about the planet. The International Crisis Group has been saying for some time that we should "negotiate" with anyone and everyone in Iraq, but seems not to have any real ideas who those individuals might be. Naturally this group wants to rely on the UN to start these palliative negotiations. I wonder if the ICG can give us a list of any successes the UN has had with such "negotiations" the past?

Both Collier and NGOs like the ICG fail to understand that "negotiating" leads to little of consequence with these types of foes. Why should they acquiesce to the central government's demands, for instance, if their own power base is wholly legitimized? What would cause them to willingly give up the power that has been handed them by a slot at any official "negotiations"? If their tenuous claims to power are supported they are far more likely to strive for more, especially if the central government cannot exert its own claims to power over them.

That is why the clear and hold strategy is so successful. Without something to temper the insurgent's insatiable grasp for power, some reason for them to feel it necessary to come to the negotiating table needy of compromise, negotiations are a complete waste of time.

But here comes the ICG and the SanFran Chronicle willing to hand any insurgent a free pass to legitimate power. All they need do is kill a few hundred civilians and attack a US convoy or two and, viola! They are an instant "leader" that should be "negotiated" with.

This idea of Collier's is a sure plan for worsening conditions, more in-fighting and further sectionalizing of Iraq's worst hotspots as well as a return to power for people who are responsible for the rapes and tortures of uncounted Iraqi citizens for decades. On top of that it invites more external meddling by al Qaeda and Iran.

No, instead of sensible analysis, what Collier gave us was an example of staff writer trying desperately to make news with his "exclusive" sources and to drive the agenda as opposed to reporting on anything. It is an attempt to make the reporter relevant but is not any serious policy discussion at all. Collier also represents the inability of certain people in the west to understand the threat that faces us in Iraq.

Collier reveals that he is not on the side of the Iraqi people, the US military, or the American people if he wants to reward and legitimize murderers, warlords, and strongmen instead of strengthening an evolving Iraqi government.

Thanks but no thanks for the "help" Mr. Collier.

Revision of My Announcement for the Presidency

2007-01-08T08:21:00.001-06:00

- By Vince Johnson

REVISION OF ANNOUNCEMENT MADE JANUARY 1, 2007

In last weeks REALITY FACTOR, I indicated I would announce my candidacy for President of the United States sometime in May 2007. After considerable inner deliberation, I am having second thoughts.

As soon as I announced that I would "announce" in May 2007, people started asking questions. One of the first reveals the problem: "Who would I appoint as Secretary of the Treasury?" I had planned to appoint Donald Trump. But when I realized this idea was based on my secret desire to fire him, I began to think it might be wise to re-consider. Maybe Bill Gates would make a good choice. If we ran a little short on cash, he could bail us out.

Then somebody asked me who I would pick as a running mate? This stopped me cold. No matter who I picked, it would make half the electorate mad. If he were a Liberal, all the Conservatives would get upset. If it were a Conservative, all the Liberals would get upset. If he were an Independent, all the Liberals and all the Conservatives would get all riled up in a rare moment of unified uproar. If it were a man, most of the women would be insulted. If it were a woman, most of the men would be insulted...........

Click HERE To Read On

AP Pelosi's 'Historic Moment for Women' -- What About Condi?

2007-01-07T01:25:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

The AP isn't the only one going ga-ga over the ascension of Nancy Pelosi to become the "first Female Speaker of the House". We are seeing the fawning on just about every news outlet out there. And it is, indeed, quite an historic change from the long line of gentlemen that have taken the Speaker's gavel.

First female House speaker, Nancy Pelosi basks in historic day

WASHINGTON (AP) - San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi made history today by becoming the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.

Standing on the House floor with her six grandchildren, Pelosi said her election marked a historic moment for women in U.S. history.

Among the onlookers in the packed visitors' galleries were actor Richard Gere and singer Tony Bennett.

I am not sure why the mention of the so-called celebrities was important in the story, but as they wish.

Still, I just have one big question about all the hooplah about this "historic moment for women"...

Where was all the hooplah when Condi Rice took her place in the Bush Administration?
She had a few "historic days" herself, didn't she? Where was the AP -- and everyone else -- going nuts about Condi?

Just wondering?

Retiring at age 21

2007-01-07T01:00:00.000-06:00

- By Hans Zeiger

For awhile I have contemplated writing this column but haven’t had the full sensibility to do it yet. I began submitting columns online at age seventeen, back in the year 2002. I began the process with the hubris of a budding pundit and kept the habit until now, with a declining sense of the value of this kind of writing. Now I am twenty-one and about 21 percent half-educated.

I now know at least this: I don’t know enough to be weekly offering my opinions as though possessed of some eminence. There is a thousand times more sense in one of Seneca’s ancient moral sketches or Joseph Addison’s essays three hundred years ago than in the freshest columns I could put forth on any topic. Wisdom is better nurtured in the memorization of Solomon’s Proverbs than the attempt to produce new proverbs for the age of YouTube and iPod. The Bible is better for the soul than the morning newspaper.

Liberals are the ambitious ones by nature; I think I have a liberal nature. A sense of proportion that results from education and experience moderates opinions and makes a mind conservative. Not that I wasn’t politically conservative at age seventeen when I started on this present course, but it was conservatism wild and liberal.

Regret is not the word for lessons learned. I have learned that punditry, for all of its good sense every now and then, is not my calling. .................
Click HERE To Read On

Dead Hiker's Father: Media Helped Kill My Son

2007-01-06T22:22:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

The story of James Kim, who died of hypothermia in a remote part of Oregon after setting out on foot to seek help for his stranded family, was a sad capper to the year 2006 for many. A lot of things went wrong for the Kims as they started out for a holiday trip only to have it end in disaster.

Spencer H. Kim, James Kim's Father, has today a plea appearing in the Washington Post titled The Lessons In My Son's Death. It is a message to Oregon's emergency services community to help stop another tragedy such as befell his son from happening to anyone else.

He has many suggestions from better marked roads (his son accidentally drove down an unmarked logging road and ended up stranded far from help), to timelier emergency services and better tracking of cell phone and credit card usage. But his last point was, to my mind, the most tragic and least sensible of the troubles that befell his son and daughter-in-law.

And that tragedy was supplied by the media.

Finally, the Federal Aviation Administration classification code for Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR) to limit media presence during a life-or-death search-and-rescue operation should be more strictly enforced. A TFR is used to restrict aircraft operations within designated areas to separate "non-participating" aircraft from those engaged in official activities, including search-and-rescue operations.

Unfortunately for James, aviation authorities acquiesced to media requests to relax restrictions and allowed low-altitude media flights in the area while the aerial search was still underway. This untimely and irrational decision caused many rescue helicopters to abandon their operations for one full afternoon due to dangerous conditions created by media airplanes. It took personal pleas to Washington to get restrictions reinstated. The search, not media interest, should be the top priority.

(I bolded the last line for emphasis)

Who can doubt that, in the rush to get the story, the media has, once again, turned human tragedy into mere fodder for their air time? And, it is entirely believable that a media more interested in their own needs did nothing but get in the way of the people who were trying to save lives.

Just as the Media lends credence and succor to terrorists by slavishly reporting their every propagandistic word and deed, so they insinuate themselves into the lives of people suffering great emotional distress just so that they can "get" their story.

The media has a lot to answer for in general, but now, according to Mr. Kim, they have the death of James Kim added to their list of black deeds.

I'll close with Father Kim's brief memorial to his son:

With his last heroic determination to rescue his family, James proved himself to be a man of action. My son deserves a legacy worthy of that man. As a tribute to him, I am determined to follow his lead and do all I can to prevent another senseless tragedy.

Like a Thief in the Night, The Defacing of an American Chapel

2007-01-06T06:31:00.000-06:00

-by Warner Todd Huston

When the extremist Taleban junta demolished the centuries old Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001, the world replied with outrage at the attacks on those ancient artifacts. It was, indeed, an outrage against art, antiquity, history, and religion as these great statues carved into a mountainside in the Bamyan Valley were brutally dynamited by the Islamist extremists then holding Afghanistan in thrall. It was right that the world community expressed their disgust at this obscene destruction.

One would think that no such outrage could happen in the United States, that no one would be uncivilized enough to propose the elimination of a long standing artifact, merely because it had a religious origin.

One would be wrong.

Since 1935 a free standing cross has been standing in Wren Chapel, the place of prayer that has stood for generations as part of the college campus of William and Mary College near Williamsburg, Virginia. Encompassed in the Christopher Wren building, which stood during Thomas Jefferson's days (though this one is one re-built after fire), the Chapel has served generations of William and Mary students. Even as the college was founded with an intimate connection to the Anglican Church in the beginning and later the Episcopal Church, Wren Chapel has served the student body of all religious affiliation and has, for years, had a practice of giving users of the Chapel the option to have the Cross removed during their scheduled time of usage.

That, it appears, was not good enough for School president Gene Nichol who announced that the Cross would be completely removed from its long standing place in the Chapel. Worse, he made this move with no consultation with the school administration, the student body or the alumnus. It was his own, arbitrary decision.

The only announcement the president seemingly meant to issue was a brief email by Melissa Engimann, W&M’s assistant director for Historic Campus. Apparently, Engimann meant to explain to employees who work in the Wren building what had happened. "In order to make the Wren Chapel less of a faith-specific space, and to make it more welcoming to students, faculty, staff and visitors of all faiths, the cross has been removed from the altar area", she wrote.

This idiotic PCism was fully endorsed by our intrepid president later.

At the end of October and after the shock of this absurd decision dawned on everyone, the good president tried to further justify his decision by saying, "Questions have lately been raised about the use of the Wren Chapel and the cross that is sometimes displayed there. Let me be clear. I have not banished the cross from the Wren Chapel."

Interesting how he tried to massage the truth by making it seem as if the cross was only "sometimes" displayed, when it was in reality only sometimes removed!

On December 20th, president Nichol belatedly decided to bring the issue to the student body and alumnus. In a public letter he "apologized" for his precipitous decision... but retreated not one step.

"I likely acted too quickly and should have consulted more broadly. ... The decision was also announced to the university community in an inelegant way", he meekly admitted.

To assuage the hurt feelings he universally inflicted he offered a compromise. He would, he magnanimously claimed, allow a plaque to commemorate the "Chapel’s origins as an Anglican place of worship and symbol of the Christian beginnings of the College" to be placed inside the Chapel. Of course, such a weak effort only commemorates the fact that his decision has turned the Chapel into some average common room, used for whatever purpose is needed and is no longer a Chapel further cementing the destruction of the historic room.

Some compromise.

Nichols went into further detail about how foreboding the Chapel is to students not of Christian background to justify his PC removal of the Cross and re-branding of the room. "I have been saddened to learn of potential students and their families who have been escorted into the Chapel on campus tours and chosen to depart immediately thereafter."

A fanciful tale, Mr. President. Even f true, does it justify the destruction of the historic purpose of the room? Are there no other places on the campus where these people of "other religions" can have their thin skin massaged enough to make them feel "included"?

Nichol went on to wax poetic at the new level of happiness he claims his decision has provided:

"A number of Muslim and Jewish students now report, for the first time, that they are using the Chapel for prayer and contemplation. And I was pleased to learn that the student organization Hillel recently made a reservation to use space in the Wren for the first time anyone can remember."

Can Mr. Nichol honestly say that all these people were somehow prevented from observing their own faiths or having their "meetings" before he summarily removed the Christian intent of the Chapel? What a ridiculous claim it would have been if he had.

With one of the last few sentences of his statement, Nichol said, "We believe in the cause of the College--its singular history, its tradition of life-changing learning rooted in character and rigor, and its promising role in the future of the nation and the world."

The Taliban would have been proud of president Nichol, as they would surely have used similar rhetoric to justify their destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha.

So, another Christian symbol is wiped off the face of the Earth to be replaced by the religious sentiment of the multicultural, a PCism that erases anything not of its liking and banishes it from sight. Wren Chapel--or is it now just the Wren room-- is now safe for use, cleansed of all that horrible Christianity.

Yes, the Taliban would be proud of president Nichol.

AP: War Bad for Your Health

2007-01-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

One must read the latest AP non-report about the effects of war on people with a big dose of "duh" in mind.

Study: War Trauma May Raise Heart Risks

A groundbreaking study of 1,946 male veterans of World War II and Korea suggests that vets with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are at greater risk of heart attacks as they age.

The conclusion: war is bad for your health.

Wow. Wonder how much taxpayer money was wasted on THAT study!?

At least our veteran's aren't so stupid that they wouldn't have been able to know it all upfront, without a "study".

"It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out," said John Oliveira of New Bedford, Mass., a former Navy public affairs officer and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, I certainly don't want to make light of the problems of coping that our veterans confront upon returning from war. Robert E. Lee once said that it is good that war is so horrible or we'd get too fond of it and he knew whereof he spoke.

People are vastly different and, whereas some may never experience much discomfort or anguish from their war service, others are bothered with the mental images for the rest of their lives. And we, as a society, should be observant and responsive to the needs of our returning heroes even as they advance into old age.

But the study we have here is so cursory that it is beyond any scientific use. The AP report mentions the following:

The data also didn't track how frequently the men exercised, so researchers couldn't tell if the men with PTSD symptoms were getting more or less exercise than other veterans.

In other words, no controlling factors were implemented, the only requirement for the study being that the subjects were in the military. And, while it is logically a prerequisite qualification necessary to be included in a study on the military, it isn't enough of a control factor to inform the findings.

It would be like deciding that all people who get haircuts are women based only on who goes in and out of the corner beauty salon!

The AP, though, does not rate the scientific viability of the study and even adds their own irrelevant part to the story.

(Dr. Gary J) Kennedy, who was not involved in the study, said treatment options for PTSD include drugs, talk therapy and behavioral changes such as getting more exercise and taking action to solve small problems in life rather than shutting down emotionally.

"We've got a whole generation of veterans coming back (from Iraq and Afghanistan) and their health needs are just going to be tremendous," Kennedy said.

A "whole generation" Mr. Kennedy? We hardly have a "whole generation" who will be "coming back" with "tremendous" health care needs. We certainly will have a large group who's needs must be satisfied, but this is no "generation" the size of WWII we are talking about. No need to exaggerate and blow the facts out of proportion.

It was most ridiculous that the AP is quoting someone who "was not involved in the study". WHY are we bothering with him in this story again?

In any case, this story really adds up to no information that is useful to the reader and starts with a "conclusion" that everyone takes as obvious in the first place; War is bad for you.

Duh, AP. Duh!

John Kerry: Latest Perspective on Iraq

2007-01-06T04:52:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

The ever-changing (aka flip-flopping) Senator Kerry gives us his latest straight scoop on Iraq.

In a December 24, 2006, Washington Post article, Senator Kerry shares his insights after literally having been on all sides of the question in the past. His latest thoughts originate in the visit that he and Senator Christopher Dodd made recently to Iraq.

The Senator's conclusion is: The only hope for stability lies in pushing Iraqis to forge a sustainable political agreement on federalism, distributing oil revenues and neutralizing sectarian militias. And that will happen only if we set a deadline to redeploy our troops.

We'll look at that in a few paragraphs down, but first let's indulge in the fun of a few pot-shots at an easy target to hit.........................
Click HERE To Read On

AP: Some 'Capt. Hussein' Proof? Yet, More Questions Remain

2007-01-05T08:18:00.000-06:00

As last reported on Publius' Forum, the AP has been under fire for a November '06 report that 6 Iraqi Sunnis were burned alive in sectarian violence a claim that was never adequately proven and is hotly disputed by both Iraqi Government and US Military officials. And, as many Bloggers investigated (such as Michelle Malkin and Patrick Frey of Patterico's Pontifications among many more), the identity of the AP's lone source seemed impossible to establish.

At last it seems some light has been shed on the existence of this capt. Hussein as we get the story from Michelle Malkin's site. Michelle has been the chief bulldog in efforts to reveal the AP's mysterious source.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.

It looks like we just might have an answer -- though it is not yet assured that this person is, indeed, the "capt. Jamil Hussein" the AP used as a source. Still, the revelation that such a man actually exists seems to answer to the doubts that the AP actually had a live source for this story.

But it's only a start toward solving the controversies surrounding this AP story.

There are still many questions that dog this story and the AP is not out of the woods yet where it concerns the truth of whether 6 Iraqi Sunnis were burned alive or not. And that, not the existence of this capt. Hussein, has always been the central point to the dispute. The existence of the source always was a sidelight, a distraction, to the story, not the main problem.

There is not a shred of proof that the 6 burning Iraqis incident ever happened and this is an issue that the AP has still not satisfactorily addressed. There's no independent source, no burnt bodies ... little of the story has checked out other than the source, at long last. And THAT has taken over a month and a lot of recrimination and controversy to straighten out.

Central points of this story

Did the incident ever even happen and where is the proof?
Why does the AP publish news stories based on only one witness with no corroboration?
How long has the AP been publishing stories on the word of only one witness?

As I wrote in my first report on this issue on NewsBusters:

And, it has always been a staple of journalism that more than one source be required to publish a story reported as "fact". After all, if only ONE source is ever needed for a story, then anyone can publish anything as "fact" merely upon any single person's say so.

The AP's inability to substantiate their source was but a small part of the questions the AP faces overs its credibility here.

Expect the AP to wash its hands of this issue, though, imagining it is a closed case now that we seem to have proof of the existence of capt. Hussein.

As for the rest of us, there is a long way to go before we could be satisfied that the AP is practicing due diligence in their reporting.

Official Announcement Set For May 2007!

2007-01-05T08:03:00.001-06:00

- By Vince Johnson

I have decided to run as an Independent Candidate for President of the United States of America in 2008. The "official" announcement will be made sometime around May 1, 2007 at three separate locations:

1. Beach Dog Cafe in Lincoln City, Oregon. 2. Coast Roast Coffee Company at Salishan in Gleneden Beach, Oregon. 3. A site yet to be determined in Stayton, Salem, or Aumsville, Oregon.

This decision was made after determining that the American Electorate is currently divided into two categories

The "Stupid Fool" Category, which believes politicians are capable of running our country and continues to elect and re-elect them, term after term.

The "Special Fool" Category which recognizes the reality that politicians are ruining the country rather than running it.......

Click HERE To Read On

Wa. Post: Good Hearted Dems 'Torn' about Shutting GOP Out

2007-01-04T08:20:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

This morning the Washington Post published a story about how the Democrats are going to exclude Republicans from participating in the "First 100 Hours" plan that the Democrats intend to implement when they officially become the majority in the House of Representatives this week. And, while they do clearly state that the Democrat majority is going against a campaign promise to be less partisan, the Post just cannot help but make it seem as if it pains those poor Democrats that Republicans are so mean that they cannot include them in compliance with their promises.

Democrats To Start Without GOP Input

But instead of allowing Republicans to fully participate in deliberations, as promised after the Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats now say they will use House rules to prevent the opposition from offering alternative measures, assuring speedy passage of the bills and allowing their party to trumpet early victories.

Wow, breaking a campaign promise before they even take the reigns of power! But, wait... the Post papers over this promise breaking by saying how bad the Dems feel about this lapse.

Democratic leaders say they are torn between giving Republicans a say in legislation and shutting them out to prevent them from derailing Democratic bills.

Gosh. That must make it all OK. Those poor, sad Dems must really be broken up over this. Why, if Republicans weren't so evil and all, the Dems COULD let them join in the legislation process. It isn't like the Republicans were really elected fairly, anyway.

"There is a going to be a tension there," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "My sense is there's going to be a testing period to gauge to what extent the Republicans want to join us in a constructive effort or whether they intend to be disruptive. It's going to be a work in progress."

Um, you mean disruptive like the Democrats have been for a decade, Mr. Van Hollen?

And, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly is already priming the pump for their "Fist 100 Hours" plan to fail with no complaint or comment about such backtracking from the Post.

"The test is not the first 100 hours," he said. "The test is the first six months or the first year. We will do what we promised to do."

And after telling us how the Democrats intend to have secret meetings closed to the public and won't allow the GOP to participate in the process if they can help it, the Post assures us that:

For several reasons, House Democrats are assiduously trying to avoid some of the heavy-handed tactics they resented under GOP rule. They say they want to prove to voters they are setting a new tone on Capitol Hill. But they are also convinced that Republicans lost the midterms in part because they were perceived as arrogant and divisive.

REALLY!!

When all is said and done, and despite the rather soft sell the Post tried to spin what is the coming Democrat Power grab, there will be no "change in tone" in Washington. Especially from Democrats who have, historically, been far more prone to mean-spirited power plays.

"If you're talking about 100 hours, you're talking about no obstruction whatsoever, no amendments offered other than those approved by the majority," said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University . "I would like to think after 100 hours are over, the Democrats will adhere to their promise to make the system a little more equitable. But experience tells me it's really going to be casting against type."

At least one quote in the piece was right on.

Naturally, Mr. Baker does not work for the Washington Post.

WHEN WE WERE COWBOYS... We Were Invincible

2007-01-04T08:16:00.000-06:00

- Resa LaRu Kirkland

Golda Meir once said (paraphrasing) "...the fighting will stop when they love their children more than they hate us." I've said multiple times that the #1 killers of Palestinian children--or any child whose parents follow Islam--are Palestinian adults. The left's mantra of "Won't someone puhlease think of the children?" rings hollow and impotent given their appalling inaction on behalf of the children who truly need it--children of Islam. Their suffering is inexcusably ignored by these self-styled paragons of the defenseless. These little ones are on their own, left to their own devices, and in the hands of Islamic adults, those "devices" are most likely Improvised and Explosive. And all because the left in this land and others are too gutless to admit to their own horrifically failed policies. Pathetic.

Get the picture? If you do, congratulations; you're not a loserly hippy. You're what we used to call a cowboy--an American Cowboy.

And when we were Cowboys, we were invincible......................
Click HERE To Read On

AP: Praising Islam for American Youth

2007-01-04T07:58:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

In apparent pursuit of their status as the chief news source for Islam in the west, the AP published a puff piece about how wonderful it is for young Americans to participate in the Muslim practice of the Hajj -- a required pilgrimage to Mecca.

Here is how wonderful and instructive it is...

The 20-year-old American tells his hajj pilgrimage stories ... and saw a man drop dead while circling the Kaaba.

Well, how "inspiring" it is to see a man drop dead at a religious function. Is that the sort of thing that should be praised as a civilized expression of religion?

"Dude, I saw it, the guy had the most peaceful smile on his face," (said) Adil Muschelewicz ... Muschelewicz didn't know the cause of the man's death -- exhaustion maybe, he said -- but it became one of the many powerful religious moments that have shaken him during the trip.

"I looked at his face and I looked at the Kaaba, and it was like he was happy, he'd gotten close to God. It just went boom, like this deep bass line in my heart," he said. "It was so emotional. I was by myself, in this wild place I'd never been before."

Isn't this somewhat shocking? Is it a western ideal to have people keeling over dead at religious services? Is it something we should celebrate for our children?

For the AP it is a great thing, it appears.

For young American Muslims far from home, the hajj pilgrimage is an awesome adventure that they say deepens their faith and connects them with the wide range of Muslim peoples.

The AP also seemed to have a multicultural orgasm as they praised the "soundtrack" of "languages" present during the Hajj.

It is also a sensory overload, with a soundtrack in languages from around the world -- Arabic, English, Turkish, Malay and Bahasa, Urdu and Hindi. Intense poverty collides with wealth, with some pilgrims sleeping on the garbage-strewn pavement and others staying in "five-star" tents with meals and other facilities provided.

Are we advocating for our children to go to Mecca and sleep on garbage strewn streets?

Just what the heck is so great about this and why is the AP celebrating it so? It all seems rather perplexing until you get to the AP's real message. A little later in the piece we see the AP's real point revealed. The AP is celebrating American Muslims distancing themselves from the west and gaining "connection to the Middle East" to give them a fuller expression of Islam.

But for American Muslim parents, it is also a chance to connect their children with a religious heritage they have only heard about growing up in the U.S. Some of the younger pilgrims -- children of immigrants from the Islamic world -- may have occasionally visited their parents' homelands. Others, whose parents are converts to Islam -- like Muschelewicz -- have less direct connection to the Middle East.

Obviously the AP is pushing the idea that one cannot be a proper Muslim in the USA and that one needs a "connection" to the Middle East to be a better observer of the faith.

But, it is doubtful that religion is what the AP is concerned about. What they are concerned about is furthering the proposition that the USA is somehow a lesser place. Lesser for Muslims or anyone else. The USA, in the AP's eyes, retards the proper development of a Muslim as it does development of anything else besides self-centered, consumer driven, halfwits that are not cosmopolitan enough to celebrate other cultures.

Yes, when all is said and done, this is just another excuse for the AP to bash the west and the USA and another way for the AP to advocate that our youth distance themselves from it.

I'll Be A Guest on WBAL, Boston Tonight...

2007-01-03T11:01:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

I have been asked to be a guest Thursday night (01/04/07) on the Bruce Elliot Show on WBAL, Boston at 11PM East Coast time.

I will be discussing the Illinois schoolboy who was thrown out of school for turning in a toy pistol to his Principal.

See the story hereSchoolboy Turns in Found 'Weapon', Gets Suspended For Effort.

You can visit the Bruce Elliot show website to see all that Bruce is up to. WBAL, Bruce Elliot Show

Kansas City Star: Muslims 'better attuned' to world politics than many 'US-raised Christians'

2007-01-03T09:43:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

One does not need to look much farther than the Newspapers in the USA to understand why we may lose this war against Islamist fascism and terrorism. At the very least, the Kansas City Star's Mary Sanchez displays her desire to condemn everything American and to make excuses for Muslim terrorists.

Using the "six imams expelled from an airplane" story as a springboard to wag a finger in the face of we ignorant Americans, Sanchez warns that we just don't get it where it concerns distinguishing between "Muslims who are a threat, and those who are not."

Naturally, it isn't the fault of any Muslim, either. No, it's all the fault of those uninformed American Christians.

Funny. I missed the part where Christians flew planes into the World trade Towers, or when Christians cut off Nick Berg's head, killed journalists and soldiers, and perpetrated so many suicide bombings.

The only crystal-clear thing is this: similar incidents will occur. We are at the beginning of a long process to gain a better understanding of, comfort level with, Muslims in the United States.

Once again, a "journalist" places the onus of understanding on us and asks nothing of those poor misunderstood Muslims -- you know, the Muslims who are perpetrating so much violence the world over?

Were she in the 1930's, Sanchez might well have been the type to plead for us to "understand" the Nazis, too.

Amusingly, Sanchez made an effort to sound like she was attempting to come from the middle ground.

"Can't we all get along" dialogues are not going to help us much right now.

An argument she promptly demolishes by claiming that Muslims are better informed on world politics.

Many Muslims are better attuned to world politics, world faiths, than many US-raised Christians. Sometimes this is due to them being immigrants, or having closer ties to foreign lands. But erasing this global gap is a first start in disconnects between Muslims and Christians within the United States.

It is a bit hard to believe that Muslims are better informed, though, considering that literacy is many times higher in the west than it is in the Muslim world. Muslims are more prone to wild-eyed conspiracy theories -- a Jew behind every door and an American paying for it -- than a Daily-Koz reader on a full pot of coffee, clutching the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine.

For Sanchez, this is another opportunity to push multiculturalism and to scold us about how racist we really are.

Then she says that "can't we all get along" is not much help because her solution is to tell us to bow to the enemy's wishes. After all, we aren't cosmopolitan enough, not worldly enough to understand those poor, put upon Muslims. Sanchez feels it her duty to let us all know that it's really all our fault anyway.

Editor & Publisher: Disgraced ex CNN News Chief, Eason Jordan, Attacks AP Over 6 Burning Iraqis Report

2007-01-03T08:02:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

As I reported on Newsbusters the Associated Press is refusing to back down from, nor give satisfactory evidence for, its November report that 6 Iraqi Sunnis were burned alive in sectarian violence, a claim heavily disputed seemingly by everyone but the AP.

The AP based their reports of this grisly violence on the word of a single "witness" they named as Iraqi police captain, Jamail Hussein. Unfortunately for the AP, and despite quite a lot of effort by quite a few people, this captain of Iraqi police cannot be located so that the story can be substantiated. The AP, however, continues to claim that he exists despite the paucity of evidence.

And, also as reported on NewsBusters, Editor & Publisher posted a story making fun of Conservative Bloggers for attacking the AP assuming that they had discovered via a post on the Winds of Change Blog that this captain Hussein had been found. E&P gleefully claimed that folks who criticized the AP for the lack of proof of the existence of the mythical AP source, such as Michelle Malkin, would have to "eat crow" since they imagined him finally found.

Since E&P's taunting of Conservative Bloggers, no further confirmation of the existence of captain Hussein has been brought forth and his existence is still shrouded in mystery.

Well, now disgraced CNN News Chief Eason Jordan has stepped up his own criticism of the AP's refusal to settle this dispute with a plaintive call to the AP to come clean on a new site called Iraqslogger. Jordan wrapped up his call to bring the AP to account with: "Until this matter is resolved, the AP's credibility will suffer."*

Editor & Publisher dutifully reports this little conflict as if they are merely practicing good journalism while conveniently forgetting their gleeful attack of Conservative Bloggers of only three weeks ago.

Still, despite Editor & Publisher's faulty memory, this Capt. Hussein controversy rolls on making the AP out to be liars, Editor & Publisher to be partisan hacks, and Conservative Bloggers to be right... again.

* And Eason Jordan should know from suffering credibility. For some background on why Eason Jordan left CNN try this story, Blogger's Success- CNN's Eason Jordon Quits.

When Did Black Become A Christmas Color?

2007-01-03T08:01:00.000-06:00

- By Frederick Meekins

It has been said that socially Evangelicalism is five to ten years "behind" the broader culture. John Warwick Montgomery once remarked that America was where old German heresies went to die, meaning that eventually the intellectual refuse of the elite came to infect the American church no matter how reluctant the bride of Christ in the United States might have initially been to such doctrinal fads.

Back in the 90's, Evangelicals looked on in astonishment as Postmodernists from lofty chairs in academia went about undermining the notion that one should not be judged by the color of one's skin but rather by the content of one's character. Instead. these deconstructionists suggested that one should be assessed primarily as a member of one's herd and judged in light of either the sins or disadvantages of one's forefathers.

As a result, whereas in years previous those of certain backgrounds struggled to take their place in and recognized as full members of society, the trend reversed itself and those skilled in exploiting past resentments were able to shame the majority into allowing certain demographic classifications to cordon themselves off as they saw fit while denying this proclivity to the members of the most numerous group. Though conservative Christians initially bucked such a trend by admonishing that it is ultimately the individual that Jesus died and rose from the dead for and will whom be judged, they too are now succumbing to this social pressure......................................
Click HERE To Read On

Jimmy Carter's Cash Links to Arab Terrorists

2007-01-02T02:37:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Jimmy Carter should be banished as a foreign agent He has consistently done his best for decades to undermine the USA's strategic interests in the Middle East.

It is sickening that he is given respect and treated as an honorable American.

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.

A quick survey of the major contributors to the Carter Center reveals hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi and Gulf contributors. But it was BCCI that helped Mr. Carter established his center.

BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. Abedi wanted the bank to reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and "the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists."

Shortly after assuming office, in March 1977, Mr. Carter made his first public statement regarding a Palestinian "homeland." Since then, he has devoted much of his time to denouncing Israel's self-defense against Palestinian terrorism, which he claims is not only "abominable oppression and persecution" of the Palestinians, but also damages U.S. interests in the region.

Read more of this excellent article...

Carter's Arab financiers

Iraq, Doing FAR Better Than Reported

2007-01-02T00:58:00.002-06:00

-By Warner Todd Hsuton

We report when they get it wrong, and now we can report when they get it right...

And it's about time some American news source describes how well most of Iraq is doing since the US led overthrow of Saddam's regime. It is a fact that escapes too many in the western media who's only goal seems to be to attack America in general and George W. Bush n particular.

THE BOOM OUTSIDE BAGHDAD

WHILE the American political elite is using Iraq as an excuse for fighting internal political wars, a different reality is taking shape in parts of this war-torn nation. Wherever some measure of security is assured - that is to say in more than 80 percent of Iraq - towns and villages long left to die a slow death are creeping back to life.

Nowhere is this slow but steady return to life more startling than in Um Qasr, in the southeast extremity of Iraq on the Persian Gulf. Four years ago, this was a jumble of rusting quays, abandoned houses and gutted buildings. By the spring of 2003, its population had dwindled to a few dozen, along with hundreds of stray dogs. There was even talk of abandoning it altogether.

The story goes on to describe how an Iraqi cell phone company is poised to make 500 million dollars this year and how soft drinks and cars are big sellers all across Iraq. Other reports recently have hinted at how well the satellite TV business is booming in Iraq, as well.

But here is an important thing to keep in mind...

But what about continued terrorist attacks? Most foreign investors coming to make money in Iraq shrug their shoulders. "Doing business in any Arab country is always risky," says a Turkish investor who has set up a trucking company and a taxi service. "In some Arab countries, you risk nationalization or straight confiscation by the ruler. In other Arab countries, you must give a cut to one of the emirs. Here, you face possible terrorist attacks. But such attacks are transitory."

With the volatility of the MidEast, not just Iraq but the region over, Iraq is no worse than any other country in the region as far as it being safe to create and sustain a business. And it is fast becoming one of the most desirable places to do so with the stability and friendliness to business the US has offered potential investors.

Unfortunately, this story of the economic success of Iraq will never make most of the western media because it doesn't fit in with the desired goal of destroying president Bush and the USA.

At least, once in a great while, we do get a story here and there that tells us some truth. Good going New York Post.

What We Ought to do and Ought Not to do

2007-01-02T00:58:00.001-06:00

- By Vince Johnson

There is a sneaky trend in America that is creeping up on us so deceptively that we do not realize it is actually happening. What is worse, we have not the slightest idea where this trend is leading.

To explain: Most of us agree that people ought to wear their seat belts to save lives. To make sure we do what we "ought" to do, politicians passed laws requiring us to do what we should have been doing all along. As the sign says along the highway: "CLICK-IT OR TICKET!"

People "ought" to quit smoking in order to live longer and avoid exposing others to the dangers of secondary fumes from smoldering tobacco. To make sure we do what we "ought" to do, politicians have passed laws making it illegal to do what we "ought not" to do in various places such as restaurants, lounges, airports, airplanes, and more recently, entire towns!......

Click HERE To Read On

Constitutional Federalism vs Totalitarianism

2007-01-01T04:44:00.001-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

As noted frequently in past postings, the unavoidable tendency of socialism is concentration of political power in the hands of a ruling elite who decide for the masses what their living and working conditions are to be. This is called state-planning.

In ways that would have been inconceivable as recently as the 1920s, our everyday lives are circumscribed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington who make regulations, enforce them, and adjudicate them, too often without our access to the normal safeguards of the common law. Those bureaucrats -- think of the IRS, for example -- issue rulings that most Federal courts will not contest, on the grounds that they lack the supposed expertise of the tens of thousands of Federal regulatory bureaus........................
Click HERE To Read On

Hppy New Year 2007

2007-01-01T01:30:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
Time for New Years. We welcome 2007 into existence.

And, time brings up an interesting observance. What, exactly, is it, after all? We experience things passing, the flower blooms in Spring and dies in Fall; that is surely time passing. But, the way we mark time is completely man made. It isn't something that exists naturally and it certainly isn't a single, ever moving force. If it were a single force of nature, time would not be measured as we measure it.

As the ball drops in New York to ring in the New Year, folks in Chicago are still an hour away from the event. Californians are two hours away. That shows the man-made structure of what we consider "time".

So, as we celebrate the New Year, take a second to reflect on the fact that what we are celebrating doesn't really even exist!

Something else to give you a headache other than too much bubbly!

Happy New Year, Publius' Forum Readers!

Psychic predictions for the New Year

2007-01-01T01:25:00.000-06:00

- By Michael M. Bates

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had better hurry up. We're down to the last few hours of 2006 and she hasn't resigned yet.

How do I know Justice Ginsburg is hanging it up this year? I read it on CaliforniaPsychics.com, which modestly bills itself "the net's Number 1 resource for psychic guidance."

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden also need to get a move on. When CaliforniaPsychics made its political predictions for 2006 a year ago, included was the prophecy that Mr. Bush would be "laid up and in a health care facility of some sort."

The news was even grimmer for Mr. Cheney; he would suffer a massive heart attack. Senator Obama was supposed to announce his intent to run for president. Bin Laden was destined to be captured.

There was more. One psychic said the war in Iraq would end in the middle of the year. Another foresaw American soldiers withdrawn from there beginning in September. A New York City terrorist attack was to be planned in April and May. An "intense campaign" to reinstate draft registration would be launched in 2006...........................................
Click HERE To Read On

French Protest New Year's Arrival

2007-01-01T01:11:00.000-06:00

Well, I wasn't going to post anything today, but this was funny...

French protest new year's arrival

From correspondents in Nates

January 01, 2007 04:50pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse

SOME 600 people gathered in the western French city of Nantes to protest the new year's arrival today

Lashed by rain, the organisers said even the weather was against 2007, as they milled about under banners reading "No to 2007!" and "Now is better!"

"The world will come to understand that it must stop this mad course towards the future and we demand the governments of the world and the United Nations declare a moratorium to stop this December 31 the future," said one of the organisers.

The tension mounted as the minutes ticked away, but the arrival of midnight and 2007 did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm as they began to chant "No to 2008!".

Organisers vowed to resist pressure from watchmakers and calendar printers to hold the event for a third time on December 31, 2007, on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

A Lump of Coal for Kwanzaa

2006-12-31T06:37:00.000-06:00

- By Selwyn Duke

For you religio-centric clods who haven't yet expanded your celebratory horizons -- and you know who you are -- I bring a message of tolerance and inclusiveness: December 26 marked the start of Kwanzaa.

As some know, this High Holy Week saw its birth 482 moons in the distant past, which means about forty years ago. It was founded by the Great Prophet, Maulana Karenga, who was born in the cradle of religion itself, Maryland.

Like many deeply spiritual men, Karenga came from humble origins, christened Ron N. Everett and raised on a poultry farm. Perhaps it was the desire to distance himself from his fowl upbringing, but young Everett took the African name "Karenga" and then later adopted "maulana," a Swahili title that means "master teacher."

Like all great spiritualistic teachers, Karenga never felt constrained by the ways and strictures of this material fold, like, for instance, laws prohibiting, assault, robbery and the torture of young women, the last of these being a highly spiritual act for which he was imprisoned, no doubt in violation of his constitutional right to freedom of religious expression............................................
Click HERE To Read On

Iraq Policy and Public Opinion

2006-12-31T06:36:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

With mounting stridency, news media demand to know why President Bush fails to bow to public opinion expressed in the recent Congressional elections and pull our troops out of Iraq.

The underlying assumption is that public opinion, expressed in elections or opinion polls, in all cases represents truth and wisdom. As I wrote in The Limitations of Public Opinion, such is seldom the case when complex policy matters are the subject of those opinions.

he stock market, for example, gives us a daily, broad spectrum opinion poll reflecting the outlook for business. Obviously, however, very few people have the knowledge and resources to become rich and to keep their wealth over time simply through knowing what composite market opinion is at any given time.......................
Click HERE To Read On

Saddam the Merciless EXECUTED - AP Misusing Words to Report it!

2006-12-30T05:33:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
Just deserts were dished out to one Saddam Hussein last night. Few deserved it more than he.

There is no reason for me to recount his many crimes against humanity here, but it is a good thing he has paid for his evil -- and paid with his life.

That is all need be said about that...

But, in reading the AP's story by Abdul-Zahra, something else comes to the fore that is vexing to anyone looking for truth in the media. Of course, truth is always in short supply from our friends at alAP, but with Abdul-Zahra's report we see a constant misuse of the English language.

There is no need to reproduce the entire report here, but I'd like to focus on the misuse of certain words that seems to offer exculpatory sentiment for the murderer Saddam and shows how the AP seems not to know what words mean.

The report starts out with this sentence:

Clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Saddam Hussein went to the gallows before sunrise Saturday, executed by vengeful countrymen after a quarter-century of remorseless brutality that killed countless thousands and led Iraq into disastrous wars against the United States and Iran.

Vengeful? Is Abdul-Zahra trying to lead us to feel that this execution isn't justice, but is mere vengence?

It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.

"Grim" end? Is that the sort of sorrowful terms we use to describe the execution of such a murderous dictator: grim? And, naturally, we cannot talk about the execution of Saddam for his crimes without making it seem all a wasted effort because his actions still "vex" U.S. presidents! Even in execution, this AP writer is trying to hand a triumph to Saddam.

Next our intrepid AP reporter got a sly dig against the death penalty by placing Saddam's use of political murder and torture next to a legitimate death penalty.

Iraq's death penalty was suspended by the U.S. military after it toppled Saddam in 2003, but the new Iraqi government reinstated it two years later, saying executions would deter criminals.

Saddam's own regime used executions and extrajudicial killings as a tool of political repression, both to eliminate real or suspected political opponents and to maintain a reign of terror.

Obviously, to writer Abdul-Zahra, there is not much difference between a measured and legitimate usage of the death penalty and Saddam's obscene murders.

Lastly, Abdul-Zahra showed complete ignorance of what the word "honor" means:

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq.

A grateful people honor a well-known person for his life's work by naming schools after him or displaying his portrait. But a dictator places them about the country by HIS OWN ORDER. Those "thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals" were decidedly NOT erected in his honor all over Iraq. They were forced there by his thugs to aggrandize a tyrant by his own order.

"In his honor" is not the right verbiage to use in that case at all, Mr. Abdul-Zahra. Do you even know the difference?

Does the AP's editors?

Amherst College: Should Marxism be Given Another Look?

2006-12-30T03:49:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Young America's Foundation has come out with their 2006 list of the most bizarre and Politically Correct college courses of the year and it shows, once again, the foolishness being called an "education" that is foisted upon our children in our colleges and universities.

The number one most ridiculous is Occidental College's "The Phallus", supposedly a study on the relation "between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism."

What palpable nonsense!

The U. of Pennsylvania's "Adultery Novel", where students learn about infidelity -- I suppose to make Bill Clinton more acceptable -- also made the list.

Additionally, we see the U. of California-Los Angeles's "Queer Musicology", where our youngsters are taught about gay music -- as if it were somehow a "different" kind of music, apparently. Now, is separating them out from the rest of our music supposed to make them accepted just like "everyone else"? I thought gays wanted to be thought of as "normal people" instead of separated and segregated?

The list seems mostly to chastise overindulgences in "women's studies" in the average American University. Occidental College, for example, has quite an extensive "women's studies" department with all sorts of facile and unnecessary courses stuffed into this area of "study". Imagine the bloated budget this department must waste on a yearly basis!

There were a myriad of other "courses" that our highly priced and woefully inadequate universities have wasted time and effort upon, many of which attack America, the male of the species, white people and western culture. Of course, they all assault the sensibilities of any student who wants to actually learn something useful.

But, to my mind, the worst one on the list was Amherst College's "Taking Marx Seriously: Should Marx be Given Another Chance? Let me answer that query with a word even the pointy heads at University might understand: NO. A resounding no!

Here is Amherst's course description:

Should Marx be given yet another chance? Is there anything left to gain by returning to texts whose earnest exegesis has occupied countless interpreters, both friendly and hostile, for generations? Has Marx's credibility survived the global debacle of those regimes and movements that drew inspiration from his work, however poorly they understood it? Or, conversely, have we entered a new era in which post-Marxism has joined a host of other "post-" phenomena? This seminar will deal with these and related questions in the context of a close and critical reading of Marx's texts. The main themes we will discuss include Marx's conception of capitalist modernity, material and intellectual production, power, class conflicts and social consciousness, and his critique of alienation, bourgeois freedom and representative democracy. We will also examine Marx's theories of historical progress, capitalist exploitation, globalization and human emancipation.

In light of the 100 million human beings murdered over the last 100 years or so by people inspired by Marx, it is a continual amazement to me that certain types of people still wonder if the failed theorist's ideas could still work "if only it were tried right".

Marx's ideas have nearly all proven chimerical at best and murderous at worst, yet we get one person after another traipsing about our college campuses claiming the mantle of thoughtful, professor positing the absurdities of Marx and his many murderous acolytes and ruefully pontificating upon their unrealized potential.

These are the same sorts of people who point to things like the Spanish Inquisition and the many wars launched under the name of Christ in previous centuries as reasons to de-legitimize Christianity. They proclaim Christianity's hypocrisy because of the many that have died in Christ's name. Yet, far more people have died as a result of Marx's religion than any other ever created. And not a word about the millions upon millions of Marx's victims is ever acknowledged by the ivory tower set.

So, according to such people, religion should be cast out because of such depredations, religion should be banished from the mind of man and excised from the university because of such historical excess, yet the excess caused by Marx? Well, let's not bring that up shall we?

After all, they plaintively claim that Marx's ideas were never "really" implemented right as this fetid course description seems to allude, so his ideas must deserve a second look. Marx's followers just didn't get it because of how "poorly they understood it". Regardless of what Marxism has led to, let's give it another shot... no pun intended.

So, why can't we use the same argument for religion? Why can't we say religion has never been tried right, too? Not that I am equating Christ to Marx, far from it. But the pointy heads don't see their dichotomy. In fact, they don't even acknowledge it as a legitimate query.

Marx has proven an utter failure through every manner of implementation of his ideas on both large and small scale and does not behoove the time spent on him as a legitimate course of study unless it is as an adjunct to political science or history, and then only as a negative example therein.

Marx deserves nothing but the contempt of everyone. And our universities don't deserve much better for their slavish love for this murderous, beast at this rate.

Yes, he should be taught. But he deserves to be placed as the worst human being in human history. Worse than Hitler, worse then Stalin, even worse then Torquemada.

A Few U.S. Muslims Who Stood Up!

2006-12-30T03:42:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

OK, since 9/11 I have had a few negative things to say about Muslims and Islam... OK, more than a "few".

I have complained that the so-called moderates in the world of Islam don't stand up to the terrorists, for instance. As the old adage goes "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing", and Muslims the world over have seemed to be more than willing to let the evil happen.

Well, since I have reported the "evil" that Muslims do, I feel it only proper to report when I see them doing something right.

On Dec. 21st, the Washington Post featured a story titled Muslims Mark Solidarity With Jews,
Event Held Days After Iranian Meeting That Denied Genocide. And in it we meet a few American Muslims who stood publicly against the re-writing of history sponsored by the Iranians a few weeks ago.

Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

Good show, Imam Magid.

Now if only more of his creed were as vocal.

Advent Fourth Sunday

2006-12-29T08:20:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Mary and Joseph were confronted by the Immaculate Conception, Mary's impregnation before the marriage ceremony, with what would have appeared to the outside world as a serious breach of Judaic righteousness that potentially could have ostracized them from their community. Yet both of them heeded God's Word: "Do not be afraid."

The Reverend Jason Pankau preached today's sermon at the Long Ridge Congregational Church (North Stamford, Connecticut). The message was "do not be afraid." When you hear God's call, trust in Him and follow where he leads......................
Click HERE To Read On

AP: Turning Gov't Letter Into Excuse for America Bashing

2006-12-29T08:17:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

As the AP reports (Strip-Searched Muslim Woman Gets Apology), the Dept. of Homeland Security sent an apology letter to a Muslim woman who was strip searched on April 11th, 2006. Naturally, the AP uses the report as an excuse to bash the US government.

The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip-searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

AP reports the letter was dated December 8th and sent in response to a complaint by Jawad.

"On behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, I offer you my sincere apology for having to undergo a strip search," wrote Timothy J. Keefer, acting chief counsel for the department's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Then the AP takes this woman's complaint to the next level, as it were, by allowing her to wag a finger in the face of the USA.

Jawad was traveling to Clearwater to visit her 16-year-old son, who lived with her ex-husband, Ahmad Maki Kubba. Kubba, an Iraqi exile and American citizen for 27 years, was praised last year by Gov. Jeb. Bush for organizing a group to vote in Iraq's election.

Kubba said his ex-wife's detention prompted his son to move to Spain.

"I lost my son because of what happened," Kubba said. "My son wanted to be in the U.S. Navy, and he speaks both English and Arabic. He would have been just what they are looking for. What they did to Jawad was unfair and is hurting America."

Where is the AP wagging a finger in the face of Muslims everywhere for allowing the smallest percentage of them to make everyone else suspect Muslims as terrorists in the first place?

As it ends up, though, this appears to be a non-story. This apology letter isn't odd at all, apparently.

Department spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez said it is standard practice to send a response letter to someone who complains. She said the agency does not track the number of apologies it issues.

Seems like the Dept. of Homeland Security does this all the time! (Though maybe a better story is why they bother wasting so much time with these letters?)

Nothing out of the ordinary at all, really.

But, it DID give the AP a chance to say how mean the USA is to those nice Muslims, though.

So, I guess the non-story DID serve SOME purpose: AP bashing the USA again.

A Perfect Example of Global Warming Hysteria

2006-12-28T07:57:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Chicken Little yelled, "Help! Help! The sky is falling!" Our frightened Chicken could well be a "journalist" writing about Global warming, or a former Vice-President that can't find anything else to do with his time.

The hysteria that is global warming is perfectly evinced in a recent story by the Independent newspaper from England.

Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island is so fraught with fear mongering and hyperventilation that it is no wonder that skeptics look to the Globaloney movement and laugh at their claims of "scientific" seriousness.

For some sidesplitting, hilarity, this particular story is as ridiculous as they come, replete with overly emotional rhetoric, ill chosen verbiage, and scientific boobery.

(I will bold some of the funniest stuff for emphasis)

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

"Obliteration"? This obliteration took many years. But using the word obliteration seems a choice to invoke a sudden cataclysm and a way to cause alarm and fear in the reader. Certainly, obliteration does mean to "erase from existence", granted, but the word has a certain emotional carriage to it that is sure to cause alarm

And the Independent is somewhat misleading on the time line as well. Lochachara Island, for instance, has been gone for 20 or so years but here we have the Independent making it seem as if it just happened! As if Global Warming suddenly swamped the island.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

Another word used to scare: "inundated". Inundation is generally a word to describe a sudden flood, not a slow, inexorable rising of water. We also use it to describe being overwhelmed, such as being "inundated" with email -- again an emotional reaction results. But, these islands have taken many years to go away. The fact that they are disappearing is certainly nothing to scoff about, and, while the hyperbolic rhetoric adds a novelist's flair, little scientific weight is brought to the story with such fear mongering.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

Another sentence calculated to cause mere fear. It is interesting that, in the rush to sound all dramatic, the Independent is ignoring the fact that 8 years or more should be plenty of time for inhabitants of these low lying islands to MOVE to a place where it ISN'T slowly flooding! It would also be plenty of time to save the tigers worried about above.

Human cost of global warming: Rising seas will soon make 70,000 people homeless.

Again, 8 years or more... they have at least 8 YEARS to move. Such advanced notice does NOT cause people to become "homeless"! This word is again used as if this is a sudden conflagration causing catastrophic loss. It is not. It is something that people have all sorts of time in which to solve their housing problems.

A forest fire, an earthquake, even a real flash flood, those are sudden catastrophes that could cause people to become "homeless". 8 years should be plenty of time to find somewhere else to live!

This grandiose flourish cries for some perspective to be called for here.

Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.

Nearly this entire sentence is filled with teary eyed, scaremongering! "Refuges", "fled", both are words usually used to denote suddenness. There is nothing sudden about the decades it is taking to submerge these islands, especially since Lohachara island has already been gone for 20 years.

Of course, these people are losing real estate and, yes, it will not be easy to move and start over. It never is easy to move and start over no matter what is causing the move. But, they will move and they will carry on. And they have many years to figure out how to do it.

And the last bit about being "in danger of being submerged". More emotionalism that. There is no "danger"; there is just plain fact. And it is a fact that must be dealt with by leaving the area affected. "In danger of" implies that something can be done to stop it and there is not one much humans can economically do to stop these islands from being submerged or even global warming, if it is happening, from happening.

Now, whether global warming is, indeed happening or not is immaterial to the fate of these islands. They are absolutely submerging beneath the waves and will soon be but a memory. This kind of erosion is happening all the time all across the world and always has. Many islands have come and gone in man's recorded history alone.

Worse, these scaremongers also fail to inform their acolytes that, if it is global warming, it is something that has happened many other times in Earth's past -- and in all those other times there WAS no man around to cause it. Man has not caused global warming. Man can do nothing to stop it.

Still, there is plenty of doubt that Global Warming is the cause. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner has written to me recently giving good reason to doubt that water levels have risen due to man's interference in the environment. "Averaged over century-long periods, sea level has been rising on Earth ever since the end of the last Ice Age, and according to the International Union for Quaternary Research's Sea Level Commission--the world's most authoritative body of scientific work on the subject--there is no significant change in the rate of rise through the period when, according to global warming theory, human activity is supposed to have contributed significantly to the warming."

But, in the end, I'd say that if people don't have the sense God gave a rock to move off an island that has been slowly submerging for 8 years or more, then global warming is the least of their worries.

Globaloney hysteria strikes again.

Planning to Fail

2006-12-28T07:56:00.000-06:00

- By Chuck Busch

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group has submitted its recommendations for altering US policy in Iraq that would also affect the entire Middle East. President Bush will present modifications to current operations in January. Nancy Pelosi recently announced her new legislative agenda for the 110th Congress but never mentioned Iraq (or border security) even once. When is the majority Democratic leadership in Congress going to unveil their new strategy for Iraq or for that matter the larger war with terrorism?

Democrats declare Iraq a failure

The Democrats have decided that President Bush's Iraq policy is a failure and have demanded a "change of course" without being very specific about their meaning.

National Democrat Committee Chairman, Howard Dean, called Iraq a "mess" blaming President Bush for "failed political leadership and lack of foresight and planning." "Staying the course is not a plan," he said................
Click HERE To Read On

Should We Honor Kwanzaa Creator, A Rapist and Torturer?

2006-12-27T08:28:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

It amazes me that this Kwanzaa business has been washed of the real life criminal activity of its creator. The man was a race monger, a violent thug, a rapist, a torturer... just a horrible human being.

Yet never a word of this man's evil is ever uttered when his pseudo holiday is discussed in the MSM.

And the Cox News Service did it again on Christmas in theirs titled Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years.

Kwanzaa turns 40 today. The colorful holiday, invented by California professor Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966, is like a jazz musician who fuses bits and pieces of music into a vibrant mosaic of sound. Kwanzaa, "first fruit" in Swahili, is a fluent, nonreligious holiday that borrows liberally from a patchwork of cultures and traditions.

Karenga originally created the seven-day observance to empower black communities and uplift black culture and identity.

Yes, kindly professor Ron Karenga. What a great guy.

Of course, his name wasn't really Ron Karenga originally. It was Ronald McKinley Everett.

In 1969 the organization called US (as is "us"--blacks--against "them" --whites), a black power militant group Everett founded, frequently clashed in violence with police and even other black power groups. Members of his group even killed two Black Panthers in 1969.

Nice and peaceful, eh?

In 1971 Everett served time in jail for assault. By then Everett had changed his name to Maulana Ron Karenga and began to affect a pseudo African costume and act a native African.

It wasn't mere assault he was convicted of, either. It was sexual assault and torture perpetrated against some of his female followers. The L.A. Times then reported that he placed a hot soldering iron in one woman's mouth and used a vise to crush another's toe.

As writer Lynn Woolley wrote of Professor "Karenga":

And so this is Kwanzaa. The militant past of the creator is now ignored in favor of the so-called seven principles of Nguza Saba – principles such as unity, family and self-determination that could have come from Bill Bennett's "Book of Virtues." The word "Kwanzaa" is Swahili, meaning something like "fresh fruits of harvest."

No one remembers the part about "re-Africanization" or the sevenfold path of blackness that Dr. Karenga once espoused. Hardly anyone remembers the shootings, the beatings,the tortures and the prison terms that were once the center of his life. It's just not PC to bring that sort of stuff up now that Kwanzaa is commercialized and making big bucks.

And the Cox News Service just helped a criminal and sexual pervert skate by again, hidden behind his false holiday, and has allowed him to continue to dupe millions of black Americans. A man who has never denounced his past criminal activity and extremist ideas.

Happy Kwanzaa, indeed!

Charity vs the Welfare State

2006-12-27T08:26:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Religion and morality command every individual to do the right thing by helping people who have fallen upon hard times. But charity is not the same thing as decreeing that such people are entitled to an equal share of everyone's wealth.

Liberal-socialist-progressive critics charge that questioning the welfare state amounts to a mean-spirited policy of dumping the needy into the streets to provide funds for tax-cuts that benefit only the wealthy.

Such questioning, however, is mean-spirited only if one assumes that the Federal government is the sole source of charity.

In fact, from 1620 to 1933, all public welfare activity was at the state and local levels, primarily through churches, local charity groups, immigrant societies, and fraternal organizations like the Elks and Shriners. Those groups operated hospitals and schools for the disabled and the sick. For a few cents in weekly dues per household, they provided social insurance to support widows, orphans, and the disabled. Members in good standing with their fraternal and sisterly organizations would be cared for and supported by them in times of difficulty.....................
Click HERE To Read On

Gay Activism Used to Stop Blood Drives!

2006-12-26T02:19:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

More proof that our schools are failing our students.

Santa Cruz schools rethink blood drives after gay student barred

A gay student prevented from donating blood because of his sexual history has stirred debate among Santa Cruz school officials over whether to continue hosting campus blood drives.

"I was turned away because of my sexual contacts," Childers said. "The reasoning behind me not being able to give blood is ridiculous. ... It made me feel like an outcast."

According to U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, a man who has had a sexual encounter with another man since 1977 is ineligible to donate.

Santa Cruz city schools officials said they were reconsidering whether to have blood drives on campus if students were required to divulge information about their sexual activities.

AIDS is plenty enough reason to prevent gays, the single most at risk segment of society, from donating blood to a blood bank. A policy to keep AIDS out from our blood supply is sensible and far from "bigotry".

Here is the stupidity from a school official to explain their decision:

"As the blood supply has become so politicized over time we need to check our policies," Santa Cruz City Schools Trustee Cynthia Hawthorne said.

If the issue is being "politicized" it would be by you and gay activists putting us all at risk over your social activism, Mz. Hawthorne.

It is logical and proper to stop gays from introducing AIDS into our blood supply and putting each of us at risk. But, in San Francisco, the activism for gay "rights" is far more important than the safety of our blood supplies.

But, it really shouldn't surprise anyone, should it?

Muslim Woman Like the Veil?

2006-12-26T01:55:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

From BBC Channel 4 comes a Christmas message that could do with a little more analysis and less taking the thing at face value.

Veiled British Muslim woman delivers alternative Xmas message

At the same time the 80-year-old monarch's Christmas message to Britain and the Commonwealth was broadcast, a woman known only as Khadijah spoke on Channel 4 television Monday about why she wore the niqab in public and called for tolerance.

"We are seen as oppressed. Since I've started covering I feel much more liberated, which I know a lot of people possibly won't be able to understand," she said.

"I don't wear the niqab to separate myself from society. I want to be part of this society -- this is where I choose to live. I hope that society is more accepting of my personal choice. It's not about separation."

OK, so we have a purported "Muslim" women claiming she loves to be covered in the black tent she walks around in. She claims it's "liberating".

At first blush (not that you could see her blush, mind you) one would see this as an affirmation of religious choice. Why, those Muslim women love their traditional dress, you'd think. We should ease off this hateful, western bias against the veil or the hajib. It must be that all our assumptions of the oppressiveness of Muslim female coverings is wrong.

But wait. One small section of the AFP story makes the entire thing a lie...

Khadijah -- who converted to Islam a decade ago and said she is the great-granddaughter of a suffragette who fought for women's right to vote -- said Straw's comments were not helpful.

This is no "Muslim" woman, but a white woman who willingly converted. And what we have here is a person who is striving to out Muslim the REAL Muslims. A nuevo Muslim attempting at zealotry trying to be accepted by people who will never accept her. A white person "gone native", as the saying used to go.

One can never take the word of an activist convert for much of anything because all too often they are extremists. They usually have certain mental problems and emotional voids that they fill with a new thing, something that becomes their entire life, something that is often even more than a passion. Usually more an obsession than a conviction or belief.

So, this claim of Muslims loving the veil is not from a woman who has spent her life covered from head to foot. This is not a woman who's mother was beaten by her Muslim Father. This is not a woman who was raped by her Muslim Uncle and warned to never tell anyone. This is not a woman who has lived with all the women around her beaten, mistreated and oppressed her whole life. This is a woman who only recently became a Muslim and is suddenly enamored with her interesting, new world.

This is not a woman who's voice comes from the experience of the Muslim world, but an outsider trying to convince herself that she is a "true" Muslim.

This woman's "message" is misleading and should be ignored. She does NOT represent the average Muslim woman and should not be treated as if she does.

Jim Webb Parrots the Party Iraq Line

2006-12-26T01:41:00.000-06:00

- By Chuck Busch

Even though the Democrat Party has seized the majority in both houses in Congress, no clear approach to the administration's current Iraq policy emerged from the campaign. Former Republican turned Democrat Jim Webb, who edged out incumbent and potential presidential candidate Republican George Allen for a Virginia US senate seat, however did gave us an explicit forewarning of many of the Democrat's attitudes and intentions just prior to the midterm elections. He said the only solution to Iraq’s dilemma was a Democrat takeover of Congress on November 7 along with a number of other easily refuted statements.

"Since 2003, President Bush has laid out nine different plans for victory in Iraq, none of them serious and none of them workable. That statement alone would suggest that the Bush administration has not rigidly stuck to one course of action, but has been adapting to the evolving situation in Baghdad.

"Most seriously, this incompetence has hindered our ability to fight international terror." If fighting international terrorism doesn't include winning the battle for Baghdad, I don't know what is. Our enemies have already declared Iraq to be the central front in the war for the Middle East...............
Click HERE To Read On

And no Crib for a bed...

2006-12-24T01:07:00.000-06:00

As Publius' Forum takes a day off for friends and family, we wish you all a Merry Christmas.

If you would like, please take some time to roam about our contributors' archives for many wonderful postings, essays and news and commentary.

And, thanks for being a loyal reader of Publius' Forum.

From the gang at Publius' Forum

Christmas at War

2006-12-24T01:06:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Christmas, of course, has not always been celebrated the same way we do today. Not in the U.S.A., not in the world. One thing Christmases throughout history have had in common, though, is that it’s been a day for family gatherings. Of course, there is another thing that Christmases of all eras share and that is the simple fact that humans don’t always pause for any mere holiday. At least one thing never stops, even during Christmas: war.

And, now we face yet another Christmas with our country involved in strife. I won't lament the causes of such then or now, but we all can feel sorrow for the many friends and family who celebrate their Christmas, once again, with an empty chair at the holiday feast.

As Christmas 2006 draws near we find ourselves again facing a force that wishes to destroy us. And, also again, we have sent our soldiers -- those young men and women we hold so dear -- into the breach to stem the tide of our enemies.

It has always been thus. Even on Christmas.

On Christmas night in the year 1776, George Washington made his famous cross of the Delaware River and captured some 900 Hessian troops in the employ of the British army. If this particularly daring act didn't form the turning point in the War for Independence, it most certainly brought a much needed victory to the beleaguered Continental forces and the celebration afterward brought hope and a new resolve to the Revolutionary generation. A Christmas present that eventually brought success at arms to our nascent nation was General George Washington’s gift to his people.

During another trial by fire, Christmas came to the minds of Americans who fought in blue and gray. But, the solemnity and death they faced did not cloud their memories of home and holidays. Corporal J. C. Williams, Co. B, 14th Vermont Infantry, wrote on December 25, 1862:

"This is Christmas, and my mind wanders back to that home made lonesome by my absence, while far away from the peace and quietude of civil life to undergo the hardships of the camp, and may be the battle field. I think of the many lives that are endangered, and hope that the time will soon come when peace, with its innumerable blessings, shall once more restore our country to happiness and prosperity."

The boys of ‘62 pressed on through two more Christmas holidays until the War Between our States came to an end in 1865.

American troops always face poignant thoughts as they trudge on with their duties during this time of year. As World War One came and faded, as American troops once again flooded Europe in service to the world only 20 some years later, and now when we face a shadowy threat from a world-wide terrorism that is hard to define, American soldiers stand stoic in the face of danger with nothing but their comrades at arms beside them and the thoughts of family back home keeping them warm.

It was said that during the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two our soldiers had faced so much of war, that war had filled every second of their waking life, that many of them had completely forgotten that it even was Christmas. But Patton's lightning strike at the Nazi breakthrough was the best present for those who would celebrate that and many more Christmas days to come free of Nazi tyranny.

It all had to be done. And our soldiers marched on even during Christmas.

So, as you sit to your Christmas dinner or as you enjoy your own family's holiday traditions and festivities, remember our soldiers. Remember those who stand between the breach and us. Remember that some will be lost to that breach so that we might enjoy our holiday. Even if you don't have a family member in the service, remember.

The men and women in uniform are family to us all, especially in times of strife. So, please take just a moment at any time during your holiday celebrations for a moment of silent thanks for their service -- past, present and future. Perhaps you might make this your own family tradition?

Merry Christmas and God bless America and her people.

Stolen Baby Jesus 'Annual Phenomenon'

2006-12-24T00:47:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is unfortunate that Nativity scene figures are the target of theft and vandals across this country each year during the Christmas holiday. As this ignorant crime increases from year to year, it shows the lack of respect that too many Americans have developed for their neighbors as well as a failed respect for private property.

Let's face it. The people who do such things are jerks. It's just that simple.

But, on a lighter note, The Hartford Courant employed an interesting choice of words in their story on the recent several thefts of Nativity Scene figures across Southington, Conn.

After giving space to Church goers reacting with outrage over these mean-spirited, and pointless thefts, Courant staff writer, Ken Byron pulls this sentence out from his "professional journalism" bag 'o tricks:

The theft of baby Jesus from Nativity scenes is something police around the state and the nation have seen, and some say it is an annual phenomenon.

(Bold mine)

Do they now, Kenny? An "annual phenomenon", ya say?

Are ya saying, Kenny my friend, that they don't steal the baby Jesus year round? That they are only doing it on an "annual" basis? And only during the Christmas season, at that? Is the Baby Jesus safe on Halloween or Thanksgiving, do ya think?

Astounding! You have informed us so well, Kenny. We are grateful for your insight.

But, here is a little news flash for ya, Kenny. Of course it would be an "annual phenomenon". Christmas only comes ONCE a YEAR!

"Annual phenomenon", indeed.

See, folks? This is the kind of professionalism that our friend at the Opinion Journal, Joseph Rago, was talkin' about when he was pontificating on how bloggers just aren't of high enough caliber to be a real, honest to goodness journalist working for the MSM!

Why, no stupid blogger sitting in his pajamas and banging away at his keyboard like a monkey at play could have come up with the "news" that stolen Nativity figures might be an "annual phenomenon".

Halp uz, Josiph Ragoo, we r stuck hear on r blogs

And, unfortunately, thanks, to Ken Byron for making this story of America's declining respect for private property and for our neighbors just a bit ridiculous with your remarks.
Merry Christmas, to all Publius' Forum readers from me, Warner Todd Huston.

Merry Bizaromas

2006-12-23T07:16:00.000-06:00

- By Frederick Meekins

In the Superman comics, Bizarro is a twisted clone of Superman that perceives things backwards such as bad being good, up being down, and left being right. As intense as the annual Christmas conflagrations have become over the past few years, it was only a matter of time before those wishing to stand for decency and common sense found themselves in an unsettling situation where the usual roles were reversed.

In a number of short stories I have written such as "The Schauungtown Chronicles" and "An U.N.I.Q.U.E. Individual", an organization known as the Toleration Fellowship set in a world governed by an elaborate system of homeowner associations suppresses traditional religious expression on behalf of secularists and New Age mystics in the name of inclusion and diversity. The Toleration Fellowship uses as its insignia the upside-down broken-cross peace symbol.

In a case in Colorado, it seems these roles have been reversed. A woman in a homeowner association there was being threatened with a fine of $25 a day for hanging on her home on private property a wreath in the shape of the peace sign. A number of residents took offense because the peace sign can also be interpreted as a Satanic symbol celebrating the defeat of Christ......................................
Click HERE To Read On

Politics and the Spirit of Christmas

2006-12-23T07:15:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

The socialistic welfare state is extolled by liberal-socialistic-progressives as more Christian then Christianity, because the welfare state purports to help the needy. So did Hitler's National Socialism.

Traditional Christmas spirit, depicted in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, was the warmth of family gatherings, friendship, and loving kindness to everyone.

Today, however, many people insist that socialism IS Christianity. It's certainly true that the early churches established by the Apostle Paul grew rapidly, because people found there the Christian love and fellowship, as well as support for the poor, sick, elderly, and disabled, that was available nowhere else....................
Click HERE To Read On

Scrooge a man for our times

2006-12-23T07:14:00.000-06:00

- By Michael M. Bates

Christmastime is inevitably accompanied by allusions to Ebenezer Scrooge. As portrayed in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Ebenezer is a thoroughly disagreeable, curmudgeonly, miserly misanthrope. I sympathize. And not just because similar contentions are routinely made about me.

Enough is enough. It's time to move on, as they say, from the conventional view of the man as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster."

We as a society have come a long way in the 160 years since Dickens wrote his story. We're kinder and gentler and infinitely more accepting. Ebenezer would be perceived much differently today..........................................
Click HERE To Read On

Do we Love the Famous... or the Infamous?

2006-12-22T08:39:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Recently, a poll of school children in England sparked a question over role models and what children there think should be the most desirable goals in life to strive for. In the poll, children under 10 viewed being a celebrity as the "very best thing in the world", though they seem not to think as highly about God.

In the 2006 top ten list such figures as Madonna and TV stars Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne appear. In the past, sports stars David Beckham and Wayne Rooney made it into the top ten, as well. But, many of these "celebrities" are famous as much for their ill-tempered comportment and the many offhanded remarks uttered in public and reported by a fawning tabloid media as they are for the extraordinary abilities that brought them to the top of their professions.

This raises an intriguing question: What has become of "fame"?

America's Founding Fathers are so revered today, for instance, because they didn't imagine they were striving to achieve mere fame as we define it today. To the Founder’s contemporaries celebrity status meant little but what was important to them was fame as defined by the ancients. Being well known for their deeds of import, moral gravity and worth bestowed true fame, as fame is properly defined.

England's great conservative, Edmund Burke, once said of someone, "He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls". By equating "fame" to "greatness" and "a noble cause" he equates fame to actions of a good and positive nature.

Founding Father and second President, John Adams, once quoted a few lines from Alexander Pope’s "Essay on Man" in his diary while pondering the sort of fame that he and his fellows hoped to win from the verdict of history and their countrymen:

Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre mov’d, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race

Pope here explained the effects of fame in the allegory of ripples in the lake, ripples that one's actions will cause for community, country, and, ultimately, humanity. And that is the reason that fame was thought to connote positive moral stature because positive "ripples" are the only ripples worth celebrating.

On the other hand, being known for bad behavior, ill temper and venality wins infamy, not fame in the proper definition of such actions. Unfortunately, today we confuse and conflate fame with the lesser category of infamy.

People who make a name for themselves by over the top behavior, immorality and general surliness, like Madonna and Sharon Osbourne, have more correctly achieved infamy, not fame or celebrity. Yet it is the Madonnas and Sharon Osbournes of the world that kids think of as famous.

This cannot be a good thing and shows that we have lost reverence for respectability and cast aside the positive, proper definition for fame. We have degraded the word to simply mean well known and gutted the moral meaning. This does not raise up the well known to heights of fame, but lowers the well meaning to the depths of infamy.

Worse than the results of who the children thought were "famous", the top ten things that these kids thought were "very best things" reveals almost a complete lack of substantive goals in the ghastly choices given by the youngsters.

1. Being a Celebrity
2. Good Looks
3. Being Rich
4. Being Healthy
5. Pop Music
6. Families
7. Friends
8. Nice Food
9. Watching Films
10. Heaven/God

Granted this is a list of the interests of 10-year-olds, but can anyone doubt that the outcome of a poll of kids into their early teens would be much different? For that matter, could the list be much different than the responses of the general public at any age?

Still, that speculation aside, it is obvious that western society is not teaching its children what is good and right in society if Britain’s tykes grant admiration for such characters as Madonna. It is a sad commentary on our society that fame has been degraded to the same low status as infamy. (And I have to admit here, that my country, the U.S.A., is certainly no better and has contributed far too much to the degradation of fame.)

Advent Third Sunday December 17, 2006

2006-12-22T08:33:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

The coming of Jesus Christ can be thought of in two respects: we look to Christmas celebrating His birth, and thank God for His ministry that came afterward.

The texts today at Long Ridge Congregational Church (North Stamford, Connecticut) focused upon the beginning of Jesus Christ's ministry, at age thirty, the traditional time of maturity for the priestly order...................
Click HERE To Read On

Troubled Childhood Increases Risk of Homosexuality

2006-12-21T12:55:00.001-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Out of Denmark comes a study that will be sure to put a crimp in the we-are-born-that-way theory of the origins of homosexuality. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, provides interesting and tantalizing evidence that the less stable or traditional a child's home is, the more likely that the child will turn to homosexuality as an adult.

The study used 2,000,355 native-born Danes between the ages of 18 and 49, virtually "the entire Danish population". With such a large base it can hardly be claimed that the sampling was problematic. Many studies in the past have been discounted because of their sampling sizes -- generally being claimed too small.

Denmark was the first country to legalize gay marriage and has a large variety of recognized modes of cohabitation and lifestyles, so this study is of particular interest in that the stats cover the longest range of time available from which to establish the most reliable statistics.

Effects of Upbringing on Sexual Orientation

As quoted on the NARTH website, the study's authors conclude: "Our study provides population-based, prospective evidence that childhood family experiences are important determinants of heterosexual and homosexual marriage decisions in adulthood."

The authors go on to say, "Whatever ingredients determine a person's sexual preferences and marital choices, our population-based study shows that parental interactions are important."

A further observation is made by Linda Ames Nicolosi of NARTH.

Assuming that people who marry heterosexually are almost always heterosexual -- especially in a country where homosexuality carries little stigma, and gay marriage is legal -- and people who marry homosexually can be presumed to be homosexual, the study's findings offer intriguing evidence about family factors separating homosexual from heterosexual persons.

The findings show that children who have unstable or abusive homes are more likely to have homosexual relationships later on. This rings true to many studies that show homosexual males were often sexually abused as children.

This would also tend to prove that homosexuality is more a pathology, than a mere "natural" predilection. It would make the claims of being born gay problematic and, rather, a result of the mind's reaction to a troubled childhood. It would also tend to make the removal of homosexuality from the rolls of mental health problems a mistake.

Here are some of the findings from the Danish report:

1. Men who marry homosexually are more likely to have been raised in a family with unstable parental relationships -- particularly, absent or unknown fathers and divorced parents.
2. Findings on women who marry homosexually were less pronounced, but were still associated with a childhood marked by a broken family. The rates of same-sex marriage "were elevated among women who experienced maternal death during adolescence, women with short duration of parental marriage, and women with long duration of mother-absent cohabitation with father."
3. Men and women with "unknown fathers" were significantly less likely to marry a person of the opposite sex than were their peers with known fathers.
4. Men who experienced parental death during childhood or adolescence "had significantly lower heterosexual marriage rates than peers whose parents were both alive on their 18th birthday. The younger the age of the father's death, the lower was the likelihood of heterosexual marriage."
5. "The shorter the duration of parental marriage, the higher was the likelihood of homosexual marriage...homosexual marriage rates were 36% and 26% higher among men and women, respectively, who experienced parental divorce after less than six years of marriage, than among peers whose parents remained married for all 18 years of childhood and adolescence."
6. "Men whose parents divorced before their 6th birthday were 39% more likely to marry homosexually than peers from intact parental marriages."
7. "Men whose cohabitation with both parents ended before age 18 years had significantly (55% -76%) higher rates of homosexual marriage than men who cohabited with both parents until 18 years."
8. The mother's age was directly linked to the likelihood of homosexual marriage among men -- the older the mother, the more likely her son was to marry another man. Also, "only children" were more likely to be homosexual.
9. Persons born in large cities were significantly more likely to marry a same-sex partner -- suggesting that cultural factors might also affect the development of sexual orientation.

In any case, this is a large sampling culled from among what is purportedly the most "tolerant" nation toward homosexuality and alternate lifestyles and it shows that, far from being benign, homosexuality is a result of abuse and instability in the home, as opposed to being some natural proclivity, for a large percentage of the population.

Publius Forum tags

The 'Times' of our Lives are Ticking Away

2006-12-21T12:55:00.000-06:00

- By Vince Johnson

We seldom think about it, but our lives are divided into brief periods we refer to as some sort of "time." It all starts when it is "time" to go to bed. Then it is soon "time" to get up and "time" to get to work, or school, etc.

Some of our "times" are so mundane we never think much about them. I am thinking of those "times" we set aside so we can eat. Like "Breakfast time." "Lunch time." "Dinner time." It goes on and on. Live theatres have curtain "time." Flights are On "Time" some of the "time." Some "times" we kill "time" and other "times" we save "time." Then, of course, there are certain "times" during the year when many folks schedule their "meal time" around "game time," which of course refers to games like football and basketball......

Click HERE To Read On

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Opinion Journal: Bloggers are a Mob -- 'Written by fools to be read by imbeciles'

2006-12-20T09:51:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

WSJ's Opinion Journal has indulged in another round of the MSM's upturned nose to the lowly blogger, another cornucopia of contumelies, a mountain of maligning. We are all fools and imbeciles according to assistant editorial features editor, Joseph Rago in today's Op Ed, The Blog Mob.

Here's the wind up...

Blogs are very important these days. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has one. The invention of the Web log, we are told, is as transformative as Gutenberg's press, and has shoved journalism into a reformation, perhaps a revolution.

I feel a "but" coming!

And the pitch...

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.

A swing and a miss, Mr. Rago.

Few bloggers, Mr. assistant editorial features editor, imagine themselves to be anything like investigative journalists... few even consider themselves journalists at all. A small number may have taken steps into that field, but most bloggers who blog on culture, the news and politics are in it for opinion making. And, I'd lay odds that few would dispute such a claim.

On Publius' Forum, for instance, we are reacting to the MSM and it's bias. We are delineating the misreporting, lies, distortions and misspeak that occurs among the many assistant editorial features editors and their cohorts out there. But, none of us lay claim to original reporting.

So, Mr. Rago is complaining that we bloggers aren't doing something we aren't even attempting to do in the first place! Would Rago be mad that a dog doesn't meow… only if he wasn't aware that a dog instead barked? And it appears that Rago is completely innocent of the kind of barking that bloggers do.

Additionally, he seems to imagine that political blogging is all that the blog is for. He seems not to be taking into account that the blog was, indeed, originally designed to be an electronic, public diary, a mode of communication not designed specifically for "reporting", newsmaking or politics and that the great preponderance of blogs out there are just that; someone's little diary.

The way we write affects both style and substance. In this aspect, journalism as practiced via blog appears to be a change for the worse. That is, the inferiority of the medium is rooted in its new, distinctive literary form. Its closest analogue might be the (poorly kept) diary or commonplace book, or the note scrawled to oneself on the back of an envelope--though these things are not meant for public consumption. The reason for a blog's being is: Here's my opinion, right now.

I'd further suspect that Mr. Rago is not very informed of American Newspaper history. Most American papers were filled with columns copied from other papers (without attribution on top of it), hackneyed writing, partisan mudslinging, and rumormongering. In fact, it has only been since the 1950s that newspapers were imagined to be straight "reporting" with commentary and opinions ostensibly relegated only to the editorial sections as opposed to running throughout every story in the paper.

In fact, before radio and TV became so prevalent, newspapers were expected to pick a political side and fight like wildcats for that choice. Political candidates even openly supported, and were in turn supported by, newspapers both on a national as well as local level.

In one complaint, though, Mr. Rago is closer to a legitimate concern.

...Instant response, with not even a day of delay, impairs rigor. It is also a coagulant for orthodoxies. We rarely encounter sustained or systematic blog thought--instead, panics and manias; endless rehearsings of arguments put forward elsewhere; and a tendency to substitute ideology for cognition. The participatory Internet, in combination with the hyperlink, which allows sites to interrelate, appears to encourage mobs and mob behavior.

Because political blogs are predictable, they are excruciatingly boring. More acutely, they promote intellectual disingenuousness, with every constituency hostage to its assumptions and the party line

Point taken. Let's face it; writing styles vary wildly, most being not of a very high caliber (perhaps myself included). And, yes, too many preach to the choir making little effort to convince or argue effectively.

It is also unfortunate that the blog, at times, lends itself to "panics and manias". We have all seen a story ripple through the blogging community that later turned out to be a humbug. I admit to having fallen for a few myself.

However, as I alluded to above, this is no departure from historical newspaper practice. This is, in fact, a complete and accurate reflection of newspaper history. It is little different even than the days of the Founding Fathers who wrote tracts and commandeered newspapers to disseminate their ideas. Thomas Jefferson didn't fund a printing of ideas of his enemies in some attempt at "moderation" or "bipartisan" reporting!

We only remember the best writing of that era because the worst was quickly forgotten and relegated to the scrap heap of memory. There were hundreds of newspapers in the old 13 colonies and not all produced the best writing, to be sure. Rago seems blinded by a narrow historical perspective.

After all, today we have the New York Times an organization that seems to have made it a practice to hire plagiarists and writers of fiction!

No, what we have here is a man who imagines his profession is far nobler than it really is -- now OR in the past -- as he turns up his nose at the new kids on the block.

As bloggers we can take note of assistant editorial features editor, Joseph Rago's bemoaning the oft times low level of literary acumen and erudition endemic throughout our work, we can take note of his admonitions and make a better effort to improve our product and enrich our content. But, on the other hand, the MSM might want to clean up its own yard before it complains about the neighbor's.

... and I'll have you note that I used a lot of fifty cent words to sound more learned, Joe. Did I pass the audition? Am I the fool or the imbecile?

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JOHNNY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE - - Getting this John the Beloved To Linger

2006-12-20T09:37:00.000-06:00

- Resa LaRu Kirkland

While attending Highland High School in the early 80's, I would often see a book in our library entitled, Johnny, we hardly knew ye. It had a youthful and smiling JFK on its cover, and was a memoir written by two of the future-President's aides regarding his first run for Congress in 1946.

I assumed the title had come from the fact that this particular Johnny died prematurely, but it actually turned out to be an old Irish war protest song. Oddly appropriate considering that the sixties ushered in the reign of this particular old Irish man, who brought in Vietnam, thereby creating that most useless of species, the Hippy. And oh! What that hath wrought.

OK, so he wasn't very old. But to a teenager, he was ancient. And to a proud Reaganite, he stood for everything nauseating, selfish, and cowardly that his decade came to be. The book was drivel, which meant the Hippy Press loved it, the critics worshipped it, and at least one teenager wasn't buying it. Heck, I wouldn't even check it out after reading the jacket. I was, after all, in an American school. I'd already had all the Political Castration I could stand. I certainly wasn't going to suffer through anymore on my own time.....................
Click HERE To Read On

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Arabic Signs Panic Virginians

2006-12-19T08:56:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
The AP is reporting that a program operating near Richmond sponsored by the Virginia Interfaith Center is raising eyebrows and causing some members of the citizenry to worry that secret Terrorist messages are being left across the city.

The small beige signs bearing black Arabic script have been appearing all over town on buses and at colleges.

The signs, which below the Arabic script carry English translations and comments that indirectly caution against jumping to conclusions, are part of a campaign by A More Perfect Union, a program of the Virginia Interfaith Center, and are aimed at dispelling some of the public's fears toward the Muslim community. Organizers hope to eventually expand the program statewide.

Of course, the signs are not a secret terrorist message, but an attempt to soften the image of Islam. The idea is to get Virginians more at ease with seeing Arabic script and not to automatically associate it with terrorism.

"As people see Arabic, they immediately make an association with terrorism," said the Rev. C. Douglas Smith, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center, a nonpartisan coalition of faith communities that work for change through education and advocacy. "That's probably because since Nine-Eleven, not only is fear overwhelming us, but that's how we're being trained to think."

This campaign is, however, a most disingenuous and, ultimately, insidious one.

Insidious in that, should this campaign truly work to make Americans cease to be alarmed at signs of Islam, we will surely be giving Islamofascists succor and freedom. It can do nothing but assist Islamist extremists to tear down American defenses and allow them to more freely roam about our country to commit their murder and mayhem at will given cover by all lack of alarm at Islamic activities.

The AP story gave us a perfect example of its disingenuousness, as well.

Bias toward the Muslim community is a continuing problem across the country and in Virginia, said Imad Damaj, president of the Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs.

"There's so many lazy, unexamined assumptions about all of us and how we react to people," Damaj said. "We need to challenge ourselves."

Schoel said history has proven that Americans can learn to let go of irrational fears toward other cultures.

"After World War II, when people saw Japanese script it was scary," she said. "But now we see it and it's fun, it's hip, it signifies a cool culture."

"That's a huge turnaround."

Sure it's "fun, it's hip" and "cool" to become fond of Japanese symbols now because Japan is an ally and has gone from a militaristic, monarchy to a democracy. THAT is why it is now "cool" and "hip", not because Americans have successfully "challenged" themselves about Japan, but because Japan has itself changed to be more deserving of interest and respect. The Japanese people have given us a reason to become at ease with their culture. The Japanese have gone out of their way to become a respected, benevolent people and have joined the civilized nations in commerce, entertainment and culture.

Islam has most certainly not given Americans any reason whatsoever to trust it or become at ease with it and the Virginia Interfaith Center knows this full well, hence the disingenuousness.

This program acts as if it is we Americans that must somehow change, to accept Islam better, to be more "tolerant" of it, instead of Islam's to show us why we should be more tolerant of it. Islam has not done a single thing even to meet us half way to convince us that it is, in truth, a benevolent -- or even benign -- ideology.

Americans have absolutely no reason whatever to become at ease with signs of Islam.

Not one single reason.

This obsequious campaign by the Virginia Interfaith Center should be opposed until Islam gives us a reason not to be biased against it and displays of its symbols.

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Extolling the Female Tongue

2006-12-19T08:55:00.000-06:00

- By Selwyn Duke

A long time ago I read a short online piece about how women could get their men to put the toilet seat down. Inherent in it was the idea that this was an example of men's lack of consideration and that the task at hand was one of disciplining these bad boys. I don't know, my attitude is that if women can leave a toilet seat down, men can leave it up.

Of course, this is just a silly, pebble-in-the-shoe issue, but I see it as a metaphor for a modern phenomenon: The casting of women's characteristic behaviors as the norm and men's as dysfunctional deviations.

This is strikingly obvious with the topic of communication. Man has long known that women were the more loquacious sex, and you've probably heard of studies to this effect. A recent book states that women have about 20,000 "communication events" (I love these terms the psycho-babblers conjure up) a day, versus about 7,000 for men. But this is nothing new; who didn't know a bevy of garrulous girls in school? ............
Click HERE To Read On

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Selwyn
Duke

What the Heck is a Paleoconservative and Why You Should Care

2006-12-18T08:31:00.000-06:00

-By Dan E. Phillips

Have you ever noticed how enthusiasts of all sorts frequently speak a language that is completely unintelligible to the rest of us? For example, computer geeks . . . err . . . enthusiasts have their own language as do gear heads . . . err . . . hot rod enthusiasts. Wonkish political obsessives like me are guilty of the same thing, I am afraid. I don't know a gigabyte from RAM or a header from a flathead, but I can rattle off the various shades of conservatism in Rainman-like fashion.

I was reminded of this tendency recently when I published anarticle on paleoconservatism and abortion. The article was originally published at Intellectual Conservative, and later published at several mainstream, GOP-oriented conservative websites. It made some very controversial assertions so I expected to get feedback. Well I did. Most of it was positive. Some of it was not. But what surprised me was that most people weren't taking issue with my controversial assertions. Instead, many seemed to be unfamiliar with the term paleoconservative. I was surprised because my article appeared on conservative oriented political websites. I assumed paleoconservative would be a term familiar to those who frequent such websites. Well you know what they say about assuming. I was also disappointed. That many conservative internet surfers didn't know what a paleoconservative is is an indication that my side seriously needs a marketing campaign.............
Click HERE To Read On

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Phillips

Editor & Publisher Hails Find of AP's 'Capt. Jamil' of '6 Burning Iraqis' Fame, Taunts Bloggers

2006-12-18T08:10:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Editor and Publisher seems hardly able to hold back their excitement over the possibility that someone has found proof of the existence of the mysterious "Captain Jamil Hussein" who the Associated Press claimed as a source for the supposed burning of 6 Sunni Iraqis in retaliation for the depredations of that sect on their Shi'ite neighbors.

In a Sunday posting on their site, E&P is crowing about "Conservative Bloggers in the U.S." eating crow.

Though far from definitive proof, it was strong enough to cause at least one conservative blogger to wonder if those who had mocked the AP might have to eat "a huge shinola sandwich."

The tag for the story on the Hot Air home page currently reads, "Anyone got any good recipes for crow?"

It was a story that had no proof whatsoever except this "captain of Iraqi police" the AP quoted. There is no confirmation by any reliable second source, nor any proof by Iraqi government sources or US Army sources. No physical evidence, or photographs. In fact the US Army disputed the story openly. But the story made a great splash and was widely cited by news services all across the western media as if it was totally verified.

USA Today reported back on November 28th that "The Associated Press is standing by its report that six Sunni men were burned to death in Baghdad Friday by Shiites, even though U.S. military officials have accused the wire service of relying on a source who "is not who he claimed he was," an Iraqi police captain."

Now,Marc Danziger of Winds of Change Blog posted the following on the 17th:

With the help of some friends who have been doing a smidgen of looking, and it appears - appears, but is not certain - that there is in fact a Jamail Hussein in the Yarmouk police station in Baghdad. We'll know more tomorrow.

Editor & Publisher seems to be relishing that Michelle Malkin and others will have to "eat crow" if it is proven that this captain does, indeed, exist.

However, E&P seems to be missing the real story... as usual.

The fact is, whether this Captain Hussein exists or not, there is still no corroboration for the story of six burned Iraqis.

And, it has always been a staple of journalism that more than one source should be required to publish a story reported as "fact". After all, if only ONE source is ever needed for a story, then anyone can publish anything as "fact" merely upon any single person's say so.

I slept with Marilyn Monroe, ya know? Print that as fact, AP... just because I say so. Even though I was but a child when she was found dead. But this one source says it's true, so the AP MUST assume it could be fact!

It is also interesting how E&P has jumped on a story that is reported as one being reported from "...some friends who have been doing a smidgen of looking, and it appears - appears, but is not certain..." How is this a story? With a may and a might and a could have been?

Isn't this just what they are chiding the "Conservative Bloggers" and Michelle Malkin for? Not having proof in hand of the truth of their claims that Captain Hussein didn't exist before writing their posts? Isn't that exactly what E&P just did with a report that "appears - appears, but is not certain"?

Further, did they not think that there could be more than a few Hussein's in Iraq, or any OTHER Muslim country for that matter, that could be a policeman?

If E&P wanted to stick a finger in Malkin's and those "Conservative Blogger's" eyes, they might have wanted to be sure themselves of the truth of the matter!

In the long run, E&P's "report" did nothing to clarify the situation and amounts to nothing but schoolyard finger pointing and an exercise of their own in mocking -- a thing they seem to be decrying in Malkin -- and they have opened themselves up to being slapped right back with claims of hypocrisy if this story of the found Captain Hussein turns out to be a false lead.

Looks like Editor & Publisher was in need of an editor for their report!

(See more at Michelle Malkin's HotAir blog)

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Apparently Not The Thought That Counts

2006-12-17T05:25:00.000-06:00

- By Frederick Meekins

In a land as prosperous as that of the United States, from time to time parents must remind their offspring that the Christmas season is not suppose to be as much about the gift as about the sentiment behind the present. However, as charities themselves degenerate into bloated bureaucracies more concerned about perpetuating themselves than about assisting the downtrodden, those administering these organizations no longer view the giving public as the real heroes behind what use to be considered grassroots eleemosynary but rather as dimwitted cogs to be lectured as to how the acts once perceived as selfless are actually reactionary gestures undermining the progressive vision of their enlightened betters.

Even within my own short life thus far, at one time Toys for Tots was grateful to receive any new toy or even a good used one in reasonable condition (as from my own experience I can tell you that a second-hand Millennium Falcon is as nearly as much a delight as one fresh out of the box). However, like a spoiled child getting too much at Christmas, now not only aren't second-hand toys not good enough for these philanthropic agencies, but now they also dictate what kinds of new ones may be donated as well.....................................
Click HERE To Read On

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meekins

Iraq Study Group... Unbiased? Hardly

2006-12-17T04:37:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

It amazes me that the Iraq Study Group was so hailed as a milestone in Iraq Policy. Worse, it has been claimed to be an unbiased deliberation of the situation in Iraq loaded with people with "gravitas" who have no political stake in the outcome.

But, any look at the people on the commission shows a group of people who came into this group with an agenda beforehand and none of them intended to address this task without preconceived notions that they were bound to prove out in their recommendations.

The putative leader of the group, James Baker, had well-known reservations about the entire Iraq enterprise so certainly couldn't approach the situation in an unbiased way. His most immediate cohort, Lee Hamilton, is a long time Democrat Party operative, so he was certain to be against the Bush Administration, as well.

Not only that but some of the supporting organizations are hardly those that might be considered "unbiased". Both the United States Institute of Peace and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are filled to overflowing with people who stood foursquare against Bush and his policies in Iraq since the day the president announced his plans.

And now, to further prove how members of this group can in no way be considered unbiased observers, another member of the ISG delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address following the president's.

Clinton's defense chief warns of Iraq 'quagmire'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Defense Secretary William Perry, a member of the Iraq Study Group, said Saturday that Iraq could turn into a "quagmire" if the Bush administration fails to change strategy.

Perry, who led the Pentagon under President Clinton, delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address.

Referring to the Vietnam War, Perry said: "The term 'quagmire' recalls one of the saddest periods in American history, which we do not want to relive. But I believe that is likely to happen if we 'stay the course' in Iraq."

Here was the amusing part of the CNN report above...

The Iraq Study Group report was critical of just about every aspect of the administration's war policies.

It's no wonder when there was no one placed in the ISG or its support organizations that weren't publicly against the Bush team at the start.

And now one of the ISG is giving radio addresses for the Democratic Party?

Yeah.

VERY unbiased, that.

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The Anti-Assimilation Movement

2006-12-16T10:11:00.000-06:00

- By Frank Salvato

Assimilation -- defined as the act of becoming part of or more like something greater -- is a hot-button issue these days. Whether alluding to the calls for a return of the American Southwest to

Mexico by the Reconquista movement or the encroachment of radical Islam on the streets of Paris, the fact remains that members of immigrating minority groups are increasingly refusing to assimilate into the cultures of their resident countries. The lack of assimilation by immigrants to the United States -- both legal and illegal -- is culminating in an American identity crisis and poses a serious problem for the future of our country.

This movement toward anti-assimilation stands in stark contrast to the very concept of our nation.E pluribus unum , "out of many, one," is the motto of the United States. This motto, this dedication, was originally selected by the Great Seal Committee in 1776. It acknowledged that the thirteen separately governed British Colonies had banded together to form one inclusive nation, a country that stood independent from the British Crown, the United States......................
Click HERE To Read On

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salvato

Murdering Babies for Stem Cell 'Research'

2006-12-16T08:38:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, here is the nightmare scenario that every right to life, Conservative has warned about when a society so disrespects life that it begins harvesting human cells and parts for "science" and medicine.

Ukraine babies in stem cell probe

There is heated debate about the ethics of using stem cells

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.

But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies.

The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of Kharkiv who say they gave birth to healthy babies, only to have them taken by maternity staff.

In its report, the Council describes a general culture of trafficking of children snatched at birth, and a wall of silence from hospital staff upwards over their fate.

Couple this report with the constant reports that China is harvesting the organs from live prisoners of the state and the poor to sell to the rich in need of organ donors and you will see perfect examples of a lack of respect for human life.

These are the warning signs of a misuse of science, the kind of misuse featured in the "medical experiments" carried out by Nazis and Japanese "doctors" during WWII that so shocked the world. When a culture is so cavalier with life these sorts of trafficking situations are absolutely bound to occur.

If you life is not rated as special, as sacrosanct, then there is no mental or cultural barrier to harvesting organs from living people to benefit those who can pay to steal their organs. There is nothing to stop unethical medical practitioners from killing babies and adults to sell the parts they harvest from those warm bodies.

If a human life is to be considered an "unviable tissue mass" even in vitro, then there is no way to stop the practice of making human cells, human organs... life itself... a commodity to buy and sell.

In fact, if this practice stays in operation underground long enough, it will surely go above ground and become legal in the long run. After all, why not just legitimize it if it has been going on for years anyway?

Now that medical science has advanced to this level, now that human cells and organs can be used to extend other's lives, this kind of buying and selling of human body parts will naturally follow. And, without a healthy respect for life embedded deep in a culture's psyche making trafficking and stealing of those parts anathema, this kind of outrage will grow apace with science and the medical arts.

And scientists will continue to and in ever growing numbers cast aside ethical considerations for that next great breakthrough, or merely to make a living off the deaths of the less protected, those "worth less" to society.

But, then, the question must always be asked in Orwellian overtones: WHO is to determine which citizen is "worth less" and which is not?

Because, let's face it, the rich are who will benefit the most from such trafficking. After all, it is they who can pay for these black market body parts. And do we really want to develop the concept in the west that the "poor" are worth so little to the world except what cells and organs can be stolen from their still breathing bodies?

I hope not.

It must be a goal of any advanced society to foster a respect for life lest life become so unimportant that such abuses become commonplace. And, if such harvesting becomes commonplace, we would live in a society so separated by class that the rich would literally be able to live off the organs of the underclass.

We must have a serious discussion of these ethical considerations before the practice of harvesting organs from people becomes widespread. We must not wait until it is so pervasive in our societies that it becomes a crisis. Let us now resolve to sanctify life before many millions die in the name of science.

The murder of people for their cells, organs and appendages has already begun, but let us undertake a cultural shift away from such mistreatment.

Let us do it before it is too late.

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Schoolboy Turns in Found 'Weapon', Gets Suspended For Effort

2006-12-14T14:04:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

In school we tell our children that guns are bad. We tell them to be good little children and turn in those bad, evil guns to a parent, a policeman or a teacher. We tell them to do the supposed responsible thing. Be an upstanding citizen and take that evil gun out of circulation so that someone else won't kill half the city, runs the logic.

So, a young boy at Troy Middle School near Joliet, Illinois follows this sage advice and what is his reward?

He is kicked out of school for following his indoctrination.

On November 15th, 13-year-old student Ryan Morgan was expelled from school in supposed compliance with the idiotic "zero tolerance" policy against weapons with the school district claiming that young Ryan had "possession of a gun".

Sounds menacing, doesn't it? A gun! Imagine that?

Well, maybe it isn't so ominous after all because this "gun" turned out to be a mere toy pellet gun that Ryan and a friend found hidden in the boy's bathroom. It seems that Ryan had heard a rumor that this "gun" had been hidden there so he and his little friend went there to do the "right" thing and retrieve it to hand it in to the office.

As a reward for his diligent efforts to be a good, responsible citizen the school recommended that Ryan be expelled for a year. A slap in the face for performing what he has been told is his civic duty.

Later, this supposed policy that the district's lawyer, John M. Izzo, said held the district "bound by state law to bring an expulsion recommendation" against this poor, dutiful child was upheld by the school board. Consequently, honest little Ryan is to be thrown out of school for his offense.

Superintendent Larry Wiers said that "purposeful possession of weapons is one of the most serious offenses a student can commit and requires close consideration by the administration."

Yes, little Ryan, even if you are trying to do the "right" thing, turning in a gun found laying about the place, you are to be punished.

Wait, it gets worse.

As mentioned, this penalty is supposed to leave young Ryan expelled for a full year. Of course, the school board really does "care" about education, you know? We know this because they say so, you see. So, instead of leaving him expelled and sans educational opportunity they are going to pay for a year of home schooling.

Not only is Ryan being punished for trying to fulfill what he is told is his duty, but now so are the taxpayers who will have to pay double for this young man to be educated. With property taxes already paying for his education once at the school, it will now be doubled for his home schooling.

Lawyer Izzo earnestly announced that "it would be in the best interest of the student and the school to continue provide this student with educational opportunities through home bound study." But, what is "in the best interest" of the taxpayers who are being forced to pay double for this kid who was only trying to be helpful, Mr. Izzo?

So, what is it, school administrators? Are we teaching our children to do the "right" thing and turn in found weapons to the school administration to take them off the street, or are we teaching children that to get involved in any way is tantamount to pulling that trigger on themselves? Are we teaching our children that taking a gun out of circulation is important or are we teaching our children that school administrators cannot be trusted?

It would seem the later in both cases.

The lessons here are disheartening. The Troy Elementary School District just taught young Ryan Morgan that if he sees something wrong going on that he'd darn well better turn and walk away, stay out of it, don't get involved. Because if he does, we have taught him that HE will be the one in trouble. See a kid waving a weapon? Pretend you see nothing. Hear a kid getting beaten? Close your ears lest it be imagined you were involved. Happen to come across a rape in progress. He sees nothing. A break in? What break in? And, what would happen if Ryan someday hears two terrorists talking about their next target? Heck, it isn't any of Ryan's business. Move along nothing to see here, little Ryan.

So much for civic mindedness.

So much for doing the "right" thing.

So much for good administration of our schools.

As Heard on WBAL
-Warner Todd Huston was a guest on the Bruce Elliot show, WBAL Boston, on January 4th, 2007 discussing this topic.

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Cupid can strike at any age

2006-12-13T08:05:00.000-06:00

- By Michael M. Bates

In the waning days of the 109th Congress, there was little joy on the GOP side of the aisle. The Republicans, tossed out of the majority last month, must give way to Democrats impatient to restore the highest ethical standards to government. You know, Democrats like Dollar Bill Jefferson of Louisiana, who won a landslide re-election race despite the FBI finding $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer.

Even in the midst of the GOP angst came some good news. According to the Congressional Record, Indiana Republican Mike Pence took to the House floor last Friday and told colleagues:

"On behalf of an extraordinary career, but what we know will be an extraordinary future, I am pleased to announce Henry Hyde's recent marriage on the day after Thanksgiving. We wish you all the best, our friend, for many, many years."

Illinois' Henry Hyde wasn't beaten in the Democratic sweep. He had announced early last year that he'd retire after 32 years in Congress. Mr. Hyde was a rarity: a Republican first sent to Congress in the wake of Watergate, a year that Democrats won over four dozen seats.........................................
Click HERE To Read On

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Bates

CNN: Americans all Racists Says Poll

2006-12-13T08:04:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

For creating a story out of nothing and then finger pointing at US society and saying how evil it is, this Dec. 12th CNN story takes the cake. In "Poll: Most Americans see lingering racism -- in others", not only is a somewhat leading poll cited as evidence that America is still rife with racism, but CNN uses comments emailed to them by their viewers as some sort of follow up proof for it!

Very scientific, I know. After all, CNN used science via the Internet and phone lines to conduct this farcical poll, I suppose.

(CNN) -- Most Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States, and many say they know people who are racist, according to a new poll.

But few Americans of either race -- about one out of eight -- consider themselves racist.

And experts say racism has evolved from the days of Jim Crow to the point that people may not even recognize it in themselves.

How convenient that those "experts" can see racism where no one else can. So, racism is everywhere, but we can't see it, don't understand it as racism, nor do we see any examples of it, but only "feel" it in others. The perfect "proof" to shore up Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for decades to come.

The "experts" that CNN dredged up really went to town on this "poll", too.

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.

"We've reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don't recognize," Dovidio said.

He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.

"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.

That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations.

Curiously enough, "researchers" once thought that gold could be created from lead via alchemy, too! These "racism" experts are little different than the sooth-sayers and shamans who pranced around countless primitive campfires with their rattles shaking as they talk in tongues. All "saw" things no one else could and found gullible benefactors to pay them for their visions. The "social sciences" are barely better than cave paintings.

But, more amusing than these supposed experts telling us how we are all secret racists -- so secret we don't even realize it ourselves -- is the interesting reliance on viewer's emails that CNN used to add further "proof" to their shaman's tale.

"Racism here is quite subtle," e-mailed CNN.com reader Blair William, originally from Trinidad, who now lives in Lexington, South Carolina.

The scintillating expertise is overwhelming there.

"I am a firm believer that racism is rampant in the United States," wrote another CNN.com reader, Mark Boyle, of Muncie, Indiana.

Mr. Boyle of Muncie, Indiana is no doubt a learned and well-known observer of American society.

And, not to be outdone by the common folk, CNN pulled in the trenchant commentary from New York Times writer Calvn Sims who, we are told, "recently wrote about his experiences in the city".

"If a cab passes you by, obviously it is frustrating, it's degrading and it's just really confusing, because this is akin to being in the South and being refused service at a lunch counter, which is what happened in the '60s and '70s," he said.

I hope not too many Americans fall for this tripe as serious commentary or scientific study of American society. I also hope that this kind of negative nonsense doesn't turn too many away from the fact that ours is one of the most inclusive societies in the world and that people of every nationality and race can find more opportunity here in the USA than in any other nation.

... and I can find a LOT of emailers to back THAT up!

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Time Mag: Setting to Tear Down McCain... Their Own Creation

2006-12-12T08:18:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
Proving that Time Magazine never understood a single thing about John McCain, Time writer, Karen Tumulty, is all worried about the "cost" of McCain's purported run for the 2008 GOP nomination for the presidency.

The head and sub-head lines alone are so filled with misconstructions, assumptions and laments that one doesn't have to read the rest of the story to know how far off they are in analysis.

Why It's Dangerous For the Maverick To Be the...Front Runner

John McCain was a straight-talking upstart in the 2000 presidential election. Now he's poised to be the G.O.P. favorite for 2008, but at what cost?

First of all, the "maverick" label is one the press created and drove McCain ever more toward with their fawning attention. This assumption of "front runner" now is also a figment of their imagination.

Then, they belie their supposed objectivity and reveal how much they loved the claimed maverick status of their hero, McCain, by claiming there now is a "cost" to be incurred with his attempt to get the '08 nomination. Tumulty's article reveals her bad feelings that he will have to try harder this time to court the base as opposed to imagining that the independent and moderate vote will catapult him past all comers in a GOP primary -- a woefully mistaken belief from the 2000 run that the press seems to have encouraged for McCain, an encouragement that doomed his candidacy.

They inflate his appeal from the 2000 campaign to a ridiculous extent with their "upstart" claims, too. McCain never had much of a chance amongst the base in 2000 with his entire campaign being a creation of the media. The last time the media tried to create a Republican candidate out of whole cloth it was Wendell Wilkie who faced Franklin Roosevelt in 1940.

Wilkie lost, too, just like McCain.

Now, Time is lambasting McCain's new slogan as one that doesn't "have quite the ring" of his earlier one. They also seem sad that a candidate running to get a Republican nomination will have to seem more like a Republican.

As a rallying cry. "Common sense conservatism" doesn't have quite the ring of "Straight Talk Express." But the new slogan on the website of John McCain's presidential exploratory committee--a slogan he manages to repeat at least three times in every speech he gives these days--tells you all you need to know about how different this presidential campaign will be from his last one. McCain '08 will be a bigger, more conventional operation--a tank, not a slingshot. The prevailing wisdom about McCain used to be that his bipartisan appeal would make him a sure bet in a presidential race--if only he could get past the Republican primary. But as more and more of the party establishment climb aboard a campaign that McCain has not yet even formally launched, it's starting to look as if the opposite may be true. By trying to become the perfect candidate for the primaries, McCain could be creating difficulties for himself in a general election.

I wonder if they ever lamented that a Democrat had to seem like a Democrat to get the nomination of the Democratic Party?

The article goes on and on about his "bad" views -- you know the ones, those conservative ones -- even quoting him as saying he is "more conservative than many of his fans believe him to be". No, he is more conservative than the media wanted him to be. If one looks at McCain's voting record, there could be little doubt that he stacks up as a pretty conservative Senator. It has always been such but the media turned away from this truth in favor of playing up his anti-Bush stances.

But, now without Bush around for the 2008 run, they are at long last setting out to bash McCain over HIS conservatism... yes, after they spent 8 years building him up as a "maverick". McCain will now see the fawning media turn hostile when they FINALLY start discussing his voting record, for sure.

But Time's report does help us see the hypocrisy in McCain's media stance and his voting record. His claims of "maverick" are at odds with many of his actual votes. Making his "straight talk" perfectly muddy, indistinct and filled with dissembling.

Still, McCain has no better chance of getting the 2008 nomination than he did the 2000 one. Even though his voting record is pretty good for the most part, he has spent the last 7 years hampering the Republican efforts in Congress, harming our national security, worsening our campaign finance laws, proving he hasn't a clue what the US Constitution means, putting the breaks on our judicial nominations and generally playing to the leftist media to get their slobbering approval. All things that will make him damaged goods to a Republican voter.

McCain will probably do worse than he did in 2000 because of his road blocking of the GOP agenda over the last 7 years, I'd bet.

Most amusingly, this article tied the supposed "racist" ad against Representative Bob Ford of Tennessee to McCain because McCain hired Terry Nelson as his campaign manager. "Nelson oversaw the Republican National Committee's independent expenditure operation, which produced the most notorious ad of the 2006 campaign. In it, a bare-shouldered white actress claimed that she had met the black Senate candidate Harold Ford at a Playboy party", Time informs us.

So, perhaps McCain might begin to see his beloved leftist media turn against him now that he is no longer a thorn in Bush's side. The Times, for their part, is ready to treat him as just another evil Republican. Watch for this to begin happening more.

Like Victor Frankenstein, the MSM stand ready to destroy their own creation.

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Pelosi/Democrats ARE Bad for Security

2006-12-12T07:59:00.000-06:00

Proving, once again, that Democrats just don't understand our security, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (Dem. Cal.), has chosen a guy that has no clue about what is going on to be the chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence over someone who at least is familiar with the subject.

House intelligence chair calls al Qaeda Shi'ite

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Is al Qaeda a Sunni organization, or Shi'ite?

The question proved nettlesome for Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, incoming Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

"Predominantly -- probably Shi'ite," he said in a recent interview with Congressional Quarterly, a periodical that covers political and legislative issues in Congress.

Unfortunately for Reyes, the al Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden is comprehensively Sunni and subscribes to a form of Sunni Islam known for not tolerating theological deviation.

This fool hasn't the first idea of what is going on in the war on terror in general or Iraq specifically and HE is tapped to be the chair of the committee on intelligence? Where is he going to keep HIS intelligence, in a box? Because it SURE as heck ain't in his head!

We can also see that Pelosi will lead by indulging her petty hard feelings and feuds as opposed to striving for the best. That she will slight qualified people of her own party to spite them because she is in a snit over something.

A former border patrol agent and a congressional opponent of the Iraq war, the Texas congressman was chosen for the chief intelligence job by House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi.

She rejected the panel's top-ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman of California, who has had strained relations Pelosi. Next in line in terms of seniority was Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a former federal judge ousted from that post amid allegations of corruption.

What is the common refrain among leftists; that women are LESS prone to fighting and mean-spiritedness because of their softer, nurturing sides? Pelosi sure is doing a great job of disproving that leftist axiom.

One axiom she is NOT disproving is that Democrats are dangerous when it comes to national security. And picking a guy who doesn't know the first thing about current events is proof enough.

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Advent Second Sunday

2006-12-12T07:45:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Christians must strive to live a life of Christ-like humility, while living in the world.

Sunday's sermon at the North Stamford, Connecticut, Long Ridge Congregational Church was preached by the Rev. Dennis Reiter. His texts were Philippians 1:27 - 2:11; 4:2-3 and Acts 16:12.

Rev. Reiter noted that, as described in the passage from Acts, Philippi was the leading city of that district in Macedonia and, equally important, was a Roman colony. The latter made the Apostle Paul's preaching more dangerous than otherwise, as the citizens of Philippi were more than usually sensitive to any doctrine that Roman authorities might construe as subversive to Roman rule..................
Click HERE To Read On

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Brewton

An ACLU Nativity Scene - No Jesus, But a 'Gary and Joseph' With Communist 'Wise men'

2006-12-11T08:42:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
I am sending out a salute for the creativity and wry sense of humor displayed by the Young Conservatives at the University of Texas for their spoof of the ACLU's war on Christmas.

As the ACLU has donned their crusader's dunce caps, the Young Conservatives have set to skewer them on a lance of parody revealing the ACLU's absurdity with absurdity in reply.

Dubbing the ACLU the Anti-Christmas Lawyers Unit, the YC of the U of Texas have created a nativity scene replete with the favored symbols of the left to replace the traditional figures of Biblical fare.

As the YC's press release explains:

“We’ve got Gary and Joseph instead of Mary and Joseph in order to symbolize ACLU support for homosexual marriage, and of course there isn’t a Jesus in the manger,” said Chairman Tony McDonald. “The three Wise Men are Lenin, Marx, and Stalin because the founders of the ACLU were strident supporters of Soviet style Communism. The whole scene is a tongue-in-cheek way of showing the many ways that the ACLU and the far left are out of touch with the values of mainstream America.”...The scene will also display a terrorist shepherd and an angel in the form of Nancy Pelosi.

Classic! AND funny.

To get serious, the YC also discussed the more meaningful message in their parody of the ACLU's attack on American tradition, values and religion.

“The ACLU and other left-wing extremist groups are working diligently to destroy American’s rights to the free expression of religion,” said Executive Director Joseph Wyly. “We’ve already seen in Chicago an attempt to censor the nativity by a city government this week. It’s just more evidence that there is a War on Christmas being waged by the far-left in this country.”

Spot on, Mr. Wyly and good on ya.

This is a great protest of the ACLU's anti-Americanism and I hope to see this a tradition down at the U of Texas, displayed for as long as the communist inspired ACLU attacks our morals and traditions and as long as the ACLU continues their attempts to destroy the culture of the United States.

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Senator Durbin, Giving Welfare to Lawyers

2006-12-10T08:04:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

It was news for one day in Chicago, the biggest city in Senator Dick Durbin’s home state. Since then, no one seems to have noticed this absurd bill being pushed by Senator Dick Durbin that would give away Federal welfare money to young lawyers.

Of course, Durbin isn’t calling it welfare. He is calling it "debt relief". It sounds helpful and innocuous doesn’t it? Relief is a nice thing, right?

On November 27th, the Chicago Sun-Times tried to soft sell the proposal as a way to help "people with over $100,000 debt" get "relief".

Gosh that is an awful lot of money to be saddled with, eh?

Debt relief may be in sight for lawyers

For prosecutors and public defenders drowning in debt, help might soon be on the way.

Since 2003, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been pushing legislation that would grant student loan relief to public sector lawyers in the criminal justice system. With the Democrats in control of Congress, Durbin plans to reintroduce his bill early next year. Some hope it finally has a chance of passing.

"It's the defining issue of this era" for prosecutors, said Bernie Murray, chief of criminal prosecutions for the Cook County state's attorney's office. "The number of people with over $100,000 in debt is amazing."

Yes, it is “amazing”, all right.

The bill, called the Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act, intends to give away $10,000 (capped at $60,000) of Federal money a year to people who will promise to commit to three years of service in the ranks of a state’s public defender’s offices.

The Sun-Time’s story is filled with pity-party stories about how all these young lawyers seem to be somehow unfairly burdened with such high tuition debt for so many years after they finish their schooling.

I am heart broken for people who, in Durbin’s home state, make an average salary of $80,000 a year at the law.

Let’s contrast that with the average yearly salaries of some other members of the Durbin’s state.

School Bus Driver : $25,000 a year
School Teacher: $38,000 a year
Preacher or Minister: $40,000 a year.
Printer: $45,000 a year
Police Officer: $55,000 a year
Registered Nurse: $55,000 a year
Plumber: $79,000 a year

Tell me Senator Durbin, is the debt that these people incur training themselves for their careers any less worthy of your so-called debt relief than that of a lawyer? Are the people who undertake these other necessary and noble careers less deserving of your “help”?

And, it must be pointed out that a lawyer is far more able to pay their tuition loans than the people who struggle to succeed in the professions I noted above.

Obviously a young, would-be lawyer knows full well what the debt that they incur will be, just as everyone else does. They elect to purse their career choice voluntarily, fully understanding the road they must travel to get there.

So, why all this feeling sorry for people who are on a life track to make more money than most people ever will? Why should we fall all over ourselves to give away our tax dollars to these strata of people?

Talk about welfare to the rich! I thought Democrats pretended to care about the "little people" and were the bulwark against the depredations of the evil rich?

Yet, now we have one of the most partisan, mud slingers in Congress, a man who is supposed to represent the best the more caring Democrats have to offer, giving away Federal money to the rich?

How can this be described most fittingly?

One word…

Hypocrisy.

Certainly this supposed relief is welcome news to certain people.

Durbin, Murray said, "is a liberal guy, so a lot of prosecutors don't like him. But he's my hero. "

I am sure.

Right now the bill is stalled but it had passed the judiciary committee with the loving help of committee Chair, Arlen Spector. And, Democrats are hopeful that the new Congress will be more receptive to their welfare for the rich.

"We're hoping now with the change of leadership in the Senate, we can get this enacted, " said Durbin, who will be the assistant majority leader come January. "It's the highest priority. "

It amazes me that anyone should propose to steal the People’s tax money to enrich those who will become richer than most of their fellow citizens.

I hope Durbin’s sop to the richest Americans is stopped in it’s tracks.

Contact your Senator and say NO to welfare for rich lawyers.

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Pie-in-the-Sky Recommendations

2006-12-10T06:02:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Two of the basic recommendations in the Iraqi Study Group Report are utterly unrealistic. In each case the Study Group, in typical liberal-socialist fashion, bases its proposals upon the theoretical assumption that everyone sees the world as they do.

First, stating that the war in Iraq cannot be won without unified support here in the United States, the Study Group recommends that appropriate steps be taken to gain support from those opposed to the war.

One might as well have called for Hitler's support of the Allies' D-Day invasion in World War II. We are engaged in a cultural civil war in the United States in which fundamental compromise is impossible. Liberal Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a jihad against our founding Judeo-Christian principles, a jihad in which there is no middle ground.................
Click HERE To Read On

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Brewton

Wash.Post: 'Reporting' Through Emotions With Bush's Iraq Policy

2006-12-09T09:19:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

How is it journalism is supposed to go: "Who, What, Where, When"?

Isn't that the purported standard for "reporting" on a story? So, should that be true, the just-the-facts-ma'am style of reporting, informing the reader so that he may decide, is obviously as rare as a white Unicorn appearing every 13th month on a blue moon in the newsroom of the Washington Post -- or the Washington comPost as it is lovingly referred to by so many.

Today's ridiculously biased and overly emotive "report" took two people to pen, apparently. Robin Wright and Peter Baker held each other's hands and cried their way through their latest Bush slapping they titled "Bush gropes for new Iraq plan".

Even the headline screams girly "feelings" as opposed to just the facts. Who likes to be groaped, anyway, Robin? Kicking off the report we are treated to overly emotive phrases fit only for an editorial page as opposed to a reporting of facts that one should expect in the news section... and need we say that all the emotions are negative? Since the report is talking about Bush's Iraq policy, could it be any other way for good little robotic denizens of the MSM enclave in Washington?

Wright and Baker did yeoman's work making Bush seem harried, pushed, unsure and unable. George Sorros must be cutting the pair a nice fat check.

Let us review some of their novelist's flourish. (I will helpfully place the fun in bold type)

-As pressure mounts for a change of course in Iraq, the Bush administration is groping for a viable new strategy for the president to unveil by Christmas...

-As President Bush and his advisers rush to complete their crash review and craft a new formula in the next two weeks...

-The White House denied trying to brush off the study group's report and said those recommendations are being considered alongside internal reviews.

So far, a lot of suppositions and this is just the first few paragraphs. Surely no "report" of the facts could contain "groping", "rushing", and "brushing off"? These are not "facts" but emotions, not real occurrences but the writer's guess on how Administration officials are approaching their work on the policies to be unveiled.

Next we get those old fashioned "unnamed sources" to assure us that everything is falling apart inside the White House.

Sources familiar with the deliberations describe fatigue, frustration and a growing desire to disengage from Iraq. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deliberations.

"Too sensitive", eh? Not so "sensitive" that they couldn't run to a hostile press to leak it, I see. Hence why we shouldn't believe it.

Anyway, after the first half of the story poisoned with the "reporter's" feelings, they finally get to a few of the facts. But, they end with a sly, but telling tidbit...

But the stature of commission members means that the White House will have to justify any deviations from their plan. "The onus will be on us to explain why we are doing something they recommended or why not," the official said. "They can't just be jettisoned. They have to be dealt with."

The "stature of the commission"? Who has more stature than a president when setting a president's policy? The Iraq Surrender Group has no more "stature" than the president except in the minds of the MSM who NEVER considered him "legitimate" in the beginning.

So, I have decided to adopt the Wright/Baker style to "report" on their "report". Let's see if we can be as professional as our journalistic dynamic duo? Who knows, maybe we might find ourselves hired by a Pulitzer winning Paper someday… or the Washington Post might have an opening, too.

Wright, Baker Struggle to Understand Iraq

By Warner Todd Huston

Washington Prost

Washington Post reporters Robin Wright and Peter Baker struggled to understand president Bush's deliberations on his new policies in Iraq today. Sources say that, as the two rushed to confer on their report to meet their deadline, that they were found groping for a way to sound informed while also edgy and relevant.

While they underwent a crash study of the situation in Iraq, learning all sorts of hard to pronounce Muslim names, the two found it easier to ignore Iraq entirely and report only on what the ISG report says. The Washington Post reporters denied trying to brush off any deeper understanding of what is really happening in Iraq to focus only on the domestic concerns of getting rid of president Bush.

The stature of the Washington Post, however, means that readers will have a harder time justifying any criticism of their reporting. "They can't just scoff at us", an unnamed reporter said. "We go to important cocktail parties, after all."

Hmmm.

Maybe Robin Wright and Peter Baker of the Washington Post are right? It's so rewarding to be a "reporter".

Very, very rewarding.

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THE RISE OF THE 'ANTI-JIHADISTS'

2006-12-09T09:16:00.000-06:00

- By Dave Huntwork

The Internet has become a favored propaganda tool for Islamists, terrorists and al-Qaeda types the world over. It is used to distribute their videos, release their fatwa's, troll for recruits, shore up their base, coordinate their activities and influence the mainstream media. It has also given birth to a whole class of 'anti-jihadists' who now wage their own propaganda war of commentary, analysis, and occasional mockery using websites and blogs as their personal weapons in the Terror Wars. The internet jihadist has now been matched by the keyboard crusader.

Some present themselves as scholarly, analytical, 'think tank' type websites. Others are more confrontational with jihad-mocking movies and Mohammed cartoon contests. But what they all share in common is a mission to expose fundamentalist Islam, and the terror it inspires, as an enemy of the West that must be faced and fought without mercy or hesitation. The Anti-Jihadists have emerged on the web with a vengeance and have joined the blogosphere wars in defense of Western Civilization.................
Click HERE To Read On

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huntwork

Why I Just Left the Illinois Republican Party

2006-12-08T12:48:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Illinois Republican Party has finally lost me as an "official" member. One final act has pushed me out the door. As of this month, the Illinois GOP has decided, in its benevolent omnipotence, that Party honchos … and only they … may decide who may use the appellation "Republican" in this great state of ours.

On their official state website, the Illinois GOP has issued an edict with all the flavor of "the law" and as much haughtiness as they can muster. It lacks only a link to the official Party title request form and phone numbers to call in case you spot a person calling themselves "Republican" who are not "real" or "authorized" Party members.

I can see it now: children will be encouraged to call Party officials in case they feel their parents aren’t "authorized" Republicans. Neighbors will make discreet phone calls to their local precinct officer to let them know that an "unofficial" Republican lurks nearby and that official, in turn, will send his goon squad to cart off the evildoer.

It all sounds rather nefarious.

The first paragraph of this new edict reads as follows:

Of course, in this country of free speech and exchange of ideas, any individual can define himself as he sees himself. Organizations can do the same. However, a difference exists between official and unofficial definitions. And, in Illinois, the use of "Republican" in the name of an organization and in the official statements attributed to the organization, its officers, and its members is allowed with the approval of the officially elected Republican committee of responsibility in the political district the organization operates.

"Of course, in this country", they say, "… any individual can define himself as he sees himself"? Well, awfully kind of ya, friends. I mean, allowing us to our consciences like that is quite mature and civilized, doncha know? But, what follows seems to make the lie to that allowance of conscience.

Of course, it is without question and perfectly reasonable that the Party may determine who officially represents said Party at the polls. That is, after all, why they are in the positions of Party direction and leadership. But, to say that they and only they have the power to dispense the tag "Republican" and may determine who is allowed to use the name is nothing short of Stalinist.

As they say in the movies, here is the money shot; The last sentence of this royal proclamation says you are not allowed to be an "authorized" Republican unless you announce "public support for all elected Republican committee members".

This is no mere arrogance on their part, though. The reason that this warning has been made is because Chairman Andy McKenna and his cadre of soulless Party officials are doing their best to secure their slipping grasp on Party power. Not because they have a viable agenda, but because power is simply all they have. The GOP natives are restless in the face of the emptiness they perceive in their leaders, but apparently those leaders won’t go down without a fight. The old guard is circling the wagons to prevent insurgents with new ideas from nosing in. They are feeling threatened.

And as the rank and file begin to look to others to take the banner forward, the cowardly generals who have lead us to so many defeats attempt to keep control of the troops even as the junior officers fall in battle by the fistfuls. Like the incompetent French General Staff of WWI, these ostensible Party leaders are willing to destroy everyone around them just to keep their own positions assured as they walk whistling past the graveyard self-satisfied that they are still in charge.

The result is that Illinois GOP lies dyeing. No wonder the National Party has pretty much ignored them for the last 7 years.

Now, unless Chairman McKenna and people like Bob Kjellander step down and make room for people with ideas, I can no longer support them. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I have not left the Illinois GOP, the Illinois GOP has left me. (I have, by the way, worked for some candidates, briefly belonged to a GOP precinct organization and pounded the pavement for Senator Steve Rauschenberger, so I am no mere bystander here.)

Now, this isn’t a lone gaffe by the Illinois GOP or a knee jerk reaction from me, by any means. This is the culmination, rather, of decades of misdirection, failed leadership and outright corruption by this Party. So, it is no sudden decision by me, to be sure. I have been struggling with this Party for several years, at least since the nomination of George Ryan for Governor in 1999.

Ordinarily, I think of myself as a Party loyalist, preferring to work from within than without. I usually say to conservatives, that the only way to get conservative ideas into action is to stay seated firmly at the table where our ideas can have some impact. Standing on the outside looking in does not help get anything done. Half a loaf, as they say, is better than none.

However, the time has long since passed where I can sit idly by and support this state’s Republican Party. The graft, corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, ignorance of the law, inability to prevent liberal Democrats from steamrolling across the state, and laxity in creating a dynamic Party platform has become intolerable. Further, the Party’s constant inability to pick sensible candidates and work together on reform and a legislative agenda for this state is unfathomable. And, worse, their complete lack of any ideological position other than seeking power just for power’s sake makes them a soulless entity.

Even in the face of the most corrupt crop of Illinois Democrats to come to power in decades under Blagojevich and Kid Daley, this party cannot pull out a win because they truly offer no reason for voters to chose them over Democrats.

And now they have decided to hand out the name "Republican" as if they are handing out royal titles? Are we to bow before Party Chairman McKenna so that he may tap our shoulders delicately with his official GOP scepter to bestow upon us our title as "Republican"?

Do I have to buy a new suit for this ceremony?

Of course, I realize that I am just one man. So what if I re-register as an independent? Why should big powerful guys like Kjellander and McKenna care if little old me leaves their graft ridden organization? The only reason is, that if a Party loyalist like me is finally fed up, there must be millions just like me who left already -- whether actually or by their indifference. I believe I am no harbinger of the future, but am firmly in the middle of the on coming wave.

The Illinois GOP is a sick organization that is being confined to its deathbed by incompetent physicians who are applying leeches and bleeding it out, while claiming to have only its best interests at heart.

So, I am going to re-register as an independent, dropping my "unauthorized" tag of Republican. This commoner is not rich enough to buy his way into this State Republican Party and is not suitable for royalty. Of course, I cannot become a Democrat, to be sure. I do have principles, after all, and that is what this is all about.

I'd like to say it's been great knowing you, Illinois GOP, but I am at a loss to know exactly what it is you ever did for me.

A History of Corruption

I am not a native Illinoisan having been born in the Buckeye State in the Queen City, Cincinnati, Ohio, so I cannot lay claim that the Land of Lincoln is my land of birth. But, it is my home and has been since 1978, so I can lay claim to a long time relationship with the state and with its leading city, Chicago to who’s southern suburb I moved during Carter’s disastrous presidency.

When I got here, it was a Republican stronghold for the most part. Not Chicago, of course, King Daley and his mob bosses having successful sewn that up for the Democrats since the 1950s, but the state itself had a strong Republican Party.

As I learned about this organization, though, I began to lose my satisfaction with how the Illinois GOP operated here. As Reagan came to office and went and as Newt Gingrich revived the Republican Party in 1994 I realized that the Illinois GOP was not a Party of ideas, but one of mere power. It just exists because it does run entirely on an insider's network and often interchangeable with the state's Democratic Party operatives.

There were a few bright spots like the legislature's “fab five”. This was a group of five conservative Illinois state senators first elected in 1992 that tried hard to interject some Conservatives principles into the Illinois GOP. The group included Sen. Patrick O'Malley of Palos Park, Sen. Steve Rauschenberger of Elgin, Sen. Dave Syverson of Rockford, Sen. Chris Lauzen of Aurora, and Peter Fitzgerald of Inverness, who later became a U.S. Senator. (only Syverson and Lauzen still serve in Ill. Government)

But, such men of principle are far and few between in the Illinois GOP, I came to discover. No, this party was merely a power based good-old boy’s network, the proof of which was the 1999 nomination of George Ryan for the office of Governor. Ryan, then the Secretary of State, was one of the most corrupt officials in the Party and was nominated not because he was a good candidate, but just because it was "his turn" and he had greased enough palms to get it.

Ryan, it turned out, would be the first (and so far only) Republican I could not vote for when it came time to pull that lever. I ended up voting for the Democrat that year (former state Senator Glenn Poshard) who seemed far more like a Republican than the state Party’s candidate, Ryan.

Since then the Party has gotten worse. The continuing Federal probes show that Republican officials and operatives have worked their sweetheart deals with corrupt Democratic party officials to the point where they are utterly indistinguishable one from the other.

And, on top of that, the Party has steadily lost offices state wide since 1999 to Democrats who are often times ether under indictment or surrounded by friends who are.

Now that the GOP has taken a stumble nation wide, this is the perfect opportunity to revitalize the Illinois Party with new blood, new ideas. Instead of doing that, Party officials are doing their level best to stifle new ideas and keep new people from receiving the blessing of Party officials.

This Party is moribund. And I have become despondent to its renewed health unless drastic measures are taken.

Publius Forum tags

Mr. Claus goes to Washington

2006-12-08T12:47:00.000-06:00

- By Michael M. Bates

Prancer could tell there was trouble. Santa had been downing hot cocoas all afternoon. Straight.

The reindeer asked the jolly elf if there were a problem. Santa looked down at the huge pile of letters on his desk. That was clearly the trouble.

"When Britney wrote me asking for underwear, I thought I'd seen everything. Not that she intended to use it, she just wanted it handy in case she has to go to a hospital. But look at the rest of these," Santa said.

Prancer glanced at the top one, from Teddy Kennedy. "Dear Santa, I already have enough toys. So all I want for Christmas is for you to not fly your polluting sleigh over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of my pet interests. You know how much I value the wild life."

"Well, at least he's not asking for another case of Chivas Regal and an 18-year-old Korean orphan to adopt like he usually does," said Santa........................................
Click HERE To Read On

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Bates

Wash.Post: More South Bashing - Racist and Pining for Slavery

2006-12-07T08:41:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
It is amusing to me that the South was always considered by Democrats as "the people", the salt of the Earth, and the so-called rank and file in the "solid South" when the they had a lock on their votes from 1820 all the way until 1980. The South was the all-American region and the Democrats loved them dearly. Yes, for over 160 years the Democrats counted the Southern states as stalwarts and they loved them like brothers. But, now that the Southern states more often vote GOP they are a "problem" and are filled with Bible brainwashed, racists who pine for a return to slavery as far as the left is concerned.

At least, so says Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post today in a screed titled "The GOP's Southern Exposure".

First he begins with a ham-handed attempt to intimate that the GOP sounding "tolerant" is obviously just a ploy and is really a lie at heart.

You've seen the numbers and understand that America is growing steadily less white. You try to push your party, the Grand Old Party, ahead of this curve by taking a tolerant stance on immigration and making common cause with some black churches.

Of course, the GOP "blew" it all by running "racist ads against Harold Ford", as far as Meyerson is concerned... even though neither he nor anyone else can REALLY say exactly what was racist about the ad to which he refers.

After that little jab, Meyerson helpfully explains to us what the "southern problem" is and goes on from there with a laundry list of harangues and slanders against every voter south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Here is a nice compilation of the name calling...

Southerners are:
-knee-jerk militaristic
-anti-scientific
-dogmatically religious
-culturally, sexually and racially phobic

That they are so stupid as to have:
-blocked stem cell research
-disparaged nonmilitary statecraft
-exalted executive wartime power over constitutional niceties
-campaigned repeatedly against gay rights
-thrown public money at conservative churches and investigated the tax status of liberal ones

No, this is not my paraphrasing of what Meyerson wrote. These are DIRECT quotes.

Naturally, Meyerson imagines his leftist policies are but facts of a civilized life and these Southerners are just too much the knuckle-draggaing, troglodyte to "get it".

And, just as naturally for this more civilized and tolerant Washington Post polemicist, it's all Wal-Mart's fault!

Wal-Mart's practice, for instance, of offering low wages and no benefits to its employees begins in the rural South, where it's no deviation from the norm. Only when Wal-Mart expands this practice to the metropolises of the North and West, threatening the living standards of unionized retail workers, does it encounter roadblocks, usually statutory, to its entry into new markets.

Meyerson is against free enterprise, obviously.

And now the capper... Southerners (because of Wal-Mart) want slavery back.

So: A Southern low-wage labor system is cruising along until it seeks to expand outside its region and meets fierce opposition from higher-paid workers in the North. Does that suggest any earlier episode in American history?

What a creep this guy is! And a complete IDIOT where it concerns reading history, too. The South did not seek to "expand" slavery outside its region -- except to expect to take what they considered their Constitutionally legal property into the western territories. The South did not try to push slavery on Northern states the way Meyerson imagines Wal-Mart is doing now. Perhaps Meyerson would pick up a book or two he'd come to find that Northern business interests had little problem with profiting from Southern slavery even while it was going away in THEIR backyards. Nor did they have a problem with child labor, slum tenements, and sweat shops filled with workers who were chained to their machines for 16 hour days in their OWN areas of the country?

These poor, Northern wage-slaves -- as they came to be known -- was one of the things that Southerners pointed to insisting that Northerners were hypocrites over. At least Southern slave owners, as their argument went, clothed, fed, gave medical attention to and housed their slaves whereas the Northern manufactories worked their "slaves" to death and kicked them out the door of the work-shop to feebly fend for themselves.

Did the South somehow force wage-slavery upon the North in the 1840s and later?

Hardly. The North was perfectly capable of handling their own region, thank you very much.

Apparently John Kerry's "nuance" never made it to the Washington Post where cheap shot polemics is all that is required to rank as high-minded political commentary, eh?

Still, I'd accept his proclamations of how the South wanted slavery back if he could but substantiate this claim with a quote or two from any Republican Southern politician -- either state OR Federal -- or any conservative thinker or writer in the South?

He might, though, want to check in with his new Senator from Virginia on this subject. Senator Jim "backturner" Webb is all about re-empowering his "cracker" culture and has written extensively about how the Southern white should take his country back.

In fact, Webb is about the only high profile guy that stands for the purportedly "racist" things that Meyerson seems to hate so much and Webb claims to be a Democrat!
Ah, but there is that "southern problem", again, I suppose.

Chalk Myerson up as a provincial with a penchant for wild-eyed theorizing and a complete lack of historical education. Of course, THAT is what makes him a good leftist.

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Carter Aide Calls Jimmah’s Book ‘Filled With Errors’

2006-12-07T08:36:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

All is not well in peanut land…

Aide: Jimmy Carter 'Invented Segments' for Book

A longtime aide to Jimmy Carter has resigned from the Carter Center think tank, calling the former president's new book on Israel and the Arabs one-sided and filled with errors.

Kenneth Stein, the Carter Center's first executive director and founder of its Middle East program, sent a letter that bluntly criticized the book to Carter and others.

Finally, someone with guts that is close to this anti-Semite, self-loathing, anti-American who lamentably once sat at the head of our government.

But, wait. The humor is not over yet…

Carter issued a brief statement saying that Stein had not been actively involved with the center for more than 12 years and was not involved with the new book. Carter did not directly address Stein's allegations.

Jimmah… so what? What does his absence from your service have to do with the accusation that your book is CRAP?

So far, only members of Hezbullah seem to think that Jimmah’s book is a good one, though. So, Jimmah is not in good company.

But, is he ever?

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Foreign Policy Realism

2006-12-07T08:29:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

It is said that diplomats must be prepared to negotiate with the Devil, which raises the question whether anything can be gained by negotiating with pure evil. Is it realism to assume that the Devil can be made less than evil?

Release of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report puts the doctrine of foreign policy realism in the middle of the table. One implication of that doctrine is that values should play no role in foreign policy; only material national interests deserve consideration.

Yet liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats have been touting the forthcoming report (predictably leaked and already widely discussed by the New York Times) as a counter to the administration's policy. How does diplomatic realism square with the endless barrages of criticism from liberals that the Bush doctrine of preemptive action has squandered the United States's moral capital with the rest of the world?................
Click HERE To Read On

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Brewton

Liberalism Just Might REALLY be a Mental Disorder

2006-12-06T07:55:00.000-06:00

-by Warner Todd Huston

A new book is arriving at booksellers that attempts to clinically explain how Liberalism is a mental disorder. It is a devastating filleting of the liberal mind.

The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.

Ouch! Is Teddy Kennedy feeling a bit self-conscious after that jab?

In any case, it seems the perfect way to peg the way the left thinks about people as mere cogs in the big government machine that they so love. Leftists, while claiming to love "the people" do not in any way love people. They want a single mind and a single body, not a world of individuals.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”

In other words, the left is merely about slogans all geared to destroy any ability of "the people" to get ahead via any means but THEIR approved government avenues.

Looks like a good book.

Here is the writer's web page

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Content to Lose

2006-12-06T07:54:00.000-06:00

- By Chuck Busch

(The purpose of this article is to shame the Republican and Independent voters who generally espouse traditional values yet ceded power to the liberal Democrats by not voting for the more conservative party in this year's midterm elections. It is highly judgmental.)

On the Sunday before the elections, Elizabeth Dole expressed confidence in a Republican triumph because she believed that Americans want the US intervention in Iraq to prevail. The Democrats, she said, ""appear to be content with losing." Judging by the lack of support for perfectly fine Republican incumbent candidates, it would appear that many Republican and other traditional value voters were content to lose also. So what does that make America now, a country of losers?

Iraq Policy

The Islamofacist needs no further convincing. Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, leader of al-Qaida forces in Iraq, boasted, "We will not rest our Jihad until we are under the olive trees of Rumieh and we have destroyed the dirty black house, which is called the white house." He said his fighters are winning in Iraq and achieving their goal of fighting Americans. He issued a further challenge to President Bush not to leave saying, "Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward." .............
Click HERE To Read On

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Busch

The Hateful, Intemperate French

2006-12-05T08:26:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Imagine if you will the scenario where a seriously considered candidate for president of the United States were to call a European country, one we are ostensibly allied with, insane Nazis. Contemplate how that person would naturally be excoriated by everyone... but also question if it is even possible for such a thing to happen in the first place?

What purported mainstream, serious presidential candidate would ever utter such a thing about an ally? Enemies, perhaps but not friends and certainly such harsh language wouldn't be used on a campaign trail ... even for enemies.

Neither the News media nor the American people would stand for such intemperate language.

Remember the firestorm that Bush's unusual usage of "axis of evil" and Reagan's "evil empire" rhetoric -- both memorable for being unusual in American political rhetoric of late against foreign nations.. And that was mild compared to European rhetoric that is used nearly every campaign, even for dogcatcher, in Europe.

But, then, Americans are not the hate-mongers the French are, I guess.

Royal stumbles in row over attack on Israel as 'Nazi'

Adam Sage, Paris

Segolene Royal, the French presidential candidate, was embroiled in a damaging row on a visit to the Middle East yesterday after appearing to condone a Hezbollah MP who denounced US "insanity" and compared Israel to the Nazis.

In a 20-minute tirade Mr Ammar (of Hezbollah) attacked "unlimited American insanity" for sending troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. He then said that Israeli “Nazism” was no better than Hitler’s Third Reich.

Ms Royal, who is on her first overseas trip since winning the Socialist Party primary, replied: "Thank you for being so frank. I agree with a lot of the things you have said, notably your analysis of the US."

Naturally this socialist blamed her remarks as "accidents" because her interpreter "mistranslated" the comments. Like most Europeans, she won't take responsibility for her actions.

But, this kind of rhetoric goes on against the USA all the time in Europe at all levels of government as well as on the campaign trail. In fact, it always has.For instance, recent German leader, Gerhard Schroder, made his whole campaign one of being against everything the USA stood for.

It just shows that, for all their claims of being more "civilized" and more "tolerant". It is a self-deception as powerful as any ever conceived, obviously.

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Clintons' Cathartes Aura (A Buzzards Eye View)

2006-12-05T08:25:00.000-06:00

- By R.A. Hawkins

I just finished reading Dick Morris' commentary on Presidential candidates for the GOP. He has been a mystery to me for years. He is one of those people that is more of a switch hitter than James McGreevey, the former hetero and then gay governor of New Jersey. I wonder if McGreevey will also become a Republican now. That's what Dick Morris did. Dick Morris has been one of those people that the media likes to call a maverick. I guess that's supposed to make him a political gunslinger or something. After watching him switch to helping the Republicans again, I began to wonder why he did it, other than to make certain he had a job. I have never been able to take someone like him seriously because he has no specific ties.

He wrote an article about Hillary having a good chance of winning in 2008 and discussed the importance of beating that with a Condoleezza Rice candidacy. Although I'd prefer her over Hillary because she understands the importance of many things, including the Second Amendment, it sounds like he thinks we should make this move just because of Hillary. Actually Ms. Rice is one of the smartest people we have in DC right now. But Dick Morris drives me nuts because I always wonder what kind of a party switch he's going to try to pull off next. He used to be Trent Lott's advisor then he switched to the Clintons and now he's a Republican? Why are we listening to this rudderless individual?.............................................
Click HERE To Read On

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Hawkins

Reuters: Americans Just 'Ignorant' About Muslims

2006-12-04T08:11:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
Did you know that Americans don't want to "live next door to a Muslim", or that Americans want all Muslims to "carry special identification", or that it is but "Ignorance" that is seen as a "Key Problem" to these foolish American's "hatred" and misperceptions?

Reuters knew, if you didn't. And they are happy to let us all know about it, too.

It all stems from a Radio host misusing his audience to make a point that Americans are no different than the Germans who turned a blind eye to Hitler's "Final Solution" against Jews during WWII.

A DC radio host announced that he thought that Muslims should be forced to have a crescent moon tattooed on them to readily identify them akin to the way Nazi Germany forced Jews to wear the yellow "Juden" star.

He then took phone calls -- no doubt specially screened just to "prove" his point -- to find, lo and behold, everyone in his audience were racists who wanted Muslims marked in such a way.

Naturally, he was not seriously proposing to do what he presented and it was all a hoax to prove that America was filled with Muslim haters. "I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said", he went on to scold his listeners.

"Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."

Neat little package he created there, eh?

But, Reuters didn't stop with just this story to "prove" that we are all Nazi-like, Muslim haters. They had "studies" and CAIR interviews, too.

Those in agreement are not a fringe minority: A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.

Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

And who carried out that poll? Why the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) did, naturally.

CAIR claims to have "found that for one in three Americans, the word Islam triggers negative connotations such as "war," "hatred" and "terrorist." The war in Iraq has contributed to such perceptions."

I wonder what the words "9/11" and "Suicide Bomber" triggers? I wonder why THOSE weren't included in the "study"? Is it because such words afford Americans a REASON to suspect Muslims? You know, the same Muslims responsible for such acts of terror?

But, I guess we wouldn't want to add that to the story. After all, it would tend to mitigate our obvious Goose Stepping tendency! So, we have a radio host who created a premise to get a predetermined end, and a CAIR "poll" to do the same, and we call that proof that we are all just Nazis in bluejeans?

Wunderbar!

Next Rueters brings up the self-manufactured "Clerics removal from a place" story to further prove we are all intolerant and helpfully informs us that the only reason we might be so evil as Americans is because "Ignorance Seen as Key Problem".

So, if we are all Goose-stepping, Nazi-like, Muslim haters, there MUST be an awful lot of Americans attacking and mistreating Muslims all across the nation, right? I mean, if there is so much hate around, we certainly couldn't expect nothing to be happening because of all that racism... right?

Well, not so much.

There are no hard figures on how many Muslims have been subject to harassment or prejudice...

What? How can there be racism everywhere yet no racist actions taken against the target of that purported racism?

Seems rather hard to believe that racism is so prevalent if we can't even see a statistical example of the result of racism.

Anyway, the most amusing part of this story is its ending. There we see a sigh of relief in the fact that Keith Ellison (D, MN) won election to a Minnesota House Seat. Ellison is the first Muslim elected to Congress whose victory could "signal to people who are not Muslims that Muslims have a lot to offer to the United States and the improvement of our country."

And Rueters highlights that Ellison "did not stress his religion during his campaign for a Minnesota seat". No wonder. He isn't a real Muslim, but a member of the racist "Nation of Islam" run by the "Reverend" Louie Farrakhan, a group few Muslims anywhere would claim as an Islamic organization. It's no wonder he ran away from that identification!

In any case, it is a good thing that Reuters is there to tell us how rotten we lowly Americans are and how innocent Muslims are.

What would we do without them?

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America's Failed Fascists

2006-12-04T08:09:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Big-government attempts to manage the economy, not the stock market crash, caused the Depression of the 1930s.

I've touched upon the subject in a number of postings under the head of economics and Constitutional principles.

In brief, the money supply was greatly over-expanded in the 1920s by the newly created Federal Reserve System. Partly it was an accommodation to American manufacturers and farmers filling the rebuilding needs of war-torn Europe.

The result was similar to our dot.com boom of the 1990s. With the economy awash in excess credit, businessmen mistook those conditions for real consumer prosperity and over-expanded production facilities................
Click HERE To Read On

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Brewton

End for Union Dues Used for Politics Workers don't Support?

2006-12-03T07:17:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is a good sign...

State workers can divert union dues to charity

State employees should be able to donate their union dues to any charity, not just a church, when they have religious objections to how the money’s being spent, state and federal officials agreed yesterday in a settlement.

One of the chief complaints against Unions is the fact that these organizations, ostensibly created to serve their membership, coerces the membership to pay dues which are then used to support politicians and causes whether or not the individual members agree with those politicians or causes.

It has always been a direct contravention to the principle of a union to do so and for years conservatives have wondered why a union member cannot specify that his dues not be used for causes in which he does not believe?

But, like the bullying Union thugs perpetrate on employers, they are no different on their membership. If a member doesn't slavishly accept all tenets of the union leadership, said member is targeted for harassment. But, that aside, their dues are used for whatever purpose the Union officials decide, the member having no say whatever.

In any case, we are beginning to see cracks in this hidebound practice and this case in ohio is one of several, though quote a successful one.

The settlement came in a case involving Ohio Environmental Protection Agency employee Glen Greenwood, who objected to paying union dues because he believed the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association supported abortion and same-sex marriage causes. Greenwood did not belong to a church to which he could direct those dues.

While the union had a policy allowing employees with similar objections to donate their dues to churches, synagogues or other religious organizations, it had no provision for those without church affiliations to donate to a secular charity. The agreement concedes the policy violated equal-protection statutes.

Granted this is a government union, but it shouldn't be too hard to carry this ruling over into other unions.

It's about time Unions had their oppressive powers taken from them. Let's hope this is but one of many.

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Contract Granted For American Concentration Camps

2006-12-03T07:13:00.000-06:00

- By Frederick Meekins

For years, whispers have ebbed and flowed across the currents of cyberspace that the U.S. government had plans on the drawing board for the establishment of detention and relocation camps to heard massive swaths of the population into during times of declared national emergency.

Haughty sophisticates regularly dismissed such nuggets of information, claiming such warnings were the ravings of kooks and the paranoid. However, at last more mainstream news sources are willing to admit such holding pens of dubious constitutionality are in the works.

According to a FoxNews.com report titled "Critics Fear Emergency Centers Could Be Used For Immigration Round-Ups", a contract has been granted to a subsidiary of Halliburton no less for the establishment of emergency relocation centers for use during a national disaster or immigration crisis. Though marketed as a way to house illegals as they are processed back to their countries of origin, the American people need to be warned this might not be the only purpose for such facilities.

For starters, as Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi points out in the FoxNews.com story, "An emergency is basically anything DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) deems an emergency." Thus Americans could theoretically be herded into such facilities over reasons far less ominous than natural disasters and calamities....................................
Click HERE To Read On

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Meekins

LA Judge's Ruling Allows for Terror Funding

2006-12-02T08:14:00.000-06:00

-by Warner Todd Huston

In another attack on our security, U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins declared unconstitutional two provisions of Executive Order 13224 (signed by Bush, Sept. 23, 2001). This will make it easier for money to be raised for foreign terror groups within the USA.

EO 13224 put a halt to fund transfers to groups known to be terrorists and known to have perpetrated violence in their cause. In particular, this case was brought by the self-immolating Humanitarian Law Project -- an imitation of the ACLU -- to protect the funding sources of the Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam- Sri Lanka) and the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK- Turkey), both of which have perpetrated acts of terror for many years in their respective countries.

This fellow traveling LA judge is just part of the nation wide network of those domestic operatives ideologically opposed to our security and who have been doing their level best to knock down every measure taken to find and destroy terror networks both within and without the USA.

On this subject, that of funding outside terror networks, I have always been ashamed that we here in the USA never tried to stop the millions of dollars in donations that went to the NRA in Ireland during the "troubles" there. In fact, I don't ever recall a single voice being heard raising the subject at all.

US citizens who donated money to the IRA contributed to the murder of hundreds of British citizens and gave succor to terrorism for decades and I feel that the USA should have stopped such money transfers. Now we have a chance to do that with the support of the citizens of the USA, at least for other, contemporary terror networks.

But, not if these obstructionist judges have their way. If they have their way we will see Americans funding their own demise with donations sent to terrorist groups. And even if the money goes to terrorism for other causes, ones not turned against our own, does that make it any better to allow our financial support to assist terror against others?

These out of control judges need to be brought under some kind of review. Jefferson had it right...

"The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body -- working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdication, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821

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Democrats Consider the Fascist Option

2006-12-02T06:13:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Democrats, committed to the theory that only the political state can improve people's lives, explore ways to deliver on campaign promises.

David Wessel writes in the November 30 edition of the Wall Street journal (here, if you're an online subscriber):

In campaign rhetoric, Democrats raised expectations they would do more than Republicans to boost wages and living standards of ordinary Americans...Now Democrats have to deliver, or at least look like they're trying.

...Democrats, [Gene Sperling, a Democratic cabinet-secretary-in-waiting] says, must figure out what government can do to encourage business to create more middle-class jobs in the U.S................
Click HERE To Read On

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Brits Have Given up on Western Values

2006-12-01T09:01:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

In yet another example of Britain bending over backwards to prove that they can ... well, ben over backwards... for fetid "multiculturalism" and self-hatred, Tony Blair has "apologized" for England's part in the slave trade!

Blair to express "sorrow" over slave trade

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair will express "deep sorrow" for Britain's role in the slave trade nearly 200 years after the legislation that led to its abolition, Sunday's Observer reported.

Why should he?

His nation was the most active nation on the PLANET to try and rid the world of slavery, doing more than any other western nation in its day to eliminate the trade.

"I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was -- how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition -- but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever could have happened,"

Mr. Prime Minister, DO pick up a history book so that you might discover that YOU GUYS are the ones that "fought for its abolition".

You have NOTHING to be ashamed of and NOTHING to apologize for.

In FACT, we should be focusing on Islam as a culprit of slavery because it is still going on in Muslim countries!

This groveling and bowing and scraping is a demeaning posture and no one should lower themselves to such cowardice.

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Hugh Hewitt a Big Government Guy??

2006-12-01T08:35:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, we all love to jump on it when a lefty says something stupid, don't we? We should also point out when an ostensible Conservative news commentator says something ridiculous, too...

Now, I don't usually report what radio guys are doing or saying, not that I don't like them or that I find them somehow illegitimate, but because they have their own fora from which to make their waves and they can get their ideas out without my assistance. But, I do listen to several talkers and enjoy some of them, as well.

One of the talkers I like is Hugh Hewitt. He is the reason I have stepped up my blogging and why I started a Town-Hall blog, too. I find he is usually a Reagan styled conservative and I agree with him very often. So, when he says something I usually give it consideration.

However, he said something in the last hour of his show today that amazed me.

Hewitt had a very short, sort of throw away segment on the last hour of his show last night (Thursday the 30th) where he seemed to advocate one of the worst apostasies in Conservative thinking: a big government take over of a private sector industry.

Worse, it was a take over of an industry that makes Hugh Hewitt's world; Internet domain registration.

Currently, the ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) handles all domain registration, charging $6 a year for that internet domain name, Hewitt reported. These are brokered through hundreds of domain sellers, but the actual issuance of the domain name is handled through ICANN no matter from what service provider one originally purchases the domain. This Brings the ICANN service several hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Yet, despite that ICANN registers and controls these domains, they are given that mandate by the US government. Congress periodically approves ICANN's authority to control all domain names basically issuing them a license to do so and has recently renewed ICANN's rights for another 6 years.

So, what did Hewitt say about ICANN? Well, he wondered aloud why the government has to "allow" ICANN to be the domain registration service and why all the hundreds of thousands of dollars that ICANN makes can't stay with some US government agency or another? He wondered why the government can't just register domains themselves and "keep all that money".

Just think of what Hewitt offhandedly posited! We are paying $6 a year for domain name registration with this privately held corporation. Does Hewitt think that this extremely reasonable fee would stay as low as it now is if domain registration fees were to be turned over to another bloated government agency?

Worse, doesn't Hewitt realize that control of these fees would give politicians just another avenue to continue raising more and more tax revenue, hiking them year after year until fees were so high NO ONE could afford to register a domain name at all?

And for a man who claims to be an internet guru, does he NOT realize that this would end up putting an end to the wonderful growth that the internet now enjoys? As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall is so famous for saying, the power to tax is the power to destroy!

I certainly hope that Hewitt was not advocating a government take over of yet another private industry! I sure hope he had not thought through his rash suggestion and is not serious that the government should take over the registration of domain names and the fee structures that comes with such! PLEASE tell us, Hugh, that this was just some half-cocked scheme that you did not fully consider before saying?

After all, we ALL say stupid things once in a while. Let's hope Hewitt just spoke out of hand without being truly serious about this ruinous idea.

On the other hand, if this was a serious suggestion by Hweitt, he needs a slap on the hand from EVERY conservative in the country.

Come on, Hugh. What do you say? Mea Culpa, I hope!

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Lights! Camera! Reverend Al!

2006-12-01T08:31:00.000-06:00

- By Michael M. Bates

It was what we've come to expect. A fatal police shooting in New York and the Reverend Al Sharpton is on the case faster than you can say the television crews are here.

That concrete information wasn't available didn't dissuade Al from swiftly concluding that this "watershed case," as he described it, was a continuation of the systematic abuse of police power.

The deceased was shot at about 3:30 am after leaving the strip club at which his bachelor party was held. Sharpton somberly intoned that the victim "should be on his honeymoon with his wife this morning." No disrespect for the departed intended, but since the victim's fiance had already given birth to two of his children, it seems to me they had their honeymoon a while ago.......................................
Click HERE To Read On

Compromise vs Moral Relativism

2006-11-30T08:05:00.000-06:00

- By Thomas E. Brewton

Between the Constitution as written and the liberal paradigm, no compromise is possible. Every concession to liberal policies entails sacrificing individual political liberty.

When people share common principles, compromise is possible. But when the founding principles of society, expressed in the Constitution, are attacked by liberal moral relativists bent upon destroying those principles, acceding to their demands is, not compromise, but surrender.

For that reason, demands by liberal media and by voters that Congress compromise and "get something done" are really demands that we continue slowly to dismantle the Constitution. The analogy is to heat yourself in the winter by tearing your house down, piece by piece, to burn in the fireplace.

The Constitution created a government of limited power for a religious and moral people. Political power was to be curbed by citizens' God-given, inalienable, natural-law individual rights to life, liberty, and private property. As the English Glorious Revolution of 1689 established, when a ruler arbitrarily contravenes those rights, he has broken the social compact and thereby forfeited his right to rule...............
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ABCNews: Pays no Attention to Devito's Bush Bashing

2006-11-29T21:06:00.000-06:00

-By Warner Todd Huston
As reported on Newsbusters by Michelle Humphrey, actor Danny Devito was on ABC's "The View" today and went into a seemingly drunken tirade against President Bush and generally acted the fool on the show.

And, as Michelle added in her update to her original entry, ABCNews issued Devito's "apology" on their website.

But, this "apology" is interesting in that ABCNews mentions all the wild statements and strange behavior by Devito on every subject except his Bush bashing. We are left wondering why it was "proper" reporting to mention Devito's seeming inebriation, his mention of partying with actor George Clooney, his slurred speech, his being bleeped, his Clinton White House story and then his "apology" to Barbra Walters.... yet not a single mention of his attack on president Bush.

Is it perhaps because ABCNews doesn't think Devito's boorish behavior was wrong when he was calling Bush names and making monkey noises in reference to the president?

I'd say it is pretty clear that ABCNews doesn't feel that Devito has anything to apologize for where it concerns his attack on president Bush.

What do you think?

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