I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU (Michelle Malkin Responds To DUmmies Who Posted Her Personal Info)

Simcox ultimatum to Bush: `Build fence or Minutemen will'
I love this guy, and I'm going to have to call him and tell him so.

Oh, and LOL!!! This is the new exhibit 'A' in the "What Is Better About America" encyclopedia... if the gub'mint don't do it, WE'LL DO IT OUR DAMN SELVES!

Lie Down With Strippers, Wake Up With Pleas [Ann Coulter]
Givin' you the whole thing, 'cause I'm good like that. Originally here:

However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.

Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. (Does anyone else detect a common thread here?)

And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. While we're on the subject of things every 5-year-old should know, I also recommend against dousing yourself in gasoline and striking a match.

Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims.

Whenever a gun is used in a crime, there are never-ending news stories about how dangerous guns are. But these girls go out alone, late at night, drunk off their butts, and there's nary a peep about the dangers of drunk women on their own in public. It's their "right."

Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!

But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar -- whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as "judgmental," I'm not sure most people do recognize that anymore.

It shouldn't be necessary to point out that girls shouldn't be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn't be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.

This is an age in which the expression "girls gone wild" is becoming a redundancy. So even as the bodies pile up, I don't think the message about integrity is getting through.

The liberal charge of "hypocrisy" has so permeated the public consciousness that no one is willing to condemn any behavior anymore, no matter how seedy. The unstated rule is: If you've done it, you can't ever criticize it -- a standard that would seem to repudiate the good works of the Rev. Franklin Graham, Malcolm X, Whittaker Chambers and St. Paul, among others.

Every woman who has had an abortion feels compelled to defend abortion for all women; every man who's ever been at a party with strippers thinks he has to defend all men who watch strippers; and every Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton feels the need to defend duplicity, adultery, lying about adultery, sexual harassment, rape, perjury, obstruction of justice, kicking the can of global Islamo-fascism down the road for eight years and so on.

This is crazy. (I can say that because I've never been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Although I did test positive for "Olympic fever" once.)

In no area except morality would a sane person believe he can't criticize something stupid because he's done it. How about: If you've ever forgotten to fill up your car and run out of gas, you must forevermore defend a person's right to ignore the gas gauge. Or if you've ever forgotten to wear a coat in cold weather and caught a cold, henceforth you are obliged to encourage others not to dress appropriately in the winter.

This deep-seated societal fear of being accused of "hypocrisy" applies only to behavior touching on morals.

But we're all rotten sinners, incapable of redemption on our own. The liberal answer to sin is to say: I can never pay this back, so my argument will be I didn't do anything wrong.

The religion of peace's answer is: I've just beheaded an innocent man -- I'm off to meet Allah!

I don't know what the Jewish answer is, but I'm sure it's something other than, "therefore, what I did is no longer bad behavior" -- or the Talmud could be a lot shorter.

The Christian answer is: I can never pay this back, but luckily that Christ fellow has already paid my debt.

Bush Declines To Exclude Nuclear Strike On Iran
Okay, this is from Roto-Reuters, but anything that keeps those kooks on their toes is fine by me.

The fateful hour has arrived By Caroline B. Glick
From Jewish World Review. A very sobering article. Worth reading in its entirety.

Donald Rumsfeld
This is a great Rumsfeld page... it includes his (impressive!) bio, pix, and, my favorite, Rummy quotes. Lovelovelove this guy!

Q: Mr. Rumsfeld, some experts are saying the insurgency in Iraq could last 10 years or more. Is this possible, in your estimation?



SEC. RUMSFELD: Who are these experts?



Q: It’s all over CNN…



SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, CNN -- come now.

And an all-time fave:

We would be happy to capture them, we'd be happy to have them surrender, and if they don't, we'd be happy to kill them.

Now this is a guy I would love to have dinner with.

Moderate Islam: Immoral to employ women--Eatery Owner Flees to Escape Lashing:

"JORDAN TIMES 18 April '06'Conference on moderate Islam to unite int'l
scholars'
QUOTES FROM TEXT:
'Muslm thinkers and religious leaders ... hopes to establish an
international assembly promoting moderate Islam
'practical mechanisms to clarify the tainted image of Islam'
By Mahmoud Al Abed
AMMAN - A meeting of Muslim thinkers and religious leaders next week hopes
to establish an international assembly promoting moderate Islam, according
to a conference spokesperson.
The Moderation Assembly for Thought and Culture expects the event to yield
practical mechanisms to clarify the tainted image of Islam,' according to a
statement issued by the Jordanian group.
. . .The international forum and its partners would carry the banner of
moderation in Islam and promote tolerance and democratic pluralism, in
addition to establishing distinctions between legitimate resistance and
terrorism."

Good luck, guys. Besides, if you're serious, you'll end up on some "Brotherhood"'s death list.

Then there's this:

QATIF, 18 April 2006 - Nabel Al-Ramadan, owner of "Ranoosh" restaurant here,
told Arab News in a phone interview that he has left the Kingdom in a bid to
fight his sentence of 90 lashes for employing two women in his restaurant
one and a half years ago. He left the Kingdom more than a week ago.
Al-Ramadan was accused of violating morality by employing women in his
restaurant on Aug. 10, 2004. He was sentenced only last month after about a
19-month court battle after he was reported for his breach.
"I appeal against the judgment because it is an insult to me as a human
being. In order to avoid this situation I preferred to travel before the
application of the sentence," said Al-Ramadan.
The two girls were wearing hijab while working, Al-Ramadan said, adding both
himself and the girls respected Islam and Saudi traditions, and didn't do
anything that contradicted Shariah.
The girls worked for four hours only on a single day before authorities
closed down the restaurant the same day.
But that still caused problems for Al-Ramadan, which started with him being
jailed briefly before being released. The case was reopened recently.
Al-Ramadan was not allowed to take a lawyer with him when he was called to
the Qatif court.
"I was informed that the court wanted me to attend the trial to investigate
the employment of two girls and was told that the hearing was to be on March
25," said the restaurant owner.
"I went to the court on March 22 just to receive the papers but the judge on
hearing that I was there asked to see me. He didn't give me a chance to hire
a lawyer and sentenced me to 90 lashes - spread over 30 lashes a time. The
judgment was announced after only a quarter of an hour."
Al-Ramadan preferred to leave the country quickly because he feared that the
swift decision against him could mean that it would be meted out quickly.

Mortuary Owner Calls Cindy Sheehan A Liar
She's quite a piece of work, this woman. I cannot wait 'til she just goes away.

Fast cars and fast living at heart of Malibu mystery
Just a totally bizarro story.

Update here: Swedish businessman pleads not guilty in LA ~ Crashed Ferrari ~ bail set at $5.5 million

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE - Student Sculpts With Conservative Firepower by Christopher Flickinger

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE - Student Sculpts With Conservative Firepower by Christopher Flickinger

eBay: Gold Diamond Protection Ring To Fight Muslim Terrorists (item 8924993071 end time Apr-18-06 12:58:39 PDT)
LOL!!

"Dime not included."

Clueless Joe Wilson
Christopher Hitchens, originally here, at Slate. Tons of additional info on the FR thread.

Suspect In Girls Death Profiles Life On Web
Way too much creepycreepy information.

Poll: Sinking Perceptions Of Islam

(CBS) Although Americans believe they are better informed about Islam than they were five years ago, a new CBS News poll finds fewer than one in five say their impression of the religion is favorable.

A FReeper stole my response before I could make it:

That's such a funny, typical liberal sentence. "Although" Americans are better informed. How about BECAUSE Americans are better informed?? Idiots. They just don't get it.

26 posted on 04/12/2006 8:52:01 PM CDT by Huck

Another Day, Another Embarrassing Intelligence-Related Correction (NY Times correction)
We start off our day with a story that the Times was losing money, therefore we must end it with yet another NYTimes correction. No matter how much money they lose, they can't help but print the news as they wish it really was (as opposed to what it is):

Another Day, Another Embarrassing Intelligence-Related Correction Posted by: Clay Waters 4/14/2006 11:59:09 AM

After correcting itself on the Lewis Libby leak yesterday, the Times on Friday corrects another Bush-related intelligence story by reporter Eric Lichtblau that brought much criticism from conservative bloggers like PowerLine.

This is what Lichtblau falsely claimed March 29: “In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order.”

Today the Times admits: “An article on March 29 about congressional hearings on the Bush administration's program of domestic eavesdropping referred imprecisely to testimony about the secretive court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which requires warrants for eavesdropping under most circumstances. While two former judges said they believed that Mr. Bush was bound by federal laws governing intelligence gathering, they did not explicitly express skepticism about whether he has the constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order.”

As Times Watch pointed out at the time, “Lichtblau doesn’t quote any of the judges actually voicing that skepticism about Bush’s actions -- skepticism Lichtblau certainly feels, judging by his slanted reporting in the past.”

Iran President Again Lashes Out at Israel, says it is heading towards "annihilation".

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 26 minutes ago

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel on Friday and said it was "heading toward annihilation," just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

On Friday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freed soon."

Ruh roh.

THE CROSSES THEY CANNOT BEAR
Malkin has picked up the cross on the continued evidence of leftists' tolerance. The real shocker here? A US university's president with actual stones:

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening. NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.

Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.

Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.

"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said.

Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, "I have no comment."

She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a "slap in the face" to women who might be making "the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion."

Jacobsen said it originally wasn't clear who had placed the crosses on campus.

She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.

Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.

"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.

NKU President James Votruba said any evidence of criminal conduct in the incident will be turned over to prosecutors. He said he appreciated the emotional nature of the abortion debate and was glad that diverse viewpoints are represented at the school, but he condemned the destruction of the crosses.

"Freedom-of-speech rights end where you infringe on someone else's freedom of speech," Votruba said.

"I don't buy the claim that this is an act of freedom of speech, to destroy property."

He said he was gathering information about the extent of Jacobsen's participation.

"I don't know if she was pulling up the crosses, but I think she was out there with the students. If so, as far as I'm concerned, she went outside the conditions of her employment," Votruba said.

N.Y. Times Leads Newspaper $hortfalls
The New York Post editors must have giggled as they typeset this one. I love Dinosaur Media Extinction Alerts.

Analysts say newspapers are pressured by circulation declines, higher costs and loss of ad dollars to the Internet and other new media.

The Times, publisher of the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune, said profits fell to $35 million, or 24 cents a share, from $111 million, or 76 cents a share, a year earlier.

I guess being "Fake But Accurate" has stopped paying off.

All in all, a lovely way to begin the day.

Former President Clinton to speak at LBJ School Graduation
Now that we're hispanicized, is that El BJ?

Former President Clinton will give this year's commencement address to graduates at the University of Texas' Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs...

The jokes write themselves.

Anyway, there goes the neighborhood.

Brown is the New Black (Ann Coulter)
WOO HOO, it must be Wednesday night, and Miss Coulter does not disappoint:

This is the only country on Earth that thinks it's not sporting to consider our own interests in choosing immigrants. Try showing up in any other country on the planet, illiterate and penniless, and announcing: "I've seen pictures of your country and it looks great. I think I'd like to live here! Oh, and by the way, would you mind changing all your government and business phone messages, street signs and ballots into my native language? Thanks!" They would laugh you out of the country.

What seems not to have occurred to the "NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL" crowd is that this is a country, not a public park.

There are more than 6 billion people in the world, many of whom apparently like the idea of living in the wealthiest democracy on Earth. But if the billions of people of the world did live here, it wouldn't be "here" anymore. America is special for a reason that must transcend the right to vote — or everyone would be trying to immigrate to Iraq right now.

America has a seller's market in immigration, but thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law, we no longer favor skilled workers from developed nations, but instead favor unskilled immigrants from the Third World. Kennedy's bill promptly cut the number of European immigrants in half and increased Third World immigrants to 85 percent of the total.

Not surprisingly, post-1965 immigrants have sharply higher levels of poverty and welfare dependence. Europeans may not seem like ideal new immigrants, but the truth is, if what they want is welfare, they'll stay in France.

It's as if we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and instead of doubling the price, we're entertaining low-ball offers. Or more accurately, we're paying our customers to take the darn things off our hands — and the customers are still indignant with us.

On CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on Monday, Dobbs was interviewing Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican-American Political Association about his demand for "full immediate, unconditional legalization for all persons currently in the United States."

Dobbs posed this innocuous question about Lopez's planned boycott, "You're talking about a boycott of all illegal aliens in this country?"

Lopez exploded: "Well, first off, I refute your terminology. You don't say 'kike,' 'patty,' 'WOP,' OK. You don't say "nigger"! ... You're using language that's offensive to me and offensive to my people! ... You pollute the air every day, Dobbs. ... That language is offensive, it's derogatory, it's denigrating, and don't use that terminology to me again, referring to my people!"

Dobbs eventually ended Lopez's Tourette's episode by calmly asking him what he expected the impact of the boycott to be.

An hour later on MSNBC's "Hardball," Dave Rodriguez, of the League of United Latin American Citizens, leapt in to denounce Rep. Tom Tancredo for using the word "amnesty." He said: "There isn't any such thing as amnesty in this law. I don't understand what this debate is. That's your own terminology on it ..."

Bank robbers and drug dealers ought to start claiming that the words "bank robber" and "drug dealer" are akin to the N-word. They could accuse lawmakers of "criminalizing felonies" and claim they don't understand what the word "jailbreak" means.

At the same time on CNN's "The Situation Room," Maria Elena Salinas, an anchor at Univision, was informing Wolf Blitzer that "all Hispanics feel offended by what has been going on, by the rhetoric, the level of the negativity that you hear coming out of Capitol Hill and also on some television stations and by some journalists."

So it's really more like we've got the last Xbox 360s available on Christmas Eve and the customers are not only demanding money to take the hottest sales item off our hands, but are verbally abusing us and acting petulant. I'm offended that you would even think about asking me to pay for the Xbox 360! You say it has a "20 GB detachable hard drive"? Well, would you use the word "kike"?

As hardworking as illegal immigrants are when they come here, they are immediately demagogued by liberals into adopting the victimhood pose so popular on college campuses. Everybody wants to act like his ancestors were brought here on slave ships.

Consider this e-mail from Michele Waslin, La Raza's director of Immigration Policy Research, to her members denouncing Sen. Lamar Alexander's proposal to provide government grants to immigrants who want to learn English and American history and to organizations offering those courses. (I'd be happy with a law that simply trained new immigrants not to be "offended" all the time.)

Even though this potentially meant free money for La Raza, Waslin — of the Guadalajara Waslins — ominously warned that while the amendment "doesn't overtly mention assimilation, it is very strong on the patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities."

Meanwhile, Americans aren't allowed to consider whether millions of immigrants refusing to learn English and American history is "potentially dangerous to our communities." Here, please — we'll pay you, just take the whole Xbox 360 factory.

Hands off 9/11 cross (Port Authority rethinks plans to remove WTC icon)

The Port Authority scrapped plans yesterday to uproot and lock away the steel cross at Ground Zero after revelations about the move in the Daily News sparked an uproar. The iconic symbol - which has comforted many since the crossed beams were found in the rubble of the World Trade Center - was quietly headed for a hangar at Kennedy Airport in the fall to keep it safe during construction.

But an exclusive story about that plan in yesterday's News set off a wave of Holy Week horror from the religious community to construction unions - and the PA backed off.

"We recognize the importance of the crossed beams, which have been a fixture at the World Trade Center site since 9/11," the agency said in a statement.

"We are exploring opportunities to relocate this important artifact to a nearby accessible public location while construction moves forward."

Sources said the cross might end up on the Church St. side of St. Peter's Catholic Church, a block north of Ground Zero, until a permanent location is decided.

"If we can be of any help, we will be," said the Rev. Kevin Madigan, the pastor of St. Peter's. "The cross shouldn't be a cause for division, especially during Holy Week."

The Rev. Brian Jordan, who said many a Sunday Mass for Ground Zero recovery workers in the shadow of the cross, felt "betrayed" by the PA's plan for the cross.

"It can't end up in some dusty hangar out at Kennedy Airport," said Jordan, of St. Francis of Assisi Church in midtown. "To put it out there would be an outrageous defamation of a beautiful symbol."

Jordan, who favors St. Peter's as an interim location, said he was asked hundreds of times after 9/11, "Why did God do this?"

"I told everyone, 'God didn't do this. These were evil acts of men who abused their free will,'" he said. "But when the cross was found - we know it's a T-beam - it was visual evidence that God never abandoned us at Ground Zero."

Edward Malloy, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, said his members helped recover and mount the cross and "they'd be reluctant to move it unless there was a commitment to make it part of the permanent memorial."

The West Can't Let Iran Have The Bomb (UK):

"With each week that passes, Iran's ayatollahs move closer to their goal of building an atom bomb.

This is not misinformed propaganda pumped out by trigger-happy yahoos on the wilder fringes of America's Republican Party. This is the opinion of the dedicated teams of nuclear experts attached to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, whose task it is to sift through the highly complex science surrounding Iran's nuclear programme and to provide a considered judgment to the UN Security Council on the Iranians' ultimate objectives.

During three years of painstaking negotiations with Iran, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel peace laureate who heads the IAEA, went out of his way to play along with the charade that Iran's nuclear ambitions were entirely peaceful and designed to develop an indigenous nuclear power industry. This, after all, is a country with known oil reserves in excess of 90 billion barrels, more than enough to meet its energy needs well into the next century.

Mr ElBaradei was even prepared to accept at face value the Iranians' shame-faced admission that their failure to disclose the existence of their massive nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz was no more than a bureaucratic oversight.

When the inspectors were finally granted admission, they were dumb-founded to find themselves in a 250,000-acre complex containing two vast underground bomb-proof bunkers designed for enriching uranium to weapons grade.

Mr ElBaradei is now prepared to concede that the Iranians have run out of excuses, and Teheran has been given until April 29 to implement a total freeze on its nuclear enrichment activities at Natanz and its other key plants, or face the wrath of the Security Council."

This article had me, until those last eight words. Then again, I've seen Team America...

But to judge by the Iranians' response so far, the threat of international condemnation and isolation does not appear to be causing sleepless nights.

Ya think?

Expose the Left ? Rumsfeld to Reporter: “I Have a Real Daytime Job” (VIDEO)
I. Love. Donald. Rumsfeld.

At today’s Pentagon press briefing, a reporter said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld didn’t dispute or address a claim from a book about the run-up to the War in Iraq. Rumsfeld interrupted him and made him look like a fool:

RUMSFELD: You think I’m going to stand around reading your books and disputing things in them or validating or not validating? I have a real daytime job. You would do nothing else but that if you did that. The fact that I haven’t disputed something—I mean, if I disputed all of the mythology that comes out of this group and the books of the world, I wouldn’t have any time to do anything else.

DOWNLOAD – .WMV

DOWNLOAD – .MP4

Cindy Sheehan: Don't Attack Iran:
Silly me, here I was thinking that Iran was daring us to "bring it on" when, as usual, it's all Bush's fault.

Yes, thankfully, Cindy Sheehan has deigned to chime in on our "strategery" vis a vis Iran and, well, she's against it. Send everyone at the Justice, Defense, and State departments home... why waste tax dollars when we can just listen to Cindy:

"Over 2000 thousand dead soldiers, billions of wasted dollars, thousands of maimed young people, innocent Iraqis dead by the hundreds of thousands, still no consistent electricity or clean water in their country, later, and this swaggering imbecile of a 'leaker in chief' has the nerve to be trying to sell all of us on a new war in Iran.

Do the warped neocons with their puppet president think that we are all stupid? Fool us once, shame on us, fool us, -- well, we just can't be fooled again.

'But our objective is to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon,' GWB, on Iran, 04/10/06 at Johns Hopkins University. So, let me get this straight, in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear, or 'nucular' weapons, we will use tactical nuclear weapons on them! The continued hypocrisy of this regime is absolutely breathtaking!

Even having nuclear weapons is crazy, but talking about deploying them is sheer insanity. Retired General Anthony Zinni said on CNN today that Iran would not just sit back and do nothing if attacked: they have the means and the capability to retaliate. Our young people in Iraq would be sitting ducks along with Israel and our supply of natural gas and oil could be greatly compromised. I have an even scarier reason: I, and others, believe that using tactical nukes in Iran could start WWIII or IV. With all of the 'Left Behind' religious fanatics praying for Armageddon, this thought is made even scarier by the fake believers in the White House who are exploiting the neo-Christian idea that Jesus was a war monger and anything our great leader does is okay, because he is a Christian man!"

Cindy, a) WWIII is already on, and b) Iran is threatening to wipe out Israel. Then again, you hate Zionists anyway, right? So of course your ilk wishes for the Ahmonajihad types to carry on unimpeded.

Quick! Call her followers! Y'know, the ones who came to her book signing...

Dutch Feminazis Want to Punish Educated Mothers:

"Sharon Dijksma, a leading parliamentarian of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) wants to penalise educated stay-at-home women. “A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work – that is destruction of capital,” she said in an interview last week. “If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at society’s expense, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished.”

Hence her proposal to recover part of the cost of their education from highly-educated women who decide not to seek paid work. Between 2001 and 2005 the number of Dutch women aged between 15 and 65 who were out on the labour market rose from 55.9 to 58.7 per cent. Dijksma says she wants to stimulate more women to join the work force. In the municipal elections earlier this month the PvdA became the biggest party in the Netherlands thanks to the Muslim vote. The PvdA is generally expected to win the general elections next year, when the 35 year old Dijksma, who has been an MP since she was 23 and is a leading figure in the party, might become a government minister.

On her weblog Dijksma explains that her proposal is a logical consequence of the Dutch system of subsidizing students. Society finances their studies with government scholarships, hence it is only normal that they pursue a professional career or repay. “If someone chooses not to work, then there should be a substantial repayment,” she said.

Most Dutch women who decide not to seek paid jobs do so in order to care for their children. Consequently the Dutch media refer to Dijksma’s proposal as “the PvdA Mother Plan.” The proposal elicited fierce criticism, some of which was aimed at Dijksma’s person. Twice the politician started a college course, and twice she failed to complete the course: her grades were poor, and anyway, at the age of 23 she was already a well-paid MP. Angry Dutch bloggers demanded that Dijksma pay back the costs of her unfinished studies before going after the mothers. “Let the fat cow repay her own scholarships first, because that was a real waste of public money,” one of the bloggers wrote."

Steyn: Facing Down Iran
A very long, very good, very serious, very scary editorial from Steyn:

"Even a loser can win when he’s up against a defeatist."

Oil prices skyrocket after news of possible strike on Iran
If oil prices are really affected by the rantings of Seymour Hersh... well, then, frankly, we're in more trouble than I thought. (And, like, this guy really needed the ego boost...)

Ugliness linked to parenting skill: Study suggests homely people less attentive to their children
This is a ridiculous study, and yet, since it's Canadian, my family-who-remains-there must have unknowingly coughed up coin for it.

One possibility that the author misses is that perhaps ignoring their children is ingrained behavior, i.e. perhaps their own parents ignored them and they think it's de rigeur. Ask Rodney Dangerfield. (Okay, you can't... but allegedly he was so ugly that his parents tied pork chops around his neck so that the dog would play with him, that is, when they weren't feeding poor widdle Wodney with a slingshot.)

Recruiting, Retention Rates Remain High for 10th Straight Month [libs weep]

Recruiting and retention rates released today demonstrate that young people see military service as a viable career option and, once they join, they want to continue serving, Defense Department officials said today.

Active-duty statistics for March reflect continued across-the-board success for the 10th consecutive month, Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokesman, told American Forces Press Service.

Krenke said the numbers prove that recruitment-age men and women aren't dissuaded by the possibility of combat duty and want to serve in the U.S. armed forces.

More than 13,000 people joined the active services during March alone, almost 5,400 of them in the Army, the service with the most members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, retention remains high among troops already serving who choose to re-enlist in the active as well as reserve force, Krenke said.

The Army achieved 104 percent of its active-duty recruiting role for March, and the Marine Corps attained 102 percent, with almost 1,700 new members. The Navy and Air Force both met their monthly goals, recruiting more than 2,800 sailors and almost 3,200 airmen, respectively.

Sweet lil Iraqi Kids - Google Video
God bless our men and women in uniform.

(And, LOL!)

Democracy and Islamic Law Don't Mix, Iraqi Official Says:

"Islamic or 'sharia' law has 'nothing to do with democracy or human rights,' according to Iyad Jamal Al-Din, and mixing Islam and democracy 'is like mixing Marxists and capitalists.' Al-Din escaped Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime in 1979 but returned and was elected to the Iraqi Parliament last Dec. 15. He addressed an April 6 luncheon sponsored by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Al-Din is an outspoken supporter of the U.S. military's presence in Iraq but is critical of the new Iraqi Constitution, which he complained still relies too heavily on religious principles. Al-Din favors a secularized form of government."

I love this guy. Besides stating the obvious, he's an unimpeachable mouthpiece for that particular reality. (Anyone else would be labeled a bigot.)

TIME.com Print Page: TIME Magazine -- Let's Roll! Inside the Making of United 93

If the actors find United 93 hard to take, what will an audience's reaction be? Many people will certainly feel they're not ready to see the film. And that's fine. But it's honorable and artful as a re-creation of history, and as a film experience it's both unbearable and unmissable.

"Movies need to address the way the world is," Greengrass says. "We have to tell stories about 9/11." He also notes, "The victims' families want this film made. Every single one of them." (Universal, the studio producing the film, is donating 10% of the first weekend's box-office gross to the Flight 93 National Memorial Fund.) Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother died on the flight and who serves as chairman of Families of Flight 93, sees two reasons America needs this film. "One, we're proud of what these Americans did," he says. "These are ordinary citizens who in a matter of minutes overcame what very evil and capable people had planned for years. The passengers took action without police or official support. They knew right from wrong, and they acted on it. Out of the dark of 9/11 came these heroes. And two, it is an example that future world citizens can learn from. If you remember Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, he tried to engage a very dangerous bomb and was thwarted by the bravery of the passengers and crew. Flight 93 served as a beacon for them. I don't think you can reaffirm that message too often or too much."

"I hope we're not as a society inured to the messages of the movie," says Hoagland. Those messages, of the hijackers' terrible cunning and dedication, the passengers' valor and sacrifice, are both timeless and timely. "I know it's not too soon," she says. "I hope it's not too late."

Long Waits, Ingrates, and Ahmonajihad




For a long time I have been very sympathetic towards immigrants, even the illegal ones, here in America. As an immigrant myself, and as the daughter of immigrants, suffice it to say, "I understand". Or at least I did. Today, I still just have two words for them, but now those words are, "SHUT UP!"

I have paid my dues and I have paid my fees. I have stood in lines, been fingerprinted and background-checked, answered questions and opened up and said "Ahhhh." Had the lines been longer, I would have still waited in them, had the fees been higher, I would have still paid them. My sentiment was always "I understand", because although I was born in a country that many people in the world consider a promised land, Canada, I was still as desperate as anyone could be to be an American.

Which is why I am out of my mind over the teeming, screaming, demanding masses taking to the streets. You're here and you're not daily kissing the ground? You're here and you're not doing everything you can to repay the gift? You're here and you're not weeping to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner? Good grief, are you really still hoisting a buzzard over your head? (My favorite protest sign has been the "We're not criminals!" one. Uh, well, yes, frankly, you are. Shut up. Go back to the job you've been blessed to be given. Be happy you're not back in some unpronounceable province grinding corn.)

And now, frankly, the situation is getting out of hand, as every two-bit, shade-of-red organization is hijacking the march. That's just fabulous. We have Senators tripping over themselves to harvest the illusion of potential voters and meanwhile the 'world worker parties' are already signing them up. This is because they are completely aware of the real battle they're trying to get us to lose, and the rest of us, and especially those we have elected, have got to remember what's really at stake. It's what I wish these immigrants would get a grip on. We are at war.

[I]n the free world, the competition of ideas and parties flourishes, and allegiances are often based on a single common principle or purpose that struggles against a competing point of view.
Though generally healthy for a society, this competition can be quite dangerous if we lose sight of the fact that there is a far greater divide between the world of freedom and the world of fear than there is between the competing factions within a free society. If we fail to realize this, we lose moral clarity. The legitimate differences among us, the shades of gray in a free society, will be wrongly perceived as black and white. Then, the real black-and-white line that divides free societies from fear societies, the real line that divides good from evil, will no longer be distinguishable.
A lack of moral clarity is why... people living in free societies cannot distinguish between religious fundamentalists in democratic states and religious terrorists in fundamentalist states. It is why people living in free societies can come to see their fellow citizens as their enemies, and foreign dictators as their friends.
Natan Sharansky, The Case For Democracy

Why does this conjure up visions of Belafonte and Castro, Sheehan and Chavez, Penn and Hussein? And whose side in this illegal-immigration battle do you believe they will, by default, fall upon?

Because, meanwhile, there's a new psycho in town, name's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which, for easy enunciation and moral clarity purposes, we'll pronounce as Ahmonajihad. He's a playful guy, as has been witnessed by his schoolyard wipe-out-the-little-guy taunts and the displaying of all his new toys, like rockets, missiles, and flying boats. This may make some of us giggle (even I've posted the picture of the two guys in the desert with the missile strapped to the donkey), but it shouldn't.

I'm not that interested in whether all these newly loud immigrants think that they should pay for their healthcare or if the government should. I'm not that interested in whether they believe they should have proper working papers or be given their walking papers. I only care that they remember what it is that made them leave their native lands for this one and upon what philosophy this great Republic was built. Clichéd or not, are they with us or against us? Are they going to follow those who wish to destroy us? Because if we don't win, if we don't survive, ain't nobody going to be buying their tacos, not unless they whip up the halal version.

---

I posted this for commentary purposes on FR, here.

Iran 'shoots down unmanned plane'

IRAN had shot down an unmanned surveillance plane in the south amid reports that the United States is planning military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a press report said today.

"This plane had taken off from Iraq and was filming border areas," a report in the hardline Jumhuri Eslami newspaper said.

It added the Islamic Republic "officials have obtained information from the plane system and recordings", without giving any further details.

Those kooky mullahs crank it up a little notch.

Great aircraft pix on the thread, if you're so inclined.

As for me,

10 years after Ron Brown

Sunday, April 9, 2006

WASHINGTON
On April 3, 1996, 35 people died in the crash of a U.S. Air Force plane in Croatia. Among them was Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, whom then-President Bill Clinton claimed as a close and dear friend.

There are many indications that could suggest Ron Brown was killed before or during the crash to protect not only the Clinton presidency but also Hillary Clinton's future.

I am absolutely awed that this has been published in a lamestream venue.

Iran accuses U.S. of "psychological war":

"TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran on Sunday brushed aside what it called a U.S. 'psychological war' against its nuclear programme after a published report described Pentagon planning for possible military strikes against Iranian atomic facilities.

A report by influential investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine, citing unnamed current and former officials, said Washington has stepped up plans for possible attacks on Iranian facilities to curb its atomic work.


The article said the United States was considering using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's underground uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, south of Tehran.

'This is a psychological war launched by Americans because they feel angry and desperate regarding Iran's nuclear dossier,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference."

Okay, for starters here, it's those kooky Iranians who have been "psychologically war-mongering", what with all their "top secret" missile tests, Persian gulf excursions, and flying-boat photo-ops.

Secondly, neither America-hating Seymour Hersh nor his fellow-traveling publisher, the New Yorker, can be said to ever be doing anything on behalf of the US government. Unless one was born yesterday.

Roto-Reuters... in the toilet as usual.

Steyn -- No easy answers on immigration conundrum
Perfection Steyn, as usual. This guy is a global treasure.

Here's my immigration "compromise": We need to regularize the situation of the 298 million non-undocumented residents of the United States. Right now, we get a lousy deal compared with the 15 million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented American community. I think the 298 million of us in the overdocumented segment of the population should get the chance to be undocumented. You know when President Bush talks about all those undocumented people "living in the shadows"? Doesn't that sound kinda nice? Living in the shadows, no government agencies harassing you for taxes and numbers and paperwork.

Go ahead, try it. In Michelle Malkin's book Invasion, she recounts the tale of two fellows who in August 2001 pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Va., in search of fake ID from the illegal-alien assistance network that hangs around there. Luis Martinez-Flores, who'd been living here illegally since 1994, took them along to the local DMV, supplied them with a fake address and falsely certified they lived there. The very next day, the two guys returned with two pals of their own, and used their own brand-new state ID on which the ink was not yet dry to obtain in turn brand-new state ID for their buddies. A couple of weeks later, all four of them used their Virginia ID to board American Airlines Flight 77 at Dulles Airport and plowed it into the Pentagon.

Think about that. From undocumented illegal alien in the 7-Eleven parking lot to lawful resident of the State of Virginia in just a couple of hours. Wow. Say what you like about Luis Martinez-Flores, but he runs one efficient operation.

By comparison, say you've got two kids under 5, and you'd like to bring over a nice English nanny to look after them. Name of Mary Poppins. Good references, impeccable character. If you apply now, there's a sporting chance the process may be completed before your children's children are in college.

Given that the new immigration "compromise" bill retrospectively approves all the millions of people who've been through the super-efficient Luis Martinez-Flores immigration system but without doing anything to improve the sclerotic U.S. government immigration system, maybe it would be better just to subcontract the entire operation to Senor Martinez-Flores and his colleagues. It would certainly be cheaper. The extensive Undocumented American support network manages to run it out of the back of the car from a parking lot without a lot of air-conditioned offices full of lifetime employees on government pensions, and given that the net result is exactly the same people who'd be living here anyway, why not go with the lowball bid? Legal immigrants to the United States can only envy the swift efficient service Messrs. Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar received outside that 7-Eleven.

All developed countries have immigration issues, but few conduct the entire debate as disingenuously as America does: The president himself has contributed a whole barrelful of weaselly platitudes, beginning with his line that "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." True. They don't stop at the 49th parallel either. Or the Atlantic shore. Or the Pacific. So where do family values stop? At the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If you're an American and you marry a Canadian or Belgian or Fijian, the U.S. government can take years to process what's supposed to be a non-discretionary immigration application, in the course of which your spouse will be dependent on various transitional-status forms like "advance parole" that leave her vulnerable to the whims of the many eccentric interpreters of U.S. immigration law at the nation's airports and land borders.

Steyn goes on to list other embarrassing examples, but let me add my favorite... six months, to the day, after 9/11, two of "the magnificent nineteen" received their visas from INS. "Irony", as a definition, fails to capture the stunning face-slap. Their bureaucratic ineptitude seemingly knows no boundaries.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Cuba? It was great, say boys freed from US prison camp
From the Guardian, no less:

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. "I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great," said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.

Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times - a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

[snip]

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

Gee, they must have been really tortured.

Actually, this jibes well with other things that have been said about "Gitmo" -- that the average inmate gained fifteen pounds, that mothers in their native countries begged for them to not be transferred to local "legal" prisons.

In fact, our problem is that we are too good. Yes, of course, fortunately, especially in a case like this. However, when I read stories of our "infidel" soldiers wearing gloves to hand out Korans to the inmates, I have to shake my head in politically-correctified dismay. Did we hand imprisoned Nazis copies of Mein Kampf"?

Naqibullah, Asadullah and Mohammed Ismail were moved into one large room, which was never locked. They were taught Pashto (their own language), English, Arabic, maths, science, art and, for two months, Islam. "The American soldiers ate pork but they said we must never do that because we were Muslim," said Naqibullah. "They were very strict about Islam."

San Francisco may be world's gayest city: report

New statistics suggest San Francisco has the highest percentage of gay men among major cities in the world, with a quarter of them HIV-positive, a top city health official said on Friday.

"Despite an overall loss in the population in San Francisco in the last five years, we think there has been an absolute gain in gay men," William McFarland, head of HIV/AIDS statistics at San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said in an interview. "From all the data I have seen ... it's the gayest city in the world."

In other news today, the Pope is Catholic, the sun sets in the West, and bears tend to defecate in the woods.

Dan Simmons - Author's Official Web Site
Apparently this author writes messages each month or so. Checked some of them out. Innocuous.

This one however is anything but. Chilling. Can't be true. One hopes.

Don't miss it.

Democrats Ripe for Political Embarrassment, But Gutless GOP Would Rather Pander
This is a great Rush Limbaugh rant on spineless RINOs vis a vis illegal immigration. However, within it he segues into this tidbit which mentions that Pubbie shining star Michael Steele:

"-- oh, McKinney is expressing sincere regret for the altercation on the floor of the House right now.

That means the Democrats have taken her to the woodshed. John Lewis told her to shut up and get over this, and Steny Hoyer told her to shut up and get over this. Well, she's a distraction. They're out there trying to prove it's Republicans that are the SOBs, and here she's taking all the oxygen out of that room. I'm going to get into that in due course, because there's a great story here in the Washington Post: 'An internal document prepared by top Democratic strategerists warns that a majority of African-American voters in Maryland are opening up to supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele, and they advise the party not to wait to knock him down,' which means take him out.

Now, when I saw this, this is great news. I'm looking at Cynthia McKinney. Look at the black Republicans here seeking office. You've got Lynn Swann. You got Michael Steele. You got Ken Blackwell, and you go to the Democrat side? You got Cynthia McKinney, and that's why they had to get her on the floor and apologize and try to move this behind them, because she's the wrong face, at all times, at any time for the Democratic Party."

Steyn: The West is losing the war of words
Steyn is Steyn is Steyn. These three paragraphs are epecially, if yet still typically, sublime:

The line here is “respect.” Everybody’s busy professing their “respect”: we all “respect” Islam; presidents and prime ministers and foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace routine they forget that cumulatively it begins to sound less like “Let’s roll!” and too often like “Let’s roll over!”

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, gave a typical Western government official’s speech the other day explaining that “a large number of Muslims in this country were—understandably—upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomized the learned, peaceful religion of Islam.”

“The learned, peaceful religion of Islam”? And that would be the guys marching through London with placards reading “BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM” and “FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM” and promising to rain down a new Holocaust on Europe? This is geopolitics as the Aretha Franklin Doctrine: the more the world professes its R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the more the Islamists sock it to us.

*sigh*

There can be only one.

Iran Test-Fires 'Top Secret' Missile ('Top Secret' Missile, the Third in a Week)
Oh, those kooky, saber-rattling Iranians.

The linked thread has some typical, rude "raghead" humor, but some pretty funny graphics. And scroll down for the Pravda link... methinks the mullahs aren't receiving the "respect" they're looking for.

I received the following hilarious, and true, email regarding NBC's Dateline trolling. Enjoy:

Okay, honestly now! I would like to see two Arizona football players go to the Middle East with a camera crew and see if they will be discriminated against by Muslims. I think they would most likely end up in a body bag. These people at NBC (Nobody Believes there Crap) forget that in America you can actually make a distasteful piece of crap that offends Americans and not be beheaded. AH! Anti American @#$%’s!

You tell 'em, sister!

Michelle Malkin: NBC: STAGING THE NEWS AGAIN?
I should have put this one up a couple of days ago. Really, the lamestream media is achingly grotesque:

Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:05:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Subject: Looking for Muslim Males to participate in NBC Dateline Segment

[Forwarded]

Salam,

I hope everyone is doing well.

I have been talking with a producer of the NBC Dateline show and he is in the process of filming a piece on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in the USA. They are looking for some Muslim male candidates for their show who would be willing to go to non-Muslim gatherings and see if they attract any
discriminatory comments or actions while being filmed.

They recently taped two turbaned Sikh men attending a football game in Arizona to see how people would treat them. They set them up with hidden microphones and cameras, etc.

They want to do the same thing 2 or 3 other times (in various parts of the USA) with one or two Muslim men in each setting. They are looking for men who actually "look Muslim". They want a guy with no foreign accent whatsoever, a good thick beard, an outgoing personality, and someone willing to wear a kufi/skullcap during the filming.

They also want someone who is fairly well accomplished and has contributed to American society at large in some meaningful way.

That said, I'm urgently looking for someone who can be filmed this April 1st weekend at a Nascar event (and other smaller events) in Virginia. NBC is willing to fly in someone and cover their weekend expenses. The filming would take place all day on Saturday and Sunday.

We already have a hijabi sister who will be filmed there but a Muslim is also needed to join her. I also need candidates for the other filming segments which will take place in the following weeks.

Good grief.

FrontPage magazine.com :: The ACLU's Leap to Inaction by Hillel Stavis

For nearly a hundred years the crèche sat in front of the Balch Elementary School in South Norwood, Massachusetts. Then in 2004, Sarah Wunsch, attorney for the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union contended that the display depicting the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem manger, violated separation of church and state. and its presence on the grounds of a public school sent a message that the schools endorse Christianity. ''Kids being driven to school or being dropped off see it and think it's part of school," she said.

Eventually, the ACLU prevailed, the crèche was removed and relocated nearby to private land.

In scores of similar cases, the ACLU and its 50 state affiliates relentlessly scan the horizon for perceived violations of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Supreme Court decisions on religious constitutional issues began in earnest in the late 1940’s, culminating in the landmark decision in the 1962 Engle v. Vitale decision in which the Court ruled that New York’s practice of beginning the school day with a prayer violated the first amendment. Recently, the ACLU has trumpeted its victories in “The Silver Ring Thing” case in which The Department of Health and Human Services was held in violation of the clause by providing “inherently religious activities” in its promotion of an “abstinence before marriage” program. Nor is the ACLU shy about broadcasting its role in eliminating “intelligent design” courses in Pennsylvania public schools. In hundreds of cases, the ACLU neither slumbers nor sleeps when it comes to pursuing miscreants who would subvert our Constitution. Thanks to their efforts, perhaps next year our currency will bear the inscription, “In Litigation We Trust.”

Now imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find anyone – either at the Massachusetts ACLU – or at its big brother in Washington who had brought legal action – or who would even render an opinion - on the construction of a $22,000,000 religious structure on land virtually given away by the city of Boston and attendant religious instruction courses forced on a nearby state-funded college. How could such a monumental religious undertaking involving the obvious endorsement by government officials at every level escape the withering gaze of the watchdogs of the ACLU?

It took only a few phone calls to find the answer. The religious structure and institution was neither a church nor a synagogue. It was a mosque. And not just another mosque. The Islamic Society of Boston’s mosque project will be the largest on the east coast of the United States and will be funded primarily through Middle East emirate money.

Not content with support pledged by Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, the ISB sought to purchase the city-owned land at a bargain basement price. And did they ever succeed. The City of Boston obliged the group by selling its 1.9 acre site valued at $2,000,000 for $175,000. Boldly compounding the fraudulent conveyance part of the scam, the city agreed to receive further in-kind payment from the ISB in the form of an Islamic Library and courses in Islamic instruction at a state facility, Roxbury Community College; not a $200 crèche or a menorah made of scrap tubing, but a multi-million dollar enterprise based on defrauding taxpayers and establishing ongoing indoctrination courses on the glories of Islam. Not only did this enterprise represent “inherent religious activity”, but it went far beyond the ACLU’s floor for triggering action by involving explicit and manifold religious activity.

If, as de Rochefoucault had it, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue”, the ACLU has to be first in line at that altar.

Jihad camp to be built in Iowa on U.S. government land:
I can't believe I forgot to blog this one. The hypocrisy is almost paralyzing (next up, a similar tale, from Boston):

March 27, 2006

Lease signed for Muslim youth camp ASSOCIATED PRESS? March 23, 2006 http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060323/NEWS/60323003/1001/NEWS


North Liberty, Iowa. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has signed a lease for up to 25 years with a group that wants to build a Muslim youth camp at Lake Coralville.

The lease allows the Cedar Rapids-based Muslim Youth Camps of America to build on 114 acres of federal land. Construction can start once the group works out details with county and state regulators, the corps said Wednesday.

Plans for the $934,000 camp north of North Liberty call for lodging up to 60 campers ages 10 to 17 in cabins and tents plus staffers during the summer and up to 40 per night in the offseason. When completed, the camp will include a 2,400 square-foot lodge, a beach, recreation trails, five cabins, five tent pods and a bathroom.

The initial plan, submitted in 1999, called for a 17,500-square-foot lodge, 12 camping platforms, 10 cabins, bathrooms, trails and a beach. The scaled back plan was presented after an environmental assessment.

Neighbors who had been opposed to the camp said they no longer were as concerned as they had been.

Rick Hollis, whose property adjoins the land, said he could live with the scaled-down version.

He said it is closer to the size of a Girl Scout camp there previously. 'I like the quiet neighborhood the way it is, but if they really keep it the size of the Girl Scout camp, it should not be a big intrusion on the neighborhood,' Hollis said.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MIM:For background on the camp see the article below :

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8670
Camp Terror
By Joe Kaufman

Environmental concerns have been a factor. Parking accommodations have been a factor. How many people? Where will they stay? Will it cause traffic? All of these issues have been addressed to one degree or another. But a significant few issues have been sidestepped entirely, covered up in such a manner that would suggest either political correctness or deception was to blame. This is especially significant in light of the fact that there is a terror connection to the proposed new Muslim Center.

Issue number one: The Church-State Problem

In July of 2002, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a long fought battle to remove a cross from the Mohave Desert public preserve, as a Federal judge ruled that it was in breach of the 'establishment' clause of the Constitution.

Of the case, Peter Eliasberg, an attorney at the ACLU stated, 'The federal government should not offer public land – owned collectively by people of every faith and of no faith – as a site for the advertisement and promotion of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Pope John Paul II, or any other particular religious figure. Contrary to what some believe, it is not the role of the federal government to advance Christianity or any other sectarian belief.' He further stated, 'The courts have consistently held that a permanent religious fixture on federal land is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.'

While the ACLU feels it necessary to take action against symbols of the Christian faith, it seems they do not attribute the same set of standards to Islam."

Virginia Beach agrees to change the way it scores police math exams [to hire minorities]

VIRGINIA BEACH The city has reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve allegations that the math portion of the police entrance examination discriminates against blacks and Hispanics.

[snip]

Also, the city will offer to allow 124 applicants to resume participation in the hiring process. Those 124 failed the math test between 2002 and 2005, but would have passed under the new standards.

The city also will create a $160,000 fund to compensate those applicants.

Under the agreement, the city will eliminate the 70 percent passing score for the math part of the test. Under the new standards, an applicant must score at least 70 percent on the reading and grammar test, and score an average of at least 60 percent on all three parts of the exam, said Deputy City Attorney Mark Stiles.

The old format required a 70 percent passing score on each of the three sections.

This kind of stuff peeves me to no end. SATs are racist. Math tests are racist. You're really hunting for boogeymen when inanimate objects are prejudiced.

Bush's term, "the soft bigotry of low expectations", is truly perfect. "Hey, Guy-With-Extra-Melanin, you're retarded!"

Would you allow, in a post-affirmative action world, surgery on your heart or brain to be performed by a "minority" (I put minority in quotes since Jews and Asians, truly monorities, don't apply here)?

Affirmative action has NOT helped anyone. Instead it has allowed underqualified people into positions requiring serious qualifications. It has institutionalized the notion that "people of color" are incapable of succeeding on their own merits. It is truly a shame.

This kind of crap is just depressing.

McKinney's arrogance crosses line
Apparently the Atlanta Journal-Constitution deserves a Broken Clock Award:

"The officer apparently failed to recognize the DeKalb Democrat, who was not wearing a special lapel pin given to the 435 House members to help police identify them. In addition, McKinney sports a new hairdo.

A smarter, less arrogant politician would have smiled at the officer who stopped her, extended a hand and explained: 'I'm Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney from the great state of Georgia, and I appreciate your diligence in keeping the Capitol safe. Next time, I hope you'll recognize me.' She would have had a pal for life.

But why make friends when you can make headlines? Two days after the scuffle, McKinney faced TV cameras and stayed true to form, charging the officer with racism.

'The whole incident was instigated by the inappropriate touching and stopping of me — a female, black congresswoman,' she said.

McKinney's haughty position — that every Capitol employee ought to know her by sight and that she should never have to endure checkpoints like the riffraff — evinces the arrogance and ego that voters expect from elected officials. It may be inconvenient for self-important people such as McKinney to stop and show their IDs, but it's essential in these scary times of terrorist bombings and anthrax attacks.

In 1998, two Capitol officers were killed by a mentally ill man who opened fire at the main tourist entrance to the Capitol.

In the past, McKinney has complained that she's mistaken for the 'hired help' in Washington. In the next election, DeKalb residents can help clear up that confusion by putting an end to McKinney's employment with them."

3-Woman Campaign Targets Day Labor (PICS)
This thread is definitely worth checking out for the pictures.

"Broke-Butt Border". BWAHAHA! I'll try and post a couple here later.

Australia: Boom times on underworld gun market
This is "news" from post-gun-ban Australia:

"'People who have a criminal lifestyle don't care about any legislation. ' "

Gee, ya think?

"When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" wasn't coined as a term just 'cause it worked semantically.

Of course, self-defense in Australia is as difficult as ever.

*sigh*

Manager who accidently threw copies of Quran in trash flees Bahrain:

"A EUROPEAN manager at a major restaurant who allegedly desecrated the Holy Quran has fled the country, it was revealed yesterday.

A lawsuit against the manager has been filed by MP Mohammed Khalid Mohammed at the Public Prosecutor, which issued a warrant for his arrest.

The employer told the GDN last week that the man was sacked on the spot because of the offence caused when he threw translations from the Quran into a waste bin in front of Muslim colleagues.

The manager disposed of copies of translations from the Quran by mistake that were distributed by Discover Islam during the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix and left on one of the desks by some customers.

He admitted being guilty, but he said it was unintentional.

Shaikh Mohammed said that Interpol should bring the manager to justice like any other criminal.

'I don't care where this manager is, the only thing that matters is for him to be brought back to the country to face the punishment he deserves,' he said.

'This is a serious matter and the government shouldn't rest until this man is punished.

'He should have been arrested a long time ago, but everyone knows about the bureaucracy in this country.

'This person has made a mockery of Muslims and Islam and should get the severest punishment possible, but first he should be brought back.

'I am very angry and I will not breathe a sigh of relief until he is behind bars.'"

Unbelievable. And I thought Bahrain was less militant.

Oh, and I'm sure Interpol will get right on it.

To Soon To See 9/11? Its Been Too Long (El Rushbo On The Forthcoming United 93 Movie Alert):
There's some really great stuff in this one:

"Too soon? It's been too long! People have forgotten what it's all about. This movie would serve the purpose of reminding everybody why we are in the posture that we're in, why we have to assume the responsibilities, and why it's crucial who leads the nation in future years in this effort. You know, I just think this is just typical of many in the American left. Oh, they can huff and puff, go out and show Fahrenheit 9/11 all day long, they can go watch that. They can go watch garbage and lies that their documentarians and so-called comedians make and it's never too soon to watch any of that. We can go watch all these movies that try to prove Bush lied and that Bush was in this for oil and that all this is trumped up and fake and phony and unnecessary. Let reality rear its head, 'Oh, no, I can't be confronted with reality, why, that is too soon, too painful.' It's not just a New York mentality."

And this call:

CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet, sir.

CALLER: To me, Flight 93 was a defining moment in the sense that the hijack victims of Flight 93, when they understood what was going on, changed themselves into the Flight 93 militia and fired the shot heard around the world, the beginning of the war against Al-Qaeda, followed by Congress and Bush officially declaring that same war. To me, this is something that I think is probably -- since 1776 we haven't had a moment like this. These victims said "We will be victims no more," they became soldiers, men and women alike, shoulder to shoulder, and took on Al-Qaeda and said, "You will not succeed," and they took down that plane, and I think it's marvelous.

RUSH: And they were heroes.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: They were heroes in the process.

And this one:

CALLER: I really appreciate your show, Rush. You are my life preserver.

RUSH: Well, I float really well, sir. Thanks for saying that, that's very nice of you.

CALLER: I just wanted to say that I think the people on Flight 93 accomplished more in a few minutes than the Democrats have accomplished in four or five years --

RUSH: Ooh!

CALLER: -- to fight terrorism.

RUSH: I like it! I like it!

CALLER: I have a slightly different take on Flight 93 than Amy. I can appreciate her view, as I think a lot of people feel that way, and it's tragic the loss of life, but for the people to know what the probable consequences were and to get up out of their seats, I mean that's the true definition of courage. And that is what has fueled this country, whether you're talking about, you know, the Marines on Iwo Jima or soldiers, sailors, airmen over in Iraq right now, that even though they're scared and even they know that the end is coming, they still were able to fight through. That just motivates the heck out of me. I appreciate the loss of life. But, you know, the Vikings had a saying that, "My days are already written out on the skins of time, and all that is left to me is to die bravely." And that's what those people did.

Amen.

Al-Jazeera buys Welsh sheep show
Don't. Want. To. Go. There.

The News Media [liberal bias at NYT]
From Michael Barone, originally at TownHall.com:

"'Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?' I asked.

'Oh, no, no,' he said. 'Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news.'

'So what you're saying,' I said, 'is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans.'

He quickly replied, 'No, then it would be biased.'

I have been closely acquainted with newsroom cultures for more than 30 years, and I recognize the attitude. Only liberals can see the world clearly. Conservatives are prevented by their warped and ungenerous views from recognizing the world as it is.

The New York Times and The Washington Post have often hired as reporters writers who have worked on liberal publications like The New Republic, The Washington Monthly and The American Prospect -- and many of those writers have produced fine work. But they have never hired as reporters writers who have worked on conservative publications like National Review, The Weekly Standard and The American Spectator. News media executives like to brag about the diversity of their staffs, but there is precious little political diversity in most newsrooms.

And of course this affects the work product. Consider two stories in the New York Times last month. On March 8, the Times ran a long story about a woman from Biloxi, Miss., and her problems getting aid from the government after Hurricane Katrina. Turned out she wasn't from Biloxi, was not a Katrina victim and had been fraudulently obtaining government aid.

'For its profile, the Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton's account,' the Times admitted in a correction on March 23.

On March 11, the Times ran a story about an Iraqi identified as the man in a famous photograph of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Turned out he wasn't the man in the photo. On March 18, the Times ran another correction: 'The Times should have been more persistent in seeking comment from the military.'

Both of these too-good-to-check stories of course reflected badly on the Bush administration, which seems to be a requirement for getting your story in the Times these days. The relentlessly negative coverage of Iraq in most news outlets falls in the same category. Stories about American heroes, stories about soldiers building schools and water systems, stories about the successes of Iraqis -- you have to look awfully hard to find them in most news media today. What you do see is a determination to make Vietnam and Watergate happen again.

All of which brings to mind an old politician's comment on an idealistic young colleague: 'He actually thinks this place is on the level.' The good news is that many Americans have caught on. Newspaper circulation is down, and so is viewership of broadcast TV network news. New media offering a different point of view -- talk radio, Fox News, the blogosphere -- are thriving. We can't design the news media from scratch, but we can scratch some of the news media we have."

God by the numbers - Christianity Today Magazine
I love this kind of stuff. The whole article is great, but painful. It discusses mathematical formulae way beyond my puny mind's capabilities. Read it all, if you dare.

Summation:

"Because of the serendipitous elegance of this formula, a mathematics professor at MIT, an atheist, once wrote this formula on the blackboard, saying, 'There is no God, but if there were, this formula would be proof of his existence.'"

Would you hire this man?:
A fabulous, and very funny, article regarding the student riots in France.

"Lots of over-educated youths with too much black in their wardrobes are desperate to dress up in balaclavas and bandannas and torch things because (now let me word this correctly) they are disillusioned that their government wants to help them get jobs, because when you get a job there is a big danger you might one day lose it, especially if you are crap at it."

And, as an extra bonus, a topical Michael Ramirez:

Meeting Doctor Doom [Top scientist advocates eliminating 90% of population for ecology]
I just had to save this one. This "honored" "scientist" wants us all to get Ebola. You know, that lovely disease that turns one's insides to liquid. Hideously and painfully. Sweet. Name's Dr. Eric R. Pianka.

Oh, and here's his email: pianka@mail.utexas.edu

United 93 - Trailers & Clips - Yahoo! Movies
Well, finally.

Universal Pictures' United 93. In theaters this month.

I, for one, cannot wait to see it.

Never forget.

Republicanism proves a tough sell in Harlem
The headline is funny enough to bring April Fool's Day to an official start here. However, it's not a joke article.

The best (real)April Fool's joke was this one: Introducing Google Romance

...and my favorite satire for the day was Recoil Mag's Unemployment rate among hot young women holding at zero percent

Yes, I'm back.

ZEN MOTORCYCLE PHOTOGRAPHY REVEALED (from 1968 "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance")

[Naked] Couple Found Dead In Car In Garage [23 year old man & 17 year old girl die of CO poisoning]
'Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night
I can see paradise by the dashboard light

Pumping iron, with Condoleezza Rice

Why The Left Doesn't Blame Muslims For Muslim Violence (Dennis Prager On PC Victim Alert)

Is Abortion a Moral Issue? A Fascinating Debate on the Left

(IMDB) If Republicans Ran Hollywood, Recent Movies would look like this....

Play About Demonstrator's Death Is Delayed [Rachel Corrie]

Scalia jeers fans of 'living' charter

Italian Minister to Wear Muhammad Cartoon T-shirt:

"'It is time to put an end to this tale that we need dialogue with these people,'"

Iran paper plans Holocaust cartoons
Oh, brother... and this will be different from their regular cartoons how? (And I thought they didn't believe in the Holocaust?)

Funny way to kickstart the Crusades II, isn't it?

[UK] School deems hot cross buns 'offensive'
First Piglet, then piggy banks, now this... the mind boggles.

Brit Hume: Muslim Cartoon Protests 'A Disgrace':

Prior to Hume's comments, 'Fox News Sunday' aired a shot of the cartoon deemed most offensive by the protesters - a drawing of Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb.

CNN, on the other hand, has only broadcast images of the cartoons with Mohammed's face digitally distorted beyond recognition.

It's official, even the French are ballsier than CNN.

FT.com / World / Europe - Muslim anger over cartoons hits Danish companies:

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, said he believed "freedom of the press should always be exercised in a way that fully respects the religious beliefs and tenets of all religions".

How did we arrive at this?

The dispute began on September 30, when Jyllands-Posten, Denmark?s biggest newspaper, published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a move considered blasphemous in Islam. One of the cartoons showed the Prophet with a bomb under his turban. The Danish newspaper later apologised but the row escalated this week after several European newspapers reprinted the cartoons to assert the right to free speech.

Most daily UK newspapers decided not to reproduce the cartoons. One cartoon appeared on The Spectator's website but was quickly taken down.

Jack Straw, UK foreign secretary, said on Friday that "freedom of speech" did not carry "any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory".

"I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong," he said, adding that he thought the British media had shown "considerable responsibility and sensitivity" in its approach to the issue.

FRANCE'S LE MONDE PUBLISHES FRONT-PAGE CARTOON OF MOHAMMED
Good thread.

Austria says it cannot afford to buy back Klimt masterpieces ($300 million dollars)

First they came for the funny ones:
Ahhh... finally, the back-story.

"The cartoonists in question are a dozen Danish artists who drew Muhammad-themed cartoons last September for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten during an exercise to test the limits of free speech. The cartoon-a-thon was conceived in response to complaints from a Danish author who couldn't find anyone to illustrate her Muhammad children's book.

Although the book itself was not controversial, the Muslim faith considers it blasphemy to depict the Prophet in any way. Thus, in December, the youth branch of Pakistan's largest religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, offered a bounty for murdered cartoonists. "

More papers (French and German) join cartoon furore
Al Jazeera chimes in.

Well, it seems like this is a line in the sand to the Islamic nations... time to join us in the 21st century.

But I don't see it happening.

Germans print Muhammad caricatures
The French did, too. Is someone spiking their wine with Viagra or something?

The drawings were among several published in a Danish paper in September that sparked outrage and boycotts in Islamic countries. The pictures were also shown in a Norwegian magazine last week.

Palestinians in Gaza burned Danish and Norwegian flags this week in protest of the caricatures.

The caricatures offended many Muslims both because of their critical content and because Islam forbids representations of Muhammad out of concern they could lead to idolatry. In some of the pictures, Muhammad was shown to be wearing women's attire.

But the German Welt daily put one of the drawings showing the prophet's turban transformed into a bomb on its front page on Wednesday. It said the picture was "harmless" and expressed regret that the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily had apologized for causing offense.

"Democracy is the institutionalized form of freedom of expression," the paper said in a front-page commentary. "There is no right to protection from satire in the West; there is a right to blasphemy."

BUCKHEAD REFUTES MARY MAPES ON RATHERGATE DOCS:I'm resurfacing briefly to post this one. It's worth the price of admission.



I would have loved to be blogging "France burning", but I would not have been sufficiently consistent. Soon, perhaps.



xo!

Something to believe in: Star-studded 'Gospel' building on a new Hollywood theme
Hollywood's new theme... if you can't beat 'em, by golly, make money off of 'em.

Capitulation.

Such a tragedy, that their years of attempting to destroy Judeo-Christian culture so failed.

My fave line: "Hollywood has a tendency of following trends and not creating them," Hill says. "I don't think there was this epiphany of 'Wow, we need to spread this great thing.' It was 'Wow, it makes a lot of money.' They realized that there was money there and they wanted to make that happen."

Oklahoma City's Channel 9 Blows Bomber story Wide Open
This one is HOT. Don't miss.

New York City: Imam resigns as incoming FDNY chaplain after report
Dang!! He already resigned. IN A DAY!!!

LOL!!!

Truly Unbelievable
So unbelievable, I can't even comment.

King arrested for allegedly threatening daughter, ex-girlfriend
Honestly, honestly, this guy canNOT stay out of trouble.

Get along, Rodney? You can't even get along with your family! Yeesh!

INSIDE AIR AMERICA: AL'S PAL BAILS...AND PHILLY STATION DITCHES, TOO
Heck, they tried.

Unawarenezzz: Brain disconnects during deep sleep, UW study says
And thus all Leftists are sleepwalkers. At least there's finally a scientific excuse for it.

Discussion here.

:: rogerebert.com :: Dirty Love
Review of the day. (LOL)

Professor Questions Accuracy of Famed Slave Narrative | theledger.com

"It may lessen the claims to historical veracity," he said. "But it does not lessen its persuasive power."

Ah, yes, of course... the new "I, Rigoberta Menchu". The new "fake, but accurate".


Discussion here.

I still am pc-free, but I had to avail myself of a friend's computer to bring you this Original-AP-Headline-Alert.

Katrina Leaves La. Budget in Worser Shape

FR thread here

*shakes head*

It's one of their bestest ever.