The Tragedy of Islam

Michael Graham was suspended by WMAL for making the following comments:

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth:


Islam is a terror organization.


For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.


Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."


But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."


Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked the question "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam," they could not answer "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" had to answer "It depends."


Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether or not you're killing Jews.


That is part of the state of modern Islam.


Another fact about the state of Islam is that a majority of Muslims in countries like Jordan continue to believe that suicide bombings are legitimate. Still another is the poll reported by a left-leaning British paper than only 73 percent of British Muslims would tell police if they knew about a planned terrorist attack.


The other 27 percent? They are a part of modern Islam, too.


The Council on American-Islamic Relations is outraged that I would dare to connect the worldwide epidemic of terrorism with Islam. They put it down to bigotry, asserting that a lifetime of disinterest in Islam has suddenly become blind hatred. They couldn't be more wrong.


Not to be mean to the folks at CAIR, but I don't: Care, that is. I simply don't care about Islam, its theology, its history — I have no interest in it at all. All I care about is not getting blown to smithereens when I board a bus or ride a plane. I care about living in a world where terrorism and murder/suicide bombings are rejected by all.





And the reason Islam has itself become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers.


Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.


Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9/11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia — both governed by Islamic law.


If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder — and the scoutmasters in charge simply said "Could be" — the Boy Scouts would have driven out of America long ago.


Today, Islam has entire sects and grand mosques that preach terror. Its theology is used as a source of inspiration by terrorist murderers. Millions of Islam's members give these killers support and comfort.


The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.


As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.


Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.


Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."


But Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.


He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.


Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.

Michelle Malkin has much more HERE.

Mark Steyn: Wake up, folks — it’s war!

Excerpt (read the whole thing):

"The distinction between coarse blundering Israelis and subtle sophisticated Britons depends where you’re standing. If you happen to be the late Jean Charles de Menezes, for example, you might wish fate had selected you instead to be the Palestinian suicide bomber interrupted en route to Tel Aviv that same Friday. The Euro-reviled IDF managed to disarm the Fatah terrorist of his explosives belt, packed with nails, without harming a hair on his pretty little suicide-bomber head. If the demented anti-Zionism of the British and Continental media these last four years ever had a point, it doesn’t now, when you’re in the early stages of the Israelification of Europe — and, in one of fate’s better jests, in this scenario you’re the Jews."

[snip]

"On the Thursday of the second attacks, I happened to pass through London, which isn’t the easiest town to pass through these days. I am a Canadian subject of Her Majesty and, when I showed up at the ‘Fast Track’ lane at Heathrow, the immigration officer plonked down in my passport a big stamp saying ‘RECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS PROHIBITED’. ‘Tosser,’ I sneered. Well, OK, I murmured it, very sotto voce, as I had no desire to miss my appointment because the zealots of HM Customs suddenly fancied an intimate cavity search. But honestly, what a pathetic example of pointless gesture politics: if you’re a fancypants North American business traveller in town for less than 24 hours and splashing a ton of hard currency around the West End, the Home Office goes through a big hoop-de-doo about saying you’ve no entitlement to welfare. But if you’re a Somali and you want to live in public housing at public expense for six years while you fine-tune your plot to blow up Warren Street Tube station, pas de problème!"

Priceless.

I Don't Care

This letter came to me by e-mail. It expresses the opinions of most Americans.

The lady who wrote this letter is Pam Foster of Pamela Foster and Associates in Atlanta. She's been in business since 1980 doing interior design and home planning. She recently wrote a letter to a family member serving in Iraq. Read it.

Subject: I don't care!

WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS?

"Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001? Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania? Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet? Well, I don't. I don't care at all.

I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia.

I'll care when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi tells the world he is sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling, slashed throat.

I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

I'll care when Clinton-appointed judges stop ordering my government to release photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which are sure to set off the Islamic extremists just as Newsweek's lies did a few weeks ago.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care.

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college hazing incident, rest assured that I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank that I don't care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts that I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and -- you guessed it – I don't care!"

Steyn: Mugged by Reality

Steyn is always good, but here he is spectacular. Read the whole thing (excerpt):

WITH hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Atta's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier.

Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest crop-duster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington - the White House, the Pentagon et al - and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"

Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could."

So a few weeks later, when fellow 9/11 terrorist Marwan al-Shehhi arrived to request another half-million dollar farm subsidy and Atta showed up cunningly disguised with a pair of glasses and claiming to be another person entirely - to whit, al-Shehhi's accountant - Bryant sportingly pretended not to recognise him and went along with the wheeze. The fake specs, like the threat to slit her throat and blow up the Pentagon, were just another example of the multicultural diversity that so enriches our society.

For four years, much of the western world behaved like Bryant. ...

Why Rhetoric Matters

Jeff Goldstein finds a connection between the Left’s ( and MSM) lies about Abu Ghraib and the London bombings.

Mr Saleem supported his cousin’s bombing at Aldgate station which killed seven people, saying: “Whatever he has done, if he has done it, then he has done right.” He recalled how Tanweer argued with family and friends about the need for violent retaliation over US abuse of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

Since Abu Ghraib did not compare to the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Killing Filed of Cambodia, in fact, did not compare to anything that is remotely associated with the mass hysteria that it engendered, will there be any member of the MSM who will wash the blood from their hands.

Of course not. What a silly question. Next….

Read the whole thing

Robin Givhan Attacks Kids

Robin Givhan is the Washington Post’s Style Editor. In a recent article she criticizes the Roberts’ kids for the way they were dressed during their introduction by President Bush. You have to read the whole thing to appreciate how viciously she goes after Judge Roberts THROUGH HIS CHILDREN.



“His wife and children stood before the cameras, groomed and glossy in pastel hues -- like a trio of Easter eggs, a handful of Jelly Bellies, three little Necco wafers.”

Here is Givhan's picture.



Robin her own self—looking for all the world like a half-eaten chocolate cupcake from a Mary Kay store opening. (from Protein Wisdom)

Here's Michelle Malkin on Givhan's history:

Time and again, Washington Post Style reporter Robin Givhan hides behind fashion snarking and culture reporting to savage conservatives. She did it with Katherine Harris and Dick Cheney and John Bolton--and I'm sure you can remember many more examples of partisan mockery.

From Mary Katherine Ham at Townhall.com we have

"One final note for Robin: Referring to regular Americans as "light-up/shoe-buying hoi polloi" displays a much higher degree of upper-crusty condescension than dressing your kids in seersucker and gingham does."

All The Best Generals are Editing Newspapers

The Belmont Club has a good article on the Left and it’s assumption that there is really no War on Terror because there really is no “Terrorist Threat.” It’s an excellent read, as are all of Wretchard’s essays.

However, I found the following comment most appropriate, and it is a quotation from Robert E. Lee (yes, the Confederate General):

This is Robert E. Lee talking to a friend admitting that the south had made a huge mistake from the beginning:

"Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers.

I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper."

Basically what he is saying is that, you know, "It is amazing all these generals that write for the newspaper have no clue what they are doing. They are always telling me what I am doing wrong after the fact. Why don't they tell me what I'm doing wrong before I get started? In fact, let's trade places. You people in the media think you know what is best and run the war, you go ahead and do it and we'll take your jobs." That is Robert E. Lee.

The Press, Truthtelling and Plame

Here’s a good question for you: when two people give testimony and that testimony differs, isn’t it reasonable to ask WHICH ONE isn’t telling the truth? But the press in the Plame case has been reporting discrepancies between the testimony of Administration officials and reporters and asking only if the officials were making “false statements.” The operative assumption is that the members of the press corps are incapable of making false statements.

Well, we know that is not only untrue, it is so untrue that the truth telling ability of the press is ranked somewhat below that of used car salesmen. Take for example the following story from Bloomberg:

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.

My points are expanded and amplified by Just One Minute who smells a press cover-up.

He asks why more reporters who talked to the White House were not questioned. And also asks why reporters are not either verifying or denying discrepancies between stories. Why are reporters not reporting whether they have been interviewed by the FBI; surely that is a story. If they were interviewed, did they cooperate and if not, why not. This is, after all, a story about the White House’s relationship with the press, who said what to whom. Yet the press treats it as if they were not an integral part of the story, as if the only information that is available comes from grand jury leaks and lawyerly statements.

No, that’s not good enough. When the press is intimately involved in the story, they had damn well better be forthcoming about what they said and when they said it or THEY are conducting a cover-up. It’s time to end the conspiracy of silence by the press about their role in the Plame case.

The Blood on the Hands of the Media

Why are the deaths of the Vietnamese, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and the Cambodians, measured in the millions - after the US left - so seldom mentioned by the MSM? Could it be because those deaths can be laid at the doors of Walter Cronkite and the editors and columnists of the NY Times?

This is a long but intriguing article that addresses this issue. Well worth a read.

"During the latter half of the 15-year American involvement in Viet Nam the media became the primary battlefield. Illusory events reported by the press as well as real events within the press corps were more decisive than the clash of arms or the contention of ideologies. For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield, but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen. Looking back coolly, I believe it can be said (surprising as it may still sound) that South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the “native” guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. None the less, the War was finally lost to the invaders after the US disengagement cause the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance."

Link to News Organization Legal Brief claiming Outing Plame Was No Crime

Here's a link to the legal brief that 35 news organizations filed with the court supporting the claim that no crime was committed by outing Valerie Plame. So why are they pursuing the story?

We report ... you decide.

Did the CIA “Out” Valerie Plame?

From NRO (excerpt):

With each passing day, the manufactured "scandal" over the publication of Valerie Plame's relationship with the CIA establishes new depths of mainstream-media hypocrisy. A highly capable special prosecutor is probing the underlying facts, and it is appropriate to withhold legal judgments until he completes the investigation over which speculation runs so rampant. But it is not too early to assess the performance of the press. It's been appalling. ...

IowaHawk on John Roberts

Hilarious spoof of the Liberal Activist group talking points:

The Progressive Action Network For American Progress is extremely concerned by today's news that President Bush has selected ___JOHN ROBERTS___ as his nominee for the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. Unlike outgoing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the widely respected and admired moderate consensus-building sensible mainstream compromisist, ___JOHN ROBERTS___ has a shocking record of extremely extreme fringe legal positions that fill us with grave concerns about ___HIS___ fitness for this critically crucial office...

Reparations I could Support

Inner City Minister sues Democrats for repartions:

On December 10th 2004, inner-city minister, Rev Wayne Perryman, - filed a class action Reparation lawsuit (in the United States District Court in Seattle Case No. CV04-2442), alleging “that because of their racist past practices the Democratic Party should be required to pay African Americans Reparations.”

Scopes and Superior Monkeys

It's instructive to revisit our preconceptions about historical events. The "Scopes Monkey Trial" pitted William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow with Bryan portrayed as the fundmentalist buffoon and Darrow as the enlightened modern man. How ironic then that an examination of the textbook that was at the heart of the trial should reveal something shocking to modern sensibilities.

What Mr. Scopes was teaching was not just evolution, but eugenics in the 1900s sense of selective breeding. His biology textbook was "Civic Biology." Bryan was not just disturbed by the teaching of evolution but more broadly by the whole social Darwinist agenda, including genetic superiority. "Civic Biology" was a vicious social Darwinist tract. Here are some excerpts from the book, courtesy of Eugenics Watch:

Hunter's Civic Biology, p. 195-196

The Races of Man. — At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; The American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

In fact, the textbook Scopes was using would be roundly condemned by Liberals today as a virulenty racist tract. Read more by clicking HERE.

Profound Thoughts from Belmont Club

But not only has radical Islamism stirred up local mischiefs, it has also functioned as a bellows to fan the flames across other smoldering divides: the conservatives versus the Left; Europe versus America; the Third World versus the First World. It is almost as if the historical narrative, after seeming to settle into the smooth patch of the 1990s, had been reanimated across its entire spectrum by the Islamic disturbance, which shook things loose from their momentary stoppage and got things flowing again. Although the War on Terror is ostensibly a fight against the nihilism of radical Islam, it is probably much more: just how much more history will presently tell us. Radical Islam may find they are in the grip of larger forces whose power they have unleashed, which in their arrogance they sought to control only to find that events have acquired a dynamic of their own.

Is the Press Stupid or Evil?

This morning my wife turned on the news channel and we were greeted by a story on Karl Rove and Joe Wilson. The “correspondent” stated that Joe Wilson was dispatched to Niger to find out if Saddam was making nuclear weapons, a reason for going to war. Of course if you have been conscious during the last 2 years you would know that this is NOT what happened. How could someone who is presumably paid for passing on information get some basic facts on a story that has been in the headlines for years so wrong? Did they just fly this guy in from Mars and is he playing catch-up? No, he looked human.

The choices are a slip of the tongue, stupidity or deception. A slip of the tongue I do not believe. This was a straightforward statement. That leaves stupidity or deliberate lying. I think it’s a combination. By now, anyone who is interested in this story knows it by heart. So I think the reporter lied. But he is also stupid because … everyone who has any knowledge of this story would know he was lying. Its almost funny as in the old story of the man caught in bed with another woman saying: “Who are your going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

There is something suicidal about the MSM today. They continue to commit the same sins they once got away with – before the internet – yet now that they can be exposed as liars, they can’t seem to help themselves. Here is a wonderful example:

So today, when this blog takes the July 10, 2004 comments out of context from the September 30, 2003 comments (even though the latter clearly reference the earlier), it makes sense that their assertion is quite wrong (emphasis mine):
President Bush said Monday that if anyone in his administration committed a crime in connection with the public leak of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, that person will “no longer work in my administration.”
…
Bush said in June 2004 that he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame. On Monday, however, he added the qualifier that it would have be shown that a crime was committed.
Asked at a June 10, 2004, news conference if he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame’s name, Bush answered, “Yes. And that’s up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts.”
If that blog had the accuracy checks of, say, the Washington Post, careless invalid assertions like this would never have made it past the editors. Oh, wait a moment, that wasn’t a blog at all. That was the Washington Post!

Day By Day

Steyn on Lyin' Yellowcake Joe Wilson

This controversy began, you'll recall, because Wilson objected to a line in the president's State of the Union speech that British intelligence had discovered that Iraq had been trying to acquire ''yellowcake'' -- i.e., weaponized uranium -- from Africa. This assertion made Bush, in Wilson's incisive analysis, a ''liar'' and Cheney a ''lying sonofabitch.''

In fact, the only lying sonafabitch turned out to be Yellowcake Joe. Just about everybody on the face of the earth except Wilson, the White House press corps and the moveon.org crowd accepts that Saddam was indeed trying to acquire uranium from Africa. Don't take my word for it; it's the conclusion of the Senate intelligence report, Lord Butler's report in the United Kingdom, MI6, French intelligence, other European services -- and, come to that, the original CIA report based on Joe Wilson's own briefing to them. Why Yellowcake Joe then wrote an article for the New York Times misrepresenting what he'd been told by senior figures from Major Wanke's regime in Niger is known only to him.

Nadagate

By John Tierney in an Op-Ed in the NT Times.

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

The Rise of Islam in Europe

Fascinating article from the WSJ relates how the Nazis, the CIA and other intelligence sevices helped build the Islamic threat in Europe.

Day By Day

Bin Laden - Saddam and ABC News

From Powerline:

That Was Then, This Is Now
This ABC News video from five years ago, courtesy of Media Research Center, is a classic. Before Democrats had a partisan motive to claim, contrary to all the evidence, that there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and bin Laden's al Qaeda, their close and dangerous relationship was common knowledge. That common knowledge is reflected in this ABC news report, as it was in the Clinton administration's indictment of bin Laden in 1998 for, among other things, collaborating with Saddam on weapons of mass destruction.

It really is a fascinating question: in this era of digital media, can the news media and the Democrats get away with trying to flush what they said as recently as 1998 and 2000 down the memory hole?

Let's hope not.

Thanks to reader Adam Smith.

Click on the LINK to see the ABC News Report from 1998

Thanks to the Internet the MSM can lie, but no longer lie with impunity.

Rove – Plame – Wilson Case Unravels

Cliff May asks some excellent questions about who really exposed Valerie Plame and who really leaked.

And Stephen Spruiell asks why the NY Times asks questions when they already know the answers, but refuses to tell the public.

However, I'm also baffled about some other things: How can anyone consider the Times' coverage of this issue credible anymore? The Times is hiding information that the public increasingly needs to know. Who was Miller's source? With whom did she speak, and what did they talk about? Why is the Times covering up her role in this case, while hammering away at Rove?

The Times should answer these questions — either by publishing a story or cooperating with Fitzgerald and thereby putting the answers on the record — or it should recuse itself from covering this case. I’m sorry, but I can’t read the Times’ coverage of this case without wanting to shout:

“But you KNOW the identities of the other sources! How dare you pretend like this could all be cleared up if only Karl Rove would hold a press conference? You have vital information about this case, but you’re refusing to report it. Tell us what you know!”

Then there’s this from the Washington Post:

Federal prosecutors investigating the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity have asked several witnesses in the case whether they read a State Department memorandum mentioning her that circulated inside the Bush administration in the days before she was publicly named …. Rove said of the memo that he "had never seen it, had never heard about it and had never heard anybody else talk about it,"

And here’s a complete timeline of the whole fiasco from Stephen St. Onge

Here is something I have noticed: Wilson is artful in his lies:

The MSM proved it can't read, by failing to notice Wilson's artful sliding from 'Iraq didn't buy Niger uranium' to 'Iraq didn't attempt to buy Niger uranium.'

UPDATE: There is so much commentary on this, it's almost overwhelming.
HERE, HERE,HERE, HERE, HERE.

Snipers Shoot GI Who Lives & Fights Back

Via Glenn Reynolds:

During a routine patrol in Baghdad June 2, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic, was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper, hiding in a van just 75 yards away. The incident was filmed by the insurgents.

Tschiderer, with E Troop, 101st “Saber” Cavalry Division, attached to 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was knocked to the ground from the impact, but he popped right back up, took cover and located the enemy’s position.

After tracking down the now-wounded sniper with a team from B Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army Brigade, Tschiderer secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.

"Plame Not Clandestine" - Wilson.

From NRO via Powerline:

Here is Joseph Wilson himself, talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN today: "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity." Read that again. Now reflect on the fact that there has been an ongoing investigation FOR TWO YEARS conducted, we were breathlessly and rather constantly told in the weeks surrounding the initial controversy, on the basis that the White House and reporters OUTED A CLANDESTINE AGENT. Now we know. She wasn't. Not then.

The Hive Stings Back

This one’s a keeper. It seems that an editorial writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Mark Yost criticized the media’s coverage of the Iraq war. He wrote:

I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq. A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic? No, to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up.

At BuzzMachine.com there is a very revealing exchange between the editor the Columbia Journalism Review, Steve Lovelady and Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine. You have to read it to believe it….

There's a lot we don't know yet about the CIA flap

Unlike the grandstanding “hounds” of the MSM, Byron York is an investigative reporter who did what I though of doing yesterday, but he beat me to the punch. He made a list of things about the Wilson/Plame affair that we don’t’ know.

Read his list HERE.

And here is another question that I would like the answer to: After reading all that Wilson had to say about his “fact-finding” mission to Niger, exactly what did he do, who did he talk to or where did he go that could not have been accomplished with a few phone calls? According to Wilson, most of his time was spent talking with various government officials and drinking tea. Is this how the CIA or its agents learn the secret activities of other governments?

Lileks on the Press and Plame

The press always mistakes its own fascinations for important news, figuring that if the WaPo and the NYT and friendly radio outlets hammer the story like a sheet of tin on a blunt study anvil, and the stories appear on the front pages of the second-tier dailies, it will somehow move the needle. Sometimes, yes. But it doesn’t help that this is scandal #8732.

[snip]

The only reason I mention this is because I heard an account of the daily press briefing, the usual raft of sanctimonious boilerplate. One reported went on and on and on about the effect this had on Wilson family, attempting perhaps to connect with those soccer moms who wouldn’t want to have their family business splashed all over the news. (As if Wilson had somehow been dragged screaming from obscurity.) Well: what of the families of the charter airline pilots?

You may recall the story. The NY Times ran big piece on a charter airline the CIA was using to transport suspects. This isn’t just outing a covert operative; it was outing a covert operation. In the case of Wilson / Plame, we had an attempt to point out how two opponents of the adminstration were trying to thwart the foreign policy of the US government via the pages of the NYT and Vanity Fair; in the case of the airline, we had an attempt to peel back the Tupperware lid of secrecy of an anti-terrorist organization in order to ruin – I’m sorry, let the people know what they needed to know about the operation. Did anyone wonder whether the families of the people in that charter airline might be harmed in anyway? Did anyone wonder whether this information might compromise attempts to interrogate suspects? Did anyone ask what the devil was served by running this story?

Imagine the war was prosecuted by a Democratic administration; imagine a GOP operative blowing the charter airline’s cover to make a point about billing irregularies. Imagine the GOP operative slipping photos of the planes on the tarmac, tailfin numbers visible, to the press.

Imagine the press running with the covert-ops story, outraged that the Democratic administration had covered up this crucial story. Can you see that happening? You can?

The air on Bizzaro World – what does it smell like, exactly? As fresh and sweet as one can only dream?

Just Possibly, Killing dozens of Children is Not Good PR.

Near the charred, shrapnel-scarred bombing scene women draped in black abayas wept as they walked by, and dazed children with tears in their eyes wandered amid bits of metal and bloody human remains. A pile of children's slippers lay on the street. "My cousin Mustafa was killed," said 11-year-old Mohammed Nouredin, gesturing toward a blackened engine block in the middle of the street. "That is part of his bicycle. His coffin was sent to Najaf," the traditional burial ground for Iraqi Shiites.

And HERE...From Ace of Spades.

Howard Kurtz Misleads on Karl Rove.

From Calblog:

First off, let's examine Kurt's "conclusion". He cryptically tells us that Wilson was "right...although his credibility did take a hit from a critical Senate intelligence committee report." Kurtz never bothers to explain the nature of this "critical hit". If you read the bipartisan report itself - any honest person will tell you that Kurtz's conclusion is full of shit....

Krauthammer on O'Conner

Excerpt: read the whole thing.

Perhaps the most telling moment of Sandra Day O'Connor's nearly quarter-century career on the Supreme Court came on her last day. In her opinion on the Kentucky Ten Commandments case, O'Connor wrote that, given religious strife raging around the world and America's success in resolving religious differences, why would we "renegotiate the boundaries between church and state. . . . Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?"

This is O'Connorism in its purest essence. She had not so much a judicial philosophy as a social philosophy. Unlike a principled conservative such as Antonin Scalia, or a principled liberal such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, O'Connor had no stable ideas about constitutional interpretation. Her idea of jurisprudence was to decide whether legislation produced social "systems" that either worked or did not.


But that, of course, is the job of the elected branches of government. Legislatures negotiate social arrangements. Judges are supposed to look at their handiwork and decide one thing and one thing only: whether the "system" the politicians produced comports with the Constitution.

...

The Saddam Al al Qaeda Connection

From Powerline:

The story of the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda is one that the Bush administration refuses to make -- not because it isn't true, but because it prefers not to confront its domestic opponents on this point. Nevertheless, the case for the connection grows stronger every day. The administration has left the field to independent journalists such as the Weekly Standard's indomitable Stephen Hayes. In the Standard's current issue, Hayes (with Thomas Joscelyn) returns to the subject in a long, ground-breaking article: "The mother of all connections." Claudia Rosett picks up the theme at OpinionJournal this morning: "Saddam and al Qaeda."

I spoke briefly with Hayes yesterday. He informs me that the Standard Web site will be following up with daily installments on the connection over the next few weeks.

NY Times Lies About Its Own Sources

From Powerline:

[Joe Wilson]He leaked the contents of his own report to the CIA--in the pages of the New York Times!--only he lied about his own report. He "peddled disinformation," falsely claiming to have found no evidence of an Iraqi effort to buy uranium from Niger, in order to "harm a political adversary," President Bush. The Times didn't mind that particular disinformation, however, since it fit the paper's political agenda. In fact, the Times has never issued a correction of the misstatements in Wilson's op-ed. On the contrary, today's editorial links to Wilson's 2003 piece and repeats its central allegations, without even mentioning that Wilson's op-ed has been found to be fraudulent by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee!

al Qaeda Attacks: A Flash Presentation

From Winds of Change. A MUST SEE!!!!

The facts presented speak for themselves.

There have been 30 major mass casualty attacks directed against the United States, Britain, France, Spain, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, Tunisia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and North Osetia. 14 of the 30 attacks were conducted prior to the invasion of Iraq, making claims of the occupation of Iraq as a casus belli for al Qaeda’s terrorism to be disingenuous at best. 4,895 people have been killed in these attacks, and 12,345 plus have been wounded. The majority of the countries attacked are Muslim countries. And although not stated, the vast majority of the victims of al Qaeda's violence are Muslims.

Paper Tiber

Interesting article about the Catholic Church and its critics. From Touchstone.

Debunking 8 Anti-War Myths About The Conflict In Iraq

John Hawkings explains, in words of one syllable, what you should know to counteract some widely spread myths about the War on Terror .. and especially about the war in Iraq.

The myths are:

1) George Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (If so, so did Hillary!)
2) A study released in March of 2003 by a British medical journal, the Lancet, showed that 100,000 civilians had been killed as a result of the US invasion. (one of the most ridiculous statistical studies ever published)
3) The Bush Administration claimed Iraq was responsible for 9/11. (Never happended)
4) The war in Iraq was actually planned by people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz back in 1998 at a think tank called the Project for the New American Century. (The idea that Saddam should go has been the policy of the United States since 1991)
5) The war on terror has nothing to do with Iraq. (John Kerry! said getting rid of Saddam was critical in the war on terror.)
6) Saddam Hussein had no ties to terrorism. (Except for harboring terrorist and paying terrorist, no sir, nothing to do with terrists.)
7) Saddam Hussein had no ties to Al-Qaeda. (The evidence that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al-Qaeda worked together is absolutely undeniable.)

8) The Downing Street Memo proves Bush lied to the American people about the war. (Depeneds on what you mean by "fixed.")

A great read. Click on the link to read the whole thing.

The Osama Letter

From Belmont club in 2004 in the style of the Screwtape Letters (excerpt - click on the link to read the whole thing):

...But as you know, our successes in Iraq have been entirely inflated by the press. Objectively speaking, we have endured an unbroken string of defeats. We could not get the UN to stop the American attack; we persuaded Turkey to withhold cooperation, but it did not matter. The country fell to the invader and although we have called every Jihadi at our disposal into the theater, with Syrian and Iranian help, we have not been able to delay the American timetable of handover by June 30 so much as a single day. But worse, it has forced us into coalition warfare. I know how sick you are, as I am, of the Persian apostate mullahs and the greedy Syrians. The Americans can kick their ally France like a dog, but we alas, must endure the humiliations of dealing with the Assads and the Ayatollahs with a smile. It must now be accepted, than even if John Kerry wins, that we will not be able to seize a state like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or even Afghanistan again within a five year horizon. The return to the crossroads is barred, at least for the foreseeable future. It is sad, but a fact.
That leaves us with this tantalizing question. Having gone so far on September 11, can we not go further? Will one more push topple the rock? The answer is yes, but only if the push is sufficient and it leaves the Left which is the spirit of suicide, in control. This latter condition is essential. The fundamental fact is that the triumph of the Jihad must be momentarily preceded by the ascendance of the Left. Only the Left will pick up the gun, put the barrel to the temple of the Western mind and pull the trigger without hesitation. But their ascendance will only be momentary, and I for one delight in imagining how we will kick them as they squeal about their rights and their sexual entitlements once there is no one left to protect them.
In this respect, I must warn our brothers against wooing the Western Left too ardently. For it is the reality that the average Western man still recoils from the sight of the bearded believer or the veiled woman. He would much rather trust the eccentric English professor in rumpled tweeds with bad teeth. We must ensure that these types are always in ample supply. Already the Jihad is siphoning away their younger members, those who have grown tired of Solidarity Marches and dancing in the streets without their trousers, and who want action of the sort that the Left can no longer provide. It is useless to remind them that their physical contribution to the fight will be paltry. It is their propaganda they do best and we should leave them alone to imagine us innocuous, misunderstood and exotically dressed victims even while we prepare to kill them in their millions. The Left will find a way to blame the dead themselves, a job at which they are surpassingly brilliant.
The hard part then, is to kill those millions.

Fight For Representative Government - and The Court

There’s little that has not been said about the upcoming battle over the Supreme Court nominee that has not been said more eloquently by others.

The Powerline Guys have it dead right:

This is how the French news paper Liberation described the upcoming Supreme Court battle here in the U.S.:

In the United States, the appointment (for life) of a judge of the Supreme Court is an enormous affair. The president’s choice can have a long-term impact on the life of society in general, and on public freedoms in particular. The justices of the Court, known as the nine "sages," every year, with their judgments, decide the law. The U.S. Supreme Court holds, at the same time, the power of [France’s] Supreme Court of Appeal, the Council of State and the French Constitutional Council. At the very heart of American political life, the Court is the final arbiter of all the great issues of U.S. society: it was the Supreme Court that initiated race desegregation in schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and authorized abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973).

That wasn't, of course, the role envisioned for the Court by the Founders, but it certainly is the one favored by contemporary liberals, so it isn't hard to see why Supreme Court appointments are awaited with such interest.

Acceding this much power to the Court is deadly to the concept of American Democracy. In a freeform conversation recently with a Virginia State Senator, he mentioned that the Virginia Legislature twice passed, and the Governor signed, a bill outlawing partial birth abortions. And in both cases, the courts ruled against the laws.

And here’s the kicker: he is personally opposed to partial birth abortion, his constituents are opposed as are most of the people in the state, but … he was critical of his fellow legislators passing the bills because he KNEW that the court would strike the bills down. Yet the Virginia constitution is silent on abortion as is the US constitution. Why does this man question the wisdom of his fellow legislators instead of the wisdom – and the unconstitutional usurpation of power – of the courts? This Senator has taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the State of Virginia and yet he has handed his right to uphold that oath – and part of his manhood – to the courts as having a superior right. That is the end of representative government and the beginning of dictatorship. Thanks to the usurpation of the courts and the supine acquiescence of the legislature, our elected representatives can take care of the minor issues of government, the courts will decide the major issues.

So what can we do? One thing we can do is to stop being spectators. Thanks to the Internet, we can make our voices heard. This is the Website of the US Senate. Find your Senator and contact him or her. Tell your friends. Send this post to as many people as are on your mailing list. Don’t let the Left drown you out. This fight is critical and may decide your children’s’ futures as well as your own.

Is The Press Critical to Terror's Success?

There is a real question about the role of the media in the War on Terror. The entire concept of terror as a weapon only works in a psychological sense. That is, terror that is not communicated is not terrorism. It’s simply a crime.
The question arises: would there be terror attacks in Iraq, Bali, Madrid or London, if they were not communicated?

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Mainstream Media (MSM) is critically important to the bombers, head cutters and assorted terrorists. The MSM act as the communication tool of the terrorists, showing just enough of their murders to blow them up to giant size, but showing none of the failures and completely eliminating context. How much do you know of a largely pacified and increasingly prosperous Iraq? Virtually nothing, unless you read it on the Internet from people actually there. What you get is the daily death and bomb toll.

If all the MSM reported every day from schools are the crimes committed there, how many parents would send their kids to school in the morning? What would our impression of schools be? But the MSM don’t. Can they be accused of a cover up? In a way they can. But the real answer is that they view schools from an entirely different perspective; the focus is not on the problems, the focus is on the solutions.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit notes:

JIM DUNNIGAN: "Al Qaeda, and Islamic radicals, would not be a world terrorism problem were it not for global Islamic media, and media coverage that treated the goals of the Islamic radicals with seriousness and respect."

UPDATE: Reader Joseph Fulvio emails:

Since the ‘insurgency’ is as much about influencing the Western public as it is about destabilizing Iraq, one wonders just how virulent it would be without Al Jazeera and Western media life support. I suspect it would be far less potent absent the breathless, sympathetic ‘reporting’ of each act of barbarism. This notion is dismissed by war critics as ‘blaming the messenger,’ but that doesn’t make it any less true.

What's interesting to me is that members of the press are exquisitely sensitive to the dangers of being manipulated by our own government, but so much less so in other cases.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Zelda Aronstein emails:

I bet if the media voluntarily stopped showing any pictures of all terror attacks, that the terror would stop. Thus ending the GWOT without a shot.

This policy would be NO DIFFERENT than how they cover folks who run on to baseball fields: they do NOT show them on TV; they ignore them.

Would the media ever put peace above their ratings/profits? Never.
Sadly, that's probably right.

And Strategy Page has these comments:

Al Qaeda, and Islamic radicals in general, would not be a world terrorism problem were it not for global Islamic media, and media coverage in general that treated the goals of the Islamic radicals with seriousness and respect. For decades, Islamic radicalism only played in its own backyard, trying to replace Islamic tyrants with Islamic religious dictatorships. These Islamic terrorists didn’t get much publicity overseas, and what they did get was mostly negative. Most Islamic nations were dictatorships, with the local media tightly controlled. That changed, for a while, in the 1980s, when the fight between Moslem Afghans, and atheist Russians, was given ample, and positive, publicity by the media in most Moslem nations, and throughout the Western world. The battle in Afghanistan was considered a jihad (Holy War) by Moslems, and what good Moslem could refuse to heap praise on that. The thousands of Moslems who went to Afghanistan (Pakistan, actually, which was where the Afghan rebels rested between missions), were considered heroes when they returned home. Many of these “Afghanis” soon ended up in jail, for spouting off about how great it would be to have a little Islamic revolution at home. Moslem countries went to war with their Islamic radicals in the 1990s, an event largely unnoticed in the West. There was always some unpleasant violence going on in Moslem countries. Either religion or politics would set things off, and this wasn’t news in the West.

That changed in 1996, when al Jazeera, an international satellite news network began. Now the millions of Moslems in the West could get news delivered using modern, compelling methods, but with a Moslem slant. That slant was quite different from the view of the Moslem, especially Arab, world provided by Western news. The biggest difference was how Israel, and Islamic terrorism, was explained. To Moslems, Israel was a great crime inflicted by the West on the Arab world. To the Arab media, Israel did not deserve to exist, and any Western nations that supported Israel, especially the United States, were enemies of Islam. Extreme stuff, but the sort of line you had to run with if you wanted to succeed as a journalist in the Arab, and Moslem world. This line was supported by most Arab governments, because if took attention away from the fact that most Arab governments were corrupt dictatorships that had never done much for the Palestinian people the Israelis were accused of oppressing.

The only large scale opposition to Moslem corruption and dictators was Islamic radicals, especially in the form of al Qaeda. But this opposition failed in the 1990s, and al Qaeda decided to turn its attention to targets in the West. According to al Qaeda, the ultimate cause of all the problems in the Moslem world (the corruption, the poverty, the dictatorships) was Western influence. Decadent Western media, and political influence in the form of Western support for Israel and current Moslem governments, must be destroyed before al Qaeda could clean things up in the Moslem world. Once the Moslem world was “purified” and united under one religious dictator, the rest of the world could be converted to Islam, and a planet wide Islamic religious government establishment. This is what al Qaeda wants. Does anyone believe they have any chance of achieving it? No one does, except millions of Moslems mesmerized by the al Qaeda message, and the thousands of al Qaeda warriors ready to die for the cause. Many of these al Qaeda supporters were in Moslem communities in the West. Thanks to al Jazeera, the Internet, and other satellite based media, the twisted logic of al Qaeda, was presented as news. The rabid anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic reporting so common in Arab media, but absent in the West, was now available anywhere in the world.
This created an enormous “expatriate patriot” effect. This is what happens when expatriates become more enthusiastic about violent solutions than the folks back home. This was seen rather vividly among Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19th century, where these Irish patriots formed armed groups, and engaged in terrorist acts in North America, in support of liberating Ireland from British rule. After this happened in the 1920s, the expatriate Irish still maintained the most anti-British attitudes. In the 1970s, when Irish terrorism began again, in Northern Ireland, which was still under British rule, much of the monetary support came from Irish overseas. The Irish in Ireland were much less enthusiastic about Irish terrorism than were the Irish overseas. The same thing is now happening with Moslem support for Islamic terrorism. In Moslem nations that have suffered from Islamic terrorists, places like Algeria, Egypt and Iraq, al Qaeda is hated. But among Moslem communities in Europe, there is a rather more idealized and romantic view of these Moslem “martyrs.” Recruiting is easier in Europe, as is raising money. While only a small minority of the expatriate Moslems support the terrorists, that amounts to over a million supporters, and thousands of volunteers for suicide attacks and terrorism.

There is another problem, particularly with Europe. When confronted with a growing Moslem minority, and its enthusiastic adoption of al Jazeera’s breathless coverage of Islamic terrorists, and the usual anti-Semitic coverage of Israel, Europe blinked. Rather than resisting this, Europe again went for appeasement. This didn’t work with the fascists in the 1930s, or the Soviets during the Cold War. But appeasement is a very popular policy in Europe. It isn’t working with Islamic radicals who, like the nazis and communists, want to conquer the world, and are willing to kill millions to get the job done. Appeasement is deeply embedded in the European psyche. Even after the nazis made it clear what they were all about, and had conquered much of Europe, many Europeans preferred to collaborate with the new tyranny. Even after the Cold War was over, many Europeans are nostalgic for the “failed experiment” of Soviet communism. If only someone else could come back and try it again, and do it right this time. This same twisted logic is being applied to al Qaedas mad march towards world conquest.

….

LIBERALS LOVE THE POOR SO MUCH IT HURTS

From Don Feder:

Of all the myths of the left, the most exasperating and pervasive (perpetuated by its media propaganda machine and trumpeted by blowhards like Ted Kennedy) is the fantasy that conservatives are rich, cruel, plutocrats who get their kicks evicting widows and orphans on Christmas Eve, whilst liberals - salt-of-the-earth-types, don't you know -- are champions of the powerless and downtrodden.



The Supreme Court decision last week in Kelo v. City of New London should lay to rest that lie for all time.



Kelo was a classic confrontation between the little guy and powerful, moneyed interests.



The high court's five doctrinaire leftists decided to let New London, Connecticut demolish a middle-class neighborhood - small businesses (some in the same family for generations) and private dwellings (one lived in by a married couple in their '80s, for over 50 years) - to make way for a riverside development, including a hotel, health club and office complex.



In keeping with its penchant for rewriting the Constitution to suit its whims, the court's Stalinist majority (Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Kennedy) expanded the 5th. Amendment's power of eminent domain -- which allows government to take private holdings for "public use" (schools, roads and the like) for "just compensation" - into the stratosphere.



New London argued that "public use" should be more broadly interpreted as public benefit. In other words, because the use planned by a developer will hypothetically provide more tax revenue and new jobs, it should be allowed to bulldoze a neighborhood -- and all the memories, hopes and dreams contained therein.



Say the magic words -- revenue enhancement -- and a liberal's eyes begin to gleam; saliva forms at the corners of his mouth. Whatever feeds government's insatiable appetite for revenue (while simultaneously throwing a few scraps to the left's corporate cronies), must be constitutional!



Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (who often mistakes the Constitution for her conscience) got it right this time - as did those heartless conservatives, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas. In a scathing dissent, O'Connor noted that the ruling was Robin Hood in reverse (take from mom and pop businesses and elderly homeowners, to bestow on corporate giant Pfizer, future occupant of the office space).



O'Connor: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of a private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries will likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."



This latest judicial obscenity is courtesy of those who passionately proclaim their tender regard for what they condescendingly call working families. Stevens et. al., are the face of the monstrosity liberalism has become. If Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Taliban Dick Durban had their way, all nine justices would be intellectual clones of Souter and Ginsberg.....

Read the whole thing.

Michelle Malkin Chimes In on British Terrorists

Evan also points to this blood-boiling story about Guerbouzi in The UK Mirror, detailing how he's been living comfortably in a flat just blocks from Downing Street with his wife and six kids despite being accused of playing a key role in the Madrid atrocity, as well as a dozen suicide bombings in Casablanca last May which left 33 dead.

How the hell was he able to stay in the country, when Morocco has had an outstanding international warrant for his arrest since 2003? Scotland Yard explained:

"We don't have any extradition treaty with Morocco and no evidence has been submitted before the courts to consider an arrest."

This problem, according to War on Terror analysts, has contributed to Britain becoming a safe haven for many other radical Islamist leaders and their followers. Found this buried in a UK Mirror piece:

Read more....

Growing You Own Terrorists

Some more thoughts on the London bombings from the Belmont Club.

First, the political class of Britain (and the Left internationally) has, due to Political Correctness, refused to identify the threat within it’s borders.

Click on the links and read the whole thing.

What the Butler Saw

Mark Steyn talks about the absurdities highlighted by the London bombings. We profess to smile, he says, until we are forced to cry. Then like fools, we smile again.

As I wrote in The Daily Telegraph last March, "History repeats itself: farce, farce, farce, but sooner or later tragedy is bound to kick in." ... To three high-profile farces, we now have that high-profile tragedy, of impressive timing. ... the jihad, via one of its wholly owned but independently operated subsidiaries, scheduled an atrocity for the start of the G8 summit and managed to pull it off - at a time when ports and airports and internal security were all supposed to be on heightened alert. That's quite a feat.
From sanctuaries forever exempt from attack by the "political class" attacks are hatched against which no protection is offered is except passive defense, a passive defense that is bound to fail because "one day - on Monday or Wednesday, in January or November, when an immigration official or a luggage checker is a bit absent-minded and distracted" an attacker is bound to slip through.

And:

Waiting for Disaster

Christopher Hitchens thinks the London attackers may have been homegrown. In an article in Slate, Hitchens argued the attacks were timed to coincide with specifically British public events, the G8 meeting in Edinburgh, the successful Olympic hosting bid and the imminent extradition trial of the hook-handed Mullah Abu Hamza al Mazri. Therefore:

This would mean that the cell or gang was homegrown, rather than smuggled in from North Africa or elsewhere. Or it could mean coordination between the two. In any event, there are two considerations here. The first is Britain's role as a leading member of the "Coalition" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second is its role as a host to a large and growing Muslim minority. The first British citizens to be killed in Afghanistan were fighting for the Taliban, which is proof in itself that the Iraq war is not the original motivating force. Last year, two British Muslims pulled off a suicide attack at an Israeli beach resort. In many British cities, there are now demands for sexual segregation in schools and for separate sharia courts to try Muslim defendants.

The Left on the London Terror Attacks

Kevin Drum hosts a Liberal blog Washington Monthly and posted a comment asking for just one day of no political crossfire. "A WISH....If I could have one small wish for today, it would be for the blogosphere on both left and right to refrain from political point scoring over the London attacks. Just for a day. Isn't tomorrow soon enough to return to our usual arguments?"


Here is what Fiona (a reader) replied:

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the reason why mainstream press is so worthless, and why blogging is fast becoming equallly worthless. We are hearing all over the cable news networks a corporate voice that is promoting that the bombings are the work of terrorists. A call to arms against terrorists because of their handiwork today in London.
How does corporate media know this? They get paid to fall into lockstep.
Kevin is liking the money he's getting for falling in line with the mainstream voice and the recognition of being part of the media blogging world.
Why does anybody who appreciates the independence of blogging come here? Kevin is a stooge for the powers that be. Who is served by Kevin's point of view? Not anybody who is a potential victim of terrorism.
Has anybody who supports what Kevin has said today actually lost anybody to terrorism? I bet you that the 9/11 widows don't agree with Kevin. As somebody who has lost a loved one to an earlier terrorist attack, I know that I don't support what Kevin has to say on the subject. Those of us who have experienced terrorism first hand are more clearheaded and cynical about what our government has to say about it.
I think that Miles is absolutely correct when he questions who today's bombings serve. Underground bombings, not caught on film as the 9/11/01 airplane attacks were, on ordinary people using public transit do not serve the terrorists' political aims. The British public does not support Tony Blair's allegiance to Bush and war. Why would terrorists do anything to galvanize the British people to get behind Tony Blair and George W. Bush?
Today's bombings serve to get Karl Rove and Judith Miller off of the front pages. These bombings serve to get G8 protests off of the front pages. These bombings serve to get Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement off of the front pages. These bombings serve to get the Downing St. memos and the other 7 UK documents that expose that the intelligence was fixed around Bush's policy and plans to go to war against Iraq off of the front pages.

Here's the real Left, the insane core of the Democratic party. They really believe that this was NOT a terrorist attack but a plot by George Bush to distract attention from Karl Rove, Judith Miller, the G8 protests and the Supreme Court appointment. This is why an increasing number of peole are leaving the Democrats. They have become the party of the certifiably barking-at-the-moon, crazy aunt in the attic, loons.

UPDATE:

From Right Wing Nut House we have this story about the Left's reaction, entitled "Taking a Permanent Break From Reality":

After all they have been setting us up for this since September 11, 2001, with the PR machine going into overdrive since Blair jumped into Bush’s lap the summer prior to the invasion of Iraq. And who are they going to pin it on? Our favourite CIA asset, Osama bin Laden…

London - From Belmont Club

Excerpt:

...The Al Qaeda have characterized the attack on London as 'punishment' for Britain's temerity to resist the inevitability of Islam. It is the kind of punishment these self-ordained masters of the universe are accustomed to meting out against harem women and insolent slaves. A few administered licks, and no doubt the cowardly kuffar will crawl back to his place. The tragedy is that Al Qaeda's perception is perfectly correct when applied to the Left, for whom no position is too supine, no degradation too shameful to endure; but incorrect for the vast majority of humans, in whom the instinct for self-preservation has not yet been extinguished. It will result in history's greatest case of mistaken identity; the mismatch that should never have happened. The enemy is even now dying at our feet, where we should kick him and kick him again.

On Brian Williams Comparing Terrorists to the Founders

From BeldarBlog on the Brian Williams non-apology for comparing the Founders to terrorists:

I belatedly found, via a link from Will Collier, what Will correctly calls NBC News anchor Brian Williams' "rather pompous non-apology apology" for writing and broadcasting last week that "several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England."

[snip]

Heck, Ben Franklin only broke familial relations with his Tory son, rather than trying to have him beheaded. Patrick Henry's cry was "Give me liberty or give me death!" rather than "Give them all death, the guilty and the innocent alike, slowly and painfully and publicly!" Nathan Hale wasn't quoted as saying, "I regret that I haven't killed thousands of innocent women and children for my country." George Washington was not Guy Fawkes, and although his artillery bombardment (partly directed by Alexander Hamilton) of British fortifications at Yorktown was indeed terrifying, those who marched out with Cornwallis were Redcoats, not civilians. Whatever his other personal failings, Thomas Jefferson had never murdered, raped, and pilaged his way through Canada. James Madison and James Monroe are rather more closely associated with the Bill of Rights than with jihad or fatwa. When John Adams, John Jay, and Ben Franklin signed the Treaty of Paris on America's behalf in 1783 to formally end the war, not one of them had explosive charges strapped around his waist; and his Britannic Majesty's express purpose in joining in that document was not to put a stop to anything remotely akin to "terrorism," but rather "to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which [Britain and the United States] mutually wish[ed] to restore, and to establish such a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse between the two countries upon the ground of reciprocal advantages and mutual convenience as may promote and secure to both perpetual peace and harmony."

Read the whole thing

Iowa Hawk on Terrorists

Iowa Hawk's website may well be the best parody site in the country. It's certainly better than anything usually encounted in the MSM. Here are two examples:

Stop Comparing Me to American Moonbats

Iowahawk Special Guest Commentary
By Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

As a holy activist battling infidel crusaders and their heretic lackeys here in Mesopotamia, Allah knows I have to have a thick skin. Still, every once in a while, I’ll run across something that really gets my blood boiling. For instance, after my last opinion piece I got this nastygram from some choad over in Great Satanland:


I am appalled and sickened that anyone would draw a parellel between Al-Zarqawi and the American Left.


Oh, ya think? Well, I got news for you, Moby: I’m not exactly thrilled about any such comparison MYSELF, okay? See, I didn’t spend the last ten years crawling in the sand at jihad training camp, getting my knuckles thwacked by an Imam every time I forgot a Quran verse, and living in smelly Baghdad safehouse just to get compared to a bunch of trucker-hat AltWeekly motards from Austin and Seattle.


Me, like the American Left? I mean, are you fucking joking me?


As. Fucking. If.


Oh sure, the infidel progressives like to talk a good game. They’ll call you “freedom fighters” and “the resistance” and “Iraqi Minutemen.” But soon as you need some volunteers to take out a grade school full of collaborators, they’re like, “sorry dude, I’ve got to run off some International ANSWER fliers at Kinkos.”

Click on the link to read the rest.

And:
Stop Questioning My Patriotism

Iowahawk Special July 4 Guest Commentary
by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

Americans are famous for their diversity, and nowhere is this diversity more on display than in the various ways we celebrate the Fourth of July. Whether you are a traditional infidel enjoying hot dogs and cold watermelon, a recent immigrant infidel celebrating your new citizenship with a colorful piñata full of sweet treats, or like me, a not-as-yet-arrived-there-American who celebrates our independence through videotaped beheadings, we Americans have an almost infinite variety of ways of ‘lighting up the Fourth.’


Unfortunately, there are some who are angered by this rich Independence Day tapestry of watermelon and piñatas and decapitations, and express their anger through intolerance. Ironically, these angry voices have chosen to ignore the message of the Founding Infidels, and have instead lashed out against their fellow Americans, and aspiring-Americans, by openly questioning our patriotism and threatening our civil liberties with their GPS-guided ‘Bunker Busters.’

It gets funnier...

Masters Of Somebody Else's Domain

Here's some great investigative reporting on political corruption that you'll never find in the MSM:

Excerpt from Vodkapundit... read the whole thing:

After reading the comments in my earlier post about the confluence between a recent property seizure in Oakland and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's wild defense of eminent domain in the Kelo decision, I did a bit more digging into the lead developer on the Oakland project, Forest City Enterprises, Inc.

Forest City is a publicly-traded development and real estate conglomerate run by the Ratner family of Cleveland, Ohio. Led by the Ratners, Forest City is a player in major developments on both coasts (and many places in between), including some of the hottest hot spots in eminent domain seizures.

The biggest, or at least the most publicized, involves a huge tract of Brooklyn in New York City. The Ratners are proposing to turn it into a condo-shopping-basketball-arena complex; Bruce Ratner of Forest Park is the owner of the New Jersey Nets. The Ratners are lobbying the city and state of New York to exercise eminent domain powers to seize properties in Brooklyn for this project.

(Incidentally, Bruce Ratner's brother Michael runs the far-left humanrightsnow.org website, and is president of the George Soros-funded "Center for Constitutional Rights," and is one of the major legal players trying to free the terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Quite a family there.)

Ann Coulter Get O'Connor Right

Since Ann's columns don't come with a trackback feature, I will quote her in full:

REAGAN'S BIGGEST MISTAKE FINALLY RETIRES
by Ann Coulter
July 6, 2005


The fundamental goal of the next Supreme Court justice should be to create a record that would not inspire Sen. Chuck Schumer to say, as he did of Justice O'Connor last week: "We hope the president chooses someone thoughtful, mainstream, pragmatic — someone just like Sandra Day O'Connor." That's our litmus test: We will accept only judicial nominees violently opposed by Chuck Schumer.

Showing what a tough job it is to be president, when Bush announced O'Connor's resignation, he called her "a discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity." I assume he was reading from the script originally drafted for Justice Rehnquist's anticipated resignation, but still, he said it.

Cleverly, Bush also made a big point of noting that Reagan appointed O'Connor, reminding people that whatever mistakes Bush may have made, at least he didn't appoint O'Connor.

It's hard to say which of O'Connor's decisions was the worst. It's like asking people to name their favorite Beatle or favorite (unaborted) child.

Of course, it was often hard to say what her decision was, period. In lieu of clear rules, or what we used to call "law," O'Connor preferred conjuring up five-part balancing tests that settled nothing. That woman could never make up her mind!

In a quarter-century on the highest court in the land, O'Connor will have left no discernible mark on the law, other than littering the U.S. Reports with a lot of long-winded versions of the legal proposition: "It depends."

Some say her worst opinion was Grutter v. Bollinger, which introduced a constitutional rule with a "DO NOT USE AFTER XXXX DATE." After delivering a four-part test for when universities are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race (a culturally biased test if ever there was one), O'Connor incomprehensibly added: "The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."

So now constitutional rules come with expiration dates, bringing to mind the image of O'Connor proffering one of her written opinions to Justice Scalia and asking, "Does this smell bad to you?" Strangely enough, she failed to specify which month and day in the year 2028 that affirmative action would no longer be justifiable under the Constitution.

Others say her worst decisions came in the area of religion. In determining the constitutionality of religious displays on public property and government aid to religion, Justice O'Connor evidently decided she preferred her own words, "entanglement" and "endorsement," to the Constitution's word "establishment."

No one could ever understand O'Connor's special two-prong entanglement/endorsement test — including Justice O'Connor. Over the years, she struggled to resuscitate her own test by continually adding more tines to the prongs.

Among the tines to the "endorsement" prong is the "outsider" test, requiring that the government not make a nonbeliever feel like an "outsider." But wait! There are spikes on those tines!

O'Connor discovered a spike off the Feelings tine of the Endorsement prong, which requires the court's evaluation of the feelings of the nonbeliever to be based on a "reasonable observer" who embodies "a community ideal of social judgment, as well as rational judgment."

It's often said that O'Connor's problem is that she is not a judge, but a legislator. On the basis of her bright idea to replace 10 blindingly clear words in the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") with a 40-page manual of flow charts and two-pronged, four-tined, six-spiked tests, she wouldn't have made much of legislator, either. O'Connor's real calling was as a schoolyard bully, maliciously making up rules willy-nilly as she went along.

Processing the religion cases through the meat grinder of her own multipart tests, O'Connor found it was unconstitutional for a Reform rabbi to give a nonsectarian prayer at a high school graduation. It was also unconstitutional for a courthouse in Kentucky to display a framed Ten Commandments along with other historical documents.

In the latter case, McCreary v. ACLU, O'Connor haughtily added this bit of advice to religious believers: Visionaries "held their faith 'with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.'"

Religion may be able to get along without the government, but apparently sodomy and abortion cannot. Those, O'Connor found, were special rights protected by the Constitution.

O'Connor took sadistic glee in refusing to overturn Roe v. Wade in the face of the unending strife it has caused the nation. (And it hasn't been easy on 30 million aborted babies either.)

She co-authored the opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which upheld Roe v. Wade, gloating: "(T)o overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason ... would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question." Yes, the court has really crowned itself in glory with those abortion decisions.

At least she would not overrule a precedent for something as trivial as a human life. Overruling a precedent would require a really, really compelling value like our right to sodomize one another.

Thus, in the recent sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas, which overruled an earlier case that had found no constitutional right to sodomy (risibly titled Bowers v. Hardwick), O'Connor specifically cited criticism of Bowers as a reason to overrule it. "(C)riticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing," O'Connor explained in her concurrence. When "a case's foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance."

Mercifully, O'Connor was concurring only in Lawrence, so there is no multipronged test for sodomy under the Constitution.

For all the blather about O'Connor's moderation and pragmatism and motherly instincts, Mommie Dearest signed on to the most monstrous opinion in the history of the court, Stenberg v. Carhart, which proclaimed a heretofore unnoticed constitutional right to puncture the skull of a half-delivered baby and suction its brains out — just as the framers so clearly intended.

In her 2003 memoir, Miss Pragmatic-Consensus wrote, "Humility is the most difficult virtue," which perhaps explains why she never attempted it.

Every human being on the globe has heard the lachrymose tale of O'Connor being offered the job of secretary after her graduation from Stanford Law School. Bushmen in Africa weep at the unfairness of it all — though not as bitterly as O'Connor does.

O'Connor spent the last quarter-century paying America back. With no offense intended to the nonbelievers who are "reasonable observers" embodying "a community ideal of social judgment, as well as rational judgment," thank God the punishment is finally over.

Pity for the Bombers

This morning a British barrister (British for lawyer) was interviewed, having escaped relatively unhurt from the subway system. He began his comments with comments critical of the British authorities, for allowing this to happen. He ended by expressing “pity” for the perpetrators.

He was not asked what he felt for the victims.

This is the opinion of one man. It remains to be seen if “pity” for the bombers is the overwhelming reaction of the British people.

Somebody Feed Them Some Cat Food

Powerline has a great piece on the Plame case and the silly article by one Robert Kuttner in the Boston Globe:

Excerpt:

...Even more egregious, though perhaps less surprising, is Robert Kuttner's column in today's Boston Globe. Kuttner, an editor of The American Prospect, is a lefty, so his anti-Bush prejudice is no secret. Kuttner not only gets the facts wrong, he offers a conspiracy theory that makes no sense. Kuttner retails the myth of the heroic Joe Wilson, adding some embellishments of his own:

Plame's husband is former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, who had undertaken a secret mission at the request of the CIA to investigate what proved to be a fake story about the government of Niger providing nuclear material to Saddam Hussein. The Niger story figured prominently in Bush's justification for war and his disparagement of UN weapons inspectors, even though it had already been disproven by Wilson's mission. Wilson, now retired, was so appalled at the administration's misuse of a discredited story that he went public with his information.

Just about every word of this paragraph is false, as the Intelligence Committee's report shows. But liberals seldom let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Kuttner continues:

The administration's leak to Novak, ''outing" Wilson's wife, Plame, was part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson. The administration line was that Plame supposedly suggested Wilson for the Niger assignment, though that allegation has never been confirmed.

Wrong again. The Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Valerie Plame did indeed--contrary to Joe Wilson's denials--recommend her husband for the Niger assignment. The report quotes Plame's memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations dated February 12, 2002, which said that her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Why do prominent newspapers like the Boston Globe print op-eds by writers who don't know any facts?

Kuttner says "the administration" leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak as "part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson." This is dumb. First of all, Novak has already explained the context of the "leak." Many people wondered why the CIA sent such an unsuitable person as Joe Wilson on the Niger mission; someone in the administration explained to Novak that Wilson was selected because his wife worked for the Agency. Which, of course, turned out to be true.

But, in any event, why would that "discredit and punish Wilson"? The fact that his wife is a CIA employee doesn't discredit Wilson in the least. And her employment status is anything but a deep dark secret, as her subsequent Vanity Fair photo shoot demonstrated.

Kuttner now makes the real point of his column, titled "Politics Taints Probe of CIA Leak." His purpose is to libel U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald:

After Novak's column was published, Democrats in Congress demanded and got the administration to name a special counsel to investigate the leak. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. His deputy named Chicago US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, supposedly a man of high principle and unblemished reputation.
"Supposedly," indeed. Read Kuttner's diatribe carefully and see if you can spot any actual evidence supporting his libels of Fitzgerald.

One leading suspect of having leaked Plame's identity is the president's chief political adviser, Karl Rove. Given how utterly Machiavellian Rove is, readers who take press reports of Fitzgerald's pristine independence at face value are touchingly naïve.

"Leading suspect"? Really? Based on what? No evidence is forthcoming. Then note the non sequitur. Rove's supposed "Machiavellian" nature shows that Fitzgerald can't be independent. Huh?

Given the stakes, do you really think this administration would let a Justice Department official just pick some highly independent prosecutor to launch a wide ranging probe -- one that could net Novak, a reliable administration toady, and the chummy high officials Novak talks to, say, Rove or Vice President Dick Cheney?

More slander, still no evidence. And, by the way, Novak is a frequent critic of the administration. And how in the world did Dick Cheney come into the picture? Kuttner is just making this stuff up as he goes along.

Nor is it an accident that this investigation, rather than fingering whoever inside the administration broke the law by outing Valerie Plame, is instead putting the squeeze on two news organizations that just happen to have been critical of the Bush administration, Time magazine and The New York Times, and by extension the entire press corps.

If you're going to serve up a conspiracy theory--without any evidence, of course--shouldn't the theory at least make some kind of sense? Kuttner's theory makes none. It is almost certain that no crime was committed by whoever told Novak (and, apparently, other reporters) that Plame works for the CIA. (Kuttner misstates the law, too.) No administration official has been fingered for talking to reporters. Fitzgerald has said that he is ready to wrap up his investigation, but for getting evidence from the two reporters. Let's suppose that it really was Karl Rove who told Novak that Plame was a CIA employee. Why would the administration want Fitzgerald to send reporters to jail to force them to reveal that fact? If the administration were pursuing its political interests, it would want the whole affair to die, and it would side with the reporters who want to take their "secret" to the grave. If Fitzgerald were serving the administration's political interests, he would defer to the reporters' assertion of privilege and conclude his investigation without identifying their sources.

All of this seems so obvious that one can only wonder what standards of evidence, logic and common sense the Boston Globe applies to its columnists.

Karl Rove's Web

It's hard to believe but this bit of hilarity is actually found on The Huffington Post.

Excerpt:

KARL ROVE'S WEB OF EVIL

Right from day one, Karl Rove cemented his link with the religious right, by being born on Dec 25, 1950, a day many on the right refer to as “Christmas," a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (an influential leader worshiped by the religious right.) It was no surprise that Dec 25, 1950 was ALSO the same EXACT day Communist forces recrossed the 38th parallel into South Korea. Clearly, Rove was already making an impact.

"This is what he does," says one observer.

After an unremarkable stint in high school, Rove entered the University of Utah, which currently ranks FIFTH HIGHEST among the nation's campuses for drug-related arrests. Rove dropped out after a few years. What is more interesting: when you research other individuals who have dropped out of college, two names keep coming up.

Rush Limbaugh. Tucker Carlson.

Coincidence?

Rove began his political career with the College Republicans, an organization operating on college campuses with the expressed goal of extolling the virtues of the Republican party. Although not at his branch, or during his period of involvement, there was another well-known member of the College Republicans. His name was Lee Atwater.

Lee Atwater is dead.
Like Paul Wellstone.
Like Ron Brown.
Like John Tower.
The list could go on. All died in air crashes, with the exception of Lee Atwater. In Rove's world, the exception clearly proves the rule. And vice versa.

Read the whole thing...

Who Wants to be A Minion?

Jeff Goldstein's blogsite Protein Wisdom is one of the funniest ones on the planet. But, be careful, there is lots of crude language and some of the references are obscure.

But... This one starts with an obscure reference and quickly gets funnier and funnier as the comments keep coming. I almost hurt myself laughing.

Feel it, idiot minion!

Feel the rich, cool salve of healing!*

****
update: “WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF THE DIALOGUE, YOU FILTHY NAZI ENABLER YOU?”

Read the whole thing...

Video of Deep Impact

See the CNN video of the impact on the comet.

Attending to Trudeau

Doonesbury got a lot of attention this week. Here's what Powerline had to say (click on the link for the whole thing:

I gave up reading Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury strip some thirty years ago. In the mid-1980's I attended a version of Trudeau's incredibly lame satirical revue Rap Master Ronnie when it played at the Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis. By Trudeau's lights, Ronald Reagan was of course a stupid oaf. I haven't taken another look at Trudeau's work since then.

Yesterday, however, a reader asked us to respond to Trudeau's Sunday Doonesbury strip attacking bloggers (the reduced image below is linked to a full-size reproduction of the strip at the Slate archive of the Doonesbury daily strips). I'm not familiar with the characters Trudeau employs in this strip, but his point seems to be that bloggers are obsessive, clueless, vainly in love with the sound of their voice even if no one is listening, and perhaps delusional. I'm sure the portrait applies to some cartoonists as well as bloggers.

Nancy Pelosi's Day

Turning Faith into Elevator Music

Here's a thought provoking article by a Christian professor from Harvard about the Supreme Court decisions on the Ten Commandments.

Not sure I agree, but it may be valid. I have always had a problem with showy or effusive religious expression. Do manger scenes do anything for us? How about Santa, his elves and reindeer?

Roosevelt Lied, Robots Died!

"War of the Worlds" as it would be reported today. Excerpts. Click HERE to read the whole thing. Brilliant!

CARL PHILLIPS
Ow! I’m sorry Professor Pierson, I was just reaching for the microphone control and I guess my hand slipped. Professor, as we look out and see the Martian mechano-men smashing and blowing up the countryside, I think all America wants to know: why do they hate us?
PROF. PIERSON
That’s a very good question Mr. Phillips, and I’m sure the mechano-men have a number of good reasons. Maybe it is our militarism, our alignment with their Venusian oppressors, or it could be the luxurious liqui-cushioned ride of our Kokomo Mogul 8s. Whatever their reasons, it is important that we get beyond the violence and begin a dialog with the mechano-men –
(LOUD MECHANICAL NOISES)
CARL PHILLIPS
I’m sorry to interrupt Professor, but have to describe an incredible turn of events. Over Mr. Wilmuth’s hedgerow, there has burst a phalanx of US Army tanks, perhaps dispatched from Fort Dix… and, yes, I believe the sound you just heard overhead was an Army Air Corps bomber squadron! It appears that the War Department has launched an counter assault against the mechano-men! Just a minute, there is a caisson rolling by and… excuse me, sir, Carl Phillips, Consolidated Radio News. May I have a word?
CAPTAIN LANSING
Quickly.
CARL PHILLIPS
Can you tell the folks at home who you are, and what you are doing here?
CAPTAIN LANSING
I’m Captain Lansing of the signal corps, attached to the state militia, and we’re here to give these Martians a taste of hot New Jersey lead.
CARL PHILLIPS
Captain, I think question on the mind of all our listeners is obvious – have you received authorization for this action from the League of Nations?
CAPTAIN LANSING
Well, no, but the President and the War Department have asked us to…
CARL PHILLIPS
If you proceed without the cooperation of Prime Minister Chamberlain or Mr. Stalin or the Germans, won’t the mechano-men have a strong case that this is an illegal, unilateral strike that only serves the interest of the United States, and neo-Venusian masters? Won’t this just anger the Martian community, and provoke them further? What about the brutal New Jersey winter? What about --
CAPTAIN LANSING
Listen, pal, I have to go, they’re shooting death rays at our tanks. You’re welcome to embed with us.
CARL PHILLIPS
With all due respect Captain, that would compromise my integrity as a radio journalist, and a citizen of the solar system. Wait! Ladies and gentlemen, I can hardly describe the horror before my eyes! The Air Corps bombers… and the tanks… they are overwhelming and decimating the outmatched mechano-men! One by one, the mechano-men are fleeing and surrendering!
(TROOPS CHEERING)
CARL PHILLIPS
I think I’m going to be sick.
PROF. PIERSON
Roosevelt lied! Robots Died!