Portland loves its anarchist thugs

Via Michelle Malkin:
A reminder of just how lovely, polite, and respectful Portland's kids are:

Indoctrinate U: The Trailer

See the trailer and see the movie

An Enemy So Evil...

It is hard, sometimes, to appreciate fully how evil our enemies in the war on terror are. This AFP story is a reminder:

Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.
The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said.

"It killed the two children inside as well as three other civilians in the vicinity. So, a total of five killed, seven injured," the official said.


The perpetrators were believed to be members of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Hat tip to Power Line

Chuckie Schumer Interferes With a Federal Investigation

January 22, 2004
The Honorable James Comey
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Deputy Attorney General Comey:

I write to request an update on the investigation into allegations that senior administration officials committed a federal felony by leaking the identity of a covert CIA operative.

The investigation has been underway for four months now and we have received no meaningful reports regarding the progress you are making. I realize there are limitations on information that can be disclosed regarding an ongoing criminal investigation, but, as we have discussed, a prosecutor has the responsibility to assure public confidence in criminal investigations, especially those of such a serious nature.

In the wake of recent calls by former intelligence operatives for a Congressional investigation, I write to ask that you publicly answer several questions regarding the progress you are making:

Has a grand jury been empaneled in this case? Have members of the White House staff signed waivers, permitting journalists to discuss confidential communications? If so, what percent of the White House staff has signed such waivers? Has anyone who has been asked to sign such a waiver refused to do so?

Have journalists been interviewed as part of the investigation? Has any journalist who has been released from confidentiality (assuming any has), refused to answer questions regarding previously confidential communications?

Were White House staffers ordered as a condition of employment to submit to interviews? Has anyone asked for or been offered immunity? If so, how many individuals fit in each category and what types of immunity have been asked for and offered to each?

What other information can you provide us regarding the progress you are making with this investigation?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator

Victoria Toensing's Comments to Congress Regarding the Plame Scandal

For those interested in learning if Valerie Plame's exposure was a crime, read what the person who wrote the law has to say.

Bumper Stickers

"Peace had a chance."
"If you want to take my gun, why would I trust you?"
"So you're a feminist...that's so cute!"
"What if doing the Hokey-Pokey is what it's all about?"
"Peace Through Superior Firepower."
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup"
Happiness is a beltfed weapon.
Nuke a gay whale for Jesus
"Jesus Saves, Esposito Scores on the Rebound."
"STOP GLOBAL WHINING"
DON'T CONFUSE LEADERSHIP WITH DRIVING SLOW IN THE LEFT LANE
"I've got the perfect body. It's in the trunk and starting to smell...."
"Who cares about Apathy"
United States Marine Corps: When it absolutelty, positively has to be destroyed overnight.
MY KID BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT"
MY HONOR STUDENT WILL BE YOUR KIDS DEFENSE ATTORNEY.
"Question Rebellion"
"Free Tibet, with qualifying purchase of Nepal. Offer good while supplies last."
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate"
"I haven't sold my soul to Satan, but we have worked out a rent to own deal"
"There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line."
"Hubris is stealing the fire of the gods. Chutzpah is offering to sell it back."
"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do!"
"This is no ordinary fool you're dealing with."
"If you can read this, you're in range." (usually in small type)
"Practice safe government--use kingdoms."
"Anything not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry loose is not nailed down." - Say 'hello' to Mr. Crowbar!
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"A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five."
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"Yesterday was the LAST day for complaints!"
Jesus loves you; Allah wants you dead.
"I'll forgive Jane Fonda when the Jews forgive Hitler".
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I CAN'T GO TO WORK TODAY. THE VOICES TOLD ME TO STAY HOME AND CLEAN THE GUNS.
"One by one, the penguins are stealing my sanity."

Jonah Goldberg on the Dems Betraying Their Base

Suddenly, it looks as if the Democrats are the Republicans on fast-forward. It’s early yet, and the Democrats did finish their mini-Contract with America — the so-called first 100 hours — with mixed success on the substance but great fanfare in the media. Yet items like upping the minimum wage and shafting oil companies, although certainly not insubstantial, were primarily symbolic.

The most important issue in the November elections was the war in Iraq. The weasel words and euphemisms — “strategic redeployment,” “course change,” whatever — couldn’t conceal the simple fact that the Democrats were elected largely to end the war. That was certainly how the party’s liberal base saw it, then and now.

But look at how the Democrats are behaving. They’ve completely failed to stop the surge, and their latest efforts to derail the war are so convoluted — timetables on top of timetables — that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a co-sponsor of legislation to withdraw troops by September 2008, can’t explain them.

...
Forget the war for a minute. What’s the second most important issue for liberals today? Global warming, of course. For example, Sen. John Kerry claims that he’s not running for president in’08 so that he can dedicate himself to the issues of Iraq and climate change. John Edwards says global warming will make world war look like heaven. Hollywood donors who hate the prospect of sweating in greenhouse gases as they walk to the gangway of their private jets think that global warming is the defining issue of our age.

So now’s the time to solve global warming, right? For years, we’ve been subjected to charges that President Bush “refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol.” Well, guess what? Bush couldn’t sign Kyoto. It was already signed under the previous president, who immediately shoved it in his desk drawer. (Bush didn’t sign the Treaty of Versailles either, by the way.)

If Kyoto’s such a priority, why hasn’t Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fought to take it up? There’s a strong legal case that once signed, a treaty is automatically in the Senate’s court. But you don’t hear Reid fighting to take up Kyoto even though it’s our best hope to combat the Most Dangerous Threat Facing Mankind.

Of course, Kyoto would never pass even a Democrat-controlled Senate because it would wreak havoc on the economy. Other Democratic betrayals in the making face similar problems. Democrats could never repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But that’s the ironic part. Republicans went soft because doing what the base wanted was too damn hard. It seems the same fate awaits Democrats.

Congressman's Office Vandalized by Radicals in Lansing

Vandalism in Landing, home of Michigan State University:

Congressman Mike Rogers' home is under police guard after his Lansing office was severely vandalized last night.
The case is being handled by the FBI and the US Capitol Police, who have requested that the Lansing Police investigate the matter.

According to the Congressman's spokesperson, the office was extensively damaged.

Two security cameras were destroyed and the building was spray painted.

The tapes from the cameras are being reviewed to see if they recorded anything before they were destroyed.

The vandals also spread red paint all over the 8th congressional district sign in front of the building, as well as on a sign that says "We Support Our Troops."

They also put a sign on one of the buildings windows that says Congressman Rogers has "blood on his hands."

Researchers Question Validity Of A 'Global Temperature'

Very Interesting:

Discussions on global warming often refer to 'global temperature.' Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada.
...
He explains that while it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless. Or talking about economics, it does make sense to compare the currency exchange rate of two countries, whereas there is no point in talking about an average 'global exchange rate'.

I'm glad that there is finally a real discussion on global warming.

Hello, I'm John Doe. Sue Me!

From the people who brought you the "flying Imams."

The Coming War with Islam

Food for thought:

“The Americans, the Europeans, and even you Israelis really don’t know what it is all about, do you? During the last generation hundreds of thousands of children have been taught all over the Moslem world in Madrass schools to become martyrs for Allah in order to kill the infidels. These youngsters not only are ready to do it, but are actually in the process of doing it. Bombs are going off all over the world killing and maiming thousands of people, not only on 9/11 in the US, in London Madrid and Bali, but in Africa, India, Bengladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many other places. The first signs of the Islamic Tsunami is already here, but the West doesn’t understand, or doesn’t want to understand what is coming."

A LOOK AT "CLIMATE CHANGE HYPOCRITES,"

Hat tip Instapundit

More on Voter Fraud and US Attorneys

This is a follow-up to my previous post.

From Powerline:

Stefan Sharkansky writes:

You've been writing about the fired U.S. Attorneys, so I thought you might be interested in another side of the story on John McKay. The national media have transmitted without challenge McKay's story that he investigated allegations of vote fraud in Washington's 2004 gubernatorial race but saw "zero evidence" of fraud. Now he's being portrayed (see Friday's NYT editorial) as the victim/hero of partisan Republicans who are punishing him for refusing to launch a groundless, politically-motivated investigation.

There's much more to this than has been widely reported. A lot more credible evidence of election violations from the 2004 governor's race has been shown to McKay than he's been willing to acknowledge, let alone investigate.

It's taken me two years and some litigation to get the King County Elections office to release enough of the appropriate records, but I've compiled evidence of hundreds of illegal votes (nearly 4 times the official 129-vote "margin of victory"). These are not just random errors, but incidents of systemic mishandling of ballots by the elections office, most of which occurred just before the election was certified when the Democrat appeared to be trailing. At the very least it's official negligence that may well have changed the outcome of the governor's race. Was it all run-of-the-mill "good enough for government work" negligence? Or was it willful? Does it meet the legal standard of "fraud"? We don't know, as there's never been an investigation into any of this.

McKay has cited the election contest trial where the judge ruled: "No testimony has been placed before the Court to suggest fraud or intentional misconduct." But all of the hundreds of illegal votes that I'm referring to were not known during the trial -- largely because King County evaded their discovery obligations and because the timeline was so compressed the litigants didn't have time to pursue every lead. This stuff was uncovered only months after the trial and long after the local mainstream press moved on to other things.

A summary of the findings is here. Some of this was presented to the local FBI in December 2005 and copied to McKay. See this letter (redacted to remove personal contact information). There's no indication that the DoJ or FBI ever followed up on this report or on other similar reports.

Why would McKay ignore the legitimate suggestions of election violations and fight back so aggressively now? Western Washington is overwhelmingly Democrat, especially Seattle. The dominant voices in the political establishment and the mainstream media were only too happy to put the embarrassing, if not incriminating, 2004 election behind them. It would be politically (and socially) risky for McKay (as a Republican appointee, no less) to be the first official to start turning over the rocks in county government. Much safer to stick with the in-crowd, call it a close but clean election and keep looking the other way. And now that McKay's in a public pissing match with Bush, who is extremely unpopular in Seattle? He's the darling of the local establishment. If he aspires to a career in state politics, this is his ticket.

300: It’s All Geek to Me

Though it opened on a relatively small number of screens, “300” made money far beyond the most optimistic projections of its producers, racking up the third-best opening weekend ever for an R-rated movie.

The critics, however, were mostly hostile, and frequently venomous. Many reviews made the same points:

• “300” is not sufficiently ironic. It takes its themes (duty, loyalty, sacrifice, the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds) too seriously to, well, be taken seriously.

• “300” is campy — meaning that many things about it can be read as sexual double entendres — yet the filmmakers don’t show sufficient awareness of this.

• All of the good guys are white people and many of the bad guys are brown. (How this could have been avoided in a film about Spartans versus Persians is never explained; the distinctly non-Greek viewers at my showing seemed to have no trouble placing themselves in the sandals of ancient Spartans.)

But such criticisms aren’t really worth arguing with, because they are not serious in the first place — and that is their whole point. Many critics dislike “300” so intensely that they refused to do it the honor of criticizing it as if it were a real movie. Critics at a festival in Berlin walked out, and accused its director of being on the Bush payroll.

Thermopylae is a wedge issue!

I have not been to a movie in years. I think I'll go see it.

Mark Steyn: Victor Victorians. A lesson in real morality

We have a mental image of 18th Century England as a land of very "proper" and morally scrupulous people who shuddered at the sight of a naked leg ... a piano leg. What a ridiculous misconception:

The 18th century Church of England preached "a tepid kind of moralism" disconnected both from any serious faith and from the great questions facing the nation. It was a sensualist culture amusing itself to death: Wilberforce goes to a performance of Don Juan, is shocked by a provocative dance, and is then further shocked to discover the rest of the audience is too blase even to be shocked. The Paris Hilton of the age, the Prince of Wales, was celebrated for having bedded 7,000 women and snipped from each a keepsake hair. Twenty-five percent of all unmarried females in London were whores; the average age of a prostitute was 16, and many brothels prided themselves on offering only girls under the age of 14.
[snip]
What we think of as "the Victorian era" was, in large part, an invention of Wilberforce that he succeeded in selling to his compatriots. We children of the 20th century mock our 19th century forebears as uptight prudes, moralists and do-gooders. If they were, it's because of Wilberforce. His legacy includes the very notion of a "social conscience": In the 1790s a good man could stroll past an 11-year-old prostitute on a London street without feeling a twinge of disgust or outrage; he accepted her as merely a feature of the landscape, like an ugly hill.

Read the whole thing.

The "real" federal prosecutor scandal. Dems use it to steal the next election.

There appears to be a coordinated effort on the part of Democrats and their media allies to prevent investigation of voter fraud by US attorneys.

Reasons for the firing of 8 US Attorneys have varied. Some, like Carol Lam, were ousted for failure to pursue cases against illegal immigrants. Others, like John McKay and David Inglasias were fired for failure to pursue voter fraud.

Voter fraud, unlike many other crimes, strikes at the very heart of our system of government. We do not need to be reminded of the closeness of recent elections for the very highest offices from President to Governors to Senators and Representatives.

It will not do for the Democrats in congress to make it politically impossible to bring voter fraud charges. It will not do for the partisan press (read NY Times) to dismiss charges of widespread voter fraud and voter intimidation as non-problems when it suits their ideological purposes.

From press reports it appears that most of the voter fraud was committed by operatives from the Democrat party.

It is becoming very apparent that the faux outrage among the democrats in congress and the press is designed to insure that voter fraud committed by democrats now becomes the third rail of politics. In the future, and federal prosecutor who brings charges against Democrats who commit voter fraud will now be accused of committing a political hit job under orders from the Bush administration.

That is the real outrage and it is happening right in the open.

When And Why Joseph C Wilson IV Outed Valerie Plame

Abolutely fascinating article. What is especially devastating for Joe Wilson is that he supported the belief that Saddam had WMDs AFTER he went to Niger and before the invasion!

January 28, 2003: President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union Address.

February 6, 2003: Joe Wilson wrote an editorial for the Los Angeles Times, A ‘Big Cat’ With Nothing to Lose, in which he claimed we should not attack Saddam Hussein because he will use his weapons of mass destruction on our troops and give them to terrorists.

There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend himself if the United States comes after him.

And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that.

February 28, 2003: Joe Wilson was interviewed by Bill Moyers. Wilson agreed with Bush’s SOTU remarks, and reiterated his belief that Saddam had WMD and that he would use them on US troops.

Read the whole thing.

Mahatma Gandhi: Immoral Moralist

Despite (or perhaps because of) the veneration of Gandhi by many with a superficial view of history, I have always viewed this wizened little man with a degree of distaste. Perhaps it was this very show of public morality in a mere mortal. Perhaps it was the fact that he did not so much free India from British rule as that the British let India go. Perhaps it was the bloody civil and religious war that followed Indian independence. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... I have now found some more concrete examples to list Gandhi as one of the great humbugs of all time.

From Powerline:

Gandhi's views on the European crisis were not entirely consistent. He vigorously opposed Munich, distrusting Chamberlain. "Europe has sold her soul for the sake of a seven days' earthly existence," he declared. "The peace that Europe gained at Munich is a triumph of violence." But when the Germans moved into the Bohemian heartland, he was back to urging nonviolent resistance, exhorting the Czechs to go forth, unarmed, against the Wehrmacht, perishing gloriously--collective suicide again. He had Madeleine Slade draw up two letters to President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia, instructing him on the proper conduct of Czechoslovak satyagrahi when facing the Nazis.

When Hitler attacked Poland, however, Gandhi suddenly endorsed the Polish army's military resistance, calling it "almost nonviolent." (If this sounds like double-talk, I can only urge readers to read Gandhi.) He seemed at this point to have a rather low opinion of Hitler, but when Germany's panzer divisions turned west, Allied armies collapsed under the ferocious onslaught, and British ships were streaming across the Straits of Dover from Dunkirk, he wrote furiously to the Viceroy of India: "This manslaughter must be stopped. You are losing; if you persist, it will only result in greater bloodshed. Hitler is not a bad man...."

Gandhi also wrote an open letter to the British people, passionately urging them to surrender and accept whatever fate Hitler had prepared for them. "Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds." Since none of this had the intended effect, Gandhi, the following year, addressed an open letter to the prince of darkness himself, Adolf Hitler.

THE scene must be pictured. In late December 1941, Hitler stood at the pinnacle of his might. His armies, undefeated anywhere ruled Europe from the English Channel to the Volga. Rommel had entered Egypt. The Japanese had reached Singapore. The U.S. Pacific Fleet lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. At this superbly chosen moment, Mahatma Gandhi attempted to convert Adolf Hitler to the ways of nonviolence. "Dear Friend," the letter begins, and proceeds to a heartfelt appeal to the Fuhrer to embrace all mankind "irrespective of race, color, or creed." Every admirer of the film Gandhi should be compelled to read this letter. Surprisingly, it is not known to have had any deep impact on Hitler. Gandhi was no doubt disappointed. He moped about, really quite depressed, but still knew he was right. When the Japanese, having cut their way through Burma, threatened India, Gandhi's strategy was to let them occupy as much of India as they liked and then to "make them feel unwanted." His way of helping his British "friends" was, at one of the worst points of the war, to launch massive civil-disobedience campaigns against them, paralyzing some of their efforts to defend India from the Japanese.

Read the whole thing, especially the part about making the Japanese feel unwanted.

Roanoke Times Lists Names of Concealed Carry Permit Holders in Virginia

The person who posted these names is:
Christian J. Trejbal
675 School Ln.
Christianburg, VA 24073
Christian.Trejbal@roanoke.com

Some other articles about this here, here, here, here, here.

The Myth of Moral Neutrality

Gregory Koukl in a Townhall.com column does an excellent job of exploding the myth that people who criticise others for making moral judgements are being morally neutral.

All judgements are based on morals positions ... none are neutral. True neutrality equals silence.

He takes the classic expression of moral "neutrality" expressed by Faye Wattleton (see link to article), the former President of Planned Parenthood and destructs it this way:

Faye Wattleton's assessment is based on the notion of neutral ground, a place that implies no moral judgment. Wattleton is not neutral, however, as her own comments demonstrate.

In her article, Wattleton in effect argues that each of us should respect another's point of view. She then implies, however, that any point of view other than this one is immoral, un-American, and tyrannous. If you disagree with Wattleton's position that all points of view are equally valid, then your point of view is not valid. Her argument commits suicide; it self-destructs.

Read the whole thing.