LA Times Gone Wild: 'Wrong to Blame Katrina Victims for Spending Irresponsibly'

From Newsbusters:

What do you call someone who rips off the American taxpayer by spending Katrina relief funds on champagne, 'Girls Gone Wild' videos or gambling sprees? Why, a 'victim', of course. At least, you do if you're the editorial writer of the Los Angeles Times.

The sub-headline in the editorial in today's LA Times reads like a parody of liberal paternalism gone wild: "It's Wrong to Blame Victims for Spending Irresponsibly." No, that's not a misprint.

While acknowledging that the 16% of improper expenditures 'is indeed high', the Times doesn't want us to get all worked up about it: "some misuse of the FEMA-issued debit cards is hardly shocking."

Concludes the Times:

"It's easy, and necessary, to criticize FEMA's across-the-board incompetence in responding to the largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War. But obsessing about the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim."

Got it? Blame the government agency giving away the money - not the cheats who rip off the system and the taxpayer. This is big-government liberal paternalism laid bare.

Crackpot Larry Johnson

Who is Larry Johnson and why are people talking about him? Well, for one reason, he is and ex-CIA employee and he wrote what could well be the most mistaken and mistimed op-ed in modern history.

Byron York wrote:

On July 10, 2001, the New York Times published an opinion article titled “The Declining Terrorist Threat.” It was written by Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department counterterrorism official, who argued that Americans spent too much time worrying about terrorist attacks that would likely never come. “Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment,” Johnson wrote, “Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism.” And then:

They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism. None of these beliefs are based in fact.

Surveying the security situation around the world, Johnson sought to reassure readers. “The greatest risk is clear: if you are drilling for oil in Colombia — or in nations like Ecuador, Nigeria or Indonesia — you should take appropriate precautions,” he wrote. “Otherwise Americans have little to fear.”

Two months later, the planes of September 11 crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. And Larry Johnson became known, at least in the eyes of some of his former colleagues, as the author of perhaps the most embarrassing op-ed ever published. “The worst,” says one such colleague. “On an issue of national interest, has there ever been a worse prognostication in the history of man?”

Probably not. Yet Johnson’s career as a commentator did not just continue after September 11 — it thrived ....

In just the last few months, his observations about intelligence matters have appeared in or on the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Sunday Times of London, the Guardian, the Associated Press, Knight-Ridder, National Public Radio, CNN, MSNBC, and more..

Johnson has a web site on which he writes of Karl Rove:

Karl is a shameless bastard. This could explain why his mother killed herself. Once she discovered what a despicable soul she had spawned she apparently saw no other way out. It would be one thing if his vile tactics were simply mere smears of politicians like Kerry and Murtha. They are big boys and should be able to defend themselves quite ably against this turd. But Rove, like Josef Goebbels, has used fear and smear as his primary tools to keep George Bush in power.

Thanks to the Internet and the blogosphere, the drive-by-media can no longer present cretins like Johnson as the go-to "experts" when they want an anti-administration quote. Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has it right when he says:

And yet these people—thanks mostly to their enablers in the press—are often trotted out as serious critics of the administration, and seldom shown for the vile and vicious anti-intellectual thugs that they are. Whether it’s Howard Dean calling Republicans evil and saying he “hates” them; or John Murtha convicting soldiers of murder in advance of a full investigation; or a low-rent castoffs like Johnson, who the MSM routinely turns to when they need a good anti-war intelligence source, mustering up the guts to say that Karl Rove is responsible for his own mother’s suicide—the bile is there for all to sample, if only the MSM weren’t so good at controlling the information flow.

But the question is, how long will the legacy media be able to keep a lid on this stuff now that the information superhighway has so many toll free lanes?

On the way to work this morning I plan to tune in NPR, fully expecting to hear Larry Johnson being asked why, if we got Zarqawi we can't get Osama. The answer will involve Karl Rove, Goebbels, and the peacefulness of Islam.

James Lileks Finds Terrorist Documents

From under the desk of Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, Al Qaeda’s #1 man in Iraq as of 14:41 this afternoon

In the name of Allah the merciful and peaceful, I bring you news of pitiless vengeance. Victory is near! Thanks to the bombs of the Crusaders – Satan curse their on-board guidance systems - Zarqawi has been delivered to heaven, after a brief detour through a window frame. I know all the joyous martyrdoms have made for a hectic week. Personally, my face aches from smiling and my teeth hurt from all the cake, and I have a cramp in my hand from all the paperwork. (On behalf of HR, I would request that you cut down on the number of wives, as it makes pension disbursement rather complicated.) At the risk of dampening your commendable ardor, however, I would request that everyone refrain from glorious dying for a few weeks while we regroup.

This does not mean we are not winning. Some people look at a man who has been gravely wounded and see him as half defeated; I look at him and say he is half martyred.

Nevertheless, there are issues that need to be addressed.

The Crusaders have made several dozen raids since Zarqawi’s release from mortal concerns, and each raid leads to more. I must repeat: stop printing out Google Maps and leaving them around. At least clear your browser history, brothers.

Read the rest...

Mainstream Media and Terror Joined at the Hip

Like this is a big surprise to anybody but liberals, but a document found in Zarqawi's safe house contradicts the American mainstream media's reporting of the war in Iraq. We have two sets of claims regarding the war in Iraq: (1) al-Zarqawi's admission in writing that America was winning the war, that the Iraqi government was becoming more effective against preventing terrorist attacks, and that arrests of insurgents had damaged al-Qaeda's ability to carry out attacks; (2) continuous reports from the Democrats and the American mainstream media that the war is going badly for coalition forces, that Iraq is on the brink of civil war, that Americans are committing atrocities against innocent Iraqis, and that we are stuck in a quagmire. Which set of claims most accurately represents the truth?

Read the rest...

Washington Post: Media And Terrorists are Helping Each Other

Study proves that media creates more terrorism:

The researchers counted direct references to terrorism between 1998 and 2005 in the New York Times and Neue Zuercher Zeitung, a respected Swiss newspaper. They also collected data on terrorist attacks around the world during that period. Using a statistical procedure called the Granger Causality Test, they attempted to determine whether more coverage directly led to more attacks.

The results, they said, were unequivocal: Coverage caused more attacks, and attacks caused more coverage -- a mutually beneficial spiral of death that they say has increased because of a heightened interest in terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001.

As they say in the mafia as they take you for a "ride;" "It's nothing personal, it's only business."

Soros Convicted of Insider Trading Using His Profits to Fund Liberals

The headline if the MSM was on the side of the angels.

Hillary?

Unlawful Command Influence? Murtha to Be Called As Witness

From the Washington Times:

A criminal defense attorney for a Marine under investigation in the Haditha killings says he will call a senior Democratic congressman as a trial witness, if his client is charged, to find out who told the lawmaker that U.S. troops are guilty of cold-blooded murder.

Attorney Neal A. Puckett told The Washington Times that Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine commandant, briefed Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, on the Nov. 19 killings of 24 Iraqis in the town north of Baghdad. Mr. Murtha later told reporters that the Marines were guilty of killing the civilians in "cold blood." Mr. Murtha said he based his statement on Marine commanders, whom he did not identify.
Mr. Puckett said such public comments from a congressman via senior Marines amount to "unlawful command influence." He said potential Marine jurors could be biased by the knowledge that their commandant, the Corps' top officer, thinks the Haditha Marines are guilty.

"Congressman Murtha will be one of the first witnesses I call to the witness stand," Mr. Puckett said yesterday.

Steve Benson, Arizona Republic: Scum Then and Now

Then and Now lets the cowards in the MSM have it:

In the June 7 edition of its newspaper, The Arizona Republic published a repulsive cartoon by Steve Benson that desecrates the U.S. Marine Corps' Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem and defames the USMC as a collection of wanton murderers. The source of Benson's vitriol? The alleged murders of 24 Iraqis at Haditha in November 2005.

Normally I resist the temptation to reprint professional cartoons without first receiving proper permissions, and this time is no different. However, this cartoon truly must be seen to be believed. Simply go to Benson's page here, click on "See previous Benson cartoons," and click "next" until you arrive at slide 3 of 54. Benson depicts the Corps' globe symbol as running with blood while bastardizing the USMC acronym to stand for "United States Massacre Cover-Up."

Perhaps in Benson's twisted mind our Marines are all war criminals fighting an illegal war for oil and intergalactic domination. After all, Steve Benson is known for his oftentimes inflammatory drawings. But publishing this type of cartoon should be beyond the pale even for the mainstream media, not least because this prejudges the Marines involved in this incident, not one of whom has been charged to date in an investigation that is still ongoing.

Unfortunately, I'm no longer capable of uttering "unbelievable" at the sight of such filth because this type of behavior is all too commonplace today. An American media that virtually as a whole couldn't find the stones to publish the Mohammed cartoons -- laughably passing out of so-called respect for religious symbols and "tolerance" -- has little problem poking its stick into the collective eye of the world's finest fighting force.

The image.


And the cretin who drew it.

"Movimiento:" Civil Rights or Radical Leftist Revolutionary

Jim Pinkerton in Newsday:

Advocates of an open border between the U.S. and Mexico do their best to present a mellow American flag-waving image to the public. But when they gather in semiprivate, they communicate much differently to each other. Perhaps they need to be even more careful.

In the big pro-immigration marches this spring, Hispanic activists sought to present themselves as "civil rights" advocates in the gentle and inclusive tradition of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Oh sure, some of the recent marchers went "off message," carrying Mexican flags and calling for "reconquista," but for the most part, the demonstrators were well-behaved.

But offstage, as it were, a different and harsher truth comes out. It's not a "movement," they tell each other when cameras aren't watching, it's a "movimiento" - and that Spanish-language phrasing speaks volumes about the true tilt of pro-immigration activists.

How do I know this? On Tuesday, I attended a panel discussion entitled "The New Immigrants Movement," part of a "Take Back America" conference convened in Washington, D.C., by the left-wing Campaign for America's Future. The event was open to anyone, although fewer than 100 people showed up. But to give you a flavor of the meeting, here are the surnames of the people on the panel: Lovato, Salas, Contreras, Lopez, Ramirez and another Lopez. All Hispanic - and some quite angry.

Consider the words of Roberto Lovato, identified as a writer for New American Media, describing itself as "the country's first and largest national collaboration of ethnic news organizations." Speaking first, Lovato declared that he had problems with the words "civil rights." Why? In part because that phrase had been used by black Americans half a century ago - it was their term. But mostly, he continued, the term is inapt because today "a lot of the members of the movement were political revolutionaries in countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador." And that's why, he concluded, "this is not just a civil rights movement - this is the northernmost expression of a continental rights movement."

Got that? This is "the northernmost expression of a continental rights movement" led by "political revolutionaries" from Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Van Der Leun: Follow the Rules and Die ... or Nice Guys Finish Fried

Excerpt:

By rote and by ritual most Americans to assert that they "Support our troops." But as we all know, yet seldom admit, America has more of the known reserves of the world's bullshit than the Saudis have oil. The truth of the matter is that far too many Americans are becoming far too interested in our troops behaving correctly than actually supporting and sustaining them. They blather support out of one orifice while spewing disdain from the other. We hear these clapped-out flatulators daily at work, on the street, and over the tube of the boobs. I don't know about you, but for me these hyperventilating hypocrites are beginning to gripe my hindquarters big time.

As we learn from the Holy Texts of Casey Stengel, "Nice guys finish last." I'd suggest we update this sentiment for this war into "Nice guys finish fried." As the events of the last week concerning one Zarquawi illustrate quite succinctly, Americans have the groove in rock, in roll and in the modern battle space. Indeed, at bottom, it could well be said that "They hate us because we have the groove."

[snip]

You think not? Imagine a second 9/11 on the same or a larger scale. That's what the Canada 17 were planning. Imagine the American response to such an attack. Do you know where our 18 ballistic missile submarines are? No? Neither do I, but if you know what they can do you know that the nuclear payload on any single one of them is the end of the Islamic world. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer if it all did not quite come to that. I'm sure the residents of Tehran, if they were free to speak, would agree.

Too dramatic? Imagine then just the global economic consequences. Picture the vanishing of trillions in capital, the price of a barrel of oil, the crash of the job market, the expulsion of illegals as Americans suddenly become willing to do not only the jobs they won't do, but any job. Imagine a global replay of the Great Depression in a "networked, globalized" world.

Imagine that the housing market deflates with a whoosh. After all your 401K and spare cash were in the market because who wants savings bank interest. Suddenly your one big asset, the thing that made you "feel rich," your million dollar chicken shack is worth $100,000. And your mortgage is due and both the jobs your family had have vanished like the highland mist at high noon. And that $6,000 monthly mortgage payment is 90 days past due. And tomorrow's election day. And you really don't have all that much to do except take that Mickey Mantle Rookie card down to the pawnshop so you can go to the market for a quart of milk.

How did it all happen? We forgot to win. We were so strong and so cool and so with-it, that winning just, well, didn't seem fair. And playing fair is very important to Americans. After all, world war is just the World Series with guns. Isn't it?

Mark Steyn: You Can't Believe Your Lying Eyes

I will repost the whole thing because it's great from beginning to end.

The Islamoschmoozing has gone into full gear. What's the harm? This is how nations die

Within a few hours of those arrests from the -- what was the phrase? -- "broad strata" of Canadian society, I had a little flurry of emails from radio and TV producers inviting me to toss in my two bits. But my two bits on Toronto is pretty much the same as my two bits on London and Madrid and Bali, and that's quite a mound of quarters piled up over the past five years. What's to say? The best summation is a line I first quoted in 2002, when a French oil tanker was attacked off the coast of Yemen. Back then, you'll recall, the French foreign minister was deploring American "simplisme" on a daily basis, and M. Chirac was the principal obstructionist of the neo-con-Zionist-Halliburton plan to remake the Middle East. If you were to pick only one Western nation not to blow up the oil tankers of, France would surely be it.

But they got blown up anyway. And afterwards a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden said, "We would have preferred to hit a U.S. frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels."





No problem. They are all infidels. In the scheme of things, launching a plot to behead the Prime Minister of Canada would not seem to be an obvious priority. No doubt they would have preferred to behead the President of the United States. But no problem. We are all infidels.

The multicultural society posits that each of its citizens can hold a complementary portfolio of identities: one can simultaneously be Canadian and Jamaican and gay and Anglican and all these identities can exist within your corporeal form in perfect harmony. But, for most Western Muslims, Islam is their primary identity, and for a significant number thereof, it's a primary identity that exists in opposition to all others. That's merely stating the obvious. But, of course, to state the obvious is unacceptable these days, so our leaders prefer to state the absurd. I believe the old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between a New York traffic light changing to green and the first honk of a driver behind you. Today, the definition of a nanosecond is the gap between a Western terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia. After the London tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:

"British Muslims fear repercussions over tomorrow's train bombing."

An adjective here and there, and that would serve just as well for much of the coverage by the Toronto Star and the CBC, where a stone through a mosque window is a bigger threat to the social fabric than a bombing thrice the size of the Oklahoma City explosion. "Minority-rights doctrine," writes Melanie Phillips in her new book Londonistan, "has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a 'victim' group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the 'oppressive' majority." If you want to appreciate the forces at play among Western Muslims in societies enervated by multiculturalism, Londonistan is an indispensable read. "It is impossible to overstate the importance -- not just to Britain but to the global struggle against Islamist extremism -- of properly understanding and publicly challenging this moral, intellectual and philosophical inversion, which translates aggressor into victim and vice versa."

That's true -- although I wonder for how long even our decayed establishments can keep up the act. After the London bombings, the first reaction of Brian Paddick, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was to declare that "Islam and terrorism don't go together." After the Toronto arrests, the CSIS assistant director of operations, Luc Portelance, announced that "it is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethnocultural group in Canada." Who ya gonna believe? The RCMP diversity outreach press officer or your lyin' eyes? In the old days, these chaps would have been looking for the modus operandi, patterns of behaviour. But now every little incident on the planet is apparently strictly specific unto itself: all jihad is local.

The other day, listening to an interview on America's National Public Radio with the mayor of Toronto, I was laughing so much I drove off the road. David Miller warmed up with a bit of boilerplate Islamoschmoozing: "You know, in Islam, if you kill one person, you kill everybody. It's a very peaceful religion. And they're as shocked as Torontonians are. And . . ."

Renee Montagne, the anchorette, instantly spotted the ghastly breach of PC etiquette and leapt in: "Well, they sort of are Torontonians," she pointed out.

"Sorry," gulped the mayor, hastily re-smothering Muslims within the great diversity quilt. "They're shocked as every Torontonian is . . ."

Thereafter, Ms. Montagne expressed bafflement that these allegedly alleged fellows would have wanted to commit a terrorist atrocity in what was, compared to the Great Satan next door, "a very open society, very liberal immigration policy, very good social services."

Mayor Miller agreed: "More than half of the people who live in Toronto, including myself, were not born in Canada. And I think that's why Canada works."

"Although it didn't work in this case," Ms. Montagne pointed out, somewhat maliciously.

"Well, we don't expect these kinds of occurrences, exactly because of our public services, because of diversity," blah, blah. Insofar as there's any relation between jihadists and "good social services," the latter seem to attract the former -- at least in the sense that Ahmed Ressam, Zac Moussaoui, the shoe-bomber, the tube bombers, etc., were all products of the Euro-Canadian welfare system. But go ahead, pretend that these guys were upset about insufficient "social services," that they wanted to behead Stephen Harper to highlight the fact that wait times for the beheaded at the Toronto General are now up to 18 months, and they don't always reattach the right head. It's easy to scoff that a chap who can be bothered blowing up the Canadian Parliament must be insane, but, if you were a jihadist sitting in the cave back in the Hindu Kush listening to Renee Montagne and David Miller, wouldn't you conclude that they're the ones who are nuts? The Islamic Army of Aden PR guy seems by comparison to have a relatively clear-sighted grasp of reality.

Melanie Phillips makes a point that applies to Britain, Canada and beyond: "With few exceptions, politicians, Whitehall officials, senior police and intelligence officers and academic experts have failed to grasp that the problem to be confronted is not just the assembly of bombs and poison factories but what is going on inside people's heads that drives them to such acts." These are not Pushtun yak herders straight off the boat blowing up trains and buses. They're young men, most of whom were born and all of whom were bred in London, Toronto and other Western cities. And offered the nullity of a contemporary multicultural identity they looked elsewhere -- and found the jihad. If we try to fight it as isolated outbreaks -- a suicide attack here, a beheading there -- we will never win. You have to take on the ideology and the networks that sustain it and throttle them. Does David Miller sound like a man who's up to that challenge? A reader in Quebec, John Gross, emailed me to distill the mayor's approach as: "Don't get mad, get even . . . wimpier."

Well, if Hizzoner wants to make himself a laughingstock, what's the harm? Only this -- that the more rubbish spouted by officials in the wake of these events, the more the averagely well-informed person will resent the dissembling. In that sense, Mayor Miller, M. Portelance, commissioner Paddick et al. are colluding in the delegitimizing of the state's institutions. That doesn't seem like a smart move.

One final thought: Miss Phillips is one of Britain's best-known newspaper columnists. She appears constantly on national TV and radio. No publisher has lost money on her. Yet Londonistan wound up being published first in New York, and its subsequent appearance in Britain is thanks not to Little, Brown (who published her last big book) but to a small independent imprint called Gibson Square. I don't know Miss Phillips's agent, but it's hard not to suspect that glamorous literary London decided it would prefer to keep a safe distance from this incendiary subject.

That's how nations die -- not by war or conquest, but by a thousand trivial concessions, until one day you wake up and you don't need to sign a formal instrument of surrender because you did it piecemeal. How many Muslims in Toronto sympathize with the aims of those arrested last week? Maybe we could use a book on the subject. But which Canadian house would publish it? And would the faint-hearts at Indigo-Chapters carry it?

Virginina Pilot: 2nd Amendment rights and Christians are "unconventional political attitudes" among Democrats

The Virginian Pilot, commenting on the primary race between Miller and Webb for the right to carry the Democrats banner in the upcoming election to try to unseat George Allen, made a surprisingly honest assertion when it wrote:

Meantime, of course, Democrats - often awkwardly - have been working to expand their own house, embracing - often uncomfortably - people of unconventional political attitudes. At the top of this list are pro-gun pragmatists like former Gov. Mark Warner and his successor, Tim Kaine, who wears his Catholic faith on his sleeve.

This assertion can only be interpreted one way: support for the 2nd amendment and Christianity are “unconventional political attitudes” among Democrats. They must also appear to be unconventional attitudes among the editorial writers at the Virginian Pilot. But I repeat myself.

This proves once again that Ann coulter is right.

Haditha Summary ... As Far As Is Known

As usual, the ubermensh of the drive-by-media are turning out their usual shoddy product. Meanwhile the pajamas media are fact checking and doing a remarkably good job.

From the Mudville Gazette:

Last week brought the first media demands that the Marines revise their original public statements (from last November) on the incident at Haditha before they complete their investigation into the event.

This week, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank joined the crowd.

"General," queried ABC News's Jonathan Karl, "all that we have, officially, on the record, from the military on the Haditha incident, is that 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. Can you now correct for the record that statement and tell us if that statement was inaccurate?"

Hagee could not. "As I've said several times, I cannot comment on anything that has happened until the investigations are complete."

"So you're going to let stand the press release?" Karl demanded.

Hagee was. Without another word, he turned to the next questioner.

Now there's more than a little pretending going on here - the reporters know that an investigation is underway, and that "the military" can't actually comment on an ongoing investigation. Witness each published report quoting an "unnamed senior Defense official" who speaks "on condition of anonymity because the investigation has not been concluded". But as Milbank's piece makes quite clear, reporters were relentless in demanding Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee give them the full results of the incomplete investigation right now. Since they know he can't, their line of questions serves a different purpose, and that's to serve as the basis for the sort of story Milbank delivers here - an implied "cover-up" by the military, with just a hint of tin-foil thrown in.

And for good measure, some sneering commentary directed at General Hagee:

There seemed to be a substantial risk that Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee would, at the beginning of his Pentagon press briefing yesterday, start crooning about the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli.

He was giving the first briefing by a top Pentagon official since fresh allegations surfaced three weeks ago about Marines killing two dozen Iraqi civilians in Haditha. But, unable or unwilling to provide information about that dark episode, he chose to talk "about what it is to be a Marine."

Since those comments helpfully lead off Milbank's post, they send a loud and clear signal that the noise level in what follows will not contribute much to the discussion. But given the number of media "investigations" into the story and the number of words on the topic they've delivered to the public over the past few weeks, it could be that there are reporters who actually have difficulty understanding what's taking so long with the official inquiry. But as we'll demonstrate, an actual criminal investigation - with the purpose of uncovering evidence of guilt or innocence (and perhaps ultimately determining punishment of any guilty parties) is a bit more painstaking a process than is the typing of a news report, with the purpose of selling papers.

Ann Coulter and the War Spirit

Some people are just too good for this world. It’s a good thing that not all people are. The Mudville Gazette has the motto: "Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Those who are not capable of firing a gun to defend our freedoms are given their freedoms to be extra good by those who man the weapons of war.

On our side we have people who stand by ad tut-tut when our president is called a liar, a war criminal, a Nazi and worse. It is now evident that their problems with this slander are a matter of taste. Calling George Bush a Nazi may be wrong, but more importantly, its low class. It’s just something “we” don’t do.

But like the innocent victim whose sole reaction to being beaten to death is a pitiful “please don’t,” it would be useful if someone came along and put a bullet into the would-be murderer’s head.

What does this have to do with Ann Coulter? Very simple, the simpering ninnies on the Right (or Libertarian) side of the debate in this country are trying to distance themselves from a few well chosen and blunt words Ann has spoken about one group of people who 'can't be criticized'. And she does it in a way that can’t be mistaken and that brings headlines. See here, and here.

Kevin McCullough, writing in Townhall.com makes the point well when he says:

Liberals in America have been staging a new strategy on winning public policy debates. Simply provide spokespeople that no one is allowed to respond to. Ann Coulter had the gall to challenge that and let loose with some direct observations in her newest best-seller "GODLESS" and true to form liberals have been fomenting in response.
The reason they do is not because it breaks some sacred respect that one should have for a grieving mother, wife, or relative. Rather the reason they are so outraged by this is because it simply stabs through the heart the strategy of hiding behind spokespeople who 'can't be criticized'.

Matt Lauer, Hillary Clinton, and Alan Colmes have been laughable in the trumped up outrage that they share for the statements Coulter makes in GODLESS in reference to the 'Jersey Girls'. The Jersey Girls are four wives who lost their husbands on 9/11, they jumped into the 2004 election debate early on, they cut commercials for John Kerry, and they are on record for saying some rather hideous remarks about Condoleezza Rice and Karl Rove, not to mention President Bush.

In recent years liberal spokespersons have grown infamous for self destruction when they are put into arenas where free debate, give and take response, and actual dialogue take place. As Ann argues rather convincingly in her new book, this sets up the structure of "liberal infallibility." In other words liberals use of victims of tragedies would never be criticized. So the plan is to find as many victims to become the mouthpieces for the left as possible.


An interesting point, when the GOP invited widows of 9/11 to participate in their national convention, the memes went up from the left of "pure political posturing." Yet any observer of those who participated would be hard pressed to know of a single critical thing they said about the President's opponents. The presentation they made dealt with the need for America to remain strong in its stand against terrorism. Kerry's name was never even invoked. And their involvement in the public debate ended that night.

The Jersey Girls on the other hand have consistently spoken out and advocated on behalf of leftist interests through the 9/11 Commission’s findings, to the operation of the global War On Terror, the elections of 2004, etc. In other words - they chose, or the liberal Democratic Party chose for them - to enter the fray, to don the gloves, and to mix it up.

One of the problems the Left has is that they don’t really believe we are in a war. They believe 9/11 was not an act of aggression but a crime; a crime, by the way, which we have brought on ourselves. The problem for the Right is similar. A large part of the Right does not believe we are in the middle of a serious culture war in this country. They are wrong, and their reaction to Ann Coulter’s truth-speaking differentiates those who take this culture war seriously, and those who don’t.

Democrats Vow to Fight On After Zarqawi Loss

As Blackberry devices and cell phones on Capitol Hill hummed with news of the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi yesterday, Congressional Democrats vowed that despite the loss they would fight on in “the war on the war on terror.”

“Zarqawi will be missed because he put a human face on the futility of the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq,” said one unnamed lawmaker, who assured a reporter that “Democrats are still optimistic. We’re still looking for the silver lining.”

Rep. John Murtha, D-PA, a former Marine and vocal critic of the military occupation of Iraq, immediately denounced “the Zarqawi massacre” and suggested that the F-16 pilot who dropped the bombs had snapped under pressure and murdered the al Qaeda leader “in cold blood.”

Jeff Goldstein interviews Zarqawi.

protein wisdom: “First of all, I’d like to thank you for taking this time to sit down with me, an infidel dog, and a Jew infidel dog, to boot. But I think it’s important that we as Westerners try really to understand what it is that motivates people like you—21st century Minutemen, the Thomas Paines and George Washingtons of the new Caliphate, to hear some speak of it.”

Click on the link for the rest...

NY Times: Who's Left We Can Surrender To?

Washington Post: Administration Made Too Much of Zarqawi..er..Administration Made Too Little of Zarqawi

Via Powerline:

Finally, we have this unbelievably partisan news story (!) by Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus in the Washington Post:

From the moment President Bush introduced him to the American people in October 2002, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi served a crucial purpose for the administration, providing a tangible focus for its insistence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In addition to his indisputably prominent role in the Iraqi insurgency, Zarqawi was always a useful source of propaganda for the administration. Magnification of his role and of the threat he posed grew to the point that some senior intelligence officers believed it was counterproductive.

But the administration also occasionally found it useful to play down Zarqawi's importance and influence.


So the administration both over-estimated and under-estimated Zarqawi, and it was blameworthy either way. In fact, though, after criticizing "the administration" for purportedly conflicting messages, the Post quotes, not members of the administration, but a series of military commanders in Iraq.

The Post should be ashamed of itself; this is the kind of journalism we expect from the New York Times.

Planned Parenthood: An American business 'success' story

Wonder how the business of Planned Parenthood is doing? Very well, thank you:

There is one enterprise that has received very little attention for its commercial acumen because most people don't view it as a business. But it is. Let's take a few moments to look at this business, review its business model and determine the secret to its success.

First, let's look at some of the numbers associated with this business. Last year, it had gross revenue of $882 million and a net profit of $63 million. This marks the 19th year in a row that the enterprise has increased its gross revenue and made a profit. In fact, over those 19 years, it has a total profit of $649.6 million on gross revenue of $10 billion.


Like many franchise businesses in our country, it has achieved this level of success by working out a sound business model and then replicating that model all across the country. It began in 1916 with a single site in Brooklyn, N.Y. Since that time, it expanded to 938 facilities in 1995, but has seen some contraction since that time. Its latest annual report states that it operates 860 sites.

One of the interesting parts of the business model for this endeavor is that it has been able to tap into government money and avoid paying even one penny of taxes on its profits. Of the $10 billion the company has taken in over the last 19 years, 39 percent ($3.9 billion) has come from the American taxpayer. It was after it began receiving these funds in 1964 that its explosive growth began – more than doubling its locations over the next nine years.

Belmont Club on Zarqawi, Morality, Torture and Killing

Excerpt (read the whole thing):

I don't mean to refute Talk Left's reproof, because I'm not sure if there are any canonical answers to the question of when it is proper to cast away the law. But I think it's important to make the choices clear to the public. It's dishonest to promise to keep them always safe; to ever "connect the dots" yet simultaneously promise never to match savage men for savagery. It would be better to tell the truth: that if in order to maintain our values we must sometimes stop short of harsh methods, we must also risk and spend lives to preserve those ideals. That if we hold them dear enough then a price must be paid for keeping them. In the very same way that US soldiers must daily risk their lives to obey rules of engagement. And a public unwilling to bear that risk should take the moral burden upon itself and change the rules rather than expect men to transgress them in secret for its guilty peace of mind.

In the last analysis, the preservation of a civilization's values is never free. It is possible to play by whatever rules we feel that our deepest civilizational values compel us to observe. But we must pay the price. We can, like the early Christians choose to face the lions rather than renounce our beliefs. But no one should have any illusions about the lions; and those Christians were virtuous precisely because they had no illusions about the lions. Our willingness to fight by the strictest legal standards must be matched by a corresponding willingness to sacrifice in order to uphold those standards. It may be necessary to bleed and to bleed at home to uphold our beliefs. Or change them. Talk Left merely poses the dilemma. But the choice is ours. The tragedy of the West is that it is simultaneously impatient for safety; intolerant of hardship and unable to bear guilt. The demand for no body bags; no protracted war; no inconvenience; no painstaking effort also means, in it's own way, a secret demand for no law.

Haditha Story Full of Inconsistencies

Riehl World View tries to make sense of the stories being reported by the Drive-By-Media about what really happened in Haditha. It turns out that a lot of the "witnesses" are telling conflicting stories. Click on the link for the full account.

To keep this straight-forward, I'm taking this item by item. It proves there are false reports being told by some Iraqis as regards Haditha. Unfortunately, the AP and the MSM appear to be gleefully reporting them without checking their facts.

Baltimore Sun criticizes coverage of Zarqawi kill:

From Alarming News (because the Baltimore Sun requires registration):

As happened with the capture of Saddam Hussein and the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad, some American news organizations yesterday covered the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with marked enthusiasm, verging on inappropriate glee.

Perhaps the tone was set by the cheering and sustained applause by Iraqis at the Baghdad news conference announcing al-Zarqawi's death. But American television didn't have to follow that gung-ho lead to the extent that some channels did throughout the day.

The 24-hour cable news channels and their Web sites were the worst offenders, though other news organizations shared that lack of proportion and restraint.

Some people are bigger asses than others, but the cretins working for the Baltimore Sun are in the running for some kind of "uber ass" prize.

How The "Drive By Media" Spits in Your Soup

The Washington Post headline promises to tell you "How U.S. Forces Found Iraq's Most-Wanted Man."


The writer, Jonathan Finer, then takes four brief paragraphs to tell you something that you probably already heard, if you are one of the 20 million that listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Fox News.

Beginning with pargagraph five, Finer deposits his first spitball:

The successful strike on Zarqawi came at a time of dwindling support for the Iraq war in the United States and intense scrutiny of alleged killings of unarmed civilians by U.S. Marines.

Does this add to the story or carry it along? No, but it makes it clear that this is not going to be an objective relay of facts on how we got this terrorist.

In a deeply divided Iraq, the killing of the Jordanian-born insurgent leader -- whom the government painted as a foreign invader --

Here Finer implies that Zarquawi is NOT a foreign invader, that's just a "government painted" slander

...was hailed with varying degrees of enthusiasm by leaders of all mainstream political factions: Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs and ethnic Kurds. But across the country, there were few raucous celebrations, and some Iraqis said they were saddened by the loss of the most visible symbol of resistance to Iraq's new order brought on by the American invasion.

Despite TV images of celebrating Iraqis, Finer insists that the celebrations were few (or not raucous enough for his taste) and he found "some" Iraqis who were saddened by this monster's loss. This is believeable. Despite the fact that stalin was arguably the worlds champion mass murderer, it is reliably reported that many Russians cried at his death.

U.S. and Iraqi officials cautioned Thursday that insurgents had prepared for life without Zarqawi and would continue the fight without him. But they expressed hope that his removal would ultimately help tame the fighting and bring stability to Iraq.

Message from Finer to the American people: don't get your hopes up, the death of Zarquawi will not make any difference.

Duke Rape Case: Accuser Had Multiple Sex Partners and Devices Leading Up To The Night.

From the Herald Sun:

The exotic dancer who has accused three Duke lacrosse players of gang-raping her was drinking while taking medication that night, and had sex with at least four men and a sexual device in the days immediately leading up to the off-campus party, according to court papers filed Thursday.

And despite what Durham police have contended, a medical examination showed no signs of the sort of sexual or physical attack of which the dancer complained, according to the motion filed by defense attorneys for Reade Seligmann.

Among other previously undisclosed details, the motion says the woman at one point accused her female dance partner of helping the lacrosse players rape her and of stealing her money.

Read more....

UPDATE: see Motion to Suppress

Bomb Canada and Behead Her Prime Minister. A Modest Proposal by Jonah Goldberg

From Townhall.com:

A few years ago I wrote a cover story for National Review with the subtle and nuanced title, "Bomb Canada: The Case for War." It caused quite a stir up there. My argument at the time was that Canada needed to be slapped out of its delusions and forced to stand up for itself in ways other than the Potemkin courage it shows in "standing up" to the United States.

Had I thought of it at the time, maybe I should have had American bombers stand down and suggested instead that Islamic terrorists plot to behead the Canadian prime minister and blow up a few important buildings.

Canada is arguably the most deluded industrialized nation in the world. Because elite Canadians think the U.S. is the font of the world's problems, they think being different than the U.S. and sucking up to the United Nations will buy them grace on the cheap. They claim to be "a nation of peacekeepers," but they rank 50th among U.N. peacekeeper nations in the number of troops sent. They've bravely contributed to the war in Afghanistan, where 2,300 troops still serve, but refused to join the effort in Iraq, believing that jihadists would honor such fine distinctions. That was awfully nice of them. Too bad nice has nothing to do with it.

More on the Duke "rape" case: Second dancer called allegations a 'crock'

The key points from the News & Observer:

The second dancer in the Duke lacrosse case told police early on that allegations of rape were a "crock" and that she was with the accuser the entire evening except for a period of less than five minutes.

The second dancer, Kim Roberts, made that statement when she was first contacted by Durham police one week after the party where the first escort service dancer said she was gang raped by three men.

Guns and sons of guns

Burt Prelutsky in Townhall.com

Oddly enough, it's often the very same people who get irate about their neighbors having the means to defend themselves who are the folks most opposed to mandatory sentences for gun-toting felons. It's as if they're against the possession of guns by amateurs but hate the idea of denying professionals the necessary tools of their trade.

[snip]

Because they are stuck with an agenda, liberals are forced to parrot anti-gun propaganda even when, like the late columnist Carl Rowan and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they, themselves, are discovered to be packing heat. And surely I wasn't the only person who yawned when Sharon Stone made such a big deal out of turning in her three roscoes. The point might have been made more forcefully if her bodyguards had turned in their artillery.

Protecting Marriage

Charles Krauthammer nails it:

As for dividing Americans, who came up with the idea of radically altering the most ancient of all social institutions in the first place? Until the last few years, every civilization known to man has defined marriage as between people of opposite sex. To charge with "divisiveness'' those who would do nothing more than resist a radical overturning of that norm is a sign of either gross partisanship or serious dimwittedness.

Top 11 Things That Anti-War Protesters Would Have Said At the Normandy Invasion on D-Day (Had There Been Anti-War Protesters At Normandy)

11. No blood for French Wine!

10. It’s been two and a half years since Pearl Harbor and they still haven’t brought Admiral Nagumo to justice

9. In 62 years, the date will be 6/6/6. A coincidence? I think not.

8. All this death and destruction is because the neo-cons are in the pocket of Israel

7. The soldiers are still on the beach, this invasion is a quagmire

6. Sure the holocaust is evil, but so was slavery

5. We are attacked by Japan and then attack France? Roosevelt is worse than the Kaiser!

4. Why bring democracy to Europe by force and not to Korea or Vietnam? I blame racism

3. This war doesn’t attack the root causes of Nazism

2. I support the troops, but invading Germany does not guarantee that in 56 years we won't have a President who's worse than Hitler

1. I don't see Roosevelt or Churchill storming the beaches -- they're Chicken Hawks

Did You Ever See An Article That Started Like This??

This afternoon, Senate Democrats led by Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) offered, as they do every election year, a proposal to increase the minimum wage. The Democrats sought to boost their declining approval ratings, and to curry favor with low-wage workers and union members who are irate that the Democrats have abandoned their issues to concentrate, instead, on pacifism and social liberalism, and have sold them down the river by advocating open borders.

Nah ... that will never happen.

A Broad Spectrum of Canadian Society????

Liberal or Moderate?

I'm reminded of the old line about how the difference between a liberal and a moderate is that the liberal says, "Let's burn down the town," while the moderate counters with something like, "No, let's torch three buildings a year over five years."

What Do People with Middle Eastern Names, Who Wear Beards, and Who Attend Mosques Have In Common? No Clue? Join the Canadian Authorities.

Michelle Malkin describes the lengths that Canadian (and most American) authorities go to to refuse to "connect the dots."

We live on a doomed continent of ostriches.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official coined the baneful phrase "broad strata" to describe the segment of Canadian society from whence Qayyum Abdul Jamal and his fellow adult suspects Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Jahmaal James, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid came.


"Broad"? I suppose it is so if one defines "broad" to mean more than one spelling variation of Mohammed or Jamal. Or perhaps, as Internet humorist Jim Treacher (jimtreacher.com) suggests, "broad" refers to the "strata" of the suspects' beard lengths.

Undeterred by the obvious, Toronto police chief Bill Blair assured the public that the Muslim suspects "were motivated by an ideology based on politics, hatred and terrorism, and not on faith. . . . I am not aware of any mosques that these individuals were influenced by." Well, Chief Blindspot, try the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education. That's the Canadian storefront mosque where eldest jihadi suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal is, according to his own lawyer, a prayer leader and active member -- along with many of the other Muslim males arrested in the sweep.

Many clueless North Americans remain shocked, shocked, that jihadis live among them -- despite the open secret of our northern neighbor's reputation as an Islamic terrorist safe haven. A cloud of befuddlement looms. The Toronto Star reports, with jaw-dropping dim-wittedness, that "it is difficult to find a common denominator" among those who would kill us.

Writing is Strictly Forbidden: Hijacking Haditha

Michael Yon talks about context, haditya and what is happening in Iraq.

In the absence of clear facts, most people know that a rush to judgment serves no one. What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.”

Information you won't get from the MSM.

As Pat Dollard says:

Welcome to the only thing sleazier than overbilling lawyers, overprescribing doctors shilling for pharamaceutical companies, greedy coporate executives, and used car salesmen: the American Journalist. Flawed and crooked and self-centered as the rest of us, but riding around on a high horse, pointing out everyone else's sins, but ignoring their own. This is the last great industry-wide scandal left uncovered in America. Because of course, they'd have to cover it themselves. And none of them have the bravery to take their own inventory, to list their own pathologically self-centered faults. They'd rather just go after yours. mine and those who disagree with them politically.

For those who wonder if "we" are creating more terrorists...

Wretchard at the Belmont Club asks:

We are used to hearing "see how American foreign policy creates terrorism?" But here's a counter-question. How much of the stuff generated by the Left directly produces terrorists? Directly educates them to think in this way. The London bombers were home grown. Many of the Canadian suspects were born and raised there. They were not trained in Afghanistan. What they learned, they learned in Canada. And there are Americans among the suspects too. So the question again is how much of the stuff generated by the left directly and explicitly produces terrorists? Or is that subject off limits? I don't think it should be.

Not One Word from the Left Bloggers on the Terrorist Round-Up in Canada

Ace of Spades notes that the best way to silence the leftist Blogosphere is to arrest terrorists.

The Belmont Club has ane equally important take:

Question: what's the most important news story of the past week? Haditha, Haditha, Haditha, Haditha, Canada, Britain. Ooops. Haditha, Haditha. Haditha. That's not to say the possible misconduct of US military personnel is not news, but the characteristic of correctly functioning sensory organs is that objects appear in their due proportion. If mice seemed the size of elephants and elephants the size of mice a visit to the doctor would seem in order. The press is the public's sensory organ.

Pajamas Media has a roundup of stories on the recent terrorism arrests in Canada involving suspects, many of them teens, who had never been to Afghanistan or Iraq, were as Canadian as Molson Beer or American as Apple Pie and had in their possession three times the explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

[snip]

From a purely academic point of view future historians will find this period an interesting example of how manipulated perceptions struggled obstinately with suppressed reality for the center stage of the policy debate. Some of the questions that will be asked fifty years from now are: what was Scooter Libby really charged with? Is that all? How come millions of people could die in Darfur without anyone noticing? Why were people obsessed with the possible criminal behavior of a handful of Marines in Iraq and uninterested in why their wonderful universities and high schools could produce kids who would be interested in blowing up buildings, spreading poison gas, or maybe shooting down airliners with surface to air missiles. And the most interesting thing about this period is that for a brief time, the manufactured perceptions almost looked like winning. Until reality weighed in.

GJN: The Globalist Jihad Network

Captain's Quarters points out that ... any group of Muslims filled with enough hate for motivation can work through the Internet and a system of mosques to find like-minded terrorist wannabes and the resources to make their dreams come true.

A Canadian counter-terrorism investigation that led to the arrests of 17 people accused of plotting bombings in Ontario is linked to probes in a half-dozen countries, the National Post has learned.

Well before police tactical teams began their sweeps around Toronto on Friday, at least 18 related arrests had already taken place in Canada, the United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh.

This should send chills through Western populations and open eyes as to the nature of the terrorist enemy. Seventeen native-born Canadians, whose families apparently had no connection to radical Islam, managed to plug themselves into a network that spanned six nations and literally went around the world, despite their amateur status. How did this happen? How can a group this large and inexperienced make such inroads into a jihadi network?

In short, the network itself has become so decentralized that it is almost as easy as plugging a laptop into a wide-area network jack, figuratively as well as literally. With the demolition of al-Qaeda's functional leadership, the lack of direction has moved the jihadi movement from the hills of Afghanistan to a system of mosques and imams, preaching their own brand of hatred. Young men looking for a cause or an outlet for their frustrations can easily find these Muslim supremacists. If they can't find them physically, they can certainly find them with just a few minutes on the Internet. This particular group found each other, and then found like-minded prototerrorists in five other nations, including the US.

Don Surber Fisks the NY Times

The NY Times' lead editorial today is a delicious example of early 21st century elitists saying one thing, meaning another. I shall interpret it as we go along:

Click on the link for the rest...

Mark Steyn on Haditha

Here are a couple of observations from two parents of American heroes fallen in Iraq. The first is from Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, a brave man who enlisted in 2000, re-upped for a second tour and died in 2005 after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City:

"We've been talking about Martin Luther King Jr. this night. My son was killed the same day he was killed, on April 4. I don't believe in any coincidences. Casey was born on John F. Kennedy's birthday. He was born on the day, and died on the day, of two people who were assassinated by the war machine in my country."

The second observation is from Martin Terrazas, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, who was killed by a roadside bomb at a town called Haditha:

"I don't even listen to the news."



Pace Mark Steyn, for whom I have the utmost respect, but I think that - like an inoculation against smallpox - Abu Ghraib has inoculated us against whatever happened at Haditha. Abu Ghraib was such drive-by-media overkill, so much hype and so much breast beating over ... what? A pile of nude men? A naked prisoner wearing a dog collar? A man forced to wear women's panties on his head? Rush Limbaugh had it right when he said that worse “atrocities” are committed during fraternity initiations.

Don’t misunderstand, prisoners are not supposed to be humiliated or abused, but the rhetorical overkill has shown the American people the excesses of a MSM that is so nakedly partisan that – for many people like Martin Terrazas
"I don't even listen to the news."

Many who support the war are preemptively cowering like a dog that expects to be hit. I think they’ll find that the blow will not be as bad as anticipated and the reaction to the blow may not be what the MSM expects. The Abu Ghraib inoculation, the fake war vets with their fake atrocity stories (straight out of the Viet Nam era), the constant drumbeats of quagmire have had their effect. I has encouraged those who despise the US, it has cause the “molting hawks” to flee, but it has made the core supporters even more angry at evil men and women who sit in editorial offices and work every day to tear America down.

This will not stand.

The Drive-By-Media Fails to Identify Terrorists: You Can't Tell the Players Without a Program

From The Corner at NRO Online:

Muslims? Plotting Terrorism? You Don't Say ... [Andy McCarthy]

Well, no, you most certainly don't say. Not if you're the New York Times and not if your one of its serial imitators in the MSM. Not in the story referred to by Cliff and Roger Simon about the terrorist plot thwarted in Canada yesterday. And not in the reports that first arose on Friday about the possible chemical bombing plot that was interrupted in London.

This initial report about the British plot, from Sky News on Friday, was careful to say only that the two men arrested were "both of Bengali origin."

Yesterday's report in the Times — which, by the way, makes the story about the fact that one of the apparent plotters was shot by the police, not that mass murder of British civilians was apparently being planned — mentions toward the end that two of the men associated with what appears to be a "known terrorist group" might both be members of a family "of Pakistani descent."

How do we know they are Muslims? Because of sympathetic comments from a friend, reported in the tenth and twelfth paragraphs at the end of the story (italics mine):

Sky News broadcast what it said was an interview with two unidentified friends of the man who was shot. They spoke with their backs to a camera, their heads covered and faces hidden. One of the men prefaced the interview by reciting a Koranic verse. "They shot an unarmed man because he wanted to try and protect his family," one man said.



He called the wounded man "a humble guy" who had gone "to your schools, your workplaces and paid his taxes, and at 4 a.m. the police gave him a present — they gave him a hole in the chest."





The police carried out the raid, the man said, because "they want to give us Muslims a bad name."

So here's my question: if these groups in Canada and England are not affilitated with al Qaeda, what could it possibly be that they have in common with members of al Qaeda that might lead them to want to commit bombing attacks against the West, just like al Qaeda? Hmmmmmm ...

How do you get a recent J-school graduate off your doorstep?

A: Give him a tip and take the pizza.

From FreeRepublic

UK TIMES SMEARS OUR MARINES

Michelle malkin has a thorough review of the UK Times printing a picture of dead Iraqis under the headline: "Massacre Marines Blinded by Hate."


Click on the link for the whole story.

The only problem?

The picture is of dead Iraqis killed last year by "insurgents" in Haditha who executed 19 Shiite fishermen and National Guardsmen in a sports stadium.


A picture of the dead was first published in Time Magazine in November of 2005.

Says Malkin: Our Marines did not kill these people, the terrorists did.

Child in Chicago Seeks to Escape Beating

Chicago, IL (AP) - A seven year old boy was at the center of a Chicago courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with the child custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible. The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her.

When the judge suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him. After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Chicago Cubs, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

Welcome FreeRepublic Members

Feel free to look around.

FR is still one of the base news aggregators around.

A word from Lt. Hegseth

From Powerline:

Lt. Hegseth is serving in Samarra, from where he has sent the following report to family and friends. He titles the report "Samarra: The long view." His report provides a timely contrast to what he refers to as the "dangerously narrow picture" provided in the mainstream media. We are therefore posting it in full below:

Click on the link for the letter and pictures.

Haditha, the Laws of War, and the Terrorists

From Blogcritics (excerpt):

First, a military uniform was not created to give something for the woman to ogle (though it is certainly effective at that). A uniform is a public statement to the enemy that you can shoot the person wearing it. Plain and simple, a military uniform is a full-body bull's-eye. Why would any government want their soldiers to wear them then? Simple. It let's both sides easily figure out who the civilians are so they don't engage them. When the terrorists don't wear uniforms, they might be able to seek out another kill or two, but they also put their own civilian population at risk, because it becomes impossible to tell who is a combatant and who is not.

Second, the logic of war dictates that you not attack civilian structures such as schools, houses, and churches. It should be obvious why this is so, but the laws of war comes with a caveat. The price for not getting your residential areas attacked is that you don't use them for fighting to begin with. Many like to make much of the fact that the U.S. military has attacked mosques. What those same people refuse to acknowledge is that those buildings were used as weapons stores, sniper nests, and central places to coordinate attacks on the U.S. military. The military was left with two options: either engage the enemy, or surrender. It is not the U.S.'s fault that fighting involved mosques, it was the terrorists who defiled those buildings, turning them from houses of worship to dens of killing.

Third, when an enemy surrenders, the fighting is over. Once an enemy surrenders by throwing up a white flag, raising his arms, or getting wounded, they are no longer valid targets of attack. This also comes with a caveat. The surrendering person may no longer fight. Once they pick up a weapon, they are a fair target again. When the terrorists use our mercy against us, they put at risk those who legitimately want to surrender. Is this one going to pull out a grenade on us when we get close, or does he really want medical care?

Some Civilian Killings are More Important Than Other Civilian Killings: Mass Murder in Indianapolis

You may not otherwise hear of these killings because they did not take place in Iraq and the killers were not US troops.

The family of seven had much to celebrate recently. Youngest sons David and Alberto Covarrubias had just made First Communion, and their mother, Emma Valdez, had marked a birthday. Her adult daughter had just found a new home.

The seven, described as well-liked and good neighbors, were found dead in their house late Thursday in what city officials described as the worst mass murder in Indianapolis in 25 years. The crime rocked their working-class neighborhood about a mile east of downtown.

"Right now we're kind of in shock," said the Rev. Carlton Beever, pastor of St. Philip Neri Parish, where the family attended Mass each Sunday.

Police on Friday arrested one suspected triggerman, but continued their search for the main suspect — 28-year-old ex-convict Desmond Turner — and possibly two other men a witness reported seeing running from the house.

A search of a home for Turner just blocks from the shooting scene turned up empty Friday night after police officers fired tear gas in and broke down a door.

Deputy Police Chief Tim Foley said James Stewart, 30, was arrested without incident after a traffic stop Friday afternoon and would be charged with murder. Foley said both Stewart and Turner were believed to have fired shots at the victims.

Officers found the three children — Alberto Covarrubias, 11; David Covarrubias, 8; and Luis Albarran, 5 — dead on a bed and the bodies of the four adults scattered inside the home. Police identified them as Valdez, who turned 46 in April; her husband, Alberto Covarrubias, 56; her daughter and Luis' mother, Flora Albarran, 22; and her son, Magno Albarran, 29.

Read the rest...

Conservative sites un-Googled

From the Washington Times (hat tip to FreeRepublic):

As such an indispensable tool for searching the Internet, Google is sometimes mistaken for a public utility -- albeit one that works extraordinarily well. The reality is that Google is a private company, with one important caveat: Google's success depends on search neutrality, meaning that a user will find what he's looking for, not what Google wants him to find. Which is why recent reports, documented by Newsbusters.org, a sister site of the Media Research Center, that Google is censoring political sites on account of "hate speech" threaten the company's vigorously cultivated standing with the public.

As Newsbusters reports, in March 2005, Rusty Shackleford, who runs the conservative blog the Jawa Report, received an e-mail message from Google informing him that: "Upon recent review, we've found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News." A year later, Jim Sesi, who runs the conservative MichNews.com, received a similar e-mail from Google: "We have received numerous reports about hate content on your site, and after reviewing these reports, decided to remove your site from Google news." Two weeks ago, Frank Salvato, who runs the conservative New Media Journal, also heard from Google that his site was being removed, again because of "hate content."

Aside from each of these three sites being largely conservative in outlook, the offending material cited by Google were articles criticizing radical Islam and Islamists. Upon review, the articles contain language no more -- in some cases far less -- inflammatory than the numerous Muslim Web sites a user can find when searching Google News. So, at least on the surface, it's reasonable to assume that it is Muslims who are complaining to Google, which then chooses to avoid further criticism by simply expelling the sites. It should also be noted that Google has since restored the Jawa Report to Google News status, apparently after readers complained.
But that doesn't mean Google's bowing to Islamists is any less cowardly and, as we've seen in Europe, dangerous to a free society. Google News is the fifth most popular news Web site behind Yahoo, CNN, the Weather Channel and MSNBC, meaning that it controls access to information for millions of users. That's a tremendous power, which users trust Google will not abuse or allow to be abused. That Google even considers arbitrary standards like "hate speech" as beyond the pale betrays the very trust it has strived so hard to maintain with users.

And here is where the caveat of search neutrality becomes so important. Islamists have exploited Google's seemingly well-intentioned business practices to silence critics. Because if you can't find it using Google, chances are you won't find it all.

Big Rodent fouls Donks' front porch with droppings

FreeRepublic's "JohnHuang2" has a dead-on but hilarious take on the current "Culture of Corruption" engulfing the DEMOCRATS.

Excerpt:

According to the New York Times, in recent weeks "a handful of once-safe Republican Congressional seats have come into play, and other Republican incumbents are facing increasingly stiff re-election battles, according to analysts, pollsters and officials in both parties. The change amounts to a slight but significant shift in the playing field, and a potentially pivotal change in the dynamics of this midterm election."

According to the Washington Post, a growing number of "once-safe (House) districts are turning into potential problems (for the GOP). Incumbent poll numbers have soften. Margins against their Democratic opponents have narrowed. Republican voters appear disenchanted. The Bush effect now amounts to a drag of five percentage points or more in many districts."

And, according to the Associated Press, "Republicans are three steps from a November shellacking." With less than six months to go, "most Democrats and Republican strategists say the first two elements are in place for now -- a national, anti-incumbent mind-set -- and all signs point to the third," the third being voters viewing the midterm elections as a referendum on President Bush and the GOP-led Congress."

To avoid looking one-sided, the AP titled the article, Democrats eye November landslide. Ron Fournier, an expert at counting chickens before they never hatch, wrote the piece. Even in a crowd, you can easily spot Ron Fournier. He's the one dressed up as Baghdad Bob.

So, Americans are disenchanted with Republicans over immigration, Iraq, and corruption scandals in Congress. So Americans just can't wait to turn the country over to the party of blanket amnesty for illegals, surrender in Iraq and exemplary political reformers like William Jefferson, Alan Mollohan, Maxine Waters, John Conyers. And blazing foreign policy intellects like Susan Saradon and Michael Moore.

Pollsters claim that about 70 percent of Americans think the country has swerved in the wrong direction, and want the party of Patrick Kennedy at the wheel.

And if the 'Crats seize control of the House this November, there'll be overwhelming pressure from the party's psychotic base to implement their bold and visionary 3-part plan to make America safe: (1) Impeach Bu$Hitler, (2) impeach Darth Cheney, (3) impeach Bu$Hitler.

Bush gets impeached for "spying" on al-Qaeda-Americans. Darth Cheney for having a hunting accident. And for the Iraq war. And for "outing" Valerie Plame, the domestic spy.

With Dumbya and Cheney locked up at a naval brig, no longer a threat to world peace, Pelosi becomes only the second woman president! (Geena Davis was the first, of course, but women-hating ABC network pulled the plug on her.) Yet, a funny thing happened on the way to Bush's impeachment: Freezergate.

Putting the kibosh on the donk 'strategy' of running against the 'GOP Culture of Corruption' to win back Congress, Democrat Rep. William Jefferson is now the poster boy for Washington political corruption.

Just when you thought the jails were already filled with Democrats. Which is why Hillary Clinton and John Kerry want to restore voting rights for felons. Expands the Democrat base.

The Louisiana Congressman was taking bribes from a technology company to help it obtain business deals in Africa. It's part of Jefferson's touching 'Leave no crooked tech company behind' plan.

He was videotaped by the feds last July accepting $100,000 in marked $100 bills in a sting operation. The FBI searched Jefferson's home a month later and found almost all of the cash there. The idiot had wrapped $90,000 in foil, pressed them into plastic food containers, then stuffed it all in his freezer. Of course, if the idea was to avoid jail and keep money and documents in a safe place, he could've stuffed them into Sandy Berger's pants. (In a related development, a search of Sen. Harry Reid's freezer turned up 90,000 ringside boxing tickets.)

Why Do Republican Crooks Get More Ink than Democrat Crooks?

I consider myself a very informed citizen. I typically know days or even weeks ahead of time the news that gets printed in the dead tree press, in the TV news or is commented on by friends and associates.

So I was surprised by this article. I had never heard of Frank Balance before today. From NewBusters written by John Armor:

Quick, name the two Congressmen who were convicted of corruption this year and sent to the slammer. Bet you came up with Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) like a shot. But who was the other one?

My friend John Fogle, a fine writer, ran an eye-opening comparison in the Hendersonville Times-News today. It names the other crooked Congressman. The other one, who now resides in the same federal penitentiary as Cunningham, is Rep. Frank Ballance (D-NC). Here's the comparison of the national press coverage of these two convicts:

A Web search for articles containing the three words Cunningham, congressman and jail results in 156,000 hits. But, replace Cunningham with Ballance and you get only 890 hits. So the liberal press produced not twice as many, not 10 times as many, but 175 times as many articles describing a Republican going to jail as those describing a Democrat in the same predicament.

What explains the difference in coverage? Well, Cunningham is a white Republican, therefore a target of opportunity for much of the press. Ballance, on the other hand, is a black Democrat. And we cannot have strongly negative coverage of blacks and Democrats in the press, now can we?

The Democrats on Energy

"1984" Two Minutes of Hate; 2006 "Two Minutes of Snark."

From Iowahawk:

The Snark had started. As usual, the face of Jeff Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago nobody quite remembered), had been one of their own, a member of the Modern Language Association with a solid vita and faculty parking priveleges, almost on a level with Stanley Fish himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary blogging activities, had been condemned to sabbatical and had mysteriously escaped and become a stay-at-home dad.

The programmes of the Two Minutes Snark varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Faculty's purity, a paste eater. All subsequent crimes against the Faculty, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his blog posts. Somewhere he was still alive, fixing his disgusting child a snack of Cheddar Goldfish and hatching his online conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the campus, under the protection of his neocon paymasters, perhaps even - so it was occasionally rumoured - in Arvada or Cherry Creek, or even some hiding-place in Boulder itself.

Read the rest...

Adherents of the "Religion of Peace" Act Out

Message by a (female) leader of the Arab American Political Action Committee to blogger Debbie Schussel.

I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU! I'M GONNA TORTURE YOU THE WAY YOU TORTURE EVERYBODY ELSE! WAIT AND SEE, WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND, YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A FUCKIN IGNORANT BITCH, I HATE PEOPLE LIKE YOU, YOU RACIST DUMB BITCH! YOU FUCKIN TERRORIST! WATCH! I KNOW YOU'RE WITH THE TERRORISTS YOU BITCH! I KNOW YOU FUCKED HOWARD STERN

Click on the link for the whole story and the rest of the messages...

The Cost of Obedience is Death

Go, stranger, and tell the Spartans
That we lie here in obedience to their laws

Del Gaudio said he made a tough call after a roadside bomb killed four of his men in April. While securing the scene, he was shot at by a machine gun in a follow-up attack. When he aimed his weapon to return fire, he saw that the gunmen had a line of children standing in front of them and two men filming with video cameras. He held fire until the children moved out of the way but was shot in his hand, which was only inches from his face. "Restraint almost cost me my life," he said.

In the context of the investigation of the deaths in Haditha, it may be worth musing - especially by the warriors of the drive-by-media - how many of our men have died in obedience to our "rules of engagement" - our laws.

Mark Steyn on Pierre Trudeau, Young Nazi

Excerpt; read the whole thing:

The other day, the Forward, New York's Jewish newspaper, ran a story headlined "Book offers new image of Canadian pol." Given that most New York readers don't have any old images of Canadian pols, this seemed an unlikely proposition. But the pol in question was the Canadian pol: Pierre Trudeau, who served as prime minister from 1968 to . . . well, in Vienna in 2002 a middle-aged German said to me, "Canadian? Trudeau is still prime minister?" "Of course," I said, not wishing to detour the conversation down unrewarding paths.

Anyway, the so-called "new image" derives from Young Trudeau: 1919-1944 by Max and Monique Nemni, who reveal that as a young man Trudeau had fascist sympathies, was prone to the routine anti-Semitism of mid-century Quebec francophones, blamed Britain for the Second World War, and spent it riding around Montreal wearing a German helmet. All this is the "old image" for some of us, but every few years the stories are dusted off and Trudeaupian experts are quoted professing shock and puzzlement. Morton Weinfeld, the McGill sociologist, put it down to "youthful stupidity": after all, young Pierre was in his twenties; he couldn't be expected to know any better -- though those other twentysomethings without benefit of his great intellect, the young Canadians and Englishmen and Scotsmen and Americans scrambling ashore at Normandy, all managed to figure it out.

Jonah Goldberg on Hastert's Home Grown Republican Stupidity

But if a high-ranking Democrat is caught stashing $90K next to his Mrs. Paul's frozen fish sticks, the Republicans could change the subject from GOP corruption to Democratic corruption; instead, they opted to go with curtain No. 2 and change the subject to GOP arrogance and stupidity. The congressional GOP - which won Congress by promising the laws of the land would apply to Congress - decided to seize Jefferson's cream pie and throw it in the White House's face.

Read the whole thing

LEADER...VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY

Mugs for sale.

Put your e-mail in comments section.

Saddam, Bin Laden Concede Missteps in War

From Scott Ott:

Mr. Hussein said he regrets some of his “tough talk” in the past and the famous image of him brandishing a shotgun. He also admitted to having second thoughts about putting his political opponents through a meat grinder after torturing them.

Speaking in a subdued, almost chastened manner, the former Iraqi dictator said, “I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner.”

Mr. Bin Laden, in a newly-released audiotape, said that despite capturing the hearts and minds of American journalists, he’s concerned that his claim of responsibility for the 9/11 terror attacks might be viewed by some people as arrogance or bragging.

“I’m only partially responsible for the success of the martyrdom operation,” he said, “I should have directed more attention to the little people…or perhaps, more accurately, to the little pieces of people. As the saying goes, there is no ‘i’ in ‘team’.”

The Media's Got A Feveh, And The Only Cure Is... More Haditha!

Ace of Spades tells about the PR effort of Fatah’s own Al Aqsa Brigades:

I had a conversation the other day about why this seems to be one of the first wars in American history without heroes.

Of course I know there are heroes in this war. Tens of thousands of them. But it seems strange that the media doesn't note the heroism of particular soldiers in particular engagements. It's as if non-covert military missions are the only secrets the media is willing to keep.

They only seem interested in stories about soldiers-as-victims. Those who died; those who lost limbs. Important stories, I admit. But what about stories about soldiers-as-heroes, or at least soldiers-as-soldiers?

I sort of embargoed the whole story about the CBS newscrew being attacked because I was damned if I was going to write about their bravery and sacrifice when CBS refused to do the same for soldiers. Those reporters were brave. But you know what? There are 150,000 plus Americans who are brave, too, plus a lot of Iraqi soldiers. Get in line.

On the other hand, there's Abu Ghraib and now Haditha, the two most famous "battles" of the War on Terror.

Isn't that strange? If the media's core mission is to report the truth -- good, bad, and indifferent -- why is it that we know so much about Abu Ghraib and Haditha and so little about... well, the thousand or so victorious operations that did not result in criminal charges being brought against American servicemen?

Meanwhile, there's this. Which you won't be hearing about, except on the Internet.

The terrorists, members of Fatah’s own Al Aqsa Brigades, took it upon themselves to make a favorable impression and today was the day they kicked off their public relations campaign.
How did they launch it? Did they bake cakes or distribute sweets to Israeli children? Nope. Did they send messages of good cheer accompanied by kegs of lemonade and vats of hummus? Nope. Did they blow kisses and smile fondly at Israeli passers-by while burying their weapons underground never to be seen again? Nope. Nope. Nope. They launched their campaign by killing a man in broad daylight, and then his alleged lover/mistress/girlfriend in broad daylight. I know what you’re thinking, you’re asking yourself whether this is an effective PR approach. That’s a valid question and I believe the Palestinians went out of their way to make this event truly unique and exemplary of what would happen in their ideal single state.

You see, the man who was killed, Jafal Abu Tzrur, was accused of being an informant who had told the Israelis about an Al Aqsa Brigades member who was killed by the IDF. How did they know that he was an informant? He confessed.

After two days of torture.

So Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah offshoot Al Aqsa Brigades simply issued a death warrant on the spot, took Abu Tzrur to a nearby public courtyard, threw him down to the ground and as he crawled back up, they shot him several times. Until he was dead.


It gets better. See, the wife of the killed terrorist was said to be a lover of this alleged informant, so the Brigades killed her too. Wait-- no they didn't. Her family pleaded with the brigades to spare her life... so that they, her family, could kill her. The woman's own brother put a bullet through his head.

The old schtick is that stories like this aren't publicized, and stories like Haditha are, because we have "higher standards" for ourselves than we do for others.

Well, for one thing, I didn't vote for that proposition. For another thing, even if it's true that Americans should hold America to a higher standard, I don't think the majority of Americans would agree that America is to be excortiated constantly for Abu Ghraib and Haditha -- despite the fact that the guilty have been/will be charged and punished -- and yet we don't even discuss the outrages of the Palestinians.

There is a "higher standard," and then there is an absurdly anti-American double-standard.

That Senate Immigration Bill

Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post:

The Senate passed legislation last week that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) hailed as "the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history." You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36, you could not find the answer in the news columns of The Post, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Yet the estimates do exist and are fairly startling. By rough projections, the Senate bill would double the legal immigration that would occur during the next two decades from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.

One job of journalism is to inform the public about what our political leaders are doing. In this case, we failed. The Senate bill's sponsors didn't publicize its full impact on legal immigration, and we didn't fill the void. It's safe to say that few Americans know what the bill would do because no one has told them. Indeed, I suspect that many senators who voted for the legislation don't have a clue as to the potential overall increase in immigration.

Read the rest

The Tropic North Pole

Those who blame mankind for global warming are doubling themselves up to explain this:

Global climate change is a fact. Our planet has undergone dramatic warming and cooling periods for millions of years. Any grade school student in the Upper Midwest is aware of the effect that glaciation and subsequent melting of glaciers had in shaping our landscape. What is not established is any conclusive link between human activity and climate change. Unfortunately the "global warming scientists" have become too political to be trusted. Two stories in today's news illustrate the point.

Researchers have found that millions of years ago the North Pole area had an average temperature of 74 degrees. Deep core samples brought up evidence of tropical life near the Pole. This obviously occured without any human activities like burning fossil fuels. The researchers conclusion is amusing. The article warns that the findings "suggest that scientists have greatly underestimated the power of greenhouse gases to warm the Arctic." This is an absurd conclusion. If the pole warmed to tropical temperatures in the past without the presence of people, how can you conclude that this means it is more likely that human activity can be blamed for this happening again in the future?

The second article is even better. The presence of huge amounts of buried organic material and plants embedded in the ancient sediments of the Arctic Ocean suggest the presence of VAST OIL DEPOSITS. Here is the good part: "Several researchers said they were reluctant to focus on that aspect of the work, saying it would be unfortunate if their climate studies prompted new oil exploration that could liberate more greenhouse gases."

Mr. Hastert, sit down

Roger Simon is always interesting and in this case gives good advice to Denny Hastert.

Back in the early eighties when I was working at Universal Studios, Ned Tanen, then head of production, used to tell the writers and directors on the lot regarding their work: "If one person tells you you're drunk, ignore him. If six people tell you you're drunk, sit down." Evidently a rather large percentage of Americans (86!) are telling Hastert and his Congressional cronies to "sit down" on the "Separation of Powers" issue and allow the FBI to get on with the business of investigating criminality in the House.

Read the whole thing…

One of the comments tells a funny story that applies to Hastert.

The drunk analogy raises the old story about the boss who told his young executive that he could drink during lunch with clients as long as it was not vodka. When asked why, the boss told him that vodka had no odor. If he said something stupid, he wanted the client to know he was drunk. Has anyone sniffed Hastert's breath ?

should Hastert explain himself by claiming he was drunk?

NY Offical Call for Bush Assassination

New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi said in a speech delivered to students, parent and faculty at the Queens College commencement - referring to Senator Charels Schumer:

"The man who, how do I phrase this diplomatically, who will put a bullet between the president's eyes if he could get away with it. The toughest senator, the best representative. A great, great member of the Congress of the United States."

Hevesi, a longtime professor of government and politics at Queens College before becoming comptroller, also referred to his comments as "remarkably stupid" and "incredibly moronic."

Stupid and moronic they may very well be, but they reveal - in my opinion - the venomous hatred and satanic desire of many on the Left, and in academia (they are one and the same) to commit murder for their cause.

With the exception of fictional criminals who are regularly depicted a masterminds, the true killer, rapist and robber is typically stupid. One recent rapist left his wallet with his picture ID and was quickly captured.

In the heat of the moment, you may wish someone dead, but when you get up before a crowd and begin to talk about shooting the President between the eyes there are two things you can assume about the speaker: first, he is consumed with hatred and, second, he assumes that his audience agrees with him.

We only have to remember Ward Churchill, the infamous professor at UC who has received adulation from the Left after calling the dead at the World Trade Center as “little Eichmans” to realize how deranged and truly evil the Left has become.

We have only to look at a picture of Alan Hevesi to understand – in the immortal phrase of Hanna Arendt – what the “banality of evil” looks like.