Free Speech Gets Another Day in Court

From the WSJ. Mitch McConnell (reproduced in full because it's a paid WSJ article):

Most eagerly anticipated Supreme Court cases these days are the political equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys, with one side giving no quarter to the other. A notable exception will be argued tomorrow: Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life. Even supporters of abortion rights are rooting for the Wisconsin group to win.

At issue is a provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 which severely restricts "electioneering," or grass-roots advocacy, within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election. The Supreme Court, unfortunately, upheld the basic constitutionality of this provision four years ago in a case that bears my name, but allowed for the possibility that specific applications of it could prove otherwise. Wisconsin Right to Life is testing that claim.

Specifically, the justices will consider a series of television ads the pro-life group ran in the summer and fall of 2004 during a Senate battle over a handful of President Bush's judicial nominees. The ads asked Wisconsin residents to contact the state's two Democratic senators and urge them to allow an up-or-down vote on the president's nominees.

Because one of the senators -- Russell Feingold -- was seeking re-election, the ads were pulled. But did the ads actually advocate for or against a candidate? A three-judge panel in the District of Columbia said no, thereby rejecting, on constitutional grounds, the application of BCRA to the ads in question. The Bush administration appealed and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

A ruling in favor of Wisconsin Right to Life could deal a blow to one of BCRA's central provisions, namely the "blackout" periods during which advocacy groups are forbidden from running issue ads. That would be good. But the larger question is why an advocacy group must defend itself for expressing its views on a question of urgent public interest? This is precisely the question I and many others have been raising for more than a decade.

Five years ago, as my colleagues got ready to pass BCRA, I warned them that three things would result: that rather than reduce the influence of money on politics, they'd drive it further underground; that advocacy groups would be blocked from speaking even on issues unrelated to elections; and that a deadline on issue ads would only lead to campaigns starting earlier, with a greater premium on early fund raising. All three predictions have come true, from the influence of 527s on the last presidential campaign, to the case before the Supreme Court, to primary campaigns 23 months ahead of the next presidential election.

Still, BCRA's potential impact on the presidential primary season isn't what primarily motivated those of us who fought against BCRA. The issue then, as now, is more fundamental. As I say in the amicus brief I submitted for tomorrow's case, "Restricting grass-roots lobbying would silence core political speech that is integral to the functioning of our form of government." The freedom to engage in this political speech is set out clearly in the First Amendment, and BCRA's strict limitation on issue advocacy of any kind during campaign season is a fundamental assault on its spirit and intent.

Those who agree with me have reason to hope that the Supreme Court will overturn this restrictive provision. One reason is that the court already acknowledged its potential harm in McConnell v. FEC; another is that the number of groups wrongly swept up by the blackout provision will only multiply as the primary season becomes longer. The prospect of so many appeals would itself be a sign of the law's instability.

The irony in all of this, of course, lies in another prospect: that groups as dissimilar as Wisconsin Right to Life and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin might soon stand together to applaud the same ruling.

Mr. McConnell (R., Ky.) is the Senate minority leader.

Sheryl Crow thinks she's being environmentally friendly by only squeezing the Charmin one square at a time?

Mark Steyn:

Sheryl Crow's sheet music [Mark Steyn]

So Sheryl Crow thinks she's being environmentally friendly by only squeezing the Charmin one square at a time? Ha! She's the John Edwards of celebrity bathrooms. You want environmentally-conscious stars? Step forward, Drew Barrymore:

Actress Drew Barrymore, who reportedly earns $15 million a film, told MTV viewers in one episode that after spending time in a primitive, electricity-free Chilean village, "I aspire to be like them more."

Barrymore, apparently enthralled by the lack of a modern sanitary facilities, gleefully bragged, "I took a poo in the woods hunched over like an animal. It was awesome."

The actress Sarah Miles, on the other hand, is one serious recycler. I'm surely not the only one who feels that with this campaign they've finally found a cause all Hollywood can get behind. Has Alec Baldwin got a position on toilets yet? How about an all-star cover version of "All We Are Saying Is Give One Piece A Chance"?


Making a suggestion as stupid as this implies that this over-paid cretin has someone to wipe her ass for her.

Michael Graham joins us with STOP ME BEFORE I WIPE AGAIN!

Dear Gaia, Mother Earth, Giver of All Life,


I'm sorry. I had no idea.


There I was, in the bathroom rolling out the Charmin like it was going out of style, and all the time I was killing you. And I didn't even know it.


To be honest, until I heard environmental expert Sheryl Crow speak out on the subject, it had never dawned on me to "count the squares." When I think "destroying the Earth," I think giant meteors, solar flares, or maybe a tear in the space-time continuum if Rosie O'Donnell and Michael Moore ever mated. But toilet paper?


Who knew that the future of the entire planet would come down to the question "one ply or two?"


I didn't think. I didn't care. Not like Sheryl does.


(By the way, Earth Mother, do you happen to know if Sheryl is one of those rock stars who throws her underwear into the crowd? Yikes.)

And here's from the Washington Times:Sheryl Crow on hygiene

Maybe we're being too hard on Miss Crow. She is fresh from a biodiesel bus tour of college campuses with environmental activist Laurie David. So brimming she could be right now with environmentalist fervor that the freedom-loving Miss Crow -- you know, the one who appreciates paper when it covers 7 million copies of "Tuesday Night Music Club" -- has recessed. In that case, she could be forgiven for failing to ponder how an "industrious enough people" could cut their T.P. use from 57 sheets a day to eight or 10 (federally funded nationwide bidet installation, perhaps). We could also forget the "dining sleeve," a shirt-fastened, washable napkin substitute, which surfaced this week in Miss Crow's diatribe. It is part of a phantom clothing line Miss Crow claims to have created, which trade magazines and industry watchers have inexplicably failed to write about, and which no clothesmaker will produce unless and until Americans decide that a grubby vogue applies, after all, to sleeve-wiping one's mouth after a meal.

But even then, Miss Crow could not be excused for conveniently failing to apply the same standard to herself and her industry -- which used paper, energy, plastics, chemicals and other enviro-left bugaboos to make her fabulously wealthy.

The Channon Christian-Christopher Newsom Murders

I read about this but have not blogged on it. Now I'll put it here to remind me.

In January of 2007, 21 year-old Channon Christian and her boyfriend, 23 year-old Christopher Newsom, were the victims of a horrific crime in Knoxville, Tennessee. During what appears to have started as a carjacking, the criminals decided to abduct the two and set in motion a disturbing series of events.
The suspects allegedly tortured and raped the young woman for several days before killing her. The young man's life ended sooner but his treatment was no less brutal.

The amount of savagery that took place in this case is of such magnitude that bloggers and their readers are asking, "Where's the national media?" What happened to these two young people is right up there with Jeff Dahmer's deeds on the list of wicked things that people have done to each other.

Now, carjackings are nothing new. Rapes and murders are also fairly frequent. But the brutality of this particular crime appears to have probed new heights of savage inhumanity:

"It apparently started with a carjacking," said Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten. "They did some really nasty things to this lady."
Subsequently Newsom’s badly burned and mutilated body was found in a rail yard. It turns out the five assailants did some “really nasty things” to Christopher Newsom before they killed him. Authorities know that he was raped, his penis cut off, and beaten before being set on fire and shot several times. It is believed they forced his girlfriend, Channon Christian, to watch.

Reports state that Channon Christian, was beaten and gang-raped in many ways for four days by all five assailants, including an eighteen year-old female named Vanessa Coleman. They also took turns urinating on her. Then they cut off her breasts and put a chlorine-based cleaning product in her mouth, ostensibly to eradicate any DNA evidence, then murdered her and left her body in a garbage can inside a house once occupied by two of the assailants.

Day by Day

Mark Steyn: Let's be realistic about reality

About idiotic "gun free zones" and the Yale ban on plastic swords (read the whole thing:

I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons" but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a "gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.

But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.

The Wolfowitz non-story

Why the World Bank chief and his girlfriend are victims of scandal peddlers, not their own judgment.
By Ruth Wedgwood, RUTH WEDGWOOD is professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies.
April 17, 2007


ON TAKING office, World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz set two priorities for the world's premier development institution. He asked for a focus on Africa's persistent poverty, and he targeted corruption that diverts aid dollars from the poor.

African leaders endorsed this vision, but not all bank bureaucrats were thrilled by Wolfowitz or his policies. Still, any friend of the bank's work should be dismayed by the disruption caused by a manufactured scandal at a time when the bank needs to replenish its coffers. The imbroglio rattling the World Bank during its spring meeting of finance ministers is a rehash of its clumsy attempt to resolve the status of Shaha Ali Riza, a veteran bank professional and Wolfowitz's longtime romantic partner.

The authors of this acrid affair have nakedly forgotten the standards of fairness and due process owed Riza, who is a member of the bank staff association and entitled to its fiduciary protections. And the scandal-mongers have recklessly ignored a written record of bank documents that serves not to condemn but to exculpate Wolfowitz.

Moreover, the case reveals the bank's executive board and its ethics committee as organs of haphazard judgment. In 2005, the ethics committee surprisingly denied Wolfowitz's written request that he be allowed to recuse himself from all decisions touching on Riza's status because of their relationship. Then it disqualified her from remaining at the bank yet insisted that she be compensated for this disruption to her career. Next, it insisted that Wolfowitz re-enter the chain of command to execute its advice concerning Riza. And now, board members apparently have criticized Wolfowitz for doing exactly what the ethics panel directed.

To be sure, news stories about Riza have revealed that the pay of World Bank staff far exceed what comparable professionals would earn elsewhere. The public may rightly be dismayed to learn that Riza and other World Bank "lead" professionals can earn from $132,000 to $232,000 — in some cases more than U.S. Cabinet secretaries. And because the bank is an international institution, staffers who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents are not taxed by Washington. A foreign bank employee with a salary of $132,000 can support the same lifestyle as someone with a taxable gross income of more than $200,000. This should be changed.

But this does not excuse a mob mentality that abuses the reputation of a particular female professional, much less a bank president. The internal documents released last week — at Wolfowitz's request — show that this slow-moving institution had no protocol for figuring out how to accommodate the career of a professional woman when her spouse or partner came to work in the same chain of command. This is becoming a more serious problem in today's workplace.

Riza was a veteran of the bank, working as a senior communications officer in the Middle East/North African public outreach program before Wolfowitz was picked as bank president in 2005. With more than 15 years' experience in the field, able to speak Arabic, English and French, she was short-listed for a senior-level job. The bank's ethics committee in July 2005 gave "informal" advice that Riza had to give up her eligibility for promotion and leave the bank. It acknowledged that this step would disrupt Riza's career for a substantial period. For a 52-year-old bank employee facing mandatory retirement at age 62, losing a promotion and a long period of service is not trivial. The ethics committee thus reasonably concluded that Riza should receive some compensation for her forced transfer.

According to the documents on the bank's website, it was the ethics committee's own idea — not Wolfowitz's — to give Riza a promotion as she was being moved out for four years. She was transferred to the State Department to work on a grass-roots democracy project that has been praised by Secretary Condoleezza Rice. She was given the mid-range salary for her new level. This was a lot of money, but it was based on the bank's existing pay scales.

It was certainly not a corrupt favor to a girlfriend.

The most amazing thing is that all the facts were reviewed for a second time by the World Bank ethics committee last year, and again it found nothing wrong. The chairman of the ethics committee pronounced in a Feb. 28, 2006, letter that "the ethics committee decided that the allegations … do not appear to pose ethical issues." It is hard to square the record with the entertaining claim that the World Bank's president somehow concocted a do-nothing job for his girlfriend. It's a bum rap, and one that women professionals in dual-career families might worry about.

Lord God of Hosts

Rudyard Kipling has become politically incorrect. In fact, he is political dynamite among the "elect." That's not the reason I like this poem, but it helps:


Recessional
June 22, 1897

GOD of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle-line—
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies—
The captains and the kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart,
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

Far-call'd our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!


Let us pray...

‘I found Saddam’s WMD bunkers’

Unlike 99% of people who believe that Saddam’s WMDs never existed or were destroyed, I don’t believe it. Despite not uncovering vast stockpiles in Iraq, we know he used the. Ergo he had them. We know he had a nuclear program; his reactor at Osiraq was destroyed by the Israelis in 1981. Saddam tried to reconstitute this program.

When the stockpiles could not be discovered and displayed, all sorts of explanations were given, none of them compelling: he destroyed his weapons in compliance with the UN demands, or alternatively, his generals lied to him about his weapons program. Neither explanation survives the laugh test. If Saddam voluntarily disarmed he would have been the first dictator in history to have done so. To lie to Saddam was a self-imposed death sentence.

So what’s the truth? Here’s a possible answer:

It’s a fair bet that you have never heard of a guy called Dave Gaubatz. It’s also a fair bet that you think the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found absolutely nothing, nada, zilch; and that therefore there never were any WMD programmes in Saddam’s Iraq to justify the war ostensibly waged to protect the world from Saddam’s use of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.

Read the rest...

Peggy Noonan on the Tech shootings: "Where are the Grownups?"

From the Wall Street Journal:

There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this. Common sense says a person like Cho Sheng-hui, who was obviously dangerous and unstable, should have been separated from the college population. Common sense says someone should have stepped in like an adult, like a person in authority, and taken him away. It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won't help.
And all those big cops, scores of them, hundreds, with the latest, heaviest, most sophisticated gear, all the weapons and helmets and safety vests and belts. It looked like the brute force of the state coming up against uncontrollable human will.

But it also looked muscle bound. And the schools themselves more and more look muscle bound, weighed down with laws and legal assumptions and strange prohibitions.

The school officials I saw, especially the head of the campus psychological services, seemed to me endearing losers. But endearing is too strong. I mean "not obviously and vividly offensive." The school officials who gave all the highly competent, almost smooth and practiced news conferences seemed to me like white, bearded people who were educated in softness. Cho was "troubled"; he clearly had "issues"; it would have been good if someone had "reached out"; it's too bad America doesn't have better "support services." They don't use direct, clear words, because if they're blunt, they're implicated.

The literally white-bearded academic who was head of the campus counseling center was on Paula Zahn Wednesday night suggesting the utter incompetence of officials to stop a man who had stalked two women, set a fire in his room, written morbid and violent plays and poems, been expelled from one class, and been declared by a judge to be "mentally ill" was due to the lack of a government "safety net." In a news conference, he decried inadequate "funding for mental health services in the United States." Way to take responsibility. Way to show the kids how to dodge.

The anxiety of our politicians that there may be an issue that goes unexploited was almost--almost--comic. They mean to seem sensitive, and yet wind up only stroking their supporters. I believe Rep. Jim Moran was first out of the gate with the charge that what Cho did was President Bush's fault. I believe Sen. Barack Obama was second, equating the literal killing of humans with verbal coarseness. Wednesday there was Sen. Barbara Boxer equating the violence of the shootings with the "global warming challenge" and "today's Supreme Court decision" upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion.

One watches all of this and wonders: Where are the grown-ups?

Read the whole thing...

Reactions on Arab web sites to the mass murders committed at Virginia Tech

From LGF:

And now, turning to our peace-loving Muslims at an Arabic Islamic forum, I translate some of their ‘condolences’:

Al-Jazeera reported 20 dead and 29 injured. Praise be to Allah.

Praise be to Allah for these calamities hitting America. By the will of Allah, more of this [will happen], following their defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

O Allah, keep America busy with itself, and enamor its people against it.

And on this site, the massacre is being referred to as “The Great Ghazwa of Virginia.” (Ghazwa means ‘raid’ in Arabic, referring to the battles Muhammad and his followers fought against the non-Muslims.)

"Protecting" our "children" at Virginia Tech.

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre and the magnificent reaction of the "Hokie Nation" to this tragedy it may strike a discordant note, but there are people who wonder at the fact that, with few exceptions, the Tech students were passive during the killer's spree. He was not stopped. The killing stopped when he put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

His thirty-two dead victims and 15 wounded means that he used at least 47 bullets. Given that handguns are not particularly accurate, my guess is that he used many more bullets than that.

Taking all the emotion away, it's reasonable to assume that he killed himself when he ran out of ammunition.

That's disturbing. Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia is a rural oasis and the largest University in Virginia. No effete bunch of urban liberals they. Yet the students and faculty - with a few notable and heroic examples (Professor Liviu Librescu) - were passive and panic stricken; either waiting to be shot, hiding under desks, or jumping out of windows.

Don't get me wrong, given the choice of jumping out of a window or facing a maniac with a gun, I'll jump out of a window every day. But in the end, the killer was not stopped. He just ran out of ammo. 32 people died and 15 were wounded while the killer's only injury was self inflicted.

In a way, that bothers me.

Mark Steyn talks here about A Culture of Passivity

On Monday night, Geraldo was all over Fox News saying we have to accept that, in this horrible world we live in, our “children” need to be “protected.”

Point one: They’re not “children.” The students at Virginia Tech were grown women and — if you’ll forgive the expression — men. They would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet. Granted, we live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are “children” if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office. Nonetheless, it’s deeply damaging to portray fit fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself — and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others. It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act.

There is - for those who wish to draw comparisons - a difference between the heroes of Flight 93 and the students at VT. The men of 93 knew they had nothing to lose. The VT students did not know this. Their classrooms would not crash, killing them all, and they hoped that they would survive when the shooting stopped. They were not all automatically doomed by passivity as were the passengers on the 9/11 flights. Perhaps that explains it all; a rational, mathematical decision: he can't kill us all because he does not have enough bullets.

And if the wolf takes one of the sheep, the flock still survives. But where are the shepherds? Or did they die with the survivor of the Holocaust?

Virginia Tech - A Year Earlier

Via Michelle Malkin:

Wanted: A culture of self-defense
As news was breaking about the carnage at Virginia Tech, a reader e-mailed me a news story from last January. State legislators in Virginia had attempted to pass a bill that would have eased handgun restrictions on college campuses. Opposed by outspoken, anti-gun activists and Virginia Tech administrators, that bill failed.

Is it too early to ask: "What if?" What if that bill had passed? What if just one student in one of those classrooms had been in lawful possession of a concealed weapon for the purpose of self-defense?
[snip]
Late last summer, a shooting near campus prompted students to clamor again for loosening campus rules against armed self-defense. Virginia Tech officials turned up their noses. In response to student Bradford Wiles's campus newspaper op-ed piece in support of concealed carry on campus, Virginia Tech associate vice president Larry Hincker scoffed:

"[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles…The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, 'I can't believe he really wants to say that.' Wiles tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself."

The nerve!

Hincker continued: "The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We've seen that fear here, and we don't want to see it again…Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."

Who's scratching his head now, Mr. Hincker?

The fantasy of gun-free zones Plus: A lesson in "sensitivity"

Michelle Malkin gets death threats for defending our rights to defend ourselves.

Mass Murders are Not an Exclusive American Problem

Just a Reminder, The Next Time A European Gets Huffy...

Tennessee moves to allow guns in public buildings

Via Glenn Reynolds. They must be following Ann Coulter's advice.

At the heart of both the Imus and Duke scandals is arrogance.

Victor Davis Hanson on Greek tragedy.

In the past week, Don Imus was fired, all charges against the Duke University lacrosse players were dropped, and almost everyone has offered a sermon about the racial and class issues involved in both cases. But we need look only to the Ancient Greeks for the best insight.
The Greeks believed that insolence naturally leads to bullying, or hubris. This arrogance induces a mad behavior called ate. Finally, that recklessness earns well-earned destruction unleashed by the god Nemesis.

In other words, what goes around comes around — big time.

No one gets a pass, according to the Greeks. Just ask the arrogant Oedipus, who ultimately stabbed his own eyes out.

For years, talk-show host Imus trashed people, sometimes with racist and anti-Semitic banter. And not only did he get away with playing the foul mouth, but he was often courted by the powerful for his supposedly influential audience and the notion that it was hip to rap with him.

All the attention only swelled Imus’s head. And his excess led him to a kind of madness. How else to characterize the mind of someone who labels the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos”?

Apparently, the unhinged Imus thought that adopting such racist, sexist slurs used by those in the “gangsta” culture — “hos” is a favorite term of some African-American rappers and comedians — was also cool for a white shock-jock.

Imus also foolishly assumed that the parade of liberal politicians and friends who clamored to get on his show might offer him politically correct cover.

Wrong again. Something called “race, class, and gender” studies in our universities has long preached otherwise: Only those not white, heterosexual, and male have an unspoken pass to use jocular slurs that their “oppressors” better not copy.

Lesbians on motorcycles carry placards blaring “Dykes on Bikes.” Homosexuals hype “queer studies.” Yet for outsiders to dub someone a “queer” or a “dyke” — or a “ho” — even as a bad joke is deemed automatically proof of their prejudice.

Imus, for all his pseudo-sophistication about the contemporary scene, apparently did not grasp this hypocrisy of American popular culture. So he thought he could piggyback on such vile language — and as a hip white celeb get away with it.

Then he met Nemesis, long lying in wait. And the more America learned about the past rantings of this talk-show bully, the more it wondered why such a banal fool ever had an audience in the first place, much less was courted by politicians and celebrities.

Read the rest.

What's a Barrel Shroud?

Video: Carolyn McCarthy doesn’t understand her own gun-control legislation.

If there was ever any doubt that the people who sponsor legislation don't understand what they are doing, this is it.

Watch the video.

LET'S MAKE AMERICA A 'SAD-FREE ZONE'!

I came back from a trip in the day of the Virginia Tech massacre. There is little more to be said about it, but I thought I would leave this commentary by Ann Coulter here.

From the attacks of 9/11 to Monday's school shooting, after every mass murder there is an overwhelming urge to "do something" to prevent a similar attack.

But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed.

Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy — in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.

It's certainly not against the law to be an unsociable loner. If it were, Ralph Nader would be behind bars right now, where he belongs. Mass murder is often the first serious crime unbalanced individuals are caught committing — as appears to be in the case of the Virginia Tech shooter.

The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.

Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.

And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.

Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws.

From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?

Read the rest...

Duke Lacrosse Rape Case Dropped

Via Drudge.

But the boys' attackers are unrepentant. Read Durham in Wonderland.

And read a series of thought-provoking essays by William Anderson at LewRockwell.com.

Adams v. UNCW

I have read Mike Adams for quite a while. He is a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. What’s interesting is that he became a conservative Christian after being an atheist liberal. His new viewpoint does not sit well with the faculaty and administration of UNCW and he has been the subject of false accusations and has been denied promotion.

So now he is suing.

On Monday, my attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (www.telladf.org) filed a federal civil rights suit on my behalf against the University of North Carolina - Wilmington. The two main aspects of the case are a First Amendment Claim and a claim for religious discrimination under Title VII. Below I offer a brief explanation of both aspects of the case.

First Amendment Retaliation. Simply put, the university has taken multiple actions against me after they became aware that I was no longer atheist and liberal but instead Christian and conservative. Since 2001, I have been -- among other things -- falsely accused of a felony, falsely accused of libel, been instructed to stay away from department meetings, had stricter standards applied to my own conduct than applied to my colleagues, and -- ultimately -- denied a promotion for which I was imminently qualified. In the wake of this lawsuit, I am predicting that UNCW will cite my 400-plus nationally published political columns as evidence that there are no restraints on my ability to express my rights per the First Amendment. However, the chronological organization of my civil complaint (www.telladf.org/UserDocs/AdamsComplaint.pdf) makes it clear that my career as a columnist was launched in 2002 largely as a response to false accusations of libel (and later breaking and entering and -- believe it or not -- tear gassing a colleague's office) levied against me in 2001.

I wish him well.

A Thoughtful Article on Iraq ... in the Huffington Post

I know I should be passionately following the showdown between Congress and the president over legislation tying the funding of American troops in Iraq to a timetable for the troops' withdrawal from Iraq. Honestly, though, I find it hard to follow it at all. Showdowns are all about certainty, and for me, Iraq has always been a place of ambivalence.

Read the rest.

Another Global Warming Denier: Burn Him!

April 16, 2007 issue - Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

Read the whole thing.

Ruminations from the End of the Earth?

I have always been fascinated by the Book of Revelations. Here are some thoughts from Phil Harris at Townhall.com: Old Men (Are) Dreaming Dreams.

So then, you see, this Easter is upon us, but I have begun to wonder how many more Easters there might be. Maybe there will be a thousand more Easters. Maybe there will be five more Easters. Maybe… this could be the last Easter.

An Easter People: The Centrality of the Resurrection

Excerpt:

This Sunday Christians around the world will celebrate Easter as a memorial of Christ's resurrection. If Christians are correct about what happened on the first Easter morning, then the resurrection is the single most important event in human history. If true, then in this single event Christ's teachings were validated. He is the Son of God who came to earth as a sacrifice for our sins, and those who accept him by grace through faith will have eternal life. On the other hand, if the resurrection did not occur, then Christianity is a hoax and the claims of Christ were false.

According to some people today, however, whether or not the resurrection actually occurred is of little importance. Confronted with the bold truth claims of Jesus Christ—for example, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)—they try to obscure or avoid Christ's declaration by saying they simply revere him as a great moral teacher, nothing more. If archeologists unearthed Jesus' occupied tomb, it would not change their opinion of Christ at all.

Compare this mentality to that of the Apostle Paul: "...if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men..." (1 Cor. 15:17-19) Paul understood the centrality of the resurrection to the Christian faith. He avowed, "...if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." (1 Cor. 14:15) If all we have is this earthly existence, the Apostle affirms "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." (1 Cor. 15:32) Paul understood clearly that ideas have consequences and that what we believe determines how we behave. If we believe that Christ is who he claimed to be and that he defeated death and the grave, we must live for him—in his presence, under his authority, and for his glory. But if all we have is this earthly existence, we might as well just live for ourselves because the grave is truly our final resting place.

In this age of relativism, tolerance, and inclusion, Christ's claims of absolutism and exclusivity make many uncomfortable. It is deemed to be in poor taste to assert that there is only one way to God. Therefore, acknowledging Jesus as a great moral teacher is a convenient way of partially embracing him, while at the same time keeping him at a distance. But Jesus doesn't allow us to have it both ways. Christ did not come to earth to merely usher in a new morality. C. S. Lewis explains, "...Christianity is not the promulgation of a moral discovery. It is addressed only to penitents, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law." In other words, Christ did not come to teach morality to those who are ignorant of it. He did not come to offer a new moral law. He came to save those who had fallen short of the existing one. Ultimately, Christ came to save sinners. (1 Tim. 1:15)

Read the whole thing.

The Good News: HE Is Risen!

Easter Interview: Sunday Tea with Miss Mary M.

"The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away. Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.

"And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni;which is to say, Master."

From the Gospel according to John

Read the whole thing.

Media Bias: How It Works

From Power Line: an excellent example.

The bottom line:

The AP is resorting here to the media's constant trick of misrepresenting the position of those who oppose the global warming theorists. The issue is not whether the earth has recently warmed; it has, by around 7/10 of a degree in the last century. The questions are, 1) to what extent, if any, is that warming (or the cooling that also occurs periodically) caused by human activity, 2) how much warming (or cooling) is there likely to be in the future, 3) what will the net effects, good and bad, of such warming or cooling be, and 4) are the benefits, if any, of reducing CO2 emissions by a given amount worth the costs?

The Associated Press, like nearly all mainstream media outlets, runs interference for the global warming hysterics by misrepresenting the nature of the debate, misrepresenting the positions of those who oppose the hysteria, and subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) suggesting that all who question the anthropogenic global warming theorists can safely be dismissed as cranks.

Fred Thompson Post 9/11

YouTube.

What Happened to British Pride?

Jonah Goldberg makes an interesting point

:“Blasphemy itself could not survive religion,” G.K. Chesterton observed, “if anyone doubts that, let him try to blaspheme Odin.” Similarly, humiliation cannot survive the death of pride. So it was a hopeful sign that the British Telegraph editorialized that Britain had been “humiliated” by the Iranians. At least the sting of pride can be felt in that lonely journalistic redoubt.

Target Department Store Boots Marines in Uniform

CHESAPEAKE - Two Marines in their dress uniforms - the ones with white hats, khaki shirts and blue trousers with red stripe - say they were accused of recruiting at a Target department store here and told to leave.

"We weren't recruiting," according to Cpl. Carlos Rodriguez, 22, who said he returned in October from his second combat tour in Iraq. "I just popped in to say hi to a guy I went to high school with. He works there."

But an assistant manager who saw Rodriguez and the other Marine apparently thought otherwise and showed them the door, according to both servicemen.

Read the rest HERE.

The "Backlash" Bogeyman Resurrected

Do you remember how, shortly after 9/11 there were stories all over the MSM worrying about the “backlash” against Arabs? The fear of Americans rampaging through the street hanging anyone who looked vaguely Arab may be an exaggeration, but there was no question that the people who populate the MSM believed that there would be widespread discrimination, open hatred and violence against Arabs by Americans.

It turns out that you have to get pretty outrageous to get noticed as an Arab. In fact the "Flying Imams" had to go through quite a few parts of their script before the fellow passengers on the plane finally had had enough. Of course they are now the poster-children of the MSM types who always see their fellow countrymen as blatant bigots waiting to explode. Oh wait, those are the followers of the "Religion of Peace" in suicide vests.

That was 5 years ago and the feared “backlash” did not occur. But as a bogeyman for the MSM, it keeps rising from the dead.

The latest example is our own, much loathed, Virginian Pilot. The earlier article I cited was biased enough; this is the follow-up editorial written as if it were a new article.

Writer GILLIAN GAYNAIR uses the vehicular homicide of two teen-aged girls by a drunken illegal immigrant from Mexico and screams:

Hispanics wary of fallout from deadly crash in Virginia Beach.

The powers-that-be in the area are a little incensed that Bill O’Reilly took the occasion of these deaths to point out that there is an interesting policy in place in Virginia Beach. That policy prevents the police from trying to determine if you are an illegal alien if you are arrested for a crime. A crime such as drunken driving. A crime for which the man who killed the two girls has been arrested and convicted … three times … in the seven years he has been illegally in this country. He was so drunk at the time he killed the girls that he can’t remember the crash.

Gaynair finds the usual suspects; the ones who:

…fear that because of Alfredo Ramos, people will categorize all Hispanics as drunken drivers and unauthorized immigrants. Ramos, 22, is charged with aggravated involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16. He had a record of three alcohol-related convictions in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake and had entered the country from Mexico illegally.

Read the rest of the sob story HERE.

The Pilot has one columnist - Kerry Dougherty- who is often a voice of reason.

Police Chief Jake Jacocks, for instance, said he found it "ironic that had the intoxicated driver been born and raised in Virginia Beach, little notice would have been given this senseless tragedy by the media or the community at large."

Wrong, Chief.

Any time an alleged drunk is accused of killing two people, it's news.
Unfortunately, when the culprit is a homegrown hairball, we're stuck with him.
In this case, the suspect, 22-year-old Alfredo Ramos, admitted he is in the country illegally.

The public was astonished to learn that not only had Ramos had earlier brushes with the law, but during those encounters - including a DUI conviction in Chesapeake - the Mexican's immigration status was of no interest to authorities.
We all know the laws are a federal matter and that the feds don't do enough to enforce them. Still, the cities didn't even try to find out if Ramos was here legally.
That's why the common-sense crowd is outraged.
…
After O'Reilly's television show Wednesday night, the city was flooded with e-mails about the Ramos incident. So with the whole world watching, how did officialdom deal with a growing crisis?

It dropped into a defensive crouch, hinted that those who want immigration laws enforced are reactionaries, and stubbornly pretended that last week's ghastly accident was just another car wreck.

The Virginian Pilot Rushes to the Defense of Lawbreaking. The Drunk Illegal Killer Story.

The death of two teen-age girls by a drunken illegal immigrant with a history of arrest and convictions for minor crimes is a palette for people who wish to paint their own picture.

Bill O’Reilly, who hosts the highest rated talk show on cable, has elevated these deaths and the issues they raise to a national level. State and local officials are busy attempting to shift the blame to someone - anyone - other than themselves.

The primary culprit is of course that 22 year-old Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was so drunk on the day he killed the girls that he can't remember hitting them. And his drunken driving was not an isolated incident. According to the Pilot, he has three drunken driving convictions during his 7 years in the US. This is a remarkable history since drunks are stopped and convicted for only a small fraction of the times they actually take to the road.

But this vehicular homicide has touched a nerve among the American people because there is a general unease with the fact that the country is overrun with illegal aliens. In general we are a law abiding people who believe in playing by the rules. And when the rules about immigration are flouted, and flouted blatantly and openly, people get upset. They get even more upset when community officials deliberately help the lawbreakers. And when those lawbreakers kill the most innocent among us, there will be hell to pay.

And rightly so.

The Virginian Pilot’s take? In what is supposed to be a news report, Deirdre Fernandes and Jon Frank present a defense of Virginia Beach officials who allowed – as a matter of policy – to allow Alfredo Ramos to remain in Virginia Beach until he finally kills two girls .

City leaders launched a counterattack against Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly on Thursday, calling him a "TV show gadfly" after he blamed the city in the deaths of two teenagers and accused local leaders of providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

A nice bit of name calling.

Major Meyera Oberndorf and the police chief, Jake Jacocks Jr. apparently have the support of one of the slain girls’ fathers.

Ray Tranchant, Tessa's father, urged people not to treat the tragedy like "a political football."

"There's been some politicizing and mudslinging against the city," Tranchant said in a quiet voice. He added that he trusts "justice will be done."

Tranchant has my sympathy as a parent. I would be heartbroken if my daughter was killed. Parents should not have to bury their children. As a father he has my support, but as someone who has injected himself into a political controversy he does not. And make no mistake about it; Bill O’Reilly did not create this controversy: city and state officials have.

City leaders tried to shift the debate about the recent deaths of Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, away from illegal immigration and onto drunk driving….

Police Chief Jake Jacocks Jr. said he found it "ironic that had the intoxicated driver been born and raised in Virginia Beach, little notice would have been given to this senseless tragedy by the media or the community at large.
"Unfortunately, most who have been outspoken about this recent and all-too-common tragedy have lost perspective and focus," he said.

Nice try on the part of Chief Jacocks to change the subject. “Ignore the man behind the curtain.”

We can’t deport people who were born and raised in Virginia Beach. We should be able to deport people who are here illegally and who have demonstrated – by repeated arrests – that they are a danger to the community. In fact, we should be able to deport people who are here illegally, period; full stop.

Why is Chief Jacocks so defensive? Well it appears that it is his policy that prevents his officers from asking about the status of illegal aliens:

O'Reilly was castigating a Virginia Beach policy that forbids patrol officers from asking the immigration status of defendants charged with misdemeanors.
Jacocks said the policy is similar to those used by other large cities and is necessary so that illegal immigrants will report crimes and help in the prosecution of crimes without fear of retribution from law enforcement.

Jacocks, along with his leadership command, crafted the policy and put it into practice in September 2005. "As chief of police, it is my policy," he said.

Note that Jacocks tries to subtly direct some of the blame for the policy to his “leadership command.”

And Poor old Meyera Oberndorf?

Oberndorf seemed almost bewildered by the criticism.

"Neither I nor any member of the council have adopted any legislation to make this a sanctuary city," she said.

She has rarely taken a stance on immigration locally, but as a participant in the U.S. conference of mayors, she has urged President Bush to reform the country's immigration policies and called the proposal to build the 300-mile fence along the Mexico border "un-American."

I’m sure she is bewildered. She believes that she is on the side of the angels. That her beliefs are the beliefs of all right-thinking people. That people who want illegal immigration to stop are knuckle dragging Neanderthals. That the illegals are “doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do” That they are poor but honest, that they are blah, blah, blah.

As the old Viet Nam era song says, “you don’t need a weatherman” to figure out where Oberndorf stands on the issue of illegal immigration and what her position is regarding the deportation of illegal aliens.

But when called to account, she says that we never officially passed a law making Virginia Beach a “sanctuary city.” No, she, and the police chief made it a sanctuary city by way of a police rule.

And what about the State of Virginia in all this?

Kevin Hall, a spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, said his office received about 20 telephone calls about the issue.

Hall said three callers referred to immigration proposals by Attorney General Bob McDonnell or bills on the topic that had been considered by the General Assembly this year but that most seemed to be generated solely by the television show.

"We're telling callers that immigration is a federal responsibility," Hall said. "We're already undermanned in the State Police and reluctant to order them to do the federal government's job."

Meanwhile the State has just passed a bill that will build more roads that will allow the next Alfredo Ramos to kill again. It seems that stopping him is nobody’s responsibility.

Who Sank the Titanic?

Rosie O'Donnell believes that 9/11 was a plot and that the World Trade Centers were blown up.

But WHO DID IT? Rosie gets coy and won't let us in on her little secret.

Now there's proof that not only was the World Trade Center blown up, but the Titanic was not sunk by an iceberg. Of course, when you think about it, which is tougher: ice or steel?

Click on the link for the kind of proof that will convince Rosie of this nefarious plot.

UPDATE: An admission from someone who went to school with Rosie! THE PLOT THICKENS!

And Winds of Change makes a good comment. Giving Rosie the "kook of the month" award:

I'd make it "dishonest kook of the month," but really, once you're ceritifiable your honesty becomes pretty irrelevant anyway.

Why No Jefferson Indictment?

Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) is still not seated on the Homeland Security Committee. Jefferson is the Democrat whose freezer held $90,000 in cold hard cash. The person who gave it to him has been indicted, tried and jailed.

Many political insiders have been surprised that federal prosecutors have yet to indict Jefferson. The lawmaker has maintained his innocence throughout the well-publicized probe.

The FBI found $90,000 in cash in Jefferson’s freezer when it raided his home last year as part of an investigation into whether he accepted bribes related to a telecommunications deal in Africa.

This appears to be an open and shut case. Unless there is a reason to believe that the freezer is typical of where people keep their money, why is the DOJ not indicting William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana?

Or maybe the answer is found in the party affiliation. He is, after all, a Democrat.

Want to Reach Rosie? Talk to the people that pay her huge salary.

From American Digest. The way to reach Rosie is to reach the people who pay for her to appear on The View.

I know through long experience in book and magazine publishing that "Letters to the Editor" are worth exactly zip, squat, nada -- except for giving the editors free copy to run ads against. Cutting into the advertising money, however, does something much more direct and immediately gets the attention of the producers and the network executives. It's fine to have some controversial Downs-method actor mouth 911 Conspiracy theories since it bumps up the ratings. But when ratings go up and revenues go down, that's another story.

When corporations hear from enough people that they will stop buying their products because of O'Donnell, they will -- trust me -- stop advertising. Corporations do not exist to piss off their customers in any way.

The advertisers:

All Detergent
BAM Power Cleaner
Best Foods Mayonnaise
Bush's Baked Beans
Claritin-D
Clorox
Cottonelle Toilet Tissue
Crest Whitening Rinse
Disney's "Meet the Robinsons"
Dove Ice Cream
Excedrin
Head & Shoulders Shampoo
Honey Bunches of Oats
Humira
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
Janome Sewing Machines
Loestrin 24
M&M's
Marshall's
Miracle-Gro
Pepto Bismol
Pier 1 Imports
Pillsbury Toaster Strudel
Reach One Ultimate Clean Toothbrush
Scrubbing Bubbles
Sears
Singulair
Stainmaster Carpet
Stanley Steemer
T.J. Maxx
Tide Laundry Detergent
Vaseline Intensive Rescue Body Lotion
Woolite
Zyrtec

Go to Google to find out the corporations and who the Cairman/CEO is. They are the ones who care if their ad dollars piss off their customers.

William F. Buckley on Global Warming

The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition. A respectable columnist (Thomas Friedman of The New York Times) opened his essay last week by writing, "Sometimes you read something about this administration that's just so shameful it takes your breath away."

What asphyxiated this critic was the discovery that a White House official had edited "government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming." The correspondent advises that the culprit had been an oil-industry lobbyist before joining the administration, and on leaving it he took a job with Exxon Mobil.

For those with addled reflexes, here is the story compressed: (1) Anyone who speaks discriminatingly about global warming is conspiring to belittle the threat. Such people end up (2) working for Exxon Mobil, a perpetrator of the great threat the malefactor sought to distract us from.

I'd guess that, in the current mood, I should enter the datum that my father was in the oil business. But having done that, I think it fair to ask: Are we invited to assume that anyone who works in a business that generates greenhouse gases (a) is complicit in the global-warming problem, and (b) should resign and seek work elsewhere? One recalls the plant in Nazi Germany that manufactured the toxic gas Zyklon B. The primary use of this gas was in the extermination camps, whose masters were looking for efficient ways to destroy human beings. Is the community engaged in oil production the contemporary equivalent of the makers of Zyklon B?
Critics are correct in insisting that human enterprises have an effect on climate. What they cannot at this point do is specify exactly how great the damage is, nor how much relief would be effected by specific acts of natural propitiation.

The whole business is eerily religious in feel. Back in the 15th century, the question was: Do you believe in Christ? It was required in Spain by the Inquisition that the answer should be affirmative, leaving to one side subsidiary specifications.

It is required today to believe that carbon-dioxide emissions threaten the basic ecological balance. The assumption then is that inasmuch as a large proportion of the damage is man-made, man-made solutions are necessary. But it is easy to see, right away, that there is a problem in devising appropriate solutions, and in allocating responsibility for them.
To speak in very general terms, the United States is easily the principal offender, given the size of our country and the intensity of our use of fossil-fuel energy. But even accepting the high per-capita rate of consumption in the United States, we face the terrible inadequacy of ameliorative resources. If the United States were (we are dealing in hypotheses) to eliminate the use of oil or gas for power, would that forfeiture be decisive?

Well, no. It would produce about 23 percent global relief, and at a devastating cost to our economy.

As a practical matter, what have modern states undertaken with a view to diminishing greenhouse gases? The answer is: Not very much. What is being done gives off a kind of satisfaction, of the kind felt back then when prayers were recited as apostates were led to the stake to be burned. If you levied a 100 percent surtax on gasoline in the United States, you would certainly reduce the use of it, but the arbiter is there to say: What is a complementary sacrifice we can then expect from India and China? China will soon overtake the United States in the production of greenhouse gases.

At Kyoto, an effort was made 10 years ago to allocate proportional reductions nation by nation. The United States almost uniquely declined to subscribe to the Kyoto protocols. Canada, Japan and the countries of Western Europe subscribed, but some have already fallen short of their goals, and all of them are skeptical about the prospect of making future scheduled reductions. It is estimated that if the United States had subscribed to Kyoto, it would have cost us $100 billion to $400 billion per year.

There is, now and then, offsetting good news. The next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have learned, will be less pessimistic than earlier reports. It will predict, e.g., a sea-level increase of up to 23 inches by the end of the century, substantially better than earlier IPCC predictions of 29 inches — and light-years away from the 20 feet predicted by former Vice President Al Gore.

Meanwhile, the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg said something outside the hearing of the outraged columnist. He noted solemnly that any increase in heat-related deaths should be balanced against the corresponding decrease in cold-related deaths. ... We need hope, and self-confidence.

Global Warming Baloney: A CEO With a Spine

The New York Coal Trade Association, headquartered in New York City, recently held its 94th annual banquet and meeting at the New York Hilton. One of the guest speakers was Bob Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation and probably one of the few CEOs brave enough to challenge the militant climate control movement that threatens the future of America's economy. In his speech, he dared to say that he regards Al Gore as the shaman of global doom and gloom. He is not joking when he says, "He is more dangerous than his global warming."

Unlike many heads of corporations who are taking their companies on that long green mile and caving in to the demands of environmental militants, Mr. Murray is fighting tooth and nail for what he says is, "the little guy that nobody cares about."

"Some wealthy elitists in our country," he told the audience, "who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people. These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived ‘global goofiness' campaigns."

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ: First They Came for the Jews

Dorothy Rabinowitz made a name for herself by exposing the horrible miscarriage of justice two decades ago during the pre-school witch trials which sent innocent people to jail for decades. The McMartin Day Pre-School and Fells Acres Day Care Center cases will go down in the annals of American jurisprudence as greater miscarriages of justice than OJ Simpson.

If this story is true, we may have another case of highly improper and selective prosecution.

Mr. Franklin's problem began when he was spotted lunching with Steve Rosen, for some time the object of FBI surveillance. The Iran specialist had first met with Messrs. Rosen and Weissman in February 2003, meetings repeated on at least three other occasions. The two AIPAC employees had reason to see in Mr. Franklin, a reserve Colonel in the U.S Air Force, a staunch patriot who held values and geopolitical views much like their own. Mr. Franklin's driving concern--the danger posed by a terrorist Iran, and the need for vigorous countermeasures by the U.S.--played no small role in their discussions. The centerpiece of the indictment to come concerned his disclosures to Steve Rosen about an internal policy document on Iran, which, the government alleged, was classified.

The sympathetic bond (characterized as a conspiracy in the government's indictment) between the Pentagon analyst and the AIPAC employees abruptly unraveled when FBI agents paid Mr. Franklin a home visit on June 30, 2004. Appealing to his patriotism, they persuaded him to cooperate, telling him that the two lobbyists were up to no good, and might be endangering American interests. Perhaps even more persuasive was the FBI's discovery in his house of 83 classified documents--material he had taken to work on at home, as he had done repeatedly despite warnings from his Pentagon supervisors that this was impermissible.





He was to enjoy nothing of the good fortune of Sandy Berger, former National Security Adviser for President Clinton, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to making off with highly classified documents related to that administration's policy on terrorism--papers he was observed stuffing into his pockets while sitting in the secure reading room of the National Archives. Mr. Berger was charged with a misdemeanor and paid a $10,000 fine. Former CIA director John Deutch, who also faced charges of mishandling government documents, was pardoned on Mr. Clinton's last day in office.
Anguished, his wife ill, and faced with loss of his job--now a likely possibility, as the FBI informed him--Mr. Franklin agreed to help gather evidence on Messrs. Rosen and Weissman.
...
The consequences of this spectacle--the indictment of two citizens for activities that go on every day in Washington, and that are clearly protected under the First Amendment--far exceed any other in the now long list of non-crimes from which government attorneys have constructed major cases, or more precisely, show trials. A category in which we can include the mad prosecutorial pursuit of Mr. Libby.

The government could succeed in this prosecution of two non-government professionals doing what they had every reason to view as their jobs--talking to government officials and reporters, and transmitting information and opinions. If such activities can be charged, successfully, as a "conspiracy," every professional, every business, every quarter of society--not to mention members of the press--will have reason to understand that this is a bell that tolls not just for two AIPAC lobbyists, but also for countless others to face trials in the future, for newly invented crimes unearthed by willing prosecutors.

I have been, for all of my life a staunch believer in the virtues and honesty of the people in the American judicial system. I now find my faith cracking based on the evidence I see of outright corruption (see the "Duke Rape" case), political revenge trials (see the Scooter Libby trial), selective prosecution (see the trial of the border patrol agents for shooting a drug smuggler), and wrist slaps for the rich and powerful (see the Sandy Berger case). I even see this sort of selective persecution in the prescription drug problems encountered by Rush Limbaugh.

I don't know whether the system is more corrupt, or if I'm seeing something I have never seen before. Perhaps it's the former. Before, we had virtually no way of seeing the "other side" of the legal thicket. Our opinions were pre-digested and handed to us via the dominant media.


I would prefer the faith I once had. But once faith slips away, it may not be possible to get it back.

Nancy Pelosi Shows The Subservience of Women In Syria

Noting, but nothing shows how "feminists" react when they are faced with anything but girly men:


From the New Editor
Feminist in the US, Subservient in Syria

What message is Nancy Pelosi trying to send? Are women equal to men, or not? Why is modesty foisted only upon women? That's the inconvenient truth for conservative Muslims, and for liberal Americans trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to reconcile the desire for understanding between cultures, and those cultures' starkly illiberal practices.

This is the picture of the modern American politician.

Perhaps Nancy is sending the message that her hair will create unbridled lust in the hearts of Muslim men.

God what a piece of human debris.

Supreme Court Rules: Climate Change is Serious

That's the headline on Drudge. And the story via the AP is:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration Monday for its inaction on global warming in a decision that could lead to more fuel- efficient cars as early as next year.
The court, in a 5-4 ruling in its first case on climate change, declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

So now every time you exhale, you are warming the planet. This is ideocy on stilts and is another demonstration of the fact that the Supremes are a super-legislature in black robes.

UPDATE: the Wall Street Journal discusses the Jolly Green Justices.

The current Supreme Court is a talented group of jurists, but until yesterday we didn't think their expertise ran to climatology. The Justices would have done better in their big global warming decision if they'd stuck more closely to the law.

They showed no such modesty. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a narrow majority managed to diminish the rules of judicial standing, rewrite the definition of "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act, and dramatically curtail the decision-making authority of the executive branch. And judging from Justice John Paul Stevens's 5-4 majority decision, they did so because the five Justices are personally anxious about rising temperatures. As Justice Antonin Scalia noted in dissent, the "Court's alarm over global warming" has led it to substitute "its own desired outcome" for the EPA's judgment.

[snip]

Perhaps most distressing is the way the majority made a hash of traditional "standing" doctrine, which determines when a plaintiff has a right to sue. To justify its global warming afflatus, the Justices simply asserted that the Massachusetts coastline faces imminent threat from rising seas. Not even Mr. Gore goes that far. But the Court cites climate models to suggest future harm in order to claim the threat of immediate injury, and thus standing by the Bay State.

"Aside from a single conclusory statement, there is nothing in petitioners' 43 standing declarations and accompanying exhibits to support an inference of actual loss of Massachusetts coastal land from 20th century global sea level increases," writes Chief Justice John Roberts in his dissent. "It is pure conjecture."

And done for the purpose of pure policy invention. Standing is one of the few self-restraints on the power of the federal courts, and it is a far too frequent habit of the current Supreme Court to view its own power as unlimited. By diluting the standards for standing, the High Court creates a highway by which judges can speed past the political branches and play an ever larger role in American public life.

Some Intersting Ruminations of the British Marines Abducted by the Iranians

It was a simple enough mistake to make. After all, it was the BBC in one of its first reports after the Iranian hostage-taking which referred to Commodore Nick Lambert as the captain of HMS Cornwall, the frigate on which the abducted boarding team had been based.

We fell in with the BBC – and many others – although we should have known better – the rank of Commodore is far too senior to command a mere frigate. Her captain is in fact Commander Jeremy Woods, who took command on 20th November 2006.

The distinction is, of course, rather important in the drama of the abduction because Commodore Lambert was using the ship as his flag ship, it providing him with a "command platform" from which he controlled the multinational task force in this area, of which he was the commanding officer.

Lambert assumed command on 7 March 2007 of what is known as Coalition Task Force 158 (CTF 158), a coalition force comprising up to 12 units from the US, UK, Australian and Iraqi navies, taking over from US Navy Commodore Jeffrey Harbeson (both pictured above).

Included in this line-up were significant US Navy assets, including USS Howard (DDG 83), USS Chinook (PC 9), USS Whirlwind (PC 11), USCGC Maui (WPB 1307), USCGC Monomoy (WPH 1326), as well as the Australian HMAS Warramunga (FFG 152) – over which Lambert had overall command.

The US patrol craft (PC) are particularly interesting, of which USS Chinook is a typical example (pictured right). It is the ninth of the Cyclone-class patrol coastal boats: length, 170 feet, displacement 331 tons and – all importantly – a draught of 7.5 feet (compared with the Cornwall's 20.7 feet). She has a maximum speed of 35 knots and is armed with two 25mm Mk38 machine guns, two .50 cal machine guns, two Mk19 automatic grenade launchers and six stinger missiles.

She also carries a rigid-hulled inflatable boat, launched and recovered from a stern ramp (pictured left) and a complement of eight special forces personnel to man it.

This, as you may imagine, puts an entirely different light on the additional detail that emerged yesterday, when the Scotsman on Sunday reported that the Cornwall's boarding crew "had even more protection nearby; an American military helicopter and patrol boat were within striking distance, ready - and willing - to help…".

Rather than wait until after the event, Lambert, had he so chosen, could have tasked any one of twelve vessels - including the USS Chinook or one of the other patrol boats – to carry out the freighter inspection, instead of despatching Cornwall's boats, from a distance of eight miles. Equally, he could have asked – no, ordered - any one of those vessels, to provide overwatch – and, clearly, the US Navy knows how to do it, as this illustration of one of its own boarding exercises shows, the gunner keeping a "sharp eye out" for the inflatable (centre frame).

Read the whole thing.

Teachers and Students in Public Schools

My daughter-in-law is an elementary school teacher. Second grade, I think. She comes home with stories like this:

My daughter in law teaches second grade. She is one of the strictest teachers in her elementary school and older, more experienced teachers regularly commend her on the behavior of her students. Yet she is forced to contend with behavior the editorial staff can't ever recall witnessing - even once - the entire time we were in grade school. She has had her students - these are second graders, mind you - choke other students, bite, hit, and throw screaming temper tantrums: all on a daily basis. And there is nothing she can do about it. She cannot eject these disruptive children from her classroom; that would be "depriving them of the opportunity to learn". What about the other students in the classroom? Don't they deserve a chance to learn?

No WMD in Iraq?

It seems that since General David Petraeus has taken command of the Coalition forces in Iraq, the official state of denial about Iraq's WMD from both MNF-I Headquarters and the Pentagon has been lifted concerning "insurgent" use of chemical weapons. In a report from the Army News Service, Gen. Petraeus issued a written statement blasting Al-Qaeda and its allied insurgents for the "barbaric actions against innocent Iraqi citizens." The attacks were carried out on crowded market places using conventional high-explosives and chlorine gas, resulting in the deaths of over 50 Iraqis and sickening hundreds, including 14 US Soldiers.

[snip]

Since the start of OIF, the Coalition and the Pentagon have ignored or sloughed off as inconsequential reports of US Soldiers and Marines finding WMDs and weapons labs containing huge quantities of precursors. These denials continued despite the fact that some of our service members and civilians became sick as a result of either finding chemical storage bunkers near weapons caches or chemical rounds wired as IEDs.

Teachers KILL Holocaust for fear of Muslims

In Britain:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial

How is the Troop Surge Going? By the Numbers.

A track of casualties and who is doing what to whom.

And, by the way, why the MSM is mis-identifying the actors.

I sincerely hope the troop surge works, but al Qaeda has a strong hand to play. The more they bomb, the more the media misleadingly talks about "insurgents" and "militias" fighting a "civil war" (as if al Qaeda does not exist), and the more Americans savage their own president and start calling for withdrawal. As such, you can be sure that al Qaeda is lining up the suicide bombers in preparation for the troop surge.

McCain heckled by CNN reporter

Drudge Report

McCain heckled by CNN reporter
Sun Apr 01 2007 13:50:38 ET

**Exclusive**

During a live press conference in Bagdad, Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware’s conduct “outrageous,” saying, “here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I’ve never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter.”

Senators McCain and Graham flew into Iraq and drove into Bagdad, making stops at an open market and a joint Iraq/American military security outpost before appearing at the press conference.

This is not the first time Michael Ware has taken issue with Senator McCain’s comments about early progress in Iraq. Last week, after Senator McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he needed to catch up on the news coming out of Iraq, Michael Ware responded, saying:

“I don't know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.”

Michael Ware has also publicly expressed his views on the war last year in an interview with Bill Maher, saying, “I've been given a front-row ticket to watch this slow-motion train wreck … I try to stay as drunk for as long as possible while I'm here … In fact, I'm drinking now.”

Developing...

Dowd Bails On Bush

Captain's Quarters relects on Matthew Dowd.

Dowd engages in one long, petulant rant, consumed by his disappointment at Bush's failure to change when Dowd changed. I'm sorry for Dowd's disappointment, but this says much more about Dowd's emotionalism than it does about the Bush administration.

"Silence Woman"

Muslim Persecution of Christians in Iraq

From Little Green Footballs:

“When they cook a dish in the Middle East, it is traditional to put the meat on top of the rice when they serve it. They kidnapped a woman’s baby in Baghdad, a toddler, and because the mother was unable to pay the ransom, they returned her child – beheaded, roasted and served on a mound of rice.

“The infant’s crime was to be an Assyrian, but this story, reported by the Barnabus Fund, went unnoticed in the West, like so many other horrific accounts of Christian persecution in Iraq. Since the invasion of Iraq, Muslim militants have bombed 28 churches and murdered hundreds of Christians. Last October, Islamists beheaded a priest in Mosul in revenge for the Pope’s remarks about Islam at Regensburg.”

Belgium To Tax Antennas 4000 Euros.

From Belmont Club:

Olivier Maingain, the mayor of Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, one of the 19 Brussels boroughs, is planning to tax all "antennas for the transmission of data". Each antenna will be taxed a staggering 4,000 euros per year. Such antennas are used for WiFi or WLAN, i.e. wireless internet or wireless networks over relatively short distances. ... Some Brussels boroughs are already taxing companies on the number of computer screens in their offices.

A liberal stands up to the Surrender Lobby

CAn we do this nation-wide? Let me know.

Spiritual Warfare Needed - Marine Corporal David Emery Jr.

Click on the link.

Ronald Reagan; God, I Miss Him

An excerpt from a speech Ronald Reagan delivered to the British Parliament at the time of the Falklands crisis. It seems, really, like a relic of another world, but it wasn't so long ago. And it is timely today in the context of the U.K.'s effort to figure out what to do about the kidnapping of its sailors and marines. As if that were a puzzle.

A Little War Goes A Long Way

A call to arms:

I hope by the time you read this, it is out of date. Frankly, I’m amazed as I write this it hasn’t happened already. I am dumbfounded that the Iranians have persisted, with no practical goal beyond harassments and humiliation, and I am exasperated that our usually strong leadership has allowed them to do so.

I hope that by the time you read this, the cruise missiles have already impacted; the stealth bombers have taken out radar and missiles sites; the land and sea blockade is in place … nothing moving in or out of an Iranian port and any road traffic that doesn’t risk death from above. I hope, by the time you read this, the destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure is underway.

'Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper'

Read this and then see the Fox special.

Brachfeld says major questions remain over the extent of Berger’s theft of top secret "code word" documents, and the resulting damage done to the country’s national security. Code word documents are so highly classified that only a handful of people are ever allowed to read them.

The Fox program also reveals:

— There was a deep division inside the Justice Department about how to handle Berger, who ultimately was allowed to plead to misdemeanor charges, pay a small fine and avoid jail.

— DOJ lawyers involved in the case failed to let the 9/11 Commission know the scope and seriousness of the security breach, despite direct orders from top Justice officials.

— Contrary to the assurances the Justice Department made to Congress and to the 9/11 Commission, nobody but Berger can know whether he kept key documents and information about Clinton administration anti-terror efforts from the Commission.

— Berger’s lies were far more extensive than previously revealed.

— That no full assessment of the damage to national security has been conducted.

— That the Justice Department, in a break with precedent and procedure, relied on Berger’s statements despite a record that showed a history of lies.

Bobby Jindal Saves Louisiana

This is worth reading.

The first time I saw Bobby Jindal, he left Jack Welch, John Sweeney, and a roomful of corporate bigshots, union leaders, and people who generally like to hear themselves talk absolutely dumbfounded.

It wasn’t the first time he’d done this sort of thing, and certainly not the last.

Read on

The Ryskind Sketchbook

What ethanol can’t do?

Dennis Gartman writes a great financial newsletter and recently wrote about the economics of “gasohol.” I will excerpt a small part.

There are any number of reasons why we find ethanol production comical, not the least of which is that it would be enormously unprofitable now were it not for the fact that the farm lobby has been able to extricate all sorts of expensive price support mechanism from the Congress. We’ll not go into that this morning … What we do find worthy of note today is the inherent losses of energy created as we move to make alcohol from corn. Simply put, and rounding to the nearest numbers for the sake of simplicity, we note that in producing 10 gallons of ethanol we need to expend the rough equivalent of 7 gallons of gasoline. That on the surface would look like a fine swap. The problem is that those same 10 gallons of ethanol produce approximately 85,000 BTUs of energy, while 7 gallons of gasoline produce 125,000 BTUs! Thus the ten gallons of ethanol contain the same energy equivalent of only 6.75 gallons of gasoline. So if we follow the logic through … approximately 10.4 gallons of gasoline will end producing sufficient quantities of ethanol to deliver as much energy as … now follow this please … 10 gallons of gasoline.

The Shrinking Budget Deficit

Imagine that you were making $50,000 per year and buy a house with a $100,000 mortgage. Since you also have to pay for things such as food, utilities, clothing and a host of other expenses, the payments on that mortgage would be a considerable amount of money.

Now imagine that you have been offered a new job with a salary of $500,000 per year and - to celebrate - decide to buy a new house with a $200,000 mortgage. Your mother-in-law clucks her tongue and criticizes you for going deeper into debt, even though your new mortgage is a much smaller part of your income.

Well, that's the case with our budget deficit. Since they peaked in 2004, the deficit as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has declined dramatically, despite war spending.

Year ---- Deficit as % of GDP
2002 ---- 1.50%
2003 ---- 3.50%
2004 ---- 3.60%
2005 ---- 2.60%
2006 ---- 1.90%
2007 ---- 1.80%
2008 ---- 1.60%

There is another way of looking at this. Economic numbers are always slippery and are constantly revised, even years later. The number that gets most attention is the rate of economic growth, but for people who pay attention, the number that is first issued is never right. One number that is rock-solid is tax receipts.

The media would have you believe that the economy under Bush is in the doldrums and revenue growth is tepid. In fact, revenue growth to the government is growing much faster than the growth in the economy generally.

Total tax receipts
(in Trillions of dollars)
2002----- $1.85
2003----- $1.78
2004----- $1.88
2005----- $2.15
2006----- $2.41
2007----- $2.54
2008----- $2.66

From 2002 through the end of 2008, tax receipts will have grown a stunning 44% even as the Democrats argue that "tax cuts for the wealthy" have proven ineffective.

This is nonsense - nonsense on stilts. But the Democrats believe it; it is an article of faith. And the economic miracle that Bush has wrought may be crushed by the heavy hand of a failed belief system unless Conservatives regain the initiative.

Pakistan: "Creeping Talibanisation is now a reality across the country"

If the Taliban take Pakistan, the West has a very serious problem. Pakistan has the bomb. And the Pakistani secret service is believed to be onm the side of the Jihadis.

Sunnis try to blast Al-Qaeda out of Iraq

Sunni insurgent groups that were previously allied with Al-Qaeda in Iraq have turned against it, killing its leaders, attacking its supporters and vowing to drive it out of the country.

At least two Al-Qaeda commanders have been killed by Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad. Others have been forced to flee after insurgents passed their details to US and Iraqi commanders. Fierce fighting has broken out between insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda in Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

Until the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in a US airstrike last summer, the groups cooperated with it in their bloody struggle with the coalition forces. But the insurgents have come to believe that Al-Qaeda in Iraq is destabilising the country by the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, often with truck bombs.

It's about time.

French Riots and "the Youths"

Pajamas Media reports on the riots by Arabs in the Paris

Gare du Nord, a vast transportation hub where trains from the banlieue—housing projects and lush suburbs juxtaposed—meet buses and métros that fan into all corners of the city.

Rioting breaks out again in Paris and quickly draws France’s Presidential campaign into its maw.

24 hours after the punk jihad riots, the media delivered a profile of the “kid” whose arrest sparked 8 hours of mayhem in the bowels of the Gare du Nord.

The “kid” is one Angelo H. He is, it turns out, 32 years old, an illegal Congolese immigrant, and subject to a deportation order 1993.

The “kid” has been in trouble since he came to France at the age of ten—twenty-two registered condemnations for violent incidents and many that went unreported.

The cops initially went to arrest a little cheater and found they had bagged a hardened criminal. Instead of paying for a ticket like millions of law-abiding passengers Angelo H. jumped the turnstile and was, exceptionally, arrested. In a matter of seconds he had head-butted—or slapped—one of the RATP agents. When the agents wrestled him to the ground, Angelo screamed bloody murder, a small crowd gathered in protest against the agents’ brutality. And the call to battle rang out.

Almost instantly Angelo became a thirteen year-old boy whose arms were fractured by the cruel agents (shades of Mohamed al Dura). Then a pregnant woman was added to the list of victims of police brutality. All that was missing was “the infidels set fire to the mosque.”

Police reinforcements arrived, tried in vain to calm the situation, resorted to the use of tear gas. The crowd swelled to an estimated three to four hundred, battled the police until 1:30 AM (the incident began at 4:30 PM) when calm was restored.

[snip]

The Gare du Nord vandals, the Iranian hostage takers, the killer shahids, the beheaders, the mass murder masterminds, the ultimatum peace planners, and the fellow traveling anti-warriors are attacking us on all sides with whatever weapons they can grab, combined and reinforced by the lethal narrative of their victimhood—crusades, colonisation, neocolonialism, discrimination, humiliation, occupation—and our guilt.

The Chocolate Christ Sculptor Can Now Be Prosecuted

GENEVA (AP) - Islamic countries pushed through a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion—a response largely to the furor last year over caricatures published in a Danish newspaper of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

The statement proposed by the Organization of Islamic Conference addressed what it called a "campaign" against Muslim minorities and the Islamic religion around the world since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

The resolution, which was opposed by a number of other non-Muslim countries, "expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations."
It makes no mention of any other religion besides Islam, but urges countries "to take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constitute incitement and religious hatred, hostility, or violence."
Prosecuting him now has UN approval.