Pennsylvanian in exile

A letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury

The Simon Weisenthal Center, a group I highly respect, sends this letter to the archbishop about the Church of England's anti-semitism:

Mr Rowan Williams
The Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace
London, England

Paris, 27 June 2005

Archbishop,

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is an international Jewish human rights organization with a worldwide membership of 440,000. Established in 1977, with headquarters in Los Angeles, it draws the lessons of the Holocaust to the analysis of contemporary issues of prejudice and discrimination. The Centre is an NGO in Consultative Status to ECOSOC, UNESCO and the Council of Europe.

When a Church (any church) calls for a boycott of Jews (anywhere on G-d's earth), the Jewish collective memory refocuses. The lights dim and a film reel in our heads begins to unwind:

A fast backward to the charge of collective deicide, the Judas image of ultimate treachery, original sin, the curse of exile and eternal wandering, divine retribution, the figure of the Anti-Christ, Christianity's substitution of Judaism "in spiritum" and the subsequent delegitimization of the people of Israel.

Disputations, forced conversions, Passover/ Easter blood libels, accusations of well-poisoning, importing plague and pestilence, the theft of Christian innocents, race defilement, white slave traffic.

Pogroms, autos da fe, Inquisition burnings at the stake, burning synagogues and Yeshivas, burning of Holy scrolls and prayer books.

Cathedral statues of "the Church Triumphant" alongside "the Vanquished Synagogue", exclusion from land ownership, conspiracy theories, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, expulsions, boycotts, Kristallnacht, cemetery desecration, collaboration in deportation and extermination, SILENCE...

After two millennia, we thought that the film had ended, the lights had come back on as we flash forward to a sobered Christendom that would banish the shadows forever.

Archbishop, we were so wrong:

- only one people remains an endangered species
- only one State remains unambiguously threatened with extinction in the chambers of the United Nations system
- only one nation is still denied acknowledgement of its right to sovereign legitimacy

Archbishop, your vote, last Friday, for the Anglican Church's economic disinvestment of companies that trade with the Jewish State is not only biased, not only in violation of freedom of commerce provisions of the European Union and the World Trade Organization, your vote is one more traumatic frame in that never-ending film.

From little Hugh of Lincoln, the pogrom of York, the expulsion by Edward the Confessor, you have telescoped Church history of Judeophobia in England, the liberal and tolerant land of my birth. You have widened the floodgates, for if it could happen there...!

Archbishop, when you say "divestment of Israel", we hear "Kaufen nicht bei Juden", and we are filled with an immense sadness at your damage to decades of inter-faith dialogue.

We can only hope to be comforted by those Anglican friends who will reject this new preaching of the Gospel of the Anti-Christ.

Dr. Shimon Samuels
Director for International Affairs



cc:
Mr. Simon Wiesenthal, Vienna
Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean and Founder, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles

A good interview of President Bush

The Times Online, of all sources, has this excellent interview with President Bush where they have to admit he's smarter than they thought:

THERE has probably never been a president, there may not have been a human being, who observes punctuality with the sort of fanaticism that President George W. Bush brings to every aspect of his life.

If you are on time for a meeting with the President you are late, we were told as we prepared for our interview in the Oval Office yesterday to preview the G8 summit at Gleneagles next week.

Sure enough, a full nine minutes before the allotted time for our appointment, the door of the most famous room in the world opens and a genial President steps forward to greet us.

In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.

The obligatory trip round the Oval Office is now so much of a ritual that he approaches it with the wry, self-mocking tone of an ersatz tour guide.

It’s an executive office, he points out, a place where decisions are made. “So the first decision I had to make was what colour the rug should be.”

The next thing he learnt about the presidency, he says, is the importance of delegating: “So I asked Laura to design it.”

It is, he notes, a soft yellow, like the radiance of the rising Sun. “It says an optimistic person works here.”

His mood alters, though, as he turns from the brilliantine carpet to the brooding figures that adorn his walls — great war leaders in whom he obviously seeks inspiration. Abraham Lincoln looks down from his wall beside the main entrance. On the other side of the room a bust of Winston Churchill, a personal gift of Tony Blair to the current occupant, stares across at today’s successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Mr Bush added a bust of President Eisenhower. It sits to the left of his desk, made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, a Victorian transport ship, another gift from the British. You’re probably the only people in here for whom I don’t need to explain what ‘HMS’ means,” he says. “My Texas friends have no idea what I’m talking about when I tell them.”

As expansive as he is, Mr Bush can’t help betraying a faint irritation at the intrusiveness of the modern media, with a reference to a famous brief medical emergency from a couple of years ago.

He points out the door in the well of the presidential desk, placed there by President Roosevelt to hide the fact that he spent his presidency in a wheelchair. “FDR was in a wheelchair and nobody knows. I choke on a pretzel and the whole world gets to hear about it.”

Across from the presidential desk, a portrait of the very first war leader of the United States, George Washington.

“He’s always been there,” Mr Bush notes. “No choice, really; the father of the nation. Had to be there. Rutherford B. Hayes just wouldn’t work,” he quips.

Saint of the Day: First Martyrs of Rome

From American Catholic we have today's saints: The First Martyrs of Rome.

There was a large Jewish population in Rome. Probably as a result of controversy between Jews and Jewish Christians, the Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome in 49-50 A.D. Suetonius the historian says that the expulsion was due to disturbances in the city “caused by the certain Chrestus” [Christ]. Perhaps many came back after Claudius’s death in 54 A.D. Paul’s letter was addressed to a Church with members from Jewish and Gentile backgrounds.

In July of 64 A.D., more than half of Rome was destroyed by fire. Rumor blamed the tragedy on Nero, who wanted to enlarge his palace. He shifted the blame by accusing the Christians. According to the historian Tacitus, a “great multitude” of Christians was put to death because of their “hatred of the human race.” Peter and Paul were probably among the victims.

Threatened by an army revolt and condemned to death by the senate, Nero committed suicide in 68 A.D. at the age of 31.

Comment:

Wherever the Good News of Jesus was preached, it met the same opposition as Jesus did, and many of those who began to follow him shared his suffering and death. But no human force could stop the power of the Spirit unleashed upon the world. The blood of martyrs has always been, and will always be, the seed of Christians.

Thou shalt not commit religion

Guaranteed to make your blood boil, Ann Coulter lists things the government CAN support:

To put the Supreme Court's recent ban on the Ten Commandments display in perspective, here is a small sampling of other speech that has been funded in whole or in part by taxpayers:

— Graphic videos demonstrating how to put a condom on and pep talks by "Planned Parenthood educators." — sex education classes at public schools across the nation

— Korans distributed to aspiring terrorists at Guantanamo. — U.S. military

— "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers (than the attack of 9/11), I'd really be interested in hearing about it." — Ward Churchill, professor, University of Colorado

— We need "a million more Mogadishus" (referring to the slaughter of 18 American soldiers during a peacekeeping mission in Somalia in 1993). — Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor, Columbia University

— "The entire federal government — the Congress, the executive, the courts — is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. ... If you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture ..." — Bill Moyers' commentary on PBS' "Now"

— "Kiss it." — governor of Arkansas to state employee

— "For most Americans ... (war with Japan) was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism. ... Some have argued that the United States would never have dropped the bomb on the Germans, because Americans were more reluctant to bomb 'white people' than Asians." — Smithsonian exhibit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of VJ Day, later modified due to protests

— "Anglos consolidated their control of New Mexico, acquiring huge holdings from the original owners through fraud and manipulation." — Smithsonian exhibit

— "Ignored were the less honorable aspects of California history — the profiteering, revolts against Mexican authority and Indian massacres." — Smithsonian exhibit, comment on the painting "The Promised Land — The Grayson Family"

— "This predominance of negative and violent views was a manifestation of Indian hating, a largely manufactured, calculated reversal of the basic facts of white encroachment and deceit." — Smithsonian exhibit

— "In the Americas, sugar meant slavery." — Smithsonian exhibit

— Close-up photos of women's vaginas plastered all over a portrait of the Virgin Mary (which The New York Times will still not mention when it describes the "art"). — Brooklyn Museum of Art

— A photo of a woman breastfeeding an infant, titled "Jesus Sucks." — NEA-funded performance

— A photo of a newborn infant with its mouth open titled to suggest the infant was available for oral sex. — NEA-funded performance

— "F—- a Fetus" poster showing an unborn baby with the caption: "For all you folks who consider a fetus more valuable than a woman, have a fetus cook for you, have a fetus affair, go to a fetus' house to ease your sexual frustration." — NEA-funded performance

— Performance of giant bloody tampons, satanic bunnies, three-foot feces and vibrators. — NEA-funded performance

— A novel depicting the sexual molestation of a group of 10 children in a pedophile's garage, including acts of bestiality, with the children commenting on how much they enjoyed the pedophilia. — NEA-funded publisher

— Christ submerged in a jar of urine. — NEA-funded exhibit

— A female performer inserting a speculum into her vagina and inviting audience members on stage to view her cervix with a flashlight. — NEA-funded performance

— A performance of large, sexually explicit props covered with Bibles performing a wide variety of sex acts and concluding with a mass Bible-burning. — NEA-funded performance (canceled by the venue in response to citizen protests)

— A show titled "DEGENERATE WITH A CAPITAL D" featuring a display of the remains of the artist's own aborted baby. — NEA-funded exhibit

— A play titled "Sincerity Forever," depicting Christ using obscenities and endorsing any and all types of sexual activities as consistent with Biblical teaching. — NEA-funded exhibit

— Essay describing then-New York Cardinal John O'Connor as a "fat cannibal from that house of walking swastikas up on Fifth Avenue." Also photographs of men performing oral sex, anal sex, oral-anal sex and masturbation. — NEA-funded exhibit

That's the America you live in! A country founded on a compact with God, forged from the idea that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights is now a country where taxpayers can be forced to subsidize "artistic" exhibits of aborted fetuses. But don't start thinking about putting up a Ten Commandments display. That's offensive!

I don't want to hear any jabberwocky from the Court TV amateurs about "the establishment of religion." (1) A Ten Commandments monument does not establish a religion. (2) The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law "respecting" an establishment of religion — meaning Congress cannot make a law establishing a religion, nor can it make a law prohibiting the states from establishing a religion. We've been through this a million times.

Now the Supreme Court is itching to ban the Pledge of Allegiance because of its offensive reference to one nation "under God." (Perhaps that "God" stuff could be replaced with a vulgar sexual reference.) But with the court looking like a geriatric ward these days, they don't want to alarm Americans right before a battle over the next Supreme Court nominee. Be alarmed. This is what it's about.

No God in this classroom

Why do community colleges get some of the weirdest instructors? This troll instructor fails a girl for writing a paper about religion and daring to mention God.

For using the "G" word 41 times in a term paper, Bethany Hauf was given an "F" by her Victor Valley Community College instructor.

Hauf's teacher approved her term paper topic — Religion and its Place within the Government — on one condition: Don't use the word God. Instead of complying with VVCC adjunct instructor Michael Shefchik's condition Hauf wrote a 10-page report for her English 101 class entitled "In God We Trust."

"He said it would offend others in class," Hauf, a 34-year-old mother of four, said. "I didn't realize God was taboo."

"I don't loose my First Amendment rights when I walk into that college," Hauf said. She is demanding an apology from the teacher and that the paper be re-graded.

The college says the issue over Hauf's paper, written during the spring semester, has been satisfactorily resolved. "We settled this matter during the course of this class," said Judy Solis, chair of VVC's English department. "She was treated fairly and she knew what the options were."

Shefchik could not be reached for this report.

Hauf took her concerns about not being able to use "God" in her report to her teacher, then to the department chair. During a joint meeting between all three the options were laid out: Hand in the report with the "G" word or revise, edit or re-write the paper, Solis said.

"She continued to write her paper," Solis said. "She knew what the consequences were."

Hauf acknowledges she knew her teacher's condition for writing the paper, but argued it would be impossible to write about the affect of Christianity on the development of the United States without using the word God. "He told me you might as well write about the Easter Bunny," Hauf said. "He wanted to censor the word God."

Hauf first approached her teacher about writing her paper in an April 12 e-mail, according to a 12-page ACLJ paper sent to the college offering legal opinions in favor of Hauf.

Shefchik wrote her back an e-mail approving her topic choice, but at the same time cautioning her to be objective in her reporting. "I have one limiting factor," Shefchik wrote, according to the ACLJ. "No mention of big 'G' gods, i.e., one, true god argumentation."

The ACLJ said his actions are unconstitutional. "A student's constitutional free speech rights to express religious views are fully protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments," the ACLJ wrote.

In addition to an apology and a re-grading of Hauf's paper, the ACLJ demands Shefchik "receive some kind of training to sensitize him to the constitutional dimensions of his employment in a public educational institution, including his duty to respect constitutional freedoms of expression."

Hauf's husband supports his wife's position. "She has to pursue this. Not only has her civil rights been violated this is an English class she took, not a political science course," Fritz Hauf said. "She should be graded on the composition not the 'G' word."

Though getting an "F" on the research paper Hauf got a "C" for the class.

Medicate Tom Now!

Andrea Peyser is great at eviscerating celebrities, and her take on Tom Cruise is classic.

THIS is an urgent public appeal to save Tom Cruise before it's too late.

If Tom were just some homeless person with a habit of raving in public and snarling insanely at "Today" show hosts while going off his meds, we'd know exactly how to handle him.

If he were just some creepy nobody who enjoyed playing doctor without a license, he'd be stopped.

If Tom were just any other guy who liked to jump on strangers' couches while engaging in agonizing displays of public affection with a taller girl whom he might credibly have fathered, he would be locked-up.

Tom would get hauled off by kindly men in white coats and transported to a sterile rubber room, where his noggin would promptly be attached to electrodes while he's fed a handful of Brooke Shields' leftover stash.

But Tom is not homeless and drooling.

He is rich and famous and drooling.

He is a dwarfish, fading Hollywood heartthrob with strangely white teeth who is currently tottering on the ledge, threatening to commit career and social suicide.

Tom needs your help. Do it for his fans.

Or for his kids. Do it for the preservation of his vast wealth and residual profits.

Do it for the continued existence of movie excess, for self-indulgent, hundred-million-dollar movie budgets with riders guaranteeing the stars unrealistic profits.

That's right. Saving Tom means saving Hollywood itself.

Which is why I beg of you: Medicate Tom now!

As the "War of the Worlds" opens to snickers from fans who've witnessed Tom's brain boil over on national television, it is clear that even wealthy celebrities can benefit from interventions from well-meaning strangers.

The scuttlebutt from within Paramount is that new studio chief Brad Grey is losing patience with Tom's antics.

And with his constant proselytizing for Scientology, which became acute after Tom replaced his longtime publicist with his Scientologist sister.

That was the act of a man in crisis. Even Steven Spielberg is annoyed, having scolded Tom during a press tour to stop talking about his supposed relationship with Katie Holmes and start talking about their movie.

But the low point came when Tom snarled at Matt Lauer on "Today," proclaiming, "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Get this guy some help. You wouldn't let an animal suffer the way he has. Do it for the good of global entertainment. Medicate Tom now.

Today's Saints: Martyrdom of Peter and Paul

Not that I don't like St Paul, but St Peter is one of my favorites, because he is so human. The guys screws up; he talks tough but doesn't deliver, like when he denies Christ 3 times after promising never to forsake him. I think we're all like that. As the bio says in American Catholics Saint of the Day:

But the Gospels prove their own veracity by the unflattering details they include about Peter. He clearly had no public relations person. It is a great comfort for ordinary mortals to know that Peter also has his human weakness, even in the presence of Jesus.

He generously gave up all things, yet he can ask in childish self-regard, "What are we going to get for all this?" (see Matthew 19:27). He receives the full force of Christ's anger when he objects to the idea of a suffering Messiah: "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do" (Matthew 16:23b).

Peter is willing to accept Jesus' doctrine of forgiveness, but suggests a limit of seven times. He walks on the water in faith, but sinks in doubt. He refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, then wants his whole body cleansed. He swears at the Last Supper that he will never deny Jesus, and then swears to a servant maid that he has never known the man. He loyally resists the first attempt to arrest Jesus by cutting off Malchus's ear, but in the end he runs away with the others. In the depth of his sorrow, Jesus looks on him and forgives him, and he goes out and sheds bitter tears.

Funny

A priest was being honored at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish. A leading local politician and member of the congregation, was chosen to make the presentation and give a little speech at the dinner. He was delayed, so the priest decided to say his own few words while they waited.

“I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here. I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen a television set and, when stopped by the police, had almost murdered the officer. He had stolen money from his parents, embezzled from his place of business, had an affair with his boss’s wife and taken illegal drugs.

I was appalled. But as the days went on I knew that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a
fine parish, full of good and loving people.”

Just as the priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies for being late. He immediately began to make the presentation and give his talk. “I’ll never forget the first day our parish priest arrived,” said the politician. “In fact, I had the honor of being the first one to go to him in confession.”

Moral: Don’t ever be late.

Lefty Loonieness from the NCC

And why is it the National Council of Churches that nobody goes to anymore? Well, when they come out with Anti American crap like this who wants to go?

The Governing Board of the National Council of Churches USA invites you to join them in this call to pursue peace and justice in Iraq.

This year our nation is at war as we observe the 4th of July, a day that honors those founders who spoke out for independence from tyranny. Today in Iraq a cruel dictator has been deposed, yet the suffering of the Iraqi people continues. Mandated elections have been held, yet the future of Iraq remains as uncertain as ever. Day by day the cost of this war for the United States, for Iraq, for peace grows clearer. No weapons of mass destruction have been found; no link to the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been shown. It has become clear that the rationale for invasion was at best a tragic mistake, at worst a clever deception.

As people of faith, we believe in the transcendent sovereignty and love of God for creation, and that the responsibility of human beings is thus to pursue justice and peace for all. We also believe that, as the biblical prophets of old, who in faithfulness to God spoke out to a people and a nation they loved, in humility before God we too are to speak to a land and people we love. As religious leaders we invite others who share our affections and dismay to recognize the time has come to speak out.

The time has come to say:

- NO to leaders who have sent many honorable sons and daughters to fight a dishonorable war;

- NO to the violence that has cost over seventeen hundred American lives, left thousands grievously injured, and killed untold numbers of Iraqis whose deaths we are unwilling to acknowledge or count;

- NO to the abuse of prisoners that has shamed our nation and damaged our reputation throughout the world;

- NO to the price tag for this war that has rendered our federal budget incapable of adequately caring for the poorest of our own citizens; and,

- NO to theologies that demonize other nations and religions while arrogantly claiming righteousness for ourselves as if we share no complicity in human evil.

The time has come to say:

- YES to foreign policies that seek justice rather than domination, compassion rather than control;

- YES to an early fixed timetable for the withdrawal of United States troops and the establishment of a credible multinational peacekeeping force;

- YES to the honoring of human rights even for our enemies and for a restoration of our reputation as a people committed to the rule of law;

- YES to spending and taxing priorities that put the poor first, providing health care, housing, employment, and quality education for all, not just the few; and,
- YES to a restoration of truth telling in the public square and to “last resort” rather than “first strike” as the criterion for the use of force to restrain evil.

On the day we celebrate our freedom, we acknowledge that the freedom promised in the toppling of a dictator has been replaced by the humiliation of occupation and the violence of a civil war. The sacrifice of brave men and women has been used to serve policies that have diminished our nation’s prestige and our capacity to be agents of justice in the world.

It is time to speak out that this 4th of July will celebrate the best ideals of our nation for our sake and for the sake of the world.

Shame on them!

Today's saint: St Cyril of Alexandria

Reading St Cyril's bio makes me think he makes Peope Benedict XVI look like a liberal.

Saints are not born with halos around their heads. Cyril, recognized as a great teacher of the Church, began his career as archbishop of Alexandria, Egypt, with impulsive, often violent, actions. He pillaged and closed the churches of the Novatian heretics, participated in the deposing of St. John Chrysostom and confiscated Jewish property, expelling the Jews from Alexandria in retaliation for their attacks on Christians.

His later opposition to Nestorianism is what made him a saint, although his deposing of St John Chrysostum - one of my favorite saints - and repression of the Jews were not very saintly behavior.

The REAL Gitmo

Lt Col Gordon Cucullu toured Gitmo and gives a report. Seems the animals we have corralled there are a pretty nasty lot:

Last week, I was privileged to be part of a Department of Defense trip to the Joint Task Force - Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I got to see the operations of this “controversial” facility up-close – something particularly important after Sen. Richard Durbin’s comparison of its guard to Nazi stormtroopers and calls of leftists to shut the center down. Our group went to GITMO to check out tales that the military was being too tough on these terrorist detainees. We left convinced that America is being extraordinarily lenient – far too lenient.

After speaking with soldiers, sailors, and civilians who collectively staff Gitmo, I left convinced that abuse definitely exists at the detention facilities, and it typically fails to receive the press attention it deserves: it’s the relentless, merciless attacks on American servicemen and women by these terrorist thugs. Many of the orange jumpsuit-clad detainees fight their captors at every opportunity, openly bragging of their desire to kill Americans. One has promised that, if released, he would find MPs in their homes through the internet, break into their houses at night, and “cut the throats of them and their families like sheep.” Others claim authority and vindication to kill women, children, and other innocents who oppose their jihadist mission authorized by the Koran (the same one that hangs in every cell from a specially-designed holder intended to protect it from a touching the cell floor – all provided at U.S. taxpayer expense). One detainee was heard to tell another: “One day I will enjoy sucking American blood, although their blood is bitter, undrinkable….” These recalcitrant detainees are known euphemistically as being “non-compliant.” They attack guards whenever the soldiers enter their cells, trying to reach up under protective facemasks to gouge eyes and tear mouths. They make weapons and try to stab the guards or grab and break limbs as the guards pass them food.

Meals for detainees are ample: we lunched on what several thought was an accumulated single day’s ration for detainees. “No,” the contract food service manager said with a laugh, “what you’re looking at there is today’s lunch. A single meal. They get three a day like that.” The vegetables, pita bread, and other well-prepared food filled two of the large Styrofoam take-home containers we see in restaurants. Several prisoners have special meal orders like “no tomatoes” or “no peanut products” depending on taste or allergies. “One prisoner,” General Hood said, “throws back his food tray if it contains things he has specifically said he doesn’t want.” How is he punished for this outrageous behavior? His tray is numbered, the food he requested is put on it, and the corrected “order” is delivered to his cell.

The detainees are similarly catered to medically. Almost every one arrived at GITMO with some sort of battlefield trauma. After all, the majority were captured in combat. Today they are healthy, immunized, and well cared for. At a visit to the modern hospital facility – dedicated solely to the detainees and comparable to a well-equipped and staffed small-town hospital with operating, dental, routine facilities – the doctor in charge confirmed that the caloric count for the detainees was so high that while “most detainees arrived undernourished,” medics now watch for issues stemming from high cholesterol and being overweight. Each of approximately 520 terrorists currently held in confinement averages about four medical visits monthly, something one would expect from only a dedicated American hypochondriac. Welcome to the rigors of detention under American supervision.

There is a good reason these unlawful combatants are being confined. They are evil and dangerous individuals. Yet these thugs are treated with an amazing degree of compassion: They are given ice cream treats and recreational time. They live in clean facilities, and receive a full Muslim religious package of Koran, prayer rug, beads, and prayer oils. An arrow in every cell points to Mecca. The call to prayer is played five times daily. They are not abused, hanged, tortured, beheaded, raped, mutilated, or in any way treated the way that they once treated their own captives – or now treat their guards.

Some questioned whether it were wise to give these radical Islamic fundamentalists the religious supplies that ended up landing them in Gitmo in the first place. “Giving them the Koran is simply something that we think we ought to do as a humane gesture,” said second-in-command Brigadier General Gong. “We’re Americans. That’s how we operate.”

When we challenged military authorities about the seemingly plush environs these would-be murderers receive, the commanding officers stated this was the most productive course. JTF-GITMO commanding officer Brigadier General Jay Hood radiated confidence and determination when fielding challenges from our group about his overly lenient treatment. “It works,” he says simply. “We do not allow torture or mistreatment, period.” How to they guarantee this? By rigorous, on-going training and constant oversight up and down the supervisory chain. As proof that “establishing rapport” with the detainees is far more effective than coercive techniques, General Hood refers skeptics to the massive amount of usable intelligence information JTF-GITMO continues to produce even three years into the program.

You are right to worry about inhumane treatment taking place at GITMO. But your concern should be for the dedicated, well-trained, highly professional American men and women who are subjected to a daily barrage of feces, urine, semen, and spit hurled at them along with vile invective as they implement a humane, enlightened system of confinement on men who want nothing more than to kill Americans. These quiet professional Americans, who live under the motto “Honor Bound for Defense of Freedom,” deserve our utmost respect and concern. Shame on anyone who slanders or disrespects them for short-term and short-sighted political advantage.

Free Katie, the website

Go to FreeKatie.net for links to stories and some cool T-shirts. I love this one, guaranteed to torque the most blowhard Scientologist:

Gitmo's easier than boot camp

No, I didn't serve in the military, but George Wittman did.

For those of us -- and there are millions -- who have gone through U.S. Army basic training or Marine Corps boot camp the complaints of Senator Richard Durbin regarding the treatment of the prisoners at Camp Delta in Guantanamo are laughable.

One wonders what Durbin and the folks at Amnesty International would say if their little darlings had been forced to stand at attention in 100-degree heat for two or more hours at Fort Jackson or Camp Lejeune in full combat gear, with 60 pounds of ammo and equipment, waiting for a general inspection. "What time did you get up, soldier?" the inspecting officer invariably asks the first trooper in line. The answer is always the same. "Reveille, sir." As long as you said that, you didn't have to admit you and your buddies had been up for 36 hours straight "G I-ing" the barracks, the company street, your weapons and everything that moved or stood in the area.

"Drop down and give me 20, 30, 50," the training cadre would demand, and the shaved head recruit falls to the ground and completes his push-ups -- sometimes to the point of exhaustion for those not in top condition. The heel of the corporal on your back tends to make the task a bit more difficult. Gosh, we should have had some of those ACLU lawyers.

Another fine element of training occurs when a drill sergeant's mouth is so close to yours his shouts spit saliva till it runs down your face. One flinch brings an order for 30 perfect push-ups or an evening of jogging around the company area with a rifle held with both hands above one's head while the miscreant shouts the General Orders.

Definitely too tough for those unfortunate terrorists.

Senator Durbin, whose biography shows he spent the Vietnam War in law school, knows nothing of an American soldier's training life -- and we are talking about only those first eight weeks of basic training, not the far tougher regimen for Ranger, SEAL, Recon or Special Forces.

He says he's appalled the Gitmo terrorists had to sit or stand in stress positions while under interrogation. What about crawling into and cleaning out an eight-foot deep grease pit attached to each mess hall. That's a nice little punishment for arriving late to formation. Or what about a 25-mile march with a full field pack, your weapon and ammo, and only one canteen of water?

Senator Durbin is deeply worried about the impression that is caused internationally when a terrorist prisoner complains his "space" has been invaded by a female interrogator. Oh, dear me, did that female make the poor prisoner feel badly? An American soldier yearns for such "intimidation." A recruit has no "space." He or she is government property.

From what type of mental illness does Senator Durbin suffer? What country has Durbin been inhabiting? From what planet does this civilian feather merchant come? Senator, don't insult the hundreds of thousands of on-duty servicemen and women and the millions of veterans by your politically inspired pettifogging complaints.

Perhaps Senator Durbin doesn't understand what it takes to be an American soldier or Marine. Perhaps he thinks the families of the terrorists should be thought of before the families of the victims of 9/11 or those of our fallen warriors. He speaks of Guantanamo as an embarrassment. It is he who embarrasses those who have served.

Free Katie!

Fox News has another story on Katie Holmes, the Manchurian fiance. This deals with how any offspring would be raised.

It remains to be seen how Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' weekend with their families went after Thursday's botched "War of the Worlds" premiere.

I would guess at this point Paramount and Dreamworks execs are wondering what effect if any the bad karma from the premiere itself coupled with Tom's disastrous "Today Show" interview will have on Wednesday's opening box office numbers.

I wonder how Tom explained to Marty and Kathy Holmes how he picked the famous Carlyle Hotel as the place where the new families should get to know each other. After all, The Carlyle is where Tom literally lived with Nicole Kidman and their children for months at a time during their marriage.

Certainly Tom's kids, Katie's prospective stepchildren, must have mentioned that at some point along the way.

The kids, Isabella and Conor, might have also mentioned to their father's new in-laws-to-be that they are home schooled and not sent to either a parochial school or a non denominational private academy like most stars of celebrities.

Indeed, Isabella and Conor Cruise, like Jett and Ella Travolta, are home schooled with an emphasis on the works of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The Cruise children are tutored by Tom's sisters Cass and Marian, who have teaching degrees. The former lives in Cruise's Beverly Hills estate; the latter is nearby. The sisters, as well as Tom's mother, Mary, all converted to Scientology many years ago at Tom's insistence.

Martin Holmes, Katie's attorney father, may want to vet the Scientology Code of Honor that his daughter will have to live by now that she's converting. Katie, after all, is a graduate of Notre Dame Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Toledo, Ohio. In order to join Scientology, she would be required to renounce her Catholic faith.

Cruise himself sent this to me at Christmas time last year as part of a lavish package after I had a lovely lunch with his sister/publicist Lee Anne in New York.

Among the rules to live by:

1. Never desert a comrade in need, in danger, or in trouble.

3. Never desert a group to which you owe your support.

5. Never need praise, approval or sympathy.

7. Never permit your reality to be alloyed.

8. Do not give or receive communication unless you desire it.

10. Your integrity to yourself is more important than your body.

11. Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.

12. Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.

13. Don't desire to be liked or admired.

In the meantime, Cruise will be dealing with the fallout from his Friday interview on "Today." It was such a train wreck that no less than the New York Times reviewed it on Saturday. I do think Alessandra Stanley, one of my favourite writers, did it get it a little bit wrong however. Stanley found Cruise's ferocious meltdown refreshing because it showed him unfettered by a controlling publicist. She dismissed Matt Lauer for not being tougher.

That's where we differ. First of all, Lauer had to deal with the fact that in the creepiest of ways, Holmes was sitting near Cruise on the set. The director cut to her often; she looks mesmerized, with a never-ending frozen grin. What the heck was she doing there? She looked more like a disciple than a fiancée. It was almost as if Cruise brought her for insurance thinking Lauer wouldn't ask him anything tough if he basked in the light of his insta-romance.

If I were Katie's dad, I'd be staging some kind of intervention to free her from this brainwashing being done by the Scientology mafia.

Capitol Hill Cowardice

Today's Opion Journal points out that the insurgents' bombing campaign is having an effect on Capitol Hill. Here is the beginning, read the whole thing:

"It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."--Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.), June 27, 2005, U.S. News & World Report.

"And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire. Our troops are dying and there really is no end in sight."--Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.), June 23, 2005, Armed Services Committee hearing.

The polls show the American people are growing pessimistic about Iraq, and no wonder. They are being rallied against the cause by such statesmen as the two above. Six months after they repudiated the insurgency in a historic election, free Iraqis are continuing to make slow but steady political and military gains. Where the terrorists are gaining ground is in Washington, D.C.

So why the Washington panic? A large part of it is political. As Democrats see support for the war falling in the polls, the most cynical smell an opening for election gains in 2006. The Republican Hagels, who voted for the war only reluctantly, see another opening to assail the "neo-cons" and get Donald Rumsfeld fired. Still others are merely looking for political cover. Rather than fret (for the TV cameras) about "the "public going south" on the war, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham could do more for the cause by trying to educate Americans and rally their support.

The Emperor weighs in on Kelo

Few poeple can state their opinions as eloquently as Emperor Misha I. On Kelo:

We're telling you, this is going to end in tears. If there's ONE thing that will get even calm, loyal citizens to start contemplating going postal, it's having their property, the small corner of Earth that they've worked hard to make their own, taken away from them by corrupt, thieving politicians with their pockets full of corporate payola.

We predict that it won't be long before some hapless object of the thieving paws of government will decide that there is no option left open to him or her other than raw force.

And when the blood starts running in the streets, you can lay the blame for it squarely at the feet of five black robed tyrants and traitors to the Constitution that they're sworn to uphold:

Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer.

Rope. Tree. Traitors.

Some assembly required.

Saint of the Day - some things never change

I was reading the bio of today's saint, Blessed Raymond Lull, and realized that some things in the Arab world never change:

June 26, 2005
Blessed Raymond Lull
(1235-1315)

Raymond worked all his life to promote the missions and died a missionary to North Africa.

Raymond was born at Palma on the island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea. He earned a position in the king’s court there. One day a sermon inspired him to dedicate his life to working for the conversion of the Muslims in North Africa. He became a Secular Franciscan and founded a college where missionaries could learn the Arabic they would need in the missions. Retiring to solitude, he spent nine years as a hermit. During that time he wrote on all branches of knowledge, a work which earned him the title "Enlightened Doctor."

Raymond then made many trips through Europe to interest popes, kings and princes in establishing special colleges to prepare future missionaries. He achieved his goal in 1311 when the Council of Vienne ordered the creation of chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean at the universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris and Salamanca. At the age of 79, Raymond went to North Africa in 1314 to be a missionary himself. An angry crowd of Muslims stoned him in the city of Bougie. Genoese merchants took him back to Mallorca where he died. Raymond was beatified in 1514.

P-BS

Kelo: The liberal land grab

The NY Post's lead editorial points out the irony of the Kelo decision: that conservatives, supposedly in the hip pocket of big business, care more about the little man than lefties do.

The stereotype is that conserva tives are heartless and in the tank to big business — while liberals are the ones who stand up for the little guy.

So how come the liberal Supreme Court justices just sold a bunch of New London, Conn., homeowners up the Thames River?

In Kelo et al. v. City of New London et al., the court ruled 5-4 that local governments may use the power of eminent domain to confiscate private homes and turn the land over to private developers for private projects — like sports stadiums and shopping malls.

The New London project will tear down a decent residential neighborhood for office space, a conference hotel and up-market residences. The development would accompany a nearby $350 million research center built by Pfizer.

In essence, the court expanded the requirement of "public use" — the longtime limit on eminent domain — to anything that supposedly enhances economic activity. No more need for a truly public need — such as highways, parks and bridges.

The liberal bloc — Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer — joined with moderate Anthony Kennedy to state that economic development is a legitimate "public purpose" that can override private property rights.

Writing for the majority, Stevens said: "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government . . . There is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose."

The court's more conservative members — Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia — all dissented.

"The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory," wrote O'Connor.

Added Thomas: "Losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful."

It's ironic that the conservative justices are the ones who sound like the New York liberal voices that rise to block almost any sort of economic development.

Ironic, but not too surprising.

Kelo is the logical end product of a political philosophy that seeks generally to expand government power.

It did so this time, in spades.

Both Congress and state governments need immediately to consider what specific limits can be drawn on the concept of "public purpose" — and how best to mitigate the effects of this truly disturbing decision.

New York's Bravest remember a tragic anniversary

Steve Dunleavy remembers 2 firemen who made the ultimate sacrifice in 1980.

RETIRED firefighter Billy Murphy talked softly in this beautiful church in The Bronx called St. Joseph's — but what he said sounded like a thunderstorm.

"I was with Larry that night 25 years ago . . . I live it over and over again," said Billy.

It was June 27, 1980, when Rescue 3 firefighters Larry Fitzpatrick and Gerry Frisby died in a rope disaster in Harlem.

"Gerry was trapped on the seventh floor and about to jump. I was on the roof with my personal rope and Larry had the rescue rope which went 150 feet," Billy was saying with a shudder.

He helped Frisby out the window and handed him off to Fitzpatrick.

"The rope broke immediately as Larry was trying to rescue our brother."

It was a memorial service where an Irish tenor, Firefighter Danny Walker, sang hymns and a priest by the name of Joe Hoffman told the congregation that Larry and Gerry died "saving people they didn't know."

In that congregation, I met Dan Fitzpatrick, Larry's son.

"I was six months old when it happened, but I've known my father through the guys who worked with him," Danny said.

When it happened, his brother, Andrew, was 2. His sister, Kate, was 4; Patrick, 6; Erin, 8; Larry, 9; Shannon, 11 and Tara, 12.

And there is the widow, Eileen, who brought up these beautiful kids. Eight kids with no dad.

At the service, Jeff Cool and Joey DiBernardo prayed. They're two of the survivors of Jan. 23, "Black Sunday."

Cops and firefighters still haven't gotten a raise. At least firefighters will get ropes by September, or so the city says.

Quite obviously firefighters and cops don't need a real raise unless you believe Father Joe Hoffman, who said: "They gave their lives so others could be saved . . . saving people they didn't know.

"They know, when I respond to that call, that alarm, I may not come back from it."

Greater love hath no man than he . . . well you know the end of that sentence.

Jeb calls a spade a spade

The Florida Democratic party is in some financial problems, and Gov Jeb Bush calls it like he sees it. How ironic that a party that loves to tax people so heavily, "forgot" to pay its own taxes.

Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday called the Florida Democratic Party ''pathetic,'' after the recent revelation that the party was hit with a $200,000 IRS lien after party leaders failed to take care of payroll taxes in 2003.

Bush, who is finishing his second term in office and cannot seek re-election next year because of term limits, said he was saddened by the decline of the opposition party, asserting the state needs a strong two-party system to debate ideas.

''I'm amazed. It's sad. To be honest with you, the Democratic Party has gotten pathetic,'' Bush said. ''It's important that there be a vibrant two-party system so that there is a focus on ideas because the void is filled by other things and other people. And in my opinion up here in Tallahassee, it's filled too much by special interests.''

Bush also said he was mystified by the fact that Democratic leaders were unable to pay their taxes properly.

''I feel bad for rank and file Democrats who are expecting their leaders to do the basics,'' he said. ''How could you not know you haven't paid your (payroll) and Social Security taxes? Hello? That's just the craziest thing I've ever heard.''

Bush said the tax snafu could have an impact on the gubernatorial campaign of Scott Maddox, who was the Democratic Party chairman in 2003 when the party failed to fund the payroll taxes over a six-month period. Current party chairwoman Karen Thurman has arranged a $200,000 loan to settle the tax dispute.

Saying he was obviously going to support the Republican gubernatorial nominee next year, Bush said: ''If I was a Democrat, I might take another look at some of the other candidates.''

''The sad fact is the Democratic Party is not even a big business. It's a small business. You should be able to stay on top of stuff like that,'' Bush added.

A Cruise to Insanity

Tom Cruise was interviewed by Matt Lauer, and Cruise showed just how nutty of a cult Scientology is.

When asked if he could be with someone at this stage in his life who doesn't have an interest in the Church of Scientology -- Holmes has said she's embracing the religion -- Cruise told interviewer Matt Lauer: "Scientology is something that you don't understand. It's like you could be a Christian and be a Scientologist.

"It is a religion. Because it's dealing with the spirit. You as a spiritual being." When Lauer mentioned Cruise's earlier criticism of Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants, Cruise told the "Today" show co-host he didn't know what he was talking about.

"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do," Cruise said.

The interview became more heated when Lauer, who said he knew people who had been helped by the attention-deficit disorder drug Ritalin, asked Cruise about the effects of the drug.

"Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib," Cruise responded. "You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, OK. That's what I've done."

He's just SO smart!

Anglicans supporting terror

The officials in the Anglican church seem to not think too much of Israel's right to defend itself:

Anglicans to vote on divesting from pro-Israel companies.

The Anglican Church is expected to back a report tomorrow urging it to disinvest in companies that "support the occupation" of Palestinian lands. The report has been heavily criticised by senior clerics and Jewish leaders and its adoption would place the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in a difficult position.

Drawn up by the Anglican Justice and Peace Network, it will be debated by the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham, an international body that makes recommendations to the 75 million-strong Church.

The report calls on the Church to put moral pressure on firms deemed to be supporting controversial Israeli policies such as the security fence or the clearing of Palestinian homes. Its authors believe that, as a last resort, the Church should disinvest its holdings in companies that prove unresponsive.

Some would also like the Church to boycott goods produced in the Israeli settlements in the South Bank. These range from flowers and dates to parts for electronic equipment.

The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, the Rt Rev Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, said that the adoption of the report would send a strong signal to Israel and raise awareness.

"It is not the amount of money that is important," said the bishop, who was host to the network when it visited the region last year. "It is a symbolic way of speaking for those who, for example, have had their homes demolished."

He said the Church had significant funds invested in companies such as the Caterpillar group, which manufactured the bulldozers used in clearance projects in Israel.

He warned the council against watering down the "mild" recommendations of the report when it is debated on Friday, saying that it would undermine the Church's credibility.

Pressure is growing for increased sanctions against Israel, and the Presbyterian Church in the US has already begun a similar programme.

At the same time Israel appears to be preparing to make significant concessions to revive the peace process in the Middle East, and senior Anglicans have come under pressure to drop the report.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said earlier this month that approval of the report would be "disastrous" for peace efforts in the region. He said that the Israelis already felt traumatised by attacks on them and this would be "another knife in the back".

The Chief Rabbi's office and the Board of Deputies have made strong private representations to senior Anglican figures, including Dr Williams, who is the president of the council.

A spokesman for the Chief Rabbi said that a policy of disinvestment "would not only be misguided, particularly at the present time, but it would have worrying effects on the long-established ties between Jewish and Anglican communities worldwide".

If the report is adopted tomorrow, the 38 provinces which make up the worldwide Church will be asked to implement it, but they will be under no obligation to do so.

Rod Dreher on the Kelo ruling

Rod points out two things: emiment domain harms poor people and eminent domain encourages corruption.

I'll tell you why the Kelo ruling hits especially close to home this week. The other day, FBI agents raided the Dallas City Hall offices of two city council members, as well as the office of a rich and politically well-connected developer who has built lots of housing in their districts. The FBI is being quiet about what they were looking for, but news reports say it's part of a federal investigation into bribery and suchlike. Nobody has been charged -- yet, anyway -- but if the speculation proves out, this stands to be an infuriating example of what businessmen with money can get done when they have corrupt pols in their pocket. I know, I know, this stuff happens every day, all over the place. But the FBI raids on Dallas City Hall have been front page news here all week, and the nefarious potential connection between private and public power and corruption has been on everyone's mind here in Chinatown, I mean Big D.

I have been reading various blog commentary about Kelo, and I think there's a huge disconnect between the legal eagles and the politically minded. There has been a lot of commentary about the decision from lawyer types that reads very arcanely to a layman like me. But I can understand Justice Thomas's point in his dissent:

Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful.

Justice Thomas also noted -- and I hope this doesn't get overlooked in the commentary -- that 1950s "urban renewal" fell disproportionately upon black families, who had their homes taken from them, and saw their communities destroyed. This is the sort of thing everybody understands. I am certain there will be demagoguery around this decision, but there should also be some solid and necessary political points to be scored off of it as well. I had not realized until I read it in The Corner that the Bush administration didn't pick a side here, which might make it hard for this White House to make political hay out of this decision. Besides which, this is an issue that will likely excite the base, especially by the time talk radio gets through with it, but it's going to give the deep-pockets contributors the heebie-jeebies.

Why I love Karl Rove

Karl Rove delivered a speech in New York and let the lefties have it.

LET me now say a few words about the state of liberalism. Perhaps the place to begin is with this stinging indictment:

"Liberalism is at greater risk now than at any time in recent American history. The risk is of political marginality, even irrelevance . . . [L]iberalism risks getting defined, as conservatism once was, entirely in negative terms."

These are not the words of William F. Buckley, Jr. or Sean Hannity; they are the words of Paul Starr, co-editor of The American Prospect, a leading liberal publication.

There is much merit in what Mr. Starr writes — though he and I fundamentally disagree as to why liberalism is edging toward irrelevance. I believe the reason can be seen when comparing conservatism with liberalism.

Conservatives believe in lower taxes; liberals believe in higher taxes. We want few regulations; they want more. Conservatives measure the effectiveness of government programs by results; liberals measure the effectiveness of government programs by inputs. We believe in curbing the size of government; they believe in expanding the size of government. Conservatives believe in making America a less litigious society; liberals believe in making America a more litigious society. We believe in accountability and parental choice in education; they don't. Conservatives believe in advancing what Pope John Paul II called a "culture of life"; liberals believe there is an absolute unlimited right to abortion.

But perhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. In the wake of 9/11, conservatives believed it was time to unleash the might and power of the United States military against the Taliban.

In the wake of 9/11, the liberals believed it was time to submit a petition. I'm not joking. Submitting a petition was precisely what Moveon.org, then known as 9/11peace.org did. You may have seen it in The New York Times or The Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner or the L.A. Times. (Funny, I didn't see it in the Amarillo Globe News.)

It was a petition that "implored the powers that be" to "use moderation and restraint in responding to the terrorist attacks against the United States. I don't know about you but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the Twin Towers crumble to the ground, the side of the Pentagon destroyed and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble.

Moveon.org and Michael Moore and Howard Dean may dominate the Democratic Party and liberalism — but their moderation and restraint is not what America felt needed to be done, and moderation and restraint was not what was called for. It was a time to summon our national will and to brandish steel.

Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation involved in a noble cause of self-defense. Liberals are concerned with what our enemies will think of us and whether every government approves of our actions.

Has there ever been a more revealing moment than this year. when the Democratic senator, Democrat Richard Durbin, speaking on the Senate floor, compared what Americans have done to prisoners in our control in Guantanamo with what was done by Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot — three of the most brutal and malevolent figures of the 20th century?

Let me put in this in really simple terms. Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Sen. Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

Developers can take our houses

The Opnion Journal reviews the decision by the Supremes yesterday, and lets them have it with both barrels.

The Supreme Court's "liberal" wing has a reputation in some circles as a guardian of the little guy and a protector of civil liberties. That deserves reconsideration in light of yesterday's decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The Court's four liberals (Justices Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg) combined with the protean Anthony Kennedy to rule that local governments have more or less unlimited authority to seize homes and businesses.

No one disputes that this power of "eminent domain" makes sense in limited circumstances; the Constitution's Fifth Amendment explicitly provides for it. But the plain reading of that Amendment's "takings clause" also appears to require that eminent domain be invoked only when land is required for genuine "public use" such as roads. It further requires that the government pay owners "just compensation" in such cases.

The founding fathers added this clause to the Fifth Amendment--which also guarantees "due process" and protects against double jeopardy and self-incrimination--because they understood that there could be no meaningful liberty in a country where the fruits of one's labor are subject to arbitrary government seizure.

That protection was immensely diminished by yesterday's 5-4 decision, which effectively erased the requirement that eminent domain be invoked for "public use." The Court said that the city of New London, Connecticut, was justified in evicting a group of plaintiffs led by homeowner Susette Kelo from their properties to make way for private development including a hotel and a Pfizer Corp. office. (Yes, the pharmaceutical Pfizer.) The properties to be seized and destroyed include Victorian homes and small businesses that have been in families for generations.


"The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. Justice Kennedy wrote in concurrence that this could be considered public use because the development plan was "comprehensive" and "meant to address a serious city-wide depression." In other words, local governments can do what they want as long as they can plausibly argue that any kind of public interest will be served.
In his clarifying dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas exposes this logic for the government land grab that it is. He accuses the majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment's "Public Use Clause" with a very different "public purpose" test: "This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a 'public use.'"

And in a separate dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that the use of this power in a reverse Robin Hood fashion--take from the poor, give to the rich--would become the norm, not the exception: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

That prospect helps explain the unusual coalition supporting the property owners in the case, ranging from the libertarian Institute for Justice (the lead lawyers) to the NAACP, AARP and the late Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The latter three groups signed an amicus brief arguing that eminent domain has often been used against politically weak communities with high concentrations of minorities and elderly. Justice Thomas's opinion cites a wealth of data to that effect.

And it's not just the "public use" requirement of the Fifth Amendment that's undermined by Kelo. So too is the guarantee of "just compensation." Why? Because there is no need to invoke eminent domain if developers are willing to pay what owners themselves consider just compensation.

Just compensation may differ substantially from so-called fair market value given the sentimental and other values many of us attach to our homes and other property. Even eager sellers will be hurt by Kelo, since developers will have every incentive to lowball their bids now that they can freely threaten to invoke eminent domain.

So, in just two weeks, the Supreme Court has rendered two major decisions on the limits of government. In Raich v. Gonzales the Court said there are effectively no limits on what the federal government can do using the Commerce Clause as a justification. In Kelo, it's now ruled that there are effectively no limits on the predations of local governments against private property.
These kinds of judicial encroachments on liberty are precisely why Supreme Court nominations have become such high-stakes battles. If President Bush is truly the "strict constructionist" he professes to be, he will take note of the need to check this disturbing trend should he be presented with a High Court vacancy.

Australian Thought Police

A "religious tolerance law" passed in Victoria, Australia was used to convict Christian pastors of speaking truth about the Koran.

A Christian pastor found guilty of vilifying muslims says he is prepared to go to jail in protest over Victoria's racial tolerance laws.

Two pastors involved with the Catch the Fire Ministries were last year found to have vilified Muslims at a Christian conference, and on a website, by suggesting the Koran promotes violence and terrorism.

The tribunal says an apology is appropriate.

It has ordered the pastors to publish a statement acknowledging their legal breach and has requested an undertaking the comments would not be repeated.

Outside the tribunal Pastor Daniel Nalliah said the legislation is flawed.

"I will do everything I can, even if I have to go to prison, to make sure the vilification laws, the religious part of the vilification laws, be removed from the state of Victoria," Pastor Nalliah said.

"Right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologise, we will go to prison for standing for the truth."

However the Islamic Council of Victoria has welcomed the ruling.

Waleed Aly from the council says the three-year legal battle was justified.

"You've got to imagine that it's post September 11 Australia," Mr Aly said.

"There's a lot of angst towards the Muslim community in the wider Australian community.

"These sort of things are said, which if you speak to the Muslims who are concerned themselves, they were fearful. I mean this was a serious thing."

But the Victorian Government has defended its religious tolerance laws.

The Victorian Opposition believes the laws are dividing the community, but acting Premier John Thwaites says the legislation is appropriate.

"We don't want to see people incited to hatred and so for that purpose I think it is sending the right message," he said.

The case is now being reviewed by the Victorian Supreme Court.

You talking to me????

The American Film Institute released its Top 100 movie quotes:

1. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," "Gone With the Wind," 1939.

2. "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse," "The Godfather," 1972.

3. "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am," "On the Waterfront," 1954.

4. "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

5. "Here's looking at you, kid," "Casablanca," 1942.

6. "Go ahead, make my day," "Sudden Impact," 1983.

7. "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," "Sunset Blvd.," 1950.

8. "May the Force be with you," "Star Wars," 1977.

9. "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night," "All About Eve," 1950.

10. "You talking to me?" "Taxi Driver," 1976.

11. "What we've got here is failure to communicate," "Cool Hand Luke," 1967.

12. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," "Apocalypse Now," 1979.

13. "Love means never having to say you're sorry," "Love Story," 1970.

14. "The stuff that dreams are made of," "The Maltese Falcon," 1941.

15. "E.T. phone home," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," 1982.

16. "They call me Mister Tibbs!", "In the Heat of the Night," 1967.

17. "Rosebud," "Citizen Kane," 1941.

18. "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!", "White Heat," 1949.

19. "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!", "Network," 1976.

20. "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," "Casablanca," 1942.

21. "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti," "The Silence of the Lambs," 1991.

22. "Bond. James Bond," "Dr. No," 1962.

23. "There's no place like home," "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

24. "I am big! It's the pictures that got small," "Sunset Blvd.," 1950.

25. "Show me the money!", "Jerry Maguire," 1996.

26. "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?", "She Done Him Wrong," 1933.

27. "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!", "Midnight Cowboy," 1969.

28. "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By,'" "Casablanca," 1942.

29. "You can't handle the truth!", "A Few Good Men," 1992.

30. "I want to be alone," "Grand Hotel," 1932.

31. "After all, tomorrow is another day!", "Gone With the Wind," 1939.

32. "Round up the usual suspects," "Casablanca," 1942.

33. "I'll have what she's having," "When Harry Met Sally...," 1989.

34. "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow," "To Have and Have Not," 1944.

35. "You're gonna need a bigger boat," "Jaws," 1975.

36. "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!", "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," 1948.

37. "I'll be back," "The Terminator," 1984.

38. "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth," "The Pride of the Yankees," 1942.

39. "If you build it, he will come," "Field of Dreams," 1989.

40. "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get," "Forrest Gump," 1994.

41. "We rob banks," "Bonnie and Clyde," 1967.

42. "Plastics," "The Graduate," 1967.

43. "We'll always have Paris," "Casablanca," 1942.

44. "I see dead people," "The Sixth Sense," 1999.

45. "Stella! Hey, Stella!", "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.

46. "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars," "Now, Voyager," 1942.

47. "Shane. Shane. Come back!", "Shane," 1953.

48. "Well, nobody's perfect," "Some Like It Hot," 1959.

49. "It's alive! It's alive!", "Frankenstein," 1931.

50. "Houston, we have a problem," "Apollo 13," 1995.

51. "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?", "Dirty Harry," 1971.

52. "You had me at `hello,'" "Jerry Maguire," 1996.

53. "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know," "Animal Crackers," 1930.

54. "There's no crying in baseball!", "A League of Their Own," 1992.

55. "La-dee-da, la-dee-da," "Annie Hall," 1977.

56. "A boy's best friend is his mother," "Psycho," 1960.

57. "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good," "Wall Street," 1987.

58. "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," "The Godfather Part II," 1974.

59. "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again," "Gone With the Wind," 1939.

60. "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!", "Sons of the Desert," 1933.

61. "Say `hello' to my little friend!", "Scarface," 1983.

62. "What a dump," "Beyond the Forest," 1949.

63. "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?", "The Graduate," 1967.

64. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!", "Dr. Strangelove," 1964.

65. "Elementary, my dear Watson," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," 1929.

66. "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape," "Planet of the Apes," 1968.

67. "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine," "Casablanca," 1942.

68. "Here's Johnny!", "The Shining," 1980.

69. "They're here!", "Poltergeist," 1982.

70. "Is it safe?", "Marathon Man," 1976.

71. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!", "The Jazz Singer," 1927.

72. "No wire hangers, ever!", "Mommie Dearest," 1981.

73. "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?", "Little Caesar," 1930.

74. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown," "Chinatown," 1974.

75. "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," "A Streetcar Named Desire," 1951.

76. "Hasta la vista, baby," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," 1991.

77. "Soylent Green is people!", "Soylent Green," 1973.

78. "Open the pod bay doors, HAL," "2001: A Space Odyssey," 1968.

79. Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." Rumack: "I am serious ... and don't call me Shirley," "Airplane!", 1980.

80. "Yo, Adrian!", "Rocky," 1976.

81. "Hello, gorgeous," "Funny Girl," 1968.

82. "Toga! Toga!", "National Lampoon's Animal House," 1978.

83. "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make," "Dracula," 1931.

84. "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast," "King Kong," 1933.

85. "My precious," "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," 2002.

86. "Attica! Attica!", "Dog Day Afternoon," 1975.

87. "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!", "42nd Street," 1933.

88. "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!", "On Golden Pond," 1981.

89. "Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper," "Knute Rockne, All American," 1940.

90. "A martini. Shaken, not stirred," "Goldfinger," 1964.

91. "Who's on first," "The Naughty Nineties," 1945.

92. "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac ... It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!", "Caddyshack," 1980.

93. "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!", "Auntie Mame," 1958.

94. "I feel the need -- the need for speed!", "Top Gun," 1986.

95. "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary," "Dead Poets Society," 1989.

96. "Snap out of it!", "Moonstruck," 1987.

97. "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 1942.

98. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," "Dirty Dancing," 1987.

99. "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!", "The Wizard of Oz," 1939.

100. "I'm king of the world!", "Titanic," 1997.

A funny joke

I'd better keep an eye out for lightning bolts:

On their way to get married, a young Catholic couple are involved in a fatal car accident. The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven.

While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven?

When St. Peter showed up, they asked him. St. Peter says, "I don't know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out", and he leaves.

The couple sat and waited, and waited. Two months passed and the couple are still waiting. As they waited, they discussed that IF they were allowed to get married in Heaven, what was the eternal aspect of it all. "What if it doesn't work?" they wondered, "Are we stuck together FOREVER?"

After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking somewhat bedraggled. "Yes," he informs the couple, "you CAN get married in Heaven."

"Great!" said the couple, "But we were just wondering, what if things don't work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?"

St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slams his clipboard onto the ground.

"What's wrong?" asked the frightened couple.

"OH, COME ON!" St. Peter shouts, "It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have ANY idea how long it'll take me to find a LAWYER?"

Food nazis coming after my grill

I saw this article yesterday, written by some goofs at Cal and published at I-village (which must stand for Idiot VIllage.) Obviously these guys have never been to the South.

High-heat cooking methods such as grilling and broiling cause meat, poultry, and fish to form potentially carcinogenic chemicals, especially if charring occurs. In addition, when fat drips on hot coals (or any heat source), other possible carcinogens are formed and are deposited on the meat by the rising smoke and flames.

This doesn't mean that you should never eat barbecued meat--just not every day. , consider these steps to reduce the risks.


Pick low-fat meats, or at least trim all visible fat, to reduce flare-ups. cut the fat, kill the taste!!!!

Marinate meats before grilling them. This can reduce the potential carcinogens by more than 90%. Use vinegar, vegetable oil, herbs, and spices. ok, I love to use marinades

To reduce grilling time, particularly for thick cuts of meat, partially precook the meat (in the oven or microwave), then finish on the grill. Blasphemy!!!!!

Don't place the heat source directly under the meat. For instance, put coals slightly to the side so that fat doesn't drip on them. OK, that's how you slow cook anyway.

Place aluminum foil or a metal pan between the meat and the coals to catch the dripping fat. If dripping fat creates a lot of smoke, remove the meat briefly or reduce the heat. Poppycock

Don't use mesquite: this softwood produces very high heat. I wouldn't tell that to any Texans, they take their mesquite bbq'ing pretty seriously.

Scrape off charred parts of meat.

Reminds me of the saying "Eat well, live right, and die anyway".

They are doing all the work....

The Manchurian fiance?

Was Katie Holmes brainwashed into Scientology? She was missing for 16 days in April and then made all of these changes.

The newly engaged Katie Holmes still has some explaining to do to her friends and family.

There were 16 days in April during which no one seems to know where she was.

Holmes made a public appearance on April 4 at the premiere of "Steel Magnolias" on Broadway.

She came with her publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnick, and a couple of other friends. They were there to support Rebecca Gayheart, who was making her Broadway debut.

I know this because I spoke to Holmes at length during the play's intermission. She said she had just moved into her New York apartment and was looking forward to seeing the city.

I also know that on April 4, she had not yet made the acquaintance of Tom Cruise. She briefly dated Josh Hartnett after breaking up with actor Chris Klein.

Hartnett, Klein, Cruise: Which of these three is not like the others? Klein and Hartnett are young and tall. Cruise is middle-aged and height-challenged.

On the other hand, he's the biggest movie star in the world. They are not.

Holmes was busy during that first week in April. On April 7, she was photographed at the Fragrance Foundation's FiFi event.

Four days later, Holmes was still in New York and was photographed at VH1's "Save the Music" concert. She still had not met Cruise.

Sometime that week, her friends say, she flew to Los Angeles for a meeting with Cruise about a role in "Mission: Impossible 3." The meeting took place after April 11.

The next time anyone heard from Holmes was on April 27, when she appeared in public as Cruise's girlfriend and love of his life.

Where was she during those 16 days?

Somewhere during that time, she decided to fire both her manager and agent, each of whom she had been with for years and who were devoted to her.

The manager, John Carrabino, also handles Renée Zellweger and is beloved by his clients.

Holmes also acquired a new best friend, Jessica Feshbach, the daughter of Joe Feshbach, a controversial Palo Alto, Calif., bond trader.

The Feshbach family, according to published documents, has donated millions to the Church of Scientology. Jessica's aunt even runs a Scientology center in Florida.

According to Richard Behar's now famous 1991 story in Time magazine about Scientology, the Feshbachs were the subject of congressional hearings in 1989.

Behar wrote: "The heads of several companies claimed that Feshbach operatives have spread false information to government agencies and posed in various guises — such as a Securities and Exchange Commission official — in an effort to discredit the companies and drive the stocks down.

"Michael Russell, who ran a chain of business journals, testified that a Feshbach employee called his bankers and interfered with his loans. Sometimes the Feshbachs send private detectives to dig up dirt on firms, which is then shared with business reporters, brokers and fund managers."

The risk-taking Feshbachs, known the world over for making their fortune "shorting" stocks, and the level-headed, conservative Holmeses would be a difficult mix at a dinner table.

Katie's father, Martin Holmes, is the senior partner in a large and respected Toledo, Ohio, law firm. His son, Martin Jr., has recently joined the firm. He's a Harvard graduate. Katie's mom, Kathy, is frequently cited in Toledo for her charity work.

There is some fear among Holmes' close circle that her instant romance with Cruise is not as organic as portrayed.

For one thing, Holmes was raised a strict Catholic. Also, gone from the picture are two close Holmes friends who used to be with her when she did publicity for a film.

One of these is Meghann Birie, a childhood friend who has suddenly disappeared from Holmes' world. Another, a local TV producer here in New York, was too afraid to discuss the situation with me.

We know that Cruise auditioned several actresses for this role before settling on Holmes. This column reported a story about Jennifer Garner. There have been published stories about Kate Bosworth, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba being approached.

A newer one involves Scarlett Johansson, who ran for her life when presented with a fait accompli dinner at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.

And history has been rewritten since the April 27 unveiling.

Curiously, since the Cruise-Holmes situation popped up, we have heard over and over again that Cruise was the young actress' idol when she was growing up.

That's certainly interesting because all of the publicity that used to run on Holmes — still found all over the Internet — lists another Tom as her favorite actor.

That would be Tom Hanks.

BenXVI gives Europe a piece of his mind

The Holy Father lays into Europe for rejecting God.

Pope Benedict XVI rails against Europe in his first book published since becoming pope, chastising a culture that he says excludes God from life and allows innocent lives — the unborn — to be taken from God through legalized abortion.

"The Europe of Benedict: In the crisis of cultures" was written when the pope was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's guardian of doctrine, and serves as a strong indication of issues that will be priorities in his pontificate.

Parts of the book were made available to The Associated Press on Monday.

Ratzinger takes as a starting point the decision of European Union leaders to exclude a reference to Europe's Christian roots from the preamble of the proposed EU constitution, whose future remains uncertain following its rejection by French and Dutch voters in recent referendums.

The Vatican had campaigned to have the reference included, part of its attempts to stem what it sees as a continent of increasingly empty churches that is often hostile to religion.

"Europe has developed a culture which, in a way never before known to humanity, excludes God from public conscience, either by being denied or by judging his existence to be uncertain and thus belonging to subjective choices, something irrelevant for public life," Benedict writes.

He dismisses arguments that inclusion of the reference would have offended Jews and Muslims, saying they are more offended by Europe's attempt to deny a historic fact.

"It's not the mention of God that offends the followers of other religious, but precisely the attempt to build a human community absolutely without God," he writes.

He says Europe needs more people like St. Benedict of Norcia, the fifth and sixth century monk who is a patron saint of Europe. The Benedictine order that followed his teachings became the main guardian of learning and literature in Western Europe during the dark centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.

Love it or leave it

A moonbat to the end

This obit from the Tucson Daily Star shows that some moonbats are moonbats to the end.

Corwyn (Cory) William Zimbleman
Tucson, AZ (formerly of Champaign, IL)

Age 53. Born April 18, 1952 to the late Willard and Gilda (Ebert) Zimbleman, died June 10, 2005. Throughout his life Cory was an extraordinary artist. His artistic talent and imagination would bring awe to all who viewed his work. His works grace an LP cover and numerous books; using Computer Aided Design (CAD) he designed home and business exteriors, interiors, and furniture for several architectural firms. His talent went beyond the fine arts as he added sculpturing, woodworking, metals, and other mediums to his repertoire. Having never gained the recognition he deserved in his own lifetime his family hopes to publish a book of his works. Another of his passions was herpetology. As a child he was always bringing home reptiles. His friends nicknamed him "Snake." He even built a turtle pond in his backyard. An avid atheist, he studied the bible and religion with more fervor than most Christians. He had strong political opinions and followed Amy Goodman's radio broadcast "Democracy Now." Alas the stolen election of 2000 and living with right-winged Americans finally brought him to his early demise. Stress from living in this unjust country brought about several heart attacks rendering him disabled. Cory, a great man, so very talented, compassionate and intelligent, dedicated to the arts and humanities and the environment, will be greatly missed by his wife, family, and friends. He is survived by his wife, Patricia Montiel; his step-daughter, Esperanza Hernandez both of Tucson; his brother, Mike (Dana) of St. Louis, MO; his sisters, Susan St. Claire of San Jose, CA and Laura Zimbleman of Ypsilanti, MI, and his turtles Heidie, Skinhead and Studley and many other pets. A memorial service will be held Tuesday, June 21, 2005 from 6:00 p.m.- 9:00 p.m., please call 883-2862 for information. Cremation has taken place.

Whitewashing Sheets Byrd

Senator Robert Byrd (D-KKK) has a memoir out, and the Washington Post falls all over themselves sanitizing Byrd's past.

The book reflects Byrd's appreciation for political history, but the private man remains private, revealing little of his heart. One exception lies in his explanation of the folly with the Klan.

As a boy, he watched a parade of white hoods in Matoaka, learning years later his father had been among them. Back then "many of the 'best' people were members," he says, and Byrd was vulnerable to the anti-Communism rhetoric.

He recruited 150 members, and when Grand Dragon Joel L. Baskin came to a meeting in Crab Orchard, Byrd was unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops.

"You have a talent for leadership, Bob," Baskin told him. "The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation."

"Suddenly lights flashed in my mind!" Byrd writes. "Someone important had recognized my abilities. I was only 23 or 24, and the thought of a political career had never struck me. But strike me that night, it did.

"It was the appealing challenge I had been looking for. Wolf Creek Hollow seemed very near and Washington very far away, with the road in between all uphill," he says. "But I was suddenly eager to climb the mountain."

He belonged to the Klan for a year, then moved in 1943 to Baltimore to help build ships.

Byrd says he never resented blacks, Catholics or Jews, but he failed to "examine the full meaning and impact of the ugly prejudice behind the positive, pro-American veneer."

"My only explanation for the entire episode is that I was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision _ a jejune and immature outlook _ seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions."

Yeah, right. What's funny is that one writer for the Post, Eric Pianin, reveals too much about Byrd.

Byrd wrote that he continued as a "Kleagle" recruiting for the Klan until early 1943, when he and his family left Crab Orchard for a welding job in a Baltimore shipyard. Returning to West Virginia after World War II ended in 1945, he launched his political career, but not before writing another letter, to one of the Senate's most notorious segregationists, Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.), complaining about the Truman administration's efforts to integrate the military.

Byrd said in the Dec. 11, 1945, letter -- which would not become public for 42 more years with the publication of a book on blacks in the military during World War II by author Graham Smith -- that he would never fight in the armed forces "with a Negro by my side." Byrd added that, "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."

and:

Confronting the issue, Byrd went on the radio to acknowledge that he belonged to the Klan from "mid-1942 to early 1943," according to newspaper accounts. He explained that he had joined "because it offered excitement and because it was strongly opposed to communism." He said that after about a year, he quit and dropped his membership, and never was interested in the Klan again.

Byrd won the primary, but during the general election campaign, Byrd's GOP opponent uncovered a letter Byrd had handwritten to Green, the KKK Imperial Wizard, recommending a friend as a Kleagle and urging promotion of the Klan throughout the country. The letter was dated 1946 -- long after the time Byrd claimed he had lost interest in the Klan. "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia," Byrd wrote, according to newspaper accounts of that period. Byrd makes no mention of the letter in his new book.

and:

Byrd's Klan past became an issue again when he joined with other southern Democrats to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Byrd filibustered the bill for more than 14 hours as he argued that it abrogated principles of federalism. He criticized most anti-poverty programs except for food stamps. And in 1967, he voted against the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, the first black appointed to the Supreme Court.

ACLU pizza delivery

This would be funnier if wasn't so scary. Sound required.

Memo to Pataki: Take Back the Memorial

The NY Post's editorial page weighs in.

Herewith an update on the Interna tional Freedom Center at Ground Zero. The news is worrisome.
Richard Tofel, the center's president, chatted with Fox News' Neil Cavuto last week in an entirely unconvincing effort to refute charges that leftists and other intellectual lowlifes are out to hijack the Ground Zero memorial.

The fireworks started earlier this month when Debra Burlingame, a sister of the pilot of one of the hijacked 9/11 planes, wrote in The Wall Street Journal: "Ground Zero has been stolen right from under our noses."

Burlingame, a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, specifically charged that Tofel and others are planning to host exhibits at Ground Zero devoted to such wholly off-topic issues as the alleged "genocide" of Americans Indians, the fight against slavery, the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag.

Worthy subjects for study, each and every one — but not at Ground Zero.

Tofel, for his part, insists that the controversy is all about nothing.

But when Cavuto asked, specifically, whether the museum would feature "atrocities Americans have committed," Tofel repeatedly refused a direct answer.

"Atrocities is such a loaded word," he stammered, the weasel.

Tofel needed to say — unequivocally — that the museum will not impugn or disparage America in any way, shape, form or manner.

End of discussion.

But that probably would have been a lie. In fact, the IFC seems destined precisely to become a multimillion-dollar bash-America palace.

Real Americans, after all, have no trouble recalling that Ground Zero is the site of an unspeakable atrocity committed against them. They'll wonder by what perverted logic is it appropriate to use the spot to dredge up shameful, painful episodes in American history that have nothing to do with 9/11.

Yet that is transparently Tofel's plan.

Slavery in America, for example, "probably" would be focused on, he said, because a key goal is to "inspire an end to hatred, ignorance and intolerance."

Let's be clear: America did nothing to deserve 9/11. Indeed, the fanatics — infused with "hatred, ignorance and intolerance — targeted the United States precisely because it stands as a monument to freedom and the material prosperity it produces.

The Islamists hate freedom because it threatens their power and underscores their failures.

And they hate material prosperity because it has eluded their culture; thus they must deny it to everyone.

So destroying the iconic evidence of the fruits of U.S. freedom — the Twin Towers — was vital to sustaining their credibility.

Which is why it would be outrageous for the IFC to entertain even the possibility that America somehow deserved what it got on 9/11. And yet that seems to be exactly what is going on.

"The International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you — and I — will disagree," Tofel wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Debates?

Like, whether America is sufficiently sensitive to other cultures?

Whether Muslims — and non-Americans generally — need to protect themselves from U.S. "hegemony"?

What utterly offensive nonsense.

It better not rear its ugly head anywhere near Ground Zero.

True, some IFC affiliates are serious, reasonable folk. Its advisers include John Bridgeland and Adm. Charles Abott, former aides to President Bush.

Tofel himself is a respected Wall Street Journal alum.

But, ideologically speaking, there are some very reprehensible characters involved in this project.

To wit:

* Tom Bernstein, an IFC founder, and Michael Posner, an advisor, also run the George Soros-funded Human Rights First, a bash-America forum of the first order. If you doubt it, visit the Web site: humanrightsfirst.org.

* Board member Anthony Romero of the ACLU (aclu.org) reportedly wants exhibits on what he believes have been post-9/11 "curbs to civil liberties."

* Stephen Heintz, the board's secretary, is with the Rockefeller Bros. Fund (rbf.org), which at present is concerned with what it terms the "pressing need to examine the content, style and tone of U.S. global engagement and to ensure that they reflect an understanding of the reality and implications of increasing global interdependence." (Translation: Blame America First.)

* Eric Foner, a Columbia University professor who, three weeks after 9/11, said he wasn't sure which was more frightening, the attack or the White House's response, is another adviser.

And the list goes on.

Ten years ago, the Smithsonian Institution proposed a seemingly benign plan to commemorate the 50th anniversary of end of World War II in the Pacific.

The undertaking swiftly morphed into a naked attack on American war motives, tactics and strategy that highlighted Japanese suffering and totally ignored the fact that Tokyo started the conflict.

That happens these days when academics are left to their own devices.

Tofel seems to be part of the problem — and thus he'd be a good place to start when Gov. Pataki puts his foot down on this hijacking-of-history-in-the-making.

As the governor must.

Clean up your act or pack up your desk, is the message Pataki needs to deliver. Unambiguously.

And the governor, or Ground Zero Czar John Cahill, would do well to be at Church and Liberty streets at noon today, when Burlingame and others rally on behalf of the memorial they mean to see erected at site of the bloodiest assault on American soil since Pearl Harbor.

There are many questions to be answered, and today is as good as any for Pataki to begin answering them.

Burlingame isn't going to fade quietly away.

Nor will we.

Nor will New Yorkers who care about doing the decent thing at Ground Zero.

American atrocities, indeed.

Take back the Memorial



Take back the memorial is having a rally on Monday June 19th to bring attention to the travesty that the IFC is trying to commit at Ground Zero. They have some harsh truths for George Pataki:

Governor Pataki, in five years, millions of people will come to Lower Manhattan, Ground Zero, looking for information about what happened there.

WAKE UP GOVERNOR PATAKI! Visitors will find but a tiny underground memorial buried by exhibits on Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Tibetan Monks, and other completely irrelevant showcases. The IFC is talking about slavery while the pictures of the Towers exploding will be buried underground.

Governor Pataki, surely you don’t believe these are the right stories for Ground Zero. Surely you don’t believe the story of September 11th should relegated to a basement!

WAKE UP GOVERNOR PATAKI! “Blame America” organizations and other political groups will have a venue - on top of a mass grave site - to stage their protests and exhibit their anti-American propaganda.

WAKE UP GOVERNOR PATAKI! “Blame America” groups will have a venue - on top of a mass grave site - to express their sympathy for terrorists, and complaints about their treatment.

Governor Pataki, surely you don’t believe Ground Zero is an appropriate venue for political activism. Surely you don’t believe it is appropriate to open Ground Zero to anti-war rallies and flag burning events!

Governor Pataki, surely you don’t believe an IFC at Ground Zero is an appropriate venue for those who would show sympathy for TERRORISTS!

The IFC represents the wrong people telling the wrong story. Sacred ground has been handed to people who plan to use Ground Zero to push a political agenda, while pushing aside a fitting and respectful memorial for the victims. This is even more scurrilous than those Ground Zero street vendors and con artists fleecing unsuspecting tourists.

Such blatant disrespect for the victims is outrageous, and infuriates the very people who are paying for it: the public. We invite you to read the nearly 1000 entries in our guestbook by those who support our cause: No politics at Ground Zero. Period.

Governor Pataki, please help us build an appropriate memorial for those who lost their lives on September 11th. Please help us honor their memories by keeping politics out of Ground Zero.

GOVERNOR PATAKI - WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Insight from the Catholic Church's National Review Board

The Chairman of the National Review Board, the group charged to ensure that children are safe from predatory priests, gave this good interview. Excerpts:

Twenty years as a canon and civil lawyer for Catholic institutions did not prepare Nicholas Cafardi for what he encountered as a member and chairman of the National Review Board charged with overseeing the U.S. bishops' response to accusations of sexual abuse by priests.

"It's been a dark night of the soul," said Cafardi, 56, dean emeritus of the Duquesne University School of Law. He has just completed a three-year term on the board, including a final stint as chairman. Now he is on an academic sabbatical in Rome, where he will do a doctoral thesis on the early but ineffective attempts by U.S. bishops to respond to accusations of child sexual abuse.

He believes the bishops have now taken steps that will all but eliminate molestation, and that any church workers who molest a minor will be removed and reported. The Catholic Church, he believes, has set an example that other helping professions should follow.

On Friday, U.S. bishops, meeting in Chicago, voted to extend that policy, which permanently bars abusive priests from church work, for another five years. The Vatican is expected to approve the extension.

Cafardi says that in his work on the review board, he encountered depths of perversion and pain that were incomprehensible to him. He found pockets of resistance to his work. Even a close friend in the priesthood accused his board of treating priests as the enemy.

"The harm done by some priests to children in their care was ... I don't know what to call it -- it was more than reprehensible," he said. "And the knowledge that some bishops turned a blind eye to this behavior makes you think things about the church you love that you would prefer not to think. It was more than disillusioning."

Cafardi was appointed to the newly created board in 2002 because he already had nearly 20 years of experience in such matters, but that still did not prepare him for what he discovered.

"My personal experience in the Diocese of Pittsburgh was that these men were not reassigned, they were not put back into parish life. It was a shock for me to find out other dioceses weren't doing the same thing," he said.

and:

"I learned very early on that not all of the bishops were aware of what they had created. Most bishops were solidly behind our work, but there were some who questioned the existence of the board," Cafardi said.

Of 195 diocesan bishops, perhaps two dozen resisted, he said. One threatened to sue the board.

"To have some bishops fighting us every step of the way was disillusioning because we thought we were doing what the bishops asked us to do. They are men whose teaching authority I believe in. To just have them disdain our work or question our motives was very difficult," he said.

He believes that those men were reacting to what they perceived as lay encroachment on their canonical authority, however, and were not trying to cover up ongoing abuse.

"These are not bishops who are ever going to reassign a sexually abusive priest. What they don't like is the structure the bishops put together to monitor their policies," he said.

Victims groups have long complained that the only bishop to lose his post for reassigning known child molesters was Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, in whose archdiocese the scandal broke when court records were released in early 2002. Law resigned about a year later.

The board has no power to remove bishops, Cafardi said.

"Since only the Holy Father can remove a bishop, and that happens very rarely, the only way a bishop is going to removed is if he looks into his own conscience and says, 'I blew it, and I blew it so badly that I can't really function as a bishop again,' " he said.

"Perhaps there should have been a few more bishops who did that."

The ads up top

Just a quick note that the products being advertised up top are not necessarily representative of my views. Sometimes they are, sometimes they ain't. Use your own judgement....

Tribute to fallen fathers

Steve Dunleavy pays tribute to some dads who won't be here for Father's Day: a trubite to fallen firefighters.

TODAY, as our kids give us goofy gifts and wives pretend to cook breakfast, let's pause on our great moments of fatherhood, and yes, childhood, for a tiny second, and whisper a blessing for these brave children.

They are the offspring of four brave men - Fire Lt. Curt Meyran and firefighters John Bellew, Eugene Stolowski and Jeffrey Cool - whose lives ended or changed forever in a Bronx fire on Jan. 23, "Black Sunday."

Jeanette Meyran, the lieutenant's widow, cried as she spoke of her kids.

"Dennis, my oldest son, who is 17, is lost. He has said over and over that he lost his best friend, and he says that Dad taught him a lot but there is a lot more he had to learn."

Daughter Angela showed incredible philosophy for a 10-year-old when she said, "I think with my daddy gone I have lost my childhood."

Worst of all came from little Danine, 7, who told her mom: "I don't think I remember what Daddy's voice sounds like anymore."

All this because, without ropes, six firefighters were forced to leap 50 feet, given the impossible choice of melting or being crushed.

Mrs. Meyran beat time and gut-wrenching emotion to put the inscription on her late husband's headstone before Father's Day. It reads: "In the arms of the angels until we meet again."

And there is Eileen Bellew, who is the widow of John Bellew, a beautiful Irishman.

"I'll tell you right now the kids are not really doing too good," she said from her house up in Pearl River, Rockland County

Eileen has three daughters and a 4-year-old boy called Jack who stomps around like an elephant with 10 legs.

"But even this Father's Day, I know John is looking over the kids and me. I'll always love you, John," Eileen said.

And then there were the injured on that frightening day. Eugene Stolowski saw his body so shattered that I truly believed he wouldn't live more than 48 hours. Wrong.

"Gene has a long way to go, but he really is doing great," said his wife, Brigid. "And the kids are with him today on Father's Day."

The kids are Briana and little twin girls Kaitlin and Kailey, who were born while Gene was battling for life.

And there are kids like Dylan and Jeffrey Cool Jr., children of Jeff Cool, who took that frightening plunge and lived.

Wife Jill said: "He is doing great, but the kids are very aware that two men died. Guess what, both want to be firemen."

Mrs. Bellew, whose pretty face has been met by many tears, said: "When young Jack saw the fire engine, he said - I can't remember what he said, but it was something like I want to become a fireman."

Today, when we get silly gifts and wives pretend to cook breakfast, spare a nanosecond for Curt and John, and the survivors of that day who make me wish I was just half the man they were and are.

So what were the REAL gulags?

The Jawa Report lets us know what the REAL gulags were like.

The problem with calling any penal system which is 'oppressive' a gulag is that it minimizes the enormity of the crimes committed in the Soviet gulag system. Still, the term is lightly thrown around among polemicists wishing to make a point.

It is important to recognize three distinguishing characteristics of the gulags that seperate them from other prison systems.

First, the gulags were a form of political terrorism. These massive prisons were used to weed out those that were even remotely suspected of having all but the most enthusiastic of feelings toward the Soviet system. Solzhenitsyn, for instance, found himself in a Siberian gulag for making the mistake of making a joke about Stalin in a letter.

Can a single prison holding less than 500 people be considered a widespread tool of political terrorism?

Second, the gulags were a source of slave labor. It is not a coincidence that the massive increase in the number of prisoners in the gulags is timed precisely with the announcement of Stalin's first Five Year Plan. Although most of our knowledge of the gulag system comes from the intellectual class that survived them, such as the memories of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelego, most of the victims were simple peasants. The gulags were not prisons in the Western sense of the word. The gulags were massive industrial complexes of forced labor.

No prisoner at Guantanomo or at any other detention facility for war prisoners has alleged forced labor.

Third, while the purpose of the gulags was not necessarily to torture or kill prisoners, the gulags were a place where humiliation, torture, and genocide scale mass deaths occured. Unlike survivors of the holocaust, though, who have found voice in the state of Israel, in US based interest-groups, or who have captured the fascination of Hollywood, the story of the gulags remains largely unheard of for the vast majority of the American public. While we understand that the gulags were bad places in the Soviet Union, the horrors of the gulag do not seem to resonate with us in the same way.

Anne Applebaum in Capitalism Magazine:

As a result, between 1929, when they first became a mass phenomenon, and 1953, the year of Stalin's death, some 18 million people passed through them. In addition, a further 6 or 7 million people were deported, not to camps but to exile villages. In total, that means the number of people with some experience of imprisonment in Stalin's Soviet Union could have run as high as 25 million, about 15 percent of the population.

The Hoover Institute, which in 1999 began to publish their findings from newly opened original documents from the Lenin-Kruschev era, notes:

-Ten percent of the entire population of the Soviet Union lived in the camps.
-The Gulag administration was the largest single employer in all of Europe.
-The average life expectancy of a camp prisoner was one winter.
-At least twenty million people perished in the labor camps during Stalin’s rule.
-The camps dehumanized life and instituted a reign of terror throughout Soviet society.

A single gulag complex, Kolyma, killed 3 million people. In total, between 1937 and 1953, as estimated by Robert Conquest, Kolyma consumed almost 3 million lives, mainly natives of the Soviet Union.

But foreigners were also victim. For instance, at the Chukhots camp? No Polish prisoners at all returned of 3000 sent to Chukhots camps

The gulags, then, were a system of terror. When speaking of a single gulag, a person may be tempted to conjure up the image of German POW camp, perhaps Stalig 13 out of a 1960s WWII movie. Perhaps this is why European and American Leftists like to compare Camp X-Ray to the gulags. Such an image, though, would be far from the truth.

To understand the sheer enormity of a single gulag one would have to envision medium sized cities made up entirely of the victims of forced relocation campaigns surrounded by a series of smaller cities made up entirely of slave laborers. Some of the gulags were so massive in geographic scale that they are hard to imagine. For instance, the deadly Kolyma gulag was really a series of forced labor camps in and around the massive gold mine and not a single prison. Think the size of US states, and not just Rhode Island and Deleware--think Kansas.

What were the Soviet gulags like?

Susanna Pechuro retells the horrors of the gulags:

The most horrible thing I saw in a camp was how children were taken away from their mothers. Because it's something you can't live with. And there are some things I don't let myself remember, because if I do I get insomnia for several weeks remembering those screaming mothers after their children have been taken away from them, [screaming] because they will never know where these children are being taken, to what orphanages. I've never seen anything more horrible than that, even though I also saw people beaten up. But nothing more horrible than the separation of children and mothers. And this can never and should never be forgiven. No matter what communists say now, the social structure which made it possible will never be pardoned.

Melana Zyla Vickers relates the following story from Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History. It is reminiscent of the Holocaust:

...millions of children were either imprisoned with their mothers, or were born in the Gulag. Babies were taken from their mothers to be watched in batches of dozens by rough-mannered nurses. The nurses "took off their nightclothes and washed them in ice-cold water. The babies didn't even dare cry. They made little sniffing noises like old men and let out low hoots. This awful hooting noise would come from the cots for days at a time," wrote political dissident Hava Volovich. Of her own baby, Volovich wrote: "Little Eleanora, who was now fifteen months old, soon realized that her pleas for 'home' were in vain. She stopped reaching out for me when I visited her; she would turn away in silence. On the last day of her life, when I picked her up (they allowed me to breast-feed her) she stared wide-eyed somewhere off into the distance, then started to beat her weak little fists on my face. . . . Then she pointed down at her bed. In the evening, when I came back with my bundle of firewood, . . . I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners."

This story of the gulags reminds us of the periodic mass murders that took place. From Applebaum agian:

During the winter of 1937-38, "no hot food was given to the prisoners at all; the daily ration consisted of 400 grams of half-dried bread. [In March 1938], a new group of NKVD officers arrived from Moscow. The officers formed a 'special commission' and called out the prisoners in groups of forty. They were told they were going off on a transport. Each was given a piece of bread. The prisoners in the tent heard them being marched away --- and then [heard] the sounds of shooting."

Karol M.Nawalicki remembers the horrors of the Kolyma gulag:

"-It was easier to get accustomed to seeing the dead or dying, than to the scenes of stripping the dead bodies, sometimes even before they had died. The inmates did this themselves in order to have more clothes. There was no place for the majesty of death in the gulags of Kolyma. I could not get used to naked bodies being dragged by their legs to a special store, some considerable distance from the barracks. The mortuary was emptied depending on the season of the year."

Avraham Shifrin, the son of a gulag victim and gulag survivor himself, recounts his experience:

Until 1956, Shifrin and his fellow prisoners worked ten-hour days, seven days a week. Thereafter the work load was reduced to six days. Prisoners who attempted to escape, and were shot and killed some distance from the camp, were left to rot (though their index fingers were severed for purposes of fingerprint identification). The bodies of those shot close to camp were placed near the gate to terrorize and deter other inmates who might be contemplating escape....

Shifrin also recalled a grisly incident involving a prisoner who cut off his hand with an ax and asked a fellow inmate to place the severed appendage inside lumber that had been loaded for shipment. When Shifrin asked the amputee why he had done this, he replied that the lumber would go to other countries, where the hand might help people understand the conditions under which the lumber was cut.

Hopelessness, desperation, and fatigue from the exhausting work schedule led to many instances of self-mutilation. Some prisoners induced infections by pulling thread through the plaque between their teeth, then running the thread through a few inches of flesh with a needle. Serious infection would develop within minutes and justify their transport to a hospital for a "rest."

Krakowiecki on the mine workers at the Kolyma gulag:

From there, from the gold mine, came a procession of human phantoms. These people were driven hard to work, like animals, through the entire (summer) season. The animals would have revolted or died. The man endures more than they do. The men exploited through the season changed into skeletons. One cannot understand how these people are still alive? Only skin and bones, without exaggeration. These past people, physically completely destroyed, are not needed in the gold mine anymore, because their productivity is nil; therefore the half dead men are directed to the task of maintaining the roads."

I wish our Bishops were like this

The Socialists in Spain want to legalize gay marriage, and 20 Bishops led the protests.

Hundreds of thousands of people led by 20 Roman Catholic bishops and conservative opposition leaders clogged downtown Madrid on Saturday in a demonstration against the Socialist government's bill to legalize gay marriage and permit gay couples to adopt children.

Chanting in favor of the family and children's rights, the demonstration, called by a lay Catholic group, the Spanish Forum for the Family, was held in a festive atmosphere with participants waving colorful balloons and Spanish and regional flags.

A half hour into the demonstration, organizers were claiming 1.5 million people had attended. But media eyewitnesses found the estimate difficult to believe, with most putting the crowd size at some 500,000. No police figure was immediately available.

Madrid's Cardinal Jose Antonio Maria Rouco Varela was among 20 bishops at the head of the rally, along with the opposition Popular Party's leaders, Angel Acebes and Eduardo Zaplana.

The gay marriage bill is expected to become law in a matter of weeks. It has been passed by the lower chamber of Parliament and will be voted on next week by the Senate.

Opinion polls indicate a majority of Spaniards support the bill.

But demonstrators were angry at what they called the degradation of the institution of marriage and the fact that gay couples may adopt.

"Marriage can only be between man and a woman," said Agustin Cruz, 41. "It's a divine and natural law. Marriage of homosexuals is a lie. You have to call things by their name. The first lie begins when you start calling queers 'gays.' They're queers, it's not an insult, it's the definition of that race of people."

Banners reading "FamilyMan+Woman" and "A mother and father for every child" could be seen up and down the demonstration, which was attended by families and individuals of all ages. Handfuls of priests and nuns mixed with lay protesters.

Chants for Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to resign resounded continuously.

"This demonstration is the people's response to the government's provocations," said Fr. Jose Ramon Velasco. We're not against homosexuals but allowing them to marry degrades matrimony.

"And they shouldn't have the right to adopt because if those children turn out to be homosexual, who will be to blame, the government?"

Velasco compared the bill to the beginnings of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

"Back then the majority of people also backed Hitler just like the majority back this law," he said. "I'm serious, give it time and it will destroy the moral fiber of Spain and the West."

The Bishops' Conference last week said the gay marriage bill was the biggest challenge to the church and its values in 2,000 years.

It was the first time the church has given such a display of anti-government activism in more than 20 years.

Unfortunately we have Cardinals like Egan and Mahoney, instead of leaders like the late John Cardinal O'Connor.

Turban Durbin

Archbishop of Canterbury vs the blogs

Seems the old Archdruid of Canterbury doesn't like blogs.

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised the new web-based media for ?paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry?. He described the atmosphere on the world wide web as a free-for-all that was ?close to that of unpoliced conversation?.

In a lecture to media professionals, politicians and church leaders at Lambeth Palace in London last night, Dr Williams wondered whether a balance could be struck between the professionalism of the classical media and the relative disorder of online communication.

What is wrong with a "free for all" and "unpoliced conversation?" Do wish to silence those of us who think you're an idiot?

Shaking the dust off of their feet

Orthodox Anglicans, tired of the heathens in ECUSA and ACC, appear to be ready to do something about it.

A draft of a constitution detailing a proposed realignment of the worldwide Anglican Communion became public this week, outlining for the first time how divisions over homosexuality may change the face of the more than 70-million-member church.

The unsourced and undated four-page document, named "The Organizing Constitution of the Anglican Global Initiative," has been circulating among some executive members of the Episcopal Church since January, after it was brought to the church's New York headquarters following a meeting of African bishops in Nairobi.

Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, a group of clergy and lay people, made the document available on its Web site. Its existence was first reported this week by the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain.

The articles of the constitution state that the Anglican Global Initiative would be an organization of Anglicans from the Global South, which includes Africa, Asia and parts of the Southern Hemisphere, and those in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada who "hold to the centrality and authority of Holy Scripture."

The new organization would "affiliate and unite" the Global South -- which represents about three-quarters of the total membership of the Anglican Communion -- with conservative Episcopalians, Canadian Anglicans and the so-called English evangelicals who have protested same-sex blessings and the consecration of a non-celibate gay bishop as disregarding basic Anglican beliefs.

The Anglican Global Initiative would be led by an executive council of archbishops from the Global South, along with like-minded leaders from North America and a lay representative. Archbishops Peter Akinola of Nigeria and Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, two of the most outspoken critics of the Episcopal Church's recent actions, were designated as co-presidents.

A band-aid solution

Some Bishops still don't get it

A meeting of bishops to discuss sexually abusive priests shows that some don't get it.

America's Roman Catholic bishops will keep their pledge to protect children from sexually abusive priests as they revise their discipline plan for offenders, a key prelate said at a national church meeting Thursday.

Bishops overseeing a review of the three-year-old policy have recommended that dioceses continue permanently barring guilty clergy from all church work. Some Catholic leaders have been concerned that the punishment is too severe.

"No one wants to permit children to be abused in the church," said Chicago Cardinal Francis George, who lead a team of U.S. bishops who worked with Vatican officials on the revisions. "It's a source of great shame for all of us, a source of scandal for the faithful and for the world."

The bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse spent months soliciting comment on the policy.

"Overall there was definite expression that the `one-strike' policy needs to be retained for now," the committee wrote in recommendations presented Thursday.

Still, the panel noted that "many, perhaps a majority," of prelates hoped that they could eventually allow men who are truly rehabilitated back into ministry ? an idea victims vehemently oppose.

The bishops are expected to discuss and vote on the revisions Friday.

Church leaders adopted the discipline plan, called the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, in June 2002, with the mandate that it be revisited after two years. The policy remained in effect though the review concluded later than planned.

The original charter was drafted as scandal was consuming the church. Catholics were demanding bishops resign, state prosecutors were convening grand juries to investigate and hundreds of new abuse claims were pouring in.

Bishops were desperate to restore trust in their leadership, and some Catholic leaders said the due process rights of priests were sacrificed in the process.

They complained the charter violated Catholic belief in redemption and forgiveness, and dictated a draconian, one-size-fits-all response for cases they said varied dramatically.

Victims countered that bishops who had allowed predators to stay in the priesthood could not be trusted to decide whether a clergyman was cured. Hundreds of accused clergy have been removed from the ministry in the last three years, although most of their alleged wrongdoing occurred decades ago.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said church leaders have no choice but to oust guilty priests.

"The wounds are too fresh and deep, financial costs are too high and lay people are too upset for them to go back on such a simple, elementary proposition," Clohessy said.

Socialized Malpractice



A Quebec man was told to wait a year for a hip replacement; he got mad AND even.

Let's hope Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy were sitting down when they heard the news of the latest bombshell Supreme Court ruling. From the Supreme Court of Canada, that is. That high court issued an opinion last Thursday saying, in effect, that Canada's vaunted public health-care system produces intolerable inequality.

Call it the hip that changed health-care history. When George Zeliotis of Quebec was told in 1997 that he would have to wait a year for a replacement for his painful, arthritic hip, he did what every Canadian who's been put on a waiting list does: He got mad. He got even madder when he learned it was against the law to pay for a replacement privately. But instead of heading south to a hospital in Boston or Cleveland, as many Canadians already do, he teamed up to file a lawsuit with Jacques Chaoulli, a Montreal doctor. The duo lost in two provincial courts before their win last week.

The court's decision strikes down a Quebec law banning private medical insurance and is bound to upend similar laws in other provinces. Canada is the only nation other than Cuba and North Korea that bans private health insurance, according to Sally Pipes, head of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and author of a recent book on Canada's health-care system.

"Access to a waiting list is not access to health care," wrote Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin for the 4-3 Court last week. Canadians wait an average of 17.9 weeks for surgery and other therapeutic treatments, according the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. The waits would be even longer if Canadians didn't have access to the U.S. as a medical-care safety valve. Or, in the case of fortunate elites such as Prime Minister Paul Martin, if they didn't have access to a small private market in some non-core medical services. Mr. Martin's use of a private clinic for his annual checkup set off a political firestorm last year.

The ruling stops short of declaring the national health-care system unconstitutional; only three of the seven judges wanted to go all the way.

But it does say in effect: Deliver better care or permit the development of a private system. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." The Justices who sit on Canada's Supreme Court, by the way, aren't a bunch of Scalias of the North. This is the same court that last year unanimously declared gay marriage constitutional.

The Canadian ruling ought to be an eye-opener for the U.S., where "single-payer," government-run health care is still a holy grail on the political left and even for some in business (such as the automakers). This month the California Senate passed a bill that would create a state-run system of single-payer universal health care. The Assembly is expected to follow suit. Someone should make sure the Canadian Supreme Court's ruling is on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's reading list before he makes a veto decision.

The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune from the laws of economics. Politicians can't wave a wand and provide equal coverage for all merely by declaring medical care to be a "right," in the word that is currently popular on the American left.

There are only two ways to allocate any good or service: through prices, as is done in a market economy, or lines dictated by government, as in Canada's system. The socialist claim is that a single-payer system is more equal than one based on prices, but last week's court decision reveals that as an illusion. Or, to put it another way, Canadian health care is equal only in its shared scarcity.

When asked whether he was worried about being known as the man who helped bring down his country's universal health-care system, Mr. Zeliotis told the Toronto Star, "No way. I'm the guy saving it." If the Canadian ruling can open American eyes to the limitations of government-run health care, Mr. Zeliotis's hip just might end up saving the U.S. system too.

Cooked Crook

Atl east he saved the taxpayers the cost of a trial: crook gets cooked in attic.

A man hiding from police died in an attic where the temperature climbed above 100 degrees Monday, officials said.

Earle Herring, 57, was hiding in the attic of his sister's De Bary home.

"He climbed up into the attic because police cars showed up," Mary Herring Donaldson said. "He probably thought they were going to come into the house and he probably wanted to avoid them."

Donaldson said she called Volusia County court officials to report that her brother was at the house. Herring had been living in a bedroom behind the garage although a judge had ordered him to not have contact with his sister after a May 23 domestic battery charge, she said.

Sheriff's deputies arrived at 3 p.m., but no one answered a knock at the door. Donaldson later returned and called deputies back to the house at about 5 p.m., and suggested they search the attic, where her brother would often fix the air conditioning system.

Deputies found the attic door wedged shut with electrical wires "wrapped around the hinges from inside the attic, making entry difficult," according to the incident report.

Once inside, they discovered Herring's body. The temperature inside the attic was more than 100 degrees, officials said.

An autopsy determined that Herring died from either heat exhaustion or heatstroke.

A better man than me

This is a great article about Staff Sgt Jason Leisey and his recovery from injuries suffered in Iraq.

When he awoke in a hospital bed in Texas, Staff Sgt. Jason Leisey knew about the small, white car and the explosion on the dark road in Iraq.

But he did not know where he was.

Leisey did not know he had been in a coma for two weeks. He did not know he had been on a ventilator, with his family gathered around his hospital bed.

He didn?t know he was so badly injured that his own mother would not have recognized him.

The last thing the 25-year-old soldier knew was that he had told the medics caring for him in Mosul, ?I?m OK.?

But he wasn?t.

A suicide bomber had driven into his Humvee just outside his base in Bayji.

The 1998 Hempfield High School graduate suffered third-degree burns on his left hand, arm and leg. He had shrapnel in his right bicep and right thigh. His face was burned.

Leisey also had inhalation injuries from breathing in the fiery aftermath of the attack.

Leisey?s mother, Linda, a Mountville resident, flew to Texas to see her son after the attack. It was a sobering time.

?The first two weeks...,? she says, then pauses. ?I mean, he couldn?t breathe on his own.?

Since the April attack, Leisey has undergone three surgeries. In the first two, surgeons grafted skin onto his burned leg and arm.

Surgeons amputated all of the fingers on his left hand in the third surgery. He has just a small part of his left ear remaining on the side of his head.

Leisey is out of the hospital but is still in Texas, facing up to a year of physical therapy and followup care at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He is living in a nearby outpatient residence, his recovery aided by his wife, Katie Gribbin, a Lancaster Catholic High School graduate.

His memories of the attack just two months ago are still very vivid. He is glad to be alive.

?For a while, I was really, not depressed, but angry that this happened. It took me a while. I was thinking, ?Why did this happen to me??

?I guess everyone goes through that. I?ve worked through that. I realize that everything happens for a reason. I?ve learned to live with what happened.?

Leisey, who entered the Army National Guard when he was 17, went to Iraq in December. He already had done a peace-keeping mission in Kosovo and was anxious to do a tour in Iraq.

?I wanted to go,? he says. ?A lot of my friends were going and I just felt if they were going, I wanted to be there with them. I had served in Kosovo with them.

?They were like brothers to me.?

Leisey, who also is the son of Alan Leisey of Manheim, had worked and attended classes at Harrisburg Area Community College after high school. While home from Kosovo, he had met his wife and married her, in September 2004.

After arriving in Iraq, Leisey?s unit did security for supply convoys, clearing roads of bombs. His unit also did ?presence patrols,? going into villages to interact with people.

?We showed our faces, let them know we?re there to help them, we?re on their side and want things to get better,? he says.

Children were friendly. Many adults stayed away. Some of them, the soldiers knew, were moving money to fund the insurgents.

The night of the attack, Leisey?s unit had just finished a routine patrol and was heading back to its base.

?We had just crested the hill and were about 200 yards from the front gate,? he says. ?And there was a car. We saw it.?

Leisey was in the fourth Humvee in a convoy of five. The car swerved around the Humvee in front of Leisey?s.

?I heard the tires screeching and knew it was coming pretty fast,? he says. ?He swerved around them. ... He swerved back in.?

The suicide bomber?s car collided with Leisey?s Humvee. The car, which Leisey later learned was with loaded with some kind of accelerant, and the Humvee exploded. The driver died shortly after the crash.

Leisey blacked out, but only briefly.

?I remember looking up the road and standing up, and hearing people yelling,? he says. ?I was hearing the ammunition in the (Humvee) getting cooked off. The ammo was hot and firing and there was a risk of people getting hit.?

Leisey saw that other soldiers had brought a big truck, like a flatbed, out to gather up the four wounded men who were riding in the Humvee. He walked over to it on his own.

He didn?t know it at the time but his third-degree burns, the most severe type, had melted his nerve endings.

?I didn?t think anything was wrong with me at the time,? he says. ?I didn?t know I was burned. I didn?t feel anything at all.?

Leisey was transferred to Mosul, where medics sedated him. Unconscious, he went to Germany and then to Texas, where he awoke two weeks later.

Two of the three other soldiers in the Humvee with Leisey also suffered serious wounds. One had a leg amputated, lost his spleen and suffered other internal injuries. Another had his face and pelvis smashed. He?s in a wheelchair but expected to walk.

The third had shrapnel wounds and later returned to duty in Iraq.

For his part, Leisey is attending physical therapy twice a day in Texas, stretching his burned arm so the muscles don?t contract from the scarring.

He also is riding a stationery bicycle to get cardiovascular exercise. And he expects to get a prosthetic device for his left hand, though it?s too early for that yet.

In the meantime, his wife helps him in therapy and assists him as he puts on his shirt, ties his shoes and does the many other tasks made suddenly difficult by the fact that he only has five fingers on one hand.

When he completes his physical therapy, Leisey hopes to return to Lancaster County, finish college with possibly a degree in finance, settle and raise a family. He also hopes to stay in the National Guard, maybe in intelligence.

He and his wife are grateful for the support they have received from local folks while they have been in Texas.

A fund was started, and about $9,000 was donated. Leisey?s mother?s co-workers at Hempfield School District, donated a good chunk of that. The American Legion kicked in $5,000.

?We were like, ?Wow.? It was just amazing,? Linda Leisey says.

The couple has used some of the money to help family members come to Texas to see Leisey and to pay for some day-to-day expenses. They may use some of it to buy a vehicle.

The fund is still accepting donations, which can be sent to: the Jason Leisey/Katie Gribbin Fund, in care of Hempfield Area School District, 200 Church St., Landisville, PA 17538.

?We got so many cards ... from strangers, people I went to high school with, just everybody,? Leisey says. ?It?s been really nice.?

In a voice made raspy by his injuries, Leisey says he often thinks of his friends who are still fighting in Iraq.

?They are doing a good thing over there,? he says. ?It is changing, however slowly. They are making progress.

?I hope everyone continues to support them. It really means a lot to us.?

Boo frigging hoo part 2

The Gainesville Sun continues its pity party for sex offenders; today we learn they ain't too popular in prison.

There wasn't a day David Northup didn't look over his shoulder while he was an inmate at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.

When word got around the prison that Northup was convicted of raping a child ? a charge unforgiveable by even the most brutal convicted killer ? Northup said the fear of what other prisoners would do to him was a nightmare until lock-down.

"You become paranoid," Northup said during an interview at his new home at Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City. "Being around sex offenders in here is scary. I feel God put me here for a reason."

But according to court records, the reason Northup, 28, is spending the rest of his life behind bars is because he pled guilty to two counts of capital sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation and two counts of sexual performance by a child. Northup used a digital video recorder to tape explicit sexual acts between him and a 9-year-old girl on several occasions in 2001, court records show.

Of course it's not his fault:

But Northup, who is a former emergency medical technician, said he was taking anti-psychotic medications when he was charged with the crimes and didn't understand the gravity of his plea. He insisted that there were "fishy" circumstances surrounding the allegations made against him.

"In my mind, I know I didn't do anything," Northup said. "I wish people would see that not all inmates are no good and even someone with a sexual offender charge can still be a human and be respected."

Although he firmly believes he is innocent, Northup said that didn't matter to the inmates who he claims beat and otherwise mistreated him at the Raiford facility.

Good for them! Another scum chimes in:

With no money, no attorney and little understanding of the legal system that sentenced him to life behind bars, Terry Bell, 40, said he has experienced some mistreatment by other inmates during the time he has been at Columbia Correctional Institution.

Bell, who was convicted in 1999 for two counts of sexual battery on a child under 12, said there have been incidents where inmates have made taunting remarks about what he's in for and that one inmate shoved a heavy book cart at him, narrowly missing him with it. Bell, who said he is mentally impaired, said he has learned that showing no fear gives other inmates less of an opportunity to pick on him.

"I don't scare that easily," Bell said. "When they didn't see fear in me, a lot of them stopped messing with me. In my heart, I don't feel like I'm that type of person they say I am."

Well, we do, so you're staying locked up.

Happy Flag Day!

A review of Benedict XVI

A good article in the Pittsburgh P-G by Ann Rogers. Read it! Excerpt:

Benedict gave a meditation on Psalm 111, then a recap and greetings in 11 languages.

"The Psalm invites us at the end to discover all the good things the Lord gives us every day. We see more easily the negative aspects of our life. The Psalm invites us to see the positive also, the many gifts we receive, and so find gratitude, as only a grateful heart can celebrate worthily the liturgy of thanksgiving, the Eucharist," Benedict said.

Sarah Boone, a law student from Tulane University attending Duquesne's summer law program in Rome, was impressed.

"His focus was on a person's feelings about their relationship with God and the church," said Boone, who is not Catholic. "I've never heard a papal address before. I expected it to be more doctrinal, but it was more personal."

Gee, I'm all broken up

The Gainesville Sun, owned (of course!) by the NY Slimes, tries to make us feel sorry for sex offenders.

"I understand everyone's fears," said Bill, 37, an Alachua County sex offender who served about two years in prison for 66 counts of child pornography. "There are some dangerous people out there. I've been in jail with them, in therapy with them.

"But I'd say 90 percent of the (sex offenders) I've met are just normal people who made a bad decision. They got high, they got drunk and they made the wrong choice. They're trying to start their lives over again, but how can there be rehabilitation when it's like this?

"People need to either accept us as part of society or do away with us altogether."

Bill, 37, whose 66 child pornography charges landed him on the sex offender registry, said he chose his remote location in Alachua County for a reason.

"I don't want to draw any attention to myself," Bill said. "I'm terrified all the time. My girlfriend lives in constant fear. With everything that's going on, I just wonder, if people found out, what would they do? I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want a quiet little existence."

Financial troubles from sparse job options limit where offenders can live, too.

"I can barely make a living," Bill said. "Even manual labor jobs, half of them will not even consider me. As soon as I have to state my charge, it's over. I had a temp service turn me away in Gainesville. I'm working for family now. If not for that, I can't see how I could live at all."

or this:

Ricky, 52, is off probation now, after years in prison and supervision following his 1987 offense - molesting his two young children and three of his brother-in-law's kids.

His wife of nine years said she quickly learned to look beyond her husband's past.

"It was hard," she said, "but I looked at his heart."

Still, almost 20 years after his offense, in a new life that Ricky says leaves no chance for re-offending, the social stigma hangs with him, and he said very few people are willing to look beyond his past the way his wife was. "People need to realize you made a mistake," Ricky said. "I've done my time. I regret the things I've done wrong. I learned from my mistake. I want to live again."

No matter what the charge, offenders say, the stigma of being a sex offender stretches to every aspect of a person's life. And even when probation is through, they say the punishment never ends.

"Sex offenders are not another race of creatures," Bill said. "Offenders are people with goals and dreams like everyone else. But the way we're treated, they might as well build an island and lock us all in on it."

Brown said he knows his case is bad, and said he deeply regrets the offense. But he said when he's able to fully explain the situation - that he was abused growing up, that he was young himself when he committed the crime - they usually don't judge him too harshly.

Boo frigging hoo

From Catholicism to cults

I was expecting this, but it still saddens me: Katie Holmes is converting to Scientology.

Katie Holmes says she's converting to the Church of Scientology, embracing the religion of her boyfriend, Tom Cruise.

Holmes, in London to promote her new film, "Batman Begins," said Monday that she's excited about her lessons in Scientology, a religion founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

The 26-year-old actress and Cruise went public with their romantic relationship in April. The former Catholic and star of television's "Dawson's Creek" grew up with a poster of Cruise on her bedroom wall and has said she grew up wanting to marry him.

"We all keep dreaming, and luckily, dreams come true," Holmes said.

Cruise was in Tokyo Monday for the premiere of his new film, "War of the Worlds."

In an interview in the June 17 issue of Entertainment Weekly, the 42-year-old actor was asked if Holmes is curious about Scientology.

"Yeah, absolutely. She digs it," he tells the magazine.

Shut up Charlie

The NY Post's editorial page calls out Charles Rangel.

Charlie Rangel says he can't under stand why anyone would be of fended by his comparison, on a local radio show, of the war in Iraq to the Holocaust. Let's educate him.

Appearing on the Steve Malzberg Show, the Manhattan Democrat ? who loves grabbing headlines with outrageous rhetoric ? did just that last week, saying Operation Iraqi Freedom is "just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed" by the Nazis during World War II.

By which, he says, he means that "the whole world knew and they were quiet about it because it wasn't their ox being gored."

Challenged on this odious nonsense, Rangel replied: "I am saying that people's silence when they know terrible things are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust."

Rangel defended himself, insisting that "I'm not saying that the 100,00 Iraqis and the American loss of life is the same as the loss of six million Jews."

Really? It sure sounds like it.

The lawmaker suggested he might eventually apologize, adding: "I don't see why [anyone] would be offended."

Rangel's too smart to be so blind.

Surely he understands that drawing comparisons between line-of-duty deaths in the honorable defense of America with the attempt to exterminate an entire people ? which is what the Holocaust was about ? auto- matically trivializes that horrific crime.

And it politicizes ? thus cheapening ? the sacrifices so painfully made in the War on Terror.

This latest outburst is far from an isolated incident, of course. Over the years, Charles Rangel has repeatedly indulged in over-the-top, partisan Nazi analogies.

Of the Contract With America enacted by congressional Republicans, Rangel complained: "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things." In 1995, when the House Ways and Means Committee killed a preferential tax break for minority broadcasters, Rangel said the move was "just like under Hitler."

"When I compare this to what happened in Germany," he added, "I hope you will see the similarities to what is happening to us."

What obnoxious nonsense.

You might think that Rangel just needs a history lesson, but ? again ? the reality is that he knows exactly what he's doing.

When a journalist questioned his comparison of reducing food-stamp benefits to the Holocaust, he said: "Yes, the language was strong. But I got your attention, didn't I?"

The real outrage here is not Rangel's tired and tasteless Holocaust allusions.

It is the zealotry with which he seeks to impeach the efforts of America's fighting men and women in Iraq, using the most odious comparisons possible.

Put a sock in it, Charlie.

Words Matter

Great piece on protecting our children by Andrew Vachss.

Years ago, I participated in the rescue of a child from bondage. Destiny (not her real name) was 13. She had been repeatedly raped by a pair of predators to "educate" her. Then, along with several other young girls, she was forced to sell herself to strangers. Each day, she woke to the threat of disfiguring brutality if she failed to bring in sufficient money that night. Later, it was reported that "pimps" had been arrested, and "a number of child prostitutes were taken into custody."

What was wrong with calling Destiny a "child prostitute"? After all, she was a child, and she was engaged in prostitution. First, the word itself implies a judgment of character. Don't we call people who sell out their moral convictions in exchange for personal gain "whores"? More important, prostitution implies a willing exchange. Ultimately, the term "child prostitution" implies that little children are "seductive," that they "volunteer" to have sex with adults in exchange for cash (which, of course, the children never see).

The difference between calling Destiny a "child prostitute" and a "prostituted child" is not purely semantic. It is more than the difference between a hard truth and a pernicious lie. It not only injures the victims; it actively gives aid and comfort to the enemy. By allowing the term "child prostitution" to gain a foothold in our language, we lose ground that can never be recovered. Look at the following examples:

- A judge spares a predatory pedophile a long prison sentence on the grounds that "it takes two to tango." Another grants work-release to a sex offender, declaring that the 5-year-old victim was "unusually promiscuous."

- A teacher is arrested for sexual intercourse with a minor student in her class. The newspapers describe the conduct as "a forbidden love affair."

- A young actor, in an interview given before his drug-overdose death, describes how he "lost his virginity" when he was 3 or 4 years old.

How have such grotesque distortions taken control of our language? To answer that question, we must first ask another: Who profits? Who benefits from pervasive cultural language that trivializes violence against children?

Pedophiles are very familiar with the power of language. They would have us believe that child pornography is a free-speech issue. They know that if they succeed in placing "child prostitution" anywhere on the continuum of voluntary sexual activity, they will have established a beachhead from which to launch future assaults.

We must understand that such language is no accident?it is the deliberate product of cultural lobbyists. There is a carefully orchestrated campaign to warp public perception, a perception that affects everything from newspaper coverage to legislation and even jury verdicts.
Why call the sexual assault of a child "fondling"? Why term incest a "nonviolent crime"?

If they can get us to accept that children consent to sex for money, it will be easier to sell the idea that they can consent to sex for "love." But an adult male who sexually abuses little boys is no more "homosexual" than one who victimizes little girls is "heterosexual." They are both predatory pedophiles. There is no such thing as a child prostitute; there are only prostituted children.

When we use terms such as "lose's one's virginity" in referring to adult sex acts with children instead of calling it "rape," or when we say that teachers "have affairs" with their pupils instead of saying that the teachers sexually exploit them, the only beneficiaries are the predators who target children.

This is not about political correctness. It is about telling the truth. In any culture, language is the undercurrent that drives the river of public perception. That undercurrent has been polluted for too long. If we really want to protect our children, it's time to watch our language.

Fighting Anti-Semitism

Rabbi Heir from the Simon Weisenthal gave two good speeches at a conference to fight anti-semitism. Excerpts:

I could not help but wonder, in preparing these remarks, what the millions of men, women and children gassed at the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek during the Nazi Holocaust would think of this auspicious gathering? I?m afraid they would not believe that a mere sixty years after the Shoah, fifty-five nations have gathered once again to discuss Anti-Semitism, to once more confront the oldest form of hatred, hatred of the Jews which refuses to die. Even the greatest of the haters, Hitler himself, could only dare predict in his final will and testament that it would take a few centuries to rekindle Anti-Semitism.

What shall we say to the remaining survivors of the Holocaust? That a mere six decades later, Anti-Semitism has a home again in France, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany and throughout Europe and Eurasia, and especially in the Middle East. Despite the fact that throughout history Jews have been an endangered species, encountering crusades, the Inquisition, pogroms and the Shoah, they still cannot escape being the favorite target of every bigot and extremist.

As always, there are those eager to deflect the truth by shifting the blame to the victims themselves as was the case in the 1930s when Nazi storm troopers blamed the Jews with their slogan, "The Jews stabbed Germany in the back." Today, once again, the perpetrators insist that it is Israeli policy that is responsible for all these attacks. While it is legitimate to criticize a government?s policy - any government, it is quite another matter when that criticism spills over into a message of collective hatred of an entire people and an attack on Judaism itself. It is especially the case when that message of hate is delivered by teachers, spiritual leaders and writers who should be role models for tolerance, whose words are then carried by satellite and the Internet and transmitted around the world.

Like the words of Sheikh Ibrahim Mudairis who delivered a sermon broadcast on Palestinian television, for which he was subsequently condemned by Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, that said in part, "The Jews are the cancer spreading all over the world?Jews are responsible for all wars and conflicts?Do not ask what Germany did to the Jews but what the Jews did to Germany?" is that hate or politics?

and:

We live in a different world. In today?s world, you don?t have to attend a rally to become a bigot. Or to be present at the orchestrated giant rallies that the Nazis organized atNuremberg to be imbued with hate. Today, when a newspaper article or television broadcast appears in a foreign country and is instantly transmitted via satellite, cable and the Internet into the homes of millions of people throughout the world, you can become a bigot and Anti-Semite in your own living room, watching via satellite the Iranian produced television series, Zahra Blue Eyes, depicting Israelis kidnapping Palestinian children and transplanting their organs to Jewish children, or the Syrian miniseries, Al Shattat (The Diaspora) about the alleged secret Jewish government that controls the world.

Or reading the words of Portuguese Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago: ?the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound and keep it bleeding to keep it incurable, as if it were a banner?Israel in short is a racist State by virtue of Judaism?s monstrous doctrines, not just against the Palestinians but against the entire world which it seeks to manipulate and abuse.?

Or the Lithuanian Newspaper, Respublika, who published a series, ?Who Rules the World?? And answered, ?The Jews.?

It is simply unconscionable that sixty years after the Holocaust, in spite of numerous films and books on the subject, that Anti-Semitism is again in vogue in Europe and around the world.



In such a world, the media has a special role to play in exposing the lies and defending truth. They can help by debunking the myth of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, by interviewing Holocaust survivors involved in promoting tolerance, highlighting schools that commemorate Yom Hashoah, put the spotlight on political leaders who aren?t doing enough to stop to hate, focus attention on institutions in Europe and around the world that are promoting tolerance, cover the tensions in the Middle East fairly and objectively without hurling Anti-Semitic slurs comparing Sharon to Hitler, or the Israeli army to the Nazis.

What is at stake is nothing less then the future of civilization, and the future of our children and grandchildren. History has taught us that we have paid a grave price for indifference. There can be no bystanders in this battle.

As Edmund Burke reminded us, ?The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.?

Read the whole thing!

Another American saint?

A Russian prince who came to Pennsylvania and became a priest in the 1700's is on the road to sainthood.

The Rev. Demetrius Gallitzin, a European prince who forsook his wealth to become a priest in the Allegheny Mountains of 18th century Pennsylvania, has attained the status of "Servant of God," the first of several steps on the ladder to Roman Catholic sainthood.

Bishop Joseph V. Adamec, who heads the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, announced the decision yesterday.

The ruling by the Congregation for Saints of the Holy See means the process of determining whether Gallitzin qualifies for sainthood will continue.

"In Loretto, we have always believed he is a saint," said Betty Seymour, who heads a task force dedicated to promoting Gallitzin's saintly credentials. "What we are asking for is that he be declared (a saint) for all the world."

Seymour, her husband Frank, and the Rev. John Byrnes, a diocesan priest, are pushing to have Gallitzin canonized.

The son of a Russian prince who left that life at age 29 to emigrate to the United States, Gallitzin in 1795 entered a Baltimore monastery and became the first priest to receive full orders and be ordained in the United States.

He was sent to an area that later became Cambria County, where he used his money to buy part of what is now Loretto, and spent his royal fortune building sawmills, gristmills, tanneries, a church and a model farm.

Gallitzin is known as the "Apostle of the Alleghenies" for bringing Roman Catholicism to south-central Pennsylvania. He died in 1840 of a strangulated hernia related to a fall from a horse years earlier.

"So many people trace their roots and their religion from this settlement here," Seymour said of Loretto, her hometown.

Bishop Adamec has asked area Catholics to submit any information about Gallitzin to the diocese, including any allegations of miraculous intervention by the priest.

The Vatican must approve Gallitzin for two higher levels of honor, veneration and beatification, before he can be considered for sainthood.

Roman Catholics believe they can ask dead believers to intercede with God on their behalf. Miracles attributed to Gallitzin's intercession must be recorded and confirmed by the Vatican after he is beatified for him to qualify for sainthood. Miracles alleged to have occurred before that time don't count toward sainthood, Seymour said.

Miracles must be verified by the Vatican as part of a rigorous process, she said.

Playing with the lives of NY's bravest

Steve Dunleavy calls out the abominable playing with firemen's live being done by beancounters in NYC.

JEANETTE MEYRAN, widow of firefighter Lt. Curt Meyran, had a blunt message for Fire Commissioner Nick Scoppetta: "Meet me at the cemetery."

Mrs. Meyran said Commissioner Scoppetta had contacted her on Saturday to tell her there would be a story coming out about the new fire-safety ropes.

"He was schooling me, sort of saying that I may be contacted by the press, and appeared worried about what I'd say," she said.

"Well, he can meet me at the cemetery and come and honor my husband, who died because he had to jump out a window because he had no rope."

Mrs. Meyran had just visited the gravesite of her husband, who died, along with fellow firefighter John Bellew, in a Bronx fire on Jan. 23, known as Black Sunday, that injured four other firefighters.

In unveiling the rope system yesterday, Scoppetta vowed to "never ever let the events of Jan. 23 happen again."

Instead of the old nylon rope, which took time to tie off and could burn in 30 seconds in 1,100-degree heat, the FDNY selected a 50-foot rope made out of a new generation of Kevlar, which can withstand higher temperatures.

The department also designed a special forged steel anchor that can quickly hook onto windowsills, walls, furniture and radiators as well as a device that allows firefighters to brake while rappelling.

All good news for firefighters. But widow Eileen Bellew ? while appreciative of the effort ? said, "The Fire Department only gave my husband one choice, and that was to jump."

In the FDNY, there is a curious rationale that enrages the unions. The $11 million cost of the safety rope and harness is approximately the cost saved by closing six firehouses two years ago.

The logic of the FDNY apparently says that you put firefighters at risk for almost five years by taking away their ropes and then you put neighborhoods at risk for two years by closing six firehouses.

Then, in the face of an outraged public ? after a terrible tragedy ? you tally it all up and the closing of the firehouses paid for new ropes to replace those that should never have been taken away.

Now, I was never good at math, but you try to work out that equation.

Cluelessness at Foggy Bottom

Mona Charen points out the silliness in our State Department: Real men moisturize?

"Real Men Moisturize." So begins an article on "Sharp Dressed Men" that appeared in a State Department funded magazine aimed at youth in the Arab world. The magazine, called "Hi" is published in Arabic and English. A State Department website explains that Hi is published "with the hope of building bridges of greater understanding among our cultures."

The article continues: "In fact, some of them, like Michael Gustman, a 25-year-old public relations account executive from Boca Raton, Fla., even have separate moisturizers for the face and body. Facial pores can clog with too heavy a salve, it seems. Not long ago, these and other habits would have been considered odd for a male. Gustman exfoliates. He gets manicures. He gets pedicures. He gets facials. He gets his hair done every two weeks. He accessorizes. He puts effort into getting ready for a date. He loves cooking complex dishes. He's a refined, evolved, sensitive guy. In a word, he's a metrosexual."

The photo accompanying the story pictures the male author seated in a pedicure chair, pants rolled up to his knees, along with half a dozen women enjoying the same treatment. (The women's faces aren't visible, but we can guess that they look puzzled or possibly even repelled.)

First things first. Is this what the U.S. State Department thinks America is really like? How many men, outside a tiny subset in major cities, are the primping, feminized "metrosexuals" the article lauds? Not many. You cannot enhance understanding between one people and another by presenting a false version of one side.

But more importantly, is this the way to "build bridges" between the Arab world and ourselves? Does the State Department believe that Arab males -- some of whom do not permit their wives and daughters to go out in public without a male family member as escort, others of whom think nothing of killing a daughter who dishonors the family by fraternizing with a boy -- are going to be impressed with a vision of America in which males are feminized "exfoliated," smooth-skinned eunuchs?

The State Department is apparently so delighted with the Hi Magazine approach that they are translating it for use around the world.

"We realized that most of the articles in Hi were suitable for youth anywhere in the world," said Christopher Datta, the director of special projects at the State Department's International Information Programs." A State Department website quotes a Hi Magazine contributor enthusing, "This is now everybody's world." Oh? What was it before?

In this "everybody's world," particularly the parts at which Hi Magazine is pitched, there are troubles that seem a bit remote from hair and nail care. In Iraq, half the population, according to one poll, believes that a man has a right to beat his wife if she disobeys him (and the Koran gives this sanction). In Iran, as Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi reports in Front Page Magazine, women continue to be stoned to death for the crime of adultery. Accompanying this story is a photo (smuggled out of Iran) of a weeping woman being buried up to her waist in preparation for stoning to death.

The size of the stones to be used in such executions is specified by law. "Penal Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Article 116: Stones used in stoning should be neither so big as to kill the adulterous at the first or second blow, nor as small as a pebble." Other punishments meted out by the Islamic Republic include cutting off hands, arms and legs, and plucking out the eyes.

In Saudi Arabia, an Australian man has been sentenced to 16 months in prison and 300 lashes for a crime his wife may have committed (stealing equipment from a hospital). His flogging, inflicted 50 strokes at a time, by a guard with a Koran under his arm, has already begun. "The lashing," he wrote to a friend in Melbourne, "is to humiliate and control, and I draw a large crowd as I am one of those Western ungodly people, but they shall never hear me yell." In Saudi Arabia, the punishment for Muslims who convert away from Islam is death.

And the State Department magazine prattles about facials.

Howard Dean, the Republican's best friend

Gotta love it when old Deano makes an ass out of himself.

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, unapologetic in the face of recent criticism that he has been too tough on his political opposition, said in San Francisco this week that Republicans are "a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It's pretty much a white Christian party."

"The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people," Dean said Monday, responding to a question about diversity during a forum with minority leaders and journalists. "We're more welcoming to different folks, because that's the type of people we are. But that's not enough. We do have to deliver on things: jobs and housing and business opportunities."

The comments are another example of why the former Vermont governor, who remains popular with the party's grassroots, has been a lightning rod for criticism since being elected to head the Democratic National Committee last February. His comments last week that Republicans "never made an honest living in their lives," which he later clarified to say Republican "leaders," were disavowed by leading Democrats including Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

Dean was outspoken -- as usual -- as he trolled California this week, stoking his party's coffers, and meeting with grass-roots activists. His San Francisco visit was at the tail end of a cross-country road trip, and Dean said that he will continue to pound the pavement -- and the GOP -- to get the Democratic message across to new voters, particularly in minority communities.

But Dean's style and rhetoric have sparked increasing criticism from inside the Democratic Party in recent weeks -- and gleeful Republicans say they couldn't be happier.

"Where do I sign up on a committee to keep Howard Dean?" crowed GOP operative Jon Fleischmann, publisher of the FlashReport, a daily roundup of California political news and commentary. "He's the best thing to happen to the GOP in ages."

"I'm thrilled he's the DNC chair," says Tom Del Becarro, chairman of the Contra Costa County Republican Party. "Howard Dean is scaring away the middle. People don't like angry people. They like hopeful people.''

But Simi Valley Councilman Glenn Becerra, a staffer with former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and a Bush appointee to the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, said Tuesday he was far from amused by Dean's suggestion that Republicans constitute "a white Christian party," and called the Democratic Party chairman "an embarrassment."

"I'm living proof that the (GOP) isn't what Howard Dean is trying to describe,'' Becerra said during a telephone interview. "It's a sad day when Democrats don't have any ideas to put forward, and they have to resort to race politics. President Bush didn't get 40 percent of the Hispanic vote (in 2004) because we're a monolithic, white Christian party."

What a jackass!

I guess it wasn't the right kind of church

The governor of TX held a bill signing ceremony at an evangelical church and some libs are in a tizzy.

Making good on a Republican campaign call to celebrate with "Christian friends," Gov. Rick Perry traveled to an evangelical school here on Sunday to put his signature on measures to restrict abortion and prohibit same-sex marriage.
About 100 protesters lined the street outside the school, Calvary Christian Academy, denouncing the unusual signing as breaching the constitutional separation between church and state. The event, termed historic by the church's pastor, Bob Nichols, was pointedly held in the academy's gymnasium, apart from the church sanctuary, to deflect complaints. A plan by the Perry campaign to film the event for political commercials was dropped earlier.

Mr. Perry, who may face a tough primary challenge next year, described the event as "pro-family, pro-life" and nonpartisan. On a dais before a cheering crowd of close to 1,000 churchgoers and leaders of evangelical ministries, he signed a bill passed during this session of the Texas Legislature requiring girls under 18 to obtain their parents' consent before having an abortion. Previously, they needed only to notify their parents.

"We may be on the grounds of a Christian church, but we all believe in standing up for the unborn," Mr. Perry said.

He also said he was putting his signature - although it was not required - on a measure that places a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages before Texas voters on Nov. 8. "Activist judges have used the bench to advance a narrow agenda," the governor said, adding that the measure defining marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a woman "places it beyond the reach of activist judges."

Now if this was a democrat governor signing a civil rights bill at a African Amercian church, the libs would be silent. Funny how "separation of church and state" only applies to Republicans.

Is nothing sacred?

Some goofballs have come out with their version of the Bible, in which Jesus was a woman.

A publisher is touting a new edition of the Gospels that identifies Christ as a woman named Judith Christ of Nazareth.

LBI Institute says its version, Judith Christ of Nazareth, The Gospels of the Bible, Corrected to Reflect that Christ Was a Woman, Extracted from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, takes Thomas Jefferson's edited Gospel one step futher by "correcting" the gender of Christ and God.

"This long-awaited revised text of the Gospels makes the moral message of Christ more accessible to many, and more illuminating to all," says Billie Shakespeare, vice president for the publisher, in a statement. "It is empowering. We published this new Bible to acknowledge the rise of women in society."

WND sought comment from the LBI Institute's Stephen Glazier, but he did not return messages.

The new version, according to the publisher, revises familiar stories, tranforming the "Prodigal Son" into the "Prodigal Daughter" and the "Lord's Prayer" into the "Lady's Prayer."

A passage compiled from Luke 2, with corresponding verses at the beginning of each sentence, says: "4 And Joseph went to Bethlehem. 5 To be enrolled with Mary, his wife, who was then pregnant. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn child. 21 And her name was chosen to be Judith."

A passage on the crucifixion, from John 19, says: "17 And She bearing her cross went forth. 18 There they crucified Judith."

A resurrection passage from Matthew 28 states: "1 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. 5 But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Judith who was crucified." 6 "She is not here; for She is risen."

The book's foreword says, "The Jefferson Bible is faithfully followed by the present book, with the corrections in the name and gender of Christ, the gender of God, and some of the parables."

The publisher explains Jefferson used extracts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John rather than the complete books, in order to tell a "linear, complete, organized story" that emphasizes the moral teachings of Christ.

The foreword says, "Events in the Gospel that do not relate to the moral teachings of Christ are often omitted. However, the basic narrative of Christ's life, death and resurrection is maintained."

Reader reviews on the book's Amazon.com page included these:

- "One star because there is nothing lower. May the Lord have mercy on the writers!"

- "A friend with a Hebrew doctorate noted to me: 'There is no feminine form of the name Jesus (or Joshua). Judith is the feminine form of the name Juda - or Judas.' How perfectly fitting!"

- Reading the other reviews here, I can't believe that this is being touted as being an advance for women's rights. That is just not true. God sent his only SON, not his daughter. It is also true that God loves all of us, male and female the same. He created each of us as we are. We should not strive to become something we are not. This book truly offends me. I agree with the other reviewer, those that produced this book will be held responsible for those they deceive. I pray for each of them.

- May the Lord God punish the author of this translation and its publishers if they do not withdraw this herectic bible from print Amen.

Why Islam is disrespected

Jeff Jacoby shows why Islam doesn't get much respect from reasonable people.

It was front-page news this week when Newsweek retracted a report claiming that a US interrogator in Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.

Everywhere it was noted that Newsweek's story had sparked widespread Muslim rioting, in which at least 17 people were killed. But there was no mention of deadly protests triggered in recent years by comparable acts of desecration against other religions.

No one recalled, for example, that American Catholics lashed out in violent rampages in 1989, after photographer Andres Serrano's ''Piss Christ" ? a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine ? was included in an exhibition subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts. Or that they rioted in 1992 when singer Sinead O'Connor, appearing on ''Saturday Night Live," ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II.

There was no reminder that Jewish communities erupted in lethal violence in 2000, after Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching the ancient shrine and murdering a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah. And nobody noted that Buddhists went on a killing spree in 2001 in response to the destruction of two priceless, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Of course, there was a good reason all these bloody protests went unremembered in the coverage of the Newsweek affair: They never occurred.

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers ? ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" ? was any reader surprised?

The Muslim riots should have been met by outrage and condemnation. From every part of the civilized world should have come denunciations of those who would react to the supposed destruction of a book with brutal threats and the slaughter of 17 innocent people. But the chorus of condemnation was directed not at the killers and the fanatics who incited them, but at Newsweek.

From the White House down, the magazine was slammed ? for running an item it should have known might prove incendiary, for relying on a shaky source, for its animus toward the military and the war. Over and over, Newsweek was blamed for the riots' death toll. Conservative pundits in particular piled on. ''Newsweek lied, people died" was the headline on Michelle Malkin's popular website. At NationalReview.com, Paul Marshall of Freedom House fumed: ''What planet do these [Newsweek] people live on? . . . Anybody with a little knowledge could have told them it was likely that people would die as a result of the article." All of Marshall's choler was reserved for Newsweek; he had no criticism at all for the marauders in the Muslim street.

Then there was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who announced at a Senate hearing that she had a message for ''Muslims in America and throughout the world."

And what was that message? That decent people do not resort to murder just because someone has offended their religious sensibilities? That the primitive bloodlust raging in Afghanistan and Pakistan was evidence of the Muslim world's dysfunctional political culture?

No: Her message was that ''disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States."

Granted, Rice spoke while the rioting was still taking place and her goal was to reduce the anti-American fever. But what ''Muslims in America and throughout the world" most need to hear is not pandering sweet-talk. What they need is a blunt reminder that the real desecration of Islam is not what some interrogator in Guantanamo might have done to the Koran. It is what totalitarian Muslim zealots have been doing to innocent human beings in the name of Islam. It is 9/11 and Beslan and Bali and Daniel Pearl and the USS Cole. It is trains in Madrid and schoolbuses in Israel and an ''insurgency" in Iraq that slaughters Muslims as they pray and vote and line up for work. It is Hamas and Al Qaeda and sermons filled with infidel-hatred and exhortations to ''martyrdom."

But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to ''converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" ? and having only 50 people show up.

Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day.

What? Joooos in Jerusalem???

This one is weird and shows how anti-semitic some people are. It seems the Greek Patriarch of Jersualem is in some hot water with certain folks, including some fellow Orthodox. His crime: selling property - in JERUSALEM - to Jews! The horror!

There's a huge controversy brewing over what is described as "explosive" allegations that the Greek Orthodox Church's patriarch in Jerusalem sold property in that city to Jews.

Clearly a tragedy and an outrage. I mean, property in the Jews' holy city being bought by Jews. Imagine that.

If some group in the United States threw a hissy fit over property being sold to or bought by members of racial or religious group, my guess is that the outcry would be over the hissy fit. But the Arab world is definitely not the United States.

The Arab world, particularly the Palestinians, are reportedly up in arms over what they term "the Judaizing" of Jerusalem.

Specifically, the Church's patriarch, Irineos I, is being pressured to resign because one of his top aids may have made 198-year leases with Jews for some church property, according to the Associated Press. AP also reports that World Orthodox leaders voted Tuesday in Turkey to stop recognizing Irineos I, asserting a rare unified position during a rare "pan-Orthodox" gathering. Irineos refuses to resign.

Let's examine this.

It is apparently grossly unacceptable for the Christian owners of property in Israel, in Jerusalem, the city of David, built by the Jews in antiquity, to sell or lease any of it to Jews.

Doesn't this show a rather intense anti-Semitism, while simultaneously illuminating that fact that there is property in Israel owned by members of other faiths. In fact, there are churches and mosques all over the place there, where adherents are left unmolested to worship as they choose. This is not generally the case in the 40-odd Arab/Muslim countries, where being a non-Muslim is a definite handicap, and being a Jew can be fatal.

These houses of worship of various faiths remain standing in the Holy Land, even since Israel's rebirth. An impartial comparison between Israel and probably any place overtaken by Arabs/Muslims in the past thousand years, would surely reveal a marked lack of tolerance for any other faith on Islam's part. The Muslim tradition, in fact, has been to destroy any vestige of a peoples' past culture or religion when-and-wherever Islam has gained the upper hand.

In no other arena is the qualitative difference between the Jewish and Muslim cultures more evident than in the fact that there are millions of Arabs living and working in Israel, some even serving in the military and the parliament, working as doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals and generally enjoying the same freedoms and responsibilities as Jewish Israelis. This seems to strike no one as strange, though it stands in marked contrast to the treatment of Jews in the Muslim world. Somehow, though, the idea of Jews living in "Palestine" or most other Arab countries, strikes many people as an unacceptable and dangerous provocation.

I find that curious and not a little aggravating, especially since, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Israel, and not the Arab/Muslim world, has been labeled by many as racist.

Irineos I is under siege for leasing to Jews land Palestinians want for the capital of a future state.

Why would Jerusalem and not Ramallah or some other West Bank or Gazan city be the capitol of a future Palestinian state? Jerusalem is holy to Jews as the sight of the ancient temples of David and Solomon. It is Judaism's only holy city, mentioned in the Torah hundreds if not thousands of times. It's holy to Christians as the place Jesus preached and died, and is mentioned many times in the Christian Bible, too.

Jerusalem is said to be holy to Muslims as the place from which Mohammed, who historically never actually set foot there, ascended to heaven riding a winged beast. Jerusalem is mentioned in the Quran exactly zero times.

Jerusalem's famous and admittedly beautiful gold-domed mosque was constructed atop the ancient temple and bigger than the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, as a symbolic raspberry -- it's importance to Islam artificially inflated.

The Israel/Palestinian situation is an impossible quagmire, with the Israelis seemingly unable to win for losing. It should get out of Gaza, it shouldn't get out of Gaza. It should get out immediately, but not too soon. It has the right to defend its citizens against bloodthirsty terrorists, but not to do so effectively.

Where is the Messiah when you need him?

Honoring one of NY's bravest

Steve Dunleavy tells of a tribute to a NYFD member killed in Iraq.

ON THE day he was murdered by a coven of cowards, the flag that Sgt. Chris Engeldrum had carried from the firehouse of Ladder 61 flapped over Baghdad. But at 10:15 a.m. on Nov. 29, 2004, there may have been an immaculate exception and the flag shed a tear.

That flag, that beautiful flag, was yesterday like the Holy Grail in a particularly emotional ceremony ? a "two handkerchief job," we hacks would call it ? at the Fire Academy. Probie Jayson Bresler, who served with Engeldrum in Iraq, took the podium in front of 252 probies ? including 25 Iraqi war veterans ? to present the glorious banner to Lt. Mike Bonner of Ladder 61 in The Bronx, where Chris Engeldrum had distinguished himself as a hero long before Baghdad beckoned.

"Chris Engeldrum took an American flag from Ladder 61, took it to Ground Zero, took it to Djibouti, and then took it to Baghdad, and there that flag from Ladder 61 flew over the skies of Baghdad," Bresler said.

Lt. Bonner said of his fallen comrade, "Quite an incredible man. Quite an incredible American."

And firefighter Daniel "Swifty" Swift: "You don't see these guys these days."

Swifty ? a longtime Army medic ? painfully recalled that day last year when Engeldrum was blown up by a 300-pound bomb in a convoy by the rats on a route called "Route Rams" outside of Baghdad.

"He was my best friend, and he thought, even though he was a firefighter putting his life on the line every day, you would be a coward if you didn't go to Iraq and fight evil," said Swifty.

"We were in an absolutely armored Humvee, the bomb was so big, the crater was 6 feet wide and 5 feet deep. I was blinded in the right eye, but my problem was no problem. I saw Chris and Wilfredo Urbino, I knew they were gone. I worked on two guys who were with us, and they made it, bless them. But Chris, what a hole in my heart that makes."

Guys like Chris Engeldrum, Wilfredo Urbino, at a time when we stupidly wrestle with a panty raid like Watergate, make things so incredibly clear to a man like myself, who is not too well educated.

"Chris was the go-to guy, and I thought we could clean the mess when we got blown up and thought we'd be picked off by snipers, but Chris was gone. So was Wilfredo. Scared? Of course I was. But not as bad as knowing that Chris had gone."

Chris's wife, Sharon, was not there yesterday, she has higher things to look for. Within three weeks she'll give birth to Chris Engeldrum's son, a son who will never see his brave father.

They say real men don't cry, but after yesterday's ceremony, I need not apply. Tears galore.

Gallup: Military is Hot, MSM is not

In what has to make Dean and the other moonbats scream, Gallup's latest poll shows the US military is the most trusted organization.

The American public has more confidence in the military than in any other institution, according to a Gallup poll released this week.

Seventy-four percent of those surveyed in Gallup's 2005 confidence poll said they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the military - more than in a full range of other government, religious, economic, medical, business and news organizations.

The poll, conducted between May 23 and 26, involved telephone interviews with a randomly selected sample of 1,004 people 18 and older, Gallup officials said. Those surveyed expressed strong confidence in the military, with 42 percent expressing "a great deal" of confidence in the military and 32 percent, "quite a lot" of confidence. Eighteen percent said they have "some" confidence, 7 percent, "very little," and 1 percent, "none."

Public confidence in the military jumped following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has remained consistently high, Gallup officials noted. The 2002 survey reflected a 13 percent increase in confidence in the military over the previous year's poll. The public expressed a 79 percent high-confidence rate in the military in 2002, an 82 percent rate in 2003, and a 75 percent rate in 2004.

This year's 74 percent confidence level exceeded that of all 15 institutions included in the 2005 survey. Police ranked second, with 63 percent of responders expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them. Organized religion rated third, with 53 percent of responders expressing high confidence, and banks rated a 49 percent high-confidence rate.

Health maintenance organizations bottomed out the list, with just 17 percent of responders expressing high confidence in them. Big business and Congress tied for the second- and third-lowest rankings, with 22 percent of responders expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them.

The Gallup organization noted that public trust in television news and newspapers reached an all-time low this year, with 28 percent of responders expressing high confidence in them.

anyone, anyone, Deep Throat

Ben Stein goes yard on deep throat.

Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.

Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.

When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:

1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.

So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.

Frank J's tips for Gun safety

Frank J has a new shirt, click on the image for the linky.

Just the facts, Ma'am



I'm a HUGE Dragnet fan, and Detective Steve Rose pays tribute to Joe Friday in today's AJC.

On television, the cops have a coolness about them that is, frankly, tough to equal. If you read my e-mails or articles you?ll quickly find that like many of my counterparts, I?m disappointingly human.

For example, there have been countless times when I had a Jack Webb moment yet failed to put all the words in the right place. If you recall, Jack Webb was Sgt. Friday on TV?s ?Dragnet.? At the end of each episode he did what he did best. His parting shots to the criminals were, without exception, the best putdowns in the history of not only television, but police work as well.

I?ve tried, many times, to equal what Sgt. Friday did at the end of the episode, but I failed miserably.

In one show, Sgt. Friday had just busted a bunch of hippies who were inside a house, tripping on LSD. They were slowly dancing around and waving their arms slowly over their heads and just tripping way out. The guys were dressed in the normal hippie attire of a bloused and puffed-sleeve shirt with a paisley vest, wide belt, and bellbottoms. The really-fake long hair was held in place by the wide headband and most had a Sonny Bono mustache.

The room was painted full of florescent paintings of peace symbols and ?Make Love, Not War? was written all over the place. The lights were red, green and blue. Some of the hippies were sitting on the floor staring at their hands and others were aimlessly walking in circles talking to themselves with their eyes wide open. Friday and Officer Gannon entered the house looking for a teenage runaway. They found the runaway in the corner of the living room (no furniture. Hippies don?t buy furniture) staring at a cigarette lighter an evil-looking hippie is flicking.

Friday and Gannon do their fast-paced walk-in as if they?re joined at the hip. Friday looks around, in disgust, before discovering the runaway they were looking for. At this point, nobody really knows they?re there. They?re still looking all around doing all that hippie stuff.

Gannon and Friday look at each other and shake their collective heads at what they see. I don?t know if it was the surroundings or the bad hippie-acting but it was in the ?60s and this is what we were led to believe hippies did.

Friday grabs the girl and the older hippie, whose Sonny Bono mustache is looking a bit lopsided, tries to intercede and take her back.

Older hippie: ?Hey man. That?s my chick!? (He has one arm of the 30-year-old looking runaway and Friday has the other arm.)

Friday: ?The only chick you?re going to have is chicken soup in the LA County Jail, mister. You see this girl is a decent, family-loving, daughter of a hard-working father and loving mother who lost her way after scum like you gave her some LSD, acid, or whatever name you punks call it now days. Sure, she?s tripping, she?s loaded, she?s flying around the moon, she?s whacked out, she?s wasted, she?s zombied, (Gannon now looks confused) she?s mamboed-bomboaded out of her mind thanks to you and your low-life, lazy, flag-burning, pot-smoking hippie scum friends but you can bet on this, commie-pinko, I?m going to be there every time you try and lure one of these kids with your pot and your LSD and your Volkswagen vans and paisley shirts! I?m going to be there and when I catch you I?m going to put you right back in the jail and then I?m going to be there when you get out and get back in your Volkswagen van and put on your puffy little shirt and paisley vest and then I?m going to be there when you stop for gasoline and waffles.?

The older hippie just hangs his head in shame because he has no comeback to the great things that Sgt. Friday has just said. (That or he saw himself in the mirror. Even in the ?60s, he looked way too hokie.)

There were many times over the years that I felt like I had a Friday moment in me when, after confronting someone for committing a crime, the criminal would make some ridiculous statement that begged for a Sgt. Friday comeback. Unfortunately, I never developed the skill for being able to administer a verbal lashing equal to that of Joe Friday:

?I?m going to be there because when punks like you do that stuff that you punks do all the time, then I?m going to be there and then uh ? I?m going to get you and you?re going down and the only thing you?ll be having is chicken soup or whatever else they have on the jail menu, but your scummy friends and puffy shirt people are going to realize that you uh?. can?t do that stuff you?re doing all the time ? except if you don?t get caught and then if you do you?ll probably get off on first-offender stuff but after that ? oh, yeah, you?re mine, mister! Unless it?s on the weekend because I?m off on Saturday but heaven help you Sunday through Thursday!?

It just never worked.

I finally stopped trying to emulate Sgt. Friday. Too many syllables and long paragraphs to keep up with. I took the words of another famous detective. It was much easier to say: ?Book ?em, Dano.?

Unfortunately, my partner?s name was Fred so it was:

?Book em Fred-O.?

Not quite what I was looking for.

Another Religion of Peace Update

Our friends at CAIR are distributing free Qurans. Problem? The commentary is virulently antiSemitic.

In an attempt to quell the rancor resulting from Newsweek's retracted Quran-desecration story, a controversial U.S. Muslim lobby group is giving away free copies of Islam's revered book.

The particular edition, however, "The Meaning of the Holy Quran," previously was banned by the Los Angeles school district because commentary notes accompanying the text were regarded as anti-Semitic.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has included the edition in the Islamic book-package it offers libraries nationwide and now is giving it away to help "improve America's image" through a program called "Explore the Quran."

"We want to turn a negative image into a positive one," said CAIR's Florida director, Altaf Ali, at a news conference in Cooper City, Fla, announcing the project. "America's image is taking a beating, and it's affecting us all, of different faiths."

WorldNetDaily contacted Ali at his Florida office, but he refused to be interviewed for the story.

CAIR's library project, begun in September 2002, was funded in part by a $500,000 donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. In 2001, bin Talal's $10 million donation to New York City was rejected by then-Mayor Rudolph Guiliani after the prince suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East contributed to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Saudi-funded CAIR is a spin-off of a group described by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a "front group" for the terrorist group Hamas in the U.S. Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.

A Florida-based group, Americans Against Hate, drew attention to CAIR's distribution project, noting the book's commentary and index makes it clear the Quran's references to "apes" and "pigs" are descriptions of Jews.

Khaleel Mohammed, an assistant professor of religious studies at San Diego State University, says the Saudi-approved edition was first published by Abdullah Yusuf Ali in 1934 at "a time both of growing Arab animosity toward Zionism and in a milieu that condoned anti-Semitism."

Ali, according to the professor, constructed it as a "polemic against Jews."

Until recently, he said, it's been the most popular version among Muslims. Yet, despite revisions over the years, Mohammed added, the footnoted commentary about Jews "remained so egregious" that in April 2002 the Los Angeles school district banned its use at local schools.

Happy belated birthday Clint

Dirty Harry turned 75 yesterday

ROP Update

Those crazy Saudis really think women shouldn't drive.

He just wanted his colleagues in the government's legislative arm to discuss the possibility of conducting a study into the feasibility of reversing the ban on women drivers ? the only prohibition of its kind in the world.

But Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa's proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country where the subject of women drivers remains taboo.

Al-Zulfa's cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is "driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower."

There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality.

The uproar may be astounding to outsiders. But in Saudi Arabia, where the religious establishment has the upper hand in defining women's freedoms, the issue touches on the kingdom's strict Islamic lifestyle.

Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics.

"Driving by women leads to evil," Munir al-Shahrani wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. "Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men."

But al-Zulfa contends neither the law nor Islam bans women from driving. Instead, the ban is based on fatwas, or Islamic edicts, by senior clerics who say that any driving by women would create situations for sinful temptation.

It is the same argument used to restrict other freedoms. Without written permission from a male guardian, women may not travel, get an education or work. Regardless of permission, they are not allowed to mix with men in public or leave home without wearing black cloaks, called abayas.