Pennsylvanian in exile

Pro choice

I love this cartoon, courtesy of the talented Zach at in Toon with the World.

In the line of duty

One of New York's finest, NYPD officer Dillon Stewart, dies in the line of duty.

A hero Brooklyn cop yesterday was shot through the heart but lived long enough to help nab his attacker — who had mercilessly pumped a bullet into another officer just a week ago, police said.

Decorated Officer Dillon Stewart, 35, took one deadly bullet through his left armpit — a mere quarter-inch above the protective plate of his armored vest — while driving in pursuit of the Glock-toting thug in Flatbush around 2:49 a.m., cops said.

Suspected cop killer Allan Cameron — who last night also was fingered in the infamous gunpoint mugging of an off-duty officer in Crown Heights on Nov. 19 — got off at least five shots at Stewart and his partner, Paul Lipka, authorities said.

Stewart later underwent hours-long emergency surgery at Kings County Hospital but died around 8:40 a.m., with his stricken wife, mother and sister by his side.

The beloved cop also had two daughters, ages 6 years and 6 months.

"Whoever did it, Judgment Day will come," said the officer's grieving mother-in-law at her daughter's home last night. "We leave everything in the hands of God."

Cameron, charged early today with murder, was driving with a valid license at the time — even after racking up a slew of dangerous traffic violations, including once hitting a police sergeant with his car mirror, officials said.

He allegedly shot Stewart during a wild car chase apparently sparked when the perpetrator ran a red light on Church Avenue near Flatbush Avenue.

After being shot, Stewart miraculously managed to hang on long enough to follow Cameron for a block and a half to direct other officers to where he was.

"Oh, I've been shot!" Stewart told his stunned partner after finally stumbling out of the pair's unmarked car near 21st Street, where Cameron fled in his vehicle.

Visibly distraught Police Commissioner Ray Kelly hailed Stewart for helping nail his alleged killer even after taking the bullet.

"He showed remarkable tenacity and courage in the chase keeping the shooter in sight," Kelly said.

Within minutes of Stewart's death, police reported they had finally nabbed Cameron in his girlfriend's nearby apartment.

"We got him!" an officer could be heard yelling over the radio of a police car parked outside the hospital, just as one cop leaving the building was seen bursting into tears upon learning his comrade was dead.

The tragedy unfolded during what should have been just another routine night for Stewart, a five-year veteran of the force.

He and his partner worked the night shift — 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. — wearing uniforms but in unmarked cars. The most action they usually saw involved relatively low-level crimes like stolen cars.

Officials say they were parked in their green Impala last night outside the Temptations nightclub at 2210 Church Ave., a reputed trouble spot, when they spotted Cameron in a 1990 red Infiniti speeding through the light. The cops immediately took off in pursuit, with Stewart at the wheel.

Cameron wound up heading north on Flatbush, taking the inside lane of the double-lane road, cops said.

As Stewart pulled up next to him at Church Avenue, Cameron coldly gripped the wheel as he whipped out a black 9mm Glock and pumped bullets through his open passenger-side window, police said.

Three bullets imbedded in Stewart's driver's-side door. Another tore through the police car's rear left door.

The fatal slug grazed the bottom metal rim of Stewart's open window before striking him.

Still, apparently unaware he had been even hit, Stewart managed to drive another block and a half.

Then, doubling over in his seat, Stewart stopped the car and stumbled out.

A cop who had just arrived on the scene, Mark Pihlava, helped Lipka get Stewart back into his patrol car and drive the wounded cop to the hospital. Before doing so, they both managed to get off some shots at the fleeing suspect, officials said.

Meanwhile, other cops descended on an apartment building at 131 E. 21st St., where Cameron's relatives live and where he was last seen speeding his car into the garage.

Cameron had been illegally using a parking spot there after the owner died, authorities said.

The suspect closed the garage door behind him with a remote control, cops said. By the time police got inside, he was gone — likely escaping through a small window whose metal bars had been jarred loose.

Their break came when they discovered a vehicle registration in the getaway car that belonged to a man on East 21st Street. The man later identified Cameron as the person he had recently sold another car to.

Having ID'd him, cops finally traced Cameron to his new girlfriend's Ocean Avenue address about a block away.

He gave up after heavily armed officers knocked on the sixth-floor pad's door.

His girlfriend, who identified herself only as Maritza, told The Post she had been sleeping when Cameron came to the apartment and "he didn't tell me nothing."

Cops said he shouted out, "I'm in trouble!" as he ran for cover in the home.

The Glock and its clip were later recovered in the alleyway behind the apartment building.

It matched shell casings found in the car Cameron was driving, police said.

Cops said they also discovered about 50 dime bags of pot in the vehicle.

Cameron's friends told police he had been smoking a lot of crack lately, causing him to fight.

"He'd been acting like a Jekyll and Hyde, and even his friends were staying away from him," one source said.

Late last night, off-duty cop Wiener Phillippe fingered Cameron in a lineup as the thug who robbed and shot him outside his apartment building. Wiener had said his shooter drove an Infiniti.

Sources said that robbery may give cops a motive in the fatal cop shooting, suggesting that Cameron violently flipped out seeing the cops pull up to his car, thinking they were going to nab him in Phillippe's case.

Cameron was charged with first-degree murder for Stewart — the first city cop killed this year in the line of duty — and attempted murder for Phillippe.

As for yesterday's gun-down, Cameron was still insisting to cops that he wasn't the one who fired the shots. But police who witnessed parts of the chase said he was alone in the car, authorities said.

His lengthy record already appears to read like a bad case of junk justice.

His priors include a bust in January 2003 for reckless endangerment, driving without a license, running red lights and speeding. A month later, he was busted for reckless endangerment in a car again — when he was driving erratically and clipped a police sergeant on the street.

He wound up getting three years' probation for the first offense — even after probation officers recommended he be jailed. He walked on the second rap.

Cameron's stepbrother, Denory Rogers, said the suspect was a nice guy with a penchant for fixing cars. "When he's home, he's OK," Rogers said. "I don't know how he is on the street."

Mayor Bloomberg called Stewart — awarded four medals during his career — "a hero to all of New York City. There are few things more tragic," he said of the cop's death.

Joe Lieberman: 27 million vs 10,000

At least one democrat isn't a treasonous surrender monkey.

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."

Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.

Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.

Maybe being a surrender monkey isn't a good policy position

Pravda on the Potomac, aka The Washington Post, must have hated having to write this article: 70% of Americans say criticism of Iraq war hurts troops' morale.

Democrats fumed last week at Vice President Cheney's suggestion that criticism of the administration's war policies was itself becoming a hindrance to the war effort. But a new poll indicates most Americans are sympathetic to Cheney's point.

Seventy percent of people surveyed said that criticism of the war by Democratic senators hurts troop morale -- with 44 percent saying morale is hurt "a lot," according to a poll taken by RT Strategies. Even self-identified Democrats agree: 55 percent believe criticism hurts morale, while 21 percent say it helps morale.

The results surely will rankle many Democrats, who argue that it is patriotic and supportive of the troops to call attention to what they believe are deep flaws in President Bush's Iraq strategy. But the survey itself cannot be dismissed as a partisan attack. The RTs in RT Strategies are Thomas Riehle, a Democrat, and Lance Tarrance, a veteran GOP pollster.

Their poll also indicates many Americans are skeptical of Democratic complaints about the war. Just three of 10 adults accept that Democrats are leveling criticism because they believe this will help U.S. efforts in Iraq. A majority believes the motive is really to "gain a partisan political advantage."

This poll is one of the few pieces of supportive news the administration has had lately on Iraq. Most surveys have shown significant majorities believe it was a mistake to go to war, as well as rising sentiment that Bush misled Americans in making the case for it.

Even so, there is still support for Bush's policy going forward. A plurality, 49 percent, believe that troops should come home only when the Iraqi government can provide for its own security, while 16 percent support immediate withdrawal, regardless of the circumstances.

Remembering The Ukranian Great Famine

Yep, life under the Communists in the Soviet Union was all seashells and balloons.

Olena Tuz was 6 years old when she saw a neighbor throw the body of a naked woman into a pit on the edge of a remote forest in 1932. Flesh had been cut from the body.

"People ate people, mothers ate their own children. They didn't realize what they were doing, they just were hungry," said Tuz, standing at a thousand-strong rally in the capital Kiev to commemorate victims of the Soviet-era forced famine that killed up to 10 million Ukrainians.

On Saturday, relatives and survivors lit 33,000 candles in Kiev — representing the number of people who were dying daily at the famine's height.

The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin provoked what the Ukrainians called the Great Famine in 1932-1933 as part of his campaign to force Ukrainian peasants to give up their land and join collective farms. During the height of the famine, which was enforced by methodical confiscation of all food by the Soviet secret police, cannibalism was widespread.

Those who resisted the confiscation were sent to Siberia; a person taking a wheat ear from a field was to be shot on the spot.

"The state system that made possible such crimes should be punished by the court of history," Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko told the crowd.

Hanna Kucherenko, from the village of Kryvonosivka in the northern Chernihiv region, said her grandfather was among those who died in the famine.

"Many years later, I was hiding bread in my pockets, and I still cannot throw out a piece of bread," she said.

The famine was kept secret by the Soviet authorities. Only in 2003 did Ukraine declassify more than 1,000 files documenting it.

On Friday, the Pulitzer Prize Board said it would not revoke a prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty, a reporter for The New York Times who was accused of ignoring the famine in Ukraine to preserve his access to Stalin. The board said there was not clear evidence of deliberate deception .

Even back then some reporters were cozying up to brutal dictators. I guess SOMEONE had to teach Al-Guardian how it's done.

Worst cars ever made

MSNBC.com did a survey of readers for opinions on the worst cars ever made.

Some of the choices were obvious, such as the Vega:

The 1972 Chevrolet Vega was by far the worst car ever made. Unfortunately, it was my first car, and I was so proud of it ... for about 6 months. After 20,000 miles of gentle driving, it needed a valve job, and possibly a new engine, a new clutch, a new transmission sync gear and new tires. The Vega was incredibly slow, loud, and stuffy (the air circulation was awful). The gear spacing was all wrong. And the handling was horrendous — even dangerous, especially on wet roads.

and the Pacer:

I think the worst American car ever was the AMC Pacer. It was just the silliest looking car. No reason for anyone to like it. It was a big bubble, like a moon buggy. I always looked at it and shook my head.

but some tree huggers had to weigh in on the SUV:

The worst American car ever made in my opinion is the SUV. These cars are the most inefficient waste of our already fragile natural resource supply, not to mention a safety hazard. You may feel safer in an SUV in the event of a collision, but what about the other driver if they are in a standard size sedan?

and

The Hummer is absolutely my choice. In a time when fuel efficiency is necessary to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, decrease indirect funding to terrorist cells through corrupt governments like Saudi Arabia and decrease global warming before the hurricanes destroy the whole planet, buying a monster like a Hummer is quite possibly the most un-American thing you can do.

Wow: class envy, the nanny state, environmental wackoism...a trifecta!

Fry Tookie

Michelle Malkin weighs in on Arnold's possible clemency for Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

Convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the co-founder of the violent Crips gang who is on Death Row in California, is Hollyweird's current cause celebre. He is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 13 after 24 years of legal wrangling. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to hold a clemency hearing Dec. 8.

Among the Save Tookie brigades: Snoop Dogg, Bianca Jagger, Jesse Jackson, Margaret Cho, Mike Farrell, Jason Alexander, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Noah Wyle.

I wrote about Williams' bleeding-heart worshipers back in 2000, when he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize:

San Quentin prison officials report that juvenile delinquents idolize Williams. His propaganda has been endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus. As part of an ongoing public relations campaign to soften his image while he ties up the courts with specious legal appeals, Williams has been profiled sympathetically by People magazine, Time, the Los Angeles Times, and the ethnic press. He even appeared on a TV special introduced by President Clinton. Barbara Becnel, a crusading journalist who "edits" Williams' writings, once gushed that if the death-row inmate had "been raised in Brentwood instead of South Central, he'd be head of the state Democratic party."

Williams' groupies would have us believe that their Nobel Peace Prize nominee is a helpless victim of his environment, addled by low self-esteem, forced to turn to violence by racist oppressors, and now apologetic "for the atrocities which I and others committed against our race through gang violence." Spare us the sob story. Here are the cold-blooded facts missing from Williams' Nobel Peace Prize application:

Williams was convicted of murdering four innocent bystanders with a sawed-off shotgun in 1979. There was nothing peaceful or compassionate about the way [Albert Owens], Thsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee Chen Lin died. Owen[s] was a white teen-age clerk at a 7-11 convenience store, shot twice in the back of the head -- execution-style -- as he lay unarmed on the floor during a hold-up. A witness testified that Williams mocked the gurgling sounds Owen[s] made as he lay dying. "You should have heard the way he sounded when I shot him," the witness quoted Williams.

The Yangs were Taiwanese immigrants who, along with their daughter Yee Chen Lin, were gunned down during a motel robbery two weeks after Owen[s] died. Half of the daughter's face was blown off by the shotgun blasts, former L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Robert Martin told me in an interview this week. Williams called them "Buddhaheads," Martin recounted, and robbed them of petty cash.
Williams has yet to apologize to the victims' families. When the trial ended, Martin told me, Williams muttered to the prosecution team, "I'll get every one of you m-----f-----s."

Spoken like a Nobel laureate.

Tookie Williams was sentenced to die for these brutal crimes in 1981. But at the end of this year, he will have celebrated 19 more Thanksgivings, 19 more Christmases, and 19 more birthdays. That's 6,935 days more than [Albert Owens], Thsai-Shai Yang, Yen-I Yang and Yee Chen Lin were allowed to enjoy on this earth...

The only hearings should be on reinstating the gas chamber.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A good look at McCain

The Opinion Journal has a very fair and balanced of Senator John McCain.

When I ask Mr. McCain if he's a conservative, he seems slightly agitated at having to defend his credentials in this way. "Hell yes, I'm a conservative. When it comes to a strong defense and smaller government, I'm as conservative it gets. Look at my National Taxpayers Union rating. I'm near 100% every year." (I do. He is.) Then he fumes: "I'm so disgusted with the way my party is wasting money. It's an embarrassment."

It is on this issue that Mr. McCain has struck the mother lode. More than any other first-tier GOP candidate in 2008, Mr. McCain has shrewdly tapped into the rage that conservatives are feeling over President Bush's $800 billion Medicare drug bill (which he voted against), the highway bill with its 6,000 earmarked white-elephant projects (which he also voted against), and the infamous $500 million Alaska Bridge to Nowhere (which he led the crusade to defund). Mr. McCain whips out a spreadsheet detailing the legislation he drafted with Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn to cut the budget by $100 billion by canceling the highway pork, delaying the prescription drug bill, establishing a commission to end worthless government programs, and so on. Give the man his due: He has monopolized the anti-big-government Reaganite message of late.

Yet Mr. McCain holds the most eclectic set of economic policy positions of any politician I've ever met. He seems to defy political typecasting, reveling in the role of maverick. He voted against the Bush tax cuts ("Way too tilted to the rich"), while supporting antigrowth initiatives to combat global warming ("Climate change is just a huge problem that really needs to be confronted"), and is the lead sponsor--with Sen. Ted Kennedy--of a guest worker program to allow immigrants to enter the country legally. Any one of these landmines could blow up in Mr. McCain's face in conservative red state primaries in 2008. His 2000 presidential bid was capsized by Christian conservative primary voters in South Carolina. He readily concedes that "sometimes I have run-ins with the right-wingers in the party."

On the other hand, he's a fierce defender of free trade and a champion of school choice. "The day that members of Congress will send their kids to the public schools in Washington, D.C., is the day I'll know we've fixed education in America." Then he asks: "How can my colleagues say they are against vouchers or charter schools when they won't send their own kids to the schools in the town where we work?"

Mr. McCain has an intense and combative personality; I can't resist asking him about his world-famous explosive temper. He assures me, "I can't remember the last time I had a temper tantrum. I discovered a few years ago that my temper was reducing my effectiveness. It was preventing me from getting things done." But I'm not entirely convinced, suspecting that if I were to light a match in here when he's exercised about an issue and his blood pressure runs up, the whole office might go "Kaboom!"

During our interview, however, Mr. McCain is relaxed, cordial and gracious. While I disagree vehemently with him on many policy issues, it is thrilling to sit in his presence. He is a genuine American hero and patriot in an age when heroism and patriotism have gone out of style.

This is a man who has survived nearly being blown to pieces in Vietnam, five years as a POW at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," two years of solitary confinement, and one year of torture--yet when offered a chance to go home, he refused to break the military code of honor that POWs are released in order of their capture. Most recently, he has survived a bout of potentially fatal melanoma. In short, he's been to hell and back more times than any one person should have to in one lifetime, and still he insists that I sit while he pours me a cup of coffee and politely asks if I mind if he eats his brown-bag lunch.

In a political environment where many Republicans can't build a wall around the United States high enough to keep out immigrants, Mr. McCain is admirably one of the few leaders of the party willing to lock horns with the close-the-borders wing of the party. Of his adversaries on this issue, he asks: "What do they really want to do with the 11 million illegal immigrants that are here? Send them all back home?"

His own plan involves a three-step process: better border enforcement, a guest worker program, and an earned legalization program with a $2,000 fine for those who are here already. Anyone who has heard Mr. McCain on the stump lately knows that this is an issue he feels passionately about. "America must remain a beacon of hope and opportunity. The most wonderful thing about our country is that this is the one place in the world that anyone--through ambition and hard work--can get as far as their ambition will take them," he says, in optimistic rhetoric that is somewhat reminiscent of Ronald Reagan.

On a broader range of economic issues, though, Mr. McCain readily departs from Reaganomics. His philosophy is best described as a work in progress. He is refreshingly blunt when he tell me: "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." OK, so who does he turn to for advice? His answer is reassuring. His foremost economic guru is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (who would almost certainly be Treasury secretary in a McCain administration). He's also friendly with the godfather of supply-side economics, Arthur Laffer.

But Mr. McCain is no antitax supply-sider himself. He grandstanded against the Bush capital-gains and dividend tax cuts and even co-sponsored an amendment with Tom Daschle to scuttle the reduction in the highest income-tax rates. Why? "I just thought it was too tilted to the wealthy and I still do. I want to cut the taxes on the middle class." Even when I confront him with emphatic evidence that those tax cuts have been an economic triumph and have increased revenues, he is unrepentant and defends his "no" vote by falling back on class-warfare type thinking: "We have a wealth gap in this country, and that worries me."

It is here in my conversation with the senator that the McCain economic philosophy starts to come into vivid focus. Throughout our chat he has referred to Theodore Roosevelt in almost reverential terms and glows when I ask about him. He calls TR "my hero . . . and one of our greatest presidents," and at one point he excitedly searches through his briefcase and pulls out a book that he is reading on the famously tumultuous election of 1912. That was when TR bolted from the Republican Party (which Mr. McCain concedes was "a mistake") and formed the Bull Moose Party to dethrone William Taft. When I mention TR's trust-busting (which was mostly counterproductive economically), Mr. McCain really comes to life, exultantly points his finger in the air, smiles and cries out: "He called the trusts 'the malefactors of wealth.' "

And in this very moment it becomes clear to me that John McCain aspires to be a modern-day TR. The similarities are unmistakable: Both were war heroes, mavericks within their own party, reformers and defenders of the little guy.

But here in a nutshell lies the danger of the McCain view of the world. Where some see the vast virtue of entrepreneurial wealth-generators and job-producers, he too often sees "robber barons." He seems forever in search of the next Joe Camel, Charles Keating, Ken Lay or Jose Canseco (Mr. McCain has been a prominent crusader against steroids in baseball).

He views himself, I believe, as a kind of modern-day Robin Hood, a defender of the downtrodden and tormentor of the bullying special interests, which is endearing and unquestionably a big part of his broad political appeal, but often leads to populist and parasitic economic policy conclusions like higher taxes on the rich and attacks on "huge oil profits." He wants to be the caped crusader against corruption. The buzzword for the McCain Straight Talk Express in 2008 will be reform: "I want to reform education, reform Medicare and Social Security, reform lobbying and campaigns. Reform immigration. Reform. Reform. Reform."

When I ask him about America's remarkable income mobility, he responds, "Yes, but I keep seeing the thousands of faces of those poor people who were left behind in New Orleans," as if this was a failure of capitalism, not a failure of government. And with this, he gobbles down the last bite of his unpretentious lunch--a hot dog and chips--shakes my hand warmly, and sprints off to his next appointment to clean up whatever the latest mess is in Washington.

I come away believing that if I'm ever in a knife fight or in a foxhole, there is no one I'd rather have next to me than John McCain. Whether he's someone who should be steering the rudders of the American economy is a different issue altogether.

Which Peanuts Character are you?


You are Woodstock!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
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Why can't we just get along

In the Opinion Journal, David Brog has a good op-ed about Jewish-Evangelical Christian relations. While I am Catholic and not evangelical, I found it interesting reading.

Earlier this month, Abraham Foxman took to the podium to address the key members of his Anti-Defamation League, the leading watchdog of anti-Semitism in America. In somber tones, Mr. Foxman sounded the alarm over the "key domestic challenge to the American Jewish community and to our democratic values." The threat he described was neither Islamic terror nor assimilation but a much more imaginative one. "Make no mistake," Mr. Foxman warned, "we are facing an emerging Christian Right leadership that intends to 'Christianize' all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and locker room of professional, collegiate and amateur sports, from the military to SpongeBob SquarePants."

Mr. Foxman is an intelligent and experienced man. Thus one must marvel at his ability to scan the nation and determine that the key challenge facing American Jews comes from socially conservative Christians. The fate of beloved cartoon characters aside, there are very serious threats facing American Jews today, and they have nothing to do with social conservatives.

Al Qaeda and the home-grown cells who serve it have targeted Jews around the world, including in America. In 2002, the FBI warned Jewish leaders that al Qaeda was plotting to attack domestic Jewish targets with gasoline trucks. In 2003, the Bush administration raised the homeland-terror threat level to orange due in part to a large volume of threats against Jewish targets. And in August, the Justice Department secured the indictments of four American Muslims in a conspiracy to attack Los Angeles synagogues.

Outside of physical threats from without, Jewish life in America is seriously threatened from within by assimilation. The intermarriage rate has grown in every decade since 1970 and has now reached an alarming 47%. Only one-third of the children of these intermarriages are raised Jewish. These statistics, combined with the very low fertility rates of those Jews who do marry other Jews, explain why the Jewish population in America is steadily shrinking.

Far from being the source of such threats to American Jews, Christians are actually important allies in combating them. Conservative Christians surpass Jews as proponents of a robust war on terror at home and abroad. And when it comes to assimilation, these Christians demonstrate the only solution by their example. Evangelicals take their faith seriously: They go to church, teach religion to their children, and act on their faith through good works. If Jews followed their lead, assimilation rates would plummet.

More troubling than Mr. Foxman's misdiagnosis of the threats facing American Jews is his mischaracterization of Christian goals. Just because Christian activists are motivated by their Christian faith does not mean that they are seeking to "Christianize" America. As every schoolchild knows, Christian churches have been the driving force behind some of the most important social movements in America, from the abolition of slavery to the civil-rights movement. What is relevant, of course, is not a policy's source or motivation but its merits.

And there is indeed merit to the agenda pursued by Christian conservatives. Evangelical Christians are rock-solid supporters of Israel--a fact that the Jewish community has belatedly begun to acknowledge and appreciate. What remains unacknowledged, and certainly not appreciated, is the fact that socially conservative Christians have become the leading proponents of Judeo-Christian values--and, therefore, traditional Jewish values--in America.

When Christians recognize that human beings are influenced by the surrounding culture, and therefore seek to persuade the entertainment industry to stop degrading that culture, they are taking a stand for Jewish values. When Christians fight genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and raise funds for victims of natural disasters around the globe, they are acting out Jewish values. And yes, when Christians stand up for the sanctity of human life and oppose euthanasia or abortion as birth control, they are protecting the most fundamental of Jewish values. Jews are of course free to differ on all of the above issues, but they should not wrap themselves in the flag of Judaism when they do so.

In one of the most poignant moments in the Hebrew Bible, King David's son Absalom is killed while leading a failed rebellion against his father. When David weeps for his son, David's top lieutenant, Joab, argues that the king is disgracing all those who have just risked their lives to defend him, admonishing: "You love your enemies and hate your friends." American Jews have much to learn from this story. In some ways we are Absalom, rebelling against the conservative beliefs of our religious forebears. And in other ways we are David, mourning the loss of a beloved but destructive family member--liberalism--while ignoring the true friends that surround us and preserve us. Either way, we need to follow Joab's advice and dry our eyes.

Democrats, Mad Mullahs: What's the difference?

You'd think the dems would be embarassed to share the same views on Iraq as the mad mullahs of Iran.

Iran's supreme leader urged the Iraqi president on Tuesday to seek a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from
Iraq, saying the American presence harms the country.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is paying a three-day visit to Iran, a country the United States accuses of meddling in Iraq but that is closely allied to Iraq's new Shiite and Kurd-dominated leadership.

"The government and people of Iraq can with their voices seek a timetable for the exit of the occupiers," Khamenei told Talabani, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "Certainly, in the end the Americans and British will be forced by bitter experience to leave Iraq."

Leaders from Iraq's divided Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities agreed in a conference in Cairo this week to call for a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, but gave no specific timeframe and tied it the training of Iraqi forces to carry on the fight against Sunni-led insurgents. The interior minister said this week he expected Iraqi forces to be capable of taking over security duties by the end of next year.

Khamenei denounced what he called U.S. attempts to hurt warming Iranian-Iraqi ties with "lies and slander" and urged Iraqis to resist American pressure on them to reduce relations with its neighbor.

"Iraq and its neighbors will always be present in the region, while the U.S. presence is temporary," he said.

The Shiite parties that dominate Iraq's government have been close allies of mostly Shiite Iran's Islamic government since many of their leaders fled into exile there during
Saddam Hussein's rule. Kurdish parties also built ties with Iran during that time.

On Monday, Talabani held talks with Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who proclaimed the two countries have "one soul in two bodies."

Ahmadinejad said the United States, which has nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq in support of the government, wanted to block better ties between the Shiite Muslim-dominated nations.

How do the lefties look at themselves in the mirror in the morning, knowing that they care more about the Madd Mullahs than our US troops?

Steyn on the "Arab Street"

Mark Steyn nails Murtha and other surrender monkeys.

Happily for Mr Zarqawi, no matter how desperate the head-hackers get, the Western defeatists can always top them. A Democrat Congressman, Jack Murtha, has called for immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. He's a Vietnam veteran, so naturally the media are insisting that his views warrant special deference, military experience in a war America lost being the only military experience the Democrats and the press value these days. Hence, the demand for the President to come up with an "exit strategy".

In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Demonstrating the will to lose as clearly as America did in Vietnam wasn't such a smart move, but since the media can't seem to get beyond this ancient jungle war it may be worth underlining the principal difference: Osama is not Ho Chi Minh, and al-Qa'eda are not the Viet Cong. If you exit, they'll follow. And Americans will die - in foreign embassies, barracks, warships, as they did through the Nineties, and eventually on the streets of US cities, too.

As 9/11 fades into the past, that's an increasingly hard argument to make. Taking your ball and going home is a seductive argument in a paradoxical superpower whose inclinations on the Right have a strong isolationist streak and on the Left a strong transnational streak - which is isolationism with a sappy face and biennial black-tie banquets in EU capitals. Transnationalism means poseur solutions - the Kyotification of foreign policy.

The Church is strong in Vietnam

Good news in Vietnam as the Holy Father creates a new diocese.

The Vatican said Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI has created a new diocese in Vietnam and named its first bishop in another sign of the growing clout of the Catholic population in the country.

Benedict created the diocese of Ba Ria, in the province of the same name, by dividing up the existing diocese of Xuan Loc, the Vatican said. He named Monsignor Thomas Nguen Van Tram as bishop of Ba Ria.

While predominantly Buddhist, Vietnam has an estimated 6 million Catholics, the second-highest number in Southeast Asia after the Philippines.

Xuan Loc had nearly 1 million Catholics in 262 parishes before the division, the Vatican said.

The announcement of the new diocese came a day after Catholic Church officials in Vietnam said they planned to ordain 57 priests later this month — the largest number of clergy to be added to the communist country in a single ceremony.

Church officials said the large number was an indication of the gradual improvement of relations between Vietnam and the Holy See. The two still have no diplomatic ties, and their relations have been strained by Hanoi's insistence of having the final say in most of the church appointments, a policy the Vatican has rejected.

However, relations have improved in recent years with visits by Vatican officials and the relatively smooth appointments of Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man as cardinal in Ho Chi Minh City in 2003 and Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet as archbishop of Hanoi in March.

Thank you Mr Murtha

At first I was furious at Murtha for saying we should pull out of Iraq immediately, but Brendan Miniter convinced me that Murtha did the GOP a huge favor.

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, introduced a resolution aimed at pushing political moderates to oppose the war in Iraq. His plan called for "redeploying" U.S. troops out of Iraq over the next six months, leaving a "rapid reaction force" in the region and then pursuing U.S. goals through "diplomatic" means. It was a crafted political proposal that was meant to be an alternative to "staying the course" while not calling for outright withdrawal. It was a return of "peace without victory." And it backfired.

The Murtha resolution was intended to allow Democrats to have their cake and eat it too--to oppose the war while confusing the issue by pretending to support the war's aims of a free and democratic Iraq. Instead of fighting on the ground staked out by Democrats, Republicans chose clarity. Mr. Hunter introduced a simple, one-paragraph resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Late Friday night the House voted the resolution down 403-3.

Anyone who thinks that vote was simply cheap political theater and not connected to the larger debate on how to fight the war on terror hasn't been watching Mr. Hunter and the other defense hawks in the House over the past four years. It's not an accident that the House hasn't passed the "torture ban" that John McCain and John Warner pushed through the Senate. Nor is it a coincidence that intelligence reform stalled in the House last year until it was amended to insure that troops in the field would still have the intelligence they need.

It's not lost on Mr. Hunter, or on Reps. Steve Buyer, John Kline and many others, that Iraq is the most visible front in the war on terror and is therefore a symbol for whether the political elites of this nation have what it takes to confront global terrorist networks. If politicians can't stomach going after terrorists who openly attack U.S. soldiers, they won't have what it takes to go after terrorists who hide in some of the most remote or ungoverned reaches of the world.

It should now be clear--if it wasn't already--that the Democratic Party is the party of withdrawal. Had John Kerry won the election last year, the U.S. would today be packing its bags and preparing to leave Iraq under something similar to the Murtha plan. The fallout from that would be disastrous. "Rapid reaction force" or not, Iraq would descend into political chaos and then perhaps fall under the power of a dictator. Maybe Saddam Hussein himself would return, though there is no shortage of Saddam wannabes in that part of the world. Following that, no U.S. president for a generation or maybe two would have the political muscle to topple a rogue regime anywhere. In the meantime, the U.S. would be on the run, while terrorists and the dictators who nurture them would have the upper hand.

It turns out, however, that the politics of national security favor staying the course. Both the president and vice president have hit back hard in this debate, noting the importance of winning in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday called for an open and clear debate, but he forcefully argued that the war was and remains in this nation's interests because it allows the U.S. to combat terrorists in the heart of the Middle East. He also took on the idea that by invading Iraq the U.S. has made itself more of a target for terrorists. "We were not in Iraq on Sept. 11 and the terrorists hit us anyway," he told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

And in Congress, fighting the war remains the one issue that continues to rally the GOP. Before Mr. Murtha's resolution, the Republican Party seemed hopelessly split and unable either to cut spending or to make the president's tax cuts permanent. After the Murtha resolution, Republicans quashed the earmark for the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska (though the state still gets to keep the money for it), passed $50 billion in spending cut, and, of course, soundly rejected the idea of withdrawing from Iraq. Suddenly Republicans seem to understand why they are in the majority.

How do you say "Kristallnacht" in French?

France, that wonderful beacon of tolerance, is getting very dangerous for Jews.

French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. They are moving to Israel, the United States, and increasingly, Montreal -- where the mostly English-speaking Jewish community is preparing for its greatest demographic change in decades.

Mr. Barthel is the Benvenuti school's principal; a diminutive, soft-spoken, 32-year-old observant Jew, who wears a skullcap but no sidelocks, and fashionable sneakers with narrow trousers. The gates by which we meet are not the kind you open with a latch, but rather ones you pass through with the permission of a security guard provided by Service de la protection de la communaute Juif -- a security firm created and funded by France's Jewish community -- who is installed in a booth in the school's vestibule. These gates close off both the sidewalk and the street in front of the school to cars and pedestrians -- they are a barricade.

Mr. Barthel walks me through the school, which was built three years ago to what he calls "new specifications for a new reality."

"All of our windows are made with glass both bomb- and bullet-proof; there are security cameras in all the common rooms," he says. "You will also notice there is no sign outside of the school that could single it out as a Jewish place."

In the past few years, Jews in Canada may have become familiar with some security measures in synagogues, notably around the high holidays, but nothing approaching this level of stringency.

Mr. Barthel explains the buddy system instituted at the Benvenuti school for children both arriving and leaving the premises. The students must travel in a pack and are not allowed to wear visible skullcaps or Stars of David anywhere but inside the school. They are also discouraged from dressing in a manner that Mr. Barthel calls "Shalala," meaning that they asked to refrain from dressing in a style which in North American parlance might be termed "Jappy."

"The Diesel jeans, the tight bomber jackets, these things can also make them look like Jews," he says. "They must look more quiet now, for safety."

Mr. Barthel is the father of two young children. Last year, his children's school bus, belonging to a Jewish school in Epinay-sur-seine, a northern suburb of Paris, was set on fire. "The bus was empty when it was attacked, but still, nobody did anything about it, not the police, not the government."

He says the Jews of France have increasingly felt as if they have had to take safety into their own hands. "For us now, this means one of two things: bunker in with bomb-proof glass, or leave."

Mr. Barthel and his family have chosen the latter, becoming part of what could easily qualify as an exodus of Jews. In the past four years, French-Jewish immigration to Israel has more than doubled. The United States has received an influx of thousands as well, notably to the Miami area, where, as in Israel, entirely French-Jewish communities have cropped up, bringing with them everything from kosher patisseries to synagogues both French in language and culture.

How to lose a war

Columnist - and retired Army officer - Ralph Peters lists a blueprint for losing the Iraq War.

QUIT. It's that simple. There are plenty of more complex ways to lose a war, but none as reliable as just giving up.

Increasingly, quitting looks like the new American Way of War. No matter how great your team, you can't win the game if you walk off the field at half-time. That's precisely what the Democratic Party wants America to do in Iraq. Forget the fact that we've made remarkable progress under daunting conditions: The Dems are looking to throw the game just to embarrass the Bush administration.

Forget about the consequences. Disregard the immediate encouragement to the terrorists and insurgents to keep killing every American soldier they can. Ignore what would happen in Iraq — and the region — if we bail out. And don't mention how a U.S. surrender would turn al Qaeda into an Islamic superpower, the champ who knocked out Uncle Sam in the third round.

Forget about our dead soldiers, whose sacrifice is nothing but a political club for Democrats to wave in front of the media. After all, one way to create the kind of disaffection in the ranks that the Dems' leaders yearn to see is to tell our troops on the battlefield that they're risking their lives for nothing, we're throwing the game.

Forget that our combat veterans are re-enlisting at remarkable rates — knowing they'll have to leave their families and go back to war again. Ignore the progress on the ground, the squeezing of the insurgency's last strongholds into the badlands on the Syrian border. Blow off the successive Iraqi elections and the astonishing cooperation we've seen between age-old enemies as they struggle to form a decent government.

Just set a time-table for our troops to come home and show the world that America is an unreliable ally with no stomach for a fight, no matter the stakes involved. Tell the world that deserting the South Vietnamese and fleeing from Somalia weren't anomalies — that's what Americans do.

While we're at it, let's just print up recruiting posters for the terrorists, informing the youth of the Middle East that Americans are cowards who can be attacked with impunity.

Whatever you do, don't talk about any possible consequences. Focus on the moment — and the next round of U.S. elections. Just make political points. After all, those dead American soldiers and Marines don't matter — they didn't go to Ivy League schools. (Besides, most would've voted Republican had they lived.)

America's security? Hah! As long as the upcoming elections show Democratic gains, let the terrorist threat explode. So what if hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners might die in a regional war? So what if violent fundamentalism gets a shot of steroids? So what if we make Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the most successful Arab of the past 500 years?

For God's sake, don't talk about democracy in the Middle East. After all, democracy wasn't much fun for the Dems in 2000 or 2004. Why support it overseas, when it's been so disappointing at home?

Human rights? Oh, dear. Human rights are for rich white people who live in Malibu. Unless you can use the issue to whack Republicans. Otherwise, brown, black or yellow people can die by the millions. Dean, Reid & Pelosi, LLC, won't say, "Boo!"

You've got to understand, my fellow citizens: None of this matters. And you don't matter, either. All that matters is scoring political points. Let the world burn. Let the massacres run on. Let the terrorists acquire WMD. Just give the Bush administration a big black eye and we'll call that a win.

The irresponsibility of the Democrats on Capitol Hill is breathtaking. (How can an honorable man such as Joe Lieberman stay in that party?) Not one of the critics of our efforts in Iraq — not one — has described his or her vision for Iraq and the Middle East in the wake of a troop withdrawal. Not one has offered any analysis of what the terrorists would gain and what they might do. Not one has shown respect for our war dead by arguing that we must put aside our partisan differences and win.

There's plenty I don't like about the Bush administration. Its domestic policies disgust me, and the Bushies got plenty wrong in Iraq. But at least they'll fight. The Dems are ready to betray our troops, our allies and our country's future security for a few House seats.

Surrender is never a winning strategy.

Yes, we've been told lies about Iraq — by Dems and their media groupies. About conditions on the ground. About our troops. About what's at stake. About the consequences of running away from the great struggle of our time. About the continuing threat from terrorism. And about the consequences for you and your family.

What do the Democrats fear? An American success in Iraq. They need us to fail, and they're going to make us fail, no matter the cost. They need to declare defeat before the 2006 mid-term elections and ensure a real debacle before 2008 — a bloody mess they'll blame on Bush, even though they made it themselves.

We won't even talk about the effect quitting while we're winning in Iraq might have on the go-to-war calculations of other powers that might want to challenge us in the future. Let's just be good Democrats and prove that Osama bin Laden was right all along: Americans have no stomach for a fight.

As for the 2,000-plus dead American troops about whom the lefties are so awfully concerned? As soon as we abandon Iraq, they'll forget about our casualties quicker than an amnesiac forgets how much small-change he had in his pocket.

If we run away from our enemies overseas, our enemies will make their way to us. Quit Iraq, and far more than 2,000 Americans are going to die.

And they won't all be conservatives.

How did THIS get past the PC police at Time?

Two faced jackasses

How appropriate the symbol of the Democrat party is a jackass, when they feature liars like these:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W. Va.)

Ranking Member,

Intelligence Committee

Before: "There was unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. We also should remember that we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction . . .

"Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America now . . . He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." (Oct. 10, 2002)

After: Investigators should compare all intelligence agency statements with what President Bush said about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to see "whether intelligence analysis was manipulated, shaped or exaggerated . . . We owe the American people a full and honest accountability of the intelligence that was used to make the case." (Nov. 4, 2005)

"You know, it was not the Congress that sent 135,000 or 150,000 troops to Iraq." (Nov. 13, 2005)

Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.)

Minority Leader

Before: "Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator who presents a serious threat to international peace and security. Under Saddam's rule, Iraq has engaged in far-reaching human-rights abuses, been a state sponsor of terrorism and had has long sought to obtain and develop weapons of mass destruction." (Oct. 2, 2002)

After: "The administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq, and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions." (Nov. 1, 2005)

Bill Clinton

Former President

Before: "Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq . . . Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors . . . If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." (Dec. 17, 1998)

After: The Iraq war "was a big mistake. The American government made several errors . . . one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country." (Nov. 15, 2005)

Howard Dean

Chairman, Democratic

National Committee

Before: "There's no question Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies." (Sept. 29, 2002)

After: "Iraq was not a threat to us. As frightful and dreadful as Saddam Hussein is, or was, it was not OK for the United States to attack a country that was not a threat to us . . . We've taken our eye off the ball because of the president's obsession with Iraq." (May 22, 2003)

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.)

House Minority Leader

Before: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process . . . As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations." (Dec. 16, 1998)

"Yes, he has chemical weapons. Yes, he has biological weapons. He is trying to get nuclear weapons." (Oct. 10, 2002)

After: "This war has been a grotesque mistake that has diminished our reputation in the world and has not made America safer." (Sept. 25, 2004)

"Speaking specifically to Iraq, we have a situation where — without adequate evidence — we put our young people in harm's way." (May 20, 2004)

Sen. Joe Biden (Del.)

Ranking Member,

Foreign Relations Committee

Before: "It is clear that he has a residual of chemical weapons and biological weapons . . . We know he continues to attempt to gain access to additional capability, including nuclear capability . . . I think he has anthrax . . . He does have the capacity, as all terrorist-related operations do, of smuggling stuff into the United States and doing something terrible. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world, and this is a guy who is in every way possible seeking weapons of mass destruction." (Aug. 4, 2002)

After: "The vice president, I believe, flat lied. The president didn't lie, he misled . . . Eighty percent of the intelligence community said no, 20 percent said yes . . . [The president] led you to believe and everyone else to believe that the entire [intelligence] community agreed on that. He led you to believe . . . and the American people to believe there was a consensus. There was no consensus." (Nov. 16, 2005)

Sen. Ted Kennedy (Mass.)

Before: "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction . . . There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." (Sept. 27, 2002)

After: "War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. It was a product they [members of the Bush administration] were methodically rolling out. There was no imminent threat, no immediate national security imperative and no compelling reason for war." (Jan. 14, 2004)

Sen. John Kerry (Mass.)

"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam, because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." (Oct. 9, 2002)

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator leading an impressive regime. He presents a particularly grievous threat, because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he's miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction." (Jan. 23, 2003)

"If you don't believe . . . Saddam Hussein is a threat with nuclear weapons, then you shouldn't vote for me." (Jan. 31, 2003)

After: "It's the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time." (Sept. 6, 2004)

"The country and the Congress were misled into war. It is deeply troubling that the Republicans in Washington are so afraid to share the truth with the American people. Clearly it will require an independent, outside investigation to get to the bottom of this." (Nov. 1, 2005)

Al Gore

Former Vice President

Before: "If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He has already demonstrated a willingness to use such weapons . . . Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf, and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction." (Dec. 16, 1998)

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country . . . Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." (Sept. 23, 2002)

After: "Too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way . . . On the nuclear issue, of course, it turned out that those documents were actually forged by somebody. As for the cheering Iraqi crowds we anticipated, unfortunately, that didn't pan out either, so now our troops are in an ugly and dangerous situation . . . In other words, when you put it all together, it was just one mistaken impression after another. Lots of them." (Aug. 7, 2003)

Sen. Robert Byrd (W. Va.)

Before: "We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons." (Oct. 3, 2002)

After: "Before they [U.S. troops] could realize their dreams, they were called into battle by their commander in chief, a battle that we now know was predicated on faulty intelligence and wildly exaggerated claims of looming danger." (April 7, 2004)

Clinton badmouthing his country on foreign soil, again

Bill Clinton protested against his country while he was in Europe as a Rhodes Scholar, and now, in the Middle East, Clinton blasts the Iraqi war.

Bill Clinton demonstrated yet again yesterday that, as far as he's concerned, the rules don't apply to him.

In a speech to students at the American University of Dubai, the former president fired a rhetorical broadside against President Bush, saying the invasion of Iraq was "a big mistake."

Toppling Saddam Hussein may have been "a good thing," said Clinton, "but I don't agree with what was done."

He particularly blasted the decision to "dismantle the whole authority structure of Iraq," suggesting that the U.S. should have left Saddam's "fundamental military and social and police structure intact."

Thanks for nothing, Bill.

It has long been accepted that former presidents do not publicly criticize their successors, particularly when it comes to foreign policy; certainly the first President Bush held his tongue when it came to judging Clinton's dubious foreign-policy performance.

To be sure, Jimmy Carter violated that pact long ago — but then, he'd been hungrily campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize, the first requirement of which is a solid record of America-bashing.

(A failed president himself, he was uniquely qualified for that task. Now that he's been given the award, he has a new book to flog.)

As for Clinton — well, his wife is pretty clearly running for president, an unprecedented situation. She's been talking particularly tough on terrorism — but what does it mean?

Look for Bill and Hillary to put together a political tag-team act in the months and years ahead, with Bill playing bad cop in sticking it to the current president while the New York senator adopts a more "statesmanlike" — that is, presidential — approach.

For the record, it should be noted that the man who's now railing about America's "big mistake" in its Iraq policy is the same president who told the nation in 1998 that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to world security because of his WMD programs.

"The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government — a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people," said Clinton then.

And, he warned, establishing such a government would take a great deal of time and effort.

Just as the Bush administration has been learning.

Anyway, what Bill Clinton said was bad enough — what makes it worse is where he chose to say it.

Not in this country, but in the Middle East — where the current administration has been working so hard and successfully to bring democracy and dampen the flames of Islamic radicalism.

Little surprise, though, that Clinton's listeners responded to his remarks with "cheers and a standing ovation."

The man once again shows he has no shame.

Shame on the Senate

RINO's like Bill Frist are collaborating with the dems to lose the war on Terror.

It's disturbing enough that Democrats have become so hostile to America's efforts to fight terror, particularly in Iraq.

But now Republicans — like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist — also seem to be peeking at the polls and going all wobbly on the Iraq campaign.

It's pathetic.

And dangerous.

True, the resolution pushed by Senate Republicans yesterday, which passed 79-19, is non-binding — and far less feckless than what Democrats sought.

The bill demands that 2006 be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq."

The Dems, by contrast, wanted to set a precise timetable for a pullout of U.S. troops.

But both statements send a message to terrorists that U.S. resolve is waning. That Americans are tiring of the fight, recoiling from their losses and destined to get the troops out of Iraq — ASAP.

That is, it's just a matter of time for the thugs: If they can just hang on long enough, America will quit — and they'll win.

How sad. It is exactly that kind of wobbliness that encouraged the jihadists to launch their savage war in the first place.

They looked at America's withdrawal from Beirut. And Somalia. And Vietnam.

Indeed, the Vietnam War scenario is becoming all too relevant. In that fight, America agreed to provide arms and material to South Vietnam and to help defend it against the North.

But Congress eventually cut off that support (even though — contrary to the received wisdom — Saigon was doing quite well for itself by then). Not only did that sap the South's strength, it also sent a message to Hanoi that America had no stomach to repel an invasion.

The South was left to its own fate — and the North swept in. Carnage ensued. Remember the Boat People?

Yet America's stake in Iraq's survival is far, far greater than it was in South Vietnam's. If U.S. troops leave before Iraqis are able to kill the remaining thugs and assure their nation's future, the terrorists will rejoice, regroup — and re-attack.

In Iraq. Jordan. Maybe France.

And, eventually, New York.

In truth, the idea of pressuring President Bush to bring troops home defies all logic, save for political posturing.

Why would Washington want to trust hastily trained Iraqis to wage the War on Terror on America's behalf? Is this nation too soft to fight its own battles?

And make no mistake: Iraq is the most important battlefield today in the War on Terror.

Certainly Democrats, many of whom voted to invade Iraq, have been despicable on the subject. Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid bragged about forcing the Senate "to change the policy of the United States with regard to Iraq."

But for the GOP — Frist and Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, who, in essence, recycled the Democrats' shameful plan, sans exact withdrawal deadlines — to go along is truly disheartening.

In the end, the War on Terror won't be dictated by polls or political jockeying, but by facts on the ground. Better that ground be in Iraq — than New York.

Videos don't lie, but Democrats do!

At the GOP website, they have videos of dems supporting the war on Iraq before they opposed it.

Maryland isn't serious about terrorism

Come to Maryland, drivers licenses for everyone!

CASA of Maryland sued the state Motor Vehicle Administration Tuesday, claiming the MVA has unlawfully denied driver's licenses to immigrants and placed an undue burden on foreign-born residents seeking driver's licenses.

The suit says the MVA has refused to accept legal forms of identification and that it violated the Maryland Administrative Procedure Act when it changed the rules for foreign-born applicants to obtain a driver's license or learner's permit.

The MVA is reserving comment until it sees the suit, said agency spokesman Buel Young.

Regulations begun in July 2004 have made it cumbersome for non-U.S. citizens to obtain licenses. They must make an appointment at one of eight MVA offices in Maryland, and, because processing and verifying foreign documents is time consuming, the number of daily appointments is limited, according to the MVA.

Before July 2004, applicants with foreign documents could visit any MVA office with an appointment.

The suit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, claims the current rules were made in violation of the regulatory process, and foreign-born applicants are forced to wait months for an appointment.

Jose Hernandez Araujo, a plaintiff in the suit who has lived legally in the United States for 20 years, said at CASA's news conference that he presented valid documents to apply for a license, including a Maryland identification card. After he passed the vision and written tests, he went to his appointment, but was told he had to wait six months to take the driving test.

The MVA would not return his Maryland identification or his driver's license from New York, he said, and now he can't work without a license.

Immigration status is irrelevant to the MVA, which cannot deny a driver's license based on a person's legal status in this country. A bipartisan bill to prevent those residing illegally in the United States from obtaining a Maryland driver's license failed to pass the House in the last session of the General Assembly.

A digital Munich

Be afraid of the UN trying to control the internet, be very afraid.

If Paul Revere were alive today, he'd have his midnight work cut out for him. Most likely he'd be spreading the alarm not on horseback, but by Internet: The U.N. is coming! The U.N. is coming!

The United Nations' so-called World Summit on the Information Society opens today in Tunis, Tunisia, proposing to set up U.N. sway over the Internet under the slogan of bridging the "digital divide." But that's the wrong metaphor. This three-day jamboree is a U.N. turf grab: the latest case of the U.N. misinterpreting its noble mandate to promote peace as a license to take a piece of anything it can get.

For anyone who cares about the vast freedoms and opportunities afforded by the Internet--for pajama-clad bloggers, for journalists, for businessmen and especially for people in the poorest countries--it is time for a call to arms. Sen. Norm Coleman, whose investigations into U.N. corruption have provided him with more insight than most into the cracks and chasms of that aging institution, has already warned in The Wall Street Journal against the possibility of Tunis becoming a "digital Munich." Whether America retains control over the root directory or some other setup ultimately evolves, the clear bottom line right now is that allowing the U.N. to involve itself in these questions is the wrong answer. A U.N. unable even to audit its own accounts or police its own peacekeepers has no business making even a twitch toward control of the Internet.

Worse, the corruption and incompetence at U.N. headquarters, however disturbing, are the least of the problems linked to the U.N.'s bid to control interconnectivity. The deeper trouble is that the U.N. has embraced the same tyrants who in the name of helping the downtrodden are now seeking via Internet control to tread them down some more.

That is hardly the kind of information, however, that U.N. organizers of this Tunis turf grab are about to share. The U.N. Web site for this event goes heavy on high-tech doo-dads, and very light on the highly relevant big picture. For instance, the site includes two scroll bars. One shows select news coverage of the summit. The other shows funding contributions from various quarters, including the governments of Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia, all distinguished as perennial members of Freedom House's list of the world most repressive regimes. Except the U.N. site doesn't make mention of the censorship and brutal internal repression of these regimes--only of their participation, and their money.

As usual, the U.N. for reasons sadly unrelated to actual performance, is styling itself as the champion of the poorest people, in the poorest countries. (This is the same U.N. that still hasn't repaid or even apologized to the people of Iraq for the billions worth of their national assets that were grafted, stolen and wasted under U.N. supervision in the Oil for Food program). In the face of mounting public concern over the Tunis summit, Secretary-General Kofi Annan betook himself recently to the pages of the Washington Post to argue that the main aim is "to ensure that poor countries get the full benefits that new information and communication technologies--including the Internet--can bring to economic and social development." Mr. Annan concluded with what I suppose was meant to be a clarion call: "I urge all stakeholders to come to Tunis ready to bridge the digital divide," etc., etc.

What Mr. Annan evidently does not care to understand, and after his zillion-year career at the U.N. probably never will, is that for purposes of helping the poor, the problem is not a digital divide. It is not the bytes, gigs, blogs and digital wing-dings that define that terrible line between the haves and the have-nots. These are symptoms of the real difference, which we would do better to call the dictatorial divide.

In free societies, all sorts of good things flourish, including technology and highly productive uses of the Internet. In despotic systems, human potential withers and dies, strangled by censorship, starved by central controls, and rotted by the corruption that inevitably accompanies such arrangements. That poisonous mix is what prevents the spread of prosperity in Africa, and blocks peace in the Middle East, and access to computers, or for that matter, food, in North Korea (which is of course sending a delegate to Tunis).

But never mind the realities, as long as Mr. Annan and his entourage see an opportunity for more U.N. turf, job patronage, global clout and funding (including the prospect of a "ka-ching" for the U.N. cash register every time someone logs on). Leading the charge, with policy documents posted on the U.N. information summit site, are such terrorist-breeding blogger-jailing regimes as those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, and such millennial pioneers of backward motion on free speech as Belarus and Russia. China's rulers, who have recently been availing themselves of modern technology to censor the Chinese word for "democracy" out of Internet traffic, and to track down and punish its users, have been toiling away to add their two cents to this summit. Sudan, better known for genocide than free speech, has registered to set up a pavilion. Were Saddam Hussein still in power in Iraq, as Mr. Annan tried to arrange, the odds are good that a front company for his regime, with U.N. blessing, would be setting up a booth in Tunis as well.

Moonbat prof: football fans "unsportsmanlike"

Here at UF, a prof writes a letter to the editor saying the fans cheered too loudly and tries to draw a parallel with the Iraq war.

I'm on the UF faculty and at one time played football for a small college in the Midwest. While I seldom go to events at Florida Field, I did attend the Vanderbilt game. The game was good, but the experience was rotten.

Every single time the Vanderbilt offense approached the line of scrimmage during the game, Gator fans were yelling and screaming their seemingly vacant heads off. And this excessive, unsportsmanlike behavior was encouraged by a message on the scoreboard calling for a "Gator Growl."

There are only small grains of wisdom in most popular truisms like "Waterloo was won on the playing fields at Eton." Yet, as a Vietnam era veteran I'm left to wonder if there might be some truth in the notion that the current American idiocy in Iraq was/is being lost on the playing fields at Florida/Yale?

Ary J. Lamme III,
Gainesville

Moonbats - the real San Francisco treat

Maybe San Fran should just secede.

Lost amid the discussion of whether last week's election results portend a dis mal future for Republicans has been a more interesting question: Does San Francisco's balloting this year foreshadow its eventual withdrawal from the United States of America?

We ask simply because voters there are acting as if the city's already seceded.

Featured on last Tuesday's ballot were two referenda: Measure H, to ban possession of handguns save by cops and the like; and Measure I, the "College, not Combat" referendum that condemned military recruiting in the city's high schools and colleges.

Both won by wide margins — 58 percent to 42 percent, and 60 percent to 40 percent, respectively.

Measure H's passage means a citywide ban on the retailing of firearms. Anyone owning a gun has until April 1 to hand it over to authorities.

Citing statistics showing that a majority of the Bay City's homicides involve a handgun, campaigners ostensibly sought the Second Amendment's repeal for their city in the belief that it would lead to fewer murders.

Of course, this leap assumes that potential killers will buy their weapons legally in the first place. And if folks really think that the bad guys will drop off their Glocks come April Fool's Day, the joke's on them.

The practical result? 'Frisco's criminals will know that virtually all their potential victims are unarmed. The Washington, D.C., City Council enacted a similar ban in 1976 — and the murder rate rose 134 percent.

San Franciscans' distaste for liberty was on even greater display in passing Measure I, which presumes that the city's young adults are insufficiently mature to make their own decisions about service in the armed forces.

An outright ban would make city schools ineligible for federal funds, so the measure is non-binding. Instead, it encourages administrators to create scholarships and training programs that reduce the appeal of military life to young adults.

Bear in mind, these measures come on top of the City Council's 8-3 vote in August to bar the mothballed battleship USS Iowa from the Port of San Francisco, where organizers had hoped the ship could serve as a museum. (The retired submarine USS Pampanito and a World War II Liberty ship, both tourist-attracting museums, get to stay — but for how long?)

Citing concerns from the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy to the war in Iraq, one councilman summed up the collective mood well: "I am sad to say I am not proud of the history of the United States of America since the 1940s."

Sad?

The city's recent behavior — disrupting attempts to enlist eager Bay Area recruits, shunning the display of a famed battleship — is just that.

San Francisco is a beautiful, culturally significant city; we hope it returns to the real world sometime soon.

In the line of duty

In Dallas, the "Thin Blue Line" just became thinner.

A newlywed police officer was killed early Sunday by a suspect he was chasing on foot, authorities said.

Officer Brian Jackson and another officer went to investigate a disturbance complaint and chased a male suspect through alleys and between houses, Police Chief David Kunkle said.

During the chase, the man fired at the officers, fatally wounding Jackson, Kunkle said. The suspect, Juan Lizcano, 28, was charged with one count of capital murder and was in police custody.

Jackson, 28, was a five-year veteran of the Dallas police force and had previously served with the New York Police Department, Kunkle said. He had been married for just two months.

Jackson was the first Dallas officer killed since Oct. 23, 2002, when an off-duty officer died in a traffic accident.

God Bless him and all who mourn him.

The Latest Mainstream Media Poll

A brilliant piece of satire (I hope) from Mr. Right.

CBS NEWS/NEW YORK TIMES POLL:

NOTE: All calls are to be made between Friday night and Sunday afternoon, when you are least likely to get a hold of many {shudder} Republicans. Calls should be concentrated in inner-city areas of the Northeast and on the West Coast as well as specially selected metropolitan areas and college campuses elsewhere. (Please consult attached list of "safe zones.")

The list of questions for this week is as follows...

What is your sex?

a) Male.
b) Female.
c) Transgendered.
d) Hermaphrodite.
e) Eunich.
f) Paid professional.
g) Self-serve only.

What is your approximate age?

a) It is still legal for me to be aborted by my Mommy.
b) Jail bait!
c) 18-34.
d) 35-49.
e) 50-64.
f) 65 or older.
g) Deceased.
h) Deceased, but still registered to vote in a Democrat stronghold!

If you are naive enough to believe in a so-called "God," what religion do you practice, if any?

a) Atheist.
b) Agnostic.
c) Wiccan.
d) Satanist.
e) Hari-Krishna.
f) Buddhist.
g) I worship our Mother Earth!
h) Dignified Native American, who deserves to hate and kill us all!
i) Repressed Muslim, who deserves to hate and kill us all!
j) Jewish - but cool (like Streisand).
k) Zionist Jew pig!
l) Some goofy cult, like Christianity.

What is your approximate yearly household income?

a) Unemployed.
b) Under $20k/year.
c) Much too rich!

Which of the following best describes you?

a) *Republican.
b) Democrat.
c) Independent.
d) Other.
e) Uninterested in politics.

*NOTE: If respondent answers "Republican," call them rude names and hang up immediately. Record their information so that the proper authorities may deal with them when the correct order of things is restored and so that they are never again surveyed by us.

Are you a registered voter?

a) Yes.
b) No.
c) Uncertain.
d) You mean like a cash register?

In the 2004 Presidential Election, you...

a) Voted for John Kerry.
b) **Voted for George W. Bush.
c) Voted for Ralph Nader.
d) Voted for someone else.
e) Did not vote.
f) What? There was an election last year?

**NOTE: If respondent answers "Voted for George W. Bush," blow a high pitched whistle in their ear and hang up immediately. Record their information so that they can be exterminated when the correct order of things is restored and so that they are never again surveyed by us. You may have a few moments to cry and then compose yourself before making another call.

How would you characterize the ridiculously awful job being done by this incompetent boob we laughingly call our President, George W. Bush?

a) Poor.
b) Very poor.
c) Horrible.
d) Beyond horrible.
e) It's the end of all civilization!!!
f) I'm too stupid to know what a boob he really is.
g) What was the question again? I don't know how to answer a simple poll.

What one issue facing our country today is most important to you?

a) Bush must resign!
b) Cheney must resign!
c) Karl Rove must resign!
d) Tom DeLay must rot in jail forever!
e) Death to Scooter Libby!
f) U.S. out of Iraq now!
g) Protect legalized abortion at all costs!!!
h) Global warming - it's killing us all!
i) The rich don't pay enough taxes!
j) All of the above (of course)!
k) You really don't care about anything, do you?

Would you say this country is heading in the right direction or wrong direction?

a) Wrong direction.
b) A little more to the left, please.
c) A LOT more to the left, please!
d) It doesn't matter anyway, "Bird Flu" will soon kill us all!

Should the unrelentingly EVIL Karl Rove be fired by the incompetent President Bush so that this country can actually survive, which it surely will not do unless he is terminated immediately?

a) Yes, of course!
b) Are you kidding? Fire his corrupt ass!
c) While you're at it, Chimpy - why don't you resign, too!
d) No - I am a racist and a Nazi and I HATE the concept of ethical government.
e) I'm too stupid to know how to comprehend this survey and can offer no opinion.

Valerie Plame was obviously a super-secret covert agent and the White House is guilty of committing an unforgivable act of treason against the United States by "outing" her in an act of cold, calculated vengeance! What should happen next?

a) Line 'em all up against a wall and let 'em have it!
b) Lock the asses of every man, woman and child in the place up until the end of time!
c) Mass resignations from everyone until some Democrat is actually the President!
d) I'm guilty of treason myself, so I think nothing should happen to them.
e) Will this be on the test?

With the poorly run War in Iraq now hopelessly lost, the United States should...

a) Withdraw all troops immediately.
b) Return the unjustly imprisoned Saddam Hussein to power.
c) Pay war reparations to Cindy Sheehan.
d) Surrender our sovereignty to the rioters in France.
e) All of the above, moron!
f) I am a war-mongering mass murderer who just doesn't know when to quit - so let's keep on fighting!
g) Duh! I like cake!

Should gays be allowed to marry?

a) Of course, silly.

With the economy on the verge of collapse, how would you rate Bushitler's handling of it?

a) Poor.
b) Very poor.
c) Brother, can you spare a dime?
d) What's an e-con-o-meee?

Should the United States Senate vote to confirm that puppy-beating Mafioso troglodyte, Sam Alito, to the Supreme Court and destroy America forever?

a) No!
b) Hell, no!
c) Rip his spleen out and feed it to the crows!
d) Awwwwww! I like puppies!

Whom do you blame for Hurricane Katrina and all the suffering left in its aftermath?

a) George W. Bush.
b) Chimpy McBushitler.
c) Dubya.
d) Bush 43.
e) George Walker Bush.
f) All of the above.

If the 2008 Presidential Election were held tomorrow, for whom would you vote?

a) Hillary Clinton.
b) John Kerry.
c) Some other Democrat.
d) A third party candidate.
e) I wouldn't vote.
f) I want to destroy the country, so I would vote for some Rethuglican a**hole!
g) Oh, look! Buttons with numbers on them! (Beep-Boop-Beep-Beep-Beep-Boop-Beep...)


Gee, I can hardly wait to see the results!

Patriotism

Good post from the Puppy Blender about the unpatriotic Left.

The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way -- and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it's deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.

And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they're acting unpatriotically.

UPDATE: Reader Kathleen Boerger emails: "Could you do me a favor and define 'patriotism' please?"

I think it starts with not uttering falsehoods that damage the country in time of war, simply because your donor base wants to hear them.

Patriotic people could -- and did -- oppose the war. But so did a lot of scoundrels. And some who supported the war were not patriotic, if they did it out of opportunism or political calculation rather than honest belief. Those who are now trying to recast their prior positions through dishonest rewriting of history are not patriotic now, nor were they when they supported the war, if they did so then out of opportunism --which today's revisionist history suggests.

Judging from the lefty hatemail this post has created, I have to observe that it's odd -- people who have spent the past year saying that Bush took us to war to enrich Halliburton somehow now think it's beyond the bounds of civilized discussion to question people's motives on the war. That's part of the big lie, too.

RIP Eddie Guerrero



I'm a big wrestling fan in general, and a big fan of Eddie Guerrero in particular. So, it saddens me to learn that Eddie was found dead today at age 38.

Rangel is Wrong

The NY Post tells Congressman Rangel that he is wrong again, this time about the socioeconomics of our soldiers.

Rep. Charlie Rangel — dean of New York City's congressional delega tion — never ceases to amaze.

His military service during the Korean War — he was awarded a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star — entitles him to the respect of all Americans of good will.

The other side of that coin is that, regarding matters military, he should know better than to say some of the things that he does.

And we suspect that he does, indeed, know better — which is what makes his views on one particular military topic so utterly repugnant.

Last Monday, Rangel once again spun his favorite fable: The one that claims military service is being unduly shouldered by minorities and the poor.

"The heaviest burden of war is being carried by less fortunate Americans," Rangel claimed.

He peddled the same line in 2003, while calling for a resumption of the draft to more fairly apportion that "burden."

Rangel was wrong then.

He's still wrong.

A recently released Heritage Foundation report details the facts:

* In 2003, fully 22 percent of recruits came from the wealthiest household incomes (those making between $52,000 and $200,000).

* Only 14 percent came from the poorest households.

* The study found that the percentage of recruits from wealthier households — two years into the War on Terror — increased compared to 1999, while the percentage from poorer homes dipped.

* In racial terms, it determined that while whites make up 77.4 percent of the U.S. population of 18 year olds, they comprised 78.5 percent of the recruits.

The report also echoes a 1991 Cato Institute study showing that the recruits in the all-volunteer armed forces are, on average, more intelligent and better-educated than their civilian counterparts.

If Rangel has access to credible evidence demonstrating that military service is weighing disproportionately heavy on poor and/or minority Americans, he should produce it.

Enough.

Charlie Rangel is entitled to his position on U.S. policy in Iraq, and he's free to oppose the larger War on Terror, too.

But it really is reprehensible to spin tall tales that essentially devalue the courage and sacrifice of the young Americans — of all backgrounds — who today serve their nation with the same dedication and valor that the congressman displayed when he earned his medals in Korea, so long ago.

Honoring fallen officers

The Archbishop of Newark honored two police officers killed in the line of duty.

Archbishop John Myers of Newark honored two police officers Thursday, who had been killed in the line of duty this year, and thanked those still on the job for “doing God’s work.”

During the archdiocese’s 13th annual mass for law enforcement officers at Sacred Heart Cathedral, the archbishop praised the late Atlantic City Patrolman Thomas McMeekin Jr. and Newark School District Special Police Officer Dwayne Reeves.
The ceremony was attended by hundreds of police officers as well as Gov. Elect Jon Corzine, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, and other dignitaries, reported the Associated Press.

"Every day you are called on to defend the weak, protect the innocent, to maintain the peace," the archbishop reportedly told the officers in the congregation during his homily. "Evil exists in this world. Terrorists can raise their bloody hands at any moment. I thank you for your protection. You are doing God's work.”

McMeekin was killed March 4 when he was struck by a bus while directing traffic at an accident scene. Reeves was shot outside a city high school July 18, allegedly by a man angered by a fight that had broken out between two girls.

The sickness in the Archdiocese of Boston

In his email update, Deal Hudson reports on the moral decay in the Archdiocese of Boston, I think Santorum was right.

Only weeks ago the Boston Globe reported that Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston had assisted in the adoption of thirteen foster children by homosexual couples. Catholic teaching regards such adoptions as "gravely immoral."

Catholic Charities in Boston is continuing to steer a steady course away from Church authority. Invitations for the Catholic Charities annual Christmas dinner were recently sent out naming their honoree, Boston Mayor Tom Menino. Menino has distinguished himself with his public support of abortion and gay marriage. He is often quoted in the press bashing pro-life lay groups, politicians and theologians.

Catholics who have been working hard in the defense of marriage and life issues in Boston feel further discouraged that Archbishop Sean O'Malley is listed as a "Special Guest" for the evening honoring the heterodox mayor.

In June, 2004, the USCCB clearly condemned Catholic institutions from honoring or providing a speaking platform for Catholic politicians:

"The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions" (June 21, 2004, "Catholics in Political Life).

No doubt the existence of this document is known at Catholic Charities. But, in fact, there is clear evidence that Catholic Charities simply dismisses Church teaching on some important issues.

Most Catholics would assume that the decision to "honor" Menino was the result of mid-level staff decisions at Catholic Charities - but that is not the case.

Peter Meade, chairman of the Catholic Charities Board, shrugged off the doctrinal issue, ''What we do is facilitate adoptions to loving couples."

The president of Catholic Charities, Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, also defended the practice, arguing that ''We have to balance various goods." Hehir, who is easily the most powerful Catholic in archdiocese next to Archbishop O'Malley, was formerly the head of national of office of Catholic Charities USA.

Obviously neither the gay adoptions nor the choice of Mayor Menino as their dinner honoree was the product of mid-level management. These were decisions approved from the very top.

In honoring Mayor Menino, Catholic Charities is doing exactly what the United States bishops only a year ago said must not be done. Whether or not Menino fits the description of a dissenting Catholic is not even a close call. His public advocacy for abortion and gay marriage is widely documented. Last week he accused those who think "homosexuality is preventable and treatable" are motivated by "hate." The mayor added, "We also know that same-sex marriages are pro-family." (Bay Windows, 11/03/05).

Mayor Menino is confident that he knows the Catholic faith. So confident, in fact, that he recently was quoted saying that Sen. Rick Santorum "doesn't understand Catholicism."

One wonders whether Archbishop O'Malley will attend the dinner which obviously contradicts the will of his fellow bishops and cause further division to an already devastated diocese. We will see.

Youngest WWII Medal of Honor winner dies

One of the last remaining WWII Medal of Honor winners, Robert E Bush passes away at 79. From the Medal of Honor website is the citation for his Medal, the man was simply amazing:

Rank and organization: Hospital Apprentice First Class, U.S. Naval Reserve, serving as Medical Corpsman with a rifle company, 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. Place and date: Okinawa Jima, Ryukyu Islands, 2 May 1945. Entered service at: Washington. Born: 4 October 1926, Tacoma, Wash. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Medical Corpsman with a rifle company, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Okinawa Jima, Ryukyu Islands, 2 May 1945. Fearlessly braving the fury of artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire from strongly entrenched hostile positions, Bush constantly and unhesitatingly moved from 1 casualty to another to attend the wounded falling under the enemy's murderous barrages. As the attack passed over a ridge top, Bush was advancing to administer blood plasma to a marine officer Iying wounded on the skyline when the Japanese launched a savage counterattack. In this perilously exposed position, he resolutely maintained the flow of life-giving plasma. With the bottle held high in 1 hand, Bush drew his pistol with the other and fired into the enemy's ranks until his ammunition was expended. Quickly seizing a discarded carbine, he trained his fire on the Japanese charging pointblank over the hill, accounting for 6 of the enemy despite his own serious wounds and the loss of 1 eye suffered during his desperate battle in defense of the helpless man. With the hostile force finally routed, he calmly disregarded his own critical condition to complete his mission, valiantly refusing medical treatment for himself until his officer patient had been evacuated, and collapsing only after attempting to walk to the battle aid station. His daring initiative, great personal valor, and heroic spirit of self-sacrifice in service of others reflect great credit upon Bush and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

Veteran's Day photo

Time to go RINO hunting

Some RINO's on Capitol Hill scuttled ANWR drilling, budget cuts, and tax cuts.

Moderate Republicans yesterday handed their leaders two embarrassing setbacks on Capitol Hill, stopping a $50 billion package of controversial budget cuts in the House and an extension of the president's tax cuts in the Senate.

The day's events illustrated the power of the small but stubborn group of Republican moderates on both sides of the Capitol who have balked at the efforts of GOP leaders to scale back funding for social programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps while advancing a $70 billion extension of President Bush's tax breaks, which primarily benefit higher earners.

House leaders made a huge concession to those moderates late Wednesday night when they agreed to remove -- at least for now -- a provision to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Twenty-six Republicans pressured their leaders to remove the provision in a letter this week, and Majority Leader Roy Blunt said giving in to those concerns brought in the support of an additional 12 to 20 Republicans for the budget cuts.

"The moderate Republicans have slowed this process down and we stuck together," said U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md. one of the congressman who demanded the removal of ANWR from the House legislation. "I don't think this is an embarrassment to the leadership, the president or our party whatsoever, I think it shows the public that there's a strong feeling in a centrist group about conservation and fiscal responsibility and I think this enhances the GOP's standing," Mr. Gilchrest said.

Yet even with the concession on arctic drilling, the leadership did not have enough support to pass the budget bill and decided not to bring it to a vote before members headed home for the Veterans Day holiday.

"It's just not ripe yet; we ran out of time," said former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who was helping marshal votes and advise leaders even though he stepped down from his leadership post after being indicted over accusations of money laundering and conspiracy in relation to a campaign finance case in Texas.

"Even pulling ANWR back you still had a lot of people with concerns out there. ...We just couldn't pull them across the line in time," Mr. DeLay said.

Mr. Blunt, the Missouri Republican who has temporarily replaced Mr. DeLay as majority leader while keeping his job as majority whip, said he was optimistic leaders would work through the deadlock next week.

Mr. DeLay said he thought "the chances are very good" that a joint House-Senate panel would be able to get approval for drilling in the wildlife refuge if the budget cut legislation makes it to that final stage -- comments certain to fuel Democrats' suspicion that Republican leaders are temporarily removing the measure but planning to restore it later. The Senate narrowly approved drilling in the wildlife refuge in their version last week.

On the others side of the Capitol yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee was scheduled to vote on a tax cut extension proposal that would add nearly $70 billion to the deficit, but would provide $7 billion worth of measures to help rebuild areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, including credits aimed at creating more low-income housing and helping small businesses in the area.

But all nine committee Democrats oppose the package -- in large part because of the extension of capital gains and dividends tax breaks set to expire in 2008 and 2009 respectively -- meaning Republican Chairman Charles E. Grassley needed all 10 Republicans on the committee vote to get the legislation out of committee and to the Senate floor.

But Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, refused to give in even after all the other Republicans -- including Majority Leader Bill Frist -- pressured her in a members-only session for more than two hours.

They emerged without a deal, but all sides said discussions were ongoing.

Ms. Snowe would not discuss the terms of a possible deal, but said her preference was to focus on tax provisions expiring in the near future, not those that expire in several years.

"We're in a different economic environment, we've had three back to back hurricanes," Ms. Snowe said. "We want to look at the overarching issues in the context of the environment and challenges we today as a country."

To bypass Ms. Snowe, Senate leaders may opt to wait for the House to pass its own version of the tax cut package. But the fate of the tax package in the House depends on leaders' success in pushing through their budget cut measure.

Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, who has argued strenuously against the tax cuts because he believes their cost will be unfairly shouldered by future generations, said Ms. Snowe's maneuver was "wonderful."

"I think at this stage of the game -- from a political and public policy point of view -- that it would be in the best interest to let this one slide," Mr. Voinovich said.

But Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said the extensions were crucial for "the stability of our economy and the markets."

injured in the line of duty

A PA state trooper faces a long recovery after being shot with a rifle.

Doctors at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center have used rods, screws and wires to create an external skeleton to support the arm of a state police officer who was shot Wednesday.

Trooper Ronald Colyer, 36, who is assigned to the Newport barracks, faces extensive rehabilitation and surgeries to reconstruct his left upper-arm after he was shot along Routes 11/15 on Wednesday by a Thompsontown man with a high-powered rifle.

"This clearly was a high-energy missile that did a lot of damage to his arm," Dr. Robert Atnip, chief of vascular surgery at Hershey, said yesterday. Colyer's condition was upgraded from critical to serious.

Randy L. Campbell, 43, used a Savage 7 mm Magnum bolt-action rifle to fire five shots at his boss, Steve Willow, 51, of Greenwood Twp., Juniata County, at 8:50 a.m. Wednesday. The shooting occurred in the 500 block of North Front Street, Liverpool. Three of those bullets hit Willow, who was killed.

Perry County Coroner Michael Shalonis said Willow died of multiple gunshot wounds.

Campbell apparently reloaded between the time he shot Willow and the time he shot Colyer and killed himself.

The rifle, which holds five rounds, is typical of one that would be used to hunt, Perry County Coroner Michael Shalonis said.

Investigators continued yesterday to try to learn what might have prompted Campbell to kill Willow outside a house where Willow Construction was doing renovations. Police know the two men had a dispute in the days leading up to the shooting but do not know what it was about, state police spokeswoman Jackie Capriotti said. On Wednesday, Willow's brother-in-law Robert Depew said Willow had "issues" with Campbell about the latter showing up for work after drinking alcohol.

After shooting Willow, Campbell drove south on Routes 11/15, police said. Colyer and a Duncannon officer, on alert after a witness reported the shooting, began following him as he passed the Ranch House restaurant in Watts Twp. When the Duncannon officer's car had mechanical problems, Colyer continued after Campbell but did not use his lights or siren.

Colyer would not have tried to stop Campbell's vehicle on his own because it would have been unsafe, Capriotti said yesterday. Campbell pulled his vehicle to the side of the road and began shooting at Colyer, who put his cruiser in reverse and started driving away.

One of the four bullets fired by Campbell apparently hit Colyer in the shoulder as he was driving in reverse.

"Ron Colyer is really lucky to be alive, being shot at four times," Shalonis said.

The bullet entered the top of Colyer's left shoulder, slightly to the rear, then exited at the top of his left arm, causing a "blowout wound" and damaging the bone and muscle, Atnip said.

Colyer lost a significant amount of blood, he said. The bullet shattered about 4 inches of bone in his upper arm, leaving the arm with no skeletal support. Colyer underwent four hours of surgery Wednesday.

"There is a pretty decent chance he'll have some use of the arm in the future," Atnip said. "He is able to move his fingers and squeezed my hand, which is very good news."

Atnip said Colyer was awake and breathing on his own yesterday morning. Colyer, who is married and has children, remained in the intensive-care unit. Two troopers were in the operating room with Colyer, Atnip said. Troopers have been with Colyer and his family throughout the ordeal, he said.

Veteran's Day

I thought the NY Post's lead editorial sums it up nicely.

Today is Veterans Day, when America honors those who answered when the call to colors came.

This year is the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II — the so-called Good War, an unambiguous struggle against a fascist totalitarianism of a secular sort.

Over the years, young Americans have served in wars both hot and cold; at present, they are arrayed worldwide in a struggle with fascism of a different, though no less deadly, nature.

And they are winning — God bless them all.

There will be veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom, not long returned from patrols in Kabul, Baghdad and Basra, marching proudly up Fifth Avenue today in the city's 87th annual Veterans Day Parade.

They march with those who crossed the beaches at Guadalcanal and Dieppe; at Tarawa and Pelaliu; at Normandy and Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

They march with those who fought in the snow and ice at Inchon and Pork Chop Hill; in the heat of the Ih Drang Valley, the jungles of the Delta and the devastated boulevards of Hue.

They march with those who rolled through the deserts of Kuwait.

They march with those who kept the Cold War peace by standing strong at Checkpoint Charlie and the Korean DMZ, flying B-52s or manning the strategic submarine fleet.

Veterans Day brings them all together — kindred souls who share a unique bond that can never be weakened.

Not by craven politicians seeking ideological advantage by questioning the integrity of the current mission.

Not by an often-lazy media that jumps on bad news, overlooks the good and completely misses the big picture.

Not even by a public so preoccupied with job and family concerns that they forget George Orwell's observation:

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

Rough indeed. And young. And — today — women, as well.

So, if you have the holiday off, do more than just relax and go shopping.

Salute and cheer the brave who keep America the land of the free: After a 10 a.m. Wreath Laying Ceremony, the parade commences at 11 a.m. in Madison Square Park at 26th Street, heads up Fifth Avenue and concludes at 56th Street.

If nothing else, if you should encounter a vet today, say thank you.

With meaning.

Walter Ciszek - a cause for canonization

I'm embarassed to say that until today I didn't know anything about Walter Ciszek but he is a man surely deserving of canonization.

Rev. Walter Ciszek, S.J. (November 11, 1904–December 8, 1984) was an Polish-American Jesuit priest held by the Soviet Union for 23 years, between 1941 and 1963. Fifteen of these years were spent in confinement and hard labor, including seven in Moscow's infamous Lubyanka prison. He was released and returned to the United States in 1963, after which he wrote several books and served as spiritual director. Since 1990, Ciszek has been under consideration for possible official recognition by the church on the road to beatification or canonization.

Happy 230th to the Marine Corps

Happy Birthday to the Marines,

here is the annual message from the Commandant.

On November 10th, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved to raise two battalions of Continental Marines marking the birth of our United States Marine Corps. As Major General Lejeune’s message reminds us, the ensuing generations of Marines would come to signify all that is highest in warfighting excellence and military virtue. Each November as Marines the world over celebrate the birth of our Corps, we pay tribute to that long line of “Soldiers of the Sea” and the illustrious legacy they have handed down to us.

This past year has been one of continuous combat operations overseas and distinguished service here at home – a year of challenges that have brought out the very best in our Corps. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Marine courage and mastery of complex and chaotic environments have truly made a difference in the lives of millions. Marine compassion and flexibility provided humanitarian assistance to thousands in the wake of the South East Asian Tsunami, and here at home, Marines with AAVs, helicopters, and sometimes with their bare hands saved hundreds of our own fellow Americans in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Across the full spectrum of operations, you have showcased that Marines create stability in an unstable world, and have reinforced our Corps’ reputation for setting the standard of excellence.

The sense of honor, courage, and patriotism that epitomized those who answered that first call to arms 230 years ago is still indelibly imprinted on our ranks today. In commemorating our anniversary, let us strengthen our ties to the past by paying homage to those who have gone before us. As we honor the sacrifices of our wounded and fallen comrades, our commitment to one another remains unshakable. We take special pride in the actions of the Marines now serving in harm’s way, and rededicate ourselves to the service of our Nation and our Corps.

Happy Birthday Marines, Semper Fidelis, and Keep Attacking!

M. W. Hagee
General, U.S. Marine Corps

Edmund Fitzgerald

Today is the 30th anniversary of the wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee'
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?
The wind in the wire made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was the witch of November come stealin'.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the Gales of November came slashin'.
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'.
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At Seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the big ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when their lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
They may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the Gales of November remembered.

In a rustic old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!

Walmart's war on Christmas

I've defended Walmart against many detractors, but this has turned me against Walmart.

A woman who recently complained to Wal-Mart that the store was replacing “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” received an e-mail response from Customer Service. It appears below in its exact form:

“Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world.”

To which Catholic League president Bill Donohue says: “This statement was signed by someone called Kirby. When I read it, I thought he might be drunk. But I was wrong. We sent Kirby’s response to Wal-Mart’s headquarters only to find that Dan Fogleman, Senior Manager, Public Relations, agrees. After acknowledging that he read Kirby’s response, Fogleman said, in part, the following”:

“As a retailer, we recognize some of our customers may be shopping for Chanukah or Kwanza gifts during this time of year and we certainly want these customers in our stores and to feel welcome, just as we do those buying for Christmas. As an employer, we recognize the significance of the Christmas holiday among our family of associates…and close our stores in observance, the only day during the year that we are closed.”

Bill Donohue says: “It’s nice to know that Wal-Mart is closed on a federal holiday. Now here is why I am asking the leaders of 126 religious organizations that span seven religious communities to boycott Wal-Mart. Go to its website and search for Hanukkah and up come 200 items. Click on Kwanzaa and up come 77. Click on Christmas, and here’s what you get: ‘We’ve brought you to our ‘Holiday’ page based on your search.’ In other words, Wal-Mart is practicing discrimination.”

Congratulations, Walmart, you've lost my business.

look in the mirror, Froggy

I received the following in an email, recalling the "righteous indignation" of the French to our Katrina disaster. Think about these while thinking of how France has had 14 days of riots!

It is worth reminding ourselves of the pious, pompous,
condescending lectures about social order, racial and
economic inequalities, and government competence which
the French doled out to America in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina:

Philippe Grangereau in France's Liberation

"Bush is completely out of his depth in this disaster.
Katrina has revealed America's weaknesses: its racial
divisions, the poverty of those left behind by its
society, and especially its president's lack of
leadership."

Jean-Pierre Aussant in France's Le Figaro

"This tragic incident reminds us that the United
States has refused to ratify the Kyoto accords. Let's
hope the US can from now on stop ignoring the rest of
the world. If you want to run things, you must first
lead by example. Arrogance is never a good adviser!"

Le Monde

Le Monde credits the hurricane with highlighting “the
country’s social inequalities”. It says: “Despite the
economic and military strength it is prepared to
deploy overseas, the United States has shown itself
incapable of dealing with a catastrophe of this scale
at home.”

Le Monde

Why did federal authorities under Bush's command "seem
to be so little prepared in the face of a hurricane,
the strength of which was known 48 hours in advance?"
Le Monde asked. "Why did the [Bush] administration
fail its first great [national-]security test since
the September 11, 2001, attacks?"

Le Monde

"Is it well-advised to spend hundreds of millions" --
make that billions -- "of dollars to make war in Iraq
when America is incapable of protecting its own
citizens?" a Le Monde editorial asked.

Liberation

For the French, who feel greater historical, cultural,
linguistic and emotional ties to New Orleans than
perhaps any other American city, the daily front-page
images have been gut-wrenching. "The rage of the
forgotten" declared the headline of Saturday's
editions of Liberation newspaper beside a photograph
of a young woman on her knees, screaming in despair.

Liberation

"Bush had already been slow to react when the World
Trade Center collapsed. Four years later, he was no
quicker to get the measure of Katrina - a cruel lack
of leadership at a time when this second major shock
for 21st century America is adding to the crisis of
confidence for the world's leading power and to
international disorder. As happened with 9/11, the
country is displaying its vulnerability to the eyes of
the world. "

Liberation

"Katrina has shown that the emperor has no clothes.
The world's superpower is powerless when confronted
with nature's fury."

Le Fiagro

Saturday's lead editorial in Le Figaro questioned how
the U.S. military could have been so quick to arrive
in South Asia for the tsunami, yet "wasn't able to do
the same within its own borders."

Liberation

The situation is still as desperate as ever for
thousands of Americans after Hurricane Katrina's
passage. Why was the United States so ill-prepared?
Bush reacted slowly, the levees couldn't handle more
than a Category 3 hurricane. In addition, despite
evacuation orders, most in New Orleans had no mode of
transportation and finally, the war in Iraq has sapped
resources.

Emmanuel Todd, Le Figaro

American neo-conservatism is not alone to blame. What
seems to me more striking is the way this America that
incarnates the absolute opposite of the Soviet Union
is on the point of producing the same catastrophe by
the opposite route. Communism, in its madness,
supposed that society was everything and that the
individual was nothing, an ideological basis that
caused its own ruin.

Today, the United States assures us, with a blind
faith as intense as Stalin's, that the individual is
everything, that the market is enough and that the
state is hateful. The intensity of the ideological
fixation is altogether comparable to the Communist
delirium. This individualist and inequalitarian
posture disorganizes American capacity for action. The
real mystery to me is situated there: how can a
society renounce common sense and pragmatism to such
an extent and enter into such a process of ideological
self-destruction?

______________________

Could these snide criticisms have been any better
molded to so accurately describe the profound social
and ideological failures and completely societal decay
in France, currently on display for the whole world to see?

16th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

I haven't read squat about it in the MSM, but today is the 16th anniversary of the fall of Berlin Wall.

Reaping the harvest of socialism

Dick Morris opines that the institutions of France were built to benefit white Frenchmen, not immigrants.

For a North African or Middle East immigrant in France, there are few avenues that offer a prospect of upward mobility — in stark contrast to the plethora of choices available to immigrants in the United States. Instead of gearing itself to job creation and upward mobility — as the American system does — the French economy, society, labor regulations, tax laws and social structure are all designed to provide a high-quality life to the traditional, white population without allowing the growth and expansion so necessary for the swelling ranks of immigrants.

While the United States was built to absorb people from other lands, France was never designed to accommodate immigrants. Its system was built only for the French.

For many, the system seems ideal. French men and women get free health care and education. Almost all employees get the same kind of job security against dismissal we only give our civil servants. Workers are guaranteed extensive vacation, good pay, and limits on the work week.

Shopkeepers are protected against low-cost competition and farmers are sheltered behind a wall of agricultural subsidies that are the bane of the European Union that foots the bill.

And almost everybody in France gets a check every month. The amounts vary, but even millionaires get a handout from the government. There is no resentment against welfare or the dole in the salons of Paris because everybody gets it. Middle-class entitlements are the order of the day.

But this seeming utopia costs money. Taxes in France absorb a bit less than half of the national income (compared with about one-third in the United States). And the rigidity of labor laws make it very hard to dismiss a worker, assuring that few jobs will be created.

The combination of taxes and labor protections has left France with an economy that creates very few jobs and grows at a snail's pace, if at all.

As fellow Post columnist John O'Sullivan observed, immigrants to the United States invest heavily in our national "narrative," popularly called the American dream. Ask any Islamic taxi driver in New York and he will tell you his children are going to college and will regale you with his high hopes for the future. This sense of optimism and improvement kindles a national pride which tends to offset the pull of the separatist Islamic culture and nullifies much of its anti-Western connotation.

But the French Muslim has no such offsets. Far from a melting pot, the stagnation of the French economy — and the rigidity of its society — leaves them a congealed mass at the bottom of the economic ladder, concentrated in poor suburbs, shunted out of sight and out of the way. With 10 percent of the population thus confined to the lowest rung of society, the threat of violence is quite real.

When America had her own racial riots in the '60s, they came at a time of unprecedented upward economic and social mobility. Segregation was collapsing. Minority educational and income levels were poised to rise rapidly in the ensuing 30 years. While the riots raged, relief was around the corner.

But France's entire social and economic fabric was never designed to accommodate outsiders. Without fundamental and wrenching changes, it will not be able to deal with the increasingly heavy ballast at the bottom of its economic boat, a weight that could increasingly threaten the navigability of the ship of state.

Porn 101

Reading, Riting, Rithmetic......and porn.

AT Wesleyan University, "grade inflation" has taken on a whole new meaning: One student earned an "A" — for filming another student masturbating

In his seminar "Pornography: Writing of Prostitutes," Professor Hope Weissman requires students to create their own pornography project, either video, essay or live project. "I don't put any constraints on it," said Weissman. "It's supposed to be: 'Just create your own work of pornography.' "

Wesleyan University is not alone. UC-Berkeley, New York University, UC-Santa Cruz, UMass-Amherst, Chapman University and Northwestern University have all developed "porn curricula." At Arizona State University, a "Sexuality in the Media" course requires students to watch porn flicks such as "Deep Throat."

Forget for a moment the utter lack of moral propriety. Colleges are ostensibly places where students are supposed to be exposed to the best ideas that civilization has produced. This kind of "education" they can get on cable TV or at the local video store — minus a considerable tuition expenses.

Brainwashing would-be teachers

A group that accredits teaching colleges wants to make sure the colleges turn out good little socialists.

The nation's schools of education have long been bastions of left-wing nuttiness. They teach aspiring teachers that there's no such thing as truth and that students should "construct" their own knowledge from the world around them. They demonize such awful "traditional" ideas as having kids memorize names and dates and become familiar with the Western canon.

Now an organization that accredits teachers colleges wants to make this implicit leftist indoctrination explicit: It is pushing schools to evaluate students on their commitment to "social justice."

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education accredits 602 colleges of education - about half of the country's teachers colleges. In 2000, it introduced new standards for aspiring teachers, including the concept of "dispositions" - that is, measuring would-be teachers not just on their classwork, but on their "beliefs and attitudes" toward values such as "caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility and social justice."

A group of conservative academics who argue for traditional approaches to teaching, the National Association of Scholars, is trying to head off the assault. Last week, the association filed a complaint with the federal Education Department (which recognizes the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education as a certified accreditor) of violating the aspiring teachers' First Amendment rights.

They seem to be on solid ground.

In Washington state, a 42-year-old would-be teacher, Edward Swan, expressed conservative views in class - and was ordered to sign a contract affirming his commitment to social justice, or face expulsion.

And, as reported by The New York Sun, Brooklyn College's School of Education has also been busy coercing its students into the cause of social justice, through intimidation in the classroom and retaliation against those who won't play along.

This is simply wrong.

The feds need to fix it

I'd be willing to be that their idea of "social justice" probably includes such issues as abortion on demand, gay marriage, teaching first graders about condom use, and other wonderful ideas of "social justice."

French Toast

France is in big trouble, even if they won't admit it.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin yesterday called up police reservists and promised state-of-emergency curfews, to no immediate avail: A 12th straight night of violence began at dusk, having spread from the Paris suburbs to every major city, and 300 smaller towns, in France — and even beyond its borders:

Arson attacks were reported Sunday night in Germany and Belgium, to match unrest reported in Denmark last week.

So? Is Europe on the brink of a continent-wide civil war as Muslim immigrants rise up in angry protests?

For now, officials insist that the attacks outside France are only "copycat" incidents. Across Europe, however, leaders of nations with large Muslim populations are concerned and nervous.

Because what appeared at first glance to be a spontaneous outburst has now moved to a more organized and deliberate level. Growing Internet chatter is inciting violence across France. And while there's no evidence as yet that the riots were a pre-planned and coordinated attack, do not be surprised if al Qaeda or similar groups quickly attempt to capitalize on the unrest.

Indeed, they may already be players.

Were all this happening in the United States, French officials would no doubt be at their most insufferable in lecturing Americans on their intolerance for immigrants from a different culture.

And yet French leaders, from President Jacques Chirac on down, seem almost paralyzed by the growing intifada.

Only yesterday did the government authorize municipalities to impose curfews; meanwhile, Chirac and de Villepin have cynically used the situation to try to isolate their political foe, hard-line Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has his eyes on Chirac's job.

In the meantime, France continues to burn. Its police are coming under gunfire, businesses and public buildings are being targeted for destruction and burned to the ground. Yesterday, the riots claimed their first fatality.

Over the weekend, police in the Parisian suburb of Evry discovered a firebomb factory containing 150 bombs — a third of them ready for use.

How can any self-respecting government allow such an intolerable situation to continue?

To be sure, France is paying a price for its eyes-shut policy towards its growing population of immigrants, who — more than most — suffer the ill effects of the nation's overbearing anti-business policies, which cause massive unemployment.

But much of the Muslim population has resisted attempts at assimilation: As The Wall Street Journal reported, organizations like the Tabligh — which demand that Muslims identify primarily with their religion rather than with their nationality — are highly influential and have created a "separate [Muslim] society within [French] society."

France is not alone with this problem. Britain, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands all have significant Muslim immigrant populations — and all have experienced Islamic terrorism, first-hand.

France's failure to contain the rioting — and swiftly — will only embolden those who hope to spread the devastation across Europe. Yet Chirac remains torn by his desire to appear both firm and conciliatory.

When will they act?

Maybe when all of France has been burned to the ground.

Jacques "Nero" Chirac

Kerry finds religion, sorta

Kerry may not like the "thou shalt nots" but he seems to think Jesus would want more government spending.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry called the Republican budget approved by the U.S. Senate "immoral" and said it will hurt cities like Manchester.

"As a Christian, as a Catholic, I think hard about those responsibilities that are moral and how you translate them into public life," the Massachusetts senator said at a rally Saturday in support of Democratic Mayor Bob Baines, who is running for re-election.

"There is not anywhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ, anything that remotely suggests - not one miracle, not one parable, not one utterance - that says you ought to cut children's health care or take money from the poorest people in our nation to give it to the wealthiest people in our nation," he said.

Let's talk about "responsibilities" and Jesus's ministry. Here are some things he did talk about:

Mark 10 Jesus talks about divorce: "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.". Oops, maybe you shouldn't have dumped your first heiress wife for another heiress, and then try to get the first marriage annulled.

Bearing false witness: Luke 18: You know the commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother.'" hmm, maybe lying to Congress about being in Cambodia, about atrocities that never happened, maybe you shouldn't have done that.

Jesus also didn't think much of rich people: Jesus looked at him (now sad) and said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." Luke 18:24-25.

The French riots: Bin Laden meets Rodney King?

Kinda scary when one of the rioters says his two heroes are Osama Bin Laden and Rodney King.

Mahmoud Khabou, 20, the jobless son of Algerian immigrants, knows little of the world beyond the concrete housing projects that rise in bleak rows barely an hour's subway ride from the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and other grand monuments of Paris.

But he knows who his heroes are. ''Osama bin Laden and Rodney King," he said, referring to the Al Qaeda leader and the African-American whose videotaped beating by Los Angeles police in 1991 spawned massive racial riots.

''One because he gives pride back to the Muslims," the young man asserted as he and a trio of friends stood near the charred ruins of a carpet shop. ''The other because he was just a poor man, a 'nobody man' of color, but he caused a great city to burn."

Pretty scary

Bullish on Bush

Much like the stock market has its ups and downs, but keeps trending positive, so too the Bush administration.

Where does President Bush go from here? U.S. deaths in Iraq hit 2,000, which sadly had the antiwar crowd celebrating. Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination for the Supreme Court, which had just about everybody celebrating but Mr. Bush. Syria plotted to kill a Lebanese leader, and the leader of the world organization responsible for doing something about it tried to protect Syria instead. Sen. Tom Coburn put forward at least two amendments to cut pork, and just 13 senators voted for it--including only one Democrat, Russ Feingold, who is looking more and more like a great presidential candidate who sticks to his principles.

Things seem to look terrible for President Bush--and yet, I think this is going to turn into a great success story.

Think long-term. There are two major actions Bush made in his first term: toppling Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq and cutting taxes. The Iraqi people, for all the horrible things that are still happening there, are progressing very nicely, including passing a constitution, just a couple of years after the war. That is a major success story, and somewhat unprecedented in history. Meanwhile, the economy has been running so well that nobody even brought it up for a while until the hurricanes hit--and yet gross domestic product rose at a 3.8% annualized rate anyway. Mr. Bush is, wisely, sticking to his guns and refusing to raise taxes to make up the losses, as taxes would not solve the problem, only exacerbate it.

This forced the country to think of other ways of coming up with revenue--notably, not wasting it on pork projects. Bloggers rallied (and still are rallying) with Porkbusters, while Sen. Coburn pushed to cut the pork in the Senate. At the same time, Mr. Bush's nomination of Ms. Miers met with opposition by conservatives and liberals alike, most importantly conservative bloggers. After enough poor feedback and other issues, Ms. Miers withdrew.

Mr. Bush, meanwhile, had the time and reasons to refocus. He nominated Samuel Alito in place of Ms. Miers, and the Democrats will have a hard time convincing Americans that this nomination is worth a filibuster--especially when they've spoken so highly of him in the past. Toss in the threat of the nuclear option to get rid of filibusters, and the likelihood of Judge Alito not making it to the bench is extremely low. Add in Chief Justice John Roberts, and Mr. Bush's impact on the court could be felt for 30 years. Meanwhile, if the president does begin cutting pork from the budget, the already decreasing deficit could disappear--an incredible feat for a president who has presided over both 9/11 and a slew of major hurricanes.

Toss in the Middle East: In the next three years or so, Iraq should slowly grow stronger and stronger. If the U.S. decides to take action against Syria (or Iran, for that matter), the already changing Middle East will learn democracy even faster. Mr. Bush's allowing Israel to direct the path it takes is proving wise, forcing the Palestinian people to choose democracy or terror. While it is still unclear which will win out, at least now they are battling over it.

If the president would also work on Social Security, he could go down as one of the most effective Presidents in history. His nomination of Ben Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan as the Fed chairman was received with . . . quiet. The little that has been said has been mostly positive; randomly clicking around on DemocraticUnderground.com shows that the left thinkers believe him to be an excellent choice, much as the right does. If he can help push the necessity to fix Social Security, to make the tax cuts permanent, and to seriously consider a different tax system, Mr. Bush will have covered just about every major issue--both foreign and domestic.

The biggest trick is to let his policies stay in place for as long as possible. Most of his policies take the right approach--long-term fixes so problems do not recur; planned-out ideas that do not rely on external revenues (taxes, etc.) or fixes to sustain themselves. Unfortunately, many politicians rely on short-term fixes that make people happy enough to keep poll numbers high. It will take a dedicated president to let Mr. Bush's policies ride their course and build up this country and the rest of the world.

If--and this is not a small if--the people and politicians of this country can support the president, and if Mr. Bush himself can refocus his energies on doing what is in the best interests of this country for the long term, rather than trying to broker compromises that serve nobody's interests, this country will be far better off. I think that the current situations have allowed Mr. Bush to realize this, and we will look back on this somewhat darker hour as the turnaround point of this presidency. In the end, Mr. Bush will use this opportunity to push the proper--long-term--agendas and set this country for a healthy, prosperous, and safe future.

The Population Fund

Liberals are mad, so Bush not paying for forced abortions of Chinese women must be a good thing.

Samuel Alito isn't the only nominee under attack by liberals for his record on abortion. So is Ellen Sauerbrey, President Bush's choice to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

To be precise, Ms. Sauerbrey is under fire for supporting Mr. Bush's priorities at the United Nations, where the former Maryland legislator and gubernatorial candidate has spent four years as U.S. envoy to the Commission on the Status of Women. Among her alleged sins is that she supports the Administration's decision to withhold $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund because some of the agency's contributions go to China's appalling forced-abortion policy.

The Population Fund is one of the principal cheerleaders of China's one-child policy, which has been enforced through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilizations and even, human-rights groups charge, infanticide. Several weeks ago Mr. Bush invoked a 20-year-old policy--known as the Kemp-Kasten Amendment--which prohibits federal funding of "any organization or program which supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."

One would think that women's organizations would applaud this decision--and the appointment of an American woman who champions it. Mandatory limitations on family size and involuntary sterilizations hardly represent "reproductive freedom" or "a woman's right to choose." Instead, groups such as Planned Parenthood have protested that Mr. Bush is denying women access to reproductive health and family planning services. Planned Parenthood is also attacking Ms. Sauerbrey.

China insists that coercion is a thing of the past. But the senior China specialist at the U.S. Census Bureau told Congress in December that, "The evidence is clear that the one-child policy is still basic national policy, that it remains coercive and violative of human rights." Amnesty International continues to document abortions, sterilizations and infanticide inside rural hospitals. China also uses fines and "social compensation" penalties of up to four years of salary to punish one-child violators.

There are an estimated 40 million girls demographically missing in China as a result of its one-child policy. The Population Research Institute reports that the sex ratio of 117 boys to 100 girls is so out of balance that the Chinese government has initiated emergency programs to teach parents about the value of girls.

Representative Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) has introduced legislation to release taxpayer funds for the Population Fund and give recipients a blank check on how to spend it. But it is Ms. Maloney and her allies who should be forced to defend the Population Fund's practices, especially its support for China's birth-control policy. The Fund has publicly praised the one-child policy as "the most successful family planning (sic) policy ever developed," and it once gave the Chinese government an award for the "effectiveness" of its population control.

American elites share the blame for this and other coercive population programs by instructing foreign leaders with the false Malthusian premise that people constrain economic progress. The notion of a "population bomb," so universally accepted in the 1960s and 1970s, has been thoroughly discredited.

The birth rate in developing countries like Mexico and India has plummeted to just over three children per couple today from about six in 1950. The major explanation for smaller family sizes, longer life expectancy, income gains and improved health and nutrition has been economic growth, not condom distribution or lower birth rates. Population stabilization is not a cause, but rather a consequence, of growth and prosperity. The Reagan Administration had it right when it first stopped financing the Population Fund and declared that "capitalism is by far the best contraceptive."

As for Ms. Sauerbrey, her opponents' claims that she is a "crony" (for having run Mr. Bush's 2000 election campaign in Maryland) and "unqualified" are a smokescreen for their real gripe about the Bush Administration's decision to withhold money from the Population Fund. California Democrat Barbara Boxer recently managed to get a vote on Ms. Sauerbrey delayed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where pro-choice Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is being lobbied hard to vote against her.

The principle that is most at stake here is personal freedom. We have seen in China the debasement of human dignity on a grand scale when population control is imposed by an authoritarian regime. Mr. Bush deserves credit for refusing to coerce American taxpayers into paying for it, and Ms. Sauerbrey deserves to be confirmed.

Eco-terrorism

Animal Crackers has the play by play from the congressional hearings. Pretty chilling stuff:

Senator Inhofe. Okay. Dr. Vlasak, do your fellow animal rights activists understand that animal testing is required by law and therefore the people who are performing this testing are merely following the law. Do they understand that, and do you understand that?

Dr. Vlasak. I understand that they are merely following the law, and the law in this case is wrong, just like the law that allowed slavery was wrong at one time.

Senator Inhofe. Well, you mentioned slavery, you also mentioned slavery in several of the comments that you made, as well as your testimony. You analogized the plight of animals to that of the African-American slaves of early American history, asserting that the animal rights movement is similar to that of the Underground Railroad. You even at one time or several times have talked about the Jews in Nazi Germany.

It sounds to me, in looking at this, like you’re evaluating the lives of human beings in a similar way that you are animals. Do you think animals’ lives are as precious as human life?

Dr. Vlasak. Non-human lives, non-human animal lives, are as precious as animal lives. At one time, racism and sexism and homophobism were prominent in our society. Today speciesism is prominent in our society. It is just as wrong as racism.

Senator Inhofe. So you do put them in the same category, the animals of non-human and human lives? Is that correct?

Dr. Vlasak. They are morally equal.

Senator Inhofe. They are morally equal?

Dr. Vlasak. They are.

Senator Inhofe. One of the statements you made at the animal rights convention when you were defending assassinating people, murdering people, you said, let me put it up here to make sure I’m not misquoting you, “I don’t think you’d have to kill, assassinate too many. I think for five lives, ten lives, fifteen human lives, we could save a million, two million, or ten million non-human lives.’’

You’re advocating the murder of individuals, isn’t that correct?

Dr. Vlasak. I made that statement, and I stand by that statement. That statement is made in the context that the struggle for animal liberation is no different than struggles for liberation elsewhere, whether the struggle for liberation in South Africa against the apartheid regime, whether the liberation against the communists, whether it was the liberation struggles in Algeria, Viet Nam or Iraq today, liberation struggles occasionally or usually, I should say, usually end up in violence.

There is plenty of violence being used on the other side of the equation. These animals are being terrorized, murdered and killed by the millions every day. The animal rights movement has been notoriously non-violent up to this point.

But I don’t believe that — I believe as my statement says —

Senator Inhofe. Let me interrupt. You said it has been notoriously non-violent up to this time?

Dr. Vlasak. That is correct.

Senator Inhofe. You don’t think there is violence in the testimony you’ve heard?

Dr. Vlasak. I think when you compare the 500 animals being murdered every single day at Huntingdon Life Sciences, which is just one company, I think when you look at the amount of violence that goes on at Mr. Boruchin’s house, getting a little spray paint on the wall, I think if you look at the amount of violence that went on at this yacht club in New York, where again some spray paint was slapped up on a wall, I don’t think you can compare that kind of vandalism with the murder of millions of animals.

Senator Inhofe. And so you call for the murders of researchers and human life?

Dr. Vlasak. I said in that statement and I meant in that statement that people who are hurting animals and who will not stop when told to stop, one option would be to stop them using any means necessary and that was the context in which that statement was made.

Senator Inhofe. Including murdering them, is that correct?

Dr. Vlasak. Pardon?

Senator Inhofe. Including murdering them?

Dr. Vlasak. I said that would be a morally justifiable solution to the problem.

Senator Inhofe. Senator Lautenberg.

Senator Lautenberg. Dr. Vlasak, you approve of these dastardly acts in the name of liberation, of a liberation movement. Do you have any children?

Dr. Vlasak. I have no children. And just to be clear, I don’t approve of any unnecessary suffering. And I wish these things didn’t have to happen.

Senator Lautenberg. Fine. You do. And what you have said confirms it. So I just want to go there. I want to know who you are, what makes you tick. Because it is so revolting to hear what you say about the murder. These aren’t extermination camps. What’s being done, whether you like it or not, is to try and improve the quality of life for human beings. This isn’t Germany.

How do you feel about people, you said you think people who have a cause have a right to violence. How about the guys who kill our soldiers and who killed the people in the Trade Towers? They have a cause. Is that okay with you?

Dr. Vlasak. No. Unnecessary loss of life is never okay with me. I extend that loss of life to animal life, non-human animal life as well.

Senator Lautenberg. You’re the super moralist, you’re deciding where it’s right and where it’s wrong. Many people who have causes, some of them justified, but to take tactics like the intimidation of people to spoil their lives or spoil their ability to make a living is an outrageous thing to propose. You’re anti-social in your behavior, obviously. But to sit here so smugly and be proud of the fact that you stand by this statement about five or ten lives, if those lives were your kids, well, maybe you don’t have anybody you love. You don’t have any kids.

Can I ask you a question? Mr. Boruchin’s life has been exposed, credit card numbers, everything else. Where did you go to medical school?

Dr. Vlasak. I attended medical school at the University of Texas, in Houston.

Senator Lautenberg. And where do you practice now?

Dr. Vlasak. I practice in the Los Angeles area.

Senator Lautenberg. At a hospital?

Dr. Vlasak. I do. A number of hospitals.

Senator Lautenberg. What is your favorite, what is your dominant hospital activity?

Dr. Vlasak. I practice at several hospitals in the Riverside and San Bernadino area.

Senator Lautenberg. Name one.

Dr. Vlasak. Loma Linda University.


Senator Lautenberg. I think we ought to go further. Dr. Vlasak, how do you feel about animals like rats and mice? The use of experimentation on them to see how they react to different medications, things of that nature, would you permit that?

Dr. Vlasak. I think it’s a hugely wasteful use of scarce resource dollars that we have in the medical industry. We have much better ways of showing whether a drug is toxic to a human being or not, rather than choking it down a rat’s or a mouse’s throat. I think from a scientific standpoint __

Senator Lautenberg. If they are injected __

Dr. Vlasak. Pardon?

Senator Lautenberg. If they are injected with a material, is that okay?

Dr. Vlasak. As I was trying to explain to you, I think from a scientific standpoint, there is so little validity to doing that that we’re wasting hundreds of millions of scarce health care dollars. Even if it did work, though, and it doesn’t, but even if it did, I’d still be against it. Because the same reason I’m against the experimentation that happened on human beings against their will, whether it was in Nazi concentration camps or whether it was here in the United States —

Senator Lautenberg. We shouldn’t experiment on human beings.


Dr. Vlasak. There were people who were experimented on against their will. They got good, useful results and they published it in the same medical journals that I read today. But it was wrong. Whether it worked or not doesn’t matter.

Senator Lautenberg. Since I have the mic on this side, I would prefer that we follow my line. So you would say, there is something called the Lautenberg Cancer Research Center. I helped establish that, because my father died when he was 43 years old. He got sick at age 42, he worked in a mill in Patterson, New Jersey, as did his brother, my uncle. He died when he was 52, also cancer, their father died also of cancer when he was 56.

And when I had the good fortune of success in business, I put some resources into a group of New Jersey scientists who were moving abroad, to learn more about cancer research. After watching my father suffer for a year, 13 months, he was athletic, he was strong, he exercised, he was very careful about his diet, I had enlisted in the Army when my dad finally died, and I made the decision then that I would do whatever I can to try and prevent another family from undergoing the same torture and grief, the same individual.

But you are so smug, if you’ll forgive me, about what is right and what is wrong. If I asked you a question about mice, mice that are raised particularly, Mr. Chairman, for learning more about the anatomy of the animal and see if we can convert that. And right now, there is all kinds of talk about using, even using animal organs for life saving. You wouldn’t permit that, would you?


Dr. Vlasak. Well, I’m sorry to say that your organization is wasting money on mice and rat experimentation, when we know much better ways to find cures for human beings.

Senator Lautenberg. I’ll tell the scientists there about that.

Dr. Vlasak. Let me just address the transplantation issue that you brought up. As you know, transplantation, or placing animal organs into human beings, that’s not going to work. It hasn’t worked, and it’s not going to work any time in the near future. We have a hard enough time transplanting human organs into human beings and all the immunosuppressives that are required to do that.

Senator Lautenberg. We can’t find them all that we need.

Dr. Vlasak. Well, we could, if we had a presumed consent law, for instance. If you guys would pass a law that says everybody’s an organ donor unless proven otherwise, or unless they declare they don’t want to be. This has been done in Belgium, they get all the organs they need by doing laws like that.

There is not a shortage of organs absolutely, there is a shortage of organs that we can get at the last minute. I deal in trauma patients, I see people die every day. I save lives, but I lose lives sometimes as well.

Senator Lautenberg. But you’re willing to take lives. That’s the anomaly here. You are willing to say that somebody you don’t know, somebody’s kid, somebody’s parent, somebody’s brother, somebody’s sister, take that life, that’s okay.

Dr. Vlasak. These are not innocent lives.


Senator Lautenberg. You’ll teach those SOBs a lesson about killing those mice or killing those animals, or doing experimentation that’s going to make this world — why are we living longer? It is because we experimented in different ways. And for you to sit there and you decide what the proper course of action is in the sanctity of your practice and the rules of your club here, which is identified in your statement, “morally acceptable,’’ I don’t want to waste my own energy any more.

Mr. Chairman, this is an outrage to have an individual sit here and impose a standard that is supposed to fit all of society. I don’t know whether, at Mr. Bibi’s company, everything they do is exactly right. I know that what they’re trying to do is to help us live better lives, all of us. And I hope that they continue.
And when I see a kid down here, at Walter Reed Hospital, who’s lost a leg or lost a part of his body, and they find ways, because they have experimented with things, maybe to regrow even bone, it’s fantastic, and I want it to continue. And you have no right to intimidate people who are engaged in a proper practice under our laws. You want the law changed? Write letters. Come down here and ask for a change in law about whether or not animal experimentation is right. Don’t take the law into your own hands. That’s a bad mistake.

Dr. Vlasak. HLS isn’t trying to save human lives. They’re trying to turn a profit, nothing else.


Senator Inhofe. Senator Lautenberg, thank you. I think you and I can go a long ways to correcting what we have seen here today with the law that we are introducing, and I look forward to working with you on the floor of the Senate to make sure that we get this thing passed and give the FBI and the Department of Justice the necessary tools to stop this type of perversion in our society.

My son called me up right before this hearing, he noticed we are having this hearing. He’s a doctor. He said, at some point, you need to explain to them that it’s either going to be the lives of these animals or human life. When I call him back, Dr. Vlasak, that we have a witness who equates animals lives with human lives, then that takes away all the argument. If you believe that in your own heart, what you do, and you have advocated the assassination, the murder of human lives, of human beings, of researchers, then I don’t see any reason to go any further with this.

Steyn: Wake up for Europe

Mark Steyn says we've got another Battle of Tours looming, where is the Charlemagne?

Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.

Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''

''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.

The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.''

Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was ''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.''

Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman. They're in Brussels, where Belgian police officers are advised not to be seen drinking coffee in public during Ramadan, and in Malmo, where Swedish ambulance drivers will not go without police escort. It's way too late to rerun the Battle of Poitiers. In the no-go suburbs, even before these current riots, 9,000 police cars had been stoned by ''French youths'' since the beginning of the year; some three dozen cars are set alight even on a quiet night. ''There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,'' said Michel Thooris of the gendarmes' trade union Action Police CFTC. ''We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting.''

What to do? In Paris, while ''youths'' fired on the gendarmerie, burned down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.

A few years back I was criticized for a throwaway observation to the effect that ''I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." But this is why. In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, these young men are less assimilated than their grandparents. French cynics like the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, have spent the last two years scoffing at the Bush Doctrine: Why, everyone knows Islam and democracy are incompatible. If so, that's less a problem for Iraq or Afghanistan than for France and Belgium.

If Chirac isn't exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren't doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn 'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.

MSM Lies of 2005

Cassandra has been compiling the top Mainstream Media (MSM) lies of 2005. Some examples:

3) January 12, 2005. The allegedly anti-war soldier that committed suicide-by-police. The MSM portrayed a gunman in California as desperate to avoid a return to combat, while failing to mention that he had never seen combat, was not headed for combat and had a history of violence before ever entering the military under murky circumstances:

There's just one thing wrong with the sympathetic spin about the anti-war Marine. It's all dead wrong.

This much is true about Raya: The 19-year-old man did in fact serve with the Marines' 1st Intelligence Battalion's motor transport unit as a driver in Iraq.

But contrary to the impression left by initial media reports, Raya had never seen combat. And he was not headed back to Iraq. He had been transferred to a new unit scheduled for deployment to Okinawa. "During our investigation, we found he wasn't due to go back to Iraq, never faced combat situations and never even fired his gun," Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Woodman said.

Raya was high on cocaine at the time of the ambush, according to police reports. He was reportedly affiliated with the prison gang Nuestra Familia. Investigators found photos of Raya wearing gang colors and a shopping list in his bedroom safe that included body armor, assault rifles, and ammunition.

The drug use, the gang ties, etc. - all went unreported in the MSM in the MSM/DNC attempt to undermine the war effort.

4. January 26, 2005. Washington Post uses the term "centrist". The Washington Post describes several Senators that voted against Rice's confirmation as "centrist", including Tom Harkin, Mark Dayton and Carl Levin. Who wouldn't the Washington Post consider "centrist" [aside from Republicans, that is]? Who would the Washington Post refer to as "leftist"?

5. Late January/ Early February 2005 - Easongate. CNN executive Eason Jordan falsely claims that American soldiers are targeting journalists in Iraq. MSM/DNC refuses to cover the story until Jordan is forced to resign by the resulting blogosphere storm.

8. February 10, 2005 - BBC reports a bogus story of a man who was jailed by the Israeli Army for refusing to shoot children. The only problem is, the story is false. BBC later retracted the story, but refused to back off claims that Israeli policy is to shoot children. Hat tip to LGF.

9. Ongoing lie dating back to 2003 and continuing probably throughout 2005 - "There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Without getting into the arguments over the justification for the war, this myth is simply false. American and coalition forces found enough WMD's to kill more people than the number that died on 9-11. The real question is, what happened to the WMD's that we didn't find and that were taken away while we were debating in the UN in 2002 and early 2003.

update - The New York Times admits (on 3/13/05) the existence of WMD's in Iraq at the time of the U.S. led invasion, but only for the purpose of attacking Bush over something else. Once NYT has finished attacking Bush, the WMD's disappear down the memory hole.

11. February, 2005. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd falsely claims to have been denied a White House press pass while Jeff Gannon received such a pass. Dowd failed to tell her readers that she was talking about two different types of passes. Dowd was denied a permanent pass while Gannon received a daily pass (the type that anyone can get).

13. March 6, 2005. AP uses a video of an unrelated car to bolster the claims of the Italian communist Sgrena regarding the shooting by American troops.

16. March 19, 2005. The Minneapolis Star Tribune falsely claims that Little Green Footballs tried to deny any credit to Powerline for Powerline's role in exposing Rathergate.

17. Late March, 2005. Person(s) unknown created and circulated a fake memo purporting to show that the Republican Senate leadership would like to capitalize on Terri Schiavo's murder for political purposes in the next election. The MSM/DNC immediately condemned the Republicans but fell silent once the story started to implode. Update. Although a Republican lawyer now has stepped forward and taken credit for the memo, The Washington Post's original story attributing the memo to Republican "leaders" remains a lie.

19. March 31, 2005. The New York Times acts in concert with Columbia University to cover up abuse by Arab professors of pro-Israel students.

20. April 1, 2005. The AP lied in stating that Sandy Berger destroyed only "copies" of crucial intelligence documents and that the originals remain in the government's possession. In fact, each of the three copies that Berger destroyed contained unique notes that now are gone forever. "Obviously he reviewed the notes on the five documents and destroyed the three that contained information damaging to the reputation of the Clinton administration."

22. April 12, 2005. L.A. Times columnist invents a story about the Bush administration dispatching William Bennett to the Vatican to drum up support for the Iraqi invasion two years ago. In fact, no such thing occurred and William Bennett made no such trip. Click here, here and here.

23. Mid - April, 2005. A Boston Globe writer invents a story about a seal hunt in Canada (including graphic detail) and passes it off as actual news.

24. April 29, 2005. MSM/DNC refers to Bush' proposal for different indexing of SS benefits for upper income recipients as a "cut" in benefits. That is not mere spin, it is a lie. See Michelle Malkin and the Loudest Cricket for a summary of the liers.

27. May 12, 2005. CBS falsely reports that Ken Starr opposes the Republican position on the filibuster rule. In fact, Starr was strongly critical of the Democrats' tactics and CBS falsely attributed that criticism to the Republicans.

28. May 12, 2005. Sacramento Bee columnist resigns after her habit of inventing characters is exposed.

29. May 14-15, 2005. Newsweek runs a false story that U.S. soldiers flushed the Koran in front of Islamic detainees. 15 people die in the "Newsweek riots." Newsweek lied - people died.

32. July 1st, 2005. Molly Ivins falsely claims that Americans have killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam Hussein ever did. Ivins later retracts and apologizes after she is outed by an indignant blog stormlet.

34. July 15. 2005. L.A. Times falsely asserts that the White House Supreme Court short list is composed only of "White Men." This false assertions is later airbrushed without acknowledgment in the online edition. [The original post is misnumbered as #33].

38. August 12, 2005. New York Times finally attempts to spin the Air America scandal, but in doing so they edit out an admission from an Al Franken radio interview and they put words in Michelle Malkin's mouth.

39. August 15, 2005. The Detroit News inflates the numbers of "Palestinians" living in the Detroit metro area so as to inflate Muslim political influence.

40. August 16, 2005. Various MSM/DNC outlets, including NBC news, refer to the Israelis giving Gaza "back" to the Palestinians. But the "Palestinians" never had Gaza in the first place. Israel took it from Egypt in 1967.

41. August 19, 2005. Paul Krugman of the New York Times repeats the Florida recount lie. Krugman would spend at least one more column trying to explain this column.

42. September, 2005. Michael Kinsley reveals that CNN has coached its guests to sound angry during discussions of Katrina.

44. October 14, 2005. NBC's Today show stages a canoe stunt in which the reporterette pretends to be sitting in dangerous New Jersey floodwaters. In fact, her canoe was sitting on the ground in 4-6 inches of water.

Al Jazeera: Terrorist TV

Dorrance Smith, a nominee for assistant secretary of defense for Public affairs, tells it like it is about Al Jazeera. Predictably, Senator Carl Levin, a democrat (you had to ask?) from Michiganistan, is pitching a fit. Here's Smith's op ed.

On April 11, Jeffrey Ake, an American, was taken hostage in Iraq. Video of him in captivity was shown on al-Jazeera on April 13. A short time later six American networks--ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC--aired the same video, a vivid example of the ongoing relationship between terrorists, al-Jazeera and the networks. Last week, al-Jazeera showed video of a helicopter being shot, bursting into flames and trailing smoke as it fell to the ground. It also aired video of the lone survivor being forced to walk on a broken leg and then being shot by the terrorists, one of whom said, "We are applying God's law."

As the war continues, more hostages will be taken and acts of murderous violence committed--leading to more videos for al-Jazeera and the networks. Isn't it time to scrutinize the relationship among al-Jazeera, American networks and the terrorists? What role should the U.S. government be playing?

Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and al Qaeda have a partner in al-Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S. This partnership is a powerful tool for the terrorists in the war in Iraq. Figures show that 77% of Iraqis cite TV as their main source of information; 15% cite newspapers. Current estimates are that close to 100% of Iraqis have access to satellite TV, 18% to cell phones, and 8% to the Internet. The battle for Iraqi hearts and minds is being fought over satellite TV. It is a battle today that we are losing badly.

The collaboration between the terrorists and al-Jazeera is stronger than ever. While the precise terms of that relationship are virtually unknown, we do know this: al-Jazeera and the terrorists have a working arrangement that extends beyond a modus vivendi. When the terrorists want to broadcast something that helps their cause, they have immediate and reliable access to al-Jazeera. This relationship--in a time of war--raises some important questions:

• What does Al-Jazeera promise the terrorist organizations in order to get consistent access to their video?

• Does it pay for material?

• Is it promised safety and protection if it continues to air unedited tapes? (No Al-Jazeera employee has been killed or taken hostage by the terrorists. When I ran the Iraqi Television Network, seven employees were killed by terrorists.)

• Does Al-Jazeera promise the terrorists that it won't reveal their whereabouts and techniques as a quid pro quo for doing business? Is this bargain in the guise of journalism a defensible practice?

While I was in Iraq in 2004, Al-Jazeera was expelled from the country by the Iraqi Governing Council for violating international law. Numerous times they had advance knowledge of military actions against coalition forces. Instead of reporting to the authorities that it had been tipped off, Al-Jazeera would pre-position a crew at the event site and wait for the attack, record it and rush it on air. This happened time after time, to the point where Al-Jazeera was expelled from Iraq. The airing of the Ake video, however, demonstrates that it can still operate on behalf of the terrorists even from outside the country.

A world with Roe v Wade

Imagine if Roe vs Wade was overturned.

The word abortion appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. Yet less than a week into Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, abortion is already emerging as the flashpoint of the confirmation debate. It is an apt moment to consider how we got to where this single issue so dominates judicial politics.

The answer is Roe v. Wade, the Court's 7-2 decision that, in one fell judicial swoop, took this deeply divisive social issue out of the hands of voters and their elected legislators. The year was 1973. The consequences have distorted American law and politics ever since.

Go back to late 1960s and early 1970s, before Roe became the most controversial Court decision since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Numerous state legislatures had relaxed their hitherto absolute bans on abortion, making it easier for a woman whose health was endangered to obtain one. The burgeoning women's movement had made legalization one of its primary goals.

Attitudes toward abortion were shifting and Americans were engaged in serious public debate, amending state laws to fit new community norms. Sure, New York's law was more liberal than Texas', but that's the way our federalist system of government is supposed to work. And a Texan who wanted an abortion could--with the help of charity if she needed it--go across state lines to obtain one.

Enter the Supreme Court. In his Roe opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun purported to find in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitution the right to abortion. His ukase struck down 50 state laws, but, more destructively, he also stopped democracy cold. Without Roe, we likely would have had a decade or so of political battles in 50 state legislatures. Our guess is that we would have ended up with a rough consensus close to where every poll shows the American public stands on abortion: legal in the first trimester, with restrictions later in pregnancy and provisions for parental and spousal notification.

One of Roe's many paradoxes is that it instantly gave the U.S. one of the most permissive abortion laws in the Western world. Many European countries require counseling and/or waiting periods and most--including Germany, France and Sweden--forbid it after the first trimester or early into the second. Britain and Japan allow it only when the physical or mental health of the woman is at stake, and in Japan the husband's permission is required. By contrast, U.S. law falls into the same no-questions-asked category as China and the former countries of the Soviet Union.

Another paradox has developed with strides in neonatal technology: Our society now spends millions of dollars to save premature babies born at 25 weeks but permits abortion in the final week of gestation so long as the mother can find a doctor willing to say she will suffer psychological trauma if she gives birth. Such moral disparities will only become more acute as modern medicine lowers the age at which a fetus becomes viable outside the womb.

But the biggest paradox has been political, in that Roe has been a disaster for the Democratic Party that has made its defense a core principle. It took a few years as the pro-life movement organized, but by the late 1970s evangelicals and traditional Catholics--often middle- and lower-middle-class folks who voted Democratic (or didn't vote at all)--began to move to the GOP.

Jimmy Carter still won major chunks of those votes in the 1976 Presidential race, when he and rival Gerald Ford differed little on abortion. Then came Ronald Reagan, who made opposition to Roe part of his platform. Reagan trounced the then-pro-choice George H.W. Bush in the 1980 GOP primaries and went on to win the general election with the help of the "Reagan Democrats," whose opposition to abortion was one factor in their decision to vote Republican. The GOP has had a pro-life plank in its platform since 1980, and this cultural political realignment has helped bring the party close to parity with Democrats.

While criticism of Roe is now said to be "conservative," some of its most telling critics have been liberal legal scholars. Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, writing in 1987, charged the Court with behaving like "a body of Platonic Guardians charged with bringing the Constitution up to date . . . without regard to the past or the long-run sentiment of the people."

The late Yale Law School Professor Alexander Bickel agreed with Justice Byron White, who in his dissent described Roe as an "extravagant exercise" of judicial power. "So it was," Bickel wrote in 1975, "and if the Court's guess on the probable and desirable direction of progress is wrong, that guess will nevertheless have been imposed on all 50 states."

But it is Justice Antonin Scalia who has said it best. "By foreclosing all democratic outlets for the deep passions the issue arouses," he wrote in his dissent to the 1992 Casey decision elaborating on Roe, "by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight . . . the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish."

We have no idea whether a Justice Alito would vote to overturn Roe. But notwithstanding the scare tactics of the left, the right to an abortion would not vanish if Roe were overturned. The issue would return to 50 state legislatures, nearly all of which would quickly make it legal with some restrictions. In short, the country would arrive at the position favored by most Americans, voters would be less polarized over cultural disputes, abortion would stop dominating Supreme Court nominations, and our politics would be a lot healthier.

Judge Alito and spousal notification

The abortion at all cost group didn't like judge Alito's common sense approach.

When President Bush nominated Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, it didn't take long for extremist groups to alight on his partial dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, decided by the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991, as a pretext to oppose him. Planned Parenthood's Karen Pearl called the opinion "outrageous" and said it proved Judge Alito is "far, far out of the mainstream."

Planned Parenthood mostly lost the Casey case, in which a three-judge panel unanimously upheld all but one of Pennsylvania's abortion restrictions. The next year, a 7-2 Supreme Court majority agreed. But by 5-4, the justices affirmed the decision of Judge Alito's two colleagues that struck down a provision designed to encourage a married woman to inform her husband before having an abortion.

This was a modest effort to balance a wife's "reproductive rights" against her husband's. The law did not provide for spousal consent, only notification. The wife's say-so, in the form of a signed statement delivered to the physician performing the abortion, was sufficient to establish that the husband knew. And a woman seeking an abortion had the alternative of affirming that her husband was not the father of her unborn child, that he could not be located, that the pregnancy was the result of marital rape, or that she feared physical abuse if she informed him. In any of these cases, no notification was required.

Arguably this was an unwise law because it was superfluous in most cases and ineffective in the rest. One must assume the vast majority of married couples make the decision to have or abort a child together; and the mere requirement of signing a statement was not a serious impediment to any woman who, for whatever reason, decided on her own to abort.

But deciding if a law is wise or unwise is the job of legislators, not judges. The Supreme Court is obliged to let even a foolish law stand unless the Constitution prohibits a state from enacting it. The five-justice majority, however, held that the Pennsylvania spousal-notification provision was an "undue burden" on the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Roe was the offspring of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that established a "right to privacy"--and specifically, a right of married couples to obtain contraceptives. This right had no basis in the text of the Constitution, but it was grounded, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority, in "the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship."

By 1992, when the high court decided Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the right to marital privacy had somehow morphed into a woman's right to abort her husband's child without telling him. The court's privacy jurisprudence has become simply a matter of five justices' policy preferences, unmoored from any limiting principle. You don't have to be a pro-life absolutist to object to this exercise in pro-wife extremism.

Pimpify!

Here is a website to get your pimp name.

My pimp name is Big Playah D. Rockefeller

Kofi on the internet: We mean you no harm

How can you tell when Kofi Annan is lying? His lips are moving.

The main objective of the World Summit on the Information Society to be held this month in Tunisia is to ensure that poor countries get the full benefits that new information and communication technologies -- including the Internet -- can bring to economic and social development. But as the meeting draws nearer, there is a growing chorus of misinformation about it.

One mistaken notion is that the United Nations wants to "take over," police or otherwise control the Internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United Nations wants only to ensure the Internet's global reach, and that effort is at the heart of this summit.

Strong feelings about protecting the Internet are to be expected. In its short life, the Internet has become an agent of revolutionary change in health, education, journalism and politics, among other areas. In the United Nations' own work for development, we have glimpsed only the beginning of the benefits it can provide: for victims of disaster, quicker, better-coordinated relief; for poor people in remote areas, lifesaving medical information; and, for people trapped under repressive governments, access to uncensored information as well as an outlet to air their grievances and appeal for help.

There are also legitimate concerns about the use of the Internet to incite terrorism or help terrorists, disseminate pornography, facilitate illegal activities or glorify Nazism and other hateful ideologies. But censoring cyberspace, compromising its technical underpinnings or submitting it to stringent governmental oversight would mean turning our backs on one of today's greatest instruments of progress. To defend the Internet is to defend freedom itself.

Governance of matters related to the Internet, such as spam and cybercrime, is being dealt with in a dispersed and fragmented manner, while the Internet's infrastructure has been managed in an informal but effective collaboration among private businesses, civil society and the academic and technical communities. But developing countries find it difficult to follow all these processes and feel left out of Internet governance structures.

The United States deserves our thanks for having developed the Internet and made it available to the world. For historical reasons, the United States has the ultimate authority over some of the Internet's core resources. It is an authority that many say should be shared with the international community. The United States, which has exercised its oversight responsibilities fairly and honorably, recognizes that other governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns, and that efforts to make the governance arrangements more international should continue.

The need for change is a reflection of the future, when Internet growth will be most dramatic in developing countries. What we are seeing is the beginning of a dialogue between two different cultures: the nongovernmental Internet community, with its traditions of informal, bottom-up decision making, and the more formal, structured world of governments and intergovernmental organizations.

Bottom line: Thanks, United States, for creating the internet, but it's mine now!

It was 25 years ago today...

...Ronald Reagan taught the GOP to play.

Today marks 25 years since Ronald Reagan unseated Jimmy Carter in a landslide election victory. It's hard to think of any leader in the postwar era who made a greater mark on history.

According to conventional wisdom, there were all sorts of reasons why Reagan was unelectable in 1980. He was an actor. He was old. He was a warmonger in the age of detente who naively refused to believe that the Soviet Union was a permanent player on the world stage.

"Governor Reagan couldn't start a war," warned a Gerald Ford campaign commercial a few years earlier. "President Reagan could."

Twenty-five years ago, America was in retreat. Our then-commander-in-chief scolded us for our "inordinate fear of communism," gave speeches about a national malaise and told us where to set our thermostats.

Military actions became so rare they were micromanaged from the Oval Office. Like the Desert One rescue mission that went down in flames in the Iranian desert before ever reaching our hostages.

The secretary of state so abhorred the use of the military that he resigned in protest when we had the audacity to use our own forces to try and free our own people. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, we retaliated by ... boycotting the Olympics.

It was a time of 21% interest rates and the long-forgotten "misery index": inflation plus unemployment. It was also period when many concluded that the presidency was too big for any one man, that a committee might be better suited to the times.

Reagan changed all that instantly. In his final stump speech at a San Diego shopping center, he summed up his intentions: "In eight years here as your governor I learned to have faith in you, the people, and I envision a leadership as president taking government off your backs and turning you loose to do what I know you can do best."

He kept his word. He quickly ended government regulation of gas prices and, like magic, the "energy crisis" was over. Under Reagan, oil prices dropped 70%.

His tax cuts sparked a 92-month, noninflationary boom that generated 17 million new jobs. When Reagan came into office, the top tax rate was 70%; since he left, it has remained below 40%.

He appointed to the Supreme Court a lodestar of constitutional integrity and clarity: Antonin Scalia. He stood before the Berlin Wall and demanded that it be torn down, and in less than 2 1/2 years it was gone.

He had the mettle to walk out of the 1986 Reykjavik Summit empty-handed rather than accede to Mikhail Gorbachev's demand to abandon the Strategic Defense Initiative.

At the Oxford Union in 1984, George McGovern called Reagan's March 1983 announcement of SDI the most irresponsible speech ever made by a president of the United States. Today, few dispute the link between our commitment to build SDI and the collapse of the Soviet empire.

"Reagan's SDI was a very successful blackmail," admitted Gennady Gerasimov, senior Soviet foreign ministry spokesman in the 1980s, at the time of Reagan's death last year.

The Reagan Revolution taught us many lessons, but the most pertinent today may be this: Sometimes freedom depends on one man who knows what's right, and is willing to suffer ridicule for doing what's right.

why paris is burning

THis column has some good explanations.

AS THE night falls, the "troubles" start — and the pattern is always the same.

Bands of youths in balaclavas start by setting fire to parked cars, break shop windows with baseball bats, wreck public telephones and ransack cinemas, libraries and schools. When the police arrive on the scene, the rioters attack them with stones, knives and baseball bats.

The police respond by firing tear-gas grenades and, on occasions, blank shots in the air. Sometimes the youths fire back — with real bullets.

These scenes are not from the West Bank but from 20 French cities, mostly close to Paris, that have been plunged into a European version of the intifada that at the time of writing appears beyond control.

The troubles first began in Clichy-sous-Bois, an underprivileged suburb east of Paris, a week ago. France's bombastic interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, responded by sending over 400 heavily armed policemen to "impose the laws of the republic," and promised to crush "the louts and hooligans" within the day. Within a few days, however, it had dawned on anyone who wanted to know that this was no "outburst by criminal elements" that could be handled with a mixture of braggadocio and batons.

By Monday, everyone in Paris was speaking of "an unprecedented crisis." Both Sarkozy and his boss, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, had to cancel foreign trips to deal with the riots.

How did it all start? The accepted account is that sometime last week, a group of young boys in Clichy engaged in one of their favorite sports: stealing parts of parked cars.

Normally, nothing dramatic would have happened, as the police have not been present in that suburb for years.

The problem came when one of the inhabitants, a female busybody, telephoned the police and reported the thieving spree taking place just opposite her building. The police were thus obliged to do something — which meant entering a city that, as noted, had been a no-go area for them.

Once the police arrived on the scene, the youths — who had been reigning over Clichy pretty unmolested for years — got really angry. A brief chase took place in the street, and two of the youths, who were not actually chased by the police, sought refuge in a cordoned-off area housing a power pylon. Both were electrocuted.

Once news of their deaths was out, Clichy was all up in arms.

With cries of "God is great," bands of youths armed with whatever they could get hold of went on a rampage and forced the police to flee.

The French authorities could not allow a band of youths to expel the police from French territory. So they hit back — sending in Special Forces, known as the CRS, with armored cars and tough rules of engagement.

Within hours, the original cause of the incidents was forgotten and the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories." By midweek, the riots had spread to three of the provinces neighboring Paris, with a population of 5.5 million.

But who lives in the affected areas? In Clichy itself, more than 80 percent of the inhabitants are Muslim immigrants or their children, mostly from Arab and black Africa. In other affected towns, the Muslim immigrant community accounts for 30 percent to 60 percent of the population. But these are not the only figures that matter. Average unemployment in the affected areas is estimated at around 30 percent and, when it comes to young would-be workers, reaches 60 percent.

In these suburban towns, built in the 1950s in imitation of the Soviet social housing of the Stalinist era, people live in crammed conditions, sometimes several generations in a tiny apartment, and see "real French life" only on television.

The French used to flatter themselves for the success of their policy of assimilation, which was supposed to turn immigrants from any background into "proper Frenchmen" within a generation at most.

That policy worked as long as immigrants came to France in drips and drops and thus could merge into a much larger mainstream. Assimilation, however, cannot work when in most schools in the affected areas, fewer than 20 percent of the pupils are native French speakers.

France has also lost another powerful mechanism for assimilation: the obligatory military service abolished in the 1990s.

As the number of immigrants and their descendants increases in a particular locality, more and more of its native French inhabitants leave for "calmer places," thus making assimilation still more difficult.

In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarize himself with any aspect of the famous French culture.

The result is often alienation. And that, in turn, gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid.

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.

In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.

The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

A reporter who spent last weekend in Clichy and its neighboring towns of Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Bobigny heard a single overarching message: The French authorities should keep out.

"All we demand is to be left alone," said Mouloud Dahmani, one of the local "emirs" engaged in negotiations to persuade the French to withdraw the police and allow a committee of sheiks, mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood, to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

President Jacques Chirac and Premier de Villepin are especially sore because they had believed that their opposition to the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 would give France a heroic image in the Muslim community.

That illusion has now been shattered — and the Chirac administration, already passing through a deepening political crisis, appears to be clueless about how to cope with what the Parisian daily France Soir has called a "ticking time bomb."

It is now clear that a good portion of France's Muslims not only refuse to assimilate into "the superior French culture," but firmly believe that Islam offers the highest forms of life to which all mankind should aspire.

So what is the solution? One solution, offered by Gilles Kepel, an adviser to Chirac on Islamic affairs, is the creation of "a new Andalusia" in which Christians and Muslims would live side by side and cooperate to create a new cultural synthesis.

The problem with Kepel's vision, however, is that it does not address the important issue of political power. Who will rule this new Andalusia: Muslims or the largely secularist Frenchmen?

Suddenly, French politics has become worth watching again, even though for the wrong reasons.

"There's a bad moon on the rise"

Too true

Denmark doesn't bend over for Islam

Unlike England banning Piglet, Kudos to the Danish government for refusing to cave in to Muslim criticism over cartoons.

A Danish experiment in testing "the limits of freedom of speech" has backfired - or succeeded spectacularly - after newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed provoked an outcry.

Thousands of Muslims have taken to the streets in protest at the caricatures, the newspaper that published them has received death threats and two of its cartoonists have been forced into hiding.

Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's leading daily, defied Islam's ban on images of the Prophet by printing cartoons by 12 different artists.

In one he is depicted as a sabre-wielding terrorist accompanied by women in burqas, in another his turban appears to be a bomb and in a third he is portrayed as a schoolboy by a blackboard.

The ambassadors of 11 Muslim countries called on Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister, to take "necessary steps" against the "defamation of Islam".

But Mr Rasmussen, the head of a centre-Right minority coalition dependent for its survival on support from an anti-foreigner party, called the cartoons a "necessary provocation" and refused to act.

"I will never accept that respect for a religious stance leads to the curtailment of criticism, humour and satire in the press," he said.

The Danish debate over how to integrate Muslims has raged for years, with nursery school menus and women-only opening hours for swimming pools particular battlegrounds. But the cartoons satirising the Prophet have injected a dangerous new element into the controversy.

"This is a pubescent demonstration of freedom of expression that consciously and totally without reason has trampled over the feelings of many people," said Uffe Ellemann Jensen, a former foreign minister and member of Mr Rasmussen's party.

Carsten Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, spurned demands that he apologise, saying he "would not dream" of saying sorry.

"To demand that we take religious feelings into consideration is irreconcilable with western democracy and freedom of expression," he said. "This doesn't mean that we want to insult any Muslims."

Juste commissioned the cartoons after learning of the difficulties a children's writer, Kare Bluitgen, had in finding an illustrator for his book on the Koran and the Prophet's life. Bluitgen said all the artists he approached feared the wrath of Muslims if they drew images of Mohammed.

Many cited the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamist as a reason for refusal.

Juste said he wanted to counter growing "self censorship" and see how many cartoonists would be "bold enough" to draw the Prophet.

One artist, Franz Füchsel, said he intended no offence. "But I live in 2005, not 905 and I use my quill in the way that Danish law allows me."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch MP famous for her criticism of Islam and author of the screenplay for Mr Van Gogh's film Submission, supported the paper. "It's necessary to taunt Muslims on their relationship with Mohammed," she said.

"Otherwise we will never have the dialogue we need to establish with Muslims on the most central question: 'Do you really feel that every Muslim in 2005 should follow the way of life the Prophet had 1,400 years ago, as the Koran dictates?' "

So they shouldn't practice "honor killings"? whoda thunk!

send THIS mayor over to France

I like the mayor of Vegas and his approach to fighting crime.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has suggested that those who deface freeways with graffiti should have their thumbs cut off on television.

Goodman, appearing Wednesday on the "Nevada Newsmakers" television show, said, "In the old days in France, they had beheading of people who commit heinous crimes.

"You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.

"I'm saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb," the mayor added. "That may be the right thing to do."

Goodman also suggested that whippings or canings should be brought back for children who get into trouble.

"I also believe in a little bit of corporal punishment going back to the days of yore, where examples have to be shown," Goodman said.

"I'm dead serious," said Goodman, adding, "Some of these (children) don't learn. You have got to teach them a lesson, and this is coming from a criminal defense lawyer."

"They would get a trial first," he added.

Send him over to deal with rioting scumbags over in France.

9th Circus Court of Appeals to parents: SCREW YOU!

If anyone is wondering why judges are important, here's exhibit A.

Parents have no constitutional right to prevent public schools from exposing children to sexual topics, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's decision that found the rights of parents were not violated by a California public school district that allowed a psychological survey of its elementary school children.

Among the survey questions asked of the children were 10 with sexual references, such as "Can't stop thinking about sex" and "Not trusting people because they might want sex."

A group of parents whose children were surveyed sued the Palmdale School District, alleging their right to privacy and civil rights had been violated because control of their children's upbringing had been "robbed."

A three-judge panel held the parents have a right to inform their children as they wish about sex but do not have the right to prevent a public school from providing students with information it deems appropriate.

"Schools cannot be expected to accommodate the personal, moral or religious concerns of every parent," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the panel. "Such an obligation would not only contravene the educational mission of the public schools, but also would be impossible to satisfy."

Hell, if they were Muslim the leftards on the court would "accomodate the religious concerns" of the parents. Another reason my son will be attending Catholic schools.

"Acting too white"

This is a sad story about damning people with low expectations.

Smart black students being accused of "acting too white" is an issue Triangle educators are debating at a youth and race conference this week.

Students say the stigma is keeping some of their peers from doing well in school.

Tenth grader Anais Guzman is on the honor roll. She says some of her peers see the achievement as acting too "white".

"They can get high grades but they don't want to because they'll be considered as acting white, so they put white people down," Guzman said.

That's the argument some educators say is fueling the achievement gap in North Carolina schools.

Smart black students being accused of "acting too white" is one issue they discussed "It's a serious issue in North Carolina," said William Darity with the African-American Research Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill. He says while the "acting white" stigma does play a part, student performance has more to do with school structure and curriculum for minorities.

"We argue it's due to the school context and because of a pattern of exclusion of vast numbers of black kids from the most challenging curriculum," Darity continued.

But students say the "acting white" theory is a reality.

"Some people might say some people are acting white, or acting black or different things like that so I see it often," said tenth garder Vance Cherebin.

College freshman Erin Burns added, "Black students that are doing well in the classroom or hang out with white friends or have good grammar, talk properly or don't use slang, they get accused of being white a lot."

Guzman says the accusations aren't worth the sacrifice. It's a confidence she wants to share with the rest of her peers.

Organizers hope people attending the conference will continue the debate in their classrooms. The two-day event continues Saturday in the Bryant Center at Duke University.

WEB Dubois would be outraged, this is far from the "talented tenth" pulling up the rest.

Paris is burning

Now that the Muslim rioting has spread to 20 SUBURBS even the MSM can't ignore it anymore.

Rampaging youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car dealerships and public buses and hurling rocks at commuter trains, as eight days of riots over poor conditions in Paris-area housing projects spread to 20 towns.

Youths ignored an appeal for calm from President Jacques Chirac, whose government worked feverishly to fend off a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in neighborhoods heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a string of emergency meetings with Cabinet ministers throughout the day. He told the Senate the government “will not give in” to violence in the troubled suburbs.

“Order and justice will be the final word in our country,” Villepin said. “The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priority — our absolute priority.”

The riots started last Thursday after the electrocution deaths of two teenagers who ran from a soccer game and hid in a power station in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois after they saw police enter the area. Youths in the neighborhood said police chased the boys to their death.

French authorities have said that officers were investigating a suspected burglary and not pursuing the boys, a view backed up by an interim report by the national police inspectors office released Thursday.

Investigators said the boys — Mauritania-born Traore Bouna, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, of Tunisia — knew of the dangers of hiding in an electric substation as they sought to evade police. The report also cites two witnesses saying they did not see the boys being chased. A third boy, Muttin Altun, 17, was badly burned.

Separate administrative and judicial investigations into the accidental deaths also were under way.

By Wednesday night, violence triggered by the deaths had spread to at least 20 Paris-region towns, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris where the violence has been concentrated. He said youths in the region fired four shots at riot police and firefighters but caused no injuries.

Nine people were injured in Seine-Saint-Denis and 315 cars burned across the Paris area, officials said. In the tough northeastern suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, youth gangs set fire to a Renault car dealership and burned at least a dozen cars, a supermarket and a local gymnasium.

Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a suburban commuter line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains overnight at the Le Blanc-Mesnil station. They forced a conductor from one train and broke windows, the SNCF rail authority said. A passenger was lightly injured by broken glass.

The unrest has highlighted the division between France’s big cities and their poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty.

The violence also cast doubt on the success of France’s model of seeking to integrate its large immigrant community — its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe’s largest — by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.

Opposition groups accused the government of letting the situation spiral out of control, either by failing to act quickly enough or letting in too many immigrants over the years.

“We see that the situation in certain neighborhoods is not getting better at all but degenerating,” Socialist Party President Jean-Marc Ayrault told LCI television, who said Chirac’s conservatives “did not know how to take control.”

Right-wing French lawmaker Philippe de Villiers, who has said he wants to “stop the Islamization of France,” told RTL radio that the problem stemmed from the “failure of a policy of massive and uncontrolled immigration.”

Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react “firmly” but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.

“We cannot hide the truth: that for 30 years we have not done enough,” he told France-2 television.

Love that last little line there, typical lefty response "gee, if we only cared more/spent more money everything would be fine." Time to get Chicago 1968 on their asses.

Alito gets praise from former clerks

Good article about some liberals that clerked for Alito endorsing him as a smart and fair judge.

Samuel A. Alito Jr. was quickly branded a hard-core conservative after President Bush announced his nomination, but a surprising number of liberal-leaning judges and ex-clerks say they support his elevation to the Supreme Court.

Those who have worked alongside him say he was neither an ideologue nor a judge with an agenda, conservative or otherwise. They caution against attaching a label to Alito.

Kate Pringle, a New York lawyer who worked last year on Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, describes herself as a left-leaning Democrat and a big fan of Alito's.

She worked for him as a law clerk in 1994, and said she was troubled by the initial reaction to his nomination. "He was not, in my personal experience, an ideologue. He pays attention to the facts of cases and applies the law in a careful way. He is conservative in that sense; his opinions don't demonstrate an ideological slant," she said.

Jeff Wasserstein, a Washington lawyer who clerked for Alito in 1998, echoes her view.

"I am a Democrat who always voted Democratic, except when I vote for a Green candidate — but Judge Alito was not interested in the ideology of his clerks," he said. "He didn't decide cases based on ideology, and his record was not extremely conservative."

As an example, he cited a case in which police in Pennsylvania sent out a bulletin that called for the arrest of a black man in a black sports car. Police stopped such a vehicle and found a gun, but Alito voted to overturn the man's conviction, saying that that general identification did not amount to probable cause.

"This was a classic case of 'driving while black,' " Wasserstein said, referring to the complaint that black motorists are targeted by police. Though Alito "was a former prosecutor, he was very fair and open-minded in looking at cases and applying the law," Wasserstein said.

It is not unusual for former law clerks to have fond recollections of the judge they worked for. And it is common for judges to speak respectfully of their colleagues. But for a judge being portrayed by the right and left as a hard-right conservative, Alito's enthusiastic backing by liberal associates is striking.

Former federal Judge Timothy K. Lewis said that when he joined the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992, he consulted his mentor, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. The late Higginbotham, a legendary liberal and a scholar of U.S. racial history, was the only other black judge on the Philadelphia-based court at the time.

"As he was going down the roster of colleagues, he got to Sam Alito. I expressed some concern about [him] being so conservative. He said, 'No, no. Sam Alito is my favorite judge to sit with on this court. He is a wonderful judge and a terrific human being. Sam Alito is my kind of conservative. He is intellectually honest. He doesn't have an agenda. He is not an ideologue,' " Higginbotham said, according to Lewis.

"I really was surprised to hear that, but my experience with him on the 3rd Circuit bore that out," added Lewis, who had a liberal record during his seven years on the bench. "Alito does not have an agenda, contrary to what the Republican right is saying about him being a 'home run.' He is not result-oriented. He is an honest conservative judge who believes in judicial restraint and judicial deference."

In January 1998, Alito, joined by Judge Lewis, ruled that a Pennsylvania police officer had no probable cause to stop a black man driving a sports car after a rash of robberies in which two black males allegedly fled in a different type of sports car. The driver, Jesse Kithcart, was indicted for being a felon in possession of a gun, which police discovered when they patted him down after his car was stopped. After a trial judge refused to suppress the search, Kithcart pleaded guilty but reserved his right to appeal.

"Armed with information that two black males driving a black sports car were believed to have committed three robberies in the area some relatively short time earlier," the police officer "could not justifiably arrest any African-American man who happened to drive by in any type of black sports car," Alito wrote. He said the trial judge had erred in concluding that the police had probable cause that extended to the weapons charge because Kithcart had not been involved in the robberies.

Alito and Lewis sent the case back to the trial judge for new hearings on whether the search was legal. The third judge in the case, Theodore A. McKee, said he would have gone even further.

"Just as this record fails to establish" that the officer "had probable cause to arrest any black male who happened to drive by in a black sports car, it also fails to establish reasonable suspicion to justify stopping any and all such cars that happened to contain a black male," wrote Judge McKee. He said he would have thrown out the search without further proceedings.

Judge Edward R. Becker, former chief judge of the 3rd Circuit, said he also was surprised to see Alito labeled as a reliable conservative.

"I found him to be a guy who approached every case with an open mind. I never found him to have an agenda," he said. "I suppose the best example of that is in the area of criminal procedure. He was a former U.S. attorney, but he never came to a case with a bias in favor of the prosecution. If there was an error in the trial, or a flawed search, he would vote to reverse," Becker said.

Some of his former clerks say they were drawn to Alito because of his reputation as a careful judge who closely followed the text of the law.

Clark Lombardi, now a law professor at the University of Washington, became a clerk for Alito in 1999.

"I grew up in New York City, and I'm a political independent. But I liked Judge Alito because he was a judicial conservative, someone who believed in judicial restraint and was committed to textualism," he said. "His approach leads to conservative results in some cases and progressive results in other cases. In my opinion, he is a fantastic jurist and a good guy."

Some of Alito's former Yale Law School classmates who describe themselves as Democrats say they expect they will not always agree with his rulings if he joins the Supreme Court. But they say he is the best they could have hoped for from among Bush's potential nominees.

Joel Friedman teaches labor and employment law at Tulane University Law School, but is temporarily at the University of Pittsburgh because of Tulane's shutdown following Hurricane Katrina.

"Ideology aside, I think he is a terrific guy, a terrific choice," said Friedman, a Yale classmate of Alito's. "He is not Harriet Miers; he has unimpeachable credentials. He may disagree with me on many legal issues — I am a Democrat; I didn't vote for Bush. I would not prefer any of the people Bush has appointed up until now.

"The question is, is this guy [Alito] going to be motivated by the end and find a means to get to the end, or is he going to reach an end through thoughtful analysis of all relevant factors? In my judgment, Sam will be the latter."

maybe fighting Alito isn't the smartest idea

Maybe the dems aren't complete fools.

DEMOCRATS are getting cold feet about starting an abortion fight over Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito — because if they do, they could lose big-time in the court of public opinion.

Alito backed a law requiring a woman to notify her husband before an abortion. The Supreme Court disagreed.

But Americans — by a nearly 3-1 majority — agree with Alito, so the fact that he might shift the court could be a plus.

In all, 72 percent of Americans favor spousal-notification laws, according to a 2003 Gallup Poll, and an equally lopsided margin thinks teens under 18 should have to tell their parents before an abortion.

Most Americans want legal abortion, but they want it more restricted. If the abortion debate centers on whether to tell parents or a husband, it's a loser for pro-choice Dems.

So some Dems want to blast Alito on machine guns — he opposed a federal law barring private ownership.

But it was a narrow ruling, and the truth is, Dems seem privately resigned that Alito will be confirmed.

democrat amnesia

Their hatred of Bush is so strong, the dem leaders have forgotten what THEY have said about Saddam.

They must think the media are stupid, because so many Democrats are themselves on the record in the pre-Iraq War period as declaring that Saddam had WMD. Here is Al Gore from September 23, 2002, amid the Congressional debate over going to war: "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."

Or Hillary Rodham Clinton, from October 10, 2002: "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. . . ."

Or Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who is now leading the "Bush lied" brigades (from October 10, 2002): "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . .We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." If Mr. Bush is a liar, what does the use of the phrase "unmistakable evidence" make Mr. Rockefeller? A fool?

The scandal here isn't what happened before the war. The scandal is that the same Democrats who saw the same intelligence that Mr. Bush saw, who drew the same conclusions, and who voted to go to war are now using the difficulties we've encountered in that conflict as an excuse to rewrite history. Are Republicans really going to let them get away with it?

It's only racism when a Republican does it

The dems in MD show their hypocrisy in attacking Lt Gov Michael Steele.

Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican. Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.

Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican candidate so targeted. But black Democrats say there is nothing wrong with "pointing out the obvious." "There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes."Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black. "Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

During the 2002 campaign, Democratic supporters pelted Mr. Steele with Oreo cookies during a gubernatorial debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore. In 2001, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. called Mr. Steele an "Uncle Tom," when Mr. Steele headed the state Republican Party. Mr. Miller, Prince George's County democrat, later apologized for the remark.

"That's not racial. If they call him the "N' word, that's racial," Mrs. Marriott said. "Just because he's black, everything bad you say about him isn't racial."
This week, the News Blog -- a liberal Web log run by Steve Gilliard, a black New Yorker -- removed a doctored photo of Mr. Steele that depicted him as a black-faced minstrel. However, the blog has kept its headline "Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house." A caption beneath a photo of the lieutenant governor reads: "I's Simple Sambo and I's running for the Big House."

A spokesman for the Maryland Democratic Party denounced the depiction as being "extremely offensive" and having "no place in politics or in any other aspect of public discourse," The Washington Post reported. Democrats have denied any connection to the News Blog. Still, Mfume spokesman Joseph P. Trippi said Mr. Steele opens himself to such criticism by defending Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. for holding a Republican fundraiser in July at the all-white Elkridge Club in Baltimore."The facts are the facts. Ehrlich went to that country club, and Steele said it didn't bother him," Mr. Trippi said. "I think that says something ... and should be part of this debate." Several club members told the Baltimore Sun that, though blacks are welcome as guests and there is no policy banning blacks from membership, the club never has had a black member in its 127-year history.

Democrats also have used the club for various events, including Peter O'Malley, brother of and adviser to Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Democratic candidate for governor. Peter O'Malley held his wedding reception there in 2003.

A look at Alito's record

Kris Kobach, a law professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, looks at Judge Alito's record.

PRESIDENT Bush has made a truly daring choice with the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In football terms, this is no flea-flicker or bootleg play that hides the ball to skirt the opposition: It's a rush straight up the middle, taking the defense head-on.

He's a solid conservative with a judicial record a mile long, having written hundreds of opinions. He was confirmed 15 years ago, so few senators will feel constrained by their past votes.

His qualifications won't be an issue. His resume is impeccable — Princeton, Yale Law School and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. As an assistant to the solicitor general, he argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the U.S. government. On top of that, he served as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey prior to his current post on the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

So there are no pretexts for Alito's Senate opponents to hide behind. Any "no" vote must be explicitly based on the nominee's judicial philosophy.

Where does Alito stand?

Abortion: In 1991, Alito dissented in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case the Supreme Court would hear in 1992. A state law required a married woman to notify her spouse before obtaining an abortion; did this impose an "undue burden" on women seeking abortions? Alito said no, because the vast majority of abortion-seekers informed their husbands anyway; the requirement didn't apply to unmarried women; the husband's consent was not necessary; and women fearing physical abuse were exempted by the law.

His opinions in this case and others suggest that he would be willing to question and impose limits upon Roe v. Wade.

Free exercise of religion: Alito has protected the right to practice one's faith without government constraint. In Fraternal Order of Police v. Newark (1999), he wrote an opinion striking down Newark's policy against police officers growing beards. He maintained that two Muslim officers should have been exempted from the policy and allowed to grow their beards as their faith required.

"Establishment" of religion: Alito has rejected efforts by some attorneys to drive religion from the public square. In ACLU v. Schundler (1999), his opinion upheld a city holiday display that included a crèche, a menorah and Kwanzaa symbols, along with images such as Santa Claus. Three years earlier, he dissented in ACLU v. Black Horse Pike, finding no Establishment Clause violation in the inclusion of a student-initiated, student-composed and student-led prayer in a graduation ceremony.

If confirmed, Alito would stand with Scalia and Thomas in these matters.

Free speech: Alito has been an articulate defender of the First Amendment's free-speech and free-press clauses — including defending speech that conservatives might dislike. In Pitt News v. Pappert (2004), he wrote that a Pennsylvania law barring student newspapers from running alcohol ads was unconstitutional — such "disfavored speech" could not be suppressed. In Saxe v. State College Area School District (2001), his opinion struck down a public school's anti-harassment policy that punished students for making comments that other students might find offensive.

Congressional power: Expect rhetorical bullets to fly when the senators consider Alito's 1996 dissent in United States v. Rybar. In that opinion, he questioned Congress' use of its interstate-commerce power to ban the private possession of machine guns that do not cross state lines. He rejected "the proposition that the purely intrastate possession of machine guns . . . has a substantial effect on interstate commerce." Advocates of national gun control will not like these words.

Such opinions will surely inflame liberal opposition to Alito. His ideological critics are already calling his nomination "divisive." What they miss is that the selection of Alito puts the constitutional questions squarely on the table. There is no need for the senators to probe with hypothetical cases when the nominee has written so many opinions.

Will Bush's draw play lead to a bruising confirmation battle? No question. But a straightforward discussion of constitutional principles is no bad thing in a democracy. And the linemen will know exactly who they're blocking for.

"religitation of the war"

The product of a McCain republican turned moderate democrat, this blog raises some valid points.

The Moose weighs in on the re-litigation of the war.

Yesterday's Senate action demonstrated that the Democratic minority can stage creative political theater. It is good for the Republican majority to be hornswaggled once and a while. The Democrats also forced the Republicans to move on the delayed intelligence report. And the dramatic maneuver brightened the spirits of the frustrated Democratic base.

But, alas, the Senate action raises the question - does the Democratic Party really want to re-litigate the arguments to go to war? Maybe so, but keep in mind that many Democrats voted to grant authority to the President to go to war. And most still stand by that vote.

This author argues that while the Bushies went to war with insufficient troop levels and mishandled the post war situation, it was inevitable and just that Saddam was removed. In the post-9/11 environment any American Administration would have erred on the side of vigilance concerning Saddam's threat. That may not have been wise, but it wasn't a case of lying and massive deceit.

The Moose does not have to trust George W. Bush to hold that view. He believes Tony Blair. For that matter, most of the Clinton national security team was convinced that Saddam posed a threat to American interests and security. It was hardly a vast neo-con conspiracy that brought us to war.

Will the American people have faith in and trust a party that claims that it was gullibly duped, or as George Romney claimed about another war - that it was "brainwashed."? Moreover, should the objective be re-fighting the reasons to go to war and making the Democrats the official anti-war party or should the goal be achieving reasonable success in Iraq? If you believe in the former than you would encourage more efforts like the one Senate Democrats undertook yesterday. If you believe in the latter, you want the opposition party to present a better plan for winning this war.

While the war is increasingly unpopular, the Democrats should be careful that they are positioning themselves as a party that is gullible, feckless and indecisive on national security. It may provide immense partisan satisfaction to flummox the Republicans on a procedural maneuver, but beware of the long-term impact on the party which already suffers from a perception of being weak on national security.

During the late 90's the Moose was appalled by the behavior of many of his fellow Republicans who ascribed the worst motives to President Clinton for attacking Saddam and going to war in Kosovo. Clinton drove the Republicans to lose all judgement. Although it involves different different players, the Moose is feeling deja vu all over again.

Pizza for Pali update

Time to order more pizzas as the IDF exterminates some more terrorists.

An Israeli missile blasted two Palestinian terror chiefs to death in the Gaza Strip yesterday — and militant groups vowed to "open the gates of hell" in a wave of retaliation attacks.

Israeli officials said their main target, Hassan al-Madhun, was responsible for killing 20 people in attacks such as last year's bombings at the port of Ashdod and the Karni border crossing.

Madhun, commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in the northern Gaza Strip, was killed when an Israeli aircraft triggered an explosion in his car as he rode with Fawzi Kara.

Kara, a senior Hamas official, and Madhun were high on Israel's wanted list.

Since a truce began earlier this year, Israel has generally avoided "targeted killings" of wanted terrorists, but said it would strike at "ticking bombs" who are about to carry out an attack.

Madhun and Kara "were not just a ticking bomb, they were a driving bomb" because their car contained explosives that were being prepared for a terrorist attack, a senior Israeli official told The Post.

The worst ex president writes a book

Jimmy Carter, who never met a tyrant he didn't love, has a new book.

Jimmy Carter's 20th book is a tedious meditation about the appropriate uses of moral values in political life--as wisely and humbly exemplified by Himself--and of their misuses under the current Bush administration.

Subtracting "Our" and "Values" from the title, then, the reader is left with "Endangered," the form of the verb here characteristically rendered in the former president's favorite voice. Who, or what, is doing the endangering? Mr. Carter's animating concern is the rise of fundamentalism in religion and politics, but don't suppose that this has anything to do with Islamic fundamentalism. What chiefly exercises Mr. Carter's indignation are neoconservatives, the Southern Baptist Convention and their allegedly converging and insidious influence on government. Together, Mr. Carter believes, they have contrived to set America loose "from the restraints of international organizations" like the United Nations and "global agreements" such as the Kyoto Protocol, apparently for the purpose of eradicating the separation of church and state and creating "a dominant American empire throughout the world."

This is an odd complaint, given the source. Mr. Carter admits that as president he worked "behind the scenes" with the head of the Southern Baptist Convention to develop a program called Bold Mission Thrust, "designed to expand the global evangelistic effort of Baptists." Weirdly, Mr. Carter offers this anecdote in the context of his ostensible opposition to the "melding of church and state," which, he gravely notes, "is of deep concern to those who have always relished their separation as one of our moral values."

As for neocons, Mr. Carter is nearly one himself, so obsessed does he claim to be with human rights. But much as he may hate the sin, he loves the sinner. Think of his view of various world figures from his White House years: Yugoslavia's Josip Tito ("a man who believes in human rights"); Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu ("our goals are the same"); the PLO's Yasser Arafat (a "misunderstood" figure for whom Mr. Carter once moonlighted as a speechwriter). And then there is Kim Il Sung ("vigorous," "intelligent"), whose relationship with Mr. Carter is reprised in this book.

"Responding to several years of invitations from North Korean president Kim Il Sung . . . Rosalynn and I went to Pyongyang and helped to secure an agreement from President Kim that North Korea would cease its nuclear program at Yongbyon and permit IAEA inspectors to return to the site." Leaving aside the interesting question of why that Dear Leader would be so solicitous of this one, what's chiefly notable about this sentence is that it is one of the few here that isn't demonstrably false or misleading in respect to U.S. dealings with the North.

In Mr. Carter's telling, the 1994 Yongbyon Agreed Framework--in which Pyongyang agreed to trade its nuclear-weapons program for oil shipments, security guarantees and the construction of two light-water reactors--was generally going according to plan, only to be gratuitously upended the moment the Bush administration arrived in Washington. "Shipments of the pledged fuel oil were terminated, along with construction of the alternate nuclear power plants," writes Mr. Carter.

In fact, North Korea violated the Agreed Framework almost from the moment it was signed by pursuing a secret, parallel weapons program. For its part, the Bush administration continued to honor the framework's commitments; in 2002, a State Department official even attended the groundbreaking for one of the promised reactors. Only later, when the U.S. presented the North with evidence of its cheating, and the North admitted to the cheating, did the fuel shipments and reactor construction stop.

There is more of this--personal slurs, particularly against U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, factual omissions (Mr. Carter accuses the Bush administration of making hardly any effort to reduce nuclear-weapons stockpiles but doesn't mention the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which involves the most dramatic nuclear cuts in history), trite sophistries ("a rising tide raises all yachts") and the invariable, habitual, irrepressible blaming of America first for everything from degrading the environment to alienating Syria. At a certain point it all begins to ooze and blur, in the way the speeches and doings of Al Sharpton or Michael Moore ooze and blur. Past a certain point, you just stop keeping track.

Mr. Carter, however, is no gold-plated race hustler or quack documentary maker. He is--as he constantly reminds us, as if our memories aren't still vivid--the 39th president of the United States and winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. Bill Clinton may have the heart of the Democratic Party, but Mr. Carter captures the Zeitgeist of the global left. "Our Endangered Values" is a distressing piece of work for many reasons, most of all because it cannot be safely ignored.

Pittsburgh Girls

A Pittsburgh girl knows just as much about football as her guy friends,
in some cases, even more. She drinks beer because it tastes good but knows when to be classy and drink something more sophisticated. She owns a Steeler jersey not just because it's cute but because she supports her team and understands the game.

She loves Kennywood and isn't afraid to order cheese fries from the Potato Patch because, let's face it...Pittsburgh girls wear winter coats and scarves a lot more than bikinis and flip flops. A Pittsburgh girl loves St. Patrick's Day, even
if she's not Irish because green beer is good for the soul.

Pittsburgh girls don't have a funny accent. They just speak a different language.
The word yinz is dear to her heart, even if she would never say it herself. A Pittsburgh girl bleeds black and gold and knows how to have a great time. She's stylish and sweet. She has a great education and loves her friends and family.

A Pittsburgh girl goes to church on Sunday hung over, only to be let out by the priest early because the Steelers kick off at one. A Pittsburgh girl might not live by the beach, but the Three Rivers are just as good! She has seen all four seasons and has a reason to love and hate each of them.

She's the type of girl you can call late at night and spill your heart out to. She's the type you can take home to Mom and Dad without worrying they won't like her. Because everyone loves a Pittsburgh girl. If you need a girl to take to the
game, she'll be there. If you need a friend to help you out, she's there. If you need a drinking buddy, she'll be there with her IC Light in hand. So let your Pittsburgh girl know you love her! You can take the girl out of Pittsburgh, but you can never take the Pittsburgh out of the girl!

Dunleavy on Alito

Straight talk from one of my favorite columnists.

THOSE who perceive Republicans as fuddy-duddies and those who think the Democrats are the life of the party are absolutely right.

Whether it be the glorious Jack Kennedy, the darling knockabout Lyndon Johnson, or the open-door policy of Bill Clinton, they're right.

"When it comes to Judge Alito, whom I admire so much, I have to say he was never the life of the party," says retired Judge Andrew Napolitano, who graduated from Princeton with Alito.

"Now when I was younger, I may have raged and ranted and introduced myself as a lawyer or a judge, big deal. But with Judge Alito, he would introduce himself to a stranger by saying, 'Hi, I'm Sam.' He administers justice in a straight and modest way, not provocative."

John Nagle, a Notre Dame law professor who met Judge Alito when he was teaching law at Seton Hall in New Jersey and Alito was on the federal bench in Newark, had the same impression.

"A deep thinker but very modest," said Prof. Nagle.

"Mainly, he talked about his kids, who were about the same age as mine at the time."

The law professor and Judge Napolitano have tagged Alito as someone who's square as a butter- box. But we want our judges to be squarer than us.

Point is, in my neighborhood we don't know too much about this process. It is Beltway b.s.

But Judge Napolitano, pretty much the average guy himself, said, "When it came to partial-birth abortion, I believe Sandra Day O'Connor would've held for it. I also believe in his quiet way, Alito would not go along with that."

So, as for you abortionists, here comes the judge.

Good blog

Gates of Vienna a is a blog I stumbled upon today, and I liked what I read. The quote from the blog's heading:

At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war.

Welcome....


A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she
openly expressed.  Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing
in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew.  She didn't even have time for
a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?"

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by.  All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA.  She is so popular on campus, college for her is a blast.  She's always invited to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over."

Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him  to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0.  That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair!  I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work!  Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree.  She played while I worked my tail off!" The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

You know you live in Florida when....

You know you live in Florida when:

*You have FEMA's number on your speed dialer.
*You have more than 300 C and D batteries in your kitchen drawer.
*Your pantry contains more than 20 cans of Spaghetti Os.
*You are thinking of repainting your house to match the plywood covering your windows.
*When describing your house to a prospective buyer, you say it has three bedrooms, two baths and one safe hallway.
*Your SSN isn't a secret, it's written in Sharpie on your arms.
*You are on a first-name basis with the cashier at Home Depot.
*You are delighted to pay $3 for a gallon of regular unleaded.
*The road leading to your house has been declared a No-Wake Zone.
*You decide that your patio furniture looks better on the bottom of the pool.
*You own more than three large coolers.
*You can wish that other people get hit by a hurricane and not feel the least bit guilty about it.(My favorite!!!)
*You rationalize helping a friend board up by thinking "It'll only take a gallon of gas to get there and back"
*You have 2-liter coke bottles and milk jugs filled with water in your freezer
*Three months ago you couldn't hang a shower curtain; today you can assemble a portable generator by candlelight.
*You catch a 13-pound redfish. In your driveway.
*You can recite from memory whole portions of your homeowner's insurance policy.
*You consider a "vacation" to stunning Tupelo, Mississippi.
*At cocktail parties, women are attracted to the guy with the biggest chainsaw.
*You have had tuna fish more than 5 days in a row.
*There is a roll of tar paper in your garage.
*You can rattle off the names of three or more meteorologists who work at the Weather Channel.
*Someone comes to your door to tell you they found your roof and
*Ice is a valid topic of conversation.
*Your "drive-thru" meal consists of MRE's and bottled water.

*Relocating to South Dakota does not seem like such a crazy idea.
*You spend more time on your roof then in your living room.
*You've been laughed at over the phone by a roofer, fence builder or a tree worker.
*A battery powered TV is considered a home entertainment center.
*You don't worry about relatives wanting to visit during the summer.

*Your child's first words, "hunker down" and you didn't go to UGA!
*Having a tree in your living room does not necessarily mean it's Christmas.
*Toilet Paper is elevated to coin of the realm at the shelters.
*You know the difference between the "good side" of a storm and the "bad side."
*Your kids start school in August and finish in July.
*You go to work early and stay late just to enjoy the air conditioning.