Pennsylvanian in exile

Taking a principled stand...with YOUR money

You gotta just love the cavalier attitude of this guy, as he shows it's easy to have prinicpals when someone else is paying the bills.

"The more you know, the less you need."

"Think globally, act locally."

These are just two of dozens of bumper stickers that Jack Powell has carefully arranged on his white van. They've become stuck in his psyche as well.

A longtime singer and guitarist with the Zucchini Brothers and a substitute teaching assistant for Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES, Powell has lived frugally for years. He works about three days a week as a sub, earning about $70 a day, with no benefits. From March to October, he rides his bike 20 miles to work when work is available.

Sometimes he works for a funeral home to make extra money. The shawl he has wrapped around himself on this winter day, he says simply, doubles as a blanket.

"I do whatever it takes to survive and live a socially conscious life," said Powell, who has a tepee in his yard.

Part of that survival — or so he thought — included shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of cheaper prices for himself, his partner and her two children. Then his discussions about Wal-Mart with Sandra Carner-Shafran, a teaching assistant at BOCES and a member of the Board of Directors of New York State United Teachers, started churning inside him.

Back to another of his bumper stickers: "Words become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes destiny."

Powell put the brakes on his actions. Shopping at Wal-Mart? This is a place that encourages employees to get social services because it does not provide adequate health insurance or wages; sells goods made in sweatshops; and upsets entire communities by undercutting the downtown stores, then raising its prices when the locals go out of business.

"I don't like what Wal-Mart stands for," Powell said, noting the mega-chain's scanty health insurance for staffers. "Because of all those things they can lower the prices."

He and his partner agreed to go on food stamps for their family rather than shop at Wal-Mart any longer.

"I don't like to have to do that (use food stamps)," he said. However, the two children who are part of his family gave him extra courage because they had disliked shopping at Wal-Mart anyway, Powell said. They knew what the store stood for.

"I'm just trying to live my life. I try to set an example and do what I believe," said Powell. When he travels across the country to schools, theaters and festivals for the Zucchini Brothers, he sings and strums about health and environmental awareness.

What an ass! "I'll let the taxpayers feed my family rather than spend my OWN money"; I hope the state cuts off his benefits rather than continue to spong off those who work hard for a living.

Victor Davis Hanson: critiquing the left's myths about Iraq

It it's VDH, it's got to be good.

Opponents of the war in Iraq, both original critics and the mea culpa recent converts, have made eight assumptions. The first six are wrong, the last two still unsettled.

1. Saddam was never connected to al Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11.

2. There was no real threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

3. The United Nations and our allies were justifiably opposed on principle to the invasion.

4. A small cabal of neoconservative (and mostly Jewish) intellectuals bullied the administration into a war that served Israel’s interest more than our own.

5. Saddam could not be easily deposed, or at least he could not be successfully replaced with a democratic government.

6. The architects of this war and the subsequent occupation are mostly inept (“dangerously incompetent”) — and are exposed daily as clueless by a professional cadre of disinterested journalists.

7. In realist terms, the benefits to be gained from the war will never justify the costs incurred.

8. We cannot win.

First, notice how the old criticism that Saddam was not connected to al Qaeda has now morphed into a fallback position that “Saddam was not connected to September 11” — even though the latter argument was never officially advanced as a casus belli.

Opponents have retreated to this position because we know that al Qaeda cadres were in Kurdistan, and that al Zarqawi fled to Baghdad, as did a mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin.

The Clinton administration in 1998 officially cited Iraqi agents as involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That is part of the reason why the U.S. Senate, not the Bush administration, authorized a war against Saddam in October 2002: “ Whereas members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."

From the slowly emerging Baathist archives, we are learning that for more than a decade Saddam’s agents had some contacts with, and offered help to, al Qaeda operatives from the Sudan to the Philippines.

The issue is closed: Saddam Hussein’s regime had a mutually beneficial association with al Qaeda. All that remains in doubt is the degree to which Iraq’s generic support enabled al Qaeda to pull off operations like September 11. It may be that Saddam and Osama, in their views of Islam and jihad, were as antithetical to one another as Japanese and Germans were in attitudes about racial superiority. But in both cases, rogues find common ground in their opposition to hated Western liberalism.

His conclusion is hard-hitting:

As for the eighth complaint that we cannot win (or “the war is lost”), the verdict is still in the future and depends mostly on us.

Our military cannot be defeated by either the Islamists or their autocratic supporters. We have the right strategy of hunting down terrorists, securing the homeland, and insidiously, but carefully, promoting democratic reform in the Middle East (an impossible notion, by the way, with the sinister presence of an oil rich and genocidal Saddam Hussein, given his history of attacking four of his neighbors.)

We have even articulated, at last, an exegesis of the dangers of radical Islam — why it hates Western freedom and how it thrives on the oil, misery, and dictatorship of the Middle East.

There remains this last unknown — how well can a liberal democracy, in its greatest age of affluence, leisure, and self-critical reflection, still fight a distant war against emissaries of the Dark Ages who seek to behead apostates, blow up democrats, and silence with death writers, journalists, and cartoonists. It is not just our democratic values versus their IEDs, but whether our idealism still has the resilience to defeat their nihilism.

Or put more directly: Can Western enlightenment and power, embedded in deep cynicism, still prevail over ignorance and self-inflicted pathology energized by fanaticism?

Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends

The Story of a true American hero, the first medal of honor winner from Iraq, Paul Ray Smith.

Since his days growing up in Tampa, Fla., the lanky kid with the slightly mischievous smile had wanted to be a soldier. By this bright morning, April 4, 2003, Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith had more than fulfilled his dream. He had served 15 of his 33 years in the U.S. Army, including three tours of duty in harm's way--in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Now all his training, all his experience, all the instincts that had made him a model soldier, were about to be put to the test. With 16 men from his First Platoon, B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion, Sgt. Smith was under attack by about 100 troops of the Iraqi Republican Guard.

"We're in a world of hurt," he muttered.

That "world" was a dusty, triangular walled compound about half the size of a football field, near the Saddam Hussein International Airport, 11 miles from Baghdad. Sgt. Smith's engineers, or "sappers," had broken through the 10-foot-high concrete-block southern wall with a military bulldozer and begun turning the compound into a temporary "pen" for Iraqi prisoners as U.S. forces pressed their attack on the airport.

While they were working, guards posted at a small aluminum gate in the north corner of the triangle had spotted the large Iraqi force approaching the compound from the north and west. Sgt. Smith had just run up to join the guards when all hell broke loose. They came under furious fire from machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

The lightly armed work detail needed fire support. Sgt. Smith called for a Bradley fighting vehicle. Within minutes the tank-like Bradley roared through the breached wall and broke through the aluminum gate, taking a position just beyond it and opening up on the attackers with its rapid-fire 25mm Bushmaster cannon.

Sgt. Smith's men took positions around the Bradley. He could see Iraqi soldiers north, east and west of him, streaming out along his flanks. He called for a nearby M-133 armored personnel carrier, to give additional fire support with its M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun.

As the APC passed through the breached wall, its commander, Sgt. Louis Berwald, realized that flanking Iraqi troops had occupied a roofed guard tower to his left, just outside the southwest corner of the compound, and were firing from it. He raked the tower with his M2, then moved on through the compound to a point just outside the north gate behind the Bradley.

By now the Iraqis were concentrating their fire against Sgt. Smith's small force by the gate. An RPG round hit the Bradley, and at almost the same moment a mortar round hit the APC, wounding its three occupants.

Several additional RPG rounds hit the Bradley, which by now had run low on ammunition. The Bradley retreated through the compound, exiting south through the breached wall. With one armored vehicle gone and the other out of action, Sgt. Smith's men had lost any firepower advantage they might have had.

Sgt. Smith could have withdrawn as well, back south through the compound. But beyond it was a lightly defended aid station crowded with 100 combat casualties and medical personnel. To protect it from being overrun, Sgt. Smith chose to fight no matter what the odds.

Under intense fire, Sgt. Smith's men heroically extracted all three wounded crewmen from the APC. Sgt. Smith then entered the vehicle, ordering Spc. Michael Seaman to join him as driver and "keep me loaded" with ammo belts. Sgt. Smith popped up out of the turret hatch and grabbed the grips of the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on top.

The Iraqis were practically on top of him. Coolly grasping the situation, Sgt. Smith ordered Spc. Seaman to back the APC south into the compound to a position half way down the eastern wall. There he could arc the big machine gun back and forth, from the gate entrance to the north, all along the western wall of the triangle, to the Iraqi occupied tower in the southwest corner to his left.

To fire the machine gun, Sgt. Smith had to stand in the APC's main hatch, his body exposed from the waist up to a withering fire coming at him from three directions. On the ground through the blur of combat, Sgt. Matthew Keller saw Sgt. Smith grimly firing measured bursts from atop the APC even as a hail of bullets hit around him.

Sgt. Keller yelled at him to get out. Sgt. Smith looked back at him and with a slight shake of his head, made a cutting motion across his throat with his right hand. Sgt. Keller would always remember the look in his eyes. "There was no fear in him whatsoever."

As Spc. Seaman, crouching in the adjoining hatch, fed him ammunition belts, Sgt. Smith directed an expert and murderous fire with the long-barreled M2, hitting Iraqis who tried to enter the compound through the gate or over the wall. He tried also to suppress renewed fire coming from the Iraqis in the guard tower to his left.

Finally, one of his fellow sappers, First Sgt. Timothy Campbell, led a small fire team which stole up to the tower and killed all Iraqis inside. But by this time, Sgt. Smith's machine gun had fallen silent. The attack had been broken. Nearly 50 Iraqi dead lay all over the area. Others were in retreat. But Sgt. Smith was now slumped in the turret hatch, blood soaking the front of his uniform.

Spc. Seaman jumped out of the vehicle in tears. "I told him we should just leave," he said. Pvt. Gary Evans drove the APC out of the compound at high speed to the nearby aid station.

But it was too late. When Medic Michelle Chavez tried to remove Sgt. Smith's helmet, she realized that it was holding his head together. A bullet--one of the last fired from the tower--had entered through Sgt. Smith's neck and traveled up into his brain, shattering his skull from the inside. There were 13 bullet holes peppered over his armored vest--the impact from any one of them enough to knock a man down. The vest's ceramic armor inserts, back and front, had been cracked in numerous places.

"Sapper Seven," the wiry, hollow-cheeked guy who had been so hard on his men in training, so exacting, so insistent on "doing it right"; the guy who had led them into battle on the first day of the war with a rock-'n'-roll tape blaring from his Humvee; the guy who had personally got down on his knees in front of their convoy to patiently, carefully extract the deadly mines when they ran into a minefield near the Karbala Gap, was dead.

A chaplain and a sergeant in dress uniforms came to Birgit Smith's home near Fort Stewart, Ga., late on the night of April 4 to break the terrible news. Mrs. Smith, the German girl Paul had met and married during his tour of duty in Western Europe in 1992, listened numbly to her visitors. She fought the growing dread and pain by grasping at a desperate hope:

"Our name is so common," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "Maybe it's a mistake."

There was no mistake. Paul Ray Smith had given his life protecting his men and his position. He had almost single-handedly blunted an overwhelming attack which might well have overrun the nearby aid station.

"There are two ways to come home, stepping off the plane and being carried off the plane," Sgt. Smith had written in an unsent email to his parents. "It doesn't matter how I come home, because I am prepared to give all that I am to insure that all my boys make it home." He had been the only American killed in the courtyard fight.

On April 4, 2005, exactly two years after his selfless action, his wife and their children David and Jessica stood in the White House as President Bush presented them the nation's highest decoration for bravery, the Medal of Honor.

It was the first awarded in the Iraq War. Paul Ray Smith had indelibly marked his "common name" on history's small bright roll of those forever remembered for their uncommon valor.

Striking for Selfishness

Ralph Peters rips into the French strikers.

Why have the students been demonstrating? Because their government proposed that young workers should not automatically be granted a (short) lifetime of job security from the first day they're hired. Under the proposed reform, the first two years of employment would be a probationary period (under siege, the government offered to compromise at one year).

The regime's hope is that employers might be more willing to take a chance on hiring more young workers if they aren't automatically condemned to keep even the most inept or lazy workers on the payroll - and on their tax rolls.

Reasonable? Mais non, Monsieur le Anglo-Saxon Capitalist Cochon! The burdern must be on the employer to pay, not on the worker to work!

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is hardly a sympathetic figure, yet this time around he's right. It's essential for France to create more jobs - especially for the blue-collar youths and the slum-dwellers who rioted out of hopelessness last autumn.

By American standards, the minor reforms proposed seem common-sensical. But common sense has fled the land of Cartesian rationalism. To gratify the world's most-spoiled workers, employers must be treated as bridegrooms forced to marry blindly and for whom the cost of divorce is exhorbitant. And, of course, striking is the French national sport.

But consider who's doing the striking: Workers who already have tenure, plus fashionably left-wing students. Those students ultimately will get their degrees and they'll either find jobs at home or have the credentials to migrate - to that nasty Anglo-Saxon capital, London, if they can't get work visas to the United States.

French students from elite schools can protest and riot all they want. For them, there are no consequences.

It's different for the blue- collar kids. In la belle France, once you leave the Disneyworlds of central Paris or Provence, a quarter of the young are unemployed (the rate's almost 50 percent among those whose skin isn't white).

As for those "progressive" French labor unions, they're not interested in creating new jobs in a changing world or in fostering competitive skills. They just want to protect the unaffordably lavish benefits their current members enjoy.

The strikes and demonstrations aren't about justice. They're about shameless selfishness.

Perhaps we should send a thank-you bouquet to the French strikers for making the English-speaking world look even more attractive to investors than it already did: The French strike, we work. Guess who wins the economic sweepstates. And guess who says the mean world isn't fair.

The French (and their neighbors in Old Europe) enjoyed a golden half-century living off the fat of the land. Now the bones are showing. For all of the worries about our own Social Security system, it looks as robust as a regiment of super-heroes compared to the European government pension funds plummeting toward bankruptcy today.

It's true, folks: There ain't no free lunch. Aging populations suffering from depression-level unemployment rates can't survive if those with jobs demand 35-hour work-weeks, a couple of months' vacation and lavish benefits upon an early retirement. Oh, and 100 percent job security.

The results? French industy is staggering, research is torpid, French investment funds are fleeing offshore and new ideas hardly have a chance.

Think GM's got problems in the showroom? Any of you want to buy a Renault?

the Nanny state goes after baseball

The State of Maryland decides that in spite of a raging heroin problem in Baltimore, pollution in the Bay and traffic woes, it needs to be involved in regulating little league headgear.

As spring settles in, with the crack of Little League bats soon to follow, Maryland senators wrangled yesterday over whether the state should be trying to save baseball's youngest players from bruises, bloody noses and concussions.

A bill to require youth league players to wear state-approved protective gear struck some senators as too costly and too hard to enforce.

"What are you going to have - helmet police?" asked Sen. Sandra B. Schrader, a Howard County Republican whose daughter plays softball. "Who's going to go out and check these teams?"

But others argued that inaction would be unconscionable.

"We're telling 8- and 9-year-olds that when a ball is coming at you 50, 60, 65 miles per hour, if you get out of the way, great. If not, and it takes your eye out, that's the way it goes," said Sen. James Brochin, Democrat of Baltimore County.

And so it went for nearly an hour, a debate in which seasoned senators spoke out like ordinary mothers and fathers and grandparents.

Under the proposed law, the state's Health and Mental Hygiene Department would dictate the types of safety equipment that youth baseball leagues throughout Maryland would have to use in play.

Though the specific safety gear is up for discussion, high on the priority list are face masks for batters and protective goggles for fielders.

Coaches, teams or leagues that skirt the rules would have their wrists slapped with warnings.

The bill has pediatricians and ophthalmologists who favor increased safety measures facing off against youth sports programmers wary of state mandates.

Coaches and parents are split, with some advocating anything to help shield small athletes from injury, and others unwilling to toy with the fundamentals of a summer classic.

"The issue is, do we want to protect the eyes of our young baseball players?" said Sen. Leonard H. Teitelbaum, the Montgomery County Democrat who is the bill's sponsor. "It's a simple precaution."

But Sen. J. Robert Hooper, a Harford County Republican, sees no reason for government to meddle on the baseball diamond.

"I think there's some things best left up to the family," he said. "We're going to micromanage every life right down to the bottom."

Publik Skool Updayt: Zero tolerance silliness

A school in Ohio gets the award this week for the silliest zero tolerance example: 8 year old removed for "sexual harassment."

The boy's mother, Tammy Barth, said yesterday her son was playing in gym on Tuesday when a girl student said he and two other boys may have grabbed her buttocks.

He was then questioned in an informal hearing by school officials and he admitted he had been passing love notes to the same girl.

The second-grader then asked to sign a notice of emergency removal form for sexual harassment without a parent present***cough***bullsh!t***cough***, Barth said. The boy printed his first name on the portion of the form asking for his signature.

School documents provided by Barth and the boy's father, Frank Johnson, did not give specifics on the incident but showed that the second-grader was removed from school on Tuesday for ''sexual harassment during gym.'' It also states the student ''admits to writing notes saying ÔI love you' and giving them to a student.''

''It's an embarrassment to me and it's an embarrassment to him because he doesn't understand what's going on,'' Barth said.

Lorain schools spokesman Dean Schnurr confirmed yesterday that a student was sent home on an ''emergency removal'' for inappropriate actions. Schnurr insisted that his removal was a minor, precautionary action.

''It's not a disciplinary action,'' Schnurr said yesterday, adding the allegation will not be placed in the student's permanent record. ''We don't want to put something in the permanent record of a youngster who may not understand what they did wrong.

''He admitted to what he was being accused of,'' Schnurr said, unable to give specifics but said they were ''inappropriate'' in nature.

However, the student's mother said the school assumed her son touched the girl because he had written her a love letter a few weeks ago.

''Apparently, they had to treat it as sexual harassment,'' Barth said, adding the girl has been friends with her son for a long time. ''And then he was given a day off of school because of passing notes that say ÔI love you.'''

Johnson said the incident was harmless and referring to it as sexual harassment is what was ''inappropriate.'''

''Little kids are going to do stupid things like that,'' he said of his son passing love letters.

The student was temporarily removed from school for a day, March 23, and instructed to come back to school on March 24 with a parent.

''It's our job to teach students at a young age that inappropriate behavior is unacceptable,'' Schnurr said. ''The student did something wrong, admitted he did something wrong and received the proper discipline.''

He added it is unfortunate that this discipline is not emphasized at the student's home.

The second-grader's parents are still wondering how to discipline their son because they are not sure of what he did wrong. Barth said being reprimanded for passing love notes to another student is not and should not be a disciplinary matter.

Johnson said his son has had a difficult time with the whole ordeal.

''He started crying and he thinks he did something wrong (by passing a love letter),'' Johnson said. ''He's a good kid and he's very, very shy. And now he's emotionally distraught.''

Barth and Johnson are planning to remove their two children from Frank Jacinto, and the Lorain School system altogether, sometime next week and enroll them in the Clearview Schools District. She said she and Johnson are also looking into taking civil action against the school.

All four of her children are honor roll students, she said, adding that any school system would be happy to take them.

''I want them out of there before (the school system) does some damage.

Global warming "expert" is a partisan hack

No surprise that a junk scientist would be an Algore hack.

The scientist touted by CBS News' "60 Minutes" as arguably the "world's leading researcher on global warming" and spotlighted as a victim of the Bush administration's censorship on the issue, publicly endorsed Democrat John Kerry for president and received a $250,000 grant from the charitable foundation headed by Kerry's wife.

Scientist James Hansen has also admitted that he contributed to two recent Democratic presidential campaigns. Furthermore, he acted as a consultant in February to former Vice President Al Gore's slide show presentations on "global warming," which Gore presented around the country.

But Scott Pelley, the "60 Minutes" reporter who profiled Hansen and detailed his accusations of censorship on the March 19, edition of the newsmagazine, made no mention of Hansen's links to Kerry and Gore and none to the fact that Kerry's wife -- Teresa Heinz Kerry -- had been one of Hansen's benefactors.

Pelley's "Rewriting the Science" segment focused on Hansen's allegations that the Bush administration was preventing his views from becoming publicized because it did not like his conclusions. Hansen's complaints were first publicized in January.

"In my more than three decades in the government, I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," Hansen told Pelley.

But Hansen had made similar claims of another Republican White House allegedly censoring his views. In 1989, Hansen claimed that President Bush's father -- then-President George H. W. Bush -- was censoring his climate research. Kerry and about a dozen other senators eventually co-signed a letter written by Gore, who was also a senator at the time, demanding an explanation for the alleged censorship.

Hansen has previously acknowledged that he supported the "emphasis on extreme scenarios" regarding climate change models in order to drive the public's attention to the issue, but Pelley's "60 Minutes" report made no mention of that admission.

"Not only are [Hansen's] apocalyptic predictions not coming true, but more and more countries are beginning to realize that they will destroy their economies just under Kyoto 1, to prevent about 0.1 degrees of warming," Paul Driessen, the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power -- Black Death, told Cybercast News Service.

"Hansen's rants might still garner headlines in the Washington Post and New York Times, and raves from CBS -- especially if you believe every beetle infestation, forest fire, cold snap, hot flash, dry spell, flood, frog death and malaria outbreak is due to global warming -- but they're complete hogwash," Driessen said.

In endorsing Kerry's presidential bid late in the 2004 campaign, Hansen conceded that it could harm his reputation. "Dr. Hansen, 63, acknowledged that he imperiled his credibility and perhaps his job by criticizing Mr. Bush's policies in the final days of a tight presidential campaign." according to the Oct. 26, 2004, edition of the New York Times.

Hansen said in his October 26, 2004 speech, "John Kerry has a far better grasp than President Bush on the important issues that we face."

Three years earlier, Hansen had accepted the $250,000 Heinz Award granted by the foundation run by Kerry's wife Teresa. But the same day Hansen publicly endorsed Sen. John Kerry's presidential candidacy in 2004, the New York Times quoted Hansen as saying that the grant from the Heinz Foundation had had "no impact on my evaluation of the climate problem or on my political leanings."

Loving Crabby Chloe

I'm not the only one with a crush on Chloe.

In spite of herself, Chloe O'Brian has charmed the "24" audience.

Her job on the Fox thriller, which airs on Channel 19 at 9 p.m. Mondays, is that of senior analyst at the Counter-Terrorist Unit, and she's a whiz, lording over her keyboard with data-slinging deftness as the nation's well-being hangs in the balance.

Each 24-episode season tracks a single day's crisis in real time, hour by hour, as agent Jack Bauer (series star Kiefer Sutherland) summons Chloe's high-tech assistance, then runs with it.

Jack (breathless from an L.A. rooftop): "Listen to me - I have a thumb drive! I need you to data-mine the files!"

Chloe (in a sure-why-not tone at her CTU console): "Upload the drive to my socket. Access code 5J55J."

But Chloe, well-played by Mary Lynn Rajskub, is much more than a glorified computer nerd.

She's also petulant, snippy and a simmering sourpuss. An acquired taste she may be, but Chloe's very social gracelessness during three seasons of "24" has won her an unlikely viewer following.

A large measure of Chloe's appeal is due to Rajskub, whose unenviable challenge is to humanize a character defined by her scowl and techno-jargon. And she does.

Convincingly.

So it's all the more bracing to find that, spared from Chloe's pressures and chronic funk, Rajskub is: pretty, funny, freewheeling to talk with; endowed with a plummy chuckle and a quirky take on life. And though single at the moment ("My psychic told me I would have problems in relationships in this lifetime," she reports with a laugh), she's upbeat: "I'm gonna keep trying."

American business is winning

Despite the gloom and doom of the Enrons and GMs of the world, American businesses are still setting the pace for the world.

Newspapers bring us the dark stories about American business. The Enron trial serves up tales of lies and looting. The General Motors restructuring dramatizes the death of traditional U.S. manufacturing. Commentators from left and right agree that a growing swath of the economy, from accounting services to non-emergency health care, may one day move offshore. And yet something is going dramatically right inside American corporations. Despite all the nostalgia for the era when GM dominated the world's car industry, the heyday of American business may actually be now.

The dawn of this heyday came in 1995. In the two preceding decades, the productivity of American workers had grown more slowly than that of Japanese and European competitors. But in the decade since 1995, U.S. labor productivity growth has outstripped foreign rivals'. Meanwhile U.S. firms' return on equity -- that is, the efficiency with which they manage the capital entrusted to them -- has pulled away from that of Japan, France and Germany, according to data provided by Standard & Poor's Compustat.

Other measures tell a similar story. Up until the 1990s, management books were crammed with Japanese buzzwords, and the early Clinton administration was in awe of Germany's apprenticeship system. But today the United States provides most of the business role models, from Starbucks to Procter & Gamble, from Apple to Cisco. The (British) Financial Times publishes an annual list of the world's most respected companies. In 2004 and again in 2005, no fewer than 12 of the top 15 slots were occupied by American firms.

"I'm all broken up about their rights"



The Supreme Court reviews how far a state can go in punishing the worst of the worst inmates.

The Supreme Court struggled today with how far states can go in punishing their most incorrigible prison inmates.

A lawyer for Pennsylvania asked the justices to allow the state's prison officials to deny troublesome inmates access to secular newspapers and magazines in hopes of making them behave.

Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly pressed a lawyer for the inmates to say what options are left for prison officials who have already taken away most of a prisoner's privileges.

"You are saying they just have to grin and bear it?" Roberts asked.

Justice David Souter jumped in, suggesting that the inmates' lawyer may have been arguing that the prison officials' policy could go too far and become "cruel and unusual punishment."

But the lawyer, Jere Krakoff, said that was not his argument. "There comes a time when you take away so much," he said, "that, yes, you may have to give up. You may have to keep them in segregation."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said Krakoff's argument made little sense. He said the state should have the option of trying to change an inmate's behavior and not "forgetting about them altogether."

The case could wind up in a tie because only eight justices are considering it. Justice Samuel Alito did not participate because he wrote a dissenting opinion -- siding with Pennsylvania -- when he was a member of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The key question is whether prison officials can transform constitutionally protected rights, such as freedom of speech, into privileges that can be taken away unless inmates do as they are told.

The case's outcome could affect prison operations nationwide if the justices require state officials to prove that their policies serve legitimate security and rehabilitative interests inside prison walls.

The Bush administration is siding with Pennsylvania, saying the state's policy deserves deference by the courts because it involves maintaining order in prisons.

Jonathan L. Marcus, an assistant solicitor general, argued Pennsylvania's policy allows inmates to earn back the privilege of receiving newspapers and magazines, as well as personal photographs.

Matt Lauer inteviews Satan

Here is a transcript of Matt Lauer's interview with Michael Schiavo, the man who won his determined battle to murder his wife, with the sanction of the courts and the stunning silence from the Bishop of Tampa. Is the bastard repentant?

Matt Lauer: I guess you could’ve written a book to honor Terri. After reading it, it’s not really the book you wrote. This is a book that in some ways settles some scores, doesn’t it?

Michael Schiavo: Oh yes, it does.

Hell no, and he used the interview and the book he's whoring to slam the Schindler family again and again, refusing to just let them grieve.

San Francisco city council condemns Christianity...

Or at least this gathering of Christians. I'm wondering when they will change the name of the city to something less, well, Christian.

More than 25,000 evangelical Christian youth landed Friday in San Francisco for a two-day rally at AT&T Park against "the virtue terrorism" of popular culture, and they were greeted by an official city condemnation and a clutch of protesters who said their event amounted to a "fascist mega-pep rally."

"Battle Cry for a Generation" is led by a 44-year-old Concord native, Ron Luce, who wants "God's instruction book" to guide young people away from the corrupting influence of popular culture.

Luce, whose Teen Mania organization is based in Texas, kicked off a three-city "reverse rebellion" tour Friday night intended to counter a popular culture that he says glamorizes violence and sex. The $55 advance tickets for two days of musical performances and speeches were sold out, but walk-up admission was available for $199.

After stops in Detroit and Philadelphia in the next few weeks, Luce wants to unleash a "blitz" of youth pastors into the communities to do everything from work with the homeless to find new ways to bring others to Christ. He challenged youth leaders to double the size of their groups in the next year.

And then he plans to return to San Francisco next year to chart their progress.

That's bad news to Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who told counterprotesters at City Hall on Friday that while such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco."

Luce didn't flinch in the face of the counterprotest. The author, host of the "Acquire the Fire TV" cable television program and a President Bush appointee to a federal anti-drug-abuse commission, wants teens to find Bible-based solutions for the spread of sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, drug abuse and suicide.

My inability to find anything objectionable about this gathering makes me realize just how out of touch I am. Here I thought the people in San Francisco were the "loud, obnoxious, disgusting" people.

RIP Buck Owens



One of the true giants of country music is dead at 76.

Buck Owens, who died early Saturday at his ranch north of Bakersfield, Calif., at 76, was on the crest of a late-blooming second act when he came to the Birchmere in 1989. One of country's biggest, most charismatic stars in the 1960s and early '70s, he'd stopped recording and touring for a decade before his No. 1 fan, newcomer and neo-traditionalist Dwight Yoakam, helped pull him back into the spotlight with a chart-topping duet of "Streets of Bakersfield."

It was in Bakersfield's blue-collar juke joints that Owens and his onetime bass player Merle Haggard had fine-tuned a hard-core honky-tonk sound informed by the energy and edge of rockabilly and rock-and-roll and defined by their authoritative, emotion-drenched vocals. Dubbed the "Bakersfield sound," it was a flat-out rejection of the smoothed-out, string-laden, pop-driven "Nashville sound" that ruled in the '50s as country music eschewed its rural roots to go uptown.

A great cause for liberals!

Some jokers called the "Voluntary human extinction movement" want everyone to stop breeding to save the planet. Al Gore's dad should have belonged.

VHEMT (pronounced vehement) is a movement not an organization. It's a movement advanced by people who care about life on planet Earth. We're not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.

We don't carry on about how the human race has shown itself to be a greedy, amoral parasite on the once-healthy face of this planet. That type of negativity offers no solution to the inexorable horrors which human activity is causing.

Rather, The Movement presents an encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth's ecology.

As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens... us.

Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom.

When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve (if they believe in evolution), and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Mother Nature's "experiments" have done throughout the eons. Good health will be restored to the Earth's ecology... to the "life form" known by many as Gaia.

the University of Arizona, home of the Wildcats (and future terrorists)

The University of Arizona is seeing the numbers of Saudi students increasing, so so you might want to increase the security at the football games.

The UA will enroll about 100 new Saudi Arabian students this summer, which could signal the reverse of a post-Sept. 11 trend of having fewer international students in the United States, especially those from the Middle East.

The students are part of a new large-scale scholarship program by the Saudi government, which will send about 6,000 students to American universities this year after just 1,442 Saudi students had visas to study in the United States in 2004.
About 80 of the students are already at the UA, enrolled in English-immersion classes before they start their academic programs in the fall. More are expected by the start of next semester as they secure visas.

"International education and student mobility are critical to a lot of positive initiatives worldwide," said Joanne Lagassé Long, director of the Office of International Student Affairs. "The best way to do that is have students study in each other's countries."

The Saudi scholarship program comes at a time when international student interest in American universities is rebounding nationwide. After Sept. 11, 2001, new federal procedures and delays in obtaining U.S. visas caused a decline in foreign students in the United States.

International-student enrollment at the UA surged from the late 1990s until 2002, but has dropped sharply since. The UA had 3,011 international students in 2002 but was down to 2,446 last fall. There's a distinct economic benefit to international students, with the new Saudis expected to have an impact of about $3 million a year on the Tucson economy.

But with this new crop of Saudi Arabian students, it's clear the UA is a hit.
"U of A is famous in Saudi Arabia," said Abdullah Alshammari, 35. "All of them didn't come by chance. They made a plan."

A short note to the ungrateful freed hostages

Beautiful Atrocities sums it up well:

Dear Christian Peacemaker Losers,

I see you finally got around to thanking the neoimperialist thugs who saved your sorry asses. Like you, I'm grateful no one got hurt during your release rescue, because if an American or British soldier had been killed wasting his time on you, I would have finished you off myself. It's too bad the Islamonutters snuffed that one dude, but, you know, shit happens, especially if you go around sticking your head in septic tanks.

I'm so bored with these anti-American halfwits - like that Italian cow - who think Zarqawi's jihadi death squads are going to have a hen party with them just for mouthing tired old paleoliberal crap. In the future, why don't you protest the absolute evil of Chimpy McHitler by cutting your own heads off? That would save us all a lot of time, wouldn't risk the lives of any real men, & would raise the collective world IQ.

Your friend,
Jeff

Bishop

From Rich Anglican Fudge With Nuts:

Why I don't watch Sportscenter

Phil Muschnick nails what's wrong with ESPN.

IN ONLY two minutes, during the Sunday night/Monday morning "SportsCenter," ESPN showed us what it has become, what it's now all about.

First we were shown what was identified as the pivotal moment in Arizona's NCAA Tournament four-point loss Sunday to Villanova. AU guard Hassan Adams, on a semi-break, hit a jumper to make it 76-74, VU, with 1:55 left.

But wait a second. Just before Adams shot, AU coach Lute Olson called a timeout. If only he hadn't, declared co-anchor Steve Levy, "It would've been a two-point game!" Levy concluded that, "Lute and the Cats would like to have those two points back."

But they did get them back. In the same possession. Right after the timeout. Adams was fouled and hit two free throws.

SportsCenter, as it now does as a matter of either neglect or design, abandoned intelligent context to boil something down to a single, sensational moment supported by a video clip. Basketball, football, the X-Games - they're all the same.

And thus what ESPN showed (over two days and over and over) as the biggest moment in a big game, was more incidental than relevant. If you hadn't seen that game, the nation's sports show of daily record would have had led you and left you to believe that what didn't much matter is what mattered most.

Moments later, SportsCenter pointed to the day's big story from the women's tournament - Tennessee's Candace Parker dunked against Army. She did it twice, although both times, barely. Parker stands 6-4, so it stood to reason that she might.

And then ESPN's lead women's studio hoops analyst and former Oklahoma star, Stacey Dales-Schuman, looked into the camera and said something that she couldn't possibly believe. Or was it that she figured that's what her ESPN bosses would have had her say?

Regardless, she soulfully proclaimed: "If you didn't watch women's basketball before, you'll watch it now, since, as you clearly saw today, we do have the dunk."

In other words, adhering to the Disney/ESPN formula, we're all morons. We don't watch basketball for basketball, we watch for dunks, we watch only for the chance to scream, "Woooo!" - never for the game or for the sport.

And now that the women's game includes a dunk, every blue moon, we're going to watch women's basketball just to see if a blue moon rises during the game we're watching.

Truth is, many of women's college basketball's biggest supporters became big fans because the game is mostly free of the premium placed on spectacular individual achievement. They love it for team play, for off-the-ball movement, for attention to fundamentals. For basketball.

But on ESPN, such people can't possibly be basketball fans, not real ones.

In two minutes, this week, ESPN identified the irrelevant as the biggest play in a big game, then declared women's basketball had been legitimized by a dunk. But this is what the nation's sports network has become. And that doesn't say much for us.

Why we must not lose in Iraq

The effects of a "cut and run" would be devastating.

The third anniversary of U.S. military action to liberate Iraq has brought with it a relentless stream of media and political pessimism that is unwarranted by the facts and threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophesy if it goes unchallenged.

Yes, sectarian tensions are running high and the politicians of Iraq's newly elected parliament are taking a long time forming a government. But the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra several weeks back has not provoked the spiral into "civil war" that so many keep predicting. U.S. casualties are down over the past month, in part because Iraqi security forces are performing better all the time.

More fundamentally, the coalition remains solidly allied with the majority of Iraqis who want neither Saddam's Hussein's return nor the country's descent into a Taliban-like hellhole. There is no widespread agitation for U.S. troops to depart, and if anything the Iraqi fear is that we'll leave too soon.

Yet there's no denying the polls showing that most Americans are increasingly weary of the daily news of car bombs and Iraqi squabbling and are wishing it would all just go away. Their pessimism is fed by elites who should know better but can't restrain their domestic political calculations long enough to consider the damage that would accompany U.S. failure. A conventional military defeat is inconceivable in Iraq, but a premature U.S. withdrawal is becoming all too possible.

With that in mind, it's worth thinking through what would happen if the U.S. does fail in Iraq. By fail, we mean cut and run before giving Iraqis the time and support to establish a stable, democratic government that can stand on its own. Beyond almost certain chaos in Iraq, here are some other likely consequences:

• The U.S. would lose all credibility on weapons proliferation. One doesn't have to be a dreamy-eyed optimist about democracy to recognize that toppling Saddam Hussein was a milestone in slowing the spread of WMD. Watching the Saddam example, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi decided he didn't want to be next. Gadhafi's "voluntary" disarmament in turn helped uncover the nuclear network run by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and Iran's two decades of deception.

Now Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons, a prospect that might yet be headed off by the use or threat of force. But if the U.S. retreats from Iraq, Iran's mullahs will know that we have no stomach to confront them and coercive diplomacy will have no credibility. An Iranian bomb, in turn, would inspire nuclear efforts in other Mideast countries and around the world.

• Broader Mideast instability. No one should underestimate America's deterrent effect in that unstable region, a benefit that would vanish if we left Iraq precipitously. Iran would feel free to begin unfettered meddling in southern Iraq with the aim of helping young radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr overwhelm moderate clerics like the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.

Syria would feel free to return to its predations in Lebanon and to unleash Hezbollah on Israel. Even allies like Turkey might feel compelled to take unilateral, albeit counterproductive steps, such as intervening in northern Iraq to protect their interests. Every country in the Middle East would make its own new calculation of how much it could afford to support U.S. interests. Some would make their own private deals with al Qaeda, or at a minimum stop aiding us in our pursuit of Islamists.

• We would lose all credibility with Muslim reformers. The Mideast is now undergoing a political evolution in which the clear majority, even if skeptical of U.S. motives, agrees with the goal of more democracy and accountable government. They have watched as millions of Iraqis have literally risked their lives to vote and otherwise support the project. Having seen those Iraqis later betrayed, other would-be reformers would not gamble their futures on American support. Nothing could be worse in the battle for Muslim "hearts and minds" than to betray our most natural allies.

• We would invite more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden said many times that he saw the weak U.S. response to Somalia and the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings as evidence that we lacked the will for a long fight. The forceful response after 9/11 taught al Qaeda otherwise, but a retreat in Iraq would revive that reputation for American weakness. While Western liberals may deny any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, bin Laden and the rest of the Arab world see it clearly and would advertise a U.S. withdrawal as his victory. Far from leaving us alone, bin Laden would be more emboldened to strike the U.S. homeland with a goal of driving the U.S. entirely out of the Mideast.

We could go on, but our point is that far more is at stake in Iraq than President Bush's approval rating or the influence of this or that foreign-policy faction. U.S. credibility and safety are at risk in the most direct way imaginable, far more than they were in Vietnam. In that fight, we could establish a new anti-Communist perimeter elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The poison of radical Islam will spread far and wide across borders if it can make even a plausible claim to being on the ascendancy, and nothing would show that more than the retreat of America from Iraq.

Osama and Saddam and Saddam and France, connecting the dots

Now that the US is releasing some of the documents that were found when we invaded Iraq, we're finding some interesting things.

A newly released prewar Iraqi document indicates that an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995, after receiving approval from Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden asked that Iraq broadcast the lectures of Suleiman al Ouda, a radical Saudi preacher, and suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. According to the document, Saddam's presidency was informed of the details of the meeting on March 4, 1995, and Saddam agreed to dedicate a program for them on the radio. The document states that further "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left according to what's open [in the future] based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation." The Sudanese were informed about the agreement to dedicate the program on the radio.

The report then states that "Saudi opposition figure" bin Laden had to leave Sudan in July 1996 after it was accused of harboring terrorists. It says information indicated he was in Afghanistan. "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location," it states.

(Editor's Note: This document is handwritten and has no official seal. Although contacts between bin Laden and the Iraqis have been reported in the 9/11 Commission report and elsewhere (e.g., the 9/11 report states "Bin Ladn himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995) this document indicates the contacts were approved personally by Saddam Hussein.

It also indicates the discussions were substantive, in particular that bin Laden was proposing an operational relationship, and that the Iraqis were, at a minimum, interested in exploring a potential relationship and prepared to show good faith by broadcasting the speeches of al Ouda, the radical cleric who was also a bin Laden mentor.

The document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship. Given that the document claims bin Laden was proposing to the Iraqis that they conduct "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia, it is worth noting that eight months after the meeting — on November 13, 1995 — terrorists attacked Saudi National Guard Headquarters in Riyadh, killing 5 U.S. military advisers. The militants later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden.

Also Saddam was perhaps trying to influence French elections:

Correspondence regarding election campaigns in France. This includes a document from the Iraqi intelligence service classified as "secret," ordering the translation of important parts of a 1997 report about campaign financing laws in France. It also includes a document from the foreign minister's office indicating the report was attached. The attached translated report included very detailed information about all the regulations regarding financing of election campaigns in France. Translation was done by someone called Salam Abdul Karim Mohammed.

(Editor's Note: This is an intriguing document that suggests Saddam Hussein's regime had a strong interest in the mechanics and legalities of financial contributions to French politicians. Several former French politicians are implicated in receiving oil vouchers from Iraq under the U.N. Oil for Food program.)

Debunking the anti-war myths

Proud Kaffir at Red State gives us some perspective about just how few troops are being killed in Iraq compared to "peacetime" presidents:

On the third anniversay of the Iraq war, the MSM keeps bombarding us with stories and statistics trying to compare this war to the carnage in Vietnam, trying to make us think that US soldiers are dying at an alarming number due to Bush's failures.

While every lost serviceman and servicewoman is certainly tragic and should be mourned, the actual statistics tell quite a different tale from the MSM and Democratic doom-and-gloom outlook. Comparing the numbers of lost US military personnel to past years, and past presidential terms, may even be a shock to supporters of the war.

Take a look at the actual US Military Casualty figures since 1980. If you do the math, you wil find quite a few surpises. First of all, let's compare numbers of US Military personnel that died during the first term of the last four presidents.

George W. Bush . . . . . 5187 (2001-2004)
Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . 4302 (1993-1996)
George H.W. Bush . . . . 6223 (1989-1992)
Ronald Reagan . . . . . . 9163 (1981-1984)

Even during the (per MSM) utopic peacetime of Bill Clinton's term, we lost 4302 service personnel. H.W. Bush and Reagan actually lost significantly more personnel while never fighting an extensive war, much less a simulaltaneous war on two theaters (Iraq and Afghanistan). Even the dovish Carter lost more people duing his last year in office, in 1980 lost 2392, than W. has lost in any single year of his presidency. (2005 figures are not available but I would wager the numbers would be slightly higher than 2004.)

In 2004, more soldiers died outside of Iraq and Afghanistan than died inside these two war zones (900 in these zones, 987 outside these zones). The reason is that there are usually a fair number that die every year in training accidents, as well as a small number of illness and suicide. Yet the MSM would make you think that US soldiers are dying at a high number in these zones, and at a significantly higher number than in past years or under past presidents. This is all simlpy outright lies and distortion.

Taken all together, it is clear to see that the military is actually doing a fine job and suffering very low casualty rates. It also shows that our enemies are not quite as efficient as the MSM and world press would like them to be.

It would seem that Bush and Rumsfield are actually doing a wonderful job in Iraq and, although there have been setbacks, the war is far from the tragedy the press wants us to believe.

Pimpin' ain't easy

There is nothing funny about prostitution, especially when it involves minors, but the comments from the pimps busted in this sting are pretty funny.

On a stretch of roadway just off I-81 and surrounded by other, larger, better-lit truck stops, The Gables' patch of asphalt ends at the edge of a woods -- convenient for hookers hiding from police.

The truck stop was often jammed by late afternoon, according to investigators, especially "party row," the dark far end of the parking lot notorious for "lot lizards."

If she was able to duck the cops and enticed enough clients, a prostitute could end many nights $1,000 richer -- even with lots of competition.

Out of "the game" for almost a year, a Toledo woman known on the street as "Fire" said she had been selling sex long before her string of arrests in Harrisburg.

And the $418.50 fine and court costs? She shrugged. Shell it out and get back to the lot. There was plenty more.

"You could go back and double up, triple up what they took" she said.

Like most of the prostitutes named in the indictment, Fire, 25, comes from Toledo, Ohio, 420 miles away. "That became a joke around here: Is everyone from Toledo a prostitute?" said Trooper David Olweiler, a state police intelligence officer.

During her years in the sex trade, Fire said, she worked for four pimps, including, she said, Derek Maes.

Mr. Maes is now sitting in a Pennsylvania jail, awaiting trial next month on federal prostitution charges that could put the 41-year-old Toledoan away for life.

A 102-page federal indictment unsealed in December names him and 13 other men as co-conspirators in a nationwide sex-trade ring. He knows investigators allege this ring traded and sold girls as young as 12 -- routinely beating them if they failed to follow orders or make enough money.

But Mr. Maes said federal prosecutors have it wrong. He's no pimp, he said in phone interviews from the jail last week, he's "a player."

"Pimps do things like ... lock the girls up in closets. I'm 'finesseful,' you know what I'm saying?"

Mr. Maes has been accused at least three times of breaking women's noses. But he insisted that he forced no one to do anything. "These girls, they love the game. They love the game, trust me. It's the glamour, it's the pimped-out ride. ... It's Snoop. It's all of that."

Robert Scott, 44, agreed.

Convicted twice before of pimp-related charges involving minors, the Toledo man also awaits trial. Four others charged in the Harrisburg case, he said, are relatives: two sons, a cousin, and a nephew.

"The prosecutors are trying to make it like a bunch of us running around with candy in our pocket, going to parks and picking up little kids. It wasn't like that at all -- period," he said.

If the girls were forced or scared, Mr. Scott asked, why didn't they call home? And when they were arrested, Mr. Scott added, why didn't they ask police for help?

But Mr. Scott and other co-defendants argue that no one is forced into the business. And, as for brutality, Mr. Scott said: "Have I ever hit a woman? Yeah, I hit a woman, I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "You know why I hit her? Because she hit me. ... My old man raised me. [He said if] you're big enough to give a punch, you're big enough to get a punch."

Besides, Mr. Scott said, he's not even a pimp. If anything, he's in a partnership -- and partners are always free to change allegiance.

"She's choosing the best investment for her money," Scott said. "It's like going to Smith Barney or any other firm that invests your money."

I know where this truck stop is - just down the road from the ex girlfriend from hell, and it's only a few miles from the state police headquarters - not the smartest place to set up shop.

Michael Schiavo rubs salt in the wound

There should be a special place in hell for a egotistical murderer like Michael Schiavo.

Terri Schiavo's husband insists that, despite what her devastated family thinks, she is now "praising" him in heaven for pulling the plug on her one year ago.

"She's up there right now praising me . . . and saying thank you," Michael Schiavo asserts in his first TV sit-down since his tragic, once- comatose wife succumbed at a Florida hospital last March, sparking a national de bate on right-to-die is sues.

The husband - ap pearing on NBC's "Dateline" to hawk his new tell-all tome - ac knowledges that even his now-new wife, who he was dating at the height of the controversy, urged him to give in to Terri's desperate right-to-life family and keep her on hospital machines.

But Schiavo says he refused to do so because "I wasn't going to let anybody stand in my way.

"You know, my parents, they raised me to be a fighter. And I was doing something that Terri wanted," says Michael Schiavo, with his wife, Jodi, by his side.

"I guess when it all boiled down, I couldn't understand why these people were so passionate about my life . . . People are allowed to die every day. Feeding tubes are removed every day," Schiavo says in the interview set to air Sunday.

The emotionally charged battle between Schiavo and his devoutly Catholic in-laws raged in the courts for years, finally culminating in the husband being allowed to remove his stricken wife's feeding tube. She died weeks later.

Schiavo insisted that Terri had made it clear before she mysteriously collapsed into a coma in 1990 that she wanted to die if she ended up being artificially kept alive on machines.

But her family angrily disputed his claim, asserted that her coma might one day be reversed - and even suggested that Schiavo may have had a hand in Terri's collapse.

An autopsy later revealed no evidence of abuse before Terri fell into the coma and that she was in a persistent vegetative state when she died.

Asked why he stayed technically married to Terri even though he was openly living with Jodi before his wife died, Schiavo said, "Why [did] I have to divorce Terri?

"Terri wasn't like a football . . . an inanimate object you pass back and forth. She was my wife. You mean, because your wife gets sick, do you give her back?"

Adds Jodi Schiavo: "That is one of the qualities in him that I so admire. That up against everything, he stuck by her."

Better stay healthy, eat right, and take your vitamins Jodi, lest Michael find a reason to kill you too.

A-B-C's not HIV

Activists in New York want to teach HIV in the public schools....to kindergarteners. Thanks to Andrea Peyser for getting the word out on this:

HERE'S another reason to keep my precious daughter away from the public schools: Childless eggheads who dictate educational policy think it's high time kids her age were indoctrinated in the ways of AIDS.

Like hell.

My child is a first-grader, thriving in an outrageously expensive private school. There, she is learning about arctic puffins and can run faster than most boys.

This child is still an innocent - unschooled in the intricacies of procreation, death and incurable disease.

It would not be that way in a public classroom.

Faceless activists there want to add these words to the vocabulary of children her age - Virus. HIV. AIDS. Even cancer.

Under an updated curriculum, all public-school students - starting in kindergarten! - are required to learn about the disease that we know is spread through unsafe sex, intravenous drugs and tainted blood.

But the first-grade learning guide, of which I have a copy, dances around the issues of sex and drugs while needlessly scaring the heck out of little kids.

Here are a few choice excerpts from the official state Lesson Guide for Grade 1. We're talking about 6-year-olds:

"Draw a person and point to different parts of the body," the instructor is required to tell the class.

"As you point to each part, ask the children if a virus can get in through these parts. If the answer is yes, circle that body part. Be sure to point at body openings, such as the eyes, ears, nose and mouth."

There is no mention of any other "body openings." The curriculum opens a door that a child is too young to enter - then fails to consummate the lesson.

Insane.

This gem is included in a lesson plan:

"Say, 'Your friend finds out her uncle is HIV-positive. What could you say or do to help your friend better understand what is happening to her uncle's immune system?' '

And this complete howler: Children are instructed on ways they can "keep healthy." Listed are such things as "Wash hands," "Brush teeth," "Get enough sleep" and "Do not share combs or brushes." Mind you, this is a lesson plan whose sole purpose is to help impressionable tots avoid contracting HIV.

This just begs confused children to spread misinformation. What happens when a child flips out at the sight of a skinned knee? A nose bleed? Who will explain what he or she is not ready to know?

As always, parents may "opt out," in writing. But parents should demand that those who want to be included should "opt in" to the program - so as not to subject their children to embarrassment.

My child will learn about AIDS when she is ready. That day will certainly come sooner than I'd like. She is not a guinea pig for people with an agenda.

My only agenda is to let her grow up. And keep her away from that trash heap known as public school.

The best dressed protest ever

The tailors of Savile Row held a protest today while dressed to the nines.

A protest yesterday by the tailors of London's Savile Row must have been one of the most unusual in English history and certainly the most immaculate.

Threatened by rising rents and redevelopment plans, more than 150 cutters, finishers and waistcoat makers took to the street.

Their aim was to preserve Savile Row as the home of exclusive bespoke gentlemen's tailoring and to keep the likes of parvenu Gucci, Paul Smith and Louis Vuitton at bay.

As the protesters lined the street clutching shears, swatches and tape measures, the whiff of Brylcreem and quality shoe leather was unmistakable.

There were no placards and no unseemly chanting of "What do we want? When do we want it?"

Jostling was kept to a minimum and relations with two policemen who turned up belatedly to admire the orderly line and turn a blind eye to the imposing shears, were cordial.

Mark Henderson, the chairman of the Savile Row bespoke trade association, denied that there was any snobbery involved in the desire to keep off-the-peg stores out of the street.

Savile Row had "iconic status" that would be undermined if bespoke tailors were replaced by retail outlets, he said. "As champagne and fine wine are to France, Savile Row is to English heritage and craftsmanship."

The 100 or so bespoke tailors in the street say they are victims of their success. The street has become so famous that stores selling off-the-peg designer clothing are circling. Abercrombie and Fitch have already moved in.

Royal family inbreeding makes you stupid

Prince Charles thinks the Cartoons of Doom^TM are a bad thing.

“Responsible men and women must work to restore mutual respect between faiths,” Charles said in his speech, which referred to Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars and quoted the holy books of the three religions.

“The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others,” he said, referring to the cartoons first published in Denmark and later reprinted in several European nations that provoked riots in many Muslim countries.

Some of the caricatures depicted the seventh century Prophet Muhammad as a man of violence, including one that showed him wearing a turban that looks like a bomb.

The prince deplored the sectarian nature of the violence in Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories. “Images of communities torn apart by religious conflict are deeply harrowing,” he said.

He also criticized what he said was the prejudice shown to people of other faiths.

“I think of the experience of Muslims living in Europe who are subject to varied and continuous expressions of Islamophobia by fellow Europeans. I think of Christians living within some Muslim nations, who find themselves fettered by harsh and degrading restrictions, or subject to abuse by some of their fellow citizens,” he said.

A big step towards helping to "restore mutual respect between faiths" would be for the followers of Mohammed to quit blowing up those who don't follow him. Mulsims in Europe want to quit being subjected "to varied and continuous expressions of Islamophobia" then they can quit killing filmmakers like Theo Van Gogh or stop blowing up trains in London and Madrid.

Oh, and Charles, I think "subject to abuse by some of their fellow citizens" is a tad bit mild for describing the Christian school girls in Malaysia getting killed with machetes, a convert facing execution in Afghanistan, Hindus getting massacred in India, or Christians getting massacred in the Sudan and Nigeria.

The Vatican defending the Crusades

I'm beginning to like Pope Benedict even more, as the Vatican rehabilitates the Crusaders.

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict reached out to Muslims and Jews after his election and called for dialogue. However, the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has in the past suggested that Turkey’s Muslim culture is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots.

At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.

“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.

He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”. He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”.

Professor Riley-Smith said that the script, like much writing on the Crusades, was “historically inaccurate. It depicts the Muslims as civilised and the Crusaders as barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” It fuels Islamic fundamentalism by propagating “Osama bin Laden’s version of history”.

He said that the Crusaders were sometimes undisciplined and capable of acts of great cruelty. But the same was true of Muslims and of troops in “all ideological wars”. Some of the Crusaders’ worst excesses were against Orthodox Christians or heretics — as in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The American writer Robert Spencer, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, told the conference that the mistaken view had taken hold in the West as well as the Arab world that the Crusades were “an unprovoked attack by Europe on the Islamic world”. In reality, however, Christians had been persecuted after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.

Gays against religion

A prominent gay rights advocate isn't happy with a group that says it can change gays' hearts.

The annual Reclaiming America conference often draws controversy, but not always before it even begins.

A national gay-rights group has criticized the conference, set for Friday and Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, for planning a speech by a leader of a ministry to gays, Exodus International in Orlando.

"Giving a speaking opportunity to anyone from the ex-gay movement is wrong," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It needs to be repudiated at every step, not given a pulpit."

Gary Cass, executive director of the Center for Reclaiming America, shrugged off the complaint: "We believe God can transform people, and the results speak for themselves."

Exodus International was criticized, as was the Center for Reclaiming America, in a report issued March 2 in Miami Beach by the Washington, D.C.-based task force. The report targeted several current outreaches to the young, saying ex-gay therapies largely don't work and cause psychological harm.

Alan Chambers, president of Exodus, will be among 17 speakers at the 10th annual conference, which deals with conservative issues and trains participants for grassroots action in their communities.

If that isn't enough controversy, embattled U. S. Rep. Katherine Harris is also on the speaker list. The Longboat Key representative, who also appeared at last year's conference, will speak at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

The appearance is unrelated to her troubled U.S. Senate campaign, Cass said. "She is appearing as an elected representative, not as a candidate."

The conference will take place at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, whose pastor, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, also founded the Fort Lauderdale-based center. Kennedy will speak at the conference, as will:

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is also a Southern Baptist minister.

David Gibbs III, the attorney who represented the Schindler family in the 2005 Terri Schiavo case.

Marvin Olasky, editor of the Christian newsmagazine World. He will discuss intelligent design, the belief that living things show evidence of a supernatural designer.

Michael Farris, president of Patrick Henry College in Purcelville, Va., a champion of home schooling.

William Federer, of the publishing company Amerisearch, who will criticize the "religion of secularism" promoted by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Cass said the diverse topics have an "overarching concept: getting Christians out of the pews and into the public forum."

Some 800 people are registered for the conference, coming from more than 30 states.

Yep, how dare they confront Big Narcissism. Guess Mr. Cass can always go cry on Bishop Robinson's shoulder.

Religion of Peace^TM Update

In Afghanistan, a man coverted to Christianity from Islam. So, naturally, they want to execute him.

An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday.

The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told the Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws.

Rahman, who is believed to be 41, was charged with rejecting Islam when his trial started last week, the judge said.

During the hearing, the defendant allegedly confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago when he was 25 and working as a medical aid worker for Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan, Mawlavezada said.

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which states that any Muslim who rejects their religion should be sentenced to death.

"We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam. ... The prosecutor is asking for the death penalty."

The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said the case was the first of its kind in Afghanistan.

He said that he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman changed his religion back to Islam, but the defendant refused.

Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.

Afghanistan is a deeply conservative society and 99 percent of its 28 million people are Muslim. The rest are mainly Hindus.

Badly defending a bad law

I want to lockup all the sexual predators too, but the justice department and its enforcement of the COPA is not the way to do it.

Google had its day in court this week in its battle with the Justice Department over a subpoena for data about Web searches and the sites available through Google's search engine. The judge indicated that he was inclined to give both sides something, and Justice later agreed to limit its request to "just" 5,000 sample searches and 50,000 Web addresses.

This outcome may seem Solomonic, but the precedent is still troubling. The subpoena that started it all emerged from a separate case being tried in Pennsylvania. In that case, the ACLU is challenging the constitutionality of the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, or COPA.

That law has never been enforced owing to an injunction and multiple unfavorable rulings, including one from the Supreme Court. But it nonetheless aims to protect minors from "harmful" material on the Internet by making it a crime to allow them to access it. The ACLU suit claims the law is a restriction on free speech. The Supreme Court said it might be, and sent the case back to trial for the government to prove that it wasn't.

Which is where Google, Yahoo and MSN come in. The government wants to use their search data as part of its effort to show that the law is necessary to protect minors from the Internet's seamier side. But these companies are innocent bystanders in the dispute over the constitutionality of COPA. It is one thing when company data are pursued by the government as evidence in a criminal proceeding. Most Americans would probably accept if otherwise private information were turned over to law enforcement in a case where the request is narrowly tailored and probable cause exists.

The COPA trial is different. Tasked by the Supreme Court with justifying COPA's Internet restrictions, the Justice Department has embarked on a fishing expedition for large swathes of data about Internet use. The whole project suggests that the government has little basis for defending the law in the first place, and is hoping it can use the Web sites' data to generate a rationale after the fact.

But dragging these companies into this litigation is not without risks. The first is the possibility that the data could lead to further inquiries--possibly under COPA, should it be upheld--of a criminal nature. Justice has taken pains to emphasize that this case is being handled by the civil division and that there are safeguards to ensure the information does not find its way into any future criminal case. But it's not hard to imagine a legal rationale for securing the data for such a use in the future, once the precedent has been set.

Then there are the ramifications for Google, Yahoo and the rest in the COPA case itself. The ACLU has already argued that if the Web site operators become, in effect, witnesses for the government in this case, the ACLU may be compelled to seek further discovery of the data employed by Justice, the Web sites' means of gathering it, their search methodology, and so on. This is no small intrusion into the business practices and privacy reputations of companies whose stock in trade is information about what is searched for and found on the Web.

All of which highlights the dangers and unintended consequences of the government's conducting wide-ranging market research by subpoena. Two prior incarnations of COPA have already been struck down twice by the Supreme Court. The third time, the Court created a presumption of unconstitutionality but remanded the case for trial. If commandeering such data from private companies against their will is what it takes to defend the law, maybe defending it isn't worth the effort.

Heath Shuler for Congress?

The guy was a bad quarterback in the NFL - I lived in DC when he stunk it up for the Redskins - and was overrated in college, as my Nittany Lions caught more of his passes than his receivers (or so it seemed). So what's next for Mr. Shuler? He's running for congress as a Democrat! As I look at his website, I see he has 2 kids, named Navy and Island. I thought you had to be someone like Gwyneth Paltrow to come up with names that weird. A Redskins fan has started the Stop Shuler blog which is an interesting site. Some info not in Heath's bio is that when he took the Wonderlic IQ test given to NFL prospects he scored 16
out of 50. Give him slack I guess, he did go to Tennessee.

French students protesting about work

If only the French would spend as much time and effort at their jobs as they do at protesting about work.

Tens of thousands of students and workers marched in Paris and other French cities Saturday in the biggest show of anger yet at a jobs plan that has sparked violence and threatened to weaken the government.

Youths set a car ablaze, broke a shop window and hurled stones, golf balls and other objects at police at the end of the Paris protest against a plan for a new type of job contract to increase employment among less privileged youths by making the labor market more flexible.

Riot police wielding shields and batons rushed the crowds and fired tear gas in an effort to clear the streets of Paris.

Officials provided no immediate estimate of the number of protesters in Paris, the biggest known march, but two unions claimed 400,000 people participated.

For the second time in three days, students - this time joined by unions and employees - used marches to press conservative Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to withdraw the measure, which could take effect in April. Strikes already have paralyzed 16 universities.

"If by (Saturday night), the government doesn't withdraw this contract, we'll continue," student union leader Bruno Julliard said.

"We are not disposable. We deserve better," said Aurelie Silan, a 20-year-old student.

The plan, known as the "new jobs contract," does away with the generous job protections the French are used to. It would allow employers to fire young workers in their first two years on a job without saying why.

Students fear the jobs law will leave youths more vulnerable than before and eat away at long-standing measures protecting employees as France primes itself to better compete in a globalized world.

In France, once you hire someone, you are stuck with them for life, or until they quit or retire as you cannot fire them. God forbid the French government attempt to try to make France a little more competitive.

Religious Aspects of St Patrick's Day

A nice story in the PPG about people focusing on devotion this day.

Phil Brennan has a bum knee, but St. Patrick's Day will find him kneeling alone in church before a statue of St. Patrick, giving thanks for 28 years of sobriety.

Mr. Brennan, who has spent 30 of his 67 years as a janitor at St. Raphael Catholic Church in Morningside, doesn't mind a bit of fun in honor of the patron saint of Ireland. He's been known to dye his hair green to amuse the schoolchildren. But he wishes more people honored the day's first purpose.

"I see nothing wrong with having a good time as long as you don't get bombed," he said. "But they should keep in mind that it's a remembrance of St. Patrick. It's really a religious holiday."

In the United States, it is widely viewed as an Irish cultural festival featuring green beer. A recent survey by careerbuilder.com found that 10 percent of workers admit drinking on the job on St. Patrick's Day.

Mr. Brennan is not alone in trying to redeem the religious nature of the day.

Bishop Donald Wuerl of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh declined to grant a dispensation from the requirement to abstain from meat on Fridays in Lent. More than one-third of U.S. bishops -- including those of Greensburg, Erie and Altoona-Johnstown -- have granted the dispensation, according to a tally by Catholic journalist Rocco Palmo of Philadelphia on his blog "Whispers in the Loggia."

Those who want to eat corned beef to honor their Irish heritage can do so on Saturday, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Pittsburgh diocese.

"Lent is now the only time that we ask people to abstain from eating meat on Fridays, and no one should be lightly excused," he said.

"We believe that the disciplines of prayer and fasting and good works open our hearts so that we can experience the love of God more fully."

That has been Mr. Brennan's experience. He grew up in Morningside, when it was mostly Irish and Jewish. He attended Mass on St. Patrick's Day, though there was plenty of green beer around the neighborhood.

"I didn't like green beer," he said. "When I drank, I used to drink shots and beer."

To excess.

When he fell in love, "she gave me a choice -- her or Jack Daniels," he said.

He chose Jack. Now he is glad he never had children, because they would have suffered from his drinking. Asked if he ever married, he replied, "Not yet."

He was drinking 30 years ago when a buddy from the Ancient Order of Hibernians learned that St. Mary of Mercy, Downtown, was getting rid of a battered statue of St. Patrick. Morningside was then heavily Italian, and the parish held a festival each summer in honor of St. Rocco.

"Phil wanted equal time for St. Patrick," said the Rev. Joe Kurutz, then pastor of St. Raphael.

He didn't get that, but was given permission to put the statue in church for a March 9 to 19 novena, and to have a special prayer service after daily Mass March 15 to 17.

Men from the church restored the statue, which stands six feet high from pedestal to miter tip. The saint, vested in green, holds a shamrock in one hand and a shepherd's staff in the other. Rows of red electric votive candles are moved from the side chapel honoring St. Raphael to the temporary shrine to St. Patrick. Mr. Brennan provides flowers, and often keeps vigil.

He knows that some popular stories about St. Patrick aren't true. "He didn't drive the snakes out of Ireland because there weren't any there to begin with," he said. That's correct, said Philip Freeman, associate professor of classics at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and author of "St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography."

St. Patrick was a young Roman nobleman in 5th century Britain. He rebelled against his Christian upbringing and became an atheist. Then he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland.

"Without any other resources, he turned to God and became an avid Christian," Dr. Freeman said.

He escaped to Britain, but returned to Ireland as a missionary bishop.

"He baptized several thousand people, but spent decades with all sorts of trouble. He got beaten up, got kidnapped again and expected to be killed at any time," Dr. Freeman said.

He was nearly forgotten for 200 years after his death. For centuries after that, March 17 was a minor holy day in Ireland.

"St. Patrick's Day as we know it, with parades and green beer, didn't get started until the 1800s, and that was in America," he said.

While the saint would be shocked at the revelry that takes place in his name, he probably wouldn't sweep the beer mugs to the floor, Dr. Freeman said. His ministry was criticized by bishops in Britain because he adapted it to the local culture.

Dr. Freeman can imagine St. Patrick strolling into a bar, taking a small swig, and starting a conversation about Jesus.

"I think he played it pretty smart," he said. "He doesn't strike me as a prude. He would just want people to go to church instead."

And so it was with Mr. Brennan after he began his special devotion to St. Patrick.

He had tried and failed to stop drinking. But two young parish priests confronted him and supported him through recovery, he said.

He believes their help stemmed in part from the prayers of St. Patrick, who wanted him to live a holy life. He also credits the Venerable Matt Talbot, a 19th century alcoholic who stopped drinking through faith and is a candidate for sainthood.

About the only thing St. Patrick hasn't helped him with is playing the numbers -- though he touches the saint's shamrock for luck.

St Patrick's Day, Teddy Kennedy style

WSJ on St Patrick's Day

A good view of St Patrick's Day.

On this St. Patrick's Day, we'd like to turn your attention for a moment from all the shamrocks and leprechauns and "Kiss Me I'm Irish" buttons to this curious fact: Today's honoree was actually born in Scotland, and historians believe that he spent as much of his life off the Emerald Isle as he did on it. Rankling as such a fact may be to the fiercest of Irish patriots, it's actually fitting, since his holiday has become more an Irish import than an export.

Two million people will watch or participate in the New York City parade alone, while all but two Irish cabinet ministers this year are leaving their country to attend celebrations elsewhere. How did this happen?

St. Patrick's Day began as a religious observance to commemorate the death in the fifth century of Ireland's patron saint. Because March 17 falls during Lent, the Catholic Church in Ireland has traditionally allowed parishioners a one-day reprieve from their fast.

The holiday didn't get its reputation for revelry until centuries later, and that happened in America, not Ireland. What is believed to have been the first St. Patrick's Day parade was staged, some accounts say, by Irish soldiers serving in the British army in New York City in 1762. The American Irish Historical Society claims that the parade has been held in New York every year since, although we're not sure who has been keeping count.

As more Irish moved to America, particularly after the 1845 potato famine, the holiday became a way for them to band together, celebrate their heritage and thumb their noses at those older settlers who looked down on their Irish ways. The leprechaun, traditionally an evil sprite in Irish lore, didn't become associated with the holiday until Disney's 1959 film "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" gave him a friendlier persona.

Back home in Ireland, however, the holiday stayed a muted affair. While merrymakers downed pints of Guinness and shots of whiskey at the ubiquitous Irish bars the world over, the pubs in Ireland itself weren't even allowed to be open on St. Patrick's Day until the 1970s. A National Public Radio crew in the early '80s called a bartender for a "live report" from St. Paddy's Day central, only to find that the mystified Dubliner didn't know there was supposed to be a party going on.

It is not surprising that the tradition took off in America. Living in a great melting pot sometimes inclines us to distinguish ourselves through various cultural traditions. And if the traditions are fun--like the Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras or the Feast of San Gennaro--our countrymen might participate too. Irish-Americans, like other hyphenated Americans, are so attached to their heritage that they have actively spread it all the way back to their ancestral home.

By 1995, the Irish government realized that it was missing out on a chance to cash in on this holiday bonanza and established a St. Patrick's Festival in Dublin. In the decade since, attendance at the four-day event has more than tripled to some 1.2 million people.

These days it's popular in some quarters to warn that globalization is making the world more homogeneous. But stories like that of St. Patrick's Day are the other side of the cultural-imperialism coin. Rather than promoting uniformity, Americans have helped to create a more colorful world. In this case, a greener one.

A joke for St Patrick's Day

Jacques Chirac, The French Prime Minister, was sitting in his office wondering what kind of mischief he could perpetrate against the United States when his telephone rang.

"Hallo, Mr.. Chirac!", a heavily accented voice said. "this is Paddy down at the Harp Pub in County Sligo, Ireland. I am ringing to inform you that we are officially declaring war on you!"

"Well, Paddy, Chirac replied, "this is indeed important news! How big is your army?'

"right now," said Paddy, after a moment's calculation, "there is myself, my cousin Sean, me next door neighbor Seamus, and the entire dart team from the pub. That makes eight!"

Chirac paused. "I must tell you Paddy, that I have one hundred thousand men in my army waiting to move on my command."

"Begorra!" said Paddy. "I'll have to ring you back!"

Sure enough, the next day, Paddy called again. "Mr.. Chirac, the war is still on. We have managed to get us some infantry equipment!"

"And what equipment would that be, Paddy?' Chirac asked.

"Well, we have two combines, a bulldozer, and Murphy's farm tractor." Chirac sighed, amused. "I must tell you Paddy, that I have 6,000 tanks, 5,000 armored personnel carriers. Also, I've increased my army to one hundred fifty thousand since we last spoke."

"Saints preserve us!" said Paddy. "I'll have to get back to you."

Sure enough, Paddy rang again the next day. "Mr.. Chirac, the war is still on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne! We've modified Jackie McLaughlin's ultra-light with a couple of shotguns in the cockpit, and four boys from the Shamrock Pub have joined us as well"

Chirac was silent for a minute and then cleared his throat. "I must tell you Paddy, that I have 100 bombers and 200 fighter planes. My military complex is surrounded by laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke I've increased my army to two hundred thousand!"

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!", said Paddy, "I'll have to ring you back."

Sure enough, Paddy called again the next day. "Top o'the mornin', Mr. Chirac! I am sorry to tell you that we have had to call off the war."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Chirac. "Why the sudden change of heart?'

"Well," said Paddy, "we've all had a long chat over a bunch of pints, and decided there's no foo-kin way we can feed two hundred thousand prisoners"

St Patrick's Day!



St. Patrick of Ireland is one of the world's most popular saints.
Apostle of Ireland, born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, in the year 387; died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, 17 March, 461.

Along with St. Nicholas and St. Valentine, the secular world shares our love of these saints. This is also a day when everyone's Irish.

There are many legends and stories of St. Patrick, but this is his story.

Patrick was born around 385 in Scotland, probably Kilpatrick. His parents were Calpurnius and Conchessa, who were Romans living in Britian in charge of the colonies.

As a boy of fourteen or so, he was captured during a raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave to herd and tend sheep. Ireland at this time was a land of Druids and pagans. He learned the language and practices of the people who held him.

During his captivity, he turned to God in prayer. He wrote

"The love of God and his fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was rosed, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same." "I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain."

Patrick's captivity lasted until he was twenty, when he escaped after having a dream from God in which he was told to leave Ireland by going to the coast. There he found some sailors who took him back to Britian, where he reunited with his family.

He had another dream in which the people of Ireland were calling out to him "We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more."

He began his studies for the priesthood. He was ordained by St. Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre, whom he had studied under for years.

Later, Patrick was ordained a bishop, and was sent to take the Gospel to Ireland. He arrived in Ireland March 25, 433, at Slane. One legend says that he met a chieftain of one of the tribes, who tried to kill Patrick. Patrick converted Dichu (the chieftain) after he was unable to move his arm until he became friendly to Patrick.

Patrick began preaching the Gospel throughout Ireland, converting many. He and his disciples preached and converted thousands and began building churches all over the country. Kings, their families, and entire kingdoms converted to Christianity when hearing Patrick's message.

Patrick by now had many disciples, among them Beningnus, Auxilius, Iserninus, and Fiaac, (all later canonized as well).

Patrick preached and converted all of Ireland for 40 years. He worked many miracles and wrote of his love for God in Confessions. After years of living in poverty, traveling and enduring much suffering he died March 17, 461.

He died at Saul, where he had built the first church.

Segregation pardons in Alabama

The legislature in Alabama is looking to right some wrongs by pardoning blacks convicted of violating segregation laws.

Alabama lawmakers are considering pardoning hundreds, possibly thousands, of people who were arrested decades ago for violating Alabama's segregation laws.

The idea of a mass pardon gained traction after the death last year of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who had refused to give up her bus seat to a white man half a century earlier.

Even though the law allowing segregated seating on city buses was eventually overturned, Parks' conviction is still on the record, said Rep. Thad McClammy.

"This is something that's long overdue. It's something aimed at giving the state a forward look," he said.

His proposed "Rosa Parks Act" would pardon everyone ever arrested under the state's segregation laws, which date back to the state's 1901 constitution. A House committee approved the bill Thursday, sending it to the full House for debate.

The old segregation laws required that blacks attend separate schools, use separate water fountains and theater entrances, and made it illegal for whites and blacks to marry, among other things.

There was no opposition to the proposed legislation in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, where the plan was praised by Republicans and Democrats.

"I think it's wonderful. There were 89 people arrested during the bus boycott, and I think every one of them should be pardoned because of the contribution they made to the state and the nation," said Rep. Alvin Holmes, a Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement.

The Legislature is in the final 10 days of the 2006 session, but the committee chairman, Rep. Marcel Black, said he believes there's enough time to pass the bill.

"I can't imagine anyone opposing this," said Republican Rep. Steve McMillan.

A meteor to blame for "global warming"?

A Russian scientist is blaming global warming on a 1908 meteor strike.

A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal "Science First Hand". The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.

Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

Global warming is thought to be caused by the "greenhouse effect". Energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface and warms it, without the greenhouse effect most of this energy is then lost as the heat radiates back into space. However, the presence of so-called greenhouse gases at high altitude absorb much of this energy and then radiate a proportion back towards the earth's surface. Causing temperatures to rise.

Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue, explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an insulating greenhouse layer.

Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in 'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, "Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.

why do conservatives like Bush?

David Boaz asks the question I keep asking myself: why do I like Bush?

Why do conservatives like Bush? After all, even his defenders call him a "big-government conservative," which was once an oxymoron. He's increased federal spending 48 percent in six years, further centralized education (which on this side of the pond we consider both un-conservative and un-[classical] liberal), inaugurated the biggest expansion of entitlements since the profligate President Lyndon B. Johnson, lured 17 percent more people onto the welfare rolls during five years of economic growth, and declared that "When somebody hurts, government has got to move."

So why do conservatives who grew up on Reagan like Bush? I can think of several reasons:

1. Tax cuts. Defying the establishment media and the class warfare of the Democrats, he has persisted in the Reaganite mission of cutting taxes, especially income tax rates.
2. The war. He stands up to the Islamo-fascists, as Reagan stood up to the evil empire. And as long as conservatives believe that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism, they will support Bush there.
3. Religion. Conservatives like his willingness to talk about his born-again faith and to bring conservative Christian values (as he defines them) to political issues such as abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, and government funding for religious charities.
And finally,
4. As a nominating speech for President Grover Cleveland once put it, "They love him most for the enemies he has made." Conservatives love Bush because the left hates him. If the New York Times would run a front-page story headlined "Bush Delivers the Big Government Clinton Never Did," and the lefty bloggers would pick it up and run with it, maybe conservatives would catch on.

So here's your challenge, lefty bloggers: If you don't like the tree-chopping, Falwell-loving, cowboy president - if you want his presidency fatally wounded for the next three years - then start praising him. One good Paul Krugman column taking off from that USA Today story on the surge in entitlements recipients under Bush, one Daily Kos lead on how Clinton flopped on national health care but Bush twisted every arm in the GOP to get a multi-trillion-dollar prescription drug benefit for the elderly, one cover story in the Nation on how Bush has acknowledged federal responsibility for everything from floods in New Orleans to troubled teenagers, and maybe, just maybe, National Review and the Powerline blog and Fox News would come to their senses. Bush is a Rockefeller Republican in cowboy boots, and it's time conservatives stopped looking at the boots instead of the policies.

Yale and the Taliban

Yale still doesn't get why admitting a member of the Taliban is a bad thing.

Indeed, while many at Yale are deeply troubled by Mr. Rahmatullah's admission, the university's administrators clearly don't yet appreciate the growing outrage over someone whom Richard Shaw, Yale's former dean of admissions, claimed to the New York Times was a prize diversity catch for the school.

A scan of just this week's headlines might give Yale officials some clues as to why the outrage exists. The Taliban, the medieval fascist regime that harbored Osama bin Laden before 9/11, may be history. But its remnants are at war with America even today.

Last Sunday, a Taliban roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. In a separate incident, suicide bombers in Kabul tried to kill an Afghan official responsible for persuading former Taliban members to support the new democratic government. The official survived, but the blast killed the two bombers along with a 12-year-old girl and an elderly yogurt vendor. Elsewhere, the Taliban killed four hostages--three Albanian Muslims and a German. The current Taliban propagandist, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, vowed that "we will kill anyone who is helping the Americans."

I spoke with an American military officer who is about to return to his post in Afghanistan. "I can't imagine explaining to my troops back there that while they just lost four of their comrades to the Taliban that one of America's most prestigious universities is giving a valued place as a student to a largely unrepentant Taliban official," he told me.

Others also have some standing to be concerned about Mr. Rahmatullah's presence at Yale. Yesterday, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Border Security panel, wrote Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff demanding that he explain exactly how Mr. Rahmatullah was given an F-1 student visa.

Then there is Sheri Clemons, a 50-year-old social worker from Brooklyn. She vividly recalls the 9/11 attack that was plotted by Osama bin Laden while he was under the protection of the Taliban regime. She was going to her office at Praxis, a private agency that assists the HIV-positive and paroled criminals. As she tried to escape the World Trade Center area, a subway grate collapsed underneath her, and she broke her back and legs. She remains disabled and can walk only the shortest of distances.

"Yale is subsidizing the education of an official from a regime that wanted to eradicate Western civilization," she told me. "The terrorists wanted to do me harm simply because of who I am in the world--a freethinker, a Jew and a lesbian." When I asked her if she has a message for Yale, she replied, "If I were able to physically travel to New Haven, I would tell Yale shame on those who have shamed a great university in this manner. Why couldn't they have identified someone from the ranks of emerging Afghan women to benefit from this precious educational opportunity?"

Even Yale isn't defending its action by suggesting that Mr. Rahmatullah has recanted all of the extremist views he espoused during a propaganda tour the ambassador made of the U.S. a few months before 9/11. No one at the International Education Foundation, the Wyoming-based group that is sponsoring his stay in the U.S., will explain an essay Mr. Rahmatullah wrote last year that appeared on its Web site (since removed) in which he called Israel "an American al Qaeda" aimed at the Arab world. In that essay he also claimed the Taliban "did what they had been taught to do. Whether what they had been taught was good or bad is another subject."

Yale will have more explaining to do to prospective students and their parents late this month when it begins sending out acceptance letters to 1,300 applicants for coveted positions in its undergraduate class of 2010. The highly selective school will also mail out 19,300 rejection letters. "I can't imagine it will be easy for Yale to convince those it rejects that the Taliban student isn't taking a place they could have had," a former Yale administrator told me. Mr. Rahmatullah boasts only a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree.

Helaine Klasky, a Yale spokeswoman, takes the position that Mr. Rahmatullah is not a freshman, merely a student in a program that doesn't grant degrees but offers participants a 35% to 40% discount on tuition. "We hope that his courses help him understand the broader context for the conflicts that led to the creation of the Taliban and its fall," she says.

But Yale has yet to explain why a Feb. 24 article in the Yale Herald, a campus weekly, called Mr. Rahmatullah "one of this year's freshmen" and said the bar for admission to his special program "is set so that potential part-time Yalies" like him "must be as qualified as their full-schedule counterparts." No retraction of that article has been printed.

Next month, Mr. Rahmatullah has told the New York Times, he will apply for sophomore status in Yale's full-degree program starting next fall. Until Yale stops stonewalling on discussing its reasons for admitting Mr. Rahmatullah and then standing by its decision, the outrage over him isn't likely to go away.

Bush, the drunken sailor

Peggy Noonan goes off on Bush spending like a drunken sailor.

I didn't understand Mr. Bush's grand passion to be cutting spending. He didn't present himself that way. But he did present himself as a conservative, with all that entails and suggests. And as all but children know, conservatism is hostile, for reasons ranging from the abstract and philosophical to the concrete and practical, to high spending and high taxing. Money is power, more money for the government is more power for the government. More power for the government will allow it to, among many other things, amuse itself by putting its fingers in a million pies, and stop performing its essential functions well, and get dizzily distracted by nonessentials, and muck up everything. Which is more or less where we are.

The president likes to speak of his philosophy when it comes to foreign affairs. But what about domestic affairs? I think he has a real responsibility to speak here about his thinking, about what he's doing and why.

Mr. President:

Did you ever hold conservative notions and assumptions on the issue of spending? If so, did you abandon them after the trauma of 9/11? For what reasons, exactly? Did you intend to revert to conservative thinking on spending at some point? Do you still?

Were you always a liberal on spending? Were you, or are you, frankly baffled that conservatives assumed you were a conservative on spending? Did you feel they misunderstood you? Did you allow or encourage them to misunderstand you?

What are the implications for our country if spending levels continue to grow at their current pace?

What are the implications for the Republican party if it continues to cede one of the pillars on which it stood?

Did compassionate conservatism always mean big spending?

Profiles in Cowardice

Gotta love the dems; they talk the talk but won't walk the walk.

Democratic senators, filing in for their weekly caucus lunch yesterday, looked as if they'd seen a ghost.

"I haven't read it," demurred Barack Obama (Ill.).

"I just don't have enough information," protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). "I really can't right now," John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters -- an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.).

"Ask her after lunch," offered Clinton's spokesman, Philippe Reines. But Clinton, with most of her colleagues, fled the lunch out a back door as if escaping a fire.

In a sense, they were. The cause of so much evasion was S. Res. 398, the resolution proposed Monday by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) calling for the censure of President Bush for his warrantless wiretapping program. At a time when Democrats had Bush on the ropes over Iraq, the budget and port security, Feingold single-handedly turned the debate back to an issue where Bush has the advantage -- and drove another wedge through his party.

So nonplused were Democrats that even Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), known for his near-daily news conferences, made history by declaring, "I'm not going to comment." Would he have a comment later? "I dunno," the suddenly shy senator said.

Republicans were grateful for the gift. The office of Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) put a new "daily feature" on its Web site monitoring the censure resolution: "Democrat co-sponsors of Feingold Resolution: 0."

Many of Feingold's Democratic colleagues agree that Bush abused his authority with the NSA spying program. And they know liberal Democratic activists are eager to see Bush censured, or worse. But they also know Feingold's maneuver could cost them seats in GOP states.

Hence the elaborate efforts to avoid comment. Five Democratic senators called a news conference yesterday to talk about the Bush budget's "dangerously irresponsible priorities" -- but three of them fled the room before allowing questions. The other two were stuck.

At least Feingold is honest

Senator Feingold is a dangerous and stupid man, but at least he is honest.

Republicans are denouncing Senator Russ Feingold's proposal to "censure" President Bush for his warrantless wiretaps on al Qaeda, but we'd like to congratulate the Wisconsin Democrat on his candor. He's had the courage to put on the table what Democrats are all but certain to do if they win either the House or Senate in November.

In fact, our guess is that censure would be the least of it. The real debate in Democratic circles would be whether to pass articles of impeachment. Whether such an inevitable attempt succeeds would depend on Mr. Bush's approval rating, and especially on whether Democrats could use their subpoena power as committee chairs to conjure up something they could flog to a receptive media as an "impeachable" offense. But everyone should understand that censure and impeachment are important--and so far the only--parts of the left's agenda for the next Congress.

And not just the loony left either, though it's getting harder to distinguish them from the mainstream variety. Mr. Feingold is hardly some Internet crank. He's a third-term Senator from a swing state who has all but announced his intention to run for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008. He was the first major Democrat to call for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, and half his party was soon demanding the same.

As a legal matter, Mr. Feingold's censure proposal is preposterous. The National Security Agency wiretaps were disclosed to Congressional leaders, including Democrats, from the start. The lead FISA court judges were also informed, and the Attorney General and Justice lawyers have monitored the wiretaps all along. Despite a media drumbeat about "illegal domestic eavesdropping," Mr. Bush's spirited defense of the program since news of it leaked has swung public opinion in support.

But as a political matter, the Wisconsin Senator knows exactly what he's doing. He knows that anti-Bush pathology runs so deep among many Democrats that they really do think they're living in some new dictatorship. Liberal journals solemnly debate impeachment, and political-action groups have formed to promote it. One of our leading left-wing newspapers recently compared Mr. Bush to J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, as if there were even a speck of evidence that this White House is wiretapping its political enemies.

When the fever gets this hot in supposedly mainstream forums, Mr. Feingold is right to conclude that the facts behind any censure or impeachment motion won't really matter. All that will count is the politics, which means it will come down to a question of votes in Congress. And several leading Democrats have already raised the "impeachment" card.

California Senator Barbara Boxer loudly wrote four legal scholars late last year asking if the NSA wiretaps were impeachable. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a "select committee to investigate the administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."

In other words, everything that Mr. Bush has been accused of during the last five years, no matter how Orwellian or thoroughly refuted, will be trotted out again and used as impeachment fodder. And lest you think this could never happen, Judiciary is the House committee through which any formal impeachment resolution would be introduced and proceed. As the country heads toward 2008 and a Democratic nomination fight, John Kerry and Hillary Rodham Clinton would be hard-pressed to avoid going along with Mr. Feingold, Al Gore, and others feeding the bile of the censure/impeach brigades.

Which brings us back to Mr. Feingold's public service in floating his "censure" gambit now. He's doing voters a favor by telling them before November's election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime President if they take power.

Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America's enemies. And they want to do so not because there is a smidgen of evidence that he's abused his office or lied under oath, but because they think he's been too energetic in using his powers to defend America. By all means, let's have this impeachment debate before the election, so voters can know what's really at stake.

WHITE TRASH WEDNESDAY!

Yeah, I know it's still Tuesday, but I don't know that I'll have time tomorrow to post my entry for White Trash Wednesday!

A Titusville man being tried on meth lab-related drug charges in Venango County Court left the courthouse Friday for dinner and never returned to find out whether a jury believed him to be guilty or not guilty.

Todd Green, 39, was reportedly last seen by his father after the jury in the case broke to deliberate at about 7:45 p.m. Friday, according to Green's attorney, public defender Leland Clark.

Green, who was being tried on charges of criminal conspiracy to manufacture/deliver/possess with intent to manufacture methamphetamine and possession with intent to manufacture or deliver methamphetamine, spoke with his father before leaving the courthouse to visit his girlfriend in Reno, Clark said.

"And that was the last anyone saw of him," Clark said Monday.

As of Monday, Clark had not spoken with Green. Nor had he spoken with Green's girlfriend, adding that he didn't know her last name.

"I have no knowledge of his whereabouts," Clark said.

Green's one-day jury trial began Friday morning and continued throughout the day. At about 7:45 p.m., the jury began deliberating. Others dispersed while the jury sifted through the details of the case.

The jury took about 11/2 hours to go over the case, and those involved in the trial were alerted to reconvene in the courtroom at about 9:15 p.m. for the verdict, Clark said.

"At that time (Green) did not show up," Clark said, adding that Green could not be found in the courthouse.

President Judge H. William White, who was presiding over the trial, spoke with Green's father when the younger Green could not be found.

Green's father told the judge that his son left to eat dinner with his girlfriend who lived in Reno, White said. Green's father provided a first name for his son's girlfriend but did not know her last name or where she lived, White said.

For White, who notes that he has handled around 600 jury trials, Friday's defendant disappearance was a first. White said he has never had a defendant disappear between the time the jury began deliberating and the time they reconvened to deliver the verdict.

The judge treated the matter as a waiver of appearance, and the jury was brought back into the courtroom to read the verdict. The jury announced that Green was guilty on both counts.

After the jury read the verdict, White released the jury members, then told them the defendant could not be found.

A bench warrant was issued for Green's arrest Friday evening. He still hadn't been located by Monday.

Once Green is found, he will be interviewed to determine why he left the trial, White said.

"It all turns on why...We want to find out why he didn't come back," the judge said.

Al Gore and the PEST crowd

Al Gore appeared in West Palm Beach and shows that "Post Election Selection Trauma" is alive and well.

Former Vice President Al Gore returned Sunday to what one supporter called "the scene of a crime," telling a feisty, partisan crowd that the administration of President Bush poses an unprecedented test for U.S. democracy.

"I genuinely believe that American democracy faces a time of trial and challenge right now more serious than any that we have ever faced," Gore told about 400 supporters gathered at the Kravis Center for a fund raiser to boost state Democrats in the November election.

Gore cited a litany of issues, including the Bush administration's assertions of executive power, its fumbled response to Hurricane Katrina and its backing of a secret, domestic surveillance program, warrantless searches and interrogation methods used in Iraq and the war on terror.

"In every war there have been excesses ... that have come out of the extremes of combat and war," Gore said. "But never previously has it been official U.S. policy to depart from that respect that we should not torture."

Backers, still chafing from the infamous 2000 election recount in Florida that ended with Gore losing the presidency despite winning the national popular vote, roared and lauded him with standing ovations.

"Welcome back, Mr. President!" someone yelled from the crowd as Gore took the stage.

Palm Beach County, with its notorious butterfly ballot, had been a focal point of the recount. It was apparent Sunday that some local Democrats harbor bitter feelings.

"This was the scene of a crime," said West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, whose son, Marine Capt. Benjamin Lubin, has served in Afghanistan.

"We're very proud of him," Frankel said of her son. "But I can tell you, if Al Gore had been president, my son would not have been at war."

Gore seems to conveniently forget that the Clinton White House spied on the Pro Life movement including John Cardinal O'Connor. What about the torture inflicted on the Branch Davidians, where 86 men, women and children were killed? Mayor Lois Frankel forgets that Clinton sent troops into Haiti, Somalia, and Kosovo, with little to no threat to the US. Screw em!

SO-called Catholic democrats and abortion

Some Catholic democrats in the House try to play both sides of the abortion fence.

On February 28, a congresswoman from Connecticut named Rosa L. DeLauro released a "Statement of Principles." Signed by 55 members of Congress--all of them Catholic Democrats, and together making up a majority of the Catholic Democrats in the House--the statement urged . . . well, it isn't really apparent just from the text what the statement is supposed to be for.

According to the description from Ms. DeLauro's office, it "documents how [the signers'] faith influences them as lawmakers, making clear their commitment to the basic principles at the heart of Catholic social teaching and their bearing on policy--whether it is increasing access to education for all or pressing for real health care reform, taking seriously the decision to go to war or reducing poverty. Above all, the document expresses the signers' commitment to the dignity of life and their belief that government has moral purpose."

Who could object to that? Certainly not the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued a response on March 10 that declared, "We welcome this and other efforts that seek to examine how Catholic legislators bring together their faith and their policy choices, . . . [and] we welcome the representatives' recognition that Catholics in public life must act seriously and responsibly on many important moral issues."

A love fest, you might say--although that would leave you a little confused when the Washington Post reports it all under the headline "Catholic Democrats Scolded on Abortion."

But the Post seems to have it almost right, for words don't always express what we know them to be about. All the talk in the "Statement of Principles" about individual conscience is intended really as a demand that Catholics legislators not get beaten up anymore for supporting abortion: "We . . . agree with the Catholic Church about the value of human life and the undesirability of abortion," the statement reads, and that word "undesirability" leaves a peculiar taste in the reader's mouth. Abortion, murder, and thermonuclear war are undesirable, it's true. They are even unfortunate and less than optimal. But somehow one wants a little more oomph in the word chosen to describe them.

As it happens, oomph is what's missing all the way through the "Statement of Principles." Syntactical clumsiness makes the drafters conclude the statement: "we have a claim on the Church's bearing as it does on ours." But the meaning seems to be: If the Church thinks it can order us around, it's got another thing coming, 'cause we are the Church and the Church are we, and so by simple logic we get to order the Church around just as much it orders us around.

That rather makes hash of the statement's earlier claim that "we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas." If you "acknowledge and accept" it, then why are you trying to change it?

In fact, why this statement in the first place? The whole thing obviously concerns abortion, as the bishops' response suggests. "As the Church carries out its central responsibility to teach clearly and to help form consciences, and as Catholic legislators seek to act in accord with their own consciences, it is essential to remember that conscience must be consistent with fundamental moral principles," the reply notes. "We encourage and will continue to work with those in both parties who seek to act on these essential principles in defense of the poor and vulnerable. At the same time, we also need to reaffirm the Catholic Church's constant teaching that abortion is a grave violation of the most fundamental human right--the right to life that is inherent in all human beings, and that grounds every other right we possess."

But still the question remains: Why the statement now? For someone like Rosa L. DeLauro--or for such signers as Bart Stupak, Patrick J. Kennedy, Cynthia McKinney, and Nancy Pelosi--what's the political gain of claiming Catholicism at a time when the American Church is still reeling from the scandals that broke in 2002?

A general rule is that you should trust people to know their own best interests--or, at least, trust professionals to understand their own professions better than outsiders do. No one gets elected to Congress by being a complete idiot--about politics, at least. There is, I think, a glamour that attaches to Catholicism right now. A lot of mud, too, of course. But the intellectual force of Catholic analysis and vocabulary seems to have touched an awful lot of America's contemporary political debate, and the 55 signers of the "Statement of Principles" want in on it all.

In one sense, this is just another entry in the Democrats' general attempt to reclaim religion. But in its peculiar Catholic iteration, the problem of abortion wrecks the logic of the statement from its very first moment. Until the Democrats find a genuine way to be pro-life, they will not be able to deploy Catholic intellectual resources--or claim the prestige of doing so.

Useless Nations Update: Human Rights

The UN is up to its old tricks.

Remember the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it"? It's proving to be true for those who've been pushing the United Nations to reform its Human Rights Commission.

Good news: Under prodding by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the world body is set to finally abolish its sorry excuse for a human-rights body - whose members have included such paragons of political virtue as Cuba, Libya and Sudan.

Bad news: The replacement - a "Human Rights Council" - is no improvement. In fact, it's worse.

First, the new provisions are designed to look like reform. But they'll only tighten the control of the body by Third World human-rights violators.

Worse, they will make it almost impossible for the United Nations to ignore, as it often has, the results of its more embarrassing ventures, like the 2001 Racism Conference in Durban, South Africa.

Indeed, the council - as things now stand - would be required to "promote . . . the followup of the goals and commitments relating to the promotion and protection of human rights emanating from United Nations conferences and summits." With no exceptions.

The "reform" plan skews the council's membership against Western nations and in favor of the Third World despots. It also prevents any country from sitting longer than two consecutive terms.

Roughly half of the current commission's time is taken up with condemning Israel - with the United States regularly running interference. But the "reform" ensures the absence of Israel's staunchest defender. Indeed, America itself would surely become a major target of the council.

Israel, by the way, is the only one of the 191 U.N. member states that is barred from the key negotiating sessions when the commission is in session. And the "reforms" don't change that.

The plan also mandates that election to the Human Rights Council be by simple majority of the General Assembly - a conspicuous change from the original reform blueprint that Annan unveiled last year, which sought to screen out nations with weak human-rights records by requiring a two-thirds vote.

This in a body that three months ago could only find 79 nations - just 40 percent of the total membership - willing to condemn Sudan for its barbarous human-rights violations.

As Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch - the Geneva-based group formed to monitor U.N. compliance with its charter - asks: "How can we expect a majority to suddenly support Sudan's exclusion" from the new council?

Indeed, membership will be open to "all Member States of the United Nations," regardless of their human-rights record, although the assembly is urged to take those records "into consideration." And hope for the best, apparently.

America's outspoken U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, makes no bones about Washington's position on this absurd notion of reform: "We're not going to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a butterfly."

Not surprisingly, though, the proposal has won enthusiastic support from a bevy of Nobel Peace laureates, including Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu. (Carter, in fact, told the Council on Foreign Relations of his fervent wish that "the other members will outvote the United States." And that's exactly what might happen.)

None of this surprises veteran U.N.-watchers. Hopefully, though, it will cause some of the world body's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill to wonder whether all the money that U.S. taxpayers pump into this thoroughly discredited outfit really is worth it.

Kick the bastards out of this country and send them to Brussels or someother suitable place. Then, turn the UN building into some very expensive condos, or bulldoze the whole area for a new stadium for the Jets.

Great shirts for St Patrick's Day

Click on the image for the link!

The revolving door of justice claims another victim

Darryl Littlejohn is accused of murdering Imette St Guillen in New York, is a suspect in a series of rapes, but should have been still serving his prison sentence.

Darryl Littlejohn should have been in prison the night Imette St. Guillen was murdered.

Instead, he ratted out fellow criminals to get himself out of prison years early, The Post has learned.

A federal judge went easy on Littlejohn during his sentencing in 2000 for a Long Island bank robbery, after a prosecutor praised the man known by the alias "Jonathan Blaze" for helping the FBI solve three other bank robberies.

"Had it not been for Mr. Blaze's phone calls, it is unlikely that the cases would have been solved," then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Conway told the judge, a transcript obtained by The Post shows.

Conway told the late U.S. Judge Jacob Mishler that "Blaze," now a suspect in the rape and strangulation of Manhattan grad student Imette St. Guillen, called the FBI from the Nassau County jail and said, "I would like to talk to you."

He then gave the feds enough information to bust five men in three Long Island bank robberies with no prior suspects. Three pleaded guilty.

As a reward for his cooperation, Littlejohn got a slashed sentence of just 31/2 years for his $61,000 heist - much lighter than the 10 years he received in state court in Nassau County for robbing a nearby bank two weeks later.

And Mishler agreed to let him serve the sentence simultaneously instead of after the state time. That leniency also helped Littlejohn get sprung on parole in July 2004, after serving just over eight of the 10 years. He violated that parole by working as a bouncer at The Falls, the lower Manhattan bar where St. Guillen, 24, was last seen alive.

Plus there was a stabbing he committed at the tender age of 16.

He's the first victim of Darryl Littlejohn - a former Manhattan clothing-store owner slashed in the face and hand during a vicious armed robbery 25 years ago.

Littlejohn was just a scrawny 16-year-old when he and his cohort burst into Runway Fashion men's clothing store on Park Avenue South - but he acted like a hardened criminal.

His actions that day, Nov. 18, 1980, were a preview of the thug's life Littlejohn would lead, culminating with him being suspected in the brutal rape and murder of John Jay student Imette St. Guillen.

Store owner Fakhry Elashmawy stood near the entrance when Littlejohn and a young sidekick strolled in, each dressed in black trench coats, he said.

"They went all the way into the store and looked like they were looking for a suit," recalled Elashmawy, an Egyptian immigrant who owned the discount shop at 418 Park Ave. South. "They didn't weigh more than 125 pounds each."

The cohort acted first.

"He came to the front and pulled out a shotgun from beneath his coat. He asked me to get away from the front door," said Elashmawy.

Two workers and two customers were the only others in the store.

Suddenly, someone grabbed Elashmawy from behind.

It was Littlejohn - and he was armed with a barber's folding razor.

"He had me from behind," said Elashmawy. "He held the razor to my neck."

But the owner wasn't about to stand by and have his throat cut.

"With my left hand, I grabbed the razor and broke it, and the guy with the shotgun got nervous," he said.

"He swung the shotgun and hit a customer in the head and broke the gun. When he saw it was broken, he ran out."

Someone from the store chased the thug, but he got away.

Meanwhile, Elashmawy and one of his employees tackled Littlejohn and pinned him to the ground. Cops arrested him at the scene.

Under questioning, the teen kept his cool, claiming he didn't know his accomplice.

"He told the cops he just met him on the subway," said Elashmawy.

The owner suffered gashes to his chin, cheek and hand. Doctors at Bellevue needed 16 stitches to sew him up, and he still bears the scars.

Cops never found the other teen. Littlejohn pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to three to 10 years - his first arrest as an adult.

CAIR-ful



How CAIR fools the mainstream.

CAIR has consistently shown itself to be on the wrong side of the war on terrorism, protecting, defending, and supporting both accused and even convicted radical Islamic terrorists.

In October 1998—months after Osama bin Laden had issued his first declaration of war against the United States and had been named as the chief suspect in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa—CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy," finding this depiction offensive to Muslims. CAIR also leapt to bin Laden's defense, denying his responsibility for the twin East African embassy bombings. CAIR's Hooper saw these explosions resulting from "misunderstandings of both sides."[57] Even after the September 11 atrocity, CAIR continued to protect bin Laden, stating only that "if [note the "if"] Osama bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him by name."[58] Not until December 2001, when bin Laden on videotape boasted of his involvement in the attack, did CAIR finally acknowledge his role.

CAIR has also consistently defended other radical Islamic terrorists. Rather than praise the conviction of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, it deemed this "a travesty of justice."[59] It labeled the extradition order for suspected Hamas terrorist Mousa Abu Marzook "anti-Islamic" and "anti-American."[60] CAIR has co-sponsored Yvonne Ridley, the British convert to Islam who became a Taliban enthusiast and a denier that Al-Qaeda was involved in 9-11.[61] When four U.S. civilian contractors in Falluja were (in CAIR's words) "ambushed in their SUV's, burned, mutilated, dragged through the streets, and then hung from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River," CAIR issued a press release that condemned the mutilation of the corpses but stayed conspicuously silent on the actual killings.[62]

During the 2005 trial of Sami Al-Arian, accused of heading Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the United States, Ahmed Bedier of CAIR's Florida branch emerged as Al-Arian's effective spokesman, providing sound bytes to the media, trying to get his trial moved out of Tampa, commenting on the jury selection, and so on.[63]

More broadly, TheReligionofPeace.com website pointed out that "of the more than 3100 fatal Islamic terror attacks committed in the last four years, we have only seen CAIR specifically condemn 18."[64]

Steyn, banned in the UK

The Guardian and the Telegraph may have given Mark Steyn the boot, but thankfully the hits keep coming.

This week's Voldemort Award goes to the New York Times for their account of a curious case of road rage in North Carolina:

"The man charged with nine counts of attempted murder for driving a Jeep through a crowd at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last Friday told the police that he deliberately rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle so he could 'run over things and keep going.' "

The driver in question was Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar.

Whoa, don't jump to conclusions. The Times certainly didn't. As the report continued:

"According to statements taken by the police, Mr. Taheri-azar, 22, an Iranian-born graduate of the university, felt that the United States government had been 'killing his people across the sea' and that his actions reflected 'an eye for an eye.'"

"His people"? And who exactly would that be? Taheri-azar is admirably upfront about his actions. As he told police, he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world."

And yet the M-word appears nowhere in the Times report. Whether intentionally or not, they seem to be channeling the great Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali, who died a millennium ago but whose first rule on the conduct of dhimmis -- non-Muslims in Muslim society -- seem to have been taken on board by the Western media:

The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. . . .

Are they teaching that at Columbia Journalism School yet?

A fellow called Mohammed mows down a bunch of students? Just one of those things -- like a gran'ma in my neck of the woods a couple of years back who hit the wrong pedal in the parking lot and ploughed through a McDonald's, leaving the place a hideous tangle of crumbled drywall, splattered patties and incendiary hot apple-pie filling. Yet, according to his own statements, Taheri-azar committed an act of ideological domestic terrorism, which he'd planned for two months. He told police he was more disappointed more students in his path weren't struck and that he'd rented the biggest vehicle the agency had in order to do as much damage to as many people as possible. The Persian car pet may have been flooring it, but the media are idling in neutral, if not actively reversing away from the story as fast as they can. Taheri-azar informed the judge he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," and it was apparently the will of Allah that he get behind the wheel of Allah.

Meanwhile, a new Washington Post/ABC poll finds that, in the words of the Post, "nearly half of Americans -- 46 percent -- have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence."

If Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar is not a free-lance terrorist, then what is he? Who is he? What's he thinking? In the absence of any explanatory voices from the Muslim community, all we have are the bare bones of his resume: He's a 22-year old UNC psychology major who graduated in December. And what's revealing is the link between Taheri-azar's grievance and his action.

Take him at his word: He's upset about "the treatment of Muslims around the world" -- presumably at the hands of Israelis on the West Bank, of the Russians in Chechnya, the Indians in Kashmir, the Americans in the Sunni Triangle and the Danes in the funny pages. So what does he do to avenge Islam? He goes to the rental agency, takes out the biggest car on the lot, drives it to UNC and rams it into the men and women he's spent the last few years studying with and socializing with -- the one group of infidels he knows really well.

Publik Skoolz updayte

This time it's about the radical left seizing the social studies agenda.

NO one familiar with our nation's increasingly dysfunctional public schools should have found it surprising that Colorado high-school teacher Jay Bennish delivered a 20-minute, anti-American rant straight out of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore to his 10th grade geography class.
Bennish was somewhat cruder than your average leftist teacher - but he is not unique. Smoother, more effective Bennishes are everywhere in our great American high schools. That's one reason why our graduates are so full of self-esteem and have all the right attitudes, but actually know less math, science and history than their counterparts in most of the world's industrialized nations.

Political indoctrination in our universities gets some attention, but it is more widespread and dangerous in our elementary and high schools. The younger the students are, of course, the less likely are they able to withstand - or even detect - attempts at social and political thought control in the classroom.

And, where the professoriate denies that it favors using the classroom as a political bully pulpit, the K-12 public school establishment has adopted a quasi-official pedagogy that encourages the classroom teacher to shape students' beliefs on controversial issues like race, gender, sexual preference and U.S. foreign policy.
The documentation on this is so extensive that Jay Bennish might have a pretty good Nuremberg defense: "My union and my professional teacher association made me do it."

FOR example, the National Education Association, the larger of the two national teacher unions, supports "the movement toward self-determination by American Indians/Alaska natives" and says these victim groups should control their own education. It calls on all schools to designate separate months to celebrate Black History, Hispanic Heritage, Native American Indian Heritage, Asian/Pacific Heritage, Women's History and Lesbian and Gay History.

This nearly takes up the entire school calendar, leaving scant time for American history - or geography, the subject that Bennish was supposed to be teaching when he went off on Bush and Bush's Amerikkka.

After 9/11, the NEA posted guidelines on how teachers should discuss the terrorist attack. It was filled with multicultural psychobabble and stressed the need for children to be tolerant and to respect all cultures - while hardly saying a word about the fact that the country was at war with a vicious enemy out to destroy our tolerant society.

The document came so close to whitewashing the 9/11 attack that a public outcry ensued, and the union removed the teacher guidelines from its Web site.

NEA-AFFILIATED teacher groups such as the National Council of the Social Studies and the National Council of Teachers of English carry on the political struggle by training teachers to focus inordinate attention in the classroom on issues of "diversity."

The NCSS denounces academic history - which some of its leaders have disparaged as "pastology" - as elitist and irrelevant. The organization has successfully lobbied state education departments to require little or no history. Instead, it has filled the schools with a hodgepodge of "global studies," "cultural studies" and "peace studies" that present all cultures and civilizations as equal in value.

If NCSS had its way, American education's entire system would reflect a race- and gender-centered pedagogy. The organization's official policy paper, "Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education," is one of the scariest documents in American education today, going far beyond the demand that social studies curricula reflect the grievances of a rainbow coalition of ethnic and racial groups.

In the tone of a commissar's lecture at a political re-education camp, the NCSS exhorts teachers, administrators and other school employees to think and act multiculturally during every moment of the school day, lest they become accomplices of American culture's invisible-but-omnipresent racism. Teachers are instructed to scrutinize every aspect of the school environment - from classroom teaching styles and the pictures on the walls to the foods served in the lunchroom and the songs sung in the school assemblies - to be sure they reflect "multicultural literacy."

Yet more evidence to support my decision to send my son to Catholic schools.

Publik Skool updayte: drivers ed for blind students

In Chicago the dead can vote and the blind have to take drivers ed.

Mayra Ramirez scored an A in driver's education this year, but sitting through the 10-week class felt like a bad joke to the Curie Metropolitan High School sophomore.

Ramirez is blind. She knows she's never going to drive. She can think of a lot of things she'd rather be studying than rules of the road, but she didn't have a choice.

Chicago Public Schools requires all sophomores to take the class and pass a written road-rules exam--a graduation requirement that affects about 30 blind and visually impaired students in specialized programs at Curie and Payton College Preparatory High.

"In other classes, you don't really feel different because you can do the work other people do," said Ramirez, 16. "But in driver's ed, it does give us the feeling we're different. In a way, it brought me down, because it reminds me of something I can't do."

State law requires that all districts offer driver's education, but does not mandate it as a graduation requirement. For the hundreds of high schools that do, there should be some exemption option for disabled students who cannot drive, a state education official said.

"It defies logic to require blind students to take this course ... and waste their academic time," said Meta Minton, spokeswoman for the Illinois State Board of Education.

Chicago's public schools have no such exemption. That is something the Curie and Payton students are pushing to change, through an advocacy program at the Blind Service Association.

District officials said Thursday that they would be willing to consider a change in the policy and give students the opportunity to earn credits in another course.

By law, any parent can ask for a change in a disabled student's individualized education plan, or IEP, which could exempt a student from driver's education as a graduation requirement. But this option is rarely, if ever, outlined to blind students in Chicago, who are told that they have to take the class if they want to graduate, students and teachers said.

"I can't explain why up to this point no one has raised the issue and suggested a better way for visually impaired students to opt out of driver's ed," said school system spokesman Michael Vaughn. "They have to make a really strong case for modifying their IEP because we want the students to take a full course load. But [blindness] ... is a compelling reason."

The advocacy project surfaced last month, when mentor Mazen Istanbouli asked the students if there was any cause they would like to champion in their community or school. Nearly every teen mentioned something about the driver's ed class--a requirement that floored the adults who work routinely with blind teens. Although some suspected money might be a motivation in the policy, that doesn't look likely; school districts only get about $30 from the state for each student who completes the classroom portion of driver's education. Chicago doesn't offer behind-the-wheel driver training or simulators.

No corned beef for you

In my old stomping grounds of Harrisburg, the bishop tells the Irish: no corned beef for you on St Patricks Day.

Irish Catholics in the midstate will be making a little extra sacrifice this Lent -- no corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day.

In a relatively rare confluence of events, March 17 this year falls on a Friday during Lent, when Roman Catholics abstain from eating meat.

Although the man who was bishop of Ireland in the fifth century is the patron saint of the Harrisburg Diocese, the feast day in his memory seems to carry no extra weight with Harrisburg Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades.

Rhoades is one of only two bishops in Pennsylvania's eight dioceses -- Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl is the other -- who has not granted a general dispensation from the no-meat rule on that day.

"There are very few days of the year when Catholics are asked to abstain from meat," said Harrisburg Diocese spokesman Joseph Aponick. "The bishop is not opposed to granting dispensations in specific cases."

So far, that hasn't been necessary. Aponick said there have been a few requests for dispensations for special events, but the organizations involved were able to reschedule for another day.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians corned beef and cabbage dinner will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on March 16 at the Cathedral Parish of St. Patrick in Harrisburg, and Seven Sorrows BVM Parish in Middletown will hold its St. Patrick's Day party from 7:30 p.m. to midnight March 18.

No one on the diocesan staff can remember Rhoades' predecessor, the late Bishop Nicholas Datillo, granting such a dispensation when St. Patrick's Day occurred on a Lenten Friday during his tenure, Aponick said.

Then again, Datillo wasn't exactly Irish. Rhoades was not available for comment yesterday, but there were unconfirmed reports that he might be a wee bit Irish.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, has granted a dispensation on St. Patrick's Day in the Philadelphia diocese. Also relaxing the no-meat rule on that day are Bishop Edward P. Cullen of the Allentown Diocese, Bishop Joseph F. Martino of the Scranton Diocese, Bishop Donald W. Trautman of the Erie Diocese, Bishop Joseph V. Adamec of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese and Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt of the Greensburg Diocese.

Not all the news from the diocese is bad for midstate Irish Catholics. "I don't think we have anything against green beer," Aponick said.

Redding up Pittsburgh

I post this article just because it has one of my favorite slang terms from back home: mayor plans to redd up Pittsburgh.

The campaign to "redd up" Pittsburgh became official yesterday, as Mayor Bob O'Connor ordered building inspectors to enforce codes, raze buildings and tow abandoned cars, even if the law applies the brakes.

The campaign was welcomed on Tioga Street in Homewood, where a community group has been fighting the tide of debris lot by lot, but needs the city's help.

"If you change the environment, you change the behavior," said Dianne Swan, executive director of the Rosedale Block Cluster, as she stood in front of a trashed house with an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle in the back and the site of a September slaying in front.

Mr. O'Connor gathered the 72 employees of the Bureau of Building Inspection at their Downtown office to prepare them for a 16-week effort to improve the city's appearance in time for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

He made it clear that effort will go beyond Downtown and the North Shore, and isn't about banners and fresh paint.

Abandoned cars have to go, he said. Told that many cars sit rusting on properties for which the owner cannot be found, and that state law bars salvors from scrapping such cars, he urged the inspectors to be bold.

"Why don't we just take a picture of the car, tow it, so if we get sued, we can say, here's what it's worth?" Mr. O'Connor asked.

"Don't be afraid to make a mistake -- as long as it's not a Mercedes Benz. ... [If it's a] $200 car or less, get it out of there."

The Three T's

Religion of Peace^TM Update

From New York, the Imam of the prisons take a big swig of haterade.

The head of Islamic chaplains in the New York City Department of Correction said in a recent speech that the "greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House," Jews control the media, and Muslims are being tortured in Manhattan jails.

The outlandish remarks were made by one of the city's most prominent Islamic leaders, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, the executive director of ministerial services for the city Department of Correction. He spoke at a conference of Islamic leaders in Tucson, Ariz., and was secretly recorded by the counterterrorism organization The Investigative Project.

The recordings capture Abdul-Jalil - speaking at two separate symposiums on Islam in America held by the Muslim Students Association on April 15 and 16 last year - making incendiary charges and espousing extremist views.

Abdul-Jalil, 56, who is also imam of the Masjid Sabur mosque in Harlem, initially denied making the comments - but later admitted to The Post that the tape was most likely accurate and said his words are being "taken out of context."

At one conference session, Abdul-Jalil charged that Muslims jailed after the 9/11 attacks were being tortured in Manhattan, according to the tape.

"They [some Muslim inmates] are not charged with anything, they are not entitled to any rights, they are interrogated. Some of them are literally tortured and we found this in the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in Manhattan. But they literally are torturing people," Abdul-Jalil said.

Abdul-Jalil also accused the Bush administration of being terrorists, according to the tape.

"We have terrorists defining who a terrorist is, but because they have the weight of legitimacy, they get away with it . . . We know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House, without a doubt," he said.

At another session, Abdul-Jalil urged American Muslims to stop allowing "the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us" and said Muslims must be "compassionate with each other" and "hard against the kufr [unbeliever]."

Abdul-Jalil, a Bronx resident who said he converted to Islam while at Attica prison in 1970, participated in interfaith reconciliation efforts after 9/11. He recently took part in an educational ceremony with Gov. Pataki on Martin Luther King Day.

"His comments betray an effort to instill hatred of the United States as the enemy of Islam by making a series of false allegations portraying the U.S. as an evil country," said anti-terror expert Steve Emerson, director of The Investigative Project.

"This is a man who is supposed to be spreading words of reconciliation and moderation as head Islamic chaplain - not inciting followers to believe that the U.S. government and 'Zionists' are plotting a conspiracy of persecution against Muslims," Emerson added.

In two telephone interviews with The Post while ministering to inmates of Rikers Island yesterday, Abdul-Jalil insisted that he was not promoting extremism.

He said he was "offended, as an African-American, that someone would have the audacity to question my citizenship" and love of his country.

Oh yeah, gotta play the race card while hating America and all things not Muslim. Fire this piece of garbage.

George Clooney, boy in the bubble

Peggy Noonan writes of how Clooney - and other members of the Hollywood Elite - have lived life in a bubble.

Which gets us to George Clooney, and his work. George Clooney is Hollywood now. He is charming and beautiful and cool, but he is not Orson Welles. I know that's like saying of an artist that he's no Rembrandt, but bear with me because I have a point that I think is worth making.

Orson Welles was an artist. George Clooney is a fellow who read an article and now wants to tell us the truth, if we can handle it.

More important, Orson Welles had a canny respect for the audience while maintaining a difficult relationship with studio executives, whom he approached as if they were his intellectual and artistic inferiors. George Clooney has a canny respect for the Hollywood establishment, for its executives and agents, and treats his audience as if it were composed of his intellectual and artistic inferiors. (He is not alone in this. He is only this year's example.)

And because they are his inferiors, he must teach them. He must teach them about racial tolerance and speaking truth to power, etc. He must teach them to be brave. And so in his acceptance speech for best supporting actor the other night he instructed the audience about Hollywood's courage in making movies about AIDS, and recognizing the work of Hattie McDaniel with an Oscar.

Was his speech wholly without merit? No. It was a response and not an attack, and it appears to have been impromptu. Mr. Clooney presumably didn't know Jon Stewart would tease the audience for being out of touch, and he wanted to argue that out of touch isn't all bad. Fair enough. It is hard to think on your feet in front of 38 million people, and most of his critics will never try it or have to. (This is a problem with modern media: Only the doer understands the degree of difficulty.)

But Mr. Clooney's remarks were also part of the tinniness of the age, and of modern Hollywood. I don't think he was being disingenuous in suggesting he was himself somewhat heroic. He doesn't even know he's not heroic. He thinks making a movie in 2005 that said McCarthyism was bad is heroic.

How could he think this? Maybe part of the answer is in this: The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they've experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven't experienced life; they've experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.

Most Americans aren't leading media, they're leading lives. It would be nice to see a new respect in Hollywood for the lives they live. It would be nice to see them start to understand that rediscovering the work of, say, C.S. Lewis, and making a Narnia film, is not "giving in" to the audience but serving it. It isn't bad to look for and present good material that is known to have a following. It's a smart thing to do. It's why David O. Selznick bought "Gone With the Wind": People were reading it. It was his decision to make it into a movie from which he would profit that gave Hattie McDaniel her great role. Taboos are broken by markets, not poses.

Unions against national security

Yep, unions are screwing up things for everyone else again, although this time it is at the Pentagon.

In drafting the U.S. Constitution, the Founders entrusted national security largely to the President. But to protect the Republic today, the executive branch must first comply with something James Madison never imagined--union work rules.

In a decision last week, Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with union plaintiffs and tossed out the Pentagon's new personnel system, which the Defense Secretary and White House say they need to safeguard the nation. His decision comes after Judge Rosemary Collyer threw out a similar personnel system at the Department of Homeland Security in August. (That case is under appeal.) The danger here is that the collective bargaining rights of 650,000 civilian workers will trump the collective right we all have to a military organized to confront 21st-century threats.

Five years ago Donald Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon to find that its personnel system was even more outdated than GM's. He was forced to negotiate with some 1,300 unions and operate under rules that rewarded seniority over initiative and prevented managers from redirecting civilian workers to more pressing assignments.

This is especially dangerous in wartime, when the Defense Department is forced to put uniformed troops in administrative jobs that need to be filled quickly even though they might be put to better use in Iraq or elsewhere. Not so incidentally, this also encourages the best civilian employees to quit for private-sector jobs that will pay them better. So the Administration pushed for basing pay on performance, allowing the Pentagon to shift employees to meet emerging threats and allowing the new rules to go into effect even if the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions didn't agree to them.

Congress passed legislation in 2003 calling for a "flexible" and "contemporary" personnel system. But thanks in large part to Republican Senators Susan Collins (Maine) and George Voinovich (Ohio), the bill also said that employees were allowed to "bargain collectively" through their unions. It was on this hook that Judge Sullivan hung his decision, arguing that the new regulations would undermine agreements with union officials. So the Defense Department can have a new personnel system, but only if it's identical to the old system.

Damn those RINO's, I'm still laughing at Voinovich crying like a little girl over the John Bolton nomination. Too bad Bush doesn't have the spine to just declare via Executive Order that it's war, and screw the unions.

The dems aren't shoo-ins to take the house

Real Clear Politics shows that the dems chances of taking the House aren't as great as the media portrays.

As it stands, the Republicans have 17 open seats to defend. The Democrats have 9. Historically speaking, with an economy as strong as today’s, and the party of the President having to defend 8 more open seats than the opposition, we can expect the Republicans to lose about 9 net seats. My sense is that the final figure will be slightly lower than that. The reason for this is that this estimate takes into account the quantity, but not the quality, of open seats in play. In 2006, the quality of Republican open seats is very poor from the Democrats’ perspective. Consider the following:

· Of the 17 open Republican seat districts, Bush won 15 in 2000 and 2004.

· Bush’s median percentage of the vote in 2000 in all 17 was 55%. In 2004 it was 57%

· Of the 17 open Republican seats, Bush increased his percentage of the total vote by an average of 3% between 2000 and 2004.

· The median Cook Partisan Voting Index of these 17 districts is Republican +5. In other words, the median district of these 17 tends to vote Republican 5% more than the nation.

Simply stated, Democrats are not salivating at this set of 17. These are not the sorts of districts that have shifted against Bush and the GOP enough to give the Democrats a real shot. Sure, there are a few among these – CO 07, IA 01 – that will probably switch to the Democrats because the seats are open. And IL 06 might be a nail-biter for the GOP. Nevertheless, these types of open seats are very dissimilar to the type of open seats the Democrats had to defend in 1994. The Democrats had many more open seats that year. And, furthermore, the quality of those open seats was much more amenable to GOP gains. In 1994, Republicans won Democratic open seats in conservative districts. It is unlikely that the Democrats will win Republican open seats in conservative districts.

An awesome letter to the editor

I wonder if this 17 attends private school, the public schools don't seem capable of producing a 17 year old this smart.

Because I am 17 years old, some people might say that I am not mature enough to understand many issues. However, let me just say that I get more laughs reading the opinion page than I ever have from the comics.

Delawareans seem to be fixated on bashing President Bush and proposing new conspiracy theories whenever they seem convenient.

President Bush did not cause Hurricane Katrina or the complications afterwards. New Orleans was built below sea level so they should have seen it coming and made preparations themselves.

If Dick Cheney shoots someone by accident on his own time, it is none of your business and neither he nor the president has any obligation to tell you about it.

Finally, it seems unreasonable to me that Bush was able to graduate from Yale University, be elected governor of Texas, and earn the respect and confidence of enough of his peers in the Republican Party to be nominated as their presidential candidate if he is indeed as dim-witted as you say.

I am willing to wager that the majority of Delawareans who get their information from this sorry excuse for a newspaper have barely enough brainpower to govern their own lives, let alone governing a nation of almost 300 million.

Bradley Lehman, Hockessin

Political Correctness in Soccer

Houston has a new MLS franchise and was going to name it the 1836, but nooooooooo, that offended some Mexicans.

The MLS renamed its Houston franchise the Dynamo on Monday, dropping another nickname deemed offensive by many Hispanics.

The franchise was nicknamed Houston 1836 in reference to the city's founding. Some critics felt the name was anti-Mexican because that was also the year Texas gained its independence by defeating Mexico.

The franchise moved from San Jose in December.

"After it was clear we'd hit a raw nerve in the community, we didn't want to offend anybody," team president Oliver Luck said. "We had a short list of about 15 names to choose from and we came up with this. It's full of vitality, energy and action."

The new nickname refers to the city's links to the energy industry and the Houston Dynamos, a pro soccer team that played in 1984 in the United Soccer League, Luck said. The league folded after one season, but the team played exhibitions for two years after that.

Bite me, y'all lost that war. Remember the Alamo? Texas did, and kicked some Mexican ass. You don't like it, head south back to Mexico. Maybe the New England Patriots should change their name so as not to offend any English-Americans living in Massachusetts.

The teachers' unions are mad at John Stossel

The truth hurts I guess.

Teachers unions are mad at me. The New York State United Teachers demands I apologize for my "gutter level" journalism, "an irresponsible assault on public school students and teachers." This is because I hosted an ABC News TV special titled "Stupid in America," which pointed out:

American fourth graders do well on international tests, but by high school, Americans have fallen behind kids in most other countries.

The constant refrain that "public schools need more money" is nonsense. Many countries that spend significantly less on education do better than we do. School spending in America (adjusted for inflation) has more than tripled over the past 30 years, but national test scores are flat. The average per-pupil cost today is an astonishing $10,000 per student — $200,000 per classroom! Think about how many teachers you could hire, and how much better you could do with that amount of money.

Most American parents give their kids' schools an A or B grade, but that's only because, without market competition, they don't know what they might have had. The educators who conduct the international tests say that most of the countries that do best are those that give school managers autonomy, and give parents and students the right to choose their schools. Competition forces private and public schools to improve.

There is little K-12 education competition in America because public schools are a government monopoly. Monopolies rarely innovate, and union-dominated monopolies, burdened with contracts filled with a hundred pages of suffocating rules, are worse. The head of New York City's schools told me that the union's rules "reward mediocrity."

All that angered the unions. But when they criticize my "bias and ignorance," I don't hear them refute the points listed above. They don't refute them because they can't. It's just a fact that rules that insist an energetic, hard-working teacher who makes learning fun must be paid exactly the same as a lazy, incompetent teacher are rules that promote mediocrity.

I'm sorry that union teachers are mad at me. But when it comes to the union-dominated monopoly, the facts are inescapable. Many kids are miserable in bad schools. If they are not rich enough to move, or to pay for private school, they are trapped.

It doesn't have to be that way. We know what works: choice. That's what's brought Americans better computers, phones, movies, music, supermarkets — most everything we have. Schoolchildren deserve the joyous benefits of market competition too.

Unions say, "education of the children is too important to be left to the vagaries of the market." The opposite is true. Education is too important to be left to the calcified union/government monopoly.

Iraqi terrorist weapons: made in Iran

The mad mullahs are doing more than rattling their sabers, they are arming the insurgents.

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."

U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is using the bombs as a way to drive up U.S. casualties in Iraq but without provoking a direct confrontation.

John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 2, saying, "Tehran's intention to inflict pain on the United States and Iraq has been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it."

The U.S. Army has embarked on a crash effort to find ways to stop the bombs, according to an unclassified report issued last month. The devices are easily hidden and detonated by motion detectors — like those used in garden security lights — that cannot be jammed.

When exploded, the copper disc becomes a molten liquid bullet that can penetrate the thickest armor the United States has.

"They penetrate the armor of an M1 Abrams tank," Clarke says. "They're shape charges. They go through anything, and they are very lethal."

There is currently no real defense against the weapons, he says.

"The Pentagon has a major crash study under way to figure out how to stop them," Clarke says, "but they haven't figured it out yet."

Courts taking away more freedom

As the brother of a police officer and the parent of a small boy, I'm as against drugs as anyone. However, I don't want the courts taking away our freedoms as they fight the war on drugs.

Cash with far higher-than-normal trace levels of cocaine can be seized as illegal drug proceeds after vehicles are pulled over for speeding, a divided state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The 4-3 Commonwealth Court decision concerned the seizure of $451,000 during separate vehicle stops by state police on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 2002 and 2004 in which no drugs or paraphernalia were found and no criminal charges were filed.

The majority opinion by Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt said the amount of money, the way it was bundled, the volume of drugs on the bills and suspicions about the stories told by the vehicle occupants all helped link the money to drug trafficking.

A dissenting judge, Rochelle S. Friedman, called the ion-scan test that was used to detect cocaine traces on the bills "nothing more than junk science" as it was performed in the two cases.

The first case involved Dien Vy Phung, who said the $310,000 found in the trunk of the rental car he was driving in Somerset County on April 4, 2002, had come from several sources, including his plastics-factory job in Canada, and that he planned to use it to buy a Pittsburgh nail salon.

His lawyers argued that the money could have been contaminated by a bank's currency counter used before the ion-scan test was conducted. Friedman noted that not all the samples from Phung's cash tested above the "casual contact" level.

Most of the money seized in drug investigations is split between the agency that made the seizure and the agency that conducted the prosecution, according to the state police's Drug Law Enforcement Division.

Gregory Pagano, Keese's lawyer, said ion-scan tests don't reveal anything about the source of the money. He plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

"I have a lot of people who come to my office, who hire me in cases, where they may not have legitimate income," he said. "Do I need to test their cash before I take it? How about some guy that owns a pizza shop in some drug infested neighborhood? It's a slippery slope."

I want to luck up drug dealers, but I don't like innocent people getting swept up in this. I fear especially for immigrants that don't use banks, such as immigrant shop keepers in bad neighborhoods.

People who need spellcheck are the luckiest people....

Seems Babs on her website BarbraStreisand.com has some real difficulties in spelling her rants correctly.

A woman whose various views range all the way from far left to, um, even farther left regularly spells them out at her Web site, barbrastreisand.com.

Though "spell" might not be precisely the correct word.

As The Drudge Report notes, Streisand's latest anti-Bush rant features 11 misspelled words, including "Irag," "curruption," "subpoening," "desperatly" and "warrented." A sample: "The arrogance of this C student who maligns his opponents' crediblity [sic] by calling them flip floppers . . ."

Oh, those arrogant C students!

This is not the first time one of her missives was found to be riddled with poor spelling - though 11 errors may represent a personal best.

After the news got out, Streisand's people (who are the most beleaguered people) quickly raced to correct the typos.

"Responsibilty" (as Babs spells it) got pinned on the firm that hosts the site. (She's got nothing to be guilty of, as the song goes.)

None of this is of great consequence - and even then it matters mostly as a matter of local pride.

Streisand is a product of Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School - graduating back when, according to legend, it was churning out top scholars.

And, to be charitable, one "C" speller.

Shaking the dust and leaving ECUSA

USA TODAY had an article last week about my friend Bobby's parish that has left ECUSA to align with the Anglican church of Rwanda. Here is the link to the story.

Each Sunday before beginning the main service at Grace Church in Orange Park, Fla., the Rev. Sam Pascoe tells the assembled congregation that after 125 years, the church they worship in is no longer part of the American Episcopal Church.

On the first of the year, Pascoe and most of his 350-member congregation left one of the oldest and wealthiest U.S. denominations and joined the Episcopal Church of Rwanda, a poor, genocide-scarred African nation 7,600 miles away.

The hymns are the same, the prayer book is the same, and the U.S. and Rwandan churches are both branches of the worldwide Anglican Communion, headquartered in England and led by the archbishop of Canterbury. But the U.S. church accepts openly gay priests and bishops, and the Rwandan church, like Grace, emphatically does not.

The congregation of Grace Church is one of more than three dozen across the country that have left the Episcopal Church USA since it approved in 2003 the election of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, who has a same-sex partner.

Pascoe and his flock joined the Diocese of Rwanda, which has been recruiting unhappy Episcopalian parishes since 2000. The Anglican Mission in America, a branch of the Rwandan church, claims 87 congregations, of which half were once members of the U.S. Episcopal Church, mission spokesman Jay Greener says.

Other U.S. congregations have joined Anglican dioceses in Uganda, Brazil and Bolivia.

By Easter, April 16, Grace's congregation will have to leave its church building and worship elsewhere. Pascoe will ultimately be defrocked, says Canon Kurt Dunkle of the Diocese of Florida, to which Grace Church belongs. The U.S. church does not recognize the authority of overseas bishops to oversee U.S. parishes.

"It makes me extremely, extremely sad" to leave the church building, says Sue Chatfield, a nurse who is a 15-year parish member. Her three daughters were baptized at Grace Church. "I would like them to be married there," she says. "But that's the price" of remaining true to her faith, she says.

Chatfield says the Episcopal Church is going against biblical teachings by appointing a gay man to lead the church. "You're saying that's not really what it says in the Bible," she says. "I and our church believe that the Bible is literal and true and live by it."

As a result of the split, a bishop appointed by Archbishop Emanuel Kolini of Rwanda, instead of the Rev. Samuel Howard, the bishop of Florida, will visit Pascoe's flock once a year to perform the sacrament of confirmation for teenagers. The money from the collection plate that once went to the Diocese of Florida — about $100,000 a year — will go to Rwanda instead.

They had enough of the Episcopal church picking its beliefs from societal zeitgeist, something this clown from the worst diocese in ECUSA doesn't understand:

"In 50 years, this will blow over, and there will be attempts to reconcile," says the Rev. Bill Coats, a pastoral associate in the Diocese of Newark, N.J., which was one of the first to accept gay clergy. "The whole country is changing on the subject of gays and lesbians. You can't have Brokeback Mountain (a successful movie about gay cowboys) and think that America has not been shifting on this."

Hint: Brokeback wasn't that successful, and the whole country isn't changing as much as he thinks it is, witness the staunch opposition to gay marriages. He sounds like that woman in 1972 who was amazed that Nixon won reelection as she "didn't know anyone that voted for him", despite Nixon winning one of the biggest landslides in US history.

Bill Clinton: Dubai lobbyist

Bill and Hillary have some disclosure problems since Bill gets some hefty paychecks from Dubai.

IS Bill Clinton serving as a lobbyist and public-rela tions guru to the govern ment of Dubai? It sure looks like it.

Note, too, that he's been paid a pretty penny by Dubai's rulers - including some profit (amount not disclosed) off business relationships that include Dubai's crown prince.

The whole affair raises disclosure questions for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, too. While publicly opposing the port deal, she privately benefits from her husband's Dubai-related income.

Published reports indicate that that Clinton has been directly advising top Dubai officials over the past two weeks on how to overcome negative public opinion and congressional resistance to the takeover of six U.S. ports by DP World - which is owned by a Dubai government holding company.

A Clinton spokesman says it was Bill himself who suggested to Dubai leaders that they propose a 45-day delay to allow for investigation of the port deal. (Columnist Robert Novak also reports that the ex-prez pushed them to hire his former press secretary to spin the port story, but Dubai declined.)

Should an ex-president be devising a strategy to help a foreign government deal with Congress on a sensitive political issue? It's certainly not a routine undertaking for a former commander-in-chief.

Clinton's spokesman brushed it off as just another example of world leaders regularly seeking out his advice. But - given the combination of Clinton's role in devising the Dubai strategy, his personal financial connections, and his frequent public statements in praise of Dubai - he probably should register as am agent of a foreign government.

Why should he register? Because Congress and the public deserve to know whether Clinton has a personal bias in favor of Dubai when he issues seemingly neutral public statements. Bill Clinton is undeniably influential; his listeners should have full information to assess his credibility here.

The public purpose behind the foreign-agent registration law, after all, is to make sure that we can distinguish between propaganda and information - especially, to know when statements are coming from someone who's acting in a public-relations capacity, paid or not.

For the past week, while traveling around the globe, Clinton has repeatedly gone out of his way to inject himself into the Dubai controversy. And in every instance, Clinton had high praises for the Arab nation that was home to two of the 9/11 hijackers and the place where $100,000 was wired to lead hijacker Mohammad Atta. "I have a very high opinion of the UAE and Dubai in particular," he parroted from India to Australia, citing the country as a "good ally."

He may well be right - but now his admiration and advocacy for Dubai may have been motivated by more than that of a selfless statesman trying to remain a voice of reason amidst the political fracas.

What are Clinton's major personal financial dealings with Dubai? Plenty's been written about his $300,000 fee for a 2002 speech; a more recent talk likely yielded the same amount. Dubai also contributed handsomely to the Clinton Presidential Library, and to the William Jefferson Clinton Scholars Program at the American University in Dubai.

Bill also works for a company that has formed a partnership with the Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoun.

Back in 2002, the Yucaipa Co. LLC hired the former president as a "senior adviser." He won't say how much that pays; Hillary's disclosure forms only put it at "more than $1,000" a year. A company lawyer recently disclosed that he gets a percentage of profits, if they're above 9 percent -and also says the firm's been averaging about a 40 percent.

And Yucaipa last year with the Dubai Investment Group to create a new U.S. company: DIGL Inc, with, which invests the private funds of the Crown Prince. So Bill and Yucaipa have a big stake in keeping a positive image for the Dubai royals and their many companies.

The public deserves full disclosure on how his Dubai relationships effect his public statements - and how, if at all, his Dubai income influences the positions of a U.S. senator.

An Oscar for Osama

George Clooney won best supporting actor for Syriana, a movie that Charles Krauthammer says "Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction."

Nothing tells you more about Hollywood than what it chooses to honor. Nominated for best foreign-language film is "Paradise Now," a sympathetic portrayal of two suicide bombers. Nominated for best picture is "Munich," a sympathetic portrayal of yesterday's fashion in barbarism: homicide terrorism.

But until you see "Syriana," nominated for best screenplay (and George Clooney, for best supporting actor) you have no idea how self-flagellation and self-loathing pass for complexity and moral seriousness in Hollywood.

The "Syriana" script has, of course, the classic liberal tropes such as this stage direction: "The Deputy National Security Advisor, MARILYN RICHARDS, 40's, sculpted hair, with the soul of a seventy year-old white, Republican male, is in charge" (Page 21). Or this piece of over-the-top, Gordon Gekko Republican-speak, placed in the mouth of a Texas oilman: "Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm. . . . Corruption . . . is how we win" (Page 93).


In my naivete, I used to think that Hollywood had achieved its nadir with Oliver Stone's "JFK," a film that taught a generation of Americans that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and the FBI in collaboration with Lyndon Johnson. But at least it was for domestic consumption, an internal affair of only marginal interest to other countries. "Syriana," however, is meant for export, carrying the most vicious and pernicious mendacities about America to a receptive world.

Most liberalism is angst- and guilt-ridden, seeing moral equivalence everywhere. "Syriana" is of a different species entirely -- a pathological variety that burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.

Dude, where's my civil war?

Ralph Peters, a former intelligence officer turned columnist, is in Iraq and wondering "Dude, where's my civil war?"

I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.

And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.

Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.

All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.

And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.

Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that?

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.

Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops.

And we didn't just drive past them. First Lt. Clenn Frost, the platoon leader, took every opportunity to dismount and mingle with the people. Women brought their children out of their compound gates to say hello. A local sheik spontaneously invited us into his garden for colas and sesame biscuits.

It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs.

Help's on the way, if slowly. The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree. The Iraqi police aren't all the way there yet, and the population doesn't yet have much confidence in them. But all of this takes time.

And even the police are making progress. We took a team of them with us so they could train beside our troops. We visited a Public Order Battalion - a gendarmerie outfit - that reeked of sloth and carelessness. But the regular Iraqi Police outfit down the road proved surprisingly enthusiastic and professional. It's just an uneven, difficult, frustrating process.

So what did I learn from a day in the dust and muck of Baghdad's less-desirable boroughs? As the long winter twilight faded into haze and the fires of the busy shawarma stands blazed in the fresh night, I felt that Iraq was headed, however awkwardly, in the right direction.

The country may still see a civil war one day. But not just yet, thanks. Violence continues. A roadside bomb was found in the next sector to the west. There will be more deaths, including some of our own troops. But Baghdad's vibrant life has not been killed. And the people of Iraq just might surprise us all.

So why were we told that Iraq was irreversibly in the throes of civil war when it wasn't remotely true? I think the answers are straightforward. First, of course, some parties in the West are anxious to believe the worst about Iraq. They've staked their reputations on Iraq's failure.

But there's no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook - or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad - working for "prestigious" publications - aren't out on the city streets the way they pretend to be.

They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.

And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.

And some of them have agendas of their own.

A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news?

I doubt it.

If reporters really care, it's easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment - and other great military units - will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there's the danger of becoming infected with patriot- ism . . .)

I'm just afraid that some of our journalists don't want to know the truth anymore.

For me, though, memories of Baghdad will be the cannoneers of the 1st Platoon walking the dusty, reeking alleys of Baghdad. I'll recall 1st Lt. Frost conducting diplomacy with the locals and leading his men through a date-palm grove in a search for insurgent mortar sites.

I'll remember that lieutenant investigating the murder of a Sunni mullah during last week's disturbances, cracking down on black-marketers, checking up on sewer construction, reassuring citizens - and generally doing the job of a lieutenant-colonel in peacetime.

Oh, and I'll remember those "radical Shias" cheering our patrol as we passed by.

Yet another reason to send your kids to private school

A NJ high school class is conducting a war crimes trial of President Bush.

A mock war crimes trial of President George W. Bush at a Parsippany high school continued Friday, despite criticism from people across the nation who heard about the classroom exercise from a prominent Web site and talk-radio programs.

Parsippany-Troy Hills School District interim superintendent James Dwyer said the hearing in the 12th grade politics and government class would continue, but a verdict by a five-teacher "international court of justice" panel would not be rendered as originally planned.

Speaking after a two-hour meeting with school board president, the high school principal and a curriculum superintendent, Dwyer said Friday the project was in keeping with the district's curriculum and had received prior administrative approval.

The class is an advanced placement elective, he said, and the lesson explores current events and foreign policy in an interactive way.

"The focus is on the process itself, not on any outcome," Dwyer said.

Phone messages left at Parsippany High School for the course's instructor, Joseph Kyle, were not immediately returned Friday. Dwyer said Kyle has taught with the district for eight years.

Religion of Peace Update^TM: Chapel Hill

Seems that the hit and run that killed 3 students at The University of North Carolina may have been the work of a militant Muslim.

Authorities planned to charge a former University of North Carolina student with attempted murder after he allegedly drove a sport utility vehicle through a popular gathering spot on campus Friday, clipping and scattering startled bystanders.

No one was seriously hurt.

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, who graduated in December after studying psychology and philosophy, was in the custody of campus police. They intended to charge him with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, said police Capt. George Hare.

Taheri-azar called police to surrender and then awaited officers on a street two miles from the campus, authorities said.

The FBI joined the case because Taheri-azar, a native of Iran, "allegedly made statements that he acted to avenge the American treatment of Muslims," said agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington. "The ongoing investigation will work to confirm this."

Local investigators declined to discuss a motive.

The incident happened just before noon near the center of campus in an area known as The Pit, a sunken, brick-paved area surrounded by two libraries, a dining hall and the student union.

"I see everyone kind of part because there's a car coming through, and the next thing I know, I'm on his windshield," sophomore Jeff Hoffman, his arm in a bandage, told The Daily Tar Heel, the campus newspaper.

The Pit is a center of campus activities, with students perched along walkways and steps. Friday's noontime crowd included candidates for Black Student Movement elections.

"He slowly came in, and I thought he was going to stop or something," sophomore Scott Wilson, a candidate, told the newspaper. "But then he sped right through."

Five students and a visiting scholar were treated at UNC Hospitals for minor injuries. Five were released, and the sixth person was not expected to be admitted to the hospital, the university said in a statement.

Three other people declined treatment at the scene, police said.

A bomb squad searched Taheri-azar's apartment in nearby Carrboro and declared the building safe. Taheri-azar encouraged authorities to check the apartment after he was arrested.

"He said it almost in a baiting type of way," Carrboro police spokesman Capt. Joel Booker said.

The bloody borders of the Reigion of Peace^TM

Here is a website that details the atrocities being committed in the name of Allah. It seems everyone that lives near an Islamic nation, if they are not Muslim, is in a heap of trouble. Orthodox Serbs, Catholics in the Phillipines, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India - all of their lives are in danger from the fanatical Islamofascists.

Life and Limb

Black flight from bad schools+

Minnesota is showing why teachers' unions are afraid of school choice.

Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.

As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing both raw numbers of students and "market share." In 1999-2000, district enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it's about 38,600. Enrollment projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of families moving into the district accounts for part of the loss, as does the relocation of some minority families to inner-ring suburbs. Nevertheless, enrollments are relatively stable in the leafy, well-to-do enclave of southwest Minneapolis and the city's white ethnic northeast. But in 2003-04, black enrollment was down 7.8%, or 1,565 students. In 2004-05, black enrollment dropped another 6%.

Black parents have good reasons to look elsewhere. Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state's basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. The black graduation rate hovers around 50%, and the district's racial achievement gap remains distressingly wide. Louis King, a black leader who served on the Minneapolis School Board from 1996 to 2000, puts it bluntly: "Today, I can't recommend in good conscience that an African-American family send their children to the Minneapolis public schools. The facts are irrefutable: These schools are not preparing our children to compete in the world." Mr. King's advice? "The best way to get attention is not to protest, but to shop somewhere else."

They can do so because of the state's longstanding commitment to school choice. In 1990 Minnesota allowed students to cross district boundaries to enroll in any district with open seats. Two years later in St. Paul, the country's first charter school opened its doors. (Charter schools are started by parents, teachers or community groups. They operate free from burdensome regulations, but are publicly funded and accountable.) Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.

While about 1,620 low-income Minneapolis students attend suburban public schools, most of the fleeing minority and low-income students choose charter schools. Five years ago, 1,750 Minneapolis students attended charters; today 5,600 do. In 2000-01, 788 charter students were black; today 3,632 are. Charters are opening in the city at a record pace: up from 23 last year to 28, with 12 or so more in the pipeline.

Black leaders like Louis King have had enough. He has a message for the school board: "You'll have to make big changes to get us back." He says the district needs a board that views families as customers and understands that competition has unalterably changed the rules of the game. "I'm a strong believer in public education," says Mr. King. "But this district's leaders have to make big changes or go out of business. If they don't, we'll see them in a museum, like the dinosaurs."

Minneapolis families seeking to escape troubled schools are fortunate to have the options they do. That's not the case in many other states, where artificial barriers--from enrollment caps to severe underfunding--have stymied the growth of charter schools.

The city's experience should lead such states to reconsider the benefits of expansive school choice. Conventional wisdom holds that middle-class parents take an interest in their children's education, while low-income and minority parents lack the drive and savvy necessary. The black exodus here demonstrates that, when the walls are torn down, poor, black parents will do what it takes to find the best schools for their kids.

Left and right need to work on freeing us from oil.

Dick Morris makes a great point that the left and the right need to work on freeing us from oil dependence.

OUR dependence on foreign oil now hurts more than ever. It's far harder to to stop Tehran from getting the bomb when we need Iran's oil. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, meanwhile, is using our oil money to turn a continent against us. And, of course, oil money funds terrorism, too.

The problem's not news — nor are the proposed solutions. The left has long supported alternative fuel sources, conservation, non-polluting natural gas and ethanol fuels — while the right has backed nuclear power, off-shore and Alaskan oil drilling and greater use of coal.

And each side blocked the other's answers.

In a gentler time, it was normal for each polarized camp to reject the solutions of the other. But the stakes have risen to a point where the goal, energy independence, must outweigh these vetos — on both sides. We must say "yes" to any step that can help us rid ourselves of this debilitating dependence on our worst enemies.

Each side in this ideological war needs to put down its weapons and embrace its own solutions and those offered by the other side. The partisan division over solutions to energy also ignores how technology has advanced since the battle lines were drawn.

Nuclear power is a great example. In the 1970s, we were sold a bill of goods by movies like "The China Syndrome," brought to us by Jane Fonda, that atomic energy was unsafe. Reinforced by Chernobyl in the Soviet Union and the far less destructive Three Mile Island mishap in Pennsylvania, we sharply reined in nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, France plunged ahead with it: Half of that nation's electricity comes from nuclear power plants — without incident or danger. We need to restart the nuclear program.

The right, for its part, has got to stop writing off wind and solar power as silly, and embrace their full use. We should massively and rapidly expand our production of ethanol- and alcohol-based fuels; the auto industry needs to rev up production of the e-85 cars that use these fuels, and only fill their tanks to 15 percent with gasoline.

Two million cars now on the road — largely in the Midwest — run on E-85 fuel. With more such vehicles, and greater fuel-production capacity, a massive conversion can occur.

The left, meanwhile, has got to make its peace with coal. New techniques for capturing carbon dioxide and burying it in the ground so as not to exacerbate climate change have overtaken the political opposition to coal.

And then we come to hydrogen, the ultimate replacement for a carbon-based fuels. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger has converted 25 gas stations to carry hydrogen and will add another 30 by year's end. The hydrogen wll be available on every part of California's interstate system.

The energy required to make hydrogen fuel is dropping with new technology; and it may even be possible to extract hydrogen as part of the processing of agricultural waste and by using landfill gases.

And finally, yes, we do need to drill in the Arctic and off shore. I had long opposed this. But one look at how Iran uses its oil to paralyze our anti-proliferation efforts, or at how Venezuela's Chavez uses his oil and our money to foment anti-U.S. sentiment in Latin America, convinces me that we need to drill where we can. The Bush administration has, thankfully, released 2 million acres for off-shore oil drilling, with no site closer than one hundred miles to Florida beaches.

It is only by a mosaic of steps, some liberal and some conservative that we can end America's oil addiction. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia famously said, "There is no Democratic or Republican way to clean the streets." Let's apply thatthinking to energy independence.

I lived 2 miles from Three Mile Island for almost 4 years, and never worried about it. I'm all for solar and wind and anything else we can do to minimize our dependence on oil from the Chavez and Mullah crowd.

"Brokeback abused sheep"

There's a joke in here somewhere:

The makers of the gay cowboy flick "Brokeback Mountain" were too rough on sheep, an animal-rights group charged yesterday.

In a letter to director Ang Lee, The Humane Society also complained about the way the horses and elk were treated.

"The excessively rough handling of the sheep and horses leaves viewers questioning whether anyone was looking out for the safety of those animals," the letter said.

"And many also wonder how the filmmakers got the elk to lose its footing and crumple to the ground 'on cue' after being shot."

A spokesman for the producer of the Best Picture-nominated movie, Focus Features, had no immediate comment.

Stories from Iraq you WON'T read in the mainstream media

The Army is helping the poorest of the poor in Baghdad.

I rode with Lt.-Col. Joe Gandara, the commander of the Special Troops Battalion of the 4th Infantry Division's 4th "Cobra" Brigade. In two decades of service, Gandara's never faced a tougher job than this one: hands-on oversight of 45 "immediate-impact projects" strewn on both sides of the Tigris River. He does everything from monitoring new construction to struggling to convince Iraqis that maintenance really is important (the Iraqis run the gamut from the risk-your-life dedicated to deadbeats — Gandara sorts out the latter over time).

From top to bottom, Baghdad's culture is broken. It often seems to be every man for himself, and damn the world. Yet, that first impression deceives: More and more Iraqis are stepping up to build a better society.

Saddam didn't just ravage the physical infrastructure — he wrecked the moral infrastructure, too. The recovery will be long and often painful. But the patient wants to get better, something that's easily lost amid skewed headlines.

After inspecting a number of antiquated water-processing plants, where Gandara offered tough love and tools to Iraqi managers (he'll deliver expertise and spare parts, but won't do their work for them), we wrap up the tour at the far western edge of Baghdad, where the dug-in poor live in shanties, and new arrivals huddle in squats.

At the edge of a clotted irrigation ditch, we pull in beside a small compound. As they do at every site, threatening or not, the troops flow smoothly into a defensive posture, making it look far easier than it is. But even before we can set up a hasty perimeter, we're attacked. By a horde of children. Rushing out from the edge of the slum.

I'm no softie for kids; I like 'em best after they hit 30. But these ragged, dirty children even get to me.

Gandara and his men are here to save the children's lives. The "minor" project is a nearly completed "compact sewage-treatment plant." Built from scratch for relative pennies, the plant will drain the sewage that routinely backs up into alleys and homes while further polluting a wretched water supply.

Gandara and his NCOs handle the business end first, inspecting the progress on the site. Then it's the children's turn.

The colonel and his troops take along a bit of candy for the slum kids. More importantly, they hand out school supplies (these children's families can't afford a tablet).

Pens, notebooks, rulers: You'd think we're handing out gold coins. The NCOs are great about making sure the bigger kids don't make off with the bulk of the goods, teasing them a little but putting something into the smallest child's hands.

Of course, those notebooks will be used up and the pens will go dry. It doesn't do to exaggerate the good impression our soldiers might leave behind. That sort of thing can be readily forgotten. What really matters is that new weapon of war, a bare-bones sewage-treatment facility.

We hear no end of tales of failure in Iraq. But because of one small project (and there are hundreds such in Iraq), 10,000 of our fellow human beings won't have to live with sewage in their streets and shanties. That makes a real, human difference. Yes, it might be minor in the great schemes of global strategy. It won't make us loved throughout the Middle East. But America's soldiers make a profound difference in here-and-now lives. How many armies in history could make that claim?

We've all heard plenty about human-rights abuses. What about those 10,000 dirt-poor Iraqis whose children will have a chance to escape disease? The old regime wouldn't spare them a few pipes and pumps. Isn't exposing a child to cholera while building palaces for yourself a human-rights abuse?

By the way: I didn't see any of our self-righteous critics in the Risalah slum.

But I did see Sgt. Maurice Harris, Spec. Victor Tsung and PFC (hey, promote that guy!) Brad Sheets, along with their comrades in arms. They were soldiers to the core, mastering a new type of war. And they were great Americans.

For all the bad news you hear — much of it viciously skewed — Baghdad is a city of hope. And it isn't thanks to Saddam — or to those in the West who opposed a tyrant's overthrow.

Great job, GI!

One more reason I'm glad I'm not Episcopalian anymore



Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, goes to Havana to hang out with ol' Fidel.