Pennsylvanian in exile

The United States and the European Union struck different tones on Saturday on how to respond to Iran's nuclear defiance while insisting they were in full agreement.

Speaking at a transatlantic conference, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said no one was considering military action over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment and Europe did not want to join a "coalition of the willing" against Iran.

Influential U.S. Senator John McCain told the Brussels Forum in a speech on Friday night: "There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

He said the United States would not stand by and let Iran wipe out
Israel, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had called for.

# posted by Duane : 5:10 PM  1 comments

The construction of mosques ought to be financed by interest free loans as an alternative to voluntary contributions from abroad. The counties should take the responsibility to either provide security for these interest free loans or to lend money without interest for the construction of mosques for its Muslim inhabitants. The Swedish state should introduce the term interest free loans and borrowers should have the right to deduct payments on interest free loans from the tax returns on the same grounds as loan interest.

Muslims are in other words demand special treatment in terms of legislation as they are a minority and this would increase their status and protect them from the majority community.

Starting Imam education in Swedish universities and colleges is a demand from the nations Muslims and from Swedish authorities. The education can be created as part theology education, part Native Language (Arabian) education. Students can get permission to function as language and theology [religion] teachers. This education can create a natural integration of Islam in Swedish schools, and reduce the demand for private schools.

# posted by Duane : 3:47 PM  0 comments

into the sunset.

Historians continue to debate who was more responsible for the final collapse of the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan or Mikhail Gorbachev. At The Wall Street Journal, our version of that debate concerns whether to give more credit to the Gipper, or to George Melloan.

We'll concede Reagan tipped the scales with the arms buildup, SDI and the "evil empire" speech. But George--who is retiring this week as a columnist and Deputy Editor of the Editorial Page after 54 years at the Journal--favored Reagan's policies before Reagan and devoted much of his career to reporting on and resisting that totalitarian temptation. Significantly, he arrived in Brussels to edit the Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial pages in 1990, and soon thereafter the Soviet Union collapsed. Coincidence? We doubt it, comrade.

George joined the Journal in 1952, from the Muncie, Indiana, Evening Press, and he's more or less covered everything--the industrial muscle of the American Midwest in Detroit and Cleveland, civil rights and the rise of the new South from Atlanta, finance and the collapse of Bretton Woods from New York and London, the Six-Day War in the Middle East and the Biafran civil war in Nigeria.

In 1970, George joined the editorial page and was former Editor Robert Bartley's wing man as they battled the bad ideas that dominated the 1970s, paving the way for the Reagan reforms on economics and U.S. foreign policy. His memorable columns and editorials include an early warning against Communist attempts to subvert Central America, his defense of Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 (even Reagan criticized Israel), and dozens on the enigma that is Russia.

Dictators everywhere are rejoicing at George's retirement, but we console ourselves that he's taught us most of what we know.

# posted by Duane : 4:50 PM  1 comments

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.

Gas prices have gone above $3 a gallon again, and that means it's time for another round of congressional finger-pointing.

"Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over as president and vice president, gas prices have doubled!" charged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), standing at an Exxon station on Capitol Hill where regular unleaded hit $3.10. "They are too cozy with the oil industry."

She then hopped in a waiting Chrysler LHS (18 mpg) -- even though her Senate office was only a block away.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) used a Hyundai Elantra to take the one-block journey to and from the gas-station news conference. He posed in front of the fuel prices and gave them a thumbs-down. "Get tough on big oil!" he demanded of the Bush administration.

By comparison, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) was a model of conservation. She told a staffer idling in a Jetta to leave without her, then ducked into a sushi restaurant for lunch before making the journey back to work.

At about the same time, House Republicans were meeting in the Capitol for their weekly caucus (Topic A: gas). The House driveway was jammed with cars, many idling, including eight Chevrolet Suburbans (14 mpg).

America may be addicted to oil, as President Bush puts it. But America is in the denial phase of this addiction -- as evidenced by the behavior of its lawmakers. They have proposed all kinds of solutions to high gas prices: taxes on oil companies, domestic oil drilling and releasing petroleum reserves. But they ignore the obvious: that Americans drive too much in too-big cars.

Senators were debating a war spending bill yesterday, but the subject invariably turned to gas prices. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) engaged his deputy, Dick Durbin (Ill.), in a riveting colloquy. "Is the senator aware that the L.A. Times headline reads today, 'Bush's Proposals Viewed as a Drop in the Bucket'?"

"I'm aware of that," Durbin replied.

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) responded with an economics lesson. "Oil is worth what people pay for it," he argued.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) sounded the alarms. "We are one accident or one terrorist attack away from oil at $100 a barrel!"

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) made a plea for conservation. "We have to move quickly to increase our fuel efficiency," she urged.

But not too quickly. After lunchtime votes, senators emerged from the Capitol for the drive across the street to their offices.

Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) hopped in a GMC Yukon (14 mpg). Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) climbed aboard a Nissan Pathfinder (15). Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) stepped into an eight-cylinder Ford Explorer (14). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) disappeared into a Lincoln Town Car (17). Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) met up with an idling Chrysler minivan (18).

Next came Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), greeted by a Ford Explorer XLT. On the Senate floor Tuesday, Menendez had complained that Bush "remains opposed to higher fuel-efficiency standards."

Also waiting: three Suburbans, a Nissan Armada V8, two Cadillacs and a Lexus. The greenest senator was Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who was picked up by his hybrid Toyota Prius (60 mpg), at quadruple the fuel efficiency of his Indiana counterpart Evan Bayh (D), who was met by a Dodge Durango V8 (14).

As a political matter, Democrats clearly sense that they have the advantage on the high gas prices, judging from the number of speeches and news conferences. "The cost of Republican corruption when it comes to energy is hitting home very clearly for America's middle class," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) exulted yesterday morning.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) introduced an amendment to repeal oil-company tax breaks and distribute $500 tax rebates to consumers. It was quickly ruled out of order.

But Republicans were clearly feeling defensive. "We passed an energy bill last year, last July," House Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.) pleaded at a morning news conference. "It changes CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards. It changes some of the things that we can do -- I'm sorry, changes not the CAFE standards, but changes some of the supply issues, boutique fuels, all these things."

Only Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), who can speak freely because he is retiring, was willing to note the disconnect between rhetoric and action. "People say, understandably, 'Solve our energy problems right now, but don't make us do anything differently,' " he said on the Senate floor.

If the politics of gasoline favor Democrats at the moment, the insincerity is universal. A surreptitious look at the cars in the senators-only spots inside and outside the Senate office buildings found an Escort and a Sentra (super-rich Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl's spot had a Chevy Lumina), but far more Jaguars, Cadillacs and Lexuses and a fleet of SUVs made by Ford, Honda, BMW and Lexus.

A sampling of senators' and staff cars parked along Delaware Avenue NE found that those displaying Democratic campaign bumper stickers had a somewhat higher average fuel economy (23 mpg) than those displaying GOP stickers (18 mpg). A fuel-efficiency rating could not be found for the 1970s-era Volkswagen "Thing" owned by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.).

Maybe, lawmakers are starting to learn. When GOP senators had a lunch Tuesday a couple of blocks from the Capitol, many took cars. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) emerged from the lunch looking for his ride when he spied The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray. Reconsidering, he set out on foot. "I need the exercise," he reasoned.

# posted by Duane : 9:49 AM  1 comments

"What do you suppose [they] are in the Congress for, if it ain't to split up the swag?"--Will Rogers

Splitting up the swag ("booty, money, valuables") seems to be what the congressional Republican Party is about.

The Heritage Foundation reported last week that this sixth year of a Republican Presidency and Congress will see government expenditures of $23,760 per household--$6,500 more than when they came to power in 2001 and the highest inflation-adjusted annual spending since World War II. Excluding homeland security, domestic discretionary spending has increased 7.6% per year. Education spending is up 139%; energy spending has doubled, and the Bush Medicare prescription drug bill will add $33 billion a year to federal expenditures.

A Republican House enacted all this spending, a Republican Senate approved almost all of it (Democrats did control the upper chamber for a little under two years in 2001-02), and a Republican president signed it all. Congress has appropriated a cumulative $350 billion more than the president requested in his annual budgets, but none of that additional spending was disapproved by him--indeed, President Bush is the only president since John Quincy Adams (1825-29) never to use his veto power in a full term in office.

One political truth is that when legislators see elected executives taking no action to control spending, they spend and spend. Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the Budget Committee chairman, notes that "emergency spending"--which is not controlled by budget or other spending rules--averaged $22 billion a year in the 1990s and is now up to $100 billion a year. Last year 13,997 earmarks--money for hometown handouts--totaling $27 billion, were approved by Congress. In this year's House budget bill there are 9,963 of them costing $29 billion. The House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, pulled the bill from a floor vote when conservative Republicans demanded that votes be allowed on each earmark. But it will be back, and likely passed without amendment.

Last week's Specter swag grab--a $7 billion addition to domestic spending through an appropriations subcommittee that Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter chairs--was an addition that the senator says was "not sort of a gimmick; it is a gimmick." It was supported by every Democrat and a majority of the 55 Republican senators, which led Sen. Specter to conclude that the Republican party of the 21st Century is "now principally moderate, if not liberal."

Mr. Specter is pretty much on the mark about the Washington world, but he's dead wrong about America's Republicans. The national majority are neither moderate nor liberal but believe in conservative economic values: lower tax rates, controlled spending, and a market- as opposed to government-oriented economy. It is not Republicans who are liberal, it is the current Republican government that is fiscally liberal and the biggest budget-busting federal spenders since the 1960s.

So how can Republicans get their identity back? The current Congress is unlikely to fix itself from the inside--would a Congressional majority ever want to give up authority to do anything?--so it will be up to the American people to fix it from the outside.

First, the president must be persuaded to reduce congressional spending. He must use his rescission authority to force the Congress to vote on rescinding some $15 billion, about the average of what presidents have requested since the rescission process began in the 1970s. The president has proposed one rescission of $2.3 billion, but he must be far more aggressive.

Second, when Congress enacts legislation exceeding the president's requested budget spending levels, he should veto those spending bills. Legislators need to be forcefully reminded that spending requires executive as well as legislative approval.

Third, the president needs line-item veto authority. Most of the states governors have it and use it to control spending, and so should the President. When President Bush recently suggested a line-item veto, Mr. Lewis said the legislative branch of government had the spending power and to give any veto power to the president "could be a very serious error." But the opposite is the case: the line-item veto is a very serious improvement that the president and Republicans should pursue.

Next, Congress needs to clean up its earmark spending process. As a start it should adopt the proposal from Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) that each earmark's sponsor be identified in the text of spending bills, and that a vote be allowed on specific earmark proposals. Congress should also establish term limits for Appropriations Committee members so that the congressional political establishment cannot go on swag-splitting forever.

Then comes the hard part--the long-term solution of a constitutional amendment to control the Congressional spending process. Republicans should launch a constitutional balanced budget amendment effort as they did in 1982, when 32 states (two short of the 34 required) petitioned Congress for a constitutional convention to consider one; the U.S. Senate approved an amendment with the required two-thirds majority; and it failed in the House by 46 votes. There are several substantive choices--the Colorado Taxpayers Bill of Rights that limits spending to inflation plus population growth (with any additional revenue being refunded to the taxpayers) is one; another is the Delaware constitutional requirement that there be a three-fifths vote of the Legislature to approve spending more than 98% of revenue. A constitutional amendment requiring a supermajority congressional vote for spending in excess of revenues would be a substantial step forward.

Finally, there are two alternatives other than expenditure control that would change congressional spending habits. The first is the flat tax. Congress uses our current tax code's 66,000-page complexity to reward some constituents with lower rates and higher deductions, and punish others with the opposite. The flat tax would eliminate such political manipulation, raise government revenues, and save taxpayers much of the $150 billion and six million hours it costs Americans to comply with the current tax code.

Then there is the McCain-Feingold campaign spending law, a significant incumbent-protection device. It violates the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by limiting an individual's right to spend money to elect people he believes in. That makes it much easier for incumbents to get re-elected, no doubt why Congress is so eager to continue expanding its limitations on campaign spending. Repealing it would strengthen freedom of speech, increase congressional turnover, and reduce the seniority monopoly that has enacted the $350 billion in excessive spending.

None of these changes will be easy to accomplish, but a paradigm shift is needed to control spending excesses and restore the economic conservatism that has long been the core of the Republican Party's election victories. The White House has fresh staff leadership this week in Josh Bolten, a good time to begin changing its spending habits. Otherwise the next two elections are going to be the worst of times.

# posted by Duane : 7:27 AM  0 comments

An Oil City woman who was in court Thursday for sentencing was arrested after Franklin police found drug paraphernalia in her purse.

Emily E. Hajduk, 22, of 232 E. Sixth St. was seated in Courtroom II of the Venango County Courthouse when her cell phone rang. The phone rang several more times, and court proceedings were halted as sheriff's deputies searched for it.

"I'm sorry, judge, but this is the fifth time," court crier Duane Simpson said to Judge Oliver J. Lobaugh as deputies combed the courtroom.

Deputies found the telephone in Hajduk's purse, and the woman was removed from the courtroom. Hajduk had been in court to be sentenced for theft by unlawful taking and DUI.

Under court rules, cell phones are not to be turned on in courtrooms. Deputies ask people entering the courtrooms to turn off their cell phones and pagers.

A deputy found various items of drug paraphernalia when he searched Hajduk's purse, and Franklin police were called to the courthouse.

Franklin Lt. Richard Goldsmith, who responded about 11:30 a.m., said a copper pipe made into a crack pipe, a spoon with burn marks and white residue, a needle for injecting drugs and other items were found in the purse.

Hajduk was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.

She was also on house arrest at the time, Goldsmith said.

Hajduk was arraigned before District Judge Robert Boyer on three counts of possession of drug paraphernalia and one count of possession of a controlled substance because of the residue found on some of the items and in the pipe.

She was taken to the Venango County jail on $5,000 bail.

# posted by Duane : 11:44 AM  0 comments

Cop killer Clarence Hill lay strapped to a gurney with IV tubes running into his arms. His executioner awaited word to unleash the cocktail of chemicals that would end his life.

Just yards away, waiting silently in the witness room at Florida State Prison in Starke, sat six relatives of slain Pensacola Police Officer Stephen Taylor, whom Hill fatally shot in 1982. They were joined by reporters and others, all waiting for the brown curtains covering three large plastic windows to open, signaling the start of Hill's execution on Jan. 24.

As the seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into an hour, the only sound was the droning of an air conditioner and the scratching sound of reporters' pencils as they recorded their observations on yellow legal pads. Nothing was happening, which had to mean something was happening behind the scenes.

In Lake City, Hill's attorney D. Todd Doss watched as the clock ticked past 6 p.m., the time Hill was scheduled to die. Hill's family, who had said their tearful last goodbyes to Hill, also waited.

Then the word came - Hill had been granted a last-minute stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the high court will hear Hill's appeals, using his case to clarify how inmates may bring deadline challenges to lethal injection and whether his challenge can be filed as a civil rights action.

How the court rules could decide whether Hill will be executed this summer or whether he will be allowed to challenge Florida's use of lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment - a ruling that could halt executions in Florida and perhaps elsewhere, at least temporarily.

But Carolyn Snurkowski, a death appeals lawyer in Attorney General Charlie Crist's Office, will argue that Hill cannot challenge Florida's method of execution through a civil rights action. She also claims he filed his claim too late. He waited until just before his scheduled execution before attempting to challenge the state's lethal injection system.

"The fact that it was delayed doesn't make it right now," Snurkowski said.

Jack Taylor, the slain officer's older brother, said most of the family is growing weary after 24 years of delays. They want Hill dead and they were angry when his execution was halted.

"It just seems like it doesn't ever stop," Taylor, 61, who lives in Pensacola. "It's gets so aggravating, you make a trip down there to the prison and nothing happens."

"If they want me to, I'd put a bullet in his brain," Taylor said.

"It needs to be done and it needs to be over with," said Linda Knouse, the slain officer's sister.

Both said their 26-year-old brother had decided to leave the police force and return to college and work on an electrical engineering degree when Hill gunned him down following during a robbery at Freedom Savings & Loan in downtown Pensacola.

Steve Taylor and Officer Larry Bailly responded to a silent alarm, capturing Hill's partner, Cliff Jackson, outside the bank. As the officers attempted to handcuff Jackson, Hill approached them from behind, fatally shooting Taylor and wounding Bailly. Officers shot Hill five times. Jackson was sentenced to life in prison. Bailly, who is retired, did not respond to a request for comment made through the Pensacola Police Department.

"Steve meant the world to us," Knouse said. "Jack said, 'It doesn't seem fair. Steve should have been able grow old with us.'"

But Gary Mace, the slain officer's first cousin from Key Largo, was not upset the high court took the case.

"We are willing to see what the courts have to say. I want the Supreme Court to look at this case and make a judicial decision so other won't have to go through what we went through," Mace said.

"It's not going to change anything. Steve will still be dead and is not coming back to us," Mace said.

When Doss argues Hill's case, it will the first time he has presented oral arguments before the high court.

"I'm extremely exited to go and make our case before the Supreme Court," Doss said, who has been a death penalty lawyer for about a decade in Lake City.

"I could probably talk for a day, but I expect I will spend more time answering questions that laying out the case," said Doss, who gets 30 minutes. "I think it is a valid claim. I pray they think the same thing."

The state gets 20 minutes and the administration of President Bush, which filed a friend of the court brief, will receive 10 minutes.

Not only did Hill's stay stop his immediate execution, it also halted the death of another Florida inmate, Arthur Rutherford. He was scheduled to die Jan. 31 for the 1985 drowning and asphyxiation of 63-year-old Stella Salamon, for whom he had worked. Rutherford received a stay on the same grounds which had spared Hill. In addition, Gov. Jeb Bush said he would not sign any other death warrants until Hill's case is settled.

Rion Dennis, a spokesman for the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said Hill's stay is directly responsible for not only Rutherford's stay, but three more in other states. It is indirectly responsible for three others, he said.

Hill, 48, has been waiting at Florida State Prison since his stay three months ago. If he loses, he could be dead in months.

"He's concerned," Doss said. "His life is at stake. He is not somebody who is an overly emotional person, at least not with me."

Hill did not respond to a request for an interview. Hill's family, most of whom live in Mobile, Ala., did not return messages left on their telephone answering machines.

Doss is still shaken when he realizes his client was strapped to the gurney with IV tubes running into his arms for more than an hour before receiving the court stay.

"I couldn't imagine it. It is a hard thing for all of us to comprehend. I don't know that we can."

# posted by Duane : 11:03 PM  0 comments

Remember how the Gipper used to inspire us from the Oval Office and on the stump? Remember "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" George W. Bush could learn a lot from the great communicator.


On the recent outburst by a Chinese dissident during a joint press conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, I would have loved to have heard my president say: "What you are witnessing is freedom of speech in defense of freedom of religion, Mr. President. These rights are granted by God to Americans, and to all people, and are confirmed and defended in our Bill of Rights. It's why the United States of America will always defend liberty for oppressed people everywhere."

Instead, Bush apologized to this dictator, who presides over a government as evil and repressive as any that has ever existed on this planet. Meanwhile, the protestor was arrested for disturbing the peace. Granted, the president did issue an official statement that China should allow greater freedom of worship, but he also assured the Chinese Communists that he supports their despotic claim over the lives of the free people of Taiwan.

On the issue of illegal immigration, I would love to hear my president say: "America has always been a beacon of freedom to the world, but we cannot long remain so with uncontrolled illegal immigration into our country. My foremost constitutional charge is to defend and protect our nation's borders. Rest assured that we will do so, by whatever means are necessary."

On the press and the war in Iraq, I would love to hear my president say: "Without the free flow of information, no free society can long remain free. But the American people have not been given a free flow of information. Instead, they have been treated to a continuous string of negative stories about America's involvement in Iraq. In fact, if Ernie Pyle had worked for CNN, America would have given up on World War Two long before we were anywhere close to victory."

On education: "The federal government has failed miserably at educating our children. The Ted Kennedy education bill of 2001 has been another power grab for control over the future of the next generation. Therefore, my next budget will contain no funding for the U.S. Department of Education. Those funds instead will be block-granted back to the states for use in school choice programs that will put parents and local officials back in control. The education of America's children is too important to trust to bureaucrats in Washington."

On taxes: "The current tax system is no longer salvageable. We are burying our nation's productivity beneath an antiquated tax code. This punitive system is driving our corporations to flee our shores. The only answer is to unleash the engine of prosperity we have known for more than two hundred years by replacing the federal income tax with a national consumption tax, otherwise known as the Fair Tax."

On oil prices: "Overpriced foreign crude oil threatens to strangle the American economy. I cannot let that happen. Environmental extremists and liberals in Congress have damaged our nation by insisting on unreasonable restrictions on domestic oil production. My presidency is committed to a three-fold solution to the problem: First, we will press the new leaders in Iraq to make protection of their oil production a top priority and to sell their oil to the United States and our allies at half the current price on the world market. Second, I'm calling on Congress to immediately approve legislation to explore and drill in ANWR. Third, we will build new refineries. We will bring back reasonable fuel prices as we transition to alternate sources of energy. As your president, I will see to it."

These are just a few of the many things I would love to hear my president say.

# posted by Duane : 10:51 PM  1 comments

The good news: a federal grand jury in Eugene, Oregon, has indicted 11 people on charges that they committed acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Moreover, now one of the FBI's "highest domestic terrorism priorities," according to director Robert S. Mueller III, is to prosecute people who commit crimes "in the name of animal rights or the environment."

Nevertheless, it remains worrisome that we still dismiss such terrorists as deranged individuals who pervert the ideology of environmentalism. Even more worrisome is that few of us intellectually grasp, and then rise to defend, the irreplaceable values under attack by environmental terrorists. Their targets are not, fundamentally, a particular ski resort, logging company, meatpacking center or medical research project, but what these represent: human technology, human progress, human life.

Man's life is sustained--and made longer, healthier, happier--by industrial development and technological progress. The hospitals, antibiotics and chemotherapy treatments which keep our bodies free from disease--the pesticides, bioengineering and shopping malls which make possible our consumption of almost any food imaginable--the oil rigs, dams and nuclear power plants which keep our lights on and washing-machines running--the trucks, telephones and computers which make an hour of our time vastly more productive--the large homes, MP3 players and ski resorts which make our newfound recreational hours more enjoyable--it is these products of industrial civilization that are responsible for the vast increase in the quantity and quality of life that we enjoy today.

Imagine for a moment being transported back to Western Europe nine hundred years ago (or parts of Africa today). Imagine the daily, excruciating physical labor required to grow meager crops or to haul water from miles away--assuming there is no drought. Imagine the filth and disease, because there are no sewage systems. Imagine the pain and misery as rotting teeth go untreated, broken bones go untended, failing eyesight goes uncorrected. This is a glimpse of life without industry.

The individuals singled out for attack by environmental terrorists--namely, scientists, inventors and businessmen--are the creators of industrial civilization. As heirs of Newton, scientists discover truths about the workings of nature. As heirs of Edison, inventors use these truths to create new products which improve human life. As heirs of Ford, businessmen figure out ways to perfect and mass manufacture these products profitably.

These three categories of individuals represent the exploiters of nature, those who transform wilderness to support man's life. They find plains and forests, dangerous jungles and insect-infested swamps, in which man's life is precarious, and they build a human environment by creating houses, electric heaters and chemical pesticides. They teach man his method of survival: using his mind to reshape nature to his needs.

As monstrous as it sounds, it is precisely because these heroes are the sustainers of human life that they are targeted by those who are willing to take up arms for their cause, environmentalism.

Despite common belief to the opposite, the ideology of environmentalism is not concerned with improving man's life on earth. If it were, it would not oppose but champion industrial progress--luxury homes, dams, highways, bioengineering, food irradiation, etc.--and the individuals who create it.

Environmentalism instead champions wilderness (including wild animals). On this premise, science and technology are irredeemably evil. If the supreme value is a world untouched by human hands, then in logic man and industry are destroyers of value, to be eliminated by force if necessary.

Committed environmentalists openly voice this hatred of man and industry. The founder of Green Peace reflects: "I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot kids who shoot birds." A biologist with the U.S. National Park Services states: "Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to return to nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." The head of the 1992 Earth Summit wonders: "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"

Environmental terrorism is a consistent expression of environmentalism's worship of wilderness. By making the preservation of untouched nature the ideal, environmentalism necessarily makes man, who survives by exploiting nature, the enemy.

If we value our lives, we must never make common cause with environmentalism, no matter how appealing a particular environmentalist project may seem. We must fight not only against particular environmental terrorists but also against the ideology that inspires them. But even more important, we must fight for rational values: man's life and industrial civilization.

# posted by Duane : 10:14 PM  0 comments

Robert W. Hileman III admitted yesterday that he was an idiot for trying to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive illegal drug, in his New Cumberland apartment in September.

Hileman and his accomplice, Robert O. Bates, prompted an evacuation of part of town when their illicit lab was discovered in the 200 block of Third Street last year.

Authorities feared explosive vapors from the volatile meth ingredients could have blown up Hileman's apartment building.

"I know what I did was real foolish," Hileman told Cumberland County President Judge Edgar B. Bayley. "I was under the influence of drugs ... I realize I put a lot of people's lives in danger. I didn't know really what I was doing."

Hileman, 21, and Bates, 19, of Fairview Twp., were sentenced by Bayley to 1 to 2 years in county prison on guilty pleas to charges of possessing material to make meth. Police said the pair didn't have all the ingredients to manufacture the drug.

Before he was sentenced, Hileman told the judge he is glad he was arrested. He said he has used the seven months he has spent in jail to try to overcome his addiction through counseling and "get in touch with God."

"Beating drugs is no easy thing," Bayley replied. "You'll have to work on that your entire life."

Bates' attorney, William Fulton, said his client also "has mental health and drug and alcohol issues." Fulton urged Bayley not to send the "skinny kid" to state prison where he would be exposed to "a more varsity level of criminal activity."

Bates, who said nothing during the sentencing, was filmed by news photographers making an obscene gesture as he left a district judge's office after his Sept. 21 arrest. That photo received a mixed reaction from readers when it was published in The Patriot-News.

# posted by Duane : 10:38 PM  0 comments

Happy Easter. Happy Passover. But, if you're like the president of Iran and believe in the coming of the "Twelfth Imam," your happy holiday may be just around the corner, too. President Ahmadinejad, who is said to consider himself the designated deputy of the "hidden Imam," held a press conference this week -- against a backdrop of doves fluttering round an atom and accompanied by dancers in orange decontamination suits doing choreographed uranium-brandishing. It looked like that Bollywood finale of ''The 40-Year-Old Virgin,'' where they all pranced around to "This Is The Dawning Of The Age Of Aquarius." As it happens, although he dresses like Steve Carell's 40-year-old virgin, the Iranian president is, in fact, a 40-year-old nuclear virgin, and he was holding a press conference to announce he was ready to blow. "Iran," he said, "has joined the group of countries which have nuclear technology" -- i.e., this is the dawning of the age of a scary us. "Our enemies cannot do a damned thing," he crowed, as an appreciative audience chanted "Death to America!"

The reaction of the international community was swift and ferocious. The White House said that Iran "was moving in the wrong direction." This may have been a reference to the dancers. A simple Radio City kickline would have been better. The British Foreign Office said it was "not helpful." This may have been a reference to the doves round the atom.

You know what's great fun to do if you're on, say, a flight from Chicago to New York and you're getting a little bored? Why not play being President Ahmadinejad? Stand up and yell in a loud voice, "I've got a bomb!" Next thing you know the air marshal will be telling people, "It's OK, folks. Nothing to worry about. He hasn't got a bomb." And then the second marshal would say, "And even if he did have a bomb it's highly unlikely he'd ever use it." And then you threaten to kill the two Jews in row 12 and the stewardess says, "Relax, everyone. That's just a harmless rhetorical flourish." And then a group of passengers in rows 4 to 7 point out, "Yes, but it's entirely reasonable of him to have a bomb given the threatening behavior of the marshals and the cabin crew."

That's how it goes with the Iranians. The more they claim they've gone nuclear, the more U.S. intelligence experts -- oops, where are my quote marks? -- the more U.S. intelligence "experts" insist no, no, it won't be for another 10 years yet. The more they conclusively demonstrate their non-compliance with the IAEA, the more the international community warns sternly that, if it were proved that Iran were in non-compliance, that could have very grave consequences. But, fortunately, no matter how thoroughly the Iranians non-comply it's never quite non-compliant enough to rise to the level of grave consequences. You can't blame Ahmadinejad for thinking "our enemies cannot do a damned thing."

It's not the world's job to prove that the Iranians are bluffing. The braggadocio itself is reason enough to act, and prolonged negotiations with a regime that openly admits it's negotiating just for the laughs only damages us further. The perfect summation of the Iranian approach to negotiations came in this gem of a sentence from the New York Times on July 13 last year:

"Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Thursday."

Got that? If we don't let Iran go nuclear, they'll go nuclear. That position might tax even the nuanced detecting skills of John Kerry.

By comparison, the Tehran press has a clear-sightedness American readers can only envy. A couple of months back, the newspaper Kayhan, owned by Ayatollah Khamenei, ran an editorial called "Our Immortality And The West's Disability," with which it was hard to disagree: Even if one subscribes to the view that sanctions are a sufficient response to states that threaten to nuke their neighbors, Mohammad Jafar Behdad correctly pointed out that they would have no serious impact on Iran but would inflict greater damage on those Western economies that take them seriously (which France certainly won't).

Meanwhile, the Washington Post offers the likes of Ronald D. Asmus, former deputy assistant secretary of state under President Clinton, arguing "Contain Iran: Admit Israel to NATO." "Containment" is a word that should have died with the Cold War, and certainly after the oil-for-food revelations: Aside from the minimal bang for huge numbers of bucks, you can't "contain" a state. Under the illusion of "containment," events are always moving, and usually in favor of the fellow you're trying to contain. But the idea that the way to "contain" Iran is to admit Israel to NATO elevates "containment" from an obsolescent striped-pants reflex to the realm of insanity.

All the doom-mongers want to know why we went into Iraq "without a plan." Well, one reason is surely that, for a year before the invasion, the energy of the U.S. government was primarily devoted to the pointless tap-dance through the United Nations, culminating in the absurd situation of Western foreign ministers chasing each other through Africa to bend the ear of the president of Guinea, who happened to be on the Security Council that week but whose witch doctor had advised against supporting Washington. Allowing the Guinean tail to wag the French rectum of the British hindquarters of the American dog was a huge waste of resources. To go through it all again in order to prevent whichever global colossus chances to be on the Security Council this time (Haiti? The South Sandwich Islands?) from siding with the Russo-Chinese obstructionists would show that the United States had learned nothing.

Bill Clinton, the Sultan of Swing, gave an interesting speech last week, apropos foreign policy: "Anytime somebody said in my presidency, 'If you don't do this, people will think you're weak,' I always asked the same question for eight years: 'Can we kill 'em tomorrow?' If we can kill 'em tomorrow, then we're not weak, and we might be wise enough to try to find an alternative way."

The trouble was tomorrow never came -- from the first World Trade Center attack to Khobar Towers to the African Embassy bombings to the USS Cole. Manana is not a policy. The Iranians are merely the latest to understand that.

# posted by Duane : 10:07 PM  1 comments

In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O'Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.

Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs, as she wonders what she should scream about this day.

She smokes a cigarette. Should it be about Bush, whom she considers "malevolent," a "sociopath" and "the Antichrist"? She smokes another cigarette. Should it be about Vice President Cheney, whom she thinks of as "Satan," or about Karl Rove, "the devil"? Should it be about the "evil" Republican Party, or the "weaselly, capitulating, self-aggrandizing, self-serving" Democrats, or the Catholic Church, for which she says "I have a special place in my heart . . . a burning, sizzling, putrescent place where the guilty suffer the tortures of the damned"?


"If I can't rant, I don't want to be part of your revolution" is how she signs her comments, in the place other people might write "Sincerely."

"I was not like this before," she says. "I was riddled with empathy for everyone suffering in the world. Classic bleeding-heart liberal."

Before:

She signed petitions. She boycotted veal. She canvassed for Greenpeace. She donated to Planned Parenthood. She read the Nation, the New Yorker, the Utne Reader and Mother Jones. She agonized over low wages for overseas workers every time she bought a $40 leather purse.

Then George W. Bush was elected. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, secret prisons, domestic eavesdropping, the revamping of the Supreme Court, and the thought "It has come to the point where the worst people on Earth are running the Earth." And now, "I have become one of those people with all the bumper stickers on their car," she says. "I am this close to being one of those muttering people pushing a cart.

"I'm insane with rage and grief.

"But I also feel more connected than I ever have."

"I just want to see these [expletive] swinging from their heels in the public square," reads a recent comment from someone named Dave in a discussion about the Bush administration on a Web site called Eschaton.


"Laura Bush Talks; No One Gives a [expletive]," someone who calls himself the Rude Pundit writes on his Web site, and he continues: "The Rude Pundit doesn't give a retarded dog drool what Laura Bush has to say about the Olympics."

"I feel like I'm being molested everytime I hear his voice," one person writes on the Daily Kos Web site while watching a Bush news conference.

"It was rather though[t]less of me to compare the most asinine, brutal, criminal, disgusting, enraging, felonious, gross, horrendous, incompetent, jaundiced, kleptocratic, lazy, malicious, nefarious, objectional, psychopathic, quarrelsome, repulsive, sanctimonious, treasonous, unfit, vindictive, wasteful, xenophobic, yahooish, zealotic piece of [expletive] inhabiting the White House and the planet to persons suffering with a neurobiological disorder."

"Go [expletive] Yourself, Mrs. Cheney" and "Bush Must Be HIV Positive By Now (you can't [expletive] 500 million people and not get infected)."

On Rude Pundit: "George W. Bush is the anti-Midas. Everything he touches turns to [expletive]."

# posted by Duane : 8:44 PM  0 comments

From there it comes down to political leadership. There is no shortage of ideas on what to do about illegal immigration. There isn't, however, anything in the way of a consensus about how to address the broader problem of a nation that needs more workers but is also unsure of the power of its own culture to assimilate millions of new arrivals. In a nation where the definition of marriage is open for debate, where the Pledge of Allegiance can be ruled unconstitutional, and where we can't even agree that human liberty is a universal value, hiring more border agents isn't going to quell anxiety over the country being culturally adrift.

The solution is to create respect for the rule of law by making it possible for foreign workers to come here and fill the jobs the economy needs filled. Immigrants will use legal avenues to enter this country if they are open to them--even at a small cost--for the simple reason that it is more profitable to live outside the shadows than inside barrios where hustlers can take advantage of them without fear of the long arm of the law. That means vastly more work visas than the U.S. now issues, and it is why President Bush is pushing for a guest worker program.

Once immigrants are allowed to live outside of the shadows, it will be much easier for the nation to assimilate them and then target drug traffickers and others who still sneak across the border. The strongest fence is the economic opportunity of a life out in the open. It's about time this nation started using economic incentives to its advantage.

# posted by Duane : 8:40 PM  0 comments

Miracles do happen. In Los Angeles last week a state judge lifted a consent decree issued in 1991 after parents filed a lawsuit claiming that public schools in poor neighborhoods had too few experienced teachers. The court has since ordered the school district to spend an average of $11 million a year on teacher training in certain schools. And now, almost 15 years later, the judge has finally declared herself satisfied and declined to extend the decree for another five years.

Other locales aren't so lucky. Consent decrees are judicial decrees that enforce agreements between state and local governments and the parties suing them. But such decrees have proliferated to the extent that judges are micromanaging many public institutions in the name of protecting "rights." And they're costing taxpayers money and infringing on the right to self-government.

In New York, a 1974 federal consent decree has mandated bilingual education in the city's schools for more than 30 years--even though many parents want no part of it. In Tennessee, a federal consent decree from 1979 prevents the state from requiring generic, rather than brand-name, drugs for Medicaid patients despite the fact that this is standard practice for many private drug plans and other state Medicaid programs. And in Los Angeles, a 1996 consent decree has forced the Metropolitan Transit Authority to spend 47% of its budget on city buses no matter what the MTA deems to be its priorities.

New York Law professors David Schoenbrod and Ross Sandler call this "democracy by decree," or the process by which public-policy decisions are taken out of the hands of elected legislators and left to an unelected judiciary. Their 2002 book of that name is the inspiration for legislation introduced in the Senate last month that would limit the use of federal consent decrees.

The legislation's sponsors are Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor. It's no coincidence that both Senators were once state officials. "I'm looking at this as a former Governor," says Mr. Alexander. "The idea is to try to let those who are elected make policy unencumbered by courts." Mr. Pryor is a former Arkansas Attorney General. Similar legislation is pending in the House.

Consent decrees can be a huge burden on state and local officials. They sometimes last for decades, long after the officials who agreed to them have left office. Newly elected officials often find themselves locked in by the decrees, unable to put in place policies they were elected to implement. Outgoing officials have been known to sign their names to such decrees in an effort to force their successors to go along with policies they oppose.

One part of the Alexander-Pryor solution is term limits--either four years for a decree, or the expiration of the term of the highest elected official who signed his name to it. Their legislation also sensibly shifts the burden of proof for modifying or ending the decree to plaintiffs from state and local governments.

The legislation endorses the view of a unanimous Supreme Court, which in 2004 called for limiting decrees. It warned in Frew v. Hawkins that federal consent decrees could encroach on state and local power. They may "improperly deprive future officials of their designated and executive powers," the Court said. They may also lead "to federal court oversight of state programs for long periods of time even absent an ongoing violation of the law."

There are federal consent decrees in force in all 50 states, with judges running prisons, schools, welfare agencies, health-care systems and more--based on the advice of the advocates who brought the original lawsuits. It's time to turn those jobs back to the elected lawmakers, and it's good to see at least someone in this ostensibly conservative Congress show some modesty about federal authority.

# posted by Duane : 8:20 PM  0 comments

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Saturday his Rainbow/Push Coalition will pay the college tuition of a black stripper who told police she was raped by white members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team — no matter the outcome of the case.

"I can't wait . . . to talk with her and have prayer with her, because our organization is committed, when she's physically and emotionally able . . . to provide for her the scholarship money to finish school so she will never . . . again have to stoop that low to survive," he said from Chicago in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

When asked, the civil rights leader also said his group will pay for the woman's tuition even if her story proves false. Attorneys for the lacrosse players have strongly denied any sexual assault took place at the March 13 party, citing DNA tests performed on all 46 of the team's white members that failed to match any samples taken from the woman.

Defense attorneys have said they expect the case to go to a grand jury on Monday.

But Jackson said there is plenty of circumstantial evidence indicating something happened to the woman, a 27-year-old divorced mother of two who is a student across town from Duke at historically black North Carolina Central University.

A doctor and forensic nurse who examined the woman shortly after the alleged attack found evidence consistent with rape, according to court documents. Defense attorneys claim time-stamped photographs prove the woman was injured and intoxicated when she arrived at the party.

Attorney Bill Thomas said Saturday a member of the defense team had interviewed the other dancer who performed that night, and that she "has stated point blank she does not believe this allegation."

Jackson said the defense has vilified the accuser by talking about the photos and her criminal past. The woman pleaded guilty four years ago to stealing the taxi of a man for whom she was performing a lap dance, then trying to run a sheriff's deputy over with it.

"There's more evidence that violence occurred to her than she's the lead of a hoax," Jackson said.

Jackson has not spoken with the woman, but said he has been in touch with people who have. He has been told that she had plans to go to law school, and "we want to help her with that, too." The woman should be able to support her children and pay her tuition without having "to sacrifice her body to make money."

Thomas called Jackson offer to pay for the alleged victim's tuition "very kind."

"I certainly would have no problem whatsoever with that," he said. "I think it's a great thing for her."

Jackson said he will discuss the case Sunday morning on his radio show, "Keep Hope Alive." With him will be Charles Ogletree Jr. from Harvard Law School; the Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP; and Prof. Peter Woods, a history professor at Duke.

# posted by Duane : 8:31 PM  0 comments

As a kid i lived for 6 years in germany (may the bastards rut in hell) It was in the 1950's so my father made sure he had an american flag on our car and that the krauts saw our stars of david. Once we got to the border he stop the car and carefully folded the American flag in the correct manner and put it away. I asked him why he did that, his answer was to tell the bastards who won the war.

# posted by Duane : 8:16 PM  0 comments

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.

And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.

What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.

Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.

And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.

There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.

Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.

# posted by Duane : 5:45 PM  1 comments

Katie Holmes was raised a Catholic, but, says fiance Tom Cruise, their soon-to-arrive baby will not have a Catholic baptism.

"No," Cruise tells Diane Sawyer in an interview on ABC's "Primetime," airing Friday, 9 p.m. EDT. "No, I mean you can be Catholic and be a Scientologist. You can be Jewish and be a Scientologist. But we're just Scientologists."

The 27-year-old Holmes' switch to Scientology has sparked reports of a rift between her devout parents, Ohio, natives Martin and Kathleen, and the 43-year-old actor, who introduced her to Scientology.

However, Cruise shrugs off the stories of family friction, telling Sawyer he's close with "the whole family" and — "absolutely, yes" — they approve of Scientology.

The superstar dad-to-be also confirms to Sawyer that Holmes, in the final stages of her pregnancy with the couple's first child, will adhere to Scientology's practice of quiet birth. Cruise explains that "quiet birth," which aims to minimize talk and other noise inside the delivery room," is "basically just respecting the mother."

"She does what she's gotta do," he explains, addressing speculation that such a practice would somehow muffle Holmes completely and deny her pain medication. "If she needs medicine, she needs medicine."

The star of the upcoming "Mission: Impossible III" has two children, Connor, 11, and Isabella, 13, from his marriage to Nicole Kidman.

As the baby's birth approaches, Cruise says "it feels a little unreal."

Cruise said last week that he and Holmes plan to wed in the coming months. They have been engaged since June.

# posted by Duane : 4:59 PM  2 comments

I'VE never been a "South Park" fan, but the animated show's last two episodes on Comedy Central had me hooked. Creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker keyed off the continuing conflagration over the Mohammed cartoons (published last fall by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten) to lambaste their own network's capitulation to Islamic terrorism.

Viewers are viciously, deservedly, mocking the network for its cave-in. "Comedhimmi Central," jibed one of my Web site readers. "Cowardly Central," derided Canadian blogger Damian Penny.

The plot of Wednesday's show revolved around Kyle (one of the "South Park" kids) trying to convince a Fox network executive to air an uncensored episode of the animated show "Family Guy," even though it contained an image of Mohammed. (Many Muslims consider it blasphemy to depict Mohammed, though his image has appeared in art, architecture, and literature throughout the ages with nary a peep.)

"Do the right thing! Show Mohammed!" implores Kyle, as his nemesis, Cartman, pulls out a gun to force the network executive to pull the offending episode. (There's also a must-see send-up of the White House press corps.)

After much anguish, the Fox exec agrees to air the show - but, in place of the planned image of Mohammed, a black slate appears to announce: "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network."

Prior to the start of the true-life Cartoon Jihad, "South Park" had featured cartoon images of Mohammed without incident. A 2001 episode titled "Super Best Friends" featured the Muslims' prophet as a superhero with flame powers. No fatwas ensued; no suits complained. But when Parker and Stone wanted a Mohammed image for their latest show, Comedy Central balked.

According to the Associated Press: "Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Muhammad. . . . The network's decision was made over concerns for public safety, the person said. Comedy Central said in a statement issued yesterday: 'In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.' "

"Recent world events" is the phrase tiptoeing television executives use when referring to the insane embassy burnings, deadly riots, and murder-minded Muslim fanatics who wielded machetes and placards threatening to "BEHEAD ALL THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM" over a bunch of cartoons in Denmark mildly critical of Islamofascism.

Parker and Stone vividly underscored Comedy Central's selective standards of religious sensitivity by featuring offensive images on Wednesday's show that the network did not choose to censor even during Easter Week - images of Jesus Christ defecating on President Bush and the American flag. The real-life analogy is The New York Times, which has blithely run photos of the Virgin Mary coated in animal dung while refusing to run the Mohammed cartoons out of respect for Islam and a need to "refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols."

Christians, you see, don't have politically correct protected status. That privilege is bestowed only on riotous Muslims and celebrity Scientologists (Comedy Central recently pulled a "South Park" episode satirizing the latter). In fact, the day after the Mohammed "South Park" blackout, MTV (owned by Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom) announced plans to air a pope-bashing cartoon in Germany depicting the pontiff as a pogo-stick-riding loon.

And when Catholics complained recently about an episode mocking the Virgin Mary, Comedy Central proudly stated: "As satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right." As Parker and Stone showed us this week, however, that depends on the meaning of "all."

The show was provocative and entertaining. The creators of "South Park" deserve kudos for exposing Comedy Central's hypocrisy.

But for those who have lived the bloody consequences, bowing to Islamic terrorism is no laughing matter.

# posted by Duane : 9:57 PM  1 comments

Exactly how far will Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party go to capture the U.S. Senate this fall?

Pretty far, it seems.

Both The Washington Post and The New York Sun report that Democrats have become terrified over Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, an African-American who is the Republicans' pick to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes.

Steele in 2002 became the first black elected to statewide office in Maryland - and, by virtue of that win, a statewide threat to the Democrats.

Indeed, a strategist hired by the Democratic National Committee who polled black Maryland voters has issued a stern warning to the party: "Steele's messaging to the African-American community has clearly had a positive effect - with many voters reciting his campaign slogans and his advertising.

"Democrats must be aggressive. Steele is a unique challenge. Democrats can not afford to wait until after the primary election to knock Steele down. A persuasion campaign should start as soon as possible to discredit Steele as a viable candidate for the community." (Emphasis in original.)

For "persuasion," read smear Steele before he gets any more traction.

Rather than remain focused on their own multi-candidate primary, Maryland Democrats want to turn Steele into a dirty word in the eyes of black voters.

What's fascinating in this news is how little attention this report has generated among white Democrats: Sarbanes, for one, hasn't said a word.

But Steele's been on the Democrats' radar screen for some time. Last fall, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - Charles Schumer, proprietor - illegally obtained a copy of Steele's financial records. When it was found out, two low-level staffers had to resign (one pleaded guilty to computer fraud).

So it's not like Schumer's acolytes don't know how to play hardball.

Still, there are - or should be - certain lines in politics, and the Howard Dean-led DNC has crossed one of them. This sort of racially-motivated attack politics is outrageous and offensive.

Schumer may not be responsible for the DNC memo, but he needs to explicitly repudiate both it and the tactics it is encouraging.

And he needs to make clear that whoever carries his party's banner in the fall must reject a racialist campaign against a black man who just happens to be a Republican.

# posted by Duane : 9:06 PM  3 comments

Firing tear-gas grenades and swinging batons, hundreds of riot police and civilian officials battled rebellious farmers for three hours Wednesday, injuring more than two dozen villagers, including a woman gravely wounded when a tear-gas canister slammed into her forehead, villagers said.

The explosion of violence in Bo Mei, near Shantou city in Guangdong province 200 miles northeast of Hong Kong, ended a three-month lull in unrest that has unfurled across the Chinese countryside in recent years, posing a major political problem for the government of President Hu Jintao.

Premier Wen Jiabao, China's second-ranking leader, recently told a group of visiting U.S. officials that the surge in rural uprisings kept him awake at night, according to a person at the meeting. In response, his administration has ordered a $42.5 billion program to improve farmers' lives. Last month Hu also ordered the Chinese military to be ready to put down "mass incidents."

Most of the violent protests have erupted in farming villages over land seizures by local governments or factory pollution that seeps into fields and kills crops. Participants in the clashes here said Friday that Bo Mei's 10,000 residents rose up because authorities tried to demolish a pair of irrigation dikes constructed without authorization of the Guangdong provincial Waterworks Administration.

According to accounts from villagers, about 600 riot police and several hundred civilian officials wearing red armbands entered Bo Mei at 9 a.m. Wednesday. On orders from the Shantou Communist Party secretary, they said, the security forces stood guard as a front-end loader plowed into one of the earthen dikes diverting waters of the Chao Shui River to villagers' rice paddies.

As news of the incident spread, witnesses said, hundreds of outraged villagers rushed to the scene and began throwing bricks at the police and other officials, who responded by throwing bricks back, spraying protesters with high-pressure hoses and firing volleys of tear-gas grenades. Two police vehicles were burned, according to a villager who said he saw their blackened hulks.

"All the old women were crying, shouting and throwing bricks at the police," said a witness, whose name, like those of others interviewed, was withheld because of fears he may be targeted for retribution.

# posted by Duane : 9:01 PM  0 comments

A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening.

NKU police are investigating the incident, in which 400 crosses were removed from the ground near University Center and thrown in trash cans. The crosses, meant to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses, had been temporarily erected last weekend by a student Right to Life group with permission from NKU officials.

Public universities cannot ban such displays because they are a type of symbolic speech that has been protected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.

Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.

"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said.

Asked whether she participated in pulling up the crosses, the professor said, "I have no comment."

She said she was infuriated by the display, which she saw as intimidating and a "slap in the face" to women who might be making "the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion.'"

Jacobsen said it originally wasn't clear who had placed the crosses on campus.

She said that could make it appear that NKU endorsed the message.

Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said.

"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.

NKU President James Votruba said any evidence of criminal conduct in the incident will be turned over to prosecutors. He said he appreciated the emotional nature of the abortion debate and was glad that diverse viewpoints are represented at the school, but he condemned the destruction of the crosses.

"Freedom-of-speech rights end where you infringe on someone else's freedom of speech," Votruba said.

"I don't buy the claim that this is an act of freedom of speech, to destroy property."

He said he was gathering information about the extent of Jacobsen's participation.

"I don't know if she was pulling up the crosses, but I think she was out there with the students. If so, as far as I'm concerned, she went outside the conditions of her employment," Votruba said.

He declined to say what consequences she might face. Jacobsen is a tenured professor who has been at NKU since 1980.

Katie Walker, a sophomore who is president of the school's Northern Right to Life, said the group would like to see charges filed against those responsible.

"Campuses are supposed to be public forums. I think professors should encourage that," Walker said.

The sign explaining the cross display could not be found after the vandalism. But students retrieved the crosses, replanted them and put up a new sign.

Thursday night, Walker and others planned to camp out near NKU's main plaza and guard the display until this morning.

The Right to Life organization formed last month in response to activity by faculty members on the other side of the issue.

The faculty group is called Educators for Reproductive Freedom. So far, it has held two lunchtime discussions on campus with speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood.

The group's purpose is to learn more about laws and pending legislation that affect women's reproductive rights, said philosophy professor Nancy Hancock, one of the organizers.

Pro-life students got wind of the meetings and passed out literature near the doors. They also quickly elected officers, wrote a constitution and mounted the cross display.

Hancock said she considered the student activity an overreaction.

But Thursday, she said her group was appalled by the destruction of the cross display. None of the members had anything to do with it, she said.

"We would like to see respect for freedom of speech on this campus," Hancock said.

# posted by Duane : 8:47 PM  0 comments

Tonight after sundown, surrounded by three generations of their families at tables crowded by matzo, wine and food, Boris Zelkind and Kiva Brook will participate in a tradition that has survived for more than 3,000 years: Passover.

The two men share similarities: Both were raised in Orthodox Jewish families in shtetls, or small towns in Belorussia, now Belarus; both served in the Russian Red Army and were wounded during World War II; and both immigrated to the United States about 16 years ago.

And both, like generations of Jews before them in countries around the world, remember years they couldn't observe the festival of freedom or had to do so secretly.

Passover commemorates the Israelites' freedom from slavery in Egypt (Exodus, 12:23). A special text called a Haggadah retells the story and serves as the guide for the special Seder dinners the first two nights for Orthodox Jews and most Conservative Jews, and on the first night for Reform and Reconstructionist Jews.

Until they were drafted into the Russian army during World War II, Mr. Zelkind and Mr. Brook had celebrated Passover each year with family members. They remembered rolling the flour for matzos, their homes full of friends, walking to the synagogue as a family.

That changed as soon as they put on their Red Army uniforms.

They were among the half-million Jews who served in the Soviet army during World War II. As a soldier, there was no way to continue the observance of Jewish law, Mr. Zelkind, 89, said. With war-time shortages, it was hard enough finding bread to eat, much less being able to meet religious requirements.

"You didn't even consider matzo" during Passover, he said.

It worsened after the war.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began a series of persecutions against the country's Jews, including arrests, secret executions and a wave of sanctioned anti-Semitism. Jewish organizations and facilities were closed. Both men knew of people arrested simply for baking matzo.

Mr. Brook recalled going to Moscow's main synagogue in the years after the war and surreptitiously swapping flour for baked matzos. It was a dangerous undertaking since Russian secret police kept tabs on people entering the synagogue.

His family always cleaned their apartment of chametz, or any products containing leavening. They kept separate dishes for the holiday, he said, and though the Russian and Tatar families that shared the building's kitchen "saw the dishes, they didn't ask any questions."

Neither his family nor Mr. Brook's had access to a Haggadah; the prayers and stories they told came from memory. Mr. Zelkind said the first haggadah he had was in 1979 or 1980 that had been smuggled in illegally from Israel. Before that, each year he told his daughter the story of the exodus and anything else he could recall about the holiday from his religious upbringing.

"I was still frustrated at not being able to observe the laws" of Passover, he said.

Even after Stalin's death in 1953, it was three decades before Soviet Jews were allowed to express their faith publicly.

"That's why we left such a 'good life' in Russia," Mr. Brook, 83, said. He arrived in America in 1991.

He cherishes the memory of his first Passover in freedom. It was at his daughter's home in Pittsburgh.

"It wasn't like a completely new experience since I was familiar with the traditions from my childhood," he said. "It was a feeling of elation.

"I felt that I can openly feel pride about being Jewish."

# posted by Duane : 10:38 PM  0 comments

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a front for the communist/socialist Workers World Party, which was identified by former FBI Director Louis Freeh as a “domestic terrorist group,” is behind the immigrant rallies taking place around the nation.

ANSWER provided logistics (signs) for the immigrant rally in L.A. on March 25. ANSWER claims credit for organizing that rally.

A.N.S.W.E.R. is a cover up for the Workers World Party, a Stalinist organization. According to Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco,”Basically, A.N.S.W.E.R. is dominated by the IAC, which is largely a front for the Workers World Party.” David Corn, a writer for the liberal publication Common Dreams, stated, “A.N.S.W.E.R. is run by W.W.P. activists, to such an extent that it seems fair to dub it a W.W.P. front.”

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s director, Ramsey Clark, has served as the spokesman for the W.W.P since the early 1990s. Ramsey Clark is currently part of the legal defense team for Saddam Hussein, and was part of the legal defense team for Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Court. Another director of A.N.S.W.E.R., Brian Becker, is part of the W.W.P. Secretariat.

The former FBI Director under President Clinton, Louis Freeh, included W.W.P. in a talk about “domestic terrorist groups” on May 10, 2001 when speaking to Senate committees. He also denounced “Anarchists and extremist socialist groups - many of which, such as the Workers World Party, have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States.”

The W.W.P. does not want to participate within the American political system, it wants to overthrow our democratic form of government and eliminate private property. LeiLani Dowell of the W.W.P. said at their conference in November, 2004, “I think that these elections proved to many that there is no choice between Democratic and Republican–and essentially no choice for working people under capitalism.”
A document on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website entitled “Who is the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition” states, “The global anti-war movement must be a movement of international solidarity against the U.S. empire.”

A.N.S.W.E.R. supports the Iraqi resistance against US troops. “Having achieved their victory [the US in Iraq], however, the occupiers now confront a people who have a long and proud history of resistance. The anti-war movement here and around the world must give its unconditional support to the Iraqi anti-colonial resistance.” Richard Becker, A.N.S.W.E.R. Steering Committee, Downloadable flyer on “Counter-revolution and Resistance in Iraq,” May 2003. A recent Workers World editorial stated, “Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

A.N.S.W.E.R.’s steering committee and endorsers include the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Marxist-Leninist organization, and the Freedom Sociality Party, a Trotskyite group. A.N.S.W.E.R. supports Fidel Castro and communist Cuba.

A.N.S.W.E.R. sends its professional demonstrators to rallies in order to further its own agenda, not the agenda of the participants. Students were warned by the University of Michigan Daily about the real force behind a January 2003 anti-war rally put on by A.N.S.W.E.R. - “many who read about the rally afterward will assume the crowd showed up to support A.N.S.W.E.R.’s agenda rather than to learn about or participate in the anti-war movement.”

The W.W.P. supports the Chinese communist government, and encouraged its use of tanks against students demonstrating in favor of democracy in Tiannamen Square in 1989, where many died. In the past, it defended Soviet suppression of worker rebellions in eastern European countries, and in 1991 supported the KGB coup against former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The W.W.P. is a staunch advocate of Kim Jong II.

# posted by Duane : 10:34 PM  0 comments

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

# posted by Duane : 10:05 PM  0 comments

Long proud of its conservative religious values, Villanova University is generating new buzz as administrators consider a proposal to install a memorial to the "victims of abortion."

Administrators at the private Catholic school in suburban Philadelphia decided Tuesday to consider the proposal being pushed by Villanovans for Life. The group wants to put the memorial along a path connecting the main campus with an area where freshman dormitories are located.

Lauren Homans, 22, a group member, said the school has had other displays protesting abortion — including a field of crosses representing aborted fetuses — but not a permanent one. Her group plans to purchase the statue, depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, and label it as a memorial to the "victims of abortion."

"It's not just for the unborn," said Homans, of Lawrenceville, Ga. "It's for the mothers and the fathers and the other relatives as well."

Villanovans for Life has secured a $20,000 donation to cover the cost of buying and shipping the sculpture by artist Timothy P. Schmalz. Now, she hopes the school's administration will approve the idea of putting it along the well-traveled pedestrian path.

Most of the response to the idea has been positive, Homans said, but some students have expressed concerns.

Barbara K. Clement, a university spokeswoman, said the school's board of trustees decided Tuesday to study the memorial idea further before taking action. In a self-reported student survey, she said, 77 percent of the school's undergraduates indicated they were Roman Catholic.

Some students, however, said the statue would be taking the school's religious values too far.

"I don't like the idea of it at all," said Ashley Holmgren, 19, a freshman from Bergen County, N.J., who supports abortion rights. "Having to pass that every day — I just don't think that's right."

Another freshman, Katie Dowd, 19, worries the statue would prevent some students from attending Villanova if their values don't exactly match those of the school.

"I think it would reflect poorly on the university," said Dowd, of Lancaster. "I think it would definitely appear unwelcoming to students who aren't Catholic or don't believe that."

Clement, however, said she doesn't think the statue would prevent the school from attracting students from diverse backgrounds. If a student found the statue objectionable, she said, it would likely help stimulate academic conversation on campus.

"We definitely are committed to diversity, racial and economic diversity," said Clement. "With that kind of diversity also comes religious diversity."

The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., has had a similar memorial for more than five years; spokesman Dennis Brown said officials at the Catholic school have not heard any complaints.

Villanova freshman Page Stillwell, 19, of Andover, Mass., said she doesn't think the monument would discourage students from attending. Stillwell, who opposes abortion except in the cases of rape and incest, said applicants usually know about the school's Augustinian traditions.

"When everybody comes to Villanova, they are aware of the moral and religious background of the school," she said.

# posted by Duane : 9:08 AM  1 comments

An Egyptian group calling itself the "al-Jama’ah Consultative Council" has sent an e-mail hit list to people deemed 'apostates' yesterday. The group warned that those people on the list who had left the faith would have three days (as of yesterday) to repent or they would be killed. The group also warned that the wives and children of the Muslim apostates were being followed & would be killed.

Under Islamic Law, the maximum penalty for apostasy is death.

The list includes prominent Muslims living in the West who have spoken out against violent Islamic extremism and intolerance, some still living in Muslim countries, as well as Coptic Christians who have advocated equal treatment in Egypt.

According to Copts-United (hat tip: Clarity and Resolve) the group issued the following threat if the 'apostates' did not publicly repent:

we will follow them everywhere they go and at anytime; and they can never be far from the swords of truth, and they are closer to us that our shoelaces.

They are monitored day and night. We are fully aware of their hiding places, their houses, their children’s schools, and the times when their wives are alone at home.

We gave our rules to the soldiers of God to execute the rule of God so that their blood can become close to God [to kill them] and burn their houses.

And we thank God that many of those infidels and atheists do not exist in the land of Islam, so that they do not defile the Islamic land with their rotten blood. They are in the land of infidelity, the land of idols, pagans, and Cross worshippers: in America, Canada, Switzerland, and Italy.

If they existed on a spot in the Islamic land, let us wash the places of their slaughter and beheading seven times to purify the Islamic land of the impurity of their blood. And let us captivate their women and enslave their children loot them. Let us apply the Islamic rule to them; and whoever kills one of them, will get his loot.

The fatwa was signed by Abu Dhur Al-Maqdishi, media commander in Al-Jama’ah.

The list includes:

Wafa Sultan -- American Muslim psychologist who has spoken out against jihad, the silence of mainstream Muslims over terrorism, and the treatment of women in Islam. Sultan lives in the Los Angeles area.

Ahmad Subhi Mansur (Mansour)--a liberal Egyptian theologian condemned as an 'apostate' because he accepts only the Quran as authentic and rejects the sunnas. Mansur argues in his book "The Punishment of Apostasy" (out of print) that religious liberty is fundamental to Islam. Mansur's wife and children are also specifically threatened. Mansur live in the Virginia.

Adly Abadir -- Egyptian born Christian Coptic priest, exiled from Egypt and now living in Switzerland. Abadir is an outspoken advocate against the subjegation of Christians in Egypt and has testified before the U.S. Congress on the plight of Coptic minorities living under the thumb of Muslims.

Jamal Al-Banna-- moderate Egyptian theologian & brother of the founder of the Muslim Bortherhood who publicly disputes traditional Islamic teachings about the treatment of women & jihad, but like most Muslims justifies aggressiona against Jews. Al-Banna is probably under condemnation for his firm stance against dhimmitude and for freedom of religion and for his creation of the "Committee for the Defense of Victims of Terror-Fatwas"

Majdi Khalil-- American Muslim who has spoken out against terrorism and those that justify it in the Islamic world.

Hasan Ahmad Umar-- former President of the Egyptian Court of Appeals.

Muhammad Sha’lan--- possibly the same Dr. Muhammed Sha'lan who is a professor of psychology at the oldest and most prestigious Islamic universty in the world, al Azhar.

Father Zakarias Butros-- Coptic priest living in Holland who runs a website devoted to standing up for Christians in Egypt, against attrocities committed by Muslims against Christians, and which invites Muslims to engage in dialogue.

Sa’d Al-Din Ibrahim-- liberal Egyptian human rights activist , board member of the Ibn Khaldun Center, and Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo. Ibrahim is a leading human rights activists who was arrested by the Egyptian government in 2000 to the applause of Islamists around the world. He is accused by Islamists of being a 'Zionist'.

Salah Muhsin--Egyptian who has spoken out against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dr. Shakir Al-Nabulsi -- a Jordanian born liberal Muslim, chairman of the American Academic Association in Jordan, and co-signer of an anti-Islamist petition to the U.N calling for an end to the preaching of violence against apostates. Nabulsi now lives in Denver.

Al-Afif al-Akhdar--72 year old Tunisian born French secular Muslim. The Tunisian Islamic movement Al-Nahdha, issued a death fatwa against the him for his book "The Unknown in the Prophet's Life". In addition to exposing the hypocrisy of Muslims on terrorism, Akhdar has also been at the forefront of exposing the political motivations behind Muslim regimes using the Danish Mohammed cartoons to drum up anti-Western sentiment. More on Akhdar here.

Unknown targets-- if you know who these individuals are, please warn them that they may be the target of Muslim extremists!

America -- Nidal Na’isah, Fatin Nur

Canada-- Uthman Muhammad Ali & his family.

Holland-- Nahid Mitwali

Italy--Khalid Hilal

Jordan--Umar Abu Rassa, Ramadan Abd AlRahman Ali

Syria--Samir Hasan Ibrahim

Egypt--Abd al Fattah Asakir, Muhammad Shibl, Muhammad Said al Mushtahari, Abd al-Latif Sa’id, Ayman Muhammad Abd Al Rahman, Walid Muhammad Abd al-Rahman, Taha Hilal, Isam Nafi, Ahmad Sha’ban, Amru Ismail, Abd-Al-Karim Sulayman

# posted by Duane : 7:15 AM  1 comments

Greg Biffle's racing day came to an early and frustrating end Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway when he was nudged from behind by Kurt Busch and spun out of control.

And that didn't sit too well with Biffle, or Biffle's girlfriend, Nicole Lunders.

After the accident, Lunders climbed off Biffle's pit box and marched down pit road to angrily confront Busch's fiancee, Eva Bryan, over what happened. The confrontation was brief, and it's not clear what point Nicole Lunders was trying to make. But as the two women had it out under the hot Texas sun, Tammy Wynette was likely smiling down to see Lunders "Stand By Her Man."

"That just shows her professionalism," Busch said of Lunders in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

Biffle, who won the Nextel Cup race at Texas last April, was running well again. He had already led 49 laps, and was working back toward the front of the field when he was knocked out of the race on the 83rd lap.

"When you're the guy that all you have to do is lift on the gas pedal a little bit and elect not to run into the car in front of you on the straightaway, that's pretty unforgivable," Biffle said.

# posted by Duane : 9:16 PM  0 comments

At first glance, they seem to have little in common. But the riots in France over labor reform, the slow-motion suicide of General Motors, and the continuing decline of the New York economy all share one defining trait: entrenched and unchangeable union power.

These columns have always favored the right to collectively bargain, and any private company that allows a union to organize its workers deserves what it gets. But that doesn't mean we should fail to appreciate the consequences when unions become entrenched inside any organization. On the evidence throughout business and politics today, unions do not provide individual job or income security. On the contrary, they undermine security by contributing to broader business and economic decline.

At the national level, the French example is clear enough. While the French private sector is less unionized than America's, it must cope with mandated work rules that make it all but impossible to fire someone; so naturally companies are also reluctant to hire. The jobless rate is double America's, while youth unemployment is 23%. More significant is that the political clout of public-sector unions has blocked all but minor changes in these rules. Public-sector workers account for more than a quarter of the entire French work force (6.4 million of out 24.6 million), and their salaries and pensions made up 45% of the entire state budget as recently as 2003.

The current French protests are in response to a modest change that would allow employers to fire people under age 26 more easily. So entrenched has the politics of union entitlement become in France that even at the onset of their careers these young protesters are demanding security over opportunity. In the global economy, this means they will end up with less of both.

France remains a wealthy country, and its economic decline can be masked for a time as it lives off accumulated capital. But already the promises that its unions have extracted from the government seem unlikely to be kept. A growth rate of between 1% and 2% a year won't be enough to finance the pensions and health care of an aging nation. And facing up to those facts will require an increasingly painful political reckoning.

Here in the U.S., the same burden is slowly crippling New York, once a bulwark of American industry. Power in the state capital of Albany is shared by Republicans and Democrats. But both parties bow before the public-sector unions, especially the teachers, and the health-care workers led by perhaps the most powerful man in the state, Dennis Rivera.

Thanks to his political clout, New York's Medicaid costs are higher than those of Texas and Florida combined; a health-care insurance premium for a young family of four is roughly six times what it is across the border in Connecticut; and high-deductible health-savings accounts that can help the self-employed afford insurance can't even be offered in the state. New York is also a rare state that actually taxes private health insurance, to the tune of about $2.4 billion a year.

Another union-driven business cost is workers' compensation, and in New York the average cost per claim is second highest in the nation (after Louisiana) and 72% higher than the national average. Governor George Pataki has proposed a reform that would lower costs while actually raising the average payout for the truly disabled, but he's run up against a French-like union roadblock in the legislature.

Thanks to immigration, as well as America's continuing advantage in financial services, New York City has so far been able to avoid another fiscal collapse of the kind it had in the 1970s. But upstate is a different story, with jobs and young people fleeing to better business climes. New York manufacturing employment fell by 41% between 1990 and 2005, or double the national rate.

Even Eliot Spitzer recently referred to upstate New York as "Appalachia." Alas, the Attorney General shows no sign of understanding that the heart of the problem lies in Albany. One reason he hasn't pursued the state's rampant Medicaid fraud with any vigor is because it would get him crosswise with Mr. Rivera.

As for GM, its management mistakes are legion and its weak product line well-known. But the root of its problem is that it long ago became a corporate version of the welfare state, with the same entrenched union interests. Yes, as a private company it has had to answer to shareholders. But the size of its market dominance going back to its heyday 40 years ago allowed its managers to avoid confronting its uncompetitive wages, benefits and work rules even as they saw Toyota and Honda gaining in the rearview mirror.

In retrospect, GM management should have provoked a union showdown. Yet only a very brave CEO would have been willing to risk a potentially catastrophic strike on his watch for the sake of making the company more competitive after he retired. In any case, would the United Auto Workers really have budged? In 1998, young executive and future CEO Rick Wagoner endured a 54-day UAW wildcat strike at two plants in Flint, Michigan, after GM had tried to change some production rules. The strike shut down most GM production in North America and cost the company some $2 billion. In the end GM caved and the UAW escaped, having made virtually no concessions.

Even now at auto-parts maker Delphi--which is already in Chapter 11--the UAW is declaring it will take a strike that could destroy both Delphi and GM rather than agree to Delphi's proposed job cuts and work changes. As in France and New York, these union leaders would rather sink the company than make concessions that would reduce their own power.

This pattern has repeated itself again and again--in the steel and textile industries attacked by foreign competition, or the unionized grocery chains routed by Wal-Mart. The union answer has rarely been to work with a company to allow more job flexibility to become more competitive. The answer has typically been to seek a ruinous strike or lobby for political intervention that might stave off disaster for at best a few more years.

We recount all this because, even amid GM's decline and France's economic turmoil, most of America's liberal elites refuse to draw the right lesson. They cling to the belief that if only the Democrats can retake Congress, or the union movement can once again organize more of the American labor force, the old economy of union-backed job security and egalité will return. Or, worse, they propose seceding from global competition via protectionism. It is all a delusion. Down that road lies France--a nice place to vacation, but you wouldn't want to work there.

This is the central problem the liberal wing of the Democratic Party faces as it plots what to do if it does regain power this year, or in 2008. Democrats will eventually win an election or two because of Republican ineptitude or an economic slowdown. But to govern for the long haul they need better ideas than trade barriers, a tax hike to increase the size of government, or the defense of the entitlement status quo.

They need to champion reforms to help individual workers better secure their own futures in a competitive global economy, rather than relying on the false hope of restoring the age of Walter Reuther. They need to promote portable pensions, cheaper health insurance and education choice. So far all we see is Jacques Chirac in American drag.

# posted by Duane : 8:10 PM  0 comments

President Jacques Chirac, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions, announced plans Monday to replace a contested jobs law that fanned large protests and strikes across France.

Chirac's office said a new plan focusing on youths from troubled backgrounds will replace the "first job contract," which would have made it easier for companies to fire workers under 26.

The move comes as a blow to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had championed the law despite weeks of protests across the country. Villepin was to make a statement later Monday.

Acting on a proposal from Villepin, his longtime protege, Chirac decided to "replace" a key provision of the law with a measure aimed at "youths in difficulty," a statement from the president's office said. The conservative government has pushed the law as a way to reduce high unemployment among French youths.

Chirac enacted the law earlier this month, but immediately suspended it to give ruling conservative lawmakers the chance to meet with unions and look for a way out of the crisis.

Unions were expected to make their own announcement Monday about whether to stage more of the protests and strikes that have shut down universities and tangled traffic in recent weeks -- and cast a shadow on what is likely to be Chirac's last year in office.

# posted by Duane : 7:19 AM  0 comments

I agree that the phenomenon of "political correctness" and the attacks on American history -- most notably, the attempt to portray slavery and racism, not the fight for liberty, as the essence of our history -- are real threats to the process of assimilation. And this paves the way for anti-American leftist groups, like ANSWER, to sponsor pro-immigration rallies at which some illegal immigrants have waved the flags of their home countries -- an odd way to make the case for becoming a citizen of this country.

But the argument about political correctness and multiculturalism is not really an argument against immigration. In fact, it only connects to immigration very incidentally. If the ability of our culture to induct people into the values of our civilization is in doubt, then what happens to 11 million illegal immigrants is a relatively small problem. What we really ought to be worried about is a group of 75 million people who desperately need to be assimilated into America's culture of individualism, taught the essential facts about America's history, and encouraged to appreciate the virtues of our political system.

I am talking about 75 million people who are, you might say, on an automatic track to citizenship, and all of whom will become newly eligible to vote in the next two decades.

I am speaking of the 75 million Americans under the age of 18.

# posted by Duane : 9:47 PM  1 comments

Two Israeli air strikes killed eight Palestinian militants Saturday in the latest signs that Israel has stepped up its retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week.

Six Palestinian militants were killed and five wounded when Israeli aircraft fired missiles after nightfall at a training camp in central Gaza, Palestinian officials said.

The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an attack against a Fatah camp that it said was used for weapons training and planning attacks against Israel.

Palestinians said the target was a camp used by the Abu Rish Brigades, an ad-hoc grouping of breakaways from several militant groups, including Fatah and Hamas.

Earlier Saturday, two members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of the Fatah Party, were killed and a third was seriously wounded in an Israeli missile strike on their car in Gaza. The militants had just fired a rocket toward Israel and returned to their car when they were hit, the Israeli military said.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a Palestinian Authority spokesman, said the air strikes were a "new escalation" and that the Palestinians would appeal to the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution against the attacks.

In recent days, the military has also intensified artillery attacks on Gaza, for the first time firing at rocket launch sites even if they are in populated areas, rather than aiming only at open fields. Over a four-day period, two Palestinians have been killed and 25 wounded by direct artillery hits on houses, Palestinian officials said. Israeli security officials said troops have fired 750 artillery shells since Thursday.

# posted by Duane : 9:19 PM  0 comments

Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday he became convinced he should become a priest to help confront what he called the "anti-human culture" of the Nazis in his native Germany.

Benedict made the comments during a meeting with thousands of young people in St. Peter's Square during which he took questions from five students on issues such as the family, how to read the Bible and faith and reason.

Asked by one student how he realized his own priestly vocation, the 78-year-old pontiff said that when he was young in Germany it was more "normal" to accept faith and vocations than it is today.

"There was the Nazi regime," Benedict said. "We were told very loudly that in the new Germany 'there will not be anymore priests, there will be no more consecrated life, we don't need this anymore, find another profession."'

"But actually hearing these loud voices, I understood that in confronting the brutality of this system, this inhuman face, that there is a need for priests, precisely as a contrast to this anti-human culture," he said.

Benedict was enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teen and later deserted from the German army near the end of World War II.

The pope acknowledged that he had doubts about the commitment required for joining the priesthood and whether his love for theology alone was enough of a reason to become ordained.

"I asked myself if I really had the capacity to live an entirely celibate life," he said. "Being a theoretical and not practical man, I also knew it wasn't enough to love theology to be a good priest, but I also needed to be available to young people, old, sick and poor people."

He said that in the end, God as well as friends and other priests helped him to decide.

The meeting was Benedict's second in which he has publicly fielded questions from young Catholics. Benedict also has met several times with priests in informal town-hall style question-and-answer sessions.

Benedict was asked how Catholics can harmonize the apparent conflict between faith and reason. He gave a highly philosophical response that touched on mathematics, chaos theory and the "intelligent design" behind creation.

In November, Benedict waded indirectly into the evolution debate in the United States, saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.

At the end of the meeting, Benedict joined a few young people at the tomb of Pope John Paul II to pray, concluding the Vatican's commemorations of the first anniversary of the pontiff's death.

# posted by Duane : 9:23 PM  0 comments

The Israel Air Force struck a Popular Resistance Committees training camp in Rafah on Friday, killing six Palestinians.

Among those killed was Iyad Abul Aynayn, 29, a chief bombmaker associated with Hamas. His 5-year-old daughter was also among the dead.

Fourteen people were wounded, including one who was in a coma, Palestinian security officials said.

Palestinian police said that four missiles were launched in the attack. The IDF said it targeted a car as it was exiting the camp.

The security establishment decided recently to step-up its strikes against terrorists following an increase in the number of Kassam rockets launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip, Army Radio reported.

# posted by Duane : 9:18 PM  0 comments

Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters, and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the 11 million illegals among us.

Start with the second. No one of good will wants to see these 11 million suffer. But the obvious problem is that legalization creates an enormous incentive for new illegals to come.

We say, of course, that this will be the very last, very final, never-again, we're-not-kidding-this-time amnesty. The problem is that we say exactly the same thing with every new reform. And everyone knows it's phony.

What do you think was said when in 1986 we passed the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform? It turned into the largest legalization program in American history -- nearly 3 million got permanent residency. And we are now back at it again with 11 million new illegals in our midst.

How can it be otherwise? We already have a river of people coming every day knowing they're going to be illegal and perhaps even exploited. They come nonetheless. The newest amnesty -- the ``earned legalization'' now being dangled in front of them by proposed Senate legislation -- can only increase the flow.

Those who think employer sanctions will control immigration are dreaming. Employer sanctions were the heart of Simpson-Mazzoli. They are not only useless, they are pernicious. They turn employers into enforcers of border control. That is the job of government, not landscapers.

The irony of this whole debate, which is bitterly splitting the country along partisan, geographic and ethnic lines, is that there is a silver bullet that would not just solve the problem but also create a national consensus behind it.

My proposition is the following: a vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new -- i.e., future -- illegal immigration.

Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the last 50 years.

Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don't tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that's an expression of sovereignty. The fence around your house is a perfectly legitimate expression of your desire to control who comes into your house to eat, sleep and use the facilities. It imprisons no one.

Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn't have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle. Once we can do that, everything becomes possible -- most especially, humanizing the situation of our 11 million existing illegals.

If the government can demonstrate that it can control future immigration, there will be infinitely less resistance to dealing generously with the residual population of past immigration. And, as Mickey Kaus and others have suggested, that may require that the two provisions be sequenced. First, radical border control by physical means. Then shortly thereafter, radical legalization of those already here. To achieve national consensus on legalization, we will need a short lag time between the two provisions, perhaps a year or two, to demonstrate to the skeptics that the current wave of illegals is indeed the last.

This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America.

This is not a compromise meant to appease both sides without achieving anything. It is not some piece of hybrid legislation that arbitrarily divides illegals into those with five-year-old ``roots" in America and those without, or some such mischief-making nonsense.

This is full amnesty (earned with back taxes and learning English and the like) with full border control. If we do it right, not only will we solve the problem, we will get it done as one nation.

# posted by Duane : 9:14 PM  0 comments

A resolution passed unanimously by San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has prompted a lawsuit alleging the city officials have launched a "startling attack" on the Catholic Church, its teachings and beliefs, and its adherents.

On March 21, the Board of Supervisors voiced their approval of a resolution condemning Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality and urging the Archbishop of San Francisco and Catholic Charities of San Francisco to defy church directives prohibiting adoptions by homosexual households. According to the Thomas More Law Center, which has filed the lawsuit on behalf of two Catholic citizens of San Francisco and the Catholic League, Catholic doctrine states that allowing children to be adopted by homosexuals effectively places those children in an environment that is not "conducive to their full human development."

"[S]uch policies are gravely immoral and Catholic organizations [a reference to Catholic Charities] must not place children for adoption in homosexual households," says a Law Center press release.

In addition to calling on local Catholic leaders to defy church teachings, the Board's resolution alludes to the Vatican as a foreign country "meddling" in the city's affairs, and describes the church's moral teachings and beliefs as "insulting to all San Franciscans," "hateful," and "insulting and callous."

Robert Muise, the Law Center attorney handling the case, explains the rationale behind the lawsuit. "[The U.S. Constitution] forbids hostility toward any religion," he says. "In total disregard for the Constitution, homosexual activists in position of authority in San Francisco are abusing their authority as government officials and misusing the instruments of government to attack the Catholic Church."

He calls the Board's move an "abuse of power" and "a clear violation" of the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

The lawsuit alleges that the resolution adopted by the Board of Supervisors essentially tells not just the plaintiffs, but all those who adhere to the Catholic faith, that they are "outsiders" and "not full members of the political community." At the same time, says the lawsuit, the measure tells those who oppose Catholic doctrine regarding homosexual unions and adoption they are "insiders" and "favored members of the political community."

Says Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, "San Francisco may as well as have put up signs at [the] city limits [saying] 'Faithful Catholics Not Welcomed.'"

Catholic League president William Donohue agrees. "Make no mistake about it," he says. "Resident Catholics have been told, however indirectly, that the government does not look kindly on their right to publicly express their religion."

Donohue reminds the Board of Supervisors that the so-called "separation of church and state" is a two-way street.

"Imagine what would have happened if the Vatican had condemned the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for 'meddling' in the internal affairs of the Catholic Church simply because the two entities disagreed on a public policy issue?" he wonders. "Separation of church and state cuts both ways."

He adds that when elected representatives accuse members of any religion of interfering in municipal affairs, the inevitable result is a "chilling effect on the rights of the faithful."

# posted by Duane : 8:49 PM  0 comments

The Ed Johnson case nicely encapsulates the current situation of our United Methodist Church. A bishop who defended her colleague, Joe Sprague, after he denied Christ’s full deity, punishes a pastor for upholding traditional Wesleyan standards regarding church membership. The democratically elected Judicial Council, perhaps the most representative body in the whole connection, restores the pastor to his pulpit.

But the Council of Bishops responds with confusion, asserting what was not denied, denying what was not affirmed. In the end, the bishops submit a brief to the Judicial Council that defends no high principle or core doctrine of the faith. Instead, the bishops insist only on the prerogatives of their own power, which seems to be the only unifying principle among an otherwise hopelessly divided council.

Meanwhile, Bishop Kammerer asserts in her own brief for the Judicial Council that the elusive term “status,” which our church’s constitution guards against discrimination, somehow includes sexual practice, which is apparently as morally neutral as race, gender and economic situation.

Her underlying premise, an increasingly common one, is that sexual orientation, of whatever stripe, is a divine gift, deserving of affirmation. People are naturally good, not sinful. This version of noble humanity, of course, does not really need a Cross or a Savior. With such a graceless theology, we would wonder: saved for what, from what?

They who promote the “inclusive” church advocate more than simply “open doors.” They advocate a complete redefinition of the Christian faith that in fact, in the end, would leave us with no faith in all. It would transform The Church, or what is left of it, into an ongoing Rainbow Coalition, endlessly including and affirming, having at its core basically nothing. Like cotton candy, it is pink and almost sickeningly sweet, but offers little satisfaction when biting into it.

The Ed Johnson ruling has almost no practical application. Most clergy, conservative and liberal, will continue their practice of signing onto the membership rolls any willing soul that still has breath. The Church Left, if it were wiser, would have ignored the ruling, or minimized it. But the near hysterical reaction is based on the Church Left’s larger fear: its time is running out.

Bishops and seminary presidents and church agency staff have run to and fro, hyperventilating, signing declarations, issuing press releases, passing resolutions, and warning of an apocalypse if the likes of Ed Johnson, a mild-mannered small town pastor, were to prevail. But all the hoopla has barely registered with the average United Methodist, who must wonder what all the fuss is about.

The Church Left knows, but dares not articulate, and perhaps cannot even admit to itself, that its days of domination are over. Decades of its control robbed the church of 3 million members, moved Methodism from mainline to sideline, and left thousands of church buildings nearly empty, except a smattering of faithful old grey heads.

United Methodist vitality, where it exists, does so only because it escaped the domination of the Church Left, or simply ducked and successfully avoided attention, instead focusing on the work of the Kingdom. While liberal bureaucrats and bishops postured and administered, evangelicals quietly proclaimed the Word, in the U.S. with some success, in Africa with far greater success.

In the latest round of episcopal posturing, our bishops, even as they could not agree about what the Scriptures say about sex, simultaneously issued their third AND fourth denunciations of the Iraq War, about which God has purportedly been very clear. Evidently they were concerned, with considerable justification, that their first two condemnations were ignored. There are many intelligent reasons to oppose the Iraq War. But the bishops remarkably managed to avoid them all, instead asserting old anti-war bromides that would cause even William Sloane Coffin to blush. The Berrigan Brothers, were they still alive, would look like Henry Kissinger compared to our incomparable bishops.

But United Methodist bishops, in their foreign policy advice, have been dreadfully consistent. They wanted to disarm our country, and the West, during the final decades of the Cold War. Had their advice been taken, which thankfully was never likely, the Politburo would still reign in the Kremlin, and hundreds of millions would remain captive.

Now the bishops do not want the U.S. to defend itself from Islamic terror, no matter what the provocation. All “violence” is morally equal, they seem to assert, ignoring two millennia of Christian moral teaching. Of course, they do not really believe that all violence is morally equal. Violence by the U.S. military is, by definition, more troubling than almost any other kind.

Needless to point out, the general secretary of our Board of Church and Society far exceeds the relatively tame rhetoric of the bishops about the Iraq War. He discerns many a dank conspiracy regarding the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein. As a good liberal, he almost certainly does not believe in Hell, but he seems to surmise that fellow United Methodists George W. Bush and Richard Cheney are on their way there. Jim Winkler perhaps wants to make support for military force a chargeable offense, worthy of excommunication.

Mr. Winkler issues his declarations from the Methodist Building, which was built with Sunday school dimes and nickels given for Temperance causes nearly a century ago. Neither he nor countless other church bureaucrats who divert the church’s resources into a thousand causes deemed more worthy than the Gospel itself could survive, if their work depended on an honest and direct appeal to the average United Methodist. So, instead they depend on the endowments of the past, and the ignorance and misinformation of the present.

# posted by Duane : 8:38 PM  0 comments

CHURCHES should invite Muslims to share their faith with congregations in a bid to foster a better understanding of Islam, bishops urged this week. As the international community, including President Bush and the Pope, welcomed the release of the Afghan who had faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity, senior prelates suggested the case could harm attempts to strengthen relations between the faiths.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, led the Church’s call for the situation to be turned from one of “embarrassment, disturbance, and even outrage into positive action, positive hope, which will break the stereotypes and lay serious and lasting foundations for understanding and peace.” While the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev Richard Harries, has expressed his concern that people should be allowed the freedom to change their religion, others said that Sharia Law was being wrongly portrayed as “a strict set of rules and regulations”. In a move designed to assure Muslims in Britain of the Church of England’s support, bishops have proposed a range of recommendations that include urging churchgoers to be prepared to celebrate Christian festivals together.

The Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, said that the June Whit Walks, which “is at heart a Christian celebration”, could be made into a Walk of Faiths. “At a time when there is an effort to divide religious groups, wouldn’t it be good to see people of faith sharing this kind of witness?” he argued. “As people of faith we have something unique to offer in our understanding of the quality of life. We walk around as Christians to witness to our faith so why not witness to other faiths? We have a value system that we share and we should be celebrating that.” The Bishop of Bolton, the Rt Rev David Gillett, agreed that such walks would be a way of combating the tendency of society to highlight the division caused by religion, rather than its power to unite.

Bishop Gillett, who is Chair of the Christian-Muslim Forum, wrote to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to state his anxiety over the plight of the Afghan Abdul Rahman. He said that conflict between Christianity and Islam abroad could have a negative impact on relations at home. The call for Mr Rahman to be executed under Sharia Law was not representative of Muslims’ views on apostasy, he stressed. “Many non-Muslims misunderstand Sharia Law. It is not a set of rules and regulations. In theory it’s a much more flexible system than an immutable legal code.”

Bishop Lowe encouraged churches to ask Muslims to their services to talk about their faith so that Christians can gain a clearer insight into what Islam teaches. “The role of Communion is not diminished by having people of other faiths present,” he commented. Bishop Gillett said that he had presided recently at a Eucharist at which Muslims were observing and warned that churches should not bar the door to them. Inviting them to talk, creating an open and honest environment where issues can be addressed would be vital to build relations between the faith communities. At a dinner in Washington DC last week marking the fourth meeting of the Christian-Muslim Building Bridges seminar, Dr Williams called the Rahman trial “outrageous, unjust and exceptional” and stressed that dialogue was critical in resolving distrust between the West and the Islamic world.

Dialogue was not simply a “matter of the Islamic world being asked to adopt uncritically a ‘Western-model’, secular human rights framework,” he said, “but working out what it would be like to live in a world where different societies recognised the credibility, the justice and the legitimacy in each other”. Bishop Harries raised the issue in the House of Lords, highlighting the responsibility of Afghanistan to respect the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that there must be freedom for people to change their religion. Bishop Gillett agreed that this principle must be followed, but acknowledged that the issue of apostasy was particularly sensitive. “It can complicate relations, causing an element of discomfort with one another.”

# posted by Duane : 8:43 PM  0 comments

A family in Maynard is outraged after their 5-year-old daughter was forced to write a letter denouncing hugging after a classmate embraced her.

NewsCenter 5's Amalia Barreda reported that Brenda Brier and Michael Marino pulled their daughter, Savannah, out of school early Wednesday. The couple was angry after a meeting with officials at the Greenmeadow Elementary School in Maynard, where Savannah is in kindergarten.

At issue is a hug Savannah said she got on the playground from a friend named Sophie. Savannah hugged Sophie back. The hugs resulted in Savannah having to write a letter, complete with teacher corrections, that read, "I touch Sophie because she touch me and I didn't like it because she was hugging me. I didn't like when she hugged me."

"She said, 'I'm really sad that I got in trouble for hugging,'" Brier said.

"I can understand if boys are playing rough or kids are pulling each other around -- that's one thing. But when kids are being affectionate, I mean hugging, hey, they shouldn't be disciplined over it and they shouldn't be lying in letters making the kid say the opposite that they don't like to hug," Marino said.

School Superintendent Mark Masterson told NewsCenter 5 there was a "dispute of the facts between a hug and a lifting of a child off the floor." The superintendent said the school reported "one girl bear hugged another girl and lifted her off the ground. The aide who was monitoring told the teacher. The teacher asked several students to write a note to their parents and describe what happened."

Savannah said she did not lift her classmate off the ground.

"They're trying to accuse her now, basically," Brier said.

Savannah's parents said it should have never gone this far, and want an apology from the school. The family said they are so upset they'll start looking for a new school for their daughter to attend.

# posted by Duane : 7:47 PM  0 comments

The high-octane Mississippi Senate delegation is using a mammoth bill funding hurricane relief and the war in Iraq to have taxpayers foot the $700 million bill for a rail line along Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

But there's a catch. The track in question, owned by CSX Transportation and damaged by Hurricane Katrina, has already been repaired at a cost of $300 million.

Now, Mississippi GOP Sens. Thad Cochran and Trent Lott want to tear up the just-rebuilt track _ which divides virtually every city and town along the state's coast _ and use the land to build a much-needed highway along the congested coastline.

Lott is from coastal Pascagoula and is the project's longtime champion; Cochran supplies much-needed muscle as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which approved the project Tuesday as part of a $107 billion-plus measure funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and additional hurricane relief.

Critics are already blasting the move as a power play by the Mississippians, accusing them of using the must-pass Iraq and Katrina bill to advance a home-state project that's hardly an emergency.

"For $700 million, the Congress could certainly do a lot more to help people that are still without homes," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group. "It's certainly unclear what this has to do with an emergency. It sounds like a wish list from the senators from Mississippi."

The plan to tear up the track isn't real popular with CSX either. They're negotiating with state and federal officials, and the $700 million price tag was largely determined by the railroad.

"We rebuilt that line across the Gulf Coast as quickly as possible because it's a critical artery for us," said CSX spokesman Gary Sease. "It serves our purposes. It meets our customers' needs. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it."

But Mississippi officials like Lott and Gov. Haley Barbour have long wanted to replace the rail line, which causes traffic jams along north-south roads, with a new east-west road to supplement U.S. 90, the heavily congested coastal road.

"It's going to be very important to the future economy of the coast," said Mississippi Power President Anthony Topazi, who was vice chairman of a state commission on Katrina recovery planning. "We were already hamstrung in terms of traveling east and west along the coast and we needed a new route and we suddenly had this really great opportunity and we're trying to seize upon it."

CSX won't say exactly how it would use the federal largess, but Sease acknowledged building an entirely new line would be prohibitively costly. Instead, the company would probably reach agreements with other railroads to share lines and would use some of the $700 million to upgrade track and build connecting lines.

The ambitious project has critics already comparing it to "pork barrel" projects like the $223 million "bridge to nowhere" connecting Alaska's Gravina Island _ population 50 _ to the mainland. That project drew the ire of the American public and was rescinded in December.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said, "It is ludicrous for the Senate to spend $700 million to destroy and relocate a rail line that is in perfect working order, particularly when it recently underwent a ... repair."

The underlying bill contains lots of other money for Mississippi, such as $27 million to rebuild the Gulfport Job Corps center, $176 million to rebuild the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport and $62 million to clean up and deliver a beachfront site _ formerly a veterans hospital _ in Gulfport to the city.

Lott vigorously defended the rail line plan.

"I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina," he said. "We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We've been very reasonable."

# posted by Duane : 7:44 PM  0 comments

Rudy Rios was stripped of his duties as junior varsity baseball coach at Chavez High School last week after using a district copying machine to make a flier encouraging Latino students to attend a rally protesting restrictions on illegal immigration.

Rios, who still retains his duties as an English-as-a-second-language teacher, was copying and distributing a flier that read: "We gots 2 stay together and protest against the new law that wants 2 be passed against all immigrants. We gots 2 show the U.S. that they aint (expletive) with out us (sic)," according to district officials.

"Mr. Rios used taxpayer-funded school equipment to copy and distribute to children an offensive statement," said Houston Independent School District spokesman Terry Abbott. "The principal exercised his authority to remove Mr. Rios as junior varsity baseball coach, and it certainly was an appropriate decision."

Chavez Principal Dan Martinez made the decision, but referred questions on the issue to Abbott. Rios could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

According to district records, Rios has been with HISD since August 2002. He earned about $42,000 a year.

# posted by Duane : 7:41 PM  0 comments

Four teenagers accused of plotting to kill about 25 people in a lunch-period massacre at a high school were charged Thursday under a terrorism law created after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The boys, ages 14 to 16, were arrested Wednesday after police heard about the alleged plot from administrators at the school, where three of the teens are students. Their names were not released because of their ages.

Authorities said the teens planned to attack students, teachers and others at Winslow Township High.

The four boys appeared in family court, and a judge ordered them held for psychiatric evaluations.

The father of one of the boys said the charges were a mistake: "I think it's just kids hanging out together and having a little wild time, that's all."

# posted by Duane : 7:30 PM  0 comments

Here are a few ideas, none of them new, but all of them worth accomplishing:

• Taxes. We hear that the House-Senate conference to extend the 15% capital gains and dividend rates isn't even meeting. This is inexplicable. The one large domestic success of the Bush years has been the post-bubble, post-9/11 economic revival, yet Republicans seem blasé about extending the tax cuts that did so much to spur it. A failure here would hurt the stock market and demoralize economic conservatives.

While they're at it, force the Senate to vote on death-tax repeal. Republicans may not get 60 votes, but if they come close enough they may be able to get Senator Jon Kyl's compromise that would cut the rate to 15%, from nearly 50% today, and raise the exemption above $10 million or so.

• Reform Congressional budgeting, by passing the line-item veto and ending static revenue scoring at the Joint Tax Committee. Another good idea is the effort by Arizonans Jeff Flake in the House and John McCain in the Senate to end earmark abuse. A return to some spending self-discipline will count for much more with conservative voters than will "lobbying reform," which is a Beltway trope designed by the same crowd that promoted the "campaign-finance reform" that empowered George Soros.

• Health-care choice. Congressman John Shadegg (R., Ariz.) has a bill to let Americans purchase affordable health insurance from any of the 50 states, thus bypassing state mandates that drive up insurance costs in New York and many other places. Another idea would let associations form health-care risk pools for their members, thus giving small business owners and the self-employed the same tax-preferred insurance options that big business and unions have now. These proposals would address a top voter priority and steal a march on Democrats.

• Endangered Species Act reform. This is a huge issue in the West, where ESA rules drive property owners crazy. Congressman Richard Pombo (R., Calif.) has a bipartisan proposal that would require the federal government to compensate property owners for regulatory "takings" due to wetlands preservation or endangered species limits on development. The Senate probably wouldn't pass it, but the issue could be potent in key Congressional contests this fall.

We can think of other ideas, such as fighting for appellate-court nominees in the Senate, and defending the President's anti-terror agenda, especially the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretaps. But the larger point is for Republicans to show that they are willing to fight for something.

Some Republicans seem to believe that debating any of these issues will help Democrats "nationalize" the election, which will hurt them because of Mr. Bush's low approval ratings. But a Congressman is not a dog catcher, and some kind of national agenda is what voters expect of someone they'll be sending to Washington. With the Abramoff scandal likely to keep making headlines, Republicans need something to motivate their voters. Policy will trump scandal, but only if Republicans look like they want to achieve something real.

On election night in 2004, Democratic campaign consultant James Carville asked: Where did all these Republican voters come from? Unless Republicans set a new legislative course over the next seven months, a deposed House Speaker Denny Hastert may soon be wondering: Where did all the Republican voters go?

# posted by Duane : 6:47 PM  0 comments

It’s time for liberation

It’s time for education

Time for Liberation
from 1492
Time for education
on the last 500 years...


Time for truth
The truth about Columbus
Truth of the crimes of the Europeans
500 years of crimes
of the Europeans
The truth of our ownership
of this continent
The truth of the holocaust
that happened
to us here
The truth that we are ignorant of

We are colonized
under the European false ownership
of our land, our continent.
We are colonized
under the false labels
of Hispanic and Latino
that make us foreigners
on our own land, our continent.

We are an occupied nation
WE ARE AN OCCUPIED CONTINENT
We are a people enslaved to Europeans.

We need to learn
about colonialism and genocide.
Two important words.

We need EDUCATION
ON HOW
TO GET UP OFF
OUR KNEES
How to be free
from the racism of the Europeans.
We need to learn how to be free from Europeans.

We need to think these thoughts.
Here we promote those thoughts:
Liberation;
we are not Hispanic and not Latino;
end the occupation of our continent;

end of the theft of the wealth
of our continent.

Think on the thoughts on this page
and you will free yourself
from the slavery of ignorance
in which we are all in, then
go out to free our people
with the knowledge you will gain
from these pages.


Education
on the beauty of our people.
Education on colonialism and genocide
and why we must be free
from Europeans.
Free from Europeans.
Our continent,
free from Europeans.
Our people free from Europeans.

The genius of our people
it's being wasted every day.
You should cry one day
when you wake
and know what that means.
They have us living
as slaves in ignorance.

Listen my people
we are all one people
on this continent.
Forget the borders.
Forget English and Spanish languages.
Forget “America”.
We are the Indigenous people of this continent.

We speak to you as the Mexica Movement
in the spirit of our last great civilization,
the Mexica, the so-called, miscalled, Aztecs.
We are Mexica Movement.
The Mexica are our guides
to the liberation of our people.
The name of our nation is Anahuac.
We are the Anahuac nation.
Anahuac is this whole continent.
We are the
people of Anahuac.

Listen
Mexicans, Chicanos, “Centro Americanos”,
Native Americans
We are all one people
Not European
Not of the Spanish
Not Hispanic
Not Latino
Not of the Latins
Not of the Whites
Not Raza
Not Mestizo
Rape does not define us
That’s what Raza and Mestizo do
They celebrate our rape
They take pride in our slavery

We are not the natural slaves of the white man
We are meant to be free
Not slaves of anyone

Nican Tlaca means Indigenous.
Indigenous means
that we are the original inhabitants
of this continent.
Listen Nican Tlaca,
all Indigenous
people of this
our continent.
Listen, we are Nican Tlaca:
the only owners
of this continent.
Forget North America,
USA, Canada, Mexico,
and "Central America"
---this whole continent is Anahuac.
This is our continent.
100% Nican Tlaca.
100% Indigenous.
100% Anahuac.

# posted by Duane : 9:58 PM  0 comments

A Far-Eastside couple say they are stunned that a Warren Township Schools principal suspended their son and recommended his expulsion for possession of a pocketknife even though he turned the knife in to the office as soon as he arrived at school.

After turning in the knife, the eighth-grader was suspended from Stonybrook Middle School for 10 days and may be expelled.

Elizabeth Voge-Wehrheim and Frank Wehrheim, the boy's mother and stepfather, have hired Indianapolis attorney Lawrence T. Newman to represent them.

"This young man made the most responsible choice under any policy possible," Newman said of the boy, Elliot Voge. "They are treating him as the most irresponsible student under the circumstances."

Elliot, 14, said he was walking to the school entrance in the brisk weather March 3 and had placed his hands in his coat pocket when he felt the Swiss army pocketknife in the pocket.

"I went straight to the office right inside (the front door)," he said.
He said he handed the knife to Teri Donahue, the school's treasurer, and told her he had brought it to school by mistake.

As a result of Elliot's actions, the school's principal, Jimmy Meadows, suspended Elliot for the maximum 10 school days as allowed by law and recommended Elliot be expelled. A confidential expulsion hearing is scheduled for April 10.

Suspending and seeking to expel Elliot until June 6 under the circumstances have so stunned Elliot, his mother and stepfather that they agreed to go public with his situation.

"When Mr. Meadows said he was referring Elliot for expulsion, I was in shock," said Voge-Wehrheim.

# posted by Duane : 9:33 PM  0 comments

A group of students at Longmont's Skyline High School mounted a protest outside the school Friday to denounce their principal's decision to stop them from displaying the American flag.

Skyline principal Tom Stumpf issued a ban on all flags after seeing American flags used to taunt and harass students demonstrating in support of immigrants' rights, he said. The school has seen tension mirroring the national argument over immigration reforms being considered by Congress and at the state legislature, he said.

The ban applies to all flags, not just the American flag, Stumpf said in an interview with 7News. The district's American flags are still flying at Skyline and all other district facilities, according to the release.

"The flags were being used not as a symbol of cultural heritage, but the flags were being used as symbols of bigotry, a symbol of hostility," he said. "They were being used to inflame different groups, and we're just simply not going to tolerate that."

Stumpf told the station "one flag was thrown into the face of another group, and another flag was being brandished in front of another group."

In a release from the office of Superintendent Randy Zila, St. Vrain Valley School District officials cited a districtwide policy allowing "individuals" to display the U.S. flag "as long as such display does not disrupt the educational process or cause a safety concern."

Officials said the district "respects the professional judgment and discretion of those who are close to the situation and who have a better understanding of the emotions that are running very high this week among the students at Skyline High School," according to the release.

But officials will review the situation over the spring break recess, which began at the end of the school day Friday, they said.

The students demonstrating Friday said it felt as if Stumpf's ban applied only to American flags, which they had brought to school to counter Mexican flags displayed by other students on school grounds all week.

"What we want to know is, since when was it against the rules to have an American flag on a car, in a car, in your hands in a school?" student William Cassity said to 7News.

Two state lawmakers weighed in from their shared office at the Capitol on Friday with e-mails criticizing Stumpf's flag rule.

"Be prepared for legislative action and legal action against you to follow," wrote Republican Sen. Steve Johnson of Fort Collins.

His office mate, Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, said in an interview that Stumpf should have found some other way to ease the tensions in his school.

"Clearly, there are ways ... to manage any sort of conflict that students might have that don't diminish the respect that we should have for the flag," Wiens said.

# posted by Duane : 4:30 PM  1 comments

The Associated Press reported recently that a trailside memorial to an American soldier killed in Afghanistan had been vandalized. The memorial to Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Petithory, adjacent to the Ashuwillticook Trail in Cheshire, Mass., was defaced with the words "Oil," "Bush," "Christian Crusade" and other phrases.

Dan Petithory was one of my soldiers. He was an Army Green Beret and was killed on Dec. 5, 2001, north of Kandahar as he and his A-Team were closing in on the home of al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership.

I attended Dan's funeral in Cheshire along with Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry, as well as the archbishop of Chicago and other generals and government dignitaries, who honored Daniel and his family with their presence. Kerry gave the eulogy and moved us to tears, acknowledging that this war was one that we had no choice but to fight. Toward the end of the Mass we shook hands, giving the sign of peace. We then turned to Dan's wonderful parents, brother and sister to try to somehow alleviate their pain and suffering.

Months later, my wife, Bonnie, and I were honored to have the Petithorys as guests in North Carolina. Our hearts ached anew at their loss, and I promised to jog the Ashuwillticook Trail one day in remembrance of Dan.

I was a soldier in 1969, and I witnessed misguided students and adults attacking individual soldiers because of their disgust with national policy. In the '60s the purveyors of hate on the left were mostly resident on campus and could not differentiate between those responsible for policy and deception regarding the war in Vietnam and the young, honorable men and women who served in the military.

The vandals who struck the Petithory family were confused. Oil, Christian crusades and Bush were not issues during the fight in Afghanistan. We had consensus. Both sides of the aisle in Congress and the entire nation agreed that al-Qaeda had to be kept from continuing its attacks.

Sadly, the vandals' actions are illustrative of how we have squandered our opportunity to face terrorism with unified and coherent action. The right's neocons orchestrated a war with Iraq that has destroyed national consensus and they are culpable for politicizing the individual soldier by repeatedly sending the message that to criticize policy equates attacking the soldier -- an allegation that is simply not true. Meanwhile, some on the left are returning to mindless violence.

So here I stand, waiting for my daughter to return from her voluntary tour in the Middle East with the U.S. Coast Guard, wondering if some cretin will spit on her. I pray that soon our leaders on the left, right and center will find a way forward, build a new consensus and reverse our growing polarization.

Meanwhile, I may take to long midnight walks on the Ashuwillticook Trail -- packing heat.

Me? Polarized? Count me in. Dan was a hell of a soldier from a great family.

The writer, a retired major general, commanded the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) from 2001 to 2003.

# posted by Duane : 9:39 AM  1 comments