Pennsylvanian in exile

A former Marine who police say killed a woman that attacked him during a gang robbery attempt told reporters Tuesday he acted only to save his life.

"My first instinct was to run," said former Cpl. Thomas Autry, 36. "Those kids were younger than me. They caught me and cornered me. It was about life preservation."

"I'm sorry this whole thing happened. I hate this world has gotten to the point where it is predatory," said a shaken Autry.

The pack of would-be robbers, including a 17-year-old woman, might have mistaken the tall, thin, waiter for an easy mark, said police. But, the bandits picked the wrong victim, said Atlanta police homicide Detective Danny Stephens. The former Marine, cornered by his pursuers on Penn Avenue at 4th Street, fought back with a pocket knife in a deadly melee that left the young woman dead and a man in his late teens seriously injured at a hospital.

Autry suffered minor injuries, including a cut to his hand.

The woman, identified as Amy Martin, had just had a birthday May 10, said Investigator Mark Gilbeau with the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office. An autopsy was expected to be completed Tuesday. "Cause of death will be stab wounds, but we don't know how many yet," Gilbeau said.

Early reports were that Martin was pregnant, but the autopsy concluded otherwise, said the Fulton Medical Examiner's Office.

The teenager lived in an apartment at 3000 Stone Hogan Connector in southwest Atlanta, south of Greenbriar Mall near East Point, Gilbeau said. A young man also stabbed in the robbery attempt remained in critical condition, he added.

The identities of the surviving suspects, who Stephens said are believed to be linked to "a lot" of pedestrian robberies in Midtown and Virginia-Highland, were not released. They face aggravated assault and robbery charges, police said.

Autry will not be charged, Stephens said. "It was a clear case of self defense."

Stephens said Autry had left his job at the Jocks & Jills restaurant in Midtown and was walking along Penn Avenue when a blue Cadillac pulled alongside and three men, one armed with a shotgun, and the woman jumped from the car.

"This group had robbed two men on Piedmont earlier Monday night, taking a video camera and a cellphone," Stephens said.

"Autry takes off running, and they chase him. During the chase, Autry's trying to get into his backpack to get a pocket knife, which slows him down," Stephens said.

During the chase, Autry repeatedly yelled "fire, fire," which Stephens said attracted nearby residents' attention.

Grabbing the knife from his backpack, Autry managed to kick the shotgun from the man's hands and stabbed the woman in the chest, fatally wounding her. Stephens said. In the melee, Autry also stabbed one of the male suspects. Another suspect attempted to shoot Autry with a .380 pistol, which misfired, Stephens said.

The suspects ran back to the Cadillac and drove to Atlanta Medical Center, where police arrested them.

Autry, honorably discharged in 1992 after serving in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, spoke to a gaggle of reporters from the porch of his apartment about six block north of the King Center in downtown Atlanta.

Autry recounted the attack, saying he first realize something was amiss when he saw a white cat scurry across the road. That's when he turned around and saw the armed attackers getting out of a stopped car.

He said his military training kicked in, but "what really helped me was growing up in New York."

He said he changed his locks after the incident because of security concerns.

When told that many in the metro area consider him a hero for his actions, Autry disagreed.

"The heroes are those guys out there fighting for us every day and not getting respect," he said, referring to military personnel fighting in Iraq and elsewhere. "That [killing the attacker] wasn't admirable, it was fight or flight and I tried the flight."

# posted by Duane : 10:50 PM  0 comments

NO military service remains as close to its founder as the United States Navy. No trace of Washington's Continental Army survives in America's current ground forces. Today's Air Force is a far cry from the seat-of-the-pants days of Eddie Rickenbacker and the Lafayette Esquadrille.

But from his tomb at Annapolis' Naval Academy, the ghost of John Paul Jones still keeps watch over the service that he in large measure created, and foresaw as necessary for America's future. In the ceremony interring him in the Academy chapel crypt in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt told the Navy, "Every officer should know by heart the deeds of John Paul Jones." America's sea warriors have been admiring and emulating Jones ever since.

Retired Admiral Joseph Callo gives us a gracefully written portrait of this extraordinary and complex man. A native-born Scot, John Paul (his real name) went to sea as a boy and became a skilled merchant seaman and captain. He embodied a British seafaring tradition that combined independent, even maverick, judgment with an insistence on iron discipline over his crew. In 1774, when one of his men died after they had fought in a quarrel, John Paul fled to Fredericksburg, Va., and changed his name to Jones to hide from the authorities.

A year later the American colonies rose in rebellion against their mother country, and Jones offered the insurrectionists his services at sea. Callo's account of Jones' career in the American Revolution is sympathetic and convincing. We see Jones' commitment to the new nation of liberty blending with his hopes for an important naval command - hopes that would be constantly frustrated. It was not until Benjamin Franklin handed him command of a leaky French armed merchantmen, the Bonhomme Richard, that he finally came into his own.

It was with this underarmed and poorly manned ship that Jones would fight his most famous battle on Sept. 23, 1779. Debate rages whether Jones ever actually called out, "I have not yet begun to fight," when called on to surrender. Callo points out that Jones' own actions spoke louder than any words, anyway. He meant to beat the British, regardless of the cost. But Jones' stubborn defiance teaches a lesson particularly relevant today: that it takes moral as well as material force to win a battle, and a war.

Jones could be violent-tempered, contemptuous of his superiors and subject to long bouts of self-pity. He was also unwavering in his loyalty to the revolutionary cause, and that too would become part of the navy he founded.

It would produce many flag officers with colossal egos and touchy tempers. Yet the idea of publicly calling for the resignation of a defense secretary in the midst of a war and branding that war "unnecessary" while soldiers are dying in the field, as a group of retired army and air force generals recently did, would be abhorrent to a patriot like Jones - and repulsive to the traditions of the United States Navy.

# posted by Duane : 3:11 PM  3 comments

What Makes The Da Vinci Code Anti-Catholic by Deal W. Hudson

A reader of the Window wrote asking me to explain why I found The Da Vinci Code anti-Catholic. That's a fair question, since as she pointed out, I didn't supply any examples.

Anyone doubting my word can consult the film's co-producer, John Calley. He told The New York Times (9/7/2005) that the movie was "conservatively anti-Catholic" but not "destructively so."

I wonder if Mr. Calley sought any expert opinions on what would be destructive to the Church, or if he considered himself qualified to make that call. Why did he reject the request for a disclaimer at the beginning of the film, if he was concerned about its possibly being destructive? It's widely known that many of Dan Brown's readers believe his claim that the book is based upon "historical evidence."

Since Calley is a former chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, it's safe to assume that other Sony executives are fully aware of the film's assault on the reputation of the Catholic Church. Peter Boyer has written a fascinating account in The New Yorker (5/22/06) of how Sony's marketing department tried to head off conservative Christian criticism of the film. "(Hollywood Heresy: Marketing 'The Da Vinci Code' to Christians").

Boyer chronicles Sony's attempt to inoculate itself against a Christian backlash by creating a web site for Christians to debate whether Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene; whether they begat children; and whether the Church has hidden this secret ever since.

It's a sad day when Christian scholars get sucked into a scam like this just to be associated with Hollywood.

Sony has not been deterred by the worldwide protest against the film. Why should it? Since The Da Vinci Code is already a financial, though not critical success, Sony has announced its intention of filming more of Dan Brown's novels. Angels and Demons, his 2000 anti-Catholic rant on the subject of science, is already under development.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Human Rights, told me, "What would have happened if Calley had said his movie was 'conservatively' anti-Semitic or African-American? Do you think the film would have ever seen the light of day?"

Donohue has been the most visible Catholic leader making the case against The Da Vinci Code. I asked him to describe the difference between a film that is critical of the Church and one that is anti-Catholic.

"Disagreement with the Church is fine, but when it becomes disdain or disparagement, you have crossed the line."

Donohue used the example of the 1994 movie Priest. "In that film all five priests are dysfunctional, and their dysfunction is directly connected to their ministry, meaning the Church has created their dysfunction. You never meet a normal priest!"

He also said, "There is nothing anti-Catholic about good humor that is not designed to insult but to make people laugh. Mel Brooks, for example, puts forth good old American humor, no one is singled out, and there is no meanness. We all need to laugh at ourselves."

The key to recognizing how anti-Catholicism works in this country is seeing the "sweeping generalizations that would never be used with any other group."

The Da Vinci Code fulfills all of Donohue's main criteria: It represents the institution of the Church as corrupt from the top down. From Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) to the self-flagellating Opus Dei "monk" Silas (Paul Bettany), there are no admirable representatives of the Church. (There are no "monks" in Opus Dei as Peter Boyer points out.)

The effort to bring the film industry to some recognition of anti-Catholicism is not about censorship, but awareness. Many of those producers and artists making films are either blind to the bias that pervades their community or don't feel obliged to constrain themselves.

As Terry Teachout, drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, informed me, "It's been my experience that any mention of Catholicism in a contemporary work of art, given the current climate of elite opinion, is more than likely to be anti-Catholic."

There was a time when the Church condemned films and tried to keep them from public viewing. The Catholic Legion of Decency, established by the U.S. bishops in 1933, was established for "the purification of the cinema." Its list of condemned films includes one of the most powerful evocations of the Christian faith made in Hollywood, Strange Cargo (1940) starring Clark Gable and Joan Crawford and directed by Frank Borzage, a Catholic. (For a list see the Wikipedia entry).

The pendulum has swung the other way with a vengeance. The film community effectively seeks to censor the Church with a steady barrage of distortion and falsity. Perhaps they will learn that their caricatures of the Church, such as Priest and The Da Vinci Code, simply create bad art, and that will give them pause.

# posted by Duane : 8:56 AM  0 comments

An Iraqi tennis coach and two of his players were killed because they were wearing shorts, apparently in violation of a warning by Islamic extremists.

Gunmen stopped the car in which the athletes were riding and asked them to step out before shooting them Wednesday, Manham Kubba, secretary general of the Iraqi Tennis Union, said Saturday. The coach, Hussein Ahmed Rashid, was Sunni, and the two players were Shiite, Kubba said.

The athletes were in shorts when they were killed and police believe the attack was related to a warning by extremists against such attire, police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said. He said the warning was made in leaflets distributed in the Sadiyah neighborhood in southwest Baghdad a week before the attack.

The deaths of the three had previously been reported, but the statements provided more details and clarified that all the victims were tennis players.

This was the second attack against athletes in just more than a week.

A taekwondo team was kidnapped in western Iraq while driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan on May 17. The 15 athletes were snatched on a road between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, a particularly violent area. The athletes were members of a private sports club that hopes to one day send athletes to the Olympics.

Prominent Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi appealed for their freedom during a news conference Saturday at his office in Baghdad.

"I call upon the kidnappers of the taekwondo athletes to release the team," he said.

# posted by Duane : 9:36 PM  0 comments

Were this a straight news story, I might lead with, "The FBI appears to be actively studying Muslim student groups at UCI as part of an intense surveillance program to detect potential terrorists."

But I'm not as surprised that the FBI is doing this - as well as other aggressive anti-terrorist activities in Orange County - as I am that the FBI would tell us.

As secretive as local cops are about ongoing investigations, they've got nothing on the feds. They are, as Churchill once said of Russia, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery cloaked in an enigma."

What I heard Wednesday at the Pacific Club was as revealing as anything I've ever heard or read about terrorist activity in O.C. Two feds – Wayne Gross, chief of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Orange County, and Pat Rose, head of the FBI's Orange County al-Qaida squad - didn't offer many details to the group of about 25 club members, but they said enough to shock.

A caveat. The motivation for what could become a series of talks is to convince skeptics of the need for the Patriot Act.

"There are a lot of individuals of interest right here in Orange County," Rose said. "We are quite surprised."

The FBI has ramped up in O.C., creating three anti-terrorist units, focusing on al-Qaida, non-al-Qaida foreigners and domestic suspects. She talked about planting bugs and closed-circuit TV cameras, and examining computer use and e-mail.

"We can't afford to come in after the fact," she said, talking about the need to be proactive. She added, "Are we doing all these technologies? Yes, we are."

Approvals for searches and eavesdropping bypass the normal warrant system, going through an accelerated and secretive federal court, although she said that judicial hurdle is "not easy."

Gross said his office is taking an "Al Capone approach" to going after suspected terrorists. That is, if he can't get them on a terrorist charge, he works with other agencies to find something like a tax charge. Inter-agency cooperation is at an all-time high, he said.

"The CIA was never in our office (before 9/11); now they are in our office all the time," said Gross, who works at the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in downtown Santa Ana.

Club members did a good job of drawing out about as much as Gross and Rose were willing to give. They wouldn't talk about specific numbers of suspected terrorists or associates in Orange County, but Rose did say: "We live in Irvine. I can't tell you how many subjects' names come up, and they live right down the street from me." (Later, it was clarified she meant down the streetfiguratively - in the general area.)

Asked whether citizens should be worried about the activist Muslim students at UCI, Rose said, "That is another tough question to answer" - which I took to mean she has an answer but doesn't want to single out one group. She did say the FBI is aware of large numbers of Muslims at both UCI and USC.

"I think we need to be concerned with everybody, including our next-door neighbor," she said, adding the FBI gets frequent calls from people who want to tell them about situations like a Muslim neighbor who is changing his license plates or the guy who has nothing in his apartment but a mattress and five computers.

"I can't tell you how many" tips like that paid off, she said.

What about racial profiling concerns? someone asked.

That would be a mistake, she said.

"We have our own American-raised individuals who have converted to Islam," she said, as well as Arabs coming to the U.S. who are trying to Westernize their appearance and pass for Hispanic.

# posted by Duane : 9:31 PM  0 comments

Expect New London High School football coach Jack Cochran to operate next season as he always has, and if that means his team wins by 50 points or more, so be it. And expect Cochran to be suspended for doing so.

In what some are referring to as the "Cochran rule," the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference football committee passed a score management policy to be instituted next season. The rule says if a team wins by 50 or more points, the coach is suspended for the next game.

Although many have accused Cochran of running up scores, he doesn't see it that way. And he doesn't like this rule. On that point, he has company.

"It won't change anything with how I prepare for a game," Cochran said. "Where it's going to run into problems is when you've got your second team in or you've got your freshmen in; what do you tell them? One coach is saying he's just going to have his guys take a knee. I would never do that. I would never tell a kid to run out of bounds instead of scoring.

"I will probably have to take a suspension next year. If it comes down to letting a freshman or a [junior varsity] player score at the varsity level or me being suspended, I'm not going to stop that kid from doing that. I cherish the sport too much and believe in it too much to tell some kid he can't play the game the right way."

The rule, passed in April, says if a team wins by 50 points or more it will be called an unsportsmanlike act. Under the CIAC's disqualification rule, the coach will be suspended for the next game. The football committee is made up of coaches and school administrators, all formerly involved in coaching.

"Our football committee has been discussing this topic for two or three years and they've been studying policies," said CIAC Assistant Executive Director Tony Mosa. "It certainly didn't just come about after last year. We certainly have been having a lot of criticism regarding what appeared to be a high number of high scores."

Mosa said 12 games last season had a differential of more than 55 points.

"That's really not an exorbitant number, but 12 is too many," Mosa said.

Of the 659 games reported to the CIAC last year, there were 27 in which teams won by at least 50 points. Cochran's New London team won four games by 55 or more, including a 90-0 victory over Griswold.

"The CIAC is sending the wrong message," Cochran said. "It's protectionism of those that can't compete. Do you tell people at work that everyone has to make the same amount of money and they can't succeed? This is about teaching kids to work hard and that success will come. For a lot of guys out there, when they get beat handily it makes them stronger and they go back and work harder."

Some states use a system that calls for a running clock when a team has reached a certain advantage. Although Connecticut has no rule that allows a running clock, many coaches employ the practice in blowouts.

"I had a season where I had seven games where the clock was run in the second half. It works," Cochran said. "The problem with that is sometimes opponents won't do it. The Griswold coach [Glenn LaBossiere] wouldn't do it with me last year. But I've very rarely had a coach that didn't want to do that."

Mosa said the running clock system was something the football committee saw as prohibitive to giving second- and third-string players the chance to play.

"You do that and the game is over before anybody can even get in," Mosa said.

The rule applies only to the final score. A team could be leading 55-0 and back off defensively so that its opponent could score a touchdown that prevents a coach's suspension.

Cochran took umbrage with Hyde-New Haven coach John Acquavita referring to the rule in a published report as the "Jack Rule."

"He's pointing blame, and I don't think that's fair of him," Cochran said. "He's got a lot of lopsided scores. They're a hell of a football program. But it's easy to blame someone else when you don't like something new."

Northwest Catholic-West Hartford coach Mike Tyler said he was surprised by the decision to implement the rule and says many coaches have the same feeling.

"I'm still trying to absorb the whole thing," Tyler said. "When I was told about it, I just thought there wasn't much discussion about this."

Like many in the state, Tyler sees the rule as leading to troublesome situations.

"Regarding telling kids to just fall on balls and don't pick it up, you've got kids that are in there that don't get to get in often, and it's their chance to shine a little bit," Tyler said. "How do you tell that kid not to pick it up and run? I don't know if I could tell a kid that, but if I was going to get suspended in the next game it would be different."

Cochran sees the rule as another hindrance in helping kids in the state to move on with their football careers at higher levels.

"You look at all the other states, we're one of the weakest when it comes to football," Cochran said. "It's simply because of the restrictions put on us for coaching time. Until that changes, it's a disservice to every kid that plays football in this state. At the end of the day, they're competing against kids from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Florida to move on and it's not a level playing field. This is just another restriction that's going to hinder football in this state."

# posted by Duane : 10:07 PM  2 comments

A judge said a 5-foot-1 man convicted of sexually assaulting a child was too small to survive in prison, and gave him 10 years of probation instead.

His crimes deserved a long sentence, District Judge Kristine Cecava said, but she worried that Richard W. Thompson, 50, would be especially imperiled by prison dangers.

"You are a sex offender, and you did it to a child," she said.

But, she said, "That doesn't make you a hunter. You do not fit in that category."

Thompson will be electronically monitored the first four months of his probation, and he was told to never be alone with someone under age 18 or date or live with a woman whose children were under 18. Cecava also ordered Thompson to get rid of his pornography.

He faces 30 days of jail each year of his probation unless he follows its conditions closely.

"I want control of you until I know you have integrated change into your life," the judge told Thompson. "I truly hope that my bet on you being OK out in society is not misplaced."

# posted by Duane : 9:59 PM  0 comments

"The first note was clear and absolutely certain. There was no question or stumbling in this bugle. It swept across the quadrangle positively, held a fraction of a second longer than most buglers hold it. Held long like the length of time, stretching away from weary day to weary day. . . . This is the song of the men who have no place, played by a man who has never had a place, and can therefore play it. Listen to it. You know this song, remember?"

For novel readers who care about war and warriors who cared about novels, a great memory is the picture, seen in tens of millions of imaginations, and finally in a film, of Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt playing taps at Schofield Barracks, 25 miles from Honolulu, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, in James Jones's great novel, "From Here to Eternity." It was published 55 years ago and sold three million copies, and it is on my mind today because I'm thinking about the taps we will all hear this Monday, Memorial Day, at ceremonies and in cemeteries throughout the country. When I hear it I'm going to think of what my father always said when he heard taps. "Play it, Prewitt," he'd say. Because that character was like men he'd known in the American army of World War II.

It is good that we have this day to remember heroes, to think again of those who over the centuries put themselves in harm's way for our country, for us. It is good that we remember, and take inspiration from, tales of valor, of flags carried uphill, like the one carried by the intrepid young First Lt. Arthur MacArthur, during a Union charge in the Civil War (he would go on to become a lieutenant general and the father of a son named Douglas), and heavily defended positions taken by a lone soldier, like Sgt. Alvin York in World War I. It's good to remember the simple human potential for bravery that lives within all of us, and that in some is fully tapped and met with brilliant, unforgettable actions.

The starkest description of the meaning of what the members of the armed services do, and have done, is the simple observation that freedom of speech was not secured for us by editors, readers and writers, but by soldiers who gave their lives to win it and would give their lives to defend it.

But thinking of "From Here to Eternity" has me thinking of the old American Army of the 20th century, the Depression era, peacetime army that Jones captured as no one else ever had. It was an unspectacular thing, that Army, or seemed so until December 1941. Jones's Pvt. Prewitt was a lost Southern boy who found a home in that Army. He and his friend Angelo Maggio of New York "could live better Inside."

They came from little, had no money, had received indifferent public educations, and the 1930s Army they joined was neither racially integrated, gender-neutral nor adequately funded. The great divide, the caste system, was between officers and enlisted men. The latter were given training and discipline and were left with a passionate and passionately mixed attitude toward the institution that made them part of something as it chipped away at their individuality, that employed them and enslaved them, that made them men and often treated them like children.

When James Jones himself joined the Army, in 1937, a young man whose options seemed limited, he wrote back home, "This place is hell. They herd you around like cattle; they order you around like dogs; they work you like horses; and they feed you like hogs." In the 1953 film of the novel, directed by Fred Zinnemann, the first shot after the credits is of men marching in brisk formation. But all you can see are their boots on a dusty field, perfect but anonymous.

They were not, the men of the peacetime, Depression-era Army, especially respected by the public they served.

Our current Army is very different. Our people respect it, and its members are comparatively well-educated, largely middle-class, highly professional, and integrated in race and sex. Chances are good its members will be thanked when they return home from wherever they are--Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, elsewhere. It is a good thing we finally appreciate them, a good thing we, as a society, give them the honor they deserve. There are heroes among them, and their exploits too will be spoken of this Monday, and in Memorial Days of the future.

So here's to them. May they flourish and be safe. Here's to the heroes down the ages who did valorous, death-defying, death-ignoring things. And, this Monday, here's to someone else. Here's to the uncelebrated of the armies of the past, to all the men who went unlauded, who wanted to serve brilliantly, who didn't always quite make it or didn't quite get the call, who were replacement troops never sent to the front, whose service was comparatively undistinguished or unrecognized, but who were there, and did their job, and for us. And that's enough. Here's to them, and to their fictional counterparts Prewitt and Maggio, and all those who once found a home in the army.

# posted by Duane : 9:33 PM  0 comments

French Catholics Protest The Da Vinci Code by Deal W. Hudson

Paris: "Yes, there is without doubt a Catholic revival going on in France right now." Thus spoke Jean-Paul, one of the seven seminarians I interviewed near the southern coast of France.

"Then why do Catholics in the U.S. view the Church in France as dead?" I asked. Mathieu, an Oratorian from Lyon, answered, "Because it is not a matter of numbers but a renewal of the Catholic mentality -- our sense of Catholic community and identity is becoming stronger in France."

These seminarians, from the diocesan seminary of Frejus-Toulon, see themselves as part of a Catholic revival that started in the early 70's. At the heart of the revival, they explain, are the 100 "charismatic renewal communities" that have been founded in France over the past 30 years. (By "charismatic" the French do not mean communities that speak in tongues, although it is not uncommon.)

Jean-Marie Guenois, religion editor of the Catholic daily La Croix, emphasized the same point during lunch near his office on the Rue de Bayard in Paris. "When the leaders of all the renewal communities met in the Vatican on Pentecost Sunday with the Holy Father, nearly 150 out of the 250 new communities were French!" Guenois added that these movements, which are more scarce in Italy and Spain, are indicative of France's deep spiritual roots.

This point was made more emphatically by Fr. Laurent Sentis, the moral theologian (Thomist!) who heads the academic program at the seminary in Toulon. "This country has been impregnated with the Catholic faith for centuries." The chief cause, he said, of the Church's eclipse was its failure to grapple directly with the founding document of the French Revolution, the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. "It contained no reference to the family or tradition, but instead of arguing back, the Church just put it on the Syllabus and ignored the beginning of modernity."

There was little doubt that those roots of which he and Jean-Marie Guenois spoke were blooming once again in the vocations of the seminarians in Toulon. In fact, the city was literally full bloom when I arrived at the seminary to meet the Bishop of Frejus-Toulon, Msgr. Domenica Rey.

The seminary building sits in the midst of an old French estate -- with an active winery -- given by the owners decades ago to the diocese for "the formation and care of priests." The Domain of Castille, as it is called, is worth a visit: A bed and breakfast can be found in the old chateau adjacent to the seminary and winery (yes, the wines are quite good.). The profits from the winery and the B&B go to support the seminarians and the retired priests who live on the property.

Bishop Rey was the first priest from a charismatic renewal movement to be appointed a bishop. A priest and leader of the Emmanuel Movement, Rey had achieved some visibility as parish priest in the heart of Paris.

At dinner, and later over a small glass of Chartreuse in his home, we talked about the evolution of the renewal movements in France. "It is important to see that we have become institutionalized -- we are part of the Church," he said. When asked about the state of the Church in France, he replied with a smile that warmed the entire room, "The Church is not dead; she sleeps, and it is my job to wake her."

Bishop Rey is obviously someone who can rouse the spiritually dead. His vitality and humility are contagious. For example, when I inquired about new French Catholic intellectuals, he mentioned a name, disappeared for a few minutes, and returned with a phone. The Bishop had the scholar on the phone so I could talk to him.

One of the Bishop's favorite themes is identity. The success of the renewal movements, he said, is the "strength of its Catholic identity -- without that everything turns to dust." As a result, the biggest obstacle to renewal is the "secularism inside the Church."

I also asked him about his years in Paris, specifically about the bar in Pigale I read about where he ministered to prostitutes. "Yes, that was run by the Emmanuel Community. It was in an awful part of the city, filled with glaring lights. The prostitutes came into the bar because the light was softer."

It was also a place, he said, where the Community sought "to touch a lot of people by assuming their identity." That is exactly how I felt having spent a long evening with Bishop Rey. Any skepticism I felt toward the seminarians' claim of a Catholic revival was dispelled by the charisma of this remarkable servant of the Church.

The mood of the Catholics I met with in Paris was not so positive. The revival, from their point of view, was making its way north very slowly. But it was in Paris that I witnessed an outbreak of Catholic fervor that corroborated what I had heard in Toulon.

I was standing in line to see The Da Vinci Code on the night it opened in Paris. (I have not read the book.) It was my visit to the actual Church of St. Sulpice that prompted me to see the movie a few blocks away. I had been told that the pastor of St. Sulpice was being pestered by Da Vinci Code readers anxious to see the spot where the priest was slain. So much for the reply made by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks to critics that the movie is obviously "fiction."

As I took my place in line, I heard the sounds of singing and chanting coming up St. Germain des Pres. Then I noticed that there were a number of police cars nearby and found out from one of the policemen that the sounds were coming from a demonstration against the movie. Calling themselves the "young Catholics of France," the demonstrators were chanting the Ave Maria and singing hymns. In a few minutes a phalanx of twenty-something Catholics, mostly young women, appeared smiling and handing out fliers listing the lies of The Da Vinci Code.

I never thought I would be handed a religious tract on the streets of Paris, especially on the West Bank!

The flier prompted some laughter from the young couple behind me, so I turned to ask what they were laughing about. The couple, Antoine and Catherine, believed precisely the claim of Dan Brown's book -- the Church was hiding the fact that Jesus was married and had children. Antoine exclaimed, "His marriage proves he was fully human, and the Church is afraid to admit it."

I don't have room in this article to recount the entire conversation, which lasted over twenty minutes, but here is the final interchange:

"Antoine, are you married to Catherine," I asked. "No," he said nervously glancing at her. "Then," I replied, "according to your own argument, you are not fully human." Catherine erupted in giggles, while Antoine tried to explain how his situation was different from Jesus.

We walked into the theater in good humor, and I waved goodbye to them as I walked out after two-thirds of the film. I have never seen a piece of popular entertainment as blatantly anti-Catholic. In my opinion, Director Ron Howard and actor Tom Hanks should publicly apologize to the Church and to Opus Dei. That they could watch this film and not see the gross injustice of its "fictional" depictions is impossible to understand.

No other religious or ethnic group would ever be treated in such a way without a mighty roar of protest from the mainstream media.

Ron Howard evidently didn't realize that he was dealing with Batman-like caricatures from Dan Brown's novel and should have treated them as such.

Apart from being a terrible film, The Da Vinci Code, reveals the face of our nation's persistent anti-Catholicism in all of its self-deluded ugliness.

I could see in the demonstration against The Da Vinci Code an example of what Bishop Rey said at the end of our evening together. What holds all the renewal communities together, he said, is that "the more we identify with Christ, the more we assume the rupture between faith and unbelief."

Americans often scoff at how the French settle important matters by taking to the streets. This is one time when it was a very good idea.

# posted by Duane : 9:27 PM  0 comments

THE immigration bill before the Senate is touted as a "compromise" - one that tightens enforcement even as it allows for higher levels of legal immigration. In fact, its 614 pages are packed with anti-enforcement provisions. The worst is probably the one on page 170 - which would disarm America's state and local police in the War on Terror.

One of most important lessons of 9/11 was that state and local police can make the difference between an unsuccessful terrorist plot and an attack that kills 3,000.

In the wake of the attacks, we learned that five of the 19 hijackers had broken U.S. immigration law - and that four of the five had been stopped for speeding. All four could have been arrested, if police officers had asked the right questions.

Police across the nation responded by stepping up their efforts to help the federal government in making immigration arrests. But the Senate bill would stop them from protecting the American public in this way.

Consider 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. He first entered the United States in June 2000 on a tourist visa that allowed him to stay in the country for six months. By failing to leave at that time, the Lebanese terrorist became an illegal immigrant. (Another bitter fact: He also broke the law by not switching to a student visas when he entered flight school.)

So, when a Maryland state trooper clocked him driving at 90 mph on Highway 95 - and stopped him for speeding - he could have detained Jarrah for the immigration violation.

Had the officer made a phone call to the federal Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) - which operates 24/7 from Williston, Vt. - he could have arrested Jarrah. Instead, he just gave Jarrah a $270 ticket and let him go. The ticket would be found in the glove compartment of the car, left at Newark Airport two days later - when Jarrah boarded United Airlines Flight 93.

Three other hijacker ticketings were similar. All were missed opportunities of tragic dimensions. If even one of the police officers had made an arrest, the terrorist plot might have unraveled.

In the wake of the attacks, the Justice Department announced a legal opinion reminding police departments across the country that they have the legal authority to arrest any deportable illegal alien - and so reminded officers how important a role they could, and should, play in the War on Terror by making immigration arrests.

Departments across the country responded. The number of calls to the LESC by local officers nearly doubled, reaching more than 500,000 a year.

But the Senate immigration bill would limit local police to making arrests only for criminal violations of immigration law, not civil violations. To a non-lawyer, that may sound innocuous. In fact, it would be disastrous.

All of the 9/11 hijackers' immigration violations were civil, not criminal. So police officers would have no power to arrest such terrorists.

And, as a practical matter, the Senate bill would discourage police departments from playing any role in immigration enforcement. Most cops (indeed, most lawyers) don't know which immigration violations are criminal. There's no logic to it: Overstaying a visa (something hijackers from the Middle East are more likely to do) is a civil violation, yet marriage fraud is criminal. Which one is more dangerous to national security?

Afraid of making a "bad" immigration arrest - and getting sued as a result - many police departments would stop helping the federal government altogether.

That's probably just what the author of that particular provision in the Senate bill intended - because many of the staffers who helped draft the 614-page monstrosity are hostile to the idea of enforcing our immigration laws.

Thus, the bill can't be fixed simply by removing this provision, because it is packed with hidden surprises that the nation isn't supposed to notice. And there's no guarantee that we have found them all.

It's simply impossible to place any faith in a bill that was written by people who want to disarm the men and women on the front line of America's defenses in the War on Terror.

# posted by Duane : 9:07 PM  0 comments

The FBI is in the soup with the House of Representatives these days. Nobody...Republicans or Democrats...is happy about the raid on William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana's office over the weekend. Members of Congress, including the Speaker, are absolutely terrified that this could become a regular habit of federal law enforcement. Oh, the humanity! Isn't is just outrageous that our elected officials should be subject to the same laws that we all live under?

They claim that it's unconstitutional. Funny...nothing in the Constitution about searching a corrupt public official's office. It protects against unlawful search and seizure...but the feds had a warrant. Separation of powers? Eh..that's a stretch. A crime was committed...what were they supposed to do, look the other way? Right at the front of yesterday's whining was House Majority Leader John Boehner, who said that "the congress will clearly speak to this issue of the justice department's invasion of the legislative branch. In what form I don't know. I've got to believe at the end of the day it's going to end up across the street, at the Supreme Court. I don't see anything short of that." Aww...poor baby.

Are they actually shaking in their boots just because a corrupt Congressman got popped hiding $90,000 in his freezer? Maybe they're just more afraid of living under the same laws their constituents have to live under. By the way...evidently the bribe/kickback/payoff was $100,000. The other ten grand must be under the floorboards or something.

No wonder the approval rating of Congress is so low. This is probably just the tip of the corruption iceberg.

# posted by Duane : 8:18 PM  0 comments

This can't be the same Congress that issues subpoenas for all sorts of probes into the executive branch and the agencies it runs. Does Congress really want to establish a precedent that neither branch has to answer subpoenas if issued by the other, even if approved by a judge -- which this particular subpoena was?

The FBI had a valid subpoena for the information in Jefferson's office. He refused to provide it. The FBI had little choice but to go in and take it, and from the description given in the Washington Post, they took extraordinary care not to confiscate legitimate data relating to his legislative responsibilities.

Congress already has enough problems with corruption and scandal without adding even more arrogance to top it. If the leadership wants to argue that their status as elected officials somehow gives them the ability to disregard subpoenas and court orders, then the American people may want to trade that leadership to ensure that Congress understands that it operates under the same laws as the rest of us. Hastert and Boehner do not argue against an imperial presidency, but rather they are arguing for an untouchable political elite, where our elected officials risk nothing by taking bribes and selling their votes to the highest bidder. After all, the evidence of those transactions will almost always reside in their offices -- and if they can ignore duly executed subpoenas and search warrants, then they can sell themselves at will.

Hastert and Boehner had better reconsider this fight. Not only is it a loser legally, but it's also political suicide. They shouldn't need the Supreme Court to laugh them into oblivion to comprehend the magnitude of this mistake.

There seems to be some confusion among lawmakers on Capitol Hill (as well as some journalists) about whether the search of Rep. William Jefferson's office raises serious separation of powers issues. What is being overlooked in the argument is the extraordinary care the Justice Department has taken to address those issues.

First, it should be said that prosecutors seem to have Jefferson dead to rights. They have — and have had since late last summer — more than enough evidence to justify a search of his office. In the last months, they have apparently tried other, more standard, means to try to get Jefferson to comply with requests to turn over the evidence, to no avail. There is even, in the 95-page search warrant request, a section headlined GOVERNMENT EFFORTS TO EXHAUST ALL LESSER INTRUSIVE APPROACHES TO OBTAINING RELEVANT DOCUMENTS AND RECORDS LOCATED IN THE WASHINGTON, D.C. CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE OF WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON. It is followed by several redacted paragraphs in which prosecutors apparently describe their attempts to get Jefferson to turn over information.

# posted by Duane : 8:11 PM  0 comments

WASHINGTON - In a surprise move yesterday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called for "most of the country" to return to a speed limit of 55 mph in an effort to slash fuel consumption.

"The 55-mile speed limit really does lower gas usage. And wherever it can be required, and the people will accept it, we ought to do it," Clinton said at the National Press Club.

Before sounding off on the benefits of a lower speed limit, Clinton called for a combination of tax incentives, the use of more ethanol-based fuel and a $50 billion fund for new energy research to cut the consumption of foreign oil 50 percent by 2025.

She also pushed for half of all the nation's gas stations to have ethanol pumps by 2015, and for every gas station to have them by 2025.

# posted by Duane : 8:09 PM  0 comments

Oregon legislators and staff members should not be drunk while performing their official duties, a citizen panel says.

The Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature adopted that recommendation Monday, although the panel decided to leave it to House and Senate leaders to draft rules against intoxication and possible penalties.

"We were uncomfortable acting as a nanny," said Kerry Tymchuk, a commission member and state director for U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.

The new policy was suggested by Steve Doell, president of Crime Victims United, who said he and another member of the group noticed alcohol on the breath of at least one legislator at the end of the 2005 session while they were advocating tougher drunken-driving penalties.

Doell declined to identify the legislator.

Neither Senate nor House rules deal with possession or consumption of alcohol by legislators and staff members. Alcohol is barred from most state buildings, but it can be served at Capitol functions with written approval of the legislative administrator and under certain conditions.

# posted by Duane : 7:35 PM  0 comments

U.S. Democrat and Republican leaders expressed outrage over a weekend FBI raid on the office of a U.S. House of Representatives member from Louisiana.

Saturday night, agents entered the Washington office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who has been under investigation for 14 months for allegedly accepting bribes in connection with business ventures in Africa, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Monday, Jefferson convened a news conference to condemn the raid as an "outrageous intrusion" and to deny any wrongdoing. A report Monday said the FBI had videotaped Jefferson allegedly receiving a payoff and investigators said they found $90,000 of the funds in a freezer in Jefferson's home.

The raid also drew criticism from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who said congressional lawyers have been asked to probe the legality, the Post said.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., also issued a statement denouncing the raid.

"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this separation of powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress," he said.

# posted by Duane : 7:22 PM  0 comments

Since 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, America's population has increased by 42%, the country's inflation-adjusted gross domestic product has grown 195%, the number of cars and trucks in the United States has more than doubled, and the total number of miles driven has increased by 178%.

But during these 35 years of growing population, employment, and industrial production, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, the environment has substantially improved. Emissions of the six principal air pollutants have decreased by 53%. Carbon monoxide emissions have dropped from 197 million tons per year to 89 million; nitrogen oxides from 27 million tons to 19 million, and sulfur dioxide from 31 million to 15 million. Particulates are down 80%, and lead emissions have declined by more than 98%.

When it comes to visible environmental improvements, America is also making substantial progress:

• The number of days the city of Los Angeles exceeded the one-hour ozone standard has declined from just under 200 a year in the late 1970s to 27 in 2004.

• The Pacific Research Institute's Index of Leading Environmental Indicators shows that "U.S. forests expanded by 9.5 million acres between 1990 and 2000."

• While wetlands were declining at the rate of 500,000 acres a year at midcentury, they "have shown a net gain of about 26,000 acres per year in the past five years," according to the institute.

• Also according to the institute, "bald eagles, down to fewer than 500 nesting pairs in 1965, are now estimated to number more than 7,500 nesting pairs."

Environmentally speaking, America has had a very good third of a century; the economy has grown and pollutants and their impacts upon society are substantially down.

But now comes the carbon dioxide alarm. CO2 is not a pollutant--indeed it is vital for plant growth--but the annual amount released into the atmosphere has increased 40% since 1970. This increase is blamed by global warming alarmists for a great many evil things. The Web site for Al Gore's new film, "An Inconvenient Truth," claims that because of CO2's impact on our atmosphere, sea levels may rise by 20 feet, the Arctic and Antarctic ice will likely melt, heat waves will be "more frequent and more intense," and "deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years--to 300,000 people a year."

If it all sounds familiar, think back to the 1970s. After the first Earth Day the New York Times predicted "intolerable deterioration and possible extinction" for the human race as the result of pollution. Harvard biologist George Wald predicted that unless we took immediate action "civilization will end within 15 to 30 years," and environmental doomsayer Paul Ehrlich predicted that four billion people--including 65 million American--would perish from famine in the 1980s.

So what is the reality about global warming and its impact on the world? A new study released this week by the National Center for Policy Analysis, "Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts" (www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st285) looks at a wide variety of climate matters, from global warming and hurricanes to rain and drought, sea levels, arctic temperatures and solar radiation. It concludes that "the science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21rst century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change."

There are substantial differences in climate models--some 30 of them looked at by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--but the Climate Science study concludes that "computer models consistently project a rise in temperatures over the past century that is more than twice as high as the measured increase." The National Center for Atmospheric Research's prediction of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming is more accurate. In short, the world is not warming as much as environmentalists think it is.

What warming there is turns out to be caused by solar radiation rather than human pollution. The Climate Change study concluded "half the observed 20th century warming occurred before 1940 and cannot be attributed to human causes," and changes in solar radiation can "account for 71 percent of the variation in global surface air temperature from 1880 to 1993."

As for hurricanes, 2005 saw several severe ones--Katrina and Rita both had winds of 150 knots--hitting New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and Florida. But there is little evidence linking them to global warming. A team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists concluded that the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995 "is not related to greenhouse warming" but instead to natural tropical climate cycles.

Regarding Arctic temperature changes, the Study found the coastal stations in Greenland had actually experienced a cooling trend: The "average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, have decreased at the rate of 4 degrees F per decade since measurements began in 1987." Add in Russian and Alaskan temperature data and "Arctic air temperatures were warmest in the 1930s and near the coolest for the period of recorded observations (since at least 1920) in the late 1980s."

As for sea ice, it is not melting excessively. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans concluded that "global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice." The U.N.'s IPCC Third Assessment Report concluded that the rate of sea level rise has not accelerated during the last century, which is supported by U.S. coastal sea level experience. In California sea levels have risen between zero and seven millimeters a year and between 2.1 and 2.8 millimeters a year in North and South Carolina.

Finally come the polar bears--a species thought by global warming proponents to be seriously at risk from the increasing temperature. According to the World Wildlife Fund, among the distinct polar bear populations, two are growing--and in areas where temperatures have risen; ten are stable; and two are decreasing. But those two are in areas such as Baffin Bay where air temperatures have actually fallen.

The Climate Science study concludes that projections of global warming over the next century "have decreased significantly since early modeling efforts," and that global air temperatures should increase by 2.5 degrees and the United States by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the next hundred years. The environmental pessimists tell us, as in Time magazine's recent global warming issue, to "Be Worried. Be Very Worried," but the truth is that our environmental progress has been substantially improving, and we should be very pleased.

# posted by Duane : 11:15 AM  0 comments

Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations--the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so--and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:

The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question [the Bush administration] misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.

Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program."

Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."

In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.

The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments. Earlier this year, Mr. Gore charged that "CIA analysts who strongly disagreed with the White House . . . found themselves under pressure at work and became fearful of losing promotions and salary increases." Sen. Kennedy charged that the administration "put pressure on intelligence officers to produce the desired intelligence and analysis."

This myth is shattered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's bipartisan Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. Among the findings: "The committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with administration policy, or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so." Silberman-Robb concluded the same, finding "no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. . . . Analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." What the report did find is that intelligence assessments on Iraq were "riddled with errors"; "most of the fundamental errors were made and communicated to policy makers well before the now-infamous NIE of October 2002, and were not corrected in the months between the NIE and the start of the war."

Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren't found, Saddam posed no threat. Howard Dean declared Iraq "was not a danger to the United States." John Murtha asserted, "There was no threat to our national security." Max Cleland put it this way: "Iraq was no threat. We now know that. There are no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons programs." Yet while we did not find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, what we did find was enough to alarm any sober-minded individual.

Upon his return from Iraq, weapons inspector David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told the Senate: "I actually think this may be one of those cases where [Iraq under Saddam Hussein] was even more dangerous than we thought." His statement when issuing the ISG progress report said: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities" that were part of "deliberate concealment efforts" that should have been declared to the U.N. And, he concluded, "Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Among the key findings of the September 2004 report by Charles Duelfer, who succeeded Mr. Kay as ISG head, are that Saddam was pursuing an aggressive strategy to subvert the Oil for Food Program and to bring down U.N. sanctions through illicit finance and procurement schemes; and that Saddam intended to resume WMD efforts once U.N. sanctions were eliminated. According to Mr. Duelfer, "the guiding theme for WMD was to sustain the intellectual capacity achieved over so many years at such a great cost and to be in a position to produce again with as short a lead time as possible. . . . Virtually no senior Iraqi believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. Evidence suggests that, as resources became available and the constraints of sanctions decayed, there was a direct expansion of activity that would have the effect of supporting future WMD reconstitution."

Beyond this, Saddam's regime was one of the most sadistic and aggressive in modern history. It started a war against Iran and used mustard gas and nerve gas. A decade later Iraq invaded Kuwait. Iraq was a massively destabilizing force in the Middle East; so long as Saddam was in power, rivers of blood were sure to follow.

Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization. "The president now says that the war is really about the spread of democracy in the Middle East. This effort at after-the-fact justification was only made necessary because the primary rationale was so sadly lacking in fact," according to Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, President Bush argued for democracy taking root in Iraq before the war began. To take just one example, he said in a speech on Feb. 26, 2003: "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America's interests in security, and America's belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq. . . . The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. . . . A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region."

The following day the New York Times editorialized: "President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. . . . The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time."

These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.

# posted by Duane : 11:10 AM  1 comments

Thank you, Bob [Kerrey, president of the New School]. Thank you, faculty, families and friends, and thank you New School Class of 2006 for your welcome and for your kind invitation to give this year's commencement address. I want to join in the chorus of congratulations to the Class of 2006. This is a day to bask in praise. You've earned it. You have succeeded in a demanding course of instruction. Life seems full of promise as is always the case when a passage in life is marked by significant accomplishment. Today, it might seem as if the world attends you.

But spare a moment for those who have truly attended you so well for so long, and whose pride in your accomplishments is even greater than your own--your parents. When the world was looking elsewhere, your parents' attention was one of life's certainties. So, as I commend you, I offer equal praise to your parents for the sacrifices they made for you, for their confidence in you, and their love. More than any other influence in your lives, they have helped make you the success you are today and might become tomorrow.

Thousands of commencement addresses are given every year, many by people with greater eloquence and more original minds than I possess. And it's difficult on such occasions to avoid resorting to clichés. So let me just say that I wish you all well. This is a wonderful time to be young, and to have your opportunities. Make the most of them.

When I was in your situation, many, many years ago, an undistinguished graduate--barely--of the Naval Academy, I listened to President Eisenhower deliver the commencement address. I admired President Eisenhower greatly. But I remember little of his remarks that day, impatient as I was to enjoy the less formal celebrations of graduation, and mindful that given my class standing I would not have the privilege of shaking the President's hand. I do recall, vaguely, that he encouraged his audience of new navy ensigns and Marine lieutenants to become "crusaders for peace."

I became an aviator and, eventually, an instrument of war in Vietnam. I believed, as did many of my friends, we were defending the cause of a just peace. Some Americans believed we were agents of American imperialism who were not overly troubled by the many tragedies of war and the difficult moral dilemmas that constantly confront soldiers. Ours is a noisy, contentious society, and always has been, for we love our liberties much. And among those liberties we love most, particularly so when we are young, is our right to self-expression. That passion for self-expression sometimes overwhelms our civility, and our presumption that those with whom we have strong disagreements, wrong as they might be, believe that they, too, are answering the demands of their conscience.

When I was a young man, I was quite infatuated with self-expression, and rightly so, because, if memory conveniently serves, I was so much more eloquent, well-informed, and wiser than anyone else I knew. It seemed I understood the world and the purpose of life so much more profoundly than most people. I believed that to be especially true with many of my elders, people whose only accomplishment, as far as I could tell, was that they had been born before me, and, consequently, had suffered some number of years deprived of my insights. I had opinions on everything, and I was always right. I loved to argue, and I could become understandably belligerent with people who lacked the grace and intelligence to agree with me. With my superior qualities so obvious, it was an intolerable hardship to have to suffer fools gladly. So I rarely did. All their resistance to my brilliantly conceived and cogently argued views proved was that they possessed an inferior intellect and a weaker character than God had blessed me with, and I felt it was my clear duty to so inform them. It's a pity that there wasn't a blogosphere then. I would have felt very much at home in the medium.

It's funny, now, how less self-assured I feel late in life than I did when I lived in perpetual springtime. Some of my critics allege that age hasn't entirely cost me the conceits of my youth. All I can say to them is, they should have known me then, when I was brave and true and better-looking than I am at present. But as the great poet Yeats wrote, "All that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters." I have lost some of the attributes that were the object of a young man's vanity. But there have been compensations, which I have come to hold dear.

We have our disagreements, we Americans. We contend regularly and enthusiastically over many questions: over the size and purposes of our government; over the social responsibilities we accept in accord with the dictates of our conscience and our faithfulness to the God we pray to; over our role in the world and how to defend our security interests and values in places where they are threatened. These are important questions; worth arguing about. We should contend over them with one another. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis, especially in times of crisis, we fight among ourselves for the things we believe in. It is not just our right, but our civic and moral obligation.

Our country doesn't depend on the heroism of every citizen. But all of us should be worthy of the sacrifices made on our behalf. We have to love our freedom, not just for the private opportunities it provides, but for the goodness it makes possible. We have to love it as much, even if not as heroically, as the brave Americans who defend us at the risk and often the cost of their lives. We must love it enough to argue about it, and to serve it, in whatever way our abilities permit and our conscience requires, whether it calls us to arms or to altruism or to politics.

I supported the decision to go to war in Iraq. Many Americans did not. My patriotism and my conscience required me to support it and to engage in the debate over whether and how to fight it. I stand that ground not to chase vainglorious dreams of empire; not for a noxious sense of racial superiority over a subject people; not for cheap oil--we could have purchased oil from the former dictator at a price far less expensive than the blood and treasure we've paid to secure those resources for the people of that nation; not for the allure of chauvinism, to wreak destruction in the world in order to feel superior to it; not for a foolishly romantic conception of war. I stand that ground because I believed, rightly or wrongly, that my country's interests and values required it.

War is an awful business. The lives of the nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer. Commerce is disrupted, economies damaged. Strategic interests shielded by years of statecraft are endangered as the demands of war and diplomacy conflict. Whether the cause was necessary or not, whether it was just or not, we should all shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us. However just or false the cause, however proud and noble the service, it is loss--the loss of friends, the loss of innocent life, the loss of innocence--that the veteran feels most keenly forever more. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes war.

Americans should argue about this war. It has cost the lives of nearly 2,500 of the best of us. It has taken innocent life. It has imposed an enormous financial burden on our economy. At a minimum, it has complicated our ability to respond to other looming threats. Should we lose this war, our defeat will further destabilize an already volatile and dangerous region, strengthen the threat of terrorism, and unleash furies that will assail us for a very long time. I believe the benefits of success will justify the costs and risks we have incurred. But if an American feels the decision was unwise, then they should state their opposition, and argue for another course. It is your right and your obligation. I respect you for it. I would not respect you if you chose to ignore such an important responsibility. But I ask that you consider the possibility that I, too, am trying to meet my responsibilities, to follow my conscience, to do my duty as best as I can, as God has given me light to see that duty.

Americans deserve more than tolerance from one another, we deserve each other's respect, whether we think each other right or wrong in our views, as long as our character and our sincerity merit respect, and as long as we share, for all our differences, for all the noisy debates that enliven our politics, a mutual devotion to the sublime idea that this nation was conceived in--that freedom is the inalienable right of mankind, and in accord with the laws of nature and nature's Creator.

We have so much more that unites us than divides us. We need only to look to the enemy who now confronts us, and the benighted ideals to which Islamic extremists pledge allegiance--their disdain for the rights of man, their contempt for innocent human life--to appreciate how much unites us.

Take, for example, the awful human catastrophe under way in the Darfur region of the Sudan. If the United States and the West can be criticized for our role in this catastrophe it is because we have waited too long to intervene to protect the multitudes who are suffering, dying because of it.

Twelve years ago, we turned a blind eye to another genocide, in Rwanda. And when that reign of terror finally, mercifully exhausted itself, with over 800,000 Rwandans slaughtered, Americans, our government, and decent people everywhere in the world were shocked and ashamed of our silence and inaction, for ignoring our values and the demands of our conscience. In shame and renewed allegiance to our ideals, we swore, not for the first time, "never again." But never lasted only until the tragedy of Darfur.

Now, belatedly, we have recovered our moral sense of duty, and are prepared, I hope, to put an end to this genocide. Osama bin Laden and his followers, ready, as always, to sacrifice anything and anyone to their hatred of the West and our ideals, have called on Muslims to rise up against any Westerner who dares intervene to stop the genocide, even though Muslims, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, are its victims. Now that, my friends, is a difference, a cause, worth taking up arms against.

It is not a clash of civilizations. I believe, as I hope all Americans would believe, that no matter where people live, no matter their history or religious beliefs or the size of their GDP, all people share the desire to be free; to make by their own choices and industry better lives for themselves and their children. Human rights exist above the state and beyond history--they are God-given. They cannot be rescinded by one government any more than they can be granted by another. They inhabit the human heart, and from there, though they may be abridged, they can never be wrenched.

This is a clash of ideals, a profound and terrible clash of ideals. It is a fight between right and wrong. Relativism has no place in this confrontation. We're not defending an idea that every human being should eat corn flakes, play baseball or watch MTV. We're not insisting that all societies be governed by a bicameral legislature and a term-limited chief executive. We are insisting that all people have a right to be free, and that right is not subject to the whims and interests and authority of another person, government or culture. Relativism, in this contest, is most certainly not a sign of our humility or ecumenism; it is a mask for arrogance and selfishness. It is, and I mean this sincerely and with all humility, not worthy of us. We are a better people than that.

We are not a perfect nation. Our history has had its moments of shame and profound regret. But what we have achieved in our brief history is irrefutable proof that a nation conceived in liberty will prove stronger, more decent and more enduring than any nation ordered to exalt the few at the expense of the many or made from a common race or culture or to preserve traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity.

As blessed as we are, no nation complacent in its greatness can long sustain it. We, too, must prove, as those who came before us proved, that a people free to act in their own interests, will perceive those interests in an enlightened way, will live as one nation, in a kinship of ideals, and make of our power and wealth a civilization for the ages, a civilization in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of freedom.

Should we claim our rights and leave to others the duty to the ideals that protect them, whatever we gain for ourselves will be of little lasting value. It will build no monuments to virtue, claim no honored place in the memory of posterity, offer no worthy summons to the world. Success, wealth and celebrity gained and kept for private interest is a small thing. It makes us comfortable, eases the material hardships our children will bear, purchases a fleeting regard for our lives, yet not the self-respect that, in the end, matters most. But sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause, your self-respect assured.

All lives are a struggle against selfishness. All my life I've stood a little apart from institutions I willingly joined. It just felt natural to me. But if my life had shared no common purpose, it would not have amounted to much more than eccentricity. There is no honor or happiness in just being strong enough to be left alone. I have spent nearly 50 years in the service of this country and its ideals. I have made many mistakes, and I have many regrets. But I have never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I wasn't grateful for the privilege. That's the benefit of service to a country that is an idea and a cause, a righteous idea and cause. America and her ideals helped spare me from the weaknesses in my own character. And I cannot forget it.

When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest attainment, and all glory was self-glory. My parents tried to teach me otherwise, as did my church, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life, when I confronted challenges I never expected to face.

In that confrontation, I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, they gave me a larger sense of myself than I had before. And I am a better man for it. I discovered that nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the difference in the world.

Let us argue with each other then. By all means, let us argue. Our differences are not petty, they often involve cherished beliefs, and represent our best judgment about what is right for our country and humanity. Let us defend those beliefs. Let's do so sincerely and strenuously. It is our right and duty to do so. And let's not be too dismayed with the tenor and passion of our arguments, even when they wound us. We have fought among ourselves before in our history, over big things and small, with worse vitriol and bitterness than we experience today.

Let us exercise our responsibilities as free people. But let us remember, we are not enemies. We are compatriots defending ourselves from a real enemy. We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, promote the general welfare and defend our ideals. It should remain an argument among friends; each of us struggling to hear our conscience, and heed its demands; each of us, despite our differences, united in our great cause, and respectful of the goodness in each other. I have not always heeded this injunction myself, and I regret it very much.

I had a friend once, who, a long time ago, in the passions and resentments of a tumultuous era in our history, I might have considered my enemy. He had come once to the capitol of the country that held me prisoner, that deprived me and my dearest friends of our most basic rights, and that murdered some of us. He came to that place to denounce our country's involvement in the war that had led us there. His speech was broadcast into our cells. I thought it a grievous wrong then, and I still do.

A few years later, he had moved temporarily to a kibbutz in Israel. He was there during the Yom Kippur War, when he witnessed the support America provided our beleaguered ally. He saw the huge cargo planes bearing the insignia of the United States Air Force rushing emergency supplies into that country. And he had an epiphany. He had believed America had made a tragic mistake by going to Vietnam, and he still did. He had seen what he believed were his country's faults, and he still saw them. But he realized he had let his criticism temporarily blind him to his country's generosity and the goodness that most Americans possess, and he regretted his failing deeply. When he returned to his country he became prominent in Democratic Party politics, and helped elect Bill Clinton president of the United States. He still criticized his government when he thought it wrong, but he never again lost sight of all that unites us.

We met some years later. He approached me and asked to apologize for the mistake he believed he had made as a young man. Many years had passed since then, and I bore little animosity for anyone because of what they had done or not done during the Vietnam War. It was an easy thing to accept such a decent act, and we moved beyond our old grievance.

We worked together in an organization dedicated to promoting human rights in the country where he and I had once come for different reasons. I came to admire him for his generosity, his passion for his ideals, for the largeness of his heart, and I realized he had not been my enemy, but my countryman--my countryman--and later my friend. His friendship honored me. We disagreed over much. Our politics were often opposed, and we argued those disagreements. But we worked together for our shared ideals. We were not always in the right, but we weren't always in the wrong either, and we defended our beliefs as we had each been given the wisdom to defend them.

David remained my countryman and my friend, until the day of his death, at the age of 47, when he left a loving wife and three beautiful children, and legions of friends behind him. His country was a better place for his service to her, and I had become a better man for my friendship with him. God bless him.

And may God bless you, Class of 2006. The world does indeed await you, and humanity is impatient for your service. Take good care of that responsibility. Everything depends upon it.

And thank you, very much, for the privilege of sharing this great occasion with you.

# posted by Duane : 10:31 PM  0 comments

Two events last Friday speak volumes about the direction of modern liberal politics, and it's not an encouraging trend, especially if you're a Democrat who wants to take back the White House.

The first is that antiwar candidate Ned Lamont captured a third of the delegates at Connecticut's Democratic Party convention, thus winning the right to challenge Senator Joe Lieberman in an August primary. The second is the nasty treatment of Senator John McCain by faculty and students during his commencement address at the New School in New York.

Rude college kids and left-wing professors are hardly a new story. But the ugliness of the New School crowd toward Mr. McCain reveals the peculiar rage that now animates so many on the political left. Dozens of faculty and students turned their back on the Senator, others booed and heckled, and a senior invited to speak threw out her prepared remarks and mocked their invited guest as he sat nearby. Some 1,200 had signed petitions asking that Mr. McCain be disinvited.

"The Senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded," said senior Jean Sara Rohe, which makes us wonder what ideals, and manners, she learned at home. "I am young and though I don't possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that preemptive war is dangerous. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."

Speaking of "havoc," Ms. Rohe spoke only blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center. The Senator who spent years in the Hanoi Hilton reacted with admirable restraint to these insults, and readers who want to see his remarks can find them posted here.

Mr. McCain was invited to the New School by its president, former Democratic Senator and Congressional Medal of Honor winner Robert Kerrey. When Mr. Kerrey spoke, he was also heckled, with someone shouting, "You're a war criminal!" It'd be comforting to dismiss all this as mere Manhattan derangement, but these passions have become common in liberal media and Web precincts and are spilling into national politics.

Take Connecticut, where the left is targeting Mr. Lieberman for political extinction because of his pro-war views. Their vehicle is Mr. Lamont, a rich Greenwich businessman who decided to run after the Senator wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal supporting U.S. policy in Iraq. Mr. Lamont--who was featured in our Weekend Interview on May 13--needed 15% of the delegates to get a place on the primary ballot, but in the event rolled up 33%.

That's a remarkable showing against a three-term incumbent who as recently as 2000 was on the party's national ticket and ran for President in 2004. "They are saying this war was a mistake and bring the troops home," Mr. Lamont declared. Mr. Lieberman will still be favored to win the primary, but angry-left activists around the country will now descend on the state and the fight may well turn vicious.

The left's larger goal is to turn the Democratic Party solidly against the war on terror, and especially against its Iraq and Iran fronts. Mr. Lamont's performance will be noticed by Democratic Presidential hopefuls, some of whom (Al Gore, John Kerry) are already maneuvering to get to Hillary Rodham Clinton's antiwar left. Well before 2008, this passion will also drive sentiment among Democrats on Capitol Hill. If they recapture either the House or the Senate this fall, a legislative drive to withdraw from Iraq cannot be ruled out.

We doubt all of this will help Democrats with the larger electorate, which whatever its doubts about Iraq does not want a precipitous surrender. Americans haven't trusted a liberal Democrat with the White House during wartime since Vietnam, which is when the seeds of the current antiwar rage were planted. The great mistake that leading Democrats and anti-Communist liberals made during Vietnam was not speaking up against a left that was demanding retreat and sneering at our war heroes. Will any Democrat speak up now?

# posted by Duane : 10:10 PM  1 comments

The Peter Principle was on display in New Orleans last week as Mayor Ray Nagin was reelected to another term of incompetence and corruption. And just in time for hurricane season, too.

Nagin, of course, is the bumbling whiner who couldn't even commandeer his city's own school buses to rescue people stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last summer. Instead, many of his constituents drowned as the flood waters covered them and the buses. Meanwhile, you will recall, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the national news media joined Nagin in condemning the federal response to a local disaster.

His Honor, a former employee of Cox Communications with no previous experience in government prior to his election as mayor in 2002, was in over his head from the beginning of the tragedy, and many a commentator contrasted his job performance with that of Rudy Giuliani during the September 11, 2001, attack on New York City's World Trade Center towers.

It was almost as though Nagin was paralyzed even before Katrina slammed into his city.

On Friday, August 26, 2005, the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina could become a Category 4 storm, exceeding the design limits of the New Orleans levee system. Instead of ordering an evacuation, Nagin hesitated, concerned that the order would leave the city liable for losses suffered by hotels and other businesses. Rather, he simply told the population to "keep a close eye on the storm" and "be prepared to evacuate."

By the end of the next day, Saturday, August 27th, the mayor finally called for a "voluntary evacuation." Few of the most vulnerable left.

On Sunday, August 28, Katrina became a Category 4, as predicted, and Nagin finally ordered a mandatory evacuation. But it was too little, too late, and Nagin seemed to know it, because he declared the New Orleans Superdome a "shelter of last resort."

When Katrina hit the city and breached her levees on the 29th, approximately 90,000 people were still in the city, many of them stranded at the Superdome with no facilities to care for them.

The mayoral finger-pointing started almost immediately, much to the glee of the media. It was the governor's fault. It was FEMA's fault. But mostly, it was George Bush's fault. Nagin took to the airwaves, cursing and blaming anyone but his own incompetent administration.

Then came the outrageous, race-baiting statements that would have ended the career of any white politician in America. In October, at a town hall meeting to discuss the rebuilding of the city, Nagin said this to the crowd: "I can see in your eyes, you want to know, 'How do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity? How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?'"

On January 16, 2006, in a speech at a Martin Luther King Day celebration, Nagin made several racist remarks, including his desire to keep New Orleans "a chocolate city." He said, "It will be an African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

In the same speech, he claimed that "God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country...Surely He doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses."

Ordinarily, I could not care less who the voters in another city elect to be their mayor. In fact, had it not been for Hurricane Katrina, most of us would never have heard of Ray Nagin. But tens of billions of our tax dollars are being poured into rebuilding a city that is vulnerable to being flushed into the Gulf of Mexico as if it were a big toilet bowl. New Orleans gets the government it deserves. The rest of us don't deserve any more of this.

# posted by Duane : 8:47 PM  0 comments

IS "campaign-finance reform" about preventing political corruption? Or is about restricting political speech to protect politicians from criticism? The standard line, from Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold - along with a complacent media - is the former. But what's going on right now in Maine points to the latter.

In short: The federal courts have told a Christian group it can't run a radio ad next month, when the Senate is scheduled to take up consideration of the Marriage Protection Amendment, because the ad takes a mild swipe at Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) around the same time she faces a June 13 primary election.

Under the McCain-Feingold law, it's illegal for any ad to even mention a politician (except in tightly regulated circumstances) in the 30 days before a primary or the 60 days before a general election.

How cushy for Sen. Snowe (a co-author of the law).

The Christian Civic League of Maine has sued for the right to run the ad, so far without luck. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the ad is nothing more than a "sham" - that, while ostensibly seeking to influence legislation, it's really aimed at electing or defeating a federal candidate. Last Monday, the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

Huh. If the ad is aimed at defeating Snowe in the GOP primary, it's pretty foolish: She's running unopposed.

(The court's logic: "The advertisement might have the effect of encouraging a new candidate to oppose Sen. Snowe, reducing the number of votes cast for her in the primary, weakening her support in the general election, or otherwise undermining her efforts to gather support, including by raising funds for her re-election." God forbid.)

It's worth, at this point, reprinting the ad's full text:

Our country stands at the crossroads - at the intersection of how marriage will be defined for future generations.

Marriage between a man and a woman has been challenged across this country and could be declared unconstitutional at any time by rogue judges. We must safeguard the traditional definition of marriage by putting it beyond the reach of all judges - by writing it into the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, your senators voted against the Marriage Protection Amendment two years ago. Please call Sens. Snowe and Collins immediately and urge them to support the Marriage Protection Amendment when it comes to a vote in early June. Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your senators. Again, that's 202-224-3121.

Thank you for making your voice heard.

Snowe's vote is "unfortunate"? Them's fightin' words.

Decide for yourself whether the ad is an endorsement of the Marriage Protection Amendment by a group of concerned citizens or part of a deviously clever campaign to unseat Snowe. Either is a perfectly acceptable goal under our Constitution (How else do you influence the vote of an elected official other than to raise the threat of his or her not being elected again?), yet this is no longer protected speech in America.

The original goal of campaign-finance "reform" was to reduce the influence of big contributors, particularly corporations and labor unions, so that they wouldn't drown out the voices of the little guys. But now, because nonprofit groups like the Christian Civic League are technically corporations (the same as General Motors or Enron), the little guys' voices are silenced as well - all as part of a never-ending quest to close "loopholes" that let money into politics.

The "big money" being kept out of the Maine Senate race in this case? An anonymous donor who agreed to cover the $3,992 cost of the radio buy.

Those lined up against the Christian Civic League have their justifications (as always) for why it's OK to silence a group of citizens concerned about a bill moving through Congress (you know, people trying to exercise their core First Amendment rights). They could take out a newspaper ad, the regulators say. Or run a phone bank. Or set up a Political Action Committee - a highly regulated and immensely costly and time-consuming solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Of course, making it extremely inconvenient to criticize incumbent politicians was exactly the goal of the legislators (all incumbents, by the way) who gave us McCain-Feingold.

"Politicians know it is more difficult, and they want it to be more difficult," James Bopp Jr., the lawyer handling the League's case, says. "It's about incumbent politicians not wanting to be criticized."

Nothing more. Nothing less.

# posted by Duane : 6:49 PM  0 comments

One thing is for sure, the liberals can’t say this was government endorsed. I applaud these young men and women for standing up for their rights, and setting the example for others. The ACLU filed suit on behalf of one student who felt offended that a prayer would be included in their graduation ceremony. U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley granted a temporary restraining order sought by a student. Here is how the students responded to the attempts to censor them.

The senior class at a southern Kentucky high school gave their response Friday night to a federal judge’s order banning prayer at commencement.

About 200 seniors stood during the principal’s opening remarks and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer, prompting a standing ovation from a standing-room only crowd at the Russell County High School gymnasium.

The thunderous applause drowned out the last part of the prayer.

The revival like atmosphere continued when senior Megan Chapman said in her opening remarks that God had guided her since childhood. Chapman was interrupted repeatedly by the cheering crowd as she urged her classmates to trust in God as they go through life.

The challenge made the graduation even better because it unified the senior class, Chapman said.

“It made the whole senior class come together as one and I think that’s the best way to go out,” said Chapman, who plans to attend the University of the Cumberlands with her twin sister Megan.

The graduation took place about 12 hours after a federal judge blocked the inclusion of prayer as part of Russell County High School’s graduation ceremonies.

# posted by Duane : 12:21 AM  0 comments

The Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines apologized for disrespecting President George W. Bush during a London concert in 2003. But now, she's taking it back.

"I don't feel that way anymore," she told Time magazine for its issue hitting newsstands Monday. "I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever."

As war in Iraq loomed in 2003, Maines told the London audience: "Just so you know, we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."

The remarks led to death threats and a backlash from other U.S. country stars, including a high-profile spat with Toby Keith. It also stalled what until then had been the group's smashingly successful career.

Bandmate Emily Robinson said she knew right away the remark wouldn't be taken lightly and got "hot from my head to my toes."

"It wasn't that I didn't agree with her 100 percent; it was just, 'Oh, this is going to stir something up,"' she told Time magazine.

For band member Martie Maguire, the controversy was a blessing in disguise.

"I'd rather have a small following of really cool people who get it, who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith," Maguire said. "We don't want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do."

# posted by Duane : 9:28 PM  0 comments

The current migration of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States is one of the largest diasporas in modern history, experts say.

Roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population of about 107 million is now living in the United States, estimates show. About 15 percent of Mexico's labor force is working in the United States. One in every 7 Mexican workers migrates to the United States.

Mass migration from Mexico began more than a century ago. It is deeply embedded in the history, culture and economies of both nations. The current wave began with Mexico's economic crisis in 1982, accelerated sharply in the 1990s with the U.S. economic boom, and today has reached record dimensions.

It is unlikely to ebb anytime soon.

"There is no scenario outside of catastrophic attack on the United States that would make immigration stop," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Three-quarters of the estimated 12 million illegal migrants in the United States come from Mexico and Central America. Mexicans make up 56 percent of the unauthorized U.S. migrant population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Another 22 percent come from elsewhere in Latin America, mainly Central America and the Andean countries. These same countries send many of the half-million new illegal immigrants who arrive each year.

Migration is profoundly altering Mexico and Central America. Entire rural communities are nearly bereft of working-age men. The town of Tendeparacua, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, had 6,000 residents in 1985, and now has 600, according to news reports. In five Mexican states, the money migrants send home exceeds locally generated income, one study found.

Last year, Mexico received a record $20 billion in remittances from migrant workers. That is equal to Mexico's 2004 income from oil exports and dwarfing tourism revenue.

Arriving in small monthly transfers of $100 and $200, remittances have formed a vast river of "migra-dollars" that now exceeds lending by multilateral development agencies and foreign direct investment combined, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

The money Mexican migrants send home almost equals the U.S. foreign aid budget for the entire world, said Arturo Valenzuela, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University and former head of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

U.S. demand has driven a record increase in wages for newly arrived immigrants, about 30 percent between 1994 and 2000, according to Lowell. The migration has also raised average wages in Mexico by 8 to 9 percent, economists estimate. As the first U.S. Baby Boomers turn 60 this year, this demand is only expected to intensify.

Once migration starts, social and economic networks sustain and fuel it, which explains in part why flows have not fallen despite solid economic growth in Mexico.

Most illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America have not completed high school, although education levels are rising. Harvard economist George Borjas found that in 2000, 63 percent of Mexican immigrants had not finished high school.

New immigrants are much more broadly dispersed than previous waves. A lower percentage are going to the traditional magnet states such as California and New York. The fastest-growing destinations for new arrivals, according to demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution, are North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Iowa and Nebraska.

This geographic dispersal may account in part for rising public discontent over immigration, many believe. Migrant workers have also shifted from the fields to the cities, working in hotels, restaurants and construction, where they are more visible to the public.

Mexico is aging too, which will eventually cause migration to ebb. Its population trails the U.S. age profile by 30 years. By then, demographers expect Mexico may be importing labor.

While migration has long served as a safety valve for Mexico, the current wave may also be hindering the political and economic reforms that most agree are needed -- in education, taxes, energy, agriculture and law, where systemic corruption is a serious barrier to growth.

"The good news is that a million Mexicans were on the street recently demanding good jobs and good government and justice," Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told a recent panel at the American Enterprise Institute. "The bad news is they were marching in someone else's country. Every day, thousands of Mexico's most industrious people leave their families behind ... leading many to wonder why Mexico's political class is not capable of creating economic opportunity for its citizens in a land rich in mineral wealth, hydrocarbons, agricultural potential and human capital."

# posted by Duane : 7:09 PM  0 comments

Non-Mexican Hispanics entering the United States illegally are studying up on Mexican history and geography, even learning to whistle the national anthem, to beat U.S. plans to fly them home.

As part of a proposal to overhaul immigration laws and tighten border security, President Bush pledged last week to increase deportations of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico caught crossing the U.S. border.

Mexicans, who make up most of the almost 1.2 million immigrants detained crossing the border illegally in 2005, are given a criminal background check and then sent over the frontier, usually within a day. Many often try crossing again immediately.
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But so-called Other Than Mexican, or OTM, illegal immigrants mostly from Central America, are increasingly being flown back hundreds of miles to their home countries, which can effectively end their dream of entering the United States to earn a better life.

So, many pretend to be Mexicans.

“We heard we could be sent back to our own countries, so many of us are trying to pass ourselves off as Mexicans,” Honduran Jorge Alberto Carvajal, 38, said as he stood with a group of Central American migrants outside a shelter in this sweltering city south of Laredo, Texas.

“A lot are learning the Mexican national anthem and the names of the states, and even the names of the state’s governors,” said Carvajal, a former street trader from the city of San Pedro Sula.

Central American migrants say their journey north through Mexico to the border, often riding train box cars, is so tough they are willing to lie to U.S. agents about their nationality to avoid being flown back.

“I suffered a lot on the train journey. I was thirsty and hungry, and had to sleep in stables with animals,” said Guatemalan father of five Jose Posadas, 34, as he prepared to cross the Rio Grande to McAllen, Texas, 140 miles east of Nuevo Laredo.

False identities
Previously, illegal Central Americans apprehended on the U.S. side of the border were routinely served with a notice to appear before an immigration judge at a later date, after which most just melted into the United States and disappeared.

The majority of the 155,000 OTMs nabbed last year were freed onto the streets of U.S. cities. Bush called that so-called catch-and-release policy unacceptable.

A new strategy to detain the non-Mexican immigrants and fly them home was imposed on the 2,000-mile border last September, although it has been applied only patchily.

The program started in several areas of the border, notably the Del Rio and McAllen sectors in Texas, which had become swamped by OTMs. It covers citizens of Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said some 70,000 non-Mexican immigrants have been caught crossing from Mexico since Oct. 1, down 11 percent from the same period a year ago.

At present, a decision on whether to send OTMs home in many cases depends on whether there is detention space to hold them pending repatriation flights.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Maria Valencia said it was common for agents to encounter OTMs attempting to pass themselves off as fellow Spanish-speaking Mexicans, and said some agents might be successfully tricked.

“Definitely ... Some might fool us to believe they are Mexicans, especially when we are overwhelmed and we are trying to process a large, large group,” she said by telephone from Washington.

Agents were skilled at picking out impostors from their Mexican neighbors, Valencia said, but migrants like Posadas said they are now going to great lengths to try and beat border police and avoid deportation.

“I told (the Border Patrol) I was from the Zaragoza district of Reynosa ... I studied the streets of the area, and even had the names of my Mexican parents worked out,” said the restaurant worker from Escuintla, Guatemala.

“They caught me ... and now I’ll try again.”

# posted by Duane : 6:35 PM  0 comments

If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn’t be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn’t have been allowed on the force.

Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies “xenophobic,” Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.

In the United States, only two posts — the presidency and vice presidency — are reserved for the native born.

In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.

Foreign-born Mexicans can’t hold seats in either house of the congress. They’re also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico’s Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for “native-born Mexicans.”

Encouraging tighter restrictions
Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

Mexico’s Interior Department — which recommended the bans as part of “model” city statutes it distributed to local officials — could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.

After being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue, officials changed the wording in two statutes to delete the “native-born” requirements, although they said the modifications had nothing to do with AP’s inquiries.

“These statutes have been under review for some time, and they have, or are about to be, changed,” said an Interior Department official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

But because the “model” statues are fill-in-the-blanks guides for framing local legislation, many cities across Mexico have already enacted such bans. They have done so even though foreigners constitute a tiny percentage of the population and pose little threat to Mexico’s job market.

Just 0.5 percent
The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico’s 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half million.

“There is a need for a little more openness, both at the policy level and in business affairs,” said David Kim, president of the Mexico-Korea Association, which represents the estimated 20,000 South Koreans in Mexico, many of them naturalized citizens.

“The immigration laws are very difficult ... and they put obstacles in the way that make it more difficult to compete,” Kim said, although most foreigners don’t come to Mexico seeking government posts.

J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, was more blunt. “If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution,” he said in a recent article on immigration.

# posted by Duane : 6:32 PM  0 comments

A Keller school district parent said political correctness has run amok at her daughter's elementary school, where the principal chose to omit the words "In God We Trust" from an oversize coin depicted on the yearbook cover.

Janet Travis, principal of Liberty Elementary School in Colleyville, wanted to avoid offending students of different religions, a district spokesman said. Students were given stickers with the words that could be affixed to the book if they so chose.

Debi Ackerman of North Richland Hills said she is offended by the omission. It's yet another example of a politically correct culture that is removing Christian references from all public places, she said.

"I think it's really ridiculous," said Ackerman, whose daughter Tawni, 10, took the book home Thursday afternoon. "Now it has come to this. ... When is it going to end?"

She likened the situation to retailers that use "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" in their displays and advertising.

"First, we can't say 'Christmas' trees. It's 'holiday' trees. Then it's 'holiday' decorations," Ackerman said. "It just doesn't make any sense to me."

Officials chose an image of an enlarged nickel for the yearbook cover because this is Liberty Elementary's first year and because the nickel has a new design this year.

The nickel design features President Jefferson and the word Liberty in cursive, with the words "In God We Trust" along the right edge.

Keller administrators agreed with the decision, which Travis made in conjunction with a school parents group, district spokesman Jason Meyer said. District policy states, in part: "The District shall take no action respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech."

Principals must strive to remain neutral regarding religion, Meyer said.

"It's not always easy to make everybody happy when we are making decisions," he said. He said Travis was unavailable for comment Friday.

Michael Linz, a Dallas attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the district's move was appropriate, sensitive and constitutional.

"Sometimes administrators and schools are really caught trying to make appropriate decisions with respect to people's views. Someone is always going to complain," he said. "I think that the school administrators were drawing the appropriate line by trying not to offend others."

Many parents have said they like the $16 yearbook, which chronicles the school's inaugural year, said Tom Gardner of Colleyville, president of the Liberty PTA. Parents donated photos of events, he said.

Ackerman suggested that the school could have used a different symbol for liberty, such as the Liberty Bell or the Statue of Liberty, if it was concerned about giving offense. But Gardner said those symbols may not be acceptable to everyone, either.

"We are a public school," he said. "We sure do not want to step on anybody's toes. I don't think any harm was intended."

# posted by Duane : 4:24 PM  0 comments

The chorus of boos and hisses was so loud at yesterday's New School University graduation that Sen. John McCain was barely able to get through his commencement speech.

Along with many equally childish faculty members, students turned their backs on the war-hero senator and lifted signs that read, "Our commencement is not your platform."

How positively Sixties of them.

Actually, McCain was fortunate to speak at all. New School students circulated a petition to have his invitation withdrawn, and thousands reportedly signed.

In the end, the school's president and McCain's friend, Bob Kerrey - like the senator, a genuine Vietnam hero - ensured that free-speech protections trumped the students' juvenile antics.

However, there is no small irony in all of this. McCain, after all, has made the regulation of speech a hallmark of his incumbency.

"I would rather have a clean government than [a corrupt] one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected," the senator says.

Yes, governmental corruption is deplorable. But to combat it by restricting political speech is to put at mortal risk America's most fundamental freedoms.

McCain's breezy disdain for the "quote First Amendment" is embodied in his namesake McCain-Feingold law - which, in the guise of campaign-finance "reform," put restrictions on political speech beginning two months prior to elections - among other things.

People with ideas are barred from the debate - not much different than what the kiddies at the New School tried to do to the senator yesterday.

That is to say, McCain very nearly got a serious dose of his own medicine.

It would have served him right.

# posted by Duane : 9:37 PM  0 comments

How does the United States deal with a corrupt world in which we are blamed even for the good we do, while others are praised when they do wrong or remain indifferent to suffering?

We are accused of unilateral and preemptory bullying of the madman Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose reactors that will be used to “wipe out” the “one-bomb” state of Israel were supplied by Swiss, German, and Russian profit-minded businessmen. No one thinks to chastise those who sold Iran the capability of destroying Israel.

Here in the United States we worry whether we are tough enough with the Gulf sheikdoms in promoting human rights and democratic reform. Meanwhile China simply offers them cash for oil, no questions asked. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez pose as anti-Western zealots to Western naifs. The one has never held an election; the other tries his best to end the democracy that brought him to power. Meanwhile our fretting elites, back from Europe or South America, write ever more books on why George Bush and the Americans are not liked.

Hamas screams that we are mean for our logical suggestion that free American taxpayers will not subsidize such killers and terrorists. Those in the Middle East whine about Islamophobia, but keep silent that there is not allowed a Sunni mosque in Iran or a Christian church in Saudi Arabia. An entire book could be written about the imams and theocrats — in Iran, Egypt, the West Bank, Pakistan, and the Gulf States — who in safety issue fatwas and death pronouncements against Americans in Iraq and any who deal with the “infidel,” and yet send their spoiled children to private schools in Britain and the United States, paid for by their own blackmail money from corrupt governments.

You get the overall roundup: the Europeans have simply absorbed as their own the key elements of ossified French foreign policy — utopian rhetoric and anti-Americanism can pretty much give you a global pass to sell anything you wish to anyone at anytime.

China is more savvy. It discards every disastrous economic policy Mao ever enacted, but keeps two cornerstones of Maoist dogma: imply force to bully, and keep the veneer of revolutionary egalitarianism to mask cutthroat capitalism and diplomacy, from copyright theft and intellectual piracy to smiling at rogue clients like North Korea and disputing the territorial claims of almost every neighbor in sight.

Oil cuts a lot of idealism in the Middle East. The cynicism is summed up simply as “Those who sell lecture, and those who buy listen.” American efforts in Iraq — the largest aid program since the Marshall Plan, where American blood and treasure go to birth democracy — are libeled as “no blood for oil.” Yet a profiteering Saudi Arabia or Kuwait does more to impoverish poor oil-importing African and Asian nations than any regime on earth. But this sick, corrupt world keeps mum.

And why not ask Saudi Arabia about its now lionized and well-off al-Ghamdi clan? Aside from the various Ghamdi terrorists and bin-Laden hangers-on, remember young Ahmad, the 20-year-old medical student who packed his suicide vest with ball bearings and headed for Mosul, where he blew up 18 Americans? Or how about dear Ahmad and Hamza, the Ghamdis who helped crash Flight 175 into the South Tower on September 11? And please do not forget either the Saudi icon Said Ghamdi, who, had he not met Todd Beamer and Co. on Flight 93, would have incinerated the White House or the Capitol.

So we know the symptoms of this one-sided anti-Americanism and its strange combination of hatred, envy, and yearning — but, so far, not its remedy. In the meantime, the global caricature of the United States, in the aftermath of Iraq, is proving near fatal to the Bush administration, whose idealism and sharp break with past cynical realpolitik have earned it outright disdain. Indeed, the more al Qaeda is scattered, and the more Iraq looks like it will eventually emerge as a constitutional government, the angrier the world seems to become at the United States. American success, it seems, is even worse than failure.

Some of the criticism is inevitable. America is in an unpopular reconstruction of Iraq that has cost lives and treasure. Observers looked only at the explosions, never what the sacrifice was for — especially when it is rare for an Afghan or Iraqi ever to visit the United States to express thanks for giving their peoples a reprieve from the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

We should also accept that the United States, as the world’s policeman, always suffers the easy hatred of the cops, who are as ankle-bitten when things are calm as they are desperately sought when danger looms. America is the genitor and largest donor to the United Nations. Its military is the ultimate guarantor of free commerce by land and sea, and its wide-open market proves the catalyst of international trade. More immigrants seek its shores than all other designations combined — especially from countries of Latin America, whose criticism of the United States is the loudest.

Nevertheless, while we cannot stop anti-Americanism, here (a consequence, in part, of a deep-seeded, irrational sense of inferiority) and abroad, we can adopt a wiser stance that puts the onus of responsibility more on our critics.

We have a window of 1 to 3 years in Iran before it deploys nuclear weapons. Let Ahmadinejad talk and write — the loonier and longer, the better, as we smile and ignore him and his monstrous ilk.

Let also the Europeans and Arabs come to us to ask our help, as sphinx-like we express “concern” for their security needs. Meanwhile we should continue to try to appeal to Iranian dissidents, stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, and resolve that at the eleventh hour this nut with his head in a well will not obtain the methods to destroy what we once knew as the West.

Ditto with Hamas. Don’t demonize it — just don’t give it any money. Praise democracy, but not what was elected.

We should curtail money to Mr. Mubarak as well. No need for any more sermons on democracy — been there, done that. Now we should accept with quiet resignation that if an aggregate $50 billion in give-aways have earned us the most anti-American voices in the Middle East, then a big fat zero for Egypt might be an improvement. After all, there must be something wrong with a country that gave us both Mohammad Atta and Dr. Zawahiri.

The international Left loves to champion humanitarian causes that do not involve the immediate security needs of the United States, damning us for inaction even as they are the first to slander us for being military interventionists. We know the script of Haiti, Mogadishu, and the Balkans, where Americans are invited in, and then harped at both for using and not using force. Where successful, the credit goes elsewhere; failure is always ours alone. Still, we should organize multinational efforts to save those in Darfur — but only after privately insisting that every American soldier must be matched by a European, Chinese, and Russian peacekeeper.

There are other ways to curb our exposure to irrational hatred that seems so to demoralize the American public. First, we should cease our Olympian indifference to hypocrisy, instead pointing out politely inconsistencies in European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese morality. Why not express more concern about the inexplicable death of Balkan kingpin prisoners at The Hague or European sales of nuclear technology to madmen or institutionalized Chinese theft of intellectual property?

We need to reexamine the nature of our overseas American bases, elevating the political to the strategic, which, it turns out, are inseparable after all. To take one small example: When Greeks pour out on their streets to rage at a visiting American secretary of State, we should ask ourselves, do we really need a base in Crete that is so costly in rent and yet ensures Greeks security without responsibility or maturity? Surely once we leave, those brave opportunistic souls in the streets of Athens can talk peace with the newly Islamist Turkish government, solve Cyprus on their own, or fend off terrorists from across the Mediterranean.

The point is not to be gratuitously punitive or devolve into isolationism, but to continue to apply to Europe the model that was so successful in the Philippines and now South Korea — ongoing redeployment of Americans to where we can still strike in emergencies, but without empowering hypocritical hosts in time of peace.

We must also sound in international fora as friendly and cooperative as possible with the Russians, Chinese, and the lunatic Latin American populists — even as we firm up our contingency plans and strengthen military ties of convenience with concerned states like Australia, Japan, India, and Brazil.

The United States must control our borders, for reasons that transcend even terrorism and national security. One way to cool the populist hatred emanating from Latin America is to ensure that it becomes a privilege, not a birthright, to enter the United States. In traveling the Middle East, I notice the greatest private complaint is not Israel or even Iraq, but the inability to enter the United States as freely as in the past. And that, oddly, is not necessarily a bad thing, as those who damn us are slowly learning that their cheap hatred has had real consequences.

Then there is, of course, oil. It is the great distorter, one that punishes the hard-working poor states who need fuel to power their reforming economies while rewarding failed regimes for their mischief, by the simple accident that someone else discovered it, developed it, and then must purchase it from under their dictatorial feet. We must drill, conserve, invent, and substitute our way out of this crisis to ensure the integrity of our foreign policy, to stop the subsidy of crazies like Chavez and Ahmadinejad, and to lower the world price of petroleum that taxes those who can least afford it. There is a reason, after all, why the al-Ghamdis are popular icons in Saudi Arabia rather than on the receiving end of a cruise missile.

So we need more firm explanation, less loud assertion, more quiet with our enemies, more lectures to neutrals and friends — and always the very subtle message that cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences

# posted by Duane : 9:44 PM  0 comments

At the age of 65, when many men are considering retirement, Bishop Donald Wuerl has been tapped by the Vatican to assume a greater challenge -- to be archbishop of Washington, D.C. The trajectory of his life, especially the last 18 years spent in his hometown Pittsburgh, has prepared him well for this honor.

Bishop Wuerl's appointment is a welcome, if belated, recognition of his abilities after a lengthy spell of laboring here in the diocesan vineyard. During those years, Bishop Wuerl was often the focus of speculation concerning possible moves.

Now that the Vatican has confirmed what many in Pittsburgh already knew about his worth, and not just in the Catholic community, it is a bittersweet moment of the sort that attends any promotion of a successful homegrown achiever. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, a priest and bishop in the city, Bishop Wuerl has a lifetime of well-wishers to both congratulate him and regret the day he must leave.

But in the Wuerl era not all was blue skies and sunlit meadows for the flock. While his manner is meek and mild, his sincerity undoubted and his faith complete, there is some steel behind his smile -- and Bishop Wuerl needed it to meet the diocese's challenges.

When he became bishop, the diocese was nearly $3 million in debt. It had more parishes and parochial schools than the budget and the number of priests could sustain. In closing or consolidating the diocese's properties, Bishop Wuerl had to be a firm taskmaster in a situation fraught with sorrow and some bitterness, as faithful parishioners sought to save places dear to their hearts.

Yet even the bishop's harshest critics might concede that he did what he did because he believed it had to be done, not because he wanted to or took pleasure in it.

The same firmness of purpose also served him well on the pedophile-priest scandal that was roiling the Catholic Church in the United States. Unlike some church leaders, he did not tolerate priests who preyed on children. He went so far as to make a rare challenge -- ultimately, successful -- of a Vatican ruling that ordered him to reinstate a priest accused of abuse.

Nevertheless, he has the wisdom to know when discretion is advisable. For example, he disappointed those who wanted him to deny communion to Catholics who favor abortion rights in defiance of church teaching -- read in particular Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. But his stance was grounded in canon law, compassion and the understanding that the church would only have been hurt by injecting itself into America's political brawls.

Bishop Wuerl is learned in the ways of the church, highly respected among church leaders in the United States and knows both Rome and Washington, D.C., well. He goes to an archdiocese that is at once less Catholic than Pittsburgh and more sophisticated and nationally prominent.

# posted by Duane : 9:40 PM  0 comments

I do not doubt the president's sincerity in wanting to humanize and regularize the lives of America's estimated 12 million illegal aliens. But good intentions are not enough. For decades, the well-traveled road from the Mexican border to the barrios of Los Angeles has been paved with such intentions. They begat the misguided immigration policy that created the crisis that necessitated the speech that purports to offer, finally, the "comprehensive" solution.

Hardly. The critical element -- border enforcement -- is farcical. President Bush promises to increase the number of border agents. That was promised in the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty legislation in 1986. The result was more than 11 million new illegal immigrants.

The president himself boasted about having already increased the number of border guards by one-third under his administration. Yet he acknowledges in the same speech that we do not have the border under control -- "full control," as he comically put it. The president's new solution? Increase the number of border guards again, by half this time. Everyone knows that anything short of enough border guards to do Hands Across America from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean won't do a thing to eliminate illegal immigration.

The only thing that might work is a physical barrier. The president offhandedly dismisses a wall as something that could never stop the "enormous pressure on our border."

By what logic? Opponents pretend that these barriers can always be circumvented by, say, tunnels or clandestine entry by sea. Such arguments are transparently unserious. You're hardly going to get 500,000 illegals lining up outside a tunnel or on a pier. Such choke points are exactly how you would turn the current river of illegal immigrants into narrow streams -- which is all we need to turn the illegal immigration problem from out of control to eminently manageable.

Bush's enforcement provisions were advertised as an attempt to appease conservatives. This is odd. Are conservatives the only ones who think that unlimited, unregulated immigration is a detriment to the republic? Do liberals really believe in a de facto policy that depresses the wages of the poorest and most desperate Americans, African Americans most prominently among them? Do liberals believe that the number, social class, education level, background and country of origin of immigrants -- the kinds of decisions every democratic country makes for itself -- should be taken out of the hands of the American citizenry and left to the immigrants themselves and, in particular, to those most willing to break the very immigration regulations the American people have decided upon democratically?

And is it just conservatives who think the United States ought not be gratuitously squandering one of its greatest assets -- its magnetic attraction to would-be immigrants around the world? There are tens of millions of people who want to leave their homes and come to America. We essentially have an NFL draft in which the United States has the first, oh, million or so draft picks. Rather than exercising those picks, i.e., choosing by whatever criteria we want -- such as education, enterprise, technical skills and creativity -- we admit the tiniest fraction of the best and brightest and permit millions of the unskilled to pour in instead.

The president's speech made a fine case for temporary workers. But what possible confidence can we have that when the time comes to return home, they will not stay on? After all, having lived here for years, they would have an infinitely easier time melting into American society than the current millions of illegals who wandered into places they knew nothing about and successfully melted in.

I am not against legalization. Admittedly, legalization is desperately unfair to the further millions who have been waiting in line at U.S. consulates around the world. By itself, it would only encourage future illegal immigration. But if coupled with a program that closes down the border, it would make sense. It would resolve the problem once and for all.

Serious border enforcement is what's missing in the president's "comprehensive" program. And that is why so many "conservatives" are extremely unhappy. Not out of nativism. There are many like me who cannot wait to end the shadow life of the illegals. But doing so while fraudulently promising to close the border is a simple capitulation -- and an invitation to the next president to declare the next amnesty for the next torrent of illegals who will have understood from the Bush program that crossing the border at night and finding a place to hide is the surest road to the American dream.

# posted by Duane : 8:49 PM  1 comments

The House rejected an attempt late Thursday to end a quarter-century ban on oil and natural gas drilling in 85 percent of the country's coastal waters despite arguments that the new supplies are needed to lower energy costs.

Lawmakers from Florida and California led the fight to maintain the long-standing drilling moratorium, contending that energy development as close as three miles from shore would jeopardize multibillion-dollar tourism industries.

"It's a grievous assault on Florida and other (coastal) states," declared Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., of attempts to end the drilling prohibitions that Congress first imposed in 1981 and has reaffirmed every year since.

The moratorium bars oil and gas development in virtually all coastal waters outside the western Gulf of Mexico, where most of the country's offshore oil and gas wells are concentrated.

A measure, offered by Putnam and Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., to continue the prohibition on drilling for natural gas - which some lawmakers argued was less of an environmental threat than oil - was approved 217-203 and inserted into a $25.9 billion Interior Department spending bill.

Earlier, the House, by a 279-141 vote, rejected an attempt by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, to lift the long-standing moratorium as it applies to oil drilling.

The offshore drilling issue dominated much of the debate over the Interior spending legislation.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., argued that developing the offshore gas resources would produce none of the environmental risks - mainly the threat of a spill - associated with oil drilling.

He won a victory when the drilling ban as it applies to natural gas was stripped from the Interior bill in committee.

"This country has an energy crisis," said Peterson, arguing that access to supplies of gas beneath the waters of the country's outer continental shelf will help drive down the cost of the fuel used widely by industry and for home heating.

"This is about the economy of America," said Peterson, noting that the chemical industry and makers of fertilizer as well as other industries are talking of moving operations overseas because of high U.S. natural gas prices.

But lawmakers from coastal states, especially Florida and California, attacked the attempt to end a 25-year prohibition. They said an oil spill could devastate their states' economies, especially tourism.

"Drilling for natural gas means drilling for oil," argued Capps, citing industry views that where there is gas, often oil is found and probably would be developed. "Drilling three miles off our coast will not lower gas prices today or anytime in the near future."

Peterson insisted that lifting the congressional moratorium wouldn't mean drilling right away. A separate drilling ban on offshore areas outside the western Gulf has been put in place by President Bush and would not be affected by the congressional action, he said.

But Capps said if Congress lifts its ban, there would be growing pressure on the White House to do the same.

# posted by Duane : 8:57 AM  0 comments

What was missing in the president's approach the other night was the expression, or suggestion, of context. The context was a crisis that had gone unanswered as it has built, the perceived detachment of the political elite from people on the ground, and a new distance between the president and his traditional supporters. The president would have done well to signal that he knew he was coming late to the party, as it were; that he'd come to rethink his previous stand, or lack of a stand, and had begun to consider whether there was not some justice in the views, and alarm, of others.

Without an established context the speech seemed free-floating: a statement issued into the ether, unanchored to any particular principle and eager to use, as opposed to appreciate, whatever human sentiment flows around the issue of immigration. It was a speech driven by an air of crisis, but not a public crisis, only a personal and political one.

To acknowledge what he apparently thinks are the biases of the base, he used loaded words like "sneak"--illegal immigrants "sneak across the border"--as if to establish his populist bona fides. This was, not to put too fancy a rhetorical term on it, creepy, and managed to be offensive to everyone.

What was needed was a definitive statement: As of this moment we will control our borders, I'm sending in the men, I'm giving this the attention I've given to the Mideast.

Once that is done, all else follows. "Comprehensive solution" seems like code for "some day we may do something". No one believes in comprehensive solutions. They believe in action they can see. No one believes in the wisdom of government, but they do believe it has a certain brute power.

The disinterest in the White House and among congressional Republicans in establishing authority on America's borders is so amazing--the people want it, the age of terror demands it--that great histories will be written about it. Thinking about this has left me contemplating a question that admittedly seems farfetched: Is it possible our flinty president is so committed to protecting the Republican Party from losing, forever, the Hispanic vote, that he's decided to take a blurred and unsatisfying stand on immigration, and sacrifice all personal popularity, in order to keep the party of the future electorally competitive with a growing ethnic group?

This would, I admit, be rather unlike an American political professional. And it speaks of a long-term thinking that has not been the hallmark of this administration. But at least it would render explicable the president's moves.

The other possibility is that the administration's slow and ambivalent action is the result of being lost in some geopolitical-globalist abstract-athon that has left them puffed with the rightness of their superior knowledge, sure in their membership in a higher brotherhood, and looking down on the low concerns of normal Americans living in America.

I continue to believe the administration's problem is not that the base lately doesn't like it, but that the White House has decided it actually doesn't like the base. That's a worse problem. It's hard to fire a base. Hard to get a new one.

# posted by Duane : 8:18 PM  0 comments

Among the tiny handful of Americans who still clung to the illusion that President Bush might want to truly address and correct the illegal immigration crisis, it only took the first moments of his May 15 speech to dispel all hope. Though conceding, seemingly for the first time, that the invasion from Mexico is indeed a problem, the President immediately fell back into the standard diatribe that has underscored Washington's indifference to the American people on this matter.

Referring to the invaders as "decent people who work hard," the President sought to dilute the fact that their presence here represents a blatant violation and contempt for the laws of this country. Furthermore, by virtually asserting that the real travesty is that the illegals are not sufficiently "protected," he slapped the face of every law-abiding American.

Perhaps Mr. Bush needs to be reminded that it was the decent and hard working Americans that he once swore a solemn oath to protect, and whose well being he was elected to uphold.

Clearly, President Bush's goal, as well as that of the consummate political pragmatists who hold sway within the GOP, is to offer yet another "fig leaf" of a guest worker program. Thus they seek to camouflage their ominous underlying intent, which is as it has always been, amnesty for those who violated the law to enter this country.

That is the reality of the plan that was presented in his May 15 speech. It is the plan that has been in the works among the "ruling class" from the beginning, and it is the plan they intend to foist upon the American people, regardless of any opposition.

But the President faces a dilemma. With his approval ratings at an all-time low (And despite any attempts by Karl Rove to claim otherwise, this is a direct result of his stance on immigration), Mr. Bush must take definitive action if he is to avert an electoral disaster this fall. Such a congressional shakeup could conceivably sweep Democrats into dominance in both houses of Congress.

He knows that the likely result would be the pursuit of impeachment proceedings by a vindictive Democrat-controlled legislative branch. So he is compelled to address the immigration issue. His response must appear to be decisive and effective. But ultimately it must not truly change the immigration landscape to any significant degree.

Presuming that the American people might fall for a public relations ploy reminiscent of his laudable response to 9-11, the President has offered a last-minute caricature of what should have been done years ago to correct the situation. He now proposes sending military troops to the border.

Unfortunately, several aspects of this move telegraph a message to the people, both north and south of the border, that he is still not serious about fixing the problem. Any military personnel sent to the region are to be utilized for logistical and supportive roles, and will have nothing to do with direct enforcement of the border.

Worse yet, before the first troop has even been deployed, the President has presented a timetable that calls for the deployment to end by next summer. It should be clear that even if the presence of troops were to have any tangible effect on the northward migration of illegals, such effects would only be temporary.

Furthermore, by the same logic that prohibits the announcement of any timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, the "one year" limit on troop placement at the border effectively neutralizes such action from the start. The invading multitudes would only need to bide their time for a few months (in truth, only until election day), after which any impediment from the military would disappear.

It is not hard to look past all of the posturing and see that nothing has changed. The plan being pursued by the pro-illegal crowd is as dastardly as it is simple. Immigrants who actually assimilate into American society will also move up the economic ladder, so a "fresh supply" of easily exploitable newcomers will perpetually be necessary.

Thus, the Pandora's box of a "guest worker program" is the best means by which the floodgates will be propped open in perpetuity. And it is just too bad for future generations of Americans whose country will thus be overrun.

Those at the upper echelons of government would have liked for the invasion to remain relatively unnoticed, so that the President could have evaded this issue until after November. Unfortunately for him, uncooperative hordes of these "decent people" decided to flex their political muscle, and began marching through the streets demanding American capitulation.

In so doing, they brought the festering situation to the forefront, and now it is on the minds of the American people as never before. Still, the primary concern among high-ranking politicians is how to tap-dance away from it.

Anti-American Democrats stand to be the ultimate winners in this debacle, since the illegals will, in the long run, join their party ranks. Meanwhile, grassroots anger with the GOP will boost Democrat electoral fortunes. The public will not be fooled once again.

Thus the Democrats are willing accomplices, though understandably they have remained relatively quiet as they watch the GOP teetering on the verge of self-destruction.

Senate and House Republicans must immediately distance themselves from Mr. Bush's speech, and specifically his entire "amnesty/guest worker" agenda, and should instead push hard for a real solution. Otherwise, he may have just sealed their doom.

# posted by Duane : 8:13 PM  0 comments

Did Angela Waldron kill Garold “Abe” Davis intentionally, or was in an act of self defense?

That is the question a jury of eight women and four men face today when they begin deliberations in the murder trial of 31-year-old Titusville residen who admitted to state police she was the one who shot Davis in the back o his head, killing him last September at his home.

Waldron is on trial for criminal homicide with intent and premeditation and carrying a firearm without a license. She was charged by state police after the body of 42-year-old Davis was found in his Troy Township home several days after he was killed by a single shot to the back of his head.

State Police Trooper Mark Russo laid on the floor in front of a jury in Crawford County Court of Common Pleas to demonstrate what Waldron told him happened the night she shot Davis.

Russo testified he questioned Waldron about when she got the gun and why she did not run from Davis instead of shooting him in the back of the head. Testimony was that Waldron and Davis had left a bar in Titusville and stopped at McDonald’s before proceeding to his home in his vehicle. Russo said Waldron told him that she asked Davis to stop at her home on the way to get a sweater. Waldron said she got the sweater and also got a handgun from a bedroom closet and put it in her waistband.
The incident took place after the two got to Davis’ home.

Waldron told Russo that Davis was holding her on the floor and she could not get away. Demonstrating the positions of the pair on the floor, Russo said Waldron told him that Davis had pulled her to the floor and was lying on top of her. When he began to make sexual advances, she told him, “Let’s do this right. Let’s make love,” and suggested he “turn on some music.”

When Davis moved away to choose some music, Waldron pulled the gun from her waist, came up behind Davis, “pretending to pick out music with him, and shot him in the back of his head. She turned and ran from the home,” Russo testified.

Trooper David Gulch also testified about statements given to him by Waldron, who gave several versions about what happened before the last version, including one which she claimed a blonde woman got in the car at McDonald’s and went to the Davis home with them. She told him at that time that when she was coming out of the bathroom, she heard a gunshot and fled the scene.

After she confessed that she was the one who pulled the trigger, Gulch said Waldron was given a copy of charges, which included theft. Police at that time charged her with taking money from Davis. However, that charge was withdrawn. In the police car reading the charges from the complaint, Waldron said, “I didn’t steal anything from anybody. The only think I took was a father away from his kids.”

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Bruce Barrett, Gulch testified that Waldron told her she was frightened when Davis started assaulting her and he said something to the effect of “Old Abe is going to get what he wants.” She told Gulch that she thought, “I’m 31 and never been sexually assaulted and wasn’t about to. She said she was scared,” Gulch said.

Dr. Eric Vey, forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Davis, said he died of the gunshot wound at close range. Davis was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weight 142 pounds at the time of his death. His blood-alcohol content was .207, two and one-half times the legal limit for driving while under the influence. The defense rested without calling any witnesses. Waldron told the judge she chose not to testify in her own behalf.
Crawford County District Attorney Francis Schultz is prosecuting the case.

# posted by Duane : 8:35 PM  0 comments

Over the past week, many of us have written on the frustration felt by conservatives (especially fiscal conservatives) over the past few years. Some believe that the only manner in which to serve notice on the GOP that it cannot take conservative votes for granted is a massive walkout, a boycott of the 2006 midterms and perhaps even the 2008 presidential elections. Others, such as myself, believe that conservatives will marginalize themselves by doing so and will prove themselves incapable of being reliable partners in any kind of ruling coalition.

Today we have an example of what can be accomplished through active engagement rather than disengagement. In Pennsylvania, primary voters have unseated the two Republican leaders in the state Senate that gave the body an unpopular pay raise, joining thirteen of their incumbent House colleagues in getting the boot:

Angry taxpayers on Tuesday tossed out the two Republican Senate leaders who helped engineer last year's legislative pay raise, an issue that apparently cost 13 House members their jobs, too.

Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Jubelirer of Altoona, and Senate Majority Leader David Brightbill of Lebanon County conceded to their challengers, becoming the first lawmakers in major leadership posts to lose a primary election in 42 years. The House defeats would be the most since 1980.

"We have had a dramatic earthquake in Pennsylvania," said Jubelirer, a 32-year legislator.

The defeats of Jubelirer and Brightbill "will send shock waves throughout he political establishment for years to come," said Mike Young, a retired Penn State University political science professor.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review calls this a political "earthquake", as long-entrenched GOP incumbents have lost or are losing races to political neophytes. Brightbill lost to a tire salesman with only a single term on a city council on his resume, but who espoused fiscal responsibility and an end to government handouts. Jubelirer lost to a county commissioner who champions free markets. Another representative, Tom Lawson, trails a 21-year-old college graduate running for his first office.

The existing Republican leadership in Pennsylvania outraged fiscal conservatives with their pay raises and spending habits. However, instead of declaring defeat and retreating to their homes, these conservatives organized and found candidates for primaries -- especially those for the leadership that betrayed them. They donated, raised more funds, campaigned, and ensured a strong turnout to counter the incumbent advantage.

And they succeeded.

Without a doubt, the Pennsylvania Republican Party got the message, along with the incumbents who now find themselves out of a job after the general election. It is entirely possible to turn the rascals out if conservatives remain committed to the cause. This can be replicated on a Congressional level with enough effort and organization. In fact, thanks to the reapportionment process, it actually carries less risk than one might fear. Solidly Republican districts will likely elect whichever GOP candidate wins the primary, so the argument that the incumbent somehow protects against the loss of a seat holds little water. That gives Republicans the ability to offer true choices in the primary elections, a strategy deftly employed by Pennsylvania conservatives.

And look how the press reacted! They have given fiscal conservatives a huge victory in the recognition they received for holding the line on spending. No one expected the conservatives to organize this well or this effectively, and it gives them momentum heading into the general election. The political story of this year in Pennsylvania will be the housecleaning performed on the state legislature, and it puts candidates of both parties on notice that conservatives have grabbed the momentum. Don't be surprised if that changes the entire tenor of the debate on Pennsylvania public policy,

Conservatives can achieve these victories across the nation, especially in Congress, by working within the GOP to effect change. It requires engagement and organization, which may be less immediately satisfactory than boycotts and protests, but carries much greater potential for actual gain.

# posted by Duane : 8:20 PM  0 comments

Recently, I wrote an article on the crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security on employers who hire illegal aliens. Readers responded well, and they said similar efforts should continue. However, the fanfare of the raid of a perpetual employer of illegal aliens and the so-called “arrests” of over 1,100 illegals doesn’t paint the full picture of what is happening. It seems obvious that if employers were fined and immigration laws were enforced, the problems would start fixing themselves. But over the last decade, and especially the last 5 years, fines on employers have dropped to new lows.

On April 21, I wrote about the Department of Homeland Security’s raid on IFCO Systems, the largest pallet services company in the country. Government officials announced the arrests of over 1,100 illegal aliens as well as several current and former managers of IFCO Systems. The crackdown was welcomed by readers, and there was hope that this may signal a renewed effort by the government to enforce existing immigration laws. The actual results of this sting, however, leave a sour taste in the mouths of Americans who want the government to take this issue seriously.

As noted by Andrew O’Sullivan, editor-at-large for National Review, only 275 of the illegal aliens arrested in the raids were deported. Only 275!

The rest were sent away in return for a promise to return for a court hearing. Many, probably most, will disappear.

Is this what the government means by enforcing existing immigration laws? If the laws were enforced, there would be no need for another immigration reform bill, except for provisions for tighter security along the border. If employers were not allowed to break the law, the demand for illegal workers would be dramatically reduced. But the recent incident with IFCO systems and trends over the last several years show that the government isn’t serious about law enforcement. The economics of cheap labor and the politics of a potential voting bloc dominate the day.

According to a GAO report entitled, “Immigration Enforcement: Weaknesses Hinder Employment Verification and Worksite Enforcement Efforts,” in 1999 there were 2,849 worksite arrests for immigration violations. That number dropped to 953 the next year and was 735 in 2000. In 2004, there were only 159 worksite arrests reported. In addition, in 1999, there were 417 “notices of intent to fine” issued to employers. The number dropped to 178 the next year, and in 2004, there were only 3 “notices of intent to fine” recorded. This is simply unacceptable. Back in 1992, to give some comparison, there were 8,027 arrests made and 1,461 fines levied.

We can talk all we want about immigration reform, and note it appears that the Senate has reached some kind of compromise legislation, but unless we enforce our immigration laws, what difference does it make? Granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens will only encourage more to come over. What happens then? We are showing no will to enforce our laws, so in another 10 or 20 years, we’ll have to go through this whole thing again. By then, how much more of our tax money will be going to subsidize health care, education, and other services for illegal aliens?

We must get serious about enforcing our laws. A dog-and-pony show will not cut it. Arresting over 1,100 illegal aliens only to release almost all of them is not real enforcement. In fact, it is a mockery of enforcement. We don’t need new laws… let’s just enforce the ones we have.

# posted by Duane : 8:00 PM  0 comments

Sitting on my home office desk is one of my most treasured possessions. It's a silver medallion inscribed "United in Memory: September 11, 2001" with a proud American eagle on one side. On the other side, the memento depicts workers at the Pentagon saluting as they unfurl a large U.S. flag from the Pentagon rooftop.

The medal was given to me by Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77. Jihadi hijackers who exploited our joke of an immigration system crashed the plane into the Pentagon on 9/11 while screaming "Allahu Akbar!" I look at the keepsake every day before I write to be reminded of this nation's strength, courage, and perseverance.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters building. The Defense Department released the images, recorded by a Pentagon security camera, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Washington, D.C.-based Judicial Watch.

I know the White House didn't intend it, but the Pentagon 9/11 video release underscores why President Bush's push for a massive "guest worker"/enforcement-later approach to border security is such a betrayal of the memory of those who died in the attacks.

When September 11 hijackers Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar needed help getting fraudulent government-issued photo IDs before embarking on their suicide mission, they hopped into a van and headed to the parking lot of a 7-Eleven store in Falls Church, Va. That's where scores of illegal alien day laborers ply bogus identity documents to other llegal aliens from around the world.

As I've noted many times, I visited this 7-Eleven while reporting on the national security-immigration nexus. It is a stone's throw from the Pentagon, where Hanjour and Almihdhar deliberately drove Flight 77 into the ground. The parking lot is still to this day often filled with "undocumented" day laborers whom President Bush never fails to extol for doing the jobs Americans won't do (or "aren't doing," as he now hedges.) Local cops I have interviewed suspect that most of these men are here illegally and that they continue to facilitate trade in fake identification documents. But nobody arrests them. We are, as the Million Illegal Alien Marches have demonstrated, a de facto sanctuary nation.

On of the illegal aliens at that 7-11 was Luis Alonso Martinez-Flores is a 28-year-old Salvadoran, who had been in the U.S. illegally since 1994. He got in the van and directed the jihadis to a DMV Express office nearby; they obtained photo IDs using bogus residential info supplied by Martinez-Flores. That info was also used on ID forms for two other hijackers.

The illegal alien earned $100. 184 people paid with their lives.

Three other hijackers showed up at a different Arlington DMV the same day Hanjour and Almihdhar stopped by the 7-11 illegal alien magnet. As with many DMVs across the country, illegal aliens congregated out in the open. Victor M. Lopez-Flores, who had been previously deported after a felony conviction but returned illegally, was one of them. He and another illegal immigrant led the hijackers to an open-borders attorney's office, where they helped the terrorists fraudulently obtain Virginia ID cards.

While some states have tightened ID requirements, many others still allow illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses. The Bush Treasury Department approves the use of foreign consular ID cards exclusively for illegal aliens from Mexico. Peru, the Philippines, and Guatemala are clamoring for the U.S. to recognize their phony ID as well.

Nearly five years later, illegal alien day laborers like the ones who unwittingly assisted the 9/11 hijackers have virtually no fear of being arrested. Instead, they await their new "temporary" guest worker cards and eventual American citizenship in a land that has lost its memory. And its mind.

# posted by Duane : 7:57 PM  0 comments

Mexico warned Tuesday it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain migrants on the border, and some officials said they fear the crackdown will force illegal crossers into more perilous areas to avoid detection.

President Bush announced Monday that he will send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but said the troops will provide intelligence and surveillance support to U.S. Border Patrol agents and will not catch and detain illegal immigrants.

"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station.

Mexican officials worry the increased security at the U.S. border will lead to more deaths. Since the bolstered surveillance at crossing spots in Texas and California in 1994, migrants have flooded Arizona's hard-to-patrol desert and deaths have spiked.

Migrant groups estimate 500 people died trying to cross the border in 2005. The Border Patrol reported 473 deaths as of Sept. 30.

Sending the National Guard "will not stop the flow of migrants, to the contrary, it will probably go up," as people try to get into the U.S. with hopes of applying for a possible amnesty program, said Julieta Nunez Gonzalez, the Ciudad Juarez representative of Mexico's National Immigration Institute.

Nunez said she planned to ask the Mexican government to send a migrant protection force, Grupo Beta, to more remote sections of the border.

The dusty outpost near the New Mexico border has turned into a smugglers haven after the U.S. Border Patrol increased its presence on the Arizona border.

Along the border in Nuevo Laredo, Carlos Gonzalez, a 23-year old from Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, was waiting for a chance to swim across the river into Texas. He said soldiers would not stop him getting to a construction job he had lined up in North Carolina.

"Desperation gives one a lot of willpower. If they stop me 20 times, I'll arrive on the 21st," Gonzalez said resting on a street corner outside a migrant shelter.

However, Carlos Ferrera, a 27-year-old from Honduras who lost part of his arm in a recent car accident, was worried that the National Guard could push him into dangerous terrain when he crosses to get to an $8.50 an hour landscaping job in Dallas.

"The more reinforced the border is the further we will have to go to find places to get in." Ferrera said.

Mexican newspapers Tuesday characterized the decision as a hardening of the U.S. position, and some criticized President
Vicente Fox for not taking a stronger stand, though Fox called Bush on Sunday to express his concerns.

Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Tuesday that Mexico accepted Bush's statement that the Guard troops didn't imply a militarization of area, and that Mexico remained "optimistic" that the U.S. Senate would approve an immigration policy "in the interests of both countries."

He noted Bush expressed support for the legalization of some immigrants and the implementation of a guest worker program.

"This is definitely not a militarization," said Aguilar.

Salvadoran President Tony Saca said he worried that there could be an increase in abuses against migrants because National Guard troops are trained to handle natural disasters and wars.

# posted by Duane : 7:53 PM  0 comments

Enraged voters forced state lawmakers to give up their raises, and yesterday, many were forced out of office.

Two Senate Republican leaders -- and a total of 16 incumbent lawmakers -- went down to a historic defeat in the primary.

No legislative leaders had lost an election since 1964 until yesterday, when voters ousted Senate Majority Leader David J. "Chip" Brightbill, R-Lebanon, and Senate President Pro Tem Robert Jubelirer, R-Blair. Blair County Commissioner John Eichelberger defeated Jubelirer, and former Lebanon City Councilman Mike Folmer defeated Brightbill.

Voters still angry over state lawmakers' attempt to give themselves pay raises had their first chance to pay them back in yesterday's primary. The connection couldn't be missed.

In the House, 14 members lost, based on unofficial returns. At least two more were locked in races where the outcome was uncertain at 1 a.m.

Some called the results proof that the grass-roots government reform effort ignited by the July 7 pay-raise vote is alive and well.

"The defeat of Jubelirer and Brightbill is going to send seismic shock waves through the Pennsylvania political establishment that are probably going to be felt for years to come," said Michael Young, a Harrisburg-based public opinion researcher. "Pennsylvania voters are mad as hell, and at least some of them are not going to take it anymore."

Nearly all the incumbents who went down voted for the pay raise, including midstate Reps. Peter Zug, R-Myerstown; Roy Baldwin, R-Manheim Twp.; Steve Maitland, R-Gettysburg; Pat Fleagle, R-Waynesboro; and state Rep. Gibson Armstrong, R-Quarryville.

Lawmakers last July gave themselves and other state officials raises of 11 percent to 54 percent. The raises were repealed after a public outcry, but they nonetheless inspired a slew of challengers to incumbents. Ballots around Pennsylvania featured more than the usual number of contested primaries for the 203 state House seats and 25 Senate seats up for grabs.

In all, 61 incumbents had primary contests. Another 31 seats were open because of retirements or other factors. Both numbers were two-decade highs.

# posted by Duane : 7:16 AM  0 comments

Last July, the GOP-controlled Legislature, in cahoots with Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, raised legislative salaries by between 16% and 54% without public debate, notice or review. They passed the raise in a 2 a.m. vote and also evaded a constitutional ban on midterm pay raises by pocketing much of the increase immediately as "unvouchered expenses." Promptly labeled "Harrisburg Hogs," the legislators became the brunt of a furious citizen revolt led by talk radio and the Internet that led to the unprecedented voter rejection last November of a sitting state Supreme Court justice, who'd also gotten a pay raise. Another justice was almost defeated. Two weeks later the Legislature repealed the pay raise with only one dissenting vote.

The anti-pay-raise activists aren't satisfied. They say the episode simply revealed how arrogant and out of touch legislative leaders are on a variety of fronts. A group called PACleanSweep.com is calling for the rejection of dozens of incumbents in the primary tomorrow. Most will survive, but several are getting the race of their lives. Attention is focusing on the races against three of the pay-raise ringleaders--two Republicans and a Democrat. Polls show the underfinanced challengers within striking distance.

These David vs. Goliath races in a key state are worth watching for clues to the national mood. "Republicans in D.C. who are hearing complaints from their base about pork-barrel spending and waste should pay attention to how that plays out in primaries," says Rep. Robert Walker, a Republican former congressman from the Keystone State.

Political types in Indiana already are paying attention. They were shocked earlier this month when three out of 25 incumbent state legislators facing primary challengers lost. The biggest casualty was Robert Garton of Columbus, president of the state Senate and a 36-year Republican incumbent. He lost to Greg Walker, a political neophyte and tax accountant.

Mr. Garton outspent his opponent 10 to 1 and had groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce in his corner. But in a move eerily similar to what happened in Pennsylvania, he set off a prairie fire of protest when he pushed through a bill to give state legislators lifetime health-insurance benefits.

Mr. Walker seized on the issue and coupled it with criticism that Sen. Garton had become a status quo politician. "Many elected officials serve for so long they become spokesmen for government, rather than those who elect them," he said. The challenger drove an orange 1970 Plymouth Valiant to emphasize the incumbent had been in office since then and that it was "time for a trade-in." He cobbled together just enough financial backing from a building contractor group and conservative school choice advocate J. Patrick Rooney to pull off a stunning upset.

The leaders behind the Pennsylvania pay grab have equal reason to be wary of their electorates. GOP Senate President Bob Jubelirer thought he had contained voter anger when he moved to end the pay raise and apologized for his "mistake." "It took the edge off the anger only momentarily," says Robert Walker, the former congressman. "There is still seething frustration about all things political." Mr. Jubelirer has had to call in all his political chits from 32 years in office to counter a challenge from John Eichelberger, a Blair County commissioner. Mr. Jubelirer has raised $1.3 million; Mr. Eichelberger, less than $200,000.

Mr. Eichelberger was spurred to run by the pay raise but he says his larger complaint is that Senator Jubelirer is a "Republican in name only" who over the past decade and a half has presided over a Senate that has blocked lawsuit reform and increased the size of state government at twice the rate of inflation. He also notes that the Senate leader has voted for the largest three tax increases in the state's history, including last year's hike in the state income tax to 3.07% from 2.8%. Mr. Jubelirer has responded by noting his support for school choice. He is also courting social conservatives by recently saying he has "evolved" into a pro-life stance after many years as a pro-choice legislator. A recent poll showed the race tied.

The Pennsylvania Republican Party has taken the unusual step of pouring $300,000 into primaries to save pay-raise incumbents. At least two mailings a week have been sent into the district of Senate Majority Leader David Brightbill, several attacking his challenger, a former Lebanon City Councilman named Mike Folmer. The race has been close, with Mr. Brightbill under attack over the Legislature's failure to pass meaningful property tax relief. But the incumbent may have opened up a lead last week after his campaign publicized financial disputes between Mr. Folmer and two ex-girlfriends.

Not only Republicans are in peril. In Beaver County, Mike Veon, Democratic state House whip, is being challenged in a primary by Jay Paisley, a retired schoolteacher who is outraged that Mr. Veon was the only legislator out of 203 to vote against repeal of the pay raise. "To some extent, I'm running against myself," Mr. Veon admits. Polls show the race has been a dead heat, So far Mr. Veon's campaign has raised $719,000 in a district that only has 60,000 residents. Mr. Paisley has collected $30,000.

Many of the incumbent challengers are running on conservative themes, with some touting a "Promise to Pennsylvania" that echoes many of the themes in the 1994 GOP Contract With America. But the voter anger this year is as much populist in origin as it is conservative. "There is a general sense that those in authority ignore the concerns of average voters and have to be taught a lesson," says Pat Toomey, the former GOP congressman who now heads the free-market Club for Growth in Washington. In 2004 Mr. Toomey tapped into much of that sentiment when he won 49% of the vote in a primary challenge against four-term incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter. Mr. Toomey is actively supporting many of the challengers in tomorrow's primary. .

So too are a few bold businessmen who believe that Pennsylvania needs new leadership if it is to compete with Sunbelt states. Greg Meakem founded the Pittsburgh-based software company FreeMarkets Inc. in the 1990s and sold it last year, making a personal profit of $500 million. Now 42 years old, he believes it's a matter of civic duty that business leaders try to reform government. That's one reason he has chipped in $45,000 to support several of Tuesday's incumbent challengers. He doesn't mince words about some of the problems he sees holding his state back: "[Public-sector] unions are the most antichange, archconservative, reactionary force in society," he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Come to think of it, many of the problems bedeviling state government everywhere stem from the cozy alliance that career politicians have with unions and businesses that live off state contracts. Much the same dynamic can be seen in Washington, where spending lobbies are able to expand the size of government relentlessly, whichever party is in power. Part of the Pennsylvania anti-incumbent revolt is about a selfish pay raise. But part of it is also about the public's sense that the system is being run in the interests of everyone except that of the general public.

# posted by Duane : 7:13 AM  0 comments

Some of the news stories on how the Bush Administration is going to "militarize" the border sound like the first draft of an Evelyn Waugh story. The New York Times’ Rutenberg reports:

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met at the Pentagon with Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Gerardo Clemente Ricardo Vega. Officials said they had discussed, among other things, potential United States help in training and equipping Mexican forces at the border."

Of course, Mr. Rumsfeld is part of the same Administration that is evidently tipping off the Mexican government on where the Minutemen are guarding the border.

So we can only imagine what he's been passing along to a foreign military that has staged hundreds of incursions onto American soil while escorting Mexican drug and immigrant smugglers.

The Bush Administration has seemed never to notice that Mexico is not the 51st state, but a foreign country—one that is engaged in a slow-motion invasion of America.

Of course, Bush will make no mention of any attempt to actually, well, deport the illegal aliens he has allowed to sneak in—even though there are many ways short of mass round-ups that public policy could encourage them to leave.

And Bush is unlikely to propose the one border enforcement step that couldn't be quickly reversed once public attention is diverted: an Israeli-style security fence along the entire frontier.

But even if Mr. Bush announces Monday that he favors a fence, the plain fact is that he simply can't be trusted to provide any honest leadership on such a project at all. It would be easy for him to delay its construction for, roughly, ever.

Here’s just one obvious opportunity for obstruction: environmental impact.

Look at the endless delays in California golf course construction. It only took 18 months to build the superb Barona Creek golf course outside San Diego—because it is on an Indian reservation immune to the less crucial environmental regulations. In contrast, Barona Creek's designer Todd Eckenrode told me that he had other courses that were still on the drawing board after 8 to 12 years due to environmental impact hassles. The TPC Valencia course north of Los Angeles was proposed in 1985 but didn't open until 2002. Most of these delays are driven by the Not-In-My-Back-Yard interests of neighbors rather than by legitimate conservation needs.

Construction of a 14-mile fence along the border in San Diego began 13 years ago. But the final three miles next to the ocean are still not finished due to wetlands lawsuits.

Congress has the right to override environmental regulations, which they finally did last year to get the San Diego fence project moving again. But that won't happen on a national fence unless we voters demand it as part of the initial legislative package.

Just as the public was betrayed on immigration by its elected leadership in 1986 and 1996, we can expect more of the same in 2006.

This is shaping up to be a disastrous moment in the history of the Republic. The full impact of immigration legislation does not become visible to voters for decades (and, apparently, not to Senators for centuries). If recent history repeats itself, Congress won't consider immigration again until 2016.

Why is Bush doing this? I have suggested that his motives are dynastic—that he is selfishly sacrificing the GOP to build a family vehicle, much like Brian Mulroney sacrificed the Canadian Progressive Conservative party in a vain effort to build a personal fief in the French-speaking province of Quebec. Brenda Walker speculates he is a "MexiChurian Candidate."

What he is not is an American patriot.

So, my fellow Americans, it's now or never—unless Tom Tancredo’s Immigration Reform Caucus in the House of Representatives can persuade Republicans there to hold the line.

# posted by Duane : 7:09 AM  0 comments

A bill prohibiting discrimination against gays in school curriculum passed a key Senate committee Wednesday despite arguments that it would intrude on a parent's right to teach morals to their children.

Written by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, and sponsored by Equality California, Senate Bill 1437 attempts to create bias-free social science curriculum by requiring schools to recognize the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

The bill is one of two making their way through the Legislature that's drawn fire from some religious and conservative groups opposed to teaching such lifestyles in the classroom. The other, Assembly Bill 606 by Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, requires school districts ensure compliance with the California Student Safety and Violence Act of 2000, which seeks to keep harassment and discrimination out of schools.

In recent weeks, student demonstrations on both sides have become a flashpoint in the debate on how homosexuality should be treated in school. When students nationwide participated in a Day of Silence to support gay and lesbian peers, others organized a National Day of Truth to oppose homosexuality.

Kuehl, who is recognized as the Legislature's first openly gay member, said her bill seeks to acknowledge the contributions of an underrepresented community the way schools have fostered the acceptance of minorities and women.

The Democrat-led Senate Education Committee voted 8-3 along party lines to approve the bill, which now goes to the Senate floor for a vote.

The governor's office has not taken a position on the bill.

Opponents said people outside the state are shocked that California has even proposed such legislation because it conflicts with the moral convictions many hold about homosexuality.

Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, said SB 1437 would require textbooks to portray those lifestyles in a positive context and would interfere with parental instruction.

"Parents send their children to school for academics, not for transsexual, bisexual, or homosexual indoctrination," Thomasson said after the hearing. "SB 1437 means schools will promote same-sex 'marriages' and even sex-change operations to kids."

At the hearing, he testified: "I seriously doubt California students will excel from learning about our leaders based on who they decide to sleep with."

Kuehl had made several revisions since she introduced her bill Feb. 22. Committee chair Jack Scott, D-Altadena, said Kuehl sufficiently addressed his concerns about the cost of textbooks by only referring to future purchases. Other amendments include the use of age appropriate language and maintaining the teacher's autonomy over curriculum.

Sen. Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, said the bill goes too far in its mandate. Whether John Marshall, the man credited with discovering gold in California, was gay or not has no bearing on his contribution to the state's Gold Rush history, Morrow said.

# posted by Duane : 10:30 PM  0 comments

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lashed out at the instant-gratification generation yesterday, saying young adults "think work is a four-letter word."

"Kids, for whatever reason, think they're entitled to go right to the top with $50,000 or $75,000 jobs when they have not done anything to earn their way up," the Dems' 2008 White House front-runner said.

"A lot of kids don't know what work is. They think work is a four-letter word," she told a Republican-leaning audience gathered at the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention.

"We've got to send a different message to our young people. America didn't happen by accident. A lot of people worked really hard. They've got to do their part, too."

A young adult who Clinton knows well, daughter Chelsea, 26, started a six-figure consulting gig in the New York office of London-based McKinsey & Company after receiving her master's degree from Oxford in 2003.

The former first lady blamed cable TV, high-speed Internet, cellphones and iPods for creating a culture that "really argues against hard work. It's a culture that has a premium on instant gratification."

"You know, I grew up in a home with one TV set and we didn't get that right off the bat. It improved your negotiating skills because you had to argue about what channel you were going to watch, even though there were only three," Clinton said.

Her get-tough talk chastising a generation of spoiled brats will likely play well with heartland voters who cherish old-school values. But it may enrage her biggest fans: A recent poll found 62 percent of people 18 to 34 hold a favorable opinion of Clinton, highest of any age group.

Clinton urged parents and teachers to instill a work ethic in tech-savvy tots now in grammar school.

"We have to re-exert adult authority over the educational enterprise. We need to start early," she said.

# posted by Duane : 10:26 PM  0 comments

United Methodist lobbyist Jim Winkler told supportive church activists that there is an urgent need to “impeach George W. Bush!” because of the “illegal war of aggression” against Iraq that was “sold on lies.”

Winkler, who is general secretary of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society (GBCS), was addressing “Ecumenical Advocacy Days for Global Peace the Justice” outside Washington, D.C last month.


According to GBCS General Secretary Winkler, there was "nothing Christian" about the Bush administration's response to the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. (file photo)
“Advocacy Days” is an annual political organizing session sponsored by the National Council of Churches (NCC), agencies of several of its member communions, Sojourners magazine, a few left-leaning Catholic organizations, and numerous other church-related groups. This year’s event was March 10-13.

According to Winkler, “Even if it turned out that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction” and “could be found culpable” for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the problems posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime “could have been solved without war.” He also mocked “the [Bush] administration’s claim” that immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would have chaotic results. He sarcastically asked, “When was the last time they were right?”

At various times in his speech on “Alternatives to the War on Terror,” Winkler denounced the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, “widespread spying” on U.S. citizens, the failure of “Hillary Clinton and other Democrats” to apologize for voting for the war, and the alleged ultimate culpability of the United States in the slaughter of 2 million in the Cambodian genocide (although he conceded that it was also right to blame the Khmer Rouge perpetrators).

Winkler emphasized the importance of restraining “our secret police,” drastically reducing the size of the U.S. military, increasing foreign aid, and preventing military action against Iran (without expressing alarm about Iran’s nuclear weapons program). Fretting that his fellow peaceniks did not show enough “attitude,” Winkler urged his audience to “get angry!”

Condemning the War on Terror as a “war of vengeance, hatred, and fear,” Winkler claimed President Bush’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks included “nothing Christian.” Winkler asserted that St. Paul had presented an alternative for fighting international terrorism in Romans 12:17-21, which instructs individuals to “not repay anyone evil for evil.” And Jesus Christ was also a pacifist, Winkler claimed.

When asked about St. Paul’s reference to the civil authority’s responsibility to punish evil, Winkler responded that he believed that “a profound misreading of Romans 13” arose around the time of Constantine when people sought a way “to justify force” according to Christianity.

# posted by Duane : 10:17 PM  0 comments

At least they didn't call in the SWAT team.

Penn Hills School District officials, however, did react swiftly and harshly when Jokari Becker triggered a crisis of near-Columbine proportions by bringing a toy gun to school for a class project.

First, they suspended the Dible Elementary School fifth-grader for three days. Then they decided that wasn't punishment enough. So they suspended him for an additional seven days.

They decided that wasn't quite punishment enough, either. So on Tuesday, they expelled Jokari. He won't be allowed back in school until January -- at the earliest.

At the rate the penalties keep increasing, Jokari soon might find himself strapped on a gurney while Superintendent Patricia Gennari administers a lethal injection.

Gennari did not return calls Thursday, but Melissa Becker, 32, Jokari's mother, was available. She remains dumbfounded over the disciplinary action.

"This whole thing is absurd," she said.

It's difficult to dispute her assertion.

Few would confuse the fluorescent, oversized, green-and-orange plastic toy with a Glock.

Jokari brought the gun to school for inclusion in a memory box he was making. He kept it in his book bag until it was time to work on the project.

Jokari never pointed the unloaded gun at a student or teacher. Even if it had been loaded, even if he had aimed it at a classmate, no one would have been in jeopardy.

"It says 'paintball' on the gun, but it doesn't shoot paintball pellets," Melissa Becker said. "It shoots water soluble paint. It's a kid's toy."

A kid's toy that wouldn't even have ruined anyone's clothes.

This might be mildly amusing if Melissa Becker wasn't a single mother trying to raise Jokari and his 12-year-old brother while completing her education at Point Park University.

Her major: Criminal justice.

While an appeal of the expulsion is being prepared, Melissa Becker wonders how she is going to juggle her family and occupational obligations.

Her son is barred from school, and she is scheduled to begin training next week to become an Allegheny County 911 emergency dispatcher.

"I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but of course I'm not going to leave my child home alone," she said.

Meanwhile, Penn Hills residents -- who are facing a significant 4.48-mill school tax increase -- will pay to have Jokari tutored because he apparently is too much of a menace to mingle with other students.

The district student discipline code bars students from bringing to school weapons, replicas of weapons or any instrument capable of inflicting serious bodily injury.

It's difficult to find any evidence of misconduct by Jokari. Unloaded squirt guns don't cause serious bodily injury.

The code also states, "No disciplinary action should exceed in degree the seriousness of the offense."

District officials need to re-familiarize themselves with that portion of the code. They have violated their policies far more egregiously than the student they expelled.

# posted by Duane : 10:12 PM  0 comments

Valley law enforcement agencies are ramping up efforts to combat illegal immigration, but they are using the state's anti-human-smuggling statute to tackle the problem from two different directions.

On the one hand, a multi-agency financial crimes task force has been using surveillance and undercover operations for the past two months to target smugglers and cripple them financially.

On the other hand, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has mobilized a posse to seek out and arrest undocumented immigrants for conspiracy to smuggle themselves into the United States.

The efforts come on the heels of an anti-human-smuggling statute that took effect in Arizona in August and gave prosecutors a tool to go after "coyotes," or smugglers, who traffic in undocumented immigrants. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office later issued an opinion saying undocumented immigrants suspected of paying coyotes could be prosecuted as conspirators.

Both approaches initially appear to be having an impact.

On Wednesday, task force officials from Phoenix police, the state Department of Public Safety and the Arizona Attorney General's Office announced their investigation into human-smuggling operations and money laundering has netted 62 arrests, along with weapons, cars and cash.

The ongoing investigation has been an attack of smuggling operations "from the top down," DPS Director Roger Vanderpool said.

"We are going after the leaders. We believe that our police shouldn't become immigration officers," Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said. "Do we want to raid restaurants and arrest dishwashers? We need to arrest the people at the top."

In the past two months, the task force has seized 11 weapons, 62 vehicles, six real estate properties valued at $1.7 million, 5 kilograms of cocaine and 3 pounds of marijuana. In addition, $4.8 million in cash was seized and 528 undocumented immigrants were turned over to immigration authorities, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said.

"These people are in this for the cash," state Attorney General Terry Goddard said. "If we're going to cut off this poison, we're going to do it by making it unprofitable to conduct human smuggling."

On Wednesday night, Arpaio's posse fanned out across the desert, looking for illegal immigrants being smuggled on state highways and local roadways. In the past six weeks, Arpaio's operation has jailed 146 undocumented immigrants, including 12 smugglers.

Arpaio said Wednesday that he hoped his agency's efforts would be a deterrent, with illegal immigrants and smugglers realizing they're going to jail.

"They have to get the message and stop coming over here," Arpaio said. "Do it legally."

# posted by Duane : 7:56 PM  1 comments

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen -- and telling the Mexican government where they are.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants -- and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed.

"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Mario Martinez said Monday.

"This ... simply makes two basic statements -- that we will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will allow that government to interview the person."

Minuteman members were not so sanguine about the arrangement, however, saying that reporting their location to Mexican officials nullifies their effectiveness along the border and could endanger their lives.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

"They just basically endangered the lives of American people."

Officials with the Mexican consulate in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment Monday.

Martinez said reporting the location of immigrant apprehensions to consulate representatives is common practice if an illegal immigrant requests counsel or believes they have been mistreated.

"Once an illegal alien is apprehended, they can request counsel," he said. "We have to give their counsel the information about their apprehension, and that includes where they are apprehended, whether a Minuteman volunteer spotted them or a citizen."

Martinez said Mexico's official perception of the civilian groups is that they are vigilantes, a belief the Border Patrol hoped to allay by entering into the cooperative agreement.

One of the documents on the Web site, "Actions of the Mexican Government in Relation to the Activities of Vigilante Groups," states that Mexican consulate representatives stay in close contact with Border Patrol chiefs to ensure the safety of migrants trying to enter the U.S., those being detained and the actions of all "vigilantes" along the border.

"The Mexican consul in Presidio also contacted the chief of the Border Patrol in the Marfa Sector to solicit his cooperation in case they detect any activity of `vigilantes,' and was told to immediately contact the consulate if there was," according to the document.

"Presidio" refers to Presidio County, Texas, which is in the Big Bend region and a gateway to northern Mexico.

The document also describes a meeting with San Diego Border Patrol sector chief Darryl Griffen.

"(Griffen) said that the Border Patrol will not permit any violence or any actions contrary to the law by the groups, and he is continuously aware of (the volunteer organizations') operations," according to the document. "Mr. Griffen reiterated to the undersecretary his promise to notify the General Consul right away when the vigilantes detain or participate in the detention of any undocumented Mexicans."

The documents specifically named the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and its patrols, which began monitoring Arizona's southern border in April 2005, as well as Friends of the Border Patrol, a Chino-based nonprofit.

TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 10,000 Border Patrol agents, said agents have complained for years about the Mexican consulate's influence over the agency.

"It worries me (that the Mexican government) seems to be unduly influencing our enforcement policies. That's not a legitimate role for any foreign nation," Bonner said, though he added, "It doesn't surprise me."

Border Patrol agents interviewed by the Daily Bulletin said they have been asked to report to sector headquarters the location of all civilian volunteer groups, but to not file the groups' names in reports if they spot illegal immigrants.

"Last year an internal memo notified all agents not to give credit to Minuteman volunteers or others who call in sightings of illegal aliens," said one agent, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. "We were told to list it as a citizen call and leave it at that. Many times, we were told not to go out to Minuteman calls."

The document also mentions locations of field operations of Friends of the Border Patrol, which patrolled the San Diego sector from June to November 2005. Mexican officials had access to the exact location of the group founded by Andy Ramirez, which ran its patrols from the Rough Acre Ranch, a private property in McCain Valley.

Ramirez said that for safety reasons, he disclosed the location of his ranch patrol only to San Diego Border Patrol and law enforcement officials. The group did not apprehend or spot any undocumented migrants in that area.

"We did not release this information ... to the media or anyone else," Ramirez said. "We didn't want to publicize that information. But there it is, right on the Mexican government's Web site, and our government gave it to them."

# posted by Duane : 7:50 PM  1 comments

A Fairfax County police detective was killed and two officers were wounded yesterday afternoon after a gunman opened fire with high-powered weapons in the parking lot of a police station during a shift change, law enforcement officials said.

The gunman, who was awaiting trial on carjacking charges in Montgomery County, was killed during the ensuing shootout with police, the officials said.

Police and county officials identified the slain officer as Detective Vicky O. Armel, 40, a nine-year veteran who was assigned to the Sully District station in Chantilly in western Fairfax where the shooting occurred. Her husband is also a Fairfax detective. The couple has two elementary school-aged children, neighbors said.

It was the first fatal shooting of a Fairfax officer in the line of duty in the department's history.

One of the wounded officers was in critical condition last night, police said. The other was being treated for minor injuries and will be fine, said Mary Ann Jennings, a police spokeswoman. A civilian suffered a minor laceration during the gunfight.

Scores of police officers and relatives of the slain and injured went to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where Armel and the critically wounded officer were taken.

"My 1,320 officers, civilian officers and volunteers are grieving," a shaken Police Chief David M. Rohrer said. "We are supporting the family of the officer who is severely injured and the family of the officer who was killed in the line of duty."

Sources said the gunman was 18-year-old Michael W. Kennedy of Centreville, who was arrested April 18 by Fairfax police serving a warrant for Montgomery. He had been released from the Montgomery jail about two weeks ago after posting a $33,000 bond, court records show.

Police Capt. Amy Lubas said the three officers were in the parking lot of the station when the shooting occurred about 3:30 p.m. At least one of the wounded officers returned fire, she said. Rohrer said he did not know whether the gunman was killed by police or took his own life.

Jennings said the incident began when a man with several weapons approached a stranger in a pickup in a nearby subdivision. The stranger managed to flee with his keys. The man then hijacked a van at gunpoint. That driver also escaped uninjured. The man drove the van to the Sully station parking lot, got out and apparently crouched between two vehicles. He had one rifle, two handguns and no identification.

"All information points to the act of a lone, troubled individual -- not a conspiracy, not an act of terrorism," said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. "It would appear that the gunman specifically targeted the police."

# posted by Duane : 7:12 AM  0 comments

Hundreds of Boston College students joined a group of faculty members yesterday in opposition to the Jesuit school's recent announcement that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been invited to speak at graduation and receive an honorary degree.

Tension mounted on campus as hundreds of students countered with support for the invitation, and two of the three student newspapers published editorials supporting Rice's visit.

Student and faculty groups acknowledged that Rice -- the latest politician embroiled in a protest over a graduation invitation -- will probably speak as planned. But both sides in the debate expressed concern that the 2006 commencement is being hijacked by politics.

The conflict began this week when two leading theology professors circulated a letter opposing the college's invitation, asserting that Rice's views on international affairs and her actions in the Iraq war were in conflict with Roman Catholic values. More than 150 members of the 1,000-person faculty had signed the petition by early yesterday afternoon.

The letter stopped short of asking the college to rescind the invitation, but a student petition circulated yesterday made that demand.

''While we are not in favor of censorship on the basis of Jesuit ideals, we feel that the gift of an honorary degree extends beyond the limits or invocation of free speech and into the realm of acclamation and endorsement by Boston College," the petition said.

Some 800 people had signed the online petition by late afternoon yesterday.

There are just over 9,000 undergraduate students and more than 4,700 graduate students at Boston College.

The vice president and president of the student government also opposed Rice's appearance in a written statement asking the university to ''review conferring an honorary degree upon her."

# posted by Duane : 9:44 PM  0 comments

After his second smash-up in three weeks - and a lot of unanswered questions about an alleged police cover-up - Rep. Patrick Kennedy yesterday declared that he's entering rehab to deal with an addiction to painkillers.

Those questions need to be answered.

Because not even a Kennedy should be above the law.

This was hardly the congressman's first such incident. And he was in rehab just last Christmas.

Yesterday, Kennedy, son of Sen. Ted Kennedy, said he doesn't remember anything about the incident, but that he's "deeply concerned." (At least no one died in the back seat.)

The congressman crashed the car he was driving at 2:45 a.m. into a Capitol Hill traffic barrier after he narrowly averted broadsiding a cop cruiser. He'd been speeding (in the wrong lane) and did not have his headlights on, cops said.

A police report says his eyes were "red and watery," he was unsteady on his feet and his speech was "slightly slurred" - in short, it said, Kennedy was clearly driving under the influence.

But under the influence of what?

Cops suspected alcohol; Kennedy insists he wasn't drinking (though witnesses at a local bar reportedly say otherwise), but had taken a sleeping pill, Ambien, that left him "disoriented."

At any rate, unnamed superiors forbade the cops on the scene from giving Kennedy a sobriety test - so it's too late to know just what he'd ingested. Instead, the cops were told to give the congressman a courtesy lift home.

Which also means that the only evidence is the officers' observations.

That's outrageous.

Again, no one, not even a well-sired congressman, deserves special treatment.

Anyway, can't this guy afford a driver?

Kennedy's latest fender-bender follows an April 15 accident with a car he apparently cut off. (Police did not publicize the incident, but a Boston paper found out 10 days later.)

Patrick has long earned himself a reputation as one of the more dysfunctional members of his prominent (and prominently dysfunctional) family.

In recent years, he was accused of assaulting a Los Angeles airport guard after he tried to squeeze an oversize piece of luggage through a metal detector. Kennedy admitted he'd been rude and offered to settle the case for $25,000.

Soon after, he was accused of causing $28,000 worth of damage to a rented yacht in Martha's Vineyard; his insurance company paid off the owner. At about the same time, the Coast Guard was called in to escort a female friend off the yacht following a heated argument.

His constituents must be proud.

Actually, maybe they are. Astonishing as it may be, Kennedy may face little political fallout from these incidents.

But you have to wonder just how well he can represent those people, given the obvious demons he's fighting - and which he readily admits he's been battling for more than 20 years.

As important, though, some honest answers are needed about whether someone cut him a break. And whether he deserves to be prosecuted - like anyone else surely would be.

# posted by Duane : 9:00 AM  2 comments

A Westmoreland County woman has been accused of hosting a party where a teenager drank heavily and had to be hospitalized, police said.

Police said they found out the 18-year-old's blood-alcohol level was 0.417 percent, a level at which coma, or even death, is possible. That's five times the 0.08 state limit for driving.

Deserie Ginardi, 43, of North Huntingdon, was charged with reckless endangerment and furnishing alcohol to minors.

Police accuse Ms. Ginardi of knowing that Edward Coleman was playing drinking games with other young people in her basement last month, giving him a syrup of ipecac to induce vomiting, and telling others at the party not to call 911.

Ms. Ginardi denied the charges.

"The kid came to my house drunk," she said. "They are blowing things up so much."

She denied she told others not to call 911.

Friends took Mr. Coleman to an ambulance service garage shortly after midnight April 15, police said. He was then taken by helicopter to a Pittsburgh hospital.

# posted by Duane : 2:05 PM  0 comments

AUSTRALIA'S most influential Catholic has said the Koran is riddled with "invocations to violence" and the central challenge of Islam lies in the struggle between moderate and extremist forces as the faith spreads into a "childless Europe".

The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, said reading the Koran, the sacred text of Islam, was vital "because the challenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives - at least".

But in a speech to US Catholic business leaders, Dr Pell said Western democracy was also suffering a crisis of confidence as evidenced by the decline in fertility rates. "Pagan emptiness" and Western fears of the uncontrollable forces of nature had contributed to "hysteric and extreme claims" about global warming.

"In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions."

Dr Pell said the September 11 terrorist attacks had been his personal wake-up call to understand Islam better.

He had tried to reconcile claims that Islam was a faith of peace with those that suggested the Koran legitimised the killings of non-Muslims.

While there was room for optimism in fruitful dialogue between faiths and the common human desire for peace, a pessimistic response began "with the Koran itself".

Errors of facts, inconsistencies, anachronisms and other defects were not unknown to scholars but difficult for Muslims to debate openly, he said.

"In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages."

Last year, Dr Pell courted controversy when he drew a link between Islam and communism.

His speech on Islam and Western democracies was delivered in Florida on February 4 but only appeared on the archdiocese's website on Wednesday.

Dr Pell said every nation and every religion, including Catholicism, had "crimes in their histories". In the same way, Islam could not airbrush its "shadows".

Claims of Muslim tolerance of Christian and Jewish minorities were largely mythical and he wondered about the possibility of theological development in Islam when the Koran was said to come directly from God.

"Considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited," he said.

However, like Christianity, Islam was a living religion and the existence of moderate Islam in Indonesia was proof of the softening impact of human intervention.

Democracy and moderation did not always go hand in hand and an "anorexic vision of democracy and the human person was no match for Islam", he said.

# posted by Duane : 11:04 PM  2 comments

So it's to be life without parole for Za carias Moussaoui, convicted in con nection with the 9/11 terrorist at tacks.

The verdict came after 41 hours of deliberation by an anonymous jury that heard Moussaoui rant and rave on the witness stand, taunting the families of those killed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and vowing America's destruction.

In the end, it appears the jury decided that - for all his claims - Moussaoui was simply too peripheral a figure in the jihadist plot that took 3,000 innocent lives nearly five years ago to merit capital punishment.

Indeed, the panel itself raised as a mitigating factor the finding that he had "limited knowledge" of the 9/11 planning.

More troubling is the apparent acceptance of the jury that his culpability was mitigated by his abusive relationship with his parents - in other words, the defense famously described in the play "West Side Story" that he's "depraved on account of he's deprived."

Yet the case for death had bigger problems. Prosecutors themselves had to admit that some of Moussaoui's wild claims were simply untrue. Many felt that sentencing him to die was exactly what he wanted - though the jury unanimously rejected that assertion.

Others still were troubled about sentencing someone to death for failing to act to avert the 9/11 attacks, as opposed to actually taking part in them himself.

It's hard not to believe that Zacarias Moussaoui deserves to die - sooner rather than later - for his part, however small, in 9/11.

And we can imagine the pain that many victims' families will feel over the fact that he gets to live, while their loved ones died so prematurely, and horribly.

But the jury, for better or worse, concluded that execution would both make him happy, and transform him into a martyr.

And there remains the risk that he could now become a cause celebre for Hollywood types and others eager to condemn America's treatment of "political prisoners."

Here's hoping Zacarias Moussaoui now fades away into obscurity.

# posted by Duane : 8:58 PM  0 comments

No one wants to say, "They should have killed him." This is understandable, for no one wants to be called vengeful, angry or, far worse, unenlightened. But we should have put him to death, and for one big reason.

This is what Moussaoui did: He was in jail on a visa violation in August 2001. He knew of the upcoming attacks. In fact, he had taken flight lessons to take part in them. He told no one what was coming. He lied to the FBI so the attacks could go forward. He pled guilty last year to conspiring with al Qaeda; at his trial he bragged to the court that he had intended to be on the fifth aircraft, which was supposed to destroy the White House.

He knew the trigger was about to be pulled. He knew innocent people had been targeted, and were about to meet gruesome, unjust deaths.

He could have stopped it. He did nothing. And so 2,700 people died.

This is what the jury announced yesterday. They did not doubt Moussaoui was guilty of conspiracy. They did not doubt his own testimony as to his guilt. They did not think he was incapable of telling right from wrong. They did not find him insane. They did believe, however, that he had had an unstable childhood, that his father was abusive and then abandoning, and that as a child, in his native France, he'd suffered the trauma of being exposed to racial slurs.

As I listened to the court officer read the jury's conclusions yesterday I thought: This isn't a decision, it's a non sequitur.

Of course he had a bad childhood; of course he was abused. You don't become a killer because you started out with love and sweetness. Of course he came from unhappiness. So, chances are, did the nice man sitting on the train the other day who rose to give you his seat. Life is hard and sometimes terrible, and that is a tragedy. It explains much, but it is not a free pass.

I have the sense that many good people in our country, normal modest folk who used to be forced to endure being patronized and instructed by the elites of all spheres--the academy and law and the media--have sort of given up and cut to the chase. They don't wait to be instructed in the higher virtues by the professional class now. They immediately incorporate and reflect the correct wisdom before they're lectured.

I'm not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.

I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society's way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.

It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.

If Moussaoui didn't deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?

And if he didn't receive it, do we still have it?

I don't want to end with an air of hopelessness, so here's some hope, offered to the bureau of prisons. I hope he doesn't get cable TV in his cell. I hope he doesn't get to use his hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad. I hope he isn't allowed visitors with whom he can do impolite things like plot against our country. I hope he isn't allowed anniversary interviews. I hope his jolly colleagues don't take captives whom they threaten to kill unless Moussaoui is released.

I hope he doesn't do any more damage. I hope this is the last we hear of him. But I'm not hopeful about my hopes.

# posted by Duane : 8:55 PM  0 comments

An Erie woman who was fatally struck by a car near Erie International Airport early Monday was visibly drunk and refused service at a nearby tavern shortly before the accident occurred, the bar owner said.

Millcreek police are also investigating a report that Holly Abramoski was seen arguing with a man outside of Rocco's Tavern after she left the bar.

Abramoski, 30, of East 12th Street, was run over by an eastbound car at about 1:40 a.m. Monday while she was lying on the outside eastbound lane of the four-lane stretch of West 12th Street, investigators said.

Abramoski, a mother of three, died of blunt force trauma. It appears she was alive at the time she was struck, but that won't be known until laboratory testing and other studies are completed, Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook said.

The Coroner's Office is also awaiting the results of toxicology tests that will tell them the possible presence of alcohol, carbon monoxide or drugs in Abramoski's system, Cook said.

Millcreek police spent Tuesday trying to piece together Abramoski's movements before and after she was seen at Rocco's Tavern, which is a short distance east of where the accident occurred.

Abramoski had been at "several places," including a house, Sunday evening and Monday morning before she arrived at Rocco's Tavern, 4040 W. 12th St., said Millcreek police Cpl. Carter Mook, who is investigating.

Mook did not release specific information about Abramoski's whereabouts.
Joe Rocco, owner of Rocco's Tavern, said Tuesday that Abramoski came into the tavern with a group of people sometime early Monday, but was not served any alcohol because she was visibly intoxicated.

The female bartender who was closing up the tavern at the time gave Abramoski a glass of water and Abramoski sat at the bar while the people she was with played pool, Rocco's employees told him.

At some point, Abramoski walked out the side door of the tavern facing west, Rocco said.

None of the tavern's employees knew where Abramoski went from there, he said.
Mook said police received information that Abramoski was seen outside of the tavern arguing with a man, whom police did not identify.

Police talked to the man as part of the investigation, he said.

Neither Rocco nor Mook knew the time when Abramoski left Rocco's Tavern.
Abramoski was lying in the outside eastern lane of the four-lane section of West 12th Street, nearest to the airport, when investigators said a man driving to work at a local dairy ran over her.

The man, whom investigators did not identify, said he at first thought he ran over garbage lying in the road.

Abramoski was wearing a black leather jacket, a black half-shirt, bluejeans and black heeled shoes, Mook said.

Investigators talked to the motorist at length after the accident. It appeared he was not at fault, Erie County District Attorney Brad Foulk said Monday.

# posted by Duane : 6:49 PM  0 comments

There are none so blind as those who will not see. While the mainstream media heaped praise on the "peaceful" May Day protesters and newspapers plastered sympathetic photos of the pro-illegal alien "sea of humanity" all over their front pages, freelance photographers, bloggers, and radio interviewers captured a sea of open-borders militancy nationwide.

Uninformed political observers delude themselves into thinking that these sentiments are relegated to the fringe. But the core concepts of reconquista (the "re-conquest" of the Southwest by Mexico) have spread wide and deep-from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Milwaukee to Arkansas and beyond. In Denver, a large banner read: "AMERICA IS A CONTINENT NOT A COUNTRY." In Albuquerque, Latino activists held up a provocative sign asking aloud: "Manifest Destiny?"

On the Sean Hannity radio show Monday, I debated (or rather listened to five minutes of screeching by) a young member of the radical group MeCha. A student at the University of San Francisco, she denied that her group still subscribed to 1960s identity politics, then promptly delivered a full-throated rant about Mexico's right to reclaim American territory: "We believe that we have the right to be in this land…Aztlan is California! Aztlan is this country! This country was ours…We didn't cross the borders. The borders crossed us…This country is based on exploitation!"

On NPR's "All Things Considered," Gloria Ramirez Vargas, a politician in Baja, Calif., rallied her constituents with a similar cry: " Many Mexicans are nourishing the ground in the U.S. , but those lands were once ours. Those same lands, which now with intelligence, with love and with a lot of work, we are re-conquering again for our Mexico."

On leading conservative talk show station KFI in Los Angeles, hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou interviewed Tony Valdez, who also invoked "manifest destiny" as a rationale for supporting the sabotage of our immigration laws. He pontificated about 1846, recycled the "We didn't cross the borders" nonsense, inveighed against the war in Iraq, and exclaimed: "You took this country. You killed people in order to take this country for yourselves."

Valdez is a FOX News 11 reporter at KTTV in L.A.

In Seattle, photojournalist Byron Dazey of CreativeFlashes.com snapped hundreds of pictures of extremist left-wing claptrap. "Open the Borders" screamed a giant banner. "No more blood! No more borders!" echoed another placard. "Stop the War! Stop the Borders!" preaches a sign carried by a "Freedom Socialist Worker." Other protesters displayed a rambling, illiterate message scrawled on a giant blue tarp:

"To the diplomats in Arizona talking of illegal deal, why R U so hipocratics (sic) when we know that almost ½ of what it was Mexico, was bought illegally by the US . Santa Ana was a conquestee from France, he was not the president of Mexico or Mexican. 1845-1847 we were fighting our own independence with their own people and also fighting the French. The US took advantage N offered Santa Ana money for the Mexicans land. Do U call this legal?"

Dazey wrote me: "The best line from a speaker…was the one where she screamed: 'They can't deport you from the land that they stole from you!' The crowd cheered wildly, of course."

Our borders are sieves. We are at war with Islamofascism. And these seething demonstrators are still griping about the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo while our government prepares to grant a massive amnesty at Mexican President Vicente Fox's behest. Hello?

While left-wing socialists and anti-war Bush-bashers are indeed helping coordinate the open borders movement, it is a foolish, patronizing mistake to characterize the reconquistadores as hapless pawns of the American Left. The homegrown multiculti-mau-mau-ers know exactly what they believe and the know exactly what they are doing. They aim to mainstream the "Stolen Land" mantra and pervert history. They aim to obliterate America's borders by sheer demographic and political force.

And they are succeeding.

# posted by Duane : 6:25 PM  1 comments

A Pakistani woman beheaded her husband, chopped up his body and dumped the dismembered parts in a sewerage drain after he announced plans to take a fourth wife, police said on Wednesday.

Police said Majeeda Khatoon killed her husband, a well-off building contractor, while he was asleep, and cut his body into seven pieces with the help of two male relatives in Gulshan-e-Hadeed, a township on the outskirts of the southern city of Karachi.

“When we questioned her, after the deceased’s brother came to us for help, she confessed to the crime,” police official Nazar Mohammad Mangrio told Reuters.
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Khatoon, 45, was arrested late last week and has been remanded in custody while the police frame charges against her.

Khatoon said her 55-year-old husband had taken other wives and flaunted his infidelity, but she was pushed over the edge when he announced plans to take a fourth wife, according to the police officer.

Islam permits men to take up to four wives, and while polygamy is not the norm in Pakistan, it is not rare either.

# posted by Duane : 7:16 AM  1 comments

Difficulty in setting up the lethal injection caused a delay of more than an hour in Tuesday's execution of a man convicted of killing a gas station clerk during a series of robberies.

Joseph Lewis Clark, 57, died at 11:26 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He was sentenced to die in November 1984 for killing David Manning.

The execution was set to begin at 10 a.m., but was delayed as the team worked to find a vein in his right arm to administer the injection. Clark said "they're not working" as the team tried to start the injection.

After 25 minutes of trying to find a vein, a curtain was pulled over the window separating witnesses from the area where the execution was to take place. Clark was heard moaning and groaning and when the curtain was reopened he had a shunt in one arm.

Prisons director Terry Collins said a vein in Clark's arm had collapsed and that Clark's history of drug use could have been a factor.

"The team here is a very professional team. They're doing a very, very difficult job under difficult circumstances," Collins said.

Clark is the 21st man executed since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999.

He had confessed that he killed Manning, saying he was trying to get money for drugs. He also was sentenced to life in prison for killing a store clerk the day before Manning's death as part of the series of robberies that lasted over a week.

Gov. Bob Taft rejected Clark's appeal for clemency last week.

# posted by Duane : 9:48 PM  1 comments

The planned boycott of American businesses on Monday by groups who support “rights” for illegal aliens has gained a new ally: the California Senate. In a mind-boggling move, the legislative body passed a resolution which supports the “Great American Boycott 2006.” In other words, the California Senate is siding with illegal aliens and against the overwhelming will of the American people.

As noted by the Associated Press, “California’s state senators on Thursday endorsed Monday’s boycott of schools, jobs and stores by illegal immigrants and their allies…”

The California Senate vote was along party lines, 24-13, but it really makes you wonder what these people, even though they are Democrats, are thinking. This is America, right? The Monday boycott is by ILLEGAL aliens and their supporters, right? What’s going on here?

As noted in the news story, the resolution describes the boycott as a way to educate the country “about the tremendous contribution immigrants make on a daily basis to our society and economy.” There are several things dreadfully wrong with this picture. First, we are talking about illegal aliens — people who broke the law to get into the country, and in cases where they are using false Social Security cards and other forged documents, they are still breaking the law. Second, the whole definition of “immigrant” has been distorted.

Immigrants are those who have left their country of origin not only to live in America, but also to be American. That’s the key. An immigrant wants to be an American — to adopt our culture, to adopt our language, to share in the vast opportunities and responsibilities that go with being an American. Many of these people we have seen protesting are not immigrants at all. They have no desire to “be an American.” They wave their own country’s flag and demand rights, while never embracing what it means to be an American.

And now, the California Senate has played right into their hands. How pathetic. As the story notes, “Opponents said the nonbinding resolution was misleading because it failed to mention a goal of the boycott was pressuring Congress to legalize millions of undocumented people.” How true. Rewarding illegal behavior is the goal.

When America granted amnesty in 1986, it only caused more illegal activity. We have no will to enforce our immigration laws; we pour millions of dollars into taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens; and now we are supposed to grant citizenship to those who have no desire to embrace the American way?

It’s time to bring some common sense and political backbone into this equation. We cannot reward illegal activity. If someone wants to be a true guestworker — temporarily work in America and then return to his/her home country — then in the context of immigration reform, I’m sure that can be addressed. But the program cannot be a path to citizenship.

If we need more legal immigrants (in the true sense of the word), then we need to look at reforming our existing immigration limits and guidelines. But we can’t take people who are guestworkers and make them citizens simply because we didn’t have the will over the last 20 years to enforce our immigration laws. If we just grant amnesty again, we will end up right back where we started in another 20 years.

Legislative bodies, whether they are controlled by Democrats or Republicans, should have more sense than to embrace this boycott. It is an anti-American demonstration by groups who favor rights without responsibilities and those who value cheap labor over what’s best for America. That is simply wrong.

# posted by Duane : 10:46 PM  0 comments