THOMAS SOWELL: The Cast Of Characters:

The Cast of Characters:

Perhaps nothing so captures the superficial, frivolous and irresponsible spirit of our times like the sudden boomlet for Barack Obama as a candidate for President of the United States. He is a bright, personable and articulate young man but what has he ever actually accomplished that would qualify him for the highest office in the nation and the leadership of the free world?

This is no criticism of Senator Obama. He has been in the Senate only a couple of years. Maybe a decade from now he will have crafted enough important legislation, or distinguished himself in some other way, as to be someone worth considering for President. But today, just because he is fluent, smooth and black? Similarly for Congressman Harold Ford, who is running for the Senate in Tennessee. However moderate he may seem, his election could turn the Senate over to extremists like Ted Kennedy & Co.

Both Ford and Obama are probably better than most Congressional Democrats, but that is a very small claim in a high-tax party that has been irresponsible on national defense for decades and has fought against even modest attempts to control illegal immigration.

Contrary to what you might think from the way the media cover politics, elections are not about the careers of politicians but about the fate of the country. That fate is definitely on the line now with a nuclear Iran and a nuclear North Korea looming over our children's future.

The time is long overdue to get serious about the caliber of people to whom power and responsibility are to be entrusted. That is especially important if and when the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives after this election. They can be vague about their agenda but they can't hide the facts about who will stand to wield power if they take over the House.

Everyone seems to be talking about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a new Speaker of the House after this year's elections. But is anyone interested in what she has actually done in the past, as a guide to what to expect from her in a powerful position that also puts her next in line to become President of the United States after the Vice President?

On immigration, Congresswoman Pelosi voted against tightening border security. Current House Speaker Dennis Hastert voted for it -- and also led the fight that stopped the Senate amnesty bill from gaining approval in the House of Representatives.

On taxes, Congresswoman Pelosi has paid no attention to their actual economic consequences and instead repeated the standard Democrat's line about "tax cuts for the wealthiest few, causing red ink as far as the eye can see." Cuts in tax rates have been followed by increases -- repeat, increases -- in tax revenues. This has happened not only during this administration but also as far back as the Kennedy administration.

Red ink comes from runaway spending, which can always exceed any increases in revenues. When a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives to cut federal spending on welfare, Pelosi voted against it.

Upper income earners -- most of whom are not rich -- have in fact paid more total taxes after the rates were cut because these cuts have spurred economic growth and higher incomes. But to admit this would be to abandon the twin pillars of liberalism, higher tax rates and class warfare rhetoric.

As regards the war on terrorism and the terrorists' war against the west, Nancy Pelosi has opposed having international phone calls to and from terrorists monitored by American intelligence agencies. The liberal spin is that this is "domestic spying" when someone on one end of the line is within the United States. Pelosi also doesn't think we are treating terrorists nice enough at Guantanamo. She wants to give them "rights" that neither the Constitution nor the Geneva convention gives them.

This is from someone who, as Speaker of the House, would be two heartbeats away from becoming President of the United States. We can only hope that the President and Vice President never travel in the same car or fly on the same plane.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/10/the_cast_of_characters.html

Coward Kerry Tells Students To Cut 'n' Run From Service

Kerry Tells Students: "Educate Yourselves So You DON'T Have To Report For Duty!"

McCain Calls On Kerry To Apologize:

"Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education.

Americans from all backgrounds, well off and less fortunate, with high school diplomas and graduate degrees, take seriously their duty to our country, and risk their lives today to defend the rest of us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.They all deserve our respect and deepest gratitude for their service.

The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night. Without them, we wouldn't live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks".

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm

Pat Boone Asks A Good Question...

Tell Me, Then – What Is the Answer?
By Pat Boone

"War is not the answer! We're doing OK, and besides, they're just too much for us. We can't win; we don't have the resources or the skill or the manpower. Let's just go about our business, pay our taxes, and not make waves. Let's just dissolve our military; we don't really need it anyway." Words spoken in 2006? No, words just like these were heard frequently in the early 1770s, from many of the early colonists in Maryland and New York and Massachusetts, some of the almost 30 percent of this incipient nation who were "loyalists."

Did you think all our citizens were gung-ho for freedom when our Revolution broke out? Surprise! Many thousands were willing, even preferred, to live under the burdensome yoke of King George III, to pay taxes without any representation, and to surrender any idea of self-governance for themselves and their children forever – in return for "peace." Scroll forward about 140 years: "What are we doing? What happens in Europe shouldn't concern us! Let the English, the French, the Italians take care of their own problems. The Germans haven't done anything to us, and if we just stay out of it, maybe they won't. Who made Europe our business anyway?"

Are you old enough to remember hearing those words from so many American citizens in the earlier years of the last century? Before we were embroiled in World War I, supposedly "the Last Great War," the war that vanquished the Kaiser and the German plan to rule Europe? The war that established the United States as a world superpower, a benevolent "big brother" to all who would live free and independently?

Those were the familiar voices and mindset of people who, understandably, just wanted to be left alone, uninvolved in neighbors' problems, free to live their lives to themselves in the hope that nobody with evil intentions would come knocking at their door. "Let all those other people sort out their own problems," they would echo, "it doesn't affect us." But like an ordinary homeowner who runs next door to help a neighbor screaming for help, America sent troops to help our friends and allies defend themselves against violent armies determined to overrun and subjugate them. And we found ourselves in a war we had to win. And win we did.

Now forward just about 25 years: "Who cares about that Hitler guy? Why should it concern us? It's a European problem; let them work it out. He hasn't done anything to us anyway. We don't want our young men to fight over things that don't affect us. Let England and France and Italy and Scandinavia and Russia and Germany hash it out themselves. Sure, it's bloody and terrible, and awful things are happening over there . But let's just stay out of it. After all, war is not the answer." Again, the same familiar chorus from those who don't wish to be involved, to fight about anything, certainly not the rights and well-being of others "over there." Sounds downright sensible and reasonable and practical, doesn't it? Didn't it?

Then came 12/7 – Pearl Harbor. And suddenly, those who didn't wish to be involved, who hoped they could wish away the threats and intentions and evil actions of others, knew they were involved, under attack on our own soil, and had to be drawn, ever reluctantly, into the "war effort" – and the war itself. Thank God, in each case mentioned the majority of Americans, and our leaders, saw and correctly gauged what was happening "over there," and realized that the thirst for domination is a spreading, virulent disease. This disease, this cancer, unchecked and unopposed, will corrupt and grow and destroy any timid resistance in its path and move with greater intensity into the next areas, now weaker and increasingly ripe for plucking.

Think for just a couple of minutes, and try to envision what our nation, our world, would be like today if the majority of our citizens had not closed ranks behind our leaders and our military in all these past settings. What if the naysayers, the dissenters, the "peace, not war" folks had carried the day? First, there would never have been a United States of America, its blessed Constitution, or the democratic, explosively dynamic lifestyle that has been the envy and role model for so much of humanity these last 230 years. And quite likely, all of Europe and Asia, indeed, most if not all the world, would have struggled through new dark ages of totalitarianism and terror.

And now, scroll forward again, to our present day: "War is not the answer! Make love, not war! What do we care about Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or any of those backward countries? A lot of Iraqis supported Saddam Hussein. And they've always fought and killed each other anyway. Why should we get involved? Let them fight it out and destroy each other. It doesn't affect us, does it?"

Then memories of 9/11/2001 come to mind. The World Trade Center, New York City, on our own soil, in downtown Manhattan. Well, maybe it did –does – affect us after all. Maybe we're at war, and have been for some time, whether we wanted to be or not. And still, the angry, frightened, strident voices: "Get out of Iraq! We're there under false pretenses! The president lied! He's not my president! We can't win! Turn it over to the U.N., to anybody. Please, please, please, leave us alone! Make it go away, please, please!"

Thomas Jefferson, a gentleman farmer, a patrician really, not a warlike man at all, said wisely, "From time to time, the soil of liberty must be stained with the blood of martyrs." It's tragic, but true. No sensible, humane person wants war, not even our trained military. But eventually, inevitably, when faced with a cunning and resolute enemy who wants to destroy you, you have only two options.

You can surrender and accept whatever the enemy wants to do to you – or you can stand up on your hind legs and fight. And when Americans have been – even if reluctantly – united, unified, and committed, no one has ever defeated us. Our dream has lived on. So, when we hear the angry, frightened voices today, always proclaiming desperately, "War is not the answer!" we should ask calmly, "Oh? What is your answer?"

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/10/23/132017.shtml

The Flags Of Our Fathers, Indeed!

The Best Piece On the Clinton Birthday Bash...

A Fete Too Far
by John Burtis

Shockingly, the hoi polloi have been allowed to buy tickets to Bill Clinton's final Sunday bazaar, private love fest, rock concert, birthday party, and may enter the show after wiping their shoes.
Mick Jagger has been suffering from a sore throat of late and may not be able to holler Bill's favorite answer to any psychiatrist's question, "I can't get no satisfaction."

And even the New York City cops, who soak up overtime like nobody's business, are said to be listless in the face of yet another Clinton birthday banquet. Many are said to be fatigued at appearing with those omnipresent gifts -- the t-shirts and sweatshirts and little badges with which Mr. Clinton loves to manfully attire himself when entertaining at home.

It is also reported that many officers suffer from perpetual red eye and a painful rictus from smiling in the group shots with that overly efficacious law and order zealot and violent felon coddling junior senator from New York, who sometimes escorts the winsome intern besotted former President.

The $500,000 dollar special party tickets, which net reasonably priced color photos with the Big He during an intense three-day series of his complicated, albeit daffy and self serving mulligan explanations on the links, endless cocktail party singalongs featuring the Whiffenpoof Song and the banned verses to the Internationale, and sweaty evening photo ops in the finest of personally provided tuxedoes, have been selling at a rather imperceptible pace this time around.

Some of the big ticket buyers draped in the Arpege baubles are said to be grumbling because the alligator shirt, acid washed jeans, whale belt, and Gucci loafer crowd will be occupying the same brand of top end seats they are, for just 34/10,000 of their cost.

Imagine the cheek, the rapidity of the sell off, and depth of the discounts necessary to pack the back benches for Keith, Charlie, and Ron, to say nothing of Bill and Hillary, in order to make it look Razorback good.

But, of course, Martin Scorsese will be on hand filming the Clintons, or is it the Stones, or is it Sandy Berger? The latter proud parolee, it is said, will be sporting black ribbed sox for the affair, should any of the band members' memorabilia blow by in a delicate draft, warranting a quick purloining, an associated hosiery ballooning, and a quick explanation of elephantiasis to security with a ready cane and a shuffling gait.

And the Daily Mail says that Mr. Scorsese is having a few difficulties deciding where to put the cameras, that a spokesman for the Rolling Stones said that the great unwashed were always invited to this chic, invitation only private bash for the world's most demanding living narcissist and his shy and retiring wife. And lastly, the press spokesman for Mr. Clinton wisely had no comment about a thing, believing that a job on Monday was far better than a quick stab at the truth of the matter before the concert began.

But as the common folk mingle with the fat cats, as the rich recoil with distaste, as Bill makes himself scarce and Hillary more so, while his long, tawdry seemingly endless series of self-promotional 60th "birthday" parties finally winds down, I've got to ask a few questions.
Bill have you maybe had a party or two too many? I mean, for Pete's sake, how far can you finally stretch this batch of me, me, me luaus?

Sure you're a pretty popular dude with the progressives, the left wing, the socialists, the Muslims in Serbia, and the Soros crowd and their 527s, and you did win the Presidency as a Democrat.

But, on the negative side, you made a few gaffes. You really did. You could've been a great one but you threw it all away out of pure laziness, with the remainder of your talent sacrificed on the altar of cheap aphrodisia.

Look, by now even the rinky-dink professional cheerleading hacks are wearing out carrying your water for the limitless number of these fancy pants parties. The "do anything that you want crowd" on TV are just about out of hagiographical terms to drape you in, and that's pretty good for a guy who never won a majority of the votes in two national elections and who finally took a dive for perjury, even if you are peddling your own charity, and shaking folks down for a library in Arkansas.

The excessive panegyrics and the obsequious blandishments which are routinely employed to describe your every activity, thought, hope, and well made up traveling consort, are wearing thin after years of continual employment every time your name is mentioned or your graying frontispiece appears.

Bill, you've worked hard having fun finally turning 60. Now it's time to take a vacation and a powder. Even Mick Jagger, has a sore throat. And you've got a bad ticker. Relax. You've had a good run. Get ready to vote.

The country needs a break from the overwhelming Clinton need for praise, love, publicity, and legacy burnishment. But you won't. You'll never go a fete too far.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/burtis103006.htm

The Kennedy-KGB Collaboration

The Kennedy-KGB CollaborationThe Washington Times
History has long since vindicated Ronald Reagan's Cold War policy. Even Sen. Ted Kennedy, whom no one would accuse of harboring pro-Reagan sympathies, had to admit that Mr. Reagan "will be honored as the president who won the Cold War." But opinions have not always been so united.

In his new book, "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism," Grove City College professor Paul Kengor sheds light on a letter written by KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. The letter is dated May 14, 1983, right as the debate was heating up over Mr. Reagan's proposed deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe to counter the Soviets' medium-range rockets in Eastern Europe.

Most Democrats and much of the left were universally opposed to Mr. Reagan's plan, which they argued would lead to nuclear war. Heading the list of critics was Mr. Kennedy, who had, according to the Soviet letter, sent former Sen. John V. Tunney to meet with Kremlin leaders. Chebrikov writes that Mr. Kennedy "charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to... Andropov."

According to the letter, Mr. Kennedy was concerned with "Reagan's belligerence," which he felt was in part the result of the president's popularity. "The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations," wrote Chebrikov, relaying Mr. Tunney's message. "These issues, according to [Mr. Kennedy], will without a doubt become the most important of the [1984] election campaign."

The letter goes on to say how Mr. Kennedy felt that the Soviets' peaceful intentions were being "quoted out of context, silenced or groundlessly and whimsically discounted." Conversely, Mr. Reagan "has the capabilities to counter any propaganda." In other words, if the letter is to be believed, Mr. Kennedy felt his own president was the real aggressor.

Mr. Kennedy had two proposals for Andropov, according to Chebrikov. First, he asked for a meeting later that summer in order "to arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA." Second, that "Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize ... televised interviews with [Andropov] in the USA."

If Chebrikov's account of events is accurate, it's clear Mr. Kennedy was actively engaging the Russians to influence the 1984 election. He also seems to have genuinely believed that Mr. Reagan's policies were endangering U.S.-Soviet relations and that the best solution was to get Mr. Reagan out of office. The letter closes with Chebrikov saying that "Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988," possibly suggesting Mr. Kennedy had other, more selfish motives.

As Mr. Kengor concludes, "if the memo is in fact an accurate account of what transpired, it constitutes a remarkable example of the lengths to which some on the political left, including a sitting U.S. senator, were willing to go to stop Ronald Reagan."

We agree. Even in a jaded world, it is breathtaking to discover a U.S. senator -- brother of a former president -- actively and secretly collaborating with Soviet leaders in an attempt to undermine the president of the United States' nuclear defense policy during the height of the cold war.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061027-084248-4386r.htm

Dem Says Australia 'A Nuclear Threat'

Dem Says Australia 'A Nuclear Threat'
By Geoff Elliott

Harold Ford, a handsome 36-year-old from Tennessee, has become one of the sensations of the mid-term elections in the US and a reason why Democrats are a good chance of winning back control of the US Congress for the first time in 12 years.

But if Mr Ford, already a US congressman, wins his bid to become a more powerful senator, Australia had better watch out. Because according to Mr Ford, Australia has an interest in nuclear weapons and is part of the broader nuclear threat to the US.
In a speech to county government officials yesterday in Knoxville, Mr Ford - listed in People magazine in 2001 as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world - electrified the audience, as he does everywhere he speaks.

(snip)

If victorious on November 7, Mr Ford will be the first popularly elected black from the South to take a seat at the exclusive 100-member Senate.

His skilled oration on domestic politics may be flawless, but his grip on foreign policy is error-prone. Yesterday he stumbled into gaffes on the North Korean nuclear tests and then mentioned Australia in the same breath as rogue nations wanting to go nuclear.

"Here we are in a world today where more countries have access to nuclear weapons than ever before," Mr Ford said, adding that when he left college in 1992 he thought the nuclear age had come to an end "and America would find ways to eliminate the number of chances that a rogue group or a rogue nation would get their hands on nuclear material".

"Today nine countries have it - more than ever before - and 40 are seeking it, including Argentina, Australia and South Africa," he said.

Mr Ford was referring to the nine known nuclear weapon states: the US, the UK, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and now North Korea. He said this made the US less safe because "more countries have nuclear weapons today which means the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands has increased dramatically".

On North Korea, he claimed Pyongyang had conducted two nuclear tests, the first of which he said occurred on July 4. This confuses the ballistic tests Pyongyang carried out on that date with the single nuclear test earlier this month.

The gaffes were lost on the audience and he was given a rousing standing ovation from Democrats and Republicans alike. Any chance of clarifying Mr Ford's remarks with the man himself was impossible as minders shielded any international media from asking questions, ushering Mr Ford away.

"You don't win us any votes," said his spokeswoman. And she might have added that it also means he is insulated from pesky questions probing his limitations on enunciating a foreign policy involving a trusted ally.

more...

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20656046-2,00.html

Not So Fast With Those Fabric Swatches, Nancy

Not So Fast With Those Fabric Swatches, Nancy
By Lorie Byrd
The stars in the heavens and a virtual sex page scandal aligned perfectly this election season to give Democrats perhaps their best opportunity in years to fulfill their dream of taking back the House and (in their wilder dreams) the Senate, too. So how on earth are they going to spin it when they fail?

I don’t know that Democrats will fail to take control of the House or Senate, but my gut, and the way the pendulum appears to be swinging this week, tell me that the GOP is likely to retain control. Obviously it could go either way. There is no way to know how many more “surprises” are left in the final days of October, and even a week is an eternity in politics. Consider, for example, the Bush DUI revelation just days before the 2000 election. When “surprises” break late there is little time for candidates to react and the fallout can determine the results of an election.

With that qualifying disclaimer made, I am going to go out on a limb and predict the GOP, barring any surprises, will hold Congress, although slimly. If that happens it will be incredibly interesting to see how Democrats react to such a result and how they, and their media organs, spin it.

With Nancy Pelosi declaring she will have any suite she wants after November and most pundits having declared a Democrat victory months ago, stakes in the expectations game couldn’t get any higher. Mark Steyn described the election night many pundits have predicted as a scene with “Speaker-Designate Nancy Pelosi… doing the Landslide Lambada with Senate Majority Leader-Designate Harry Reid.” Anything less than a Democrat takeover of the House and Senate will have to be seen as falling short, although a House takeover making Pelosi the first ever woman Speaker would be celebrated by the media as the biggest story since 9/11.

If Democrats don’t win in this climate, with all the help they have received from the media, I just wonder what hope they have to ever retake control?

more...

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/LorieByrd/2006/10/27/not_so_fast_with_those_
fabric_swatches_nancy

DAVID LIMBAUGH: Iraq Criticism Deceitful

Iraq Criticism Deceitful

Iraq is a stumbling block for Democrats. They tend to view every foreign policy issue through their self-stained Iraq lens. Their manufactured fixation over whether we were justified in attacking Iraq obscures their view of the war on terror and the magnitude of the global terrorist threat.

Democrats often charge that if President Bush just hadn't attacked Iraq, the United States would have ample resources to deal with other threats in the world, like Iran and North Korea. Because our military assets are tied up in Iraq we can't effectively deter dictatorial mischief from Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This criticism is disingenuous, since Democrats probably wouldn't favor tough action against either tyrant anyway. Besides, President Bush is nowhere close to issuing military threats against either one of these rogue regimes. While he wisely won't rule out the military option, he has been emphasizing diplomatic solutions, as well as sanctions.

He has steadfastly insisted on a multilateral approach to both nations against opposition from Democrats who have mystifyingly demanded that we elevate the stature of their dictators by meeting alone with each of them. President Bush has refused to exclude from the talks the other nations, who, according to Condoleezza Rice, arguably have a greater immediate stake in them than we do.

Democrats, on the other hand, have demonstrated the insincerity of their criticism of Bush for "going it alone" against Iraq, not only because it is patently and empirically false, but because they obviously have no philosophical affinity to multilateralism, nor any fear of alienating our allies as they claim. The only thread of consistency in their approach to diplomacy is their unwavering opposition to President Bush.

But if our diplomatic efforts and sanctions ultimately fail, will we be in a weaker position to deal with the Iranian and North Korean threats than we would have been had we not attacked Iraq?

It's certainly easy to jump to the superficial conclusion that our military demands in Iraq would make military action and thus deterrence-aimed threats of military action against either nation much more difficult, though many experts doubt that action against either would involve "boots on the ground."

But what about the other side of the coin? What if we hadn't removed Saddam and he was on his way to developing nuclear capabilities, not to mention chemical and biological? Can you imagine the predicament we would be in if Iraq had become a nuclear power, supporting and supplying terrorists in the global jihad? Forget the controversy over whether Saddam had WMD. Secret documents we obtained after our invasion make clear that he never deviated from his quest to acquire nuclear weapons and missile delivery technology.

The Democrats' hang-up on Iraq exacerbates their underestimation of the global terrorist threat. Their mantra is that if we hadn't attacked Iraq, we could better deal with the real terrorists in Afghanistan. John Kerry even suggested the other day that terrorists are in 65 nations because we attacked Iraq.

The implication is that if we hadn't attacked Iraq and had focused on capturing or killing Osama, the terrorist threat would be all but over. Even now, if we would just withdraw, the terrorist threat to the United States would be dramatically reduced.

But Democrats refuse to comprehend that Islamic extremists were already at war with us before we attacked Iraq and no amount of appeasement short of our wholesale conversion to radical Islam would have enabled us to escape their violent wrath. Iraq or no Iraq, we were already in the midst of a 50- to 100-year long war on terror. Foregoing Iraq would not have given us a get-out-of-war-free card. We never had that option.

Our attack on Iraq certainly hastened and accelerated the hostilities in that theater, because the jihadists weren't about to allow Iraq to taste freedom and self-rule at the behest of the Great Satan. But we did not start this war on terror, we didn't provoke the 9/11 attacks, and we didn't start hostilities against the terrorists in Iraq.

If we withdraw before Iraqi forces can defend their new government, catastrophic consequences will reverberate throughout the world -- way beyond Iraq. Iraq will become a terrorist-sponsoring hotbed for global jihad and a springboard for incalculable Middle East instability. The global jihadists will be emboldened with this major victory and the war will be prolonged indefinitely as a result.

Before "shock and awe," Democrats had impaired vision concerning the nature and scope of the global terrorist threat. But since then, Iraq has become their blinding obsession. If they were naively oblivious to the threat before, they are recklessly obtuse today.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/10/27/82535.shtml

Capitalism In All It's "Glory"...

Please Pray For Them...

We offer our most sincere sympathy to the friends and family of the four firefighters that were killed today in the California arson fire.

Fire Officials Say Arsonist Set Deadly Wildfire

TWIN PINES, Calif. -- Fire officials said the blaze that killed four firefighters Thursday was arson.
The U.S. Forest Service said three firefighters were killed Thursday morning while attempting to protect a home from a wildfire in the Cabazon area. Officials announced the death of a fourth firefighter Thursday afternoon.

http://www.nbc4.tv/news/10163023/detail.html

Why Johnny Is Reading Islamic Propaganda

Why Johnny Is Reading Islamic Propaganda By Bob Unruh

Islam is being taught in the nation's public schools as a religion to be embraced because "organized Islamists have gained control of textbook content," according to an organization that analyzes textbooks.

The American Textbook Council has concluded that the situation is the consequence of "the interplay of determined Islamic political activists, textbook editors, and multiculturally minded social studies curriculum planners."

It has gone so far that correcting the situation now becomes a problem, because "educational publishers and educational organizations have bought into claims propounded by Islamists – and have themselves become agents of misinformation."

That comes from Gilbert T. Sewall, who not only wrote the organization's report on Islam and textbooks, but also generated a response to the flood of criticism he encountered.

William J. Bennetta, author of The Textbook Letter and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, also has documented dozens of instances of advocacy for or against a belief system, and has produced a list of books where the "religion preaching" leaves them "unfit for use."

Indeed, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes even has repeatedly expressed concern about the "privileging of Islam in the United States" and warns the stakes go well beyond 7th-grade texts. His opinion of Houghton Mifflin's "Across the Centuries? Full of "apologetics" and "distortions."

WND recently reported on a case in Oregon, where parent Kendalee Garner objected to having her son being taught Islam, including the memorization of the "Five Pillars" of Islam and dressing up as a Muslim.

That episode followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision just a few weeks ago not to review a lower court's ruling that a similar class requirement in the Byron Union School District in California, where students were instructed to "become Muslims" was "cultural education".

WND also has reported that a man arrested as a terror suspect for allegedly trying to transport $340,000 from a group tied to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, and who reputedly had connections to Osama bin Laden, helped write the "Religious Expression in Public Schools" guidelines issued by President Clinton during his tenure in office.

Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was president of the American Muslim Council and a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, worked with President Clinton and the American Civil Liberties Union when the guidelines, guidelines later used by a federal judge to conclude such teaching was legal, were compiled.

Sewall said in his elaboration that his study showed world history textbooks "hold Islam and other non-Western civilizations to different standards than those that apply to the West" even while "Islamic pressure groups and their allies seek to suppress the critical analysis of Islam inside and outside classrooms."

Such textbooks result when "nervous publishers" obey educational fashion and rely more heavily on diversity experts than on trustworthy scholarship, he said.

more...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52623

VDH: The Dark Ages — Live From the Middle East!

The Dark Ages — Live From the Middle East!

The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.

Students of history are sickened when they read of the long-ago, gruesome practice of beheading. How brutal were those societies that chopped off the heads of Cicero, Sir Thomas More and Marie Antoinette. And how lucky we thought we were to have evolved from such elemental barbarity.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Socrates was executed for unpopular speech. The 18th-century European Enlightenment gave people freedom to express views formerly censored by clerics and the state. Just imagine what life was like once upon a time when no one could write music, compose fiction or paint without court or church approval?

Ancient Greek literary characters, from Lysistrata to Antigone, reflected the struggle for sexual equality. The subsequent notion that women could vote, divorce, dress or marry as they pleased was a millennia-long struggle.

It is almost surreal now to read about the elemental hatred of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, 19th-century Russian pogroms or the Holocaust. Yet here we are revisiting the old horrors of the savage past.

Beheading? As we saw with Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, our Neanderthal enemies in the Middle East have resurrected that ancient barbarity — and married it with 21st-century technology to beam the resulting gore instantaneously onto our computer screens. Xerxes and Attila, who stuck their victims' heads on poles for public display, would've been thrilled by such a gruesome show.

Who would have thought centuries after the Enlightenment that sophisticated Europeans — in fear of radical Islamists — would be afraid to write a novel, put on an opera, draw a cartoon, film a documentary or have their pope discuss comparative theology?

The astonishing fact is not just that millions of women worldwide in 2006 are still veiled from head-to-toe, trapped in arranged marriages, subject to polygamy, honor killings and forced circumcision, or are without the right to vote or appear alone in public. What is more baffling is that in the West, liberal Europeans are often wary of protecting female citizens from the excesses of Sharia law — sometimes even fearful of asking women to unveil their faces for purposes of simple identification and official conversation.

Who these days is shocked that Israel is hated by Arab nations and threatened with annihilation by radical Iran? Instead, the surprise is that even in places like Paris or Seattle, Jews are singled out and killed for the apparent crime of being Jewish.

Since Sept. 11, the West has fought enemies who are determined to bring back the nightmarish world that we thought was long past. And there are lessons Westerners can learn from radical Islamists' ghastly efforts.

First, the Western liberal tradition is fragile and can still disappear. Just because we have sophisticated cell phones, CAT scanners and jets does not ensure that we are permanently civilized or safe. Technology used by the civilized for positive purposes can easily be manipulated by barbarians for destruction.

Second, the Enlightenment is not always lost on the battlefield. It can be surrendered through either fear or indifference as well. Westerners fearful of terrorist reprisals themselves shut down a production of a Mozart opera in Berlin deemed offensive to Muslims. Few came to the aid of a Salman Rushdie or Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh when their unpopular expression earned death threats from Islamists. Van Gogh, of course, was ultimately killed.

The Goths and Vandals did not sack Rome solely through the power of their hordes; they also relied on the paralysis of Roman elites who no longer knew what it was to be Roman — much less whether it was any better than the alternative.

Third, civilization is forfeited with a whimper, not a bang. Insidiously, we have allowed radical Islamists to redefine the primordial into the not-so-bad. Perhaps women in head-to-toe burkas in Europe prefer them? Maybe that crass German opera was just too over the top after all? Aren't both parties equally to blame in the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan wars?

To grasp the flavor of our own Civil War, impersonators now don period dress and reconstruct the battles of Shiloh or Gettysburg. But we need no so such historical reenactment of the Dark Ages. You see, they are back with us — live almost daily from the Middle East.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1006/hanson102606.php3

Teen Charged With Burning American Flag

Teen Charged With Burning American FlagKCGRNews
AP - A northeast Iowa teenager accused of burning an American flag is charged with second-degree arson and desecration of a flag under the state's flag desecration law.

Maryann Beck, 15, of Independence is accused of setting the flag on fire at the local VFW hall Tuesday night.

Police Chief Douglas Rasmussen says it was “a pure act of vandalism”. He says flag was on a flag pole outside the hall when it was set on fire.

Iowa law makes it illegal to publicly mutilate, deface, defile or defy the American flag.
Rasmussen says Beck was charged as a juvenile and she was turned over to her parents. He declined to comment on a possible motive.

http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/4487731.html

Few things make me madder than the burning of our flag--and all the liberal 'free speech' snivelers can go wet themselves for all I care! If people don't respect their own flag enough to keep it sacred, they don't deserve the civil rights it stands for.

My father--and many other relatives--fought under that flag and defended it with their lives. I'm sorry all the peaceniks and anarchists and whiners-about-free- speech can't educate themselves well enough to have a better way to protest than to light a match to it. They WON'T do it around me!

Muslim Cleric Likens Women To 'Uncovered Meat'

Outrage As Muslim Cleric Likens Women To 'Uncovered Meat'

A Muslim cleric's claim that women who do not wear the veil are like 'uncovered meat' who attract sexual predators sparked outrage around Australia yesterday.

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, the nation's most senior Muslim cleric, compared immodestly-dressed women who do not wear the Islamic headdress with meat that is left uncovered in the street and is then eaten by cats.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=412697&in_page_id=1770

It is so difficult not to think that the people who hold these ideas are animals. They do not even know, or appreciate, the value of a human life. If their religion does not even teach them that much, what will?

Liberals Throw Google 'Bombs' At GOP

Liberals Throw Google 'Bombs' At GOP

NewsMax

It's called the "Google bomb" and liberals are using it to attack 50 Republican candidates they have targeted for defeat in the Nov. 7 elections.

Using complicated computer programs, the Google bombers are able to direct Web searchers to selected articles about specific GOP members of Congress meant to disparage them.

In examples cited by The New York Times, anyone using the Google search engine for information about Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl will be directed to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly which says that Kyl "has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right, very often to the detriment of Arizonans.”

A Googler looking for information about "Peter King,” the Republican congressman from Long Island, would bring up a link to a Newsday article headlined "King Endorses Ethnic Profiling.”
The Google bomb ploy is the brainchild of Chris Bowers, a contributor at MyDD.com (Direct Democracy), a far-left group blog. He told the Times that the articles chosen "Had to come from news sources that would be widely trusted in the given district. We wanted actual news reports so it would be clear that we weren’t making anything up.”

The tactic works by flooding the Web with references to the candidates and repeatedly cross-linking to specific articles and sites on the Web, making it possible to take advantage of Google’s formula and force those negative articles to the top of the list of search results.

It has long been used by Web sites seeking to advance their rankings by attracting more viewers to their sites.
Bowers explained that his project was originally aimed at 70 Republican candidates but was scaled back to roughly 50 because Bowers thought some of the negative articles were too partisan.

According to the Times, each name targeted is associated with just one article, which is embedded in hyperlinks that are now being distributed widely among the left-leaning blogosphere. In an entry at MyDD.com this week, the Times quotes Bowers as saying "When you discuss any of these races in the future, please, use the same embedded hyperlink when reprinting the Republican’s name. Then, I suppose, we will see what happens.”

The tactic is not really new. The Times recalled that the ability to manipulate the Google search engine’s results has been demonstrated in the past. Searching for "miserable failure,” for example, produces the official White House Web site of President Bush.

"We don’t condone the practice of Google bombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results,” Ricardo Reyes, a Google spokesman told the Times. "A site’s ranking in Google’s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.”

Google, however, says it won't interfere with anyone using Bower's tactic, telling the Times that Google's faith in its system has produced a hands-off policy when it comes to correcting for the effects of Google bombs in the past. Over all, Google says, the integrity of the search product remains intact.

Writing in the company’s blog last year, Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer Web products, suggested that pranks might be "distracting to some, but they don’t affect the overall quality of our search service, whose objectivity, as always, remains the core of our mission.”
Still, some conservative blogs have condemned Bowers’s tactic. These include "Outside the Beltway," which has called him "unscrupulous,” and "Hot Air," which called it "fascinatingly evil.”

Bowers tells the Times that despite the obvious intention to damage the re-election chances of his targets, he does not believe the practice would actually deceive most Internet users.

"I think Internet users are very smart and most are aware of what a Google bomb is,” he said, "and they will be aware that results can be massaged a bit.”

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/10/26/114917.shtml?s=ic

The Dems obviously don't have the confidence to run their candidates on merit...

DAVID LIMBAUGH: What Would Democrats Do With Victory?

What Would Democrats Do With Victory?

The real question facing voters in November is whether Democrats will be able to do to the entire legislative branch what they've done to their party.

The agenda-less party has become infected with a paralyzing negativity born of its singular hatred for President Bush. Will that mindset be permitted to seize control of our legislative branch? Will disgruntled conservatives collude to make this happen?

How many times have you heard Democrats decrying the Bush administration for having no plan to win the peace in Iraq? We might have executed the initial phase of the war masterfully by removing Saddam, they now grudgingly concede, but we didn't anticipate and plan for the problems that would arise after his removal.

Putting aside a debate over that assertion, let's apply the same standard to their agenda for America today. Shouldn't we ask: "Democrats have a potentially masterful plan for removing Republicans from majority control, but what is their plan for action if they win?

Let's just look at the most important issues: the war on terror, including Iraq, the economy, social issues and immigration. In each category, they either have no plan or are unwilling to publicize it for fear that Rovian Republicans will pick it apart and expose its flaws.

On immigration, no matter how poorly Republicans have performed, the Democrats' approach would be significantly worse. They would open the borders wider, discourage assimilation further and promote amnesty harder.

On the economy, they would increase domestic spending even more. And in their compulsion to punish the "rich," they would raise their taxes at the inevitable expense of choking the life out of our robust growth and increasing the deficit and national debt. Though the middle class and poor would be hurt, the rich would feel it, too -- and that would be almost as gratifying as hating President Bush.

On social issues, Democrats and the mainstream media are engaged in an elaborate scam. I've been saying for years that they have undisguised contempt for traditional values voters. They are proving it daily through their concerted drive to suppress the values voter turnout.

Their inconsistent pretense to represent this very block of voters was revealed as the fraud it is by recent comments of Newsweek's liberal Jonathan Alter, who said, "I hope this election is going to mark the demise of values voters ... that they don't determine the election the way they were seen to have the last time around."

It is inconceivable that Christian conservatives are blind to the left's contempt for them or self-destructive enough to contribute to the ascension of the party that boos the Boy Scouts and filibusters Constitution-honoring judges.

On national security generally, Democrats would ratchet up even further their opposition to almost every tool we use to prosecute the war.

On Iraq, if you concede that conditions there are discouraging, you still - as a responsible voter - must ask yourself what Democrats would do differently - unless you are just too angry to care. Democrats are irreversibly committed to the myth that Iraq is not part of the war on terror - never mind that all global jihadists themselves radically disagree.

This commitment requires Democrats to deny the consequences our precipitous withdrawal would necessarily have on the war on terror -- and thus on America's security. The April 2006 NIE report concludes that our withdrawal from Iraq would embolden terrorists and make us more vulnerable at home.

Other experts who Democrats are fond of citing, like James Baker, also warn that it would create worse civil and ethnic strife and cause Iraq to become more of a hotbed for terrorist mischief. But, hey, reversing Bush's policy and discrediting him must take priority over the national interest.

Not only would the Democrats' Bush-hating and policy-bankruptcy be demonstrated in their approach to the issues; it would also play out in their endless investigations against the president and possible efforts to impeach him upon taking control.

Don't discount the possibility that all this hype about conservatives staying home is a carefully orchestrated ruse to suppress their turnout. Even if it isn't, the liberals' arrogance and premature boasting will surely motivate to the polls all but those rare, implacable conservatives, because even disgruntled conservatives know we can't afford to teach big-spending Republicans a lesson in the middle of a war.

Consider also that Republicans are better organized and funded and possess more intensity, that many polls have oversampled Democrats and that as the election approaches, voters will more seriously compare the parties' respective fitness to protect America. Democrats better not bet their farms just yet.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/10/24/84533.shtml

Candidate Apologizes After "Injun" Remark

Candidate Apologizes After "Injun" Remark

GREEN BAY (AP) - Democratic U.S. House candidate Steve Kagen apologized Monday for commenting that he was late for a meeting on an Indian reservation because "we're on Injun time."

"I did not mean any harm by my words, and I humbly apologize if I offended anyone. That was not my intent," he said in a statement hours after the National Republican Congressional Committee released a tape recording of the comment.

Kagen attended a meeting Friday on the nearby Oneida Reservation, and at his next stop in Green Bay he made the following remarks:

"Appreciate getting here almost on time. Our excuse in Oneida was, well, we're on Injun time. They don't tell time by the clock. Our excuse here is that I am a doctor and that we're never on time."

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=104449&ntpid=2

MICHELLE MALKIN:Blabbermouth Media, Blabbermouth Dems

Blabbermouth Media, Blabbermouth Dems

Two short weeks to Election Day. As one of those post-9/11 security moms, it all comes down to a simple question for me: Who will keep this country – and my children – safer from harm?

I have many heated differences with the Bush administration over its refusal to fully enforce immigration laws; soft-headed pandering to jihadist lobbying groups; profligate spending on illusory transportation security; failure to confront the spread of Shariah law; and kowtowing to Saudi princes eager to send over more young students to learn aviation in our universities.

For all the White House's faults, however, there is no doubt in my mind that Republicans as a group are better informed, better equipped and better able to lead this country in a time of war than the Democrats. The donkey party is led by thumb-sucking demagogues in prominent positions who equate Bush with Hitler and Jim Crow, call him a liar in front of high school students and the world, fantasize about impeachment and fetishize the human rights of terrorists who want to kill me.

Put simply: There are no grown-ups in the Democrat Party.

Maybe this is what a prematurely giddy Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meant when she told the Los Angeles Times this week: "The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children."

Yep. Put the gavel in the hands of Pelosi and the Democrats, and you will put the gavel in the hands of children. Couldn't put it better myself.

Another clarifying moment that underscores the fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats on matters of national security, seriousness and secrecy took place June 29, 2006.

That was the day the U.S. House of Representatives voted to condemn the decision by several newspapers – led by the newspaper of wreckage, the New York Times – to publish details of the Bush administration's classified program to track terrorist financing. Known as SWIFT, the program had led to the capture of a key Bali bombing suspect and identification of a convicted al-Qaida helper based in New York City, as well as helping investigators probing domestic terrorist cells and suspected Islamic charities fronting for jihad. Under specious claims by anonymous accusers that the program's legality and oversight were in doubt, the Times splashed details of the program all over its front pages. Democrats dutifully piled on to condemn the White House for its "illegal" "abuses of power."

But House Republicans refused to roll over for the blabbermouth media and the blabbermouth Democrats. They put Washington on record with a vote on a nonbinding resolution stating the obvious – that news organizations may have "placed the lives of Americans in danger" by disclosing SWIFT and that Congress "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations" in keeping classified programs secret.

The resolution passed 227-183, with only 17 Democrats joining nearly all House Republicans in condemning the leak-dependent news media and supporting the surveillance program.

"This measure attempts to intimidate the press and strengthen the hands of this despotic administration," railed New York Democrat Rep. Maurice Hinchey. "It is a campaign document," pouted Rep. Pelosi in attacking the resolution. Republicans "have adopted a shoot-the-messenger strategy by attacking the newspaper that revealed the existence of the secret bank surveillance program rather than answering the disturbing questions that those reports raise about possible violations of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. privacy laws," wheedled Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

Why remind you of this vote and the Dems' kindergarten reaction? Because the Times' own ombudsman admitted this week that the story should never have run. Public editor Byron Calame 'fessed up: "I don't think the article should have been published. ... I haven't found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal. ... The lack of appropriate oversight – to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention – was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight."

Not a single one of the Democrats who lambasted Bush and Republicans for protesting the reckless story has stepped forward to apologize to the president and the American people or acknowledge the harm caused to counterterrorism efforts.

Do you need to know any more to judge which party will keep this country safer? I don't.

http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin102506.php3

The Forever Memorial; the Forever Memory:

Everytime I see this picture, or dream about it, I always think of Todd Beamer. God Bless you Todd, and everyone else who fought aboard Flight 93.

Authorities Deny Online Rumors Of Voter Purge

Authorities Deny Online Rumors Of Voter Purge
By Alex M. Parker

Rumors started by the influential liberal blog The Daily Kos claim that scores of frustrated Lorain County voters are learning they have been disqualified from voting due to minor glitches as part of a giant Republican scheme to purge voters from the rolls.
Not so, say county election officials.

Voters can't be purged in one election cycle, there are no pending challenges to voter registration, and yesterday at the elections board, there were only a few early voters -- none of whom were disqualified.

Elections board Chairwoman Marilyn Jacobcik said the rumor seems to have come from mailings the board sent to registered voters in September as part of the new requirements set by the state legislature. The letter informs the voters of their polling place and new voting requirements, and also verifies addresses. But voters who have moved and don't receive the mailings can still vote if they have a valid photo ID.

If they don't have identification, they can still vote with a provisional ballot.''No one will be denied a ballot,'' said Jose Candelario, executive director of the board.Said Jacobcik: ''There are groups out there trying to create mistrust of the system.''

more...

http://www.morningjournal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17359390&BRD=1699&PAG=461&dept_id=46371&rfi=6

The Ldotters Motto:

For all of you out of the loop, "broken glass" means we Republicans/conservatives will crawl on our knees over broken glass to get to the polls and VOTE! Don't let the Dems win by default!

Hillary Loses Senate Debate . . . Big Time

Hillary Loses Senate Debate . . . Big Time NewsMax
On Friday night, Hillary Clinton finally had to face an unscripted, uncontrolled media event -- a debate with her feisty opponent John Spencer, the Republican candidate for Senator from New York this year.

Spencer pinned her ears back with his opening statement when he declared: "I am the only person here who really wants to be the Senator from New York .... she wants to be president."

And then he exploited the opening by reminding Hillary "you're not the president yet."
During the debate, Spencer highlighted Hillary's vote against the NSA's wiretapping program and her efforts to kill the Patriot Act.

John Spencer began his challenge to Hillary tonight. The race starts today.

Hillary's huge financial advantage and her lead in the polls was of little use tonight because it was obvious that the empress has no clothes.

While Hillary gave scripted, rehearsed answers, Spencer challenged her failure to deliver on her campaign promises of 200,000 new jobs and mocked her refusal to accept blame for anything, pinning the job loss on Bush and the North Korea bomb on the State Department.

But beyond the words, there were the appearances. Hillary Clinton was a Richard Nixon look-alike tonight, wearing pancake makeup, featuring hooded eyes that never met the camera, and looking like she felt -- angry at having to waste time justifying her Senate tenure in something as trivial as an election.

John Spencer may not beat Hillary, but he sure made her sweat tonight. If she wins by less than 12 points -- the margin Lazio lost by in 2000 --- she will have a lot of explaining to do. And John Spencer, may just be the guy to make it happen.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/10/20/235741.shtml

Hugo Chavez's Anti-U.S. Voice Silenced By U.N. Vote

Hugo Chavez's Anti-U.S. Voice Silenced By U.N. VoteNewsMax
When President Hugo Chavez called President Bush the devil at the United Nations he earned ovations, but most nations rejected his unglossed anti-Americanism this week by frustrating his bid for a Venezuelan seat on the Security Council.

The leftist cast the election for one of Latin America's rotating two-year council seats as between Venezuela and the United States, which lobbied openly for Guatemala.

But Chavez, who had hoped to use the seat to be a leading anti-U.S. voice on the world stage, failed to win in any of the 35 voting rounds at the General Assembly and trailed the tiny Central American nation by a margin of 20 to 30 ballots.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/10/20/142648.shtml?s=ic

ANN COULTER: O.J. Trials For Terrorists

O.J. Trials For Terrorists

The Democrats claim they want to treat terrorism as a criminal law problem, but when we give them an American citizen convicted of aiding terrorists – as happened this week – a Democrat judge gives her a slap on the wrist. Or he was going to give her a wrist slap until someone told him that wrist slapping was banned under the Geneva Conventions, so he let the wrist off with a warning.

Last year, a New York jury found Lynne Stewart guilty of helping her former client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with his Egyptian-based group of murderous terrorists, appropriately known as "the Islamic Group."

The blind sheik needed to instruct his followers to abandon a truce and resume murdering innocents, but he couldn't get the message through because, by sheer coincidence, he was in prison for conspiring to murder innocents here in America by plotting the first World Trade Center bombing. So Stewart and a "translator" met with her former client in prison and took his messages for transmission to his followers in Egypt.

With the full constitutional protections Democrats want for terrorists in Guantanamo, Stewart was convicted by a New York jury last year.

This week, Judge John Koeltl – appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994 – spurned the prosecution's request for a 30-year sentence and gave Stewart 28 months for being a terrorist's mule. Now she'll clog up the criminal justice system with endless appeals for the next several years – using procedures that leftists also want for Guantanamo detainees.
At Stewart's sentencing, the judge noted that the defendant's actions had not resulted in any deaths. I'll have to remember that in case I'm ever on trial for attempted murder. "Hey, your honor, did I mention that the guy lived? Yeah, the darn gun jammed on me. Go figure, huh?"
In rejecting a 30-year sentence in favor of a 28-month sentence, the judge commended Stewart for her "public service, not only to her clients, but to the nation" for representing members of the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground. In a sane world, that would have justified a longer sentence, not a shorter one.

If only Democrats could turn the entire War on Terrorism over to the courts, they could release terrorists and terrorist sympathizers with wild abandon – and Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton would never have to take a position.

When Americans are allowed to vote, a fireman's vote counts as much as George Soros' vote. But if leftists can just get terrorists into the judicial system, a Clinton-appointed judge can rule on a defense funded by George Soros – precisely what happened in Stewart's case. Note that even in left-wing New York City, average citizens on the jury voted to convict Stewart, despite her Soros-funded defense.

Democrats run apparently sane candidates for office, like James Webb in Virginia and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, who can puff up their chests and pretend they want to pursue terrorists – while carping about any and all military action in the terrorists' general direction. Instead, let's turn terrorists over to courts full of Clinton and Carter judges! Democratic candidates get to look tough, and the terrorists go scot-free.

It would be frightening enough to treat terrorism as a criminal law problem if it were Republicans saying it. But these are Democrats. Their idea of a major criminal case is Tom DeLay's campaign treasurer accidentally depositing a campaign contribution into a checking account rather than a savings account.

By contrast, terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo for trying to kill Americans must be treated as innocent little lambs. Oh, to be there when Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman is exonerated due to previously unavailable "DNA evidence"!

After President Bush signed a law this week providing for military tribunals for terrorists being held at Guantanamo and prohibiting their torture, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin said, "We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history." (Note to Democrats: It's still too soon to use "stain" as a metaphor for a White House brouhaha.)

Democrats stood outside the White House shouting "Torture is a crime!" and "Bush is the terrorist!" Yep, these are the people who claim they're going to keep us all safe, America. Everybody good with that?

Gen. George Washington tried Maj. John Andre, Benedict Arnold's British co-conspirator, by military tribunal and ordered Andre hanged within 10 days of his capture. Nazi saboteurs, including an American citizen, captured on U.S. soil during World War II were tried in secret by military commission and promptly executed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Nuremberg trials were a form of military tribunal.

But Democrats think military tribunals aren't good enough for the terrorists plotting to kill Americans today. Leftists are going to make the terrorists love us! What better way to start than with criminal trials in front of judges like John Koeltl?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=25016

The Fascists Among Us

The Fascists Among Us
By Selwyn Duke

It’s no secret that hurling names about is as common in the political world as it is in a grammar school playground. One oft-used pejorative is “fascist,” which, along with racist, sexist, homophobe and others, tends to be least understood by those who utter it most. And because these damning terms are used wantonly, more to discredit than describe, they tend to be misapplied. Then, soon, calling someone a fascist becomes akin to calling him a snake: more a vague impugnment of character then a characterization of methods and goals.

Rhetoric aside, however, I’ve come to realize that true fascists do exist in our time. But who are they? How can they be correctly identified? To discover the answer, let’s start with a trip down Bad Memory Lane.

Another word that makes the rounds these days is “Brownshirts,” which, as many know, harks back to the SA, a paramilitary organization that was instrumental in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. The Brownshirts were the adolescent Nazi Party’s muscle, squelching opposition through violence and intimidation. Shout-downs and beat-downs were their stock-in-trade, making their name a metaphor for fascist intolerance and oppression.

Now for a little current events. There was a university, some speakers and an audience. The speakers had been invited to the university in the name of intellectual debate and free expression. Some of the audience, however, would have none of it. Intolerant of the views being aired, they shouted-down the speakers and repeatedly called one of the black representatives “nigger.” Then, in a final fit of hatred and rage, in quintessential Brownshirt style, they stormed the stage violently, squelching voices that would have contributed to a fruitful exchange of ideas.

But what was the university? And, more to the point, who were the speakers and the audience? Were the guests communists or advocates for illegal immigration and the audience right-wing ideologues? No, not at all.

more...

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5952

THOMAS SOWELL: Point Of No Return?

Point Of No Return?

It is hard to think of a time when a nation — and a whole civilization — has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money and Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel — and both its actions and its rhetoric suggest aims that extend even beyond a second Holocaust.
Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred.

Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran.

The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work.

Hate and humiliation are key forces that cannot be bought off by "trading land for peace," by a "Palestinian homeland" or by other such concessions that might have worked in other times and places.

Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to "infidels" today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor.

There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves.

Israel's very existence as a modern, prosperous western nation in their midst is a daily slap across the face. Nothing is easier for demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position.

Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around.

What kind of people provide a market for videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages? What kind of people would throw an old man in a wheelchair off a cruise liner into the sea, simply because he was Jewish? What kind of people would fly planes into buildings to vent their hate at the cost of their own lives?

These are the kinds of people we are talking about getting nuclear weapons. And what of ourselves?

Do we understand that the world will never be the same after hate-filled fanatics gain the ability to wipe whole American cities off the face of the earth? Do we still imagine that they can be bought off, as Israel was urged to buy them off with "land for peace" — a peace that has proved to be wholly illusory?

Even ruthless conquerors of the past, from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, wanted some tangible gains for themselves or their nations — land, wealth, dominion. What Middle East fanatics want is the destruction and humiliation of the west.

Their treatment of hostages, some of whom have been humanitarians serving the people of the Middle East, shows that what the terrorists want is to inflict the maximum pain and psychic anguish on their victims before killing them.

Once these fanatics have nuclear weapons, those victims can include you, your children and your children's children.

The terrorists need not start out by wiping our cities off the map. Chances are they would first want to force us to humiliate ourselves in whatever ways their sadistic imaginations could conceive, out of fear of their nuclear weapons.

After we, or our children and grandchildren, find ourselves living at the mercy of people with no mercy, what will future generations think of us, that we let this happen because we wanted to placate "world opinion" by not acting "unilaterally"? We are fast approaching the point of no return.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell082306.php3

Ol' FlipFlop Wants A Do-Over...

Kerry: I Deserve Second Chance In '08:

Sen. John Kerry says he deserves a second chance if he decides to take another crack at becoming president.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who lost to President Bush in 2004, said it is a basic principle that "Americans give people a second chance. And if you learn something and prove you've learned something, maybe even more so. Now, I don't know what I'm going to do yet. We'll make that decision down the road."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/10/15/154934.shtml?s=ic

Yep, Ketchup wants a do-over before he's decided if he even wants to "do". Somebody wake me when--and IF--he finally makes up his mind....

Don't Cry For Cindy Sheehan, Alfred Nobel

Don't Cry For Cindy Sheehan, Alfred NobelBy John Burtis
After days on those rapturous tenterhooks, Cindy Sheehan, the highly touted, omnipresent, albeit picaresque peace mom, has failed in her ruthless media driven quest for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. A prize many felt she deserved.

Not that she didn't have the radical Democrats, the far left loonies, the anti-war crowd, the Dellinger descendents, Father Berrigan's brood, the few remaining Winter Soldiers, the best the fading 60s had to offer, and the rest pulling for her. But it just wasn't to be.

But neither John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Ned Lament, nor the inflationary and mystical powers of the famed peanut planting mummer, Jimmy Carter - a Nobel Prize winner in his own right for the providential nuclear arming of a starving North Korea, or was it for the coddling and nurturing of the murderous Fatah, or the atrocious gushing over that brutal island prison warden, Fidel Castro, who can really say now ? could parlay the sad, tawdry public pirouettes, back flips, and hastily written screeds of that shy shrinking violet to the rapt attention of the dynamite baron's current committee.

Sadly, it now appears to even the manifold minions of our progressive left, with the hindsight of the award now behind us, that the prize was actually given this year to a man who may deserve it.

Nope, the Prize is going to Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank.

Mr. Yunus has parlayed the small local bank he founded, which offers collateral free loans to the poorest of Bangladesh's poor to start small businesses, to a customer base of some six million. Interestingly, the borrowers currently own 94% of the banks equity, with the Bangladeshi government owning the remaining 4%, while 97% of the borrowers are women.

When advised of the prize, a humbled and selfless Mr. Yunus said that he would re-invest his prize money in his bank, enabling even more of his fellow countrymen to begin lives of improved economic circumstances.

Can you imagine a Nobel going to such a humble man, who devoted his life to such a decent venture, which overwhelmingly caters to women to boot, when Cindy Sheehan is setting such a beautiful example? That is when she's not slobbering all over raucous, blood thirsty South American dictators ? believers in peace, all - blocking roads, writing self-aggrandizing hagiographical narratives tinged with P.T. Barnum accounts of her own supreme importance, demanding air time to further her personal agenda, screeching about the war to end wars, using her dead son as a tool, piling prevarications atop lies on top of hokum, creating more hot house emissions than Albert Gore Jr., while waving the bloody shirt?

I can't for a second imagine that the Nobel Prize Committee, save for the one that dragged a thoroughly discredited Mr. Peanut to Oslo for his best Bob Barker in a white tie and tails, would have a difficult time finding folks on this planet who would equal or better the peace record of Ms. Sheehan. Though it now appears they have. And it is entirely possible that she was not, gasp, no, even on this year's program.

Fortunately, someone in Oslo may have noticed that Cindy Sheehan is a total creature of production. Not of hers but of the Democrats, the left, their ceaseless propaganda machine, and the willing acolytes, dupes, sympathizers and followers in the all too enabling progressive press.
Cindy Sheehan appeared at just the right time. And her story - however convoluted, riddled with inaccuracies, laced with problematic and divergent sidebars, sprinkled with outright fabrications, and littered with bunk ? was glossed over by the Democrats and the left because she provided them with the necessary, however campy and smarmy, street theater they were sorely lacking before her arrival.

Her public life, since her first public appearance, has been crafted by the entertainment industry, with camera angles, the beating of drums, long views, close-ups, second units, grips and gaffers, FX effects, of light and magic, and just plain computerized special effects.
And this sad, sorry woman has played it all out with a Vivien Leigh tragic-comedic effect, not knowing it all was just political theater and then failing to realize she could simply quit play acting, peel off her stage persona, and go home when the director, a Democratic strategist, Harry Reid, an itinerant TV personality, or the local ward boss said cut, that's a wrap.
Like an episode in the Twilight Zone, Cindy Sheehan seems doomed to continue acting the same painful insensate role even as the play ends, the viewers file out, the theater is closed, and the whole place is gradually covered in cobwebs.

Ms. Sheehan knows no other character to play than the archly grieving socialist, often Stalinist, anti-war mom, enraged at President Bush, embracing every tin horn dictator she can find, and some she can kiss, while the crowd, their attention, and the media gradually abandon her.
Meanwhile, Mr. Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank will continue to aid the downtrodden in Bangladesh, in their millions, for the greater good, in a place which has never crossed the mind of Cindy Sheehan.

And Cindy will disappear from view and suffer the ennui which afflicts those who have hogged the limelight from artificially constructed contrivances and fail to understand why they now stand alone in the darkness.

Across America the fire stations are quieter. Rescue companies are no longer rushing to the homes of Cindy's now grieving accomplices, bringing life giving oxygen to those who felt giddy through that long evening's night until Norway's Aftenposten brought them the news about Mr. Yunus and his prize.

Alfred, please don't cry for Cindy.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/burtis101506.htm