"doesn't have a soul,"

"At a minimum, a head of state should have a head," -- Putin

He must not have noticed the "gun-free zone" signs. -- Van Helsing

Gun Free

...the recent shooting at Northern Illinois University is yet another splatter of blood on the hands of gun-grabbers across the country. Yes, it was ultimately the gunman's decision to kill others, then take his own life. However, after a quick Live Search I came to find out that the NIU is a gun-free zone. These supposedly "peaceful" and "progressive" areas of non-violence have ironically been partially responsible for the death of many young lives in this country. You see, the law abiding citizens obey the laws and therefore do not carry firearms on their person. So, when a crazed gunman shows up to wreak havoc, they are completely and utterly disarmed. A full body of students are rendered into nothing but mobile targets, no threat at all. But hey, at least its a gun-free zone, the socialist-progressive laws gotcha covered.

Good lord: 18 people shot at Northern Illinois University?

7 Dead 21 Injured at Northern Illinois University (Video) Update: Shooter Identified

Steve Kazmierczak

Illinois University Shooter a “Progressive”

You have to be quick to find citations for guys like Steve Kazmierczak, the creep who went on a shooting spree in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall yesterday. The school website is quickly dropping all mention of the guy. I did find, however, a citation for Kasmierczak on a paper he collaborated on.

Beginning graduate work at Northern Illinois University. In addition to his interests in corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice, he is co-authoring a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States with Jim Thomas and Josh Stone. He is also develops content for online education and is an executive board officer of the NIU student chapter of the American Correctional Association.

So he was interested in “political violence, and peace and social justice.” Yeah, that sounds about right - real moonbat stuff. How long do we have to continue to pretend that “rednecks” with guns are the problem?

Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh on the issue of students being allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus.

Vet lauds female guard who felled gunman

Palestinians Torch Joseph's Tomb... Again

"One can only imagine what would happen if Jewish people did this same sort of thing to something Muslims hold dear to their religion." -- Joanne

Iran's Mirages

The illusions created by a politicized intelligence report and pacifist wishful thinking don't change the reality of Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration has just provided expanded evidence.
...
Even dovish European government officials and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei's International Atomic Energy Agency have scoffed at the foolishness of this latest NIE. ...

"Tell me, why does Iran need enriched uranium at a time when they are supplied by Russians the nuclear fuel for the civilian projects?What else do they plan, for which they need the most sophisticated ballistic missiles?" -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
...
And he called Iran "a force that is talking explicitly about using the power in order to liquidate other countries, and I think this is a good enough reason why we should focus on Iran and do everything to prevent Iran from having nuclear capacity."

Compare that kind of realism with Sen. Barack Obama's complaints to Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show" that the Bush administration "has not done the diplomatic work that needs to be done to contain Iran."

What in the world are advisers to both Senators Obama and Clinton doing in Syria in the middle of a presidential campaign — and why are the two campaigns so unforthcoming about the details of the visits?

The same week that a terrorist mastermind harbored by the Baathist regime in Damascus was assassinated by a car bomb, both one of Mr. Obama's foreign policy counselors, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a long-time critic of Israel, and one of Mrs. Clinton's national finance chairs, Hassan Nemazee, were meeting with President Assad.

Iran’s Oil Mafia... ...8/25/2007...
Right here in the USA... ...4/16/2007...Iran’s Oil Mafia
Is the 'Iraq Study Group' consulting with... ...11/16/2006...Iranian agents?
Hillary's GOP Senate challenger ...1/22/2006...John Spencer says Hillary takes Iran cash
Long documented JFKerry(D)-Iran...10/4/2004...connections
JFKerry(D)'s Iranian connections...9/8/2004...Fight Democracy

Where is the sense of reality about who President Assad is and what his regime is all about?
...
So where's the "realism" on the part of Mr. Brzezinski and other so-called foreign policy "realists," who have accused President Bush of foreign policy malpractice for downgrading relations with Syria after the Syrians threw in with the Iranians to sabotage Iraq? Why are advisers to Senators Clinton and Obama in the Syrian capital at a time like this? Are they pressing for a separate peace with the regime?

Secret Money Floods Campaigns

...more than $118 million, or one-quarter of the total raised in this cycle, banked without disclosure of who gave the funds or where the donations originated.

...the surge in low-dollar gifts has come at the cost of transparency, since federal law only requires campaigns to itemize donations when a donor gives more than $200.

... Senator Obama of Illinois led the pack with such small and secret donations, pulling in about $31 million during 2007.

...one area of concern with the flood of donations, particularly those made online, is that foreigners could be weighing in illegally in an American election. Mr. Obama's Web site allows donors to choose an address in one of 227 possible countries or territories, including Iran, Iraq, Zimbabwe, and Yemen.

Dems Superdelegates or Bought Votes?

I personally believe that it will be the decisions of the Superdelegates which will decide who the Democrat Nominee is. With Hillary sending Chelsea to breakfast with at least one Superdelegate and both candidates spending a ton of money to garner favor from these supposed "unpledged party leaders" that are prostituting their votes to the highest bidders, democracy seems to be the loser on the Democrat side. I thought they wanted more democracy? That is something they want you to believe when the opposite is true.

White Males of Steel

Politico has a count showing Mrs. Clinton with 242 superdelegates, Obama with 157.5 and 318.5 uncommitted. These pledges are not binding, however; any superdelegate can change his vote right up until the convention.

White men hold superdelegate power balance

In an ironic twist to the historic Democratic nominating contest between an African-American and a woman, the balance of power may be held by a more familiar face: the white male.

...exactly what the nation and the stock market do not want to hear.
...
He wants to “reopen” trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade.

The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion.
...
Obama would like voters to believe that he’s the second coming of JFK. But with his unbelievable spending and new-government-agency proposals he’s looking more and more like Jimmy Carter.
...
Not only is Obama the big-spending candidate, he’s also the very-high-tax candidate. And what he wants to tax is capital.

Doesn’t Obama understand the vital role of capital formation in creating businesses and jobs? Doesn’t he understand that without capital, businesses can’t expand their operations and hire more workers?
...
...on taxes, trade, and regulation, Obama’s program is anti-growth. A President Obama would steer us in the social-market direction of Western Europe, which has produced only stagnant economies down through the years. It would be quite an irony. While newly emerging nations in Eastern Europe and Asia are lowering the tax penalties on capital — and reaping the economic rewards — Obama would raise them. Low-rate flat-tax plans are proliferating around the world. Yet Obama completely ignores this. American competitiveness would suffer enormously under Obama, as would job opportunities, productivity, and real wages.

Imitate the failures of Germany, Norway, and Sweden? That’s no way to run economic policy.

Marxist Daniel Ortega Endorses Obama

'It's not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. … but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change.' -- Communist Daniel Ortega

Nicaraguan Communists For Obama

At least we know that the signals Obama sends abroad about what kind of President he would be are clearly understood.

The Problems with Obama

Under pressure to produce some facts and specifics, the Obama team is beginning to release a little on the economy, taxes, and new entitlements. But the problem is that Obama himself seems not familiar with the details, and still prefers talking only about hope and change. Wonks releasing details doesn't solve the problem. And it won't, until he, the candidate, can talk in serious fashion ex tempore about the specifics he wants to achieve.
...
...his success seems to have been achieved with a slightly different calculus — 80-90 percent of the African-American vote, elite yuppie whites, and students and Moveon.org progressives.

No Recession

Out on the campaign trail, Hill-Bama mutters protectionism at every stop. But export trade has grown by nearly 50 percent — or 9 percent yearly after inflation — for the past four years. The real export sector now accounts for nearly one-third of U.S. gross domestic product, yet more proof that the global economic boom is alive and well.
...
Hill-Bama is campaigning on a populist platform of taxing businesses and rich people. This fiscal nymphomania will create new government bureaucracies on infrastructure and energy totaling a couple hundred billion dollars. It’s beyond the pale.

For the fiscally tightfisted Sen. John McCain, and his crusade against unnecessary spending and earmarks, there is a great opportunity here. McCain can build on his pro-growth corporate-tax-cut proposal with a broad-based tax-reform plan. This approach would lower tax rates across-the-board and broaden the base by removing unnecessary exceptions and loopholes. In effect, while Hill-Bama copies Western Europe’s failed economic playbook, McCain can replicate the tax-reform success over in Eastern Europe.

Whether it’s national defense, homeland security, or economic growth, the key to a McCain victory over Hill-Bama in November is to compare and contrast two visions of America’s future. The contrast couldn’t be greater. Hill-Bama trashes corporations. But Sen. McCain understands that by lowering tax rates on corporations, vital capital will be unlocked, leading to business expansion and job creation.

Speaking in Warren, Ohio, this week, Sen. Clinton singled out oil, credit-card, insurance, pharmaceutical, investment, and student-loan firms in a massive attack on business. She’s attacking corporations that employ 23 million people and, by the way, pay higher than average wages. In other words, Clinton is attacking 23 million jobs. This is the forgotten middle-class. And they know that if politicians curb or confiscate the profits of their companies, it is they, the workers, who will be harmed.

This is what Hill-Bama fails to understand. This is why Hill-Bama policy would be so damaging to the economy. Corporations are profitable, sure. But wage earners get 70 percent of the profits; investors share the remaining 30 percent.

And these companies pay a colossal fortune in taxes. Exxon Mobil is a perfect example. Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. $27 billion! As my friend, economist Mark Perry, points out, while corporate profits receive a lot of media attention, the corporate taxes paid on these corporate profits are largely overlooked. Dr. Perry also points out that Exxon Mobil pays as much in taxes annually as the entire bottom 50 percent of individual taxpayers — a full 65,000,000 people.

The choice is clear: Jimmy Carter-style big-government spending, taxing, and regulating all over again. Or supply-side free-market capitalism that can endure the inevitable negative shocks, shorten the cyclical downturns, and fuel the engines of economic growth.

The Empty Suit

His speeches remind me of Gertrude Stein's comment about Oakland--there's no there there.
...
...his only executive experience is running a law school magazine, and not with any apparently distinguishment.
...
He hasn't performed that well in debates. His primary accomplishment, and talent, seems to be to make vaporous but inspiring (to some) speeches, that make (supposedly) grown men swoon and get funny feelings up their legs (are you sure that wasn't something running down your leg, Chrissie?). And when he doesn't have a teleprompter, apparently even his speeches aren't all that great...
...
...does he even write the speeches?
...
...we are on the brink of taking a cipher, with no notable accomplishments in running anything, who is persuasive and compelling as a speaker only when reading others' words, and putting him in charge of the armed forces and other government institutions of the most powerful nation in the history of mankind.

Obama & Liberal Fascism

The messianic nature of Obama's campaign has been noted by many for a long time now. He often sounds like he's reviving the social gospel. There's even a website called "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?"

Many of the tropes of a political religion/liberal fascism are evident. He exalts unity as it's own reward. His talk of starting new and starting over often sounds like more than merely "turning the page" on the Bush-Clinton years. It sounds a bit like starting at Year Zero.

But what I find most intriguing is his rhetoric of destiny and "choseness." He often makes it sound like he has been selected by forces of providence or God or simply history for this moment. He is, in Oprah's words, "The One." But even more interesting, he tells voters they are the ones. “This is it,” Obama proclaimed on Super Tuesday. “We are the ones we've been waiting for, we are the change that we seek.” That’s pretty oracular stuff.
...
God had chosen his preferred economic system, and any religious faith, doctrine or revelation that suggested otherwise must be false. God is a socialist, dagnabit, and if a God who isn't a socialist speaks to you in a small, still voice, turn your back on Him. The state, according to Rauschenbusch was "the medium through which the people shall co-operate in their search for the kingdom of God and its righteousness.”

BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince
...
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
...
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

Suit says county held man illegally for federal agents
...
According to the suit, Amilcar DeJesus Lopez-Santos of Gentry was held without proper documentation or authority from U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lopez-Santos posted $ 3,000 bond Friday on charges of driving without a license, leaving the scene of a property damage accident, and careless and prohibited driving, the suit states.
...
... Lopez-Santos was taken from the jail by the immigration task force to a cell at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Fayetteville.

Rep. Briley pleads guilty to hit-and-run charges in DUI arrest

State Rep. Rob Briley of Nashville has pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and property damage prior to leading authorities on a high-speed chase last September.
...
Briley stepped down from his chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee following his arrest, but has remained in the House.

Briley had two run-ins with Metro police prior to arrest

Briley on Friday resigned as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees all proposed changes to the state’s DUI laws. He is currently in alcohol abuse treatment at Cumberland Heights, and also sought alcohol treatment last fall.
...
“That was never something we discussed and I never saw those signs,” said Rep. Janis Sontany (D-Nashville), who, as secretary of the Judiciary Committee, shares an office suite with Briley.
...
Rep. Henry Fincher (D-Cookeville), also a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he had no firsthand knowledge that Briley was an alcoholic and that the Nashville Democrat seemed “on the wagon” the entire legislative session.

David Clark, chair of Detroit's General Retirement System, backed up Milton's account.
...
According to the police report filed Thursday by DeDan Milton...
...
Conyers "threatened to shoot (Milton) with her gun" and made "several aggressive movements" toward Milton "in a threatening manner."

Milton also reported to police that Conyers said she would "have my brothers (mess) you up."

"She ran at him," Clark told The Detroit News. "She told him she would get a gun if she had to and that she has four brothers and they would whup his a-- if she asked them."
...
...Milton said members of Conyers' staff, and others at the meeting, had to restrain her.
...
Clark said the verbal battle started when Conyers came late to the board meeting and wanted to talk about an investment issue the trustees had already discussed.

"The comment that was made (by Milton) was, 'Can we move forward? We've already discussed this,' " Clark said. "That's what triggered everything."

He said Conyers said she could do what she wanted and called Milton foul names. Clark also said Conyers ran toward Milton and had to be restrained by other trustees.

Conyers was accused of punching a Walled Lake woman in 2006 during a bar brawl. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy's office found Conyers had acted in self-defense at a party at the Crossroads Lounge on Livernois in Detroit. Both had filed police reports.

In 2005, Valecia Moore, who said she was a friend of Conyers, filed a personal protection order against Conyers, saying that she had threatened to kill her. "There was gun shots behind my house following that conversation," Moore wrote in the report.

Waxman at the Bat

An august congressional committee — headed by one of the nation’s most persistent nuisances, Henry Waxman -- met in public session for the purpose of grandstanding and showboating.
...
So Henry Waxman read the riot act to Clemens over some testimony that, in the very prettiest legal language, would be described as “inconsistent.”
...
Twenty years from now, will anyone understand what Congress was doing investigating cheating in baseball?

Dems’ Dangerous FISA Game

The legal authority for the United States intelligence community to collect foreign intelligence — information that protects Americans from terrorist attacks and that our soldiers in harm’s way rely on to do their duty — will expire at midnight on Friday. And Democrats are perfectly willing to allow that to happen.
...
...it is grossly unfair and counterproductive to strike out against the telecoms. The telecoms acted patriotically and in good faith. Indeed, every federal appellate court to rule on the issue — including the specialized appellate court created by FISA — has held that FISA did not and could not strip the executive branch of its constitutional authority to order surveillance, without judicial participation, in order to protect the United States from foreign threats.
...
House Democrats — doing the bidding of the MoveOn.org crowd — are courting just that risk. They are playing roulette with our security for no better reason than to preserve the ability of the ACLU, CAIR, and other anti-Bush activists to press their lawsuits.
...
Barack Obama was one of 29 senators to vote against the Senate bill, aligning himself with a hard Left prepared to leave America defenseless. Hillary Clinton, who has indicated the same sympathies, was one of three senators who did not even deign to show up for the most important votes of her Senate career. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee and among the majority of 68 senators who supported the bill, must make sure, over the course of the continuing presidential campaign, that Americans understand how unfit his opponents are to protect this nation.

Video: Republicans walk out of Congress

At issue is whether Congress spends its time going on fishing expeditions against the outgoing administration or whether it deliberates over the FISA bill. The Democrats chose the former, so the Republicans under Rep. John Beohner said enough is enough and took a hike.

That House GOP Walkout

If the president does not sign the bill before Saturday, then we revert to the previous FISA law. The feds will be able to continue certain ongoing terrorist monitoring activities, but they cannot initiate new ones. (It becomes easier to start up a terror cell on Saturday.)

GOP WALKS OUT As Dems Refuse to Pass Surveillance Bill

Debacle in the House: Behind the Lantos memorial disruption

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Republican who had to call a procedural vote while the memorial was ongoing, has been vilified.

But the disruption was the result of scheduling errors and failure of the Democrats to abide by a prior agreement.
...
The Democrats finally apologized for smearing Diaz-Balart.

Not Serious

... the Democrats have been shameless in promoting the interests of the plaintiffs' bar, their biggest source of revenue. Today was a day of infamy in the House of Representatives, one of many since Nancy Pelosi and her accomplices took control of that body.

It is deeply ironic that instead of debating legislation that would protect the physical security of Americans, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership spent their time today voting to approve contempt citations against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten for failing to cooperate with their absurd "investigation" into whether the Bush administration's appointment of U.S. Attorneys was "politically motivated."

Hmm, let's see: the post of U.S. Attorney is, by definition, a political appointment. U.S. Attorneys are always, or virtually always, members of the President's party. No one has suggested that the U.S. Attorneys appointed by the Bush administration were not fully competent. Some "investigation"!

Now, here is an investigation that would actually be worth pursuing: why did Nancy Pelosi and her House leadership refuse to take up the FISA reform bill? Did they deliberately sacrifice the security of Americans to placate their far-left base? Or was there a corrupt bargain with major Democratic Party contributors, who hope to make millions by suing telecoms? Did Nancy Pelosi politicize our national security by subordinating the security interests of all Americans to the financial interests of the Democratic Party's biggest contributors?

FISA: High Noon at Midnight Friday

...it looks like the unconscionable is about to occur. I am hearing from several sources that the House is planning to recess on Friday without taking up the Senate bill. That would mean the lapse of our surveillance authority at midnight.

This is a game of roulette with our national security, spearheaded by the Democratic leadership in the House, which is following the lead of the party's two presidential contenders, Sens. Obama and Clinton. Both of them voted against the emergency authorization last summer, and Obama voted against the Senate bill on Tuesday (Clinton did not bother to vote). Make no mistake. The MoveOn.org crowd is calling the shots on that side of the aisle.

It’s Worse Than We Thought

...it turns out that House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) adjourned Congress early to rush home for her daughter’s wedding.
...
...when you are third in line for the Presidency your priorities really ought to lie with doing your public duty “to provide for the common defense.”

Iran's ambassador to Spain delivered himself of a stinging rebuke to "arrogant Westerners" who have the nerve to criticize the mullahs' practice of chopping off the hands and feet of convicted criminals. It's just the way we do things, he said, so shut up and respect us.

And in case anyone thought that they had stopped public executions because of Western protests, no, no, not at all, he said. We did it in order to deprive the arrogant Westerners of an excuse to criticize us.

I wonder when Brzezinski's going to open his latest round of high-level contacts in Tehran on behalf of presumptive president Obama

Sharpton: If Hillary’s Florida and Michigan delegates are seated, we’ll march on DNC headquarters

Black superdelegates are getting it from both sides too. Obama’s been careful to keep himself above the fray of identity politics, but if you want to see the depths to which some of his supporters have sunk, chew on this:

[Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver] said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois had recently asked him “if it comes down to the last day and you’re the only superdelegate. … Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House? “I told him I’d think about it,” Cleaver concluded.

Hillary — By Any Means Necessary

Hillary herself was once a democratic supremacist. After the disputed 2000 election, she supported abolishing the Electoral College. “I believe strongly that in a democracy,” she said, “we should respect the will of the people.” At least until that strong belief ran up against her pursuit of a presidential nomination.

Toledo and Berkeley spit on our troops

I linked the raw form of this video yesterday. It’s the Berkeley Code Pinkos blocking the door to the USMC recruiting station while the police stand aside and do nothing about it. The RNCC has taken that video and turned it into a suitably outraged campaign ad. ...

Bingaman just blocked Semper Fi. DeMint offered Semper Fi as a second degree to Bingaman’s amendment that was first in line to the Indian Health Care bill (this would ensure that Semper Fi was the first vote today). Instead of voting to support the Marines, Bingaman just withdrew his amendment so no Democrats would have to decide between Marines and Code Pink.

... If you’re interested in contacting Sen. Bingaman, here’s how.
...
Tollfree in NM: (800) 443-8658

Huckabee: I won’t have to take acting lessons to endorse McCain

Huck's Latest Conspiracy: Club For Growth Has It Out For Me

This is starting to get weird.

Huck's hatred for Romney is total. It makes you wonder if he screams out, "Mitt Romney!" in his sleep?

The most anti-conservative rhetoric against conservative talk radio these days is coming from supposedly free-market conservatives. It's disgusting.
...
These trash-talking GOP politicians and pundits had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their "ego and power" to help kill Hillary Clinton's massive government health care takeover in 1994. They had no problem when conservative talk-radio hosts used their "ego and power" to galvanize support for the Republican revolution, two Bush presidential campaigns and the war in Iraq.

In major metropolitan U.S. cities, conservative talk radio offers rare relief from liberal orthodoxy — and local talk show hosts have spearheaded effective activism.
...
The Republican talk-radio bashers did start having problems when many national hosts harnessed popular grassroots opposition to help kill last year's Bush/McCain/Kennedy illegal alien amnesty bill. GOP Rep. Lindsey Graham dismissed them as "loud folks."

In other words: They were making a difference.

Be My Political Valentine

... from the Religion of Peace

Position Wanted

Seeking challenging, fast-paced thought leadership position in major Western industrial phallocracy. I have experience in a number of positions, including chapters 1-6 of the Kama Sutra, and an established record of speaking angry truth to theocratic power through edgy PostModern Riot Grrrrl punk feminism, which I am happy to disavow at your request.

Will You Be My Vagina-tine?

Usurped in 1998 by Eve Ensler and her vagina warriors -- conscripts to Ensler's blockbuster play ``The Vagina Monologues'' -- Feb. 14 is now called ``V-Day.'' That stands for violence, victory and vaginas -- not exactly a compelling prompt to uncork the Veuve Clicquot.
...
For anyone left on the planet who doesn't know what the monologues are, they're a series of soliloquies in which characters wax indelicately about their delicates. Subjects include rape, incest, domestic battery, genital mutilation, lesbianism and, shall we say, self-discovery.
...
Apparently, women around the globe were amazed and delighted to learn that other people had one, too!
...
Last month, V-warriors merged with anti-warriors in the peace march on Washington, where Ensler joined such anti-war luminaries as Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon. Clarifying her agenda, Ensler said in a statement:

``We are saying that if a government supports the use of force, weapons, violence as a method of control and dominance, this models and gives license to the same kind of behavior at home.''

Deconstructing Ensler's free-associative proclamation, we see that using force in war to control and dominate the enemy leads inevitably to patriarchal violence against women at home. That's quite a leap of logic.

Nothing says 'empowerment' for women like the predatory rape of a 16 year old girl by a women her mother's age.

Enemies: A Love Story

Linda Quiquivix (pronounced KEE-kee-vicks) is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who writes for the Daily Tar Heel, a student newspaper. Last week she penned an extraordinary column titled "Know This, Future Ex-Boyfriends of Mine":

Friends who know me weren't surprised to learn that my Zionist boyfriend and I broke up last summer shortly after Israel began dropping bombs on Lebanese children. But the friends who really knew me were surprised to learn that I had even dated a Zionist to begin with.

In my defense, I thought he was just Jewish when it all began--a progressive one who was white but had tendencies for black supremacy.

It was awfully open-minded of Miss Quiquivix not to disqualify him for being "just Jewish." No doubt some of her best friends are Jewish. But her description of him as "white but [with] tendencies for black supremacy" is a head-scratcher. If someone black had "tendencies for white supremacy," most people would view him with pity, perhaps mixed with contempt. Yet to hear Miss Quiquivix tell it, her ex's tendency to see himself as belonging to an inferior race was an attraction.

Even so, there was trouble in paradise:

Politically, we aligned well, so I figured that he'd automatically agree with my stance on Israel-Palestine. . . .

But my new progressive boyfriend, who was supposed to help me save the world, would stop short at any criticism of the Israeli government's racist, oppressive policies.

He was supposed to help her save the world? We've heard of rushing into a commitment, but this is ridiculous! Shouldn't they have taken some time to get to know each other first? Indeed they should have, Miss Quiquivix seems to acknowledge:

What's worse, he would sometimes defend [Israel] by saying things like that the land was up for grabs because the Palestinians never had an official state to begin with.

Man, you really think you know your white Jewish boyfriend with tendencies for black supremacy.

It quickly became obvious that, just the same, he didn't know his brown girlfriend with tendencies for anarchism well either. It was probably the anarchism that threw him off the most. I mean, he knew I was brown.

I think. I'm pretty sure it came up in conversation at least once. Like when I told him about the time the Israeli airport police racially profiled me and asked me to strip down to my underwear.

But it's very possible that "strip down to my underwear" was all he took away from that story.

Men! Don't they realize women are more than sex objects? Yet it's very possible that Miss Quiquivix is engaging in what psychologists call "projection." She goes on:

It must have been difficult to date me. My apologies. But whatever. Politics take precedence over penis.

That last sentence expresses one of the most brutish sentiments we've ever encountered in a respectable publication. It also points to a sexual double standard. If a male student at a major university wrote in the school paper that "politics take precedence over ___" (the next word would likely be vulgar rather than clinical, so we'll leave it to your imagination), he'd be run off campus for creating a hostile environment. Yet even if it is tolerable for women to objectify men by reducing us to our genital organs, it certainly isn't ladylike.

Miss Quiquivix continues:

Dating me, and all of the ideology that comes with the territory, was supposed to enlighten him, but I think it might have had the opposite effect. At times I thought he was coming around, but he'd go do stuff like hang the Israeli flag--and over his bed of all places.

We haven't heard the gent's side of the story and are hoping the Daily Tar Heel will commission a rebuttal from him. But based on Miss Quiquivix's account, we'd say the relationship suffered as a result of her unrealistic expectations. It's hard to imagine how she could "enlighten" someone if he had so little self-regard that he would "automatically agree" with her, as she also expected.

It's equally difficult to escape the conclusion that this relationship simply wasn't meant to be. These two had serious issues that they would have had to work out before even considering marriage, much less a commitment to "save the world" together.

And yet. Call us a sentimental old fool, but we still have hope for Miss Quiquivix. All her hostility toward men, and her in-your-face ideological zeal, seems like a self-protective front. Maybe one day the right man will come along--someone who makes her feel secure and good about herself, who shows her that it can be safe to allow herself to be vulnerable.

She'd just better hope he doesn't Google her first.

Teens Unremorseful After Stealing From Girl Scout

...a 17-year-old girl in a hot-pink sweatshirt approached Smith outside of a Winn-Dixie supermarket...
...
...the teen snatched an envelope containing about $167 off of Smith's table, hopped into another teen's car and drove away.
...
Authorities said they caught up with the 17-year-old girl Thursday and pulled her out of class at Park Vista High School, where she allegedly confessed to the crime, WPBF reported. Investigators said the girl's female accomplice, another a Park Vista student, also confessed.
...
Smith's mother, Charlene Rubenstrunk, told WPBF that the girls returned to the store Thursday to taunt her daughter.
...
The girls, whose names are not being released because they are minors, told WPBF that they were not remorseful for the crime, and that they did it because they "needed money."
...
"We went through all that effort to get it, we got all these charges and we had to give the money back. I'm kind of pissed," one of the girls told WPBF.

The other girl told WPBF that she was upset because police found them.

"I'm not sorry, I'm just pissed that I got caught," the girl said.

Adult charges coming in Girl Scout cookie case

On Tuesday Woods was arrested for violating an earlier probation for battery on an ex-boyfriend.
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The girl who drove the getaway car after an accomplice snatched money from a Girl Scout cookie stand is going to be charged as an adult, according to the state attorney's office.

Stefanie Woods appeared in juvenile court today with a lawyer and a man who described himself as an investigator.

Woods was arrested Tuesday, on her 18th birthday, for a probation violation although she has not been charged in the theft.

State attorney spokesman Mike Edmondson said prosecutors have the option of waiving misdemeanor cases to adult court when there is a prior record including a felony charge.

Getting her just desserts

The defense attorney says the media are "getting ready to crucify" his client, Stefanie Woods, and he's hired an "investigator." What, one wonders, would the investigator investigate? Does someone suspect that Gracie Smith, whose money Ms. Woods and another girl stole from Gracie's cookie stand on Jan. 30, fudged the books on how many boxes of cookies she sold?
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That lack of remorse might play well on YouTube. In the real world, it persuaded the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office to teach Ms. Woods a lesson. Because she has had two juvenile charges, one of them a felony, she can be charged in adult court with petty theft. A spokesman said the state attorney's office saw a need to "exercise some degree of control" over Ms. Woods, meaning that she has thumbed her nose at the juvenile court.

An adult charge may seem harsh, since Ms. Woods clearly is anything but an adult. But she also generates anything but sympathy.

Teen Accused Of Stealing From Girl Scout Apologizes

Woods was arrested Tuesday after her probation officer saw the teen on TV admitting to robbing Girl Scout Gracie Smith...

Caption This Gun Grabbing Mayor

Remember when the residents of New Orleans had their guns unlawfully taken from them following Hurricane Katrina?

The three were earlier in the day deported from Kuwait after authorities there doubted their claim to be Mexican nationals.
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...the emigration officials at Kuwait had found them to be suspects as they reportedly could not understand any Spanish.

General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a floral basket from Mahmoud Abbas...

The question is why is Israel’s supposed “peace partner”, and the man in whom the US and international community have placed so much stock, cosying up to a leading figure in the Axis of Evil, and the man heading the country assisting Iran and Syria with their nuclear ambitions?

Sue's Place : Where's Barack

What does it take to get African American candidates to condemn blatant anti-Semitism by “clergy” in the African American community in an election? So far, we haven’t heard from either front-runner Barack Obama [for whom Jewish groups have condemned fabricated attacks] or even from the candidate in TN who might be the “benefit target” of this flyer.

Volunteer State Hate

Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee is a rarity in Congress: a white lawmaker representing a majority-black district. First elected in 2006 to fill the vacant seat of Harold Ford Jr., Cohen faces a primary challenge this summer from a black candidate, Nikki Tinker. The Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers reports that the campaign against Cohen has gotten unusually ugly:

"Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus," blares the flier, which Cohen himself received in the mail--inducing gasps--last week.

Circulated by an African-American minister from Murfreesboro Tenn., which isn't even in Cohen's district, the literature encourages other black leaders in Memphis to "see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election."

Akers also quotes from an editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

Last summer Cohen came under attack from black ministers who challenged the congressman's support for federal hate crimes legislation to protect gay rights. The paper wrote that the "real motive" behind the ministers' attacks was revealed later by Rev. Robert Poindexter who, according to the Commercial Appeal, said of Cohen: "He's not black and he can't represent me, that's just the bottom line."

Poindexter seems to have a misconception about the nature of political representation in a democratic republic--namely, that his congressman's job is to represent him "as a black" rather than as a citizen. Yet it is this same misrepresentation that has led to deliberate efforts to draw "majority minority" districts like the one Cohen now defends.

As for the anti-Semitic flier, it is evidence of the folly of thinking that a society can practice identity politics without opening itself up to the ugly side of such politics.

Jew-hate outlier… right?

I really don’t think this is really our problem — black antisemitism via the classical “they killed Jesus” trope.
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On the other hand, this does kind of make you think. The Reverend Al Sharpton brought us the “outside interlopers” trope. The Reverend Jesse Jackson brought us “Hymietown.” Well, as I said — Senator Obama is supposed to represent a new style of black leadership.

Barack Obama and Israel

However, in one area of foreign policy that concerns millions of Americans, he does have a record and it is a particularly troubling one.
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One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates.
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Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions.
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...he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship.
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...he has assembled a body of foreign policy advisers who signal that a President Obama would likely have an approach towards Israel radically at odds with those of previous Presidents (both Republican and Democrat).
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There are literally hundreds of churches on the South Side of Chicago that Obama could have chosen from. He selected one that was headed by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Junior. The anti-Israel rants of this minister have been well chronicled.

As a Legislator, Obama Hit the Wrong Button... Six Times

...other campaign correspondents have noted how often Obama blames his staff, and throws them under the bus when mistakes are made.

Speaker at federation event slammed for calling Obama an 'anti-Semite'

Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-born Christian, has been condemned by the UJC for calling Barack Obama anti-Semitic.

"Little Fascist" To Withdraw Complaint Against Ezra Levant?

Levant is going to file an abuse of process lawsuit against Soharwardy, and that, unlike Sohardwardy's complaint, really is a recognized legal insult. He may also file against the "human rights" commission.
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I imagine that, behind the scenes, the "human rights" commission might just be begging Soharwardy to withdraw, because there is too much peril in convicting Levant on a thought crime -- the commission itself might be in jeopardy were they to take such a disgusting and illiberal step -- and yet they also can't afford to appear toothless.

They want to keep the threat of prosecuting for thought crimes without having to suffer the scrutiny of actually convicting in a very high-profile case, where the "perpetrator" is not some unsympathetic basement-dwelling troglodyte but someone who has much of the public, and all of the righteousness, on his side.

So it's best for the "human rights" commission and the mincing buffoon Soharwardy for this to just go away. At this point, they effectively win by simply shutting down the process, as they retain most if not all off their thought-crime patrolling "mandate."

Imam drops Star Chamber complaint against Ezra Levant?

Inside Syed Soharwardy's mosque

..there's an incongruity to rough men like Mohamed Elmasry and Syed Soharwardy filing human rights complaints. Elmasry has publicly declared that any adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack. When he's not egging on violence, though, his delicate sensibilities can be hurt by Maclean's magazine. Hey, terror advocates have feelings, too!

Syed Soharwardy, one of the complainants in my case, is a proponent of sharia law -- the legal system that governs Saudi Arabia, where rape victims get sentenced to the lash for their "immodesty". Soharwardy is made of stern stuff when he's telling Saudi -- and Canadian women -- their "proper" place. But he, too, has his soft side. In his case, our publication of some cartoons turned that stern task-master into a river of tears.

But that's how George Orwell said it would be; in his book 1984, he wrote of a war department called the Ministry of Peace, and a propaganda department called the Ministry of Truth. So why is it surprising that Alberta's "Human Rights Commission" actually tramples human rights like free speech, and that bigots like Elmasry and Soharwardy are not the subjects of its investigations, but rather the originators of them?

Well, in the case of Soharwardy, it appears that he himself is the subject of a human rights complaint -- for discrimination against women. There's a shocker. It was filed with the Edmonton and Ottawa offices of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Syed Soharwardy wants a "hudna"

Syed Soharwardy told the Calgary Herald editorial board that he is withdrawing his human rights complaint against me that he filed two years ago when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. (Seriously, if you haven't done so, you've really got to look at his hand-scrawled complaint here. I know dyslexic ten-year-olds with ADD who are more coherent.)
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It might be a lie -- it wouldn't be Soharwardy's first, but then again, lying to an infidel newspaper isn't immoral to someone like Soharwardy. It's called taqqiyah.
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The answer lies in another Arabic word: hudna. A hudna isn't a peace treaty. It's a temporary truce called by a Muslim warrior who's losing in battle. It's pretty easy to understand how hudnas work by watching Israel fight Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two terrorist groups lob rockets and send suicide bombers into Israel for months; then, every once in a while, Israel deploys its military and flattens Hamas and Hezbollah, who then call for a hudna. The UN intervenes, saving Hamas and Hezbollah to fight another day. That's a hudna: a tactical truce for a strategic advantage.

Soharwardy wants a hudna because he's losing badly. Not financially: he hasn't spent a penny to further the complaint against me -- that has been done courtesy of Ed Stelmach's government and the taxpayers of Alberta, to the tune of $500,000, I'd guess. Nor has Soharwardy had to spend hundreds of hours battling against me at the commission -- Alberta government employees do that for him. It's because over the past two years -- and the past month in particular -- Soharwardy has become known for what he is: an Islamofascist imam, who's trying to bring Saudi values to Canada. Though I'm being pummelled in a kangaroo court, he's being pummelled in the court of public opinion. He didn't expect it, and he hates it.

He hates that hundreds of bloggers ridicule him. He hates that my video clips, in which I describe his illiberal nature, have been viewed almost 500,000 times. He hates that his own enemies within his mosque have taken advantage of this media coverage to shine a light of scrutiny on the way he runs his mosque - from his financial irregularities, to his abusive treatment of women.
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The only epiphany he's had was that in the circus he started, he's coming across as the clown -- an angry, anti-Semitic clown who shouts down women at his own mosque.

I understand that Soharwardy has an Op-Ed in tomorrow's Herald in which he effectively admits his complaint was motivated by Saudi-style censorship, not any Canadian belief in human rights. In other words, he admits what I've alleged all along: he was hijacking a secular "human rights" commission for his radical Islamo-fascist agenda. But now he wants us all to pretend he didn't.

Well, back in the land of real laws and real rules of court, there's a tort called "abuse of process", and Soharwardy has just admitted to it.

For two years, this corrupt, radical imam has hunted me using the resources of the taxpayers of Alberta for the "thought crime" of publishing a cartoon he didn't like.

GatewayPundit : Danish Mohammad Cartoon Reprint Reunion

After the arrest yesterday of 3 radical Islamists who were plotting the assassination of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard newspapers across Europe reprinted the dreaded cartoons of Mohammad that started the rioting back in 2006.
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THIS WHOLE DANISH CARTOON CONTROVERSY WAS MADE UP BY THE "ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF DENMARK" WHO SPREAD THE FAKE CARTOONS ON THEIR TRIP TO THE MIDDLE EAST!

The leader of the group is a radical Islamist known for supporting the Anti-Western Islamist struggle!
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At least 139 people, mostly Muslims, died in the cartoon rioting. Another 823 were injured in the Mohammad cartoon riots.

Mohammed cartoon reprint: Show your solidarity

As a show of solidarity and a reminder of how cowardly American media outlets refused to stand up when it counted, take a minute to reprint your favorite Mo cartoon or link back to the blogging you did on the cartoon rage two years ago.

Hot Air retro: “Taqiyya”

Two years on after one of the most shameless and deadly Islamist scams ever devised, we find ourselves in worse shape in many ways than we were then. Dhimmitude has become a fact of life in Britain. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a woman without a country. Danish police broke up a plot to murder one of the cartoonists yesterday.
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In Canada, Ezra Levant finds himself the target of a Human Rights Commission star chamber for printing the cartoons in the Western Standard.
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“Taqiyya” shows all of the offending cartoons, something most US networks still haven’t done, as it traces the work of the now deceased Islamist liar Abu Laban, and how he turned Danish newspaper cartoons into a global jihad.

RIOTS IN DENMARK! Muslim Youths Go On Torching Rampage

"Immigrant" youths are torching cars and schools.

An elementary school was torched in the violence.

Mughniyeh Dead, Syria Blames Israel

Islamic terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, responsible for hundreds of murders, has been killed by a car bomb in Damascus

Hezbollah deputy leader was behind string of terror attacks

Mughniyah was indicted for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people, and was the subject of an arrest warrant for the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy there, in which 29 people died.

He was responsible for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA passenger jet, and the murder of a soldier in the U.S. navy. Four Hezbollah operatives hijacked the flight, travelling between Athens and Rome, to Beirut, beginning a 17-day ordeal in which the plane made two trips to Algeria. The hijackers killed U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem in Beirut.

He has been accused of a role in the bombings of U.S. Marines and French army barracks in Lebanon in 1983 that left more than 300 people dead.

Mughniyah is believed to be behind a 1983 bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut, in which 63 people lost their lives.

Islamic Jihad, a shadowy pro-Iranian group widely believed linked to Hezbollah, kidnapped dozens of Western hostages, including Americans, in Beirut in the mid 1980s at a time when Moughniyah was thought to be the group's commander. The group killed some of its captives and exchanged others for U.S. weapons to Iran in what was later known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Among the victims of Islamic Jihad was the CIA's Middle East station chief.

The Beirut Memorial

ABC: Saudis Had Mughniyeh, Let Him Go

Score: Imad Mughniyeh killed by car bomb; Update: Revenge for Hariri? Update: Israeli M.O.?

The site of the bombing: Damascus. Did the Israelis finally get him or did he outlive his usefulness to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah?
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“In January 2006, Mughniyeh is believed to have traveled with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Damascus for a meeting with Nasrallah, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Salah.”

Hezbollah terrorist leader Imad Mugniyah killed in Syria

The method here matches the Israeli method in taking out a Hamas operative in 2004, and the links between Hezbollah and AQ aren’t quite as tenuous as I suggested. They were mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, in fact.

He’s not quite Osama Bin Laden... But he almost is

Mughniyeh had been in hiding for years and had undergone several rounds of plastic surgery to disguise his appearance. In recent years, he established links with Osama bin Laden despite the Sunni-Shia heritage of their respective terror groups.

More Background on Mughniyeh

Most recently, Mughniyeh's name surfaced as the facilitator for a shipment of 50-tons of Iranian arms the Palestinian Authority ordered, but which the Israeli military intercepted in the Red Sea. Janes Intelligence Review reported that Israeli military intelligence analysts still consider Mughniyeh to be the mastermind of the World Trade Centre attacks.

As Important as Who was Killed is Where

I'm wondering whether Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) or Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) still believe that their private consultations with Syrian President Bashar al-Asad were successful, especially given that the Syrian president had, apparently, continued to give one of the world's most notorious terrorists free passage and haven inside Syria.

The “Navy diver” Murdered in 1985 by Imad Mughniyeh …

...has a name, and it is Robert Dean Stethem. R.I.P., not forgotten – although he’s unmentioned in today’s Associated Press’ story. Which, by the way, described Mughniyeh as a “militant,” a “fugitive,” a “reputed leader,” the “Iranian-backed Hezbollah's security chief,” and its “operations chief” – but never once as a “terrorist.”

Imad Mugniyah, Iran and al Qaeda

In December 2006, I wrote a piece for NRO called "Negotiate With Iran? How many Americans do they need to kill before we get the point?" It's worth repeating this history to underscore how significant Imad Mugniyah has been to a quarter-century of jihadist terror...
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In hindsight, disclosure of an Iran/Hezbollah/Qaeda partnership should have come as no surprise. In the aforementioned spring 1998 indictment, the Justice Department alleged that bin Laden had “stated privately … that Al Qaeda should put aside its differences with Shiite Muslim terrorist organizations, including the Government of Iran and its affiliated terrorist group Hezballah, to cooperate against the perceived common enemy, the United States and its allies.” Thus, the indictment explained: “Al Qaeda also forged alliances … with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

This concord, according to the 9/11 Commission’s review of U.S. intelligence files, traces back to the early 1990s. The invaluable terrorism researcher Thomas Joscelyn relates that the alliance was corroborated by testimony from a former al Qaeda member, Jamal al-Fadl (at the East African embassy-bombings trial in 2000). Bin Laden, according to al-Fadl, met at a guesthouse in Riyadh City with an emissary named Nomani, representing Iran’s mullahs. It would be mutually beneficial, they concurred, to put aside their Sunni/Shiite divide and work together against the common enemy: America and the West. Other Iranian contingents, the 9/11 Commission notes, visited al Qaeda’s headquarters in Sudan — bin Laden and his top aides having been transported there under Mohamed’s protection.

Subsequently, the Commission states (p. 61), “senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as intelligence and security.” That instruction, held at Hezbollah camps, included al Qaeda’s top military committee members and several operatives who were involved with its Kenya cells long before the 1998 embassy bombings. The deadly fallout from this collaboration becomes increasingly clear. On June 25, 1996, a bomb was detonated near the American Air Force dormitory at the Khobar Towers complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The resulting massacre claimed the lives of 19 U.S. airmen (nearly 400 other people were wounded). In this land teeming with al Qaeda operatives and supporters, Hezbollah had been conducting surveillance on the target since 1993.

In responding — with an indictment — five years later, the Bush Justice Department announced that “the Iranian government inspired, supported, and supervised members of the Saudi Hizballah. In particular, … [Hezbollah] defendants reported their surveillance activities to Iranian officials and were supported and directed in those activities by Iranian officials.” Those officials, it is clear, acted with impunity: No Iranians were ever charged for Khobar, and no meaningful U.S. action against Iran was ever taken. In the interim, it has emerged that the operation was likely carried out with al Qaeda complicity. This was the conclusion of the CIA, reported fleetingly by the 9/11 Commission (at p. 60 & n.48).

Meanwhile, according to al-Fadl (the aforementioned informant), among the top al Qaeda leaders who received instruction from Iran and Hezbollah in the early 90s was Saif al-Adel. As al Qaeda’s chief of military operations, Adel was not only a driving force behind the 1998 embassy bombings. He is, in addition, a longtime bin Laden intimate, largely responsible for al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and Yemen (where the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in October 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors), and believed to have trained some of the 9/11 hijackers.

Regarding 9/11 itself, suggestions at this point of an Iranian/Hezbollah role are sketchy but highly intriguing, while indications of Iran’s purposeful facilitation of al Qaeda are strong. As the 9/11 Commission summed up the state of play (at pp. 240-41):

[T]here is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. There also is circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of these future muscle hijackers into Iran in November 2000. Declining to draw the obvious inference, the Commission speculates that perhaps “Hezbollah was actually focusing on some other group of individuals traveling from Saudi Arabia … rather than the future hijackers.” It admits, however, that this would be “a remarkable coincidence.” Speaking of remarkable coincidences, the Commission also details at least two occasions when senior Hezbollah operatives were on the very same Iranian transit flights as the future hijackers.

Timeline of Hezbollah Violence

Mughniyah

I have long believed he was the key Iranian operative in Iraq, and his documented contacts with Zarqawi show that.

Unfit to Print?

The New York Times Web site features a video of reporter John Kifner discussing the killing this week of Imad Mugniyah, a Hezbollah honcho, in Syria. In the video, Kifner is straightforward in describing Mugniyah:

He is really a terrorist mastermind. Up to 9/11, he killed more Americans than anybody else.

The print version of the story, however--for which Kifner gets a reporting credit but not a byline--bears a rather convoluted headline,

"Bomb in Syria Kills Militant Sought as Terrorist."

It's interesting that Kifner is much more forthright in his video than the Times is in print. One could put that down to his speaking for himself and thus feeling freer. Or one could say that the Times's editors seem to view their role as seeing to it that the news is sufficiently muddled.

New York Times in a tizzy

We know that other big media like Reuters (see here) and the BBC, have long shied away from calling terrorists by their name.

But now the self-styled “Paper of Record” seems to be getting itself into a real tizzy about whether Imad Mughniyeh, the terrorist who killed more Americans than anyone else before the 9/11 attacks, who blew up elderly Holocaust survivors together with their grandchildren in the Buenos Aries Jewish center, who personally oversaw the torture of American hostages, who pioneered (for Hezbollah) the suicide bombings, culvert mines and other killing methods that have become routine in Iraqi schools and markets, can just simply be called a terrorist rather than the more benign term “militant”.

Imad who?

As Hezbollah’s official funeral of Imad Mughniyah unfolded today—Hezbollah’s leader eulogizied him over a coffin decked in Hezbollah’s flag—it is useful to recall the party’s denial of his very existence over all these many years. Mention of his name to Hezbollah officials would draw a blank stare or blanket denial.
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[Judith Palmer Harik ] spends a few embarrassing pages agonizing over this question: “Was Mughniyeh a member of Hezbollah?”

Now that Nasrallah’s eulogy has placed Mughniyah officially in the pantheon of Hezbollah’s greatest martyrs (with Abbas al-Musawi and Raghib Harb), this question looks absurd.

That it ever arose is a testament to the discipline of Hezbollah in sticking to lies that serve its interests. One of its paramount interests is concealing from scrutiny that apparatus of terror that Mughniyah spent his life building. Hiding the clandestine branch protects it from Hezbollah’s enemies, and makes it easier to sell the movement to useful idiots in the West, who insist that the movement hasn’t done any terror in years, and maybe never did any at all. They produce statements of such mind-boggling gullibility that one can easily imagine Mughniyah chuckling to himself on reading them. The “literature” is rife with claims that Mughniyah didn’t really belong to Hezbollah, or he answered to Iran, or he had his own agenda—anything to dissociate his terrorist acts from the party.

CAROLINE GLICK : Mughniyeh's true legacy

It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyeh was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future.

On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men - two Lebanese and one Syrian - were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Documents seized included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and "truck stopping points." The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.

Libero's report explained that the "truck stopping points" aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah had convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.

Video: Mughniyeh burns

...Syria’s already arrested several suspects. Their background? Palestinian.
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The Haaretz link up top also mentions the Iranian foreign minister meeting today with Assad and Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, so some sort of coordinated counterstrike isn’t far-fetched.
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The Democrats’ foreign policy experts picked some week to visit Damascus, huh?
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A Kuwaiti newspaper reports that Hizbullah terrorist chief Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car-bomb attack in Damascus on Tuesday, was in the midst of planning major terrorist attacks in moderate Arab countries when he was killed.
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How’d Iran get hold of this cellphone video?

Uno The Beagle Wins Best In Show

Global Warming Killed Loch Ness Monster

I thought Nessie was some kind of dinosaur. Wouldn't he be better suited to warm weather than cold?

Global Warming to Kill Thousands Maybe but Probably Not

The bitter cold this winter has failed to cool off the hysterical rhetoric relentlessly emitted by the global warming cult.

Trees Love CO2

GE, the same company that brings us the increasingly leftist NBC, also treats us to a commercial featuring a tree that hugs a house in gratitude because it supposedly emits less CO2 thanks to using GE's greenwashed products...
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This would be like us hugging plants for emitting less oxygen.

The Sun Also Sets

Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
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R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
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"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
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The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

Ed Rendell(D) And The Race Card

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is a Clinton guy through and through. And he's doing his best to help reverse the slow collapse of Hillary's campaign, even to the point of playing the race card against Barack Obama with a warning that some whites won't vote for the Illinois senator...
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Asserting that 5% of the Pennsylvania electorate of 2006 was racist is a way for Rendell to scare Democratic primary voters in the big contests remaining, and such appeals to fear used to be out-of-bounds as a naked play to voters' worst instincts.

Video: The untimely death of Nahoul, the Jew-hating bee

This makes two dead ‘toons in eight months, the other being Farfour, who was duly beaten to death on air by an evil Zionist agent.

Video: Assud, the Jew-eating rabbit

You know the rule: Western media only cares about homicidal Palestinian propaganda aimed at kids when it involves recognizable cartoon characters. Do we have that here? We do. Coming soon to a cable news network near you.

ABC, the Mickey Mouse Network...8/1/2007...God Bless America, Eh
Islamofascist propaganda...7/8/2007...Death Cult Kids' TV
Pali-TV : Video : Watch ... ...7/2/2007...'Mickey Mouse' Get Killed By The Jews
ABC-Disney is Mickey Mouse...5/22/2007...Profiles in Courage
Caroline B. Glick... ...5/13/2007...t is Israel's problem?
Iran's HisBullies and Hamaskateers... ...5/11/2007...
CNN is the terrorist-apologist network... ...5/10/2007...
Our Palis...5/6/2007...

“There is no military solution [in Iraq] and it is time that the Iraqis understood that.” -- Hillary Clinton

“The gains [in Iraq] have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure! The troops have succeeded. God bless them. We owe them the greatest debt of gratitude, the sacrifice, their patriotism, and for their courage, and to their families as well. This is a disaster, and we cannot perpetuate it.” -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

“I wish [Republicans] had as coherent a strategy for fighting the war on terror as they do for politicizing the war on terror.” -- Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), politicizing the war on terror

Andy McCarthy

Sen. McCain did the right thing and voted in favor of the Senate bill overhauling FISA and preserving our ability to collect intelligence against the enemy.

Sen. Obama voted against it. Mind you, the bill — which is chockablock with too many terrorist protections and thus far from perfect — passed by an overwhelming bipartisan margin, 68-29. As the Wall Street Journal's editors put it this morning:

It says something about his national security world view, or his callowness, that Mr. Obama would vote to punish private companies that even the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said had "acted in good faith." Had Senator Obama prevailed, a President Obama might well have been told "no way" when he asked private Americans to help his Administration fight terrorists. Mr. Obama also voted against the overall bill, putting him in MoveOn.org territory.

Hillary Clinton was even worse. She didn't show up to vote. This was the most important national security vote in her Senate career.
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McCain and Obama managed to get to the Hill without difficulty. Not Clinton.
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She has no excuse. The craven decision not to vote — not to be accountable — was calculated ... and this from the candidate who slammed Obama for ducking the tough votes as an Illinois legislator.

This was a simply disgraceful performance. It shows about as starkly as it can be shown that, when it comes to contest for who understands the threat we are facing and who is most fit to be trusted with responsibility for protecting American lives, there is no comparison here: McCain is so head-and-shoulders above Obama and Clinton it's hard to quantify.

“There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68.” —Hugh Hewitt

John Paul Stevens, age 87
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, age 74
Anthony Kennedy, age 71
Antonin Scalia, age 71
Stephen Breyer, age 69
David Souter, age 68

“The Presidential winner in November will probably appoint no fewer than two Supreme Court Justices. The likeliest vacancies, from an actuarial perspective, will come from the liberal wing of the Court. So a President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton has the potential to set back the prolife agenda by 30 years. It could well be a generation before a President would have another opportunity to shift the balance on the Court to the right. [John] McCain’s harshest critics argue that his judicial picks could easily be as bad as anyone tapped by Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama. This is caricature, but even if it had merit, [they] would be trading the risk that Mr. McCain picks moderates for the court for the certainty that his opponent would appoint liberals. It’s always possible Mr. McCain would make a bad Supreme Court nomination, just as Ronald Reagan picked Anthony Kennedy, who later affirmed Roe v. Wade... The conservative coalition has learned a lot about picking judges since 1987, and especially since the nomination of David Souter by another Republican President. As the Harriet Myers interlude proved, another mystery pick by Mr. McCain or any other GOP President is far less likely than it used to be...[S]ocial conservatives may decide they can’t vote for Mr. McCain for any number of reasons. What they can’t do with any credibility is claim that helping to elect a liberal President will further the causes that these conservatives claim to believe most deeply in.” -- The Wall Street Journal

“Kamikaze Republicans—those who say they’ll never vote for John McCain because he isn’t conservative enough—may get what they deserve. The Clintons... It isn’t necessary to love everything McCain has done to vote for him should he be the nominee. But it isn’t possible to argue that there’s no difference between McCain and Clinton (or Barack Obama), as some Republicans insist.” -- Kathleen Parker

“A wise aphorism has it that the perfect is the enemy of the good. While conservatives tilt their noses expressively in the air at the idea of John McCain’s representing a movement he votes with 85 percent of the time, Democrats offer the electorate two strong believers in the power of big government, two babes in the woods when it comes to foreign policy, two fast friends of every liberal interest from pro-choice to gay rights to let’s-kill-the-Bush-tax-cuts.” -- William Murchison

“We are a movement that believes in personal responsibility, so it’s time to take some. There are consequences to losing. Now is the time to rebuild and re-group, not whine or complain or sulk. Reagan lost many political battles along the way but never lost hope in the enduring nature of basic conservative principles. Neither should we.” -- Laura Ingraham