Monday, January 31, 2005

DenverPost.com - Controversial CU prof resigns as department chair

Remember Ward Churchill? The one who wrote that idiotic and offensive essay right after September 11, 2001, comparing the World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichman?

Funny--he titled his essay "Some People Push Back." And evidently some people have pushed back--at him, which he did not expect. I could have told him--what goes around, comes around. The latest word is that he's out as Chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department at Colorado U.--but will continue on as a teacher.

And he gave the lamest excuse for his writing that I've ever seen a man give--essentially making a distinction without a difference. He still speaks of "techno-crats of the great business empire" as if it were some dark conspiracy that somebody had to overthrow, and it didn't matter who. Even Representative Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, was unimpressed, if his spokesman's statement is any indicator.

By the way--he will still speak at Hamilton University, but this time in a room that can seat 2000 people, not 300. And apparently a bunch of people are planning to confront him and dare him to repeat his sentiments to their faces. These include many among the 9/11 families.

Can we expect to see any MSM people covering these confrontations? Nah--it wouldn't fit their worldview. They're still crowing over the spectacle of other 9/11 family members telling the 9/11 Commission what a fool the President was.

WorldNetDaily: Christians stalked on Islamic website

Are you getting this, Mr. Mayor of Jersey City? Hey, cops! Is this evidence or what?

Last time I checked, threatening in writing to kill someone was a felony in and of itself--and certainly was clear evidence of motive and desire if the target of the threat wound up dead.

Must Hossam Armanious have died in vain? Or will the cops finally stop managing the news and admit that the killers didn't do it for the money and the jewelry?

Saturday, January 29, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Smithsonian in uproar over intelligent-design article

Specifically, Richard Sternberg, managing editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a peer-reviewed journal published at the Smithsonian Institution, is in trouble with his colleagues and supervisors after he approved for publication this essay questioning key tenets of macro-evolution. He's had the chairman of the Department of Zoology call his supervisor to ask whether he's some kind of religious nut, he's locked out of his own office, and he now has to report to a known political enemy of his. As if the Smithsonian Institution has any business interfering with Dr. Stenberg's editorship of the Proceedings in the first place! Nor is Stenberg taking this lying down. He has complained formally to the Office of Special Counsel, claiming discrimination against him for his alleged religious views--because he'd be the first to admit that he is not firm in any religious belief, as I am.

The article at issue points out a glaring flaw in evolution: that no Darwinist has yet explained how brand-new forms come into being for natural selection even to act upon. In short, where does a dog's nose and ears come from? Essay after essay asserts that the Darwinian paradigm simply doesn't say. Stephen C. Meyer, the author of the review article, carefully weighs the evidence--he should have been a law clerk at the Supreme Court, that's how good this is--and concludes that the appearance of radically new life forms would take far more time than even the most ardent old-earth geologist is willing to stake his reputation on allowing. So if these forms did not appear by chance, because not enough time has passed, where did they come from? Answer: some intelligent Designer put them there.

And that has caused Dr. Meyer, and now Dr. Stenberg by association, to be accused, essentially, of obscurantism--the deliberate suppression of scientific truth in support of religion. But I suggest that the real obscurantists are the evolutionists--because the evidence is now against them. And that in turn means that this debate was never about evidence, scientific or any other kind. It was about the "de-mystification"--or, if you like, the de-Christianization--of society.

Before you had Darwin, you had Joseph Lagrange, who cooperated with men like Robespierre to change the calendar to one having thirty-six weeks of ten days each, a schedule that significantly reduced worker productivity, which is why Napoleon Bonaparte abandoned that calendar in 1806. Then along came Darwin, who deliberately set out to destroy Christianity by driving a permanent wedge between church and laboratory. (The Catholic Church hadn't helped themselves by their treatment of Galileo, of course.) The trouble is that Darwin proposed things that could never have happened even in billions of years--and attempts since then to "establish" the mechanisms he proposed have all been exposed as frauds. The notion that novel genes, proteins, and gross body forms can appear out of nothing and by chance is the last piece of bunco to fall. Einstein had to admit that our universe had a definite beginning (and therefore an Initiator to set it in motion). Ernst Haeckel and the concocters of Piltdown and Peking Man and Archeopteryx all turned out to be con artists. And now we see increasing evidence that the earth is young--very young. Add to it that no paleontologist has ever found an intact Fossil Column in the order stated on most high-school biology laboratory walls ("Cannibals Often Invite Devout Catholic Priests To Join Casseroles, Tuna or Quail").

And has the world so soon forgotten that even Ayn Rand once said to her then-protege (and illicit lover), Nathaniel Branden, "After all, the theory of evolution is only an hypothesis"? I quote in greater context:

With regard to science, this led to an odd kind of scientific conservatism, a suspicion of novelty, an indifference — this is only a slight exaggeration — to anything more recent than the work of Sir Isaac Newton. I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.
And I don't mean to imply that about Ayn Rand, either. She probably would have preferred the "directed panspermia" theory of Crick and Orgel to anything remotely supportive of the Bible--and the thought of an Intelligent Designer would, I am convinced, have filled her with dread.

The point here is that evolution is far less well supported than at any time since Darwin came back from his famous voyage. And when museum curators have to resort, in their defense of evolution, to such petty office politicking as we now see at the Smithsonian Institution, that's an almost sure sign of a theory about to collapse of its own weight.

UPDATE: Here is an article debunking Archaeopteryx lithographica and a host of replies, some disputing the fraud call, others clarifying certain issues that the article raises.

WorldNetDaily: Report: Saudis spread hate through U.S. mosques

That report comes from Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. You can read the full text of the report here, if you have a PDF viewer. The report gives full details on Freedom House's methods, and has an excellent foreword from none other than former CIA Director James Woolsey.

I have said repeatedly that the Koran and the Hadith repeatedly exhort their readers to kill non-Muslims. We now learn that the Saudis are authoring, publishing, and financing the spreading of an actual call to war in this country while also having their hand on the spigot. These are not wild-eyed screeds paid for by the remittances that the Saudi royal house has been paying. These have all the strength of royal edicts, coming as they do from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs.

Two things:

  1. Any doubt that we ought to move away from the Saudi oil spigot now ought to be resolved.
  2. This is war, people, by any reasonable definition whatsoever. We can't and shouldn't tolerate this.
Senators, did you get this? Do you understand now why I advocate that the Senate empanel a Select Committee on Religious Ideals and their Consequences? I would go further: we now have clear and convincing evidence with which to prosecute some of these clerics. The charge: treason.

Friday, January 28, 2005

New book says the Qur'an gives women the same rights as men

Really, does it? So says one Nimat Hafez Barazangi, according to The Cornell Chronicle. Ms. Barazangi (and I choose that honorific deliberately) is a career feminist, of course. She insists that evil patriarchical tribal chiefs and other leaders have willfully misrepresented the Koran and what it has to say about the role of women.

Haven't I heard this sort of thing before? Yes. Replace Koran with Bible and you would naturally say, "Been there, done that, so what else is new?" The gender-inclusive language "debate" strikes modern Islam, just as it struck against Christianity. And once again, just as the Christians have seen it, a new generation of women seeks to strike at the foundations of Islam with a pick-ax.

Sorry, Nimat, but it won't wash. Muhammad wrote the Koran, for cryin' out loud. (You don't really believe that the Angel Gabriel gave the Koran to Muhammad on the mountain, do you? I doubt that you believe in much of anything--but that's another topic.) Muhammad was the biggest oinker of the lot--oh, sorry, Muslims don't touch pork, do they? Here's a man who took several wives, and his last was nine years old! And you think you're going to read that man's words as plumping for women's rights??? I've got news for you: according to the Koran and the Hadith, women are property. The Koran even has a verse prescribing wife-beating in it, similar to the original "rule of thumb" so infamous in legal circles. (A man was not liable for beating his wife so long as the rod he struck her with was no wider than the judge's thumb.) Muhammad even had a few words to say--favorable--about the rape-murder of women taken prisoner in war!

But what else can I expect? So many people look for compromise, usually between secularism and religion. I have two pieces of advice, Nimat:

  1. Jesus loves you, and promises you a much better Deal--both personally and for women generally--than Muhammad ever did or meant to.
  2. Watch your back. Remember Theo van Gogh.

The Ward Churchill Essay

Here is the text of an essay written by one Ward Churchill (no relation to the House of Churchill, Dukes of Marlborough, which House also produced Sir Winston) and originally published Jumada t'Tania 23, 1422 AH, or September 12, 2001--the day after the Manhattan Incident. I missed this when it first appeared--and so did everyone else in the country. That we're hearing about it now is due in large measure to Andrew Sullivan and The Belgravia Dispatch--but also to the students at Hamilton College in New York, who manifestly do not want this man to speak on their campus. (Rush Limbaugh said that he should speak, and get himself into more hot water!)

Read this essay, and then try to picture this: Ward Churchill is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado. But then scroll to the bottom of the page, and you will finally know where this man is coming from: he's a Cherokee who once defended another "Native American" who led a modern-day uprising.

I won't bother analyzing this screed in detail. Gregory at Belgravia has already done a masterful job. I will, however, point out one thing that Rush Limbaugh noticed: Prof. Churchill alleges that the hashshasheen who knocked over the WTC towers were Iraqi combat teams, who carried out the strike in retaliation for an alleged bombing campaign that cost the lives of half a million Iraqi children. This is the first time that anyone on the left has even admitted the possibility that Iraq might have had a hand in the Manhattan Incident. Of course, Churchill's essay is badly flawed on the facts: fifteen of the nineteen were Saudi, not Iraqi--and that story about half a million Iraqi children has zero outside corroboration. His charge is that those Iraqi kids died because our Air Force and Navy bombed Iraqi water-treatment and sewage facilities--but why we haven't heard a peep about that during the intervening Clinton years, that screed doesn't say. And if Saddam Hussein was responsible, then why didn't he brag about it--and did he really think he'd get away with it?

To paraphrase Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High, I don't have a lot of patience with this "it's all our fault" stuff. We're in a war--a shooting war--a war we didn't start. And the roots of that war are not in any fictitious bombing raid supposed to have cost the lives of half a million children. They are in the foundational documents of a religion born in warfare and dedicated to the hatred--and designation as sub-human--of all but the most fanatical followers of the pan-Arab nationalism that Islam actually is. We've got to fight it, and we've got to be clear-headed while we're doing it. And while we're at it, we need to think twice about the kinds of universities that we send our children to, the kinds of departments they create, and the kinds of people they hire.

Woman Hospitalized From Botched Abortion Dies From Complications

From LifeNews.com (Hat Tip: Steve Ertelt, author of this article and head of LifeNews.com, who used to be a regular correspondent of mine and still sends me his e-mail updates. Thanks, Steve.)

Let's see--a woman has to go to the hospital after an abortion--not done in a hospital setting--goes sour. Now she's dead. And who operates that abortion mill? George Tiller--and this is the fourth such case out of his mill in thirteen months.

I have heard about George Tiller, off and on, for years. He does late-term abortions, and has a history of abortions going sour that goes way, way back. This case frankly stinks, and the stink is of gross medical incompetence, not just by Dr. Tiller but by everyone on his staff. Here's the 911 transcript! Here are some excerpts:

TXT: CP BEING VERY EVASIVE, PUT ON HOLD

TXT: CP IS [name and phone number withheld]
TXT: CP REFUSED TO GIVE ANY INFORMATION, JUST SAYING NEED EMS, CONFIRMED THAT PD IS NOT NEEDED
TXT: EMS ENTER THE REAR OF THE STRUCTURE OFF [street name withheld]
Come in by the back way? Oh, yeah--it might be embarrassing to see a big ol' ambulance with its flashing lights in front of your "safe and legal" abortion mill.

I have withheld the information, primarily because I don't have any mandate for encouraging people to call some abortion mill and rag on them. If you want to rag on someone, rag on your United States Senators and Representative--or if you're in Kansas, rag on your State Senator(s) and assembly members--not to mention your State's governor.

But George Tiller is not the only one. During my medical training, I saw lots of women--too many to count--brought into Saint Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, TX and typically landing in intensive care and requiring the consultation of the crack team of lung specialists with whom I was taking an elective at the time. This sort of thing happens all the time! Why? Because abortion is an inherently dangerous procedure. Many hospitals won't allow abortions on their premises, to be sure--but that didn't strike me as being the case when I saw all those women in that ICU.

At least fifty percent of the patients who enter an abortion clinic don't come out alive--and now, it would appear, it's a lot more than that. To any woman who thinks she "just can't have this baby," I say this: Is it really worth your life not to have the baby anyway? How safe is abortion, even for you? Besides--whatever mistake you've made, sometimes the cover-up is worse--not merely more reprehensible but positively dangerous to your life and health--than the original mistake. You should call The Doctor and Lawyer Who already gave His life for you. He's always standing by--and He doesn't even need operators as you know them.

And to George Tiller: What you did here is worse than therapeutic misadventure. This is manslaughter--or rather, woman-slaughter--laying aside the deaths of all those babies at your hands. Repent, Dr. Tiller. Repent, repent, repent.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch: The CBS Bogus-Memo Affair

(Hat Tip: RatherBiased.com)

Ross Mackenzie has a piece yesterday (January 27) that concurs with my analysis of the Thornburgh-Boccardi Report. Mackenzie picks up on the same things that I spotted earlier: that even if you don't grant that Dan Rather and his team were deliberately managing the news, you have to find that they were careless, overzealous by several orders of magnitude, used the worst possible sources, and in general crossed a lot of lines that you do not cross if you want people to take you seriously as a journalist. And those are just the things that Thornburgh and Boccardi specifically laid to CBS' charge.

But Mackenzie then rounds on Thornburgh and Boccardi, and very specifically, too, for letting Dan Rather and his team off far too easily. Dan Rather comes in for the worst criticism, as is only fair. Specifically, he has always cultivated the image of a reporter, not a mere news reader. So which is he? He can't have it both ways.

To put that into perspective, I lived and worked in Houston, Texas for six of the eight Reagan years. I talked to those who remembered Dan Rather from his days at KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate, and the day he reported on Hurricane Carla and made a point of having himself filmed clinging to a tree for dear life. That, in fact, is how he got noticed and "went national," as Houston's residents at the time still remembered. This is the man who told Thornburgh and Boccardi that he was "distracted" by the unusually heavy hurricane season of 2004? I'd have thought that hurricanes would be old hat to him--been there, done that, got the shards of bark clinging to his shirt to prove it.

Nor does Mackenzie limit himself to the Killian Memoranda. He quotes a CBS staffer as saying that Dan Rather would have been all over John Kerry's war record, had anything comparable to the Killian Memoranda surfaced about him. And then Mackenzie asks, quite reasonably: Oh, yeah??? But I need not comment on that one--not after John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi did such a four-oh job (and after all, they were there; I wasn't).

So where is Mackenzie's analysis incomplete? Maybe in just this wise: that Dan Rather is not the only one, and neither is CBS.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Judgment awarded in abortion-breast cancer case

At issue: a girl, fifteen years old at the time, underwent an abortion and found out only later--no thanks to the abortion mill operators--that abortion has a link to breast cancer. The clinic, in the end, blinked rather than go to trial over the medical-literary evidence, even though the case was to be tried in ultra-liberal Multnomah County, OR.

In other abortion-related news, a Georgia legislator introduced a bill flatly prohibiting abortion in his State. His Democratic colleagues screamed that the measure was "unconstitutional" and asked, in effect, "What's the fuss?" Let me answer that: the fuss is that somebody wants Roe v. Wade overturned. Norma McCorvey, once known as "Jane Roe", has asked for a reconsideration of her case. A measure like this is bound to be a cause of action that will go up through the Eleventh Circuit and land in the mail room at the Supreme Court. Between those two filings, the Court would really have to stretch a point in order to deny certiorari. Which means that we're about to get a re-hearing of the whole notion that the federal courts can tell the States what they may or may not permit or forbid in this area.

Long overdue? Most certainly. And if you wonder whether the timing is right, remember that actions like these take years to work their way up the federal court food chain. By then, Bush is bound to make a few Supreme Court nominations. Stay tuned...

WorldNetDaily: Battle over illegals: Bush vs. Congress

Specifically, while Bush is pushing his rapidly-going-nowhere AgJOBS plan, Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is proposing a measure of his own: the REAL-ID Act. It addresses all the worst holes in border security, including driver's licenses--going so far, in fact, as to set a minimum federal standard for driver's licenses and rule that any State's license that doesn't meet the standard shall be invalid for any federal purpose.

Note to all you who are understandably concerned about federalism and States' rights and such: Mr. Sensenbrenner does not propose to tell any State Division of Motor Vehicles (or equivalent) what to do. He just says that if they don't conform to a minimum standard--well, the State can settle with such a sub-standard driver's license if they want, but the federal government will not.

Mr. Sensenbrenner does make one important provision, and I'd say that the federal government has a compelling interest in making it: that no person, who is not a permanent resident of the United States, shall ever receive a driver's license that shall expire later than his visa. Significantly, Mohammed Atta, leader of the hashshasheen of 22 Jumada t'Tania ("September 11"), held a driver's license with a six-year outdate while carrying a six-month visa.

In view of the discovery in Texas of some discarded clothing that looks as though it belonged to a terrorist (and no, I don't think he disappeared in the Rapture!), I don't see how the ACLU or anyone else can reasonably oppose this measure. And I remind everyone that New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission has a very tough six-point system of proof of age, identity, and address that would easily meet the Sensenbrenner standard. (Give Jim McGreevey credit for some things, especially for his motor-vehicle reforms and for straightening out the EZPass mess! Too bad he had to ruin everything with his various corrupt practices--but that's water under the bridge.)

NewsMax.com: The ADL Calls Ted Turner a Recidivist

Webster defines recidivism as "a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior"--always something wrong and usually criminal. No, I'm sure that Abe Foxman at the Anti-defamation League doesn't mean to say that Ted Turner is a crook. But, Foxman says, he and his group asked Ted Turner nicely not to say such things as he said, Ted Turner said that it wouldn't happen again, and then it just did!

I congratulate you, Abe. I didn't think you had it in you to criticize a fellow liberal--especially when you let Bill Clinton's FBI crib from your own notes before the Y2K non-event when they put together their report alleging all manner of terrorist activity from Christian quarters.

But in all fairness to you, as NewsMax.com makes clear, you really didn't appreciate it when Ted Turner made stupid remarks about Jews and Nazis, not once but twice, during the Clinton years. You said so, and I remember that he apologized, and lo and behold, he did it a third time. Don't you hate it when that happens?

The trouble is that you have a chequered record yourself. If I were you, I'd remember the proverb about hyalo-economics and petroballistics--excuse me, that's my education in ancient Greek talking. I meant to say "glass houses" and "stone-throwing."

BreakPoint | Murder in Jersey City

Chuck Colson joins Joseph L. Farah and lays it on the line: Hossam Armanious and his family died by a terrorist murder, and not a common garden-variety robbery.

Neither man, for reasons that each will have to explain on his own someday, is willing to address the most glaring breach of police procedure: that the Jersey City police have willfully misrepresented to the community the issue of whether someone took money and/or valuables from the Armanious house. While both men decry the "desperate" search for a motive other than the fanatical for these murders, and Chuck Colson remembers that Hossan's cousins stated that the money and jewelry were still there when they (the cousins) went to fetch Hossan's legal papers, neither man remembers that on Monday the cops were saying that the jewelry had been cleaned out and that someone had turned out the pockets of the victims and swiped the petty cash not just from the house but also from the clothes on the victims' backs.

Now in the first place, I never heard of a robbery-homicide in which the perp stayed behind long enough to rifle the victims' pockets and wallet and purse after they were dead. Nor have I ever heard of the perps of a robbery-homicide taking the time to bind and gag and stab their victims. What will the Jersey City cops say next? That robbers sought to make it look like a terrorist murder so that the local pawnbroker wouldn't question their showing up with a bunch of jewelry?

And in the second place, the Armanious extended family said that the money and the jewelry were on the scene when they arrived! So what happened to it? I'd hate to think that the Jersey City Police Department has a bunch of bad cops on its force who decided to help themselves to the booty--and turning out the pockets was just a bit thick, if that happened.

I think that money and jewelry are going to sit and moulder on some forgotten shelf of a precinct evidence room. I know how the system works. When you want to cover something up, you put it in a place where someone will never find it. Sometimes I wonder how the cops find half the evidence that they are supposed to produce in court--and what happens to evidence when no trial takes place? I shudder to think of so many people's personal possessions locked away as "evidence" in a case gone cold, that the cops don't even want to solve.

I have written already to Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ)--who, by the way, wants to be our next Governor. If you, like me, are a New Jersey resident, I urge you to do the same. Tell him that the FBI needs to take over the Armanious investigation and treat it as a terrorist murder. Ask him whether he realizes that terrorism has struck home in his State, and in a very ugly fashion, and what he's going to do about it. Make this an issue in the upcoming Governor's race, and let him know you plan to do it.

And while you're at it, suggest that the Senate empanel a Select Committee on Religious Ideals and their Consequences, so that the Senate can re-examine, in public hearings, whether Islam has forfeited the protections that James Madison sought to enshrine in the Constitution. I'll tell you this: neither Madison nor Thomas Jefferson would have dreamt of anything like Islam being a significant presence in this country--and Jefferson would have recoiled in horror at the thought of citizens killing fellow citizens in support of the fundamental tenets of any faith. And that is exactly what Islam demands.

What shall we say of any faith when adherence to its fundamental tenets blackens its reputation? (I could also say that about political parties, but that's another topic.)

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Swiftvet author wants Kerry's Senate seat

And Jerome Corsi, the second-named author of Unfit for Command, is going to establish residency in Massachusetts for that specific purpose.

Naturally the Democratic chairman in Massachusetts is steamed. "Carpetbagger!", yet. Hypocrite! What have you to say about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York?

Actually, Corsi is an even longer shot because, unlike Hillary, he does not go in at the invitation of the Massachusetts GOP machine--er, chapter. The Republican Parties in New England and the Mid-Atlantic will never amount to a hill of beans until the power of the RINO machines in those States is smashed. I have watched the RINO machine here in New Jersey lose election after election that was very promising, because they will not tolerate conservative candidates even when those candidates win the primaries. Bret Schundler (governor, 2001) and Doug Forrester (Senator, 2002) each lost his respective race when the RINO machine sat on its collective hands after the primaries. Christine Todd Whitman won in 1993, and turned out to be the worst administrator I have ever seen.

Blame the Todd and Whitman families for these fiascos, if you like--and if you live in New Jersey, you know what I'm talking about. But Massachusetts, what's your excuse for the spectacle of Ted Kennedy hanging on year after year, and for losing Massachusetts' other Senate seat first to Paul Tsongas and then to John Kerry? Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, not to mention the martyrs of the Boston Massacre, must be spinning in their graves.

Of all the candidates I've seen so far, Jerome Corsi would certainly be the strongest--if the Republicans had come close to carrying Massachusetts. I have to admire him, though: he's aiming at vindication by telling his side of the story directly to the people of Massachusetts, and also bearding the lion right in his den. But I hope he has his Personal Umbrella--and life--insurance policies paid up before he faces the full rage of the Kennedy machine.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Muslim Pilgrims Urged to Shun 'Islamic' Terror

Specifically, a Saudi cleric told pilgrims at Mecca not to follow the lead of men like Osama bin Laden and his followers.

Saudi Arabia has a problem. For decades they have paid remittances to Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Now a remittance is money you pay somebody to get lost, or to leave you alone. The trouble is that Osama bin Laden and his pals are pocketing the remittances and are neither getting lost nor leaving the Saudi royal family alone. So now I have to ask the Saudi royal family: How do you like being targets? Not very well, apparently, or they wouldn't bother sending someone to address a bunch of people in Mecca to tell them not to play with Osama.

But this brings us to the bigger trouble: Osama and his buddies are the ones reading the Koran correctly, not the Saudi royal family or their sympathetic clerics. The Saudis have just proposed to take scissors to the Koran--but they can never, never admit that. And our problem is that when people read the Koran consistently, and act on it, that puts them at war with us--pure and simple. (And if they deny reading the Koran consistently, how are we to believe them? The Koran says that it's OK to lie to an infldel in order to further the holy war that every Muslim is exhorted to wage!)

We come down to the same problem, don't we? The only advice, then, that I can offer to any Muslim is this: Your entire religion is full of contradictions--and when you apply the Koran to untangle the contradictions, you end up with direct orders to kill the rest of us who are not Muslim. If that's what you want, then understand that we will defend ourselves. But if it isn't what you want--then I'd say you need to take a second look at the Koran, and then have a look at the Bible.

NewsMax.com: Howard Dean as DNC Chair?

The immediate issue is that the Democratic governors' caucus tried to stop Dean, or at least to split the chairmanship between administrative duties and public relations. Then they gave that up--when they realized that they didn't have the votes for that. All this would seem to show that Howard Dean is going to be the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee--to the consternation, and even the fear and loathing, of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Behold the factional warfare that is just as bad for the Democrats, in its own way, as their rallying around either the Clintons or the Deaniacs. The Clintons have shown little talent for anything save hypocrisy. Howard Dean is much less a hypocrite and much more brazen--and what he's brazen about is support of European-style socialism, citizen disarmament, and de-Christianization. In Revolutionary France, he'd be Citizen Marat, or perhaps Citizen Robespierre--if he had the moxie.

And look at the people with whom Dean is surrounding himself: Kerry people. That might stand the Democrats in good stead--if they'd won last time. They lost. Rush Limbaugh has noticed this before: every time you lose, your stock in the Democratic Party rises higher. That is not the way to build winners, or a winning team.

The Barnabas Fund Reports on the Armanious Murders

(Hat Tip: Crosswalk.com.)

In this article you see most of what has already come out about the murders of Hossam Armanious and his family in the week of January 12-16, 2005 in Jersey City, NJ. It doesn't mention the Jihad Watch finding that the Armanious family had reached out to local Muslims, some of whom might have lied to gain their confidence and plotted the murder. But it does mention the key inconsistency in reports about the case:

  • The Jersey City cops said that no money or jewelry was to be found anywhere in the house, and Hossam's wallet and pockets had been turned inside out, all of which, they say, points to robbery.
  • Family members who collected Hossam Armanious' papers said that the money and the jewelry were still in the house, and nothing was missing.
Sportsfans, somebody's lying. I don't like to think it's Jersey City's finest, but that's how it looks.

Now I would advise those in the Coptic community who are calling for revenge to remember what the Lord said about the province of revenge being exclusively His, and the verse about subjecting ourselves to those in authority. But when the local authorities don't want to investigate the case properly, then somebody should. Frankly I think this is now a matter for the FBI. It is also a matter for the United States Senate--though knowing the political leanings and motivations of the New Jersey delegation to the Senate, I don't look with much hope to that quarter. But I would very much like to know whether Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ) or Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) care that four of their constituents died from a terrorist murder.

NewsMax.com: The Boxer Rebellion Continues

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Late Edition that she said that Condi Rice was a liar once in committee, and she'll say it again on the floor of the Senate. And in reply to White House Press Secretary Andy Card, who said that her remarks were petty, she said:
Even though Andy Card would like me to go away, I'm not going to go away.
And even though Barbara Boxer would have liked George W. Bush to go away, he won't go away, either--and neither will Dr. Rice.

She also repeated the now-debunked claim that twenty-five percent of the KIA's in Iraq were Californians.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Dream on, Leslie Moonves!

So says TV Guide, long considered the definitive organ for behind-the-scenes chatter about TV. Specifically, Jeff Zucker, Leslie Moonves' counterpart at NBC, told the Television Critics' Association that his network has already started talking to Katie Couric about her next contract--presumably in the same interview in which Mr. Zucker told the TCA that he "couldn't believe" that CBS News would do anything as stupid as the Killian Memoranda segment, considering the rather (pardon the pun) thin sourcing of the memos. The buzz at TV Guide is that NBC will simply not allow CBS to unhook Katie Couric. She already pulls down $16 million a year and will likely get a big raise. (Hat Tip: RatherBiased.com, or rather a reader there who left the link to this article in a comment on another article in the RatherBiased news blog.)

Two things:

  1. I always did think that CBS were out of their minds to talk about signing Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer to do the evening news. These two are morning hostesses, and each one has had a hand in turning her respective morning show into something that plainly de-emphasizes news. (Even Fox and Friends, the Fox News Channel equivalent, at least tries to stick to subject matter related to the news, with their choice of interviews, which Today, Good Morning America, and The CBS Morning Show do not do.) Either woman would have been woefully out-of-place in the evening slot--and Leslie Moonves' rumored plan (if it is a plan--I'd say that all the breath-bating about that is simply the equivalent of asking what Moonves thinks he's doing) to turn the Evening News into an Evening Show won't wash, either. And now it looks as though neither woman will take the gig anyway.
  2. The salaries that people pull down for doing the news--or playing sports, or acting in a movie, or whatever--are outrageous. Even the President doesn't get paid that amount of money--and in fact Bill Clinton would have given his eyeteeth even to get graft that would amount to as much as Katie Couric gets "legitimately." Why do we continue to support this entertainment establishment? What if NBC put on the Today show and nobody bothered to watch anymore?
Today, Norman Mailer, writing in Parade, says that TV ads should go, and people should pay directly for TV. How much does anyone suppose that Katie Couric would make if Today were forced to go to pay-per-view with no commercial interruptions? Nor would this be as technically difficult as you might think. The cable providers could easily come up with several tiers of flat-fee viewership plans, and negotiate with program content providers--including all the traditional networks--for deals to pay them up-front with revenues derived from residential subscriptions. With the new digital-cable techniques, the cable guys could easily track what you're watching, and that in turn would determine what they'd be willing to pay the networks for any particular program at any particular time of day. In fact, they could offer you a smorgasbord of first-string channels and let you pick and choose which channels you are willing to pay for, and block the rest--thus putting all channels on the same footing as Home Box Office and Showtime. In this kind of format, I am convinced that Fox News Channel would blow the networks out of the water for good--because Fox News, together with the two C-SPAN's, The Weather Channel, and maybe a new type of all-local channel, would be all you'd need.

And Katie Couric? Let her compete with "Adrienne," the semi-regular on the Home Shopping Network who hawks Signature Club A cosmetic products for women--and I think "Adrienne" manages to have better camera presence, anyway, because at least she's honest about what she's doing.

(The above is not intended as a commercial endorsement of Signature Club A or the Home Shopping Network. Which is to say, they didn't pay me to say any of the above. Furthermore, the views expressed on this blog are my own, and no one else's.)

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Elite Iranian agent arrested in Iraq

And according to WorldNetDaily. he had a $150.000 payroll on him. Tsk, tsk. Sloppy tradecraft--almost as sloppy as when Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the J-3 of Al-Qaeda, got caught literally with his pants down and with a laptop computer with passwords stored in readily accessible and readable files.

And to think it happened shortly after we had this from MEMRI (the confession of a key Iraq insurgent, broadcast on Iraqi TV) as I last reported here--and not only I but many other bloggers as well.

Iran has at least two motives for such monkeyshines. First, they're trying to further the spread of Islam. And second, they've itched to get that territory back ever since Alexander the Great took it away from them, after Cyrus the Great, and his uncle and chief lieutenant Cyaxares or "Darius the Mede," captured it from Nebuchadnezzar's grandson Belshazzar. [Daniel 5] The Kingdom of the Parthians, which inherited the core territory of the Persian Empire, had to sign a peace treaty with Sulla the Happy that demarked their sphere of influence at the Euphrates River. The modern Iranians are the modern heirs to the Kingdom of the Parthians, Darius III, Cyrus, and all the rest of them. And they've never given up on regaining control of what was once the core territory of the Babylonian Empire.

I'll say it again: Bush and his administration need to understand what we're fighting, and how back the territorial and ideological ambitions go. And all you anti-war peaceniks out there have got some major 'splainin' to do.

Newsday, Which Is More Important?

The Hat Tip of the Day goes to Little Green Footballs for their summary of this article, which appeared yesterday in Newsday (New York). Because this is the third time that a story has come out of Jersey City about Muslims plotting, executing, or cheering a terrorist attack either in Jersey City or in neighboring New York, Newsday ought to be ashamed of itself for consistently missing what's really important.

They focus on anti-Muslim sentiment in Jersey City, and have a totally one-sided set of interviews from Muslim leaders and selected Muslim respondents. All of them say that they are suffering unfairly from guilt-by-association--first with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who planned the first World Trade Center attack; then with Mohammed Atta and his crew of hashshasheen (latter-day Assassins) who brought down the World Trade Center more than four years ago, and now with the still-at-large murders of Hossam Armanious and his family.

This case is already over a week old. Just one day of research on the Web would definitively identify incriminating passages in the Koran and the Hadith that say that Islam has everything to do with all three acts. In the case of the Armanious murders, the specific motives are already three in number:

  1. Hossam Armanious posted some comments in an Internet chat space that are unflattering to Islam.
  2. Hossam Armanious' cousin worked as a translator for the prosecution of Lynne Stewart, Rahman's lawyer who went beyond client advocacy and became his go-between to other members of his terrorist cell. And finally:
  3. from a family friend we now learn that the Armanious family had reached out to Muslims and attempted to win them to Christ. Perhaps a number of such Muslims only pretended to be converted long enough to gain entry into the Armanious house and carry out the killings--which, BTW, bear all the hallmarks of a ritual execution.
With regard to that last: are the Jersey City cops even looking for the last few people to whom the Armanious family reached out? Inquiring minds, concerned for national security, want to know.

"Fight and slay the infidels wheresoever ye find them"--it couldn't be any clearer. I repeat: maybe the FBI will get on the case for keeps after Mel Gibson turns up dead--though you can be certain that he won't go in the cowardly way that Theo van Gogh went.

Friday, January 21, 2005

MEMRI Arab TV Monitor Project - Iraqi Election Broadcasts and Public Service Announcements

Now this is telling those terrorists what the world needs to make sure they understand: that civilized people repudiate their agenda and want nothing to do with their totalitarian ideas. Here's an excerpt:
An Iraqi election broadcast appeared on Al-Arabiya TV on January 2, 2005. To view the clip, visit http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=453:

An old man rounding a corner into an alleyway looks up and sees young, masked militants facing him down. A couple joins the old man. Slowly, more and more people join the old man.

Voiceover:"On January 30, we meet our destiny and our duty. We are not alone, and we are not afraid. Our strength is in our unity; together we will work and together prevail."

Those joining the man now outnumber the militants. He nods and they move forward. The militants run away.

Written on screen: "Don't worry about Iraq. We are its people. We will allow no one to deprive us of our rights. For the building of Iraq: Peace, freedom and democracy. The heroes of Iraq."

And this didn't come from the United States Information Agency. It comes from the Iraqis themselves. Such is the chief benefit of terminating the Coalition Provisional Authority as early as we did--in addition to not having to prosecute every common garden-variety criminal case that came up in that country.

The people are blowing on the big microphone. On January 30, they will speak. Stay tuned...

'Pro-Choice Catholic Politicians' to Be Sued for Heresy

From the Cybercase News Service. Not since Pope Innocent III laid interdicts on some of the kingdoms of Europe has the Catholic Church reared up to defend its core principles from secular challenge. The church could blame no one for thinking it a paper tiger, especially since so many politicians try to parlay their Catholic affiliation into Catholic votes--"Vote for me because I am a fellow Catholic!"--while pouring contempt on Church teachings.

Now I won't defend all of the teachings of the Catholic Church--especially that one about transsubstantiation of the consecrated bread and wine in the Catholic Mass. But on grounds that go a lot deeper than Catholic tradition, I agree with them on the central issue: Abortion is murder. This is why those canon lawyers are bringing Catholic politicians to church courts and holding them to answer for continuing to promulgate abortion. (And don't let them fool you about their use of the word choice. Sure, they're all for choice--so long as the choice you make is to kill your baby.)

The Vatican, at last report, hasn't commented--though the head of the advocacy group De Fide (Latin for Of the Faith) says that he has the opinion of an expert that the Vatican contacted, that his doctrinal lawsuits do have merit. Stay tuned, everyone....

Dorm Brothel - Christianity Today Magazine

You read that title right--and I'll let the article speak for itself.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Jihad Watch: Inside information on the New Jersey murders

Hat Tip: Tim Thornton at C-POL. We now know why the Jersey City cops found no sign of forced entry: the killers were Egyptian Muslims who pretended to have converted to Christianity just long enough to gain the Armanious family's confidence so that Hossam Armanious would admit them to his house. And if they took money and valuables from the house, they did this for two reasons:
  1. To fake off the cops with a false motive.
  2. To obtain money, and something convertible into money, to support terrorism in one fashion or another--either their own operations or those of an Al-Qaeda or similar cell.
Now this still doesn't excuse those Copts who started a melee at their friends' funeral--and even if it did, that would still be a tactical error. But it might perhaps explain it: those Copts are now very much afraid that every Muslim in the neighborhood wants them all dead, and the Muslims haven't done enough to dispel that fear.

Nor, unfortunately, do the Jersey City cops inspire my confidence when first they say that nothing was missing from the house and then they say that the killers robbed their victims.

Katie Couric, CBS Anchor? It's Like Night And 'Today'

So says Tom Shales at The Washington (Com)Post. We have here the first speculation on the idea of a CBS Evening News with Katie Couric from the liberal side.

And what a speculation this is. Of course, Shales' accumulated anti-conservative bile shows quite prominently. For example:

It's common knowledge that Bush was a spoiled little rich boy who did not serve with any great distinction, so [the] story [of the Killian Memoranda] wasn't exactly a blockbuster. It was more a matter of new details.
Sorry, Tom, but such was not "common knowledge" outside of the narrow and shrinking world that you and your fellow style scribblers inhabit. If you want to know why Bush didn't get to go to Vietnam, you have only Walter Cronkite to blame for that--Walter Cronkite who deliberately mis-portrayed the Tet Offensive as a US military defeat when in fact it was a victory.

That aside, Mr. Shales reveals--if his own sources are correct--that Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS, is going after the new division and will turn it into something that even I, news junkie that I have been since I was a kid, won't recognize. Actually, Shales has nothing but rumors--but what's remarkable here is that more people are bating their breath inside and outside CBS News than I have ever seen before in the wake of a major media embarrassment. Here's more:

CBS News staffers are puzzled, if not furious, over Moonves's rumored plans to remodel the "Evening News" completely when Rather leaves and turn it into a nighttime version of the morning shows -- replete, perhaps, with comedy capers, jokes and satire, maybe some showbiz gossip and someone like Couric as a very "viewer-friendly" host who appeals to the young-adult demographic that generally doesn't watch the news.
And on and on it goes, all adding up to speculation that Moonves plans to turn the Evening News into the Evening Show. In that sense, hiring Katie Couric would be a good fit, because she would in essence be running the Today show at night instead of in the morning.

In his next paragraph, Shales says that "Moonves is also despised by some insiders for what he hasn't done"--meaning his not defending Dan Rather. Speak for yourself, Tom--although if some CBS News insiders really do think that Dan Rather deserved being defended after what he did, I don't suppose that I should be surprised. But what would you expect Mr. Moonves to do? What would you expect of any boss whose chief public face brought discredit--not to mention criminal liability--on the company? I don't care how many years Dan Rather has with CBS. I'll throw Al Gore's words right at you: Dan Rather betrayed that company! He played on their prejudices! (And furthermore, Mr. Shales, you disappoint me when you repeat that crazy line from the Memogate Report saying that Dan Rather just read the script that someone else wrote for him. I don't believe that for one picosecond--and neither must Leslie Moonves, if he eased Dan Rather out of the outfit earlier than he had actually planned to retire.)

Prejudice in journalism is the root of all kinds of journalistic evil, if I may paraphrase Holy Scripture here. It leads producers to promulgate documents that they ought to know are false, and it leads people to spit and hiss, "We s-s-stand by our s-s-story!" when those who have the moxie for it, catch them out in a lie. And it leads style scribblers to compromise what might otherwise be valuable observations and predictions of what is likely to happen next, by confusing their own opinions with those of the people they are supposed to be reporting on. None of this is very pleasant to watch or read. (And we shall see, won't we, what Nielsen and Arbitron has to say about which TV and radio stations had the biggest audiences for today's Inaugural events.)

Second Term!

Courtesy of JibJab.com, who makes the lyrics available free of charge. Here they are, annotated as to who is speaking what verses:

BUSH:
Yes, I’m comin’ back to serve a second term.
This time I won the national elec-she-un!
Oh, thanks to you O-hi-a,
And dear brother Jebedia,
BUSH, CHENEY, RUMMY, AND RICE:
We get four more years to rule in Washington!

THE HOLLYWOOD CROWD:
Good God he’s comin’ back to serve a second term.
JOHN KERRY AND JOHN EDWARDS:
We were hoping in ’04 we’d get a turn.
ALL THEM DEMS:
But we lost the vicious battle,
BUSH
Now they’re stuck without a paddle!
CLINTON (renting adult videos)
Who will save us from con-ser-va-tiz-eum? (Hillary slaps him upside the head.)

BUSH:
I will stabalize Iraq in my second term.
And I will amend the con-sti-tu-sheun.
Then I’ll eliminate all the taxes,
THE WALL $TREET CROWD:
That are breakin; all our back-siz.
BUSH (breaks through a Social Security card):
And push for more pri-vat-i-za-she-un!

THE UN-WORTHIES:
We cannot believe he won a second term.
JACQUES CHIRAC (dressed as a painter):
He destroyed the trans-atlantic alli-unce!
BUSH:
Heck, I’ll extend a friendly offer,
Barbeque and beers in Crawford!
BUSH, CHENEY, CHIRAC, AND OTHERS:
Mending fences broken by pre-emp-she-un!

THE POPE, THE HEAD OF THE SANHEDRIN, AND THE WORLD'S RANKING AYATOLLAH:
We want peace on earth throughout his second term.
OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ:
We want Iraqis to have free elec-she-uns.
BUSH:
There’s a beef here, let’s dispatch it,
(John Kerry flanks him:)
And bury that ol’ hatchet.
Yes, we’ve been through stormy weather,
(Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac flank him:)
Now it’s time to work together!
BUSH:
Gather round the ol’ chuck wagon,
It’s a grand time we’ll be havin’,
THE ENTIRE BUSH ADMINISTRATION:
In the four years he has left in Wash-ing-ton!

WorldNetDaily: Judge upholds traditional marriage

This is the first federal case in which the Defense of Marriage Act was at issue. A female roommate pair--don't ever ask me to call them a "couple"--traveled to Massachusetts (where else?), obtained a "marriage" certificate, then returned to Florida to wave it around--in federal court. Frankly, I welcomed this litigation, because it would tell us where our national judiciary stood.

Judge James Moody, Jr., has ruled in a way that will make the same-sex "marriage" case far more difficult to prove. He managed to highlight every issue of concern, saying that:

  1. No State need give any faith or credit to a public act, record, or proceeding of a type that that State does not recognize. So if a State does not recognize same-sex roommates as "married", it need show no deference to any roommate pair who comes in waving a "marriage" certificate issued in another State if such not be their wish. (In fact, the judge said that if FF&C applied that universally, then one State could set national policy, a thing the judge presumably believes was never the intent of the Framers.)
  2. The denial of recognition of such out-of-State instruments is not a denial of equal protection of the laws. In ruling this way, Judge Moody cited a total lack of any federal case law recognizing marriage between persons of the same sex. I would have been happier to see the judge rely strictly on the Constitution--because the trouble with case law is that there always is the first case to set any precedent.
  3. The case of Lawrence v. Texas is irrelevant to the issue at hand, because the Supreme Court held in Lawrence that they intended no such construction of their decision in that case.
  4. Last of all, the judge found that the plaintiffs simply had not shown that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. In so ruling, the judge said that a given statute is presumed constitutional until shown otherwise. That has the status of a rule of the court, rather than a Constitutional principle--but it's a rule in keeping with every other principle of the requirement of adequate showing in a free society with separated powers of government.
Now I don't expect this to be the end of the matter. For one thing, the two roommates will probably go to the Eleventh Circuit for an overturn, and if they don't get it, they'll go to the Supremes.

Now the Supremes could, if they desired, simply "deny cert" and "let the ruling stand without comment"--except for another consideration. The minute some other roommate pair in another federal district finds a judge more sympathetic to their claims, we now set the stage for a split between jurisdictions--and perhaps even a split between circuits (say, if the roommate pair files their lawsuit in Oregon rather than Florida, because Oregon, though it amended its Constitution to rule out same-sex "marriage", lies within the Ninth Circuit, whose reputation for far-left rulings is well-known). That would force the Supreme Court to act, if nothing else would--because the Court hates to see the circuits split on a question as weighty as this. (The Supreme Court cannot set a binding precedent simply by refusing to review a case sent to it. It must take the case, and rule on it.)

What is the next act in this drama? Only time will tell.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

WorldNetDaily: Students told about intelligent design

Specifically, an assistant superintendent--after all the science teachers balked--read a one-minute statement reiterating that evolution is not a proved fact, and that students could check out a new title in the library for more information on an alternative to evolution.

Yesterday, ABC News covered the same story. If their account was all you had, you would believe the town bitterly divided, between "scientific" teachers and concerned parents on one side and "anti-scientific" pastors and religious adherents on the other. And yet, from the WorldNetDaily piece, we now learn that out of 170 students, only 15 chose to go out into the hallway when the assistant superintendent read the statement. That doesn't sound like a bitterly divided student body to me.

We know, of course, why the ACLU wants all mention of alternatives to evolution to stop (though why did they decline to press for a temporary restraining order, if they were so sure of their ground?). The ACLU is anti-religion and always has been--and Intelligent Design, the alternative theory to evolution that the Dover school kids heard about, leads inescapably to the conclusion that life did not begin by itself. Somebody had to get it started--and that Somebody must be Supernatural. Intelligent Design theorists don't explicitly say that--they don't talk about the nature of the Designer, preferring only to prove that Design must exist--but they clearly imply it, if in no other sense than that no other alternative is feasible.

You will note, of course, that I don't apologize for believing in a Designer/Creator. I know that no other explanation makes sense. If even Francis Crick, of DNA fame, couldn't bring himself to believe that the first cells assembled themselves by chance, then on what authority does anyone else make such a claim? Therefore, to deny even any mention of Intelligent Design is to stifle independent inquiry and judgment just as surely as the evolutionists accuse their opponents of doing.

Rage Explodes at Egyptian Family's Funeral

This more-detailed account of the melee at the Hossam Armanious funeral comes from The New York Times. Ted Olson at CT Weblog picked it up. If the Times account is accurate, then Mr. Armanious' neighbors made a serious tactical error. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal," said St. Paul. Accordingly, the assault on a Muslim cleric who came to the funeral service and, by all accounts, did not come armed nor threaten anyone himself, was inappropriate and un-Christian. (Apparently some mourners called for Sheik Tarek Yousof Saleh to be struck, and the Jersey City cops hustled him out of harm's way before any blows could land. Again, I quote Scripture: "You sit there to judge me, according to the law, and order me to be struck, contrary to the law?" [Acts 23:3] It's not enough to say that anti-Muslim feeling broke out in this community of Coptic exiles. When our fellow Christians behave this way, we make it that much more difficult to press the Muslim community on just how seriously they take their own foundational documents--and whether they are willing to recognize the error in those documents. In the meantime we ought to obey our own foundational documents, including the verse about loving our enemies--and, of course, the Golden Rule.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Commander of Saddam Hussein's 'Army of Muhammad' Confesses: We Received Money and Arms from Syria and Iran

From the Middle East Media Research Institute's TV Project. Specifically, the linked article is a transcript of an interrogation, shown on a new Iraqi TV station operating out of the United Arab Emirates for broadcast into Iraq.

This "Army of Muhammad" was Saddam Hussein's insurgent force. Its commander has now admitted that his force received money and arms from foreign countries, to wit, Syria and Iran. That makes it rather more than an indigenous insurgency. In fact, it is a proxy for a foreign re-invasion of Iraq by two countries who haven't the moxie to launch a real blood-and-flames military operation against the Coalition of the Willing.

Tell me again that the Iraqis want us out. The only Iraqis that want us out are those who had to go abroad for "help." The other Iraqis want us to say just long enough for them to keep Saddam Hussein's phonies and toadies' heads down.

Melee after funeral for slain family

From the Kansas City Star. To review the details of the matter of Hossam Amanious, see here and here. I had heard, of course, that some Muslims had contacted the local Coptic bishop to express condolences (that they might or might not actually feel) and announce their intention to attend the funeral. Well, today in the Star, I now learn that Coptic and Muslim attendees pushed and shoved one another, and from another source I heard that the Jersey City cops had to break it up.

This isn't over by a long shot.

Abortion Litmus Tests and Fundamental Values - Christianity Today Magazine

At issue: Tim Roemer, former Governor of Colorado, has announced his intent to run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Unlike most of his fellow Democratic leaders (though I won't vouch for all his fellow Democrats), he opposes abortion. Naturally all those who now sit at the table of power in the Democratic Party oppose him.

Frankly, if any in the Democratic Party really thinks that the American people will go for window dressing, they ought to disabuse themselves of that notion. But in fact the Democratic Party is likely to have Howard Dean as its next Chairman, or maybe keep Terry McAuliffe around for another term. Why do I say that? Because I have seen signs that no man can number (with apologies to John the Revelator) that the Democratic Party has learned nothing--either from the last election or from American history.

Ted Olson at Christianity Today speaks of fundamental values--and by that he specifically means fundamental life values. I say that the Democratic Party is bereft of fundamental Constitutional values. Almost every program that their Presidents have enacted into law is in fact unconstitutional, and would be found so by a Supreme Court that paid the Constitution the respect it deserved. So why should I be surprised at their behavior today (especially as regards judicial appointments)? Tell them that Roe v. Wade is as constitutionally unsound as was Scott v. Sandford in 1856 (and in fact, Norma McCorvey, yesterday, announced her intention to petition the Supreme Court for reconsideration of that very decision), and they'll throw clouds of judicial-ese at you, all centering on the phrase stare decisis (pronounced "starry de-sigh-sis")--which means "let it stand as decided." Which, of course, is the trouble with much of our society today: in too many ways, and not just in Supreme Court cases, we take an attitude of stare decisis, when we ought to be taking an attitude of going back to correct something that is fundamentally wrong. That applies equally well to the way we live as to what the Supreme Court has most recently said about what the Constitution means.

Monday, January 17, 2005

More on the Amanious Case

John Hinderaker at Power Line has this tip, that he got from one of his readers: one of Mr. Amanious' cousins worked as a translator for the prosecution team in the criminal trial of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who took representation of her client to the point of smuggling messages out to members of his terror cell. Rocket Man also reminds me of something I had forgotten when I read the first account of the murders in The Star-Ledger (Newark): the first press accounts stated that nothing was missing from the home. But now we hear that the bodies had been robbed and the house burglarized.

This makes me furious. Which is it? Robbery--or a terrorist hit? Frankly, it would not have surprised me had the political murders taken the money and jewelry to make it look like robbery--and to use that money and jewelry to buy guns, ammo, and/or explosives.

And what I want to know is: Why are the Jersey City Police engaged in managing the news?

Once again, I would ask that the United States Senate seat a Select Committee on Religious Ideals and their Consequences. Maybe the Senate will act--if Mel Gibson turns up dead, as Theo van Gogh did.

Goodbye, Dan. Hello, Katie?

Well, whaddya know? Here's the link to the Time article about CBS approaching Katie Couric about doing the CBS Evening News. Thanks, Wonkette. You and I are not likely to agree on much, but if I read your post correctly, you're in sarcasm mode in a way that I frankly wouldn't have expected. Congratulations: you've just confirmed every impression I had about how Katie Couric doing the evening news would really be received. Your reminder about how she cared more about a celebrity marriage breaking up than about the Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami was absolutely priceless. My only quarrel with you is this: A heart of stone? Nah--more like a heart of air to go along with her head.

In fact, the Time article devotes just one bullet point out of six to Katie Couric's prospects (all right, all right, it's right at the top). The other five are Ted (Nightline) Koppel, present CBS staffers John Roberts, Scott Pelley, and Mika Brzezinski (Who? Ah, yes--Zbig's daughter, who is also a correspondent at CBS), and CNN's Anderson Cooper. And for the first time (well, sorry--I couldn't care less about this kind of stuff, anyway, so that's why I missed it) I now learn that CNN and CBS are in merger-and-acquisition talks. Oh, great--CNN becomes CBS Cable. And I wouldn't be able to care less. And I guess Diane Sawyer is permanently out of the running--or rather, must have stated in no uncertain terms that she does not want the gig.

Well, we shall see--if we can keep our eyes propped open.

Border Redux

Remember this? My first-ever post on this blog, the one I opened with--and today I get a comment on it--from the Toad. The comment reads:
Well the borders are unprotected on both sides, Bush has made sure of that.
Now I'm not sure what he really means by that, mostly because, if you look at his blog, you'll find that it's quite liberal--or maybe "socially libertarian." Actually, he's one of those avowed secularists--like Andrew Sullivan--who, unlike the Democratic National Committee, at least recognizes this Muslim thing as the threat that it is.

So what about his charge that the borders are unprotected? Well, again, I don't know precisely what he's talking about--but I can name several examples of policies that Bush ought to rescind. Frankly, he's playing too cozy with the Mexicans, and especially with El Presidente Vicente Fox (as in Crazy As). The proposed AgJOBS bill is a boondoggle from start to finish--and why are we fooling around and having to hire extra hands at every harvest, instead of automating? And the idea that Hillary Clinton actually talks tougher turkey on border security than the only President actually to do something about terrorism in the last twelve years still has me shaking my head with wonder. Because Hillary's words are correct--though whether she'd follow up on them is anyone's guess. (Where has she been since she entered the Senate? Blank-out, as my former Objectivist friends used to say.)

ROFL!

From WuzzaDem.com comes this floor-rolling side-splitter: imagine, if you will, Mary Mapes and Dan Rather suing each other over the Memogate Report--and Judge Judy Sheindlin presiding! (Hat Tip: RatherBiased.com) The only way this could have been better would have been if they had appeared before Judge Joseph A. Wapner, or Judge William B. Keene.

The Globe Goes, But 'The Passion' Remains

And how do we know this? Well, according to this story from NewsMax.com, in a year that saw the second straight drop in box-office revenues, Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ earned $370 million domestically, out of $1.53 billion in total box-office receipts: twenty-four percent of the total. And yet Hollywood refuses to nominate Passion for anything.

Govindini Murty, the column's author, points out that in Hollywood's glory days, Oscar trophies and nominations commonly went to films that were both critically acclaimed and popular. I would add this: Back then, it amounted to something even to be nominated for an Oscar, and a film that won one of the Major Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor/Actress, Best Director, and, if you like, Best Supporting Actor/Actress) would typically win a bunch of them, or even all of them. Ben-Hur, for example, won eleven Oscars--a record that would stand until Titanic came along, and even then it was a tie.

These days, very often the Best Picture will not be the one directed by the Best Director, or led by the Best Actor or Actress. But more than that, most of the time, you never heard of the winners except for all the liberal buzz.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was the last exception, of course--and it probably won every Oscar that its prequels had coming, because everybody knew that those three films were really one film in three parts. And the only reason why it found distributors is that it was not an explicitly Christian film. J. R. R. Tolkien, bless his heart, invented a Celtic mythos to replace the Celtic myths whose records the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes destroyed. And while I found much to like in the whole Middle Earth epic, I cannot in the end accept the polytheism, the magic arts, the occultic themes (like the One Ring as the Grand-daddy of all Reliquaries), and the history that cannot possibly be true or have any real-world counterpart.

The Bible is at least as rich as, if not richer than, all of Tolkien's notes and novels. But only when Republicans ran things did you ever get any epics based on the Bible. John Huston did set out to make a series of epics telling the whole story of the Bible, but he got no further than the first film, that told the story from creation to the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. (John Huston as Noah and George C. Scott as Abraham are two performances that are not to be missed.) Even when Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to remake The Ten Commandments as an animated cartoon, he made worse errors than Cecil B. DeMille did. (The worst omission was failure to recount the Golden Calf Incident; The Prince of Egypt implied that everything was hunky-dory after the Red Sea crossing.)

Passion is the best Biblical epic since The Greatest Story Ever Told, though I won't vouch for any of the non-Scriptural interpolations. Still, Hollywood has left itself no grounds for rejecting that film as Academy Award material. Face it: the Oscars have turned into a left-wing political show. We're about to go through another period, like that of the 1970's, when no Academy Award-winning title was even worth having in your library, from Patton to Amadeus.

Hey, Preacher, Leave Those Kids Alone

And who is yelling that? Muslim clerics in tsunami-stricken Indonesia, that's who--that according to Christianity Today's Weblog.

At issue: World Help's plans to build an orphanage in Indonesia to take care of 300 children in that majority-Muslim country. So what do we have here? Muslim clerics would rather those three hundred children fend for themselves in a washed-out land, rather than have those awful Christians--descendants of monkeys and pigs, I believe they think we are--get our proselytizing hands on those kids.

Haven't I said it before? Muslims play for keeps, as their Koran and Hadith demand. And to think that people think Christians are dangerous here in the USA. Well, at least our foundational documents don't say anything about fighting and slaying unbelievers wherever we find them! Nor take we any pride in any tradition of any organization comparable to the original Assassins, or hashish addicts, who gave a new word to the world's language through their terrorist activities.

CBS Nixed White House Request to Rebut Kennedy

This we have from NewsMax.com. And what makes it worse, this was after Andy Heyward, head of the CBS news division, promised White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett that CBS News would be more balanced in its coverage of this President.

At issue is Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) making a jackass of himself (and why else? He's a Democrat, and the jackass is their mascot!) before the National Press Club, and then getting the privilege of continuing his rant for a full hour on Face the Nation. Dan Bartlett wanted to come onto the program to rebut Kennedy's remarks, and CBS refused.

You will notice, if you ever watch anything on Fox News Channel, that Fox never invites the proponent of one side of a controversial issue without also inviting someone to expound the other side. Usually, you get two people to show up, so you have a moderated debate--and with a lot smarter questioning than you get on any other network, I might add. But CBS continues to do everything one-sided, thus showing that they have learned nothing from the Killian Memoranda episode. (Of course they haven't--because the panel investigating that fiasco refused to find political bias even while it was staring them in the face, as their own report clearly shows.)

Keep it up, Andy. (Heyword or Rooney, I don't give an unripe fig which.) Keep it up. And both of your Andys, and Dan, can all share a crater on the moon.

The Murders of the Armanious Family

Several days ago, Hossam Armanious, his wife, and his two teen-aged daughters, who are Coptic Christians, let some people into their Jersey City (NJ) house that they shouldn't have. After several days of not hearing from them, their relatives called the Jersey City police. The cops entered the house and found all four family members bound and gagged, with their throats cut.

The latest on the investigation is here on the Fox News Channel's site. Here is some background: Hossam Armanious and his family came here from Egypt, where Copts are routinely treated as second-class citizens. (Muslims have a word for this, of course: dhimmitude.) They went to a Coptic church, and by all accounts minded their own business. But Hossam also joined an Internet chat room, and left some comments on it. I have not seen those comments. I can think of half a dozen things he might have said, varying from the frankly inflammatory to just a simple statement of fact in the contrast between Christianity and Islam, or even about his own experiences.

Someone else in the chat room recently told him, "You'd better stop making comments like that, or I'll kill you." That we have from a friend of the family who prefers to remain anonymous. This tip appeared Sunday in the print edition of The Star-Ledger (Newark).

And from today's New York Post, as quoted by Fox News (The Post charges a subscription to see the current article, if they have it on their Web site at all), we now learn that someone--presumably the kiillers--emptied out the man's wallet, his pockets, and his daughter's purse and stole every scrap of money in the house, except for dropping a penny near the bodies. Fox News also said on their TV show that someone--presumably these same killers--made off with all the jewelry in the house. So now the police are officially investigating this matter as a robbery-homicide.

Now we all love our mysteries, in which someone, in a fit of pique, says something he shouldn't have to someone else who then winds up dead by another person's hand, and the guy who couldn't keep his temper gets arrested for a murder he did not commit. But that's not the way things happen, as any search of any big-city police blotter will show. The percentages tell us to suspect someone close to the victims--particularly since the cops, according to the Star-Ledger article which I've read, found no signs of forced entry. But the percentages also say that when someone makes a threat, you run down the threat and ask the guy who made it where he was at such-a-time--in this case over the course of the last week.

Veteran Internet users will surely say that Internet chat rooms are supposed to be an anonymous medium. Crimes of passion have arisen out of the chat, but usually when someone breaks anonymity and shares contact information in an unsafe manner. Presumably, Armanious did not do this. In fact, he didn't worry about the threat when he received it, because he relied on the anonymity to protect him.

But anonymity cuts both ways. You may think that "they don't know who you are," but in fact you don't know who they are. You could be talking to a business associate on the Internet and never even know it--but maybe they will, from some subtle hint you drop that they would recognize--and you're not prepared for them to recognize it. That's one reason I use an Internet "handle", and have been using it from the very early days, when just about every alley from the Information Superhighway ought to have been considered dark.

Furthermore, Jersey City has a nasty reputation. They suffered a spate of arson fires shortly before 22 Jumada t'Tania 1422 AH (excuse me: September 11, 2001 AD Gregorian; the "AH" stands for Anno Hegirae, meaning "in the Year of the Hegira."). And on Jumada t'Tania 22, some yo-yos were having a rooftop gawk party, looking at the dust flying from the New York skyline and shouting, "God is Great!" in Arabic. Then, of course, there's the verse in the Koran about fighting and slaying the infidels wherever you find them (9:5).

The acting head of the American Coptic Association is not fooled. He points out that this was a ritualistic killing--and I'll vouch that it looks almost like the beheadings we've heard so much about in Iraq.

A local Coptic bishop says in the Fox article that he's had some calls from Muslims in the community who say they feel bad about what happened to the Amaniouses and want to attend the funeral. Well, that's fine, and it's up to that bishop to decide who may or may not come--but once again, as Desi Arnaz, Senior would have said: Mah-mooooood, you've got some 'splainin' to do.

They Really Did It--CBS, that is

That's right--according to The New York Post citing a contact at Time, CBS asked Katie Couric to jump ship and take over The CBS Evening News at the end of her current contract. (The Time article requires a current subscription, else I would link to it directly.)

I repeat what I said when I heard about this the first time: The worthies at CBS are crazy. They are absolutely one hundred percent out of what passes for their minds.

  1. To begin with, they'll merely confirm what we already know: news anchors are merely news readers.
  2. They'll also turn their whole news division into just another liberal feel-good sop to the politics of the moment. For example: last week on Today, Katie Couric kept viewers waiting for two hours while she repeatedly ended her segments with the same "Coming Up" message. You've heard these: the anchor will tease the viewers with a segment that they're going to feature ("But first, these messages") and then don't feature it until their program is practically over, or sometimes don't feature it at all. Well, what Katie Couric repeatedly teased her viewers with did "come up"--and it was a book alleging that Abe Lincoln had homosexual feelings. YAW-AW-AW-AW-AW-AW-AWN! We heard that one back when Tinky Winky the Teletubby was still current! Not a single other news organ picked up on that story, and that will only go to show you how silly it was.
Is this, then, the kind of stuff we can expect from The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric? To paraphrase Claude Akins in The Devil's Brigade: Somebody lend me a hat; I may vomit.

Friday, January 14, 2005

FOXNews.com - Politics - Court Rejects Challenge to Inaugural Prayer

The decision came down just a few minutes ago. Judge John D. Bates of the District Court for the District of Columbia has just ruled that Michael Newdow, who has been down this road before, not only has no standing to sue the government over prayers at the Inauguration (because he cannot possibly establish that he would suffer any injury from any prayers being given), but also expressed doubt that a Presidential inauguration would even come under any court's jurisdiction on such an issue. Now we all know that the case is likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court, so this is merely the first step. (The next step is the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the same Court to which President Bush has nominated Miguel Estrada--twice.)

In case you haven't figured it out, I find zero merit in Mr. Newdow's case, for two reasons:

  1. Mr. Newdow would frankly have to prove that God does not exist--and he may think this is proved, but it isn't.
  2. Newdow would have to prove actual persecution for his lack of faith--and not only does the government not have any such persecutory laws, but no Christian would ever--ever--propose or support such a thing. Holy Scripture gives no warrant to any merely human authority to force a person to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and personal Savior if he doesn't want to. Scripture says that its adherents are not to fight such battles in the flesh. Then there's the verse about having every soul subject itself to the governing authorities [Romans 13:1].
In sum, Newdow has no claim--and for him to say that "being an outsider" is injury enough simply will not serve. If he has a specific complaint against any person who has unlawfully threatened to deprive him of his life, or has deprived or threatened to deprive him of liberty or property, because of his lack of faith, let him bring that sort of complaint to a court of competent jurisdiction. (And in fact, I condemn in advance any such act or threat.) Until such a thing happens (and I repeat: I do not wish any such thing on him), he has no case. His claim, in fact, amounts to nothing more than that he is on the losing side of an argument or election--and I could have made such a claim during President Carter's term or Bill Clinton's two terms!

My personal advice to Dr. Newdow is to contact Antony Flew and ask him why he, Flew, could no longer insist with full confidence that God does not exist. Then I would ask him to use that seventeen-jewel brain of his and review the increasing body of evidence that the earth is young, not old. I would also ask him whether he knew that Francis Crick never believed in evolution, saying that the idea that DNA assembled itself by chance violates the Law of Averages. Crick then went on another tack, saying that an outside civilization seeded our planet with the germs that became the life we know today--but I'm quite prepared to show that both parts of evolutionary theory are flawed--the idea that the first cell assembled itself by chance, and the idea that more-complex organisms could ever "evolve" from simpler organisms without Deliberate Guidance of some kind--and how could that Guidance be anyting but Divine? (If it wasn't Divine, then where did the guide come from? Blank-out, as the Objectivists used to say.)

Unfortunately, he'll probably never take any advice from me or anyone else who knows the Truth. But stranger things have happened. Antony Flew is one example; Norma McCorvey is another, even more instructive example.

News Analysis: Future of '60 Minutes Wednesday' in Doubt

From The New York Times. (Registration required; free of charge.)

How doubtful is the future of 60 Minutes Wednesday? Consider this: Leslie Moonves, the head honcho at CBS, recently said that Dan Rather would continue working at 60 Minutes Wednesday "provided the show continues." That's quite a proviso! Would Dan Rather continue at CBS if 60 Minutes Wednesday folds? Read for yourselves:

Dan is under contract to CBS News...[Dan] will be doing assignments on "60 Minutes Wednesday" and other assignments on other magazine shows that come up.
Double talk, Mr. Moonves! Do you really think you're fooling anyone with that? If you're fooling Dan Rather, then he's a bigger fool than I thought.

It's like this, sportsfans: If you have someone under contract to you, but the public can't stand the sight of him and you know it, do you insist on putting him out before the public? No. You buy him out. The old movie studios did that all the time before the contract star system collapsed. Dan Rather has very likely become the Norman Maine of network news, and by that I do not mean to say that he drinks to an unattractive extent. Consider! In the same interview, Moonves admits that the ratings for 60 Minutes Wednesday are in the tank, and sinking fast. Elsewhere, some CBS execs are talking about doing away with the old evening-news format completely. The situation is so bad that Dan Rather's former boss says that the old show is now un-watchable! And get this: Moonves hasn't yet renewed Andrew Heyward's contract, either.

In a situation like this, no one's job is secure--absolutely no one's. I know--I've been down that road personally. I know management double-talk when I hear it and read it. Les Moonves is many things, but he is not stupid. At least, not entirely. He needs to bite the bullet, buy Dan out completely, and stop talking out of both sides of his mouth, if he doesn't want to cause the morale at CBS any further damage than it has already suffered.

WorldNetDaily: Christians offer halftime show alternative

Remember Janet Jackson? Yes, I hear you--you'd just as soon forget her, and Justin What's-his-name.

Well, now you have some good news: Sky Angel, the Christian satellite TV service, is planning its own Super Bowl halftime show, to compete directly with the halftime show that everyone will see at the stadium. It will be a special edition of Sportsweek, Sky Angel's regular feature that has Christian athletes giving "testimonies," or expositions on how they came to know the Lord and what their faith means to them as they play. They'll have as co-host a Christian athlete who actually made it to the Super Bowl: Robin Cole, former All-Pro linebacker for the once-perennial Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

Now this is TV as it should be: a network that actually responds to viewers, and doesn't exist solely for temperamental "artists" who think they have a right to exhibit any "art" they create, whether anyone actually wants to patronize their art or not. It will be interesting to count how many people change channels at halftime to take in this alternative program--which sounds like an excellent program, in keeping with the finest traditions (yes, actual and original traditions) of organized sport in the USA.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Domestic Violence Law Fuels Big Government by Wendy McElroy

Courtesy of Lew Rockwell.com.

At issue is the Violence Against Women Act, which expires this year. The President, for whatever reason, apparently intends to renew the appropriation. Wendy McElroy says that Congress ought to refuse.

To the arguments she presented--that the VAWA unjustly protects women as a special class and also expands the scope of government in ways beyond any legitimate compelling interest--I give this criticism of VAWA: that it violates the fundamental principles of federalism. Domestic violence is like common garden-variety street crime, and I see no compelling interest for making it a federal matter. Not that VAWA actually makes domestic violence a federal offense--it doesn't. But it does give alleged victims of domestic violence (female only) and rape (again, female only) a special entitlement--and the last thing any government at any level needs to day is to "entitle" its citizens to yet more taxpayer's money benefits! Federal entitlements--which are actually transfers of wealth--are a Constitutional abomination, for two reasons:

  1. They sanction the theft of monies from one citizen to benefit another, and as such ought to be unconstitutional in any State.
  2. They commit federal money to purposes that are not among the legitimate federal purposes set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution. These programs do not strengthen the union of States, do not serve justice, do not affect domestic tranquillity (and we're talking about tranquillity of the community, not of the household here), do not enhance the common defense, do not promote the general welfare, and if anything are a threat to liberty.
Under the circumstances, I find the VAWA unconstitutional on its face, and for reasons going beyond the Supreme Court's original strike-down of one of its provisions. Thus I join Ms. McElroy in urging a "no" vote.

'Self-Defense' Bill Introduced in House of Representatives

From Cybercase News Service.

James Madison, more than two hundred years ago, proposed twelve amendments to the Constitution, of which ten were ratified immediately. The second of these reads:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the existence of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The twentieth century has seen a patchwork of laws, commonly called "gun-control laws," ostensibly aimed at reducing the level of violence in our society. Actually they were an emotion-driven response to a number of high-profile crimes involving guns, including the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, which was the bloody climax to the gang war between "Scarface" Al Capone and "Bugs" Moran, and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. They are totally inappropriate, for three reasons:
  1. People who use guns to break laws will break laws to use guns. Therefore these laws will accomplish nothing except to disarm ordinary citizens who might otherwise be able to fight back.
  2. The militia is not the National Guard or any armed-service reserve. It is the body of individual citizens and lawful residents who possess firearms and know how to use them. As such they are the core defense against territorial invasion.
  3. The militia are also the guarantors of individual rights. Rights are a dead letter if the holders of those rights cannot defend them. Some have even called the militia, properly understood, the "reset button on the Constitution."
And so we come to Representative Bartlett's bill (HR 47, referred to the House Standing Committee on the Judiciary). Normally I'm wary of any bill that gives someone a cause of action in the federal courts against the State, county, or municipality wherein he resides. Before I could support such an obvious extension of federal power, I need to see what compelling interest the federal government has in the exercise of that power. And here is the compelling interest: the security of our homeland requires the reconstitution of the original militia--the armed citizenry using their weapons to defend against territorial invaders--or against fanatical saboteurs and mass murderers, which we commonly call "terrorists." The militia were the actual tamers of the Old West--the famed US Marshals rarely could face down a gang of cutthroats alone, but had to appoint special deputies or raise a posse comitatus from among the local townfolk or homesteaders, as the actual records clearly show.

Obviously someone will rejoin that after all, it took the federal government to break the Chicago mobs, because no city-dwelling "militia" formed to fight Capone and his rivals. But if Chicago of the 1920's (and other cities) tolerated the Mafia and other ethno-centric criminal syndicates, that is only because the inhabitants of those cities welcomed the vice that the syndicates peddled and continue to peddle--the speakeasies, the casinos, and the brothels--and all that mattered was who was in charge of it, a thing about which the average city dweller couldn't care less. Not, that is, until the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre shocked everyone and made people think. (I still am not convinced that legitimizing vice is the way to beat the syndicates. After all, the syndicates will often invest in legitimate businesses--and everyone knows that the syndicates still control, or partially control, even legalized gambling in this country.)

Tolerance of vice aside, gun-control laws, by creating an artificial distinction between the ordinary citizen and the professional soldier or law-enforcement officer, create a passivity that a society can ill afford. A passive citizen becomes more tolerant of vice in his own life and thus more susceptible to manipulation by organized criminals. Worse yet, he is a sitting duck in the event of an invasion--and neither the police nor the armed services can be everywhere. Indeed, the armed services need to be busy doing something else--carrying the war to the enemy--and not standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the border. That's what the militia is for.

So I'm going to cite this as the required compelling interest, and urge my congressman to support HR-47, the Citizens' Self-defense Act of 2005. And I urge you all to do the same.