Monday, February 27, 2006

WorldNetDaily: When the nuke comes to port

The true subject of the article that goes under that provocative headline is a company named Allied International Development, under the presidency of one Robert Pfriender. According to this article, Mr. Pfriender's company proposed to build offshore inspection facilities that would check each and every shipboard freight container while it was still on board--and twenty-five miles out, so that if one of the containers did turn out to be a nuclear device, we'd lose the ship and the off-shore dock extension but not the entire city. I quote further:
Not only did Pfriender ensure the proposal was seen by Customs officials as far back as August 2002, less than a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, he also took the time to see that virtually every member of Congress received this proposal – along with officials in the White House, the Department of Defense, the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security.

Interestingly, the only response he received from Customs was a letter signed by Jason Ahern, the administration's point man on pushing the UAE deal through.

The article implies, though it does not state, that Mr. Ahern is the one who prefers to rely in what is called "virtual inspection." Mark Simone explained it on the radio two mornings ago: they check the manifests of every container, and inspect those that don't weigh as much as the manifest says they should, or whose weight calculations are beyond any rational estimate, or which otherwise raise suspicions.

My attempts to find Web references to Allied International Development or to Robert Pfriendler have come to nothing. But if someone claims to have found a way to inspect every single container while still aboard its ship, and before said ship has come any nearer to port than twenty-five miles, then the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement ought to listen. And if an American firm offers to run our ports, and to do it in a secure manner, then it ought to have precedence over any foreign firm.

Handing the running of our ports over to foreigners never did make sense--though I can understand arguments for increased efficiency in an era when security might have seemed of relatively minor concern, or when foreign management might have been considered trustworthy. But that was then. This is now. I have three thousand reasons for holding the position I have now taken.

And so I urge anyone reading this to call your congressman and Senators and ask them why an American firm, which has offered to revolutionize port security at a time when a revolution is required, ought not have that chance.

OpinionJournal - Jihadi Turns Bulldog

Here's a key excerpt:
I don't believe Mr. Rahmatullah had direct knowledge of the 9/11 plot, and I don't think he has ever killed anyone. I can appreciate that he is trying to rebuild his life. But he willingly and cheerfully served an evil regime in a manner that would have made Goebbels proud. That he was 22 at the time is little of an excuse. There are many poor, bright students--American and foreign alike--who would jump at the opportunity to attend Yale. Why should Mr. Rahmatullah go to the line ahead of all of them? That's a question Yale alumni should ask when their alma mater comes looking for contributions.
And as a Yale Alumni myself, let me say that such wrongheaded administrative decisions like this, and worse, are why I have refused any further contributions to Yale College.

Let me share another excerpt:

But sometimes his humor really backfired. At a speech for the Atlantic Council, Mr. Rahmatullah was confronted by a woman in the audience who lifted the burkha she was wearing and chastised him for the Taliban's infamous treatment of women. "You have imprisoned the women--it's a horror, let me tell you," she cried. Mr. Rahmatullah responded with a sneer: "I'm really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you."
The article goes on to say that Michael Moore had the bad sense to include that clip in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, and that Mavis Leno (Jay's wife) heard it and roared.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

WorldNetDaily: Anti-Semitic film cheered with cries of 'Allah is great'

By all accounts Valley of the Wolves is yet another piece of anti-American propaganda, this time with anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure. (How Gary Busey could lower himself to portray an American Jewish doctor who harvests transplant organs from Iraqi insurgent prisoners for sale to rich patients is beyond my comprehension. I thought I'd seen low with Munich and its moral equivalency. But this is the limit.)

Trouble is, Turkish immigrants in Germany ate this film up like--well, like wolves. For that, the authorities declared that such a film should not be shown again, and a major cinema chain finally pulled the film from its movie houses.

I'm going to love to see the American audience reaction. One thing to show American troops crashing a wedding and shooting down the guests. But the Jewish doctor black-market transplant angle will definitely have a few leftist political activists, many of whom happen to be Jews, choosing that day Whom they will serve.

Maybe. Or maybe we'll see just how blind is their hatred of the President and the military.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

WorldNetDaily: Environmentalists blast Gore: 'Take back toxic electronics'

Ah, hypocrisy--or maybe just plain old-fashioned cowardice. Al Gore is on the board of Apple Computer, and he won't raise his voice on behalf of the Computer Take-back Campaign to buck the spirited and scornful opposition of Steve Jobs to their efforts to get the computer maker to take back computers that have reached the end of their useful lives, so that end users don't have to throw them away in the landfills.

Some perspective: I've known for some time that computers contain toxic materials--and I have never liked to throw away an electronic device. I welcome any deal whereby I can turn in a junky computer--at least after I've hit the end of the road with various distributions of Linux that can still get some useful life out of some of them. So frankly, I can't understand why Steve Jobs dismisses a concern that his customers are raising. If Michael Dell and the current head of HP/Compaq can take back junk computers, so can he.

But about Al Gore: Why won't he raise his voice with Mr. Jobs? Why does he, who ranted and raved and screamed at the top of his lungs,

HE BETRAYED HIS COUNTRY! HE! PLAYED! ON! OUR! FEARS!
now refuse even to ask Mr. Jobs politely why he doesn't take back old computers? Quite apart from the embarrassment that Mr. Jobs might spare himself (I mean, surely it does his brand name no good to see it remain attached to a bunch of forlorn-looking discards in a garbage yard!), why does a former Vice President raise his voice where it can do some good? Inquiring minds want to know...

Rocky Mountain News: Group challenges science on 'biblically correct' tours

"Biblically Correct Tours" is its actual name. And this group does something you wouldn't expect: they walk straight into mainstream museums and openly challenge the printed essays next to the displays. And by this account at least, it's driving some curators nuts. They know they can't keep BCT out of their museums, but they can't stand the message that BCT's guides are delivering.

The article also mentions the latest project by Answers in Genesis: a museum of natural history that tells the story of creation, not the dry-labbed story of evolution.

WorldNetDaily: Illegals-advocate group to stalk Minutemen kids

As Jackie Gleason might have said: Keep it up. Keep it up. And you (that is, that day-laborer center) can all share a crater on the Moon.

I can think of no behavior that would infuriate the American public more than to threaten people's kids because those people want the law enforced. This will also shine an unwelcome spotlight on a town that tells its police not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

The solution to this kind of shenanigans is simple: declare that unlawful presence in the United States is ipso facto a federal felony. That would empowere the Minutemen to grab those illegals by the backs of their shirt collars and hale them into the nearest ICE office. The formal term for what I just proposed is "citizen's arrest."

Friday, February 24, 2006

WorldNetDaily: 22 ports in Arab deal, not just 6 as reported

Don't just take my word, or WorldNetDaily's word, for this. Check out the Web site of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, Limited.

And why didn't we hear of this earlier? Why did the President hide this?

Clearly the behavior of this administration, on this particular issue, is unacceptable. This alone is the deal-breaker. If this deal was kosher, they should have disclosed the full particulars up-front. They did not. Ergo, they had something to hide. What other nasty surprises are we going to learn about?

Sorry, Rush, but you're wrong on this one.

And way to go, Sean!

Are Stay at Home Moms "Letting Down the Team?"

According to Linda Hirshman, they are--and she said it over two straight days on ABC-TV's Good Morning, America. Albert Mohler offers a scathing summary and review of her so-called thoughts--and ends with a suggestion on how to counteract them. Herewith my "combination of refutation, amazement, and affirmation of motherhood" that Mr. Mohler suggests that we all respond with:

Let's start with some simple logic, which is a thing that Gilbert and Sullivan once recognized that women are afraid of:

Logic: why, tyrant man himself admits
it's a waste of time to argue with a woman!

Princess Ida

Specifically, let's start with her premises:
  • "I am saying an educated, competent adult's place is in the office."
  • "A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives."
That's what she says. And to make that work, she seems to propose, according to Mohler, that women limit themselves to one baby.

All right. Now let us see what sort of society would emerge if people followed her advice.

At a minimum, no child would grow up at "home" as we know it. Every woman who became pregnant would deliver her baby in a government-run creche, and would be in the hands of professionals from day one. Despite her egalitarian rhetoric, she couldn't possibly eliminate the janitors--and in this case the janitorial duties would include cleaning up baby's messes. Toilet training would, of course, come at the scientifically prescribed time, at the hands of trained nurses. From then on, the children would stay in school--a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week boarding school.

And upon graduation, nothing else would change--because all of society would exist as one vast college-like campus, complete with dormitories. Home would not exist. Marriage would not exist. The elite would determine the proper uses of one's time. Now I complain just as vociferously as the next person about the sorry state of popular entertainment. But now--just imagine a world where the only entertainment is legalized, and government-directed, prostitution. Think Fahrenheit 451 in which the firemen burn the movies as well as the books.

And why not? What does she expect to happen if everyone works outside the home? Or does she really intend to hand the dirty jobs to the men? Frankly, she never makes that clear.

But I'm not through yet. If we take her at her word that children are a messy drag on a woman's life, then I'd give her brave new world four or five generations before it would collapse for lack of people to keep it together. Because she gives not the slightest thought for the production of the next generation. Even Julie Christie's TV-addicted neighbors in Fahrenheit 451 the movie (directed by Francois Truffaut) realized that the species might die out under their government's policies--not that they seemed to care.

Now let's deal with the phenomena that scare her so out of her wits: highly educated women staying at home with their children.

I would be the first to say, "Waste not; want not." So imagine this: these highly educated women participate directly in the education of their children, giving to them a direct benefit of all that education they got. That benefits the children best of all--for who is likely to care more for any child than his or her mother? In short--imagine a new cadre of home-schooling mothers, and fathers putting in their two cents, too. (This "take your kid to work" thing could work quite well in some professions, if you make a field trip out of it.) The experience of the last twenty years, during which home schooling has been lawful in just about every State in the Union, clearly shows that home schooling, done right, is vastly superior to education by the factory-like school.

Now that is what I call a child-rearing and educational system worthy of a republic--which, after all, is a system of levels of government, beginning with the individual householder and continuing with the town, the city, the county, the State, and highest of all, the federation, with each level accepting a proper sphere of responsibility and having full authority to carry out that responsibility.

That's not what Linda Hirshman wants. Again, she never made clear what she wants, but her ideals, such as they are, are more appropriate to a secularistic totalitarian state, not a republic.

Of course, the Seven-headed, Ten-horned Beast of Revelation might make this whole discussion moot. Or the Beast might make Linda Hirshman his Minister of Residential Life. Not necessarily because her ideals mesh with his, but simply because her methods can only help a megalomaniac such as he will surely be.

Until then, the best defense against her disgusting vision is to have as many children as we all can, while those who want to follow her advice limit their childbearing. Then, a generation later (if we can't quite manage it today), we'll just out-vote them.

BreakPoint | The Elephant in the Living Room

And what is this elephant? Simply this: Pro-abortion people commonly argue that a woman's mental health will suffer if she doesn't get whatever abortion she's demanding at the moment. But from a professor of medicine in New Zealand, and one who wants to see women get their abortions as much as Kate Michelman does, comes a study that destroys the underlying assumption.

The typical argument runs like this: Laws restricting abortion are too onerous if they do not allow exceptions for the woman's life and health. As evidence--well, pro-abortion forces commonly assert that if a woman doesn't get an abortion, her mental health might suffer. That statement was always more asserted than proved, and it rested on one key unstated assumption: that the stress of pregnancy and childbirth, or perhaps the stress of the embarrassment attendant on the circumstances of the pregnancy, would have a significant impact on a woman's life.

Trouble is, no one has yet produced any studies showing what happens to women who have abortions, as opposed to those that do not, under the same or similar circumstances. So Prof. David Fergusson and his colleagues decided to study that subject themselves. And they found that women who have abortions are more likely, not less, to have mental problems later on! I quote:

Those having an abortion [under age 25] had elevated rates of subsequent mental health problems including depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviours and substance use disorders...The findings suggest that abortion in young women may be associated with increased risks of mental health problems.
At least they were intellectually honest enough to publish those results as they got them, without trying to fudge them. They had to search a little harder to publish, but they did publish--this although some government agency had the brass to warn them not to, strictly on political grounds. And why did he publish? Again, I quote:
It verges on scandalous that a surgical procedure that is performed on over one in 10 women has been so poorly researched and evaluated, given the debates about the psychological consequences of abortion.
With the case of Gonzales v. Carhart now headed for Supreme Court oral argument and decision, this couldn't have come at a worse time for the abortion-mill lobby.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Blast at Shiite Shrine Sets Off Sectarian Fury in Iraq - New York Times

The mosque in question is the Al Askari Mosque, so named because it houses the remains of the Askari--the tenth and eleventh imams of Shi'a Islam. According to Shi'a lore, the twelfth imam, five-year-old Muhammad al-Mahdi, vanished from this site after presiding over his father's funeral. Shi'a prophecy says that he will come again to lead the Shi'ites in the Last Battle for the world.

I have never placed any stock in any legend about any Mahdi. That said, the Golden Dome is an historical treasure--or was before insurgents wrecked it. Even the Soviets didn't blow up St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow!

This incident has sparked an interesting controversy on the Wikipedia. Apparently no one had thought to place an article about the Al-Askari in the English Wikipedia before the explosion. Now it has one. The article so far has more details about the bombing and the reaction to it, and is likely to change--so you might want to bookmark the link if you want truly objective coverage.

Will this dissolve Iraq in civil war? I'm not sure about that--yet. But Jesus warned us that we would "hear of wars and rumors of wars," and that "nation would take up arms against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." (Actually, that means that ethnic group would clash with ethnic group, and state against state.)

WorldNetDaily: Student under fire for yelling: 'Remember Chappaquiddick!'

And if it gets people remembering that a United States Senator left the scene of an accident and let a girl drown, then it's about time.

The campus police said that he'd be hearing from the administration regarding disciplinary action. Yes, and the student would have plenty of places to turn for help in fighting the administration on this issue. When I was a student (at Yale College), I remembered students doing a lot worse than shouting two words at a guest speaker--even if this particular speaker is Massachusetts' senior Senator--and getting away with it completely. No one took down their names.

An instructor reportedly asked, "Can't you forgive him after all these years?" Said the student in reply, "No. He killed someone...If it had been me or any other person, we'd be in jail." And I'll second that. I've noticed a number of dedicated liberals who refuse to forgive conservatives for less, after much longer time spans. How sad that a college instructor wants people to "forgive" a man for involuntary manslaughter--which is what Mary Jo Kopechne's death amounted to.

I can guess her motivation, however. To her, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) is a champion of her idea of justice. So if he wants to ask an intimate favor of someone, that someone ought to be honored to grant it. And if she dies in the process--well, so what?

We have willing dames enough. There cannot be
that vulture in you to devour so many
as would to greatness dedicate themselves,
finding it so inclin'd.

MacBeth IV.iii.74-77

Senator Kennedy, from the picture that WorldNetDaily includes with the article, looks like a vulture who has devoured many willing dames in his career.

I know that politics isn't beanbag. But what has politics come to, when college faculty excuse involuntary manslaughter, and college administrators threaten to expel a student for calling on the carpet one who ought to set a higher standard for his behavior--and those same administrators let such an incident slide if the political ideologies were reversed? (Not that the student involved is all that conservative. It's just that he attacked a liberal icon.)

UPDATE: Massasoit Community College will not subject this student to discipline. This article gives the latest.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

WorldNetDaily: Mandatory abortion proposed in Holland

Specifically, an alderwoman in Rotterdam is proposing that drug-addicted girls, mentally handicapped women (and who defines a mental handicap?), and teen-aged mothers belonging to the people indigenous to Aruba and other Dutch-owned islands in the Antillean island chains be subject to forced abortion and contraception in order to control the numbers of "unwanted" children.

Well, if any country in Europe was going to be the first to play with such a grotesque idea, it would have to be The Netherlands. This illustrates two things:

  1. Europe is slowly killing itself by considering children a liability.
  2. This proposal gives the lie to the notion that being pro-abortion is about choice.

Thank God for small blessings: a health-related charity that works with Aruban and Antillean people has reacted quite scathingly toward the proposal. They are doing it on political-correctness grounds--singling out a particular group for prejudicial treatment is not nice. But even they miss the larger point: abortion is murder, and now we see the state about to order the summary execution of its next generation.

WorldNetDaily: 500 doctoral scientists skeptical of Darwin

This came after the Public Broadcasting Service did a special on the history of evolutionary theory and claimed that "virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true." Five hundred fourteen scientists, each of whom has a doctorate, say that they are not among them--which gives a salutary clarification to the term virtual as PBS used it. Here is a key excerpt from their statement:
We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.
These men are not necessarily creationists. But they do say that evolution cannot possibly explain everything--a devastating admission.

WorldNetDaily: Democrats try to quash troops' terror-war ads

The article contains links to the two sixty-second spots, one by an actual combat veteran, another by a mother who lost a son in Iraq. Sadly, one television station has refused to run one of the ads. The Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota (the official name of the State Democratic Party chapter) accuses the ads' proponents of lying. View the ads and judge that for yourselves--and remember that this is the same party who gave a United States Senator a funeral that turned into a maniacal political rally.

Monday, February 20, 2006

WorldNetDaily: Cartoon has Jesus, Muhammad kissing

The cartoon ran in a Canadian student newspaper called The Strand. Its editor took time to defend his editorial decision, saying that this was no act of hate.

That cartoon has a number of things wrong with it. First, Jesus would not kiss anyone on the mouth--or if He did, then it would be in the context of a Middle Eastern kiss. Arabs kiss the way Westerners shake hands.

Second, Jesus will judge Muhammad, and quite harshly, at the Great White Throne Judgment, and I don't think that editor or his cartoonist can begin to comprehend that judgment.

Nevertheless, I look at that cartoon and I have to laugh. It's so silly! And the editor's refusal to run the Muhammad cartoons is just as silly--how is anyone supposed to know what the fuss is about? And--get this--he won't publish the original twelve cartoons, but he will publish something that a Muslim might find just as offensive. Not only silly, but downright weird.

But in case anyone's wondering: I do not hate this editor or his cartoonist for doing what they did. Any particular act has to amount to something in order to be hated--and also must not contradict itself. Besides, Christ told us specifically never to return evil for evil, or hatred for hatred--and Paul reminds us sharply that Divine Justice is a matter for God to handle. (Frankly, I'd sooner intercede for those guys anyway--but I must remind them that they need to get their minds right with God. Sin, and its attendant separation from God, are not the sort of thing to mess around with.)

GOP's King: Port Takeover Security Inadequate

At issue: P&O, Inc. (probably an initialism by now) currently controls port operations at six US ports, including New York Harbor. While this company is foreign-owned, it does not have any government among its owners. But--another firm is about to buy it out, and the United Arab Emirates holds a stake in that firm.

That's bad news. Worse than "just looking bad," it creates an opportunity for mischief. No foreign government should ever hold a stake in the operations of our harbors.

Representative Peter King, as head of the House Homeland Security Committee, is the most visible "man on the case." But Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the caretaker Senator keeping Jon Corzine's seat warm until the election, has also introduced a bill to block foreign-government-owned firms from operating US ports, and he has Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) as co-sponsor. I'm surprised that either Senator would see the national-security point. But they've got the right idea this time, and I hope their bill passes.

WorldNetDaily: Has bias pendulum swung against men?

A good question. I answer "yes" when I see that women outnumber men in the Grand Commencement Parade, this although affirmative action still favors women over men.

To be fair, some of the points in the WorldNetDaily article need some extra perspective:

  • "Men, whose average life expectancy was formerly on a par with women, are now dying 10 years earlier." Actually, when I was growing up, men were dying about five years earlier than women. But most of those deaths were in battle, and for fifteen years, no American saw battle since Vietnam, except for a few brief incidents in Grenada and off the coast of Libya. Sadly, the casualties in Iraq have involved both sexes, something that shouldn't happen, because we shouldn't send women anywhere near the front. Going into a place where you can get shot at is man's work, not women's. (Let's not have any jokes about hunting accidents, here.) So now, if men are dying ten years earlier than women, and it's not because of disproportionate military or LEO casualties, something is killing them. If women were involved, the MSM would be screaming to find out what. But as it is--silence.
  • "Boys have inferior reading and comprehension scores and lower graduation rates than girls." In my day, the teacher fixed that with a little discipline and competition. But today, they're letting it slide. Deliberately, perhaps?
  • "The suicide rates for boys, young fathers and older men range from four to 10 times higher than for their female counterparts." Actually, women have historically been quicker to attempt suicide. Men have been far more likely to succeed at it, however, because of the methods they employ: shooting themselves instead of taking drugs or poison, for example.
  • "Men spend more and more time at work, as compared to women in similar full-time jobs, and they engage in considerably more demanding and dangerous career choices." Frankly, that's an argument for paying men more, and putting paid to "comparable work" arguments.
The article dwells on the treatment of men in the family courts. I have always found that monumentally unfair. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep demonstrated that in the film Kramer v. Kramer. But this bias is not universal. The universal thread seems to be that judges rule in favor of undermining the moral foundations of society. Usually that means doing favors for whichever party wants the divorce. That's usually the woman--but not always. And it means not giving the tail of a stray rat in the law library about adultery.

But the worst problem is one they only touched briefly on: that boys aren't going to college in the numbers in which they once did, and when they do, they're not getting the advanced degrees, either. Part of that might be that advanced degrees in most subjects confer no additional marketable job skills, except for being a college-level instructor in that discipline--and job opportunities never match the total population of graduates holding degrees like Master of Arts or even Master of Science. (The chief exceptions are the hard-nosed professional degrees of Master of Business Administration--called "Master of Public and Private Management" at Yale--and Doctor of Jurisprudence and Doctor of Medicine.) But the other part is that boys aren't "getting with the program" in high school--and teachers are now letting boys slide, saying, "I'm not going to worry about you anymore!" Now that wasn't always the case.

That's what happens when discipline takes a slide. Everyone needs discipline in order to succeed--and minors need discipline from adult authorities. But people seem to forget that boys are different in every way. And so, if you let a boy get away with cutting class, you won't do him any favors.

In the boys' school that I went to, you had boys splitting up into two opposing camps, the "Jocks" and the "Freaks". The two camps came to open war at one point, and the administration stepped in. Today I see the Jocks getting away with letting their grades slide--and they're paying for it later on. And in fact all of society is. And it wasn't noticed because--"everybody knew" that "the best thing boys do is fool." And maybe also because society started to say that nothing was "a man's job" anymore, so boys took that as a license to let everything slide.

Repairing this problem will take a generation, and it must begin in K-12. And it will require a change in the way men and women value one another--back to the old ways.

Friday, February 17, 2006

WorldNetDaily: Probe finds terrorists in U.S. 'training for war'

It had to come out sooner or later--and here they are, in the Catskill Mountains near Hancock, NY. Right here on American soil.

Jesus says, "Seek ye first the truth, and the truth will set you free." In the interest of getting out the truth, here's the story. Read it for yourselves, follow the links, and then call your Senators and Representative and ask them why the US Marshals' service doesn't go up that mountain and clean that rats' nest out.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Man who laughed at Cheney gets shot hours later

From WorldNetDaily.

Ah, irony. And also an illustration of the Glass House Proverb.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

'Bin Laden-ism' and the Long War

Brendan Miniter, at OpinionJournal.com, tells us that the Pentagon knows that is has a new Cold War--which they call the Long War--to fight. And, like Marcus Valerius Messala, commander of the garrison of Jerusalem (as portrayed by Stephen Boyd in Billy Wyler's film Ben-Hur), they know how to fight an idea: with another idea. The idea is simple: freedom. And yes, part of the pushing of that idea is disaster relief--like what we provided after the Great Pakistan Earthquake and the Great Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami. And all this is in the Quadrennial Defense Review!

Great work.

WorldNetDaily: Scientists slam Gore

Now you know that Gore is off-the-wall, when even the environmental scientists say he's wrong.

At issue: Manila, capital of the Philippines, is sinking. Gore flew to Manila and told the world that the rising ocean is about to drown Manila. But then two Filipino scientists say that the real reason why Manila is becoming Venice Pacific is that the residents are taking all the ground water out, and that is causing subsidence. In other words, the oceans are not rising all that much--but the city really is sinking, and that sinking is a local effect.

Typical liberal that he is, Gore always seems to make the most elementary mistakes in his arguments. In this case, he ignores local causes of environmental harm, choosing instead to blame global warming for everything. Which, of course, is an excuse for the socialism he really wants.

Monday, February 13, 2006

WorldNetDaily: The cartoon wars

Patrick J. Buchanan weighs in again--and once again he manages to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt about his loyalties to the civilization that is the foundation of his liberties.

First, he should get his facts straight. The riots started five months after the fact, and were over cartoons that were not the originals, but were substitutes. Sometimes I wonder which is worse--plagiarism, or publishing your own work under another person's name in order to bring that person into disrepute. That's what those Muslim clerics from Denmark did.

Second, I've seen the original cartoons. The one showing the crescent moon wrapped in his turban as though it were a pair of devil horns was just plain silly--a total cliché. Nor did I get the point of the cartoon showing Muhammad being so tall that his pack donkey was toy-like standing next to him. The intimation that Muhammad was a criminal and therefore had to cover his eyes while his wives covered everything but their eyes, lost something in the translation. Thus those three cartoons were no worse--and should be regarded as no more powerful--than your normal everyday Internet flame.

But the one of him saying, "Stop! We have run out of virgins!" is dead on-target--along with the one depicting Muhammad's head as a bomb with a short fuse. It goes directly to what a literal reading of the Koran and the Hadith demand. The only question in my mind right now is how many Muslims take their holy books literally, and how many have "spiritualized" them, and therefore want no part of the violence done in Allah's name.

Which brings me to my third criticism of Pat Buchanan: that he simply will not admit that the Koran and the Hadith literally exhort their readers to commit murder and treason against non-believers. Ostensibly he looks at Islam and sees an ally against the wretched decadence of secular society. But what he can't get through his head is that after Hollywood runs red with blood, he's next--and so am I. (Which is why I remind everyone that pork chops, pork barbecue, and so on have become regular staples in my diet.)

He and I might agree that some kind of testimony against secular society is called for. But here's the difference: a good Christian pastor tells his flock that Jesus probably would shun the movies, if not completely, then almost completely--in that movies these days push sin to sell tickets. Even a literalist Christian pastor would say no more than that. (If a pastor did, he'd be going beyond the Bible.) But a literalist Muslim pastor is going to have a Molotov-cocktail-making lab in his mosque basement, instead of a fellowship hall, and there he is going to recruit a cadre of special acolytes to go out and firebomb the local cinema (perhaps even while it is occupied), and then plan to descend on Hollywood with scimitars and daggers to clean the place out. Which religious tradition do you prefer?

Choose this day Whom ye shall serve. That goes for Pat Buchanan and for all my fellow citizens.

BreakPoint | Is the Supreme Court Really Supreme?

Not when the Court itself violates the Constitution.

Charles Colson analyzes the case of Scott v. Sandford (that's "Scott" as in "Dred")--and, more to the point, Abraham Lincoln's refusal to recognize that as valid law. I have analyzed Scott in detail--or as much detail as a non-lawyer can bring to bear--and I can tell you that the Court violated every rule in the book with that case. For those of you who didn't hear the details in your history class, Dred Scott had traveled, in the company of his master, into a territory that, according to the Missouri Compromise, was free territory--free as in that anyone who set foot in that territory would be a free man. This is what anyone would normally assume--bring a slave into a land where slavery is not valid, and that person is a slave no more. Period.

But Roger B. Taney didn't see it that way. He threw out the entire Missouri Compromise and, in essence, declared that Dred Scott must remain a slave because he was the son of slaves. Taney did everything but issue a bald-faced declaration that blacks were genetically inferior--a thing for which the Bible has absolutely no warrant whatsoever, and more to the point, a thing for which the Constitution had no warrant, either.

Bottom line: the Supreme Court blew it. And their mistake caused a war and a lot of bitter feelings that continue to linger.

So what did Honest Abe do? Well, we all remember him for fighting a war. But more to the point, he made no attempt to follow the Court's decision in Scott. He behaved, and conducted his office, as though the Court had decided the other way.

Nor was he the first President to kick sand into the Supreme Court's face. Andrew Jackson earned that honor when he said, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

Now we can hope that Bush will put a stop to this sort of behavior by naming another member of the Roberts-Alito team to the Court. We can further hope that no President will have to go to civil war to repair a broken Court precedent--nor am I advocating a shooting war in such an event. But we have the precedents of Lincoln, and better than that, Jackson as our guide to whether the Supreme Court is really all that Supreme.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

CBS News | Ind. Proposal: Life Starts at Conception

This proposed law is merely an abortion-consent law, one that dictates what an abortionist must tell his patient before she consents to treatment. It is not as far-reaching as the South Dakota law, which proposes to send abortionists to prison for five years. While the South Dakotans are looking for a Constitutional case and a Roe overturn, Indiana is simply seeing how far they can go without having to argue directly against Roe.

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Musharraf confirms 'al-Qaeda' hit

Specifically, he said that five men foreign to Pakistan died in that raid. One of them was al-Zawahiri's son-in-law, who also led Al-Qa'ida's media operations. In essence, this man was Osama bin Laden's G-5--which is to say, his General Staff Officer in Charge of Civilian-Military Liaison.

Another man was an Egyptian bomb-making expert who carried a $5 million (US) price on his head.

So that raid was worthwhile, after all, even if al-Zawahiri himself was a no-show.

WorldNetDaily: Pentagon plans blitz on Tehran

The only reason I am sending this on is that papers in Germany and England are full of this. The cat is, therefore, out of the bag.

For myself, I begin to question the seriousness of Ahmadinejad's purpose. If he really wants the West to "pay a high price for being hostage to the Zionists," then why does he continue to sell oil to the West? Possibly because he can't afford the lost revenue.

And this is what Bush really meant by calling us "addicted to oil." Why shouldn't we be able to call a boycott of oil and see how those mad mullahs like having their one major export become valueless?

That aside, I take this nuclear-weapons talk very seriously--especially since we must remember that Ezekiel predicted that Iran would join with Russia to be at war with Israel--a war that would end in disaster for Israel's enemies.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Ken Bode, Jonathan Alter: Hillary Clinton a Loser

Add Maureen Dowd to that list, too. Two of the three said that Hillary's performance at Coretta Scott King's funeral was lackluster. Ken Bode, formerly of CNN and of MPT's Washington Week in Review, said that she cannot hope to sway a single State in the Midwest, which he says will be the actual battleground.

Now this is either in the I-don't-like-it-any-better-than-you-do department--or it is a deliberate piece of desinformatsiya. I wouldn't put it past the Fishwrappers, if--and that's a mighty big "if"--they remain capable of putting out any kind of organized message.

WorldNetDaily: Ahmadinejad to Iranians: Israel 'will be removed'

Not only that, but he also said that he'd just opt out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the West imposed any meaningful sanctions on him.

The rest of his speech struck me as half of it contradicting the other half. I don't know quite what to make of it, except this: the prophet Ezekiel said that we'd end up in a war with a Russo-Arab-Iranian alliance against Israel. This might be a prelude to that...

Friday, February 10, 2006

WorldNetDaily: State lawmakers defy Roe ruling

The South Dakota House of Representatives has signaled their defiance by passing a law making abortion in that State a felony, punishable by five years in prison. The bill now heads to the State Senate. The plan is simple: deliberately provoke a federal court challenge and start the case marching up the chain of jurisdiction to the Supreme Court.

Why now, when a possible anti-Roe bloc consists of only four reliables (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas) and not five? The article doesn't say. Here's my speculation:

Constitutional cases take much longer than you can imagine to wend their way up the appellate chain. The steps are these:

  1. File a lawsuit in federal District Court.
  2. Try the case in that court.
  3. File the appeal and/or the response. (That a District judge would actually find for the legislature is extremely unlikely, so the State will be filing an appeal, not a response.)
  4. Write briefs and then give oral arguments to a three-judge panel in the circuit having jurisdiction.
  5. Get the inevitable affirmation of the likely District-level strike-down.
  6. (Optional) Go through that whole process again by asking the entire Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the appeal en banc.
  7. Write the petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court--in essence, asking the Court to change its rule.
Now even getting to that point could take years--maybe enough years for Bush to make one more judicial appointment. Hooo, boy, the stakes in the Senate couldn't be higher! I can already hear Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), she who once said that a baby is not a person until the mother brings it home, RANTING AND RAVING AND SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS on the floor of the Senate when Bush's next Supreme Court pick comes up. And before then! Senator Ted (hiccup) Kennedy will be pestering Chairman Arlen Specter at Judiciary for another executive session. (Apologies to Sean Hannity.) Will Arlen bang the gavel on Kennedy's fingers, as he came close to doing this last time? Stay tuned! Better fashion some special gavels for the Judiciary Committee and Senate floor sessions. Chips are gonna fly from the dais in each venue!

Now back to that appeals process: So a cert petition goes to the Supremes, who take it up in Friday morning session. What will they do? Four Justices can vote to grant cert--because the Court never lets a case stand without comment without at least six Justices voting not to waste the Court's time with it. The current Court will likely grant cert--but we'll need one more Justice to retire in order to get what will likely be a five-to-four vote. And the most the Court will likely do is to say that from now on, abortion will be a State matter and only a State matter, unless a particular federal law deals with such circumstances as "interstate transportation in aid of circumvention of parental consent."

Right about now, I think a bunch of people are e-mailing private messages to the chambers of Mr. Justice John Paul Stevens, containing links to all manner of patent medicines touted for helping you live longer. I wonder: is it lawful willfully to direct spam to the e-chambers of a Justice of the Supreme Court?

Don't miss our next exciting episode....

Terrorist Blamed His Failure on Bush

So says Terence Jeffrey, editor of Human Events. And in what sense does a terrorist blame Bush for his failure? Simply this: the security measures that Bush took, prevented this man from acting out his twisted dream of death to Americans. And guess what else: this is a home-grown terrorist, a Muslim who grew up in this country, ate our bread, and intended to repay his fellow citizens with murder.

Remember this in the middle of the cacophony that passes for political debate these days.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > World -- Judge shelves case over Jesus' existence

The judge not only dismissed the case with prejudice, but, for good measure, recommended that the plaintiff be investigated for slander!

Well! This atheist wanted a trial on the existence of Jesus. He might have it--with himself as defendant, not the Catholic priest he had accused.

But more to the point, he'll get his trial all right--before the Great White Throne, if he doesn't get his mind right before then.

Harvard Gazette: Science losing war over evolution

Filmmaker Randy Olson assumes that this is only because evolutionists haven't made their case, and that they haven't made their case because they either don't think they should have to, or because scientists are trained to hem and haw and qualify everything they say.

Olson won't admit, of course, that the case for evolution is built upon fraud, dry-labbing, and deliberate misconstruction of the evidence.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Islam's Uncertain Future - Christianity Today Magazine

Why uncertain? Here we go back to the dichotomy between Arabs and the rest of the world.

You see, no one ever translated the Koran out of the classical Arabic, until very recently. So most people don't even know how it reads. And therefore their idea of what it means to be a Muslim is not the idea of Osama bin Laden.

Not yet, that is. Because the Islamo-fascists are all too ready to clarify the Koran in ways that even too many American politicians can't understand. And then a bunch of people are going to have to choose, on that day, what sort of God they will serve.

BreakPoint | The Bedroom Police

Ah, irony. Open health-benefit extensions to roommates and you've opened a floodgate. Which is why the University of Florida tried to require that roommates claiming these benefits be more than roommates--that they be Brokeback Mountaineers, if you catch my drift. The story created such an uproar that the university had to back down.

Now, says Chuck Colson, you know why marriage is so important.

Companies that have extended health benefits to roommates are going to find out fairly quickly what kind of can of worms they've opened. If they think boycotts from morally outraged customers might have stung some of them, wait 'til their HR Veeps tell them about how much money they're now shelling out for benefits...!

WorldNetDaily: Muslim newspaper ran cartoons 4 months ago

That's right, four months ago! And nobody uttered a peep! Why are they uttering it now? And of course, the cartoons that appeared were the originals, not those three fakes (one of them frankly plagiarized) that stirred up the riots this time. (Hat Tip: Freedom for Egyptians.)

OpinionJournal - Abolish FISA

The President has won the hearts and minds of the American people on this one. But the Senate still proposes measures that would gum up the works. So The Wall Street Journal now says: Abolish the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and that silly court. To which I say: It's about time! The whole thing is unconstitutional, anyway.

Voting Early--and Often

Sadly, that will now be the rule in Maryland, if three new election "reforms" go into effect this fall. Maryland is going to dye itself permanently blue if its people don't watch out. Recall that this is the State where a black candidate for the Republican gubernatorial primary walked into a hailstorm of Oreo cookies, symbolic of blacks being "white inside"--which is to say, trying to make something of oneself as a law-abiding, prosperous citizen.

More to the point: if that's what the Democratic Party in Maryland now intends to do, then I say: Let the law-abiding citizens move to neighboring Virginia, or perhaps Delaware. Then see what happens to Maryland.

Moral Atomic Bomb

That's what Bernhard-Henri Levy calls the heat behind the cartoon dust-up--though even he still fails to recognize that the cartoons that started this latest rioting were fakes, and one of them was based on plagiarism. His solution: "reject the clash of civilizations of the kind desired by the extremists of the Arab-Muslim world and by them alone." Well, maybe I don't desire it. But I know that this clash must come. The Bible predicts a war that will bring to power a dictator more brutal than Bernhard-Henri Levy imagines, or dares imagine--and capable of anything. (He will start out seeming to be capable in the good sense of the world--as in, a capable administrator. But God's judgments will make hash of all his administrative efforts, as John the Revelator describes in detail.)

Levy speaks of triangles to describe linkages on the Muslim side, and the one he'd like to see on the Western side. But I see a three-cornered war, involving Christians, Muslims, and secularists. The secularists will gain the upper hand--until Christ Himself returns to settle everyone's hash.

Understand this: I am not issuing any rallying cry to the kind of violent action we have seen among Muslims. For one thing, I don't expect to be standing on this earth when that final clash comes. For another, Christ will come back in His own good time, and not to suit anyone on earth. And for a third--in sharp contrast to the competing visions of the Mahdi that Muslims have--Christ will do His own fighting, without anyone's help.

But dreams of man-made peace are just that: dreams, or deadly illusions. The Koran does not permit Muslims to negotiate in good faith with Westerners--and the Bible contains its own cautionary tale about negotiating with people you don't really know.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Exxon: America will always rely on foreign oil

Not only that, but the head of ExxonMobil even says that America should stop trying to become energy-independent! And this is the kicker:
Because we are all contributing to and drawing from the same pool of oil, all nations -- exporting and importing -- are inextricably bound to one another in the energy marketplace.
In other words, can't we all just get along? Well, the answer is, "No!" Start with three thousand dead people in Manhattan. Continue with this dust-up about those cartoons, the most incendiary of which turned out to be faked.

The head of ExxonMobil needs to watch his mouth, in fact--because one might with some justice construe his remarks as expressing the sentiment of a vast oligopolistic conspiracy. And just so everyone knows: BP/Amoco doesn't hold with that. Not if their multiple alternative-fuels initiatives mean anything.

Blacks Poised for Political Positions

And get this: they're getting these positions in the Republican Party, not the Democratic.

Somehow I don't think Ray Nagin had this in mind when he made his ourtageous prediction about New Orleans becoming a "chocolate city" once again. I definitely know that Cynthia McKinney and her dad ("It was Jews! Jay-Eeh-Double-u-Ess!") didn't have this in mind. This must stick in a lot of craws.

And it's a development that I welcome.

Calvin, Hobbes, and Muhammad

Ann Coulter weighs in on the cartoon kerfuffle. Most of what she writes is classic, vintage Ann Coulter. But she makes one point that I missed: that the Iraqis haven't been rioting over those cartoons! I wonder why.

Maybe because those Danish Muslim clerics couldn't get in.

Culture of Coercion

That culture, or what there was of it, was called Communism. Now, in addition to a Holocaust Museum, we're going to get three Communism Museums--and these won't give the sugar-coat views. A very good development and triumph for truth.

What's Right With 'Munich'

I won't vouch for Munich being an OK film after all. But the critic linked here mentions many scenes in it that the popular press neglected to mention--scenes that speak volumes about Israel's actual policies toward civilians who "get in the way." Read for yourselves.

Bonfire of the Pieties

An Iraq expert refutes the claim that the Koran forbids depictions of Muhammad.

Crosswalk.com - Liberal Clergyman Calls Boehner a 'Disaster for Religious Liberties'

And his main complaint is of John Boehner's support for Bush's faith-based initiative. That, in turn, is nothing more than an assurance that a religious organization has as much right as any other to provide such social services as the government, from time to time, asks other people to provide.

In point of fact, The "Reverend" Welton Gaddy, head of The Interfaith Alliance, wouldn't know religious persecution if he himself got arrested for preaching. As for The Interfaith Alliance itself, I'll let its Republican critics describe it, as they do in this article.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton Blast Bush at King Service

Not only that, but so did Former President James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., and The Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--though calling themselves Christian is a clear misnomer now.

Picture this: the President of the United States had to sit there and take, without protest, the worst personal abuse ever hurled at anyone in a public place. "Weapons of Misdirection!" cried Lowery. "For war, more billions, but no mo' for the po'!" (How about that--he lapses into stereotypical Blackspeak.) Carter's dubious contribution consisted of talking about how the Kings were subject to unwarranted surveillance--though Carter forgot to mention that the order came from none other than Attorney General and future Senator Robert Francis Kennedy.

Fine. So you guys all think that Bush is a jerk--and you're willing to say it in front of his dad, in front of his wife, and in front of the whole country. But what kind of jerks heap personal abuse on a fellow guest at a funeral? Have you no respect for the dead?

Rush Limbaugh called these the Paul Wellstone moments. (Sean Hannity resurrected some old sound clips of Tom Harkin yelling at the top of his lungs, "For Paul Wellstone, will you stand up and fight for [various and sundry liberal programs]? Say yes!") But at least no Republican was present at Paul Wellstone's funeral. (At least I don't think they were--Republicans probably wouldn't get into journalism school, did they dignify such institutions with an application for admission.) These jerks said this directly to the face of the President, in the presence of former Presidents--and one of the jerks is a former President himself.

Remember this in the midterm elections.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

NeanderNews � Danish Imams Busted!

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs. I started looking for this when John Batchelor mentioned this on his radio program last night.

In short: this whole Muslim cartoon thing is a fake and a put-up job. The Islamic Society of Denmark is responsible for deliberately creating confusion on the matter. Add to it Bashir Assad's own ulterior motives, and the whole thing looks like just what John Batchelor said it was: a massive psy-op calculated to scare the willies out of the Europeans.

WorldNetDaily: Syria behind torching of Danish buildings?

None other than Walid Jumblatt, longtime leader of the Druze, charges that undercover soldiers took part in the burnings of the two Scandinavian embassies in Damascus. Jumblatt's theory is that Bashir Assad doesn't much want anyone looking into a recent Lebanese assassination. But maybe he also doesn't want the IAEA referring Iran to the Security Council, either.

WorldNetDaily: Hamas in its own words

Specifically, here is the Hamas charter. This, along with the Koran and the Hadith, should be required reading for all those neo-Nevilles at Foggy Bottom.

WorldNetDaily: Hamas declares war – on Rotary Clubs

Not only Rotary International, but also Lions Clubs International (and, I presume, Kiwanis and Civitan International, too). And the UN itself. So says Article 22 of the Hamas Charter.

Talk about jawing about things they know nothing about! My father was a Rotarian. Rotary International was something you joined if you were civic-minded. And they're not idle. They do many good things, including maintaing scholarship funds. Don't just take my word for it. Follow the above links and see for yourselves what these organizations do with their dues and their time. You'll find that they are not "just a place to go on a weekday evening"--and not part of any grand Zionist conspiracy, either.

A conspiracy theory of history always has this big problem: a conspiracy that big couldn't possibly hold together. The problem with human history is sin, and that will resolve only at the Last Battle. More to the point: this strikes me as just more taquiyya on the part of yet another Muslim radical group--the practice of lying deliberately to non-Muslims, who are always your enemies.

Monday, February 06, 2006

BreakPoint | Musical Mush

Chuck Colson is usually dead-on-target with his commentaries. But this time he swings barely wide.

He begins with a complaint about "meaningless music" in church--or rather, what passes for music and goes under the label of "Contemporary Christian Music", which I find neither Christian nor musical. But he goes on to lodge a complaint about Christian radio stations dropping their Bible study programs in favor of all-music formats.

True enough, that last is a big mistake on the part of Christian radio station managers. Music has its place, and Bible study has another place, and they both belong on the radio.

But that's only part of the problem. The other part is the sounds that are offered to God under the general category of "music." Those songs fall just as short of the mark as did Cain's sacrifice, in Genesis 4.

Music is probably the art form of which God is most likely to approve, and the one most important to God. Saint Paul discusses music in greater detail than he does any other art form. He names three specific kinds of songs that are appropriate for a Christian to offer up to the Lord. They are:

  1. Psalms--the best example of songs lifted straight out of Scripture. This demonstrably includes the Book of Psalms but might also include Mary's Magnificat ("My soul doth magnify the Lord...") and the song of the Israelites after they crossed the Red Sea.
  2. Hymns--songs that directly quote or paraphrase Scripture.
  3. Spiritual odes--songs clearly inspired by Scripture. The old standby Amazing Grace would be a good example.
Sadly, what we too often get today, particularly from "Praise Bands" and "Worship Teams," are repetitious lyrics, all too often set to music designed to make you move, not to move you--and certainly not to put you into a frame of mind to contemplate just how Great God really is. A steady diet of that would risk turning anyone's brain to mush. Playing or singing that in church makes you wonder why God doesn't make the winds howl every time they do it.

So the problem is more than radio stations and even some churches shortchanging or dispensing with sermons or messages in favor of one music number after another. The problem is also that the music itself is some of the worst music ever written. Shame on all those music directors for offering such pablum to God's ears.

WorldNetDaily: Muhammad Ali's real roots

Nothing scandalous here--not about Muhammad Ali. It's just that "grandson of a slave" is not and never was the defining characteristic of his life. The real scandal is with other biographers who have insisted on presenting him as an enraged victim of America out to get even--instead of the son of good people who encouraged him to make good. In short, the fault lies not so much with him as with those who insist on making his life over to suit their purposes.

I suspect that this story is pulling some punches to avoid spoiling the surprise. I haven't read the book Sucker Punch by Jack Cashill, in which he sets the record straight and in detail. But this piece ought to pique your interest in it.

WorldNetDaily: The cartoon that shook the world

Make that cartoons--plural. Well, let's see--we have Muhammad with a head full of high explosive and a burning fuse--and a short fuse, too. That would go along with the change he made in the whole thrust of the religion he invented, in what by historical standards is a fit of pique. We have another one that says that, just as Muslim women must cover everything but their eyes, Muhammad exposes everything but his eyes--which could stand for him being a criminal or simply having the sort of eyes a man in his position dares not reveal. Looking at the one about Muhammad being so tall that his pack donkey looks toy-like standing next to him, I can't quite discern what the cartoonist was trying to convey. The one morphing the crescent moon into a pair of horns is more telling, but it's a cliche.

My personal favorite: Muhammad yelling at a bunch of bombed-out men, "Stop! We have run out of virgins!" That might be a sad commentary on the state of the world: just how many virgins remain? (Then again, the Koran never says where those virgins are supposed to come from.) More to the point: it emphasizes everything that is wrong with that belief system--besides the obvious point that it's all a lie.

Oh, and in case anyone wants to know: tonight I am eating pork chops for dinner. Jesus--Who would consider blasphemous any suggestion that He was a mere Prophet--said long ago never to call anything unclean that God has made clean. But I don't expect anyone to understand, if the best thing that one does is to burn embassies.

WorldNetDaily: NAACP chief denies equating GOP, Nazis

And yet neither he nor the university at which he spoke will release a tape or a transcript of his speech.

He also says that the only reports that he compared Republicans to Nazis appeared in a "right-wing blog." Two things are wrong with that statement:

  1. WorldNetDaily is not a blog. It is a news site with very tight editorial control. Nothing gets printed until the editors have checked, rechecked, and double-checked every fact mentioned. (Well, now Julian Bond's words are appearing here, or at least with a link, so I suppose Mr. Bond is now correct. But if he was talking about WorldNetDaily, he wasn't.)
  2. If he's not going to release the transcript, and not going to "get in a back-and-forth about what [he] did say," then I suppose he's going to let the reports stand. That's a very dangerous thing for a man in his position. If he thinks that WorldNetDaily misquoted him, then let him sue them. That's what courts are for.
I'll tell you what will happen if he does sue. He'll lose. Truth is an absolute defense to a charge of libel, and he knows it. So now he's trying to stall, one of the two favorite tactics of a liberal caught with his foot in his mouth. (The other is to cry, "Context dropping!", forgetting that some things are inappropriate in any context.)

But then I expected no better of him. He is a typical black separatist, one who would rather fight a race war than work for genuine reconciliation. The contrast between him and men like Jesse Lee Peterson and Walter E. Williams is palpable.

Well, everyone is known by the company one keeps. Individuals--of whatever skin color--can make their own decisions about company-keeping and about everything else.

WorldNetDaily: Clinton dirty trickster faces new charges

The main thing that this story tells us is the kind of company Hillary Clinton keeps. Too bad this man faces no charges directly related to the Clintons. But for those of you in New York who actually have this woman as your Senator, you might want to remember that, just as she is known for the company she keeps, you are known for the company you keep. See you at the polls...

Sunday, February 05, 2006

WorldNetDaily: Nurses want self-harmers to be given fresh blades

They "justify" this suggestion by observing that "we provide clean needles for drug addicts, don't we?" Sadly, yes, and we should stop that practice right now.

Hippocrates of Cos made his students swear to "give no deadly preparation to anyone, even if asked, nor suggest such a course." Quite apart from the disgusting nature of this practice called cutting, the facilitation of it violates everything that good health care stands for. Furthermore, it's inconsistent: most of the liberal-dominated professional associations (including, sadly, the AMA) are gun-control advocates, and regularly tout "data" that purport to show that armed citizens are more likely to die early than unarmed (making no distinction, of course, between criminals and self-defenders). And now they want to hand out another sort of weapon? What are they thinking?

Saturday, February 04, 2006

WorldNetDaily: France 'feels solidarity' with imprisoned terrorist

I can't think why--or at least I know of no good reason for anyone in Europe to feel "solid" with any terrorist. I can think of a few bad reasons, grounded in pique at the United States--or something much, much worse.

An exchange with Jonathan Pollard is a non-starter. Pollard wouldn't go along with it even if anyone offered it to him.

Everyone needs to recognize that there are no moderates--only terrorists who have been locked up too long and have lost their touch.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Who Is Really Oppressing the Palestinians?

Hint: it's not the Israelis. This article is a long-overdue history review of the region, going clear back to the Turkish occupation of the region, long before anyone ever heard of a man named Lawrence!

Sick of Sausage: Today's Voters Crave Ideology

Well, now: when is the last time the voters didn't crave ideology? All that's happened is that voters are waking up to the abandonment of ideology, and they're not going to stand for it anymore. It's good to see.

And the Money Goes to . . .

Well, where it does not go is to movies that tell people how horrible they are for being conservative. It's Oscar season again, and all the Oscar nods went to leftish social-message movies that, combined, made a relative pittance at the box office. (That any of them individually made any money at all is because their producers at least got smart and didn't break the bank making them.) And as I've already said, the Oscars get less relevant with every passing year--or decade.

The worshippers move out, the ceiling falls in. What to do?

The answer would seem to be: get Federal funds to preserve the house of worship as an historical landmark.

Be careful what you wish for. The Communists turned St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow into a museum, don't forget.

Somerschool

Here's a new blog devoted to home schooling. Its author, Scott Somerville, saw my recent criticism of Oprah Winfrey for apparently shutting out homeschoolers from her essay contest. He blames her lawyers, and suggests that maybe she knew nothing about it. I'll vouch that what law schools teach these days is about equal parts Marxist ideology and actual law. But Oprah is still the captain of the ship (which is an important legal term, by the way), and therefore the choices that her organization makes are her responsiblity, and redound to her credit or discredit, as the case may be.

That said, Mr. Somerville does an excellent job covering home schooling and all the issues that touch it in any way. I especially enjoyed his take on "black flight" from urban schools that are severely short-changing their students. (Wonder what he thinks of the spectacle of girls prostituting themselves in school?)

Even better: he covers controversies about Child Protective Services departments (which in some States treat parents as if they were--well, Muslim terrorists or something) and the latest Government surveys. A real must-read.

WorldNetDaily: NBC's 'Out TV' not so fictional

Remember when I laughed at NBC for going out of their way to pull a dumb stunt involving a strictly hypothetical homosexual TV network? Now WorldNetDaily informs me that I am sadly mistaken. OutTV exists, and is available largely in Canada, not the USA. (No link--that would violate my family-friendly policies.)

My criticism of Will & Grace still stands--and I still say that we can expect no better of it.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Rep. John Boehner: GOP Needs to Clean House

Pardon the pun, but I find it entirely appropriate. Congressman Boehner gave this interview before he achieved the goal he sought: the post of Floor Leader of the House Republican Caucus, commonly called "House Majority Leader" today. Congratulations, John. Now I hope to see you seize your new broom--and the moment.

Alec Baldwin Blasts 'Chicken-Bleep' Dems

Didn't this man say that he would leave the country if the Republicans won the Election of 2000? We're still waiting, Alec. Leave, already.

WorldNetDaily: Another armed incursion on U.S.-Mexico border

That's right: another one. The El Paso Incident wasn't enough to convince the open-border crowd that a threat existed across the Mexican border. Now we have another one. Will this convince them?

And once again: where is the Texas State Guard? They need to catch those bandidos so that they can parade them on Fox News.

Daughter of Late Egyptian President Sadat Tells of Marriage at Age 12 to Abusive Husband

Those who insist that American culture is the worst when it comes to the treatment of women ought to watch this clip, a project of the Middle East Media Research Institute. At MEMRI, you get Arabic media in their own words, translated from the Arabic. This is important because, quite often, an Arab leader will say one thing in English and then the exact opposite in Arabic--an extension of the Muslim principle of Taquiyyah, under which it is OK to lie to a non-believer, so long as the lie will advance the faith.

Alito Breaks With Conservatives, Opposes Mo. Execution

At issue: a death-row inmate has an appeal now pending, on the question of whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, no doubt monumentally disgusted with the spectacle of endless appeals, voted to lift the stay-of-execution now in force in that man's case. But Sam Alito voted to leave the stay in force--along with five other Justices.

I can guess what's happening: Mr. Justice Alito looks at this case, and says to himself that maybe the courts ought to go ahead, hear the appeal, and then give it the contempt it deserves. That kind of thing sets precedents. But having a man go to execution before the appeal is decided suddenly renders the case moot--and any precedent that might be set would not last.

In short, Samuel J. Alito is a compulsive i-dotter and t-crosser. And he's my kind of man.

Under him, everyone will get his day in court, after all. But that does not mean that the court will ultimately decide in his favor. If Alito had voted to let the prisoner go free, then I'd worry. He didn't. He just said to let the appeal go through, and that the State of Missouri had no compelling reason to stop the legal process.

WorldNetDaily: Bush slammed for scant mention of border issues

See? I wasn't the only one. Of course, we heard the "protecting American workers" argument--which is not all that strong, when you consider that the trade-union movement has as much to do with pricing American labor out of its own markets as does illegal immigration. But you also heard from chiefs of police and other persons concerned with the nation's security--and that is the real reason why illegal immigration cannot be allowed to continue, and why an open border is infeasible and irresponsible. Bush has always granted too short a shrift to concerns about border security. At least he didn't open his mouth and jam both feet in this year--instead, he said little or nothing. The criticism is for what he ought to say, but won't.

WorldNetDaily: Students prostituting on campus for $10?

At issue: a boy got arrested for forcing himself on a special-ed girl in school. And he can't understand why what he did was wrong! Why not? Because lots of other girls in the school were earning ten-spots by servicing boys right in the school auditorium.

Now tell me again that prostitution hurts no one, or even that it only hurts the women "in the life." In this case, someone grabbed an innocent by-stander.

In other words, prostitution hurts all women, by giving men a warped view of what to expect from women.

And to see it happen in a school is a thorough indictment of that school's administrators. Clearly a bunch of people need to get fired.

And parents should yank their kids out of places like that.

WorldNetDaily: Oprah's essay contest excludes homeschoolers

The subject of the essay is "Why is the book Night by Elie Wiesel relevant today?" But the fine print on the essay rules reads: "Contest open to all legal residents of the U.S. who are currently enrolled full-time (and in good standing) in a public or state-accredited private or parochial school, grades 9-12." In other words, no home-schooler need play.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, willing to grant Oprah the benefit of the doubt, asked for a clarification--after all, maybe Oprah didn't want a bunch of drop-outs, habitual truants, or academic probationers submitting essays. But Oprah's production company refused even to talk to HSLDA. That sounds to me as though Oprah, or someone in her office, has a "thing" against home schooling.

What could that be? Oprah, why won't you answer? What do you think home schooling is? Have you any idea how hard parents work at teaching their own kids? It's one of the most challenging, exciting, and rewarding tasks that any parent could undertake--and has much more honor than you seem to appreciate. And by excluding home-schooled children from your essay contest, you're cutting out a lot of participants who would bring excellent results.

Is your contest really about promoting the best commentary on the subject at hand, or at least the best example of expository writing? Or is it about picking winners for the sake of who they are? Inquiring minds want to know.

WorldNetDaily: 'Jesus Christ' not welcome at public meetings

The Anti-defamation League is at it again--and once again they commit defamation in order, ostensibly, to combat it.

The invocation of the Name of the Lord and Savior of mankind is not in and of itself an indictment of Jews as a people. Jesus Himself bade His Father to "forgive them, for they know not what they do." Furthermore, Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, clearly said that God hasn't forgotten national Israel and won't forget them at the Last Battle and the Tribulation leading up thereto.

I know what anti-Jewish sentiment sounds like. This is not it. And when the ADL insists that it is, they demean themselves and make people merely define "anti-Semitism" as "anything about which Abe Foxman might complain." And then they give a free pass to real anti-Semitism, such as the bile coming out of the mouths of the "elected leaders" of those sojourners-within-the-gates who go by the name ("Palestine") that Emperor Hadrian gave to the region.

WorldNetDaily: Feds secure NFL profits instead of football fans?

I have this vision. A Federal agent swoops in on a concessionaire, and says, "Let me see your copy license for those souvenir trophies! No license? You're under arrest for selling contraband goods, in violation of NFL's copyrights!"

And then out of the sky drops a hijacked Goodyear blimp, which then blows up. And the last thing that agent feels is a twenty-millimeter tearing the back of his head off.

Sound familiar? It might. It's a rewrite of the 1970's thriller Black Sunday, the last time that Hollywood speculated on terrorists trying to crash the Super Bowl.

Priorities! Federal agents don't need to be enforcing copyrights! Leave that to Pinkerton Detective Agency, or any other cadre of rent-a-cops or rent-a-dicks that the National Football League cares to hire--and pay! Federal agents get paid to protect the public safety. And even if the FBI is charged with copyright enforcement, it ought to lay that aside when other, more dire threats are in play.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

BREITBART.COM - CBS' John Roberts Jumps to CNN

And small wonder. First, CBS passed him over for promotion after Dan Rather was eased out of the outfit. Then they insult him further by courting NBC's favorite Power Puff Girl, Katie Couric, to take over the CBS Evening News. Naturally, he jumped to a competitor--and CBS had the bad sense not to wring from him a covenant-not-to-compete. Some insults come back to bite the ones who deliver them. Not even thinking that a man is important enough to negotiate a covenant-not-to-compete is one such insult. Now he'll show them that they would have done better to give him a golden chain.

Or maybe not. I don't watch either network, so what John Roberts does with his time cannot matter to me. But I like to see an arrogant--and shortsighted--employer get back as much--or as little--respect as he pays out to his employees--or his customers--now and again.

Congress to Grant Patriot Act Extension

They should have gone with the deal they had before--but Harry Reid wanted to kill it, and thought this would score him political points. No joy, of course. Maybe now the Patriot Act will get whatever permanent reforms it needs.

Kim Gandy Cussin' Mad Over Alito Confirmation

Steve Malzberg reminded Ms. Gandy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's known positions for lowering the age-of-consent for sexual relations from 18 to 12. (Take note, Humbert Humbert! You were simply born too early.) And Kim Gandy said that that was a lie. Except that she used a barnyard word instead of simply saying, "that's a lie." Result: the segment became about Kim Gandy's foul mouth. And then--the kicker--she professed not even to recognize that she had just uttered an unbroadcastable word.

Linked here just to show how clueless some people can be.

WorldNetDaily: Britney, NBC in new prime-time profanity romp

When will they ever learn? Britney Spears is going to appear on NBC's pro-homosexual show Will & Grace--and I wonder who watches that show, anyway? Here is WND's description of the plot:
Britney Spears will guest star on "Will & Grace" as a conservative who hosts on a Christian TV network a cooking segment called "Cruci-fixin's."

The pop singing star will appear as a sidekick to the regular character Jack, who hosts his own talk show on the fictional homosexual network Out TV, which is bought by a Christian TV network. The episode will air April 13, and NBC seems determined to stir as much controversy about the show. "Will & Grace" is in its eighth and final season on the network.

Have I got that straight? The show is in its last season, it's about a fictional homosexual network (seen any homosexual networks on real-life TV? I certainly haven't.), and the network gets taken over by a Christian TV network, which then proceeds to put on cooking shows with titles that I suppose are meant to be blasphemous, but are instead merely silly. And this is supposed to revive NBC's ratings?

I hate to break it to you, NBC--but nobody watches you anymore! And nobody cares what you do on a show like Will & Grace, of which we expect no better!

I won't bother speculating on what the real-life CBN would do, if they ever took over the assets of this fictional network. But I know that it wouldn't look anything like this.

WorldNetDaily: Bush's address to the nation

The full text of the State of the Union speech.

I watched it, of course. The Democrats spent most of their time sitting on their hands, or cat-calling about Social Security. Bush chided them publicly for failure to act--and that was good to see.

My chief criticism, of course, is of his attitudes on immigration. Clearly he wants to let more people in--and does not recognize that not everyone has the temperament to live in a republic, with all the responsibility that places on every citizen. More to the point, our porous border is the worst vulnerability we have. Now it's all very well for The Wall Street Journal to opine that as long as we engage terrorists abroad, we need not restrict immigraiton over there. But The Wall Street Journal has a conflict of interest: its biggest subscribers and advertisers want cheap labor. So, I imagine, do most of Bush's contributors. Maybe if one of those "cheap laborers" cut the throat of the contributor who had the bad sense to hire him, those same contributors would dance a different tune. That is not a threat of any direct action by myself or by anyone I know. It is a warning of the deadly risk that those same contributors seem to want to take without even knowing what a risk it is.

Besides that, Bush said that as a nation we were "addicted to oil," and specifically to its importation from "unstable regimes"--meaning our enemies. Unhappily, his reports on the subject amounted to an admission that we've spent ten billion US dollars on research--and not a scrap of results to show for it! Imagine a research department head making that kind of report to the CEO. How many days, how many hours, would he stay in his job, do you think?

All of which goes to illustrate, perhaps, the biggest problem with State of the Union addresses. A committee of committees writes it, and the President delivers it, totally deadpan. Ronald Reagan knew how to deliver a State of the Union address. Bush doesn't.

If you're the President, and you really want to move the country off a dependency on oil, do you not say something like:

I announce now that our military will begin at once to wean itself off the oil standard--through the use of hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles on our nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, so that carrier captains can keep those vehicles running while at sea for longer deployments; and by ordering new engines for our land vehicles that will run on any of a wide variety of fuels and fuel mixes, depending on what is available for the least total cost. The major automakers will shortly receive contracts for the delivery of large quantities of such vehicles, and I strongly urge them to make such vehicles available for the civilian market as well. I have further ordered the building managers of all federal buildings to make any possible economical use of solar and wind power in his buildings, and will shortly issue an Executive Order that every new federal building incorporate in its design certain features to make it energy-efficient. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 grants to Congress absolute authority over federal property on which stands any "needful building" of the government, military or civilian. We will promote alternative-energy techniques in the most obvious way imaginable: by active demonstration.
Wouldn't that sound a lot better than just a quote of a research budget? I never want to hear numbers; I want to see results. Any boss would.

Other than the above, it was a great speech, one appropriate to the times. But I never give anyone a free pass for a missed opportunity--especially not someone for whom I voted.

WorldNetDaily: Put Hamas on probation

Sorry, Pat. Many conservatives defended you from the charge of anti-Semitism once. Now you've let them down by morally equating Hamas and Israel. That's unacceptable, Pat.

Read your Bible, and especially the Prophets. I know that you're a Catholic, and that the Roman Catholic Church has little respect for the Prophets. Such has always been the case. But the Prophets called this one straight-up: this isn't about those sojourners-in-the-gates who take the name from a Roman corruption of the name for ancient Philistia. This is about Israel, whose right to exist and place in yet-to-fulfill prophecy you and those like you have never accepted.

WorldNetDaily: Takeover of Egypt part of Hamas' plan?

Could be. Aaron Klein has developed evidence that Hamas is extending feelers to the Muslim Brotherhood, who might as well be their counterparts in Egypt. This article makes clear Hamas' desire toward that end, and the opinions on several experts as to how likely Hamas can succeed.