The influence of George Soros By Herb London

Who is George Soros and why is he saying such awful things? Most Americans do not know this billionaire investor, but he, using his vast wealth, has become a force in left wing political circles. In some ways, he is the litmus test for Democratic politics.

Most of the time, Mr. Soros concerns himself with foreign affairs pointing out what he considers the failures of the Bush administration. In interviews with the press, Soros claims that President Bush’s war on terror “is really exploitation.” Moreover, he urges European leaders to adopt a stance different from the United States.

U.S. financier George Soros gestures during a meeting with the Indian business leaders, in New Delhi, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006. Soros, a strong proponent of open economies, said that the time is ripe for India to free its currency of controls, because its economy is showing signs of overheating. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) Writing in the London based Independent Soros contends the Bush foreign mission shamelessly exploits fears generated from 9/11. As he sees it, “fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from.” He maintains that with the Bush policy terror will never end. “The terrorists are invisible; therefore they can never disappear. It is our civil liberties that may disappear instead.”

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Bill Clinton Weakened America by Michael Reagan

On Friday night, Rep. Duncan Hunter, former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and now its ranking Republican member, appeared on the Hannity and Colmes show on Fox, and I was astonished to hear him castigated for failing to see that our troops in Iraq needed equipment.

He was specifically challenged on matter of the alleged lack of body armor for our troops in Iraq, and the administration’s alleged failure to ensure that our troops had the protection the armor affords them.

Ignored were certain inconvenient facts such as the amount of body armor that was available under Bill Clinton, which was zero. Today under President Bush and thanks to Duncan Hunter’s work in the Armed Services Committee, which authorized the funds to purchase the body armor, the armed services have one million sets of body armor. That’s one million!

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Minnesota Sharia and the Silence of the Left By Robert Spencer

Here’s a Prairie Home Companion episode you’ll never hear:

It’s been a quiet week here at Lake Wobegon. Aunt Tillie had to cut short her big vacation in Paris – she got caught in a riot at the train station and you’ll never believe it, she got tear-gassed. She’s all right, but you can imagine the mood she was in when she arrived at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Poor thing, she went straight to a duty-free shop and bought a big bottle of Merlot.

After that, believe it or not, it got even worse. The airport cab driver told her, “You can’t bring that wine into my taxi!” He said it was against his religion. Cab after cab, and they all refused to carry Tillie and her Merlot. Poor Tillie was so distraught, she didn’t know what to do. She paced around on the sidewalk for awhile, and then decided to call Uncle Pete on his cell phone. Pete was with Uncle Fred at Target, but they were held up – Pete was buying a frozen pepperoni pizza for dinner, but the checkout girl refused to ring it up! You’ll never believe this, but she said it was against her religion too! Well, when Pete got Tillie’s call, he just left the pizza, told Fred and his seeing-eye dog to come along, and caught the first bus for the airport.

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One Muslim advocacy group's not-so-secret terrorist ties by Steven Emerson

This year has been a rocky one for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the self-professed "prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy" group. First, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer rescinded an award her office had issued a CAIR official, stating that she was uncomfortable with many of the organization's positions. Then, two weeks ago, the GOP House Conference objected to the use of a Capitol facility--provided by Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell to host a CAIR forum, labeling the group "terror apologists" (based on CAIR's long track record of extremism and anti-Semitism).

Yet, just as people began to realize this and to ostracize CAIR accordingly, The New York Times arrived with a life raft. Earlier this month, Neil MacFarquhar wrote an incredibly generous profile called "Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S." MacFarquhar's piece is so fraught with errors--of commission and omission--that it is a coup of CAIR propaganda.




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Gates of Vienna: Holger, the Guardian of the West

"Regular readers know that I have recently become enamored of Holger Danske.

For latecomers: Holger Danske — a.k.a. Holger the Dane — was a semi-mythical Danish hero. He fought against Charles Martel in the early part of the 8th century, but overlooked his differences with the Franks in order to journey south and fight alongside Charles the Hammer in his successful battle against the Saracens.

The Islamic threat from al-Andalus meant more to Holger than his quarrels with his Frankish neighbors, and so he became a hero of the Western World at Poitiers in 732.

That part of his story is recorded in history, but now we come to the myth. According to legend, Holger retired to the old Kronborg castle and entered a twilight sleep in one of its cellars, to awaken only when he was needed by Denmark. Hans Christian Andersen tells the tale:"

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American Thinker: Terrorists Targeting Students: The Kids are not Alright By Marc Sheppard

"Just months after 9/11, videotapes were confiscated in Afghanistan showing al-Qaeda terrorists training to takeover a school. Six months later, spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith boldly declared al-Qaeda's 'right' to kill 2 million American children. In 2004, an Iraqi national with known terrorist connections was caught with a computer disk containing information detailing Department of Education crisis planning for U.S school districts.

Last year, two Saudi men - one wearing a black trench coat despite the Florida heat -- terrified a busload of Tampa schoolchildren by boarding a school bus and remaining for the entire ride to school, all the while laughing and speaking Arabic.

And just this month, the FBI and Homeland Security Department issued a 'routine advisory' bulletin to state and local officials warning that foreign members of 'extremist groups' either already possess or are attempting to procure licenses to drive school buses. Additionally, according to the AP:"




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Bully and Thug By Jeffrey Lord

"Monica Goodling shrugged.

There wasn't, she explained, much that she could do to help me.

The scene: the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, February 26, 2002. The occasion: Senate confirmation hearings for Bush Third Circuit judicial nominee D. Brooks Smith. Smith was at the time the sitting Chief Judge of the Western District of Pennsylvania, where he had served since his appointment by Ronald Reagan fourteen years earlier.

At the time I had put aside a writing career to assist in the confirmation of Judge Smith, an old friend from college days. In an earlier life I had been a political director in the Reagan White House, our office tasked with working on the Senate confirmations of five Reagan Supreme Court nominees, most notably what became the infamous fight over Judge Robert Bork. With that particular arcane experience in my background, I had gotten back into the fray to help Smith, working with a quickly assembled group of Smith supporters from Pennsylvania, many of them Democrats and leading women attorneys appalled at the sudden political gauntlet the heretofore popular and uncontroversial Judge Smith was being forced to run -- a confirmation process run by the iron-fisted hand of Judiciary Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy."

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Not too late to keep America American By James P. Pinkerton

"The same bad idea that is ruining Europe threatens to ruin the United States, too. Indeed, the news that Uncle Sam can't find more than 600,000 of what the government calls 'fugitive aliens,' those who have been ordered out of the country but slipped past the enforcement system, reminds us, yet again, that border enforcement and maintenance of sovereignty are low priorities for Washington.

The bad idea threatening both America and Europe is this: Borders don't matter. Why not? Because patriotism is deemed some sort of infantile disease to be grown out of. Therefore, a conglomerated government is the only way to assure docility and passivity for the masses - oops, make that peace and prosperity."

This multinational view has been held by elites for a long time. Karl Marx, still a hero to many policy-minded intellectuals, was an early prophet of a borderless world. But don't take my word for it: Here's Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, praising Marx in his 2005 bestseller, "The World is Flat":

"Reading 'The Communist Manifesto' today, I am in awe at how incisively Marx detailed the forces that were flattening the world during the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and how much he foreshadowed the way these same forces would keep flattening the world right up to the present." Isn't that neat? Friedman surely thinks so; he reprints more than a page of Marx's purple prose.

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Who Are We Really Fighting? By Jim Simpson

Every day we hear more reports about the rising Islamist threat. Stephen Emerson reports alarmingly about the Islamists hidden among us. Al Qaeda is reportedly alive and spreading all over the world – morphing into a many headed snake. Meanwhile, Iran has moved from bluster to bully as it seizes British sailors on the open sea and blatantly ignores worldwide demands to cease its nuclear program, while continuing to arm Iraqi terrorists in direct defiance of the United States. Islamist militants in Palestinian-controlled areas and Lebanon visibly flex their muscles both militarily and diplomatically, while Muslims worldwide stridently demand absurdly special treatment in the non-Muslim societies where they have settled. As a friend once said, paraphrasing Trotsky: “You may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you.”

Without diminishing the threat these worldwide activities suggest, it is important nonetheless to recognize that they are a distraction, a deliberate provocation designed to keep our eyes focused on the wrong enemy. The true threat is and always has been the worldwide communist movement, spearheaded by the Soviet Union (oh sorry, I keep forgetting, “Russia,”) and Communist China. And given the cacophony currently being raised by their Islamist provocateurs, I fear the sucker punch is not long in coming.

We are obsessed with routing out “al Qaeda” in Iraq but almost willfully ignore that the insurgency remains largely driven by the Iraqi Ba’athist party’s highly organized network, with assistance from their Ba’athist cousins in Syria. I fear that if we merely defeat al Qaeda, our misidentification of the enemy will lead us to give up the fight early, leaving the much more dangerous Ba’athist infrastructure in place. In such circumstances, we will soon be facing another Saddam. Similarly, it is easy to see a Shia-led Iraq fall into the Iranian camp if we leave. (I described this potential problem in great detail before the war started. See: Regime Change Means Eradicating the Ba’ath Party.)

The Russians initially trained, funded and equipped the Ba'athists in both Syria and Iraq. They taught them the tactics being used now in Iraq against us. They continued to provide Saddam with military advice during the first Gulf war and at least the beginning of the current one, and I remain confident that they provide the Ba'athist insurgents with some manner of support to this day. They assisted in the removal of Saddam's WMD to Syria. According to defector Ion Pacepa, the former Romanian Intelligence chief, Russia long ago developed a contingency plan for all puppet states to hide WMD should Western powers appear close to exposing them. (Read all about that here.)

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ACLU Does Not Have 'A CLU(E)' or Does It? By Gabriel Garnica

The recent series of New Jersey challenges by that state’s ACLU chapter to laws designed to protect children from child predators is just another example of how dangerous and sinister this band of ghouls really is.

For ACLU, Children Always Left Behind
Jay Sekulow has pointed out the utter absurdity and irrational hypocrisy of the ACLU’s efforts to frustrate a township’s efforts to protect its children. In essence, the ACLU is fighting efforts to extend Megan’s Law protections through safety buffer zones keeping convicted predators away from certain areas where children are often found such as schools and playgrounds. They claim that such measures violate the rights of these people to live where they wish to live.

A community’s desire to protect its young should be tantamount and transcending. These are among the most vulnerable and helpless members of our society, and they represent our future. Likewise, those who would violate and corrupt our young are among the most vile and despicable vermin in our society. While it is arguable that a society should protect some rights of such people, there is no doubt as to where that society should fall when the rights of children directly conflict with the so-called rights of convicted child molesters.

Any mentality that knowingly exposes children to risk and harm in the interest of defending the rights of people who have already shown that they care little for the rights of the most innocent is misguided to say the least. Of course, one must qualify that “misguided” by linking it to rational, sensible and decent public policy with a clue about morality. The ACLU has repeatedly shown that its notion of what is rational, sensible, decent and moral is quite different than what most regular Americans believe.

From defending child pornography to treating convicted murderers as honored citizens, the ACLU has provided us with a clear picture of just what kind of behavior and activity it so passionately holds dear. In case after case and situation after situation, the ACLU has maintained one solid common denominator, which is the idea that children are mere playthings for adults with no rights of their own. Just as toys are meant for entertainment and enjoyment, children in the world of the ACLU are life-size Barbies and Kens for those adults whose infantile and juvenile mentality and morality reign supreme.

In the end, it is just one more step on the road to social oblivion for a society that allows unborn children to be murdered in the name of adult “rights” to then allow grown children to be abused and murdered in the name of other such “rights”.

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Hometown Jihad: The Return of Salah Sultan by Patrick Poole

"It was almost a year ago that I first introduced readers of FrontPage Magazine to the story of how I returned to my hometown of Hilliard, Ohio – a sleepy Columbus suburb and a longtime red-state haven – after more than a decades absence, only to quickly discover that the hometown of my youth had vanished and instead had become yet another battleground in the Global War on Terror.
This story was first presented to FrontPage readers in “Hometown Jihad,” where I recounted my finding a Muslim Brotherhood operative, Dr. Salah Sultan, living right around the corner from me and teaching out of the Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, which had set up shop during my absence in the city’s former library building. Sultan is a protégé of Yousef Al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who the Anti-Defamation League has described as “The Theologian of Terror” for his advocacy of HAMAS suicide bombings against Israel and giving religious edicts for Muslims to fight and kill American troops overseas.

In a follow-up article, “Hometown Jihad: Blowback,” I wrote about the fallout from the publication of that first article, including how the local paper, the Columbus Dispatch, rose to the defense of Salah Sultan and Sunrise Academy. Not only did the Dispatch article ignore all of the documentation I had provided to the paper on Sultan and the Islamic school in addition to what appeared in that first article, but it went so far in its defense to characterize FrontPage Magazine (and by association, myself) as neo-Nazi propaganda tool for daring to raise the issue. "

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Slavery and the Founders By John D. Turner

"'He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warefare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of a CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce'.
-Thomas Jefferson
The Declaration of Independence: Original Draft
How different American History might have been had these words, penned by Thomas Jefferson in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, been allowed to stand. Words, which condemned the British king for allowing the slave trade to flourish, and for introducing slavery into the colonies in the first place. Words which the delegations from Georgia and South Carolina, who were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery violated the 'most sacred rights of life and liberty', found offensive and therefore were stricken from the final document.
So what are we taught concerning those founders of our country and the issue of slavery in America? "

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Rebranding the Enemy By J.R. Dunn

The Left has developed no end of tricks to manipulate debates without the trouble of making a case or putting together an argument. Many of them have been in wide use for decades without ever being identified, much less counteracted. One example widely seen in recent weeks is a technique closely related to what the PR industry calls "rebranding": taking a group that is loathed for any number of good reasons - terrorists, criminals, druggies, what have you - and subtly reworking their image over time to present them instead as victims.

One group that benefited from this style of makeover was the American criminal class.
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Why Perfect Totalitarianism Is Impossible

As I was watching "The Lives of Others,'' Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's masterful Oscar-winning film, I couldn't help thinking how many Cubans, North Koreans, Iranians or Zimbabweans must have been performing little bits of moral heroism in the face of oppression at that very moment. Even their fellow countrymen will never know how many acts of defiance are being perpetrated today by ordinary people against totalitarian regimes -- ensuring that the human spirit continues to exist when everything seems bent on crushing it.
The German film focuses on Gerd Wiesler, a captain in the Stasi, East Germany's feared secret police, five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is ordered to spy on a playwright and his actress girlfriend simply because the minister in charge of culture lusts for the lady and needs an excuse to put the writer away in order to clear the path. Through a tantalizing series of small twists and turns in which what is not said is more important than what is, the plot leads us toward the moral awakening of Wiesler.

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HERITAGE FOUNDATION: "How Modern Liberals Think"

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The Right Stuff - By: Peter Berkowitz - Politico.com

"Polls indicate that Rudy Giuliani -- the thrice-married, twice-divorced, pro-choice and civil-union-supporting former New York City mayor -- has become the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. In key states, Giuliani is polling even with or ahead of likely Democratic challengers. Meanwhile, commentators, particularly on the left, are forecasting with increasing confidence the coming of a conservative crackup.
So which is it? Is conservatism, as led by a tax-cutting, crime-fighting, socially liberal big-city blue-state mayor, about to remake itself by reclaiming the center of American politics? Or is it about to collapse from the combined force of its internal contradictions, the legacy of congressional Republicans' profligacy and the errors, real and imagined, of the Bush administration?
In assessing conservatism's prospects, it is important to recognize that President Bush has been no ordinary conservative. Therefore it would be a mistake, no less for conservatism's opponents than for conservatives themselves, to assume that the fate of American conservatism stands or falls with that of the Bush administration."

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How Great Thou Art - Elvis Presely

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Gloabal Warming - Heritage Foundation

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Gonzales, FBI Director Incompetent By Edward I. Koch

"Regrettably, our government, through its incompetence, sometimes engages in actions that cause many of us, myself included, to cry out in pain, frustration and shame.
President George W. Bush is surrounded by incompetents.
One such incompetent currently is U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who suffers either from an incredibly faulty memory or has told monstrous lies to the Congress. He and others, e.g., Robert Mueller, FBI director, who administer the security laws and carry out other government responsibilities have given government a bad name.
There is great public and editorial interest in the Guantanamo prison and military trials for those alleged terrorists captured abroad and imprisoned there.
At Guantanamo or offshore sites, a different standard of proof may be used in establishing criminal convictions. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is constitutional to do this if the Congress authorizes the trial procedures for such purposes. The Congress has done so, creating the Military Commission Act of 2006. The constitutionality of the Military Commission Act was recently upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "

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For Homosexual Advocates, It's Their Way or No Way By Gabriel Garnica

Maybe someone can help me understand this one. It seems that a recent study by two respected researchers presented at the oldest regional Psychological Association in the United States just reported that 1.4% of the population is homosexual. Despite this, groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy organization, would rather see children who desperately need a loving and caring home go without one than allow anyone to limit their agenda in any way.

Does this make any sense to anyone with any sense?

Charity Begins at Home

As reported by Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe, Catholic Charities of Boston recently announced that it was being forced out of business rather than violate its own core principles against placing children in same-sex homes. It seems that despite the fact that Catholic Charities is neither trying to block gay adoptions nor trying to impose its beliefs on others, the powers-that-be in Massachusetts are not satisfied. No, Catholic Charities must actually be willing to place its children with homosexual couples or face lawsuits. It tried, unsuccessfully, to obtain a conscience exemption.

Not satisfied with forcing a distinguished and outstanding organization with a long record of helping children in Boston out of business with their bully tactics, groups such as the Human Rights Campaign issued a news release reporting that “Boston Catholic Charities Puts Ugly Political Agenda Before Child Welfare.” Now correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t this headline a bit hypocritical? As Jeff Jacoby points out, “The Human Rights Campaign and its friends would rather see this invaluable work come to an end than allow Catholic Charities to decline gay adoptions.”

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Republicans create own 'Frankenstein monsters' By Vox Day

"It wasn't all that long ago that Republicans were looking to Arnold Schwarzenegger as a pumped-up version of Ronald Reagan, who but for the unfortunate fact of his Austrian birth, might have ridden the coattails of a Republican revival in California to an eventual victory in the White House. They spurned a man with genuine conservative credentials and spent much effort convincing Republicans in California and around the country that Arnold was a conservative at heart, his connections to Hollywood and the Kennedy clan notwithstanding.
And, in fairness, Gov. Schwarzenegger demonstrated that he does have some genuinely conservative inclinations. But a man's personal inclinations and his ability to stand by them in public are two entirely different things, especially when that public is hostile. It didn't take long for Arnold to capitulate to the girly men, of course, surprising no one except perhaps Hugh Hewitt, whose Panglossian approach to life must be envied. "

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North American Union: evolution by stealth? By Wes Vernon

A hush-hush meeting held in Banff, Canada, last year seriously explored the issue of how to sneak (yes, that is the right word) — sneak a North American Union (NAU) onto the people of the U.S. Canada, and Mexico. What we are talking about is making a de facto merger of the three countries a fait accompli by the time it's too late to reverse it.

What else can one believe when the term "evolution by stealth" is used? (For background on the NAU, see this column Illegal Aliens and the Secret Monster Highway (Oct. 9, 2006) and AIM Report America's Borders: Going-Going-Gone! (Dec. 22, 2006).

Truth will out?

Thanks to the sleuthing of Judicial Watch, we know that at this meeting in September, that exact term, "evolution by stealth," was used in discussions of how to slip a North American Union past us before we know it. The mainstream media are not interested. They are too busy making a big deal out of silly non-scandals such as who cares about Valerie Plame or the audacity of the president of the United States to fire U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of — well — the president.

The media were not invited to cover the Banff conference of the North American Forum for Integration (NAFI). The only media person listed as present for the gathering was Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal. Apparently she was there as a participant/observer, not as a journalist. A Google search indicates no article on the meeting appeared in the WSJ.

However, the findings of Judicial Watch — obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — should interest any news assignment editor who is not in the wrong business.

Here is the wording in the notes for presentation at the conference, and they leave no doubt that the attendees seriously considered sneaking the NAU through so as to avoid the anticipated popular opposition to merging the three countries:

"To what degree does a concept of North America help/hinder solving problems within the three countries? ... While a vision is appealing, working on the infrastructure might yield more benefit and bring more people on board ('evolution by stealth')."

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Obama Exposed As Race Racketeer By Steve Sailer - VDare

You can blame winter for the slow erosion of Senator Barack Obama's image.

As I've been noting going back to my January VDARE.com article on Obama, much of what you hear about the fashionable Presidential candidate ranges from wishful thinking to sheer ignorance to outright distortion.

More recently, I wrote in The American Conservative one of the first detailed analyses of Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father that takes seriously his absolutely accurate subtitle: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Rather than being the racial healer of media legend, Obama has,—according to his own account—conducted a lifelong love affair with racial resentment and self-pity. [Obama’s Identity Crisis, March 26, 2007]

The response from liberals like David Brock and Matthew Yglesias was that it was not the politician who is running for President of the United States whose personality should be examined, but the journalist's who dares question Obama.

Baloney. Obama's vague, feel good, bring-us-together campaign as the half black-half white candidate who will enable America to" transcend" race is absolutely dependent on continued journalistic negligence regarding what Obama has actually written about race.

We elected a pig in a poke as President in 2000 and are paying the price today. But with George W. Bush, we at least had the excuse for not making the effort to understand him that he turns out to be not very interesting to understand—he's Peter Sellers' Chauncey Gardiner from Being There with a mean streak.

Obama, on the other hand, is a more intriguing individual, a man of parts, a fine writer and speaker. We don't have the excuse of boredom for not putting in the work to understand the passionately ethnocentric candidate's race obsession.

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Spotted at a recent Jihad 101 class

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300 by David Forsmark

"The new ultra-macho war movie, 300, continues to rack up box office victories, leaving the battered and bloodied bodies of liberal critics in its wake. The movie about the brave 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas who fought the Persian Empire of King Xerxes to a standstill for three days at Thermopylae Pass has fully animated audiences nationwide.
But what has been interesting about much of the battle over 300 is not the negative reviews-- that’s been going on since Dirty Harry inspired revulsion among the cognoscenti who used the word “fascist” with more unanimity against it than at any time since Mussolini hit the end of the rope. No, what is unusual is the psy-ops aimed at blunting the movie’s message, which is uniformly one about freedom v. slavery, rationality v. evil mysticism, and independence v. subordination.

Many of you no doubt saw the Drudge headline the weekend before the film’s opening: “BATTLE OF BUSH?: NEW MOVIE RAISES EYEBROWS WITH 'POLITICAL OVERTONE'” This was prompted by a question by an “unnamed reporter” at a press screening who asked director Zack Snyder, “Is George Bush Leonidas or Xerxes?”

The question was so stupid that “unnamed” must have been auditioning for Newsweek —you know, the publication that reported that Korans were being flushed down toilets in a place where they don’t have flush toilets (no one asked the question, “How do you flush a thousand page book down a toilet?”) and called the courageous Muslim dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali a “bombthrower” even though she speaks out against people who, uh—THROW BOMBS!"

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Replace the USA? By George Handlery - The Brussels Journal

If you are familiar with this website, you know this author deals with the “transatlantic relationship” and the related “defense of advanced civilizations.” It tells a lot about our time’s challenge that these are not the themes for which his diplomas predestine the writer. For the shift in emphasis, there are good reasons. It is the Atlantic alliance and our Judeo-Christian civilization’s PC defying confidence to rise to its own defense that will determine the future.

Several previous articles had Europe’s political collapse as their topic. Naturally, not all of Europe is anti-American, anti-Israel and thereby valiantly committed to surrender to anyone caring to conquer it. Granted, views such as from a letter to the Editor might dominate here: “Israel and America are my axis of evil.” To counter such portrayals of opinion, a piece defying the trend will be presented. Its much-published source is Dr. Anton Czettler, whose only blemish is that he is a senior friend of this writer. His recall, learning and vast experience make him into a walking encyclopedia and a reference for ideas to be tested.

The abbreviated English version of his “The Chosen People of the New Age” is of interest not only because it fails to be fashionably anti-American. The piece deserves attention because it represents a very European view of America and as such, it undertakes to combat distortions that fog the present. Although written in 2003, it represents the current view of the author who consented to this project. The growing alienation of the Atlantic sibling-cultures represents to Dr. Czettler – and to this writer – a mindlessly taken decision whose consequences will extort, especially for Europe, a heavy price. Astonishingly, Europe’s 20th century mistakes are repeated – without assurance that the ultimate outcome will be as undeservedly fortunate as in the past.

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Just Call Them "White Flag Democrats" By Raymond Kraft

"Last Friday the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed the ''U.S. Troop Readiness, Veteran's Health, and Iraq Accountability Act'' which continues temporary funding for the war against Jihad in Iraq, and then mandates that the United States concede defeat, retreat ('redeploy'), tacitly surrender to Al Qaeda, and abandon Iraq to its fate, whatever that is, no later than September 2008.

Nancy Pelosi called it 'a historic moment for our party,' but forgot to add that it was the historic moment when Democrat Party raised the white flag. When Congressional Democrats voted to become the official party of Defeat, Retreat, and Surrender. When America's Democrats--including most of the former Blue Dog Democrats--decided to be known forevermore as the ''White Flag Democrats.''

I agree with the Democrats that the United States should withdraw its forces from Iraq, but not on an arbitrary timetable. U.S. withdrawal should be contingent on victory, not surrender. And victory in Iraq can be defined as the meeting of four conditions."

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A Call to Arms: CAIR Must Be Fought - Part II

Last week I wrote an article in these pages entitled A Call To Arms: Cair Must Be Fought. In my article I repeated what I have been saying (and writing) since the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) began attacking the free speech rights of American citizens: that CAIR must “be countered with a non-profit 501(c)(3) entity that could raise tax-deductible contributions for the sole purpose of fighting CAIR in court.” Examples of CAIR’s court cases, including its most recent on behalf of the “flying imams,” were discussed.

As a result of my article, I’ve been asked exactly how CAIR could be fought in court. There are many ways, and the remainder of this article explains just one of them.

At least 23 states and one territory have statutes known by their acronym SLAPP—“Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.” [1] Actually, the laws are known as “Anti-SLAPP” statutes because they protect “public participants” from lawsuits brought by people who want to silence them.

Since the “flying imam” flap originated in Minnesota, I’ll use that states’ “Anti-SLAPP” statute as my example of what smart, tough lawyers can do to the bullying thugs of CAIR. The statute appears in bold face below; my comments are interspersed.

But before getting to that, I want to set the stage.

A broadcaster urges the FBI to search every mosque in America, a blogger demands the state department deny visas to Muslims, a newspaper editorial insists that the Attorney General prosecute citizen Islamofascists for treason.

Next, on behalf of itself and/or the allegedly injured parties, CAIR sues everyone connected with the incident. Also sued, as in the flying imam case, are “John Does”—other people allegedly connected to the incident whose names are not yet known to the plaintiffs.

These defendants are not powerless. These defendants are not sheep going to slaughter under CAIR’s knife. Every one of these defendants, every time, should invoke an available “Anti-Slapp” statute, like this one.

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Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood by Patrick Poole

"The victory of Democrats in the recent elections has launched a silly season in Washington DC, where absurd ideas that would have been scoffed at this time last year now float on the Potomac breeze like so many cherry blossoms filling the Beltway air with their fragrance.
No better example could be offered for this phenomenon than the recent flurry of articles from foreign policy “realists” urging the Bush Administration to shift its policy and begin to dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is headquartered in Egypt but has affiliates in more than 70 countries, including the US. This position is best represented in an article in the current issue (March/April 2007) of Foreign Affairs by Robert Leiken and Stephen Brooke of the Nixon Center, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood”. They summarize their argument thus:

Even as Western commentators condemn the Muslim Brotherhood for its Islamism, radicals in the Middle East condemn it for rejecting jihad and embracing democracy. Such relative moderation offers Washington a notable opportunity for engagement -- as long as policymakers recognize the considerable variation between the group's different branches and tendencies.

Admittedly, this is hardly the first time that so-called “progressives” have tried to shift the post-9/11 sentiment in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. A September 2004 article in the Washington Post, “In Search of Friends Among Foes”, described the last major attempt at a policy shift led by State Department diplocrats while noting the Brotherhood’s public relations problems of being tied to extremist activity in the Middle East and the United States."

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The Bad Shepherd by Mark D. Tooley

"Having apparently exhausted real-life targets, the Religious Left is now lashing out at a fictional movie character who supposedly embodies ugly American attitudes of chauvinism and imperialism.
Speaking to hundreds of left-wing religious activists at an “Ecumenical Advocacy Days” rally this month outside Washington, D.C., United Methodist lobbyist Jim Winkler targeted the Matt Damon character in “The Good Shepherd,” directed by Robert DeNiro.
Damon portrays a fictionalized James Jesus Angleton, the long-time chief of counterintelligence at CIA. In the Damon characterization, Angleton is the ultimate repressed and dutiful WASP, who diligently serves his country by fighting Nazis for the OSS during World War II, and then working against the communists for the CIA during the Cold War. The Damon character is an emotional cold-fish, who channels all his energies into defending America.
As a “good shepherd’ watching over his flock, the Damon character defends America’s interests by overthrowing an unspecified leftist regime in Latin America, obviously based on the 1954 coup in Guatemala, and he organizes the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Like the real-life Angleton, the Damon character is also obsessed with a possible Soviet penetration of the Agency.
Winkler found in the Damon-Angleton character the embodiment of American imperialism. “We are battling three myths: the myth of white supremacy, the myth of male superiority, and the myth of American exceptionalism,” Winkler explained. The latter is “an incredibly dangerous myth,” which has “led us into debacle after debacle.”"

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The Consequences Of A Society With A Shortage Of Females::Real Clear Religion

"The deadly combination of a nation's preference for boys over girls, and the modern medical technology to carry out this preference, threatens the future stability of the world at large.

History provides an example of the consequences of a sex imbalanced society. From NZ Herald:

'In the middle of the 19th century, an area the size of Germany located between Beijing and Shanghai in central China was run for more than 15 years by the Nian rebels, a 50,000-strong network of bandit groups who lived by pillage and rape.

The Nian bandits were men without women which was long understood in China as the principal stimulus to their rebellion and cause of their violence. They originated in a district in northern China - Huai-pei - where the killing of infant girls to conserve food for more economically valuable boys in response to famine had been particularly terrible. "

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Is Islam compatible with a republic? By Ellis Washington - WorldNetDaily

"Since 9-11, the societal and cultural battle lines for the soul of civilization have become ever more defined and at the same time, increasingly opaque – between America's Judeo-Christian traditions and Islam, between a representative republic (not democracy, which is mob rule) and totalitarianism, between freedom lovers and religious tyranny, between Justices Thomas and Scalia and the ACLU, between Reagan and craven politicians that will say and do anything to get elected.
How can men of goodwill reconcile two worldviews so diametrically opposed to one another, yet which are so interconnected? America and Israel have not only welcomed Arabs and Muslims from every country on earth, but allowed them to build mosques and to worship their god according to the dictates of their own conscience, yet our magnanimity is not reciprocated by Muslims. "

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Prepare for Biblical Floods and Droughts By Mark Tooley

"Earlier this month, a prominent group of conservative religious leaders, lead by Focus on the Family's James Dobson, unsuccessfully urged the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to rein in its Washington, D.C. spokesman, who's become a Global Warming true believer.

NAE has no formal position on climate change and its causes. But Richard Cizik of NAE's Washington office has made Global Warming a personal crusade. Media attention went to the Dobson critique. But several NAE board members organized their own letter to their colleagues, pointing out that Cizik is making Global Warming the preeminent issue for NAE, in terms of popular perceptions. These board members cited a survey of media mentions, showing that by far, Cizik is quoted on climate issues more than any other, including the family and sanctity of life issues for which NAE does have official positions.

The NAE board reaffirmed its confidence in Cizik while, once again, not taking any specific position on Global Warming. So Cizik will pursue his own agenda, but in the name of the NAE. Meanwhile, the NAE, still reeling from the sexual scandals of its last president, deposed Colorado mega-church pastor Ted Haggard, will continue to drift. Once a robust forum for America's evangelicals -- Ronald Reagan gave his 'Evil Empire' speech before the NAE -- the association has lacked strong leadership for over a decade. "

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Stop apologising! By Simon Jenkins - Guardian UK

"There can be too much of any good thing. The week's obsessive celebration of the ending of the slave trade had reduced me to media hibernation. Every politician, churchman, radio and television presenter has sought to outdo every other in telling us that slavery was evil. Historians, musicians, playwrights, comedians, poets have joined in. The BBC's current affairs output has became a monotony of smothering moral self-righteousness. The judgment has been appalling.
The point of history is to find out what happened and why, and thereby gain wisdom. It is not to make the present feel smug about the past. Why invest events 200 years ago with words such as guilt, apology, atonement and reparation? Is there some more recent guilt we are trying to conceal? If the BBC board had been around in 1807 how many flotillas would they have been financing, and what moral turpitude are they known nervously concealing? By Sunday night my brain was starting to turn. Perhaps there was something to be said for the slave trade after all.
The acceptance of guilt for a crime of which one is not guilty is a familiar psychological transference. But when one is not 'one' but an organisation or institution and when the crime is two centuries past, the transference is ludicrous. When all sense of proportion is then sacrificed in one long howl of 'I can be guiltier than thou', I cry halt."

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Terrible Swift Sword Blog - Neither Rudi or Newt

" I am very enthusiastic about the Republican candidates who are, apparently, running for the Presidency in 2008. Two of them, Newt Gingrich and Rudi Giuliani are the best men for the job of Presidency I have seen since Ronald Reagan. They could be better than Reagan.
Rudi Giuliani, as most of us know, was a former high-profile Prosecutor and Mayor of New York City, a job that is often described as the second hardest in the country, after the Presidency, from 1994-2001. While he was Mayor, he is credited with dramatically lowering the crime rate, making the city one of the safest in America, after many decades of having the reputation as being the murder capital of the country. Of course, he is also remembered for the sterling way he kept the city together during the trauma of 9/11.
Newt Gingrich is a brilliant former Speaker of the House. In 1994, in order to counter a vapid Democratic political policy, he presented Richard Armory’s ‘Contract with America,’ a series of plans that he promised to enact, if given control of the House. He enacted most of them. He is a charismatic speaker, one who is always willing to present new ideas with force and conviction.
So, what is the problem?"

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Shariah in Minnesota? By Katherine Kersten

MINNEAPOLIS--The land of 10,000 lakes and that welcoming attitude we call "Minnesota Nice"--is becoming a window on America's potential future. Here in Minneapolis, one of the nation's most livable cities, hard-line Muslim activists are injecting an element that is anything but nice.

Troubling incidents began several years ago, when taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport--about three-quarters of whom are Muslim--started refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol. One woman, returning from France with wine, was turned away by five cabs in succession. Refusals of service now number about 100 a month, and heated altercations have erupted.

In September 2006, the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) proposed a two color top-light pilot project to indicate which drivers would accept passengers with alcohol. The proposal, later dropped, would apparently have marked the first time that a government agency in the U.S. officially recognized Shariah law, and distinguished individuals who follow it from those who don't.

In November 2006, the six "flying imams" bumped the taxi drivers from the headlines. In Minneapolis for a conference, the imams were detained after engaging in what an airport police report called "suspicious" activity. Some prayed loudly in the gate area, spoke angrily about the U.S. and Saddam, switched seats and unnecessarily requested seat belt extenders with heavy buckles that could be used as weapons, according to witnesses. They were questioned and released later that day. The imams denounced the incident as racial and religious profiling. "If up to now, [Americans] don't know about prayers, this is a real problem," said Omar Shahin, one of the detained men and head of the North American Imams Federation. Twin Cities imams demanded a separate Muslim prayer room at the airport.

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Lessons of '300' By Jack Kelly

"A low-budget movie with no recognized stars that presents a cartoonish version of an event that happened long ago and far away is a surprising box office hit.
The movie is '300,' about the battle in 480 B.C. at Thermopylae between Greeks and Persians. Its opening grossed more than $70 million, more than the next 10 highest-grossing movies playing that weekend combined.
'300' has been denounced by the government of Iran, and the battle it describes was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his congressional testimony Wednesday as inspiration for Americans to fight global warming. That's a lot of buzz.
'300' has plenty of violence, sex and the largest number of ripped abdomens ever seen on the silver screen, which doubtless counts for much of its appeal. But there is more to it than that.
'300' is a simple story of good versus evil. A handful of valiant Spartan warriors, inspired by love of country and love of liberty, fight to the death against a foreign oppressor. (Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.)"

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The Collapse of a Nation by Dr. Michael Mort

"In a recent article in USA Today, the headline reads, “Democrats manipulate military policy for political gain, Bush says.” The actual article ends up quoting Democrat denials and counterattacks as much as the president, but the headline, and Mr. Bush, are accurate. You have to ask, What is the real agenda for Democrats? Why do they say we must end the war on terror, even claim there is no such thing, when we all know the Islamists have declared war on the USA, whether we wanted it or not?
Many conservative commentators claim the Democrats have embarked on this crazy path because they actually seek the destruction of the United States. I believe that’s just inflammatory rhetoric. The real answer is that the Democrats seek political power at any cost.
Recognize that the Democrats correctly sensed the growing frustration among US citizens with a war that will take decades to wage successfully. But instead of engaging the average American voter and championing the US patriotically, the Democrats seized the opportunity to advocate the opposite of common sense, the opposite of the Republican administration, and they fed upon this voter discontent by deploring and denying the war which we find ourselves dragged into. The Democrat purpose cannot be to make America stronger, as they claim. That is hollow and everyone knows it. It quite simply must be, as the president has said, that the Democrats desire to manipulate military policy so they can acquire and use political power. Their plan was obviously successful in the last election."

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The Conservative Brand by Jed Babbin - HUMAN EVENTS

"Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) isn’t an old man, but he’s old enough to remember when calling someone a “conservative” was sort of an insult. In an interview yesterday, the Senate minority leader said that the equation of his youth is reversed. “Ronald Reagan made the term, ‘conservative’ popular,” he said, and now “Democrats are running away” from the “liberal” label. McConnell is in a position to keep them running.

McConnell has a tough job, holding a fractious and often fractured group of 49 Republicans together to stop the (forgive the redundancy) liberal Democrats’ agenda of high taxes, illegal immigration, retreat and defeat. We talked briefly Thursday about how McConnell is shaping Republicans’ strategy and a host of issues in which the Democrats are trying to violate key conservative principles.

First, McConnell believes that the 2006 election results reflect the unpopularity of the war in Iraq. It wasn’t, he said, “a rejection of center-right politics.” Post-election polling supports McConnell’s conclusion, showing that a large majority of Americans did not want to withdraw from Iraq, but weren’t at all happy with the way the President was prosecuting the war."

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The National Council of Churches Should Have Died By Frank Pastore

A restaurant that serves lousy food, a bad movie no one goes to see, a book no one reads, and a church that empties its pews and runs out of both people and money, should all meet the same fate. They should all go out of business. It’s the natural dynamic of all market endeavors. Failure is a great teacher. The market shouts “you’re doing something wrong.”

We’ve all witnessed the plummeting attendance of liberal mainline denominations for decades. The market has been shouting. Go soft on the authority of the Bible, preach church-lite fluffy “be happy” messages every Sunday, avoid calling sin by its name, abandon orthodoxy and replace the message of the cross with the social gospel and you eliminate the primary reason for going to church in the first place – to be convicted of sin by the Word of God. If you’re not a sinner, you don’t need to be saved. Eliminate teaching the Bible at church and you’re just a social club and/or a political organization.

On the other hand, as in Field of Dreams, “if you teach it, they will come.” Evangelical churches have been growing while the liberal churches have been shrinking, across all demographics, precisely because of their fidelity to teaching the Bible. People don’t really want a therapy session, they want the Spirit of God to speak into their lives. They’re properly convicted, and they want help. That’s the church. Sinners reconciled to a Holy God, and now working with Him against evil in the world in fighting units called “ministries.” And though we may lose many battles, we’re assured victory because of what Jesus did on the Cross.

There are only two things that can happen when sin and the Bible clash: either sin will change the Bible, or the Bible will change the sin.

When Barack and Hillary say homosexuality is not immoral, they’re telling you volumes.

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Conscience, Calling, and the Christian Conservative Agenda::By Ken Connor

"That squabbling you hear is the sound of a movement that is trying to determine what it is and where it is going. On the one side there is Richard Cizik, Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the National Evangelical Association. Cizik has energetically argued that Christians should broaden their issue set to include what is sometimes called 'creation care.' Confronted with global warming, Cizik believes that evangelicals should help lead the movement to encourage Americans to be good stewards of God's creation.
On the other side, there is James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and other evangelicals who are concerned that Christians are becoming distracted by a medley of issues, including environmentalism. According to these leaders, our focus should be the 'great moral issues of our time'--abortion, gay marriage, and abstinence education.
I certainly have sympathy for the arguments of Dobson, et al. There is no doubt about it: abortion is the greatest moral issue of our generation, and Christians should ceaselessly work to restore a culture of life. Additionally, if we fail in our efforts to preserve marriage, society will unravel. Certainly teaching sexual abstinence is an effective way of preventing abortion and the breakdown of marriage. All of these goals are worthy of the dedicated efforts of Dobson, Perkins, Bauer, and others."

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