Saturday, April 21, 2007

The US Income Tax Fraud And Other Stuff Media Will Not Tell You About: Video - Robin Good's Latest News


"The American Constitution, the fundamental cornerstone of American society, was never meant to co-exist with the income tax system. In fact, according to film-maker Aaron Russo, to whom we have given coverage before, the 'income tax' is in full breach of the US Constitution. "

How can this be? How else would Americans pay for their education, the maintenance of their highways and the vast military expenditure of Mr. Bush?

In Russo's investigation, it transpires that these things and more are paid entirely from other taxes quite beyond those taken from the salaries of the US workforce.

Russo, a former music promoter, talent scout, rock star manager and producer of big Hollywood movies, has recently turned his sights to a more political agenda.

His film America: Freedom To Fascism received standing ovations during its theatrical release, in no small part due to his central argument: that income tax is an act of fraud that few know about and which needs to be made visible to the American people.

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Point Five » What Has Happened To Our Youth?

"I’ve been reading a lot of commentary around the blogosphere in the last few days. It seems like for every sensible acknowledgment that the Virginia Tech students should have found a way to stop the crazed shooter that killed 32 on Monday, some hand-wringing ninny will chime in to call him “buckaroo,” and say that “nobody knows what they would do in a situation like that.”
Bullshit.
I didn’t spend seven seasons battling the assassin Murdoc to listen to chicken- shit talk like that. If I hear another lame- ass internet coward coming to the defense of those feminized students, I’m going to take the handlebars off an old bike, grab a length of rubber tubing, make an improvised slingshot and go on a little spree of my own."

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Fighting the next war By CAROLINE GLICK Jerusalem Post

"Last Friday, Haaretz's military commentator Ze'ev Schiff accused the Barak and Sharon governments of responsibility for last summer's war. As Schiff put it, since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, 'a threatening system [comprised of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran] arose [on Israel's northern border], which required a preemptive strike. The aversion to conducting such a strike eventually caused the war.'
Schiff's analysis is correct. But since it stops short of drawing lessons for the present dangers, it is largely useless. Today, due to the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's failure in the last war, we stand at the brink of the next one. And in the next war, the main enemy will be Syria, which will fight in coordination with Hizbullah and the Palestinians and under Iranian guidance. "

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Jihad and the Collapse of the Swedish Model :: The Brussels Journal

"I decided to write this essay following the riots in Malmö this weekend. Malmö is Sweden's third largest city and by far the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim aggression. I read recently that an Arab girl interviewed in Malmö said that she liked it so much there, it felt almost like an Arab city. Native Swedes have been moving away from the city for years, turned into refugees in their own country by Jihad, not too different from the non-Muslims in some regions of the Philippines, southern Thailand or Kashmir in India, or for that matter Christian Serbs in Kosovo.
Sweden was presented during the Cold War as a middle way between capitalism and Communism. When this model of a society collapses – and it will collapse, under the combined forces of Islamic Jihad, the European Union, Multiculturalism and ideological overstretch – it is thus not just the Swedish state that will collapse but the symbol of Sweden, the showcase of an entire ideological world view. I wrote two years ago that if the trend isn't stopped, the Swedish nation will simply cease to exist in any meaningful way during the first half of this century. The country that gave us Bergman, ABBA and Volvo could become known as the Bosnia of northern Europe, and the “Swedish model” will be one of warning against ideological madness, not one of admiration. I still fear I was right in that assessment."

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The Mainstream Media: Islamist Facilitators By M. Zuhdi Jasser

"Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic broke the story on April 10, 2007 about PBS's censorship of the documentary, Islam vs. Islamists from its America at a Crossroads series which debuted this week. The film's producers, Frank Gaffney, Alex Alexiev and the veteran filmmaker, Martyn Burke of ABG Films, Inc. have since presented in shocking detail their painful protracted experiences trying to navigate the censors at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which funded the film with $675,000 of the taxpayers' monies but now has chosen to shelve it. In just the last week of public debate, there has been a firestorm of outcry from the public who are demanding that oppressive methods of editorial content control by power brokers at PBS be investigated and the real story behind the shelving of Islam vs. Islamists be exposed. PBS's exploitation of the public dime and the public airwaves for the narrow point of view of the Islamist sympathizers with the exclusion of the anti-Islamist Muslims is just now beginning to be understood."

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Appeal For Courage


"As an American currently serving my nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to fully support our mission in Iraq and halt any calls for retreat. I also respectfully urge my political leaders to actively oppose media efforts which embolden my enemy while demoralizing American support at home. The War in Iraq is a necessary and just effort to bring freedom to the Middle East and protect America from further attack."

If you are active duty, reservist or national guard, please Sign this Appeal

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Friday, April 20, 2007

A brief history of the five kinds of conservatism By Fred Hutchison

"During this time of political setbacks for conservatives, it is a good time to consider the vital role of Conservatism in Western cultural and political history.

Conservative ideals played a crucial role in the rise of the West, and Liberalism did not. In fact, Liberalism appeared during the 18th century after the West had already become the premier civilization of the world in literature, philosophy, art, music, architecture, economics, commerce, exploration, science, technology, war, and politics.

There is an illusion abroad in the land that Liberalism is an old tradition, and that Conservatism arose in the late 1940's as a reactionary force. This essay will demonstrate that four of the five kinds of Conservatism were very old when Liberalism first appeared.

Conservative ideals have consistently had salutary effects upon culture. In contrast, Liberalism has never been better than a mixed blessing and was often destructive to Western culture. It was destructive because it propagated false views about the nature of man, society, government, and the cosmos.

In this essay, I shall introduce each of the five major kinds of Conservatism in the order of its first historical appearance from 800 B.C. to 1300 A.D. The next essay — part 2 — covers 1300 to 2000 A.D. The historical order of appearance of the schools of Conservatism is: 1) Traditionalism, 2) Christian Conservatism, 3) Natural Law Conservatism, 4) Neoconservatism, and 5) Libertarianism."

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Ismail Ax: SuperHuman Badass::The Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster

"This is where I provide the link to an idiotic post

And this is where I quote it so you don't have to expose yourself to more of his stupidity than necessary:

Nashville has it’s own talk radio loudmouth, whom I had the distinct displeasure of listening to for the first time ever last night. Phil Valentine aired his Die Hard fantasies about how someone carrying a concealed weapon could have “ended” the massacre. No, Phil, and “no” to anyone else who believes this to be accurate. Unless the individual was John McClain (a fictional police officer trained to use firearms) or Blade, they would have likely ended up swallowing hollow points.

And this is where I explain why its idiotic...

First of all... in fairness to the author, he is expressing a view widely held on the left... ie; bad guys with guns are invinsible. Only the government can stop criminals... and if the government doesn't stop them... they simply cannot be stopped. This stems from the fact that the average leftist has never actually encountered real aggression in his life. When he does... its on tv... and his conclusion is the same as this dude's. Ismail Ax was Superman.

To the leftist... when a badman has a gun... he is invinsible. Interenstingly... when a good guy has gun... the same doesn't apply. Criminals with guns are infinitely skilled... while civilians with guns are just dumb rednecks playing Rambo."

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25 years murder-free in 'Gun Town USA'::WorldNetDaily

"As the nation debates whether more guns or fewer can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech Massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in a Georgia town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms.
In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of 'Wild West' showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender. "

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Open letter to 'environmental journalists' By Jodeph Farah :: WorldNetDaily

"In response to charges in my new book, 'Stop the Presses! The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution,' that the Society of Environmental Journalists is one of several activist pressure groups working inside America's newsrooms, I received a letter from the president of the group.
Tim Wheeler took umbrage, first and foremost, that I had mistakenly botched the name of the organization – calling it the Society for Environmental Journalism rather than the Society of Environmental Journalism.
To this charge, I plead guilty. My news organization erred. Mea culpa. We stand corrected and duly chastised. But I would like the society to know, this was not an intentional slight. In fact, many of the group's friends, supporters and colleagues often make the same mistake – and, unlike WND, don't correct it. "

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Silence is a virtue::By Charles Krauthammer

"What can be said about the Virginia Tech massacre? Very little. What should be said? Even less. The lives of 32 innocents, chosen randomly and without purpose, are extinguished most brutally by a deeply disturbed gunman. With an event such as this, consisting of nothing but suffering and tragedy, the only important questions are those of theodicy, of divine justice. Unfortunately, in today's supercharged political atmosphere, there is the inevitable rush to get ideological mileage out of the carnage.
It did not take long for the perennial debate about gun control to break out, preceded by the inevitable scolding and clucking abroad about America's lax gun laws. "

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The Muslim Bortherhood's Duping of America By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen

"Making the Muslim Brotherhood a major player in Middle East politics seems to be one of the few subjects on which both Democrats and Republicans seem to agree. Neither the State Department nor the White House commented after U.S. House Majority Leader Stanley Hoyer met in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentarian leader, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni. Hoyer and el-Katani discussed recent developments in the Middle East, and the 'Brotherhood's vision.'


This meeting took place just one day after the conclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood 5th Cairo Conference: The International Campaign Against US & Zionist Occupation, in which delegations from Hizbollah and Hamas took part. The participants cheered as Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Mahdi 'Akef declared, 'the devil Bush and his allies were now the ones sowing terror and aggression worldwide.' "

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Those Rich Old White Guys

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Nifong, Fitzgerald & American "Justice" Defiled by Chris Adamo

"So the State of North Carolina is finally officially recognizing what has been blatantly obvious to every honest and objective observer of the Duke Lacrosse Team debacle since it first made national news. The supposed rape never occurred. Crystal Gail Mangum, the accuser, fabricated her victimization. And Durham County Prosecutor Michael Nifong willingly collaborated in the scam by deliberately suppressing decisive evidence that would have instantly vindicated the accused players.
When declaring their innocence, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper not only acknowledged the defendants to be the undeniable victims of false accusations, he castigated Nifong for conducting his 'investigation' in a plainly unethical and unprofessional manner.
Unfortunately Cooper let Mangum off the hook on the spurious basis that she 'really believed' the numerous and often conflicting stories she concocted against the Lacrosse players."

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You Da Man! by Mac Johnson


"Are you an angry anti-American Marxist displaced by the fall of communism and the end of the cold war? Are you a depressed apocalyptic turtleneck wearer in need of an atheist Armageddon to tout? Are you tired of speaking for the proletariat only to have them tell you to “shove it?”
Well then, the answer to your problems is here! In a remarkable coincidence, this Sunday is not only Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, it’s also Earth Day! And the new “Green” movement is accepting all the debris of Marxism’s collapse NO QUESTIONS ASKED! Enlist now and receive a free “Che Speaks for The Trees!” t-shirt made from 100% organic fair-trade free-range cotton.
Yes, just like a disgraced corporation changing its name and logo and then re-emerging to sell the same old crap under a new trademark, all of Europe and North America’s assorted anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-Western luddites and looneys have regrouped under a new banner. Furl the red flag and mute the “Internationale,” it’s time to go green and sing “Kumbaya!” instead."

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Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates by Christopher Hitchens

"When I first began to plan my short biography of Thomas Jefferson, I found it difficult to research the chapter concerning the so-called Barbary Wars: an event or series of events that had seemingly receded over the lost horizon of American history. Henry Adams, in his discussion of our third president, had some boyhood reminiscences of the widespread hero-worship of naval officer Stephen Decatur, and other fragments and shards showed up in other quarries, but a sound general history of the subject was hard to come by. When I asked a professional military historian—a man with direct access to Defense Department archives—if there was any book that he could recommend, he came back with a slight shrug. "

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The Trans-Atlantic Terror Divide by Kenneth R. Timmerman

"“Let me be very clear,” CIA Director Michael Hayden told ambassadors from the European Union last month over lunch at the German embassy. “My countrymen, my government, my Agency and I believe that we are a nation at war. We are in a state of armed conflict with al Qa’ida and its affiliates. We believe that this conflict with al Qa’ida is global in its scope. We also believe that a precondition for our winning this conflict is to take the fight to the enemy wherever he may be.”
General Hayden’s frank and detailed presentation to the Europeans was aimed at defusing tensions created in part by a European Parliamentary “temporary committee” investigating the CIA’s program of “extraordinary renditions” of terrorist suspects."

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Molly Moore and Dr. Phil: Inept Responses to Virginia Tech Massacre By Richard Bewley, Jr.

"Why, oh, why did she have to write it? She wrote it Tuesday, just one day (let me repeat that) ONE DAY after the massacre at Virginia Tech! And if you've been following that tragedy like I have, then you also know how little we knew on Tuesday!

I wonder if Molly Moore of the Washington Post's Foreign Service might have been in training for this in advance. I expect people like Moore (Michael or Molly) to write anti-American agitprop, but couldn't she have had the decency to wait at least a few days to start the beating. Here it is:

Va. Killings Widely Seen as Reflecting a Violent Society:
World Reaction Mixes Condolences with Criticism of Policies"

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Cold Standard By Peggy Noonan

"I saw an old friend on the Acela on the way to Washington, and he told me of the glum, grim faces at the station he'd left, all the commuters with newspapers in their hands and under their arms. This was the day after Virginia Tech. We talked about what was different this time, in this tragedy. I told him I felt people were stricken because they weren't stricken. When Columbine happened, it was weird and terrible, and now there have been some incidents since, and now it's not weird anymore. And that is what's so terrible. It's the difference between 'That doesn't happen!' and 'That happens.'
Actually I thought of Thoreau. He said he didn't have to read newspapers because if you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with its numerous applications. If you know lightning hits trees, you don't have to know every time a tree is struck by lightning.
In terms of school shootings, we are now familiar with the principle. "

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Virginia Tech Massacre, and Why You Should Own a Gun By Alan Caruba

"The murders on the Virginia Tech campus, the worst such rampage in our history, might have been mitigated if just one member of the faculty or a student had the means to return fire.

I have owned guns for decades. On rare occasions, I have had to “show” one of my guns to people with bad intentions. Not surprisingly, they changed their plans to take my money and do me some harm. The Virginia Tech murders confirm the value of empowering ordinary citizens to carry a concealed weapon.

On March 9, I learned of a ruling in the case of Parker vs. District of Columbia in which Senior Judge Lawrence H. Silberman wrote an opinion, with Judge Thomas B. Griffith concurring, that restored the Second Amendment to the citizens of the District of Columbia and, by extension, to every citizen of these United States. Not since 1976, had residents of the District had the right to defend themselves with force of arms."

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Scientist: Warming not caused by humans By WENDY REEVES -Huntsville Times

Roy Spencer is speaking up about his belief that Earth is not headed toward a global warming disaster.

Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and former NASA scientist, said he knows he's in the minority with his opinions, but he doesn't believe manmade influences are causing catastrophic climate changes. "
"We see something change in our climate and we blame ourselves," Spencer told the Republican Women of Madison during a lunch meeting Wednesday.

Spencer contends there is not yet enough known about the Earth's atmosphere to understand exactly what occurs naturally to stabilize the earth's climate.

"I don't think we understand what happens. We can watch it happen on the (climate) models, we know it happens, but we don't know for sure how it happens," Spencer said.

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The Rich and the Rest By Robert Samuelson

"In a democracy, there is something unsettling about great extremes of wealth and poverty. One question today is whether rich Americans are claiming too much of the economic pie. Look at the latest astonishing estimates from economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. They find that the richest 10 percent of the population received 44 percent of the pretax income in 2005. This was the highest since the 1920s and 1930s (average: 44 percent) and much higher than from 1945 to 1980 (average: 32 percent).
But the biggest gains occurred among the richest 1 percent. Their share of pretax income has gradually climbed from 8 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 2005. Indeed, many others in the top 10 percent seem mainly upper middle class. For example, those in the richest 90th to 95th percentiles had average incomes of about $110,000."

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The Killers We Should Really Worry About Are the Jihadis By Robert Tracinski

"The Virginia Tech massacre is legitimately a big news story, on the crime-and-natural-disaster beat. And I understand why those affected by this event cannot think of anything bigger and more important in their lives than the tragedy they have just suffered.
But something more is needed to explain why this story has completely dominated the national media (and even the global media) for two straight days, to the exclusion of everything else--while the president and Congress are in a showdown over funding for the War on Terrorism.
Keep in mind that this week we are already approaching the point at which the Pentagon is going to have to start diverting funds from other parts of its budget in order to keep paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, since the Democratic Congress has refused to pass a war funding bill that does not require the president to withdraw our troops from Iraq. In effect, Congress has already de-funded the War on Terrorism. That is the most important national news story of this week. Good luck trying to hear about it on the national news."

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Suicide & Islam: Connection to slaying by Dave Gaubatz

"Due to news coverage yesterday and today regarding the shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, it was clear to me that this article was warranted and an important message to law enforcement personnel and the public. There has still been only limited information released by the authorities concerning the young man who decided to go on a murder spree. Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean who was in the US as a resident alien (i.e., “Green Card holder”) was also a senior majoring in English at Virginia Tech. He is now being described as a loner – a depressed and troubled young man.
How any state in the nation grants non-US citizens the privilege to carry arms is a whole discussion on its own, but not one I will focus on here. This article is entitled Suicide & Islam, not because of the murders by Seung-Hui at the university, but due to the rush by the authorities to determine after the initial shootings at 7:15am that the motive for the initial shooting-murders had nothing to do with terrorism or even to a potential mass murderer but instead was a “simple domestic murder” case. "

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

When the police don't come By Joseph Farah::WorldNetDaily

"I've been following every detail of the timeline of events at the Virginia Tech massacre.
Yes, like everyone else, I'm appalled that a double-homicide on campus, with no suspect in custody, was treated so lightly, so cavalierly, that assumptions were made that the perpetrator had not only left the campus but probably the state as well!
I'm shocked by this two-hour gap of time between the first murders and the ultimate bloodletting that would take place a half-mile away at Norris Hall. In this time period, the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, had time to go to his own dorm room and scrawl what is described as a 'disturbing' letter, ranting and railing against rich students and other grievances.
He also had time to reload, restock his ammunition supply and walk across campus calmly to Norris Hall, where he chained all the doors shut and began systematically killing as many people as he could. "

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Ron Paul: More Guns Will Deter Shootings

"Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has a simple solution to future shooting massacres such as the one that ripped apart Virginia Tech university Monday: more guns.
'People are a little more cautious if somebody might have a gun there,' the GOP presidential candidate told Politico reporters Tuesday. 'A concealed gun carried by a responsible person -- that might have ended the problem that they had at Virginia Tech with one person being killed or two people being killed.'
Paul, 71, is the kind of lawmaker, and presidential candidate, gun control advocates love to hate at moments like this. And, based on public opinion polls and reader feedback at Politico.com, he's far from alone."

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Right Wing Nut House » A LONG, THOUGHTFUL CONVERSATION WITH MY CATS

"It finally happened as I knew it always would happen; as cat people all over the world know someday it will happen to them and as even non-cat people suspect it happens despite them being dog people and extremely jealous and hateful of any outward manifestation of feline superiority.
I talked to my cats last night. And they talked back.
What’s that? The answer is no more than usual but I wouldn’t have wanted to take a breathalizer. And because I know you’re curious, Ebony, the liberal’s liberal, sipped several bottles of my best Fritz Haag Estate Riesling and nibbled on Edam cheese all night while wise old conservative Aramas went through my entire stock of Courvosier (VSOP) and the little angel Snowball was knocking back chocolate/Rasberry milkshakes as fast as I could make them – that is, until Ebony, tiring of the youngster’s interruptions and attention getting antics, strongly cuffed the little girl across the ear, sending her rolling like a ten pin out into the kitchen.
Cats make great parents. The little one was barely heard from again for the rest of the night."

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Gates of Vienna: Ringing Down the Days: A Va Tech Student's Failed Plea from August 2006

"A commenter, CW, brings up the first televised --sorry, it was covered by a television photographer, no mini-cams then -- campus shooting, almost forty years ago. How different things were then.

The reaction of students and professors -- which was to begin firing back -- couldn't happen now. We've been disarmed by an emasculated press which is yowling even now for more gun control. They seriously don't get it; they never will either. J school is a brainwash.

CW says:

This incident should be compared to the U. Texas campus tower incident in 1966. That brain cancer-deranged shooter was shot by a combination of police and fellow students [and professors --D] who pulled rifles out of their car trunks and began firing back in self-defense. If there were no armed students on the UTx campus in 1966, the death toll would have been higher as the shooter in the tower had a commanding vantage point of the entire campus.
Follow the link to an engrossing first-person account of that day. The author describes it as worse than his experience in Vietnam.

Exactly. In Vietnam, he was armed."

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Enough Blame to Go Around By Lisa Fabrizio

"Most conservatives have enjoyed the outcomes of two notable stories in the last week or so. They reveled in the dropping of all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players and cheered the revelation of perceived hypocrisy, if not the actual firing, of radio personality Don Imus for his disparaging remarks about the oddly named Lady Scarlet Knights basketball team.
What I find amazing is the canonization of the Duke trio in some quarters. While they were no doubt falsely accused of rape and other crimes by a race-baiting charlatan masquerading as a District Attorney who will hopefully spend some time behind bars, have people forgotten that a drunken stag party occasioned the charges against them in the first place?"

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A Post-Imus Republic Of Virtue by Tony Blankley

"The Imus affair was not about Don Imus; it was -- and more importantly, is -- about the motives of those who brought him down. And we should be familiar with those motives, because they recur throughout history. They were well articulated in a once famous speech:
'Since virtue (good citizenship) and equality are the soul of the republic … it follows that the first rule of your political conduct must be to relate all of your measures to the maintenance of equality and to the development of virtue.
'… What is our goal? The enforcement of the constitution for the benefit of the people. Who will our enemies be? The vicious and the rich. What means will they employ? Slander and hypocrisy … The people must therefore be enlightened. But what are the obstacles to the enlightenment of the people? Mercenary writers who daily mislead them with impudent falsehoods. What conclusions may be drawn from this? These writers must be proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the people. Right-minded literature must be scattered about in profusion.
'… If the driving force of popular government in peacetime is virtue, that of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue, without terror is destructive; terror without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice that is prompt, severe, and inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.'"

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Summer of War: The Sequel by Michael Widlanski

"Leading Arab and Israeli officials are increasingly convinced that another major Arab-Israeli conflict will erupt within months, according to recent statements and background briefings.
'We are prepared for the possibility of another adventure or the demand of American policy that might push the IDF [the Israeli Defense Force] in that direction,' declared Sheikh Naim Qassem, the deputy leader of the Hezbollah terror organization this week. “Adventure” is one of Hezbollah’s favorite terms to describe an Israeli pre-emptive strike, and while Qassem’s claims seem wild, they are taken seriously by Western analysts, including the director of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin. Iran, Hezbollah and Syria, he believes, are preparing for war this summer."

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The Nine Lives of Al Sharpton by John Perazzo

"By now everyone knows about the recent idiotic remarks that longtime broadcaster Don Imus made last week about some black members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, to whom he referred as “nappy-headed hos.” Imus’ words require no comment; their stupidity is clear to all.
What is not at all clear, however, is why Al Sharpton has become Imus’ de facto confessor in this case. On Monday, the shock jock contritely appeared on Sharpton’s radio program and apologized for his stupid statements. Sharpton, for his part, slid into his customary moral preening routine and denounced Imus’ comments of last week as “racist” and “abominable,” adding that the broadcaster “should be fired” for what he had said. “I accept his apology,” Sharpton later elaborated, “just as I want his bosses to accept his resignation.” Moreover, Sharpton vowed to picket Imus’ New York radio home, WFAN-AM, unless the broadcaster was fired within a week for having “use[d] the airwaves for sexist and racist remarks.”"

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A Gutless Lynch Mob::By Thomas Sowell

"Just before the Attorney General of North Carolina appeared on television to announce his decision on the Duke University 'rape' case, one of the many expert TV legal commentators said that Attorney General Roy Cooper would probably use the words 'insufficient evidence' but not the word 'innocent' in dismissing the case.
As it turned out, the Attorney General did use the word 'innocent,' saying that he and his staff considered the accused students innocent. It was the only decent thing to do.
Anything less would have let the ugly accusation follow them for life and, years from now, when all the details of this sordid story have long since been forgotten, hang over their heads with a suspicion that they got off on some legal technicality.

What a difference a year makes. A year ago, there was a lynch mob atmosphere against the accused students -- from the Duke University campus to the national media, and including the local NAACP and the ever-present Jesse Jackson."

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Progressive Taxes Aimed Squarely at the Middle Class::By David Strom

How often have you heard phrases like "tax cuts for the rich" hurled as epithets by liberal activists?

It's like a mantra. Every time a tax cut is proposed, liberals go apoplectic about the supposed injustice of it all. It's as if conservatives were suggesting sending out the Sheriff of Nottingham to shake down the peasants to subsidize the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Well, I have news for you: it's the liberals who are shaking down the peasants, and their "socially just" policy of progressive income taxation is aimed squarely at middle-class people working their way up the economic ladder, not at the "rich" who supposedly pay the most under this system.

Liberals have it exactly wrong, as usual.

Let's examine the premise of progressive income taxes. It's pretty simple, really: people with lower incomes pay a smaller share of their income than people who make more money. The lowest Federal income tax rate, for single people making up to $7550, is 10%. The highest rate, for single people making over $336,550 is 35%. There are basically 6 tax brackets.

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Israeli professor killed in US attack:: HAVIV RETTIG::Jerusalem Post

Joe Librescu, son of murdered Virginia Tech engineering professor Liviu Librescu, expressed overwhelming pride in his father's life, and in his death, on Tuesday.

"He's unique on multiple levels," Librescu told The Jerusalem Post by phone from the family's home outside Tel Aviv.

Professionally, "he's one of the finest researchers in his field in the world." As a father, Librescu said, Liviu Librescu "believed in excellence and was a strong figure."

"He saw himself as the ambassador of Israel to that part of the world, to an American university that had few Israelis but many representatives from the Arab world," Librescu said.

Liviu Librescu's life in Romania, which ended with the family's move to Israel in 1978, was difficult from the start. A teenager during WWII, he survived fascist Romania and life in the shadow of the Gestapo. His father was deported to a forced labor camp during the war, while Librescu spend part of the war in relative safety in Russia, Joe Librescu said.

"Afterward," he said, "he endured [communist dictator Nicolae] Ceaucescu's Romania."

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Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part II by Patrick Poole

"Having considered in Part 1 the false distinction between “defensive jihad” and “global jihad” drawn by Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke in their response to me last week here at FrontPage, “A Response to Patrick Poole’s ‘Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood’”, today I turn my attention to several national affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East – the Palestinian terrorist organization HAMAS, the pro-HAMAS Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) in Kuwait, and the genocidal National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Sudan. The activity of these respective Brotherhood affiliates, and their ties to the main Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt, severely undercuts Leiken and Brooke’s assertion of a “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood.)"

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Humans Versus Nature - R.A. Hawkins

"It has been interesting to read the numerous articles and commentaries regarding the vanishing bees. The newest theories have to do with mobile phone technology running them out of their hives. It is a fact that, according to the article link referenced at the end of this commentary, if a cell phone is placed near a beehive the bees will not return to that hive. My first suggestion would be for people not to leave their cell phones near beehives. I know I’ve certainly quit that habit. However, if this is true it does say something that we would be wise to heed. We need bees to pollinate our crops. If the bees aren’t pollinating the crops, we’ll have to get a new breed of migrant worker that runs around with little Q-tips touching all of the flowers. The cost of food might go up a tad, but we’ll still have our phones so that we can impress everyone with how much everyone wants to converse with us for hours on meaningless garbage.
But before we decide to automatically blame cell phones for this new dilemma here are a few other things to ponder: Bee keepers are now more likely to take their hives cross-country to new places where they can earn money pollinating crops. This places stress on the bees and can at times cause them to move to less mobile, and therefore stress free, environs. At times that has been considered a factor in the great bee vanishing act."

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Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst 04-17-07

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Monday, April 16, 2007

The inconvenient Serbs

"When the outcome of a tragedy is known in advance, it finds ways of occurring earlier than expected. In this case, the fate of 100,000 Serbian Christians who remain in Kosovo may pre-empt the debate over Europe's eventual absorption into the Muslim world.

A new book on the Islamification of Europe appears almost weekly, adding to the efforts of Ben Wattenberg, Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye'or, George Weigel, Mark Steyn, Philip Jenkins and a host of others. Scholars debate whether the decline and fall of Europe

will occur by mid-century, or might be postponed until 2100. The inconvenient Serbs may force the issue on Europe a great deal sooner.

If Serbia and Russia draw a line in the sand over the independence of Kosovo, we may observe the second occasion in history when a Muslim advance on Europe halted on Serbian soil. The first occurred in 1456, three years after the fall of Constantinople, when Sultan Mehmed II was thrown back from the walls of Belgrade, 'The White City', by Hungarian and Serb defenders. The Siege of Belgrade 'decided the fate of Christendom', wrote the then Pope Calixtus III. Not for nothing did J R R Tolkien name his fictional stronghold of Minas Tirith 'The White City'. "

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Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood by Patrick Poole

"I must admit that I was pleased last week when FrontPage Magazine’s editors informed me that they were about to publish a response by Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center to my article last month, “Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood.” Before having had a chance to read their “Response to Patrick Poole’s ‘Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood,’” I sincerely hoped that we might have the makings of an open and serious public policy debate.
I will admit that there are elements to their original article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood,” that are sound, reasonable and uncontroversial, such as their recommendation that the U.S. must approach and consider each Brotherhood chapter in their respective countries as entities in their own right, rather than trying to consider the vast movement as a monolithic whole; and engaging reformists of all types in the Middle East. Who could possibly disagree? At other times in their original article they rely on making obvious statements of fact, such as that within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood there are varying sentiments, programs and ideas, and the organization is not a monolith. O.K., no problem here."

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Socialism Alert: Nearly Half Of All Americans Reliant On Government For Income

"I truly worry how our country can continue to prosper and excel when most of the people in it are dependent on the government for their livelihood. And who are the lucky people that get to subsidize all of this? Yup, that’s right - the ever dwindling number of “producers”, who pay nearly all of the taxes.
I mean, it’s already bad enough that in 2004, the top 10% of wage earners paid 70% of the income taxes. And as Ari Fleisher pointed out in today’s WSJ (paid subscription required) those in the bottom half of wage earners not only don’t pay federal income taxes, they also get reimbursed (through the Earned Income Tax Credit) for the payroll taxes that come out of their check. So it’s hard to make the argument that those people “paid into” the Social Security and Medicare system that they will be accessing later in life.
To boil it all down - there are many in our society who pay nothing for the benefits they currently receive, or will be receiving. I’m not saying that to slam them or say their bad people but facts are facts."

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Imus go down to the idiocy again By Mark Steyn

was at LaGuardia the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual four-hour delay brought on by yet another of these April snowstorms Al Gore has arranged as a savvy marketing gimmick for his global warming documentary. Anyway, as always when you're at the gate for hours on end, there's nothing to do but watch CNN. I gather air traffic delays now account for 87 percent of CNN's audience. If it's just a routine holdup of two or three hours because the gate agent hasn't shown up, you know you'll be out of there before Wolf Blitzer's said goodnight. But, if it's something serious, like a light breeze at O'Hare, you know you'll be watching Larry King right through to the plug for tomorrow night's full hour with Tina Louise.
So I had the pleasure of sampling a typical evening's lineup of Don Imus coverage, from Wolf bringing us up to speed on the various networks that have fired him to Paula Zahn hosting a balanced panel of three African Americans and a guilt-ridden honky. It would have been a bad day for Ahmadinejad to drop the big one because nothing was going to prize CNN from their Imus-In-the-Morning-Noon-and-Night coverage.

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The Peace Process as Treason :: SaneWorks


This political cartoon renders what we all know to be true. Iran is devouring Iraq before our very eyes.

Notwithstanding the anti-war crowd’s chants that the neo-cons are driving Vice President Cheney, who in turn is pushing President Bush, to start a new war front with Iran, the evidence would suggest that practically nothing would bring President Bush to take that step.

Let’s take our own step back. Just the other day, the army did what it doesn’t usually do. It announced in clear no uncertain terms that Iran is the insurgency’s big warehouse. Planning, weapons, money, and even manpower. Syria is playing a role as is Saudi Arabia, but each in turn a lesser one than Tehran.

That Iran covets Iraq could not have been missed by the Bush administration prior to the war. First, there was the centuries-long struggle over the border region of Khuzestan and just recently Saddam’s almost decade-long war on Iran in a bid to take advantage of the new and weak revolutionary regime. (Arguably, Saddam was also motivated by the real threat of a religious regime of hostile Shia on Iraq’s border.) Second, Iran’s Ayatollahs have long considered the Shia world as part of its Caliphate and that most certainly goes for the Shia of Iraq who make up the overwhelming majority of the population and the group most tyrannized by the Hussein regime.

That being said, President Bush and his military team developed a war strategy in Iraq. That strategy was to overwhelm the Saddam regime and then to piece together a Shia-led coalition government based upon western liberal democratic principles. We have certainly written enough on this subject for any SANE reader to understand just how insane this approach to civilizing the Middle East through democracy-building was and continues to be.

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

What It Means to be a Conservative By Mark Levin

"I touched on this in an earlier post, but I'm disheartened by conservatives who continue to lecture that we must ignore serious defects in a Republican candidate's record. Conservatism is about more than tax cuts and the war on terrorism, it's about more than abortion and illegal immigration. These are certainly important policy aspects of conservatism. But conservatism is about a way of life, a way of governing, and a way of bettering society. When a pundit or candidate demands that conservatives limit their critical thinking to one or two subjects or positions, that's self-serving. They're usually putting their own political preferences and motivations ahead of serious analysis. That's not to say that a candidate must be a 'perfect' conservative, as there is no such thing. But a candidate who has a long record of rejecting fundamentally conservative principles — such as those protected by the Bill of Rights (from free political speech and gun ownership to property rights and federalism) — or pandering to populist demands with big-government solutions, can't logically be said to be a conservative."

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The Wisdom of Solomon Applied to Modern Liberals By Dennis Campbell

"The wisest man in history was the great philosopher/king Solomon, who ruled over Israel 3,000 years ago during the height of that nation's power and prosperity.

His story is recorded in First Kings of the Old Testament (New International Version). At the beginning of Solomon's reign, God appeared to him in a dream and asked what he desired from the Lord. Solomon asked for 'a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.'

This pleased the Lord, who said, 'Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.'

Solomon's great wisdom is displayed in the book of Proverbs, a series of sayings that cover most aspects of human life. Remarkably, Solomon seemed to anticipate today's liberals in these gems.

Of course, he did not use the word liberal, but instead made repeated references to fools. He was biting in his disdain for their behavior and in his warnings of the consequences of it. Two Hebrew words were most frequently used that are translated 'fool.'"

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Robert Spencer - The Truth About Muhammad - Part 1

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The Post-west by Victor Davis Hanson

"I recently had a dream that British marines fought back, like their forefathers of old, against criminals and pirates. When taken captive, they proved defiant in their silence. When released, they talked to the tabloids with restraint and dignity, and accepted no recompense.
I dreamed that a kindred German government, which best knew the wages of appeasement, cut-off all trade credits to the outlaw Iranian mullahs — even as the European Union joined the Americans in refusing commerce with this Holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic, and thuggish regime.

NATO countries would then warn Iran that their next unprovoked attack on a vessel of a member nation would incite the entire alliance against them in a response that truly would be of a “disproportionate” nature.

In this apparition of mine, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in Syria at the time, would lecture the Assad regime that there would be consequences to its serial murdering of democratic reformers in Lebanon, to fomenting war with Israel by means of its surrogates, and to sending terrorists to destroy the nascent constitutional government in Iraq."

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SEEING THE UNSEEN, Part 2 By Proteus at Eject!Eject!Eject!

Occam’s Razor is the idea that when confronted with competing theories that explain certain data equally well, the simplest one is usually correct. It’s called Occam’s Razor, and not Occam’s Hypothesis, or Occam’s Theorem, or Occam’s Bit of Useful Advice, because it is a razor – it cuts cleanly and with great efficiency.

And though it pains me to say so, this culture is in desperate need of a shave.

IT’S A CONSPIRACY!

I want to forgo the niceties of the hot towel and go straight for the jugular on this one. My goal here is not to bust any of these four conspiracy theories; that has all been done much more effectively elsewhere. What I am trying to do here is to build a chain of evidence to show a progressively deteriorating epidemic of world-wide insanity, of truly diseased thinking -- not just a misunderstanding or difference of opinion but real, diagnosable mental illness.

I want to get to that disease in a minute -- and the cause of it too – but first let’s examine what some people claim to believe in and the mountains of sand one has to carry in order to bury one’s head so deep.

Man on the Moon

Several years ago, I was having lunch with some co-workers and the subject of the Loch Ness Monster came up. They seemed genuinely amazed that I was so certain that it did not exist. I pointed out that an air-breathing plesiosaur would have to surface for air so often that its “reality” would be as much in doubt as that of whales or dolphins. Also, there are essentially no fish in Loch Ness, so it has nothing to eat. The most famous photo of it is a known fake. It’s a no-brainer. Not that I couldn’t be convinced I was wrong, I added. But I would want to pet the damn thing, or at least stand on the carcass with my hands clasped in the air.

This shocking position got me an invitation to meet “Joe” (might be his real name; I frankly don’t remember). Joe was a friend of one of my colleagues. Joe, I was told, was one of the most well-respected paranormal researchers in the world, and as it turned out, he lived a few blocks from me.

Would I be willing to debate him?

I said yes, of course – and for a reason that I later came to regret. I said yes not because I felt some need to set this guy right, but rather because I hoped he might have something really interesting, something that might cause me to change my mind.

I met him at his apartment: the kind of musty, cluttered, book-filled room I had seen before and come to expect. There were two others in the room. We shook hands. He was a nice enough guy.

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