Vatican: “Attempts to Islamise the west cannot be denied” :: Gates of Vienna

Given the Muslim outrage the last time the Pontiff said something substantive about the history of Islam and the West, it has fallen to his secretary to make public observations about what is going on:

Pope Benedict XVI’s private secretary warned of the Islamisation of Europe and stressed the need for the continent’s Christian roots not to be ignored.
“Attempts to Islamise the west cannot be denied,” Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published Friday.
“The danger for the identity of Europe that is connected with it should not be ignored out of a wrongly understood respectfulness,” the magazine quoted him as saying.

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Romney Should Stop Hispandering, Run On Illegal Immigration Record By Joe Guzzardi

Dear God! What in the world was Mitt Romney doing addressing the Republican National Hispanic Assembly last week? (The RNHA is a thirty-three year old front group created by George H. W Bush).

There was Romney, Hispandering to the choir about "Hispanic family values," and all the other nonsense that candidates just can’t help but utter when they mingle with Hispanics.

If you want to see how little influence Romney’s canned speech had on the sparse crowd, look closely at the photo that accompanies the AP story linked below.

A guy in the front row is text messaging, a woman at the same table is digging in her purse ,possibly looking for her fingernail file, another older woman in the back has fallen asleep, the man next to her is eyeballing the door, probably hoping he can bolt out of the room ASAP.[ Romney Touts Immigration To Hispanics,  by Andrew Miga, Associated Press, July 22, 2007]

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The CIA vs. Scarborough by Jed Babbin

On July 20, the CIA issued the most extraordinary press release. Director of Public Affairs Mike Mansfield wrote:  

We generally don't comment on books, but we have departed from that on occasion, and have decided to do so in connection with Rowan Scarborough's new book, "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA."

CIA employees work very hard to protect their fellow citizens and to help keep America safe. They take great pride -- and take great risks -- in serving our country. They know that the intelligence they collect, analyze and deliver to policymakers, diplomats, law enforcement officers, and military commanders makes a difference, each and every day.

The premise of Mr. Scarborough's book -- that CIA employees are working to undermine our government -- is both ridiculous and offensive.

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Spencer Abraham, no way in Hell, Fred Thompson. :: Right Truth

Fred Thompson has been my favorite for President in the 2008 election, until now. If what I'm hearing about Spencer Abraham, Thompson's new campaign manager, then Fred's campaign is dead in the water. Spencer Abraham, according to reports, is a supporter of open borders. That by itself is enough to turn most conservative voters off. On top of the border security question, I'm hearing that Spencer Abraham is an apologist for the Islamists. No way Fred can get elected if this is true. No way in hell.

Are you not aware that immigration restrictionists loathe Abraham as an open-borders true-believer, and that your appointment of him as your most important staff person throws into doubt your main selling point as a candidate? Did you have a reason for doing this, or are you just thick? (LibertyPost.com)

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Why the European Union Must Go By Fjordman

At the EU Observer, Anthony Coughlan, a senior lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that in every EU member state at present the majority of laws come from Brussels. Why do national politicians and representatives accept this situation? He suggests a plausible explanation:

"At national level when a minister wants to get something done, he or she must have the backing of the prime minister, must have the agreement of the minister for finance if it means spending money, and above all must have majority support in the national parliament, and implicitly amongst voters in the country. Shift the policy area in question to the supranational level of Brussels however, where laws are made primarily by the 27-member Council of Ministers, and the minister in question becomes a member of an oligarchy, a committee of lawmakers, the most powerful in history, making laws for 500 million Europeans, and irremovable as a group regardless of what it does.
"National parliaments and citizens lose power with every EU treaty, for they no longer have the final say in the policy areas concerned. Individual ministers on the other hand obtain an intoxicating increase in personal power, as they are transformed from members of the executive arm of government at national level, subordinate to a national legislature, into EU-wide legislators at the supranational."

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Corporate America: Freedom's Greatest Threat By Chuck Baldwin

Most of us who believe in the free enterprise system have been taught that business interests normally work to the betterment of America's overall health, both commercially and politically. While there might have been a time when this was true, it is definitely not true today. Not only has Big Business become unfriendly to the principles of freedom, it has also become freedom's greatest threat.

To say that Corporate America is America's greatest threat is a harsh accusation, but one that I believe is warranted. I will even be so bold as to say that freedom has much more to fear from today's Chambers of Commerce than it does from Al Qaida.

Today's Americans need to carefully heed the sage counsel of Thomas Jefferson, who said, "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." The truth of that statement aptly explains the serious damage that Big Business is currently inflicting upon our liberties.

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Obama Bombing... By Charles Krauthammer

For Barack Obama, it was strike two. And this one was a right-down-the-middle question from a YouTuber in Monday night's South Carolina debate: "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?"

"I would," responded Obama.

His explanation dug him even deeper: "The notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."

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How to save the Constitution by Lawrence Auster

A federal district judge has found that Hazleton, Pennsylvania's anti-illegal alien ordinance violates the Constitution. What this really means is that the ordinance violates the monstrously hypertrophied understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment that has been spawned, as in the laboratory of a constitutional Dr. Frankenstein, by out-of-control federal judges over the last 70 years, usurping the normal power of states and municipalities to govern their own affairs. In the present case, the judge found that the ordinance, by punishing businesses that hire or rent to illegal aliens, was violating the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment which says that no state "shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The "due process of law" that is supposedly found lacking in Hazleton's ordinance is not the ordinary lawful operation of the Hazleton City Council in passing the ordinance, but rather a particular substantive result that the judge in his supra constitutional wisdom arbitrarily deems necessary. Under interpretations of the Constitution over the last 70 years, "due process" has become an unlimited catch-all phrase for any result a judge considers just.

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Back to school for Barack Joseph Farah

The three things that strike terror into the hearts of all freedom-loving people are Osama, Obama and Chelsea's momma, so the joke goes.

Listening to Barack Obama dismiss the probability of a slaughter – even genocide – following a U.S. troop withdrawal, reminds us just why there is so much truth in the joke.

Obama said the U.S. cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems around the world and preventing even a genocide in Iraq would not be a good enough reason to keep troops there.

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now – where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife – which we haven't done."

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Border agent says China ordered his prosecution By Jerome R. Corsi

A Border Patrol agent who was acquitted of a charge of using excessive force during a 2004 arrest of a Chinese national on suspicion of drug smuggling is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for $25 million.

And in a companion lawsuit, Robert Rhodes is seeking another $25 million from three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with the Office of Professional Responsibility.

He says the agents disregarded their oaths by pursuing a politically motivated prosecution against him to appease their superiors, who allegedly were seeking to do what communist China wanted.

"I was involved in a political prosecution that our government began at the demand of the government of communist China," Rhodes told WND. "The prosecution was promised to China by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge."

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Conservative Commitment and Unity Required for the Future by Susan Heathfield

I am troubled by the shift that appears to be occurring in the sentiments of the American people. We are becoming a nation of people who expect handouts from the government. We are bothered by the inequity of the amounts of money people make regardless of their life choices, career choices, and determination. And, we are losing our commitment to fighting terrorists internationally lest they attack us in our homeland.

The trends introduced in a March 22 Pew Center for the People and the Press study bode ill for conservative thinking and values. Conservatives need to unite and act quickly to counter these trends. The study reported:

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"Something’s Wrong:" A memorial to 9/11 hijackers in the U.S. by Douglas J. Hagmann

It was during court testimony on August 25, 1995 in the capital murder trial of O.J. Simpson when forensics expert Dr. Henry Lee testified there was "something wrong" with the manner in which one part of the blood evidence was obtained. Dr. Lee uttered “something’s wrong, something’s very wrong here” when addressing that particular evidence during the most infamous televised criminal trial of the twentieth century. At issue in that instance were wet blood transfer stains inside the paper packaging holding supposedly dry blood samples, something that made no scientific or even practical sense. “Something, somebody . . . put the swatch in the (package to) cause such a transfer. Who did it? What happened? I don't know," said Lee, a renowned forensics expert. "Only opinion I can give you under these circumstances: Something's wrong."

As an investigator certified in the forensic science of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, and having had the opportunity to study some of the bloodstain evidence collected during that trial while undergoing my certification, I can state with authority that I agree with Dr. Henry Lee’s assessment and also understand his perplexity.

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Emphasis on US Mideast Policy Should Be Liberty, Not Democracy By Frank Salvato

The recently released Benchmark Assessment Report mandated by the US Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 (HR2206/PL110-28) states that the common goal for both the US and Iraqi governments is a democratic Iraq that can govern, defend, and sustain itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror. All of these goals are achievable. The problem is, while some are achievable within a reasonable amount of time, where US intervention is concerned, at least one goal should be considered lofty: the goal of achieving a functional, democratic Iraqi government.

There are myriad reasons why US troops should not be prematurely withdrawn from the Iraqi battlefield. Two of the chief reasons revolve around genocide and the overall war against Islamofascism.

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Global Warming is Real And It’s Happening on Mars! By John D. Turner

NASA scientists are reporting that the climate on Mars appears to presently be warmer than it has been for at least several decades, possibly even centuries. This is based on pictures of Mars dating back to 1999. These images document substantial changes in the polar ice caps that Michael Malin, the principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera describes as shrinking at “a prodigious rate”.
This is not new news. Back in 2003, scientists were theorizing that Mars was in the process of emerging from an ice age, based on studies of its surface from data collected by the Mars Odyssey orbiter. According to William Feldman, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Lab, there is too much frozen water present at the lower latitudes, away from the poles, given Mars current climate.

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Stalin Lives - In England By Thomas E. Brewton

British PC education follows American lead, wipes out Western history.

Read Lisa Fabrizio's article, Not Their Finest Hour, on the Intellectual Conservative website.

The pull-quote summarizes the thrust of PC education in Britain:

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in Britain has dropped Winston Churchill from its list of key historical figures, in order to make room for "modern" issues.

This is straight out of the Soviet Union, where those out of favor with Stalin were liquidated and all records of their existence were expunged. Documents were destroyed or altered and photographs were retouched to remove individuals who had became non-persons.

Stalin took his cue from V. I. Lenin, who, in 1923, instructed the Commissars of Education:

We must hate — hatred is the basis of Communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not Communists.

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SCHIP A Step Towards Socialism by Mike Franc

During the heady days of 1993 when former First Lady Hillary Clinton assembled a group of health experts to reconfigure our health-care system, liberal strategists realized that the march toward socialized medicine might be a slow and halting one. Thus, they devised several alternate routes to the promised land of a universal, government-run system.
Intriguingly, one of these fall-back scenarios bears an uncanny resemblance to the dramatic expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) now under consideration on Capitol Hill.

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The CIA vs. Scarborough by Jed Babbin

On July 20, the CIA issued the most extraordinary press release. Director of Public Affairs Mike Mansfield wrote:  

We generally don't comment on books, but we have departed from that on occasion, and have decided to do so in connection with Rowan Scarborough's new book, "Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA."

CIA employees work very hard to protect their fellow citizens and to help keep America safe. They take great pride -- and take great risks -- in serving our country. They know that the intelligence they collect, analyze and deliver to policymakers, diplomats, law enforcement officers, and military commanders makes a difference, each and every day.

The premise of Mr. Scarborough's book -- that CIA employees are working to undermine our government -- is both ridiculous and offensive.

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Barack Obama: Ignoring Genocide By Alan W. Dowd

The ideological spectrum is not really a horizontal line neatly demarcating liberals and conservatives, leftists and rightists, radicals and reactionaries. Rather, it is something like an arc, bending and sloping at either end, until the extremes finally touch.

Just consider Sen. Barack Obama’s recent declamation that US troops should not stay in Iraq to prevent genocide. The AP reported it this way: “Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

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A "Humiliating" Executive Order By Andrew Walden

Eight terrorist enemy combatants have been captured in the U.S. as they prepared to carry out a wave of attacks in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. Organized in two squads, one group illegally entered the US from a boat June 13 off the shores of Amagansett, New York. The other group waded to shore June 16 at Point Vedra Beach, Florida. The eight were armed with guns, explosives and about $175,000 in US currency. Fortunately for Americans, one of the New York terrorists got cold feet and turned himself into the FBI. By June 27 agents of the FBI arrested the other seven.

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Accommodation as an Islamist Political Instrument By M. Zuhdi Jasser

Political Islam’s ideological battle fronts are many. They can include the obvious like the liberation of Iraq or the rampant domestic and foreign policy speeches given under the guise of Friday sermons in mosques around America. However, an ideological front which is gaining traction among Islamists is that of religious accommodations (or demands) in our free society. Every week, it seems we are seeing new iterations of the same issue. Soon we must all ask -- at what point do Muslim requests for accommodations to religious practices and beliefs cross the line of the fundamental basis of American liberty and freedom?

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ACORN falls again: The worst case of voter-registration fraud in Washington state history By Michelle Malkin

Here’s the PDF of the settlement agreement (via David Postman):

a. ACORN agrees that submission of registrations that have been fraudulently collected by an ACORN employee and not reviewed pursuant to the quality control procedures, or willfully turning in fraudulent cards, may constitute grounds for criminal prosecution of ACORN as a corporate entity unless such cards have been segregated by ACORN pursuant to the requirements of section 7 of this agreement.

b. ACORN agrees that violations of the terms of this agreement may be used as evidence in the State of Washington in future criminal prosecutions against ACORN employees, ACORN management, or ACORN as a corporate entity.

Guess which left-wing group is at the center of the worst case of voter-registration fraud in Washington state history? Yep, you guessed it: ACORN. The same ACORN tied to massive voter fraud in Missouri. And Ohio. And 12 other states. Here’s the Washington state scoop via Seattle’s KOMO TV: “King County prosecutors filed felony charges Thursday against seven people in what a top official described as the worst case of voter-registration fraud in state history, while the organization they worked for agreed to keep a better eye on its employees and pay $25,000 to defray costs of the investigation. The seven submitted about 1,800 registration cards last fall on behalf of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, which had hired them at $8 an hour to sign people up to vote, according to charging documents filed in Superior Court.”

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The Black Trial: The human drama the jury didn't see By MARK STEYN

Just before the case went to the jury, Conrad Black's two lead attorneys sent him a demand for an additional million bucks each. No messing around with billable hours and 15-minute increments and $27.59 for photocopying: just a nice round seven-figure sum by way of supplementary retainer.

A day or two before closing arguments to the 12 men and women who'll decide your fate is no time to pick a quarrel with your lawyers. Or, at any rate, yet another quarrel to add to those you're already having, and they're having with each other, and the American lawyer's associates are having with the Canadian lawyer, and the Canadian lawyer is having with his own associates, and your wife is having with all of them. So Conrad paid up.

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Iran 2 - Israel 0 By Caroline Glick

Jafar Kiani was an anonymous Iranian prisoner until earlier in the month he became the first Iranian to be stoned to death since 2002.

Iran's decision to revert to domestic barbarism is just one aspect of the regime's strategy for terrorizing its people sufficiently to quell all pockets of resistance to its rule.

The regime's determination to prevent an internal rebellion is an integral part of its larger plan to cast aside all obstacles to its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Iran already possesses what it needs to make nuclear bombs. What it needs is time. Last summer's war against Israel was timed to provide Iran with a respite from international pressure. Hizbullah's abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser took place the day before the leaders of the G-8 were scheduled to discuss Iran's nuclear program. By ordering the assault on Israel, Iran diverted their attention away from its nuclear program.

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A Canadian Doctor Describes How Socialized Medicine Doesn't Work BY DAVID GRATZER

I was once a believer in socialized medicine. As a Canadian, I had soaked up the belief that government-run health care was truly compassionate. What I knew about American health care was unappealing: high expenses and lots of uninsured people.

My health care prejudices crumbled on the way to a medical school class. On a subzero Winnipeg morning in 1997, I cut across the hospital emergency room to shave a few minutes off my frigid commute.

Swinging open the door, I stepped into a nightmare: the ER overflowed with elderly people on stretchers, waiting for admission. Some, it turned out, had waited five days. The air stank with sweat and urine. Right then, I began to reconsider everything that I thought I knew about Canadian health care.

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America and Its Enemies By Christopher Adamo

America understands that had Bin Laden been killed or captured on September 12, 2001, America would still have faced a protracted war on terror no less extensive than it has since endured.  Dealing with the al Qaeda leader is a worthy goal, but hardly the end of the conflict.

 Ultimately, September 11 represented neither a superior military capability on the part of the terrorists when assaulting the American homeland, nor immunity to its staunchest defenses.  Rather, it was the predictable result of an insidious and plotting enemy who understands that its quarry has, primarily in the spiritual sense grown weak, and over time became vulnerable.

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Jihad Watch: Watching the Polls

Click To Play

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"John Doe" provision: hold your euphoria :: Jihad Watch

The "John Doe" provision protecting passengers who report suspicious behavior is back -- or is it? Paul Green at GreensPiece reports a disturbing element of the new version:

My initial euphoria at the revivification of the "John Doe" protection provision in the Homeland Security bill is much tempered by a look at the actual language to which its opponents agreed. It has quite enough wiggle room to enable the sort of mischief at which attorneys and grievance activists have become adept.

Moreover, any hopes that this measure, if passed, is going to "nullify, in part" the "flying imams" lawsuit (an outcome predicted by Washington Times reporter Audrey Hudson at
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070725/NATION/70725003/1001)
are likely to be dashed. The devil is in the details:

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ELECTING ALLAH By Ralph Peters

The results of last week’s elections in Turkey should be deeply troubling to America and all those in the secular West who were counting on a successful resistance of the expansion of Islamic extremism there. Cox & Forkum’s new cartoon illustrates this very serious rising new threat.

THE bad news is that democracy works. In free and fair elections, the Turkish peo ple voted overwhelmingly to deepen the majority status of a religion-based party that's modern on the outside and medieval within.

In Sunday's vote, 47 percent of the ballots went to the Justice And Development Party (AKP). In Turkey's multi-player parliamentary system, that's a landslide. The Islamist-in-a-necktie AKP still doesn't have enough votes to break the secular Constitution - which it intends to do - but it believes it has a mandate to hack away at the legacy of Kemal Ataturk.

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Another "Ambassador of Peace" Underlies Thailand's Cluelessness By Zachary Abuza

Once again Thailand has brought in another Muslim dignitary in the hopes that they will be able to miraculously quell the violence in the restive south, in which nearly 2,400 people have been killed since the start of 2004.

In late June, the head of the quasi-official Saudi agency, the Muslim World League, Abdullah bin Abdul Mohsin Al-Turki, came and white washed any religious or ideological affinity of the insurgents. The MWL is one of the primary means that the Saudi government exports their virulent and intolerant version of Islam, often termed Wahhabism. Yet the Thai government is in denial that there is any correlation between the current outbreak of violence and the spread of Salafi/Wahhabism into the region. Southerners repeatedly tell me that the current generation of militants is comprised of ideological hardliners, completely intolerant of non-Muslims and moderate Muslims who seek accommodation with the Thai state. To wit, roughly 55 percent of the victims of the insurgent have been their co-religionists.

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Jihad on Campus? By Daniel Johnson

Many Americans I know are dismayed by the British academic boycott of Israel. What, they wonder, lies behind the rise of such attitudes on British campuses? The truth is, however, we do not know the half of it. A case that has just ended at the Old Bailey criminal court in London—a case that has gone largely unreported—throws light on this dark corner of university life.

This morning, the BBC’s flagship radio news program, Today, reported on the case. It involves a schoolboy and four Muslim students at Bradford University who have been convicted of “possessing articles for terrorism”—in other words, downloading jihadist material from the Internet. The only reason this particular group came to light was that a 17-year-old member, who had run away from home, told his parents about the group’s activities. The parents decided to tell the police, who arrested the other group members.

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Fighting To Win Hearts And Minds In Anbar By Matt Sanchez

US Military Civil Affairs Units Help Turn the Tide in Troubled Sunni Province

Fallujah - The official role of Civil Affair units is to "help military commanders by working with civil authorities and civilian populations in the commander's area of operations to lessen the impact of military operations on them during peace, contingency operations and declared war." That's a mouthful.

It's great to have people in high places make bald decisions, but someone actually has to carry out those decisions out. I'd call civil affairs the "boots on the ground" section in the diplomacy department. Their tasks can range from developing a police precinct, to making sure the sewers are running. The civil affairs unit engages the population, asks them what they need and, if it fits the general mission, work to get it. They're like armed social workers who ride in armored vehicles.

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Standing Up for the Rule of Law in the United States By Phyllis Schlafly |

Standing up for the Rule of Law means that the president and Congress must do their constitutional Article IV duty to "protest [us} against invasion" by people who come here illegally and then expect U.S. taxpayers to provide them with social benefits.  Here's what we expect our national lenders to do:

*  We must secure our borders and build the fence that was overwhelmingly voted by Congress last year in the Secure Fence Act and signed by President Bush in front of television cameras.  Where is the fence?  In six months since the fence law was passed mandating the building of a 700-mile fence, the Bush administration has only built a 2-mile fence.  At that rate, it would take 175 years to finish the job.  Was Bush just tricking us with a dishonest pre-election gimmick?

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The Nightmare of Being a U.S. Combat Troop in Iraq Hamstrung By Washington's Battlefield "Ethics" by Elan Journo

Americans rightly admire our troops for their bravery, dedication and integrity. The Marines, for instance, are renowned for abiding by an honorable code--as warriors and as individuals in civilian life. They epitomize the rectitude of America's soldiers. But a recently disclosed Pentagon study--little noted in the media--has seemingly cast a shadow over our troops.

The study of U.S. combat troops in Iraq finds that less than half of the soldiers and Marines surveyed would report a team member for breaches of the military's ethics rules. Military and civilian observers have concluded from the study that more and stricter training in combat ethics is urgently needed.

But instead of reinforcing the military's ethics, we must challenge them. The Pentagon study provides evidence for a searing indictment not of our soldiers but of Washington's rules of engagement.

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Be Worth Your Freedom by John Bambenek

The response to the Federal Election Commission complaint I filed has been harsh and swift. I expected as much, but unlike most who simply follow the herd, I'm not inclined to change my opinion because a few people tell me I better stay on the reservation.
There is one point that I wanted to respond to that has been made repeatedly. That is the fear that the FEC will regulate the political speech of bloggers and we'll all be doomed. Now, this fear isn't entirely unwarranted with the insane censorship rules of a certain soon-to-be ex-presidential candidate (i.e. John McCain). Let's assume for a moment that my complaint is successful and the DailyKos does have to file disclosure reports to the FEC (note: they wouldn't be shut down).

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Avi Lewis and the Decline of Socialist Thought By Aaron Goldstein

My interest was piqued when I read an e-mail sent by Matthew Brooks, Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition (of which I am a member). His e-mail contained a little blurb on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The blurb contained a video link to an interview she did on a CBC Newsworld (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s 24 hour news channel) program while she visited Toronto called On The Map with Avi Lewis in June 2007.(1) Brooks said Hirsi Ali "demonstrated her trademark bluntness in response to condescending and anti-American jibes from the interviewer."

In introducing Hirsi Ali, Lewis described her as a “born again America booster.” Indeed, when Hirsi Ali praised America as the “best democracy”, “the best place to be” and a place where someone can come without a penny and become wealthy, Lewis asked incredulously, “Is there a school where they teach you these American clichés? Is it part of your application process?....I can’t believe you just said that.” Hirsi Ali, in her reposeful manner, replied, “I don’t find myself in the same luxury as you. You can grow up in freedom and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom. I haven’t.” Lewis abruptly concluded the interview.

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Democrats go soft on crimes against humanity. BY JAMES TARANTO

Barack Obama's latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq.

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done," Mr. Obama told the AP. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."

Mr. Obama is engaging in sophistry. By his logic, if America lacks the capacity to intervene everywhere there is ethnic killing, it has no obligation to intervene anywhere--and perhaps an obligation to intervene nowhere. His reasoning elevates consistency into the cardinal virtue, making the perfect the enemy of the good.

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Thompson gains among social conservatives By Scott Helman

Some of the nation's most influential social conservatives say their movement is quickly coalescing around Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee, for the Republican presidential nomination, a decision that would bolster his expected campaign with money and grass-roots support.

Dissatisfied with the current crop of GOP contenders, these conservative leaders say Thompson, despite new questions about his record on abortion, possesses the right combination of electability and conservative values -- the two ingredients they believe are necessary to energize evangelical voters and keep the White House in Republican hands in 2008.

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Leading America Toward Energy Independence By Rudy Giuliani

America needs to become energy independent.

We should have started to move toward energy independence back in the 1970s, when oil prices spiked and there were the long lines at gas stations. Presidents Nixon and Carter talked about energy independence, but not a lot got done. The next President of the United States is going to have to make it a major goal of their administration. Most people will say it's impossible, we've tried before. I'm running for president because I know how to get things done.

I will move America toward energy independence. It will require setting goals, sticking to them and energizing the American people to achieve them. It will require expanding our reliance on a much more diverse range of energy sources that America can control.

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Cutthroats in White Coats By THEODORE DALRYMPLE

The British public is by now quite used to thwarted or unsuccessful bomb attacks, and has even come to expect them. Messages relayed repeatedly over the public-address systems in airports, bus and train stations, and elsewhere have accustomed them to the idea that an unaccompanied suitcase or package is likely to be a bomb. Government officials and senior policemen tell us from time to time that bomb attacks at some point in the future are “inevitable,” in the same way that Marxists used to say that revolution was “inevitable.” Bombs are as much part of modern life as the Internet.

But the attempts in London and Glasgow nevertheless caused considerable outrage, not only, or even mainly, for the loss of life in which they would have resulted had they been successful, but because they were planned and carried out (assuming the authorities have got it right) by doctors.

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Rehearsing Evil :: IBD

The government has alerted airport security officials to be on the lookout for terrorist "dry runs." It's just the latest reminder of how determined the enemy is to attack us.

The Transportation Safety Administration last Friday distributed an alert to air marshals and other law enforcement personnel to watch for terrorists practicing smuggling explosive devices onto aircraft.

The directive was issued after four disturbing incidents at airports around the country:

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Neville Obama Vs. The Gipper :: IBD

Pledging to seek audiences with the great thugs of our time, Barack Obama would imitate Neville Chamberlain, not the man who won the Cold War and freed millions from communist slavery.

Based on Obama's statements at the YouTube debate, maybe Ted Kennedy was right when he once referred to the former Illinois state legislator as "Osama Obama." It was bad enough when Oprah's pick to be president said he'd talk to the biggest thugs and despots on the planet on day one. It was appalling when he invoked President Ronald Reagan's name to justify it.

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Iraq Is a Proxy War with Iran by Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker

On July 9 it was reported that the Iraqi government of Dr. Nouri Kamal al-Maliki had failed to meet many of the benchmarks set for it. Although there are mixed reports about the success of the “surge” -- significant successes in bringing Sunnis to battle against al-Qaéda versus horrific daily casualty rates from suicide car-bombings -- it should not come as a major surprise that the current Iraqi government is not fulfilling its duty to produce a greater success rate and to foster reconciliation among the three major Iraqi ethnic/religious groups.

Why? Why shouldn’t we be surprised at al-Maliki’s failure to meet fully even one US benchmark?

First, let’s review a little bit of background information. Iraq’s multi-party political system seems to be difficult for many Westerners to understand. It is essential to overcome this failure of comprehension and come to a realization that within Iraq’s three major ethnic/religious communities there are many, many different political parties and groups.

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The Changing and Expanding al-Qaeda Threat By Michael Jacobson

On July 17, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell released declassified key judgments from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland." According to the NIE -- which represents the intelligence community's collective view on a given issue -- al-Qaeda still has both the capability and intent to conduct an attack inside the United States and will increase its efforts to place operatives in the country. Terrorists coming from Europe pose a particularly serious risk. Yet, in addition to remaining a major threat to the United States, al-Qaeda has made clear through recent statements and actions that it poses a serious threat to many U.S. allies as well -- and that its definition of success is no longer limited to an attack on U.S. soil.

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Divest Terror breakthrough? Or a bait-and switch? :: CSP

Since August 2004, public pension funds across the United States have, with few exceptions, steadfastly refused to participate in an effort to deny terrorist-sponsoring states the wherewithal such regimes use to support attacks on Americans, here and abroad.   In fact, since the Center for Security Policy first unveiled its Divest Terror initiative in that month with the publication of its landmark report The Terror Investments of the Fifty States, a number of these funds have: gone to considerable lengths to attack the Center and its allies in this fight; worked tirelessly to defeat legislation aimed at taking state and local pension funds' portfolios terror-free; and otherwise striven to insulate this country's enemies from any financial pressure that legislators, pension fund beneficiaries or taxpayer-underwriters might try to impose.

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Bill Gates Now Invests In Sodomy By Dave Gibson

Bill Gates has become the controlling investor in the homosexual and deviant lifestyle community known as PlanetOut. The enterprise which Gates has added to his portfolio produces and distributes hardcore homosexual pornography, provides a forum to arrange sexual encounters, and sponsors all-homosexual cruises.

With $26 million, Gates is bailing out the failing homosexual network, whose stock opened at $9 per share when the company went public in 2004. Most recently, the stock was selling for $1.59. Gates purchased a controlling 56 percent of the company.

PlanetOut operates the following sites:
-OutTraveler.com
-Gay.com (homosexual personal ads)
-HIVPlusMag
-Alyson Bookstore (a homosexual book site which offers such titles as: "Working Stiff: True Blue Collar Gay Porn," "Sweet Lips," and most troubling "The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth")

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Danish Soldiers Are Legitimate Targets :: Gates of Vienna

Islam is a political ideology with the trappings of a religion, and adherents who are zealous in their practice of Islam are engaging in political activism, often of the most radical and violent form.
For that reason we right-wing extremists regard vigorously practicing Muslims as a potential fifth column in their adopted countries in the West. As a result we are considered “racists” and “Islamophobes”.
But there is no secret about the lack of loyalty among Muslims in the West. Sedition is routinely recorded in opinion polls, proclaimed from the pulpit, broadcast over the airwaves, posted on the internet, and distributed in newspapers. One has to be willingly blind, stupid, or dead in order to ignore it.

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The Leadership Dearth: How Did it Come To This? :: GOPublius

"The latest national polls are telling. Nearly a quarter of Republican voters, when asked who they favor in the primaries choose, “None of the Above.” Can anyone blame them? In what has generally been an exception to the rule, America finds itself in the midst of a difficult and trying time in its history without the kind of capable leadership that has so often found its way to the top.

The American Revolution was spurred by some of the most gifted minds in world political history - Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Washington and others. The critical early years of the Republic were guided by their steady hands, and America was placed on an unlikely and unparalleled path to prosperity. "

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Duke 88 Disgrace Ad by Carey Roberts

The three lacrosse players have been declared innocent, Duke University has agreed to a multi-million dollar settlement, and Michael Nifong’s law license has been yanked. But unfinished business remains.

Three weeks after Crystal Gail Mangum made her false allegations of rape, 88 Duke professors ran an advertisement in the student newspaper asking, What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like? [http://listening.nfshost.com/listening.htm]

The rambling April 6, 2006 statement lamented, “… no one is really talking about how to keep the young woman herself central to this conversation, how to keep her humanity before us.” But no mention was made about the humanity of three male students falsely accused of rape.

Worse, the professors’ manifesto used the logic of the lynch mob, fostering the notion that since a Black woman claimed to be a victim of rape, everyone at Duke was now tinged with racism: “We go to class with racist classmates, we go to gym with people who are racists … It’s part of the experience.”

Exactly who are the members of the Duke 88 and what is their agenda?

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Creation scientist: Recently discovered fossil doesn't bolster evolutionists' claims By Allie Martin

Science fiction reported as science fact? That's the claim of a staff member with Answers in Genesis in reaction to a recent scientific "discovery."

Dr. David Menton, a speaker with the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, says the recent announcement that scientists have found a possible link between two species of early humans is more fiction from those who want to promote the false theory of evolution. He says he sees a double standard in how evolutionists handle their so-called discoveries in comparison to other scientific fields.

"The intriguing thing is that in any legitimate branch of science, these articles are published in the scientific literature and are hashed over there long before you get the popular press," explains Menton. "But in the field of evolution -- and particularly hot-button areas of evolution like origin of birds, origin of humans -- it seems like the first release is to the public, as though the real effort was to convince the public rather than to really communicate with the scientific community."

 

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Waving the White Flag by Monica Crowley

Every time we are subjected to yet another excruciating debate of the Democratic presidential candidates, they tell us that they represent “change.” Especially, they say, when it comes to Iraq.
For them, “change” in Iraq means only one thing: setting a concrete date for the withdrawal of American troops. Most of them -- including the frontrunners, Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards -- have spent the past few years criticizing President Bush for not having a postwar plan. And yet, none of them has an adequate postwithdrawal plan. What happens if the United States draws down according to their timetable and catastrophic violence ensues? What if there is mass slaughter? What if fundamentalist elements take control? Are any of these Democrats prepared to allow that to happen in the heart of the Middle East, in one of the most oil-rich nations on earth?

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Timmerman’s Tendentious Tirade Against Iranian Opposition By Professor Daniel M. Zucker

Dr. Kenneth R. Timmerman has an excellent understanding of the nefarious nature of the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In that regard he enjoys a well deserved fine reputation. It is therefore a shame that he spoils his good name by engaging in wholesale lies and slander towards the best organized, oldest, and most popular and most effective of all Iranian resistance organizations,1 the Mojahedin-e Khalq, a group that has existed for 42 years, beginning as an anti-monarchist (anti-Shah), pro-democracy student group in 1965 and after the fall of the Shah in 1979 became the leading anti-fundamentalist (anti-Khomeini), pro-democracy movement in Iran.

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On Imposition Fantasist and Fanaticist Renegades By Nicholas Guariglia

A video has recently hit the Internet, where two Iraqi men, presumably Shi’a, are hauled away by members of Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The two men sat blindfolded, their captors’ spit periodically hitting their cheek. Their alleged crime was the selling of alcohol, banned under Islam. The one man asks of his subjugator, “We were saved from tyranny! And you brought another?” He then turns to his prison mate, “How can it be, brother… When Saddam fell I rejoiced, but now again I’m blindfolded.”

While watching this, I could not help but feel a sentiment of solidarity with the world’s liquor distributing and consuming Muslims, fellow lovers of a vodka and tonic. It also reaffirmed scorn for the very unimpressive statecraft of the Coalition Provisional Authority, now condemned by Dick Cheney himself; an entity which allowed, in the postwar interregnum, Iranian-backed warlords a chance to bully and claim power-vacuums in unlucky Iraqi villages. The whole episode reminded me of an article I had the misfortune of reading, written by one Dr. M. Amir Ali, entitled The Dream of Anti-Islam Forces.

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U.S. News Media and Terror Group Figure Editorials By Jeffrey Imm

In the battle against global Jihadist organizations, the challenge of how to effectively deal with Jihadist terror group propaganda remains a national issue that needs to be addressed.

Individuals who are either members of or supporters of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) (as designated by the U.S. State Department), are increasingly being represented in the U.S. news media's editorials, op-ed pieces, and other columns. FTO's Hizbullah and Hamas terrorist group figures are gaining unfettered access as columnists in major American newspapers, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Hizbullah "Supporter" Column in Washington Post
The Washington Post and Newsweek today has provided an online column for Hizbullah terrorist group supporter and religious leader Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah to discuss the nature of Jihad as a "defensive" struggle. The Washington Post column clearly describes Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah as a Hezbollah "supporter", stating that he is "a controversial figure known primarily for his support of the armed Shi’ite resistance movement, Hezbollah".

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The Difference Between Presidents and Secretaries of State at Summits :: NRO

I'm hearing from a reader or two who think I'm being unfair to Hillary defender Madeline Albright. These readers suggest Hillary's position from last night is more responsible, because there's a significant difference between a president having a face-to-face summit with a leader of a rogue state than a secretary of state.

But if the goal is to avoid providing a hostile state with material for propaganda, couldn't a secretary of state's visit just as easily be used for propoganda purposes by a regime's leader?

Nah. Would never happen. And it clearly wouldn't happen with other leading government officials...

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Standing Up for the Rule of Law in the United States :: ChronWatch

Standing up for the Rule of Law means that the president and Congress must do their constitutional Article IV duty to "protest [us} against invasion" by people who come here illegally and then expect U.S. taxpayers to provide them with social benefits.  Here's what we expect our national lenders to do:

*  We must secure our borders and build the fence that was overwhelmingly voted by Congress last year in the Secure Fence Act and signed by President Bush in front of television cameras.  Where is the fence?  In six months since the fence law was passed mandating the building of a 700-mile fence, the Bush administration has only built a 2-mile fence.  At that rate, it would take 175 years to finish the job.  Was Bush just tricking us with a dishonest pre-election gimmick?

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How to Win in Iraq by William S. Lind

Among the bits of lore of the United States Senate is a story that dates back to before I arrived there in 1973 as a staffer to Sen. Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio.

A senator—from New York, perhaps—known for depending wholly on his staff while treating it with contempt, told his assistant for foreign policy, “I want to give a major speech on the Vietnam War tomorrow morning. Stay here all night and write it.” With that, the senator headed out for a Capitol Hill reception rich with giant shrimp and large checks.

The staffer did as he was bidden, despite the fact that it was his anniversary, and his wife had made grand plans. The next morning, the senator found the text of the speech in his inbox. Snatching it eagerly, he proceeded directly to the floor of the Senate. His voice booming, he laid out a brilliant and incisive analysis of the war. At the bottom of the seventh page, he proclaimed, “I will now lay out my plan for winning the Vietnam War.” Page eight began with the words, “Now you’re on your own, you S.O.B. I quit.”

At the risk of finding myself in the same situation, I offer my plan for winning in Iraq.

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Give War a Chance! By Michael I. Krauss and J. Peter Pham

Two items in the batch of international news and commentary at the end of last week strike us as particularly noteworthy, justifying our recall in a new context of the title of P.J. O'Rourke's book.

First, as the extremely well-connected Debka reports, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has now built up an army of up to 13,000 trained men in Gaza. Not only are these fighters well-armed with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, they are literally awash in explosives. Apparently, in the month since it drove off partisans of the rival Fatah faction, Hamas has imported 20 tons of explosives through the wide open Philadelphi border crossing with Egypt. In comparison, until the Israeli pullout from Gaza two years ago, Hamas struggled to smuggle an estimated four tons per year! Hamas fighters are also now equipped with upgraded Katyusha rockets, more lethal and accurate than the primitive Qassams that Hamas has been lobbing onto Israeli civilians (most recently on Thursday, July 19, when four civilians were injured by a Qassam falling on a residential street in the Israeli town of Sderot). Hundreds of Hamas fighters have crossed at Philadelphi for training courses in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. In short, unless it is stopped immediately, Hamas will soon have the means commensurate with its will to inflict terrible damage on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

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Thompson's Waiting is a Good Thing! by Warner Todd Huston

Getting edgy waiting for Thompson? 

I know what you're thinking; "WHY can't he just announce and get it over with?"

There have been a few scattered reports that Thompson supporters are getting tired of waiting, getting edgy over it all, or otherwise are wondering what the hold up might be? I think there are some excellent reasons why waiting doesn't materially hurt Thompson, the impatience of some of his supporters aside.

First of all we have the polls that are consistently in the candidate-to-be's favor. Here is just the latest report:

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Bush's Europe New York Sun Editorial

Those on the right who have already written off Europe as Eurabia may have another thing coming. As may those on the left who blame President Bush for having ruined America's relations with our European allies. That, at least, is what we gather from the latest developments at London and Berlin.

In Downing Street yesterday, Gordon Brown delivered his first press conference as prime minister. He refused to rule out the use of military force against Iran, and he spoke warmly about the Anglo-American relationship. "I believe relationships between a British Prime Minister and an American President will be strong, should be strong and I believe will be strengthened in the months and years to come," he said. "The American relationship for Britain is our strongest bilateral relationship and I am determined to do everything in my power to make sure that it is strong and effective in the work that it does, not just between our two countries but for the whole world."

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Ataturk's Turkey Overturned By HILLEL HALKIN

Some 12 or 13 years ago, when I was reporting from Israel for the New York weekly, the Forward, I wrote a piece on Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern secular Turkey, that I submitted to the newspaper with some trepidation.

In it, I presented evidence for the likelihood of Ataturk's having had a Jewish — or more precisely, a Doenmeh — father.

The Doenmeh were a heretical Jewish sect formed, after the conversion to Islam in the 17th century of the Turkish-Jewish messianic pretender Sabbetai Zevi, by those of his followers who continued to believe in him.

Conducting themselves outwardly as Muslims in imitation of him, they lived secretly as Jews and continued to exist as a distinct, if shadowy, group well into the 20th century.

In the many biographies of Ataturk there were three or four different versions of his father's background, and although none identified him as a Jew, their very multiplicity suggested that he had been covering up his family origins.

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Clinton's Extremism New York Sun Editorial

Senator Clinton had been trying to maintain a modicum of centrist respectability in the midst of her pursuit of the Democratic nomination for the presidency, but a comment she made in last night's CNN/ YouTube debate is going to dog her if she ever makes it to the general election campaign. Mrs. Clinton claimed that "any one of us" would be a better president than George W. Bush or the Republican nominee. Our own bet is that not even she honestly believes that. The particular obstacles are the hard-left pacifist-protectionist candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich and the angry former senator from Alaska, Michael Gravel, who not only is a pacifist but asserts, as he said last night, that "The Clintons and the DLC sold out the Democratic Party to Wall Street ... They're lock stock and barrel in their pockets."

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The Damage Caused by Lies By Michael Tanji

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last several days, you are no doubt aware of the Shock Troops story published at the New Republic as well as the corresponding Fact or Fiction article in the Weekly Standard. Wrapping all of this controversy up is the related blogswarm, which is addressed by more milblogs than can be captured here. I will save you some time though and gist the general consensus about Shock Troops from anyone who has worn the uniform in recent history: its bunk.

(In the interest of full disclosure it is important to note that your author has written for the Weekly Standard, which in the minds of some colors this commentary slightly red. It is left to the readers to determine if this is a political piece or one focused simply on issues related to reason.)

It is no secret that readers of the New Republic are not fans of the war. They are exercising their right to say so, but they do not have the right to perpetrate frauds and disseminate slander in order to bolster their arguments. “All is fair in love and war,” but that does not extend to war correspondence, at least not responsible correspondence.

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Fred Thompson Shakes Up Campaign By LIBBY QUAID

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is shaking up his still-unofficial campaign, replacing his top aide with a former Michigan senator and a veteran Florida strategist.

The shake-up comes amid consternation inside the campaign about the active role played by Thompson's wife, Jeri, a lawyer, media consultant and former Republican National Committee official.

Related Media:

VIDEO: Thompson: His views on abortion and more

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VIDEO: Thompson: A better country for tomorrow

"Rumors are rumors," said Thompson spokeswoman Linda Rozett. "It is not a personal issue. It's an organizational issue. We are strengthening the organization as we enter the next phase."

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Discoveries leading up to the atomic bomb by Lawrence Auster

Given the recent discussion about the necessity and morality of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, this may be a good time to publish my notes on Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. After I finished reading the book in 2001, I realized it contained such a wealth of fascinating and important information that I needed to have my own summary of it for quick reference. So I went through the book a second time taking extensive notes. The result is below. (Note: If you are seeing odd coding symbols in this document, go to your browser's View menu, Encoding, and select Unicode UTF-8.).

Discoveries in Twentieth Century Nuclear Physics
Leading up to Atomic Bomb
Auster's notes on The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes

This is basically a chronology and description of the basic discoveries, cumula-tively leading, step by step, to the possibility of making an atomic bomb. The number and types of different things that had to be true for the bomb to be possible--things that no one could have imagined beforehand and yet that all turned out to be true over the course of the 1930s--is astounding. It's one of the most interesting books I ever read, though marred by the author's periodic intrusions of liberal globaloney derived from Neils Bohr--a giant in physics but a fuzzy thinker in politics.

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Paying Dues by Bryan O'Keefe

EVEN THOUGH HOUSE Democrats campaigned on promises to improve ethics, promote greater transparency and disclosure, and fight corruption, it now appears they will not require some of their top campaign contributors to live by those same vows.

In a galling political move, the House voted down an amendment last week that would have restored funding for the Office of Labor and Management Standards (OLMS), an office within the Department of Labor. That means OLMS's budget will be slashed by about 20 percent next year. And OLMS isn't just any ordinary office. Under the Bush administration, OLMS has led the charge on requiring greater union financial disclosure and transparency and fighting union corruption.

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Conservative Commitment and Unity Required for the Future by Susan Heathfield.

am troubled by the shift that appears to be occurring in the sentiments of the American people. We are becoming a nation of people who expect handouts from the government. We are bothered by the inequity of the amounts of money people make regardless of their life choices, career choices, and determination. And, we are losing our commitment to fighting terrorists internationally lest they attack us in our homeland.

The trends introduced in a March 22 Pew Center for the People and the Press study bode ill for conservative thinking and values. Conservatives need to unite and act quickly to counter these trends. The study reported:

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Conservative Beach Girl: Western lemmings following PC Pied Piper over the cliff!

"We are living in a world gone mad. At least many of the leaders seem to have gone stark, raving mad and of those, most should be committed to mental institutions, not elected to positions of power. Certainly the 'international courts' should be banned followed closely by pulling the 'life-support' of the United Nations, the EU, and the North American Union. At least someone read his Orwell and Huxley to bring us to heel.

We seem to have people/judges and globalists signing on to the EU (e-ewe: nations of sheep), the NAU, and the UN's Human Rights Act that 'subverts the rule of law itself.' Londonistan, pg. 30, all certifiable, indeed.

Michael Savage wrote a book, Liberalism is a mental disorder. How right he is! And that was before the madness of the PC garrote had tightened at our throats as it has today."

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Morally Paralyzed By Thomas Sowell

"Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them.

It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times.

Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing -- and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him.

Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today -- "negotiations."

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New York Times' parallel universe By Joseph Farah

"Palestinians never used to do these things to one another."

That was the first sentence of a New York Times Magazine story by the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau chief, Steven Erlanger.

What are the things Palestinians are doing to one another today that they didn't do before?

• putting bullets in the back of the heads of men on their knees;
• shooting up hospitals;
• killing patients;
• knee-capping doctors;
• executing clerics;
• throwing handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from Gaza's highest apartment buildings;

Is it naivete? Plain ignorance and incompetence? Deliberate disinformation? Partisanship with radical Islamists? Anti-Israeli zealotry? Anti-western pseudo-intellectualism?

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Congressional posse rides to help jailed border agents By Jerome R. Corsi

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., plans to introduce an amendment tomorrow intended to get former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean released from prison immediately.

Tancredo, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, plans to attach his amendment to H.R. 3093, the appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce, Justice and Science, stating that none of the funds may be used to carry out the 11- and 12-year sentences imposed respectively on Ramos and Compean by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

"Americans have been waiting months for the president to right this wrong, and I am not going to wait any longer," Tancredo said in a press release. "It's time that the Congress took matters into its own hands."

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Freed accused child rapist does in fact speak English

On The Big Story Sunday, Julie Banderas and James Rosen discussed the case of accused child rapist Mahamu Kanneh, released because the court couldn’t find a translator to interpret for him in his obscure language. Never mind that Liberia was founded by Americans and English is the official language of that country. Never mind the man completed high school and college in the US, in English.

A Fox producer reached Mr. Kanneh by phone and surprise! he does in fact speak English.

 

Link: sevenload.com

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“Islamophobic” or Informed? By Robert Spencer

A new Newsweek Poll on American attitudes toward Muslims and Islam has found that 46 percent of Americans believe that the United States is taking in too many Muslim immigrants. 32 percent think that Muslims in America are less loyal to the United States than they are to Islam. 28 percent believe that the Qur’an condones violence, and 41 percent hold that Islamic culture “glorifies suicide.” 54 percent are either “somewhat worried” or “very worried” about Islamic jihadists in this country, and 52 percent support FBI surveillance of mosques, with the same percentage rejecting the claim of American Muslim advocacy groups that Muslims are being singled out by investigators and police.

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MICHAEL VICK By Greg Strange

When it comes to the inhumane treatment of animals, the charges can sometimes be a bit silly. For instance, Al Gore was recently castigated by the Humane Society International for serving Chilean sea bass, one of the world’s most threatened fish species, at his daughter’s wedding. You know what? I believe I can find it within my heart to forgive him for that.

But there’s inhumane -- and then there’s really inhumane. Case in point, Michael Vick, Atlanta Falcons star quarterback and -- get this -- "registered dog breeder." Just seeing or hearing that name now makes me sick to my stomach, literally.

You don’t have to be a dog lover to be repulsed by the "sport" of dog fighting. Sure, there are worse things that plenty of other well-known professional athletes have done or been accused of, like assault, rape and murder. But there’s just something so despicably base about taking pleasure from watching dogs tear each other apart -- and being utterly clueless that there’s even anything wrong with it.

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Tribune’s Former Public Editor: Hamas Operative Is An Asset To Chicago Community By Steven Emerson

Many have noted the fairly recent trend of Hamas leaders taking to the op-ed pages of major American newspapers. (Side note: Hamas is not the only terrorist group with access to the op-ed pages of American newspapers. Just this morning, the Washington Post, in its Muslims Speak Out section, has a piece from Hizballah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, extolling the virtues of violent jihad).

But another equally insidious phenomenon has been occurring for much longer: American newspaper editors advocating on behalf of Hamas. One of the worst offenders is Don Wycliff, former Public Editor and Editorial Page Editor of the Chicago Tribune.

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A Sunny View of Oblivion By Alan Caruba

Despite a plethora of television programs and books on the topic, predicting the ''End of the World'' has become boring.

For example, on June 10 you had a choice between watching the 61st Annual Tony Awards or “Last Days on Earth” on the History Channel.  “Scientists explain seven of the deadliest threats to humanity” was the topic, and later that evening you could check out “Mega Disasters” with its story of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.  Indeed, hardly a week goes by without some television program devoted the planet’s extinction.

 

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A Perfect Story of Marxism vs. the Free Market By Dennis Campbell

One of the most dramatic and graphic illustrations of the difference in the abundance provided by a free-market economy and the deprivation imposed by a Marxist government had its moment in the national consciousness several weeks ago.

It was in a few paragraphs of a widely-reported news story, one of those here-today, gone-tomorrow reports that focused on Polish railway worker Jan Grzebska’s awakening from a 19-year coma, while the real lesson was given all too little prominence.

While news accounts were primarily concerned with his recovery (USA Today ran it in the “offbeat news” section), the important story was revealed in Grzebska’s description of the Poland he awoke to, contrasted with the Poland he lived in at the time of his railroad accident.

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Suing Anti-Terror Tipsters By Rich Lowry

If you see something, hire a lawyer. Then, perhaps, you can say something.

That would be the new mantra for passenger vigilance -- replacing the ubiquitous "If you see something, say something" -- if Democrats get their way in Congress. They oppose an amendment to the homeland-security bill sponsored by Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), that would protect anyone from civil lawsuits who, in good faith, offers a tip about suspicious activity on mass transit.

The case of the "flying imams" prompted King's amendment. On Nov. 20, 2006, six Islamic clerics were removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis after passengers complained about behavior they considered suspicious. The imams prayed before boarding the plane, didn't sit in their assigned seats -- arranging themselves in a pattern associated with the 9/11 hijackings -- and asked for seatbelt extenders. Authorities questioned and eventually cleared them.

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An Unholy Alliance Between the NRSC and Harry Reid? By Matt Lewis

According to its website, the purpose of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is to “help Republican candidates develop the campaign resources they need for 2008 so we can re-gain the majority …”
But a former senior NRSC staffer tells me that Republicans may not be receiving as much financial support as they should, because of the collegial relationship that exists between NRSC Chairman John Ensign (R-NV) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). In fact, I'm told the Chairman has discouraged his staff from publicly attacking the Majority Leader.

This is interesting, because it seems to me that Harry Reid is a lighting rod whose name could be invoked to raise money from conservative donors. (In case you doubt he is controversial, as I write this, I notice the top story on Townhall.com is by Bob Novak, and is titled: Shame of the Senate, and is about Harry Reid, Rob Bluey just wrote Ringmaster Reid Cracks the Whip ...," and the latest HamNation is titled: Harry and the Dems Sleepover Party.) Yet, you’d have to search hard to find anything remotely negative about Harry Reid on the NRSC website.

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Injudicious Religious Activism by Thomas Brewton

The Wall Street Journal, in its July 20, 2007, edition printed an article based on a Time Magazine story in the July 30 edition. The first two paragraphs are the following:

Sanctuary Drive Could Bolster Religious Left

TIME -- JULY 30

A movement to give sanctuary in churches to illegal immigrants threatened with deportation might bring new firepower to the long-quiescent religious left, writes David Van Biema in Time.

Inspired by churches who offered sanctuary to Central Americans fleeing civil wars in the 1980s, members of a range of religious faiths have launched the New Sanctuary Movement in cities around the U.S. The effort has been small-scale, housing eight undocumented immigrants in churches in five U.S. cities. (While immigration authorities legally can raid a church, they rarely do.) NSM activists say four more congregations will house immigrants in August, and the mainline Protestant United Church of Christ has resolved to work with it.

A few observations:

First, deciding to break the law of the land solely on the basis of what an individual or a group, including a church, thinks the law ought to be is essentially what activist judges do when they ignore the Constitution or statute law and, in effect, legislate from the bench.

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The Surge Succeeds By J.R. Dunn

God looks after children, drunkards, and the United States of America
- Otto von Bismarck

It's now quite clear how the results of the surge will be dealt with by domestic opponents of the Iraq war.

They're going to be ignored.

They're being ignored now. Virtually no media source or Democratic politician (and not a few Republicans, led by Richard "I can always backtrack" Lugar) is willing to admit that the situation on the ground has changed dramatically over the past three months. Coalition efforts have undergone a remarkable reversal of fortune, a near-textbook example as to how an effective strategy can overcome what appear to be overwhelming drawbacks.

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Global Kellogging By Jay D. Homnick

Watching Albert Arnold Gore Jr., Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., and their fellow juniors consistently duck the tough questions about the scientific shortcomings of their elaborate phantasm of global warming, carbon footprints, hybrid automobiles, fluorescent light bulbs, greenhouse gases, toxic emissions, shrinking icecaps, melting glaciers, homeless polar bears and boring documentaries, it suddenly hit me: if it ducks like a quack, it must be a quack.

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Trapped In Camelot By Edward B. Driscoll Jr.

What happens to a nation when a world-changing event occurs of such tremendous magnitude that half the population can't process who caused it?

September 11? Try the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As James Piereson recently told me, "If Kennedy had been killed by a right winger with the same evidence that condemned Oswald, there never would have been any talk about conspiracies. It would have fit neatly into the moral framework of 1950s and '60s-style liberalism. And the liberals would have been off and running with it, and no one would have talked about conspiracies."

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Democrats Overtly Support Terrorists against US Citizens By By Sher Zieve

Just when we thought Congress could not become more demented—it has. As the Democrat-run Senate and House of Representatives are experiencing their lowest approval rating in recent recorded history (Zogby polling ranks said approval at only 14%), with the stroke of 2 pens Democrat leaders have removed provisions from legislation that would have protected US citizens from being sued for reporting potential terrorist activities. This is the latest addition to the ever growing Democrat Death Wish List that its leaders have been preparing since taking Congressional leadership in 2006. In this latest fiasco, leader of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stripped out the provision that would have allowed limited immunity for reports of witnessed suspicious behavior. Reps. Peter King’s (R-NY) and Steve Pearce (R-NM) had drafted the ‘John Doe Protection Amendment’ after the infamous Flying Imams simulated airline hijacking behaviors.

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Cozy With 'La Raza' :: INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

If a GOP candidate sought votes from a white group calling itself the "National Council of the Race," he'd rightly be shunned as a racist. But let Democrats do the same and they're called "progressive."

The difference, of course, is that in the latter case both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were appearing before the National Council of La Raza ("The Race"), a radical Latino group.

Trolling for votes, Obama pandered to La Raza's convention in Miami over the weekend, selling himself as one who marched alongside Latinos at last May 1's illegal immigrant amnesty rallies.

Clinton, by contrast, insisted she was "at home" among the La Raza crowd, having hired a top La Raza official, Raul Yzaguirre, as her national co-chair. She then whipped out a mariachi band in his honor to celebrate his birthday.

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Exclusionary Ideas of Progress By Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Religious Fundamentalism are as utopian as the classical Idea of Progress, which is most strongly reified by Western science and liberal democracy. All four illiberal ideologies firmly espouse a linear view of history: Man progresses by accumulating knowledge and wealth and by constructing ever-improving polities. Similarly, the classical, all-encompassing, idea of progress is perceived to be a "Law of Nature" with human jurisprudence and institutions as both its manifestations and descriptions. Thus, all ideas of progress are pseudo-scientific.

Still, there are some important distinctions between Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and Religious Fundamentalism, on the one hand, and Western liberalism, on the other hand:

All four totalitarian ideologies regard individual tragedies and sacrifices as the inevitable lubricant of the inexorable March Forward of the species. Yet, they redefine "humanity" (who is human) to exclude large groups of people. Communism embraces the Working Class (Proletariat) but not the Bourgeoisie, Nazism promotes one Volk but denigrates and annihilates others, Fascism bows to the Collective but viciously persecutes dissidents, Religious Fundamentalism posits a chasm between believers and infidels.

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Terror Apologist Identifies Frontpage Scapegoats By Patrick Poole

In Abukar Arman’s world, any criticism he might receive for his praise of Islamic terrorist organizations and individuals is driven by “Islamophobia”. Anyone actually writing about it is a “neo-McCarthyite” and part of the Zionist global conspiracy. And to explain why he is currently the subject of a local government investigation into his extremist views, Arman has identified two men here at FrontPage Magazine – Dr. Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz – as scapegoats (conveniently, two of Jewish backgrounds) for my recent exposé of Mr. Arman’s extremist views and his role in local Homeland Security, “Hometown Jihad: The Somali Terror Apologist Next Door”.

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The Summer of Terror By Dr. Earl Tilford

A lot has happened in the past two weeks to refocus attention on terrorism and the global war against Islamist Jihadists in which the United States, Israel and, indeed, the Judeo-Christian world is engaged. Indeed, the war may be entering a critical phase. Soon, U.S. forces may be in Pakistan hunting down al Qaeda and Israel may be heavily engaged in Gaza exterminating Hamas. Furthermore, the sooner the United States deals with Iran the better.

Iran is at war with the United States and has been since 1979. The world cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Normal parameters of deterrence will not work with an enemy anxious to die prompting an apocalypse. If Tehran goes nuclear, it will use its bombs—and not just on Israel.

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Right for the Wrong Reasons By Max Boot

I hesitate to disagree about Afghanistan with Rory Stewart, who has spent a lot more time there than I have. A former British officer and diplomat, he walked across the entire country shortly after the fall of the Taliban, a madcap escapade gracefully chronicled in his book, The Places in Between. He now runs an NGO, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which is rebuilding the ancient heart of Kabul, where he lives.

On today’s New York Times op-ed page, Stewart has a provocative article entitled “Where Less is More.” His argument is that it would be counterproductive to act as the Democrats suggest by pulling out of Iraq and beefing up the foreign troop contingent in Afghanistan. I agree with this conclusion, but am dubious about his reasoning: namely, that sending more troops to Afghanistan would simply produce a backlash among nationalist Afghans.

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What Has Happened to Cal Thomas? By: Christopher G. Adamo

Few Americans, back when first subjected to the insipid banalities of Jimmy Carter, presumed him to be a deliberately malignant force striving to wreak horrendous harm on the country. Rather, he was perceived as a naive imbecile who was had merely gotten in over his head after having fallen into the presidency in the wake of Nixon, Watergate, and the lackluster administration of Gerald Ford.

Yet over time Carter continued to degenerate, and especially in recent years, arrived a point where he consistently calls good “evil,” and evil “good.” As a result, he now holds a prominent position as spokesman and apologist for any vile entity that seeks to justify itself on the basis of America’s faults. Clearly, at some point Carter crossed over to the “dark side.”

Sadly, another prominent American is headed down this same path. Nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, once a beacon of light for mainstream America, has descended beyond the point of mere ambiguity and confusion. He can now be counted upon, ostensibly in the name of offering a “Christian” perspective, to advance the cause of the counterculture while insidiously undermining those on the right.

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Dem leaders try to hand Islamists a victory :: CSP

The next few hours will likely see the fate sealed of legislation designed to protect alert, public-spirited Americans from harassment and potentially devastatingly expensive lawsuits arising from their warnings to law-enforcement authorities concerning possible terrorist activities.  If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and their chambers' respective Judiciary Committee chairmen, Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. John Conyers, have their way, that fate will amount to the elimination of such legislation – and a victory for terrorists and their fellow-travelers at the expense of our people and their homeland's security.

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Cold Or Hot, it's always our fault By Lorne Gunter

If you haven't been following Lawrence Solomon's brilliant, reader-friendly Financial Post series on the scientists who are skeptical of the coming global warming crisis, you really must check it out. It's called Climate change: The Deniers, and there is a link to the 29 profiles he as written so far on the National Post's homepage. (Go to www.nationalpost.com, and scroll down to the "Current Features" section.)

In one instalment -- Forget warming -beware the new ice age -- published in June, Lawrence reminds readers that as recently as the 1970s, the scientific consensus was that earth was entering a new ice age.

If geological history is any guide, we're long overdue for one. And in the 1970s, the world was in the throws of a 30-year phase of especially cold weather. So naturally, scientists put two and six together and came up with impending disaster.

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Drums of War :: Cox & Forkum

From CNN: Americans held in Iran on alleged security offenses shown on state TV.

Two detained Iranian-Americans were shown on state television Wednesday night in a program contending they tried to foment regime change in Iran with the support of the U.S. government.

The 50-minute program showed a montage of disparate quotes from Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh combined to form what could be interpreted as incriminating statements, which their supporters and the U.S. government called illegitimate and coerced.

The scholars appeared alongside footage of anti-government protests in the former Soviet Union and of President Bush saying that the "untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."

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