What FDR had in common with the other charismatic collectivists of the 30s By David Boaz

On May 7, 1933, just two months after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New York Times reporter Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote that the atmosphere in Washington was “strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan.…America today literally asks for orders.” The Roosevelt administration, she added, “envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy.”

That article isn’t quoted in Three New Deals, a fascinating study by the German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch. But it underscores his central argument: that there are surprising similarities between the programs of Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler.

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Witch Hunter in Chief By Oliver North

Two weeks after the 2006 elections put Democrats in charge of Congress, Time magazine depicted Rep. Henry Waxman, now the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as "The Scariest Guy in Washington." In the column by Karen Tumulty, the ultraliberal Beverly Hills Democrat is portrayed as "tenacious," and Tumulty says there is "no one tougher." Quoting from the left-wing magazine The Nation, she calls the Napoleonic Waxman the "Eliot Ness of the Democrats" and describes those who work for him as "one of the most highly regarded staffs on Capitol Hill."

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Save Belgium: Postmodernists to the Rescue By Paul Belien

Aaron Timms of The Sydney Morning Herald loves Belgium. In a column this week, Mr. Timms writes

“Belgium long ago abandoned all hope of being a presence on the world stage and gave itself over to the pleasures of alcohol, chocolate, sex and seafood. To this day, it remains a nation untouched by nutrition. These are ideas worth fighting for. In its almost total lack of ambition, in its unrelenting sense of existential dread, in its drunkenness and in its gluttony, Belgium is the most inspiring of nations. If the Belgians have tired of being Belgian, it is up to us to take their place. If Belgium will not be Belgium, it is up to Australia to be Belgium.”

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The Only Way to Win the Immigration Battle By Selwyn Duke

It's hard to think of a battle that has been won by being defensive. You may be most skilled at blocking and slipping punches, but if that is all you do, sooner or later your opponent will land a few and enjoy victory.  This occurs to me as I watch the latest amnesty battle.

As you may know, the DREAM Act — the latest Scamnesty scheme – is being debated in Congress at this moment.  And it may be the Mexican dream, but it's our nightmare.  But that isn't what I want to address today.

We may defeat this proposal as we did the last, but so what?

Are you surprised?  Do I sound overly cavalier or a tad defeatist?  Here is my point: Until we transform this debate and talk about the true remedy for our problem — namely, halting legal immigration — we will labor in vain.

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Gingrich Sounds Presidential at Solutions Day Launch by Ericka Andersen

With some conservatives eagerly awaiting the announcement of a Newt Gingrich presidential run, the former House Speaker launched his inaugural Solutions Day in Atlanta, Georgia yesterday.

The two day event kicked off with Gingrich’s opening address that outlined the problems facing America and how citizens could fundamentally address the challenges.

“American people are tired of red versus blue…the American people do want red, white, blue and that means bringing us together,” Gingrich said, repeating a line he’s used to color the face of Solutions Day in the past week.

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The Bible and the Origins of Western Culture By Jeff Lukens

Our progressive culture is separated into those who believe in the Bible and those who do not. Many people believe the scriptures to be the revealed word of God that provides a moral foundation to human behavior that cannot be found elsewhere. Secularists say that moral issues are mostly matters of personal opinion, and that we are accountable to no one but ourselves. Secularists, however, offer no credible alternative framework for preventing the worst acts of human behavior while promoting the good ones.

What makes murder wrong, for instance, is not some logical deduction, or that it feels wrong, but a Creator who commands, "You shall not murder." Likewise, what makes compassion a virtuous trait is not reason or emotion, but that same Creator who says, "Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord."

The Bible has been scrutinized more than any other book in the world. Though many have tried, no one has ever been able to invalidate it. Many who have attempted such an endeavor have instead come to believe in it.

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America: Land of the Ignorant, Home of the Spineless Quitter! By JB Williams

Has America given up on America? Have voters quit and left their nation in the hands of despotic politicians seeking power and fortune for themselves at the expense of America’s future?

If fat, lazy, over-indulgent American voters don’t actively educate themselves beyond their daily dose of anti-Americanism oozing 24/7 from every Secular Socialist Democrat and their leftist press, they will soon find themselves living under the boot of Marxist brown shirts eager to enslave every American for a greater common good …

You think I’m kidding or extreme? Think again, and this time, think using facts!

America Always Has A Long List Of Priorities
Bringing the war against international jihad to a successful conclusion is high on that list. But it will take years to accomplish and electing people that will remain steadfast in their resolve to that end, is all that matters in the 2008 election cycle. Don’t worry - our troops will handle all foreign enemies. It’s the American voter must rise to the challenge of dealing with the enemy within, at the ballot box.

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The Entitlements People By DAVID BROOKS

If you live in Washington or just visit for a few days, you may run into the entitlement people. Some of them are former senators, cabinet officers or other previously powerful folks. Others are maverick members of Congress or agency heads, who are not in a position to set policy but are prominent enough to get noticed.

They bombard you with alarming statistics about unsustainable entitlements. The U.S. government has $43 trillion in unfunded liabilities, or $350,000 for every taxpayer. Standard & Poor’s projects that in 2012, the U.S. will lose its AAA bond rating.

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Bill is an attempt to nationalize care By U.S. REP. ZACH WAMP

The State Children's Health Insurance Program was adopted in 1997 under Republican leadership to bring health-care benefits to children of the working poor. We worked in a bipartisan way to gain support for the program and to ensure it would have stable funding for the 10 years of its authorization. I supported SCHIP then, and I support renewing SCHIP now.

However, Democrats do not want to simply renew the program. They propose expansion of government-run health care, which will cause 2 million children to move from private insurance to government health care. This represents the first big push by the Democrats to nationalize health care.

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Freedom of Immigration Acts By Tom Bethell

After the immigration bill failed in the U.S. Senate, the postmortems deplored the new power of bloggers and the Internet. A done deal cooked up behind closed doors was derailed by the voice of the people. "Talk radio is running America," complained Mississippi's Sen. Trent Lott. The Washington Post headlined a David Broder column on the subject, "A Mob-Rule Moment." Often called the "dean" of Washington journalists, Broder was concerned that public opinion had been "exaggerated by modern communications and interest group pressure."

That is a fascinating topic, but of more interest right now is the issue of immigration itself. To what extent are immigrants good for America? Are illegals all that bad? Does the continued performance of the U.S. economy require a sizable inflow of newcomers? Did the defeated bill deserve to lose?

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In Case you didn’t Hear about the Summer’s Prison Break in Kosovo By Julia Gorin

Seven inmates escaped from a high-security prison over the weekend in western Kosovo, and police backed by NATO helicopters launched a manhunt throughout the province, authorities said Monday.

The convicts, on a scheduled walk in a yard at Dubrava prison late Saturday, were supported by an armed group who shot at guards….Two senior prison officials and two prison guards were arrested on suspicion of involvement, Elshani said. No injuries were reported.

Police said they found six unused rocket launchers and shell casings from automatic rifles at the site of the gunbattle. The inmates, some convicted of terrorism, murder and theft, were believed to still be in the province, but police have notified authorities in neighboring countries.

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“Political Parties: A Buyer’s Guide” by George Soros *UPDATED: Hillary Connection?* :: Texas Rainmaker

In 2003, George Soros declared that defeating President Bush is the central focus of his life. Apparently his scorched earth approach also includes trying to tear down the basic pillars of our country.

He aggressively supported campaign finance reform under the guise of “reduc[ing] the corrupting influence of very large donors to political parties and candidates.” Then he drove a mack truck through the loopholes in that legislation and became one of the single, largest donors to political parties and candidates.

He uses his “Open Society Institute” to funnel cash from those “very large donors” (including himself) to groups designed to undermine the U.S. government…

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Bombs Away by Forkum

From FOX News: Senate Approves Symbolic Rebuke of Iran

The Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a measure sending another rebuke to Tehran, this one aimed at sending a message to the Islamic regime to end military tactics targeting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The vote came one day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told international leaders gathered at the U.N. General Assembly that Iran only seeks a peaceful nuclear program, and said that the conversation on the Iranian nuclear program "is now closed."

The Senate, showing it was not convinced by Ahmadinejad's proclamations, approved the nonbinding measure on a 76-22 vote. It was sponsored by Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.

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Va. appointee resigns after videos by Bob Lewis

A member of the state's Commission of Immigration resigned Thursday, a few hours after Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was told about online videos showing the appointee condemning Israel and advocating "the jihad way."

Kaine issued a statement saying he had accepted the resignation of Dr. Esam S. Omeish. He said Omeish offered to resign because he didn't want anything to distract the work of the commission.

In a video that appears on YouTube, Omeish, who is president of the Muslim American Society and chief of the division of general surgery at INOVA Alexandria Hospital, is shown at an August 2006 rally in Washington denouncing an invasion of Lebanon by the "Israeli war machine."

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Fascism Old and New By Benjamin Ivry

As the jury and contestants entered the second round of Stuttgart’s triennial classical song competition last week, organized by the Internationale Hugo Wolf Akademie, idealistic young singers and pianists performed lieder by Robert Schumann and Wolf, often alluding optimistically to a better world. A brief break offered time for a stroll through one of Stuttgart’s parks, where high school girls jogged dispiritedly, sidestepping piles of horse dung. I walked to the Hegel-Haus, the birthplace of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. On display in the charmingly spare little house were letters from Hegel’s friends, stressing the importance of freedom: “Vive la liberté” writes one, while another quotes Klopstock, an 18th century German poet who cheered the American Revolution.

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Why We're Not Winning School Choice Elections By Paul Weyrich

The school choice battle has come to Utah and it is a battle every American should know about.  Let me explain what is going on, what is at stake, and provide a little bit of historical analysis that might give us some insight as to what might happen in November.

        Oversimplifying (of course), Utah has on the ballot a referendum on a voucher program passed by the Legislature earlier this year.  Utah spends $7,500 per pupil in the public school system.  The voucher program would provide between $500 and $3,000, depending upon family income, to students switching to private schools.  An average voucher is projected to be less than $2,000, which would create a savings of more than $5,500 as to every student who used a voucher.

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Muhmoud Ahmadinejad Is Not Insane; He's Muslim By Barbara J. Stock

In front of what appeared to be a sparse crowd at the United Nations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad started his speech with a short prayer that only those who have paid attention to this man, and educated themselves about Islam, would have noticed.  He prayed to the Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi.  Most people don’t even know who this Imam is, or was, nor do they care, but they should.  The Imam al-Mahdi is the "hidden" Imam, honored and revered by Shia Muslims all over the world. 

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Living life on the Internet By Brent MacLean

They're all still down there, out of sight and all but out of mind -- hundreds of millions of miles of hair-thin strands of glass, uniquely strung beneath the streets of every city, under our homes, suburbs, deserts, and strewn across the ocean floor. It's enough optical fibre to wrap around the earth 4,000 times (scary statistics), with each strand capable of blasting library stacks of information across the globe at the speed of light. And almost all of it sits empty, dark and idle -- an unseen monument to every unfulfilled promise of the Internet. A statistical reality people can't even begin to comprehend.

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Why We Can't Live with a Nuclear Iran by The Obnoxious American

I've noticed something about people. When provided an out in a sticky situation, people tend to take it, regardless of future consequences. This is known as a dynamic inconsistency, a situation where people's preferences change over time. A great example is the high school kid who drops out. His present self is thrilled with the decision to sleep late and watch daytime TV as opposed to buckling down in class, but his future self likely won't be nearly as happy with the reduced ability to earn as life goes on. Generally speaking, it's much better to consider your future self, and not the immediate happiness of the present self, when making long range decisions.

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The Second Coming belongs to God alone, not to a twelfth Imam By Marie Jon'

In the Bible, we read about the twelve disciples working tirelessly to spread the Gospel to the ancient cities and countries of their time. All twelve were sinners and were saved by God's grace.

Jesus Christ, who is the son of God, died for us all so that we could be forgiven of our sins. "We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

A number of sects of Islam believe in a mythical twelfth Imam. It is interesting to contrast the gospel with an obvious mere imitation. The Islamic twelfth Imam almost sounds like the Second Coming of Christ.

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Hershey Bypass IED Miss

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The Soros Threat To Democracy By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?

That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

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POLAND-- VICTIM OF THE TYRANNY OF THE EUROPEAN COURT OF CONTRIVED HUMAN RIGHTS :: Real Clear Religion

The term "human rights" is fast becoming synonymous with the right to abort one's child and engage in sodomy. Just as I have come to loathe and detest the term "women's rights"-- I can't help but feel the same way about so called "human rights" --especially in the context of the European Court of Human Rights.

The Court of Human Rights today confirmed Poland will have to pay compensation to a woman whose vision became impaired after being denied an abortion under Polish laws.

Poland had appealed an order to pay the woman 25,000 euros compensation and 14,000 euros in legal fees.

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Is it wrong for me to talk about race? by Lawrence Auster

A reader writes:

When reading your blog, I am struck by the number of times you and others talk about the "white race" or a "white majority." You seem fixated on race.

However, the battle we are fighting has little to do with "race" and everything to do with "culture." For example, I am an Indian (ie non white). Yet I am also a traditionalist Catholic who believes very strongly in the superiority of Western traditions and culture. 99 percent of the whites I know are probably not even aware of their own cultural tradition. However, the constant fixation with the "white race" , would exclude me and other non-whites from being a traditionalist simply because of the colour of my skin.

Race is irrelevant. Culture is what matters. Whether a person is black or white, Hispanic or Asian, their adherence to traditional Western culture is paramount. At the moment, they are encouraged by liberals to hate Western traditions and celebrate their own cultural identity. But there is no reason why non-whites cannot be traditionalists or spearhead the Western traditionalist movement.

LA replies:

Context and numbers are everything.

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Indians Aren’t That Intelligent (On Average) By Professor J. Philippe Rushton

In this article, I summarize the evidence for an average IQ of 85 in the group designated South Asian/North African. The people of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf States, the Near East, Turkey and North Africa have an IQ just below the world average of 90. This is much higher than the IQ of 70 found for Black Africans, but it is also much lower than the IQ of 100 found for Europeans.

As VDARE.COM readers will know, IQ tests were constructed in Western Europe and North America and standardized with an average IQ of 100. The "normal" range goes from "dull" (IQ around 85) to "bright" (IQ around 115). IQs of 70 suggest handicap, while IQs of 130 and above predict giftedness.

There are large inequalities in average IQ scores between groups. Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve reported that the average IQ for "African" Americans is lower than those for "Latino", "White", "East Asian", and "Jewish" Americans (IQs = 85, 89, 103, 106, and 115, respectively, pp. 273-278).

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New(t) ideas By Cal Thomas

As I listen to the presidential candidates speak and engage in what passes for debate these days, it appears that most, if not all of them are simply talking about improving the old government model, rather than boldly proclaiming a new one. Carmakers, if they want to sell cars, produce "new and improved" models, not remakes of previous ones. So why do politicians continue to rely on a Model T version of government when it's outmoded and unfit for modern life?

Presidential candidates should speak about what has worked in the past and could work again. The candidates - at least the Republican ones, if they remember what Republicans are supposed to stand for - should be talking about freedom from dependency and a return to self-sufficiency. Government doesn't need to be reformed under the present system; it needs to be transformed under a new one.

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Back With a Vengeance By DANIEL JOHNSON

Dictators are back with a vengeance. In Rangoon the Burmese junta butchers Buddhist monks, while over at the United Nations the international community wrings its hands. The world needs a new Charlie Chaplin to do justice to the grotesque spectacle of Robert Mugabe comparing President Bush and Tony Blair to Hitler and Mussolini. But the president of Iran is in deadly earnest: a nuclear 9/11 is beyond satire.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be pleased with his visit to New York. By using the world's most dramatic metropolis as a grandiose backdrop, he has guaranteed himself a global audience for his vile propaganda.

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The Devil Comes to Television by Jonathan Falwell

French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) wrote, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” If that’s true, I think maybe the second greatest trick Satan ever pulled was convincing the world that he is simply a joke.

I fear that many people in our nation believe Satan to be either a hoax or to not exist at all. But the Bible describes Satan as our “adversary” who is as “a roaring lion” who walks about “seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8).

This hardly casts him as a source for laughs.
However, that is the new image of Satan we are often seeing.

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The Terminal Sickness of EUtopia :: The Brussels Journal

Across Europe the left has found in Islam a convenient ally, since both hate the core political goods of the West, liberal democracy and free-market economies, and both hate Christianity – the same mayor of Brussels who silenced European Christians greeted the death of Pope John Paul II with a call for champagne. Al Qaeda understands this Western self-hatred, which is why bin Laden speaks to us about economic oppression, colonialism, even environmentalism, issues about which he cares nothing but which create common cause with the anti-Western left.

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The Nuclear Renaissance Begins By William Tucker

If you're tracking the nuclear power revival in America, last Tuesday, September 25, was a milestone. For the first time since 1973, a new application for building a reactor was placed before the federal government.

The applicant was NRG Energy, Inc., an 18-year-old "merchant" corporation headquartered in New Jersey's Princeton Corridor. A one-story steel-and-glass structure in the Carnegie Industrial Park, NRG has the look of a West Coast firm. The 300-or-so employees work in one vast room sectioned by neat rows of parallel workstations. The place could be a fine arts classroom, with employees casually strolling past each other's computer screens and kibitzing over their work. "This place has a collegial atmosphere," says Lori Neuman, communications manager at NRG. "It's very conductive to getting things done."

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Katie Couric: objectivity charade is history :: Pundit Review

Katie Couric abandons the charade and throws in the towel at the National Press Club,

“Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,” said Couric, adding that it is “pretty much accepted” that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

“I’ve never understood why [invading Iraq] was so high on the administration’s agenda when terrorism was going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan and that [Iraq] had no true connection with al Qaeda.”

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O’Reilly and Bruce Discuss New ‘Gestapo’ in America Smearing Conservatives By Noel Sheppard

In the wake of the recent media-created scandal concerning statements made by Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on his radio show, a rather enlightening discussion has ensued regarding the existence of a well-organized campaign to demonize every television and radio personality whose political opinions don't march in lock-step with the left.

A rather frank and candid conversation concerning this matter occurred on Wednesday's "The O'Reilly Factor" between the host and outspoken radio talk show personality Tammy Bruce.

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Hugo Chavez: Enemy in America's Backyard by Ericka Andersen

If you don’t believe that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is dangerous to American national security, “Crisis in the Americas”, a new film produced by the American Security Council Foundation, will convince you. 

ASCF drew from their 1980's video series about similarly threatening countries during the Cold War, called "Peace through Strength." The new series, called "Defending Freedom", educates the public about the dangers America faces via Venezuela’s oil-rich dictator.

“Crisis in the Americas” documents the close alliance Chavez shares with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Chavez’s eerily parallel ideologies and close coalition with Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

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Demonizing the DNI by Robert Novak

Rep. Rush D. Holt of New Jersey looked across the House Intelligence Committee table at Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell last week and said evenly: “There’s some doubts about your ability to act as an unbiased source of information.”

Even as an isolated incident, this would be remarkable. A very partisan Democrat with a nearly perfect liberal voting record was telling a senior career intelligence officer that he is a liar. That abuse usually is reserved for political appointees.

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The Defective Right By William R. Hawkins

Last weekend, the John Randolph Club held its annual meeting in Washington, DC. It is a project of the Rockford Institute, a group with which I have been associated for a quarter century. The JRC was founded eighteen years ago to bring together traditional conservatives and right-libertarians for a dialogue on issues of common concern. As Rockford President Thomas Fleming noted in his opening speech, the libertarians don’t much attend the JRC these days. Unfortunately, they have been replaced by left-wingers (libertarian and Marxist) whose mission is not dialogue, but subversion.

This was made painfully evident during the closing debate. The resolution presented was “America should immediately withdraw her armed forces from Iraq.” I was on the negative side, and thought that the extreme phrasing of the resolution guaranteed its defeat. Immediate withdrawal is not what is being debated in the U.S. Congress, or anywhere else among responsible people. It is the stuff of radicals like Moveon.org and International ANSWER, who oppose all policies aimed at defending U.S. interests in the world or advancing American values.

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Black Racism and “The Jena Six” By John Perazzo

Because they generally consider it bad manners to draw attention to obvious examples of black racism, the media -- in concert with contemporary America’s self-anointed champions of “civil rights” and “civil liberties” -- have recently put on a spectacular exhibition in the art of depicting black racism not as what it is, but rather as the unfortunate by-product of an allegedly underlying white racism. At issue is the case of the so-called “Jena Six” -- the half-dozen black Louisiana youths who brutally beat an apparently loudmouthed white youth named Justin Barker last December. In the wake of that incident, the American Civil Liberties Union complained -- as did the political Left at large -- that the local district attorney was unjustified in having initially charged the defendants with attempted murder in this case of “questionable circumstances.”

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ACADEMIC LUNACY :: Dr. Sanity

Victor Davis Hanson asks, "Have American academics lost their collective mind?"
Having been in academia for much of my professional career, I think I am qualified to andwer that question in the affirmative. And let me add, that it is because the "mind" of academia has become a "collective", that it has been lost.

Hanson considers some of the more recent examples of academic lunacy and then points out:

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The Muslim Brotherhood in the Old Dominion :: Gates of Vienna

Virginians who live in the rest of the state look askance at Northern Virginia, and with good reason: the sprawling suburbs of D.C. are like a piece of Yankeeland dropped into the bosom of our sovereign

Commonwealth. I voluntarily exiled myself from NoVa thirty years ago, and whenever I have cause to return, I stand with my son atop Arlington Ridge, sweep my hand in the direction of Pentagon City and Alexandria, and warn him: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

Unfortunately, we all have to pay attention to Northern Virginia, because that’s where the people are, and that’s where the money is. The state Senate keeps the old ways of the Commonwealth from being swamped completely, but NoVa pays the piper in Richmond, and it still gets to call much of the tune.

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New York: A New Haven for Terrorists? By Peter Gadiel

The bin Ladin lieutenants who are planning the next set of 9/11attacks must be very happy because the odds of “successfully” carrying out their next plot and committing mass murder in the United States have just improved enormously. Last Friday, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced that he would make available to future terrorists the same tools which the 9/11 Commission noted were essential for the success of the conspiracy that killed my son and three thousand others six years ago. Those tools were U.S. drivers’ licenses.

Certain facts about terrorist operations are beyond dispute, and as the 9/11 Commission noted, one is that terrorists cannot function without I.D. The sixty-three authentic U.S. driver’s licenses the 9/11 terrorists held (from Virginia, Florida, Maryland and other states) permitted them to blend in as ordinary U.S. citizens; permitted them to rent cars, open bank accounts, rent hotel rooms, obtain credit cards, etc. They used them when purchasing flying lessons. And on the morning of 9/11, their U.S. licenses were the “valid ID” that got them on board the planes they used as missiles.

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Bring Out Your Dead: Fudging the Numbers in Iraq By Glen Reinsford

Counting bodies in Iraq has become quite the fashion these days. Most major news organizations, from CNN to the New York Times, keep an up-to-the-minute running total of the number of U.S. troops killed there. Critics note that if demoralization of the war effort is not the key motive, then it is certainly odd that the number of dead terrorists is so rarely, if ever, provided as well.

Dead Iraqis are extremely popular with anti-war groups, particularly IraqBodyCount (IBC), which meticulously compiles a database of deadly incidents in Iraq based on news and morgue reports. The organization’s “counter” of civilian casualties was once found on the sidebar of most anti-war blogs – before bloggers were seduced by the wildly insane Lancet survey estimates, which exceed IBC’s numbers by a factor of 10.

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"NEWT'S" NOTES ON FREEDOM By: Gordon Bishop

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most brilliant political analyst in America. 

As a reporter/columnist for the past 48 years, I have covered umpteen politicians, from Presidents and Governors down to U.S. Senators, Congressmen, Mayors and elected local council and committee members.

They’re not all bad. But they all seem to fall into the same bottomless pit after getting elected: Tax & Spend, Spend & Tax. 

Only a handful knows how to balance a budget at the federal, state, county and local levels of government. 

Of the 566 municipalities in the great State of New Jersey, only one – the town of Bogota, Bergen County – has balanced its annual budget the last 10 years without raising taxes.

That’s why my own home-state of New Jersey today has the pathetic distinction of having the highest property taxes in America. 

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Katie’s World By Peter Wehner

At her National Press Club event yesterday, we heard this from CBS News anchor Katie Couric:

The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying “we” when referring to the United States and, even the “shock and awe” of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the “Today” show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, “Will anybody put the brakes on this?” And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.

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AARP & Other Liberals Spearhead Charge For Clintoncare II By J.J. Jackson

As groups get bigger I swear their collective intelligence decreases. Nothing could be a truer example of this than one of the largest groups in America, the American Association of Retired Persons. Often affectionately known as the AARP I prefer to call them the Anti-American Retired Persons because I believe in truth in advertising.

Here you have a group that on one hand uses the power of capitalism. They flaunt the purchasing power of their vast membership to negotiate with companies all over the globe to get special discounts and incentives for their members in return for promoting these same companies to their members. But on the other hand they pimp anti-American ideas such as socialism and collectivism.

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Ahmadinejad and the Suicidal Left By Tony Blankley

Our Founding Fathers were wise to create a constitutional republic rather than a direct democracy. Although, given the caliber of many of our elected representatives — whose role it is to intermediate between the rashness of the public and the safety of the nation — it seems like rather thin protection. Nonetheless, we must be grateful for small blessings.

On Monday, the left-wing Daily Kos (as pointed out by the blog American Thinker, which apparently monitors that citadel of leftish chat so we don't have to) had the following entry from one of its readers:

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Global Warming Hysteria By Walter E. Williams

Despite increasing evidence that man-made CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change, politicians and others who wish to control our lives must maintain that it is.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Rep. John Dingell wants a 50-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline. We've heard such calls before, but there's a new twist. Dingell also wants to eliminate the mortgage tax deduction on what he calls "McMansions," homes that are 3,000 square feet and larger. That's because larger homes use more energy.

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Ahmadinejad at Columbia: Merely a Sympton By Christopher Adamo

The only real surprise from the disgraceful speaking appearance by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University is that anybody was surprised at all.  University President Lee Bollinger was so taken aback by the ferocity of public anger that after first stridently defending his decision to bring the crazed Iranian ruler on campus, he felt compelled to excoriate Ahmadinejad once they were both on stage.

University leaders felt a necessity to justify themselves, resorting to most of the wornout clichés by which they have repeatedly justified their abysmal behavior in recent years.  Among other excuses, Columbia’s defenders claim a “First Amendment issue,” along with their predictable mantra that “universities exist for the purpose of freely and openly exchanging all ideas, no matter how outrageous they may be.”

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The Last Supper in San Francisco By Robert Klein Engler

On the table we see sex toys instead of bread and wine.  It doesn't stop there.  Randy Hall reports that, "An advertisement portraying Christ and his disciples as half-naked sado-masochists to promote a homosexual event this weekend in San Francisco continued to draw fire from Christian organizations...though the group behind the ad said it was not intended to be either 'pro-religion or anti-religion.' "

This ad follows one from Plug TV, a youth network in Belgium, that portrays "Jesus Christ as a pot-bellied, whiskey-slugging hippie who weasels his way into a nightclub by turning the bouncers into dwarfs..."

What's going on here, besides blasphemy and an effort on the part of the secular media to undermine Christianity, one of the few remaining opposition forces against the globalist, secular agenda?

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Role Reversal :: New York Sun Editorial

The highlight of the week of the General Assembly for us has been the role reversal that Benny Avni, in his dispatch on page 7, writes about from Turtle Bay. He is referring to the address to the General Assembly by President Sarkozy, in which the new leader of the Fifth Republic struck a tone that was, let us say (we wouldn't want to use the word belligerent), moderately hawkish. It was only a few months ago (or was it years?) that the left was warning how we were alienating the peaceable French and the other Europeans. But this week Monsieur Sarkozy's remarks were in sharp contradistinction to the speech of President Bush, which was full of talk about soft-power and human rights. We were tempted to send some smelling salts over to the editorial sanctum of the New York Times in case anyone there came down with vertigo.

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The Frivolity of Evil By Suzanne Fields

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got one thing right in his rant at Columbia University. History, he said, can't close the books on the Holocaust because the subject must be approached from different perspectives. That also got him to concede, sort of, what everybody else knows -- that the Holocaust actually happened.

Ahmadinejad in America coincides with the opening of a remarkable new online exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org), which features photographs of Nazi SS officers laughing, flirting and reclining at Auschwitz. These photographs offer a different perspective, true enough, because there aren't many photographs of SS officers at play. Here we see Camp Commandant Hans Hocker, who created the album, smile handsomely into the camera. We see pretty Eva, Angela and Irmgard, "communications specialists" at the camps, enjoying bowls of fresh blueberries. We watch an officer serenading them with an accordion solo.

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Bin Laden's true beliefs by Lawrence Auster

Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Raymond Ibrahim, editor of The Al Qaeda Reader, demonstrates that it is Muslim theology, not any specific grievance, that drives the jihadists' attacks on us. Bin Laden's famous complaints of American wrongs done to the Muslim world that supposedly justify Muslim retaliation against us have only appeared in statements aimed at Westerners. In documents directed at other Muslims, many of which Ibrahim has translated into English for the first time, bin Laden and his associates make it clear that they are simply following Allah's timeless command to wage aggressive jihad against the infidel.

Ibrahim writes:

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Political Correctness is Killing US. by Joseph Nelson

Political correctness is going to be the death of America as we know it. I fear that my 2 year old daughter is going to end up in a country under Sharia Law and wearing a burka. Here is more of my viewpoint on how and why this is going to happen: We as a nation are afraid to extend our finger at a group or individual and state firmly “you are my enemy”.

Case in point: Islamic Terrorist. Recently British Prime Minister Gordon Brown instructed his ministers to stop using the phrase "war on terror". According to the EU Observer the reason for this is “to avoid the use of words that could unnecessarily offend Muslims and spark radicalization.” Political Correctness, European style! For God's sake, a cartoon sparked radicalization in the Muslim community peppered throughout Europe.

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Preventing a Massacre and Bringing Democracy to Burma: the Time is Now By Frida Ghitis |

When I heard the news that protesting Buddhist monks in Burma had managed to reach the home of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi last week, a wave of cold dread washed over me. My mind traveled back to the time a few years ago when I tried to reach Suu Kyi's home on University Avenue in Rangoon (now named Yangon by the brutal military rulers of Burma, itself renamed Myanmar by the same illegitimate government). My thoughts then moved further back in time, to 1988, when street protests led by the astonishing Suu Kyi ended in tragedy. By some accounts, some 4,000 demonstrators died as security forces massacred them on orders from Burma's generals.

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The Real Heroes in Jena (UPDATED) :: Patterico's Pontifications

Via Instapundit comes an article with the best observation yet on the Jena situation. Although many seem intent on making martyrs out of violent thugs, the author suggests that there are better heirs to the legacy of Selma:

[A]ll along, Jena has had a better symbol for civil rights on offer. The anonymous black students who defied the informal segregation at the high school and sat under the perversely misnamed “white tree” are the movement’s true legatees. They have received so little attention that I don’t even know their names or how many such brave and defiant young people there were.

Why don’t we let the system deal with the violent criminals, and do some digging to learn who these real heroes are?

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Corporate America's Loyalty Is Now Global By Doug Patton |

As the toadies in charge of Columbia University in New York City provided a forum for the left’s latest rock star, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to spout his propaganda, another story grabbed my attention.  Given the recent news reports of tainted products from the world’s largest communist country, imagine my surprise and anger when I picked up my morning paper and read this Associated Press headline: “Mattel takes recall blame, makes apology to China.”

        Apparently, our corporate leaders are now expected to lick the boots of Chinese officials and take the blame for recalling junk toys from our markets because they were painted with lead-based paint.

        According to the AP, “Mattel, Inc. tried to save face Friday with Chinese officials, taking the blame for the recent recalls of millions of Chinese-made toys as it strives to mend a strained relationship with the nation that makes most of its toys and fattens its profit.”

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IMBRA: Anatomy of a Feminist Hoax By Carey Roberts

Want a textbook example how the Left manufactures a crisis, passes a law that rolls back Constitutional protections, snookers card-carrying conservatives, and bilks American taxpayers? Look no farther than IMBRA, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act.

A little background: It’s no secret that conditions in post-socialist Russia are grim. Author Sonya Luehrmann recounts how women desperately search to find a husband “to put one’s personal life in order, to settle down with a stable family.”

And here in the United States, some men find American ladies to be a little too, shall we say, high-maintenance for their tastes.

Before long over 200 match-making services around the world had sprouted up like a clutch of springtime tulips.

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Coyote Ugly :: Velvet Hammer

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep. 24, 2007 (KGO) - New York said “yes,” but we said “no.” Why were the U.S. Marines denied permission to film a recruiting commercial on the streets of San Francisco?

San Francisco is, once again, the center of a controversy over how city leaders treat the U.S. military. This time, it involves an elite group of Marines who wanted to film a recruitment commercial in San Francisco on the anniversary of 9/11.

The tension has been building in the two weeks since the city turned away members of the Silent Drill Platoon, and it boiled over Monday afternoon at a meeting of the San Francisco Film Commission.

The U.S. Marine Silent Drill Platoon performed Monday morning in New York’s Times Square. They filmed part of a recruitment commercial through the start of the morning rush hour — something they could not do in San Francisco on the anniversary of 9/11.

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Birth of the “speechers” :: Eric Odom

1 : An individual who has been misinformed on the truth about free speech

The last 24 hours of news has presented us with a whirlwind of debate, thanks to Iranian President Ahmadinejad. The leader of the terror supporting country of Iran was given a welcome mat at Columbia University. This particular invitation ignited a firestorm across all sides of the political isle.

The right warned Columbia about the fact that this position would be used for propaganda purposes. Those warnings, of course, went ignored by the “progressive” leadership at the University.

The left, unlike the right, doesn’t much care about Iran’s support of terrorist organizations, nor does it accept the facts regarding the country funneling weapons and military assistance to terrorists in Iraq. But the left DOES care, like the right, that Iran murders those who are homosexual. The country also is suppresses women rights and has fought vicious wars against Iranian women who attempt to oppose the corrupt system… another issue both sides find unacceptable.

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The British anomaly: The attempt to abolish England By Paul Belien

Ever heard of the West Lothian Question? West Lothian is the Scottish region immediately to the west of Edinburgh. The question is so called because it was first posed by Tam Dalyell, a Labor member of the British Parliament for West Lothian. Mr. Dalyell wondered how long the English would tolerate the situation in which Scottish members of the British Parliament, such as himself, have a (sometimes decisive) say about issues affecting only England, while English parliamentarians have no say about the same matters in Scotland.

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Does Anyone Still Think Eurabia Is a Conspiracy Theory? By Fjordman

Does anyone still think it is a conspiracy theory to say that there is a coordinated campaign going in Europe to destroy the established nation states and surrender our countries to Muslims?

Government Advisors: Dutch Should Adapt to Muslims

Tolerance for Islam is too low and question marks on the sexualisation of Dutch society are justified. In the report, the WRR also says that the integration debate is not helped by the fixation on the concept of 'national identity'. The report says that there is nothing wrong with the dual nationality held by most immigrants in the Netherlands. The WRR already produced a controversial report last year (Dynamics in Islamic activism) when it complained that many Dutch politicians are involved in "Islam-bashing" and urged dialogue with "moderate movements such as Hamas." According to newspaper Volkskrant, the WRR will also advise that primary schools should be encouraged to have ethnically mixed pupil populations. They should be given the statutory commission to create a 'link' between population groups, said WRR member and Labour (PvdA) Upper House member Pauline Meurs in the newspaper.

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Banning Boyhood By Selwyn Duke

Huck Finn must be spinning in his literary grave.  Just recently a Colorado Springs, Co., elementary school banned tag during recess, joining other schools that have prohibited this childhood pastime.  Upon hearing this, I thought about the movement to ban cops and robbers, musical chairs, steal the bacon, and the kill-joys' most frequent target and this writer's favorite childhood school game, dodge ball.  Then there's the more inane still, such as the decision by the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association to prohibit keeping score in kids' tournament play.

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U.S. media all-stars dine with tiny terrorist on his last night in town by Allahpundit

Laura Ingraham’s joke wasn’t far off the mark. The Times editorial board didn’t ask him to lunch at the Four Seasons; he asked the equivalent of the Times editorial board to dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel. And most of them seem to have accepted, of course. Here’s the first account of the event I’ve seen, from Time’s managing editor, Richard Stengel:

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran “requests the pleasure” of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel — with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There’s Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room…

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Mahmoudapalooza: The Good, the Bad and the Craven By Michelle Malkin

When my children are grown, I can tell them where I was when bloodthirsty Iranian thug-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dared to disgrace Columbia University with his presence. I was standing with Jewish leaders, Iranian-American dissidents, World War II veterans and other concerned citizens, young and old, taking a stand against evil outside the campus gates.

Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, an Iranian-born activist whose dissident journalist father is jailed in her homeland, was appalled at the ignorance and moral equivalence of the Leftists who paraded in front of the TV cameras with their Bush-is-a-terrorist paraphernalia. A few goons held a large banner that read: "Ahmadinejad is bad. Bush is worse."

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Sweet Nothings By Forkim

It's Ahmadinejad Week here at Cox & Forkum; he keeps giving us material that we can't resist. Little Green Footballs has been vigilantly following the reaction from the left, particularly in posts at Daily Kos. Below are some of the LGF posts on the topic:

Daily Kos: Ahmadinejad 'Sounds Entirely Too Reasonable'

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Why Is New York's Governor Inviting Terrorists to Get a NY Drivers License? By Michael Cutler

You cannot control illegal immigration purely at our borders, but must also create an inhospitable environment for illegal aliens who succeed in entering and making their way to the interior of the United States. The immigration laws of our nation are clear that anyone who induces aliens to enter our country illegally or reside in our country in violation of law or conspire to do so are violating our laws. Section 1324 of the Immigration and Nationality Act is quite clear on this issue:

Section 1324. Bringing in and harboring certain aliens

(a) Criminal penalties
(1)(A) Any person who...
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or
reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of
the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be
in violation of law; or
(v)(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding
acts, or
(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,
shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).

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Barbara Boxer emerging as Senate's new Al Gore By Dr. Timothy Ball & Tom Harris

Since taking over as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in January, California Senator Barbara Boxer has emerged as a truly bizarre figure in the global warming debate. Making climate change the focus of committee activities, Boxer maintains that "the American people have the will to slow, stop, and reverse global warming." 

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'Islamic Economics - What Does It Mean?' By Daniel Pipes

While the outside world hardly noticed, a significant and rapidly growing amount of money is now being managed in accord with Islamic law, the Shari‘a. According to one study, "by the end of 2005, more than 300 institutions in over 65 jurisdictions were managing assets worth around US$700 billion to US$1 trillion in a Shari'ah-compatible manner."

Islamic economics increasingly has become force to contend with. burgeoning portfolios of oil exporters and multiplying Islamic financial instruments (such as interest-free mortgages and sukuk bonds). But what does it all amount to? Can Shari‘a-compliant instruments challenge the existing international financial order? Would an Islamic economic regime, as an enthusiast claims, really imply end injustice due to "the State's provision for the well-being of all people"?

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Newt Notes on Freedom in America By Gordon Bishop

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most brilliant political analyst in America.
As a reporter/columnist for the past 48 years, I have covered umpteen politicians, from Presidents and Governors down to U.S. Senators, Congressmen, Mayors and elected local council and committee members.

They’re not all bad. But they all seem to fall into the same bottomless pit after getting elected: Tax & Spend, Spend & Tax.

Only a handful knows how to balance a budget at the federal, state, county and local levels of government.

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Corporate America's Loyalty Now Global By Doug Patton

As the toadies in charge of Columbia University in New York City provided a forum for the Left's latest rock star, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to spout his propaganda, another story grabbed my attention. Given the recent news reports of tainted products from the world's largest communist country, imagine my surprise and anger when I picked up my morning paper and read this Associated Press headline: "Mattel takes recall blame, makes apology to China."

Apparently, our corporate leaders are now expected to lick the boots of Chinese officials and take the blame for recalling junk toys from our markets because they were painted with lead-based paint.

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Israel Is Not the Cause of All the World's Problems By Prof. Barry Rubin

Note: The following article was published as a response to an editorial in The Diplomat, a top Canadian international affairs magazine, which explicitly claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict--and specifically Israel's "occupation" policy--was at the root of all the problems in the Middle East, between the Middle East and the West, and between Islam and the West. This notion continues to be expressed (perhaps increasingly so) despite the fact that there is so much evidence to the contrary and that (though many in the West seem to have failed to nice this little detail) Israel has withdrawn from the Sinai, south Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and much of the West Bank, as well as offering to leave the rest of the West Bank and the Golan Heights in exchange for full peace.

What is antisemitism? It is not merely the Nazi view that all Jews are evil and should be killed without exception. It is a set of beliefs including the idea that Jews are the cause of all the world's problems--which is expressed in this editorial--and others which are not contained in this particular editorial.

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Remember Eddie, Remember His Message By Lance Fairchok

Early Wednesday afternoon, in a break from teaching, I took a moment to check my e-mail. The first line of the first message I opened hit me as hard as any message could. “Sergeant Eddie Jeffers, 23, was killed this morning in Iraq.”

Eddie’s father Dave is a colleague and good friend, and just a few hours earlier Dave and I had spoken of Eddie, the son he loved, the son that made him proud, the son I felt I knew after listening to my friend over the last couple of years. He has pictures of Eddie on his desk, pictures of a tall young man in uniform, smiling with his father, pictures of a warm and loving relationship, pictures that are precious now. How can you comfort a dear friend when his son is killed? How can you find a way to convey your sympathy? How can you find the words to describe the sorrow that you share but can never truly understand? Everything falls short, and flowers and cards seem an empty gesture.

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Pat Caddell: Hillary Campaign is a Criminal Operation!

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Law Versus Mob Rule by Thomas Sowell

It is painful -- and dangerous -- how little we learn from history, even when it is recent history.

Just a year ago, "rape" charges spread lynch-mob hysteria on the campus of Duke University and in much of the liberal media, while professional race hustlers descended on the town of Durham, North Carolina, and mindless tribalism was stirred up by extremists in the local black community.

This year, we have all learned what a total fraud that case was, from beginning to end. Yet now we see a similar outburst of mindless tribalism and another attempt at mob rule, promoted by such veterans of last year's hysteria as Jesse Jackson.

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Tendentious Junk From Mr. Jencks By Edwin S. Rubenstein

Christopher Jencks is a highly respected social scientist, a Harvard professor no less. "Balanced" and "intellectually flexible" are adjectives used to describe his research on controversial issues such as income inequality, welfare, and immigration. In 2001 he reviewed George Borjas’ Heaven's Door for The New York Review of Books. Jencks called it "by far the best introduction I have seen to the economics of immigration," adding cheekily" (He is also my colleague at Harvard, so skeptics should feel free to discount my enthusiasm for his book.)" [Who Should Get In?, · November 29 and · December 20, , 2001 (Part 1, Part 2)]

But Pat Buchanan is another matter. State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, reviewed by Jencks in the latest NYRB, elicits a decidedly pro-immigration bias from the normally dispassionate academic.

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Shostakovich and Stalin: Symphony as propaganda By Lev Navrozov

John Franse, a generous reader and friend of mine (and a lover of classical music), asked me in his e-mail to write a column about the “Soviet composer” Dmitri Shostakovich.

On the shelves of my library is a 917-page volume, published in 2000 in Russia in Russian and entitled “Shostakovich Between a Moment and Eternity.” I cannot discuss its 917-page pages in my 3-page column, but one point may be of interest. Just as those who have never been hungry cannot imagine how it feels to be starving or dying of hunger, so the Russian and Western contributors to this volume cannot imagine how it felt living in Stalin’s Russia. In contrast to Rachmaninoff, who was 44 when Lenin and his associates came to the absolute autocratic possession of the country in 1917 and who managed to emigrate in 1918, Shostakovich was 11, and had to stay in the new owners’ Russia.

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The Islamist Fifth Column In America By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

We've warned for years that an Islamist underground exists in this country, secretly working to take over the U.S. Now the mainstream media is waking up to the threat.

Yes, theirs is an ambitious plan. But the enemy lurking within is assiduous, patient and well-organized. We are only now starting to see its tentacles, thanks to a landmark federal terror-financing case under way in Dallas.

News about the secret Islamist plot against the U.S. is starting to trickle out from the few media covering the trial against the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in America.

It hasn't made the politically correct evening news yet. But the Associated Press has dared to quote from the chilling courtroom exhibits, and now the Dallas Morning News has weighed in with a lengthy feature story.

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Sea Sickness In The Senate By INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY

Time was, Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy gave us freedom of the seas. But if Joe Biden and the Senate have their way, we'll need the permission of 21 judges in Hamburg.

On Thursday, presidential wannabe Biden will chair hearings intended to lead to the ratification of the quarter-century-old Law of the Sea treaty (LOST), a document that would severely restrict our ability to use oceans to defend ourselves and would turn over control of 70% of the world's surface to a U.N. bureaucracy.

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History of Jihad against the Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (638 -- Ongoing) :: Jihad Watch

Unlike the complete Islamization of Persia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Turkey, North Africa, the Islamization of India was never complete. After more than one millennium of Muslim Tyranny from 715 up to 1761, more than 70 percent of the population of India remained Hindu. This was NOT due to any Muslim charity or benevolence, since the murderous and savage beastlike Muslims have none of these characteristics.

The Muslim tyranny in India was as blood-thirsty and insidious as it was in all parts of the globe that were unfortunate to be trampled by the Jihadis. The Hindus suffered initial setbacks due to the innocuous but ill-founded belief amongst them, as amongst all other non-Muslims, that the Muslims too were normal human beings, who would after a victory, settle down to govern the defeated population. But once the nightmare of Muslim tyranny began, the Hindus grew wiser relatively faster than most of the other unfortunate victims of the Islamic Jihad.

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Playing pretend with Glenn Beck :: Jihad Watch

Glenn Beck does some good reporting about the Islamic jihad threat, but he doggedly plays pretend, assuming repeatedly that Islam is a religion of peace, the Qur'an is a book of peace, etc.

What he doesn't realize is that this doesn't empower Muslim moderates, as he clearly wants to do -- rather, it cuts the ground out from under them, for you can't reform what you won't admit needs reforming. Rightly or wrongly, the Protestant Reformers didn't indignantly deny that the Catholic Church taught Transubstantiation -- rather, they argued against this and other doctrines with which they disagreed. How far do you think they would have gotten if they had simply charged with "bigotry" anyone who pointed out that the Church taught the Real Presence or the papal primacy?

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Media: Censorship by Hillary OK By Richard Newcomb

Is the media hypocritical on censorship when conducted by Democrats versus Republicans? It would seem that this may indeed be the case. The media likes to claim that President George Bush's Administration is clamping down on civil rights, although they have a difficult time citing any actual examples of such. However, when the Clinton campaign really does exercise press censorship, the media is largely silent. According to the Politico online magazine, GQ magazine was poised to run a story that would have been critical of the Hillary Clinton campaign. This in itself is a relative rarity in the current media. However, by threatening to withold access to former President Bill Clinton, the campaign managed to force GQ to pull the planned story. Editor Jim Nelson then tried to claim that this was normal procedure,

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Giuliani Defends Right to Bear Arms By LIZ SIDOTI and LIBBY QUAID

Rudy Giuliani, who sued firearms manufacturers and called for tough gun control as New York's mayor, said Tuesday the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a recent court ruling framed his current defense of a right to own guns.

"You have to look at all of these issues in light of the different concerns that now exist, which is terrorism, the terrorists' war on us," the Republican presidential contender told The Associated Press in an interview. He also mentioned immigration and border security.

He said his thinking on gun rights also was influenced by a federal appeals court decision that overturned a 30-year-old ban on private ownership of handguns in Washington on the grounds that the Constitution gives individual citizens the right to own guns.

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"Hope Rides Eternal" for Sgt. Eddie Jeffers' Dad :: Confessions of a Closet Republican

How does one react to the death of one's child in a war that many deem "immoral"? For some, like the Cindy Sheehan's of the world, it turns into seething anger and ugliness, for others...for those who believe that this is the ultimate battle between darkness and light, for those who walk in faith with God, it turns into acceptance, with a grace, strength and humility that is beyond comprehension. One such person is David Jeffers, the father of Sgt. Eddie Jeffers, patriot, brave soldier and author of the powerful "Hope Rides Alone" opinion piece. This is my tribute to both Eddie and David. Rest in Peace Eddie.

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Video Dedicated to US Troops: "Think About It."

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Fake but Accurate Depiction of Code Pink :: Blue Star Chronicles

There’s a debate going on at a sad little leftist blog about the difference between Dan Rather’s ‘fake but accurate’ news and the ‘fake but accurate’ photoshop below. Talk about parsing words, they are downright Clintonesque …. it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.

Sadly, yes they use the adolescent debate tactics of a high school sophomore debate class inhabited by jocks who have to take the class to stay on the football team. When those tactics don’t get the hoped for results, they predictably take the lower road of name calling and personal insults.

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Is Google gearing up to influence world power? By Eric Odom

Some might say it’s a bit “out there” to make statements as strong as “influence world power” when it comes to a search engine. But remember, there was a day when people thought it laughable that a search engine would ever become as big and powerful as Google.

Just how big has Google become? Well, if the Google-DoubleClick merger goes through, Google will dominate the PPC market, putting the company in a position that will pretty much allow them to “strong arm” anyone out of the search business.

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Ahmadinejad knows the power of boldfaced lies :: Foehammer's Anvil

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lies to an audience at Columbia University and states that “there are no homosexuals in Iran” it isn’t the lie that matters, it is the persistence with which he tells such lies. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad refuses to answer “yes” or “no” to a simple question — “Did the holocaust happen?” — it is the opportunity for him to call out for “justice” for the “Palestinian people”, all in the hopes of making more people forget that the Jews have a right to own their own nation, and in hopes of making people believe that there ever was a nation called Palestine (which there was not).

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The Counterjihad Calendar: November :: Gates of Vienna

The month of November in the Counterjihad Calendar is represented by Australia.
Australia has shown stalwart resistance to Islamization. Yes, it has its dhimmis, its PC brigades ready to crack down on “racism” at the drop of a burnoose, but its national character seems to have pushed all the Multicultural nonsense to the sidelines.

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The Ever-Elusive Hearts and Minds :: Gates of Vienna

Whenever I think of something that I want to say, it’s all but inevitable that Zionist Youngster has already said it better.
And so it is with a comment on yesterday’s post quoting from Staff Sergeant David Bellavia’s book about his experiences in Fallujah. An interesting discussion about the Iraq war developed in the comments, and Zionist Youngster had this to say:

Iraq showcases something other than what the Politically Correct (and PC taxpayers, such as President George W. “Islam is a religion of peace” Bush himself) would like to get from it: the unannounced support of the Muslim majority for the actions of a few. Or, as it is often put on Jihad Watch: Has a way of sifting the Muslims who don’t support jihad from those who do been devised yet?

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Why Unions Matter and Why They Ought to Scare You by Susan Heathfield.

GM Reports the UAW Has Called a National Strike. How's that for partnering for progress? More information at the Wall Street Journal. Says a reader about Michigan: "If we can follow up with a state shutdown next week we may be able to grab that coveted 50th place in the national business climate!"

Labor unions in America should have seen their time come and then, go. Representing approximately eight percent of the worker population in the United States, according to a speaker at this week's Michigan Chamber of Commerce legislative meeting in East Lansing, because of (in many cases) mandatory, untaxed member dues, labor unions have an unprecedented and undeserved impact on political action in America.

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Congress debate begins on North America Union By Jerome R. Corsi

A House resolution urging President Bush "not to go forward with the North American Union or the NAFTA Superhighway system" is – according to its sponsor Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., in an exclusive WND interview – "also a message to both the executive branch and the legislative branch."

As WND previously reported, on Jan. 22 Goode introduced H.C.R. 40, titled "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

The bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

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Max Boot's Illegal Army By Marcus Epstein

Council on Foreign Relations “Senior Fellow” Max Boot [email him], who epitomizes the "Invade The World/Invite The World" mentality of the neoconservatives, has objected to my objections to the DREAM Act in the Commentary Magazine blog Contentions.( Dream A Little DREAM Max Boot, September 20, 2007)

The DREAM act will give amnesty to illegal aliens who (among other things) sign up for the military. I accurately described such an institution as an "illegal alien legion".  Boot has argued for this policy for years. Now he has gone a step further in proposing a "freedom legion" that will allow not just illegal aliens but all foreigners to achieve American citizenship in exchange for military service.

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"We Need More Climate Catastrophes" By Luc Van Braekel

How do you persuade Europeans that America is concerned about climate change and is reducing its carbon emissions? Well, one way would be to put a fundamentalist environmental regulator from the state of California together with a pragmatic European bureaucrat from Brussels in a debate. After listening to both, the green girls and boys in the audience will be convinced that while Europe is talking and persuading, the US is acting, regulating, enforcing and punishing. Perhaps this was the reasoning at the US mission to the EU when they sponsored a debate on climate change last Wednesday in Brussels, organized by CafeBabel.com.

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Al Qaeda Targets Our Schoolchildren By Marc Sheppard

While Democrats prepare witless campaign slogans blaming Republicans for millions of children not protected by health insurance, al Qaeda's blatant threat to exterminate 2 million American kids remains unheeded.  And it will likely continue to be, notwithstanding mounting evidence that there exists no peril on Earth our young need greater protection from today than merciless jihadist monsters.

Not lack of a national insurance plan. Not global warming.  Not racial or cultural disparities. Not even the Patriot Act, any of its overplayed incursions into individual liberties, or any of the other countless silly and diaphanous liberal causes célèbres, but rather that which would abruptly and savagely end their innocent short lives.

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Intolerance in the Name of Tolerance By Cal Thomas

I would not be as bothered by Columbia University's decision to host Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if Columbia and other universities had a consistent policy toward those they invite to speak and the rules applied equally to conservatives and liberals; to totalitarian dictators and to advocates for freedom and tolerance.

Any conservative who has ever tried, or actually succeeded, in speaking on the campus of predominately liberal academic institutions knows it can resemble to some extent the struggle experienced by African Americans when they attempted to desegregate lunch counters in the South during the civil rights movement.

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The Misnomer of Radical Islam: America's Security Blunder By Martel Sobieskey

There is the erroneous assertion that Radical Islam is not connected with mainstream (moderate) Islam in any way, that the religion of Islam has been “hijacked by a few extremists” that the vast majority of Muslims do not agree with the Islamofascists. Such thinking is a terrible error and a grave threat to America’s national security, especially in this age of nuclear terrorism.

So what is Radical Islam and what should it be properly named? Radical Islam is actually the Islamic Military. The so-called radicals are not a fringe element; they are fully supported by the worldwide Islamic community (Ummah). If they were a fringe element, they would have been defeated long ago. The fight rages on because of strong support from the moderates both covertly and overtly. This means the Islamic Military (wrongly labeled radicals) is intimately connected with today’s moderate Muslims who we have mistakenly labeled as innocent bystanders.

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HIDDEN FROM THE WESTERN WORLD By: Al Cronkrite

English filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones has made a movie about a real-life incident during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda entitled “Beyond The Gates”. It stars John Hurt as a Catholic priest who lived in Africa for thirty years and was the director of a Catholic school and Hugh Dancy, the idealistic son of a well to do British family, as a young teacher at the school.

Caught in their compound by the vicious crescendo of violence that overtook this tiny nation and surrounded by Hutu killers, the priest and the teacher along with a couple of dozen other white refugees and over 2 thousand Tutsis were kept safe by United Nations troops until the troops were ordered out. The young teacher joined the evacuation which was confined to white Europeans but the priest stayed with his parishioners. All who stayed joined the 800 thousand to one million whose dead bodies littered the terrain of this Maryland sized nation; most were gleefully hacked to death with machetes.

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DARE WE CALL IT TREASON? By: Tom Rose

I love our American Republic and the individual freedom and personal responsibility for which it historically stands. But I fear for our nation because I see an immanent crisis looming on the horizon, and the vast majority of our people are unprepared to meet it. For many years hidden forces have secretly conspired to destroy our Constitution while, at the same time, insidiously working – through the news media, tax-supported education, and other ways – to undermine the capability of the average American to think constitutionally or to reason from cause to effect (that is, to think economically). The result is that the average person in America has not the slightest inkling of the deep problem(s) we face or how to go about solving them if he were aware!

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A Time to Remember the Iran-al Qaeda Connection By Douglas Farah

One of the more surprising things about Iran and the
visit of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is that Bush administration’s unwillingness to lay out the case of Iran’s unusual complicity with al Qaeda.

I say unusual only because Shi’ite governments do not often make common cause with Sunni radicals, although tactical alliances among non-state actors is not so unusual.

But, it seems, if the cause is big enough, tactical alliances can be made and endure. Hatred for the United States and a shared desire to create Islamist states seem to be enough in this case to unite the old guard of al Qaeda with the Ahmadinejad regime.

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The Jena Dodge By Heather Mac Donald

Let’s assume the worst about Jena, Louisiana, and the charges of attempted murder brought against five black youths for beating a white student unconscious last December: that the district attorney’s indictments were motivated by rank racism, and that the racial tensions in this town of 3,000 are exclusively the product of white animus against blacks. Does it follow that this latest object of frenzy on the media’s racism beat is emblematic of America’s judicial system or the state of race relations today?

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Leaving California: Is It Inevitable? By Joe Guzzardi

There is bad news about California and its future continues.  As a result many residents, me included, are contemplating what may be the inevitable--leaving the once Golden State.

        Among California’s most pressing problems is the state’s water shortage. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the Metropolitan Water District is considering water rationing in southern California in 2008 for 26 cities in six counties including Los Angeles and Ventura.

        The alarm bell went off when U.S. District Judge Oliver Wagner ruled last week that water imports from Northern California must be cut by up to 30 percent to protect the delta smelt, a small fish threatened with extinction.

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Scientists Speak Out Against AP’s Climate Change Fear-mongering By Noel Sheppard

Scientists from all over the world are coming out strongly against an inexcusably hysterical article recently published by the planet's leading wire service.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, the Associated Press published an unbelievably disgraceful article about global warming induced sea level rises supposedly destined to wipe out large amounts of American coastal communities in the next 100 years.

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Bush quietly advising Hillary Clinton by Bill Sammon

President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

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Hope Rides Eternal By David Jeffers

“Right now, the burden is all on the American soldiers. Right now, hope rides alone. But it can change, it must change. Because there is only failure and darkness ahead for us as a country, as a people, if it doesn't.”
– Sgt. Eddie Jeffers, USA, 1984-2007

Those now famous words scream out of these pages as a constant reminder of what I’ve lost. Those words were first sent to me as a quick note from my son serving so far away, becoming a man way too quick. I remember reading the email for the first time thinking to myself, “Oh my, Eddie has written something very big.” Of course in Eddie’s normal style, it came across as almost an afterthought.

Let me allow you to eavesdrop on his actual words from the original email: Dad, I've recently read all the emails you've sent, and I've decided to respond in the form of an actual article, it's been a long time coming. So here it is, do with it as you like.

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Global Warming: Now the Media Get Religion By Matthew Sheffield

In recent years, the liberal press has become increasingly upset with conservative religious people who maintain the rightfulness of having their political views stem from their religious ones on issues like abortion, gay rights, and welfare. Such views, according to the media, are illegitmate and even threaten the balance of church and state within our society.

Trouble is, though, liberal journalists don't apply this standard consistently. While the media are adamantly opposed to religious motivations on cultural issues, rarely do you hear the media grouse about Christians and Jews who oppose capital punishment on religious grounds. That's because religion is like anything else to the radical left--a means to an end. In the eyes of the media, the moral value of anything or anyone is directly proportional to its usefulness to liberalism.

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Law enforcement under attack by Islamic groups By Douglas J. Hagmann

Men and women in law enforcement have one of the toughest jobs in America, if not the toughest. It’s bad enough that they face the possibility of not returning home from their shift, but now they face the increased possibility of being sued by individuals and special interest groups largely representing the interests of enemies of America. Consider it another form of warfare by terrorists or terrorist sympathizers in this asymmetrical war in which we find ourselves.

For example, consider the case of 49 year-old Jeffrey SHIELDS, a Muslim convert from Ocala, Florida. SHIELDS, no stranger to the process of being arrested as indicated by his Florida rap sheet (below), is filing a civil rights complaint against four Ocala police officers for firing a Taser gun at him for not complying with their orders to him to show his hands, making sure that he was unarmed.

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Iran's German Enablers BY YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI

Business opportunities in Iran were the theme of a German government-sponsored conference last week in Darmstadt, Germany. "Iran is accustomed to crises," the conference invitation delicately noted, "but somehow always keeps going forward." In fact, Iran's resilience is made possible in no small measure by Germany itself, which remains one of Iran's largest trading partners. Now Berlin is balking at international attempts to intensify economic sanctions against the Tehran regime for its nuclear program.

Just how discordant Germany's Iranian policy is even within the European Union was made clear to me last spring, when I participated in a "roving seminar" on Iran and nuclear weapons that visited Paris, Brussels and Berlin. As the sole Israeli participant in the seminar--jointly sponsored by the German Marshall Fund and the American Enterprise Institute--I assumed that my role was to play the heavy, reminding naïve and self-righteous Europeans of the unpleasant truths of the Middle East.

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On Ahmadinejad; it’s not that complicated :: Pundit Review

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
-Mark Twain

And so it did this morning,

‘No homosexuals in Iran’: Ahmadinejad

NEW YORK (AFP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad skirted a question about the treatment of homosexuals in Iran on Monday, saying in a speech at a top US university that there were no gays in Iran.

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” Ahmadinejad said to howls and boos among the Columbia University audience.

“In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I don’t know who has told you that we have it,” he said.

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Aid and Comfort by Any Other Name By David J. Feith & Jordan C. Hirsch

Since news broke of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming speech at Columbia University, student groups on campus have been organizing protests to highlight the Iranian regime’s human-rights violations and belligerency. Correct as our peers are to do this, Columbia’s student leaders have wrongly answered the controversy’s central question: What standards should apply to a university’s decision to give an official invitation to a person such as Ahmadinejad?

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