It’s Time to Get Serious: Thompson for President By George Shadroui

Why settle, when we have a full-fledged, tough and experienced conservative to turn to?

It’s been fun, as it always is, to watch the horserace that is the presidential primary season.

The media loves it. Political junkies love it. And even the candidates seem to enjoy their moments in the spotlight.

At the end of the day, however, it is probably the candidate who has least enjoyed it who is best suited to be the next president. In my view, that person is Senator Fred Thompson.

I know there are those who claim he has run a lackluster campaign. Perhaps, though my own take is different. I think he is a guy who got into the race a bit reluctantly, precisely because the meat market of trying to win is not the same as the art of governing. I think it says a lot about Thompson’s character that he finds the spectacle a bit distasteful and isn’t afraid to show it.

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The Pentagon’s Muslim tug-of-war ends in defeat :: HOTAir

Islam, no pun intended as you’ll see below, wins a victory at the highest levels of the Pentagon.

Mentioned Dec 28, Steve Coughlin is looking for a new job.

Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon specialist on Islamic law and Islamist extremism, has been fired from his position on the military’s Joint Staff. The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

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Democracy Without Liberty Is Just Authority By Frank Salvato

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is probably one of the most serious events that has happened since the attacks of September 11, 2001. She represented a move toward a Pakistan governed by political process and away from government by military rule. Truth be told, the only true stabilizing force in Pakistan is its military.

It is for this reason that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was so reluctant to relinquish his military commission, a move he made in deference to his exclusively civilian role. To be sure, Bhutto was no angel but she was certainly a more attractive choice in an unattractive field.

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Hiding Black Interracial Crimes by Walter Williams

If you're like I am, you've heard scores of media reports about the 2006 Duke University rape case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black stripper at a wild party at the home of one of the team members. These guys, convicted by the news media and Duke faculty, were later found innocent. It turned out that Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was running for re-election. In seeking the black vote, he concealed DNA evidence that would have exonerated the lacrosse players.

You might remember hearing scores of stories about the 1998 murder of James Byrd, a black man who was stripped, chained to a pickup truck and dragged through the streets until he was decapitated in Jasper, Texas. The incident provided fodder for the NAACP and others to attack then-Texas Gov. George Bush, during his 2000 election campaign, for not supporting hate crime legislation. It turned out that two of Byrd's murderers were sentenced to death, and the other, life in prison.

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The Meaning of Jihad by John Lewis

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has published a first-rate piece on the meaning of jihad: “Jihad Today” by Menahem Milson (Inquiry and Analysis Series, No. 411 , December 20, 2007).

The topic of this piece is the concept of jihad—but the author’s abstract theme is that ideas matter. He begins by identifying the concept of jihad as presented to school children across the Middle East today, which is that of war on behalf of Islam. Milson translates from an 11th-grade textbook used in Jordan and Palestinian areas:

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A blatant propaganda piece compares the Palestinian movement to the U.S. Civil Rights movement ::CAMERA

"Any violence by a large population is not because the people is more violent than any other. It's an alarm, it's a sign, it's a signal that something is wrong in the treatment of this population."

This blanket excusing of violence sets the tone for Occupation 101, a film currently being promoted to schools, churches and activist groups. What follows is ninety minutes of indoctrination. Scenes of squalid refugee camps, Israeli soldiers assaulting protesters, despairing Palestinian mothers and teary-eyed children, serve as a backdrop to well-rehearsed indictments of the Jewish state by a who’s who of anti-Israel activists. Narrator Alison Weir and the producer/director team of Sufyan and Abdallah Omeish present a litany of anti-Zionist canards. The message throughout is that Palestinians are blameless victims while Israelis are entirely responsible for Palestinian violence.

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Conservative Media on the Defensive By Cliff Kincaid

If the liberal media have lost much of their influence, are the conservative media beginning to lose theirs? Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh is on the defensive for attacking Mike Huckabee, the big winner in the Republican Iowa Caucuses, and Fox News is under fire for excluding Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter from its scheduled Sunday night debate.

Limbaugh has a lot of egg on his face for trying to tell Republicans in Iowa that Huckabee was no Ronald Reagan and didn't deserve their votes. Limbaugh, who himself never voted for Ronald Reagan, told a caller, "…how dare you compare Mike Huckabee to Ronald Reagan. That is simply intellectually vapid, and it's grasping at straws."

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CNN and Hillary Destabilize Pakistan By Cliff Kincaid

In the wake of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Wolf Blitzer of CNN made much of an e-mail, exclusively provided to him by a close associate of Bhutto and a Hillary Clinton supporter, casting blame on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for her murder. We can now understand why Musharraf’s November 3 state-of-emergency decree took foreign news outlets like CNN off the air. Musharraf, who is one of the main targets of the al-Qaeda international terrorist organization, recognizes that the so-called “CNN effect” in global affairs can destabilize foreign governments, including his own. It’s no wonder that he recently complained about being betrayed by the Western media. 

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Islam vs. Free Speech by Jed Babbin

Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada.  They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America.

Muslims -- individually and in pressure groups -- are using British libel laws and Canadian “human rights” laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and Mark Steyn prove the point.

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Chinese scroll of Madonna and Child shows Christianity's spread By RON GROSSMAN :: CHICAGO TRIBUNE

CHICAGO _ As a pair of conservators at the Field Museum slowly unrolled an ancient Chinese scroll, it dramatically revealed how far the Christian faith has traveled since that first Christmas in Bethlehem.

Though the delicate watercolor of a Madonna and Child is among the oldest visual evidences of Christianity in the Far East, the museum had prosaically dubbed it "catalog number 116027." For decades, it sat in a dimly lit case, cracked and soiled. The details were hard to discern.

"I only began to realize how important this thing is when we (recently) had it restored," said curator Bennet Bronson. "Look."

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Orwell's Proposed Preface to ‘Animal Farm’

This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will ‘sell’), and in the event it was refused by four publishers. Only one of these had any ideological motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:

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Why Fred Might Be the Big Winner in Iowa :: The Sophistry

In the aftermath of the Iowa caucii, there are a number of views circulating throughout the Right Blogosphere about What It Means?  I’m going to add my $0.02 because I haven’t seen it really discussed much anywhere (although I crossposted this to Redstate.com for feedback).

My take on Iowa is that Fred Thompson may have been the big winner.  Now, I know most of you are going, “WTF are you smoking, son?”  And I realize the skepticism is warranted.

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Sudden Jihad Syndrome Is Still Terrorism :: NTA

When discussing “sudden jihad syndrome”, the most important point to remember is that it is not a mental illness, a temporary lapse in judgment, or the “acting out” of a wannabe terrorism fanatic. It is T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-M.

Whether it’s lying in wait, in a park with an automatic weapon, shooting up a Jewish Community Center, running your car at full speed through a crowd of students, or innocent citizens in the Bay Area, it is still terrorism. The following story appeared yesterday in the Washington Post.

Sympathy for al Qaeda has produced “sudden jihad syndrome” in domestic terror cells unaffiliated with foreign terrorists and people seeking to carry out attacks in the U.S., a law-enforcement intelligence analysis says.

The Dec. 6 report by the Texas Public Safety Department’s Bureau of Information Analysis warns officials not to dismiss individual or homegrown terror cells as “wannabes,” saying they pose a credible threat to homeland security.

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Don't criticise Islam, says UN by Damian Thompson :: Telegraph UK

It didn’t attract much notice, but the General Assembly of the United Nations ended the year by passing a disgusting resolution protecting Islam from criticism of its human rights violations.

The resolution shows a worrying acceptance of Islamic ideology

Lots of non-Muslims voted for it – a sign that more and more corrupt Third World governments are identifying with the ideology of Islam, even if they don't accept its doctrines.

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Trying Times For The Spread Of Democracy By Charles Krauthammer

Of all the understandings of the democratic idea, none could be more wrong than this one. Democracy at its very core is an antidote to the kind of dynastic revenge young Bhutto was suggesting.

For the Bhuttos, elections are a means for the family to regain power. Benazir was always avenging the death of her father, the former prime minister hanged two years after a coup. Bilawal is now pledged to do the same for his mother's martyrdom. The Pakistan People's Party has always been a wholly owned family subsidiary. Hence the almost unseemly haste with which Bhutto's husband and son were given immediate control upon Benazir's death.

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The real loser last night :: Power Line

To the extent that a skewed caucus process in one state can produce a loser, last night that loser was mainstream conservatism. That's because the only two major Republican candidates who take mainstream conservative positions across-the-board both fell short of expectations. Mitt Romney finished a distant and disappointing second, while Fred Thompson failed to finish a strong third, which he said he needed to do at a minimum. Thompson is plainly on the ropes and Romney will be if, as I expect, he fails to win in New Hampshire.

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Kosovo 101 By Julia Gorin

As usual, we must rely on the letters sections of our newspapers if we want to glimpse any truth in print about Kosovo or the rest of the Balkans — since the papers themselves will print only the propaganda that the letters object to. Financial Times recently carried an exceptional letter that spelled out Kosovo’s non-case for independence. From Oskar Lindström, of Sweden:

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Hispanic gang may be responsible for vandalizing Vietnam War memorial By Chad Groening

An author and investigative journalist who has done extensive research on notorious Hispanic street gangs says it's "sickening" that a Vietnam War memorial has been defaced with gang graffiti.

Veterans in New Haven, Connecticut, are outraged over the vandalized memorial at Long Wharf. Spray paint now covers the names of many veterans who fought and died in that conflict. The El Salvadoran gang, known as MS-13, is believed to be responsible for the vandalism.

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2008-Crimes By Bob Parks

Every year, people come out with their “New Year’s Resolutions”; their wish lists of things they hope to either accomplish or see accomplished during the coming year.

As we all know, many of these wishes, or “pledges”, are broken within days, so I don’t hold much optimism that these will hold, but there’s nothing wrong with hoping...

The End of Campaign 2008

Because of the “early” start, many of us are already sick of this campaign season. There are political ads flooding our markets with presidential candidates making promises they know they can’t keep, as they don’t know what the political make up of the Congress will be.

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Culture? Or Religion? By Robert Spencer

Below is my FrontPage article for today, "Islamic Misogyny," about the feminist Left's silence on the Aqsa Parvez case. I wrote this article before the murders of Amina and Sarah Said, but as it happens, it touches on many themes that are newly relevant in light of their horrific deaths. For this morning Islam Said, the brother of Amina and Sarah Said, says that the killings were not honor killings: "It's not religion. It's something else. Religion has nothing to do with it."

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Over A Barrel By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Crude futures topped the symbolic century mark on the New York Merc on Wednesday as worldwide demand continues to climb and instability in Pakistan and oil-producing countries such as Nigeria creates uncertainty about supplies.

Oil is now within reach of the inflation-adjusted high of $102 set in April 1980 in the wake of the Iranian revolution and amid Carter-era solutions such as windfall profit taxes and price controls.

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More Inconvenient Truths By Jack Ward

In Al Gore’s environmental tome and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, he claims that anthropogenic (human-caused) activity will cause irreversible damage to the planet. The basis of this claim is that by using carbon-based fuels (oil, gas, coal, wood) to produce energy, we will increase the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and cause global warming. According to Gore, this global warming will cause glaciers to melt, causing the oceans to rise thereby flooding all the coastal communities. Of course, the poor, minorities, women, and children will die first.

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Newt Gingrich Out-Greens Al Gore? By Steven Milloy

Newt Gingrich has guzzled Al Gore’s Kool-Aid. Now he wants us and the Republican 2008 presidential candidates to drink it, too.

The former House Speaker’s latest book, "A Contract with the Earth" co-authored with Palm Beach Zoo CEO Terry Maple, is an appalling paean to environmental naïveté and taxpayer-subsidized profiteering.
While the book’s theme — i.e., let’s all just happily pitch in and do what it takes to save the environment — may sound reasonable, at least on a superficial basis, Mr. Gingrich’s notions are often wrong or simply bizarre, and his prescriptions amount to little more than a full embrace of rent-seeking "green" business and left-leaning eco-activist groups, both of which often masquerade as "protectors" of the environment.

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Terrorists, Drug Dealers and People Smugglers Welcomed into USA By Sher Zieve

In case you happened to miss recent news on the subject, the Democrat-run US Congress has now officially welcomed terrorists, drug and people-smugglers into the United States of America. Welcome wagons, if not the proverbial red carpets, are now being extended to non-citizen criminals - many of whom have vowed to destroy the USA and its entire people—in a heretofore unprecedented manner. Refusing to follow the dictates of those US citizens who elected them, members of these now less-than-august bodies have, instead, decided to curry favor with our country’s enemies - enemies who are currently either firmly at the gate or who have already freely entered the country.

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This is war.... By Carolyn Hileman

Call it what you want I call it treason, when senators who are supposed to be doing the bidding of the people decide on their own during the holidays to kill the border fencing when the people called and sent emails in support of this fence it shows simply that our government has resorted to tyranny and is no longer a government by the people for the people but a government of the senate for the senate and senator Harry Reid is now our leader.

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The Social Gospel Has Found its Savior By Thomas E. Brewton

Read Lawrence Auster's "Deification of Gore" in View From the Right.

Regrettably, well meaning Christian ministers like Rick Warren are supporting Mr.  Gore's junk scientism and the power of man over the earth, rather than sticking to faith in the one True God as Creator and Regulator of the cosmos.

In so doing they are verging perilously close to the social gospel, a phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The social gospel reflected the rising popularity of the secular political state and its presumed capacity, when properly structured on the socialistic model, to produce earthly salvation without need for God and the Holy Spirit.

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Hurricane watcher disputes number of 2007 storms By KEN KAYE

A well-known name in hurricane-forecasting circles _ Neil Frank _ is challenging how the National Hurricane Center classifies storms. Last year, he contends, six of the 15 named systems may have been too weak to really deserve tropical storm status.

"They're questionable," said Frank, the hurricane center's director from 1974 to 1987 and now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.

Though it might seem he is trying to upstage the hurricane center, his real intent, Frank said, is to dispute that global warming has led to more active Atlantic tropical storm seasons, as several meteorological studies have asserted. Over the past decade, Frank maintains, numerous systems were classified as tropical storms and hurricanes that probably didn't warrant that status.

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Does Sharia Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.? By Humbled Infidel

A narrow, technical New York Appeals Court decision rendered last month essentially means that American writers and publishers can be held subject to Islamic law. Alyssa Lappen explains how. Article is on Pajamas Media.

Intended or not, a narrow, technical New York Appeals Court decision on Thursday Dec. 20, 2007 produces that net effect. The ruling concerns jurisdiction in Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld’s suit against Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, seeking a federal declaratory judgment against him to render unenforceable in the U.S. a U.K. High Court default “libel” decision. By implication, the New York Appeals Court ruling harms all publishers and writers in New York, the world’s publishing capital.

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Cultural Cavemen and the Wimps of the West by Erik Rush

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen."

Al-Qaeda commander and spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid, referencing the
assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto; Adnkronos
International News Service (AKI), December
27, 2007.

Lest I wind up standing back-to-back with actor Will Smith tomorrow morning defending myself against flying produce (Smith is taller, so I might not fare too badly), I’ll insert the disclaimer here: My personal, moral and religious values preclude a belief that any ethnic group is inherently superior or inferior to any other.

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Kooks With Nukes In Pakistan: Uncle Sam Says Fret Not

By John W. Lillpop

Those who fret about the presence of nuclear weapons in the violent and unstable nation of Pakistan need not concern themselves.

According to the U.S. government, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal is secure despite political turmoil after the assassination of Ms. Bhutto.

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The Challenge of 2008 & Beyond By Alan Caruba

The beginning of a new year is a good time to consider the many things that differentiate this new century from the last.

I’d like to recommend that everyone read «It’s Getting Better All the Time: Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years» by Stephen Moore and the late Julian L. Simon. It was published in 2000 by the Cato Institute and is singularly the best reference for anyone and everyone who assumes we have always had electricity, global telecommunications, abundant food, and extraordinary medical treatment.

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Republican identity jumps to two year high ByRick Moran

According to pollster Rasmussen, the number of Americans who identify themselves as Republican has risen to a two year high:

The number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans jumped nearly two percentage points in December to 34.2%. That’s the largest market share for the Republican brand in nearly two years, since January 2006 (see history from January 2004 to present).

At the same time, the number of Democrats fell to 36.3%. That’s down a point compared to a month ago. During 2007, the number of Democrats has ranged from a low of 35.9% in July to a high of 37.8% in February.

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Kwanzaa: Holiday From The FBI By Ann Coulter

Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? The same goes for the Iowa caucuses -- the early scheduling of which forced me to run an attack on a synthetic candidate, rather than a synthetic holiday, last week.

I've seen so few mentions of Kwanzaa this year, I was going to declare my campaign a success, but I see that President Bush issued another absurd Kwanzaa message in December, referring to millions of African-Americans gathering to celebrate Kwanzaa.

I believe more African-Americans spent this season reflecting on the birth of Christ than some phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks.

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To Black Americans...And Every Other Citizen By A.J. DiCintio

For years some black VIP’s have insisted upon anointing Bill Clinton “America’s first black President.” In fact, these elites are so determined to have the nation accept their claim that one of them recently asserted not only that “Bill is every bit as black as Barack” but also that the former president has “probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

That last statement deserves a thorough condemnation because it reveals how politicians will obscenely insult even their sisters and brothers for the love of power. But today I’m asking black Americans and every other citizen to spend a few minutes examining the validity of the whole “black” business about Bill Clinton, especially because the VIP’s mentioned above are asking voters to transfer Bill Clinton’s “admirable blackness” to his wife Hillary.

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One Sunday afternoon in December, the History Channel (an NBC owned station) broadcast a replay of Clear and Present Danger, the film based upon the Tom Clancy novel. Co-hosting the rerun were the Channel’s in-house liberal historian, Steve Gillon, and guest liberal political commentator Neal Gabler. Neither, of course, was identified ideologically.

In brief, the movie’s storyline, centers on a fictional presidential administration that cuts off assistance to American soldiers involved in anti-drug efforts in Columbia and leaves them to be slaughtered.

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UN Condemns Counterterrorism By Robert Spencer

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the largest voting bloc at the United Nations, has succeeded in pushing through the UN a resolution condemning the “defamation of religions.” That’s “religions,” not “religion” – yet according to Cybercast News Service, “although the resolution refers to defamation of ‘religions,’ Islam is the only religion named in the text, which also takes a swipe at counter-terrorism security measures.” The OIC has been pushing hard for such a measure ever since cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten late in 2005.

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BRAM STOKER'S HILLARY By Norman Liebmann

Preamble: To paraphrase an old song, old vampires never die, they just run for President. The proliferation of the Clintons and the Bushes raises the question of whether we will have to tent the White House to deal with this infestation. Some bat control experts refer to one method of thinning the recent presidential vampire population as “deathnic cleansing”.

Is Hillary Clinton a vampire? She doesn’t deny it, and that is a standard of proof that has stood up in many courts of the land. Let us say the question frequently asked by the night crawlers that emerge in Washington at sundown is, “Hillary Clinton? Is she still dead?” (One contraindication is that she does not sleep in a coffin for fear that hubby Bill would sneak into her chamber and nail the lid shut.)

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A cold spell soon to replace global warming :: RIA Novosti

MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.



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2008 to be in top 10 warmest years say forecasters By Jeremy Lovell :: Reuters

2008 will be slightly cooler than recent years globally but will still be among the top 10 warmest years on record since 1850 and should not be seen as a sign global warming was on the wane, British forecasters said.

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The Pre-Election Paradox BY DANIEL HENNINGER

"On New Year's Eve, Gallup's poll delivered unto us the good news that 84% of Americans say they are satisfied with how things are going for them personally. What Woody Allen might say about that phenomenal datum of good cheer one can only guess. One then has to account for the darker data Gallup released two weeks earlier: Some 70% of those responding believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

Explanations for this paradox would fill screen after screen of comments on Internet blogs, written no doubt by the 16% who can never be satisfied with 'how things are going.' Sample: It's the 46 million uninsured, stupid!"

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Verification of 22 Historic Climate Studies Pinpoints Patterns in Data Errors By Angelique van Engelen

We're swamped with information about anticipated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the indicators vary wildly. A new study compared the historic numbers of 22 trend-setting organizations to actual findings and found out where data fouls up.

The researchers compared the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual data. Many of these models are also incorporated in research by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the recent Nobel laureate.

Turns out that the historic predictions of these models do not match current climate change by far. The problem lies in the measurement of key portions of the atmosphere, the researchers say. They devised a better method which they claim will be more reliable for future predictions because datasets that have been faulty have been pinpointed at long last.

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Staten Island Mystery :: NIN

Witnesses described the events during the afternoon of December 21, 2007 “as something from a movie” – birds dropping from the sky in mid-flight over a small area on Staten Island, most of them dying before hitting the ground. Birds that did not die in mid-flight reportedly “landed, lied on the ground, flapped and died.” The most recent estimates of dead birds currently range between 50 and 75, with the majority of the birds being Purple Martins. Most of the birds dropped from flight within the Port Regalle development near the intersection of Wiman Avenue and Tennyson Drive, on the southeastern shore of Staten Island.

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Voters Without Borders By KENNETH BLACKWELL

On January 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments for one of the biggest election law cases in years. This case might decide who becomes president of America, and shape the future of the country.

The Court will hear arguments in the consolidated cases of Crawford v. Marion County and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita. At issue in the case is Indiana's new voter ID law.

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Mr. Sharpton’s Neighborhood By James Kirchick

New York magazine recently reported on the continuing political influence of Al Sharpton, a man whose last foray into politics was the 2004 Democratic presidential primary in which he received negligible support. For some inexplicable reason, Sharpton plays the role of kingmaker in Democratic circles, with candidates falsely assuming that he holds sway with black voters. Sitting with him at the swank Grand Havana Room on Fifth Avenue, Geoffrey Gray listens to voicemails left on Sharpton’s phone from both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seeking Sharpton’s advice. “In the end they may all hate my guts,” Sharpton says. “But it’s the reality of the landscape . . . how much they need me and how bad. I’m sure right now they know they need me.”
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Does Sharia Libel Law Now Apply in the U.S.? by Alyssa A. Lappen

Unless the U.S. Congress and New York legislatures act immediately to stop them, foreign terror financiers and libel tourists now can essentially impose sharia (Islamic) law on American writers and publishers.

Intended or not, a narrow, technical New York Appeals Court decision on Thursday Dec. 20, 2007 produces that net effect. The ruling concerns jurisdiction in Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld’s suit against Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz, seeking a federal declaratory judgment against him to render unenforceable in the U.S. a U.K. High Court default “libel” decision. By implication, the New York Appeals Court ruling harms all publishers and writers in New York, the world’s publishing capital.

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America's Pursuit Of Happiness By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

A long-forgotten 1960s movie title pretty much sums up how Americans feel about their lives: "What's So Bad About Feeling Good?" According to a new Gallup Poll, for most people that's not just a rhetorical question.

"Most Americans say they are generally happy, with a slim majority saying they are 'very happy,' " according to the Gallup Poll released on the final day of 2007. "More than 8 in 10 Americans say they are satisfied with their personal lives at this time, including a solid majority who say they are 'very satisfied.' "

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Yemen Times columnist: There must be violence against women :: Jihad Watch

Over the next few days, as more details emerge about the murders of Amina and Sarah Said, we will see Islamic spokesmen on TV (Ibrahim Hooper is probably sitting for make-up as you read this) explaining that honor killing is a cultural practice that has nothing to do with Islam, and of course above all the one thing we must avoid doing in the aftermath of these murders is entertain for even a moment the possibility that Islamic attitudes and atmospherics had anything to do with the deaths of these girls. And Alan Colmes will nod sagely and agree that Islamophobia is a terrible problem, and Sean Hannity will burble about the "hijacking of a great religion," and Glenn Beck will assure us that the Qur'an teaches nonviolence, and a splendid time is guaranteed for all. No one will dream of holding the American Muslim community accountable for aiding and abetting the creation of a culture of violence against women. Oh no. That would be "Islamophobic."

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The Pleasures of Assassination by Theodore Dalrymple

When President Bush described the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as cowardly, he chose precisely the wrong word. (He was not the only person to do so, but he was the most important one to do so.) In fact, it was a very courageous act: for it requires great courage to assassinate someone in the middle of a large and volatile crowd favourable to that person, and above all then to blow yourself up just to make sure that you have succeeded. Not many people have that degree of courage: I certainly don’t.

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Muslim Organization in Nashville, Tennessee: An Overview by Rebecca Bynum and Elizabeth Noble

Nashville, Tennessee has one of the fastest growing foreign-born populations of any major US city. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, “The 2000 data showed an increase of 210.1 percent in the immigrant population since 1990, which compared with a 6.5 percent increase in the native-born population (which includes children born to immigrants) over the same period. That meant that immigration accounted directly for 45.4 percent of the overall population increase of the city.” Though much of this increase is comprised of immigrants from Southeast Asia, for our purposes we will focus on the Muslim population which accounts for up to half of all immigrants claiming refugee status to the United States.

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Muhammad and Mrs. Jones - Kenny Gamble's Philadelphia Muslim Enclave By Beila Rabinowitz

Kenny Gamble is best known for being "the architect of the Philly Soul Sound." His catalog of hits includes "Me and Mrs. Jones" and he and longtime collaborator Leon Huff are slated to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next year. But Gamble is also the architect of a planned stealth Islamist enclave in Philadelphia where he is better known in Muslim circles as Brother Luqman Abdul Haqq.

Gamble has admitted that he intends to bring about the Muslim community in South Philadelphia through his "Universal Companies" and proclaims that his state and federally subsidized funded building endeavors are part of an Islamist blueprint, "We are not down here just for Universal-we are down here for Islam."

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Dead in Dallas: Honor Killings Land on our Shores By Phyllis Chesler

They have dishonored our shores for quite some time and more keep coming our way.
I am talking about honor killings in North America. In The Death of Feminism, I write about honor murders in Missouri, Ohio, and in parts of New Jersey, New York, and Canada which took place during the last quarter-century.

Just yesterday, an Egyptian Arab Muslim father in Dallas, Texas allegedly shot his two beautiful teenage daughters to death because he disapproved of their American-style ways. Their names were Amina and Sarah Said and their father’s name was Abdul Said. The girls looked sassy and full of life; they looked like Dallas teenagers. They were 17 and 18 years old and their friends considered them “geniuses.” Abdul was a taxi driver. (In parts of Europe, taxi drivers are known to aid and abet honor murders).

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A revenger's tragedy By Ziauddin Sardar

Pakistan has a new political leader barely out of nappies. Bila wal Bhutto, 19, has become the new chairman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), after the assassination of his mother, Benazir Bhutto. The teenager, who has hardly spent any time in Pakistan and speaks virtually no Urdu, will share the responsibility of leading the most powerful political party in Pakistan with his widower father, Asif Ali Zardari, who has become co-chair of the PPP. This is what Benazir has bequeathed to the party and the nation.

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The Extremists Are Undermining Democracy by Kamala Sarup

The Extremists Are Undermining Democracy by Kamala Sarup: "Terrorism is not over. Extremism is not over. The extremists, and terrorists are forging a front to eliminate democracy. One cannot ignore reality. Worry is not a solution. Things cannot go back to what it was. Need innovative thinking to match the new and emerging reality.

'Should be' is not the solution. Focusing on 'what can or could be' would be more realistic. The real controversial issue is the retention or ending of violence and extremism. The question of the role of the people is valid only if a decision to retain the violence-free, extremist-free or leftist-free society is made. A sustainable system has to be that which evolves from practice not prescribed in terms of ideology. Here again, the term 'should be' should be replaced by 'can be'."

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The Conservative Tide in Major Democracies By Bruce Walker

When things are going poorly for the Left, count on it to change the subject.  After the surge refused to fail, the surge ceased to be news.  Recall four years ago, when "all" the leaders of our major democratic friends were hostile to America, to our liberation of Iraq, and in particular to President Bush?  Remember how Senator Kerry said that leaders of Europe privately wanted him to win the presidency?  That news has ceased to become newsworthy. 
Why? Because, like the surge, the sentiment in major democracies has turned as well.

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The Other Jihad: Islam's War on the Hindus By Janet Levy

Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal catastrophically may fall into the hands of jihadists. But the South Asian version of jihad is a less familiar but no less fearsome variant of the war directed at the Great Satan America, and the Little Satan, Israel.

At one billion people, Hindus, the majority of whom live in the Indian sub-continent, constitute the third largest religion in the world after two billion Christians and 1.5 billion Muslims. Yet, their numbers have not spared Hindus from ongoing, systematic Muslim attacks in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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2007: A Global Assessment of the Confrontation Dr. Walid Phares

The conflict we call the War on Terror still continues at the end of 2007 and all indications are that its battlefields are expected to spread further, and escalate, in the upcoming year.

The following is a global assessment of the confrontation that has taken place since 2001, though the systematic war waged by the Jihadi forces against democracies and the free world began at least a decade before 9/11. This evaluation isn't comprehensive or definitive, but a collection of observations related to major benchmarks, directions and projections.

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Bhutto’s Assassination Must Lead to War on Islamism by Michael J. Economides

Predictably, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Dec. 27. Few, herself included, thought she was safe in Pakistan. On the day of her return from exile last October, scores of her welcoming supporters died near her motorcade in Karachi; victims of at least two suicide bomb attacks.

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Man of the Year: General David Petraeus By Ben Johnson

IN MOST YEARS, SEVERAL PEOPLE COULD REASONABLY BE SELECTED FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE’S MAN OF THE YEAR. This year, one candidate distinguished himself beyond all others: General David Howell Petraeus. In commanding the U.S. Surge in Iraq, Petraeus has not merely arrested an explosive and deteriorating security situation but has reversed terrorist initiatives, driving al-Qaeda out of a province it once governed and denying it the ability to reconstitute a Salafist safe haven. No one has more significantly advanced the welfare of the United States and the cause of freedom in 2007 as Gen. Petraeus, and none has been as harassed as a result – not merely harassed unduly but harassed precisely because he aided liberty’s cause in a time when so many seek to benefit politically from its diminution. In his selection, FrontPage Magazine maintains its tradition – expressed by honoring Col. Allen B. West, John O’Neill, and Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean in years past – of especially praising those who have been maligned, derided, and belittled (or worse) for merely doing their duty.

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Kiss your bulbs goodbye By Joseph Farah

I've often said America faces danger from creeping fascism.

I said that not because, as Ron Paul might suggest, too many Americans are proud to wave their flag or say their prayers.

On the contrary. The real reason we face this danger is because the American people are just too willing to allow their corrupt and clueless elected leaders to pervert, distort and undermine the Constitution in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few short years ago.

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Bible standards attacked in 'bastardized courts' By Bob Unruh

Biblical standards are under attack by the "bastardized courts" of Canada, where activists who claim they have "hurt feelings" are demanding – and getting – penalties imposed against those who oppose the homosexual lifestyle, according to a family organization.

The description of the courts, also known as the provincial and national Human Rights Commissions, comes from the Canada Family Action Coalition, which has addressed the problem in an alert to its constituents, and warns the United States is not that far from having similar assaults on traditional family values.

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Winners of the 2007 Award for Political Incorrectness By Carey Roberts

The Duke lacrosse case represents an enduring failure of the American mainstream media.  Not only did the New York Times, CNN, USA Today, and other outlets neglect their duty to provide balanced and factual coverage of the case.  Worse, they became the public relations arm of a sleazy prosecutor named Michael Nifong.

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White House Scores Knockout Over New York Times By Cliff Kincaid

Like Floyd Mayweather knocking down Ricky Hatton in the recent welterweight title fight, the White House has exposed how the New York Times makes things up for dramatic political effect. The paper has now corrected the record in its coverage of White House statements on the CIA destruction of interrogation tapes. It’s a knockout win for the White House and a loss for the Bush-bashing press.    

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The Top 20 Stories Of 2007 By John Hawkins

20) Anna Nicole Smith dies and no one can figure out who the father of her child is because she apparently slept with 1 out of every 10 adult males on the planet earth within 3 months of when her kid was conceived.

19) Larry Craig's "wide stance" got him into trouble in an airport bathroom.

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10 Reasons Why Pastors Avoid the Culture War By Doug Giles

As far as I’m concerned, a silent or waffling pastor in today’s paranormal climate is about as necessary as Rosie O’Donnell is to CPAC. I don’t care how much the minister likes kitty cats, candy canes, and if he cries at Celine Dion concerts. Look, voiceless vicar, if you’re not currently in the middle of this crucial cultural squabble, pointing out what’s putrid and cheering on what’s proper, then you’re Dr. Evil in my book.

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The systematic destruction of Europe is happening before our eyes by Lawrence Auster

Tiberge at Galliawatch excerpts an article by former French ambassador Christopher Lambert, entitled "The Inexorable Suicide of Europe." He's talking about the ongoing mass immigration from Africa and elsewhere into France and the rest of Western Europe.

See the photo at the top of the post--it is of the Carolingian chapel at Aachen.

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The new world order that threatens Uncle Sam By Henry Porter

Two events last week make me wish I could have just a few words with American thinker Francis Fukuyama. The first was Time magazine giving Vladimir Putin the accolade of person of the year. The second was the purchase by the China Investment Corp of nearly 10 per cent of American bank Morgan Stanley as it announced the write-off of $9.4bn in bad debts

In 1992, I met Francis Fukuyama when he was touring his book The End of History and the Last Man and explaining to anyone who would listen that the world had reached a point where there was no longer any meaningful dispute between Marxism and the market. More particularly, he said, it looked as though Western liberal democracy was becoming 'the final form of human government'.

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Reflections on the Watergate Tragedy By Jeff Lukens

To understand Watergate, we need to understand the times in which Richard Nixon was president. Nixon was the only president of the 20th Century to face an unyielding and organized resistance to a war. LBJ had handed him a war without end, Vietnam, and consequently, great unrest at home. Washington was regularly filled with thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of protesters. The counterculture movement, born in those days, was bent on overturning the very foundations of American life.

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More Inconvenient Truths By Jack Ward

In Al Gore’s environmental tome and movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, he claims that anthropogenic (human-caused) activity will cause irreversible damage to the planet. The basis of this claim is that by using carbon based fuels (oil, gas, coal, wood) to produce energy, we will increase the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and cause global warming. According to Gore, this global warming will cause glaciers to melt, causing the oceans to rise thereby flooding all the coastal communities. Of course, the poor, minorities, women, and children will die first.

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Liberalism Will Lose This "Cold War" By Chris Adamo

On June 24, 1948, after having isolated West Berlin inside of the boundaries of Communist East Germany, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin suddenly cut off all road shipments into the city, essentially laying siege to it with the expectations that it could be starved into subjection and thus added to his expansionist regime.

In a daring and decisive response President Harry Truman ordered every available military cargo plane to the area thereby providing a lifeline of food and supplies to the beleaguered West Berliners. In many respects, the famous operation that became known as the Berlin Airlift represented the initial indirect “volley” of the Cold War.

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A New Low in Foolhardy Fear-Mongering By JB Williams

Champion of prostitutes, drug dealers, white supremacists and anti-war activists like MoveOn.org, Code Pink, libertarian Lew Rockwell and girl friend Cindy Sheehan, Ron Paul is raising money from outside of the Republican Party and counting on one day party-jumpers to secure the Republican nomination.

In terms of fund-raising, Paul really is setting campaign records. He has also set new records for working outside of a political party to upset the party he claims his rightful home and is well on his way to setting a new low standard for foolhardy fear-mongering.

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A Harried Screed from Harry Reid By Marc Sheppard

First, he dismissed Roll Call’s assertion -- that the majority of “airdropped earmarks” in recent legislation favored committee members and vulnerable incumbents -- as just “somebody’s news article.” Then, literally seconds later, Harry Reid suggested that Iraqis’ resentment of American presence on their soil can be readily assessed – by reading somebody’s news article.

When asked at Wednesday’s Democratic Leaders Year-End Legislative Briefing whether the role of “airdropped” earmarks in the $555 billion spending package approved by the House on Wednesday betrayed the “restoring accountability” reform promise Dems ran on last year, Reid replied:

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The Islamist war on Muslim women By Jeff Jacoby

THE "QATIF GIRL" won a reprieve last week. On Dec. 17, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah pardoned the young woman, who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison after she pressed charges against seven men who had raped her and a male acquaintance in 2006. Two weeks earlier, Sudan's president extended a similar reprieve to Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher convicted of insulting Islam because her 7-year-old students named a teddy bear Muhammad. Gibbons had been sentenced to prison, but government-organized street demonstrators were loudly demanding her execution.

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The Energy Bill: The Death of Small Government Conservatives by Martha Zoller

“Pelosi: ‘This is a choice between yesterday and tomorrow’: Energy bill promises to change how we live” Headline from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday, December 19th.

I don’t know about you but I’ve had about enough of government changing the way I live.  From the moment I get up in the morning, until I go to sleep at night, the government is in my life and now they want to tell me what kind of light bulbs to use and what kind of car to drive and what kind of fuel to use. 

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The End of America? By Jacob Laksin

"So it turns out that we are at war -- a long war, a global war, a war for our civilization."

The line might well have been written by Norman Podhoretz but in fact it comes from Naomi Wolf in her new book, The End of America. It would seem, on first glance, a welcome sign of intellectual maturity from the feminist critic whose most famous contribution to American political discourse is advising Al Gore to wear "earth tones" during the 2000 presidential election.

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The Cradle’s Revenge :: The Brussels Journal

[T]he pansexual hedonists of the Netherlands are now in a panic over their nation’s Islamic future. Even the blasé Parisians have begun to wonder whether their nation’s bureaucratically atheist state is acid enough to dissolve the faith of burgeoning immigrants – before the Arabs outbreed, outvote, and expel the residual Frenchmen. The Germans who a generation ago worshiped their race as a pagan god now look on lackadaisically, and welcome the Turk into Europe. To read their children’s future, they may look to the fate of the Christians in Lebanon, or Kosovo – two other lands where the cradle has had its revenge.

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Stepping Back from the Precipice By Alan Caruba

The end of a year, any year, is a good time to give some consideration to the reason we have arrived at a particular state of affairs and whether a new direction is required. This is particularly true at a time when the campaigns to be the party’s choice for the presidency is more drenched in debate of religious issues and assertions, than in domestic and foreign policy issues.

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"Show Me A Good Loser, And I'll Show You A Loser" by Jay Tea

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

That line from Shakespeare's Henry VI is oft quoted, but now I wonder if it will gain in popularity among the militaries.

Thanks to He Who Needs No Linkage, I found this article from the Jerusalem Post. It seems that there is one contingent among the Israeli military and government that is well pleased with last year's aborted war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, that ended with absolutely nothing resolved on the battlefield -- the lawyers.

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Reply to the Spectator's Christianity-hater Stephen Pollard by Lawrence Auster

Below is a follow-up comment I've sent to Stephen Pollard's blog at the Spectator. The comment has been posted, but unfortunately with all the paragraph breaks missing. There are many other comments posted in that discussion, and I'm glad to see that I am not the only person who is deeply offended by Pollard, though there is also the usual liberal contingent ranging from the virulently anti-Christian to the clueless.

I earlier missed Stephen Pollard's reply to my comment. He wrote:

"UPDATE: So much for the Xmas spirit. There were some very tetchy and, frankly, weird comments sent on this post. I couldn't allow a couple to be posted, so vile were their antisemitic words.

"Lawrence Auster accuses me of expressing my contempt for the majority religion of Britain and describes the post as obnoxious. I'd be grateful, Lawrence, if you could point to one mention of Christianity above, let alone an expression of contempt for it. As I say: weird. I simply wrote that I am happy to join in a big national secular festival, which Xmas has now become. How is that construed as my expressing contempt for Christianity?"

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The Rise of China & the Future of the West By John Ikenberry

The rise of China will undoubtedly be one of the great dramas of the twenty-first century. China's extraordinary economic growth and active diplomacy are already transforming East Asia, and future decades will see even greater increases in Chinese power and influence. But exactly how this drama will play out is an open question. Will China overthrow the existing order or become a part of it? And what, if anything, can the United States do to maintain its position as China rises?

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Subverting Bush at Langley By Robert Novak

Outrage over the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes is but one element of the distress about the agency by Republican intelligence watchdogs in Congress. "It is acting as though it is autonomous, not accountable to anyone," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told me. That is his mildest language about the CIA. In carefully selected adjectives, Hoekstra calls it "incompetent, arrogant and political."

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Has global warming stopped? David Whitehouse

Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?

Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.

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Moving Deck Chairs on the Titanic by Terry Easton

Supporters of so-called global warming tend to fall into one (or more) of three categories: politicians who want to use this latest scare tactic as another means to take more control and power over our lives, corrupt businessmen who want to profit by selling snake oil solutions to a gullible public, or ignorant but well-intentioned people who have bought into another fantasy fable.  

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Benedict XVI resurrects the aesthetics of the Mass By Michael Knox Beran

In a recent address to the bishops and priests of St. Peter’s, Pope Benedict called for a greater “continuity with tradition” in the music of the Church, and spoke of the value of the Church’s older musical traditions, among them the baroque sacred music of the 17th and 18th centuries and Gregorian Chant. The address followed the pope’s issuance, in July, of an Apostolic Letter (accompanying letter in English here) in which he permitted broader use of the Latin Mass, the “Tridentine” rite authorized by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century and promulgated most recently by John XXIII in 1962.

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Liberals Sing ‘Huckelujah’ by Ann Coulter

All I want for Christmas is for Christians to listen to what Mike Huckabee says, rather than what the media say about him. The mainstream media keep flogging Huckabee for being a Christian, apparently unaware that this "God" fellow is testing through the roof in focus groups.

Huckabee is a "compassionate conservative" only in the sense that calling him a conservative is being compassionate.

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I’m a Terrorist Groupie, Hear Me Roar! By Fjordman

I have heard some people say that Western popular culture will destroy Islam. That is possible, but we need to remember that this is not a one-way street. What if the opposite happens? Sometimes the barbarians also influence the civilized people, and there is a disturbing amount of “understanding” for terrorists in Western movies and media these days. Creeps come crawling out of the woodwork, more or less cheering for the terrorists who are trying to bring society down. There are probably always people who are drawn to blood and mayhem. They would like to destroy the current political order, but aren’t capable of doing it themselves, so they end up as cheerleaders for those who are attempting to do so. Let’s call them “terrorist groupies.” I’m not just talking about the Oscar-nominated suicide bomber film Paradise Now. There are others examples of this mentality.

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Never Mind the Bomb, Beware of Islamofascism By Amil Imani

The National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran’s bomb project has stirred a great deal of controversy. Some say that there is now reason to abandon the war posturing and start negotiating a live-and-let-live deal with the Mullahs, since they have “abandoned” their quest for the bomb. At least that is what the not-so-reliable report seems to imply. Others, with good reason, remain skeptical of both the validity of the report and the ever-cheating, conniving Mullahs.

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Interview with Bat Ye'or: After Saturday (Israel), comes Sunday (Europe) By Pamela Geller

Bat Ye'or is a pseudonym (meaning the Daughter of Nile) used by Gisèle Littman, née Orebi. She was born in Egypt to an Italian father and French mother, and currently lives in Britain. As a historian she specializes in the history of non-Muslims in the Middle East. She is the author of eight books, including Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005), Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001), The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996), and The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (1985). She has provided briefings to the United Nations and the U.S. Congress. Bat Ye'or was interviewed by Pamela Geller.

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A Standing Army for the United Nations Frank Salvato

There are many disturbing issues to contemplate in the world. From the dangers of aggressive Islamofascism to the pomposity and arrogance of the American elected class (and those vying to be included) the world stands witness to myriad threats and power grabs. But two power grabs opens the door for the United Nations to both amass sovereign rights and to fund and assemble a military force under its own banner.

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Evangelicals for Hezbollahstan By Mark D. Tooley

Evangelicals have long been a mainstay of U.S. support for Israel. But the Evangelical Left is trying to push Evangelicals into a more neutral position towards Israel.

“An Evangelical Statement on Israel/Palestine,” which seems to have originated mostly with Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), benignly urges “all evangelicals, all Christians, and everyone of good will to join us to work and pray faithfully in the coming months for a just, lasting two-state solution in the Holy Land.”

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End of postmodernism: 'New atheists' and democracy By Tina Beattie

The Economist recently published a colour supplement titled "In God's Name: A Special Report on Religion and Public Life" (3 November 2007). The accompanying leading article included a rueful admission: "The Economist was so confident of the Almighty's demise that we published His obituary in our millennium issue." There is an almost palpable sense of discomfort at a leading international journal finding itself confronted with the unexpected resurgence of religion as a newsworthy topic which merits serious debate.

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Democrats’ Christmas Gift to Big Labor by Robert B. Bluey

The federal government’s union watchdog agency will have to get by on less next year. The mammoth omnibus spending bill passed last week hacks nearly $3 million from the Office of Labor Management Standards -- a gift for Big Labor just in time for Christmas.

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Coal in Israel's stocking By CLIFORD D. MAY

In this holiday season, there are journalistic conventions one comes to expect: stories lamenting the commercialism of Christmas; stories summing up the 12 months gone by and predicting the direction of the New Year; and stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land.

Reuters, the BBC, McClatchy, ABC News -- in recent days, all have run pieces in the last category. But the one that troubled me most appeared in the Wall Street Journal -- my favorite national daily newspaper -- on Dec. 24. It was written by Ken Woodward, a religion writer whose work I've long respected. But in this instance his subject was not religion but foreign affairs, and what he produced was the usual anti-Israeli dogma.

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Climate Change By Daniel Muniz

“Climate Change” is perhaps the most disingenuous term ever employed by environmentalists. This terminology implies that there really is some kind of measurable normalcy in global temperatures. Nothing could be further from the truth because there is no such thing as a “normal” temperature for our planet. Even a cursory look at our recorded history vividly demonstrates that there is absolutely no average or normal climate.

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Black Men: They Could be Heroes - Part 1 By Elizabeth Wright

"Every demonstration of pathology offers the chance to submit "proposals" for yet newer and trendier social programs that will, of course, require the input of the black elites' wise and judicious expertise. Black social problems offer unlimited fodder for workshop topics and themes for the endless string of conferences funded by Philip Morris or Anheuser-Busch, and hosted by the growing numbers of black social scientists and talk circuit riders."

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Biofuels Balderdash by Michael J. Economides

In this era of increasingly expensive energy and political-environmental polarization, if most Democrats and Republicans in Congress agree and then the President signs a bill, it must be a bowl of pablum laced with bad ideas. Which is a fair description of the new "energy bill" which will cost more only money and will do nothing for either energy independence or the environment. And in the highly unlikely case that it comes close to achieving its goals, it may do a lot more harm than good.

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Baltimore paper looks forward to the wiping out of red-state America by global warming by Lawrence Auster

Is this a joke, or is it for real? The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel has an article by Dave Lindorff saying it's good news that much of the country will be inundated by rising sea levels resulting from global warming, because conservatives live in the areas that will be most affected. Lindorff writes:

Say what you will about the looming catastrophe facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting accelerates. There is a silver lining.

Look at a map of the US.

The future political map of America is likely to look a lot different, with much of the so-called "red" state region either gone or depopulated.

Before you get too upset, understand that the Chronicle and Sentinel is not a regular paper but a left-wing rag, as can be seen from the mission statement on its main page:

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Bali Bull By Brett D. Schaefer and Ben Lieberman

Earlier this month, representatives of 187 nations and thousands of environmental activists and other participants gathered for the United Nations Climate Change Conference on the resort island of Bali, supposedly to forge a new "consensus" on how to address global warming. In reality, the Bali conference was a carefully orchestrated performance designed to force the U.S. to commit to negotiations for a post-Kyoto Protocol agreement on global warming that includes binding greenhouse gas reductions, despite the evident failure of Kyoto, which embodies a similar strategy, and the prohibitive cost of binding reductions.

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Bad Faith Bestseller By Jeremy Lott

Many, many refutations have been written of Christopher Hitchens's god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Readers can take some small comfort that this won't be another.

After all, what would even be the fun in piling on at this point? The Washington Post reviewer cast Hitchens as a latter day incarnation of the censorious anti-liberal Pope Pius IX and professed to have "never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject."

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An Ambassador Warns: The Suicide of Europe By Tiberge

The Brussels administration admits officially that each year some 550,000 immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and China, plus South America, enter the European Union. In reality the figure is twice that, in other words, more than a million.

We will briefly take it country by country.

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The Fundamental Truth About 'Fundamentalism' By James Lewis

Fundamentalist Christians have become the new target for the Old Media. One big reason is that media scribblers are simply ignorant of Western and world civilization. That thought comes to mind on listening to Verdi's Requiem, one of the most gorgeous and moving works ever composed. It is simply filled with "Christian fundamentalism" --- including the fear of punishment before God. At a guess, half of the greatest works in Western civilization are directly inspired by religious fundamentalism of one kind or another. 

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Swiftboating History By Denis Keohane

It may be Providential that a book of history is soon to be released dealing extensively with certain shameful events of nearly four decades ago, just as others are now seeking to shamelessly and eagerly repeat those events.

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Hillary, Bonhoeffer, and the Meaning of Truth By Miguel A. Guanipa

In his seminal work on Ethics the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that "it is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to tell a lie."

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A Rogue CIA by Robert D. Novak

Outrage over the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes is but one element of the distress about the agency by Republican intelligence watchdogs in Congress. "It is acting as though it is autonomous, not accountable to anyone," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told me. That is his mildest language about the CIA. In carefully selected adjectives, Hoekstra calls it "incompetent, arrogant and political."

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