Religion of Peace update: You Owe Us An Apology

Everybody sing along...

Quote of the Day

"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill pail."
- George Orwell

Religion of Peace update: Islamic thugs censor Fitna

The rabid followers of the Religion of Peace Perpetual Outrage have again lived up to their reputation and succeeded in getting Fitna pulled from LiveLeak's site. (h/t: Allahpundit)

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.

Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.

We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high.

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UPDATE: LiveLeak has restored Fitna! Take that, Islamofascists!

On the 28th of March LiveLeak.com was left with no other choice but to remove the film “fitna” from our servers following serious threats to our staff and their families. Since that time we have worked constantly on upgrading all security measures thus offering better protection for our staff and families. With these measures in place we have decided to once more make this video live on our site. We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules. We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don’t consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted.

Religion of Peace update: Fitna arrives, Islamists go nuts

***Scroll down for updates***
Despite numerous threats from several Muslim countries and al-Qaeda, Fitna – Geert Wilders' movie about jihad, the Qur'an and the radical followers of Islam – has finally launched on LiveLeak. (h/t: Michelle Malkin)

Warning: Graphic content including some footage of beheading murders.

Lan astaslem: Arabic for “I will not submit/surrender”
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UPDATE: Google and YouTube now have it too, but LiveLeak must be getting hit hard because they've issued a statement:

LiveLeak.com has a strict stance on remaining unbiased and allowing freedom of speech as so far as the law and our rules allow. There was no legal reason to refuse Geert Wilders the right to post his film (Fitna) on LiveLeak.com and it is not our place to censor people based on an emotive response. We in no way endorse Geert Wilders, his views, nor the views expressed within Fitna. To many of us involved in LiveLeak.com some of the messages therein are personally offensive. That being said, our being offended is no reason to deny Mr Wilders the right to have his film seen. Pre-emptive censorship or a discriminatory policy towards freedom of speech are both things we oppose here on LiveLeak.com. A person has a simple, clear choice about whether to view this film. No one is being forced to view it and nor is it being broadcasted on every channel on their television set. If you click on media simply to be annoyed, it is pointless to blame others for your choice.

We do not intend on defending the content of Fitna, only our choice to allow it. Anyone has the full right of reply on LiveLeak.com. Any person or organizations are free to post their opinion and, dependent on said response falling within both the law and our rules, we will afford such responses equal exposure. There are undoubtedly better ways to spark a discussion but this film is now out there and we believe we should all grasp this opportunity to create an open dialogue and discussion on this subject.

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UPDATE: The film has been criticized for having showing the Mohammed cartoon without permission, and for this error: filmmaker Geert Wilders mistakenly showed the face of hip-hop artist Salah Edin in place of Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo Van Gogh.

That said, the confusion over the correct picture doesn't invalidate Wilders' message: millions of radical Islamists pose a grave danger to everyone. Muslims and non-Muslims alike must stand up against the intolerance of their world conquest theology.
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UPDATE: Movie reposted to replace the LiveLeak version that was taken down.

The Democrat party will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3...

It's March Madness in the Democrat party!

Democrats' Party Divide Runs Deep – A new Gallup poll shows that 28% of Clinton supporters and 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain rather than the other Dem candidate in the general election. To paraphrase Rev. Wright, "The Democrat 'politics of personal destruction' chickens are coming home to roost!"

Democrats Are Tied in New Poll – Although the Wright scandal has taken some of the glow off Obama's halo, Dems seem determined to ignore Obama's 20-year affair with racism and anti-American hatred. But he's still tied with Hillary, whose favorability rating has dropped to 37%; its lowest point yet.

Pelosi Firm On Not Allowing Superdelegates To Tip Race – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks tough about her opposition to the Superdelegates “overturn(ing) the will of the voters.” Gee, I wonder who she's pulling for?

Clinton Donors Warn on Superdelegate Fight – Clinton donors are telling Pelosi to shut up and allow the kingmakers of the Democrat party to coronate Hillary, regardless of the will of the voters or the consequences to the party.

Somebody pass the popcorn, this is just too good!

Footage of Hillary under sniper fire...

This must be the way Hillary remembered her Tuzla trip!
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UPDATE: Re-linked so the video works again.

Bitch is the new black?

I don't usually quote comedians, but this was too funny to pass up; in the comments section at HuffPo today:

Bitch may be the new black, but black is the new president, bitch!
- Tracy Morgan

Obama's pastor slurs Italians

More black liberation theology from Barack Obama's spiritual mentor and pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I'd like to know how this is any different than Don Imus' "nappy headed ho"s" remark.

Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been a member for two decades, slurred Italians in a piece published in the most recent issue of Trumpet Newsmagazine.

"(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him," Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue. "The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans."
[...]
"He refused to be defined by others and Dr. Asa Hilliard also refused to be defined by others. The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God."

I wonder if he's referring to the same god that he thinks should participate in the "holy activity" of "the destruction of the white enemy... by any means at their disposal."

Sen. Pot vs. Sen. Kettle

In a fruitless attempt to change the subject from her "sniper fire" fabrication, Hillary Clinton's campaign issued a memo today about Barack Hussein Obama's record (or lack thereof) and attempted to change the subject back to the Rev. Wright scandal. The entire memo is available here, but this is my favorite part:

We are happy to discuss Sen. Clinton's foreign policy experience and her record overall. Unfortunately, the Obama campaign doesn't want to discuss its candidate's record and prefers personal attacks instead.

Sen. Obama knows that if he focused on his experience, he'd get questions about the shortcomings in his record and the efforts he has made to embellish it.

The unabashed hypocrisy of that statement alone is breathtaking. But the schadenfreude gets even better when Obama's campaign takes her to the woodshed with a memo of their own:

TO: Interested Parties

FR: Obama Campaign

RE: Clinton's Exaggerations: The Domestic Record

DA: March 26, 2008

Senator Clinton's claims about her visit to Tuzla, Bosnia - and the footage disproving her account - have created quite a stir. And with good reason. As the Associated Press wrote yesterday: "What makes Clinton's situation unique - and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging - is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel."

Unfortunately, Clinton's fantastic invention of a sniper-raked landing is only one in a growing list of instances in which she has exaggerated her role as First Lady, particularly with respect to domestic policy.

Clinton has credited herself with "creating" the State Children's Health Insurance Program and "helping to pass" the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Like the Tuzla story, both of these claims turn out to false - raising serious questions not just about the rationale for Senator Clinton's campaign, but about her willingness to adhere to the truth.

"Creating" the State Children's Health Insurance Program?

* Question: Did Hillary Clinton "create" SCHIP as First Lady? That's what her web site says. But it's not what the program's congressional sponsors say.

On her website, Senator Clinton goes so far as to laud what she calls "her successful effort to create the SCHIP Children's Health Insurance program."

"Create" SCHIP? Once again, Senator Clinton's claim simply doesn't hold up.

The Boston Globe recently conducted an investigation into Clinton's purported role in the legislation, concluding that: "Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children's health insurance plan, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue."

Not only is Senator Clinton's claim of authorship false, but the White House actually opposed SCHIP during it's creation: "But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah…"

Representative Henry Waxman, a leader on the bill who remains unaffiliated in the race, said he has no memory of any involvement by Clinton: "It was a bipartisan bill. I don't remember the role of the White House," said Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has not endorsed a candidate in the presidential race and who was the chief Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with health matters. "It did not originate at the White House."

And Senator Kennedy, the Senate's undisputed leader on universal health care and one of the actual creators of SCHIP, does not agree with Clinton's assessment: "Asked whether Clinton was exaggerating her role in creating SCHIP, Kennedy, stopped in the hallway as he was entering the chamber to vote, half-shrugged. 'Facts are stubborn things,' he said, declining to criticize Clinton directly. 'I think we ought to stay with the facts.'"

Leadership on the Family and Medical Leave Act?

* Question: Did Senator Clinton "help to pass" FMLA? Her White House schedules and the timeline of the bill's passage call that claim into question.

Clinton claims on the trail and on her website that she played a significant role in "helping to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to enable new parents to take time off without losing their jobs..." But there is no evidence that this is the case.

For starters, the bill was signed into law only 16 days after Bill Clinton took office - not much time for the new First Lady to play much of a role. On top of that, the Associated Press reported that an existing version of the bill that had already been passed "by majorities in the last Congress" was altered only slightly and "recycled for enactment" [AP, 2/9/93].

In addition, Senator Clinton's recently released White House schedules show that she didn't have a single meeting on the bill she now touts. And in her own autobiography she discusses FMLA without making any mention of having a role in its passage.

Now that she's running for President, however, the facts seem to have changed. Or at least her allegiance to them has.

Experience: Foundation of the Clinton Candidacy

The refrain that Senator Clinton "has the experience to lead on Day One" has been repeated endlessly since she entered the race. On closer inspection, the claims Senator Clinton makes turn out to be little more than stories.

With the next primary less than a month away, it's time for Senator Clinton to finally face the "vetting" she's so fond of discussing. Badly trailing in delegates, votes, and states won, she's going to need more than a new script to win the nomination. But if she wants to regain the trust of the American people, it would be a good place to start.

Ouch, that's gonna leave a mark!
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UPDATE: Looks like I've been linked again! Welcome politikly.com and reddit.com readers, feel free to have a look around. Your comments are welcome.

Pinocchio Rodham-Clinton

The fact that CBS exposed Hillary's Tuzla fraud this week just adds to the enormous pile of reasons why she's unfit to serve as president: she seems pathologically incapable of telling the truth (sadly, that won't dissuade the obtuse Clinton loyalists).

Michelle Malkin coined a brilliant term – "Truth Deficit Disorder" – to describe Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal continuation of her husband's legacy of prevarication. And her brazen attempts to rewrite history have become so numerous it's gonna take a scorecard to separate fact from fiction.

Luckily, former Clinton political adviser Dick Morris assembled a (possibly incomplete) list of Hillary's lies.

Admitted Lies

• Chelsea was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)


• Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She admitted she was wrong. He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)


• She was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)


• She learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (It didn't cover the market back then.)

Whoppers She Won't Confess To

• She didn't know about the FALN pardons.


• She didn't know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.


• Taking the White House gifts was a clerical error.


• She didn't know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.


• She didn't know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had.


• She opposed NAFTA at the time.


• She was instrumental in the Irish peace process.


• She urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.


• She played a role in the '90s economic recovery.


• The billing records showed up on their own.


• She thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.


• She was always a Yankees fan.


• She had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).


• She negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).

With a record like that, is it any wonder that we suspect her of being less than honest and straightforward?

I'll wager the list of Hillary's distortions is actually a lot longer. Starting with the claim on her website "Hillary's American Health Choices Plan covers all Americans and improves health care by lowering costs and improving quality. It speaks to American values, American families, and American jobs."

See?
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UPDATE: There are many other really good posts covering Hillary's Tuzla deceit...
Allahpundit skewers her "I'm only human" excuse. With clips.
Jenn of the Jungle posted the video of CBS' exposé on the lie.
Texas Rainmaker has a good summary of the damage control continuing lies.

Midweek Peek 03.26.08

Katie Price a.k.a. "Jordan"

Blogroll roundup

Today is just WAY too busy, no time to blog. But that hasn't stopped some of my illustrious fellow bloggers. Check out these goodies and I'll be back with something tomorrow.

• Captain Ed nails Hillary's Tuzla “misstatement” lie and subsequent damage control.


• Allahpundit does the same, and addresses her weak excuse of being "sleep-deprived." (I thought she was claiming to be capable of making critical judgments at 3:00am...)


• Leaning Straight Up thinks Al Gore is still gonna toss his hat into the ring.


• Crush Liberalism touches on DC cops' unconstitutional door-to-door raids against private firearm ownership.


• Jihad Watch analyzes the apoplectic Muslim response to the Dutch film Fitna, which, ironically, was announced as an exposé on Islamic intolerance.

How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take In A Fight?

31

Not that I would, but I could. Watch out, they swarm ya!

Real Mario and Homer, untooned!

Pixeloo has created some very detailed Photoshop renderings of what Nintendo's Mario and Homer Simpson would look like if they were real people instead of cartoons. Freaky! (h/t: Digital Fortress)

The Democrats' undemocratic Super Delegates

Yet another dirty little secret of the Democrats, the whole "Super Delegates" thing has bugged me for several weeks. And before I could get around to blogging it, the WSJ's John Yoo has beaten me to it in grand style.

Until recent weeks, one of the least understood aspects of the Democrats' primary contest was the role of superdelegates. These are Democratic Party insiders, members of Congress, and other officials who can cast ballots at the party's national convention this summer.

But now these unelected delegates are coming in for a close inspection, because neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can win their party's nomination without superdelegate support. The big Pennsylvania primary on April 22, for example, has only 158 delegates at stake (each of them will be pledged to support one of the candidates). By comparison, there are a total of 795 superdelegates, none of whom are required to honor the will of the voters of their state at the party's convention.

Sound undemocratic? It is. That the 2008 Democratic nominee for president will be chosen by individuals no one voted for in the primaries flew for too long under the commentariat's radar. This from the party that litigated to "make every vote count" in the 2000 Florida recount, reviled the institution of the Electoral College for letting the loser of the national popular election win the presidency, and has called the Bush administration illegitimate ever since. [emphasis added - ed.]

Democratic Party reforms in 1982 gave super-delegates about 20% of convention votes -- so that party greybeards can stop a popular, but politically extreme, candidate from seizing the nomination. The Democrats deliberately rejiggered their party's rules to head off insurgent candidates, like a George McGovern or a Jimmy Carter, who might be crushed in the general election. Unelected delegates thus have more than twice the votes of the richest state prize, California.

So much for unfiltered democracy. In truth, the Democratic Party runs by rules that are the epitome of the smoke-filled room and ensure, in essence, that congressional incumbents exercise a veto power over the nomination.

This delegate dissonance wasn't anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature.

Read the whole post.

New hannya drawing

Here's a little sketch I made in my Moleskine sketchbook last week. One of my resolutions for this year was to actively create; at least one drawing a month. So far, I'm ahead. I've got a few new ideas I'm gonna try out this week, too. Some bigger projects that will take a bit longer, but will have a lot more detail in them, too. Can't wait to get home from work today and start it up!

A brief history of Jan Strÿcker

Genealogy is a hobby of mine, and for the past two years I've spend countless hours delving into historical records in an attempt to trace my roots as far back as possible. And I hit quite the interesting nugget yesterday.

After being stymied for several months due to a lack of verifiable information about my great-great grandfather, I came to find that my surname has been spelled a few different ways over the years (early verbal census-taking resulted in several various misspellings). Once I realized that, the trails which had turned cold began to warm up significantly, with relatives whose names and dates matched up with what I already knew. And the hunt was on again.

So indulge my excitement, if you please. I not only managed to pinpoint where my paternal line first entered America, I also stumbled upon a resource with many interesting details about the guy. I find that I'm a direct descendent of Jan Strÿcker; a Dutch immigrant who arrived in America in 1652, founded what we now know as Flatbush, NY, and helped draft an early sort of "bill of rights." How cool! This passage was from Genealogical and Personal Memorial of Mercer County, New Jersey by Francis Bazley Lee:

Jan Strÿcker was born in Holland in the year 1615. He emigrated from Ruinen, a village in the province of Drenthe with his wife, two sons and four daughters, and arrived at New Amsterdam in the year 1652. Leaving behind him all the priviliges and rights which might be his by descent in the old world, he sought to start his family on new soil in habits of industry and honesty. He was a man of ability and education, for his subsequent history shows him to have been prominent in the civil and religious community in which his lot was cast.

His first wife in Holland was Lambertje Snebering, and by her all his children were born there or in this country. She was certainly living in 1663. Jan Strÿcker remained in New Amsterdam a little over a year after his arrival there, and in the year 1654 he took the lead in founding a Dutch colony on Long Island, at what was called Midwout, probably from a little village of that name in the province of North Holland. It was also called Middlewoods. The modern name of the place is Flatbush.

On the 11th of December, 1653 while still in New Amsterdam, Jan Strÿcker joined with others in a petition of the Commonality of the New Netherlands and a remonstance against the conduct of Director Stuyvesant. The petition recited that "they apprehended the establishment of an arbitrary government over them: that it ws contrary to the general principles of well-regulated governments that one or more men should arrogate themselves the exclusive power to dispose at will of the life and property of any individual: that it was odious to every free-born man, principally so to those whom God has placed in a free state or newly settled lands. We humbly submit that 'tis one of our privileges that our consent, or that of our representatives is necessarily required in the enactment of laws and orders."

It is remarkable that at this early day this indictment was drawn up, this "bill of rights" was published. But these men came from the blood of the hardy Northmen and imbibed with the free air of America the determination to be truly free themselves next, on the present state of the country.

To turn from the civil and military man we find him in the first year of his residence at Midwout, one of the two commissioners to build the Dutch church there, the first erected on Long Island, and he was for many years an active supporter of the Dominic Johannes Theodorus Polnemus, of the Reformed Church of Holland, in that edifice.

After raising a family of eight children, every one of whom lived to adult life and married, seeing his sons settled on valuable plantations and occupying positions of influence in the community, and his daughters marrying into the families of the Brinckerhoffs, the Berriens, and the Bergens, living to be over eighty years of age, he died about the year 1697, full of the honors which these new towns could bestow, and with his duties as a civil officer and a free citizen of his adopted country well performed.

The Easter Bunny hates you!

Better think twice before going on any Easter egg hunts today!
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UPDATE: Alberto posted the prequel to this clip. It's funny stuff!

Happy Easter!

I'm off from work today, so I'm gonna take a break from the Obamamania, Muslim death threats, the passport dustup, and the racism of the "typical white person" and instead just spend some time with my daughter today rather than blog.

Although I'm certainly in no position to call myself a good Christian, I still wish you all a happy Easter and the hope that comes from a risen Christ.
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UPDATE: I added a little doodle I made this morning in my Moleskine notebook. Hope you're enjoying the day with your loved ones.

Religion of Peace update: tolerance roundup

There have been so many incidents this week of Muslim radicals exemplifying the teachings of Mohammed, it would take a ridiculous amount of individual blog posts. So I'm just gonna give you the highlowlights.

• Rabbi Attacked by Muslim Teenagers Screaming "Allah Akbar"
  A 25-year-old Israeli rabbinical assistant was assaulted by a group of Arab teenagers screaming "Allah akbar" in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening.
  
  Uria Ohana, originally from Kfar Chabad, entered a subway station in the affluent Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn Tuesday evening, on his way to a lecture in Manhattan, when he noticed a group of Arab teenagers congregated on a bench in the station.
  
  Ohana did not exchange words or make eye contact with the group, but proceeded upstairs to his train.
  
  On his way, he felt someone grab his kippa from his head and then heard laughter. Ohana decided to chase the boys to retrieve his kippa.
  
  The 18-year-old boy who grabbed the kippa left the subway station and ran into the street, where he was hit by a car, breaking his leg.
  
  While Ohana chased the boy, the other teenagers began chasing him, screaming "Allah akbar."
  
  "They screamed at me, 'Did you see what happened to him because of you?'" said Ohana, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical assistant who works in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
  
  Two of the Arab boys then started kicking and punching Ohana in the face.


• Muslim Radicals Attack During Church Service Murder, Amputate Christians
  The Kale Hiwot Church was the scene of most of the violence on the day of the attack. There were about 200 people attending the service, when a group of Muslim radicals surrounded the church and barricaded the doors shut. They then proceeded to break in through the windows and started hacking at the churchgoers with machetes. It is clear that these attacks were well planned and carefully executed to cause as much bloodshed as possible.
  
  Muslim radicals had attacked the church before and burned it down, which the Christians in the village rebuilt. During the most recent attack, someone was able to raise the alarm and the local police quickly arrived at the scene, averting further bloodshed. One policeman who was wounded while trying to quell the violence was taken to a hospital in Addis Ababa. Eight of the seriously wounded Christians were taken to a hospital in Awassa. ICC was able to speak to one of the eight who had been wounded, Ahmed Jamal [not his real name], who is a Muslim convert to Christianity. The Muslim radicals cut off his left hand with their machetes during the attack. When ICC asked him if he knew his attackers, he said, “Our attackers are our neighbors, with whom we ate and drank.”
  
  Asked what motivated the Muslims to attack, he said, “They were taught [about] Jihad.” Though he is lying on a hospital bed, Ahmed Jamal is worried about further attacks by Muslim radicals. He said, “We fear for our families [who remain in the village].”
  



• OBL Threatens Violence If Europe Won't Curb Freedom Of Speech
  In his five-minute audio message entitled, "The Response Is What You See, Not What You Hear," bin Laden accuses Europeans of abandoning the "etiquettes of disputes and morals of fighting." [OBL lecturing Europe about morality? That's rich! - ed.]
  
  Bin Laden says he considers the reprinting of the cartoons a more serious offense than the killing of women and children. He also adds the revenge for republishing the cartoons "will be more severe."
  
  Bin Laden concludes his message by saying if there are no checks on the Europeans' freedom to speak, then there will be no checks on his freedom to act.



• Palestinian Stabs Rabbi In Neck
  A Palestinian stabbed a Haredi rabbi in the neck in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday, but medical workers said his wounds were light and not life-threatening.
  
  A police spokesman confirmed that the attack, near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, was politically motivated.
  
  The Zaka emergency service said the rabbi, 49, was walking with a bodyguard in Jerusalem's walled Old City, where his seminary is located, when he was attacked. The bodyguard gave chase but the attacker escaped, leaving behind a blood-stained knife.
  
  According to police, the unidentified assailant stabbed the man once and fled the scene. Security forces are currently searching the area in hopes of capturing the attacker.



• Afghan Immigrant Beheaded By Husband
  A woman reportedly found decapitated in her Etobicoke apartment Tuesday had complained to neighbours as recently as Sunday her husband was abusive, residents say.
  
  Police have one man in custody after discovering a body on the penthouse floor of her west end building shortly after 2 p.m. CTV Toronto reported that a distraught man called 911 and said a woman had been decapitated.
  
  One woman, who would not give her name, said the victim, in her 40s and from Afghanistan, had disclosed to her past physical abuse at the hands of husband.
  
  "(She told me) he hits my kids but stopped hitting me because I said I would call the police," the neighbour recalled Tuesday. She said she saw the husband handcuffed and being placed into a police cruiser.
  
  The family had lived in the building for two years with their four daughters and two sons, she said.
  
  "His kids and wife were always scared."



• al-Qaeda Murders Moderate Muslims "With Allah's Consent."
  Members of the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb militant group in Algeria have reportedly attacked members of a moderate organisation opposed to its terrorist activities. [No wonder moderate Muslims are silent. - ed.]
  
  A report on Tuesday in the Algerian newspaper el-Khabar said an al-Qaeda militant carried out a raid against a mosque in the Algerian province of al-Wadi on Sunday night and killed two men while they prayed.
  
  According to the report, eyewitnesses said masked men entered the mosque as evening prayers were being held forcing everyone to fall to the ground.
  
  The armed militants called for the two men, Harun Ahmad, and his cousin, Harun Abdel Jabbar, to step forward. They were then taken to the courtyard in the mosque where they were shot to death as the killers, speaking in an Algerian dialect, said: "We kill you with God's consent."

Hillary hires Sandy Berger as campaign adviser

Hey kids! It's new and improved Cronyism 2.0!

Hrmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with yesterday's release of Hillary Clinton's White House schedules? Perhaps there was a document that wasn't sufficiently edited and needs to be shredded?

Washington - Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Berger, who was fired from John Kerry’s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton’s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton’s admirers.

“It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger’s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the most impressive candidate in the Democratic field.”

Adler told The Examiner that it is “simply incomprehensible to me that a serious contender for the presidency would rely upon him as a key foreign policy advisor.”

He added: “If Senator Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, at some point she will begin to receive national security briefings that will include sensitive information. At such a point, continuing to keep Berger on board as a key advisor, where he might have access to sensitive material, would be beyond incomprehensible.”

The Clinton campaign declined to comment.

I don't see what all the fuss is about. After all, the Bill Clinton ran "the most ethical administration in history", right? Looks like Hillary just wants to make sure she continues that legacy alongside Nancy Pelosi's "most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history."
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UPDATE: Welcome RealClearPolitics readers! Take off your coats and stay awhile.

Paging Al Gore: 3,000 scientific robots measure ocean temperature DECREASE

Remember Al Gore's "chicken little" routine, where he frightened millions of gullible people with this picture of polar bears on a piece of ice, claiming that global warming is causing these animals to drown (despite the fact that they're aquatic hunters).

Well, sorry, Al. Get ready for yet another inconvenient truth.

Ironically, NPR (a.k.a. National “Progressive” Radio) has published a story about the exact opposite: data from oceanic robots indicates the oceans are actually cooling. (h/t: Ace)

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can.
[...]
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

To paraphrase Inigo Montoya: "Warming? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. [e.g. The Sun - ed.] It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

More perspective, more analysis; good idea. In the meantime, we might wanna hold off on draconian laws spawned by panic over a supposedly impending man-made environmental apocalypse.

Midweek Peek 03.19.08

Ice T's wife and voluptuous (i.e. booty) model, Coco.

Obama's whirling dervish spin-control speech

Drudge got a leak of the transcript for the damage control speech Barack Obama will be making this morning, in which he'll try to distance himself from 20 years of sitting in the pews and absorbing the hateful racist and anti-American rhetoric of his spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper."

Didja catch all those buzzwords? Progress. Change. Hope. Achieve. Fairness. Opportunity. Dreams.

Mmmm, now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, don't you?

But wait, don't forget the other serious words. Profound. Racism. Discrimination. Investing. Welfare. Education. (c'mon, wrinkle your brow and look concerned... it's for the children)

A commenter at Ace of Spades HQ reads between the lines in these two paragraphs:

Para one: Everything that guy (Wright) said is bullshit.

Para two: But seriously, America is really fucked up and white people need to get on the ball.

Yep, just make with the checkbook, America. And soon, you can be free of your white guilt!

My guess is that mush-minded Americans everywhere will eagerly accept this consolation prize of a speech and forget all about the politics of oppression that form the underpinnings of Obama's philosophy. It sounds like the same racist, poor me, "what have you done for me lately" victim-speak calumny, wrapped up in a nice pretty package with a bow.

Awww, look. It's not racism anymore, now it's HOPE (brought to you by the Ministry of Truth).
---
UPDATE: Ok, so we know Obama looks up to Jeremiah Wright as his spiritual mentor, but from whom did Wright learn his extremist views? A "black liberation" theologian named James Cone. Here's a little something Cone wrote about his views on God.

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

God needs to participate in "the destruction of the white enemy?" Wow. This is as repugnant as any vitriol I've ever heard from the KKK. Just change the skin colors.

Here's a little tidbit about Cone and his influence on Trinity UCC, Obama's church:

There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he's asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity. Cone's groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: "The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people. . . . All white men are responsible for white oppression. . . . Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'. . . Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement." Contending that the structures of a still-racist society need to be dismantled, Cone is impatient with claims that the race situation in America has improved. In a 2004 essay he wrote, "Black suffering is getting worse, not better. . . . White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even though black people are dying daily from its poison"

Amazing. Such deep-seated resentment and a willful ignorance of our country's progress seems born from a lifetime of lingering in victimhood bombast.

No matter what Obama tries to say, or how he tries to distance himself from the man who performed his marriage, baptized his children, and served as his spiritual mentor for the past 20 years, I look at it this way: you don't keep going back to eat at a restaurant where you don't like the taste of the food.
---
UPDATE: Thomas Sowell puts this whole situation into perspective:

The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright does not mean that his track record is different. Barack Obama’s voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far-left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.

Senator Barack Obama’s political success thus far has been a blow for equality. But equality has its down side.

Equality means that a black demagogue who has been exposed as a phony deserves exactly the same treatment as a white demagogue who has been exposed as a phony. [emphasis added]

We don’t need a president of the United States who got to the White House by talking one way, voting a very different way in the Senate, and who for 20 years followed a man whose words and deeds contradict Obama’s carefully crafted election-year image.

---
UPDATE: Here is Obama's entire speech, minimizing Wright’s demagoguery as mere ”snippets,” saying “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community” and pointing the finger at “talk show hosts and conservative commentators” for bringing Wright's hate-filled legacy to light.

(In other words, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.)

Michelle Malkin gives a good summary of the speech's high points:

Obama’s bottom line: Everyone’s a victim. You’re part of the problem if you keep talking about Jeremiah Wright. Everyone’s churches have crazy demagogues. Schools need more money. Leave illegal aliens alone. Never mind all the black grievance-mongers who have built careers sowing seeds of divisions. Look at all the talk show hosts and conservative commentators! Elect Obama. Fixer of souls.

Daily Kos: The United States needs to be invaded - not just invaded - occupied.

Just when I thought it wasn't possible for some leftists to hate America any more than they do, another Daily Kos asshat goes and proves me wrong. (h/t: LGF)

"As a nation the United States no longer has the remotest idea about what it really feels like to be part of a war zone. Americans have lost the empathy that is necessary to make an informed, meaningful, compassionate decision about whether or not war should be waged. While candidates fight over who has the required experience to properly oversee our republic’s international interests, none realize that none of them have ever felt what it is like to have war waged in their neighborhood and occupied by intruders. While they may claim to know when to wage wars and to know the horrors of war, they only know them intellectually. They can’t claim that they have emotionally felt them. No one who was born and raised in the United States can claim that and none can really feel it. We have allowed a Congress and an administration to encourage hate and to hi-jack our compassion. In fact, as a nation we have lost our compassion.

Unfortunately, America is at a point that to be able to really feel again, to regain that compassion, it needs to be invaded and occupied in the same way that we have invaded and occupied Iraq. Then there might be a greater chance that Americans will be more reluctant to accept the invasion of another country. Maybe seeing and feeling the same level of destruction that we have inflicted on Iraq, at least the American public will understand why invading another country is unconscionable except in the most dire circumstances - which means after that country has directly attacked the United States. And that has not happened since World War II.

The United States hasn't been directly attacked since WWII? What a selective memory this dolt has. He's obviously forgotten:

• November 4 1979 – Iranian militants attacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.


• April 18, 1983 – A Hezbollah suicide bomber in a pickup truck loaded with explosives destroyed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people (17 were Americans).


• Oct. 23, 1983 – A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.


• Dec. 12, 1983 – The U.S. embassy in Kuwait was bombed by the Iranian-backed Shiite group known as "Al Dawa."


• Dec. 3, 1984 – Hezbollah terrorists hijacked Kuwait Airways Flight 221 and diverted it to Tehran, where they later murdered two American officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Iran let the hijackers leave the country.


• Oct. 7, 1985 – Four Palestinians hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners and killing Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old disabled American tourist.


• December 21, 1988 – Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board.


• February 26, 1993 – Islamic terrorists detonated a car bomb below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six people and injuring 1,042.


• June 25, 1996 – Hezbollah terrorists bombed a fuel truck adjacent to the housing section of the Khobar Towers, killing 19 U.S. servicemen.


• August 7, 1998 – al-Qaeda terrorists bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 233 and injuring 4,085.


• October 12, 2000 – al-Qaeda suicide bombers attacked the U.S.S. Cole while it was anchored in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 crewmembers and injuring 39.


• September 11, 2001 – Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners which they used to murder 2,998 people, crashing two planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, one into the Pentagon, and the fourth plane was crashed as the passengers retook the plane from the cowardly jihadists.

America has been directly attacked by radical Islamists MANY times. I'm not sure if this Kos diary entry falls under treason, sedition, stupidity, or all of the above. But he's hella progressive!

I gotta wonder if Skippy here is voting for Obama or Hillary, hoping to get America attacked, invaded, and occupied. Either way, he just might get his wish.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Here's a little drinking music from Metallica; their cover of the traditional Irish folk song "Whiskey In The Jar." Slainte!

Musha ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack for my daddy-o
Whack for my daddy-o
There's whiskey in the jar-o!

Obama's spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright: God damn America

Today's been a busy day at work for me, but in case y'all haven't already seen the hateful bile spewing forth from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor and "spiritual mentor", I wanted to make sure to post it.

In a brazen attempt at spin control, Obama said he doesn't think his church is controversial. Is that just a lie, or does he really believe that everyone else thinks the way Rev. Wright does?

Q: I don't know if you've seen it, but it's all over the wire today (from an ABC News story), a statement that your pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side) made in a sermon in 2003 that instead of singing "God Bless America," black people should sing a song essentially saying "God Damn America."

A: I haven't seen the line. This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.

Q: What about this particular statement?

A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it's important to judge me on what I've said in the past and what I believe.

Sorry, Obama. You can't have it both ways. If Wright is "like an old uncle" saying things with which you don't agree, then you wouldn't have him as your mentor. And you could have left the church years ago if he made outrageous statements with which you didn't believe.

Which is more likely: that Obama is completely surprised by the victim rhetoric from his pastor, or that he and his wife agree with the politics and hate-America-first views of Rev. Wright and just don't want to admit it now that his church is under closer scrutiny?

Judging by their recent statements, I'd say it's the latter.

So Spitzer's a Republican now?

I know the mainstream media has a hard time being objective, and has frequently omitted the fact that disgraced NY Governor Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat, but this takes the cake.

Thing is, this isn't an isolated occurrence. Newsbusters has documented evidence of the media's repeated and blatant distortions.

An examination of the fifteen ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows through Wednesday night finds Spitzer was called a Democrat just 20% of the time — twice on CBS, once on ABC, and never on NBC.
[...]
The media’s message: Republicans enmeshed in personal scandal are a moral stain on their entire party; Democrats in similar circumstances are just individuals, not “Democrats” — and certainly not representatives of the liberal cause.

Don't just take my word for it. Click the link above for proof. And there's more here, too.

Ace, as usual, swings for the fences on this and pings the scoreboard.

They don't even bother responding to us on the right, even in a clear-cut and provable systemic and deliberate case of a bias such as this. They don't even bother defending themselves. They just ignore us. Because they're not even reading us and even if they did, what we think just doesn't matter.

New York Times outs Spitzer's hooker, maintains their integrity as journalists

While Gov. Spitzer's (D-NY) career now circles the bowl, the press has fallen all over themselves to identify Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the high-priced callgirl who was the object of his hypocritical trysts. And while it amuses me no end that supposedly legitimate news sources are running stories and posting T&A pictures masquerading as "news," The New York Times once again demonstrates their willingness to sink lower than the rest (even this blog!). They ran right out to interview her mother. There's some class for ya. I'd expect that of TMZ or National Enquirer.

Somebody start the clock, Ashley's 15 minutes starts now. Cue the made-for-TV movie based on her difficult childhood.

If you listen closely, you can hear the scribbling of pens signing multi-million-dollar book deals.

Moonbats claim Spitzer's dalliances are BUSH'S FAULT!

Well that didn't take long, did it? BDS strikes again. (h/t: Crush Liberalism)

From Radio Equalizer: Though certainly not alone with her assessment of the true motives behind Spitzer’s troubles, libtalker Randi Rhodes delivered a typically over- the- top analysis of the situation at the beginning of Wednesday’s show:

RHODES: "The more you look at this the more you understand this man was set up. Now now, wait, I know I just said that. He was easier to set up then Lincoln logs. He was easier to set up then a Christmas train set, which is difficult.

This was easy. This was no I I mean he admitted that he did this thing. But the idea that the guy who ran the escort service that caused Eliot Spitzer to get caught that this man was an enrolled IRS agent running an escort service and it was the IRS who became suspicious because of money transfer is so on its face a set up, it’s unbelievable. However, you know he did do it, there’s no question. He did it."

When the left resorts to pathetic conspiracy- mongering, you know they’re worried sick about how the downfall of a high- profile partisan might hurt their movement. You can bet your Zapruders they aren’t going to give up on this idea anytime soon.

There are many more examples of the fervent hysteria on the left . Shockeroo.

Tech Pr0n: Nokia Morph and 888

Depends Alert – Here are some slick concepts from Nokia, utilizing nanotechnology to create next-gen devices. Imagine a phone that can be transparent or opaque at will, whose shape can be manipulated (e.g. worn on your wrist), can recharge via sunlight and is impervious to liquids. I don't know how much of this is actual work towards a prototype and how much is science fiction, but it's what the pointy heads at Nokia are exploring. Coolness.(h/t: Julia Roy)

One is called the Nokia Morph:


The other is the Nokia 888:


Who knows when stuff like this might become reality? But it's exciting that the thoughts are already in motion.

Personally, I still want moving sidewalks and a flying car.

Midweek Peek 03.12.08

Denise Milani

Religion of Peace update: Islam will dominate America "by force"

The radical followers of Islam are rarely candid about their vile plans, preferring instead to cloak themselves in taqiyya; their official doctrine of deliberate deception against non-Muslims. But in this case, a follower of Omar Bakri Mohammed (the exiled British cleric) openly claims that the U.S. & Britain will either be conquered through violence or overthrown by Muslims from within.

Infidels Are Cool lays it all out, including the Qur'an verses used by jihadists to justify their intolerant war against the rest of the world.

So how will Islam dominate the world? Most likely by force! If the people do not embrace Islam and implement the Sharee’ah on their own accord, it becomes an obligation upon the Muslims to fight and implement Islam. In countries such as Britain and America, their people have clearly rejected to embrace Islam and will never choose to live by the Sharee’ah.

Therefore, the only two ways in which these countries can become under the domain of Islam is by the last two options, a group of Muslims rise and overthrow the government, or an Islamic state is established elsewhere and comes to conquer these nations.

Coincidentally, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice seemed to be channeling Neville Chamberlain yesterday when she claimed human rights, liberty and the rule of law are principles that Muslims and non-Muslims alike hold dear.

"These are not American values or Western values," she told OIC ambassadors in Washington on Monday. "They are universal values, values that are lived and practiced by the majority of Muslims in the world, many of whom are citizens of democracies."

Yep, about 1.3 billion do, and only 91 million seek our destruction. No need for concern, right?

New York's Democrat gov Eliot "Mr. Clean" Spitzer mired in prostitution ring

New York's first-term Democrat governor (and superdelegate for Hillary Clinton) who proposed drivers' licenses for illegal aliens and a tax on the internet has now officially tripped over his own genitalia.

Formerly known as "Mr. Clean" and "The Sheriff of Wall Street," now he's now just "Client 9" to a brothel known as the Emperor's Club. Does anyone remember the Democrats' constant drumbeat about the Republican "culture of corruption?"

If he has to resign or is impeached, Clinton will lose Spitzer's superdelegate vote. No word yet on whether this scandal will have any effect on his position as a diarist for ultra-lefty blog Daily Kos.
---
Others blogging:
(Practically everybody has something to say about this, but here are some goodies...)

• Crush Liberalism notes that the mainstream press seems to have selective memory of Gov. Spitzer's political affiliation.


• Say Anything has info about the Emperor's Club VIP rates, some of their prostitutes garnered as much as $5.921.00 an hour!


• Michelle Malkin has details about Spitzer's “structuring:” creating a series of financial movements designed to obscure the true purpose of the payments.


• Wonkette has a pictorial tour of the Emperor's Club ladies, showing what you can get for your 6 grand.

---
UPDATE: The New York Post is citing unnamed sources who claim that Spitzer has been a bad boy for at least six years.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been soliciting high-priced hookers for at least six years and possibly for more than a decade, sources tell The Post.

The revelation yesterday that the crusading governor was in fact “Client 9” named in a federal prostitution indictment did not shock insiders in the city’s sex industry.

Sources tell The Post that Spitzer had frequented high-priced hookers as far back as 2002 and possibly earlier.

Big Brother schools set the stage for disarming America

Yet another sickening instance of taxpayer dollars being used to further an anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment agenda in public schools. Via Neal Boortz:

I was sorting out some papers over the weekend ... and came upon one of my favorites. It's a page out of an "Activity Book" published by Harcourt Brace, now called Harcourt Education. This page is entitled "Rights & Wrongs" and comes from the Harcourt social studies textbook "United States in Modern Times." The heading for this page says "In the late eighteenth century many people complained that the Constitution did not list rights of the people. So the authors of the Constitution decided to write a Bill of Rights. These first ten amendments to the Constitution state simply and clearly citizens' rights that the government cannot take away."

This particular page (page 14) of the "Activity Book" then lists the Bill of Rights with short explanations of each one. I thought you might like to see what this book says about the 2nd Amendment:

"The Second Amendment * says that states may enlist citizens for a trained militia [army] and provide and train them with weapons."

Are you believing that? This, my friends, is the way the government schools work to indoctrinate rather than educate. In the heading Harcourt says that the Bill of Rights protects the rights of the people ... then they go on to say that the 2nd Amendment actually protects the rights of government.

---
As usual, Neal cuts through the PC crap and makes a good point. That textbook contains the kind of subtle dissembling which creates a mindset for future acceptance of a judicially-imposed disarming of the American public, which is the stated goal of many "gun control" advocates on the far left:

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles...that we are unable to think about reality."
– President William J. Clinton

"For target shooting, that's okay. Get a license and go to the range. For defense of the home, that's why we have police departments."
– James Brady

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here."
– Dianne Feinstein

"Every good communist should know that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
– Mao Tse Tung

In contrast:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
– U. S. Constitution

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
– Robert A. Heinlein

"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?"
– Patrick Henry

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
– Thomas Jefferson

"The 2nd amendment was never intended to allow private citizens to 'keep and bear arms.' If it had, there would have been wording such as 'the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'"
– Ken Konecki

Dramatic Lemur

A little Monday morning smile. Looks like someone had a bit too much Starbucks!

Religion of Peace update: Jihadist murders 8 Israeli students, Palestinians celebrate

A cowardly Palestinian jihadist opened fire in the library of a Jerusalem seminary last night, murdering 8 students and eliciting barbaric festivities among Islamic radicals who support the homicides.

Fatah's al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, and Muslim extremists practically fell all over themselves to endorse the killings: Hamas 'blessed' it, Palestinians danced for joy in the streets, fired weapons in the air and handed out candy to children in celebration of the slaughter of innocents.

The inhuman depravity of these animals sickens me.

Friday headline roundup

A couple interesting stories:

• Daily Kos' Markos (Screw Them) Moulitsas is losing it with his latest post, titled Dirty Politics. And some of his followers are beginning to get embarrassed by his shenanigans: "Markos finally wears a tin-foil hat." So goes the mainstream of the Democrat party.


• Barack Obama's key foreign policy aide "resigned" today after calling Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster." She also said Obama may not be able to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within a year as he has promised on the campaign trail. Wow, another Obama pie-in-the-sky campaign promise he has no intention of keeping? That wouldn't be the first!

Anti-gun reporter fired for unprofessionalism

Nice to finally see an official sanction in this shameful example of "ambush journalism" that took place here in Dallas last October. Uncle Barky has the details: (h/t: Crush Liberalism)

Rebecca Aguilar's 14-year career as a Fox4 reporter has officially ended via a letter from an attorney representing the station.
[...]
"No doorbell, no knock on the door," said Aguilar, who had been on paid suspension since Oct. 16th following her controversial interview with an elderly West Dallas salvage business owner who had shot and killed two alleged burglars within three weeks time.

The interview had been hotly debated in both Dallas and around the country. Some accused Aguilar of "ambushing" a feeble old man; others said she had been aggressive, but not unduly so, in getting a story that rival stations also wanted on their newscasts.
[...]
"I just think it's really sad that I gave this company 14 years and I did about 6,000 interviews," Aguilar said. "And now I'm out of a job because of one interview? It's like in one swoop it ruined my reputation. It ruined my name."

Sorry, Ms. Aguilar, your own bias ruined your reputation. It's called professional misconduct, and in the real world people are held accountable for their actions. Your severance was handled with the same consideration you showed to Mr. Walton. That's poetic justice.

Obama's Foreign Policy Adviser: Obama and Hillary "both not ready for that 3am phone call"

What a refreshing bit of unintended truth from Susan Rice, Barack Obama's Senior Foreign Policy Adviser. John McCain, are you paying attention? The ball just fell into your hands...
---
UPDATE: Sorry, Hillary. Rasmussen reports Americans overwhelmingly want McCain to answer that late night call.

The commercial was credited as one factor enabling Clinton to turn her campaign around in Texas last week. But, 42% of all voters said the person they’d most want to answer the phone was John McCain. Among all voters, 25% picked Clinton and another 25% named Obama as the person they’d want in the White House when a foreign policy crisis call arrived.

Among Democrats, 46% said they’d like Clinton to take that call while 36% named Obama.

Among Republicans, 79% named McCain while neither Democrat reached double digits.

Among unaffiliated voters, 39% said McCain would be their top choice to handle such a crisis. Twenty-seven percent (27%) of unaffiliateds said they thought Obama was the best to handle the call while 18% named Clinton.

Dems defile cemetery during caucus

It seems Democrats only care about the dead when they're exploiting them for voter fraud.

Cemetery Trampled During Tuesday Caucus
FLOWER MOUND, TX – The cemetery next to the Flower Mound Presbyterian Church was a peaceful, well-kept place until Tuesday night. An overflow of voters trying to join the caucus next door ended up leaving muddy tire tracks through the cemetery. One vehicle's tire actually got stuck in a recently filled grave.

Many voters parked on the shoulder of a gravel road winding through the cemetery, right next door to the church where the voting was taking place. One witness says motorists either didn't notice – or didn't care – they were parking just a few feet from buried bodies.

To make matters worse, recent rains left the ground soft, and the tires kicked up plenty of mud. Carved angels, flowers, mementos and other decorations on some of the graves were splattered with grit and dirt clods.

Francis Darroca, a Flower Mound resident whose son is buried in the cemetery, was at the church Tuesday night and said the people who were parking there had no respect for the cemetery.

Anti-war terrorists bomb Times Square recruiting station

**Scroll down for updates**
How disgustingly hypocritical of the so-called "peace movement." Many on the extreme Left have, for years, displayed their overweening contempt for the military. But last night, they set a new low.

NEW YORK -- A small bomb caused minor damage to an empty military recruiting station in Times Square early Thursday, shaking guests in hotel rooms high above "the crossroads of the world."

Police blocked off the area to investigate the explosion, which occurred at about 3:45 a.m. No one was injured. The blast left a gaping hole in the front window and shattered a glass door, twisting and blackening its metal frame.

Authorities said at a news conference that a witness saw a person on a bicycle wearing a backpack and acting suspiciously, but that no one saw a person place the device in front of the recruiting center.

"If it is something that's directed toward American troops then it's something that's taken very seriously and is pretty unfortunate," said Army Capt. Charlie Jaquillard, who is the commander of Army recruiting in Manhattan.

He said no one was inside the station, where the Marines, Air Force and Navy also recruit.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg responds to the cowards:

“The fact that this appears deliberately targeted at the recruiting station insults every one of our brave men and women in uniform stationed around the world.”

These bombers are the same kind of gutless turds as that Code Pink dimwit who cried for the Marines to help her after she protested their very presence.

Detestable.
---
UPDATE: Guess who's fault it is?

(wait for it)

Yep, you guessed it. It's President Bush's fault.

In an astonishing display of "truther"-esqe derangement, a Daily Kos diarist is claiming the attack is part of a right wing conspiracy. (h/t: Hot Air)

It’s nothng [sic] new for the right to CAUSE or INCITE the violence, or to trigger arranged mob responses, and make sure it all gets pinned on the Left. And the right seems to be able to get the FBI and law enforcement to do this for them as well. Anarchy, chaos, property damage, physical harm, mayhem, murder, militarized police with massive crowd control equipment, are all ‘options’ the right are eager to use to shut down any potentially energizing movement.

---
UPDATE: Allahpundit has the surveillance video.
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UPDATE: Sorry to disappoint the imbeciles at Daily Kos, but the "progressive" terrorists responsible for the bombing wrote a diatribe claiming responsibility and sent it to their Democrat exemplars in Congress before embarking on their fifth column attack. All that unhinged anti-war rhetoric doesn't add up to "patriotic dissent" now, does it?

Religion of Peace update: Harvard goes dhimmi

Institutionalized discrimination, in the name of Islam. Once again, the Religion of Peace Perpetual Outrage gets their way:

In a test of Harvard's famed open-mindedness, the university has banned men from one of its gyms for a few hours a week to accommodate Muslim women who say it offends their sense of modesty to exercise in front of the opposite sex.

The policy is already unpopular with many on campus, including some women who consider it sexist.

"I think that it's incorrect in a college setting to institute a policy in which half of the campus gets wronged or denied a resource that's supposed to be for everyone," said student Lucy Caldwell, who also wrote a column in The Harvard Crimson newspaper critical of the new hours.

Student Ola Aljawhary, who is Muslim and works out elsewhere on campus but is not one of the women who requested the change, rejected that argument.

"The majority should be willing to compromise," she said. "I think that's just basic courtesy. We must show tolerance and respect for all others."

Newspeak translation: "You must give special concessions for Muslims, no matter the cost to kafirs."

The Boston Herald's Michael Graham reports: (h/t: Moonbattery)

Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won’t let them work out in front of men.

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”

By banning all men from the facility, right?

“It’s not ‘banning,’” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”

Newspeak translation: "we're accommodating some intolerant Muslims by catering to their sexist bigotry." Now that's progressive!
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UPDATE: Jenn of the Jungle asks a good question:

Now, where is the outrage? "Harvard currently receives about $400 million in federal funding annually."

Where are the pissed off heathen Moonbats picketing Harvard chanting:SEPARATION OF MOSQUE AND STATE, SEPARATION OF MOSQUE AND STATE!!!!!

Hillary crows, wants to be on top

meg·a·lo·ma·ni·ac
–noun
A person afflicted with megalomania; a psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.

Hillary Clinton's campaign barely survived last night by edging out Obama in Ohio and Rhode Island (Texas is still not in the bag). And despite her continual losses to Obama in primary after primary, debate after debate, Hillary displays her arrogant narcissism by prematurely declaring victory and assuming her coronation.

Clinton, in particular, projected confidence on the day after her candidacy-saving victories, suggesting she might want Obama as her vice presidential running mate.

"That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket. I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me," she said on CBS.

Obama no doubt had other thoughts.

I've known since last year that it'd most likely be an Obama/Clinton ticket for the Democrats: it'll be a nigh-unbeatable combination. The question has always been who'd be the pres and who'd be veep. Hillary doesn't have nearly the appeal that Obama does and I really don't believe she can beat him. And she seems to be making it clear that she won't play second-fiddle. But who knows how this thing is gonna shake out? Maybe she knows something about those "Super Delegates" that we don't.

Then again, hubris may be her undoing after all.

The band, Incubus, has a song that seems tailor-made for the Clinton campaign:

I hear you on the radio
You permeate my screen,
It's unkind but
If I met you in a scissor fight
I'd cut off both your wings
on principle alone
On principle alone

Hey megalomaniac
You're not Jesus
Yeah, you're no fucking Elvis
Special, as you know yourself, maniac
Step down
Step down

Midweek Peek 03.05.08

Barbara Moore

Vote today, Texas!

Watching the returns tonight should be interesting. Of course, Hillary says she'll continue no matter the results. She says she's got momentum...

Logobama.com fun

Whether you're already drunk on the Obama Kool-Aid, or are worried about the real substance behind the appealing style, there's still a little fun to be had before the heavy hand of government becomes a lot heavier.

Make your own Obama logo!

The reason for your pain at the pump

Next time you're inclined to believe the populist class-warfare rhetoric from a Democrat who demonizes "Big Oil" for their profits, take a minute to reflect on the real reason for high gas prices. (h/t: DPGI)

McCain straight talk: “I’m a proud conservative liberal Republican”

The "Straight Talk Express" rolls on. That Freudian slip thing sure does seem to be going around lately. (h/t: Tundra Politics)

Religion of Peace update: "Scholars" demand international dhimmi laws

More "tolerance" from the Religion of Perpetual Outrage, er, Peace.

Via the Yemen Observer:

The re-publication of the Prophet cartoons by seventeen Danish newspapers last week was denounced by Muslims the world over. The controversy is not one of press freedom, but rather it feeds cycles of hatred and ignorance which only increase the gulfs between religions, according to the Prime Minister, Dr. Ali Mohammed Mujawr, in a support meeting organized by the Al-Eman University last Monday calling for defending the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).

In his speech, Mujwar called for an international law that criminalizes religious insults and enforces mutual respect of religions, calling on all rationalists in the West to avoid such negative acts. “This can only increase the instability in relations among Islamic and Western nations,” said Mujwar.

I wonder if book burnings would help restore stability in relations among Islamic and Western nations?

The publication of these cartoons has nothing to do with press freedom, a device used by some as a shield to insult others. This was an act that violates human values, laws and rights, satisfying only the devilish whims of those who put the cartoons to print, said Mujwar.

Translation: "Beheadings and suicide bombings aren't nearly as bad as cartoons which mock them."

Mujwar then urged all religious scholars, preachers, and university professors present to show the story of Mohammed (PBUH) and his great rectitude to young generations as a model and to show how any damage to Muslims feelings will further hatred, extremism, and clashes between civilizations.

Translation: "If you point out Islamic hatred, extremism, and clashes, it will hurt our feelings and cause further hatred, extremism, and clashes. Just keep your mouths shut like good little kafirs."

Religious scholar, Mohammed Ismael al-Hjji, asserted that insulting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) is an insult to all religions and urged all Arabian and Islamic nations to boycott all those who scorn Islam and Muslims. He also ordered the Yemeni parliament to issue a law that criminalizes anybody dealing with those who insult Islam in any way.

The sheikh of all sheikhs in Yemen, Sadeq Abdullah bin Hussien al-Ahmr, said that one’s freedom ends where another’s freedoms begins, and that freedom does not allow one to trespass other’s. “Muslims today stand unified against a clear and organized attack on all Islamic symbols,” said al-Ahmr.

Translation: "If you speak out against the barbaric violence carried out in the name of Islam, we can't be held accountable for our violent reaction. And we want laws that allow us to act on our outrage against your expressions of outrage. Because we're the Religion of Peace."

/snark
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UPDATE: Michelle Malkin and Wizbang have more on this story, and
Stop the ACLU has a good post today about YouTube bowing to Islamic petulance.

CBS shows their bias, claiming "Bush Resigns"

Talk about wishful thinking! Check out the headline on the CBS News website, claiming that "Bush Resigns Because of Plagiarism." I'm betting there are more than a few lefties out there in need of fresh underwear this morning!

Freudian slips don't come any frillier than this. (h/t: Crush Liberalism)
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UPDATE: CBS must have recognized their gaffe and added the word "aide" to the headline.

Syrian beheads 15-month-old in supermarket

I don't think this story fits the typical "Religion of Peace" pattern of beheadings, as the victim is Arabic and the crime is more likely cultural rather than religion-driven. It's unclear whether the murderer was following some kind of crazy jihadi or sharia-based mentality. But it's horrific and despicable regardless of motivation. Just pure evil. (h/t: Hot Air)

JEDDAH — Early morning shoppers at a supermarket in Jeddah were left reeling yesterday, with some falling unconscious, after a well-built Syrian man clinched a knife and decapitated his 15-month-old nephew in front of his mother in the store’s fruit and vegetable section.

In a brutal murder that has shocked the city, the 25-year-old man beheaded the boy, who was out shopping with his mother — in full glare of shoppers and staff at Al-Marhaba supermarket on Sari Street around 9.30 a.m. The man, who is the boy’s maternal uncle, apparently killed the boy following a dispute with his sister and brother-in-law.

Eyewitnesses said that the man picked up a knife from inside the store and severed the boy’s head. The mother and a shopper standing close by fainted, while several other stood in shock and disbelief over what had happened.

A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Arab News, “The murderer was in a dispute with the boy’s mother and her husband. He chopped off the boy’s head in front of the mother to get back at her.” He added that the mother has been left traumatized and is in hospital. The boy’s father was at work at the time of the incident.

Following the murder, police sealed off the supermarket while forensic experts gathered evidence. Ambulances were also called to the scene. The supermarket reopened for business at around 1.15 p.m. “It happened so quickly. Before people could intervene, the man had cut more than half way through the child’s neck,” said Abu Muhammad, a grandfather in his mid-60s.