The 64-year-old star was "in good spirits and the operation went very well", said his agent Jodi Shields.

He last week joined former Monty Python colleagues Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin for the London opening of Idle's Python musical Spamalot.

Jones directed the three Python films as well as movies including The Wind in the Willows, and has had success as a TV presenter, author and historian.

The BBC

On this day in 1983, 241 American servicemen were murdered in their barracks at the Beirut International Airport, by a suicide truck bomber sent by Iran, Hizballah, and the PLO: 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.

The failure of the United States to strike back for this terrorist attack—and for a long line of previous and subsequent attacks—undoubtedly emboldened our enemies:

President Reagan assembled his national security team and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters. But Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations.

 

Via:  LGF 

Beirut Veterans 

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

October 23, 2006, 11:25 AM

New York Times ombudsman Barney Calame, often referred to as “The Empty Suit,” finally gets around to admitting that the Times was wrong to reveal the SWIFT program that monitored terrorist banking.

He also admits that no person’s private data was misused, and that the program was not illegal.

He does not deal with the bigger issue—that revealing secret government programs that protect us from terrorists just might negatively affect the security of America.

UPDATE at 10/22/06 6:48:59 pm:

Here’s the column at the NYT: Can ‘Magazines’ of The Times Subsidize News Coverage?

Notice how Calame buries the critical admissions way down deep in an otherwise unrelated piece.

Via:  LGF 

Let me get this straight…You can spread feces on a crucifix.  You can burn the American Flag and drown a Crucified Jesus in a jar of urine, but the wrath of hell and threats of Jail come down when you put a Koran in the toilet?  Kiss my fat, hairy ass!!!  I’m freaking pissed off now!

In the space of a month there have been two separate incidents where a Koran, the Muslim holy book, was found in a Pace University toilet. The most recent was found just last Friday.

“This is no different from placing a burning cross in front of a house or painting a swastika on a locker,” said Aliya Latif of the Muslim-American Lawyers Association.

Representatives of New York Muslim organizations came together Thursday to make sure the incidents aren’t forgotten, even as they praised the way authorities are handling them.

“We spoke to [the] NYPD yesterday and they said they are doing everything they could to make sure there will be an arrest. They will work really hard on this,” said Omar T Mohammedi of the American-Islamic Relations Council. [This is almost certainly the Council on American Islamic Relations, and shows you how much care was taken researching the article. —ed.]

The Pace Muslim Students Association, which criticized the University for not being aggressive enough in its handling of the first incident where a library copy of the Koran was found in the library toilet, praised the administration’s actions this time.

“I would say that the university has kind of done a 180 and is definitely working with us in terms of labeling it as a hate crime and then, the sensitivity forums that I spoke about earlier, they’re actually helping us facilitate those,” said Faiza Ali of the Muslim Students Association.

The Arab Muslim/Islamic Terrorist/Scumbags are daily issueing FATWA’s against Christians, Jews, Americans, and anything that moves that isn’t a Muslim advocating our death/murder,  but we are not allowed to say anything negative against Muslims, Islam or their Cartoon like Prophet Muhammad? 

Our own government is allowing these douchebags to dictate what is and what is not “Freedom of Speech” while they are free to make threats against America, Europe and Israel. 

Next on the agenda will probably be any public display of any faith OTHER THEN(sic) Islam. 

I’m not afraid to tell you, that I am really sick and tired of Muslims and their Cartoon Image Prophet Muhammad right about now.  Sensitivity is not one of my stronger suits. 

I am not offended when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter.  I’m not going to cut someones head off over a Santa Clause(sic) or an Easter Bunny.  But I am offended that Muslims and Islamic Terrorists are telling me what I can and cannot say or do.  SCREW THEM!  When the Head Choppers start denouncing their own people for cutting off the heads of young Christain School Girls and Orthodox Christian Priests then MAYBE I will tone down my distaste for Islam, and I stress maybe.

Liberals were all a shudder and declared it art when Christains found the Cross in a Jar of Urine and a image of Mary in Feces, but they want to prosecute people who put a Koran in a toilet.  Let’s not forget the Liberal Democrats defense of Tookie Williams, the mass murdering POS that was executed in California. 

Am I a sensitive person in touch with my inner fuzzy self?  F#*K No.  If I was you wouldn’t come back every day to read the rantings and ravings of the madman known as The Rogue Jew!

So, how do you REALLY feel, TRJ?

Men's News Daily 

While the Washington Post sanctions the propaganda of radical Islamists, our friends the Saudis are continuing their infiltration of American society, openly telling anyone who cares to listen that their goal is domination of the US, via the Islamic television channel Bridges TV: An Islamic TV Channel Expands Its US Audience.

Bridges TV, an American-Islamic TV channel “seeking to improve the image of Muslims in the United States” and to “offer a unique perspective on the Middle East and the war on terrorism,” has extended its availability into six states, creating a potential audience of nearly 2 million.

What is the “unique perspective” that Bridges TV hopes will “improve the image of Muslims in the US?”

One religious figure who appeared October 3 said Muslims have a duty to change America and to increase their numbers to 50% of the population from 2%. He recommended that Shariah, or Islamic law, be implemented in American courts.

During a roundtable discussion on the Arab-Israeli conflict on October 5, one participant offered a solution: “For the Jews to leave and return to Europe.”

Bridges TV aired a speech by the influential Muslim scholar Jamal Badawi on October 4. Mr. Badawi, who teaches Islam throughout North America, gave an interview to the Saudi Gazette on June 24, 2005, in which he raised questions about who was behind the September 11 attacks and suggested that Americans could be behind the car bombings of Iraqi markets.

Every night, Bridges TV shows a news program, “Talking Points.” Its guest on October 4 was Imam Mohammad Alo Elahi, whom it described as a leading “interfaith figure.” According to his Web site, Imam Elahi was a spiritual leader in Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian navy and also is the leader of “one of the largest mosques in the U.S.,” in Dearborn, Mich.

The Web site describes his meetings with world leaders and shows photographs of him with the spiritual adviser of Hezbollah, Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah; Ayatollah Khomeini; Presidents Khatemi and Rafsanjani of Iran; Secretary-General Annan of the United Nations; and Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Throughout the day, Bridges TV airs segments of Koranic verses, quite a few of which denounce “unbelievers.” One notable verse that aired October 9 praised martyrdom.

Since the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began, the channel has been showing official, Saudi government-controlled Wahhabi sermons from Mecca’s holiest mosque, Al-Haram. The sermons stream live via Saudi TV Channel one every day at 4 p.m., and Bridges TV adds its own English subtitles.

An anti-Jewish, anti-Christian sermon from October 5 included the call, “May God destroy them!”

UPDATE at 10/22/06 10:14:54 am:

And note: this anti-Jewish, anti-American Islamic supremacist propaganda channel enthusiastically endorses the Democratic Party.

One of the stars of Bridges TV is a cofounder and vice chairman of the international health care company CBay Inc., Donald “Skip” Conover, who hosts and produces a show called “Words Matter.” He was the subject of a gushing article in the Saudi daily Arab News on September 27. In the article, Mr. Conover expressed “his disgust” at what he called inflammatory statements about Arabs and Muslims in the press.

He also discussed the power of the “Jewish lobby” and called on all Muslims to vote for the Democratic Party. “Every American politician is in lockstep with Israel. ... If they vote against, then the Jewish lobby will put a lot of money behind the candidate against them in their districts in the future. I have news for the Muslim community. All American politicians are in the pocket of the Jewish lobby today because they control a lot of money, and they spend a lot of money in politics.”

“If the Muslims of America believe that they don’t want Bush to have a free hand for the next two years, then the Muslims of America need to get organized and make sure they get out to vote for Democrats for both the House and the Senate,” Mr. Conover added. “Every Muslim in the Middle East who has a relative in the U.S. should get the message across to their relatives. They need to make sure that all their friends vote against Bush.”

Via:  LGF

By Charles Bremner A year after the Paris riots violence and despair continue to grip the immigrant suburbs

NI_MPU('middle'); FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.” Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. “We’re ready for it again. In fact it hasn’t stopped,” he added. Before next week’s anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment. The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism. “The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.” Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. “There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb,” he told The Times.

 Times Online

NEW YORK -- The temptation was there: an envelope stuffed with $12,450 in cash, stashed under a hospital patient's pillow. But the housekeeper at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan didn't hesitate before doing the right thing. For Marie Toussaint, it was a no-brainer.

"The money didn't belong to me, and I wasn't supposed to take it," the 50-year-old native of Haiti told The Associated Press. "That's the normal thing to do." Toussaint found the envelope, filled with $100 bills and "a few fifties," after the patient checked out on Oct. 4.

She handed it over to the nurse in charge. A relative of the unidentified patient, an elderly woman, later collected the money. Toussaint is to be honored for her honesty next month at a hospital Thanksgiving party.

"Some people are crazy about money," she said in a telephone interview. "But my conscience would kill me if I took it, because I believe in God."

Almost restores my faith in humanity.

WNBC 

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1.  Load your gun with Season Shot and let the hunt begin. Watch as your bird is seasoned on impact leaving no harmful waste behind in the environment.

2.  Forget about removing shot, prepare the whole bird for dinner! The Season Shot pellets will melt in the oven seasoning the entire bird.

3. Enjoy! No wasted time, no wasted meat, no waste left behind. Finally there's a better way!

I LOVE the free market!

Season Shot 

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

October 20, 2006, 12:32 PM

(10/15/2006)

Thirty five years ago John Kerry slandered an entire generation of men who fought in Vietnam branding them as a "war criminals." Today, much of the same thing is being said about our young men and women in Iraq.

Now, a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas will test the very foundation of Kerry’s anti-war persona for the first time. It isn’t dubious medals or Kerry’s disputed service record in Vietnam that is being called into question. This time Kerry may finally be forced to answer for the events that launched his public career, one that made him an anti-war hero for many American liberals and a turncoat for millions of Vietnam veterans.

The lawsuit (Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, et al. v. Kenneth Campbell, et al.) challenges the basis, the factual accuracy of then-Lt. (j.g.) Kerry’s acrimonious testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. It was there Kerry’s public career was catapulted with his now ubiquitous portrayal of American soldiers as murderers, rapists and torturers "who ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam . . . [and] razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

Kerry said then his accusations were based on the so-called "testimony" of "150 honorably discharged" Vietnam veterans who, like himself, claimed to have committed or witnessed "war crimes, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

Many if not all were members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization led by Kerry and financed by Jane Fonda during the early 1970s. Now, a number of those "witnesses" will be required to testify, under oath for the first time ever, about what they really did and saw in Vietnam.

What these VVAW witnesses say could have implications reaching beyond Kerry’s veracity and reputation. Their lasting portrait of the American soldier as a blood-thirsty butcher, a baby killer, is also at stake. And that picture remains entrenched among their kind, "proof" that those serving in the U.S. military, even today, truly are a "horde of barbarians" capable of unspeakable brutalities. That is the underlying theme, the constant drumbeat from the mainstream media and others as they try to undermine the American military today.

For the anti-war, anti-American protesters, the American soldiers are the "terrorists," and the enemies are the victims of a barbaric U.S. military which tortures and murders defenseless civilians.

That false premise, one of the most vicious and enduring smears spawned by Kerry 35 years ago, will also be put to the test once Kerry’s true "Band of Brothers" are put under oath in a Philadelphia courtroom.

VVLF 

Hmmm...  I suspect the Defeatocrats will do everything they can to shut this down, but it could get interesting.  Of course, "Under Oath" means nothing to these people.

by Jason D. Fodeman
Posted Oct 20, 2006

Do not be sidetracked by the latest “October surprise.” The bottom line on the 2006 election is whether the American people will vote to support the aggressive pursuit of terrorists across the world or succumb to the demagogues who want to direct energy, resources and security to their ultimate goal of impeaching President Bush. To put control of Congress in the hands of the “terrorism be damned, it’s time to get even” crowd could result in a catastrophe for this nation. Despite years of conflict in which survival of the civilized world is the prize, thanks to liberals and their media enablers many in the public think this war is optional.

While America addresses what undoubtedly is the ultimate challenge of the 21st century, Democrats contemplate control of Congress as the springboard for their No. 1 priority: commencement of investigations and impeachment hearings. With no positive agenda to confront Islamic fascism—yes, I dare call it what it is—they are prepared to go after the perceived No. 1 bad guy: George W. Bush, a wartime President in the middle of an unprecedented battle against an unconventional enemy.

Democrats temporarily dampened their rhetoric during the campaign, sensing the public would be appalled to learn this is the sum total of their agenda in these difficult times. But they are on record, content for now to let the issue lie quiescent, simmering on the back burner until after the election. They hope to slide into power on the discontent surrounding a long difficult involvement. A war they viscerally oppose, do not understand, but have identified the President as the enemy.

After more than a quarter-century of a stealth war against Western interests, this President got the message loud and clear on 9/11: Go on offense, so we do not have to fight on U.S. soil. Which Democrat could be trusted to address the nuclear threats of North Korea and Iran? Certainly not those who sold them nuclear technology in 1990s. Does anyone really believe Democratic assertions that they support the war on terrorism but believe it should be fought elsewhere?  

Democrats claim they will fight a smarter war, no specifics of course. Perhaps like Bill Clinton did, particularly on the public—relations front: ignore it, hope it goes away, pass it off on a subsequent administration and have a good time. Democrats do not like it when their circumlocution is called “cut and run.” Maybe “cut and run lite” is more descriptive: Withdraw to Okinawa and wait for a signal to return. Why not South Beach? It makes as much sense.

The same people who claim Bush did not do enough in his first seven months in office are the ones who held up key national security appointments in those early days—confirming the FBI director only days before 9/11—and who continued to do so to this day for similar petty political reasons. Meanwhile, our security hangs in the balance.

Democrats rejoiced thinking they killed renewal of the Patriot Act, they opposed the NSA terrorist surveillance program and applauded illegally leaked information, even though the intercepts foiled attacks on our nation and saved American lives. The same applied when secret CIA prisons were exposed or the SWIFT bank money transfer operations were outed. They blew the Abu Ghraib scandal out of all proportion and object to the treatment of the most heinous terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. They insist on only the most genteel interrogation tactics and constitutional protections beyond those afforded a common criminal suspect in U.S. custody or a member of our armed services in military courts. They oppose mining of phone records, an anti-missile defense system, ditto drilling for oil in ANWR.

They salute the New York Times for its selective leaks of National Intelligence Estimate information, which suggests terrorism has gotten worse since the preemptive war in Iraq. When a comprehensive multi- page summary tends to vitiate that conclusion, they demand the entire report be made public, even if it compromises sources and methods. The end justifies the means. All the while knowing each and every breach of security makes it more difficult to fight and defend against this amorphous enemy that transcends traditional country boundaries and fights with no identifiable uniform.  

The familiar indignation will be heard: Question Bush policies and you are labeled non-patriotic. It will not work. Too much is at stake to be put on the defensive. Those are the facts. Ignore them at this country’s peril. There is not a single overt or formerly covert operation that liberals have unqualifiedly supported. Not one! Yes, those are the facts, draw your own conclusions.

Liberals are not the only ones opposed to torture and in favor of humane treatment of captured terrorists. However, the people who orchestrated attacks on civilians in the United States and televised beheadings are not entitled to a day at the beach. One should not be surprised. Progressives have always shown more concern for criminal rights than victims’ rights. There is nothing new here. They saw the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the Cole, etc., as just another criminal event. Why these people are called “progressives&rdquo ; is itself a mystery. They have not had a useful idea in decades. “Regressives” seems more appropriate.

Terrorism is the premier issue of our times and President Bush—inarticulate as he may be—sees it exactly for what it is. There were congressional scandals but rotten eggs were jettisoned, not allowed to tough it out. Disgruntled conservatives upset with spending, border security, illegal immigration and the rest, will rue the day, if they do not support those candidates who understand it is better to have terrorists coalesce and die in Iraq than to provide them leisure time to plan the next attack on an American city, while Democrats subpoena witnesses for impeachment proceedings and discuss strategy with an impotent UN secretariat.

Were mistakes made in Iraq and elsewhere? Of course! That is why it is called “war,” not a board game, not a Playstation cartridge and not a movie. It is a war! And God help America to prevail. Yes, I dare to say that too.

Human Events Online 

by the Mathematics Department

Frisbie Middle School

Suzanne Alejandre

Activities in English and Spanish

*Note: Asterisks indicate activities that require extra software

 WTF????

Math Forum:  Frisbie's Multicultural Math Fair 

by Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Posted Oct 20, 2006

It appears that political correctness has infected many of our military brass, indeed even instructors in our military academies. It is one thing when politicians and cultural elites force it into our lives; it's quite dangerous, however, when those selected to protect us elevate political correctness over the necessity of vanquishing enemies intent on destroying us.

Many of us now believe that a much ballyhooed "higher morality" in the conduct of war is a major cause for America and the West not achieving its goal of destroying jihadist terrorisim. A new "counter-insurgency manual" provides evidence of a military guided not by the age-old assumption of an army's purpose being military victory over its enemy but, instead, attempts at sociology and "understanding" the enemy's culture, and the need to persuade the enemy of our goodness and noble intentions.

In the name of "compassion," our soldiers are at times asked to risk their lives, placing themselves in lethal fighting conditions, so as to spare the "innocents" among the enemy. Where bombing from above could easily destroy a terrorist hideout, young Americans are forced to fight treacherous hand-to-hand combat so that "innocents" mingled among the jihadists will not be harmed.

Because of this rule, more soldiers die than need be, creating, also, demoralization and hesitancy. Some, out of fear of later military reprimand, are reluctant to shoot at terrorist targets where civilians may also be. This, too, renders our war less effective than it could be. Beyond question, this new ethos stands in the way of victory. The Iraq war should have been won long ago. If soft political correctness remains a guiding military motif, the most powerful nation in the world will have defeated itself, given victory to a rag-tag al Qaeda band unworthy of being called fighting men.

Even assuming that the enemy's non-combatant members are innocent, morality dictates only that a soldier not engage in cruelty, as opposed to this form of "compassion" that chooses the enemy's life over one's own. "Is," as the Jewish Talmud asks, "his blood sweeter than mine?" Why should one posit that, in relation to the "innocent" enemy, our own soldiers are somehow guilty, expendable? After all, our soldiers embark on these missions not for greed and lust but in self-defense, national self-defense.

A war for survival is clearly an imperative war. As such, a soldier is given license to do whatever combat demands to rout the enemy so long as his approach does not contravene the intent of such a battle for survival. Thus, raping the opponent's women or plundering his treasure would be prohibited since these are activities of lust and greed for which one does not go to war. They nullify the war's purpose. Fighting to the fullest and in the most effective way, however, conforms to the ethical imperative of victory, a lasting and resounding victory.

Deliberately murdering civilians as a "tactic" to frighten the enemy into submission is not moral. But targeting outposts harboring terrorists planning or engaged in killing you is what war is all about, irrespective of whether or not collateral damage occurs. This is especially necessary given the diabolic circumstance wherein Islamic terrorists purposely place themselves among members of their clan.

If America, Israel and the West refuse to wage full overpowering war in these neighborhoods, we might as well give the keys to the global kingdom to the jihadists who are exploiting these shielding methods as a means to innoculate themselves from attack within the very positions from whence they are attacking.

Moral war conduct demands that we not engage in deliberate cruelty, lust and greed. It is not, however, moral to construct a code which chooses the enemy's life over one's very own. It is immoral for a society to be concerned more about the enemy's "innocents" than the heartbreak and devastation of kindred parents now without child. Parents can be filled with pride knowing their child has died saving a fellow countrymen. Having died to save an "innocent" enemy, many of whom, if given the chance, would slit the throat of our boys in a heartbeat, leaves parents empty.

It is fashionable among the egalitarian left in the West to not elevate any life over the other. Some even go out of their way to show more concern for others than their own as a way of proving their universality over tribalism. But choosing your own first is not only natural but constitutes true legitimacy. Before we take care of others, we must first take care of our family; similarly, the poor of your city come first. It is the moral duty of a nation, its armed forces, and those officials elected and empowered to send native sons to war to place an absolute primacy for their soldiers' welfare over other considerations.

What constitutes a moral war was fixed long ago. Upside-down "compassion" for the enemy is not part of it. This zeal to keep raising the bar as to what constitutes "moral" conduct in war smacks of a desire to be "more-holy-than-thou ," a form of egalitarian one-upsmanship. One would hope that the lives we daily live are sufficiently filled with moral majesty and nobility freeing us of finding new ways to verify our morality. Are we so insecure in our goodness that we have a constant need to show, ad absurdum, how moral we are?

Perhaps it is an overcompensation needed by those not fully convinced of the righteouness of our own national cause. For others, it is a way to retain the appearance of not being too "powerful." However, this is antithetical to the needs of a sovereign nation. For, in wars of survival, a nation must feel that its survival is more important than the enemy's survival, and that concern for innocent citizens must first include its own citizen soldiers.

This "higher morality" is not biblical but, frankly, a peculiar form of self-worship, granting to its proponents and followers a sense of "being better." It is hubris. Its victims are our own soldier-children.

Listening to this constant "moral" boasting, one begins to think that wars are fought by America, Israel and the West not so much to be won but to show how moral we are.

Now that America and Israel are, apparently, no longer invincibile and assured of victory, it is time for military policy makers to drop this "higher morality" rule, given that far more, frighteningly more, U.S. servicemen's lives have been snuffed out because of it. It is a form of self-indulgence we can no longer abide.

Being a "Light Unto the Nations" does not mean pacifism, nor does it mean recoiling from the notion of military "victory" and constantly insisting on 1960s-ish "peace and love." It means providing clarity, a clear-headedness rooted in reality. Choosing the course that is needed for the specific circumstance.

In Jihadist times, such as this, it means having the courage to identify evil and "eradicate the evil in your midst."

Proponents of the "higher morality" could do the world, the West, a service if they repudiated this dangerous and ludicrous notion that "our young soldiers must forfeit their lives so as to spare the lives of members of the enemy's community." It has become one of the major impediments to our victory against Islamofascism. In fact, word has it that during the Clinton Administration, bin Laden was in the crosshairs of a bomb, but was left alone after a children's swing set was found nearby. Our concern over collateral damage to the enemy resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 of our citizens two years later.  [You were making sense up to this point, why the cheap shot at Clinton?  -ed.]

Nothing is more sociologically silly and devoid of deep thinking than the equation claiming that unless we risk our own for the sake of the enemy "we are no better than them," somehow "racist," or "indifferent to life."

Those military brass who twist our soldiers from being fighting men to social workers should be fired. Those in the military that wish to be philosophers instead of real generals should become professors or clergymen and get out of the military. If they don't have the stomach for real war and the criticism from the left, they should find another vocation. They have become a collateral damage to our security.

Millions of Americans are sickened by the unnecessary loss of young American soldiers trained to fight but sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Those in the military more concerned with how our enemies feel about us -- will they like us -- than protected the American prople absolutely are betraying the American people and are AWOL.

Outstanding.

Human Events Online 

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

October 19, 2006, 2:34 PM

A question that answers itself: Hamas official: Is violence Palestinian ‘disease?’

GAZA (Reuters) - A senior figure in Hamas, the Islamist group that heads the Palestinian government, published an article on Tuesday condemning internal violence and questioning whether it had become a “Palestinian disease.”

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas who also acts as the spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said he was disturbed by growing factionalism in the Palestinian territories, including recent deadly clashes between rival political movements.

“Has violence become a culture implanted in our bodies and our flesh?” he asked in the sharply worded article, published in the widely read Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam.

“We have surrendered to it until it has become the master and is obeyed everywhere — in the house, the neighborhood, the family, the clan, the faction and the university.”

You mean indoctrinating children to crave death and violence, militarizing every aspect of society, watching hate propaganda on television 24/7, and voting for a genocidal terrorist gang ... might have consequences?

What a concept.

Of course, this genius is only concerned about internal Palestinian violence. Killing Jews is perfectly fine, except when it’s not politically expedient.

It was the second time in recent months that Hamad, who is based in Gaza, had written an opinion piece in al-Ayyam critical of Palestinian in-fighting.

In August, he criticized Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel, saying they were not doing the cause of Palestinian independence any good by launching attacks at moments when it appeared progress was being made.

Apparently all this hate and murder is giving Palestinians a bad reputation.

It also meant that television pictures of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broadcast around the world too often showed armed men and images of violence, casting the Palestinian struggle in a poor light, he suggested.

“(Violence) has taken away the language of brotherhood and replaced it with arms ... It has stolen our unity and divided us into two camps, or three, or ten,” he wrote.

“Shouldn’t we be ashamed of this ugly behavior which scandalizes us before our people and before the world?”

It’s tempting to see this as a tiny baby step toward self-awareness—but the intent of this self-examination is solely to become more efficient and PR-savvy in the ultimate task of wiping out Israel.

Hmmm...  Ya think you have some bad PR?

Little Green Footballs 

In truth, suppression of dissent, mass imprisonment, and murder happen all-too-routinely in despotic regimes such as Iran and North Korea. America's "progressives" minimize the real human suffering and misery occurring as millions of North Koreans starve to death and Iranian women are routinely stoned for adultery.

All the while, "progressives" sip their Starbucks lattes, compare Bush to Hitler, and chuckle over the latest Stephanie Miller diatribes.

These "progressives" have every right to free speech.

But they should know that their misguided vilification of America's government, the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen, consigns them to history's dustbin.

Their free speech stands in stark contrast to countries where true rebels are executed for speaking out. A young Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Iran or Natan Sharansky in North Korea must be utterly disgusted with the egregious rhetoric of the Bush-haters. For they, unlike the "progressives," know the true nature of fascism.

Today's "progressives" are exceedingly poor representatives for liberalism. In days past, liberals believed in free speech. They defended the poor and down-trodden. And, at the end of the day, they stood for America and American values. After all, this was the party of JFK, of Truman, and of FDR.

Today's "progressives" can't really be called Democrats. And they will ultimately lose every meaningful election in which American voters outnumber the "progressives" ' growth voting blocs of convicted felons, illegal voters, and the dead.

Some days I think the only thing keeping the Earth aligned on its axis is the gyroscopic energy of JFK, Harry Truman, and FDR spinning in their graves.

Doug Ross

Commanders of the French contingent of the United Nations force in Lebanon have warned that they might have to open fire if Israel Air Force warplanes continue their overflights in Lebanon, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.

Peretz said that nevertheless, Israel would continue to patrol the skies over Lebanon as long as United Nations resolution 1701 remained unfilfilled, adding that such operations were critical for the country’s security, especially as the abducted IDF soldiers remain in Hezbollah custody and the transfer of arms continue.

Over the past few days, Peretz said, Israel had gathered clear evidence that Syria was transfering arms and ammunition to Lebanon, meaning that the embargo imposed by UN Resolution 1701 was not being completely enforced.

More hypocracy from the French and the UN.

After injecting themselves into the Lebanon crisis and making all kinds of promises they didn’t intend to keep, France and the United Nations have made it explicitly clear that they will not use force to disarm Hizballah, or to prevent weapons from being smuggled in from Syria.

Via:  Little Green Footballs 

The team of neuroscientists was able to treat a 38 year-old assault victim who had barely been conscious for a period of six years. Using the treatment, he was gradually able to use his left arm and was able to utter coherent words for the first time since the injury.

Before their efforts, could respond to questions on occasion by moving his thumb or nodding, but was essentially mute and unable to move.

Doctors implanted two wire electrodes deep into the man's brain, according to a New York Times report, in a process that is called deep brain stimulation. It has frequently been used to treat people suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The doctors involved are slated to present the case to the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Atlanta. They said it may provide hope to patients like this man but the surgery also presents ethical questions about operating on patients who can't give their consent.

Terri Schiavo received the treatment as well but some experts say she received it too soon after her collapse for it to have made much of a difference.

"I think this case suggests that this surgery probably will be one of the choices of treatment we can give to certain patients who have some chance of recovery," Dr. James L. Bernat, a professor of neurology at Dartmouth Medical School, told the Times about the case.

He indicated the treatment would mostly be beneficial for patients who already have some responsiveness.

The research team in the case works at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weil l Cornell, the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

I think this is extremely preliminary, but interesting nontheless...

Lifenews.com 

NEW YORK -- Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was sentenced this afternoon to 28 months in prison on a terrorism charge for helping an Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers on the outside.

The 67-year-old Stewart, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, smiled as the judge announced his decision to send her to prison for less than two-and-a-half years. She had faced up to 30 years in prison.

Stewart's defense lawyer, Elizabeth Fink told the judge just before the sentence was pronounced: "If you send her to prison, she's going to die. It's as simple as that.''

Stewart was convicted in 2005 of providing material support to terrorists. She had released a statement by Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind sheik sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted in plots to blow up five New York landmarks and assassinate Egypt's president.

Prosecutors have called the case a major victory in the war on terrorism. They said Stewart and other defendants carried messages between the sheik and senior members of an Egyptian-based terrorist organization. Prosecutors say that helped spread Abdel-Rahman's call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law.

In a letter to the sentencing judge, Stewart proclaimed: "I am not a traitor.''

 I heartily disagree, Ms. Stewart...

WINS Radio 

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

October 12, 2006, 2:12 AM

WASHINGTON - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.

The Nevada Democrat's deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He's never been charged with wrongdoing — except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.

Land deeds obtained by The Associated Press during a review of Reid's business dealings show:

_The deal began in 1998 when Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas' booming outskirts for about $400,000. Reid bought one lot outright, and a second parcel jointly with Brown. One of the sellers was a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported. The seller never talked to Reid.

_In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited liability corporation created by Brown. The senator didn't disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress he had any stake in Brown's company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.

_After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Brown's company sold the land in 2004 to other developers and Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling the senator's investment. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.

The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown's company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later.

Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview last week.

The senator's aides said no money changed hands in 2001 and that Reid instead got an ownership stake in Brown's company equal to the value of his land. Reid continued to pay taxes on the land and didn't disclose the deal because he considered it a "technical transfer," they said.

They also said they have no documents proving Reid's stake in the company because it was an informal understanding between friends.

The 1998 purchase "was a normal business transaction at market prices," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "There were several legal steps associated with the investment during those years that did not alter Senator Reid's actual ownership interest in the land."

Senate ethics rules require lawmakers to disclose on their annual ethics report all transactions involving investment properties — regardless of profit or loss — and to report any ownership stake in companies.

Kent Cooper, who oversaw government disclosure reports for federal candidates for two decades in the Federal Election Commission, said Reid's failure to report the 2001 sale and his ties to Brown's company violated Senate rules.

"This is very, very clear," Cooper said. "Whether you make a profit or a loss you've got to put that transaction down so the public, voters, can see exactly what kind of money is moving to or from a member of Congress."

"It is especially disconcerting when you have a member of the leadership, of either party, not putting in the effort to make sure this is a complete and accurate report," said Cooper. "That says something to other members. It says something to the Ethics Committee." [It certainly does... -ed.]

Other parts of the deal — such as the informal handling of property taxes — raise questions about possible gifts or income reportable to Congress and the IRS, ethics experts said.

Culture of Corruption, Harry? Pffft.

Yahoo!

By MALCOLM RITTER
AP Science Writer

A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.

The timing of the survey's release, just a few weeks before the U.S. congressional elections, led one expert to call it "politics."

In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer.

"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The study by Burnham, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others is to be published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet, a medical journal.

An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.

"They're almost certainly way too high," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.

"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.

The work updates an earlier Johns Hopkins study _ that one was released just before the November 2005 presidential election. At the time, the lead researcher, Les Roberts of Hopkins, said the timing was deliberate. Many of the same researchers were involved in the latest estimate.

Speaking of the new study, Burnham said the estimate was much higher than others because it was derived from a house-to-house survey rather than approaches that depend on body counts or media reports.

A private group called Iraqi Body Count, for example, says it has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths. But it notes that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook "many if not most civilian casualties."

For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.

The survey participants attributed about 31 percent of violent deaths to coalition forces.

Junk science once again to the fore.

"How come during the Vietnam War, you leftists ridiculed inflated body counts as being totally unreliable in a wartime situation and a meaningless indicator of progress--and now you're using inflated body counts as justification for your own position? Aren't you doing now exactly what you accused the Pentagon of doing in 1968?"   -Right Side

Breitbart.com 

By Debbie Schlussel

With all the Democrats screaming about Mark Foley, we wonder why there's hardly a peep from Republicans about Dean P. Proffitt.

DebbieSchlussel.com has learned that Proffitt--the indicted chief of a Missouri Trucking School----is THE Democratic candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives from Missouri's 151st District. As we reported in September, Proffitt was indicted because, as superintendent of the South Central Career Center Truck Driver Training School in West Plains, Missouri, his school provided answers for the Commercial Driver's License (CDL) Test to Muslim students seeking to fraudulently pass the test and seek CDLs and Hazardous Materials hauling certificates.

A whopping 60% of those taking the CDL test at Proffitt's trucking school were Muslims, who'd traveled from all over the U.S. and the world to take the test specifically at the school. That's because his school enabled Muslims to cheat. Some never even attended classes and can't drive trucks. As we reported yesterday, there has already been one fatality linked to a Muslim driver from the school, the killing of an Oklahoma State Trooper. True to the phonetics of his surname, Dean Proffitt apparently cared more about making a profit than America's security.

From my September post on Proffitt's indictment, resulting from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation:

The defendants included Ernest A. "Mustafa" White [DS: who converted to Islam in prison], 49, of Kansas City, who owned the Muslim Brothers and Sisters trucking company in Kansas City, Kan. . . .

Also charged were Dean P. Proffitt, 71, superintendent of the South Central Career Center Truck Driver Training School in West Plains, Mo., and Orbin Dale May, 63, a truck driving tester from West Plains. . . .

White then allegedly arranged with Proffitt to have Muslim Brothers and Sisters students take the driving test at the facility in West Plains, South Central Career Center Truck Driver Training School, a division of the West Plains R-7 School District. May was authorized by the state of Missouri to give the test as a "third-party tester," according to the indictment.

Students paid the defendants amounts "far in excess" of the state's licensing fee, and White's students were given abbreviated tests, had someone else take the tests for them or, in some cases, did not even travel to West Plains for the testing, prosecutors alleged.

May then allegedly submitted documents to the Missouri Department of Revenue falsely reporting that the students had successfully passed the test.

"This fraud became quite lucrative for May and White," Schlozman said Thursday.

Proffitt allowed May to conduct testing on weekends - a violation of state law - and also assisted him in testing more than the four students per day allowed by the state, the indictment alleges.

Although the indictment refers to about three dozen test applicants by name, White and May have told investigators that between 200 and 300 students fraudulently got their CDLs through the conspiracy, officials said Thursday.

Of those, 150 to 200 later obtained certification to haul hazardous materials. . . .

The investigation leading up to the indictment began in the fall of 2004 when a confidential informant "reported suspicious activity" at South Central Career Center, Keathley said. Another tip came from the Missouri Department of Revenue, which noted the school's extraordinarily high pass rate of 99 percent, compared with a statewide average of 83 percent. . . .

Information obtained by the Associated Press under Missouri's open records law indicated that more than 300 of about 520 people who did not train at the school but took the test there between May 2004 and December 2005 had names that could be Middle Eastern in origin.

And apparently the Missouri Democrat cares more about Republican gay former Congressman than America's security, since there was nary a wince from the party over Mr. Proffitt's September indictment. We called both the Missouri Democratic Party and Dean Proffitt for comment. But predictably, neither responded. Since he's been indicted in federal court, we doubt Proffitt will be talking to anyone but his attorney for the foreseeable future.

But what we'd like to know is WHY DIDN'T THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CALL FOR HIS RESIGNATION AS THEIR CANDIDATE FOR THE MISSOURI HOUSE? To date, he is still listed on the Missouri Democratic Party's website.

Frankly, you'd think a party that is still up in arms about a former Congressman's instant messages--with no criminal wrongdoing--would be a tad concerned about their own candidates for office. . . especially when one of their candidates apparently sold out his country to Muslims committing fraud.

Their candidate already has blood on his hands--the killing of Oklahoma Trooper William Lloyd "Bill" McClendon. Why isn't that and a federal indictment not enough to get the Dems to dump their legislative candidate, Proffitt?

We hope all of our Missouri readers living in District 151 will vote for Proffitt's opponent, incumbent Republican State Rep. Ward Franz.

Debbie Schlussel dot com 

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

October 9, 2006, 4:44 PM

“I’m ashamed for my country.” – Oliver Stone

Me too Oliver, but for probably much different reasons from you.
 

I’m ashamed that my country has become a Balkanized collection of Hyphenated-Americans demanding special treatment because of their pre hyphened identities.  We’ve become a collection of nations within a nation unable to present a united One-America front to people who wish for our destruction.  People want to re-create here the failed societies they fled.
 

I’m ashamed that the citizenry of the greatest representative republic in the history of the world may be so shallow in thought that an entire election could turn on the sexual perversion of a single member of Congress.  Possibly putting in charge of our country people who resort to such a political tactic because they lack the ideas and intellect required to solve our nation’s problems.
 

I’m ashamed that someone such as you would say that our President has set the country back 10 years, but lack the courage to make a similar comment about the people who wish to turn us and the rest of the world back to the 7^th century.
 

I’m ashamed that one of my country’s major political parties would run a political ad about promises broken to Veterans and be as ignorant of our Military as to use in the ad a picture of a Soldier from another country.  I can’t think of when I’ve been more ashamed of and insulted by a political party.  These people tell us they would do it better, but always fail to tell us what it is.  Maybe they intend to out source our defense since they chose the picture of a Canadian Soldier for their ad.
 

I’m ashamed Oliver when people with the means to help solve problems, such as you, point out all of the world’s tribulations, blame them on others, then insist that someone else solve them.  You make millions of dollars and point your finger at poverty and disease asking why someone else hasn’t fixed that.  I suppose when you point out a problem for us, you’ve fulfilled your societal obligations and can feel good then to return to self-worship.
 

I’m ashamed that people who claim to be patriotic citizens of the United States of America will stand embracing a troll like Hugo Chavez while calling our President a terrorist.
 

I’m ashamed that I must spend hours reading dozens of versions of the same story in order to collect most of the pertinent facts.  All because there are no media sources I can trust to give me the complete picture.  Reading or listening to the news nowadays is like reading a 9^th grade term paper.  The writer or speaker tosses out everything except the one fact that supports his or her position.  I’m ashamed that too many of my fellow citizens accept your words or the words of those who fail to report the whole story to them as the complete truth.
 

I’m ashamed when our system and our people elect a government and then watch helplessly as the minority party spends every waking hour ensuring that the majority party fails while never considering the impact their idiocy has on common every day people.  Neither the political persuasion of the parties, the needs of our country nor the desires of our people determine what they do, only their minority or majority status does.  I expect it’ll take a catastrophic event of proportions most of us can’t comprehend to change that.
 

I’m ashamed that we’ve killed millions of babies in our country and call it freedom of choice.
 

I’m ashamed because we’ve lost common courtesy and respect in our country and we are bringing up an entire generation to act that way.  When is the last time you read a news article referring to the President as something other than a last name, or practically anyone else who has earned a title for that matter?  We wouldn’t call our family doctor by his or her last name, but it’s OK for our President, Congressman, or whomever.  That’s how our children are learning to show courtesy and respect.  When you’re child mentions Jones, you may have to clarify whether it’s the school principal, your elderly neighbor or one of his buddies.
 

I’m ashamed that during a time when people wish our destruction and are actively trying to fulfill their wishes, when dangerous regimes are actively pursuing nuclear weapons, when American Soldiers are fighting and dying, when inept politicians have failed for decades to free us from dependence on foreign energy sources, when pork barrel politics are bankrupting our country, when… that the leading news story on every 24 hour news source is about a homosexual Congressman who may or may not have cyber-diddled a homosexual page and whether or not that episode will decide who gets to lead our country.  Frankly, Oliver, I found more substance in student council elections during my brief one-year tour in a public school.
 

Ashamed Oliver?  Somewhat.

J. D. Pendry's Blog

Colleagues of the officers branded the vandalism a “disgrace”. A source at the regiment said: “These guys have done nothing but bravely serve their country — yet they can’t even live where they want in their own country.” The £3,000-a-month detached home in picturesque Datchet, Berks, is less than a mile from Windsor Castle. It was attacked as extra police were drafted into Windsor — where battles have raged for days between Asian and white gangs.

...The young officers — from the same regiment as Prince Harry — had planned to use the four-bed house for rest and recuperation after months risking their lives on the frontline.

Louts struck two days after the four arrived in uniform in an Army Land Rover to view it.

The source said: “A gang of local Muslims set about keeping them away. They hurled bricks through the windows and then wrote offensive graffiti across the front of the house.” The vile messages included one in 4ft letters on the drive — warning: “F*** off”.

Sources inside Windsor’s Combermere Barracks — where the officers are based — confirmed Muslims had made calls threatening the men.

The Sun Online

The Associated Press

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2006
-- Published: October 7, 2006

VERMILLION, South Dakota Veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, who received the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media at the University of South Dakota, says the United States has never needed a vigorous free press more than now. [Agreed. Does that you're going to "vigorously" investigate your peers when they blatently attempt to influence an election with forged documents? -ed.]

He said Thursday the U.S. government will always cover up its mistakes if it operates in secret and that it was up to journalists to expose the truth.

"Some would argue these revelations hurt our cause. I argue just the opposite. Bringing mistakes to the fore is a strength, not a weakness."

Schieffer said America's great strength comes from emphasizing the values and principles that separate it from its enemies — "not by adopting their methods and their techniques."

I'm not even going to go into the damage you assholes caused with your "Tet Offensive" bullshit...

Herald Tribune

UPDATE: Outspoken Putin critic shot dead in Moscow

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on Saturday at her apartment block in central Moscow, police said.

"According to initial information she was killed by two shots when leaving the lift. Neighbors found her body," a police source told Reuters. Police found a pistol and four rounds in the lift.

Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, won international fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin's government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya.

"The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed for her professional activities. We don't see any other motive for this terrible crime," said Vitaly Yaroshevsky, a deputy editor of the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked.

Kinda puts your petty, whiny, little screed about the "Free Press" in perspective, doesn't it, Bob?

On December 6, 1989 a lunatic took a rifle into a Montreal school and brutally murdered fourteen young women and wounded an additional thirteen.

With the battle cry of "Never Again!" the government-of-the-day introduced Bill C-68, Canada's Firearms Act, and passed it into law in 1995.

On September 13, 2006 another lunatic took another rifle into another Montreal School, brutally murdered one young woman and wounded another twenty people.

Bill C-68 (the Firearms Act) could not stop Kimveer Gill on September 13, 2006 any more than it could have stopped Gamil Gharbi (aka Marc Lepine) on December 6, 1989.

Both Gharbi and Gill were vetted by the authorities of the day. Both were cleared by the government and "given permission" to purchase their firearms.

Neither the Firearms Acquisition Certificate questions asked of Gharbi nor the Possession and Acquisition License questions asked of Gill tipped off those guarding our Public Safety that these young men were deranged and dangerous.

Those who continually cry for more "gun control" refuse to learn the fundamental truth these heinous crimes teach those of us with the ears to hear:

Society cannot legislate sanity.

There is nothing government can do to stop someone from going crazy and going on a murderous rampage.

All we can do is stop them once they've already gone mad and started killing.

Who do we call when this happens?

Someone with the means and ability to stop the killer...

Someone with a gun.

In Canada it is "unthinkable" that we citizens are capable of defending ourselves when a madman starts shooting.

Instead, panicked and terrified, we frantically dial 9-1-1 and pray to God we aren't dead by the time "someone with a gun" arrives to save us.

It would be so much simpler to cut out the middleman and the high death toll, don't you think?

What if the first student confronted by Gamil Gharbi and his rifle that awful December day, instead of cowering and dying, had pulled a concealed-carry handgun from her purse and shot him dead?

Even if her actions were not in time to save her own life, thirteen other young women would be alive today, celebrating her training and foresight each December 6th.

Instead, every year we allow the "grief industry" to tell us over and over how powerless we are. We allow the "victim culture" to grow. We allow ourselves to believe the lie that we cannot defend ourselves.

What if one of the first young men confronted by Kimveer Gill had pulled his own concealed-carry pistol and shot Gill dead?

Instead of mourning the death Anastasia De Souza and facing his own impotence, he could instead stand tall, knowing his training and foresight saved Anastasia's life.

When will Canadians comprehend the simple truth Israel learned back in the '70's when Muslim terrorists were murdering Israeli children in their schools:

Gun-Free Zones only protect the killers... not their intended victims. Once Israel armed their teachers, attacks on schools stopped. Immediately.

One day we must face the truth: licensing and registration of firearms does not work.

On that day we must look for real-world solutions to this problem, instead of the politically-expedient knee-jerk reactions that keep killing our young people.

After all, the goal is to save lives, isn't it?

Sanity from the Great Whiter North.

Mountain News (Ontario) 

SEOUL, South Korea —  U.N. Security Council expressed "deep concern" Friday at Pyongyang's plan to conduct a nuclear test as North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il held a rally for hundreds of his top military commanders.

The statement, adopted unanimously by the council and read at a formal meeting, warns North Korea that carrying out a nuclear test would bring international condemnation, "jeopardize peace, stability and security in the region and beyond," and lead to further unspecified council action. [Oh no!  The "Strongly Worded Letter????  *Gasp*  -ed.]

The U.N. action came as Japan's vice foreign minister said the test could come as early as this weekend, the anniversary of Kim's appointment as head of the Korean Workers' Party in 1997. Japan said it was stepping up monitoring of North Korea.

Still shots of Kim waving to an assembled crowd of 500 olive-suited officers aired on North Korean state television. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the communist leader was greeted with rousing cheers of "Fight at the cost of our lives!" by his top brass as he urged them to bolster the nation's defenses.

Kim later posed for a group photo with his commanders in front of Pyongyang's sprawling mausoleum for his father and national founder, Kim Il Sung.

The presidential statement, which becomes part of the Security Council's formal record, says the council "deplores" the pursuit of nuclear weapons by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name which is referred to by its initials, the DPRK.

"The Security Council will be monitoring the situation closely," the statement says. "The Security Council stresses that a nuclear test, if carried out by the DPRK, would represent a clear threat to international peace and security and that should the DPRK ignore calls of the international community, the Security Council will act consistent with its responsibility under the Charter of the United Nations."

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the U.S. priority now is to stop a North Korean test.

"North Korea should understand how strongly the United States and many other council members feel that they should not test this nuclear device," Bolton said, "and that if they do test it, it would be a very different world the day after the test ... because there would be another nuclear power."

"This would be proof positive of North Korea having nuclear weapons. It would be an example of nuclear proliferation that we're very much concerned about," he said.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said threatening or conducting a nuclear test "would not help anybody including North Korea."

"This message is very clearly conveyed in the useful presidential statement which we today adopted," he said. "Let's hope that things will cool off and that everybody will return to six-party talks."

UNacceptable.

Fox News  

A new movie that depicts the death of President George W. Bush looks likely to flop at the box office after being snubbed by America's biggest cinema chain.

Distribution firm Newmarket Films snapped up the rights to controversial faux documentary Death Of A President after it was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, and has moved quickly to ensure it is released at the end of October - ahead of the November 7th elections.

But bosses at Regal Entertainment Group are refusing to show the film. CEO Mike Campbell explains, "We feel it is inappropriate to portray the future assassination of a sitting president, regardless of political affiliation."

Regal has been joined by Cinemark USA and executives at other chains are still considering whether to screen it.

But Newmarket bosses insist it is successfully placing the movie in a number of theatres.

Distribution consultant Richard Abramowitz says, "Every day during a busy time we are picking up plenty of screens. We're getting a good reception in a lot of places. No matter how tight the screens are, once a film has success, it's always easier to get more screens."

Wow.  Moral clarity in the Entertainment  industry?

WREC 

By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
October 6, 2006

After years of dithering over political correctness with Muslims and Islam, Europe is waking up to a different morning.

Indeed, what can one say about Britain's Muslims, when 10% of those polled after the August airliner plot said they would be "willing" to wage suicide attacks against their fellow Britons, and another 70% refused to condemn that view?

Europeans now see a need not to massage the Muslim ethos but to remove it. One can talk forever of the necessity for Islam to reform itself, but that fails to resonate within Muslim societies, Europeans tell me.

My European tour made it eminently clear that Western Europeans — if not their more liberal, compromised ruling and business elites — believe that for Muslims living in the West, it's either Western ways or the highway.

Harsh, maybe, but that is how it stands.

When the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci died in September, newspapers across Europe celebrated her for her journalistic exploits with the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini and Henry Kissinger. But above all, they celebrated her for her fierce, uncompromising, "rejectionist" book about Islam in Europe, "The Rage and the Pride," which called for nothing less than the expulsion of Muslims who insist on separate societies.

Shortly before and after the pope's pointed remarks on Islam — in which he added to his earlier statements that Turkey's 70 million Muslims have no place in "Christian Europe" — there were numerous other mini-explosions. They included Dutch revulsion over the ritual Muslim killing of the movie director Theo van Gogh; the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad; and, most recently, a September 19 article in Le Figaro by the French philosopher and schoolteacher Robert Redeker that made the case that Muslims are bent on muzzling Europe's democratic values.

Europe is no longer dithering. Every other week, parliaments are restricting the freedom of expression of Muslim fundamentalists, preachers, and madrassas, and questioning every value that militant Islam has attempted to sneak into the Continent over the past 20 years.

The dialogue is over. The time for action is closing in.

The New York Sun 

By THOMAS WATKINS
Associated Press Writer
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.

Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo "told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison," the statement said.

"One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee's head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others," the statement said. The sailor said he was never punished.

The statement was provided to the AP on Thursday night by Lt. Col. Colby Vokey. He is the Marine Corps' defense coordinator for the western United States and based at Camp Pendleton.

Calls left for representatives at Guantanamo Bay on Friday were not immediately returned. A Pentagon spokesman declined immediate comment.

Other guards "also told their own stories of abuse towards the detainees" that included hitting them, denying them water and "removing privileges for no reason."

"About 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees" and that included "punching in the face," the affidavit said.

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees."

You've got to be effing kidding me.

AP, you are a bunch of child molesting, Neo-Nazi hacks, who eat babies.  A guy in a bar told me.

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU OCT 5 2006 2:53:48 ET XXXXX

CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE MESSAGES WERE PAGE PRANK GONE AWRY
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded an unwitting Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats.

The primary source, an ally of Edmund, adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund. Both are fearful that their political careers will be affected if they are publicly brought into the matter.

The prank scenario only applies to the Edmund IM sessions and does not necessarily apply to any other exchanges between the former congressman and others.

The news come on the heels that Edmund has hired former Timothy McVeigh attorney, Stephen Jones.

Developing...

This just get stupider and stupider.  I'm invoking the 48-hour rule before forming an opinion on this...

Via:  Drudge 

Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.

	Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was warned of an 'intifada'

As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.

It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.

The number of attacks has risen by a third in two years. Police representatives told the newspaper Le Figaro that the "taboo" of attacking officers on patrol has been broken.

Instead, officers – especially those patrolling in pairs or small groups – faced attacks as soon as they tried to arrest locals.

Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics.

The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the leading centre-Right candidate for the presidency, has sent heavily equipped units into areas with orders to regain control from drug smuggling gangs and other organised crime rings. Such aggressive raids were "disrupting the underground economy in the estates", one senior official told Le Figaro.

However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an "intifada" on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.

He said yesterday: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."

He added: "We need armoured vehicles and water cannon. They are the only things that can disperse crowds of hundreds of people who are trying to kill police and burn their vehicles."

However, Gerard Demarcq, of the largest police unions, Alliance, dismissed talk of an "intifada" as representing the views of only a minority.

Mr Demarcq said that the increased attacks on officers were proof that the policy of "retaking territory" from criminal gangs was working.

Mayors in the worst affected suburbs, which saw weeks of riots and car-burning a year ago, have expressed fears of a vicious circle, as attacks by locals lead the police to harden their tactics, further increasing resentment.

As if to prove that point, there were angry reactions in the western Paris suburb of Les Mureaux following dawn raids in search of youths who attacked a police unit on Sunday. The raids led to one arrest. They followed clashes on Sunday night when scores of youths attacked seven officers who had tried to arrest a man for not wearing his seat belt while driving. That driver refused to stop, and later rammed a police car trying to block his path.

The mayor of Les Mureaux, Francois Garay, criticised aggressive police tactics that afterwards left "the people on the ground to pick up the pieces".

The Telegraph

Hypocrisy on parade from the San Francisco Chronicle:

A contingent from NAMBLA marches in San Francisco's Gay Pride parade.

Shame on Congress

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

THE ABRUPT fall of Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from West Palm Beach, is about more than one congressman's sickness. It's about whether his colleagues were sufficiently vigilant in responding to signs of his exploitive behavior toward House pages.

In backtracking through the scandal, it's outrageous that Foley was not confronted long ago by responsible adults in the House. His doting over congressional pages earned him a label as an eccentric to avoid. After one youth complained about "sick" e-mails from Foley, he was privately warned by House overseers of the page system to knock it off. It's obvious he didn't get the message.

Foley was indulged and tolerated. He headed, of all things, a House caucus on missing and exploited children. There was never a serious inquiry into his curious conduct, and to underline the partisan backdrop, Democrats on the ethics review panels were kept uninformed about the allegations against Republican Foley.

But this dam finally burst. When the explicit e-mails were made public, Foley had little choice but to quit. Days later, he vanished from sight by entering rehab for alcohol abuse.

House leaders are now in a flurry of action they never showed before in controlling Foley. With his resignation, the mess is conveniently out of reach of a bipartisan House inquiry. The Department of Justice is now invited in to sort out the charges.

Foley could face criminal charges if young witnesses can be encouraged to back up the evidence.

Foley's misconduct is obviously a serious matter, but equally shameful is the negligent oversight that allowed his behavior to continue. Members of Congress have a parental responsibility to assure the safety of these young pages. House Speaker Dennis Hastert insisted Monday that neither he nor any other Republican leaders saw the lurid exchanges between Foley and the pages.

Hastert said, "As a parent and speaker of the House, I am disgusted." So are we. But our disgust does not stop with Foley.

So far as we know, Representative Foley has yet to be accused of any crime.

All that was known by the House GOP leadership was that Foley had scribed some emails to a former page that seemed in hindsight possibly overly familiar.

There are no "explicit emails," like the Chronicle incessantly claims. Just explicit internet messages.

The Chronicle appears to suggest that because Foley "doted" over pages he should have been forced by the GOP to resign.

The Chronicle is outraged that Foley's homosexual tendencies were tolerated. -- Isn't irony ironic?

If the GOP had forced Foley out of the House because they suspected he had homosexual tendencies, what do you think the headlines would have been in our one party media? What would the Chronicle have said?

Meanwhile, Democrat leaders had access to the more explicit IMs for three years, and said nothing until it would be too late for the Republicans to replace Foley with a viable candidate.

But the Chronicle is disgusted with the GOP.

Also note that the word "homosexual" does not appear in this editorial. Why do you think that is?

Lastly, one can't help but notice that George Soros created a whole new operation to promote this scandal -- CREW. One suspects even he realized that using his stooges at MoveOn.org was just too ironic.

As Wikipedia notes:

Initially called "Censure and Move On," [MoveOn.org] invited visitors to add their names to an online petition stating that "Congress must Immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country."

MoveOn (and the rest of the Democrats) argued that it mattered not at all that a President had committed and suborned perjury.

Nor was it significant that Bill Clinton broke laws that he himself had so loudly championed, such as laws against sexual harassment in the workplace. (Remember, Clinton perjured himself in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit.)

No, MoveOn and the rest of the Democrats said it was "just about sex" and ergo laughably unimportant.

Still the Chronicle may be on to something. Yes, shame on Congress -- especially the Democrat operatives who sat on this information for three years rather than try to prevent other possible victims merely for political gain.

But also shame on the San Francisco Chronicle for lying about events and for suddenly finding homosexuality a crime that dare not speak its name.

Sweetness and Light 

How times change.

By David French

It is tough not to admire the campus Left’s mental agility. Over the past few decades, we have seen the architects of the free-speech movement become the authors of speech codes, and those who formerly glorified dissent clamp down on campus with a mind-numbing level of intellectual conformity. Scientific inquiry is welcome, unless it results in tough questions about possible innate gender differences. Open debate is the hallmark of the academy, unless of course that debate intrudes into areas where policy should be settled and morality decided (like when dealing with race, class, gender, war, peace, and sexuality).

Given the remarkable ability to reinvent its position on the free-speech clause of the First Amendment (from protesters to censors), it was only a matter of time before the Left began to rethink the religion clauses as well, especially the establishment clause. “Separation of church and state” has been a battle cry of the hard Left for many decades, but what if the Left ran the state — or at least dominated an important state agency? Would the Left remain dedicated to this allegedly bedrock principle?

In the university context, the answer is clearly “no.” Faced with large and active religious student groups who are often engaged in public debate over the Left’s currently fashionable civil-rights issue — homosexuality — public universities simply cannot restrain themselves. They are taking sides, not just politically, ideologically, and culturally, but religiously.

Take this official statement from the Georgia Institute of Technology (in its so-called “Safe Space” training manual):

Many religious traditions have taught, and some continue to teach, that homosexuality is immoral. These condemnations are based primarily on a few isolated passages from the Bible. Historically, Biblical passages taken out of context have been used to justify such things as slavery, the inferior status of women, and the persecution of religious minorities.

Displeased that the State of Georgia is comparing those who hold traditional religious views of sexuality to slaveowners? At least Georgia does not make religious conservatives look as, well, silly as the University of Michigan does:

Some texts of the Old Testament are used to condemn homosexuality. Taken literally and out of context, Biblical passages can be used to justify slavery, prohibit the wearing of red dresses, and eating of shrimp and shellfish, and to reinforce the inferiority of women.

So there you have it. At Michigan, religious conservatives are not only like slaveowners and misogynists, they also are as contemptible as those philistines who dislike Benetton’s fall line.

But as any student of religion knows, abstract theological statements and insults of religious opponents are not by themselves enough to change hearts and minds. You also need good old-fashioned testimonials, like the following from the University of Texas:

Former youth activist Jamie Nabozny was raised Pentecostal and hoped to become a minister. But he was gay and thought the only worse thing he could be was Satan himself. So he tried too put his same-sex attractions aside until, one day, he could deny them no longer.

“I walked as far as I could into a big field. I was crying, praying and hollering at God. I said, ‘I’ve read the Bible, I’ve prayed, I go to church three times a week. Every time I have a homosexual thought, I rebuke it in the name of God and yet still I’m gay. Either you’re not there, or you don’t give a damn that I’m gay.’ It took me a little while but then I realized God was OK with it. The god I really believed in was not a God that hated or condemned people.”

This is an experience some people go through. Faced with a conflict between their religion and their feelings, they come to realize that the God they truly believe in could never condemn people for loving.

To put this state religious activity in context, it must be compared to the most famous leftist establishment-clause case of this decade: The Dover, Pennsylvania, Intelligent Design litigation. In that case, the national media and the campus Left fretted over the coming dark night of theocracy because a school board required science teachers to read a brief statement that said “Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view.” Oh, and the nefarious statement also said, “With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind.” The horror.

So, with respect to a debate over the origins of life, a statement asking students to “keep an open mind” and noting the existence of an alternative view is just too coercive. But when the debate involves sexual morality, it is just fine to compare conservative Christianity to the theology of slavers and to pontificate on the nature of the “God they truly believe in.” Censorship is now acceptable to the free-speech champions of the Sixties, so it only makes sense that those who drove God from the public square are setting up state-run Sunday schools. Mental agility is a wonderful thing.

— David French is a senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). ADF is challenging Georgia Tech’s Safe Space Training program in federal court.

National Review Online

Europe turns its back on Socrates, Locke, et al.

By Victor Davis Hanson

The first Western Enlightenment of the Greek fifth-century B.C. sought to explain natural phenomena through reason rather than superstition alone. Ethics were to be discussed in the realm of logic as well as religion. Much of what Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and the Sophists thought may today seem self-evident, if not at times nonsensical. But that century was the beginning of the uniquely Western attempt to bring to the human experience empiricism, self-criticism, irony, and tolerance in thinking.

The second European Enlightenment of the late 18^th century followed from the earlier spirit of the Renaissance. For all the excesses and arrogance in its thinking that pure reason might itself dethrone religion — as if science could explain all the mysteries of the human condition — the Enlightenment nevertheless established the Western blueprint for a humane and ordered society.

But now all that hard-won effort of some 2,500 years is at risk. The new enemies of Reason are not the enraged democrats who executed Socrates, the Christian zealots who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity, or the Nazis who burned books. No, they are a pampered and scared Western public that caves to barbarism — dwarves who sit on the shoulders of dead giants, and believe that their present exalted position is somehow related to their own cowardly sense of accommodation.

What would a Socrates, Galileo, Descartes, or Locke believe of the present decay in Europe — that all their bold and courageous thinking, won at such a great cost, would have devolved into such cheap surrender to fanaticism?

Just think: Put on an opera in today’s Germany, and have it shut down, not by Nazis, Communists, or kings, but by the simple fear of Islamic fanatics.

Write a novel deemed critical of the Prophet Mohammed, as did Salman Rushdie, and face years of ostracism and death threats — in the heart of Europe no less.

Compose a film, as did Theo Van Gogh, and find your throat cut in “liberal” Holland.

Or better yet, sketch a cartoon in postmodern Denmark, and then go into hiding.

Quote an ancient treatise, as did the pope, and learn your entire Church may come under assault, and the magnificent stones of the Vatican offer no refuge.

There are three lessons to be drawn from these examples. In almost every case, the criticism of the artist or intellectual was based either on his supposed lack of sensitivity or of artistic excellence. Van Gogh was, of course, obnoxious and his films puerile. The pope was woefully ignorant of public relations. The cartoons in Denmark were amateurish and unnecessary. Rushdie was an overrated novelist, whose chickens of trashing the West he sought refuge in finally came home to roost. The latest Hans Neuenfels adaptation of Mozart’s Idomeneo was silly.

But isn’t that precisely the point? It is easy to defend artists when they produce works of genius that do not offend popular sensibilities — Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws — but not so when an artist offends with neither taste nor talent. Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the smile and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But isn’t that why we must come to the present Pope’s defense — if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not?

Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship: fear of radical Islam and its gruesome appendages of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-chanting mobs.

In contrast, almost daily in Europe, “brave” artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. Why?

For a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that they can do this without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a Dr Zawahri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.

Second, almost every genre of artistic and intellectual expression has come under assault: music, satire, the novel, films, academic exegesis. Somehow Europeans have ever-so-insidiously given up the promise of the Enlightenment that welcomed free thought of all kinds, the more provocative the better.

So the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort, since they themselves, not just their consensual governments or some invader across the Mediterranean, have nearly destroyed their won freedoms of expression — out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing.

Europe boldly produces films about assassinating an American president, and routinely disparages the Church that gave the world the Sermon of the Mount, but it simply won’t stand up for an artist, a well-meaning Pope, or a ranting filmmaker when the mob closes in. The Europe that believes in everything turns out to believe in nothing. [Oh!  That's GOTTA hurt...  -ed]

Third, examine why all these incidents took place in Europe. Since 2000 it has been the habit of blue-state politicians to rebuke the yokels of America, in part by showing us a supposedly more humane Western future unfolding in Europe. It was the European Union that was at the forefront of mass transit; the EU that advanced Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. And it was the heralded EU that sought “soft” power rather than the Neanderthal resort to arms.

And what have we learned in the last five years from its boutique socialism, utopian pacifism, moral equivalence, and cultural relativism? That it was logical that Europe most readily would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists.

Those in an auto parts store in Fresno, or at a NASCAR race in southern Ohio, might appear to Europeans as primordials with their guns, “fundamentalist&rdq uo; religion, and flag-waving chauvinism. But it is they, and increasingly their kind alone, who prove the bulwarks of the West. Ultimately what keeps even the pope safe and the continent confident in its vain dialogues with Iranian lunatics is the United States military and the very un-Europeans who fight in it.

We may be only 30 years behind Europe, but we are not quite there yet. And so Europe has done us a great favor in showing us not the way of the future, but the old cowardice of our pre-Enlightenment past.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

National Review Online