THE NIXATRON BLOG-TIMES

HOME DISCUSS SEARCH ARCHIVES EMAIL ABOUT LINKS

“One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.” --Winston Churchill

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say
by Kenneth Chang
Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught "is very much natural," said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season...
Related: A Powerful Reminder From Mother Nature

Study: Terrorists Exploit Immigration Laws
by Lara Jakes Jordan
...The report provides newly compiled data on U.S. terror arrests to illustrate gaps in the nation's border security, visa approval and immigration systems...
Full Report Consider this: The History of Ideological Exclusion and the Need for Its Revival
Related: Impatience Grows for Immigration Reforms Day Labor Centers Stir Controversy Throughout Country

Jihadism's Roots in Political Islam
by Bassam Tibi
...It is wrong and even deceitful to argue that jihadism has nothing to do with Islam, because the jihadists believe that they are acting as "true Islamic believers" and learn the Islamist mind-set in mosques and Islamic schools, including those of the Islamic diaspora in Europe...

Who Is Hugo Chavez?
The New York Sun
...None of this amounts to justification for the American government to assassinate Mr. Chavez, though we certainly wouldn't shed any tears if he were removed from power by some resourceful Venezuelans. But the contrast between the left's loud fuss over Rev. Robertson's comments and their silence about Mr. Chavez's actions signals that whatever its motivation, the furor surely doesn't stem from an evenhanded application of principles of nonviolence or human rights.
Related: Pat Robertson's Words and Our Responsibility

Monday, August 29, 2005

Real Reform At Last
Investor's Business Daily
...Bolton has occupied his Turtle Bay office just a few weeks and already he's tipped over Kofi Annan's bureaucratic apple cart. The secretary general had scheduled a Sept. 14 summit for the heads of 175 nations. The agenda? Ratifying the 2000 Millennium Summit, which put the U.N. squarely in the business of not just arbitrating global conflicts but ending poverty and curing disease. Global utopianism of this sort — the Bush administration rightly believes — does not set the U.N. on the right course. It simply invites more of the monumental corruption into which the body — once touted as "the last, best hope for mankind" — has been sinking...

New Constitution has Something for Everyone
by Mark Steyn
...To be sure, we shouldda done this, and we shouldda done that. Yet nonetheless Iraq advances day by day. The real quagmire is at home, where the kinkily gleeful relish of defeatism manifested by Cindy Sheehan, Joan Baez, Ted Kennedy et al. bears less and less relationship to anything happening over there...

Immigration Problem Needs an Attrition Policy
by Mark Krikorian
Those who can, do. Those who won't, declare a state of emergency. After years of welcoming illegal immigration, Govs. Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson now see a political tsunami gaining force and are heading for higher ground...a clever political tactic nonetheless, allowing officials to appear responsive to public concerns over immigration without actually doing anything to control it...

The Geopolitics of Katrina
Strategic Forecasting
...The Port of Southern Louisiana is a river port. It depends on the navigability of the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is notorious for changing its course, and in southern Louisiana -- indeed along much of its length -- levees both protect the land from its water and maintain its course and navigability. Dredging and other maintenance are constant and necessary to maintain its navigability. It is fragile...if we speculate on worse-case scenarios the following consequences jump out...

Sunday, August 28, 2005

A War to Be Proud Of
by Christopher Hitchens
..."Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad." I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it...If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.
Related: 'Wonderful Time To Be a Soldier'

Iraq: Where Socialists and Anarchists Join in with Racialists and Paleocons
by Victor Davis Hanson
...both, in their exasperation at George Bush's insistence on seeing Iraq emerge from the Hussein nightmare years with some sort of constitutional government, have embraced the paranoid style of personal invective. They employ half-truths and spin conspiracy theories to argue that the war was unjust, impossible to win, and hatched through the result of a brainwashing of a devious few neocons....
Related: Sheehan's Radical Views Little Noted

Dems Can Make Inroads on Immigration Issue
by Froma Harrop
President Bush should know he's not doing us any favors by offering to enforce the nation's immigration laws. It's already his job. Yet that's the deal in his new guest-worker proposal: Keep the cheap labor flowing to business, and maybe I'll start going after employers who hire illegal aliens. This mindset is making Americans crazy, and Democrats have taken notice...

Worry About the Fed, Not Oil
by Lawrence Kudlow
...Right now, stable commodities (excluding energy), low bond rates, and a steady dollar are signaling low inflation and moderate economic growth. But Greenspan’s neglect of the commodity-price-rule approach to policy makes one wonder if he is turning a blind eye to the message of the markets. After all we have learned about the failure of central planning in the last century, are intelligent people today willing to accept the notion that government banks are smarter than markets?...

Saturday, August 27, 2005

US Heading for House Price Crash, Greenspan Tells Buyers
by Graham Searjeant
Wall Streer shuddered yesterday after Alan Greenspan, the United States’ central banker, warned American homebuyers that they risk a crash if they continue to drive property prices higher. He said that the US house-price spiral had become an economic imbalance, threatening stability like the country’s trade gap or its budget deficit...
Related: Wisconsin Program Helps Illegal Aliens Get Mortgages

Nominal vs. Real News
by George F. Will
...the price of oil—not in nominal dollars but real, inflation-adjusted dollars—to surpass the record set in January 1981, it would have to be $86.72 per barrel. Last Friday it was $65.35...Fuming drivers should remember that the cost of a gallon of gasoline also contains a cost of government—18.4 cents federal tax and an average of 25.6 cents state taxes. So the cost of the gallon is what the pump tells you—minus about 44 cents...

Divided They Stand
by David Brooks
...Galbraith says he is frustrated with all the American critics who argue that the constitution divides the country. The country is already divided, he says, and drawing up a constitution that would artificially bind three divergent societies together would create only friction, violence and civil war. "It's not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently," Galbraith says. "Iraq wasn't created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill"...

Third Source Backs 'Able Danger' Claims About Atta
FOX News
...J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who claims he worked on the technical side of the unit, code-named "Able Danger", told reporters Friday that he helped gather open-source information, reported on government spending and helped generate charts associated with the unit's work. Able Danger was set up in the 1990s to track Al Qaeda activity worldwide...

The U.N.'s Latest
The New York Sun
Just when you thought the United Nations couldn't disgrace itself further, it fetches up siding with supporters of terrorists against defenders of innocent civilians...This latest disgrace from Turtle Bay follows last week's discovery that the United Nations Development Program was financing the distribution of anti-Israel propaganda in Gaza. Which comes amid the oil-for-food scandal, the sex scandal, and the inaction against the ethnic cleansing in Sudan, to list but a few. The question to ask in all this is, "Where is the secretary-general, Kofi Annan?" He was supposed to be reforming the human rights commission. The case for active, pre-emptive oversight of the United Nations by the United States Congress gets stronger by the day.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Anti-War Protests Target Wounded at Army Hospital
by Marc Morano
..."I believe they are tormenting our wounded soldiers and they should just leave them alone," Floyd added..."You know that 95 percent of the guys in the hospital bed lost guys whenever they got hurt and survivors' guilt is the worst thing you can deal with," Pannell said, adding that other veterans recovering from wounds at Walter Reed share his resentment for the anti-war protesters...
Related: Anti-War Crowd Backs Notorious Dictators, Communists

Your Land Is Their Land
by Debra Saunders
..."A baby smiles, and a flower grows," read the plan. Scratch that. Make it: A baby smiles, a flower grows, and city officials try to evict local artisans...it is still wrong for a city to take one taxpayer's unblighted property in order to give it to a richer entity. Revelli Tires, about which I have written, wasn't blighted. Yet Oakland seized that property and the adjacent Autohouse to accommodate a housing project -- and then seized a parking lot a block away to accommodate a bigger Sears auto center. City politicians have been treating properties that taxpayers have worked hard to attain as if they were Monopoly cards...
More: Part 1 Part 2

Libertarian Basics
by Arnold Kling
...I believe that you will find that when government power is held in check, people solve problems by creating institutions that are less coercive and more effective. That is not a utopian vision. It is not an irrefutable proof. But for me, it is a sound basis for libertarianism.

To Wall or Not to Wall
by Jonah Goldberg
...my preferred immigration policy is to have one. When you don't enforce the laws, you are in fact saying that the laws don't matter. If this country wants 10 million legal immigrants a year, fine. Let's have 10 million. But not 10 million legals and 3 or 4 million illegals as well. No line jumpers. Period...
Related: Cross-hating Lawyer Part of Border-Ranch Grab Illegal Entry Tops Crime List Abortion "Causes" Illegal Immigration

Doctor in Trouble for Calling Patient Obese
As doctors warn more patients that they should lose weight, the advice has backfired on one doctor with a woman filing a complaint with the state saying he was hurtful, not helpful...

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Iran Prez: Democracy? Never!
by Amir Taheri
...The United States, Ahmadinejad's manifesto explains, is a "sunset" (ofuli) power while the Islamic Republic is a "sunrise" (tolu'ee) one. America will crumble because it is based on a system that produces "endless material needs" which lead into "the desert of lust" where men are handed over to Satan. The Islamic Republic is going to win because it has God on its side...To carry out his ambitious program Ahmadinejad has created a strong and unusually united Cabinet. And, thanks to spiraling oil prices, his government has almost $200 million a day to play with...

Big Government Discourages Private Charity
by John Stossel
...When you rely on the government to help those who need it, you don't practice benevolence yourself. You don't take responsibility for deciding whom to help. Just as public assistance discourages the poor from becoming independent by rewarding them with fixed handouts, it discourages the rest of us from being benevolent. This may be the greatest irony of the welfare state: It not only encourages the poor to stay dependent, it kills individuals' desire to help them.

Hard Cell
Investor's Business Daily
A stunning discovery has exposed three myths of stem cell research — that President Bush has banned it, that government funding is required and that the use of human embryos is necessary. Almost as amazing as the announcement by scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute — that they've been able to "reprogram" the genes in the skin cells of a human being, turning them into new embryonic stem cells — is the ample coverage the breakthrough has received...

A Dangerous Vioxx Verdict
Chicago Tribune
...All drugs, including aspirin, have dangers. It's easy to forget that some 20 million people found Vioxx beneficial for the treatment of pain from crippling ailments like arthritis. After Merck pulled it off the market, those patients were forced back onto medications that many of them find inferior. An advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration voted earlier this year not to ban Vioxx, based on its proven efficacy. But it's hard to see how Merck can afford to bring the drug back, given the risk of lawsuits...

Homeland Security Chief Tells of Plan to Stabilize Border
by Eric Lipton
..."If you have a boat with numerous holes in it, the boat will sink unless you plug all of the holes effectively," said Michael W. Cutler, a former senior immigration enforcement special agent who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington research group. "He is only addressing a few of the holes, meaning he may slow the flow but it will not solve the problem in the long run"...
Related: Don't Assume U.S. Hispanics are Soft on Immigration Is Mexico Still a Nation

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The Rejection of Materialism
by Dennis Prager
...The Left regards itself as morally elevated because of its preoccupation with materialism. Yet religious Americans who reject materialism are far more likely than left-leaning parents in the same socio-economic condition to sacrifice materially in order to have one parent be a full-time parent. And Judeo-Christian values explain why a religious woman is far more likely to sacrifice materially by giving birth to, rather than aborting, an unplanned child...

Fidel's Victims and Enablers
by Nat Hentoff
For years, Ray Bradbury's novel, "Fahrenheit 451... the temperature at which books burn," has been an inspiration to me and other millions around the world who believe in the freedom to read -- very particularly in those countries whose dictators forbid dissenting books...

Gaza and the Next War
The Washington Times
...Ariel Sharon is under intensified fire from two sets of critics: 1) those on the Israeli right who cannot understand why he would withdraw from the territory, given the lack of a serious Palestinian peace partner; and 2) the usual suspects, most of them on the left, who see every unreciprocated Israeli concession to the Palestinians as insufficient...
Related: Jordan’s King Abdullah Warns Israel Against Unilateral Gaza-type Steps on the West Bank

Of Minds and Metrics
by Michael Barone
Metrics are hard to come by in the war on terrorism...the most important changes occurring -- not just in Iraq, but across the Muslim world -- are changes in people's minds. These are harder, but not impossible, to measure...

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Beyond the News: Weekend Journal

Salem Radio Network
Bill Bennett and Andrew McCarthy of the National Review discuss how tactics must change in order to win the war in Iraq; Dennis Prager and writer Yossi Klein Halevi discuss Israel's withdrawal from Gaza; Michael Medved critiques Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war mom; a special Beyond the News report from Keith Peters about what happened to a Connecticut Episcopal parish that upheld traditional Christian teaching; Mike Gallagher hosts a debate over the true nature of Islam; Albert Mohler asks whether video games are really that good for kids plus Hugh Hewitt, Jay Sekulow and Richard Land weigh in on the latest developments on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court.

The Gaza Withdrawal and Israel's Permanent Dilemma
by George Friedman
...Israel has managed to balance the occupation of a hostile population with splitting Arab nation states since 1967. Sharon's judgment is that, given the current dynamics of the Muslim world, pursuing the same strategy for another generation would be both too costly and too risky. The position of his critics is that the immediate risks of disengagement increase the immediate danger to Israel without solving the long-term problem. If Sharon is right, then there is room for maneuver. But if his critics, including Benjamin Netanyahu, are right, Israel is locked down to an insoluble problem. That is the real debate.

The Border Emergencies
In New Mexico...
by Gov. Bill Richardson
Masked men kidnap three teenage girls. A sniper fires shots at the local sheriff. Property is destroyed at homes and businesses. Mexican cattle suspected of carrying bovine tuberculosis are found on ranches. Seven people reportedly are attacked and robbed at gunpoint. These are some of the many troubling developments in recent weeks along the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico...

... and Arizona
by Gov. Janet Napolitano
...Each day, officers in Nogales, Douglas and other border cities battle crimes involving violent human trafficking and the illegal drug trade. Property damage is rampant; burglaries and robberies are on the rise...

The Biteback Effect
by Victor Davis Hanson
...in the interest of simplicity, I'll call it the "biteback" effect. Every time one hears a strident censor bring up a purported American sin, expect that he'll be bitten right back by proving the opposite of what he intended — and looking foolish in the bargain. Examine a few recent examples of biteback...

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Embryos for Profit

by Albert Mohler
...In reporter Peter Slevin's words: "The moral debate over embryonic stem cells stretches far beyond Capitol Hill to state capitals and research parks across the country, where a fierce competition is underway from Maryland to California for cutting-edge research and the profits that could follow." Note carefully the focus on profits...

Dereliction of Duty?
by Bill O'Reilly
Recently released classified documents paint a stark picture as to how Al Qaeda was able to start the War on Terror. Let's walk through it. The group Judicial Watch has been tracking Usama bin Laden and filed a Freedom of Information request for a State Department report that detailed bin Laden's activities. It took Judicial Watch four years, but this week they finally got the secret documents and they are devastating...

Indifferent to Democracy
by Michael Young
...By refusing to profit from the prospective democratic upheaval that Saddam's removal ushered in; by never looking beyond the American messenger in Iraq to the message itself; by lamenting external hegemony while doing nothing to render it pointless, Arabs merely affirmed their impotence. The self-pitying Arab reaction to the Iraq war showed the terrible sway of the status quo in the Middle East. An inability to marshal change for one's benefit is the stuff of captive minds.

The Left's War Contract
by Tom Bevan
...Of course, one of the primary requirements for the left to support U.S. military force is winning the approval of the UN Security Council. Taken together these requirements would seem to make it almost impossible for the left to support U.S. military action under any circumstance. Or will all these rules not apply when Hillary or some other Democrat is sitting in the White House?

A Mighty Wind
by Jonah Goldberg
...let's be honest, it's not a huge sacrifice. If Teddy [Kennedy] really thinks his fat — or, if you prefer, "phat" — crib on the beach will be ruined by the prospect of having to look at some windmills 5-13 miles offshore, he can swap pads with me. The opponents of the project have made every ludicrous claim in the book, proving that environmentalists will even lie to other environmentalists...
In other environmental news: Climate Change Sceptics Bet $10,000 on Cooler World

Friday, August 19, 2005

Scenes From What Could Be Our Coming Oil Nightmare
by William F. Buckley
Sixty-dollar-a-barrel oil is certainly a success [for OPEC], but the body on which it feeds does not expand, pari passu, with the successes of OPEC. It does not matter how much you consume, if the supplies are inexhaustible and your capacity insatiable. But here is what we might be facing if oil rose to $100 per barrel...

A Few Humble Theses
by Ben Stein
There is such a thing as evil in this world and such a thing as good...In Europe and Asia and South America and in much of North America, this idea is unknown. All is relative and the only point is to get away another day without having the evil ones attack you. Appeasing the terrorists, ignoring them and their instigators, pretending that the good guys are the bad guys -- all of these are now standard practice in the capitals of the world, and in the academies of America...

Oil for Enron
by Claudia Rosett
...Since the Oil for Food program came to an end in 2003, it has been described--accurately enough--as oil for palaces, oil for terror and oil for fraud. Now it turns out the U.N. relief program in Iraq was also oil for Enron...

Taken and Tortured
by Steve Harrigan
Mexico has recently passed Colombia as the #1 country for kidnapping. Statistics, though, are tough. There is something new in Mexico called "express kidnapping" in which someone is snatched for just a few hours for a quick cash payment. The victims are often from the middle class or students. Little research is done by the kidnappers — anyone in a nice car or clothes can be grabbed...

She Does Not Speak for Me
by Ronald R. Griffin
My son died in Iraq--and it was not in vain...We refuse to allow Cindy Sheehan to speak for all of us. Instead, we ask you to learn the individual stories. They are glorious. Honor their memories. Honor their service. Never dishonor them by giving in. They never did.
Related: The Real Meaning of the Cindy Sheehan Vigils Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle Conservative Compassion

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Commission Coverup?
Cabal of Doom Blog
...This week brought the stunning revelation that elite military spies pinpointed Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers as a terror cell more than a year before 9/11 — but were barred from alerting lawmen to try to lock them up. A prime reason why that warning never came is that Gorelick — as top deputy to then-Attorney General Janet Reno — issued a 1995 order creating a "wall" that blocked intelligence on terrorists from being shared with law enforcement. Commission staffers at first denied knowing about the elite military unit known as Able Danger, but later admitted they were briefed — twice — and Atta was specifically named. Still, it was conveniently left out of the 9/11 report. It gets worse...
More: Intelligence Officer Speaks Out

And now we learn: State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996 New Unclassified Documents

U.N. Funds Palestinian Campaign

Fox News
...[Poverty in the Gaza Strip is] exactly the kind of situation that the United Nations Development Program was set up to deal with, and the U.N. is spending millions of dollars there every year. But FOX News has discovered that not all that cash is going to alleviate poverty. Instead, some of it is funding a Palestinian political campaign under the slogan, "Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem"...
Meanwhile, in the Balkans: Jihadists Find Convenient Base in Bosnia

The Exploits and Exploitation of Cindy Sheehan
by James Lileks
...she is right about one thing: The Internet is helpful. Thanks to the Web, we know that Sheehan spoke at a rally at San Francisco State University in April. It wasn't a Mothers Against Pre-emptive War With Ambivalent U.N. Approval meeting. It was a rally for a lawyer convicted of aiding Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the terrorist connected with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993...

Srategies or Diversions?
Critics have assailed President Bush for his strategy on terrorism, calling the war in Iraq a diversion from the main task of defeating al-Qaeda. But just days after the 60th anniversary of victory in World War II, it is striking to note how Franklin D. Roosevelt faced very similar critics and how President Bush has adopted a grand strategy very much in the Roosevelt tradition...

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Church Desecration Video Serves as Jihad Fund-Raiser
by Sherrie Gossett
...The video footage also depicts mujahedeen forces entering an Orthodox Christian church. One combatant throws down what appears to be a vial of incense before others mock sacred items, break up the altar and vandalize Byzantine-style icons while smiling and singing. One combatant raises his rifle and fires at the cross atop the [icon screen]...

Unfree Under Islam
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
...Muslim women across the world are caught in a terrible predicament. They aspire to live by their faith as best they can, but their faith robs them of their rights. Some women have found a way out of this dilemma in the principle of separation of organized religion and state affairs. They fight an uphill battle to achieve and hold on to their basic rights. Two cases demonstrate just how difficult that struggle can be, in the context of new as well as established democracies...

Immigration Taboos
by Thomas Sowell
...Bombings in London, Madrid and the 9/11 terrorist attacks here are all part of the high price being paid today for decades of importing human time bombs from the Arab world. That in turn has been the fruit of an unwillingness to filter out people according to the countries they come from. That squeamishness is still with us today, as shown by all the hand-wringing about "profiling" Middle Eastern airline passengers...
Related: Arizona Governor Napolitano Decares Border Emergency Border-control Democrats and President Bush

Did DoD Lawyers Blow the Chance to Nab Atta?
by Jacob Goodwin
...“Obviously, if we had taken out that cell, 9/11 would not have occurred and, certainly, taking out those three principal players in that cell would have severely crippled, if not totally stopped, the operation that killed 3,000 people in America,” said Weldon...
More: Able Danger's Hidden Hand

United in Greed, Divided It Falls
by Mark Steyn
How many Annans does it take to change a light bulb? Well, if the replacement light bulb's being shipped to Uday Hussein's Iraqi Olympic Committee recreational basement as part of the UN Oil-for-Food programme, there's no telling how many Annans you'll need...

Why Target Wal-Mart?
by Michael Reitz
...Asking parents and teachers to boycott a retailer does nothing to advance the NEA's stated mission. Rather, it is a convenient means of political payback. Once again, the National Education Association has demonstrated that it is more interested in entrenching organized labor's power than in promoting the quality of education.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

How do you say "Patriot Act" in Italian and German?
Opinion Journal
...Some observers have predicted Britain's new anti-terror laws will clash with human-rights laws, and Mr. Blair has pledged to change the human-rights laws if necessary. Other European nations would do well to review whether their laws could be tweaked to close loopholes that terrorists have learned to exploit. That these measures are finally being discussed is a sign that Europe is finally giving serious thought to the balance between freedom and security.

'Anti-ACLU' Fights for Religion in Public Life
FOX News
For years, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have fought to remove any trace of religion from government and public life, and for years they've won. Now the ACLU is facing a challenge from groups such as the Alliance Defense Fund, one of several Christian law firms formed in the 1990s...

Cops Held to Impossible Standards
by Debra Saunders
Why would anyone want to become a police officer when even self-defense is now deemed "excessive force" and "racist?" Those charges have been hurled at Los Angeles police officers, who, on July 10, shot to death 19-month-old Suzie Marie Pena -- because her father Jose Raul Pena held the child as a human shield as he fired a stolen semiautomatic handgun toward police...

Selective Diversity in Higher Education
by Nat Hentoff
...As summarized in the June 24-26 New York Sun, the result of this study, confirmed in previous reports in the widely respected, nonpartisan weekly, the Chronicle of Higher Education, reveals that campus liberal professors "outnumber conservatives 5-to-1. It also concludes that conservatives get worse jobs than liberals"...

Meet with Her (again), Mr. President
by Cal Thomas
...he should meet with her, but not alone. Other relatives of dead and wounded soldiers and some of the soldiers, themselves, should be included. He might also invite a few Iraqis who support the effort to free a people long held in bondage by Saddam Hussein and who face new bondage under the totalitarian dictatorship of Islamofacism if this effort fails...

Monday, August 15, 2005

Why God Hates Terrorists More Than Gamblers
by Dennis Prager
The recent bombings in London once again raise an ancient question: What is the greatest sin? One common response is that all sins are equally bad in God's eyes. But this makes little sense....It is particularly sad when religious people depict God in a way that renders him less intelligent than his creations: "Sure, we humans think that murdering a family is worse than taking a stapler home from the office, but God doesn't!"...

Fight Terrorism with Bombs, Not Bread
by Alex Epstein
The pernicious idea that poverty causes terrorism has been a popular claim since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001...More fundamentally, poverty cannot determine anyone's code of morality. It is the ideas individuals choose to adopt that make them pursue certain goals and values. A desire to destroy wealth and to slaughter innocent, productive human beings cannot be explained by a lack of money or a poor quality of life -- only by anti-wealth, anti-life ideas...

Atta Way to Blow 9/11 Panel's Credibility
by Mark Steyn
...Maybe we need a 9/11 Commission Commission to investigate the 9/11 Commission. A body intended to reassure Americans that the lessons of that terrible day had been learned instead engaged in what at best was transparent politicking and collusion in posterior-covering and at worst was something a whole lot darker and more disturbing...
More: "9/11 commission wrote history as it wanted it to be, not as it was"

The Brits are Right: Speak English!
by Carol Platt Liebau
...To end the separatism and disengagement that flourishes in part because significant portions of his country cannot speak English, Blair wants to make basic knowledge of English a requirement for British citizenship. There can be no true national unity when citizens cannot understand each other and participate in the majority culture. Britain has learned that lesson — the hard way. Let's hope the United States will learn it through observation rather than bitter experience.

Run for the Border
by John Fund
...[Governor Richardson] asked Chris Simcox, the president of the volunteer border patrol group Minutemen, for a meeting. Mr. Richardson, a man who wears his ambition for national office on his sleeve, has apparently decided he has to reposition himself on border issues...
More: Beefed Up Border Pledged

Sunday, August 14, 2005

New Mexico Governor Declares Border Emergency
by Louie Gilot & Sylvia Brenner
...In the past three weeks, a sniper shot at Columbus Police Chief Clare May while he was checking abandoned cars parked at a store, and area rancher Joe Johnson witnessed the attempted kidnapping of three female undocumented immigrants by three masked and armed men on his land. Ongoing cattle thefts also contribute to making residents feel as if they were under siege. "We're in an emergency situation and need to get help now, not two years down the road. We need reinforcements, and our own personal safety is getting worse"...
Related: NM Border Residents Get Govt.-Issued 2-Way Radios Guest Workers or Helots? Paying for the Care of Illegal Aliens

Beyond the News: Weekend Journal

Salem Radio Network
Bill Bennett and Kent Keith explore the Paradoxical Commandments; Janet Parshall and Joe Dallas examine homosexuality; Hugh Hewitt and David Allen White link Mozart and diversity; Dennis Prager and George Gilder delve into why technology industries are leaving the US plus Richard Land, Albert Mohler, Mike Gallagher and more.

Miracles of God and Miracles of Science
by David M. Phelps
...In the minds of many, there is a vague notion that somehow God and science are necessarily in competition. We see this opposition take form in the debates between creationism and evolution, between church and state, where faith is pitted against reason, the secular against the sacred. Why isn’t this opposition more often transferred to our discussions of medicine as well? The reason may be that physicians recognize more readily the relationship between God and science...

The Theology of Global Warming
by James Schlesinger
...On the eve of the summit, the Economic Committee of the House of Lords released a report sharply at variance with the prevailing European orthodoxy...The science of climate change leaves "considerable uncertainty" about the future. There are concerns about the objectivity of the international panel of scientists that has led research into climate change. The Kyoto agreement to limit carbon emissions will make little difference and is likely to fail. The U.K.'s energy and climate policy contains "dubious assumptions" about renewable energy and energy efficiency...

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Visa and a Prayer
Investor's Business Daily
A bruised and betrayed Britain vows to kick out foreign Muslim clerics who inspire violence and hatred while blocking entry of radical imams. But America keeps ushering them in — by the hundreds. Are we really that stupid? Yes. Since 9-11, the multiculturalists at the State Department have admitted more than 1,000 religious workers from Muslim nations, including terror hotbeds like Pakistan...

Weldon Not Buying 'Able Danger' Dismissal
World Net Daily
Weldon says two critical questions remain unanswered about Able Danger's findings: Why did the Department of Defense fail to pass critical information obtained through Able Danger to the FBI between the summer and fall of 2000? Why did the 9/11 Commission staff fail properly to follow up on the three separate occasions when they received information on Able Danger and Mohammed Atta?
More: The American People Should Demand Answers What We Know, and What We Don't Know

Apple Pie, Pot Roast and Survival
by Suzanne Fields
A society defines itself by what it thinks is worth debating. The intellectual class, for whom the debate is all, gets a free ride. They get to indulge moral relativism because they won't have to pay any of the consequences. Harvard makes the wars, as one red-state philosopher once put it, and Central High School fights the wars. It's the belief in God and country that enables Middle America to send its sons and daughters to strike at the evil that the intellectual classes often can't even recognize as evil...

No Pork Left Behind
by Veronique de Rugy
Congress is frequently like a self-centered toddler who couldn't care less about the welfare of others. The transportation bill is the best example of that. The bill is two years overdue, billions of dollars higher than the President wanted and loaded with the kind of legislative projects that congressmen love to bring home to constituents at the expense of American taxpayers. Sadly, like a weak parent giving in to a child's temper tantrum, the President gave up what was left of his credibility as a fiscal conservative and signed the bill...
More: Has the GOP Lost Its Soul?

Friday, August 12, 2005

The Energy Bill's Gift to Terrorists
by Alan J. Kuperman
...Despite widespread opposition - from the Bush administration, a majority of the Senate, leaders of the House Energy Committee, and nuclear regulators from the five preceding presidential administrations - Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and chairman of the Energy Committee, included an amendment that guts restrictions on the export of highly enriched uranium, the same material used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb...

The 9/11 Commission in Mortal Danger
by John Podhoretz
...The 9/11 Commission staff did hear about intelligence-gathering efforts that hit pay dirt on the whereabouts of Mohammed Atta -- in 1999 -- and deliberately chose to omit word of those efforts. And why? Because to do so might upset the timeline the Commission had established on Atta. And why is that significant? Because the Mohammed Atta timeline established by the Commission pointedly insisted Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. And why is that significant? Because debunking the Atta-Iraq connection was of vital importance to Democrats, who had become focused almost obsessively on the preposterous notion that there was no relation whatever between Al Qaeda and Iraq -- that Al Qaeda and Iraq might even have been enemies...
More: 9/11 Commission Changes Its Story -- Again Confirmation Of Able Danger Raises Even More Questions

In Meth War, Innocents Presumed Guilty
by Debra Saunders
...the feds arrested 49 convenience store clerks and owners -- essentially for selling legal cold and allergy pills....Oregon lawmakers passed a measure that will force consumers to get prescriptions to buy Sudafed. It makes no sense. First, the push to make emergency contraception available over-the-counter and now a law to make you see a doctor to get allergy medicine?...

Poison in the Sympathy Well
by Tom Bevan
...I understand that grief and anger might make you do strange things. But I also understand that being showered with praise and support from the most rabid fringes of the antiwar base and being instantly transformed into a media celebrity might lead you to do strange things too.

Briefing Book Baloney
by George F. Will
...The role of ex-president requires a grace and restraint notably absent from Carter. See, for example, his criticism of the United States when he is abroad, as in England two weeks ago. Having made such disappointing history as president, Carter as ex-president should at least refrain from disseminating a historical falsehood...

Thursday, August 11, 2005

NARAL Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts
Annenberg Political Fact Check
An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. The ad is false. And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber...

Able Danger, the 9/11 Commission & the Strange (But Now Explainable) Actions of Sandy Berger
by Sean Osborne & Douglas J. Hagmann
...Did you ever wonder what Berger was attempting to hide and even more importantly, why?...Those documents reportedly included an assessment of America's terror vulnerabilities at airports, something very relevant to Able Danger’s findings and key to the 9/11 attacks. What Sandy Berger did was a felony, yet was allowed a generous plea agreement of a fine and a three-year suspension of his security clearance. Under the prism of Able Danger, we are now able to make sense out of the previously curious actions of Sandy Berger...
More: Pentagon Accused of Withholding 9/11 Intel

The Washington Fatwa
by Walid Phares
...In the final analysis, a step in the right direction should always be acclaimed. But a step into no direction can be counterproductive. We will know from the next step if the authors of the fatwa want to be part of the war on terror or want to deflect it.

Red vs. Blue? Not True
by Robert Kuttner
...To hear network commentators and read innumerable press stories, you would think the United States was divided into two bitterly opposed cultural worlds known as red states and blue states. The reality is quite different...

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

US Knew of al Qaeda Cell Long Before 9/11
by David Morgan
..."Able Danger," now disbanded, was a small classified military operation engaged in data-mining analysis of "open source" information including media reports and public records through the use of massively powerful computer systems...The former military official said his unit recommended that information identifying Atta and fellow hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi as part of an al Qaeda cell they called "Brooklyn" be forwarded to the FBI...But government lawyers advised the military's Special Operations Command, which oversaw "Able Danger," not to forward the information apparently because the four were in the United States legally on visas and should not be subject to a military operation...

The Trade-and-Aid Myth
by Dani Rodrik
Trade and aid have become international buzzwords. More aid (including debt relief) and greater access to rich countries’ markets for poor countries’ products now appears to be at the top of the global agenda. Indeed, the debate nowadays is not about what to do, but how much to do, and how fast. Lost in all this are the clear lessons of the last five decades of economic development...

The Democrats' 9/11 Slush Fund
by Michelle Malkin
For the past four years, Democrats have ceaselessly attacked Republicans for "exploiting" the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...But when an investigative reporter exposes Democrats raiding federal homeland security grants and turning 9/11 money into a party slush fund, where, oh where, are all the indignant liberal watchdogs to protest such clear and unconscionable political exploitation?...

Denver Plan for Spanish Libraries Hammered
World Net Daily
..."I fail to see how an official Spanish library will aid immigrants in learning English and becoming Americans. If anything, it will further the notion that Spanish-speaking immigrants can live in relative comfort without needing to learn our common language. If we are to successfully continue as a nation of immigrants, we cannot send an 'English optional' message to any immigrant group"...

Hollywood's New War Effort: Terrorism Chic
by Jason Apuzzo
Slow to awaken after the 9/11 attacks, Hollywood has finally come around to contributing what it can in the War on Terror: namely, glossy, star-studded movies that sympathize with the enemy. Hard to believe? Here's the pitch...

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Modernizing America's Welcome Mat
by Jessica M. Vaughan
US-VISIT, the new biometrics-based border inspections program, has proven its value in enhancing U.S. security; so far enabling border and consular officials to intercept the entry of thousands of terrorists, criminals, and other ineligible foreign visitors. But the administration’s decision to exempt most Mexicans and Canadians from screening, despite well-documented problems in regulating the entry and exit of these visitors, along with foot-dragging in making use of the exit-recording capability, severely undermines the program and risks transforming this potentially critical national security tool into a high-tech Potemkin Village...

There Is No Viable Alternative: Judeo-Christian Values Part XX
by Dennis Prager
...Much of humanity has little by way of a religious/moral foundation. Many of the more than a billion Chinese, for example, have some ancestral emotional ties to Confucianism, but with each passing year, those ties weaken. And a combination of strident nationalism and a rapacious money-making ethic are replacing it. That is a frightening amoral combination. The Judeo-Christian value system is not only the best value system for humanity; it is the only viable one. If we do not promote it, moral chaos will ensue. And we can't promote it if we don't know what it is.
Related: God Help Us

Hollywood [Unintendedly?] Makes a Pro-Life Movie
by Phyllis Schlafly
The Island tells the story of a government-funded billion-dollar laboratory hidden in the Arizona desert in 2019 where scientists do cloning on a mass scale. They sell $5 million "insurance policies" to rich people who want to live forever by buying replacement body parts...

Monday, August 08, 2005

What Society Has Come To

by Craig J. Cantoni
...Unfortunately, thanks to the government becoming a daddy, a husband, a nanny, a landlord, a teacher, a house renovator and a busybody, there are now many more morons than when my father-in-law was a kid. There are also more sociopaths...

Democrats' New Strategy: Almost Winning
by Mark Steyn
...the Dems' Congressional Campaign Committee hailed their electoral failure in last week's Ohio special election as a triumphant "deferred success." As their press release put it: "In nearly the biggest political upset in recent history, Democrat Paul Hackett came within just a few thousand votes of defeating Republican Jean Schmidt in Ohio's Second Congressional District." Yes, indeed. It was "nearly the biggest political upset in recent history," which is another way of saying it was actually the smallest political non-upset in recent history...

I Still Fight Oppression
by Nick Cohen
Looking back on how his generation covered up the crimes of communism in the 1930s, WH Auden explained that he and his friends weren't true communists but fellow travellers. At home they defended civil liberties and stood up for freedom of speech. Abroad, they tolerated atrocities precisely because [those atrocities] didn't impinge on them...The thing to watch for with fellow travellers is what shocks them into pulling the emergency cord and jumping off the train. I know some will stay on to the terminus, and when the man with the rucksack explodes his bomb their dying words will be: 'It's not your fault. I blame Tony Blair.'

War of Words
by Jack Kelly
The War on Terror is ending, at least in the rhetoric of senior Bush administration officials...We are engaged in a "struggle" we cannot win unless we kill most of those who are trying to kill us. Calling this a war seems appropriate, even if that offends the sensibilities of the Politically Correct.

Iraq's Compact With America
by Zalmay Khalilzad
While Iraq has elected a transitional government and is making progress in drafting a constitution, it faces a clever and brutal terrorist threat and the profound challenge of overcoming the political, social and economic legacy of Saddam Hussein's rule. In the past two weeks, I have discussed with Iraqi leaders a set of ideas about what is needed to set Iraq on the right trajectory. We have agreed on seven points.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Beyond the News: Weekend Journal

Salem Radio Network
Janet Parshall and Tom Kilgannon review the John Bolton recess appointment to the United Nations; Bill Bennett and Arthur Waldron discuss China's growing military threat; Brent Bozell and Frank Pastore examine liberal bias in the media; Dennis Prager looks at the controversy surrounding the President's support of teaching intelligent design in public schools; Albert Mohler critiques new wedding vows; Scott Thomas interviews Ed Klein, author of a controversial new book about Hillary Clinton; Michael Medved shows why Hollywood's box office receipts are falling precipitously and Richard Land ruminates over Senator Bill Frist's new stem cell decision.

A History Test
by Doug Giles
...To deny who has been culpable and who is probable for the next act of war against the West would relegate us to the “stupidest people” on the planet category. To not specifically investigate Muslim men, especially within our borders, who are between the ages of 17-40 would be completely goofy. Don’t believe me? Then take this little history test and tell me if you see a pattern...

A Portrait of Our Scary World, 60 Years After Hiroshima
by Fred C. Ikle
Sixty years after Hiroshima's fiery destruction by only one bomb, here is where we have arrived: The proliferation of nuclear weapons continues apace, and stopping it is now a top priority of our foreign policy. It was a driving motive for the war against Saddam Hussein, it ceaselessly fuels our conflict with North Korea, it exacerbates our relations with Iran, and we are in fear of terrorists with a nuclear bomb. Eleven American presidents, from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush, sought to prevent this. The United States started with a nuclear monopoly. So how did we get into this mess?...
Related: Considering Hiroshima

Goldilocks Economy: The Bad News is the Good News Isn't Being Heard
by Irwin M. Stelzer
There are times when the president can convert his famed inarticulateness into a charming trait. But more often, the inability to explain and defend his policies causes serious political damage. Somehow, for instance, all the president's men have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the debate over the state of the U.S. economy...

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Press Ignores Astonishing Reenlistment Rate

by Michael Medved
...Despite any stateside skepticism, the rising numbers of reenlistments prove that our men and women in uniform overwhelmingly believe in their mission, and want to insure its ultimate success.

Everything in the American Garden is Lovely. So Why the Long Face, Buddy?
by Gerard Baker
...The real problem, I suspect, lies in the paradox of the efficient modern globalised economy that the US has become. The factors behind America’s impressive performance are the very same factors that make Americans uncertain and nervous about their future. Since the late 1980s, its flexibility and dynamism has made the US both the main driver and the main beneficiary of the economic forces at work in the world: technological change; deregulation and competition; globalisation...

Bursting Bubbles of Illusion
by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
It is now becomes ever clearer the 20th century's last decade could go down in history as the Decade of Illusion....Think of it, a whole decade of baseball records thrown into a twilight of doubt because the rules were compartmentalized. Slowly but steadily those who cast doubt on the marvels of that decade are being vindicated.

The Strange Metamorphosis of Senator Clinton
by Victor Davis Hanson
...triangulation for a chameleon Sen. Clinton relies on an emotional base that will still cry Hillary, right or wrong. Like her husband, Hillary Clinton generates just that diehard loyalty. Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform bill for which George W. Bush would have been demonized. Without a cry from Barbara Boxer or Al Franken, he pre-empted and bombed in the Balkans despite neither U.N. approval nor a vote of the U.S. Senate. Sen. Clinton also grasps another great truth about America. Populism is never passe...

Friday, August 05, 2005

Democrats Sing in the 'Abuse of Power' Chorus
by Byron York
...The funny thing is, for all the talk today, defying the opposition wasn’t an abuse of power — much less a devious maneuver — back in 1997, when Bill Clinton used his presidential authority to evade the constitutional requirement of Senate consent and install Bill Lann Lee in a top Justice Department job...(There was, by the way, one small difference in the Lee and Bolton cases: Clinton ignored the wishes of the majority party in the Senate, while Bush ignored the wishes of the minority)...

The Republican Pork Barrel
by Jeff Jacoby
AT $286.4 BILLION, the highway bill just passed by Congress is the most expensive public works legislation in US history. In addition to funding the interstate highway system and other federal transportation programs, it sets a new record for pork-barrel spending, earmarking $24 billion for a staggering 6,376 pet projects, spread among virtually every congressional district in the land. The enormous bill -- 1,752 pages long -- wasn't made public until just before it was brought to a vote, and so, as The New York Times noted, ''it is safe to bet that none of the lawmakers, not even the main authors, had read the entire package"...
More: Transportation (In)equity Act: A Legacy for Losers (Taxpayers) Related: Democracy Demands Ousting the Incumbent Class

The Challenge of the Transgendered: Judeo-Christian Values, Part XIX
by Dennis Prager
...The war waged by cultural radicals at universities, in state legislatures and in courtrooms against the very distinction between male and female is one of their most significant attempts to undo the Judeo-Christian foundations of American and Western culture. And they know it. That's why fighting to blur gender distinctions is so important to them. Now the rest of society needs to understand why not allowing that to happen is so important.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Why Feel Guilty About Hiroshima?
by Max Boot
...Oh, how times change. Today we can put "smart" bombs through the window of an office building. Along with greater accuracy has come a growing impatience with "collateral damage." A bomb that goes astray and hits a foreign embassy or a wedding party now causes international outrage, whereas 60 years ago the destruction of an entire city was a frequent occurrence...But even today, there is cause to doubt whether more precision is always better. During the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. was so sparing in its use of force that many Baathists never understood they were beaten. The butcher's bill we dodged early on is now being paid with compound interest...

Missing the Perfect Storm
by Edward Morrissey
The mainstream media ignores a story tailor-made for them...The mission of the mainstream media to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to tell truth to power, and to hold the reverse Robin Hoods accountable for their malfeasance wouldn't depend on the politics of the criminals. Would it?

The Price Is Right
by Pankaj Ghemawat & Ken A. Mark
...Wal-Mart's customers tend to be the Americans who need the most help. Our research shows that Wal-Mart operates two-and-a-half times as much selling space per inhabitant in the poorest third of states as in the richest third. And within that poorest third of states, 80 percent of Wal-Mart's square footage is in the 25 percent of ZIP codes with the greatest number of poor households. Without the much-maligned Wal-Mart, the rural poor, in particular, would pay several percentage points more for the food and other merchandise that after housing is their largest household expense...

Privatize PBS
by John Stossel
...Public broadcasting is a classic example of welfare for the well-off. We PBS viewers are 44 percent more likely than other Americans to make more than $150,000 a year. I enjoy PBS, but it hardly seems fair that the government demands you buy it for me...

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Strategy and Saddam
by Douglas Hanson
The strategy of the three US administrations conducting the 15-year war with Iraq has been a remarkably consistent. Our current and past national leadership established deposing Saddam Hussein as our primary strategic objective, rather than achieving total victory over his military and intelligence forces. During Iraqi Wars I through IV, as Victor Davis Hanson classifies them, we have had a strategy in thrall to Saddam. Unfortunately, the difficult and complex counter-insurgency campaign that the Coalition is now conducting in Iraq has its roots in military and political decisions based upon this flawed decades-old playbook...

Old Saudi Games
by Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
...King Fahd's death, the mounting evidence of the danger from ongoing Saudi support for terror and the appointment to Washington of one of the kingdom's most experienced double-gamers should require Saudi Arabia finally to do what President Bush demanded nearly four years ago: The Saudis can no longer be with us and against us. They must be made to choose.

'No Shoes Allowed' in Terrorist Captures
World Net Daily
Police in Britain leak PC guidelines to avoid offending Muslim suspects...

Why Did Joseph Wilson Lie?
by Cliff Kincaid
...In retrospect, it's clear the Plame and Wilson pulled off a monumental deception, with the help of the media. The facts suggest that Plame and her husband were determined to undermine the Administration's Iraq policy and were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to accomplish that. Together with their media allies, they created such a firestorm over the naming of Plame that the White House panicked into seeking a special prosecutor...

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Mexican Mercenaries Expand Base into U.S.
by Jerry Seper
A renegade band of Mexican military deserters, offering $50,000 bounties for the assassination of U.S. law-enforcement officers, has expanded its base of operations into the United States to protect loads of cocaine and marijuana being brought into America by Mexican smugglers, authorities said...
Related: Border Security Money Spent in Bureaucracy, Not Security

Nazi Echoes in the Gaza 'Disengagement?'
by Jeff Jacoby
...Israel's withdrawal from Gaza changes nothing, the senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahard said recently. He told an Italian newspaper that Israel's existence would be unacceptable even if it were to retreat to the armistice lines of 1949. "In the end, Palestine . . . must become Muslim," he insisted. "And in the long term Israel will disappear from the face of the Earth"...
Related: Hamas Summer Camp: Sun, Fun, Hate

Extremists Rip Off Tsunami Charity Cash
by Ian Johnston
Charitable donations to help people affected by the Asian tsunami disaster are falling into the hands of radical Islamic groups linked to terrorists in Indonesia, a leading expert on the global al-Qaeda network warned yesterday. Relief money had become the "primary source" of income for two militant groups, including one founded by a Muslim cleric serving a prison sentence in connection with the Bali bombing in 2002 in which more than 200 people were killed...

Let's Face Facts, Europe's Being Run by Cowards
by Mathias Doepfner
...This hypocrisy continues even as it is discovered that some of the loudest critics of US action in Iraq made illicit billions - indeed, tens of billions - of dollars in the corrupt UN oil-for-food program. Today we are faced with a particularly grotesque form of appeasement. How is Germany reacting to the escalating violence by Islamic fundamentalists in The Netherlands, Britain and elsewhere in Europe? By suggesting - wait for it - that the proper response to such barbarism is to initiate a Muslim holiday in Germany. I wish I were joking, but I am not...

Economist Blames Aid for Africa Famine
by Todd Pitman
..."When aid money keeps coming, all our policy-makers do is strategize on how to get more," said the Kenya-based director of the Inter Region Economic Network, an African think tank. "They forget about getting their own people working to solve these very basic problems. In Africa, we look to outsiders to solve our problems, making the victim not take responsibility to change"...

Monday, August 01, 2005

Confronted With Our Own Decadence

by Minette Marrin
...One of the things that strikes me more, not less, forcibly as time has passed is the contempt that Muslim extremists feel for us. They despise us for our decadence, and I feel more and more forced to accept the painful truth that they have a point...it can hardly be denied that with all our celebrated freedom, and all our wealth, we have somehow created a society that is characterised by growing disorder, uncertainty and loss...
More: Heaven Knows How We'll Rekindle Our Religion, But I Believe We Must

Parent A and Parent B? Children Need Mom, Dad!
by Kathleen Parker
...In Massachusetts this week, Gov. Mitt Romney has been butting heads with same-sex couples over birth certificates for their newborns. I'll give you a minute to wrap your mind around that concept...As long as children are viewed as mere extensions of our selves, put here to satisfy some narcissistic need for self-actualization, it is easy to suppose that our needs and their needs are complementary. If same-sex marriage is what "I" need, then two same-sex parents are what "my" child needs...

Quagmire for al-Qaida
by Jack Kelly
...If al-Qaida is indeed shifting personnel out of Iraq, expect to hear more about Iraq as an "incubator" for terrorism. But what, pray tell, do the promoters of this theory imagine Zarqawi and his minions would have been doing these past two years if there had been no war in Iraq? Origami? Iraq has indeed proven to be a quagmire. But not for us.

_____________________

Today's Amazon Deals

_____________________

They Just Don't Get It : How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It
by Col. David Hunt

Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture that's Gone Stark Raving Mad
by Rebecca Hagelin

The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President--and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time
by Byron York

Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life
by Michael Medved

Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America
by Mark R. Levin

Search Now: