Naval tradition and the camaraderie of sailors always surpasses politics:

Quote:
"Military vessels routinely render honors to military ships of other countries when they pass at sea by dipping their flag, as a sign of respect. The German frigate FGS Niedersachsen went above and beyond this normal gesture of respect when it asked to come alongside the USS Doyle on September 11, 2003, the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US. ...

The unexpected gesture touched the US sailors, Vice Admiral Timothy LaFleur described in an unclassified email: “From their main mast they flew our flag and they held their covers over their hearts. Needless to say, the whole crew was choked up and a few tears formed in our eyes. Both ships stayed next to each other in silence for about 5 minutes. These are the days that remind me why I joined the Navy.”"

Yeah, me too.

Speaking of baseball. I went to the 2nd to last game at Veterans Stadium on Saturday. Say what you will about the Vet; it had rats, the turf was the worst in MLB or the NFL, it was sterile or looked like a toilet bowl. Weve heard it all. But it was our toiletbowl. Opposing teams hated playing there. The fans were crazy if not full-out insane, and would boo the home team just as enthusiastically as the visitors. It was a definite home-field advantage. I grew up watching sports there and will miss it. The Phillies did a class job of closing the stadium out.

How did I do on my baseball predictions? Let's revisit March:

NL East-Phillies Forty HR's from from Thome & 35 from Burrell ought to do it. Pitching is the key as always.
NL Central-Reds Griffey should regain some of his form and get them past the Astros and Cardinals.
NL West-Dodgers Bonds will not hit homers like the last few years and the Padres lost Nevin and Hoffman.
Wildcard-Braves The East will belong to another team, finally.


AL East-Yankees Too much pitching and Soriano will continue to play well.
AL Central-Whitesox A team that seems to have what it takes to win the division. The Twins will be tough also.
AL West-Angels This team reminds me of the '93 Phillies and really seems to come to play every day.
Wildcard-Redsox The Yanks will be too tough to win the division but they may make some noise in the playoffs.

Phillies-47 homers from Thome, 20 from Burrell, bad closer.
Dodgers, Reds, and Braves. I was right on one. Damn, I hate the Braves, but at least I know they'll tank in the playoffs like mostly they tend to do.

I got the Yanks and the Redsox. The Whitesox hung for awhile but the Twins were too much. The Angles just never got on track.

Predictions for the playoffs:

Marlins and Cubbies in the NLCS with the Cubbies winning it in 7.
Redsox and Yanks in the ALCS with Boston winning in 6.
Cubs win series in 6.

Maybe it's the baseball romantic in me that made me pick the two most losingest franchises in baseball history, but it'd sure be great theater.

You know you have zero credibility when your own son distances himself from your statements:

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy yesterday split from the recent harsh criticism that his father, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, leveled against President Bush for attacking Iraq and said the country is better off without Saddam Hussein.


I don't agree with his stance,'' the Rhode Island congressman said of his father. ``I believe that the U.N. needs to be a viable international organization and the only way it is viable is if its proclamations and resolutions are enforced.''

The elder Kennedy stirred a storm of controversy recently by saying that the reasons for war were ``made up in Texas'' to help the GOP at election time and calling it ``a fraud.''

But Patrick Kennedy, who voted to authorize Bush to use force against Iraq, said Saddam Hussein had ``the worst track record of any international leader in the history of the U.N.'' for violating human rights and inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

If he didn't have (the weapons), then how come he gassed all his people with them?'' the younger Kennedy asked. ``The fact is, he definitely had them. Whether he destroyed them or not is up for debate. But he had them and he's got a propensity for invading neighboring countries and causing instability in a part of the world (where) we can't afford to have a lot of instability.

And I think the country is much safer off without Saddam Hussein,'' he added.

The first sane thing said by a Kennedy since JFK was murdered, and it only took 40-years.

In America, education in public schools is secular and barely teaches anything about civics or how the country is governed. In France they are encouraging schools which will call for the overthrow of the government:

The goal of the school, which began its first term this month, is to provide Muslims with an alternative to public school education, like those that French Catholics, Protestants and Jews have long enjoyed.

The challenge for France is to preserve the country's secular identity as codified under a century-old law, meet the demands of its second-largest religious community and discourage religious and ethnic separatism all at the same time.

The six boys in the class were dressed in unremarkable casual clothing.

But the four girls had covered their hair and necks with well-secured scarves, a practice normally banned in public schools.

They hid the shape of their bodies under dark-coloured knee-length coats and pants.

How would a Muslim school "discourage religious and ethnic separatism all at the same time"?. From what I've read of Islam and islamic schools or madrassa's, I doubt they'll be teaching along the togetherness for all people lines.

Slick Willy was always thought to have had a good rapport with Tony Blair, evidently not:

Charting the Blair-Clinton relationship, Riddell says that in the early days Mr Blair seemed overawed by the elder man's pyrotechnics. The relationship always had an "edge", according to an adviser who was present at all their meetings and saw it as "master and pupil". But after Mr Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, he asserted himself and was never entirely at ease with Mr Clinton when they were both in office. He did not like playing the junior partner and told a senior civil servant he found Mr Clinton "weird".

According to a senior minister, Mr Clinton's role in Northern Ireland was "hugely exaggerated". The two men fell out during the Kosovo conflict in 1999. There were several clashes and what Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador in Washington, told Riddell was a "very angry" 90-minute phone call between the two. There was a "huge, monumental explosion" from the president about a British briefing and an article in The New York Times that suggested British unhappiness at Mr Clinton's reluctance to consider ground troops.

I think the things his "legacy" is built on, such as North Korea and Oslo were exaggerated also.

It was just a joke, you know, I didn't mean to hurt anyone with those biological weapons:

The deadly 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks may have been carried out by someone who did not intend to cause any harm, a top FBI official said on Monday.
Of the possibility that a scientist wanted to issue a wake-up call about the bioterrorism threat and it went out of control, FBI Assistant Director Michael Mason told a news conference, "That's a possible theory, but it's all conjecture."

Asked why there had been no other attacks, Mason said, "I suppose the leading thought might be the person didn't intend to cause harm, and did."

The FBI has been investigating anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to the news media and politicians in September and October 2001, which resulted in five deaths in a country already shaken by the Sept. 11 attacks.

I'm sure the ACLU would fight for someone if this picture was displayed in Manhattan.

Here is a picture of baby mentioned in the previous post. She sure looked like she was the one responsible for keeping the Palestinians oppressed.

Praise Allah, a baby has been murdered:

Two Israelis, including a baby girl, were killed
and two others lightly wounded Friday night by a
Palestinian gunman who infiltrated the West Bank
settlement of Negohot, southwest of Hebron.

"To our regret, we have two
killed and two more slightly
wounded," said Dror Richter,
spokesman for Magen David
Adom.

The gunman infiltrated the
isolated settlement around 9:30
P.M., through a part that was
not fenced. Armed with an M-16

assault rifle, he knocked on the door of one of
the homes. A 30 year-old man who was visiting
at the house opened the door and was critically
wounded by the gunman. He died a short time
later.

The owner of the house and a soldier opened fire
at the gunman, who tried to escape and while
fleeing fired a number of rounds at the house,
one of which hit and critically wounded a
seven-month-old baby who also died a short
while later.

My belief in a God would never even let you get close close to paradise, you vile scumbag. I hope you suffered and I hope the baby didn't. Burn in hell.

The man who arranged the first Uday assasination attempt speaks:

A four man hit squad drawn from Sharif's resistance group decided to go ahead after weeks of surveillance. As Uday Hussein drove his golden Porsche slowly up a busy street in Baghdad's posh Monsour district, just after dark on Dec. 12 1996, two gunmen responded to Sharif's command with a hail of bullets from their AK-47 rifles.

"We were sure we had killed him," Sharif recalled. "We fired 50 rounds into that car."

However, Uday, although struck 17 times, survived. He was crippled for the rest of his life, and - according to popular belief - rendered impotent.

"Everybody in Iraq hated Uday," Sharif said. "The team members were very happy: they said they felt lucky to have been chosen for such an operation."

The Onion has a dream.

My Phillies are about to tank. Getting swept by the likes of Milwaukee didn't help. Oh, to have a few of the games against teams who suck back again. There's still hope but it is fading quickly. If they don't make it, I'm rooting for a Boston-Cubbies series and see if it's possible for either team to win.

I honestly believe, as I've alluded to before, that the Dems and Libs hate Bush more than Reps and Conservatives hated Clinton. I never thought that was possible. Andrew Sullivan has been getting the e-mails to confirm it:

"Please tell me, Andrew: why are you keeping track of Bush hatred? Are you on the administration’s payroll? Do you report those who are critical, make sure they don’t work in this town (America) ever again? There's nothing lower than a lapdog anyway, but a lapdog for the moral cretins that are the Bushies is a gutter-level low. Disgusting and pathetic. Yes, many of us "hate" Bush and company, and for precisely the reasons Susan Lenfesty mentions. We are on a metaphorical flight into a metaphorical building – and yes, somebody besides Bush can analogize 9/11 (although Bush doesn’t analogize 9/11, he explicitly cites it, and for political gain).
It's absolutely repulsive the way people like you lay curled at the feet of this wanna-be dictator (his own words, bespeaking dreams) and bark at the ones who question him and his policies. Don't even begin to think that American casualties in Iraq keep any of them up at night. For these monsters, it's a harvest of souls...or, monster food."

Granted, as a homosexual who is also conservative, Sullivan will always be a lightning rod for criticism from the Left. I imagine alot of folks in the gay community look at him as a sell-out on a par with Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas in the Black community. I think this is becoming very deeply ingrained in Liberals and may make for an exciting election in '04. We shall see.

Syria is having a bad week. I wonder if we have some people stirring up trouble there yet:


“There is no graver threat to our country today than states that both sponsor terrorism and possess or aspire to possess weapons of mass destruction. Syria, which offers physical sanctuary and political protection to groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and whose terrorist operations have killed hundreds of innocent people -- including Americans -- falls into this category of states of potential dual threat.”

As Under Secretary of State Bolton pointed out, “Since the 1970s, Syria has pursued what is now one of the most advanced Arab state chemical weapons capabilities. It has a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin that can be delivered by aircraft or ballistic missiles, and [it] has engaged in the research and development of more toxic and persistent nerve agents such as V-X.”

The younger Assad is not as savvy as his old man was, which could be his downfall. Hama rules (in the words of Friedman) may not be enough. There's also this:

An Air Force translator for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp tried to send classified information about the prisoners to his native Syria, military authorities charge.

Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi is behind bars at a California Air Force base, facing 32 criminal charges. The most serious — espionage and aiding the enemy — could carry the death penalty.

Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said a broader investigation into possible security breaches at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba was continuing. One suspect, a member of the Navy, is under investigation but has not been arrested, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Military authorities accuse al-Halabi, 24, of sending e-mail with information about the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay "to unauthorized person or persons whom he, the accused, knew to be the enemy." The Air Force documents detailing the charges do not say who "the enemy" is.

Al-Halabi also is accused of planning to give classified information about the prisoners as well as more than 180 written messages from detainees to a person who would then go to Syria.

And this:

We were told (by U.S. Army lawyers) that he had a list of prisoners and a map of the detention center," said Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "If he's charged, then criminal procedures would take effect. But we don't know at this point."Though Yee is not charged with any crime, his case is already attracting national and international attention to this out-of-the-way military jail, the holding facility for American citizens detained in the war against terrorism.

Yee, the first American serviceman to be detained in connection with that war, joins three civilian detainees at the Hanahan brig. Muslim groups and civil rights advocates are keeping close tabs on his status.

Emphasis mine.

(Hat tip LGF)

The Euro gets a little freaky with George Washington.

A dictator who is buddies with Castro refuses to acknowledge the new Iraqi interim government.

President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday Venezuela won't recognize an Iraqi delegation at an upcoming meeting of OPEC ministers, although his oil minister said informal talks may happen.

"We don't recognize a 'quote government unquote'" under foreign occupation, Chavez told a meeting of foreign journalists at the presidential palace.

Cuba was been 'quote occupied unquote' by Russia for 30-years.

The two best sources for political satire, Scrappleface and the Onion.

Speaking of The Onion, anyone who read Encyclopedia Brown as a kid will find this hilarious.

Tim Blair Rocks!

The Thais get in on the War on Terror. I guess no one told them that it's a unilateral operation:

Police in Thailand three months ago arrested a man
suspected of planning an attack on an El Al plane
or against Israeli travelers in the country.
Channel Two television, which broke news of the
arrest Tuesday night, said the man is a suspected
member of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaida terror
organization. The suspect's nationality and
identity remain undisclosed.

I would suspect that he is Saudi. Just a shot in the dark.

Another black mark on our "state university":

Police are investigating a graffiti attack on several buildings on Rutgers University's main campus in New Brunswick, including a Jewish community center and a fraternity house, as a bias crime.

On Saturday morning, swastikas were found spray-painted on Rutgers Hillel. They were also painted on the porch and front door of Alpha Epsilon Pi, an historically Jewish fraternity.

Three other buildings were damaged by spray paint, but no swastikas were painted on them, police said

Nice. I guess the culprits were not man enough to show their anti-semitism to the fraternity in the light of day. What pussies.

(via LGF)

I'm bored listening to her music too. What a coincidence:

Barbra Streisand says she finds listening to her own songs is so boring that it was one of the reasons she gave up public performing three years ago.

Does that mean maybe she'll shut up and just go away. Unlikely.

Via the indispensible James Taranto, check out this correction in the WaPo:

A Sept. 21 item in the Metro in Brief column about a woman fatally shot in Prince George's County and a child who was wounded incorrectly reported the woman's age, the child's sex, the child's location at the time of the shooting, and the street on which the shooting occurred.

That'll surely enhance your opinion of the media. Maybe we'll see something like this soon:

Numerous stories over the last five months have have incorrectly reported the mood of the people in Iraq, the state of the reconstruction in that country, and the good feeling the citizens their have since the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein, his children, and the Baath party. The American media regrets the error.

Eventually a bill comes up that you'd think someone would say "you are intruding entirely too far into my life". This is one of those times:

Smoking even in the privacy of your own car could be banned under one of at least five state bills introduced in the past year to limit where a person can light up.
From public beaches to carnivals to a person's private vehicle, the legislation would make it more difficult for smokers to take a drag.

Pro-smoking forces fear the ultimate goal of some lawmakers is to ban cigarettes and cigars completely in New York.

"This is a well-planned strategy to essentially eradicate tobacco use using back-door methods," said Audrey Silk, co-founder of the New York City-based pro-smokers group CLASH.

"This is completely about controlling one group of people using a legal product," Silk added.

But the sponsors of the bills deny such intent. They said each anti-smoking bill has its own merit, including protecting children, helping New York businesses, and reducing litter.

Aha! The "it's for the children" angle. Dems use that for everything.

Yeah, no shit!

Is it not a just cause to attempt to end this type of barbarism?

Musarti shared the apartment, in which her body
was found, with her parents and her young
daughter. A five-month old fetus was growing in
her womb. In Arab society, in which getting
divorced is frowned upon, Musarti was viewed in
an unfavorable light. Rumors rife back when she
was married spoke of her hanging around with
other men. Her pregnancy as a divorced woman
did nothing to add to her image in the eyes of
the society in which she lived.

Intelligence gathered by the police indicates
that Musarti's parents had already received a
visit a year ago by a relative who demanded her
death. "Either you do it or I will," the
relative reportedly said. The intention was
clear - Musarti was condemned to death.

This is shameful. In this culture, women are owned by either their father, or if married, their husband, who they may or may not have chosen to marry. In either case, their lives are run by men.

A fairly devastating piece on Arafat and where he received his support:


Right after that meeting, I was given the KGB's "personal file" on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.

The KGB's disinformation department then went to work on Arafat's four-page tract called "Falastinuna" (Our Palestine), turning it into a 48-page monthly magazine for the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah. Arafat had headed al-Fatah since 1957. The KGB distributed it throughout the Arab world and in West Germany, which in those days played host to many Palestinian students. The KGB was adept at magazine publication and distribution; it had many similar periodicals in various languages for its front organizations in Western Europe, like the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Trade Unions.

Next, the KGB gave Arafat an ideology and an image, just as it did for loyal Communists in our international front organizations. High-minded idealism held no mass-appeal in the Arab world, so the KGB remolded Arafat as a rabid anti-Zionist. They also selected a "personal hero" for him -- the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the man who visited Auschwitz in the late 1930s and reproached the Germans for not having killed even more Jews. In 1985 Arafat paid homage to the mufti, saying he was "proud no end" to be walking in his footsteps.

Arafat was an important undercover operative for the KGB. Right after the 1967 Six Day Arab-Israeli war, Moscow got him appointed to chairman of the PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet puppet, proposed the appointment. In 1969 the KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American "imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. It appealed to him so much, Arafat later claimed to have invented the imperial-Zionist battle cry. But in fact, "imperial-Zionism" was a Moscow invention, a modern adaptation of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism.

Arafat...one big friggin' lie after another.

What does a killer of a 6-year old girl do when he gets out of prison? Work in show business of course:

Steinberg, 62, is completing an 8-to-25-year prison term for manslaughter in the death of his illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, and is expected to be released next June.

In 1987, Steinberg fatally struck 6-year-old Lisa, the girl he had taken as a days-old infant from an unwed teenager. He was supposed to arrange an adoption, but instead took the baby home to his live-in companion, Hedda Nussbaum.

Steinberg left the unconscious child while he went out. Nussbaum stayed home with the first-grader but did nothing all night. An ambulance was called the next morning. The child died three days later.

Nothing like cashing in on the murder of an innocent child.

Walter Cronkite has lost his friggin' mind:

In his two and a half years in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law. Tom?s de Torquemada, you might recall, was the 15th-century Dominican friar who became the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. He was largely responsible for its methods, including torture and the burning of heretics - Muslims in particular.

Now, of course, I am not accusing the attorney general of pulling out anyone's fingernails or burning people at the stake (at least I don't know of any such cases). But one does get the sense these days that the old Spaniard's spirit is comfortably at home in Ashcroft's Department of Justice.

There was something almost medieval in the treatment of Muslim suspects in the aftermath of 9-11. Many were held incommunicado, without effective counsel and without ever being charged, not for days or weeks, but for months or longer, some under harsh conditions designed for the most dangerous criminals.

In the past few years, Walter Cronkite has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Jimmy Carter of former respected journalists. Jimmy Carter, you may recall, was a peanut farmer and president of the US from 1977-1981. He became known, quickly, as the worst American President ever to occupy the Oval Office. He was largely responsible for leading the country into the worst economic times in the last 50-years and making America a laughingstock by allowing Iranian students to take numerous of his fellow citizens hostage and allow them to languish in captivity for 444 days. He also, in his retired years, allowed the North Korean government to dupe him and proceed with developing nuclear weapons.

Now, of course, I am not accusing Mr. Cronkite of being a poor politician and even poorer diplomat (at least I don't know of any cases). But one does get the sense that the old socialist's spirit is comfortably at home in the former liberal's column of weekly drivel.

Not comparing Ashcroft to a ruthless torturer? Old Torq was a fundamentalist, Ashcroft is a fundamentalist, therefore Torquemada=Ashcroft. That's exactly what you meant Walter. And for you info Mr. Cronkite, these men are some of the worst criminals. They are aligned with a group that murdered 3,000 American citizens.

This from the WSJ:

In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he charmed President Carter. Arafat, he urged, would transform his brutal PLO into a law-abiding government-in-exile if only the U.S. would establish official relations. The meeting was a great success for us. Carter hailed Ceausescu, dictator of the most repressive police state in Eastern Europe, as a "great national and international leader" who had "taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community." Triumphant, Ceausescu brought home a joint communiqué in which the American president stated that his friendly relations with Ceausescu served "the cause of the world."em>

The WTO protest idiots exposed:

Fairness was the overriding concern for the folks marching to the barricades, but no one really knew how to define or achieve it. So we decided to set up a "fair trade soda stand" along the parade route on Saturday. We offered Coke, Sprite, and water to the hot and bothered activists. The catch was that they could choose from two options: the free trade and the fair trade price. The sign for the fair price (20 pesos) explained that the price included the true cost of the drink plus: health care, environmental protections, taxes and other welfareish provisions; while the free trade price (5 pesos) included only the true cost of the beverage.

At first, this enterprise drew a lot of very confused looks and some yelling. But a few customers finally grew thirsty enough to brave the looks the others were shooting at them. We made seven sales -- two at the fair trade price and five at the free trade rate. Just as business was picking up, however, a young lady approached us, read the sign, and promptly threw a hissy fit.

"You can’t be here; you’re misrepresenting what fair trade is! It doesn’t involve products from multi-national corporations; you have to have local diversity!" she seethed, while clutching her Sony Handycam.

And of course, what is a good protest without a mistaken suicide:


Granted, the reason option was a long shot from the start. To get an idea of how cra-a-azy some of these people were, consider: The day before I arrived, South Korean farmer and union leader Lee Kyung-Hae had climbed on top of a barricade with a sign that said, "The WTO kills farmers" slung around his neck. Once he got the crowd's attention by brandishing a pocket knife, Lee stabbed himself through the heart and bled and died not long thereafter in the hospital. It was a publicity stunt gone badly wrong; one member of Lee's group told us, on camera, that he hadn't intended to kill himself and had done sort of thing before with only a flesh wound to show for it. Maybe he got caught up in the moment.

The self-inflicted nature of Lee's demise, however, did not stop the protesters from claiming him as a martyr. His name became a chant ("Lee! Lee! Lee!") and his death an act of heroism for the demonstrators who remained. They constructed an impromptu shrine, complete with flowers and candles, to him at the edge of a traffic circle just down from the barricades, and memorialized his name in graffiti.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but Lee accidentally offed himself in defense of a subsidy and tariff regime that is particularly heinous. Korean rice farmers are both subsidized and sheltered from foreign competition, with the end result of a local price of rice four times as much as in the U.S., for a food that is a staple of Asian cuisine. The farmers are made rich at the expense of everyone else.

Nice group. They don't need a reason to be anarchists, any occasion will do.

I hate the Braves in baseball, and the Devils in hockey, and abhor the Giants in football, but jeez!

Police detained two suspects and were searching for another Saturday in the killing of a 25-year-old San Francisco Giants fan in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, a shooting that authorities said had been triggered by a decades-old baseball rivalry.

Two families leaving the game during the eighth inning apparently traded words about the teams, police said. The dispute culminated when Mark Allen Antenorcruz, of Covina, was shot twice after a man he was arguing with pulled a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun from his family's white SUV, police said.

No-Cal/So-Cal rivalry run amok.

The worlds oldest terrorist seems to have been playing faster and looser with the books then expected:

An audit of the Palestinian Authority revealed that President Yasser Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account he controlled, an International Monetary Fund official said yesterday.
Most of the cash, which came from revenues in the budget, went into some 69 commercial activities in Palestinian areas and abroad, said Karim Nashashibi, IMF resident representative in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hanan Ashwari, a Palestinian lawmaker and one-time Arafat spokeswoman, acknowledged there had been incidents of misuse of funds in the past but that the release of the information was an attempt to discredit the embattled Palestinian leader.

"There is nothing innocent about the timing," she said. "This is a campaign against the president and the [Palestinian] Authority."

The allegation came as Arafat told hundreds of supporters outside his Ramallah compound that the UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel retract threats to remove him "shows the international community ... stands by the Palestinian people."

Nashashibi said the information provided by the Palestinians was an example of the openness and transparency in finances under Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad.

However, Nashashibi did not rule out the possibility that a portion of the funds were misused.

I hope the lefties who support this murderous thief think about what $900 million could do for the people in the west bank and Gaza. Maybe increase the standard of living or provide better health care services.

Most people have kids to love and raise them to be productive, smart adults. Not this Palestinian:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - In the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, Thuraya Eshbear wields a powerful weapon.

Babies.

At 35, this wisp of a woman has 13 children, from 20 years down to 10 months. Though she can't afford to school them all, though she rarely has a minute to herself, she would gladly bear more.

"I have many children so that the Palestinian people will have more than the Israelis," says Eshbear, a $37-a-week cleaner in the maternity ward of Gaza City's biggest hospital. Here, on any given day, dozens of other Palestinian women are doing their part to ensure ultimate victory over Israel.

"I want to have many boys, so we have more people and can get the Jews out."

Perhaps they can ask Jordan for space to spread out with their big families.

This is interesting:

Islamic Army chaplain from New Jersey has been detained by the U.S. military amid an investigation into his role as the spiritual counselor to suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba.

Capt. Yousef Yee, 35, a West Point graduate who grew up James Yee in a Lutheran family in Springfield, was taken into custody at a Jacksonville, Fla., naval station as he returned from Guantánamo Sept. 10, a spokesman for the military's Southern Command said yesterday.

Yee, who has since been held at a military brig in Charleston, S.C., has not been charged. The Washington Times reported yesterday that Yee was under investigation for aiding the enemy, spying and espionage.

After his 1990 West Point graduation, Yee served on active duty as an air defense artillery officer, Crosson said. He left the Army in the mid-1990s and moved to Syria for four years, later returning to the United States and re-entering the Army as an Islamic chaplain.

In November, Yee was assigned to the task force holding prisoners at Guantánamo. Known as Camp Delta, the prison holds about 660 people, the majority of whom were captured in the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan. The detainees include suspected members of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

This information would most likely not have been revealed if the military didn't have a tight case. I'll keep an eye on this.

I have no idea what this guys PhD is in, maybe idiocy:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., looking and sounding to us old-timers eerily like his martyred father, spoke of the degradation of our environment to a packed house last week at Rider University's Luedeke Center theater.

Kennedy, who has devoted his life to legal advocacy for our environmental heritage, passionately attacked the Bush administration and Congress, accusing both of reckless policies that threaten to turn back the clock to pre-1970 pollution levels and exploitation of our natural treasures and public resources.

Would that be the Kennedy who for wind power every where but in his neighborhood? Maybe the good Provost would take a little time to examine exactly which party was responsible for signing the strictest environmental regulations into law. NEPA, RCRA, TSCA, the Clean Air Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, etc.

At the talk's end, I asked Kennedy why, assuming that conservatives in Washington and the corporate polluters they seek to protect are intelligent people who love their children, his highly persuasive points appear to be unheeded.

He replied by citing a classic economic model - the Tragedy of the Commons. If everyone in the village is entitled to graze cattle on the town commons, this theory states, it's in every individual's best interest to graze as many cows as possible. The result, of course, is that eventually the commons becomes a desert.

The conservatives and the joined-at the-hip corporate polluters, wow. Yes we love our children, as a matter of fact we are in the midst of a war against people who wish our children dead. Mr. Kennedy broke out with some lame analogy, blah, blah, blah. Maybe all the cattle could survive if you used genetically modified crops.

Kennedy's contention is that polluters and their proponents in Washington are content to rape America's public lands, waterways and air because they can retreat with their profits to gated communities and exclusive resorts. They can leave the rest of us - especially the poor - to the pay the price of living with and cleaning up their mess.

Therefore, he concluded, use of public land, navigable waters and the atmosphere must be regulated. Otherwise, greedy capitalists and politicians, who are equally hungry for polluters' campaign contributions, will continue to rape the environment.

The "rape" of americas waterways has been dramatically cut back due to smart regulation and business incentives. Wake up you lefty lunatic, the waters and air are cleaner than ever before. By the way, where do you live, sir? I would imagine it's a pretty nice house in Lawrenceville or Princeton. I'm reasonably sure that you are not part of the poor. If so, you have to improve your salary negotiating skills.

His conclusion about the need for regulation is probably correct. But I wonder if he gives his adversaries enough credit. Dyed-in-the-wool free marketers might respond that the marketplace can be structured to compel conservation practices in the name of self-interest.

For example, "pollution swapping," a procedure in which permissible pollution is regulated and a high polluter can pay a low polluter for the latter's share of the total, is one such strategy touted by advocates of free enterprise. Such panaceas are more than just radical economic theories to these folks. They are tenets of their faith.

On a smaller scale, those of us who purchase gas-guzzling SUVs are buying more than just very big vehicles. Consider the names these behemoths bear: Durango, Explorer, Cherokee. Media maven Marshall McLuhan observed 35 years ago that Americans view life through a rearview mirror. Today, we may drive on crowded highways from suburban sprawl to suburban mall, but our mental landscape is still McLuhan's "Bonanzaland," the Wild West of the 1880s.

Ah, I get it, polluters must be only able to pollute equally. Perhaps we should take the same approach to taxes. Everyone pays the same whether wealthy or poor. How about that? By the way, SUV's are gas guzzlers, but you have as much right to tell someone what they can and can't drive as I do to tell them if abortion is legal or not.

While Kennedy is right about self-interest and greed being powerful motivators, this explanation is too simple. A compelling drama is being played out on the American stage. The protagonists face each other not merely across an income divide but, more fundamentally, across a philosophical divide.

The trouble is that one person's free-market philosophy is another person's asthma. As Kennedy said: "Our children will pay for our joyride."

The rugged individualist, whether a polluter for the sake of profits or in pursuit of an idealized free-market America, shifts the cost of pollution from his own bottom line onto the backs of the American public.

We need to climb down out of our SUVs and turn our backs on Bonanzaland. Otherwise, we will be saddled with poor health, degraded air and water, and denuded landscapes, all for the luxury of an American myth we can no longer afford to sustain.

James, Jimmy, with all due respect, you're a moron. The only weight on my back is the weight of too many social programs that I am funding, not to mention the NEA, NPR, and Bill Moyers. Perhaps you should take a closer look at the environmental business and maybe discover that the regulations currently in place are more than adequate if not too much so.

You have got to be kidding:

It was far worse than just a bad hair day.

A jury awarded $150,000 to a woman who was left mostly bald after a visit to a salon.

Mary Lynn Reddish, 43, went to a Regis Salon in October of 2000 to have a mild hair relaxer applied to her wavy blonde tresses, but after the treatment, clumps of her hair came out in the wash and even more were pulled out when combed.

Reddish said she was left nearly bald as the result of a chemical reaction from the hair-relaxing product and the dye used to bleach her hair blonde.

The blonde jokes that I could think of just overload my mind.

I don't know if this is real or not, but it sure is cool.

Oh yeah, remember the nice lefty protesters who always circle their calendars for the date of the WTO meetings? Check out what polite and upstanding people they really are, here.

How do these people get off work to go to these meetings...uh...stupid question.

Lileks picks apart editorials from 1998 which had interesting things to say:

“There is one sound conclusion to be drawn from the confluence of events in Washington and Iraq: The conduct of foreign policy is a weighty responsibility that at times requires the undivided attention of a whole, unencumbered president. It is a sad commentary that some voices in Washington are complaint that momentous world events have interrupted their sideshow. . . . Events in Iraq make it clear that there is a world out there which requires the attention of the US Government. It’s time to shift focus away from the neighborhood farce and back to the world stage.”

This was a reference to the impeachment proceedings, of course. The editorialists were appalled that Congress was impeaching the president when the threat of Iraq loomed so large. Now the threat has been dispatched - and does this count for anything? No. The terrorist training campes are closed down, the torture barracks padlocked, the mass gravesare opened to the wailings of the families, the official hospitals of Baghdad no longer welcome cancerous terrorists, the Kurds no longer watch the skies for the helicopters and their bitter gusts, the citizens no longer wonder whether the government men will rip out the eyes of their infant children to produce the proper confession -

Irrelevant.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

A novel idea for exiling Arafat:
Allow me to offer a solution. There is another Arab country where Arafat has yet to reside and where the large Arab population unquestionably would welcome him. I suggest Prime Minister Sharon rise to the challenge, demonstrate that he is one of history's Great Men, and send Arafat to France. The Palestinian has a wife in Paris and a friend in Jacques Chirac. The two could have long lunches together. They could even negotiate. Both love to negotiate. Over the years as Arafat has "negotiated," thousands have died. Not as many people will die if Arafat is out of the West Bank, but in Paris negotiating can be very agreeable nonetheless, especially with so suave a negotiator as Chirac. Possibly the two might also invite Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder into their negotiations.

I find it highly unlikely that Arafats wife misses him too much.

I know that Justin Timberlake's music sucks, but I didn't know it was hazardous to ones health:

A Winston man told police he crashed his car after a bee flew into his mouth while he was singing along with Justin Timberlake's song "Rock Your Body" on the radio.

A Douglas County sheriff's spokeswoman said John L. Nunes, 19, was trying to get rid of the bee or yellow jacket when his car hit a tree.

"I kind of panicked and went off the road," Nunes said yesterday.

He was taken by ambulance to Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg.

"I had to get a stitch in my tongue, and I got a gash on my left ankle," Nunes said. The tongue injury was from his teeth, not the bee, he said.

I'm glad the dude is okay, but who actually sings out loud to such bad music?

Tom Freedman is a great writer. He sometimes goes off on odd tangents, but is arguably the best writer with regards to mid-east policies and politics. This is his take on Franco/US differences in Iraq, and he's right, almost:

If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we're sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.

But then France has never been interested in promoting democracy in the modern Arab world, which is why its pose as the new protector of Iraqi representative government — after being so content with Saddam's one-man rule — is so patently cynical.

Clearly, not all E.U. countries are comfortable with this French mischief, yet many are going along for the ride. It's stunning to me that the E.U., misled by France, could let itself be written out of the most important political development project in modern Middle East history. The whole tone and direction of the Arab-Muslim world, which is right on Europe's doorstep, will be affected by the outcome in Iraq. It would be as if America said it did not care what happened in Mexico because it was mad at Spain.

The last paragraph is what I don't agree with, however the thought of what France is doing is on target.

Stanley Crouch in the NY Daily News opines about a 60'S terrorist who killed three men. She's about to get released. Crouch couldn't stay away from slamming the right for the Black Panthers and other insurgents:

I disagree with those who believe that extremists like Boudin rose on the wings of drugs, rock 'n' roll, birth-control pills and the anti-war demonstrations that some say tore this nation from the world of reason and did away with the respect for authority.

The problem actually started on the right, beginning with Joe McCarthy and the demagogic abuse of power in Washington. In reaction, distrust of government - a basic American attitude - took on a fresh intensity. It increased as the civil rights movement exposed local Southern government as racist, right-wing and ever willing to maintain itself through terrorism and murder.

Fighting against the South's undemocratic laws, the civil rights workers took the same position that abolitionists had during the age of slavery: Laws based in bigotry should not be respected, and anyone who broke them was a hero and a freedom fighter, not a villain.

Those reasonable roots bore mad and tragic fruit on the radical left. By the late '60s, Negro extremists caught up in Marxist fantasies called for the violent overthrow of the U.S. The most well known were the Black Panthers, who often used the slogan "off the pig," which meant "kill the police." They have since become, in the lying conventions of our time, a noble civil rights organization that fell at the hands of the FBI.


This woman is a murderer who killed a black man also. She is a terrorist with her own agenda. I suspect that civil rights were a front for greed.

Although I'm morally against abortion, I believe that the right to have an abortion should not be changed. However, partial birth abortion is way over where I draw the line. How any politician could fight to keep this horrific practice in place is beyond me. I see NOW and every other pro-abortion group fighting this as an erosion of abortion rights, but this is a pratice that must be ceased.

The Inquirer, in between sticking their tongue down Wes Clark's throat, has an interesting article about a woman in France:

The commotion over these radical notions has thrust Herold into the national limelight. Quickly, the attractive Reims native has become a symbol for those French disillusioned with the status quo. A conservative British newspaper invited her to London, where she was wined and dined by parliamentarians and the Tory party leader. She conversed in impeccable English honed during a year at the University of Birmingham.

Herold's appeal has not stopped in Britain. She defends American policies and describes herself as a staunch advocate of free enterprise, longer work hours, globalization, and the right to eat at McDonald's. Choice and individual responsibility are her frequent themes.

"The state shouldn't forbid you to do things that just concern you," Herold said in an interview. "Some people love working 35 hours. Others want to work 70. If you want to work more because you want something for your family, you cannot" in France.

Her group favors same-sex marriage, access to abortion, assisted suicide, and decriminalization of drugs and prostitution. Its members backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq and, before the war began, demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Paris, hoisting placards supporting the U.S. position.

But in France, resistance to change can be well-organized and widespread. Premier Jean-Pierre Raffarin's recent reform proposals, including extending the period that public-sector workers must work to gain full pension benefits, sparked some of the fiercest strikes in recent history. Raffarin also has proposed cutting France's exorbitant income-tax rate by 3 percent. When his government's next round of changes is unveiled later this month, the public-sector unions promise more demonstrations.

Perhaps there is hope for the French. Unions probably hate this woman for even imagining changing the status quo. This is what unions in the US would aim for given the opportunity.

There has been so much talk about neo-cons. You know the new Conservatives who will do anything to support Israel and force a new order in the mid-east. Come on, you know, Wolfowitz, Perlman, et al.

But what of neo-Liberals. What are they you ask? Progressives, you know, the new type of Marxist. You see them on the tube whenever the World Trade Organization is meeting. You see them whenever Bush or Rumsfeld speak. They will never cross over and agree with conservatives no matter what. If they agree with neo-cans they form a new opinion farther to the left. You know the type, they believe that we were at fault for being attacked on 9/11. They believe that Osama was a guy who built roads and daycare centers (for what daycare centers would be needed when women can't leave their houses without a close male relative is beyond me). They believe even though Saddam did gas the Kurds and pummeled the Shiites, we still had no business toppling him, and were horrified that we not only offed his treacherous offspring but showed their bodies. They're the ones who protest in support of the cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal and the death penalty, yet never showed their faces when an abortion doctors murderer was put to death.

As I said in a previous post, they are not Kennedy (Edward maybe, but not John), who lowered taxes to boost the economy, and stood up to the Soviets. They are not Truman, who dropped a nuclear (nucular if your a Bush) on an enemy to save American lives. No, neo-libs are spineless. They believe that even if attacked, response is not just wrong but reprehensible. They believe that the Israelis are as bad as the Palestinian genocide bombers. They believe that globalism and genetically modified foods, which will only serve to pull the impoverished up to a higher standard, are evil (no, not evil, Bush uses that word and it's so simplisme, so black and white).

I won't go as far as saying they are anti-American, however I will say that they believe that the UN should have a greater say in the lives of Americans than the comnstitutional government, and that my friends, is unforgivable.

Some old time Libs get it. Hitchens to a degree is one. I hope that others,as I said with Saletan in an earlier post, eventually get it.

The Clintons are the best thing to happen for the party...The Republican party:

Former President Clinton will automatically be a New York delegate to the Democratic National Convention next year, the state's party chairman said Tuesday.

State Assemblyman Herman Farrell said national party rules call for all members of Congress, all members of the Democratic National Committee from New York and all former presidents and vice presidents to be automatic delegates.

That means Clinton and his wife, New York's junior senator, can both go to the convention in Boston next summer as so-called super delegates from their adopted state. Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000.

Their is a raging fight going on for the soul of the Democratic party, the Clinton branch and the Dean branch. I don't think the American voter likes either one. They are not the Truman or Kennedy type of Dems. The Clintons represent sleaze, I give Terry McAulliffe as evidence. Dean is the Goldwater type that is disconcerting post 9/11.

Perhaps this is why women don't report rapes:

Someone at the Eagle County courthouse on Tuesday printed the name of the woman who accused NBA star Kobe Bryant (search) of sexually assaulting her on the official Web site for the courts for everyone to see.

The 19-year-old accuser's name and probably her address were used in a court filing from the Vail, Colo., police department in their attempt to keep the defense from seeing their investigative files.

The item came up on the site at 10:35 a.m. EDT -- clerks at the courthouse were unaware of the mistake until employees of the Web site thesmokinggun.com called them to alert them at 10:55 a.m. EDT.

This girl, whether she consented or not, is going to have her life ruined.

John Ashcroft has taken a beating for so long that not seeing his name equated with nazism, gulags, or constitutional obliteration is a day that feels empty. I ask this question, if the Attorney General of the US is quashing debate with a huge jack boot, where is the proof? The detainees in Guantanamo? I think not, they are not US citizens but POW's. The Patriot Act? I would be the first to storm his office with a pitchfork if the government could intrude the way the left is spinning it, which they can not. We are at war not with a country, but with a group that transcends borders, nationalities, and skin color. Some more scrutiny is in order. Remember, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the liberal hero Roosevelt gathered up American citizens of Japanese origin, and put them in internment camps in Arizona. No due process, no recognition of service to their adopted country, no recourse for lost homes. Our current war is against an enemy that attacked our largest city and killed hundreds more than in 1941. I have yet to see anyone incarcerated for speaking out against Bush or his administration. If the left wants to play this game, at least stop being intellectually dishonest.

William Saletan, no conservative he, has a sobering look at the Democratic Party:

Are Republicans nasty? Do they refuse to accept election defeats? Do they subvert respect for democracy? If so, they have no monopoly on these vices. They aren't the ones claiming that our current president "was not elected by the American people." They aren't the ones declaring "a nonmilitary civil war." And it was Clinton, not a Republican former president, who asserted at the Iowa steak fry that the other party "tried to put more arsenic in the water."

A day after Clinton leveled that charge, ABC's This Week aired a delicious exchange between George Stephanopoulos and Howard Dean aboard a Dean campaign van. Stephanopoulos asked Dean whether it was true, as rival candidate Dick Gephardt alleged, that Dean had supported $270 billion in Medicare cuts advocated by Newt Gingrich in 1995. Dean said it was "very unlikely." Then Stephanopoulos showed Dean newspaper clips backing up the allegation. "It's pretty clear that you said you would accept a 7 to 10 percent cut in the rate of growth of Medicare," said Stephanopoulos. "Oh!" Dean interjected, raising his eyebrows. "Cutting the rate of growth! That's much different."

Excuse me, but wasn't that difference exactly what Clinton deliberately blurred in his 1996 campaign? Didn't he beat Bob Dole by accusing Dole and Gingrich of cutting Medicare?

Damn, I hope more Dems don't wake up to see what their party has become. As long as the Clinton wing of the party is in charge, that shouldn't happen.

My favorite story of the day:

Some of the first patients to smoke Health Canada's government-approved marijuana say it's "disgusting" and want their money back.

"It's totally unsuitable for human consumption," said Jim Wakeford, 58, an AIDS patient in Gibsons, B.C. "It gave me a slight buzziness for about three to five minutes, and that was it. I got no other effect from it."

Barrie Dalley, a 52-year-old Toronto man who uses marijuana to combat the nausea associated with AIDS, said the Health Canada dope actually made him sick to his stomach.

"I threw up," Dalley said Monday. "It made me nauseous because I had to use so much of it. It was so weak in potency that I really threw up."

Both men are returning their 30-gram bags, and Dalley is demanding his money back - $150 plus taxes. Wakeford is returning his unpaid bill for two of the bags with a letter of complaint.

I hope Cletus down on his farm in Kentucky or Moonbeam out in Humboldt County, CA are paying attention. Their weed would never have this type of criticism. The Dems are screaming about how drugs are cheaper in Canada and what a disgrace this is. If they can't even grow quality bud, which even the stonedest burn-out can, how the hell can we expect them to make or distribute pharmaceutical quality drugs. Ha.

PETA has had some interesting things to say, here's a taste (like chicken?):


"Serving a burger to your family today, knowing what we know, constitutes child abuse. You might as well give them weed killer. "
— Toni Vernelli, then-coordinator of PETA’s European operations

"Even if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it."
— PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk, in the September 1989 issue of Vogue

"Our nonviolent tactics are not as effective. We ask nicely for years and get nothing. Someone makes a threat, and it works."
— Ingrid Newkirk, in the April 8, 2002 issue of US News & World Report

"We are complete press sluts."
— Ingrid Newkirk, in The New Yorker, April 14, 2003

"I will be the last person to condemn ALF [the Animal Liberation Front]."
— Ingrid Newkirk, in the New York Daily News, December 7, 1997

Nice.

Andrew Sullivan hits on a point I meant to address this evening:

No one has yet accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of sexual harrassment of workplace underlings or rape. So where were these "women's groups" during the Clinton administration? Shilling for the abuser. And why didn't the reporter ask about their double standards?

I have just finished Hitchens "No One Left To Lie To" and he spells out, in damning fashion, the case against Clinton as , if not a rapist, a serious scumbag. The NOW gang never said one thing about this. Clinton degraded women twice, once sexually, than by letting loose his spin machine to make the women look like; a.) they wanted it; or b.)They are accusing him to get money; or c.) they were put up to it by the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". If any women needed the backing of NOW it was them. NOW gave them nothing.

Ambit wonders why Iraq Body Count isn't counting backward:

Since the end of the war the UN's economic sanctions have been lifted and, from what I can tell, Iraqis are no longer dying from privation or any humanitarian crises arising from the war. And since Iraq is crawling with both international and domestic journalists as well as NGO types making assessments, I have little doubt that if Iraqis were continuing to die in such large numbers we'd have heard about it by now. You may recall that there were early reports of a small outbreak of cholera near Basra shortly after the war's end. That crisis in the making was nipped in the bud but the fact that the illnesses (not even deaths) were picked up by the media tells me that they are unlikely to have missed a humanitarian disaster on the scale of what reportedly occurred under Saddam's regime.

So if the UN's estimate was accurate - and if it wasn't where's the outcry that those who opposed the sanctions on humanitarian grounds were lying - and there is no evidence that Iraqis continue to die of privation, then, by my calculations, the war has already resulted in a net savings of over 15,000 Iraqi lives since the war's end using the war casualty figures compiled by Iraq Body Count. By rights the odometer-style counters should be running in reverse subtracting 5,000 Iraqi deaths per month.

I agree with this. The main reason is that the admission of being wrong is impossible for the pre-war quagmirists. They honestly can't admit that the thing they have put all their time & effort into was, quite definitely, wrong. (Via Glenn Reynolds)

Mel Gibson has made a movie of Jesus Christ's last hours and has gotten some heat. I don't think he fears for his life though:

A Canadian Muslim who tomorrow releases a book critical of her religion is drawing ''a very high level of awareness'' from police because of a feared backlash from fundamentalists.

Irshad Manji said she has taken every step possible to ensure her safety, including forwarding critical e-mails and letters to the authorities.

The Toronto journalist said she is not sure how The Trouble with Islam, which urges Muslims to purge Islam of fundamentalism, will be received. ''At this point it's all about being prepared rather than paranoid,'' she said in an interview this weekend.

Today's National Post carries an exclusive excerpt of the book one day ahead of its release.

Ms. Manji said her book denounces terrorism, the poor treatment of women and ''Jew-bashing'' while promoting tolerance and human rights. In it, she urges an Islamic reformation that begins in the West.

''I didn't write this book to be deliberately inflammatory,'' said Ms. Manji, a self-described activist, leftist, Muslim and feminist.

''It's about the things that were troubling to me as a kid and the things that are troubling young Muslims today.''

It is clear from the book's Web site, www.muslim-refusenik.com, that the book's messages have struck a nerve.

The fatwa should be issued by Friday.

Not that I care even remotely;

Twice last week, before the idiotic B-Lo/J-Lo wedding was called off, I was told the same thing: Ben Affleck's close pals staged an "intervention," the kind used for addicts, to stop his wedding to Jennifer Lopez.

It looks like they got through to him.

On Wednesday, friends of Affleck's I talked to didn't deny that the intervention took place, but by the time I reached them the wedding had been canceled anyway. There was relief in the air and in their voices.

I can't understand why people actually get paid to write about the lives of people such as Affleck, a guy who has some talent, but hasn't made a good movie in years, and Lopez, a ghetto chick who is a horrible actress and a worse singer.

Lileks has his hilarious take:

J-Lo and B-Af have called it quits, and I’m as devastated as the rest of you. Which is to say I am incapable of caring any less than I did when that horrid symbiotic organism they called Bennifer first appeared on the covers of US and People and WE and Them and Pretty Humanoid Penile / Mucoid-Membrane Interface Update and all the rest of the magazines that detail the doings of vapid, genetically-blessed bipeds we have elevated to the status of impotent royalty. According to People, which I glimpsed in the checkout line today, the next big thing is Justin and Cameron. The magazine promised to tell me why they’re drawn to each other. That’s why we need People! Lesser mortals might figure that the usual triplicate enticements of money, fame and smokin’ pokin’ are at play here, but no: People will tell us that they share some deep bond based on a moment when they both took calls from their agents advising them to soft-pedal the PETA pronouncements and gradually move their advocacy statements to something more megaplex-friendly, like the Campaign to Save the Peruvian Forests.

"Whoa, Cameron - you like those native flute-guys who play on streetcorners through really loud amps? Me too! I was coming back from this one place and we were like stopped at like Times Square and I heard those guys playing, and it was like totally haunting. I even made my handler run out and buy a CD because I was like, whoa, we need to be seriously considering Peruvian music for underscore in my next film - but did you read that quote my agent sent to my Blackberry? If we don’t speak up the trees they use for native flute will be used for, like, furniture or something. I can’t believe you’re into that! That is so cool!"

It took me 4 seconds to translate the magazine cover - who are they talking about? Justin must be that Timberwood fellow, whose work I cannot quite fix. Cameron would be that goofy Diaz creature who was so lovely in “The Mask” but suffered so many internal tapeworms she will compete with Courtney Cox for a nomination in “The best performance by a prominent sternum bone” in the 04 People’s Choice Award.

Damn, I thought our drug laws were tough:

A Saudi drug trafficker was beheaded Sunday, a Ministry of Interior statement said.



Dhaher bin Thamer al-Shimry was convicted of smuggling marijuana into the kingdom, the statement said.


Al-Shimry was beheaded in the eastern province of Hafr al-Baten, bringing the number of beheadings in the kingdom this year to 41, most of them drug traffickers. At least 49 people were beheaded last year.


This conservative country follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which people convicted of drug trafficking, murder, rape and armed robbery are executed. Beheadings are carried out with a sword in public.

Religion of peace my ass. Ask the lefty whackos out there who's worse, the Saudis or Ashcroft, and I guarantee they would say Ashcroft is worse.

My God, the outrage, where is PETA when you need them:

MOROGORO, Tanzania - Far from the outbreak of monkeypox that shed light on a worrisome increase in exotic pets in the United States, Mathias and his African pouched rat pals are hard at work in rural Tanzania learning how to locate land mines.

In their little red, black and blue harnesses, they look like miniature sniffer dogs. But their trainers at Sokoine University of Agriculture say the giant rats can do a much better job.

"Rats are good, clever to learn, small, like performing repeated tasks and have a better sense of smell than dogs," said Christophe Cox, the Belgian coordinator of the rat training project.

When they succeed, they get bits of ripe bananas.

At least it's ripe banana.

Bad news for people who blog at work.

President Bush is fighting an uphill battle when it comes to environmental politics. No matter what he says or what actions he takes, he will get slammed by the Sierra Club or the terrorist Earth Liberation Front (ELF):

President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday defended a change in clean air rules -- which environmentalists believe will cause more pollution -- as necessary to allow power plants to upgrade their equipment and keep the U.S. economy going.


"We have done the right thing," Bush said.


Wearing a hard hat and safety glasses, Bush toured a coal-burning power plant, the Detroit Edison Monroe facility, then gave a speech to employees and local political figures saying his environmental policies are working.


Bush was on a day trip to two states crucial to his re-election next year, Michigan and Pennsylvania, to talk up his environmental record and add to his $60 million campaign war chest. He was to address Republican donors in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, later on Monday.

Why a reference to fundraising was inserted in an article on environmental policy is beyond me. If you want another spin on Bush environmental policy, click here.

My Navy is getting ready to send the heavy iron out to sea to get away from Isabel:

The US Navy was debating Monday whether to send the Atlantic Fleet out to sea to ride out a powerful hurricane that is expected to hit the US east coast later this week, a US navy spokesman said.
About 70 US navy ships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, were in southeastern US ports threatened by Hurricane Isabel, a category four storm packing 240 kilometer (150 mile) per hour winds.

It's not going to be pretty for the crews, the seas should be high and the ride ugly, but it sure beats what they'd get slammed with in port.

James Taranto has this interesting story:

Last week, by a razor-thin vote of 209-208, the House passed an amendment to the District of Columbia appropriations bill providing federal funds for vouchers that would allow some 1,300 Washington schoolchildren to escape the district's miserable public schools. The New York Times denounces the plan in an editorial titled "In D.C., Taxation Without Representation"--a bizarre headline, since the editorial isn't about taxation. The Times asserts that the voucher proposal is "tyrannical" because it is opposed by "the school board and a majority of the city's elected officials, including Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting representative in the House." The editorial doesn't mention that Mayor Anthony Williams supports the proposal.

The Times editorialists lash out against the Constitution, which provides that the nation's capital, as a federal district, does not have the same sovereignty as the 50 states. Federal jurisdiction over Washington, the paper avers, is "dictatorial." The editorial also complains that the voucher amendment "erodes the wall between church and state by pushing children toward parochial schools"--never mind that the Supreme Court ruled last year that it is constitutional to spend public money on vouchers for parochial schools, provided the government does not favor religious schools over secular ones (or vice versa).

In addition, the Times faults Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, for supporting the measure, which it claims "would lead to an uprising were it tried in her home state."

What he doesn't say is that the bill would've been defeated if either Gephardt or Kucinich were doing the jobs the good citizens pay them to do. How many jobs can you just not show-up and still get paid?

This from the Agence France Pressse:

Johannesburg - Police are searching for a prisoner with no legs who managed to escape ''unnoticed'' from a hospital, the Saturday Star reported. ''Two months later, he is still on the run (or should that be crawl?) and the law enforcement authorities appear to be stumped,'' it said

Isn't that considered non-PC? That would never run in an American paper (for good or bad).
Link is corrupted however.

I think we'll see more of this in the coming months:


WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has evidence of some prewar Iraqi contacts and training with al-Qaida, based on prisoner interrogations, defector statements and documents collected in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no proof of joint terror operations, according to U.S. officials.

Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on a supporter of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He is believed to have run terrorist training camps in both Iraq and Afghanistan and received medical care in Baghdad.

U.S. officials have accused al-Zarqawi of trying to train terrorists in the use of poison for possible attacks in Europe, running a terrorist haven in northern Iraq and organizing an attack that killed an American aid executive in Jordan last year.

The administration must put everything we've found in Iraq into one huge, damning document and lay it all out to the public. This is one time that the administration's secrecy is hurting its case.

A sure sign that democracy may be close in Iraq, editorials from numerous newspapers. A free press is awesome in its way. MEMRI has a collection of translated editorials.

Read this quote:

Israel lashed out yesterday at the "hypocrisy" of the international community and UN Security Council over its threats to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but vowed it would not give in to the criticism.

"When it comes to defending a terrorist like Yasser Arafat the world mobilises, but when women and children are killed in the streets of Israel, the UN Security Council is silent - it's hypocrisy," a senior Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Despite this unjustified criticism, Israel will not modify the decision taken in principle Thursday by the security cabinet to remove Yasser Arafat at an opportune moment," he said.

That is it in a nutshell. I've said this a zillion times and will say a quintillion times more, the Palestinians target civilians in buses, cafes, and during Seder dinners. The Israelis respond to the terror, but target only militants who send their youth to hell as homicide bombers. The Israelis have every right, as does the US to take the battle to the enemy that targets it's civilian population. Period.

King Abdullah of Jordan takes terrorists to task:

This year, Jordanians, like Americans, have been killed and injured in devastating terror bombings in Saudi Arabia and Baghdad. The dead include a 5-year-old boy, Yazan Abassi, and his 10-year-old sister, Zeina. The faces of these victims and their grieving families are in my mind whenever I read terrorists' claims to speak for the Arab and Muslim people. In fact, my people have been among the first to suffer from those who preach the culture of terror and seek power through violence. And their claim that Islam justifies their actions is, pure and simple, a lie.

One country was conspicuosly absent from that paragraph, King. Deeds speak much louder than words. What do you plan to do about the state of the region?

Even when a terrorist is convicted of being a murderer and a terrorist, the AP can't bring themselves to call him one. The headline says it all:

Yemeni Court Sentences Militant to Death

A Yemeni court on Sunday sentenced a Muslim extremist to death for plotting the assassination of a politician and three American missionaries in December 2002.

Ali al-Jarallah was found guilty of planning the assassination of Jarallah Omar, deputy secretary-general of the Yemeni Socialist Party, as well as the murder two days later of the missionaries at a Southern Baptist missionary hospital in Jibla.

He was also convicted of creating a terror cell to assassinate local officials and foreigners, as well as buying weapons and explosives.

Hurricane Isabel is coming my way:

MIAMI -- Hurricane Isabel churned in the Atlantic as a Category 5 storm early Sunday, still several days from land but on a course unpredictable enough to worry residents along a large stretch of the East Coast.

"It's looking more and more likely that this is going to be a big event for the eastern United States," National Hurricane Center meteorologist Eric Blake said Sunday. "But it's so far out that you can't really pinpoint it."

Path maps here & here

Jack Straw drops this little nugget on the French:

Asked why there had been so much friction between London and Paris over the years, Straw reportedly replied:

"A great many of the difficulties that have faced the relationship go back to the profoundly different experiences that we had in the war, with, quotes, Britain standing alone, and quotes, France capitulating and surrendering to the Germans."

According to the Daily Mail, Straw also said that pictures of France's war-time leader General Charles de Gaulle were displayed outside the gentlemen's lavatory in the foreign secretary's official London residence in Carlton Gardens, which was de Gaulle's former home.

The French have been trying to spin their capitulation for decades, however unsuccessfully. Straw just said the truth, is unheard of in European diplomatic circles. Good show Jack. (via Instapundit)

I love the anti-war left. Pro-abortion, pro-dictator, and pro-Mumia. Pathetic.

Why is LGF a must read every day? Because of links to stories like this:

Hill could hear Rescorla issuing orders through the bullhorn. He was calm and collected, never raising his voice. Then Hill heard him break into song:

Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming;
Can't you see their spearpoints gleaming?
See their warriors' pennants streaming
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady;
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready;
Stand and never yield!

Rescorla came back on the phone. "Pack a bag and get up here," he said. "You can be my consultant again." He added that the Port Authority was telling him not to evacuate and to order people to stay at their desks.

"What'd you say?" Hill asked.

"I said, 'Piss off, you son of a bitch,' " Rescorla replied. "Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse, and it's going to take the whole building with it. I'm getting my people the fuck out of here." Then he said, "I got to go. Get your shit in one basket and get ready to come up."

Hill turned back to the TV and, within minutes, saw the second plane execute a sharp left turn and plunge into the south tower. Susan saw it, too, and frantically phoned her husband's office. No one answered.

About fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. It was Rick. She burst into tears and couldn't talk.

"Stop crying," he told her. "I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I've never been happier. You made my life."

And this outstanding Esquire article:

In the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. If he were not falling, he might very well be flying. He appears relaxed, hurtling through the air. He appears comfortable in the grip of unimaginable motion. He does not appear intimidated by gravity's divine suction or by what awaits him. His arms are by his side, only slightly outriggered. His left leg is bent at the knee, almost casually. His white shirt, or jacket, or frock, is billowing free of his black pants. His black high-tops are still on his feet. In all the other pictures, the people who did what he did—who jumped—appear to be struggling against horrific discrepancies of scale. They are made puny by the backdrop of the towers, which loom like colossi, and then by the event itself. Some of them are shirtless; their shoes fly off as they flail and fall; they look confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain. The man in the picture, by contrast, is perfectly vertical, and so is in accord with the lines of the buildings behind him. He splits them, bisects them: Everything to the left of him in the picture is the North Tower; everything to the right, the South. Though oblivious to the geometric balance he has achieved, he is the essential element in the creation of a new flag, a banner composed entirely of steel bars shining in the sun. Some people who look at the picture see stoicism, willpower, a portrait of resignation; others see something else—something discordant and therefore terrible: freedom. There is something almost rebellious in the man's posture, as though once faced with the inevitability of death, he decided to get on with it; as though he were a missile, a spear, bent on attaining his own end. He is, fifteen seconds past 9:41 a.m. EST, the moment the picture is taken, in the clutches of pure physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared. He will soon be traveling at upwards of 150 miles per hour, and he is upside down. In the picture, he is frozen; in his life outside the frame, he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.

Tomorrow marks the second year of the cowardly attacks on the towers. I remember watching them burn and fall from Brooklyn. I have a deep feeling that we've forgotten. We have forgotten the feeling we had of anger, disbelief, and resolve.

Alot has happened in two years, we have toppled Saddam and the Taliban, although our job is hardly complete. We have seen a dramatic change in our daily lives, such as increased airport security (although I can't necessarily say that it's for the better), a bulked-up Air Marshal program (that is better, regardless of what's reported), and a new, cabinet level agency.

I believe in my heart that George Bush has the best interests of our country at heart. I believe that the ongoing war in Iraq is an extension of the war againt Militant Islam. I further feel that the Dems are doing their damnest to make these events a political issue when surely it is not. It is a battle that must be undertaken now, in Iraq, or tomorrow in New York.

Granted, I have selfish reasons to fight this war now, I have a seven-year old son who is one of the three lights of my life. I don't want him to fight this war in ten years when we could end it now or in the near future. I served my country and feel deep pride in that, but I have no desire to see my own child enlist to fight a war that we put off.

The current topic for editorial writers is the deficits that we are now running and the fact that we're pushing them off on our kids. I sure as hell know that my kids would rather work at paying down the deficit than have to fight al-Qaeda when they've had ten years to recruit and upgrade their weapons.

I wish they would show the events of that day from 8:00 AM til 11:00 PM just as they happened that day, uncut and raw. From the horrific pictures of people forced to end their lives from jumping out of the towers, to the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. Perhaps some people who have chosen to forget will watch and feel the ember growing a little brighter. Maybe they'll actually rethink the positions they have developed in the last year and understand that this country could turn very quickly into Israel. Imagine being fearful of getting on a bus or subway for fear that the person next to you is intent on the destruction of you and your children simply because you are not a Muslim.

When you wake tomorrow remember what occurred on the same day in 2001. Remember the passengers of those planes as the screamed across Manhattan at 1,000 feet and the horror of the realization of what was about to happen. Remember the 3,000 people who were murdered by a satanic group of men for being non-Muslim.

If you don't agree with any of the reasons I stated, at least just remember.

Coming off my very prescient baseball picks, I will now tell you who will make the playoffs and win the Super Bowl (TM).

NFC

East-Eagles, defense bears watching though.
North-Green Bay, Favres last bit of glory.
South-Tampa Bay-That defense, especially Brooks is solid.
West-St. Louis, Faulk, Faulk, and more Faulk.
Wildcard-NY Giants, Shockey will be a pain in the ass for a decade.
Wildcard-New Orleans, if Deuce can get it going and keep it going.

AFC

East-Buffalo, Bledsoe will have a stellar year.
North-Cleveland, Holcomb could be the answer.
South-Tennesee, McNair is a stud and Kearse could return to the caliber player of several years back.
West-San Diego, Tomlinson is the real deal and with Brees and addition David Boston, they should win 11.
Wildcard-Kansas City, If they find another receiver besides Gonzalez and Holmes stays healthy.
Wildcard-Miami, Ricky must have the same type of season as last year.

There they are. Fearless? No. At least half right? Probably. The parity of the NFL is the reason I don't bet.

How can something like this happen?

Scott D. Francis isn't rich or charming or handsome. But he has an unsettling way of getting what he wants.

When the convicted pedophile wanted his kids back, he got them.

As it turned out, all he had to do was ask.

Five years ago, the 41-year-old Northville man molested a young girl who was living in the foster home of Francis' mother. Francis became a licensed foster parent and tried to adopt her, officials say.

When his young victim was instead awarded to a couple, Francis adopted a brother and sister, now 9 and 11.

The girl he had molested called authorities after she learned of the adoptions, and the criminal justice system charged ahead.

Francis was tried twice in Wayne County Circuit Court on rape charges. After the second jury deadlocked, the prosecutor reluctantly agreed to a misdemeanor plea deal the judge called "not unjust ... but lenient."

He pleaded no contest to two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a misdemeanor.

Francis got five years' probation and a severe lecture from Wayne County Judge Brian Sullivan about not having contact with children and not having unsupervised contact with his own children.

But -- oops -- the court clerk forgot to include any details about children in the probation order. And the judge signed it anyway.

The kids, living with Grandma, didn't have a lawyer. Over the river and through the woods in Northville, Grandma's house was the very same residence where Francis had already preyed on that young girl.

Can you guess what happened next?

Francis, who briefly metamorphosed into a barricaded gunman on the evening news, is now being charged with raping his son.

How thre hell does the court clerk forget something of that magnitude? I know hindsight is 20/20 but jeez, a little foresiight would be nice occasionally.

Ariel Sharon explains how you hunt for terrorists. Make the hunter the hunted:

Hamas leaders are "marked for death" and won't have a moment's rest, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) warned Sunday, after Israel failed in an attempt to kill the top echelon of Hamas with a 550-pound bomb dropped on a Gaza City apartment.


Hamas threatened unprecedented revenge, with spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi saying Israel had "opened the gates of hell" with the attack on Hamas founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who escaped with a minor injury. Israel declared a high security alert and imposed a blanket closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites).


Security officials said the Shin Bet security service tightened protection of Israeli leaders.


Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that Israel's campaign against militants would continue.


"They are marked for death," Sharon was quoted as saying, referring to Hamas leaders. "We won't give them a moment's rest. We will continue to hunt them because they have only one objective: the destruction of Israel."

This is the only way to stop terrorist scum. I don't think that Udai or Qusay had much time to plan any terrorist acts as we hunted them down and shot them like the dogs they were.