Islamo-fascists Turn Up the Heat

Pope Benedict, in an address on my anniversary (!), 9/12, talked a lot about how the West is not able to communicate effectively with the East because the West has become so secularized. Because the West has elevated "reason" above "faith" in all discourse, it's no longer on the same plane of reference when dealing with other countries (often Islamic countries).

In the course of these remarks, the Pope referenced a conversation from the 14th century in which a Byzantine emperor complains to the Ottomans in his company at the time that Mohammed has basically brought nothing new to the table that isn't "evil and inhuman". He goes on to speak specifically about Islam's propensity for "conversion by the sword," wherein people are forced to either convert to Islam or die. Benedict also included the part of the conversation where the emperor correctly asserts that conversion by the sword is incompatible with the nature of God, since it involves violence and God disdains violence. Faith is born in the soul, not in the body, and thus the ONLY legitimate way to convert someone is through an intelligent argument for the faith, that appeals to the person's soul, from which all decisions emanate.

Predictably, Muslims throughout the world have gone completely berserk, calling for the pope's death by beheading, and warning that they will come into the Vatican and burn it down to the ground. Some Islamic leaders have also called for Muslims to kill Christians wherever they find them. And this morning, we are hearing reports that this has already begun. A nun in Somalia was murdered -- shot in the back 4 times -- while walking from one building to the next. She was a schoolteacher and had worked to serve God there for over a quarter-century. Her bodyguard was also gunned down. There are other reports of violence, but this one stands out to me as the most prominent and immediately obvious as a direct link to the Holy Father's comments.

You can see the transcript of the Pope's lecture here, but it's quite long and would take a couple of hours for even smart theologians to digest. Here is a nice breakdown by a priest that explains what the Holy Father said, what he meant, and throws in a number of commentaries about the Muslim reactions. It is a must-read.

The repeated wild Muslim over-reaction to comments about their religion is eventually not going to be taken seriously any more as a real reaction to offensive comments, and instead for what it really is: an excuse to wreak more havoc and violence.

This kind of violence could not come from God. It is theologically impossible. Therefore, one of two possibilities is the actual truth: Either 1) These people are not worshipers of God, they are just pretending to be so they have an excuse that people are supposed to have to respect; or 2) They are sincere when they worship 5 times a day, but they are worshiping Satan, not Our Lord. For, all these acts are of course condoned by Beelzebul.

I would also note that, at this time, I have (as usual) yet to read of a single Muslim sticking up for the Pope or at least condemning the calls for violence from other Muslims. As usual, it has been left to others -- Christians -- to apologize on behalf of Muslims with statements like "these views, of course, are embarrassing to millions of Muslims". To me, this failure among rank-and-file Muslims is almost as big an indictment of that religion as the Jihadis' rantings.

Jihadis around the Islamic world are screaming for a full-blown war with Christianity over these comments, and have already killed an innocent elderly nun over them. If they lay a hand on the Pope, they just may get it. We should all pray for the enlightenment and empowerment of people who can prevent such a war.

Kelblogg to Ex-Presidents: SHUT THE HELL UP!

I just got done reading the German magazine Der Spiegel's interview with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and after I picked my jaw up off the floor, all I can say is, when will Democratic ex-presidents shut the hell up already?

Look around and tell me how much political commentary you see out there from ANY former Republican ex-president. Then look at the two Democratic ones: Carter and Clinton. They are both all over the news endlessly. This used to be an unwritten rule, that you stay out of the limelight once you're out of office. Let future administrations do their thing without your comments to muck things up. Former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush NEVER made comments about anything political once they'd left office. But apparently megalomaniac socialists Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton cannot help themselves.

Now Carter is off in Germany, bashing President Bush and American society. His commentary is truly incredible. This is a former president of the United States! Take 5 minutes and read this interview with Mr. Carter. It truly is a must-read.

I hardly know where to begin as far as criticism. Besides the "keep a low profile" mantra that Carter should have been keeping, his factual misstatements and outrageous opinions, given and published OVERSEAS, during a time of war, are beyond belief. I have lost what tiny amount of respect I still had for this joke of a president. I remember his presidency, and it was an abject failure on every front. High inflation, gasoline rationing and long lines, American hostages being taken in Iran, you name it.

Let's just tackle a few of the president's comments:

I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

Wow, what a whopper. He's a bigger fool than I thought. First of all, Israel holds NO political prisoners. Name ONE. Any prisoners they hold are criminals who were caught in the act (of things like murdering innocent people in cold blood) and put through a fair trial before imprisonment, just like in the U.S. Why should Israel return these folks? By contrast, Hezbollah (a terrorist group, by the way) has been attacking Israel across internationally-recognized and guarded borders ever since the day Israel vacated southern Lebanon. They've used rockets and soldiers to do this, and when Israel finally attacked a month ago, it was in response to a massive rocket barrage and an illegal crossing by Hezbollah where they killed 7 Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another before crossing back into Lebanon. What was Israel supposed to do? So Carter is a liar and an appeasing fool.

SPIEGEL: One main points of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?

First of all, in my opinion the stupidity at Abu Ghraib happened precisely because of a lack of religiosity there. Chaplains were told to stay out of everyone's way at Abu Ghraib. Keep to themselves. They did, and look what happened. When the new administration there came in, they put the chaplains front and center as one of their first orders of business. As far as torture at Guantanamo, that is so ridiculous as to be funny. Prisoners at Gitmo are treated better than any other prisoner in the history of warfare. They're given 3 squares a day and allowed to pray and given copies of the Koran to use. In addition, soldiers are told never to speak of or treat the Korans disrespectfully, out of respect for their prisoners. In return, they get prisoners faking illnesses to draw the soldiers in close, then get pelted with human feces and urine, and generally mistreated by these barbarians under their care. Furthermore, the "torture" the interviewer speaks of is nothing of the sort. We're not pulling guys' fingernails off or raping them or anything else even remotely close. Instead, they're subjected to such horrors as having to listen to annoying sounds, being kept awake for days at a time, etc. Boo hoo. So the statement and question itself is already idiotic.

Now consider Carter's response:

Carter: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history.

I don't disagree with Carter very much on his characterization of fundamentalists. He goes overboard when he talks about "sub-humans," as no fundie that I've met thinks like this. They just believe the rest of Christianity (and everyone else) is seriously misguided and headed for Hell. I disagree, but it's a position I can at least respect.

However, more importantly, President Bush is NOT a fundamentalist. Not even close. Bush is an Evangelical, and there is a significant difference. In addition, Carter is asserting, here, that Bush's religion is somehow infecting the entire government and crossing that all-important (and made-up) wall between church and state. This is ridiculous, and so Carter's reasoning totally falls apart from the get-go. He is claiming that Bush refuses to negotiate with Hezbollah and the Palestinians because he's religious and looks down on both groups. Here is the truth: Bush, as a devout Christian, recognizes Evil when he sees it and stands up to it, instead of appeasing it, understanding that you can't legitimately negotiate with evil terrorists. Their goal is to wipe out Israel and the West, period. You don't negotiate that because it's an immoral and illegitimate position. That Carter, who at the time of presidency was the most overtly religious president in decades, doesn't see that is a real question mark.

I can't keep up with all the ridiculous and outrageous positions stated in this interview -- or even comment on the photographs of Carter alongside his Communist dictator buddy Fidel Castro -- but get a load of this:

SPIEGEL: You've been called the moral conscience of your country. How do you look at it yourself? Are you an outsider in American politics these days or do you represent a political demographic that could maybe elect the next US president?

Carter: I think I represent the vast majority of Democrats in this country. I think there is a substantial portion of American people that completely agree with me.

If that's true, then this country is headed down the toilet quickly.

Setting aside the absolutely preposterous comment that Jimmy Carter is the "moral conscience of the country," the immediate response is, of course, it's not true. There's no doubt many people think like him. However I don't believe the "vast majority of Democrats" agree with him, and I guarantee not a single Republican does. And I'll say this: Truman Democrats, a dying breed, should get on their knees and pray to God that the extreme left in this country, which has been taking over their party, loses its foothold and the party again becomes serious and respectable. The sooner the Democrats get serious and stop pandering to these insane atheist left-wingers, the sooner the country can again get back to have legitimate respectful debates on political questions.

All the Treason That's Fit to Print

The New York Times and L.A. Times are under massive fire from conservatives, and some liberals, this week for running a story a week ago about a secret U.S. government program that, under power of international subpoena, data-mined the financial records of a Belgian consortium that was known to handle transactions and probably money laundering schemes of known terrorists. The Belgian outfit, named SWIFT, provided this information, our people dissected it, and terrorists were actually caught with it.

No one who knew about the secret program questioned its legality, yet the NY and LA Times almost simultaneously ran major stories detailing the program's operations, under the idea of the public's need to know. Why the public had a need to know, no one seems to know. The paper's writers and editors, doing only interviews with "friendly" interviewers where they won't be seriously challenged, have made only nebulous assertions that the methods the government is using could conceivably be brought bear against the domestic population, so people need to know about this. That's it.

One thing is for certain: Al Qaeda now knows all.

It really is beyond despicable that these newspapers and their writers hate the country that enriches them so much that they are willing to sell it out in this way. Whether it was the truly damaging report a year ago on the administration's pursuit of terrorist telephone conversations into and out of the country -- which the NY Times (the same reporter - James Risen) exposed and which was completely secret -- or this program, which was also secret and had been proven to work, the Times appears not to care in any way. And they still claim they're not agenda-driven. Right.

Perhaps the most galling, the Times personnel have said in interviews that although the U.S. government met with them and urged them not to publish the story, they (the Times) thought and thought about it, then decided it was not going to cause any harm and published.

Where do you start with such asinine statements???? The government has pleaded with you to not publish to the entire world the details of a program no one is supposed to know about and the details of which you received from a person with security clearance who has broken the law by telling you. You listen to the government's pleadings (or do you, really?) and then you take it upon yourself, in your infinite wisdom and knowledge on national security matters, to go ahead and tell the whole world anyway. First of all, what claim do these people have to any real understanding of national security, the need for secrecy, the damage lost secrets can wreak, etc.? They are reporters. They have never even been run through a national security background check, much less received an official intel briefing. They haven't got the faintest damned idea of what damage their actions can cause. Yet they are arrogant enough to believe they know it all. Un-freaking-believable.

And in the second place, who died and made them intelligence czar? Who says they GET to release this information? On whose authority are they releasing state secrets to the world?

The Times argues that it's unreasonable to believe that Al Qaeda didn't already know this stuff. That's absolutely prepostorous and laughable. Every terrorist knew the specifics of what was being tracked, how, and where?

One thing's for sure: They do now. Guess who won't get caught there any more?

For its part, the U.S. Congress today was debating a non-binding resolution to basically censure "the media" for this outrage. Asked on national radio yesterday whether the NY Times or the LA Times would be named in the resolution, my local Congressman David Dreier said "No", and then went on to sputter about how it's not just them that are at fault, here, and that this kind of thing has happened before with other media outlets, he's sure of it, etc. etc. What a bunch of absolute garbage!! Hugh Hewitt, not known for getting angry, referred to himself as "ballistic" when he heard this. He asked Dreier a half-dozen times about this rationale, not buying it for a second, and I think Dreier, a political animal from head to toe, was expecting all kinds of praise for this act but got nothing but outrage and grief. Good. I was yelling at him myself during my drive home, listening to his nonsense. For God's sake, what does a newspaper have to do in this country to get scolded by the government??? How damaging a state secret do they have to reveal??

Mark my words: This stuff will not stop until the Bush Administration actually takes action against these traitors. Conservative pundit Andrew McCarthy said on Laura Ingraham's show the other day that the Times reporters ought to be brought into court under subpoena and asked who their leaker source was, and when they refuse to divulge the source, toss 'em in jail until they're willing to talk. He says they can be kept there for 18 months. Would it be worth a year and a half of confinement to not reveal a source that had damaged national security? Let's find out.

Reporter James Risen should be on the hook for 3 years, as far as I can tell, since he also broke the NSA wiretapping story a year ago. Is that leak - which did serious damage - even being investigated?? Who's to say that Risen's source is not the same person in both cases? Isn't it important to a) get that person out of the intelligence loop to stop further damage, and b) to lock that person up for treason? Why aren't we pursuing this? Why can't we muster even half as much outrage and prosecutorial zeal as the liberals have done in pursuing the Valerie Plame non-story?

Read more outrage at pretty much ANY conservative blog on the web. Hugh Hewitt has talked about it all week long, and Ann Coulter has an as-usual-devastating piece about it on her online column.

One final note: For all their claims that this release of secret national security information is not helpful to the terrorists because they already knew it all, word came out yesterday that the Belgians are "reviewing" the whole SWIFT program and it seems likely that they will end their cooperation with the U.S. government on it. If that's true, then it's PROVEN damage that these traitorous reporters have wrought against the United States.

Illegal Immigration Article Roundup

The Senate passed its unbelievably ridiculous bill today - during Mexican President Vicente Fox's visit to California - proving beyond any doubt how out-of-touch this body is with the American public. Only the House of Representatives stands between us and our continued - possibly accelerated - spiral down into oblivion.

For the life of me I cannot understand how so many Republicans could possibly vote for such an asinine piece of legislation.

Republicans have had control of both houses of Congress since 1994, and the Executive branch since 2000. Yet liberal legislation like this nonsense continues to get passed. Who is voting for these people? BOTH senators from Alaska voted YES. John McCain teams up with TED KENNEDY?? What is the world coming to?

One of the humdingers in this legislation include a provision that Republican Arlen Specter allowed in, which says the U.S. must consult with Mexico before building any kind of barrier at the border. It's this kind of un-serious legislation that will doom our country. Either terrorists will waltz through the border and start blowing up random shopping malls, or 15 million poor illegal Mexican immigrants will get amnesty (or continued lack of enforcement - same thing), have "anchor" children here, bringing more relatives and much larger families in with them, while sending billions of American dollars south to support Mexico's economy. All while continuing to turn the United States into a third-world country.

Michelle Malkin has a nice roundup of comments on the bill here and the "consultation" language here.

Charles Krauthammer, excellent as always:

...is it just conservatives who think the United States ought not be gratuitously squandering one of its greatest assets — its magnetic attraction to would-be immigrants around the world? There are tens of millions of people who want to leave their homes and come to America. We essentially have an NFL draft in which the United States has the first, oh, million or so draft picks. Rather than exercising those picks, i.e., choosing by whatever criteria we want — such as education, enterprise, technical skills and creativity — we admit the tiniest fraction of the best and brightest and permit millions of the unskilled to pour in instead.

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint has a great "Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Senate Amnesty Bill" list on his website.

ExposeTheLeft.com has audio and a transcript of a brilliant debate between Rush Limbaugh and Tony Snow, now the White House spokesman, on the bill.

The Washington Times ran an article on the bill's passage:

The leaders of both parties hailed the 62-36 passage as a historic success. Majority Leader Bill Frist said the vote represented the "very best" of the Senate.
"This is a success for the American people," the Tennessee Republican said. "It is a success for people who hope to participate someday in that American dream."

One wonders what could be further from the truth, or just how much worse of a Majority Leader we could possibly get in the Senate. Frist has been spineless every single day he's held that title.

And Mark Steyn, always good, writes about the Senate wanting to give illegal immigrants social security benefits for the work they did while illegal (i.e. using fraudulent social security documents). On John McCain's complaint on the Senate floor about his colleagues continuing to refer to his bill's provisions as "amnesty", Steyn made this brilliant observation:

"Call it a banana if you want to," he told his fellow world's greatest deliberators. "To call the process that we require under this legislation amnesty frankly distorts the debate and it's an unfair interpretation of it."

He has a point. Technically, an "amnesty" only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history.

I'm giving myself a headache. I'm going to bed. More this weekend. It's MEMORIAL DAY! PUT UP YOUR FLAG!

Gay Crusade Continues in California

The California State Senate this week passed a bill submitted by Sheila Kuhl, of ultra-liberal Santa Monica, that would mandate by law that any textbooks used by children in California include the contributions of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) people in history. This, whether those people had anything noteworthy to contribute or not. So we're getting to the next step in what I call the Gay Crusade. Rewriting history, bringing people from history out of the closet posthumously, and writing about gay people who might have been completely marginal in every other respect, simply because they were (supposedly) gay.

If this bill passes the State Assembly (and it will), it will go to Governor Schwarzenegger's desk to be signed into law, and he has not taken an official position on this, yet. He has signed other pro-homosexual legislation in the past, though, so conservatives are rightly concerned.

I call it the "Gay Crusade" because it needs to be made obvious to people who haven't connected everything together, yet, that this is a master plan we're watching unfold, here. Up until 30 years ago, homosexuality was shunned by society as a perversion. When the AIDS crisis first broke out, people from all walks used to comment that it was God's punishment to gays for their behavior. When enough of this started happening, people started sympathizing more with homosexuals and, I believe, the door was opened for activists to begin parlaying that into real change in the culture. They argued, at the time, for common decency toward homosexuals, and simply to be left alone and not mistreated.

If it had stopped there, we might be somewhere today. But it did not. Once they won majority agreement to be left alone, they pushed for acceptance. This push for acceptance has been going on ever since. Acceptance of homosexuality as completely equal to heterosexuality is a done-deal as far as our media goes. Gay characters have been on television and in the movies for decades, now, and we are at the point in the gay lobby's "acceptance" campaign where we are now also supposed to completely accept homosexual unions. In other words, we've now gone beyond acceptance of each individual homosexual's choice of lifestyle, to accepting the homosexual relationships themselves. Gay relationships are depicted on mainstream television shows like "Will and Grace" in an effort to say, "we're exactly the same as you."

Recently we went beyond the "accept that the relationships are the same" argument and moved into "accept that the loving is the same" phase, where we were treated to watching homosexual kisses and even sex scenes in series like HBO's "Six Feet Under" and in the movie "Brokeback Mountain."

Amid all this insanity, we get Sheila Kuhl's "promote historical gay people" bill, which doesn't even limit itself to gay people. She has included transgenders, as well. People who change their sex or pretend to be the opposite sex. And this, regardless of whether the people actually contributed anything of historical value. And, whether those people were, in fact, GLBT, or alleged to have been so (a judgement call by the publishers).

But wait, it gets better. It doesn't only demand rewritings of textbooks. It also outlaws any activity that could be deemed hurtful or deragotory toward GLBT's on school campuses. So no judgement as to the morality of homosexuality at all. In fact, many have pointed out that this will no doubt lead to such things as King- and Queen-free proms and homecoming events, since that makes an assertion that the heterosexual union is the "normal" one. Make your own guesses as to other situations that could be equally ridiculed or shut down.

As absurd as this all sounds, it is really happening in the state of California. And if you don't live in California, you still should be concerned. Because California buys more books than any other state in the country, unless book publishers want to make "California" versions of their books (they won't), they will have to institute these changes in all their textbooks.

So there is a "master plan" at work, here, and this is just the latest salvo. How much further can it go?

What no one ever points out is that the Left, which runs this campaign, constantly characterizes their position as the one of "tolerance." The conservatives who oppose this sort of thing on moral grounds are the intolerant ones because we don't accept the Left's idea of sexuality. But this characterization is utterly and demonstrably false. Conservative people believe that the Bible is the word of the creator of the universe, God, and that His laws are to be taken seriously. He says unequivocally in several places in the bible that homosexual sex is a perverted action that leads to Hell, period. Man and Woman were made by God to be put together. Man and Woman, together, make the image of God. Even if you are not a religious person, you can easily see that men and women's genitalia were made to fit together, and for the purpose of procreation -- the perpetuation of the species. Yet the Left completely ignores all of these issues and belief systems in pursuit of its own agenda. That is the definition of intolerant. They do not tolerate everyone else's understandings of the way the world is. They are every bit as intolerant as they claim we are. In short, I will agree that I am intolerant of certain behaviors (and I make no apologies for it), but the Left will not admit this. They are hypocrites or ignorant, take your pick.

The Catholic Church has this to say about homosexuality:

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

Yet all you hear from the Left is rhetoric about how "intolerant" we are and how tolerant they are. Don't believe it. In fact, we need to be fighting it hard, now more than ever. Just imagine where we'll be in 10 more years.

Today's Townhall Readings...

Some great work being done, as usual, over at Townhall. Doug Giles explains why no self-respecting Christian can vote the liberal ticket. Here are a few choice quotes:

Secularism to be continually mainlined into our public school system. Thanks to rabid, vapid secularism, our public schools and universities would rather you be a Rocky Horror super freak than a Christian. If your beliefs run to the bizarre or the banal; or if you want to smoke the same philosophical crack that Caligula, Nero, Castro or Lenin freebased, they'll accommodate you...Our schools are totally open to anyone and to anything, unless, of course, you're a Christian. And if that's the case, then you're likely to get more sympathy from a badger with minimal sleep than you will from liberal educators who are hard at work making your life hard.

The continued media endorsement of the same putrid, hedonistic stuff that sunk ancient civilizations. With the liberals in place, expect more weird crap in movies and on television. Expect to see more paintings of Christian symbols and saints smeared with elephant dung. Expect Christianity to be bashed and vilified and Christians made out to be buckled-shoed morons with three teeth and an IQ of 50. Expect the culture to coarsen. Expect your kids to continue to be exposed to things that only rock stars see backstage with groupies.

The Democratic Party's liberalism has degenerated over the last 40-50 years in regard to its view of Christianity and Christian rights. This party, which formerly embraced and protected our nation's great Christian heritage and teachings, no longer does so. Thus, today the Christian is between a rock and a hard place: he can either be a Christian or a liberal—but he cannot be both.

The whole thing is pretty aggressive; good reading. I read through a few other articles there, but most were not particularly powerful. Charles Krauthammer, however, never disappoints. His take on illegal immigration, which he's been writing quite a bit about lately, is dead-on. Today he's talking about the illegals' marches looking more American (fewer Mexican flags, more white t-shirts, etc.) and peaceful. The illegals are now comparing themselves to the blacks of the 60's. But Krauthammer, of course, isn't buying it:

Americans instinctively know the difference between these two civil rights crusades. Blacks were owed. For centuries they had been the victims of a historic national crime. The principal crime involved in the immigrant crusade is the violation of immigration laws by the illegals themselves.

Krauthammer sees the solution to this problem to be a tight border (for the first time), followed -- NOT preceded -- by amnesty. Here's the gist of his argument:

If you find a stranger living in your basement, you would be far more inclined to let him stay if he assured you that his ultimate intent is just to improve his own life and not to prepare the way for his various cousins waiting on the other side of your fence.

And that's the critical issue that the demonstrators and their supporters ignore. Is the amnesty they are demanding/requesting the beginning or the end? Is it a precedent or a one-time -- last time -- exception? Are they seeking open-ended immigration or do they agree that they should be the last wave of illegals?

So many big history-changing movements going on right now. Iran, illegal immigration, the liberal agenda. You really need to keep your eyes open in an environment like this.

Hilarious Comments on McKinney

The Ace of Spades blog has a short piece on U.S. Congresswoman McKinney's run-in with the Capitol police. But I thought the comments section below the piece was the real entertainment. Here are a few selections:

Cynthia McKinney shouts racism when there aren't enough pepperoni slices on her X-large from Papa John's. And once again, fellow readers, I have to apologize on behalf of the state of Georgia and the human race for this galactic embarrassment of a person.

---

I read their filing an amended complaint to add a charge of attempted "talk to the hand."

---

Based on her "new look" at the press conference, I'm guessing that the quality of the crack she's doing with Marion Barry has dropped off. That would explain the paranoia.

---

Did the bad white police man guy do that to her hair, too? The first thing I thought of was that SideShow Bob and Buckwheat had a child.

---

It is of essence for members of the Congress to 'b*tche slappe' the constabulary when they interfere with the business of serving the citizenry.
- Stuff Jefferson Said, Vol. V
(to be published in June, 2006)

---

Ms. McKinney, Macy Gray called and wants her hair back. Oh, and the bong, too.

---

"What's up with the "backup" that you frequently see when black people give press conferences? All the other people in the background? Why are they there?"
That's the "amen" corner. "uh-huh" "that's right" "you go girl" etc. The men are also wannabe secret service agents/bodyguards and look around for any potential assassins. Of course, they'd be the first to duck in any such event.

---

This is all Bush's fault. If he hadn't been president, 9/11 wouldn't have happened, which means that we wouldn't need metal detectors in our buildings which means that our allegedly intelligent (smirk) elected officials wouldn't be required to remember something as complicated as putting on a lapel pin to walk through the security. OR...If Bush had just signed the Kyoto Treaty, the ozone layer wouldn't have disappeared and the sunrays would have filled Ms. McKinney with the high volume of brain cells required to remember to wear her lapel pin so as to avoid public humiliation. OR if Bush had bothered to pour billions of dollars into the levis in New Orleans, there would have been no flooding ergo, Ms. McKinney wouldn't have been so distracted worrying about them that she forgot to put on her lapel pin...or so distraught that she naturally reacted by hitting a uniformed law enforcement official in her distress. See? No matter how you look at it, it's Bush's fault (sigh).

---

Maybe it's just me, but this week has just plain sucked. Between the mexicans and George Bush telling us we're occupiers of America and McK telling us that in spite of the Civil War, Affirmative Action, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and being not only elected and rejected, but re-elected, she's still a victim of the whiteys. Personally, I've about had it with these douchebag politicians, professional race hustlers, and angry dwarves.

Wait a minute. Angry dwarves? That must be a new pressing grievance for NEXT week. Sorry. I am ever prescient. But I'm just saying...
Angry black mexican dwarves will rise up and challenge our very democracy because they, too, are aggrieved. They don't like the fact Cyntihia McKinney has an Irish name, just like they do. Next thing you know she'll be singing that Lucky Charms song. Magically delicious.

F---ing EVERYBODY is aggrieved.
When is it my turn?

What Planet Am I Living On?

I'm looking at the front page of Fox News's website tonight and I hardly know what to think anymore. The headline article shows a bunch of hoodlum high school students carrying a Mexican flag in front of them, protesting against the evil United States in a march. Where is this happening? In Mexico? NO! This is in Las Vegas. They're protesting for "an end to anti-immigrant legislation." Carrying the Mexican flag. Carrying the flag of another country, a country which millions have fled because of its corrupt government and crippled economy. They protest under the protection of taxpayer-funded police officers, squad cars, and a helicopter. On safe and clean streets, skipping taxpayer-funded school classes, all of which are available to them thanks to the hard work of American citizens and legal immigrants, all of whom built this great country with blood, sweat, and tears over several hundred years. These ingrates come here and squat, then start demanding rights they're not entitled to while carrying the flag of a foreign country. And the media and educational systems (i.e. liberal establishment) back them up 100%.

Below that photo is a caption referring to Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean's comment that the GOP needs to "reign in their extreme right-wingers." This from the extreme left wing leader of the DNC. And again, he gets the airtime. All this while President Bush is meeting with Mexican president Vicente Fox in Cancun, Mexico! The president not only doesn't get people's feelings on this matter; he is WAY behind these illegal immigrant protestors, to the point of visiting their country and laughing it up with their corrupt president, no doubt patting each other on the back for their great humanitarian work in solving Mexico's poverty problem (by transporting it to the U.S.).

To the left of all this nonsense is a collection of pieces about U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who assaulted a Capitol police officer the other day when he tried to stop her from walking into the Capitol building without going through security. She was not wearing her congressional identification pin (and we're told she is notorious for doing this, despite being told to numerous times) and when she skirted the metal detectors, she was told 3 times by an officer to stop, all of which she ignored. Then when the officer caught her arm, she wheeled and punched him in the chest with her cell phone in hand.

Interesting story, right? She's probably in big trouble, right? The article mentions the arrest warrant she might be served with next week one time. The rest of the article is a collection of quotes from all kinds of nut job anti-American racists like Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte, plus her lawyers. Yeah, she "lawyered up". These quotes are truly galling. Check this out:

Her lawyer said she was "just a victim of being in Congress while black. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney [is] a victim of the excessive use of force by law enforcement officials because of how she looks and the color of her skin."

Racist Harry Belafonte:

"In America and Washington, D.C., issues of race have always been at play and have often been central to justice miscarried."

and the head of the NAACP in Georgia (where her district is):

"The mistreatment of Cynthia McKinney at the hands of Capitol Hill Police is a tragedy of major proportion and points to the vigor of outright disrespect for women and people of color,"

For her part, she's saying she did nothing wrong. She says the officers ought to recognize her and if they don't, that's basically their problem. She said so what if she doesn't wear her pin; supposedly many congress members don't. No idea if that's even true, but WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THAT MAKE? Rules exist for a reason, you big dope. In this case, those rules are FOR YOUR PROTECTION, so that someone doesn't come in and fake their way around the metal detectors, get into the Capitol, and blow the place up! How difficult is this to understand?

But all the congresswoman can do is point fingers at everyone besides herself. She says they didn't recognize her because she just had a makeover. "It is ... a shame that while I conduct the country's business, I have to stop and call the police to tell them that I've changed my hairstyle so that I'm not harassed at work." HARASSED! Unbelievable. And this is an elected member of Congress. She helps pass this country's laws!!! This is not some random woman off the street.

Here is the bottom line: In this country people are free to express themselves, and generally people are welcomed from all over the world. It is the greatest country the world has ever known, without question. This is not even debatable. People flock here from every country on the planet because we have built a model free, democratic republic. Yet for some reason, there are classes of people who feel like they haven't got as much as they deserve, and so they speak up and start blaming everyone else for their perceived problems. They play the race card at the drop of a hat (as though an elected member of the United States Congress had a leg to stand on in that department); and for some reason, the media pays attention to these offensive people. They scream RACIST at the top of their lungs without any kind of support for their claim, or any argument on their own behalf, and lawmakers listen. We have atheists out there trying to kill off Christmas and Easter, the two most meaningful Christian holidays of the year, and lawmakers listen, essentially agreeing that it's okay to persecute non-Atheists.

What is going on in this country? Where are we heading? When will this insanity stop? Or is this society about to implode?

Illegal Alien Racism

This site is amazing. The hatred, the vitriol, all in the name of "La Raza" - Spanish for "The Race". Why do Americans cower when Muslims and Illegal Aliens call them racists? Take one look at a site like this, an expose of blatant and violent racism perpetrated by illegal Mexican aliens, and then completely ignore ridiculous assertions of racism from the other side.

We Hate Gringos.

Let the Flash intro page load; it takes about a minute.

If you haven't noticed that this issue of illegal immigration is heating up rapidly, you need to crawl out from under your rock. They're marching in the streets by the tens of thousands; desecrating the American flag; raising the Mexican flag; shouting death threats; physically assaulting peaceful demonstrators who back the U.S. And no one is stopping them.

Apparently the Gloves Are Off

Students at Montebello High School today raised the Mexican flag ON TOP OF the American flag, AND turned the American flag upside-down on the flagpole, at the school. This, in protest of Congress working to pass immigration reform bills that get tougher on illegal immigration.

Does the word "ingrate" mean anything to you?

These morons get free education, paid for courtesy of the country they stole their way into, and they not only ignore that, but they SPIT ON the country providing it to them, along with all the other perks living here gets you, like a safe community, clean streets, reliable utilities, etc. All things they can't get in Mexico, yet they raise the Mexican flag and desecrate the American?

And where on Earth were the high school administrators during all this????

See Michelle Malkin's gripping post on this here. Photos are included, if you can stomach them.

My Response to a Linda Chavez Column

After reading this article on Townhall.com, I felt compelled to respond with the following:

---

Your claim that the "anti-immigrant" crowd is driving this debate is as ludicrous as the idea that the majority of Americans don't think this way. To say people are "anti-immigrant" is basically calling them racists without using that word, and that's offensive, not to mention unwarranted.

I have no problem with immigrants, nor does anyone I know. What I have a problem with are ILLEGAL immigrants, and you and the rest of the pro-illegal immigrant crowd never make that distinction, or even acknowledge that it exists. That is where your argument becomes dishonest, because you're not addressing the real issue; just a straw man.

The fact is that illegal Mexican immigrants are always poor and they bring poverty into this country, little by little, when they come here. Without money they rely more heavily on social services. They imbalance the budget system that pays for their children to go to school. They go to emergency rooms for minor ailments and leave without paying the bill, forcing the closures of countless hospitals and e.r.'s. They make up 26% of the jail and prison systems, yet L.A. county, for example, gets reimbursed for only a small portion of the costs of housing them.

When my wife immigrated to this country, her family was required to get sponsorships so they would not burden our society while they assimilated. Illegal Mexican immigrants assimilate VERY slowly and show up with no sponsorships of any kind, nor even satisfaction of the "no communicable diseases" requirement you raised in your column. These may seem like little things, but when you consider we're already at upwards of 12 million illegals already here, those little things multiply into big things.

My main point was to say that your painting of all people who are against illegal immigration as racists was wrong and offensive. There are real, serious issues at play, here, and it's intellectually dishonest to just brush them aside as though they were figments of racist imaginations.

Open Letter to all Republican Senators

I'm mass-mailing this letter to Senators tomorrow:

---

Dear Senator:

I am writing to urge you to block any legislation that is put through the Senate that includes any kind of amnesty (defined as permitting illegal aliens to work toward legal status without first leaving the country and “righting the wrong” they did) for illegal aliens. There are a number of misnomers about the current illegal immigration crisis. Here are my thoughts on just a few, for your consideration.

1) “They’re only doing jobs Americans won’t do” This is patently ridiculous and yet I continue to hear Republican senators and our own President repeating this lie. What they are doing are jobs Americans won’t do at a less-than-competitive wage. If those employers increased their wages on those jobs, American would fill them, guaranteed.

2) “We should legalize them so employers won’t exploit them” Putting aside for a moment the fact that if we’re ready to admit that employers are exploiting these workers, then we’ve also admitted that the wages they’re paying are below competitive levels; if we legalize these workers today, they will demand higher wages, and tomorrow there will be a whole new batch of illegals taking those jobs away from the newly-legalized ones.

3) “We are a nation of immigrants” This is another convenient lie. 85% of the citizens in our country were born here. We were a nation of immigrants 150 years ago, but we are definitely not today.

4) “The economy will collapse if we deport all the illegal aliens” First of all, less than 5% of all workers are illegal aliens. While this is a huge number and a travesty when you consider the number of times our laws were broken; it is a part of the workforce that could be replaced if necessary by the remaining 95%, and by others, such as teenagers, who currently are not in the workforce at all. Secondly, no one is suggesting we deport all 11 million illegal aliens. What we should start doing, simply, is enforce the laws we have on the books, fining employers who hire illegal aliens. This will dry up the market for illegals in an instant and, faced with no job prospects, these illegals will likely return to Mexico, where they can get a job legally.

5) “We need a sensible guest worker program in any bill” This is ridiculous. Before illegal immigration, we were somehow able to get the job done, as a country. Furthermore, we do not have a labor shortage in this country. Mexican immigrants come here to make more money than they can make in Mexico (a lot more); not because we are desperate for more workers. Besides, even if we did have a labor shortage, we could alleviate it by increasing the number of immigrants allowed through the legal process. This is how we have always done it; why the sudden need for a new "guest worker" program?

6) “The guest worker provision in this bill is not amnesty” It certainly is if you concede that amnesty can be defined as putting illegal aliens on a path to citizenship in this country without returning home first, as basic fairness would require. They broke the law; even if you are willing to not prosecute them for breaking that law, you cannot do so in good conscience without requiring them to “right the wrong” by returning to their home country first. And even if you disagree with that statement, but believe that requiring some years of consistent work, plus admission of guilt, plus payment of a fine, is fair recompense for the crime, I defy you to find 100,000 illegal aliens who would be willing to pay such a fine or admit such guilt on paper. And what do you do with those who won’t play by that rule? The government has already shown it is unwilling or unable to enforce the law in this area. Without the “stick” of deportation threatening them, no illegal alien will agree to these stipulations, which makes the provision totally impractical.

7) “Under the guest worker program, aliens will have to leave the country periodically” Again, given the government’s total inability to enforce existing immigration laws, where are the teeth for this provision? What will we do when illegals refuse to leave the country? Or when they start having children (who will be citizens), or bringing their families across the border with them? We have zero chance of enforcing any such rule, so to even include it in a bill is ridiculous.

8) “Any new bill will include ‘get tough’ policies, including fines, on employers” This is also a ridiculous statement. We were told this exact same thing back in 1987 when amnesty was put in place for illegals then. There are laws on the books right now that fine an employer $10,000 for every instance of an illegal alien being employed. Yet how many enforcements occurred in the entire year of 2005? Zero. Bottom line: It makes no difference at all how big you make these fines, since they won’t be enforced anyway.

Illegal aliens are well aware of this. Far from being “in the shadows,” as President Bush claims, these people are taking to the streets – literally – disrupting traffic on freeways and streets, draining valuable police coverage and costing the hard-working legal residents of this country time and money in the process. They wave Mexican flags; desecrate American flags, and make all kinds of demands for respect. They get support from Democrat politicians and are emboldened at every step.
Decades of inaction at the border have put us into this position, and Congress must take some drastic steps, now, to attempt to fix the problem. Our government services are bleeding to death already; they cannot take much more of this absorption of poverty from Mexico. We need control over our borders first and foremost. Then and only then, it is reasonable to start talking about all these other issues. All the other issues pale in importance to the issue of control at the border. Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, and have for years. Accordingly, Republican congress people need to control this debate, focus on the real issues, here, and start putting America first for a change, instead of employers. Failure to do this will definitely cost Republicans at the polls later this year. If you all can’t get this kind of thing done, why shouldn’t we vote in the Democrats?

Open Letter to Afghani Ambassador

I'm sending the following letter to Washington today:


Ambassador Said T. Jawad
Embassy of Afghanistan
2341 Wyoming Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20008

March 21, 2006

Dear Mr. Ambassador:

I have been reading these past two days articles on Mr. Abdul Rahman, currently in jail in Afghanistan and on trial for his life for the simple “crime” of converting to Christianity. It is difficult for me to express just how angry the very fact of this trial makes me. This is one of the worst possible messages your country can send to the rest of the world, most importantly the country which liberated your people from the tyranny of the Taliban regime.

Conversion to Christianity cannot, under any reasonable system of law, be considered a crime in any way. That Mr. Rahman is in jail, on trial, facing the death penalty, and being condemned by everyone from his jailers to his family to the judge in the case, is extremely troubling and, if left on its course, should make people write off your young government as no better at all than what was in place before. Honestly, why in the world should one more drop of American, Christian blood be spent saving your country from itself when this is the thanks that you provide?

Such persecution is also a clear violation of your own country’s constitution and of Article 18 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

I will be writing to my State Department, my Congressman, my Senators, and our President to put pressure on you and your government to stop this ridiculous trial from moving forward, to free Mr. Rahman, and to prevent charges like these from being brought against anyone else in the future. You must realize that not only is this intolerable, it is bad for your country and smacks of totalitarianism. You have a vested interest in disposing of this bigotry completely and allowing people the freedom to practice whatever religion they believe in.

Regards,

Michael J Kellogg

Christian Soon to be Executed for Being a Christian

In Afghanistan, a country whose government we tore down a few years ago and rebuilt as a democracy, a man is on trial for his life. The charge? Being a Christian. It seems that it is against the law to convert to Christianity, or any other religion, if you're a Muslim. The recommended penalty? Death. This from the judge in the case.

Michelle Malkin picked up the story and quotes most of it here. The original article states that this is the first time a Christian has refused to "back down" and embrace Islam in the face of a threat of execution. Bush friend Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, would have to sign the papers authorizing the execution if that is what it comes to. The article states he will be under enormous pressure from Islamic groups inside Afghanistan to "make an example" of this Christian. We can and should pray that President Karzai comes under even MORE enormous pressure from the United States.

This is one example of why Islam is a false religion. God never intended anyone to convert "by the sword." Man is supposed to be free to make his own choices: Free to exercise the "free will" that God granted him. He can choose to live a righteous life under the laws of God, or he can choose to live a life full of self-fulfillment, ignoring God. In Christianity we acknowledge that people don't convert people, the Holy Spirit converts people. All we, as evangelists, do is let the Holy Spirit work through us as a tool if needed.

In short, a religion cannot be true if it relies on force to bring people into it. But what we're seeing, in addition to these insane laws in Islamic countries, is acquiescence and support in other, non-Islamic, countries -- including the U.S. -- by media outlets and governments. The whole Danish cartoon issue is a perfect example of Muslims claiming to respect other religions, while simultaneously rioting, killing people and burning down buildings, in protest against political cartoons that criticize Islam. And governments' responses to these riots have often been to condemn the newspapers that run the cartoons for not being adequately respectful. Being disrespectful of Christianity is fine; just don't "dis" Islam (suppose this attitude has anything at all to do with the fact that disrespected Christians simply complain, while disrespected Muslims kill?)

Let people decide freely, without peer pressure or brainwashing as children, what their faith ought to be and watch how quickly the tide turns away from Islam and toward Christianity.

Pray for Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan, that he be set free to practice his religion free from persecution. And pressure the White House.

Arab-American Speaks Out on Al-Jazeera

An Arab-American psychologist swung for the fences and hit a homerun on Al-Jazeera last month. On February 21, psychologist Wafa Sultan, in a televised discussion, let the world of Islam have it, saying things we only wish our politicians would have the guts to say to Muslims. And she's a woman! The transcript and video are available on MEMRI.ORG, which has been a fantastic resource over the years for people who want to read English translations of all sorts of Islamic papers and speeches, to get the first-hand accounts of what they say about us. Here are a couple of excerpts to whet your appetite:

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings."

And:

"We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

I can't pass this one up:

"Can you explain to me the killing of 100,000 children, women, and men in Algeria, using the most abominable killing methods? Can you explain to me the killing of 15,000 Syrian civilians? Can you explain to me the abominable crime in the military artillery school in Aleppo? Can you explain the crime in Al-Asbaqiya neighborhood of Damascus, Syria? Can you explain the attack of the terrorists on the peaceful village of Al-Kisheh in Upper Egypt, and the massacre of 21 Coptic peasants? Can you explain to me what is going on in Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt, even though these are Islamic countries which opposed the American intervention in Iraq, and which don't have armies in Iraq, yet were not spared by the terrorists? Can you explain these phenomena, which took place in Arab countries? Was all this revenge on America or Israel? Or were they merely to satisfy bestial wild instincts aroused in them by religious teachings, which incite to rejection of the other, to the killing of the other, and to the denial of the other. When Saddam Hussein buried 300,000 Shi'ites and Kurds alive, we did not hear a single Muslim protesting. Your silence served to acknowledge the legitimacy of these killings, didn't it?..."

Truly powerful stuff; she hit the nail right on the head. I highly recommend reading the entire transcript.

Oscar Night: Nationally Televised Proof of Hollywood's Liberal Lean

Hollywood has always denied that it is the mouthpiece of the Left (and continues to do so), but this year they've finally proved the critics right by elevating their favorite pet projects onto their biggest mainstream stage, the Oscars. For anyone to suggest other than that Hollywood = Leftism in our culture, at this point, would be utterly ridiculous.

Take a look at the most prominent category of awards on tonight's broadcast, Best Film. "Brokeback Mountain," the movie everyone expects to win and which has received 8 nominations, is about two gay cowboys, one of whom is married, who fall in love. Not only is homosexuality celebrated in this movie - including a gay sex scene - but one of the cowboys is married, so they throw in a little adultery without even blinking. "Capote" is about Truman Capote, a famously eccentric gay figure from the 60's who wrote about a horrible murder and the executions that followed. "Crash" is about how people of different races, whose lives would otherwise never come together, get entangled and explores the interactions between them (this is the least objectionable of all of them). "Good Night and Good Luck" is about Edward R Murrow and his fight against the evil conservatives. It's the brainchild of George Clooney, a famous liberal who has another anti-conservative movie out this year called "Syriana." And "Munich" is about the 1972 Olympic murders. It has been assailed as a horrible movie that practices moral equivalence between Israelis and the Arab terrorists who kill them.

"Brokeback" has gained some ground in the past few weeks at the box office, but by and large no one is going to see these movies. Yet they are supposedly the best of the year. "The Chronicles of Narnia," on the other hand, a famously Christian movie based on C.S. Lewis's popular novels, cleared $100 million in its first weekend of release last year, but is receiving virtually no recognition. In the same way, "The Passion of the Christ," a movie produced and directed by devout Catholic Mel Gibson, received almost nothing from the academy a couple of years ago, and at this point is approaching $400 million in sales.

The simple truth is that mainstream Hollywood is no friend to Christianity or Judaism, and yet they influence our culture very directly. The signs are absolutely everywhere, especially in these days, when the Left no longer controls any of the three branches of our government and Hollywood is the one place they have left with which to make these kinds of pitches.

The Cheney Hunting Non-Story

Unbelievable how insane the White House press corps is behaving after Vice President Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter while after quail earlier this week. "Why weren't we notified for 18 hours?" they ask. No, make that, they DEMAND to know. The idea that Cheney somehow had an obligation to notify the national news media right away is just stupid. This was a hunting accident. A private affair. Get over it.

For what it's worth, the owner of the ranch that Cheney had been hunting on told the Vice President that she was going to go ahead and call the local newspaper, to which he said, "fine," and that was that. But the national press corps is still outraged that they didn't get the scoop. Where's my violin? Also, according to the V.P., the police told him on the phone that they'd be out at 10am the next morning (the accident happened at 5:30pm) and he reportedly told them, "make it 8". So where's the big conspiracy?

Mona Charen at Townhall.com does a much better job at lambasting the press in this situation than I could. Check out her column; it's a riot.

Fox News's Brit Hume conducted an interview with the Vice President about the incident, and Fox has it on their website. The two parts I watched were about 5 minutes each and worth the time to get Cheney's side of the story, straight from the horse's mouth. Hume guides the Vice President through the minute details of the incident, did a nice job.

Contrast that with John Gibson's later interview on Fox of former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe on the subject. McAuliffe was livid and couldn't stop himself from lobbing all kinds of really conspiratorial-sounding rhetoric out there. He admitted he hadn't even heard the interview with Cheney, yet suggested all kinds of things, such as the possibility that the V.P. had been drunk when the incident occurred, and that it was in fact some sort of cover-up that he'd waited so long to report it to the media.

I have never hunted birds, but I used to shoot skeet and trap. One thing I remember from that experience was that different kinds of birds fly in different kinds of patterns. I remember that quail start from the ground and go up, unlike others which might just fly across your field of view, higher up in the sky. Mr. Cheney said that he and a fellow hunter had separated from Mr. Whittington, who had gone over toward a quail he had downed. At one point Cheney heard/saw some quail off to his right flying up, turned quickly and pulled his shotgun trigger, seeing Whittington getting hit and falling as he did. Mr. Cheney said during the interview that he cannot get that image (of Whittington falling) out of his head, as we would expect a reasonable, moral hunter to feel.

And today, the man who was shot, Harry Whittington, met with the press and explained HIS side of everything. He was fairly eloquent and at one point actually apologized to the Cheney family for having caused so much aggravation.

So someone please tell me where is the story, here? The story is actually just one more obvious example of hateful Democrats overreacting to a potentially negative story about the White House, trying to drum it up to generate as much negativity as possible. I'll bet they're so proud of their accomplishments.

A Public Sign From God?

Fox News is reporting on a story from Boston wherein the family of a young man who died in a car crash asked for some sign from God that the boy was at peace in Heaven. They got it: A billboard advertising tickets for the Red Sox showed several happy fans celebrating a homerun from a game last October. The most prominent fan was -- believe it -- this deceased young man.

If you can get past these three dorky Fox in the Morning co-anchors, the comments from the parents are pretty interesting. Watch the video here.

Democrats: Sinking to a New Low

Yesterday was the funeral of Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King. On hand in Atlanta were President Bush and the First Lady, as well as former presidents Clinton and Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Many members of congress were also present, as were various religious leaders from Atlanta, and Jesse Jackson.

President Bush got up and gave an eloquent and charitable 10-minute eulogy of Mrs. King, rightly praising her and her husband for their contributions to civil rights in America. He then sat down and the liberals took over.

You might think that one of the last places where Americans of both parties can be Americans first, politicians second, would be a funeral. I mean, we threw out national disasters when Hurrican Katrina hit, right? Democrats were tripping over each other to get to a microphone and blast the Bush administration for incompetence and racism in their response to that emergency. But no, now funerals are apparently fair game, too, as former President Carter wasted no time in taking potshots at President Bush during his eulogy. Carter brought up the government-sanctioned (Democratic government-sanctioned) wiretapping of Dr. King and his wife in the 60's in an effort to slam President Bush, who is involved in a battle over wiretapping of potential terrorists. He also made a despicable comment that said flat-out that the Bush administration is racist when he commented on all the black deaths in the southern states when Katrina hit a few months ago. This from a former president. Amazing.

Then an early civil rights leader alongside Martin Luther King, Rev Joseph Lowry, got up to speak -- again, these are eulogies for Coretta Scott King -- and got a huge crowd response when he asserted that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and yet the Bush administration is happy to go to war and spend money there, all the while ignoring the poor in our own country. Again, despicable.

Dan Burrell at commonvoice.com had this to say about these two speakers:

Joseph Lowery is a has-been activist who can only make headlines these days by dredging up the past and being "over-the-top" in his rhetoric. Jimmy Carter was one of the most disgracefully weak and inept Presidents in the history of the republic. Years of building stick houses for Habitat for Humanity and running to elections in third-world countries may have rehabilitated his image, but his Presidency remains (for those of us old enough to have lived through it) a testament to his incompetence. I remember 18% interest rates, the Iranian hostage crises, a dead economy and his Mr. Rogers sweaters and blue jeans in the Oval Office. Ronald Reagan took about 20 minutes in office to restore it's dignity, authority and respect.

Patrick Hurley at theOneRepublic.com had some good comments, too, in his article, "4 Windbags and a Funeral".

Look, if you want to disagree with the government's policies, I'm fine with that. But let's keep it adult-like and charitable, and let's remember that politicizing, and taking cheap shots at the sitting President of the United States, at a funeral, is beyond classless and should never, ever, ever be done. Even if you think the POTUS is evil or a complete fool, you don't make comments like this at a funeral. Period. This is common sense, folks, isn't it?

The Islamic Cartoon Mess

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims all around the world have been rioting, now, for weeks in protest of the Danish (and later, global) publication of a dozen cartoon drawings of their prophet Mohammed. Most of these cartoons were totally innocuous. Three or so were provocative. But provocative or not, the Muslim response has been completely inappropriate and over-the-top. They are rioting; burning down buildings; getting people killed; marching with signs like "Europe - Your 9/11 is Coming" and "Behead the Publishers"; and similarly outrageous statements. They are making death threats everywhere, and for what? Because Islamic law supposedly prohibits the creation of any images of Mohammed. Note that the people drawing, and the companies publishing, these cartoons are not Muslims. That doesn't seem to matter to the Muslims, though, as I guess they think everyone should follow their rules.

Ann Coulter has an article on all the violence on her website this week:

In order to express their displeasure with the idea that Muslims are violent, thousands of Muslims around the world engaged in rioting, arson, mob savagery, flag-burning, murder and mayhem, among other peaceful acts of nonviolence.

I think the more interesting story here, though, is that most of the American media refuses to publish these cartoons. You can see them on a large number of blogs, but not on any television programs or many newspapers. The L.A. Times claimed they were going to run them, then backed off. Even supposedly conservative Fox News, when Michelle Malkin was being interviewed, cut away to video of protestors as soon as she held up a posterboard of all the cartoons in front of her for the cameras to film.

What is with all this cowardice? In every case, the media outlet claims it's out of "respect for Islam," yet respect for religion is a new thing for these outlets. You see anti-Christian stuff on TV all the time (most recently in the now-cancelled series, "The Book of Daniel," where Jesus is portrayed as your basic hippie idiot and a priest as a drug addict). So what's with the supposed sensitivity? Is anyone buying that? Anyone?

Mark Steyn at the Chicago Sun-Times has written a really humorous piece on all the "respect"

When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is.

...

NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's."

No mention, of course, of any non-violence by Christians. The hypocrisy is just unbelievable. Steyn's piece is funny; he points out very clearly where this is leading as far as media capitulation is concerned. Read the whole thing.

The Crusades are coming. Again.

Mexican Soldiers Smuggling Drugs

My local paper, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, reported this morning that yesterday, U.S. Border Patrol agents squared off against the Mexican military at a border crossing near El Paso, Texas. The Mexican soldiers were well-armed with machine guns and were attempting to smuggle "what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana" into our country. The agents immediately called for backup, which arrived quickly in the form of sheriff's deputies and highway patrol officers. The officers apparently intimidated the soldiers back across the border. According to the report, "deputies captured one vehicle in the incident, a Cadillac Escalade reportedly stolen from El Paso, and found 1,477 pounds of marijuana inside. The Mexican soldiers set fire to one of the Humvees stuck in the river."

The Bulletin has been reporting stuff like this for some time, now, and especially in the past week they've had several articles (here and here) related to some documents that someone brought to them which detail incursions by the Mexican military over the past decade. One document "outlines 216 incidents since 1996 where Mexican military personnel crossed the U.S.-Mexican border and were spotted or confronted by the Border Patrol." The other, a map with the official seal of the Mexican government's Drug Control agency, showed 34 of those incursions.

That the Mexican military is smuggling drugs across the U.S. border, you would think, is a major problem. Imagine if the U.S. Army were doing this to the south. However, our government absolutely refuses to address the problems at the border, regardless of how bad they get. Doug McIntyre on KABC radio here in L.A. routinely refers to President Bush as "Vicente W. Bush," a melding of his own name and that of the Mexican president, as his positions on these sorts of matters are well-known. Confronted about these recent incursions, the head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, had this to say: "I think the stories are overblown," and he explains it by suggesting these soldiers aren't really soldiers: "We do have instances where we have Mexican police or military who have deserted and become involved with criminal activity. But we've also had bad cops in the United States, too. It happens." This is the head of our national law enforcement agency talking, folks.

The Bulletin reports that ICE, our own Immigration and Customs Enforcement department, part of the DHS, wouldn't comment at all about the matter, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising. They are the department that the U.S. government always directs people to, instead of the Border Patrol, when discussing these kinds of matters, yet they have no teeth whatsoever; no interest in actually enforcing the border laws.

Why? It figures that Democrats won't do it because they focus on the humanitarian aspects of the illegal immigration issue and believe we shouldn't even HAVE an enforced border to begin with. The Republicans apparently are more interested in their own corporate contributors, who love the cheap labor, and won't do anything, either. In the middle, the Border Patrol officers get support from citizens but not their own government. The whole thing is simply amazing.

In the latest Bulletin article, the head of the Border Patrol, TJ Bonner, had this to say about Chertoff's uninformed comments: "Were he to go out there on actual patrol with Border Patrol agents ... and experience what we experience -- where you encounter a group of highly trained, very well-armed Mexican soldiers coming across our border, and your closest backup is an hour or more away -- I think he would be a lot more concerned about it."

Despite the Mexican government's total denial that any such incursions have ever happened, TJ Bonner told the Bulletin this in an earlier article:

In one 2000 incident, more than 16 Mexican soldiers were arrested by border agents in a small town west of El Paso, in Santa Teresa, N.M., after Mexican soldiers fired on the agents. None of the agents was injured in the gun battle, and U.S. State Department officials forced the border agents to release the soldiers and return them to Mexico with their weapons, Bonner added.

It makes one wonder what it will take before our government actually takes real steps to secure our southern border. I predict it will take the death of a few Border Patrol agents. It pains me to say that, but what other conclusion can you possibly reach?

Hillary's Plantation

Star Parker has written a nice response to Hillary Clinton's pandering "plantation" comments in Harlem last week, at Townhall.com

Hillary and the Democrats don't want to free the slaves. They love Uncle Sam's Plantation. They just want to run it.

Read it here

More Iraq News You Won't See on TV

Michael Yon continues to post dispatches from Iraq. His pieces are honest, "everyman" type of articles that cover battles that the troops he is embedded with are fighting, as well as the more mundane but positive stuff that our brave soldiers are doing over there.

In his 1/20 post, he talks a lot about Gary Sinise's "Operation Iraqi Children," a charity that takes donations for school and other supplies specifically for children. Yon saw both ends of this charity's work, and reports on them here. Truly great work; this charity certainly seems worthy of serious attention.


Yon also writes about the exploits of Major Mary Prophit, who is a Civil Affairs officer in the U.S. Army, stationed over in Iraq. He describes some of the multitude of firefights the Major has been in -- so many that her fellow troops began to refer to her as a "bullet magnet" -- as well as much of the humanitarian work she's done; much of it with children there. Along the way, she told a story about a suicide bomber hitting their base, the funerals that followed, and what also happened just days later. A story I have yet to hear in the mainstream media:

"...two days after the memorials for the soldiers lost in that bombing, we lost another soldier. He was at a combat outpost in the city and a suicide bomber in a dump truck full of explosives came charging toward his post to try to overcome the barriers and kill the platoon of soldiers that were stationed there. [Oscar Sanchez] held his ground and caused [by firing his machine gun] the driver to detonate his load prematurely, before the truck was able to strike the building. This soldier lost his life and saved the lives of the rest of his platoon. His memorial was yesterday. He was 19 years old, and leaves behind a young widow. Today the battalion is out in force and determined to keep taking the fight to the enemy."

Yon goes on to mention that Major Mary is a reservist. Her "real job" is back in the states as a Library Assistant in Randle, Washington. Amazing, uplifting stuff. Why, oh why, can't the mainstream media cover stuff like this, instead of constantly ranting about all the negative aspects of this war?

Malkin on Clinton Race-Baiting

Michelle Malkin, besides having what is the best blog I read day after day, has published a column in the Jewish World Review this week about Hillary Clinton's race-baiting comments at a church in New York. Here's a choice quote:

These calculated moments of Democrat demagoguery illuminate liberalism's three-decade-old moral bankruptcy on issues of race. From the party's smearing of Clarence Thomas to the bigoted attacks on Condoleezza Rice and Maryland GOP Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, to its opposition to school choice for inner-city students and denigration of California businessman Ward Connerly's campaign against government racial preferences, to its latest desperate attempts to blame racism for Hurricane Katrina and to portray Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a red-necked bigot, the Left has offered nothing but slime and obstructionism.

Excellent column; read it.

Dems Break Promise to Confirm Alito

The Democratic senators convinced Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, in December, to wait to hold confirmation hearings on Samuel Alito until January instead of December; reportedly because they promised to hold the vote to move Judge Alito on for a vote by the full Senate on Tuesday, January 17th. Senator Specter then disappointed conservatives by agreeing to the delayed hearings (which gave liberals around the country plenty of time to dig up dirt on the judge and scream about various aspects of his record or personality they didn't like).

Well today those same senators broke their promise to hold the committee vote, as their minority leader Harry Reid had recommended, saying they would delay the business meeting until next week, on the 24th. ConfirmThem.com has the rundown on this delay, as well as Majority Leader Bill Frist's follow-up, as promised, that he would push all other business off to the side until the vote was brought to the Senate floor. He's finally standing up to the liberals. Whether it will do any good is anyone's guess.

Judge Alito seems to be a good man with a stellar background who should be confirmed without delay, especially after having had to sit through these ridiculous confirmation hearings where the likes of Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden were lecturing him on ethics. To continue breaking promises and delaying the vote is unfair and dishonest.

Ray Nagin: Racist

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is not only incompetent, and a finger-pointer, it turns out he's also a racist. Here are some comments he made during a MLK rally yesterday on the streets of New Orleans:

"It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying in Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have it no other way."

Now I ask you: What would happen if a white mayor made comments like these, that the mayor wanted to rebuild a "white New Orleans"? Answer: All hell would break loose, with every black organization in the country screaming about the racism and calling for the mayor's head on a stick.

Yet guys like Nagin get away with this kind of thing without any problem.

Michelle Malkin is reporting that Anderson Cooper has scheduled interview after interview with Mayor Nagin, only to have him cancel at the last minute time and time again. In a video she is playing on her site, Cooper explains that the mayor again cancelled an interview at the last minute today, claiming "emergencies" had arisen that prevented his appearance. Cooper's correspondent in New Orleans reports that the mayor is, in fact, having dinner at a posh restaurant on Bourbon Street at that very moment. Nice to see he stands up for his beliefs.

What We Can't Not Know

I have started attending this year's "Masters Series in Christian Thought" lectures at Stand To Reason, an apologetics organization in Hermosa Beach. Last week's was by Dr. J. Budziszewski, from the University of Texas. It was called, "What We Can't Not Know," which is the title of his new book, and it was generally about natural law and its applications. Here are some of my notes:

Why do we do apologetics? For evangelical reasons (we're called to); for protective reasons (what "they" do affects us); and for love and charitable reasons (we want them to know the truth).

So many moral imperatives these days are treated, in our society, as unimportant, or as simple matters of disagreement. The problem is that when you remove a moral baseline, anything can happen, and it would be justified.

Many moral imperatives are known already. Murder, for example, is not something that anyone can reasonably say they know is not wrong, even without being told such. It is this central fact that apologists/evangelists need to keep in mind when having this type of argument with someone who insists that what they're doing is not wrong. Abortion is a perfect example. Don't worry about convincing them that taking life is wrong - they already know that. They just deny it. Worry, instead, about getting them past their denial.

There are two types of revelation in this context: "General" revelation, the natural law which we all "know"; and "special" revelation, which is God's word as written in the bible. Each of these 2 types of revelation illuminates aspects of the other type that might otherwise not be understood.

There are 4 types of "witness":

1. Deep Conscience - The truths ARE down there. In everyone.


2. Design in general - The design of the universe has God's authorship all over it


3. Specific design - "Things" are obviously designed if you look at them. The complementarity of the sexes is an obvious example.


4. Effects of our good deeds - The ill effects of sin are often met in this life, not the next. People who lie, for example, find themselves without friends.

People who deny any of these witnesses are that - in denial. As St Paul said, "These things are plain". Dr. Budziszewski also raises Psalm 14 and the fool who denies God. Finally, he points out that "any way of life that denies the complementarity of the sexes is headed for trouble." Obviously this is done in two major movements in our society that I can think of today: Feminism and the Gay movement.

Dr. Budziszewski defined "unnatural" as that which contradicts our design. He is leading to the Christian condemnation of homosexual relations, which under these descriptions are obviously wrong on so many levels. Finally, he points out that "Man and woman together make up the image of God." That statement alone is thought-provoking.

The rest of the lecture had to do with methods of conducting a conversation with someone who denies any of these truths or is anchored in some sinful behavior that they have no desire to get out of (active homosexuality; support for abortion; etc.). He also took Q&A for about 25 minutes, including role-playing various conversational situations.

It was a very interesting lecture and I learned quite a few things. I'm looking forward to the next lecture tonight. I will blog those notes, as well.

Mark Steyn on the End of the World

Mark Steyn at the Wall Street Journal has written one of the most thought-provoking piece I've read in years. I printed this thing out (12 pages), highlighted it, wrote notes to myself, etc. I rarely do that.

The piece is about Western Europe being overrun by muslims, which is happening right now and doesn't appear to be headed in the right direction. Furthermore, it's probably irreversible at this point, given Europeans' loss of faith in God.

Very. Scary. Stuff.

The Book of Daniel

Brent Bozell at Townhall.com has written a devastating article about the new NBC show, "The Book of Daniel". I could quote every line, it's that good and on-point. This is a must-read and should be a clear example of how Hollywood is completely out-of-touch with the rest of the country (which is 95% Christian).

The Book of Daniel" is a disgusting bit of anti-Christian garbage, though its author denies this. Here is Bozell:

Episcopal minister Daniel Webster is hooked on Vicodin and sees Jesus Christ regularly. His wife is an alcoholic. His son is gay. His daughter sells marijuana. His adopted Chinese son is a teenage sex machine. His female bishop, who asks him for one of his "Canadian headache pills" for the codeine, and later raids his office for more, is having an adulterous relationship with his father, who's also an Episcopal bishop, whose wife has Alzheimer's and keeps talking about penises.

Are there enough ridiculous, plastic characters in this spectacle yet? No, apparently not. Daniel's brother-in-law escapes town with the church treasury, but his wife and the church secretary have gone from a menage a trois to a saucy lesbian relationship. To find said brother-in-law, Daniel seeks out "Father Frank," an Italian Catholic priest who (no stereotypes here?) uses his Mafia contacts to hunt down the missing money, so the mob can compromise Daniel.

And when the writer for this despicable show claims he's being totally respectful of Christians, Bozell points this out:

Daniel's sermon before credits roll in the premiere begins, "Temptation. Is it really a bad thing? I don't think so." He concludes, "if temptation corners us, maybe we shouldn't beat ourselves up for giving into it. And maybe we shouldn't ask for forgiveness from a church, or God, or from Jesus, or from anyone, until we can first learn to forgive ourselves."

That's not Christianity. That's the gospel of Hollywood.

The left just gets worse and worse. I rarely watch TV any more because this is the kind of garbage that gets on. This is an incredibly blatant example, but this kind of thinking is everywhere in the mainstream media. Once you acknowledge what we're called to do as Christians (i.e. emulate Jesus), you can see this stuff everywhere.

Hollywood and Liberalism

Ben Shapiro over at Townhall.com has an interesting, short piece today focusing on Hollywood's push of the Liberal Agenda. Curiously, liberals I talk to deny that this kind of bias exists, but I suspect that's because they deny that any themes in the Liberal Agenda are actually morally problematic in any way.

Here are a couple choice quotes from Ben's article:

With great films scarce and politically mainstream Academy voters even scarcer, 2000 featured the victory of repulsive anti-suburbia and pro-homosexuality hit piece "American Beauty." Of course, it beat out a film lionizing an abortionist ("The Cider House Rules") and another attacking the tobacco industry ("The Insider"). Most disturbingly, the Academy handed Hilary Swank a Best Actress Oscar for playing a transgendered biological girl murdered by a bunch of hicks. And 2002 was the year of the African-American honorary Oscars, when Denzel Washington took home Best Actor for his decent if overrated performance in "Training Day" and Halle Berry took home Best Actress for her highly touted simulated orgasms in "Monster's Ball." In 2003, homosexual agenda films like "The Hours," "Frida" and "Far From Heaven" grabbed the largest share of nominations. In 2004, Hollywood couldn't hold off "Lord of the Rings" any longer, but Charlize Theron, playing an ugly lesbian serial killer in "Monster," won Best Actress. And last year, the Best Picture was forgettable pro-euthanasia film "Million Dollar Baby."

And then there's this year. "Brokeback Mountain," the stomach-churning story of two 1963 cowboys who get cozy while bunking down in Wyoming and then carry on their affair over the course of decades, is likely to grab Best Picture honors. The critics love it, mostly because critics love anything that pushes homosexuality as normal behavior.

Ben sums up his disgust thusly:

Aside from pimping for GLAAD, the Oscars will provide a platform for other leftist talking points. "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's blatant attempt to bash the Bush administration through the mouth of Edward R. Murrow, and "Munich," Steven Spielberg's attempt to equate Arab terrorism with Israeli self-defense, will likely garner nominations. And to top it off, Comedy Central partisan hack Jon Stewart (who is less and less funny each day) hosts this self-congratulatory leftist feting.

I won't be watching. Neither will most Americans.