How do we deal with this tactical twist? And what does it mean?

MIREILLE, who was born in Belgium to a white, middle-class Christian family, blew herself to pieces last month in a suicide attack against American troops near Baghdad.

In one of the most extraordinary tales of Islamic radicalisation, she is thought to be the first white Western woman to carry out a suicide bombing.

Belgian investigators, who arrested 14 people associated with her, are keeping the 38-year-old woman’s true identity secret, but details have started to emerge. She was from the southern Belgian town of Charleroi, married to a Moroccan and converted to an extreme form of Islam.

“This is how she came into contact with the organisation which allowed her to become a fighter for jihad,” said Glenn Audenaert, the federal police director. Her Belgian documents show that she travelled with her husband to Iraq. On November 9 she blew herself up in a car bomb attack on a US military convoy, killing — according to conflicting reports — either only herself, or six people. Her Belgian passport was near by. Her husband was killed by American troops in a separate incident.

Security sources said that they knew of no other western European women suicide bombers. Al-Qaeda recently appealed for white converts to become suicide bombers, because it was easier for them to travel and evade detection before carrying out their attacks.

The enemy today is not just "Middle Eastern men". Now it is women, and individuals of European descent. Short of annihilating Islam as a cancer among us, destroying it root and branch, how do we combat the Islamist enemy without destroying our most preciouis liberties? Must we recognize Islam an exception to our pincipled support of religious liberty that liberty might survive? Or do we travel the path of pure principle, even if the cost of our lives or our liberties if the enemy is successful?

Sadly, I do not know. How do we balance the lives of many against the liberty of our enemy?

Kenneth Lee Boyd killed his estranged wife and father-in-law in 1988 is scheduled to be the next condemned murder executed in the United States on Friday -- the 1000th since the resumption of the capital punishment in 1977.

In a recent interview, he made the following statement -- one with which I fully agree.

"I feel like I should be in prison for the rest of my life."

As a death penalty supporter, I have to agree.

And the rest of your life ends at 2:00 a.m. on Friday, December 2, 2005 -- bringing justice for those you murdered 17 years ago.

UPDATE: He got what he deserved this morning, December 2, 2005.

Let’s set aside the offensive title of the show -- “Merry F#%$in’ Christmas”.

Can you believe that the Comedy Channel is airing and promoting Denis Leary's blasphemous garbage during one of the two most sacred times of the year for Christians?

“Merry Christmas. Tonight we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus, whose mom, Mary, just happens to be a virgin—even after she apparently gave birth to Jesus. At least that is what the Catholic Church would have you believe. “Tom Cruise is taking a lot of s--- for belonging to a religion, Scientology, that believes aliens came to this planet 75 million years ago. That is nothing. I was raised Catholic. We believe Mary was a virgin and Jesus ended up walking on water, creating a bottomless jug of wine and rising from the dead. Oh, yeah, and Tom Cruise is crazy. “Listen, Christmas is built on a line of bulls---. Do I believe there was a baby Jesus? You bet your ass I do. But I believe that nine months before he was born someone sure as s--- banged the hell out of his mom.”

Ask yourself a simple question – would any media outlet air such vile crap about Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism and the core beliefs of any of those faiths at any time of the year – much less during a period that is particularly sacred to the faith in question? I think we all know the answer, hence the absence of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Happy F#%$in’ Passover” or similar “holiday” specials.

Do I believe this idiot has the legal right to say such things? Yes, I do -- just like the Klan and the Nazis have every right to spread their preferred brand of hatred, so do Leary and the Comedy Channel. I do not support government action to punish this speech which I despise.

Do I believe there should be consequences for such rabid anti-Christian blasphemy? Yes, I do – in the form of the destruction of Denis Leary’s career and of the Comedy Channel's economic viability. We believers can make both happen if we are prepared to stand up and flex our economic muscles to support our faith.

From Jeff Jacoby’s latest column.

''We're trying to be inclusive," says the Boston parks commissioner, explaining why the white spruce that was sent from Nova Scotia under a giant banner reading ''Merry Christmas, Boston" became a ''holiday tree" on her department's website. But suppressing the language, symbols, or customs of Christians in a predominantly Christian society is not inclusive. It's insulting.

It's discriminatory, too. Hanukkah menorahs are never referred to as ''holiday lamps" -- not even the giant menorahs erected in Boston Common and many other public venues each year by Chabad, the Hasidic Jewish outreach movement. No one worries that calling the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by its name -- or even celebrating it officially, as the White House does with an annual ''iftaar" dinner -- might be insensitive to non-Muslims. In this tolerant and open-hearted nation, religious minorities are not expected to keep their beliefs out of sight or to squelch their traditions lest someone, somewhere, take offense. Surely the religious majority shouldn't be expected to either.

As a practicing Jew, I don't celebrate Christmas. There is no Christmas tree in my home, my kids don't write letters to Santa Claus, and I don't attend church on Dec. 25 (or any other date). Does the knowledge that scores of millions of my fellow Americans do all those things make me feel excluded or offended? On the contrary: It makes me feel grateful -- to live in a land where freedom of religion shelters the Hanukkah menorah in my window no less than the Christmas tree in my neighbor's. That freedom is a reflection of America's Judeo-Christian culture, and a principal reason why, in this overwhelmingly Christian country, it isn't only Christians for whom Christmas is a season of joy. And why it isn't only Christians who should make a point of saying so.

Quite correct – the public marking of the Christmas holiday is not discriminatory. Rather, it is demands to mask its celebration in euphemisms that threaten to ultimately destroy religious freedom in America. After all, if the beliefs of the majority must yield to the voices of a few hyper-sensitive individuals demanding "inclusion", how much longer until thoe same restrictions fall upon the practitioners of minority faiths?

They have listened to critics of the Flight 93 “Crescent of Embrace” design and taken another crack at memorializing the site where heroes died. Is it an improvement?

Designers of a Flight 93 memorial have made a bowl-shaped piece of land its centerpiece, replacing a crescent-shape design that some critics had said was a symbol honoring terrorists, officials announced Wednesday.

The new design for the memorial, to be built on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, crash near Shanksville, features most of the details of the original, which was unveiled in September after a worldwide design competition.

But a round, bowl-shaped area would replace a "Crescent of Embrace," a crescent-shaped cluster of maple trees.

In September, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., criticized the design in a letter to the National Park Service Director, saying many questioned the shape "because of the crescent's prominent use as a symbol in Islam _ and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists."

Paul Murdoch, president of Paul Murdoch Architects, which designed the memorial, had called the criticism of the crescent an "unfortunate diversion," but said they were sensitive to the concerns.

In both old and new versions of the design, a tower with 40 wind chimes welcomes visitors to the site, where they can then walk to a large circular field ringed by 40 groves of red and sugar maple trees, symbolizing the 40 passengers and crew who died. There will also be pedestrian trails, a plaza from which to view the crash site, and a white marble wall with the victims' names inscribed.

I’m still not in love with the design, but will concede that it is a movement in the right direction.

MORE AT Michelle Malkin, A Blog For All, JunkYardBlog, David Boyd, and Local Liberty.

Why are time and money being spent to study this issue? What is the redeeming social value of research on geriatric prostitutes?

Prostitutes as old as 70 continue to work in rural Australia, pushed out of the cities due to strong competition from younger and more attractive sex workers, the author of a study says.

* * *
The research, by John Scott of the University of New England, examined prostitution in rural areas of New South Wales state. He found the sex industry has flourished in rural towns, with many prostitutes making regular visits.
"I've likened some of them to travelling musicians, in that some of them might be based in metropolitan centres and they go out and travel -- they tour the bush," Scott told Reuters.

[Insert Your Joke Here]

He said a sex worker might pass through a country town every couple of months, but would advertise in advance and book up appointments. He said sex workers in rural areas tended to be older, and provide more companionship than city sex workers.

"In a business that is based on looks and age a lot of the time, it became increasingly hard for workers as they progressed in age," Scott said.

Hookers who are old enough to qualify for Social Security? Yeah, it might be increasingly hard for them, but I think it would make customers increasingly soft. Maybe there is a reason all they want is cuddling and conversation

Once upon a time, Great Britain was a Christian country.

Today it seems that it has become simply one more province of Eurabia.

After all, why else would a case like this ever come to pass?

An eye specialist has accepted undisclosed damages after claiming that he was forced out of his job by Muslim colleagues.

Joseph Erian took the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust to an employment tribunal, stating that he was made to resign from the ophthalmology department of Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, after staff there discovered that he was a Christian. The tribunal, which started earlier this month, ended when the trust offered an out-of-court settlement and admitted that the problems surrounding Dr Erian’s case “were not his fault”.

And lest you think this was not really a case of the hospital conceding guilt, consider this.

United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust initially denied all the allegations. But the tribunal was halted when the Trust’s lawyers agreed to pay undisclosed damages.

In other words, they saw that they were losing.

You might ask how he was forced to resign. It turned out that a short time after Dr. Erian's colleagues discovered that he was a Coptic Christian from Egypt, his job was suddenly and without warning advertised as being available. What's more, at least two other physicians from the same hospital are pursuing cases against it.

Dr. Erian's case is only the sixth successful one brought in the UK under the religious discrimination statute.

MORE AT: Western Resistance