The Texans go for their third win of the season -- after coming frighteningly close to beating the Indianapolis Colts in a game marked by massive injuries to the Texans offense. And Texans QB Matt Schaub has something to prove to the team where he would have been starting this season if they hadn't traded him in the off season.

Better quarterback. Better defense. Texans win.

But then again, that might just be one more sign that the Surge is working, and they certainly couldn't let the American people start to believe that victory is possible.

US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 70 on Sunday, the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

The figure also marks the fourth consecutive drop in the monthly death toll following a high of 121 in May. June saw 93 deaths, July 82 and August 79. The monthly toll in July 2006 was 53.

Two US soldiers were killed on Saturday in separate incidents, pushing the overall toll of American losses since the March 2003 invasion to 3,801.

A US military "surge" strategy saw an extra 28,500 US troops being deployed from mid-February, mainly in Baghdad and the neighbouring province of Anbar, although commanders said most were not in combat positions until May.

US commanders say the strategy is starting to work and that levels of violence are dropping, allowing for a possible drawdown of the 160,000 or so troops currently deployed across war-torn Iraq.

So let's make this clear --more troops in Iraq, fewer deaths. the Surge is working -- even though the Democrats don't want you to know that.

Will an unpopular Democrat at the head of the national ticket harm the party in many states? And could this help offset the difficulties facing the GOP elsewhere?

The New York senator and Democratic front-runner was by a wide margin the most unpopular of 13 potential presidential candidates in Montana, according to a June survey by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Billings Gazette; 61% said they would not consider voting for her, compared with 49% who would not vote for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and 45% who would not vote for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. The most unpopular Republican candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, was rejected by 51%.

Recent polls in Colorado, Nevada and Arizona have found similar distaste for Clinton.

Got that -- the leading candidate for the Democrat nomination is overwhelmingly rejected by the majority in several states. Even her two closest competitors (if she can be said to have any) are rejected by nearly half of voters.

And while there is a single Republican rejected by a majority of voters, he is still so unfamiliar to most Americans that further exposure can only help him, while Hillary Clinton is so well-known that it is unlikely that she can overcome these negatives.

Now Hillary Clinton may be our next president -- if one can project that outcome from over a year away from th election -- but that could be a Pyrrhic victory for the Democrats. After all, if she has negative coattails for th lower part of the ticket, Democrats may fail to consolidate their hold on the Senate and House. Indeed, she could single-handedly destroy the advances made by the Democrats in some red states.

The old joke is confirmed with the front page tag-line for this WaPo story today.

In support for Democrat's plan, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) joins bipartisan side of Iraq debate.

Get that -- a Republican voting like a Democrat is "bipartisan. Never mind that the Democrats are acting in partisan lockstep. On the other hand, no Democrat voting with the Republicans -- say Joe Lieberman -- would never be considered to be "bipartisan".

And I guess it also goes to show that the Left considers military victory to be a partisan position, while surrender is a bipartisan option.

And that claim has all the legitimacy of the Gambino family calling the FBI and Department of Justice "organized crime families".

Iran's parliament voted Saturday to designate the CIA and the U.S. Army as "terrorist organizations," a largely symbolic response to a U.S. Senate resolution seeking a similar designation for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The parliament said the Army and the CIA were terrorists because of the atomic bombing of Japan; the use of depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; support of the killings of Palestinians by Israel; the bombing and killing Iraqi civilians and the torture of imprisoned terror suspects.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the 290-member Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which urges Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations, would become law if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog but probably would have little effect as the two nations have no diplomatic relations.

If, however, Mahmoud the Mad does give approval to this silly resolution, I hope that all Americans will see fit to wabge a "terrorist" war against the Iranian regime -- one conducted without roadside bombs, suicide vests, beheadings of hostages and planes flown into buildings.

Mahmoud the Mad needs to be taught that war is Hell -- and it is high time that he receives a one-way ticket there, courtesy of Uncle Sam.

After all, he does have a point.

We can’t afford to keep being this stupid!

He's right on that point -- and dead wrong on everything else.

We need to fight the Crusade Against Jihadi Terror much more intensively, not disengage. We need to quit pretending that jihadis are criminals who deserve a lawyer due process, and treat them like POWs who are imprisoned until the end of the conflict -- which may not come in my lifetime.

Friedman clearly wants to ignore the realities of the Crusade Against Jihadi Terror while raising taxes so that we can become another socialist "paradise" like the EU or Red China. I think I'll pass on that agenda.

But he's right -- we cannot continue to keep being this stupid. America must quit listening to nanny-state liberals and instead get serious about fighting terrorism, securing the border, and putting the socialist vision of the Left in the ash-heap of history where it belongs. In other words, we must do the exact opposite of what Thomas Friedman suggests.

MORE AT Stop the ACLU, JammieWearingFool, Don Surber, Jules Crittenden, Wizbang, The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Ed Driscoll, NewsBusters, Freedom Eden, Riehl World View, Strata-Sphere, Wake Up America, Sister Toldjah, Chuch Adkins, Oxford Medievalist

Of all the districts in the Houston area, there is one that really ought to be closed -- North Forest ISD. They have been through superintendent after superintendent in the last 20 years, having fired them over poor performance ratings for the schools, financial mismanagement, and the color of their skin (they canned a white superintendent because he "did not understand the community because he was white". The schools are a mess, the district is a mess, and there seems to be little hope of the place getting better. It really ought to be closed down, with a neighboring district taking over the area. But given the racial makeup of the district, it won't happen because it would be "racially insensitive" (I guess it is more racially sensitive to leave minority kids in failing schools run by minorities).

Well, now they are searching for another superintendent.

Leaders of the North Forest school district soon will pen their "help wanted" ad for a new superintendent, beginning a nationwide search that could prove difficult.

Given the problems facing the northeast Houston district, the job posting could read: Change agent needed to turn around an urban system with declining enrollment, shaky finances and numerous underperforming campuses.

The district's newly hired search consultant, Benjamin Canada of the Texas Association of School Boards, said the pursuit of a top-notch leader will be challenging, but achievable.

"It is a district that doesn't have the best reputation, but it has some outstanding students. It has some outstanding staff," said Canada, a former superintendent. ''But like all districts, it has a need for significant change."

The board has fired or forced out four of its past five permanent superintendents, the last being James Simpson in March.

You can see in the sidebar how rough things have been in the district -- and why any candidate for the job would be nuts to take it.

Add to that the fact that 5 of 11 schools are rated as "academically unacceptable" -- and that is an improvement from a year ago, when 8 of them received that ranking -- and you can see what awful shape the district is in. Indeed, it is probably the only district in the Houston area I would not apply in.

Still, I wish them well -- and can only hope that they find a good leader who can help turn the schools around. And that the racist, over-bearing school board members will allow the new leader to do the job for which he or she is hired without bringing in petty political and personal agendas like those that have brought the district to its current woeful state.

More heroes of WWII have been found at the site of their final resting place, entombed forever in the remains of their submarine, USS Grunion.

When famed novelist and sailor Joseph Conrad wrote in 1900, "I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency," perhaps he had some foresight into the mysterious disappearance of a U.S. Navy submarine 42 years later.

The foreboding comment by Conrad, author of sea novels such as "Lord Jim," "Typhoon" and "The Rescue," dramatically applies to the fate of the crew of the submarine USS Grunion and the anguish of the families of the missing whose ship vanished in 1942 while steaming off the coast of Alaska.

The 311-foot, diesel powered Grunion and its 70-member crew had not been heard from for 65 years since they went missing while on patrol off the island of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands.

In early July of 1942, the Grunion had sunk two Japanese sub chasers and damaged a third near Kiska, one of two islands in the Aleutians that had been captured by the Japanese during the early months of World War II.

But the Grunion, named for a small fish and commissioned just three months earlier, had not been located since its last message of July 30, 1942, when it reported by radio the receipt of a Navy message ordering it back to the U.S. Navy base at Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

One month ago, the remains of the USS Grunion were found in 1,000 feet of water off Kiska Island following a lengthy and intensive search led by the son of the Grunion's skipper and with the cooperation of the Alaskan Civil Air Patrol and World War II Japanese navy veterans who had served in the Aleutians in 1942.

Utilizing Japanese navy records discovered in Tokyo last summer, John Abele, the son of Grunion skipper Lt. Cmdr. Mannert Abele, discovered the mangled remains of the sub utilizing an underwater, remotely operated vehicle equipped with video cameras.

May God Almighty grant them eternal rest, and comfort to their families.

The Crew of USS Grunion (SS-216)
Abele, M. L. LCDR
Alexander, F. E. SM3
Allen, D. E. SM3
Arvan, H. J. Matt2
Banes, P. E. CMOMM
Bedard, L. J. I. CMOMM
Blinston, W. H. RM3
Bonadies, N. R. F2
Boo, R. F. RM3
Bouvia, C. L. MM1
Caldwell, G. E. CEM
Carroll, R. H. S2
Clift, J. S. TM2
Collins, M. F. F2
Cooksey, L. D. MOMM1
Cullinane, D. MM1
Cuthbertson, W. H., Jr. ENS
Deaton, L. D. S2
DeStoop, A. E. CTM
Devaney, W. P., Jr. S2
Dighton, S. R., Jr. LTJG
Doell, L. H., Jr. RM2
Franck, L. H. S1
Graham, M. D. CTM
Hall, K. E. S2
Hellensmith, E. G. EM3
Henderson, H. B. MOMM2
Hutchinson, C. R. TM3
Kennedy, S. J., Jr. MOMM2
Knowles, E. E., Jr. S2
Kockler, L. R. TM1
Kornahrens, W. G. LT
Ledford, M. J. CY
Lehman, W. W. EM1
Loe, S. A. MOMM2
Lunsford, S., Jr. EM2
Lyon, J. W. F1
Martin, C. R. CMOMM
Martin, T. E. EM1
Mathison, R. EM1
McCutcheon, R. G. TM3
McMahon, J. M. LT
Miller, E. C. F2
Myers, D. O. F1
Nave, F. T. MOMM2
Newcomb, A. G. RM1
Nobles, J. W. MOMM1
Pancoast, J. E. MOMM2
Parziale, C. A. TM3
Paul, C., Jr. MATT2
Pickel, B. J. S1
Post, A. C. S2
Randall, W. H. RM2
Ryan, L., Jr. S2
Sanders, H. A. MOMM1
Schumann, E. T. CQM
Sullivan, P. P. PHM1
Surofchek, S. SC1
Swartwood, D. N. S2
Templeton, S. A. GM1
Thomas, M. W. LT
Traviss, B. A. S2
Ullmann, A. S1
VanWoggelum, M. F. F3
Walter, M. H. F3
Webster, R. E. EM2
Welch, D. F. FC2
Wells, J. H. TM2
Wilson, J. E., Jr. SC3
Youngman, R. J. F2

Bless those who serve beneath the deep,
Through lonely hours their vigil keep.
May peace their mission ever be,
Protect each one we ask of Thee.
Bless those at home who wait and pray,
For their return by night and day.
— Reverend Gale R. Williamson

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I wonder -- is this a true voice of sanity that presages change? Or is it simply one lone voice of sense that will be drowned out by in a sea of anti-Semitic Israel-bashing?

The United Nations Human Rights Council has not managed to deal fairly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the council's president Doru-Romulus Costea told a Spanish newspaper on Saturday, according to Israel Radio.

Doru admitted that he was dissatisfied with the fact the council had overly focused on the degree of human rights violations by Israel.

"The body which I head must examine the actions of both sides equally, and we have not done that," said Costea. "Clearly, from now on things need to change."

Israel Radio reported that earlier this week, US President George Bush criticized the UN Human Rights Council, saying that it had put too great an emphasis on Israeli actions.

I suspect that the above comment is the lone voice -- after all, let's look at what the body in question has done this week.

When President Bush told the United Nations General Assembly this week “the American people are disappointed by the failures of the Human Rights Council,” his words could not have been more timely or deserved. He pointed out “This body has been silent on repression by regimes from Havana to Caracas to Pyongyang and Tehran — while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel.” On Friday, the Council piled the dung heap higher. It wrapped up another session in Geneva by adopting two more resolutions against Israel and no resolutions critical of the human-rights record of any of the other 191 U.N. member states.

This brings the total of anti-Israel resolutions and decisions adopted by the “Human Rights” Council — in only the first 15 months of its operation — to 14. Another four very weak decisions and resolutions have been applied to Sudan. And the Council finally decided to hold a special session of the Council on Myanmar. So adding up the highly selective concerns of the U.N.’s lead human-rights agency: 74 percent of the Council’s moves against individual states have been directed at Israel, 21 percent at Sudan, 5 percent at Myanmar, and the rest of the world has been given a free pass.

But then again, it is easier to criticize liberal democracies that value human rights and human life than it is to oppose terrorists and oppressive regimes -- after all, the latter don't give a damn about anything except holding on to their power

The incredible Mark Steyn points out why the Left's tendency to engage in only easy, safe protests against easy, safe targets (the US, Israel) where human rights are respected is unworkable when they are confronted with true evil that doesn't give a damn about their eloquent (or not so eloquent) protests .

The pen is not mightier than the sword if your enemy is confident you will never use anything other than your pen. Sometimes it's not about "freedom of speech," but about freedom. Ask an Iranian homosexual. If you can find one.

In the end, unsavory dictators like Mahmoud the Mad don't care about the insults of Lee Bollinger or the cries of has-been hippies in the streets. They know that the latte-sipping class won't actually get their hands dirty to stop the evils they protest -- and that such folks quickly become the unwitting allies of evil when they turn upon their own countries for daring to act on behalf of freedom and human rights.

After all, why fight the real oppressors of the world when you can do this instead, risk-free?

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I'm pleased to hear that Newt Gingrich has ended any flirtation with a presidential bid this year.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) decided Saturday morning not to run for president just as his staff was preparing to launch a website to seek $30 million in pledges, his spokesman told Politico.

Gingrich had planned to seek pledges as part of a three-week exploration without making any formal declaration of candidacy for the Republican nomination — an approach that several Republican leaders said was legally questionable.

The decision will bolster the contention of several key Republicans that Gingrich's repeated flirtation with a presidential run was a publicity stunt designed to keep him in the news and sell his books.

I won't go so far as to say Gingrich was looking to sell books -- instead, I'll argue that it has all been about stroking the former Speaker's ego. But regardless of the reason for his proposed candidacy, I stand by what I said earlier today -- Let's say it loud and clear -- Newt has all of Rudy's liabilities and none of his personal popularity with the American people. Indeed, his abrasiveness even turns off a lot of Republicans. So while he is clearly one of the leading minds of the conservative movement, Newt Gingrich is clearly not someone who should be in the race for the nomination this year.

More at Michelle Malkin, Stop the ACLU, Captain's Quarters, RTFLC, American Mind, Wizbang

And this is not about religion, or discouraging abortion, or limiting "choice" (to kill other members of the human race because they are inconvenient). No, it is about public health and safety.

Consider this story.

The Alternatives abortion clinic in Atlantic City, New Jersey, opted to surrender its license to the state instead of correcting the list of health violations detailed in a 116-page report.

Atlantic City Councilman John Schultz, who leased the facility to Alternatives, said the clinic's equipment was emptied out of the building last month and the space is available for lease.

The state's report detailed a slew of violations at the clinic, including bloodstained operating tables, expired drugs and the absence of a sterilization sink.

The facility had not been inspected in six years, even though state law requires annual inspection. I guess they didn't want to come into conflict with the abortion industry or the feminists who support them.

Mark Noonan makes these interesting points on one of his sites.

If you go over to the Centers for Disease Control, you'll find that the CDC (at least in 2002) was saying that there is 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions - but the problem with this stat is that everything about abortion at CDC is reliant upon voluntary reporting. An abortion mill with 1.2 deaths per 100,000 has no obligation to report and, indeed, would have a vested interest in keeping the death rate quiet. With little or no regulation of abortion at the State and local level, we really have no idea how many women are killed and injured in the course of their abortion procedure.

What we need is to bring the abortion industry under the same regulations which are applied to all medical operations. We need records to be kept; we need suspected cases of abuse to be reported (among the many dirty secrets of the abortion industry is the way they have become the means of choice for older men to hide their statutory rapes of young women); we need to ensure the facilities are up to surgical standards and that the staffs are fully trained not just in baby-butchering, but in emergency medical care in case they botch the abortion. And we should also have a comprehensive study done of abortion in the United States - to find out how many are really happening, and what emotion and physical effects abortion has on the women who have them.

Naturally, any such attempts will be desperately fought against by the pro-abortion fanatics - showing, in the end, that their real desire is that the killing continue. This, I believe, is a result of their guilty consciences - they know what they do and advocate is wrong, but as long as they can prevent any change in the status quo, they believe they can block out the fact that they are committing horrible crimes on a daily basis. Pro-abortion people - and the people fooled into being "pro-choice" - are people more to be pitied than despised; it must be a sad way to view life - but we who are pro-life have a duty to do whatever we can to lessen the ill effects of abortion.

As long as Roe v. Wade stands as precedent, we will be unable to stop the slaughter of the unborn in this country. That is a sad reality. However, treating abortion centers like other medical facilities would be a good start in protecting the woman who make the (wrong) choice to kill their babies from the unscrupulous and incompetent medical "professionals" who operate places like the one in the article above.

And hopefully he will lose the defamation case against him.

A federal judge refused Friday to dismiss a defamation case against Rep. John P. Murtha and ordered the Pennsylvania Democrat to give a sworn deposition about his comments alleging "cold-blooded murder and war crimes" by unnamed soldiers in connection with Iraqi civilian deaths.

A Marine Corps sergeant is suing the 18-term congressman for making the charge, which the soldier claims is false. Murtha, who opposes the Iraq war, made the comment during a May, 2006 Capitol Hill news conference in which he predicted that a Pentagon war crimes investigation will show Marines killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005.

Murtha's office declined to comment on the ruling. A Vietnam veteran and retired Marine Reserves colonel, Murtha has said his intention was to draw attention to the pressure put on troops in Iraq and efforts to cover-up the incident.

The Justice Department wanted the case dismissed because Murtha was acting in his official role as a lawmaker. Assistant U.S. Attorney John F. Henault said the comments were made as part of the debate over the war in Iraq.

I've got a real problem with the argument Henault made on Murtha's behalf. There is a provision of the constitution providing some limited immunity to members of Congress, but I think it is important to note what it says.

Article I, Section 6: The Senators and Representatives. . . shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

Murtha's comments were not made in the course of speech or debate -- they were made in a press conference, off the House floor and therefore so not meet the standard for such immunity under any legitimate reading of the text. If the argument advanced upon Murtha's behalf were to be accepted, any statement on any political issue made anywhere in the US (or the world) would be magically converted into "speech or debate in either House" -- thereby turning this limited immunity into a license to go forth and commit defamation against any private citizen or political opponent under the rubric of "debate" on a political issue. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue -- in Hutchison v. Proxmire, it ruled that the Speech of Debate Clause is limited in its scope.

The last thing that the GOP needs in the race for the 2008 nomination is another candidate -- and especially not one who is as polarizing as Newt Gingrich.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will open a website by Monday in an effort to round up the $30 million in pledges that he says would be his ticket to entering the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

A longtime adviser, J. Randolph Evans of McKenna Long & Aldridge, will hold a press briefing at 3:30 p.m. Monday in Atlanta to describe plans for what Gingrich aides are calling a “feasibility assessment.”

Aides say Gingrich will announce his intentions by Oct. 21, ahead of a Michigan filing deadline.

During a recent breakfast with a Politico reporter and other journalists, Gingrich made it clear he has given a great deal of thought to how he would run, starting with a national television ad that would be heavy on his policy ideas.

That might be followed with DVDs of his agenda to households in early-voting states.

Gingrich vowed that he would not participate in group debates like those that now sprinkle the campaign calendar.

“I’m not a penguin,” he said, referring to the field of candidates at the debates as “a row of penguins.” Instead, he said, he wants to hold one-on-one, 90-minute “dialogues” on such topics as fixing specific inner cities.

“If I did run, I wouldn’t do any dog and pony shows,” he said. “I’d debate anybody who wanted to for 90 minutes — one-on-one, for 90 minutes, in either party.”

Let's ay it loud and clear -- Newt has all of Rudy's liabilities and none of his personal popularity with the American people. Indeed, his abrasiveness even turns off a lot of Republicans. So while he is clearly one of the leading minds of the conservative movement, Newt Gingrich is clearly not someone who should be in the race for the nomination this year.

Over at Gates of Vienna, the Baron posted this interesting notice for college bloggers.

A representative of the Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation emailed us today, and asked us to spread the word that the Foundation is giving away $10,000 to a blogger this year. If you’re a college student, a U.S. Resident, and you keep a blog, you’re eligible.

Full scholarship details are available at the College Scholarships website.

This Second Annual Blogging Scholarship prize will be awarded at the Blog World and New Media Expo, to be held in Las Vegas on November 8th and 9th.

Important Dates:
Submission Deadline: Midnight PST on Oct. 6th
10 Finalists Announced and Public Voting Begins: 9am EST on Oct. 8th
Public Voting Ends and Winner Declared: Midnight PST on Oct. 28th

Contact Information:
Daniel Kovach
(919) 630-4895
daniel@collegescholarships.org

If only I were 25 years younger!

When it comes to the question of granting commutations and reprieves in death penalty cases, the governor of Texas has very limited authority. On his own authority, he can only stop an execution once, and for a maximum of 30 days. Anything else requires an affirmative recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Parole to be legal. This is both statutory and constitutional law in the state of Texas.

But at least one Texas legislator doesn't think that a little obstacle like a constitution should be grounds for Gov. Goodhair to allow executions to go forward while the US Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case.

[Gov. Rick] Perry believes the fate of death row inmates lies with the courts, said spokeswoman Krista Moody.

"The governor does not have the authority to issue a moratorium nor does he believe there's a reason for one," she said.

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said Perry should issue a moratorium because the Supreme Court likely will grant a stay in every Texas execution until the Kentucky case is decided.

Whitmire noted that Perry, until overturned by the Legislature, attempted to use his executive order power to require teenage girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease.

"If he can tell a state agency to vaccinate people, I think he can tell a state agency not to execute people," Whitmire said.

Perry, of course, was legally wrong to issue his Gardasil order last spring, and and was slapped down by the Legislature as a result. That action was clearly seen as an overstepping of his authority. Doing so in this case would be an even more blatant case of exceeding his authority -- and would be grounds for impeachment. It is up to the courts to act -- and for the Texas justice system to continue to move forward if they do not.

Rick Perry is correct in not acting in this case. If a moratorium is truly necessary, he ought to call the legislature back into session to consider one -- and perhaps also legislation restoring either hanging or the firing squad as the form of execution in Texas, rendering moot the need for a moratorium at all.

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Dead terrorists are always a happy note on which to start the day.

A U.S. airstrike killed one of the most senior al-Qaida leaders in Iraq, a Tunisian linked to the kidnapping and killings last summer of American soldiers, a top commander said Friday.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson said the death of the suspected terrorist in a U.S. airstrike Tuesday south of Baghdad, and recent similar operations against al-Qaida, have left the organization in Iraq fractured.

Abu Osama al-Tunisi was killed along with two other terrorist suspects in a U.S. F-16 strike that dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a safehouse where they were meeting, said the U.S. Central Command Air Forces.

"Al-Tunisi was one of the most senior leaders ... the emir of foreign terrorists in Iraq and part of the inner leadership circle," Anderson told a Pentagon news conference.

Al-Tunisi was a leader in helping bring foreign terrorists into the country, said Anderson, chief of staff to the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno.

Speaking by videoconference from Baghdad, Anderson said that al-Tunisi operated in Youssifiyah, southwest of Baghdad, November '04 and became the overall emir of Youssifiyah in the summer of '06.

His group was responsible for kidnapping American soldiers in June 2006, Anderson said.

As so many enemies of America have found since the birth of our country, the United States military will keep after you until they find you. Your two options are surrender or death -- and in the case of the jihadis, I personally like the second option.

And by now he knows that there were no virgins waiting for him -- and that the sands of Iraq are much cooler than his new eternal dwelling place.

The winning entries in the Watcher's Council vote for this week are Cosmic Ironies by Bookworm Room, and Rafael Medoff: Columbia "Invites Hitler to Campus" -- As it Did in 1933 by History News Network.  Here are the full results of the vote:

You would think she would comment -- after all, the event is taking place in her district.

Instead, she chose to avoid answering the question.

CNSNews.com:"I'd like to get local for a second and talk about what's going on in San Francisco. Your spokesman told the Bay Area Reporter that the Folsom Street Fair advertisement mocking the last supper would not harm Christianity. I'm wondering if you find the advertisement personally offensive."

"And as a follow up, the city's Grants for the Arts program, funded by the city's hotel tax, subsidizes the fair. Do you think that it's fair to tax everyone who visits San Francisco and stays in a hotel to support the fair?"

Pelosi: "Well that's not really a local question. That's a constitutional question. That's a religious question. That's as big a global question as you can ask. I'm a big believer in First Amendment and therefore, as I said in my statement, I do not believe that Christianity has been harmed by the Folsom Street Fair advertising."

Notice what she avoids answering.

1) Are you offended by the poster?

2) Should tax dollars subsidize the event and the poster?

I guess Pelosi realizes that the gay bondage crowd is more likely to vote for her than Christians are -- but that she and her party need to court Christians and capture some of their votes to win in 2008.

But the obvious answers are:

1) No, I'm not offended by the mocking of Christianity and a sacred event in the life of Christ. Gay sado-masochism is a beautiful thing between two leather clad consenting adults.

2) Yes, taxpayers, especially Christian taxpayers, should have to subsidize everything that offends them and insults them, because they vote for Republicans. On the other hand, gay sado-masochists are a key part of the Democrat coalition of the victimized, and so they are entitled to everything they can get from the government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for highlighting the Democrat family values.

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But even as the percentage of the federal spending sits at about half of what it was 50 years ago, some want to cut it even further.

For Ben Cohen, the politically active half of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, life's not all about ice cream anymore. Since he and Jerry Greenfield sold their Burlington, Vt., company in 2000 to Unilever, the politically conscious cofounder Cohen has turned his attention entirely to making Americans more aware of what percentage of their tax dollars goes toward funding the Pentagon's budget. His latest efforts include hitting up the early primary states and finding Democratic caucus attendees who will pledge to only vote for a candidate who promises to slice the defense budget and put that money toward social needs programs.

* * *

From what I understand, you're trying to persuade the presidential candidates to commit part of the federal budget away from the Pentagon. How are you doing this?

About two years ago we started a grassroots campaign working with "Iowans for Sensible Priorities" and "Priorities New Hampshire" to educate people as to how the federal budget is currently sliced up. We knew from surveys that once people found out about it, people were incredulous and wanted to shift twice as much money as we're talking about.

What percent are you trying to get sliced away from the Pentagon?

It's about 13 percent. That's $60 billion and it's amazing what you can do with $60 billion. It's enough money to rebuild all our schools, provide healthcare for every kid who doesn't have it, provide food self-sufficiency for all 6 million starving kids a year in the world, and reduce our need for oil, increasing energy independence—a lot of stuff.

Cohen, of course, fudges the numbers in this project. What he shows is the proportions of government DISCRETIONARY spending. He ignores those expenditures that are not discretionary, which is about half the budget. Many of those expenditures that deal with the very social issues he wants to address – expenditures on programs that grow every year and have generally been ineffective.

But then why would we expect a super-rich socialist like Cohen to be honest? It simply is not in the nature of the Left to do so.

And I'm curious -- any American with common sense knows the War on Poverty was lost a generation ago. How many more lives and how much more treasure must be wasted on it before liberals will admit that their war policies have been a failure and devise a plan for surrender retreat redeployment of our nation's social workers and anti-poverty activists?

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A young author gives an interview to promote her new book.

The reporter asks her a totally unrelated question on US foreign and military policy regarding Iraq.

Is it relevant? Is it appropriate? Should she answer?

My answer to all of the above is NO!

Even if her father is President of the United States.

Jenna Bush agreed to an interview with Diane Sawyer to promote her new book, "Ana's Story." The nonfiction book is based on the life of a 17-year-old Latin American mother infected with HIV. She met the mother while working for UNICEF, teaching in four countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The AP, of course, chooses to criticize her, claiming she “ducked the question”. But it was a question that should not have been asked in the first place.

Next time the Left claims that they are being oppressed in this country for speaking out against the government, point to the situation in Burma (I don't recognize the name change made by the oppressive military junta).

Brutality and defiance marked the second day of an armed crackdown in Myanmar today as the military junta tried to crush a wave of nationwide protests in the face of harsh international condemnation.

The violence began before dawn with raids on Buddhist monasteries and continued through the day with tear gas, beatings and volleys of gunfire in the streets of the country’s main city, Yangon, according to witnesses and news agency reports from inside the closed nation.

Witnesses said soldiers fired automatic weapons into a crowd of protesters. State television in Myanmar reported that nine people had been killed and that 11 demonstrators and 31 soldiers were injured. The numbers could not be independently verified, and exile groups said they could be much higher.

International action is being taken.

After news of Thursday's violence reached Washington, the White House renewed its demand that the Burmese junta end the crackdown.

"The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals," President Bush said in a written statement. He added: "Every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand up for people suffering under a brutal military regime like the one that has ruled Burma for too long."

The U.S. Treasury Department designated 14 senior Burmese figures under new sanctions announced by Bush earlier in the week, including Than Shwe; the army commander, Vice Senior Gen. Maung Aye; and the acting prime minister, Lt. Gen. Thein Sein. Any assets they have in U.S. jurisdictions will be frozen, and Americans are now banned from doing business with them. U.S. officials hope to leverage that to influence foreign banks and institutions to follow suit.

The European Union also vowed to seek tighter sanctions. The United Nations, meanwhile, has said it will send an envoy to Burma, a move that the Burmese foreign minister said Thursday would be welcomed.

India and Red China, however, are blocking a serious response by the UN Security Council. Contact their embassies to demand that they support concerted international action to end the violence against peaceful protesters seeking regime change.

Embassy of the People's Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Embassy of India
2107 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008

Michelle Malkin reports that the junta has cut off internet access to Burma.

How is it that someone with such a record was ever appointed to a government office in the first place?

Oh, that's right -- the governor who appointed him is a Democrat, and they have been siding with the enemy for some time.

But at least the supporter of jihadi terror is no longer holding an official position in government.

A controversial leader of a U.S. Muslim group resigned from a Virginia state board hours after Gov. Tim Kaine learned during a radio call-in show about incendiary comments the appointee made about Israel, Islam and U.S. foreign policy.

Dr. Esam Omeish, who is a top surgeon at a Washington, D.C., area hospital, also is seen in videos found on YouTube.com that show him advocating "the jihad way," decrying the Israeli invasion last year of Lebanon, and calling for President Bush's impeachment.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, Kaine said he had accepted Omeish's resignation from the state Commission on Immigration, which only met for the first time on Tuesday.

"Dr. Omeish is a respected physician and community leader, yet I have been made aware of certain statements he has made which concern me," Kaine said. "Dr. Omeish indicated that he did not want this controversy to distract from the important work of the Commission."

In a separate, undated video, Omeish tells a crowd of Washington-area Muslims, "... you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land." The video was credited to Investigative Project, a Washington-based organization that investigates radical Islamic organizations.

Again and again we find "mainstream" Muslim leaders in this country engaging in the rhetoric of jihad. I applaud those who are engaged in an informational crusade to expose this ugly underbelly of the so-called "Religion of Peace."

About 2 1/2 years ago, Nancy Pelosi and John Dingell sent a letter to the President that read as follows.

April 20, 2005

The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As you know, gasoline prices have risen by an average 38 cents a gallon in the past two months. In fact, 70 percent of the American people have already said that the price at the pump is having an impact on their lives. We understand that the White House is feeling pressure from the American people to act, but misleading the public about the Republican's energy bill is not the answer.

In your weekly radio address last Saturday, you called on Congress to pass the energy bill and implied that the bill would lower costs to consumers. But your Administration's own Department of Energy studied last year's conference report on which this bill is based, and concluded that the Republican proposal would actually raise gas prices by 3 cents per gallon.

The American people deserve an energy policy that would boost the economy, preserve the environment, protect public health, and truly lower gasoline prices. This bill fails on all fronts. The Republican energy bill was written by energy lobbyists for the benefit of the energy industry, while hurting the environment, consumers, and taxpayers.

We encourage you to use your speech to the U.S.-Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to lay out an agenda that seeks to lower gasoline prices, not simply exploit them.

Sincerely,

Nancy Pelosi
Democratic Leader
John D. Dingel
Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Commerce

And two years ago, Dingell spoke on the issue again in the Democrat radio address.

We must respond to the needs of the American consumers who are seeing the prospect of $4 a gallon gas and $1,000 monthly heating bills. I promise that Democrats will keep fighting for constructive solutions to America’s energy needs.

Well, around here gas prices are hovering around $2.50 a gallon -- and they are higher most other places in the country.

What is John Dingell's solution? A 50-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline.

Dealing with global warming will be painful, says one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. To back up his claim he is proposing a recipe many people won't like — a 50-cent gasoline tax, a carbon tax and scaling back tax breaks for some home owners.

"I'm trying to have everybody understand that this is going to cost and that it's going to have a measure of pain that you're not going to like," Rep. John Dingell, who is marking his 52nd year in Congress, said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

John Dingell has repeatedly spoken out against "price-gouging" by oil companies causing high gas prices, only to have every single investigation of those prices show that they were a legitimate response to market forces. So now what does he do? He proposes that the federal government perpetrate a little price-gouging itself to pay for programs to deal with the junk-science "problem" of man-made global warming. I guess that Mr. Dingell thinks that the government, which already makes more profit off a gallon of gas than the oil companies, just needs that extra 50-cents a gallon more than the American consumer does.

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It was a first that went unnoted at the time -- but which began a practice that is quite common today.

The play was 48 Toss, and 30 years later, Dick Vermeil remembers it as if he called it last Sunday. Herb Lusk took a pitch from Ron Jaworski, headed around left end and breezed unscathed 70 yards for a fourth-quarter touchdown. Four steps over the goal line at Giants Stadium, the Philadelphia Eagles' running back rewrote the playbook. Alone in the end zone, with a crowd of 48,824 looking on, he celebrated with a gesture in what has since become a watershed moment in American sports.

With little ceremony and no advance warning, Lusk kept his eyes straight, dropped to his left knee and bowed his head in prayer. A few seconds later, he stood back up and returned to the sideline, his legacy sealed.

"Herb Lusk was the first NFL player to kneel in the end zone and pray," said Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, which has footage of more than 9,000 games played since 1894.

No one doubts the sincerity of Lusk's action -- his faith was well-known to others in the NFL. The prayer was not particularly noted at the time. But it opened the floodgates to such religious moments -- something about which I have mixed emotions.

I'm glad to see folks be open about hteir faith.

I'm less pleased about the fact that some of those who engage in such public prayer appear to "talk the talk" during the game but don't particularly "walk the walk" off the field.

I guess some folks think that absolute moral authority means the law does not apply to them.

A bench warrant was issued Thursday for antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who did not appear for arraignment Thursday in a Washington, D.C., courtroom to face charges related to her Sept. 10 disorderly conduct arrest on Capitol Hill.

District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Michael McCarthy issued the order to Sheehan around noon, a court spokeswoman said. The warrant says she is to be arrested and brought before the court. She also faces one count of unlawful assembly.

"She wasn't aware that there was a court appearance today," said Sheehan's spokeswoman, Tiffany Burns, reached by cell phone.

"We'll have the attorney deal with this immediately, so as soon as she's rescheduled to appear, she'll be there," Burns added.

Burns said Sheehan was at home in California Thursday, and did not receive the paperwork notifying her of the court date.

However, a court document obtained by FOXNews.com dated Sept. 10, signed by Sheehan, advised her to appear Thursday at 8:30 a.m. The warrant issued Thursday sets a $50 bond for her arrest.

Damn those signed papers with the court date clearly indicated! They must be CIA fakes, manufactured as a part of a Rovian conspiracy by the BusCheneyHitler dictatorship!

And as for rescheduling the court date, I'd rather see her cuffed, stuffed, and dragged into court whining like Paris Hilton.

Even a wannabe Commie dictator can be right from time to time.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez railed against a new trend in his beauty-conscious country -- giving girls breast implants for their 15th birthday.

"Now some people think, 'My daughter's turning 15, let's give her breast enlargements.' That's horrible. It's the ultimate degeneration," Chavez said on his weekly television show, which lasted a record eight hours.

Do we really need to further sexualize young people?

Well, maybe – for a billion dollars and all his WMD information.

Less than a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein signaled that he was willing to go into exile as long as he could take with him $1 billion and information on weapons of mass destruction, according to a report of a Feb. 22, 2003, meeting between President Bush and his Spanish counterpart published by a Spanish newspaper yesterday.

The meeting at Bush's Texas ranch was a planning session for a final diplomatic push at the United Nations. The White House was preparing to introduce a tough new Security Council resolution to pressure Hussein, but most council members saw it as a ploy to gain their authorization for war.

Yeah, that’s the ticket – let the bad guy go with a wad of cash and the knowledge to either obtain WMD or sell the info to the highest bidder. That sure would have made the world a safer place!

To celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the US Mint will issue commemorative pennies with a variety of designs on the reverse.

“A penny for your thoughts” will have extra meaning in 2009 — the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Lincoln cent.

To commemorate the event, the U.S. Mint, at the direction of Congress, will introduce four rotating designs on the 1-cent coin for that year depicting different aspects of Lincoln’s life.

Those designs will replace the engraving of the Lincoln Memorial on the “tails” side of the coin. The famous profile of the 16th president will remain on the “heads” side.

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which provides recommendations on such matters, met Tuesday and got into a lively debate over what those rotating images should be.

The question of the design to depict the Lincoln presidency provoke some discussion and dispute. The panel didn’t like the designs of the incomplete US Capitol building (Lincoln ordered construction to continue during the war to signify that the union would endure). Instead, there was a request for designs related to Lincoln as a war president (perhaps visiting troops) or relating to emancipation. Personally, I believe a design depicting Lincoln at Gettysburg would be most appropriate, given the fact that the Gettysburg Address so neatly unifies those two elements.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

A masterpiece of American rhetoric and a cogent statement of our nation’s republican form of government, love of liberty, and debt to those who serve our nation in time of war. They are words to remember today – ideas appropriate to commemoration on our nation’s coinage.

H/T Don Surber

Supporters of Hillary Clinton’s campaign frequently hearken back to Bill Clinton’s Administration for clues about what her administration will be like.

But consider what this answer tells us.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) dodged a curveball thrown at her by moderator Tim Russert in tonight’s debate after she disavowed the use of torture against terrorists, even in extreme circumstances, only to be told her husband took the opposite position on Russert’s Meet the Press. “Well, he’s not standing here right now,” Clinton responded. The moment brought her huge applause, and her campaign promoted the clip as “Tonight’s Video Moment.”

So, she won’t be a repeat of Bill Clinton – and she is very correct to note that he is not going to be the candidate in 2008. Let’s hope the American people recognize that fact.

I suppose that she would have been welcome if she were denying the Holocaust, calling for the destruction of Israel, and giving support to those killing Americans – at least if the principal were adhering to the Columbia University understanding of free speech and academic freedom. Instead, a few parental complaints were sufficient to get Alveda King’s speech cancelled.

A decision to cancel a speech by an anti-abortion activist at a Des Moines high school is sparking criticism.

The principal of Roosevelt High School, Kathie Danielson, says she canceled Friday's appearance by Alveda King because some parents complained about her message.

The Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says it implies the school is taking sides on the abortion issue. Spokesman Ben Stone says Danielson is doing a "disservice" when she decides she must protect students from controversial viewpoints.

King is a niece of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Danielson says it was a good opportunity to hear King on issues such as diversity. But parents complained about her political and social views.

Of interest, though, is the fact that King was not scheduled to speak on abortion at all. Her topic was, by all indication, her lifetime involved with civil rights. After all, as an author and minister and former college professor and state legislator, she might just have something of importance to teach these students on that subject—and about her uncle, whose life and work in that area ought to be an inspiration to every American. Add to the fact that attendance a the speech was voluntary, it seems hard to believe that anyone was going to be coerced, indoctrinated, or proselytized as a member of a captive audience of students.

However, that was not good enough for some.

Danielson explained the decision in an e-mail to the parents. When the school scheduled King in August, the plan was for King to speak about her civil rights journey.

Then Monday, "several community members" called to complain about King's allegiance to anti-abortion issues and abstinence. There was also the sticky possibility of King's expressing her religious beliefs in a public-school setting.

Those still wishing to hear King's message, Danielson added, could see her at either Iowa State or Drake.

Danielson said she called King, had a nice talk and came away impressed.

"She is a wonderful person," Danielson e-mailed, "and our conversation was meaningful and enlightening. We will visit in the near future about the possibility of scheduling a time when she could speak to our parents."

That's good, because King has a compelling story to tell. The students should be allowed to hear it.

The irony of this situation is not lost on me. You see my knowledge of history and constitutional law makes Roosevelt High School in Des Moines a familiar name to me – and it ought to be to any educator.

After all, Roosevelt High School was one of the schools at which the events occurred that gave rise to the Supreme Court’s seminal decision of freedom of speech in schools, Tinker v. Des Moines. And while the circumstances are different, we again see a small group deciding that there are some ideas, well-within the mainstream of American political belief, that must be suppressed at all cost in the public schools. Such actions were wrong then, and are wrong now.

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Remember that "one man, no vote" edict promulgated by the Democrats regarding Florida? Well, it should also apply to Michigan -- but the Democrats have made an exception to the rules on no campaigning in that state. What is that exception?

In one reluctant concession, the Democratic chairs in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and that great American tradition, the Nevada caucus, are graciously allowing one exemption to the no-campaigning rule so the candidates can participate in a conference held in Dearborn by the Arab American Institute.

Are you following all this? Here’s where we are so far:

Florida:

A) One man, no vote.

B) No talking to any Floridians who are not waving checkbooks.

Michigan: Both of the above, but Arab-Americans organized into a large conference are exempt.

So lets get this straight.

Florida, with its many Jewish voters, will be off limits to the Democrat candidates, and its voters will be disenfranchised by the DNC.

Michigan, with its many Arab and Muslim voters, will be granted a special exception to the rules -- and, I suspect, be subject to a lesser penalty so as not to disenfranchise those groups despite holding its primary two weeks before Florida.

Given the realities of the last six years, does it seem odd to you that the Democrats are prepared to accommodate a group that has shown great sympathy towards the jihadi cause while disenfranchising Jewish voters who are accused of having too much influence on American politics and policy? It seems to me that the disparity is objectively anti-Semitic -- and given the rhetoric that has come out of the pro-Democrat netroots and anti-war movement, that is a point that should not be easily dismissed or discounted without closer examination.

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The artificial limits imposed upon religious literature in prison libraries has been lifted following a public outcry over the absurd limits and nebulous standards behind the list.

Facing pressure from religious groups, civil libertarians and members of Congress, the federal Bureau of Prisons has decided to return religious materials that had been purged from prison chapel libraries because they were not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources.

The bureau had said it was prompted to remove the materials after a 2004 Department of Justice report mentioned that religious books that incite violence could infiltrate chapel libraries.

After the details of the removal became widely known this month, Republican lawmakers, liberal Christians and evangelical talk shows all criticized the government for creating a list of acceptable religious books.

The bureau has not abandoned the idea of creating such lists, Judi Simon Garrett, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. But rather than packing away everything while those lists were compiled, the religious materials will remain on the shelves, Ms. Garrett explained.

In an e-mail message Wednesday, the bureau said: “In response to concerns expressed by members of several religious communities, the Bureau of Prisons has decided to alter its planned course of action with respect to the Chapel Library Project.

“The bureau will begin immediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radicalizing or incite violence. The review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of January 2008.”

It is nice to see a little sunshine and public outrage bringing about a policy shift that makes sense. Get rid of the problem materials after a review of what is in the libraries, and in the future don't add anything until it has been reviewed. Packing away unobjectionable material based upon an arbitrarily defined limit of 150 items was the wrong way to go -- and the new policy is substantially better.

In light of recent controversies on California colleges campuses regarding controversial speakers and faculty members and the Columbia University speech by Mahmoud the Mad, Victor David Hanson offers up a criteria regarding who should be welcomed and given a platform at such prestigious institutions of higher learning.

In each of the above cases, the general public has had to remind these universities that their campuses should welcome thinkers who have distinguished themselves in their fields, regardless of politics and ideology. The liberal Chemerinsky, the Clinton Democrat Summers and the conservative Rumsfeld have all courted controversy -- and all alike met the criterion of eminent achievement.

But the propagandist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has not. Unlike Chemerinsky, Rumsfeld and Summers, he used the prestige of an Ivy-League forum solely to popularize his violent views -- and to sugarcoat the mayhem his terrorists inflict on Americans and his promises to wipe out Israel.

Here's a simple tip to the clueless tenured class about why a Larry Summers or Donald Rumsfeld should be welcome to speak, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shunned: former Cabinet secretaries -- yes; homicidal dictators killing Americans -- no.

Sounds like a reasonable standard to me -- what do you think?

Maybe, suggests Roger Simon at Politico.

There are two unbreakable rules for picking a running mate: Never pick anybody who might overshadow the top of the ticket, and never pick anybody you cannot completely control.

So Obama might be eliminated on both counts.

Then there is the Rule of Firsts. The Clinton campaign does not want to force too many “firsts” on the American electorate.

Electing the first woman president will be challenge enough. Electing the first woman president and first African-American vice president at the same time? Forget it; they don’t need that kind of problem. (The same reasoning might prevent New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is Hispanic, from getting the vice presidential nod.)

Does this mean that only white males need apply to become Hillary’s running mate? Probably.

Which is why Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, Sen. James Webb of Virginia, and even former Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri are all having their names tossed around.

Personally, I think there is a better reason to reject Obama -- his lack of experience. Hillary has enough of a credibility problem with some voters on that score (First Lady isn't a training ground for the Presidency), and selecting a national novice like Obama might leave the ticket open to questions about how qualified they really are. That is why I'd argue that Clinton might do well to go for a"double first" pick and tap Bill Richardson for as her running mate.

These numbers sure look like it.

A brand-new CNN/WMUR poll finds her with a 23-point lead over Obama in New Hampshire (43%-20%). Back in July, her lead was nine points (36%-27%).

The question, of course, is this -- is the increasing lead a sign that Democrats have united behind her? Or is this limited to one state? And is this support stable, or is Hillary Clinton peaking way too soon?

I’d like to see the movie Banished.

There are ghosts haunting Marco Williams’s quietly sorrowful documentary “Banished,” about the forced expulsion of black Southerners from their homes in the troubled and violent decades after the Civil War. Dressed in what looks like their Sunday best, in dark suits and high-collar dresses, they stare solemnly into an unwelcoming world. A couple ride in a cart along a pretty country road, and others stand awkwardly before houses with peeling paint. There are few smiles. Photography was then a serious business, though being a black landowner, part of a fragile, nascent Southern middle class, was more serious still.

The events and the period covered are clearly one of the great missed opportunities of American history, one of those “what ifs” that those of us who are students of history often look at and think of with a heart-felt sadness.

And it looks like Williams has done a great job, hitting many important but little-known incidents.

Mr. Williams isn’t one for hysterics or histrionics, even when seated across from a Ku Klux Klan leader who says he wouldn’t be happy if this African-American director moved in next door. The Klan leader lives in a nice-looking house adorned with white supremacist banners in Forsyth County, Ga., which in 1912 brutally expelled an estimated 1,000 of its black residents. Mr. Williams guides us through this terrible history, often while strolling on camera through the scene of the crime, talking to white residents and dredging up memories. He also uncovers some repellent images of a white mob trying to stop a peaceful, interracial civil rights march in the county in 1987. The marchers sing “We Shall Overcome.” The mob throws rocks.

There is so much more to the story than can be told by this 87-minute movie, which only casts glances at Reconstruction, the question of reparations and the bitter, enduring, living legacy of slavery. Although Mr. Williams somewhat overstates his case when he says that racial cleansing has “remained hidden,” there’s no denying that this ugly chapter deserves more than an occasional well-meaning documentary. (A national day of mourning might be a good start.) The 1997 fiction film “Rosewood” recounted one such expulsion that took place in central Florida in the 1920s, and journalists, activists and descendants, including those who appear in “Banished,” have dug into the archives and sifted through the evidence. Mr. Williams has done his own part to shed needed light, though I wish he had dug longer, harder.

In late 2006 The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., published a series about an 1898 white riot to destroy a political alliance between blacks and poor whites in Wilmington, N.C., where the literacy rates for black men were higher than those for whites. One agitator, a former Confederate soldier and the future mayor of Wilmington, vowed that he and other like-minded whites would never surrender “even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses.” What followed was a coup d’état, possibly the only time that a municipal government was toppled in American history. Black residents were murdered; the local black newspaper was torched, and survivors exiled. Reconstruction died, and Jim Crow moved right in.

But what I find interesting in this review, even with the commentary on the Wilmington incident (which I wrote about earlier), is the fact that a single word appears nowhere in the entire piece. This despite the fact that it is crucial to the story being told, and the evil being perpetrated. It points to the thing that linked the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators of these great evils, and the overwhelming beneficiary of them.

The missing word?

Democrat.

After all, the guilty individuals in most of these acts of domestic terrorism would have been Democrats, and the political party that benefited would have been the Democratic Party. It is an institution that today still benefits from the legacy of its own racism, even while trying to place the label of “racist” on its political opponents to obscure its racist past while exploiting black misery in the present. It is the party that placed a Klansman on the Supreme Court in the 1930s, and which still has an old Kluxer serving in the US Senate today.

For some reason, Manohla Dargis leaves those details out of the review. I hope that Marco Williams didn’t leave them out of the movie.

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Smoking pot while awaiting sentencing and subject to drug testing – how freakin’ stupid can you get?

A federal judge placed tighter restrictions on Michael Vick on Wednesday after the Atlanta Falcons quarterback tested positive for marijuana. Because of the result, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson placed special conditions on Vick’s release, including restricting him to his home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. with electronic monitoring and ordering him to submit to random drug testing.

The urine sample was submitted Sept. 13, according to a document by a federal probation officer that was filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.

This could result in a longer sentence for Vick, because the judge can take such violations of release conditions into account when determining the amount of time he must serve.

I wonder – will this violation lead to an additional suspension by the NFL under its drug policy after his release from prison (state or federal, as the case may be) and reinstatement in the NFL?

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Children at a downtown preschool got an unplanned lesson in animal rights activism when their pet rabbit was stolen and anti-circus fliers were left in the animal's cage.

Sugar Bunny vanished from the Community Building Children's Center during a celebration of building renovations Saturday evening, teachers said.

"Somebody stoled him," 5-year-old Zion told The Spokesman-Review, which gave only the first names of him and other children in a report on the heist. "I'm sad."

Lori Peters, a teacher, said watching, petting and playing with Sugar Bunny helped the little children overcome separation anxiety. The theft is being reported to police but it's unclear whether the preschool will find a new pet, she added.

The fliers that were left were for protests against the Ringling Brothers Circus, which was in town Friday through Sunday, and showed a picture of a bear trying to escape beneath the bars of a cage. Listed at the bottom were People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Northwest Animal Rights Network.

Save a child. Save a pet. Shoot an animal rights terrorist.

I’ve stayed out of this controversy, because every time I’ve tied to examine the facts the incident seems more and more muddied. After all, something is clearly wrong in Jena, Louisiana – but the facts underlying the incident are often obscured by the haze induced by the heated racial rhetoric (often amazingly fact-free) surrounding the incident.

The district attorney offers an explanation of why he brought the serious charges he did in this case. The heart of his argument is compelling, when one considers what actually happened last December at the high school.

Last week, a reporter asked me whether, if I had it to do over, I would do anything differently. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the answer is yes. I would have done a better job of explaining that the offenses of Dec. 4, 2006, did not stem from a “schoolyard fight” as it has been commonly described in the news media and by critics.

Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.

The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.

Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight?

Only the intervention of an uninvolved student protected Mr. Barker from severe injury or death. There was serious bodily harm inflicted with a dangerous weapon — the definition of aggravated second-degree battery. Mr. Bell’s conviction on that charge as an adult has been overturned, but I considered adult status appropriate because of his role as the instigator of the attack, the seriousness of the charge and his prior criminal record.

So what we have here is an attack on a kid completely uninvolved in the noose incident. It was unprovoked, with six young thugs kicking and stomping their unconscious victim. That isn’t a fight – it is an ambush designed to maim (and perhaps kill) a defenseless individual based, it would appear, solely upon race. Frankly, I’m disturbed that there is no hate-crime enhancement to these charges, just as I would expect there to be if a group of white kids did the same to a black kid. As a result, I think those aggravated battery charges are appropriate – and one could argue (as does prosecutor Reed Walters) that the adult charges against Bell were not unreasonable in light of his previous criminal record.

Where I disagree with Walters is his assessment of the criminality of the original noose incident. Surely there was some aspect of civil rights law, either state or federal, that might apply to what happened that day. The “prank” was clearly designed to discourage students from fully and freely exercising their civil rights at the high school, and as an incident taking place on public property ought to be treated in precisely the same manner as a cross-burning would have. But even if my position is wrong on this point, there is no possible way of justifying the assault on Justin Barker – which might best be described as an attempted lynching of an innocent man in the “best” race-hating tradition of the KKK.

Now do I fault people who have been outraged over the situation in Jena? No, I don’t – given the amount of misinformation out there it is hard to drill down to the facts. I wish the media had done a better job of reporting on this, and that the blogosphere had exercised a little more restraint before buying in to all the claims being made about the case by one side. This isn’t Selma, and it isn’t Scottsboro – let’s quit pretending it is.

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This seems to be the sort of thing he and his entourage might do.

Police flooded a Brooklyn precinct with extra cops yesterday following the discovery of swastikas and other anti-Semitic messages scrawled on two synagogues and several other buildings and cars. Twenty extra detectives were added to investigate the incident, which sent shivers through Brooklyn Heights. In addition to the swastikas found late Monday, the culprits placed on cars fliers that read, "All Jews Die. Israel Land of Jews Die," above a swastika and "SS." The rabbi at a synagogue violated with a swastika laid the blame on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying his visit inspires anti-Semites. "I think [his] visit here spurred hate-mongers to come out of the closet," said Rabbi Aaron Raskin of Congregation B'nai Avraham. "I have numerous congregants whose parents are survivors of the Holocaust. It brings up bad memories. [A swastika is] not just a symbol - it represents the deaths of 6 million people."

I think the good rabbi is correct – Mahmoud the Mad and his Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying rhetoric can bring the nut-jobs out of the woodwork to express the sort of bile spewed by this “world leader”.

Once upon a time, it was understood that a property owner could decide who they wanted to rent to – or who they did not want to rent to – based upon pretty much any standard they chose to set. After all, the government really had no business interfering in that decision on whether or not to enter into a contract with another.

Unfortunately, government decided to get involved. Sometimes it was through laws mandating racial or religious segregation, and later it was through laws banning such discrimination. As time moved on, we saw additional groups added to such “fair housing” laws, so that in many places one may not make such decisions based upon race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, family status, disability, veteran status, and a host of other criteria.

Do we now need to add laws preventing discrimination against those with tattoos and body/facial piercings?

Gilbert Carrillo thinks tattoos are an artform. He's been to tattoo conventions and one of his tattoos was featured in a magazine. "Ever since I was 18, to now, 25, bit by bit, covering up here, covering up there." But last month, Carrillo's tattoos kept him and his wife, Melissa, from moving into an apartment complex called the Villas at Medical Center. "We liked the apartment, we brought them a check for the deposit and a check for the application fee," says Melissa. Later, Gilbert went by to look at the apartment wearing a short sleeve shirt. The next day, the Carrillos were told they didn't qualify to live there, because the tattoos on Gilbert's arms violated the policy on personal appearance. "For them to be so judgmental on a person's appearance, and for them to judge someone based on them having a tattoo is just ridiculous, you know," says Melissa. The Carrillos were also upset that the manager refused to refund their full $70 application fee. But mostly, they feel the policy is discriminatory.

Ah, there we have the word – discriminatory. And they are, in fact right – but in the sense that one notices the differences among and between things and people and responds accordingly. There is no provision under the law that would (ordinarily) prohibit discrimination based upon body “art”.

We contacted one of the owners of the apartments: A southern California doctor named Edward Frankel. Frankel e-mailed us a statement saying his apartment complexes do, in fact, "reject prospective tenants who have... tattoos exposed on the neck, head, hands and wrists, or large tattoos that cover over 40% of the lower or upper arm." Frankel says, "We do not discriminate. The above applies to persons of any race, color, gender, etc." Frankel, and his partners, have purchased numerous upscale apartment complexes in San Antonio and Dallas, where they've also banned pierced eyebrows and tongues. Tenants can't have more than one nose piercing, or more than five earrings.

Fine – this is the standard the owner wants. One can argue it is absurd, but that is one of the nice things about property ownership – you get to make decisions about how to use your property. Do we really need to go the next step and have the government act to ban such discrimination? I certainly hope not.

Unfortunately, we have added so many exceptions to the right to determine who one rents to that I wouldn’t be surprised to see new law come out of this case. That’s too bad, because what we really need to do is restore the property rights of owners by repealing all or most of the limits placed upon the rental of real estate. While there might be some individuals and companies that make decisions that I find despicable, the reality is that my standards should not ordinarily be the basis for limiting property rights. After all -- is it really freedom if citizens are only permitted to act according to the dictates of government and the majority (ore even a vocal minority) find acceptable?

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Coalition forces have killed 165 jihadis.

Two battles killed more than 165 Taliban fighters and a U.S.-led coalition soldier in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday as President Hamid Karzai prepared to discuss the escalating violence with President Bush in New York. One of the clashes began Tuesday when several dozen insurgents attacked a joint coalition-Afghan patrol with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades near the Taliban-controlled town of Musa Qala in Helmand province, with Taliban reinforcements flowing in all day, a coalition statement said. The coalition said it returned artillery fire and called in fighter aircraft, killing more than 100 of the Taliban fighters. One coalition soldier was killed and four wounded. The coalition said there were no immediate reports of civilian deaths or injuries. Taliban militants overran Musa Qala in February, four months after British troops left the town following a contentious peace agreement that handed over security responsibilities to Afghan elders. Musa Qala has been in control of Taliban fighters ever since. Situated in northern Helmand province, Musa Qala and the region around it have seen the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan this year. It is also in the middle of the country's poppy-growing belt. In neighboring Uruzgan province, more than 80 Taliban fighters attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol from bunkers near the village of Kakrak in a six-hour battle Tuesday night, the coalition said. Coalition artillery and air support bombarded Taliban positions, killing more than 65 insurgents, it said. Three civilians were wounded in the crossfire, it said. No Afghan or coalition forces were hurt. The battle took place near an area where more than three dozen insurgents were killed as they prepared an ambush six days ago, the coalition said.

Here’s hoping that they enjoy eternity in Hell.

Laws that allow the seizure of assets when someone is convicted of a crime never bother me. But actions like this one strike me as heavy-handed, and lead me to question how they can be squared with our rights under the Constitution.

Driving 11 miles over the speed limit cost one driver more than a quarter-million dollars this weekend — at least for now.

A State Patrol trooper spotted a Honda Accord speeding southbound on Interstate 5 on Friday, according to State Patrol spokesman Jeff Merrill. It was raining, and the driver was cruising down the freeway at 71 mph. So the trooper pulled the driver over, Merrill said.

The 35-year-old from British Columbia, who had a valid driver's license, struggled to tell the trooper where he was going and how long he had been in Washington, prompting the trooper to search his car, Merrill said.

The trooper found two suitcases in the trunk — one filled with $276,640 in cash. The driver claimed he won the stacks of dollar bills at 23 casinos in Washington, California and Nevada, but he was unable to produce any receipts, according to Merrill.

The money was confiscated as the State Patrol investigates the incident. Merrill said if it is determined the man obtained the money legally it will be returned to him.

1) On what basis does one have to account for one's whereabouts to a police officer during a routine traffic stop?

2) How does the failure to do so constitute probable cause to search the vehicle?

3) Upon what basis does the government legitimately seize property and assets that are, on their face, legal to possess?

4) Shouldn't the burden here be the other way around -- why should any individual be required to prove that he obtained property legally to get it returned? Shouldn't the burden be on the state to prove otherwise?

Yes, I know -- I'm going to hear the phrase "War on Drugs". But doesn't that really beg the question?

Because a virtual fence will lead to virtual enforcement -- if there is any enforcement at all.

Technical and management troubles have caused the government's effort to secure a portion of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border with a chain of surveillance towers to fall behind schedule, jeopardizing the success of a costly project meant to showcase the Bush administration's tougher stance on immigration enforcement.

A $20 million pilot program to safeguard a 28-mile stretch of rough, mesquite-dotted terrain that straddles a smuggling corridor south of Tucson was supposed to be operational in June but now is expected to be delayed until the end of the year, according to the officials at the Department of Homeland Security who are overseeing it.

Ground radar and cameras that were to identify illegal border crossers so that armed patrols could be dispatched to capture them have had trouble distinguishing people and vehicles from cows and bushes. The sensors are also confused by moisture, the officials said.

Here's an idea -- brick and mortar for a real wall. It may seem to be rather old school, but it is demonstrated to work.

I understand niche marketing, but I find the notion of limiting distribution by ethnicity to be a bit troubling.

Nike today unveiled what it said is the first shoe designed specifically for American Indians, an effort aiming at promoting physical fitness in a population with high obesity rates.

The Beaverton-based company says the Air Native N7 is designed with a larger fit for the distinct foot shape of American Indians, and has a culturally specific look. It will be distributed solely to American Indians; tribal wellness programs and tribal schools nationwide will be able to purchase the shoe at wholesale price and then pass it along to individuals, often at no cost.

“Nike is aware of the growing health issues facing Native Americans,” said Sam McCracken, manager of Nike’s Native American Business program. “We are stepping up our commitment ... to elevate the issue of Native American health and wellness.”

Nike said it is the first time it has designed a shoe for a specific race or ethnicity. It said all profits from the sale of the shoe will be reinvested in health programs for tribal lands, where problems with obesity, diabetes and related conditions are near epidemic levels in some tribes.

Nike designers and researchers looked at the feet of more than 200 people from more than 70 tribes nationwide and found that in general, American Indians have a much wider and taller foot than the average shoe accommodates. The average shoe width of men and women measured was three width sizes larger than the standard Nike shoe.

As a result, the Air Native is wider with a larger toe box. The shoe has fewer seams for irritation and a thicker sock liner for comfort.

However, let's be honest -- it would be nice if Nike would market such shoes for a more general population. I've never been able to buy Nike shoes because I have very wide, taller feet than their product is designed to fit. Indeed, there are only two brands of athletic shoes that fit me comfortably -- and not even all the styles from those companies. I'd love to be able to get shoes designed to actually fit my feet -- a particular concern for me in light of my diabetes -- if only they were on the market. Maybe someday Nike will be interested in making shoes that fit me and other non-ethnic Americans who need a bigger shoe.

We'll know within the year if we can require the same standard of proof of identity to vote that we do for cashing checks or getting on airplanes.

With the 2008 presidential and Congressional elections on the horizon, the Supreme Court agreed today to consider whether voter-identification laws unfairly keep poor people and members of minority groups from going to the polls.

The justices will hear arguments from an Indiana case, in which a federal district judge and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in January upheld a state law requiring, with certain exceptions, that someone wanting to vote in person in a primary or general election present a government-issued photo identification. Presumably, the court would rule on the case by June.

I think the rulings of the appellate court judges in this case are interesting because they are both correct. Especially this point by the Democrat judge who wrote the dissent in the case.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” [Judge Terence T. Evans] wrote. “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”

Quite true. Having grown up outside of Chicago, I readily affirm that my support for such laws is based upon my explicit and conscious desire to disenfranchise certain key Democrat constituencies.

Dead-Americans.

Fantasy-Americans.

Felon-Americans.

"Not American Citizen"-Americans.

After all, those groups have been key to influencing elections and preventing GOP victories for years. And I believe that keeping members of these groups from voting violates nobody's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment -- especially when the necessary identification documents are available free to American citizens under the voter ID laws.

When images seen as disrespectful of Muhammad are published or displayed, there are riots, death threats, and demands for government apologies. Artists have to go into hiding, and receive police protection.

When similar artwork is done of Christ, the response is much more muted.

A SWEDISH artist unveiled a sculpture depicting Christ as a well-endowed dog, saying he wanted to stimulate debate about religion and freedom of expression in the wake of a row over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

The artwork showed Jesus as a dog with a bloodstained head under a crown of thorns and an “enormous sexual organ”, according to Swedish press agency TT.

However, within hours of the sculpture being installed on a roundabout in Skaanes Fagerhult, a town in the south of Sweden, it disappeared.

“I want religion to stop taking society and the vulnerable for idiots,” the 59-year-old artist, Stig Ramsing, told the online version of Helsingborgs Dagblad newspaper.

In Nordic countries the display of outlandish sculptures of dogs on roundabouts is a familiar art form which has become common in the past decade.

“It is my turn to follow (artist) Lars Vilks and provoke a sensible discussion about religion,” Ramsing said.

Vilks is the Swedish artist whose cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a dog's body published in the Swedish press triggered controversy both in Sweden and other countries.

Sweden saw protests against Vilks's cartoon, while Egypt, Iran and Pakistan made diplomatic protests about the image. Death threats were also made against both Vilks and the editor of the newspaper which published the satirical cartoon.

Will Sweden apologize to the world's Christians? Will the pope put a price on Ramsing's head? How many Swedish embassies and consulates will rioting Christians burn? I think the answer to these questions is obvious -- Christians will do none of these.

What does that tell you about the nature of the two religions? Which one is really a religion of peace?

I cannot disagree with this editorial in today's WaPo.

THEY SAY three times is a charm -- except when it comes to getting a common-sense bill through the Senate by unanimous consent that would require its members and candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically. The latest attempt was killed by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.). At least he objected publicly.

Since April, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Rules and Administration Committee, has been trying to get the Senate to bring its filing system into the 21st century. Candidates for the House and for the White House have had to file their campaign finance reports electronically for years, as have political parties, political action committees and "527" groups. There is no good reason the Senate should not be doing the same.

Yet senators, particularly Republican senators, are blocking the innovation at every turn. The first two attempts at passage were beaten back with an anonymous hold. The reason was never given, and the identity of the objector not revealed, thanks to a fine Senate tradition. But after Congress approved the new ethics law last month, those who place holds on legislation must come forward within six days. Thus, Mr. Ensign objected publicly -- and offered a poison pill amendment.

Mr. Ensign wanted to add a provision to the electronic filing bill that would require an organization filing an ethics complaint against a senator to list donors who have given the group $5,000 or more. The idea deserves a debate in committee, as Ms. Feinstein offered. To try to push it through as a last-minute, non-germane add-on serves no purpose other than to kill the overall bill.

There is absolutely no reason that these documents should not be filed in a manner consistent with every other similar disclosure. My party needs to get out of the way and allow it to be done.

This incredible story makes me cringe.

AN Croatian motorbike rider was knocked unconscious when lightning struck his penis during a roadside toilet break.

Metro.co.uk reported Ante Djindjic, 29, escaped relatively unscathed from the incident, suffering only light burns to his chest and arms.

He said: "I don't remember what happened. One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.

"Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis."

"Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually."

That's just as long as lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice.

I asked it before, and I ask it again – can the rest of the US dump the city of my birth from America?

Once again, the city insults the military.

New York said "yes," but we said "no." Why were the U.S. Marines denied permission to film a recruiting commercial on the streets of San Francisco?

San Francisco is, once again, the center of a controversy over how city leaders treat the U.S. military. This time, it involves an elite group of Marines who wanted to film a recruitment commercial in San Francisco on the anniversary of 9/11.

The tension has been building in the two weeks since the city turned away members of the Silent Drill Platoon, and it boiled over Monday afternoon at a meeting of the San Francisco Film Commission.

The U.S. Marine Silent Drill Platoon performed Monday morning in New York's Times Square. They filmed part of a recruitment commercial through the start of the morning rush hour -- something they could not do in San Francisco on the anniversary of 9/11.

"It's insulting, it's demeaning. This woman is going to insult these young heroes by just arbitrarily saying, 'no, you're not going to film any Marines on California Street," said Captain Greg Corrales of the SFPD Traffic Bureau.

Captain Greg Corrales commands the police traffic bureau that works with crews shooting commercials, TV shows and movies in the city. He's also a Marine veteran and his son is serving his third tour of duty in Iraq.

He says Film Commission Executive Director Stefanie Coyote would only allow the Marine's production crew to film on California Street if there were no Marines in the picture. They wound up filming the empty street and will have to superimpose the Marines later.

Interestingly enough, they only needed a single lane shut down, and only for a few minutes at a time. The city regularly does more than that for construction purposes – and private businesses often hire off-duty cops to do the same thing on major streets so that their employees can exit parking lots. For that matter, the city regularly allows anti-American anti-military and political protests to block streets for longer periods of time, including during rush hour. But to let representatives of our nation’s military do so would clearly have been beyond the pale to the leftards in San Francisco city government.

So yes, let’s act as a nation and secede from San Francisco – set up the border checkpoints and build a wall to keep them out of our country.

Especially in light of what they will shut multiple streets for annually after denying the US Marine Corps a few brief minutes in one lane.

Organizers of San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair -- sponsored by Miller Brewing Co. -- have portrayed Christ and his disciples as half-naked homosexual sadomasochists in the event's promotional advertisement, and the conservative group Concerned Women for America is complaining about the hypocrisy of it.

"The bread and wine representing Christ's broken body and lifegiving blood are replaced with sadomasochistic sex toys in this twisted version of Da Vinci's The Last Supper," CWA said on its Web site.

"'Gay' activists disingenuously call Christians 'haters' and 'homophobes' for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse," said said Matt Barber, CWA's policy director for cultural issues.

"In their version of The Last Supper, Christ, Who gave His life for our sins, is despicably replaced by sin itself as the object of worship."

* * *

Concerned Women for America called it "shocking and offensive" that California taxpayers are forced to foot part of the bill for the Folsom Street Fair. The City of San Francisco sanctions the event by shutting down several city blocks and providing police for security.

So let’s get this “straight” – streets cannot be closed for the US Marine Corps, but will be closed for an anti-Christian festival celebrating gay sado-masochism. I guess those are what we call “San Francisco family values”.

H/T Michelle Malkin (twice), Right Voices (twice), Bookworm Room, Crush Liberalism, Stop the ACLU

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That should settle matters, as the method of execution was one which the founders clearly viewed as not being “cruel and unusual punishment” due to its ubiquity at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

Such a course of action would clearly undo the ponderous jurisprudence of the Supreme Court on the death penalty, and what methods of execution are permissible.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country.

The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky — Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month.

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions.

But until Tuesday, the justices had never agreed to consider the fundamental question of whether the mix of drugs used in Kentucky and elsewhere violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

All 37 states that perform lethal injections use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 11 states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel. The three drugs consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.

Personally, though, I have to note that the entire debate over the constitutionality of any given form of the death penalty seems to be absurd to me. Look at the terms. Capital Punishment. Death Penalty. The goal is not to rehabilitate or show mercy – it is to exact retribution for the misdeeds of the condemned. The time has come, quite frankly, to get over the misguided notion that these folks have a right to experience no pain or suffering as they are executed. Maybe a little pain and suffering would even be good for their souls – or perhaps a foretaste of what they will experience for all eternity.

Hearts stopped and more than a few prayers were said at Reliant Stadium Sunday as Houston Texans DT Cedric Killings was removed from the field on a stretcher after what was clearly a serious injury. Those prayers seem to have been answered.

When Texans defensive tackle Cedric Killings stood up next to his bed Monday morning, the doctors and hospital personnel applauded. All indications point toward Killings eventually walking out of Methodist Hospital.

But there are a number of questions surrounding Killings' future as he tries to recover from a fractured vertebra. Killings, who initially had no feelings in his arms or legs, fractured his C-4 vertebra in the second quarter when he collided with Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Roy Hall on a kickoff return.

Team doctors said Monday that Killings, 29, has complete movement in his both of his legs, but his hands remain weak and so does his left arm. They said they are waiting to see if that changes in the coming days.

The C-4 is one of two vertebrae fractured by Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett two weeks ago. Everett is rehabilitating at Memorial Hermann Hospital, and has only limited motor function in his arms and legs. He is not yet able to walk.

The Bills' Everett is a local boy, so the Killings injury hit home for a lot of us in the stadium who immediately thought of the incident only two weeks ago. I'm thrilled to hear that Killings is doing better -- and that Everett is near to friends and family, and on the slow road to recovery.

Unfortunately, we have some other injury news that may have more of an immediate impact on the season, one that saw the Texans off to a strong start after five years of less-than-mediocrity.

Center Steve McKinney cannot believe the timing of it all. During five losing — and often hopeless — seasons, McKinney was on the offensive line trying to help lift the Texans to respectability.

If the Texans finally do record their first winning record this season, McKinney will be forced to watch from the sidelines.

During the 30-24 loss to the Colts on Sunday, McKinney suffered the first serious injury of his NFL career when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. He must undergo season-ending surgery, and will be replaced in the starting lineup by 12-year veteran Mike Flanagan.

The loss of McKinney will be keenly felt, for he is a great performer on the field and a team leader.

And he isn't the only injury that will impact the starting lineup.

Coach Gary Kubiak said he is confident backup running back Ron Dayne (bruised ribs) will be able to play this weekend against Atlanta.

Ahman Green, who hasn't finished the last two games with a bruised knee, received positive news from an MRI, but said he doesn't know if he will be able to play Sunday. Tests revealed no damage to the knee.

"It's just sore," Green said. "(The MRI showed) nothing bad, just swelling. I'm grateful for that."

Kubiak said Green bruised the knee against Kansas City in the season opener, and it has gotten worse.

He is hopeful Green will start. If not, Dayne will fill in and Samkon Gado will back him up.

Of more immediate concern is the wide receiver position. Jacoby Jones will be out two to three weeks with a separated shoulder. He started the first game of his career against the Colts, filling in for Andre Johnson, who is out with a knee sprain.

Johnson will not return this week, either. Sunday was the first time he was allowed to bend his knee since suffering the sprain Sept. 16 against the Carolina Panthers.

Johnson sprained the posterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament in his left knee, and must wait until they both heal.

"It's like I'm learning to walk normally again," Johnson said. "I've been in a brace for the whole week. Now, I have slack in my brace where I can bend my knee."

Fortunately, we seem likely to get WR Andre Davis back after his finger injury.

But let's be honest -- we need Johnson, Green, and Jacoby back to bolster an offense that has done a good job in the opening weeks of the season. They are performers for the Texans, and without them the talent pool is definitely a bit shallower.

This is one of the worst political moves that I have ever sen -- and it is quite unclear who is responsible for it. Rudy Giuliani needs to step in and quash this plan immediately, and disassociate himself from those who originated it -- or else appear guilty of the most heinous act of pimping the events of 9/11.

A supporter of Rudy Giuliani's is throwing a party that aims to raise $9.11 per person for the Republican's presidential campaign.

Abraham Sofaer is having a fundraiser at his Palo Alto, Calif., home on Wednesday, when Giuliani backers across the country are participating in the campaign's national house party night.

But Sofaer said he had nothing to do with the "$9.11 for Rudy" theme.

"There are some young people who came up with it," Sofaer said when reached by telephone Monday evening. He referred other questions to Giuliani's campaign.

"I'm just providing support for him. He's an old friend of mine," Sofaer said of Giuliani.

I'm sorry -- the symbolism here is atrocious. Yes, Giuliani has made the events of that horrible day a centerpiece of his campaign, but this simply leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Better that the party be canceled and the funds be unraised than this sick idea move forward and tarnish the Giuliani campaign.

UPDATE: Don Surer disagrees.

Looks like he may have state time to do, too.

The prosecutor in the county where Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick has admitted to bankrolling a dogfighting operation plans to present evidence to the grand jury, Tuesday, that could possibly lead to an indictment.

"Yes, I'm presenting matters to the grand jury that involve dogfighting at 1915 Moonlight Road," Surry County Commonwealth Attorney Gerald G. Poindexter told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday night.

* * *

Poindexter couldn't detail the exact indictments he will pursue, but said the local investigation and the federal investigation largely focused on different crimes.

"The killing of dogs is one of those statutory prohibitions. Dogfighting is a crime, the mistreatment of animals is a crime, so you could take your pick, or take them all," Poindexter said before cutting the conversation short. "I don't have anything else to say about it. I'm through with it. Hopefully it's coming to an end."

The real question, other than the nature of the state charges, is whether the sentence will be served concurrently with or consecutively to the federal sentence that has yet to be imposed. If the latter, Michael Vick could find himself doing significantly longer prison time than he expected.

UPDATE: Vick indicted on state charges.

Michael Vick and three co-defendants were indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on state charges related to a dogfighting ring operated on Vick's Virginia property.

Vick, who already pleaded guilty in federal court to a dogfighting conspiracy charge and is awaiting sentencing Dec. 10, was indicted on one count of beating or killing or causing dogs to fight other dogs and one count of engaging in or promoting dogfighting. Each count is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

And since these are state charges, there should not be any question of double jeopardy.

Is the jump in violent crime an aberrational spike or a sign of something else at work?

Violent crime in the United States rose more than previously believed in 2006, continuing the most significant increase in more than a decade, according to an FBI report released yesterday.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program found that robberies surged by 7.2 percent and homicides rose 1.8 percent from 2005 to 2006. Violent crime overall rose 1.9 percent, substantially more than an increase of 1.3 percent estimated in a preliminary FBI report in June.

The jump was the second in two years, following a 2.3 percent rise in 2005. Taken together, the two years represent the first steady increase in violent crime since 1993, FBI records show.

The uptick presents a significant political challenge for the Bush administration, which has faced growing criticism from congressional Democrats, big-city mayors and police chiefs for presiding over cuts in federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies over the past six years.

Frankly, the increase is troubling, though coming after a decade of decline might not be surprising as they initially seem. And the issue of cuts in federal aid to local law enforcement begs the question of whether local law enforcement should be funded at the federal level.

However, there seems to be a question that isn't answered by this story. To what degree does the surge in violent crime constitute a surge in gang-related crime connected to groups such as MS-13? And related to it, to what degree is the increase connected to the illegal alien population more generally?

This is not a question of scapegoating, but a genuine inquiry based upon increased media coverage of Latin American drug gangs and crimes committed by the undocumented. Are those real phenomena, or are they simply ratings boosting yellow journalism? And if the increase is connected to illegal immigration, to what degree should that impact the debate about border security and immigration amnesty programs?

Sadly, we may not be able to get those breakdowns -- the FBI classifies Hispanic perpetrators as White, so the data is not readily available to the public.

But the numbers for black-on-black crime are astounding, with there being nearly as many murders committed by that relatively small population segment against that relatively small population segment as there are by the many times larger white population against any ethnic group. That does sort of make one wonder about the focus on the questionable prosecution of the Jena 6 when there is obviously a much more pressing problem facing the black community. When will we see the major civil rights organizations making an effective effort to stem black-on-black violence in the face of a "no snitchin'" culture?

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Kill the negative story about Hill or you don't get the promised story about Bill.

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

GQ writer George Saunders traveled with Clinton to Africa in July, and Clinton is slated to appear on the cover of GQ’s December issue, in which it traditionally names a “Man of the Year,” according magazine industry sources.

A couple of thoughts here.

1) Why would any media outlet be making Bill Clinton its cover boy in 2007 -- especially its man of the year?

2) What does this say about the Clinton machine's media manipulation strategy?

3) Would the media put up such manipulation from any Republican?

H/T Captain's Quarters, Stop the ACLU

And here I thought the shelf-life of the Larry Craig story had expired with the arrest of OJ and the Britney custody saga. I guess not.

The prosecutor who brought charges against Sen. Larry Craig in an airport sex sting says he told the Idaho senator that he should hire an attorney, according to court papers filed Monday.

Prosecutor Christopher Renz, in a motion opposing Craig's request to withdraw his guilty plea, wrote that he spent considerable time in a July 17 conversation telling the Idaho senator how the legal process would work if he chose to plead guilty.

"The defendant told Mr. Renz that he felt he was in a difficult situation as the result of the public office he held, in response to which Mr. Renz said that he appreciated that difficulty and for that reason the defendant should consult with an attorney," Renz wrote.

Craig, R-Idaho, did not, and eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He has since said that he was panicked into admitting to a crime he did not commit. A Hennepin County judge is set to consider Craig's request on Wednesday.

Let's call "bullshit" on that claim of panic. That might work if we were talking about bing dragged right into night court for a quickie plea to seeking a quickie in the loo -- but not when there was an eight-week gap between the offense and the court date. Larry Craig had plenty of time to consult a friendly attorney confidentially. He had plenty of time to do his onw legal research. He did none of that -- he simply tried to cover up his acts.

In my book, the best claim he has is that the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain a conviction -- but since he pled guilty to the offense, I think that boat has sailed and Larry Craig missed his opportunity to raise it.

Just go away, Senator -- and quit disgracing your state and your party.

You may notice I've added a new blogroll here at RWR -- One ascribing to the Cowboy Code.

What is the Cowboy Code?

The Cowboy Code

1. A cowboy always tells the truth and keeps his word.

2. A cowboy is a Patriot and stands for Truth, Justice and the American way.

3. A cowboy never betrays a trust or takes advantage.

4. A cowboy is brave, but never careless.

5. A cowboy defends the weak and helps them.

6. A cowboy is kind to children, old folks, and to animals.

7. A cowboy is free from racial and religious prejudice.

8. A cowboy is clean about his person and in thought, word, and deed.

9. A cowboy is loyal, hard working and maintains a high ethic.

10. A cowboy is thankful for what God has given him.

Seems like the sort of Texas values I ascribe to.

After all, the building where the Holocaust-denying, Israel-hating anti-Semite spoke today was named for and funded in large part by donations from philanthropist Alfred Lerner.

Alfred Lerner Hall, the main student center, was named for the late Jewish philanthropist who donated $25 million to the school.

It is an "obscenity" that the Iranian is speaking there, said Rabbi Gerald Skolnik of Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens, to which Lerner also gave. "To have a Holocaust-denying, nuclear-aspiring hatemonger speaking in a hall that bears his name in the interest of 'free speech,' it's just the wrong person in the wrong place."

Lerner, who died in 2002 at 69, was born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrants. He was a 1955 Columbia graduate and a Marine pilot. He became chairman of MBNA Corp. and owned the Cleveland Browns football team. Lerner donated a fortune to the Cleveland Clinic and created a fund to help families of first responders killed on 9/11. He also gave generously to the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, which assists aging unsung heroes from World War II who helped save Jews during the Holocaust and educates teachers about the genocide

Thank you, Columbia University, for pissing on the grave of a great man and a great patriot. May no American, and especially no Jewish American, give your pathetic excuse for a university a single penny in donations.

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This kid offers the most inane reason for opting-out of military service in Israel.

To many she is a traitor, a coward and a parasite. But 17-year-old Israeli "draft dodger" Saar Vardi says if more people thought like her, the Middle East would be a more peaceful place.

Vardi is part of a growing group of young Israelis who are refusing to sign up for mandatory military service, often in protest over the Jewish state's occupation of Palestinian territory or because of last year's unpopular war in Lebanon.

* * *

"People refer to me as a traitor and say that my country has given me so much and I'm not willing to give anything back, like a parasite," Vardi, a student, told Reuters.

"But I know what I believe ... If truly everyone saw things the way I see them then we wouldn't need an army."

Actually, Saar Vardi has it wrong – if everyone saw things like she does, then there would not be an Israel. Maybe the lack of a major fight for the survival of Israel since 1973 has resulted in a weakening in the resolve of that nation’s young people to ensure their homeland’s survival. Maybe distance from the Holocaust has made the notion that Jews must fight for survival an alien thought. But regardless, I fear for the future of Israel in a sea of hostile neighbors.

Maybe these archaic things will disappear if this sort of fraud is prosecuted like it would be in any other case.

When Ashley Wood was crowned Miss South Carolina in 2004, she thought her title came not only with a tiara and a shot at Miss America, but also a $20,000 state scholarship and $5,000 national pageant scholarship.

This fall, Ms. Wood entered the Wharton School, the business-studies arm of the University of Pennsylvania. But she has yet to receive any of that scholarship money, having been locked in a dispute with the Miss South Carolina pageant for more than two years.

“You are talking about an organization that is promoting itself as the largest scholarship provider for women in the world,” Ms. Wood, 26, said of the Miss America Organization. “When contestants try to collect their funds, they encounter one obstacle after another.”

Ms. Wood said she was told that she would not get the $20,000 for winning the Miss South Carolina pageant in part because her two local pageants had not paid her $950 that she had won from them (Ms. Wood said that after she enrolled in classes, one group reneged on payment and the other dodged her when she tried to collect). In turn, because she did not receive the state money, the national pageant sent her a letter in June saying she was ineligible for the $5,000 from it, even though the deadline to use her national scholarship had not passed. “It’s like a game of gotcha,” she said. “What is very clear to me is that the goal is to not give out the scholarships if at all possible.”

Most of us have believed that the ugly underbelly of the pageants was the sexism and the unhealthy competition between contestants and their parents. I see now that the real problem is the financial shenanigans and broken promises f the pageants themselves.

But some will still deny that the Jews occupied Israel in the past, will still deny the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, and will still advocate for their expulsion from the Holy Land. Historical evidence like this doesn't matter to them -- or to international organizations and "prestigious" universities that give such folks a platform to speak.

An ancient quarry where King Herod's workers chiseled huge high-quality limestones for the construction of the Second Temple, including the Western Wall, has been uncovered in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Sunday.

The quarry, which is located four kilometers northwest of the Old City of Jerusalem in the city's outlying Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, was used 2,000 years ago by dozens of King Herod's workers at the site during the construction of the Second Temple walls, archeologist Yuval Baruch said.

"This unique and sensational find is the first Second Temple quarry ever found," he said.

The site, which spans at least five dunams, was uncovered by chance during a "salvage excavation" carried out by the state-run archeological body over the last two months following municipal plans to build an elementary school in the area, he said.

Dozens of quarries have previously been uncovered in Jerusalem - including ones larger than the present find - but this is the first one that archeologists have found which they believe was used in the construction of the Temple Mount itself, Baruch said.

Archeologists had previously assumed that the quarry which was used to construct the Temple Mount was located within the Old City itself, but the enormous size of the stones found at the site - up to 8 meters long - as well as coins and fragments of pottery vessels dating back to the first century CE indicated that this was the site used 2,000 years ago in the construction of the walls of the Temple Mount, including the Western Wall.

"We have never found any other monument in Israel with stones this size except for the Temple Mount walls," Baruch said.

One more bit of proof of the undeniable presence of the Jews in Israel. One more bit of evidence for the Jewish nature and history of Temple Mount. One more fact to throw back at the anti-Semites.

And may we see the Temple rebuilt in our lifetimes.

Come on -- let Grandpa and Great Aunt Martha have their doughnuts.

It was just another morning at the senior center: Women were sewing, men were playing pool — and seven demonstrators, average age 76, were picketing outside, demanding doughnuts.

They wore sandwich boards proclaiming, "Give Us Our Just Desserts" and "They're Carbs, Not Contraband."

At issue is a decision to refuse free doughnuts, pies and breads that were being donated to senior centers around Putnam County, north of New York City. Officials were concerned that the county was setting a bad nutritional precedent by providing mounds of doughnuts and other sweets to seniors.

The picketers said they were objecting not to a lack of sweets but that they weren't consulted about the ban.

"Lack of respect is what it's all about," said Joe Hajkowski, 75, a former labor union official who organized the demonstration. He said officials had implied that seniors were gorging themselves on jelly doughnuts and were too senile to make the choice for themselves.

Of course, this is precisely the problem when government is making the decisions. They don't consult you -- they decide for you.

Jon Edwards wants to tell us when we must go to the doctor. County officials want to tell seniors what they can have for a snack. Do we really want more government regulation of our lives?

Every now and then, liberal commentators have to pull out the same old template to comment on Republican racism. Never mind that the position is untrue -- it is holy writ among the Left, and must therefore be preached upon regularly.

And so you get this old chestnut from Paul Krugman.

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered. In 2000, Mr. Bush made a pilgrimage to Bob Jones University, famed at the time for its ban on interracial dating.

And all four leading Republican candidates for the 2008 nomination have turned down an invitation to a debate on minority issues scheduled to air on PBS this week.

Ah, yes -- the liberal intones the mantra: Republicans are racist.

But let's look at those examples Krugman cites.

Yes, Reagan did oppose the Fair Housing Act -- but not on the grounds that discrimination was a moral good, but rather because of a belief that the government should not be regulating how private individuals control their own property. Having watched an elderly family member suffer through an investigation of her refusal to sell her home to a black couple with lousy credit (they wanted a 75 year old woman to finance the sale herself for 10 years because they could not qualify for a mortgage with a bank) before selling to a white couple with cash in hand, I can't help but sometimes feel that the government has no business in this field.

For that matter, the Philadelphia, Mississippi speech --w hcih came after teh GOP convention, not at the beginning of his presidential run, reflected the same themes that Reagan had been addressing for years, as California Governor, as a radio commentator, and as a candidate for the GOP nomination. While the choice of Philadelphia Mississippi may have been questionable, it was not chosen because of its racial symbolism. Rather, it was chosen because of an invitation from a leading Republican congressman whose district included Philadelphia -- Trent Lott.

And as for Bush visiting Bob Jones University (a place which I believe no civilized individual should patronize), I can only note that he spoke to many groups in many places in South Carolina. I'm curious -- will Krugman insist that n Democrat speak at Columbia University this year (or in any future year) because of the platform given to Mahmoud the Mad this week? Will he label any candidate who does speak at Columbia as objectively pro-terrorist and anti-Semitic? I think we know the answer -- so why does speaking at BJU indicate that the candidate is somehow racist or insensitive? Could it be that Krugman is warm to terrorists and cold towards Jews?

And as noted recently by many major outlets, the GOP candidates turned down the PBS debate because it comes two days before the quarterly fundraising deadline. But Krugman would prefer to impute racism where none exists because it fits the template.

The GOP has, throughout its history, done more to provide opportunity for racial and ethnic minorities than the Democrats. What's more, it has done so without pandering to racial separatism, but rather by appealing to racial equality. But that won't make the cut in a Krugman column -- because it doesn't fit the template.

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Yes, Rudy Giuliani didn't see terrorism as a threat before 9/11. Neither did most of America, Republican and Democrat, with the Clinton Administration being key among those who missed the threat level after the 1993 truck bomb in the World Trade Center.

Today, Rudy Giuliani has learned from that mistake following the horror of 9/11 -- but the Washington Post seems intent upon minimizing the reason for the change in his evaluation of the terrorist threat.

As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns for president, he rarely misses a chance to warn about the threat from terrorists. "They hate you," he told a woman at an Atlanta college. They "want to kill us," he told guests at a Virginia luncheon.

The former New York City mayor exhorts America to fight back in what he calls the "terrorists' war on us" and accuses Democrats of reverting to their "denial" in the 1990s, when, he said, President Bill Clinton erred by treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, not a war.

Democrats, he said in July, have "the same bad judgment they had in the 1990s. They don't see the threat. They don't accept the threat."

It is a powerful message coming from the man who won global acclaim for his calm and resolve after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But it is undercut by Giuliani's record as mayor and by his public statements about terrorism since the 1990s, which document an evolution in thinking that began with a mind-set similar to the one he criticizes today.

And therein lies the difference -- in the 1990s, Rudy followed the prevailing wisdom that terrorism needed to be treated as a crime problem and handled by the courts. Today, he recognizes it as a national security problem that needs to be handled by other means. Democrats still want to handle the problem with cops and judges.

What it comes down to is this -- in a post-9/11 world, do we continue to follow 9/10 strategies. Rudy, who lived the devastation of 9/11, understands that we cannot. Rather than being criticized for holding a different view on handling the terrorist threat today than he did a decade ago, Giuliani needs to be applauded for moving forward rather than sticking with the failed policies of the past.

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Can the Texans make it 3-0 this week? The loss of Andre Johnson is a problem, though, and the Colts are dominant. Still, a much-less talented Houston team beat the Colts last year as they prepared for their Super bowl run.

CBS had disabled embedding for the YouTube analysis of the game, but you can see it here.

In the mean time, here is another analysis for you.

This is a nationally televised this week, so let's hope they acquit themselves well and pull another miracle out of their hat.

Oklahoma State University QB Bobby Reid is a graduate the high school where I teach. He was really savaged in a column this week by a hack reporter for one of the local papers. Coach Mike Gundy went off about it yesterday.

Bobby Reid is a fine young man. Thank you, Coach Gundy, for standing up for him.

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Let me explain.

Mitt Romney has remained mum on the alleged killing of 11 Iraqis by a company where one of his top advisers serves as vice chairman, even as the case has led to an uproar in Baghdad and Washington. Barack Obama, John McCain and other politicians have raised the possibility of tighter controls on the firm.

The top counterterrorism and national security adviser to Romney’s presidential campaign is Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA. The Iraqis died after guards employed by the private security firm opened fire following an alleged attack on a State Department convoy under their protection. Blackwater has a lucrative contract to guard U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Frankly, I think the Romney/Blackwater connection is a red herring. Romney should remain silent pending the outcome of this case, because we remain unsure of what happened and he should not be politicizing it or prejudging it.

This is the same position I took with regard to the irresponsible words of John Murtha, the corrupt, cowardly cut-and-run congressman from Pennsylvania. He gave a press conference declaring the Haditha marines guilty of war crimes and murder -- only to later see those men cleared. He still has not retracted his libel against them. I'd rather that Romney remain silent than follow such a shameful path.

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I can't help but note this fine profile of Justice John Paul Stevens. I encourage folks to read it -- and will likely assign it to my students the next time I teach US Government. It gives a fine insight into a complex jurist of the highest caliber -- though one with whom I often disagree on the outcome and reasoning of cases.

But I'm struck by this story.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941, Stevens enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, hours before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He later won a bronze star for his service as a cryptographer, after he helped break the code that informed American officials that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was about to travel to the front. Based on the code-breaking of Stevens and others, U.S. pilots, on Roosevelt’s orders, shot down Yamamoto’s plane in April 1943.

Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, he said, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “I was on the desk, on watch, when I got word that they had shot down Yamamoto in the Solomon Islands, and I remember thinking: This is a particular individual they went out to intercept,” he said. “There is a very different notion when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.” Stevens said that, partly as a result of his World War II experience, he has tried on the court to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death penalty and to ensure that it is imposed fairly and accurately. He has been the most outspoken critic of the death penalty on the current court.

One can look at the death penalty from many different points of view, and this is one upon which I differ with Stevens -- particularly because the death penalty is clearly authorized in the Eighth Amendment, and therefore unambiguously constitutional. But his view on the intentional, targeted killing of Yamamoto strikes me as misplaced.

Yes, killing a random soldier or sailor is in some ways different from making a particular officer a target, with the intent of ending his life. But for all his Stevens' moral qualms, I think it is important to remember that military commanders, not just the man in the trenches, are legitimate targets. There really is no moral distinction between the two. And I wonder -- would he feel the same had he instead helped locate Hitler and therefore brought about the demise of that evil man (and likely the end of the war)?

But not the one that Toobin tries to reveal in regards to the Bush v. Gore decision.

O’Connor was clearly Toobin’s most important source. She’s also — readers can decide if it’s coincidental — his hero: the justice, he argues, who through her pragmatic, seat-of-the-pants jurisprudence single-handedly kept the court close to the American mainstream, particularly on matters like reproductive freedom and affirmative action.

Excuse me -- court decisions, especially Supreme Court decisions, are not supposed to be based upon considerations like the political opinions of the majority of Americans or a judge's views of the same. They are supposed to be rooted in precedent, law, and the Constitution. If the picture painted by Jeffrey Toobin (and characterized above by reviewer David Margolick) is correct, Sandra Day O'Connor was unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court and performed her duties in an unfit manner for nearly a quarter of a century. It explains what I have long pointed out in my college level American government classes -- the lack of a clearly consistent jurisprudence on O'Connor's part. She is too busy trying to shape policy based upon some majoritarian impulse more appropriate to the Legislative or Executive branches.

As one of my students noted in a paper some years ago, an O'Connor opinion (especially when compared to those of her fellow justices) often seemed to be a conclusion in search of reasoning to support it. Now we know why.

Oh, one other comment on a Toobin tidbit discussed in the review.

Why were O’Connor and Stevens the only colleagues the dying Rehnquist allowed into his home? And who most regularly persuades whom (if, on such a factionalized court, there’s any persuasion going on at all)?

Simple -- O'Connor and Rehnquist had known each other since their days at Stanford Law School (it is even suggested that there might have been a few dates). Stevens and Rehnquist had become fast friends in the latter's early days on the Court and worked together for some 30 years. The rest of the justices were at least a decade younger and had a decade less service on the Court -- and had all come aboard AFTER (or in Scalia's case, concurrent with) Rehnquist's move to the center chair on the bench. Their relationships were therefore different from the rest.

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The day before coming to America to speak to the UN and (based upon his request) desecrate Ground Zero.

A day before flying to New York to speak directly to the American people, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a confrontational tone Saturday with a parade of fighter jets and missiles and tough warnings for the United States to stay out of the Mideast.

Three new domestically manufactured warplanes streaked over the capital during the parade marking the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which sparked a 1980-88 war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The parade also featured the Ghadr missile, which has a range of 1,120 miles, capable of reaching Israel.

Some of the missile trucks were painted with the slogans "Down with the U.S." and "Down with Israel." The parade also featured unmanned aerial surveillance drones, torpedoes, and tanks.

Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran over U.S. accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target U.S. troops. Iran denies the claims.

Washington has said it is addressing the Iran situation diplomatically, rather than militarily, but U.S. officials also say that all options are open.

Our government needs to revoke Mahmoud the Mad's permission to enter America -- screw the UN and the Host Country Agreement. After all, what enforcement power do the terrorist supporters at the UN actually have?

On the other hand, assuming that this Iranian pig is allowed to enter the US, American citizens ought and should fully exercises their rights under the US Constitution to make him unwelcome at every turn. And if Mahmoud the Mad does attempt the desecration of Ground Zero, he must be physically prevented by doing so by American citizens. What's more, those citizens must resist any attempt by law enforcement officials to open a path for him to approach the site of the worst terror attack upon American soil, where his fellow hate-filled Muslim extremists murdered over 2700 Americans.

This week marks the Bush Administration's Elian Gonzalez moment -- will President Bush fail the test in the same way Bill Clinton failed his, accommodating evil anti-Americanism in the face of American freedom.

They don't want illegals either.

Fleeing stepped-up sweeps by the American authorities, illegal immigrants to the United States, mostly Mexican, are arriving in growing numbers at the foot of the bridge in this Canadian border town seeking refugee status.

Still more immigrants, mostly Mexicans living illegally in Florida, have begun trying to make their way past America’s northern border at other locations, the majority of them flying into the airport in Toronto, Canadian officials said Thursday.

So, will the fuzzy-minded liberals/socialists in Canada eventually decide they must take in all of the illegals? Or will they instead insist on deporting them home?

And if they decide to keep them, are they prepared to absorb all 12-20 million who are already violating America's immigration laws and who American citizens want out?

If you want to avoid those junk calls.

he cherished dinner hour void of telemarketers could vanish next year for millions of people when phone numbers begin dropping off the national Do Not Call list.

The Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the list, says there is a simple fix. But some lawmakers think it is a hassle to expect people to re-register their phone numbers every five years.

Numbers placed on the registry, begun in June 2003, are valid for five years. For the millions of people who signed onto the list in its early days, their numbers will automatically drop off beginning next June if they do not enroll again.

"It is incredibly quick and easy to do," Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, said in an interview with The Associated Press this week. "It was so easy for people to sign up in the first instance. It will be just as easy for them to re-up."

I'd rather not drop off the list, but I understand teh time-limit rule.

And it isn't like it is difficult to deal with -- it takes under 5 minutes every 5 years.

In fact, I just re-registered today, through 2012.

Here is where to go to get on the Do Not Call list -- or to renew your registration.

As a seminary-trained Christian who is also an educator, I find this story quite troubling.

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.

Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.

What, exactly, did Bitterman say?

Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha’s Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint.

Bitterman’s Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was “denigrating their religion.”

“I put the Hebrew religion on the same plane as any other religion. Their god wasn’t given any more credibility than any other god,” Bitterman said. “I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there.”

Bitterman said called the story of Adam and Eve a “fairy tale” in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.

“I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the 8th century.”

Now his words are harsh, impolitic, and maybe even mildly offensive -- but that does not mean they are wrong or that they should lead to discipline against him -- especially because they are, in my opinion, more or less correct.

The Genesis account of the creation cannot and should not be taken literally in light of the fossil record. It is best understood as an allegorical tale that communicates the essential truth that everything was created by God, and that our free will leads us to disobey God and to sever/strain our relationship with him. The story of Adam and Eve and the snake is therefore a myth -- but it is also true at its core.

And for those of you who object that the Bible is the revealed word of God (a contention which i whole-heartedly affirm), I offer this for your consideration -- if I can write an allegory, don't you suppose that the omnipotent God we both worship is able to do the same?

But regardless of whether we agree or disagree, and regardless of whether either of us agrees with Bitterman, there remains the question of academic freedom. There is a great body of academic literature which agrees with his position, and to fire him for citing it and teaching about it is not only wrong, but positively anti-intellectual.

It strikes me that Southwest Community College needs to offer a more public explanation of this personnel decision -- and that Bitterman should explicitly authorize them to do so. And if the comments on genesis have anything to do with the firing, Bitterman should be immediately reinstated.

And on a personnel note, I have more than a passing interest in such controversies. I've actually had a parent call my school and demand their child be removed from my class over a similar issue -- the inclusion of evolution in my World History class. Silencing truth in the name of religious sensitivity is simply wrong, whether the perpetrators of Christian, Muslim, or atheist.

A different viewpoint at Stop the ACLU

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Let's hope that the rest of the league has the integrity to not offer Barry Bonds a contract.

Barry Bonds was told by the San Francisco Giants that he won't play for them in 2008, he said on his Web site Friday. But baseball's all-time home run leader said he planned on playing somewhere next season.

In a statement, Bonds said: "This journal will be one of my last entries as a San Francisco Giant. Yesterday, I was told by the Giants that they will not be bringing me back for the 2008 season."

Giants owner Peter Magowan told Bonds of the decision in person Thursday night, said Bonds' agent, Jeff Borris.

Frankly, the MLB should have banned Barry Bonds before he passed Hank Aaron with his steroid-enhanced home run number 756*.

And for all you Barry Bonds fans out there, you can kiss my asterisk.

* home run count includes those hit while using illegal performance-enhancing drugs in violation of major league rules -- and which shrunk his package to smaller than that of a six-year-old.

New York is upset that Medicaid is no longer allowing chemo for illegals.

The federal government has told New York State health officials that chemotherapy, which had been covered for illegal immigrants under a government-financed program for emergency medical care, does not qualify for coverage. The decision sets the stage for a battle between the state and federal governments over how medical emergencies are defined.

The change comes amid a fierce national debate on providing medical care to immigrants, with New York State officials and critics saying this latest move is one more indication of the Bush administration’s efforts to exclude the uninsured from public health services.

State officials in New York and other states have found themselves caught in the middle. The New York dispute, focusing on illegal immigrants with cancer — a marginal group of unknown size among the more than 500,000 people living in New York illegally — has become a flash point for health officials and advocates for immigrants in recent weeks.

Under a limited provision of Medicaid, the national health program for the poor, the federal government permits emergency coverage for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. But the Bush administration has been more closely scrutinizing and increasingly denying state claims for federal payment for some emergency services, Medicaid experts said.

Last month, federal officials, concluding an audit that began in 2004 and was not challenged by the state until now, told New York State that they would no longer provide matching funds for chemotherapy under the emergency program. Yesterday, state officials sent a letter to the federal Medicaid agency protesting the change, saying that doctors, not the federal government, should determine when chemotherapy is needed.

The problem with that argument is not, of course, that th federal government is defining what is needed. Rather, it is defining what is "emergency" care, and determining whether or not medical care is entitled to reimbursement from federal funds. And since long-term chemotherapy is chronic, rather than emergency, care, it clearly is not covered under the limited exception to the law that is intended to provide critical care in the case of an immediate medical crisis.

If an illegal immigrant needs chemo, let him or her return to the country of origin and receive the health care there under whatever medical program their home country has. And if the home country has no such program, explain to me again why I, as an American taxpayer, should provide it for a persona who is in this country in violation of our nation's laws.

However, if the state of New York disagrees, it may opt to spend its own tax dollars for the non-emergency treatment of border-jumpers. Similarly, private charities can step in and cover the cost. But the demand for illegal reimbursements for medical care for illegal aliens is unacceptable.

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