Change of Scenery

Sharia in Minnesota?

Radical Muslims try to initimidate moderates and us. Powerline on the efforts to push Sharia in Minnesota.

Related post: A Hijab with Your Name on it

The Surrender Party

President Bush chastises Congress for micro-managing the war. Pelosi Porkfest: The Dem "leader" buys votes with pork, while hamstringing our troops.

Some perspective here. Reports the surge is working so far. And in comparison to the "peaceful" Clinton years.

The Dems are trying to lose Iraq. The surrender party.


UPDATE: Caroline Glick on "The Road to Serfdom". Also IraqPundit, Sadr in Splinters? WSJ: "By bowing to their antiwar left, Democrats are once again showing that they can't be trusted on national security."

Don't Forget to Look Up

Obama's Philosophical Allies

Ed Lasky, The American Thinker, writes of Obama's other anti-Israel friends (in addition to his black-separatist pastor.) I view Obama as not particularly religious, that his leftism drove his choice of church. The key point here is that those he looks to for philosophical guidance are an unsavory group:

Ali Abunimah is a well-known Chicago-based activist for Palestinian causes. He has a harshly anti-Israel attitude. He has also written that he had met Obama about half a dozen times at various Palestinian and Arab-American events, including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which the late Edward Said was the keynote speaker (there is a photo of Said with Senator Obama and his wife).

Edward Said was a severe critic of Israel; he developed a school of study about the Middle East based on denunciation of so-called "Orientalism" that has influenced many Middle Eastern professors to take an anti-Israel view. The entire field of Middle Eastern studies has been so corrupted that Congress has raised an alarm about federal funding going to professors with an anti-American, anti-Israel agenda. These are the ideological heirs of Edward Said.

(One of Said's heirs at Columbia is Prof. Mahmood Mamdani) And Obama's recent speeches bear out this anti-Israel tilt, though he seems to mute it and distance himself from his philosophical allies when he's campaigning, as Lasky also notes in his piece. Obama speaks of the Palestinians as victims, but he has been silent on their new textbooks which wipe Israel off the map and celebrate martyrdom. Others have questioned his approach to foreign policy, his tendency toward appeasement.

Obama distanced himself (actually it was his spokesperson) from billionaire George Soros' recent ill-judged remarks, but will he turn down or return his campaign contributions this time around? Soros also has a nasty history. And Obama has a history with Soros.

UPDATE: Nation of Islam leader and Chicagoan Minister Louis Farrakhan, who traveled with Obama's pastor to Libya some years ago. Video of Farrakhan supporting Iran's quest for nuclear weapons on Al Jazeera, "The Time for the Chastisement of Allah is Here".

UPDATE: In his speech in Chicago, Obama ignored Hamas terrorism. Here's how Hamas educates their children.

Why Not More Charters?

Charter schools in Illinois have been around for 10 years and demand only grows, yet some legislators want to limit their growth, rather than raise the caps on opening new ones. Tribune:

Some 15,000 children applied to the state's 29 charter schools in 2005-06, but only about 5,000 new students were accepted, state data show. The number of children turned away--about 10,000--was significantly larger than in each of the previous two years, when roughly 5,500 to 6,500 children were not accepted.

Most charters are in the Chicago area, bringing needed innovation, and have a successful track record:

Patricia Munoz-Rocha, principal of Aspira's Mirta Ramirez Computer Science Charter School, said demand is high because parents want a safe environment and a demanding college preparatory curriculum for their children.

She said more charter schools should be allowed in Illinois. If need be, charter schools currently authorized, but still not created--in Downstate and suburban areas--should be set up in Chicago instead.

"Why is it that those charter schools can't be created in Chicago if the demand is there," she said.

Why can't we help inner city parents who can't afford a choice otherwise? Why shouldn't money taxed for education follow the child? Ask your legislator.

Previous posts: The Challenge for Schools, Dream Killers

Cook County Loses

Sun Times:

Census population estimates released today show Cook County posted the third biggest decline in the nation, losing 88,000 residents since 2000.

Only counties surrounding New Orleans, ravaged by a hurricane, and Detroit, clobbered by a declining auto industry, lost more.

Not only Chicago, but suburban Cook County lost population. Could it have something to do with the management?

The Big Sister Party

Steve Chapman, Tribune, RCP holds forth on Hillary, "The Big Sister We Can Do Without", and asks who really likes her:

It's not as though she warms the hearts of moderates everywhere. Her husband was a master of triangulating between the two poles. But Hillary's efforts to place herself in the sensible center suggest naked opportunism, not hardheaded practicality.

The candidate we all know is the one portrayed by Amy Poehler in the "Saturday Night Live" skit who, when asked about her original position on Iraq, replied with a condescending smile, "I think most Democrats know me. They understand that my support for the war was always insincere."

Unless they run as out and out leftists, Democrats are always insincere. They always try to hide the liberalism at the heart of the party. There may be a few naive freshmen, but Hillary is not in that category, (nor Obama, liberal yes, naive no--maybe just about the Clintons).

Democrats are the Big Brother, Big Sister Party, always claiming to know what's best for us, always promising big government as a solution, always raising taxes. The only reason Bill managed to triangulate so well for so long was because we had a Republican Congress to stop his excesses, (at least most of them), and because he was, as one of his own party members, Sen. Bob Kerrey described him---an unusually good liar.

Big Sister doesn't lie as well, but she embodies the Democrat Party. With her, the "naked opportunism" is revealed. Shudder.

Related posts: Obama's Technical Capacity, Hillary's Cans of Worms

UPDATE: More on the origins of the Hillary ad.

Sun Dazzles Scientists

Scientists discover activity on the sun, which was up until now thought "impossible". Scientific inquiry continues on this, as well as other hot topics like cosmic rays, and its impact on global warming.

Story and more amazing pix here.

UPDATE: Apropos story on the latest eco-centrics, NY Times, "The Year Without Toilet Paper":

DINNER was the usual affair on Thursday night in Apartment 9F in an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue. There was shredded cabbage with fruit-scrap vinegar; mashed parsnips and yellow carrots with local butter and fresh thyme; a terrific frittata; then homemade yogurt with honey and thyme tea, eaten under the greenish flickering light cast by two beeswax candles and a fluorescent bulb.

A sour odor hovered oh-so-slightly in the air, the faint tang, not wholly unpleasant, that is the mark of the home composter. Isabella Beavan, age 2, staggered around the neo-Modern furniture — the Eames chairs, the brown velvet couch, the Lucite lamps and the steel cafe table upon which dinner was set — her silhouette greatly amplified by her organic cotton diapers in their enormous boiled-wool, snap-front cover.

A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there.

(Hint: no newspapers either) Mr. Mom for a year is writing a book on the subject. (maybe it will be an e-book)

Chicago version here.

Taxes an Issue for April 17th

Wilmette Life:

The Wilmette Village Board took steps March 13 toward fostering affordable housing through market forces or grants and donations, as well as possible new taxes.

But the pressure is on from non-incumbent village trustee candidates Karen Spillers, Gale Teschendorf and Mike Basil to avoid taxes to promote housing opportunity.

All three challengers panned the idea of taxing residents for affordable housing at a March 11 League of Women Voters forum, while incumbents Mari Terman and Joanne Aggens were more open to the possibility.

Terman and Aggens, as members of the Village Board's Finance Committee, recommended earlier this year that the village explore increasing unit density and other zoning changes to let developers create affordable housing free to village taxpayers. March 13, the full board voted unanimously that the Land Use Committee should explore zoning changes.

The same night, trustees referred another Finance Committee recommendation to the Administration Committee: Creation of a community land trust and an affordable housing trust fund to accept grants and donations, as well as possible tax money.

As Wilmette strives to double its stock of affordable housing, as directed by a recent state law, Aggens has favored a now-stalled "teardown tax" to help fund the effort, though she's expressing doubts since the issue drew opposition in 2006.

The election is April 17th. The league's forum is being replayed on Channel 6 at 5:30 p.m. today (Thursday), 6 p.m. Monday, 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, 5 p.m. March 29 and 10 p.m. March 30 and 31, as well as April 1.

UPDATE: Related story here. Related post here.

Conflicts of Interest

Wilmette Life:

Polan wants the assessment reduced 31.6 percent to $574,784. The Cook County Board of Review has turned down his appeal, so he's appealed that decision to the state Property Tax Appeal Board.

All such appeals of more than $100,000 trigger a notice to local taxing districts. In many suburbs, those districts react by joining to hire a lawyer to fight the appeal.

"This is money that's not going to educate the boys and girls of District 39," Wilmette elementary school district Superintendent Max McGee said Monday, referring to successful appeals. "And I personally think the assessor does a pretty good job."

The village of Wilmette and the Wilmette Park District have voted already to hire the lawyer.

New Trier Township High School District 203 hasn't voted yet. Associate Superintendent for Business Don Goers said New Trier is waiting to see whether McGee's district, which would pay 45 percent of the legal fees, backs the fight before voting to kick in its 33 percent.

The numbers are based on the districts' cuts of the tax pie.

District 39 is expected to vote on the expenditure today (Thursday).

One School Board member won't be voting, because he has a conflict of interest.

His name is Greg Polan.

Polan, a six-year board member, never votes to fight property tax appeals anyway, McGee says.

"I believe that we, as citizens of the United States, are taxed enough, and we have the right to appeal," Polan explained last week.

He said he never votes to fight a tax appeal, even of a commercial property, because he doesn't like the district picking on property owners.

"I'm a big supporter of the district and its foundation," said the owner of Skokie's Alltown Bus Service, a school transportation company that doesn't bid on District 39 business.

Ah, but last I knew, he had the District 39 PTA field trip business, and....the New Trier business.

The school board is rife with conflicts of interest. What's rare is to have someone on the board who is anti-tax. (Or anyone who is truly interested in educational excellence for that matter.)

Related posts: Public Servitude

Iraqi Polling

Jay Cost, RCP dissects two opposing polls. Polling, a soft science.

Scientific Smackdown

(I'm on spring break, but couldn't resist this one.)

The scientist skeptics on global warming flip the audience watching the debate to their side. Great stuff.

Ice and Open Water

The Clinton Crack-Up

R. Emmett Tyrrell's new book is out, The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House. He knows them well.

New revelations on Bill and Hill. Excerpt here.

Kirk at Linden True Value

I meant to link to this before now, Congressman Mark Kirk held "traveling office hours" at Linden True Value in Wilmette to support the Barkemeyer family, whose son Fr. John is serving as an Army chaplain in Iraq. Previous post Thanks from Fr. John. You can make donations to support Fr. John and the troops here.

The Teardown Question

Friendly sparring on teardowns on the North Shore, the St. Barbara blog, and the Wilmette blog.

I lean toward St. Barbara's position.


Other recent local post: Wilmette adopts Kyoto Protocol

Stopping the Cycle

Christopher Hitchens, via RCP, refreshes our memory on Iraq. Key point on nukes:

To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq. Thus, we can now say that Iraq is in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty. Moreover, the subsequent hasty compliance of Col. Muammar Qaddafi's Libya and the examination of his WMD stockpile (which proved to be much larger and more sophisticated than had been thought) allowed us to trace the origin of much materiel to Pakistan and thus belatedly to shut down the A.Q. Khan secret black market.

And this:

The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

Now Iran has barred the IAEA, another escalation on their part. But this time, instead of being an appeaser and worse, as they were with Iraq, perhaps the Russians are serious about stopping Iran. Maybe the US will get some help in stopping the next threatened cycle of states and terrorists with nukes.

UPDATE: Latest with Gen. Petraeus on the surge in Iraq, why it's working so far.

UPDATE: Interesting analysis of some Iraq polling at Powerline. And, in case you missed it, this poll with the largest sample we've seen yet.

The Coming PC Crack-up

Up until now there's been an uneasy truce between people of faith and the public schools. If you really object to liberal proselytizing you can take your children out and put them in religious or private schools. That is, if you can afford it.

But that will soon come to an end. Already we have the spectacle of the NY Regent's exam watering down passages from literary classics so they won't offend anyone. And in Britain the politically dominant Wahhabist Muslim purportedly "moderate" group is making a move to cram their view of Islam down the throats of real moderate Muslims and other believers and non-believers in the public schools. Guidelines here. (Ah, yes, they claim they are working for the "common good". Where have we heard that before?)

It's the Taliban approach to culture, only this time, instead of blowing up Buddhas, they want to push us back to the dark ages by eliminating most music, dance and art for starters. Girls should wear the hijab. We know our kids don't really learn history anymore, the curriculum has been dumbed down, but we haven't reached this point yet. The Muslim Brotherhood is infiltrating Egypt's education system, discriminating against Coptic Christians and encouraging intolerance. It's happening in Kuwait too. And we have swimming pool shenanigans in Sweden and Canada. Yup, they want "separate but equal". Guess who would be the second class citizens in this scheme. Note current Muslim practice, most notably in the Middle-East, also here, of demanding an unbeliever tax or jizya. And do we want our kids to have report cards like this?

The UK is starting to make some rulings to address this attempt to abrogate every one else's rights. It'll be here soon.

Obviously this has broad implications for society, but the immediate effect may be to give political correctness a brain cramp. This may be what finally pushes the US to adopt widespread school choice. And let's have some academic courses on religion in the public schools, so we understand the value of tolerance as a bedrock of our Judeo-Christian heritage, and study other major religions substantively as well, so our children are literate about religion. Enough of the ignorant, patronizing, and superficial multiculti mantra the left loves. Of course, in the universities we have secular creationism, masquerading as "Women's Studies", but at least there students have a choice about whether they want to take such a brainless approach to history and society.

It's the coming PC crackup, taking the straightjacket off thought and speech, heading off a burka on the brain.

UPDATE: Related stories on education at RCP Buzztracker. One-third of DC residents are functionally illiterate, the biggest obstacle being English is a foreign language. We have to get better at integrating, not separating. The melting pot, not the salad bowl. One of the standards that must hold is learning civics and English in public or private schools. And a liberal says he has seen no evidence teachers' unions are detrimental to education. Teachers' unions are not interested in education. They are interested in job security, a point which he illustrates in his same post. Laughable.

UPDATE: Powerline on the new anti-Semitic Palestinian textbooks, and the cynicism of Democrat candidates for president who ignore the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel.

Spring Sprung Upon Us

Did you have this discussion in your household? Is today the first day of spring or tomorrow? Our calendars were conflicted on the arrival of the vernal equinox. Natalie Angier, NY Times:

But as I soon discovered in my attempt to resolve the calendar crisis, the vernal equinox in 2007 has the added snag of arriving at the querulous hour of just seven minutes past midnight, universal time, on March 21. Coordinated Universal Time is what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time, but the new name doesn’t make it any more universal than it ever was, and it remains a time zone centered in Britain. For those of us in the United States, the vernal equinox arrives while it is still the evening of March 20.

Whatever the date, go on and celebrate, for the vernal equinox is a momentous poem among moments, overspilling its borders like the swelling of sunlight it heralds. As with everything else about the seasons, the equinox is the result of Earth’s sizable tilt, 23.5 degrees relative to the plane of the orbit. That tilt is fairly fixed, and as Earth makes its way on its circumsolar migration and rotates on its imaginary skewer, the northern tip of the skewer always points toward the same spot in space, the bold sparkle of Polaris, the North Star.

Coordinated Universal Time? Apparently even Greenwich Mean Time has gone PC. I guess it sounded too definitive.

It's not a big deal, but sometimes our family likes to bang a few pots and pans outside in celebration of the day. So here's some music to herald spring (yeah, the French guy does stop talking). Carmina Burana. And here's another version. Happy Spring!

Obama's "Technical Capacity"

Sweet on the unofficial Obama campaign ad against Hillary. I posted the ad here. Tom Bevan, RCP Blog on Obama's "technical capacity". If he's deficient in that area, maybe he could use a little "magic".

Or maybe he could unleash that lethal charm.

It worked in New Hampshire. Sun Times (all Obama, all the time):

The crowd waited an hour for Obama to arrive and swarmed him for autographs before he spoke.

''By the way, you had us from your first hello,'' said Carol Thebarge, who went on to ask Obama about President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq.

But more astute observers have their doubts about Obama's capacity, technical or otherwise. Leon Wieseltier on Obama:

"Nobody ever charmed anybody out of a nuclear weapon."

Previous post: Enduring Glamour of Anger, One-Sided Obama

UPDATE: Could be someone in Hillary's hometown of Park Ridge does not like her. Sounds like one of her classmates at Park Ridge High. FoxNews, via RCP:

The text to the right of the video says, "Make up your own mind. Decide for yourself who should be our next president." The ad's poster, named ParkRidge47, is anonymous except that he or she is listed as age 59.

Officials in the Illinois senator's camp say they have nothing to do with the ad. The Clinton campaign says it doesn't know where the ad came from and had no further official comment. But Clinton supporters are wondering aloud about the role of Obama's campaign even though they readily admit they have no evidence to support their suspicions apart from Obama's Web site being named at the end.

Some entertaining Dem infighting in Illinois.

Stroger's "Clean" Machine

It's Stroger's Cook County "Clean" Machine. Sun Times:

Also Monday, the county board voted 9-8 on Stroger's request to approve a no-bid contract with a cleaning company that has ties to Stroger's political organization and to Cicero-based mob figures.

We Clean Maintenance & Supply got the $357,000 contract to clean the county building for the next 135 days, replacing county janitors laid off because of budget cuts.

Company officials, citing the "security of our clients," declined to comment.

Is We Clean clean? Are they in the "security" business too?

Previous post: Cronyism for Goons

UPDATE: Related story, Sun Times:

Not even a month after the Cook County Board made massive cuts to pass a $3 billion budget, next year's deficit is already in the millions.

Cigarette sales, collection of hospital patient fees and fees from recording property deeds are all lower than officials anticipated when balancing this year's budget, records released Monday show.

Jihadi Disinformation Primer

The jihadists advise their adherents to influence the views on the war of the "weak-minded American" by pretending to be an American and posting on various websites:

“In my experience, the areas most visited in American forums... [are titled] ‘Random Thoughts’ and ‘What’s going on in your mind?’... [The former] takes priority in the American forums, and is highly popular. You should post your contribution there... This should include films of the mujahideen in Iraq, mujahideen publications in English, and images and films of the Americans’ crimes, [such as] killing unarmed civilians in Iraq... etc.”

“Invent Stories About American Soldiers You Have [Allegedly] Personally Known”

“Obviously, you should post your contribution... as an American... You should correspond with visitors to this forum, [bringing to their attention] the frustrating situation of their troops in Iraq... You should invent stories about American soldiers you have [allegedly] personally known (as classmates... or members in a club who played baseball and tennis with you) who were drafted to Iraq and then committed suicide while in service by hanging or shooting themselves...”

“Also, write using a sad tone, and tell them that you feel sorry for your [female] neighbor or co-worker who became addicted to alcohol or drugs... because her poor fiancé, a former soldier in Iraq, was paralyzed or [because] his legs were amputated... [Use any story] which will break their spirits, oh brave fighter for the sake of God...”

MEMRI, hat tip LGF.

UPDATE: One of CAIR's useful idiots, freshman Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Pa). The Politico, via RCP.

Women's Work in Saudi

Arab News:

"Saudi Businesswomen Seek Greater Participation:

In the first of three audience-participation polls, 55 percent said there are obstacles hindering the participation of women in development. According to Banany, these obstacles are related to tradition and culture, unsupportive families and husbands, lack of education and work experience and mixing between both sexes.

The second poll however showed that 79 percent believed having an agent is a proof of women’s inefficiency, while 21 said it is not related. The third poll asked if having an agent to do the women’s work is part of Shariah law, 85 percent voted no, yet 15 percent voted yes. (In Saudi Arabia, a women must have a male agent or representative to obtain the paperwork to start a business.)

“Doesn’t Saudi Arabia trust us enough to manage our own businesses without having to hire a manager who may misuse our trust, though we proved we could run more than one company in different fields?” one businesswoman asked.

A related story on the same conference:

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. According to the 2006 report, Saudi Arabia ranked last in a group of 115 countries in terms of economic participation and opportunity and political empowerment.

Kind of hard to believe they are last. No, Yemen is last (115). Saudi Arabia is 114. Let's see, who else is in the cellar. Iran 108, Egypt 109, Benin 110 (missing data), Nepal 111, Pakistan, 112, Chad 113. Looks like a clump in one neighborhood.

Appeal for Courage

Appeal for Courage to Congress, from our troops. Via Powerline.

The Gathering of Eagles

The eagles gathered to guard the memorials to our fallen the protesters defaced the last time they came to Washington, and to give heart to our troops serving us overseas.

More at HotAir.

Related post: A Hijab with Your Name on it.

The Last Straw with McCain

Sen. John McCain is off my list.

This morning I read he's sucking up to Europe characterizing us as "Ugly Americans" and kowtowing again to the global warming goofs, now I read he is beating up on the Club for Growth and defending that RINO fink Lincoln Chafee, who as a lame duck spitefully blocked John Bolton's nomination.

This is the last straw. No way am I voting for McCain. Only if by some fluke he wins the Republican nomination, but the way he's offending the base, it's more of a long shot every day.

By the way, he wants to move the Gitmo terrorists to a brig in Kansas.

Previous posts here and here.

UPDATE: McCain rips Club for Growth unfairly, citing Reagan not to criticize a fellow Republican. Well, the national party should stay out of Republican primaries. The Club interceded to back a challenger, nothing wrong with that. Post-primary is another question entirely. Video.

Thompson Gets It

John Fund has an excellent interview in the Weekend WSJ with former Sen. Fred Thompson. It is well worth reading. Thompson on Iraq:

The challenges, he says, are numerous. On Iraq, he admits "we are left with nothing but bad choices." However, he says the "worst choice" would be to have Osama bin Laden proven right when he predicted America wouldn't have the stomach for a tough fight. The costs of Iraq have been high, but they could be even higher "if we have another stain on America like that infamous scene from Saigon 1975 in which our helicopters took off leaving those who supported us grabbing at the landing skids."

And this is key, showing he's not afraid of engaging in substantive debate with Republicans or Democrats, with wit and supply side wisdom:

On domestic issues, Mr. Thompson says a major reason Republicans lost last November was that they aided and abetted runaway government spending. Yet Democrats, he contends, are incapable of following through on their pledges to be fiscally prudent. "Their political coalition needs more revenue like a car requires gasoline," he laughs. "Reagan showed what can be done if you have the will to push for tough choices and the ability to ask the people to accept them."

But Mr. Thompson says those tough choices shouldn't include the tax increases contemplated in the new budget released by Senate Democrats this week. "The phony static accounting the government uses has obscured just how successful the 2003 tax cuts have been in boosting the economy," he says. "Lower marginal tax rates have proven to be a key to prosperity now by Kennedy, Reagan and Bush. It's time millionaires serving in the Senate learned not to overly tax other people trying to get wealthy."

More analysis at the RCP Blog.

Fred Thompson gets it on the issues. The question is whether he will get in the race. I think he would be a welcome addition.

UPDATE: Thompson rips Iran.

Make Earmarks Public

We need the administration to approve full disclosure of earmarks by OMB. And Congress needs to live up to its promises. Robert Novak, Sun Times:

An even stronger example of the resiliency by the congressional pork purveyors is the appropriators' non-compliance with the ethics bill that has passed the Senate 96-2 but has not yet been finally enacted. Coburn last Monday delivered a letter to Byrd, saying: "The committee's failure to make earmark information public would make a mockery of recently passed earmark reforms and would suggest to taxpayers that the Senate wants to continue to earmark funds in secret."

And the Democrats are irresponsibly and shamelessly loading up a bill to fund our troops with pork. WSJ:

Thus has Mr. Bush's request for $100 billion to fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus $3 billion to replenish the disaster-relief fund, devolved into a $124.6 billion logrolling extravaganza. You can get the flavor from the bill's very first words on page two: "Title I -- Supplemental Appropriations for the Global War on Terror Chapter 1 Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service." Forget the Marines; send in the meat inspectors.

This bill has everything the modern military doesn't need. There's $25 million for spinach, designed to attract the vote of Sam Farr, a California farm-region liberal. Perhaps spinach growers who lost business due to last year's E. coli scare need this taxpayer bailout, but it won't intimidate the Taliban unless Mr. Farr plans to draft Popeye.

The Democrats' hold on the majority is thin. One of the reasons they won seats is voters were fed up with Republicans' failure to reign in porkbarrel spending and halt earmark abuse. The Republicans have learned the lesson. Have the Democrats? Don't count on it.

New Trier Scholars Win State

Tribune:

For the first time in its history, New Trier Township High School on Saturday won the Illinois High School Association's Scholastic Bowl.

After defeating three teams at the daylong competition in Peoria, New Trier beat Wheaton North High School for the championship, 325-218.

Co-coach David Reinstein, a New Trier math teacher, said the Winnetka school had finished second once before and third several times.

"We worked hard, and it paid off," Reinstein said. "Every group of students is unique. This year we had a great group that loves to learn."

(It's not bragging if you can do it:) Sounds like math had something to do with it.

Swiss Reject Single Payer

A stunning defeat for a single-payer plan in Switzerland. Consumers for Health Choices:

“On Sunday the Swiss people voted overwhelmingly to reject a Single Payer system. But there has been not a word about it in the American press – other than a single paragraph in the trade publication Business Insurance.

“The vote was on whether to replace Switzerland’s current system of mandatory health insurance coverage provided by 87 private health plans with a single payer system based on income-related premiums. It was rejected by 71% of the voters.

The Swiss like their healthcare choices. No slavish devotion to a European model by the MSM on this one.

Exploring America

Tony Blankley on the departure of most of Halliburton's operations to Dubai:

Rather than hold hearings or construct phantom conspiratorial tax evasion theories, Mr. Waxman, Mr. Leahy and their fellow ilk might consider that, since Congress won't permit American oil companies to drill for the more than 140 billion barrels of recoverable oil that exists under American ground and in our coastal waters, it only makes sense for oil-drilling companies to go where oil drilling is permitted.

I wouldn't blame Halliburton if it moved all its assets out of a country (that would be the United States) that slanders its good name rather than appreciates its world-class, vitally needed skills. What a pity if Mr. Waxman and his fellow anti-capitalists soon won't have Halliburton to kick around any more.

Since Democrats cut defense spending so sharply during the Clinton administration, Halliburton is one of only two companies in the world capable of doing what our government needed it to do. The other company is French. Of course that wouldn't bother the Democrats, but most Americans would not be comfortable entrusting our national security to the French.

But think about that number---140 billion barrels of recoverable oil under the ground in America. Iran has 138 billion barrels of oil.

We consume 21 billion barrels a day and produce only 5. Yet for years we have allowed environmentalists to lock up all this potential which would put us on a par with Iran. Unbelievable!

Our grandfathered existing offshore drilling rigs withstood Katrina, illustrating how good and safe the technology is. And the technology for drilling on land has developed to the point where it's akin to a laparoscopy through a navel.

Over 70% of Americans are in favor of offshore drilling, when the affected states are willing, and with the highest safety measures.

By all means let's look at energy alternatives, (no subsidies please) but most offer very little power. In the longer term nuclear power, a clean, green technology can be brought online, if we start building now.

Americans need to support energy exploration at home as well as abroad for our present and future comfort, security and freedom.

Wilmette adopts Kyoto Protocol

The Village of Wilmette Board of trustees has adopted the coyote (if you watched the meeting), uh Kyoto protocol "concerning global climate change and supporting the reduction of greenhouse gases".

See the last of the adopted items.

But what does it mean?

Perhaps the village will suspend the use of air conditioning and adopt an open window policy. In the winter, close the windows.

Build a nuclear power plant in the village.

A wind farm on the beach?

Computers use a lot of energy. Line item cut? And the village uses a lot of PC’s. Back of the envelope calculations 1pc is about 22 trees (planted in the tropics and never cut down). Plus if you are connected to the internet you really ought to factor in the CO2 produced by the electricity used in the server farms that allow you to surf the world wide web.

Will the village set up checkpoints to harangue drivers and hand out flyers for green cars?

Will the Glenview cows be on the agenda at the next intergovernmental meeting?

Will the village ban greenhouses?





Will coyotes rule?



P.S. I'll be happy to do my part and get a Hummer as my next car.


Related posts: What it Means to be Green, Sister Cities, Kyoto-Wilmette, Greenies, Stay Home

UPDATE: Related story, Sun Times:

A waste-hauling firm that's repeatedly been accused of having ties to the mob is still doing taxpayer-funded work and has surfaced on a government-produced list of environmentally friendly businesses.

(Joining Gore in the racket.) More on Al here.

UPDATE: The Wilmette Blog weighs in. Read it all. Here's an excerpt:

Generally Treaties are the stuff of nations, not local governments who don't seem to be able to deliver basic services. Maybe if the Trustees paid more attention to what is going on locally, the quality of life in Wilmette might greatly improve. A recent home invasion, burglaries, and wholesale disregard of the traffic laws are now common occurrences in Wilmette.

Only Village President Chris Canning voted against this lunacy.

The Right of Self-Defense

George Will, WaPo, RCP:

When Madison and others fashioned the Bill of Rights, they did not merely constitutionalize -- make fundamental -- the right to bear arms. They made the Second Amendment second only to the First, which protects the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and worship. They did that because individual dignity and self-respect, which are essential to self-government, are related to a readiness for self-defense -- the public's involvement in public safety. Indeed, 150 years ago this month, in the Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney said that one proof that blacks could not be citizens was the fact that the Founders did not envision them having the same rights that whites have, including the right to "keep and carry arms."

Self-respect, self-defense, enshrined in our Constitution.


Previous post: Individuals and the 2nd Amendment

UPDATE: Dennis Byrne, Tribune:

This doesn't mean that the D.C. decision applies here, but the conflicting rulings invite the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, where three sitting justices--Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and David H. Souter--said in a 1998 dissent that "bearing arms" goes beyond a collective right in the context of a well-ordered militia. Combined with the votes of recent conservative appointees, the high court could sweep away draconian laws that don't even allow the possession of a handgun to protect yourself and your family in your home.

He also discusses the Wilmette connection.

KSM Mass Murderer

The left and the MSM are dismissing KSM as a braggert and a victim of coercion. But his statement dovetails with independent evidence. He is brutally credible to an honest observer. Rivkin and Lowry, via RCP:

Indeed, KSM, while complaining about his prior treatment, specifically and repeatedly told the tribunal that he was describing his activities voluntarily and without any coercion being applied. Moreover, a number of his key factual assertions could be verified based upon independent physical evidence.

For example, at the time he was apprehended in Pakistan, a number of computer disks containing details of his various al Qaeda activities were seized. And his involvement in specific al Qaeda attacks, both actual and planned, has been corroborated by other detainees.

Significantly, Sheik Mohammed did not claim that he was the leader of every single al Qaeda plot he described during the hearing. He did not allege, for instance, that he played a major role in the scheme to assassinate Pope John Paul II in the Philippines. This delineation of his various roles does not support the notion that he is a serial exaggerator, prone to boast about non-existent exploits.

Those on the left want KSM to be given a trial in our country. If he were tried in US courts, as evidence was obtained overseas, it would be difficult to get a conviction. Yet we know he is a serial mass murderer, an unlawful enemy combatant who is determined on jihad against the West:

In other circumstances, humanitarian groups and international-law mavens understand perfectly well the symbolic importance of charging individuals with grave violations of international law and laws of war. Indeed, they have insisted that individuals ranging from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to senior leaders in Rwanda or Darfur be charged with genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes, rather than being slapped with national-law violations, such as murder, assault or robbery. The same logic should, of course, apply to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his al Qaeda cohorts.

Keep KSM penned up at Gitmo. Try him there. Who calls to unleash him on our country? He doesn't even deserve our jails, and we shouldn't put our country at further risk by bringing him here.

We are still fighting the war on terror, or rather, the terrorists are still fighting a war with us, whether we like it or not. So far most of the carnage they have wrought has been overseas.

A little snippet in Saturday's Tribune.

So far.

Previous posts: "Hollywood" Goes to War--NOT, KSM Targets, CNN Blinks

Steyn on Sunday

If it's Sunday, it's Mark Steyn in the Sun Times. Thinking about it all. Read it all.

Flimflam Plame

FoxNews Sunday transcript, via RCP:

WALLACE: I guess the question I have, Bill, is couldn't they have pushed back against Joe Wilson without outing a CIA operative?

BILL KRISTOL, WEEKLY STANDARD: Maybe. Maybe. They didn't, of course. Richard Armitage outed the CIA operative, and he was not a supporter...

WALLACE: Well, so did Libby. So did Karl Rove. So did Ari Fleischer.

KRISTOL: No. No. That's not true.

WALLACE: They didn't talk to reporters?

KRISTOL: They may have talked to reporters about the fact that his wife was at the agency as a way of explaining the trip. That's what the State Department reported. There's nothing secret about that.

Valerie Wilson attended a Senate Democratic Policy Committee meeting in early may with her husband, Joe Wilson. He was on a panel denouncing the Iraq war. She was there.

They had breakfast the next morning with New York Times columnist Nick Kristof. If she is so covert, if she was so concerned that her presence might endanger operations, why does she accompany her husband -- why does she first send her husband or help send her husband to Niger which, of course, was going to raise questions ultimately about why he was picked as a critic of the war?

Secondly, why does she attend a partisan Senate Democratic committee meeting with her husband? Why does she have breakfast with a New York Times reporter?

CIA operatives are not supposed to have breakfast with the media, incidentally. They're supposed to report media contacts. If anyone outed Valerie Plame Wilson, it was her and her husband.

Flimflam Valerie Plame.

Previous posts: Trial in Error, Trib gets it wrong, PlameOut Fallout

A Hijab with Your Name on it

So Cindy and Nancy---there's a hijab waiting with your name on it. It's already spread to a movement in Europe. Bret Stephens, WSJ:

Caroline Lucas, a member of the Green Party faction in the European Parliament, is a longtime activist in anti-nuclear, animal-rights and environmentalist causes, and not someone likely to describe herself as an anti-feminist. Yet in June 2004, she joined British MPs Fiona Mactaggart of Labor and Sarah Teather of the Liberal Democrats for a press conference in the House of Commons organized by the Assembly for the Protection of Hijab. The Assembly, better known as Pro-Hijab, is a pan-European organization formed "to campaign nationally and internationally for the protection of every Muslim woman's right to wear the Hijab in accordance with her beliefs and for the protection of every woman's right to dress as modestly and as comfortably as she pleases."

How about the protection of a Muslim woman's right not to wear one? How about protection of even more basic rights than that? In countries where a man's word is worth twice that of a woman's. Or where she can't leave the country, or even the house without her husband's or a man's permission. Or where she can't drive a car.
Or where she can be beaten on the slightest pretext or become the victim of an honor killing by the male members of her family after being raped because she is now unclean.



Or if she resists and kills in self-defense or in defense of a younger girl she can be charged with murder and face execution.

Even in America, where unfortunately Wahhabi Islam is widespread, imams counsel beating women "lightly", and we have seen at least one honor killing. And the most prominent Muslim organization in America, CAIR, is at the very least an apologist for terrorists, and there is evidence of terrorist ties. Groups like the Muslim Student Association present sweet little seminars in Kansas about how liberating the hijab is, while in San Francisco and Montreal they mob Jews.

For feminists and the left, political expediency always, always trumps principle. Victimology always triumphs over the rule of law. Because you see, they view Muslims as an ethnic minority and as such they can not be questioned. Actually the multicultural approach is not non-judgemental and egalitarian in this case---Muslims have superior moral authority as supposed victims of the West. Hirsi Ali:

As to the charges that she is an "Enlightenment fundamentalist," she points out, rightly, that people who live in democratic societies are not supposed to settle their disagreements by killing one another.

And yet contemporary democracies, she says, accommodate the incitement of such behavior: "The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism. . . . Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve. . . . With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place."

And apparently it's Islamophobic to ask this: "Where do you stand on the statement that a wife should obey her husband and that he can hit her if she fails to do so?", as German immigration is doing now. The morality of the feminists and the left is very blinkered. I guess this is an issue of privacy, now extended from the fetus to the wife. The effect of this is to empower bullies of women, bullies of fellow Muslims who have more gentle beliefs, and bullies of non-believers in Islam. Some have murder in mind for us, starting as always with the Jews. And eventually the extremists will probably murder the left, unless they are stopped. One of them already murdered Theo van Gogh.

So feminists, liberals and Democrats, when you decry the war on terror we are fighting for your liberty as "not in our name", think about that hijab with your name on it. Or worse.

UPDATE: Ordinary Americans gathered on the mall to take on the anti-war left in numbers that shocked the media (they still downplayed the numbers of patriots and showed unrepresentative pix). Michelle Malkin here. Rick Moran:

History ended yesterday. Or at least one version of it. Or perhaps it didn’t end as much as it was overthrown, trampled by the feet of 30,000 ordinary Americans who gathered on the mall and along the broad avenues in Washington to confront those who have, either wittingly or witlessly, given aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States for more than 40 years.

And this from another blogger who was there. Pix and video of the good guys outnumbering the bad guys:

In my opinion, this Gathering of Eagles rally has done more for the healing of the wounds these veterans have been burdened with for forty years than any wall or memorial could ever. It was if they’d finally been given the opportunity to face their oppressors. There were no sorrowful stares, no sympathetic words. It was all smiles and laughter.

All of those years of anger that had been bottled up was directed against their common enemy - moral and intellectual laziness. The world had to listen to them, the citizens who had sacrificed and paid the price and came home to the disapproval of the citizens who had never spent an uncomfortable moment in their lives.

One veteran told me, “We’re here because those guys who are fighting in Iraq deserve better than what we got when we came home. No one stood up for us, but by God, we’re standing up for them. And if we don’t, who will?”

More from Flopping Aces. And HotAir.

Wearin' o' the Green

Ireland wears green too. My last visit was pre-digital so here's a NASA photo via Wikipedia. Can you count the forty shades of green? Have a good weekend.

The Irish in the Midwest

The American Midwest, a hefty volume full of fascinating facts. (And my UW professor brother James Patrick Leary is a senior consulting editor).

In honor of the wearin' of the green in Chicago, a few of them. Though it may seem everybody's Irish this time of year, the German-Americans outnumber us (and perhaps the English, though we will just say that softly, softly.) And the first Irish in the Midwest likely came with the French to serve with their army in the posts of Detroit and St. Louis.

During the famine in the 1840's thousands came, many migrating West working on the railroads. Though most in the Midwest settled in the cities, 30 % settled on farms and in small towns in small clusters. By1880 a majority of the Irish had settled in the Northeast, but 25% were here in the heartland.

And for good or for ill, in Chicago.

MNF Iraq Engages

Multinational Force Iraq engages in the media war. Their own channel on YouTube. Hat tip RedState. One clip here.

Tom Bevan, RCP Blog with analysis on the surge so far.

Enduring Glamour of Anger

Steve Sailer, via RCP, "Obama's Identity Crisis", offers a thoughtful essay on Barack and his first book:

For the few willing to read all 442 pages, he offers important testimony about the enduring glamour of anti-white anger. It’s a bitter counterweight to the sunny hopes so widely invested in his candidacy as the man whose election as president would somehow help America finally “transcend race.”

In reality, Obama provides a disturbing test of the best-case scenario of whether America can indeed move beyond race. He inherited his father’s penetrating intelligence; was raised mostly by his loving liberal white grandparents in multiracial, laid-back Hawaii, where America’s normal race rules never applied; and received a superb private school education. And yet, at least through age 33 when he wrote Dreams from My Father, he found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against his mother’s race.

In contrast, Tiger Woods:

Although the biracial Obama is frequently lumped with the multiracial golfer Tiger Woods as evidence of the socially healing power of interracial marriage, their attitudes are quite different. Woods turned down Nike’s suggestion that because African-American celebrities are so popular today, he should identify himself solely as black. He didn’t want to disown his mother.

Of course liberal white women are his biggest supporters.

I wish Obama would just get over himself. And not in front of us. Sigh.

Previous post: One-Sided Obama

Friends of Rod

More friends of the governor appointed to positions of responsibility in state government. This time, as head of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Tribune:

Davis, a former Blagojevich fundraiser, formerly ran the Rock Island Co. of Chicago, a LaSalle Street securities firm that crashed in 2005 in part because of risky deals to buy out competitors.

Months after the business crashed, Blagojevich appointed Davis to the loan commission. He was then promoted to the agency's top job, which pays $180,000 a year.

He wants to sell off most of the student loan portfolio, providing cash to the state up front but jeopardizing future revenue streams. While Davis does raise a good point about 75% of the student loans being to students from other states, why should we place our trust in another friend of Governor Big?

"Hollywood" Goes to War--NOT

On the same day Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's monstrous crimes were headlined across the country, here in Illinois state Sen. Rickey "Hollywood" Hendon (Chicago, yeah) enlisted his Dem buddies to show a little non-binding resolve. Sun Times:

In a slap at President Bush, the Democratic-led Illinois Senate went on record Thursday opposing any additional troops being sent to Iraq.

"We have to send a message to Washington that it is time for us to get out," said Sen. Rickey Hendon (D-Chicago), sponsor of the resolution. "We declared victory already. We've already made it clear the weapons of mass destruction no longer exist, if they ever did, so why are we still there? It doesn't make any sense."

Perhaps Sen. "Hollywood" would rather wait until reality slaps him in the face some fine day in Chicago. What's a dirty bomb here or there. You and your Dem friends can always retreat to Springfield.

Related posts: Business as Usual, Susan Garrett Defends Sexist

UPDATE: Sun Times:

Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Mayor Daley and Chicago Police officials have denied that the Sears Tower was a secondary target.

Now the potential threat has come up again.

Suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay that he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation A to Z" and that the Sears Tower was supposed to be part of a "second wave" of attacks. The plan was to blow up Sears Tower by burning a few fuel or oil tanker trucks beneath it or around it, Mohammed said.

Disharmony at Concordia

Denying free speech at Concordia University. No, not Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, not the Concordia in Chicago. At least not yet. Most of these colleges in the US are Christian, most Lutheran.

This one is in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was created as a merger of a Jesuit school dating back to 1848 and a school started by the local YMCA (you know, the Young Men's Christian Association) back in the 19th century.

The name of the university comes from the motto of the City of Montreal, “Concordia Salus,” which means “well-being through harmony.”

You will note the video was made on the first anniversary of Sept. 11th. At LGF. (There are 5 parts to this, all worth watching, the additional parts easier to find here through Powerline)

Remember, before we went after Al Qaeda and the Taliban, they blew up the ancient Buddhas, which had stood for 1700 years.

Further disturbing background on CAIR's ties to terrorists.

Al-Jazeera, taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood?

And this disturbing development in the US. (Previous posts on the flying imams here and here.) Katherine Kersten, Minneapolis Star Tribune, RCP:

But the most alarming aspect of the imams' suit is buried in paragraph 21 of their complaint. It describes "John Doe" defendants whose identity the imams' attorneys are still investigating. It reads: "Defendants 'John Does' were passengers ... who contacted U.S. Airways to report the alleged 'suspicious' behavior of Plaintiffs' performing their prayer at the airport terminal."

Paragraph 22 adds: "Plaintiffs will seek leave to amend this Complaint to allege true names, capacities, and circumstances supporting [these defendants'] liability ... at such time as Plaintiffs ascertain the same."

In plain English, the imams plan to sue the "John Does," too.

They want to scare us into silence. They want us to think twice before we act to save ourselves. And they are using our courts to do it.

They think themselves blessed.

Related posts: Spotlight on CAIR, Burying Girls Alive, An Ancient Culture Extinguished, Jihad TV Stateside

Taxed in Illinois

Discussion by Democrat Sen. Schoenberg of his pet tax swap "not to worry" and defense of the gross receipts tax. His remarks and other reaction, Wilmette Life:

So far, most of the debate out in the hustings is not over a tax swap, but over the gross receipts tax, which would take a bite of manufactured and distribution at every stop along the way. Schoenberg said that not charging the tax to businesses grossing under $1 million will make it easier for small business to swallow.

But Wilmette Chamber of Commerce executive director Julie Yusim says that $1 million isn't what it used to be, and a lot of small businesses can gross that much while netting comparatively little.

"It still could be very painful for a small business owner," she said. "It could be the difference between making it or not. This is not a good place to go looking for state financing."

State Rep. Beth Coulson, R-17th, condemned the gross receipts tax as "a tax on every one of us who buy products in Illinois."

As an example, she said, the seats, interior carpeting and other parts of a car could each be taxed separately if they are manufactured in Illinois. "By the time it gets to be a car, who knows how much tax there is going to be," she said. "And you know it's going to be passed along to the consumers. It's a real hidden tax."

The gross receipts tax, made in Illinois, brought to you by Sen. Schoenberg and Gov. Blagojevich.

Taking the Global Temperature

Danish professor Bjarne Andresen gives us some food for thought:

"It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth," said Andresen, an expert on thermodynamics. "A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate".

He says the currently used method of determining the global temperature -- and any conclusion drawn from it -- is more political than scientific.

Taking the global temperature.

It's the differences that drive the process.

Why can't we all get along? Hmm, Al?

I kind of visualize myself as a sea current.

Wilmette Candidate Forum

The Wilmette Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring a forum for village board candidates at the library next Tuesday, March 20th at 5 p.m. (per the Wilmette Life, at least in the print edition.)

Joann Aggens, Mike Basil, Karen Spillers, Mari Terman and GaleTeschendorf will each be given 15 minutes to speak.

On Monday, April 9th, Charlie's Coffee House hosts the candidates for a round-table discussion at 7 p.m.

The public is welcome at both events.

There are 3 open positions for village trustee. The election is April 17th. You may register to vote at village hall through March 20th.

Illinois GOP Hispanics Meet

(excerpt from press release. Contact Gloria Campos for more info, gloria.campos@ilrnha.org )

The state convention for the Republican National Hispanic Assembly (RNHA) of Illinois will take place Friday and Saturday, March 23 & 24, 2007, at the Bolingbrook Golf Club, 2001 Rodeo Drive in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Keynote speakers for the event are U.S. Congressman Dennis Hastert and Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andrew McKenna. The national group was founded in 1974. Gloria Campos:

"The job of the RNHA is to offer an alternative to Hispanics of Illinois in the political arena of our State and Nation. As Hispanics we are very traditionalist. We are for traditional family values, good education for our children, job opportunities and less government interference in our daily lives. That is why we identify ourselves with the Republican Party creed.”

Their website is here.

One-Sided Obama

One-sided, blind-eyed Obama on the issue of the Palestinians. Ed Lasky, the American Thinker, on key principles of the Roadmap.

Previous posts: Pinning Down Obama, Obamanation, Obama's Audacity

Stem Cell Facts

Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, and the Rev. Thomas V. Berg, executive director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, WSJ, "Six Stem Cell Facts":

Most scientists acknowledge that ESCs will not provide therapies for many years, if ever. Their therapeutic potential is, at best, speculative. They cannot be used now, even in clinical trials, because of their tendency to produce tumors. So it comes as no surprise that many scientists now admit that their primary interest in pursuing ESC research lies not in the hope for direct cell transplant therapies, but in the desire to enhance basic scientific knowledge of such things as cell signaling, tissue growth and early human development.

We believe that embryo-destructive research cannot be morally justified, even if it really were likely to produce cures for dreaded afflictions. We fervently share the desire for cures, but we believe that biomedical science compromises its own integrity when it destroys human life in the cause of trying to save it.

As they point out as well, ESC research goes on unimpeded in the private sector, it is only government funding at issue for new lines of ESC research, and other kinds of stem cells offer more immediate promise.

Previous posts: Deniers and Liars on the Left, Sanctimonious Schoenberg

Holding Health Hostage

Thailand revokes patents on AIDS drugs and threatens to hold Westerners hostage if there is a flu outbreak, until they receive flu vaccine. WSJ:

If you care about property rights -- or access to new medicine for the world's poor -- keep your eye on the current fight over Thailand's attempt to confiscate drug patents. The brawl is getting messier by the day.

In the latest news, the Journal reports that Abbott Laboratories has decided not to market any new medicines in Thailand. Abbott will continue to sell drugs currently on sale in the country, but it has withdrawn its applications for other drugs under government review.

Abbott is based in the Chicago suburbs, and this kind of government intervention costs jobs and restricts medical advances. As the Journal points out, (pay attention Democrats):

Drug patents are a globally recognized way to guarantee a return on investment in producing new therapies, and there will be no incentive to innovate if governments can revoke patents with impunity.

Of course, the relevant UN authority has caved on this and even the WHO is wobbling. US HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt has cautioned Thailand on its other innovation:

In a March 7 letter, Mr. Leavitt said Dr. Suwit's comments "appear to contravene the spirit and provisions of the revised International Health Regulations" for how countries cooperate to curb the global spread of disease. Hostage-taking is not among the preferred medical treatments for the flu. Would-be kidnapper Dr. Suwit was also an important voice advocating seizure of the drug patents.

For now, I suggest avoiding Thailand, where holding health hostage is the new normal.

Relate posts: The Millionaire Next Door, Dark Age Democrats II

NCLB Reform

Amid calls for a return to more local control as Congress debates the renewal of NCLB, a cautionary tale on local school control. I viewed NCLB as one way to force accountability and wrest control from the teachers' unions, who often dominate locally. Accountability has improved, but performance results have been mixed. In addition, some councils in Chicago have sacrificed learning for power politics. Mary Mitchell, Sun Times on Chicago schools:

In the name of school reform, local school councils with hidden agendas have gotten away with rewarding unqualified principals, while other LSCs have kicked out qualified ones.

What this really illustrates is we need the most local control of all. Who, most of the time, has the true interests of a child at heart?---parents. We need more school choice. At least in Illinois we could start with expanding the mandate for public school charters.

Previous posts: The Challenge for Schools, Dream Killers

New Insight

Northwestern University professor Charles Taylor has won the Templeton Prize, $1.5 million worth of recognition. It's larger than the Nobel Peace Prize. And it's unusual for a professor of philosophy and law to be awarded the accolade. Sun Times. Tribune:

"The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both," Taylor, 75, said in accepting the award Wednesday in New York. "But it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual."

In his speech, Taylor took aim at Nobel laureate cosmologist Steven Weinberg, who once said: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

"On one level, it is astonishing that anyone who lived through a good part of the 20th Century could say something like this," Taylor said.

"We urgently need new insight into the human propensity for violence ... [that] must take full account of the human striving for meaning and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion," he said. "But we don't even begin to see where we have to look as long as we accept the complacent myth that people like us--enlightened secularists, or believers--are not part of the problem.

The great evils of the 20th century were perpetrated by the secular ideologies of the Nazis and Communists, though in the past religion has been used by imperfect men as an excuse for great wrongs. Taylor's work may give us some insight into confronting the current threat by Islamic terrorism and identifying the political and spiritual dimensions of the conflict. But he seems to regard all cultures as "equally valid", rejecting "American ideals of individualism and modernity", and merely describes terrorists as "wounded in spirit". He cites pacifists as his moral exemplars. As Mark Steyn has pointed out in the last issue of National Review, doing an interview on NPR about his book America Alone, Gandhi's passive resistance wouldn't have succeeded if he hadn't had an empire as enlightened as the British to deal with.

I will have to read more, but this seems too forgiving an approach to me, though I am glad he has taken on the clueless secularists.

Related posts: Burying Girls Alive, The Multiculti Trap

Hedging Their Bets

Hillary and the NY Times are hedging their bets. What if the surge succeeds? The front page has a picture of a little boy, covering his ears, seeking protection with a US soldier after he hears gunshots. And Hillary, in an interview, offers this:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.

How tough is that. Ah yes, the NY Times describes it in the next paragraph as a more "nuanced position".

Video with General Petraeus yesterday. More in the Financial Times, already there's been a huge drop in death squad activity. They are still on the hunt for car bomb makers, assembled in the outskirts of Baghdad. But deaths of US soldiers are down dramatically.

The mastermind behind 9/11, KSM confesses to numerous crimes, we relive the horror, but it feels like we caught him again.

So have a cup of coffee, and give a little thanks.

Death Cult Family

Hamas TV (from MEMRI) puts on two little children who have lost their mother, a suicide bomber, and has them sing a song about her---Rim, you are a fire bomb.

KSM Targets

Comments and links at LGF:

Newly released transcripts of hearings at Guantanamo Bay show that Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to a stunning range of terrorist plots, including September 11 and plans to assassinate former presidents Clinton and Carter.

Maybe this will finally get the Dems attention---might not want to close Gitmo and let this guy into the country. A prison break would be nasty.

Pinning Down Obama

Via the RCP Blog, The Politico:

It's a hard thing to pin down, Barack Obama's Jewish problem. But in the halls of the AIPAC Policy Conference yesterday, there was no denying that the members of the pro-Israel group -- largely Democrats, though they tilt right -- feel a real, if kind of inchoate, skepticism about the Illinois senator.

Now, an Iowa Democrat and AIPAC member, David Adelman, has written Obama a letter asking for clarification of Obama's remark to the Des Moines register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people," a statement Adelman writes he found "deeply troubling."

No kidding. Along with pinko Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Obama was noticeably missing at the rally for Israel last summer in Chicago. (though not too many of us around here expected him to be there.)

In his recent speech to AIPAC in Chicago he ignored Hamas' terrorism.

Previous post: Obamanation

Spotlight on CAIR

The NY Times finally deigns to notice concerns about CAIR, while dismissing them at the same time. What and who they're "advocating" for, as the headline says, is a matter of opinion:

Broadly summarized, critics accuse CAIR of pursuing an extreme Islamist political agenda and say at least five figures with ties to the group or its leadership have either been convicted or deported for links to terrorist groups. They include Mousa Abu Marzook, a Hamas leader deported in 1997 after the United States failed to produce any evidence directly linking him to any attacks.

There were no charges linked to CAIR in any of the cases involved, and law enforcement officials said that in the current climate, any hint of suspicious behavior would have resulted in a racketeering charge.

The group’s officials say the accusations are rooted in its refusal to endorse the American government’s blanket condemnations of Hezbollah and Hamas, although it has criticized Hamas for civilian deaths.

"Blanket condemnation" kind of skates over the fact that CAIR will not recognize Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations. Note this video.

I don't think it is guilt by association to call such an organization apologists for terrorists. And it is disturbing that an organization, which demands free speech on its own behalf, has barred CBN and The Washington Times from covering its press conferences, and attempted to intimidate speakers at the recent Secular Islam Summit. Other American Muslims have a few questions of their own for CAIR, about their support of the Holy Land Foundation (as laid out by Captain's Quarters) :

CAIR exploited 9/11 to help fund the very group that perpetrated the attack. Is that specific enough for MacFarquhar? Why didn't he bother to note this very specific charge in his article, filled as it was with protestations of lack of specificity?

And what about the board member named as an unindicted co-conspirator, who still sits on their board. In addition, CAIR Chicago has menaced a University of Chicago professor of Islamic History and Literature.

CAIR has also received donations from Saudi Arabia:

CAIR has raised some suspicion by accepting large donations from individuals or foundations closely identified with Arab governments. It has an annual operating budget of around $3 million, and the group said it solicited major donations for special projects, like $500,000 from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia to help distribute the Koran and other books about Islam in the United States, some of which generated controversy.

The donations are a source of contention within CAIR itself. Several branch directors said they had avoided foreign financing and had criticized the national office for it.

Good for some of the branch directors. Perhaps they should start a new organization. The Saudi, Wahhabi version of the Koran is virulently and pointedly anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. It is their official text in translation and has been distributed by the Saudi government to American prisons. (see page 6).

We need to continue to shine a spotlight on CAIR, because it is clear they are trying to intimidate and crowd out moderate Muslims, as well as bully the rest of us.

UPDATE: Dafydd has more here.

Related posts: Two Views on Terror, A CAIR Package, A Saudi Valentine?

Hillary's Cans of Worms

Hillary opens up a can of worms by resurrecting her claims of a "vast right-wing conspirancy". Some of my friends and I used to joke about being the HQ for it as we sat in our kitchens together stuffing envelopes for political mailers. James Taranto, Best of the Web, puts it all in perspective in this video, "Life in the Vast Lane".

And she opened her mouth again on the issue of the firing of the US attorneys. (I wrote a bit about it in Hamstringing Hillary.) WSJ:

Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration's decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from--gasp--the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for "the politicization of our prosecutorial system." Oh, my.

As it happens, Mrs. Clinton is just the Senator to walk point on this issue of dismissing U.S. attorneys because she has direct personal experience. In any Congressional probe of the matter, we'd suggest she call herself as the first witness--and bring along Webster Hubbell as her chief counsel.

Read on to jog your memory about the Clintons' abuse of power, as the Journal describes it. In contrast, the Bush administration has done nothing to merit this level of scrutiny. Some of the current attorneys were fired because they had failed to pursue serious allegations of vote fraud. One in New Mexico involved ACORN, which was investigated in other states.

In any event, when Hillary moves on from her campaign cliches and goes on the attack, she reminds us all of the Clinton administration, with real scandal after scandal. Lots of cans of worms yet to be opened.

Republican Jewish Coalition: Chicago

Chicago Chapter

Is honored to present

State Representative Sid Mathias

Jewish Republican Illinois State Representative and RJC member

Update from Springfield: The Governor and his tax increases
(and his really “ Gross” Receipts Tax)

Monday, March 26

Registration and kosher dessert: 6:30 - 7:00
Program to start at: 7:00 pm.

The Westin Chicago North Shore
601 N. Milwaukee Avenue (Southeast corner of Milwaukee and Lake Cook)
Wheeling

No Charge for current paid RJC Members and students
$20 non-members

RSVP is required
Email Dr. Michael Menis at rjcchicago@gmail.com
or call 815-459-7400

RJC Membership is $50.00 per year (includes Chicago chapter membership).
You can join by going to www.RJCHQ.org or at the event

School Ousts Sexually Explicit Teacher

Follow up on Fire this teacher. Tribune:

The board of Thornton Elementary School District 154 decided Tuesday night that a teacher accused of handing out sexually explicit material to 8th graders in a health class would go on paid administrative leave immediately and his contract would not be renewed for the next school year.[snip]

Groff distributed a sexually explicit handout to about 40 pupils last week. It explained in detail how to perform oral sex and how to masturbate and included dimensions for average penis size. It also contained colloquial expressions for various sexual positions.

According to parents, children were required to read aloud various questions ranging from "How do you French kiss?" to "Do you need to use a condom during anal sex?"

I think this teacher should choose another profession, one that does not involve kids. Even when they were visibly and vocally upset he didn't stop. This verged on a hate crime.

Brady Speaks Up

Heard Sen. Bill Brady this morning on WLS asking people to sign up and fight the Six Billion gross receipts tax at StopRod.org.

Sen. Brady says this is very bad for Illinois, business will be doubly taxed--gross receipts and net profits, and consumers will pay more. And how will new businesses start up, many run by women and minorities, if they have to pay taxes on gross receipts even if they have no profit coming in yet? Brady said Mayor Daley gets it, as stated in this Sun Times story:

Arguing that business leaders are "not fat cats," Mayor Daley accused Gov. Blagojevich on Tuesday of playing with fire by using anti-business rhetoric to sell a proposed gross receipts tax and demanded that property tax relief be added to the mix.

Daley said business leaders are committed to education funding reform and they should have been consulted upfront -- before the governor unveiled the biggest tax increase in Illinois history.

Daley also said the governor's tax is an invitation for business to leave the state. Sen. Brady said Illinois passed a tax like this several decades ago and it took years for the state economy to recover. Illinois is in the cellar among the states on job creation, when our natural advantages and infrastructure should put us at the top.

UPDATE: Trib story here, with this:

But Daley's criticisms Tuesday were noted in Springfield, where lawmakers shared his skepticism. "I think [Daley] is just expressing what probably a lot of us are thinking," said Rep. Michael Smith (D-Canton), chairman of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.

Asked if lawmakers ultimately would approve the governor's proposal, he said, "If I were to bet money on it, I'd say no."

At the same time, Smith said it is early in the legislative session, and lawmakers still need to see more analysis on how the taxes would affect businesses as well as consumers.

Obamanation

Let's hope we don't become an Obama nation. He who would be president speaks. Scott at Powerline on the latest Obamanation.

Previous post: Obama's Audacity

There's No Place Like Home

Blue Skirt asks, "What's the matter with Kansas?" (Red Skirt here) Well, my mom was from Nebraska, so I claim a kinship of sorts. And I'm from a small town in Wisconsin, though I live in a suburb of Chicago now. For my first job out of college I worked for a grain company, and in the first few weeks I did a bit of traveling around and training. I went to the Kansas City Board of Trade, and drove one summer night southwest to Emporia. I saw the sign on the way in to town: Home of William Allen White. His influence endures. He asked that question too.

But in fairness to Kansas, anyone anywhere has some gripes with where they live. I may not like the corruption in Illinois that emanates from Chicago, but Chicago is still a great city. And Illinois is still the Land of Lincoln---we lay claim to that history even if we don't always live up to it.

So, a little rebuttal.

CPAC:
Rigid? Any group that invites NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani can't be caricatured as rigid.
I disapprove of Ann Coulter. She substitutes foul-mouthed words for argument too often. Reminds me of the leftist Daily Kos. I don't imagine she'll be invited back.

Gore:
Bigfoot. Nuff said.

Women's suffrage:
I've had doubts about that myself:) Women used to not be able to vote, then they voted like their husbands. Now they vote based on their own beliefs. Either you're for the children or against them.

Minimum wage:
My guess is Illinois, which just raised its minimum wage, may lose jobs to Kansas.

Intelligent design:
I'll settle for silent prayer in school. And maybe some decent science instead of junk.

No hilarity?
Humor is difficult across cultures.

English only:
A good idea, leads to success and is supported by most Latino parents.

High school kids of undocumented receive resident tuition:
Agree with that. But need a long term solution.

Ecoterrorism from illegal immigrants:
Not a worry by me. More likely pulled off by leftie spoiled suburban brats on the left coast.

Immigration:
We do need to control our borders and know who is in our country.

Overall we need immigrants as our economy is growing and we are at near full employment. We need more highly skilled legal immigrants, because our schools aren't producing enough math and science cognizant kids.

I generally agree with the president's plan on immigration. We need to regularize guest workers. Those who have come illegally need to go to the back of the line, behind those who have applied to come here legally. I am concerned about illegal immigration because people are victimized, women are raped, children and babies are sold and abused, and criminals easily hide.
US border towns' schools and hospitals are overwhelmed, and some hospitals have closed, depriving everyone of health care. And the border environment is being despoiled.

It is well known though, that our southern border has been open, so thousands of people from other countries have come through illegally. Many wish us well, we continue to be a beacon of hope and opportunity, but some wish us deadly harm. And I am worried about identity theft, an exploding problem---the highest incidence is in Arizona for obvious reasons.

Mexico also needs to help its people and grow its own economy so families aren't so desperate. Looks like their new president is pursuing that.

I don't think close-mindedness and provincialism are determined by a zip code. Some of the most provincial people in the country live in Manhattan. I helped a friend from Nebraska and her new roommate from NYC move into their dorm room my freshman year. The roommate's mom didn't know where Omaha was, or Nebraska, and even had trouble with Chicago and Denver. The roommate is now a heavy hitter at the NY Times. (Did I say that?:)

And some of the most open-minded and open-hearted people in the US of A live on the open plains. (Did I say that?:)

So I think the lesson is that whatever state you live in, it's important to debate the issues and think well of your neighbor even if you don't always agree with them. There's no place like home.


And know your geography.

Thanks from Fr. John

(A note with thanks to some of the contributors to the ComPadres.org from Father John Barkemeyer, sent to me by my friend who regularly organizes donations.)

A little ComPadres story. I was this afternoon I was walking down of of the main roads of the Camp. Off to the side I see about 25 Marines sleeping in the dirt. I walked over to kid the couple that were awake about these guys sleeping on the job. They said the group had just gotten in from one of the outposts. They get to come on one day a month to take a shower and shop at the PX. Of course I felt like heel ribbing them knowing this was their "day off." I happened to have a bunch of PX gift certificates on me (courtesy as you know of the ComPadres). I passed them out and they acted like they won the lottery. I also asked what the living conditions were at their outpost, typically abysmal as you can imagine. I asked how they relax after a shift. They said there really isn't much for them to do so I told them I just may be able to hook them up with a little video entertainment! Of course they went out of their minds with the idea they could play each other with the Xbox Halo II game. It was really cute.

I'm going to divert one of the Xboxes that has been sent my way to them. They recently had one of their guys killed on the rooftop of their outpost so they could use a break. Anyway, I included a picture of these guys. Just thought you'd like to see who's benefitting from what you are doing. From them and me to you, THANKS! John

Corruption at Illinois Energy Consortium?

New blogger Cinny Agnew is following up on a Tribune story, initially as it affects District 211, Palatine, Hoffman Estates. Ask your school district about this possible corruption. Latest from the District 211 blog:

As I wrote yesterday, I have been attempting to learn from the Illinois Energy Consortium how they came to the conclusion that they have saved school districts throughout Illinois $30,000,000 on electricity and natural gas bills.The IEC posted that claim on its website last week in response to Diane Rado’s March 5 article in the Chicago Tribune that showed that the three groups that sponsor the IEC have received literally millions of dollars from the IEC.

Her previous posts here and here.

Brady on Don & Roma Wed.

(Press Release)

Brady to Discuss StopRod.org on WLS Wednesday A.M.

Listen to Don Wade and Roma on Chicago’s WLS-AM (890) Wednesday morning when Sen. Bill Brady is scheduled to discuss his new website – www.StopRod.org – and his opposition to Governor Blagojevich’s $6 billion tax increase on Illinois business and consumers.

He’ll also talk about skyrocketing electric bills for ComEd and Ameren customers and the Governor’s overall budget proposal.

Bill is slated to be on the popular morning program about 7:40 a.m. Wednesday. Again, it’s 890 on your AM radio, or listen live on your computer at www.wlsam.com.

Update on McCain

Sen. McCain will be in Iraq during the Club for Growth conference, according to the RCP Blog.

Mugabe's Brutality

From Zimbabwe, The Telegraph reports on the dictator Mugabe's treatment of his opposition:

Mr Tsvangirai arrived at the magistrates' court in the capital, Harare, with about 50 others, including several terribly wounded women, in an open truck. They sang songs of defiance against President Robert Mugabe's regime.

After being arrested on Sunday for trying to attend a prayer meeting the authorities had deemed an illegal gathering, Mr Tsvangirai was severely tortured by police.

"I am all right," he said, emerging from the packed courtroom and shaking hands with well-wishers, including Andrew Pocock, the British ambassador in Harare,

Mr Tsvangirai winced in pain, his eyes so puffed and bloodshot he could barely see. The left side of his body was hunched and the stitches sewn into a deep wound on his head were clearly visible.

Memory Mapai, 38, mother of one child and a supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), could barely walk. She was assisted by a wounded party official, Grace Kwinjeh.

Mrs Mapai's thin legs were blistered from blows. She clutched her side, and said in a weak voice: "The pain is very bad. I was tortured at Machipisa [police station]. But we will not stop."

Sunny and Warm

Amazing weather for March, sunny and warm, in the 70's. The backyard's a swamp but the lake is beautiful.

McCain's Economic Record

I guess Sen. McCain has adopted some kind of Rose Garden strategy for his presidential run--not engaging, not playing politics, just doing his job. Only Sen. McCain is not the incumbent and he is no longer even the front runner.

He has been more of the old static school balance-the-budget-no-tax-cuts, but in recent interviews seemed to come over to the supply side. Why did he turn down the invitation of the Club for Growth?

WSJ opinion piece by Club for Growth on the McCain record. Full report here.


Related post: Keeping McCain in Mind

What it Means to be Green

There are a few stories floating around about what it means to be green. In San Francisco, an office building with no A/C and elevators that only stop every 3rd floor. In Chicago, your sink on top of your toilet and worms in the basement. (Somehow the front page Home and Garden story from the Sunday Trib print edition "The eco-centrics" can't be found online. I linked to the related story.)

Now I'm all for rain barrels, and gardens on the roof, if that works in your urban landscape, but let's look at whether all this is really necessary. I'm a conservative, I like conservation, but we need to cut through the alarmism and junk science. We may have some global warming, but it may well be a short-term natural cycle, and if it's man-made, who was influencing the cycles that have been documented pre-man?

So please, don't tax us for breathing.

And take a little time to watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

Previous posts: Global Warming Swindle, Gore's Racket, The Goracle's Carbon Footprint.

UPDATE: Rogers Park Bench has a couple of interesting posts to add to the debate on the subject, here and here.

UPDATE: WSJ on the Big Corn Con, with this salient point, in addition to the evils of tariffs:

The folks to blame are the corn-ethanol lobby, led by Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, who sounds like Senator Cornpone but is craftier than a highwayman. He's blocking repeal of the tariff because repeal would mostly benefit sugar-based ethanol, while his voters and campaign contributors make ethanol from corn. Corn is less efficient as an ethanol feed stock because as a starch it first has to be turned into sugar before it can be turned into fuel.

We could import sugar much more cheaply from Brazil to make ethanol.

UPDATE: NY Times opens the door to disagreement with the Goracle! (They must be worried they are losing credibility on the issue. Introducing nuance) But we'll give you the best quotes:

I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Then they bury the good stuff at the end:

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”

Heh:)

Dollars for Dictators & Terror

I don't know how liberals can continue to have faith in the UN to help people in Darfur and others in need elsewhere through police action.

The UN can not even police itself.

And starving people are way down on the UN's list of priorities.

And there is evidence the UN's actions have undermined US national security and set back efforts to stop nuclear and WMD proliferation. UN Oil for Food money may have ended up funding terrorists. Billions for terror, not food and medicine for Iraqi children.

Fresh from its enormous fraud in the Iraq Oil for Food program, now we find the UN has been bankrolling North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's nukes, not to mention his personal proclivity for caviar and cognac and "joy brigades", while millions of his people starve to death. Tribune editorial here.

The US instituted sanctions after the December nuke test, which have influenced the dictator to come to the table and allow the IAEA into the country (another UN entity). The US has taken the right tack here, not waiting for the UN but working with North Korea's neighbors to put the pressure on.

The Challenge for Schools

States have succeeded in evading some of the NCLB accountability for school improvement by dumbing down the tests. Which doesn't help these kids learn to the level they are capable of, a pattern that is reflected in Illinois high school scores:

It's much the same story nationwide, indicating that turning around underperforming high schools is a far tougher challenge than it is at the elementary level.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose foundation has poured $1.5 billion into high school reform since 2000, spoke of that disconnect during testimony last week before a U.S. Senate Education Committee.

"International tests have found our 4th graders among the top students in the world in science and above-average in math," Gates said during the hearing Wednesday. "By 8th grade, they have moved closer to the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students score near the bottom of all industrialized nations."

We need more competition to give parents and their kids choices. Competition will concentrate the minds of public schools on challenging and retaining students. At the very least, we need more, not fewer charter schools in Illinois and especially Chicago, to meet the need evidenced by a big waiting list of prospective students.

Giuliani in the Loop

Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in the Loop yesterday, making a stop at Harry Carey's as well as the Palmer House to introduce himself to Chicago as a presidential candidate. The evening event hosts included Patrick Ryan and Ron Gidwitz. The former mayor of NYC also thanked Chicago. Sun Times:

"Of all the cities that helped us after Sept. 11, Chicago helped us the most," he said. "One day I was actually driving through [New York] city about a month after Sept. 11, and I saw this police officer directing traffic. And the police officer had a Chicago uniform on. . . . He said, 'Mayor Daley sent me here."

Welcome to Chicago America's Mayor.

Oprah's School

Usually I don't comment on Oprah, as I don't watch her, but this story's on the front page of the Sun Times---is her new girls school in South Africa too strict?:

The 12- and 13-year-old girls are allowed only one visit a month, the number of visitors is limited to four, names of visitors must be submitted in advance and cell phone calls and e-mails to relatives are allowed only on weekends.

Some parents are upset, they of course miss their daughters, but allowing more frequent communication will only make the girls more homesick. I have sympathy for Oprah if parents are going to go to the press every time they have a problem. They can always pull their child out of the school.

At least she's given them a choice.

Coy Candidates

McCain rejects an invitation to the Club for Growth conference the end of this month. I just don't get it. Is he running as a Republican or not? Details at GOP Bloggers.

And Erick at RedState has Chuck Hagel's measure.

Green Machine

WSJ on the wonders of supply-side economics in Iceland and Ireland. Given St. Patrick's Day is already being celebrated around here, wouldn't it be better for the governor to look for that pot of gold to bail out the state by adopting the Green Machine's measures?

Too bad some of us can't secede from Illinois and create our own island nation.

Individuals & the 2nd Amendment

Well, the Washington Post has finally found some activist judges they don't like. They think it's a "dangerous" ruling. The DC Circuit for the US Court of Appeals, the most influential circuit court in the country, has struck down DC's handgun ban as a violation of the 2nd Amendment, and affirming the right of individuals to keep and bear arms under the Constitution. More from WaPo story:

Yesterday's majority opinion said that the District has a right to regulate and require the registration of firearms but not to ban them in homes. The ruling also struck down a section of the D.C. law that required owners of registered guns, including shotguns, to disassemble them or use trigger locks, saying that would render the weapons useless. [snip]

In a footnote, Silberman noted that "the black market for handguns in the District is so strong that handguns are readily available (probably at little premium) to criminals. It is asserted, therefore, that the D.C. gun control laws irrationally prevent only law abiding citizens from owning handguns."

RCP Blog with commentary and links. The opinion here.

A few shock waves may be felt here in Wilmette among backers of the local ban. But others of us have been shocked by the rise in crime, locally and nationally, and a few recent and not-so-recent incidents in Wilmette, which apparently has put out a welcome mat for criminals.

And as those opposed to this ban have stated, why shouldn't the courts apply the Second Amendment much like the First, providing an individual right rather than a collective one?

Perhaps next time a father like Hale DeMar, who may have saved his children's lives that night by having a handgun, won't be charged with a crime by his village. We value our police, but they may not be able to help us all in time, and advice like "locking your bedroom door", given at the time by the police chief, is small comfort.

And women living alone have protected themselves with hanguns. More from the Second Amendment Sisters.

It always amazes me that here in one of the most well-educated zip codes in the country, liberals don't trust their neighbors to handle their lives and their guns responsibly. But that's the liberal nanny state mentality. They know what's good for us.

Governor Big

Byrne takes Blagojevich apart.

StopRod.org

Previous post: MoveOnout, Rod's Knockout Punch

Kirk Questions Aid to Hamas

Apparently some US aid has been flowing to at least one university in Gaza. Scholarship students are not even being asked to sign pledges that they will not participate in terrorism, as is normally the case with US aid recipients:

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) today called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to launch a special Inspector General investigation into reports that U.S. assistance was provided to a university run by the HAMAS terrorist group in Gaza.

The Washington Times reported on Monday that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provided more than $140,000 in assistance to the HAMAS-controlled Islamic University in Gaza even after Congress restricted aid to entities or individuals "involved in or advocating terrorist activity."[snip]

“These allegations raise serious questions as to the integrity of US taxpayer assistance,” Kirk said. “Current law prohibits foreign assistance to institutions that support or sponsor foreign terrorist organizations. At the very least, these reports demand an Inspector General investigation by the State Department and USAID.”

Incredible. And there's this:

Last month, Palestinian security forces raided the university, confiscating 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles, hundreds of RPG launchers and ammunition. Senior Palestinian sources told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot that kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit had been kept at Islamic University for most of 2006. The newspaper also reported five Iranian citizens were arrested during the Fatah raid, including an Iranian general who trained HAMAS activists to manufacture explosives in the university’s chemistry labs.

Original Washington Times story here.

Dream Killers

At a time when Illinois education can only benefit from more options for success, there is a new attack on charter schools in Illinois:

The Illinois House of Representatives Elementary & Secondary Education Committee passed House Bill 466. This bill, sponsored by State Representative Monique Davis (773-445-9700, 217-782-0010), is dangerous because it seeks to limit public school options by prohibiting all charter public schools from opening additional campuses.

Currently there are 10,000 students on waiting lists to attend charter public schools and HB 466 would take away that option.

Ask your state representatives to oppose this bill, which would take away hope for those who most need it.

This is a civil rights issue, and the teachers' union and others who continue to stand in the way of parents and children trying to better themselves are in part responsible for the consequences. Clarence Page remarked on the sad state of the NAACP, locked in the past, as they rejected their new head:

Gordon had the audacity to hope for an expanded NAACP mission. He set out with a corporate CEO's sense of urgency to target, for example, the continuing crises of undereducated black males.

Gordon understood something that NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and numerous others in the organization's breathtakingly huge 64-member board refuse to face: White racism is not the biggest problem holding back the advancement of people of color.

Yes, overall black poverty is down to about 24 percent today from well over 60 percent in the mid-1960s. But since the mid-1990s, recent studies show young, undereducated black males are worse off by every statistical measure of unemployment, drug abuse, disease and imprisonment.

And at the national level, there is recognition from some Democrats, joining with Republicans, that more merit pay, school accountability and at least more public school choice are the only way to help kids, especially the most needy, excel.

Some kids, like Rontrell, are able to break free and work to achieve their dream.

Others need more help. Those legislators who stand in the way are dream killers.

President Thompson?

Yet another Senator is contemplating running for President, but despite his being an actor now, I wouldn't characterize Fred Thompson as a vanity candidate.

And though he has played a President, he doesn't seem to have the need to compare himself to an earlier great one or two. Thompson seems comfortable as himself, and his positions and record are solidly conservative.

FoxNews transcript here via RCP Buzztracker.

Obama's Audacity

Is it just serendipity that Barack Obama is running for President this year? Or does he have more in common with the Clintons than you think? Tom Bevan, RCP Blog, with some background and a new take on the Big O.

(Does Barack have a picture of himself shaking hands with President Lincoln? Did Hillary shake hands with JFK too?)

UPDATE: Will we have two for the price of one too?

UPDATE: Trib editorial on Obama and the long campaign. Turns out it was even longer than we thought, as noted above. But it also puts his judgement into question. If he was contemplating running for president so early, with ethics his signature issue, why did he ever get involved with Rezko? Taking ambitious shortcuts on the way up.

UPDATE: WSJ interviews John Kass on Obama. Hat tip Reverse Spin.

The Party of Freedom

Last week Guiliani spoke to members of Stanford's Hoover Institution, then headed to red/blue Virginia . Salena Zito, via RCP:

Giuliani said Hoover's approach to the Soviet Union -- successfully achieving peace through military and diplomatic restraint -- was at the core of Ronald Reagan's policy, "and Ronald Reagan was a hero of mine."

In Virginia, the conversation that GOP members wanted to have with Giuliani centered on the Iraq war and the state of the Republican Party.

"That discussion was focused on the war in Iraq and how we have to look at it," he recalled. "But we also talked about how the Republican Party should position itself and rejuvenate itself as the party of freedom over our own lives."

The party of freedom, the party of decision.

Jim Sleeper, TPM Cafe, a onetime liberal supporter, makes the case for Giuliani while trying to blast him:

He forced New York, that great capital of “root cause” explanations for every social problem, to get real about remedies that work, at least for now, in the world as we know it. I saw Al Sharpton blink as I told him in a debate that twice as many New Yorkers had been felled by police bullets during David Dinkins’ four-year mayoralty as during Giuliani’s then-seven years and that the drop in all murders meant that at least two thousand black and Hispanic New Yorkers who’d have been dead were up and walking around.

Giuliani’s successes ranged well beyond crime reduction. As late as July, 2001, when his personal and political blunders had eclipsed those gains and he had only a lame duck’s six months to go, I insisted in a New York Observer column that he’d facilitated housing, entrepreneurial, and employment gains for people whose loudest-mouthed advocates called him a racist reactionary. James Chapin, the late democratic socialist savant, considered Giuliani a “progressive conservative” like Teddy Roosevelt, who was a New York police commissioner before becoming Vice President and President.

But they're worried now. Democrats always say they're "fighting for you" but when they run into someone who is really willing to fight for what he believes in they think he's crazy.

No, we can't have someone who "panders shamelessly to some Hispanics and Orthodox Jews"---clearly dangerous constituencies. (I don't know about deals with cronies, might wanna ask Dem leader Ritzy Harry Reid about that.) Maybe it was that clip Rudy did with The Donald for a press roast. Gasp.

Anyone willing to make a fool of himself in aid of a little humor can't be that dangerous.

And Sleeper suggests economic good luck had a lot to do with his tenure in NY. Funny how it's always luck for Republicans, pure genius when it's a Democrat (Bill Clinton) taking credit for a good economy.

And the ultimate---Rudy's an---OPERA FANATIC.

The horror!

Too much culchah--he's "living in a libretto"! (not to be confused with bordello, that was Bill)

To them 9/11 was just a day at the opera, isolated in time, with no real consequences, and the emergent hero is scarier than any real villain.

It seems liberals can only handle dead bodies when they're on a stage. Too much real devastation, emotion, love of country and willingness to fight a truly evil enemy are too much for them.

Who's out of touch with the real world?

Not Rudy.

And a reminder---a grateful Great Britain only dumped Churchill after he defeated the Nazis. And secured our freedom.

UPDATE: Rudy's in Chicago tonight at the Palmer House. (scroll past Lynn Sweet's gushing coverage of Michelle Obama.)

Keeping McCain in Mind

Reason Magazine just had John McCain on its cover, (very popular at the recent CPAC meeting--the unflattering story, that is, not McCain) and now he's looking at us from National Review. Here's Ramesh Ponnuru's interview, available online, but for the cover story of the March 19th issue you need to subscribe.

McCain has a conservative record but he doesn't seem to have a consistent conservative philosophy, something that has bothered me for some time. Ponnuru puts his finger on it here:

There are genuinely disconcerting elements to McCain's politics. He talks about cutting spending, but he rarely connects limited government to individual freedom. He is an inveterate moralist, which eludes many observers because he is concerned about honor rather than virtue.

And this sometimes leads him to the regulation (campaign finance) and social engineering (tobacco) of the left. This is why the libertarians are on his case, in addition to their isolationism on the war. And that is also why social conservatives don't entirely trust him, because his ethics aren't grounded in a sense of right or wrong stemming from our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Of course, most conservatives agree with McCain on the war, (recent take here) which is for most of us the overriding issue for our country, so we will keep him in mind.

Democrat Dishonesty

Dishonest and gutless. These are the Democrats today. Video here.

Always trying to rewrite recent history, because history does not treat them kindly. They suffer in comparison to their leaders of earlier generations.

The Democrats of today never learn from history, they hide from it. As they hide from the consequences of their actions.

Previous posts: Outlaw War Now!, Dead Souls Democrats

Hamstringing Hillary

The Democrats are having hearings on the firing of 8 US attorneys by the Bush administration, claiming they are politically motivated. That may be true, though I doubt the hearings will get to the bottom of it, since they are most certainly politically motivated.

But let's set the record straight, for the Democrats and MSM editorialists. The US attorneys were all appointed in the first place by the Republican Bush administration, and serve at the discretion of the president. That is one way of ensuring accountability for incompetence.

And let's also recall that at the "dawn" of the Clinton administration, Bill fired virtually all the US attorneys--more than 90. Presumably it had a little bit to do with a case called Whitewater.

So maybe it's a good thing to have more Congressional oversight, but the Dems may want to consider they might be hamstringing President Hillary.

If that's what they really want to do they should say so. :)

Fire this teacher

Fire this teacher. He knew exactly what he was doing. One parent had it right when she described it as "almost voyeurism". Beyond indoctrination, which would have been bad enough, this was teacher as predator.

And consider this. Steven Warshawsky, RCP:

But toleration is a two-way street. By what political, moral, or logical principle should the views of religious minorities and non-believers take precedence over those of the vast majority of Christian Americans? Why should my non-religious "sensitivities," for example, trump those of my more religious neighbors? To put it in concrete terms, why should a small number of dissenters be able to prevent the larger community from consecrating their public ceremonies and rites of passage, like high school graduation, with a short prayer (nondenominational or otherwise)? Put somewhat differently, why are political majorities entitled to impose their political views on others with impunity, sometimes in the most obnoxious ways (think liberals in San Francisco or Manhattan), but religious majorities cannot even have a moment of silence in school or a representation of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom? Frankly, I do not see how any "conservative" can agree with the present treatment of Christianity in this country.

The intolerance and bigotry of the left is intolerable. Every day in many classrooms and schools, Christians are belittled, a faith whose tradition in this country is one of religious tolerance for all. Would the schools allow them equal time? At Deerfield High School, or New Trier? I thought not.

And yet teachers like this are kept on and defended.

Previous post: Purposely Provocative.

UPDATE: From the Culture Campaign blog:

According to Lora Sue Hauser, the head of North Shore Student Advocacy (NSSA), students at Deerfield High School were asked to sign a 'confidentiality agreement' before listening to a panel discussion by homosexual students in a mandatory class known as Freshman Advisory.

Several weeks ago, Ellen Waltz, mother of a freshman girl, was denied permission by the school to quietly sit in on the class and observe. The school instead offered to give her a video tape of the class. When she called to obtain the videotape, she was told it was not available...How convenient.

NSSA filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the Freshman Advisory curriculum. The request was denied by the school.

More details at the site.

The Good Guys

The good guys. Courtesy MEMRI. And Robert Kagan, WaPo, RCP on the surge:

Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying."

A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself."

More of our good guys are on the ground. Don't straightjacket our troops and cut the ground from under them, Democrats. And Iraq's leader confronts his neighbors (and maybe the) NY Times:

“Confrontation of terrorism, dear brothers, requires ceasing any form of financial and media support and religious cover, as well as logistical support and provision of arms and men that would turn out to be explosive tools killing our children, women and elders and bombing our mosques and churches,” Mr. Maliki said.

Present were Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia,(among others). The ____ _____.

Greenhouse Effect With Cat

Hillary Beats out Obama

Despite Obama's lofty rhetoric in Selma, Alabama, Hillary has widened her lead among the state's Democrat voters, including blacks. And Lynn Sweet on Obama's hush-hush fundraising from the party's limousine liberal fatcats. Hat tip RCP Blog.

Previous post: Obama the Scofflaw

Townhall Chicago: Eminent Domain

You’re invited to a Townhall Chicago meeting next Tuesday, March 13th. 6:30 social hour and/or dinner, 7:30 (promptly) presentation, at Lincoln Restaurant, Chicago. $3.00 to cover Townhall expenses.

Topic: Eminent Domain--Whose Land is This?

Speakers: John Tillman, President and CEO, Sam Adams Alliance

Paul Fisher, Partner, McGuire Woods, LLC

Scott Bludorn, Coalition to Save International Plaza (Arlington Heights)

(Arlington Heights village mayor and trustees have been invited.)

More details: Please RSVP TownhallChicago@aol.com or call 312.420.3115 with headcount and names. Free parking behind building, entrance off Irving Park going west from Damon--exchange token inside.

Faceless

Well, I've almost abandoned the regular phone and the TV (except for Brit's show on FoxNews, Sox games, and watching DVDs), I probably use my digital camera as much as my cell phone, I mostly email my friends and family and get my news on the net.

But I don't think I'll go in for Facebook. Someone about my age has, with questionable results. Emily Yoffe, Slate, RCP:

It's clear that if you are in the target demographic for a face-lift, you're not going to know a lot of people on Facebook.

She struck out a lot, but then looked up old friends from academia, assuming they would be more connected to the prime student demographic. She found one in California:

My other professor friends didn't even have profiles. After I read an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about the evils of Facebook, this was less of a surprise. In the piece, one journalism professor is quoted asking a class of 140 students how many had watched the NewsHour on PBS the night before. Only a few hands went up. Then a student said, "Ask them how many use Facebook." Every hand went up. "I was amazed," the professor said.

This sounds like progress to me, especially if they are budding journalists.

I read on. Facebook users send each other imaginary gifts. This I like even better. Imaginary teddy bears. There is still a trunk of beanie babies under the guest room bed. I think I'll send off this real gift first to my Facebook kids who have moved out. The imaginary gifts can go off later.

But I still think I'll pass on Facebook. As my contemporary, Ms. Yoffe would understand, at my age it's best to leave most to the imagination.

Capitalism and Empowerment

The Tribune has an excellent essay on a new approach to stamping out poverty in Latin America. It is no coincidence that this started in Chile, a laboratory for the free-market "Chicago Boys", and has spread to a few other enlightened countries in Latin America---Brazil and now Mexico:

The premise is simple: The women get money. But unlike traditional welfare plans in other countries that critics say create a culture of dependence, these programs have strict eligibility requirements designed to help the recipients and move them off the rolls once they no longer qualify.

And the sums handed out, experts say, are enough to help poor families but not enough to create a disincentive to work. In Brazil, for example, the average monthly payment is less than $60.

The World Bank, headed by Bush appointee and "neocon" Paul Wolfowitz has been supportive of this and similar ventures which empower individuals, not bureaucrats, and show concrete results. President Bush is currently visiting our neighbors to the south.

One goal of the aid initiative, and of Bush's trip, is to counter the influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other leftist leaders who have come to power by promising to champion the neglected poor.

In Brazil, economist Marcelo Neri of the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro said the country's Family Fund, or Bolsa Familia, is more effective at easing poverty than raising the minimum wage.

The Democrats could take a few lessons here on how to really improve people's lives. And opening up trade could benefit the entire hemisphere.

Getting Along

The NY Times covers Islamic swimwear and life-saver culture in Oz. None of that hyphenated stuff there, all to the good:

Like most Muslim immigrants here, Mr. Damouny, 20, a sportswriter at The Torch, a weekly newspaper, does not like to be referred to by ethnicity. His grandparents fled Palestine in 1948 and moved to Lebanon, then to the United Arab Emirates, where he lived until moving to Australia seven years ago. He considers himself Australian.

Mr. Damouny said his friends could not understand why he wanted to be a Life Saver, especially in Cronulla. And they did not think he could pass the rigorous eight-week course. “But I did,” he said proudly. Seventeen finished; one woman dropped out after making the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and coming back in a full burqa.

And an Islamic designer holds her first fashion show in Chicago today and tomorrow:

Turkish designer Rabia Yalcin wears modest clothes that cover her completely, and she hides her hair with a scarf, in accordance with her Islamic beliefs. But her haute couture designs bare plenty of skin with plunging necklines and exposed backs.

She designs wraps and jackets to go along for more modest occasions. Tribune story and video interview here.

It's all about choices and getting along.

Related posts: Women Only Island, A Saudi Valentine?

MoveOnout

Comerica is moving out of Michigan after Democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm proposed taxing just about everything that moves. They are moving first. WSJ, "MoveOnoutofMichigan.org":

Comerica Inc. was founded in 1849 in Detroit and the Detroit Tigers play in Comerica Park, but this week the bank holding company announced it is moving its headquarters to Dallas -- where, it said, the bigger growth opportunities are. Consider it one more vote of confidence in the state the national expansion forgot, and especially in Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's economic agenda.

Re-elected last year, Ms. Granholm recently rewarded the voters by announcing some $1 billion in new fees and tax increases. The plan would charge Michigan residents higher levies for almost every activity inside the state with a moving part. She would tax trucking, shopping, smoking, hunting, fishing, drinking beer and liquor, using a cell phone and, yes, even dying.

Will Sox park suffer the same fate? StopRod.org.

Previous post: Rod's Knockout Punch

UPDATE: Illinois Review on Americans for Tax Reform naming Governor Rod Blagojevich "Enemy of the Taxpayer".

Ikebana at the Botanic Garden

At the Chicago Botanic Garden this weekend.
(March events):

SOGETSU IKEBANA SOCIETY SHOW March 10 – 11, 2007 — 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Members of the Seigyoku-kai Sogetsu Ikebana Society of Chicago will demonstrate the Sogetsu School of Ikebana's flower-arranging techniques and answer questions. Sogetsu Ikebana began in 1927 with the philosophy that plants are beautiful as they are, but with people's help, they can be arranged in an effective style to be even more appreciated. The Sogetsu School of Ikebana emphasizes individuality and imagination in floral arrangements that can be created by anyone at any time and with any material.

A breath of spring.

CNN Blinks

General Petraeus updates us on Iraq amid the Democrats' empty posturing.

And CNN blinks. It's a rare thing. An honest man at CNN. Video at HotAir.

UPDATE: Oh, and the Democrats want to import Gitmo terrorists to the US. You know, the kind of guys who use hot sauce and hacked off combs to stab guards in the eyes and blind them? Presumably Sen. Schumer does not want them in New York. We're waiting for you to speak up Senator. An administration official in The Politico:

"While we want to bring these guys to trial as quickly as possible, where do Democrats believe we should keep Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 plot?" the official asked. "Which American city will they choose to place America's most wanted terrorists?"

I suggest DC as a prime location. Better check the gas mask packs under their chairs for freshness. Or maybe San Francisco (maybe the Pelosis could donate a little real estate in Napa, call it Auberge du Osama) or Beverly Hills.

Tremors in Iran

Earlier this week we read about Iran's president being challenged by his main political rival due to the country's poor economic performance, the women of Iran demonstrate on International Women's Day, despite being beaten with batons, and now one of their key generals has defected to the West and is sharing a wealth of intel. Amir Taheri, NY Post, RCP details a pattern of pressure by the US and its allies that is paying off:

Always in the shadows, Askari was in charge of a program to train foreign Islamist militants as part of Tehran's strategy of "exporting" the Khomeinist revolution.

In 1982-83, Askari (along with Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Mohatashami-Pour) founded the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah and helped set up its first military units. The two men supervised the 1983 suicide attacks on the U.S. Embassy and on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut - killing more than 300 Americans, including 241 Marines. Iranian sources say Askari was part of a triumvirate of Revolutionary Guard officers that controlled Hezbollah's armed units until the end of the '90s.

He would have knowledge of the Quds forces, the "elite arm" of the Revolutionary Guard that has been attacking our troops in Iraq, and has been involved in arms deals and may have information on Iran's "peaceful" nuke program. Tremors in Iran.

Wizbang and C-Span

Kevin Aylward of Wizbang successfully takes on C-Span after they went after bloggers for copyright infringement but gave House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a pass. (Rather than face Nancy, C-Span caved:)

The Visible Jihad

News reports of an arrest of an American in Phoenix, a home-grown terrorist. ABC7Chicago:

A former U.S. Navy sailor has been charged with allegedly passing military secrets about U.S. Navy movements through waters in the Middle East to al Qaeda-related Web sites during the spring of 2001, just months after the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen.

Hassan Abujihaad, formerly known as Paul R. Hall, allegedly passed information about U.S. Navy warship movements in the Straits of Hormuz in April 2001 while he was a member of the Navy. The information passed along contained details about vulnerabilites of U.S. vessels — including susceptibility to small boat attacks by terrorists.

And who is one of his friends?

The complaint claims Abujihaad was an associate of Derrick Shareef, who allegedly tried to explode grenades at the CherryVale Mall outside Chicago during the height of the holiday shopping season last December. Shareef was arrested on Dec. 6, 2006, when he traded stereo speakers for dud grenades in an FBI sting operation.

Abujihaad was discovered during the investigation of an individual in the UK who ran an Al Qaeda website, "which was a key recruitment and propaganda tool."

The invisible jihad becomes visible. Connect the dots.

Related posts: I am from America, Jihad Professor at Kent State, Terror Tactics Hit Home, The Invisible Jihad

UPDATE: Related editorial by IBD on the efforts of CAIR, the apologist for terror, to intimidate the Secular Islam Summit:

It dispatched its henchmen to Florida to shout the reformers down at their confab earlier this week. CAIR also posted on its Web site no fewer than four stories bashing the event and its courageous speakers, many of whom are women calling for an end to inequality and mistreatment under radical Islam.

Rod's Knockout Punch

From Sen. Bill Brady:
Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) today launched a new website – StopRod.org – to give Illinois citizens an opportunity to learn how Governor Blagojevich’s massive new tax increase may affect them and to register their opposition to it.

“This is the largest proposed tax increase in the history of Illinois,” Brady said. “I think it is important that consumers and businesses alike know they face higher costs and bigger government if the Governor somehow pushes this through the Democrat- controlled General Assembly. This is the governor again sticking its hands into the pockets of every business and every consumer in Illinois, to the tune of $6 billion just to pay for programs the state cannot afford today.”

“This is a tax that everyone who is concerned about the long-term economic security of Illinois should oppose. Illinois already is the eighth-worst job producing state in the nation, thanks to the Governor’s anti-job policies over the last four years. With these new taxes, even more Illinois businesses will shut their doors or move across the stateline, and the financial vitality of Illinois families will be even more threatened,” Brady added.

No state funds are being used to support the new website, which is being paid for by Brady’s political committee, Citizens for Bill Brady.

Crain's editorializes on the gross receipts tax, describing it as the "knockout punch" to Illinois business. Hat tip GOP USA Illinois (added to my blogroll).

Does the governor really think no one will move out of Illinois in response? There may be a lot of empty office buildings downtown. And who will support the Olympics? The Lyric? On and on and out.

Previous posts: Letter on Gross Receipts Tax, SIX repeat SIX BILLION

GOP 2008 Race

George Will in the Sun Times, RCP on conservatives and the double standard in the MSM:

The journalistic rule is that conservatives pander, liberals ''grow.'' When Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, Jesse Jackson and Dennis Kucinich changed from being pro-life to pro-abortion, their conversions -- the price of admission into Democratic presidential politics -- were often described as conscientious ''growth.'' But when McCain, who opposed Bush's tax cuts, concludes, on the basis of the humming economy, they should be made permanent, it is called pandering.

The GOP has always been more Big Tent than Democrats on the social issues. Glad to hear about McCain's change of heart on taxes, though I am not happy he is pushing for more open primaries again to undercut our party preferences.

Will also offers good insight for conservatives on the leading GOP candidates for 2008. He introduced Giuliani at CPAC, so Rudy's his preference. Giuliani's lead has lengthened over McCain in the latest WSJ poll. Newt is narrowly ahead of Mitt. The RCP Poll Average here.

It's early, but the race is on.

Related posts: Romney in Chicago, A Liberal Slayer

Inconvenient Incarceration

One of those generous friends of the governor and his wife has been charged with six felony counts. Generous with our money, that is. Sun Times:

Sources familiar with the investigation said Wednesday the firm allegedly bilked taxpayers out of at least $400,000. That number could soar to $3 million as investigators continue their work.

In one instance, the firm allegedly submitted a bill for a urinalysis on a man who it said dropped off his sample in person, sources said. Investigators later determined the man couldn't have dropped it off in person because he was incarcerated.

(How inconvenient for Governor Indefensible.) The Sun Times continues:

K.K. Bio-Science landed the DCFS deal long before Gov. Blagojevich took office. Amrish Mahajan, president and CEO of Harvey-based Mutual Bank, has donated $10,000 to the governor's campaign, records show.

Having helped the governor get elected and Patti with her real estate deal, I guess they felt a sense of entitlement. Maybe a cell at our expense would be appropriate.

Related posts: Fitzgerald's Front Burner, Political Bedfellows

Obama the Scofflaw

Oh, and the money Obama had to invest in the not-so-blind-trust came from his $1.2 million book contract. Remember that cute deal? Under Senate rules he could cash in on his new celebrity, raking it in between his election and actually taking office. (Hillary did the same thing, so she can't make an issue of that, but we can.) With the book deal money he also bought his $1.65 million mansion that got him in hot water with Rezko later. The Audacity of Hope has a lot to answer for.

Sweet also reports on his scofflaw behavior as a Harvard law student. (Previous post here.) More here:

Records from the Cambridge Traffic, Parking and Transportation office show that between Oct. 5, 1988 and Jan. 12, 1990 Obama was cited for 17 traffic violations, sometimes committing two in the same day. The abuses included parking in a resident permit area, parking in a bus stop and failing to pay the meter.

Guess he heard "destiny calling" even then, couldn't be bothered with "the smallness" of such details. Abiding by the law was too mundane.

American Princess on Obama

The American Princess tosses this one out on Obama. Via RCP Buzztracker.

Related post: Obama's Signature Issue

Expedient or not?

First Syria's Assad reportedly blows up (figuratively) at Iran's Ahmadinejad.

Now Ahmadinejad's leading rival has "erupted" into public disagreement on the economy:

Hashemi Rafsanjani, the president's most influential opponent, set the scene for a power struggle by telling Iranian journalists that Mr Ahmadinejad's "trial period is over". He said he would use his position as head of the expediency council, a state body empowered to set the Islamic regime's long-term goals, to reshape the government's economic policies.

Maybe expediency means something else in Farsi. (maybe it's the translator having a little fun at Iran's expense.) We should want to root for this guy.

Fitzgerald's Front Burner

John Kass on the return of Patrick Fitzgerald to Chicago. Tribune, RCP:

Meanwhile, there are those eight words by Fitzgerald:

"We're all going back to our day jobs."

It warmed me. But some others in Illinois must have felt like they were crossing the River Styx, if the Styx was full of ice and they crossed it without waders, leaving sensitive areas (perhaps their egos) subject to much freezing and shriveling.

Before he was burdened with the distractions of the Libby case, Fitzgerald was the U.S. attorney in Chicago.

Kass runs through the litany of cases moving from the back burner to the front burner. A special sort of hell awaits. We wait in hope.

Global Warming Swindle

Don't know if after you saw the story on Gore's energy hog mansion you saw the other one on Gore's Hollywood friends receiving carbon credits in their official Oscar goodie bags:

This year's Oscar goodie bag contained gift certificates representing 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gas reductions from TerraPass, which describes itself as a "carbon offset retailer." The 100,000 pounds "are enough to balance out an average year in the life of an Academy Award presenter," a press release from TerraPass asserts. "For example, 100,000 pounds is the total amount of carbon dioxide created by 20,000 miles of driving, 40,000 miles on commercial airlines, 20 hours in a private jet and a large house in Los Angeles.

Like the plenary indulgences that seemed to sanction sin, these credits are an invitation to excess.

But someone has emerged as a scold on the porkiness of the pampered people---PETA. Yes, they suggest St. Al should go vegan.

But Al has more on his plate than PETA, new global warming skeptics have emerged. A French scientist, an early supporter, has flipped:

With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming.

And there is a competing narrative out to Al's opus. It's called, "The Great Global Warming Swindle". It airs on UK TV tomorrow and I imagine will migrate over here. Sweet.

But just to make your blood boil, here's Al's Oscar-winning song one more time:)


Previous posts: Gore's Racket, The Goracle's Carbon Footprint

Obama's Signature Issue

Our superstar Senator catches some unwelcome attention from the NY Times:

Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.

One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.

Taking advocacy to a whole new level. Here's his official explanation:

The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama’s broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made.

“He went about this process to avoid an actual or apparent conflict of interest, and he had no knowledge of the stocks he owned,” Mr. Burton said. “And when he realized that he didn’t have the level of blindness that he expected, he moved to terminate the trust.”

Maybe he just expected a little help from his friends, not a lot. The NY Times tut-tuts:

Mr. Obama has made ethics a signature issue, and his quest for the presidency has benefited from the perception that he is unlike politicians who blend public and private interests. There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.

The NY Times entertains questions:

Even so, the stock purchases raise questions about how he could unwittingly come to invest in two relatively obscure companies, whose backers happen to include generous contributors to his political committees. Among those donors was Jared Abbruzzese, a New York businessman now at the center of an F.B.I. inquiry into public corruption in Albany, who had also contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sought to undermine John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004.

Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed about the stock deals, has already had to contend with a controversy that arose out of his reliance on a major campaign contributor in Chicago to help him in a personal financial transaction. In that earlier case, he acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to involve the contributor,a developer who has since been indicted in an unrelated political scandal, in deals related to the Obamas’ purchase of a home.

Obama, when he announced, talked about rising above the "smallness of our politics". Well this may be small potatoes to some but not to most. I suppose he just read the Wall St. Journal to pick 'em, like Hillary claimed for her $100K killing in cattle futures. Obama also said the campaign can't "only be about me". This looks pretty me-first to me.

Meanwhile the Chicago Olympic committee aired tape of Obama to dazzle visiting dignitaries with our star quality, trumpeted in the Sun Times:

"Chicago is a city that lives and breathes the Olympic ideals. Chicago will embrace an Olympics that represents the triumph of hope over fear," said Obama.

Good luck to Chicago on the Olympic bid. I'm afraid, though, Sen. Obama will have to do better than mouth pieties. He's stamped his signature on more than a few questionable transactions and raised the issue again of his hypocrisy on ethics.

Previous posts: Obama Come Lately, Obama the Dream
Related post: Political Bedfellows

UPDATE: Jason Horowitz, NYO, RCP cover story "It's Obamalot!" (Yes, moving on from Lincoln to JFK) Nice quote apropos of the above post. It seems a little mangled to me:

Under an illuminated cross, gold organ pipes and hanging chandeliers, Mr. Obama closed his eyes and nodded to the hymns and prayers. He shook his head in a show of embarrassment when Bishop T. Larry Kirkland illustrated his point about racial equality by saying, “Show me a John Fitzgerald Kennedy and I’ll show you a Barack Obama.”

But for all his squirming, Mr. Obama seemed eager to encourage the comparison.

“It’s not enough just to ask what the government can do for us—it’s important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves,” he said.

Romney in Chicago

Governor Mitt Romney made it into Chicago despite the snow, meeting more than a few supporters this morning. Andy McKenna, the head of the Illinois Republican Party was in the crowd, as well as Mrs. Hastert.

The Olympic committee was also in town looking Chicago over, so as the head of the 2002 US Olympics Mitt quipped that he had to raise money in LA too, but thought Chicago would make a fine choice and had a good chance to win the bid.

Romney drew supporters from around Chicago, as well as one couple I spoke with who drove up from Peoria. Governor Romney talked about holding the line on spending and taxes, creating jobs, tackling health care with emphasis on the private sector, (as he did in Massachusetts), investing more in energy at home (including offshore and nuclear), improving our schools, and our need to compete globally. He spoke of visiting troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as governor, and calling their families when he got back home. He said America's strength flows from the goodness and ingenuity of the American people, and that we must keep alive the hope America offers for our children, and for the world.

The governor made the point that professional politicians aren't penalized for talking without concrete results. In the private sector, if you don't perform and deliver on your promises, you're out.

Mitt Romney turned around a company, he turned around the Olympics and made it a success, he brought Massachusetts back into the black without raising taxes. Can he turn DC and the country around?

Well, I shook his hand and look forward to a good campaign.

Previous posts: The Mormon Question, Romney Scores Big

Helicopter Parenting

Well, I don't even know if I could stand to read about what is billed as a comic novel about college admissions and obsessive parents. It sounds like something you could only read if you were obsessive and wanted to be able to laugh about if you tried really hard.

But maybe it would provide a little comic relief for those of us waiting along with our child for those acceptance letters to roll or drift in--so here you go.

As this is my last time 'round I can afford to be more amused than most. Apparently the new term is "helicopter parenting".

My nest is nearly empty, just a few more months to go.

So I think I'll just wing it. Maybe glide.

The ComPadres at Camp Ramadi

(from one of my friends)

Folks,

I understand that Congressman Kirk will be at Linden Hardware (east of Green Bay Rd. on Linden Ave. , almost to the El) in Wilmette, this Sat @ 11:00 am...to show support for the family of Army Chaplain, Father John Barkemeyer.

Father John Barkemeyer, Army Chaplain embedded with Troops in Iraq (Camp RAMADI) is the son of Hank and Germaine Barkemeyer.

I plan to attend to ask Mark for direct support to the Compadres, a growing group of Father John's home based support system. (Check out their web site "the Compadres".)

Any support you can offer, showing up on Saturday...or a financial contribution to the Compadres (and to Father John's mission in Iraq) would be greatly appreciated.

Related post: Support Our Troops

Death Star

Hillary courts the pro-aborts of Emily's List. She's their death star.

A Saudi Valentine?

Is there a Valentine Revolution beating in Saudi Arabia? Has King Abdullah had a change of heart? Apparently he is instrumental in opening the door to reform. Weekly Standard:

Not a single book proposing guidelines for a transition from Communist statism was ever published in the West, as far as we can tell; nor have we seen a useful summation of the lessons learned from the various, improvised transitions that occurred across the former Soviet bloc.

By contrast, Saudiologists may already contemplate the end of Wahhabi domination and imagine rational pathways toward normality. Nobody responsible wants the Saudi monarchy to collapse altogether; a violent disintegration would have negative consequences far beyond the oil markets, undermining what stability remains in the Sunni Muslim world. Instead, a plausible scheme would envisage the House of Saud as heads of state along the lines of the British royal family, even keeping a share of oil revenues, but with a written constitution that guarantees an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, religious liberty--and the complete and total disestablishment of Wahhabism.

Saudi Arabia has a growing number of entrepreneurs and the largest middle class in the Arab world. Recently many Saudis celebrated the "pagan" Valentine's Day, despite disapproval by the official religious militia. And foreigners were granted the right to celebrate behind closed doors. (Authorities often burst into foreigners' homes in search of liquor, which is outlawed in Saudi Arabia.)

And here's another hopeful sign, this time in Egypt---a debate on female "circumcision" (genital mutilation), though we in the West find it inconceivable there is even a debate about this barbaric practice.

On the other hand, this is why we rarely hear from moderate Muslims, even in the US. A moderate Muslim who had come here from Pakistan spoke out, urging that all Muslims condemn Al Qaeda and terrorism. He was threatened at his local mosque:

Miftah says he won't be returning to the al-Salam Mosque. He now leads his family in prayer at their home. But he still wants the mosque to apologize for calling him anti-Islamic.

"It amounts to an invitation to anyone within the Muslim world to come and get me.The more I think about it, the more I get worried about it. And that is what I wanted them to say, that 'he is not anti-Islamic.' And that is what they are not saying."

Miftah says that even in Pakistan, he was never treated so badly by his fellow Muslims. He says that if it can happen in America's heartland, it can happen anywhere.

Well, and this is what happened to a moderate Muslim who stayed in Pakistan---his head was hacked off. A schoolteacher, he had spoken out against militants. Oh, and of course they accused him of being an American spy.

But there continue to be moderate Muslims who speak out, some who have suffered and "resign from Islam", others who describe themselves as part of secular Islam (more here) and those in the West who defend them. (The latest insult hurled at Hirsi Ali by leftists in the West is that she is an "enlightenment fundamentalist" --and intolerant. How ridiculous. I heard her speak in Winnetka recently. She is very bright and personable and impressed those gathered there, many of them liberal Democrat women I know. Hitchens defends her as no absolutist.)

Since Saudi Arabia has been central to the spread of the most radical and intolerant version of Islam, by financing Wahabbi centers of learning and mosques in the US and around the world, it would be an important development if the Kingdom is rethinking this support and moving toward religious tolerance and democracy.

Related posts: Jihad Professor at Kent State, Blue Burqa Band, The Jihad Apologist Press, Hirsi Ali Speaks Up, A CAIR package, They Call Me Infidel, Burying Girls Alive, An Ancient Culture Extinguished

UPDATE: From the March 2007 issue of the American Spectator (on the newsstands now or subscribe online), a must read article by Daniel Johnson on the British and European experience with Islam, which has implications and suggestions for the US as well, "The Storks Are Landing". Key graf:

Funded largely by Saudi and other Middle Eastern oil money, Wahhabi influence is growing fast. The vast majority of British Muslims are not Middle Eastern in origin; most belong to the Sufi tradition, which is relatively tolerant. But many--probably most--British mosques are now under the control of community 'leaders" who are radically opposed to the war on terror and whose loyalty to the Muslim "ummah" takes precedence over their allegiance to the Crown. It is hard to measure the precise extent of Wahhabi and other extremist influence, but a fairly reliable indicator is the attitude toward women: If they are excluded from the mosque, or segregated in a separate prayer room, it is likely to be hard-line. More than half of the British mosques do in fact exclude women, and it is a similar story across Europe.

And in the US? Johnson also suggests this funding of extremist mosques should be cut off by Western governments if the Islamic countries who are the source refuse to permit Christian, Jewish, or other non-Muslim worship in their own countries. That is essentially true in most of the Middle East.

And of course, sincere interfaith gatherings are vital here.

UPDATE: Very interesting, in the Arab News, a forum for prominent Saudi women this month:

Princess Adila bint Abdullah will spell out her vision for Saudi woman in 2020 at the Khadija Bint Khuwalid Forum on “The Reality of Women’s Participation in National Development” to be held at Hilton Hotel in Jeddah on March 19 and 20.

The forum will bring together prominent Saudi businesswomen, academics and executives. It coincides with the launch of the Arab News Top 20 Supplement featuring a profile of companies headed and owned by Saudi women.

Jihad Professor at Kent State

Here's the original blog post on the professor at Kent State who blogs for jihad, by Mike Adams, Townhall. Note one of the choice offerings on the "Global War" site:

Under the entry "Sister Detonates Herself to Eliminate Shia Traitors" there is a description of a female suicide bomber who recently killed 41 people. Just in case you wondered how the host of the site feels about the suicide bomber, the next line tells you: "Now she lies on the Golden Couch of Paradise."

I initially blogged about it last week, but then there were initial denials from Kent State, as the professor's picture was not the one displayed on the site (oh, it was of a dead 9/11 suicide bomber displayed as a hero), so I took down my post. Now Kent State, a public institution, defends him as a matter of academic freedom. Akron Beacon Journal:

Pino, 46, a Muslim convert and associate professor of history at KSU, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

His department head, John Jameson, defended him as a good teacher and said the allegations in the story appeared to have been blown out of proportion.

He said Pino told him he provided news stories to the Web site but didn't accept any ownership of it.

The Web site does not name the originator, but a photo of a bearded man there is not of Pino, the description of the originator does not fit Pino and none of the postings on it can be tied to Kent State, Jameson said.

The site is a virtual training manual for terror and that is its explicit intention. (60 minutes just did a segment on Al Qaeda's use of the internet. Here.)

More follow-up in video from the Big Story via LGF. Kent State professor Julio Pino, a Muslim convert, admits he writes for the Jihad training website, featuring an "Ode to Anthrax" and celebrating suicide bombers going to heaven after killing innocents:

The most controversial incident may have been in 2002, when he wrote a column in the Kent Stater that eulogized an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber. He said he was trying to explain why suicide bombings occurred in Israel.

KSU English professor Lewis Fried took offense and urged then-KSU President Carol Cartwright to fire Pino. She refused, saying the university supported free speech.

``A university stands for the sustaining of life and not of murder,'' Fried said Wednesday. ``I'm not opposing free speech, just murderous free speech.''

Kent State has had no more response. Obviously Pino's postings on the jihad training website are not "news stories" to any reasonable observer. Guess Kent State takes their cue from the MSM, but even 60 Minutes has taken note of this kind of hostile activity. Latest from Mike Adams here.

Should Ohio taxpayers finance a professor who explicitly advocates the murder of innocents and lauds suicide bombers who attack our country?

Kent State's silence is not acceptable.

Related posts: The Mind of Mamdani, Jihad's Campus Collaborators

Vote Check

Congressperson Melissa Bean sides with the union Bully Bosses. Bean co-sponsored and voted for the bill that denies secret ballot to workers in union elections. The bill passed the Democrat House and goes to the Senate.

In contrast, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL 10th) voted to protect their rights:

Unions lost 300,000 dues-paying members last year alone, said bill opponent Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. "But just because only 12 percent of Americans now choose to pay into a union is no reason to attack our rights as Americans to a secret ballot."

Tribune editorial here.

Making people declare their vote publicly is a form of intimidation, as anyone who lives around Chicago should know.

Previous posts: Dems Attack Worker Privacy, Unions Anti-Choice

Check those Checks

Suburbs secede from Cook County? Not likely. But here's an idea. Mary Laney, Sun Times:

My friend Mick came up with an idea as a group of us had breakfast one recent morning. "I think every single check the city, county and state writes should be registered with the name of who signed it, who it was written to, the address of the recipient, when the check was written, for what product it was written, and it should all be posted on the Internet for anyone to read," Mick said.

Check those checks, follow the money.

Previous posts: Cronyism for Goons, Cut Cook County Fat

The Horrific Stories were True

Some humility on the left, years later. Powerline:

The Times (London) is giving away a DVD of "The Killing Fields" to readers today. It has accordingly called on William Shawcross to comment on the film and has published his column "Remember: For Cambodia, read Iraq." Shawcross refers to his own experience researching the events depicted in the film:

At the end of 1975 I went to the Thai-Cambodian border to talk to refugees. Their horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees were being dismissed as CIA propaganda by the antiAmerican Western Left, but it seemed obvious to me that they were true. I wanted to discover how the Khmer Rouge had grown and come to power; I wrote a book called Sideshow, which was very critical of the way in which the United States had brought war to Cambodia while trying to extricate itself from Vietnam.

But horror had engulfed all of Indo-China as a result of the US defeat in 1975. In Vietnam and Laos there was no vast mass murder but the communists created cruel gulags and, from Vietnam in particular, millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US. Given the catastrophe of the communist victories, I have always thought that those like myself who were opposed to the American efforts in Indochina should be very humble.

You see, in the aftermath of our catastrophic retreat, the horrific stories were true.

Blue Burqa Band

Young women of Afghanistan. Music was forbidden under the Taliban. No more. (and the song says they even can wear blue jeans now.) Via LGF.

Nealz Nuze about Youse

I've blogged on the travesty of the Defense budget being starved by Democrats for years, the same Democrats who are now shocked, shocked that enough hasn't been done to put Walter Reed on a war footing, especially in caring for recovering soldiers. And not just at Walter Reed. Maybe the Dems will finally pony up and vote for the bigger and better funded military we need, including better health care, one of America's promises to its veterans.

Now Neal blogs it home to all of us. Via RCP:

An investigative reporting team from The Washington Post investigated conditions at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington .. particularly the outpatient facilities. What they found was deplorable. There was mold, there were rats, and there was no small amount of grime and filth. Our injured soldiers were waiting interminable lengths of time for the most basic services. In short, the place was a mess. In the aftermath of the investigation the General in charge of Walter Reed resigned .... followed by the Secretary of the Army. Let's dispense with the PC language here. They didn't resign. They were fired. The American people won't tolerate this type of shabby treatment for our injured soldiers.

President Bush is going to appoint a commission to investigate all of this. Whoopee. Another government commission. Can't wait.

While they're cleaning up this mess at Walter Reed ... here's what you need to know. This treatment that was being delivered to our injured soldiers is the future of your health care. This is what you, if you're somewhat young, and most certainly your children have to deal with as the United States moves inexorably toward socialized medicine. Government health care.

There you have it. Still want HillaryCare? Still want ObamaUniversalTrauma?

Previous posts: A Six Year Toothache, Heartless Socialized Medicine

Scary Hillary

Obama supporters, not the official campaign, produce this attack ad. Scary Hillary.

The Mormon Question

My friend Jason calls for a little tolerance on the Mormon question concerning Mitt Romney, which reminds me of the baseless assaults on JFK as a papist puppet back in the day. Clarence Page mentions that here as well.

Related post: Romney Scores Big

Wilmette Crime Alert

Violent crime alert from the Wilmette Police:

On Sunday night at 9:20 pm the Wilmette Police Department responded to a single family home in the 400 block of Hibbard for a report of a home invasion.

Two offenders, both armed with handguns and both wearing ski masks, entered the residence through an unlocked front door shortly after the family arrived home for the night. There were a total of five victims in the home at the time consisting of two teenagers and three adults. The offenders duct taped each victims’ arms and legs before leaving. One of the victims was able to free herself and ran to a neighbor home to call the police. The offenders took one of the victim’s automobiles, a 2007 Lexus, which was recovered on an adjacent street. The offenders removed currency and cellular phones. No one was hurt during the incident.

The preliminary investigation suggests that this does not appear to be a random act; rather this family was specifically targeted for a robbery. If you have any information on this case, please contact the Wilmette Police Department at 847-256-1200.

Genteel, Tea-Serving Liberalism

Well, I enjoy a good cuppa as much as any Irish-American Anglophile, but I have to admit I didn't expect a liberal to admit that NPR is a "genteel, tea-serving" haven for liberalism. Newsbusters:

When liberals try to deny that National Public Radio is a taxpayer-funded media sandbox for liberals, there’s nothing like reading liberals writing about NPR to rebut it. Michael Tomasky, a leading liberal and editor-at-large of The American Prospect, recently wrote in anguished protest when WETA-FM in Washington dropped its relatively new news-talk format to return to its classical-music roots. This left him without "Weekend Edition Sunday," anchored by Liane Hansen.

Tomasky writes of how NPR is always on in the background at his place on weekend mornings, and he can recognized that the tone can be soporific, the hosts can sound self-satisfied, and – "there's that air of genteel, tea-service liberalism suffusing the whole enterprise." He later added, when talking about a vice president at WETA, that "He's the kind of guy you'd like to have a (remembering the medium) chardonnay with."

Classical music can only be an improvement.

Now true Brits with grit, as well as the Irish, (well, the Irish probably prefer something stronger) prescribe tea as curing most ills. So I say libs don't have a monopoly on liking tea. I think they are probably enamored of some rarefied ritual to brighten their cramped liberal lives, sneering at the everyday stout pots. Here's a comment from ThisnThat:

Here are some listener stats for NPR, from Wikipedia: According to a 2003 Washington Monthly story, about 20 million listeners tune into NPR each week. On average they are 50 years old and earn an annual income of $78,000. Its audience is predominantly white; only about 10% are either African American or Hispanic. Many of its listeners consider NPR to be at the apex of journalistic integrity.

Clearly, NPR doesn't attract the "Public"; it attracts white, rich liberals. That's fine. But I don't think NPR needs to be publically funded anymore, and should have been cut off years ago from the public trough. Let it stand on its own, if it can, and grab its money from these $78,000-per-year individuals.

BTW, this was difficult to write with both pinkies raised, but I felt it was my duty to do so in honor of the subject matter. And as much as I wanted, I did not also raise any middle finger at any time.

Raised pinko pinkies at the public trough.

So liberals, put your money where your mouth is. Free the rest of us from the tyranny of paying for NPR. It'll never happen. Liberals aren't used to this kind of effort.

As for me, I'm a coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon type. That doesn't make me a moderate.

My favorite is Bigelow's Constant Comment.

Very appropriate for a blogger. And as a conservative, I pay for it myself.<