Saturday, May 20, 2006

Iraq forms a cabinet

Bloomberg reported Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki announced his cabinet today after more than five months of negotiations during which he and his coalition partners failed to agree on an interior or defense minister. Al-Maliki named his 37 cabinet members in a press conference carried live by Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based al-Arabiya television station. Hoshyar Zebari retained his post as foreign minister and Hussain Sharistani was named oil minister. Maliki, who presented the appointments to the legislature for approval, will temporarily run the interior ministry and Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zaubai the defense ministry.

Congratulations, and welcome to the 21st Century's newest democratic government

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Quote of the Day

PoliPundit has what must be the Quote of the Day: Ulta-liberal comedian Lewis Black once said something that sums up the immigration debate in the Quisling Senate:

The only thing dumber than a Republican or a Democrat is when these two pricks work together.

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Friday, May 19, 2006

Photo ID Required For Federal Elections?

Hotline On Call reported An amendment to the immigration bill being debated in the U.S. Senate would make it mandatory for all voters to present photo identification before casting ballots in a federal election by Jan. 1, 2008.

Damn, if this passes I may have to support the Senate Bill I was happy they included a 350 mile fence, but I really want something the entire way. But if this ammendment is approved, I may have to stop hoping the House will block this bill.
Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced the amendment (S.A. 4021) to The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 (S.B. 2611).

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Fencing Logic: More miles = fewer deaths?

Mickey Kaus wrote in Slate The A.P. reports--

"We don't think you fence off the entire border," Snow told reporters aboard Air Force One. But, he added, "there are places when fences are appropriate." The Senate was following the lead of the House, which passed a bill last year that would have constructed 700 miles of fencing. Bush has talked repeatedly about building fences along the border in urban areas, but told CNN Espanol in March that "it's impractical to fence off the border."
If you put a fence only in "urban areas," doesn't that mean would-be illegals will seek to cross the border in more remote, rural areas, where more will die of thirst and exposure? Is that a humane result? We want to discourage desperate foreigners from even making the attempt, which means a fence in rural areas as well as urban areas, no? You could even argue a fence in rural areas is more "appropriate." (We have policemen to patrol urban areas. It's the hundreds of miles of desert where you need a fence.)
I don't agree with that; I believe you need a fence both places.
The logic of seems inescapable. The U.S., in this sense, is an attractive nuisance like a swimming pool. If you want to keep neighborhood children from using the pool, and possibly drowning, you don't partially fence it in. You completely fence it in. ... Full funding for full fencing!
I support that.
... P.S.: Sure, Bush has said "it's impractical to fence off the border." But earlier this week he wasn't willing to flatly endorse even the 320 miles the Senate supported. Today he was. Give him time. He's caving fast! Nation-building in Iraq was a lot more "impractical."

Glenn Reynolds said Mexican immigrants are adults, though, not children.
That is true, but I agree with Mickey, we need to fence the entire border.

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Holocaust Revisited

Canada.com reported Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments." The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims. Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

First Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust never happened; now he is following Hitler's playbook. This procedure of making non-Muslims wear distinctive clothing so that they can be easily recognized is called dhimmis. The next step is to make them pay an annual tax known as the jizya and accept various restrictions and legal disabilities. We have already seen this nutcase issue his da'wa or Call to Islam to both President Bush and the Pope. And according to DoctorZin "Former Military Intelligence chief Aharon Ze'evi, speaking at a Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies conference in Tel Aviv University, said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad has been overheard promising the 'end of history in two or three years.'", i.e. he is going to trigger the End Times Battle. Is there any doubt that we need to take this nutcase out NOW.
There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."

Kim Priestap blogged If not now, when? What ever happened to "never again"?

Update Michelle Malkin links to IsraPundit who says the report MAY not be true.

Update 8 pm Iran's only Jewish MP strongly denied the report, CQ says Canada.com has pulled the original story, although Amir Taheri's article is still available.

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Senate Votes English as 'National Language'

WaPo After an emotional debate fraught with symbolism, the Senate yesterday voted to make English the "national language" of the United States,

But not the "Official Language"
declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English
It is about time.
except for those already guaranteed by law. The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to "preserve and enhance" the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages.
Now we just need to go to work on those laws.
Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.
Hopefully it will.

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Senators Left Out of Loop Make Their Pique Known

NYT reported There were two types of senators at Thursday's confirmation hearing for Gen. Michael V. Hayden: the briefed, and the briefed-nots. The former were mostly polite. The latter, especially Democrats, threw the Congressional equivalent of a temper tantrum.

They need to demonstrate that they can be trusted, and when secrets are leaked they need to encourage prosecution of the leaker, rather than taking political advantage of the leak, and maybe they would be brought into the loop on more secrets.

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Thursday, May 18, 2006

Is It a Civil War Yet?

Not in Iraq but Gaza.: Clarity & Resolve blogged It looks like Palestinian Arabs are getting exactly what they voted for and just what they deserve: Gaza Gunfight Erupts Between Hamas, Fatah

A gun battle erupted early Friday between the new Hamas security force and rival Fatah forces in Gaza City, police officials said.
Maybe they will kill each other off, and those that are left can make peace with Israel.
Two police officers were wounded. An Associated Press reporter in Gaza City heard the gunfire break out. The Palestinian police, who are mostly Fatah loyalists, were instructed by radio to respond with force to any attacks by Hamas forces. The gun battle erupted just after midnight near the Palestinian parliament building, witnesses said. The two policemen were shot in the legs and were not in serious condition, hospital officials said. The AP reporter said Hamas forces closed off the streets leading to police headquarters, the stronghold of the Fatah loyalists, and sporadic exchanges of fire could be heard every few minutes, half an hour after the clash began. Police were running to their posts.
Probably a Mossad/C.I.A. plot.

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Muslims in Somalia

Christian Persecution Blog reported

  • Since U.S. and U.N. peacekeeping troops left in 1995, Islamic mobs have murdered more than 500 members of the persecuted church in Somalia. Militia groups were incited to kill Christians and Jews to gain the shortest route to heaven.
    I suspeect on Judgement Day they will be very surprised.
    Christians Liban Gala, John Warsame and Mudde Ali were shot in front of a cheering crowd before verses from the Koran were read over their bodies, which were later dumped and half-eaten by wild dogs. Martyrs’ bodies, including those of Michael Guleed and Afgoye Somalia, were even dragged behind trucks.
  • Somali Christian refugee, Diriye Barre of Minneapolis, recounted how Muslim militants left him for dead after shooting out his right eye and piercing his neck with a second bullet. He is fortunate, as Christians are now the only group having no place to flee in Somalia, and cannot register as refugees to resettle in other countries. Because refugee camps are controlled by Muslims, most believers have fled to the remote areas of Ethiopia and Kenya along the border.
  • Somalia’s persecuted church was started by British protestant missionaries in the north and Italian Catholic missionaries in the south decades ago, and it remains a small minority. Islamic organizations consider all Somali nationals as Muslims by birth, calling for Shariah law’s death sentence on Christian converts.
    These Muslims must have not read the Quran: Surah 2:256 – “There is no compulsion in religion…” and Surah 88:21-22 – “And so, (O Prophet!) exhort them, your task is only to exhort; you cannot compel them to believe.”
    Foreign relief workers have been killed in front of their children in their own homes, which were then burned. This happened to World Vision’s Mr. Shikhdoon and Swedish Relief Organization’s Mr. Salmon. The Muslim mob later forced themselves upon the martyrs’ wives after threatening them to reconvert.
    What if they were never Muslims to start with?

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Ahmadinejad is writing a letter to Pope Benedict

Reuters Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is writing a letter to Pope Benedict, following an unprecedented letter to U.S. President George W. Bush earlier this month, a newspaper said on Thursday.

Bryan blogged He also invited Bush to become a Muslim. And you would be wise to interpret the word “invite” to have a whiff of the mob inviting you to dinner at the end of a pier. Since al-Reuters doesn’t provide the context for these global pen pal missives, I will. These letters are hardly unprecedented, as al-Reuters says. Their origins go all the way back to Mohammed, who often issued letters to the kings of lands he was about to attack to invite them to accept Islam before Mohammed would invade to convert them by the sword. Thus, the religion of peace spread far and wide. This, now second letter from the hand of Ahmadinejad is a da’wa–a call to Islam. It follows Mohammed’s traditional letters. Implicit in such letters is the threat that if the recipient doesn’t accept Islam voluntarily, he and his land will accept it by force. Or die resisting.

In Crazy Mahmoud’s mind, he has now written to the chief of the world’s top secular superpower and is writing to the chief of the world’s unbelieving (vis a vis Islam) religious superpower (there being no equivalent of the pope in Islam). He is inviting them both to accept Islam, both personally and on behalf of their nation and church. Unless I miss my guess, in the letter to Benedict he will be, in essence, calling upon the Catholic Church to accept Islam–or die.

Should the Pope respond and invite Ahmadinejad to accept Jesus Christ as his personal saviour?
These letters are not well-wishes for the holidays or get-to-know-you cultural exchanges. They are threats. Mahmoud has something planned, and it would seem to me to be in the latter stages of finalization before it goes forward.

Update (Allahpundit): Bryan beat me to the punch, so I’ll merely add that MEMRI has video of this tool ranting yesterday about “nuts and chocolates.”
Ahmadinejad is clearly the nut. Who is the chocolate?

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Whaaat???: Illegal Immigration Edition

Mary Katharine Ham wrote on Hugh Hewitt Seriously, if you could see me now, I'm very Yosemite Sam. Very stampy and tantrumy and incoherent. Just a few minutes ago, on the floor of the United States Senate, senators debated an amendment to the McCain immigration bill. This is not, by itself, profanity-inducing. But here's the substance of the debate-- Should ILLEGAL immigrants, once made legal by the McCain legislation, be entitled to receive the Social Security benefits they have paid into the system while ILLEGALLY using FRAUDULENT Social Security numbers STOLEN from actual, legal citizens of the United States of America.

This is obscene. Fortunately I don't think the Senate bill has a chance in the House, nor would a conference bill pass the house with this sort of stuff in it.
The fact that this is even up for debate is just beyond insane. Everyone knows we will never have enough Social Security funds to serve, you know, actual citizens. Every single one of those senators knows that, and they're debating whether we should extend such non-existent, unsustainable, budget-busting, generation-saddling benefits to millions of people who fraudulently entered the system by stealing the identities (and sometimes ruining the credit) of legal Americans?!?

Sen. Ensign, God bless him, offered an amendment suggesting illegals should not be eligible for Social Security benefits accrued while illegal. The U.S. Senate voted to kill that amendment, 50-49. here. Some of the usual Republican suspects voted to kill the amendment. Here's the list: McCain, Specter, Stevens, Voinovich, Lugar, Hagel, Dewine, Chafee, Brownback

Capitol switchboard, baby: (202) 224-3121

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Reform in Turkey

Yahoo! News reported A gunman opened fire Wednesday in Turkey's highest administrative court, killing a prominent judge and wounding four others in an attack the suspect called retaliation for a ruling against a teacher who wore an Islamic head scarf.

Islam: the Religion of Peace, but if you do something we dont like, we will kill you.
Four of the justices, including Judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, who died of gunshot wounds to the head, had voted in February against the promotion of an elementary school teacher who wore an Islamic-style head scarf outside of work

Allah Pundit blogged He’s being investigated for ties to Hezbollah (the Turkish version, not the Lebanese one), but he insists his jihad was of the freelance variety. Wouldn’t be the first time. Two things make this story significant. First, it demonstrates how potentially important the judiciary is to reforming Muslim countries. Egypt has two judges on trial right now for daring to challenge the results of last year’s elections. Reformists have been out protesting, and getting beaten up, on their behalf for weeks. (Here’s the latest.) Second, the shooting could tip political momentum in Turkey back towards secularism. The fundamentalists have been gaining ground for awhile now, as exemplified by the election of Erdogan as prime minister. Turkey’s secularist president and Erdogan’s political enemies wasted no time pointing fingers at him today. I’ll keep an eye on the story over the next week to see if there’s any fallout.

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Saudi press told to stop printing pictures of women

Independent reported Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has told the country's newspapers to stop publishing pictures of women as they could lead young men astray.

It apparently is easy to lead Saudia youth astray. Does this mean leading them astray from their praying to Allah, or astray from their preparing for Jihad?
..... The authorities indefinitely postponed a move to replace male shop assistants with women at lingerie shops.
Talk about leading someone astray. Maybe the Union of Male Shop Assistants complained they were losing their jobs.
The proposal, offered as evidence of progress on women's rights, has been quietly shelved amid claims that shopowners need more time to manage the transition.

AllahPundit blogged Sounds like the reports of reform have been greatly exaggerated.

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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

'The DaVinci Code' Stinks

Amy Proctor blogged Ian McKellen, homosexual activist and talented British actor, said this to NBC’s Matt Lauer during an interview with the cast of The DaVinci Code :

"I have often thought that the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying, ‘THIS IS FICTION’. I mean, walking on water? It takes an act of faith."
The Bible certainly is not fiction, but you are right, it does require an act of Faith.
McKellen said yesterday:
“When I put the book down I thought, ’what a load of potential codswallop’. “That’s still going on in my mind. But I’m very happy to believe that Jesus was married.” “I know that the Catholic church has problems with gay people and I thought that this was absolute truth that Jesus was not gay.”
I suspect he means proof. However I dont see how portraying Christ as married proves anything one way or the other about him being gay. There are many married gay men. What should prove that he is not gay is the fact that he is the Son of God and there are many places in the Bible where homosexuality is forbidden (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Romans 1:27, etc. )
Some reviews of The DaVinci Code at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday:
I didn’t like it very much. I thought it was almost as bad as the book. Tom Hanks was a zombie, thank goodness for Ian McKellen. It was overplayed, there was too much music and it was much too grandiose." -Peter Brunette, The Boston Globe.

"At the high point, there was laughter among the journalists. Not loud laughs, but a snicker and I think that says it all." -Gerson Da Cunha, The Times of India.

"People were confused, there was no applause, just silence. I have only read half the book, and then I got bored. It’s terrible" -Margherita Ferrandino, Italian television Rai 3.

"It was really disappointing. The dialogue was cheesy. The acting wasn’t too bad, but the film is not as good as the book." -Lina Hamchaoui, British radio IRN.

"At Cannes, one scene during the film, meant to be serious, elicited prolonged laughter from the audience, and when the credits rolled, there was no applause, only a few catcalls and hisses. Things were no better Stateside, where the film screened for critics in New York." -CNN Entertainment

"No chemistry exists between the hero and heroine, and motivation remains a troubling sore point." reviewer Kirk Honeycutt.
....That’s why the movie will be a flop. Hollywood just doesn’t get it; there are some things you don’t mess with. Jesus is one of them.
Christians will not respond to this offence like Muslims would, but I am happy to see that it may lose money.

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Aksa Brigades threatens US, Europe

Jerusalem Post The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, on Monday threatened to strike at US and European interests in response to international sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

Why would Fatah want Hamas to be funded. It is in their interests for Fatah to fall flat on their face.
The threat, the first of its kind, came as PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to hold talks in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin on the severe financial crisis in the PA territories. Moreover, the threat by Abbas's Fatah party came as Palestinians marked the 58th anniversary of the nakba, or catastrophe (the secular anniversary of Israel's independence).

"We won't remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the US and other countries," said a leaflet issued by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. "We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad."
Al Qaeda. protected by the Taliban, struck the US (on 9/11). Most of the leadership of Al Qaeda are dead or in hiding, and the Taliban no longer rules Afganistan. Is Fatah certain that it wants to strike the US, especially when it is Hamas that would be helped?
The leaflet added: "Let the entire world know that we won't succumb in the face of the policy of blackmail, siege and starvation. In the past we did not capitulate in the face of the policy of assassinations, detentions and air raids."

The group also urged the heads of Arab and Palestinian banks to resist US and Israeli pressure and to agree to transfer funds from Arab and Islamic countries to the PA.

Another armed group affiliated with Fatah, the Abu Rish Brigades, threatened to launch a new intifada unless the international community agreed to fund the PA. "This will be a merciless intifada that will destroy everything," said Abu Haroon, a spokesman for the group in the Gaza Strip.
There is very little in the Gaza Strip that has not already been destroyed.

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Senate OKs Border Fence

AP The Senate voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing

That is less than 19%; the border is 1,951 miles long. 370 is nice, but what about the remaining 1581 miles?
along the Mexican border Wednesday and clashed over citizenship for millions of men and women who live in the United States illegally. Amid increasingly emotional debate over election-year immigration legislation, senators voted 83-16
Akaka (D-HI), Bingaman (D-NM), Cantwell (D-WA), Dodd (D-CT), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Inouye (D-HI), Jeffords (I-VT), Kennedy (D-MA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Lieberman (D-CT), Menendez (D-NJ), Murray (D-WA), Obama (D-IL), Reed (D-RI), Sarbanes (D-MD) voted against it.
to add fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southern border. It marked the first significant victory in two days for conservatives seeking to place their stamp on the contentious measure.

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Hug the tar baby

NYT Tony Snow said he didn't want to "hug the tar baby," and then he did just that by using the expression in his first televised White House press briefing yesterday. The tar-covered doll that Br'er Fox used to ensnare Br'er Rabbit

Were either of them black?
in an 1881 Uncle Remus story is used as a metaphor for a sticky situation, but for some it also carries vague racist connotations
For some, anything carries racist connotations.
— it has been used as a derogatory term for a black. In a society where a District of Columbia councilman can be accused of racism simply by using the word "niggardly,"
Only to someone too stupid to know that niggardly means "stingy and miserly" and comes from the Old Norse verb nigla, meaning "to fuss about small matters", while "nigger" derives from niger, the Latin for "black".
most politicians and TV commentators prefer to avoid tar baby references. When a reporter playfully asked him to explain the term, Mr. Snow mumbled that it could be traced to "American lore."

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G.O.P. Voters to Be Target of Radio Ads by Democrats

NYT reported House Democrats, trying to capitalize on conservative dissatisfaction with Republicans, are reaching out to Christian voters with radio advertisements critical of Republican proposals to overhaul Social Security. In a campaign tied to appearances by President Bush on behalf of House candidates later this week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has bought time on stations with Christian and conservative audiences to try to remind those who traditionally vote Republican of their party's plan to add private investment accounts to Social Security.

And the fact that the Democrats blocked it, so that when Social Security goes bankrupt, and all they are left with is nothing, they can remember that the Republicans were going to give them a Private Account so they would have something the Government could not waste, but because of the Democrats, they are left with nothing. It will be interesting to see how they are going to make that look favorable to the Democrats

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Albinos Condemn 'Da Vinci' Assassin

AP reports The notion of Christ as a family man is not the only raw nerve "The Da Vinci Code" has touched. Albinos are bothered that one of their own has yet again been depicted as a villain. Dan Brown's best seller begins its worldwide debut Wednesday with Tom Hanks as the cryptologist pursuing a 2,000-year-old mystery that could reveal Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that the Vatican covered it up.

This is serious. Offending Christians in general, and Catholics in particular is something that we are used to, but now we find they have offended albinos. That should be almost as bad as offended Muslims. Maybe they will now pull the film from the theaters. After all, critics panned it at the Cannes Film Festival: Hollywood trade magazine, Daily Variety, gave the Code a blistering review; saying it verged on "dull" and regretting "a palpable lack of chemistry" between co-stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou of France.
Among his co-stars is Paul Bettany, the British actor playing monk- assassin Silas, an albino with red eyes who carries out a series of bloody murders to secure the secret of the Holy Grail, a trove of lost Christian documents that could prove Jesus had wed. Critics cite a long list of albinos cast as heavies by Hollywood: The dreadlocked twins in "The Matrix Reloaded," a powder-haired hit man in the Chevy Chase-Goldie Hawn crime romp "Foul Play," the pasty zombies in "The Omega Man," a sadistic killer in "Cold Mountain," even the wicked executioner in the fairy-tale comedy "The Princess Bride."

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Virtual Earth API

MSR MapCruncher announces Have you ever looked at satellite photos of a building in Virtual Earth -- and wished you could zoom right in and see its floorplan? Have you ever used VE to plan a trip across town -- and wanted to seamlessly switch from its road maps to maps of bicycle trails, bus routes, or carpool lanes? Have you ever wanted to create and publish your own map mashups -- and wished you had a tool to make it easy to integrate a map you care about into Virtual Earth? Microsoft Research has made this a reality!

This is an interesting API. I can think of several interesting applications to do with either this, or a similar API with Google Earth.

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Open Source / Closed Source

The top two items today in TechMeme are interesting because of the contrast.

Apple closes down OS X Thanks to pirates, or rather the fear of them, the Intel edition of Apple's OS X is now a proprietary operating system. Mac developers and power users no longer have the freedom to alter, rebuild, and replace the OS X kernel from source code. Stripped of openness, it no longer possesses the quality that elevated Linux to its status as the second most popular commercial OS.

Sun promises to open source Java Sun Microsystems is planning to release the source code of the Java programming language, chief executive Jonathan Schwartz said at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. "It's not a question of whether we'll open source Java, the question is how, " Schwartz told delegates in his opening keynote at the tradeshow. By releasing the source code, Sun hopes to attract a new group of developers who previously refused to use the language because of the software licence, Schwartz later added.

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

WaPo ran an article by John Ward Anderson entitled Discredited Somali Quits Dutch Politics

Why does WaPo call her a "Discredited Somali". The fact that she did not tell the entire truth in her petition for asylum had been known for many years, and I wonder how many asylum applications, either here or in Holand, tell the absolute truth?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who moved to the Netherlands, won a seat in the Dutch parliament and became one of Europe's best-known champions of immigrant and Muslim women's rights, said Tuesday she would give up her seat and leave the country because she is being stripped of citizenship for lying on an asylum application 14 years ago. Hirsi Ali, a harsh critic of Islam and Dutch intolerance toward immigrants, has been negotiating for a position at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and expects to begin there in September, according to her spokeswoman, Ingrid Pouw.
Good for the AEI
In a statement Tuesday, Hirsi Ali said she was proud that she had "put the oppression of immigrant women -- especially Muslim women -- squarely on the Dutch political agenda." She said she had spoken out against what she called "issues related to Islam," including limits on speech, the murder of women deemed to have brought shame on a family, and the religion's failure to condemn genital mutilation.
And as a result caused her to receive death threats.
She came to international prominence in 2004 for writing the screenplay for "Submission," a short film that outraged many Muslims and prompted an Islamic radical to kill its director, Theo van Gogh. The film featured four women, wearing see-through robes with words from the Koran scribbled on their bodies, who claimed to have been abused by their Muslim husbands. Hirsi Ali's outspokenness and celebrity made her a high-profile target of complaint in the Netherlands, both from Muslims and anti-immigrant figures.
The reason the anti-immigrant people are agains her is because they have realized the problem with so many Muslim immigrants in their country, and they just want to get rid of all of them.
The target of frequent death threats, she has lived in semi-hiding under armed protection for about four years, conditions that she said contributed to her decision, months in the making, to leave the Netherlands.... "I have said many times that I am not proud that I lied when I sought asylum in the Netherlands," Hirsi Ali said in her statement Tuesday. "I did it because I felt I had no choice. I was frightened that if I simply said I was fleeing a forced marriage, I would be sent back to my family. And I was frightened that if I gave my real name, my clan would hunt me down and find me." "The allegations that I willingly married my distant cousin, and was present at the wedding ceremony, are simply untrue," she said of the television documentary. "I refused to attend the formal ceremony, and I was married regardless."
Forcing someone to marry a cousin. Isn't that nice.

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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The N.S.A.'s Math Problem

NYT reported News that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth gave customer records to the National Security Agency has set off a heated debate over the intricacies of espionage law. But legal or not, this sort of spying program probably isn't worth infringing our civil liberties for — because it's very unlikely that the type of information one can glean from it will help us win the war on terrorism.

There are three things wrong with this
  1. If it is not likely to help with the war on terrorism, it certainly is not going to hurt our civil liberties, because if they can't track terrorists they can't track anyone doing anything
  2. Considering how much the NYT is opposed to it, why are they pointing out potential problems; could it be they are making them up
  3. Considering how much the NYT seems to want to warn the terrorists how we are tracking them, could it be that this analysis is designed to tell them how to block us?
If the program is along the lines described by USA Today — with the security agency receiving complete lists of who called whom from each of the phone companies — the object is probably to collect data and draw a chart, with dots or "nodes" representing individuals and lines between nodes if one person has called another. Mathematicians who work with pictures like this are called graph theorists, and there is an entire academic field, social network analysis, that tries to determine information about a group from such a chart, like who the key players are or who the cell leaders might be. But without additional data, its reach is limited: as any mathematician will admit, even when you know everyone in the graph is a terrorist, it doesn't directly portray information about the order or hierarchy of the cell. Social network researchers look instead for graph features like "centrality": they try to identify nodes that are connected to a lot of other nodes, like spokes around the hub of a bicycle wheel. But this isn't as helpful as you might imagine. First, the "central player" — the person with the most spokes — might not be as important as the hub metaphor suggests. For example, Jafar Adibi,
With a name like that, he could easily be an arab. Is it possible he is lying to keep us from finding the terrorists.
an information scientist at the University of Southern California, analyzed e-mail traffic among Enron employees before the company collapsed. He found that if you naïvely analyzed the resulting graph, you could conclude that one of the "central" players was Ken Lay's ... secretary.
If you can identify the top man's secretary, it should be easy to find the top man

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Dutch citizenship rescinded

Hot Air blogged She was going to resign from parliament in September, then move to the U.S. Change of plans: she’s resigning effective immediately, thanks to Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk’s ruling that Hirsi Ali was never a legal citizen of the Netherlands in the first place.

I am sorry to see this happen, but she will probably be safer here, because the Dutch did not seem that interested in protecting her.
Robert Spencer is mortified and quotes a reader who says this could have serious complications for her U.S. visa. I tend to doubt that, if only because the outcry from American conservatives will be fierce if Condoleezza Rice doesn’t make it happen. The good news? Verdonk might have bitten off more than she can chew. Spencer also notes a report that Verdonk is facing a monster backlash from Hirsi Ali’s party — and that the government could fall over it.
It servs them right.
Here’s an excerpt from the statement she issued today after resigning from parliament:
I am completely certain that I have, in my own way, succeeded in contributing to the debate. Issues related to Islam - such as impediments to free speech; refusal of the separation of Church and State; widespread domestic violence; honor killings; the repudiation of wives; and Islam’s failure to condemn genital mutilation — these subjects can no longer be swept under the carpet in our country’s capital. Some of the measures that this government has begun taking give me satisfaction.
They need to take a lot more measures.
Many illusions of how easy it will be to establish a multicultural society have disappeared forever. We are now more realistic and more open in this debate, and I am proud to have contributed to that process…

[M]ay I say that it is difficult to live with so many threats on your life and such a level of police protection. It is difficult to work as a parliamentarian if you have nowhere to live. All that is difficult, but not impossible. It has become impossible since last night, when Minister Verdonk informed me that she would strip me of my Dutch citizenship.

I am therefore preparing to leave Holland. But the questions for our society remain. The future of Islam in our country; the subjugation of women in Islamic culture; the integration of the many Muslims in the West: it is self-deceit to imagine that these issues will disappear.
The issues will not disappear as long as there are brave people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali to raise them

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Whose God may we mock?

Pat Buchanan wrote in Townhall If "such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust," said Archbishop Angelo Amato, the Vatican's secretary for the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, "they would have justly provoked a world uprising."

That is certainly true. Jay Tea sarcastically wrote on Wizbang:
If they REALLY wanted to garner the respect of the world and silence its detractors, here are some of the things they should have done first:
  1. Issue a death sentence against Dan Brown, the book's author.
  2. Hold massive riots against the book and movie.
  3. Issue death threats against Tom Hanks and everyone else involved in the film.
  4. Kill several people, such as book store employees who sold the novel, by beheading or some other gruesome manner.
  5. Burn down book stores that stock the book.
But Christians follow Jesus Christ, who would be horrified if we responded that way. I wish Moderate Muslims would seek to bring their faith into the 21st century, and discourage violent responses like we hav seen recently from members of their faith. However I question Pat's title for this article. The God of Jews, the God of Christians, and the God of Muslims is the same God, the God of Abraham. I don't like to see Him ridiculed, or to have false books published about Him, but I believe that He will deal with those that do those things, at Judgement Day, and we should all focus on conforming our own behaviour to one that He would approve of.
The archbishop was speaking of "The Da Vinci Code," the Ron Howard film that debuts at Cannes and opens worldwide this week, and is expected to gross $500 million by summer's end. The archbishop's point is undeniable. Blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, published a few months ago in a Danish newspaper and reprinted on the front pages of Europe's major papers, ignited demonstrations in Muslim communities across Europe and violent and deadly riots across the Islamic world.

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Tamper-proof ID and Forgiveness Program

Jay Tea at Wizbang blogged about the President's proposal. Two items I want to comment on are Tamper-proof IDs and the Forgiveness Program

Tamper-proof IDs for legal aliens in the United States. Again, sounds great, but how it will be implemented will reveal just how well it will work. Market forces will almost inevitably trump a government plan, and there will be a huge incentive to find ways to fake the unfakeable IDs. There are a lot of very intelligent people who would very much like to find a way to make big money, and finding ways around the ID system offers access to a lot of money -- all under the table. What one technology can create, another can undo.

A way to forge the unforgable cards might be found if it is difficult to get one of the ID cards. But in the plan that I propose it will be easy for a worked without a criminal record to get one, and if we build some secret check data in the magnetic card stripe we can probably detect most of the forged ones.
A graduated forgiveness program, based on how long someone has been in the United States. I predicted it before, and I'll repeat it again: the primary consequences of this will be twofold: a huge surge in illegal aliens looking to cross the border before it takes effect, and an explosion in forged documents that "prove" how long someone has been in the country. People will start finding ways to fake utility bills, rent receipts, and the like to show that Skippy who just hopped the border last week has been in the United States since the Clinton Administration, just quietly doing those jobs Americans don't want to do.
That is true, but in the plan that I propose all we would do is give guest worker cards to the people that were here illegally (after making them pay a penalty for coming in). This would let them stay here (which they will do anyway, because as many have said, it would be impossible to round them up and send them back), but it would not put them on a path to citizenship. If they want that, they would have to put their names at the end of a list and wait their turn. They might do that waiting here in the US, but they would wait their turn

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Free calls on Skype

Skype Blogs announced If you’re in the US or Canada, you can use SkypeOut to call any landline or mobile number in both the USA and Canada for free.

This is interesting. I have done Skype to Skype calls for free a number of times, including talking to someone in Australia and it sounded like he was next door, but Skype calls to a telephone number have cost money. This free period goes at least through the end of 2006. They are not sure what they will do then. They are probably hoping we will get used to doing it, and will then be willing to pay, but for now at least it is free. They said "Note that if you haven’t bought any Skype Credit, your Skype client may still tell you something about needing to buy some before you can use SkypeOut. Just disregard that and place your call."
If you’re in the US or Canada and calling any other country, OR if you’re in any other country and calling landline or mobile numbers in the US or Canada, the standard SkypeOut rates apply. Of course, Skype-to-Skype calls continue to be globally free, so no changes there.

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Monday, May 15, 2006

Please, Mr President, consider this

The Senate is working on a bill that has no chance in Hades of passing in the House, and the House passed a bill that doesn't stand a chance of passing the Senate. And God knows what mess will result when a conference committee gets both bills. The President is going to speak tonight, and I am afraid he will push the Senate bill. Here is what I wish he would propose, and say he will sign it only if it contains all of the above:

  1. Funds to build a wall. Such a wall may or may not be built (see the additional points), but if technoligical features are considered better the funds could be used for them
  2. Posse Comitas will be changed to permit the Military to enforce laws within 10 miles of an international border. Then the Military would be sent on training exercises to back up the Border Patrol, and learn how to close a border (a skill needed in Iraq and Afganistan)
  3. A Guesd Worker ID card would be developed which would be impossible to forge. It would have a color photo of the person, and a unique number which would be clearly printed on the card, and also on a magnetic stripe, and that number would provide access to additional biometric information including fingerprints, retinal scan, and DNA information. If it is feasible that info would also be on the card.
  4. In order to get an ID card the person would have to pass a medical test and not have any felonys on their record, and if they commit a felony in the US it would be grounds for cancelling the card and deporting the individual.
  5. Guest Worker Program A person outside the US, or a person inside the US with a legal green card, could get an ID card for the cost of issuing the card, if their record is clear.
  6. Dealing with the 12 million For a person inside the US who entered illegally, the card would be available, but there would be an additional fine of $2,000, which would go up to $4,000 after two years, and $10,000 after four years.
  7. A person with such a card could enter the US after the card was validated, but it would not guarantee them a job, or any social services.
  8. An employeer hiring less than 5 people would merely have to record the number from each card, and provide that information when they filed their taxes. An employeer hiring 5 or more people would be required to have a machine like are used with credit cards, that they can swipe the card through, and verify that it is a valid card.
  9. A person with the ID card could work in the US, but if they want to go on a path to eventual citizenship they must learn English, and then apply, at which time they will be placed at the end of the line of others from their country of origin.
  10. If any state or local government issues any ID cards (Drivers licenses, etc) to a non-citizen, it must list the number of this ID card, and it must be clearly identified (different color, etc) as being for a non citizen.
  11. Applying for a second ID card (not a replacement card, but one with a unique number) would be a felony, or using forged documents to pretend to be a citizen.
  12. The Department of Labor would annually look at the unemployment rate, and the number of people with these Guest Worker cards, to determine how many additonal cards to issue each year.

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Senate Immigration Bill Would Allow 100 Million New Legal Immigrants over the Next Twenty Years

Heritage reported If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years—fully one-third of the current population of the United States.

The House needs to block this bill, because we can't count on Bush to veto it.
Much attention has been given to the fact that the bill grants amnesty to some 10 million illegal immigrants. Little or no attention has been given to the fact that the bill would quintuple the rate of legal immigration into the United States, raising, over time, the inflow of legal immigrants from around one million per year to over five million per year. The impact of this increase in legal immigration dwarfs the magnitude of the amnesty provisions.

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The NAACP's fight against private school vouchers

Star Parker wrote in Townhall Why would an organization that calls itself the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose motto is "Making Democracy Work Since 1909," oppose individual choice and freedom and dedicate itself to promoting public policy that guarantees the perpetuation of black poverty?

Because the NAACP thinks that supporting the Democratic party, which caters to teacher's unions, is more important than educating black children. In fact it might hurt to have them educated, because then they might vote Republican.
As incongruous as this might sound, it is in fact true. Consider the prominent role that the NAACP played recently in killing the Opportunity Scholarships Program created by Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida, which granted vouchers to students in failing public schools to attend a different school of their choice - public or private.

Betsy Newmark blogged Star Parker rightly excoriates the NAACP for opting for the NEA-supported opposition to school vouchers over the interests of poor black children.

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Negroponte Had Denied Domestic Call Monitoring

WaPo When he was asked about the National Security Agency's controversial domestic surveillance program last Monday, U.S. intelligence chief John D. Negroponte objected to the question and said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls without warrants.

And that is absolutely true.
"I wouldn't call it domestic spying," he told reporters. "This is about international terrorism and telephone calls between people thought to be working for international terrorism and people here in the United States." Three days later, USA Today divulged details of the NSA's effort to log a majority of the telephone calls made within the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
Talk about MSM distortion. The NSA is not "logging" those calls, they are getting records from the telephone companies of telephone numbers called for a database.
amassing the domestic call records of tens of millions of U.S. households and businesses in an attempt to sift them for clues about terrorist threats.

James Joyner blogged Would we expect that any administration would, upon the illegal leak to the press about a highly sensitive intelligence program, decide it was time to reveal all of our classified ops in order to provide full disclosure? Regardless of one’s position on the utility or even legality of these programs, surely keeping them secret on operational grounds is reasonable.

Sister Toldjah blogged So not only was the WaPo article poorly researched, but Eggan falsely implies that the calls themselves were monitored as if to say people’s private conversations had been listened to - what is actually being monitored are calling PATTERNS.

The media reporting on this story is beyond bad - it’s grossly misleading and negligently researched. What really makes this so bad is that the media are the ones who are supposed to help keep our politicians honest by reporting the facts - in this case, as it has been the case with so many other non-scandal ’scandals’, the media has gotten it horribly wrong. And their getting it wrong comes with a price: it hurts our chances of catching the REAL enemy, which as sane people know is NOT President Bush but instead the likes of Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations hell bent on destroying the west.

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Yahoo! Answers: 10 million strong and growing

This is an interesting service I was unaware of before: Yahoo Answers

Yahoo! Search blog blogged At around 5:30 am on Sunday, May 7th, almost precisely five months since we launched, a user posted the 10 millionth answer on the service. This is a big day for us, and we’ve decided to celebrate by coming out of beta, and beginning the integration of Answers into our core search services. Do a search on Yahoo! and you’ll see how questions and answers are being surfaced within results. Every day, someone out there has a question, and someone out there knows the answer and gives it for free. Just because helping someone by sharing what you know is a reward in itself....

There is an extension where you can add Answers as an optional search repository on Firefox, and there are badges you can put on your website to indicate your participation. They even have a scoring system to indicate the level of your participation.

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Sunday, May 14, 2006

That’s Not The Role of Our National Guard

Think Progress reported Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) sharply criticized President Bush’s proposal, expected to be announced Monday, of sending thousands of National Guard troops to police the southern U.S. border. Hagel said flatly, “that’s not the role of our national guard.”

According to the National Guard website, "The National Guard traces its history back to the earliest English colonies in North America. Responsible for their own defense, the colonists drew on English military tradition and organized their able-bodied male citizens into militias. The colonial militias protected their fellow citizens from Indian attack, foreign invaders, and later helped to win the Revolutionary War." We don't have that many Indian attacks today, but we certainly do have a foreign invasion, and we need protection on the border.

The National Guard website also says National Guard continues its historic dual mission, providing to the states units trained and equipped to protect life and property, while providing to the nation units trained, equipped and ready to defend the United States and its interests, all over the globe. This use is a combination of the two: they are protecting us here, from a foreign invasion.
He added that “we’ve got National Guard members in their second, third and fourth tours in Iraq” and “stretched our military as thin as we have ever seen in modern times.”
They are doing a very good job there, but they need to learn how to close borders, so that when they are sent to Iraq or Afganistan, they can close those borders too.

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Plane Carrying Kennedy Hit by Lightning

AP reported A plane carrying U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy from western Massachusetts to his home on the coast was struck by lightning Saturday and had to be diverted to New Haven, Conn., his spokeswoman said.

Do you think God was trying to tell him something?
The eight-seat Cessna Citation 550 plane lost all electrical power, including communications, and the pilot had to fly the plane manually, according to spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner. No one was hurt.

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McCain Reconnects With Liberty University

WaPo reported Senator May Have an Eye Toward 2008

MAY??? You don't think he just happened to be in Lynchburg, Virginia and just dropped in to see what was going on?
as He Reaches Out to Religious Conservatives.

Six years after labeling the Rev. Jerry Falwell one of the political "agents of intolerance," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered the commencement address Saturday at Falwell's Liberty University, and vigorously defended his support for the war in Iraq while saying that opponents have a moral duty to challenge the wisdom of a conflict that has exacted a huge toll on the nation.

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To connect the dots, you have to see the dots

Mark Steyn wrote in Chicago Sun Times How do you connect the dots? To take one example of what we're up against, two days before 9/11, a very brave man, the anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, was assassinated in Afghanistan by killers posing as journalists.

He was killed because they knew that once 9/11 occurred, if there was someone the US could aid to go after the Taliban, we would have done so. They did not realize that we would actually attack the Taliban ourselves, especially after seeing the results when Russia invaded Afganistan.
His murderers were Algerians traveling on Belgian passports who'd arrived in that part of the world on visas issued by the Pakistani High Commission in the United Kingdom. That's three more countries than many Americans have visited. The jihadists are not "primitives". They're part of a sophisticated network: They travel the world, see interesting places, meet interesting people -- and kill them. They're as globalized as McDonald's -- but, on the whole, they fill in less paperwork. They're very good at compartmentalizing operations: They don't leave footprints, just a toeprint in Country A in Time Zone B and another toe in Country E in Time Zone K. You have to sift through millions of dots to discern two that might be worth connecting.

I'm a strong believer in privacy rights. I don't see why Americans are obligated to give the government their bank account details and the holdings therein. Other revenue agencies in other free societies don't require that level of disclosure. But, given that the people of the United States are apparently entirely cool with that, it's hard to see why lists of phone numbers (i.e., your monthly statement) with no identifying information attached to them is of such a vastly different order of magnitude. By definition, "connecting the dots" involves getting to see the dots in the first place.
That is a VERY good point.
Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) feels differently. "Look at this headline," huffed the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida?" No. But next time he's flying from D.C. to Burlington, Vt., on a Friday afternoon he might look at the security line: Tens of millions of Americans are having to take their coats and shoes off! Are you telling me that tens of millions of ordinary shoe-wearing Americans are involved with al-Qaida?

Of course not. Fifteen out of 19 of the 9/11 killers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. So let's scrap the tens of millions of law-abiding phone records, and say we only want to examine the long-distance phone bills of, say, young men of Saudi origin living in the United States. Can you imagine what Leahy and Lauer would say to that? Oh, no! Racial profiling! The government's snooping on people whose only crime is "dialing while Arab." In a country whose Transportation Security Administration personnel recently pulled Daniel Brown off the plane as a security threat because he had traces of gunpowder on his boots -- he was a uniformed U.S. Marine on his way home from Iraq -- in such a culture any security measure will involve "tens of millions of Americans": again by definition, if one can't profile on the basis of religion or national origin
I think it is absolutely foolish that we cannot.
or any other identifying mark with identity-group grievance potential, every program will have to be at least nominally universal.

Last week, apropos the Moussaoui case, I remarked on the absurdity of victims of the London Blitz demanding the German perpetrators be brought before a British court. Melanie Phillips, a columnist with the Daily Mail in London and author of the alarming new book Londonistan, responded dryly, "Ah, but if we were fighting World War Two now, we'd lose." She may be right. It's certainly hard to imagine Pat Leahy as FDR or Harry Truman or any other warmongering Democrat of yore. To be sure, most of Pat's Vermont voters would say there is no war;
Ask the 3,000 killed in 9/11 if there is a war or not.
it's just a lot of fearmongering got up by Bush and Cheney to distract from the chads they stole in Florida or whatever. And they're right -- if, by "war," you mean tank battles in the North African desert and air forces bombing English cities night after night. But today no country in the world can fight that kind of war with America. If that's all "war" is, then (once more by definition) there can be no war. If you seek to weaken, demoralize and bleed to death the United States and its allies, you can only do it asymmetrically -- by killing thousands of people and then demanding a criminal trial, by liaising with terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan and then demanding the government cease inspecting your phone records.

I yield to no one in my antipathy to government, but not everyone who's on the federal payroll is a boob, a time-server, a politically motivated malcontent or principal leak supplier to the New York Times. Suppose you're a savvy mid-level guy in Washington, you've just noticed a pattern, you think there might be something in it. But it requires enormous will to talk your bosses into agreeing to investigate further, and everyone up the chain is thinking, gee, if this gets out, will Pat Leahy haul me before the Senate and kill my promotion prospects? There was a lot of that before 9/11, and thousands died. And five years on?

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Critics Want Dutch Lawmaker Deported

Yahoo! News reported Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch legislator who has championed the rights of Muslim women, is returning from a book tour to a firestorm for lying on her asylum application when she fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage.... Political opponents want her stripped of her Dutch citizenship and deported. Others say she should be expelled from parliament.

When extreme Muslims want her killed, the brave Dutch think it would be safer for them to just get rid of her
Hirsi Ali became a popular figure in the Netherlands for renouncing her Muslim faith, condemning the treatment of women in many Muslim households and criticizing Dutch immigration and integration policies. She became internationally known when a film she wrote provoked the murder of its director, Theo van Gogh, by an Islamic radical in 2004. With her own life under threat, she went into hiding for three months, and still lives under 24-hour protection.
And as we reported here her neighbors want her evicted
The latest political storm followed the airing of a 30-minute TV documentary Thursday tracing her steps from Somalia, where her father was an imprisoned opposition politician, to her family's exile in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Hirsi Ali repeated on the TV documentary that when she arrived in 1992 she changed her name from Hirsi Magan and her birth date on her asylum application and did not tell the authorities that she had lived in three different countries since leaving Somalia. "I invented a story that would be consistent with the conditions for asylum," she told The Associated Press.
Practically every candidate for asylum does it.
Jeff Goldstein blogged Uh, deported where, exactly? Somalia? Why not just behead her themselves and been done with it? U.S. lawmakers should immediately, and in a bi-partisan manner, offer Ali asylum and citizenship. Such a move would let the world know, yet again, who stands for universal individual rights, and who is willing to shoulder the risks associated with guarding those rights.

Damian blogged If there was ever anyone I was willing to forgive for having lied on a refugee claim, it's Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And sending her out of the Netherlands - especially back to Somalia - would be a death sentence. If she is forced out, I hope Canada has the cojones to take her in. Anyone want to bet the people demanding her expulsion from the Netherlands would never demand any other refugee claimant be expelled 14 years after the fact?

coondawg blogged Yes, I think they have gone mad. This is what she sought asylum from.

Allah Pundit blogged Hirsi Ali is arguably the greatest champion of western values on the international scene right now; in refusing to tolerate Islamist intolerance, she’s … doing a job Europeans won’t do. Call it “earned citizenship.”

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Cheney Notes Surface in Fitzgerald Probe

- Newsweek reported Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.... In the margins of the op-ed, Cheney jotted out a series of questions that seemed to challenge many of Wilson's assertions as well as the legitimacy of his CIA-sponsored trip to Africa:

They were all very good questions.
"Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. [sic] to answer a question?
He was a former Ambassador, so I don't understand the "sic", but do we send former Ambassadors as intelligence officers?
Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?
A very good question, and if we do, do we expect them to just report to us, or are they expected to publish their response in an editorial in the papers.
Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
Since he only gave the government an oral report, and since all he wrote was an editorial, it is a very good question. An even better question would be was this evidence of a coup attempt where some in the CIA wanted to overthrow the current US Government.

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