Saturday, November 11, 2006

Islamization of American Justice System

St. Petersburg Times reported Al-Arian's Tampa attorney, Jack Fernandez, wrote that on Sept. 18 he asked Gordon Kromberg, assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, to delay Al-Arian's transfer 30 days until after the Islamic religious holidays of Ramadan. According to a court motion filed by Fernandez, Kromberg responded: "If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury, all they can't do is eat before sunset.

That is an extremely good point. And he was not pressing for Al Arian to eat while appearing before the Grand Jury, in fact eating in the court room is probably forbidden.
I believe Mr. Al-Arian's request is part of the attempted Islamization of the American Justice System. I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian's grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America."

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John Conyers And The Muslim Caucus

Investor's Business Daily The likely new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says he's just fighting bigotry in leading a Democrat jihad to deny law enforcement key terror-fighting tools. But he is in the pocket of Islamists. John Conyers, son of a leftist Detroit union activist, represents the largest Arab population in the country. His district includes Dearborn, Mich., nicknamed "Dearbornistan" by locals fed up with cultural encroachment and terror fears from a steady influx of Mideast immigrants. Conyers, who runs an Arabic version of his official Web site, does the bidding of these new constituents and the militant Islamist activists who feed off them. They want to kill the Patriot Act and prevent the FBI from profiling Muslim suspects in terror investigations. They also want to end the use of undisclosed evidence against suspected Arab terrorists in deportation proceedings. And the 77-year-old Conyers has vowed to deliver those changes for them.

If he is succeessfulwe will be attacked again, and the Democratic party will bear the whole blame. It should destroy them.

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Hamas Offers to End Rule if Aid Resumes

NYT reported Hamas committed today to folding its eight-month government if that would restore the international assistance that was cut off after it won national elections earlier this year.

It is not necessary for you to leave the government; just accept the existance of the State of Israel, and work with it, rather than attacking it.
In a shrewd and dramatic speech, the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyah, said he would likely resign in the next “two or three weeks” to make way for a national unity government more acceptable to international donors than Hamas, the organization responsible for the deadliest attacks against Israel.

“When they put the siege on one hand, and having me the prime minister on the other, I said ‘no: Let us end the siege and let us end the suffering of the Palestinian people,’ ” Mr. Haniyah, 43, a former teacher and union official, told worshippers at Friday prayers here.


CQ blogged In order for the West to put any reliance on the PA, we have to know that successive governments will abide by the treaties and agreements signed by previous ones. Otherwise, everyone has to start from scratch after every election, and no progress can be made towards any kind of peaceful resolution, if one exists at all. Hamas does not want a two-state solution, and so Israel has no incentive to restart tax payments to an entity that wants to destroy it. And while America might be willing to buy peace through foreign aid in the hope that a few years of quiet might produce leaders who want it to continue, we're not going to pay Hamas to be terrorists, and so far neither will the Europeans.

Haniyeh wants to change the label but keep the product the same. Some world leaders, desperate to reverse the economic collapse in Gaza and the West Bank, might take the bait. They shouldn't, and neither should the American people. We cannot defeat terrorism while we fund it, a basic truth that all of Haniyeh's declarations cannot hide. If the Palestinians want international aid, then they need to comply with its conditions, and not just switch the nameplates on the doors.

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Alternative Minimum Tax Targeted

WaPo reported Democratic leaders this week vowed to make the alternative minimum tax a centerpiece of next year's budget debate, saying the levy threatens to unfairly increase tax bills for millions of middle-class families by the end of the decade.

I support getting rid of the AMT. But don't raise taxes to cover the loss in revenue; cut spending
The complex and expensive tax was designed to prevent the super-rich from using deductions, credits and other shelters to avoid paying the Internal Revenue Service. But because of rising incomes, the tax is expected to expand to more than 30 million taxpayers in 2010 from 3.8 million mostly well-off households in 2006.

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Friday, November 10, 2006

Radical Cleric Details CIA Abduction, Egyptian Torture

WaPo reported In an account smuggled out of prison, a radical Muslim cleric has detailed how he was kidnapped by the CIA from this northern Italian city and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured for months

As indicated in the al Qaeda Manual At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison.
with electric shocks and shackled to an iron rack known as "the Bride."
Why was he let off that easily.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, wrote an 11-page letter describing his 2003 abduction at the hands of the CIA and Italian secret service agents. He somehow transferred the document out of Egypt -- where he remains in custody -- and into the hands of Italian prosecutors who are investigating his disappearance.

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Hoyer, Murtha Battle

Roll Call reported As Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged Wednesday to rule the House fairly in the 110th Congress as the first-ever female Speaker, a handful of senior Democrats moved aggressively to secure other leadership posts in their nascent majority. One day after Democrats decisively seized control of the chamber from the GOP, one of the architects of that victory — Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) — remained mum about his plans despite speculation that he could run for Majority Whip.

Current Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was not similarly hesitant, formally announcing his bid for the Majority Leader’s office early Wednesday morning and confidently predicting that he will secure the post when Democrats vote in leadership election on Nov. 16. “I think I’m going to win,” Hoyer said in an interview Wednesday. The Maryland lawmaker, who has served as Minority Whip since 2003, said “over a majority” of House incumbents as well as newly-elected lawmakers “have indicated that they would be supportive of me.”

And he gave candidates a lot more money than Murtha did.
But Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) — who stunned fellow lawmakers when he announced in June that he would campaign for the Majority Leader post against Hoyer — re-affirmed his own interest in the office Wednesday. “I’m working diligently now trying to convince people that I’d make a good balance” to the leadership team, Murtha said in an interview with National Public Radio.
An anti-war male balancing an anti-war female. That should really make the moderate/conservative Dems that were just elected, many of whom have military backgrounds.

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RNC asks Steele to replace Mehlman

Washington Times reported Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, whose party just lost both chambers of Congress, will leave his position in January, and the post as party chief has been offered to Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.

This is a very good move. I don't know how good he is at organization and planning; he may need to have some very good assistants, but having a black chairman of the party is a good idea. It looks like the Dems may have thought that too. Ryan Lizza wrote in The New Republic Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy
Which is responsible for the Dems winning seats in Red States.
and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities. The candidate being floated to replace Dean? Harold Ford. Says James Carville, one of the anti-Deaniacs, "Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day. Now probably Harold Ford wants to stay in Tennessee. I just appointed myself his campaign manager."

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With Power Set to Be Split, Wiretaps Re-emerge as Issue

NYT reported The Bush administration escalated its defense of the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program on Thursday, even as Democrats in Congress vowed to investigate the program aggressively once they assume power.

Investigate all you want, but dont reveal what you find, even to the New York Times, and don't seek to block anything, or you will be held personally responsible for the next attack that could have been foiled before you came into power.
In Washington, President Bush urged that during the lame-duck session that starts next week, Congress pass a bill effectively authorizing the program. And in San Francisco, the Justice Department told a federal court that public scrutiny of the operation risked “exceptionally grave harm to national security.”

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Thursday, November 09, 2006

Point Fingers At Each Other

Michael Grunwald wrote in Wapo After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching, Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP's various factions all agree: This wouldn't have happened if the party had listened to us. In the aftermath of the historic GOP losses Tuesday night, moderate Republicans quickly concluded that the party needs to be more moderate. Conservative Republicans declared that it should be more conservative. Main Street is angry at Wall Street, theo-cons are angry at neo-cons, and almost everyone is angry at President Bush and the GOP congressional leadership.

Iraq certainly hurt, but if the Repub;icans could have remained the party of fiscal conservative / low government and avoided the scandals we would have been fine.


CQ blogged So what's next for George Bush after having his party stripped of Congressional control? The final two years of a two-term presidency normally get devoted to The Legacy, as Oval Office occupants start to look longingly at the history books and wonder how their own presidencies will be recorded in them. No President wants The Legacy to be gridlock and can-kicking, and so Bush has made moves towards the Democrats in a manner similar to what Arnold Schwarzenegger did in California after a series of ill-conceived referenda.
Bush has a lot more Republican support than Schwarrenegger did. I don't blame him from trying to see if they are serious about bipartianship, but when he realizes they are not, I hope he will realize that a lot of the new Dems are moderate or conservatives, and that the Republicans should be able to peal a lot of them off when the Dems get too liberal.


blue Crab blogged Actually, I think that both groups
Moderates and Conservatives.
are correct, oddly enough. The Republican-conservative coalition depends on certain conservative tenets being a bedrock foundation for the Republicans. But at the same time, conservatives must realize that there are times when moderation rather than ideological purity are the better way to go. That was Reagan's strong suit, being able to stand on the truly important issues while yielding enough on other things to make it all work. Remember, he did it with an opposition Congress. The issue now will be how to define the true bedrock and not define everything as crucially important. That should be the goal now. Get the recriminations out of your systems, then start working on rebuilding. Soon.

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Beheaded girls were Ramadan 'trophies'

Australian reported Three Christian high school girls were beheaded as a Ramadan "trophy" by Indonesian militants who conceived the idea after a visit to Philippines jihadists, a court heard yesterday.

Arabs are not the only evil ones. It must be Islam.
The girls' severed heads were dumped in plastic bags in their village in Indonesia's strife-torn Central Sulawesi province, along with a handwritten note threatening more such attacks. The note read: "Wanted: 100 more Christian heads, teenaged or adult, male or female; blood shall be answered with blood, soul with soul, head with head."
Does that mean Christians need to take the heads of three Muslim girls?

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Why the election was a good thing

Danny Carlton blogged First of all the margins are too thin to accomplish much.. Yes the Dims control the House, but if Webb is declared the winner in Virginia, then they control the Senate by one, and the one independent is Joe Leiberman, arguably one of the most conservative Democrats that was in the Senate, trashed by his own party, and now free to ignore any party loyalties he might have once held.

Also a LOT of the newly elected Democrats, in both houses, are conservative Democrats, and if the left wing of their party tries to push them to do too many liberal things, they may revolt.
I don't think they can count on him too much. So the Senate, while technically in the Dims hands, is really more or less a dead heat. And the White House is still Republican. So there's not a lot the Dims will be able to do, other that continuing to prevent Republicans from getting anything really successful done, then blame them for it. Meanwhile, on paper, they control both houses of Congress. So here we are, heading toward the 2008 election with the Dims controlling Congress, and a Republican in the White House.
And Bush can veto any actual tax increases, so all they can do is allow the tax cuts to expire, and most of them expire in the 2008 to 2010 period.
Americans have always had a soft spot for the underdog, and had we faced the 2008 election with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress we would have not had the benefit of that. As it is we can claim "underdog" status, while still maintaining enough power to prevent the Dims from really screwing things up, in the man time.
I assume you mean in the meantime.
We can emphasize the idiocy the Dims will inevitably display, and easily project it onto whatever moron they toss onto the ticket (Sometimes they make our jobs so easy, don't they. Please send Kerry in again, he's so fun to watch, but then again, he's hardly a challenge.)
Not likely, and if Hillary is smart she will accept the Senate Majority Leader position they offerred her, instead of running in 2008.
Even the most die-hard Dims know full well that pulling out of Iraq would be disastrous and that disaster can easily be blamed on Congress. President says stay; Congress says leave; we leave; Iraq melts into a free for all...we could run Yogi Berra after that fiasco and get him elected in a land slide. So it's unlikely, even after all their rhetorical posturing that the Democrats actually will pull us out of Iraq.

Then again, sometimes they are stupid enough to actually believe their own lies. So you never know.
If we stay we need to insist that they allow us to close down all of the militias, both Sunni and Shia, including Al Sader's, and if they refuse, we need to pack up and pull out, at least to Kuwait and nto the north to protect the Kurds.
They want to raise the minimum wage. A meaningless act, and everyone that has more than a Freshman economics understanding knows that. Very few minimum wage employees have a Freshman economic understanding, and that's the key. It's like the old trick of making your dog think you've thrown something up in the air, then watch him get all excited waiting for it to come down. "Here you go minimum wage workers. A raise! Oh and [mumbled under breath] prices will all go up, too." Personally I find it sick that the Democrats use a tactic like that, but then for the most part, their willingness to ignore basic morality is why they're Democrats.

So in the end we'll have two years of a lame duck Congress, unable to escape blame for the mess they do cause, leading up to an election which could easily toss control of the Presidency and Congress back to the Republicans. If only the GOP learned their lesson about abandoning the Conservative values that always win.
We need to find a lot of true conservatives (both fiscal and moral) and be ready for the 2008 primary season.

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Catastrophometer

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Indecision 2006

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Still A Democrat,

Courant reported Now that he's won re-election as a petitioning candidate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is pledging to remain a Democrat, if for no other reason than to keep his 18 years' seniority in the Senate. "I'll sign up with the caucus to protect my seniority," Lieberman said Wednesday. "My seniority is important to my ability to deliver for the state of Connecticut."

If you have any sense you should be able to get a committ chairmanship out of it. You could get that from the Republicans.
Lieberman briefly joked about how the Republicans might coax him into joining the GOP, a switch that could keep the closely divided Senate under Republican control. "There is a little playfulness in me that wants me to make a joke about that, but it's too serious. The answer is no," he said. "When I give my word I stick with it, and I am definitely going to organize with the Senate Democrats."

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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

‘Liberated’ Lieberman Likely to Be Courted by Both Sides

NYT reported Throughout his career, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman has proudly proclaimed himself an “independent-minded Democrat.” But in the closing days of this campaign, Mr. Lieberman added a superlative, promising to be a “very independent Democrat.” After a brutal fall from grace in losing his party’s primary this summer, Mr. Lieberman will return to the Senate emboldened, rather than chastened. All fall, he used terms like “unshackled” and “liberated” to describe himself and called his independent candidacy a “twist of fate.” In Washington, he is unlikely to be cast out — rather, he could be courted by both sides on close votes.

In fact if he agrees to caucus with Republicans he could probably get a Committee Chairmanship

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May both sides win

Robert Spencer wrote in Jihad Watch Keith Ellison, the new Muslim Congressman from Minnesota, "advocated quick U.S. withdrawal from Iraq," according to this article.

My view exactly. Yet I am not a Muslim, and do not wish Islam and its Jihad well. Does this mean that I am dead wrong in my views, because I appear to agree with Keith Ellison, or he with me? Or is it something else? Is it what one might understand better if we stand back and think what, objectively, would happen if the Americans withdrew?

Rather than just withdrawing I believe that we should give the Iraqis an ultimatum. Close down the militias, including Al Sader's, or we will withdraw and let them kill each other.
I think as soon as the Americans withdraw, there will be all kinds of shrill cries in Iraq, coming from both some Sunnis and some Shi'a, for the Americans not to go. The Sunnis will realize that it is the Americans who are protecting them from the Shi'a militia. Other Sunnis, possibly a majority, will be delighted, for they are convinced that somehow, though outnumbered three-to-one by the Shi'a, they possess the necessary training, the organization, the ruthlessness, and the ability to count on Sunni volunteers coming from Syria (70% Sunni, though Shi'a missionaries from Iran have been given free rein by Bashir al-Assad), Egypt, Jordan, and of course the Gulf. And they are relying, too, on equipment and money coming from the Saudis, who similarly supplied Saddam Hussein during his war against Shi'a Iran (why, I even know someone who painted over the markings on the American-supplied Saudi tanks then shipped to Iraq), not to mention the tens of billions that the U.A.E. and Kuwait "loaned" Saddam Hussein for his Sunni Arab crusade against "the Persians."
That is fine. And if the Saudi's come to us begging us to stay, we need to insist they stop funding the madrassas teaching jihad.
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And some of the Shi'a, too, will suddenly be eager to have the Americans stay, for they calculate that they need the American soldiers to stay and fight and die just a little longer -- as long as they stick to killing Sunnis. And of course the training those Shi'a volunteers are receiving for what the Americans call the "Iraqi" army and the "Iraqi" police is also valuable. And finally, the longer the Americans stay, the more stuff -- money, projects, and above all military equipment -- is likely to be given to, or fall into the hands of, the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi government. Others, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, never cared for the Americans, and still others, including those disinclined to disarm the militias ("those Americans can't be serious, can they?"), may now feel it is time for those heretofore amazingly pliant and gullible Americans (well, no longer the officers and men, but the civilians in Washington whom those officers and men have been taught to unquestioningly obey) to leave.

And what will happen in the Muslim world? Oh, crowing, of all kinds. Crowing from somewhere in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yes, we won, we won, the Americans have had to leave. And that apparently is what some in the Administration are so scared of.
Let them say that. They will get killed in the civil war that will result.
But they need not be. For if they leave, and when they leave, the natural centrifugal forces, whirring away, will cause Sunnis and Shi'a to be unable to compromise. Or if they do enter into any kind of compromise, it will immediately be broken by one side or the other or both, for it will be impossible for the Sunnis to accept their new status, and impossible for the Shi'a Arabs to share power and money in the way that the Sunnis demand. And if the Americans think that enlarging the pie by giving potentially-rich Iraq even more American -- i.e., Infidel -- money will bring about that spirit of compromise that is so foreign to, and so inimical to, Islam, they are only proving that their ignorance of Islam and the psychology of Muslims is nearly total. And being unable to compromise, they will fight.

And Muslims being Muslims, and Sunni Arabs regarding the land of the most glorious Abbasid Caliphate as important to their own history and their own identity, will never permit the Shi'a, those quasi-Persians, to win Iraq, and will offer their co-religionists every aid. And so will the Shi'a in Iran, which is not the same thing as saying that the Shi'a Arabs will necessarily wish their own state to be incorporated into a larger Shi'a state ruled from Tehran, just because they accept such aid -- money, men, materiel.

And as the American squandering of resources -- men, money, materiel -- is replaced almost overnight by a situation in which the squandering of resources is that of Muslim states and peoples whose money, men, and materiel are now being used up, the shrill voices expressing delight over "the defeat of America" will grow fainter. And as the conflict reverberates, as for example when the Shi'a in Bahrain, or Kuwait, or Al-Hasa become inspired by the conflict in Iraq to act up, and then to bring down the Sunni Arabs behaving as those Sunni Arabs will, and as the Sunnis in Pakistan attack, as they will, the Shi'a in Pakistan, and as Hizballah volunteers possibly march off to help fellow Shi'a in Iraq (and seen off at the station -- the one existing in their imaginations -- by deliriously happy Christians and Druse and even Sunni Muslims), and as the unstated American goal becomes, it is clear, no longer that messianic foolishness about making Muslim states happy and prosperous, but rather working to exploit the natural fissures -- ethnic and sectarian that are most obvious in, though hardly limited to, Iraq -- all sense of triumph over America, of having defeated America, will fade.

And then there is the matter of an independent Kurdistan. That too, spells trouble for the Arabs and for the unity of Islam. For Islam has always been a vehicle for Arab imperialism. Anwar Shaikh rightly titled one of his analyses of Islam "The Arab National Religion." An independent Kurdistan (with arrangements made for an enclave for Iraqi Christians, their safety to be guaranteed, on pain of loss of all American support, by the people and government of Kurdistan) will not only unsettle the Kurdish regions of Iran and Syria (causing migraines in both regimes) but ideally would raise, for non-Arab Muslims everywhere, the promise that they too might throw off Arab domination. Think only of the Berbers in North Africa, and think too of the Berbers in France, who might be turned against the Arabs in the same immigrant population, with useful results not least for the French security services.
That would be interesting to see.
The spectacle of internecine warfare not only promises to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam. No, it will also serve as a Demonstration Project to Infidels. Let them see how, without well-meaning Infidels to bring aid of all kinds and to keep the peace and to prevent one side or the other from behaving with their wonted barbarity (just read the reports of the corpses found murdered by Shi'a or Sunni militias or insurgents or irregulars or, for that matter, by members of regular army and police units), Muslims treat each other.

For time now needs to be bought, and Infidels tutored in the ways of Islam. There is no better way than to remove the controversial American presence in Iraq that so gets in the way of a clear-sighted view from a distance, a pisgah-sight of Islam, that many Infidels need.

Oh, there'll be much mafficking among Muslims when the Americans leave. It will last a week, maybe a month, maybe two. But not longer. And if the Administration has any sense, it will turn its attention to Western Europe, just as soon as the more-in-sorrow withdrawal is first announced and then quickly put into effect (with possibly just a very small force left in Kurdistan to help protect the Christians or oversee their exodus to Lebanon or possibly the "West Bank," but only as part of a population exchange with local Muslim Arabs).
That is an interesting solution to the problems in the Mid east. Hamas says it wants everything from the River to the Sea. Instead give it none of that land, and move them to Iraq, and move the Kurds to the West Bank.
It will turn its attention to checking or disrupting in Europe the campaigns of Da'wa, and to changing immigration policies and supporting those in Europe who wish to do the same, and to engaging in propaganda to demoralize the camp of Islam and Jihad. (Hint: Karen Hughes is not the right person for this job; Ali Sina, and Wafa Sultan, and Ibn Warraq should be consulted at every step on the staffing, and on the lines of information and argument to be disseminated; no more "life in America for Muslims is great" and no more rock music and other wonderful examples of Western decadence that do nothing to win or at least unsettle minds.)

So yes, I agree with Keith Ellison that the American forces should leave Iraq forthwith. But not for the same reasons.

Who do you think is right? Do you think an American withdrawal will be a victory for Islam, or do you think an American withdrawal will not only conserve our reserves, preserve or halt the degradation in the quality of our armed forces just in time, and help to divide and demoralize the camp of Islam and Jihad?

There are those who are indifferent to Islam, but not indifferent to the environment. Such people may have no interest in, or be completely unaware of, both the menace of Jihad and how important it is to reduce the OPEC oil revenues which supply the "money weapon" that is one of the main instruments of Jihad, without which the building and maintaining of mosques and madrasas all over the West, and the vast campaigns of Da'wa, and the employment of armies of Western hirelings to promote or defend Islam and the agenda of Islam, in government, in business, in the media, in the universities, would not be possible. But objectively, in their desire to rescue the world from environmental degradation, they are the allies of all those who are most concerned about the worldwide Jihad, or its local components.

And those who worry about the Jihad, and have concluded that the most important task is to reduce the use of oil and gas, may have little in common with members of some environmental groups, but objectively they will work for the very same goal -- a goal which will be pursued by some to save the natural world, and pursued by others to save, in a sense, the manmade world, or at least the world made somewhat better, somewhat more interesting, by all those names to be found in, say, the Index to Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence."

In similar fashion, some of those who want the Americans out of Iraq do so for reasons I deplore and abhor. One such person is Keith Ellison. But the policy in Iraq that he desires is exactly what I desire. For I know what will follow, and I welcome it. He does not know. He, just like many Sunnis in Iraq now convinced they will win, or like those people in the West who are convinced that "of course Iran will just take over" -- doesn't know what societies suffused with Islam are like. No compromise. Victor and vanquished. Until another despot comes along, to rule over this or that segment of what was once, but is unlikely to ever be again, Iraq.

And may both sides win.

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Pence & Shadegg To Run

Redstate reported In light of our editorial from the wee hours, we are hearing from multiple credible sources Mike Pence will announce he is running for Minority Leader later today. Likewise, John Shadegg will announce he intends to run for Minority Whip.

This is good news. We definitely need to clean house in the Republican Leadership.
Both men are expected to wait for Speaker Hastert to announce he is going to the back bench.

James Joyner blogged Great news, indeed. Both are reasonably conservative–and fiscal conservatives, at that–and untainted with the stench of the scandals that helped transform the current Majority into the incoming Minority. Rob Bluey has details.

It’s definitely time for Hastert and Blunt to go. I’m not sure Boehner, who only took over the Majority Leader job a few months ago, deserves a lot of blame. Still, a clean sweep is warranted. Pence is staking out Reagan-esque territory, saying, “we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way.”

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Chickens, not children, at "ghost school"

Yahoo! News

Pakistani authorities found chickens, not children, when they went to inspect a state-run primary school after a tip-off the establishment was being used to produce poultry.
One good thing is that the chickens were not being taught Jihad.
So-called ghost schools -- where people pocket government funds for education but use the schools for their own purposes -- are a common problem in Pakistan. "Chickens, television sets, video recorders, playing cards and breeding cages were found in what were supposed to be classrooms but no students," Kanwar Naved, the mayor of the city of Hyderabad told Reuters Wednesday.

Blue Crab blogged Now, they say they are going to go after the owner of the school, but we think they are missing the obvious here. This is yet another manifestation of the animal uprising. The chickens ate the students and staff. Remember, you heard it here first.

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Will the Democratic leaders come from the center?

WaPo reports The complexion of the Democratic presence in Congress will change as well. Party politics will be shaped by the resurgence of "Blue Dog" Democrats, who come mainly from the South and from rural districts in the Midwest and often vote like Republicans. Top Democrats such as Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) see these middle-of-the-road lawmakers as the future of the party in a nation that leans slightly right of center.

This should be interesting. I predict a war within the Democratic party. If the extreme left gets control of the leadership and the committees, the blue dogs may split off and form a centrist party, and if the centrists get control, the extreme left wing may split off and form a new left wing party.
In private talks before the election, Emanuel and other top Democrats told their members they cannot allow the party's liberal wing to dominate the agenda next year. Democrats will hold 30 or 35 seats that went for Bush in the past, meaning that Democratic candidates such as Brad Ellsworth in rural Indiana are likely to face competitive races again in 2008. Still, their interests are likely to collide with those of veteran liberals such as Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and John Conyers Jr., (Mich.), who will chair committees.
That depends on who the speaker is.
With that in mind, there is a chance the 110th Congress could begin on a bipartisan note. Democrats have vowed to move quickly to tighten ethics laws and require offsets for new spending -- two plans many Republicans will probably support in light of yesterday's results. Democrats also plan to push next year to raise the minimum wage, increase spending for cargo inspection at ports and reduce rates on student loans, all issues likely to draw some GOP support.

Sister Toldjah blogged Heh. And the far left blogosphere is already pitching a fit over Emanuel’s and other top Democrats’ plans to suppress their more liberal wing. I love it.

There’s no question we need to get our house in order and analyze where we went wrong, so elections like this don’t happen again. But in the meantime, the prospect of infighting between the liberalcrats and the more moderate wing should provide some much needed enterainment for months to come for those of us who are numb from last night’s resounding defeat. They may not be as united as they’d like you to think, which could bode well for Republicans - provided Republicans play their cards right, literally.

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Hotel yanks CNN; says network is pro-terrorist

Wausau Daily Herald reported Guests at one local hotel who switch on the TV in search of the latest news no longer have CNN as an option.

I hope they give them Fair and Balanced Fox News as a replacement.
The Stoney Creek Inn, 1100 Imperial Ave., in Rothschild has dropped the 24-hour news channels CNN and CNN Headline News from its basic cable offerings. Tony Magro, 76, of Barrington, Ill., stayed at the inn Monday night and said he was told by a receptionist that the hotel chain’s corporate office had issued a letter calling for the removal of the channels because CNN aids terrorists.

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The Good News And The Bad

Hugh Hewitt blogged I have to assume that the Dems will get the Senate as well as the House, though Conrad Burns may be able to pull off an upset, in which case I hope the GOP in the Senate reject the silly rules they agreed to the last time the body was 50/50. They got no cooperation from Dems over the past two years, and if by good luck and the Veep's vote they have the majority, they have got to begin to use it.

I agree with that. And I hope they can lure Liberman into caucusing with the Republicans.
The long and short of this bad but not horrific night was that majorities must act like majorities. The public cares little for the "traditions" of the Senate or the way the appropriations process used to work. It demands results. Handed a large majority, the GOP frittered it away. The chief fritterer was Senator McCain and his Gang of 14 and Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, supplemented by a last minute throw down that prevented the NSA bill from progressing or the key judicial nominations from receiving a vote. His accomplice in that master stroke was Senator Graham. Together they cost their friend Mike DeWine his seat in the Senate, and all their Republican colleagues their chairmanships. Senator McCain should rethink his presidential run. Amid the ruins of the GOP's majority there is a clear culprit.
I agree with you completely.
A second loser was Bill Frist. To be the Majority Leader of a majority that did not lead is lethal to his presidential ambitions. Like Senator McCain, it would be easier on everyone if he just exited the stage.
Again I agree. Just get his medical practice going again.
President Bush will not flag in the pursuit of the war, and Senator Santorum is now available for a seat on the SCOTUS should one become available.
And with Steven's health problems one probably will be. I wonder if the Senate will accord Senatorial courtesy to a Santorum nomination.
GOP senators will have the chance to select leadership equal to the new world of politics which, as the past two years have demonstrated, does not reward timidity.

House Republicans as well have to rebuild from the ground up and with an eye on those members best equipped to debate the almost certain overreaches of the Democratic majority. From the first day of the new Congress it is going to be a partisan slugfest or a GOP dismemberment. The GOP must find the fighters with talent and promote them.
And we must try to replace the Republicans whose excessive spending caused them to lose the majority.
The anti-illegal immigration absolutists got their heads handed to them. As the fence goes up, their rhetoric must go down --dramatically.
As long as the fence does go up.
But there is good news as well. Hillary's path back to the White House is much more difficult with her party in the majority in the House, and much much more difficult if the Senate falls to Harry Reid's command as well. Clarity as to her party's fecklessness will be back within the first six months, and the GOP frontrunners --Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney-- do not have to serve in the almost certain to be paralyzed Senate.

The Beltway-Manhattan media elite is now stuck "covering" Democratic majorities. Sure, they will go easy on them, but it is much more difficult to cover for a majority than a minority. And it is a wonderful day for new media, especially talk radio.
And the right side of the blogosphere.
For two years we have had to defend the Congressional gang that couldn't shoot straight. Now we get to play offense. I am concerned for the country that the Democrats have won, but the Republicans are indeed going to find this sojourn in the minority a potentially very good thing. If the GOP adopts and refines the tactics the Democrats have used for the past four years all will be well two years hence, and perhaps even better than well.

UPDATE:

For comparison purposes, in 1986 the GOP lost eight Senate seats, and Reagan faced a 55-45 Democratic majority in the upper chamber. The Republicans only lost five seats in the House that year, and the count was 258 Democrats to 177 Republicans. Sure, it stings. But it is far from a wipe-out, and if you had told me in 1986 that 20 years later there would be a Republican president facing a 20 seat Democratic majority in the House and a two seat Democratic majority in the Senate --and that the Soviet Union had collapsed-- I'd have cheered long and loud.

As Dean has pointed out, congratulations are in order to the Dems who ran a skillful campaign that kept the focus on the GOP's scandals and away from the left's agenda. The GOP couldn't recover from Foley's repulsive conduct, and the enemy was willing to kill randomly in the run-up to the vote in order to demoralize an American public. But the war isn't lost, and won't be on this Administration's watch. But the prospect of a Leahy chairmanship of Judiciary and Biden back with the gavel at Foreign Relations is wearying. Pray that Montana comes in strong.

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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

MoveOn Offers $250,000 Reward

us news wire reported MoveOn Offers $250,000 Reward for Evidence Leading to Voter Fraud Conviction

Would that include this
In wards 7, 19, 51 in Philly, PA, the crowds are going wild. Inside several voting locations, individuals have poured white out onto the polling books and the poll workers are allowing voters to go into the polls and vote without first registering. Several individuals are on hand demanding that voters vote straight Democrat.

RNC lawyers have headed to the scene of the incidents, which are occurring in mostly hispanic precinct locations. The District Attorney has also been contacted.

More from the ground: Reports of voter intimidation by son-in-law of Philadelphia City Commissioner in 19th Ward. Carlos Mantos is not allowing Republican poll watchers with valid poll-watching certificates monitor polling places.

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How to prank a telemarketer

How to prank a telemarketer. It's hysterical.

Hat tip to Wizbang

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Naked man arrested for concealed weapon

Yahoo! News reported A man was arrested on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon after police found him outdoors — naked — and he told them he had a tool somewhere the sun does not shine.

What do you expect. He could not have put it in his pocket. He did not have any.

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Saddam calls for reconciliation

BBC News Saddam Hussein has urged Iraqis to seek reconciliation, two days after being sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against humanity.

Maybe they can all come to a picnic, and watch you hang.
"I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands," the former president told the court in a separate trial for genocide.

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One more ugly campaign ad

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Woman arrested for 'jihad recruitment'

IOL reported Dutch authorities have arrested five men and a woman suspected of recruiting volunteers for a jihad (holy war) in a probe into an international Islamic terror network, the prosecutor's office said on Tuesday. The suspects were arrested in The Hague and Amsterdam on Monday evening and Tuesday morning as part of an investigation launched in November 2005, the authorities said in a statement. The six are suspected of "recruiting radical Muslims for the international jihad", a crime under recently amended Dutch laws.

That sounds like a law that all countries should adopt, particularly European Countries

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I voted - Did you


I had to have a friend come and take me and my wheelchair over to the poll, and it was a lot of trouble, but I voted. Did you? If you did not, and if the results are not as we would wish, it is all your fault.

If you voted too, and the results are still not as we would have wanted, then we can join together to blame those that did not vote.

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New York Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice

NYT reported Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.

Is this an attempt to get around the prohibition for same sex marriage? Just get one of the parties to change their sex on their birth certificates?
Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

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Plan to create human-cow embryos

BBC News reported UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs. Researchers from Newcastle University and Kings College, London, have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a three-year licence. The hybrid human-bovine embryos would be used for stem cell research and would not be allowed to develop for more than a few days

Stem Cel Research is now creating new human-cow species
.... They would insert human DNA into a cow's egg which has had its genetic material removed, and then create an embryo by the same technique that produced Dolly the Sheep. The resulting embryo would be 99.9% human; the only bovine element would be DNA outside the nucleus of the cell. It would, though, technically be a chimera - a mixing of two distinct species into one. The aim would be to extract stem cells from the embryo when it is six days old, before destroying it.

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Exit-Poll Secrecy Measures Aim to Plug Leaks to Blogs

WSJ Two-by-two, polling specialists from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press will go into rooms in New York and Washington shortly before noon Tuesday. Their cellphones and BlackBerrys will be confiscated; proctors will monitor the doors; and for the next five hours, these experts will pore over exit-poll data from across the country.

Why study the data if you are not going to report it? And what prevents experts in another room from getting the same data, and reporting it: to the blogs, and elsewhere? The answer is to stop exit polls, and wait for the real results. And the way to do that is to tell everyone that if they are contacted by an exit poller, to lie to them about how you voted. If the exit polls are wrong in the results, they will stop holding them.
If all goes well, only when they emerge from their cloisters will the legions of ravenous political bloggers have any chance of getting their hands on the earliest indication of which party will end up controlling Congress. "The demand for info is intense, and if the safeguards aren't steel doors bolting people inside a room, it will get out," says Marc Ambinder, associate editor of National Journal's Hotline OnCall. "The insatiable appetite for this info will overwhelm the ability to keep it secret."

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Monday, November 06, 2006

Survival Guide

John Lillpop wroye on Wizbang Bomb Squad In that spirit, the following Survival Guide has been designed exclusively for concerned conservatives. Herewith 10 great ideas for passing time on election day, 2006:

  • Read the Koran and learn to speak Arabic " in anticipation of Nancy Pelosi's "New Day" for America.
  • Repeat the phrases "Allah Bless America," "In Allah We Trust," and "One Nation under Allah," until the word God is no longer in your vocabulary.
  • Quite your job, list your home for sale, and check out jobs and homes in Australia and New Zealand. Move quickly to beat the rush!
  • Repeat the phrase "Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House" three times, or until you run out of barf bags, whichever comes first
  • Buy a prayer rug and reliable compass. Practice praying east five times daily with your posterior pointed straight up, your nose crushed into the ground, and love in your "Religion of Peace" heart.
  • Learn Spanish and join the scores of millions of Americans who will invade Mexico illegally in 2007. Caution: Plan on taking bottled water and bathroom tissue with you.
  • Dig out those 500 Christmas cards you planned to send to friends and family, line through "Merry Christmas" and write in "Belated Ramadan Greetings!"
  • Buy Hal Lindsay's end-of-times book "Late, Great Planet Earth" and plan the rest of your day accordingly.
  • Study the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, and look for loopholes that the GOP could use to prevent Speaker Pelosi from ascending to the presidency should tragedy strike President Bush and Vice President Cheney at the same time.
  • Draw all money out of your 401(k) plans and invest said funds in any construction company that specializes in the renovation of old Christian churches into modern mosques.

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Active Euthanasia

Independent reported Doctors are urging health regulators to consider allowing the "active euthanasia" of severely disabled newborn babies.

If we failed to abort them in the womb, kill them in the nursery
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has put forward the option of permitting mercy killings of the sickest infants to a review of medical ethics.
If you are considering this your ethics definitely need a review
It says "active euthanasia" should be considered for the overall benefit of families who would otherwise suffer years of emotional and financial suffering.
Kill them to avoid financial suffering.
Leo blogged When one is god-less, one tends to fill the void by playing the part himself, and invariably failing miserably at it. Nothing illustrates that concept better than this news story.

As an educator who works with some severely disabled children, I am here to say that every life has value. Every life has purpose. I have worked with some severely disabled children who are more loving, and yes, more human than the many pointy-headed arrogant intellectuals who claim to know better.

To value life based solely on outward functionality and/or arbitrary level of/ contribution to society, rather than on its inherent sacredness, is to engage in the same god-less mentality that led to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, the Stalinist purges, the killing fields in Cambodia, and every instance of man's inhumanity to man since time immemoriam.


Dr. Melissa blogged

By the way, the picture used for an article about this is of a preemie bigger than my sons were when they were born. One died. The other one is in the kitchen learning his multiplication tables.

The boys were born at 24 weeks gestation. One pound, eight ounces (at birth--he dropped serious weight after that) or 750 grams at birth. There are doctors today who recommend that these children be denied medical care. Death.

My son is moderately disabled (he doesn't know this.) Slow development, lung problems, lack of coordination, muscle weakness, autism, nearly every milestone years behind, executive functioning problems.

Life was transcendent bliss and hell at the same time for the first few years. It still isn't easy. My trials with my son have lead me to levels of empathy, patience and understanding on the one hand and frustration, isolation and rage on the other hand. I had to relearn how I looked at life. And I'm so glad to have had the opportunity.

And yet, we are lucky. Some parents have children who require round-the-clock care and do live in hell and their child was bigger and born later than my sons. Some children are suffering because of medical mistakes. Do you see the temptation for a doctor who just screwed up big time?

No one can predict life and death or level of disability right after birth in so many cases. One child who was on ECHMO, who I thought for sure would die, lives today. How do you know which way it will turn out? What if you make a mistake? What if a doctor believes a baby will turn out fine...and doesn't?


Sister Toldjah blogged Sounds like there are a few (too few) voices of sanity on this issue in the UK. I’ll be very eager to read about the results of the “ethics review” for this proposed “option.” I’m usually reluctant to throw the Hitler card on the table, but I can’t resist doing so here because what the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology are suggesting sounds all too familar.

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Sunday, November 05, 2006

Hot for martyrdom

Canana.com Dr. Tawfik Hamid.... [is] determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.

They complain of Western iimperialism, but only because it stands in the way of fundamentalist Muslim imperialism
"Yes, 'imperialism,' " he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe.".... "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine. "I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."
Good point.
.... "We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys.".... But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"

He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."

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At war with radical Islam

Canada.com reported Social housing must be counted as one of the greatest failures -- and there are many -- of the "progressive" thinking of the 1960s and 1970s.

Socialism doesn't work? Who is surprised?
Nearly everywhere large public housing projects have been built, they have become incubators for crime, drug dependence, fatherless families, unemployment and welfare. Rather than lifting minorities out of poverty, social housing has herded them together where they are easier prey for bad people and bad ideas.
France needs to do as the Republicans forced Clinton to do, change perpetual welfare into "welfare to work".
So, at least some of the troubles in the Paris banlieues (suburbs) in recent years can be attributed to France's version of mass public accommodation. It is true, the vast majority of rioters, criminals and agitators in the French "housing estates" have been Muslims,
Something most of the MSM does not admit.
mostly from France's former colonies in North Africa. And it is true their faith is a contributing factor in their violence. Radical imams use the poor conditions in collectivist housing to whip up religious fervour among young Muslim residents.
Deport the radical imams.
Still, as Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse point out in their new book, Integrating Islam, nearly one-fifth of French immigrants do not have jobs. In the banlieues, where Muslim immigrants predominate, the rate approaches 50%.
Do they know how to speak French proficiently? that is necessary to get a good job in France.
Muslims account for more than half of all inmates in French prisons. In prisons near the banlieues, that figure is between 70% and 80%. In many French housing projects, two out of every three men have been arrested at least once in their lives. Nearly half have been in prison at least once in the past decade.
about deporting them when they get out of prison?
How

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Bishop attacks 'victim' Muslims

Sunday Times The Church of England’s only Asian bishop, whose father converted from Islam,

Did the Muslims kill him for apostacy?
has criticised many Muslims for their “dual psychology”, in which they desire both “victimhood and domination”.
Can't have it both ways.
In the most outspoken critique of Muslims by a church leader, Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, said that because of this view it would never be possible to satisfy all their demands.
Giving into demands, especially ones that involve force, or threat of force.
“Their complaint often boils down to the position that it is always right to intervene when Muslims are victims, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, and always wrong when the Muslims are the oppressors or terrorists, as with the Taliban or in Iraq,” said Nazir-Ali. “Given the world view that has given rise to such grievances, there can never be sufficient appeasement and new demands will continue to be made.”
Britain should have learned in the late 39s and early 40s that appeasment is not a good plan.
The failure to counter such beliefs meant that radical Islam had flourished in Britain, spread by extremist imams indoctrinating children for up to four hours a day, he said.

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Secularist Turks stage anti-government march

Reuters About 12,000 Turkish secularists marched in the capital on Saturday to protest against what they see as a rising Islamist influence under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government, Anatolian news agency said. The demonstrators, who represented 112 non-governmental organisations, shouted "Turkey is secular, will remain secular" and "Independent Turkey" and protested against Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has roots in political Islam. Overwhelmingly Muslim, Turkey is governed by secular laws that separate religion and state.

And if that changes, their desire to join the EU will definitely be hurt.
Since winning 2002 elections, Erdogan's government has alarmed secularists by promoting an increase of religious schools, seeking to lift a ban on wearing Islamic headscarves in universities and government offices and filling senior government posts with Islamists.

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The Rumor About John Paul Stevens

Sean Rushton wrote in Human Events For weeks, commentators have speculated that significant numbers of conservatives, alienated by over-spending, the Iraq War, and other perceived GOP disappointments, will stay home on Election Day, giving one or both Houses of Congress to Democrats.

Voluntarilly giving control to the Dems is stupid for several reasons. They should focus on the primaries, replacing candidates that spend too much, with those that will restore historical Republican fiscal conservative policies.
But for those who care about reforming the Supreme Court, sitting this one out may soon look like a mistake of historic proportions. For the past several weeks, there has been a rumor circulating among high-level officials in Washington, D.C., that a member of the U.S. Supreme Court has received grave medical news and will announce his or her retirement by year’s end. While such rumors are not unusual in the nation’s capital, this one comes from credible sources. Additionally, a less credible but still noteworthy post last week at the liberal Democratic Underground blog says, “Send your good vibes to Justice Stevens. I just got off the phone with a friend of his family and right now he is very ill and at 86 years old that is not good.”
I knew he was unlikely to last till 2008, but it is good that this news gets out before election day.
Normally, this news might be too ghoulish to repeat publicly. Nevertheless, with the election just days away, it is news that should be considered. It points out what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the 20-year movement to recast the court with a constitutionalist majority. It would be a cruel twist indeed for conservatives to “teach Republicans a lesson” next Tuesday, only to be taught a lesson themselves within months when new Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) leads a Democratic majority against the most important Supreme Court nominee in decades. Conservatives whose mantra is “no more Souters” should bear in mind Robert Bork’s fate after the Senate changed from Republican to Democratic hands in 1986.

The rumor should focus the mind not only on whether the Senate will remain majority-Republican, but by how much. In 2005, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) was able to force Democrats to abandon filibusters of numerous Bush judicial nominees by threatening use of the Constitutional Option, which would have ended such filibusters. Democrats threatened to “go nuclear” in response, shutting down Senate business. Instead, a face-saving deal was reached in which moderate Democrats agreed to drop the filibuster, effectively paving the way for the filibuster-free confirmations of John Roberts and Sam Alito.

With 55 Republican senators, the majority needed for the “constitutional option” was never a sure thing. But with significant Republican losses on Tuesday, it will surely be buried, leaving Senators Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) free to return to filibusters, including against Supreme Court nominees. Schumer is reported to have assured Democrats that Bob Casey Jr. -- despite running as a moderate Senate candidate -- would be supportive of Democratic efforts to block constitutionalist judicial nominees.

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Harris' Prayer Call Stirs Concerns

TBO reported U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, who has made past comments that raised questions about her religious sensitivity, prayed in a telephone prayer service recently that God would "bring the hearts and minds of our Jewish brothers and sisters into alignment." A Harris spokeswoman said Friday that the Longboat Key Republican, who has advocated electing Christian officeholders, was talking about converting Jews to vote Republican, not to Christianity.

I suspect that is correct, considering that she is probably focusing on the upcoming election, but I don't see anything wrong if she was praying to bring them to Christ. At least she was not suggesting using force to convert them to Islam.
In a conference call prayer service sponsored by a religious conservative group on Oct. 3, Harris expressed the belief that Florida will lead the nation in a spiritual reawakening.
I hope that is true, not just in this country, but especially in Secular Europe.
She said that will include changes in government, including prayer in schools and changes in tax regulations on churches and charities. "We just decree and declare there will be a shift for this nation, that there will be an enormous revival, even a revolution as we speak," she prayed. "Once again, we'll rejoice, rejoice with your Son and bring this nation into alignment with your government with your kingdom principles and authority."

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Priest burns himself to death over Islam

Times Online reported A retired priest committed suicide by setting himself on fire in a German monastery in protest at the spread of Islam and the Protestant Church’s inability to contain it.

I agree with him that the church needs to do something about the spread of Islam, but I don't see where burning yourself is going to help.
Roland Weisselberg, 73, poured a can of petrol over his head and set light to himself in the grounds of the Augustine monastery in the eastern city of Erfurt, where Martin Luther spent six years as a monk at the beginning of the 16th century. Witnesses said that Weisselberg climbed into a building site next to the monastery church, where a Reformation Day service was being held. He shouted “Jesus and Oskar” before the flames engulfed him. The latter name was an apparent reference to Oskar Brüsewitz, a priest who burnt himself in 1976 in protest against the Communist regime in East Germany.
There must be a better way to alert people about a percieved danger.

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Saddam Hussein Is Sentenced to Death

NYT An Iraqi special tribunal today convicted Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging for the brutal repression of a Shiite town in the 1980s. As the verdict was read, Mr. Hussein shouted, "Long live the people! Long live the Arab nation! Down with the spies!" He then chanted "God is great." The chief judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdul Rahman, tried to calm Mr. Hussein down. "There’s no point," Mr. Rahman said.

The five-judge panel, which heard more than nine months of testimony in the case, also issued death sentences for two of his seven co-defendants: Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Mr. Hussein’s half-brother, who was head of Iraq’s domestic intelligence agency; and Awad al-Bandar, president of Mr. Hussein’s revolutionary court.

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