The Dirty Face of Immigration

Police in Tacoma Washington and FBI agents found the body of a 12-year-old girl who was snatched from an alley behind her house during a July 4 fireworks celebration.

Information provided by a man in custody on an immigration complaint led police and FBI agents to an undisclosed location where they found Zina Linnik's body.

Police now have a suspect in the death, and while the man is innocent until proved guilty in a court of law, circumstances certainly point to his guilt, as a vehicle fitting the description of the suspect’s van was spotted in the area at the time the girl was abducted, and girl’s undergarments were found where he was living.

The suspect is Terapon Adhahn, 42, and guess what? He is a Thai immigrant who was convicted of incest in 1990. He also has been charged with failing to register as a sex offender. The incest conviction makes Adhahn eligible for deportation. If convicted, Adhahn should be executed.

Not too long ago an illegal Mexican alien killed two teenaged girls in Virginia Beach, Virginia, when in a drunken stupor his car crashed into theirs. This bozo had been arrested numerous times for being drunk and other infractions. If convicted, he, too, should be executed.

So, friends, all of this begs the question: What is wrong in the United States when people who are in this country illegally are arrested numerous times and are allowed to remain here, and when a legal immigrant is convicted of a crime that should have resulted in his deportation is allowed to remain here? Another question: How do the defenders of our asinine policies regarding aliens/immigrants who break our laws justify allowing these miscreants to remain here to prey on our citizens?

These soft-headed people don’t apparently care who we let in to our country, or what horrible things they do.

And perhaps more on point, why does the federal government continue to shirk its responsibilities on immigration, which is one of only a few legitimate functions of the federal government.

We simply have got to demand changes, and we have to do it NOW. The local, state and federal officials who fail to jail and/or deport criminal immigrants, legal or not, should be prosecuted and put in jail. Maybe that would get the point across.

Technorati Tags: Immigration, Illegal Immigration, Common Sense, Crime and Punishment, Liberalism

You Worry Me

Isn’t email a fascinating thing? On the same day, right next to each other can be one email that is totally useless and one that if quite profound. One of those sent to me today by my cousin Mike fits into the latter category.

I don’t know if it was really written by an American Airlines pilot or not, as the message said it was; I can’t verify its authenticity. But it has been floating around since 2002, and the message is valid and worthy of a couple of minutes of your time. It expresses sentiments that many of us, perhaps most of us, have felt at least once in a while.

The newspaper stated today that some Muslim doctor is saying we are profiling him because he has been checked three times while getting on an airplane.

The following is a letter from a pilot. This well-spoken man, who is a pilot with American Airlines, says what is in his heart, beautifully.

"You Worry Me!"

By an American Airlines pilot

I've been trying to say this since 9-11, but you worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country.

But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate, but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers.

The Palestinians Celebrated, the Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world. So, I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that have destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab / Muslim-Americans and the Arab Muslim terrorists in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter these same good neighbors and children?

The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know, whether or not you love America? Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Or do you pray that Allah will destroy it in one of your Jihads? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by also paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America?

If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about

it. Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America.

Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy. I am only interested in action.

What will you do for America - our great country - at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America " I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize right now in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are. Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals. The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating.

They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.

If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people, then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good, and pure, and true, when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?

It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if huge numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion that has been demonstrated to us over and over again, a form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide and whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after a year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.

I want to know where every Arab Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know.

I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American.

But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand. Until then, "YOU WORRY ME!"

Technorati Tags: America, Radical Muslims, Common Sense, Islam, National Defense

Walter Williams Sees Immigration Issue Clearly

Editor's Note: Columnist Walter Williams' latest column puts immigration in plain language, and that is a refreshing change.

President Bush and his pro-amnesty allies both in and out of Congress suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the American people. Like any other public controversy, there are vested interests served on both sides of the amnesty issue, but I'd like to raise some ordinary non-rocket-science questions to the pro-amnesty crowd, many of whom are my libertarian friends.

Do people, anywhere in the world, have a right to enter the United States irrespective of our laws pertaining to immigration? Unless one wishes to obfuscate, there's a simple "yes" or "no" answer to that question. If a "yes" answer is given, then why should there be any immigration requirements, such as visas, passports and green cards, for anyone who wishes to visit or reside in our country? Why not abolish the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services?

If your answer is "no," one does not have a right to enter the U.S. irrespective of our laws, what does that make a person who does so? Most often we call a person whose behavior violates a law a criminal. If people commit criminal acts, should there be an effort to apprehend and punish them? In general, my answer is yes, with one important exception.

I was summoned for jury duty some years ago, and during voir dire, the attorney asked me whether I could obey the judge's instructions. I answered, "It all depends upon what those instructions are." Irritatingly, the judge asked me to explain myself. I explained that if I were on a jury back in the 1850s, and a person was on trial for violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting a runaway slave, I would vote for acquittal regardless of the judge's instructions. The reason is that slavery is unjust and any law supporting it is unjust. Needless to say, I was dismissed from jury duty. While our immigration laws are overly cumbersome and in urgent need of streamlining, they do not violate human rights and should be obeyed.

Many pro-amnesty supporters offer the canard that there are 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants in our country. We cannot keep every illegal immigrant out or expel the ones living here. That might be true, but it is also true that we can't prevent every rape and murder. Does that mean we shouldn't attempt to enforce the laws against rape and murder and try to prosecute the perpetrators?

In addition to greater efforts to secure our borders, there are several non-rocket-science steps we can take. People who are here illegally should be denied access to any social service such as Medicaid, public education and food assistance programs. An exception might be made for temporary emergency medical treatment. In some cities, such as Los Angeles, police are prohibited from asking people they stop about their immigration status. While state and local police shouldn't be turned into federal agents, they shouldn't knowingly conceal criminal acts.

The United States is a nation of immigrants from all over the world. The resulting ethnic mosaic goes a long way toward explaining our greatness as a nation. Immigration has always been a blessing for us, and it still is. But yesteryear's immigration and today's differ in several important respects. For the most part, yesteryear's immigrants came here legally. Because there was no welfare state, we were guaranteed that they'd work as opposed to living off the rest of us. Furthermore, they sought to assimilate and adopt our culture and become Americans. That's not so true today, where Hispanic activists seek to impose their language and culture on the rest of us. At some public schools, they've raised the Mexico flag atop the U.S. flag. They've announced that they seek to take back parts of the U.S. that were formerly Mexico.

Technorati Tags: America, Immigration, Common Sense, Fairness

The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell

I have great admiration for Dr. Thomas Sowell. He is brilliant,

successful and has a way with words. He writes conventional columns most of the time, but occasionally he imparts his wisdom to us with “random thoughts on the passing scene,” excerpts from which follow:

Whenever I hear terrorists referred to in the media as "militants," it is a painful reminder that we have degenerated to the point where we no longer even have the courage to talk straight.

Does anybody seriously believe that "hate speech" prohibitions will be applied to Muslims demonizing Jews, to blacks demonizing whites, or to women demonizing men?

Few things are more scary than the number of people who rely on talking points, instead of weighing serious issues in a serious way.

The same people who think it was wonderful that the Warren Court forbad government to assign children to schools on the basis of race think it is terrible that the current Supreme Court has recently stopped local governments from assigning children to schools on the basis of race.

In politics, there are few skills more richly rewarded than the ability to misstate issues in a way that will sound plausible and attractive.

"Nations are like men in that they prefer a fuss made in their behalf to real services rendered." Although de Tocqueville said this back in the 19th century, it may help explain why the black vote today is so overwhelmingly for the Democrats, when Democrats have done so little good for blacks and so much harm.

In contrast with today's senators who try to get every Supreme Court nominee to pledge allegiance to Roe v. Wade, when Abraham Lincoln was considering nominees to that court, he said, "we cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it."

If the Democrats' presidential and vice-presidential candidates next year are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, most of the mainstream media will just gush at the image and the rhetoric of a woman and a minority -- and specific issues and track records will fade into the background.

A month doesn't go by without several offers to lend me money arriving in the mail. Where were these people when I was broke?

Many people who have never held a firearm in their hands are nevertheless convinced that the police fired too many shots in a confrontation with a criminal.

Many people who have never run one business for one day are nevertheless confident that they know corporate CEOs are not worth as much as they are paid.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.

Is “Live Earth” and Similar Behavior Acutally Killing the Earth?

The recent series of environmental awareness concerts called “Live Earth” has generated a lot of interest. Supporters treat it as the Second Coming, while opponents think it is a great example of hypocrisy on the issues of global warming and energy conservation.

“How,” opponents ask, “is it saving energy to fly musicians and other luminaries to concert locations all over the world in private jets to encourage people to use less environmentally harmful energy?” One common answer from those who flew around the world is that they “offset” their trip.

What the heck does that mean, anyway? Here is the explanation of “carbon offsetting” from Carbonfund.org.

What Are Carbon Offsets

"Carbon offsets are relatively simple. We all are responsible for carbon dioxide emissions through the use of energy: driving, heating and cooling our homes, watching TV, etc.

“Carbon offsetting is the act of reducing an equal amount of carbon somewhere else to counterbalance the carbon emissions from your energy-using activities (called your ‘carbon footprint’).”

…

“While most people can reduce their energy use by improving the efficiency of their homes, buying cars that get better gas mileage and making other changes, which we strongly support, reducing it to zero through individual actions is nearly impossible. Carbon offsets are a cost effective way to reduce the remainder of one’s climate footprint.”

The site also offers this: “It’s good to see the world, but it’s also good to have a world left to see. Our flying is filling the wild blue yonder with more greenhouse gases everyday.

“A roundtrip flight from New York to Los Angeles emits more than 2, 000 lbs. of CO₂ – about a third of the amount a hybrid car emits in an entire year! Offset your next flight today!” This you can accomplish for just $6.25. A longer trip of 100,000 miles, dumping 41,750 lbs. of CO₂ into the air, can be offset for $104.50.

Okay, let’s review: You are concerned about the environment and you want to do your part to reduce CO₂ emissions. But you also have a concert tour to Europe, then to Scandinavia, and then to South Africa, then to Japan and then return to New York, a trip of some 24,000 miles emitting about 18,000 lbs. of CO₂ into the environment. You feel guilty about doing this, and you learn that for the additional cost of a measly $20.90 you can pay someone else to forego producing CO₂ emissions for you, and you can gad about the globe just like you planned to, guilt free.

This is the sort of sacrifice that the supporters of and participants in “Live Earth” made in order to participate in the concert series. But guess what? There was virtually no “investment” by these participants; they essentially lived life normally, paid a few pennies to purchase carbon offsets, and claimed to be self-sacrificing environmentalists helping to reduce carbon emissions. They paid for someone else to cut back on their carbon usage so they don’t have to, and they get all the glory.

Ain’t liberalism grand?

Technorati Tags: America, Entertainment, Politics, Liberalism

What Made Me Me

Long ago and far away,
In a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan,
Or the dawn of Camelot.

There lived a race of innocents,
And they were you and me,
Long ago and far away
In the Land That Made Me Me.

Oh, there was truth and goodness
In that land where we were born,
Where navels were for oranges,
And Peyton Place was porn.

For Ike was in the White House,
And Hoss was on TV,
And God was in His heaven
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We learned to gut a muffler,
We washed our hair at dawn,
We spread our crinolines to dry
In circles on the lawn.

And they could hear us coming
All the way to Tennessee,
All starched and sprayed and rumbling
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We longed for love and romance,
And waited for the prince,
And Eddie Fisher married Liz,
And no one's seen him since.

We danced to "Little Darlin,'"
And sang to "Stagger Lee"
And cried for Buddy Holly
In the Land That Made Me Me.

Only girls wore earrings then,
And three was one too many,
And only boys wore flat-top cuts,
Except for Jean McKinney.

And only in our wildest dreams
Did we expect to see
A boy named George, with Lipstick
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We fell for Frankie Avalon,
Annette was oh, so nice,
And when they made a movie,
They never made it twice.

We didn't have a Star Trek Five,
Or Psycho Two and Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty
In the Land That Made Me Me.

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold,
And Chester had a limp,
And Reagan was a Democrat
Whose co-star was a chimp.

We had a Mr. Wizard,
But not a Mr. T,
And Oprah couldn't talk, yet
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We had our share of heroes,
We never thought they'd go,
At least not Bobby Darin,
Or Marilyn Monroe.

For youth was still eternal,
And life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever,
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We'd never seen the rock band
That was Grateful to be Dead,
And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson ,
And Zeppelins weren't Led.

And Beatles lived in gardens then,
And Monkees in a tree,
Madonna was a virgin
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We'd never heard of microwaves,
Or telephones in cars,
And babies might be bottle-fed,
But they weren't grown in jars.

And pumping iron got wrinkles out,
And "gay" meant fancy-free,
And dorms were never co-Ed
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We hadn't seen enough of jets
To talk about the lag,
And microchips were what was left at
The bottom of the bag.

And hardware was a box of nails,
And bytes came from a flea,
And rocket ships were fiction
In the Land That Made Me Me.

Buicks came with portholes,
And side show came with freaks,
And bathing suits came big enough
To cover both your cheeks

And Coke came just in bottles,
And skirts came to the knee,
And Castro came to power
In the Land That Made Me Me.

We had no Crest with Fluoride,
We had no Hill Street Blues,
We all wore superstructure bras
Designed by Howard Hughes.

We had no patterned pantyhose
Or Lipton herbal tea
Or prime-time ads for condoms
In the Land That Made Me Me.

There were no golden arches,
No Perriers to chill,
And fish were not called Wanda,
And cats were not called Bill.

And middle-aged was thirty-five
And old was forty-three,
And ancient was our parents
In the Land That Made Me Me.

But all things have a season,
Or so we've heard them say,
And now instead of Maybelline
We swear by Retin-A.

And they send us invitations
To join AARP,
We've come a long way, baby,
From the Land That Made Me Me.

So now we face a brave new world
In slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why they're using
Smaller print in magazines.

And we tell our children's children
Of the way it used to be,
Long ago, and far away
In the Land That Made Me Me.

~Author unknown~

Run Cindy, Run

The 2008 elections have held great promise ever since the presidential race got started a year early. For those enamored of the lure of raw politics it couldn’t get much better than an extra year of watching the political machinations of the presidential hopefuls, as they position themselves and batter each other. But hardly anyone, I’d venture, was anticipating this announcement:

Cindy Sheehan said Sunday that she plans to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unless Pelosi introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks. Sheehan, the mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq after reenlisting for a second tour of duty, said she will oppose the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek to impeach Bush by July 23. She has been an avid anti-war protester and Bush critic since her son's death.

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," she told The Associated Press. "We hired them to bring an end to the war. I'm not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn't be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money."

The fifty year-old Sheehan, who recently said that she was leaving the Democratic Party because it "caved" in to the president, said Bush should be impeached because she believes he misled the public about the reasons for going to war, violated the Geneva Convention by torturing detainees, and crossed the line by commuting the prison sentence of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. She said other grounds for impeachment are the domestic spying program and the "inadequate and tragic" response to Hurricane Katrina.

Here, Here, Wesley

Hardly anyone says it better, and few say it as well as Wesley Pruden, the Washington Times Executive Editor and political columnist. I gave it a try on the same day as Mr. Purden, but fell well short of his mark.

Halfway toward righting a wrong
July 3, 2007
Wesley Pruden

One cheer, but no more than two, for George W. Bush.

He spared Scooter Libby from prison, as decency demanded, but left intact a $250,000 fine, which can only be regarded as tribute to the venality of a special prosecutor and the vanity of a federal judge (both lawyers, after all).

"I respect the jury's verdict," the president said, announcing the clemency. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison."

What's excessive here is the president's caution. He said the expected things about respecting the jury's verdict and, by implication, the "need" for Mr. Libby to pay the fine and remain on probation. But if the prison sentence was excessive, so is the fine and the probation. The jury and even the court is entitled to respect, but its verdict is not. The verdict was wrong, harsh and vindictive, and in a perfect world the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, would be cited for misfeasance of office and Judge Reggie Walton would be cited for excessive concern for the professional reputation of a prosecutor watching his ambition about to swirl down a particularly public toilet.

The commutation was all anyone should expect from a Republican president, afflicted, as Republicans invariably are, by extravagant indulgence of daintiness and delicacy. It's in the DNA. By saving Mr. Libby from prison but leaving in place the rest of a sentence reeking of rotten politics, the president enables the destruction of a reputation and the imposition of a cruel fine. If the president set out to redress a miscarriage of justice, the halfway measure of a commutation looks, as his Democratic critics are already saying, like cynical politics. The president's political advisers should have taken to heart the first rule of politicians and philandering husbands: If you're going to be hanged for stealing a goat, you might as well take a sheep.

The baying of the Democratic critics began at once. Barack Obama, decrying, as is his wont, partisanship and divisive politics, rushed out (as is another wont) to practice his talent for divisive partisanship. "This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division."

This will be the Democratic mantra. Hillary won't be far behind, and as soon as he can mooch a quarter from the shampoo girl John Edwards will call from the beauty shop, eager to add a tinny voice to the chorus.

Mr. Obama has been having a little trouble lately keeping his stories straight, and unless he is deliberately trying to mislead he got this one wrong, too. If anyone compromised "national security" by "outing" Valerie Plame as Mata Hari, it was not Scooter Libby. The special prosecutor knew all along that it was Richard L. Armitage, another government functionary, who had "outed" Valerie at the CIA, except that she was not really a covert agent, anyway, and even if she had been the law protecting covert agents did not actually apply to her. (Nobody's perfect.)

After spending millions "investigating" a Washington fantasy and searching vainly for a crime, Mr. Fitzgerald had to have something to show. Scooter Libby was standing nearby. Rarely has Washington seen a more brazen railroad job. The judge could have derailed the train; naïve citizens no doubt imagine that such a derailment is a judge's sworn duty, but anyone who has ever spent as much as a day at a courthouse knows how lawyers take care of each other.

George W.'s commutation, and not a pardon, will be taken by the friends who have not deserted him as the work not of a stand-up guy, but a well-meaning halfway-up guy. Fred Thompson was the first to apply the needle. "I have long advocated a pardon," he said last night, "but I respect the president's decision."

Since he has nowhere to go but up, the commutation puts only the president's legacy at risk. With his 29 percent favorability rating George W. had been closing in on Harry Truman's 23 percent, a mark that has stood for more than a half-century. Eclipsing that mark is the only legacy available. Redressing a particularly odious miscarriage of justice, even reluctantly and timidly done, might lift him out of Mr. Truman's neighborhood. Too bad. He coulda been a contender.

Technorati Tags: Justice, Crime and Punishment, Politics

Bush Action on Libby Is A Positive Step

President Bush, on a long downward slide in the Observations universe for his ham-handed policy on illegal immigration and a few other anti-conservative positions, has rebounded a little by commuting the jail sentence for Louis “Scooter” Libby. Yes, Mr. Bush ought to have given Mr. Libby a clear and unequivocal pardon instead, but at this point in time, I’ll accept trashing the absurd jail term imposed by the trial judge, Reggie Walton, who lacked the grace and good judgment to allow Mr. Libby to remain free while his appeal works its way through the system, as even common thugs and punks and real criminals are most often allowed to. Louis Libby is not, after all, Sandy Burger.

Just to remind readers, Mr. Libby has the remarkable distinction of having been trapped into perjury and obstruction of justice charges in an investigation into a crime that didn’t happen by an over zealous Special Prosecutor determined to put someone in jail, even though no laws had been broken, in order to justify the investigation that cost taxpayers millions of dollars and produced nothing of substance. Yeah, I know: He was convicted by a jury of his peers, and all of that. But remember that just because you are convicted doesn’t mean you are guilty. And if you choose to argue that point, remember all those innocent people that get released from jail when it is finally determined that the prosecutors that charged them and the juries that convicted them were wrong.

And if that doesn’t convince you, if you still are moved by the political rhetoric of the likes of Harry Reid, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, with their righteous indignation, and sanctimonious oratorical drivel, try to objectively consider what Louis Libby actually did. Or didn’t do.

When you take the politics out of the Libby case, he did nothing to warrant even an indictment, let alone a trial, and not even a mention or a thought of a conviction and a sentence.

Technorati Tags: Justice, Crime and Punishment, Politics

Talk Radio: the Next Liberal Target?

During and before the 1970s AM radio was king. Then came FM, with its better fidelity and greater transmission range, and AM stations found themselves with fewer and fewer listeners. Looking for some programming to make AM viable again, oldies stations developed to play old music, and the talk radio concept took hold. Today, talk programming is a major force in radio, with hundreds of radio stations now featuring talk programming of one sort or another. In the category of current events/politics, listeners have shown a clear preference for conservative programming; the marketplace has spoken.

Although there are successful programs in individual markets, liberal/progressive talk radio has generally failed to attract listeners in sufficient numbers, with the most recent and most glaring failure being the terrible showing of Air America, which has recently been saved from bankruptcy by Stephen Green, a New York real estate investor. Despite liberals’ and progressives’ best efforts, conservatives dominate talk radio, and that is okay, since this dominance evolved as a matter of listener preference, the free choice of the audience. And since the major newspapers and networks are left leaning, conservative-dominated talk radio helps to provide balance.

However, liberals and progressives are not content with their dominance of the mainstream media, they want half of the talk radio pie, too. But rather than try to develop programming that attracts listeners, they prefer to do through legislative fiat what they have been unable to do in an open marketplace.

Liberals are trying to shame conservatives into giving up what they have won through producing a product that the listening public wants, and assert that conservatives are afraid to have balance in talk radio, and insisting that the public deserves balance in talk radio.

But they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have had ample opportunity to earn a significant share of talk radio’s audience, but have failed miserably because the audience doesn’t like what they are selling.

That should be a plain enough message, even for liberals/progressives.

What’s Wrong in Iraq

No, that wasn’t supposed to be a question. Read the account below, which is taken from a BBC report.

US-led raids 'kill 26' in Baghdad

US-led forces say they have killed 26 militants in overnight operations in the Sadr City area of Baghdad in which four vehicles were destroyed.

Troops also detained 17 militants in pre-dawn raids on the area, a Shia stronghold, the US military said.

But Iraqi hospital and police officials put the death toll at eight and said civilians were killed in their homes.

The raids are the latest in a series of US offensives against militants accused of smuggling weapons from Iran.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki criticised the raids on Sadr City, saying his government strongly opposed operations carried out by US-led forces without its permission.

Never mind the BBC's anti-U.S. spin; that isn't what this column is about.

I have ignored the Monday-morning-quarterbacking about whether we should have gone into Iraq, which deserves to be ignored, and I’ve tried to discount the more recent attitude against staying there, and even though I know intuitively and factually that the situation in Iraq is better than the media tells us it is, I am growing weary of this controversy. I find myself increasingly accepting of the suggestion that it is time for the U.S. to back off over there. I’m not saying, “Pull out,” nor am I endorsing the Democrat’s two-stage plan: 1 – Cut, and 2 – Run. But I am more and more coming to agree with the sentiment that the Iraqis aren’t holding up their end of the bargain. That sentiment just gained enormous strength with Prime Minister Maliki’s statement that “his government strongly opposed operations carried out by US-led forces without its permission.” (my emphasis) How’s that, again, Mr. Maliki?

If you and the boys would get off your duffs and take control, you wouldn’t have to worry about such things. The last thing the U.S. needs is some do-nothing wimp criticizing it for doing what the wimps haven’t the courage or wherewithal to do.

The danger of the U.S. backing off and leaving Iraq to the various factions to work out on their own is that those factions won’t be working things out on their own. Iran will have all of its fingers in the pie, as will other Middle East interests, and the future Iraq will be a detriment to peace and tranquility. Not that there’s much peace or tranquility in the Middle East outside Iraq, anyway. But enough is enough, and I’ve had just about enough of the Iraqi incompetence.

So, Mr. Maliki, it’s all yours, ol’ buddy, and good luck with that F Troop you have to help you.

Technorati Tags: Iraq War, Radical Islam, America

Ever Heard of “Arrowhead Ripper?” I Thought Not

Reports of U.S. and Coalition casualties keep making the news from Iraq, but the Bush administration must have done an excellent job of keeping at least one secret: Operation Arrowhead Ripper. Or maybe there is another explanation.

According to Michael Yon, who is embedded with U.S./Coalition forces in Iraq, "interest in the war is waning back home, I'm told, which may explain the thinning ranks of reporters over here.” That’s one reason you haven’t heard about Arrowhead Ripper, and maybe not the most relevant one, but maybe you should know exactly what it is. Yon writes on his Web site, “The immediate goal of Arrowhead Ripper was to free Baqubah of al Qaeda, by trapping and killing its members, but according to American officers here, public remarks by senior military officials may have flushed many AQI leaders before the attack. Despite this frustrating and significant setback, progress toward the end-state goal of Arrowhead Ripper—turning over Baqubah to Iraqi government control—appears to be working, at least in terms of the removal of the current AQI leadership and its quasi-government.”

Anyone interested in knowing more than the mainstream media’s reports from Iraq ought to check out this site and read Yon’s reports. It will broaden your perspective.

Technorati Tags: Iraq War, Radical Islam, Journalism

Zoo Pics

These photos were taken at the Miami Metro Zoo on our recent trip to South Florida.

Enjoy!

Rationalizing Life Away

Dr. Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Institute, whose letter to the editor appeared in Monday’s edition of our local daily, and must have been sent to dozens of other papers, either is badly confused or it splitting hairs to rationalize away the clear ethical implications of the type of stem cell research that President Bush has vetoed, and that Lockitch favors. (Photo: Embryo at 4 weeks)

Lickitch’s claim that “an embryo is a potential, not an actual, human being, just as canvas is a potential, not an actual, work of art” is a faulty comparison.

“It is a primitive cluster of cells,” Lockitch tells us, “which is no more unethical to destroy than the cells that make up one’s appendix.” This is where it becomes evident that Lockitch is confused, or splitting hairs. You see Dr., the appendix does not have the potential to become a human being, as does the embryo, which anyone who has had a couple of biology classes knows is the first stage in the process of creating a human being. To produce the stem cells that Lockitch wants to experiment with, you first must create an embryo, and that is accomplished by uniting a human sperm cell with a human egg, which is how babies are created. In fact, up until fairly recently the only way to produce an embryo was for one human male and one human female to do so together. Only after beginning the process of creating a living human being can you “harvest” the stem cells for research, which of course kills the fetus.

It is clear that the Creator (if you believe in a Creator) or the evolutionary process (if you prefer the scientific explanation) developed the uniting of sperm and egg for the clear and singular purpose of procreation of the species.

Lockitch apparently believes that taking a process that was designed by our Creator, or that evolved through millions of years of evolutionary progress, to produce offspring and then moving it into a laboratory somehow changes the purpose for which sperm and egg exist, and for which the process of uniting of sperm and egg exists. But whether you believe that God created the process of birth, or whether you believe that the process evolved along with the rest of the universe, you can’t deny the plain truth that the uniting of sperm and egg had one purpose and one purpose only, until science came along and changed the rules.

The only rationale for starting a process that was designed or evolved expressly to create a life, and to then destroy it, is that you do not believe life is something special to be revered and protected.

What an odd circumstance for a scientist to willingly destroy life on the premise of trying to find ways to save lives.

Technorati Tags: Science, Children, Politics, Culture, Life

I Just Love Creativity!

And when you add Ray Charles into the mix, it gets even better.

Finding Excuses and Shirking Responsibility

The following news report appeared a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, I have lost the attribution information, however, it was from a reputable news organization Web site.

The mothers of five children killed in a house fire surrendered to police Thursday to face involuntary manslaughter charges for allegedly leaving the youngsters alone while they went to a bar.

Wearing a T-shirt that read "Mommy Loves You" and "God Loves You More," Shakita Mangham, 25, arrived at municipal court early Thursday. Furaha Love, 25, turned herself in at police headquarters a short time later.

Mangham initially told police she left the children with a baby sitter, but later admitted she lied, according to a criminal complaint. Love also said later that she knew there was no baby sitter, and that the children had been left in the care of two 8-year-olds.

Authorities said the early morning fire June 12 was started by children playing with matches.

Love was taken from police headquarters in handcuffs to a patrol car and was expected to be arraigned Thursday. Her attorney, Ernest Sharif, said they were ready to fight the charges.

"We're in a very emotional climate right now," the attorney said Thursday. "Five children died. Automatically people want to make the connection it was her fault. But from a legal standpoint, it was not her fault."

He said Love was "a loving parent who did something she regrets, but she didn't kill the children."

Mangham was arraigned and was to be released after posting 10 percent of a $10,000 bond, said her attorney, Jim Ecker. A preliminary hearing was set for June 29.

Surely everyone recognizes that this is a tragic situation and that these two women are grieving heavily over the loss of their children. But I find it interesting the way Furaha Love’s attorney attempts to rationalize the women’s obvious and undeniable guilt in the deaths of those five children, as he announced that they will fight the involuntary manslaughter charges.

Are there no people left in this country that will simply face up to their mistakes without trying to wiggle out from under their responsibilities through some legal maneuver or another? And what about lawyers? There seems to be an endless supply of them at the ready to try to find some loophole or another to get people released from their proper punishment.

This Blog is Rated PG

After receiving an email from Texas Fred pointing me to a site that rates blogs like movies and TV shows are rated, I visited the site and typed in the URL for Observations. This is the result:

This blog is rated PG – Parental Guidance Suggested.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

dangerous (2x)

death (1x)

If only the raters were as strict with movies and TV shows.

In case anyone is interested in seeing how your blog is rated, go here.

Bush Administration Considering Shutting Down Gitmo

Word is in the media that the military and administration advisors are considering recommending to President Bush that he close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for enemy combatants and suspected terrorists and transfer them to military detention facilities in the U.S. The only thing stupider and more dangerous than this is the Illegal Immigration Amnesty Bill now working its way through Congress.

Some have argued that detaining enemy combatants and suspected terrorists in Cuba is unfair, and perhaps it is in a few cases. However, giving these people, most of whom are miscreants bent on America’s destruction, the legal status and access to our court system that bringing them into the U.S. in a military prison would, is asinine. And, it’s not appropriate to bring these people to the U.S.

Imagine in World War II that the Japanese, instead of sending planes to Pearl Harbor, had dropped paratroopers on the U.S. mainland. Those that we didn’t kill would have been captured. Would we have put those enemy combatants in jail and tried them in a court of law? No. They would have been tried in a military court and imprisoned or shot.

The enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan or Iraq or where ever else they might have been acting against or plotting against the United States are no different: they are enemies of the United States, acting against the interests, safety and well-being of the U.S. government, its military personnel and citizens. They are not criminals; they do not belong in the criminal justice system. They do not deserve or qualify for legal representation from civilian lawyers (or perhaps any lawyers at all).

Sometimes the U.S. and its citizens are its own worst enemies. When we want to coddle our enemies, as we will be doing if we shut down Gitmo and bring our nation’s enemies into the country and give them access to our legal system, that is one of those times. Taking steps to treat our enemies better than they deserve or have a right to, just because this is the United States of America, is stupid, and worse, it is dangerous.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Islam, Common Sense

Nancy and Harry Are Doing a Bang-up Job

USA Today reports “fewer Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job than at any time since shortly after Republicans impeached President Clinton, a Gallup Poll finds.” The story goes on to say that while fewer than one-in-two Americans gave Congress a thumbs-up last month, now only slightly more than one-in-three approve of the job the national legislature is doing, and only 14 percent say they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the Congress.

Disapproval ratings have risen from 48 percent in February to 53 percent. And that may be the good news. Other polls show approval ratings from 23 percent to 43 percent, and more polls are in the 20s and low 30s that in the upper realms.

So, what happened to the mandate Democrats thought they had after the November elections? Clearly, the American people did not mandate what they now see the Congress doing. And what is the Congress doing?

Not much, really. Aside from passing minimum wage legislation, the highly vaunted first 100 hours turned out to be a bunch of hot air, which is not unusual for Washington, even during the winter. And what has happened since then is even worse than raising the minimum wage. Democrats have squandered their thin majority with political dilly-dallying, wasting their time and our money on such boondoggles as trying to pass a no-confidence measure on the Attorney General, and both parties are driving the wrong way on the immigration highway, trying to pass a foolish immigration plan that hardly anyone outside of Washington likes, excluding the illegal aliens and their employers who will benefit from it.

Little wonder, then, that its ratings are in the tank. The 14 percent figure is an interesting number. According to the National Science Foundation, more Americans believe in UFOs (30 percent), or in astrology (31 percent), or in the theory that President Bush knew in advance about the 9-11 attacks (22 percent), or agree with Rosie O’Donnell that explosives brought down the world trade center (16 percent), or believe in Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster (17 percent), than believe in the job Congress is doing.

Congratulations for a job well done to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Technorati Tags: Congress, Politics, Democrats

Good News about CAIR

By Fred Thompson
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

I've talked before about the Council on American-Islamic Relations -- most recently because it filed that lawsuit against Americans who reported suspicious behavior by Muslims on a U.S. Airways flight. Better known just as CAIR, the lobbying group has come under a lot of scrutiny lately for its connections to terror-supporting groups. This time, though, The Washington Times has uncovered some very good news about the group.

For years, CAIR has claimed to represent millions of American Muslims. In fact, they claim to represent more Muslim in American than ... there are in America. This has alarmed Americans in general as the group often seems to be more aligned with our enemies than us -- which isn't surprising as it spun off from a group funded by Hamas. As you know, Hamas has been waging a terrorist war against Israel and calls for its total destruction. It also promises to see America destroyed. Nowadays, Hamas is busy murdering its Palestinian political rivals.

Even with this history, and CAIR's conspicuous failure to condemn Hamas by name, it has been treated as if represents Muslim Americans by our own government. The good news is that the financial support CAIR claims to have among American Muslims is a myth. We know this because The Washington Times got hold of the group's IRS tax records.

CAIR's dues-paying membership has shrunk 90 percent since 9/11 -- from 29,000 in 2000 to only 1,700 last year. CAIR's annual income from dues plunged from $733,000 to $59,000. Clearly, America's Muslims are not supporting this group -- and I'm happy to hear about it.

Of course, every silver lining seems to have a cloud; and this cloud is that CAIR's spending is running about $3 million a year. They’ve opened 25 new chapters in major cities across the country even as their dues shrank to a pittance. The question is; who’s funding CAIR?

CAIR's not saying. The New York Times earlier this year reported that the backing is from "wealthy Persian Gulf governments" including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Obviously, we have a bigger problem here than the one with CAIR.

Photo Credit: Carl Cox Photography

Technorati Tags: Islam, Terrorism, Culture

"Gore-y" Environmental News

Here is part of a piece from the BBC Web site:

Arctic spring's 'rapid advance'

Spring in the Arctic is arriving "weeks earlier" than a decade ago, a team of Danish researchers have [sic] reported.

Ice in north-east [sic] Greenland is melting an average of 14.6 days earlier than in the mid-1990s, bringing forward the date plants flower and birds lay eggs.

The team warned that the observed changes could disrupt the region's ecosystems and food chain, affecting the long-term survival of some species.

The findings have been published in the journal Current Biology.

The scientists assessed how a range of species' behaviour was affected by the changing climate in Zackenberg, north-east [sic] Greenland, between 1996 and 2005.

Observation of 21 species - six plants, 12 arthropods and three birds - revealed that the organisms had brought forward their flowering, emergence or egg-laying in line with the earlier ice melt.

What important information can we glean from this piece? Other than seeing some grammatical and punctuation errors that signal that the writers at the BBC don’t know the English language very well, not very much.

The piece equivocates: “The team warned that the observed changes could disrupt …” (emphasis mine). Okay. So the changes might disrupt things, or they might not. And, nothing in the piece delivers any substantive evidence that things occurred that would not be expected to have occurred through natural causes.

So, why did the BBC even bother to run this piece on its Website? Fair question.

But even as we say a polite and necessary “ho-hum” about the BBC piece, we should be secure in the knowledge that even if Al Gore has failed to persuade most thoughtful Americans that an environmental cataclysm is eminent, he has at least persuaded his daughter, Kristin, to his cause, according to a news story that one of my headline services posted a little while ago, and which has since disappeared from the Ethernet. If memory serves—and sometimes it doesn’t—Kristin Gore is a co-author of a screen play dealing with the sorry state of the environment. Like father, like son, er, daughter, they say.

While the story that I initially saw disappeared from the headline list, a determined search finally turned up a story:

(From NewsBusters): As reported Sunday by Variety:

Queen Latifah proves an amiably authoritative narrator [in “Arctic Tale”], and is allowed more personality than most script readers; Morgan Freeman never told his penguins they'd "best be goin'." (Co-writer Kristin Gore, Al Gore's daughter, is the only connection to Par Vantage's similarly themed docu hit, "An Inconvenient Truth.")

That doesn’t tell us much more than that Ms. Gore seems to hold the same view of man’s impact on the environment as her dad, so we’ll just have to wait and see what the impact of “Arctic Tale” actually is. But somehow I doubt that it will be more meaningful in the long run than either the BBC story, or papa Al’s “Inconvenient Truth.”

Technorati Tags: Environment, Political Correctness, Common Sense