August 2009 Archives

Let me see if I get the gist of the White House's charges.

First, Cheney is wrong and "clearly" wrong.
Second, Bush is wrong.

It is interesting to note that the facts do not need to be pointed out by the Administration. They are just insulting the people who list facts that make the President look like an incompetent, corrupt boob. Is this the Politics of Personal Destruction that the Leftists are always finding in the Right? No facts are pointed out there either,just innuendo and slander.

Mr Gibbs, can you give one example of where Mr Cheney is wrong? Just one? And back it with facts? Maybe just one fact?

Mr Cheney gave facts and figures. Besides claiming those facts are wrong, where are the "correct" facts?

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.d8df467307578a0d94d3901b476f55ca.4c1&show_article=1

The White House on Monday dismissed former vice president Dick Cheney's attacks on a probe into alleged CIA abuses of "war on terrorism" detainees and sharply questioned his foreign policy judgment.

"This is the same song and dance we've heard since literally the first day of our administration," spokesman Robert Gibbs said after Cheney blasted the investigation as politically driven and harmful to national security.

Gibbs said Cheney "clearly had his facts on a number of things wrong" and highlighted Republican Senator John McCain's denunciation of CIA use of interrogation techniques widely seen as torture.

"I would add this: I'm not entirely sure that Dick Cheney's predictions on foreign policy have borne a whole lot of fruit over the last eight years in a way that have been either positive or, to the best of my recollection, very correct," said the spokesman.

Cheney told Fox News Channel in an interview aired Sunday that the probe was an "outrageous political act" that would harm national security by making CIA agents fear possible legal reprisals.

Attorney General Eric Holder last week named a special investigator to determine whether a full criminal probe is needed into the actions of CIA interrogators of alleged terrorists.

The probe will cover CIA agents at overseas sites thought to have overstepped the limits laid out in Bush-era legal memoranda after the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes.

President Barack Obama has ruled out actions against Central Intelligence Agency officials who followed Bush-era interrogation guidelines in good faith

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090831_russia_rapprochement_poland

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Aug. 31 sent a letter to the Polish people in which he denounced the World War II era Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty. The Polish population, who views the pact as a symbol of Russo-German aggression, likely sees Putin's condemnation as a way to reconcile with Russia. However, it will be difficult for Warsaw to choose between accepting an accord with its traditional enemy or resuming its long-standing policy of aggression toward Moscow with the United States still undecided on the ballistic missile defense system placement in Poland.

Analysis

Related Links

* Iran, Russia, U.S.: The BMD link
* Warsaw's Reality on the North European Plain
* Geopolitical Diary: Berlin Warms Up To Moscow
* The German Question

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin addressed the Polish public ahead of his visit to Gdansk on Sept. 1 in an editorial published on Aug. 31 titled "Letter to Poles" in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. In his article, Putin condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a nonaggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that also included a secret provision for division of Poland between Berlin and Moscow signed on Aug. 23, 1939. Putin, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are guests of honor at the Sept. 1 ceremony in Gdansk that will mark Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland 70 years ago.

Putin's very public denunciation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty is a significant gesture of friendship toward Warsaw, where the treaty is seen as the quintessential symbol of Russo-German designs on Poland. Putin may also be sending a message to Berlin that the recently reinvigorated friendship between Russia and Germany better not end like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which Hitler broke when he invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

This is great! You need to follow the link to read the rest.

Enjoy it!

http://interested-participant.blogspot.com/2009/08/global-warming-protest-in-london-london.html

A group of about 100 anarcho-warmists gathered at Blackheath Common Climate Camp 2009 and organized a direct action attack against the 32-story, name-in-neon Barclays Bank.

Led by a 30-something skittish woman called Blonde Leader, they were a rag-tag bunch, "with seasoned activists in dreadlocks mixing with middle-class couples in chinos" and shaven-headed anarchists.

"Departments" were designated and everyone was reminded that they don't have to legally reveal their names under any search power. Pens, paper and Post-it Notes were made handy for delivering an ugly mess of global warming, anti-capitalist messages on every available surface.

http://www.imao.us/index.php/2009/08/random-thoughts-83/

Random Thoughts
Posted by Frank J. on August 31, 2009 at 9:35 am

Liberal commenter to my PJM column called us racist for hating Ted Kennedy. I think that charge just jumped the shark.

Liberal responded saying Ted Kennedy was concerned with "justice." Must restrain urge to strangle monitor.

Maybe we should name a term limits bill in honor of Ted Kennedy.

I have to get off this Kennedy stuff. It's actually starting to wear out my faith in humanity.

I can't believe some people are saying the death of Kopechne was worth it. I thought people like that only existed in the movies.

I missed the funeral. Were they able to roll him back into the ocean, or did they have to use dynamite?

Can I also suffocate a liberal if I promise to be an advocate for progressive causes afterwards? It's tempting...

Can I strangle someone if I promise not to successfully run for president?

Has anyone polled yet on whether naming the health care bill after Ted Kennedy would be helpful or harmful for it? "You know the fat, philandering drunk who drowned that woman? Here's what he thought on the issue..."

Lots of conflicting opinions on laser sights on guns. Guess I should just get one and try it out. Better yet, I could get a laser gun.

Actually, is a laser sight on a laser gun apropos or silly?

Maybe in the Fringe universe where the Twin Towers still stand, it was Mary Jo who survived and not Ted Kennedy. Or maybe in that universe the citizens of Massachusetts decided they didn't want someone who would leave a woman to die to represent them. That would be crazy!

People are now pretty suspicious of get rich quick schemes. I wonder if I could trick people with a get rich slow scheme?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,544460,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r3:c0.067915:b27431038:z0

The homicide truck bomber who targeted Iraq's Foreign Ministry in one of the most deadly attacks this year had recently been freed from U.S. custody, an Iraqi investigator said Sunday, raising fresh concerns that former detainees will return to violence.

The revelation came as the government added more fodder to its allegations that Syria has been used as a launching pad for violence in Iraq, broadcasting a confession from a man who said he received militant training in the neighboring country.

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken the Aug. 19 bombings that devastated the foreign and finance ministries and killed about 100 people personally as they dealt a major blow to confidence in his administration and security forces just two months after most U.S. forces pulled back from urban areas.

The attacks have undermined his efforts to portray himself as a champion of security and restore a sense of normalcy in the capital ahead of January's parliamentary elections.

A senior Iraqi investigator said the man who carried out the attack against the Foreign Ministry was a former detainee at the U.S. detention camp known as Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

The bomber left his identification card at a checkpoint in order to be allowed to approach the Foreign Ministry and police were able to track down his background from the information, according to the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information.

The Americans have been releasing detainees or transferring them to Iraqi custody to comply with a security pact that took effect on Jan. 1, but some Iraqis have complained that those freed from custody have returned to violence.

The number of detainees in U.S. custody dropped to 8,947 from a high of 27,000 in 2007, the lowest it has been in more than four years, the U.S. military said Sunday.

See? If the National Socialists of the Democrat party had been able to already pass the Fairness Doctrine then poor Misunderstood Harry Reid would not have to deal with such blatant attacks by the Far Right attack machine at the Review-Journal.

This is why the Mainstream Media that supports the Messiah needs to be Bailed Out! Save the Mainstream Media to protect the honest Party Leaders from the Far Right attack machine!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/30/publisher-accuses-reid-bullying-nevada-newspaper/

The publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Sunday accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, of "bullying" his newspaper by telling an employee he wants the Review-Journal shut down.

Sherman Frederick alleged in a column in his newspaper that the "full-on threat" was made during a brief exchange between Reid and the newspaper's advertising director Wednesday at a luncheon for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.

Frederick said that as Reid shook the employee's hand, he said, "I hope you go out of business."

While acknowledging that his newspaper does not always see "eye to eye with him on matters of politics," Frederick noted that ad director Bob Brown has "nothing to do with news coverage" or opinion pages.

It's unclear whether Reid's comment was meant in jest. A representative for Reid could not be reached for a response.

But Frederick apparently did not take it lightly.

"Such behavior cannot go unchallenged. You could call Reid's remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying," he wrote. "But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid's remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was -- a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he's shaking them down."

In excoriating him, Frederick referenced Reid's upcoming 2010 election -- which a recent poll published by the Review-Journal shows is a tough race for the powerful incumbent senator.

"No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term," he wrote. "So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated."

When the CIA is over stretched because the Democrats have gutted it to give money to people without jobs, or to give money to the unions and other pork barrel projects, then it is nice to know they can find a reputable company with the required expertise to fill in the gaps. Of course, the Dems have attacked that company for providing the personnel, because the Dems hate the CIA and anything that provides security for our country. If it does not buy votes it is not worthwhile, right Senator Reid?

Good for Blackwater. I am proud of them and the way that they filled the gaps the politicians created in our security. Tell the pols to go to heck and continue to kill the terrorists and other dangers how ever you can.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/30/blackwater-wanted-tap-foreigners-carry-secret-cia-program/

When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA.

With Blackwater's lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking terrorists in lawless regions and countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government.

Blackwater told the CIA that it "could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support -- all of the things you need to conduct an operation," a former senior CIA official familiar with the secret program told The Associated Press.

But the CIA's use of the private contractor as part of its now-abandoned plan to dispatch death squads skirted concerns now re-emerging with recent disclosures about Blackwater's role.

The former senior CIA official said he had doubts during his tenure about whether Blackwater's foreign recruits had mastered the necessary skills to pull off such a high-stakes operation.

Blackwater's later hiring of several senior CIA officials who were involved in or aware of the secret program, including one of the men who ran the operation, showed the blurred lines of using a private contractor for such a highly classified and dangerous project.

http://www.newsobserver.com/1573/story/1666555.html

VA won't pay benefits to Marine whose injuries came from vaccine
David Goldstein - McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- It wasn't a bullet or roadside bomb that felled Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez three years ago after nine days in Iraq.

It was an injection into his arm before his unit left the states.

The then 20-year-old Marine from Springfield, Mo., suffered a rare adverse reaction to the smallpox vaccine. While the vaccine isn't mandatory, the military strongly encourages troops to take it.

However, it left Lopez in a coma, unable for a time to breathe on his own and paralyzed for weeks. Now he can walk, but with a limp. He has to wear a urine bag constantly, has short-term memory loss and must swallow 15 pills daily to control leg spasms and other ailments.

And even though his medical problems wouldn't have occurred if he hadn't been deployed, Lopez doesn't qualify for a special government benefit of as much as $100,000 for troops who suffer traumatic injuries.

The hangup? His injuries were caused by the vaccine.

"I could have easily died, or not been able to walk because of that," Lopez said. "It destroyed my world. It was pretty traumatic to me."

Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees the benefit program, said they're following what the agency has determined to be Congress' intent.

"It's for traumatic injury, not disease; not illness; not preventive medicine," said Stephen Wurtz, deputy assistant director for insurance at the VA. "It has nothing to do with not believing these people deserve some compensation for their losses."

The VA was unable to say how many claims have been rejected because of vaccine-related injuries. Wurtz and others familiar with the program said it probably wasn't a large amount.

As of July 1, the traumatic injury program has granted nearly 6,700 claims, a 63 percent approval rate, and paid $394 million in compensation, Wurtz said.

A representative for the Military Vaccine Agency, which oversees the vaccination of troops for smallpox, anthrax and other diseases, couldn't be reached for comment, despite repeated attempts.

http://www.homeland1.com/business-continuity/articles/586477-Army-of-volunteers-put-N-O-firefighters-back-in-firehouses/

Gerry Crimmins, a stocky, bald-headed carpenter from New York City, has traveled to New Orleans 24 times since 2007.

It hasn't been to party or gamble, though. It has been to direct a massive carpentry mission that saw 200 skilled union volunteers from New York and Louisiana donate 8,000 hours to restoring half of the 22 firehouses the New Orleans Fire Department lost during the 2005 Katrina flood.

On Thursday, the work of Crimmins and fellow volunteers was finished. Firefighting officials offered thanks, loudly applauding them in the truck bay at Engine 7, a large building across from the Municipal Auditorium that took dozens of volunteers multiple trips to rebuild.

Crimmins, a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and the New York City District Council of Carpenters, was moved to action in the fall of 2006, when he visited his son at Loyola University. The level of devastation he saw stunned him.

--- Carpenters scattered ---

Determined to apply his trade skills to the storm recovery, Crimmins visited a New Orleans carpentry training school. But the flood had wiped it out, and its members -- many of whom lost their homes -- were scattered across the country. They weren't in a position to organize a volunteer rebuilding effort.

When Crimmins flew home, he heard about how a firefighter foundation started by "Rescue Me" star Denis Leary had donated 15 aluminum rescue boats to supplant the personal crafts New Orleans firefighters used to rescue people after Hurricane Katrina -- even after many of the firefighters had lost their own homes and possessions.

With 22 of the NOFD's 33 firehouses knocked out by the storm, the foundation wanted to help finance the rebuilding of as many as possible.

Crimmins said New Orleans residents were among many who helped stunned New Yorkers cope and recover from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He sensed an opportunity to pay them back and fired off an e-mail to the Leary Firefighters Foundation, offering his skills and those of his fellow union members.

Angela Coyle, who managed the project for Leary's foundation, responded enthusiastically. She phoned him, told him to get to work and pledged to coordinate the effort.

Crimmins began recruiting fellow union carpenters who would need to pay their way to New Orleans and work during their vacation time. Hundreds answered the call. Fellow members sought donations of money and materials from New York companies, and pitched in money of their own.

I am once again very glad that I am not linked into the Democrat Party. Could you imagine the outcry if the Republicans had done this to their base?

Good job Dems! Abuse your people just as you abuse us all.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/28/democratic_party_419_abuse/

Scammers pumping out emails that try to trick recipients into parting with large sums of cash are getting a helping hand from the Democratic National Committee.

According to a researcher with anti-spam company Cloudmark, 419 fraudsters have been relaying a "significant" amount of messages through the democrats.org domain name. The abuse, which dates back at least to the beginning of this month, helps evade filters that internet service providers employ to block the messages.

"Unfortunately, because they're able to relay mail through the Democratic Party server, it does affect the Democratic Party's IP reputation, as well as their domain sending reputation," Jamie Tomasello, Cloudmark's abuse operations manager, told The Register. "I was surprised."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090829/ap_on_re_us/un_un_ship_seized_4

The United Arab Emirates has seized a cargo ship bound for Iran with a cache of banned rocket-propelled grenades and other arms from North Korea, the first such seizure since sanctions against North Korea were ramped up, diplomats and officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

The seizure earlier this month was carried out in accordance with tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to derail North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but which also ban the North's sale of any conventional arms.

Diplomats identified the vessel as a Bahamas-flagged cargo vessel, the ANL Australia. The diplomats and officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

"We can confirm that the UAE detained a North Korean vessel containing illicit cargo," a Western diplomat told the AP.

Turkey's deputy U.N. ambassador, Fazli Corman, who chairs the Security Council's sanctions panel, also confirmed the incident without providing details and said council members are examining the seriousness of it.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/sun_says/244723/The-Sun-Says.html

THE Government wants our military in the Premier League - with Championship facilities and management.

They STILL refuse to admit it is war. For the ministers this is just another item on the weekly Cabinet agenda.

It feels like everyone is treading water because they all know they will be going next spring. Maybe they need to see the things troops in combat do, like picking up the body parts of a soldier after an IED and then they would realise.

Their inaction just delays operational needs and puts lives in danger.

Without The Sun and the public's support for the troops I doubt what has been done would have been done. The public pushes the agenda for the Government.

Is this really in America?
While the Messiah still has power, maybe he should hurry and ban Christ from all public places.

The government forcing a girl to learn about other religions, especially atheism, is just completely UNConstitutional.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108084

A 10-year-old homeschool girl described as "well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level" has been told by a New Hampshire court official to attend a government school because she was too "vigorous" in defense of her Christian faith.

The decision from Marital Master Michael Garner reasoned that the girl's "vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view."

The recommendation was approved by Judge Lucinda V. Sadler, but it is being challenged by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, who said it was "a step too far" for any court.

The ADF confirmed today it has filed motions with the court seeking reconsideration of the order and a stay of the decision sending the 10-year-old student in government-run schools in Meredith, N.H.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/28/hold-breath-epa-expected-declare-carbon-dioxide-pollutant/?test=latestnews

Don't exhale.

That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases dangerous pollutants, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions.

But some skeptics say regulating carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, may be a difficult task, especially since people emit carbon dioxide with every breath.

"The EPA doesn't have the manpower to implement the regulations the way they would have to be," said David Kreutzer, senior policy analyst in energy economics and climate change at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Kreutzer said new regulations would trigger a flood of lawsuits, would create massive paperwork and the EPA should have no reasonable expectation that people would comply.

In April, the EPA released its proposed finding that man-made pollution is a cause of global warming, triggering a 60-day comment period before the agency issues a final decision.

The finding was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that said greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act and must be regulated if found to be a human health danger.

Rep. Watson is a huge source of humor. She is incredibly stupid and proves that almost everytime she makes a public statement. Go watch the video to see racist stupidity in action.

http://www.breitbart.tv/la-congresswoman-praises-cuban-revolution-castros-health-care-system/

"You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met."
BR> KABC's Michael Linder was the only broadcast reporter at Thursday night's town hall health care debate at Wade AME Church when Rep. Diane Watson [D] made some astonishing comments including claims that those opposed to health care reform are attempting to destroy a president "who looks like me."

Later, Watson praised heath care in Fidel Castro's Cuba -- and, it seemed, the Cuban revolution itself.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller's aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president's power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. "We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs--from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records," Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government's role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is "not as prepared" as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Of course there is a racial element to profiling a group of Mexican drug trifficers. What should we look for? Mexicans with blond hair and blue eyes who wear Brooks Brothers suits and praise the Messiah? Or are these African Mexicans listening to hiphop and drinking Colt .45?

Get a life. Get a clue. If you think of this is racist and not a description of who the threat is coming from then you don't know who the threat is coming from.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9AC372G0&show_article=1

A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday.

The warnings were issued Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service, which is investigating how much marijuana is being illegally cultivated in Colorado's national forests following the recent discovery of more than 14,000 plants in Pike National Forest.

"That's discriminatory, and it puts Hispanic campers in danger," said Polly Baca, co-chairwoman of the Colorado Latino Forum.

A spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service had no immediate response to Baca's comments.

Forest Service officials said they believe illegal immigrants are being brought to Colorado by Latin American drug cartels for mass cultivation of marijuana.

Michael Skinner, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, said warning signs of possible drug trafficking include "tortilla packaging, beer cans, Spam, Tuna, Tecate beer cans," and campers who play Spanish music. He said the warning includes people speaking Spanish.

The warning signs were included in a slide presentation put together for drug agents in Colorado and the public.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08282009/news/regionalnews/oops__charlie_forgot_this_1m_house_186849.htm

Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income -- including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale -- on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.

The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee -- failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.

This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.

In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.

But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.

I have been advocating this in my area, too. This is a good place to set up a Homeland Security training school. I have wide open areas, built up regions, and all the required infrastructure to support it. It would be fun to make a real Homeland Security College that has degrees and also the standard coin, cointel, coterror trainings. Full service!

What is wrong with this concept? We need a good college that can train people to handle massive emergencies and do it without the government. Sure, the government will almost always be the basis of the planning, but ALL communities need to be prepared to survive for at least a week without the state or federal services. If I had the money I would set it up myself and hire the best experts from around the world.

Allowing Leftists to train the future leaders of our security and safety services is insanity. The only thing they understand about security is shutting up the opposition anyway they can. They think safety means shutting down all the businesses so that they don't exploit the workers. Leftists are fools who have a place in society reminding us how to be human, but not so far into being human that we become fools also.

http://www.homeland1.com/homeland-security-careers/articles/586264-Mich-group-courts-homeland-security-industry-to-create-jobs/

In another move Michigan is making to diversify its struggling economy, a former state politician has launched a non-profit group aimed at attracting homeland security businesses.

The state has a storied history in supplying defense needs in times of national peril: During World War II, car manufacturers stopped making cars and built tanks and bombers. The famous Rosie the Riveter poster proclaiming "We Can Do It!" was modeled after a woman working at a plant in Ypsilanti.

With Michigan in need -- it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation -- Leslie Touma thinks there's opportunity in other areas of defense: cybersecurity, border monitoring and bioterrorism. They are sectors the state has the talent base to fill. What students graduating from its prestigious university programs need are places to get jobs.

Touma this week launched the Michigan Security Network, which will work to bring more security companies here, as well as coach auto suppliers on how to expand into the industry.

"We think the homeland security industry is a great opportunity for Michigan," says Touma, who has a background in both the automotive and defense industries and once ran for a congressional seat in Michigan. "This is a great opportunity to expand our leadership."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,543509,00.html?test=latestnews

An 83-year-old driver chased a pickup truck for 15 miles from New York into Connecticut, helping police catch the drunken driving suspect who had rear-ended his car.

The incident last weekend started on Interstate 684 in Southeast, N.Y.

Frank Canale of Scarsdale, N.Y., pursued the man all the way to his driveway in Danbury, Conn., and stayed there until police arrived. He says he feared the man could kill someone.

His daughter, Lori Canale-Smith of Pleasantville, called police on her cell phone during the chase.

By the time they finished filing police reports in two states, the pair missed the wedding they were heading to when the accident happened.

Police say the truck's driver was charged with driving under the influence and driving without a license.

How inhumane! If the evil introgators gave this guy a case of cancer, then how would he blow himself up in a crowd of children at a mosque? This is so violent and wrong.

Well, it is if you are an insane Leftist.

If you are in your right mind, then this is a joke. Take these terrorists and send them out to Allah.

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/53088

Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general's report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.

CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.

The IG's office described this smoke-blowing as one of several "unauthorized or undocumented techniques" it discovered had been used in isolated incidents by CIA employees interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists.

"An Agency (redacted phrase) interrogator admitted that, in December 2002, he and another (redacted phrase) smoked cigars and blew cigar smoke in al-Nashiri's face during the interrogation," said the IG report.

The IG, however, was unable to clearly establish that the smoke-blowing was intended to force Nashiri to cough up what he knew about al-Qaida's plans.

"The interrogator claimed they did this to 'cover the stench' in the room and to help keep the interrogators alert late at night," said the IG report. "This interrogator said he would not do this again based on 'perceived criticism.' Another agency interrogator admitted that he also smoked cigars during two sessions with al-Nashiri to mask the stench in the room. He claimed he did not deliberately force smoke into al-Nashiri's face." The interrogators learned their lesson: Don't blow smoke at terrorists.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/198599.php

The US military has begun notifying the Red Cross of the identities of terror suspects being held at secret camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, reports say.

The Red Cross, which has lobbied the Pentagon for years to give its staff access to all detention facilities, declined to confirm the changes.

The policy reportedly took effect this month with no public announcement.

Correspondents say that the move represents a victory for human rights groups seeking more US transparency.

The new approach is said to be part of a broad review of US detention and interrogation practice launched by the Obama administration.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/08/baitullah_mehsud_dea.php

Two senior Pakistani Taliban leaders thought to have been at odds have confirmed that the former leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan is dead. The leaders also confirmed that Hakeemullah Mehsud is now the new leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, dispelling the rumors of rampant infighting to choose Baitullah's successors.

Hakeemullah and Waliur Rehman Mehsud said that Baitullah died on Sunday night from wounds suffered in the Aug. 5 US Predator strike in South Waziristan. The two Taliban leaders spoke via the phone from the same room to an The Associated Press reporter.

"He was wounded. He got the wounds in a drone strike and he was martyred two days ago," Hakeemullah Mehsud told The Associated Press. Waliur repeated the statement to confirm that Baitullah had been killed.

Both leaders stated that Hakeemullah is now the leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. Waliur would take command of the Taliban in South Waziristan.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,543203,00.html?test=latestnews

The United Nations is recommending that children as young as five receive mandatory sexual education that would teach even pre-kindergarteners about masturbation and topics like gender violence.

The U.N.'s Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released a 98-page report in June offering a universal lesson plan for kids ranging in age from 5-18, an
"informed approach to effective sex, relationships" and HIV education that they say is essential for "all young people."

The U.N. insists the program is "age appropriate," but critics say it's exposing kids to sex far too early, and offers up abstract ideas -- like "transphobia" -- they might not even understand.

"At that age they should be learning about ... the proper name of certain parts of their bodies," said Michelle Turner, president of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, "certainly not about masturbation."

Turner was disturbed by UNESCO's plans to explain to children as young as nine about the safety of legal abortions, and to advocate and "promote the right to and access to safe abortion" for everyone over the age of 15.

"This is absurd," she told FOXNews.com.

The UNESCO report, called "International Guidelines for Sexuality Education," separates children into four age groups: 5-to-8-year-olds, 9-to-12-year-olds, 12-to-15-year-olds and 15-to-18-year-olds.

Under the U.N.'s voluntary sex-ed regime, kids just 5-8 years old will be told that "touching and rubbing one's genitals is called masturbation" and that private parts "can feel pleasurable when touched by oneself."

http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=16545

A Muslim in a Jewish Land

DON'T MISS THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE

by Dr. Tashbih Sayyed

(On a trip to Israel, a Muslim journalist sees firsthand a litany of lies.)

As I boarded EL AL flight LY 0008 for Tel Aviv on November 14, 2005 with my wife, Kiran, my mind was busy arranging and re-arranging the list of things I intended to accomplish. I wanted to use my first visit to Israel to feel the strength of the Jewish spirit that refuses to give in to evil forces despite thousand of years of anti-Semitism. It was not Israel's suicidal sacrifices that I wanted to investigate but the foundations of Israeli determination to live in peace.

There are many things that I wanted to talk about with Israelis, the foremost among them being their reluctance to do something about the bad press that continues to paint them as villains. Although I understand why the media, which reasonably covers most events accurately, chooses to ignore all rules of ethical journalism when it comes to Israel, I could not fathom Israel's reluctance to challenge the negative press effectively. Media bias against Israel reminded me of the Nazi era German press that was recruited by Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels who picked up every hate-laden word against the Jews. Just like the German press who refused to print the truth about the gruesome atrocities in Europe's death camps - or claimed that it was all an exaggeration, the media today also ignores the Arab terrorism. I wanted to see if there was any truth in the media allegations that Israel was an apartheid state, undemocratic and discriminatory.

I knew that a true Jewish State could not be undemocratic since democratic concepts were always a part of Jewish thinking and derived directly from the Torah. For instance when in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, he was basically referring to Torah that said that all men are created in the image of God. I was confident that Israel cannot be racist or discriminatory since it is based on the idea of the covenant between God and the Israelites, in which both parties accepted upon themselves duties and obligations underlining the fact that power is established through the consent of both sides rather than through tyranny by the more powerful party.

My understanding of the Jewish State was confirmed when the entry form that I needed to fill before landing in Tel Aviv did not ask for my religion as is the law in Pakistan. Also, unlike Saudi Arabia, no one in Israeli immigration demanded from me any certificate of religion.

As the El Al approached the Promised Land, I continued to shuffle the list of charges made routinely against Israel by its enemies.

Israelis live in a perpetual state of fear.

Israel is undemocratic.

Muslim Arab citizens of Israel do not have equal rights

Israelis live in a perpetual state of fear

From Tel Aviv to Tiberias, Jerusalem to Jezreel, and from Golan heights to the Gaza border, I could not find any evidence of fear. In fact the people felt so secure that none of the stores, gas stations, market places, or residences we went to, and where it was known that we were Muslims, deemed it necessary to either search or interrogate us. Especially when Kiran and I went to the Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem one evening, we found it bursting at its seams with people of all ages. The ground was shaking with music and young boys and girls were so busy having fun that they did not bother to even look around. Tourists were busy making deals and the whole crowd seemed to throb with the beat of the music.

I could not help but compare Israel's sense of security with the environment of insecurity that exists in Muslim countries. From Indonesia to Iran and from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia, people are not sure of anything. In Pakistan's capital Islamabad, and the port city of Karachi, I was constantly advised not to make big purchases publicly for it encourages robbers to come after you.

I did not hear news of any rape, honor killing or hold-up in Israel.

http://blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters/Post:0dcaff14-d72f-476c-b111-c25709abd3fa

Thirty Palestinians killed. Women and children caught in the crossfire. Missiles fired at a Mosque. Muslim prisoners 'executed' in cold blood. A massacre. Media restrictions.

A familiar tale? Indeed. International outrage and demonstrations in the streets of London? Nope.

And why might that be? Why it's simple. The Palestinians were were killed by Palestinians and, it would appear from the lack of reaction that in those circumstances their lives are cheap, but when they are killed by Israelis it is an outrage.

On August 15th Hamas militiamen attacked a Mosque in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Inside were extremists from the
Jund Ansar Allah group (JAA). JAA were so extreme they viewed Hamas almost as liberals.

They had declared Gaza an Islamic state and challenged Hamas to enter the Mosque. 'No problem' said Hamas.

In the assault Hamas desecrated holy ground, firing rocket and after rocket at the Mosque, some hit surrounding houses. It would be reasonable to assume that at least one Holy Koran may have been damaged.

After they took the building they rounded up the survivors. Mobile phone footage shows what appears to be Hamas men 'executing' some of them.

It is not hard evidence, but local reporters say that is what happened, and the footage is certainly of the aftermath of the attack. Audio material has Hamas commanders ordering the killings.

I put 'executed' in quotation marks as in this context, ie, the killing of someone, it is a legal term. But in the context of what Hamas did, perhaps it should be substituted for murdered.

And where is the outrage about these murders. The marches, the petitions, the calls for a boycott, the conspiracy theory of a war against Muslims, ad infinitum? I hear just the wind blowing across the freshly dug graves. Because unless the Israelis kill them, people don't care.

Why is it that so many stories of Muslims involve violence or lies? Here in this continuing tale, the family is lying about wanting to kill their daughter, even though they have told her she is going to be killed. They are lying about their finances to make it seem they are in need of extra government aid. What are they telling the truth about?

If they were not Muslims, I would expect the government to investigate. However, since they are Muslim, the government will accord them special treatment and work desperately to find a way to get them off. If these guys had the luck to be black skinned also, then they might get a reward for lying about trying to kill their daughter and all the other lies they are telling.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/08/indigent-rifqa-moms-aysha-bary-is-risana-bary.html

Rifqa's parents, Mohamad and Aysha Bary, signed affidavits declaring themselves indigent. That's why the Florida court appointed a lawyer for the father and a lawyer for the mother. Both their lawyers are being paid by the taxpayers of Florida. Worse still, Aysha and Mohamed Bary's lawyer asked the court for more money at Rifqa's custody hearing last Friday, so that they could wage a campaign to get Rifqa back home -- a campaign involving depositions, legal docs, filings etc.

Yet in a Dunn and Bradstreet report filed by Mohammad Bary himself for his business, Bary Gems, he states his business does $237,561 per annum. When I first reported the story, and Risana Bary's name kept popping up in Mohamed Bary's various business dealings, I thought Mohamed's partner "Risana" was another family member. She's not. She is his wife, Rifqa's mom. Aysha Risana Bary makes high-end bridal veils.

According to this website at WESH,com, Aysha is Risana Bary. That means that Rifqa's mom is a small business owner. Rifqa's father is a gem dealer and her mother, Aysha Risana Bary, is the proud owner of Custom Bridal Veil.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/012-apostasy.htm
Qur'an (4:89) - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them"

Qur'an (9:11-12) - "But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then are they your brethren in religion. We detail Our revelations for a people who have knowledge. And if they break their pledges after their treaty (hath been made with you) and assail your religion, then fight the heads of disbelief - Lo! they have no binding oaths - in order that they may desist." This verse is speaking of infidels (ie. "slay the infidels wherever you find them" 9:5) who obviously became Muslim to escape the sword, but the Hadith make no distinction of how a Muslim came to be a Muslim. Apostasy is always punished by death.

Other verses that seem to support the many Hadith demanding death for apostates are Qur'an verses 2:217, 9:73-74, 88:21, 5:54, and 9:66.

I am so glad that the Messiah is importing this kind of excellent care into the US! Only with Socialized Medicine can a man have his appendix out twice in five weeks! It is a miracle.

Or this is a freakin disaster that proves that the Socialist system is in collapse. I tend towards this later view, as my readers should know.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1208970/Man-collapses-ruptured-appendix--weeks-NHS-doctors-took-out.html

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.

Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.

But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.

Mark Wattson, 35, from Swindon may have been the victim of botched surgery after he had to have his appendix removed twice

To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication.

In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.

Mr Wattson told of the moment he realised there had been a serious mistake.

'I was lying on a stretcher in terrible pain and a doctor came up to me and said that my appendix had burst,' he said.

'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told these people I had my appendix out just four weeks earlier but there it was on the scanner screen for all to see.

'I thought, "What the hell did they slice me open for in the first place?"

'I feel that if the surgery had been done correctly in the first place I wouldn't be in the mess I am today. I'm disgusted by the whole experience.'

This is why we need gun control! Because guns take over people and try to slaughter...

What? The kid did not have a gun? Just a chainsaw, sword and pipe bombs? So, we need sword control?

Ban all cutting instruments! They are dangerous and need to be only used by licensed professionals. It is the failure of Bush and the Joos to protect our children that have allowed this to happen.

When are the teachers going to be sued for harming the self-esteem of this victim of the Right? This kid was just trying to show his displeasure of the way the Republicans have destroyed America. Pray to Obama that He will free this Victim and punish the Right wing Racist teachers who held him against his will.

Now that I got the insanity out of my system, I can praise the teachers for stopping this kook before he got too far. Praise the Lord for real Americans who refuse to wait for the police to rescue them.

These are Heroes! Good for them!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,542481,00.html

A teen armed with a sword and chainsaw who had several pipe bombs strapped to his body was arrested Monday after two explosions rocked Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif., KTVU reported.

Police called the foiled attack that forced the evacuation of more than 1,200 students and teachers a Columbine-style plot, according to the station.

San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer told KTVU that the 17-year-old boy came onto campus with the chainsaw, a 2-foot-long sword and 10 homemade pipe bombs attached to a tactical vest he was wearing.

He detonated two of the pipe bombs in an empty hallway near the library, and the smoke activated a fire alarm, Manheimer said.

Authorities fielded several calls from Hillsdale High School beginning at 8:07 a.m. about a gunman on the grounds, the station said. Shortly thereafter, reports came in of an explosion inside the school.

Two teachers heard the explosions, ran into the hallway and confronted the teen, who then fled, Manheimer told KTVU. A third teacher caught up with the boy and tackled him, according to police Lt. Mike Brunicardi. Another arrived a minute later with school Principal Jeff Gilbert to help hold the suspect down.

Brunicardi called the actions by Gilbert and the teachers "simply heroic," according to KTVU.

"All the while that the teachers and principal are confronting this kid, holding him down and tackling him, he's got eight live pipe bombs attached to his person," Brunicardi said.

No one was hurt in the explosion and no gun was found, according to Manheimer.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/52983

A terror suspect charged with the attempted murder of two U.S. soldiers -- before a judge ruled that his confession was coerced and inadmissible -- returned home to Afghanistan on Monday, the same day news broke of a policy change in interrogations.

After many Democrats and some Republican lawmakers called the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation techniques such as playing loud music and waterboarding "torture," President Barack Obama reassigned interrogation responsibilities from the CIA to the National Security Council - which is run out of the White House, the Washington Post first reported.

"They are taking a page right out of the Lyndon Johnson Vietnam playbook, where it's 'let's run things right out of the White House on a day-to-day basis, because we trust no one else in the government to be competent enough, talented enough or dedicated enough to be able to run a major war time effort," former USS Cole Commander Kirk S. Lippold told CNSNews.com.

The Cole was attacked by terrorists in 2000.

The release of Mohammed Jawad and his return to Afghanistan is the latest of dangerous decision by the Obama administration, argued Lippold, a senior military fellow at Military Families United, an advocacy group for military families. Obama has pledged to shut down the controversial prison by January 2010.

http://washingtonindependent.com/56175/the-2004-cia-inspector-generals-report-on-torture

Classified for years -- and still heavily redacted -- here is former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's 2004 report into the CIA's Bush-era interrogations operations. The ACLU sued to obtain the controversial report, which was so charged within the agency that former CIA Director Michael Hayden clashed with Helgerson over the inspector general's independence and investigative authority.

Here is the full report:

This is why this stuff is being destroyed as fast as it possibly can. It could possibly be destroyed faster, but that means that the chance of leaks will rise even faster. Accidents happen, but rushing things make it worse.

Of course, it might go quicker if the paperwork to prove how safe it is was lessened. Or the margins were allowed to drift a little so that the amount destroyed could be increased. It will all work out in the end, but it is so dangerous right now that it might be better to destroy it quicker. Something to think about.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,542267,00.html?test=latestnews

The Army says a low level of mustard agent has been detected in a building storing chemical weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot.

The leak was found Monday when a mobile laboratory drew an air sample from inside the building.

The Army says the air inside the building is being filtered to clear out the agent. It says technicians in protective gear will go inside later to look for leaks from the shells stored there.

Officials say there were no injuries.

A similar incident was reported in April.

Mustard agent is highly toxic and can cause severe skin and lung inflammation, cancer and birth defects.

About 2,600 tons is stored at the Pueblo depot, about 100 miles south of Denver. The agent is slated for destruction.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,542320,00.html?test=latestnews

Dense black smoke is billowing from a Detroit chemical factory where a fire has forced the evacuation of about 300 employees.

Explosions were heard inside Diversified Chemical Technologies Inc., where the fire began shortly after 3 p.m. Monday. No injuries were immediately reported.

Detroit Police officers are in the west side neighborhood asking people to stay inside their homes, although no residential evacuations were immediately ordered.

But firefighters evacuated employees and some surrounding businesses. Diversified Chemical Technologies' Web site says its complex encompasses 750,000 square feet of office, laboratory and manufacturing space.

The company produces chemicals for clients ranging from the automotive to food and beverage industries.

Would it hurt anything to get rid of all the politicians and lobbyists? Throw in the lawyers and we have a good thing!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR2009082302381_pf.html

We've had the Summer of Love. We've had the Summer of the Shark.

Now, get ready for the Summer of the Lobbyist.

In a glum economy, the lobbying business feels kind of bubbly. Every new Obama proposal comes with acres of fine print for corporate powers, interests groups and lobbyists to haggle over, profitably. Three gargantuan legislative challenges -- health care, the environment, the economy -- crisscrossing at once on Capitol Hill. Major health-care interests alone are spending $1.4 million this year lobbying Congress . . . per day, according to Common Cause, a government watchdog group. A lobbyist's delight created, ironically, by the let's-solve-all-our-problems-RIGHT-NOW approach of a president who pooh-poohed the excesses of lobbyists.

"This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist . . . it's incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen," Podesta says one afternoon at her office in one of those cool, restored red-brick buildings on E Street. "It's always a good time to be Heather Podesta."

There are more than 12,500 registered lobbyists -- about 23 for every member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics -- and some are getting richer while others stagnate or even dip a bit because of all of this pesky recession talk. But those who operate at the confluence of this summer's big three legislative streams are happiest of all.

Podesta is right there in the eddy, an It Girl in a new generation of young, highly connected, built-for-the-Obama-era lobbyists. She gets an undeniable boost from a famous name -- she is the sister-in-law of John Podesta, the insider's insider who was Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff and Obama's transition director, and the wife of über-lobbyist Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony run his-and-hers lobbying shops. His grew a staggering 57 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period the year before, taking in $11.8 million, fourth-highest among major lobbying firms. (Full disclosure: Tony Podesta has long represented The Washington Post, which paid him $10,000 in 2009 and $80,000 the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) Her six-person shop grew even faster, rocketing 65 percent to $3.4 million.

The joys of having Socialists in charge. I love the way that the Left is trying to control everyone and the proles who forced this Change are now Hoping it will end soon.

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/08/24/the-fccs-first-target-wireless-phones/

Don't look now, but the FCC is back in business. For some nine months the Federal Communications Commission had been operating with no permanent chairman, and with 3 of its 5 commissioner seats vacant. Now, with the confirmation of new chairman Julius Genachowski, and new commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker, the agency is locked, loaded, and ready to go.

It's first target? Not broadcasters, despite talk of a revived Fairness Doctrine, or Internet providers, despite talk of "net neutrality" regulation. Their turn may come soon, but first up will be the wireless industry. Specifically, in a meeting next week, the agency will launch investigations of wireless competition and billing practices, with an eye toward imposing new regulations on the sector.

http://www.militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/

The database contains 22,548 valor award citations.

http://www.homeland1.com/homeland-security-products/hazmat-equipment/articles/585579-u-s-to-destroy-stockpile-of-lethal-nerve-gas-in-ky/

Behind armed guards in bulletproof booths deep in the Kentucky woods, workers have begun pouring the foundations for a $3 billion complex designed to destroy America's last stockpile of deadly chemical weapons.

The aging arsenal at the Blue Grass Army Depot contains 523 tons of liquid VX and sarin -- lethal nerve agents produced during the Cold War -- and mustard, a blister agent that caused horrific casualties in World War I.

President Barack Obama's administration has pushed to speed up the disposal operation after decades of delay, skyrocketing costs and daunting technical problems. The arms must be destroyed by April 2012 under an international treaty and by December 2017 under federal law. But the Pentagon notified Congress in May that, even under what it called an accelerated schedule, it would not finish the job until 2021.

A senior administration aide downplayed the diplomatic fallout of missing the deadline.

"No one accuses the United States of willfully seeking to violate the treaty for purposes of maintaining our chemical weapons arsenal," said Gary Samore, the White House coordinator for weapons of mass destruction. "Everyone understands this is a technical problem."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090824/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_cia_interrogations

"The CIA has played a vital role in the work of the task force, and its substantive knowledge will be essential to interrogations going forward," agency spokesman George Little said Monday.

Obama campaigned vigorously against President George W. Bush's interrogation policies in his successful run for the presidency. He has said more recently he didn't particularly favor prosecuting Bush administration officials in connection with instances of prisoner abuse. But the issue now before Holder for consideration would have the new administration do precisely that: reopen several such cases with an eye toward possible criminal prosecution.

The new interrogation unit will be known by the acronym HIG.

The administration was publicly confirming the new interrogation unit on the same day that the CIA inspector general was to unveil a report on Bush administration handling of suspects. Details were expected to show that highly questionable tactics were used.

Now, all such questioning will fall under the rules of the Army manual.

The manual, last updated in September 2006, authorizes 19 interrogation methods used to question prisoners, including one allowing a detainee to be isolated from other inmates in some cases.

The manual prohibits forcing detainees to be naked, threatening them with military dogs, exposing them to extreme heat or cold, conducting mock executions, depriving them of food, water, or medical care, and waterboarding.

Subjecting prisoner abuse cases to a new review and possible prosecution could expose CIA employees and agency contractors to criminal prosecution for the alleged mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

http://www.cracked.com/article/79_the-5-most-embarrassing-failures-in-history-terrorism/

Terrorism isn't exactly rocket science. It's something pretty much anyone can do. You wake up one day and decide that you'd rather like to explode in the middle of a crowded shopping center, and BAM! There you go. You're a certified terrorist.

But, incredibly, people manage to fuck up even that. And if we can't laugh at terrorists, who can we laugh at?

Wow! This guy is a True Hero. Semper Fi.

You need to read the whole story. It is worth the time and a good warm feeling in your soul.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2009/08/lance-corporal-richard-weinmaster-someone-you-should-know.html#more

"I didn't do anything special. Everyone on my left and right would have done the same thing. I was just in the right place at the right time.'' - Lance Corporal Richard Weinmaster

Lance Corporal Richard S. Weinmaster, an automatic rifleman with 3rd Platoon, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, was recognized for extraordinary heroism in combat in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Semper Fi! I am not photogenic, or I might do this myself. I am safer behind the scenes.

God bless this Man during his virtuous war on the politicians who are destroying this wondrous land.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107417

Fed-up Marine has guns blazing to oust Democrats
'They're destroying this nation, and while I'm still breathing, I will not let it happen'
Posted: August 23, 2009
10:07 pm Eastern

By Joe Kovacs
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Jesse Kelly, a U.S. Marine from Arizona running for Congress displays a photo of himself serving in Iraq as part of his fundraising campaign.

"Send a warrior to Congress."

"Does this look like a Rino?"

In the battleground of American political power, candidates for office tend to use every weapon at their disposal to be heard above the din.

Now, a U.S. Marine who helped lead the initial charge into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein is taking that approach literally by brandishing his M-16 assault rifle in some eye-catching campaign fundraising ads.

"I'm taking full credit for that," says 28-year old Jesse Kelly of Tucson, Ariz., a Republican seeking to boot Democrat Gabrielle Giffords from the U.S. House of Representatives. "If you're not going to get anyone's attention, you might as well not waste your time or money."

Kelly, who is married and has a 9-month-old son, is splashing his spots across the Internet on high-profile sites such as the Drudge Report, and offering no apologies about the weapon imagery.

"I think people understand fully well that I'm serving my country," he said. "I'm in Iraq at war for my nation. I'm not posing in my bedroom with a gun."

To date, the former infantryman says he's collected about $100,000, expecting to need up to $1.5 million to win the race.

Another campaign ad for Jesse Kelly shows him on active duty while serving as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.

Regarding his "tough guy" theme, Kelly said, "People are sick of politicians from all parties. They're lying to them. People want someone to fight for them in Washington and that's the message I want to convey."

After being honorably discharged in 2004 and taken off inactive reserve last year, Kelly now works in the private sector as a project manager for a construction company that handles commercial water and sewer projects.

While he says he always loved politics, he never had a desire to be a politician.

But that all changed with the election of Barack Obama - whom Kelly calls a "radical president" - and the signing of the stimulus bill "monstrosity."

"They're spending us off the cliff!" he exclaimed. "They're destroying this nation, and while I'm still breathing, I will not let it happen. It's time to be 'in your face.'"

Indeed, Kelly's online ad thrashes the current administration, stating:

I'm tired of President Obama and the liberals who control Congress insulting us, calling us racist, and calling us a mob. I'm tired of their double-talk. I'm tired of their bait-and-switch shell games. I'm tired of being avoided by my public servants. They have forgotten that they work for us. ...

Ronald Reagan once famously said, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." We are that generation! Either we stand now and fight for our country, or the great United States of America may be but a fading memory.

He told WND his main goals are to "bring fiscal sanity back to Washington, to stop the out-of-control spending, and get back to the founding principles of free market capitalism."

Kelly actually took over a town-hall meeting this month when its original congressional host, Rep. Giffords, canceled her appearance.

He stressed there's "no question" the national outpouring of rage against members of Congress is "100 percent genuine."

"These are citizens concerned about a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy," Kelly said, explaining Americans are not ready to give life-and-death decisions to Obama.

"These people are scared of a government that has grown radically out of control."

I think the last line is the key to this whole story. Enjoy it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6806502.ece

It could be construed as a black day for the English language -- but not if you work in the public sector.

Dozens of quangos and taxpayer-funded organisations have ordered a purge of common words and phrases so as not to cause offence.

Among the everyday sayings that have been quietly dropped in a bid to stamp out racism and sexism are "whiter than white", "gentleman's agreement", "black mark" and "right-hand man".

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has advised staff to replace the phrase "black day" with "miserable day", according to documents released under freedom of information rules.
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It points out that certain words carry with them a "hierarchical valuation of skin colour". The commission even urges employees to be mindful of the term "ethnic minority" because it can imply "something smaller and less important".

The National Gallery in London believes that the phrase "gentleman's agreement" is potentially offensive to women and suggests that staff should replace it with "unwritten agreement" or "an agreement based on trust" instead. The term "right-hand man" is also considered taboo by the gallery, with "second in command" being deemed more suitable.

Many institutions have urged their workforce to be mindful of "gender bias" in language. The Learning and Skills Council wants staff to "perfect" their brief rather than "master" it, while the Newcastle University has singled out the phrase "master bedroom" as being problematic.

Advice issued by the South West Regional Development Agency states: "Terms such as 'black sheep of the family', 'black looks' and 'black mark' have no direct link to skin colour but potentially serve to reinforce a negative view of all things black. Equally, certain terms imply a negative image of 'black' by reinforcing the positive aspects of white.

"For example, in the context of being above suspicion, the phrase 'whiter than white' is often used. Purer than pure or cleaner than clean are alternatives which do not infer that anything other than white should be regarded with suspicion."

The clampdown in the public sector has angered some of the country's most popular writers.

Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider children's spy books, said: "A great deal of our modern language is based on traditions which have now gone but it would be silly -- and extremely inconvenient -- to replace them all. A 'white collar worker', for example, probably doesn't wear one. An 'able seaman', under new regulations, could well be neither. 'Spanish practices' can happen all over Europe. We know what these phrases mean and we can find out from where they were derived. Banning them is just unnecessary."

Marie Clair, spokeswoman for the Plain English Campaign, said: "Political correctness has good intentions but things can be taken to an extreme. What is really needed is a bit of common sense."

Studying the Whole Foods insanity, I found this article. When you get to the second or third letter you will see that the Left is now attacking their own for the crime of disagreeing with the Messiah on health care. The Far Left, the Champions of Free Speech, will attack, slander and denigrate anyone who dares to disagree with them. Now that the fools in America voted in the biggest Lefty they could find, just because of his skin color, that Far Left slander machine is even attacking their own.

If you voted for Obama and allowed the Far Left to get this greater voice in our great country, then you are either a racist or a twit. I will let you choose. Were you voting on skin color or because you were too stupid to listen to what he was saying? Tough choice? Twits.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/08/21/letter-from-a-whole-foods-worker/

You may have heard about the nutroots boycott of Whole Foods, whose CEO John Mackey is an outspoken critic of Obamacare and advocates market-based alternatives.

Their food is pricey, but if you have a chance/opportunity to help counter the boycott, go out and buy a few Whole Foods items. I think it's worth it.

Do not eat before viewing these pictures of the starvation and misery in Gaza. Taken from a Gazan magazine.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2009/08/starving-gazans-2009-edition.html

Starving Gazans (2009 edition)

Heartbreaking pictures from Palestine Today.

I am not linking directly to the pics so save bandwidth.

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

On Wednesday, August 12, a man holding a sign that said "Death to Obama" at a town hall meeting in Maryland was detained and turned over to the Secret Service for questioning, which is pursuing an investigation into charging him with threatening the president.

As well they should. I fully and absolutely agree with the Secret Service pursuing this case, since anyone who threatens the president is breaking the law and should be prosecuted. It doesn't matter that Obama was not at the meeting nor that the man was unarmed: the threat all on its own is a federal crime, according to the United States Code.

I support the arrest and prosecution of any person who threatens Obama or any president of the United States.

You really need to see the rest and read signs held up by the Party Of Peace anytime they could bash Bush

I have heard about this from other veterans! Scary to read more about it here. Lets kill the old and sick people! Kill them to provide care for the criminals and the lazy and the worthless. While were at it, lets kill the unborn! They are also inconvenient. Kill, kill, kill. The Liberals are some blood thirsty killers, aren't they.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358590107981718.html

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/08/much_ado_about_something_terro.php

Much Ado About Something: Terror and Pakistan's Nuclear Assets
By Animesh Roul

Every Pakistan watchers knew about those events. Bill Roggio has highlighted these events in his reports too (esp. in Long War Journal). But, Shaun Gregory ("The Terrorist Threat to Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons," CTC Sentinel, Vol. 2 (7), July 2009) has analyzed these events to expose the vulnerability of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the "pillar of Pakistan's national security".

The paper published in the CTC Sentinel (Combating Terrorism Center, West Point) has triggered a pitched debate in the region and in the Western World whether Pakistan's nuclear infrastructures are secure or not , especially in the face of those (mentioned below) terror attacks that occurred in the last couple of years. Gregory's article underscores three terror strikes on nuclear weapons facilities in Pakistan, questioning the physical security of the coveted nuclear assets:

"These have included an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly sites."

I am so sick of these terrorists slowly being released. Lets just stop taking prisoners that The Messiah can release to attack us again. Take them, interrogate them, drop them far out at sea with a bucket of chum. Not ethical, but it is much safer!

In previous wars, POWs were not released until the war was over - how ever long that takes. Worse, according to the Geneva Convention, POWs are soldiers who fight in uniforms. Spys, saboteurs, and terrorists do not get the same protections - until the Left finds they need to protect the poor murderous thugs.

This prison is the most secure in the world. Keep the terrorists there until they die. No loss to the world.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BarackObama/idUSTRE57I5ZZ20090819

The Obama administration plans to transfer six prisoners abroad from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, part of the effort to close the controversial facility by early 2010.

The detainees include those previously ordered released by U.S. courts or whose release has been approved through the Obama administration's review process, a Justice Department official said, declining to give further details.

The administration notified Congress around August 6-7 of the planned moves, starting a 15-day waiting period before the transfers can begin.

One, Mohammed Jawad, could be sent back to Afghanistan as early as Friday. But authorities are still considering criminal charges in U.S. court which accuse him of throwing a grenade that wounded two American soldiers and their translator in late 2002, so there is a chance he may not be released.

The Miami Herald reported that Congress was told two detainees would be moved to Portugal and two would be sent to Ireland. Already, 11 prisoners have been sent overseas since President Barack Obama took office in January.

Oh no! The CIA hired former Special Forces operators to kill terrorists and track down the leaders? And then they ended the program before it got started. Then it was talked about restarting it. Then it was ended again. What is the problem?

I think the real problem is that the CIA did not follow through and kill the terrorists. Nothing is wrong with killing people who have sworn to kill you. Common sense tells me that! Of course, most politicians have no common sense.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/20/cia-hired-blackwater-al-qaeda-hit-squads/?test=latestnews

WASHINGTON -- The CIA hired private contractors at Blackwater USA in 2004 as part of a secret program to kill top-level members of Al Qaeda, a person familiar with the program said Wednesday.

The contracts were canceled several years ago, the person told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified.

The New York Times first reported the program late Wednesday on its Web site.

The Times, citing unidentified current and former government officials, said Blackwater executives helped with planning, training and surveillance for the program. The program never resulted in the capture or killing of any terror suspects, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials. It was never fully operational, and has been canceled twice: once by then-CIA Director George Tenet, restarted by Porter Goss, and finally by CIA Director Leon Panetta in June.

Panetta then informed the congressional intelligence committees about the program for the first time the next day.

The officials told the Times that the CIA's use of an outside company for a potentially lethal program was a major reason Panetta called the emergency congressional briefing. The House Intelligence Committee last month launched an investigation to determine whether the CIA broke the law by not informing Congress about the secret program as soon as it was begun.

Blackwater, a North Carolina company now known as Xe Services, has come under heavy criticism for its alleged role in a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

It was unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives or just to help with training and surveillance. Government officials said bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations, the Times reported.

The CIA has regularly used contractors for intelligence analysis and operations, former CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress last year. Contractors participated in the secret harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects, he said. Contractors are no longer allowed to conduct interrogations, Panetta told Congress in April.

The Times reported that the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince. Blackwater's work on the program ended years before Panetta took over the agency after senior CIA officials questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program, the Times said.

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090819_pakistan_spreading_taliban_factionalism

Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, a Pakistani Taliban commander in Bajaur agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), told the BBC on Aug. 19 that he has become acting chief of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and has named Muslim Khan of a Swat-based Taliban group led by Maulana Fazlullah to be the TTP's new spokesman. He added that high-ranking TTP officials Wali-ur-Rehman and Hakeemullah Mehsud both lack authority to appoint a new TTP chief without consulting the Taliban in "various areas," and that the Waziristan Taliban cannot make important decisions on its own.

The emergence of a new grouping between Taliban elements in Bajaur and nearby Swat, as evidenced by Muslim Khan's appointment, combined with Maulvi Faqir's criticisms of the Waziristani TTP reveal growing fissures within the TTP along geographic lines.

While the Swat-based Taliban leadership has had ties to the FATA-based TTP, this is the first move to bring people from the two groups -- which were organizationally distinct before -- under one leadership. (There are signs that Maulvi Faqir might be seeking to expand the alliance even further by drawing in the TTP commander in Mohmand agency, just south of Bajaur). During the Swat offensive, the Swat Taliban had sought help from the TTP in the form of increased suicide bombings to counter the Pakistani military moves. But the TTP did not oblige, saying it, too, was under pressure due to drone strikes and Pakistani intelligence operations that had cost the TTP a number of key assets.

While I agree with most of this article, I also think the author, Jeff Rubin, is being a little harsh on a system that was thrown into place in a hurry and has worked. It is not perfect, or even that close. It does have some very good elements, however.

Basically, the HSAS is simple, easy to read and understand, it works and is easy to update, and it is in place already. It has drawbacks, sure. It is not easy to understand at the operations level. Sure, we know that when the system reaches a new level it means we have to be more vigilant, but how much? What is the criteria to go up or down levels? Blah blah blah? It is not great. Fixing it is going to be very difficult. I can't think of anyway to improve it without making it more difficult.

http://www.homeland1.com/Emergency-Management-Operations/articles/533726-What-is-the-Future-of-the-Homeland-Security-Alert-System-Part-1-of-2

First, kudos to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for her ongoing review of numerous Department of Homeland Security policies and practices, including the 60-day review of the Homeland Security Alert System (HSAS).

It would be a challenge to find anyone at any level (of government or cerebral function) who actually likes the HSAS as it currently is or thinks it's effective. Even Tom Ridge, who served as White House Homeland Security Advisor and became the first Homeland Security Secretary, recognized that the HSAS needed improvement if not major a overhaul. Knowing that what's there doesn't work is a big step; so is determining what should replace it.

It's actually been well over seven years since the HSAS was released, with the vision of providing "a comprehensive and effective means to disseminate information regarding the risk of terrorist attacks to Federal, State, and local authorities and to the American people." Authorized by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 3, the HSAS predates the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and National Response Framework (NRF; nee National Response Plan, or NRP), but its shortcomings reflect the times of its development, along with NIMS and the original NRP.

Authorized and developed in the months after the 9/11 attacks, HSAS and ensuing initiatives represented the recognition that we needed to do things differently. Terrorism was a real threat and needed to be accounted for in planning, not just as a threat, but as a different type of threat. (9/11 did not mark the beginning of the federal government's efforts to generate awareness of and preparedness for terrorism, which had started in the '90s, but it advanced it to the top of the list.) A national (as opposed to strictly federal) approach was needed, and HSAS traveled down the same road that NIMS and the NRP did later.

This is a dangerous precedence. I have insulted many people and I have nothing to give them if they sue. I think that a better way to deal with insults is "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." This girl might have pretty skin, but it is mighty thin!

Get over it and move on. You have just turned a barely read blogger into a major news story. How stupid do you have to be?

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/08/outing-anonymous-bloggers.html

Outing Anonymous Bloggers

Here is an interesting court case - a Canadian model wanted to sue for defamation an anonymous blogger who called her a "skank" - and she won the right to learn the identity of her accuser.

If calling someone a racist or a moonbat is defamatory, there are a lot of heroic yet anonymous (or pseudonymous) bloggers who might be unveiled.

From the report:

A Vogue cover girl has won a precedent-setting court battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her a "skank" on the internet.

In a case with potentially far-reaching repercussions, Liskula Cohen sought the identity of the blogger who maligned her on the Skanks in NYC blog so that she could sue him or her for defamation.

A Manhattan supreme court judge ruled that she was entitled to the information and ordered Google, which ran the offending blog, to turn it over.

OK, my Liberal friends, what is the negotiating point from this? You Liberals all think it is the Evil Joos who are not allowing Peace, even when the Israelis restrain and give up land to make their sworn enemies like them.

What stance should the Evil Joos take? The midpoint stance is that half the Joos should die. Still not an outcome I find acceptable. I guess that might make me evil too?

http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/index.php/200907281893/No-recognition-of-Israel-ever-Fatah-PA-recognizes-Israel-not-Jewish-state.html

No recognition of Israel - ever: Fatah; PA recognizes Israel, not Jewish state
Written by the Jewish Tribune staff
Tuesday, 28 July 2009

JERUSALEM - Senior members of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah have announced that their group will never recognize Israel and will continue to call for war against Israel.

"Fatah does not recognize Israel's right to exist, nor have we ever asked others to do so," said senior Fatah member Rafik Natsheh, a close associate of Abbas.

Media reports, according to which Fatah has recognized Israel and has called on Hamas to do the same, are false, Natsheh said in an interview with the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

"It's all media nonsense. We don't ask other factions to recognize Israel; we ourselves do not recognize Israel," he said.

Fatah controls the PA in Judea and Samaria, and is the party of Abbas. Unlike the rival breakaway PA led by Hamas in Gaza, the Fatah-led PA has agreed to recognize Israel, although it will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

The PA recognizes Israel because if it did not, it would not be able to "serve the Palestinian people," Natsheh explained. However, Fatah does not have such constraints.

Not only will Fatah never recognize Israel, but it will never end its call for armed struggle against Israel, he said.

"Let those who are deluding themselves hear: this will never happen," he said.

A second senior Fatah member, Azzam el-Ahmed, agreed that Fatah would not drop its call to wage war on Israel.

Natsheh and Ahmed gave interviews in advance of the Fatah general assembly in early August, in which the organization will meet to discuss its goals and to hold elections. The meeting will be the first in about 20 years.

I just posted about HRWs lying "report" and now the IDF and others have jumped all over this and proven the lies. Fast work, but fairly easy when the report is based upon lies, rumors and false allegations.

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/08/video-hamas-terrorist-hides-behind-white/index.shtml

Human Rights Watch is at it again, condemning a Western nation (Israel), while utterly ignoring the sins of its terrorist enemy. Here's the reality they ignore:

Fortunately, the IDF is responding quickly: HRW Report on Civilian Targeting Based on Unreliable Witnesses

NGO Monitor is right on top of it: HRW's 'White Flags' Report Surrenders Morality

* HRW had no presence in Gaza during the conflict. Therefore, the organization's Gaza 'reports', including "White Flag Deaths" are based entirely on unverifiable claims wrapped in a façade of research.
* The report's co-author Joe Stork is a veteran anti-Israel political activist and the antithesis of a professional legal analyst. Before joining HRW, he was a leader of MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project), whose publications have carried laudatory interviews with terrorist leaders and urged socialists to "comprehend the achievements" of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.
* HRW's publication fails to investigate incidents in which "white flags", ambulances and hospitals were used by Hamas to hide military activity. Instead, the entire report is designed to provide "evidence" of alleged Israeli war crimes (a term used 15 times)...

...This is another HRW publication that substitutes speculation for serious research. The text reflects HRW's consistent pattern with regard to the Middle East, with condemnation of Israel as its starting point, particularly in relation to the Gaza conflict. It is further evidence, if any were needed following the Saudi fundraising dinner that HRW is more interested in targeting Israel than in promoting universal human rights...

The government is telling us that whites are upset at the election of a black man. They claim that right wing nuts are planning attacks on blacks in retaliation. Then it proves that by showing us a black guy who posed as a white supremacist to threaten blacks for that same election.

Proving a thought crime by planting the thoughts is illegal, or at least immoral.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/08/black-man-posing-as-white-supremist.html

Dyron Hart, a former Nicholls State football player, faces 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

A black man posing as a white supremist on the internet entered a guilty plea for communicating threats against black students after the election of Barack Obama.

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3654162093

Israel has been accused of the "unlawful" killing of 11 civilians who carried white flags during its Gaza operation at the end of 2008 and early in 2009. The New York rights group, Human Rights Watch, has claimed that Israel violated the rules of war and demanded a full investigation.

In a report released on Thursday, the rights group presents seven incidents in which Israeli soldiers shot at civilians and reportedly killed 11 civilians, five of whom were women and four children. It said at least eight others were injured.

The group said that it had conducted thorough investigations and interviewed at least three eyewitnesses, reviewed ballistic evidence and medical records and visited the locations of the alleged war crimes.

In every case the civilians were reportedly carrying white flags as they carried out routine tasks - walking or in slowly moving vehicles - when attacks such as these occurred.

"I want to understand whether I did something wrong to Israel to be punished like this," said Khalid Abd Rabbo quoted by the group, referring to his two daughters, aged two and seven, who were killed while they were waving white flags in January this year.

how do you write a book about cartoons that you are not allowed to publish and show? If the reader has to already know what the cartoons look like to understand the controvery that spawned the book, then what is the point of the book? Academic morons.

If you want to minimize the controversy and the riots of the Muslims, then seal the pictures in an envelope. This will not stop the riots because uneducated Muslims will riot over anything Allah tells them to. Educated Muslims will become terrorists and send the uneducated to die as walking bombs. One of the joys of Islamic thought.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/12/disgrace-yale-removes-mohammed-cartoons-from-book-about-mohammed-cartoons/

Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, "The Cartoons That Shook the World," should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What's more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children's book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante's "Inferno" that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí...

Talking about moronic ideas like this is worthless. The fools who think this will stop violence don't understand human behavior, they only understand that they are pretending it will.

Sure, kids should not take weapons to school, but banning bats is stupid. Just ban violence.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/08/13/lynn_bans_bb_guns_bats_clubs_to_increase_school_safety/

As students in Lynn prepare for the start of another school year, the city is taking extra steps to ensure their safety.

The City Council authorized police this week to arrest students who bring to school objects that could be used as weapons, officials said.

The ordinance, which passed Tuesday, expands the definition of a weapon to include items that are otherwise legal but could be used to inflict physical harm, said Police Chief Kevin F. Coppinger.

Students could be arrested if they bring objects such as air guns, pellet guns, BB guns, fireworks, and even bats and clubs to school without a "legitimate purpose,'' he said.

In the past, Coppinger said, police could only seize the weapons in question and summon offenders to court, allowing them to stay in school and possibly threaten or harm other students and staff. The ordinance allows police to act when they "come across a group of kids engaged in a fight or ready to fight,'' he said.

http://www.redplanetcartoons.com/

From the Heritage Foundation:

The household survey's headline number that the unemployment rate had fallen from 9.5 to 9.4 percent seems to be good news. However, the decline results entirely from the fact that 422,000 people left the labor force. As a result, the labor force participation rate fell to 66.5, which equals the lowest recorded number for the current recession. The civilian employment to population ratio continued to decline as people left the labor market. It fell to 59.5, the lowest level in 25 years.

When labor markets begin to firm, many of these discouraged workers will begin to re-enter the workforce, making it likely that the unemployment rate will remain high or even increase past 10 percent before the start of 2010. After all, labor force re-entrants account for over a fifth of all unemployed workers. When companies are reluctant to hire, it becomes even harder for these workers to obtain a job.

Another factor that will boost the unemployment rate in future months will be the fate of teenage workers. Teens accounted for a quarter of the decline in the labor force last month. July's jobs report was conducted before the minimum wage took effect. Therefore, it is likely that the job market for teenagers will be further weakened by the minimum wage increase. Teenagers already have the highest unemployment rate at 23.8 percent, which is more than double the national average...

This is my Hero story for the day! Usually, these stories come from Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan, but this is good too!

Mrs. Orring, you are a hero! I will buy you a beer if you come over this way.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Granny-87-Kills-Venomous-Rattler-With-Bare-Hands-52963742.html

An 87-year-old Tampa woman had had it with the motherloving snakes on her motherloving porch.

So when a seven-inch pygmy rattlesnake slithered up to Esther Orring's door and bit her on the hand, she got even, strangling the venomous little serpent with her bare hands.

"She's a tough lady," Orring's daughter, Maria Pellicone, told WFLA. "She's a very strong person, so she will be a survivor."

Orring has been hospitalized since the Monday incident, after she was administered several vials of antivenin.

But the well-gripped granny is expected to make a full recovery, and Pellicone says she'll have the dead snake framed for her.

http://www.imao.us/index.php/2009/08/reasons-to-let-the-government-run-things/#comment-41109

as a loyal American (who doesn't what to be flagged), I present other reasons to let the government run health care. Here are things that will present excellent examples of how government-run organizations (regardless of the level of government) operate:

* Amtrak
* The quality of public schools
* The NEA funding of porn
* The DMV
* Oil for Food
* Paying farmers to not grow crops
* Student visas
* The TSA
* FEMA
* The IRS

If these examples don't show you just how wonderful a government-run health care system will be, I don't know what will convince you.

http://townhall.com/columnists/ChuckNorris/2009/08/11/dirty_secret_no_1_in_obamacare

Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare is about the government's coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development.

It's outlined in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838), under the heading "home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children." The programs (provided via grants to states) would educate parents on child behavior and parenting skills.

The bill says that the government agents, "well-trained and competent staff," would "provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains ... modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices," and "skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development."

http://www.homeland1.com/domestic-international-terrorism/articles/532698-Obamas-counterterror-chief-blasts-Bush-policies/

President Barack Obama's counterterrorism chief rebuked the Bush administration repeatedly Thursday in a speech designed to make the case for a broader approach to fighting Islamic extremism.

In his first public appearance as White House counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan said that the Bush administration's policies had been an affront to American values, undermined the nation's security and fostered a "global war" mindset that only served to "validate al-Qaida's twisted world view." "Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism -- whether they are with us or against us -- the administration is now engaging other countries and people across a broader range of areas," Brennan said.

The sharp language is likely to extend the war of words between the Obama administration and conservative critics such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has carried out an unusually high-profile campaign accusing the new administration of abandoning methods that he said had made the country safe.

Brennan's speech was the latest in a series of addresses by senior Obama administration figures in recent weeks outlining the president's national security agenda. Brennan emphasized the argument that the United States must move beyond using the CIA and the military to attack al-Qaida and must work to expand economic and educational opportunities across the Muslim world.

"We cannot shoot ourselves out of this challenge," Brennan said. "If we fail to confront the broader political, economic and social conditions in which extremists thrive, then there will always be another recruit in the pipeline, another attack coming downstream."

Many people have been wondering about the state of Pakistan's nuke program. I am very glad to know it is still safe, but knowing that the location is compromised is scary. If that facility falls, NATO will have to attack and destroy it to protect the cities of the world. That attack will lead to UN and Muslim condemnation, riots and violence.

Of course, the other solution is to give the nuclear material to a safe third party. Who that might be, I am not sure. Bury it in Mecca? Or Beijing? I don't trust either place, but they are safer than the current location.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/pakistan/Revealed-Jihadis-thrice-attacked-Pakistan-nuclear-sites/articleshow/4879235.cms

Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts. ( Watch )

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.

These attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken several steps to secure and fortify its nuclear weapons against potential attacks, particularly by the United States and India, says Gregory.

In fact, the attacks have received so little attention that Peter Bergen, the eminent terrorism expert who reviewed Gregory's paper first published in West Point's Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, said "he (Gregory) points out something that was news to me (and shouldn't have been) which is that a series of attacks on Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities have already happened."

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists.

http://stlouisteaparty.com/2009/08/09/guess-who-beat-kenny-gladney/

Tea Party researchers have discovered some interesting news on one of the people arrested for beating Ken Gladney.

Elston K. McCowan is a former organizer - now the Public Service Director of SEIU Local 2000 - and board member of the Walbridge Community Education Center, and is a Baptist minister, has been a community organizer for more than 23 years, and now, he is running for Mayor of the City of St. Louis under the Green Party.

McCowan accused the Mayor of setting fire to his van . . . because that's what big city mayors do in their spare time, I guess. He also called Slay a racist. And, on election night, McCowan thanked the family who voted for him. It was quite touching, actually.

McCowan is not a rank-and-file, card-carrying union guy. He is a director with SEIU. He IS the union. He ISSUES the cards. Andy Stern himself might as well have kicked Gladney.

Stern has some fishy hiring standards, folks. Can't wait to see how he spins THIS one.

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090808_pakistan_taliban_infighting_amid_search_successor

STRATFOR sources in Pakistan said that when the TTP senior leadership met to decide on Baitullah Mehsud's successor, a fight broke out and the Taliban commanders started shooting at each other. Unconfirmed reports are now flooding in claiming that Hakeemullah, Wali-ur-Rehman and a third associate -- Mufti Noor Wali -- died in the fighting and now a little-known Taliban commander in Barwand -- Azmat Ullah -- has jumped up a few places in the succession line.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/08/07/jdge-andrew-napolitano-obama/

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from abridging the freedom of speech. The reason the Amendment refers to speech as "the" freedom of speech is a recognition by the Framers that the right to speak freely precedes the existence of the U.S. as a country. The Framers recognized it as a natural right ("...endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..."), which comes to all persons by virtue of our humanity. The right to speak freely does not come from the government, which the Big Government folks claim; it is an indelible aspect of our humanity. The Supreme Court has endorsed the concept of the natural, as opposed to governmental, origins of this right, and hence, even though the First Amendment only prohibits "Congress" from abridging the freedom of speech, the Court has ruled that no one in any government-from a school janitor to a state governor, from a board of education to a local cop, from the courts to the Congress to the President-may interfere with speech.

Because speech can startle and offend, as well as enlighten and illuminate, the courts have held that it requires breathing room. Stated differently, no one in the government-any government-may impose a burden on the exercise of speech. That means that the government may not require a license, demand permission, or intimidate any speakers. It may not punish speech, no matter what the speech asks. When the Nixon administration created the "Cointelpro" and"Houston" plans in the 1970s, it used undercover FBI, CIA, and civilian-garbed military to photograph and record the faces and voices of anti-war protestors. Nixon claimed that he needed the records of this for national security purposes. He argued to David Frost, after he had resigned the Presidency, that in case of domestic upheaval, his government would know who to arrest.

The Supreme Court rejected the idea that the First Amendment permits the government to make and keep a record of the faces and voices and ideas of its domestic political opponents. The Court called this "chilling" the right to speak freely; in other words, denying it the breathing room that free speech requires. The whole purpose of the First Amendment, the Court wrote, is to encourage-not discourage-open, broad, robust political debate, and any inhibition, real or threatened, that comes from the government is unconstitutional.

In direct response to Cointelpro and Houston, Congress enacted the Privacy Act. Among many other protections, it specifically prohibits the President or anyone in his name from making or keeping records of any persons' use of speech. The constitutional rule is "All innocuous speech is absolutely protected. And all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to address the same matter."

More good news this morning! Who else can we get today? Don't these things come in threes?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090807/wl_nm/us_srilanka_tigers_3

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan authorities said on Friday said they were interrogating the new head of the Tamil Tigers, their most-wanted target since crushing the separatist rebels and their 25-year insurrection in May.

But mystery remained over where Selvarajah Pathmanathan, the man who ran the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) lucrative arms and smuggling operations for decades, was arrested.

Pathmanathan is the public face of the LTTE's post-war remnants and the highest-ranking Tiger still alive, after troops killed LTTE founder Vellupillai Prabhakaran in the war's cataclysmic final battle on the northeastern coast on May 18.

"He is in custody in Colombo and is being questioned," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, who declined to say where he had been arrested.

What a way to start the day! Great news for Mr Mehsud, who can now talk to Allah and have all those virgins and doe eyed boys.

You will not be missed.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,537727,00.html

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- Pakistan's Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, has been killed in a U.S. missile strike, a Taliban commander and aide to Mehsud said Friday.

"I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan," Kafayat Ullah told The Associated Press by telephone. He would not give any further details.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad that intelligence showed Mehsud had been killed in Wednesday's missile strike on his father-in-law's house in Pakistan's lawless tribal area, but authorities would travel to the site to verify his death.

my question:
Should these two be placed in the WitSec program? They might not be witnesses, but I think they should fear for their lives!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080601704_pf.html

Washington Post apologizes for Clinton joke

The Associated Press
Thursday, August 6, 2009 11:38 AM

WASHINGTON -- Two Washington Post journalists are apologizing and their satirical online video series has been canceled following criticism of a joke they told about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli killed the "Mouthpiece Theater" series Wednesday after pulling the latest episode from the paper's Web site Friday.

In the video, columnist Dana Milbank and White House correspondent and blogger Chris Cillizza appeared in smoking jackets to discuss the kinds of beer politicians might drink. Milbank said he couldn't reveal to whom President Barack Obama would serve a drink called "Mad B---- Beer." That line was followed by a brief picture of Clinton.

The group Women, Action and the Media complained to the Post in a letter signed by 32 women. They called the video "sexist" and "tasteless."

"I regret that we put up that image," Milbank said, "and while I highly doubt the secretary of state has seen 'Mouthpiece Theater,' I would be honored to have the opportunity to apologize to her over a beer."

Cillizza said the joke was over the line and that the show was not funny.

Brauchli called the joke "a serious lapse."

The episode follows an apology from Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth last month after a flier surfaced announcing plans to charge business leaders and lobbyists for intimate dinner chats at her home with government officials and the newspaper's journalists.

I seem to remember that when President Bush had 32% of the People say he was a failure, and 40% of the People are Democrats, that was proof that he was washed up and needed to be washed out of the Halls of Power. Now that President The One is in an even worse position, it is because the National Socialists are trying to smear his Great Works? Are you kidding me?

Even a cursory review of the facts shows that the Media slandered Bush at least twice as much as they are saying anything negative about The One. Bills that Bush pushed for were examined and then had additional thoughts added to that made them sound horrible. Bills that The One pushes for are ignored in favor of the talking points the Government publishes about them. Anyone who finds parts of the bills that differ from the talking points is attacked as a racist!

Thank AlGore for inventing the internet and allowing us bitter gun clingers to find information besides what the Media spoon feeds us.

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/08/06/after-6-months-more-view-obamas-presidency-as-a-failure-than-bushs/

After 6 Months, More View Obama's Presidency as a 'Failure' Than Bush's
Posted by Tom Bevan

A rather surprising finding from the newly released CNN poll. Question three on the national survey of 1,136 adults (which includes an oversample of African-Americans) asks, "Do you consider the first six months of the Obama administration to be a success or a failure?"

Thirty-seven percent (37%) said they believe the Obama administration is a "failure," while 51% consider it a "success" and 11% say it's still "too soon to tell."

An identical question was asked of the Bush administration in an August 2001 CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey. At the time, 56% said the Bush administration was a "success" while only 32% considered it a "failure."

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090805_lebanon_hezbollahs_control_over_lebanons_military

A reliable source in the Lebanese military with strong connections to Hezbollah has informed STRATFOR that Hezbollah's security chief, Wafiq Safa, has significantly increased his authority over all Shiite officers in the Lebanese army. Safa, who maintains close contact with the Lebanese army command, now apparently has a say in all appointments, promotions and deployments of these officers. Safa also allegedly has made arrangements with the Lebanese army command to be regularly informed of the army's movements and plans.

Tensions are continuing to build across the Lebanese-Israeli border, with Israel sending almost daily signals to Iran that an attack on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon -- a precursor to a potential military strike against Iran -- could be in the cards. Hezbollah has grown increasingly anxious over these threats, but is also wasting little time in preparing for such a confrontation. Hezbollah has been steadily building up influence over the weak and fractured Lebanese military; now, it appears this influence has translated into direct authority over the army's Shiite contingent.

By French design, Lebanon's Maronite Christians have dominated the Lebanese military. Over the past couple of decades, however, Iranian and Syrian efforts to incorporate more Shia into the armed forces have undermined Maronite influence. Approximately 30 percent of the Lebanese armed forces are Shia, and that number is growing.

STRATFOR sources in the Lebanese military admit that the army has neither the capability nor the will to stand up to Hezbollah. Indeed, the Lebanese army turned a blind eye even when Hezbollah overran Beirut in the summer of 2008 when the government attempted to clamp down on the group's communications network. Maintaining a strong stake in the Lebanese armed forces is essential for Hezbollah to mitigate any threats from within Lebanon while focusing on the Israeli threat. Lebanese politicians have discussed the possibility of formally integrating Hezbollah into the Lebanese army as a separate brigade, but under the existing conditions, the army appears to be developing into more of an auxiliary force attached to the Shiite militant group.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536845,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r4:c0.069643:b26966872:z0

Hezbollah has stockpiled up to 40,000 rockets and is training its forces to use ground-to-ground missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv and anti-aircraft missiles that could challenge Israel's dominance of the skies over Lebanon.

Brigadier-General Alon Friedman, the deputy head of Israel's Northern Command, told The Times from his headquarters overlooking the Israeli-Lebanese border that the current stability was "in danger."

He added that the peace, which has reigned over the rolling Biblical landscape for the past three years, could "explode at any minute."

His concerns were partly due to threats from Hezbollah's leadership. Last month, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, warned that if the southern suburbs of Beirut were bombed as they were in the last war, he would strike back against Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/08/crisis-of-confidence-americas-government-losing-faith-in-outoftouch-constituents.html

Guest Opinion
By Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA)
and Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services

Over two hundred years ago, America's founding fathers established a constitutional republic based on the audacious notion that the interests of its citizens would be best served by a wise body of their democratically-elected representatives. In the two centuries that have since transpired, that bold experiment has largely been a success. But we should also realize our system only works when the interests of voters and their government are in harmony. Unfortunately, recent evidence suggests that America's hard-working hometown legislators are feeling the pinch from a fickle and increasingly out-of-touch voter class who no longer serves our needs.

Nowhere has this disturbing trend been more evident than in the recent debate over health care reform. Like hundreds of our fellow legislators and government officials, we recently traveled to a town hall meeting to distribute a grassroots press release explaining why this critical legislation is a done deal. Our advance staffs said that should anticipate a respectful, positive hearing from local media and bused-in union members. Instead we were greeted by a rude howling mob of idiot "voters" who refused to listen to reason, and ruined what should have been a killer photo op for our re-election ad campaign.

Have these arrogant ivory tower armchair quarterbacks ever had to live with the pressures of being a working stiff Senator or Cabinet Secretary in Washington DC? Have they ever had to juggle markup language on a supplemental appropriations bill, or deal with an incompetent Chief of Staff who constantly double-books fund raising dinners? Apparently not, if their whiny obnoxious chants are any indication. "Read the Bill! Read the Bill!" blah, blah, blah, as if we weren't already exhausted from writing and voting for the damned thing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536863,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g2:r1:c0.211261:b26947194:z0

A California dad is refusing to take down the tattered and torn American flag that's been flying on his lawn in Fresno for almost a year, despite complaints from neighbors on his military-heavy block and from a national veterans group that says he's mistreating the Stars and Stripes.

Even passersby have phoned Louis Haros, demanding that he take down his weather-beaten flag immediately.

But Haros, a Vietnam veteran, told his son last September that he'd wave that flag until he comes home from Iraq.

And a promise is a promise.

"I made a promise to him that it won't come down until he's home," Haros told FOXNews.com on Tuesday. "Well, it's still there. I feel if I bring it down and something happens to him ... I don't know."

This is the problem with terrorists and modern society, they can take our freedoms and attack us from within. A century ago, thugs like this would have met a lynch mob and that would have been that. If they survived, they would have been sent to a prison that believed in punishment and not rehabilitation. That would scare most of them straight.

To the Australian police: good on ya, mate! Praise the Lord you got them before they attacked. Now you have to figure out what to do with them. Good luck getting through the politically correct weenies who will try to free these rat b@st@rds.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536442,00.html?test=latestnews

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Australian police launched a major anti-terrorism operation on Tuesday, arresting four men they said were part of a terrorist cell that was planning to launch a suicide attack on several Army bases in the country.

The Melbourne-based group was believed to be linked to an Islamic extremist group in Somalia, al-Shabaab, and had planned to use automatic weapons in their attack, Australian Federal Police Acting Commissioner Tony Negus said.

"The men's intention was to actually go into the Army barracks and to kill as many soldiers as they could before they themselves were killed," Negus told reporters in the southern city of Melbourne.

The men were arrested after about 400 officers from state and national security services took part in 19 pre-dawn raids on properties in Melbourne, Negus said. They were to appear in court later Tuesday.

"This operation has disrupted an alleged terrorist attack that could have claimed many lives," Negus said.

The men arrested are Australian citizens ranging in age from 22 to 26, Victoria state police said. Several others were being questioned Tuesday.

The group had been under investigation since January, Negus said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/03/AR2009080300130.html?wprss=rss_world/asia

BEIJING, Aug. 3 -- Chinese authorities have sealed off a remote town in northwestern China after three people died of pneumonic plague and eight others were infected with the highly contagious lung disease.

The Qinghai province health bureau said a 32-year-old herdsman and a 37-year-old neighbor in Ziketan, a Tibetan town of 10,000, have died. A doctor at a nearby hospital where patients are being treated said a third victim, who was 64, died about 6:40 a.m. Monday.

Chinese authorities have said most of the other infected patients are in stable condition, but Wen Xin, a physician at the Tibetan Hospital of Xinghai County in Qinghai, said the wife of the herdsman was in serious condition and coughing up blood. He said an additional 13 people are being quarantined at the hospital for observation.

"City leaders, plague experts and cadres from national and local disease control and prevention departments are all in the village," Wen said.

Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacterium as bubonic plague, or Black Death, which is estimated to have killed 25 million people during the Middle Ages. While bubonic plague is transmitted by infected fleas, pneumonic plague moves person-to-person through the air, according to the World Health Organization. Patients typically become infected by being in close contact with someone who has the plague and is coughing, or by handling contaminated articles. If left untreated, pneumonic plague can cause death within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms.

http://www.marines.mil/units/marforcom/iimef/cbirf/Pages/2009/CBIRF%E2%80%99schemlabonwheels.aspx

NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY INDIAN HEAD, Md. --
Page Content
Sometimes, the enemy isn't recognized.

Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, II Marine Expeditionary Force Marines and sailors have a life-saving mission as emergency responders. This requires a lot of different disciplines, one of which is organic to CBIRF.

"The mobile laboratory is an analytical suite on a mobile platform," said Dr. Erick Swartz, who is the resident scientist here. "It is designed to analyze gases but more specifically, liquids and solids that give off a gas."

With such a state-of-the-art piece of equipment, training on how to use it is vital to its implementation. Being able to recognize the contaminants in a contaminated area, identification and detection platoon (IDP) Marines are imperative to CBIRF's mission. Only Marines with IDP can operate the mobile laboratory and go through extensive training on its usage.

"First, Marines must master sampling techniques in a contaminated area," Swartz explained. "Then, they must pass technical classes, including organic chemistry, in which they have to get at least an A- to pass. This class really teaches them to speak like a scientist. Once Marines complete the class, they are able to recognize different materials from alcohols to organic phosphates," he added.

IDP Marines effectively use the mobile laboratory to establish how CBIRF Marines and sailors conduct their rescue operations.

http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/petraeus-innovation-spurs-marine-successes.html

ARLINGTON, Va. (July 31, 2009) - The secret to the U.S. Marine Corps' success is a blending of bedrock principles with innovation, the commander of U.S. Central Command said here last night.

Using two examples from recent history -- the heroism of the last Marine Medal of Honor recipient and the turnaround in Iraq's Anbar province, -- Army Gen. David H. Petraeus shared his view at an event hosted by the Marine Association Foundation.

"On the one hand, Marines display a stalwart resistance to change in those bedrock values that form the very foundation of what it means to be Marine," he said. "On the other hand, Marines demonstrate a ready embrace of innovation that allows them to adapt to the environments in which they operate and to the enemies they face."

Some of those timeless, unchanging truths that describe the Marine Corps include an unflinching devotion to one's fellow Marines, a ready embrace of hardship and a universal emphasis on the skills and the spirit of the rifleman, he said.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/03/mccain-to-vote-against-sotomayor/#more-63022

"Again and again, Judge Sotomayor seeks to amend the law to fit the circumstances of the case, thereby substituting herself in the role of a legislator. Our Constitution is very clear in its delineation and disbursement of power. It solely tasks the Congress with creating law. It also clearly defines the appropriate role of the courts to 'extend to all Cases in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties.' To protect the equal, but separate roles of all three branches of government, I cannot support activist judges that seek to legislate from the bench. I have not supported such nominees in the past, and I cannot support such a nominee to the highest court in the land.

I love studying Islam. It is such a difference from anything else. The Buddhists and polytheists rarely if ever developed something even close to this.

This article is about the coming assassination of Sasha Cohen for his "interview" with known terrorists. He poked fun at Islamic terrorists, which is making fun of Islam, which is harem, which means he has to die. I think that Mr Cohen is a bore and rather disturbed, and not in a good way. But killing a guy because his humor is insipid is wrong. Otherwise I would have died a long time ago.

This section of the article is about the Islamic version of humor. It is kind of scary what Mohammad found to be a good laugh:
Raping a nine year old girl = good.
Poking a guys eye out the back of his head = funny.
Saying that Islam might not have a sense of humor = death.

http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/humor-is-not-just-for-entertainment/

Cultures that are modern and inclusive understand and embrace humor. Cultures that are reactionary and pre-modern as is Islam cannot countenance satire and humor. Humor and satire are consistent with free-thinking, freedom of thought and speech, and intellectualism. People who think freely find humor in one another and in the world. In totalitarian systems like Islam humor is not allowed; only authoritarian thinking is allowed,that is one can only think what the theocratic dictatorship clicque want you to think. They get these directives directly from the doctrine of Islam. In Islam it is considered pious to kill people who tell jokes. Mohammed did it, so it is sunna.

Let us examine Islamic humor for a moment. Mohammed had a sense of humor. It is somewhat different from ours. Allah also likes humor. Unfortunately, what is funny to them means death to us.

'Asim b. 'Umar b. Qatada told me that 'Auf b. Harith-his mother was 'Afra'-said 'O apostle of God, what makes the Lord laugh with joy at His servant?' He answered, 'When he plunges into the midst of the enemy without mail.' 'Auf drew off the mail-coat that was on him and threw it away: then he seized his sword and fought the enemy till he was slain. (Sira, Ishaq, 446)

I said (to myself), 'You will soon know!' and as soon as the /badu/ was asleep and snoring I got up and killed him in a more horrible way than any man has been killed. I put the end of my bow in his sound eye, then I bore down on it until I forced it out at the back of his neck. Then I came out like a beast of prey and took the highroad like an eagle hastening until I came out at a village which, (said the narrator), he described; then to Rakuba and al-Naqi' where suddenly there appeared two Meccans whom Quraysh had sent to spy on the apostle. I recognized them and called on them to surrender, and when they refused I shot one and killed him, and the other surrendered. I bound him and took him to the apostle.

Ibn Ishaq from Sulayman b. Wardan from his father from 'Amr b. Umayya: 'When I got to Medina I passed some shaykhs of the Ansar and, when they exclaimed at me some young men heard my name and ran to tell the apostle. Now I had bound my prisoner's thumbs with my bow­string, and when the apostle looked at him he laughed so that one could see his back teeth. He asked my news and when I told him what had happened he blessed me') (Sira, Tabari, 914).

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/5868/let-em-rot-hiking-americans-detained-in-iran-are-pro-syrian-anti-israel-left-wing-journalist-activists/

We have enough looming and present foreign and domestic policy problems to worry about. We don't need to add people like Laura Ling and Roxana Saberi . . . and now, three "hikers" who are really left-wing, pro-Syrian, anti-Israel "activist" "journalists" from Berkeley-two of whom chose to leave America and live in the Arab Muslim Mid-East. They knew the risks when they went "hiking" on the Iranian border. (Hint: It's not like vacationing in South Beach, and I don't think they were really hiking.) Two of them chose to live in the Middle East. Tough luck that they got caught.

Oh, and if you think I believe the "they were just hiking" story, think again. Here's a little bit of info about these far-left "hikers." It seems that an Iranian prison might be a great place for them to spend some time.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html

Here's a Second Opinion

By Scott W. Atlas

Ten reasons why America's health care system is in better condition than you might suppose. By Scott W. Atlas.

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America's health care system.

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.

What is wrong with just keeping these terrorists where they are? I know that Gitmo is considered to be evil by the Lefties, but what is honestly wrong with the site? So, there might have been abuses in the past. Now there are so many lawyers and do-gooders at the prison that it is almost impossible to abuse anyone.

Right now, the terrorists are kept safely away from the American population and kept from doing more acts of violence. Keep this prison open and the terrorists out of the way until the swear off violence forever.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/08/02/sources-obama-eyes-military-civilian-terror-prison/?test=latestnews

The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected Al Qaeda, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The officials outlined the plans as the latest effort to comply with President Barack Obama's order to close the prison camp by Jan. 22, 2010, and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil

How hard is it to hide a body in the desert? Do you think a few vials of biological material might be out there someplace?

Anyway, I am glad the Captain has been found. G-d rest his soul. May G-d bring Peace to the family of this formerly lost hero.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090802/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_gulf_war_missing_pilot

The remains of the first American lost in the Gulf War have been found in Iraq, the military said Sunday, a sorrowful resolution of a nearly two-decade old question about the fate of Navy Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher.

The Pentagon said the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on Saturday positively identified the remains, buried in the desert and located after officials received new information from an Iraqi citizen about a crash.

Speicher's disappearance has bedeviled investigators since his fighter was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the 1991 war.

The top Navy officer said the discovery is evidence of the military's commitment to bring its troops home. "Our Navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how long or how difficult that search may be," said Adm. Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations.

http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/07/will-hamass-new-culture-war-acknowledge-its-historic-ties-to-nazism.php

The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler's Holocaust.

The official leader of the Palestinians, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent the war years in Berlin with Hitler, serving as a consultant on the Jewish question. He was taken on a tour of Auschwitz and expressed support for the mass murder of European Jews. He also sought to "solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries" by employing "the same method" being used "in the Axis countries." He would not be satisfied with the Jewish residents of Palestine--many of whom were descendants of Sephardic Jews who had lived there for hundreds, even thousands, of years--remaining as a minority in a Muslim state. Like Hitler, he wanted to be rid of "every last Jew." As Husseini wrote in his memoirs, "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.'"

The mufti was apparently planning to return to Palestine in the event of a German victory and to construct a death camp, modeled after Auschwitz, near Nablus. Husseini incited his pro-Nazi followers with the words "Arise, O sons of Arabia. Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor."

Not only did Husseini exhort his followers to murder the Jews; he also took an active role in trying to bring about that result. For example, in 1944, a German-Arab commando unit, under Husseini's command, parachuted into Palestine and with the intention of poisoning Tel Aviv's wells.

The wimp-ification continues. Forget that! If they try to rob me, they better be very careful not to get hit in the face with whatever is handy. Including their own weapon(s).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536061,00.html?test=latestnews

A Seattle bank teller has lost his job because he ran down a would-be bank robber and held him until police arrived.

Jim Nicholson, who worked at a Key Bank branch, says he understands the bank's policy that employees comply with robbery demands and avoid dangerous confrontations. But he tells The Seattle Times that his instincts took over when the man demanded money during the Tuesday incident.

Nicholson says he tried to grab the man, then chased him several blocks before knocking him down with help from a passer-by. The man turned out to be unarmed.

The 30-year-old Nicholson was fired Thursday. Key Bank officials declined to comment, but Seattle police and the FBI say they advise tellers against acting against robbers. Instead, police Sgt. Sean Whitcomb says, they should be good witnesses and comply with demands unless their personal safety is in jeopardy.