Heavy-Handed Politics: August 19, 2007

WHAT ABOUT SYRIA?

Dr. Jack Wheeler writes:

Last Monday (8/20), Senator Joe Lieberman came quite close, in the op-ed page of the Wall St. Journal, to publicly calling for regime change in Syria.

He couched it as calling for a boycott of Damascus Airport by international airlines as it is "the main terminal for international terror," through which flow foreign suicide bombers to be sent into Iraq and kill Iraqi civilians and American soldiers.

Privately, he wants the "terrorist regime" of Bashar al-Assad removed from power, and is in close consultation on how to do so with the only folks possessing real cajones in the Bush White House, Dick Cheney and his staff.

This is giving the Little Lord Fauntleroys in the seventh floor of the State Department the vapors. Condi has become their stooge, totally wimping out to the permanent (and permanently invertebrate) State bureaucracy. Thus she is blocking any attempt of Cheney and Lieberman's to get Bush to approve a plan for regime change in Syria.

Now it looks like they've got allies, the richest and most influential allies in all the Middle East. The Saudis have decided that the Bashar regime must go, and Cheney and Lieberman are only too happy to accept their help.

(Bold emphasis mine - HH)

RUDY'S ARMY

According to a recent Gallup poll, military veterans are backing Rudy Giuliani, making him the most popular candidate among all the presidential hopefuls. Sixty-four percent of the polled veterans saw Giuliani favorably; whilst twenty-nine percent viewed him unfavorably.

Hillary is the least popular. Those military veterans polled viewed Hillary as favorable only 37 percent of the time. Significantly, 59 percent viewed her unfavorably.

Jeff Jones, Gallup managing editor was quoted as saying: “Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who is viewed much more negatively than positively by veterans. Clinton would seem to be at a decided disadvantage among veterans, given that roughly 9 in 10 in the sample are men.”

The New York Post has the story.

Freedom's Watch to Rival MoveOn Funding

A new conservative organization called Freedom’s Watch has begun running $15 million in TV, radio, and Internet ads aimed at bolstering support in Congress for President Bush’s surge strategy in Iraq.

Conservatives have long wondered why no one has stepped forward to provide as much funding to push their issues as the left-of-center MoveOn.org operations started by George Soros. The new non-profit organization is designed to fill that void: Its funding will exceed that of entities that have been underwritten by Soros.

The No. 1 issue pushed by the new group will be protecting America. More details.

Who The Liberals Really Are
By Monica Crowley

When the Democrats tell you who they are, what they think, and what they intend to do, believe them. When they claim (with Oscar-worthy straight faces) they "support the troops," their history-- both past and recent -- betrays that vacuous claim.

Propaganda as Journalism
By Michael J. Economides

Poll turns liberalism on its head

"More bad news for liberals: Youth cite family and faith (not government or the “village”) as paramount to happiness. According to a recent Associated Press-MTV poll of young people ages 13-24, spending time with family topped the list as the greatest source of happiness. Ranking second was spending time with friends, and time with a significant other garnered third place. Additionally, nearly half of the respondents gave high marks to religion and “spirituality,” vague though the terms may be. Furthermore, belying the gloom and doom predictions spouted by the Left, a full 62 percent of respondents foresee their happiness increasing in the future.

On the losing end were sex and drugs. Even money failed to win the prize for a high happiness quotient. Naturally, these results pose a problem for the Left as its raison d’ tre is to gain support by promoting sex under the guise of reproductive education, guaranteeing monetary equality via income redistribution, and undermining the family unit through homosexual-rights crusades.

With traditional family values proving their staying power, what’s a liberal to do? As politics goes, if you can’t spin something in your favor, don’t spin it at all. In other words, expect a whole lot of silence about this poll."

Source: Patriot Post

What I’m Hearing

By John Boehner

"There’s no better way to get a beat on what Americans are thinking than to get out of Washington, DC. I’m halfway through an 11 state swing in support of House Republicans that’s taking me to 18 different Congressional Districts throughout the Midwest. So far, the questions I’m hearing most are “who will secure the borders?” “Who has a plan to reduce gas prices and make us less dependent on foreign oil?” “Who will make health care more affordable?” And “who will defend America from the threat of terrorism?” The voters I’ve met on my road trip want leaders with practical solutions to today’s problems and a commitment to securing America – but that’s not what they’re getting from the Democratic Congress."

Read on.

The Fairness Doctrine: A Brief History and Perspective

The First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This was worked out in Colonial and Revolutionary times with the correct assumption that the government would almost never be neutral.

The Fairness Doctrine Fairness Doctrine Debate Freedom of Speech has always meant… Absence of Government Control.

E Pluribus Unum

By Chuck Colson

Since 1782, the Latin phrase E pluribus unum—“out of many, one”—has appeared on the Great Seal of the United States. But what happens when we neglect and even deny the importance of the “one”—that is, cultural unity—and emphasize the importance of the “many”—that is, individuals—which, today, we call “diversity”? As a renowned social scientist learned, nothing good.

The debate on Iraq takes a turn

By Charles Krauthammer

"After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so. In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities on the ground in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both critics and supporters of the war, agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster."

Read on.

Defeatist Dems Sing Same Song, Different Key

By David Limbaugh

"The Democrats' latest ploy of shifting the goal posts to dampen Gen. Petraeus's anticipated report of military successes in Iraq by emphasizing the slow progress on the political side makes it increasingly hard to deny they are working for defeat at all costs. From Sens. Carl Levin, to Dick Durbin to Hillary Clinton, Democrats who have been on the front lines forecasting our military defeat in Iraq are now scrambling to repackage their message -- retrospectively."

Read on.

A New Cold War?

By David Aikman

During the Cold War, a common symbol of the Soviet-American stand-off was Tupolev-95 Bear reconnaissance bombers were testing the readiness of American defense radar.

Those kinds of bomber flights ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. But now they're back. Last week British Typhoon fighters intercepted a Russian Bear reconnaissance bomber in the north Atlantic approaching British airspace. It was the first such interception in a decade and a half.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has made it clear he wants to make Russia number one in the construction of military hardware. He's already pumped billions of roubles from Russia's new oil wealth into his military and showed off his new military technology at air-shows.

Unfortunately, it seems the Cold War is back.

Global warming in the '20s

"Before Gore D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: 'Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.'

The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention 'great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones,' and 'at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.' "

By John McCaslin

Deadly Environmentalists

"Environmentalists, with the help of politicians and other government officials, have an agenda that has cost thousands of American lives. In the wake of Hurricane Betsy, which struck New Orleans in 1965, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed building flood gates on Lake Pontchartrain, like those in the Netherlands that protect cities from North Sea storms. In 1977, the gates were about to be built, but the Environmental Defense Fund and Save Our Wetlands sought a court injunction to block the project."

By Walter E. Williams

How Venezuelans View Hugo Chavez and America

"Contrary to what Americans hear constantly from the media, Venezuelans have a poor opinion of their president, Hugo Chavez, and a positive opinion of Americans and the United States.

As a senior Venezuelan currently living in the U.S. while keeping up-to-date with Venezuelan affairs (I am also a former member of the Venezuelan congress), I have come to accept that Venezuela generally merits little attention from U.S. society, except in three or four areas: baseball players, beautiful women, oil and the antics of Hugo Chavez."

Read more at HUMAN EVENTS.

Shell game: The greens try to sue their way to an energy policy.

1,964 Missiles Fired From Gaza in Last Two Years
Jerusalem – The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, is still operating in Hamas-controlled Gaza. On Wednesday, the group claimed responsibility for firing mortars into Israel...

“Aides are always there to cut their roast beef, butter their bread, button their overcoats, knot their ties, polish their shoes, and, in the case of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, touch up eye shadow, lip gloss and moisturizer.”

—Wesley Pruden

“Most of the disciples of global warming are liberal Democrats who never have enough of our money and believe there are never enough regulations concerning the way we lead our lives. That ought to be enough to give everyone pause, along with emerging evidence that the global warming jihadists may be more full of hot air than the climate they claim is about to burn us up.”

—Cal Thomas

“Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don’t hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous.”

-- Will Rogers --

A New Home for DDT

Op-Ed
By DONALD ROBERTS

New York Times

Bethesda, Md.

DDT, the miracle insecticide turned environmental bogeyman, is once again playing an important role in public health. In the malaria-plagued regions of Africa, where mosquitoes are becoming resistant to other chemicals, DDT is now being used as an indoor repellent. Research that I and my colleagues recently conducted shows that DDT is the most effective pesticide for spraying on walls, because it can keep mosquitoes from even entering the room. Read more.

Politics and the Precariousness of Reality

By David Strom

"There is a growing idea that Government can shield us from all ills, regardless of their source, as long as enough resources are poured into bureaucracies dedicated to shielding us from the contingencies of daily life. If we only pay enough in taxes, life can be safe. Reality proves this thesis as not just wrong, but pernicious. Two weeks after the bridge collapse here in Minnesota, another, much larger-scale tragedy has ..... " Read more.

Goldilocks and the Three Dems

By Jon Sanders

"John Edwards, fresh from admitting he didn't know Cuba's healthcare system was government-run, was featured in an Aug. 19 interview by Liz Halloran in U.S. News & World Report. Among other questions, Halloran asked Edwards if his campaign had moved from an emotional appeal to a 'more cerebral, issues-oriented approach.' Edwards' response: 'I think it's the opposite. I think what you're seeing from me now is coming, all of it, from here [touches heart].' Yes, the parenthetical 'touches heart' is in the story. Yes, Edwards used the stereotypically sappy 'touch the heart' gesture in an interview – for print, where whatever emotional tug it could have had would be lost."

Pogo Stick Politics

By Emmett Tyrrell

"For longer than three decades now, thoughtful Americans have lived in wonder at the enduring spectacle of the environmentalist. How, these thoughtful Americans ask, can a group of people continue to fetch the attention of the nation after being so thunderously in error year after year? 'The end is nigh,' our environmental Jeremiahs have told us over and again. Yet over and again, when nigh arrives, it generally arrives very decorously and passes uneventfully. Does the environmentalist's failed prophecy send him off into history's dustbin along with other failed prophets such as the Shakers (officially known as the Millennial Church), the nudists (there have been various denominations) or the grumpy members of the Communist Party of the United States? Not at all. The environmentalist merely sets another date for our ecological doom and returns to his soapbox."

Read on.

Losing is winning

By Cal Thomas

George Orwell, call your office. You can add to your list of opposites ("war is peace," "ignorance is strength" and "freedom is slavery") a new one. It is the emerging plan of congressional Democrats, joined by at least one Democratic presidential candidate: "losing is winning."

After years of embracing defeat and openly saying of Iraq "the war is lost" and "this surge is not accomplishing anything" (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, among others), is that a light at the end of the Democrats' dark tunnel?

Is America ready to be a superpower?

By William Rusher

In one sense, of course, there is no doubt about it: America is a superpower. In relative terms, the only superpower in the world. Our armed forces dominate the globe. And, in purely economic terms, our power is equally overwhelming.

But I increasingly find myself wondering whether the United States is indeed a superpower in the fullest sense of that word. For one thing (and it is an extremely important thing), in order to be an authentic superpower a nation must want to be one. And there is, it seems to me, increasing evidence that this country, or at least an important segment of its population, simply doesn't want it to be one.

Read on.

"Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions
for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the
structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is
essential that public opinion should be enlightened. "

-- George Washington --

"Shoot to Kill"

By Albert Mohler

The Iron Curtain fell almost two decades ago. Many Americans do not even remember the horrors of the communist regime of East Germany and the human atrocity known as the Berlin Wall.

Do we remember that the communist East German government ordered its police to shoot those who were guilty of nothing more than trying to escape communist tyranny?

In recent years, apologists for European communism have tried to deny that such "shoot to kill" orders even existed. But just within the past few weeks a 1973 order for the Stasi--the East German secret police--has come to light. The order calls upon the police to "stop or liquidate" those trying to escape, and includes these chilling words:

"Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which the traitors have often used to their advantage."

Not only did the "shoot to kill" order exist--it was worse than we even thought. So much for rehabilitating communism.

Global Warming: No Urgent Danger; No Quick Fix
Cato Institute

New NASA Temperature Data Yet Another Reason to Re-Assess Global Warming Scare
In a special column for BMI, climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball explains that faulty data abounds in the foundational arguments of climate change zealots.

Networks Still Get High on Gas
Gas prices have been dropping since May 25 – before Memorial Day – but broadcasters keep bemoaning rising prices. BMI noticed this trend last year and it continues this summer. According to the networks, prices are still “skyrocketing,” “soaring” and “painfully high.”

Rove Attacks Hillary Health Care Record

"Hillary Clinton voted against providing seniors with a prescription drug benefit. 'Hillary Clinton voted against allowing people to save tax free for their out-of-pocket medical expenses. 'Hillary Clinton voted against medical liability reform so that docs are not forced out of practice by junk lawsuits.

'She opposes leveling the playing field so that people who pay for health insurance out of their own pocket get the same tax break the big corporations get for providing health care benefits to their employees. 'She’s against allowing people to shop for health insurance across state lines like we do with auto insurance so the consumers would have more choices and there’d be competition to get your business, give you more for less." More.

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong."
-- Ronald Reagan --

Congress Is Destroying America's Schools
By Alan Caruba

If you want to witness the most blatantly un-Constitutional and un-American laws at work than just take a walk through your local schools. They are currently under the control of the federal government. Why any town or city bothers to hold an election for members of the local board of education is a mystery to me. Between the U.S. Department of Education and a union, the National Education Association -- masquerading as just a group of concerned teachers -- local boards have no real power to reverse the subjugation and destruction of the nation's education system...

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose."
- Ronald Reagan -

Legislative Tidbits

(1) Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) plans to introduce legislation to tighten requirements for transportation earmarks—bike paths, museums, parking lots and beautification projects would no longer be covered by these funds.

(2) All 202 members of the House Republican Conference have co-sponsored the Broadcaster Freedom Act (H.R. 2905), a bill that prohibits the resurrection of the misleadingly named “Fairness Doctrine.”

(3) Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, plans to propose an increase in the federal gas tax from 18.4 cents per gallon to 23.4 cents. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will see Oberstar’s five-cent increase and raise him by 49 cents for a 72 cents-per-gallon tax—50 cents of which would be in direct federal taxes, with a separate carbon-emissions tax adding an additional 22 cents. That should bring prices down.

From The Patriot Post

“The world meat industry produces 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, more than transportation produces. A gallon of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream requires electricity guzzling refrigeration, and four gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks.”

—George Will

NOT SO HOT AFTERALL (RELATIVELY SPEAKING)

“Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA’s Web site and look at the ‘U.S. surface air temperature’ rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed. Then again, you might not. They’re not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The ‘hottest year on record’ is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century—2000, 2002, 2003, 2004—plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America’s Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone’s ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have a word to say about it. And yet we survived.”

—Mark Steyn

CLOUDS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

“There’s a reason why one should be extremely wary of the computer models that are cited by the endless doomsday predictions of Al Gore, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, and all the other advocates of ‘global warming.’ The reason is clouds. Computer models simply cannot provide for the constant variability of clouds, so they ignore them. In a July issue of The Economist an article called ‘Grey-Sky thinking’ was subtitled, ‘Without understanding clouds, understanding the climate is hard. And clouds are the least understood part of the atmosphere.’ Since the increasingly rabid claims of Earth’s destruction from rising temperatures depend on computer modeling, how can they be regarded as accurate if they must largely exempt or deliberately manipulate the impact of clouds? How can you make predictions, whether it’s a week or a decade from now, if you haven’t a clue why clouds do what they do?”

-Alan Caruba

“There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”
-- James Madison --

The Left's Rovian Hate-Obsession

By David Limbaugh

"Those decriers of 'hate' on the left just can't imbibe enough hatred for Karl Rove to quench their 'tolerant' and 'compassionate' appetites. What drives them to this persistent state of unmitigated and unforgiving rage? I'll tell you what it's not. It's not that he's an unfriendly, hateful, uncompassionate, unlikable ogre -- because he is .... "

WHY I FOUGHT FOR TWO BOYS I NEVER MET

By Dennis Prager

At Patton Middle School in McMinnville, Oregon, students created something called "slap butt day." On one such day in February 2007, according to The Oregonian (July 22, 2007): "Two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting. But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them."

A police officer interrogated them?

"After hours of interviews with students," The Oregonian continues, "the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days."

Two seventh-graders were read their Miranda rights for butt-swatting?

And hauled off to jail for butt-swatting?

And kept in jail for five days for butt-swatting?

This is worse than a bad joke; it is actually sick.

And it gets worse. The seventh-graders were not ..... "

COMPUTER ISSUES

I have been struggling with computer issues for the last few days. Last Wednesday evening and Thursday I started having internet connectivity problems. Trying to determine if it was a cable company problem (I have Comcast Cable), a modem problem, or a router problem, I decided, what the hell, I might as well add some long overdue RAM memory.

I eliminated a faulty router possibility and decided to go with a new modem. I seemed to be having problems off and on with my modem recently anyway, so again I decided what the hell - it's only money. Heh.

Having installed that, I called Comcast with the new modem info so they can do whatever it is they do on their end to make the new modem functional. Sooooooooo, I was back online. But I was not happy with my computers speed and efficiency. That too has been a problem for awhile and seemed to be getting worse - you know - slower.

I faithfully run anti-spyware and antivirus and have firewall software, along with the router of course having its' own firewall. I was not picking up any spyware or viruses from my scans.

I finally tried AVG anti-root kit (not their spyware software, and not their virus software). It is free, and is designed to look for rootkits .

It found 48 little buggers. Who knows how long I have had them. I have had my router only for a couple of months, so I may have had these little nastys (or most of them) prior to setting up the router and its firewall.

But you cannot assume that all these hidden files the anti root-kit found are illegitimate, so then the research on the internet begins to try and identify them as legit -- or not.

I also had to uninstall and then re-install Firefox browser as it became quite lame throughout this whole process - perhaps I got rid of a file that I should not have -- I don't know. But so far so good, at least for now.

A pox to all of you evil morons out there who design these computer bugs.

An Investment in Failure

By Thomas Sowell

"It is not just in Iraq that the political left has an investment in failure. Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise. The old advertising slogan, 'Progress is our most important product,' has never applied to the left. Whether it is successful black schools in the United States or Third World countries where millions of people have been rising out of poverty in recent years, the left has shown little interest.

Progress in general seems to .... "

Education or Indoctrination: Inquiring Minds Want to Know

"Abraham Lincoln once famously observed, 'The philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.' The truth of Lincoln's observation is, no doubt, at the core of the apprehensions that New Yorkers have expressed about the Khalil Gibran International Academy scheduled to open next month in Brooklyn. Adding to their apprehensions is the fact that KGIA is just three blocks from a mosque which has a history of employing radical imams and which was frequented by one of the terrorists implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing." More of Ken Connor.

Being Mike Huckabee

"Whose yardstick do you use to measure the impact of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s second-place showing in the Iowa Straw Poll?" Read more by Salena Zito.

Tough On Foreign Soil, Weak And Wimpy At Home

"Did you hear the big, new developments with our government’s efforts to curb illegal immigration? Probably not. The details got lost in the shuffle, like a lot of other important information emanating from Washington these days." Read more of Austin Hill.

The EU: A Mini UN

EU urges Texas to halt executions before 400 mark

"BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union urged the governor of Texas on Tuesday to halt all executions before the U.S. state carries out its 400th death sentence since reinstatement of the penalty in 1976."

An Interesting Violation of the Sacred Separation of Church and State. No?

Ministry Sues to Keep Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Out of Its Facility
(CNSNews.com) - A Methodist group that refuses to let homosexuals hold civil union ceremonies at one of its retreat facilities is suing New Jersey officials to prevent the state from forcing the church to violate its religious beliefs...

Brussels: What ails it?

Mayor Rejects Anti-Shari’a Rally But Says Yes to 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists
The socialist mayor of Brussels is trying to block a rally against the “islamization” of Europe from taking place on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, but he has given the go-ahead for another demonstration in the city -- by left-wing 9/11 conspiracy theorists...

NAU - The Ultimate Answer to All The World's Ills

Leading Conservatives Denounce Bush on ‘North American Union’
Ottawa, Ontario - President Bush is meeting with other world leaders in Canada this week to establish, in part, a “New World Order” that subverts national sovereignty, according to some leading American conservatives who have taken a hard stance against the president over the Security and Prosperity Partnership...

Here Piggy, Piggy, Piggy

Report Finds ‘Pork’ in Homeland Security Grants
The 9/11 Commission Report warned that when handing out homeland security grants, “Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel.” But an analysis of the grants going to state and local governments suggests that some of them are pork barrel projects...

Illegally Entering The Country vs. Being In The Country Illegally: A Worthy Legal Distinction?

Illegal Presence in US Not Necessarily A Crime, Court Says
If you can get past the border guards and into the United States, you’re no longer violating the law, according to a Kansas Court of Appeals decision. A three-judge panel threw out an illegal immigrant's jail sentence, based on an apparent contradiction in U.S. law: While it is illegal to enter the country without the proper documents and permissions, it is not necessarily illegal to be in the country...

TAXES DIVERTED FOR PAROCHIAL ENDS

Of Bridges and Taxes
Opinion Journal

"A study in the politics of transportation spending. Saturday, August 18, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT Some things in politics seem to be inevitable--and one of them is that any road or bridge tragedy will be followed by an argument to raise the gasoline tax. That's what is now happening in the wake of the terrible Minnesota bridge collapse, but that state's transportation and tax record shows precisely why voters are skeptical.

The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.

As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That's the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems." Read on....

NOBODY WILL ELECT ME

Bloomberg: I Can't Win White House

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg said - again - that he's not running for president, adding in a television interview that he wouldn't win anyway."

REACHING INTO THE AFTERLIFE

China Bans Reincarnation

"The Chinese Communist dictatorship has now reached into the afterlife – authorities have banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission."

SATURDAY MATINEE

My wife and I and HH Jr. went to see a matinee on Saturday. We decided to go for the action adventure, and The Bourne Ultimatum was the movie of choice.

As expected, it had a lot of action. And, it did not take long for it to kick into gear. Also as expected, it was way over the top in "the believability factor." Multiple punches, kicks, and falls could not slow these cyborg-type fighters down. Multiple smashes and crashes while driving the same vehicle the whole time (how is it that these vehicles can keep on running without any loss of power, no smoking, or anti freeze leakage?) did little damage to the drivers . Oh well. It was not unexpected. It served the purpose for those looking for action.

By Star Parker
Fred Thompson's rope-a-dope

It's said that in life, timing is everything. And it could be that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson's entry into the 2008 presidential race, expected in early September, will prove to be timed perfectly.

By Burt Prelutsky
The Left is Brain-dead

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make sense of the world. Which is probably all the proof anyone needs to prove that I'm certifiably loony. Even though I know that one of the most obvious symptoms of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again in the foolish belief that the end result will be different this time, I can't help myself.

"It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils whichare not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other."

-- Thomas Jefferson--

OUTING THE ATHEISTS

By Albert Mohler

Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins, probably the best-known atheist of our times, is launching a campaign to call atheists "out of the closet," so to speak. Even as his book, "The God Delusion," continues as a best-seller, he wants to mobilize the unbelieving community for greater influence and action.

"Our choir is large, but much of it remains in the closet," he says. Dawkins' idea is simple: get the atheists to "out" themselves to the public--to come out of the closet. He makes clear that he does not intend to out persons against their wills, but he calls them to identify themselves as unbelievers. He asks unbelievers to declare their atheism on T-shirts and bumper stickers.

Professor Dawkins may be right--his "choir" may be larger than many people recognize or are willing to admit. But are they ready to "out" themselves?

Truth is not determined by numbers, but influence often is. We'll keep an eye on the OUT campaign.