Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.

-- George Washington --

It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

-- Thomas Jefferson --

Eco-theology

“The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ On this Earth Day, and every day, let us honor the earth and our future generations with a commitment to fight climate change.” Or so said Nancy Pelosi in her Earth Day news release.

The trouble is, the Bible doesn’t tell us that. Neither the quote nor a close paraphrase can be found in Scripture—Old or New Testaments. This isn’t the first time Pelosi has peddled her eco-theology either. December 2005 and February, April and October 2007 all found her using the same “quote” supposedly from the book of Isaiah. Her principle of putting the earth above Man, for whom the world was made, is a bit backwards to begin with. Not to mention a lie. We suspect Pelosi is reading the AAGV Bible—the Albert Arnold Gore Version.

- The Patriot Post

Around the nation: Alabama’s ‘Big Oil’ tax

"When Alabama’s legislature completed next year’s budget, they weren’t counting on having to refund $63 million in overpaid taxes to offshore oil companies. A recent court ruling, however, has compelled Alabama’s politicos to get that money back. Solution: a punitive tax hike of $200 million over six years on energy companies. That’ll teach those nasty oil companies to win a lawsuit. Gov. Bob Riley went so far as to accuse opponents of the tax hike of “lining the pockets of big oil companies.” Believe it or not, Riley and his fellow pickpockets are Republicans.

As we have noted before, in the end, it will not be the big, bad oil companies paying the taxes, but consumers at the gas pump. Furthermore, Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union writes, “A study by economists Robert J. Shapiro and Nam D. Pham found that 98.5% of oil company stock is owned by some combination of individual investors and managed investment vehicles, like mutual and pension funds. Only 1.5% is owned by oil company insiders such as board members. Any attempt to target a tax hike, even toward politically convenient oil companies, will ultimately mean a one-two punch to middle-class pocketbooks already softened up by a slowing economy.” If this keeps up, residents of “Sweet Home Alabama” may even become bitter and begin clinging to their guns and religion."

-Patriot Post

Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries

Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels
NY Sun

Catastrophic Nuclear Terrorism 'Inevitable,' Says Expert

If a major metropolitan area suffers a nuclear attack, the consequent catastrophe would overwhelm America's ability to respond, various experts have said. Clifford May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative group, said, "America would survive as a nation, but it would never again be the same."

Libya’s Conduct in UN Security Council Makes Waves

Four months after Libya assumed a seat on the U.N. Security Council, the Libyan deputy envoy compared Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis -- sparking a walkout by several ambassadors. The envoy, Ibrahim Dabbashi went a step further Thursday, telling reporters that Israel's policies were in fact “worse” than those of the Nazis in their concentration camps...

Black Pro-Lifers Protest Planned Parenthood, Criticize Obama

Washington - A group of black pro-lifers joined a protest outside a Planned Parenthood clinic here on Thursday, calling for an end to federal funding of the abortion provider and expressing opposition to Sen. Barack Obama's pro-abortion stance...

It finally occurred to me why dogs are considered mans' best friend.

This quote from Dave Barry made everything click:

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!' "

“The liberal world order will not let go of their global-warming assault on free economies until hell freezes over—by which point, obviously, the global-warming theory will be visibly disproven.”

-- Tony Blankley --

Chicago's Misfire on Gun Violence
By Steve Chapman

As Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck notes, most criminals arm themselves by stealing guns or buying guns stolen by someone else. So new restrictions don't make much difference to them. The federal ban was a classic illustration of how gun control works. Law-abiding people who rarely misuse their guns were deprived of options. Ex-cons went on as before.

A New Environmentalism
By Victor Davis Hanson

About Obama's friends, wisdom, courage, and judgement

"John McCain is a good man. He's an American hero. We honor his service to the nation. But he's made some bad decisions about the company he keeps."

Heh. This statement is from Barack Obama, of all people. He made this statement back in February, before the Rev. Jeremiah Wright dust-up.

Incidentally, I heard a sound bite awhile back in the recent past, in which Barack said Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been his mentor for [a number of] years.

More recently, I heard it being reported that Obama claims not to have said that. Sorry Barack, but I heard you say it ... in your own voice .. on tape.

I will trust my own ears, before I trust your memory (or lack thereof) ... or the spin of a typical politician.

Furthermore, a second source ( a supporter of yours, no less) claims you wrote in a letter dated February 5, 2007 that for 20 years, Rev. Wright has been a " friend, mentor and pastor.

"In that letter, the senator wrote "I constantly remember Rev. Wright as the shepherd who guided me to my commitment to Christ one Sunday morning at Trinity. I often consider, as I work in the Senate how he lives his lifea life of service to Trinity, Chicago and the nation; his activism on behalf of causes that few would champion and his dogged commitment to the first principles of love for God and fellow man. And in my personal walk, I seek daily to imitate his faith."

(Hat tip to Bob McCarty Writes)

Spin, spin, spin. Kinda' makes you dizzy.

Anyway, forgive me for I have digressed a bit. Guy Benson comments on Barack's quip on the company McCain keeps:

This magnanimous pronouncement from Barack Obama in February sounded noble at the time it was uttered. The country should reject Senator McCain not because of his biography, he argued, but because of his questionable associations—many of whom are wicked right-wingers like President Bush. With his remark, Obama unwittingly constructed a new standard of judgment that can, and should, be used against him mercilessly in the general election. An alarmingly large portion of the company Obama keeps seems to be a ragtag posse of unreformed leftists, race baiters, and blame-America-first polemicists. Although none of these individual associations will singlehandedly derail his candidacy, when considered in the aggregate, they will give many Americans reason to pause before pulling the lever for the unvetted freshman senator.

His last point is also a good one, and one that I have subscribed to all along; and that is, that all his friendships with these very questionable characters and the things he (or his wife, Michelle) have said in public in which they then had to go into spin control to minimize damage could, individually, be explained away to the satisfaction of many.

But when viewed together in totality becomes much more than I, and I suspect to many, can ignore and explain away as being a harmless mistake or misunderstanding.

Make no doubt about it. You are judged by the company you keep. This was drummed into my skull full of mush by my mother when I was a young lad growing up.

Hugh Hewitt has a good summation of Barack Obama and his friends in his recent column, "Some of My Best Friends Are Liberals. None of Them Are Terrorists."

If Barack Obama did not see the problem in befriending and accepting the support of Ayers and Dohrn --and he didn’t—and if Obama really thinks Senator Tom Coburn can fairly be compared with Ayers and Dohrn –and he did make that comparison-- then Senator Obama lacks the judgment necessary to be president.

If he understood what this rhetoric meant, then he lacked the courage to separate himself from the extremism from which it emanated.

Go read it all.

Over at Powerline, they have posted on their column, "The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2" many audio clips of Willie Ayres and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, both former members of the terrorist group from the 1970's, the Weather Underground. They consist of both old and recent audio clips.

John Hinderaker at Poweline writes:

In The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1 I reviewed Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who helped to kick off Obama's first political campaign and with whom Obama's campaign says he has a "friendly" relationship. Ayers and Dohrn were domestic terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, and they are as radical now as they ever were, as evidenced by their own words. Obama emerged from the far-left fringe of Chicago politics, and his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn, like his relationship with spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, raises important questions about Obama's own political beliefs.

He concludes in part 2:

Does Barack Obama really consider these views to be "respectable" and "mainstream," as his web site indicates? If so, what does that tell us about Barack Obama and the hard-left milieu from which he emerged? Likewise, what are we to make of Obama's suggestion that Jeremiah ("God damn America") Wright's church is "not particularly controversial"? A politician can't pick his relatives, but he can choose his spiritual mentor and those who host fundraisers on his behalf. Barack Obama owes the American people an explanation of his choice of friends and political associates.

Go read parts 1 and 2 and listen to the audio clips. Many questions remain in my mind.

You mean it's not living, breathing, and malleable?

“The Constitution is a written instrument. As such it’s meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.” —United States Supreme Court, South Carolina vs. United States, 1905

Never seen this one coming, eh Jimmy?

“The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria, the problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet these people... So I told [Hamas] don’t wait for reciprocation, just do it unilaterally. This will bring a lot of credit to you around the world for doing a humane thing. They turned me down.”

—Jimmy Carter

Fox News:
Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age, Says Scientist

Washington Times:
Democratic prizefight might knock out party

USA Today:
Clinton's Pa. win highlights an Obama vulnerability

ABC News:
PA exit polls: Whites, blue-collar voters, gun owners choose Clinton

Fox News/AP:
Homeland Security Scraps Virtual Fence Along Arizona-Mexico Border

Parents Urged to Stage 'Day of Silence Walkout'

By Melanie Hunter-Omar

(CNSNews.com) - A pro-family group is urging parents to keep their kids home from school on Friday to protest the so-called "Day of Silence," organized by homosexual activists during which some students and faculty members remain mute to "protest the oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth."

The "Day of Silence" is organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) described by one pro-family group as "one of the most militant and well-funded of the powerful homosexual pressure groups.

I posted earlier, here, about the "Day of Silence."

Anarchists Prepare to Crash 2008 GOP Convention
Self-described anarchists and “anti-authoritarians” are planning to “shut down” the Republican National Convention, which will take place in St. Paul, Minn., on Sept. 1-4. Mindful of the upcoming protests, the city’s police force said it will quintuple its numbers to deter possible aggressive action by the activists...

Chinese Supply of Weapons to Zimbabwe Blocked
– A small arms-laden cargo ship making its way around the southern tip of Africa after several countries refused it permission to dock has become a symbol of China’s willingness to arm some of Africa’s most questionable regimes...

Dang, those religious "clingers"

They put their bibles down just long enough to go to the polls and NOT pull the lever for Obama:

Pennsylvania Church-Goers Turn Their Backs on Obama
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-Ill.) soundly defeated Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) among church-going voters in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania presidential primary, exposing a potential weakness in the Democratic frontrunner among northern church-going voters, particularly Catholics, who have been a key swing vote in recent presidential elections...

Arab-Muslim Anti-Semitism Threatens Peace Process, Report Says
Jerusalem – Growing Arab and Islamic anti-Semitism is posing a strategic threat to Israel by threatening the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and encouraging and justifying terrorism, according to report released this week. “It contradicts the peace process. It encourages and justifies terrorism [and] is a tool in the policy of Iran, which became an anti-Semitism-sponsoring state,” one analyst said...

Both Bad and Good in Bush's Climate Change Speech
The Heritage Foundation

Networks Ignore Government's Role in Ethanol-Driven Global Food Crisis

"Food inflation. Rioting. Shortages. The world is feeling the effects of U.S. ethanol mandates, while Democratic presidential candidates advocate even more biofuels. It wasn’t that long ago the media were hailing ethanol as ‘the wave of the future.’ "

Read more at The Balance Sheet.

I FIND THIS DESPICABLE

Time magazine's "Earth Day" issue.

Why does college cost so much?

"Those who want the government to provide subsidies to help meet the high cost of college seem not to consider whether government subsidies might have contributed to the high cost of college in the first place.

In any kind of economic transaction, it seldom makes sense to charge prices so high that very few people can afford to pay them. But, with the government ready to step in and help whenever tuition is "unaffordable," why not charge more than the traffic will bear and bring in Uncle Sam to make up the difference?" -- Thomas Sowell

Read more.

Politics and Black Americans
By Walter E. Williams

Thomas Sowell recently pointed out that it is a losing strategy to reach blacks through the civil rights organizations and black politicians. (Continue....)

Rising Euro-Muslim Tensions
By Tony Blankley

Perhaps the greatest secular gift to the world by Judeo-Christian civilization is its seminal concept of the individual, which it raises above the tribe or the collective. (Read More)

The Democrats' Jimmy Carter Problem
By Michelle Malkin

So much for Jimmy Carter's triumphal peace mission in the Middle East. Like everything else he has done on foreign policy, the world's biggest tool for jihad propaganda created yet another bloody mess.

What part of "Don't meet with the Jew-hating killers, you idiot!" didn't Carter understand?

Article 13 of the Hamas charter is also as clear as day: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

(Continue reading)

Too Nice to Win: Will Obama's 'New' Politics Survive a Old Game?
By Mary Katharine Ham

Despite his protestations that he's not running "to play the game better, but to stop the game-playing," it's standard fare, very, very old politics, and the voters of Pennsylvania and media alike are noticing. (Continue reading)

Faith, Democrats, and Double Standards
By Michael Medved

The Democratic Presidential candidates recently celebrated the Lord's Day by participating in a "Compassion Summit" at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. (Continue reading)

From the Washington Policy Center:
April 22

"Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet.

Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975."

Here's one prediction: “By 1985...air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half” – Life magazine, January 1970

Here is a bunch more they compiled:

• “...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

• The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.

• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

The dustbin of history is littered with remains of those countries that relied on diplomacy to secure their freedom. We must never forget...in the final analysis...that it is our military, industrial and economic strength that offers the best guarantee of peace for America in times of danger.

-- Ronald Reagan --

Individual liberty depends upon keeping government under control.

-- Ronald Reagan --

Abstinence Education: Assessing the Evidence
Heritage Foundation

Studies have shown that abstinent teens report, on average, better psychological well-being and higher academic achievement than those who are sexually active.[4] Delaying the initiation of or reducing early sexual activity among teens can decrease their overall exposure to risks of unwed childbearing, STDs, and psycho-emotional harm. Authentic abstinence programs are therefore crucial to efforts aimed at reducing unwed childbearing and improving youth well-being.

Opponents of abstinence education contend that these programs fail to influence teen sexual behav­ior. At this stage, the available evidence supports neither this assessment nor the wholesale dismissal of authentic abstinence education programs. (Continue Reading)

Group on US Terror List Heading for Power in Nepal
(CNSNews.com) - A communist group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization for activities including murder, torture and assassinations, is edging towards taking power in Nepal...

Recent historical background from the CIA:
"In 1951, the Nepalese monarch ended the century-old system of rule by hereditary premiers and instituted a cabinet system of government. Reforms in 1990 established a multiparty democracy within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. A Maoist insurgency, launched in 1996, gained traction and threatened to bring down the regime, especially after a negotiated cease-fire between the Maoists and government forces broke down in August 2003. In 2001, the crown prince massacred ten members of the royal family, including the king and queen, and then took his own life. In October 2002, the new king dismissed the prime minister and his cabinet for "incompetence" after they dissolved the parliament and were subsequently unable to hold elections because of the ongoing insurgency. While stopping short of reestablishing parliament, the king in June 2004 reinstated the most recently elected prime minister who formed a four-party coalition government. Citing dissatisfaction with the government's lack of progress in addressing the Maoist insurgency and corruption, the king in February 2005 dissolved the government, declared a state of emergency, imprisoned party leaders, and assumed power. The king's government subsequently released party leaders and officially ended the state of emergency in May 2005, but the monarch retained absolute power until April 2006. After nearly three weeks of mass protests organized by the seven-party opposition and the Maoists, the king allowed parliament to reconvene in April 2006. Following a November 2006 peace accord between the government and the Maoists, an interim constitution was promulgated and the Maoists were allowed to enter parliament in January 2007. The peace accord calls for the creation of a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution. The Constituent Assembly elections, already twice delayed, are set for April 2008."

Related News:

FPTP counting over, Maoists win 120 out of 240 seats
The counting for the votes under the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) has been completed

No change yet in Maoists' status as terrorist outfit: US official
A senior US official has said that there has been no change yet in the status of Maoists as a terrorist outfit despite their ...

Time Fights Carbon Emissions; Military Fights Evil
By Dennis Prager

The state of the liberal mind is on display on this week's cover of Time magazine. (Read more)

The Opportunity Cost Principle - Economics 101 Review

"The inadequacy of resources to produce everything that everyone wants is the fundamental fact of life in every economy -- capitalist, socialist or feudal. This means that the real cost of anything consists of all the other things that could have been produced with those same resources.

Building a bridge means using up resources that could have been used building homes or a hospital. Going to college means using up vast amounts of resources that could be used for all sorts of other things.

Prices force people to economize. Subsidizing prices enables people to take more resources away from other uses without having to weigh the real cost.

Without market prices that convey the real costs of resources denied to alternative users, people waste.

That was the basic reason why Soviet industries used more electricity than American industries to produce a smaller output than American industries produced. That is why they used more steel and cement to produce less than Japan or Germany produced when making things that required steel and cement."

-- Thomas Sowell

Don't you mean global warming?

Boston Globe:
Warm Weather Linked to Spate of Violence in Boston, Chicago

Obama Deplores Clinton's Attacks but Uses Same Tactics
Boston Globe

Obama Wrong to Compare Terrorist to Coburn, McCain Says

In a interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week" presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain said Sen. Barack Obama's association with Weather Underground member William Ayers and his comparison of Ayers to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) "borders on outrage."

Immigration Is Bad for the Environment, Group Says
Unless the government does something about the ever-increasing levels of immigration, Americans will face worsening environmental conditions, dwindling resources, and greater dependence on foreign energy sources, said an immigration reform group in an Earth Day news release...

A team of wild horses couldn't drag me there.....

Al Gore’s Climate Advocacy Now Playing in Movie Theaters
Organizations spearheaded by former Vice President Al Gore have launched an advertising campaign in movie theaters to inform audiences of the measures they can take in their everyday lives to mitigate the “climate crisis.”

House Speaker Invokes God and Bible in Earth Day Declaration
(CNSNews.com) - Some critics say global warming is a form of religion for liberal environmental activists. Indeed, in her official statement on Earth Day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted from the Bible...

MORE TROUBLE FOR BARACK OBAMA ?

Jeremiah Wright on estrogen

Last Friday in this column I reported on a brewing scandal that would be front-page news on the New York Times if the developments had concerned anyone other than their hero: Barack Hussein Obama.

Instead, the new media was left to pick up and disseminate how one of Barack Obama's presidential campaign bundlers is Jodie Evans  a political ally to Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, and an advocate for Islamic militants.

The story was also..... (read on)

SPENDING AMENDMENT

Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a great conservative from the state of Minnesota - the state of 10,000 taxes - is shown here at a press conference where she announces a constitutional amendment - which she is co-sponsoring.

The goal is of course to curb spending and eliminate wasteful government spending. No small task, indeed; but a worthy goal, nontheless.

In a nut-shell, the amendment would make certain that the growth in government spending would not outpace the growth of our economy.

Boycott the April "DAY of SILENCE"

From Mission:America

This pro-homosexual day communicates clear (and false) messages to ALL students in the school that: homosexuality is a worthy lifestyle; that it has few or no risks; that some people are "born" homosexual, including students; and that those who oppose this behavior are hateful and uninformed.

We do NOT agree. The Day of Silence is, sadly, a day of deception.

To read more and see the list of schools we believe will be participating in the April 2008 "Day of silence," go here.

Dinesh D'Souza:
Atheism Masquerading As Science

The problem with evolution is not that it is unscientific but that it is routinely taught in textbooks and in the classroom in an atheist way.

Debra J. Saunders:
Soak the Very, Very, Very Rich

Call it the new American idealism. Ask not what you can do for your country. Make someone else pay for it.

Dinesh D'Souza:
Ben Stein Exposes Richard Dawkins

In Ben Stein's new film "Expelled," there is a great scene where Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything.

A papal message about academic freedom

Star Parker says: I know firsthand their left-leaning bent and what a conservative has to deal with walking into the belly of the liberal beast.

Bittergate

By Michael Medved

At a recent fundraiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama spoke to the well-heeled crowd in condescending terms about working class Americans. He said: "So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Does the Senator really believe that religion is something people "cling to" with bitterness, or is it something they embrace in joy? Are guns an irrational obsession based on bitterness, or a reasonable and constitutionally protected means of protecting a family? And is "anti-trade sentiment" merely a quirk of bitter blue collar workers, or a sentiment that Obama himself actually shares?

For all his polish when reading a carefully scripted speech, Obama can sound awkward and clumsy when speaking off the cuff. His political skills are looking less formidable than his adoring media fans suggest.

(Emphasis mine-HH)

I would say it appears Barack and his congregational brothers and sisters, along with Pastor Wright, might fit into this description of clinging to religion out of bitterness.

Could this be a case of projection?

HILLARY'S TERRORIST TIES

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

In this week’s debate, Hillary Clinton said all of her “baggage” has been “rummaged through” for years. But important features of her close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters are still opaque to the public view.

Her relationship with terrorists began in the mid-1980s when she served on the Board of the New World Foundation, which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a time when the PLO was officially recognized by the US government as a terrorist organization.

In 1996, the First Lady initiated an outreach program to bring Muslim leaders to the White House. But, as terrorism expert Steve Emerson noted in the Wall Street Journal “Curiously, nearly all of the leaders with whom Mrs. Clinton elected to meet came from Islamic fundamentalist organizations. A review of the statements, publications, and conferences of the groups Mrs. Clinton embraced shows unambiguously that they have long advocated or justified violence. By meeting with these groups, the first lady lent them legitimacy as ‘mainstream’ and ‘moderate.’”

Among these radical groups was the ... (Read more)

Parents tip cops to teen's alleged bombing plans
Los Angeles Daily News

Will McCain (like Bush) Fall Into the PC Trap?

Muslims press McCain on 'Islamic' terror label
Washington Times:

McCain Questions Obama Remark Comparing '60s Radical, Lawmaker

washingtonpost.com

In his appearance on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee questioned why Obama (D-Ill.) had compared William Ayers -- an academic who belonged to the Weather Underground, a violent group opposed to the Vietnam War -- to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a McCain backer who has said he supports the death penalty for abortion providers.

Mexican soldiers recruited to be drug cartel's hit men
Arizona Republic

Carter Doesn’t Understand What Hamas Really Wants, Analyst Says
Jerusalem – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter doesn’t understand that Hamas is not engaged in a border dispute with Israel but in a war over Israel’s very existence, Israel said on Monday...

Shari’a-Compliant Financing Described As New Islamist Threat
Washington – Radical Islamists not only want to destroy America with bombs and weapons of mass destruction, they also are infiltrating U.S. financial markets and influencing the flow of credit and capital, according to the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think-tank...

Glib Talk and Contempt

“Senator Obama’s election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed... Senator Obama is all talk—glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk.

Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama’s public image and his reality... However inconsistent Obama’s words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years.

He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi. Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings. Karl Marx said, ‘The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.’ In other words, they mattered only in so far as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.”

—Thomas Sowell

“Wouldn’t it be better for the human spirit and for the soul of this Nation to encourage people to accept more responsibility to care for one another, rather than leaving those tasks to paid bureaucrats?”

—Ronald Reagan

THE OBAMA/CLINTON LIMO

Official Democratic Party campaign car designed exactly the way Obama and Clinton lay out their campaign message:

'A NEW DIRECTION'

You figure it out. I have a headache

“In the final analysis, Jimmy Carter will be best remembered by history as a man whose time in and out of high public office was almost unblemished by success.”

-- Frank Gaffney, Jr. --

“One way to reduce illegal immigration might be to translate some of our far left publications into Spanish and give everyone in Mexico subscriptions. After they read how terrible this country is, many may want to stay away.”

-- Thomas Sowell --

“Bill Clinton was ripped after House auditors revealed his taxpayer-paid office expenses. He has run up a $400,000 phone bill since he left office. It never occurred to Congress to block all 900 numbers for ex-presidents.”

-- Argus Hamilton --

“Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.”

-- Will Rogers --

“A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny.”

-- Calvin Coolidge --

“To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.”

-- Benjamin Disraeli --

Can you say, "Communism ?" .... boys and girls?

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more’.”

Michelle-Marx Obama

“These days Democrats are not sounding very liberal. Classic liberals, after all, would support free markets, internationalism and the universal desire for constitutional government, while downplaying racial affinity.”

-- Victor Davis Hanson --

“Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That’s because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values.”

-- Burt Prelutsky --

“Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don’t matter.”

-- Brent Bozell --

Donald Lambro: Obama At A Big Loss Over Capital Gains
When ABC News anchor Charles Gibson questioned Barack Obama in the April 16 Democratic presidential candidates' debate about the plan to raise capital gains tax rates, he told Obama it would bring in less revenue, not more.

To rise above...... What?

“Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago [and more than $26,000 in 2007] to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?... This contextual analysis of Wright’s venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It’s the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That’s why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.”

—Charles Krauthammer

Principled and self-sacrificing

“In Barack Obama’s America, rich people who vote on cultural issues rather than economic self-interest are principled and self-sacrificing. People of more modest means who do so are credulous and bitter... With Barack Obama’s ‘postracial’ appeal having proved illusory but Democrats likely to nominate him for president anyway, the party faces a difficult problem: how to persuade Americans to vote for the spiritual protégé of a man who espouses crackpot anti-American and antiwhite views.”

—James Taranto

There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well

“There is [a] class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs... There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

—Booker T. Washington in his 1911 book, My Larger Education

Salena Zito: Elite Democrats Historically Lose

When it comes to racial issues, the 2008 Democrat primary has been lowered to the most politically correct campaign in history.

Austin Hill: Obama, Clinton And Capitalism: It's Okay For Them, But Nobody Else

It's been a few weeks since the Clintons and the Obamas publicly released their tax records. Based on this information, it is now known as fact what many of us could have safely assumed: both families rank among America's economic "upper class."

The Fed Muddles Through a Bailout

George Will: Some say the world will end because of subprime mortgages.

Report: Israel's tiny air space makes it vulnerable to 9/11-type attack

World Tribune —

TEL AVIV — A report by Haifa University found that increasing civilian air traffic to Israel has increased the risk of a suicide air attack similar to that which struck the United States in 2001. The report said Israel was also increasingly vulnerable to air strikes from neighboring countries. "Israel's air space is very small," the report said.

Israel attack fails to stop rocket production at refugee camp

GAZA CITY — Palestinian sources said the Hamas regime as well as aligned militias have maintained missile and explosives production at the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Read more.

Prospect of Iran nukes frightens Saudi royals

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. report projects a concerted effort by Saudi Arabia to match Iran's nuclear weapons program. The report, submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took note of a U.S. assessment that Teheran's nuclear program frightens the Saudi royal family "to their core." "The future Middle East landscape may include a...(click here for more)

U.S. intel to brief Congress on secret Israeli strike

WASHINGTON -- The Bush Administration will brief Congress on the Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear facility. Congressional sources said members of the U.S. intelligence community would report to the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Israeli attack in northeastern Syria on April 22. The sources said the briefing would be held in closed. (click here for more)

MIRACLE RELIEF FOR E.D. SUFFERERS

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THE AUDACITY OF NAÏVETÉ WITH IRAN

"Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. wants to talk to our Middle Eastern enemies, notably Iran. He can't imagine a happy resolution of the war without such talks. And he seems to think this desire is something new, maybe even revolutionary.

He apparently does not know that it is not at all new, and certainly not revolutionary. It is instead the fully tested "policy" of the United States for the past thirty years, ever since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979.

We have had high-level and low-level talks, public and private talks, talks conducted by diplomats, by spooks, and by a colorful array of intermediaries. All failed. We tried everything. The Iranians were not interested. It reminds me of that great scene from Goldfinger, with Sean Connery as James Bond spread-eagled on a sheet of gold, and a laser beam slicing through it, headed for his private parts.

"Do you expect me talk, Goldfinger?" he asks.

"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."

That's Iran. The mullahs want us to die. Mr. Obama won't allow himself to understand this. Perhaps his book should have been entitled The Audacity of Naïveté."

-- Michael Ledeen

CONSERVATIVES ARE HAPPY, LIBERALS ARE BITTER

"If Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. read Karl Marx less and Arthur Brooks more, he might not be in such hot water.

Barack's now-infamous comments in San Francisco reek of the watered down Marxism that passes for thought on college campuses these days. "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people," Marx wrote in 1843.

Barack and his apologists in the news media focused on his description of rural Pennsylvanians as "bitter" because that was the least offensive element of what he had said. Most of those who were upset by his remarks were upset by his notion they "cling to" religion out of economic frustration.

Arthur Brooks could have told Barack the people he described as "bitter" likely are a good deal happier than most of his supporters are, or his wife seems to be. Dr. Brooks, a professor of business & government policy at Syracuse University, demonstrates, through the wealth of statistics in his new book, Gross National Happiness, that conservatives are much happier than liberals. It's urban liberals who are bitter, not small town folks."

-- Jack Kelly

Quit clinging to your bibles and guns

And try not being so bitter.

BILL & HILL’S GAME: GOOD COP, BAD COP ON TRADE

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

People have always accused Bill Clinton of wanting to be all things to all people. Now he and Hillary have found a way to do it in her campaign.

The former first couple has a carefully choreographed pas-de-deux in which they take opposite sides of an issue, depending on Hillary’s political needs of the moment.

The free-trade deal with Colombia? She’s the good cop, opposing the deal to preserve the rights of unions here and abroad. But he’s the bad cop, taking $800,000 in speaking fees from groups supporting the legislation and huddling with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to advise him on his choice of lobbyists.

And where did that $800,000 go? Into their joint bank accounts. So Hillary made money with one hand while distancing herself from the agreement with the other.

NAFTA? Even though she supported it at the time, she now has rewritten history to assign to herself the leading role of opponent while bad-cop Bill pushed it through.

China? Good-cop Hillary calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony to protest the crackdown in Tibet. But bad-cop Bill got an undisclosed contribution to his foundation, whose money he controls, from Ali Baba, the Chinese-government-dominated Web site that asked people to turn in Tibetan monks who were demonstrating for freedom.

Bad-cop Bill pardoned the FALN terrorists who bombed Fraunces Tavern. But Hillary not only didn’t know about the pardon, she claims, but would’ve opposed it. Her political gains among Puerto Ricans as she first ran for the Senate as a result of the pardons? Pure coincidence.

Then, Bill went and collaborated with... Read more.

Not the kind of change Obama had in mind.......

Michael Barone says "the rules are changing for Obama." And according to Barone, Barack seemed puzzled, but not just puzzled, he seemed angrily puzzled.

"The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question."

Read more here.