Well, it looks like the DemocratICK leadership of both houses of Congress are looking to repeal the authorization of force in Iraq, replacing it with a withdrawal timetable. But will that move fly with the American people -- and their own members?

Senate Democratic leaders intend to unveil a plan next week to repeal the 2002 resolution authorizing the war in Iraq in favor of narrower authority that restricts the military's role and begins withdrawals of combat troops.

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party's own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"If you strictly limit a commander's ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk," said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who personally lodged his concerns with Murtha.

In both chambers, Democratic lawmakers are eager to take up binding legislation that would impose clear limits on U.S. involvement in Iraq after nearly four years of war. But Democrats remain divided over how to proceed. Some want to avoid the funding debate altogether, fearing it would invite Republican charges that the party is not supporting the troops. Others take a more aggressive view, believing the most effective way to confront President Bush's war policy is through a $100 billion war-spending bill that the president ultimately must sign to keep the war effort on track.

What is missed in this calculation is the fact that EITHER direction will legitimately be presented as not supporting the troops -- just as the recent non-binding resolutions put forward by the Copperheads can only be viewed as a failure to support the troops and the abandonment of an ally.

However, I said some time ago that the Democrats should have the cojones to seek binding legislation if they want to act against the war -- that they should put their money where their mouth is. Let's see how serious they really are on th issue, or if all the anti-war talk is nothing but window-dressing -- because I believe that the Democrats know that any binding legislation to tie the hands of the President and the US military will ultimately be rejected by the American people.

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Medical Health Information Resource is a relatively new source for medical information on the internet. It has a number of good articles on different health issues, everything from treating acne to the signs of Multiple Sclerosis. The articles I've looked at are clear and understandable to those of us who are not medical professionals. There is even a good article on stem cell research that I will direct one of my college students to for her research paper on the subject.

Drop by Medical Health Information Resource and take a look at this growing site. I think you will find it to be a useful resource for information on health issues.

Paid Endorsement.

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Well, this certainly gives us some insight into how our early ancestors began making and using tools.

Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.

The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a "power grip," they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small, monkeylike mammals -- sleep during the day.

I suspect there will be a lot more study of this behavior over the course the next few decades, including whether this was independently developed behavior or whether the chimps were in some way contaminated by human interaction.

Personally, though, I won't worry much until they start observing monkeys making firearms.

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Especially when it is organized, ideological censorship of the nature engaged in by folks aligned with this Miami mother.

A Miami-Dade parents group has identified a third book that they say paints a false picture of life in Cuba. But this time, they're taking matters into their own hands.

Fed up with the long, bureaucratic process surrounding the removal of two other controversial books about Cuba from school libraries last year, parent Dalila Rodriguez simply checked out the book Discovering Cultures, Cuba from the library at her son's school earlier this month. She said she does not plan to return it.

''If you take it out and don't return it, no kid can read it,'' Rodriguez, who is a member of the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee, said Wednesday. ``It's not censoring; it's protecting our children from lies.''

Rodriguez discovered the book on Feb. 9 when she was browsing for books for her son in the library at Norma Butler Bossard Elementary, 15950 SW 144th St.
''I first read it and started seeing it had some educational facts, but it's still erroneous,'' she said.

The Cuban-born Rodriguez said she was offended by passages in the book that romanticize life on the island, such as the statement that many Cubans immigrated to Florida when Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

''We're not immigrants; we're exiles,'' Rodriguez said. ``We were persecuted, incarcerated and killed.''

Rodriguez also checked out the children's travel book Vamos a Cuba, which the Concerned Cuban Parents Committee led the charge to ban last year, saying the book paints a rosy and inaccurate picture of life under Castro. Both books were due back Feb. 16, records show. Neither has been returned.
''We're going to take the books and lock them in a box,'' she said.

There is a very simple remedy for this, given her admission that she has no intent to return the books. Arrest her for theft of public property, jail her accordingly, and as part of her sentence require that she replace the missing books with new copies.

And I say this as an individual who probably agrees with Mrs. Rodriguez on her criticism of the books in question. However, the answer is not censorship (whether official or vigilante), it is making more accurate and more complete information available to make it clear what the truth is.

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A little good news out of Israel.

The Islamic Jihad vowed on Wednesday to avenge the death of the group's leader in Jenin, who was reportedly behind a planned suicide attack in Tel Aviv that was thwarted by police on Tuesday.

"The Zionist enemy's crimes and killing will not affect our resistance program and God willing today's crime will not pass without revenge and revenge will be soon," the group said.

Mahmoud Abu Abait, 24, was traveling in a car in the center of Jenin when undercover IDF soldiers shot and killed him, the witnesses said.

An Israeli combat helicopter was seen in the area at the time, they said.

According to Army Radio, defense sources said the would-be bomber who was arrested in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening admitted during his interrogation that Abait was the one who had sent him on the mission and supplied him with the homemade explosives he was carrying.

On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing attempt. The bomber was from the Jenin area.

Overnight Tuesday, IDF troops also arrested three more wanted Islamic Jihad operatives during the Jenin operation. They also arrested a Hamas member in Hebron.

Too bad our own Congress lacks this sort of resolve to hunt down and stop terrorists wherever they may be found.

Remember -- happiness is a dead jihadi.

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Bravo to the prince, third in line to the British throne, for insisting that he go to Iraq with his unit.

Prince Harry's regiment will be deployed to Iraq, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Clarence House have confirmed in a joint statement.

His Blues and Royals regiment will serve in Iraq for six months as part of the latest deployments.

The prince will be the first senior royal to serve on the front line since Prince Andrew in the Falklands in 1982.

While in Iraq, the prince will carry out "a normal troop commander's role", the statement said.

This will involve "leading a troop of 12 men in four Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles, each with a crew of three" from the regiment's "A squadron", the statement added.

"The decision to deploy him has been a military one, made by Chief of General Staff, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, in conjunction with Cornet Wales' commanding officer," it said.

"The Royal household has been consulted throughout."

I admire this manÂ’s determination to do the right thing.

And on an entirely different level IÂ’m also amused by it, given Prince HarryÂ’s role in John BirminghamÂ’s Axis of Time novels.

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Only a week after joining her fellow Neo-Copperheads in urging the abandonment of America’s allies in Iraq, Queen Shelia has expressed her support for providing military equipment to the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

A U.S. congresswoman called Wednesday for Washington to reconsider its ban on selling parts for U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to Venezuela, saying she had traveled to the South American country to repair strained political relations.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, told reporters that she was making the first U.S. congressional visit to Venezuela since President Hugo Chavez's December re-election with the message: "I want an immediate repairing of the relations between the United States and Venezuela."
Jackson Lee described Venezuela as a friendly nation that the U.S. should cooperate with and said that the F-16 jets, which are built in Texas, was an issue of concern to her constituents in Houston.
Pledging to "personally go back and raise" the issue, she called for the U.S. Congress "to reconsider sanctions on the F-16s."
The U.S. State Department has banned arms sales to Venezuela, including parts necessary to maintain its fleet of F-16s, citing a lack of support by Chavez's government for counterterrorism efforts and its close relations with Iran and Cuba.

She said her fact-finding mission to Venezuela was part of an effort by a new Democrat-controlled Congress to show that "Venezuela has many friends in this new Congress."

To bad America doesn’t.

Now remember, though – this is the same woman who asked if the Mars Rover would take pictures of the flags left behind by the Apollo astronauts, so we are not talking about the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. But to think that she is so oblivious to the situation in Venezuela and the nature of the Chavez regime is frightening.

Then again, since when has the mere fact that appeasement has failed wherever it has been tried kept a liberal from advocating it?

More at Hot Air

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Only a week after joining her fellow Neo-Copperheads in urging the abandonment of AmericaÂ’s allies in Iraq, Queen Shelia has expressed her support for providing military equipment to the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

A U.S. congresswoman called Wednesday for Washington to reconsider its ban on selling parts for U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to Venezuela, saying she had traveled to the South American country to repair strained political relations.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, told reporters that she was making the first U.S. congressional visit to Venezuela since President Hugo Chavez's December re-election with the message: "I want an immediate repairing of the relations between the United States and Venezuela."
Jackson Lee described Venezuela as a friendly nation that the U.S. should cooperate with and said that the F-16 jets, which are built in Texas, was an issue of concern to her constituents in Houston.
Pledging to "personally go back and raise" the issue, she called for the U.S. Congress "to reconsider sanctions on the F-16s."
The U.S. State Department has banned arms sales to Venezuela, including parts necessary to maintain its fleet of F-16s, citing a lack of support by Chavez's government for counterterrorism efforts and its close relations with Iran and Cuba.

She said her fact-finding mission to Venezuela was part of an effort by a new Democrat-controlled Congress to show that "Venezuela has many friends in this new Congress."

To bad America doesnÂ’t.

Now remember, though – this is the same woman who asked if the Mars Rover would take pictures of the flags left behind by the Apollo astronauts, so we are not talking about the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. But to think that she is so oblivious to the situation in Venezuela and the nature of the Chavez regime is frightening.

Then again, since when has the mere fact that appeasement has failed wherever it has been tried kept a liberal from advocating it?

More at Hot Air

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And if there is any justice left in our court system, Scooter Libby will be cleared of all charges in a case that amounted to little more than an instance of prosecutorial pique.

A federal jury ended its first day of deliberations yesterday in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby after the presiding judge urged jurors to rely on their "life experiences" in deciding whether the vice president's former chief of staff lied to investigators -- or made an honest mistake -- about his role in a CIA leak.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton's instructions to the jury of eight women and four men reinforced the issue of the fallibility of human memory that has been central to one of Washington's most celebrated trials in years.

Prosecutors allege that Libby, then Vice President Cheney's top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury to obscure the fact that, in the spring and summer of 2003, he aggressively sought out and shared with reporters information about Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer. Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was emerging then as a harsh, early critic of President Bush and the Iraq war.

The only person accused in the three-year CIA leak investigation, Libby, 56, is charged with five felonies: two counts of making false statements to FBI agents, two counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice. He is not charged with the leak itself. If convicted of all charges, he would face a potential prison term of 1 1/2 to three years under federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors outside the case have said.

Libby's attorneys contend that Libby did not intentionally lie, but inaccurately remembered his conversations about Wilson and Plame with administration colleagues and Washington journalists.

And that is, ultimately, the big issue -- were any statements made by Libby intentionally misleading, or were they based upon inaccurate recollections? Interestingly enough, despite contradictory statements by many of the other witnesses, Patrick Fitzgerald chose to charge only Scooter Libby with a crime, in a leak case in which the rogue prosecutor knew from day one who the leaker was and made a decision not to prosecute the leak.

This is a case that never should have been prosecuted, on charges that never should have been brought. Let's hope the jury quickly acquits.

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I guess she thinks being Speaker of the House means you cannot be criticized.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday phoned President Bush to air her complaints over Vice President Dick Cheney's comments that the Congressional Democrats' plan for Iraq would "validate the Al Qaeda strategy."

Pelosi, who said she could not reach the president, said Cheney's comments wrongly questioned critics' patriotism and ignored Bush's call for openness on Iraq strategy.

"You cannot say as the president of the United States, 'I welcome disagreement in a time of war,' and then have the vice president of the United States go out of the country and mischaracterize a position of the speaker of the House and in a manner that says that person in that position of authority is acting against the national security of our country," the speaker said.

The quarrel began in Tokyo, where Cheney used an interview to criticize Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., over their plan to place restrictions on Bush's request for an additional $93 billion for the Iraq war to make it difficult or impossible to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.

"I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy," the vice president told ABC News. "The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people ... try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit."

It seems that Pelosi thinks that she and Murtha and the rest of the Neo-Copperheads are immune from criticism -- because no one can seriously argue that Cheney's comments are wrong. That is not to say that the DemocratICK leaders support al-Qaeda or share their ideology, simply to note that the course of action they are taking is precisely in line with the stated goal of al-Qaeda leaders to wear down America's political will. What else can you call the position taken by the new DemocrtICK majority and their White Flag Republican cohorts in seeking unilateral capitulation in Iraq?

Sorry, but it seems to me that the biggest gripe these folks have is not that Cheney is wrong, but rather that he is speaking an inconvenient truth.

H/T Gateway Pundit

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This story is beyond belief -- were it not for the long history of political violence engaged in by the American Left against political opponents. But this case is extreme even by those standards.

A Fredericksburg man is facing several assault charges after police say he hunted down a group of Republicans and confronted them in their home over their beliefs.

Police said Andrew Stone, 23, recently went to a home in Fredericksburg at around 5:30 p.m. after he saw a name and nearby address on a Republican Web site.

Stone confronted three residents about their political viewpoints, police said. When he found out the residents supported the Republican-led war effort in Iraq, police say Stone became enraged.

Stone then hit the homeowner and his roommates several times as they tried to force him out of the door, police said.

Stone faces three counts of assault and battery.

Now this story really does not do the event justice. Michelle Malkin has more, including an account by one of the victims of the attack.

"I was taking a shower a little after 5pm while two of my housemates were cooking dinner. A man (Stone) came to the door asking for Reed Pannell. He was very polite and had some military literature with him so the housemates assumed he was either a recruiter or a friend of mine from class. As they were waiting for me to get out of the shower, Stone came inside, sat down in our living room, and quietly read the paper while he waited. I rushed out of the shower, came down with just a pair of jeans on and shaving cream still on my face.

At this point, Stone politely stood up, shook my hand, and told me that he had found my address on facebook. He asked if I was a College Republican as it said on my account, I told him yes. He then asked me "Oh, so that means you support the war, right?" and I responded with a yes. He then said that since I was for the war, if I was interested in signing up for the army. At this point I was sure he was a recruiter, and I told him that I'd definitely look into it as soon as I graduate (I'm a junior political science/econ major right now at UMW). This is where something changed in his eyes and he started getting aggressive. He took a step towards me and said that I support the war, yet don't want to fight in it.

At this point my roommate, Matt, stepped into the room and told him he was being disrespectful, and that it was time to leave. I told Matt that I could handle the guy (I've gotten into debates like this before). Stone responded to Matt by saying that "I'm not done talking to your roommate, he's a pussy and can't back up anything he believes in". At this point I, not politely, told him to leave our house. He refused, saying he was not done talking with us. He threw the military literature he had at me, which turned out to be United States Air Force literature. He said that I would never make it in the army and that was why he brought over USAF literature (implying he came over in a sinister manner--not only have I never seen/spoken to him before, but what if I had said that I had wanted to join up, right then and there? Oops, take this Air Force literature...).

My roommate Matt pushed Stone's shoulder towards the door at this point, and the second that happened Stone swung and struck Matt in the side of the head. Both exchanged several punches to the face/body and then I jumped in, throwing them both onto our couch. My other roommate called the police while both Matt and I tried to restrain him on the couch, but he kept hitting us. Both of us were yelling at him to leave, but he kept screaming that he wanted to fight us one on one like men, that we're "pussies" for not being in Iraq, and that we're hypocrites. He going crazy. Both of us struck him several times while he was on the couch. We finally dragged him off of the couch and forcibly pushed him out of the door. He then forced his way back into the house, where he struck Matt several more times. We both pushed him outside and went outside with him, where he would not leave our porch, and he continued to strike us both. Matt ended up pushing him over the railing, but fell along with him face first, with Stone holding onto my right arm as he did so.

The police on the phone with my other roommate told us to get inside, and so we did, and locked the door. As we entered my house, we yelled at Stone that the police were coming, and that if he was in the right, he should tell them. Personally, I'm surprised that he stayed--any logical person would flee after assaulting two people at once, unprovoked (the third roommate was not assaulted). The police showed up (4 cruisers) 30 seconds later, and Stone continued to be incredibly disorderly. They got his story, then ours, talked with eachother for 30 seconds and then arrested Stone. They asked if we wished to press charges, we said that we did. He is now out on bail, but he is charged with assault and battery, trespassing, and we have a restraining order against him.

We then hopped on facebook to see this guy's profile--he is NUTS.

...Later that day we found a list of names on the front porch, complete with addresses, boys and girls, all members of the college Republicans. I was 9th on the list. I contacted a few of the people on the list and only one had received a visit from this guy, and they hadn't even answered the door because they knew of his affiliation and what he was coming to say. For lack of better words, we were pretty unsuspecting. His arraignment is on March 1st, and our school newspaper is doing a large investigation of his ties to other organizations on campus, etc. For now, we're all pretty scared about what this guy'll do now that he's back on the streets.

Malkin also includes a online posts by this clown, Andrew Stone, on her site. Good grief, he fits right in with the NutRoots anti-war types -- profane, anti-Semitrc, and ready to advocate violence against political opponents. He just took it to the next level by preparing a hit-list and beginning to act upon it.

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Need a speaker for your conference? Looking for someone to come in and give a little motivation to your staff? Would you like to bring a topical and timely personality to your college campus? Well, the International Speakers Bureau is a fantastic source for motivational keynote speakers and celebrity speakers for whatever event you have planned.

Let's be honest here -- I'm talking about top-flight individuals. Just go to their homepage and you will see folks like Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, or celebrity psychologist television personality Dr. Phil McGraw. Helen Thomas and Peggy Noonan are both represented by IBS. After looking through the lists of available speakers, I am really convinced that you can literally find the right speaker for any need you have. They can even help you find speakers whose fees meet your needs. And that is, after all, why you want to work with a speakers bureau to begin with, right?

What I find particularly interesting is their focus on college and university speaker series. IBS offers a whole range of programs and speakers tailored to the need of various sorts of college programs, including endowed lecture series, staff development, and leadership development programs. Frankly, i wish I had known about IBS when I worked programming speakers years ago -- it would have made all that committee work so much easier!

Go by the IBS website and take a look -- I can almost guarantee that you can find the speaker who meets your needs for your event.

Paid Endorsement.

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First, Merck suspended lobbying on making Gardasil mandatory. Now the Texas House has voted to overturn Rick Perry's executive order mandating the vaccine for Texas schoolgirls.

A House committee handed a stinging rebuke to Gov. Rick Perry by voting to rescind his executive order requiring pre-teen girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

Wednesday's Public Health Committee vote was 6-3, with all the Republican members and one Democrat voting to reverse Perry's order. Three other Democrats voted against the bill, which now goes to the full House for consideration.

Passage is all but guaranteed since 90 of the 150 House members have signed on as co-sponsors, said the author of House Bill 1098, Rep. Dennis Bonnen.

"I'm very pleased that the majority of the committee saw the wisdom of not putting every 11-year-old girl into a mandated situation of a vaccination that we don't know all the facts about," said Bonnen, R-Angleton.

Perry spokesman Robert Black said the committee's vote doesn't change the governor's position.

"He believes the state should do everything it can to protect young women from getting cancer," Black said. "He has encouraged the Legislature to have a vigorous debate on this issue. They are."

Another bill, HB 1397 by Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, would require the Texas Department of State Health Services to develop a public education plan about HPV. It also was passed by the committee on a 9-0 vote.

So as you can see, the vote is not one of opposition to the vaccine -- it is a rejection of the naked power-grab of a governor intent upon playing doctor with evey little girl in Texas. Education -- and presumably eventual legislation to make the vaccine more widely available -- are supported by many of us who opposed by Perry's actions. What we objected to was the high-hande3d manner in which teh governor sought to override the political proces.

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You hate it when stuff like this happens -- you make that purchase, only to have the price drop the next day or next week. It happens in brick-and-mortar stores, and it happens online, at places like Amazon.com Well, you can get Amazon price protection by ordering through AmazingRefund.com.

Here's how it works.

You go to AmazingRefund.com and shop, just like you would at Amazon. All products you examine and all items you purchase will come from Amazon, but you check out through AmazingRefund.com's shopping cart feature instead.

Now here's where the neat part comes in.

AmazingRefund.com will keep track of your purchases for the next 30 days, and will check Amazon's site twice daily to see if there are any price reductions. If there are, AmazingRefund.com will contact you and let you know, so that you can take advantage of Amazon's 30 day price guarantee. All you have to do is contact Amazon to get your account credited.

Now think about this -- do you have the time to check prices aily on purchases you've made? Or would you prefer to have someone else spend the time doing it, letting you do more productive things? I think the answer should be obvious. So go to AmazingRefund.com the next time you want to order through Amazon and get what you have coming to you.

Paid Endorsement.

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And it looks like a some of those bishops would prefer to become schismatic.

Several leading liberal Episcopalians said yesterday that they would rather accept a schism than accede to a demand from leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion for what they view as an unconscionable rollback of the U.S. church's position on gay rights.

The defiant reaction to the communique issued by the primates, or heads, of the Anglican Communion's 38 national churches on Monday at the conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, reflected a growing feeling on both sides of the dispute that time for compromise is running out.

"Yes, I would accept schism," said Bishop Steven Charleston, president of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. "I would be willing to accept being told I'm not in communion with places like Nigeria if it meant I could continue to be in a position of justice and morality. If the price I pay is that I'm not considered to be part of a flawed communion, then so be it."

I can't help but notice two things about Bishop Charleston's statement.

First, his apparent anger over the choice seems rather amusing, considering that he and his liberal brethren have been making precisely such demands of conservative Episcopalians for years, demanding conformity with the flawed theology of the liberal leadership of the American branch of Anglicanism.

The second thing I notice is an implicit imperialism/racism in his words -- it seems that the good(?) bishop feels that following the leadership of the thriving, vibrant Anglican communities of non-white Third World countries like Nigeria is beneath him and his liberal American colleagues.

I'll be interested in seeing what impact this communique has on court cases involving parishes that have split with liberal Anglican bishops around the country.

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The Bush Administration has been vindicated on the rights of terrorists detained at Gitmo.

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a new law stripping federal judges of authority to review foreign prisoners’ challenges to their detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The decision set the stage for a third trip to the Supreme Court for the detainees, who will once again ask the justices to consider a complex issue that tests the balance of power among the White House, Congress and the courts in the murky context of the fight against international terrorism.

It also prompted some senior Democratic lawmakers, who have fought the Bush administration on the matter before and who now hold sway in Congress, to vow enactment of a law more favorable to the prisoners.

Question -- do the Democrats rewrite the law to give terrorists more rights? Or do they recognize that there is a war on, one not of our choosing which will end with either our victory or our destruction?

Great analysis over at SCOTUSblog.

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We regularly hear from liberals how Catholic politicians (among others) need to put aside their personal morality and the teachings of their Church when it comes to the issue of abortion. Indeed, those who do are painted as heroes in the battle against sectarian theocratic impulses. Something similar happens with regards to the homosexual marriage issue. And yet somehow, liberal media outlets paint politicians like this one as heroic as they look for ways to impose their religious views on other public policy issues -- with results that are acceptable to liberals, even as those beliefs are opposed by the majority of Americans.

Sen. Alex X. Mooney (R-Frederick) is proud of his conservative record in the Maryland legislature.

But as a devout Catholic, he is also guided by his religious beliefs.

Today, as Maryland begins to debate the death penalty, Mooney finds himself wrestling with how to deal with a bill that calls for abolishing capital punishment and replacing it with life without parole.

"I am conflicted," said Mooney, a member of the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee, which is scheduled to hear testimony on the bill today. "I try to look at it from a moral and philosophical point of view. Is it right to use the death penalty when there is another option, life in jail?"

It is a wonderful piece, and raises all sorts of arguments -- pro and con -- about the death penalty/life without parole debate. But could you imagine the Washington Post running an article like this about a liberal legislator going against the grain on abortion or gay rights, and seeking to bring their Catholic religious values into the legislative process? There would be howls of outrage!

And interestingly enough, I'm not going to condemn Mooney. He is acting well-within the framework intended by our Founders, who expected legislators to consider a whole range of beliefs and values, including religious ones, as they evaluate public policy choices. Mooney is acting in the best tradition of those same Founders. It's a pity that actions such as his are not respected by the Left when it might lead to policy decisions they oppose.

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I somehow expect that it will never happen -- and have wondered when we would start seeing these rumblings.

Winning approval for a proposed merger of the nation's two satellite radio companies turns on whether regulators buy their argument that iPods, Internet radio and other new technologies have expanded so dramatically that a monopoly would not harm consumers' choices or purses.

It may be a difficult argument to win, but XM Satellite Holdings and Sirius Satellite Radio's officers say it's worth the gamble and have assembled an expensive and experienced team of lobbyists to aid them in the fight. Alone, the companies have suffered heavy losses and spent heavily on recruiting personalities such as Howard Stern and Oprah Winfrey and on marketing to compete against each other.

* * *

All those new devices, however, are not directly analogous to satellite radio, and Karmazin's plea is a tough sell, said Chad Bartley, an analyst for Pacific Crest Securities. XM and Sirius provide "the only paid-radio service out there," he said, and regulators may be loath to turn them into a monopoly. He rated the chances for merger approval at "less than 50-50."

"The regulatory process will be quite onerous," said William Kidd, an analyst for Wedbush Morgan, an investment firm in Los Angeles. Regulators will be reluctant to create a single satellite radio company, particularly because they have recruited a total of 14 million paying customers in five years as separate companies, he said.

My guess is that the merge doesn't happen now -- and only happens if one (or both) of the companies files for bankruptcy in a few years.

Posted by: Greg at 10:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've been very fortunate in my life when it comes to home insurance and a href="http://www.insure121.com/">car insurance. I've been with one company my entire life, from the day I first got my drivers license on forward, and later when I began renting my first apartment and finally when I purchased the house where I live.

That does not mean that I don't comparison shop for insurance -- every year I compare car insurance rates to find out if the company I use is giving me the best deal -- and I do the same for my insurance on my house. I've never found a good website for comparing those rates, until now. Insure121.com is a fantastic site for looking up the various rates from different insurers to find what best suits your needs. they also provide you with the latest insurance news so that you can make informed decisions on the companies you hear about.

indeed, the only thing this American consumer finds wrong with Insure121.com is that it a UK site, and so provides me with no American information. But hey, if you are in the UK and need insurance, drop by and take a look. Me, I'll just keep on waiting for Insure121.com to makes its presence known here in the United States, where I'm sure it would be a smashing success.

Paid Endorsement.

Posted by: Greg at 10:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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How long until the DemocratICK majority in Congress implodes?

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party's left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

Progressive blogs -- including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher -- were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

Helping? Jennifer Barton, the lawmaker's district director, played them a DVD of Tauscher blasting the increase as an awful idea in a floor speech eight days earlier.

"The words are fine and good, but we are looking for leadership," scoffed Susan Schaller, one of the activists.

Leadership? Barton showed them the eight golden shovels Tauscher had received for bringing transportation projects to her suburban district, along with numerous awards she had won for her work protecting children, wetlands, affordable housing and abortion rights.

"That's fine and good," Schaller repeated, "but this is about Iraq."

The anti-Tauscher backlash illustrates how the Democratic takeover has energized and emboldened the party's liberal base, ratcheting up the pressure on the party's moderates. That pressure is also reaching House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a San Francisco liberal who recognizes that moderate voters helped sweep Democrats into the majority. Pelosi has clashed with Tauscher in the past, but she's now eager to hold together her diverse caucus and to avoid the mistakes of GOP leaders who routinely ignored their moderates.

* * *

Democratic leaders want their activists to focus on beating Republicans. But the grass roots and Net roots believe the political tide is shifting their way, and they can provide the money, ground troops and buzz to challenge Democratic incumbents they don't like. MoveOn.org had two Bay Area chapters before the election; now it has 15, and they could all go to work against Tauscher in a primary. "Absolutely, we could take her out," said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga -- better known as Kos -- the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site.

This could be fun -- the Dem majority being flanked by the most liberal wing of its base, the part far outside the mainstream, and brought down by its own "supporters".

Keep up the good work, Markos!

Posted by: Greg at 10:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I just ran across this, and I'd love some opinions. Box.Net has a free widget available over at their site -- a flash player that streams podcasts, music, photos, videos, and any other type of files. Now I'm interested in possibly beginning to do a little bit of video here at Rhymes With Right, and I wonder if the Box.net Widget is the way for me to go. It looks nice, and is even customizable for individual websites. They even have code available for those of us who are a little less HTML savvy. And what is particularly nice is their free hosting of 1 gig of content free!

Here's what it looks like.

I'm going to try this here for a while, and and give it a trial run. I'll let you know my evaluation as we move further on, and as I host more content.

Paid Endorsement.

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I'm a bit of a Supreme Court junkie -- and have been ever since I read Woodward and Armstrong's The Brethren as a teenager. And one of the realities that I have long struggled with is that the dry focus on precedents and case law obscures the individual appellants and respondents in the cases -- the folks whose lives are the fodder for the decisions rendered by the justices.

The Washington Post does a nice article on one of the individuals at the heart of one of this year's cases, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

Lilly M. Ledbetter says she almost stopped breathing when she heard her name called that day, her eight-year battle over alleged pay discrimination finally reaching the ultimate legal forum, the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We'll hear argument next in Ledbetter versus Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced.

The odds are akin to being struck by lightning, having your case plucked from the thousands of others who have vowed, like you, to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court. And then you find it's not so much about you anymore.

It was the only time that November morning that any of the nine justices spoke Lilly Ledbetter's name.

When she thought back last week on the arguments before the court, she remembered them as not being much about her complaints about Goodyear, or Goodyear's complaints about her. "Except when my lawyer got up, it [seemed to be] based on changing the law somewhere down the line," she said. "That's what it boils down to, I guess. It tends to leave the person out."

And Ledbetter has it exactly right, as a couple of the justices have publicly acknowledged.

At a forum late last year, Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer, usually the court's yin and yang on matters of constitutional interpretation, agreed that that is how it should be. They were asked whether their duty was to provide justice for those who came before the court or simply to interpret the law.

"The point of the law is to satisfy a human desire for justice," Breyer explained, but he added: "You don't necessarily get to that end by simply trying to look for what is the intuitively nicer result in each case."

Scalia was blunter. "By the time you get up to an appellate court -- and lawyers ought to learn this -- I don't much care about your particular case," he said. "I am not about to produce a better result in your case at the expense of creating terrible results in a hundred other cases."

And that is as it should be, as cold and hard-hearted as it might sound. Court decisions at this level are about the law, since the facts have long since been vetted at the trial court level. These cases are about the broad principles and not the individual circumstances that are impacted by them. Indeed, the justices at this level serve as legal technicians.

But it is still important to remember that there are faces that go with these cases -- and I thank the Washington Post for reminding us of that.

Posted by: Greg at 11:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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While the Washington Post wants to know IF the system of public financing for presidential races can be saved, they really ought to be asking the more appropriate question -- "Should the public financing system be saved?"

THE PRESIDENTIAL public financing system is probably dead for the 2008 campaign. Certainly, the notion that candidates would limit their spending during the primary season in return for receiving federal matching funds has become quaint; the limits are so outdated and the amount of funds that can be raised so great that no serious candidate will take that bargain. And, for the first time, it looks as if the second part of the post-Watergate financing reform -- providing each major-party nominee with full financing for the general election campaign -- is about to become extinct as well.

Top-tier candidates of both parties, including Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former senator John Edwards, have already started raising money for a general election race. (They'll have to give it back if they don't win the nomination.) So has Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), but with a twist: Mr. Obama has asked the Federal Election Commission to rule on whether he could legally collect money for the general election campaign but ultimately decide to take public funding were he to win the nomination and his GOP opponent followed suit.

The reality is that running a full modern campaign cannot be done on the budget set by law under public financing. Furthermore, the editorial begs the question of the desirability of public financing of campaigns. Why should we accept some artificial limit on political speech in the form spending limits? Why should we accept the inherent rationing of speech that results? Isn't it better for America to return to the system that served us well for most of the first two centuries of American history -- unlimited spending by candidates who raise money from willing contributors?

I think the answers to those questions should be self-evident to any believer in the First Amendment.

Posted by: Greg at 11:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One of the great heroes of the Second World War was Pope Pius XII, whose was virtually the only world leader to speak out clearly, consistently, and forcefully against the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis during his papacy. Sadly, however, his memory has been tarnished by a campaign of slander and blood-libel which dates back nearly half a century. It has now been disclosed, however, that this effort was backed and coordinated by the Soviet KGB.

THE KGB hatched a plot to smear the late pope Pius XII as an anti-Semitic Hitler supporter and fostered a controversial play that tarnished the pontiff, according to the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer to have defected to the West.

Former Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who headed the Romanian secret service before defecting in 1978, has broken a silence of nearly half a century to reveal that he was involved in the operation codenamed Seat-12, a Kremlin scheme launched in 1960 to portray Pius XII "as a coldhearted Nazi sympathiser".

The result, according to Mr Pacepa, was the 1963 play The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, which argued that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged the Holocaust. It ignited furious debate over the pope's attitude to Hitler.

Pius XII was clearly seen during his lifetime as a staunch opponent of Nazism, so much so that during his life the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra traveled to the Vatican to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Rome with a concert in tribute to the Pope's work on behalf of the Jews during the war and none other than Golda Meir paid tribute to him on his death on behalf of the people of Israel.

"We share in the grief of humanityÂ…When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

Because of his staunch anti-Communism, the Soviets found it necessary to tarnish the image of Pope Pius XII -- and, by implication, the likely successor to the dying Pope John XXIII, Cardinal Montini (later Pope Paul VI) who had been a close aide to Pius during much of his papacy. And while Hochhuth still defends his work and its supporting documentation, the taint of KGB involvement -- as well as the weight of historical evidence -- proves that it is a crude smear against a saintly defender of the Jewish people in the face of Nazi genocide.

Posted by: Greg at 08:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I believe I have mentioned a time or two that my younger brother is a police officer out on the West Coast (exactly where will remain vague, to protect his privacy). For that matter, my grandfather was a state police officer in Illinois for many years, and was assigned during WWII to work guarding defense plants in the St. Louis metropolitan area. So cops have a special place in my heart.

That's one reason why I want to encourage folks to get your FOP Gold Supporter Shield from the Fraternal Order of Police. If you cannot support the Fraternal Order of Police at that level, consider one of the lower sponsorship levels that are available . These folks do good work in education, community service and lobbying on behalf of law enforcement officers to help make them more effective and our streets safer. So show your support for your local cops -- and police officers around your state and the nation. Donate today!

Posted by: Greg at 07:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I can't say I'm particularly surprised by this move, given that it is an easy pander to the black voters in South Carolina who she is actively courting.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from its Statehouse grounds, in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war.

"I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day," Clinton told The Associated Press in an interview.

"I personally would like to see it removed from the Statehouse grounds," the New York senator said during her first trip to the early voting state since announcing her White House bid.

Other Democratic hopefuls, including Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, have said the flag should come down. The banner, which once flew over the Statehouse dome and now flies nearby, is the subject of an ongoing NAACP boycott.

Personally, I'm pleased that the flag does not fly over the state capitol building any longer, but I'm troubled by efforts to remove it from what is, after all, essentially a memorial to the state's Confederate war dead. Even if the battle flag is removed, some flag of the Confederacy should fly as a part of that memorial, simply as a matter of historical accuracy and perspective.

However, if Senator Clinton is going to take this stand, she really needs to go further and condemn not just the flying of that flag, but also those who put it over the state capitol building in the first place as a sign of opposition to the civil rights movement. That would involve condemning, by name, former Senator Fritz Hollings, the grand old man of the DemocrtatICK Party in South Carolina, who supported and signed into law the bill raising that flag over the capitol dome. Not only that, but she should condemn, by name, the political party that supported secession in the South and capitulation in the North -- the DemocratICK Party, which in 1864 ran on a platform of appeasement and negotiated peace with the Confederacy even as victory was within grasp.

But then again, doing either of those things would cost Hilary Clinton votes -- the former because it would cost her the support of Hollings and his political heirs, and the latter because the position of latter-day Democrats on the Iraq War is eerily similar to the Copperheads of 1864.

Posted by: Greg at 07:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I talked the other day about the "Review My Post" badges that have been appearing on my site since I started working with PayPerPost.Com. Well, if I wasn't clear enough in that post, let me say for the record that PPP is a blog ad network, not unlike some of the other ads I've placed on my site. The difference is that I get to exercise my talents with prose as I earn money blogging, and have control over what offers I take. Frankly, I'm really happy with this.

Now lately, I've been blessed with some big money opportunities. I've been paid to write about topics that interest me and earned $10.00, $15.00, $35.00 and even $75.00 for posts on my site -- sometimes as few as 50 words, but once or twice as long as 300. Frankly, I wish my blog had the right focus and traffic level to take advantage of the $1000 offer from one media site, or even the $90.00 offer about diamonds for sale on a popular auction site. But this past weekend, I still made about $250 pending approval of my posts, for a relatively small investment of time and bandwidth.

Oh, and one other nice thing about PayPerPost.Com -- most of the advertising money goes to you, not the company. PPP does only a 35% mark-up over what we blogger get paid, unlike some competitors that do a 100% mark-up or who use obscure formulas to pay you pennies a day. Frankly, that sort of payout rate makes PPP the logical choice for bloggers of all sizes.

And yes, PayPerPost.Com does have a disclosure requirement, but that is simply a way of keeping them and us honest about advertising. That's why you will see a badge like this

at the end of some posts, or even the following simple disclosure.

Paid Endorsement.

Posted by: Greg at 06:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Don’t you just love it when the word “racist” gets flung around by someone to hide their own questionable conduct? Well, Campaign 2008 has had an instance of that happen already, over questions about an endorsement made by a powerful black politician in South Carolina.

Days before U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton makes her first visit to South Carolina as a presidential candidate, one of her top supporters here faces accusations that his support for her is tied to a contract his firm landed with ClintonÂ’s campaign.

State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, said such accusations are offensive and smack of racism.

When asked Tuesday by a reporter, Jackson said he was backing Clinton, D-N.Y. A day later, a national political Web site reported JacksonÂ’s consulting firm, Sunrise Enterprises, had agreed to work for Clinton for $10,000 a month.
That story was picked up by The New York Post and on cable television. The Post story questioned whether “Jackson’s endorsement was bought by a higher bidder.”

That, Jackson said, was a low blow.

“I’m somewhat offended in the sense that ... the national media thinks that an African-American in my position cannot support a candidate without being paid off,” Jackson said. “Second, they seem to have a hard time believing that in South Carolina there could be a legitimate African-American public relations firm that’s not a hustler.”

Well, the fact that Jackson was, in fact, paid to work for Clinton just days before he made his public statement certainly raises questions. So does the fact that Jackson didn’t disclose that financial relationship when he made his endorsement. There is certainly an appearance of impropriety there, related to the timing issue, which Jackson himself calls “unfortunate”. So what makes asking these questions – questions which could be legitimately asked of any white politician with a consulting firm – racially tinged? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing, and the charge is simply intended to obscure the scandal and stop it in its tracks.

Posted by: Greg at 12:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Once again, a reporter tries to tug at our heartstrings with a story of a poor illegal alienÂ’s oppression by the evil American government and the enforcement of immigration laws. And it shows the fundamental dishonesty at work in the debate over illegal immigration

Fear has gripped immigrant families across the country as federal agents raid neighborhoods, work sites and jails in a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration.

Tens of thousands of people have been rounded up over the past several months, and many more are afraid to leave home, answer a knock on the door or leave their children alone in fear they might be next. Churches and community groups are stepping in with legal advice and financial aid for families split up or left without an income because of the sweeps.

"My kids are asking me, 'Why is this happening, mommy? Why did they take uncle away?'," said Dinora Sanchez, whose uncle was taken by immigration officials in January while riding his bike to a construction job in this low-income city northeast of San Francisco. "I'm afraid. There are no explanations I can give them."

Yes, there is an answer that this woman could give to her children – your uncle broke the law and has to face the consequences of his illegal behavior. That is what you would say had he committed a robbery or a murder – why not this offense as well? Could it be that doing so would force the kids to ask other questions – like “Isn’t breaking the law wrong?” So rather than teach the children respect for the law, immigrants like Dinora Sanchez teach their children that law-breaking is acceptable and the enforcement of laws is a racist, oppressive scheme by the government against people with the wrong skin-tone or ethnic heritage.

Ultimately, immigration raids ought to frighten those breaking immigration laws. Indeed, it ought to scare them so much that they return to their country of origin and seek to enter the country legally

Posted by: Greg at 12:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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You should not have to retreat from an intruder in your own home – or from anyone threatening your safety anywhere else – if you are following the law. The very notion of the “duty to retreat” constitutes an affront to the notion that law-abiding individuals should not have to cower before criminals or face legal jeopardy themselves.

Aficionados of Hollywood Westerns know all about the legal code that says "shoot first, ask questions later". But now, Republican legislators in Texas - spiritual home of the six-shooter and a John Wayne-style frontier spirit - wants to enshrine the principle into law.

Sponsors of a new bill in the state legislature call it the Castle Doctrine - the idea that anyone invading your home or threatening your safety deserves everything they have coming to them. Critics are already calling it the "shoot thy neighbour" law and questioning whether Texas, of all places, really needs to give its citizens further encouragement to take matters of crime and punishment into their own hands.

"I believe Texans who are attacked in their homes, their businesses, their vehicles or anywhere else have a right to defend themselves from attack without fear of being prosecuted and face possible civil suits alleging wrongful injury or death," Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio - home to The Alamo - said recently in support of the bill.

"You've got to assume a criminal's not there to buy girl scout cookies; you could be harmed," the bill's other sponsor, Texas Representative Joe Driver told The Los Angeles Times. "You should be able to meet force with force without getting in trouble."

Opponents claim that such legislation is unnecessary because in practice such cases are not prosecuted – but if that is the case, there is nothing wrong with enshrining the practice into law, is there? And as for their fears of “Wild West-style violence”, I cannot help but recall that was their objection to concealed-carry, too, and that their predictions were so far from the mark as to render their arguments in this case incredible.

Posted by: Greg at 11:58 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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One more example of the law of unintended consequences coming into play in the latest attempt to “fix” congressional ethics.

When Rep. Collin Peterson goes home to Minnesota, he likes to get around in his private plane, a single-engine four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza.
But since last month, his plane has been grounded, a victim of the new ethics rules passed by Congress, and Peterson isn't happy.

He said his Democratic colleagues were "trying to do the right thing" by cracking down on lawmakers flying around in fancy jets, but he was surprised when he was told he could no longer be reimbursed for flying his own plane for official business.

"It's a pretty stupid deal," said Peterson, 62, the new chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

"I threatened to put in a bill to make it illegal for any member to drive their own car until we got this fixed," Peterson said. "And I told Nancy Pelosi that if she didn't get this fixed, I was going to quit and there was going to be a Republican in my place, that if I couldn't fly I wasn't going to do this anymore. She just kind of looked at me -- she said it'll be fixed."

It really is pretty simple – if Congresscritters can be reimbursed for auto mileage, there really isn’t any reason to forbid such reimbursement for official travel in any other sort of personal vehicle, is there?

Posted by: Greg at 11:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And while the Washington Post tries to raise the possibility that border crackdowns are the reason -- and even hints that the violence may be the work of "extremist vigilantes" without giving one shred of evidence to support such a charge -- the article really supports more aggressive action by law enforcement..

Among the statuesque saguaro cactuses in the desert south of this old mining town lies the remnant of a crime scene that federal authorities say signals a troubling and escalated level of violence associated with the human smuggling trade.

* * *

It is not clear whether this attack was the work of rival smugglers, extremist vigilantes or what are known in Spanish slang here as bajadores-- crews of bandits who steal human cargo throughout southern Arizona and from Phoenix stash houses to extort ransom from their families in Latin America or the United States. What is unusual, said Alonzo Peña, the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Arizona, is the recent frequency of the violence, the fact these incidents resulted in deaths and that they occurred in the desert, where the crime scenes are hard to find within the thousands of acres of sand and brush.

"There's more and more sophisticated, high-powered assault-type weapons being used . . . and there are back-to-back incidents," Peña said.

Smuggling violence has increased in Arizona during the past six months, the byproduct of a clampdown by federal immigration authorities, Peña said. The U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona remains the busiest illegal entry point in the country, but the increased concentration of Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops stationed there during the past year has made it harder to cross.

These human smugglers are nothing more than latter-day slavers. It is time to take treat them as such -- and that means also ratcheting up border security to make it harder and less-profitable to continue this trade in human flesh.

Posted by: Greg at 11:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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It is a position that certainly appeals to the conservative base of the GOP, but will it be enough to earn John McCain the trust of the many different strains of conservatives he has alienated over the years?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain (news, bio, voting record), looking to improve his standing with the party's conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.

"I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned," the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench."

The landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade gave women the right to choose an abortion to terminate a pregnancy. The Supreme Court has narrowly upheld the decision, with the presence of an increasing number of more conservative justices on the court raising the possibility that abortion rights would be limited.

Social conservatives are a critical voting bloc in the GOP presidential primaries.

Frankly, this is a pretty mainstream position. Indeed, among legal scholars there is great sentiment that the decision is so flawed that it ought to and will be overturned.based upon its poor legal foundation. And as is often pointed out, all the reversal of Roe will do is place the issue of abortion back in the hands of the elected representatives of the people -- where it rested for the first two centuries of American independence.

Posted by: Greg at 11:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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It is one of the most important documents of the Revolutionary period, but has been in private hands and out of public view since it the speech it contains was given at the very beginning of the our nation's independence. It is the speech that set the precedent that the military would be under civilian control -- and likely also kept this country from being ruled by a king or a Caesar.

It was a speech so moving the crowd wept. It was a speech so personally important George Washington's hand shook as he read it until he had to hold the paper still with both hands. After the ceremony, he handed the thing to a friend and sped out the door of the State House in Annapolis, riding off by horse.

For centuries, his words have resonated in American democracy even as the speech itself -- the small piece of paper that shook in his hands that day -- was quietly put away, out of the public eye and largely forgotten.

Today, however, amid festivities celebrating his birthday, Maryland officials plan to unveil the original document -- worth $1.5 million -- after acquiring it in a private sale from a family in Maryland who had kept it all these years. It took two years to negotiate the deal and raise money for the speech, which experts consider the most significant Washington document to change hands in the past 50 years.

The speech, scholars say, was a turning point in U.S. history. As the Revolutionary War was winding down, some wanted to make Washington king. Some whispered conspiracy, trying to seduce him with the trappings of power. But Washington renounced them all.

By resigning his commission as commander in chief to the Continental Congress -- then housed at the Annapolis capitol -- Washington laid the cornerstone for an American principle that persists today: Civilians, not generals, are ultimately in charge of military power.

It would have been very easy for Washington, as head of the Continental Army, to have become the de facto ruler of the newly formed United States. Instead he placed the needs of the country first and retired, however temporarily, from public life. In doing so he earned the respect even of his erstwhile enemy, King George III, whose comment upon his impending resignation to the painter Benjamin West upon hearing the news was "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

And indeed, we were fortunate that t this critical juncture of American history, Washington was clearly one of a number of American patriots who could qualify for that title.

Posted by: Greg at 11:18 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm going to show you folks a headline here, and then ask you a question.

Cabbie Runs Down Students

Religious Argument Leaves One Hospitalized

Quickly -- what religion was the cabbie?

Got your answer yet? Good -- now read the story that goes along with the headline.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A local cab driver allegedly tried to run over two customers after a fight over religion became heated.

The incident happened early Sunday morning on the Vanderbilt campus and left one man hospitalized and a cab driver arrested, said police

Two students visiting from Ohio were coming from a bar downtown when they got into an argument with their driver over religion, said police. After they paid the driver he allegedly ran them down in a parking lot.

Ibrihim Ahmed, of United Cab, was arrested and charged with assault, attempted homicide and theft. One of the passengers, Andrew Nelson, managed to outrun the cab but Jeremy Invus was taken to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center with serious injuries, said police.

Ahmed has been convicted of misdemeanors including evading arrest in a motor vehicle and driving on a suspended license, said police.

Ahmed was charged with theft because police said the license plate on his cab was listed as stolen. His bond is set at $300,000.

Now I'll concede that the article in question does not include the religion of the outraged cabbie, but with a name like "Ibrihim Ahmed" I'm willing to make an educated guess.

Now tell me -- how often do religious discussions regarding your faith lead to assault causing great bodily harm? Does a religion which on an almost daily basis produces outrageous acts of violence by adherents "defending the faith" really deserve to be called a "Religion of Peace"?

UPDATE: FoxNews mentions the unmentionable. Ahmed is a Sunni Muslim from Somalia.

Posted by: Greg at 11:16 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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And I mean both the story and the reporting of it.

SAN JACINTO, Calif. A sport utility vehicle fatally struck a 68-year-old San Jacinto man in a motorized wheelchair as he crossed a street, according to the coroner's office.

The accident occurred about 4:45 p.m. Saturday on San Jacinto Avenue just north of Midway Street. He was declared dead at Hemet Valley Medical Center about 6:30 p.m., according to the coroner's office.

The man's name was withheld pending notification of next of kin. Hemet sheriff's station deputies were handling the investigation.

There is, of course, and obvious question to be asked -- was the SUV operating independently, or was there a driver behind the wheel? What did the driver look like? What did the SUV look like? Did anyone get the plates? Frankly, this reporting is simply awful -- and hardly does justice to the investigation of this poor man's death.

Posted by: Greg at 06:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Another American hero has been buried in Katy, TX, a booming, middle-to-upper-middle class suburb to the west of Houston.

A Katy Marine was honored as a hometown hero by family, friends and strangers who lined the streets waving American flags after his funeral service on Saturday.

Sgt. James R. Tijerina, 26, became the sixth member of the military from the Katy area to die in the war when his CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed in Iraq on Feb. 7.

Those who gathered Saturday morning at Katy's Epiphany of the Lord Catholic Community to pay their respects remembered him as a caring man who loved God, his country, friends and family.

The photographic pieces of his life, from smiling newborn and Katy High School football player to Marine standing proudly in his uniform, were vividly displayed a few feet from his flag-draped casket.

Sgt. Tijerina was a young man with many opportunities before him who CHOSE the military. He made a decision to serve, and to continue serving even though he knew that his decision would place him in harm's way in Iraq. Indeed, after joining the Marines in 2002, J.R. Tijerina had recently chosen to reenlist for five more years of service to his country -- a decision common among his fellow members of the armed forces today. J.R. Tijerina was not an ignorant child with no choices, no hope and no future other than the military -- he was an American patriot who made the decision to be a part of something greater than himself when he chose to serve his country.

I believe the pastor of Sgt. Tijerina's boyhood church summed up his life and sacrifice well.

The Rev. Monsignor Jack Dinkins, who presided over the ceremony, said a poem Tijerina wrote expressed how he interpreted life and revealed all he was trying to be.

"It's about his beliefs, faith in America as a great nation and ideals of freedom," Dinkins said. "For a young man to have these thoughts about his country is remarkable."

Tijerina, who joined the Marines in 2002, had re-enlisted for five more years.

After his comments, Dinkins asked that Tijerina be given a standing ovation.

"J.R. not only gave his life to his country," he said, "he gave his life to the people in Iraq."

Sgt. J.R. Tijerina laid down his life for his fellow man, which my faith tells me is the greatest sort of love that there is. May his sacrifice, and the sacrifices of every other member of the American military killed or wounded in Iraq, not have been in vain.

An online guestbook honoring Sgt. J.R. Tijerina can be found here.

And I have a request for anyone who may read this post -- Msgr. Dinkins mentions the poem that Sgt. Tijerina wrote. If you have access to it, would you please add it to the comment section or email it to me so that I can include it in this post as a tribute to Sgt. Tijerina and the sacrifice he made.

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Even the Washington Post can't help but report on one of the biggest broken promises by the DemocratICK majority in the House of Representatives -- free and open debate on the important issues facing America.

Democrats pledged to bring courtesy to the Capitol when they assumed control of Congress last month. But from the start, the new majority used its muscle to force through its agenda in the House and sideline Republicans.

And after an initial burst of lawmaking, the Democratic juggernaut has kept on rolling.

Of nine major bills passed by the House since the 110th Congress began, Republicans have been allowed to make amendments to just one, a measure directing federal research into additives to biofuels. In the arcane world of Capitol Hill, where the majority dictates which legislation comes before the House and which dies on a shelf, the ability to offer amendments from the floor is one of the minority's few tools.

Last week, the strong-arming continued during the most important debate the Congress has faced yet -- the discussion about the Iraq war. Democrats initially said they would allow Republicans to propose one alternative to the resolution denouncing a troop buildup but, days later, they thought better of it.

"It sounds like we're not doing what we said we would do -- I understand that," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday. "Here, however, we believe we are very justified in one of the most important issues confronting the country, which clearly was a huge issue in the election and which got bottled up in the Senate."

Did you get that from the number two Democrat in the House? Silencing the minority is especially justified when it deals with extremely important issues like national defense! After all, we can't let the elected representatives of the American people actually have their say, offer amendments or alternative resolutions or have any significant input on little things like the War in Iraq. I guess he thinks that this "huge issue in the election" only counts when the people of a district elect Democrats -- that those who voted for Republicans are not even entitled to input on such an important matter.

It has been said that there are three types of falsehoods -- lies, damn lies, and statistics. Pelosi, Hoyer, and the rest of the Democrats have made it clear that the more accurate assessment is that there are lies, damn lies, and Democrat campaign promises of reform.

Oh, and by the way, whose proposal would the Democrats not even allow to be discussed?

Republicans hoped to introduce a bill similar to one written by Rep. Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican who flew combat missions in Korea and Vietnam and was a prisoner of war in Hanoi. It says Congress would not cut off money for soldiers in the field. But Democrats worried it would place some members of their party in a difficult position.

Dems have claimed that anything John Murtha does or says related to the military or the war cannot be disputed because he is a hero. Well, next to Sam Johnson, the corrupt windbag from Pennsylvania is nothing but a treasonous pussy -- and so the Democrats had to suppress Johnson's proposal at all costs. So much for respect for those who served.

Posted by: Greg at 03:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, maybe not quickly, but there does seem to be a move in that direction.

Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, The Times has learnt.

The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches.

In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope.

The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response.

Now dialogue betweent he two churches has gone on for most of my lifetime, so I'm not surprised by the discussion. But that they have gone this far is a bit of a surprise.

Some of the key points are rather interesting.

In one significant passage the report notes: “The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome [the Pope] as universal primate is in accordance with Christ’s will for the Church and an essential element of maintaining it in unity and truth.” Anglicans rejected the Bishop of Rome as universal primate in the 16th century. Today, however, some Anglicans are beginning to see the potential value of a ministry of universal primacy, which would be exercised by the Bishop of Rome, as a sign and focus of unity within a reunited Church.

In another paragraph the report goes even further: “We urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore together how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome might be offered and received in order to assist our Communions to grow towards full, ecclesial communion.”

Other recommendations include inviting lay and ordained members of both denominations to attend each otherÂ’s synodical and collegial gatherings and conferences. Anglican bishops could be invited to accompany Catholic ones on visits to Rome.

The report adds that special “protocols” should also be drawn up to handle the movement of clergy from one Church to the other. Other proposals include common teaching resources for children in Sunday schools and attendance at each other’s services, pilgrimages and processions.

Anglicans are also urged to begin praying for the Pope during the intercessionary prayers in church services, and Catholics are asked also to pray publicly for the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Now the Times article does indicate that there might not be great support for this move among rank-and-file Anglicans. Still, as divisions within the Anglican Communion over issues of sexual morality and the ordination of gays and homosexuals continue to fester, I wonder if this might not be a direction considered by the more conservative wing of worldwide Anglicanism.

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In 1997, Palestinian Ali Abu Kamal killed an innocent victim and wounded six others on an observation deck at the Empire State Building before ending his terrorist rampage where he should have begun -- killing himself.

His family claimed that the attack was caused by his business losses -- but now admits that the Palestinian Authority crafted that as a cover story and helped them feed the lie to the media.

Ali Abu Kamal's relatives say they are tired of lying about why the Palestinian opened fire on the observation deck of Empire State Building, killing a tourist and injuring six other people before committing suicide.

Kamal's widow insisted after the shooting spree that the attack was not politically motivated. She said that her husband had become suicidal after losing $300,000 in a business venture.

But in a stunning admission, Kamal's 48-year-old daughter Linda told the Daily News that her dad wanted to punish the U.S. for supporting Israel - and revealed her mom's 1997 account was a cover story crafted by the Palestinian Authority.

"A Palestinian Authority official advised us to say the attack was not for political reasons because that would harm the peace agreement with Israel," she told The News on Friday. "We didn't know that he was martyred for patriotic motivations, so we repeated what we were told to do."

But three days after the shootings, Kamal's family got a copy of a letter that was found on his body, they said. The letter said he planned the violence as a political statement, his daughter said.

Interestingly enough, there does not seem to be any remorse or anquish on this woman's part over her father's terrorist actions, even a decade later. She refers to her father's motives in seeking o kill innocents for political reasons as "patriotic", not terroristic.

Oh, by the way, the daughter works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, carrying on daddy's agenda for the destruction of Israel and all who support her.

One more reason to get America out of that terrorist-supporting organization, and get that terrorist-supporting organization out of America.

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