Photo: Jimmy Mizen's funeral in June 2008 in South London

Lawrence Auster has rightly drawn our attention to an unbearably tragic murder of a 16-year-old boy named Jimmy Mizen. It happened last year in a London bakery of all places where Jimmy and his older brother were standing in line to buy sausage rolls--a small homey detail that somehow hurts to read. A 19-year-old piece of scum named Jake Farhi barged into the line, and Jimmy told him:

"Some manners would not go amiss."

Some manners would not go amiss. This courtly, almost archaic locution sent Farhi into a rage which didn't end until he had hurled a heavy glass bakery dish at Jimmy's head. The dish shattered, severing Jimmy's carotid artery and his jugular vein. He bled to death on the floor of the shop in his brother's arms.

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More on the story behind the story on the Obama administration's Orwellian word choices. Turns out when I wrote they were boring us to death with deadening language--putting us to sleep, to be sure--I wasn't kidding. In his NRO piece today on the Obama switch from "Global War on Terror" (bad enough, sez I) to Overseas Contingency Operations (beyond garbled),  Andy McCarthy explains what's really going on:

Saul Alinsky, Obama’s community-organizing inspiration, wrote at length about words in Rules for Radicals, about their power to inspire and to enervate. “In communication as in thought, we must ever strive toward simplicity” when it is our purpose to inspire....

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Photo: The face of "volunteerism" to come?

Remember when Candidate Obama called for “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the regular military? Gave me the willies.

Well, Congress may have just brought this proto-fascist-sounding plan to life. Here, finally, is some ink on a hackle-raising "national service plan," in this case from the editorial page of the San Fran Examiner:

With almost no public attention, both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community-service jobs increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion....

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This week's column, director's cut:

“Jack Bauer Meets Barack Obama…Or Does He?” Note: The message to Iran attributed to “the President” below is directly quoted  from President Barack Obama’s message to Iran of March 20, 2009.

Ba-bink…Ba-bink…Ba-bink….

The following takes place in an unseen episode of “24.”

Tony Almeda, glowering, is watching the President live on a television in a seedy bar across the street from the White House. (Agreed, there are no seedy bars across the street from the White House, but this, after all, is “24,” where a small army of African terrorists recently accessed the White House via a waterway leading to the basement….)

The President (on screen): “In particular, I would like to speak directly to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture….”

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Suddenly, the metaphor of the ostrich digging its head into the sand is wholly  insufficient to explain the antipathy to a perfectly sound, obviously needed bill proposed by freshman Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) to require future presidential candidates to offer proof that they are "natural-born" citizens as the Constitution requires. No one seems to want it; and Posey is even being attacked for his responsible efforts. At first glance, it would seem that the opposition is ostrich-like in not wanting to acknowledge the problem the bill addresses: namely, the permanent unease caused by Barack Obama's failure to release his vault birth certificate (and many other documents pertaining to his education and career). As one reader asked: "If he could admit to cocaine use, why is he worried about his birth certificate?"  

But the ostrich that hides its head is hiding from the truth of its...

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"Dear AIG, I quit!" is the title of Jake Desantis' fascinating letter of resignation from AIG as published in today's New York Times. An executive vice president (not of the division related to the credit default swaps that brought down the company), Desantis agreed to stay on for $1/year, he writes, and he recently received --after his first round of taxes (and before the surely unconstitutional 90% punitive bonus tax the House has passed)--$742,006.42 of the notorious $165 million the company recently handed out in "bonuses."

Question: Were all of the recipients working for nothing to restructure the company? That certainly changes the bonus-ness of the payouts (Desantis calls them "retention payments"). Of course, maybe in Obamaworld execs on the dole shouldn't be paid, period. Such three-headed monster conundrums, of course, are simply what happens in the unnatural union of government...

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First, Geert Wilders speaks out about Islamization of the Netherlands on Beck and O'Reilly; now, Filip Dewinte gets his say (below) about the Islamization of Belgium on Bret Baier's Special Report news show. Finally, the story at Fox, anyway, is the Islamization of Europe--not the rise of so-called "right-wing" "fascist" parties in Europe, which is usually the media spin on the movements these men represent. Incidentally, the reporter, Greg Burke, even went to my old haunt of Molenbeek (with police escort who advised Fox team to stay in the car). Fox's angle is welcome and significant.



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From renaming acts of terrorism "man-caused disasters", to changing Global War On Terror (bad enough) to Overseas Contingency Operation: the Obama administration's plans for us are cystalizing, particularly after Prez O's mind-numbing presser tonight. The administration is trying to bore everyone to death by employing dehumanizing lingo devoid of meaning--which is not to say that in their meaningless there is no meaning, if you know what I mean.

 

Pointing out the rift between small business and big business, former Republican Rep. JC Watts writes:

Republicans are finally waking up and recognizing what I discovered long ago: that the virtues of some in big business can sometimes be as bad as the virtues of big government. Because of this, there's always room for oversight. Not over-regulation of market activities, but oversight of the human abuse of market activities.

As I have noted--as Steve Sailer has voluminiously documented--the economic meltdown resulted from decades of  social engineering designed to create a national spread sheet of home mortgage borrowing that reflected the nation's racial make-up. (George W. Bush and Karl Rove seized on this same social engineering machinery in a disastrous effort to Republicanize incoming Hispanic populations.) Essentially, banks penalized for "red-lining" were government-compelled to make increasingly risky loans--government-  guaranteed via Fannie and Freddie. This led to the creation of those "exotic" financial instruments we read about, and the marketplace for them that became a global trading frenzy ultimately saddling the great banks of the world with "toxic" paper. So long as the housing bubble kept growing, all was well; once the bubble popped, well, you know the rest. But that's another story. Watts concludes:...

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Joker One by Donovan Campbell got a positive review today in the Sunday NYT Book Section for it's you-are-there verisimilitude in depicting the experiences of a Marine platoon in Ramadi, Iraq. Reviewer James Glanz, however, is frustrated by the book's failure to put those experiences into context. He writes:

The book, named for the platoon’s radio call sign, is ostensibly about a young lieutenant whose faith in God, the Marines and his own leadership is shaken, then restored, as his men are maimed and killed on the filthy streets of Ramadi. But it is really the story...

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This week's column examines the US taxpayer's misplaced, misfocused and wrongheaded rage over chump change bonuses even as the Bush-to-Obama bailout is funding the spread of sharia (via AIG!), and  O and the Dems are engaged in a multi-trillion-dollar theft of our future as a free nation ... No wonder our friends are asking: Is this the end of America?

But about those bonuses...

Congratulations, American taxpayer. Finally, something has roused you from the stupor, the...

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WIsh he'd at least removed the American flag and lapel pin from view before crouching down and licking Iran's boots.

At your service, American Taxpayer! AIG's  Shariah Advisory Board

Meet Moe, Larry and Curly. I mean, Mohamed, Muhammad, and Mohammed.* As members of the AIG Takaful Shariah Advisory Board, they really work for you and me, the American taxpayer, ever since we the people bought an 80 percent stake in the bankrupt insurance company.

How's that for bait and switch? While we agonize over chump-change...

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Below, Jeffrey Imm recounts what it was like to be one of six stalwart souls speaking out amidst six hundred supporters of the Islamic Saudi Academy at a public meeting of the Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County Planning Commission.The meeting was to consider granting the Islamic Saudi Academy a special zoning exemption to expand. This is the same Islamic Saudi Academy that, as Jeffrey writes, "has been frequently criticized for its reported use of textbooks promoting hate and violence, its former students associated with jihad plots, reports of negligence on reporting female child sex abuse, and ISA’s former valedictorian convicted of joining Al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate the president."

Far worse than the pro-ISA crowd...

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Reuters reports

LUXEMBOURG  - A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar....

Oh, did he? Did he really.

Howz about if I recommend that US "ditch" the UN, which can take its "shared basket of currencies" and dump it on its head?

For a far better-reasoned rebuttal to assorted UN perfidies, read Claudia Rosett's rapier-sharp assessment here. Claudia's subject today--the anti-Western, pro-Iranian grotesqueries of the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann--is enough to make any self-respecting Western nation "ditch"...

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How do these guys look themselves in the mirror? Christopher Dodd spends the past couple of days categorically denying he wrote the language protecting AIG's bonuses, insisting the language was inserted by persons unknown, by the Treasury Department, by other members. Now, cool as a cucumber, he says he and the administration actually wrote the language together a month and a half ago, Of course! Silly him. How could he have ever forgotten?!

Better question: What did administration promise him?

Watch CNN's "Dodd: I added bonus loophole" video here. The Hartford Courant reports here.

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It hasn't worked  (yet), but the Obama administration clearly wants to limit ammo manufacture in the United States.

They also want to disarm airline pilots--secretly--who since 9/11, as a matter of public safety, have been allowed to be armed.

Then there's H.R. 45, aka., Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009, an alarmingly onerous piece of legislation that takes federal regulation of not only of gun ownership but also of gun owners to new levels of intrusion and control, and placing the Attorney General in charge...

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Photo by Stephen Crowley/NYT

The Obamas dyed the White House fountain green for St. Patrick's Day, thus making their mark as the administration of Nouveau Kitsch.

Meanwhile, White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers is actually claiming credit for the idea. She told MSNBC  "she and the first lady discussed turning the fountain green, and Michelle Obama liked the idea." "Coming from Chicago, we thought it would be a great way to pull the two towns together," she said. "In Chicago we annually dye the Chicago River green, so why not the White House fountain?"

Who knew? Of course, Chicago style has a different connotation for some people. Outraged over the Obama administration's partisan-by-definition plans to ram massive healthcare and energy spending through the Senate without GOP...

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Photo: #2 and #1 recipients of AIG largesse in 2008

"I warned them this would be met with an unprecedented level of outrage,"  Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), the chairman of the banking committee and part of a group of senators who pressed Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to stop the [AIG] bonuses, said yesterday.

The above quotation ran in Tuesday's Washington Post.

Dodd "warned them"? Dodd may have "warned them" all right, but he also authored a provision called, modestly enough, The Dodd Amendment that includes language that protects the very bonuses he is now railing against and  seeking to tax. Michelle Malkin has been all over this story, which was unearthed by Fox Business reporter Rich Edson, also yesterday. Edson wrote:

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction...

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Several readers have asked where to write Secretary of the Army Pete Garen to urge him to please do the (minimally) right thing and upgrade Capt. Roger Hill's General Discharge to an Honorable Discharge. Here is the address:

Secretary of the Army
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101

Image: The Department of Homeland Security's new office is almost finished

"Terrorism" is out. "Man-caused disaster" is in. And you can just forget all about "jihad." From an interview with Janet Napolitano at Der Spiegel Online:

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word "terrorism." Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country? Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word "terrorism," I referred to "man-caused" disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

Is this a joke, a late-night skit's attempt to skewer...

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I hear that Capt. Roger Hill (photographed above serving as the OIC [Officer in Charge] of the honor guard at President Reagan's funeral), who is one of our brave military men that first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration has allowed to be raked over the coals by PC military law for doing his duty under unconscionably difficult circumstances (shades of Allen West, Illario Pantano, Evan Vela, the Haditha marines, etc., etc.) will be telling his story tonight on the Fox's O'Reilly Factor.

If you are interested in helping Capt. Hill with his costly legal fight, my good friend Gen. Paul Vallely has provided, through the Scott Vallely Soldiers Memorial Fund,...

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A reader aptly, perceptively applies the themes of The Death of the Grown-Up to his church:

I just finished reading your book a couple of weeks ago and I  wanted to thank you for the material you have made available. It  was an eye opener for me. I teach a small Bible study every couple  of weeks and we spent an evening reviewing your book and discussing  the implications of what you are saying for us personally and the  future of our country. It occurs to me that what you are saying about the death of the  grown-up in our culture may apply across the board and not simply  in the area of the West confronting the onslaugt of Islamification. I speak here as an evangelical. I cannot believe the changes I have seen in the last 25 years in our churches. All of these are  related, I believe, to the rise of what is known as the "Church Growth Movement." This movement has many characteristics,...

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From the Netherlands, a disquieting report on the number of threats Dutch policitians, led overwhelmingly by Geert Wilders, have received in the last year is out.

THE HAGUE, 13/03/09 - The police corps in The Hague region received 428 reports from threatened politicians last year. Two-thirds came from Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders....

The number of reports of politicians being threatened has risen enormously in recent years. The number had reached 264 by 2007. The 2008 figure shows a further sharp increase.

The Hague being the seat of parliament means the police corps of this region receives the bulk of reports from threatened politicians. The corps has for some time had a special Threatened Politicians Team (TBP).

Public Prosecutor Nicole Vogelenzang, with special responsibility for threats to politicians,...

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This week's column is an elaboration on the post below. Given a few editing glitches in the final product, I include here the true version straight from typewriter.

    Forced to the ramparts to defend Rush Limbaugh against spurious, low-down attacks from the Obama White House and assorted Obamedia, conservatives, in their understandable zeal to defend a salient voice of conservatism, are letting the real enemy slip away unnamed, undetected. Who would that be? The answer is George W. Bush, whose stealth political legacy is a tectonic lurch Left for what is popularly known as "conservatism."     A shocking statement, maybe. But one thing I came...

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Forgot to post last week's hour-long interview on The Death of the Grown-Up with Avi Davis of Western World Radio, available here.

Illustration: Tweedledum and Tweedledee or ... 44 and 43? 

Forced to the ramparts to defend Rush Limbaugh against the spurious, low-down attacks of the Obamedia-plus-hangers-on, conservatives are letting the real enemy of  conservatism slip away. That enemy would be George W. Bush, whose stealth political legacy is a tectonic lurch Left for what is popularly thought of as "conservatism." The resulting chaos--crisis, in fact--is exactly what the new collectivist-in-chief has seized on, not to change America's direction, but to accelerate its Leftward shift. This continuity is what conservatives are failing to appreciate and assess, much to the detriment of their own coherence and political message. I tried to get at this jarring continuity between...

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Writing at NRO today, my friend Andy McCarthy casts his legal-eagle eye over last week's little-noticed DC Court of Appeals ruling on al Odah v. United States and explains in clear, unmistakable terms how, with this disastrous verdict, the Federal Courts have declared our war on jihadist Islam over.

The case has to do with the process of discovery. A three-judge panel ruled that the US government, in trying alien enemy combatants, must surrender anything during the process of discovery that might possibly be helpful to their court cases--even sensitive military intelligence.

As Andy explains:

This court has given alien enemy combatants — who have no constitutional entitlement to the due-process protections accorded to American citizens at trial — discovery...

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This video (below) should be shown to every journalism class, every civics class in America (if they only taught civics anymore). It should also be shown to the Washington press corps to instruct them on how to ask a real question. Sure, there's room for discussion, as you will see, as to whether the reporter should have id'd himself first; not used a four-letter word himself. And yet...maybe this what has to happen when the MSM is a supine lot of press release writers who, for example, only this past weekend even broached the socialism topic with Prez O. Anyway, Hot Air TV's Jason Mattera shows the way to a better, tougher, more public-service-minded media with a smile, via Michelle Malkin:

 



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Photo: Who's picture is that, anyway?

Ran into my old Washington Times colleague Tom Kelly over the weekend. Tom, a bona fide newspaperman from way back, is also the father of the late and still lamented Michael Kelly, who tragically made history as the first journalist killed in Iraq. Michael, whom I never knew, was a straight-shooting writer and editor of huge talent who first came to attention with his massive, 1990 GQ expose of the gross life and times of Sen. Ted Kennedy--lionized last week by a British knighthood and last night by a Kennedy Center birthday party. Highlights of the party included a rendition of Happy Birthday, Mr. Senator, or something, led by President Obama. No word on whether Big O was spraypainted into his dress for the occasion....whoops--wrong Kennedy birthday party. In any event, the Washington Post account of the evening came to my doorstep this morning,...

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Prez O seems to be spending more time on the road lately than in the office--making this slideshow (see one photo from it above) by Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer Stephen Crowley of the New York Times must-see viewing.  

A sidebar to the big NYT "outreach to the Taliban" interview with Prez O in today's paper  offer insight into the president's heretofore unpricked media bubble. The short story is called (online, at least): "The President Is on the Line to Follow Up on Socialism." (In the print editition, the title only has the presdident calling "to Follow Up on an Answer"--!): By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — Less than 90 minutes after Air Force One landed, the telephone rang. President Obama was on the line, wanting to add one more point to a response he gave during an interview with The New York Times. On a flight from Ohio to Washington on Friday, Mr. Obama was asked whether his domestic policies suggested that...

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Photo: Iran's A-jad and Hezbollah's Nasrallah: Will the UK be making it a threesome?

Writing over at The Corner, my friend Andy McCarthy reports on the UK's disgraceful decision to open an official dialogue with Hezbollah. The decision is thought to pave the way for the US to follow suit. The Guardian piece he cites explains:

Britain overturned its policy on a key Middle East issue yesterday by agreeing to talk to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement which fights Israel and is banned as a terrorist organisation by the US. Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister, told MPs the government would authorise "carefully selected" contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah, which is represented in the Lebanese parliament. Other EU countries, including France, already deal with the group. The move, urged privately by British diplomats for some time, may be...

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Something about the government's mortgage bailout plan incenses me above all. Maybe it's because, as a genuine home-owner with a mortage, I understand the economic issues involved more than those surrounding more exotic financial holdings. The fairness, the morality, the nuts-and-bolts financial arrangements are clear-cut and as accessible as they are instructive. It is simply unfair and divisive to burden all taxpayers for the mistakes of a few. It is immoral to reward the fecklessness of the loaners and loanees involved. It makes no economic sense to attempt to float the bloated real estate market with government intervention. And there is something so terribly corrupting about empowering courts to declare contracts made between citizens null and void. 

Q: How can this be happening?

A: Grown-ups are not in charge.

Put another way, good-faith efforts made to stabilize...

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                                                    VS                              

 

                        

The mortification. Gordon Brown arrives with beautiful, historic and thoughtful gifts for the president, and Barack Obama offers the prime minister a lousy box of DVDs. In other words, not only is the president making war on our institutions, he is deeply, crashingly, embarassingly etiquette-challenged.. And so is his wife. These are faux pas (pl.) for the books. Here are some of...

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Photo: No room at the Obama White House for this Churchill by Epstein

I thought I was going to take this week's column to launch my new pet theory about how Obama is indeed a war president--only his war is against the USA. I came to this admittedly diabolical notion after reading countless financial stories in which assorted analysts wondered how the new president could do this--"this" being spend trillions we don't have to fix a problem caused by spending trillions we don't have, whack the top brackets, raise capital gains taxes, punish charitable giving, etc., etc.--because doing "this" is sure to deepen the crisis. It suddenly occured to me that the president wants to deepen the crisis. He doesn't want the markets to recover. He wants to break the private sector. Why?He needs the crisis--panic is a better word--to fuel his government takeover of the economy. If the markets recover, the emotional convulsions...

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Q: Who said this?

“In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You  know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”

A: The 44th President of the United States

More on the "Minority Mortgage Meltdown" no one wants to talk about from Steve Sailer. Read and be educated. (Links in the original.)

Steve Sailer writes:

Was the mortgage meltdown the fault of Republicans or Democrats? Was it caused by the ideology of deregulation or of regulation? Questions like that are fun to debate because they follow the usual fault lines that divide the country into fairly equal and thus intensely rivalrous halves. But let’s think about the Housing Bubble from a more general standpoint for a moment. Is it terribly likely that a disaster that long gestated and then ran amok in plain sight for over three years (from 2004 into early 2007) would turn out to be overwhelmingly the fault of a single party or ideology? Why wouldn’t the opposition have sounded the...

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First David Brooks, now (via Powerline) the Associated Press?

Headline: "Obama beats early retreat on promise to fight pork"

How straightforward, how un-spun.

But get the lead:

WASHINGTON – Despite campaign promises to take a machete to lawmakers' pet projects, President Barack Obama is quietly caving to funding nearly 8,000 of them this year, drawing a stern rebuke Monday from his Republican challenger in last fall's election.

Arizona Sen. John McCain...

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Say it ain't so: The Messiah-in-Chief doesn't walk on water?

Apparently not, according to the NYT's David Brooks, whose column today is an exercise in wiping away the pixie dust from his eyes--or some of it, anyway. Describing himself as a "moderate conservative" who sympathizes with O and likes "his investments in education and energy innovation" and supports "health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs," Brooks writes:

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

Wait a minute. Just last month--or was it just last week?--DB was still trying to calm his own nerves over Obamanian excess...

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Photos: 1,2 at the US Capitol; 3,4 with Sen. Kyl in the LBJ Room; outside the National Press Club; 5,6 speaking in the National Press Club; with fellow IFPS board member Allen West

Dutch MP Geert Wilders finished off a whirlwind week in the US with a couple of days in DC of media interviews, meetings, and events, including a showing of Fitna and a Q&A at the US Congress, where he was hosted by Sen. Jon Kyl (above with Wilders, lower left), another presentation of Fitna...

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Figuring that with all the new media coverage this week marks the first time many Americans have heard of Geert Wilders, I wrote this week's column to reflect on the political progress of his ideas.

What a difference a year makes. I say this on realizing that just over one year ago, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders -- who has been on a multi-stop media and speaking tour of New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. -- that includes a screening of his film "Fitna," hosted by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., in the U.S. Capitol -- was little known outside the Netherlands.

ndeed, most of what people seemed to know about him -- and I refer to those of us irresistibly riveted on Islamization as the great, ignored, existential peril -- was that Wilders, along with then-fellow Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan...

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After four years at West Point, nine years of honorable service, including two wars and a Bronze Star for valor, Captain Roger Hill now faces a "less than honorable discharge" in a massive miscarriage of military "justice."  Three retired senior officers--Army Col. Andy O'Meara, Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerny and Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely--explain the case below and call for sanity to return to our armed forces in the form of either an honorable discharge for Capt. Hill, or his reinstatement as a commanding officer. Here is what O'Meara, McInerny and Vallely wrote:

When President Obama dispatched another 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, he didn't know that one of the biggest risks they face comes from the U.S. military's own lawyers. An out-of-control, politically correct legal code means U.S. soldiers could be brought...

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Now, a second active duty soldier in Iraq is questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to be commander-in-chief. Here is the first story from Worldnetdaily.com. The second begins this way:

Another U.S. soldier on active duty in Iraq is joining a challenge to President Obama's eligibility to be commander-in-chief, citing WND's report on 1st Lt. Scott Easterling, who has agreed to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit over the issue, as his inspiration. "I was inspired by 1LT Easterling's story and am writing you to inform you that I would like to be added as a plaintiff against Obama as well if you feel it would help your case," the soldier, identified for this report only as a reservist now on active duty in Iraq. His letter...

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Behold Sen. Chris Dodd's Irish idyll--a "cottage" in beautous, coastal County Galway, Eire. This makes the third home to Dodd's name--and the third stinky, sweetheart, unconventional, something-fishy real estate purchase to his name, too. From The Corner, via Kevin Rennie's dogged reporting published in the Hartford Courant, now picked up in today's London Telegraph.

When will they read about it in the Senate Ethics Committee?

Or--heaven help Dodd--at the local pub?



 

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Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly both had Geert Wilders on their Fox shows last night. Here is a link to both segments. It was Beck's second interview; O'Reilly's first. Both men were respectful.

That's not to say that Beck didn't balk at condeming Islam based on his own friendships with individual Muslims--failing to appreciate that any such personal experiences in no way alter the immutable and animating laws of Islam that Wilders and other critics (including yours truly) oppose. Wilders was nonetheless able to make good points, and introduce the notion that what the Free World needs is a kind of international First Amendment to protect speech, an initiative co-sponsored by the International Free Press Society. Meanwhile, O'Reilly must have cut off the end of every sentence Wilders spoke. But the interview went off quite well, with Wilders making good arguments against O'Reilly's two bone-headed contentions: that "everybody knows" what O'Reilly called "Islamic fascism" is behind world terrorism, so...

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You've heard of tin pot dictatorships--how about tin cup superpowers? Hillary Clinton confirms our new status in the course of an unusually straightforward piece of reporting about China and the about-faces former candidates Obama and Clinton took on assuming office by CBS News' Wyatt Andrews, as noted by AIM's Cliff Kincaid.

Once upon a time--a few months ago--both O & C promised to stand up to China's unfair trade practices, including currency manipulation. Now, they will do anything to get China to finance the "stimulus."

As Hillary told CBS. "We are relying on the Chinese government to continue to buy our debt.”

 

 

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GoV brings good news from an important new front--the linen-draped tabletops of Vienna, where a culinary school, far from acceding to Islamic prohibitions on pork, alchohol and Western dress, is requiring all students in its Kitchen and Service class to prepare, taste and serve pork and alchohol and refusing to allow headscarves in the waitress uniform.

Wunderbar!

 



This week's column takes the lesson Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says that seven years of war in Afghanistan have taught America--namely, that the US must win the "trust" of the Afghan people--and gives the good admiral an "F."

The buzzword on Afghanistan is "trust." Having routed the Taliban, liberated millions, midwived a (Sharia-supreme) constitution, assisted in elections, propped up a government and routed the Taliban some more, all the United States needs now to win victory in Afghanistan is to win the "trust" of the Afghan people.

So wrote Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in a column appearing in the Washington Post just days before President Obama ordered 17,000 new troops to Afghanistan, nearly doubling the American presence there. The president's top military adviser explained the policy this...

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Frontpage headline of the NYT Wednesday:"From Pakistan, Taliban Threats Reach New York." And pray tell, why is that? Because there are thousands of "Swatis"--Pakistani immigrants from Pakistan's Swat valley, where Pakistan has just recognized sharia (Islamic law) in exchange for a truce (worth the paper it's written on)--living in the New York area.

Front section of the Washington Post today:"Court Blocks Release of 17 Uighurs into US." This story is about Uighurs picked up in Pakistan now held  in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay whom the government wants to "resettle with Uighur families in the Washington region."

And from Frontpagemag today:...

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