For those who still don’t “get it,” this is an editorial cartoon…

and this is blasphemy.

“From the standpoint of freedom of speech and the press, it is enough to point out that the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them…

It is not the business of government to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine.”

– Justice Tom C. Clark
(1899-1977) U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Source: Burstyn v. Wilson, 1952

Source: The Liberty Tree

On Friday, February 3, conservative talk show host Neal Boortz posted an article about the Muslim cartoon riots on his weblog Nealz Nuze. Three days on, it is all over the email network, unfortunately without attribution. Everyone is reading it, talking about it, and resending it, and no one can tell where it originated. Unless, of course, they happen to be a Nuze fan. Here is the famous email:

OUTRAGED MUSLIMS! OH MY!

We wake up this morning to see video on CNN showing rampaging Muslims around the world. In Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim … Muslim Mobs spreading mayhem. It seems that these mighty mad Muslims are rioting and firing their ever-present AK-47s into the air because of cartoons. Yup … this latest epidemic of Muslim outrage comes to us because some newspapers in Norway and Denmark published some cartoons depicting Mohammed. In fact … here is one of my favorites!

Admit it, this turban/bomb thing could be the next big fashion hit on the Muslim street!

Muslim outrage huh. OK … let’s do a little historical review. Just some lowlights:

• Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia.  A Christian school.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt.  No Muslim outrage.
• A Muslim attacks a missionary children’s school in India.  Kills six.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia.  Muslims shoot children in the back.  No Muslim outrage.
• Let’s go way back.  Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses.  Over 700 are injured.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali.  No Muslim outrage.
• Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons.  No Muslim outrage
• Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
• Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge.  No Muslim outrage.
• Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed.  Muslims are outraged.

Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. no Muslim outrage … but publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and all hell breaks loose.

Come on, is this really about cartoons? They’re rampaging and burning flags. They’re looking for Europeans to kidnap. They’re threatening innkeepers and generally raising holy Muslim hell not because of any outrage over a cartoon. They’re outraged because it is part of the Islamic jihadist culture to be outraged. You don’t really need a reason. You just need an excuse. Wandering around, destroying property, murdering children, firing guns into the air and feigning outrage over the slightest perceived insult is to a jihadist what tailgating is to a Steeler’s fan.

I know and understand that these bloodthirsty murderers do not represent the majority of the world’s Muslims. When, though, do they become outraged? When do they take to the streets to express their outrage at the radicals who are making their religion the object of worldwide hatred and ridicule? Islamic writer Salman Rushdie wrote of these silent Muslims in a New York Times article three years ago. “As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?”

Indeed. Why not?

Here’s another good reason to be suspicious of all information you find in the liberal mainstream media. From the New York Post:

COMPUTERS CAN’T EAVESDROP
By HEATHER MAC DONALD

February 6, 2006 — COMPUTERS can’t spy. They can’t violate your privacy, because they don’t know that you exist. They are are the solution to Americans’ hyperactive privacy paranoia, not its nightmare confirmation.

The furor over the National Security Agency’s al Qaeda phone-tracking program has been inflamed by conflating computer scanning with human spying. Administration critics and the media have thrown around the phrases “domestic surveillance” and “warrantless eavesdropping” to refer to what appears to be computer analysis of vast amounts of communications traffic.

In only the most minute fraction of cases has a human mind attended to the results — at which point, the term “eavesdropping” may become appropriate. Most of the time, however, the data passed through NSA’s supercomputers without any sentient being learning what the data were.

Anyone who feels violated by the possibility that his international phone calls or e-mails joined the flood of zeros and ones that feed the NSA’s machines — only to be passed by, undeciphered — must believe that his individuality can spark interest even in silicon chips….

So all of this outrage has been about a computer scanning overseas calls with pattern recognition software? Perhaps they are looking for bit strings that say — explosives, bomb, hijack, boxcutter — and so on. How many inocuous phone calls might that include?

Read the entire article here.

Military action is NOT subject to civilian courts. Here is a related article from the WSJ Opinion Journal:

America Expects Surveillance
Monitoring the enemy is necessary and appropriate.
BY ALBERTO R. GONZALES

In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush charted a course of action to respond to the worst attack on our homeland in history. He promised to use every tool available to defeat al Qaeda and pledged to take the fight to the enemy abroad as he worked to prevent another attack. As he said in the State of the Union address, “Our country must remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home.” The president has the constitutional responsibility–and authority–to lead this response.

After Sept. 11, Congress immediately confirmed the president’s constitutional authority to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against those “those nations, organizations, or persons he determines” responsible for the attacks. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) gave the president the latitude to use a full complement of tools and tactics against our enemy. A majority of Supreme Court justices have concluded that the AUMF authorizes the president to use “fundamental and accepted” incidents of military force in our armed conflict with al Qaeda. The use of signals intelligence–intercepting enemy communications–is a fundamental incident of waging war….

The AUMF is not a blank check for the president to cash at the expense of the rights of citizens. The NSA’s terrorist surveillance program is narrowly focused on the international communications of persons believed to be members or agents of al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist organizations. The terrorist surveillance program protects both the security of the nation and the rights and liberties we cherish….When I testify before Congress today, I will tell them not only that the president had the authority to use this effective antiterror tool, but that it would have been irresponsible for him not to employ this weapon to prevent another attack on our country.

To read all of this one, go here.

Be sure to visit the Editorial Page and read today’s offering by our [WordSmith]:

The weblog Euphoric Reality, which is written by two ladies who are military vets, is organizing a blog coalition to report on illegal immigration. On Monday, January 30 they published a long article describing the problem. This is an absolute must-read. We urge all of you to visit them and spend a good bit of time studying their post.