Eleven days ago, we posted an article about the death-penalty trial of Mohammed Al-Asadi, the editor of the leading Yemeni English-language newspaper. In case you missed the background information, you can read our original report:

One weblog that continues to provide excellent coverage of this affair is Agora. We urge our readers to remain current by reading all of their recent article

A lengthy interview with Al-Asadi was published in Danish-language Information. The good folk at Agora have kindly provided a translation into English. Here’s an excerpt:

Mohammed al-Asadi had become a known face in Yemen: He had been presented as a criminal on national TV and in government-friendly newspapers. He was also a known face outside of Yemen: Newsweek did a telephone interview with him in prison where they called him a “martyr for the free press” and BBC World has told his story. This Friday Mohammed al-Asadi didn’t wish to be recognised. All he wanted to do was to go to Friday Prayers, so he walked towards a Mosque in a part of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, where he doesn’t usually go:

“When I entered, I bowed my head and listened. The preacher warned against a terrible sinner among us, against one in Yemen who has dishonored our religion and our prophet. He talked of how disgraceful this man was. I realised that I was who he was talking about. I was their sinner. I dared not lift my head. I covered my head with my scarf and looked down. There and then I realised how bad things are. If the others in the Mosque had recognised me, they would have killed me. With their shoes if they had nothing else to do it with.”

It’s Monday, and our [WordSmith] has posted another one of his fine articles on the Editorial Page. Visit and read

SCENARIO:

1. Find an opening in a mountain just big enough to fly through with your airplane.
2. Line up and go inverted.
3. Fly through it.
4. Rotate to non-inverted flight.
5. Land
6. Go to men’s room and remove dirty skivvies.
7. Go to happy hour and keep mouth shut or nobody will ever fly with you again.

File format:  MPG      File size:  2.2 Mb

Editor’s Note: [MathMan] also has his own weblog, The Braden Files.

The anti-second-amendment Democrats are behind this apparantly innocuous, not-so-non-partisan effort to modify state park usage in Montana. Who would have guessed?

Here’s a local story with national significance. For more than fifty years, the Montana citizens who live near Makoshika State Park have practiced shooting their pistols and rifles at plywood targets on the park’s shooting range. Now park officials want to close the range. They fear that the increasing number of out-of-state visitors will be bothered by the sound of gunfire. Worse yet, the visitors could wander over a hilltop and into the wrong end of the range, and get shot. From Associated Press:

Rifle Range Gets the Boot From Mont. Park
By SUSAN GALLAGHER

HELENA, Mont. – Erosion by wind and water is a big part of the story at Makoshika State Park, a place of badlands and dinosaur fossils, bobcats and bluebirds. Now some people who enjoy firing guns at a range there fear erosion of what they have come to view as an entitlement.

The state parks agency plans to eliminate a decades-old rifle range at Makoshika, a rolling expanse of peculiar sandstone formations in eastern Montana. The 11,500-acre park gets about 54,000 visits a year, and is especially popular among gun enthusiasts in Glendive, about a quarter-mile from the rifle range and its plywood targets.

“Things have changed,” said Tom Reilly, an assistant administrator in the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “Now we have a visitor center on one side and a public campground on the other.”

Shooting may disturb people who “come from New Jersey to camp and wake up to gunfire,” he said “We may be used to that, living here, but others may not be.”

The state agency’s new 10-year management plan for Makoshika calls for moving the shooting range, but no new site has been selected.

That concerns Glendive shooters such as Ernest Huether, who sells and repairs guns. He worries the alternative to the state range will be a private one, with fees and a less convenient location.

Another shooter, Henry Mischel of the Dawson County Rod & Gun Club, said state planners should keep in mind that guns are a traditional part of life in Montana.

His response to concerns about visitors: “I don’t like the sound of sirens when I go to a big city, but I have to deal with it.”

Mischel said the rifle range has existed at least for the 50 years he has lived in Glendive. On a busy day, the range — passed by visitors heading to the park’s interior — draws dozens of shooters carrying handguns and rifles.

The new Makoshika plan, prepared after study of recommendations from a public advisory group, was approved in late 2005 by Jeff Hagener, director of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The state commission overseeing the agency will take up an appeal Monday by John N. Haas of Glendive, who has challenged removal of the range. Eliminating it might be OK were there a suitable replacement, but one has not been found, Haas said.

“I’m not sure that a suitable replacement site exists — it depends on what is defined as suitable,” he wrote in the appeal. And without an alternative site, he said, “future development within the park cannot successfully be planned around a faulty assumption that the range will be moved.”

There have been no reports of accidents or close calls associated with the range, but the plan says “the possibility of a misfire” into a populated area cannot be ignored.

“People wander all over,” said Jim Swanson of the park advocacy group Friends of Makoshika. “They can drop over a hill and, boom, they’re right in a rifle range.”

Some observations:

The gun range was in place first. The park service then put a visitor’s center on one side, and a campground on the other. Then they decided this was no longer a desirable place for the gun range?????

How many people coming to stay at the campground consider the range to be one of the local recreational amenities? Has anyone even raised that question?

You would probably be safer wandering through the wrong end of that gun range than you would be wandering the streets of Washington, DC at night. Or, for that matter, many inner city locations in the above-mentioned New Jersey.

And OH HO HO HO HO!!!! Who would have guessed? Jim Swanson, the “friend of the park” who is harassing the gun owners and range users, is a Democratic activist. He is the treasurer of the committee to elect Katherine Lee, Democrat, to the Montana state senate. And, as she mentions in her list of credentials, she is also a “friend of the park.”

Here’s a comparison between what really happened in Iraq versus the Democratic National Committee’s propaganda reported by the Democrat MEDIA.

IRAQ’S OVERLOOKED TRIUMPH
by John Podhoretz

March 17, 2006 — THREE years after the beginning of the war in Iraq, what have we accomplished? The honest fact is that we don’t yet know the answer to this question – and because we don’t know, the war remains unpopular.

For example, we don’t know yet whether the war we’re fighting against al Qaeda in Iraq has made the United States safer because we’ve tied down terrorist assets and distracted terrorist attention from the homeland. This was not the purpose of the war at the outset, but world-changing conflicts take twists and turns no one can foresee.

What we do know is that 41/2 years have passed since 9/11, and we have not been hit again. To be sure, others have – Spain and Britain and Indonesia most evilly. But we have not. Is the war in Iraq part of the reason? The question will have an answer – not now, but eventually.

Presumably, as time goes on, evidence will emerge in the form of intelligence we don’t know about, secret correspondence, prison interviews and memoirs, e-mails and the like that will tell the tale. That kind of evidence emerges over time, from the careful spadework of historians and academics expert in languages and idioms that present-day journalists and intelligence officers just don’t get.

We do know that our decision to put boots on the ground in the Middle East has had profound consequences in two Arab countries.

In Libya, Moammar Khadafy gave up his weapons of mass destruction. In Lebanon, a million people took to the streets of Beirut in a show of astonishing resistance to Syrian imperialism following Syria’s assassination of a leading Lebanese politician – something that would have been unthinkable before the United States invaded Iraq.

Will the positive changes we helped provoke in these countries have lasting meaning? No one can yet say.

The key accomplishments are in Iraq itself, and they are considerable – and to some degree offer an answer to the fashionable pessimism of the present moment.

Despite the insistence of some realist conservatives that we have learned the folly of attempting to plant democratic ideas in the ruined earth of Iraq, the evidence of the past two weeks is that the seeds we planted are bearing fruit among the politicians elected in those dramatic and moving elections in January and November 2005.

Yesterday, as Iraqi and Coalition troops were beginning a pitched battle against insurgent fighters, the new Iraqi parliament was sworn in. It was only two weeks ago that Sunni insurgents blew up a holy Shia mosque in a transparent effort to ignite a sectarian war – a war that, we were assured by many, was sure to catch fire.

Only it hasn’t. Instead, Iraqi politicians have sought to find common ground….

You can read the whole article at the New York Post.

Louisiana is the best example of Democrat corruption. Republicans haven’t really controlled the state since the end of Reconstruction in 1877 & yet they’re blamed for the mess caused by Democrats like the parasitic Landrieu family.

Louisiana: Second time a charm?
Mar 17, 2006
by Eliot Peace

Louisiana is the least Southern of the Southern states. Home of jazz and jambalaya, not fried chicken and sweet tea, the culture is a blend of hearty people, descendents of colonists under many flags. Strongly religious, it is the only state in the Southeast with a huge Catholic population, a relic of Spanish and French colonialism. Louisiana’s unique characteristics lend to its unpredictability, especially on Election Day.

Louisiana is also home to a unique system of selecting officials. As the only state in the nation without a primary system, parties do not nominate candidates. Candidates from all parties run against one another on Election Day in November, with the top two vote getters advancing to a runoff in December….

You can read the entire article at Townhall.

Early this morning, Iraq’s new parliament was sworn in while stateside Americans slept. This past December, Iraqis turned out to vote at the risk of their lives in a national general election. Now their chosen representatives are stepping up to serve, also at the risk of their lives. We are in awe of the courage of these ordinary people.

Meanwhile, the snide American press is still trying to stir up a civil war in Iraq. All of their press coverage is designed to encourage the insurgents. It is hard to find a positive comment about this remarkable nation-building process in the US media. For a balanced coverage, one may turn to the Pakistan Daily Times:

Thursday, March 16, 2006
Rice confident about Iraqi national unity government

* Stresses Iraqis will not allow foreign-fuelled civil war
* Iraqi leaders warn no government before May

JAKARTA/BAGHDAD: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed confidence on Wednesday that an Iraqi national unity government would be formed and that the nation would unite to avert civil war.

“I think they (the Iraqis) have shown extraordinary patience and extraordinary political maturity to work through the problems,” Rice said after a speech delivered during a two-day visit to Indonesia.

“I believe that they are going to form a national unity government. And when they do and when the coalition has properly trained Iraqi security forces in order to be able to secure the country, you can be certain that we will be more than pleased to stand down and to have the Iraqis do it themselves,” she said.

Rice said she believed that the Iraqis would fend off attempts by “foreign terrorists” to divide the country along sectarian lines.

“I think it’s time we stop saying that the Iraqis want to descend into civil war. That’s not what they want. That’s what some foreign terrorists want for them,” she said.

“Every time they have been confronted by the terrorists, every time they have been confronted by Zarqawi or by the lieutenants of Bin Laden and efforts to break them apart . . . the Iraqis have come together, they have not split apart,” she said.

The American Daughter Media Center is a member of the Stop The ACLU Blogburst. This is a coalition of weblogs working together to oppose the destructive impact of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the traditional values that made our country great.

Here is an excerpt from this week’s featured article:

Is A Moment of Silence Prayer?
by Gribbit

The ACLU has consistently opposed having prayer in public schools. But what truly constitutes prayer? How about a moment of silence where a student can say a Hail Mary or a small prayer, internally reflect, meditate, sleep, do homework, or just plain decompress and prepare for their day? Does this constitute prayer? I wouldn’t think so. But the ACLU does.

Having a 2 -3 minute forced moment of silence at the beginning of the day to accommodate the personal religious convictions of children, or to allow them to do whatever they feel the need to do silently, is something that I think would be a good compromise to those who condemn the idea of prayer in schools.

Also keep in mind that the major objection to prayer in schools is the leftist idea of Separation of Church and State. There is NO mention of separation of church and state in the entire Constitution….

You can read the rest by visiting the Stop The ACLU weblog.

America is destroying itself through Balkanization by “diversity.” Here’s an example described in this article from Townhall:

“I pledge allegience to my black people”
Mar 15, 2006
by Michelle Malkin

One of the nation’s fastest-rising poetry prodigies is a 7-year-old New York girl whose poisonous demagogic advocacy of black separatism makes Al Sharpton look like Mister Rogers.

Autum Ashante’ of Mount Vernon, N.Y. … recites her verses not only in English, but also in fluent Swahili and Arabic (she attended the Islamic Darul Arkam School in Mount Vernon).

Most recently, as New York Post education reporter David Andreatta reported this weekend, she was invited to perform at public middle and high schools in Peekskill, N.Y., for Black History Month….

Autum’s performance also included commanding white students to remain seated as she led black students in a recitation of the “Black Child’s Pledge,” by Black Panther Shirley Williams….

Complaints from shocked students and parents led to a tape-recorded apology sent to all parents apologizing for the performance. Autum’s father condemned white district officials as “racist crackers.” Autum defended her poem by explaining to the Westchester Journal News that white people are “devils and they should be gone. We should be away from them and still be in Africa.”….

Autum Ashante’ is the natural offspring of militant multiculturalism and government-sanctioned identity politics. We reap what we sow.

Do you want to know, dear readers, how truly incompetent the CBS journalism is?

On the evening of February 19, 2006, the CBS program 60 Minutes discussed the cartoon controversy in Denmark. (Transcript here.) In a piece titled The State Of Denmark, Correspondent Bob Simon gave a biased presentation that misrepresented the situation so egregiously that many Danish citizens, journalists, and bloggers were offended.

The next day one of the Danish folk who had seen the broadcast wrote to Michelle Malkin. She posted his fairly long letter in which he contradicted the CBS portrayal of Denmark:

….as I am anxious to let off steam I hope you don’t mind me writing to you….The reason for my upset is the CBS ’60 Minutes’ programme of last night. You see, I have always enjoyed this programme thinking it was based on sound journalistic research. But now I have gotten serious doubts.

This time I am in a position to judge the validity of the statements about Denmark made in the programme by Bob Simon as I am Danish and have followed the cartoon issue since the beginning….

Expose the Left was quick to point out the bias in the television program:

February 20, 2006
60 Minutes Piece Makes Danish Look Responsible for Muslim Riots

On last night’s edition of 60 Minutes, correspondant Bob Simon did the first investigative report about the Mohammed cartoons and how they have effected the Muslim world. In an extremely sarcastic tone, Simon referred to the Danish newspaper who published the cartoons as a “bastion of free speech”. The report makes Denmark look like an unfriendly country….

Kim Priestap summed up the situation with one well-aimed sentence:

It is unfair for the Danes to be portrayed the way they were by 60 Minutes. It’s slanted journalism at its worst.

Five days later, Blue Star Chronicles drew the obvious comparison between the Danish fairy tale and the bad journalism:

The Emperor’s New Clothes
Saturday, February 25, 2006

I watched a 60 Minutes segment the other night in which Bob Simon ‘investigated’ the roots of the Cartoon Riots. With an air of authority and superiority, he portrayed the Danes as child-like and living in a land of fantasy. He implied the whole affair had been set off by the naivete of the Danish nation. He implied the Danes were shocked by the realities of the world focused on them. Oh really? As I was watching this display of overt propaganda, I was seroiusly offended….

Yesterday, the Danish blog Punditokraterne posted a terrific response by a highly respected and impeccably credentialed Danish journalist. Samuel Rachlin, a Danish TV anchor, is a graduate of Copenhagen University and the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and the Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. From his guest commentary on the blog:

The Correspondent’s New Clothes
By Samuel Rachlin

The picture of Denmark presented by CBS and its 60 Minutes magazine on American TV as a country of aggrandizing, arrogant bigots, blond models and happy-go-lucky fools out of tune and touch with the real world has nothing in common with the country I call home….

This kind of journalism does not have much in common with the tradition of Ed R. Murrow or what his associate, Fred Friendly, taught me at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University when I took my degree there in the late 70ies. The snide asides and sarcasm that permeated the narrative do not mix with the high quality journalism I have learned to expect from 60 Minutes. What we got was a presentation so biased, distorted and corrupted by so many inaccuracies and innuendos that it was impossible to recognize Denmark. I am sorry to say it, but it is shameful for the profession that both Bob Simon and I belong to….

We urge our readers to visit Punditokraterne and read all of this excellent article.

We first discovered this piece through a post at Pia Causa, so a tail wag goes to that blog.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006
60 Minutes: Go Dig Your Grave

Samuel Rachlin is sharp and to the point, – and he sums it up on behalf of all of us….

Do you want to know, dear readers, how truly incompetent the CBS journalism is? When we studied journalism (as an elective, not our main field of endeavor) we learned that the first rule was — to spell the last name of the subject correctly. If you got nothing else right, if you couldn’t spell, if you were dreadful at grammar, at least write down the last name of the person being written about, and make sure it was spelled correctly. Our teacher called it “the first rule of journalism.”

The whole cartoon controversy began when a Danish author of books for children had difficulty finding an illustrator who was willing to draw the pictures for the book. So this author is at the heart of the whole story. His name is KÃ¥re Bluitgen.

Here are some paragraphs from the CBS transcript:

….The riots, reaching from Jerusalem to Jakarta, can all be traced back to the most unlikely of places: a cluttered work space in the apartment of Kare Buitgen, a writer of children’s books.

“Well, it’s sad to see what happens now,” Buitgen says. “I wrote a book about the Prophet Muhammad to promote better understanding between cultures and religions here in Denmark.”

Buitgen had trouble finding someone to illustrate his book. Muslims don’t permit representations of their prophet, and illustrators were afraid of offending the Muslim community in Denmark.

Buitgen’s problem became known to the editors of Denmark’s largest newspaper. Its cultural editor, Flemming Rose, said he was offended by what he called this self-censorship. He explained himself in an interview that aired on the BBC….

CBS consistently misspells Bluitgen’s last name.

Previous coverage:

The Jyllands-Posten Cartoons: article

The Jyllands-Posten Editorial Cartoons: images

The Jyllands-Posten Cartoon Wars, A Perspective: article

Origins Of The Cartoon Wars: article

The Bluitgen Illustrations: images

General Michael Hagee, Marine Corps commandant, has announced that he will step down from that office a few months before his expected retirement date. From the online news service Inside Defense:

Inside the Navy
March 13, 2006

Marine Corps Commandant May Retire Early, DoD Seeks Successor

Gen. Michael Hagee, who is challenging Pentagon plans to cut his service’s end strength by 5,000 Marines, may step down as Marine Corps commandant months before his four-year term expires next January.

By law, Hagee will no longer be commandant Jan. 13, 2007. But in a brief interview last week with Inside the Navy, Hagee signaled the change could come sooner. He said he would step down as commandant “sometime between now and the 13th of January.”

Service and defense industry sources tracking the issue said Hagee is likely to step down by this summer or early fall.

Hagee said the exact timing is up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who must pick the new commandant in consultation with the president. “That will be up to the secretary of defense as he looks as to who the individual will be who relieves me, and then of course he’ll talk to the president about that,” Hagee told ITN March 8.

Rumsfeld is interviewing candidates for Hagee’s job and other senior positions, according to military and industry sources….

Hagee is not known for publicly fighting with Pentagon leaders, but at a recent breakfast with reporters he voiced his disagreement with the Quadrennial Defense Review’s recommendation to slash Marine Corps end strength from 180,000 to 175,000 by fiscal year 2011. Hagee reiterated his views when senators questioned him at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing March 9….

This would be a tragedy if General Hagee is stepping down because he went against Rumsfeld on the end strength issue from the QDR. Of course it would not be that big of a surprise, would it? Rumsfeld gets rid of anyone who does not agree with him.

On a related note, there is an earlier article in Inside Defense about Hagee’s initial response to the QDR’s recommendation to slash Marine Corps end strength:

QDR’S CALL TO SHRINK FORCE SPURS MARINE CORPS TO DO ITS OWN STUDY

Inside the Navy, Feb. 21, 2006 — Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee, who disputes the Quadrennial Defense Review’s recommendation to slash his service’s end strength by 5,000 Marines, is launching his own study to re-examine the issue.