Yesterday (Feb. 13) on his program, Sean Hannity allowed that [other countries] don’t get involved in the killing of American troops without facing severe consequences. Well, I guess that in these times, they do.

It has been established, beyond question, that Iran has been complicit in the killing of U.S. service members by providing materiel, expertise and personnel.

Leave aside, for the moment, that Iran has been acting against American interests for nigh on 30 years now. Leave aside involvement in the massacre of sleeping Marines in Beirut and the bombing of the Khobar Towers. Leave aside Iran’s active effort to thwart U.S. will in Iraq. The harsh reality is that Iran is today involved in the killing of American troops. The harsher reality is that we do absolutely nothing in response.

This administration may lack the will to take action against Iran to prevent their acquiring nuclear weapons — this loss of will due in no small part to the Left and the media so utterly politicizing the war; but one is staggered to conclude that it apparently lacks the spine to defend our troops. If a decapitation strike of the Iranian regime is not in the cards, or assaults on their nuclear sites, can we not at least muster the nerve to attack Basij or Revolutionary Guard units in their staging areas?

There is talk of low morale in some Army and Marine units serving in Iraq. The American warrior is able to tolerate a lot: combat, long deployments, harsh living conditions, fatigue, serving in a thankless task. What they cannot tolerate is seeing their comrades killed pointlessly and with no reprisal. And this war will be pointless if, at some point, the administration does not begin treating it as the regional conflict that it is.

And, as far as reprisal, our troops know that they are being killed by IED’s and other sophisticated weaponry that is coming from Iran. The nobility of our fighting men and women, the rightness of our cause, and the decency of our people require that we exact justice for the killing of our finest, let alone deter others from reasoning that U.S. troops are low-risk targets.

The continuation of the status quo, while unconscionable, is, sadly, thoroughly believable.

You can read more articles by ADMC contributor [Jon Pananas] at his own weblog, Laconic Blog.

We are still closely watching the Border Patrol case, especially after last week’s explosive news that the DHS had lied to Congressmen who were looking into the case. Close on the heels of that shocking revelation, we noted that US Attorney Johnny Sutton, the prosecutor in this case, has lied openly and repeatedly about this case to the media. In an effort to counter Sutton’s lies, here is one of his favorite public statements about Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean deconstructed:

“These guys did very serious crimes and once anybody who knows all the facts of this case — the fact that they shot at an unarmed guy 15 times, lied about it, covered it up, destroyed the evidence … it’s hard for me to imagine a prosecutor would look the other way,” he said.

1. It has not been proven that the drug smuggler was unarmed. Sutton has been unable to prove it, yet he states it like it’s a fact. Furthermore, two of the drug smuggler’s own family members have made statements that he has been running drugs since he was 13 or 14 and has never smuggled drugs without being armed.

2. Compean and Ramos DID NOT LIE about shooting the drug smuggler. They didn’t know that they had until almost a month later! And it’s still not proven that Ramos is the one who shot the drug smuggler.

3. The DID NOT try to “cover it up”. They verbally reported to their superiors that they fired their weapons.

4. They DID NOT destroy evidence. Sutton has been harping on this because he claims that the site of the shooting was a “crime scene” and that the BP agents knowingly altered the scene of the crime by picking up their shell casings. That is FALSE. The agents, including the agents that were with them at the time of the shooting, did NOT designate the area a crime scene, since they did NOT know that the drug smuggler had been shot.

5. In fact, far from lying about the incident or “covering it up”, Ramos and Compean followed procedures exactly:

U.S. Border Patrol firearms policy specifically states that agents are prohibited from filing a report if a shooting incident takes place and that only an oral report to supervisors is required.

“Ensure that supervisory personnel or INS investigating officers are aware that employees involved in a shooting incident shall not be required or allowed to submit a written statement of the circumstances surrounding the incident,” according to the firearms policy. “All written statements regarding the incident shall be prepared by the local INS investigating officers and shall be based upon an interview of the INS employee.”

INS refers to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which oversaw the Border Patrol prior to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The shooting policy has remained unchanged.

Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General documents obtained by the paper show that all nine agents on the scene at the time of the shooting – including two supervisors – knew shots had been fired.

Oscar Garcia, El Paso Border Patrol Union representative with Local 1929 and a firearms instructor, said that the Report of Apprehension or Seizure filed by Compean and Ramos on the day of the incident was accurate. Garcia stated that the agent’s omission of the shooting in the drug seizure report followed firearms policy.

“Our own policy prohibits them from filing any report on the shooting incident,” Garcia said. “The U.S. Attorney’s assertion that they covered up the incident by not filing a report is ridiculous.”

6. On Saturday, it was further revealed that two of the Border Patrol agents that had testified on behalf of the prosecution against Ramos and Compean also lied in their testimony during the trial.

Two Border Patrol agents who testified against two co-workers convicted of shooting a drug smuggler will be fired for changing their stories about events surrounding the shooting, according to documents obtained by the Daily Bulletin.

Sources inside the Border Patrol also say Oscar Juarez, a third agent who testified against Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, resigned from the agency last month shortly before he was to be fired.

All three agents gave sworn testimony against Ramos and Compean for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which successfully prosecuted the shooting case in March. The agents were given immunity in exchange for their testimony despite changing their accounts of the incident several times.

“When you give deals to witnesses like immunity, the government usually gets the testimony (it wants),” said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a former judge and prosecutor. “This case is a perfect example.”

What else is Johnny Sutton up to, besides being a bald-faced liar and coercing others to lie? As we’ve already reported in our previous coverage, he’s an over-zealous prosecutor of American law enforcement officers who are doing their best to protect America and themselves from coyotes, drug smugglers, and the other criminals turning our borders into a war zone. Ramos and Compean are not Sutton’s only victims:

A Texas deputy sheriff who fired shots at a fleeing vehicle after the driver tried to run him down faces 10 years in prison for injuring one of the passengers, a Mexican national being smuggled illegally into the United States.

The U.S. attorney, who won lengthy prison terms last year for two U.S. Border Patrol agents in the shooting of a drug-smuggling suspect, also prosecuted Edwards County Deputy Sheriff Guillermo F. Hernandez, who is to be sentenced next month.

The deputy’s boss, Sheriff Donald G. Letsinger, said his officer — who had been on the job for a year — “followed the letter of the law” in defending himself in the April 2005 incident and questioned why the government brought charges.

“This is a fine young man, and I just don’t believe he committed the wrong of which he was accused,” Sheriff Letsinger said. “I have never had anything hurt me so badly as this prosecution. We’ve got to make this right.”

Rep. Ted Poe, Texas Republican, called the prosecution and conviction of Hernandez, known to his friends as “Gilmer,” “another example of how the federal government is more concerned about people [who are] illegally invading America than it is about the men who protect America.”

“Once again, our government is on the wrong side of the border war,” Mr. Poe said.

The deputy’s Dec. 1 conviction has enraged his hometown of Rocksprings, Texas, population 1,250, where “Free Gilmer” signs have been posted. The Baptist church is paying the deputy’s mortgage and others have come up with costs for the family’s truck, propane and water bills. Hernandez, 25, and his wife, Ashley, have a 4-month-old daughter.

“The town is outraged that this has happened to our deputy,” said the Rev. Albert Green, pastor at the First Baptist Church. “Those people were in this country illegally, and they tried to run him down. They were the criminals, but the prosecutors made our deputy out to be the criminal.”

“I do not know a single person who doesn’t feel Gilmer was prosecuted for doing his job,” said Mr. Green, who is the deputy’s pastor. “I do not know a finer, more well-behaved gentleman. He would not purposely or willfully hurt anyone.”

U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, appointed in October 2001 by President Bush, said Hernandez fired shots at the vehicle as it sped away “knowing it was occupied with the nine individuals,” at least seven of whom were illegal aliens — some of whom later were called to testify for the government.

Hernandez was convicted after a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Del Rio, Texas, 75 miles southwest of Rocksprings — found guilty of violating “under the color of law” the civil rights of Maricela Rodriguez-Garcia, a Mexican national.

Furthermore, those same illegals LIED about Hernandez shooting at them after they crashed their vehicle and fled on foot:

Sheriff Letsinger also said the Rangers and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents, using dogs and metal detectors, found four shell casings at the traffic stop site but none at the crash site — discounting claims by two of the vehicle’s occupants that Hernandez fired shots at them as they fled the vehicle.

Nevertheless, Sutton treated the testimony of illegals already proven to be liars as inviolable, while painting Hernandez as a “rogue cop” (sound familiar?) and has imprisoned Hernandez for doing his job. But it doesn’t stop there. Sutton has a very dirty track record. In 2004, in an effort to protect one of his star witnesses – a Mexican informant – he covered up the informant’s participation in 15 tortures and murders at the “House of Death” in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Apparently, no crime is too vile for Sutton when it comes to protecting his informants. Just as he protected the notorious drug smuggler Aldrete-Davila and provided whim with taxpayer funded benefits such as a vehicle and a green card, so he has previously protected and paid off an informant that he KNOWS is a mass murderer. In fact, Sutton’s office has gone to great lengths to conceal the heinous crimes of their informant and have moved him frequently to keep him away from other American law enforcement agencies, such as the DEA. Furthermore, Sutton has been involved in making huge payments in “hush money” to this informant – over $50,000 – which was disguised as a payment to a different informant who was already dead. Now Sutton has gone to his high-level contacts inside the Department of Justice (I’ve previously revealed his insider connections with Alberto Gonzales and George Bush) in order to shut down a DEA officer who hass brought serious charges against Sutton for his complicity in covering up torture and murder.

Several sources within the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, confirmed that the informant Lalo was moved around frequently after DEA was forced to evacuate its agents from Juarez and the full extent of his – and the ICE agents’ and U.S. prosecutor’s – complicity in the murders became known to DEA.

“They (the ICE agents and U.S. prosecutor Juanita Fielden) couldn’t get rid of him (Lalo), so they tried to control him, and they moved him from place to place, to Albuquerque (N.M.) then to San Antonio (Texas), so no one could talk to him,” one source says.

Then, the first hints of the informant’s role in the murders in Juárez hit the media in the spring of 2004, and the cover-up went into full swing, according to sources. The problem is that the informant Lalo had leverage because of what he knew. He was demanding more money, sources indicate.

That’s what allegedly led one of Lalo’s ICE handlers, a high-level supervisor in El Paso, sometime between March and June of 2004, to put a payment through to him using a dead informant’s “source number,” which is a number assigned to all confidential sources in order to keep their identity concealed.

Although it is not clear how much money was given to Lalo through this means, sources indicate that it was discovered by someone at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C. The sources add that because the payment required headquarters’ approval, the amount likely exceeded $50,000.

“The confidential informant (Lalo) said the government owed him money,” one source says. “They decided they better pay him or he would start talking.”

According to law enforcement sources, a high-level ICE supervisor in El Paso allegedly sent out the word to members of his staff that no one was to cooperate with any investigation into the informant’s role in the murders, or they would face discipline. Ironically, that supervisor has since been promoted, sources indicate.

To date, no one directly involved in overseeing the informant has been brought up on criminal charges, at least no such charges have been publicly announced. One field agent has been put on administrative leave, however. Law enforcers familiar with the case believe that Hispanic agent, unless he has documentation to prove otherwise, will likely be the only person set up to take the fall.

Any investigation into U.S. prosecutors in this matter, of course, would have to go through Sutton’s office – absent the appointment of a special prosecutor – or through the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is under the charge of San Antonio native Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Given those realities, most law enforcers who spoke with Narco News believe that, absent intervention by Congress, nearly everyone involved will get a pass on the House of Death murders.

“If Sandy Gonzalez or I had done something like this, we’d be in prison,” says a former high-ranking DEA official who asked to remain anonymous. “When a U.S. attorney is incompetent, there are no sanctions. You have the Department of Justice that is supposed to control these U.S. Attorneys, but they don’t when it comes down to nut-cutting.”

As for Sandalio Gonzalez, he can’t believe justice is being sacrificed in this case, that some 15 murdered people are deemed expendable for the sake of salvaging careers and promoting political ambitions.

“If someone in Congress is not willing to take a stand on this, the nation as a whole loses some integrity in the process,” he stresses. “This isn’t about national security, spies or intelligence work, this is police work, right here. There are bodies out there.”

All the details of the above case are presented here. There is no crime too vile – not drug smuggling, not torture, and not mass murder – for U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton to overlook in order to further his career. How many lives does he get to destroy with impunity before he’s held accountable? U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton is a despicable and incredibly corrupt individual. And because of his long-held and close ties with President George W. Bush, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and other high-ranking Texas politicians in D.C., Johnny Sutton gets a free pass for crimes that would put any other American into prison for the rest of their lives! Who is paying Johnny Sutton for his crimes?

Hillary must be fuming. Segolene Royal, Socialist Party candidate for the French Presidency, has released her 100 point manifesto. In doing so, she has stolen the thunder from Hillary and the Democrat Party platform for 2008.

Not content with an unemployment rate of around 10%, Mme. Royal’s Manifesto contains many items which, if enacted, will accelerate France’s slide into irrelevance, unreality and social feebleness. All other socialist prescriptions and nostrums having not yet lifted France to a new
Belle Epoque, a President Royal would, among other things:

• increase the minimum wage from approx. $1625 per month to $2000 per month
• construct 120,000 low rent houses each year
• increase benefits for the unemployed (of which there will soon be many more…)
• increase pension amounts for low income retirees.

The effects on the French economy — an economy which becomes less competitive and sound every year — should be interesting to observe. More interesting, for us, will be the effects, other than envy, on American socialists, i.e., the MoveOn/Soros/Moore/Kennedy wing of the Democrat Party. The French platform may end up posing as many problems for Mme. Clinton as it does for Mme. Royal.

The tendency of the Left will be to think that the 2006 elections were a sign of liberal success rather than Republican failure. There will be a strong push by the MOSMK wing to write a very liberal agenda into the Democrat platform for 2008. Hillary, or whoever the candidate is, will have a delicate time reconciling a centrist candidacy with a very liberal platform.

Stay tuned for interesting times.

You can read this and other articles by ADMC contributor [Jon Pananas] at his own weblog, Laconic Blog.

What do mature, responsible adults do when faced with a complex problem of their own doing? Do they

1. call names, cast aspersions, try to affix blame regardless of their own culpability or do they
2. attempt to assess the choices and vie for the best possible resolution after much deliberation and in full acknowledgement of their own contributions to the problem?

Apparently, they do “Choice A” if we are to believe the members of our current Congress. It has long been established that not only did they vote unanimously, with one lone exception, in favor of the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of the United States Armed Forces Against Iraq but came out with highly spirited speeches in support of it. Snopes.com even has a page devoted to this because it is sometimes believed to be an Urban Myth so opposite are their claims now as to what they did and said. Their quotes refute the myth that there was little support for this action at the time the resolution was drafted into law.

These “leaders” of our country are mostly “career politicians” who have long been feeding at the public trough. For many terms, they have served on various committees in congress, some of them literally for decades, and had received intelligence briefings for years on the situation of the world in general and Iraq in particular. And in spite of all this experience and the inroads and connections they were bound to have formed over the years, President Bush was able to come to town and in very short order and only a year’s time, fool, deceive and trick them all! I just find that very hard to believe. In fact, most of what I hear coming out of Congress these days is hard to believe.

An excellent recap of what was known at the time can be found in this article, and more evidence to support our actions is brought forth on a continual basis. I will not even attempt to go over the details yet again. Those who have never heard any of this information are those who chose not to know and nothing is going to make them listen anyway. And the Liberals just feel that George W. Bush should be blamed for this and that they should be allowed to absolve themselves of any and all responsibility if they can only vilify him enough and paint the entire effort as some sort of evil war-mongoring inflicted on an otherwise tranquil and peaceful country for no reason at all. A tall order but they are feeling up to the task.

Besides, there is a presidential election coming up in 2008. I think this thought is never out of the Liberals’ minds. It is the driving force behind just about every action taken by this new majority in their “governing” of us. It is what makes them get up in the morning and it sees them to bed at night; it is nothing short of an obsession. And nothing is more important — not national security, not the best interest of the country, nothing on the face of the earth is more important to the Left in this country than regaining the White House in 2008.

They seem engendered with the belief that they and only they are fit to govern; their and only their ideas and agenda must be enacted and the sooner the better. Nothing must be allowed to get in their way in this regard and they will quickly shred each other or anyone else who dares to stand between them and the implementation of the socialist values. Only they are capable of understanding. They seem to believe this is necessary before any further progression can be achieved by mankind. Not only their world as they know it depends on this but ours as well.

Without these values in place, the world will continue to flounder with a great disparity between the have’s and the have not’s Liberals tell us from their multi-million dollar estates. Social strife and all sorts of inequities will continue to exist and plague the rest of the world, the place where we live. In short, all that prevents global Utopia, a veritable paradise on earth, is having just the right Liberal in the Oval Office. Backed by control in Congress, nothing could stop them! The sky’s the limit on the power that would bestow upon them as well as on the ceiling of our taxes. There are those who support and enable this mindset, their ardent devotees who hang on their every word and actually seem to believe all this is possible and Valhalla is within our grasp if only their candidate ascends to that most covented postition of all, President of the United States of America. That is the face the rest of the world sees, the Ultimate in Power.

And surely they will not fail in this task they perceive as their elitist birthright. Their time has finally come — it may be their last and best chance. They must weed out their own weak and annihilate any members of the unenlightened opposition who dare to get in their path to Glory. After all, with the collapse of the former Soviet Union, there are those afoot who seek to spread the false rumor that communism doesn’t work when they know that it would — if only they could be the ones to implement it. Oh, not at first, of course, but gradually it must be brought to bear, calling it more appealing names such as “Health Care for All” and “taking profits from the greedy only.” Hillary is already deciding who is greedy (oil) and who isn’t (her publicist). Sugar coat it so that it is not recognizable as the old, tired Marxism it truly is.

Has any Liberal ever had an original idea in their life? Not that I have noticed. They seem totally fixated on not just one but this particular one. A little variety would have been nice over the last fifty years but we have seen none.

To further these goals, the larger the prevailing disaster for the nation as a whole, the better. A Fox Opinion Poll stated that thirty-four percent in this country support them in this as far as the War on Terror in Iraq goes. They don’t want this country to win there. They said so, voted that way. Ask yourself why. Why would they want their own country to lose in a war? Well, that should be one sure way to get the much coveted seat in the White House, their Holy Grail of sorts. Failure on a massive scale, the bigger the better, that’s the ticket! But first they must come out in opposition to the continuance of the war, create an “other side” to which they can then subscribe, champion and create a clear division.

But what if the stupid voters failed to get it yet again and fail to elect one from among their ranks come Election Day? Never ones to underestimate what they perceive as the inferiority of those whom they serve, they must make it crystal clear that there are those who should be blamed for this disaster to which they are giving birth. Next, they must spell out very clearly who those to blame actually are. Bush Lied; People Died. Not even original in that either but I suppose they feel that it is clear enough that even voters and the unwashed masses can figure it out. It is a sort of refrain to which they often return, just changing the name of the culprit to fit the occasion.

The nation’s reputation and standing in the world will surely suffer for this power grab by deceit but it is well worth it to those on the Liberal side. It’s a small price to pay for ushering in the new dawn they will be creating, one of globalization and people of every walk sharing equally in the earth’s bounty. Never mind this is impossible and they have staring them in the face the skeleton of what was once the powerful Soviet experiment. And if they have to bring the standard of living down in this country in order to elevate that of the rest of the world, well, that is yet another very small price to pay. The Little People in this country have had it too good for far too long; they will force us to share. Level the playing field just a bit. It won’t personally effect them, just the rest of us. We are talking major megalomania here!

So let’s look for a moment at this blame they seek to place squarely on President Bush and the United States as a whole. He is the worst president in the history of this country and maybe the world, they shrill. But truly, what is the basis in fact for this claim? Liberating 25 million people? Best economy in recent history? That used to be THE national priority and both of those things the basic foundations on which this country was built. Apparently, that is Old School now, time to move on for their wisdom is greater than the founding fathers and the global experience combined. And their time has come.

Before buying into this Blame Game, let’s stop and think this over just a bit. Is it wrong to do something expecting a reasonable outcome? Why did they support the use of military force in the beginning if it was so wrong? The answer is that it wasn’t. Yes, things have morphed into a deplorable situation in Iraq now but is that the fault of George Bush and the U.S.? Could this outcome have been predicted with absolute certainty? Should it have been expected as a part of our action there or is there a point at which it can be expected that those whom we are seeking to liberate will contribute to their own freedoms and establishing peace within their own borders? The question I am asking is whether or not it can be blamed on the liberators when democracy or at least representative government fails to take hold peacefully and in-fighting develops? Is this something for which those seeking the greater good should be held accountable?

What does history have to say on this? Well, one example is that of the freedom bestowed upon India by the British. After decades of refusal on the part of the British, they finally capitulated and India was declared fully autonomous. How did that work out for them? After all those demands for freedom, lasting decades, one might think India would be fully ready and committed to making a go of it. There again is one of those reasonable assumptions that proved not to be the case. But who among us blames the British for what went wrong there? The fact that is that in short order and some 50 thousand deaths later, the British had to go back and partition the country to try to quell the violence that broke out among the various factions much as has happened in Iraq.

Now we have both India and Pakistan, but that wasn’t the end of it either. This time it was mostly Muslims and Hindus at odds. Partitioning the country should put an end to the violence, surely, would again be the logical conclusion but no, yet again and again the region has been beset with violence and fighting among the various factions just as we see in Iraq. Some of those same factions in Iraq are here engaged in an ongoing war in yet another part of the world. This could be taken for a global effort at a sort of never-ending cycle of violence if we didn’t have the Left to tell us no such movement exists today.

The Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century (website) has graphs, charts and stats taken from just about every perspective from percentage of population involved to just the straightforward count on the number of war casualties. In the example of India-Pakistan, the count is well into the millions now with Bangladesh and Kashmir added. And yet, I do not read nightly in the news, despite the violence continuing until this very day, how it is the fault of the British that these religious factions chose to fight among themselves.

I don’t ever recall hearing this in my entire lifetime. And I don’t think I have ever heard it stated that the British had no business going there in the first place. It would seem at least similar if not more culpability would be in order for the British as they were not attacked, had colonial interest and imperial ambitions and no plans for withdrawal.

So why is this particular phenomenon of assessing blame (and always to Bush and the U.S.) peculiar to this country? If you bothered to go to the above link and reviewed what is known with more information still coming out every day, there were and are connections among the various factions of the Global Jihad. Most of these are represented in Iraq. And Saddam certainly did not have good will in his heart for this country. Despite this, and their own endorsement of the military action, the Liberals in this country are the primary ones touting this Blame Game. They bemoan the isolation of this country from our former allies and decry the policies that have led to this but fail to take into account that it is their Blame Game that gives the impression that some how, some way, we are culpable for the failures and infighting in a country we have only sought to liberate. And, of course, the rest of the world is gleeful at this confession of sorts, always eager to bring down the sole remaining Super Power.

It is also an established fact that representative governments tend not to wage war on each other in the manner of those more repressive regimes found both in Iraq and in the India-Pakistan recurring wars. So is this what makes one country grasp newfound freedom and go with it and others break out into endless war? I am not sure much is known in this regard but those with representative governments have a much better record at keeping the peace. It has long been the goal of the Western world to promote this. Until recently, this was considered the most noble calling a country could have, that of the privilege of liberating others and establishing representative government where none existed. Now that is no longer a respected objective by not only our few and dwindling allies but those within our own country. It has become as if they have never heard of the concept.

Estimates in Partition violence in India and Pakistan are placed between half a million and a million. Bangladesh War for Independence is at 1.2 million, add in Assam, the Sikh uprisings, the Kashmir fighting and all since and not counting deaths related to the independence from Britain, we have a total of well over two and a half million. And this tragic atrocity is only seventeenth in ranking when it comes to bloody wars of the last century. Saddam Hussein’s own ten year war with Iran is estimated to have cost a million lives counting both sides. Yet we are told our own efforts in Iraq are the worst blunder in history.

Ranking above all the strife from war on the Indian Sub-Continent is that of Indochina, Southeast Asia. And yet I do not hear one of those blaming all the conflict in the Middle East on Bush and his policies assigning blame for this. Those 2.5 million deaths could be just as easily attributed to our abandonment of our efforts in Vietnam. Would not they be far more likely the fault of John Kerry than the current chaos in Iraq belongs to Bush based on the theory of assigning blame? Vietnam never expressed ambitions with regard to massive expansion and did not pose the threat we now face in the world to our own safety. This blaming in Iraq goes beyond hyperbole into the realm of insanity in its grandiose claims. Guess they are counting on public schools for a wealth of voters with absolutely no knowledge of history at all.

Iraq is a strategic part of the Global War on Terror. That does not seem to even be on Liberal radar. “What Global Jihad?” they ask! If reminded of 9-11, they will then try to play this down to an act committed by an isolated extremist, nothing to worry our empty heads about, won’t happen again and all that. Just be nice to the Terrorist and they will be nice to you.

So sectarian violence is officially the fault of the President and the U.S. if it is politically expedient for his party’s opponents. Yet it is not not their fault when they are the ones promoting a policy of disaster as in Vietnam. And it becomes more or less neutral in the instance of India or other regions of the world where the U.S. was not involved at all. There is something very wrong with this picture.

It’s just all too convenient and contrived. Playing on the emotions of a nation weary of casualties and not seeing the best of outcomes in Iraq, they are once again playing fast and reckless with lives on a global scale. The ensuing bloodbath in the middle east should this spin out of the borders of Iraq following an abrupt pullout of our military could dwarf both the loss of life in India and Southeast Asia. I have no doubt that they would then seek to cast their blame onto Bush for a withdrawal and whatever should next happen without regard that this was their own position. Just as they now posture that they did not in fact support military action in the first place, they will change the rules after the game. It is truly just a game they play and they change the facts to fit whatever outcome they want. It is based on the best strategy for winning an election. It is motivated by a desire for power seldom seen in this country and made doubly dangerous by the Leftists’ partner and accomplice in this, the ultra-liberal press.

At one time we felt tremendous sympathy for our fellow man caught behind the “Iron Curtain” as it was called, without a free press, no access to the truth or what was happening in the world. Now we find ourselves in a very similar situation with the slanted and biased fabrication of news coverage that now passes for journalism in this country. What were once respected newspapers and TV media are now little more than pawns of the DNC. Whatever the Liberals need the press to say, they will say it and even go to Kinko’s and whip out a few fake memos for evidence.

Savaging their own country before the rest of the world and squarely placing blame for fighting that has gone on for centuries, fueled by ancient hatreds and their own equal greed for power, the Left will continue to blame Bush and this country for literally every ill in Iraq and elsewhere. “It’s Bush’s Fault!” has become a joke they have used it so often and in regard to such a vast array of events. The outrageous re-counts of Florida in the past are nothing compared to what we may see in their quests for power this time. They seem to be willing to risk global cataclysm! The thought of people with these values getting even more power than they already have is truly frightening and I fear for my country as never before.

We must not allow these people to denigrate our efforts in Iraq nor accept the blame for the insurgents who are no doubt emboldened by seeing their enemy weakened from within our own ranks in this manner. Our efforts and mission have been the correct course and we must not allow those who will say anything for a few votes to misrepresent the facts. If factional infighting continues, that is not our fault and not the fault of the President nor our military leaders. It’s time we place blame for this along with all acts of terrorism all over the world where it belongs — on the terrorists and those committing the acts of terrorism — not on the President, not on the U.S. and not anywhere else but on those who are committing the acts of violence themselves.

We don’t want to play their Blame Game! But above all, we don’t want to allow them to win it, either!

Lock Bumping — Our media center has contributors of all professions and ages living all over the United States. So whenever several of them send in the same story, it can be assumed that the subject is a “hot topic.” Today that topic is lock bumping. Before today, most of us had never heard of it.

Wikipedia has carried information about this topic for some time:

Lock bumping is a lock picking technique for opening a pin tumbler lock using a specially-crafted bump key. One bump key will work for all locks of the same type….

The technique involves inserting the bump key into the lock and tapping the key one or more times with a mallet or similar device, while applying a slight turning force (torque) to the key. In some cases, a tap with a finger is all you need. After a little bit of practice, this will open the lock. The skill level required to bump a lock is minuscule compared to other lock picking techniques; bumping is a feasible method for compromising locks by just about anyone….

There’s also a good post on the subject at the weblog Didn’t You Hear?, worth visiting for a very good graphic illustration of the technique, showing key slots and pins.

The current spate of interest results from a video about lock bumping posted on YouTube in mid-January by Memphis locksmith Glen Peifer of Peifer Safe & Lock. And a smart move it was! Tens of thousands of folk are alarmed and looking for ways to upgrade their protection. The video has been seen by almost two million viewers. Ah, the power of the Web.

Glen was interviewed about lock bumping by WMC TV in Memphis. The story is here.

Lock Bumping – Protect yourself

If you think your home is safe just because the door is locked, think again. Bad guys may be able to slip into your house with very little effort, by trying something called “lock bumping.”…

And safety experts say this technique works on more than 90 percent of homes.

“The good guys need to know what to watch out for. The bad guys are gonna find out what to do. So why should the public not know what’s happening?” said locksmith Glen Peifer.

The trick? A special series of cuts on a regular old house key and a tap or a series of taps will do the trick.

Memphis locksmith Glen Peifer says you need to worry about this because it is so easy. Even a ten year-old can do it….

And here is the famous video:

The Blogger Flap — Keeping up with the times, John Edwards hired blue bloggers from the so-called “netroots” community to work for his presidential campaign. Like most of the liberal bloggers, they speak with strident voices. Two of them, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, had made statements critical of the Catholic Church before joining the Edwards campaign.

Earlier this week the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Bill Donohue, called on Edwards to fire the pair. Yesterday during a campaign stop in Charleston, South Carolina John Edwards announced his intention to retain the services of these bloggers.

Donohue’s reaction was described by the Washington Post:

An angry Bill Donohue … criticized Edwards for not firing the two bloggers. Donohue also promised a nationwide public relations campaign in newspapers, magazines and Catholic publications to tell voters what the candidate had done.

“When Mel Gibson got drunk and made anti-Semitic remarks, he paid a price for doing so. When Michael Richards got angry and made racist remarks, he paid a price for doing so. … But John Edwards thinks the same rules don’t apply to him, which is why he has chosen to embrace foul-mouthed, anti-Catholic bigots on his payroll,” Donohue said….

All over the Blogosphere, pundits reacted to this kerfuffle. Dan Riehl has a somewhat chauvinistic take:

As I discovered in college – play a radical feminist just right, and many end up eating out of your hand. I think most of that venom is little more than protection, anyway. Unfortunately, when you grow up, the dysfunction can be a little too much to tolerate.

In a sense, Edwards has solved something of a problem for the Right – better he has to keep an eye on these two, than us. Don’t lose too much sleep over it, John. The campaign fun hasn’t even begun.

Will this be “maccaca” for John Edwards? Or do the same rules not apply to liberals?

Passing — Sadly, the turbulent life of Anna Nicole Smith has come to an end. She collapsed in Florida and and was taken to a hospital, where she died a short time later. Only 39 years old, she survived her beloved son by only a few months. He died last year at the age of 20, while visiting his mother in the hospital as she gave birth to her baby daughter, who is now left without mother or brother.

She began her career as a waitress and topless dancer, achieved fame as a model for Guess jeans, and scandalized the public in 1994 when she married elderly oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II when she was 26 and he was 89. Following his death a year later, she battled with his son by a previous marriage for his estate all the way to the Supreme Court. The son died shortly after the case, which remains unresolved, was sent back to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

There’s a lesson in this. The two parties to the lawsuit have both died, but the lawyers for both sides plan to continue the battle. On Anna’s behalf, lawyers will fight to get a share of the estate for her five-month-old baby girl. That’s what lawyers do.

The “Scooter” Libby Trial — Yesterday the prosecution rested its case in the “Scooter” Libby trial, after lengthy testimony by television journalist Tim Russert. (The Washington Post coverage is here.) Some intrepid souls are still trying to follow the intricasies of the case. The rest of us are just thinking, “Thank God I am not on that jury.”

It has been determined that no crime was committed in the affair about which Libby was originally testifying. So the case that remains is only to determine whether Libby lied under oath while giving testimony about a crime that never took place.

Contrast this with the fact that Bill Clinton lied under oath to a grand jury, and got away with it. Oooops, forgive me, it depends on what you believe the meaning of “is” is. And meanwhile, we simple taxpayers watch these unbelievably self-absorbed Washington politicians wasting our money in endless parsing of their grievances.

It is a special time for Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor. He has been a professional rival of Libby’s for years, and must be savoring his moment in the sun.

Reading the Brain — Well, perjury may not be an issue much longer. The Guardian reports that a team of scientists have the ability to do a brain scan and read a person’s intentions or tell if he is lying.

The brain scan that can read people’s intentions
Call for ethical debate over possible use of new technology in interrogation
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday February 9, 2007

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.

The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.

The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way….

In the science and technology department, this is pretty amazing stuff. But to put it in perspective, most mothers with small children learn out of necessity to do the same thing by looking into their kids’ eyes.

Palestinian Deal — The Saudis have brokered a deal between Hamas and Fatah to share the government of Palestine. The New York Times reports:

MECCA, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 8 — The main rival Palestinian factions agreed late Thursday to form a government of national unity aimed at ending a wave of violence between them and an international boycott.

The agreement, signed here in Islam’s holiest city under Saudi auspices, appeared likely to end, at least for now, weeks of fighting that has ravaged the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but it seemed to stop short of meeting the demands of the international community for resuming relations and support for the Palestinian Authority.

The accord, signed by Khaled Meshal, the exiled political leader of Hamas, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and leader of Fatah, its main rival, is the first time that the two parties have agreed to share authority. It sets out principles for a coalition government, like the distribution of ministerial portfolios….

This is good. One Arab country stepping up to the plate to straighten out another in need of a bit of firm guidance. We don’t have to be everybody’s arbitrator.

Historically, immigrants to the United States have undergone health screening upon arrival at our borders or shores, to prevent catastrophic epidemic outbreaks in America. Writing about the history of Ellis Island in the academic publication Medicine and Health Rhode Island, prolific health science writer Dr. Stanley M. Aronson notes:

The immigrants, each with their names and geographic sites of origin inscribed on a piece of paper attached to their shirts, climbed a flight of stairs before entering the huge inspection hall. During this brief transit, they were carefully observed for visible signs of lameness, excessive physical weakness, pathologic lesions or mental aberration. Medical inspectors wrote appropriate chalk marks on the immigrants’ shoulders (e.g., G for goiter, L for lameness, X for mental deficiency). The immigrants were then channeled into twelve narrow aisles at the head of which was a vigilant uniformed public health physician who conducted what has sometimes been called the six-second inspection. Since twelve examining physicians were expected to certify the health of some 5,000 immigrants per day, the medical inspections were brief. The eyes and scalp were rigorously examined for signs of trachoma, scalp infection or lice.

Imagine, if you will, the anxiety, the inner turmoil, the dread experienced by each immigrant as he or she lined up for the rapid inspection, knowing that any hint of a number of organic illnesses or emotional states, deemed to be unsuitable for a future American resident, might be the basis for disqualification, shipment back to the old country and disruption of the family.

The 1903 published guidelines for examining physicians stated that certain diseases constituted unequivocal grounds for exclusion and therefore for shipment back to the old country. These dangerous and loathsome illnesses were first, trachoma, a highly contagious eye infection and one of the major causes of blindness today, especially in tropical regions. Early symptoms of trachoma included redness of the eyes with some discharge; and so mothers, fearful that their children might be rejected for admission, blindfolded them for the duration of the ocean voyage, many weeks, in the naive hope that this would cause their eyes to appear clear and unaffected. The second major ailment was pulmonary tuberculosis. A stethoscope was sometimes employed, but most of the time the diagnosis was reached by the nature of the cough and the degree of weight loss. Other excludable diseases included leprosy and various venereal diseases….

More recently, vigilance against the Asian bird flu has been prominent in the news. Mainstream media have given this subject extensive coverage, profiting from the readership that their scare-mongering inspires. The Center for Disease Control warns:

The avian influenza A (H5N1) epizootic (animal outbreak) in Asia and parts of Europe, the Near East, and Africa is not expected to diminish significantly in the short term. It is likely that H5N1 infection among birds has become endemic in certain areas and that human infections resulting from direct contact with infected poultry and/or wild birds will continue to occur. So far, the spread of H5N1 virus from person-to-person has been rare , limited and unsustained. No evidence for genetic reassortment between human and avian influenza A virus genes has been found; however, this epizootic continues to pose an important public health threat.

There is little pre-existing natural immunity to H5N1 infection in the human population. If these H5N1 viruses gain the ability for efficient and sustained transmission among humans, an influenza pandemic could result, with potentially high rates of illness and death….

Note how seriously our government and media respond to something that might happen. Why then is there no concern about something horrific that is happening? The flood of illegal aliens across our southern border spreads throughout our country, wherever day laborers and domestic workers find opportunity. With them they bring tapeworms and tuberculosis. They undergo no health screening as they slip across the Rio Grande at night. But our media deem it politically incorrect to caution the public about these dangers.

Owned by the Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon, the Washington Times is less restricted. They have acknowledged the incursion of tapeworm disease:

Parasitic infection plagues states along Mexico border
By Joyce Howard Price
February 8, 2007

Federal researchers say neurocysticercosis, a brain infection caused by a pork tapeworm, is a “growing public health problem in the United States,” especially in states bordering Mexico, where the disease is endemic.

Neurocysticercosis is the “most common parasitic disease of the central nervous system,” according to a study jointly conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California public health officials, who reported that “international travel and immigration are bringing the disorder to areas where it is not endemic,” such as this country.

“Neurocysticercosis is the primary cause of epilepsy in endemic areas. This brain worm is very serious,” Victor C. Tsang, chief of the immunochemistry laboratory in the Parasitic Disease Division of the CDC said in a telephone interview….

“Recent data indicate cysticercosis is an important cause of death in California,” Mr. Tsang and other authors wrote in a recent report on the disease published in the European medical journal Acta Neurologica Scandinavica….

“In Hispanics and Latinos, neurocysticercosis accounts for 13.5 percent of [U.S.] emergency-room visits for seizures,” federal and California investigators wrote in their report in Acta Neurologica Scandinavica published late last year. “The growth is mainly due to immigration from endemic developing countries,” they reported….

Bottom line — the illegal immigrants who come here and take jobs in agriculture, domestic service, and fast food restaurants put us at risk for this brain disease. Also, they burden our health care system (and our tax dollars) with their own medical care for cysticercosis. And this is a pathogen that would not be spreading in our country if it were not for illegal immigration.

Tuberculosis, once thought to be well under control in the United States, is also on the rise as the illegals bring new drug resistant strains into our population. An article at About: Lung Diseases states:

Illegal Immigrants May be Bringing Tuberculosis Into U.S.
Government officials believe illegal immigrants are responsible for spreading tuberculosis to the U.S. Most illegal immigrants come from countries where health care is inadequate, and/or the immigrants lived in poor areas where they do not or can not seek proper health care. This puts them at risk for developing and dying from curable diseases, such as tuberculosis….

Tuberculosis is on the rise, affecting over 50 million people in over 30 countries. The toughest tuberculosis to control is multidrug-resistant tuberculosis….

The respected business publication Investor’s Business Daily discussed this problem in a widely excerpted article:

Give Us Your Sick
24-JUN-05

The Border: Among the consequences of illegal immigration we can now add the reappearance of infectious diseases long thought eradicated or under control.

In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reports the emergence in the U.S. of a particularly virulent, multidrug-resistant form of tuberculosis known as MDR-TB.

“Evidence of it has surfaced in 38 of 61 California health jurisdictions, and it could ‘threaten the efficacy of TB control efforts,’ Granich said. The infected were said to be four times as likely to die from the disease and twice as likely to transmit the disease to others.

“Reluctant to label the infected as ‘illegal’ or even ‘undocumented’ aliens, the report notes that of the 407 known cases of MDR-TB, 84% were ‘foreign-born’ patients, mainly from Mexico and the Philippines who’d been in the U.S. less than five years. The percentage of TB cases among the ‘foreign-born’ jumped from 29% in 1993 to 53% as of last year….

We find this report in The Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons:

Volume 10 Number 1 – Spring 2005
Illegal Aliens and American Medicine
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.

The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences. We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than what is seen….

What is unseen is their free medical care that has degraded and closed some of America’s finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors. ‘Anchor babies’ born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income….

By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease….

Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., is a medical lawyer who formerly taught medical students at the City University of New York. She has written an outstanding report on the impact of illegal immigration to the American health care system. Her findings are extensively documented with impeccable professional references and scholarly papers — there is no political agenda here, just findings based on research and facts. The report is available in PDF format here. We urge our readers to study it.

Summarizing her findings, Cosman concludes:

We must choose either to surrender medicine to illegal aliens, or to fight illegal aliens. Surrender to illegal aliens is surrender to collectivist America: land of moral ambiguity and home of pacifist appeasement. Fighting against illegal aliens is fighting for individualistic America: land of moral strength, and home of responsible liberty.

As we fight to reclaim medicine, so we defend our nation.

Do not shrug this off as a problem for California and other southwestern states. Now we are all paying for it. In 2005 the government worked out a plan to use federal tax revenue to reimburse health care providers for the mandatory treatment of illegal aliens. From a report by CNN News:

U.S. to pay medical bills for illegal immigrants
Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Health care providers can charge the government for emergency care provided to illegal aliens beginning Tuesday.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued final guidance Monday that sets up a system for reimbursement. Lawmakers set aside $1 billion over four years for the program, created by Medicare legislation passed in 2003….

Two-thirds of the money will be distributed to health care providers based on a state’s percentage of undocumented aliens. The remaining third will go to providers in the six states with the largest number of arrests of undocumented aliens.

The states receiving the highest amounts in the current fiscal year are California, $70.8 million; Texas, $46 million; Arizona, $45 million; and New York, $12.25 million….

Last year the talking heads drummed up the specter of the black plague, salivating over the fear-driven media ratings as they asked over and over, “Should we be worried about the bird flu?” (When there is no factual news to frighten us with, they ask a rhetorical question repeatedly until it assumes the stature of real news in the minds of the American public.) But faced with a real and demonstrated danger that we should be warned about, they are frozen in the silence of political correctness.

We must control our borders. We must permit only legal, and consequently health-screened, immigration. It is not a question of meeting labor force requirements. It is not about being compassionate to foreigners who seek opportunity. It is a medical issue of life or death, of survival for our own legal citizens.

Previous articles in our Illegal Immigration series:

The Crider Case
Illegals Deadlier Than War On Terror
Going By The Numbers
The Price of Lettuce

All across America, cold weather and snow stories are dominating the local news. Several bloggers are tuned in as well. Our friend Wayne at Babylonandon writes:

Yeah….Right.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

2 pm

-4ºF

-22ºF windchill.

Al Gore…you can plant your … lips right in the middle of my large hairy (frozen) white butt.

Global warming, indeed.

A little more direct than our prose at American Daughter usually is, hence the omissions, but he does make his point. And from a more comfortable vantage in Texas, Silvio offers words of encouragement at My View:

To all my friends freezing in the East and Midwest…

….Hey, I feel your pain. I remember freezing to death many years ago in Milwaukee.

So enjoy your annual encounter with winter and remember that the baseball season is two months away.

Tail wag for the cartoon to Silvio at My View.

From the Deep South ADMC writer Amelia notes:

We are freezing!! Let’s put Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi on the tarmac at O’Hare in wet bathing suits and have them tell us about global warning then! How stupid do they think we are but more to the point, how stupid are they to always release this global warming stuff at a time when we are literally freezing to death. I think six died last night from the cold! Talk about tin ear for timing!

And once before Al Gore delivered a speech in NYC on the coldest day of the year there.

If the liberal press as well as those politicos pushing this unproven theory as fact expect to be taken seriously, shouldn’t they maybe release information on global warming in say, July, for example?

And here at our editorial epicenter in Virginia, we have left the water running in the sink at the remotest corner of the house in the hope that our pipes will not freeze and break. Meanwhile, the mainstream media, who have so much news space to devote to “global warming,” are not talking about this, because it is an inconvenient reality that does not support their agenda.

For a mainstream source you have to go to something relatively obscure like the National Weather Service website, which is not necessarily a hot stop on the Internet:

Current Watches, Warnings and Advisories
Oswego (New York)
URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE

AN ADDITIONAL 10 TO 15 INCHES OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE TONIGHT INTO FRIDAY …. GUSTY WEST WINDS WILL ALSO PRODUCE SOME BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WITH NEAR WHITEOUTS AT TIMES. THIS WILL BRING STORM TOTALS FOR THE WEEK TO OVER 90 INCHES IN SOME AREAS.

ADDITIONAL HEAVY LAKE EFFECT SNOW IS POSSIBLE FROM FRIDAY NIGHT INTO THE WEEKEND. LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNINGS MAY NEED TO BE EXTENDED THROUGH THE WEEKEND.

TRAVEL WILL BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE AT TIMES ACROSS THE EASTERN LAKE ONTARIO REGION THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING ESPECIALLY ON NORTH SOUTH ROADS SUCH AS INTERSTATE 81 AND ROUTES 11 AND 3.

Ninety inches! Do you realize how many feet that is?

Scientists who reason based on data rather than a political agenda or wishful thinking dispute the theory of global warming. Dr. Timothy Ball, one of Canada’s premier climatology experts, writes:

….why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don’t pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. “It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species,” wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976….

[Dr. Ball has an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. He has a Doctorste of Science from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. Currently he is the Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (website). ]

Doubtless none of these real-world experiential data will get in the way of the Liberals ideological goals. They would like to trash America and give the advantage to China via the Kyoto Protocol. Mind you, Al Gore knows so much more than we do because he is so much smarter than we are. After all, he invented the Internet.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has been crusading against guns for some time, mounting sting operations against gun shows that seem to many to border on entrapment. Bloomberg sent private investigators to gun shows to purchase guns and secretly videotape the transactions.

Last May he filed a federal lawsuit against 15 gun dealers, and later 12 more were added to the list. They were accused of permitting illegal “straw purchases,” transactions in which one person discusses the purchase and another actually fills out the forms and undergoes the mandatory background check.

This past Tuesday, Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation expressed encouragement about the federal investigation of Bloomberg’s actions.

Five months after the Second Amendment Foundation called on U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for obstruction of justice relating to Bloomberg’s rogue “sting” operation against gun retailers in five states, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has confirmed in a letter that an investigation is underway.

SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb said today that a letter he received from W. Larry Ford, Assistant ATF Director for Public and Governmental Affairs, confirms that the agency “is investigating the matter in order to determine if violations of federal firearms laws occurred.” Ford could not offer details in his letter, explaining to Gottlieb that the agency cannot comment on “an open investigation.”

“We’re delighted that ATF is taking this matter seriously,” Gottlieb said. “Mayor Bloomberg dispatched private investigators to several states, where they apparently made straw gun purchases in an effort to file civil lawsuits against gun dealers. The mayor refused to turn over alleged evidence obtained during this vigilante operation to ATF or other proper authorities, and instead exploited the affair to advance his own political agenda.

“Nowhere in state or federal statute does the mayor of New York or any other municipality have the authority to launch such a rogue investigation, especially one that extends beyond his jurisdiction,” Gottlieb said….

And yesterday we learned that Bloomberg’s current anti-gun crusade has hit a snag. From an article in the New York Daily News:

Feds shoot down Mike’s gun suit
BY MICHAEL SAUL

The federal government will not file criminal charges against any of the 15 out-of-state gun dealers accused by Mayor Bloomberg in a federal lawsuit of selling guns illegally, the Daily News has learned.

In a stern rebuke to the city’s high-profile crusade against illegal guns, the feds warned the Bloomberg administration that it could face “potential legal liabilities” if it continues to conduct sting operations that fall within the jurisdiction of federal agents….

According to a letter sent to City Hall, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and various U.S. attorneys’ offices have determined the city’s findings against the 15 dealers “do not rise to a level that would support a criminal prosecution.”…

This is another example of the liberals demonizing the activities of law-abiding gun-owners, based on what they suppose criminals might do. News flash — the criminals are going to have guns whether they are legal or not, and they will get them on the street, not at gun shows.

But consider this. For all of my long life, my weapon of choice has been the garden trowel. I know nothing about guns, beyond the fact that the safety I have enjoyed until now has come from a thin blue line of folk who do know how to use them at home and the courageous young warriors who carry them abroad.

Observing the horrific violation of homeowners in New Orleans by city police following Katrina while thugs and looteres roamed the city unhindered has changed all that. I signed up for a Life Membership in the National Rifle Association, and I am going to purchase a gun for personal protection and learn how to use it.

I have absolutely no idea how to go about shopping for a gun. So when I do mount this expedition, I will be accompanied for advice and counsel by a trusted friend of the past 35 years who is an expert in firearms and firearms training. He will do the talking, ask the seller the necessary questions, negotiate the deal. But I will fill out the forms, and I will have the background check, because it is going to be my gun.

Does that make this a “straw purchase”? Does that make me a criminal?

Gideons handing out Bibles on public sidewalk arrested after school officials complain

Cross-posted from Stop The ACLU Blog

From an article in WorldNetDaily:

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Two men who are members of Gideons International, the Christian organization that is famous for, among other ministries, placing Bibles in motels and giving them to children, have been arrested after trying to hand out Bibles on a public sidewalk in Florida, according to a law firm.

Officials with the Alliance Defense Fund have confirmed they will be representing Anthony Mirto and Ernest Simpson, who were arrested, booked into jail and charged with trespassing.

Jeremy Tedesco, one of the ADF’s lawyers on the case, confirmed to WND that the organization’s clients were on a public sidewalk when they were handing out Bibles and school officials summoned police.

Yes, it reads public sidewalk and yes, it reads school officials. I hope you’ll also notice that it doesn’t say anything about sex offenders, child molesters or military funerals.

“The First Amendment protects the right to engage in religious speech on a public sidewalk,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman said. “Members of the Gideons have been highly respected for decades as peaceful providers of free Bibles to those who want them.”

The arrest happened Jan. 19, when Mirto and Simpson were on the sidewalk outside of Key Largo School in Key Largo, Fla., and were distributing copies of the Bible to those interested.

“Neither man entered school grounds,” the law firm said. “After the school’s principal called police, a Monroe County sheriff’s officer asked the men to leave immediately or face trespassing charges. As the men prepared to leave, the officer decided to arrest both individuals.”

A hearing is scheduled March 5 in Monroe County Court in the cases, and ADF attorneys are preparing motions to dismiss the charges.

“Officials cannot use fear of arrest as a means of bullying law-abiding Christians into silence,” Cortman said. “These men broke no laws when they decided to communicate their message on a public sidewalk.”

Tedesco noted that sometimes school officials have a misconception about whether they can control activities on school grounds and adjacent public sidewalks. But the First Amendment does provide a protection for speech on those parcels of ground that are public, he said.

Lets see… public schools, public grounds, public sidewalks, public officials and public law enforcement.

“There’s no reason why they should be put in jail,” he said.

The ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the truth, through strategy, training, funding and litigation.

The Gideons, a group founded in the late 1800s, has as its “sole purpose” the goal “to win men, women, boys and girls to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ through association for service, personal testimony, and distributing the Bible in the human traffic lanes and streams of everyday life.”

Members of the Gideons, who pay their own expenses so 100 percent of the donations to the group go toward Bible purchases and distributions, have placed the Bible in 181 nations in 82 different languages over the years.

The organization focuses on hotels and motels, hospitals and nursing homes, schools, colleges and universities, the military and law enforcement and prisons and jails.

“The demand for Scriptures in these areas far exceeds our supplies that we are able to purchase through our donations. Much more could be done – if funds were available. However, we are placing and distributing more than 1 million copies of the Word of God, at no cost, every seven days in these areas” the group said.

The organization only gives away the Bibles with the Gideon logo on the covers, but plain Bibles are available for consumers to purchase at its distribution center at P.O. Box 140800, Nashville, Tenn., 37214-0800. Information about the products is available on the group’s website.

The Gideons serve as an extended missionary arm of the Christian church and are the oldest Christian business and professional men’s association in the United States.

Great! Get those laws keeping sex offenders away from our school kids and daycares overturned. Get those laws that permit our loved ones to grieve and honor our dead in peace overturned.

But get them Christians, handing out Bibles, in jail. Got to protect the kids and…

Did they legalize drugs in Florida or are they putting something in the water? The Dixie County Ten Commandments issue, immigration raids in Miami, and now this.

References:

Principal Annette Martinson  305-453-1255 ext. 455

Sheriff Rick Roth  305-292-7001

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay or email Gribbit. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.

by Allan Erickson

It has been said by somebody, somewhere, at some time or other, “If you want to know a person’s heart, look at their checkbook, track how they spend their money.”
 
We live in a small town in Oregon, population 20,000.   It’s a marvelous place.  The wonderful warmth and generosity of Americans, especially in small towns, is the soul of our country.    We’ve been reminded of that truth recently in a variety of ways.
 
Today, in a meeting of town pastors, one individual reported that last year the local hospital provided $3.8M in healthcare services for uninsured people unable to pay.  Business people got together with many others in town to raise the money to build the new hospital. 
 
The local Rotary Club, and many other philanthropic outfits, raise and give away millions each year, benefiting students and families and the entire community.   Our Rotary Club sends teams of doctors and dentists to Guatemala many times each year to provide free care to people living in isolated villages.
 
There are ongoing outreaches to the homeless, abused children, battered women, senior citizens, inmates and addicts.  Several groups in town work consistently for racial reconciliation.
 
My daughter and son recently went door-to-door asking for donations so their youth group could contribute to help the homeless.   The kids even spent the night in the park in 28-degree weather to learn, in part, what it’s like to be homeless.    Our kids, between the two of them, made more than 100 calls on individual households, raising more than $500.  
 
Guess how many times they were turned down?  Answer: six times.   That’s the Heart Land.
 
If somebody gets sick or injured and they can’t afford medical care, people get together and raise funds through can drives and pancake breakfasts and raffles and you name it.
 
All this goes on day after day in towns and cities across the country.  And it’s been going on for decades and decades.   By the grace of God, and the sweat of our brows, we’ve prospered to the point we have surpluses, and we give it away, time and again, globally, without fanfare or expectation, because our spiritual tradition teaches us to give and serve without attracting attention to ourselves.
 
There has never been a more prosperous people, or a more generous nation, than this, our dear old USA.   “Give, and you will receive.”  From the very rich to the modest, we give from the heart, from the pocketbook, and from our abundance, as we should, as we always will. 
 
Our President and our Vice President lead the way in charitable giving.  
 
In 2005, Mr. & Mrs. Cheney gave 77% of their adjusted gross income (AGI) — $6.8M –- much of it to Katrina relief.    Even so, the Cheneys came under fire, believe it or not (source).
 
In 2005, Mr. & Mrs. Bush had an AGI income of  $735,180.  They gave $75,560 to churches and charities, giving 10.3% of their income.   The Bushes also received criticism for taking advantage of the provisions of the Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act.
 
The mind boggles to think political enemies of the President and Vice President — people who claim to be more compassionate than ‘evil right wingers’ — would actually stoop so low as to condemn philanthropy and generosity.  
 
Is it possible Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were making some people look bad without trying to, and thus, the backlash?
 
A former VP aligned in another direction politically, in 1997, had an AGI of $197,729.  He gave $353.   That’s not a typo.  Three hundred fifty three.    The next year, the same VP made $224,376 and gave $15,197, a mere 7%.
 
But let’s not nitpick.  Some people have knots in their purse strings, or they have a bad year here and there. 
 
To get the view from 30,000 feet, consult the Charities Aid Foundation report a few months back publishing results of surveys concerning charitable giving comparisons around the world here.
 
(Be sure to check out page 14!)
 
Highlights:
 
As a percentage of GNP, most generous nation in the world — USA at 1.7%.
 
Next four in order from .6 to .75%, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa.   Next two at about .5%, Ireland and Netherlands. 
 
Looking at giving within our own borders, the findings are quite encouraging, indicating that conservatives and religious people set the pace.
 
In his book Who Really Cares, (Basic Books, 2006) Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks documents the following:

 
• Conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals, even accounting for differing income levels.

 

• Conservatives volunteer much more, and donate more blood.

 

• Generally speaking, religious people are more than three times more generous than secularists to all charities, 14 percent more generous to nonreligious charities and 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person.

So much for the popular belief conservatives are mean and stingy, and religious people are heartless hypocrites.   So much for the belief secular liberals really care more about others.
 
Still, the criticism of conservatives and religious folk pounds away, lest anyone let the facts get in the way.
 
The criticism heard from certain quarters these days during this early presidential election cycle is falling on deaf ears in the Heart Land.   There is only one America here.  We take care of our people, we work together, we pray together, and we think Norman Rockwell got it right, although we aren’t so naïve as to buy all the romanticism. 
 
We don’t need political predators from the halls of power promising us health care, or a “fairer” economy.   We don’t need the government to “redistribute wealth.”  Their attempts to guilt-trip us fail.  We know there is a relationship between government power and personal freedom: the more power in government, the less freedom for individuals; the less power in government, the more freedom for the people, freedom to prosper, and give and serve. 
 
We threw off King George precisely because he had too much power and encroached too much on our freedom, and if Uncle Sam ever becomes King George, we’ll throw him off again.
 
We do what we do as individuals, from the heart, for the greater good, simply because it’s the right thing to do.  We don’t need the government to do it for us.
 
And that’s the Heart Land of America.  Let’s work to preserve her. 
 
We don’t need the government to make our hearts good.
 
The One who created the heart makes it good, if we’ll let Him.  

(And, hey, we can do better than 1.7% gang!)