Even more News babes.

Top (left to right) Dawn Hasbrouck, Kara Sundlun, and Rachel Lutzker of WFSB in Hartford.

Bottom (left to right) Jennifer Murphy and Carole Sullivan of WKYC in Cleveland.

Mail circumcision.

La Bona's back, kiddies, and so is the whole circumcision kerfuffle. (I guess the last one was intended for me.)

La Bona said...
Something related here ... As you are aware, Female Circumcision has been outlawed and even male circumcision is being look upon as a health hazard as well as undermining the liberty of minor, I have proposed to have circumcision done online instead ...VIRTUAL CONEVANT: Circumcise without knife ... no blood, no pain, no complication!Appreciate any comment you may have … email: divinetalk@gmail.com or at my Site

I hope Bill Gates never hears of this. Can you imagine? Proprietary mohel software, making God wait interminably for downloads, the works.

I wish you well, pal, but this is the last mention of circumcision anyone will read here.

Cal Thomas: The end of Israel?

Writing at Townhall.com, Cal Thomas gives up hope of saving Israel from immolation.

The "disengagement" later this month (which is actually a retreat and is seen that way by Israel's enemies) will not be the end, anymore than previous retreats, concessions, "good will" gestures and written documents have produced security or peace in the region.

Only after Israel is destroyed will the West realize what it did and failed to do, but it will find convenient and comforting explanations to absolve itself from any blame. Jews, you see, are always responsible not only for the world's problems, but for bringing destruction upon themselves by virtue of their being Jews.

Some Israelis are placing faith in a formal "letter of assurance" that President Bush addressed to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004, in which the president assured Sharon that the United States would back Israel's claim for defensible borders, which Israelis take to mean the West Bank. The Palestinian and Arab sides have not agreed to any borders.
Israel trusts the word of the president, even as the State Department continues its pro-Arab ways and pressures Israel into real concessions while accepting as gospel empty promises from the Palestinian side, a side that has lived up to only one pledge: to eradicate the Jewish state.

Does anyone doubt that the moment (or even before the moment) the last Jewish "settler" is dislodged from Gaza and the last thriving business closed, that Hamas and its legion of demons will rush into Gaza, expand their terror operation and begin close-up attacks on Israel?

Not me, Brother Cal.

Who will stop them? It won't be the Europeans, or the Palestinians, or any Arab state that helps subsidize them. When the next formal war is launched against Israel, will the United States send troops and planes? With so little land left to defend, it is likely such a war will be over soon after it starts with Israeli cities reduced to rubble and casualties running to perhaps tens of thousands, or more.

No responsible business owner would give something to his customers without receiving something in return, or he would not remain in business for long. Why should Israel be required to do all the giving and none of the receiving?

Have we forgotten what produced the Israeli "occupation" of the Gaza Strip? In May, 1967, the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria gathered on Israel's borders in another attempt to eradicate Israel. These armies enjoyed backing from several other Arab countries, much as Hitler's "final solution" enjoyed similar support from some of the same Arab states. Israel's pre-emptive strike allowed it to gain control of Gaza and the West Bank.

The Israelis should have annexed it all and said to hell with the UN and endarkened world opinion.

The West, having failed 60 years ago to save millions of Jews from the murderous ways of the Third Reich, will have new blood on its hands which history will not, and should not, allow it ever to wipe clean.

And the left will blame the pope.

This must be Open Letter Week, because my gal Orit has written one to her fellow Jews.

Proving she is much more than just another pretty face and a smoking body, Orit pleads for sanity before it is too late at Israelinsider.

Dear Friends,

As some of you may know, I'm writing from Gush Katif. I'm writing now to anyone whose e-mail I remember, and anyone I can reach through the web. (Internet access, phones, and electricity will be cut off here by the government in the coming days.)

I'm writing because I know it's easy to stay home in your living rooms while Jewish history is being forged -- for the better or the worse -- and thousands of Jewish lives are on the brink of destruction. But this week has made me see everything differently, with my own eyes and with my own mind.

Throughout my time here I've witnessed how these people - who are good, kindhearted, generous people who love Israel with all their hearts -- have been mistreated, persecuted and put through psychological terror. I'm watching lives and communities being destroyed, synagogues and Jewish graves upturned, thousands of nurseries and livelihoods uprooted.

I cannot shut my mouth anymore. I know many of you have strong political opinions either way -- but to me this is not only a political issue -- this is a human issue.

The people here have suffered, are suffering, and if this madness is not stopped they will continue to suffer. The government has not provided for them, and many who believe this "law" is immoral refuse to cooperate with the government and sanction this immorality. They will be homeless. There is talk of building for themselves "tent cities."

Their suffering may never go away, even though they are strong. They do not deserve this, no matter how much any of you see the settlers as a scapegoat to Israel's ills, which I am certain they are not.

Some of you may think I'm a fanatic or radical -- but I like to think I'm a human being and a proud Jew. I'll not be afraid to say it. I'm a Jew and I'm proud about it. And when it comes down to it, that's what a lot of this is about.

Once the settlers are forced out, there will be a free terror trade within Gaza and Egypt. Hamas will move into their homes and plan our deaths. Things may seem peaceful for a brief while, but (most of the top IDF and intelligence people say) it will all break apart soon.

If the government says it seeks "peace," and it is achieved through making Israeli children cry, Israeli families dragged out of their homes, and little Israeli kids beaten -- then I can only cringe at the kind of "peace" this government would accomplish.

If you can open your hearts, then I ask all of you to do something. This can be stopped through non-violent civil disobedience of the likes of Martin Luther King and Ghandi. For those not willing to go that far there will be organized and legal marches and rallies which will take away the forces from the expulsion and THIS WILL BE STOPPED. And you can say that you took part in the miracle.

We will all be the better off for it -- and I promise we will all sleep better at night.

With love and best regards, Orit

P.S. If you would like to read more about what's going on here, check out my "disengagement diary" at www.israelinsider.com.

And please -- forward this letter to all your friends and fellow Jews.

Anti-homosexual nazis in Spokane plot to create a queer ghetto.

Didn't we learn when they did this to the Jews? Where are the voices of the compassionate left? Why aren't they defending the rights of sodomites to live and shop and work where they please?

What? This is the work of the left? Why, that could only mean...

A committee charged with laying the blueprint for a proposed gay business district in Spokane has identified possible locations for the district and hopes to meet with the city council by the end of the year to solidify plans.

"Solidify the final solution to the 'homosexual problem' is more like it.

Leaders of a dozen-member subcommittee of the Inland Northwest Business Alliance, a nonprofit lesbian and gay business organization, said Browne's Addition, East Sprague and North Monroe/West Broadway are its top picks for the location of the district. The committee, which has been working on the plan for more than a year, said at a meeting Wednesday that affordable housing, room to grow and easy access to parks, bus routes, churches and schools are some of the criteria they considered.

"We don't want to go out there and pick anything," said Marvin Reguindin, co-coordinator of the committee. "We want to be smart."

The committee estimates that 5 percent to 10 percent of Spokane's population is gay, or about 10,000 to 20,000 people, a report handed out to members of the INBA said.

Reguindin said the purpose of creating a gay business district, or "hate-free zone," is to provide a supportive place where people will be comfortable being gay.

"Yes. Ze Jews vill be much more comfortable and safe in their own neighborhood vith zer own kind, and protected by ze polizei."

"It can look like those districts that are already established," he said. "It would just be more gay."

Said committee co-coordinator Bonnie Aspen, "We need to have a place where we can hold hands and have it be OK."

Put a fence around it. You'll be safe from the Christians.

Call it a zoo. Call it a ghetto.

Reguindin said the INBA would try to work with the city to bring new businesses and residents to whatever district is chosen. He said development would look similar to that of the burgeoning University District; businesses gradually would locate there to serve a select community.

"There could be people in city government who aren't thrilled with this," he said. "But once you start talking about it, I think it is pretty hard to go against economic development."

Aspen said investors will make the final decision about the location of the district. The volunteer committee itself has no money for development and is seeking investors for the project. She said it's too early to estimate how much money will be needed. In five years, however, Aspen said she hopes to see anchor businesses settle in, allowing for growth of the district.
"Not all the businesses will be gay-owned, but they will be aligned with creating a vibrant business area," she said.

Aspen said the group hasn't formally approached the city yet because of a need for further research.

"We really haven't wanted to put the city in a position to fight," she said. "We want to use existing resources, and not have it be special treatment for the gay folks."

How condescending is this? How could homosexuals who can think not be offended by this?

Reguindin said the committee's next steps are to attend neighborhood council meetings to get a better feel for potential district sites, and also to expand the number of businesses and developers committed to the project.
"There certainly are numbers of people who want to support a gay business district if we want to establish one," he said. "We are not re-creating the wheel. We hope we can find an area that works with the city."
(Thanks to the Spokesman-Review and CNSNews for the heads up on this travesty of the American way of life.)

The Mary Jo White Memo: Documentation of Clinton's culpability.

Click to enlarge.

Looking for a smoking gun? This will do for now.

More on this here and here.

Check out FreeRepublic for even more.

Monday, August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption.

It is a Holy Day of Obligation.

More on "The Myth of Hitler's Pope".

Thanks to Human Events Online for what shall serve as a followup to two of my earlier posts. (Here, and here.)

This book should put the slander against The Church and Pope Pius XII for good. Except, of course, in the fever swamps of the God-haters.

Conservative Booknotes Interviews Rabbi Dalin on The Myth of Hitler's Pope

Rabbi David Dalin answers our questions about his new book, The Myth of Hitler's Pope:

Do you remember how you first became interested in the controversy about Pius XII's actions during World War II?

I'd always heard about Pius XII, but in 2000 . . . I was asked to write a book review for The Weekly Standard. . . . At the time I knew relatively little about the subject. . . .this was shortly after the book by John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope, had been published. I thought I would write a short book review, and I spent that summer just immersed in this. I came to the conclusion that really there had been a terrible historical injustice against Pius XII, and I wanted to make a small contribution in the book review to set the historical record straight.

And I want to come back to that, because I basically came first in that book review and then in this book to the exact opposite conclusion from John Cornwell the British journalist that Pius XII not only was not Hitler's pope, but he was a great friend of the Jewish people at a moment in history when it really mattered quite a bit: World War II during the Holocaust years. So what started out as just a small book review ended up being quite a significant review essay . . . and that really motivated me -- I got a terrific response; nothing I've ever written before has gotten as much attention-to try to write a book that would in some way also help to correct the historical injustice against Pius XII. The motivation was to set the historical record straight.

Can you give maybe just one example of evidence that you came across that's really ignored by the folks who believe in Hitler's pope?

Can I give you more than one-two or three? You can tell me when to stop...
Oh, please go ahead.

Let me give you a few quick examples. During World War II, during the Holocaust, it's estimated that close to 80% of the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe were killed, were exterminated by the Nazis. In Italy itself, and in Rome, over 80%, close to 85% of the Jews survived. Now what I argue and document in my book is that this was more than a coincidence-that, contrary to those who say that the high rate of Jewish survival in Italy was because of mere luck or chance or coincidence, or that the rescue efforts for the Jews were carried out spontaneously by individual Catholics unconnected to the pope, I show that this had a lot to do with the pope's direct intervention in the rescue efforts, that he was directly involved in the rescue efforts, and therefore became a leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in Italy.

Now let me give you a couple of examples of this. There were certainly individual Catholics, a lot of individual Catholics who rescued Jews, but most of this took place on the instructions and through the involvement of the pope. Now, in Castel Gandolfo, which is the pope's summer residence outside of Rome, it's estimated that close to 3,000 Jews were sheltered and hidden in Castel Gandolfo throughout the years of the Holocaust.

That's a very large number. How does that compare with [numbers of Jews helped by] other rescuers?

Well, that's just what I was going to say. I argue in my book, in no-it's an estimate; it may have been less than 3,000 . . . we have no precise figure, but let's say for the sake of argument it's even closer to 2,000 than to 3,000-in no other location in all of Nazi-occupied Europe were as many Jews sheltered and hidden for as long a period of time as at Castel Gandolfo. And this absolutely, definitively could not have happened without the intervention, the involvement and the go-ahead of the pope because this Castel Gandolfo was essentially part of the Vatican. It was the pope's summer residence. And by the way, parenthetically, it's interesting to note, during the time in which they were hidden there, the Jews at Castel Gandolfo were even provided with kosher food, which is amazing, which is a tremendous kind of footnote to all of this. Also related to this, during the time of the Nazi occupation, in 155 monasteries, churches, and convents in Rome, as well as in buildings of the Vatican itself, Jews were also sheltered and hidden.

Now, once again, this could not have happened without the direct intervention of the pope, this could not have happened independent of the pope. Can I give you two other quick examples? John Cornwell who coined the phrase "Hitler's Pope"-and I want to come back to that term, by the way, which is so historically misleading-but he and other papal critics alleged that Pius XII even before he became pope did little in the 1930s to oppose Hitler and Nazism. And nothing could be further from the truth. In fact I've come up with over 40 statements by the pope . . .especially in the1930s, from the late 1920s, once Hitler takes office, and even before, opposing Nazism, then the Hitler regime, and Nazi anti-Semitism. . . . Pius XII's contemporaries knew that indeed he was a friend of the Jewish people. . . . The Nazis themselves realized this because the Nazis for example opposed strongly his selection as pope in 1939. Already in the 1930s Nazi documents were referring to Pius XII as the Jew-loving cardinal in Rome. He was then the cardinal Secretary of State. A Nazi document . . . later refers to Pius XII as the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals. So the Nazis themselves considered him an outspoken opponent of the Hitler regime and of anti-Semitism and as a defender of the Jews.

And one last example: In 1938 Hitler makes his famous state visit to Rome, to Italy at the invitation of Mussolini. Eugenio Pacelli-who's the Vatican Secretary of State, the future Pius XII, who becomes pope the following year -- he publicly snubs Hitler. He leaves Rome for Castel Gandolfo, refuses to meet with Hitler, to even shake his hand. Besides being what I would argue are tremendous courageous acts, it was risky as well. We now know that the Nazis had plans to kidnap Pius XII, to attack the Vatican and kidnap him, and there was historical precedent for this. In 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte had sent his troops to Rome and had kidnapped the pope of that era and taken him as a prisoner to Paris. . . . In the 1930s Pius XII I would argue was a lonely voice in the wilderness of opposition to Hitler. One might compare him in that respect to Winston Churchill who was lonely voice in opposing Hitler during the same time period. . . .

What do you say to critics who say, well, Pius XII should have taken any risk in order to save as many Jews as possible, in order to take an even firmer stand. Why didn't he do even more?

Well, okay, that's an argument that his critics have made. . . . One thing he might have done which many critics . . . say . . . maybe he should have tried to do this was to excommunicate those Nazi leaders who were baptized Catholics, and that included Hitler and several other top Nazi leaders. Now that having been said, this would have been a moral statement . . . it's arguable that maybe that would have been an important statement for the pope to have made. The answer to that of course is that . . . the fact is, it wouldn't have helped. The Nazis were oblivious to public opinion. And, on the contrary, it might have invited more reprisals against both Jews and Catholics. And let me give you another example similar to that. . . . One of the arguments of papal critics is that the bishops of Germany, at the instruction of Pius XII, should have published and read out loud in every German church a pastoral letter publicly opposing Hitler, opposing the Nazi regime, and opposing anti-Semitism. Now that was never done in Germany, one of the reasons being, and I think it's a good assumption that the reason is wasn't done [was] that Pius XII was a diplomat, he was a papal diplomat for years, and he realized he didn't -- he was concerned about inviting more reprisals against both Catholics and Jews if his actions would be, you know, would outrage so to speak the Nazis. Now, if I were to make [this] statement his critics would say, Oh, come on . . . he should have done this; this was an example of his cowardice. But the perfect answer to that is . . .just what his critics have asked for here . . . did take place in Holland. In 1942 the Dutch bishops at the instruction of Pius XII . . . read a pastoral letter at every Catholic church in Holland on the same Sunday . . . opposing, attacking Hitler, the Hitler regime, and Nazi anti-Semitism. This is just what his critics said should have been done in every country of Nazi-occupied Europe. Well, the reprisals were catastrophic and devastating, and they've led even some of his critics to pause for a moment. The reprisals were so strong that in no other country in all of Nazi-occupied Europe were as large a percentage of Jews deported to Nazi death camps and killed as in Holland. The percentage was higher than in any other country of Nazi-occupied Europe. And also tens of thousands more Catholics were killed in Holland in reprisal for the statements of the Dutch bishops. So one can say, Yes, he should have done, but I think an argument is that he recognized -- Pius XII was an ordained priest, but he wasn't a pastor in a church so to speak; his career was, almost from the time of his ordination he was a diplomat, he worked in the Vatican Secretariat of State; so in other words he wasn't so much a pastoral priest and clergyman as a trained diplomat; and this is important because that's one of the reasons, by the way, when he was selected as pope in 1939 it was on the eve of World War II and one of the credentials that he had, it was felt that he should be named pope because he had tremendous credentials as a diplomat. Now it was his very experiences as a diplomat that led him to be cautious and pragmatic in an instance like this. Now his critcs will say, No, that wasn't being cautious and pragmatic, that was being fearful and you know, and just not ready to -- he was silent. But his silence may actually have saved a lot of lives. And one last thing on this. I'm often asked as a rabbi, What possibly could be worse than the mass murder, the extermination of 6 million Jews? And my answer is the mass murder extermination of hundreds of thousands more. . . . Not to mention hundreds of thousands of more Catholics as well. The threat of Nazi reprisals to actions on the part of the papacy were very real, I think.

If the evidence is this overwhelming, what's driving the myth of Hitler's pope? Who wants to believe, or wants other people to believe, that Pius XII was an anti-Semite, or a coward?

It's a good question. First of all, the myth goes back to a play. It goes back -- the term is John Cornwell's, from his book in 1999 -- the myth goes back actually to the play The Deputy in 1959 -- 63, rather -- by a West German playwright, a secular Protestant by the name of Rolf Hochhuth, which portrays Pius XII for the first time -- this was five years after his death -- as a collaborator with Nazi Germany and as an anti-Semite. Parenthetically, we now know that Rolf Hochhuth was among other things a member of the Hitler Youth as a child, as a youngster. But the point is that . . . until that time, Pius XII had an [enviable] reputation among Catholics and Jews alike. . . . I've documented in my book that no pope has had such gratitude and praise from Jewish leaders throughout the world during his lifetime as had Pius XII, until then. . . . If Pius XII truly were Hitler's pope, one would expect the most devastating attacks and critiques to come from Jewish scholars and journalists. But, on the contrary, the most devastating have not been, in fact some of the best defenses have come from Jewish scholars, some much more prominent than myself. I'll give you a good example, Sir Morton Gilbert of England, who's Churchill's official biographer and one of the great historians of the Holocaust of this generation, also one of the greatest historians of the past 50 years. He's the author of well over 70 books. Now, he -- he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth; he's a very prominent leader of the Jewish community in London; he has a home in Israel as well -- he's been one of the great defenders of Pius XII. In fact, in an interview in Inside the Vatican, published in Rome, he spoke about, in praise of Pius XII. And there are others as well. What surprised me was that the most vicious critics of Pius XII have been Catholic writers, for the most part liberal or lapsed Catholics, who kind of have a problem with and a political agenda against the church. You know, John Cornwell . . .is a former Jesuit Jesuit seminarian, Gary Wills, who wrote the book Papal Sin, is a former Jesuit seminarian, and James Carroll, another critic, a papal critic in this respect is a former priest. Why did they write these books?

My argument is -- and this has generated a lot of discussion when I wrote this in The Weekly Standard, and I develop it in this book -- is that they had a political agenda with the pontificate of the late pope, Pope John Paul II, which for them was anathema. John Paul II was far too conservative for them, and I think they hoped if they could undermine the papal credibility and say that one pope was morally fallible, who was also, now, Pius XII was an orthodox Catholic, in many ways similar in his theology and orthodoxy to John Paul II, and I think if they could try to prove, to argue that one pope was morally fallible and to question his credibility as a moral leader then they could insult or undermine the moral credibility of the modern papacy, especially of John Paul II. And it's interesting in each of the books written, each of these books, and subsequent books by Cornwell and Wills, they have even more about their attack on John Paul II. And I think this is really their political agenda.

And the other thing is, Why did these books emerge, and there were several almost at the same time. . . . Part of that, there was another agenda. Your readers may remember, there was a momentum during the 1990s from John Paul II to canonize Pius XII. And my sense is . . . these books are coming from ultra-liberal Catholics, for the most part not from Jews, and it's to forestall the movement for the canonization of Pius XII, to curtail the momentum . . . I think it's been put on hold for quite a while. You talk about the underlying motivation -- my sense is that the timing is more than coincidence. . . .

Very interesting.

By the way, can I mention one thing about the title Hitler's Pope? When the book came out, it was historically misleading in so many ways. . . . Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, never met Adolf Hitler. He was the papal nuncio, diplomat in Germany in the 1920s, but he left Germany in 1929 to return to Rome become the Vatican Secretary of State. He never returned to Germany. So he never met with Adolf Hitler. And as I mentioned before when Hitler visited Rome on a state visit in 1938 he publicly snubbed Hitler; he refused to meet with him. Now here's the dishonest thing about the book. In the British edition of John Cornwell's book, the malicious title, Hitler's Pope, is reinforced by the book's misleading jacket and picture, which has a picture of Eugenio Pacelli, who was then the papal nuncio in Berlin, leaving a reception given for the constitutionally elected president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, in 1927. . . . In the background are two uniformed German soliders, [of] which the implication is -- well, the caption of this jacket says that this meeting took place in 1939 -- not 1927. So the implication is that he's just come out of a meeting with Adolf Hitler, and that the soldiers in the background are Nazi soldiers. Well, the fact is, nothing could be further from the truth. The picture, which later was-the publishers admitted was -- from 1927, these were soldiers of the democratic Weimar Republic. But you know, the use of this photograph, is something that is a favorite of those who wish to portray Pius XII in an unfavorable light. And it's just completely dishonest, you know. In fact, as one historian has said that-he's said in criticizing this, he says: Perhaps photographs do not lie (I can give you his name if you want), but this particular book cover, offered in the context it was, and under the title Hitler's Pope, comes close. By the way, in the caption reads, "Cover photograph shows Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, leaving the presidential palace in Berlin in 1939" -- which is patently false. So, the whole term, and I would think in the popular culture and imagination, people almost equate automatically Pius XII equals Hitler's Pope. You know, it was a bestselling title, I'm afraid. It must've made Cornwell a fortune. It was on the bestseller list for quite a while.

Coulter: It's 'Let's Roll,' not 'Let's Roll Over'

Ann Coulter should be on the Supreme Court or writing scripts in Hollyweird. Watch carefully, gentle reader, as she rips the louts and killers intellectual new ones.

Since the London bombings, there has been a palpable feeling in the air here in the U.S. that another terrorist attack is imminent. Maybe not as bad as 9/11, perhaps a train or subway bombing. Or maybe it will be something worse. There were fevered rumors circulating over the last few weeks about massive attacks on New York and Washington scheduled for August 6 and August 9, to mark the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But now August 6 and 9 have come and gone. More significantly, 47 months have come and gone since 9/11 without a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The closest thing we had to a major bombing was the new Pauly Shore show on TBS.

I miss making fun of Ted Turner.

Even if the next attack comes tomorrow, it is worth pondering that we've gone 47 months without the savages being able to mount another terrorist attack in a country virtually designed for terrorist attacks, a country where we search the purses of little old ladies so that recent immigrants from Saudi Arabia named "Mohammed" wearing massive backpacks don't get singled out.

But instead of news stories about how we must be doing something right in the war on terror, we're being carpet-bombed with news stories about how Bush doesn't have a "plan," the war was based on "lies," we're losing the war, the redcoats are coming!

As Republicans were saying repeatedly—captured on Lexis-Nexis for a year before it showed up in a Frank Luntz talking points memo in 2004—the savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender). That strategy appears to be working. Then again, maybe it's just that it's so damnably hard to find parking in New York

Two weeks ago, Gen. Jack Keane, a former deputy chief of staff for the Army, said our forces in Iraq have killed or arrested more than 50,000 insurgents in the past six or seven months. It appears the majority of those were captured and released, but that may be good enough.

Consider the intriguing diary entries of British jihadist Zeeshan Siddique, reported in the New York Times last Monday (somewhat less prominently than the 4 billion front-page stories on Abu Ghraib). Siddique was captured last April in Pakistan by that country's security forces. His diary is a sort of Plan-a-Jihad journal, much like California seventh-graders were required to write in 2002. (There's also talk of publishing his diary under the title "Hello, Allah? It's Me, Siddique.")

Heehee.

In addition to heartwarming entries like the one on the pope's death—“Allah will throw him in hell"–a number of Siddique's diary entries suggest that it's not all sunshine and song for the Islamo-fascists these days. Day after day for six weeks, it was nothing but bad news for Siddique–except for the good news about the pope's death, Saul Bellow's death and the Prince of Monaco's death, all of which cheered him considerably.

WTF? Saul Bellow?

After visiting his fellow jihadists in early March, Siddique reports that he received "bad news"–and something tells me it wasn't about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. He writes: "The relaxing place was done over" and "7-8 of the guys taken whilst asleep." He was told "guys need 2 make a move soon. Cant stik round."

A week later, he is informed by someone, probably not the Prince of Monaco, that "the situation is really bad" and he should "just sit tight & wait it out until things get a bit better." Oddly enough he is also a Mets fan, so this spring was an all-around bummer for Siddique.

Heehee.

A few weeks later, Siddique is vowing to make "an all out immense effort" to "rejoin my contingent." And then he was captured, too, along with his diary and phone numbers for other al Qaeda operatives and his co-religionists in Britain involved in the failed subway bombing. If you made a movie of this bumbling nincompoop's misadventures, you'd have to call it "Dude, Where's My Car Bomb?"

Siddique's diary entries refer to Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari as "the dog of the hell fire" and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as "Satan." That's not the talk of a winner! Siddique's future as a jihadist may be fading, but he has a good shot at writing speeches for Howard Dean. (He also describes Maya Angelou as "America's national treasure," so I guess some things are universal.)

Yeah, I can see how Maya's nonsense (She's the poetess laureate of the duct tape and tinfoil hat set, kiddies.) could drive a man to slaughter as many innocent people as possible. I really do.

Meanwhile, every time Americans get a gander at these lunatics ranting about the "Great Satan" and the "Zionist entity," we can't believe we're at war with such a comical enemy. No wonder they dream of an afterlife with 72 hot teenage girls. These guys are klutzes. Nerds. Dweebs. In the Las Vegas of life they're at the convention center with the other "Star Trek" fans. Even in Pakistan, Siddique says he is "constantly laughed at & ridiculed."

Ha! Damn Klingons. (Ann, seriously. There is nothing funny about teenage girls.) Do you think Klingons believe they get 72 teenage Klingon virgins when they go to heaven?

Ahmed can't get a date, and now the rest of us have to suffer.
But you will notice, the jihadists are not pouring across the Syrian border to, say, Brooklyn Heights. They are running to Iraq, where they run smack dab into the glorious U.S. military.

Amen to that, sister.

The current Iranian regime will not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons...

... if sane leadership guides the US and Israel.

But that is one hell of an if, kiddies.

Ever since its 1979 Islamic revolution the only fate Iran has had in mind for Israel has been simple: its destruction. Now that Teheran seems to be moving towards acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, its plans for its great enemy threaten to be both fiery and radioactive.

Sometimes Iran's stated policy towards Israel is couched in inflammatory rhetoric, like that on a 40ft banner that used to hang outside the entrance of the foreign ministry in Teheran bearing the message: "Israel Must Burn".

Sometimes the language is tamer, such as the "Down With Israel" chants of students who march after Friday prayers in Teheran week in, week out.
But whatever the tone, the message remains the same. The Jewish state has survived wars, internal upheaval, intifadas and bloody entanglements in the internal affairs of its neighbours. But now a major enemy, one committed to its annihilation, appears close to deploying the most destructive force known to Man.

"Having the ayatollah regime armed with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to the state of Israel," Mark Regev, senior spokeman at its foreign ministry, admitted grimly. "We take the issue extremely seriously.''

But while the danger Israel faces is clear, what it should do about the threat poses much more of a quandary.

Some Israelis cite the precedent of the 1981 unilateral Israeli airstrike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Israel, they argue, should do the same again and launch pre-emptive military attacks on Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure.

But Iran has developed its nuclear programme with such a scenario in mind. It has deliberately spread its facilities far and wide, using nine locations, according to one intelligence source.

And each facility is buried under tons of reinforced concrete, making it more difficult to destroy, even with the help of the BLU-109 "bunker-buster" bombs the US is selling its closest Middle Eastern ally.

Iran, moreover, is further away from Israel than Iraq, raising even greater doubts about the ability of the F15 and F16 planes Israel would use in any air raids to reach their target and then make it home without being refuelled.

And there is also the question of how the aircraft would get close enough to hit their targets. The US controls Iraqi airspace but it seems inconceivable that Washington would open it up to Israeli combat jets and tankers.

While the problems facing air strikes are significant, Israel's military nevertheless believes it has the means to cause serious damage to the Iranian nuclear capability.

Israel's cruise missiles, launched from planes or submarines, give the country a capability that it did not have in 1981 when it attacked the Iraqi reactor with a conventional bombing sortie.

"It's a bit more challenging in Iran but the military option remains a real one," said David Ivri, a retired Israeli air force officer who commanded Operation Opera, the attack on Iraq's reactor.

"After all, the aim would not be to neutralise the Iranian nuclear programme. That would be impossible. But what we could do is delay it considerably.

"That was our aim in Iraq and that is what we achieved - a very long delay.''
The calculation Israel must make is a simple one: when will Iran become a nuclear power?

The Iraq attack was launched only when Israel's intelligence concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime was within a year of producing its own nuclear weapons.

The longer we wait, the more difficult it will be.

It also followed a lengthy diplomatic campaign by Israel to dissuade France from selling nuclear technology to Iraq. When that failed, Mossad agents blew up components due to be shipped to Iraq at a warehouse in France.
Only when it was clear that Iraq's nuclear programme continued did Operation Opera get the green light.

According to a senior figure in the Israeli Defence Force quoted in the Jerusalem Post, Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear bomb until 2008 at the earliest; 2012 is a more realistic date and experts believe that the current situation is insufficiently acute to warrant military action.
(Thanks to the Telegraph and Drudge for the heads up.)

"Combat Zone"

Marvel Comics' "Combat Zone: True Tales of GIs in Iraq" offers a similar though more patriotic take on the conflict. This new graphic novel portrays a month in the life of soldiers in the 82nd Airborne division during major combat operations in the spring of 2003, as penned by former embed and American Enterprise editor-in-chief Karl Zinsmeister. All the characters depicted in the story have names except the embed, who is known simply as "Reporter," a nice antidote to the media celebrity cult.

In some respects, the tough, well-trained soldiers follow in the mold of classic comic-book characters like the 1950s Sgt. Rock but without some of the more cartoonish aspects of the genre. "Combat Zone" is closer to the somewhat propagandistic comics produced during World War II that also depicted actual battles. It is scrupulously realistic, with meticulously drawn vehicles and equipment and command situations taken from real life.

The comic lacks the "superhero" genre's emphasis on one or a few indestructible characters saving the world; here every soldier plays a role, and the emphasis is on teamwork, bravery and self-sacrifice.

They soldiers are not perfect but benefit greatly by comparison with their benighted enemy. The fedayeen in "Combat Zone" (and in real life) use children as human shields, set up sniper posts in hospitals and mosques, and exploit flags of truce and ambulances to mount surprise attacks. Faced with this criminal behavior, the Captain reminds his men: "We're Americans. We don't shoot women and children....We don't shoot people who are trying to surrender."

In most post-Vietnam stories, a speech like this would be the setup for some kind of atrocity committed by Americans; but in "Combat Zone" the U.S. troops fight by the rules and win. It says a lot about our culture when a comic book offers greater moral clarity than most American universities.
(Thanks to OpinionJournal.)

Congratulations to the Ave Maria School of Law.

Now, future Supreme Court justices don't have to go to Haardvark. ("Veritas" my eye!)

In the ideological world of higher education, religious allegiances can be stumbling blocks. So it's good to see the American Bar Association granting full accreditation to Ave Maria School of Law this week. An Aug. 8 press release from the Ann Arbor, Mich., school notes that it was founded in 2000 to integrate a "Catholic world view" into a quality legal education and that, while ABA accreditation has been a slow process for some schools, Ave Maria got it done in the quickest possible time. Of course, its 100% pass rate for graduates who first took the bar exam in 2004 probably helped matters. (Thanks to OpinionJournal for the heads up.)

Ohio remembers--and understands--its Marines.

Don't you dare forget the Marines of the Third Battalion, Twenty-fifth Regiment. Daniel Henninger of OpinionJournal helps with this story of remembrance.

BROOK PARK, Ohio--Over the weekend of Aug. 6, a steady line of cars and motorcycles pulled off Smith Road here to visit the fence that stands in front of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Center. The small brick building beyond the fence is the headquarters for Third Battalion, 25th Regiment--"the 325th." The fence had become a spontaneous memorial tribute to 19 Marines from the 325th, most of them from Ohio, who were killed near the Euphrates River in western Iraq last week. Across the weekend, planes were landing with the returning bodies at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland.
The politics of the Iraq war wasn't much on view amid the memorial fence's American flags, flowers, football jerseys, photographs, poems and Marine memorabilia. But someone had decided to put down on the ground an article published just three weeks ago in the News-Herald, a nearby newspaper. "All I can ask," wrote Marine Cpl. Jacob Arnett, who is still on duty in Iraq, "is that the American people be given more than the bombings and daily death toll, because we are giving much more than that for Iraq."
A recurring question raised about the American military these days is whether our current "professional" army of volunteers, like those from the 325th, is somehow estranged from the general population. The Pentagon, for its part, wants no part of the army that served in Vietnam, drafted out of the general population. It prefers the dedication and commitment of soldiers who have volunteered.
For all that, I think Cpl. Arnett raises an important question, one with implications that will extend beyond this time in Iraq. He had written in the News-Herald that "we are giving much more" in Iraq than the news of combat deaths and bombings would suggest. The "much more" to his mind includes the millions who voted in Iraq's first real election, the Shia and Kurds who no longer have to fear death from Saddam's regime, and the memory left behind of American Marines protecting the families and neighborhoods of Iraqis who are trying to rebuild their country.
The question is whether back home it is possible for people who, unlike in any previous war, absorb real-time after-battle accounts in the papers and on television of mainly violence and death. Does the "we are giving much more" part get overwhelmed and over time, washed out? Opinion polls, whatever their value, suggest that in Iraq the "much more" is indeed getting washed away beneath daily, graphic, meticulously reported accounts of combat death.

Animal Flesh Recipe of the Day.

Apparently, I've got a bit of a pork jones thing going on here. Or, it could be another excuse to mention binbacon gun lube.

Pork Loin Cured in Spiced Apple Cider with Ricotta Gnocchi, Braised Lettuce, and Corn (Ricotta Gnocchi! Mama mia!)
(Recipe courtesy of Brian Gerritsen and Applewood Inn and Restaurant via Food Network.)


Brine mixture:

1 quart apple cider
5 quarts water
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 tablespoon toasted coriander seeds
1 tablespoon toasted fennel seeds
1 teaspoon chili flakes
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
3 large sprigs fresh thyme


1 (4 to 5-pound) pork loin, boned and trimmed of any excess fat
2 heads butter lettuce, trimmed of large outer leaves
4 ears corn, kernels removed
4 firm apples, peeled, cored and cut into 8 wedges
1 tablespoon butter, plus 4 tablespoons, plus 2 tablespoons
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup apple cider
1 cup pork stock or chicken stock
1 tablespoon chopped thyme leaves
56 pieces ricotta gnocchi (or potato gnocchi), store bought (NOOOOO!!!)

Combine all the ingredients for the brine in a large non-reactive pot. Bring to a simmer and remove from heat. Allow to steep for 30 minutes, then cool in an ice bath. Place the pork loin in a container large enough to submerge it and pour the cooled brine over the pork. Make sure the entire loin is submerged, use a heavy plate, if necessary. Cover the container and place in the refrigerator at least 24 hours and up to 48 hours to cure.

Remove the pork from the brine, discard liquid. Dry the pork loin with a cloth and cut the loin into 8 (8-ounce) fillets. (You may alternately roast the entire loin whole, then slice medallions for presentation.)

Cut the lettuce through the core into 16 wedges, reserve. Blanch the corn in salted water until tender, then cool and drain, reserve. Cook the apples over medium heat with a tablespoon of butter in a skillet until beginning to brown. Cool and reserve.

In a large heavy bottomed skillet, large enough to hold all the pork loins (or 2 smaller pans), heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Season the pork with salt. Saute the pork fillets about 7 minutes each side for medium.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce:

Have a pot of salted boiling water ready for the gnocchi. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium high heat. Add the lettuce quarters in batches with a pinch of salt and brown on both sides. Remove from the pan. Repeat until all the lettuce is browned. Return all the lettuce quarters to the pan, and over medium high heat, deglaze the pan with the white wine and apple cider. Reduce to a glaze. Add the pork stock and corn kernels and bring to a simmer. Mount the sauce with the remaining butter, add the chopped thyme, adjust seasoning, and reserve warm.

Cook the gnocchi until they float, then transfer them to the sauce to coat.

Divide the lettuce, corn, gnocchi, and sauce among 8 large bowls. Top each with a pork fillet.

The latest on the Crappyradiopot Dome scandal.

Whoa! Look out evildoers! The NYT is (finally) on the case. (Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the heads up. If she was bubblegum, she'd be Babe-a-licious. Ok, so I messed with the quote a bit. But it's better than "Baberaham Lincoln".)

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past the featured stories.

Aha! There it is:

Bronx Boys Club's Finances Investigated

The article is a rehash of everything blogs and a sprinkling of MSM outlets have already reported. Underwhelming. Entirely expected. And wholly inadequate given the paper's massive previous coverage of Air America.

Send your thoughts on the NYTimes' slothful reporting to ombudsman Byron Calame (public@nytimes.com).

Update: Check out the Times' Dowdification of Al Franken's quote about what happened to the money.

The NYTimes reports:

"I don't know why he did it," Mr. Franken said, according to a transcript of the broadcast made by the Department of Investigation. "I don't know where the money went. I don't know if it was used for operations. I think he was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul."

Here's what Franken actually said (via audio at Brainster's Blog and transcript at Brian Maloney, who busted this story wide open in the blogosphere the Times sneers at):

I don't know why they did it, and I don't know where the money went, I don't know if it was used for operations [softer, especially fast], which I imagine it was. I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The omission of those five little words matters because Al Franken's actual statement suggests that the money was in fact stolen from poor kids to pay Air America's bills--a speculation that the Times attributes to "conservative-leaning blogs," but not to the Times' favorite liberal talk show host who said it himself.

(Hat tip: Reader Michael V.)

Mr. Calame, care to explain the omission?

Michelle's blog is a great place to stay up to date on this theft of funds from poor minority kids for the benefit of fatassed totalitarians.

BTW, don't the cadavers at the Times know they cannot control what people read anymore?

An open letter to Mrs. Cindy Sheehan.*

*Hey, if that commie addlepate Nader can do it, so can I.

Dear Mrs. Sheehan,
I would like to extend my condolences to you and to the patriotic members of your family. You should take comfort in the fact your son Casey died a hero, fighting to protect the freedom of people he could never have possibly known, even if he had lived to be one hundred years old. You should be proud he had the strength and guts to fight for the freedom of ungrateful people, people who will never, ever appreciate the sacrifice he volunteered to risk.

You should be proud and thankful you reared a son who was a better man than most. (A better man than me, I will readily admit, though I will never have the pleasure and honor of meeting him.) From your words and actions since Casey's death, however, I doubt you realize what sort of man you reared.

Regardless of how "sincere" your words and beliefs may be, stop. Even if you have had a change of heart since you first met with President Bush and praised his compassion and belief in God, stop. Just stop it. Go home to Vacaville and reconcile with your husband and the rest of your family. You and the rest of us will be better for it.

You are being used by the forces of ignorance and hate. These people worship death and delight in bringing it to millions. Just stop it.

The world has always been a vile, stinking place because of the defective wills of men who lust for power over their fellows, either one at a time at the Vacaville level or on the mass scale of the late, unlamented twentieth century. Often it becomes necessary to kill these men because they will not stop and cannot be contained. This is the human condition. It is not all sunshine and gumdrops.

Reality regularly requires young men like your Casey to go to war. And war means death. The only alternative in the real world is slavery and death on an even greater scale.

I thank God every day men like your son choose freedom rather than slavery. I hope and pray you will appreciate this one day.

May God have mercy on your son's brave soul and all souls.

Sincerely,

Fyodor Garibaldi

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today we honor three Vietnamese martyrs, St. Anthony Peter Dich, St. James Nam, and St. Michael My. They died in defense of The Faith and for the greater glory of God in 1838. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.

Today's reading is Josue 24: 1-3 .
Today's Gospel reading is Matthew 19:3-12 .


Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful;O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Prayer to Saint Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


PRAYER TO SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Animal Flesh Recipe of the Day.

Mortadella Stuffed Pork Loin: Lombo di Maiale Ripieno di Mortadella

That's good eating in any language, paisan!

This delicious and delightful pork dish is dedicated to the guys and gals of binbacon.com, makers of Fyodor's favorite gun lube.

This dish was inspired by a truffled mortadella we tasted in Rome. Good-quality mortadella can be found at butcher shops, at Italian markets, and even in the deli section of many supermarkets. Pork can be butterflied and stuffed 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Bring to room temperature before proceeding.

Pork:
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
5 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 (3 1/2-pound) center-cut boneless pork loin roast (4 to 5 inches in diameter), trimmed, leaving a 1/4-inch layer of fat if possible
6 tablespoons black truffle butter, softened
1/2 pound thinly sliced mortadella

Sauce:
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon black truffle butter

Special Equipment:
a mortar and pestle;
kitchen string;
a 17 by 11-inch flameproof roasting pan with an adjustable V-rack;
an instant-read thermometer

Serving Suggestion: roasted potatoes

To make the pork:
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Coarsely crush peppercorns and 2 teaspoons kosher salt with mortar and pestle, then add garlic and mash until a paste forms.
Stir in unsalted butter. Reserve.
If pork loin has been tied, discard strings.
Put loin, fat side down, on a cutting board lined with plastic wrap.

Butterfly pork in a spiral cut:
Find beginning of a flap on 1 long side of loin (where bone was removed). Starting at inside edge of flap, make a long cut lengthwise down side of loin with a very sharp boning or paring knife, stopping 1 inch from bottom (this is beginning of spiral).
Turn knife parallel to bottom of loin and begin to cut your way inward (parallel to bottom), keeping thickness of meat as even as possible, using your other hand to gently lift and pull top portion of meat away from knife, until loin is 1 long flat piece of meat.
Cover pork with a sheet of plastic wrap and pound to 1/2-inch thick with a smooth meat pounder or rolling pin.
Remove plastic wrap and spread 2 tablespoons truffle butter over pork. Top with half of mortadella, slightly overlapping slices.
Spread 2 tablespoons truffle butter over mortadella, then top with remaining mortadella and spread with remaining 2 tablespoons truffle butter.
Beginning with end that was interior of loin, roll up loin tightly and arrange, seam side down (fat side up), on cutting board.
If fat layer is 1/4-inch thick, make very close crosswise cuts in it (about 1/8 inch apart; do not cut through to meat), then tie with kitchen string at 1-inch intervals.
Rub roast all over with peppercorn butter, covering fat layer well.
Put pork, fat side up, on oiled rack in roasting pan and roast in middle of oven 20 minutes.
Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F and roast the pork until a thermometer inserted diagonally 2 inches into meat registers 145 degrees F, about 45 minutes.
Transfer pork to a platter and let stand 25 minutes.

To make the sauce:
Skim as much fat as possible from pan juices. Straddle roasting pan across 2 burners, then add broth and deglaze pan by boiling over high heat, stirring and scraping up brown bits, 1 minute.
Stir together water and cornstarch, then add to broth mixture and boil, whisking, 1 minute.
Remove from heat and whisk in truffle butter.
Discard string, then slice pork and serve with sauce and potatoes.
(Thanks to Gourmet Magazine and Food Network.)

Hey, kids! It's time again for the annual American Political Science Association convention! Be sure to bring lots of booze. You're going to need it.

Academentia Watch

Kathy Ferguson directs the "women's studies" program at the University of Hawaii, where she boldly goes where no man has gone before (i.e., she teaches a course titled "Political Theory in Star Trek").

Damn Klingons.

When we heard about this panel, we suspected the APSA of partisanship--after all, would the group have entertained the notion that President Clinton was a fascist or a communist? Well, maybe it would have. The "chair" of the panel, Dvora Yanow of Cal State Hayward, turns out to have written a book chapter in 2002 (with co-author Hugh Willmott) that seems to argue just that:

In the arena of national politics, for example--Clinton in the US, Blair in the UK, and others--a postmodern play of images offers competing representations of, and promises to, the middle ground as established divisions between "left" and "right" have been de-differentiated, with attendant confusion and uncertainty for those wedded to their respective (individualistic and collectivistic) beliefs and values.

This loss of established bearings and associated ethical disorientation can produce a moral vacuum in which a fascism of the centre (!!! - F.G.) can take hold. Fascisms of the right and left are well documented. Their seductive and destructive power has been demonstrated repeatedly during this century. Currently, both stand discredited, lending greater appeal to the seemingly moderate ideas of the centre--the Third Way. The door is then opened to an authoritarianism, if not a fascism, of the centre, in which ideas of moderation and progress, based upon commonly accepted, uncontested (and uncontentious) values, become the new, and seemingly the only, basis for government.

That s.o.b.! That sounds suspiciously like my Grand Theory of the Totalitarian Middle, if I am not mistaken. Anybody out there know if I can copyright this blog crap?

This is not exactly deathless, or even clear, prose, but it's not bad work for a piece of furniture. In any case, fascism seems to have become the academic equivalent of another well-known F-word: a generalized expletive that only infrequently bears any relationship to its original meaning, though it retains the power to shock those who are unaccustomed to its overuse.

For our part, we are not shocked. Then again, we pretty much stopped taking the academic left seriously while we were still in college.
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today for the heads up.)

The Find The Hottest TV News Babe Contest continues.

Melanie and Corrina work at KTVI in St. Louis.

Kristen Joyce of KTVN in Reno.


Sonni Abatta (right) of KDKA in Pittsburgh.

Jamie Gore-lick (that's one way to get a job in Washington) has the blood of thousands (and counting) on her hands.

Another of the Clinton administration's criminal conspiracies begins to unravel. (Michael Moore, call your office, fathead.)

Members of the commission now are calling for a review of the matter, saying they knew nothing about a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger" identifying Atta and three of his accomplices in 1999. The information was shared publicly this week by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa. vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.

While Weldon says Able Danger personnel recommended Atta and the others be deported, the information was not shared with federal law enforcement agencies, another symptom of the Clinton-era wall of separation that had been erected between intelligence and law enforcement personnel.

The New York Times reports the 9/11 commission staff decided not to share the Able Danger information with the panel members because some of the information sounded inconsistent with what they thought they knew about Atta.

"… [W]hy did [the commission] ignore the Able Danger operation in their deliberations?" asked Captain's Quarters blogger Ed Morrissey, as highlighted by columnist Michelle Malkin. "It would emphasize that the problem was not primarily operational, as the commission made it seem, but primarily political – and that the biggest problem was the enforced separation between law enforcement and intelligence operations upon which the Clinton Department of Justice insisted. The hatchet person for that policy sat on the Commission itself: Jamie S. Gorelick."

See Captain's Quarters here.

It was Gorelick who, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department, established the wall of silence between intel and law enforcement.

"We believe it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations," Gorelick wrote in 1995.
"These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."

Gorelick rejected calls for her resignation from the commission last year when conflict-of-interest charges were raised.

Morrissey further discusses the apparent failure of commission staff to address the Able Danger data:

First we hear that no such [briefing on the info] occurred. After that, the commission says one might have occurred in October 2003 but that no one remembered it. Now we find out that the commission had two meetings where [they] heard about Able Danger and its identification of Mohamed Atta, including one just before they completed their report. Instead of saying to themselves, "Hey, wait a minute – this changes the picture substantially," and postponing the report until they could look further into Able Danger, they simply shrugged their shoulders and published what they had.

Why? Able Danger proved that at least some of the intelligence work done by the U.S. provided the information that could have helped prevent or at least reduce the attacks on 9/11. They had identified the ringleader of the conspiracy as a terrorist agent, even if they didn't know what mission he had at the time.

What does that mean for the commission's findings? It meant that the cornerstone of their conclusions no longer fit the facts. Able Danger showed that the U.S. had enough intelligence to take action – if the government had allowed law enforcement and intelligence operations to cooperate with each other. It also showed that data mining could effectively identify terrorist agents.

Morrissey says Gorelick's "wall of separation" between intelligence and law enforcement agencies "specifically contributed to Atta's ability to come and go as he pleased, building the teams that would kill almost 3,000 Americans."

National Review's Jim Geraghty hammered the commission as well, saying, "[A]s for the 9/11 commission, after all that patting themselves on the back, all that gushing praise from left, right and center, after their work was called 'miraculous' by Newsday, and the nomination for a National Book Award, and calling their own work 'extraordinary' ... man, these guys stink. Really, if this checks out, and the staffers had information like this and they disregarded it, never believing that we in the public deserved to know that the plot's ringleader was identified, located and recommended to be arrested a year before the attacks ... boy, these guys ought to be in stocks in the public square and have rotten fruit thrown at them. What a sham."

Family members of 9-11 victims also are speaking out against the commission. Yesterday, the organization September 11 Advocates released a statement calling on commission members to be held accountable, saying it was "horrified" that the Atta information was not considered.
"We believe that the time has come for the American people to demand the necessary accountability from all of our leaders," the statement said. "The 9/11 commissioners and staff who had a legal obligation to investigate and report upon all of the facts relevant to the 9/11 attacks should, therefore, be the very first individuals to be held accountable and responsible for their collective failure to meet their legislative mandate."

Continued the statement: "As 9/11 widows who fought tirelessly for the creation of the 9/11 commission, we are wholly disappointed to learn that the commission's Final Report is a hollow failure."
(Thanks to WND for the heads up.)

TAKE SOUTER'S HOUSE! TAKE SOUTER'S HOUSE! update...

...or, Shilpit Wee Nyaff of the Day.

The folks at Freestar Media press on in their quest to make that shilpit wee nyaff* Souter suffer the punishment he unconstitutionally imposed on his fellow citizens. Even after the local solons declared Casa Souter sacrosanct.

Weare Residents Start Ballot Initiative Drive to Support the Project and Circumvent the Board of Selectmen

Early Friday, July 22 Logan Darrow Clements sent a letter to all five Selectmen in the Town of Weare asking them whether he should spend the time and money to develop a presentation of the Lost Liberty Hotel project. If the Selectmen already decided that they will oppose the project no matter what form it takes, or what benefit it offers, then there would be no point in making a presentation.

Here are the letters that were sent back and forth between Freestar and Selectman Joe Fiala.

What Mr. Fiala misunderstands in the position that he and other other Board members are taking is that, in shielding Mr. Souter from from his own ruling, the Board is not defending property rights, they are giving a special exemption to Mr. Souter from the consequences of the eminent domain abuse set loose by Mr. Souter himself. After the Kelo decision we are all subject to lose our homes to economic development. However, the Board seems to think that Mr. Souter should be shielded from the outcome of his own decision. Susette Kelo did not enjoy such a shield nor did Ahmad Mesdaq. Equal justice under the law is a principle the Board should abide by in this matter. Souter's high position should not allow him the privilege to be exempt from his own rulings.

I ask the residents of Weare to continue with your ballot initiative drive to circumvent the Board and also to investigate whether the laws in your jurisdiction allow you to remove the entire Board of Selectmen from office. America now needs the assistance of the residents of Weare so that the torch of liberty can enlighten one who has so soundly turned his back on all those who died to keep it lit.

DEVELOPERS ARE JOINING THE BATTLE: Freestar plans to hand off the project to experienced development companies that can successfully complete it. Several real estate development companies have expressed an interest in taking this role. The ultimate project may end up as a small resort offering time shares or a bed and breakfast. It will also include the Just Deserts Cafe and Museum of Lost Freedom. Stay tuned...

BACKGROUND: On Monday June 27, Freestar Media, LLC informed the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire that it wants to begin the permit process to build a hotel on the land owned by Justice David H. Souter. Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner. Read Freestar's fax to the City of Weare here. Read Freestar's press release here. If you want to help us move forward with this project click here. Please be aware that this is a real project and if we receive sufficent funds and approvals we will build a hotel.

* misshapen little good-for-nothing

Wow. And I thought "Lord of the Flies" and "Catcher in the Rye" sucked.

READING, Pa.

The book "The Buffalo Tree" has been reinstated without fuss to the Muhlenberg School District's reading list.

The book, by Adam Rapp, had been removed from the curriculum in April after a student and some parents objected to its references to masturbation and pornography.

Joycelyn Elders , (May God have mercy on her bloody soul.) call your office.

The book is about a 13-year-old serving time in a juvenile detention center.

Not exactly The Pickwick Papers, eh, kiddies?

"The Buffalo Tree" had been taught in 11th grade English courses since 2000, and the decision to drop it drew an outcry from other students and teachers who said it conveyed a positive message about anti-bullying and friendship.

The school board voted 6-0 Wednesday to once again approve the book for use in English classes. No one in the audience commented.

If I said it once, I said it a million times...
GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS!

Oh yeah, and

TAKE SOUTER'S HOUSE! TAKE SOUTER'S HOUSE!

too.

How many life lessons can you learn from this story, kiddies?

From KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh comes the story of a man and his child bride.

Man to Stand Trial for Shooting Wife in Spat Over Dishes

A Greene County man will stand trial on homicide and other charges because state police say he shot his 17-year-old wife when she refused to do the dishes.

Hmmm. 27 - 17 =...Uh-oh.

At a preliminary hearing yesterday, police say James Petrie, 27, told them he was watching "Doctor Phil" on TV when his wife came downstairs and also started watching the show on July seventh.

Ah, Dr. Spill. That explains a lot.

When Petrie asked his wife, Jessica, why there were still dirty dishes in the sink, he said she would "get to them."

That's when Petrie took a .22-caliber gun and shot his wife in the head.

Police say Petrie at one point told them he thought the gun wasn't loaded, but later acknowledged that he hadn't checked the gun before pulling the trigger.

A great defense. You should have been a lawyer, Jimbo.

Jessica Petrie died about ten hours later at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia.

May God have mercy on her soul.

And his.

Right Wing Smile of the Day.

Visit binbacon.com and buy some "Bin Bacon Anti-jihadist Gun Lubricant" for your guns. It's made with yummy, yummy pork.

Or maybe you'd like a coffee mug like the one above.

"A Mil-spec (MIL-L-46000, LSA ) gun lubricant, with a trace of PIG* to act as an UNCLEANSING agent, sending TERRORISTS a wad of DOOM with every bullet fired."

"*as with the contents of many hotdogs, we think that an air of mystery as to WHICH PART of the PIG is being used is a trade secret which benefits our customers and those on the receiving end."

Heehee.

And just when you think it can't get any better:

They have served with Honor.

Help us pay the debt by choosing which charity your order supports.

We have made it our goal to donate the maximum IRS allowed amount (10%) of net income to one of several Charities of your choosing, such as the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, which serve the needs of our most wounded and needy Marines, Sailors and Soldiers beyond the limited government programs now available.

Pick your charity during the checkout process.
(Thanks to The Glenn Beck Program for the heads up.)

What can you do to show Our Boys you're on their side?

Donate your frequent flyer miles, that's what. Thanks to CNSNews for the heads up on this one.

Families of U.S. soldiers wounded in the war against terrorism are receiving free airfare so they can be with their loved one through medical rehabilitation and the gifts come from their fellow Americans.

The Fisher House Foundation inaugurated this program in January 2004, which allows average Americans who have accumulated travel miles with a participating airline to donate them to wounded soldiers and their families.

Since the beginning of last year, more than 525 million miles have been donated, resulting in four thousand tickets for the family members of wounded soldiers.

"We go through anywhere from 2.5 million to 3.5 million miles a week," James Weiskopf, vice president of communications at the Fisher House Foundation, told Cybercast News Service.

The Fisher House Foundation's effort follows a similar program initiated in October 2003 by U.S. Rep. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat. Ruppersberger's Hero Miles program allowed frequent fliers to donate airline miles to the soldiers themselves who were trying to get home.

Until last year, Defense Department policy only allowed the government to pay for soldiers to fly to gateway cities. From that point on, the soldiers were responsible for their connecting flights home.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. Clinton's culpable for September 11, 2001.

Don't bother trying. You won't see this story on the evening news.

Fifty or sixty years from now, books with the truth about the Leninist-Leninist Clinton administration's failure to act to protect our nation because action against our enemies is contrary to their putrid, puerile worldview will appear. This truth will never be permitted to appear in textbooks nor will anyone be allowed to utter it on any college campus.

All emphasis below is mine.


Members of the 9/11 commission apparently left some key information out of their "comprehensive" report on the terror attacks - because their own staffers didn't tell them about it.

Hang on. That's not the big one.

Press reports said commission staffers are now planning to retrieve their notes from the National Archives to find out if they overlooked important information. (They did, one U.S. senator [Nope. Congressman.-F.G.] says.)

The staffers are looking for information about a secret U.S. military unit called Able Danger. That military unit learned -- one year before the 9/11 attacks -- that a terror cell including Mohammed Atta and three other future 9/11 hijackers was operating in the United States.

Information about the terror cell was not handed over to the FBI, although Able Danger repeatedly requested that the FBI be told. Sen. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) (I wish. Mr. Weldon is a member of the US House of Representatives. - F.G.) says Pentagon lawyers in the Clinton administration refused to tell the FBI, because the four terrorists were in the country legally.

Because the Clinton administration barred U.S. intelligence agencies from sharing information with the FBI, Pentagon lawyers reportedly argued that information on the legal residents could not be shared with the FBI.

Why such a rule? Because the Clinton cabal is a product of the 1960's, when left-fascist intellectualoids took to the streets to get us to give up on another war. The domestic (FBI) and foreign (CIA) intelligence gathering agencies were emasculated to prevent YOU from knowing the truth about the traitorous, un-American, and anti-American left.

RADICAL ISLAM? HA! A SEVENTH CENTURY PHILODOXY OF DEATH THAT WILL BE DESTROYED WHEN THE WEST AND/OR SANE MOSLEMS WAKE UP AND WAGE TOTAL WAR AGAINST THOSE WHO MURDER THE INNOCENT.

THE REAL ENEMY OF THE WEST WAS, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE THE DIABOLICAL CONCEIT KNOWN VARIOUSLY AS SOCIALISM, COLLECTIVISM, MARXISM, COMMUNISM, LEFTISM, LIBERALISM, ET CETERA, AD NAUSEAM.


Thursday's New York Times reported that 9/11 commission staffers were told that Able Danger had identified a terror cell in the country - a full ten days before the 9/11 commission issued its final report on the terror attacks.

Sen. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) (If wishes were horses, we'd all spend the day at the track. Mr. Weldon is still a member of the US House of Representatives. - F.G.) told Fox News on Wednesday that commission staffers were briefed at least once on Able Danger, but he does not believe that panel members were told about it.

"Why weren't they briefed? Was there some deliberate attempt at the staff level of the 9/11 commission to steer the commissioners away from Able Danger because of where it might lead?" Weldon said on Fox News Wednesday.

Weldon also told Fox that some commission staffers did not return phone calls from members of the Able Danger military unit.

Thursday's New York Times reported that Weldon has just sent a letter to commission members, in which he "criticized the panel in scathing terms, saying that its 'refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose.'"'

Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox & Friends on Thursday that "Able Danger and what they learned" is a "huge deal."

"We will learn that we should have known about [the Sept. 11 attacks] and that we could have prevented it," he said.

"And hats off to Curt Weldon," Shays said, for directing the media's attention to critical information that other government agencies and the 9/11 commission apparently had no interest in pursuing. (Weldon, in a show-and-tell on the Senate floor in June 2005, explained that Able Danger had identified the four suspected terrorists in 1999.)

Said Shays, "Bottom line is -- we had a defense organization that knew about this [terror] cell... they knew about these guys; they knew about four of the 19 hijackers."

Lee Hamilton, the 9/11 commission's co-chair, told Fox News on Wednesday, "The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell. Had we learned of it, obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."

Ignorant old fool.

In another development, a group of Sept. 11 widows that demanded a probe of the events leading up to 9/11 issued a statement saying it is disappointed to learn that the commission's final report is "incomplete and illusory."

Why redheads are tougher than you and me.

Fiery, temperamental, gorgeous, and now scientifically proven to be tougher than the average gal, redheads will soon rule the world.


Red-haired women have a higher pain threshold than blondes or brunettes, research has found.

The Medical Research Council's Human Genetics Unit in Britain has found the same gene mutation that is responsible for red hair also produces low levels of a protein that is sensitive to pain.

Blondes and brunettes release higher quantities of the protein, which makes them feel more pain than redheads.

For unknown reasons, red-haired men do not have the same immunity.
Prof Ian Jackson said the protein found in flame-haired women may be used to develop anaesthetics and pain-killers.

"It does appear redheads have a significantly higher pain threshold and require less anaesthetic to block certain pains," he said.

"It is early days yet, but I can see people would be interested in developing new anaesthetics and also treatments for chronic pain."
(Thanks to the Herald Sun and Yahoo!News for the heads up.)