Friday....

London:

Victor Davis Hanson: "Anticipate Western leaders condemning the terrorists in the same breadth as they call for “eliminating poverty” and “bringing them to justice” — as if the jihadists and their patrons are mere wayward and impoverished felons.

Wretchard: "The inevitable question then is 'why could Bin Laden not find the means to attack 30 trains?' The answer it seems to me, must be Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and hundred other places where he is engaged without quarter by US forces. Resources, whether Jihadi or no are not infinite. They do not have some magical machine that allows them to be everywhere at once, to sustain losses yet grow. There's no free lunch, not even, and especially not for Bin Laden. If it were true that Islamism would shrivel faster were it pursued more passively, then pre-911 policy should have finished it by now. But what we empirically observe is that ignoring them allowed them to mount 911-scale attack. Hit them continuously and in four years they could scrape together enough to blow up a London bus and some subway trains."

Steyn: "Yesterday, al-Qa'eda hit three Tube trains and one bus. Had they broadened their attentions from the central zone, had they attempted to blow up 30 trains from Uxbridge to Upminster, who can doubt that they too would have been successful? In other words, the scale of the carnage was constrained only by the murderers' ambition and their manpower."

and:

"Of course, many resources had been redeployed to Scotland to cope with Bob Geldof's pathetic call for a million anti-globalist ninnies to descend on the G8 summit. In theory, the anti-glob mob should be furious with al-Qa'eda and its political tin ear for ensuring that their own pitiful narcissist protests - the pâpier-maché Bush and Blair puppets, the ethnic drumming, etc - will be crowded off the news bulletins."

Arab view: 'Enough, enough' "Arabs and Muslims in Britain and across the world expressed outrage at the terrorist attacks in London, with the dominant viewpoint summed up by one person who wrote on a Web site, "Enough ... enough.""

Good. The War on Terror is showing more dividends. Some people wising up.

Incongruent note: "The September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks in the United States sparked some anger at Arabs and Muslims, which U.S. leaders and others worked to quickly counteract."

I recall a great deal of hyperbole about a backlash that didn't happen, 'US leaders' or not.

Official warns against Israel using events to 'score points' Israel can't do anything right. I guess.
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Oh and BTW Livingstone is a twofaced fickle lying sack of sh*t

Hee hee! Ken Livingstone, socialist mayor of London. Note that his anti-Isreali and anti-American beliefs didn't buy him any real gratitude.

Just a little background:

"Livingstone was in charge of London's transportation policy once before, in the early '80s, when his socialist "Fare's Fair" policy slashed prices on public transport and plunged the industry into financial troubles (which helped lead to the abolition of the Greater London Council of which he was head). "
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The Folk Song Army Sings Africa

If people really want to end poverty in Africa, they will support free market capitalism.
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North Waziristan refugee camps close: 85 percent choose repatriation

" The UN refugee agency has completed registering Afghans who wish to repatriate because of the closure of refugee camps in troubled North Waziristan, with at least 85 percent of the camp population choosing to return to Afghanistan rather than relocate elsewhere in Pakistan."

Afghanistan...... That wouldn't happen to be another sign of American success?
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Martin's effort to sway Bush on climate change gets mixed reviews

"Environmentalists are cheering on Prime Minister Paul Martin as he appeals for U.S. support in fighting climate change, saying Canada can't meet its Kyoto targets unless the United States is onside. "

"Martin said earlier this week he will speak "forcefully" to George W. Bush at the G8 summit to convince him of the scientific evidence that the world is getting warmer and that manmade sources are the cause. "

"Canada's greenhouse emissions are now 24 per cent above 1990 levels, a far cry from the six per cent reduction from 1990 levels called for under the Kyoto treaty."

Okay. Let me get this straight. The Canadian PM, whose country is not anywhere near compliance with Kyoto, is going to make demands on the US take action so that Canada can meet its goals. Would Martin like anything else? A rubdown and a shiatsu? Make his mortgage payments for him? Buyout the Canadian national debt?

Here is an idea. Canada signed the Kyoto Treaty, incidentally making a great deal of noise about how morally superior this made them. Canada, naturally, can meet their own obligations.
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Man Sues Mass. for Right to Get Drunk

"A man arrested when police showed up to break up a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house has filed a lawsuit, arguing he had a constitutional right to get drunk on private property as long as he didn't cause a public disturbance. "

A man on private property, not disturbing anyone, not operating any equipment, not breaking any actual laws, is arrested... for being drunk.

"Legal experts said his lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Boston, is the first to challenge a state law allowing police to lock up drunk people against their will for their own protection."

"Laverriere argues that the Massachusetts Protective Custody Law was written to combat public drunkenness and that the police had no right to use it to take him from a private residence. He also says he had planned to spend the night at his friend's and wasn't going to be driving anywhere."

"One thing people should be able to do is drink in their own house," Laverriere told The Boston Globe. "That's the beauty of the land of the free."

Hell, even a despotic regimes lets people get hammered.

"Attorney Leonard Kesten, who has defended police departments in civil-rights cases, said if officers are investigating a crime or responding to an incident and discover that someone is drunk and posing a danger, they are obligated to take that person into protective custody."

"Police have been sued for failing to take people into protective custody who later died from alcohol poisoning or killed others in drunken-driving accidents."

Aha. Tort reform.
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Brents' rampage nets 1,300 years

"Brent J. Brents was sentenced to more than 1,300 years in prison Wednesday for crimes a judge said showed "unspeakable cruelty and malignance."
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