How to apologize to a feminist.

It's difficult.

via NRO

Mr. President, How are the soldiers doing?

The Cool Blue Blog brought up an interesting point:

After visiting wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, President Bush stopped to answer some questions from reporters. No reporter asked about the condition of any of the soldiers.

No, what was on their minds was the topic du jour in Washington; the fact that he ordered the NSA to intercept calls from al Qaida to American citizens.

Q: "Mr. President, with this program, though, what can you say to those members of the public that are worried about violations of their privacy?"

THE PRESIDENT: "Ed, I can say that if somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why."

Do you suppose it could have hurt to ask one simple question about the wounded soldiers? The media and the left are always telling us they care about the soldiers too.

Gee, kinda hard to tell.

But no, the focus must be on trying to embarrass the President. Nothing else matters.

Here is a thought. Let's let the process of investigation move forward and get a full answer. Meanwhile stop badgering the President who has made it more than clear the legality of his decision.

Oh, and by the way, if Al Qaeda is calling someone, I want to know why too.

via BA

The Losing Issue.

Remember when I said Democrats would sink their teeth into the wiretapping story and not let go even though it seems to be proving to be a losing issue for them?

Well, here ya go.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are drafting a strategy to attack the Bush
administration and Republicans as having little regard for the privacy of
Americans. "We will initiate at the beginning of this year one of the most
serious debates and discussions on Capitol Hill in our history about individual
rights and liberties," Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin said just before
Christmas

The article goes on:

The topic will be a major focus of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of
federal Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. as privacy rights -- the political code phrase
for abortion rights -- already has become a major issue, Mr. Durbin said.
Democratic leaders then plan to keep the issue alive as they continue their
opposition to key parts of the USA Patriot Act, which is set to expire in early
February unless extended.

When it comes to individual rights and liberties, the general public understands that the administration was not listening to their phone calls. They were listening in to suspected terrorist's phone calls. And Democrats, get a clue, everyone WANTS that.

The Democrats keep using the phrase "wiretapping American citizens" like Bush cares about the business meeting you are setting up. Please. He was wiretapping those who wish us harm. And the Democrats opposing the Patriot Act, which has clearly kept us safe for over 4 years, isn't exactly a winning issue either.

If this is all the Democrats have going into the Alito hearings, then things are looking good for us.

Time Magazine's photos of 2005.

Tragic and stunning photos. It occurs to me that all but three show the suffering of man. Whether it be nature's wrath or the tragedies that man brings upon himself.

B.E.T .com users, Shame on you.

B.E.T.com users name Louis Farrakhan as 2005's 'Person Of The Year.'

"They agreed that he has done what no other African American leader has: "mobilize hundreds of thousands of Blacks around the issues of atonement and empowerment, and to convince the masses of our people that we must be the primary catalysts and engines for positive change in our communities,"

Positive change? Read this part of a past post of mine from Oct. 18th 2005 and tell me how "positive' he is :

Despite Farrakhan's supposedly reaching out to a more diverse group, here are some of his recent remarks:

Remarks at Shelter for Hurricane Katrina Victims, Charlotte Coliseum, Charlotte, North Carolina, 9/12/05

"I heard from a very reliable source that under that levee there was a 25 foot hole, which suggested that it may have been blown up, so that the water would destroy the black part of town, and where the whites lived, it would be dry."

Power Center, Houston, Texas, 9/11/05

"FEMA is too White to represent us and so is the Red Cross."

Saviour's Day: Chicago, 02/27/05

"Listen, Jewish people don't have no hands that are free of the blood of us. They owned slave ships, they bought and sold us. They raped and robbed us. If you can't face that, why you gonna condemn me for showing you your past, how then can you atone and repent if somebody don't open the book with courage, you don't have that, but I'll be damned, I got it."

"I'm not into integration. I ain't for that. God told the Jews, he didn't want you intermarrying with others. But you disobeyed him. He don't want us uniting into this that he's come to judge… You can't integrate with wickedness if you want righteousness."

8th Anniversary The Holy Day of Atonement speech at Mosque Maryam, Chicago, 10/16/03

"You can go to Palestine, called Israel today, you can see Sodom, you can see Gomorrah, ain't nothing built there. God hadn't let anything be built there to show you his displeasure against homosexual behavior. Now the church says it's all right. I was an Episcopalian before I was a Muslim, and I liked my church. I can't remember anybody in the church, if they were gay they were hiding that. They were sure acting like men, you know what I mean."

8th Anniversary The Holy Day of Atonement speech at Mosque Maryam, Chicago, 10/16/03

"And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you."

Saviours' Day Speech, Chicago, 2/25/96

For more quotes go here.

A commenter suggested that we should get use to Farrakhan because whether we like it or not, Farrakhan represents a great many black people.

No. I will not get use to it. I will not accept it. I will not stand by quietly and watch a bigot lead young African Americans into this sort of hate and separation. Nope. I am not going to do it. I will write about it, talk about it, write newspapers about it, and write Congressman about it. But I will not be quiet about it.

I didn't grow up watching brave black men and women get hosed and beaten and having dogs snarling and tearing at them as they fought for equality, to watch some insane bigot teach their grandchildren to hate as their grandparents were hated, to separate as their grandparents were separated.

No. I will not get use to it. I will not.

via NRO

What divides Us.

In a previous thread there is discussion between my Democrat commenters about the nasty division there is in politics. I never read Atrios, but I hear about him quite a bit. Maybe one of the reasons there is an ugly divide is because of statements of his like this:

2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he
determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative.

That's right. You mean you missed Bush press conference where he said, "I proudly broke the law and I can do it whenever I want to?" Well, that's because it never happened of course. In fact no reasonable news story is saying anything close to what Atrios is implying. In fact, because there is even a question of the legality of it, many of those in Congress, Republican and Democrat are saying we should have hearings into it to make sure of the law.

The administration has cited as legal justification for the program Article II of the Constitution and a post-9/11 law that authorized the president to use force against al Qaeda. That doesn't sound like Bush declaring he had broken the law. It sounds like Bush defending himself saying that he had in fact not broken any law.

Now you might ask what difference does it make if a leftwing blog makes some ridiculous claim about the President of the United States?

It makes a difference when that blog gets 2 million hits a day. That's right. 2 million. Liberals come to Atrios everyday to see what he has to say.

This kind of over the top rhetoric is what divides us so badly. This is what causes so much hate.
Now, are there rightwing blogs that have similar over the top statements? Yes. But I can't think of one influential rightwing blogger that has that kind of traffic and respect that has ever said anything close this kind of harmful lying rhetoric. If you know of one let me know.

The Big Tent.

I usually pay little attention to Andrew Sullivan. But when I saw this excerpt over at NRO, I had to look.

"The GOP is now a fundamentalist, Christian, Southern party first - and
tries to cobble some more slices of the pie onto that base."

Has this guy even looked at the Red/Bue state map of the last Presidential election? It is always silly when people try to stereotype each party. If there is one thing the blogosphere has convinced me of is that libertarians make up a large portion of our party. The 3 bloggers I link the most are most decidely not "fundamentalist Christian or Southern." (Ace, PW, Beautiful Atrocities) and I wouldn't have it any other way. I realize we need them to win and they need us. We differ on many social issues, but then, they don't agree with the Democrats on those issues either. But we do agree on enough to stay together under this big tent.

Sullivan and many others only want to pretend the G.O.P is like this because it makes them feel better about their own prejudices. When they portray Republicans as big bad fundies pointing judgemental fingers at them, it makes them feel better about hating Republicans.

Gay or Straight, black or white, Jew or Christian, libertarian or conservative. We are all Republican and proud.

Andrew Sullivan has never made much sense, and he makes even less with that false statement about the G.O.P.

A Journey to LIfe.

In my lead up to live blogging at the Family Research Council's "Justice SundayIII" I am going to re-post some of my earlier writings regarding my faith and the relation of that to my politics. In the following I describe how I became pro-life. I didn't mention my faith here because I feel pro-life is not just a religious issue. It is a human rights issue. But it was clearly my faith that led me to the realization of the horror of abortion. I am also going to post what I do know and think about many of the speakers that will be speaking at "Justice Sunday III" and we will see if hearing them speak changes my opinion of them at all.

The following is from January 2005:


Getting into pro-life work 20 yrs ago, I recognized at the time the mistake pro-lifers were making. First and and foremost they were totally naive to the nature of politics and PR. They didn't understand either one nor did they try to. It was simply a calling to them to reach out to women in crisis pregnancies and to educate the public on the horror of abortion and the sanctity of each and every child's life.

But the other side was very savvy on politics and PR. In the late 70's through most of the 80's most people believed that abortion was being used only for hard case such as rape, incest, and health of mother. When in fact less than 1% of all abortions occur for these reasons. Planned Parenthood was the master of PR. The owner and operator of the largest number of abortion clinics in the country. It runs a muti-million dollar industry that profits off the agony of women.

It isn't that I believed them to be cold heartless monsters set out to destroy babies in the womb, I knew that they believed deeply that they were helping women at a terrible time in their life. They still believe that. But, they are wrong. When a wolf has her leg caught in the jaws of a steel trap, it will gnaw it's leg off because it sees no other option. I think this is how most women in crisis pregnancies feel. Isn't it more compassionate to gently help remove the steel trap and help the leg to heal so that the wolf does not spend her life knowing that there is something missing that was there before?

In the 70's I was pro-choice and had many friends who had abortions. What I couldn't understand was why they were not experiencing relief afterwards. I too had bought into the lie that it was just a blob of tissue, not a baby yet. It was later that I learned that abortions are not performed before 6 weeks. And it was later that I would see my daughter's heartbeat at 6 weeks on a special sonogram. The same heart that beats in her chest today. Same heart. Same child. I thought of my friends who had had abortions and now years later were having children of their own as well. They were looking at sonograms as well. Were they thinking of the child they aborted? Were they wondering why they were never told the heart was beating?

In these many years I have heard many post abortive women speak and their anguish is hard to hear. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece was on Fox News the other night describing the pain of her 2 abortions. She is an active pro-lifer now. Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe of the infamous Roe v. Wade case is an active pro-lifer now, she describes how they used her in that court case and told her to lie and say that she had been raped. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist who spear headed NARAL (National Abortion Rights League) and was instrumental in the Roe v. Wade case, is now an active pro-lifer. He admits they lied about the number of women dying in illegal abortion.

The bottom line is that this is an issue that tears at the heart of us all. We all hate it. We hate discussing it. Arrows are thrown back and forth, but a true debate has never been put on the table for all Americans to see. In 1973 nine men decided a case that has divided this country since because we, the people, never got to decide how we felt about it. We never got the whole story.

I wonder if the democrats realize how much they lost in this debate. It is certainly one of the prime reasons I left the democratic party. At the very heart of what we believe in this country is right of every human being to live. Back in the 70's at one of the first Right To Life marches Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke and said "Never let them tell you that a fetus is not a human being, that is what they tried to say about the negro." Jackson changed his tune when he ran as a democratic nominee for President. But it didn't change the truth of his words.

Since 1973 we have averaged 4000 abortions a day in this country. And there is one question that is rarely asked. Are women's lives better for it? I don't see it. I see women in the past 30 yrs more prone to suicide, promiscuity, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, eating disorders, and depression. I don't see how this helped women. I only see heartache and regret.

Whether you agree or disagree with me, we do know that there is no celebration here. There is no good feeling. If we can agree on that, then let's work together on 2 things. Helping women to appreciate their fertility and the gift that it gives them. Not looking at children as burdens or birth control failures, but as the greatest gift we are given on this earth. Let us help women to understand that sex means something. And that even with all that we know to prevent having a child, it can still happen. Women need to carry that knowledge in their heart whenever they want to make love, so they will be ready to carry that child in their womb as well.

Interesting.

The Jerusalem post is reporting this:

'US planning strike against Iran.'

I seriously doubt it. The carnage here woud be brutal. Think of all the Democrats whose heads would explode.

via Drudge

Even when someone is a dyed in the black moonbat....

You have to give credit where credit is due.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!

Open Thread!

The message of a picture.

This photo won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize as part of a package submitted by the Associated Press. It is described this way:

A gunman, center left, holds a pistol to the head of an Iraqi election worker lying in Baghdad's Haifa Street on Sunday. The man kneeling at right is also an election worker who was pulled from the car.

This is the story behind the photograph.

One of the Pulitzer photographs carried the credit line "stringer." Fearing deadly reprisals, the photographer remained unidentified after he photographed insurgents, pistols in hand, murdering election workers. Tipped by a colleague about burning vehicles in a city street, the photographer went to the scene and found two cars that were bombed. One continued to burn. Others in the street directed traffic away from the scene. The photographer left his cameras in his car some distance away and sought information from the crowd. "None of your business," he was told. He returned to his car, at which time an explosion nearly knocked him down. He turned and saw armed men in the intersection attacking election workers. Using his camera with 400-mm lens, he shot the scene as two of the election workers were shot to death in the intersection.

Tonight when you go to bed, I want you to think about those two election workers. I want you to think about how boring our voting process is. So much so that half of us don't even bother to vote. I want you to think about a people willing to risk a terrifying death to work at the polls. And they paid for it with their lives.

And I want you to think about another thing. The men who shot these people in cold blood do not deserve to walk on this earth. They are evil. We throw that word around alot here until it means nothing. But it does mean something. It means no conscience. It means deliberate innocent death. It means hating a free election so badly that they would drag men out of their cars and execute them in the middle of the street.

This is who we fight and this is why we fight.

via Alive In Baghdad

Some Stuff.

After two decades three big oil companies are back in Lybia. My goodness, things are a'changing. And as Ace says about Bush: "... he peacefully, diplomatically gets countries to renounce WMD's and terrorism for his oil buddies, too. Are there no limits to this man's nefarious machinations??" Heh.

In the "Nothing Sacred" segment. Ugh.

I will say that I may find things objectionable that many may find mild. That is because I haven't wandered into the nasty side of the internet. If you have, then my complaints might seem... quaint.

For my commenters who were mentioning concern over Iraqi civilian deaths, you might be interested in this.

via Ace

Peace Like A River (a milblog) sees an insurgency collapsing. For those worried about recruitment, maybe this will ease your mind.

Women Who Make the World Worse.

Kate O'Beirn has been a favortie NRO writer of mine forever. She talked to Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO about her new book "Women Who Make The World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Agenda Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports." Who knew she was so funny too? Here is the interview. I love her.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Kate, knowing you and your reputation, I was not surprised to read that you were a traitor to your sex even in law school. Does wanting to see other women fail just come naturally to you?

Kate O'Beirne: Having been raised with three sisters and educated by women in a girls-only high school and all-female college, it was jarring to find myself labeled as a traitor to my sex. Some of my best friends were women! But I never believed that men and women were interchangeable, that marriage was a patriarchal plot, or that women's equality rested on abortion rights. So wanting to see feminists fail came naturally to me.

Lopez: You mentioned the influence of the women in your background. But does being the mother of boys make you especially sensitive to women who make male lives worse?

O'Beirne: The men in our lives can shape our views on the most destructive ideology afoot. I have long thought that if high-school boys had invited homely girls to the prom we might have been spared the feminist movement. We live with the destructive feminist agenda because the fathers or husbands of so many of them, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and Jane Fonda, never failed to fail them. The views of these angry, abandoned women inform the modern women's movement.

Lopez: You write that "A battle was won when the ETA was defeated, but feminists went on to win the war." How did they win — it lost, for Pete's sake — and if they won why don't they act like winners?

O'Beirne: What feminists couldn't impose by constitutional amendment (thanks to Phyllis Schlafly) they have imposed through the schools, college faculties, and the culture, by judicial fiat and advocacy dressed up as legislation. Don't be fooled by their militant insistence that women's equality has been thwarted. These women are chronically dissatisfied and qualified for only one job: professional feminist. They are generously paid, largely by taxpayers, but also by corporations anxious to look good on "women's issues." The fact that American women are the most privileged women in the history of mankind (woops!) must be vehemently denied.

Because their goal of a sex-blind society is frustrated by biology (see my last chapter — "Mother Nature Is a Bitch"), feminists' schemes are increasingly coercive. In that sense, they are losers.

Lopez: You write that "The Jobs Rated Almanac reveals that twenty-three of the twenty-five jobs rated as the worst are over 90 percent male." I bet a man wrote that.

O'Beirne: That's just one of the many uncomfortable facts that feminists ignore in order to make their dishonest claims. Men make up 54 percent of the workforce, but account for 92 percent of job-related deaths. Jobs that are flexible, fulfilling, and safe (so typically favored by women) pay less. Feminists hate it when that happens.

Lopez: Seriously though, feminist always go on about unequal pay when most pay discrepancies simply make sense and are, in fact, fair, right? Why can't anyone get them to shut up?

O'Beirne: The persistent fable that women are denied equal pay for equal work has been a never-empty tank of gas that fuels feminism. A sympathetic public is largely unaware that the claim that women face widespread wage discrimination is a myth aggressively advanced by feminists. Disparities in wages exist between women with children and men and single women. This is not sex discrimination, but if that were better understood feminists would have to get real jobs.

Lopez: Abortion gets the rap as the topic you can't bring up in polite company, but daycare is pretty incendiary too. Talk about day care's healthy and developmental drawbacks and you're mommy warring. But our reticence to talk about it is a problem, isn't it?

O'Beirne: Any discussion of day care's drawbacks invites the wrath of the child-care industry and their friends in the media. Proponents of the male model of career success for women and substitute care for young children — typically working mothers themselves — use subterfuge and censorship to thwart the free choices women make. As you'll learn in Chapter 2, "Day Care Good; Mother Bad," the propagandists don't just insist that day care benefits children, they see stay-at-home mothers as a timid and fearful lot whose full-time attention damages their children.

Lopez: In 1977, Jean Stapleton, hanging out with Bella Abzug announced that Edith Bunker would support the ERA "if she understood it." Does that pretty much sum up what the feminist establishment thinks of many American women?

O'Beirne: The modern feminist movement has never enjoyed the allegiance of a majority of American women and that condescension represents feminists' explanation when confronted with the evidence. The rest of us are too stupid to recognize our oppression. One of the most celebrated feminists you'll meet in the book dismisses the surveys reporting that married women are happier than single women by attributing their contentment to being "slightly mentally ill."

Lopez: "Modern feminism's biggest enemies are the smallest humans." Without caricaturing the Left too much: What about "Her body, her choice?" People get into tough situations. Is it really fair to characterize it as a war against unborn children?

O'Beirne: Feminist fundamentalism holds that the battle of the sexes can't be won unless women make war on the tiniest enemies of their independence. How can we be the equal of men when our bodies betray us? These women aren't arguing that abortion must be available for the hard cases. They believe that women's fertility makes us inherently inferior to men, so there can be no restrictions at all on abortion. Lacking the public's support for their radical abortion agenda, they wrap their demands in a tissue of euphemisms and lies and fiercely fight to keep the issue in the courts insulated from public opinion. The majority of the public, including the majority of women, oppose the majority of abortions.

Lopez: Why do you raise questions about women in the military while we're at war? Don't we need every man or woman we can get in our overstretched military?

O'Beirne: In the lull of peacetime, regulations that kept women in uniform at a safe distance from combat were lifted. We are now paying the price and being made to think that our national defense rests on the ability to deploy teenage girls and single mothers. What a disgrace. In the name of a phony equality, the military shouldn't ask women to serve where they don't have an equal chance to survive. Experience with integrating the service academies and the great majority of military specialties has shown that women can't and don't meet the male physical standards. The institutionally self-confident Marine Corps hasn't integrated its basic training and has little trouble recruiting the kind of good men who recognize that women should be protected from physical threats.

Lopez: Do you want men to beat their wives? How can you be against the Violence Against Women Act?

O'Beirne: It's possible to recognize that physical abuse within a relationship shouldn't be considered a "private matter" and not support enacting an ideological agenda dressed up as legislation. The feminist conviction that marriage is inherently abusive and all men potential assailants won a federal imprimatur, and well over $1 billion, with this legislation that congressmen were too intimidated to resist. This program, packed with feminist pork, has the female psychologist who declared that "all female-male relationships [are] more or less abusive" on the public payroll training police, prosecutors, and judges.

Lopez: Was there ever a gender gap? There had to be a problem selling George W. Bush to women or the campaign would have never bothered with a "W Is for Women" gimmick, right?

O'Beirne: What can I say? Republicans can be dopey about the so-called gender gap. It was first aggressively promoted in 1980 when Ronald Reagan beat Carter among women voters, but by a smaller margin than his win among men. Hyping the supposedly intractable gender gap was useful to browbeat Walter Mondale into picking a female running mate. While Geraldine Ferraro was busy making history on the other ticket, Reagan was winning over women voters — by a margin of 56 to 44. As I show, convincingly I hope, there is no monolithic women's vote and there is no monolithic women's agenda.

Lopez: What's the worst thing that women who make the world worse do?

O'Beirne: They put us at war with the men in our lives, the fathers, husbands, and sons who love and support us. Because men don't like arguing with women and naively assumed that if they gave feminists what they wanted they would be left alone, the allegedly fierce patriarchy collapsed in the face of the feminist assault. The moral intimidation feminists inflict on men means that other women have to take on the modern, destructive women's movement. In the pages of my book you will meet some of the smart, admirable women who take on the feminists. The feminist message is crippling to our daughters, but we mothers of sons in particular have to defend our offspring. We are not raising unindicted co-conspirators in the gender wars!

Lopez: Has Hillary Clinton's work making the world worse only begun? Would a President Rodham Clinton unleash a destructive feminist nightmare on the world much worse than anything Geena Davis could ever portray?

O'Beirne: Oh boy. Hillary Clinton is a committed feminist. She's a true believer in the grievance agenda and promotes the myth of stunted progress for women's equality. She would reliably be one of the women who make the world worse by endorsing all of feminism's pet causes — strict sex quotas for college sports, "girl power" in our schools, the "epidemic" of domestic violence, abortion on demand (despite her phony rhetoric), universal, federally funded day care, enforced "equal pay for equal work" and women in combat. I have to lie down now.

The "Nothing Is Sacred" series continues.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden

— Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.
Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he's not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.
"It is an active statement against Christianity," Atldax told The Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion."
The label's makers say it's more of a joke, but Atldax insists his graphic designs have a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, a "force of evil" that he blames for sparking wars throughout history.

Why don't they just go ahead and make "Jew" jeans with lots of pockets for all the money they make. Or maybe a label with Auschwitz and a smiley face? Or a Muslim blowing himself up? Or a "black person" jean showing him hanging from a tree.

Come on! Why not? If we are gonna offend 1.2 billion people on this planet let's include the rest!!!

Why is it OK to offend Christians, but not anyone else?

Just Keep Us Safe.

The Washington Post has an article on Bush, the CIA, and covert operations.

"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert
action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to
2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert
action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty
details of operations."

See now, this is the kind of President I want when we are fighting these kinds of monsters. He doesn't give a damn about what past Presidents did, he promised he would protect us and he did. And that is one fact no one, not even the Michael Moore types, can argue with.

There are complaints from former CIA officials that Bush will justify anything based on the resolution passed soon after 9-11:

... authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those
nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned,
authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks."

Which is why Bush was re-elected. I haven't seen one thing that Bush has done that hurts Americans or tramples on our rights. What he has done is make sure none of these blood thirsty insane terrorists get NEAR US.
The blowup over the wiretapping is nothing more than the Democrats way of making an issue out of nothing to make Bush look bad. Period.

The GTS program mentioned in the article, which is "the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War", was Bush's way of shaking up the CIA and getting together the type of covert organization we BADLY needed to protect us. I just don't understand how anyone could have a problem with that.

The article seems to want to paint a picture of a President shutting Congress out with little accountability. But I see a President determined to create a way to keep us safe and knowing that Congress and others would leak information that was vital to doing that (and God knows we have seen plenty of that), he chose to rely on those who know how to be a efficient spy organization.

I think most Americans understand that we are fighting an evil force never encountered before. Not an army that seeks to overthrow or invade, but individuals that simply want to kill us. US. You and me and anyone American. And they will kill themselves in order to do it.

Remember when Clinton said he almost "got Bin Laden?" Remember when the 9-11 commission detailed how we completely missed the clues of the planning of 9-11? All of these types of things were what were unacceptable to President Bush. Another attack was just not going to happen on his watch.

We believed him. We re-elected him. And for once, a politician kept his promise. So the Democrats can whine and complain, but they can't deny the fact that we have been SAFE.

via Red State (which has an excellent take on it as well)

Nothing Sacred.

I think I'll start a series called "Nothing Sacred" that chronicles the offensive and degrading things some people come up with. I've mentioned the Dennis O'Leary Christmas special and The SouthPark episode about Mother Mary. So now you have this:

Controversial images of Queen Elizabeth II, George W Bush and Jacques Chirac
apparently having sex have been removed from billboards in Austria.

It's art, don't cha know?

It's called a Hero's truck.

I found this wandering around the web. Some guy's truck that has beautiful paintings on it. On the passenger side of the truck is a fighting scene with out soldiers in Iraq.

Yes, I know this is just so Texas and Nascar but still...

Pretty cool, huh?

(Click on image for a bigger picture)

Stuff.

As you can see I now have comments on the sidebar. I like it because you can instantly see if there is a response to your comment. I also got my blockquote thing fixed. All this courtesy of the so very sweet MacStansbury.

Now, news of the weird:

A Central Dauphin School District teacher faces charges of assaulting a
Lower Paxton Twp. police officer and possession of illegal drugs after being
arrested earlier this month while standing naked in the snow outside of his
home, police said.

It goes on to say:

According to court papers, when Lofton was asked if he was okay, he
responded, "No, I am ... crazy, and I need a menthol cigarette."
When
asked
where he lived and why he was naked, Lofton is alleged to have said
that he was
"Jesus Christ" and that the officer must be "God," court papers
say.
A
scuffle broke out between the two men during which Lofton is
alleged to have hit
the officer over the head with a long plastic toy
trumpet which he scooped up
from nearby.
The officer used his pepper
spray on Lofton, at first to no
avail. Then a cursing Lofton advised the
officer that "'Jesus' is now blind,"
court papers say.

H/T BigDog

What is it with teachers these days? They seemed to have turned into postal workers with drugs rather than guns.

I'm grateful.

The Ithaca Journal is encouraging Blue state people to take a walk on the Red side. He graciously included me in this walk:

For a different view of the war, if you have Internet access, take time on two days to read a military blog such as the Mudville Gazette (www.mudvillegazette.com) and an Iraqi blog such as The Messopotamian (http://messopotamian.blogspot.com).
For a different view of domestic politics, read two days of black conservative La Shawn Barber (www.lashawnbarber.com/), of the gay conservatives at Gay Patriot (http://gaypatriot.net), and of the hot conservative blond Rightwing Sparkle (www.rightwingsparkle.blogspot.com.
Finally, go to church or mosque and give thanks for the blessings in our lives, the blessings we in all our differentness are for each other, and the genius of those who built the sturdy constitutional framework that shelters us all.

I'll go give thanks that at age 40ish someone still calls me "hot." (my mom made me change the age thing...;-)