I will be posting again on May 9th, but have taken some time off to spend with family and loved ones. Thank you all for visiting my site, and if you enjoy visiting, tell a friend. Feel free to visit some of my links or search some catagories while I am gone. Keep up the good fight, it is our state too!
robert

By Pete Yost
The Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring with the hijackers in the Sept. 11 plot and declared Osama bin Laden personally instructed him to fly an airliner into the White House in a separate assault.

Over the objection of his lawyers, Moussaoui calmly admitted his guilt in a courtroom a few miles from where one of the hijacked planes crashed into the Pentagon in 2001, setting up a showdown with prosecutors who quickly reaffirmed they will seek Moussaoui’s execution.

“I will fight every inch against the death penalty,” Moussaoui told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema as he became the only person convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the Sept. 11 plot that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The unshackled Moussaoui, wearing a beard and green prison jumpsuit, told the judge he had not been promised a lighter sentence for his guilty pleas. Then he added, “I don’t expect any leniency from the Americans.”

Moussaoui, a 36-year-old French citizen, pleaded guilty to six felonies, four of which carry the death penalty. They accuse him of conspiring with the 19 hijackers and al-Qaida leaders in a broad plot to kill Americans using commercial airliners as weapons. The conspiracy included the Sept. 11 attacks. from the Sun again

By Paul Adams
Sun Staff

Major League Baseball’s delicate deal to ensure the widespread broadcast of Washington Nationals baseball games while appeasing Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos hit a snag yesterday when Comcast SportsNet sued the Orioles and baseball over broadcast rights.

The lawsuit, which claims Comcast has a contract guaranteeing it exclusive rights to negotiate for Orioles broadcast rights through November 2005, will delay efforts to get Nationals games carried on local cable television and potentially limit advertising revenue that could have come with increased exposure. It also opens an awkward rift between Comcast and the Orioles, which have been television partners for more than a decade. The deal struck in April between Angelos and MLB would hand broadcast rights to a regional sports network majority-owned by the Orioles.

Industry sources say the recently formed Mid-Atlantic Sports Network would, in turn, charge cable providers $2 to $3 per subscriber to receive the Orioles and Nationals. Presumably, the fee would be passed on to cable consumers. With Comcast on the sidelines while its lawsuit plays out, baseball fans will see only Nationals games already carried on Washington stations WTTG/Channel 5 and UPN WDCA Channel 20, as well as the few games nationally broadcast by ESPN or Fox.

The cable provider sought to portray its lawsuit, in part, as a fight for baseball-loving cable subscribers, who could potentially be forced to pay extra to get broadcasts of both teams’ games over cable.

“If Major League Baseball wants to compensate Angelos for bringing the Nationals to Washington, that’s their right,” said David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast Corp. “But MLB should pay for it, as opposed to creating a structure where cable and satellite customers in Baltimore and Washington are going to have to pay an Angelos tax in order to finance whatever obligation MLB felt it had to give the Orioles.” from the Baltimore Sun

Moore’s Venal, Vindictive Scholarship

Michael Moore is lashing out at a university that canceled his talk, by setting up a scholarship specifically for troublemakers: Moore Sets Up Scholarship for Rebels. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

Filmmaker and Michigan native Michael Moore has established a scholarship for students who defy the administration at California State University, San Marcos — the same school that canceled his talk last year.

The Michael Moore Freedom of Speech Scholarship will award two $2,500 annual scholarships to Cal State San Marcos students “who have done the most to fight for issues of student rights by standing up to the administration,” according to a news release issued Wednesday.
.from LGF

Mona Charen

In the late 1990s, John Bolton published an article titled “The Creation, Rise and Fall of the United Nations.” If you had read this essay and not witnessed one minute of his confirmation hearings, you would already know that Democrats were going to despise him.

Here is Bolton’s take on the post of U.N. secretary-general: “… One should not invest excessive hope in any secretary-general. The U.N. Charter describes the secretary-general as the U.N.’s ‘chief administrative officer.’ He is not the president of the world. He is not a diplomat for all seasons. He is not Mr. Friend of the Earth. And most definitely of all, he is not commander in chief of the World Federalist Army. He is the chief administrative officer. Nothing less than that, to be sure, but, with even greater certainty, nothing more.”

A wound to the quick! In a few words, Bolton ridiculed liberal U.N. worship. It’s no surprise that they did not thank him for bringing them down to earth with a jolt. Bolton’s point in that article is that the United Nations is a tool, not an end itself. Rather than the “parliament of man” liberals fondly imagine, the United Nations is a collection of nations each pursuing its own interests, and an unaccountable bureaucracy awash in waste, sloth, luxury and abuse.

Frankly, in a decade that has brought us the Oil for Food scandal, the child sex slave trade carried on by U.N. workers, U.N. failures to confront horrific human rights disasters like North Korea and Sudan — indeed, even offering the genocidal regime of Sudan a place on the Human Rights Commission (other members: Zimbabwe, Congo, Cuba, Saudi Arabia) — the real question ought to be not why John Bolton isn’t sentimental about the United Nations, but rather why Democrats are. .read the whole thing at townhall.com

The UPI’s Religious Affairs Editor, Uwe Siemon-Netto, catalogs the abuse to which Pope Benedict has been subjected since his election, noting that Googling the phrase “Nazi Pope” turns up nearly 700 entries. Much of the abuse directed at the Pope is superficially anti-German, but in reality, as Siemon-Netto acknowledges, it is anti-Catholic:

“They knock the Germans but they are motivated by their anti-Catholicism,” Catholic League president William Donohue proposed.
New York Times columnist Maureen Down seemed to prove Donohue right by stirring all the elements she considered disagreeable about Ratzinger and his church into one venomous brew.

Siemon-Netto notes that “[t]he Internet is of course the kooks’ playground,” but, notwithstanding the encouragement dished out by columnist Dowd, he seems surprised to find some of the most venemous of the anti-Pope abuse dispensed by readers of the New York Times:

[The term “Nazi Pope” entered America’s foremost paper via the Readers’ Opinion section of NYTimes.com and caused dismay at the Anti-Defamation League.
“We reject that outright,” ADL spokeswoman Mryna Shinebaum told UPI. Her national director, Abraham H. Foxman, had welcomed Ratzinger’s election. ” Cardinal Ratzinger has great sensitivity to Jewish history and the Holocaust. He has shown this sensitivity countless times,” Foxman stated.

Was it ethical, then, for NYTimes.com to publish a text accusing pope Benedict XVI of being a Nazi?

Toby Usnik, the Times’ director of public relations seems to think so. “We choose not to censor such posts unless they are abusive, defamatory or obscene. While we believe that this post stretches the truth of the pope’s youth, we do not believe it violates our policies,” he informed UPI.

One wonders: If accusing one of the world’s great theologians and religious leaders of committing or sympathizing with genocide is not abusive or defamatory, what would be? In the law of defamation there is no such thing as an outcast, a person so low that he cannot be libelled. It seems, however, that in some people’s eyes, Catholics in general and the Pope in particular are in that category. from Powerline

Yes, the shifting values with some on the left is at it again. It seems what is right and wrong depends on who the victim is. Take this article.

Missouri Man Spits on Jane Fonda
By TIM CURRAN

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – A man spit tobacco juice into the face of actress Jane Fonda after waiting in line to have her sign her new book, police said. The man ran off but was quickly caught by police Tuesday night and charged with disorderly conduct.

Fonda has been on tour and doing interviews to promote her just-published memoir, “My Life So Far.” The thrice-married, two-time Academy Award winner covers a wide array of topics, including her 1972 visit to Hanoi to protest the Vietnam War, during which she was photographed on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. She has apologized for that photo, but not for opposing the war.

(For the record, I despise Jane Fonda, but don’t think she should be spit upon. ) However, it seems it is okay to throw things at, threaten, and advocate violence against conservatives. Since it is getting late I will not bother having to pull up articles on the countless incidents I have read about in the past and will only post the Ann Coulter incident. (However, if some lib challenges these facts, I will throw some more examples out.)

by Ann Coulter

After my column last week, in which I noted that there had been a spate of food attacks on conservative speakers on college campuses within weeks of charges being dismissed against the “Deliverance” boys who threw pies at me at the University of Arizona, the prosecutor said it was my fault. (This column gets results!) David Berkman, chief criminal deputy in the office of Democrat Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall, told the Arizona Daily Star that charges had to be dismissed because I didn’t show up for the trial.

Of course, it’s hard to know what anyone said in this country based on newspaper accounts. The actual statements people make are filtered through reporters, who, as we know, are generally unexecutable in this country under Atkins v. Virginia (holding the death penalty for mentally retarded persons unconstitutional).
Is the prosecutor a phony or the reporter a moron? In other words, is this a “Jeffrey Toobin situation” or a “Dan Rather situation”? We report, you decide.

In an article titled “Writer Coulter, arresting officer missed 1st trial,” reporter Kim Smith writes in the April 16 Arizona Daily Star: “Pima County prosecutors plan to take another shot at two men accused of throwing pies at political writer Ann Coulter, even though she didn’t show up at their first trial last month.”

“Smith and Wolff were scheduled to go to trial March 18, but neither Coulter nor the arresting officer showed up, Berkman said.”

“Coulter was sent repeated notices of the court date” (all of which were apparently sent telepathically) “and she will be notified of the new court date as well, Berkman said. He said it should also be noted that Coulter never contacted prosecutors to find out the resolution of the case.”

In fact, my verbatim reply in an e-mail dated Feb. 15, 2005, to the only notice I ever received about my appearing at the trial was the following, preserved through the miracle of computers: I remain very committed to pressing charges. What is the date of the trial? I do not live in AZ and it may be difficult for me to get there for the trial. Does the prosecutor believe he will have to call me as a witness? I believe there is videotape of the entire event and it is evident thereon that I apprehended the attack and ran away. I was never asked to attend any trial. Are crime victims in Pima County typically required to pester prosecutors with endless “When’s the trial?” phone calls? This trial received even less publicity than my recent speaking engagement at the school. I didn’t even get one of those “haven’t heard from you lately” postcards the publisher sends after you let a magazine subscription lapse. The need for a prosecutor to call me as a witness still seems completely absurd in light of the in-living-color videotape of the entire assault, vividly showing each element of the crime.link here

I’m not sure if I love more that tolerence for opposing views all liberals share or that convenient double standard they use so well.

By Desmond O. Butler
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — Two senior investigators with the U.N. committee probing corruption in the oil-for-food program have resigned in protest, saying they think a report that cleared Kofi Annan of meddling in the $64 billion operation was too soft on the secretary-general, a panel member confirmed yesterday.
The investigators felt the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, played down findings critical of Mr. Annan when it released an interim report in late March related to his son, said Mark Pieth, one of three leaders of the committee.

“You follow a trail and you want to see people pick it up,” Mr. Pieth told the Associated Press, referring to the two top investigators who left. “What we did was we told the story that they found, but we made different conclusions than they would have.”
The investigators were identified as Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan.
Mr. Parton, as the senior investigative counsel for oil-for-food, had a wide purview. He was responsible for investigations into the procurement of companies under the oil-for-food program, and he was the lead investigator on issues pertaining to charges of impropriety relating to the secretary-general and his son, Kojo Annan. Miss Duncan worked on Mr. Parton’s team.
Mr. Parton, a lawyer and former FBI agent who has worked on a hostage-rescue team abroad, confirmed yesterday that he resigned a week ago, but he declined further comment. from the Washington Times

Those unfortunate souls who read the Sun regularly might have had a laugh when they read the Sun’s Public Editor Paul Moore’s investigation on Ehrlich’s list of complaints against the paper. Here is the link

First of all, the easiest way to de-legitimize an investigation is to have someone in the same company do the investigating. Anyone can see a conflict of interest here! Actually, I am surprised they admitted even some wrongdoing with this line.

While there is no doubt that some mistakes have been made in The Sun’s coverage of the Ehrlich administration, there is no evidence of the grievous, purposeful mistakes publicly referred to by the governor.

And they go on to try to justify themselves later in the article.

Some other articles noted in the list could have been better organized and edited. In a few stories, sentences were poorly worded. But taken together, the Ehrlich administration’s complaints do not support a conclusion that The Sun or any of its journalists were engaged in a deliberate campaign to smear the governor.

However, as Dave at the HedgeHog notes, things go deeper then that. “Going through the list, the thing that jumps out at me is how often the Public Editor just accepts what the Baltimore Sun reporter states as accurate despite the admission in other cases where the same reporter fabricated facts or purposely left out relevant contrary details in a story. And the most humorous item is the last one where the Baltimore Sun admits to misspelling Governor Ehrlich’s name wrong over 80 times. I can understand a misspelling here and there, I make spelling mistakes all the time; but how on earth does a major newspaper manage to misspell the name of the State’s Governor over 80 times if it isn’t a deliberate attempt to show disrespect. We are not talking about one time or five times, but 80 times! ”

All one needs to do is to count over a period of a month the number of anti-Ehrlich articles vs. articles that paint Ehrlich in a good light and compare that to pro-vs-anti-O’Malley articles to see their bias. It has come to the point that people laugh when I mention that the paper is bias. They do not laugh because they think I am wrong or off-the-deep-end, but laugh because I am stating something that is painfully obvious. It is not by accident that the Sun has began a new marketing campaign while at the same time a growing number of people begin to question the paper’s fairness. It has become a giant editorial board for the Democratic Party

Reader Joel Loeschman makes a good point:

With all the huffing and puffing of Democrats over whether John Bolton threatened a civil servant’s job, I have to ask…What exactly happened with Hillary Clinton and the White House travel office a few years ago? Does this disqualify Bill and/or Hillary from ever working @ the U.N.?
There is one obvious difference between what Hillary (with help from Bill) undoubtedly did, and what John Bolton allegedly did: Hillary actually got someone fired. Seven people, if my memory is correct.

Well, I guess there is another difference, too. Bolton had reason to be upset with under-performing employees. Hillary just wanted to install her own cronies. If Bolton is disqualified from working at the U.N., one can ask, as Joel does, whether Hillary is likewise disqualified from service at the U.N. The more pertinent question, though, is: why isn’t Hillary disqualified from being President?

from powerline

The Kos Kidz are absolutely disgusting in this topic at Daily Kos, crowing over the deaths of more Blackwater contractors in Iraq: Copter shot down in Iraq; six Blackwater U.S. contractors among 11 dead.

One of the sickest, most un-American (yes, I wrote “un-American,” and I meant it) commenters echoes their leader Markos:

They aren’t “civilians” (4.00 /

They are mercenaries. They are being paid big money to take the risk of going to a war zone and getting shot at. Our soldiers are also going to a war zone and being shot at, but they aren’t getting paid anything near what these men made.

I’m not callous about their deaths, I don’t *want* anybody to die, and certainly nobody deserves to die for wanting to make a living. BUT I am sympathetic to the feelings Markos had at the reaction to the previous “civilian” death’s in Iraq.

In other words, “Screw them.” Where would anyone get the impression this miserable creature is “callous?”

And please note: these are Barbara Boxer’s kind of people. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

from LGF

and check out this awful link

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed an $81.3 billion spending bill to keep U.S. combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan running and to provide additional help to last December’s tsunami victims. By a vote of 99-0, the Senate passed the emergency spending bill that also funds some new domestic security measures, including the hiring of additional border agents.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, said the bill would “continue to support the additional funding that’s needed for this fiscal year for our troops in the field, for those who are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.” The fiscal year ends at the end of September. Last month, the House of Representatives passed its own measure to speed delivery of funds President Bush sought for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The two chambers will try to work out their differences quickly and send the legislation to Bush for signing.
link is here

Another story today from WBAL about the Steffen/O’Malley affair.

Gov. Bob Ehrlich reacted Thursday to the private e-mails that the 11 News I-Team first reported Wednesday. Collins said Ehrlich is using the e-mail messages to bolster his claim that the Democrats are behind an orchestrated effort.

“It appears that an orchestrated effort was put together to inflict political damage on our administration,” Ehrlich said.

WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said the string of private e-mail messages revealed that former Ehrlich aide Joe Steffen advised the mysterious Internet user MD4Bush to back off going after the personal life of Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley.
….
The private e-mail messages show that MD4Bush — not Steffen — added new dirt to the rumors. And throughout the private chats, MD4Bush appears to prod Steffen into spreading the rumors, Collins said.

On Feb. 8 — five hours before The Washington Post broke the story on its Web site exposing Steffen — another e-mail went out. Collins said a member of the Maryland Democratic Party with close ties to the O’Malley administration wrote that message, providing instructions on how to react to the story.

The e-mail touts: “This will be the biggest story of the year, in The Post, either tomorrow or Thursday, that credits Gov. Ehrlich’s staff for creating and spreading the nasty and untrue rumor about our mayor and his family.”Collins said the e-mailer urged showing “your disgust by calling in WBAL Radio, it also provides talking points.”

“If it does go back to the Democratic Party, they will have a lot of explaining to do,” Ehrlich said.Interesting.

Based on that last email mentioned in the article, it is starting to become very clear that there was some coordination between the O’Malley campaign and The Washington Post on this story in an concerted effort to smear Governor Ehrlich and his staff. And silly me thought The Washington Post was an “objective” newspaper…. from the HedgeHog

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Senate yesterday turned back a proposed amnesty for up to 1 million illegal immigrant agricultural workers and their families, though it gained support of more than half the chamber.
In the first major vote on immigration policy in almost a decade, the Senate fell seven votes shy of the 60 required to proceed with the amendment, which would have offered the illegal immigrants a three-step path to citizenship. A vote on a guest-worker program with no path to citizenship also failed, by an overwhelming margin.

“Nobody really wanted either of those proposals to pass. They knew they hadn’t been fully and carefully considered,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, who voted against the amendments. The amnesty and guest-worker votes indicate that it may be difficult for Congress to pass any broader immigration reform this year. link is here

Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm said his officers don’t see crimes as either major or minor. “All we see is a violation,” Hamm said. “What may be minor in West Baltimore may not be minor in South Baltimore. We don’t deal with minor. We deal with violations of the law.” Read more about one of the ways our wonderful mayor and his police chief are fighting crime here I am in favor of tough crime laws. But there is a difference between tough and stupid.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will plead guilty on Friday to all charges against him and admit to having a role in the deadly hijacking plot, U.S. government sources said on Wednesday.

Moussaoui, who has been charged with six counts of conspiracy relating to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will plead guilty to the six counts in a court appearance, they said. “We do expect him to admit to some connection with the September 11 attacks,” one government official said.

The officials said Moussaoui, 36, knew he could face a death sentence if he pleaded guilty. They said there was no plea deal with the government and sources close to the case said Moussaoui’s lawyers were opposed to his decision. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued an order saying Moussaoui was “fully competent” to plead guilty. She set a hearing to accept the plea for Friday at 3:30 p.m. The sentencing phase will come later.

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the only person charged in connection with the attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington. from yahoo news

an essay by KEITH URBAHN

In observing our soon-to-be fellow students, immediately identifiable by those ubiquitous manila envelopes, I noticed something slightly amiss: the bizarre preponderance of communist apparel. In casually walking around campus Monday and Tuesday, I saw no fewer than three pre-frosh wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Che Guevara’s pensive black and white face; another proudly sported the Soviet hammer and sickle.

While hardly evidence of a Red invasion of the Yale campus, the approval of communist emblems as acceptable pop culture icons is nothing short of disturbing. In eulogizing the symbols of communism, angst-plagued teens, aspiring leftists and hipster poseurs celebrate a murderous ideology responsible for over 85 million deaths.

Trying to fit in on a campus known for its liberal activism certainly doesn’t make you a card-carrying member of the Communist Party; in fact, I’d be surprised if any of the Commie-wannabee pre-frosh had ever read a page of Marx or Engels. After all, a true communist is hard to find these days. Marxism discredited itself by its numerous failures at creating socialist governments in the last century. In “The Black Book of Communism,” co-author Stephane Courtois exposes a scale of “class genocide” that he claims rivaled Nazism in its brutality and far surpassed the Holocaust in number of victims. Compared with Hitler’s 25 million deaths over six years, communist dictators (Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung and Pol Pot among the most egregious offenders) were directly responsible for between 85 and 100 million deaths over 80 years. In the ways Nazism systematically dehumanized Jews, Christians, homosexuals and gypsies, communism labeled its opponents “bloodsuckers,” “rich bastards,” “pigs” and “filthy, capitalist dogs.” The purportedly “scientific” basis and infallibility of Marxist thought, like Hitler’s Darwinian racialist theory, fostered totalitarian rule that demanded absolute conformity and the extermination of any rivals. Apologists for communism often assert that pure Marxism was hijacked by bloodthirsty dictators and never had a fair chance to succeed. This disingenuous argument ignores the fact that Marxist ideology, like Nazism, carried the seeds of authoritarianism and mass murder within it. Like other totalizing ideologies, Marxism required dictatorship and the use of violence as indispensable tools in eliminating the bourgeois class enemies.

Che Guevara is the consummate embodiment of Marxism and everything it stands for: mass murder, injustice and failure. Che’s noble vision of serving the communist revolution was killing hundreds — likely thousands — of “state enemies” in the Cuban jungles as Fidel Castro’s executioner. With the conviction of a true crusader for justice, he believed that “to send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.” His attempts at fomenting socialist uprisings and fighting bloody insurgent campaigns in the Congo and Bolivia were grand failures that led to his ignominious death.

People have always identified in Che Guevara and Marxist ideology the rebellious idealism of youth and the indomitable courage of the human spirit. The grand (but ultimately empty) promises of equality inspire hope. As Tom Wolfe trenchantly observed in his essay “Radical Chic” about New York elites drawn to the street allure of the Black Panthers, the wealthy are often drawn to revolutionary politics to allay feelings of guilt. Little wonder that privileged hipsters shell out 40 bucks for a Che shirt at faux-vintage clothing stores in SoHo. Others simply misidentify Marxist socialism as a more extreme form of European socialism, which owes nothing to the thought of Marx and Engels.

But “idealism,” “courage” and “equality” were part of the Marxist myth fed to us by the propaganda machines of communist regimes and the Western intellectual elite who willingly did their bidding. Yet the Marxist reality, now revealed to us by a century of communism’s ignoble history, is synonymous with genocide and tyranny. That we are blind to the crimes of communism and the true meaning of Marxism is no longer an excuse. Marxism was a dark — perhaps the darkest — chapter in human history. Those who still admire the ideology are sullied by the black stain of 85 million deaths. Those who — ignorant of the story behind their beloved leftist icons — sport Che or vintage Communist Party shirts are likewise tainted by tacit approval of unprecedented crimes against humanity. (note: Edited for length.) read the full article here

The ACLU joins hands with radical Islamic front group CAIR to sue the US Department of Homeland Security for “racial profiling:” Muslim-Americans Sue Govt for Racial Profiling. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

The suit charged the Muslim-Americans were taken aside after being asked if they attended the religious conference and were then subjected to unlawful treatment at a border crossing near Buffalo, New York, under a new Homeland Security policy.

“They are engaging in profiling,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU said. “The government detained people because they attended a conference that was perfectly legal, exercising their basic rights.”

“We were told that we were being pulled aside because of a random selection,” said plaintiff Sawsaan Tabbaa, an orthodontist from Amherst, New York, who was traveling with her four children. “Then we saw the whole Muslim community there that had attended the Islamic conference.

”It was unbelievable. I am proud of being American but I couldn’t believe my eyes something like this could happen.“

Tabbaa said she refused to be fingerprinted, but finally relented after breaking down in tears after more than four hours of detention.

The suit does not seek monetary damages, but asks for a declaration that the government action was unlawful, an injunction against further enforcement of such policies and practices and erasing from all federal databases of information obtained from the plaintiffs.

Lieberman, whose organization filed the suit along with the American Civil Liberties Union and Council on American-Islamic Relations, said there was nothing about the RIS conference to raise suspicions.

”If the government has suspicions about criminal activities they have every right and indeed the obligation to go after those suspicions,“ Lieberman said. ”This is a case of rounding up the usual suspects in derogation of their rights and in derogation of all of our liberties.”

Please note other LGF entries about the “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” conference in Toronto, which has previously featured the Islamists’ favorite guest speaker, neo-Nazi William Baker.
LGF

–Today’s Hillary Meter shows that perceptions of the New York Senator have moved four points to the left over the past two weeks.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of Americans now believe New York Senator Hillary Clinton is politically liberal. That’s up from 43% two weeks ago, but down from 51% in late January.

Thirty-two percent (32%) of Americans view the former First Lady as a moderate while 8% believe she is politically conservative.

Collectively, these numbers place Senator Clinton a net 56 points to the left of the nation’s political center. Two weeks ago, she was 52 points left of center.

The political center is calculated by subtracting the number of liberals from the number of conservatives among the general public (35% conservative, 18% liberal for a net +17). For the Senator, 8% conservative minus 47% liberal equals a net -39. The minus 39 reading for Senator Clinton is 56 points away from the plus 17 reading for the general public.

By way of comparison, President Bush is 37 points to the right of center; Condoleezza Rice is 21 points to the right, and John Kerry is currently seen as 54 points to the left of center.

However, the current numbers for Mrs. Clinton are to the left of John Kerry’s ratings at the beginning of Election 2004. Perceptions of Senator Kerry shifted significantly during the campaign. In January, 2004, just 37% viewed the eventual Democratic nominee as politically liberal. That increased to 53% by mid-October.

Thirty percent (30%) of voters say that they would definitely vote for Hillary if she runs in 2008. Forty percent (40%) would definitely vote against her. Two weeks ago, those numbers were 32% for and 37% against. A separate survey found that 44% of Virginia voters say they will definitely vote against Clinton in 2008.
(Hat Tip- Dave Wissing) link is here

Del. Pat McDonough spoke at The Patapsco Valley Republican club on 4-14 to give the other side of the proceedings at the Md General Assembly which cannot be read in the liberal Baltimore Sun. (I call their motto “light for some”) I will dicuss later some of the topics that concern me the most, namely how illegal immigrant friendly this state is becoming. But for now, let me bring up what seems to me to be a grave violation of the rules of the General Assembly and a chilling silencing of the rights of the opposition party in the State of Maryland. First, let me post a link rom the Assembly Webpage entitled : THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS:
HOW A BILL BECOMES A LAW.

SECOND CHAMBER
After passage by the first chamber, the bill is sent to the opposite chamber, has its first reading, and is assigned to a committee for consideration. The procedure followed is identical with that of the first chamber except that amendments may be proposed during second and third readings. If not amended in the second chamber, final passage may occur without reprinting.
If amended in the second chamber, the bill is returned to the chamber of origin so that house may consider the amendments. If the amendments are agreed to, the bill is voted on as amended and action is complete. The bill is reprinted, or “enrolled,” to include the added amendments before being submitted to the Governor.

If the amendments are rejected, the amending chamber may be asked to withdraw its amendments. If it refuses, either chamber may request that a conference committee be appointed to resolve the differences between the two chambers. link here

In the final minutes on the last day of the General Assembly Del. McDonough had his mike turned off and was not allowed to make an amendment, which was left “at the desk.” The crowd responded to this breaking of Assembly rules by cheering. The link to listen to this yourself is here. Listen to House proceedings session Monday, April 11, 2005, Session #4. It is at the end of the tape. You can hear who (I believe Mike Bush) turn off Del McDonough’s mike so no one could hear him and break the rules and thus (as it seems to me) pass a bill illegally. Listening to the tape makes it clear that the Democrats in control make no effort to compromise whith the Republicans or even try to represent the 40% of Maryland who is “red.” I invite all to listen to the audio to see just how ugly politics is becoming in Md, because you won’t hear about this in the Sun. (Note: I believe it was in reference to house bill 691, but it is hard to hear.)