now this is funny….

GI Sues Michael Moore for $85 Million

A double-amputee veteran of the Iraq war is suing filmmaker Michael Moore for $85 million, claiming Moore used an old interview with the G.I. to make him appear anti-war in his movie “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, who strongly supports America’s invasion of Iraq, said he never agreed to be in the 2004 movie. Damon lost his arms when a Black Hawk helicopter exploded in front of him.

In the 2003 interview, which he did at Walter Reed Army Hospital for NBC News, he discussed only a new painkiller the military was using on wounded veterans, the New York Post reports.

“They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene,” Damon said. “They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition.”

According to the lawsuit filed in Suffolk County, Mass., Damon seems to “voice a complaint about the war effort” in the movie.

But he told the Post: “I was complaining about the pain I would’ve been having [if it weren't for the painkiller].”
Newsman Brian Williams ends the NBC clip by adding, “These men with catastrophic wounds are . . . completely behind the war effort,” according to the lawsuit. That part wasn’t shown in the Moore movie.

Damon’s lawyer Dennis Lynch said he delayed filing the lawsuit in a bid to settle the matter with Moore.

“We attempted to resolve the situation amicably with Mr. Moore [for a year] but he refused,” he said.
Damon is asking for up to $75 million because of “loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment, and personal humiliation.”

In addition, his wife is suing for another $10 million because of the “mental distress and anguish suffered by her spouse.”
again from NewsMax.

that treasonist liar deserves to loose every cent he earned from his waste of celluloid……

The MSM Bias & Haditha

Posted by Curt

Another day another biased piece of reporting by our media:

A preliminary military inquiry found evidence that U.S. Marines killed two dozen Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in November, contradicting the troops’ account, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

No one is disputing a IED attack…is this unprovoked? By the headline of this article it appears they want us to believe the Marines were driving by and said “hey guys, lets go kill some kids!”….Sigh

CNN did a interview with the 10 year old in the house where she states that she knew the IED was out there and knew to cover her ears in anticipation of the explosion.

Did the fact that this family know and quite possible supported (in spirit) the IED attack give the Marines an excuse to kill them IF they did not fire on the Marines. Hell no.

But the Marines were engaged when that IED went off. They may have believed the threat, the person who planted and pushed the button, was inside the two nearest buildings and they engaged. They are fighting a enemy that does not wear uniforms, that blends in with civilians and strikes from within houses containing civilians.

I say MAY because I just don’t know until the investigations and the hearings are done. The MSM and the left have decided not to wait, they have decided to pass judgement by calling this an unprovoked attack based on one “anonymous” informant….B I A S.

Take a look at this interview done with a Marine who was injured during the IED attack about the use of civilians by the terrorists: (h/t Michelle Malkin)

Crossan: We used to go out on patrols and have the little kids count the patrols and all that stuff and we couldn’t really do anything except grab them and throw them inside their houses…

KING 5 TV interviewer: Why would you do that? Because you were afraid that the kids were scouting for the insurgents or you thought they were in danger?

Crossan: There are little kids that scout for ‘em. ‘Cuz later that day we, along the main road there, we cut behind a few buildings and the next patrol that went out got hit. And that little kid that was just there and there was people all around. But the day that I got hit they were planning a major attack and it got spoiled, so, and there was like 20 some people, insurgents, that were gonna attack the cop that day.

Then we got hit by an IED and the cops sent out a squad of Marines, and the insurgents just started attacking then, just right off the bat and we just foiled it. We were just driving back from the cop. I remember taking a left and then a right, and then remember waking up from the ground for a split second. And then waking up in the helicopter and then finally knew what happened in the hospital.

KING 5: So after you were injured, also tell me, you lost one of your guys. What can you tell me about him?

Crossan: We lost Lance Col. Miguel Terrazas. He was a good guy. He was from El Paso, Texas. And he was my point man. He was pretty much the guy I went to if I needed anything.

KING 5: Was he driving the Humvee at the time?

Crossan: Yes he was.

KING 5. And so you were sitting next to me?

Crossan: Yes, I was in the passenger side. I know in my heart if I was there, I possibly could have stopped what happened, so. ‘Cuz I know that the other team leaders and even staff sergeants…they both, they all kinda, listened to me and I just gave ‘em ideas and all that stuff. Things just went smoother. But I just don’t know.

KING 5: How do you feel about the villagers involved? Um, you know, do you have emotion as you think about them or not really?

Crossan: No. Because half of them were bad guys. You just never know, so. It really didn’t cross my mind.

KING 5: There are reports of, you know, little children being killed and women being killed.

Crossan: Little kids I can see being bad and even some of the women, but just over there, you just can’t tell who the bad guy was…

A little bit more complicated then the MSM would have you believe huh?

The article I lead off with had an “anonymous” source saying exactly the opposite of what some lawyers who may be representing the Marines are saying.

So we are to believe the anonymous source now instead of the other source? Other sources are saying there was small arms fire directed at the Marines. Who are we to believe?

I tell you who. NO ONE until the investigation is done. The media is trying to paint the picture they WANT to believe, that they WANT all of us to believe before the friggin investigation is done.

Remind you of some “flushed Korans”, “Thousands drowned in New Orleans”, “Gangs running rampant in the Superdome”, “Civil War in Iraq”, “Lt. Pantano murdered” kind of stories?

Back to the original article.

Forensic data from corpses showed victims with bullet wounds, despite earlier statements by Marines that civilians were killed by a roadside bomb that also claimed the life of a Marine from El Paso, Texas, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, a defense official said.

“The forensics painted a different story than what the Marines had said,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Really Einstein? By now I think we know that the first reports were not true so this is not news.

The article then goes on to detail something that isn’t highlighted much:

There are two ongoing military investigations.

A probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, responsible for cases involving Marines, might lead to charges including murder, officials said. A separate fact-finding inquiry involves whether Marines tried to cover up the true nature of the incident, officials said.

So you mean the wheels of justice are turning? Go figure.

All we have at the moment are “unnamed” and “anonymous” defense officials leaking supposed results of a classified investigation to reporters? That’s it. Now reporters worldwide are trying to make their name on the backs of the Marines.

The left and the MSM so WANT this to be another My Lai….they don’t care if the truth is something other then that because they wont to believe it. This has to be a My Lai because we Americans are all so evil.

This is the modus operendi of the left and their cohorts in the MSM. Get out in front of the story, spin it how they want it to come out, and then if it turns out they were correct they can partah! If it turns out they were wrong they can claim its a big cover-up and then partah!

It’s all a big party to them.

from Flopping Aces.

and what about soldiers targeting civilians? or rathergate,

the media lies to you every day. Check out

Newsbusters

The Sun Lies

and the Media Research Center

daily if you don’t believe me…….

Just when you thought this story couldn’t get any more bizarre, the mother of the wheelchair athlete who was caught violating the rules and caused her teammate and team to be disqualified is now trying to get the disqualification overturned in court. From The Baltimore Sun.

Deborah McFadden said last night that she has spoken to lawyers to see whether anything can be done to reverse the ruling that disqualified her daughter and a teammate in the Class 2A 1,600-meter race at Saturday’s state championship meet, a move that later cost Atholton a team title

It reminds you of a Democrat after losing an election…when you can’t win during the actual event, take ‘em to court! I did have to chuckle with this sentence later in the article.

Atholton boys coach and athletic director Chuck Fales said the school will not pursue the matter.

Fales said it’s McFadden’s option if she wants to do anything else.

In other words, the school that gets screwed over by this wants nothing to do with it, yet the mother is going to continue to drag this sorry episode through the mud…and for what? To prove a point?

Also in The Sun, Milton Kent rails against the judge who started this entire mess by allowing a WHEELCHAIR to be used in a RUNNING race.

If there is blame to be applied, it should fall on someone wearing not a runner’s uniform, but rather a judicial robe.

U.S. District Court Judge Andre M. Davis got the ball rolling last month when he gave a court-sanctioned ole to McFadden’s lawsuit and he certainly ought to shoulder some responsibility for a big chunk of this.

Davis should have had the courage to say no last month to McFadden and her mother in their fight to have her race alongside other kids, rather than in a separate-timed event, at least until all of the parties had a chance to sit down, away from pressure and publicity, and come up with something reasonable.

Just an absolutely sad event that could have been avoided from the beginning….
from the HedgeHog.

this just gets sillier and sillier

If you try to make everything equal you wind up destroying what makes it unique, which is why political correctness destroys everything……

Howard Dean: Democrats Need Religious Voters

Howard Dean says Democrats must have faith in their ability to attract religious voters.

The former presidential candidate, who will speak at this weekend’s Oregon Democratic Convention in Eugene, says his party must do a better job of winning the support of evangelical Christians, who have voted Republican in recent elections.

To that end, Dean recently appeared on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club.” The appearance wasn’t without its bumps. Dean had to later apologize to gay-rights leaders for incorrectly stating during the program that the party’s platform said “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Still, Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview with the Register-Guard newspaper that he hopes to eventually make another appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network — and that he’s encouraging rank-and-file party members to discuss faith and morality.

“Our Democratic values are American values,” Dean said. “Most people in this county, including evangelicals, think it’s immoral to let children go to bed hungry at night. They think it’s immoral not to have everyone in some kind of health insurance.”
from NewsMax.

Does he even think before he talks???

It’s the Democratic economics that keep people poor and attacks on the family by his liberal allies that are the reason the black nuclear family is dead. And if you think socialized medicine has anything to do with Christianity, why don’t you study the religious devotion of socialized Europe.

Does he think killing babies is religious?

And what about the liberal’s hostility to traditional values.

Dean’s values are as christian as Marx.

And republicans care about poverty, we just have different views how to end it.

This is called class warfare, you know Republicans hate blacks, poor people, because that is the only thing they can say when they don’t have a message.

Marylanders for Fair Elections Submit Signatures to

Maryland Secretary of State

Marylanders for Fair Elections today reached a crucial first step in ensuring voter integrity at the polls by submitting more than 40,000 signatures to the Maryland Secretary of State’s Office in an effort to petition two voter bills to referendum this November.

“Ensuring a safe and fair elections system is the bedrock of American democracy,” said Tom Roskelly, chairman of Marylanders for Fair Elections. “This effort is a clear indication that Marylanders not only deserve, but are willing to fight for a clean and fair election.”

The Maryland General Assembly passed a law in the 2005 legislative session that would allow early voting (Tuesday through Saturday before Election Day). In 2006 the legislature passed another bill that handpicked precincts mostly in Democratic strongholds as the only sites where early voting would be allowed to take place. However, these bills lacked the necessary provisions to stop people from voting multiple times in each different early vote location because voter’s names are not checked off the voter list until after the early voting period is over. In addition, the General Assembly opposed voter identification and paper audit trails on the Diebold touch-screen voting machines and restricted the cleaning of voter rolls, such as removing names of the deceased – further jeopardizing the integrity of Maryland’s elective process. In response and amidst the threat of lawsuits, Marylanders for Fair Elections launched an extraordinary grassroots effort to prevent voter fraud at the polls this November.

Voluntary circulators took on the arduous task of collecting a minimum of 17,068 signatures per petition. Circulators had to collect the name and personal information (including address and date of birth) of each petition signer on two separate petitions. Each petition was county specific, meaning a Baltimore County resident could not sign a petition for Harford County. By doing so, the signer agreed that the bill should be placed on the ballot as a referendum question and that the signer was a registered Maryland voter.

The Maryland Secretary of State’s Office will turn over the petitions to the State Board of Elections, who will deliver the petitions to local boards of election for verification of signatures.

“In April, we began a bipartisan, statewide grassroots effort to ensure voter integrity at the polls,” said Roskelly. “I would like to thank our volunteers for their hard work and their ongoing efforts as we strive to prevent voter fraud this November through a successful referendum process.”

contact:
Tom Roskelly

410-703-2186

from Haider Ajina

The following is my translation of a headline and article from the Iraqi newspaper “Almada” of May 30th

Iraqi security arrest 19 amongst them one of Iraq’s most wanted

“The Iraqi government announced yesterday that it arrested a terrorist suspect in Baghdad who was on top of Iraq’s most wanted list. He is wanted for murder crimes of many Iraqis.

“The official press release said that the anti terror unit arrested yesterday ‘Ahmad Samer Albatawi” who is on the top of the list of those who have committed heinous crimes against Iraqi innocent civilians. Especially in Hurriyah which has witnessed many such crimes. The press release mentioned that Albatawi has confessed (during interrogation) to decapitating hundreds of innocent Iraqis from Baghdad and other provinces.

“The special unit found documents in Alabatawi’s possession, which had lists of, targets in Naynawa he was going to hit. They also found a number of mobile phones and a computer, all containing important and vital information about the names and whereabouts of other terrorist suspects along with expiationist announcements and memos.

“Iraqi police in Wasit announced yesterday that three of Zarqawi’s noted assistants were killed in Sobehrah because of an armed confrontation with Iraqi swat police. The men killed were amongst Zarqawi’s important assistants and leading members of Alqaida in Iraq’s Wasit province. The reports did not give details of the confrontation nor did not give information about Iraqi casualties. Sobehrah area in western Wasit is considered a high terror activity area, which sees regular armed confrontations with terrorists.

“In Babylon, police Scorpion units arrested yesterday 14-armed men in the Siafiah area and uncovered a large weapons cache. The Scorpion unit raided ‘Arab Jiboor’ via air and parachuted police into the area after they received intelligence that a number of armed men were in the area. They added that a two hour armed confrontation took place, which resulted in two wounded police. The cache found was of weapons, ammunition, bomb making equipment and remote detonators”.

His comments,

While most of our news focuses on the tragic bombings of innocent Iraqis, police and government buildings, they do not report on all the security forces successes in thwarting attacks, arresting terrorist and uncovering weapons and bomb making equipment. It is very easy to focus on the tragedy and telling the tragic stories. But why not also tell the story of the successes we and the Iraqis are having in Iraq. Our training of the Iraqi security is yielding good results against the terrorists and intelligence is coming in to Iraqi security on a regular basis. The main reason the terrorist are stepping up their campaign is to shake the new government and also because the Iraqis and us are getting closer and closer to squeezing the terrorist into their last stand in central and western Iraq.

Iraqi president Talebani called on law enforcement to release all who have been arrested but not charged. Lets see, how many other Middle Eastern or North African leaders have recently called to release prisoners who have not been charged? In many Mideast or North African countries once you are arrested (specially for political reasons) you rarely escape the experience alive.

It’s time to dive into the cesspool known as today’s media.

CBS Acknowledges Public Unaware of Good Economic News — Which CBS Skipped

Posted by Brent Baker

In reporting on President Bush’s nomination of Henry Paulson as his new Secretary of the Treasury, CBS’s Jim Axelrod on Tuesday night suggested that “the administration needs a salesman,” citing how “no matter how much they trumpet 5.3 percent economic growth in the first quarter, 5.2 million more jobs since August 2003, or unemployment down to 4.7 percent, there’s another number to contend with. In the most recent CBS News poll, just 34 percent approved of the President’s handling of the economy.” But might not part of the problem lie in lack of media attention to the booming economy? For instance, Axelrod’s citation of the 5.3 percent GDP growth in the first quarter, the fastest rate in two-and-a-half years, was the first on the CBS Evening News which ignored it when the number was announced last Thursday.

Earlier is in his story, Axelrod snidely marveled at why anyone would want to join the declining Bush administration: “Leaving a job that paid him $38.3 million last year in salary, stock, and options, to take one that pays 175 grand, and to join the last two and a half years of a struggling administration, the question isn’t why the White House would want him, but why he would want the job?” (Transcript follows)
from NewsBusters.

And not to be left out, the Balitmore Sun just doesn’t lie, but helps hide fraud. How’s that for integrity???

Almost 1/3 Of Nonpartisan Election Chiefs Resign. Why Isn’t This Covered In The Sun?

May 30th, 2006

“Nearly a third of the nonpartisan elections chiefs in the state have quit in the past year, and some are saying they are leaving over frustration that numerous changes to the voting system could threaten the integrity of the fall elections.
…
“There’s too much, too soon happening,” Ms. Fisher said. “There’s not enough time to do the normal process, let alone last-minute mandates.”
…
One of the most controversial changes this year allows people to vote at polling locations for the five days leading up to the election. Photo identification is not required to vote in Maryland.

That means someone with a publicly available voter registration list could easily scan peoples’ voting histories. If they see someone hasn’t voted for the past three elections, they can conceivably show up at the polls, say they are that person, and choose candidates for every political office in the state and county.

Theoretically, a single person could drive through five counties, or five precincts, and claim to be five other people without a problem.”

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2006/05_28-34/TOP

Why isn’t this being reported in The Sun? We know The Sun endorsed these early voting measures in their paper by offering little opposition to them as the Washington Post, Gazette, and other major media outlets did, but now The Sun won’t even research critical stories about the process? That is not just a failure in editorials–that is a failure in journalistic integrity.
from the Sun Lies.

People, wake up, the MSM lies to you daily. Not only do they lie to you, they are helping your elected officials commit fraud by hiding the evidence. You are being taken as suckers….

And you “journalists,” (and I use that term loosely) how do you sleep at night? Most of what you say is a lie.

You can already see the battle lines being drawn by the left regarding Haditha. As they did with Abu Gharib they want to encapsulate the whole Iraq war into one event. They will say that the Iraq war is one big Haditha. Recall the outcry from the left when Nick Berg’s head was chopped off. Do you recall that? Exactly. There was none.

Recall the outcry when women’s panties were put on the heads of Iraqi prisoners. There was a HUGE outcry.

Head chopped off = Nada
Panties on head = Lots
So now we have Haditha. Even before the investigation is completed the EX-Marine Murtha spouted his mouth off again today:

Now, there were payments made to victims, which aren’t made unless we kill them, one way or the other. And, secondly, they knew about it the day afterwards. So, there’s no excuse for not having this be more open and know exactly what — and the longer it goes, the worse it is for us, because it looks like it’s the policy of our troops to do something like this.

He is telling the world that it may very well be the POLICY of our Armed Forces under President Bush to murder innocent civilians, just because. You know….Bush is eeeevvviiillllllllllllllllll

Let me get this straight. After deposing Saddam Hussein, a man who was connected to Al-Qaeda, harbored terrorist, and possessed WMD’s, after freeing the Iraqi citizens from rape rooms and acid baths, after giving those citizens a new Democracy…giving it to a country that has never had it before, after all that the left will try to encapsulate the WHOLE war over Haditha.

Freedom for 25 million people and ridding the world of a terrorist harborer and his WMD’s = No big deal
Haditha = Big deal
This will be the new outcry.

Nevermind that there may be evidence that contradicts much of what the left and Murtha is spewing:

In addition to video from the drone, investigators have records of radio message traffic between the Marines and a command center, said military defense lawyers who have discussed the investigation with Marines who were at Haditha but who have not yet been formally retained by them.

“There’s a ton of information that isn’t out there yet,” said one lawyer, who, like the others, would speak only on the condition of anonymity because a potential client has not been charged. The radio message traffic, he said, will provide a different view of the incident than has been presented by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and other members of Congress. For example, he said, contrary to Murtha’s account, it will show that the Marines came under small-arms fire after the roadside explosion.

[…]Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Marine spokesman, said yesterday he could not comment on the reports of drone-aircraft video or other aspects of the case because “the investigation isn’t complete.”

[…]One of the military lawyers said Nov. 19 was the 3rd Battalion’s “hottest day” in Iraq, and was unusually violent even for al Anbar Province, which is where the insurgency began and where it remains extremely active.

In addition to drone surveillance that day, AV-8 Harriers were dropping bombs, helicopters were evacuating wounded, and a large firefight occurred about one-third of a mile from the site of the civilian shootings, said several people familiar with the investigation.

So now there may very well have been small arms fire directed at the Marines. But I thought Murtha said they were never shot at?

Heh, never expect a lefty to tell the WHOLE story. Hell Murtha was on the news recently saying this blantant mischaracterization:

“Eighty percent of the Iraqis want us out of there,” said Rep. John Murtha

Notice how he spins this since the actual question asked was “should the Americans leave EVENTUALLY!”

Of course they want us to leave eventually but being Democrat he wants to spin it this way to prove his point, and his whole point being CUT AND RUN!

What a coward and a disgrace this man and the left is.

Here is a message from Lt. Pantano who was accused of war crimes and found NOT GUILTY.

A year ago I was charged with two counts of premeditated murder and with other war crimes related to my service in Iraq. My wife and mother sat in a Camp Lejeune courtroom for five days while prosecutors painted me as a monster; then autopsy evidence blew their case out of the water, and the Marine Corps dropped all charges against me [”Marine Officer Cleared in Killing of Two Iraqis,” news story, May 27, 2005].

So I know something about rushing to judgment, which is why I am so disturbed by the remarks of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) regarding the Haditha incident. Mr. Murtha said, “Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

In the United States, we have a civil and military court system that relies on an investigatory and judicial process to make determinations based on evidence. The system is not served by such grand pronouncements of horror and guilt without the accuser even having read the investigative report.

Mr. Murtha’s position is particularly suspect when he is quoted by news services as saying that the strain of deployment “has caused them [the Marines] to crack in situations like this.” Not only is he certain of the Marines’ guilt but he claims to know the cause, which he conveniently attributes to a policy he opposes.

Members of the U.S. military serving in Iraq need more than Mr. Murtha’s pseudo-sympathy. They need leaders to stand with them even in the hardest of times. Let the courts decide if these Marines are guilty. They haven’t even been charged with a crime yet, so it is premature to presume their guilt — unless that presumption is tied to a political motive.

ILARIO PANTANO

Jacksonville, N.C.

Diane Irey had a few choice words for Murtha yesterday as well:

Pennsylvania 12th district Republican Congressional nominee Diana Irey, surrounded by a dozen supportive war veterans, demanded that John Murtha apologize for his statement that US Marines are guilty of killing Iraqi civilians in cold blood.

John Murtha made the comments in question during a press conference he held last week and during his appearances on TV news shows, claiming “Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” Murtha made his remarks regarding an incident that happened on November 19th in Haditha, Iraq.

“Mr. Murtha, You need to make this right for our fellow Americans,” Irey demanded. “You need to formally apologize for your reckless statements and your rush to judgment. Such unfounded criticism of United States Marines serves only to empower those who promote hatred of Americans in foreign lands.”

“My opponent tells the story of this incident as if he was on the ground that fateful day. He somehow had a front row seat when all of the rest of America awaits the results of a monumental investigation, convicting these men without due process,” Irey said.

[…]Reporters have failed to ask Rep. Murtha why he hasn’t read a report on which he is commenting, said a Pentagon source.

Ms. Irey, of Carroll Township in Pennsylvania, accused Murtha of denying the Marines due process and had put American troops in danger with his remarks.

“John Murtha was a patriot,” Irey, a Republican, said at the Press Club. “…but many years have passed and I say again my opponent has lost his way because the comments and actions of late are not that of a patriot. Rather they serve to aid and comfort our enemies.”

“These inflammatory remarks read around the world not only put American lives at risk,” she said, “but will also be used as a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Murtha said the congressman would not comment on Ms. Irey’s remarks.

The crowd that assembled during Ms. Irey’s event illustrated the prominent role that critics of Mr. Murtha’s from outside the 12th District are likely to play in her campaign against him.

At least three of the eight veterans standing behind Ms. Irey on the dais during her speech at the Press Club were from Virginia and Ms. Irey said financial support was pouring in, not only from Murtha’s district, but from around the country for her campaign against the well-financed Murtha.

One of those veterans, Eric Cooper of Springfield, Virginia, said he sent Ms. Irey a contribution yesterday and has been promoting her Web site to those who are angry about Mr. Murtha’s comments on Iraq, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“There’s a lot of anger out there [at Mr. Murtha] and she kind of represents that anger for us,” said Mr. Cooper, who said he served in the Marines between 1984 and 1993. “I know that I cannot vote for Diana Irey, but I can support her and I will.”

“By coming out and calling them ‘cold-blooded killers,’ he’s already tainted the minds of a possible jury of those who will be hearing these allegations,” added Irey.

As of late April, Federal Election Commission records show that Ms. Irey had raised nearly $75,600 but had less than $27,000 in cash. Mr. Murtha, who is among the top recipients of lobbyist contributions in Congress, had nearly $1.5 million on hand for the race, according to the Post-Gazette.

Support Diana Irey:

DIANA IREY FOR CONGRESS
600 PARK AVENUE
MONONGAHELA, PA 15063
724-258-2300

Send anything you can….we may not be able to vote for her but we can help her win this thing and push out this cowardly EX-Marine.

by Curt at Flopping Aces.

As I said yesterday, if Haditha is true, then those involved should be punished, but the allegations should not be made while the investigation is ongoing and people should shut up until the investigation is over. What I hate about liberals is they care more about what we are doing then what the enemy is doing, as if parading naked men on leashes is morally equal to beheading captives. This has nothing to with concern for Iraqi’s, but is just another attempt by the anti-war crowd to attack the war. Ann Coulter is right, liberals love this country like OJ loved Nicole.

I am not making excuses if these alligations are true, but all armies have done something bad during a war, including the US in WWII. But if liberals had brains, they would not use one incident to to try to paint a picture of a war as a whole. If we used this logic, all wars would have been bad, and we would be speaking German, or be communists, or maybe soon worshipping Allah whether it be our will or not.

By DAVID ABRAMS, Staff Writer

Nearly a third of the nonpartisan elections chiefs in the state have quit in the past year, and some are saying they are leaving over frustration that numerous changes to the voting system could threaten the integrity of the fall elections.

“There is a hole that’s left open that people can say it’s fraud,” said Robin Downs Colbert, a veteran elections official in charge of operations in Prince George’s County who’s stepping down next month. “It’s not that it is fraud, but because there may be a process that (election workers) haven’t been prepared for, it can be claimed that there’s fraud.”

Anne Arundel County’s elections chief, Barbara Fisher, is threatening to retire at the end of this year, citing the same reasons.

“It’s getting more and more difficult to conduct elections,” said the 30-year veteran who has been in charge of county contests for a decade. “It used to be a really fun thing to do, but it’s not fun anymore.”

If Ms. Fisher leaves, she will be the seventh administrator to step down in the past year.

Harford County’s chief resigned this month. Her counterparts in Baltimore City, Queen Anne’s, Charles and Wicomico counties have already left. Ms. Fisher said to expect other resignations.

Pressure is building with the election about three months away.

More than 20,000 judges have to be trained on a new $13 million computer system that the state hasn’t even purchased yet. At the same time, more people will be able to vote in different ways than ever before.

People who show up in the wrong county to vote will be allowed to cast ballots in statewide races, and voters will be able to request absentee ballots without a reason.

“There’s too much, too soon happening,” Ms. Fisher said. “There’s not enough time to do the normal process, let alone last-minute mandates.”

State Elections Administrator Linda Lamone said none of the county chiefs who are leaving have told her it was because of this year’s changes.

“They’ve all been there so long, they’re eligible for retirement,” she said.

But the process of holding elections has rarely been so charged with political rhetoric and allegations of what could go wrong – even though previous contests have gone relatively smoothly.

Many Republicans, hoping to hold on to the governor’s mansion they captured four years ago for the first time in a generation, are crying foul over this year’s changes.

They say the opportunity for fraud is high. They blame Democrats in the General Assembly for ramming through changes without considering if there is time to work them all through. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is promising lawsuits, and a petition drive is underway to repeal the new law.

“It’s so open to fraud,” said Jeremiah M. Brandt, one of three Republicans on the five-member county elections board. “They’re trying to steal the election, is what they’re trying to do.”

Democrats dismiss such talk. They say the changes are intended to make elections easy for busy people to access, and make the process more efficient.

Stephen V. Bittner, Sr., a Democrat on the county elections board, said there are concerns every year about problems.

Last time, it was the change to new touch-screen voting machines from paper ballots and lever machines. There were some headaches, but most voters liked the machines and the election was completed with few complaints of fraud.

“I don’t know where the hell these people think they’re going to get fraud,” Mr. Bittner said. “I think they’re just trying to stir up trouble.”

Board members and nonpartisan administrators normally work quietly behind the scenes, but some said they felt the issue of secure elections was serious enough to discuss their concerns publicly.

Mr. Brandt said he’s upset with the politics involved, although when he gets together with his colleagues who oversee elections, he said party labels are nearly invisible. He said everyone is concerned.

“They’re concerned more than angry,” he said. “They’re concerned we have a big job to do and not enough resources.”

Jacob Brown and John Smith

One of the most controversial changes this year allows people to vote at polling locations for the five days leading up to the election. Photo identification is not required to vote in Maryland.

That means someone with a publicly available voter registration list could easily scan peoples’ voting histories. If they see someone hasn’t voted for the past three elections, they can conceivably show up at the polls, say they are that person, and choose candidates for every political office in the state and county.

Theoretically, a single person could drive through five counties, or five precincts, and claim to be five other people without a problem.

State elections officials admitted that there is no way to completely guard against such a tactic. But Ms. Fisher said that’s nothing new.

“From the beginning of time of voting, anybody could walk in and say they’re John Smith and they’re actually Jacob Brown,” she said. “That is nothing new. That has never been a major problem, or even to my knowledge a minor problem.”

It wouldn’t be that easy. A poll judge could ask for identification, but it wouldn’t have to include a photo. A judge could notice that a voter doesn’t look like the neighbor he claims to be. Or a glance at the registered voter’s birth date could provide a clue something’s up.

Of course, if someone is caught they could end up in court, and face a fine and jail time.

A decade ago, the state would automatically purge the rolls of people who hadn’t voted in years, but that changed along with federal law in 1996, said Ross Goldstein, deputy state administrator of elections.

Now, a voter can’t be taken off the list unless he has died or moved out of the state. Even then, it doesn’t happen automatically. But Mr. Goldstein said 10 years of accurate elections have proven that looser rules haven’t led to rampant fraud.

Matthew W. Platt Jr., a Republican on the county’s election board, said officials from both parties are against another proposed rule.

It would require each early voting location to report the names of every person who votes to political parties each day. Mr. Platt said that could tell potential troublemakers who to cross off the list of would-be no shows ripe for impersonation.

The policy was one that officials objected to at a western Maryland conference two weeks ago to talk about early voting and preparations for the elections. The conference was closed to the public.

“Most people were against giving names,” Mr. Platt said. “You can give numbers, but you don’t need to give names out.”

Mr. Brandt agreed, although he said you could also argue that the policy of reporting names would help parties know where to find people who needed assistance getting to the polls.

Mr. Goldstein said the state board hasn’t decided yet whether to require reporting names of early voters. But he said officials agree regardless of political affiliation that they have a job to do, and will get it done.

“They are professionals,” he said. “They have done this for years. They might not agree with the changes, but they are going to do it to the best of their ability and do it right.”

But Ms. Downs Colbert said retirements and resignations by veteran administrators should not be viewed as bureaucrats overwhelmed by their responsibilities.

“These are people who have been around for such a long time,” she said. “We know what we’re doing, and we don’t want to repeat our mistakes like dogs returning to their vomit.”

Published May 28, 2006, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.

I do not see how anybody, whether Republican or Democrat, would not be bothered by this. If voter fraud becomes commonplace, it might help you for one election, but it might hurt you the next election, and in the end it will be the system itself that will sustain the most damage.

By Jim Boulet Jr.

May 30, 2006

Ask people which states have a horrible language problem, and they are likely to name Florida, Texas and California. Maryland won’t be mentioned.
It should be.

In 2002, the Maryland General Assembly passed a law requiring all state agencies to offer oral interpretation and written translation “into any language spoken by any limited English proficient population that constitutes 3 percent of the overall state population within the geographic area served by a local office of a state program.”

Canada has two official languages. The United Nations has six. Because of the 2002 law, Maryland now has several official languages. The available evidence suggests that no one in Annapolis is quite certain as to exactly how many.

The Maryland State Board of Elections Web site offers translations into eight languages, two more than the United Nations attempts: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

By contrast, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Web site merely offers translation into French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The Maryland Department of Transportation’s Motor Vehicle Administration Web site is solely in English.

The Department of Transportation is now being sued by CASA of Maryland and the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund. Why? Non-English speakers must make an appointment in advance so that the time of the state’s official translators is more efficiently used.

Previous generations of immigrants may not have learned English instantly, but neither did they file lawsuits when government officials failed to understand Polish or Yiddish.

This demand for an officially multilingual, multicultural America comes from professional ethnic activists, nearly all of whom speak fluent English. The people they claim to represent have other ideas.

A U.S. Justice Department-ordered postcard to foreign-born voters in Orange County, Calif., generated this response from a person with a Spanish surname: “We are in the United States. If you can’t speak English you should not be allowed to vote.”

These translations are not only divisive, they are also expensive. According to the General Assembly’s estimate, Maryland taxpayers will spend at least $724,700 this year to comply with the 2002 law.

Needless expense is hardly the worst problem with mandatory multilingualism. All this linguistic rigmarole sends a dreadful message to immigrants: “Don’t bother to learn English. Your translator will tell you everything you really need to know.”

The record of translators is more mixed than the anti-English lobby wants you to believe.

In 2005, the Washington secretary of state’s Web site translated Secretary of State Sam Reed’s name into Chinese as “Swampy Weed.”

New York City’s Chinese ballot in the 2000 election translated “Democratic” as “Republican” and “Republican” as “Democratic.”

Some errors are less amusing and more costly than others. A January 2003 study in Pediatrics, “Errors in Medical Interpretation and Their Potential Clinical Consequences in Pediatric Encounters,” found that professional interpreters still make errors over half of the time. Every one of those errors is a potential malpractice lawsuit.

The official-English amendment passed by the U.S. Senate won’t stop Marylanders from greeting each other in Farsi, Urdu or Spanish. It won’t even guarantee an English-speaking clerk at your local McDonald’s.

But if it becomes law, it will mean that the federal government is no longer forcing Maryland to be officially multilingual. That would be a victory for every Maryland taxpayer.”

By Jim Boulet Jr. is executive director of English First, based in Springfield, Va. His e-mail is jboulet@englishfirst.org.

It should also be considered what influence multilingualism and multiculturalism has on the unity of our country as a whole. It worked so well in Yugoslavia.

Babies aborted for not being perfect
by Bosun

According to the Daily Mail, a United Kingdom news service, the ethical storm over abortions is beginning to rise in Britain with the emergence of information that terminations are being carried out for minor, treatable birth defects.

The article in the Daily Mail went on to say that late terminations have been performed in recent years because the babies had club feet, official figures show. If true, these are only minor defects that can be corrected with a simple operation or physiotherapy… Jane Fisher of the charity Antenatal Results and Choices defended the right of parents to terminate pregnancies when defects are found. ‘This is not part of a move towards designer babies,’ she said. Source Daily Mail, Babies aborted for not being perfect.

It is this blogger’s humble opinion that Ms. Fisher appears to be very smug when it comes to infanticide. To think that Hitler and his Nazi regime were the only ones who wanted to produce a perfect race. Just one more sign of the times; the eroding away of human decency, morals, values, and ethics. In our own country the controversy of infanticide and euthanasia is being debated by liberalists, pro-choice, and legal beagles who represent them..
from Stop the ACLU.

No one can tell me that liberalism does not devalue life. The sickest thing I ever heard is the justification on how unfair it is to bring a baby into the world when the mother is poor and cannot afford the baby. Well, lets just firebomb the projects. shall we???

And speaking of the ACLU……

Hysteria at the ACLU

by Jeff Jacoby

There was something missing from the full-page advertisement that the American Civil Liberties Union ran in newspapers around the country last week.

The ad kicked off an ACLU campaign called “Don’t Spy On Me,” which is aimed at pressuring federal and state regulators into investigating the phone companies that supplied domestic call records to federal intelligence analysts.

Subtle the ad wasn’t. “IF YOU’VE USED A TELEPHONE IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS, READ THIS,” shouted the headline in end-of-the-world-sized type. “AT&T, Verizon, and other phone companies may have illegally sent your phone records to the National Security Agency.” The ad went on to charge that “millions of Americans” have had “their privacy invaded” by an “illegal secret arrangement” that allows “instant government access to every single phone call.” It raised the alarming specter of Bush administration officials prying not only into the phone records of “political opponents, news reporters, and potential whistle blowers,” but even into *your* calls to “friends, family, associates, lovers.”

“Stop this abuse of power now,” the advertisement urged. “File a complaint.” Readers were directed to the new “Don’t Spy On Me” page at the ACLU web site, where they can sign a petition telling the Federal Communications Commission to “get the spies off the line.”

You would never know from all this heavy breathing that the data supplied to the NSA consisted of phone numbers only, stripped of any identifying names or addresses. Or that the calls themselves weren’t actually monitored — no one was wiretapping any conversations. Or that the Supreme Court has ruled that the government doesn’t need a warrant to collect phone records, since information voluntarily disclosed to a third party (such as the phone company) isn’t protected by the Fourth Amendment.

Perhaps the ACLU would dismiss those facts. Perhaps it would say they don’t change the central issue — that the collection of this calling data represents a government encroachment into private behavior, with all the possibilities for abuse that entails.

But something even more important was omitted from the ACLU’s ad — something so crucial to this issue that only an organization suffering from acute moral myopia could ignore it:

Context.

Nowhere in its advertisement does the ACLU make any mention of terrorism or Sept. 11, or of the horrific price we paid that day for failing to “connect the dots” before the terrorists could strike. Nowhere does the ad acknowledge that we are at war with the forces of radical Islam, or that the jihadists have been able to murder thousands of innocent people by infiltrating free societies and attacking them from within. The ACLU is passionate about protecting Americans’ privacy; it says nothing about protecting American lives. How can an organization committed to civil liberties simply disregard the threat posed to the foremost civil liberty of all? Before blasting the government for data-mining through anonymous telephone records, shouldn’t it at least consider whether doing so has prevented any attacks or saved any lives?

It isn’t just the ACLU’s advertising that provides no context for the phone-records controversy. The ACLU’s web site also appears to provide none. There is no mention of counterterrorism on its home page or on its “Don’t Spy On Me” page. There is, however, an animated movie featuring an intrepid hero who charges, “Someone has been secretly spying on us — tapping our phones, reading our e-mails, tracking every move we make.” Naturally, the eavesdropping villains turn out to be George Bush and Dick Cheney.

To anti-Bush partisans, the administration cannot possibly have any legitimate interest in domestic telephone records, and it was an outrage for Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T to have supplied them. “We cannot sit by while the government and the phone companies collude in this massive, illegal, and fundamentally un-American invasion of our privacy,” the ACLU’s executive director, Anthony Romero, thundered last week. Funny — that wasn’t the way he spoke 18 months ago, when the ACLU itself was discovered to be using sophisticated data-mining to secretly amass information about its own members and donors. (Some ACLU board members were shocked by the revelation and publicly condemned it. “It is a violation of our values,” board member Wendy Kaminer said at the time. “It is hypocrisy.”) To be sure, the two cases are very different. The ACLU’s data-mining was part of a fund-raising effort. The NSA’s is part of the war effort.

Earlier this month, a British parliamentary committee issued its report on the terrorist attacks in London last July, and on what if anything could have been done to prevent them. It reached the obvious conclusion: “If we seek greater assurance against the possibility of attacks, some increase in intrusive activity by the UK’s intelligence and security agencies is . . . inevitable.” There is always some tradeoff between civil liberty and national security, and the point at which they balance is not fixed. Reasonable people understand what the ACLU seems to have forgotten: Before you can connect the dots, you have to collect them.

from Townhall.com.

Well, for some good news, President Bush marked Memorial Day by signing a bill that keeps demonstrators from disrupting military funerals.

Reading the story of any unit that served at Gettysburg brings home the meaning of Memorial Day, as well as the meaning of the words that Lincoln spoke four months later on the hallowed battlefield ground. In Minnesota, we remember the men of the First Minnesota Volunteer Regiment. When the war broke out in April 1861, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey happened to be in Wahsington to meet with President Lincoln. Governor Ramsey was among the first (if not the first) to answer Lincoln’s call for volunteers to fight the rebellion, committing a regiment of 1,000 Minnesotans. The men of the First Minnesota fulfilled Governor Ramsey’s commitment.

They served in every battle of the Army of the Potomac, from Bull Run to Gettysburg. By the time they reached Gettysburg, their number had been reduced to some 300 men. At a crucial moment during the battle on July 2, 1863, General Hancock ordered what amounted to a suicide charge into Wilcox’s onrusing Alabama brigade that threatened to exploit a momentary breach in the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Staving off the collapse of the line for a few mintutes, they suffered enormous casualties. Yet they were not done.

On July 3 came Pickett’s charge on the Union line. The First Minnesota’s Company C had been held in reserve on July 2 and fortuitously met up with the First Minnesota’s survivors. Richard Moe writes in his history of the First Minnesota:

As the surviving rebels hit the Union line at the clump of trees they had been using for their aiming point — the spot would soon become known as the “high-water mark” of the rebellion — the First Minnesota and the other regiments in Harrow’s brigade received orders to leave their positions and charge headlong into the Confederate flank. Describing the charge, Lieutenant William Lochren wrote:

Corp. Dehn, the last of our color guard, then carrying our tattered flag, was here shot through the hand, and the flagstaff cut in two. Corp. Henry D. O’Brien of Company E. instantly seized the flag by the remnant of the staff. Whether the command to charge was given by a general officer I do not know. My impression then was that it came as a spontaneous outburst from the men, and instantly the line precipitated itself upon the enemy. O’Brien, who then had the broken staff and tatters of our battle flag, with his characteristic bravery and impetuosity sprang with it to the front at the first sound of the word charge, and rushed right up to the enemy’s line, keeping it noticeably in advance of every other color. My feeling at the instant blamed his rashness in so risking its capture. But the effect was electrical. Every man of the First Minnesota sprang to protect its flag, and the rest rushed with them upon the enemy. The bayonet was used for a few minutes, and cobble stones, with which the ground was well covered, filled the air, being thrown by those in the rear over the heads of their comrades. Moe reminds us that for his bravery in leading Minnesotans into the fray, O’Brien was awarded the Medal of Honor.

At the end of the battle, the First Minnesota had sustained seventy percent casualties. Its colors, however, had survived the unbelievably grueling combat of July 2 and 3. Having survived, the colors emerged as a kind of sacred relic, now on permanent display in the rotunda of the state Capitol in St. Paul. Above is a photo of Sergeant William Irvine holding the regimental flag shortly after the battle.

Today’s Star Tribune briefly notes the story of the First Minnesota’s color sergeant, Ellet Perkins: As Ellet Perkins lay dying in his Minneapolis home in 1903, he whispered a request to friends at his side.

“The flag,” he said.

Someone was sent to contact Gov. Samuel Van Sant, like Perkins a Civil War veteran. The governor himself brought from its place of honor at the Capitol the flag of the First Minnesota Volunteers, whose color sergeant Perkins had been at Gettysburg until he was wounded — carrying the regimental banner — on July 2, 1863.

Handed the colors again, Perkins kissed the tattered flag and held it as he died.

The after-action report of Captain Henry Coates is accessible online here. Subsequent research has slightly revised the casualty numbers reported by Captain Coates, though he perfectly captures the spirit of the First Minnesota: Several acts of heroic daring occurred in this battle; I cannot now attempt to enumerate them. The bearing of Colonel Colvill and Lieutenant Colonel Adams in the fight of Thursday [July 2] was conspicuously gallant. Heroically urging on the attack they fell nearly at the same moment (their wounds completely disabling them), so far in the advance that some time elapsed before they were got off the field. Major Downie received two bullets through the arm before he turned over the command to Captain Messick. Color Sergt. E. P. Perkins, and two of the color guard successively bearing the flag, were wounded in Thursday’s fight. On Friday Corporal Dehn, of Company A (the last of the color guard), when close upon the enemy, was shot through the hand, and the flag staff cut in two; Corp. Henry D. O’Brien, of Company E, instantly seized the flag by the remnant of the staff and waving it over his head rushed right up to the muzzles of the enemy’s muskets. Nearly at the moment of victory he too was wounded in the hand, but the flag was instantly grasped by Corp. W. N. Irvine, of Company D, who still carries its tattered remnants. Company L, Captain Berger, supported Kirby’s battery throughout the battle, and did very effective service. Every man in the regiment did his whole duty.
from Powerline.

And how do liberals honor Memorial Day? You guessed it, by hurting the country by making alligations about US troops before all the facts are in and before the investigation is over.

One of the most disgusting aspects of the story so far is the behavior of ex-Marine Jack Murtha, who has been making the talk show rounds trumpeting claims of atrocity in Haditha: “Worse than Abu Ghraib” is a description we’re often hearing, but that comparison mostly points up how relatively trivial Abu Ghraib–the most over-blown news story of modern times–was.

If it is true, then those involved should be punished, but the allegations should not be made while the investigation is ongoing and people should shut up until the investigation is over. What I hate about liberals is they care more about what we are doing then what the enemy is doing, as if parading naked men on leashes is morally equal to beheading captives. This has nothing to with concern for Iraqi’s, but is just another attempt by the anti-war crowd to attack the war.

Ann Coulter is right, liberals love this country like OJ loved Nicole.

Gay agenda means less freedom for all

by Star Parker

The latest Gallup polling on attitudes regarding same-sex marriage shows a trend that should concern conservatives as well as all Americans.

From the narrow view of just the same-sex marriage issue, although the majority of Americans are still opposed to legalization, they are a lot less opposed than they were in the a decade ago. From the vantage point of homosexual activists, the trend certainly appears to be their friend.

Moreover, given how this debate is formulated and presented, I see a broader message emerging. I get a sense that Americans are increasingly confusing entitlement and political power with freedom and tolerance. This does not bode well for the future of a free and vibrant country.

The most recent polling shows that a strong majority of Americans oppose legal recognition of same sex marriage (58 percent) and a slight majority favor a constitutional amendment (50 percent for, 47 percent opposed). The support breaks out consistently along partly lines. Republicans favor the amendment (66 percent for) and Democrats oppose (55 percent against).

These results are about the same as they were last year. However, they have changed a lot over the last 10 years. Today 39 percent of Americans support legal recognition of same sex marriage, up from 27 percent 10 years ago and 58 percent oppose, down from 68 percent 10 years ago.

Completing the picture of what seems reasonable to call a trend, the area of the population where support for same-sex marriage is strongest and growing is among young people. Time does not seem to favor those who want to preserve tradition.

A more qualitative measure of this trend is to just listen to how the debate is cast.

A Washington Post editorial opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment accuses Republicans of “picking on gays and lesbians.” According to the Post, such an amendment would “discriminate against a class of people.”

Mary Cheney in her new book equates this alleged discrimination to denial of rights in the past to women and blacks and prohibitions against interracial marriage.

So, along with the trend toward increasing acceptance of the idea of same-sex marriage has been the complete obliteration of the idea that homosexuality is a type of behavior as opposed to a state of being. The discussion has long disappeared that this is about attitudes regarding this behavior and it has become almost exclusively cast as discrimination claims against gays and lesbians.

Philosophers of science point out that there is nothing we can prove. We can only disprove things. The only thing that it takes to disprove something is to find one incident where the theory doesn’t work.

We have, for instance, a law of gravity. However, if we find one morning, while someone is eating their bowl of cheerios, that their spoon jumps out of their hand and flies up to the ceiling, we kiss goodbye to our law of gravity.

Now there are without question instances where individuals change their sexual behavior.

I have never heard of instance of a black person becoming white or vice versa.

Yet, somehow we have gotten to the point where it is generally accepted that being gay is a fact and not a choice.

The more we obscure where choice lies and the more we obscure where responsibility lies, we become increasingly transformed into a political entitlement society rather than a free and tolerant society.

If gay activists really wanted freedom, as opposed to advancing a particular political agenda, they would be hard at work moving government control out of areas of our society that limit their as well as everyone else’s freedom.

They should be fighting for nationwide school choice, so they can send their children to schools that teach what they want. They should be fighting for private social security accounts and so they could stop complaining about discrimination in survivor benefits. They should fight for private health care accounts and getting corporations out of the benefits providing business and so they could stop complaining about discrimination in benefits toward gay couples.

Unfortunately, this is not happening. From what I see, despite the hijacking of the language of freedom, rights, and discrimination, this movement is about sleight of hand and political power.

And, more unfortunately, it appears to be succeeding. Particularly among our young people.
from Townhall.com.

and to repost an earlier article in support…

In Defense of Marriage

by Robert Farrow

Early this year, a Baltimore Maryland Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of nine gay couples, ruling that Maryland’s law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman violated the state’s Constitution. In the ruling, Judge M. Brooke Murdock stated: “Although tradition and societal values are important, they cannot be given so much weight that they alone will justify a discriminatory statutory classification,” the decision states. “When tradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest.” Pro-gay marriage advocates were jubilant, stating it takes them “one step closer to ensuring that the right of equal protection applies to everyone.”

With the ruling, Baltimore became another victim of judicial activism and intentional constitutional misinterpretation. And now the Pandoran box has been opened. Shall equal protection apply also to polygamy, and if so, what about other sexual groups? What bothers me is the inability to have any sane dialogue on this issue. Just like race relations, the issue is so clouded with name-calling and emotions that people have just stopped thinking. If you are against gay marriage you must hate gays, the argument follows, and that is just not true. I am against polygamy for exactly the same reasons, but I do not hate them either. (And actually, polygamy has more historical support.) So, what is really behind this attack on the values that has served our country for centuries? Sometimes it is just as simple as gays who just want to be married, but for others I feel there is a deeper issue. I think some want to fundamentally rewrite society. Take the review on the book Virtual Equality, where the author draws attention to the

tension between gay activists who simply want rights, such as the right to marry, adopt children or serve openly in the military, vs. those who want liberation, that is, to fundamentally change the institutions of marriage, the family and society as a whole. Put another way, rather than fighting for a place at the table, liberationists want to replace the table all together. In fact, they want everyone to be sitting in the living room on the floor in a circle. The link is here.

Though the novel 1984 was a work on fiction, Orwell does a great job of illustrating the concept that those who control words control society. As I said in an article previously, I continue to hear many people talk about the concept of discrimination (which means to show partiality, bias, or prejudice) and intolerance as a justification for moral relativism. The truth is that the progressives are using these words to demonize those standing against them and thus allow their ideas to spread easier. This is the reason for the ever- growing attacks on Christianity and their value system. I am the first to say most discrimination is wrong, but the left is misusing such words as discrimination, intolerance, and hate in an effort to make it impossible for those who do not share their values to disagree with them. For example, it is nearly impossible today to criticize urban culture without being called racist, and that is a misuse of the word racist. All cultures and beliefs should be held to critique at one time or another, to not do so is exceedingly dangerous. Like political correctness and newspeak, progressives are using these words as an effort to control behavior by controlling words. But is intolerance and discrimination always a bad thing? Or to put it in another way isn’t it just for concepts like pedophilia not to be tolerated? Thus intolerance is not always a bad thing; it depends on its context. However these words and concepts are being cleverly misused in order to modify our culture progressively. In the end it is as simple as this, to tolerate everything means to believe in nothing.

Many ultra-liberals have very different lifestyles that the average American. Some are as radical as the feminist Catherine MacKinnon, who once said “all heterosexual intercourse is rape.” Many are outright hostile to traditional Christian concepts of right and wrong, and thus they are attacking these concepts. It can be easily summed up by this famous quote, “If God is dead, all things are permissible.” (And for those who are ready to name call: I don’t hate gays. There has always been gays, and always will. And they should be left alone and have all the same individual right save marriage. I am even in favor of civil unions. But the activists will not stop with that. And they have fought well, some progressive groups calling themselves the People for the American Way, which is quite absurd, but reads a lot better then People for the Homosexual Way or Radical Liberal Way. But it is all how you market yourself, and currently progressives are better then conservatives in this regard.

Throughout history marriage has been the bedrock of our society, and if marriage is tampered with, so is our society. I believe changing the meaning of definitions of values has consequences. If the meaning of marriage becomes open to interpretation, then thus it will have no meaning at all and the institution itself will be dead. Think I’m reaching? Well, liberal groups have attacked the definition of the word family for decades, and thus the concept of a nuclear family (the traditional definition of a family) has died in many inner city African-American communities. The result is more crime, more teen pregnancy, and so on. Whatever the liberal liars say, studies has shown children with a mom and dad tend to be more successful then those without. Now with the transgender movement even the concept of sex is under attack. What does all these different views mean at the end? Well if a definition means different things to different people, then it can be further watered down to mean anything. And a definition that means anything ultimately it does not mean anything. Or, to sum it up. moral relativism ultimately means no morals at all. It is already happening. Think about what marriage, family, decency meant a few decades ago, and what they mean now. I think this is the end goal for the most radical liberal, to destroy marriage, traditional values, and perhaps even such basic concepts as male and female.

Ms. Maggie Gallagher, in her excellent article, In Defense of the Family, makes some excellent points about the state of affairs in Massachusetts, and how changing the definition of marriage may ultimately change the definition of gender.

Gov. Romney was in Washington, D.C., making the single most eloquent and articulate defense of our traditional understanding of marriage I have heard from an American politician.

Then he asked the question we should all be asking: “Given the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. . . Should we abandon marriage as we know it and as it was known by the framers of our Constitution? Has America been wrong about marriage for 200 plus years? Were generations that spanned thousands of years from all the civilizations of the world wrong about marriage? Are the philosophies and teachings of all the world’s major religions simply wrong? Or is it more likely that four people among the seven that sat in a court in Massachusetts have erred? I believe that is the case.”

The advocates tell us the skies have not fallen in Massachusetts; nothing has changed, they assure us. Romney points out that small things have already begun to change, foretelling the bigger, sadder changes to come. First, the marriage licenses change so they no longer read husband and wife but “Party A” and “Party B.” The Department of Health insists that birth certificates also change. The line for mother and father becomes “Parent A” and “Parent B.”

So far the governor has resisted, but ultimately the same court that could see no reason why marriage involves a husband and wife other than “animus” will decide whether or not we still think the language of mothers and fathers is appropriate. …

The transformation of mother and father into “Parent A” and “Parent B” is the model of the paradigm shift now underway in Massachusetts. The distinctive features of the union of male and female are going to have to be removed from our notions of marriage and family. The experience of same-sex couples will become the new norm for family life, because the “unisex” idea that gender has no public significance is the only model that can be construed as “inclusive” of both opposite-sex and same-sex unions. The result is not neutrality but the active promotion of a new unisex ideal, in which the distinctive features of opposite-sex relations will be submerged, marginalized, cast to one side, and redefined as discrimination in order to protect the new court-ordered public moral standard of the equality of same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

Here’s Gov. Romney’s estimate of the future: “[C]hanging the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions will lead to further far-reaching changes that also would influence the development of our children. For example, school textbooks and classroom instruction may be required to assert absolute societal indifference between traditional marriage and same-sex practice.” from Marriage Debate.

Some may think I exaggerate. But have you ever noticed how many of the liberals who are often for gay marriage in the same breath are also some of most hostile towards traditional values and often marriage itself? (and those people who don’t see the use of a social institution are the last people who should be allowed to reform it.) I argued with a liberal once who argued strongly for gay marriage. Later, he told me he thought marriage was a harmful institution and did not see anything bizarre or contradictory in his thought process. (I also spoke with a N.O.W. worker, who after attacking my conservative values, admitted she was having an affair with a married women. She was for gay marriage and saw nothing wrong with her behavior at all. But perhaps I should not have been surprised that some who are the most flexible with their meanings and values also are those most likely to hold them to little regard.)

This is the slope, if you allow gay marriage, someone is going to push for polygamy. (And I would like a logical reason to allow gay marriage and not to allow polygamy.) Someone else will push for something else, and in the end the definition of marriage will have no meaning at all. And I think that is the point. I believe that some really do want gay marriage, but, again, I think the deeper agenda of some others is to destroy traditional values and marriage itself. Think I’m exaggerating? Again, many pro-gay rights advocates have admitted their end goal is to change the fabric of society itself. In short, if a definition is open to interpretation, how much meaning can it have? And that is the danger to our values, to the very fabric of our society.

Finally, 10 percent of the population has no right to dictate terms to 90 percent of the population. If the activists want some attempt at legitimacy, put it to a state referendum, and let the people decide, not some judge. But most of the activists know they will loose that way, and thus they have decided the judicial route is more productive. Sadly, I have noticed many of the conservative blogs have been rather quiet on this issue. It appears to me that many has unknowingly accepted a slow surrender in the cultural war, thinking that simply voting once every few years is enough. The Republican Party itself, in my opinion, has not confronted some of the core moral issues in this culture battle. Though their election strategy in the past has proven successful, they might find themselves continuing to win election battles but loosing in the end the war, the cultural war. It is our culture, and in the end it is up to us to defend

I’ll start off with a post from Mark Steyn that I found on Flopping.

Memorial Day in my corner of New Hampshire is always the same. A clutch of veterans from the Second World War to the Gulf march round the common, followed by the town band, and the scouts, and the Fifth Graders. The band plays “Anchors Aweigh,” “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America” and, in an alarming nod to modernity, Ray Stevens’ “Everything Is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)” (Billboard Number One, May 1970). One of the town’s selectmen gives a short speech, so do a couple of representatives from state organizations, and then the Fifth Graders recite the Gettsyburg Address and the Great War’s great poetry. There’s a brief prayer and a three-gun salute, exciting the dogs and babies. Wreaths are laid. And then the crowd wends slowly up the hill to the Legion hut for ice cream, and a few veterans wonder, as they always do, if anybody understands what they did, and why they did it.

Before the First World War, it was called Decoration Day — a day for going to the cemetery and “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Some decorated the resting places of fallen family members; others adopted for a day the graves of those who died too young to leave any descendants.

I wish we still did that. Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory” are difficult to hear in the din of the modern world, and one of the best ways to do it is to stand before an old headstone, read the name, and wonder at the young life compressed into those brute dates: 1840-1862. 1843-1864.

In my local cemetery, there’s a monument over three graves, forebears of my hardworking assistant, though I didn’t know that the time I first came across them. Turner Grant, his cousin John Gilbert and his sister’s fiance Charles Lovejoy had been friends since boyhood and all three enlisted on the same day. Charles died on March 5, 1863, Turner on March 6, and John on March 11. Nothing splendid or heroic. They were tentmates in Virginia, and there was an outbreak of measles in the camp.

For some reason, there was a bureaucratic mixup and the army neglected to inform the families. Then, on their final journey home, the bodies were taken off the train at the wrong town. It was a Saturday afternoon and the stationmaster didn’t want the caskets sitting there all weekend. So a man who knew where the Grants lived offered to take them up to the next town and drop them off on Sunday morning.

When he arrived, the family was at church, so he unloaded the coffins from his buggy and left without a word or a note to anyone. Imagine coming home from Sunday worship and finding three caskets waiting on the porch. Imagine being young Caroline Grant, and those caskets contain the bodies of your brother, your cousin and the man to whom you’re betrothed.

That’s a hell of a story behind the bald dates on three tombstones. If it happened today, maybe Caroline would be on Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric demanding proper compensation, and the truth about what happened, and why the politicians were covering it up. Maybe she’d form a group of victims’ families. Maybe she’d call for a special commission to establish whether the government did everything it could to prevent disease outbreaks at army camps. Maybe, when they got around to forming the commission, she’d be booing and chanting during the officials’ testimony, as several of the 9/11 families did during Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s testimony.

All wars are messy, and many of them seem small and unworthy even at the moment of triumph. The sight of unkempt lice-infested Saddam Hussein yanked from his spider hole last December is not so very different from the published reports of Jefferson Davis’ capture in May 1865, when he was said to be trying to skulk away in women’s clothing, and spent the next several months being depicted by gleeful Northern cartoonists in hoop skirts, petticoats and crinolines (none of which he was actually wearing).

But, conquered and captured, an enemy shrivels, and you question what he ever had that necessitated such a sacrifice. The piercing clarity of war shades into the murky greys of post-war reconstruction. You think Iraq’s a quagmire? Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” bogged down into a century-long quagmire of segregation, denial of civil rights, lynchings. Does that mean the Civil War wasn’t worth fighting? That, as Al Gore and other excitable types would say, Abe W. Lincoln lied to us?

Like the French Resistance, tiny in its day but of apparently unlimited manpower since the war ended, for some people it’s not obvious which side to be on until the dust’s settled. New York, for example, resisted the Civil War my small town’s menfolk were so eager to enlist in. The big city was racked by bloody riots against the draft. And you can sort of see the rioters’ point. More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War — or about 1.8 percent of the population. Today, if 1.8 percent of the population were killed in war, there would be 5.4 million graves to decorate on Decoration Day.

But that’s the difference between then and now: the loss of proportion. They had victims galore back in 1863, but they weren’t a victim culture. They had a lot of crummy decisions and bureaucratic screw-ups worth re-examining, but they weren’t a nation that prioritized retroactive pseudo-legalistic self-flagellating vaudeville over all else. They had hellish setbacks but they didn’t lose sight of the forest in order to obsess week after week on one tiny twig of one weedy little tree.

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites — from the deranged former vice president down — want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it’s pain-free, squeaky-clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we’re supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

Playing by Gore-Kennedy rules, the Union would have lost the Civil War, the rebels the Revolutionary War, and the colonists the French and Indian Wars. There would, in other words, be no America. Even in its grief, my part of New Hampshire understood that 141 years ago. We should, too.

Curt summed it up well: Memorial Day used to be a national day of mourning. A day of remembrance. Now it’s a day of Barbeques, heading to the beach and shopping bargains. Some don’t even know what this day means.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war).

It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

In 1915, inspired by the poem “In Flanders Fields,” Moina Michael replied with her own poem:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

She then conceived of an idea to wear red poppies on Memorial day in honor of those who died serving the nation during war. She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers with the money going to benefit servicemen in need.

Later a Madam Guerin from France was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Ms.Michael and when she returned to France, made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. This tradition spread to other countries. In 1921, the Franco-American Children’s League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the VFW for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans’ organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later their “Buddy” Poppy program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans. In 1948 the US Post Office honored Ms Michael for her role in founding the National Poppy movement by issuing a red 3 cent postage stamp with her likeness on it.

Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day. While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country.

from Flopping Aces.

It is sad to say that in today’s American it has become hip to be unpatriotic. As I said earlier, behavior that in older days would have had someone shot or their head shaved, now gets you the cover of Time or a nomination by the Democrats. Now these great soldiers whose sacrifice allowed are looked down upon by many. At least today take some time to remember the sacrifice of those who fought for your freedom during this holiday. That is the least we can do.

By Robert Farrow

The universe is full of magicals things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Philpotts.

Atoms are mostly empty space, yet your hand does not slide through the coffee table Why? The repulsive force in all atoms. So what keeps atoms together? The world as we know it, the world that supports life, is full of forces that are everyday taken for granted. Few care why the Sun shines, or why the sky is blue, or that time actually slows down when you are traveling at high speeds or the fact that when you look up in the sky at night, you are looking back in time. Sometimes homo sapien is the least inquisitive species on the planet. The average person might not care about the strong force, the weak force, gravity, or electromagnetism; however, if these forces were only slightly off in value, the world as we know it would be unrecognizable.

I grew up in a Catholic family, but also had a deep love of science, and contrary to what some might think, I did not find these beliefs in contradiction. I have often heard many say, “If God exists, why does he not show himself and prove it to the unbeliever?” Perhaps he shows it to us every day, but like those of us that do not care why the Sun shines, we do not care to think hard enough to see it.

I know the average reader does not care about science, and a few might have already stopped reading, but again, the reason why things are the way they are is found in science. And some might find it interesting that the more I read about science, the more I think I have found evidence of the designer’s hand, evidence for the existence of God. Take for the example that all atoms have a repulsive force and an attractive force, and that except for atoms with high atomic numbers these forces are in balance. (It is in fact very difficult to overcome these forces, which is why fusion as a power source has been so difficult to realize) That these forces are in balance is taken for granted. But is that if these forces were not in balance, we could not exist in this universe. Even more, the fact is, if any of these four fundamental forces had a slightly larger or smaller value life as we know it could not exist.

And there is the rub. That this situation could have happened by chance seems to me nothing short of miraculous. Scientists recognize that something odd is going on and quickly made up a number of theories so they would not have to utter the G word. There is a curious term known as the Anthropic Principle, which states that the universe must be one that admits life to exist. Another theory is the Many Universes Theory, which states that are a number of universes, so it is not surprising that one exists that supports life. This to me is really reaching, and is ignoring the obvious. Scientists have long feared uttering the G word, and the closest they will come is utter the phrase, intelligent design, but is really the same thing. I do not always believe the simplest explanation is always the correct one, but to ignore another explanation because it makes you feel uncomfortable is to me very unscientific. And in the end, who created God seems no more unanswerable then what happened before the big band. The most likely scenario seems to me that we should not be here at all. Nevertheless, we exist.

The more I study the universe, the stranger and more wonderful it seems. The more I read of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the duality of light, of superstrings, and curved space, the more I realize just how amazing it is that we are here at all. To me the simple fact that we exist shows the hand of the designer, the hand of God at work. The universe is full of miraculous things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. The most miraculous thing of all is us.

Canada’s Largest Union Joins Israel Boycott
My contempt for the people and groups pushing this abhorrent boycott of Israel knows no bounds. The latest left-wing organization to join the chorus of hatred of Israel and delusional sympathy for terrorists is the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Canada’s largest union: CUPE in Ontario votes to boycott Israel. (Hat tip: Judeoscope.ca.)

The Ontario divison of Canada’s largest union has voted to support an international campaign that is boycotting Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.

Delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario convention in Ottawa voted overwhelmingly Saturday to support the campaign until it sees Israel recognizing the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The Ontario group represents more than 200,000 workers.

The global campaign started last July and has been supported by many North American churches, 20 Quebec organizations, and others, Canadian Press said.

CUPE also condemned what they called Israel’s “apartheid wall,” saying it is illegal under international law.

“Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South Africa,” said Katherine Nastovski, chairwoman of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee.

“We believe the same strategy will work to enforce the rights of Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return to their homes and properties.”

The “right of return” is a code phrase, meaning the demographic annihilation of the state of Israel, and its inclusion in this statement tells you everything about the sick mindset controlling the CUPE.
from LGF.

Unions had their place, and did some wonderful things, but they have degregated into another liberal activist group which takes money without their workers consent for whoever the leaders choose. And even worse, they have become so greedy they make many companies unproductive and hurt their competativeness. Now I see they have become racists too, nice…..

In the old days if you collaberated with the enemy you had your head shaved or was shot. Today you end up on time magazine or is nominated by the Democrats…..

by the way, did anyone notice the treason chicks on the cover of Time? I’m sure the fact that one of them retracted their apology over Bush has nothing to do with it. I wonder who Bin Laden’s favorite band is???

Got in late today, sorry, but the only thing I have time to do is rip off Flopping Aces’s article and have to make it up to Curt later. Enjoy your holiday, I’lll post more in the evening.

The Senate’s Immigration Legislation
Posted by Curt

So the Senate passed some legislation regarding the immigration problem yesterday:

The Senate yesterday approved legislation that would trigger the biggest changes to U.S. immigration policy in decades, by strengthening border security, establishing a guest-worker program, and providing the means for millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country and possibly become citizens.

The product of a tenuous bipartisan coalition that faced tough conservative opposition, the measure calls for 370 miles of triple-layer fencing along the Mexican border, a complicated three-tiered system for determining who can stay and who must leave the country, and more jail cells for those awaiting deportation. It would declare English the country’s national language, a gesture that many advocates found insulting but accepted in hopes of helping millions of undocumented workers achieve legal status.

[…]The Senate bill calls for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents and thousands of National Guard troops to support them, plus 500 miles of vehicle barriers on the Mexican border. Several such provisions, added during two weeks of debate, were designed to appease Senate conservatives who threatened to kill the entire bill. But senators repeatedly rejected conservatives’ bids to strip or weaken the provisions allowing legal status for undocumented immigrants.

The Senate bill would provide 200,000 new temporary guest-worker visas a year, while creating a separate guest-worker program for immigrant farm laborers. Its key compromise would divide the nation’s estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants into three groups.

Those here five years or longer would be allowed to stay and apply for citizenship, provided they pay back taxes, learn English and have no serious criminal records. Those here two to five years would eventually have to return to another country and apply for a green card, which could allow their immediate return. The roughly 2 million immigrants who have been in the United States illegally for less than two years would be ordered home and be subject to deportation. Illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors would be deported no matter how long they have been in the United States.

[…]Those claiming five years of residency or more would have to prove they were employed for at least three years to qualify for a citizenship application.

Which is a good start. Some of the legislation is ludicrous, such as consulting Mexico prior to building more walls…wont happen and is the stupidest thing I’ve seen the Senate pass in oh say a week. Social Security entitlements, give me a break.

BUT this is not the finished product. It still needs to be worked out in the House and believe me, those things won’t pass muster.

You wouldn’t know this by some of the Conservatives shrieks tho:

This would be catastrophic…..because the Senate’s bill is garbage.

Screw politeness, screw nice, these bastards should be removed from office for acting against the interests of the United States and violating the oath they’ve taken- more than once.

This not an immigration bill, it’s amnesty and open invitation to tens of more Mexicans and Central Americans to infiltrate our country and take it over. And the Dims get a lot more “victims” to give money to.

The so-called “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” (“CIRA”) being debated in the United States Senate is quite possibly one of the most far-reaching and dangerous pieces of legislation to be proposed in many years.

To whit I would say, calm the eff down please. This is not going to be the final legislation so relax. Every legislation that gets voted on has things in it that some like and some don’t. That is politics. It all gets worked out in the end and you know the House will not vote these things in.

But if your talking about the guest worker program, this you will have to deal with. Most Republicans support it along with Democrats:

RNC senior adviser/BC04 senior strategist/Ron Fournier co-author Matthew Dowd urges Republican Nat’l Committee members to favor a “comprehensive” solution to immigration, which the public believes is is “unifying — not polarizing.”

Dowd: “Furthermore, majorities of Hispanics back it. Therefore, it is imperative for the Republican Party to talk about immigration effectively and comprehensively and demonstrate leadership on this vital issue as we move toward the mid-term elections.”

Dowd’s memo says that an internal RNC poll conducted by Jan Van Louhuzen finds that “overwhelming support exists for a temporary worker program. 80% of all voters, 83% of Republicans, and 79% of self-identified conservatives support a temporary worker program as long as immigrants pay taxes and obey the law.”

[…]Voters don’t consider granting legal status to those already here amnesty. Seventy percent (70%) of voters say illegal immigrants who have put down roots in the U.S. should be granted legal status after they go to the back of the line, pay a fine, pay back taxes, learn English, and have a clean criminal record; just 25% say that would be amnesty and we should instead impose criminal penalties on illegal immigrants in the U.S. Republican and conservative opinion is only slightly lower—68% of conservatives and 64% of Republicans support granting legal status over criminal penalties.

Voters want comprehensive reform, including a temporary worker program and legal status, not inaction. When voters are given the choice between a comprehensive reform plan of getting tough on border security and a temporary worker program or no reform at all (below), 71% choose comprehensive reform and 19% choose no reform. Support for comprehensive reform is even higher among GOP base voters—80% of conservatives and 72% of church-going Protestants want comprehensive reform over no reform.

[…]Dowd concludes: “Finally, when discussing immigration reform, tone and language are extremely important. To continue to grow the party, we must conduct this debate with civility and respect for our nation’s heritage — as the President has said, we are both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. That is why the American people favor a balanced plan that secures the border, improves enforcement, enhances immigration avenues AND deals compassionately and equitably with those who are already here.”

Dowd has been more right then wrong in the past and I would give great credence to this memo. The “enforcement only” crowd is going to have to understand that most of us do not see this as amnesty. No matter what Rush says. Having to prove that you have lived here for 5 years, paying a penalty, going to the back of the line is not amnesty and I just do not get how some of you would think so.

As usual The Anchoress nails it:

Build a wall, by all means. Make sure you build it deep, so tunneling is difficult. Arm it and stand guards. I’m all for it. But this overheated rhetoric, this astonishing willingness by too many to keep blowing on the flames until something erupts…this is not good.

I cannot buy into this idea that suddenly America will be overthrown unless 11-12 million illegals are “shipped out, no matter what the story is…” I also cannot buy into the idea that there is a conspiracy afoot to create a socialist state, anymore than I buy the idea that this brouhaha is a conspiracy on the right to form a third party. But what do I know? Maybe everything is a grand conspiracy, after all. In which case, everyone is working at cross-purposes and all of this sound and fury may signify nothing…

[…]I also believe that Hispanics are the upcoming huge voter bloc in this nation, and that most of them (not the A.N.S.W.E.R. rowdies or the useful idiots who exist in EVERY ethnic group) are fairly conservative types of folks, and the conservatives are doing all they can to convince the Hispanics that they will never be welcome in the GOP.

Take it from someone who works around thousands of illegals in South Central Los Angeles. For the most part they are hard working CONSERVATIVE people. Who are deeply religious and believe in conservative values. Do I think it’s a good thing they are here illegally, no. Am I one of those who believe they are doing jobs Americans won’t do, no. But they are here.

The idea that we will round up 12 million illegals and send them back is ridiculous so we need a bill that takes some of what the House is proposing and some of what the Senate is proposing. Get those who have roots here into the system, get them paying taxes and learning English (my pet peeve, nothing pisses me off more then when a Hispanic won’t even try to learn English) put them at the back of the line AND fix our immigration policies. Build a wall, hire more Border Patrol, GO AFTER EMPLOYERS….(via Let Freedom Ring)

SNOW: […]Now, I don’t think anybody wants to sit around and wait to go after employers who are hiring people illegally and know it. You want to go after them right away, and I don’t think people want to wait to figure out who the illegals are. You want to find out that is rapidly as possible, and I, frankly, don’t think people want to wait to start figuring out what we do with the 11 or 12 million illegals, and that’s really what the president… It’s interesting. I’ve heard… Every conservative I talked to on Capitol Hill says, “We want to do that stuff, but we want to do it later.” My answer is, “Why? Don’t you want to go after employers now and don’t you want to figure out who the illegals are now and don’t you want to start solving this mess now?”

RUSH: But the Senate bill doesn’t do any of this though!

SNOW: Well, sure it does. What the president’s proposing does. I mean, you take a look, for instance, at the issue of illegals. You get these tamper-proof IDs with biometric stuff. You can’t fake that. Now, once you have that in place, employers no longer can say, “Man, I don’t know. That birth certificate looked okay to me, and that fake driver’s license, I thought it was legitimate.” Suddenly you’ve got something you can’t fake.

RUSH: Why should we believe there’s going to be enforcement now when there hasn’t been since ‘86, there hasn’t been in Simpson-Mazzoli?

SNOW: Well, a couple of reasons.

RUSH: Because the enforcement appears to be voluntary on the illegals. They’ve got to show up to pay the fine. They’ve got to show and up go to the back of the line. They’ve got to show up and do this. Now they’ve got to show up and get this card, this ID card. What’s the incentive for them?

SNOW: There are several reasons. First, on the ID card, again, you get the discipline from the employer side. The employer doesn’t have it, and they’re doing it, and you and I have seen places, you know, in our neighborhoods and elsewhere where guys were probably illegally, they get there they work early they do all the stuff but they’re illegal! Now if all of a sudden somebody shows up and says, “Show me your cards,” and they don’t have it, that does change behavior. The other thing is, this issue is of far more concern now than it was in 1986. From 1986 until, what, eighteen months ago, most people didn’t give a rip. I mean, they really didn’t. Now all of a sudden it’s top of mind, which means the people who see activity that they find objectionable and illegal, they now think, “Okay, I can call the government to do this. I can call the cops on this. I can call the Border Patrol. I can call the legal enforcement.” They suddenly realize that you’re going to have a government that also has gotten a message because for a long time people didn’t the give a rip, and, as you know, this town, Washington, response when people say, “Hey, you gotta do something,” and I think the message has been received pretty loud and clear. We need to do something.

And we’re on the road to solving this issue. Will it be perfect? Don’t be silly. Nothing is in politics, hell nothing is in life. But we deal with it.

As I’ve said many times in my earlier immigration posts….

Calm the eff down people.

from Flopping Aces.

He is nicer then me, I still think it’s amnesty, but maybe I’m a big jerk. I’ll let the reader decide.

Reagan’s SDI Deployed Against Iran, North Korea

Democrats and their media minions derided Ronald Reagan back in 1983 when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. “Star Wars,” they called it, claiming it would never work.

Two decades later, however, U.S. defense planners are now turning to Reagan’s system as the last, best line of defense against a nuclear missile strike launched by the madmen running Iran and North Korea.

Reports London’s Financial Times:

“In a move that is raising hackles in Moscow, the U.S. is proposing to install an anti-missile defense system in central Europe to counter any future attack from a nuclear-armed Iran”

The Pentagon, says the Times, is planning to install 10 anti-missile interceptors in central Europe over the next five years. Each interceptor will contain a 155-pound “kill vehicle” designed to intercept enemy missiles as they careen toward London, Paris and Berlin – not to mention New York and Washington, D.C.

The anti-Iranian SDI deployment isn’t just a pipe dream. An anti-missile system modeled on Reagan’s vision is already under construction on the U.S. West Coast – with an eye toward heading off a North Korean nuclear attack.

The Times reports:

“So far, nine interceptor rockets are in place at Fort Greely in Alaska, and two more at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.”

Along with Reagan, President Bush deserves credit for pulling the U.S. out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty four years ago, making the ultimate deployment of SDI legal.

With Democrats salivating over the prospect of returning to power, perhaps now would be a good time for a few of them to acknowledge how valuable the program they sought to kill has turned out to be.

from NewsMax.

If you recall the Democrats and Europe attacked Reagan as a threat to world peace, (as they do Bush) and they never admitted Reagan had anything to do with the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of millions. They will also never admit Bush has freed millions.

Think of this, if the Democrats were in power during those two Administrations, how many millions would still be enslaved?

Thought you might enjoy reading this – Prime Minister Blair delivered a speech earlier today at Georgetown. Below are his remarks on Iraq –

Excerpt

Let us go back to the immediate issue: Iraq. We can argue forever about the merits of removing Saddam. Our opponents will say: you made terrorism worse and point to what is happening there. I believe differently. I believe this global terrorism will exploit any situation to further its cause. But I don’t believe that its cause is truly to be found in any decision we have taken. I believe it’s cause is an ideology, a world-view, derived from religious fanaticism and that had we taken no decisions at all to enrage it, would still have found provocation in our very existence. They disagree with our way of life, our values and in particular in our tolerance. They hate us but probably they hate those Muslims who believe in tolerance, even more, as apostates betraying the true faith.

They have come to Iraq because they see it as the battleground. The battle they are fighting is nothing to do with the liberation of Iraq, but its subjugation to their extremism.

I don’t want to reopen past arguments. I want to advocate a new concord to displace the old contention.

It is three years since Saddam fell. It has been three years of strife and bloodshed. But it has also seen something remarkable. Despite it all, despite terror, sectarian violence, kidnapping and the exhibition of every ugly aspect of human nature, a democratic political process has grown. Last week, a new Government was formed. This Monday I visited it in Baghdad, I sat and talked with the leaders, chosen by the people, Sunni, Shia, Kurds, non-aligned, and heard from them not the jarring messages of warring factions but one simple, clear and united discourse. They want Iraq to be democratic. They want its people to be free. They want to tolerate difference and celebrate diversity. They want the rule of law not violence to determine their fate.

They were quite different from the Interim Government of 2004 or the Iraqi Transitional Government after the elections of January 2005.

This is a child of democracy struggling to be born. They and we, the international community, are the midwives.

You may not agree with original decision.

You may believe mistakes have been made.

You may even think how can it be worth the sacrifice.

But surely we must all accept this is a genuine attempt to run the race of liberty.

These are not stooges. Or placemen.

They believe in their country.

They believe in its capacity to be democratic.

They are fighting a struggle against the odds but they are fighting it.

And in their struggle is a symbol of a wider struggle.

Listen to what the new Prime Minister says and the new Government’s programme.

Tell me where their vision differs from ours except that ours is based in experience and theirs in hope.

I came back from Iraq not less daunted by the responsibility on our shoulders to help them succeed. But I did come back inspired by their determination that they do indeed succeed.

This should be a moment of reconciliation not only in Iraq but in the international community. The war split the world. The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it.

There was a moving moment when I was talking to the new Prime Minister in his office in Baghdad that he told me, with a smile, used to be the dining room of one of Saddam’s sons. We were on our own with the interpreter. He leant across to me and said: “if we can change Iraq we can change this region and the world”.

The terrorism that afflicts them is the same that afflicts us. Its roots are out there in the Middle East, in the brutal combination of secular dictatorship and religious extremism. Yet in every country of the region there are people, probably the majority, who are desperate for change. In Kuwait, as I boarded the plane for Iraq, they told me how they were planning elections for the first time with women voting. Across the Gulf states, in the Lebanon, in the steps, however difficult, Egypt is taking, in signs of change in nations as different as Jordan or Algeria, there are possibilities for progress.

These are the true voices of Muslim and Arab people, or more true than the voices of hate, with their poisonous propaganda that seeks to divide.

They need our support. In Iraq, of course, people want to gain full control of their own destiny. The MNF should leave as soon as the Government wishes us. As the Prime Minister said we need an objective timetable. By that he means one that is conditions-based ie as Iraqi capability is built up. But don’t be in any doubt. No-one, but no-one I spoke to, from whatever quarter, wanted us to leave precipitately. An arbitrary timetable ie without conditions being right, would be seen for what it would be: weakness.

Here is where we have to change radically our mindset. At present, when we are shown pictures of carnage in Iraq, much of our own opinion sees that as a failure, as a reason for leaving. Surely it is a reason for persevering and succeeding. What is the purpose of the terrorism in Iraq? It is to destroy the prospect of democratic progress. In doing so, they hope to deal us a mortal blow. They know victory for them in Iraq is defeat not just for Iraqi democracy but for democratic values everywhere.

So they kill our soldiers even though our forces – with incredible heroism and dedication – are and have been in Iraq for three years with full United Nations support and are there now with the free consent of Iraq’s first ever fully democratic Government. They kill ordinary Iraqis for wanting to join the police or build the country or just for being of one religious persuasion not another. Theirs is a strategy drenched in the blood of the innocent.

Should their determination to do evil eclipse our desire to do good? By all means debate the tactics and strategy of how we succeed. But I ask: how can we possibly, in the face of such a struggle, so critical to our own values, not see it through and do so with renewed vigour and confidence? If Iraqis can show their faith in democracy by voting for it, shouldn’t we show ours by supporting them in it?

And if we are not willing to fight for Democracy in the Middle East now, I guarantee you we will be fighting for survival later. Democracy breeds peace. History has shown us that.