Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Democrats Bar Black Man from U.S. Senate Seat

It’s official. Democrats have blocked Roland Burris from taking his seat in the Senate to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama.

Senate Sgt. at Arms Terrance Gainer, left, shows Illinois U.S. Senate Appointee Roland Burris the door when Burris tried to take his seat in the U.S. Senate.

Just two months ago Democrats insisted that any stain on Obama’s character by linking him to the notorious Weatherground bomber William Ayers or the convicted slum lord Tony Rezko was nothing more than “guilt by association.”

But now, it appears that guilt by association IS enough to disqualify someone for high federal office. Here’s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Meet the Press discussing why Democrats would bar Burris from taking a seat in the Senate:

SEN. REID: Blagojevich obviously is a corrupt individual. I think that’s pretty clear. … That’s why President-elect Obama agreed with us that Mr. Burris is tainted. Not as a result of anything that he’s done wrong. There’s–I don’t know a thing wrong with Mr. Burris. It’s not the person that has been appointed, it’s the appointee.

Al FrankenStein Declared Winner of Minnesota Senate Seat

Apparently taint isn’t enough to disqualify ALL Democrats who wish to take seats in the U.S. Senate. Only the black ones. On Monday, Al Franken was declared the winner of the extremely error laden (some would say fraud) election in Minnesota. Only a long shot court challenge can stop this clown from disgracing the U.S. Senate.

The Wall Street Journal did an excellent job summarizing the fiasco:

Funny Business in Minnesota
In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.
Wall Street Journal
JANUARY 5, 2009

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on “counting every vote” wants to shut the process down. He’s getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as “duplicate” and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that “very likely there was a double counting.” Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken’s campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had “lost” 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge — officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night — the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he’s benefited both ways from the board’s inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie’s office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken’s edge by a further 176 votes.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie’s office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes — in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he’ll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn’t like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn’t. But we can’t recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

Keep in mind that the Secretary of State in this state was bought and paid for by George Soros and friends! An effort they are trying to duplicate (like so many ballots) nationwide.

Also:

The Burden of Peace is on Hamas and Palestinians

Mataharley was suspicious of some possible fauxtography going on with the photo below. American Power confirms this, through one of his commenters, reliapundit:

No one is unaffected by the civilian casualities. But it’s precisely images like these which are used by Hamas for diabolical propaganda puposes.

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French TV claims photos from 2005 showed damage from Israel’s Gaza operation
By Haaretz Service

Tags: France, Gaza, Israel News

French public television network France 2 on Tuesday revealed they had aired photographs that allegedly showed destruction caused by the Israel Air Force during Operation Cast Lead, which were in fact taken during a different incident in 2005, one in which Gaza civilians were killed by an explosion caused by militants in the Strip.

The footage aired on Channel 2 on Tuesday afternoon showed dozens of dead bodies, including Hamas gunmen and citizens, which the channel said were killed by an IAF bombing raid on January 1st. It later came to light that the channel had instead aired footage of the devastation caused after a truck full of explosives blew up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp.

A news editor at France 2 told Le Figaro Tuesday that they had “made a mistake by airing those pictures, which he said depict events from 2005.

No, I’m not overjoyed by innocent civilian deaths. Especially that of children. I’ve seen some comments by callous political allies who excuse it in terms of “So what? They’re indoctrinated to be future terrorists and America and Israel haters, anyway.”

We should never stop caring, even as we support what needs doing: namely in this case, Israel defending itself. And yes, this is a defensive response. It’s so odd to argue “disproportionate force” by Israel, when it’s obvious that it’s not disproportionate enough so long as Hamas is still delivering rocket attacks.

From today’s WaPo:

JERUSALEM, Jan. 6 — Israeli shelling near a U.N.-run school in a Gaza refugee camp Tuesday killed at least 30 people, many of whom had gathered at the school building to flee the ongoing clashes between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters, Palestinian and United Nations officials said.

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In response to the news of the shelling at the Al-Fakhora School, the Israeli military said in a statement that Israeli forces were responding to attacks.

“Initial inquiry by forces on the ground indicates that a number of mortar shells were fired from within the school at [Israel Defense Forces],” the military statement said. “And in response the forces fired several mortar shells back at the source.”

Military spokesmen said they did not yet have an explanation for air strike at the other school Monday.

Here’s an interesting blog belonging to the mother of an Israeli soldier (Hat tip for the find: American Power). Her current entry:

Today, in Gaza, a school was hit by an Israeli missile. The Palestinians claim dozens have died. It’s a horrible thing, a terrible tragedy, every parent’s nightmare.

Except…

Except that Israel’s initial inquiry into the incident, showed that the missile didn’t hit the “school” by mistake. The target was true; the aim was accurate. In August, last year, Israel filed a formal complaint with the United Nations, complaining about the school being used to fire against Israel. Israel has already identified Hamas gunmen who were killed at the scene of the attack – even publicized their names.

The proof that the building was a legitimate target was found, once again, in the secondary explosions that occurred. The missile hit the building, causing explosives inside the building to detonate. You can watch these and other videos on the web. You’ll see the initial explosion, and then, mere seconds later, multiple explosions and objects shooting high into the air.

If you hit a building that has no explosives, the building collapses and the only thing that rises into the air is dust and rubble. Nothing explodes – again, see all the videos of houses hit in Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheva. As horrible as it sounds, as tragic as the results are, the missile was accurate. It hit its target and did what it was supposed to do. Secondary explosions prove that the building was used to store rockets.

What it comes down to is a building from which mortars were shot, in which explosives were stored, and in which, Palestinians chose to teach their young. There is something incredibly sick about that.

There are rules in warfare and in life.

One rule: A civilized people should not target innocent civilians. This is what Hamas repeatedly has done for the last 8 years. This is NOT what Israel did today.

Second rule: An innocent civilian should not protect a terrorist location. If you are in a training camp – leave. If you are near a rocket launching site – run, and if you are sending your children to a school where rockets are stored and missiles and mortars are launched, be smart and stop sending your child because the government against whom those rockets and mortars are being shot, has the right to defend itself. School is important, but as Israel has shown in the last few days by canceling lessons, nothing is as important as life.

And there is an even more sinister issue here lurking under the surface of this story, one that I hope will come to light in the next few days. The United Nations and its involvement in Gaza is one that is as suspect as its involvement in Lebanon was years ago. Too often, they are “at the scene” and too often, they allow their “sanctuaries” to by used by terrorists who attack Israel. Their ambulances have been used by gunmen, and their school to be used as a launching ground for mortars.

Today Israel hit a target – a legitimate target used to launch mortars against our people. If, in addition to shooting mortars, that building was also used for classes, that doesn’t make it a school. A school should be a place of knowledge and growth. A school should be a place of safety and it seems rather obvious to me that a missile launching pad isn’t a safe environment, and therefore, no matter what the United Nations calls that building in Gaza, it was not a school.

A school cannot be a place for mortars…and a place with mortars cannot be a school. Golda Meir once said that there would be peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us. Decades after she said that, generations have come and gone, and still that day has not arrived.

When Hamas launched hundreds of unanswered rockets into Israel, where was the public outcry? Where were the peace activists? Where was the UN Security Council, condemning Hamas for perpetuating a “cycle of violence”? How about when an al-Qaeda faction in Gaza claimed responsibility for rocket attacks in November?

When the sleeping giant is finally stirred to take action to defend itself, now the anti-war crowd is vocal? Now the world community is stirred? Condemning the side who has bent over backward for decades, aching for peace, while supporting the side that has sued for nothing less than the destruction of Israel?

Israel tried appeasement when they gave up the Gaza Strip, uprooting 9,000 Jewish settlers from their homes. Such acts of appeasement only encourages more violence from those who refuse to acknowledge that the other side has a right to exist; it perpetuates the cycle of violence:

The rocket attacks by Hamas weren’t a response to violence, but rather an answer to withdrawal–Israel’s controversial 2005 decision to put a unilateral end to Israeli occupation of Gaza. Concessions actually produce a more reliably violent response from Islamic terrorists than do decisive military actions.

Hamas and the Palestinians who support the terror organization only know how to destroy:

Isn’t the New Era of Peace that was ushered in by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza just wonderful? You may recall that some American Jews raised millions of dollars to buy the greenhouses and give them to the Palestinians, so that the poor things wouldn’t suffer any economic difficulties. Moral blindness, dhimmitude, naivete, and more — as I said at the time.

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Several greenhouses belonging to the former settlement of Morag in the Gaza Strip were destroyed over the weekend during an attempt by dozens of gunmen to take control of the area.

The Palestinian Company for Economic Development, which is in charge of thousands of greenhouses that used to belong to Morag and other settlements in Gush Katif, said the attack, which took place on Friday, was the latest in a series that began almost immediately after the settlements were evacuated.

The company revealed that hundreds of greenhouses and other agricultural installations have been sabotaged over the past few months, expressing its outrage over the recurring phenomenon. The company issued an urgent appeal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Interior Minister Said Siam to intervene to halt the attacks on the lands belonging to the former settlements.

“These greenhouses and other installations and projects provide a source of income for over 4,500 families,” company officials said. “We are very disturbed by the recurring attacks and thefts. Such actions jeopardize the largest agricultural project carried by the Palestinian Authority after the Israeli withdrawal.”

Why destroy what was given over to them for the purposes of growing food and encouraging prosperity? As Michael Medved put it on his radio program yesterday, because these greenhouses had “Jewish cooties”.

President Bush:

“Instead of caring about the people of Gaza, Hamas decided to use Gaza to use rockets to kill innocent Israelis,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “Israel’s obviously decided to protect itself.”

Bush said he agreed with Israel’s position that a truce would be a waste of time unless Hamas is somehow prevented from resuming attacks. “I know people are saying, ‘Let’s have a cease-fire,’ ” Bush said. “And those are noble ambitions. But any cease-fire must have the conditions in it so that Hamas does not use Gaza as a place from which to launch rockets.”

Israel- while not perfect- has done much to extend the olive branch for decades now, aching to co-exist. The problem isn’t Israel. The problem is with Hamas and those Palestinians and Arabs who refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

The world community wants peace and “cease-fire”? A cessation of violence? Take it up with Hamas; not with Israel.