PrairiePundit

Another high tech lynching by the liberals Thomas Sowell: ". . .Leading the charge against Justice Brown, as it did against Judge Bork 16 years ago, is the grossly misnamed organization "People for the American Way." This is a far-left group with only contempt for American traditions and culture. ". . .Judges who believe that their job is to uphold the Constitution, instead of replacing it with left-wing social engineering, are anathema to "People for the American Way." That they are spearheading the character assassination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown is completely predictable. "Because Justice Brown is black and conservative, she is being denounced as "another Clarence Thomas." Like Clarence Thomas, she is also being denounced as "unqualified" by people who have never read a word she wrote. Anyone who does read Justice Brown's opinions will discover a wealth of knowledge, a command of logic and an unflinching...

The Boykin critics John Podhoretz: ". . .Boykin is an evangelical Christian. That is his right. He believes that the terrorists threatening us are working for Satan. That is also his right. It is crucial to note that he was notcalling Islam a Satanic faith. "And though the use of the phrase "Christian nation" is offensive to many non-Christians, it's hardly the sort of thing that should get a guy fired - especially when he takes care to refer to the "Judeo-Christian" tradition as well. "Unless, that is, you believe that anyexpression of religious conviction in public life is inappropriate. Which, of course, is something many in the media and elsewhere do believe. "They think there is something illegitimate about anyone on the public payroll making open and passionate professions of their faith. There's more than a hint of anti-Christian bigotry at work here. "That's made crystal clear when you take...

Islamic excuses Amir Taheri: ". . .By blaming others, Mahathir and his predecessors in this game absolve Muslim leaders of responsibility. They also divest Muslims of their humanity, turning them into witless pawns in a game played by others. "With his speech, Mahathir did great harm to the cause of those who believe that, as an existential reality, Islam needs to be subjected to serious critical reexamination. "Mahathir's 'us-and-them' dialectics belongs to a tribal mentality that has no place in the modern world. He forgets that the Iran-Iraq war, in which a million people died, was not an 'us-and-them' conflict. Nor was it 'the other' who tried to wipe Kuwait off the map in 1990. "Are Jews raiding Algerian villages at night to massacre entire families, including babies? "Are Jews murdering thousands of Muslim women each year in the name of 'honor-killing'? "Are Jews throwing acid at girls w...

Fresh air from Bush parents Barbara Bush: "So far, they (Democrat candidates) are a pretty sorry group, if you want my opinion," she said. "This is the world according to Barbara Bush, not George, not George H.W. -- not anybody." "...George H.W. Bush, meanwhile accused the nine Democratic candidates of using 'vicious' rhetoric against his son. 'The one who makes the most outrageous charges against the president . . . he gets his 20 seconds on the evening news,' he said. 'Hey, I didn't ride in here on a watermelon cart -- I know how it works.'"

Why war in Iraq Craig Trebilcock: "...Upon entering southern Iraq U.S. troops encountered a battered and despised Iraqi Shi'ite population that Saddam Hussein had denied water, electricity, water and medical care for decades. People lived at a bronze-age level in a country possessing the richest natural resources on the planet. Comprising 60 percent of the nation's population, the Shi'ites were treated as enemies of the state by the 20 percent Sunni population that was the core of Saddam's Ba'ath Party. Why is that an issue for the United States? The answer to that crystallized for me in a swampy field in Southern Iraq in April 2003. Escorting a group of U.S. government officials to inspect a recently discovered mass grave 60 miles south of Baghdad, we encountered a killing field, where the Ba'athist regime had systematically executed approximately 5,000 Shi'ite men, women and children in retaliation for the Shi'ite uprising in 1991. ...

Liberals Stanley Kurtz: "Liberals are my life. At least, they used to be. Back when I was in academia, I lived and breathed liberals. I’ve been traveling lately in the land of the liberals, many of whom I know and love. I was struck by the paranoia and anger. The best seller list really is indicative of the trend of the culture. There is a deep belief out there, shared by well educated professionals, that there is a lying right wing conspiracy ready to take over the world–that FOX News and conservative think tanks somehow overbalance the entire mainstream media, Hollywood, and all of academia. After 9/11, there were all sorts of wild conspiracy theories floating around on the fringes. To accept the reality of 9/11 was to give up the post-sixties cultural stance, and that was intolerable. Now the aftermath of Iraq seems to have spread an only slightly more mild form of paranoia among much of the liberal mainstream. The liberal mood today seems to be tinged as much with fear...

More are losing respect for BBC war coverage The liberal Independant reports: "The public considered BBC television coverage of the Iraq war less objective than that of its commercial rivals, a watchdog revealed yesterday. "The Independent Television Commission reported that both BBC1 and BBC2 were judged to be less 'fair' in their coverage than Channel 4, Five, Sky News and ITV. The findings were released while the BBC is bracing itself for Lord Hutton's report into the death of Dr David Kelly, which is expected to criticise the corporation's journalistic standards. "The ITC findings suggest that the traditional public respect for the objectivity of BBC journalism is on the wane.

Muslims do not get it "Some think Jews are beyond criticism, says paper. This is just another example of muslims only hearing what they want to hear. Their paranoia is on display. Jews are critized all the time. Perhaps no one is more critical of Jews than their fellow Jews. What Mahathir said that was clearly wrong was that Jews controlled the leading countries of teh world, i.e. the US and therefore were able to prevent the muslims from evicting them from Palestine. One of teh basic problems with muslim thinking when it comes to jews is that the squatters who occupied Israel several hundred years ago have superior title to the land than the Jews who were there before them. Because they are too impotent to evict the Jewish residence of Israel, the muslim world concocks paranoid conspiracies to explain their impotenance rather than accept the reality of the facts on the ground. As I have said before, if the Jews really controlled the world, they are too smart to w...

The Arafat MO DEBKAfiles: "...Our Palestinian sources add that Arafat is not in the habit of giving out clear orders to subordinates. An inkling of his style of command was revealed in the BBC interview. He throws out fragmentary, often oblique clues to different aides, also naming sums of cash on offer for anyone willing to risk his neck by going out and hiring a killer squad for the next terrorist operation. The aides either put their heads together to find out what he is after or, more often, compete amongst each other for the mission and the pay. Arafat keeps his band of cronies in a constant state of rivalry for his favors, positions of influence in the Palestinian hierarchy and the cash he hands out now and again. Several members of this executive group may end up setting up the same operation separately, each hiring a terror squad. This tactic has created a reservoir of willing guns outside Ramallah who are spoiling for action. "While preparing the next hit...

Bio weapons manual found in raid on Philipean terrorist "SECURITY forces recovered a bio-terror manual and traces of possible biological weapons in a raid on a Jemaah Islamiyah hideout in the southern Philippine city of Cotabato, the army said yesterday. "...The raid on a Cotabato apartment unit was launched a day after the visit to Manila of US President George W. Bush and more than two weeks after the arrest in Cotabato of Indonesian Taufiq Rifqi, described by Philippine authorities as the No2 man of JI."

Power from squeezing water New Scientist: "An entirely new way of generating electricity has been discovered. The way it works is simple: squeeze water through fine pipelines and an electrical current flows. "...To test the idea, Kostiuk and his team pumped ordinary tap water through a block of glass riddled with half a million holes, each just a hundredth of a millimetre wide. When an electrode was attached to each end they measured a current of a few microamps. "To increase the current, they will need to increase the efficiency of the device. At the moment, says Kostiuk, 'it's really pretty pathetic - a fraction of a percent.'"

Laser waeapons are working in labs Laser beam weapons are close to showing success. "...No longer are laser guns the stuff of Hollywood and Strategic Defense Initiative fantasy. Instead of laser-guiding bullets and 'smart' bombs, the Pentagon inside of a decade could be armed with a beam weapon that is near-instantaneous, gravity-free and truly surgical, focusing to such hair-splitting accuracy that it could avoid civilians while predetonating munitions miles away. "A laser arms race already is under way, chiefly in California. The prize is billions of dollars. Three families of high-energy beams -- powered by combusting chemicals, electron accelerators and crystals, such as Yamamoto's -- are vying for the Pentagon's eye. "Defense contractors are sniping at each other's designs, and corporate alliances are shifting. But no one seems to doubt that battle lasers -- perhaps mounted on Humvees, jet fighters and unmanned aircraft -- could k...

The al Qaeda Iraq alliance "The independent Iraqi weekly Al-Yawm Al-Aakher reveals details on the training of Al-Qa'ida members operating under the orders of Saddam's Presidential Palace two months before the September 11 attacks." "...The Fedayeen command [Fedayeen Saddam under Uday's command] supervised the 100 Al-Qa'ida fighters directly, to the extent that senior Fedayeen officers visited them constantly and inspected them almost daily, especially during the final days when they transferred them, late at night in two red trucks that belonged to the Ministry of Transportation, to an undisclosed destination. I witnessed that with my own eyes because on that day I was the duty officer." ..."A few days before the beginning of the last war, we were surprised to see the same people whom we had trained return to the Special Forces School and with them 100 additional individuals. The high command asked us to re-train them and to divide th...

The state if jihad Dr. Walid Phares: "...This last tape is an advanced "State of the Jihad Address," as well as another slap in the face of the doubters. Indeed, the tape has proven, once again, that the Jihadists are not the product of some U.S. foreign policy. Far from this stereotype, the men of this Holy war have their own world policy. "...Against the attempts by a sea of intellectuals who have, and still attempt to read 'social injustice' into the roots of the 9/11, the sultan of al-Qaida reaffirmed that this 'Jihad is against the Kuffars (infidels), those who have assembled today under the banner of the Cross.' "Evidently, this is not a Marxist discourse. His war is, among others, specifically directed at Christians and Jews. It is also against the 'munafiqeen,' those Muslims who strayed away from the right path. Time has not changed in the mind of bin Laden.The world is divided between his cohorts of Mujahideen,...

Dems in scrotal torsion Jonah Goldberg: "...the only people I have palpable contempt for are the coterie of Democrats who so obviously voted for the war out of rank political calculation and who now spin themselves beyond the point of scrotal torsion in an effort to say they didn't mean it. Now they're trying to atone for having done the right thing by doing the wrong thing. To support the war but oppose its reconstruction — as Senator Kerry is doing — runs so counter to every historically noble impulse of the Democratic party and the United States itself it alone should disqualify such people from public office. "...Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is to beat the tar out of a bad guy — even if that bad guy was "innocent" of the specific offense that ticked you off. If a crackhead robs your house, there's no reason in the world you should feel bad about shutting down all of the crackhouses in your neighborhood. If a rat bites your baby,...

Dem candidates marketing failure Donald Lambro: "...North Carolina Sen. John Edwards says he is outraged Mr. Bush "asserted a new doctrine that suggests a uniquely American right to use force wherever and whenever we decide it's appropriate. The result has been distracting and damaging." "Well, yes, it's certainly damaging to the al Qaeda and Taliban forces that ruled Afghanistan and the terrorists who worked out of training camps in Iraq. Is Mr. Edwards saying we shouldn't have the right to take pre-emptive action to thwart terrorists when it is 'appropriate'? " Lambrough points out that if the US had followed the advice of the Dems failure lobby Saddam would still be setting in Kuwait and ignoring economic sanctions.

Drumbeats from the failure lobby Mona Charan: "There is a marked tendency among those on the left to believe the worst about the United States. This is particularly true when it comes to military action. "...the Saddamists and Islamists who have gathered in Iraq to defeat us are not acting irrationally. They have historical reasons to believe that if they can inflict enough casualties on the United States, we will run. They cite Somalia, Lebanon and Vietnam. "What we are doing in Iraq is right morally and strategically. And it is succeeding on the ground. But the press has the power to distort reality. By presenting an overly bleak picture of the challenges we face, they can demoralize us." The left is attempting to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in order to validate their wrong prewar assumptions.

More bad news for Dems The Dems house organ aka the NY Times has noticed that the Dem presidential candidates have no plan for dealing with their complaints about current policy in Iraq. "...Almost all the Democratic contenders talk about enlisting more help from America's allies and the United Nations. What's missing is an explanation of how they would achieve this desirable goal given the obvious reluctance of many countries to contribute troops as long as America retains exclusive political control. "...The candidates also need to tell Americans where they stand on the larger issue of preventive war. The prewar intelligence failures in Iraq and the failure, so far, to find threatening unconventional weapons strike at the basic premises of Mr. Bush's alarmingly novel strategic doctrines. What alternative ideas do the Democratic contenders have for handling threats like North Korean, and possibly Iranian, nuclear weapons programs and for dealing with c...

Helping Iraq Houstonian "Termite" Watkins will be helping Iraqi boxers qualify for the next olympic games.

Bad news for the Dems again Deana West: "The problem with the antiwar elite -- and by that I mean most of the Democratic presidential candidates and their assorted liberal 'wise men' -- is that political attacks on the president's war on Islamic terrorism won't always be enough to satisfy them. It's just a matter of time before taking shots at the president (Howard Dean), nixing the White House's $87 billion funding request to stabilize Iraq (John Edwards, John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich), and penning essays for The New York Review of Books entitled 'Iraq: What Went Wrong' (Wesley Clark), will seem evasive at best, even obstructionist. Soon, the burning question Democrats must answer will be not what they think is wrong with George W. Bush's policy, but what they, as members of the antiwar elite, would do in his place. "This is a tough question. It forces members of the antiwar elite to admit they would have left Saddam Hussein and h...