PrairiePundit

Saudi hate literature Washington Times: The government of Saudi Arabia is spreading "hate propaganda" in religious tracts sent to mosques throughout America, telling Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and to kill any Muslim who converts to another religion, a leading human rights group charged yesterday. Saudi government literature collected during the past year from American mosques also tells Muslims living in the United States to "behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines," says an 89-page report released by the Human Rights Group Freedom House. ... Abdulmohsen Alyas, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, said he had not seen the Freedom House report. When told of the report's contents, Mr. Alyas said, "Saudi Arabia recognizes that extremism is part of a worldwide problem that all nations must work on diligently to bring to an end. "Saudi Arabia condemns extremism or hateful expression among people a...

Delusional liberals talk about Christians Peter Steifels: Perhaps you didn't know that Christian fundamentalists were running the United States, but then perhaps you weren't attending any upscale Manhattan parties over the holiday season. Or perhaps you didn't have the advantage of being introduced as someone who writes about religion for a newspaper. That party climate was crisp with shock and awe at the dubious findings about the role of moral values in the presidential election. There was a palpable sense that the Bible Belt was tightening like a noose around Gotham City and all it represented for civilization. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether the partygoers found this ominous or merely more fuel for the seasonal excitement. Most of them, needless to say, had about as much personal contact with Christian fundamentalists as with Martians. In fact, "fundamentalist" was a handy label for a vague group of religious conservatives "out there...

Dumb and dumber Powerline: There's a new contender for the title "dumbest argument against President Bush's Iraq policy." Until yesterday, the front-runners were "Bush has no plan" and "we need to involve the allies/U.N" (both submitted by John Kerry). But yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid , through a spokesman, stated that we need to employ "political as well as military tools" in Iraq ( Madeleine Albright said the same thing yesterday). Now, one can debate the mertis President Bush's Iraqi policy. But it's hard to imagine how that policy could be more "political." The strategy relies heavily on free elections and the development of a constitution. Indeed, Bush bets nearly everything on the power of democratization to win over the country. Does Senator Reed believe that democracy is not a political tool? Ironically, Reid made his comment by way of disagreeing with Senator Kennedy's...

Coming to grips with rejection Debra Saunders: WHAT WENT WRONG? It's the question spurned lovers and political parties must ask when they've lost their prize. And how to go on? Last weekend, Democrats convened in Sacramento to begin to answer that question at a candidates' forum with the seven wannabes for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. Did they care too much or not enough? For this go-round, the loss is an especially bitter pill for many activists, because they went down under the leadership of a man who voted in support of a war they despised. It's hard to lose. It's really a killer when you lose after selling out. Hence the heavy support for Howard Dean in a room filled with Western Dems, in the neighborhood of Moveon.org. The big divide in this race is between realists and idealists, centrists versus leftists, or, if you will, those who think the party is too liberal, and those who think the party isn't l...

After flunking condom test, "Planned" Parenthood head resigns Shortly Consumers Report testing revealed Planned Parenthood condoms failed at a higher rate than other tested models, Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for the past eight years resigned .

Oedipus merger, Ma Bell being acquired by sibling USA Today: The "unthinkable" just got thinkable. When SBC (SBC) and AT&T (T) first tried to combine back in 1997, they got stopped short by the Federal Communications Commission. Reed Hundt, then the FCC chairman, blasted the union as "unthinkable," saying it would thwart competition. ( Related: Deal likely to face tough scrutiny ) The deal died before it had even been announced. Now, AT&T and SBC are making another try, at a time of looser regulation and furious consolidation in the telecom industry. People with direct knowledge of the talks say the two companies are deep into merger discussions. Under the terms of the deal, which are still being finalized, San Antonio-based SBC would buy New York-based AT&T. The famous AT&T brand name would survive, but as the property of SBC. The transaction, should it go forward, stands to transform SBC, already the USA's second-large...

Kennedy and the memory hole Belmont Club: The one unarguable virtue of Ted Kennedy's speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies is that it nails his colors to the mast. He wants America to begin pulling immediately out of Iraq after the elections. Going in the first place was in his view a mistake, a strategic dead end in which the Janaury 30 election is a compounded error; another step on the road to another Vietnam. ... And perhaps for the first time in history, Ted Kennedy's words will not be forgotten. The emergence of the Internet has closed down the "memory hole" within which the former apologists of Joseph Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein could hide their bad advance and from which they could emerge at whiles to offer new sage advice. The term 'memory hole' itself was coined by George Orwell who used it to describe the mechanism through which the media manipulated historical memory. One of t...

The "Damning But" Lilleks: So there’s an election in Iraq soon, I understand. I haven’t been writing about this here because I’m just taking the long, long view, and haven’t the time or inclination to argue with people who think “No WMD!” is the argument equivalent of a spreading a full house on the green felt table. It may seem so, but unfortunately we’re playing chess. However the election goes will be one thing; how it’s reported is another. The thing to watch is the position of the Damning But, the old DB. The DB will probably bob up in the first or second paragraphs of most dispatches. “The election went as planned in 95 percent of the country, but violence marred polling in the disputed Sunny D Triangle, where insurgents opposed to Tropicana Juice fired automatic weapons into an juice concentrate factory.” That’s one spin. “The election, long anticipated as a flashpoint for insurgent activity, went off with few delays. Despite sporadic gunfire marred the overal...

The unreported war in Iraq Strategy Page: For the last month, the population of Fallujah has been allowed back into their city. The government has a division (eight battalions) of troops and police in Fallujah, along with a regiment of American marines. Nearly 200,000 civilians are back in Fallujah. Anti-government fighters have been almost completely removed from the town. The marines went house to house, looking for hostile fighters, and stockpiles of weapons, three times. Some 500 weapons caches were found and removed. For over two months, there have been no mortar or rocket attacks on American camps around Fallujah, there used to be 3-5 a week. Fallujah is in eastern Iraq's Anbar province, and that area is still violent, with many of the anti-government gangs moving to Samara and Mosul. There are still, by some counts, 70-80 anti-government attacks a day throughout Iraq. Most are in Anbar province, and most are concentrated in a few areas (Samara, Mosul and parts o...

Don't know much about history Neal Boortz: Given that yesterday's 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp has come and gone, how long before the media starts comparing the interrogation tactics at Abu Ghraib to the extermination of Jews and others by the Nazis? Well, it turns out not long. It's already happened. The Daily Texan, which serves the University of Texas at Austin, published an op-ed piece today. Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at the Auschwitz memorial service yesterday, and this is what they had to say about it: "Cheney's words ring hollow as his administration attempts to promote a man who expressly condones torture, Alberto Gonzales, to the highest law-enforcement position in the United States. They ring hollow as more evidence is uncovered that the acts of barbarism at Abu Ghraib were not isolated incidents but rather acts according to policy set down by the executive branch." ...

Who would have thought it? Scientists: Life Not Likely on Titan: Saturn's largest moon contains all the ingredients for life, but senior scientists studying data from a European probe ruled out the possibility Titan's abundant methane stems from living organisms. How about ingrediants like oxygen and a temperate climate? But the abundance of methane does raise the question of the how the gas was created. On earth, it is believed to formed by decaying vegatation and animal waste, so how did it get to Titan? How was it created?

Does anyone favor enforcing current immigration laws? Victor Davis Hanson: T here are several issues ahead, such as immigration, deficits of all sorts, and energy dependence, that have the potential to erode conservatives' appeal to the general public. There is also no guarantee that the Democratic party is going to stay politically suicidal, as if an embarrassing Barbara Boxer or an unhinged Michael Moore will always remain self-appointed symbols of the opposition. The president's immigration proposals are probably unworkable. A conservative base bristles at the idea that perhaps as many as 20 million illegal aliens now reside in the U.S. There are no proposed enforceable mechanisms such as stiff employer fines for unlawful hiring. Closing the border is never mentioned. Yet how are we to avoid a continued illegal presence in tandem with a legal guest-worker program without stern coercive measures — as if suddenly one million aliens annually will cease coming north...

Count all the votes, shether legal or not Rich Lowry: D uring the Florida-vote controversy in 2000, Democrats always said they wanted to "count all the votes." Skeptics thought what they really meant was "count enough votes for Al Gore to win." In Washington State it is this latter mantra that has apparently been the operating principle. A Democratic governor, Christine Gregoire, has just taken office after the state kept recounting until she finally overcame the slight advantage of her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi, and — voilá! — all curiosity about getting ever-more accurate vote counts ended. For years, experts have warned that the nation's election process is scandalously sloppy and prone to fraud. And that this risks creating elections that no one can have any confidence in. They were right. Look no further than the shame of Washington state. Granted, any election as close as the state's gubernatorial race — Gregoire "won" by 1...

Chavez nonsense LA Times Editorial: Picking a fight comes naturally to Venezuela's demagogic president, Hugo Chavez. In the last four years, he has taken on leaders from Peru, Chile, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Bolivia. Now as he spars with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Chavez seems to be hoping for a bout with his greater nemesis, George W. Bush — a fight that, he feels, would earn him a place in the pantheon of the Latin American left. Long before Uribe was elected president in 2002, the Colombian government asked Venezuelan officials to discuss legitimate concerns over border security, but the diplomatic plea fell on deaf ears. Once in power, Uribe chastised the Venezuelan leader for tolerating Colombian rebel camps on the Venezuelan side of the border. Chavez, who has a history of flirting with Colombia's communist guerrillas, denied the charge. Last month, Uribe ran out of patience and ordered the detention of Rodrigo Granda, a...

Democracy Egyptian style Nir Boms and Aaron Mannes: With international attention focused on the Palestinian and Iraqi elections, the October presidential referendum in Egypt will be little more than a re-inauguration for President Hosni Mubarak, who seeks to regain the presidency for the fifth time and to pave the way for his son Gamal to succeed him. Yet, this time Mr. Mubarak could face a real challenger. "If given the chance, I personally want to run to break the barrier of fear and intimidation," Professor Saad al-Din Ibrahim, perhaps the Arab world's leading voice for democracy and human rights, stated. "Not that I have real hopes of success, but I want to show my fellow Egyptians that nothing should be a political taboo." An open political contest in the largest Arab nation would be an enormous advance for democracy in the Middle East. But Mr. Ibrahim will probably not get this chance, because under the Egyptian constitution the parliament nominate...

Whining women Diana West: I hate women. Let me rephrase that: I hate "women" — the ones who make a career of it, the feminists who like to blow things up and then cry as the pieces rain down, choking on the vapors. Which filled the air, apparently, up at Harvard when big, bad Lawrence Summers — Harvard's prez, who has just got to stop saying he's sorry — declared in a meeting that the dearth of women in the hard sciences might have something to do, not so much with (yawn) male chauvinism but with the innate differences between the sexes. "I felt I was going to be sick," said Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at MIT who stormed out of the meeting. "My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," she informed reporters. "I couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." Why, had she not left the room, "I would've either blackedoutor thrown up." Clearly, what the hard sciences need to at...

Kennedy puts his ignorance of warfare on display Washington Times: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy yesterday said U.S. troops, instead of defeating the insurgency in Iraq, are spawning it, and he called for immediate withdrawal of 12,000 troops after this weekend's election and a complete pullout by early next year. "There will be more serious violence if we continue our present dangerous and reckless course. It will not be easy to extricate ourselves from Iraq, but we must begin," said the Massachusetts Democrat and leading liberal voice in the Senate, who is the highest-profile lawmaker to call for withdrawal. A really dumb idea when you are winning. Of course Kennedy is such a brilliant military strategist that he would ledt a tiny minority represented by the insurgents who are attacking mainly Iraqis, not US forces , rout him into a stupid retreat.

Dem opposition to Rice will cost them Charles Krauthammer: In parliamentary systems it is not uncommon to turn a political nomination — or even a relatively insignificant bill — into a way of expressing a lack of confidence in the government or in a major policy. In the United States that is far less common, but 12 Senate Democrats (plus the independent Jim Jeffords) have done precisely that over the Condoleezza Rice nomination for secretary of state. They have used it as a vehicle to stake out their opposition to the Iraq war. They are likely to pay a heavy political price. In this country, it is customary to allow the president to choose his own Cabinet, so long as the nominee is minimally qualified. Rice is superbly qualified and everyone concedes that. So it is mildly shocking that the Democrats mustered more votes against this nomination for secretary of state than for any since 1825. Indeed, secretaries of state are generally approved unanimously. This is the fi...

Two more Zarqawi chiefs captured in Baghdad AP via Houston Chronicle: The government today announced the arrests of two close associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, including the chief of the terror mastermind's Baghdad operation. The announcement came two days before historic elections that extremists have vowed to subvert. ... Qassim Dawoud, a top security adviser, told reporters that the arrests of the al-Zarqawi lieutenants occurred in mid-January but gave few details. Dawoud said one of the men, Salah Suleiman al-Loheibi, headed al-Zarqawi's Baghdad operation and had met with the Jordanian-born terror leader more than 40 times over three months. The other was identified as Ali Hamad Yassin al-Issawi. Rolling up the leadership of al Qaeda's operatives in Iraq is much more important than the AP or Ted Kennedy are willing to recognize. It is particularly important when the insurgents are in the middle of amaximum efort as they are now trying to thw...

The Chicom fiction of Tiawan as a province Clifford D. May: Remember that U.N. official who complained about Washington's contribution to the tsunami victims? He neglected to mention that even as he was deriding Americans as "stingy," the United Nations was refusing more than $50 million in aid. Why? Because the offer came from Taiwan, and the Chinese rulers in Beijing do not want this island nation playing an independent role on the world stage - not even a charitable one. "I really wonder," said Zakaria Fellah, an Algerian-born former U.N. official, "whether the victims of the stricken areas in Indonesia, Thailand or Sri Lanka would have cared about the origin of the assistance." ... It is a source of particular irritation to the Taiwanese that, at Beijing's insistence, they have been barred from U.N. membership - and even from the kind of "observer" status enjoyed by the Red Cross and the Palestine Liberati...