PrairiePundit

KTBS.com - Shreveport, LA  News, Weather and Sports A boy in Shreveport Louisiana sent a message to the troops in Afghanistan that became a motto for a group of troops.

Legal Insurrection: Rick Perry seeks writ of habeas corpus barring prosecution Prof. Jacobson has a copy of the motion along with a description.  It appears to be a pretty thorough critique  of the indictments.  I will be interested to see the response from the special prosecutor.  I don't think he has really explained the theory behind the indictments.

NY Observer: The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan ’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive. We all know by now that Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashed in June 2011 and was destroyed by IRS. The emails of up to twenty other related IRS officials were missing in remarkably similar “crashes,” leading many to speculate that Lois Lerner’s Blackberry perhaps held the key. Now, the Observer can confirm that a year after the infamous hard drive crash, the IRS destroyed Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry—and without making any effort to retain the emails from it. Judge Sullivan has had to pry information from the IRS to learn anything about Ms. Lerner’s Blackberry. Now, with these latest revel...

National Post: Israel bombed two Gaza City high-rises with dozens of homes and shops Tuesday, collapsing one building and severely damaging the other in a further escalation of seven weeks of cross-border fighting with Hamas. In the past, the military has hit targets in high-rises in pinpoint strikes, but left the buildings standing. However, since Saturday, it has toppled or destroyed five towers and shopping complexes in an apparent new tactic aimed at increasing pressure on Hamas. The objects of the latest strikes contain apartments inhabited almost exclusively by middle-class Gazans, who up until now have been largely spared the considerable dislocation that has affected tens of thousands of other residents in densely populated neighbourhoods of the coastal strip, like Shijaiyah. That has raised the possibility that the Israeli military is trying to use better-off Gazans, like professionals and Palestinian authority employees, to put pressure on Hamas to end the fighting on Isr...

Jennifer Braceras: In the wake of 9/11, it seemed undeniable that the United States and Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, were at war with a common enemy — radical Islamic terrorism. It seemed obvious that the Islamic terrorists who attacked America shared the same barbaric, anti-Western ideology as the fanatics that seek to wipe Israel off the map. And yet, 13 years later, the equation of anti-American Islamic terrorism with anti-Israeli Islamic terrorism remains inexplicably controversial. Witness the collective gasp from the liberal elite when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated bluntly last week that, “Hamas is ISIS. ISIS is Hamas.” “Not so,” they protested. “Hamas is a national liberation movement.” And, to some extent, it is. But like ISIS (and al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other radical Islamic groups), Hamas is comprised of fanatics that use violence, summary executions and terror to achieve their objectives. And what, exactly, are those object...

NY Times: Obama Allows Surveillance Flights of ISIS Over Syria The flights authorized by President Obama would be a precursor to broader airstrikes against Sunni militants, which are already taking place in Iraq. While Syria has objected to strikes against their deadly enemy, I suspect the complaints will be ignored by the US.   The objections sound more like a drowning man rejecting a life raft than a serious complaint.  While the purpose of potential strikes would not be to help the Assad regime, the strikes should be to decapitate the ISIL leadership and make it difficult for them to continue their genocidal campaign.

Times of Israel: Israel returns fire after rockets shot at Galilee from Lebanon   No injuries reported as at least one rocket lands in northern Galilee; third straight day of fire on north Israel returned fire with artillery that was probably using counter battery radar to pinpoint the location.  I suspect Iran is trying to help its Hamas allies by using its Hezballah proxies.

Jerusalem Post: Hamas set a "classic humanitarian trap" and attempted to get the air force to kill Gazan civilians when it fired medium-range rockets from sensitive civilian buildings, in Gaza's Shati region, a senior IAF officer said Monday. On Saturday, rockets were fired from northern Gaza at Israel's Sfhela region, south of Tel Aviv. The rockets were fired from rooftops, and from launchers next to several buildings; the Shuhada medical center, a basketball court and two schools, named by the IDF as Iben Sina and Salah Halef. The schools were used as an evacuation center for Gazan civilians at the time of Hamas's attack, the official said. On Sunday, the IDF evacuated the region, and dispatched a fighter jet to strike the rocket launchers. "It is a very sensitive area. You can see that Hamas set up the launchers on top, and next to the structures. This is a classic humanitarian trap. Last night, we struck the launchers with precision strikes aft...

Matthew Clark: Leftist university professor Michael Boyle of La Salle University took to the pages of the New York Times to condemn all of us who refer to ISIS as “evil” or a “cancer.” And unsurprisingly, the New York Times happily printed the drivel, under the headline: “The Problem With ‘Evil.’” The professor claims that such terminology is a “disturbing return of the moralistic language once used to describe Al Qaeda,” and using such language is a “moral hazard.” Instead he refers to ISIS as “a successful insurgent group that wants a seat at that table.” With complete moral clarity, I can say he’s wrong. To reject value judgments – that a jihadist army that beheads journalists and is waging genocide against Christians is evil – is to ignore reality. He states that we are turning this into a religious war by use of such terminology, that it somehow advances their cause by helping portray jihadists “as engaged in a war against the Christian West.” But they are. No one accused...

AWDNews: Saudi foreign minister: we must denounce our hatred toward Israel and begin normalize ties with Jewish nation This is a remarkable change and it is not just the Saudis.  It is interesting that the Hamas human shield campaign is getting less support in the Arab world than at the UN and in Europe.  I suspect that is because they view Hamas as the greater danger.  Rejection of the death cult by those who know it best should be followed by the same in the rest of the world.

Guardian: Isis accused of ethnic cleansing after Shia prison massacre As many as 670 prisoners thought killed in Mosul with other abuses reported in Iraq amounting to 'crimes against humanity' It is rare to see someone so openly committing war crimes and documenting them.

Global Warming Policy Foundation: GREEN SUICIDE: EUROPE RISKS LOSING 30 MILLION JOBS TO U.S. SHALE BOOM European manufacturers are already moving production to new plants in Texas.

Daily Caller: Australia Government Climate Office Accused Of Manipulating Temperature Data The US has also been cooking the books substituting computer generated data instead of using the actual data.

NY Times: Emirates and Egypt Said to Secretly Attack Militia in Libya American officials said they were caught by surprise by the airstrikes against Islamist-allied militias, in a major escalation by the bloc of nations seeking to roll back Islamist gains since the Arab Spring. There is a potential for a coalition of Arab states to fight groups lide ISIL and Boko Harem as well as the Islamic religious bigots of North Africa in Libya.  It will be interesting to see just how effective their air strikes can be.

If the back ups are there the IRS has been misleading the Congress and the courts.

Washington Times: Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge Citizens are stopping the criminals in many cases.

Times of Israel: Israel knew the whereabouts of Hamas terror chief Muhammad Deif last weekend, but waited to target his hideout until Hamas breached a temporary truce on Tuesday, local media reported. According to a report Sunday on Israel’s Channel 10, Jerusalem received intelligence last weekend that the Hamas military wing head had emerged from his bunker during what was then a five-day truce to visit his wife and children. The government had solid evidence that Deif was in a building in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, it reported, and debated whether to launch an attack. Israel ultimately decided to withhold a strike, assuming Hamas would breach the truce, as it had breached several previous truces. It targeted the building last Tuesday night, hours after Hamas resumed rocket fire at Israel.  ... Last week, Lebanese media reported that a telephone call from Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal may have enabled Israeli intelligence to pinpoint Deif, wh...

Mirror: SAS and US special forces forming hunter killer unit to 'smash Islamic State' The plan is for Task Force Black is to attack the Islamic State leadership with decapitation strikes.  It may be similar to the team that went after Zarqawi in Iraq.

NY Times: A Teenager Grappling With Problems and Promise In the weeks before he was shot, Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, showed signs of change and began to speak about religion and the Bible, family members said. There is visual evidence that Brown participated in a strong arm robbery and there is also allegations that he struck a police officer before being  gunned down.  The guy had marijuana in his system to go along with the Swisher Sweets taken from the convenience store. His actions don't suggest he was taking religious principles to heart.  From the start of this mess the media has seemed intent on pushing the "gentle giant" narrative about a guy whose alleged actions suggest he was a bully and a thief.  The reason this is relevant is the "gentle giant" narrative has been used by the race hustlers to excite mob action and the destruction and theft of other people's property.  For the media to go along with a false narrative...

Michael Barone: “About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.” So supposedly said Elihu Root, New York lawyer and secretary of war and of state, and U.S. senator from 1909 to 1915. Today it seems that many liberal “would-be clients” are in desperate need of what Root called “a decent lawyer.” Take Texans for Public Justice, the so-called public interest group that has been pushing for the indictment of Gov. Rick Perry by a grand jury at the urging of special prosecutor Michael McCrum. The basis for the indictment is, in the words of liberal New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait , “unbelievably ridiculous.” The first count says that Perry violated a vaguely worded statute by threatening to veto an appropriation. That, even though the Texas Constitution gives governors the veto power and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protects their right to free speech. The second count states that it was illeg...