How about a federal 'nice crimes' law?

Now that the left has ascended to power in Washington, San Fran Nan and her munchkins have declared that adding "sexual orientation" to existing federal "hate crimes" law will rise to the top of the congressional priority list.
But wait. Why not first pass a "nice crimes" law, at the federal level and also in some states? >LINK

Can We Talk?

In Iraq, we’ve tried to fight the most civilized “light footprint” war of all time. We made sure everyone knew our beef was only with Saddam Hussein, as if he were a one-man militia — no Sunni Baathists supporting him, no Arab terrorists colluding, and no Shiite jihadists hating us just on principle. >LINK

Would you let your child take this flight?

You are sitting in the concourse of an airport, preparing for your flight, when out of the corner of your eye, you spot six Arab men praying loudly in Arabic.
"Okay," you say to yourself, "that's a bit disquieting. But praying isn't terrorism."
You glance at your watch. It's time to board the plane. Sure enough, there's the boarding announcement. Suddenly, you hear the six Arab men chanting loudly. "Allah! Allah! Allah!" >LINK

Cold set to snap city record

The arctic deep freeze trapping Calgary is on track to break a 110-year-old weather record today, but the bitter cold is expected to ease in the coming days.
With a forecast low of -31C today, Calgary could break the -27C record set on this day in 1896. >LINK

Sharia law is spreading

Islamic sharia law is gaining an increasing foothold in parts of Britain, a report claims.
Sharia, derived from several sources including the Koran, is applied to varying degrees in predominantly Muslim countries but it has no binding status in Britain. >LINK

Britain wants UK break up

A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone. >LINK

More corruption seen among border agents

Agents fighting crime on the border are dealing with increasing corruption in their ranks. Among those facing charges are immigration, customs and border patrol agents.
All were caught working for smugglers in El Paso who are supposed to protect our border are increasingly taking bribes instead. >LINK

How the imams terrorized an airliner

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials. Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix. "I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department. >LINK

Women talk three times as much as men

It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.
In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man. >LINK

Biden: Blame Immigration Woes on Mexico

Sen. Joe Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's incoming chairman, wants to get tough with Mexico, calling it an "erstwhile democracy" with a "corrupt system" responsible for illegal immigration and drug problems in the U.S. >LINK

Reuniting the conservative base

It seems like everyone wants to be like Ronald Reagan these days -- at least those with presidential aspirations. Gov. Mitt Romney says he's a Reagan Republican, and so does John McCain -- amazingly. Some Democrats even identify with the Gipper.
Indeed, mainstream conservatives, present company included, believe Republicans should revert to Reagan conservatism. But this will be easier said than done given the different set of problems facing the nation today, >LINK

Democrats Want to Keep Pork

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic candidates have complained loudly about "special interest earmarks” in Congress – pork barrel spending projects inserted into bills, often anonymously.
But now that the Democrats have won control of Congress, it appears doubtful that lawmakers will seriously clamp down on the practice, according to a report in the New York Times. >LINK

Is Putin being set up?

PARIS -- Whoever poisoned Alexander Litvinenko had two goals: a long and lingering death for the KGB defector and pointing a finger of accusation for his killing right in the face of Vladimir Putin.
Which leads me to believe Putin had nothing to do with it. >LINK

Church feels betrayed by Katrina couple

MEMPHIS, TENN. — A church that wanted to do something special for Hurricane Katrina victims gave a $75,000 house, free and clear, to a couple who said they were left homeless by the storm. But the couple turned around and sold the place without ever moving in, and went back to New Orleans.
"Take it up with God," Joshua Thompson told a TV reporter after it was learned that he and the woman he identified as his wife had flipped the home for $88,000. >LINK

Group Drops Plans to Protest Wal-Mart

NEW YORK (AP) - A conservative group that had called on supporters to boycott Wal-Mart's post-Thanksgiving Day sales to protest the retailer's support of gay-rights groups withdrew its objections Tuesday.
Wal-Mart said it would make changes in the way it contributed to such groups, earmarking funds only for specific causes it supported, such as workplace equality, rather than giving unrestricted gifts. >LINK

Teachers Emphasize the Indians' Side

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back. >LINKS

U.S. to Require Passports for Nearly All

Nearly all air travelers entering the U.S. will be required to show passports beginning Jan. 23, including returning Americans and people from Canada and other nations in the Western Hemisphere.
The date was disclosed Tuesday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in an interview with The Associated Press. The Homeland Security Department plans to announce the change on Wednesday >LINK

God' erased? Suit could force city name changes

If an atheist who contends "In God We Trust" violates religious rights under his own "First Amendment Church of True Science" wins in court, the changes in the U.S. could be radical, says a lawyer defending the national motto. >LINK

U.S. press should count its blessings

In between breathless condemnations of the Bush administration for stifling its free speech, endless court filings demanding classified and sensitive information from the military and intelligence agencies, and self-pitying media industry confabs bemoaning their hemorrhaging circulations (with the exception of the New York Post), my colleagues in the American media don't have much time to give thanks. Allow me: >LINK

H. Paul Rico a gifted gangster

Memo to the national news media: Please, in all future stories about Rep. Alcee Hastings, stop referring to “the FBI agent” who set him up in a bribery sting when Hastings was a federal judge.
The guy who brought down Hastings wasn’t just an FBI agent, you know. He was also a gangster. He died in 2004 under guard, in custody, indicted for the murder of his boss two months before he bagged Alcee Hastings. >LINK

TEEN GOES NUCLEAR

In the basement of his parents' Oakland Township home, tucked away in an area most aren't privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build -- a large, intricate machine that , on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion >LINK

Al Gore Unveils Solution to Global Warming

Washington, DC—Al Gore is about to launch a product that could potentially cut greenhouse gases by an estimated 21% and may also save the world, if it's not too late already.
The product, an anti gas liquid, which will be marketed as 'Al's Anti-Gas Cow Formula', was developed by Al Gore himself. Tipper Gore helped with the testing of the product. >LINK

Free-for-All on Science and Religion

Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told. >LINK

Compromised

During the recent off-year elections, the president repeatedly pointed to the booming economy and noted that his tax cuts were responsible. With growth strong and unemployment low despite the ending of the stock-market bubble, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq, he had every reason to be proud. Moreover, both economic theory and the actual timing of the economic revival support his claims regarding the tax cuts. >LINK

US Communists Declare Election Victory

New York (11-20-06) – "The right-wing stranglehold on Congress has been broken," declared Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party USA’s (CPUSA) political action commission, to a meeting of its 81-person National Committee this past weekend. >LINK

Polygamists Fight to Be Seen

SALT LAKE CITY -- In her battle to legalize polygamy, the only thing Valerie hasn't revealed is her last name. The mother of eight has been on national TV; her photo along with that of her two "sister-wives" has graced the front cover of a glossy magazine dedicated to "today's plural marriages." >LINK

Lebanese Cabinet Minister Is Killed

Prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, his Phalange Party radio station and Lebanon's official news agency reported.
The slaying will certainly heighten political tensions in Lebanon, where the leading Muslim Shiite party Hezbollah has threatened to topple the government if it does not get a bigger say in Cabinet decision-making. >LINK

We Don’t Like to Hear That Here

Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish is “too controversial” to speak at Brown University, where her invitation to speak was just taken back. The title of her new book about says it all Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror . Good luck with that one. Here, where we’ve been attacked by jihadists, we don’t like to hear about the enemy we face. >LINK

Homosexual Animals Out of the Closet

From male killer whales that ride the dorsal fin of another male to female bonobos that rub their genitals together, the animal kingdom tolerates all kinds of lifestyles.
A first-ever museum display, "Against Nature?," which opened last month at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality. >LINK

Liberal Professor Targeted Me From Day One

A Christian social work student who took Missouri State University to court after a liberal professor targeted her for refusing to lobby for homosexual adoption said Thursday she and the teacher had clashed over her beliefs from day one.Emily Brooker was vindicated when the university agreed to an out-of-court settlement, and the professor was disciplined. >LINK

'Bush doesn't think America should be an actual place'

"People have to understand what we're talking about here. The president of the United States is an internationalist," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. "He is going to do what he can to create a place where the idea of America is just that – it's an idea. It's not an actual place defined by borders. I mean this is where this guy is really going." >LINK

As Evil An Idea As You Can Get

Charlie Rangel shouldn't be pilloried solely for suggesting a return to the military draft. I remember a lot of Conservatives expressing anger at The American Left for attempting to hang Ronald Reagan from a lamppost over making us have to go to the post office and register for a non-existent one. They should have expressed such anger. A military conscription program can serve a vital purpose. >LINK

More than Peace in Our Time

Just when you think no one can come up with a genuine modern analogy to Nazi Germany, someone does. Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the conservative Likud Party in Israel, offers a scary and wholly plausible comparison. "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany," he told the annual General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities the other day in Los Angeles. "When someone tells you he is going to exterminate you, believe him — and stop him." >LINK

Primer on Islamic Imperialism

One of the alleged sins held against the West by Islamic radicalism – which has declared war on us through Osama bin Laden’s fatwa issued in 1998 in London – is imperialism: the imperialism of the Dutch, the British and the French from the 17th to the 20th centuries. (For some reason, Russian imperialism in Central Asia gets a pass – so far.) Israel is allegedly an outpost of European imperialism. >LINK

Bye-Bye to Secret Spy Program?

Republicans who limped back to Washington for a lame duck congressional session last week found a host of marching orders from President Bush, but perhaps none more urgent than this: Before Democrats take control of Congress in January, they must pass legislation authorizing the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. >LINK

Will the West Stumble?

The global sale of PlayStation 3 or a world in Levis is only the glitzy veneer of civilization. That shared taste almost unnoticeably hinges on a powerful and liberal United States that keeps the peace and remains the spiritual and intellectual fountainhead of an entire global system--one ultimately dependent on American core ideas like freedom and tolerance. What pressures China to liberalize, protects the creativity of Japan, assures Europeans they can be postmodernists in safety, and guarantees that the world commerce is protected from both old and new piracy is a confident and strong United States. >LINK

Iran's next spiritual leader

In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state. >LINK

Iran experiments linking nuclear and ballistic missile

A report by IAEA, prepared for the Nov 22-23 Board of Governors meeting, was leaked to press Tuesday. AP reports that it saw the 4-page report. The same article refers to the IAEA document as a summary, by the way. The headline of the AP story, and of other stories about the report, highlighted the report's description of recent discovery of plutonium and enriched uranium in Iranian radwaste.
>LINK

The climate is just like Bambi

The Los Angeles Times today has a story by Robert Lee Hotz that reports on a new scientific article reviewing what’s going on with the Arctic climate. The team finds that the Arctic has been warming up, but that there are now some signs that it may be starting to cool down. >BAMBI

Crash victim missed NYC trip

Last month, Bob Cartwright learned that his friend and personal pilot died in the plane crash that killed a New York Yankees pitcher. Cartwright died Tuesday at the age of 68 with two other men in a plane that crashed into the shoreline of Big Bear Lake, which is near his mountain home in nearby Sugarloaf. The twin-engine plane had just taken off from Big Bear City Airport and witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from it. >LINK

Chocolate milk good for athletes

DENVER - It comes in only one flavor — no Fierce Grape or Riptide Rush available — and you certainly won't see your favorite basketball star gulping it down on the sideline during a timeout. But a group of scientists recently discovered that one of the most effective drinks to help athletes recover after exercise is the same thing moms across America have been giving their kids for years. A simple glass of chocolate milk. >LINK

Nevada Town Bars Foreign Flags

The town council of Pahrump, which lies in the Mojave Desert west of Las Vegas, voted 3-2 on Tuesday to make flying any foreign flag above the U.S. flag or alone an offense punishable by a $50 fine and 30 hours' community service. >LINK

English as official language

“The voters in Arizona are sick and tired of the federal government doing nothing on immigration,” said Arizona State Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Phoenix, in explaining why she thought the measure passed in Arizona. >LINK Arizona voters last week approved Proposition 103, a constitutional amendment making English the official language of the state. Passing similar laws were the city councils of Taneytown, Md.; Farmers Branch, Texas, and the town board of Pahrump, Nev.

God 'fat black dyke'

A book that family organizations in Canada had warned about just weeks ago found its way into the Wal-Mart stock list, and while it calls God a "fat black dyke" and provides how-to information for same-sex experimentation, the store said it's the "stuff youth need to know." >LINK

Glenn Beck

More people need to see this. Hopefully it will help shake off the shackles of complacency and get our collective heads out of the sand. Favorite quote ... from a Holocaust survivor. "When someone says they want to exterminate you...take them seriously." >Link to Video

ISLAMISTS DREAM BIG

Calling the election "the beginning of the end for Bush," Ayatollah Imami Kashani told a Friday congregation in Tehran that the Americans were learning the same lesson that last summer's war in Lebanon taught the Israelis. >LINK

Mutant flu 'will kill 50 million'

BIRD flu is mutating into a human virus which could kill 50 MILLION people, scientists warned last night.
The terrifying discovery means that medics’ worst fears have been realised.
And Department of Health chiefs say an outbreak could kill at least 300,000 Brits — mainly kids, mums-to-be and the elderly.

Pollution could combat global warming

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Air pollution may be just the thing to fight global warming, some scientists say.
Prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate, said a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere could act as a "shade" from the sun's rays and help cool the planet. >LINK

Two N.J. Women 'Parents' on Birth Certificate

Two women will be listed as parents on the birth certificate of a baby born this week in New Jersey, one of the first implications of a state Supreme Court ruling that gives same-sex couples access to the same rights as married couples. >LINKS

Jonestown tragedy had liberal roots

This week marks the deaths of 913 people, including 276 children, in the Guyanan jungle. Most of them died by their own hand, voluntarily drinking a cyanide-laced grape punch (not Kool Aid, contrary to the idiomatic expression). The ones who wouldn’t kill themselves were shot. Babies had the lethal concoction forced into their mouths with syringes.
Orchestrating the 1978 holocaust was “Reverend” Jim Jones, founder of the People’s Temple. >LINK