SHIVER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats savoring a return from political wilderness are ready to move quickly this week to take the levers of power in a Congress that has been run by Republicans the last 12 years.

On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi will take the gavel as the first woman speaker in the history of the House, and immediately launch a 100 legislative-hour march to quickly put the Democratic stamp on the new Congress.

Before President Bush arrives on Capitol Hill on Jan. 23 for his State of the Union address, House Democrats intend to update ethics rules, raise the minimum wage, implement 9/11 Commission recommendations, cut subsidies to the oil industry, promote stem cell research and make college educations and prescription drugs more affordable.

"Democrats are prepared to govern and ready to lead," said Pelosi

via-my way news

Ford's Midwestern virtues.

Watching all the President Ford coverage, I am struck by the number of times I have heard praise of his small-town- and Midwestern-values; which is of course a more feeble way of praising his small-town- and Midwestern-virtues, but we don’t use this latter and more vigorous word because the oppression of political correctness has, indeed, enfeebled us. But what is striking about these extravagant tributes to virtues (self-reliance, magnanimity, hard work, patriotism) that are altogether real no matter that our manias obscure them, is that the communities which produce them — a great but dwindling arc of towns and small cities which another Midwesterner, Willmoore Kendall, liked to refer to as the “Appalachia-to-the-Rockies” America — are regularly the target in our national media of derision, contempt, and sanctimonious criticism. These censures come from various quarters: from the entertainment media cometh the contempt; from New York the derision; from Washington the sanctimonious criticism. What they generally have in common is ignorance, and a suspicion ungrounded in experience.

read more at-redstate.com

Top Ten Lowlights of The New York Times in 2006
From reporters throwing national security secrets onto the front page to publishers going on liberal rants at graduation ceremonies, we've whittled down the worst from another liberally slanted year in Timesland.



via- Timeswatch

The hanging of Saddam

It's done.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm. He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of defiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power.

France As a "Muslim Power"

As I write, it is exactly a year since the desolate banlieues of France erupted in an orgy of violence, on a scale which had not been seen for generations. At the time, these riots were blamed on social exclusion. Since then, it has become clear that the rioters are not just ‘immigrants’ or ‘youths’, but are first and foremost Muslims. When they set light to a car, their cry is often: ‘Allahu akhbar!’ (’Allah is great!’) [Oddly enough, the same thing supporters of Rep. Keith Ellison shout. —ed.]

The violence, moreover, is endemic and ubiquitous. In 2005, there were 110,000 incidents of urban violence, including 45,000 vehicles burnt out. This year, there has been an average of over 100 incidents a day. Since the riots supposedly subsided last January, some 3,000 police officers are reported to have been injured. France is quite deliberately being made ungovernable.

This ‘French intifada’ was merely the culmination of a process that has turned many suburbs into no-go areas for the police and increasingly for non-Muslims too. In particular, the Islamist rabble-rousers who are behind the insurgency have incited their followers to attack Jews, who are now outnumbered by Muslims in France by at least ten to one.

How has it come to this? In this devastating indictment, the cri de coeur of an Englishman who loves France but is exasperated by the French, the background to this breakdown of civil society gradually emerges. David Pryce-Jones has discovered the explanation in the archives of the French foreign ministry, known after its imposing headquarters, the Quai d’Orsay. The corps diplomatique who have run this institution like a private club - known to initiates simply as ‘la carrière’ - are responsible not only for the decline of French prestige abroad, but also for creating the conditions for the unfolding catastrophe at home.

Like so many misfortunes, this one has its origins in the megalomania of the Bonaparte clan. For more than two centuries, since Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, French diplomacy has been gripped by a delusion of grandeur: the idea of France as une puissance musulmane, ‘a Muslim power’ - a phrase that has a new and sinister echo now.
From LGF

via-

Al Qaeda Sends a Message to Democrats
my father said that you can tell who a person is by who his friends are.

Well.....

Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.

In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats.

"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help.

"And if you don't refrain from the foolish American policy of backing Israel, occupying the lands of Islam and stealing the treasures of the Muslims, then await the same fate," he said.

via-the blotter

Report Says Berger Hid Archive Documents

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.

when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he lied by saying he did not take them, the report said.

Brachfeld's report included an investigator's notes, taken during an interview with Berger. The notes dramatically described Berger's removal of documents during an Oct. 2, 2003, visit to the Archives.

Berger took a break to go outside without an escort while it was dark. He had taken four documents in his pockets.

"He headed toward a construction area. ... Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the Archives and the DOJ (Department of Justice), and did not see anyone," the interview notes said.

He then slid the documents under a construction trailer, according to the inspector general. Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

"He was aware of the risk he was taking," the inspector general's notes said. Berger then returned to the Archives building without fearing the documents would slip out of his pockets or that staff would notice that his pockets were bulging.

The notes said Berger had not been aware that Archives staff had been tracking the documents he was provided because of earlier suspicions from previous visits that he was removing materials. Also, the employees had made copies of some documents.

In October 2003, the report said, an Archives official called Berger to discuss missing documents from his visit two days earlier. The investigator's notes said, "Mr. Berger panicked because he realized he was caught."

The notes said that Berger had "destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash."

After the trash had been picked up, Berger "tried to find the trash collector but had no luck," the notes said.

Significant portions of the inspector general's report were redacted to protect privacy or national security.

via-my way news

“How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few, his precepts! O! ‘tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.” —Benjamin Franklin

Blair to urge Middle East states to rein in Iran

Speaking in the United Arab Emirates, he will underline what has been the theme of his Middle East tour: moderate leaders must be empowered against extremists.

"We must recognize the strategic threat the government of Iran poses, not its people, not possibly all of its ruling elements, but those presently in charge of its policy," he will say, according to extracts of his speech released by his office.

Iran seeks "to pin us back in Lebanon, in
Iraq and in Palestine," he will tell business leaders in Dubai.

"Our response should be to expose what they are doing, build the alliances to prevent it and pin them back across the whole of the region."

He says to do this "we need the open and clear backing of the countries in this region that know better than me what is happening and why."

via-Reuters

Here! Here! for Lord Monckton!

In what The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called "an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences," Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon's funding of a "climate change denial campaign." The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as "deniers," a term usually directed at "Holocaust deniers." Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media.

Responds Lord Monckton, "Sceptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest, 'obfuscate' the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the 'consensus' argument and they compel necessary corrections ... "

Lord Monckton's Churchillian reproof continues, "You acknowledge the effectiveness of the climate sceptics. In so doing, you pay a compliment to the courage of those free-thinking scientists who continue to research climate change independently despite the likelihood of refusal of publication in journals that have taken preconceived positions; the hate mail and vilification from ignorant environmentalists; and the threat of loss of tenure in institutions of learning which no longer make any pretence to uphold or cherish academic freedom."

read the rest here

The Sunday Morning Talk Shows - The Review

Some people still don't understand why military personnel
do what they do for a living.
This exchange between
Senators John Glenn

and Senator Howard Metzenbaum








is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive
impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one
man's explanation of why men and women in the armed
services do what they do for a living.

This is a typical, though sad, example of what
some who have never served think of the military.

Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn):
"How can you run for Senate
when you've never held a real job?"

Senator Glenn (D-Ohio):
"I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps.
I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions.
My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different
occasions. I was in the space program. It wasn't my
checkbook, Howard , it was my life on the line. It was
not a nine-to-five job, where I took my tie off to take the
daily cash receipts to the bank."

"I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day...
to a Veterans ' Hospital and look those men ..
with their mangled bodies in the eye, and tell them
they didn't hold a job!

You go with me to the Space Program at NASA and go,

as I have gone, to the widows and orphans
of Ed White, Gus Grissom , and Roger Chaffee...
and you look those kids in the eye and tell them
that their dads didn't hold a job.

You go with me on Memorial Day , and you stand in
Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends
buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch
those waving flags;

You stand there, and you think about this nation,
and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job?

What about you?"

For those who don't remember ..
During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney
representing the Communist Party in the USA .

Now he's a Senator!

The 1st Amendment is not a suicide pact

"Either before we lose a city, or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up (terrorists') capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech [protections] and to go after people who want to kill us -- to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us." Newt Gingrich

via-Newt.org

It’s settled then:

Alec speaks!

We listen?

“There is a way to defeat terrorism while building new and better alliances in the Arab world. It will be an enormously complex and difficult diplomatic puzzle. But the first step might be oddly simple. Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform U.S. intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat. I think our hopes must begin there.” —actor Alec Baldwin

Illegal Workers Arrested In 6-State ID Theft Sweep

It's about time!

Federal agents targeting illegal immigrants raided meatpacking plants in six states yesterday, arresting hundreds of workers on the uncommon charge of identity theft and shutting down the world's second-largest meat processing company for much of the day.

About 1,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with search warrants entered plants owned by Swift & Co., of Greeley, Colo., charging that "large numbers" of workers illegally assumed the identities of U.S. citizens or legal residents by using their Social Security numbers to get work, ICE officials said.

By Spencer S. Hsu and Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01



via-Washington post

Wise words from Victor Davis Hanson

What worries me most about this country is not the threat of Islamic fascism, but this strange new hysteria that erupts at any suggestion something has not gone quite according to script, or that perseverance and doggedness are needed for eventual success.

A reminder of that is to read of the attacks on Lincoln in the months before Sherman took Atlanta, or what Churchill heard in the late 1930s, and then after the fall of Singapore, or the madness that broke out in Washington after the Chinese crossed the Yalu when our troops had been promised to “be home for Thanksgiving.”

Reading the columnists of the New York Times might make one forget that the present managers of a venerable newspaper inherited a noble legacy and have nearly ruined it within a mere twenty years—losing readers, issuing as many daily retractions as news scoops, and still not fully recovered from the Jason Blair scandal.

Watching CBS news requires amnesia, since it is impossible to take it seriously after Dan Rather serially, almost nightly, assured millions that a forged document that had fooled him was real. When I see a Reuters photo I look instinctively for signs of photo shopping. AP dispatches from the Middle East I assume are primarily the impressions of bought Arab stringers, ghost written by sympathetic Western journalists.

read the whole article - here

Iran president says Israel's days are numbered

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.

"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.

"Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added.

Holocaust Conference Begins in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -By NASSER KARIMI

Iran hosted Holocaust deniers from around the world Monday at a conference examining whether the Nazi genocide took place, a meeting Israel's prime minister condemned as a "sick phenomenon."

The 67 participants from 30 countries included former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Holocaust skeptics who have been prosecuted in Europe for questioning whether 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis or whether gas chambers were ever used.

"The number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp could be about 2,007," Australian Frederick Toben told the conference, according to a Farsi translation of his remarks. "The railroad to the camp did not have enough capacity to transfer large numbers of Jews," said Toben, who was jailed in 1999 in Germany for casting doubt on the Holocaust.

via-My way news