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McCain has very little credibility with me. This is the same McCain who “came around” on illegal immigration after the conservative uproar last year (muttering “I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it”). Like illegal immigration, his heart is not really committed to fix the energy issue; he’s throwing conservatives some crumbs and hoping they’ll be dumb enough to think he means it. Note that he still opposes drilling in ANWR and supports cap and trade (i.e. higher energy prices) to “fight” global warming.” He’s trying to court both conservatives and envirokooks. Count me out.

– Smitty, 6-22-08

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Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121374864081982763.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

McCain’s Energy Drill

June 18, 2008; Page A14
Behold, a miracle: Public anger over $4 gas is forcing at least some of our political class to confront their energy contradictions. Last week, Republicans Jim Walsh of New York and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland — two longstanding opponents of offshore drilling — asked for a mulligan. We can now add John McCain to the roll: In a speech in Houston yesterday, the Senator finally came out in favor of increasing domestic energy supplies.

This is progress, even if it did come dressed in some of Mr. McCain’s familiar policy confusions. In the past, the Republican has been a chief opponent of opening up the vast U.S. offshore regions and other federal lands where oil-and-gas exploration and production are prohibited, especially the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But oil at $135 a barrel is a powerful political motivator.

The candidate now says we must drill for more domestic oil “as a matter of fairness to the American people.” He did not back off from his sentimentality about ANWR — leaving off-limits nearly half of the proven reserves of the entire U.S. at 10.4 billion barrels. But he did propose to open most of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to development, so long as the nearby states were in favor. This could open up as much as 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil on the Outer Continental Shelf to development. That’s a big deal considering that we now consume nearly 10 billion barrels a year.

Mr. McCain also picked up on a good idea from the Bush years, in which states would share the royalties generated by offshore development. In 2006, Congress lifted prohibitions on leasing a narrow strip in the Gulf of Mexico, splitting 37.5% of oil-industry returns with Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. By filling state treasuries, this arrangement could build political constituencies for increased domestic production, and is attracting interest among the Southern seaboard states.

In 2007, at the urging of Democratic Virginia Governor Tim Kaine and the legislature, the Interior Department tried to open deepwater areas off the state to seismic testing. Yet Congress has so far refused to appropriate funds for even this preliminary step. Democratic leaders and the green lobby remain opposed to any exploration whatsoever, no matter how minimal the environmental disturbance from modern equipment.

This obstructionism may now be tested. We hear — and hope — that as early as this week President Bush may lift a 1990 executive order that prohibits offshore drilling. That would leave Congress as the only obstacle to drilling policies that would help alleviate record-high gas prices. Since those prices are hurting the GOP politically almost as much as they’re hurting consumers economically, Mr. McCain’s drilling reversal sets him up for a useful debate with Barack Obama.

For a candidate claiming the mantle of “change,” Mr. Obama’s energy policy might as well have been drafted in the 1970s. He supports punitive new windfall profits taxes on Big Oil, which won’t do anything for supply; as well as at least $10 billion a year in new subsidies for “alternative” energy technologies, which may take years or decades to pan out, if they ever do.

Mr. Obama’s hostility to new drilling relates directly to his larger hostility to all carbon energy. Last week, he told a CNBC interviewer that his only objection to higher energy prices was how fast they had risen. He said, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.” His climate-change tax-and-regulation scheme known as cap and trade is designed to raise gasoline and other energy prices, albeit in a politically stealthy fashion.

Mr. McCain would have an easier time making a contrast with Mr. Obama if he didn’t also support a softer version of cap and trade himself, on top of all his other green genuflections. He also needs to get his bearings on the reason oil prices are high. It’s not merely rising demand from China and India, and it certainly isn’t because “some people on Wall Street” are speculating in the futures market, as Mr. McCain claimed yesterday.

Mr. McCain seems to lack a basic understanding of how markets work and so is often swayed by such populist nostrums. He would have been better off mentioning the Federal Reserve and Bush Administration’s weak dollar policy, which has sent all commodity prices soaring across the board since last August. By rightly blaming inflation, he would also have put himself on the side of the middle class the way Ronald Reagan did in the 1970s. That’s a wiser kind of populism.

No matter how far the country progresses in “the great turn away from carbon-emitting fuels,” as Mr. McCain put it, the truth is that fossil fuels will remain indispensable for decades. The U.S. Energy Information Agency forecasts that over the next 25 years, oil, coal and natural gas will provide roughly the same 86% of the world’s energy mix as they do today. Mr. McCain’s new willingness to drill is at least a welcome bow to that reality.

– Lynn Lavner

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The Marines referenced in the story below should have instead just blew up some car bombs in a church, mosque or other public place, killing scores of innocents - - there would have been far less outrage.

And I sure hope the words “In God We Trust” have been removed from all currency that the US taxpayers have so generously sent to Iraq - - - that would obviously also be “proselytizing.”

– Smitty, 5-321-08

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Source: http://www.twincities.com/ci_9421667

Marines make hasty apology for Bible coins

New York Times

Article Last Updated: 05/29/2008 11:15:30 PM CDT

BAGHDAD — A U.S. Marine guarding a checkpoint on the western outskirts of Fallujah handed out coins with an Arabic translation of a biblical verse to Iraqis entering the city, angering residents and city leaders who denounced it as a serious affront to Islam and an attempt to convert them to Christianity.

As the Marines quickly apologized Thursday for the episode, Sunni guerrillas struck several times in northern Iraq, killing at least 19 people in two suicide bombings. Gunmen near Tikrit also used a water tanker as a Trojan horse to attack an Iraqi checkpoint, but Iraqi security forces repelled the assault and killed 14 attackers.

In Fallujah, the Marines pledged to discipline the Marine who handed out coins inscribed with one of the Bible’s best-known verses, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

U.S. military officials in Baghdad emphasized Thursday that military regulations barred service members in Iraq from “proselytizing any religion, faith or practices.”

The episode risked gravely offending residents of Fallujah, the most fortified bastion of Sunni guerrillas and religious extremists before a Marines campaign in November 2004.

Fallujah long after remained a deadly place for U.S. service members, though it has calmed in the past year, after the Marines and local leaders banned vehicles and instituted security and screening measures.

But guerrillas still covet the city, and there were fears they would use the episode to rally support.

Mike Isho, a Marines spokesman, confirmed the incident but said it involved only one Marine who handed out a limited number of coins. The Marine, he said, had been removed from his duties and taken to a base east of Fallujah.

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The story below is what happens when you treat terrorism the way that liberals prefer: as a “law enforcement” issue, using negotiation, the UN and “international diplomacy” instead of our military (given we are at war with these savages). In other words “fighting” terrorism by relying on lawyers, legal systems, bureaucrats, our State Dept, and our “friends” in the Mideast for “justice” ………. instead of our Special Forces and Gitmo.

Anyone care to defend the wonderful success of this “law enforcement” model to the wives, parents and children of the 17 USS Cole sailors killed by these vermin ??

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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24449741/

Probe of USS Cole bombing unravels
U.S. efforts frustrated as plotters are freed in Yemen

By Craig Whitlock
The Washington Post
updated 2:59 a.m. CT, Sun., May. 4, 2008

Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he’s still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections.

Two suspects, described as the key organizers, were captured outside Yemen and are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Many details of their alleged involvement remain classified. It is unclear when — or if — they will be tried by the military.

The collapse of the Cole investigation offers a revealing case study of the U.S. government’s failure to bring al-Qaeda operatives and their leaders to justice for some of the most devastating attacks on American targets over the past decade.

A week after the Cole bombing, President Bill Clinton vowed to hunt down the plotters and promised, “Justice will prevail.” In March 2002, President Bush said his administration was cooperating with Yemen to prevent it from becoming “a haven for terrorists.” He added: “Every terrorist must be made to live as an international fugitive with no place to settle or organize, no place to hide, no governments to hide behind and not even a safe place to sleep.”

Since then, Yemen has refused to extradite Badawi and an accomplice to the United States, where they have been indicted on murder charges. Other Cole conspirators have been freed after short prison terms. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq.

To this day, al-Qaeda trumpets the attack on the Cole as one of its greatest military victories. It remains an improbable story: how two suicide bombers smiled and waved to unsuspecting U.S. sailors in Aden’s harbor as they pulled their tiny fishing boat alongside the $1 billion destroyer and blew a gaping hole in its side.

Despite the initial promises of accountability, only limited public inquiries took place in Washington, unlike the extensive investigations that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Basic questions remain about which individuals and countries played a role in the assault on the Cole.

Some officials acknowledged that pursuing the Cole investigation became less of a political priority with the passage of time. A new administration took power three months after the bombing. Then came Sept. 11.

“During the first part of the Bush administration, no one was willing to take ownership of this,” said Roger W. Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who helped oversee the White House’s response to the Cole attack. “It didn’t happen on their watch. It was the forgotten attack.”

A clash of cultures and wills

The day after the attack, a planeload of armed FBI agents arrived in Aden. But they quickly ran into resistance from Yemeni officials, who didn’t like the idea of foreigners operating on their soil and telling them what to do.

The Cole bombing represented an enormous political embarrassment for Yemen, which had lobbied the U.S. Navy to use the port of Aden as a refueling stop. As the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen was also unprepared for some of the FBI’s demands.

“This is a country that didn’t even have fingerprint powder, and now they’re dealing with the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world,” said Barbara K. Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen at the time. “DNA is a complete fantasy to them.”

Bodine said the FBI was slow to trust Yemeni authorities, and kept the U.S. Embassy in the dark as well, hampering the probe. She described the Yemeni government as generally cooperative, but said some officials dug in their heels and “certainly didn’t like us.”

The FBI was “dealing with a bureaucracy and a culture they didn’t understand,” she said. “Yemen operates on a different timeline than we do. We had one group working on a New York minute, and another on a 4,000-year-old history.”

The FBI and some White House officials, in turn, suspected Bodine was too sympathetic toward the Yemenis. The FBI special agent in charge, John O’Neill, was forced to return to New York after butting heads too many times with the ambassador.

Michael A. Sheehan, then the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, said both sides were to blame.

“Basically, I was in the middle of this thing,” he recalled. “I felt both sides were over the top — the FBI in demanding complete autonomy in a foreign country and State in being too protective of the host country. And eventually it just turned into a clash of wills.”

“Sometimes, when you deal with a host country, you can push too hard and it backfires and you get less cooperation,” Sheehan added. “We needed to find a middle ground, and we had difficulty getting there.”

Two in U.S. custody

Amid the friction, U.S. and Yemeni investigators soon identified the ringleader of the attack as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent who served as al-Qaeda’s operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula.

At the time, Yemeni authorities insisted that Nashiri had fled the country before the Cole bombing. But a senior Yemeni official said that was not the case and that Yemeni investigators had located Nashiri in Taizz, a city about 90 miles northwest of Aden, soon after the attack. The official said Nashiri spent several months in Taizz, where he received high-level protection from the government. “We knew where he was, but we could not arrest him,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation.

Nashiri eventually left Yemen to prepare other attacks on U.S. targets in the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials said. He was captured in the United Arab Emirates in November 2002 and handed over to the CIA. He was detained in the CIA’s secret network of overseas prisons until he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006.

In a hearing at Guantanamo last year, Nashiri said he confessed to masterminding the Cole attack only because he had been tortured.

“From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me,” he said, according to a transcript. “I just said those things to make the people happy.”

Another al-Qaeda leader, Tawfiq bin Attash, who also played an organizing role in the Sept. 11 hijackings, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in May 2003 and confessed last year to overseeing the Cole plot. In a separate appearance before a Guantanamo tribunal, he said he had helped buy the explosives and the motorboat. He also said he had recruited operatives for the plot but was in Afghanistan at the time of the attack.

Bin Attash and Nashiri were both named unindicted co-conspirators in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Cole attack. A decision was made not to indict them because pending criminal charges could have forced the CIA or the Pentagon to give up custody of the men, U.S. officials said in interviews.

A special deal

After a long trial, a Yemeni court condemned Badawi, the organizer, to death in 2004, although his sentence was reduced on appeal to 15 years in prison. Four other conspirators were given prison sentences ranging from five to 10 years.

The convicts were sent to a maximum security prison in Sanaa, the capital. They didn’t stay there long.

It was Badawi’s second successful jailbreak. Three years earlier, he had wormed out of another maximum security prison in Aden; Yemeni officials said he had picked a hole through the bathroom wall.

Badawi surrendered about 20 months after his second escape. But Yemeni authorities cut him a deal. They said they would let him remain free if he would help them search for the other al-Qaeda fugitives.

The arrangement was kept secret until Yemeni newspapers reported shortly afterward that Badawi had been spotted at his home in Aden.

U.S. officials said they were stunned. After his first escape, Badawi had been indicted in U.S. District Court in New York for the Cole killings, and the United States had posted a $5 million bounty for his capture. But U.S. officials couldn’t get their hands on him. “This was someone who was implicated in the Cole bombing,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at the time. “He needs to be in jail.”

U.S. officials withheld $20 million in aid to Yemen and canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yemeni officials said they quickly put Badawi back behind bars. But reports persist that his incarceration remains a day-to-day affair.

In December, a Yemeni newspaper reported that Badawi had again been seen roaming free in public. One source close to the Cole investigation said there is evidence that Badawi is allowed to come and go, despite the periodic requests by U.S. officials to inspect his prison cell.

Diplomatic relations soured further in February, when the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa learned that Fahd al-Quso, another Cole conspirator, had been secretly freed nine months before. Like Badawi, Quso faces U.S. charges in the Cole case and has a $5 million bounty on his head.

‘Something . . . doesn’t smell right’

U.S. officials have renewed their demands that Badawi and Quso be extradited so they can stand trial in New York.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III flew to Sanaa last month to deliver the message personally to Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Yemen has refused, citing a constitutional ban on extraditing its citizens.

“Unfortunately, we now have a stalemate,” said Foreign Minister Abubaker al-Qirbi.

Qirbi said the dispute was a politically sensitive one, with many Yemenis opposed to helping the Bush administration. He defended the tactic of allowing the Cole plotters to go free in exchange for help in tracking down other terrorist suspects. “This is a normal practice,” he said. “Everybody makes deals with anybody who cooperates, not just in Yemen, but in the United States.”

Yemen’s interior minister, Rashad al-Alimi, said the deal-cutting was necessary because al-Qaeda has rebuilt its networks in Yemen and is targeting the government.

“Our battle with al-Qaeda is a long one,” he said. “It isn’t our battle only. Our tragedy — and what makes things worse — is that al-Qaeda is united. And our coalition is divided, even though we have a common enemy.”

Some Yemenis have questioned whether their government has other motives. One senior Yemeni official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Badawi and other al-Qaeda members have a long relationship with Yemen’s intelligence agencies and were recruited in the past to target political opponents.

Khaled al-Anesi, an attorney for some of the Cole defendants, said Yemen had rushed to convict them. But he said he is still mystified by the government’s subsequent handling of the case.

“There’s something that doesn’t smell right,” he said. “It was all very strange. After these people were convicted in unfair trials, all of a sudden it was announced that they had escaped. And then the government announced they had surrendered, but we still don’t know how they escaped or if they had help.”

Hamoud al-Hitar, a former Supreme Court justice, said the trials were fair. But he suggested that the government had turned lenient because the Cole defendants had participated in a “dialogue and reconciliation program” designed to de-radicalize al-Qaeda members.

Hitar, who oversees the program, claimed that 98 percent of graduates have remained nonviolent. Asked about two Cole suspects who escaped and went to Iraq to become suicide bombers, Hitar shrugged. “Iraq was not part of the dialogue program,” he said.

A lawsuit and a rebuff

Relatives of the 17 sailors who died on the Cole said they are furious at Yemen for releasing the plotters. But they expressed equal disdain for their own government.

The families have fought for years to obtain information from the State, Defense and Justice departments about their inquiries into the attack. “We never really got anyplace,” said Andrew C. Hall, an attorney for the relatives.

With few other options, family members filed a civil lawsuit in 2004 against the government of Sudan, alleging that it had provided support for al-Qaeda over the years and therefore was also liable for the Cole attack. Last July, a federal judge in Norfolk, Va., ruled in their favor and ordered Sudan to pay $7.96 million in damages. (Yemen could not be sued because, unlike Sudan, it is not listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department.)

John P. Clodtfelter Jr. of Mechanicsville, Va., whose son Kenneth died on the Cole, said the families have tried to meet with Bush to press for more action.

“I was just flat told that he wouldn’t meet with us,” Clodtfelter said. “Before him, President Clinton promised we’d go out and get these people, and of course we never did. I’m sorry, but it’s just like the lives of American servicemen aren’t that important.”

Staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.

He’s not too bright - he watches The Three Stooges and takes notes.

- Unknown

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A nation with $100 Trillion in debt or unfunded liabilities ………. and THIS is who voters are supposed to turn to for fiscal sanity ?? THIS is supposed to be the “conservative” party ?? A party so addicted to pork that it can’t even agree to moratorium on earmarks. What would Goldwater or Reagan say ??

I’ll either be sitting home in November or considering voting libertarian to send a “I’m fed up” message.

– Smitty, 5-4-08

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Source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2008/05/03/gop_loves_earmarks

GOP Loves Earmarks

By Robert D. Novak
Saturday, May 3, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A recent secret survey of the House Republican minority by the party’s whip organization showed a two-to-one margin opposed to imposing a moratorium on earmarks.

House Republican John Boehner, who personally sponsors no earmarks, has indicated the party’s position should be based on what GOP House members want. That led to the whip check.

Reformers had contemplated calling for a vote on earmarks by a closed-door session of the House Republican Conference, assuming it would be difficult for many members to vote no. But the lopsided outcome of the whip check dissuaded reformers from requesting a vote.

“I may not have been the greatest president, but I’ve had the most fun eight years.”

– Bill Clinton

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Do you still want to see the cost of fuel go up and up and pay higher & higher taxes year after year so that we can “fight” global warming ??

Are you sure ???

– Smitty, 4-27-08

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Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-5013480,00.html

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

– From the Book “Disorder in the American Courts” (a collection of things people have actually said in court)

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More proof the Stupid Party made a massive mistake selecting the Capital of the People’s Republic of MN as the site for their convention in September: Local leftist lawyers are giving free legal advice to the demonstrators who plan the trash the convention (which the taxpayer will have to clean up). They’re being advised as to what to do if they are “questioned, detained or arrested” during the chaos they hope to incite.

I have some top notch “double-secret” advice far superior to anything they’ll hear from the local brownshirt-enablers: Avoid being questioned, detained or arrested” in the first place. It’s really very easy. All you have to do is ………….

1) If you want to take time away from your 9-5 job to protest (giggle), do so peacefully (THAT is a constitutional right)

2) Act your age instead of your political IQ (inciting anarchy is NOT a constitutional right)

3) Set a goal of trying to bathe at least once a week (optional)

4) Get a job (optional)

If you do the above it will minimize the adult supervision required. The police and taxpayer won’t have to babysit you.

Thank you for your cooperation.

– Smitty, 4-27-08

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Source: http://www.twincities.com/ci_9018927

Demonstrators get legal briefing

Peace activists, students and others who plan to demonstrate during the Republican National Convention learned Tuesday what they can do if they run into problems.

A group called the Coldsnap Legal Collective told about 30 people at St. Paul’s Macalester College what they should do if they are questioned, detained or arrested. The group was formed in January to create a network of legal support for protesters.

Among other things, Coldsnap trains people on legal rights, jail solidarity and consequences in the event of an arrest.

The Republican National Convention will be at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul from Sept. 1 through Sept. 4.

— Associated Press

Now they say that coffee is habit forming. Hey, I’ve been drinking coffee every morning for the past 30 years and haven’t found it habit forming !!

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Starbucks has made a ton of $$$ in the US selling their product in what essentially is a free-market economy (at least when it comes to coffee). Yet they apparently find the phrase ‘Laissez Faire’ offensive (either due to economic illiteracy or to stupidity).

How’s that for hypocrisy ??

OK, fine. It’s time for some ‘Laissez Faire’ Economics 101: From now on I will voluntarily refuse to give Starbucks a dime; I will take my business elsewhere and encourage everyone who loves liberty to do likewise.

Make sense now ??

– Smitty, 4-20-08

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Source: http://s.wsj.net/article/SB120752454414093553.html

Starbucks and ‘Laissez Faire’
By DAVID BOAZ
April 7, 2008; Page A12

Laissez-faire. It’s a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don’t try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card.

The cards are supposed be personalized to reflect customers’ tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java.

But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company’s Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase “Laissez Faire” be printed on his card. A few days later he was informed that the company couldn’t issue such a card because the wording violated company policy.

Starbucks’s company policy is this: “We review each Card before printing it to make sure it meets our personalization policy. We accept most personalization requests, but we can’t honor every one. Some requests may contain trademarks that we don’t have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate (such as threatening remarks, derogatory terms, or overtly political commentary) or wouldn’t want to see on Starbucks-branded products.”

Is the phrase “laissez-faire” threatening? Only to officious bureaucracy, I would think. So, it must be that the phrase is considered to be “inappropriate” by corporate Starbucks.

But why should it be considered inappropriate? The phrase itself is an imperative. It’s French for “leave us alone,” more or less. And it comes to us through history as advice offered to Jean Baptiste Colbert, finance minister under the French King Louis XIV in the 17th century. Colbert is best known for his statement: “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.” When Colbert asked a group of merchants, “What do you want from us?,” the answer was, “laisser nous faire.” “Laissez-faire” is, then, an old piece of economic advice with an impeccable French heritage.

Maybe Starbucks considers the phrase inappropriate because it’s “overtly political commentary”? Certainly my friend regards it as a firm statement of political philosophy.

And so, at my suggestion, my friend went back to the Web site and asked that his card be issued with the phrase “People Not Profits.” Bingo! Starbucks had no problem with that phrase, and the card arrived in a few days.

I wondered just what the company’s standards were. If “laissez-faire” is unacceptably political, how could the socialist slogan “people not profits” be acceptable?

My assistant and I tried to get the company to explain its policy. We started by trying to purchase a card with the phrase “Laissez Faire,” and were rejected as my friend had been. We then asked a company spokesperson why. He suggested that it might be because “laissez-faire” is a foreign phrase. That seemed possible and a reasonable precaution.

So we tried another foreign phrase – “Si Se Puede,” or “Yes we can.” It’s the United Farm Workers slogan, now adopted by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. That sailed right through. The senator’s political campaign slogan was acceptable.

We called again. Several spokespeople at Starbucks and at Arroweye, the company that actually creates personalized cards for Starbucks and other retailers, said that they couldn’t be sure, but that the phrase was probably rejected because it is political. They explained that they would not allow a customer to print “McCain for President” or “Support the Democratic Party” on a Starbucks card. And they noted that they had rejected a request for “My coffee is a weapon.” But fewer than 1% of card requests are rejected.

They had no explanation as to how “People Not Profits” and “Si Se Puede” could be regarded as less political than “Laissez Faire.”

I’m still hoping that it was all a computer glitch, and that some day my latte-drinking, non-tax-hiking friends will be able to get their very own customized Starbucks gift card with “Laissez Faire” emblazoned on it – even if it does risk a sneer from the barista.

Starbucks has prospered mightily in a free economy. For the most recent fiscal year, the company earned $672.6 million on revenue of $9.4 billion, a very healthy profit. And these days, in the wake of a California Superior Court judge’s order that the company repay $100 million in back tips that were shared by shift supervisors, Starbucks honchos just might like a little less government intervention in their affairs and a little more laissez-faire.

Mr. Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and the author of “The Politics of Freedom” (Cato Institute, 2008).

Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease….. how come he didn’t see it coming ????

– Anonymous

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Thanks John - couldn’t have said it better myself.

– Smitty, 4-13-08

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Source: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2008/03/14/why_i_am_a_conservative

Why I Am A Conservative

By John Hawkins
Friday, March 14, 2008

Long ago, when I was a mushy headed moderate, I studied conservatism and liberalism to try to figure out what the best philosophy was for my life and for my country. After doing that, I became a conservative because…

* I don’t think some politician in Washington who has never held a job outside of politics in his entire life, has a better handle on what to do with my money than I do.

* We have a moral obligation to leave a better America to our children than our parents left to us.

John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News.

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A religious school in Inver Grove Heights, MN paid for by taxpayers !! …….. er wait, it must be OK since it’s Islamic and not Christian. Never mind.

In the meantime, don’t forget …………. YOU need to open your wallet even more ………. YOU’RE not paying enough for our “underfunded” MN schools according to the “Education MN” teacher union mouthpiece.

Since this is not a “Christian” school, here is what the ACLU has done about this to date: ______________

So, the “People’s Republic of MN” continues it’s slide into the sewer of political correctness. If you hate America, or if you want to sponge off of the working class taxpayer, come to MN - - - this state will welcome you with open arms.

What an outrage.

– Smitty, 4-13-08
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Source: http://www.startribune.com/local/17406054.html

Wall of silence broken at state’s Muslim public school

By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

April 9, 2008

Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion.

Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.

TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.

Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food - permissible under Islamic law — and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day.

Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, “due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing.” But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond — even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. “When I arrived, I was told ‘after school we have Islamic Studies,’ and I might have to stay for hall duty,” Getz said. “The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one — the board said the kids were studying the Qu’ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other.”

After school, Getz’s fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their “main reason for choosing TIZA … was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building,” according to a TIZA report. TIZA may be the only school in Minnesota with this distinction.

Why does the Minnesota Department of Education allow this sort of religious activity at a public school? According to Zaman, the department inspects TIZA regularly — and has done so “numerous times” — to ensure that it is not a religious school.

But the department’s records document only three site visits to TIZA in five years — two in 2003-04 and one in 2007, according to Assistant Commissioner Morgan Brown. None of the visits focused specifically on religious practices.

The department is set up to operate on a “complaint basis,” and “since 2004, we haven’t gotten a single complaint about TIZA,” Brown said. In 2004, he sent two letters to the school inquiring about religious activity reported by visiting department staffers and in a news article. Brown was satisfied with Zaman’s assurance that prayer is “voluntary” and “student-led,” he said. The department did not attempt to confirm this independently, and did not ask how 5- to 11-year-olds could be initiating prayer. (At the time, TIZA was a K-5 school.)

Zaman agreed to respond by e-mail to concerns raised about the school’s practices. Student “prayer is not mandated by TIZA,” he wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, “students are released … to either join a parent-led service or for study hall.” Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other “nonsectarian” after-school options are available, he added.

Yet prayer at TIZA does not appear to be spontaneously initiated by students, but rather scheduled, organized and promoted by school authorities.

Request for volunteers

Until recently, TIZA’s website included a request for volunteers to help with “Friday prayers.” In an e-mail, Zaman explained this as an attempt to ensure that “no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers.”

But an end run of this kind cannot remove the fact of school sponsorship of prayer services, which take place in the school building during school hours. Zaman does not deny that “some” Muslim teachers “probably” attend. According to federal guidelines on prayer in schools, teachers at a public school cannot participate in prayer with students.

In addition, schools cannot favor one religion by offering services for only its adherents, or promote after-school religious instruction for only one group. The ACLU of Minnesota has launched an investigation of TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education has also begun a review.

TIZA’s operation as a public, taxpayer-funded school is troubling on several fronts. TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic school at taxpayer expense. The Department of Education has failed to provide the oversight necessary to catch these illegalities, and appears to lack the tools to do so. In addition, there’s a double standard at work here — if TIZA were a Christian school, it would likely be gone in a heartbeat.

TIZA is now being held up as a national model for a new kind of charter school. If it passes legal muster, Minnesota taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for a separate system of education for Muslims.

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com

- The Hollywood Squares

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Against all logic and common sense, the Stupid Party selected the “People’s Republic of MN” as the location for their National Convention. Well they’re getting their just reward ……….. St. Paul is refusing to extend their drinking hours in order to prevent “puking Republican lobbyists” in the streets. How’s that for a warm welcome ??

In the meantime, the same leftist city is doing triple-back flips welcoming the anarchist vermin who will be taking time away from their 9-5 jobs (giggle) in order to come here and trash the convention (with the taxpayers picking up to tab to baby-sit and clean up after these degenerates).

– Smitty, 4-8-08

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Source: Source: http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/17239419.html

St. Paul: Thumbs down to late bar hours for GOP convention

By CHRIS HAVENS, Star Tribune
April 2, 2008

St. Paul isn’t Las Vegas, so if you want to toss one back at the bar at 3 a.m., you better get on a plane.
That was the message the St. Paul City Council delivered Wednesday in opposing a proposal in the Legislature that would extend bar closing time from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. during the Republican National Convention.

Council members — many miffed that they weren’t consulted beforehand — voted 4-3 for a resolution asking that the proposal not be enacted and citing potential for neighborhood disturbances and a strain on police.

“It would be nothing short of a nightmare,” said Council Member Dave Thune, whose Second Ward includes downtown. He said he wants to spare downtown residents the sight of “puking Republican lobbyists” in the streets.
The legislative proposal would allow cities within 10 miles of the Xcel Energy Center, where the convention will be held, to push closing time back during the 11 days around the Sept. 1-4 event.

Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, who has supported the proposal, said Wednesday night that lawmakers need to repeal the law to give cities the option of longer hours. She predicted that proposal language would change and that St. Paul would have a chance to vote again. “They don’t have to do it,” she said. “Maybe St. Paul doesn’t want to be a big city.”

Council Member Lee Helgen, who brought the resolution forward and offered the Las Vegas reference, said later that bar hours weren’t part of the proposal to lure the convention here. He said an analysis of some Fifth Ward bars shows a spike in police calls after midnight.

Council President Kathy Lantry said she understood the arguments opposing later bar hours and expressed concerns herself, but suggested postponing the vote to see whether something could be worked out. Council members Dan Bostrom and Pat Harris sided with her.

The cost for extending security has been estimated at about $500,000.

Mayor Chris Coleman said he has serious concerns about that cost. “However, I believe strongly that we need to work on this issue with other cities that would be affected,” he said. “I am deeply concerned about putting St. Paul’s restaurant and bar owners at a competitive disadvantage with other entertainment venues in the area.”

Minneapolis city officials on Tuesday gave a generally cool reception to the proposal but decided against outright opposition. They’re seeking changes to give them more control.

Chris Havens • 651-298-1542