Posted 1:01 PM by a
Court upholds firing of man who displayed flag stickers

By the Associated Press

Published May 30, 2003

RICHMOND, Va. -- "A federal appeals court Friday upheld a South Carolina dairy's firing of a mechanic who displayed Confederate flag stickers on his toolbox.

Matthew Dixon claimed that Coburg Dairy Inc. in Charleston violated his First Amendment rights and state employment laws when it fired him in 2000 for refusing to remove the stickers after a black co-worker complained. The dairy said the stickers violated its policy against harassment.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Dixon has a constitutional right to display the flag, but said that right is not unlimited. For example, his employer could not fire him for attending a pro-flag rally at the state capitol on his own time."

Posted 12:35 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

"Between April 2002 and March 2003, the Joint Task Force returned to Afghanistan 19 of the approximately 664 men (from 42 countries) who have been held in the detention camps. . . . During their 14-month stay, the detainees (nearly all of them) had each gained an average of 13 pounds.

Can an epidemic of heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related ailments be far behind? Such a travesty of human rights is a heavy burden on the world's conscience."

Posted 12:25 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"To visit Iraq is to see a land of opportunity, rich in resources and educated people who are, most importantly, well-disposed to our presence. But to take advantage of the opportunity to remake a country and perhaps a region, the U.S. will have to become at once a more dedicated and more nimble occupier. This could mean a competent American-led administration for the foreseeable future--most Iraqis certainly would not object. But if ORHA cannot rise to the occasion, Mr. Bremer could do a lot worse than speed moves toward a provisional government. Iraqis' distrust of local politicians will fade, and the veterans of the country's democratic opposition are ready and waiting."

Posted 12:14 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

"Animal rights, the patients' bill of rights, affirmative action in all its permutations, medical-privacy rights, environmental justice, reproductive rights, the rights of foreign-born prisoners, golf-club rights and disabled-golfers' rights, the right to insurance coverage, smokers' rights, non-smokers' rights. Some of these rights, standing alone (like an island), make for interesting argument. But does a point arrive when the never-ending claims become too absurd or arcane for most people to support or comprehend? What historic "wrong" was being "remedied" by allowing Annika Sorenstam (71-74) to compete against Justin Leonard, who shot a final round 61?"

Posted 5:41 PM by a
Samizdata.net - Duncan's Laws

"I'm unsure as to your political orientation, but if you were a follower of Karl Marx's fallback idea of creating a social democratic Utopia, via the ballot box rather than via the bullet in the back of the neck, how would you do it? Putting my devout Marxist hat on, (and I was such an idiot, until well after my 30th year), this is how I would do it:"

Posted 4:25 PM by a
Honoring Virtue

"Memorial Day is a solemn and sad occasion honoring the American soldiers who lost their lives in war. But it is also a hallowed day--because the values those men fought to defend form the essence of our country: freedom and the rights of the individual.

The United States has never fought a war of conquest. The Revolutionary War was waged to gain freedom from the tyranny of King George. The Civil War was fought to end slavery in this country. The Americans defended liberty in World War Two against the murderous collectivism of the Nazis. Even the Spanish-American War was fought against the brutal colonialism of the Spanish Empire, with the eventual result of Spain's former possessions gaining greater freedom."

Posted 1:08 PM by a
Recently, there have been numerous postings regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton. Standby for a blitzkrieg of propaganda about their greatness beginning with Bill's pronouncement yesterday that "Congress should change the rule that barred him from seeking a third term in the White House." It's unclear how this could be done without revising the 22nd ammendment to the constitution. But not to worry, the slick one could surely find a way.

Next on the agenda, ABC television's Barbara Walters will interview Hillary the first week in June to kickoff the promotion of her new 8 million dollar book. When the dust clears from that, Bill's 10 million dollar book will ready for promotion as well. These events are obviously designed to lay the foundation for a Hillary for president in 2008 campaign, about which we will have much hoopla shoved down our throats by the vast left-wing conspiracy including the ultra liberal national media over the next 5 years.

It's truly a sad day for this great country when the likes of these two parasitic narcissists command the loyalty of such a large segment of our population even as they strew carnage in the path everywhere they walk.

Hillary's candidacy is as sure as the fact that night follows day. If it is successful, the final nail will have been driven in the lid on the coffin containing the remains of the once great United States of America.

So help us God?

Posted 12:27 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Political Diary Responses

The Admiral has long felt that the way to explain the Clinton mystique could best explained by a line from Shakespeare: "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

"In the big Bible Mr. Clinton used to carry so faithfully for the Sunday TV cameras is a verse by the Prophet Isaiah (5:20) that begins, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." That will ultimately be the real Clinton legacy."

Posted 12:24 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Political Diary Responses
"Mr. Clinton has shown time and time again that it is Clinton first--damn the consequences to the country and the Democrat Party. But the party has canonized him. If this continues and the Democrats lose even more seats in the Senate so that the Republicans have over 60 seats, I am sure that it will still be someone else's fault and not the Clintons. Where else could this happen but the United States of America."

Posted 12:10 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

Zero-Tolerance Watch

"Two years ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, the state of Wisconsin set up a hotline, at a cost of $50,000 a year, "so students can anonymously call authorities to report weapons in schools." The hotline has received a total of seven calls. "State Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) said none of the seven calls the hotline has received so far has been legitimate, and five of them were pranks." The paper calculates the cost per call at $14,285."

Posted 12:06 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

"Like Helen Thomas, American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic, Byrd gets a lot of respect simply for endurance. But let's face it: The man is batty. As it happens, his term ends at the end of the current Congress. Perhaps someone should take him aside and gently suggest that the time has come for him to retire. Hasn't this man embarrassed the Mountain State enough?"

Posted 7:55 PM by a
LT SMASH

And these words my friends are in complete agreement with thoughts shared by your Armchair Admiral. A reminder of this truth from time to time in a turbulent world is a good thing.

"One thing is for certain: there is no place on Earth quite like the United States of America. When you’re safely back home, it’s easy to forget that you enjoy the highest standard of living in the world. But it’s true. You also enjoy a degree of personal freedom that is unprecedented in modern history. Other nations, especially in the western world, often do a halfway decent job of imitating the rights that Americans enjoy. But in America, liberty is part of the very fabric of our society. Nowhere else on the globe are such ideas as those embodied in our Bill of Rights held in such high esteem. In other nations, rights are granted by the government, with the implied caveat that they can be taken away. In America, such rights are considered to be, in the words of Thomas Jefferson “endowed by (the) Creator” and “inalienable.”

Posted 5:29 PM by a
The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED

"An increase in the federal budget deficit has been the inevitable consequence of an economic slowdown, the bursting of the stock-market bubble, the prosecution of three wars and the attendant defense build-up. However, even at $400 billion, a budget deficit of that magnitude represents only about 3.5 percent of total economic output, hardly an unmanageable level under the circumstances. Do Democrats offer a rational, alternative policy prescription? As Democratic presidential candidates crisscross the country promising Hoover-like tax increases in the face of national and worldwide deteriorating economic circumstances, it is clear that they do not have even a clue."

Posted 4:39 PM by a
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas1.asp

"The "road map" contains what should be unacceptable concessions by Israel in exchange for meaningless assurances by the Palestinian side. These concessions include Israeli withdrawal from land it captured for its own security in the 1967 war, which was started by Israel's neighbors with the express intention of wiping Israel off any road map (a goal that remains unchanged). These concessions would put Israel in grave peril from her enemies, which now possess more sophisticated and lethal weapons than they used in each of the previous wars."

Posted 4:33 PM by a
Michelle Malkin

"To further pad the hate crimes report, the ADC decries the "hostile commentary" of Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, terrorism expert Steven Emerson, syndicated columnists Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, and Ann Coulter, Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard, National Review, and jewishworldreview.com, not to mention talk radio and the entertainment industry, as part of an orchestrated "campaign of racism."

Posted 4:12 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: What freedom is all about

"Again the question reasserts itself: If it is perfectly acceptable for black, Asian and Hispanic students to have separate dorms and cultural centers in college, subsidized by tax dollars, why is it an outrage that white high-school kids in rural Georgia have their own prom, paid for by their own parents? Whatever did these white folks do to lose the right to equal respect and equal treatment?"

Posted 3:34 PM by a
Walter Williams

"I've taught economics and graded students on the racist, culturally biased standards of individual performance. In today's America, that's unfair and insensitive.

Starting next fall semester, in the interest of diversity and multiculturalism at George Mason University, I'm going to change the way my students are assigned grades."

Posted 3:04 PM by a
Jewish World Review May 28, 2003 / 26 Iyar 5763

Thomas Sowell

An appalling idiocy

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com

Maybe we should have a monument to historical truth somewhere, though Washington hardly seems the place for it.

It is especially painful to read a proposal to create a "National Slave Memorial" on the Washington Mall. Supposedly this memorial will promote "reconciliation" and "healing," according to both the Republican and Democratic supporters of this proposal.

A slave memorial is guaranteed to become a magnet for every race hustler from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton down to any local demagogue who can scare up a crowd to go stand in front of the slave memorial and spew venom at American society on TV. Some reconciliation, some healing!

The only way to prevent this from happening, either this year or in future years, is for the voting public to inform their Senators and Representatives loud and clear that they do not want any such memorial created by the federal government, whether on the Washington Mall or anywhere else.

Posted 12:34 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article Responses

"In the past few years, some of the sordid Clinton behavior has finally begun to rub off on the former Stainmaker-in-Chief. And in the past few years, with a thoroughly decent couple living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, has anyone noticed the lack of scandal? In his famous saying, Lord Acton declared that power corrupts, but the Clintons corrupted the power, and the Bushes have cleansed the White House the Clintons stained with the power of their personal decency. Mr. Blumenthal's memoir serves at least one useful purpose: It reminds us how lucky we are to have George and Laura Bush in the White House."

Posted 12:32 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article Responses

Clinton's Legacy
Morris Buttnick - Mercer Island, Wash.

"They want to rewrite history, but thanks to Mr. Bartley the facts are known and cannot be refuted. Their main problem is that the eight years of the Clintons produced no accomplishments to which they can point and no memorable rhetoric except: "I did not have sex with that woman." How sad for America that almost a decade of our history was wasted and that our world has become so dangerous because of their unwillingness to govern."

Posted 12:29 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article Responses

"Thank you Mr. Bartley for this tour of Clinton's "parallel universe," a journey that somehow makes me feel like taking a shower. How is it that these crooks were able to ascend to the pinnacle of power in this country, remain in office for two terms despite scandals and impeachment, and now continue to haunt this country in the Senate and around the world?

The economic "bubble" during the 1990s had nothing to do with Mr. Clinton's policies, any more than the economic upturn in 1992, for which former President Bush was not given credit. Yet Mr. Clinton somehow did receive credit. Foreign countries, benefiting from Mr. Clinton's largess and his amazing ability to see no evil, remained relatively pacified, such as North Korea and Saddam Hussein. Terrorists could rest assured that Mr. Clinton might ruffle his feathers and talk tough but that they would be allowed to plot in peace.

Other than the numerous scandals, we were lulled to sleep, thinking all was well with the world. Thank goodness for The Wall Street Journal and the Whitewater series that exposes the Clinton's for who they really are: small town crooks who hit the big time. Amazingly though, they still have supporters, who are either ignorant of the Clinton's past, misinformed, fooled into thinking the Clinton's actually care, see them as their ticket back into power, or actually believe in the world the Clinton's would like to create.

We've had a glimpse of that world. It involves lying, obstruction of justice, abuse of women, pacifying dictators, decimation of our military, kissing terrorists. They have succeeded in gaining a death grip on the Democratic Party and I suspect they have plans to do the same in regards to our country. I think however their chances of succeeding are greatly diminished with journalists such as Mr. Bartley on the job."

Posted 12:14 PM by a
OpinionJournal - The Real World

"If the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Ruud Lubbers, possessed the courage and convictions of a Mr. Seok, he would have used his agency's ample resources to make a crusade of helping the human beings fleeing the holocaust that is North Korea. But as it has played out, while Mr. Seok was awaiting his sentence in China last week, Mr. Lubbers was in Washington pocketing a fresh U.S. pledge of $85 million for his refugee agency, which doesn't even list the North Koreans among the clients of its official rescue operations."

Posted 11:56 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"I don't remember the $850,000 anywhere in Mr. Blumenthal's account. I double-checked all the index entries, and asked an editor to thumb the pages as well, since Mr. Blumenthal managed to trap one reviewer by sneaking in a reference to Joseph Lieberman's Senate speech on Clinton ethics more than 200 pages out of its logical context. Nor do the index entries on Judge Wright turn up her finding the president in contempt of court for "intentionally false" testimony that "undermined the judicial system," or her additional award of more than $90,000 in resulting expenses to Mrs. Jones and her lawyers. These events need no explanation or defense; in Mr. Blumenthal's parallel universe they seem never to have happened."

Posted 11:54 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"There, come to think of it, you have the entire 822 pages, and in all likelihood the next two books as well: The president of the United States cops a plea on perjury in a federal court, but no conviction, no foul. And certainly no contrition for the ignominy his reckless acts and words brought on himself, his office and his nation. Indeed, the outcome is vindication; the only problem was the critics, a billionaire exercising free speech and an independent counsel who did the job thrust upon him."

Posted 11:20 AM by a
A book about Clinton's wasted second term=TheHill.com=

Book Review: Sidney Blumenthal parrots Hillary’s paranoid mutterings

"A second term is a terrible thing for a president to waste. Sidney Blumenthal's new book makes clear how totally Bill Clinton wasted it. He was a one-term president who lived in the White House for eight years.
The Clinton Wars speaks not about the war on terror or the war on drugs or even the war on poverty. Instead, it’s about the wars that occupied Clinton in his second term: on Paula Jones, on Kenneth Starr, on the Washington Post's Susan Schmidt, on Matt Drudge, on Clinton's women and the war to get Hillary into the Senate."

Posted 10:01 PM by a
USS Clueless

"It's not going too far to say that this is the most mementous decision to face the English (and the rest of the British) since the Civil War, when Parliament made the deliberate decision to oppose their own monarch. In a sense, it's even greater than that one. The British are seriously considering giving up their independence and yielding the bulk of governmental power and control to a foreign capitol which will be dominated by people from other nations, who will have the constitutional power to impose laws and policies and regulations on the British even if the people of the former UK strongly disagree with them."

Posted 9:57 PM by a
USS Clueless

"The United States never came even close to actually ratifying the ICC, and the reason why was that it was viewed here (by leaders of both parties) as being a venue where disgruntled losers would harass and persecute Americans. Such concerns have been ridiculed, but are now shown to be entirely justified. The ICC has only been online for 2 months and already the fruitcakes are trying to use it to persecute their political enemies. The only reason that these lawyers are trying to indict Blair and not trying to indict Bush is that the UK ratified the treaty and we didn't. If we actually had ratified that monstrosity, there can be no doubt at all that every American official down to the official dog-catcher in Washington DC would have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by now, just because they were American and were drawing breath."

Posted 9:54 PM by a
USS Clueless

"On the other hand, we now have the first attempt to file charges for "crimes against humanity" with the International Criminal Court because of the war. As should surprise no one, the targets of these charges are not Baathist.

A Greek lawyers' group has accused Prime Minister Tony Blair and other British officials of "crimes against humanity" for their role in the Iraq war. The claims were contained in a complaint the Athens Bar Association plans to file with the International Criminal Court. The group said it was considering similar action against Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who also backed the US-led campaign."

Posted 4:23 PM by a
StrategyPage.com - Measure of respect-  A Letter to Senator Bird

"If you had spent some time in the service, instead of the Klan, you might understand the significance of that moment to all the men and women aboard the Lincoln, and indeed to all the men and women in the service who shared that moment vicariously. But you chose the bedsheet instead of the uniform, and so you don't. I am half-tempted to move to West Virginia just so I could vote against you in your next election."

Lewis F. McIntyre CDR, USN (Ret)
Hughesville, MD

Posted 3:52 PM by a

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Christ! Whose voice the waters heard
And hushed their raging at Thy word,
Who walked'st on the foaming deep,
And calm amidst its rage didst sleep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease,
And give, for wild confusion, peace;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

O Trinity of love and power!
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Lord, guard and guide the men who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair;
Oh, hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air!

Eternal Father, grant, we pray,
To all Marines, both night and day,
The courage, honor, strength, and skill
Their land to serve, thy law fulfill;
Be thou the shield forevermore
From every peril to the Corps.

U.S. NAVY FAQ: The Navy Hymn

Posted 12:12 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

"Well, heck. We're all in favor of cutting spending on social programs, especially popular ones (shared sacrifice and all that), but we'd have more faith that this is what Republicans plan to do if government spending weren't increasing while they control the White House and both houses of Congress. This "starve the government" stuff seems to be the latest in a series of Democratic delusions: the "stolen election," the "neocon conspiracy," "unilateral war in Iraq," "questioning John Kerry's patriotism," etc. The partisan left puts these crazy ideas forward with such regularity and intensity that it almost seems to arise from a medical condition of some sort."

Posted 4:35 PM by a
Winds of Change.NET: Guest Blog: The Death of Socialism

"The war isn't over yet, of course. There are pitched battles taking place everywhere, most notably over education, the Left's most staunchly maintained bastion. Socialism in the West is going part undercover, morphing back and forth between its traditional form and several new guises: multiculturalism, postmodernism, and transnationalism. But for the moment, the counterinsurgency for freedom appears to have the upper hand.

Here's another poser: To what extent has the drive for socialism been crippled by the bad behavior of its most prominent exponents? There's certainly been enough of that. How closely do people identify the virtues of an idea with the character of its champions?"

Posted 4:10 PM by a
Winds of Change.NET: Guest Blog: The Death of Socialism

"So communism is dead and socialism is dying. What does this mean for America? It means the left in America as we know it is dying. The first glimpse of that was in the 2002 national election. The first post 9/11 national election. The Democrats lost ground. Post Iraq you hear a lot of formerly centrist Democrats saying they no longer care for the party."

Posted 2:14 PM by a
Welcome to CounterPunch

By ELAINE CASSEL

"Memorial Day is the day we set aside to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms of life that the Bush Administration is taking away. In that respect, this Memorial Day is most poignant. Can it be that those hundreds of thousands of sacrifices have now been in vain? because one Administration, drunk on power and ruling by fear, will dismantle the Constitution to promote the interests of wealth and privilege?"

Posted 12:08 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"All of this is progress of a sort. It shows that the original ban was all about politics, not safety. Keeping assault weapons off the streets was never the real issue. Proponents knew that all but a small percentage of crimes involving firearms were committed with guns that wouldn't fall under the ban. They also knew the ban was easily avoided by making small adjustments to the guns.
But liberals didn't care about these details because guns were simply a wedge issue designed to scare suburbanites, and particularly women, into voting Democrat. Now that elections have repudiated the strategy, the party's enthusiasm has waned."

Posted 11:56 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Thinking Things Over

"Now the plain fact is that there has long been going on amongst us a change in the conscience of certain groups of opinion and especially in "Liberal," "progressive," "left-wing" circles in the direction of emphasizing the importance of "society" as against that of the person. The "Instrumentalist" philosophy has gone practically the whole distance in this direction, and its logic implies absolutism of the "democratic" state. All the left-wing drift is in the same direction, that is of sinking the person in the State. It is a drift toward the old Greek and Roman concept of "liberty"--political liberty--and away from the American concept of individual liberty that is afoot on the "Left," a drift of which public opinion is as yet largely unconscious because the "democratic" form structure is not so far in question, and has sustained no important visible changes."

Posted 5:15 PM by a
The Neal Boortz

"So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes; then compare these to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy Conservatives. From the Left you will hear "I feel.' From the Right you will hear "I think From the Liberals you will hear references to groups --The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left we hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

Liberals feel that the masses, their favored groups, have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives (and Libertarians, myself among them, I might add) think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses."

Posted 5:05 PM by a
Ravenwood's Universe

"The bill would extend the federal program to Dec. 31 at a cost of $6.5 billion.

You can bet that in December, the Christmas spirit will kick in again, and there will be yet another cry for an extension.

It is absolutely shameless that Congress will not pass a tax cut for those of us who do work, without having a gun put to their head, but when it comes to simply doling out dollars to those that sit around on their couch watching Oprah, it passes the House by a 409-19 vote."

Posted 7:30 PM by a
insomnomaniac: Loony Byrd: "I tawt I taw a Preditat!"

"As I watched the president's fighter jet swoop down onto the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, I could not help but contrast the reported simple dignity of President Lincoln at Gettysburg with the flamboyant showmanship of President Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln," Byrd said.

"Well Loony Byrd, we realize that--being older than dirt--you were probably alive when Lincoln spoke, but chances are you were reading about it in a Confederate paper you ex-KKK hypocrite! And if you recall, when President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address, he was in the midst of fighting the most deadly war this nation has ever seen. I'm talking EVER, to date, in our history, get it? Tens of thousands died at Gettysburg alone, what else could he have been but solemn?"

Posted 5:59 PM by a
One of the five top blogs today. Be forewarned of X rated language. Seems that in todays world, inappropiate language has become the norm. And that's sad. The Admiral blames it on the socialist/democrats who are largely responsible for the decline in excellence over the past 40 years.

Somehow the Emperor Misha has maintained a sense of humor in the face of all adversity. All hail his hurculean efforts..

http://www.nicedoggie.net/

"As to immediate goals, we are determined to further and encourage the use of colorful invective, banishing the unnatural rules of P.C. from our Empire so that we may insult and be insulted freely wherever we go. As a matter of fact, we're toying with the idea of instituting an Imperial "Be Mean to Somebody Week". We think that that would be a good start. Other ideas could be "Imperial Demean a Faith Week", with bonus points for demeaning your OWN faith, "Imperial Fossil Fuel Burning Week", which would include making long, unnecessary trips in the biggest gas guzzler you own, "Imperial Freak Out a Hippie Vegan Week", which could mean sneaking into a Hippie Veggie Restaurant and exchanging the tofu with chicken meat... You name it, the sky's the limit.


But, ultimately, the Empire's true goal is to rule the Universe in all eternity."

Posted 4:04 PM by a
Paul Craig Roberts: Our undemocratic ally

"Next month, Blair intends to give his approval to a new European Union constitution, which would create a United States of Europe and turn Parliament into the equivalent of a local council. Trevor Kavanagh, political editor of the Sun, Britain's largest newspaper, says Blair's decision signs away 1,000 years of British sovereignty and hands "control of our economic, defense, foreign and immigration policies to Brussels. The EU will also gain authority over our justice, transport, health and commerce systems -- and dictate the strength of union power.

Blair has ruled out a referendum or vote on his decision to terminate the existence of Great Britain as a country. He says the issue is too complicated for voters to understand."

Posted 4:00 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The 'gay' sword of tolerance

"Last year, I wrote about a proposed piece of legislation in California, AB 2651, which would have allowed a boy in foster care to report his foster parents to family services for a civil-rights violation if they refused to permit him to dress like a girl. The bill also would have encouraged California counties to provide sensitivity training for foster parents on "sexual orientation, gender identity and the challenges faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender youth, or youth with gender issues."

Posted 3:50 PM by a
Mudville Gazette: DEMOCRACY, WHISKEY, SEXY?

"Mountains of refuse? Will be gone when Allah wills. Collapsed building? Removed when Allah wills. Shelter then, in the meantime, for someone for whom Allah wills it. A degree of planning and administration appears to be lacking, and rather then demand accountability from city officials, understand that this is what Allah wills. The logic is not arguable. If Allah did not will it, it would not be."

Posted 2:49 PM by a
USS Clueless

http://denbeste.nu/external/Peters02.html (Scroll to May 21, 2003)

Ralph Peters retired from the US Army shortly after his promotion to lieutenant colonel so he could pursue a writing career. A contributor to Parameters since the 1980s, he is also the author of 12 books, including Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?, a collection of essays on strategy; eight novels with strategic or military themes; and, under a pen name, a series of critically acclaimed historical novels.

Mr. Peters shares his wealth of knowledge and experience relating to geopolitics. He presents the material in in a fashion that is easy to understand. This is a far ranging essay covering most if not all of the hot spots in the world today as well as the complicated role of the United States as we go forward. Well worth any serious readers time.

"The hardest thing is always to think clearly, to slash through the inherited beliefs that no one ever examines and to defy the wise men who have built careers on exorbitant failures. All people, in every culture, are captive to slogans, but Americans must strive to do a little better. We have made a slogan of democracy abroad, imagining it as a practical means when it is, in fact, the glorious end of a long and difficult road. We speak of human rights, then wink at the mundane evil of Saudi Arabia, the grotesque oppression in China, and any African massacres that don't leak to the press--because, inside our system of diplomacy, human rights are finally regarded as a soft issue. Yet, sincere and tenacious support for human rights is always good policy in the long term. The oppressor falls, whether in one year or 50, and it is easier to do business with a nation whose freedom struggle you have supported than with one whose suffering you ignored or even abetted."

Posted 12:16 PM by a
USS Clueless "

"The contrary is true: the UN hasn't been restored to anything. Rather, it will continue to exist only as long as it doesn't get in the way, and the government of France can still pretend that its veto in the UNSC actually makes France special, even though it's now been proved that it doesn't. The UN has now been proved to be an empty and hollow illusion. If there's another attempt to try to pretend it's anything more than that, it's going to be roadkill."

Posted 12:08 PM by a
USS Clueless

"Which is to say, that is why it is so important for France's business leaders to make sure that Chirac understands that we're not going to put up with any more French grandstanding. "Work together" means to accept the reality of the UN's power: that it doesn't really have very much, and that it is not a world government and isn't going to become one. But if Chirac once again tries to overplay his hand and becomes intoxicated with delusions of grandeur, the US is going to come down on France hard, and it's going to hurt a lot, especially in the French wallet."

Posted 11:54 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Wonder Land Responses

"The students and the radical groups in Florida are fighting to remove a barely minimal standards test of a student's ability to have acquired enough knowledge to obtain a high school diploma. They can take the test up to five times and only have to know 40% of the answers to pass. There is something extremely wrong with a system that allows students to think he has a right to a high school diploma without at least a 70% result. They blame the school system, but if any of the students are passing, the education is present and available for everyone to learn. It might take a little more effort on their part, however. Being poor has nothing to do with the ability to learn. It is the American dream that tells us that no matter how we start life we can achieve whatever we want through hard work and sacrifice. The current attitude and the predilection to blame others for your own failures has become the order of the day."

Posted 11:40 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"When the two-year trial was finally over, the six-member jury deliberated for a mere five hours before deciding that the tobacco industry should pay a sum more than twice the gross domestic product of New Zealand. (It also voted $12.7 million to the three individual plaintiffs.) The $145 billion was many times the tobacco companies' net worth, and thus (as the appeals court pointed out) in bald violation of state law, which prohibits punitive damages set so high as to bankrupt a defendant. Yet the verdict was soon hailed by such anti-tobacco stalwarts as Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and even the American Medical Association, which seems to have trouble recognizing litigation excess when its own members are not among the intended targets."

Posted 7:03 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online
"Reform at the U.N. should be a centerpiece of our new policy. There is no reason why a billion people of a nuclear, democratic India, an increasingly confident Japan, or a vast country like Brazil should not be represented as permanent members of the Security Council. In addition, we must move to require democratic government for participation in the General Assembly; it makes no sense to give despots the privileges they don’t extend even to their own people. Let the U.N. become an assembly of free peoples, and allow Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba to form their own United Tyrannies."

Posted 6:58 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"Napoleon was willing to risk the lives of millions for the idea of a pan-European dream, its scary, pretentious adages not unlike those now emanating from Brussels or from the mad M. Villepin. The rise of German Nazism, Italian fascism, and continental Marxism at times turned Europeans away from the liberal tradition and drew them to darker and more authoritarian promises, with roots from Plato’s Laws to Oswald Spengler. Too many Europeans still cherish the belief that they are close to an end to war, hunger, want, and meanness — ideals inseparable from a light work week, cradle-to-grave care, protection by an uncouth American military, and a steady stream of fertile, darker, unassimilated peoples to take out their trash and clean their toilets."

Posted 5:53 PM by a
Mrs. du Toit - Comments/Archives

"It is the socialist who will attempt to deny an individual the right of ownership, the right to possess property (of any kind). The foundation of socialism requires that we surrender the right to own anything, to possess anything, or to be secure in our papers and property. They’ve been duped and they walk around like cogs in a wheel trying to convince everyone else that property is wrong, that defending it worse, and that we should be morally ashamed of ourselves for thinking otherwise."

Posted 12:40 PM by a
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

"Because of these lies, the so-called Palestinians feel justified in sending suicide bombers to kill women, children, babies, old men, old women and noncombatant citizens. Because of these lies, the United Nations and the media of the world are condemning Israel who is acting less harshly than any other country would act in retaliation for such heinous attacks. What is the United States doing in Afghanistan, a totally foreign country? Killing Afghanistanis. Why? Because they attacked us on Sept. 11. I understand this. But why do they not understand that that is exactly what Israel is doing, only on a much smaller scale?"

Posted 12:24 PM by a
ShopNetDaily.comA WorldNetDaily Exclusive! May 2003 -

THE NEW WORLD RE-ORDER: Exposing the United
Nations' attack on U.S. sovereignty

"Decisions made in the next few months will determine to a great extent whether the United States of America remains a free, constitutional republic or yields its freedom to the rule of international law administered by the United Nations, according to the May issue of Whistleblower magazine. Indeed, says this eye-opening special report, the long battle between globalists and those committed to U.S. sovereignty is coming to a head."

Posted 8:32 PM by a
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

"Blood drive canned due to 'gay' discrimination College students say federal AIDS guidelines not fair to homosexuals.

Citing a federal guideline meant to prevent the blood supply from being tainted with HIV, students at Southern Oregon University have canceled a planned blood drive, saying the regulation discriminates against homosexuals, reports the Associated Press."

Posted 3:27 PM by a
Walter Williams

Doctor Williams should have been aboard the good ship USS Santa Maria. He could have instilled some naval self-esteem into sniveling whiners and complainers and turned them into men.

"How many times have we applauded those who "made a difference in the lives of others" and been admonished to do the same? On the face of it, that has to be one of the more mindless generalities of our modern era. After all, didn't Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Castro also make a difference in the lives of others?

Dr. Martin Rosenberg, my high school English teacher, having had it with my classroom antics whilst he drilled us in English grammar, told me, "Williams, teaching you this material is like casting pearls before the swine." That was in 1952 before everyone became concerned about self-esteem, but it was precisely the kind of dressing down that I needed to challenge me and turn my high school academic performance around. Two years later, it was Dr. Rosenberg who proudly coached me with my salutatorian address for our graduation ceremony. I thank G-d that I received my education before educators and psycho-babblers became concerned about self-esteem; I'm also thankful for having received it before it became fashionable for white people to like black people. It meant my grades were honest."

Posted 3:20 PM by a
Cal Thomas

"Suppose our enemies have invaded the United States through immigration for the express purpose of organizing themselves politically? Suppose they present themselves as benign and seek to register voters, becoming politically active in order to elect their people to office and change U.S. policy in the Middle East? What if their intentions are the eventual destruction of this nation through its democratic processes and the imposition of a theocratic state? Would that be enough to get our attention?"

Posted 3:13 PM by a
Thomas Sowell

"The collapse of the Soviet bloc has now made it clear that these useful idiots were not pro-Communist. They were and still are anti-American. They have contempt for the values of the American people and the principles on which this country was founded and built.

They are ready to give a sympathetic hearing to our enemies around the world, whether those enemies are Communists or Islamic fundamentalists or whatever. Mona Charen's "Useful Idiots" spells it all out, citing chapter and verse."

Posted 3:11 PM by a
Thomas Sowell

"Once in power, Castro tolerated no opposition, held no free elections, and established a police state that made the previous dictators look like amateurs. Those who spoke out against what was happening were jailed or executed. So were those who tried to flee the country.

The useful idiots in the United States and other Western democracies ate it up. Many still do, to this very moment."

Posted 3:01 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The ex-president's boys

"But alas, Bill Clinton, who offered his boys the Bush-bashing advice in the first place, better get on the same page with them. While the boys seem to be saying Bush isn't focusing enough on the War on Terror (he's too distracted with Iraq, which they don't see as part of the War on Terror), Clinton just gave a speech saying Bush is focusing too much on terror and ignoring domestic issues. "We can't be forever strong abroad if we don't keep getting better at home." Which is it, Mr. Ex-president? When you figure it out, you better tell the boys. No fair just telling them half the story."

Posted 2:58 PM by a
WorldNetDaily:

"The ex-president's boys As if attached to the former president's dangling, legacy-craving puppet strings, the boys set their sights on Bush and began firing, albeit with shoddy ammunition. Clinton probably should have told the boys at least to have something to say – even if you have to make things up, like "this is the worst economy in 50 years" – before opening their mouths and just talking to hear their heads rattle. They're shooting blanks and looking pretty impotent (and often ridiculous) in the process. It's all so artificial. They're expected to say something negative, and so they do, no matter how silly and off base."

Posted 2:56 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: Scapegoating to paradise

"You better believe this insanity will not stop with McDonald's – and it won't stop with fast foods – because this really isn't about nutrition. It's about changing our societal relationships, restructuring our economic system and undermining the nuclear family. It's about destroying our liberties by divorcing them from personal responsibility and accountability – freedom can't long survive without them."

Posted 2:49 PM by a
Iraq: A Moral Reckoning (washingtonpost.com)

"Iraq today is a social, economic, ecological and political ruin not because of allied bombing but because of Baath Party rule. Since 1979 Hussein had managed the economic miracle of reducing by 75 percent the gross domestic product of the second-richest oil patch on the planet. That takes work. Hussein's capacity for destruction was up to the task. He reduced the Shiite south to abject poverty. He turned a once well-endowed infrastructure to rot by lavishing Iraq's vast oil resources on two things: weaponry and his own luxuries. And in classic Stalinist fashion, he destroyed civil society, systematically extirpating any hint of free association and civic participation."

Posted 2:43 PM by a
Jonah Goldberg's Goldberg File on National Review Online

State of Confusion: Part I of III

Brouhahas — intellectual and otherwise.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: When I announced last week that I would be doing a series of articles on neoconservatism, a number of readers e-mailed me to complain that conservatives are getting too bogged-down in labels and prefixes and I shouldn't encourage the trend. I agree. My aim here is destroy, or at least pare back, the increasingly ludicrous use of the word "neoconservative" and maybe even a few other silly labels. If none of this is your cup of tea, that's fine. There's plenty of other elsewhere stuff on NRO or even my syndicated column.

Posted 2:41 PM by a
Jonah Goldberg's Goldberg File on National Review Online

Part II of III

"With this context in mind, to call neoconservatism a coherent "movement" of any kind ignores the fact that such transformations tend to be intensely individualistic. "When two neoconservatives meet they are more likely to argue with one another than to confer or conspire," Irving Kristol wrote in 1979. And no neoconservative has ever contradicted James Q. Wilson's assertion that neocons have no common "manifesto, credo, religion, flag, anthem or secret handshake." This holds even truer today. The idea that, say, Hilton Kramer, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Richard Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and Jeanne Kirkpatrick all receive orders from some central Comintern or politburo — as Pat Buchanan is so fond of suggesting — is bizarre enough. The idea that they are all consulting in lockstep the collected works of Leon Trotsky is simply hysterical."

Posted 2:34 PM by a
Jonah Goldberg's Goldberg File on National Review Online May 21, 2003, 9:40 a.m.
The End of Neoconservatism: Part III of III

Debunking the myths.

"All of the fulminating about the Jews, about war lust, about neocons running everything would be forgivable, even tolerable, if it were intellectually defensible. But the neoconservative label distorts more than it reveals. As Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride might say to all of these people, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Posted 2:28 PM by a
WorldNetDaily:

"From Democrat to independent to Republican So, to my fellow Republicans: Fight the good fight, explain to the American people the importance of limited government, low taxation, strong self-defense and trust them to have the maturity and common sense to govern their own personal and financial lives.
Make no mistake: My libertarian principles remain unchanged. But as writer Midge Decter once said, "There comes a time to join the side you're on."
Count me in."

Posted 2:17 PM by a
Welcome to anncoulter.org!

"The Times is not even attempting to preserve a reliable record of events. Instead of being a record of history, the Times is merely a "record" of what liberals would like history to be – the Pentagon in crisis, the war going badly, global warming melting the North Pole, and protests roiling Augusta National Golf Club. Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger has turned the paper into a sort of bulletin board for Manhattan liberals."

Posted 2:10 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The terrorists' turn at bat

"America's innings – victory over the Taliban, the triumph in Iraq – are over. The glory days are behind us. Now, we must take the field, and the innings of the terrorists begin. They will bleed us in Afghanistan, bleed us in Iraq, bleed us in Arabia, bleed us all over the Middle East.

Will we persevere? Can we outlast them in the Middle East where they live, but we do not? Or will we, like the Brits in Palestine, the French in Algeria, the Israelis in Lebanon and the Americans in Beirut and Somalia, one day pack it in and go home?"

Posted 2:04 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The revenge of Spiro Agnew

"Who hired Jayson Blair? Who promoted him? Who protected him? And why? Like the purloined letter, the answer is right in front of us. Jayson Blair is black. The New York Times worships at the altar of "diversity." So, Times editors cut him all the slack he needed. And Jayson Blair knew how to snooker "progressives."
Had Jayson Blair been a white graduate of Bob Jones, he would not have lasted past his second correction. Indeed, he would never have been hired. But he was, because Jayson Blair was exactly the right color for the New York Times' guilty conscience."

Posted 12:13 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"The American people agree with us on many vital issues--but they believe that we Democrats are weak and indecisive when it comes to standing up to dictators and terrorists, and when it comes to the primary responsibility of government: defending the nation. No matter how compelling our positions on the economy, health care, Social Security, the environment and privacy, if voters continue to see us as feckless and effete they will not listen to our message next year and they will re-elect Mr. Bush."

Posted 12:04 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts

"Any parent who has coerced a child through the agonies of instrumental practice wonders if there isn't some other way. Children who seemed so creative, making up tunes at the piano and singing at five, become miserable and obstinate when faced with the endless repetition that it takes to make a decent sound and correctly string notes together to reproduce music written by someone else. Talent is useful only up to a point. Learning to play an instrument requires determination, and a tolerance for repetition that does not come naturally to most young children. So why not give those innate musical instincts an outlet that is not connected with a high level of motor skill? Mr. Machover says, "I value creativity over technicality. I would like to find a way to develop a discipline that trains the imagination."

Posted 11:45 AM by a
JOHN MAULDIN

"Europe, and especially Germany, has its own problems. I think it is now safe to say Germany is in recession. The "authorities" will reveal this to us in a few months. Their problems are compounded by ridiculous labor rules and huge government guarantees for social services. Their tax revenues are down, yet expenses are up. They are in a European Union treaty, which in theory prevents them from running large deficits, though they are ignoring this (as is France), as they cannot raise taxes in a recession and they refuse to cut spending. Their population is aging. The European Central Bank is still fixated on fighting inflation in Europe as a whole, while Germany is getting ready to go into outright deflation, so they get little or no relief from the central bank. As the Euro rises against the dollar, their export industries, which have been the heart of what little growth there has been, are seeing rapidly shrinking sales and profits."

Posted 7:41 PM by a
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

"Danny Glover's outspoken politics could turn out to be lethal for his gig as a spokesman for MCI. The 55-year-old film star and activist has called President Bush "racist," and he recently signed an open letter in support of Fidel Castro that stated that the administration's "harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion." .....In a Brazilian magazine interview, Glover accused Bush of pushing a "conservative program designed to eliminate everything Americans had accomplished" in matters of race and equality."

Posted 11:36 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

"So what if much of it failed? What those infant entrepreneurs brought to the economic culture was nonstop chatter about creation, problem-solving, stamina and winning. The thrill, for now, is gone. It won't return until conditions allow what produced the economic energy of the the vital growth cycle of 1982-2000--not just ROI but ROEPFI--the return on emotional, physical and financial investment. But the chances for this are dim because the economy's prospects have fallen into the hands of the nation's most downer people--Olympia Snowe, George Voinovich, Tom Daschle, Lincoln Chafee, George Pataki, Gray Davis and similar scolds. They won't let the economy get its life back until it's bled some more to save what most matters in the life of a nation--the federal, state and city deficits, which they created."

Posted 11:30 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Extra

"First, the United States will not make concessions to terrorists, for to do so would be to take the first step down the endless road of blackmail. By our actions as well as our words, we must show that countries that use, sponsor or protect terrorists will pay a significant price. And we must make the terrorists themselves worry that they are not safe from our reach, no matter where they are. As in so many areas, the world looks to America for leadership in this fight. Therefore, I am today ordering the following actions:"

Posted 11:12 AM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"Poland wants NATO in Iraq, which would go a long way toward revitalizing the Atlantic alliance and mending some fences. And above all, the Poles want to build the future EU around a strategic relationship with America that France and Germany are all too happy to sacrifice at the altar of their imagined "Europe." So who's the "bad" European here?"

Posted 6:06 PM by a
Creators.com - Creators Syndicate

"Hillary Clinton is never going to be president of the United States. There is no more divisive figure in the Democratic Party, much less the country, than the former first lady. And I like her. But many women don't. Even Democratic women. Even working women. Not to mention non-working, independent, non-political women. She can be a great senator. She's smart, hard working and effective. She is much respected among her peers."

Posted 4:25 PM by a
The politics of deflation -- The Washington Times

"The question of the moment is whether stock, real estate and other inflated prices have returned to that natural point — or if they have further to go down. And if they have further to go down — how much further? The greatest danger of such a process is that as prices for such inflated assets go down, they may induce a general deflation of prices — which tends to have a contracting and deadening effect on most economic activity. The two most conspicuous examples of a busted bubble leading to deflation and contraction of the economy are the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan's contraction that is now entering its second decade."

Posted 1:06 PM by a
ArabNews: Editorial: The Enemy Within

"We cannot say that suicide bombings in Israel and Russia are acceptable but not in Saudi Arabia. The cult of suicide bombings has to stop. So too has the chattering, malicious, vindictive hate propaganda. It has provided a fertile ground for ignorance and hatred to grow."

Posted 6:01 PM by a
New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

"But insisting that every American success is really a failure serves no one's interests. President Bush has soared in the polls because he's a man of action and because his actions have been intuitively correct. His opponents, trapped in a culture of rejection as reality-defying as that of the terrorists, have become nothing more than political suicide bombers."

Posted 6:00 PM by a
New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

"We accept that monopolies are bad for markets. In the Middle East, we see how fatal religious monopolies can be. But monopolies are bad for political systems, too. The utter lack of new ideas in the Democratic Party means that the Republican Party goes unchallenged as it pioneers new foreign and military policies."

Posted 5:57 PM by a
New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

"Just as the Democratic Party has failed to articulate any new foreign (or domestic) policy ideas for the 21st century. In the Democratic world-view, America is bad, our armed forces are baby-killers, the terrorists have a point and we might as well just surrender. "Hell no, we won't go" is not an adequate foreign policy.

Even domestically, the Dems are caught in a time warp, convinced it's still 1936 and Tom Joad is struggling to trample the grapes of wrath. Hey, old Tom's grandkids are out in California making cabernet sauvignon."

Posted 5:55 PM by a
New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

"One poor lefty columnist even complained, in outrage, that the president's visit meant taxpayers would have to pay all those sailors overtime.

Sorry, babe. The men and women of our armed forces don't draw overtime. America's military ain't a union shop. The absurdity of the claim shows just how out of touch the lefties are with the realities of uniformed service."

Posted 5:31 PM by a
Suzanne Fields: Ammunition in the 'culture wars'

"They've put the politically correct educationists on the run, overwhelming them with intellectual firepower, campaigning to restore the teaching of civics and American history to the nation's schools.
If they succeed, we may not raise another generation of what historian David McCullough calls "historical illiterates," the consequences of what Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, calls "collective amnesia."

Posted 2:07 PM by a
www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish

"Stigmatize? Apart from the loopy idea that telling editors of a reporter's track-record is somehow "stigmatizing," am I the only person that sees a racial dimension to that word? It's almost an admission that any criticism of a black staffer is somehow racially stigmatizing. When you hear words like that, you get a glimpse of what it's like to live in the p.c. newsroom. Offending minority journalists is more of a no-no than allowing the paper's reputation to hit a 152-year low. I'd go further and argue that the refusal to hold black reporters or gay reporters or any reporters to the highest possible standards is itself evidence of prejudice and condescension. Did it do Blair any good to get this kind of pampering?"

Posted 1:58 PM by a
'Huge Black Eye'

"Then to the affirmative-action angle: See what happens, they taunt, when you treat a minority employee with kid gloves, promoting him when he deserves to be fired? Oh, we know your editors insist that "diversity" had nothing to do with it. But remember what Senator Dale Bumpers said about our impeachment of Clinton: "When you hear somebody say, `This is not about sex' — it's about sex." This is about diversity backfiring."

Posted 9:43 PM by a
Mean Mr. Mustard

"Postmoderism contends that reality itself is a social construct, merely a belief system, a dominant paradigm, maintained by a repressive system of structuring discourse along certain ideologies from which no deviation is permitted. These ideologies that currently enslave us include such things as "science," "facts" and "logic." To a devout postmodernist, the logical statement of "If A, then B; and therefore if not B, then not A," is not a "true" statement, only a subset of the most powerful and oppressive ideology that is in existence today: that of the heterosexual white male. The fact that none of us (except the incisive pomos, of course!) can see this whole system working is only more proof of its incredible power.

As one need always say when actually dealing with the ideas of postmodernism: don't laugh, they're serious."

Posted 9:33 PM by a
The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky by Keith Windschuttle

"Chomsky has used his status, originally gained in the field of linguistics, to turn himself into the leading voice of the American left. He is not merely a spokesman. His own stance has done much to structure left-wing politics over the past forty years. Today, when actors, rock stars, and protesting students mouth anti-American slogans for the cameras, they are very often expressing sentiments they have gleaned from Chomsky’s voluminous output."

Posted 9:29 PM by a
The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky by Keith Windschuttle

"Of all the major powers in the Sixties, according to Chomsky, America was the most reprehensible. Its principles of liberal democracy were a sham. Its democracy was a “four-year dictatorship” and its economic commitment to free markets was merely a disguise for corporate power. Its foreign policy was positively evil. “By any objective standard,” he wrote at the time, “the United States has become the most aggressive power in the world, the greatest threat to peace, to national self-determination, and to international cooperation.”

Posted 9:26 PM by a
The hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky by Keith Windschuttle

"Noam Chomsky was the most conspicuous American intellectual to rationalize the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The death toll, he argued, was minor compared to the list of Third World victims of the “far more extreme terrorism” of United States foreign policy. Despite its calculated affront to mainstream opinion, this sentiment went down very well with Chomsky’s own constituency. He has never been more popular among the academic and intellectual left than he is today."

Posted 6:51 PM by a
TownHall.com:
"Conservative Columnists: Paul Craig Roberts In the meantime, ask yourself: What sort of government do we have? Is our government a democratic dictatorship in which we elect our own dictators?"

Posted 6:49 PM by a
TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Paul Craig Roberts

"Beck and Camarota report: "It is a well established fact in public opinion polling that most Americans for nearly all of the last quarter century have desired reductions in legal and illegal immigration. However, in general, federal lawmakers have moved in the opposite direction of their constituents' desires, continually raising the numerical level of legal immigration and failing to take steps to reduce illegal migration.

Even post-Sept. 11 after illegal immigrants destroyed the World Trade Center towers, a section of the Pentagon and thousands of American lives, the political leadership of both parties continues to advocate and legislate policies that increase the flow of immigration into the United States."

Posted 6:46 PM by a
Paul Craig Roberts: Democracy's serfs

"Democracy produces the opposite results of feudalism. Instead of an upper class living off the sweat of a lower class, the lower class lives off the sweat of an upper class. Philosophers such as John Rawls created a philosophy to justify the latter as "moral" and the former as "immoral," but it all comes down to the same thing: Some people live off other people's activities."

Posted 6:41 PM by a
David Limbaugh: Rampant relentless relativism?

"We must not let the relativists prevail in their relentless quest for a valueless society. They'll try anything -- including turning Scripture, such as "Judge not lest ye be judged," on its head. It requires courage to stand firm for Judeo-Christian values, because those who dare to do so are morally condemned by those who say we have no right to make moral judgments. And they want to talk to us about Bennett's hypocrisy?"

Posted 6:37 PM by a
Paul Rosenzweig and Todd Gaziano: It's time to solve the judicial confirmation crisis

"So, instead of appointing the moderate judicial candidates the Democrats are already blocking, President Bush should make recess appointments of even more well-known conservative scholars and former judges who are willing to serve until the Senate votes up or down on the president’s nominees. We hope Robert Bork and others are willing to serve their country again, if only temporarily, on the bench.
These appointments would serve notice that anti-democratic filibuster tactics used by a Senate minority cannot take away a president’s right to appoint judges. It’s admittedly an extreme strategy, but large problems require bold solutions."

Posted 5:22 PM by a
Columbus's Ships

"As everyone knows, Columbus had three ships on his first voyage, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The flagship Santa Maria had the nickname La Gallega. It was a nao, which simply means "ship" in old Spanish; today, we might call such a ship a carrack. She was fat and slow, designed for hauling cargo, not for exploration."

Posted 2:48 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Featured Article

"The harshness of the debate indicates that the real war here is not the one between Republicans and Democrats. The real battle lines are drawn between Democrats who will defend the miserable status quo no matter what and those who are beginning to question the wisdom of sacrificing African-American children to the interests of the teachers' unions."

Posted 2:36 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Extra

"What's most troubling is that all this is so unnecessary. The facts suggest that there is enormous room to cut the city's budget without severely damaging services or laying off crucial workers. New York City already spends on many things that other city governments don't. The city boasts a plethora of committees, boards, and commissions that overlap other government functions or are largely symbolic--and costly. New York's five borough president offices, along with the public advocate's office, are largely ceremonial, but the city spends $30 million a year to maintain their staffs. The city even has its own human-rights commission, duplicating federal and state efforts, which costs $7.5 million a year."

Posted 8:58 PM by a
Blinded by Bush-Hatred (washingtonpost.com)

"So Bush's claims should never be taken at face value. But accepting the fact that Iraq had an extensive and continuing program for weapons of mass destruction doesn't require taking Bush at his word. The U.N. Special Commission, when it finished its work in 1999, concluded the same thing. So has Germany's intelligence service. So has the United Kingdom's. Indeed, the only people who seem to doubt it are either allies of Hussein or those who distrust Bush so much that they automatically assume everything he says must be false.

Perhaps the most disheartening development of the war -- at home, anyway -- is the number of liberals who have allowed Bush-hatred to take the place of thinking. Speaking with otherwise perceptive people, I have seen the same intellectual tics come up time and time again: If Bush is for it, I'm against it."

Posted 8:52 PM by a
Kirkpatrick Was Right (washingtonpost.com)

"That same tendency to blame America for the moral shortcomings of others unfortunately permeates the left and the Democratic Party. I wish it were otherwise, but I got the first whiff of it after Sept. 11 when some people reacted to the terrorist attacks here by blaming U.S. policy -- in the Middle East specifically but around the world in general.

Had we not supported Israel, had we not backed the corrupt Saudi monarchy, had we not been buddies with Egypt, had we not been somehow complicit in Third World poverty, had we not developed blue jeans and T-shirts and rock music and premarital sex, the World Trade Center might still be standing and the Pentagon untouched."

Posted 5:23 PM by a
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

"Facing one of the numerous risks that our brave airmen face thousands of times in order to be the first to thank them in person for their selfless and dedicated service to him, their Commander-in-Chief is absolutely DISGUSTINGLY offensive!

The way he was welcomed by the brave men and women of the "Lincoln" shows unequivocally just how offended they were by the gesture.
Let's face it, you Pathetic PimplePricked Latter Day Saint, you're just ticked that the "Abraham Lincoln" hasn't been renamed."

Posted 7:18 PM by a
Michelle Malkin: Eleanor Holmes Norton: The jailer

"Eleanor Holmes Norton is stark raving mad. The congressional delegate from the District of Columbia accused her fellow Democrat, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, of "selling out" last week because he supports a Bush administration-backed school choice proposal that would free thousands of poor black students from rotten public schools."

Posted 6:39 PM by a
Meghan Keane on Tammy Bruce's The Death of Right and Wrong on National Review Online

"The Left wants a world where there are no rules, no morality, and no personal responsibility. In a relativistic world, those people who do have beliefs or morals must be held as the enemy. Liberal elites thus must seek to undermine traditional values and the status quo. Bruce's book does a good job of pointing out the moral vacuum so often disguised as social activism and acceptance. Bruce quotes Orianna Fallaci's poignant observation: "Freedom cannot exist without discipline, self-discipline, and rights cannot exist without duties. Those who do not observe their duties do not deserve their rights." Unfortunately, this self-evident truth is just what is denied by the liberal elites."

Posted 6:34 PM by a
Thomas Sowell

Part I

"With profits eliminated, in theory there should have been lower prices for the consumers, who would now be able to afford a higher standard of living. In reality, countries that went the socialist route found themselves falling farther behind countries that allowed the hated profit system to continue to exist.


Naturally, political leaders with the vision of a government-controlled economy did not want to admit that they were wrong, much less have the voters realize that they were wrong. Only when decade after decade of blatant evidence from around the world became undeniable did governments begin to withdraw their suffocating controls and sell government-owned industries to private entrepreneurs."

Posted 6:03 PM by a
Thomas Sowell

Part II

"Like so many welfare state programs, government health insurance is based ultimately on an implicit assumption of getting something for nothing. I must confess to a certain grudging admiration for the fellow who said, "The government has its own money." At least he made explicit what is only implicit in others."

Posted 6:01 PM by a
Thomas Sowell

Part III

"What about the poor when it comes to health care? If this were the real issue, then money could be provided to take care of the poor. But here, as elsewhere, the poor are being used as excuses to fasten a whole system of controls on all of us. The left uses the poor as political human shields."

Posted 5:50 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: Rampant relentless relativism?

"We must not let the relativists prevail in their relentless quest for a valueless society. They'll try anything – including turning Scripture, such as "Judge not lest ye be judged," on its head. It requires courage to stand firm for Judeo-Christian values, because those who dare to do so are morally condemned by those who say we have no right to make moral judgments. And they want to talk to us about Bennett's hypocrisy?"

Posted 5:48 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: Rampant relentless relativism?

"How dare Santorum not cave to the bullying demands of the vocal minority that he repudiate his faith! That's what we're talking about here. Unless you concede the relativists' premise that no values are superior to any others, you are an intolerant, immoral S.O.B. The problem is that if you truly subscribe to Judeo-Christian ethics, you cannot honestly say that morality is a subjective matter, varying with the preference of every individual."

Posted 5:45 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: Castro's bizarre enablers

"What do you suppose could motivate these curious people to glorify such a man as Castro and such a universally failed, inhumane and corrupt system as communism? Why do they repudiate the United States for denouncing such evil? It has to be either an irrepressible love for communism that rejects all rationality, that defies all evidence, that still fantasizes longingly for the dictatorship of the proletariat, or, an unquenchable revulsion for the United States – or both. It's your call."

Posted 5:41 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The censorship conspiracy?

"Only close-minded liberals would deny that liberals enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the major media, say, from the '60s until fairly recently. But they have watched it slip away since the advent of conservative talk radio, the Internet and now Fox News, and they're beginning to panic."

Posted 4:44 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: Why America's empire will vanish

"Today, our children are tutored in the evils of our history and the tenets of egalitarian democracy, a new dogma that holds that all races, religions, cultures and civilizations are equal, and none has a right to impose its values or rule on other peoples. The United Nations is a shrine to this idea. Followed logically to its end – and given the West's shrinking fraction of world population – this idea must lead to what James Burnham called "The Suicide of the West."

Posted 3:39 PM by a
http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com

"After dinner we watched two shows on the History Channel about Saddam Hussein and golly, we're all wrong about him. He was a product of his childhood. His mother didn't want him so he was raised by his uncle, until the uncle had to go to prison. Young Saddam then went back to live with his mother and stepdad who physically abused him. When the uncle got out of prison, young Saddam went back to live with him. His uncle had him stealing goats for a while and gave him a gun when he was ten years old. The gun promptly murdered someone. The liberals among us will attest that it had to be the gun that did the crime and Saddam was a victim of the gun. Evil, evil gun! And if only Saddam had been given more self esteem in the Iraqi school system he would have turned out all right."

Posted 12:30 PM by a
OpinionJournal - John Fund's Political Diary

"E.J. McMahon, a former state Senate budget expert now with the Manhattan Institute, says the current fiscal crisis is but the latest example of the unholy alliance between both major parties and various spending lobbies. "The Democrats are in bed with the public-sector unions. The Republicans can't say no to profligate suburban school districts. The only thing they can agree on is saddling taxpayers with the bill for everything."

Posted 12:13 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today

"Perhaps the most disheartening development of the war--at home, anyway--is the number of liberals who have allowed Bush-hatred to take the place of thinking. Speaking with otherwise perceptive people, I have seen the same intellectual tics come up time and time again: If Bush is for it, I'm against it. If Bush says it, it must be a lie. Their opposition to Bush has made liberals embrace principles--such as the notion that the United States must never fight without U.N. approval except in self-defense--to which the Clinton administration never adhered (see Operation Desert Fox in 1998, or the Kosovo campaign in 1999). And it has made them forget that there are governments in the world even more odious and untrustworthy than the Bush administration."

Posted 12:47 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Extra

"For democracy to work, and for the constitutional principle of majority rule to prevail, this obstructionism must end, and we must bring matters to a vote. As Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge famously said of filibusters: "To vote without debating is perilous, but to debate and never vote is imbecile." Two years is too long. The Senate needs a fresh start."

Posted 12:44 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Extra

"By brazenly insisting, as Nevada's Harry Reid--the Senate's second-ranking Democrat--has said, that "there is not a number [of hours] in the universe that would be sufficient" for debate on certain nominees, Democrat leaders admit they are using the filibuster not to ensure adequate debate, but to change the Constitution by imposing a supermajority requirement for judicial confirmations."

Posted 2:12 PM by a
www.AndrewSullivan.com

"In the year after military action in Afghanistan and in preparation for war in Iraq - a process that so many experts predicted would lead an upsurge in terror and thousands of new Osamas - terrorist incidents actually fell from 355 in 2001 to 199 in 2002. Under this alleged cowboy president, in other words, during what was supposed to be an explosion of Islamist rage at the West, terrorist incidents fell to a thirty-year low. That is a huge, if still-vulnerable, achievement. Bush fully intends to build on it."

Posted 2:04 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Outside the Box

"American education needs choice and competition and the freedom to innovate if it is going to improve. The rising tide of educational mediocrity so startlingly revealed in 1983 has not ebbed, and until the market forces that have propelled America to the top in other endeavors replace the establishment public education bureaucracies, it may even continue to rise."

Posted 1:57 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Thinking Things Over

"Now, if anyone thinks the GOP invented this, ask Bob Bork. And for all of Mr. Brock's patent instability, his famous article in the American Spectator was essentially accurate; witness Bill Clinton's $850,000 payment to Paula Jones and his suspended law license for lies in the case. Those of us who told the truth about Mr. Clinton do not need to acquiesce in lies about our friends."

Posted 1:53 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Thinking Things Over

"Judicial nominee Miguel Estrada is currently being Borked; he was made "controversial" because the Justice Department won't release the internal memos he wrote, some of them for Democratic officials who back his nomination. Senate Democrats did allow a vote on Jeff Sutton, who'd been made "controversial" because he did too well defending clients the Emily's List Democrats didn't like. But the Democratic leadership promptly said they would filibuster against Priscilla Owen. She's "controversial" because on the Texas Supreme Court she voted to uphold laws requiring parental notification in cases of abortion for minors--laws widely approved in polls and upheld by the Supreme Court."

Posted 12:42 PM by a
Thomas Sowell

"While there are more than 19 million people working in households with incomes in the top 20 percent, there are fewer than 8 million people working in households in the bottom 20 percent. How much of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?"

Posted 7:24 PM by a
House Joint Resolution Authorizing Use of Force Against Iraq

10 October 2002

House Joint Resolution Authorizing Use of Force Against Iraq. House of Representatives approves resolution October 10.

Following is the text of House Joint Resolution 114, "To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq," approved in the House of Representatives October 10, by a vote of 296 to 133:

107th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. J. RES. 114
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 2, 2002

JOINT RESOLUTION

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.

Posted 7:16 PM by a
Bush cites legal 'duty' to wage war on Iraq -- The Washington Times

"The president of the United States has the authority — indeed, given the dangers involved, the duty — to use force against Iraq to protect the security of the American people and to compel compliance with United Nations resolutions," according to a seven-page report the White House sent to Congress, accompanied by a brief letter from Mr. Bush."

Posted 2:45 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"The world is not as it was: 3,000 Americans are dead. We took casualties in Iraq as a result of Turkish-French-German duplicity, and the French government had stronger military associations with Iraq than it did with us. The saner and safer, not the more precipitous, course is quietly but resolutely to change business as usual — and sooner rather than later."

Posted 2:40 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"To bring back moral clarity and maturity, we must begin to establish a more reciprocal relationship with the willing. We can start by moving all our troops from Germany or relocating them in much smaller pockets in Eastern Europe. This is not just a military issue; and the generals involved there should bow out and yield to their civilian overseers, who recognize the larger political and moral issues at stake."

Posted 2:36 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online "

"Maybe the animus comes from our radically different constitutions and the singular American experience of vast frontiers, immigration, assimilation, and the lack of a national creed or race? Or could it even be because we are optimistic about the future, and believe we can still assimilate our newcomers, grow the economy, expand our military, and promote freedom — even while they fret about stagnant growth, a demographic time bomb, and rising unassimilated minorities. Maybe, too, the angst arises because of the youth of Europe, who desire America’s popular and often crass culture enough to worry their older guardians of hallowed values? Who knows? Who cares?"

Posted 2:34 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"The fact is that the absence of Russian divisions has meant an end to both a common threat and unity with the United States. It is not just that Europeans have forgotten two World Wars, the Berlin Airlift, America’s willingness to expose its cities to Soviet nuclear attack to protect the continent, or our support for German reunification. They resent even the mention of past beneficence and, if history is to be contemplated, prefer to bring up Hamburg and Dresden rather than Auschwitz."

Posted 2:32 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"Too many Europeans still cherish the belief that they are close to an end to war, hunger, want, and meanness — ideals inseparable from a light work week, cradle-to-grave care, protection by an uncouth American military, and a steady stream of fertile, darker, unassimilated peoples to take out their trash and clean their toilets."

Posted 2:30 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"In the coming year alone, troves of archives — economic, political, and military — will reveal France to have been more an enemy than a friend of the United States in the present war, and that a legion of German, French, and Russian businessmen, journalists, and politicians were on the Iraqi take, or worse. The duplicity of our so-called friends will make their deceit during the Balkan fiasco look like child’s play."

Posted 2:27 PM by a
Victor Davis Hanson on War & Europe on National Review Online

"In return, many European elites ridicule American values, naïveté, and insularity — even as their countries have raked in billions of American dollars in trade surpluses and tourism from mostly oblivious, aw-shucks Americans. We self-absorbed, parochial yokels laughed and paid little attention to the fact that some in Europe had forsaken Christianity for this weird, emerging boutique religion of anti-Americanism."

Posted 2:21 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

"How the schools got this way--how respect for teachers died, disorder rose, basic learning fell, bureaucracy rose, why the best teachers quit, parents stopped caring and why professors think freshmen are academically delusional--is a subject for another column and maybe another lifetime (it takes more than one paragraph to explain how Supreme Court justices with high IQs render legal decisions reflecting no common sense)."

Posted 2:18 PM by a
OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

"Please join me for a tour of the second circle of hell. George Bush has a plan of action called No Child Left Behind, but if Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were sufficient reason to invade Iraq, he should now send in the Marines to occupy and reconstruct the nation's dysfunctional public schools."

Posted 1:55 PM by a
Michelle Malkin

"In response to Ashcroft's reference to a State Department report that "third country nations (Pakistanis, Palestinians) [were] using Haiti as a staging point" for entering the United States, the Washington Post breezily argues that "the difference between a Haitian and a Pakistani entering from Haiti could surely be discovered in a perfunctory border check." Hello? Illegal aliens aren't checking in at the border or any other ports of entry for any kind of checks on their national origin, criminal records or medical histories, "perfunctory" or otherwise."

Posted 1:41 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: High court's freedom from religion

"It's freedom of religion, men and women of the high court, not freedom from religion. As I read the First Amendment, it's "Congress" that is restrained from passing laws "respecting an establishment of religion." It doesn't say anything about prohibiting state legislatures or city governments from doing exactly that."

Posted 1:38 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The looters liberals ignore

"As muck-raking journalist Peter Brimelow argues in his devastating new expose, "The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education," teachers' union monopolies have put a chokehold on our education system, much like the "trusts" that stifled American businesses a century ago. Through their collective bargaining power, forced dues schemes, and "self-perpetuating staff oligarchy," the "Teacher Trust" has succeeded in providing ever more money and benefits not for students – but for themselves. This power grab would not have been possible without a socialized government school system immune from private competition and sustained by a bottomless well of taxpayer funds."

Posted 1:34 PM by a
WorldNetDaily: The censorship conspiracy?

"Only close-minded liberals would deny that liberals enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the major media, say, from the '60s until fairly recently. But they have watched it slip away since the advent of conservative talk radio, the Internet and now Fox News, and they're beginning to panic.
They dominated (and still do) the editorial boards of most of the nation's influential daily newspapers. They controlled (and still do) the three major television networks, including their news departments and anchors. Check the voluminous data provided at mediaresearch.org under "Media Bias Basics." No space here to set it all out, but the objective evidence is powerful and unarguable."

Posted 1:09 PM by a
WorldNetDaily:

"Santorum before the inquisition America's cultural and moral elite is almost wholly converted to the doctrine enshrined in the Humanist manifestos of 1933 and 1973. These documents hold that all voluntary sexual relations are equal, all are moral, none should be criminalized and any state that does so is bigoted. Moreover, all anti-sodomy laws should be overturned, and if voters are too benighted to do so, the court should step in and do it for them."

Posted 12:35 PM by a
Jonah Goldberg's Goldberg File on National Review Online

"Okay, let's recap. "Intimidation" of free speech is a moral horror. Democracy means never being criticized. And, the refusal to sponsor speech you don't like amounts to having one's "right to work" repealed. This is childish. Oh, I don't mean childish as in silly, I mean literally this is childish. This is the way children talk and think, especially in our gitchy-goo self-esteem culture. Not understanding the difference between their desires and rights, they insist they are entitled to do whatever it is they are doing. No matter what they do with their crayons, children expect to be told "That's so good. Good for you." Any criticism elicits a tantrum about the unfairness of it all."

Posted 12:20 PM by a
Jonah Goldberg's Goldberg File on National Review Online

"And lest you think Robbins is alone on this point, noted political philosopher Madonna voiced a similar point after voluntarily pulling her latest video from the airwaves. "It's ironic that we were fighting for democracy in Iraq," she explained, "because we ultimately aren't celebrating democracy here. Anybody who has anything to say against the war or against the president or whatever is punished, and that's not democracy."

Posted 12:12 PM by a
The Shiite 'Menace' (washingtonpost.com)

"It does not even merit a rejoinder. The idea that legitimacy flows from the blessings of France and Russia, Saddam Hussein's lawyers and suppliers, is on its face risible. Legitimacy does not come out of U.N. headquarters in New York; it will come out of the ground in Iraq, as more and more factions join in the construction of a provisional government."