The Continued Decline of Network News (We Love It)

Over the past 20 years, with the decline of the mainstream media and the rise of internet use and talk radio, the American people have gained many opportunities to get at the truth. No longer are Cronkite’s lies about the Tet offensive the only report we hear. No longer can Dan Rather use forged documents to smear an American president and go unchallenged, nor, without correction, can the New York Times, Reuters and the Associated Press publish doctored photographs and articles about Iraqi mass atrocities that never happened.

It is baffling to me that for-profit organizations, watching their liberal agendas drive away their audience, do not make adjustments and strive for more balance and truth in their reporting and their opinion pieces. The only network I see that is, in a very small way to be sure, making occasional efforts towards fairness is the domestic version of CNN – responding, I would guess, to the huge losses of its audience to Fox News.

StateoftheNewsMedia.com (Excerpt)

“The evening network news programs continued their steady but bumpy decline.
Between November 2004 and November 2005, ratings for the nightly news fell 6% and share fell 3%. That is an acceleration of the pace of decline in recent years. It translates into overall viewership on the three commercial nightly newscasts of 27 million viewers, or a decline of some 1.8 million viewers from November 2004. From the start of CNN in 1980, nightly news viewership for the Big Three networks has fallen by some 25 million, or 48%.

As measured in ratings, the percentage of nightly news viewing in all TV households, the three network evening newscasts had a combined 18.9 in November 2005, down from 20.2 a year earlier.

As measured in share, the percentage of just those television sets that are on at the time, the three newscasts earned a 37 share in November 2005, a drop from the 38 earned in November 2004.

In the previous editions of this report, we have illustrated the decline in viewership for the nightly network newscasts by using two landmarks: 1969, the historic peak of nightly news viewership, and 1980, the launch of the cable news network CNN. In 1969, the three commercial nightly network newscasts had a combined 50 rating and an 85 share. In 1980, they had a 37 rating and a 75 share. Based on November data for 2005, ratings have fallen 62% since 1969 and 48% since 1980. Share has fallen 56% since 1969 and 51% since 1980.”

The Global Warming Two-Step and Me

If you are disgusted that every few days there is another article warning of the catastrophe we face from global warming - followed immediately by another article saying that the alarmists are all wrong, this piece should really please you. Since it is the first article I have seen that substantially agrees with what I have been saying all along, of course it pleases me. I know that discussions of global warming turn a lot of you off, but give this one a chance.

The Global Warming Two-Step
By William Tucker
The American Spectator

Published 1/23/2007 12:08:03 AM

I'm in an interesting dilemma. I'm just finishing up a book on global warming and nuclear power. The premise is this:

A. Global warming is a real dilemma that should be solved.

B. Nuclear power is the only way we're going to solve it.

It's a simple premise that defies both liberal and conservatives -- fair enough. But ultimately it could get both on the same side. Then we might get something done in the country. Environmentalists hate nuclear but they worry about global warming more. Conservatives pooh-pooh global warming but they do like nuclear power. So maybe we could get going on a nuclear economy that would at least free us from coal (the worst polluter) and maybe eventually cut into our imported oil.

When I came to the chapter on global warming, the argument seemed fairly cut-and-dried. It employed the graph put out by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change in 2000. It shows global temperatures staying on a very even keel over the last 1,000 years until suddenly jetting upward into unknown territory since 1980. What could be simpler? Global warming is real.

Although I didn't know it at the time, this graph is commonly referred, in good Silicon Valley fashion, to as the "hockey stick."

Two months ago I tested the waters by writing a Spectator.org column called "Endorse Kyoto." As I expected, a lot of people wrote in denouncing me for giving in to the liberals on global warming. What I didn't expect was that many alert readers clued me in to something that has emerged over the last five years -- the hockey stick is a fraud.

THE BIG PROBLEM FOR GLOBAL WARMING alarmists is a period called "The Medieval Warming," which occurred from about 950 A.D. to 1350 A.D. It's well known from the history books. The Vikings colonized Greenland in 982 A.D. and stayed until 1425 A.D., when the cold weather and permafrost drove them out. While there they mapped the northern coast of Greenland, which is now encased in ice (although it's slowly melting). Leif Ericsson, blown off course while headed for Greenland in 1000 A.D., discovered "Vinland" -- probably Nova Scotia -- where he found wild wheat and grapes growing in abundance. Today the land is barren.

In fact, the IPCC had known about the Medieval Warming all along. In 1996 it published a temperature graph that clearly showed the Medieval Warming. There wasn't any dispute at that point.

What happened? Somehow a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts named Michael Mann did some fancy things with some tree-ring data from California in 1998 and came up with the "hockey stick." Such a blatantly ahistorical effort would have only raised eyebrows under ordinary circumstances, but it turned out to be just what the UN wanted -- proof that global warming was unprecedented! The IPCC made the hockey stick the centerpiece of its 2001 Climate Report. Bill Clinton also used it as the centerpiece of his 2000 National Report on Climate Change. The government of Canada sent a copy of the graph to every household in the country. In the end, the IPCC appointed Mann editor of its Journal of Climate -- not bad for a lowly Ph.D. student.


Slowly the criticisms trickled in. Two Canadian statisticians, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, examined Mann's algorithms and found that any random data plugged into the equations produced the same hockey stick. The hockey-stick fraud was also the subject of Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

The Hudson Institute has just published an excellent book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, chronicling the whole controversy and more. Authors S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery present their own counter-theory -- that the earth goes through regular 1,500-year cycles of warming and cooling, driven by the fluctuating intensity of the sun. There was a Roman Warming from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D. -- and of course the well-documented Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850, when Europe nearly froze to death.

All this is part of the guerrilla warfare that is going on between proponents and skeptics of global warming. Dennis Deming, a climate scientist at the University of Oklahoma, recently told the Senate about his experience in the field:
In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them.... One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

All this was very encouraging news. While I was researching all this, temperatures on the East Coast were in the '60s and '70s and people were sunbathing in January. I still miss winter, but it was encouraging to know that we had been through this once before and the world didn't fall apart, as generally predicted by alarmists. Greenland may become habitable again, but at least Miami isn't going to be underwater.

THERE WAS ONLY ONE PROBLEM: What about my book? I was willing to make a concession on global warming in order to try to win liberals over to nuclear energy and now the whole thing had fallen apart.

I spent a very intense two weeks in study. There's lots of literature on both sides and of course alarmists and skeptics each accuse each other of the most nefarious skullduggery. Environmentalists are now pillorying Exxon of spending $16 million trying to refute global warming. Each side is at the point of trying to outlaw the other's opinion.

What finally occurred to me is that maybe both are right. It's possible that the sun forces a 1500-year cycle of warming and cooling and that recent carbon emissions from industrial civilization are exaggerating the pattern. That would suggest there's nothing too unusual about the recent pattern (everybody agrees it's getting warmer), but carbon emissions could still be playing a part.

I finally found a handful of scientists who support this view. One is Nir Shaviv, a very intelligent Israeli astrophysicist who has written the following on ScienceBits.com:
The truth is probably somewhere in between, with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. Following [the] empirical evidence... about 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes.

The others are S.K. Solanki of the Max Planck Institute and M. Fligge of the Institute of Astronomy in Zurich, who have done extensive research on solar activity and show that it corresponds very closely with temperature changes. In particular, their data explains the slight decline in temperatures from 1956 to 1970 -- a period that carbon-emissions advocates have a great deal of trouble in explaining.

Solanki and Fligge are generally acknowledged by both sides to be very objective chroniclers of the solar theory. Yet when I read one of their leading papers, I found this:
Since approximately 1975 the situation is clearly different...with solar irradiance showing a comparatively much more modest rise than air temperature....[U]nless the influence of solar variability on Earth is very strongly non-linear, at least this most recent temperature increase reflects the influence of man-made greenhouse gases or non-solar sources of natural variability.

So I'm back in business. As far as I'm concerned, both sides have a point. Yes, there was a Medieval Warming and yes, the sun is the main agent of temperature change, but something is also happening with carbon emissions that is pushing us into unknown territory. It's worth doing something about it.

I hope this convinces both sides to take another look at nuclear power.

William Tucker

Dinesh, Dinesh, You Have Gone Too Far

Dinesh D’Souza, as my readers know, is one of my favorite people. He is being raked over the coals these days because of his recent book, “The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11”. D’Souza’s main contention is that the disintegration of American society and its decadence, as seen by others through television and movies, provided the main motivation for the Islamic fanatics who attacked us on 9/11 and in previous and ongoing attacks. For once I agree with his critics; his contention is not correct. I believe that his previous position, that American culture is inundating and dominating many other cultures, including Muslim culture, - together with other factors such as: Muslim shame at being left behind and their desire to reestablish the Caliphate – are much more important. He forgets that Islamic terrorists are at work almost everywhere in the world, in deepest Africa, in the Orient, in Europe and in Chechnya.

On the other hand, D’Souza does make some good points, some of which I have excerpted from an interview he gave to FrontPage Magazine last week:

FP: You argue that liberal popular culture has created a blowback of resistance from traditional cultures, especially Islamic culture. Kindly explain.

D’Souza: Here in America we know that there is a distinction between the values of American popular culture and the values by which Americans live. But for a Muslim on the streets of Cairo or Islamabad, American popular culture reflects what America is all about. Our popular culture is our country’s face to the world. There is an attractive aspect to this culture, its vitality and individuality. But there is also a lot in this culture that is excessive and trivial and indecent and shameful. I’m not just talking about rap music and Jerry Springer, but also about so-called high culture. Eve Ensler is very proud that her “Vagina Monologues” has played worldwide, including in many Muslim countries. She is especially proud of sequences in which people stand up and discuss their vaginas. Now you have to remember that outside of Europe and America, most of the cultures of the world are quite traditional. They are socially quite conservative. Islamic culture is especially conservative in valuing female modesty and childhood innocence. So things that we may consider edgy or “pushing the envelope” here in America are, in the Muslim world, considered shocking evidence of American moral degeneracy. The radical Muslims say it’s one thing for Americans to have these perversions in their own society, but now they are forcing it upon the rest of the world. So the call to jihad is issued defensively: to protect Islamic society from values that will undermine the religion and destroy the family and corrupt the children.

FP: If Islam rejects separation of church and state, how can Muslim countries become democratic?

D’Souza: Separation of church and state is an American invention. Even the Europeans don’t have it. In England you have the Anglican Church which is an official establishment. Even European countries which are more secular than the United States often give money to religious schools and so on. So religious establishment is consistent with religious toleration. And religious toleration is an idea that has long been upheld in Islam. When Catholic Spain gave the Jews three choices—leave the country, convert to Christianity, or be killed—Jews and other religious minorities were living peacefully and practicing their religion in Muslim empires, from the Mughal empire in India to the Abbasid empire and later the Ottoman empire based in Turkey. True, the Islamic empires discriminated against other religions, but they put up with them and gave them considerable control over their own communities. The radical Muslims are trying to get rid of this tradition of religious toleration, but the traditional Muslims still abide by it. Here is something within the Muslim tradition that can provide a foundation for Muslim democracy.

FP: You cite Abu Ghraib as an example of the depravity of “liberal family values.” Why exactly do you say this?

D’Souza: For Muslims, torture was not the big story at Abu Ghraib. Historian Bernard Lewis has said that compared to prisons anywhere in the Muslim world, Abu Ghraib was like Disneyland. Many of the infamous pictures depicting captives blindfolded, or with wires all around them—that was simulated torture, not real torture. What really scandalized the Muslim world were the pictures of sexual depravity. Now even some conservatives minimized this at the time, I guess in the hope that it would make the scandal go away. “It was just a fraternity prank,” and so on. But for traditional societies where honor is the highest social value, there is nothing amusing about taking a religious man and putting a woman’s underwear on his head. There is no humor in stripping him naked and forcing him to masturbate while you take photos. For many Muslims Abu Ghraib was an illustration of what perverts Americans have become, and how lightly we tread on other people’s sacred beliefs. We think that a little sexual tomfoolery is nothing compared to cutting of a man’s head and broadcasting the assassination on the Internet. But for many Muslims, it’s bad to kill a man but it’s worse to strip away his honor. This is why some traditional Muslims are reluctant to condemn their radical counterparts. They don’t want to be seen as taking the side of Western depravity, a depravity that my book shows to be the product of contemporary liberalism.

FP: You challenge the idea that radical Muslims are against modern science, democracy and capitalism. How come?

D’Souza: Because they’re not. Read the works of the leading thinkers of Islamic radicalism, like Qutb and Sharia’ti and Mawdudi. They are all champions of modern science. They like capitalism. Now democracy is a trickier issue. Here the radical Muslims are divided. Some, like Qutb, support democracy while others say we cannot allow the will of the people to substitute for the will of God. But in the last decade and a half most of the leading organizations of radical Islam have become enthusiastic proponents of democracy. Why? Not because they have been reading The Federalist Papers. The reason they support democracy is that they have discovered that this is an excellent way to come to power. Look at the success of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria in the 1990s. Or the success of Hamas. Or of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian parliamentary election.

FP: You say that liberal foreign policy sowed the seeds of 9/11. How?

D’Souza: First the liberals advising Jimmy Carter helped radical Islam to capture its first major state. Since the 1920s the radical Muslims were on the margins of society. But in 1979 they came to power in Iran. How did this happen? Well, our friend Carter was elected in 1976 on a human rights platform. The liberals went to Carter and said, “You can’t support the Shah of Iran because he is a dictator. He has a secret police. He violates human rights.” And so Carter began to pull the Persian rug out from under America’s ally. As resistance to the Shah mounted, Carter urged the Shah not to resist it but to abdicate, which he did. And the result was Khomeini. In trying to get rid of the bad guy, liberal foreign policy brought us the worse guy. Khomeini invented the idea that America is the Great Satan. He called for martyrdom in the cause of fighting America. Without Khomeini, we would never have had Bin Laden. Khomeini paved the way for 9/11. I’m not even going to get into Clinton’s role in emboldening Bin Laden to strike when he did. I’ll leave that for people to read in my book.

FP: You say the left wants us to lose in Iraq. But why? Aren’t the Islamic radicals a threat to women’s rights and gay rights?

D’Souza: It’s quite clear that the left wants us to lose the war on terror. Some people like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn are outspoken in saying this. But even people who don’t say it clearly wish it. If you think the left wants us to win, then its actions become baffling and mysterious. You have to labor hard to figure out why they speak and act like they do. On the other hand if you assume the left wants us to lose, then all its rhetoric and actions make complete sense. But why? Because the left is a bit scared of Bin Laden but it is very scared of Bush. The left doesn’t like Bin Laden but it absolutely hates Bush. And while Bin Laden and his allies are the “far enemy,” Bush and the conservatives are the “near enemy.” As the left sees it, Bin Laden threatens sharia in Baghdad, but Bush threatens sharia in Boston. Imagine one or two more conservative court appointments and the whole liberal agenda of the past half-century is jeopardized. So the left is quite willing to ally with the lesser evil, the Islamic radicals, in order to defeat the greater evil, Bush and the right.

FP: We have a difficult time with the word “treason” now. Is treason the problem?

D’Souza: No, because the left loves America. Yes, I know David Horowitz is going to do a double-take on that, but it’s true. I’ll say it again: Michael Moore loves America. The only thing is that he loves a different American that we do. What he loves is liberal America, the America of labor revolts and bra-burning and the Stonewall riots and Roe v. Wade. What he hates is traditional or conservative America. Jeanine Garofalo said that she hates it when people wave the American flag but she gets teary-eyed when they burn the American flag. That’s because she identifies the flag with traditional American values. So she’s not anti-American: her patriotism is based on an allegiance to liberal American values.

FP: How important is the Iraq war? Can we win?

D’Souza: I am not sure how we are doing in Iraq. It’s hard to say because the media accounts are so untrustworthy. It’s important we win because we don’t want radical Islam getting its hands on a second major state. They already have Iran, and that’s a big enough problem. If Iraq falls, you can be sure that Egypt and Saudi Arabia will be targeted next. This is not Vietnam, which was peripheral to our vital interests. Our whole way of life, not to mention our security, depends at least for the foreseeable future, on a stable Middle East. So the stakes in Iraq are very high, and the Democratic Leadership that is trying to force a precipitous withdrawal is playing with fire.

FP: You say America can fight a better war on terror by making allies with traditional Muslims. What do you mean?

D’Souza: Our current strategy is based on trying to find secular liberals in the Muslim world, people who believe in women’s rights and separation of church and state. News flash: there are hardly any such people. Yes, there is Salman Rushdie and a lesbian radio host in Canada who have gotten a lot of attention. I like some of the things these Muslim liberals are saying. But they have no constituency in the Muslim world. That world is divided between the Islamic radicals and traditional Muslims. The left is allied with the Islamic radicals, so common sense says the right should build ties with traditional Muslims. Besides, there is no way to win the war on terror without driving a wedge between radicals and traditionalists. The traditional Muslims are the recruiting pool for radical Islam. Even if we kill 100 radicals, it’s no use if 500 traditional Muslims join the next day. So we have to find a way of drying up radical Islam’s recruitment. Whenever we attack Islam or say that Muhammad was the founder of terrorism, we are pursuing a self-defeating strategy because we are driving traditional Muslims into the hands of the radicals. My book, however, has specific suggestions for how America can work with traditional Muslims to defeat not only Islamic radicalism but also the global influence of the cultural left.

FP: Dinesh D’Souza, thank you for joining us. From Frontpage.com

What’s in the Water In Michigan?

My frequent harangues on the dangers and pervasiveness of liberal domination of our schools and colleges may make some of my readers think that my own experiences as a conservative college professor in a liberal college environment have made me overly sensitive to this poison. I assure you that the extent of the degree to which a ‘hate America’ curriculum and the harassment and silencing of students and faculty who disagree with the leftist party line has reached the point where it completely dominates American upper education.

A few recent examples tell the story: the Harvard University president forced to resign because he suggested there might be (might be) some innate differences between men and women; the bodyguards that conservative speakers feel are required when invited to speak at college functions; the physical intimidation of the Minuteman speaker at Columbia; the reaction of faculty, administration and students to the accused students at Duke; the denial of Islamic terrorism by student groups at hundreds of colleges; and now, the fine example being set by the University of Michigan and Michigan State:

Dec. 18, 2006
Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: More campus thought police (Excerpt)

Another example of political correctness run amok
“The agents of political correctness who police the nation's college and university campuses generally use shame and scorn to beat down free expression deemed offensive by the tiniest minority.

But sometimes, institutions aren't content to merely marginalize those who fail to embrace a worldview that emphasizes the rights of groups over those of individuals. Rather than engage these free spirits in open debate in a classroom setting -- isn't that what college is all about? -- administrators seek to re-educate these malefactors on the proper way to think.

Michigan State University has taken the multicultural mantra of indoctrination to a new extreme. Students whose speech or behavior is deemed inappropriate for a university setting are ordered to complete, at their own expense, the school's Student Accountability in Community Seminar.

This program bills itself as an "early intervention" for those who take "any action of obscuring, concealing, or changing people's perceptions that result in your advantage and/or another's disadvantage." In other words, any behavior that might make someone feel bad. Seminar participants have included students who've argued with professors or cracked offensive jokes -- constitutionally protected free speech.

Once enrolled in the seminar, students are forced to complete written questionnaires about their behavior, sometimes several times, until an instructor believes the student has taken "full responsibility" for his actions. If a student refuses to enroll in the seminar, the university won't let the student register for classes, a de facto act of expulsion….”

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November 23, 2006
The University of Michigan vs. The People
By Steve Chapman (Excerpt)

“After the votes were counted on election night, there were lots of gracious concession statements by losing candidates thanking their supporters, offering to work with the winners and paying tribute to the virtues of democracy. Then there was Mary Sue Coleman, who was having none of this.

The day after Michigan's citizens voted to ban the use of racial and gender preferences by public institutions, the president of the University of Michigan gave an embittered speech telling them to take a long walk off a short pier. Her message was that the school would do "whatever it takes" to delay, frustrate and circumvent the clearly expressed will of the public. She could have been more succinct if she had merely repeated the words of Dick Tuck after losing a California state senate race in 1964: "The people have spoken -- the bastards."

Coleman has been a staunch champion of the idea of correcting racial discrimination by practicing racial discrimination. The University of Michigan's admissions policies have the effect of accepting many black and Hispanic applicants who would be rejected if they were white or Asian-American.

Until the Supreme Court ruled it illegal, the formula automatically gave 20 points (out of 100 needed for acceptance) to anyone from an "underrepresented" minority group. A perfect SAT score, by contrast, was worth only 12 points. Though it struck down that approach, the court agreed to let the school employ race as a "plus factor" in a program aimed at assuring "diversity" in the student body. Double standards in the pursuit of what amount to racial quotas were allowed to continue.

But it turns out that was not the last word. Opponents of racial preferences responded to the Supreme Court decision by offering a state constitutional amendment, Proposal 2, to outlaw this kind of discrimination. On Nov. 7, it was approved with the support of 58 percent of the voters.

Coleman exudes contempt for these people, accusing them of opposing "a community that is fair and equal for all." She said California's 1996 ban on racial and gender preferences "has been a horribly failed experiment" that "we cannot, and will not, allow to take seed here in Michigan." And she assured her campus audience that she would not be bound by the intentions of the voters: "We will find ways to overcome the handcuffs that Proposal 2 attempts to place on our reach for greater diversity."

Democrats Vote to Increase American Dependence on Arab Oil

Hooray! Finally those nasty and obscenely profitable oil companies will get their just desserts. The Democrat-controlled House Of Representatives just recently voted to repeal tax breaks that were in place to encourage domestic oil exploration and drilling.

Wait a minute. Why would they repeal tax breaks that are designed to free us from foreign (mostly Arab) oil? Why, to encourage the use of Biofuels, of course. The same Biofuels that most experts now admit cost more energy to produce and transport than they contain – the same Biofuels that Brazil, formerly a leading user of fuel produced from sugar cane, just celebrated not having to use any more since they discovered their own oil reserves? Give me a break.

House votes to repeal oil tax breaks (Excerpt)
Friday, January 19, 2007
Sabrina Eaton
Plain Dealer Bureau

Washington -- Democrats in the House of Representatives voted Thursday to repeal roughly $14 billion in oil industry tax breaks and use that revenue to support renewable-energy research and alternative energy.

It was the last measure in a legislative package that Democrats pushed through in their first legislative hours to make good on campaign pledges they made in the 2006 election.

"This serves as a fitting end to our first 100 hours agenda," said Illinois Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel. Government "handouts to energy companies" at a time of record profits exemplified corruption that Democrats want to end, he said.

Foes of the bill said raising taxes on domestic oil companies will cost U.S. jobs and boost reliance on foreign oil. They argued it would increase energy costs and discourage investment in domestic energy production.

"If the problem is foreign oil, why increase taxes and make it harder to produce American oil and gas?" asked Alaska GOP Rep. Don Young, whose state gets 85 percent of its budget from oil production.

The bill was adopted, 264-163, with support of all Ohio's Democrats and opposition from all its Republicans.

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Clinton Shills For Bad Energy Policy (Excerpt)
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/27/2006

Clinton is hawking the idea that taxing offshore oil drilling companies, from 1% to 6% — a 600% hike for some — and then turning the spoils into a new government bureaucracy for ethanol development is the way to end California's dependence on imported oil.

"Imagine if we stop being dependent on foreign oil. Brazil did it. They made a simple switch to their cars. Switched to ethanol, grown from their own crops. And it's 33% cheaper than gas," Clinton said, neglecting one key detail: cars must use three times as much ethanol as gas.

"With Proposition 87, we can switch to cleaner fuels, wind and solar power," he says in a political ad, "and free ourselves from foreign oil. If Brazil can do it, so can California."

But as a matter of fact, that's not what Brazil did. It launched a crash program of offshore oil drilling in the late 1990s, working with a Manhattan Project-like determination to develop its own natural resources.

In 1997, Brazil opened its oil sector to foreign competition, encouraging companies like Royal Dutch Shell to explore and drill for oil in its offshore waters for the first time. It offered incentives — like tax cuts. It also turned its inefficient state oil company, Petrobras, into a for-profit company run like a real business instead of a government cash cow, forcing it to compete on an international-standard level. In short, it got out of the way.

Net result, lots more oil for Brazil — enough to enable the once-oil-dependent country to actually export some, all from fewer energy reserves than the U.S.
Brazil's new P-50 rig has boosted output to an average 1.9 million barrels of oil a day, a bit more than the 1.85 million Brazil consumes.

By contrast, ethanol output in Brazil, the world's biggest producer, is only a small share of its energy consumption.

Last year, the country squeezed out just 282,000 barrels a day mostly using sugar, a more efficient and clean-burning energy source than the corn-based stuff produced in the U.S. But sugar-based ethanol still isn't as efficient as gasoline.

We Thank You President Bush For 20 Years

We thank you President Bush for 20 years of peace and freedom. Here in 2027, as we look back on all that has happened, we salute you for your steadfastness in the face of unstinting vitriol from the left, including books and movies advocating your assassination, in holding fast to your belief that America’s future could only be secured by facing the terrorists on their ground, not ours. Your decisions to go first into Afghanistan and then into Iraq before they could supply nuclear weapons to terrorists and to finish that job has turned out to be as important to America as was Lincoln’s decision to save the Union at all costs.

Our eventual victory in Iraq, which took several years to accomplish, changed the whole equation in the Middle East. True democracy spread to Iran, Kuwait and Egypt. Lebanon restored its delicate balance and eventually gained back its role as the Switzerland of the east. Without the support of Iraq and Iran, Hezbollah influence waned, and Syria became much more accommodating and reached an agreement with Israel, as did the Palestinians.

Another result of the stabilization of a true democracy in Iraq and the defeat and expulsion of Al Qaeda from that area had another snowball effect: it strengthened the resolve of many European countries not to give in to the demands of their Muslim immigrants to live under special laws only for them. These countries also put a stop to the wholesale immigration from Muslim countries that had been taking place.

Your experience of having to deal personally with the most incredible series of personal attacks, wherein you were repeatedly called a liar, a Hitler and a murderer by the scalawags of their time (Senators Reid, Kennedy, Durbin and Kerry to name a few), and had to deal with a hostile press which constantly revealed classified information and published fake photographs and made-up stories of atrocities also reminded us of President Lincoln’s experience. In fact, here are accounts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in the newspapers of his time:

“members in the back reaches of the audience had a tendency to wander off. An entire group of convalescent soldiers who had come to listen to the "speechifying" had drifted away down onto the battlefields and observed carcasses of still unburied horses, and looked across the fields, remembering what they had seen and done in them. . . .

One newspaper would write: "We pass over the silly remarks of the President, for the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated or thought of."

Another: "Mr. Lincoln did most foully traduce the motives of the men who were slain at Gettysburg. . . . Readers will not have failed to observe the exceeding bad taste which characterized the words of the President. . . ."

The London Times' correspondent would write: "The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln. . . .
Anything more dull and commonplace it wouldn't be easy to produce."

Lincoln himself would feel his speech was a failure. In a remark regarding his effort he would say it did not "scour." A word used by farmers: if wet soil stuck to the plow it did not "scour."

The correspondent of the Chicago Tribune would be among the first to recognize something special in Lincoln's oration: "The dedicatory remarks by President Lincoln will live among the annals of man. . ."

From the book, “Gettysburg” by Jack McLaughlin, page 195

Mr. Bush, we recently saw a video of your 2007 State of the Union address. The courtesy you always showed, and especially showed during this speech, to your foul-mouthed critics was an inspiration to us all.

Why Are We Concerned About Rep. Keith Ellison?

Newly elected Representative Keith Ellison is being watched closely, not for his Muslim religion, but for the combination of his religion with activities that might indicate a certain sympathy for various forms of jihad, from imposing the Sharia to terrorism. When enough Canadian-Muslims got themselves into positions of leadership to try to push through the adoption of Sharia law, a province in Canada narrowly escaped coming under its rule. Sharia law, of course, is Muslim religious law, with harsh justice that is administered by imams and not by our civil courts. We Americans have some difficult and hard choices to make: we wish to protect the civil rights of all Americans regardless of their religion, but common sense tells us that if enough Muslims gain political office, our country may be doomed to constantly fighting off attempts to impose Sharia and to a weakening of our resolve against Islamic terrorists.

Christopher Hitchens in Slate reports: (Excerpt)

“It was quite witty of Rep Keith Ellison, D-Minn., to short-circuit the hostility of those who criticized him for taking his oath on the Quran and to ask the Library of Congress for the loan of Thomas Jefferson's copy of that holy book. But the irony of this, which certainly made his stupid Christian fundamentalist critics look even stupider, ought to be partly at his own expense as well.

In the first place, concern over Ellison's political and religious background has little to do with his formal adherence to Islam. In his student days and subsequently, he was a supporter of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, a racist and crackpot cult organization that is in schism with the Muslim faith and even with the Sunni orthodoxy now preached by the son of the NOI's popularizer Elijah Muhammad.

Farrakhan's sect explicitly describes a large part of the human species—the so-called white part—as an invention of the devil and has issued tirades against the Jews that exceed what even the most fanatical Islamists have said. Farrakhan himself has boasted of the "punishment" meted out to Malcolm X by armed gangsters of the NOI (see the brilliant documentary Brother Minister: The Assassination of Malcolm X, which catches him in the act of doing this). If Ellison now wants to use his faith to justify an appeal to pluralism and inclusiveness and diversity, he needs to repudiate the Nation of Islam, and in much more unambivalent terms than any I have yet heard from him….” Christopher Hitchens

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And from PowerLine
September 30, 2006
Keith Ellison for dummies

After he unexpectedly won the endorsement of the DFL nominating convention for Minnesota's Fifth District congressional seat on May 6, Keith Ellison faced a serious problem. The problem was how to deal with his well-known involvement with the Nation of Islam. Had Ellison not managed to dispose of the problem, his candidacy would likely have been irreparably weakened in the competitive DFL primary field.

Ellison chose to deal with the problem by writing an audacious letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council on May 28. In the letter, Ellison staked his campaign on three assertions: That his involvement with the Nation of Islam was limited to a period of 18 months around the time of the Million Man March in 1995, that he was unaware of the Nation of Islam's anti-Semitism and that he terminated his involvement with the Nation of Islam when he became aware of it.

Instead of undertaking any investigation of these assertions, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has simply reported the assertions and repeated them as facts ever since. Yet each of these assertions is demonstrably false. Their falsehood is easily established by newspaper accounts documenting Ellison's activities, speeches and beliefs over the relevant period of time.

Moreover, Ellison's long commitment to and advocacy of the Nation of Islam is reflected in the various aliases he used over a period of ten years: Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison and Keith Ellison-Muhammad. The Star Tribune has not only failed to connect these aliases to Ellison's involvement with the Nation of Islam, it has erroneously reported that Ellison used these aliases during his student days at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Ellison's involvement with the Nation of Islam includes his support of "the truth" of Joanne Jackson's condemnation of Jews in 1997 as "the most racist white people." In his May 28 letter to the JCRC, Ellison went out of his way to state that, unlike others, he did not come to the defense of the statement that created the controversy that engulfed Joanne Jackson. Rather, according to Ellison, he only called for dialogue. This too is demonstrably false.

Ellison's involvement with the Nation of Islam is not the most offensive of his public associations and commitments. That distinction must belong to Ellison's work with Minneapolis gang leader and murderer Sharif Willis following the 1992 murder of Minneapolis Police Officer Jerry Haaf.

Ellison's February 2000 speech on behalf of domestic terrorist Kathleen Soliah/Sara Jane Olson picked up this reprehensible aspect of Ellison's career and united it with his missionary work on behalf of the Nation of Islam. In that speech Ellison called for the release of Soliah/Olson and spoke favorably of cop killers Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur. The Star Tribune has never gotten around to reporting what Ellison said on that occasion either.

The new issue of the Weekly Standard carries my article summarizing the most notable aspects of Keith Ellison's public career: "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman." As Power Line readers might guess, my preferred title for the article was "Who is Keith Ellison?" Thanks to Standard online editor Jonathan Last for making it accessible this morning and to Standard managing editor Claudia Anderson for her work on the piece.

Given the Star Tribune's disinclination to examine Ellison's public record, or to get straight what little it has let come to the surface, we thought we might set out a Keith Ellison timeline and post copies of some key articles as a companion to the Standard piece:

1987--Ellison enrolls in University of Minnesota Law School

1989--Ellison publishes the first of two articles in the University of Minnesota Daily under the alias "Keith Hakim." In the first such article, Ellison speaks up for the Nation of Islam.

1990--Ellison participates in the sponsorship of the anti-Semitic speech by Kwame Ture given at the University of Minnesota Law School ("Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy or Both?"). Ellison rejects the appeal of Jewish law students to withdraw sponsorship of the lecture. Ellison graduates from University of Minnesota Law School.

1992--Ellison appears as speaker at demonstration against Minneapolis police with Vice Lords leader Sharif Willis following the murder of Officer Haaf by four Vice Lords gangsters in September.

1993--Ellison leads demonstration chanting "We don't get no justice, you don't get no peace" in support of Vice Lords defendant on trial for the murder of Officer Haaf. Ellison attends Gang Summit in Kansas City with Willis.

1995--Ellison supports Million Man March, appears at organizing rally with former Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammed at University of Minnesota. Ellison acts as local Nation of Islam leader in march at office of U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis protesting indictment of Qubilah Shabazz for conspiring to murder Louis Farrakhan. Ellison charges FBI with conspiring to murder Farrakhan. Ellison writes article under alias "Keith X Ellison" attacking Star Tribune for criticizing Louis Farrakhan.

1997--Ellison appears under alias "Keith Ellison-Muhammad" at Minnesota Initiative Against Racism hearing in support of Joanne Jackson. Ellison defends "the truth" of Jackson's statement that "Jews are the most racist white people."

1998--Ellison first runs for DFL endorsement for state representative. Ellison identifies himself as member of Nation of Islam in Insight News article on his candidacy. Ellison runs for endorsement under alias "Keith Ellison-Muhammad."

2000--Ellison gives speech supporting Kathleen Soliah/Sara Jane Olson at National Lawyers Guild fundraiser. Demands Soliah/Olson's release. Asks audience to recall time when "Qubilah Shabazz was prosecuted in retribution against Minister Farrakhan." Speaks favorably of cop killers Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur.

May 2006--Ellison writes letter to JCRC asserting involvement with Nation of Islam limited to 18 months supporting Million Man March.

August 2006--Ellison appears at unpublicizied fundraiser with CAIR executive director and Hamas supporter Nihad Awad among featured guests.

What are we to make of this? Take a look at Ellison’s May 28 letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council; it has served as the keystone of his campaign. That letter to the contrary notwithstanding, the documents posted above nevertheless by themselves establish that 1) Ellison’s involvement with the Nation of Islam exceeded any 18-month period, 2) Ellison's involvement with the Nation of Islam extended far beyond the promotion of the Million Man March, and 3) that Ellison himself, far from being ignorant of the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitism, actively supported it.

The steadfast refusal of the local Minnesota media to examine Ellison’s public record in the course of his congressional campaign represents a striking case of nonfeasance, incompetence and willfully averted eyes that is a story unto itself.

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AND IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF SHARIA IN THE USA?

N.C. lawsuit seeking use of Quran for courtroom oaths gets green light
Gary D. Robertson / Associated Press
January 16, 2007

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A lawsuit filed by the ACLU and a Muslim woman seeking the use of the Quran or other non-Christian texts in addition to the Bible for courtroom oaths should be allowed to go forward, the state Court of Appeals ruled today.

A trial court dismissed the lawsuit in December 2005, saying there was no controversy that warranted litigation. The three-judge appeals panel disagreed, but did not comment on the merits of the case.

The lawsuit, filed in July 2005, claims the state law that says witnesses must take an oath on the Bible is unconstitutional because it favors Christianity over other religions. State law allows witnesses preparing to testify in court to take their oath either by laying a hand over a "Holy Scripture," or by saying "so help me God" without the use of a religious book.

Plaintiff Sydiah Mateen claims she had a request to place her hand on the Quran denied in 2003. Several Jewish members of the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union also have said they would prefer to swear upon the Old Testament, one of the religious texts of their faith, Chief Judge John Martin wrote in the appeal panel's unanimous decision.

"The government cannot favor one set of religious values over another and must allow all individuals of faith to be sworn in on the holy text that is in accordance with their faith," said Jennifer Rudinger, director of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The issue surfaced after Muslims from the Al-Ummil Ummat Islamic Center in Greensboro tried to donate copies of the Quran to Guilford County's two courthouses. Two Guilford judges declined to accept the texts, saying an oath on the Quran is not a legal oath under state law.

The Attorney General's Office is reviewing the ruling but hasn't decided whether to appeal, spokeswoman Noelle Talley said.

In Loco Parentis and the Duke Case

Some who find it difficult to support the Duke University lacrosse players because of their stupidity in drinking to excess and hiring a stripper in the first place should help put pressure to end the tolerance and even encouragement of these practices by college administrators and alumni.

When I first started teaching, the term, 'in loco parentis' still somewhat applied.

Due to the efforts of liberals on faculty and in the administration, and even, surprisingly, to parents complaints, 'in loco parentis' has turned into 'anything goes'. Colleges have become places where binge drinking, pervasive casual sex and robotic liberal propaganda with no tolerance for dissent is the norm. And it’s not just that these practices are accepted, they are encouraged by the prevailing liberal philosophy that what you do is your own business (so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else). This applies to drugs, alcohol, sex, obscenities and men hanging foot-long chains from their ears. I can’t begin to recall the number of arguments I have had with liberal colleagues over the harm some television programs and movies were doing to our children. They can’t understand that these behaviors ALWAYS affect other people.

The real reason for the stance of liberals is that they want to engage in this behavior themselves, and they don’t want to feel any heat from society or from their neighbors for their actions. “Don’t be judgmental, you Neanderthal; besides, it’s no one’s business but mine.”

From Wikipedia:
“Taking root in colonial American schools, in loco parentis was an idea derived from English common law. The colonists borrowed it from the English ideal of schools having not only educational but also moral responsibility for students. With this duty went the equivalent of parental authority. The idea especially suited the puritanical values of the colonists, and after the American Revolution, it persisted in elementary and high schools, colleges, and universities. The judiciary respected it: like their English counterparts, U.S. courts in the nineteenth century were unwilling to interfere when students brought grievances, particularly in the area of rules, discipline, and expulsion.

Two important shifts in society and law diminished the effect of the doctrine. One was the evolution of educational standards. Beginning in the late 1800s and advancing rapidly during the mid-1900s, the increasing secularization of schools brought an emphasis on practical education over moral instruction. At a slower rate, courts adapted to this change, according greater rights to students than were previously recognized. This trend began during the turbulent era of social change in the 1960s.

The first to benefit were students in higher education, through rulings such as the landmark Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 294 F.2d 150 (5th Cir. 1961). In Dixon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit extended due process rights to students at tax-supported colleges, ruling that the Constitution "requires notice and some opportunity for hearing" before students can be expelled for misconduct. After Dixon, courts largely abandoned in loco parentis in favor of contract law for adjudicating disputes between students and their institutions. Partly in reaction to free speech movements, other changes came as courts recognized that students at public colleges and universities were entitled to full enjoyment of their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

Over the next decade, public school students received greater recognition of their rights, too. In ruling that high school students could not be expelled for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1969 that students do not "shed their constitutional rights … at the schoolhouse gate" (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731). In 1975, it held in Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 95 S. Ct. 729, 42 L. Ed. 2d 725, that the suspension of high school students for alleged disruptive or disobedient conduct required some sort of notice of charges and a prior hearing.

But the underlying premise of in loco parentis did not disappear completely from public schools. Instead, the Supreme Court limited students' rights based on what it found appropriate for children in school. In 1977, it held that the disciplinary paddling of public school students was not a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment (Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S. Ct. 1401, 51 L. Ed. 2d 711). Public school students have also traditionally enjoyed less protection of their First and Fourth Amendment rights. Recognizing the duty of schools to safeguard students, the Court in 1995 permitted high schools to conduct random urinalysis of student athletes even without prior suspicion (Vernonia School District v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S. Ct. 2386, 132 L. Ed. 2d 564).

The progression from the courts' early acceptance of in loco parentis to a broader recognition of students' rights transformed U.S. education. Students in public universities gained the most from this shift in philosophy and law, but students in high school also earned recognition of their due process rights. The judicial revolution that began with Dixon did not give constitutional protection to the rights of private school students, who are distinct under the law from public school students.

In the 1980s, new issues involving the in loco parentis doctrine arose for colleges and universities. Victims of campus crime insisted that these institutions owed a duty to provide safe campuses to students. The schools, noting that the doctrine of in loco parentis was no longer upheld, resisted the idea because of the increased liability that would accrue to them. At the same time, many institutions enacted controversial rules governing so-called hate speech, and these codes returned them in some measure to the days when they tightly regulated student behavior.” Wikipedia

After reading this, I hope my viewers can gain a greater understanding of just why our public schools and formerly great universities have descended into a maelstrom of undisciplined mishmash – graduating ignoramuses who never heard of Thomas Jefferson, think Dick Cheney is a basketball star and Britney Spears is an appropriate role-model.

Where Do Republicans Really Go From Here?

It becomes clearer and clearer every day that the Republican Party is locked in an internal conflict whose resolution, if that can ever really happen, will determine, not only the future success of the party, but also its impact on safeguarding what is left of the principles on which we have been governed and the rules of decency affecting how we relate to each other as Americans. Our democracy is a republic, with checks and balances and constitutional limits on federal intrusion into our lives. Our forefathers were well aware that democracy begins to fail when the foxes gain entry to the henhouse; that is, when a mass of uneducated voters, who take, but do not give, begin to control the public treasury.

When this same mass of uneducated and ignorant people also determine the social standards by which we live, through their support of ever more salacious and violent television programs and movies, something our forefathers could not have foreseen, a decent society begins to crumble. (Liberals who continue to maintain that the entertainment media have no impact on children, and any restrictions interfere with their ‘rights’, are now loudly complaining about the children who hung themselves after watching the Saddam videos.)

In the Republican Party we have people who are traditional and conservative and want the party to defend these values, and we have people who believe that they cannot win election unless they at least pretend to be liberals. We tend to call them ‘moderates’ if their approach seems pragmatic, rather than principled or even partisan. We also have people who are clearly liberals, even though they are declared Republicans. We use the term, RINO, to describe them (Republicans in Name Only). The loss of Congress in November, 2006 has exacerbated the conflict between those who say that we lost because we abandoned our conservative roots and those who say that the country is moving left, and we must move left with them. In my view, when you take into account the unpopularity of the Iraq War, the ineffectiveness and perceived corruption of Congressional Republicans, and combine it with the fact that this was an election in the off-year in the sixth year of Bush’s term, the number of seats lost seems quite low compared to historical averages. Another important point is the large number of Democrats who won seats by running on conservative platforms.

On illegal immigration, on McCain-Feingold and on education policy, our president has clearly shown that he governs as a moderate conservative – either by choice or by perceived necessity. These positions have angered and turned off many conservatives without gaining, in my view, a single liberal convert, and when you consider the poll numbers indicating large-scale opposition to abortion-on-demand and to same sex marriage, it is clear to me that Republicans should move right and stay right. Since conservatives are also much more disposed to safeguarding traditional values than are liberals, going right is not only the smart thing to do, it is the ‘right’ thing to do.

Let’s not have any more of the kind of nonsense we saw in Rhode Island last year, with the Republican National Committee supporting that extreme liberal twit, Lincoln Chaffee, with ads and money, against a popular conservative mayor (Steve Laffey) in the Republican senatorial primary. It succeeded in destroying Laffey, but it didn’t save the Republican seat. If you are going to go down, go down fighting.

Is Conservatism Finished? (Exerpt)
By Wilfred M. McClay From issue: January 2007
Commentary Magazine

“One particularly notable gesture of disaffection appeared on the very eve of the election, when, in a symposium titled “Time for Us to Go,” a group of seven self-identified conservative writers were moved to publish, in the liberal Washington Monthly, their reasons why the Republicans deserved to lose. While not exactly the “A” list of conservative minds, these writers, ranging from Christopher Buckley to Joe Scarborough (the former Florida Congressman turned talk-TV host), urged the defeat of their party for the sake, precisely, of the future health of conservatism itself. But their words contributed mightily to a growing general impression: that after a run of two decades or so, conservatism’s day in the American political sun was drawing to a close.

For liberal Democrats, this was a termination devoutly to be wished. So intense, indeed, was the pent-up need of the Democratic party and its media allies for a victory dance in the end zone that the high-stepping began long before any touchdowns had actually been scored. The columnist Joe Klein’s exultant observation in Time just prior to the elections—“2006 may be remembered as the year that the Reagan Revolution finally crested and began to recede”—was just one of hundreds of such gun-jumping predictions.

Yet it is now clear that the results of the vote, while a solid reversal not seen since the more epochal mid-term Republican victories of 1994, hardly justified this extravagance. In comparison with similar historical circumstances, the GOP’s losses were quite modest, leaving the Democrats with only relatively thin majorities in both houses of Congress. This was all the more impressive given the pervasive national mood of discouragement over the war in Iraq. Nor did anything about the GOP losses justify the claim that conservatism lost, or that the slow movement of the American electorate to the center-Right of the political spectrum has stopped or even diminished, let alone reversed.

Some Republican defeats, for example, including that of the liberal Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, effected no change in the ideological balance and can hardly be seen as a setback for conservatism. On the Democratic side, meanwhile, the remarkably easy triumph of the highly-targeted, much-reviled Senator Joseph Lieberman over his more liberal anti-war challenger was a bellwether. So too were the Senate victories of such relatively conservative Democrats as James Webb in Virginia and Robert Casey, Jr. in Pennsylvania. There was also the surprisingly strong showing of Harold Ford, Jr., the Democratic Congressman who promised Tennesseans that if they elected him to the Senate, they would get “a gun-loving, Jesus-loving American who thinks that taxes ought to be lower and America ought to be stronger.” In the event, most Tennesseans were not quite willing to buy that assertion, but there can be no doubt that they took Ford seriously in offering it….”

Conflicted Thoughts About the Border Agents Resolved

I had been grappling with the right and wrong of the situation concerning the two imprisoned border agents for some time until I viewed a segment on the O’Reilly Factor Thursday where he interviewed Johnny Sutton, the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case and put these men in jail for doing their job. He came across looking like a straight-shooter who was somewhat conflicted about a case he knew was weak, but was trying to put the best face on the prosecution that he could. His explanations convinced me that something was very wrong here, and to rethink this whole, awful state of affairs.

The basic problem for me all along is that a jury listened to the evidence and convicted these men of serious felonies for which they have received long sentences, and could subject them to ‘prison justice’. I have since learned that at least three members of the jury have stated that they were misled by jury instructions and intimidated into going along with a guilty verdict. Of course, also, the O.J. jury always and forever will cloud jury verdicts in my mind. At the same time, we have the examples of Nifong of the Duke case, Earle of the DeLay case, Fitzgerald of the Scooter Libby case and a whole series of mishandled child abuse cases which raise serious questions about what happens to some people when they acquire the power we give to district attorneys.

Then this morning I read the following article by Debra Saunders, a columnist who usually gets it right, and all the pieces fell into place. President Bush, please pardon these men before something terrible happens to them in prison!

January 18, 2007
Free the Border Patrol Two
By Debra Saunders, Real Clear Politics

Prison doors clanged shut last night, leaving two Border Patrol agents locked up among the very types of felons they once helped put away. The agents' families have been wiped out financially, their kids will grow up without a father watching over them, their freedom has been stripped from them. What was the terrible crime that put agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean behind bars for sentences of 11 years and 12 years, respectively?

They fired at a drug smuggler, who had been driving a van with 743 pounds of marijuana, as he ran toward the border to avoid arrest. They say they did not know they wounded him in the buttocks, so they picked up their shells and filed a false report that didn't mention the shooting.

For that, Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for Western Texas, prosecuted the agents.

After a two-and-a-half-week trial, a jury found them guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon, discharge of a firearm during a violent crime, obstructing justice, lying about the incident and willfully violating the Fourth Amendment right to be free from illegal seizure of Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, the Mexican drug smuggler, who, incidentally, is suing the Border Patrol for $5 million because his civil rights were violated.

Sutton isn't happy about granting the smuggler immunity, but as he told me over the phone, he didn't have enough evidence to prosecute Aldrete-Davila.

Sutton hates being called "an overzealous prosecutor." As he said in a statement, "In America, law enforcement officers do not get to shoot unarmed suspects who are running away and file official reports that are false." And, "It is shocking that there are people who believe it is OK for agents to shoot at an unarmed suspect who is running away."

As for the long sentences, they are the doing of Congress, which tacked 10 years onto federal sentences for crimes committed with guns -- and there is no exemption for law enforcement officers.

Let me say this: Border Patrol agents do not have a right to -- and should not -- shoot at unarmed suspects. When and if they do shoot unarmed suspects, they should be disciplined -- and that includes firing them.

In this case, however, Ramos and Compean say they thought the suspect was armed. Sutton says that's not true. Ditto the drug smuggler -- but he has 5 million reasons to lie.

Two of Aldrete-Davila's family members, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin that the smuggler had been dealing drugs since age 14 and, according to one, he "wouldn't move drugs unless he had a gun on him."

Sutton responded, "There's this impression that all these dopers carry guns," but mules -- smugglers such as Aldrete-Davila -- "almost never carry guns," because federal law "tacks on five years to their sentence."

Even if everything Sutton says is true, Ramos and Compean most certainly should not spend 11 and 12 years behind bars. I don't think they should spend a single night in prison -- not for what was a mistake (if the smuggler was not armed) made in the heat of the moment, even if it was followed with a cover-up.

Americans should not put men in frustrating and dangerous law-enforcement positions, then lock them up and throw away the key if those men do one wrong thing, especially of the sort that angry, scared men sometimes do. It is not as if Ramos and Compean were crooked agents running criminal enterprises and betraying their fellow agents. If they were, they'd probably be facing a shorter sentence.

As T.J. Bonner of the agents' union, told me: "It's going to be terrible. These are good cops going to prison. It's not as if they're bad cops who are going to be accepted into the community. The very people they put away are going to be in the next cell to these guys."

Asked if President Bush would pardon the agents last Friday, White House spokesman Tony Snow noted that a jury had convicted them after a long trial. "We also believe that the people who are working to secure that border themselves obey the law."
Bonner looks at Bush's decision not to pardon the two men as a signal that Dubya doesn't particularly care about securing America's borders.

It is not as if Bush has too many friends and too much public support. I've heard from many Americans who are outraged at these excessive sentences and don't understand why Bush has not used his pardon power to commute the sentences of agents who were just doing their jobs.

If anything happens to these men while they are behind bars, then what will America think of George W. Bush?

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FLASH: THIS JUST IN:

BUSH CONSIDERING PARDON FOR BORDER AGENTS CONVICTED OF SHOOTING MEXICAN DRUG RUNNER
Friday, January 19, 2007

WASHINGTON — President Bush promised to review a case for a possible pardon of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents serving time in prison for shooting a Mexican drug runner.

Bush said in an interview with KFOX-TV in El Paso, Texas, Thursday that he would "take a sober look at the case" as it works its way through the appeals system.

Stem Cell Technology Advances Vindicate President Bush

Two important recent studies on stem cells have been announced: one says that it looks possible to produce all types of embryonic cells from ambiotic fluid without harm to mother or fetus; the other study indicates that stem cells can be produced from embryos without killing the embryos. If either or both of these developments prove valid, federal funding can be limited to these methodologies without the current moral and ethical objections to the killing of embryos. Of course, there still will remain the problem that embryonic cells have not yet produced much in the way of results, and some caution must be applied to the commitment of tax dollars to support this research area.

As usual, the mainstream press described the President’s position as neaderthalish, and promoted the absurd comments made by the actor, Michael J. Fox, who suffers terribly from Parkinson’s disease, in order, in Missouri, to defeat the Republican candidate for the senate in November. It’s interesting to note that the European Union, not a bastion of conservatism, also voted to ban funding of embryonic stem cell research.

January 12, 2007
Stem Cell Miracle? (Excerpts)
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON – “When President Bush announced in August 2001 his restrictive funding decision for federal embryonic stem cell research, he was widely attacked for an unwarranted intrusion of religion into scientific research. His solicitousness for a 200-cell organism -- the early embryo that Bush declared should not be destroyed to produce a harvest of stem cells -- was roundly denounced as reactionary and anti-scientific. And cruel to boot. It was preventing the cure for thousands of people with hopeless and terrible diseases, from diabetes to spinal cord injury. As John Edwards put it most starkly and egregiously in 2004: If John Kerry becomes president, Christopher Reeve will walk again….

This kind of stem cell advocacy did not just shamefully inflate its promise. It tended to misrepresent the basis for putting restrictions on embryonic research, insisting that it was nothing more than political enforcement of the religious fundamentalist belief that life begins at conception.

You don't need religion to tremble at the thought of unrestricted embryo research. You simply have to have a healthy respect for the human capacity for doing evil in pursuit of the good. Once we have taken the position of many stem cell advocates that embryos are discardable tissue with no more intrinsic value than a hangnail or an appendix, then all barriers are down. What is to prevent us from producing not just tissues and organs, but human-like organisms for preservation as a source of future body parts on demand?

South Korea enthusiastically embraced unrestricted stem cell research. The subsequent greatly heralded breakthroughs -- accompanied by lamentations that America was falling behind -- were eventually exposed as a swamp of deception, fraud and coercion.

The slope is very slippery. Which is why, even though I disagreed with where the president drew the line -- I would have permitted the use of fertility-clinic embryos that are discarded and going to die anyway -- I applauded his insistence that some line must be drawn, that human embryos are not nothing, and that societal values, not just the scientific imperative, should determine how they are treated.
Congress will soon vote to erase Bush's line. But future generations may nonetheless thank Bush for standing athwart history, if only for a few years. It gave technology enough time to catch up and rescue us from the moral dilemmas of embryonic destruction. It has just been demonstrated that stem cells with enormous potential can be harvested from amniotic fluid.

This is a revolutionary finding. Amniotic fluid surrounds the baby in the womb during pregnancy. It is routinely drawn out by needle in amniocentesis. The procedure carries little risk and is done for legitimate medical purposes that have nothing to do with stem cells. If it nonetheless yields a harvest of stem cells, we have just stumbled upon an endless supply.

And not just endless, but uncontroversial. No embryos are destroyed. The cells are just floating there, as if waiting for science to discover them.

Even better, amniotic fluid might prove to yield an ideal stem cell -- not as primitive as embryonic stem cells and therefore less likely to grow uncontrollably into tumors, but also not as developed as adult stem cells and therefore more "pluripotential'' in the kinds of tissues it can produce.

If it is proved that these are the Goldilocks of stem cells, history will record the amniotic breakthrough as the turning point in the evolution of stem cell research from a narrow, difficult, delicate and morally dubious enterprise into an uncontroversial one with raw material produced unproblematically every day.

It will have turned out that Bush's unpopular policy held the line, however arbitrary and temporary, against the wanton trampling of the human embryo just long enough for a morally neutral alternative to emerge. And it did force the country to at least ponder the moral cost of turning one potential human being into replacement parts for another. Who will be holding the line next time, when another Faustus promises medical nirvana if he is permitted to transgress just one moral boundary?
Charles Krauthammer

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New Stem Cell Method Avoids Destroying Embryos (Excerpt)
By NICHOLAS WADE

Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a method that, if confirmed in other laboratories, would seem to remove the principal objection to stem cell research.

“There is no rational reason left to oppose this research,” said Dr. Robert Lanza, vice president of Advanced Cell Technology and leader of a team that reported the new method in an article published online by the journal Nature.

But critics of human embryonic stem cell research raised other objections, citing the possible risk to the embryo from using the technique, and the fact that it depends on in-vitro fertilization, the generation of embryos outside the womb from a couple’s egg and sperm.

The new technique would be performed on an embryo when it is two days old, after the fertilized egg has divided into eight cells, known as blastomeres.

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European Union Denies Funding for Embryo-Destruction (Excerpt)
By Bradford Short
www.MichNews.com
Jul 29, 2006

(NEW YORK - C-FAM) On Monday the European Commission decided to deny funds to researchers engaged in the destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells. The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union and its members report to the foreign ministries of EU member governments.

The European Commission engaged in vigorous debate late last week where members of the Commission from Germany, Poland, Austria, Malta, Slovakia, Lithuania and other nations proposed that the EU science budget cease funding for all research that directly or indirectly involves the destruction of human embryos. For years, the EU has funded embryo-destructive stem cell research with few restrictions on the use of such funds.

After negotiations ended on Monday, the only position that a majority of the Commission could agree on was that the actual killing of a human embryo, which is necessary for a scientist to then collect that embryo’s stem cells, would not be paid for by EU funds.

Join Me in the New Fun of NHL Hockey

I was fortunate to rediscover the joys of watching and following NHL hockey as football ends and before baseball begins. I used to be a great NBA fan, but what they call basketball today has lost all appeal to me. The new rules of hockey have opened up the game, increased the scoring and ended the frustration of a tie after two and one-half hours of up and down play. There is no question in my mind that the game of hockey is the fastest and most demanding of all major sports and also requires the greatest skill set of the players.

The new rules allow two-line passes and prevent checking of a player who doesn’t have the puck; they also don’t permit a line change after icing by the icing team. This has opened up scoring, minimized the defensive line-up at the blue line, and also reduced the number of dump-ins. Games that end in a tie go to four on four, sudden-death overtime and then to a series of shoot-outs until someone scores the winning goal. Very satisfying. The only thing better would be a permanent four-on-four, which I love.

Back in the late sixties and seventies, during the reign of Bobby Orr, the greatest hockey player of all time (and the classiest gentleman of all pro sports), I was a rabid Bruins fan. Four things happened to sour me on pro hockey: Orr retired; Orr seemed to be badly mistreated by the new owners of the Bruins (a situation misreported and misunderstood at the time); league expansion together with the formation of a new league substantially lowered the quality level of the available players; and helmets were adopted so you couldn’t see the players’ heads and faces as before.

For twenty years I didn’t go to or watch another pro hockey game until I moved to Florida and, for some reason, tuned in the Tampa Bay Lightning for the first time. The new rules weren’t in place yet, but the addition of so many European players had so raised the talent level that exciting hockey was obviously back. It was just my good fortune that I started following the sport again just as the Lightning began to make their move, and, the following season (2004), won the Stanley Cup.

This year’s Lightning team badly needs a great goalie, but I’m loving the sport again, anyway. Perhaps, with the new rules and the incredible talents of players like Jason Spezza, Danny Heatley, Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, you will too. Better hurry before Global Warming makes the sport of hockey obsolete.

What Do New Orleans, Columbia University and Duke University Have in Common?

Answer: they are cesspools of liberal control, with residents of New Orleans unwilling or unable to help themselves after Katrina, and with students and faculty of both schools so steeped in political correctness and multiculturalism that white students and conservative speakers are harassed and threatened while their administration stands by in embarrassed or willing silence. Could anyone watch 60 Minutes without cringing as the president of Duke University tried to explain why Duke allowed its faculty and students to pummel the Duke lacrosse players?

Why would anyone ever want to move to New Orleans with the highest murder rate in the country and with its reputation for ineptness and sloth? Why would anyone send a child to Columbia or Duke or any one of a number of universities that are similarly controlled by extreme liberals teaching their students the party line and teaching hatred of America?

The Duke rape case also has something else in common with some other cases that smell to high heaven – like the Fitzgerald prosecution of Scooter Libby after Richard Armitage confessed to leaking Valerie Plame’s name – like the phony prosecution of Tom DeLay by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle after several grand juries returned ‘no bills’ – like the prosecution for child molestation of the Amiraults in Massachusetts by Scott Harshbarger, another liberal who is convinced he knows what’s best for us regardless of the vote or the facts.

Here’s a great article by someone who also sees the danger posed to all of us by liberal prosecutors and their supporters and enablers:

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG
The Michael Nifong Scandal

The Duke rape hoax is redolent of past decades' phony child-abuse cases.
Thursday, January 11, 2007 12:01 a.m.

No one could have imagined, when the story began last March, how soon and completely that bit of shorthand--"the Duke University scandal"--would be transformed.

Scarcely 10 months after, the term is now almost universally understood as a reference to the operations of Michael Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, whose abandonment of all semblance of concern about the merits of the rape and assault accusations against three Duke University students was obvious from the first. So was his abundant confidence while broadcasting comments on the guilt of the accused. He seemed a man immune to concerns for appearances as he raced about expounding on the case against the accused lacrosse players and calling them hooligans. He would hear nothing by way of concern from Duke administrators (seven months into this affair, the university president did find an opportunity to mention the accused students' right to a presumption of innocence)--and certainly none from the politically progressive quarters of the Duke faculty who lent their names to an impassioned ad thanking everyone who had come out to march in protest against the rape and assault of the exotic dancer; 88 faculty members signed it, among them such Duke luminaries as Alice Kaplan, author and student of fascism, and Frank Lentricchia, literary critic.

Unable to take part in the ad signing, Duke's administrators nonetheless found ways to identify with its spirit. Soon after news broke of the Duke athletes' alleged brutish sex crimes against a black woman, the administration undertook a well-publicized campaign targeting the entire lacrosse team for offensive behavior. President Richard Brodhead was, it seems, barely able to recover from the shock of his discovery that a party thrown by male jocks could occasion heavy drinking. And related loutish behavior. Not to mention a stripper. Lacrosse was suspended for the season, and the team coach, Mike Pressler, was shortly after forced to resign. Mr. Brodhead in due course reinstated the team, but on probation, and with conditions, i.e., no underage drinking and disorderly conduct, and no harassment. The members of other Duke organizations, sports teams included, which had sponsored parties where alcohol flowed freely and which had featured strippers--an informal count reveals at least 20 known to have done so--no doubt understood that they faced no similar disciplinary action. The reason for the moral-cleansing program devised for the lacrosse team could scarcely have been missed.

Mr. Nifong's confidence that he had nothing to fear from establishment opinion or from the leaders of the great university as he bounded about making hash of the rules of justice--prime among them the accused's right to a presumption of innocence--proved justified. And might have remained so longer but for the catastrophic effects of the accuser's unraveling stories.

Mr. Nifong is no anomaly--merely a product of the political times, a prosecutor who has absorbed all the clues about the sanctified status now accorded charges involving rape, child sex-abuse and accusations of racism. Which has in turn ensured their transformation into weapons of unequalled power. Like others before him, the DA quickly grasped the career possibilities open to him with such a case and proceeded accordingly--denouncing racism, and the rape and assault of a helpless black woman, and the Duke athletes guilty of these crimes in every media interview available to him (and they were many).

For all the public shock and fury over his behavior, there is little that is new or strange about Mr. Nifong. We have seen the likes of this district attorney, uninterested in proofs of innocence, willing to suppress any he found, many times in the busy army of prosecutors claiming to have found evidence of rampant child abuse in nursery schools and other child-care centers around the country in the 1980s and throughout most of the '90s. They built case after headline-making case charging the mass molestation of small children, and managed to convict scores of innocent Americans on the basis of testimony no rational mind could credit. Law officers who regularly violated requirements of due process in their effort to obtain a conviction, they grasped the special advantage that was theirs: that for a prosecutor dealing with molestation, and wearing the mantle of avenger, there was no such thing as excess, no limits to what could be said of the accused. In court, rules could be bent, any charges presented, and nonexistent medical evidence proclaimed as proof positive of the accusation.

In his role of avenger of a young black woman alleged to have been brutalized by white males, Mr. Nifong proceeded with similar assurance. His was a crusade. Who but enemies of the good would object? Confronted with hard questions about his evidence, whether from the defense or the press, Mr. Nifong answered that these challenges were all designed to intimidate the rape victim. More than once the DA suggested, as criticisms of his case multiplied, that he was himself a victim of the press. He could have had little complaint, last summer, about the New York Times, which provided its own reports on the Duke story. It maintained that that the DA's case had been distorted by the defense and that there was, in fact, a body of evidence that supported the decision to take the case to a jury. A close study of this work's wondrous logic, and of its body of evidence, should provide rich material for students of the press for years to come.

The jury to which Mr. Nifong played--the black population of Durham--duly helped re-elect him. This could not prevent his case of rape and abuse against the three Duke students from coming undone, thanks in part to his own heedless behavior but mainly to the accusing dancer herself, whose shifting stories and checkered past could not be hidden.

Mr. Nifong had, of course, nothing like the advantages of nursery school prosecutors: endearing 4- and 5-year-old witnesses clutching teddy bears, who came to court to recite lies they had been cajoled into inventing, about how the accused had raped and stabbed them, cut off the legs of animals--the kinds of charges mounted, against elderly Violet Amirault of Massachusetts and her adult children Cheryl and Gerald, proprietors of the respected Fells Acres Day School. Many like them were caught up in the era's whirlwind of accusation and sensational trials invariably leading to conviction, on which ambitious prosecutors built careers. Almost all those cases would ultimately be thrown out by appeals courts, most of the time not before those convicted had served long years and paid with the ruin of their lives.

Mr. Nifong's case has come undone long before any trial, fortunately for the three Duke students charged. They have had, nevertheless, a powerful taste of what it means to have been named and despised as perpetrators of abhorrent sexual crimes. I could go to prison for 30 years, Reade Seligmann, one of the accused, told the late Ed Bradley during a "60 Minutes" interview last October--and "for something that never happened"

Neither Mr. Seligman nor the other accused Duke students will ever have to contend with a punishment like the one meted out to Gerald Amirault, who was sentenced to a 30- to 40-year term for something that never happened--atrocious sex crimes that never took place, of which there was no physical evidence, or anything resembling a credible allegation. What did it matter that the child's testimony that resulted in Gerald's conviction had claimed rape with a large butcher's knife--one that had magically left not the slightest injury? The jury's most important duty was, the prosecutors informed them, to believe the children and show that they honored their testimony. The same young witness also testified that Gerald was accompanied by a green, silver and yellow robot, R2-D2, from "Star Wars."

What did it matter, either, that special judicial hearings about the Amiraults' prosecution had concluded that it was a travesty, that a tough panel of former prosecutors, the Governor's Board of Pardons, had virtually declared Gerald Amirault innocent and voted for commutation of his sentence--or that he was finally granted parole nearly three years ago, after nearly 18 years' imprisonment? He was almost immediately classified by Massachusetts's Sex Offenders Registry Board as a Level 3 offender. The kind, that is, deemed the most dangerous and most likely to re-offend.

This bizarre classification, the board made clear, had to do with the number of counts of sex abuse charged to him--and the fact, too, that he continued to deny guilt. He now has to wear a large tracking device around his ankle, and obey a curfew confining him to the house from 1 1:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day. He has, not surprisingly, been unable to find a job. He is sustained, as ever, by the unstinting devotion of his family, and he grieves now mainly for the loss of the chance he had dreamed of in prison--of earning a salary and finally lightening the burden his wife had carried, uncomplaining and alone, during his years in prison. (He has recently been advised of pending legislation that will require him to pay $10 a day for the global positioning tag on his leg, that tracks him.)

The accused Duke students can be grateful that the case against them has collapsed, and that Mr. Nifong now confronts a serious ethics complaint filed by the North Carolina State Bar. They will never have to face anything like the malignant force which descended on the happy and ambitious Amiraults in 1984, and turned their lives to dust. But Reade Seligmann, David Evans and Collin Finnerty have this year had a look into an abyss that has claimed many others, and that is never less than terrorizing. It is a piece of their Duke education they are unlikely to forget.
DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

The Anti-Assimilation Movement by Frank Salvato

It was largely my belief in the evils of multiculturalism and its destructive corrosion of the American spirit that motivated me to start this weblog and write often of its symptoms and effects. The following article by Frank Salvato, cross-posted from Newsback.com, is worth reading by every patriotic American:

The Anti-Assimilation Movement
by Frank Salvato

Assimilation – defined as the act of becoming part of or more like something greater – is a hot-button issue these days. Whether alluding to the calls for a return of the American Southwest to Mexico by the Reconquista movement or the encroachment of radical Islam on the streets of Paris, the fact remains that members of immigrating minority groups are increasingly refusing to assimilate into the cultures of their resident countries. The lack of assimilation by immigrants to the United States – both legal and illegal – is culminating in an American identity crisis and poses a serious problem for the future of our country.

This movement toward anti-assimilation stands in stark contrast to the very concept of our nation. E pluribus unum, “out of many, one,” is the motto of the United States. This motto, this dedication, was originally selected by the Great Seal Committee in 1776. It acknowledged that the thirteen separately governed British Colonies had banded together to form one inclusive nation, a country that stood independent from the British Crown, the United States.

As our country grew, the underlying ideal behind e pluribus unum expanded as well. It transformed from simply being a unifying declaration used to exemplify our commitment during the American Revolution to also representing the uniquely American notion that all men were created equal and that freedom was a human right derived directly from The Creator, not a gift bestowed through the prerogatives of Kings. It stood as a clarion call to all who sought a better life. It offered opportunity, hope and inclusion, the inclusion of being accepted as an American by Americans.

Today, as the politically correct tool of cultural diversity serves to Balkanize our nation, it can be argued that the Progress-Left, the one-worlders, the globalists, those who have grown to practice the narcissism of placing oneself before all else, have ignorantly fostered an anti-assimilation movement in the United States that is tearing our country apart at the seams.

The establishment of this anti-assimilation movement was born of the divisive ideology that brought us the practice of segregating ethnic groups through the use of hyphenated labels. This ideology is the aggressive dogma of “multiculturalism.”

Introduced as an effort to celebrate the importance of being proud of one’s national heritage, a heritage that sometimes transverses several generations, multiculturalism, as employed by the Progressive-Left, has served to divide and polarize the people of the United States. Where once it was possible to be proud of familial heritage while also being patriotic, today the shadow set of laws known as political correctness encourages those who immigrate to the United States – whether legally or illegally – to place their nationality and customs before those of their community and, in some cases, the laws of our constitutional government.

This problem is best illustrated by two examples; the aggressive Reconquista movement in the Southwestern US and the developing and sometimes violent row with the growing Islamic community in the United States.

The militant Reconquista movement embraces the divisiveness of multiculturalism more fervently than Dr. Leo Buscaglia used to embrace his patients. Their motto, “Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada” – which translated means "For the Race, everything, for those outside the Race, nothing" – encapsulates the dangers multiculturalism poses to a nation’s identity.

Those who join in this movement believe that anyone not of Mexican heritage existing on American soil is a foe. They believe that all those who immigrated to the United States since the days of the pilgrims – including those who came as slaves – are invaders and that the American Southwest rightly belongs to Mexico. They refuse to assimilate into mainstream American culture choosing to speak Spanish over English whenever possible and vehemently discourage marrying outside “the Race.”

And while they hold nothing for contempt for the United States, they are incrementally infusing themselves and their movement into our American system of government. Both Cruz Bustamante, the current Lt. Governor of California, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa were members of MEChA, a radical organization that promotes Latino superiority.

The aversion toward assimilation in the Islamic community is more prevalent. Islamic leaders and special interest groups alike routinely pressure governmental entities around the free world to acquiesce to their cultural laws. Many times, when their requests fail, the response is violent.

Having created Islamic enclaves in communities outside of the French capitol, disgruntled Islamic youth who practice anti-assimilation are literally waging an intifada on Parisian police. In the wake of societal debate over whether it was appropriate to wear Islamic headscarfs (hijabs) or burquas in public in a post-9/11 world, riotous Islamic youth took to the streets under the guise of protesting financial inequities based on race and religion. They refuse to allow authorities into their neighborhoods as they physically battle police and threaten to impose Shari’a Law in their communities.

In Britain, the anti-assimilation movement has engaged the “tolerant,” inclusive British government. Just days after British and American authorities broke up a terrorist plot to blow-up jetliners over American cities, “moderate” Muslims approached the British government demanding that they not only change their foreign policy where the Middle East was concerned, but that they make two Islamic holidays official British holidays and that profiling be forbidden in British airports. All of these demands made as the wounds of the terrorist bombings – the radical Islamist terrorist bombings – of 7/7 still lay gaping upon the country’s soul.

Meanwhile, representatives from the Council for American-Islamic Relations (there’s that hyphenated nationality label again) are exploiting the multicultural abyss in the United States by imploring Muslims residing in America to file civil rights complaints should they “feel” as though they have been discriminated against by US airlines while they travel to the Hajj.

And while Mosques in the Islamic enclave of Dearborn, Michigan trumpet the call to prayer five times a day over loudspeakers causing non-Muslims to feel intimidated to the point of relocation, California schools are employing curriculum that requires American children to “be Muslim for a day” in the name of cultural diversity, something that the ACLU would immediately file lawsuit over if the words “Catholic” or “Jewish” were substituted for Muslim.

Today, several countries in the European Union have come to grips with the dangers of the multicultural movement. The Netherlands, Denmark, France, Germany and Britain have all abandoned multiculturalism as an abstract failure that threatened their very existence.

Sadly, because the Progressive-Left in the United States have intertwined multiculturalism with political correctness – and because the negative consequences of both are rarely highlighted by an agenda-driven mainstream media – the anti-assimilation movement continues to grow.

In our post-9/11 world, as we fight a very real war against radical Islamofascism, it would behoove Americans to understand that we are also fighting a war for the preservation of our American Heritage. As long as political correctness and multiculturalism remain viable, as long as the anti-assimilation movement remains strong, it will be impossible re-establish one of our founding principles, that of E Pluribus Unum. Frank Salvato