A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Border Complicates War in Afghanistan - SPERA DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- As a cold darkness enveloped the tiny U.S. military camp just inside Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, word spread that Taliban fighters were on the move nearby, planning an attack. (READ MORE)
Administration Asserted a Terror Exception on Search and Seizure - The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, in one of several secret memos containing new and controversial assertions of... (READ MORE)
Basra Assault Exposed U.S., Iraqi Limits - BAGHDAD, April 3 -- When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an offensive in Basra last week, he consulted only his inner circle of advisers. There were no debates in parliament or among his political allies. Senior American officials were notified only a few days before the operation... (READ MORE)
Missile Defense Endorsed By NATO - BUCHAREST, Romania, April 3 -- President Bush advanced his plans Thursday to build a controversial missile defense shield in Eastern Europe by winning the unanimous backing of NATO allies and sealing a deal with the Czech Republic to build a radar facility for the system on its soil. (READ MORE)
Aides Study Mugabe's Options as Police Detain Foreigners - HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 3 -- President Robert Mugabe's fractured inner circle called an emergency meeting for Friday morning to debate whether the president should step down or participate in a second round of voting against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who appeared to receive more votes in... (READ MORE)
8 Accused in Transatlantic Bomb Plot Go on Trial - LONDON, April 3 -- Seven transatlantic flights, all leaving Heathrow Airport within 2 1/2 hours of one another, were to be simultaneously blown up in midair with the goal of killing on "an almost unprecedented scale," jurors were told at the opening of the long-awaited trial of eight British Muslims. (READ MORE)
ACLU, Lawyers Group Aim to Defend High-Value Detainees - The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers announced last night that the groups are assembling teams of civilian lawyers that could represent the high-value detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in upcoming military commissions there. (READ MORE)
Russia Voices 'New Concerns' Over NATO Deal - BUCHAREST, Romania — As Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the NATO summit today, a senior Russian official registered "new concerns" over the U.S.-backed missile defense system planned for Eastern Europe, which NATO yesterday supported. (READ MORE)
China order targets dissent - China's ruling Communist Party has ordered regional party leaders to use military and intelligence units to crack down "harshly" on dissent and step up spying throughout the country as part of security measures before the upcoming Olympic Games, according to a purported internal party document. (READ MORE)
Recovery slow for wracked communities - Forty years after the Martin Luther King's assassination sparked riots in hundreds of cities across the United States and in the nation's capital, many D.C. neighborhoods still live with the legacy of violence, decay and indifference that laid waste to vast swaths of the urban landscape. (READ MORE)
Obama boasts wealth of 'partners' - Sen. Barack Obama raised more than $40 million last month, flexing his fundraising juggernaut that has left his Democratic presidential rival in the dust and dwarfs presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain's efforts. (READ MORE)
Intelligence officials downplay Iran report - The contested U.S. intelligence conclusion that Iran stopped work on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is now being downplayed by the same officials who wrote the much-publicized report in November. (READ MORE)
McCain warned against naming Romney - More than 20 social-conservative leaders purchased a full-page ad in an Arizona paper warning Sen. John McCain against picking Mitt Romney as his running mate, calling the former Massachusetts governor a "deal breaker" and an "utterly unacceptable" choice for social conservatives. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Mike Gallagher: A Radical In The White House - A radical in the White House. Is it really possible? When all the sniping and dust-ups of the 2008 presidential campaign are over, it sure is going to be fascinating to see if “the anointed one” – Barack Obama – meets the expectations of a breathless, fawning media (will we ever forget Chris Matthews of MSNBC moaning about the “thrill up (my) leg” that he gets when Sen. Obama speaks?) and winds up winning the presidency. If he does, this simply has to be the first time in American history that we will have a true radical as commander-in-chief. This isn’t hyperbole. I don’t state this in order to shock or even offend. It’s a fact. (READ MORE)
Burt Prelutsky: Taking Up Obama's Gauntlet - Barack Obama gave a speech that his disciples compared favorably to the Gettysburg Address and the Sermon on the Mount, but which I thought came a lot closer to Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, a desperate attempt to keep himself from being relegated to the trash heap of history. Coming in the wake, as it did, of all we had come to know about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I thought Obama’s speech was far too little and much too late. Say, 20 years too late. Frankly, I’m surprised that so many people, and not just liberals, were so willing to give Obama a pass. It’s one thing, after all, for this half-white fellow to join the Trinity United Church of (a Black) Christ in order to use it as a launching pad into Chicago’s scummy political scene. That’s just playing the game. (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Six Uncomfortable Truths About Race in America - "People have been calling for national dialogues and conversations for decades. It usually works something like this: Liberals say we need a frank discussion about race (or class or gender) in this country, and then they proceed to bludgeon any conservative stupid enough to take them up on their offer." -- Jonah Goldberg. Everyone always says that they want a national dialogue about race, but what they really seem to want is a national lecture where a liberal mouths politically correct platitudes -- and everyone else is welcome to either nod along or shut up out of fear that they'll be called a racist for daring to have an opinion contrary to left-wing doctrine. (READ MORE)
Brent Bozell III: The Revolt Against Sincerity - Washington Post writer Linton Weeks recently wrote a fascinating big-picture essay about the long, sad decline of sincerity and sentiment in America, symbolized by the public loathing of the 1975 Morris Albert pop song "Feelings." It wasn't merely the whoa-whoa-whoa chorus that drove the criticism, he suggested, but the mere act of the singer putting the heart on the proverbial sleeve that became phony, cheesy and hopelessly square. It's been said before that we live in an age of irony, and irreverence is king. But Weeks added the irresistible term "Snark Ages" to characterize it: "The revolt against sincerity -- the Snark Ages, still upon us -- began as a rebellion against corny, over-the-top displays of emotion in movies, songs, TV shows. (READ MORE)
Oliver North: Basra: Fact and Fiction - WASHINGTON -- In the midst of last week's meaningless Arab League summit in Damascus, Syria, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki boldly launched his government's first major offensive against renegade Shiite militias. Ranging from Baghdad's suburbs south to Basra -- the country's oil port and second-most populous city -- Saulat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights) is the largest and most complex operation undertaken by the Iraqi military since 2003. The effectiveness of Iraq's soldiers, police and special operations forces in this bloody fight will be an important factor for Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during Tuesday's congressional appearances. (READ MORE)
Charles Krauthammer: At Arm's Length With the Truth - WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton met her Waterloo at Tuzla. She'd been regaling audiences with tales of a dangerous landing under sniper fire in Tuzla 12 years ago and then running for cover. None of this occurred. When CBS provided the tape, she was forced to admit to "a misstatement." Now, confabulation is a fairly common psychological phenomenon. We all have internalized childhood stories so oft repeated by elders that we come to falsely "remember" the actual experience. Adult memories are less susceptible to such unconscious inventions, but past experiences embellished over time by repeated recounting can reach the point where we actually believe the elaborate trappings of our own retellings. (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan: Was It 'The Good War'? - "Yes, it was a good war," writes Richard Cohen in his column challenging the thesis of pacifist Nicholson Baker in his new book, "Human Smoke," that World War II produced more evil than good. Baker's compelling work, which uses press clips and quotes of Axis and Allied leaders as they plunged into the great cataclysm, is a virtual diary of the days leading up to World War II. Riveting to this writer was that Baker uses some of the same episodes, sources and quotes as this author in my own book out in May, "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War.'" On some points, Cohen is on sold ground. There are things worth fighting for: (READ MORE)
Jonah Goldberg: Democrats' Tussle is Right Up Republicans' Alley - "When you set out to take Vienna," Napoleon famously advised, "take Vienna." That might be updated to: "If you're going to bowl, bowl better than a 37." That's what Barack Obama scored when he set out to demonstrate he was just one of the guys at a Pennsylvania bowling alley recently. He started with a gutter ball. Hillary Clinton responded with an April Fools' Day gag about deciding the nomination with a bowl-off. "A bowling night. Right here in Pennsylvania," Clinton proposed. "The winner take all. I'll even spot him two frames." "It is time for his campaign to get out of the gutter and allow all the pins to be counted. I'm prepared to play this game all the way to the 10th frame..." (READ MORE)
Lorie Byrd: I'd Pay to See Movies About American Heroes - “If you make it good, they will come.” That’s what my friend Sarah said about war movies after reading a recent Washington Post article about how poorly the current crop of Iraq war movies are doing at the box office. Sarah is an Army wife and she is not surprised that recent movies about the war in Iraq have not been successful. In the Post article, Paul Farhi writes “a spate of Iraq-themed movies and TV shows haven't just failed at the box office. They've usually failed spectacularly, despite big stars, big budgets and serious intentions.” Farhi asks, “Are audiences turned off by the war, or are they simply voting against the way filmmakers have depicted it?” (READ MORE)
Mona Charen: Do We Care What They Think of America? - If there's one thing the Democrats are certain they can accomplish provided they win in November (and it doesn't matter, for this purpose, which of the two candidates becomes the nominee) it will be the restoration of America's tattered world reputation. Barack Obama has promised that his first priority is to get the United States out of Iraq and "restore our standing in the world." Mrs. Clinton has said that an "urgent task" for the next president is to "restore America's standing in the world." Other Democrats hit this theme over and over again. Sen. Pat Leahy offered the standard version in his endorsement of Obama: "We need a president who can reintroduce America to the world and reintroduce America to ourselves." (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Obama Comes Out Against Concealed Carry - Barack Obama is embracing anti-gun policies in the run-up to a Democratic presidential debate scheduled on the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings. “I am not in favor of concealed weapons,” Obama told the Pittsburgh Tribune. “I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.” Well, everyone likes to be loved, but Democrats seem more than a little obsessed with America's international reputation. Recall that in 2004, John Kerry described the matter as "primary" to the presidential race. "Foreign leaders" were apparently tapping Kerry on the shoulder at restaurants to express their dim view of his country. (READ MORE)
Joseph Repya: One Hundred Years - Senator John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to the service of our country. He served in the U.S. Navy for 22 years; he spent five-and-a-half of those years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Later he served as the commander of the largest aviation attack squadron in the U.S. Navy. On the political front, John McCain has served over 20 years in the United States Senate, leading American policy on national security and military issues as chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He has been involved in every major foreign policy decision over the past two decades. In short, he has the experience, judgment, and character to lead our country as Commander in Chief from the very first moment he steps into the Oval Office. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: It's 3 A.M., Do You Know Where Your President Is? - This campaign season appears to be defined by the campaign ads that are based on the 3 AM phone calls. Hillary released one this morning claiming that John McCain is doing nothing to help families who are in trouble because of the subprime/home lending woes. McCain snapped back with a pithy retort. He's got a very good point. The last thing you want to do is take still more money out of the hands of taxpayers when they need it most in order to help a choice few who made terribly poor decisions... (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: Sometimes You Have to Draw Lines: John Yoo Responds - Just yesterday Glenn Greenwald accused John Yoo of war crimes. Greenwald, of course, is leading the left's blogospheric attack on Yoo, who was Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel, and the reviled author of the "torture memos" outlining the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques. It turns out that Yoo's got an interview forthcoming in Esquire, which is excerpted today. I particulary liked Yoo's response to the jab that he's not the kind of guy who'd employ purportedly inhumane definitions of torture, like this: (READ MORE)
Gabriel Malor @ Ace of Spades: Obama Wins Michigan and Florida By Default - At least, that's how I'm reading the situation. Tomorrow, Howard Dean and the Michigan Democratic Party will announce that there will be no re-vote in Michigan. Dean says that the only way the delegates will be seated at the convention is if the candidates can agree on a way to split up the votes. “Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and four top Michigan Democrats who have been trying to work out a way to get the delegates seated are expected to put out a statement Friday after the executive committee vote. In the statement, they’re expected to say the DNC is committed to seating Michigan’s delegates at this summer’s convention as long as any agreement is supported by the party’s two presidential contenders.” (READ MORE)
Mark Grimsley: That’s All Very Well, But He’s Never Been Inside a Tank - Back in the mid-1980s, when I was in the War Studies program at Kings College London, a common response from our military students when a civilian-type said something they disliked was to dismiss it with a comment like the one in the title of this post. It raises a perennial question: To what extent should military analysts without military experience pass judgment over military matters? This is precisely the question that has emerged at Abu Muqawama over the contrast between the confidence with which Fred and Kimberly Kagan routinely (and influentially) pass judgment on the situation in Iraq — most recently the events in Basra — and their apparent dearth of any military service whatever. I say “apparent” because I have no independent knowledge of their backgrounds. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Global Warming revisited - Roger Harrabin, the BBC Environment Analyst reports. “Global temperatures this year will be lower than in 2007 due to the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said. The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer. This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts have also forecast a record high temperature within five years.” In the meantime the AP reports that cosmic rays play no role in global warming. "Physicist Terry Sloan of Lancaster University and Arnold Wolfendale of Durham University said their research finds no evidence of a link between the ionizing cosmic rays and the production of low cloud cover." (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Misleading Polls - So, I'm over at Yahoo, reading an article on Obama's softening support among Democrats, which isn't surprising, it's hard to remain in the 70% region forever. Later in the article, it notes that according to the NY Times/CBS Poll, both Obama and Hillary Clinton hold 5 percent leads over John McCain nationally. That sounded suspect to me, since Rassmussen and Zogby both have it the other way around. Then, in the last paragraph, they explain it: “The nationwide telephone poll was taken March 28 through April 2, with 1,196 registered voters participating, including 510 Democratic primary voters and 323 Republican primary voters.” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Nancy Warns Petraeus - The gall of this woman: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday not to ‘put a shine on recent events’ in Iraq when they testify before Congress next week. ‘I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,’ said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.” So, in other words she is “warning” the General to keep any optimism out of his report because it just wouldn’t allow her to put her spin on things I suppose. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Global stagnation - BBC: The world’s temperatures haven’t changed since 1998. Conservatives knew that. “Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said,” reported the BBC. Of course, it is not really La Nina at all. Look at the Sun. It heats the planet. I don’t need a scientific consensus to prove that. Sherman, to the Wayback Machine. Set the date for April 28, 2007. The place: Denver. (READ MORE)
Baron Bodissey: On Trial in California and on Parade in Binghamton - Ramadan Abdur-Rauf Abdullah, a member of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, is on trial this week in California for the 2001 murder of a sheriff’s deputy. A local news report gives an account of recent testimony heard by jurors, including a tape of Abdullah’s questioning by detectives not long after the murder. Al-Fuqra Exposed is a website dedicated to monitoring and reporting on the activities of Jamaat ul-Fuqra and the Muslims of America. Yesterday’s post discussed the trial of Ramadan Abdullah: “Finally facing justice for his crime, Ramadan Abdur-Rauf Abdullah, now 26, went on trial this week in Fresno County, California for killing Deputy Sheriff Erik Telen in 2001. He is pleading insanity in his defense.” (READ MORE)
GayPatriotWest: There’s Something About Barry #2 - Twice today, I read posts, one linked by Instapundit, the other on Powerline which pretty much “get at” my take of Obama, a basically decent guy with very far left views. Maybe I haven’t yet come to dislike him (despite his evasive speech on race) because he reminds me of a certain type of lefty I dealt with in college. You’d often find these guys in the library reading articles in a great variety of news and opinion magazines, making sure at least to skim the conservative ones to familiarize themselves with their ideas. They would always talk to me when we bumped into each other on campus, ever eager for my take on the latest controversy at the college or event in the world. They would show up when conservative speakers came to campus, either asking intelligent (but pointed) questions and sometimes even engaging the speaker in heated (but civil) discourse after his talk. (READ MORE)
Gribbit: Chairman Dean Beginning to Feel the Heat - Life as the DNC Chairman isn’t all beer and skittles for Chairman Dean these days. He’s got to take time out of his BDS driven psychopathic rampages in order to make an attempt at unifying his own party before the rifts being created by Obama and Clinton don’t become permanent fractures within the Party. From FoxNews.com: “Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean is under increasing pressure to bring an end to the contentious and drawn-out nomination battle, and some Democrats are questioning whether his modest approach so far has been effective.” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: When was liberalism’s expiration date? - Dionne commemorates the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King by proclaiming it the day that liberalism died. He argues that King’s death led to the election of Richard Nixon, thanks to his “coded racism” of law and order, and that liberalism died on the balcony at the Lorraine in Memphis. The only problem with this analysis is that it ignores the entire decade of the 1970s and misses the mark by eleven years: “It is easy to forget that the core themes of contemporary conservatism were born in response to the events of 1968.” (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: Absolut arrogance and the advertising agency behind the reconquista ad - You know what has been heartening the past two days as reaction to the Absolut Reconquista ad continues to pour in? The fact that so many of you still take our sovereignty seriously and are willing to give voice to your concerns without apologizing for it. I’m including a sample of e-mails below. But first: The advertising firm that created the Absolut Reconquista ad is Teran/TBWA. Teran is based in Mexico City. The company’s website boasts a pretentious statement of philosophy advocating “disruption” as a “tool for change” and “agent of growth.” (READ MORE)
Strategy Page: Why 4,000 Wasn't 13,747 - March 31, 2008: Five years of fighting in Iraq has killed 4,000 American troops. The first five years of fighting in Vietnam (1965-69) killed 40,258. There were about three times as many U.S. troops involved in the Vietnam fighting. But even then, the number of Americans killer per thousand troops in Vietnam was three times higher (19, versus 6 in Iraq). If the casualty rates were the same in Iraq, there should have been 13,747 dead so far. However, there were proportionately more wounded in Iraq. While there were 3.4 times more dead in Vietnam (in killed per thousand troops), there were only 3.2 times more wounded. Overall, there were 133 casualties per thousand troops in Vietnam, versus 47 in Iraq. (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Indiana Democrats suspicious of Republicans voting in primary, not so suspicious of illegal aliens - Karl explains it all to you. Considering whom Operation Chaos is designed to benefit — and may be benefiting — Hillary-supporter Dan Parker is a man of high principle. Or an abject moron. “Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said he is concerned Republicans may try to cast crossover votes to skew results in the close presidential primary between U.S. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.” (READ MORE)
neo-neocon: Obama lied, the press sighed - Hey, even if Karl Rove says it, it can still be true. What’s Rove saying? That Obama is an arrogant liar. You might ask what’s so strange about a politician lying? Don’t they all? (And I’m sure some would say, about Rove, “takes one to know one.”) Well, there is a general tendency in the direction of politicians and what we might call deception. But since Obama makes a point of being a different sort of politician, his lies make him a supreme hypocrite as well. (READ MORE)
Pirate's Cove: Surrender Monkey Friday: Grey Lady Thrilled With Wrong Track Poll, Plus BDS - Surrendie is truly happy about the poll that says the People think everything really sucks right now. “Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll. In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed ‘things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,’ up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002.” The question asked was “Do you think things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel that things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?” I bet the folks at the Times and cBS are partying it up today over this poll, which makes them happen, but, of course, being liberals/progressives, being happy will make them sad. (READ MORE)
Paul Mirengoff: The Washington Post's editors clean up after the reporters - I've been quite critical of the Washington Post's coverage of the fighting in Basra and related skirmishing. As is often the case, though, the Post's editorial page succeeds where its news pages fail. In fact, this editorial about Basra is not only unobjectionable, it actually assists me in trying to evaluate what the fighting meant and where things stand now that it has subsided. The editors begin by rejecting the ultra-negative view propagated in much of the MSM, including the Post itself: “Those who portray every development in Iraq as negative described the fighting as proof of worsening sectarianism or as a negation of the improved security achieved in the past six months. In fact, it was neither.” (READ MORE)
Political Vindication: Still Vetting Hillary - One of Hillary Clinton’s first complaints about Barack Obama was that he had not been vetted, and that the right wing machine would chew him up. We’re hearing that again over the last few days, as Bill tells every superdelegate that will listen that Obama is untested and prone to a withering attack from the party charged as racist for so long by Democrats. But what do we know about Hillary? She’s been notoriously unavailable for biographies about herself, and her relationship with the press has always been one sided. I think there’s more to learn about the matriarch, and with many more months before the election, we’re bound to see the vetting she’s due. (READ MORE)
Kim Zigfeld: Democracy Takes it on the Chin - The past month or so has been a really rough one for democracy. The month started out with an "election" in Russia in which there were no debates and no opposition candidates. A proud KGB spy guaranteed that his hand-picked successor would "win" by indicting his own former prime minister on fraud charges and striking him from the ballot, and when his successor takes over he'll remain in the government as prime minister himself -- meaning that, in fact, there won't be any transition at all. And it ends with an "election" in Zimbabwe where the regime, though more civilized than Russia's in that it allowed an actual opposition candidate on the ballot and allowed it to become known that it had lost control of the parliament... (READ MORE)
McQ: Berkeley’s City Council - is this what you’d accept from yours? - I don’t know about you, but if my city council was doing this, I’d be more than a little irritated that my taxes were being used by local government to pursue an agenda over which it has no authority and no impact: “Berkeley is finding that having its own foreign policy isn’t cheap. The city’s recent dustup with the U.S. Marine Corps has so far cost the city more than $200,000, while businesses say they’ve been slammed by related protests. And that’s on top of the $1 million the city spends annually on domestic and foreign policy matters hatched by its 45 citizen commissions, which outnumber those in virtually every other city in America and debate everything from regime change in Iran to the plight of nonneutered dogs.” (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: On Firefly and Intellectual Reductionism - The intellectual bankruptcy of current feminism has become almost a cliche. While academic feminists rail about the patriarchy of George W. Bush and conflate white male and oppressor, they ignore truly egregious treatment of women throughout large swaths of the third world. They have become disoriented by their success (few young women complain of the patriarchal nature of America these days; they are too busy getting into law school, medical school, business suites, etc) and as happens to so many movements which become animated by ideology rather than reality, have become more and more extreme in their world view as a result. Yesterday Dr. Sanity, who has written extensively on the failures of the modern feminists, sent me a link to an article which offered a fascinating glimpse into the angry, unhappy mind of a modern (or is it post-modern?) feminist. (READ MORE)
Mark Steyn: KANGAROO COURT LOSES ITS BOUNCE - "If anything I said above upsets you, please lodge a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission," Kevin Baker advised his readers the other day. "You pay nothing. Filing is risk-free." The National Post columnist had penned a gloriously insensitive opening paragraph suggesting that Ontario's polygamous welfare deadbeats collecting individual dole handouts for each of their wives might like to corral their better halves (better eighths?) into a Muslim curling team. Mr. Baker proposed this because he's decided he wants a slice of the human rights action, such as yours truly and Maclean's have been enjoying these last three or four months. "I want to be a free-speech martyr, too. Give me some of that CHRC hate-speech love." The big bucks are in getting your ass sued off for "flagrant Islamophobia." (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Time to target Tehran - I think there’s a better way to stop Hamas from firing missiles into Israel. Israel should start firing missiles into Tehran. There is ample proof that Iran is at war with Israel. Hamas and Hezbullah openly admit they sends their operatives to Iran for training. Syria and Iran have many deals for weapons and mutual cooperation. And Iranian arms have been used against Israel for years. Time to stop letting Iran get off scot-free. If Israeli citizens are going to be in danger of dying from Iranian missiles, perhaps Israel should let fly a missile or three at Iran. (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
No comments:
Post a Comment