Thune advises distance from Bush agenda

Freshman Sen. John Thune, the Republican hero two years ago for ousting the Senate Democratic leader, said Wednesday that if he were running this year, he would distance himself from President Bush and his agenda.

“If I were running in the state this year, you obviously don’t embrace the president and his agenda,” Thune told reporters at the National Press Club. He said the Iraq war is Bush’s biggest problem. “The first thing I’d do is acknowledge that there have been mistakes made,” he said. “Our candidates have to draw and point out differences in how they would approach and win the war in Iraq and how their opponents would. The biggest thing we have going for us on that issue is that Democrats are very divided.”

“Clearly, we are facing a headwind if you look at the national political environment,” Thune said. “The president’s numbers in most places aren’t good … these are going to be tough races to win.”

Thune said Republicans should not let Democrats make the election a referendum on the president but rather highlight their differences with Democrats on issues such as the economy and national security, which he said favor Republicans. He said GOP candidates shouldn’t be afraid to point out where they differ with the president and should localize the contests.

Tough truth for the administration.

State to check on residents’ health

The health Nazis are coming!

Washington state health officials will soon start asking detailed questions about the health of some state residents – and even give them brief physical exams.

This really creeps out the Chief. It’s not so much this admittedly limited “survey”, as the precedent that it sets.

Nasrallah speaks, vows surprises

Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, spoke for the first Thursday since the beginning of the week, saying Hizbullah’s entire infrastructure and leadership hierarchy were still intact and functional.

Darn!

“Hizbullah has so far stood fast, absorbed the strike and has retaken the initiative and made the surprises that it had promised, and there are more surprises,” he said,…

Time will tell about this. Do they have WMD’s – maybe the ones that moved to Syria from Iraq?

…warning that a Hizbullah defeat would be “a defeat for the entire Islamic nation.”

YES! And a great thing it will be!

Lebanese Army may join forces with Hizbullah

The Lebanese Minister of Defense warned Israel Thursday that if IDF ground forces are sent into southern Lebanon, Lebanese troops will fight along with the Hizbullah against Israel.

If this happens, so much for the Lebnanese Army!

Cleric tries to join evacuation

Exiled Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed tried but failed to join the naval evacuation of British nationals from Lebanon’s capital Beirut, it was reported today.

The Sun also reported that Syrian-born Bakri has written to the British embassy in Beirut, asking to be readmitted to Britain on “humanitarian grounds”.

Bakri, who settled in Britain in 1985, was banned from reentering Britain in August last year, when then home secretary Charles Clarke ruled that his presence was “not conducive to the public good”. He headed the radical al-Muhajiroun group in London until 2004, and praised the hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 as the “magnificent 19″.

The Chief hopes that this character is left to stew in his own juice in Lebanon. With any luck the Israelis can drop a bomb on his head.

A couple of items here:

Spanish PM in scarf scandal

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has come under criticism for posing with a Palestinian scarf on his shoulders after accusing Israel of using force “abusively” to defend itself, press reports said on Thursday.

In Spain, anti-Semitism is new leftist trend

Although many experts had foretold of the imminent disappearing of European Jews, nobody expected such a virulent explosion of anti-Semitism in Spain, not even under a Leftist government.

The first signal came on Monday, 5 December, when during a dinner with the Benarroch family, Zapatero and wife began declaiming what Vidal Quadras, member of the European Parliament, described on the radio as “a tirade of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism”. By the moment the Benarroch couple had left the table to express their regrets, Zapatero was explaining his lack of surprise about the Holocaust: according to the people present, Zapatero claimed to understand the Nazis.

I wonder how he says “Sieg Heil” in Spanish?

There’s more in this article – it’s chilling to see the “progressive” socialists of Spain slipping back towards the anti-Jewish policies of Ferdinand and Isabella who expelled the Jews by royal proclamation in 1492.

Arithmetic of Pain

The Chief often disagrees with the opinions of Alan Dershowitz, the liberal Harvard law professor who has regularly appeared as a talking head commentator on various media outlets. At the same time, he is always interesting, and at times, comes up with some observations that go far beyond the usual liberal orthodoxy into the realms of reality. This is one of those times.

There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel’s military actions in Lebanon is what is “reasonable.” The answer, according to the laws of war, is that it is reasonable to attack military targets, so long as every effort is made to reduce civilian casualties. If the objectives cannot be achieved without some civilian casualties, these must be “proportional” to the civilian casualties that would be prevented by the military action.

OK. There’s the issue: “proportionality”.

…misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war….The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.

This makes a lot of sense to the Chief! If this is to be the case, where does it lead:

Israel must be allowed to finish the fight that Hamas and Hezbollah started, even if that means civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon. A democracy is entitled to prefer the lives of its own innocents over the lives of the civilians of an aggressor, especially if the latter group contains many who are complicit in terrorism. Israel will – and should – take every precaution to minimize civilian casualties on the other side. On July 16, Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, announced there will be new “surprises,” and the Aska Martyrs Brigade said that it had developed chemical and biological weapons that could be added to its rockets. Should Israel not be allowed to pre-empt their use?

Indeed! Score one for Dr. Dershowitz!

30-year weather forecast by Japan

Japan’s science ministry hopes to harness the power of a supercomputer called the Earth Simulator to deliver forecasts 30 years into the future.

This is just crazy. There is no way there is enough detailed data to allow this to succeed with any degree of reliability, especially to the degree that is being claimed.

Now the ministry is working on refining the simulation models, which are crucial to accurate projection.

The BEST models to date can’t get things sorted out properly pertaining to issues of global warming, cooling, or whatever. This is due to there being too many variable factors with too little validly “controlled” data. (Controlled data is data that is actually comparable, due to its being collected and processed in a way that is exactly controlled for uniformity of the collection conditions.)

The project is expected to cover the whole planet, producing forecasts for areas of the globe as small as two square miles.

This is totally insane! The Chief lives in the country in South Dakota on a “quarter” – 1/4 square mile. Having watched the weather here for years as a storm spotter – the claim that a computer in Japan is going to be able to make 30-year forecasts on that sort of scale beggars the imagination.

The only thing wierder that the scope of the claims being made by these ambitious Nipponese is the unquestioning seriousness with which it is being reported.

Gag Order

The 9th Jerkit Court of Schlemiels is at it again out in La-la Land. These judges must be on some bad acid to come up with the judicial hallucinations that pass for legal decisions out there.

Recently, in a 2-1 decision, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals handed down a decision which may provide a foundation for applying preferential treatment to freedom of speech. If allowed to stand, the decision could authorize local governments to set varying limits to free expression, depending on the race, religion, or sexual orientation of the listener.

The one consolation is that of 18 decisions from this bunch of activist loser judges, 15 have been reversed on appeal to SCOTUS. (12 reversed unanimously!) One has to hope that this is another to add to that list.

Arab Majority May Not Stay Forever Silent

Yes, world, there is a silent Arab majority that believes that seventh-century Islam is not fit for 21st-century challenges. That women do not have to look like walking black tents. That men do not have to wear beards and robes, act like lunatics, and run around blowing themselves up in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise. And that secular laws, not Islamic Shariah, should rule our day-to-day lives.

Maybe there is some hope yet for Islam without the Islamists.

All in all, it seems that when Israel decided to go to war against the priestly mafia of Hamas and Hezbollah, it opened a whole new chapter in the Greater Middle East discourse. And Israel is finding, to its surprise, that a vast, not-so-silent majority of Arabs agrees that enough is enough. To be sure, beneath the hostility toward Sheik Nasrallah in Sunni Muslim states lies the deep and bitter heritage of a 14-century Sunni-Shiite divide, propelled to greater heights now by fears of an ascendant Shiite “arc of menace” rising out of Iran and peddled in the Sunni world by Syria.

The sooner this is settled the better.

IAF attempts to assassinate Hizbullah leadership

The IDF obtained intelligence information late Wednesday night that Hizbullah leaders possibly including Nasrallah had taken refuge inside the bunker. A wave of aircraft immediately took to the air and dropped 23 tons of explosives on the bunker.

Whether or not the IAF got the big fish, their 23 ton TNT care package is sure to get their attention.

Iran heavily invested in North Korean missile program

This is a “teaser” intro to an article on Geostrategy-Direct.com. Unfortunately you have to pay to get the whole deal, but the kernal is still clear, and points up a relationship the Chief has previously posited.

Teheran has been financing Pyongyang’s intermediate and ICBM programs for nearly a decade, Western intelligence sources said. The funding has been part of a deal in which North Korea would share missile technology and equipment with Iran. “Anytime you hear of a North Korean success, translate that directly into an Iranian success,” an intelligence source said. “You can be sure that within a few weeks, Iran will receive briefings, training and eventually production expertise from Pyongyang.”

Like the old song says: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it.”

‘Great Men’ have grating effect on Mideast

Mark Steyn once again cuts through the crap and correctly labels the Emperor, or at least the Emperor’s Envoy Plenipotentiary as having a severe sartorial deficiency in his new wardrobe:

It’s easy to fly in a guy in a suit to hold a meeting. Half the fellows inside the Beltway have Middle East “peace plans” named after them. Bush flew in himself a year or two back to announce his “road map.” Before that it was Cheney, who flew in with the Cheney plan, which was a plan to open up a road map back to the last plan, which would get us back to “Tenet,” which would get us back to “Mitchell,” which would get us back to “Wye River,” which would get us back to “Oslo,” which would get us back to Kansas.

And none of these Great Men meeting with other Great Men gets us anywhere. Some of the Great Men can’t speak for their peoples (Mubarak) or their legislatures (Abbas). And a lot of the Great Men can’t even speak for themselves: From the late Yasser Arafat to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, they say one thing in meetings with Western emissaries and something entirely different to their compatriots. And some of the Great Men we send to negotiate aren’t all that great: the wretched Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, is, in fact, a patsy for the nuclear mullahs.

The stark reality of the situation corresponds fully to the above mentioned starkness of the attire, or lack thereof.

To reprise one of my all-time favorite Iranian negotiating positions, let’s recall the perfect distillation of what Great Man diplomacy boils down to in the Middle East, as reported in the New York Times exactly a year ago: “Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Thursday.” If we don’t let Iran go nuclear, they’ll go nuclear. Negotiate that, Chuck Hagel.

REALLY! This is a powerful cluebat, that needs to be forecefully applied to the talking heads and fuzzy cogitators that are always oh so ready to keep talking forever, whether anyone is listening or not. Steyn goes on and makes a telling point about why these negotiating mind games never seem to quite work out:

The median age in Gaza is 15.8 years old. How likely is it that any of those bespoke Palestinian “moderates” who’ve been permanent fixtures on CNN and BBC Middle East discussion panels for 30 years have any meaningful sway over a population of unemployed uneducated teenage boys raised by a death cult? Israel withdrew from Gaza and, instead of getting on with a prototypical Palestinian state, Hamas turned the territory into an Islamist camp. Israel withdrew from Lebanon entirely in 2000, yet Hezbollah is now lobbing rockets at Haifa.

Why? Because in both cases these territories are now in effect Iran’s land borders with the Zionist Entity. They’re “occupied territories” but it’s not the Jews doing the occupying. So you’ve got a choice between talking with proxies or going to the source: Tehran. And, as the unending talks with the EU have demonstrated, the ayatollahs use negotiations with the civilized world as comedy relief. They don’t get Larry King’s salutes to Red Buttons and Don Knotts on Iranian TV, so entering into talks with the French foreign minister is as near to big-time laughs as the mullahs get.

These are just some of the highlights hear. Steyn, as usual, is well worth the read. Go check him out.

Elimination of Hezbollah the ultimate goal

Israel’s military operation in Lebanon is designed to cripple Hezbollah by destroying its headquarters, weapons stockpiles and supply network, and eventually eliminating the militant group, Israeli officials and analysts said yesterday. Targeting Hezbollah’s leadership is a secondary priority for the time being, they said, although Israel would not hesitate to act if it had credible intelligence regarding the whereabouts of the militia’s leaders.

“We are trying to create a new reality that would not enable Hezbollah to operate,” one Israeli official said.

Sounds like a plan!

The United States supports that goal, even as it cautions Israel to exercise restraint in carrying it out. “The root cause of the problem is Hezbollah, and that problem needs to addressed,” President Bush said yesterday.

Hear, hear!

Saudis blame Hezbollah

Saudi Arabia is blaming Hezbollah and its supporters, Iran and Syria, for provoking the Israeli attacks on the militant group’s strongholds in Lebanon, according to a statement posted on the Saudi Embassy Web site.

Although the statement does not specifically name Hezbollah or the governments in Damascus and Tehran, the message is a clear diplomatic denunciation of the group and its state sponsors.

So much for pan-Arab unity.

IAF foils rocket transports from Syria

Although Hizbullah has suffered a harsh blow from Israeli air force strikes…Syria was continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon to rearm the group, IDF Operations Branch Head Major General Gadi Eisenkot said during a press briefing Tuesday….the IAF managed to intercept a number of trucks transporting rockets from Syria to Hizbullah, including trucks laden with the 20mm-diameter rockets with warheads like the one that hit the Haifa train depot Monday, claiming eight lives. Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said he would be very surprised if official elements in Syria were unaware of these transports.

Good shooting by the IAF. The Chief concurs that the Syrian government is in this up to it’s hips, and should be held accountable.

Hizbullah preventing civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon

The old “human shield” strategy back again.

Iran’s Hizbollah says ready to attack US, Israel

NOTE: Hezbollah operates out of Iran.

Iran’s Hizbollah, which claims links to the Lebanese group of the same name, said on Tuesday it stood ready to attack Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide. “We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year,” said Iranian Hizbollah’s spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli, speaking by telephone from the central seminary city of Qom.

We should do all we can to grant them their wish for martyrdom – the sooner, the better.

Hizballah Wants Israel to Free Child-Killer

Among the prisoners that Hezbollah want’s released it this piece of human debris:

The Arab prisoner that Hizballah wants Israel to release in exchange for two abducted Israeli soldiers, is serving multiple life sentences for killing a four-year-old girl with a rifle butt.

Samir Kuntar is one of only two or three Lebanese prisoners still held by Israel, and Hizballah said its July 12 assault is aimed at winning his freedom.

The only liberation this character should get is liberation from life.

United States to Israel: you have one more week to blast Hizbullah

The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources.

If we have a “hard” time limit on this operation, it needs to ignored at need by the Israelis. If there is such a thing, it smacks of the typical Rovian/State Dept. weenie sort of approach.

What’s to say? There’s a huge amount of coverage and commentary from a multitude of sites on-line (and off-line for that matter if you’re into paper media).

It’s really pretty simple as far as the Chief is concerned:
• Israel good, Hamas & Hezbollah bad.
• When you get attacked, defend yourself.
• If you have to fight a war, fight to win (by killing the enemy, and breaking his things).
• The axis of evil is real, and is really an axis. It may be possible to solve this problem in Beijing.

Admittedly that last one IS a bit more complicated. The terrs are getting their support from Iran and Syria. Iran gets missile technology from North Korea; and NK in turn gets components for missiles from Russia and the ChiComs.

At the very least, Syria nad Iran will need to be dealt with before this situation gets resolved. (The plot thickens.)

How would the ChiComs like it if their continued dissemination of missile tech to the middle east (and NK for that matter!) cost them full participation in their much-vaunted 2008 Olympic games? Just a thought.

Ted Nugent Quote of the Month

As the world appears to be possibly shuffling in bemusement towards a possible appointment at har Meggido, the Chief appreciated a lighter comment from the irrepresible and unashamedly conservative rocker and hunting enthusiast Ted Nugent. The original source wasn’t part of the post, but it’s definintely all Nugent in its flavor.

H/T to South Dakota Politics. Enjoy:

Ted Nugent was being interviewed by a British journalist. The journalist asked: “What do you think the last thought is in the mind of a deer before you shoot it ? Is it, `Are you my friend?` or is it `Are you the one who killed my brother?'”

Nugent replied: “Deer aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, ‘What am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away. They are very much like the French.”

Rock on!

Two border incidents with different Presidential responses:

Why The Sheriff Won’t Patrol The Border

Captain’s Quarters has a posting regarding the Mexican border which includes this report from Austin:

Trevino said the shooting appeared to have started in Tamaulipas, at a riverside ranch owned by a family from Donna. He said two brothers said they were with their father at the ranch when vehicles full of armed men drove into the ranch and opened fire on the house, killing a ranch hand and taking their father hostage. The brothers said they hid for several hours in their cornfield before swimming across the river, which, at that point, is only 30 to 40 yards wide. They called their mother from a cell phone, and she called 911.

On the other hand Mr. Prez – when Islamoterrs crossed the border from Lebanon attacked an Israeli patrol and kidnapped two soldiers, Israel essentially has gone to war with Hezbollah to attempt to recover them.

The Prezidential response was to state that Israel had acted properly to defend itself, with a caveat that excessive collateral damage should be avoided.

HEY PREZ! If it’s OK for Israel, why isn’t it OK for the US? Where’s General Blackjack Pershing when we REALLY need him? Even Woodrow Wilson (not exactly a sabre-rattler) recognized the need for a forceful response to border raids in 1916, hence the Pershing expeditionary force.

Analysis: Israel at war

Two days of dizzying escalation, and there can be no illusions: Israel is at war.

Yep! No doubts here!

There are those who have branded this latest conflict a continuation of Israel’s War of Independence, and there is no little truth in the assertion. On both of the fronts on which Israel has been drawn into heavy fighting, its enemies can make no legitimate claim to be pursuing a territorial dispute: as of last summer, Israel relinquished its hold on the Gaza Strip; in Lebanon, it pulled back to the UN-certified international border six years ago.

Except that, in both cases, the Jewish state’s assailants are indeed pursuing a territorial ambition – to unseat Israel from its own sovereign lands.

I think he’s got it nailed down pretty well.

Senate denies funds for new border fence

Less than two months after voting overwhelmingly to build 370 miles of new fencing along the border with Mexico, the Senate yesterday voted against providing funds to build it. “We do a lot of talking. We do a lot of legislating,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican whose amendment to fund the fence was killed on a 71-29 vote. “The things we do often sound very good, but we never quite get there.”

Just a sellection of headers from DRUDGE REPORT says it all, as WW-III may be getting started (or not).

Hizbollah, Israel head for showdown…
Drone Attacks Warship…
Syria and Iran told to rein in guerrilla group…
Hizbollah chief defiant…
Palestinians Stream Into Gaza From Egypt…
Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon…
Hizbullah: We will hit beyond Haifa…
General warns range greater than thought…
200,000+ now staying in bomb shelters…
USA warns against travel; authorizes personnel evacuation…

Hopefully Israel will literally stick to its guns and forcefully disestablish Hezbollah and Hamas once and for all.

Democrats pull ad with flag-draped coffins

Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial.

Apparently at least SOME Donks are not without some sense of shame!

Battle Plans

The next Middle East war – Israel against genocidal Islamism – has begun. The first stage of the war started two weeks ago, with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim; now, with Hezbollah’s latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon. Ultimately, though, Israel’s antagonists won’t be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.

The Chief has always figured that there could be nothing as far as any lasting resolution of the Jihadistan Islamofiascist terror war is concerned as long as Hezbollah, and Ham-ass were going concerns in Paleswine and Lebanon.

Both are convenient front-men for Syria and Iran, who are truly part of the axis of evil (in spite of Bush’s neglect to include Syria in that initial list.

Here’s hoping that Israel takes names and kicks butt over there! If so it couldn’t happen to more deserving folks.

from the London Telegraph:

Israeli forces bombard Lebanon

Israel imposed a naval blockade on Lebanon, bombed its airports and threatened to sever the main road to Syria yesterday as fears grew that the military confrontation in Gaza and Lebanon could develop into a wider regional conflict.

Definitely no more Mr. Nice-guy!

Civilians fled on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border and the Hizbollah militia responded to Israel’s intense air and artillery bombardment with volleys of more than 80 rockets into northern Israel. Two rockets were said to have fallen as far south as the port city of Haifa for the first time.

What a concept. A nation is attacked across its border, and then acts forcefully to defend itself and its people. The Chief hopes someon in Washington is paying attention, and perhaps may even learn what to do.

Hidden agenda

This comes up in the context of the upcoming G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

This year, as at past G-8 meetings, there will be another, enormously momentous item in play – a threat that will receive, all other things being equal, little if any public notice. Call it a hidden agenda. Unless President Bush asserts his adamant opposition, it is likely that the G-8 leaders will once again do what they did last year. They will endorse in some fashion the imposition of global taxes.

Yech!

Most Americans would of course reject such a notion – as has Mr. Bush in the past. For starters, as a general rule, we don’t like taxes very much. Then there is the natty little problem that we may have no say over the size or character of global taxes. These amount to “taxation without representation,” something our founders considered so intolerable they put on the line their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to be free of it.

OK, so what else is wrong here?

Worst of all, global taxes are well understood by their proponents as a way of addressing what they see as grievous ills. Chief among these is the sovereignty exercised and the concentration of wealth enjoyed by nations like the United States.

Bingo! This is why Soros, Turner, Carter, et al are salivating at the prospect of a UN based IRS.

Fortunately there IS a poison pill or two that may be in the offing:

The only hopeful news is that the Congress has begun to awaken to the danger represented by these initiatives – and the precedents they are creating. The House of Representatives has adopted legislation “that prohibits the Treasury from paying UN dues if the organization attempts to implement or impose any kind of tax on U.S. citizens.” Unfortunately, this would not necessarily prevent global taxes from being inflicted through the action of member states, as is being done now by the French and their friends.

Today [Tuesday], however, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska will be introducing legislation designed to penalize the UN by withholding American funding if it advocates, promotes or tries to impose global taxes on U.S. citizens. They are to be commended for taking this initiative and the full Senate should adopt it at the earliest possible moment.

This is a low profile issue (especially in the MSM), but still is one worthy of close attention, or we could all wake up and find ourselves in deep…you get the idea!

Kim Jong-Il offers to abandon nukes in exchange for role as villain in new Bond film

Hey – he DOES fit that pattern! It would work out, at least for Hollywood.

Beheading Desecration Video of Dead U.S. Soldiers Released on Internet by al Qaeda

If you have ANY doubts about whether or not we should be fighting to eliminate Islamofascist Jihadistanis, this should be as strong a reminder as anything else – like the censored videos of 9-11 victims diving out the windows to avoid incineration, etc.

It reminds the Chief once again that when Islamists refer to their “religion of peace”, it is only the peace that results from willing and complete submission to their spiritual abomination that sanctions stuff like this.

WARNING: If you do take a look at this stuff, remember, it’s about as graphic and tough as anything you can imagine. FOr comparison purposes, it brings to mind the stuff NOT shown in the scene where William Wallace is executed in Braveheart. One can only hope that the US troopers were killed FIRST, before they were so grossly abused, but one can also only fear that this may not have been the case.

We CANNOT live with these people. They can only be exterminated. They need to be shot not once or twice, but three times, to make sure that the time and paperwork to put them someplace like GITMO is not wasted.

DEUS VULT!

Co-ordinated Bombay blasts kill 163 on rush hour trains

UPDATE: Count up to 190 later in evening!

At least 163 Indian commuters were killed tonight when seven co-ordinated bomb blasts tore through crowded trains and stations in the Indian financial capital of Bombay, creating rush-hour chaos on one of the world’s busiest train networks.

(Hmmmm. The Chief notes in passing that there’s none of that post-colonial “Mumbai” stuff for the Times of London! To them it’s still “Bombay”!)

More seriously though, the only real question is which particular flavor of Islamofascism is accountable for this latest incident of mass murder – not that it really matters to India and the dead and injured victims.

In fact, the Chief would submit that it doesn’t matter to anyone – Islamofascists are all (bad) seeds out of the same pod, whichever faction they claim as their identity.

Kill ’em all, celebrate with a nice ham and swiss on rye afterwards, and F’ ’em if they can’t take the joke!

China’s Secret Arms Trade

A spate of recent spying cases opens the lid on China’s aggressive military buildup. What’s most troubling: It is based largely on U.S. technology.

These guys are the REAL threat. Where does Iran get a lot of its military tech? ChiComs. What about North Korea? Chicoms again. Hey – that’s 2/3 of the original “Axis of Evil” made in Beijing, using tech stolen from…USA.

What’s to say? This is an important and alarming article.

We need to start throwing away the key (at least) or executing (preferred) spies again.

Judge rules FBI raid on Hill office legal

A federal judge in Washington yesterday said the FBI’s search of Rep. William J. Jefferson’s Capitol Hill offices in a bribery investigation — which ignited a firestorm of protest in Congress — was legal and denied efforts by defense attorneys to have the seized documents returned.

So much for Congressional privilige in this sort of thing. I guess $90,000 in “cold cash” stuck in the freezer is a bit much even for a federal judge to swallow.

U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, in a 28-page opinion, described the “facts and questions of law presented” by the May 20 weekend raid on the Louisiana Democrat’s office as “indeed unprecedented,” but said it was “well-established” that a member of Congress was as bound to criminal laws “as are ordinary persons.”

What a concept! Congresscritters subject to the same law as us peasants…er…”ordinary persons”!

‘Marriage’ amendment OK’d for vote

Another set of state supremes, this time in Massachusetts have ruled in favor of the constitutional legality of a marriage definition amendment, this time in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, showing that the legal system is not totally mind-dead just yet.

This allows the proposed amendment to continue its progress towards an eventual vote, possibly in 2008.

The same piece notes progress of similar move in Arizona, but a signature certification problem in Illinois on a non-binding initiated resolution.

In general, the Chief supports such amendments for a variety of reasons previously posted.