Homecoming

Two years later, and dead, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are finally home after being kidnapped by Hizballah.

Israel launched a pitiful war attempt in response to their abduction, a war which ended up worsening Israel’s image in the world while strengthening and emboldening their Islamist enemy in Lebanon.  And the release of 5 still-kicking terrorists in exchange for Goldwasser’s and Regev’s remains will only serve to embolden Hizballah further, along with the rest of her enemies.

A millenium-and-a-half of subservience must have altered the DNA of today’s Jewish people (at least the ones with high seats in Israel’s government), as the leaders in the land of this once-proud people is pushing the nation and populace into acts and attitudes of head-hanging penitence and appeasement.

It can only get worse from here.

H/T Jihad Watch.

Update: Make that dead, and mutilated

“the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I’ll leave it at that.”

Also, Dr. Bulldog reminds that these men were captured and verified ALIVE, which means that Hizballah murdered these men, ostensibly prisoners of war, and are thus guilty (TRULY guilty…not like the accusations tossed at Israel…Israel returned living people) of war crimes.

Free Speech Victory

Another bit of good news on the Individual Freedom front, this time from Ezra Levant.  Sure, the motive is wrong, but the outcome still works.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s. And so they did.

With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they’re already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn’t pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean’s and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing their own political death sentence.

So they blinked. Against everything in their DNA, they let Maclean’s go.

[...]

Here’s Maclean’s reply, which is far more polite than I would have been:

…Though gratified by the decision, Maclean’s continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience. We enthusiastically support those parliamentarians who are calling for legislative review of the commissions with regard to speech issues.

Maclean’s and Steyn are still under the gun with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, but at least the Canadian Human Rights Commission backed off.

Nod: American Thinker

Constitutional Victory

Coming on heels of the ridiculous decision yesterday in Kennedy vs. Louisiana (not to mention the disaster of Boumediene), today we got a Victory for the Constitution (as written) and individual American citizens.

In their ruling on DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER, the SCOTUS determined (finally) that the Framers of the Constitution did, indeed, intend that Americans have the right INDIVIDUALLY to keep and bear arms.

In his dissent, Justice Stevens wrote that:

the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.” [H/T American Thinker]

However, a person of his intelligence should be able to READ.  The 2nd Amendment states “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  Whenever the Constitution, and the Framers’ writings, refer to a “right of the people”, they invariably describe rights held individually.  Additionally, the last four words provide the evidence Justice Stevens says is lacking: SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia wrote:

The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.

Our Constitution was devised by men too familiar with tyranny to allow the Federal government to usurp powers over the People and States which were not expressly granted.  That was the whole point.

For the record, here’s how the decision went:

• Dissenting:  Stevens, Souder, Bader Ginsburg, Breyer
• Majority: Chief Justice Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito

Note that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito were the dissenters in Kennedy.

Also note that McCain has vowed to nominate (conservative, constructionist-leaning) Justices like Roberts and Alito - whom he helped confirm.

Obama, OTOH, would nominate someone with “the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. [1]“, and with the outlook that “it’s not just the particular issue and how they rule, but it’s their conception of the Court. And part of the role of the Court is that it is going to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process, the outsider, the minority, those who are vulnerable, those who don’t have a lot of clout.   . . . [S]ometimes we’re only looking at academics or people who’ve been in the [lower] court…people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them…[2 , 3]“

Hey, Obaman - Harvard LAW grad, and former instructor on Constitutional (of all things) LAW - what about a strong grasp of LAW? Since when is Law about FEELINGS?  YES, JUDGE, I DID RAPE THAT CHILD, BUT I FEEL REALLY BAD ABOUT IT…WHERE’S YOUR EMPATHY FOR MY SITUATION?

The End

News from TownHall:

Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.

Obama is 40 delegates shy of clinching the nomination, but he is widely expected to make up the difference Tuesday with superdelegate support and votes in South Dakota and Montana. Once he reaches the magic number of 2,118, Clinton will acknowledge that he has secured the necessary delegates to be the nominee.

Which means that the scariest SOB to enter the political race for POTUS in my lifetime has made it to the finals.

Lord, have mercy.

UPDATE: Maybe not?

NPR.org, June 3, 2008 · Amid pressure from fellow Democrats and published reports to the contrary, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign denied Tuesday morning that she will concede that Sen. Barack Obama has enough delegates to secure the party’s presidential nomination.

Responding to an Associated Press story fueling speculation that such a concession was imminent, the campaign issued this statement: “The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening.”

Guess we’ll find out tonight.

UPDATE 2: Right the first time…it’s over.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois sealed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation’s first black president. A defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket.

Another Victim

A victim of the ligitation jihad, or whatever the appropriate term might be, and of the onslaught of the Politically Correct machine of EU-rabia.

PARIS - Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France.

Which is true, of course.  Witness the recent riots of “youths” outside of Paris, and the Muslim-dominated slums which the gendarme are afraid to enter, and where firefighters are often attacked.  Truth, however, is irrelevant in politics.

A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to MRAP.

A leading French anti-racism [uh, what race are Muslims again?] group known as MRAP filed a lawsuit last year over a letter she sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The remarks were published in her foundation’s quarterly journal.

In the December 2006 letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is “tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts.”

Bardot, 73, was referring to the Muslim feast of Aid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep.

French anti-racism laws prevent inciting hatred and discrimination on racial or religious or racial grounds. Bardot had been convicted four times previously for inciting racial hatred.

While the basis of Ms. Bardot’s complaint was ANIMAL rights (the slaughtered sheep), so she didn’t mention any of the things I noted above, her assessment - which direction she’s pointing the finger - is still accurate.

Freedom of speech loses more ground, and the band plays on.

Crescent of Betrayal News

So, this was actually from Sunday (old news…sorry). Still, it’s good that this is getting more exposure, so I’m posting it here, late, anyway.

There should be another post later today.

Crescent controversy on Fox News television and Fox News front page!

Check out the Fox News front page today, where “Crescent Outrage” alternates top billing with “Six-Legged Soldiers!” Finally, more than a handful of Americans will at least know that there is a controversy over the Flight 93 memorial.

They won’t get much more than that from Fox’s text report, which is pretty bare. There is no mention of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent, no mention of the 44 inscribed translucent blocks on the flight path, no mention of the Islamic sundial, and no fact checking (the modern media disease). Still, this is big.

The text report DOES show the side-by-side comparison of the Crescent of Embrace and the Islamic crescent and star insignia. It also reports Tom Burnett’s condemnation of the crescent design as an insult to his murdered son, and it mentions our petition.

UPDATE: Red Lasso has the Fox News video clip (thanks to Avid Editor):

This is powerful stuff. Not only do they show the clear likeness between the original design and an Islamic crescent and star flag, but the image they show of the redesign shows pretty clearly how the giant crescent remains intact in the redesign:

From the crescent and star likeness, they cut to Tom Burnett, asking what people would think if a memorial were laid out in the shape of a swastika. If viewers hadn’t just seen the crescent and star likeness, that statement could be made to sound crazy, but Fox does right by Tom, giving viewers the information they need to see the reasonableness of the comparison. Many thanks to Fox for getting this right.

Fox has a lot more information at their disposal. They had a television crew at the Somerset County Courthouse yesterday where Colonel Harry Beam laid out a precise and devastating exposé of Islamic and terrorist memorializing design features, and they were sent extensive fact checking materials. None of this gets into their present reporting. If they put that material into an investigative feature, they can knock the crescent memorial out for good.

UPDATE II: Avid Editor found another completely different Fox News segment on Red Lasso. This one is even better, mentioning the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent!

Getting it Right

Once in a while, our Congress does it.  It did yesterday.

H. Res. 185

In the House of Representatives, U. S.,

April 1, 2008.

Whereas armed conflicts in the Middle East have created refugee populations numbering in the millions and comprised of peoples from many ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds;

Whereas Jews have lived mostly as a minority in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region for more than 2,500 years;

A New Muslim State

This is what I expect will happen, as I mentioned yesterday in a comment at Jihad Watch.  It’s starting a little earlier than I thought, however.

From Jewish & Israel News.

Abbas aide: Palestinians should emulate Kosovo

Published: 02/20/2008

Palestinians should declare independence unilaterally, like Kosovo, if diplomatic progress stalls, a senior aide to Mahmoud Abbas said.

Citing Israel’s West Bank settlements as an obstacle to future Palestinian statehood, Yasser Abed Rabbo said Wednesday the Palestinian Authority may emulate Kosovo, a predominantly Muslim province of Serbia which, with Western support and in the face of Belgrade’s opposition, declared independence this week.

“If things are not going in the direction of actually halting settlement activities, if things are not going in the direction of continuous and serious negotiations, then we should take the step and announce our independence unilaterally,” Abed Rabbo told Reuters.

“Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence.”

Abed Rabbo’s remarks were quickly disavowed by other aides to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who voiced confidence in negotiations revived with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last November.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence has been a source of alarm for countries with restive ethnic minorities, which fear the precedent could stoke widespread separatist campaigning.

Of course they’re expecting support from Washington for this idea, since we already expressed our support for Kosovo, and it fits in nicely with the Two-State Solution that our feckless leaders have been pushing for.

Expect a wave of this sort of thing going forward, along with the inevitable civil wars that will accompany much of it.

Threats

 First, Egypt threatened Hamas with broken legs if they penetrated the border again.

Now they’ve upped the ante.

Egypt Warns Hamas: ‘We Will Shoot if Border is Breached’

by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com) Egypt officials say they are informing a visiting delegation from the Hamas terrorist organization that police will open fire on anyone who tries to cross the border at Rafah in southern Gaza.

The Associated Press reports that Egyptian intelligence officials said they had received information that terrorists are again planning to force open the border.

The whole world (almost) condemns Israel for militarily protecting its border.  Where’s the howling against Egypt?

Truth from Gaza

As reported in Haaretz (not typically an Israel-friendly publication) 

“Gaza is not occupied, so why should Israel have any role [at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing] when it has no presence on the border between Egypt and Gaza?” argued Mohammed Nuseir, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, on Saturday.

Which I’ve been saying for years, though most likely from a different basis.

Let’s see if anyone notices, and if someone does, what happens next.

Tales of the unExpected

Who knew that once the Gazans could move freely into Egypt, this kind of thing would occur?

Anyone?

Yeah, me too.

Woman killed in Dimona explosion

A woman was murdered Monday morning and about 10 people were injured in a terror attack carried out by a suicide bomber at a commercial center in the southern Israeli city of Dimona. 

Palestinian sources estimated that the terrorist was sent by the Islamic Jihad organization. The bomber is believed to have taken advantage of the breached border at the Rafah crossing in order to infiltrate to Egypt and into the Negev.

Those bastards from Hamas are at it again, eh?  Not this time.

Fatah: Bombers infiltrated Israel through Egypt

In Gaza press conference, members of Fatah’s military wing, PFLP say suicide bombers who carried out Dimona attack entered Sinai from Strip. ‘Attack has been planned for a month, but was only made possible due to breach in border,’ says al-Aqsa Brigades spokesman

You mean moderate Fatah did this?  I thought they wanted peaceful coexistence? Oh, wait a minute…

Hamas, of course, is fully supportive.

Hamas referred to the Dimona attack as “a heroic act”, which constitutes “a natural response to the crimes of the occupation.”

Yeah…let’s give them a state.

Nobama continued

Jeez, there’s more?

Indeed there is…at least to those of us who care about Israel and Jerusalem. Thanks Velvet Hammer.

This part from American Thinker, via Serendip.

Barack Obama’s real thinking about Israel and the Middle East continues to be an enigma. The words he chose in an address to AIPAC create a different impression than the composition of his foreign policy advisory team. Several advisors have evidenced a history of suspicion and worse toward Israel. One of his advisors in particular, Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama.

Through his [Malley's - GdB] writings he has served as a willing propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve an agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group of Middle East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros; and now is on the foreign policy staff of a leading Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems to be a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.

Malley has written a range of pieces over the years that reveal an agenda at work that should give pause to those Obama supporters who truly care about peace in the Middle Peace and the fate of our ally Israel.

• Why would Barack Obama have on his foreign policy staff a man who has been widely criticized for a revisionist history of the Middle East peace process sharply at odds with all other accounts of the proceedings?
• Why would Barack Obama give credibility to a man who seems to have an agenda that includes empowering our enemies and weakening our friends and allies?
• How did Robert Malley, with a record of writing that reveals a willingness to twist facts to serve a political agenda, come to be appointed by Obama to his foreign staff?
• What does it say about Senator Obama’s judgment that he appointed a man like Malley to be a top foreign policy advisor?

Or does it speak more to his true beliefs?

Caroline Glick opines at Jerusalem Post:

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