The Rant

______________________ When the U.S.S.R. imploded, many essays were written speculating on the topic: "Who will be our next big enemy?" Some talked about how the 21st century was the century of China and China would be our next enemy. Some imagined that the Eurpean Union would swell into a potential rival and enemy. But China is one of our biggest trading partners, necessary to our standard of living. China needs us as much as we need China. Europeans are our friends and where we love to visit on vacation. Europeans are virtually pacifists and hardly a threat to our country. Some, (showing a slight improvement in the Vision thing), point to the axis of evil: North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Bush, perhaps believing this story, went to war with Iraq, and rattles sabers at Iran. But the outcome of our victory against the political state of Iraq points out with startling clarity that our real enemy today is not one of these poor, pathetic states in the Mid-East, such as ...

_______________________ by Diana West Q: Who is winning the really important war of ideas — the one between the West and itself? A: Not the side that understands jihad as a foundational Islamic institution. This is nothing new. From September 11 onward, the yeoman effort of elites has been to wrench "Islam" away from all acts of jihad. But now, particularly after the London and Glasgow attacks, their efforts have achieved a deeper level of denial, and, worse, broader consensus. The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, has directed ministers to omit "Muslim" when discussing (Muslim) terrorism. And forget the generic "war on terror"; even that pathetic phrase is off limits. (This has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Brown's unctuously stated goal to make Britain "the gateway for Islamic finance.") The new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (love that "i" ending) refers to British Muslims as "communities" — maybe a prelude ...

__________________________________ I don't claim to have followed the trial for "Scooter" Libby carefully. But this is another case where no crime was found or charged except the crime of lying to the investigator, in this case a "Special Prosecutor". (Another one like this was Martha Stewart). Perhaps they should change the Special Prosecutor's name to the Divine Inquisitor. An attorney in my office was called to jury duty. He was advised that the trial was about a person being in the vicinity of a prostitute, where prostition activity was known to be going on, although there was no evidence that he actually had sex with the prostitute. Apparently this is now a crime in the good city of Santa Ana. Mike advised the Prosecutor that he thought the prosecution of such "crimes" was a waste of taxpayer money. You should not have to go to jail if you didn't even get laid. I feel the same about these special prosecutions for "lying" to ...

George Mason, a distinguished Virginian who refused to sign the Constitution because of its lack of a bill of rights, noted that “the President of the United States has the unrestrained Power of granting Pardon for Treason; which may be sometimes exercised to screen from Punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the Crime, and thereby prevent a Discovery of his own guilt.” Luther Martin, a somewhat less distinguished but extremely interesting non-signatory from Maryland (who also raised questions about the collaboration with slavery), also objected to the potential “attempt [of the President] to assume to himself powers not given by the constitution, and establish himself in regal authority; in which attempt a provision is made for him to secure from punishment the creatures of his ambition, the associates and abettors of his treasonable practices, by granting them pardons should they be defeated in their attempts to subvert the constitution.”

1. Equality of rights before the law: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." — Declaration of Independence "Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution...Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash.... Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim… then his punishme...

_______________________________ Doctors from the religion of peace wish to give you the gift of eternal peace. They were undoubtedly compelled to a life of terrorism by their poverty and lack of proper education. _____________________ Five doctors are now being held in connection with the recent attempted terror attacks - one is an Iraqi doctor who trained in Baghdad. [Thus the gratitude of the Iraqi people at being liberated from tyranny and given the gift of freedom continues to pour forth] Sky sources named him as Iraqi Bilal Abdulla - he was left relatively unscathed in an attack on Glasgow airport, in which two men drove a flaming jeep into the airport terminal. Two doctors were arrested in Paisley, Glasgow, another in Liverpool and one on the M6 on Saturday night. Abdulla was pictured being led away from the explosion by police and worked at the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow. The other man detained at Glasgow airport had severe burns and remains in a critical condition at...

__________________________ The London car-bomb plot was designed to kill women Why on earth do people keep saying, "There but for the grace of God …"? If matters had been very slightly different over the past weekend, the streets of London and the airport check-in area in Glasgow, Scotland, would have been strewn with charred body parts. And this would have been, according to the would-be perpetrators, because of the grace of God. Whatever our own private theology or theodicy, we might at least agree to take this vile belief seriously.__ ______________________ [a] car bomb might have been parked outside a club in Piccadilly because it was "ladies night" and that this explosion might have been designed to lure people into to the street, the better to be burned and shredded by the succeeding explosion from the second car-borne cargo of gasoline and nails. Since we have known since 2004 that a near-identical attack on a club called the Ministry of Sound was proposed...

_________________________________ J ACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Authorities from a terrorism task force closed off a roughly 10-block downtown area on Sunday after a man made a bomb threat. Youssef Bouchlarhem made threatening statements in both Arabic and English saying, "Allah is great," "I am going to blow this place up" and "Kill Me, according to Micheal Edwards, director of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Department of Investigations and Homeland Security. A witness called authorities around 11:45 a.m. to report a man who was behaving strangely in the middle of the street. When officers arrived and attempted to detain Bouchlarhem, he physically resisted and had to be restrained, Edwards said. Bouchlarhem, 34, was charged with making a false report about planting a bomb and resisting police. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday. It was not immediately known if he had legal representation. Authorities searched Bouchlarhem's home, but did not fin...

American Health Care is not perfect. But Socialized Medicine works as well as socialism in general. One can rail against free market economics all one wants, but basic economics is like gravity. One defies it at one's peril: see North Korea v. South Korea and East Germany v. West German as an example. What socialists ignore in their emphasis on equal distribution is the small problem of production. Most people do not produce things (work) for nothing, nor out of charity. Nor can anyone produce anything for very long at a loss. In addition, the process of scientific and technological improvement which underlies progress in the West relies open the profit motive to capitalize it. The market price for any good is the price that the demand roughly equals the supply. If you artificially lower the price, by some kind of state price control, the demand will exceed the supply. This is what we seen in every socialist economy: shortages. That is the state of things for the or...