The Rant

See link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts_Jr#Early_life_and_education

KIM JONG-IL DEMANDS IPOD Latest Twist in Nuke Talks Raises Eyebrows, Concerns Mercurial North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il threw a monkey wrench into the six-party talks about North Korea’s nuclear program today by demanding that the other five nations give him an Apple iPod Shuffle™. In a morning session of the Beijing talks, the reclusive Kim told representatives of the United States, Russia, Japan, China and South Korea that if he did not receive an iPod by the end of the day he would test-launch a missile into the Sea of Japan. Kim’s latest demand took most of the diplomats by surprise, since many had expected North Korea to demand diplomatic recognition and a security arrangement with the United States in exchange for denuclearization, rather than a portable music device that retails for under $150. At Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple CEO Steven Jobs hailed the development: “This just goes to show that everybody wants an iPod, even one of the most insane, brutal d...

The CIA has recently obtained a transcript of an Al Qaeda secret planning meeting: _______________________________________________________________ A cave, somewhere deep in the Hindu Kush… ANAS: They’ll go in to the subway system here, get on separate trains going in different directions, then detonate their nail bombs simultaneously at 9am. Once they have killed and maimed dozens of innocent people, we issue our demands. Any questions? ABDULLAH: Demands? We’ve never done that before… What exactly are the demands? USAMA: We're giving Bush two weeks to withdraw completely all infidel soldiers from the Lands of the Believers, and if he doesn't agree immediately, we’ll blow up more trains. AYMAN: In London? ANAS: In London, New York, Rome, Sydney, Berlin, Tokyo, Toronto, Paris, Amsterdam… USAMA: And of course, we point out that they bear full responsibility when we slaughter their people, and that we shall not submit to blackmail! TERRORISTS: No blackmail! USAMA: They've bled...

But the bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there's no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about "the West," to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don't like and can't defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. Indiscriminate murder is not a judgment, even obliquely, on the victims or their way of life, or ours. Any decent and concerned reader of this magazine could have been on one of those planes, or in one of those buildings--yes, even in the Pentagon. Does anyone suppose that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would have forestalled the slaughter in Manhattan? It would take a moral cretin to suggest anythi...

___________________ Polygamy and Terrorism By William Tucker After almost four years of dealing with Al Qaeda, jihad, Iraq, and Muslim terrorism, it is obvious that we are up against something we have never encountered before in our history. We have fought and defeated a Nazi regime that was unprecedented in its cruelty and intent on wiping whole peoples from the earth. We fought and defeated an Imperial Japan and helped turn it into a modern nation. We fought the Korean and Vietnam Wars and saw how the portions of Asia we rescued thrived while those that fell under Communism turned into bleak totalitarian societies. But we have never fought an enemy so utterly “in love with death,” as the terrorists themselves put it, so willing to commit suicide and take the whole earth with them in pursuit of their cause. All this demands that we take a look at Muslim society to find out what makes it so different. This does not mean we should desist in our efforts to bring democracy to Iraq or ...

__________________________________________ Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad: "Is There Art that Is More Beautiful, More Divine, and More Eternal than the Art of Martyrdom?" The following are excerpts from a speech by Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, which aired on Iranian Channel 1 on July 25, 2005. ( Transcript ) Ahmadi-Nejad: We want art that is on the offensive. Art on the offensive exalts and defends the noble principles, and attacks principles that are corrupt, vulgar, ungodly, and inhuman. Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity. The message of the (Islamic) Re...

This is good ole Ben Stein trying to defend Karl Rove: In connection with his recent attack on Bob woodward, Stein said Nixon didn't do anything warranting impeachment. It was just politics. So now he defends Rove. STEIN: Dear President Bush, may I presume upon our friendship and my longtime support to offer you some thoughts about Karl Rove? First of all, I just had a very thorough exam of my prostate by a Democrat doctor, so I have a good idea of what you both are going through, and it's not fun. But I worked for a president named Richard Nixon who was an extraordinary genius but who handled this kind of thing totally wrong, so maybe we can learn from him. Let's begin with the obvious: Karl Rove did nothing wrong in the Valerie Plame case. He did not "knowingly" out her as a CIA secret overseas undercover agent because, among other things, she was not a secret overseas agent. She worked at a desk at Langley, Virginia, at the CIA headquarters. That ain't se...

Meet John Roberts A first-class lawyer with a sense of humor. Too bad he’s a threat to women’s rights -- and the Constitution. By Adele M. StanWeb Exclusive: 07.20.05 It is hard to know what’s more disturbing about President George W. Bush’s nomination of Judge John Roberts for a seat on the Supreme Court: the man’s sparse paper trail or the loose leaves he’s scattered along the way. Either way, the nomination should give pause, not just to women or African Americans but to all Americans who hold dear the Bill of Rights.Let’s begin with Roberts’ women problem. As deputy solicitor general for George Bush Senior, Roberts presented two troubling briefs on matters having to do with abortion. In 1991, he served up the government’s case before the Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan, arguing for the right to restrict the speech rights of family-planning organizations that receive public funding. The result of that decision upheld a gag rule on such organizations, denying them the right to ment...

What the world owes Palestinians and the Left by Dennis Prager July 26, 2005 In the last few weeks, innocent men, women and children have been blown up, paralyzed, brain damaged and otherwise had their lives ruined by Muslim suicide bombers in Britain, Egypt and Iraq. Who can we thank for this man-made plague? Palestinians and the Left. We need to thank Palestinians for their major contribution to humanity -- religiously sanctioned mass murder of innocents through suicide. Prior to the Palestinians, this did not exist. It is true that Tamil suicide bombers in Sri Lanka have murdered many thousands and they are not Muslims. But the Tamil rationale for suicide terror -- though utterly immoral -- is confined to a (secular) nationalist movement in Sri Lanka. Palestinian Muslims -- no Palestinian Christians have committed a suicide bombing -- have created a religious and moral basis for mass murder and did so within a worldwide religion with a billion adherents. When the Palestinians sen...

And for those with a cynical point of view TreasonGate - What Did Bush Know, And When Did He Know It? by Thom Hartmann Political smears by right-wingers are nothing new. In the election of 1800, John Adams had a surrogate newspaper publisher write an article about "Dusky Sally," the half-sister of Thomas Jefferson's deceased wife, who was also one of the Jefferson family slaves. Jefferson succeeded in avoiding the issue, and his friends pointed out that it was merely about his personal life, not national security. George W. Bush may not be so fortunate. Today comes the revelation in The Wall Street Journal that "A key department memo discussing Joseph Wilson's Niger trip was classified 'Top Secret,' and the passage about his wife's CIA role was specially marked 'S/NF' -- not to be shared with any foreign intelligence agencies." Perhaps even more damning are reports that the Top Secret-S/NF document was apparently first delivered to Air Fo...

From this week's New Yorker....GET OUT THE VOTE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq’s election?Issue of 2005-07-25Posted 2005-07-18The January 30th election in Iraq was publicly perceived as a political triumph for George W. Bush and a vindication of his decision to overturn the regime of Saddam Hussein. More than eight million Iraqis defied the threats of the insurgency and came out to vote for provincial councils and a national assembly. Many of them spent hours waiting patiently in line, knowing that they were risking their lives. Images of smiling Iraqis waving purple index fingers, signifying that they had voted, were transmitted around the world. Even some of the President’s harshest critics acknowledged that he might have been right: democracy, as he defined it, could take hold in the Middle East. The fact that very few Sunnis, who were dominant under Saddam Hussein, chose to vote was seen within the Administration as a temporary setback. The sense of v...

In my effort to keep some perspective regarding the Rove debate, I read All the President's Men. That's right, Watergate.. I think any one who didn't live through Watergate ought to read this book. Not solely because it is a facinating story, but I don't think the average American knows or remembers the scope of the misdeeds of the Nixon Whitehouse. My sense of the signifigance of the book is to point out that our government has perpetrate huge, dissinformation campaigns to hide the truth before. The tactics used by the Nixon Whitehouse are no different than what we see in the news everyday- whether it is tearing down Joe Wilson, the disaffected FBI "deep throat", or even Ben Stein defending Nixon last week, it's always the same. Don't address the issue, change the subject by attacking the usual suspects, the whistleblower, the news media, the eastern elite...... Scott McClellan is a Ron Ziegler clone. His problem is that the Washington press corp...

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This is pretty strong stuff by today's standards. From Justice Joseph Story's commentaries on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. § 1866. The real difficulty lies in ascertaining the limits, to which government may righttnlly go in fostering and encouraging religion. Three cases may easily be supposed. One, where a government affords aid to a particular religion, leaving all persons free to adopt any other; another, where it creates an ecclesiastical establishment for the propagation of the doctrines of a particular sect of that religion, leaving a like freedom to all others; and a third, where it creates such an establishment, and excludes all persons, not belonging to it, either wholly, or in part, from any participation in the public honours, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities of the state. For instance, a government may simply declare, that the Christian religion shall be the religion of the state, _____________________________ 1 See Burlemaqui, Pt. 3, ch. ...

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posted by Bob Clasen (who else) By Matthew Jones LONDON (Reuters) - British youngsters convicted of crimes that do not carry a jail term could be made to wear U.S.-style "chain-gang" uniforms when they perform community service sentences. Home Office minister Hazel Blears outlined plans for young offenders to be identifiable when doing community service because she said the public needs to see criminals punished. "People feel very strongly that they don't often see justice being done," Blears told Sunday's Observer newspaper. "I would like to see a very quick connection to community punishment, that people see being done. I want them to be identified." Community sentences typically involve activities such as picking up litter or removing graffiti. The sentences are usually given to offenders convicted of non-violent crimes, such as vandalism or driving without insurance. Blears' comments come only days after Prime Minister Tony Blair made a cra...

___________________________________________________ Breast Reductions on the Rise as More Women Choose to Reduce in Order to Increase Their Quality of Life LOS ANGELES, CA, April13, 2005 – Despite the national media attention on breast augmentation and breast implants, a different trend can be seen at plastic surgeons’ offices all over the nation: an increase in the number of women receiving breast reductions. Over 113,000 women will elect to have their breasts made smaller this year, an increase of 11% from previous years. While many people may find this information surprising, in truth, overly large breasts can cause serious physical pain. The weight of pendulous breasts causes structural demands on the neck and back that can create chronic pain. Depression and self-consciousness to the point of lowered self-esteem are also commonly documented. “Many people don’t understand the daily pain endured by women with overly large breasts,” said Dr. Grant Stevens. “Chronic neck, should, and ...

Can you believe Sanchez get a pass. Four Top Officers Cleared by Army in Prison AbusesBy ERIC SCHMITT Published: April 23, 2005 ASHINGTON, April 22 - A high-level Army investigation has cleared four of the five top Army officers overseeing prison policies and operations in Iraq of responsibility for the abuse of detainees there, Congressional and administration officials said Friday. Among the officers was Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who was the top commander in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. He was the highest-ranking officer to face allegations of leadership failure in connection with the scandal, but he was not accused of criminal misconduct. Advertisement on error resume next plugin = ( IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.4"))) if ( plugin Barring new evidence, the inquiry, by the Army's inspector general, effectively closes the Army's book on whether the highest-ranking officers in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal should be held acc...