The Rant

by Bob Clasen Abdul Rahman, raised a Muslim, who converted to Christianity, was released from jail yesterday in Afghanistan. He was branded by his own family as insane, because he had doubted the religion he was brought up in. He wisely disappeared as he had been threatened by death my many local religious authorities. He was offered asylum in Italy. It does seem a little reckless to announce your conversion from Islam in a conservative Islamic culture, since the penalty for conversion under Sharia (Holy Law) is death. Freedom to convert to another religion is apparently not part of Islamic culture. In conservative Islam, the Koran is accepted literally, just as some Christians accept the Bible literally. In many Moslem schools, the main subject taught is the Koran and arabic, the "holy language" of the Koran. Many onservative moslems reject western culture, including science, technology, and western economics, wherever they conflict with the Koran. (just as some conservat...

Many thousands of Moslems recently rioted all over the world, because they felt that a few cartoons published in Denmark insulted the founder of their religion. Many people were murdered in these riots. Many embassies were burned. Conclusion: Moslems do not respect the right of non Moslems to honestly express their lack of belief in Islam or it's founder. So does Islam give Moslems freedom of religion in their own country? . . . Afghan Man Faces Execution After Converting to Christianity By Benjamin Sand Kabul 18 March 2006 An Afghan man who recently admitted he converted to Christianity faces the death penalty under the country's strict Islamic legal system. The trial is a critical test of Afghanistan's new constitution and democratic government. The case is attracting widespread attention in Afghanistan, where local media are closely monitoring the landmark proceedings. Abdul Rahman, 40, was arrested last month, accused of converting to Christianity. Under Afghanista...

by Bob Clasen What is the basic intellectual defense of free speech? It is that people are intelligent enough to make the best decision, if they are allowed free access to all of the relevant information. The defense of liberty assumes that it is safer to allow all points of view to battle it out in the marketplace of ideas rather than allow any particular group to enforce its point of view at the point of a gun. This defense of Liberty assumes a rather optimistic opinion about the nature of man. It appears to me that since it has been allowed to dominate in the west, the results have not been so bad; better than in ages when proper opinion was dictated by the Church or State or both. What does it say about a philosophy or religion that believes that any contrary opinion is "evil" and that it is good to throttle any hostile opinion by violence and force? What should we think of any philosophy which has spread itself over the world by force of arms rather than by persuas...

I am trying to understand the Islamic frame of mind. If several persons in Denmark publish a cartoon about Mohammad that Muslims find offensive, this means that Muslims all over the world are justified in rioting and random acts of violence: burning down embassies and assaulting and murdering people who had nothing to do with creating or publishing the offensive cartoon. Their only crime is that they are non Moslems; Christians, Jews and secular non believers. This is a very interesting notion of justice, don't you think? So if one western person does something wrong, all western persons are therefore "open season?" Groups are held responsible collectively for the sins of any one member. I have heard of this sort of "justice" being carried out in Iraq. For example, if one person betrayed Saddam Hussein, the Republican Guard would seek out and exterminate all the members of the family of the miscreant, even though none of them had actually broken any law, ...

I have two questions to Moslems about their fury about the Danish cartoons. 1. Why do you expect expect to be treated better than Christians and Jews in their own countries? Religous satire is part of our Western culture and history since the Enlightenment. Apparently, Moslems want to receive unique, special treatment for their religion, upon threat of violence to Western culture in which they live as a minority. 2. Why do you expect Islam to be accorded special respect, when Islam does not give such respect to other religions? In many Islamic countries, other religions are frequently insulted in state controlled media, especially the Jewish religion. Furthermore, Islam does not grant equal rights to members of other religions, nor the right to proselytize others. As an extreme example, the Taliban destroyed historically and artistically valuable statutes of the Buddha in their effort to eliminate any trace of competing religions. It seems clear to me that these Moslems who a...

By Ann Coulter Wed Feb 8, 8:16 PM ET As my regular readers know, I've long been skeptical of the "Religion of Peace" moniker for Muslims -- for at least 3,000 reasons right off the top of my head. I think the evidence is going my way this week. The culture editor of a newspaper in Denmark suspected writers and cartoonists were engaging in self-censorship when it came to the Religion of Peace. It was subtle things, like a Danish comedian's statement, paraphrased by The New York Times, "that he had no problem urinating on the Bible but that he would not dare do the same to the Quran." So, after verifying that his life insurance premiums were paid up, the editor expressly requested cartoons of Muhammad from every cartoonist with a Danish cartoon syndicate. Out of 40 cartoonists, only 10 accepted the invitation, most of them submitting utterly neutral drawings with no political content whatsoever. But three cartoons made political points. One showed Muhammad tu...

NY Press Kills Cartoons; Staff Walks Out FILE UNDER: Newspapers The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight. Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff: New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to ...

Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest Jurist Concerned Bush Order Tainted Work of Secret Panel By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna LinzerWashington Post Staff WritersWednesday, December 21, 2005; Page A01 A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources. U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation. Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work. Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Bill Clinton in 1...

Militant warns of more attacks 17/11/2005 13:09 - (SA) Jakarta - A hooded Islamic militant, believed to be one of Asia's most wanted men, has warned western nations to expect more attacks. The warnings were made in a video. Indonesian police said on Thursday that they had found the video in the hideout of slain Azahari Husinlast last week. The balaclava-clad man is believed by Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla to be Malaysian, Noordin Mohammad Top. Noordin and Azahari are accused of being top members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional extremist network linked to al-Qaeda and blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings, as well as a string of other attacks across southeast Asia. "Accidents and terror by mujahedin (holy warriors) will continue to take place as long as western countries deploy their soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan," said the man on the video. The man, his index finger repeatedly stabbing the air to accentuate his points, threatened to attack the United States, Bri...

Regardless of the answer of whether the administration did or did not manipulate the intelligence prior to the Iraq War, the public has a right to know. If the administration would lie about WMD or Al Qaeda, what about tax cuts, social security reform? From Media Matters. Org Led by Roberts, conservatives continued to falsely claim government reports found that Bush administration didn't manipulate intelligence In recent days, conservative pundits have repeated the false claim -- now advanced by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- that government investigations have already cleared the Bush administration of "manipulat[ing]" intelligence in 2002 and 2003 as it made the case for the war in Iraq. In fact, while several reports found that analysts felt no "pressure" from senior policy-makers in reaching their intelligence assessments -- a conclusion that has since been challenged by several senior intelligence officials -- no government ...

From Jeff Abouaf: Judy Miller and the neoconsArrogance, poor editing, and getting too close to her sources -- not ideology -- led to her fall. By Juan Cole Oct. 14, 2005 New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified again on Wednesday before a grand jury regarding allegations that Irving Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, outed an undercover CIA operative in summer of 2003. After spending 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury, Miller was released after receiving a personal waiver from Libby -- who turned out to be her confidential source. Miller's reputation had already been deeply sullied by her inaccurate and one-sided reporting on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the war. Questions have swirled about her relationship with the small coterie of neoconservatives, including Libby, who staffed key positions in the Bush administration, and who were allied with Ahmad Chalabi, a corrupt Iraqi expatriate and not...

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are...Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, November 8, 1954

By George F. Will Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A27 It took exactly one month -- until the president's prime-time news conference of Oct. 11, 2001 -- to refute the notion that Sept. 11 "changed everything." When a reporter said, "You haven't called for any sacrifices from the American people," he replied, "Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before." And that was before the sacrificing became really hellacious with the requirement that passengers remove their shoes at security checkpoints. The idea that Hurricane Katrina would change the only thing that matters -- thinking -- perished even more quickly, at about the time Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a suitable symbol of congressional narcissism, dramatized the severity of the tragedy by taking a television interviewer on a helicopter flight over her destroyed beach house. "Washington...

Assigning blame Charles Krauthammer (archive) September 9, 2005 WASHINGTON -- In less enlightened times, there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews). A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush. This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph. There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period. The problem with the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq could not get to New Orleans, but that National Gu...

Mark Steyn Terror war all but forgotten on home front BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Sept. 11, 2005 -- the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. That is, if you believe it's a ''war'' A lot of people didn't want to, even in those first days. About a week after, one of my local radio stations held a fund-raiser and this is how their trailer for it opened. Cue the terminal-illness-movie-of-the-week soupy piano. Then: ''After the tragic events of Sept. 11 . . .'' And, by the time I'd heard it half-a-dozen times, I retuned the dial and never listened to the station again. It wasn't a "tragic event" or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an "attack," an "act of war." I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who'd tuned out the same station on the grounds that "I never heard my grampa talk about 'the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.' " But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effo...

Hurricane Katrina-Our ExperiencesHurricane Katrina-Our ExperiencesLarry BradshawLorrie Beth SlonskyTwo days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store atthe corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy displaycase was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours withoutelectricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginningto spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up thefood, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen'swindows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and thewindows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. Thecops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices,and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not.Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily cha...

By CORNELIA DEAN Published: August 30, 2005 NY Times CHICAGO - When Jon D. Miller looks out across America, which he can almost do from his 18th-floor office at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, he sees a landscape of haves and have-nots - in terms not of money, but of knowledge. While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process. Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 1...

For some time, the central mystery in the Valerie Plame saga was which members of the White House staff leaked the undercover CIA operative's identity to reporters. Although there are still many unanswered questions, at least part of the mystery has been solved: Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper has testified that he was told about Plame by White House senior adviser Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Yet while Cooper and his editors at Time spent two years keeping Rove and Libby's -- and their own -- role a secret, they published articles that reported, without challenge, a statement from the White House that they knew to be false. The issue of Time's actions over the past two years was revived by an August 25 Los Angeles Times article stating that the magazine did not pursue a waiver from Rove allowing Cooper to testify in part because "Time editors were concerned about becoming part of such an...

Sad . . . Moody's Cuts GM, Ford Debt to Junk Status Thursday, August 25, 2005 • GM Posts $1.10B Loss — Worst Since 1992 NEW YORK — Moody's Investors Service Wednesday cut General Motors Corp.'s (GM) and Ford Motor Co.'s (F) debt ratings to junk status, citing continued operating losses, global competition and challenges to restructuring for long-term viability. Moody's also cut GM's finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp. (search) , to junk status. The cuts affect about $170 billion of outstanding debt, Moody's said. Moody's was the last of the three major rating services to cut the auto giant to junk status. Moody's cut GM's senior unsecured debt rating to "Ba2" from "Baa3," and GMAC's senior unsecured rating to "Ba1" from "Baa2." The outlook is negative on the new ratings. Moody's also cut Ford's debt ratings, the second cut to junk for the No. 2 automaker. Moody's cut its ratings ...

by Lawrence Kudlow Permit me to take a contrarian view on the oil price shock. I say three cheers for higher energy prices. Why? Because I believe in markets. When the price of something goes up, demand falls off (call it conservation) and supply increases (call it new production). We're seeing a tectonic shift. As Dan Yergin has advised us, energy supplies in the next few years will explode. Now the public is even favoring nuclear power. And the government is stepping out of the way by giving FERC the authority to override localities who oppose nuclear power, liquefied natural gas or other forms of energy. Meanwhile the impact on the economy has been negligible, at least so far. And the Fed has prevented oil inflation from spreading to the rest of the economy. So much so that I think they should quit raising rates while they're ahead. Meanwhile the spread of global capitalism to places like China, India, eastern Europe and elsewhere (which is a very good thing for world prospe...