Political Digest September 22, 2010

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.

A classic: The Curious Logic of Our Governing Elites
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_curious_logic_of_our_gover.html
Excerpt: George Orwell said, "There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them." What follows is my beginning of a list of ideas that some very intelligent people seem to believe. The air should be taxed. More precisely, what every animal on earth exhales and what every plant on earth inhales can and should be taxed. President Bush was bad for the economy because he spent too much. President Obama is helping the economy by spending a lot. A jury is better informed if evidence is withheld from it. The Boy Scouts are wrong for having policies that inhibit pedophilia. The Catholic Church was wrong for not having policies that inhibit pedophilia. An economy in which government accounts for about 40% of economic activity, which owns a similar percentage of all land, and which enforces a stack of regulations the size of 64 Bibles (or 30 New Deals) is considered a radical laissez-faire free market. Grabbing a person by his shirt and pulling him toward you is an "enhanced interrogation technique" not in the Army Field Manual. It is therefore "tantamount to torture" and out of bounds for any government agency or contractor to use when asking a terrorist what his plans are. Simply dropping a bomb on him, though, with neither trial nor tribunal, and killing him and anyone near him, including his wife, children, family and friends, is OK. Stopping Saddam Hussein by force was wrong because he did not have WMD. Using force against the Taliban is OK despite no one even claiming the Taliban has, or ever had, or ever intend to obtain, WMD. It was also OK to use force against the government of Yugoslavia, which had no WMD and had never harmed or threatened anyone outside Yugoslavia….Randall Hoven is creator of Graph of the Day. He can be contacted at randall.hoven@gmail.com or via his website, www.randallhoven.com.

Important: The Politics of Resentment by Thomas Sowell
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/thomas-sowell/2010/09/21/the-politics-of-resentment/
Excerpt: Few things have captured in microcosm what has gone so painfully wrong, where racial issues are concerned, like the recent election for mayor of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, under whom the murder rate has gone down and the school children's test scores have gone up, was resoundingly defeated for re-election. Nor was Mayor Fenty simply a passive beneficiary of the rising test scores and falling murder rates. He appointed Michelle Rhee as head of the school system and backed her as she fought the teachers' union and fired large numbers of ineffective teachers-- something considered impossible in most cities across the country. Mayor Fenty also appointed the city's chief of police, Cathy Lanier, who has cracked down on hoodlumism, as well as crime. Either one of these achievements would made mayors local heroes in most other cities. Why then was he clobbered in the election? One key fact tells much of the story: Mayor Fenty received more than 70 percent of the white vote in Washington. His opponent received more than 80 percent of the black vote. Both men are black. But the head of the school system that he appointed is Asian and the chief of police is a white woman. More than that, most of the teachers who were fired were black. There were also bitter complaints that black contractors did not get as many of the contracts for doing business with the city as they expected. In short, the mayor appointed the best people he could find, instead of running a racial patronage system, as a black mayor of a city with a black majority is apparently expected to. He also didn't spend as much time schmoozing with the folks as was expected. So what if he gave their children a better education and gave everybody a lower likelihood of being murdered?.... How did we reach the point where black voters put racial patronage and racial symbolism above the education of their children and the safety of everyone? There are many reasons but the trend is ominous. One key factor was the creation, back in the 1960s, of a whole government-supported industry of race hustling.

The Ground Zero Mosque
Old Bloomberg, cool as a piece of ice,
Would sell his mother and not think twice!
He's now putting up a gigantic Mosque,
While saying it's just like any kiosk.
But now the truth comes fast and loose,
It's lining his pockets with much more felooce!

(Note:--- "felooce" is colloquial Arabic for "money" or "cash" )

--Michael Sherbourne, (92) London, England, WWII Royal Navy vet.

Proof: New Records Show DOJ Lied About New Black Panther Dismissal
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/proof-new-records-show-doj-lied-about-new-black-panther-dismissal/?singlepage=true
Who would have guessed? ~Bob. Excerpt: Judicial Watch made an explosive announcement today about the Justice Department’s stonewalling in the New Black Panther voter intimidation case dismissal. Forced to bring a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit after DOJ rebuffed its public records request (so much for transparency), Judicial Watch obtained a privilege log from the DOJ last week. It shows — in a rather dramatic way — that the DOJ has been untruthful about who was involved in the dismissal of the case. In July, I complied with a subpoena and provided testimony to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. I did so in part because inaccurate statements had been made about the case by DOJ officials. Some of these statements falsely claimed that ethical rules mandated the dismissal of the charges against the New Black Panthers. This was nonsense. But the real whopper? DOJ’s claim — repeated over and over again — that career civil servants were wholly responsible for the spiking of the case. Today we learn, from the Department’s own records, that this claim is demonstrably false.

Black Panther case roars back to life
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/20/black-panther-case-roars-back-to-life/
Excerpt: Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, is in big trouble. The public-interest group Judicial Watch yesterday released a 62-page index of documents regarding the New Black Panther Partyvoter-intimidation case that undermines the credibility of Mr. Perez and of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. For more than a year, The Washington Times has been reporting that Mr. Holder's top political appointees intervened to force the abandonment of serious sanctions against the Black Panther members who threatened voters at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008. The Justice Department denied the claim, with spokesman Tracy Schmaler asserting to the contrary that only "career employees" engaged in what supposedly was a decision based entirely on "the facts and the law." On May 14, Mr. Perez swore under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that there was no "political leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case any further than it was" and that it was only "a case of career people disagreeing with career people."

Obama's Mother-in-law practicing Witchcraft IN the White House
http://www.therightperspective.org/2009/08/18/obama-mom-in-law-practising-witchcraft/
This is just silly and a distraction from real issues. I don’t think Obama is into witchcraft, any more than he is a Muslim—or a Christian. I believe he’s a secular humanist leftist who will profess any religion that is politically good for him, as the black liberation theology was when he started his political career, then disposed of when not. On the other hand, maybe it will cover ObamaCare. ~Bob. Excerpt: Barack Obama is reportedly steaming mad after learning that his mother-in-law is openly practicing Santeria in the White House. 72-year-old Marian Robinson, who lives in the White House and looks after Obama brats Sasha and Malia, began practicing the Afro-Hispanic witchcraft in the late 1980′s to help her ailing husband, who was crippled from multiple sclerosis. Robinson took him “to ceremonies where they did spells and trances, and sacrificed animals, chickens and goats,” which upset Michelle, a close friend reports. “But Marian was desperate and kept going anyway, even when her husband was to sick to go with her.” Michelle never brought up the incidents after her father passed away in 1993. The friend says Robinson is now afraid for her health and recently invited an old friend with whom she practiced Santeria with to the White House. Michelle is said to have “flipped” when she saw the woman. Obama “is quite upset about this on two different levels. First, he is a committed Christian, no matter what his critics say about Reverend Wright. He is adamant that Sasha and Malia be raised with Christian influences. He does not want them to be involved with African voodoo. And secondly, he is worried about the political fallout if his enemies get wind of this. Rev. Wright was bad enough, but this would be political suicide,” a close friend of Michelle’s confided. Obama reportedly has told Michelle that her mother will have to go back to Chicago if she does not “stop this witchcraft mumbo-jumbo immediately” and ordered the Secret Service to not allow Marian’s friend to return to the White House.

Aunt Zeituni: 'The System Took Advantage Of Me'
http://wbztv.com/local/obama.aunt.zeituni.2.1921954.html
Excerpt: "If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen." Those are the words from 58-year-old Zeituni Onyango of Kenya in a recent exclusive interview with WBZ-TV. Onyango is the aunt of President Barack Obama. She lived in the United States illegally for years, receiving public assistance in Boston. (Keep those hard earned tax dollars rolling in folks. We have to keep folks like this who have never contributed a dime to our society living well. What this report doesn’t say is that Auntie Zeituni somehow comes up with enough money for plane fare on a regular basis to take trips to unknown locations. Isn’t that rich? Unless we shut off the money and send these folks home we will have nothing for our children and grand children. Sounds like a broken record but it is fact. –DH)

The Original Mama Grizzlies
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-20/women-in-conservative-politics-the-original-mama-grizzlies/?om_rid=Mqh-D0&om_mid=_BMl765B8UvAQwT
Excerpt: In 1995, a group of feisty, far-right Republican women rode the country’s roiling populist rage into the House of Representatives, part of the conservative congressional takeover led by Newt Gingrich. There was Idaho’s Helen Chenoweth, dubbed “the poster-child for the militias” by one newspaper, who believed that environmental regulation was a step toward totalitarian, one-world government and wanted to abolish the IRS; and Andrea Seastrand, an antiabortion activist from California, who famously called her state’s natural disasters God’s punishment for sins including feminism, fornication, and church-state separation. Many of these women had overcome the resistance of the Republican establishment to win their seats—Linda Smith, who came out of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, even won her Washington district in a write-in vote. For all the media hyperventilation about Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, and the rest of the so-called Mama Grizzlies, there’s nothing new about insurgent conservative women. Indeed, one of the great ironies of American politics is that the anti-feminist right has long valued female standard-bearers far more than the egalitarian left. On the ground, women have dominated right-wing movements at least since the McCarthy era. According to the scholar Abby Scher, during the early 1950s, “a majority of the grassroots anti-communist activists were women.” Later, during the Christian right’s ascendancy in the 1980s and 1990s, women made up a majority of the local activists who kept the movement running. These movements let women access the kind of power and influence that feminism fought for, but without incurring male anger or sacrificing the privileges and prerogatives of traditional femininity. After the 1994 election, the seven new Republican congresswomen presented Rush Limbaugh with a plaque saying, “Rush Was Right.” Barbara Cubin, a freshman representative from Wyoming, crowed, “There’s not a femi-nazi among us!” Gingrich was smart enough to capitalize on these new female faces. As Elinor Burkett reported in her enlightening 1998 book, The Right Women: A Journey Through the Heart of Conservative America, he held regular meetings with women representatives and made sure to put women in leadership roles. After two months in office, he bragged, “We have more women chairmen, and more women members in leadership than the Democrats have ever had, and that’s real power.” Indeed, though{sic} they may have been wont to admit it, these conservative women began to experience exactly the power and freedom that feminists have always fought for. (As usual, lefties make a lot of noise, but Republicans get it done. The only black American currently on the Supreme Court, the first black American Secretary of State (who had also been the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--and he probably could have been the first black President back in 1992 or 1996, had he wanted that) and the second, who also happened to be a woman, and too many other firsts to be mentioned, all done by Republicans. Those mean, rotten conservative bastards! Minorities have generally faired better economically, too. Maybe we should elect more of them. Ron P.)

Fold Up Shop
http://biggovernment.com/amarcus/2010/09/20/andrew-breitbart-forces-president-obamas-protesters-to-fold-up-shop/
Excerpt: On Saturday, September 18th, Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart headlined an event entitled “Right Nation 2010,” held just outside of Chicago, Illinois. As you will see in our video report from the scene, when Andrew Breitbart arrived at the Sears Centre, he was met with an angry mob of protesters who were calling for an ‘end to hate’ while also hurling expletives and homophobic slurs toward the targets of their enmity. In the following dramatic video, Breitbart brings the protest to a complete halt by cleverly asking sign holders to do the impossible: explain the placards they were carrying. In the end, the frustrated organizers abruptly end their protest and leave.

A Teamsters High? Dope Growers Join Union
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/09/a-teamsters-high-dope-growers-join-union/
Excerpt: Can you imagine the Teamsters mellowed? Can you think of them being more interested in munchies than in beating up non-union workers? Imagine them just hanging out instead of doing some mobster’s bidding on the mean streets. The good news today is that we may finally see the violence and agitation in which Teamsters have for so long been embroiled come to a mellow end because California’s pot growers have joined the union. Maybe the dopers will spread the mellow? In California, the teamsters have organized 40 marijuana workers. They work as gardeners, trimmers and cloners. It’s not clear how labor laws will apply to this situation, since medical marijuana is legal in California but is still a federal crime. Still, the workers got a new contract and a raise. Nah. More likely the dopers will just become more militant and start beating up non-union drug dealers. But we can dream, can’t we?

Female Marines A New Weapon In Afghanistan
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/19/women-marines-new-weapon-afghanistan/
Excerpt: Sgt. Vanessa Jones and her teammates filed through the countryside with a squad of U.S. infantrymen and Afghan troops. They pushed through tall grass and leaped over canals, spilling into fields of sunflowers and the emerald spikes of marijuana plants rustling above their helmets. Then they waited, tucked into a ridge of dirt, while fellow Marines checked on a bomb dug into the road. Jones and her partner, Lance Cpl. Yvonne Blanco, were among a group of 40 volunteers who deployed to Afghanistan this spring to serve as Female Engagement Teams, a detachment organized by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton. The new teams were sent to the highly segregated Pashtun south of the country to connect with the female half of the population that is inaccessible to male Marines, to assess their needs, convey information, perform security searches, and whenever possible, win the support of Afghan mothers and daughters. The Marines knew it would be a tough assignment. Keeping up with the all-male infantry units is perhaps the least of their many obstacles. Jones and Blanco's first patrol in Marjah, one of the most hostile areas of the Taliban heartland for U.S. and NATO forces, underscored the challenge.

Mexican Marines attack Gulf Cartel convoys in Matamoros, bodies on the street
http://prairiepundit.blogspot.com/2010/09/mexican-marines-attack-gulf-cartel.html
Excerpt: Northern Mexico's surge of gangland bloodshed continued Friday in Matamoros, with shootouts reportedly leaving streets strewn with dozens of corpses and rumors flying that Mexican forces might have taken down “Tony Tormenta,” a reputed Gulf Cartel capo who is the brother of the imprisoned boss Osiel Cárdenas. Reports in the Brownsville Herald, La Reforma, and El Norte used unnamed law enforcement sources and witnesses to describe three battles starting about 1 p.m. The Blog del Terror, one of the numerous blogs serving as anonymous forums on the drug violence, reported sniper fire from military helicopters.

The Daily Blather by katatinka
Another post to a UK paper from my High School Classmate, Kate, a recovering liberal, who has been cured by living and returning to college in L.A. ~Bob. Excerpt: I have lived in Los Angeles for five years. We are surrounded by people from the third world who want to live a first world life-style while behaving as if they are in the third world. People in LA spit, drive and sleep on the pavement. You have to walk in the gutter if it is nap time. I nearly got killed one evening just after dark when one of them decided to drive along the pavement without her lights on. They do not understand that the United States is what it is (a desirable location) because Americans are what they are. In LA, you can't hear yourself think in a classroom, library or computer lab. There are chickens on our local library lawn. We get circulars about killing live animals, come see which one you want and we'll kill it for you on the spot. When I first got here I was all for the illegals and figured we could learn to get along. That was before I realized they don't want to get along with me. They want me out. And they have no time for the British either. You are the ancient enemy. Bet you didn't know that. You will notice that the criminals who have lived illegally in our country ,and derived all the benefits of that ,do not describe themselves as Americans. They say, "We grew up in this country. We belong in this country." The country they are referring to is Atzlan, a place which has never existed , and never will exist, except in the minds of people who not only cannot speak English properly, but cannot speak Spanish properly. I have had two years of Spanish at my local college. My teacher for both Span 1 and Span 3 said I always got the best grade on all the exams. They want the whites out of here. I am the target of anti-white and anti-American abuse, not only by individuals but at my PC college. I am also the target of anti-British bigotry because I spent many years in the UK and have a slight accent. The fact is I am mestizo, which means I have "Native American" blood. Why I haven't spent my life moaning about that will forever remain a mystery. Give my regards to the Portobello Road, my spiritual home. I miss you.

Tea party picking up steam nationwide
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092006163.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
Excerpt: Fresh off big primary wins in Delaware and Alaska, national "tea party" groups are redirecting the energy of the movement toward the November midterm elections, raising millions of dollars, expanding their advocacy into dozens of congressional races and building voter turnout operations nationwide. Leaders of the Atlanta-based Tea Party Patriots said they will announce a seven-figure donation Tuesday, from a yet-unnamed person, that the organization will pour into local tea party groups and get-out-the-vote efforts in some of the most competitive congressional races. FreedomWorks, which is headquartered in Washington and endorsed 25 House and Senate candidates during the primary season, said it will expand that list to more than 80. The Tea Party Express, based in Sacramento, is planning its largest national bus tour at the end of October to get conservatives to the polls. The goal is to keep alive the momentum the movement has generated and to use it to target vulnerable Democratic candidates.

Long-term increase in US unemployment 'possible', warns OECD
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8014124/Long-term-increase-in-US-unemployment-possible-warns-OECD.html
Excerpt: The recession has left the US with a long-term unemployment rate – a measure of those without work for more than six months – of 4.5pc, almost double that of the 1980s and 1990s downturns. "Previous US recessions have exhibited no long-term damage to the economy or long-term increase in unemployment, but it is possible this recession will trigger these effects," the OECD said in its first survey of the world's biggest economy since late 2008. (There are not that many construction jobs. The ones that do exist go to the illegals. The illegals don't have their own tools, and they don't have insurance, and, contrary to reports in the press, they very often do not pay taxes, so they can work more cheaply. Often a US citizen will be hired for a job and then told he will be working with an illegal. He shows the illegal how to do the job, and then the US citizen is sacked and the illegal finishes it. If you think the illegals hate us, you should know how much they hate you. I lived in Britain for many years and have a slight accent. I pay for that here. You are the ancient enemy. A guy from El Salvador told me illegals don't want to come here to LA any longer as it is too much of a dump for them now. They prefer Europe. --Kate in L.A.)

Boycott Progressive Insurance?
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/peterlewis.asp
The reason for the name. Couldn’t call it “Statist Insurance.” ~Bob.

A hero of Vietnam finds victory in defeat
http://www.tampabay.com/news/military/war/a-hero-of-vietnam-finds-victory-in-defeat/1122720
Excerpt: If one healer can splint the American fracture left by the Vietnam War, a Vietnamese named Harry looked the part in a ceremony over the weekend at this U.S. Navy base. "We won the war," said the former South Vietnamese army colonel, five times wounded and 13 years imprisoned by North Vietnam. "The Hanoi government knows China is going to attack Vietnam. So it must democratize and unify the country and be friends with America because the enemy of my enemy is my friend." His name is Tran Ngoc Hue. U.S. Marines nicknamed him Harry nearly a half-century ago. It stuck to this day when he was honored aboard the Navy warship USS Hue City in a memorial of the 1968 Tet battle for Hue. Harry was a hero there. But he was no victor in the war. As a South Vietnamese, he lost along with his departing American allies. Like Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, though, his transcendent gallantry in a lost cause offered both sides in a polarized America a unifying symbol of their kinship in courage.

Heroes, Frauds and Imposters
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2010/s3018090.htm
Excerpt: Among the 1.9 million who’ve fought in America’s War on Terror, he was one of finest. Rick Duncan had survived three tours of Iraq, dodged bullets and survived an exploding mine that flipped his armoured vehicle and killed four of his buddies. Captain Duncan had collected shrapnel he proudly declared to be ‘internal body bling’ and garnered some of the highest military medals possible. Back in the U.S the hero became an activist for the veterans’ cause and as a decorated serviceman he was sought after, even starring in campaign ads endorsing an Air Force veteran turned would-be congressman. His was a rollicking, triumphant story of sacrifice, dedication and heroism. And it was a lie. Rick Duncan was a complete fraud. And he’s not alone. Far from it. (This is a really well done piece on the Stolen Valor situation, made by an Australian journalist. I recommend it. The only thing that's too bad is they don't mention Jug Burkett, who deserves more credit than anyone for the whole movement to out the phonies. –Del)

Keep It Real, Conservatives
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/09/21/grover-norquist-way-forward-conservatives-november-election-newt-gingrich/
Excerpt: Between now and the November 2 election there are several dangers that stand between conservatives and the overwhelming victory that present polls predict.
The first threat flows from complacency, hubris, laziness, a sense that victory is already ours. The polling data tell us that Americans want to vote for Republican more than Democrats, against those who voted for Obamacare and for those who oppose higher taxes. Of course, this assumes that “present trends continue.” If we work hard, harder and hardest then today’s cheerful polling data can be the harbinger of victory when real votes by real people are counted on November 2. The second threat is that of distraction by “shiny things.” Many issues pop up and politicians and talk show hosts are intrigued and tempted to spend precious minutes talking about new and exciting issues rather than focus on the spending that threatens our future.

Fox News Polls Track Tea Party Influence in 5 Battleground States
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/21/fox-news-polls-track-tea-party-influence-battleground-states/
Excerpt: The Tea Party movement is changing the face of American politics in 2010, with midterm elections shaping up as a referendum on the movement’s small government message versus President Obama's big government agenda. The latest Fox News battleground polls show that despite broad support for the movement and its ideas, Tea Party-fueled Christine O’Donnell trails her opponent, Democrat Chris Coons, for U.S. Senate in Delaware. The surveys are being conducted weekly until the election for Fox News by Pulse Opinion Research. (My view was that the choice in the Delaware Primary wasn’t between a RINO and a conservative. It was between having a RINO in the senate voting to put conservatives in charge, and having a former Marxist in the senate, voting to put liberals in charge. Republican voters opted for the former Marxist over the RINO. I hope I’m wrong. ~Bob.)

Ticket trouble--Another blow to the NYPD
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/ticket_trouble_pXZMPHjafLQDDjXsLoAMPN
Excerpt: In the name of fighting "ticket quotas," state lawmakers recently struck another blow against effective policing. Apparently the cop-bashers (and their allies in the police unions) won't rest until they've reversed the policing revolution that has made New York the safest big city in the nation. The state's existing anti-quota statute was already foolish: It banned the imposition of any consequences on a police employee for failure to write a certain number of traffic summonses over a specified time period. Now, thanks to an amendment pushed by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and state Sen. Eric Adams, the statute covers every kind of law-enforcement activity -- from arrests to stops for suspected criminal activity. (Well, I don’t think employees should be punished for not doing their jobs. What would that lead to? ~Bob.)

Palestinians selling land to Israelis face automatic death penalty, court rules
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gtwqPaxxTa-aPNuPrzdMkyFEnxow
Excerpt: A Palestinian court has ruled that anyone selling land to Israelis will automatically face the death penalty. The ruling came in response to an appeal from Palestinian public prosecutor Ahmed al-Mughani. The current law says courts can choose life in prison or death. Al-Mughani told the AP on Monday that the law isn't tough enough. In practice, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has not approved executions since coming to power in 2004. In the past there have been vigilante killings of Palestinians suspected of selling land. Land sales are deeply sensitive among Palestinians. Many Palestinians sold land to Jews in the beginning of Zionist immigration in the late 1800s. Some continue to sell their properties to Jewish settlers. (Suppose any country, from Israel to us, had a law against selling land to Muslims? Never mind the death penalty. What would the reaction be? These are our “partners” in the “peace process”! ~Bob.)

France raises terror security, new threat reported
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100920/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_terrorism_threat
Sounds like someone didn’t get the “Islam is a Religion of Peace” memo. Where are the moderate Muslims we hear about condemning this? ~Bob. Excerpt: France is on alert for possible terrorism after intelligence suggested that attackers might target a public gathering place, with one lead pointing to a female suicide bomber, a counterterrorism official said Monday. The official told The Associated Press that authorities had been bracing for a possible attack last Thursday. Nothing unusual happened that day in France, but authorities are not letting their guard down, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of office policy. The scare came as five French workers and two African colleagues were kidnapped in Niger, part of the African turf of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. On Sept. 14, there was a false bomb alert at the Eiffel Tower.

Senate Dems consider early exit
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/120011-senate-democrats-consider-early-exit
Excerpt: Senate Democrats are seriously weighing whether to leave town at the end of next week, instead of staying in session until Oct. 7 or Oct. 8, as had been anticipated. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Democrats might pass a stop-gap spending measure to keep government funded beyond Sept. 30 and then go back to their home states to campaign.

Democrats pull in more cash than GOP
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/-1-2-3-8.html
Cash matters, as few voters pay real attention, are moved by the attack ads. If Republicans are doing so well, why are Democrats getting more contributions? ~Bob. Excerpt: Despite facing a difficult electoral environment this fall, the three national Democratic campaign committees outraised their Republican counterparts in August, numbers that should provide something of a boost to the party's hopes of retaining control of the House and Senate this fall. The largest fundraising margin was between the Democratic National Committee, which raised $10.9 million last month, and the Republican National Committee, which collected $7.9 million. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee brought in $8.3 million, besting the National Republican Congressional Committee's $6.6 million raised during the last month. The DCCC's haul broke a four-month streak where the organization had been outraised by the NRCC. On the Senate side, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $7.4 million as compared to $6 million collected in August by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It's worth noting that the trio of Democratic committees have each outspent their Republican counterparts over the past month as they seek to utilize their financial edge to impact competitive races heading into the final weeks of the campaign. The DNC spent better than $13 million in August -- more than a third of that was transferred to the Senate and House committees and state parties -- while the RNC spent $8.5 million. The DSCC dropped $7 million in August, more than double the $3.1 million the Senate Republican committee spent; the House Democratic campaign arm disbursed $5 million as compared to $3 million in spending for the NRCC. Despite that heavy spending, the DNC and DCCC retained significant cash-on-hand leads over their Republican equivalents -- the DCCC ended the month with a whopping $39 million in the bank. On the Senate side, however, Republicans closed the month with a $1.5 million cash-on-hand edge.

Government and journalists cower at threats to cartoonist
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Examiner-Editorial-Government-and-journalists-cower-at-threats-to-cartoonist.html
Excerpt: Last week, the Seattle Weekly announced that Molly Norris, its editorial cartoonist, had "gone ghost." Put another way, she went into hiding. The FBI told her she had to because otherwise it couldn't protect her against death threats from Muslims she'd angered. Earlier this year, Norris started "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" to protest radical Muslims' violently stifling freedom of speech and conscience. Incredibly, her plight has drawn precious little media attention, even though it is infinitely more newsworthy than, say, a fundamentalist preacher in Florida threatening to burn Qurans. When The Examiner asked the American Society of News Editors for a statement on the issue, none was forthcoming. This despite the fact that the first sentence of ASNE's Web site describes its mission as supporting "the First Amendment at home and free speech around the world." We got a similar response from the Society of Professional Journalists, despite its dedication "to the perpetuation of the free press as the cornerstone of our nation and liberty." Freedom of speech and press are in deep trouble when the American government thinks the best it can do to protect a journalist from death threats is to counsel her to go into hiding, and when the elite voices of American journalism can't be bothered to say anything in her defense. But it's actually worse than that. The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof thinks Muslims are owed an apology. "I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you," he wrote Sunday. "The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you."

Kerry In Line to Replace Clinton at State?
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=19382
Dear God, from bad to worse. ~Bob. Excerpt: Word on Capitol Hill is that Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee with a well-worn passport to the world’s hot spots, is in the mix to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s been hinting of an exit before the end of President Obama’s first term. Kerry, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has acted as an emissary for Obama. Should he leave, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, in a bitter reelection fight, would be in line to chair the committee. If he loses, it might fall to New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, whose goal is the fall of Cuba’s Castro regime, a policy Obama doesn’t seem to back.