Political Digest September 25, 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.

The Choice
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/09/essay-choice.html
If you missed my handy Voting Guide, or want to forward the link to someone.

Mourning in American
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YXqf_6ug54
Powerful ad.

Liberal blogger directly confronts David Axelrod, accuses White House of "hippie punching"
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/09/liberal_blogger_directly_confr.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
Damn it—hippy punching is OUR job! I hope when they take that crowd under the bleachers, they use protection. ~Bob. Excerpt: Top Obama adviser David Axelrod got an earful of the liberal blogosphere's anger at the White House moments ago, when a blogger on a conference call directly called out Axelrod over White House criticism of the left, accusing the administration of "hippie punching." "We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day," the blogger, Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars, pointedly told Axelrod on the call, which was organzied for liberal bloggers and progressive media. The call seemed to perfectly capture the tense dynamic that exists between the White House and the online and organized left: Though White House advisers in the past have dumped on the left, anonymously and even on the record, Axelrod repeatedly pleaded with the bloggers on the call for help in pumping up the flagging enthusiasm of rank and file Dems. "You play a great role in informing people about the stakes of elections," Axelrod told the bloggers. "One of the reasons I was eager to expend time was to enlist you." But hovering over the call was the obvious disconnect between this plea for help and statements like those of Robert Gibbs, who recently pilloried the "professional left" for being overly critical of the White House. That tension burst out into the open when Madrak directly asked Axelrod: "Have you ever heard of hippie punching?" That prompted a long silence from Axelrod. "You want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching," Madrak added. "We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day."

GOP Blocks Bill to DISCLOSE Campaign Ad Donors
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/23/politics/main6894710.shtml
Excerpt: Senate Republicans on Thursday stood fast in blocking legislation requiring special interest groups running campaign ads to identify their donors. Mirroring a Senate vote on the bill last July, all 39 Republicans who voted stopped Democrats from bringing the campaign disclosure bill to the Senate floor. The 59-39 vote fell one short of the 60 needed to advance the legislation. Two Republicans didn't vote. Republicans dismissed Democratic efforts to revive the bill as an attempt to win political points before the midterm elections. The White House-backed measure is a response to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision last January overturning a decades-old law that barred corporations, unions and other organizations from spending on advertising, mass mailings and other forms of political activity.

Senate Democrats postpone tax cut vote until after elections
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/22/AR2010092205406.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert
Every candidate in the country should be put on the record about this. There was a time—before it became the propaganda arm of the Democrat party, when the media would have done this. ~Bob. Excerpt: Senate Democrats said Thursday that they had abandoned plans for a pre-election showdown with Republicans over taxes, postponing any vote on extending Bush administration tax cuts until after the November midterms. Democrats discussed the issue during a caucus luncheon but left the final decision to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Late Thursday, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said, "We will come back in November and stay in session as long as it takes to get this done."

Chrysler Auto Workers Busted
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/chrysler-auto-workers-busted_20100923_dk
Your bailout dollars at work. ~Bob. Excerpt: Rob Wolchek got a tip about what some guys are doing at Chrysler's Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. This is the same plant that President Barack Obama visited back in July and talked about the significance of manufacturing in America.

Senate Republicans launch $1 million ad buy in West Virginia
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/senate-republican-launch-ad-in.html?wprss=thefix
Is WV in play? Or just a better shot than DE, where the Tea Party upset candidate is trailing by 15 points? Excerpt: The National Republican Senatorial Committee will launch ads in the West Virginia Senate race today, a seven-figure expenditure that strongly suggests the party thinks they can pull off an upset in the Mountain State. The commercial goes directly at Gov. Joe Manchin (D) -- arguing that the governor "supports Barack Obama's big government agenda" on big ticket items like the economic stimulus package and the health care law. "Big spending, more government and less freedom...we don't want a rubber stamp for Obama," says the ad's narrator. "We can't afford Joe Manchin in Washington." The ad will cost the NRSC roughly $1.2 million and will run statewide -- including in the pricey Washington, D.C. media market -- for two weeks, according to sources familiar with the buy. Republicans have been hinting for the last several weeks that the race between Manchin, a popular second term governor, and wealthy businessman John Raese was surprisingly competitive.

Ethics panel struggling to set trial dates
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/120595-ethics-committee-struggling-to-set-trial-dates
Excerpt: The ethics committee is struggling to come up with a schedule for the public trials of Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). After separate investigations, the panel charged Rangel and Waters with violating House rules. Both rebuffed attempts to negotiate punishments, choosing to opt for public trials of the charges against them. Watchdogs are expecting those trials to take place after the elections so the ethics committee can avoid any accusations of politicizing the ethics process. (the cover-up goes on. How about Christmas or new Years day? ~Bob.)

A Stimulus Project Gets All Caulked Up
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704488404575441410775239560.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
Excerpt: The Motor City has lots of drafty houses and tens of thousands of unemployed people. So when Congress proposed spending $5 billion to insulate homes as part of the stimulus bill, Detroit got excited. The director of the city agency managing the program advertised for construction companies before the legislation even passed. But on the same day in March 2009 that Shenetta Coleman picked up applications from 46 companies, she received an email from the Michigan Department of Human Services telling her she couldn't award work to anyone. The problem: Ms. Coleman hadn't met requirements for her advertisement. Those included specifying the precise wages that contractors would have to pay, and posting the advertisement on a specific website. There were other rules—federal, state and local—for grant and contract-award processes, historic preservation and labor standards. The bureaucratic obstacles Ms. Coleman hit took more than a year to clear. Some were mandated by the stimulus bill, the same legislation that was supposed to rapidly create jobs. For example, there is a union-backed provision that requires that weatherization workers receive the prevailing wages in the area. Eighteen months after the bill was signed into law, Michigan has weatherized 10,194 homes with stimulus dollars. It has 23,216 more to go before it meets its target. Michigan says it is on track to finish the homes on its list by March 2012, the deadline set by the U.S. Department of Energy. Many states are at a similar stage. But when Obama administration officials were selling the idea of a huge federal stimulus program to buoy the U.S. economy, they talked about a plan that would get money into the economy quickly. Instead, spending stimulus dollars fast has turned out to be surprisingly hard.

Democrats Run From Their Record
How bad is it for Democrats? They're running against their own programs. ObamaCare, cap-n-tax, you name it, they're against it now. This situation reached absurdity when five Democrat members of Congress ran ads claiming to have voted "no" on TARP. The five are Frank Kratovil (MD), Dina Titus (NV), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH), Kathy Dahlkemper (PA) and Glenn Nye (VA). The inconvenient truth is, according to FactCheck.org, "None of the five lawmakers who are running these ads is listed in the roll call vote. That's because none of them had taken office yet." But if they had been in Congress, they would have been against it. Yeah, that's the ticket. From The Patriot Post www.patriotpost.us/subscribe/

Visigoths at the Gate?
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/charles-krauthammer/2010/09/24/visigoths-at-the-gate/
Excerpt: In fact, the big political story of the year is the contrary: that a spontaneous and quite anarchic movement with no recognized leadership or discernible organization has been merged with such relative ease into the Republican Party. The tea party could have become Perot '92, an anti-government movement that spurned the Republicans, went third-party and cost George H.W. Bush re-election, ending 12 years of Republican rule. Had the tea party gone that route, it would have drained the Republican Party of its most mobilized supporters and deprived Republicans of the sweeping victory that awaits them on Nov. 2. Instead, it planted its flag within the party and, with its remarkable energy, created the enthusiasm gap. Such gaps are measurable. This one is a chasm. This year's turnout for the Democratic primaries (as a percentage of eligible voters) was the lowest ever recorded. Republican turnout was the highest since 1970. True, Christine O'Donnell's nomination in Delaware may cost the Republicans an otherwise safe seat (and possibly control of the Senate) and Sharron Angle in Nevada is running only neck-and-neck with an unpopular Harry Reid. On balance, however, the tea party contribution is a large net plus, with its support for such strong candidates as Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Joe Miller of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah. Even Rand Paul, he of the shaky start in Kentucky, sports an eight-point lead.

No More Racial Gerrymandering
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/linda-chavez/2010/09/24/no-more-racial-gerrymandering/
Excerpt: Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., seems to believe that her ethnicity entitles her to keep her congressional seat this election. In a Spanish language interview on Univision, the seven-term representative from California's 47th Congressional District accused "los Vietnamese y los Republicanos" of trying to take away a seat she says belongs to the Hispanic community, and therefore her. Sanchez's Republican opponent this year is a state assemblyman, Van Tran, who came to the United States at the age of 10 from his native Vietnam just days before the fall of Saigon. Sanchez's comments were highly offensive. But they reflect a reality that is little discussed these days, namely racial gerrymandering, which has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans for decades. The 47th District spans across a populous area in California's Orange County, including the cities of Garden Grove and Santa Ana as well as parts of Fullerton and Anaheim. Orange County was once synonymous with wealth and conservatism. But the county has changed in recent years largely because of the influx of working- and middle-class Hispanics and Asians, many of them immigrants and small-businessmen and women. The changing demographics have also made this district less easy to pigeonhole. Congressional districts are redrawn every 10 years in order to reflect population changes in the latest decennial census. In most states, the legislature redraws the lines, and the party that controls the legislature often draws those lines to try to ensure its members stay in power. But amendments to the Voting Rights Act have played a large role in how the lines have been drawn since 1982. Unfortunately, the act has been interpreted by the courts to favor drawing legislative districts so that minority candidates have a good chance of being elected, creating so-called "safe" minority seats.

How Privileged Democrats Pay for Their Houses
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/michelle-malkin/2010/09/24/how-privileged-democrats-pay-for-their-houses/
Excerpt: Like millions of Americans, Delaware Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell has had trouble covering her mortgage and other bills over the years. Her opponents consider this a scandal of disqualifying proportions. But there's a bigger disgrace: It's all the sanctimonious Democrats who have exploited their entrenched political incumbency to pay for multiple manses and vacation homes -- while posing as vox populi. Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware's ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens' most valuable asset. Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his compound's lawn needs. He secured the new estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden's top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA. In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property….Then there's President Barack Obama's own $1.7 million Chicago manse -- which was financed with a discounted mortgage from Northern Trust and infamously included a shady land swap with convicted felon donor/developer Tony Rezko. A report released by the Federal Election Commission in February 2009 underscored that the Obamas received reduced loan rates (saving $300 a month, or $108,000 over the life of a 30-year loan) because of their high-profile positions. Northern Trust offered the super jumbo loan to the Obamas in anticipation of entering "long-term financial relationships" with the successful couple. The FEC refused to call the Obamas' mortgage deal an illegal corporate contribution, but it was an obvious act of favor-trading. Northern Trust employees had contributed $71,000 to Obama since 1990.

The Other Delaware Candidate
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/r-emmett-tyrrell/2010/09/23/the-other-delaware-candidate/
Excerpt: Yet Lord went back further. He found that before Coons became the Democratic opponent of O'Donnell, he was profiled in early May in Politico. In that profile, Politico reports that as a 21-year-old about to graduate from Amherst, he wrote a piece in the college newspaper that was titled "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist." Apparently, there was more to that trip to Africa than he would like voters to recall or than the Post chronicled. Coons reported in the student newspaper that his trip to Africa was what we now call a transformative experience. "It is only too easy to return from Africa glad to be American and smugly thankful for our wealth and freedom," Politico quotes the returning student as saying. "Instead, Amherst had taught me to question, so in turn I questioned Amherst, and America." The groundwork for this questioning began before he left for Africa, during a course in cultural anthropology that "undermined the accepted value of progress and the cultural superiority of the West." A course on the Vietnam War also caused him to "suspect ... that the ideal of America as a 'beacon of freedom and justice, providing hope for the world' was not exactly based in reality." Then came his trip to Kenya. "I became friends with a very wealthy businessman and his family and heard them reiterate the same beliefs held by many Americans: the poor are poor because they are lazy, slovenly, uneducated," young Coons wrote. "I realize that Kenya and America are very different, but experiences like this warned me that my own favorite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America were largely untrue." He found a moral equivalence between Kenya and the United States and became a "bearded Marxist." My guess is that he is still a Marxist. Certainly, he shows no scruples about keeping his hands off other people's property. As county executive of New Castle County, Coons promised voters he would keep taxes down. Once elected, he raised property taxes by 5 percent in 2006, by 17.5 percent in 2007 and by 25 percent in 2009. He loves taxes. Lord tells us he has proposed to raise hotel taxes, paramedic taxes and something heretofore unheard of. Lord tells us that Coons has a proposal to raise taxes on 911 calls. Lord discovered that by reading Byron York's report in The Washington Examiner.

U.S. Has Spent $1.39 Million on Study Surveying Married Tajik Migrant Workers in Moscow, and Interviewing Some of Them, Their Wives, Girlfriends and Prostitutes
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75736
Your tax dollars at work…and play. ~Bob. Excerpt: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent $1.39 million over the last 3 years on a study that involves surveying a group of married Tajik migrant workers in Moscow, and interviewing some of them, their wives, girlfriends and prostitutes. According to the description of the study on the NIH Web site, the research was developed in order to address “the major global health problem of HIV prevention amongst married male labor migrants in Central Asia and the public health risk for an AIDS epidemic in Tajikistan.” “The study focuses on married men from Tajikistan working in Moscow and their risks for acquiring HIV through having sex with female sex workers and then transmitting the infection to their wives or female sexual partners,” the description said.

National Security Experts: Shariah Law Is 'Preeminent Totalitarian Threat of Our Time'
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75520
Excerpt: A team of national security experts assembled by the conservative Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, issued a report last week warning that Shariah law--which they described as a "legal-political-military doctrine"--is the "preeminent totalitarian threat of our time." (...) The group drew a distinction between Muslims who embrace Shariah law as the comprehensive model for governing all human society and those who view it as a reference point for personal behavior but not for the conduct of government and the state. "Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates--figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world’s largest libertarian Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama--whose members embrace the Enlightenment’s veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms," the authors write. "On this side of the divide, shariah is a reference point for a Muslim’s personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society," they say. "By contrast, the other side of the divide is dominated by Muslim supremacists, often called Islamists. Like erstwhile proponents of Communism and Nazism, these supremacists--some terrorists, others employing stealthier means--seek to impose a totalitarian regime: a global totalitarian system cloaked as an Islamic state and called a caliphate.

In Politics, Only the Dull Need Apply
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/in-politics-only-the-dull-need-apply/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: Dealing with youthful indiscretions is hardly a new issue in politics. President George W. Bush made no effort to hide his rough youth, declaring, “When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.” He chose not to go into grueling details, and this was fine with the American people even though, for eight years, leftist scandalmongers speculated about Bush’s drug and alcohol use. Unfortunately, twenty-first century technology could make this method obsolete. Thanks to the rise of the Internet and social media, permanent records are creating of all kinds of things a sensible person would not want to exist anywhere, such as drunk pictures on Facebook, a blog post flirting with anarchism or the occult, a tweet celebrating a sexual conquest, or an online diary written during a dark period. This information can be hidden from the casual searcher, but not highly paid opposition researchers. Potential candidates who care about their families and reputations may forgo running for office to avoid the disclosure of embarrassing details from their past, particularly if Christine O’Donnell’s high school years are lethal. What we will be left with in politics are a few boy scouts and girl scouts, but mostly power-hungry career politicos who live a clean and boring life out of a desire to fulfill themselves by ruling others. Get ready for the era of the sociopathic narcissist. In the era of personal destruction, conservatives are at greatest risk of finding themselves victims of a digital lynching. The media permits liberals to excuse their bad behavior as the result of institutional racism, the Bush administration, or poverty. The media, however, knows conservatives believe individuals remain morally responsible for their own actions. The media has taken this conservative belief and made it a license to go after conservatives for all their sins, both real and imagined. The left has likewise decided that if a conservative adheres to any standard of morality he or she must be held liable in all points of moral behavior. Any breach of this perfection is the only sin the media recognizes — hypocrisy. On the other hand, leftist breaches of morality are treated with kid gloves (see the John Edwards story, or how the media made Bill Clinton a martyr during the Lewinsky affair). (Perhaps being a king isn't too bad, but only a madman would run for national elective office these days. Financial records, psychological/psychiatric records, school transcripts and papers, chat room flirting and posts, blog posts and comments, all are or will soon be considered fair game. If a candidate ever wrote a letter to the editor supporting a position no longer popular, or vice versa.... Ron P. Yes. I was a state senator from 1973-82. I was single, and that was before AIDS, and before Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and the media made a candidates sex life fair game. It was a golden age that will never come again. I was called many things, but “dull” wasn’t one of them. ~Bob.)

Trial lawyers heavily supporting White for governor
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/DN-trials_19tex.ART.State.Edition1.365b289.html
Excerpt: For the first time in more than a decade, trial lawyers – a key source of campaign cash for Democrats – are betting big on the party's candidate for governor. Plaintiffs attorneys gave more than $1.9 million through June, the most recent figures available, to Democrat Bill White's campaign. And a Houston lawyer is bankrolling a political committee with $3 million to help beat incumbent Republican Rick Perry. The last time the industry showed such sizable support for a Democratic nominee was Ann Richards in the 1990s. Political consultant Jason Stanford says trial lawyers view White as a Democrat who can win.

Suits by disabled raise questions on litigation law
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/18/local/la-me-lawsuits-20100918
Find someone to sue. Beats playing the lottery. ~Bob. Excerpt: A Senate bill was supposed to reduce inappropriate claims under the Americans With Disabilities Act, but some small businesses faced with litigation say reforms are needed. It didn't take long to figure out why a man in a wheelchair had been snapping photographs of the aisles, counters, shelves and bathrooms inside eateries and watering holes in a fashionable eastern Long Beach enclave. On June 30, Powell's Sweet Shoppe; Open Sesame, a Lebanese restaurant; and Panama Joe's Grill & Cantina were served with lawsuits on behalf of Eric Moran alleging that they were in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The violations, each of which could cost a minimum $4,000 in damages, ranged from lacking a restroom grab bar to a restaurant chair out in an aisle.

Vietnam Sneaks Up On Obama
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/24/vietnam_sneaks_up_on_obama_107291.html
Excerpt: At the CNBC town hall meeting, President Obama responded appropriately to a supporter who mentioned, in passing, that his son had just been commissioned as a U.S. army officer. Before turning to the questioner's principal query, the president made it a point to thank the man's son for "his service to our country." So he should. So should we all. But if the account in Bob Woodward's new book, "Obama's Wars," is correct, the president is asking all of our soldiers to fight for a war he is frantic to "exit." Throughout the protracted 2009 "strategy review," the Woodward book reports, Obama "repeatedly press(ed) his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him." At last, the president crafted his own withdrawal plan. "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan ... Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room." No wonder the president returned the bust of Winston Churchill to the British when he assumed office. No "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" for this leader. No talk of fighting "on the beaches ... on the landing grounds ... in the fields and in the streets." No, we're all about exit strategies. There is no shame in declining to fight a war you believe to be misguided or futile. Obama preens about having opposed the war in Iraq ab initio. He may have been right or wrong about that. But it was a perfectly honorable position to take. What is not honorable is sending men and women into battle when you neither seek nor expect victory.

Obama Made Us Do It!
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/obama-made-us-do-it/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: Even the bogeyman George Bush has a finite shelf life. It is as if he is now somehow last fall’s Halloween goblin that we are still supposed to worry about months later during the Fourth of July. Yes, Bush’s utility for blame is now like that of the demonized Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, Fox News, Glen Beck, Wall Street, the insurers, the surgeons, the Republicans, and John Boehner, and so has pretty much expired. Even MoveOn.org cannot believe that all the above kept the country at nearly 10% unemployment. Instead, the new mantra for Democratic candidates is a sort of “Obama made us do it!” And I cannot recall ever quite seeing that in American politics. Even the slaughtered House Republicans of 2006 did not plead in their campaigns that they were coerced or duped by George Bush. After passing ObamaCare, providing more bailouts and stimuli, castigating greedy CEOs and their corporations for selfishness, and embracing Keynesian $1.5 trillion deficits, suddenly no one wishes to support that record.

Important: Our political establishment wears blinders and ignores the threat
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/14/needed-a-second-opinion-on-shariah/
Excerpt: It is time for a "Team B" approach to Islamist ideology. The strategy has worked before, against a similarly determined threat to freedom. In 1976, George H.W. Bush, then director of central intelligence, invited a group of known skeptics about the strategy of detente to review the classified intelligence regarding Soviet intentions and capabilities. The point was to provide an informed second opinion on U.S. policy toward the Kremlin. The conclusions of this experimental Team B study differed sharply from the government's regnant theory. The skeptics found that, pursuant to its communist ideology, the Soviet Union was determined to secure the defeat of the United States and the West and to tyrannize the globe. Thus, not only was detente unlikely to succeed, but national-security policies undertaken in its pursuit exposed the nation to grave danger. The study was particularly persuasive to former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who would use it not only to challenge the detentist policies of the Ford and Carter administrations but to build the strategy that ultimately brought down the "Evil Empire." Today, the United States faces a similarly insidious ideological threat: Shariah, the authoritarian doctrine that animates the Islamists and their jihadism. Translated as "the path," Shariah is a comprehensive framework designed to govern all aspects of life. Though it certainly has spiritual elements, it would be a mistake to think of it as a "religious" code in the Western sense because it seeks to regulate all manner of behavior in the secular sphere - economic, social, military, legal and political. That regulation is oppressive, discriminatory, utterly inimical to our core constitutional liberties and destructive of equal protection under the law, especially for women. We consequently have joined a group of security-policy practitioners and analysts in subjecting this ideology and its adherents to a new Team B study. Our assessment challenges bedrock assumptions of current American policy on combating (and minimizing) what the government calls "extremism" and on engaging (and appeasing) Shariah proponents who claim to reject terrorism. These proponents are described, wrongly, as "moderates" because they appear content to achieve their patently immoderate designs through political-influence operations, "lawfare" and subversion. Participants in the study constitute a rich reservoir of national security experience drawn from military, intelligence, homeland security, law enforcement and academic backgrounds. Our study does not perfectly replicate the Team B work of a generation ago. We have not been encouraged by our government, which, under administrations of both parties, has been immovably content to wear its blinders. Nor have we been invited to review classified information. These, however, have hardly been insuperable obstacles. What Americans need to know is ready to hand in the public record. The problem isn't access to information, it is coming to grips with what available information portends for our security. Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam's internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates - figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world's largest liberal Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama - who embrace the Enlightenment's veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms. On that side of the divide, Shariah is defined as but a reference point for a Muslim's personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society. The other side of the divide is dominated by "Islamists," who are Muslim supremacists. Like erstwhile proponents of communism and Nazism, these supremacists - some terrorists, others employing stealthier means - seek to impose a global theocratic and authoritarian regime, called a caliphate. On this side of the divide, Shariah is a compulsory system that Muslims are obliged to wage jihad to install and to which the rest of the world is required to submit. For these ideologues, Shariah is not a private matter. They see the West as an infidel enemy to be conquered, not a culture and civilization to be embraced or at least tolerated. It is impossible, they maintain, for alternative legal systems and forms of government like ours to coexist peacefully with the end-state they seek.

K.O.! Union Throws in Towel on Arizona Boycott
http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/2010/09/23/ko-union-throws-in-towel-on-arizona-boycott/
Excerpt: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has knocked the United Food & Commercial Workers union out of union boycott of Arizona over SB1070.

Philly man admits going to Egypt to impregnate young girls
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20100916_Philly_man_admits_going_to_Egypt_to_impregnatedyoung_girls.html
Excerpt: A Philadelphia man admitted in federal district court yesterday that he had sex with three underage females in Egypt from January 2004 to May 2007. Authorities said Omar Rashaad Bey, 33, of South Philadelphia, impregnated two of the victims when they were 15 and both bore Bey's sons at the same age. The births occurred in Egypt in February 2006 and March 2007. Federal law makes it a crime for a U.S. citizen to travel abroad to engage in illicit sex with persons under the age of 18. Bey allegedly entered into "purported Islamic marriages" with the two women he impregnated, according to prosecutors. (Simply following the perfect example of the Prophet: http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/062.sbt.html#007.062.088)

Britons arrested for Qur'an burning
http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/09/23/15447621.html
Political speech, of course. Would they have been arrested if they burned a bible or torah? And it’s for “racial hatred.” But Islam is the only race you can join by making a declaration of faith. ~Bob. Excerpt: Six men in England have been arrested after two Qur'ans were burned and video of the Sept. 11 act was posted online. Four men were arrested Wednesday and two men had been arrested Sept. 15 on "suspicion of stirring racial hatred," a Northumbria police press release said.

India: Muslims attack Hindu procession, injuring 50
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/09/india-muslims-attack-hindu-procession-injuring-50.html
Didn’t get the memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: "Plenty of stones were pelted continuously on the procession, acid bulb and burning objects were also thrown."

Egyptian Coptic Church Accused of Stockpiling Weapons
http://www.aina.org/news/20100921210800.htm
Excerpt: A new wave of defamation by Islamists against Coptic Pope Shenouda III and the Coptic Church is seen by many observers as a serious provocation to sectarian violence against the Copts, and the possibility of Egypt being dragged into civil war. On September 15, Qatar-owned Al-Jezirah TV broadcast a program called Without Limits, presented by moderator Ahmad Mansour, who hosted the Islamist Dr. Selim el-Awah, former Secretary-General of the World Council of Muslim Scholars, which has stunned and enraged Copts inside and outside of Egypt. "El-Awah is simply threatening Copts that the forthcoming chaos after Mubarak dies will see mass violence against the Copts," says Magdy Khalil, Coptic activist and head of Middle East Freedom Forum. The program alleged the Church has its own militia and hides weapons and ammunition in monasteries and churches, preparing for a war "against the Muslims." el-Awah said that "Israel is in the heart of the Coptic Cause," and the Church gets weapons from Israel. He cited as evidence an incident in mid-August, in which the son of a priest in Port Said, Mr. Joseph El-Gabalawy, was falsely accused of importing weapons from Israel. Although he was cleared of charges and released, as the imported goods were children's fireworks from China and did not belong to him, he is still detained by State Security.