Persecution Watch II

Brown University has suspended the Reformed University Fellowship group from campus. RUF is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America and ministers to students on one hundred ten campuses nationwide, with Bible study, worship, conferences and retreats. The Brown University press release is extremely vague on the reasons for the suspension of RUF. After the usual statements of commitment to religious diversity, the only explanation Brown offers is the citation of a nebulous, "failure to abide by guidelines established for all religious groups on campus." Obviously, that could mean anything.
RUF is a conservative Christian organization and is not inclined to subscribe to Politically Correct notions of "tolerance" that might include acknowledging that all religions are basically the same and have different ways to reach God. From what the Brown press release reveals, there is no way to find out why RUF has lost its affiliation. The RUF page at Brown University contains no information on the subject, but all of the links have been disabled.

Justice in Miami

The University of Miami has fired Larry Coker as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes, or as they are known to the Miami Police Department, "Mug shots #1,218-1,321." Their 6-6 record probably had as much to do with his firing as the brawl with Florida International earlier this year. After the brawl, Coker suspended thirteen players for only one game. The spectacle of one Miami player, Anthony Reddick, if I recall correctly, swinging his helmet like a club at the heads of his opponents could have brought assault and battery charges easily. The legal authorities refused to treat thugs like thugs and gave them community service as a sentence. Community service is a penance you might get from confession with a priest - it's hardly punishment for assault. Coker chose not to establish even rudimentary consequences for Reddick and company. His basic refusal to enforce discipline on a team that already had a reputation as a Thugocracy destroyed Coker's credibility with his players, his fans, and his critics.
Good riddance to him. His 2001 National Championship victory over Nebraska will soon become nothing more than the answer to an obscure trivia question.

Saddam's Human Rights

Human Rights Watch has released a 97-page report denouncing the guilty verdict of Saddam Hussein for his killings of 148 people in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad, because of, "procedural and substantive flaws." The sight of Saddam making impromptu speeches in defiance of the judge during his own trial looked like a procedural flaw to me. The Iraqi judges did not conduct his trial in the manner that we in America would recognize, with a jury and the presumption of innocence and cross-examining witnesses, but this was still the most open and transparent trial in terms of justice that Iraq has ever seen.
Seriously, does anyone doubt that Saddam ordered 148 people killed in a town that plotted his assassination? The most rabid haters of President Bush admit that Saddam was an evil man. Does anyone doubt that Saddam used poison gas on the Iranians and the Kurds? Even Bill Clinton criticised him for those gas attacks on the Kurds in 1996 and punished him with missiles hundreds of miles from the action. Fundamentally, Human Rights Watch decided that one execution of a mass-murdering dictator is worse than the mass murders that the dictator committed.
Human Rights Watch complains that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared Saddam guilty before the trial started. Earlier this year, Congressman John Murtha (D, NY) said that American Marines killed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, "in cold blood," before the Marines had even been arraigned and indicted. When NYPD officers shot Amadou Diallo, Hillary Clinton declared them guilty of murder before any trial had begun. Diallo was an immigrant from the Caribbean who did not speak English and bore a strong resemblance to a rapist, Isaac Jones, whom the detectives were seeking. Late at night, when the officers ordered him to put his hands up, he instead reached into his back pocket and pulled out something black. The officers drew pistols and fired immediately, killing him. The object turned out to be his wallet. When Human Rights Watch denounces John Murtha and Hillary Clinton, we can take them seriously.

The Iraq Committee: de ja vu Vietnam

As you know, in terms of the situation on the ground, the casualties, and the style of combat, there are very few comparisons at all between Iraq and Vietnam. In Iraq, there is no Ho Chi Minh Trail, no NVA being supplied and refitted from an area off limits to our troops, no foreign sponsor of the size of China and the Soviet Union outfitting our enemies, and no safe haven where the VC can retreat where our troops are not allowed to go. The guerrilla-style insurgency getting supplied from Iran is drastically smaller and less successful than anything our men faced in Vietnam.
Two things, however, are identical to Vietnam: 1) Hollywood and the Political Left are cheering for our side to lose as the New York Times commits treason repeatedly and 2) the committees in Washington are utterly inept. During the Vietnam War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was a quantitative data analyst and nothing more. He had no background in tactics or strategy at all, but he had been a logistical worker for the Army during World War II. His last assignment before his cabinet post had been the presidency of Ford Motor Company. His civilians were clueless about the nature of war, as I have been reading in the book Dereliction of Duty by H. R. McMaster.
At the present day, the Baker-Hamilton joke is supposed to advise President Bush on the situation in Iraq and come up with solutions for the Middle East using our military assets there. The committee has NO, as in ZERO, ZIP military people on it. Chuck Robb, former Senator of Virginia and Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme Court Justice and discoverer of the "sundown clause" for affirmative action rulings, are two committee members. With all due respect, they know less about military matters than the average sergeant who just got back from Iraq. I understand the Left's antagonism to military people making military policy, but here is the second punch line: guess how many experts on the Middle East will sit on the committee? NONE, NOT ONE, ZILCH NADA. May God have mercy on this nation. For the record, a tsunami hitting Washington would constitute mercy.

JROTC Banned from San Francisco

The City Council of San Francisco has now begun a one-year phasing out of Junior ROTC from its high schools, despite the objections of the students who participate in JROTC activities. San Francisco is the most tolerant city in America, as we have long known, and a safe haven for all gender deviants of every kind. The city council has cited the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy of the Armed Forces, adopted by the Clinton Administration, as the reason for this ban of JROTC. The JROTC programs enforce no such policy, however, and do not have any policy on homosexuals. I suppose the surprise in this story is that JROTC was allowed to persist until now in San Francisco. The council members of San Francisco also want their children to earn less money if they enlist in the Armed Forces. A JROTC cadet with two or four years of experience can enlist in the Army at the E-2 or E-3 pay grade instead of E-1. San Francisco, the land of Leftist tolerance proves what that tolerance consists of: they tolerate only people who are Liberal like them.
The council members say that they want their children learning about peace rather than war. In their world view, I, as a war veteran, am morally equal to Osama bin Laden. Both of us are practitioners of war. There are no good guys, bad guys, heroes, villains, just causes or depraved causes. Of course, accusing the Army of being all conservatives while banning liberals from doing JROTC is one of the best self-fulfilling prophecies they could devise.

Stem Cell Watch III

Well, as we continue to wait for the first treatment using embryonic stem cells (although John Edwards would probably tell us they can raise the dead if he thought it would get us to vote Democratic) another discovery using adult stem cells has come to light.
Doctors in India have begun performing stem cell transplants to restore vision in the human eye. They take stem cells from the patient's good eye, or from a donor, and inject them into the sightless eye. The beauty of this procedure is that in many cases the patient can supply his own stem cells, which removes all of the concerns inherent with donors, questions over supply, etc. The restored vision is imperfect, of course, but the patients have experienced marked improvement.
I saw Michael J. Fox recently in a public even not shaking as noticably as he was in the campaign commercials. When you see this, don't be fooled. Embryonic stem cells have not cured his Parkinson's - he's just gone back onto his normal dosage regimen. For the record, he has admitted to altering his dosage patterns so as to enhance his symptoms during his Congressional testimony.

Iran Claims Victory

Having used Democrat talking points to good effect - bemoaning our lack of universal health care for one - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has learned to see President Bush as his enemy and the self-described enemies and haters of Bush as friends of Iran. Even now, Ahmadinejad cloaks his argument for nuclear energy in the popular Leftist slogan that one nuclear nation should not deny nukes to the other nations of the world. The Ayatollah has now declared victory for Iran in the recent election results in America.
The Iranians are correct, at least in part, in this belief that the Democrats' victory is their victory. Our friends across the aisle in the House and Senate have not disagreed respectfully with President Bush on policy in Iraq while offering alternative plans. Rather, they have spewed vitriol indiscriminately and professed the most heated and homicidal hatred for the man currently in the White House. Multiple books have engaged in speculation about how to asssassinate President Bush and one movie indulges that theme. Never ones to shy from assassinating their enemies, the Iranians are in love with today's Loony Left and believe that the recent election will guarantee their safety as they develop nuclear weapons.
Nancy Pelosi has given a key sign of her support for Iran's agenda of a weakened America ousted from Iraq by backing John Murtha for Majority Leader. Steny Hoyer, her current Whip, would be the logical leader if investigation of the Bush administration and a legislative agenda were the top priorities for Democrats. With her support for Murtha, a one-trick pony whose only credential is Vietnam service, Pelosi shows that her top priority is cutting and running from Iraq. The Democrats may fail in this endeavor, but we now know that they will try a maneuver that leaves Iraq destabilized and Iran free to develop nukes. President Bush and the Republicans are in for the fight of their lives.
The possibility of freedom in the Middle East and the safety of Americans from terrorist attacks may depend upon the result. Deo Vindice.

Election Lesson #4

I don't know how many times we will get to re-learn this lesson, but here it is: Scandals involving crimes hurt Republicans and do not hurt Democrats. We are still waiting for a Republican to win re-election after drowing a girl in his car, but that is just the most obvious example.
This past year, when the Abramoff scandal broke, investigators fingered Representative Ney, (R) of Ohio as offender #1. The Republican party leadership informed Ney that he would need to resign or be forced out. He resigned and a Democrat won his seat on Tuesday night. Representative William Jefferson (D) of Louisiana, actually accepted $100,000 in bribes. Agents found $90,000 cash in his freezer. Even Rajun-Cajun James Carville laughed at his protestations of innocence. Naturally, his party leadership did nothing. Today, Jefferson is faced with a run-off election for his seat from a 13-candidate field, but he was the top vote-getter in the general election and will doubtless win reelection. Accepting bribes is a crime and Jefferson should be behind bars, but his fellow Congressmen in his party only see him as a victim because of the color of his skin.
You all know the Foley story: his overly-friendly emails and highly inappropriate IMs with male pages led to his immediate resignation. When Barney Frank paid a male prostitute government money as part of his staff, to do nothing but run a brothel, no discipline was forth-coming. When Gerry Studds committed statutory rape and Congress censured him, he got reelected six more times. At the time of the Studds case, a Republican also seduced a page and faced ouster at the next election. When Representative Patrick Kennedy (D) RI, drove into a concrete barrier while drunk, his constituents reelected him.
It couldn't be more obvious: only Republican voters punish their leaders for misconduct. This is why Democrats are always, not sometimes, but always, soft on crime: they tolerate criminals. Criminals are their friends and colleagues in Congress. They care about redistribution of wealth, racial quotas, and political correctness, what they call "social justice," because they want to ignore real justice. Justice in America is the enforcement of laws to protect the American people. There is no law that says life must be fair or people have a right not to be offended. Life is not fair, but taking bribes, DUI, misappropriation of funds, statutory rape, and negligent homicide are all actual crimes that have not been enforced on Democrat lawmakers. (Affirmative Action is lacking in this posting: Massachussetts and the Kennedy family produced a disproportionate number of these examples of crimes.)

Aftermath of the Election

We know two things at this point: Secretary Rumsfeld will not be target #1 for the Democrats anymore and we will never have any immigration law enforcement. I heard an advertisement on the radio on Sunday, proclaiming the non-discrimination policy of some company, "We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation...or immigration status." These illegal immigrants are now considered protected minorities simply because they broke the law. Does the company discriminate on the basis of the "title status" of a car that used to sit in a lot but now sits in my driveway after somebody hotwired it? I can say I didn't steal the car - it's just an undocumented immigrant. One Congressman who is a member of the Minutemen in Arizona actually lost his bid for reelection last night.
The next lesson from this election: the people who vote are not terribly concerned about immigration law enforcement. Until we get attacked by terrorists who came in over the Mexican border, the American people will not get serious about enforcement.
A few words on Rumsfeld's resignation: it was the best move the Bush White House could make to begin defusing the Democrats' platform. They have forwarded no platform of issues and principles. They can't win elections with "raise the minimum wage, keep abortion legal, don't touch social security and don't enforce the border." Rather, their message is, "Bush is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Himmler and our soldiers are the SS guards at Auschwitz." With Himmler, I mean Rumsfeld, gone, they will probably tone down on their attacks on the military. Thereby, Rumsfeld by resigning removes one plank of their platform entirely and weakens another one.

Lesson #2 From the Debacle

In his seven years as Speaker, Dennis Hastert has spent like a Democrat. Worse still, he thinks the Democrats would have been so much worse that he wasn't even all that bad. The single silver lining now is that the Republicans will have a new leader. President Bush never asked for a balanced budget, so some of the blame goes to him for this Congress' utter failure to govern responsibly on fiscal issues. Mark Twain famously said that the only officially recognized native American organized crime element is Congress. I can see what he was talking about.
I pressed one name for a Libertarian yesterday, and a couple of my friends who favor smaller government voted straight party for Libertarians. In 2004, the moral base saved the GOP, due largely to initiatives on same-sex marriage, but the fiscal conservative base has been deserted by its party. I haven't had a home in several years, and the agenda of 1994, including the Balanced Budget Amendment, is dead. In 1995, Newt Gingrich led Congress to pass a balanced budget, which President Clinton stalled until the government shut down. Today's GOP would not even consider balancing the budget. Lesson #2: DON'T FORGET YOUR BASE!!

Lesson #1 From the Debacle

We on the right need not entice ourselves any longer: both Virginia and Montana are lost. Lincoln Chafee, RINO-in chief of the Senate, has been ousted despite a voting record that he touts as Left of Hillary Clinton. The lesson he can take with this bitter pill: Democrat voters do not return favors. It was stupid of him to vote like a Democrat anyway, but obstructing John Bolten for the UN Ambassadorship was a feat of idiotic desperation as he tried to show that he could be a Democrat in all but name. With Chafee's loss, Harry Reid can become the Majority Leader, but nothing of vote substance is lost.

Saddam, Nuclear Builder, Condemned

It is official now that Saddam will be hanged if his appeal fails. Amnesty International is doubtless incensed because they oppose the death penalty for everyone - even a mass murderer who used chemical weapons multiple times and routinely subjected his political enemies to gruesome torture. I have to recall the second Presidential debate in 2004, when President Bush said, "If Senator Kerry had been president, Saddam Hussein would still be in power." The Senator quickly countered, "Not necessarily still in power." Now, I am certain, Saddam would, "not necessarily," have been condemned under his authority.
As reported in the New York Al-Treason Times, the Bush administration has made public a number of documents showing that at the time of the 2003 invasion, Saddam may have been within a year or less of possessing a nuclear weapon. The Axis of Evil Speech will doubtless go down in history as a wake-up call to Americans, notifying us of which countries posed the greatest threats. Only five years after that speech, the most dangerous of those three regimes - the one that had actually used WMDs and had sponsored the most terrorists - has been replaced and the other two threaten the world with nuclear weapons that they are trying to develop. One down, two to go. At present, as North Korea returns to six-party talks while China twists the arm of the pot-bellied tin horn dictator, diplomacy seems to be making laboriously slow progress. For real deterrence against North Korea, I say, "Let Japan build Nukes!"

Who Am I?

I leave my wife and family for a year at a time to go overseas, but not on vacation.
I try to assist people who speak a foreign language, worship a different god, have never experienced freedom and democracy in their lifetimes, and have never met me.

I was angry on September 11, 2001, because the terrorists killed the wrong people.
Michael Moore says they were the wrong people to die because they didn’t vote for President Bush.
I say they were the wrong people to die because protecting them is my job. The terrorists were cowardly and ruthless as they killed my civilians. God help me if I let that happen again.

I have faced mortar fire, small arms fire, and bombs have exploded beside my vehicle as I drove. Some of my fellow Americans appreciate my contributions thus:
In 1972, John Kerry wrote that if my organization were all-volunteer, we would be disproportionately, “the poor and the black and the brown…” and that I would commit war crimes routinely.
Senator Durbin compared me to Nazis or torturers from Pol Pot’s regime, who wiped out ¼ of Cambodia’s population.
Senator Kennedy said that my comrades acted like the torturers of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He has yet to produce evidence of rape rooms.
Johns Hopkins University produced a “study” accusing me of causing 600,000 murders in three years, with a margin of error of 400,000, under the assumption that no one ever got murdered before my arrival.
Seymour Hersh told a crowd of college students in Montreal, Canada on November 2, 2006, that my organization is the most violent and murderous in the history of the American nation.

All of these statements are lies, distortions, slanders, or plainly sloppy work, but not one of these speakers has been stifled. No government raids, threats of revenge or reprisal or unreasonable searches have disturbed these citizens to change their opinions by force. This is America and speech and the press are free of government suppression.

I am black, brown, white, red, and yellow, but I do not see my racial diversity as a bad thing. Green is the only color I see.

I am an American Soldier. If you are an American, my job is to protect you. First you, then my Army comrades, then all other civilians in the world.

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you can read it in English and have enjoyed five years without terrorist attacks,
You’re Welcome.

Stem Cell Watch II

News from the medical front, where our doctors seek to bring about miracle cures. Scientists have recently used stem cells to grow a small human liver. As has been the case with previous treatments, this did not come from embryonic stem cells, but from umbilical cord blood stem cells. Notwithstanding the hype about embryonic cells, the number of treatments they have produced remains at 0.
As the debate over federal funding for embryonic stem cell research rages, understand the reason why they are seeking federal funding: very few private investors are willing to risk an investment. In areas where success has a track record, private money is easy to come by, but embryonic stem cells are not one of these areas. Michael J. Fox is lying through his teeth that the legislation he stumps for will cure him of Parkinson's Disease. In reality, Amendment 2 in Missouri would make human cloning legal. We are getting cures and treatments from stem cells, but they do not require the destruction of human life.