Those wacky, irrepressible Muslims

Mark Steyn on the Jews they kill and the European media that doesn´t report it:

In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story?

You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim.
You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' In London, the Observer couldn't even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi's, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ''radical young Jewish men'' who'd attacked an ''Arab-run grocery.''

Thanks Ace.

Yale enrolls Taliban spokesman

Why am I not surprised? Yale has welcomed a member of and spokesman for one of the most evil and brutal regimes of the 20th century.

American Airlines

American Airlines is brutal in their cost-cutting. For a long time, they haven't served free alcohol in coach on international flights. Now they don't serve meals either. And no more movies.

That was bad enough, but I was amazed when a stewardess gave me a hard time about asking for a second soft drink.

Their new motto is "American Airlines: like riding Greyhound, but faster!"

En la playa

Little or no posting this week. On vacation in Mexico. I hope Keith and Old Zeke will take up the slack.

US Supreme Court, champion of the little guy

Remember when those blowhard Democratic Senators ran out of substantive issues (like membership in a Princeton alumni association) to use against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito? They turned to the vague accusation that he never supported the powerless, the underdog, the "little guy."

In the ruling in Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, the Roberts Court ruled that a small, powerless, religious group had the right to use hallucinagenic tea in their rituals. The all-powerful U.S. Justice Department lost.

Alito didn´t vote in this one because he wasn´t on the court when the case was heard, but as a First Amendment absolutist, he clearly would have ruled with the majority. We are on the verge of having a regular majority of Justices who actually understand the Constitution.

Alito will support "the little guy" wherever and whenever Constitutional rights are being violated. Oh, well. Democrats can always go back to the Princeton alumni scandal.

The Economist City Guides

The Economist is the finest weekly news magazine in the world. Read one issue and you'll be embarrassed to look at Time or Newsweek ever again.

It also has a great free monthly e-mail service of happenings in your city (if you live in a city worth noting). Sign up. It's good.

San Francisco and the GOP Convention

SF Examiner columnist Ken Garcia says that San Francisco should jump at the opportunity to host the GOP convention:

There are a number of good reasons San Francisco should be going great guns — sorry, Gerardo — to land the Republican convention, even though with 30 competing cities, our boiling liberal cauldron is clearly a long shot.

For starters, the last time I looked Republicans were still using the same currency as the rest of us, and those dollars could certainly help The City lift itself up by the bootstraps and carry it out of its deficit ways. New York City, another largely lefty bastion, managed to embrace the parade of flag-bearing Republicans in 2004 and cashed in to the tune of $163 million. I realize that many San Franciscans would rather flee town than share sidewalk space with the likes of Dick Armey and Orrin Hatch, but they could just use the week as a much-needed vacation from, well, the rest of the nation.

Garcia is obviously right that the convention would be a huge economic boost to the city, but he's missing the bigger point. The Republicans invited San Francisco to bid because they know what would happen: insane leftists would protest, or riot, in the streets.

The Republicans aren't very attractive this year, with pork, corruption, incompetence, and an unpopular war. But put them next to televised coverage of San Francisco's angriest anti-Bush wackos rioting in the streets, and the Republicans will win by a landslide.

Rick Santorum is carne asada

In May of last year, I predicted that Rick Santorum would lose his re-election bid.

It looks like a lock now. Thank goodness. One fewer religious nut in the Senate.

It's nice to see that people won't let him forget that he compared homosexuals to dog molesters.

Cheney's Chappaquiddick

Mark Steyn on the similarities between Quailgate and Chappaquiddick:

Fortunately, the Washington Post had that wise old bird David Ignatius to put it in the proper historical context: "This incident," he mused, "reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969."

Hmm. Let's see. On the one hand, the guy leaves the gal at the bottom of the river struggling for breath pressed up against the window in some small air pocket while he pulls himself out of the briny, staggers home, sleeps it off and saunters in to inform the cops the following day that, oh yeah, there was some broad down there. And, on the other hand, the guy calls 911, has the other fellow taken to the hospital, lets the sheriff know promptly but neglects to fax David Gregory's make-up girl!

Oprah: Don't Lie to Me!

Oprah gets mad at people who lie to her. Video here.

Thanks to The Superficial.

Muslims gone wild

Unfortunately, they're not just killing themselves rioting any more, but killing innocent people.

Spendthrift nation

Ben Stein on Americans' perilous refusal to save:

The Baby Boomers are the single largest part of the population by generations. They're about 78 million men and women. They will need a staggering sum to maintain their lifestyles after retirement, especially with pension systems that promise defined benefits collapsing.

But the Baby Boom generation is pitifully unprepared for the future. The average savings for Baby Boom households is less than $50,000, not including their homes. Even including the equity in their homes, it's not much over $100,000. And roughly half of all boomer households have either little retirement savings or none.

Max out your 401(k), dammit! Eat out less often and forgo that new car. You've been warned. If you're eating dog food in your old age, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

Home sales, prices down

Good news!

Home Sales Falter -- Hints Of A Slowdown

Bay Area home sales tumbled to their lowest level in five years last month, and prices hovered well below record territory, further evidence that the region's seemingly unstoppable housing boom may have peaked with the blistering market of 2005.

Crime and punishment, part deux

Patt Morrison, an annoying Los Angeles columnist best known for wearing silly hats on a local PBS show, thinks "tough on crime" means hassling people about hunting licenses and motorcycle licenses.

No, Patt. When we vote Republican on "law and order" issues, it's because we want murderers and child molesters locked up. Burying people in bureaucratic paperwork and licensing requirements is the domain of Democrats.

A little harmless fraternity goat sex

Welcome to the nanny state. Fraternities can't even keep goats around for hazing any more.

Cheerleaders in prison

North Korea sends its cheerleading team to prison for speaking about what they saw in the free world.

Cheerleaders in prison? I think I've seen that movie.

Dump Dick?

Peggy Noonan says President Bush may want to get rid of Dick Cheney.

I'd like to see that happen, if it resulted in the nomination of Condoleezza Rice for VP. Not only would she make a great VP, but it would also set her up as the anointed Presidential candidate in 2008.

Dick, you've done a great job. Take an early retirement.

The left was right

It has started.

Crime and punishment

Parents upset with one-year sentence for molesting coach

They're lucky they didn't get more time. Molesting a coach is a serious offense.

From Ang.

Cartoons to really piss off the Muslims

More at Cracked. Via Ace.

Dems have change of heart

Congressional Democrats shocked the world this evening, apologizing for years of partisan bickering and promising to make amends with the administration. As a symbol of their commitment, the Democratic delegation offered up an all-expense-paid hunting trip for Messrs. Bush and Cheney in the wilds of Maine.

In other news: The vice-president blasts his hunting buddy in the face.

Jimmy Carter, warrantless eavesdropper

Former President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies.

Thanks Polipundit.

Steyn on self-censorship

On request from Stu Down Under, Mark Steyn writes on those wacky Muslims and the people they threaten to kill:

That's the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they'll marvel at how easy it all was. You don't need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact,
that's a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural "sensitivity," the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want -- including,
eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the "sensitivity" of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

...

One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there's very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and Sharia. As a famously sensitive Dane once put it, "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Bush Administration bows to insane Muslim mobs

Muslims around the world go nuts over cartoons about Muhammad (see them here). The Bush Administration supports them:

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, reading the U.S. government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

But the federal government subsidizes anti-Christian images!

Harriet, we hardly knew ye

Over at PoliPundit, DJ Drummond still can't admit that he was wrong in his blind loyalty to President Bush and his vehement support for Harriet Miers. He asks:

1. President George W. Bush has a very good track record for his decisions and appointments overall, but especially for his judicial picks. That suggests that there was a sound reason why he chose Miers for the high court. Insulting the woman by presuming she was just a crony, insulting Bush by claiming he feared a fight with Liberals, or insulting the Senate by pretending they would rubber-stamp anyone appointed for the Supreme Court without a reasonable review, are just puerile evasions of the main question - what did President Bush see in Miers that convinced him she was not only suitable for the post, but the best first choice?

2. Prior to the Miers nomination, most leading Republicans and especially Conservatives demanded that a Presidential nominee be allowed a vote - up or down - without attempts to ambush the candidate or obstruct a fair examination and decision on the nomination. When Miers was nominated, many Conservatives abandoned that principle and demanded her withdrawal before even a minute of hearings. What damage, if any, has this hypocrisy done to the Republican Party, and how might such equivocation show up again to the cost of Conservative plans?

3. A key difference between Democrats and Republicans in recent years, is the ability to debate internal issues and resolve them while still respecting minority viewpoints witin the party. That ability, while annoying at times, is alive in the Republican Party, but quite dead in the Democratic Party. For example, there are gay Republicans and there are Republicans who find the gay lifestyle offensive, but they can both support the party. No anti-gay Democrat has a voice in the party of ‘Tolerance’. There are pro-Life Republicans and there are pro-Choice Republicans, but there are no pro-Life Democrats willing to take a stand on that issue. There are Small Government Republicans and there are Big Government Republicans, but there are no Small Government Democrats. The list goes on. Has the Miers debate damaged the Republican Party in the eyes of most Americans, or did their ability to debate a Presidential appointment reinforce the character in the GOP which is so sadly deficient on the Democrat’s side?

My answers:

1) Bush saw that Harry Reid liked her, and he didn’t want a tough confirmation battle. Any claims that she is either a brilliant Constitutional scholar or conservative are completely refuted by her record in Texas as a politician and a lawyer.

2) “Up or down vote” is about being against filibusters. It’s not about questioning the credentials of the nominee. Miers was not filibustered. If President Bush nominated a failed horse enthusiast for FEMA again, would you demand that he go through confirmation hearings and get “an up or down vote"? I wouldn’t. I’d be relieved when the administration realized its mistake and withdrew the nominee.

3) Most Americans won’t remember the Republican debate over Miers. It was a good thing for the party, though. It proved that some Republicans will stand up for principle and insist their leaders do the right thing.

Big vote

Today is a huge opportunity for the Republicans to show they're not a party of corruption and incumbency.

House Republicans vote for a new Majority Leader today, and whom they pick will tell us a lot about how they view the performance of this Congress so far. Are they proud of the record amount of pork-barrel spending? Or that they ran for cover at the earliest criticism of President Bush's plans for Social Security reform?

Go Shadegg!

UPDATE: Well, Shadegg didn't win, but Boehner's a hell of a lot better than Blunt.