Just in time for the Fourth Of July weekend, from the DNC’s Associated Press:

U.S. soldiers patrol in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, south of Baghdad, Saturday April 3, 2004. Two attacks on Iraqi police south of Baghdad on Saturday left four people dead, officers said, in the latest of a string of attacks on local authorities linked to the U.S.-led occupation.Gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Col. Wisam Hussein, the police chief of Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing both him and his driver, police said.

GIs eyed in alleged rape, murders in Iraq

By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer

A group of American soldiers in an insurgent-riddled town allegedly noticed a young Iraqi woman when on patrol and later returned to rape her, according to U.S. officials Friday. In an apparent cover-up attempt, she and three members of her family then were killed and her body was set on fire.

Five U.S. troops are being investigated, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press.

It is the fifth pending case involving alleged slayings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops.

The suspects in the killing, which took place in March, were from the same platoon as two soldiers kidnapped and killed south of Baghdad this month, said the official, who is close to the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

One soldier was arrested after admitting his role in the alleged attack on the family, the U.S. official said. The official said the rape and killings appear to have been a "crime of opportunity," noting that the soldiers had not been attacked by insurgents but had noticed the woman on previous patrols.

One of the family members they allegedly killed was a child, said a senior Army official who also requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Some of the suspects allegedly burned the woman’s body to cover up the attack, the U.S. official said.

In Baghdad, the U.S. military issued a sparse statement, saying only that Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, ordered a criminal investigation into the alleged slaying of a family of four in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad.

However, the U.S. official said the soldiers were assigned to the 502nd Infantry Regiment. The official told the AP that the suspects were from the same platoon as two slain soldiers whose mutilated bodies were found June 19, three days after they were abducted by insurgents near Youssifiyah southwest of Baghdad.

The military has said one and possibly both of the slain soldiers were tortured and beheaded. The official said the mutilation of the slain soldiers stirred feelings of guilt and led at least one member of the platoon to reveal the rape-slaying on June 22.

According to the senior Army official, the alleged incident was first revealed by a soldier during a routine counseling-type session. The official said that soldier did not witness the incident but heard about it.

A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the official said.

Before the soldier disclosed the alleged assault, senior officers had been aware of the family’s death but believed it was a result of sectarian violence, the official said.

One of the five suspects has already been discharged for unspecified charges unrelated to the killings and is believed to be in the United States, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing…

How appalling – if true.

And as we saw with Haditha, that is a mighty big “if.”

From France’s AFP:

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

France Approves Sweeping Immigration Law, Protests Escalate

Received Friday, 30 June 2006 20:46:00 GMT

PARIS, June 30, 2006 (AFP) – The French parliament on Friday approved a divisive new immigration law which tilts the system in favour of qualified foreign workers and increases the restrictions on others.

The vote coincided with an escalating furore over threats by the government to deporting school-age children whose parents are illegal immigrants, which is expected to cumulate in a mass protest in Paris on Saturday.

The law, proposed by right-wing Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, creates a new type of residence permit — named a "skills and talents permit" — for foreigners with qualifications which are judged to be important for the French economy and labour market.

At the same time it increases restrictions on migrants moving to France to join their families, as the vast majority currently do.

Foreigners will be allowed into the country only if they can earn an income. The foreign spouses of French citizens will now have to wait longer for residence cards — a move designed to combat convenience marriages. And migrants will be forced to sign an "integration contract" committing them to respect the French way of life.

The law also scraps regulations that previously allowed illegal immigrants to obtain French documents if they succeeded in living in the country for 10 years. Now their cases will be dealt with on an individual basis by the authorities.

The law has prompted a strongly hostile reaction from the left-wing opposition, rights groups, the Catholic church and some African countries.

Critics say it risks creaming off the most talented people from countries where they are badly needed and will make life harder for ordinary migrants.

"Keeping the best and sending back the worst is not exactly Christian," said Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon.

The government believes there are between 200,000 and 400,000 illegal immigrants in France and is planning 26,000 deportations this year, some on flights run jointly with Britain.

On Friday police said a 28-year-old illegal Moroccan immigrant committed suicide in the detention centre where he was being held before being deported. His 18-year-old French girlfriend is pregnant.

As the immigration bill worked its way through parliament, a political row intensified over the fate of thousands of young illegal immigrants, who campaigners fear could be deported with their families once the school term ends in early July.

Politicians from the left-wing opposition, media personalities and sports stars have been among thousands to sign a petition which promises to provide refuge for children threatened with expulsion after June 30, when a government moratorium expires. Former Socialist minister Jacques Lang has described the government’s action as a "manhunt".

The children are from families who entered France illegally and who would normally be expelled along with their parents. But campaigners say that most of them know no other country and that deportation would be inhumane.

On Friday the lawyer appointed by Sarkozy to mediate in the dispute said there would be no immediate deportations of children.

"Families have till August 13 to lodge a dossier. There will be no child hunt … there will be no expulsions this summer," lawyer Arno Klarsfeld told Sud radio.

In mid-June Sarkozy — whose father is Hungarian — yielded to pressure from campaigners and agreed that some families might be allowed to stay in France "as an exceptional and humanitarian measure, in the interest of the children".

Prefects — state-appointed governors — have been told to examine individual cases and grant temporary residence permits to families in accordance with certain criteria.

But campaigning groups have condemned Sarkozy’s concessions as window-dressing.

"We are convinced that the criteria for judging and treating individual cases will not only be arbitrary but also unjust if their fate is left in the hands of prefects," said SOS-Racisme.

The Education Without Borders Network (RESF), which has organised the petition against the government, said recently: "For thousands of children and young adults, the end of term won’t be the beginning of the summer holidays but rather the beginning of a nightmare."

On Friday the lawyer for a Turkish Kurd family with seven young children — the youngest born in France — said a deportation order had been issued against the family.

And the mayor of the central city of Poitiers ordered the evacuation from an abandoned school of 42 illegal immigrants who have been on hunger strike since May 29. Doctors said the hunger strikers’ health was danger.

Where are all those people who say that we must follow the sophisticatedFrench now?

Less than twenty years ago there was an attempt to explicitly expand the Geneva Conventions to cover terrorists. It was rejected by the United States and its then President, Ronald Reagan:

Message to the Senate Transmitting a Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions

January 29, 1987

To the Senate of the United States:

I transmit herewith, for the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, concluded at Geneva on June 10, 1977. I also enclose for the information of the Senate the report of the Department of State on the Protocol.

The United States has traditionally been in the forefront of efforts to codify and improve the international rules of humanitarian law in armed conflict, with the objective of giving the greatest possible protection to victims of such conflicts, consistent with legitimate military requirements. The agreement that I am transmitting today is, with certain exceptions, a positive step toward this goal. Its ratification by the United States will assist us in continuing to exercise leadership in the international community in these matters.

The Protocol is described in detail in the attached report of the Department of State. Protocol II to the 1949 Geneva Conventions is essentially an expansion of the fundamental humanitarian provisions contained in the 1949 Geneva Conventions with respect to non-international armed conflicts, including humane treatment and basic due process for detained persons, protection of the wounded, sick and medical units, and protection of noncombatants from attack and deliberate starvation. If these fundamental rules were observed, many of the worst human tragedies of current internal armed conflicts could be avoided. In particular, among other things, the mass murder of civilians is made illegal, even if such killings would not amount to genocide because they lacked racial or religious motives. Several Senators asked me to keep this objective in mind when adopting the Genocide Convention. I remember my commitment to them. This Protocol makes clear that any deliberate killing of a noncombatant in the course of a non-international armed conflict is a violation of the laws of war and a crime against humanity, and is therefore also punishable as murder.

While I recommend that the Senate grant advice and consent to this agreement, I have at the same time concluded that the United States cannot ratify a second agreement on the law of armed conflict negotiated during the same period. I am referring to Protocol I additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which would revise the rules applicable to international armed conflicts. Like all other efforts associated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, this agreement has certain meritorious elements. But Protocol I is fundamentally and irreconcilably flawed. It contains provisions that would undermine humanitarian law and endanger civilians in war. One of its provisions, for example, would automatically treat as an international conflict any so-called “war of national liberation.” Whether such wars are international or non-international should turn exclusively on objective reality, not on one’s view of the moral qualities of each conflict. To rest on such subjective distinctions based on a war’s alleged purposes would politicize humanitarian law and eliminate the distinction between international and non-international conflicts. It would give special status to “wars of national liberation,” an ill-defined concept expressed in vague, subjective, politicized terminology. Another provision would grant combatant status to irregular forces even if they do not satisfy the traditional requirements to distinguish themselves from the civilian population and otherwise comply with the laws of war. This would endanger civilians among whom terrorists and other irregulars attempt to conceal themselves. These problems are so fundamental in character that they cannot be remedied through reservations, and I therefore have decided not to submit the Protocol to the Senate in any form, and I would invite an expression of the sense of the Senate that it shares this view. Finally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have also concluded that a number of the provisions of the Protocol are militarily unacceptable.

It is unfortunate that Protocol I must be rejected. We would have preferred to ratify such a convention, which as I said contains certain sound elements. But we cannot allow other nations of the world, however numerous, to impose upon us and our allies and friends an unacceptable and thoroughly distasteful price for joining a convention drawn to advance the laws of war. In fact, we must not, and need not, give recognition and protection to terrorist groups as a price for progress in humanitarian law.

The time has come for us to devise a solution for this problem, with which the United States is from time to time confronted. In this case, for example, we can reject Protocol I as a reference for humanitarian law, and at the same time devise an alternative reference for the positive provisions of Protocol I that could be of real humanitarian benefit if generally observed by parties to international armed conflicts. We are therefore in the process of consulting with our allies to develop appropriate methods for incorporating these positive provisions into the rules that govern our military operations, and as customary international law. I will advise the Senate of the results of this initiative as soon as it is possible to do so.

I believe that these actions are a significant step in defense of traditional humanitarian law and in opposition to the intense efforts of terrorist organizations and their supporters to promote the legitimacy of their aims and practices. The repudiation of Protocol I is one additional step, at the ideological level so important to terrorist organizations, to deny these groups legitimacy as international actors.

Therefore, I request that the Senate act promptly to give advice and consent to the ratification of the agreement I am transmitting today, subject to the understandings and reservations that are described more fully in the attached report. I would also invite an expression of the sense of the Senate that it shares the view that the United States should not ratify Protocol I, thereby reaffirming its support for traditional humanitarian law, and its opposition to the politicization of that law by groups that employ terrorist practices.

Ronald Reagan

The White House,

January 29, 1987

To this day Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions has not been adopted by the United States.

Could someone please tell the Supreme Court?

As we noted a few months back, the New York Times is so proud of their ability to rise above such a parochial thing as patriotism that they have listed this as a great moment in their illustrious history:

New York Times Timeline

1918
September

The Times is widely denounced for an editorial praising an Austrian peace proposal that falls short of unconditional surrender. Adolph Ochs’s patriotism is questioned; The Herald begins a circulation drive with the slogan "Read an American Newspaper."

This is certainly more true today than ever.

I’ve never been much for petitions or boycott campaigns. But it is long since time someone did something about the treasonous behavior of the New York Times.

To that end I propose that we should try to compile an exhaustive list companies who advertise in the New York Times.

Then, those who wish, will have a ready way to contact The NYT’s sponsors.

A poster a t Free Republic named Windchime began a list culled from the June 27, 2006 online edition of the New York Times: 

50 Pine Street

About

American Express

Bankrate.com

Benzel-Busch Motor Car Corp. -

Brown Harris Stevens

C/Net

Canon

Central Intelligence Agency

Chase

Citibank

Citi Habitats New York

Continental Airlines

Credit Protect X3

Crestor

Dell

E-Trade Financial

Eberhart Rentals

Edmunds.com

Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center

Fidelity

Google

Halstead Property

Hewlett Packard

Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate Centers

K. Hovnanian’s  Builders

Lenovo

Manhattan Mortgage

Mercedes Benz Tri-State Dealers

Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Consultants

NY City Department of Education

Pair Networks

Quebec

Related Rentals

Rockrose Development Corp.

Samsung

Scottrade

State Farm

T Mobile

It is a very good starting point.

(Though it’s pretty ironic to see the Central Intelligence Agency listed as an advertiser.)

If anyone comes across more, please post the name of the company and ideally an internet link for them, and I will update the list.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Wearing white shirts, unidentified family members of a group of men charged with plotting to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago and other buildings across the country react during a news conference Thursday in the Liberty City neighborhood in Miami. Jack Lieberman of the South Florida Peace and Justice Network, podium left, and Max Rameau of Copwatch look on.

Official: Suspects Sought Overthrow

June 30, 2006

By GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO

ATLANTA — Seven men charged with plotting to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago also are accused of planning to scout out FBI buildings across the country for potential attacks with the goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and replacing it with an Islamic regime.

New details about the suspected terrorist ring came out during a federal court hearing Thursday in Atlanta when one of the suspects was denied bail and was ordered transferred to Miami, where the other six were arrested and await trial.

The men are suspected of pledging to support what they thought was an al-Qaida operative’s plan to bomb FBI buildings in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington. They shot footage of some of those locations after swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden in a March meeting videotaped by the FBI, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Getchell.

Lyglenson Lemorin, a permanent resident from Haiti who was arrested separately in Atlanta last week, is accused of belonging for more than eight months to the Miami-based group, the "Moorish Science Temple." He showed no emotion during the three-hour hearing.

Lemorin and the other men are charged with four counts of conspiring to provide support to al-Qaida, to destroy government buildings and to wage war against the U.S. government. The charges carry maximum imprisonment terms of 15 to 20 years.

In the prosecution’s timeline, an Arabic man whose identity has not beel released contacted law enforcement in Miami in October 2005 to say suspected ringleader Narseal Batiste had told him he wanted to meet "Muslim brothers" from Yemen to "wage a holy war." The informant then introduced Batiste to another Arabic informant, who posed as a member of al-Qaida and worked to prevent Batiste from seeking out real al-Qaida representatives.

In several dozen other meetings and phone conversations monitored by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, mostly in a Miami warehouse the group used as headquarters, prosecutors say Batiste said he wanted to start his jihad with a dynamite attack to destroy the Sears Tower. He said he knew the building and its below-ground floors because he had worked for a delivery firm in Chicago.

Batiste also said he had about 100 "soldiers" in Florida, Chicago and other parts of the U.S., as well as land he wanted to use as a training camp in Louisiana. He told the informants that with resources, he could start the Chicago attack in much less than a year, the prosecution said. Batiste asked for weapons including machine guns and a sniper rifle. He also said he planned to attack a National Guard armory to get more weapons and was hoping to get an "explosive expert" from alQaida to train his men.

At a March 16 meeting prosecutors say was attended by all defendants, Batiste said he thought bin Laden "an angel," and he was "excited and overwhelmed" that the terrorist would form an alliance with his group and he was speaking for all his men when saying he liked bin Laden’s work, Assistant U.S. Attorney Getchell said.

The FBI informant then led the group in an oath to bin Laden, in which the defendants pledged to be loyal to "the path of holy war until God’s word is exalted."

But remember, our one party media has assured us these
bravos aren’t Muslims.

They went to church every Sunday.

From their lying colleagues at the DNC’s Associated Press:

USA Today: Call database not so broad

USA Today acknowledged in a "note to our readers" Friday that it could not establish that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the National Security Agency to provide it with customer calling records, as it previously reported.

But spokesman Steve Anderson said "this is an important story that holds up well. At the heart of our report is the fact that NSA is collecting phone call records of millions of Americans."

"What we address in the editors’ note," he said, "deals with the fact that we originally reported that the telephone companies were working under contract with the NSA. We’ve concluded that we cannot establish that BellSouth or Verizon entered into a contract with the NSA to provide the bulk calling records."

In an accompanying story, the newspaper reported Friday that lawmakers on House and Senate intelligence committees have said that while the NSA has amassed a huge database calling records, cooperation with the NSA by telephone companies was not as extensive USA Today initially reported on May 11.

USA Today at that time reported that, according to its sources, AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. all agreed to provide the agency with domestic call records. The newspaper said Friday that Verizon and BellSouth deny they contracted to provide the NSA with records of their customers’ phone calls. AT&T has neither confirmed nor denied the newspaper’s report.

Some lawmakers briefed on the program said NSA has a database of domestic calls that includes numbers called and the length of conversations, but not what was said. Five members of the intelligence committees said they’d been told by intelligence officials that AT&T, the nation’s largest telecommunications company, did cooperate in providing NSA with call records.

Five lawmakers on the intelligence committees said they’d been told that BellSouth did not turn over call records, and three lawmakers said they’d been informed that Verizon did not turn over call records to the NSA.

Lawmakers who support the Bush administration’s domestic spying program see the apparent gaps in the database as a problem.

"It’s difficult to say you’re covering all terrorist activity in the United States if you don’t have all the (phone) numbers," Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., told USA Today. "It probably would be better to have records of every telephone company."

In its note to readers, USA Today vowed to "continue to report on the contents and scope of the database as part of its ongoing coverage of national security and domestic surveillance."

Said Anderson: "There have been no denials that this database exists. Nineteen members of Congress who have been briefed following the May 11 article have confirmed the existence of the database."

USA Today is published by Gannett Co.

Readers will recall that we pretty much thought that USA Today was misrepresenting the facts when they published their story.

But since USA Today doesn’t have the contacts to get real national security secrets to leak, they had to make up something to sell their cartoon paper.

From his fans at the DNC’s Associated Press:

Bin Laden wants al-Zarqawi body released

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer

Osama bin Laden called on President Bush in an audiotape released Friday to release the body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and said Jordan should allow the slain terrorist to be buried in his homeland.

In the 19-minute message, bin Laden paid tribute to al-Zarqawi and said the former al-Qaida in Iraq leader had been under orders to kill Iraqis who supported U.S. forces in the country. He also vowed more attacks against the United States in the Middle East and Africa.

"We will continue to fight you and your allies everywhere, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan to run down your resources and kill your men until you return defeated to your nation," he said, addressing Bush. His voice sounded breathy and fatigued at times.

It was the fourth audio message purportedly put out this year by bin Laden. The voice in the latest message — released on an Islamic Web forum where militants often post messages — resembled that on previous recordings attributed to bin Laden, but the authenticity of the tape could not be immediately confirmed.

Al-Zarqawi was killed in a June 7 airstrike northeast of Baghdad by U.S. warplanes. Bin Laden said Bush should return al-Zarqawi’s body and that Jordan’s King Abdullah II should allow the militant’s family to bury him.

The Jordanian government has said it will never allow al-Zarqawi to be buried in his homeland because of a November triple suicide bombing his followers carried out in Amman hotels that killed 60 people.

"What scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead?" bin Laden said, addressing Abdullah. "You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedeen."

The audio message was accompanied by a video showing an old photo of bin Laden next to images of al-Zarqawi taken from a previous video. New video images of bin Laden have not appeared since October 2004.

The message bore the logo of As-Sahab, the al-Qaida production branch that releases all its messages. Typically, the CIA does a technical analysis to determine whether the speaker is who the tape claims and the National Counterterrorism Center analyzes the message’s contents.

In the tape, bin Laden effusively praised the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, often in rhyming couplets.

"Al-Zarqawi’s story will live forever with the stories of the nobles, so don’t cry over one who is not missing," bin Laden said. "He can teach the world a lesson on how to seize freedom … and how to resist tyrants."

"Even if we lost one of our greatest knights and princes, we are happy that we have found a symbol for our great Islamic nations, one that the mujahedeen will remember and praise in poetry and in stories secretly and aloud," he said.

The tape comes exactly a week after bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahri issued his own tribute video to al-Zarqawi, extolling him as "the prince of martyrs."

The tributes appear to be part of an attempt by al-Qaida’s leadership to tout their connection to al-Zarqawi, who emerged as a hero among Islamic extremists with his dramatic attacks in Iraq and even stole the spotlight from bin Laden and al-Zawahri.

Al-Zarqawi had sworn his allegiance to bin Laden, the terror network’s overall leader, but often had tense relations with him and al-Zawahri. In July 2005, al-Zawahri reportedly wrote a letter to al-Zarqawi criticizing his attacks on Iraqi Shiite mosques and civilians, saying they hurt the mujahedeen’s image.

The al-Qaida deputy also asked al-Zarqawi for money, according to the U.S. military, which said it intercepted the message.

Al-Zarqawi apparently brushed off the criticism as he continued to attack Shiites, a strategy intended to spark a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

In the new tape, bin Laden addressed "those who accuse Abu Musab of killing certain sectors of the Iraqi people," referring to the campaign of suicide bombings against Shiites.

"Abu Musab had clear instructions to focus his fight on the occupiers, particularly the Americans and to leave aside anyone who remains neutral," bin Laden said.

"But for those who refused (neutrality) and stood to fight on the side of the crusaders against the Muslims, then he should kill them whoever they are, regardless of their sect or tribe. For supporting infidels against Muslims is a major sin."

Bin Laden’s mention of "instructions" to al-Zarqawi could be aimed to show the al-Qaida in Iraq leader was under his command.

"In conclusion, I say that Abu Musab was not just an honor to his tribe, his country and his Islamic nation, but to all mankind, for he embodied the meaning of pride and glory," bin Laden said.

Bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the rugged border zone of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Maybe if Bin Laden will tell us the best way to deliver the body to him, we could arrange something.

By the way, note how ready Moslems are to exhume a body when it suits them.

From Toronto’s Globe and Mail:

Hateful chatter behind the veil

Key suspects’ wives held radical views, Web postings reveal

OMAR EL AKKAD AND GREG MCARTHUR

From Thursday’s Globe and Mail

MISSISSAUGA — When it came time to write up the premarital agreement between Zakaria Amara and Nada Farooq, Ms. Farooq briefly considered adding a clause that would allow her to ask for a divorce.

She said that Mr. Amara (now accused of being a leader of the alleged terror plot that led to the arrests of 17 Muslim men early this month) had to aspire to take part in jihad.

"[And] if he ever refuses a clear opportunity to leave for jihad, then i want the choice of divorce," she wrote in one of more than 6,000 Internet postings uncovered by The Globe and Mail.

Wives of four of the central figures arrested last month were among the most active on the website, sharing, among other things, their passion for holy war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a hatred of Canada. The posts were made on personal blogs belonging to both Mr. Amara and Ms. Farooq, as well as a semi-private forum founded by Ms. Farooq where dozens of teens in the Meadowvale Secondary School area chatted. The vast majority of the posts were made over a period of about 20 months, mostly in 2004, and the majority of those were made by the group’s female members.

The tightly knit group of women who chatted with each other includes Mariya (the wife of alleged leader Fahim Ahmad), Nada (the wife of Mr. Amara, the alleged right-hand man) Nada’s sister Rana (wife of suspect Ahmad Ghany), as well as Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal (the Muslim convert from Cape Breton, N.S. who married the oldest suspect, 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal). The women’s husbands are part of a core group of seven charged with the most severe crimes — plotting to detonate truck bombs against the Toronto Stock Exchange, a Canadian Forces target, and the Toronto offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The women were bound by the same social, political and ideological aims. They organized "sisters-only" swimming days and held fundraisers for the notorious al-Qaeda-linked Khadr family. With the exception of the occasional Urdu or Arabic word or phrase, their posts are exclusively in English.

After their husbands were arrested, most of the women refused to tell their stories to the media; reached at her home in Mississauga, Ms. Farooq would not comment on her posts.

But in the years leading up to the arrests, they shared their stories with one another.

She knows it freaks her husband out just thinking about it, but 18-year-old Nada Farooq doesn’t care: She wants a baby. It is mid-April, 2004, and the two have been married for less than a year. In the end, the jihad clause was not included in a prenuptial agreement.

Like many students at Meadowvale Secondary School, Zakaria Amara is busy worrying about final exams and what, if any, university to go to. But Ms. Farooq — the Karachi-born daughter of a pharmacist who now hands out prescription medicine to soldiers at the Canadian Forces Base in Wainwright, Alta. — has already done a fair bit of daydreaming about what it would be like to have a child. She even has a name picked. If she has a boy, she wants to name him Khattab, after the commander of the mujahedeen in Chechnya who battled Moscow until he was assassinated in 2002.

"And i pray to Allah my sons follow his footsteps Ameeen [Amen]," she writes at the on-line forum she founded for Muslim teens in Mississauga’s Meadowvale area. Her avatar — an on-line symbol used to indicate personality — is a picture of the Koran and a rifle.

(All postings in this story have been rendered as they appeared on-line.)

There is nothing casual about Ms. Farooq’s interpretation of Islam. She reiterates the belief that jihad is the "sixth pillar" of the religion, and her on-line postings are decidedly interested in the violent kind. In the forum titled "Terrorism and killing civilians," she writes a detailed point-by-point explanation of why the Taliban is destined to emerge victorious in Afghanistan.

Virtually every other government on the planet, however, she only has disdain for.

"All muslim politicians are corrupt," she writes. "There’s no one out there willing to rule the country by the laws of Allah, rather they fight to rule the country by the laws of democracy." She criticizes Muslims in places such as Dubai for spending money on elaborate buildings while Iraqis are being killed.

Ms. Farooq’s criticism is often directed first at other Muslims. When another poster writes about how he finds homosexuality disgusting, Nada replies by pointing out that there are even gay Muslims. She then posts a photo of a rally held by Al-Fatiha, a Canadian support group for gay Muslims. "Look at these pathetic people," she writes. "They should all be sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in public."

The majority of Muslims Ms. Farooq does admire are ones currently at war, and she reserves her most vitriolic comments for the people they are at war with.

In a thread started by Mr. Fahim’s wife, Mariya, marking the death of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi after an Israeli missile strike, Ms. Farooq unleashes her fury: "May Allah crush these jews, bring them down to their kneees, humuliate them. Ya Allah make their women widows and their children orphans." The statement is so jarring that another poster complains it’s not right for Muslims to wish such things on other people. Ms. Farooq’s sister Rana is also in favour of violent resistance, posting often graphic photos of female militants and suicide bombers.

But while her heart may be in the battlefields and holy cities, Nada Farooq finds herself physically in Canada, a country the Karachi-born teen moved to after spending her childhood in Saudi Arabia. Her name is properly pronounced "Needa," and when she came to Canada as a child, some of the kids at her school teased her by calling her "Needa Shower." She’d often come home in tears.

The Farooqs, a Pakistani family, came to Canada in 1997 because they didn’t like the idea of raising their children in the conservative society of Saudi Arabia, where foreign-born children don’t have access to the same education as nationals, said Nada’s father, Mohammad Umer Farooq.

When a Globe reporter contacted Nada’s father at his home in Wainwright, and described some of his daughter’s Internet postings, Mr. Farooq said he was "curious" and "concerned."

His daughter never expressed such opinions to him, he said, though he noted that he’s worked in Alberta for the past five years and only makes it home to Mississauga a few weeks every year. He headed west because the pharmacist training hours required in Alberta were much lower.

His daughter has always been more religious than he and his wife, he said, and it was a faith that she developed in Canada, not Saudi Arabia. He described himself as 30 per cent religious and his daughter as 100 per cent.

"Occasionally. I pray. She prays five times."

While his daughter has used her Internet forum to lament the end of the Taliban, Mr. Farooq is a firm supporter of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. Many of the soldiers he serves at CFB Wainwright will eventually be joining the mission.

"They are there for the betterment of the people. They are there for the development of Afghanistan."

While she forms a close circle of Muslim friends, Ms. Farooq is never comfortable with life in Canada. She posts that her mother is often lonely because her father spends large portions of his time at work. She talks about going to the University of Toronto in Mississauga as fulfilling her parents’ dreams rather than her own.

Ms. Farooq’s hatred for the country is palpable. She hardly ever calls Canada by its name, rather repeatedly referring to it as "this filthy country." It’s a sentiment shared by many of her friends, one of whom states that the laws of the country are irrelevant because they are not the laws of God.

In late April of 2004, a poster asks the forum members to share their impressions of what makes Canada unique. Nada’s answer is straightforward.

"Who cares? We hate Canada."

In Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal’s mind, every Muslim is another potential victim.

As a 44-year-old member of an on-line forum inhabited almost exclusively by teenagers, Ms. Jamal fits snugly into the role of maternal figure, and the advice she dispenses reflects her firm belief that the forces of evil are out to get every member of her adopted religion. She encourages Muslim youths to learn about herbal medicine and first aid lest they ever find themselves in a Muslim country under embargo, unable to receive proper medicine. Even in Canada, she says, one can never become complacent.

"You don’t know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!" she writes in one 2004 post. This is a time when Muslims "are being systematically cleansed from the earth," she adds.

If she’s looking for an example of such oppression, Ms. Jamal finds it in the Khadrs, the Canadian family whose patriarch, Ahmed Said Khadr, was killed by Pakistani forces and declared a martyr by al-Qaeda. In June, 2004, Ms. Jamal spearheaded a committee to help Mr. Khadr’s widow, Maha. In Ms. Jamal’s view, Maha Khadr and her family have committed no crime, only stated their opinion, and it is the duty of the entire Muslim nation to ensure the family’s well-being.

Ms. Jamal’s zealousness for homegrown Muslim causes is matched only by her rejection of just about everything Canadian. As the June, 2004 federal election draws near, she repeatedly advises Muslim youth to completely avoid the process. Voting, she tells them, inherently violates the sovereignty of God, making it the most egregious sin against Islam.

"Are you accepting a system that separates religion and state?" she asks. "Are you gonna give your pledge of allegiance to a party that puts secular laws above the laws of Allah? Are you gonna worship that which they worship? Are you going to throw away the most important thing that makes you a muslim?"

Ms. Jamal’s list of forbidden institutions goes beyond politics. Banking, membership in the United Nations, women’s rights and secular law are all aspects of Canadian society she finds unacceptable.

But her deepest outrage, like that of so many Muslims, is time and again sparked by the treatment of her brothers and sisters around the world. In a May, 2004 post titled "Behold Your Enemy!" she posts multiple articles describing the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of American soldiers.

"Know what you will face one day," she warns fellow forum members. "Let them call you a terrorist, let them make you look like a savage, but know that THIS is the filth of the earth, the uncivilised destroyer of humanity.

"Know from this day that this is not an Iraqi problem, it is not an Afghani problem, it is not a Palestinian problem, it is not a Somali problem. IT IS YOUR PROBLEM!!!"

Often, the conversation was quite tame. The women post advice on make-up, organizing sisters-only events and finding restaurants that offer truly halal Chinese food. Fahim Ahmad’s wife, Mariya, posts a warning to other women not to go watch the brothers play soccer, because it makes them uncomfortable."Yea, and besides, their OUR husbands!" Ms. Jamal concurs. "Go get your own to stare at!"

But inevitably, it would come back to Islam, the very purpose for which Ms. Farooq created the forum in the first place. When it comes to religion, the wives of Mr. Amara, Mr. Jamal, Mr. Ghany and Mr. Ahmad exhibit a commitment to hard-line fundamentalism that rivals and often exceeds that of their husbands.

In May, 2004, the Meadowvale students come across an extremely graphic video showing the beheading of a U.S. hostage in Iraq. Mr. Fahim, posting under the name "Soldier of ALLAH," praises the killers as mujahedeen who will be rewarded in the afterlife. Another poster maintains the beheading was actually carried out by U.S. forces as a ploy to direct anger at the Muslim community. It’s this post that inspires Nada to prohibit any further discussion of similar conspiracy theories.

Three posts later, her husband reprints an article claiming the Americans were responsible for the beheading.

But such occasional bickering between newlyweds does not stop Ms. Jamal from seeing the bigger picture. In her 40s, she is more than twice as old as most of the other Muslims on the forum. But like her husband, she believes young Muslims are the only ones capable of standing up against non-Muslim oppression.

For the most part, the wives of the other suspects do not let her down. This is especially true of Ms. Farooq, who deeply believes that education, financial success and other such goals are relatively frivolous because they only help Muslims during their time on Earth, and not in the afterlife. When another forum member disagrees with her view, she describes him as being "too much in this dunya [world]," and not sufficiently concerned with what comes after.

"Those who are sincere in pleasing Allah will go to whatever length to help the true believers," Ms. Farooq writes. "Those who fear Allah more than they fear the CSIS. Those are the ones who will succeed in the hereafter." NEXT: The transformation of

Zakaria Amara

Husbands and wives

CHERYFA AND QAYYUM ABDUL JAMAL

Cheryfa’s age: 44

Husband: Qayyum Abdul Jamal, charged with knowingly participating in the activities of a terrorist group, receiving training and intent to cause an explosion

On-line nickname: UmmTayyab ("Mother of Tayyab")

Quote: "You don’t know that the Muslims in Canada will never be rounded up and put into internment camps like the Japanese were in WWII!"

RANA AND AHMAD GHANY

Rana’s age: 19

Husband: Ahmad Ghany, charged with knowingly participating in the activities of a terrorist group and receiving training

On-line nickname: Al-Mujahidah ("The Jihadist")

Quote: "May Allah curse the jews.. Ameen"

NADA FAROOQ AND ZAKARIA AMARA

Nada’s age: 20

Husband: Zakaria Amara, charged with knowingly participating in the activities of a terrorist group, receiving training, providing training or recruiting and intent to cause an explosion

On-line nickname: Admin (the website’s administrator)

Quote: "Those who fear Allah more than they fear the CSIS. Those are the ones who will succeed in the hereafter."

MARIYA AND FAHIM AHMAD

Mariya’s age: 19

Husband: Fahim Ahmad, charged with knowingly participating in the activities of a terrorist group, importing a firearm, receiving training, providing training or recruiting and intent to cause an explosion

On-line nickname: Zawjatu Faheem ("Wife of Faheem")

Quote: "I heard that some sisters were watching the brothers play soccer last time…just wanted to let you know the brothers dont feel comfortable playing while the sisters are watching, so please, refrain from going there inshallaah and find something that will benefit you."

Lest we forget, these are the same "suspects" that were described as just a cross section of Canadian society.

The Mounties could find no other common denominator.

Every day lately it seems like it’s time for another round of Guess That Party Affiliation.

From the Montgomery Advertiser:

Siegelman found guilty on 7 of 34 charges

Scrushy found guilty on six counts against him

June 29, 2006

A federal jury Thursday found former Gov. Don Siegelman guilty on 7 of 34 counts in a corruption case.

Former Health South CEO Richard Scrushy was convicted on all six charges against him.

Two other co-defendants, Paul Hamrick and Mack Roberts, were exonerated of all charges against them.

Of course everyone knows since no party was mentioned that Sigelman must be a Democrat.

And he is.

(Thanks to 1sttofight for the heads up.)

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Supreme Court blocks Bush, Gitmo war trials

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.

The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.

Two years ago, the court rejected Bush’s claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this follow-up case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.

The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court’s liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

Thursday’s ruling overturned that decision.

Bush spokesman Tony Snow said the White House would have no comment until lawyers had had a chance to review the decision. Officials at the Pentagon and Justice Department were planning to issue statements later in the day.

The AP’s photo of Salim Ahmed Hamdan shows him passing out cake, which surely was one of his duties when he worked with Osama Bin Laden.

What a great victory for the Communists at the Center for (Invented) Constitutional Rights and the (Anybody Who Isn’t) American Civil Liberties Union.

Now these America-hating groups will get millions of taxpayers dollars and these trials will be dragged out for decades. That’s justice, all right.

  Update!

Here’s a reaction from the victors in today’s ruling, via the terrorist enablers at Reuters:

Ruling won’t close Guantanamo camp: Pentagon

GOAL TO CLOSE GUANTANAMO

…Michael Ratner, president of a New York-based group representing about 200 detainees, said the ruling was "another building block in our ultimate goal to shut down Guantanamo, and a very big one."

Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the ruling appeared to allow detainees to press forward with individual federal court challenges to continued detention…

And who is Michael Ratner?

Here is his rap sheet from Frontpage Magazine’s Discover The Networks:

MICHAEL RATNER

• President of the Center for Constitutional Rights
• Former president of the National Lawyers Guild
• Open Borders advocate
• Leftist critic of U.S. and supporter of Communist adversaries of U.S.
• Agitates for the expansion of rights for suspected terrorists

Michael Ratner is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which was co-founded in November 1966 by longtime members of the Communist and radical left. Today the CCR characterizes itself as an organization that "uses litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction, to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections and least access to legal resources." Among those whom the CCR counts as largely "unprotected" are terrorist organizations and illegal immigrants. The CCR is a core activist organization in the Open Borders Lobby, which seeks to eliminate all restrictions on immigration across U.S. borders. In the wake of  9/11, the CCR has focused its efforts heavily on reining in the U.S. government’s newly implemented anti-terrorism measures, which the CCR depicts as having "seriously undermined civil liberties, the checks and balances that are essential to the structure of our democratic government, and indeed, democracy itself."

In March 2002, Ratner explained his views on the origins of anti-American terrorism. "If the U.S. government truly wants its people to be safer and wants terrorist threats to diminish," he said, "it must make fundamental changes in its foreign policies . . . particularly its unqualified support for Israel, and its embargo of Iraq, its bombing of Afghanistan, and its actions in Saudi Arabia. [These] continue to anger people throughout the region, and to fertilize the ground where terrorists of the future will take root." He further condemned America’s post-9/11 attack on Afghanistan – stating that thousands of refugees were being forced to flee, and citing a UN prediction that some 100,000 Afghan children would die as a result of U.S. "aggression." He suggested that, as an alternative to war, the U.S. ought to "treat the attacks on September 11 as a crime against humanity, establish a UN tribunal, extradite the suspects, or if that fails, capture them with a UN force, and try them."

Prior to serving as president of the CCR, Ratner was president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The NLG, which originated as a Communist front, and remains, an organization that supports the Communist regimes in North Korea and Cuba, and agendas indistinguishable from Communism domestically, is today one of the chief groups championing the "rights" of illegal immigrants and terrorists, and works in close association with the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights on these issues. Also in the vanguard of those fighting to weaken America’s intelligence-gathering agencies, the NLG has launched a campaign to repeal the Patriot Act, claiming that it tramples on people’s civil liberties. In addition, the NLG opposes the Domestic Security Enhancement Act and the use of military tribunals for captured combatants in the War on Terror.

According to Ratner, Attorney General John Ashcroft "crystallizes for me what this administration does wrong. What Ashcroft has done is essentially take the courts out of our system of government, in not having reviews of immigration cases, not having reviews of people that are jailed . . . and . . . allowing Americans to be surveilled by the FBI and to have our privacy really invaded in terms of our political speech, our religious affiliation, and he’s done that without any criminal predicate."

Ratner recently served as co-counsel in the Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush, where he sought to prevent the Bush Administration and the U.S. military from detaining captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay while the war on terror continues. Ratner has said, "Guantanamo represents everything that is wrong with the U.S. war on terrorism. The Bush administration reacted to 9/11 with regressive and draconian measures worthy of a dictatorship, not a democracy." In his lectures to law students around the country, Ratner dons a baseball cap that reads, "Guantanamo Bay Bar Association."

Ratner’s opposition to American policies is longstanding and cuts across Party lines. He sued President George Bush Sr.’s Administration – to stop the Gulf War in 1991, and the Clinton administration – to end the U.S. bombing of Kosovo.

Ratner’s support of expanded terrorist rights and his pro-Communist worldview are made apparent in the books he has authored, which include: (1) Che Guervara and the FBI: The U.S. Political Police Dossier on the Latin American Revolutionary; (2) Against War with Iraq: An Anti-War Primer; and (3) Guantanamo: What the World Should Know.

Regarding the capture and eventual prosecution of Saddam Hussein, Ratner says, "If you’re going to have any kind of criminal trial here, if you want any sense of legitimacy or fairness, you cannot go after Saddam Hussein. After all, the U.S., as is well known, has a war of aggression that they just fought against Iraq, a violation of any international law."

These are the people who won today.

Everyone on our side in the war against terrorists lost.

From the America-hating website of a man always in need of a good long fast, Michael Moore:

Troops Home Fast

Wednesday, June 28th, 2006

Dear Friends,

GSFP and Code Pink are sponsoring a hunger strike for peace which begins July 04, called Troops Home Fast Some of us like Dick Gregory and Diane Wilson will be fasting until the troops come home from Iraq, and some, like me, will be fasting for a specified time. My fast will begin on 7/04 and end on the last day of Camp Casey: 09/02.

We are announcing the fast from Washington, DC on 07/04 and having our last supper on 07/03 in Lafayette Park.

If you can join us in DC on the 3rd and 4th, or fast in solidarity with us on that day, or any other time, please let me know.

Also, Jodie Evans is throwing me a birthday party at Bus Boys and poets on the 3rd of July from 9pm to 11pm….our last food will be before midnight that day….please come to my party, if you can!!!

Love and peace soon,
Cindy

According to this article from Slate, even Gandhi never lasted past 21 days. Though 60 days is supposed to be doable for a healthy adult.

But I'm sure she will cheat or come up with an excuse to call it off.

Mother Sheehan has never followed through on an of her previous vows. Such as lying down in front of the White House and never getting up. Or not paying her taxes.

I doubt if this will be any different.

(Thanks to Kilmeny for the heads up.)

From the New York Times’ stockholders meeting:

 

2006 Annual Meeting of Stockholders

April 18, 2006
New York, New York

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.
Chairman, The New York Times Company
Publisher, The New York Times

Janet L. Robinson
President and Chief Executive Officer,
The New York Times Company

Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger:

Good morning. I am Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman of The New York Times Company. Welcome to our annual meeting and thank you for your interest in our Company…

<Much self-congratulatory back-patting snipped.>

As Bill Keller told our newsroom yesterday as our Pulitzers were awarded: Prizes don’t always say anything terribly important about the state of our business, but [t]his year’s Pulitzers do, and what they say is: the country has never needed us more than it does today.

Amen.

How’s that for chutzpah ?

From the once reputable newspaper, the Chicago Tribune:

 

Taking a bath with Ann Coulter

Charles M. Madigan

June 27, 2006

I am visiting Ann Coulter.

Not the real Ann Coulter, with her blond hair and fetching little black cocktail dress, but her Web site. She’s pretty blunt.

Former President Bill Clinton was a rapist, she argues. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has fat legs. The unfair MSM (mainstream media) viciously chop at decent conservatives.

I don’t care about any of that, and her themes have changed by now anyhow.

She notes that if she hasn’t offended you just yet, wait. She’s working as fast as she can.

She is pumping her new book, but I am not. See? No title here.

My question is where should I put Ann Coulter in my treasure chest of political figures?

Everything needs its place. William F. Buckley is on a pedestal for his smarts. Such an eloquent man deserves honors, whether one agrees with him or not. He is a hero to me, although we disagree on many things, but not on the beauty of sentences.

What are we to do with this outrageous woman, who has the eloquence of, say, a roofer on a really bad day?

She is despised by many. That is unfair. She is just doing business by being hyperbolic, which is her job description.

She has become the commentary equivalent of a great belly dancer at a men’s smoker. The harder she works it, the more dollars get stuffed here and there.

Perhaps she has no brain-mouth regulator, the little device that keeps most dark thoughts unexpressed.

Or, perhaps she is like an egomaniacal kid-party clown, but with a screw loose.

One balloon wiener dog is not enough. She feels she can twist up an entire Noah’s ark of balloon animals. Before you know it, she’s on "America’s Craziest Clowns" scaring kids with her realistic boa constrictor digesting a balloon-shaped pig that looks like Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On Coulter’s part, I think this hyperbole is brilliant.

I don’t really think she’s nuts, but she sure is playing crazy for her loving audience, which expects it of her. It is, I suspect, a stunt.

She is important in my life.

Because of her, I now know exactly where the right wing stops.

A couple of clicks beyond Coulter on the political scale and you are in a land full of biting reptiles, spiders, peasants with torches and survivalists.

She is a bit like Michael Moore on the left, except he is about 10 times her size, not even vaguely pretty and looks like he could use a danged good scrub.

A couple of clicks beyond him on the left?

People with petitions, righteous rhetoric, rusty 190DL Volvo wagons, wine, cheeses, debates about how Marx (Karl not Groucho) was right on some things.

They won’t take "yes" for an answer and could break in to folk music at any minute.

How could Moore and Coulter be the same thing, then?

Oh, sweet reader, in our beloved, confused country, extremes have become so comfortable that gobs of otherwise sensible, fine folks just slip on over to the left or right and splash right in the ideological bathtub.

It would be fun in Coulter’s bathtub because everything would be so certain.

Here is the water. Here is the soap. Here is the bile. Here is the enemy.

("Do NOT touch my feet with your feet," she would say.)

Exactly the same thing holds true for the filmmaker Moore, but there wouldn’t be as much room in Moore’s tub and maybe just feet would fit in there, probably a blessing.

In a more repressive place, Coulter and Moore would be fabulous in the Ministry of Propaganda, pumping out grist for the mills of hyperbole.

As it is, they are merely iconic to their followers.

I read all about her book and what she had to say, just as I followed Michael Moore’s assessment of American politics during the last presidential campaign.

I’m looking for a model to understand what these characters are about.

I have concluded it’s the hyperbolic, grown-up version of the Howdy Doody show, with the particulars in the role of a mutated, very mean-spirited, politicized Buffalo Bob Smith, the host.

One of the key elements of the show was the peanut gallery, kids sitting on risers who reacted so you would know what was funny in Howdy’s world.

"Hey kids, what time is it?" Buffalo Bob would shout.

"It’s Howdy Doody time!" the peanut gallery would respond.

Same thing here, but Howdy Doody was one sweet puppet.

On the left and right extremes of American politics, it’s the adoring audience that’s the puppet.

The character who is Ann Coulter pulls the strings.

The puppets respond with money.

Mind you, this gentleman is paid for his brilliant insights and trenchant analysis.

Among the subtle differences he failed to discern between Ann Coulter and Michael Moore is that Michael Moore is a notorious liar who purposefully presents disinformation as facts. (He is facing at  multi-million dollar lawsuit for this little peccadillo.)

Whereas Ms. Coulter has never written anything of significance that was found to be in error — let alone a deliberate falsehood.

Oh, and another minor distinction, Michael Moore hates this country.

A poster at Free Republic says he took the time to email Mr. Madigan with some questions. Here is his email:

From: TC Rider
Sent: Tue 6/27/2006 12:54 PM
To: Madigan, Charles
Subject: Coulter

You sir, have a bad case of Venus Envy.

It appears from what you wrote that you haven’t read Coulter’s book, proving once again her theory that liberals don’t wish to debate issues or policy, just attack the messengers.

The larger difference between her and Moore, is that she researches and backs up her writing with facts, and footnotes. Moore tends to just make it up.

TC Rider

And here is what he says was Mr. Madigan’s thoughtful reply:

Subject: RE: Coulter
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 08:34:05 -0500
From: "Madigan, Charles"
To: "TC Rider"

venus envy? very clever. lets go cut her arms off and that will stop all this. setting aside the argument about issues, the woman looks as though she has a budding eating disorder and should get some help.

her arms, tiny for such a tall person. i would just feed her cheese burgers until she swells up a bit and then i might say, "pretty, in a it’s late at night in the holiday inn bar and there’s no one left to talk to" kind of way.

madigan

This is a photo of the gentleman who is mocking Ms. Coulter’s appearance, from his own column:

Charlie Madigan — "The Rambling Gleaner"

One suspects the only thing "Charlie" would have to say in a late night at the holiday inn bar would be "hello, sailor!"

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, left, and Gov. Rick Perry enter a news conference in this Oct. 9, 2003 file photo, in Austin, Texas, where they displayed a new congressional redistricting map, shown on the right. On Wednesday, June 28, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out part of a Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The court ruled that some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights.

Justices Back Most G.O.P. Changes to Texas Districts

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

June 28, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights.

The fractured decision was a small victory for Democratic and minority groups who accused Republicans of an unconstitutional power grab in drawing boundaries that booted four Democratic incumbents out of office.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Hispanics do not have a chance to elect a candidate of their choosing under the plan.

Republicans picked up six Texas congressional seats two years ago, and the court’s ruling does not seriously threaten those gains. Lawmakers, however, will have to adjust boundary lines to address the court’s concerns.

At issue was the shifting of 100,000 Hispanics out of a district represented by a Republican incumbent and into a new, oddly shaped district. Foes of the plan had argued that that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voting rights.

On a different issue, the court ruled that state legislators may draw new maps as often as they like — not just once a decade as Texas Democrats claimed. That means Democratic and Republican state lawmakers can push through new maps anytime there is a power shift at a state capital.

The Constitution says states must adjust their congressional district lines every 10 years to account for population shifts. In Texas the boundaries were redrawn twice after the 2000 census, first by a court, then by state lawmakers in a second round promoted by DeLay after Republicans took control.

That was acceptable, the justices said.

"We reject the statewide challenge to Texas redistricting as an unconstitutional political gerrymander," Kennedy wrote.

However, he said the state’s redrawing of District 23 violated the Voting Rights Act.

The 2003 boundaries were approved by the state Legislature and its Republican majority newly elected with DeLay’s help. In the next congressional elections, Republicans picked up six additional seats in the House. The contentious map drawing also contributed to the downfall of DeLay.

He was charged in state court with money laundering in connection with fundraising for legislative candidates. Although he is fighting the charges and maintains he is innocent, DeLay gave up his leadership post and then resigned from Congress.

After Texas decided to redraw its congressional district boundaries, two other states — Colorado and Georgia — also undertook a second round of redistricting.

"Some people are predicting a rash of mid-decade redistricting. I am skeptical," said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School. "It would be seen as a power grab in a lot of places."

Huh. I thought the US Constitution specifically gave Congress the right to set Congressional districts. I guess I was mistaken about that.

It turns out race trumps the Constitution every time.

Carved out with the aid of a computer, this congressional district was the product of California’s incumbent gerrymandering. This is the district of Democrat Grace Flores Napolitano, who ran unopposed in 2004, obtaining 100 percent of the vote.

The unusual "earmuff" shape of the 4th Congressional District of Illinois connects two Hispanic neighborhoods while remaining contiguous by narrowly tracing Interstate 294. It is represented by Rep. Luis Gutierrez [D].

Funny how gerrymandering for Democrats is alwaysallowed.

This is an excerpt from a Washington Post article published back in March.

The piece concerned the onset of FBI investigations into the egregious leaks of national security secrets at that time, including the "CIA prisons" and the NSA’s monitoring of Al Qaeda calls.

(This investigation probably lead to the the firing of the CIA officer Mary McCarthy, who was the presumed source for Dana Priest’s Pulitzer Prize winning articles on the "CIA prisons.")

But the comments expressed in the article by the Washington Post’s executive editor Leonard Downie seem to perfectly exemplify the hubris felt by the Post, the New York Times and much of our media watchdogs:

Columbia University President George Rupp (left) presents Katherine Boo and Leonard Downie, Jr., of The Washington Post, with the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

White House trains efforts on media leaks

Bush administration targets sources, reporters under espionage laws

By Dan Eggen
March 4, 2006

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI’s Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources familiar with the notices…

"There’s a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don’t know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."

President Bush has called the NSA leak "a shameful act" that was "helping the enemy," and said in December that he was hopeful the Justice Department would conduct a full investigation into the disclosure.

"We need to protect the right to free speech and the First Amendment, and the president is doing that," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. "But, at the same time, we do need to protect classified information which helps fight the war on terror." …

Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Post, said there has long been a “natural and healthy tension between government and the media” on national security issues, but that he is “concerned” about comments by Goss and others that appear to reflect a more aggressive stance by the government. Downie noted that The Post had at times honored government requests not to report particularly sensitive information, such as the location of CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

“We do not want to inadvertently threaten human life or legitimately harm national security in our reporting,” he said. “But it’s important . . . in our constitutional system that these final decisions be made by newspaper editors and not the government.” …

I didn’t know that the framers of the Constitution put the decisions concerning matters of national security in the hands of newspaper editors rather than an elected representatives.

Did you?

Despite these delusions, there are laws against what the our one party media have been so gleefully doing.

Such as US Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 3, § 793:

Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information:

(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any… information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it…

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Though prison really is too good for them.

From the Brownsville Herald:

Under honor guard escort, the remains of Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca are unloaded off an airplane at the Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport in Brownsville, Texas, Monday, June 26, 2006.

Hundreds turn out for arrival of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca

BY Emma Perez-Treviño, Chris Mahon
and Kevin Sieff

June 27, 2006 — The body of Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, arrived at the Brownsville airport Monday in a solemn ceremony broken only by the sobs of his young widow.

Eighteen-year-old Christina Menchaca of Big Spring, Texas received her husband’s body shortly after noon, surrounded by family, her little boy, and Rev. Carlos Villarreal.

They watched as 11 members of the 101st Screaming Eagles Military Funeral Detachment team provided full honors as they carried the varnished brown coffin from a chartered Falcon jet to a waiting hearse.

The coffin was draped with an American flag.

“He was a young man who had dreams and hopes and they just vanished,” U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz said after watching the arrival of Menchaca’s body with local officials who showed their respect at the Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport.

“He deserves a hero’s burial,” Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, said.

Menchaca, a native of Brownsville and Houston, Army Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25 of Madras, Ore., and Army Spc. David J. Babineau, 25 of Springfield, Mass. came under fire June 16 at a traffic control point south of Yusufiyah, Iraq.

Babineau’s body was recovered at the ambush site, but Menchaca and Tucker were kidnapped. Their bodies were found June 19 next to a road near the village of Mufaraji, northwest of Yusufiyah. Several explosive devices were encountered, delaying the recovery of the bodies until the following day. The three soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.

While in Brownsville in the mid to late 1990s, Menchaca attended Porter High School and Vela Middle School, which is no more than a mile north of the Brownsville Event Center – where his visitation will be held today.

For the last week, the flags — of the United States, Texas, and Mexico — that line Ruben M. Torres Boulevard have all flown at half-mast. They’ve been accompanied by banners and tickers reading “in honor of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca.”

On Tuesday, when Menchaca’s body was returned to Brownsville, hundreds more flags appeared on the boulevard.

In addition to the police procession that accompanied Menchaca’s hearse, hundreds of Brownsville residents, some noticeably weeping, drove slowly to the city’s events center. From city officials to “Los Escondidos,” a biker group, every member of the procession carried his own American flag.

“By coming here I am showing my respect,” said Frank Garza, a former soldier. Even though he doesn’t know Menchaca’s family, Garza’s nephew, who is currently assigned to Border Patrol duty, will be driving in from Arizona for the funeral.

Like Garza, Adelaida Rey showed her support by waving a small flag from the side of the road. She brought her grandchildren along to share the experience.

“El estaba peleando por nuestro freedom, y por eso estamos aqui,” she said. “He was fighting for our freedom and because of that we are here.”

Although Rey speaks only Spanish, she carefully pronounces the word “freedom” in English. For the woman waving both Texas and American flags, it’s a word too important to be translated.

While the procession drove by, Rey’s grandchildren were as solemn as she was. “Es importante que lo vean,” she said. “It’s important that they see this.”

Under a blue sky with foreboding rain clouds on the horizon, stood Henry Valdez, sweating from the 90-plus degree humidity.

He stood far from the small crowds of people that dotted Paredes Line Road up to the event center, the motorcade’s final destination.

“I came to pay my respects,” the former U.S. Marine said.

“So young, man. So young,” he said with a sigh.

“So young.”

Soon afterwards, the convoy of about 100 turned right onto Paredes Line Road from Ruben Torres Boulevard. Its final destination, less than a mile away, was now visible.

Catching sight of the convoy, which wound like a snake around the corner, Irahi Masso whispered to her young son, “Here he comes Brandon, raise the flag.”

He dutifully obeyed, raising a small American flag. It was a mirror image of the dozens of public safety officers parked across the street, holding full-size flags of their own.

In the middle of the motorcade of cars, trucks and motorcycles, was Menchaca’s body in a polished, black hearse, making its way past the Massos and Valdez. Other than the rumble of vehicles, it was quiet.

As the procession entered the center’s parking lot, it passed members of Brownsville American Legion Post 43 and other veterans.

Finally, with the emergency response vehicles that escorted the body finally dispersed, all that was left was the black hearse. It parked beneath the overhang at the center’s entrance.

The only sound as his flag-draped coffin was unloaded was water gurgling in a fountain between two palm trees. The ends of the yellow ribbons attached to the trees fluttered gently in the breeze.

Menchaca’s mother and other immediate family members waited at the Brownsville Event Center for his arrival, instead.

Menchaca will be buried in uniform and with several medals: America’s Meritorious Service Medal, a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and a Prisoner of War medal.

“He earned them, he goes down with them,” Ortiz said.

Thomas Tucker was similarly remembered in Oregon:

A park fence is adorned with memorial items in Madras, Oregon for slain U.S. Army Private First Class Thomas Lowell Tucker, who was killed in Iraq, June 23, 2006.

Funny how these stories weren’t covered by the AP or NYT.

  Update!

Our one party media has finally gotten around to this story. At least I think it is the same story.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

Bishop At GI’s Funeral: Work For Peace

BROWNSVILLE, Texas, June 28, 2006(AP) The remains of a Texas soldier captured and brutalized in Iraq were buried Wednesday following a funeral Mass celebrated by a Catholic bishop and a dozen priests, and attended by hundreds of veterans, local residents and area dignitaries.

Pfc. Kristian Menchaca was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and a Prisoner of War medal.

Menchaca, 23, was one of three soldiers to die after a June 16 insurgent attack at the checkpoint they were guarding. He and another soldier, Pfc. Thomas Tucker of Madras, Oregon, went missing for three days before their mutilated and booby-trapped bodies were recovered. The third soldier, Spc. David J. Babineau, of Springfield, Massachusetts, died in the attack.

Diocese of Brownsville Bishop Raymundo Pena spoke during the bilingual Mass of Menchaca’s valor and sacrifice. Some of Menchaca’s relatives crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to be with his family. His mother, Maria Vasquez, was born in Mexico, and his family now lives largely in Brownsville.

“News reports about the circumstances of Kris’ death in Iraq could lead us to an unholy rage and anger, but that would only dishonor Kristian’s very name and Kristian himself,” Pena said. “ We must, as he did, reach for the ideal: to work for peace and an end to conflict wherever we may find it .” …

Thank goodness we have an objective press safeguarding our freedom.

I’d hate to think they had their own separate agenda.