ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20091230

Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable

Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!



"Daily Motivations"

Living inspired is born in the awareness that this is it! We have one chance at life. And the wonderful gift we are given every morning is the choice of how we are going to live that moment, that day. -- Sally Cofer-Lindberg

"He who cannot forgive others destroys a bridge over which he himself must pass." -- George Herbert

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." -- Sydney J Harris



"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)

The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of unfailing love. (Psalm 145:8)

Justice delayed is often justice denied. For example, if a defense lawyer can keep postponing a murder case, evidence that is available in a speedy trial becomes useless. Witnesses may die or move away. The defense can challenge the validity of a witness's memory. Police departments misplace evidence.

However, as believers, it is important that we also recognize that we are saved precisely because God delays His justice. Whatever age you or I received God's promise of eternal life was more than enough time for God to have caused His just wrath to fall on us.

Dr. Cyril E. M. Joad, who for years was the head of the Philosophy Department at the University of London, probably did more to undermine the faith of the collegiate world of recent generations than almost any other. He believed that God was an impersonal part of the cosmos and that there was no such thing as sin.

However, before he died, Dr. Joad became convinced that the only explanation for sin was found in the Bible---and the only solution for sin was the cross of Jesus Christ. Like the apostle Paul, he became a zealous follower of Jesus. No doubt many of his followers turned to faith in God through his testimony and writings. God's long-suffering and incredible patience brought this skeptic to his knees at the cross.

None of us deserve even one day of life because of our sinful, depraved nature, so we should be grateful for a just God who delays His justice. When it comes to our sin, justice delayed works to our advantage.

Your View of God Really Matters …

The next time you see justice denied because it is delayed, let it be a poignant reminder of how greatly you have benefited because God was slow to enact His justice toward you.



"The Patriot Post"

"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1801

"No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave." -- Alexander Hamilton



The BIG Lie

"To paraphrase Shakespeare, it's sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven't read all the [CRU] e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus. ... [W]here the scientific consensus is concerned, it's completely unchanged. What we're seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly." -- Algore on the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University



This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award

On the topic of health care, Harry Reid offered an interesting comparison on the Senate floor. He likened opponents of the Democrats' proposed takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy to those who defended slavery and opposed women's suffrage.

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over,'" Reid said. "If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'" Slavery is not exactly a favorable issue for Democrats.

But he didn't stop there. "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund notes one of the historical omissions in Reid's claim: "Among those voting to block the civil rights bill was West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who personally filibustered the bill for 14 hours. The next year he also opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Byrd still sits in the Senate, and indeed preceded Mr. Reid as his party's majority leader until he stepped down from that role in 1989."



This Week's 'Braying Jenny' Award

"Is it morally correct [to force taxpayer funding of abortion]? Yes, I believe it is. Abortion is legal, and there are certain very tragic circumstances that a woman finds herself in. Married, with an unborn baby that's unable to survive outside of the womb, her doctor tells her it's a threat to her health. I think she ought to have a policy available to her. ... We pay for a lot of things that we may or may not agree with, and taxpayers pay for it, for those things, as well." -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Death Valley)

Don't miss more on the abortion issue, including Sen. Ben Nelson's rejected amendment to the health care bill barring federal funding for abortions, as well as Sen. Barbara Boxer's comparison of abortion to a certain blue pill.



Judicial Benchmarks: A Tale of Two Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court this term has taken up two cases that are important to religious freedom and property rights, respectively. On Dec. 7, the Court granted a hearing in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, in which the University of California Hastings College of Law denied recognition to the local CLS chapter because it required each prospective member to sign a statement of faith that tracked traditional, orthodox Christian theology and morality. Unless the CLS chapter opened its membership to everyone, including non-Christians and practicing homosexuals, UC would deny access to any benefits and facilities provided to other student organizations.

The district court decision, which was summarily affirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, lightly glossed over the obvious and oppressive burden placed on the CLS members by UC's actions. Arguing that the CLS chapter could avoid the restrictions by simply accepting everyone as members, the court completely missed the point: If it accepted everyone as members, the CLS chapter would no longer be a Christian organization. The CLS chapter was unfairly burdened precisely because it is Christian. Or maybe that was the point.

The Court also heard arguments on Dec. 1 in Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Dep't of Environmental Protection. In this case, Florida trucked in sand to "renourish" critically eroded beaches and then promptly took ownership of this "new dry land." Owners of what had previously been waterfront properties now had a strip of state land between themselves and the ocean.

Tossing out well-settled principles of common law in its attempt to "balance" the rights of the property owners and the state, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that this was not an unconstitutional taking in violation of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause. In an unusually strident dissent, Justice Charles T. Wells pointed out that Florida expropriated valuable property rights clearly established by Florida law: the right to have their property in contact with the water. While Florida was free to do so, it should pay the owners compensation for the taking.

Both of these cases will be important tests of whether the Court will uphold constitutional religious, association and property rights against government encroachment.



Friends in High Places

Some people work their whole life to achieve a position of prominence, but others take a shorter path, i.e., they sleep their way to the top. That's the perception of Melodee Hayes, who recently withdrew her candidacy for U.S. Attorney in Montana. She is also the girlfriend of Montana Democrat Senator Max Baucus.

Hayes, who was director of Baucus's Montana office when their relationship started in 2008, indeed had some qualifications for the U.S. Attorney post as she had served as a local prosecutor prior to working under the senator. But their deepening relationship (as Baucus was divorcing his wife of 25 years) led to the speculation that he was pushing his girlfriend for the job. He also gave her a $14,000 raise at the time. She withdrew from consideration and took a job at the Justice Department -- partly so she could shack up with Baucus.

Of course, had this been a Republican senator, the story might have competed with other sordid domestic tales for airtime on the network news shows. Since Baucus has a "D" after his name, however, this will blow over quickly and will be a distant memory when he's up for re-election in 2014.

Speaking of Republicans, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford dodged a bullet this week when state lawmakers rejected an impeachment resolution, choosing instead to consider a formal rebuke of the governor. Sanford had traveled to Argentina in June, where he ended an extra-marital affair. He was accused of misusing state resources but repaid the expenses, thus making the charges moot.



Belly Laugh of the Week

"One of the central goals of this administration is restoring fiscal responsibility." -- Barack Obama



"The Web"

Islamic Terror Attacks on American Soil

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/AmericanAttacks.htm

We recently got taken to the mat by a polite, young Muslim living in the U.K. who took issue with our oft-repeated statement that no Muslim-American lost their life to vigilante violence following 9/11. She provided us a list of six or seven candidates and, after whittling out the ones where the killer was unknown or in cases with mitigating circumstances such as “victim was sleeping with killer’s ex-girlfriend” (and we’re not making that up), we reached a shocking conclusion:

We were wrong.

There is one seemingly unambiguous case that occurred in Dallas, Texas where Waqar Hasan, a Muslim convenience storeowner, was gunned down by Mark Anthony Stroman four days after the 9/11 attacks. Stroman claimed to have been motivated by anger from watching the towers fall. He is not exactly your average American, however, even apart from the shooting. For one thing, he is a white supremacist who carried a felony criminal record at the time of the attack. He also went on to shoot two more people in the weeks that followed.

Thankfully, an American jury sentenced Mark Stroman to death. The same cannot be said of many Muslim terrorists such as Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, who not only have sanctuary in Muslim countries, but are often treated as heroes by devout followers of Muhammad.

Nevertheless, we acknowledge that our friend is correct and that there was at least one Muslim killed in an anti-Arab hate crime in the U.S. following the anti-American hate crime on 9/11. For anyone keeping score:

People killed by radical Muslims on 9/11: 2,996

Muslim-Americans killed "in revenge": 1

Of course, 9/11 was neither the first nor the last time that Muslims have killed Americans on U.S. soil in terror attacks. In fact, since that day, Muslims have killed at least 52 people in 31 separate acts of terrorism in the United States (by the standards that Muslim-American groups set for hate crimes). Perhaps more importantly, there have been quite a few planned mass murders of Americans by Islamic terrorists that were thwarted by the FBI, law enforcement and overseas intelligence operations both before and after 9/11.

By contrast, Muslim-Americans do not appear to be in any special danger from murderous (non-Muslim) religious fanatics, even in a nation awash in firearms. Identity groups, such as CAIR, whine incessantly about relatively trivial incidents while turning a blind eye to the horrible violence that is meted out daily in the name of their religion. This distasteful petulance offers insight not only into the character of Islam, but also the impressive religious tolerance that Americans manage to maintain.

For anyone wondering about the history of deadly Islamic terror on American soil in the last 35 years, here’s what we could find:

Date, Country, City/State, Killed, Injured, Description

4/14/1972
USA
New York, NY
1
3
Ten members of a local mosque phone in a false alarm and then ambush responding officers, killing one.

1/19/1973
USA
Brooklyn, NY
1
1
Muslim extremists rob a sporting goods store for weapons, gunning down a police officer who responds to the alarm.

7/18/1973
USA
Washington, DC
8
2
Nation of Islam members shoot seven members of a family to death in cold blood, including four children. A defendant in the case is later murdered in prison on orders from Elijah Muhammad.

10/19/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
1
1
Nation of Islam terrorists kidnap a couple and nearly decapitate the man, while raping and leaving the woman for dead.

10/29/1973
USA
Berkeley, CA
1
0
A woman is shot repeatedly in the face by Nation of Islam terrorists.

11/25/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
1
0
A grocer is killed in his store by Nation of Islam terrorists.

12/11/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
1
0
A man is killed by Nation of Islam terrorists while using a phone booth.

12/13/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
1
0
A woman is shot to deah on the sidewalk by Nation of Islam terrorists.

12/20/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
1
0
Nation of Islam terrorists gun down an 81-year-old janitor.

12/22/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
2
0
Nation of Islam terrorist kills two people in separate attacks on the same day.

12/24/1973
USA
Oakland, CA
1
0
A man is kidnapped, tortured and decapitated by Nation of Islam terrorists.

1/24/1974
USA
Oakland, CA
4
1
Five vicious shooting attacks by Nation of Islam terrorists leave three people dead and one paralyzed for life. Three of the victims were women.

4/1/1974
USA
Oakland, CA
1
1
A Nation of Islam terrorist shoots at two Salvation Army members, killing a man and injuring a woman.

4/16/1974
USA
Ingleside, CA
1
0
A man is killed while helping a friend move by Nation of Islam terrorists.

3/9/1977
USA
Washington, DC
1
1
Hanifi Muslims storm three buildings including a B'nai B'rith to hold 134 people hostage. At least two innocents were shot and one died.

7/22/1980
USA
Bethesda, MD
1
0
A political dissident is shot and killed in front of his home by an Iranian agent who was an American convert to Islam.

8/31/1980
USA
Savou, IL
2
0
An Iranian student guns down his next-door neighbors, a husband and wife.

1/31/1990
USA
Tuscon, AZ
1
0
A Sunni cleric is assassinated in front of a Tuscon mosque after declaring that two verses of the Qur'an were invalid.

11/5/1990
USA
New York City, NY
1
0
An Israeli rabbi is shot to death by a Muslim attacker at a hotel.

1/25/1993
USA
Langley, VA
2
3
A Pakistani with Mujahideen ties guns down two CIA agents outside of the headquarters.

2/26/1993
USA
New York, NY
6
1040
Islamic terrorists detonate a massive truck bomb under the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring over 1,000 in an effort to collapse the towers.

3/1/1994
USA
Brooklyn, NY
1
0
A Muslim fires on a vanload of Jewish boys, killing one.

3/23/1997
USA
New York, NY
1
6
A Palestinian leaves an anti-Jewish suicide note behind and travels to the top of the Empire State building where he shoot seven people in a Fedayeen attack.

4/3/1997
USA
Lompoc, CA
1
0
A prison guard is stabbed to death by a radical Muslim.

10/31/1999
USA
Near Nantucket
217
0
An Egyptian airline pilot runs a planeload of 217 passengers into the water after uttering a Qur'anic prayer.

3/17/2000
USA
Atlanta, GA
1
1
A local imam and Muslim spiritual leader guns down a deputy sheriff and injures his partner.

9/11/2001
USA
Washington, DC
184
53
Nearly 200 people are killed when Islamic hijackers steer a plane full of people into the Pentagon.

9/11/2001
USA
Shanksville, PA
40
0
Forty passengers are killed after Islamic radicals hijack the plane in an attempt to steer it into the U.S. Capitol building.

9/11/2001
USA
New York, NY
2772
251
Islamic hijackers steer two planes packed with fuel and passengers into the World Trade Center, killing hundreds on impact and eventually killing thousands when the towers collapsed. At least 200 are seriously injured.

3/19/2002
USA
Tuscon, AZ
1
0
A 60-year-old man is gunned down by Muslim snipers on a golf course.

5/27/2002
USA
Denton, TX
1
0
Muslim snipers kill a man as he works in his yard.

7/4/2002
USA
Los Angeles, CA
2
0
Muslim man pulls out a gun at the counter of an Israeli airline and kills two people.

9/5/2002
USA
Clinton, MD
1
0
A 55-year-old pizzaria owner is shot six times in the back by Muslims at close range.

9/21/2002
USA
Montgomery, AL
1
1
Muslim snipers shoot two women, killing one.

9/23/2002
USA
Baton Rouge, LA
1
0
A Korean mother is shot in the back by Muslim snipers.

10/2/2002
USA
Wheaton, MD
1
0
Muslim snipers gun down a program analyst in a store parking lot.

10/3/2002
USA
Montgomery County, MD
5
0
Muslim snipers kill three men and two women in separate attacks over a 15-hour period.

10/9/2002
USA
Manassas, VA
1
1
A man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas two days after a 13-year-old is wounded by the same team.

10/11/2002
USA
Fredericksburg, VA
1
0
Another man is killed by Muslim snipers while pumping gas.

10/14/2002
USA
Arlington, VA
1
0
A woman is killed by Muslim snipers in a Home Depot parking lot.

10/22/2002
USA
Aspen Hill, MD
1
0
A bus driver is killed by Muslim snipers.

8/6/2003
USA
Houston, TX
1
0
After undergoing a religious revival, a Saudi college student slashes the throat of a Jewish student with a 4" butterfly knife, nearly decapitating the young man.

12/2/2003
USA
Chicago, IL
1
0
A Muslim doctor deliberately allows a Jewish patient to die from an easily treatable condition.

4/13/2004
USA
Raleigh, NC
1
4
A Muslim man runs down five strangers with a car.

4/15/2004
USA
Scottsville, NY
1
2
In an honor killing, a Muslim father kills his wife and attacks his two daughters with a knife and hammer because he feared that they had been sexually molested.

6/16/2006
USA
Baltimore, MD
1
0
A 62-year-old Jewish moviegoer is shot to death by a Muslim gunman in an unprovoked terror attack.

6/25/2006
USA
Denver, CO
1
5
Saying that it was 'Allah's choice', a Muslim shoots four of his co-workers and a police officer.

7/28/2006
USA
Seattle, WA
1
5
An 'angry' Muslim-American uses a young girl as hostage to enter a local Jewish center, where he shoots six women, one of whom dies.

10/6/2006
USA
Louisville, KY
4
1
In an 'honor' attack, a Muslim man rapes and beats his estranged wife, leaving her for dead, then savagely murders their four children.

2/13/2007
USA
Salt Lake City, UT
5
4
A Muslim immigrant goes on a shooting rampage at a mall, targeting people buying Valentine's Day cards at a gift shop and killing five.

1/1/2008
USA
Irving, TX
2
0
A Muslim immigrant shoots his two daughters to death on concerns about their 'Western' lifestyle.

7/6/2008
USA
Jonesboro, GA
1
0
A devout Muslim strangles his 25-year-old daughter in an honor killing.

2/12/2009
USA
Buffalo, NY
1
0
The founder of a Muslim TV station beheads his wife in the hallway for seeking a divorce.

6/1/2009
USA
Little Rock, AR
1
1
A Muslim with 'religious motives' shoots a local soldier to death inside a recruiting center.

11/2/2009
USA
Glendale, AZ
1
1
A woman dies from injuries suffered when her father runs her down with a car for being too 'Westernized.' (10-20-09)

11/5/2009
USA
Ft. Hood, TX
13
31
A Muslim psychiatrist guns down thirteen unarmed soldiers while yelling praises to Allah.

(3,308 killed by Muslims in America in 65 terror attacks)



Attorney: Hasan's 'religious rights' prohibited

Chad Groening - OneNewsNow

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Security/Default.aspx?id=827476

One of the nation's foremost critics of Islam says it's absolutely reprehensible that the lead attorney for the man charged in the murderous rampage at Fort Hood last month is trying to paint his client as a victim.

Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan is suspected of killing 14 people, including an unborn baby, while wounding more than two dozen others at the Army post in Texas on November 5. Hasan remains hospitalized at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he is paralyzed from the chest down.

The San Antonio Express-News recently reported that Hasan's attorney, John P. Galligan, claims the Army is violating his client's religious rights because it prohibited him from praying from the Koran in Arabic with a relative. Hasan was reportedly on the phone with his brother when the guard cut the conversation short because the suspect was not speaking English. The military has restricted Hasan to only speaking English to visitors or on the phone, unless an Army-approved translator is present.

"It's very common for Islamic jihadists to claim victim status when they're in prison," notes Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch. "Part of the al Qaeda playbook is that they should always claim that they have been tortured, whatever the truth may be."

In Spencer's opinion, Galligan's claims are at fault. "It's reprehensible for this lawyer to be demanding that Nidal Hasan be given free and unrestricted access to the ideology that led him to commit those murders," he argues. "It would be like saying that a Nazi war criminal has to have a copy of Mein Kampf in his jail cell."

The Jihad Watch director concludes that the military is completely justified in imposing the language restrictions on Hasan.



Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is not fit for position, recent events prove

Michael Daly

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/12/29/2009-12-29_put_real_cops_in_charge_of_security..html

Brandon/AP

It's time to put a real cop in charge. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is just not fit for the job, after she claimed "the system worked" in Flight 253 terror incident.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is living proof you can not only take the girl out of New York, but take New York out of the girl as well.
Napolitano was born in New York and yet takes so little interest in us that as recently as last April she seemed unaware of some basic facts regarding the attack on the World Trade Center.

That became apparent in an interview with Canadian television. Napolitano suggested that the Canadian and Mexican borders warranted equal attention.

"Yes, Canada is not Mexico. It doesn't have a drug war going on," Napolitano said. "Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country ...it's been across the Canadian border."

The interviewer inquired if the terrorists included those who had staged the 9/11 attacks.

"Not just those, but others as well," Napolitano said.

The Canadian ambassador to the U.S., Michael Wilson, subsequently lamented that "misconceptions arise on something as fundamental as where the 9/11 terrorists came from."

"As the 9/11 commission reported in 2004, all of the 9/11 terrorists arrived in the United States from outside North America," Wilson noted. "They flew to major U.S. airports. They entered the U.S. with documents issued by the United States government. No 9/11 terrorists came from Canada."

Napolitano announced through an aide she had "misunderstood" the interviewer and had actually been speaking about the lone would-be bomber who had been caught crossing from Canada into Washington State in 1999.

Napolitano then made a declaration no homeland security chief should ever have had to make, most particularly one born in New York.

"I know that the Sept. 11 hijackers did not come through Canada to the United States," she said.

No doubt some Canadians saw a certain irony on Christmas Day, when the undies bomber aboard a flight from Amsterdam attempted to destroy an airliner descending into Detroit, just across a river from Canada.

An Islamic extremist who never should have been allowed on an airliner in the first place had passed through security with a high explosive. He likely would have killed all 289 aboard were it not for his bungling and the heroism of a Dutch passenger.

"The system worked," Napolitano had the nerve to say.

No doubt some Canadians discerned a pattern when Napolitano responded to the ensuing uproar over her remark by saying she had been "taken out of context."

"Our system did not work in this instance," Napolitano now said.

In both instances, Napolitano flip-flopped after saying something ludicrous while playing politics. That is particularly reprehensible in time of war, but it is not surprising, for she is a politician by profession.

By all accounts, she was a pretty good governor in her adopted state of Arizona, certainly much better than the one we have in her native New York.

She is a disgrace as the secretary of homeland security. That job should be held by somebody who has some working expertise and no agenda other than to keep the innocent as safe as possible.

I hate to admit it, but President George W. Bush was right to appoint a cop to head homeland security. He just picked the wrong one when he chose Bernard Kerik, who is also a crook.

In making that mistake, Bush was no doubt looking for some of the magic that has transformed New York into America's safest big city, a phenomenon in which Kerik played no significant role.

Our new President could get some of that magic from those who really did make it happen.

Our present police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, is one.

Former NYPD Commissioner and LAPD chief William Bratton is another.

There is also John Timoney, who went from the NYPD to become top cop in Philadelphia and then Miami.

Put one of those truly talented souls in charge and the system might actually work, eh?



It's the incompetence, stupid

Rich Lowry

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_the_incompetence_stupid_Smobhu7UYi3kwiQzGPHnMP

Janet Napolitano is impressed with Janet Napolitano's work. In an instantly notorious statement on CNN over the weekend, the Homeland Security secretary said "the system worked" when a man boarded a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with explosives in his underwear that he couldn't quite manage to ignite.

Does "the system" count on all explosive devices smuggled onto international flights not detonating? When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set himself on fire while trying to blow up the plane and kill its 278 passengers, a Dutch filmmaker leapt on him, ripped a smoldering object from near his crotch and put it out with his bare hands. Or as Napolitano put it, "Everybody played an important role here."



Napolitano: Letting airline passengers fend for themselves.

This is a bizarre division of labor. You carefully pack to avoid any liquids more than 3 ounces. You stand in a security line. You take off your shoes. You get your fingernail clippers confiscated. You run your carry-on bags through an X-ray machine and walk through a metal detector, with an extra wanding if your spare pocket change sets off the alarm. And after all that, it's still your responsibility to subdue the terrorist in the next row trying to set off the pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) secreted on his body.

Napolitano immediately took back her praise of "the system," in a tacit acknowledgment that its only success was in demonstrating its own industrial-scale irrationality. At a cost of $30 billion since 2004, we've implemented security procedures ideally suited to harassing innocent passengers who only want to travel from Point A to Point B with minimal inconvenience. It's only the terrorists we have trouble handling.

If a terrorist is a proverbial needle in a haystack, Abdulmutallab constituted something closer to a sledgehammer. His father, a powerful banker in Nigeria, warned the US Embassy that he might be dangerous. This didn't prompt any further investigation, but got Abdulmutallab entered into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, a huge database that evidently does nothing to enjoin terrorists from traveling to America on missions of mass murder.

Even by the most basic standard of post-9/11 travel, Abdulmutallab should have set off alarms. He reportedly bought his ticket in cash and only had carry-on luggage. Never mind his travel history that included a trip to Yemen, or the revocation of his visa by the British when they suspected he tried to enter Britain on false pretenses. For all this, Abdulmutallab -- who maintains he worked with al Qaeda in Yemen on his plot -- got nary an extra pat.

The initial reaction to the incident has been more of the same: beside-the-point inconveniences in the grand airport-security charade. On the latest international flights to the US, passengers have been kept from standing up during the last hour and have had to stow all personal items, including books and the airline's own pillows. What do the new rules say should be done with the PETN?

It's never going to be easy for a free society to defend itself from furtive enemies, but that doesn't excuse willful obliviousness. We should move to a more Israel-style security system, devoting more energy to the intelligence and on-the-spot assessments necessary to focus on the greatest potential threats. And we should resist the civil libertarians who create pressure to narrow down the most meaningful watch lists and work to forestall adoption of more effective whole-body imaging scanners.

For its part, the Obama administration should frankly acknowledge that the "war on terror" wasn't a Bush-Cheney construct to scare and manipulate the American public. Speaking from Hawaii, Obama sounded stalwart yesterday, but it took him 72 hours to address the incident. The administration's body language says it would prefer to keep counterterrorism on a back-burner while it engages in the more important work of nationalizing health care and fighting global warming.

The same Napolitano who initially portrayed the near-miss on Christmas as a vindication did her utmost to avoid even uttering the word "terror" at a congressional hearing earlier this year, preferring the absurd neologism "man-caused disaster."

That's a phrase best applied to the shoeless shuffle at the airport-security lines, not the heinous acts of war plotted by Abdulmutallab and his inevitable successors.



No pastels in Florida

Donald Lambro

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/28/no-pastels-in-florida//print/

Conservative challenger Marco Rubio has surged into a dead heat in his Florida Senate campaign against establishment-backed Charlie Crist in a primary battle that is the first major test of the growing power of the "tea party" movement.

Mr. Rubio's once-underdog candidacy, which has been trailing far behind the better-financed Republican governor for months, is suddenly catching fire, helped by the conservative Club for Growth and an army of tea party activists drawn by his unequivocal anti-tax, anti-big government campaign.

The latest Rasmussen telephone poll showed Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and Florida's former speaker of the House, was tied among Republican primary voters, 43-43 percent.

Mr. Crist, in his first term as governor, is the hand-picked candidate of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, recruited and all but endorsed by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the NRSC's chairman. His decision to run was widely seen as nailing down the open Senate seat for the Republican Party, and Mr. Rubio's challenge was dismissed as a lost cause by the party's right flank.

But Mr. Rubio unleashed a relentless barrage of attacks that challenged Mr. Crist's conservative credentials, charging he had raised taxes to balance the state's budget and embraced President Obama's nearly $800 billion, waste-ridden, economic spending stimulus that was overwhelmingly opposed by Republicans in Congress.

For months, the nonstop attacks seemed to throw Mr. Crist on the defensive. So much so that at one point he denied he had endorsed Mr. Obama's big-spending plan to get the economy moving again. But then the Club for Growth came in, running TV ads across the state showing Mr. Crist standing next to Mr. Obama at a Florida rally, fully endorsing the big spending pork-barrel bill.

The TV ads drew blood and elevated Mr. Rubio into a major candidate to be reckoned with, boosting his support from the Republican Party's conservative base and tea party activists and organizers in particular.

Things went from bad to worse this month when Mr. Crist was asked if he would support Mr. Obama's recent call - in the face of a 10 percent jobless rate - for a second similar stimulus spending bill. "It depends what's in it," he said.

Mr. Crist has badly underestimated the growing conservative mood of his state's electorate toward Mr. Obama's big-government policies, even for a so-called jobs bill in the midst of a deepening recession.

"What's really exceptional at this stage of Mr. Obama's presidency is the extent to which the public has moved in a conservative direction on a range of issues," writes veteran pollster Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center at PewResearch.org.

Surprisingly, this trend has "emanated as much from the middle of the electorate as from the highly energized conservative right," Mr. Kohut says - producing a "backlash against Obama policies that have expanded the role of governnment."

The latest Rasmussen poll in the Crist-Rubio contest reflect Mr. Kohut's findings. Earlier this year, soon after Mr. Crist announced his candidacy, he was flying high and all but assured of the GOP's nomination for the Senate.

But as Mr. Rubio and the Club for Growth stepped up their fall ad campaign, Mr. Crist's support began dropping from 53 percent in August to 49 percent in October. "The fact that Mr. Crist has fallen below 50 percent in a primary against a lesser known opponent suggests potential vulnerability," Mr. Rasmussen said at the time.

Mr. Rubio is now viewed "very favorably" by 34 percent of likely primary voters, up from 18 percent who said that this summer. Mr. Crist, on the other hand, has seen his "very favorable" ratings drop to 19 percent.

"I believe voters are starting to realize that there are vast differences between me and Charlie Crist on a number of important issues," Mr. Rubio said in a statement.

A few national party leaders have begun to break for Mr. Rubio, including South Carolina Jim DeMint. Republican campaign strategist Karl Rove noted in his Wall Street Journal column last week that he has donated to Mr. Rubio's campaign, but says either Mr. Crist or Mr. Rubio "will likely hold the seat."

But there is an even larger political struggle going on here for the soul of the Republican Party and its future ideological direction.

The party's base has, to a large degree, turned against candidates that are too often willing to water down party principles for the sake of political expediency - as Mr. Crist has done on Mr. Obama's failed stimulus plan. Like the campaign theme struck by Ronald Reagan in his 1976 campaign against President Gerald Ford, the Republican bedrock base wants the party's policy positions to be drawn in bold colors, not "pale pastels."

Andrew Kohut's polling analysis accurately portrays the rightward trend of the nation's electorate. There is a huge backlash building against the far-left policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress.

Mr. Obama's job approval numbers fell this month into the 40s. Congress' approval ratings are in the teens. The current outlook in the House is a Democratic loss of 20 to 30 seats, and elections handicapper Stuart Rothenberg says "Republican Senate gains are now looking likely."

Donald Lambro is chief political correspondent of The Washington Times.



How Big Are You? Keep life in perspective!

Posted by Trayan

http://www.hemuz.org/Space/How-Big-Are-You-Keep-life-in-perspective

In case there is anybody out there that sweats the small stuff!

Now, THIS is really fascinating - it's rather dazzling to see it presented this way.

Beyond our sun it's a big universe.

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky.

It is more than 1000 light years away.

Now how big are you?
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Now TRY to wrap your mind around this.........

This is a Hubble Telescope Ultra Deep Field Infrared View of countless "ENTIRE" Galaxies Billions of Light-Years Away.

Below is a close up of one of the darkest regions of the photo above.

Humbling, isn't it?

Now How Big Are You?

And how big are the things that upset you today?

Keep life in perspective. and don't sweat the small stuff!



"The e-mail Bag"

You might be a redneck .....

http://www.eons.com/groups/topic/1952299-You-might-be-a-redneck-?page=1

You might be a redneck if: It never occurred to you to be offended by the phrase, 'One nation, under God.'

You might be a redneck if: You've never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public places.

You might be a redneck if: You still say ' Christmas' instead of 'Winter Festival.'

You might be a redneck if: You bow your head when someone prays.

You might be a redneck if: You stand and place your hand over your heart when they play the National Anthem.

You might be a redneck if: You treat our armed forces veterans with great respect, and always have.

You might be a redneck if: You've never burned an American flag, nor intend to.

You might be a redneck if: You know what you believe and you aren't afraid to say so, no matter who is listening..

You might be a redneck if: You respect your elders and raised your kids to do the same.

You might be a redneck if: You'd give your last dollar to a friend.