Over at View from the Right, Lawrence Auster takes note of an intensifying  political focus on Obama's inexperience vs. Palin's inexperience. His take:

The belief that Obama's lack of experience is his most vulnerable point  reveals the stunning intellectual emptiness of the many conservatives who hold that belief. It shows an inability to oppose Obama based on the things that really matter: namely, who he is, what he stands for, what he would do as president. Very few people vote for president on the basis of the candidates' experience; they vote based on who they think would be the best person to lead the country. The Founding Fathers never spoke of number of years in office as ...

Just saw her maiden speech as GOP vice presidential pick.

Verdict: Wow.

See the video of the arrest here.

I asked my friend the retired-cop to take a look at the video of the arrest and give a professional assessment. Here's what he wrote:

For the police to legally take a physical action like this would require some sort of obstruction of the sidewalk, blocking other pedestrians from passing, or some sort of alarming physical or verbal harassment of other citizens (disorderly conduct is the catch-all phrase).  I didn't see either of those situations here as the video cut into the action.  I don't know what happened prior to the beginning of what we see on the video.

Now, as to the BCSO Deputy pushing the newsman a ...

Birthplace of Greek democracy by day...White House Rose Garden by night? So reports the New York Daily News.

He likes it.

If Obama wins, don't be surprised if the White House becomes a tear-down.

Via Jihadwatch, more evidence of the sharia-fication of England:

Muslim council chiefs ban ALL members from 'tea and sandwiches' in meetings during Ramadan

So reads the headline in the Evening Standard.  I don't think the tea and sandwich

As we await Obama and his Speech to advance his Campaign, ponder these stories about actions of the Campaign to repress Speech about Obama.

1. Attempting to shut down the Obama-Ayers commerical

2. Attempting to smear a reporter (Stanley Kurtz) researching the Obama-Ayers relationship. Hair-raising eyewitness account from

Reuters reports:  "Obama speech stage resembles ancient Greek temple." 

Or maybe Imperial Rome: All Hail Barackus Huss-heinous Obamaius!

From Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood ...

From the AP via Michelle Malkin:

DENVER (AP) - Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign.

Obama not only aired a response ad to the spot linking him to William Ayers, but he sought to block stations airing the commercial by warning station managers and asking the Justice Department to intervene. The campaign also planned to compel advertisers to pressure stations that continue to air the anti-Obama commercial.

It's the type of going-for-the-jugular approach to politics many Democrats complain that Kerry lacked and that ...

Here is this week's column as it appears in The Washington Times, the first of 125 papers that now regularly run my column.

While we're on the subject of  questions for the presidential candidates, I realize this column introduces another question for them:  What, even under the best of conditions  the US military can achieve, can the US expect to "get" out of its immeasurable investment of blood and treasure in Iraq? 

If the answer is "an ally," please explain how this can be so.

If the answer is "a bulwark against Iran,&am ...

Robert Spencer poses key questions for the presidential candidates.

1. What would you do to deal with the national security aspect of immigration? With plans afoot to bring large groups of Iraqis, including Iraqi Muslims, into the United States, what kind of screening will you implement to try to ensure that we are not importing jihad terrorists into the country? Will you reevaluate immigration levels from Muslim countries based on recognition of the fact that there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist sympathizer or potential jihadist?

2. Forty percent of the foreign jihadists fighting against American troops in Iraq come from a putative ally of the United States, Saudi Arabia. The Kingd ...

If the Bright Idea behind the US surge was, in essence, to Surge 'Till They Merge--meaning, provide the requisite security conditions under which Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis and  Kurds  and, presumbly, remnant Christians still not ethnically cleansed by the above, would achieve "reconciliation"--we may have hit a wall.

Not in providing the requisite security conditions: That is the successful part of the surge story. The dodgy bit comes from the misbegotten twist of so-called strategic thinking that removed chances of ultimate US success from US hands, entrusting it instead to what we blithely (arrogantly and ignorantly) assumed would be the Iraqi reaction to enhanced security: the "reconciliation" of warring Iraqi parties. The surge succeeded, improving overall security conditions in ...

The Washington Post weighs in, lightly, on "The Jewel of Medina"  debacle. In recounting the story--by now much blogged on and written about by Yours Truly--they start describing the author's experience thus:

She started writing a fictionalized story of Aisha, a young and much-beloved wife of Muhammad. Seven drafts later, in April 2007, Random House gave Jones a $100,000 contract for "The Jewel of Medina" and a sequel.

Aisha wasn't just "young"; she was six.

I mostly read this stuff, so I haven't actually seen McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, but he's scored twice in 24 hours with some target-nailing responses to the Obama campaign: first here, and now this:

From National Review's Byron York writing at The Corner:

From McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, in response to the Obama campaign's new offensive on John McCain's houses:

Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacatio ...

Photo: Major General Hammond apologizing for the Koran sniper incident.

I was on a plane to Europe on June 6, the day this column by Col. Hunt appeared on the Fox News website, and missed it until someone sent it to me this morning. It's about the Koran Sniper incident, which, I am reminded, took place at the end of May. When I looked up my own two columns on the subject, I was actually surprised at how recently t ...

Responding to an Obama commercial linking John McCain with the Abramoff scandal, a McCain spokesman comes back good and strong. ABC's Jake Tapper reports:

“Barack Obama’s ad is ridiculous," responded McCain spox Brian Rogers. "Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.

“However, if Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched. Mr. Ayers ...

The Gates doctrine?

Remember back in 2003 when Turkey refused to allow US troops passage over Turkey into Northern Iraq? That meant no Northern front in Iraq, as well as  creating a logistical scramble.

Well, as the MEMRI Turkish Media Blog reports, Turkey's done it again: "Turkey once again rejected America’s request to allow passage through the Bosphorus straits into the Black Sea for U.S. vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Georgia. Similarly Turkey denied permission to NATO naval forces to use the straits for deployment in the Black Sea...."

So much for Turkey's NATO membership.

From the New Statesman via Gates of Vienna's News Feed: A report on Carla Del Ponte's disturbing new memoir, which lays out a case against the injustices and fabrications that the US-led international community brought to bear in its intervention in Kosovo.The book, which has so far been published in Switzerland and Italy, isn't scheduled for US (Random House, oh no!) and UK publication until January 2009.< ...

Case in point: How jihad terrorism--and the threat of jihad terrorism--makes a nation-state into a dhimmi state. From IsraelNationalNews.com:

In a letter appearing in the weekend edition of the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy.

Cossiga wrote that the government of the late Prime Minister Aldo Moro reached a "secret non-belligerence pact between the Italian state and Pa ...

Why won't the University of Illinois at Chicago allow inquiring minds--or, rather, inquiring mind (NR's Stanley Kurtz)--to examine its collection of documents deposited in its library relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation founded and guided by former Weather Man Bill Ayers where Barack Obama once served as board chairman?

From NRO's The Corner, an exchange between Chicago radio host Jerry Agar and a UI spokesman:

Q: Who’s the donor?

A: I’m not sure I’m at liberty to r ...

The eagle eyes at The Brussels Journal picked up on a fascinating report from the press agency AKI:

The Islamic Community in Serbia said on Monday it was not satisfied with the withdrawal of Sherry Jones’ novel, The Jewel of Medina, from the country’s bookshops. Referring to the book released by Belgrade publisher Beobuk three weeks ago, the organisation’s leader Muamer Zukorlic said it was “offensive to Muslims” and demanded all of the published copies be handed in. He also called for director Aleksandar Jasic to repent for what he had done.

Whoa, there. First of all, who, post-Milosev ...

What is the story on Barack Obama's relationship with former, but unrepetant Weather Man Bill Ayers? 

National Review's Stanley Kurtz wanted to find out examining  the extensive records of The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation  founded and guided by Ayers where Obama served as board chairman, that are stored in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The apparently close working relationship between the two men, Kurtz writes, makes it more than happenstance that Ayers and his former, unrepetant Weather Man wife, Bernadine Dohrn, hosted Obama's first kick-off political event. Kurtz continues:

This much we know from th ...

Another US soldier goes to the dock for the politically correct crime of fighting a war--this time, for the first time, in civilian court.

Reader challenge: Read this story (below) from CNSNews.com and ask yourself how long the United States will have any military  forces at all after just a couple of travesties of judicial overreach like this one. And don't stop reading before you get to the plight of the 28-year-old ex-Marine sergeant and his wife on being indicted.

Irvine, Calif. - A former Marine sergeant facing the first federal civilian prosecution of a military member accused of a war crime says there is much more at stake t ...

LIBYA TO RECEIVE REPARATIONS FOR REAGAN AIR STRIKE

I've been forgetting to mention this kind of thing so here goes:

I'll be on CNN's "Lou Dobbs This Week" at 7pm EST Saturday and Sunday. I will also be on the radio with John Batchelor on Sunday at 7:50 pm. You can hear John's new Sunday show from 7 to 10 pm on WMAL in DC, WABC in NY and KSFO in San Francisco.

Today's column:

Roars about Russia, Nary a Whisper about Islam

Amazing, how quickly the punditocracy switches maps, time zones and histories, simultaneously mastering new combinations of consonants and vowels, to report and react to a "surprise" conflict in Georgia. It's almost hard to recall that, just a few days ago, the most urgent questions confounding most of the media had to do with just how narcissistic John Edwards really is, or what the ramifications of Barack Obama's plans to announce his vice presidential pick via text message might finally be.

I went to the map store in downtown DC yesterday--the one up the street from  the White House, across Farragut Square from the New York Times bureau, around the corner from the Washington Post.... Not surprisingly, the shop had sold out of maps of Georgia. But they still had plenty of maps of the overall Caucausus region. This struck me as an apt metaphor for the way we are covering and commenting on events in Georgia--without fully considering all the implications of the bird's eye view. Here is Walid Phares on the subject, adding much-needed perspective to our assessment of unfolding events in a piece at The American Thinker called "South Ossetia: The Perfect Wrong War."&l ...

What does "Sprogbrug og Terrorbekæmpelse" mean in Danish?

"Self-Censorship as Dhimmitude."

Well, that's the loose translation. Literally, it means "Language Use and Fighting Terrorism," which is the title of another one of those suggested language guides that seek to divorce  words from reality. Problem is, this one is issued by the Danish Security Service, PET, which, Islam in Europe reports, is proposing that the Danish government refrain from using the words "war against terror" and "Jihad."

More from Islam in Europe:< ...

Starting to see the light:

Rasmussen reports that in a poll conducted on  Tuesday, August 12--four days after Russian troops moved into Georgia--61 percent of Americans said Congress should vote on offshore oil drilling ASAP.  On Sunday, August 10--two days after Russian troops moved into Georgia--64 percent of Americans said they now support offshore drilling.