The rest of the IPT story is here.

Kudos, appreciation and a snappy salute to GOP Reps. Myrick, Hockstra, Shadegg, Broun and Franks for looking out for our country.

Q: So, why did Barack Now-You-See-Hussein-Now-You-Don't Obama sit down with an Arab news network for his first presidential interview?

A: He wanted to address his new constituency. More on that in this week's column here.

From GoV, translation from De Telegraaf, courtesy VH:

Bloomberg supports Wilders Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York yesterday came to the aid of PVV leader Geert Wilders by making a strong stand for freedom of expression. In the presence of State Secretary Frans Timmermans [PvdA, Socialist, Labour], the Dutch ambassador to the U.S. Renée Jones-Bos and Mayor Cohen of Amsterdam [PvdA, Socialist, Labour], Bloomberg said he was absolutely against any form of restriction on freedom of expression. “Of course I do not appreciate everything I hear. But when you start restricting that, you step on a slippery slope. Before you know it, you can no longer say what you want,” Bloomberg said at the kickoff of NY400, a year of celebrations in which a central theme...

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Michelle Malkin notes (via ABC's Jake Tapper) that the White House celebrated the passage of its $1.1 Trillion Porkulus Package with a steak-and-martini dinner for 26 comprising the House and Senate leadership.  

Aside from the bill itself, nothing wrong with that--except, as Tapper reported in a detail worthy Tom Wolfe-ian elaboration, that the steak was "wagyu steak," a  cut (usually known as Kobe) that goes for a whopping $89/lb.

"Would you care for molten gold with your wagyu, President Obama?"

Not that I would want the White House to serve up franks 'n' beans or anything, but for a nation-bankrupting bill that is supposed to stave off economic...

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House Dems (244) lay biggest egg in history, voting 244-188 for Obama's Porkulus Package.

House GOP (188) sits on its hands.

Attaboy!

Photo: Fox confirmed as Secretary of the Henhouse

What Cliff Kincaid has been reporting at AIM about the USTreasury is the stuff of revolution, or at least Brechtian-style theater: thieving Wall Street bankers in cahoots with corrupted government officials gobbling up billions on behalf of global corporations and enemy (Chinese) interests.The twist on the stereotype though is that the corrupted government officials are Democrats of the change-you-can-believe-in school.

Here's Cliff's latest: "Wall Street's Marxist Presidential Pawn"

There was big news out of the U.S. Senate on Monday evening but the major media were not paying much attention. By approving exposed tax cheat Timothy Geithner as President Obama’s Treasury Secretary, the Democratic Party was confirming and advertising itself as the party of Wall Street.  

One day earlier, during an appearance on the CBS...

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More to come (natch), but here's something to chew on from an exchange between Al-Arabiya reporter Hisham Melhem and The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who describes Melhem as his "brother," which I don't really get. (I mean, are they actual brothers or metaphorical "brothers"? No explanation.) Anyway, Goldberg writes:

My brother Hisham Melhem of al-Arabiya television scored an important interview with Barack Obama yesterday, so I called him to say Mazel Tov and to ask him if he thinks the interview signals a shift in rhetoric or a shift in substance.  Here's what he had to say: Jeffrey Goldberg: What have you been hearing so far about the interview? Hisham Melhem: I think many people in the Muslim world, ordinary people, were, judging by our website, sensed a different tone, that Obama was trying to reach out to them....

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From Dutch News Service:  Wilders Surges in Poll after Prosecution Order   THE HAGUE, 27/01/09 - MP Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) has advanced strongly in the favour of voters, according to pollster Maurice de Hond. If elections were held now, the PVV would win 20 seats, three more than last week and 11 more than in the Lower House now. "The ruling of the Amsterdam appeal court that the OM (Public Prosecutor's Office) has to prosecute Geert Wilders has had a clear positive effect on the size of the electoral support for the PVV," according to De Hond. With 20 seats, the PVV is the same size as the conservatives (VVD) this week. "This is the highest score for the PVV since September 2007." Centre-left D66 also gained this week, by 1 seat to 17. It had also matched this high score in December. "Before that, D66 only...

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LTC Allen West (USAR),  a member of the Board of Advisors to the International Free Press Society and a likely GOP Congressional candidate in 2010 (cross your fingers), tells the Western world not to roll over and play dead.

Allen writes:

I recently read of the travails of my fellow IFPS board member Geert Wilders. A day later my attention was drawn to President Barack Hussein Obama signing an executive order to shut down operations at the Guantanamo detention facility. The irony struck me that here we have the new President seeking to extend US Constitutional protections to Islamic terrorists, the enemy. We plan to provide them legal rights under the equal protection clause. Yet in...

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What would Winston Churchill say about what the Brussels Journal's Thomas Landen reveals (below) about the House of Lords? (Links in the original.)

The House of Lords is a venerable British institution, but what does one get if one accepts Muslims in? This: A member of the Lords intended to invite her colleagues to a private meeting in a conference room in the House of Lords to meet the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, an elected member of the Dutch parliament, to watch his controversial movie Fitna and discuss the movie and Mr. Wilders’ opinions with him. Barely had the invitation been sent to all the members of the House when Lord Ahmed raised hell. He threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr. Wilders from entering the House and threatened to take the colleague who was organizing the event to court. The result is that...

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Photo: At least he's good lookin'

The ever-vigilant Andrew Bostom writes in with the news from MEMRI:

"Prominent Sunni Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, Banned in U.S., Opens Washington D.C. Office of Islamist News Organization, Says It (IslamOnline) Is "The Jihad of Our Era."

Hope and change at hand.

One of Qaradawi's missions is to extend the reach of Islamic blasphemy laws around the world. In a 2006 sermon against the Danish Mohammed cartoons, he said:

The nation must rage in anger. It is told that Imam Al-Shafi' said: 'Whoever was angered and did not rage is a jackass.' We are not a nation of jackasses. We are not jackasses for riding, but lions that roar. We are lions that zealously protect their dens, and avenge affronts to their sanctities. We are not a nation of jackasses. We are a nation that should rage for the sake of Allah, His Prophet, and His book....

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An important update from The Corner by Michael G. Franc at NRO:

"Will Obama Revive the Fairness Doctrine?"

Those of us who fear a revival, directly or indirectly, of the Fairness Doctrine need to be aware of the following exchanges that occurred during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s January 15th confirmation hearing for Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder. The first comes from the senior Republican on the panel, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania:

SPECTER:  Mr. Holder, there had been suggestions for a revival of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, and my question to you is do you think that as a matter of public policy, the so-called Fairness Doctrine ought to be reinstated?   HOLDER:  Senator, that's a toughie. I've not given an awful lot of thought to. If I could perhaps...

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An update from Thomas Landen at the Brussels Journal:

 

The Jordanian Muslim organization “The Messenger of Allah Unites Us” states that the Kingdom of Jordan is about to issue an international arrest warrant against the Dutch politician Geert Wilders “within the next ten days.” Jordan wants to put Mr. Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament and the leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, on trial for producing Fitna, a documentary film about Koranic verses advocating violence against Jews and other non-Muslims. (See Fitna here.)...

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News of Geert Wilders' criminal prosecution was just breaking as I sat down Wednesday morning to write this week's column. But then there was that happening on the National Mall that had taken place the day before, which ultimately formed the column's basis.

In an epochal sense, the two events are connected. Barack Hussein Obama, telegraphing an openness to the Islamic world even in his Inaugural address (a first), will tilt US policy toward that world (this is already happening with Obama's first phone call to a foreign leader going to the PA's Mahmoud Abbas, his executive order to close Gitmo, and his call to Israel to open its border with Gaza). Wilders is being prosecuted because of Holland's tilt to the Islamic world, which compels the tiny...

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From the sharp pen of the Baron at Gates of Vienna (links in the original):

It’s important to remember that Geert Wilders is not the first European politician to be prosecuted for telling the truth about Islam, nor will he be the last. Last November I reported on the case of Susanne Winter, an Austrian politician and member of Parliament for the FPÖ, who was charged with incitement for public statements she made about Islam. As a reminder, here’s the description of her “crimes”: “In today’s system” the Prophet Muhammad would be considered a “child molester,” apparently referring to his marriage to a six-year-old child. She also said that it is time for Islam to be “thrown back where it came from, behind the Mediterranean.” Yesterday Susanne Winter was convicted of the...

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Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal and the International Free Press Society has tied in the Wilders prosecution for Fitna and related statements on Islam to a similar judicial travesty in Belgium. He further points out that among the nine (count' em, 9) complaints against Wilders' freedom of speech in Holland  one came from a Mrs. Els Lucas. And who is Mrs. Els Lucas? Paul explains that she is "a member of the governing Labor party, a political opponent of Mr. Wilders’ PVV party, and a party which is rapidly losing its blue-collar voting base to the PVV."

Gee, you don't suppose she was trying to kneecap--theoretically, of course--a political rival...? 

The case against Mr. Wilders in the Netherlands bears a striking resemblance to the...

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Photo: Gettyburg Address, not the Obama Inaugural

From the American Thinker on Barack Obama and the difference between being "equal" and being "created equal":

Coupling Paul's first letter to the early church at Corinth with words from the Declaration of Independence, President Obama said, "the time has come to set aside childish things" and carry forward the "God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."



Lincoln more accurately quoted the Declaration of Independence at Gettysburg when he spoke of a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  The difference between "are equal" and "are created equal" is crucial to understanding President...

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Over the past 24 hours I've been helping the International Free Press Society rev itself up into fighting form a little sooner and a little quicker than expected (while simultaneously writing this week's column). The occasion was yesterday's ominous, outrageous announcement by a Dutch appeals court ordering a criminal prosecution of Geert Wilders for what is known in multicult-speak as hate speech. You can read about the free press society's campaign in defense of Wilders at our brand new website. You will also find information there about donating to...

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Byron York parses the flim flam at the Geithner confirmation hearing today. In essence, it's a bum's rush to, well, rush the bum through to Treasury, no questions answered. Byron writes:

At the hearing today, Geithner avoided some fundamental questions about his failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.  Geithner came to the hearing with a well-rehearsed self-criticism — he should have been more careful, he told the senators — but he simply would not answer some questions about his state of mind at the time he was not paying his taxes.  Given that, plus a number of other issues involved in the nomination — TARP, anyone? — a number of committee members had a lot of questions they wanted to submit to Geithner in writing.  So, after today's hearing ended sometime between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., Baucus decreed that all written questions had to be submitted by 5 p.m. Geithner is required to submit his answers in writing by 10 a.m. Thursday — that is, tomorrow — and then senators will be given about half an hour to assess those answers before they vote on Geithner's nomination....

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Sen. John Cornyn, bless him, refused to pass along Hillary Clinton's State Department nomination via unanimous consent, requiring senators to vote on the record and maybe even debate her innumerable conflicts of interest. Not John McCain.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Sen. John McCain unexpectedly lent a hand to Sen. Hillary Clinton on the Senate floor today, calling for her quick confirmation as secretary of State without a lengthy roll-call vote.

If I hear the word "maverick" one more time....

UPDATE: Clinton confirmed. Despite McCain's apple-polishing efforts, there was a vote (if you can call it that). The final senatorial tally was 94 to 2.

Who were the Loyal Two? Not Cornyn, weirdly enough (Wonder what Mrs. Soprano, I mean, Clinton  promised him yesterday while squeezing...

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Geert Wilders calls today--the day Amsterdam's Appeals Court ruled that the Dutch parliamentarian should be prosecuted for his statements about Islam--a "black day me and for freedom of speech."

The two--Wilders and freedom of speech--have become synonomous. He   must therefore be defended if freedom of speech is to endure.

Correction, courtesy a sharp-eyed reader: Wilders must be defended if freedom of speech is to be resurrected.

Robert Spencer comments and features Fitna here.

Rev. Wright, call your office.

From Rev. Joseph Lowery's Inaugural "benediction":

"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

So much for that post-racial tingle.

My good friend Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal writes in today with the appalling news that the US Embassy in Brussels called up the Vlaams Belang party this morning to rescind the invitation it had extended to VB members to attend the Obama Inauguration at the US Embassy this afternoon.

A small lens through which to view today's Cosmic Happening? Not on your life. This crude, offensive act to isolate politically a democratic party defined by its defense of the West against Islamization may well be the Obama administration's first (un)diplomatic act. This doesn't just bode ill for the defense of the West in general, not to mention its defenders; it sets in motion a new policy of actively disgracing our friends and actively appeasing our enemies.

As Paul explains:

Three weeks ago the Vlaams Belang members of the Foreign Affairs committee of the Belgian Senate were invited to attend the Inauguration at the US Embassy in Brussels this afternoon. The invitation was sent to all the members of the Foreign Affairs committee of the Belgian Senate. This morning the US embassy rang the party to say that the invitation to the VB members has been withdrawn. The VB politicians are not welcome (though the politicians from other parties are). The US Embassy says the invitations to the VB were a "mistake."

...

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After outlining in reverential (natch) tones our prez-to-be's utterly unremarkable (dare I say middlebrow?) reading tastes on the frontpage of the NYT--the backpage was a full-page ad for the upcoming New York Times-written-photographed-and-published-book Obama:The Historic Journey--critic Michiko Kakutani compares them to those of still-President Bush and, well, find them wanting (what else?):

Mr. Obama tends to take a magpie approach to reading — ruminating upon writers’ ideas and picking and choosing those that flesh out his vision of the world or open promising new avenues of inquiry.

His predecessor, George W. Bush, in contrast, tended to race through books in competitions with Karl Rove (who recently boasted that he beat the president by reading 110 books to Mr. Bush’s 95 in 2006), or passionately embrace an author’s thesis as an idée fixe.

Come on. If Obama "raced through"...

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George W. Bush has (finally) pardoned--correction, COMMUTED THE SENTENCES of--Ramos and Capion. Not three cheers, but I'm glad Bush freed the men from jail. As I understand it, however, their felony convictions stand.

Now, Mr. President-for-23-more-hours: Please pardon Sgt. Evan Vela. The White House confirmed to Vela's father earlier this month that the president was seriously reviewing the case,

----

New question: Why would the White House send such a letter to Vela's family? That is, couldn't the White House have made its decision, up or down, without injecting what seems likely to have been false hope into the Vela family's ordeal? I don't get George Bush.

This week's column examines the Republican approach to Hillary during her Senate confirmation hearing and finds it, um, ... lacking.

Not that anyone seems to have noticed.

Michelle Malkin, meanwhile, is commendably outraged over the tax-evading Treasury nominee here.

Devotes of the show 24 will have learned that this season's mission is being run as an extra-governmental effort mounted by remnants of the now-disbanded CTU. The US government, it seems, has been thoroughly corrupted by forces working in cahoots with some pretend-nation in Africa. Kind of cockamamie, natch, but I am afraid the government corruption part rings all too true. And how many good guys are there? Not counting Jack Bauer, three.

Unfortunately,...

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NRO's Byron York takes a trip down memory lane today, noting that Vincent Foster would have been 64 today had he not committed suicide in 1993, apparently, over pressures linked to the Clinton White House Travel Office scandal. Byron writes:

The Travel Office affair was a serious matter, one that warranted serious investigation and one that should have resulted in people in the Clinton administration losing their jobs.  It was an outrage that Billy Dale, the longtime Travel Office head, was prosecuted.  (He was almost instantly acquitted.)  But Foster's suicide put it all in a pretty terrible perspective. And even though the scandal went on for quite a while, it seems very long ago now, especially when you look at all the Clinton types who are playing enormously important roles in today's affairs. Hillary Clinton — who the independent counsel concluded gave "factually false" testimony on the Travel Office firings — is going to become Secretary of State.  Her husband is an international statesman.  John Podesta runs an influential think tank and has orchestrated the Obama transition.  George Stephanopoulos is sitting in David Brinkley's chair at ABC News.  And Vince Foster has been dead for 15 years.  Make of it what you will.

...

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Jeffrey Imm writes in with an AP report about the January 21 Inaugural prayer service to take place at the National Cathedral in Washington. Among those officiating will be Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). This is an outrage and should be stopped.

What's ISNA? As I have written (here, for instance), the US government has identified ISNA   as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. Actually, the Muslim Brotherhood itself has identified ISNA as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. And the Muslim Brotherhood is all about extending Islamic law globally--even in America. According to its 1991 grand strategy document,...

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In prep for the Obama Years, bear this in mind (via Newsbusters):

The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day.

Kind of they way he selects pundits for dinner?

In this address on the abysmal failures of the Antwerp government to control Muslim rioting against the Jewish community on New Year Eve, Filip Dewinter of the Vlaams Belang exemplifies the vibrant political opposition to Islamization and multiculturalism that does exist, despite overwhelming Islamo-socialist opposition, on the continent in such countries as Belgium, Holland and Denmark, as well as in Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Austria. Great Britain, alas, is worse than pathetic. French opposition is in disarray. Such robust articulation of these crucial issues is not to be heard in American politics, but we can take heart--and lessons--from this European example.

From Gates of Vienna, which has provided a translation from the original Dutch as published on Filip Dewinter's website of Dewinter's speech to the Antwerp City Council about the Arabic European League (AEL) demonstration and riots of December 31, 2008....

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Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) on Hill's conflict of Bill's interest:

"This senator thinks that your husband's Clinton Global Initiative is an extremely positive thing to have in a relationship with the Secretary of State.. It only lends additional credibility."

If it only lends credbility, then what's that funny smell?

More on why Hillary shouldn't be Secretary of State from the AP:

Secretary of State nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton intervened at least six times in government issues directly affecting companies and others that later contributed to her husband's foundation, an Associated Press review of her official correspondence found.

Why isnt that the end of this nomination? Why isn't this the end of this career? I think the answer has something to do with the fact that the body politic, having watched the Clintons erupt in raging scandal and outlast the inferno, has itself been cauterized by the whole experience and is senseless of the subject...

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How's that SOFA working out?

From the Washington Post, "US Troops Uneasy as Rules Shift in Iraq: Americans Must Coordinate with Sometimes Unreliable Local Counterparts":

BAGHDAD -- First Lt. Ilya Ivanov's initial mission of 2009 began with a crucial, if irksome, task: rousing an Iraqi army sergeant out of bed.

After trekking through dark, trash-filled streets in Sadr City, as the crackle of gunfire and the wails of stray dogs echoed in the distance, the 24-year-old infantry platoon leader arrived at the Iraqi army station one hour before midnight on New Year's Eve. The Iraqi soldier was sleeping placidly...

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A favorite reader writes in with a pointed list of questions about the shameful spectacle of London police in full retreat from a jihadist mob. His observations come out of his own experience, as he puts it, as a "retired street cop who went to a few mob scenes, complete with rocks and bottles thrown at us," adding: "It's not a pleasant sensation." He writes:   Well, words are difficult to find.  I've watched the fleeing Metro Police and the flying missiles, sticks, traffic cones and whatever else was thrown at the police;  and I've listened to the mob chanting "Free, free Palestine" and calling the turn-tail police "cowards."

1)  Where were the exploding tear gas cannisters the police have in their arsenal?

2)  Where were the riot shotgun teargas grenade launchers?

3)  Where were the police attack K-9s and handlers?

4)  Where were the water cannons?

5)  Where...

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Via Jihadwatch.

Last time I read about Prince Harry it was because the media had blown the lid off his secret deployment to Afghanistan's war-torn Helmand Province. As a young officer who had pressed for active duty, "Harry Wales" was serving there without public knowledge to avoid drawing untenable risk to himself and his men by providing jihadists with a prize to send any "martyr" rocketing to "paradise" for his "72 virgins" (or raisins, whatever): the fair-haired head of an infidel prince of Britain. Of course, once the news blackout was cut short, so was Harry's hitch. Which was really low and rotten of all leakers and media concerned.

Now, Harry's back in the news, again the short-ended object of leakers and media malevolence, but this time also as Britain's Biggest Political Whipping Boy. Harry has been excoriated as a "racist" up and down the British establishment for an unguarded piece of home video shot during...

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Kensington--home of the Israeli embassy in London and Peter Pan

As the world focuses on the potential for urban warfare in Gaza City, the world ignores a far more perilous kind of urban warfare now underway from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale to Toronto to London to Barcelona to Milan to Berlin to Copenhagen to Oslo. Here, roiling mobs of Muslims in the West are taking jihad to a new stage of threat, violence and political blackmail. It is the hallmark of our decadence, however, that even as our governments and elites fret for Hamas in Gaza, the crown jewels of the West, our rich and storied cities, are under assault by the jihadist proponents of Hamas in our midst. Their agenda is clear: the destruction and subjugation of Judeo-Christian civilization. In the short term, that means cutting off Israel from the West, isolating Jews from their own countries,...

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From a book review of "The Black Girl Next Door" by Jennifer Baszile in yesterday's NYT:

Jennifer Baszile grew up in Palos Verdes Estates, an elite and nearly all-white suburb of Los Angeles in the 1970s and ’80s, and she and her family were sometimes called, without a hint of irony, “the real live Huxtables from ‘The Cosby Show.’ ”

They seemed to have it all figured out. Ms. Baszile’s father ran a successful metals business and drove a Mercedes; her mother was known for her volunteer work. They had a large house a block from the ocean; they were attractive and well dressed; they took expensive vacations. Ms. Baszile’s older sister was her high school’s first black homecoming queen; the author was the first black student-body president. (Today Ms. Baszile is Yale’s first black female professor of history.)

...

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This week's column, up at Townhall.com., peels back the cosmetic layer of respectability and inevitability affixed to Hillary Clinton's nomination to become Secretary of State. Chi-coms, cattle futures, bimbo eruptions,  Travelgate aside--it is Bill's pathological post-White House life as a suck-up to the world's despots to fund his vanity-foundation that has wholly compromised Hillary's capacity to represent this nation as an independent actor.  

"Rubber Stamp for Hillary" If I were Gov. Bill Richardson, still smarting somewhere in New Mexico over his lost Cabinet post in the incoming Obama administration, I would be plenty sore about Sen. Hillary Clinton. According to all rosy media predictions, Clinton is destined to sail through Senate confirmation hearings and become secretary of state next week, a veritable regatta's worth of clapping senators trailing in her wake....

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The Guardian reports: "The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush's ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say."

Photo: IDF Capt. Yehonatan Netanel, who was killed during operations in the Gaza Strip.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Yehezkel Laing describes what happened after he heard a neighbor's name read in a radio report on Israel's war dead:

I pray it's just a coincidence, but to be safe I drive by the street where they live. If it is him, they would have notices on the street. And as I slowly drive by I look at the houses as they pass, but I see nothing - no notices here, nor here, nor here, and I am already at the end of the street. And then I see it, all over the Jerusalem stone wall, mourning announcements, and the unthinkable has happened - Yonatan is gone. THE FAMILY is gathered at the next door...

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Photo: Anti-Israel demonstror carries a poster of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Brussels, not only the capital of Belgium, but the capital of the European Union.

Bart Debie writes in with a hair-raising account called "Gaza in Belgium": The conflict in Gaza where Israelis are defending themselves against the non-stop missile-attacks of Hamas-terrorists has been brought into and fought over in a lot of European cities. In Belgium violent incidents have been reported these last 2 weeks and Jewish citizens have become the victims of violence, threats, arson and even an attempt at murder. ...

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The Hindu of India broke several stories based on a dossier the Indian government just released pertaining to the jihadist assault on Mumbai that left 163 people killed at the end of November.

One of those stories, picked up by news organizations around the world, was about conversations the Indian authorities were able to intercept during the atrocities between the ten terrorists--or "gunmen," as the MSM likes to style them--and their handlers in Pakistan.

The dossier includes selected excerpts of exchanges marked by their fiendish, bloodthirsty cruelty. The media, of course, has chosen to excerpt these excerpts. Guess what goes either missing entirely or gets buried in the B-matter?

Islam. While these few excerpts released by the Indian...

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Photo: Munich 2009

My friend Erick Stakelbeck at Christian Broadcast News has put together a must-see video tour the Western world, from Paris to New Orleans, from Greece to California, showing video footage of the blatant, noisy, unsheathed anti-Semitism that has erupted since Israel decided 6,000 rockets was enough and attacked Hamas in Gaza. His report and broadcast are here.



Photo: Berlin 2009

Jewish schoolchildren (in Denmark) threatened by Muslims here.

"Hitler didn't do enough" (in Toronto) here.

20,000 anti-Israel demonstrators march, 300 rampage (in Paris) here.

This last report comes via Atlas Shrugs, who, on a much more positive note, reports on a very heavily attended pro-Israel march in NYC today where Robert Spencer spoke.



...

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Writing at National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy declares in static-cutting, clarion prose that "It is high time to acknowledge the failure of the fantasy that the Palestinians are legitimate actors worthy of statehood and its privileges."

Amen, brother. No hand-wringing for him.

Andy continues:

Contrary to the prevailing elite view, legitimacy is not conferred by such facile exercises as the holding of popular elections — though such exercises are not without consequences, which we will come to momentarily. There are certain minimal requirements for statehood, not least of which is accepting the right of one’s sovereign neighbor to exist. At present, no representative of the Palestinian people concedes this right to Israel. As its 1988 charter makes plain, Hamas unapologetically seeks Israel’s destruction. This is why Hamas was formed: to eradicate the Jewish state...

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Photo: Israel soldiers entering the Gaza Strip

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, "neocon" Max Boot declares:

Israelis have to discard Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous maxim: "War's objective is victory -- not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory."

They do, do they? Of course, the West in general abandoned such MacArthurian wisdom long ago--probably about the same time the general turned the well-known phrase. Before that, "victory" was an intuitive "objective" in wars including, oh, say, for example, World War II, and no one much needed Mac's reminder. 

As for Israel, never having been allowed by the world or itself, to achieve total victory over any of its jihadist neighbors, "prolonged indecision"...

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Photo: Anti-Semitic "protest" in Antwerp--and no Vlaams Belangers in sight!

Remember all those viciously, mendaciously slanderous attacks on the supposedly Nazi-minded European Right--the allegedly crypto-Jack-Booted Ones whose concerns about the Islamization Western civilization were supposed to be big fat anti-semitism in disguise--the Vlaams Belang of Flanders (Belgium), for instance?

The Baron at Gates of VIenna remembers:

"Who Defends the Jews of Antwerp."

In the nine days since Israeli operations against Hamas began, mass demonstrations against Israel and in support of “Palestine” have taken place in major cities all over the world. Some of them have escalated into violent confrontations with counter-demonstrators and the police, and attacks have been launched against Jews in the United States, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium, among other countries. Muslim immigrants...

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From Right Side News:

In an exclusive interview with Alyssa A. Lappen, Lars Hedegaard announced the December 21 formation of International Free Press Society (IFPS), following the lead of Denmark's Free Press Society, established in 2004. The founders chose Hedegaard as their president, and Diana West as vice president. Among the organization's Board of Advisers is Fitna producer Geert Wilders.

As Lars explains in the interview:

We are trying to create an organization that will defend free speech in the Western World, on the assumption that if free speech goes down where we live, it will be doomed in the rest of the world as well. The organization will be built up over the next few months. I am the president of the Danish Free Press Society, created in 2004, and a very successful organization. The enemies of free speech are organized and well financed and we have to counteract their...

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Well, Copenhagen is wonderful--but this is not (from my friend Steen via GoV):

This is a pamphlet that was distributed in Copenhagen’s Rådhusplads. GIven Denmark's exemplary record for bravely protecting its Jewish population   during World War II, such sentiments are obviously new to Denmark. Steen writes that TV2 in Denmark is reporting that there are now 23,000 Palestinians in Denmark. They sure may hate but they sure can't spell.

Newsflash from the London Telegraph:

"Hundreds of schools have banned their teachers from marking in red ink in case it upsets the children."

An excerpt:

Pupils increasingly find that the ticks and crosses on their homework are in more soothing shades like green, blue, pink and yellow or even in pencil. ... The red pen goes back further than most schools, having been developed during the mid-19th century when ammonia-based dyes became available. But the opposition to using red ink is now a worldwide trend with recent guidelines to schools in Queensland, Australia warning that the colour can damage students psychologically.

There are no set guidelines in this country on marking, and schools are free to formulate their own individual policies.

Crofton Junior School in Orpington, Kent, whose pupils are aged 7 to 11, is among hundreds to have...

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