By Kim Wilmath, 13 July 2003, St. Petersburg Times
TAMPA — The man who shot and killed another man who was apparently trying to break into his New Tampa apartment Sunday night has been identified as 72-year-old Marcos Antonio Trujillo, police said.
-I know what you are thinking and NO! it was not me. I do have to say; nice shootin Gramps.

Around 9:30 p.m., officers went to 6103 Coral Bay Road in Tampa where they found Carlos Humberto Ibanez Arias, 37, shot in the upper body. Police found Arias of 16217 Compton Heights Place on the ground. They tried but failed to resuscitate him, authorities said.
-Darn, remind me to get all broken up later.

It’s unclear how, or if, Arias broke into the first-floor unit. The apartment’s screened-in porch was intact Monday morning. “I never said he came in anywhere,” said Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis.

Davis said police don’t think the two knew each other.

Neighbor Les Travis, 32, said he was relaxing on his patio when he heard six shots. There were two quick shots, followed by four more, he said. But he thought they were firecrackers and didn’t investigate.
-Uh huh – anyone that has ever heard a gun fire can tell the difference between it and a firecracker.

The shooting was in a quiet apartment complex off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard called Compton Place at Tampa Palms. It’s gated but the gates were open Monday morning and there is no guardhouse.

Neighbors called the complex a safe place where most people keep to themselves.

“I’ve lived here for two years,” Travis said. “Nothing happens.” That’s why he dismissed the noise as fireworks leftover from the Fourth of July, he said.
-Ok, I’ll concede that this guy may have not been able to tell the difference but I would have.

Police are investigating the circumstances of the shooting. Trujillo called police to say he shot someone who was trying to break into his home. “Homicide detectives are working with the State Attorney’s Office to determine if the shooting was justified,” Davis said.

Florida’s “stand your ground” law allows a person who is attacked and not involved in illegal activity to meet force with force, including deadly force, if he or she believes it is necessary to prevent further harm or death.
-At 72 years old it is hard to side with the other person. At 37 years old, it would have been easy for the criminal to over power the average 72-year-old male. Thankfully, the owner had an equalizer.

A man who answered the door at the address declined to comment, saying police and his attorney advised him not to discuss the shooting. Tampa Police detectives said they don’t expect the investigation to be complete until next week.

According to the most recent public records available, Trujillo has a concealed weapons permit that expires in 2010. The state stopped making those records public after 2006.
-I do not register weapons or have a concealed weapons permit but trust me enter my home uninvited and I’ll find a gun somewhere. You can also forget the police report, I ain’t callin um and neither will you.

Arias has been arrested once in Florida, charged in 1999 with domestic violence battery in Seminole County, according to state records. Trujillo does not appear to have a criminal record in Florida.
-I feel real good after reading this story. At 72 Mr. Trujillo should be allowed to live a peaceful life.

Gee, where’s Obama?   Too busy chastising Jewish settlers and sucking up to our Islamic enemies to take notice?

Bush had the whole thing under control.  In fact, since Obama likes to claim that he “inherited” everything from Bush, one might say that Obama “inherited” a relatively peaceful Iraq, only to throw it all down the crapper.

Iraq raises church security amid bombings

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraq has increased security around all Christian places of worship after a wave of church bombings that has killed four and wounded at least 35 others.

The latest attack happened Monday morning in the northern city of Mosul, when a car bomb detonated near a church in the al-Faisaliya district, wounding three children, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

Six churches in and around Baghdad were bombed over the weekend, leaving four dead, officials told CNN. A total of 35 people have been wounded in the wave of attacks, including the three children Monday.

[...]

Members of the dwindling Christian community in Baghdad expressed fear and concern after hearing about Monday’s attack in Mosul, which followed five other attacks in Baghdad over the weekend.

“After a year and a half of calm and now the bombings and targeting of Christians is back?” said Father Saad Sirop Hanna, a Catholic priest in Baghdad. “We are concerned.”

[...]

Uhm, let’s see, now…  A year and a half of calm…  Hmm…  Sounds to me like the surge worked and Obama screwed it all up…

More “interfaith dialog” from the “religion of peace:”

Muslim extremists decapitate seven Christians in Somalia
Catholic News Agency
The Somali Muslim extremist group Al Shabaab, which is linked to Al Qaeda, has decapitated seven people accused of being Christians and “spies” in the city of Baidoa, Somalia.

According to the AGI news agency, the extremists said they were applying Sharia law in murdering the seven people. Baidoa had been a stronghold for the transitional government that re-gained control of Somalia in 2006 with the help of Ethiopian troops.

Now the government is losing increasingly greater swaths of territory to fundamentalist groups that are beginning to appear in the country. Al Shabaab, which means “youth” in Arabic, had already decapitated three other people in the region last month.

The extremist group seeks to control the country and strictly enforce Muslim law, forcing women to wear burkas and cutting of the hands of those accused of stealing, AGI reports.

When politics shape science, it is all of humanity which loses:

Temperatures are normal, it’s the Politics that are Wrong

By Dr. Tim Ball  Monday, July 13, 2009 – CFP

There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain. A.N.Whitehead.

Temperatures are normal.

In a massive irony President Obama spoke of global warming at the G8 on July 8, the same day his political hometown of Chicago recorded the coldest July 8 in 118 years.

Global temperatures are declining but politicians keep speaking of warming. After sea level rise the biggest alarmism and misinformation is about global temperatures. Unlike sea level threats temperature data is more easily understood and difficult to ignore, but that doesn’t stop extremists or politicians with a narrow political agenda.

A few events are easily dismissed as weather, but a pattern indicates a climate trend. Reports of record cold began in the Southern Hemisphere 20 years ago but became global over the last 10 years. This contradicts predictions of warming and indicates the claimed cause of human produced CO2 is wrong.

Official predictions are Consistently Wrong and Getting Worse

Temperatures declined between 1940 and 1980. From the mid-1980s to 1998 temperatures rose and the cause was identified as human addition of CO2. But the biggest temperature rise in the 20th century was prior to 1940 when human production of CO2 was minimal. Then temperatures declined when human CO2 production was increased most after 1940. The claimed mechanism did not match the data. They claimed it was addition of sulfates that caused the cooling. The problem is sulfate levels continued to rise after warming resumed in the 1980s.

Every Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) temperature prediction has been wrong. Why? For accurate predictions the temperature data is not adequate, you must know the physical causes. Clearly the IPCC understanding is wrong.

[...]  CLICK HERE to read the data and view the graphs

It is no longer possible to argue the cooling was due to the drop after the peak of 1998. They now dismiss it as a brief trend but this contradicts the IPCC 90% certainty claim that CO2 is almost the sole cause of warming of the last 20 years. That is clearly wrong yet it is the basis of all political planning, although many are having second thoughts.

Don’t confuse me with facts I’m saving the world

But nothing stops Obama as his comments in Italy show. His purpose parallels a wonderful comment about exploiting environmental misinformation for social engineering toward more government control. Christine Stewart, Canada’s former Minister of the Environment said in 1998, “No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits….Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.” It also provides a massive source of revenue.

Just a little Country and Western ditty that has a catchy tune:

Too funny:  CNN’s Don Lemmon obviously thought Obama’s treatment in Africa was “unprecedented,” or, at least, that’s the impression he wanted to give his viewing audience, and I’m sure he was expecting his guest African journalist, Nkepile Mabuse, to contribute to his Obama worshiping palaver .  But, Nkepile pops his bubble of sycophancy and sets him—and the viewers—straight:

H/T – Newsbusters

I do not find this surprising at all. I have found most people that have a problem with Christian traditions, values and teachings realize that they cannot hold themselves to that high of a standard. It is much easier for them to marginalize them and or ignore them.

12 July 2009, SKY News
Only one in 20 Brits can list all Ten Commandments and 16% cannot name any, a damning study of modern-day knowledge of the Bible has found.
-The legal system was partially based on these concepts; the lack of basic knowledge is not surprising in a culture pushing society into socialism. Religion has to be beaten back less the people develop the ability to think freely. It appears the Brits have succeeded.

Young people are especially bad at reciting stories from the Good Book, the Durham University survey of 900 believers and non-believers learned.

Half of under 45s failed to accurately recount information about Samson and Delilah, while a third were clueless when quizzed about the Feeding of the 5,000.
-I would fail that test but I do recognize the contribution that Christianity has made to building our modern societies and establishing a baseline of values to build on.

But the survey, funded by a consortium of national churches, charitable trusts and Bible agencies, also found few among the young troubled by their ignorance.

The majority ruled the Christian tome old fashioned, irrelevant and “for people like (the church-going EastEnders’ character) Dot Cotton”, the research found.
-Our own media also pushes people away from religion and encourages children to question authority and value self-fulfillment over authority.

The National Biblical Literacy Survey 2009 also revealed that 40% did not know that the tradition of giving Christmas gifts came from the story of the Wise Men bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus.

One respondent said David and Goliath was the name of a ship while another thought Daniel – who survived being thrown into the lions’ den – was The Lion King.

Despite the success of the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, more than half (57%) of those polled knew nothing about Joseph and his brothers. The researchers say their findings show public figures can no longer make assumptions about people’s knowledge of Christianity.
-I would think most public figures would also have failed this survey and none of them could name two of the Ten Commandments. I base that on seeing them ignore them all on a routine basis.

The Reverend Brian Brown of St John’s College, Durham University, said: “The Church and political leaders should take serious note of the findings and recognise that we can not make the assumptions we used to make about the Bible and its place in contemporary people’s lives and culture.”
-Good luck changing things, I know many professed Christians but few that share, teach, volunteer or help with established church activities.

The initial findings formed part of the evidence behind the Methodist Church’s decision to designate 2011 as the Year of the Bible.
-First I have heard of it. Need to work on better advertising.

Free speech is bitch; the traitorous Ali has a right to express his opinion but try and reverse this and call for U.K. muslims to be killed and you would be guilty of a hate crime.

12 July 2009, Daily Mail
A Muslim civil servant suspended amid claims that he used his personal website to justify the killing of British troops in Iraq has returned to work at the Treasury.
-Touchy issue, I readily admit my first choice to defend American values is to vote out all the corrupt incumbent politicians the next chance I get. I also have publicly admitted that I will defend my home from any and all attempts to disarm me. Not quite the same as calling for the open murder of government troops by violence but all Ali has done as far as we know is exercise his right to give his opinion. He also pointed out that his religious ideology can be used to justify it.

Azad Ali, an IT worker and president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, was suspended on full pay for six months following comments on his blog.
-This pedophile worshiper just got a free six-month vacation courtesy of U.K. taxpayers, nice. If the brits are that stupid, we should all move there.

In one post Mr Ali quoted an interview with an Islamic militant who said: ‘If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation.
-As traitorous as that sounds it follows sharia law, it is the obligation of all muslims to support the call for jihad. What gets the savages into trouble is who gives the call and what agenda they are attempting to force.

‘If I found the same soldier in Jordan I wouldn’t touch him. In Iraq he is a fighter and an occupier, here he is not. I respect this as the main instruction in my religion for jihad.’
-Here is the but…he has openly admitted to being a practicing muslim and supported islam above the U.K. His comments were not made as a representative of his government, his personal opinion are his to share as long as he did not use his position to influence anyone. If he really hates the U.K. he should be removed or man up and leave for another position that does not conflict with his beliefs.

Sir Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s most senior civil servant and patron of the Civil Service Islamic Society, ordered that Mr Ali be suspended while an investigation was carried out.
-You could pick any practicing muslim and you would probably find most support Ali’s statements. Any of them could use sharia as justification to support Ali.

It is understood there were concerns that Mr Ali may have breached the Whitehall code of practice that restricts civil servants from political activities.

The investigation has now finished and Mr Ali has returned to his job.
-He is guilty only of being a muslim. How many stories like this do authorities have to see before they realize islam and western values are not compatible?

A Treasury spokesman said last night: ‘Azad Ali is back at work. The Treasury has dealt with the matter in accordance with our disciplinary procedures. We will not comment on individual cases.’
-I’m sure all of his co-workers are glad to have him back.

Mr Ali refused to comment.
-Why should he? We all know what happened last time.

Like many armed Americans, I realize my right to own weapons is dependant of my ability to defend them from thugs, crooks, criminals and congress. I was asked by a liberal relative (sigh, we all have at least one) if I would really fight to protect my weapons. I smiled at her and showed her that my bug out bag was already packed. At the first announcement of a gun grab, it is on. Anyone stupid enough to think American gun owners are going to stay at home and wait for authorities to arrive is seriously misguided.

By Toby Harnden in Memphis, 11 Jul 2009
“I’ve sold probably four times as much in the last six months as I have in 20 years combined,” said Cliff Hunter, owner of Tommy Bronson Sporting Goods in Memphis. “Hand guns and the tactical weapons, they’re absolutely off the charts.”

Most of his gun sales used to be for hunting, or personal protection in a city riddled with crime. But just before the November election, anxiety that Mr Obama would win and enact a radical programme of curtailing gun rights began drove business right up.

“Obama’s a liberal socialist and I think he’s proven quickly how extreme he is,” he said. “When they get through healthcare, guns are on the table. They’re not talking about it but it’s going to happen.”
-If the liberals ever want to know where the line in the sand is at-just try and ban guns.

The FBI recorded a 49 per cent rise in gun background checks during election week compared to the same week a year earlier.

“Sales have been up 50, 60 per cent sinces Osama got elected,” said Jay Hill, owner of the Classic Firearms gun store in Cordova, just outside Memphis, smiling as he deliberately mixed up the name of the US president with the leader of al-Qaeda. “He speaks with a forked tongue. I don’t trust him a bit.”
-Amen, preach on brother.

Crime would always mean there was a demand for gun, especially in a state like Tennessee which is in the South and where permits to carry a concealed weapon are available.
-I always go off grid; I have no registered guns, do not order subscriptions to gun magazines and never buy ammunition from anywhere that asks for proof of identity. I want all you gun grabbers to know that I am not in the minority of gun owners. Tens of millions of unlicensed guns change hands weekly register that in your brains. You will never get them all and those of us with the off the grid weapons will gladly rearm America when we have to.

This week, a travelling jewellery salesman who was ambushed by four men, at least two of them armed, pulled out his pistol and shot two of them. The other two would-be robbers fled as the wounded men lay moaning on the ground.

“Bingo,” said Mr Hill. “They’re in critical condition in hospital last time I heard. He had a handgun and a legal carry permit, so he’s back at home having dinner with the kids. Mark one up for the good guy.”
-One draw back to non-registered weapons is you do need to leave the area before the cops arrive but it also saves on paperwork. For your own sake never kill an intruder and give an interview to the press all you are doing is letting their buddies know who you are.

While Mr Hill does not believe an outright ban would be attempted, he suspects that a “backdoor” attempt to limit gun ownership might be on the cards.

“What they want to do is limit the amount of handguns you can buy, assault rifles, things like that. The constitution doesn’t say you have the right to keep and bear ammunition. A car’s no good without gasoline so one way you can get to banning or controlling guns is by attacking the ammo.”
-I was out buying ammunition earlier today funny considering I own no firearms (do not believe me? I wonder why not?). If life has taught me anything, it is to remember the Boy Scout motto of “be prepared”. With ammunition, a firearm is only a few chucks of pipe, steel, know how and elbow grease away.

Sales of high-end collectible rifles, which cost several thousand dollars, have fallen as the recession has deepened. But the value of military-style rifles such as the AR-15, a variant of the AK-47, had increased by at least 25 per cent.

This has made modern rifles a potentially lucrative investment. Some people are banking on Mr Obama introducing gun control legislation, a move that would lead to a hefty profit as demand soared and people scrambled to beat a ban on purchases.
-The underground weapon market is already raking in record profits.

A week before the election, Mr Hunter bought about 20 Sig .556 calibre rifles. “I’d probably sold six or eight of those in 20 years. I placed one call to an investment firm here in Memphis and within 45 minutes every one had been pre-sold.

“People are afraid they won’t be able to get them in the future. Everybody’s guessing what they [the Obama administration] are going to do. People are stockpiling ammunition. We’re just starting to see more inventory on that but ammo is not slowing down.”

Americans, he said, would not allow their Second Amendment right to bear arms to be taken away from them.
-The last weapon in the USA will be given up only after the last American is dead.

“The country’s divided but this is something that’s dear to a true American’s heart. It goes way back to the cowboy days when a gun was a man’s most prized possession.”
-It still is.

Jason Hart, 31, who was buying ammunition from Mr Hill’s store, said: “I was raised not to have a gun. My mum told me to stay away from them. But we get four or five murders a day here in Memphis.

“Everybody else has guns, especially since Obama came in and people got afraid and started buying. I’ve been in a lot of situations where I was able to fight my way out because I’m a martial artist. But everybody has a gun I didn’t want to be the only one without one.”
-There ya go folks, buy them while you can get them, develop a plan to hide them away from your own property (state and federal property are always good) and always remember the lesson of the CSI shows, leave no biometrics behind. It is no use to cache anything if your fingerprints are on the inside. If the worst happens you could always offer to give a weapon to anyone that can give you the address of an elected official, bet that would make a few of them think. Until then, prepare, plan and naturally obey the law.

Oh, this is war!!!!!

UPDATE: JMB has informed us that the video is no longer available on YouTube.

I have found it at Clip Syndicate, but I cannot embed the code, so you will have to click on the link below to view it:

http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/play/1014700/tea_party_banned?wpid=1904

Author unknown.
Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I had worked hard all my life to build it… I live in a free country.. There’s nothing that the government can do to me if I’ve broken no laws. My wealth was earned honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an American President is an honor.

“You should have stopped me at the dinner roll,” he said.

Of course, that anti-American terrorist organization called CAIR is right there to play the victim card;  How dare you disrespect our religion—Islam is peace and love, yada, yada.  However, I noticed that they forgot to make up some signs quoting such lovely suras as:

[Christians and Jews] are the worst (vilest of) creatures (98:6)

“Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends.” (5:51)

“The only true faith in Allah’s sight is Islam.” (3:19)

Wow.  Just, wow…

This needs to go viral:

H/T – HasItBeen4YearsYet.

John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet

Book he authored in 1977 advocates for extreme totalitarian measures to control the population

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed.

CLICK HERE to continue reading this over at ZombieTime.com

This was in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, but I didn’t see it until today.  It’s a great read and points out the fallacies inherent in relying on Obama’s mathematical skills:

Obama Can’t Be Trusted With Numbers
So why should we trust him with health care?
By KARL ROVE – WSJ

In February, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill while making lavish promises about the results. He pledged that “a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America.” He also said the stimulus would “save or create up to four million jobs.” Vice President Joe Biden said the massive federal spending plan would “drop-kick” the economy out of the recession.

But the unemployment rate today is 9.5% — nearly 20% higher than the Obama White House said it would be with the stimulus in place. Keith Hennessey, who worked at the Bush White House on economic policy, has noted that unemployment is now higher than the administration said it would be if nothing was done to revive the economy. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than Mr. Obama promised.

The economy takes unexpected turns on every president. But what is striking about this president is how quickly he turns away from his promises. He rushed the stimulus through Congress saying we couldn’t afford to wait. Now his administration is waiting to spend the money. Of the $279 billion allocated to federal agencies, only $56 billion has been paid out.

Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration “misread” the economy. But he explained that away on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday by saying the administration had used “the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there” to draw up its stimulus plan. That’s not true.

The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts. In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%. Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.

Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren’t previously able to push through Congress. Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy. More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.

On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that “no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money.”

This fits a pattern. The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with it because the media haven’t asked many pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.

The Obama administration wants a government takeover of health care. To get it, it is promising to wring massive savings out of the health-care industry. And it has already started to make cost-savings promises.

For example, the administration strong-armed health-care providers into promising $2 trillion in health savings. It got pharmaceutical companies to promise to lower drug prices for seniors by $80 billion over 10 years. The administration also trotted out hospital executives to say that they would voluntarily save the government $150 billion over 10 years.

None of this comes near to being true. On the promised $2 trillion, everyone admits that the number isn’t built on anything specific — it’s an aspirational goal. On drug prices, a White House spokesman admitted that “These savings have not been identified at the moment.” It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.

None of this will stop the administration from arguing that its “savings” will pay for Mr. Obama’s $1.5 trillion health-care plans. By the time the real price tag emerges, it will be too late to do much more than raise taxes and curtail spending on urgent priorities, such as the military.

The stimulus package is a clear example of how Mr. Obama operates. He is attempting to employ the same tactics of bait-and-switch when it comes to health care, only on a much larger scale.

Mr. Obama has already created a river of red ink. His health-care plans will only force that river over its banks. We are at the cusp of a crucial political debate, and Mr. Obama’s words on fiscal matters are untrustworthy. His promised savings are a mirage. His proposals to reshape the economy are alarming. And his unwillingness to be forthright with his numbers reveals that he knows his plans would terrify many Americans.

Obviously, Pelosi has drug induced amentia and has learned nothing from her previous loss while attempting to battle the CIA.

Yeah, let’s see what happens when the Wraith and her buddies foolishly take on the CIA, yet again.  I wonder who will lose that battle…

Didn’t Albert Einstein once say that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

About that CIA ‘Lie’
House Democrats play politics with national security to protect Pelosi.
WSJ

As political spectacles go, one would be hard pressed to find anything as ridiculous as the Washington Romper Room now starring Congressional Democrats and the CIA. If only the consequences weren’t potentially so damaging for national security.

The latest episode comes courtesy of Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. In a letter leaked to the press on Wednesday, he claims the agency “misled” Congress about its activities after 9/11. Recall that this all started when Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about aggressive interrogations during her time on Intelligence earlier this decade. CIA Director Leon Panetta in May said the agency didn’t, as policy or practice, “mislead Congress.” Briefing notes from the time showed Mrs. Pelosi was told and didn’t object to waterboarding. The CIA this week felt compelled to issue another denial in response to the Reyes letter.

Mr. Panetta must feel burned. After the Pelosi blow-up, he has tried to repair relations with his own party’s Congressional leaders, and last month he reached out to the Intelligence Committee. On June 24, in a classified hearing, Mr. Panetta produced so-called new information about CIA counterterrorism efforts in the months after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We’re told that he informed the Members that the agency had considered, then abandoned, a major covert antiterror program. (Our sources wouldn’t say what it was.) Bush-era CIA officials didn’t tell Congress because it never got off the ground. But this is the “at least one case” Mr. Reyes claims his committee was “lied to” about in the Bush years.

There’s apparently no limit to how far Speaker Pelosi’s friends on the Hill are willing to go to salvage her reputation. The intentions are transparent enough.

The Reyes letter was addressed to Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on Intelligence. Mr. Hoekstra yesterday said the media received the missive before he did. And two days after the Panetta testimony last month, six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to “correct” his statement in May that the CIA doesn’t lie to Congress. He didn’t. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing — and poll numbers — have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.

To his credit, Mr. Panetta sees the obvious danger to morale at the agency and its ability to perform its essential job, and is standing up for his troops. But the Democratic attack isn’t limited to bad-mouthing America’s intelligence professionals. As dangerous is the intelligence authorization bill before Congress.

House Democrats have set out to hobble the CIA and further handcuff the executive branch. Republicans, naturally, were frozen out. At Speaker Pelosi’s insistence, gone would be the right of the President to limit disclosure of sensitive information to the so-called Gang of Eight — the House Speaker and Minority Leader, Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, and the Chairmen and ranking Members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. This authority would pass to Congress. The bill would also expand disclosure requirements for all sorts of intelligence activities.

This is a recipe for more leaks and more compromised CIA operations. Congress claims it needs to better monitor Presidential intelligence decisions. But the real lesson of the last few years is that Congress wants to know about, and often second-guess, intelligence decisions without being responsible for the result. Mrs. Pelosi could have objected to waterboarding but didn’t at the time, becoming a critic only when it became a political uproar. Senator Jay Rockefeller could have resisted warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda but instead wrote a letter and stuck it in a drawer.

The original sin was President Carter’s for conceding so much intelligence supervision to Congress in the 1970s. The Obama White House is right to resist giving away any more, and on Wednesday it threatened to veto the Democratic bill. House Members who are willing to put the politics of protecting their Speaker above national security can’t be trusted with adult decisions on intelligence and war-fighting.

Firearms Freedom Act Introduced in Florida

Posted on 10 July 2009 – tenthamendmentcenter.com

Introduced in the Florida House on July 6, 2009, the “Firearms Freedom Act” (HB-21) seeks to provide “that specified firearms, firearm accessories, and ammunition for personal use manufactured in state are not subject to federal law or regulation” in the State of Florida.

The bill is sponsored by Florida State Reps O’Toole and Plakon.  They follow in the path of Montana, and Tennessee who have already passed such legislation.  And they join with Utah, Texas, South Carolina and others who are considering it in an effort to limit federal regulation of guns, and specifically invoke the 9th and 10th Amendments as restrictions on federal power:

“the regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the ninth and tenth amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. Congress has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition”

CLICK HERE to read the full text

Debunking  the myth of anthropogenic global warming one page at a time:

Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick
James Delingpole – Spectator.co.uk

James Delingpole talks to Professor Ian Plimer, the Australian geologist, whose new book shows that ‘anthropogenic global warming’ is a dangerous, ruinously expensive fiction, a ‘first-world luxury’ with no basis in scientific fact. Shame on the publishers who rejected the book

Imagine how wonderful the world would be if man-made global warming were just a figment of Al Gore’s imagination. No more ugly wind farms to darken our sunlit uplands. No more whopping electricity bills, artificially inflated by EU-imposed carbon taxes. No longer any need to treat each warm, sunny day as though it were some terrible harbinger of ecological doom. And definitely no need for the $7.4 trillion cap and trade (carbon-trading) bill — the largest tax in American history — which President Obama and his cohorts are so assiduously trying to impose on the US economy.

Imagine no more, for your fairy godmother is here. His name is Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at Adelaide University, and he has recently published the landmark book Heaven And Earth, which is going to change forever the way we think about climate change.

‘The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,’ says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority. Where fellow sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg or Lord Lawson of Blaby are prepared cautiously to endorse the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) more modest predictions, Plimer will cede no ground whatsoever. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history.

To find out why, let’s meet the good professor.

He’s a tanned, rugged, white-haired sixtysomething — courteous and jolly but combative when he needs to be — glowing with the health of a man who spends half his life on field expeditions to Iran, Turkey and his beloved Outback. And he’s sitting in my garden drinking tea on exactly the kind of day the likes of the Guardian’s George Monbiot would probably like to ban. A lovely warm sunny one.

So go on then, Prof. What makes you sure that you’re right and all those scientists out there saying the opposite are wrong? ‘I’m a geologist. We geologists have always recognised that climate changes over time. Where we differ from a lot of people pushing AGW is in our understanding of scale. They’re only interested in the last 150 years. Our time frame is 4,567 million years. So what they’re doing is the equivalent of trying to extrapolate the plot of Casablanca from one tiny bit of the love scene. And you can’t. It doesn’t work.’

What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

All this is scientific fact — which is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. Plimer doesn’t trust them because they seem to have little if any basis in observed reality.

‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Plimer’s uncompromising position has not made him popular. ‘They say I rape cows, eat babies, that I know nothing about anything. My favourite letter was the one that said: “Dear sir, drop dead”. I’ve also had a demo in Sydney outside one of my book launches, and I’ve had mothers coming up to me with two-year-old children in their arms saying: “Don’t you have any kind of morality? This child’s future is being destroyed.’’’ Plimer’s response to the last one is typically robust. ‘If you’re so concerned, why did you breed?’

This no-nonsense approach may owe something to the young Ian’s straitened Sydney upbringing. His father was crippled with MS, leaving his mother to raise three children on a schoolteacher’s wage. ‘We couldn’t afford a TV — not that TV even arrived in Australia till 1956. We’d use the same brown paper bag over and over again for our school lunches, always turn off the lights, not because of some moral imperative but out of sheer bloody necessity.’

One of the things that so irks him about modern environmentalism is that it is driven by people who are ‘too wealthy’. ‘When I try explaining “global warming” to people in Iran or Turkey they have no idea what I’m talking about. Their life is about getting through to the next day, finding their next meal. Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.’

Heaven And Earth is the offspring of a pop science book Plimer published in 2001 called A Short History of Planet Earth. It was based on ten years’ worth of broadcasts for ABC radio aimed mainly at people in rural areas. Though the book was a bestseller and won a Eureka prize, ABC refused to publish the follow-up; so did all the other major publishers he approached: ‘There’s a lot of fear out there. No one wants to go against the popular paradigm.’

Then someone put him in touch with a tiny publishing outfit in the middle of the bush — ‘husband, wife, three kids, so poor they didn’t even have curtains’ — and they said yes. Plimer couldn’t bring himself to accept an advance they clearly couldn’t afford. But then something remarkable happened. In just two days, the book sold out its 5,000 print run. Five further editions followed in swift succession. It has now sold 26,500 copies in Australia alone — with similarly exciting prospects in Britain and the US. There’s even an edition coming out in ultra-green Germany.

But surely Aussies of all people, with their bushfires and prolonged droughts, ought to be the last to buy into his message? ‘Ah, but the average punter is not a fool. I get sometimes as many as 1,000 letters and emails a day from people who feel helpless and disenfranchised and just bloody sick of all the nonsense they hear about global warming from metropolitan liberals who don’t even know where meat or milk comes from.’

Besides which, Australia’s economy is peculiarly vulnerable to the effects of climate change alarmism. ‘Though we have 40 per cent of the world’s uranium, we don’t have nuclear energy. We’re reliant mainly on bucketloads of cheap coal. Eighty per cent of our electricity is coal-generated and clustered around our coalfields are our aluminium producers. The very last thing the Australian economy needs is the cap and trade legislation being proposed by Kevin Rudd. If it gets passed, the country will go broke.’

Not for one second does Plimer believe it will get passed. As with its US equivalent the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, Kevin Rudd’s Emission Trading Scheme legislation narrowly squeaked its way through the House of Representatives. But again as in America, the real challenge lies with the upper house, the Senate. Thanks in good measure to the influence of Plimer and his book — ‘I have politicians ringing me all the time’ — the Senate looks likely to reject the bill. If it does so twice, then the Australian government will collapse, a ‘double dissolution’ will be forced and a general election called. ‘Australia is at a very interesting point in the climate change debate,’ says Plimer.

The potential repercussions outside Oz, of course, are even greater. Until this year, environmental legislation has enjoyed a pretty easy ride through the parliaments of the Anglosphere and the Eurosphere, with greener-than-thou politicians (from Dave ‘Windmill’ Cameron to Dave ‘climate change deniers are the flat-earthers of the 21st century’ Miliband) queuing up to impose ever more stringent carbon emissions targets and taxes on their hapless electorates.

In the days when most people felt rich enough to absorb these extra costs and guilty enough to think they probably deserved them, the politicians could get away with it. But the global economic meltdown has changed all that. As countless opinion surveys have shown, the poorer people feel, the lower down their list of priorities ecological righteousness sinks. ‘It’s one of the few good things to come out of this recession,’ says Plimer. ‘People are starting to ask themselves: “Can we really afford this green legislation?”’

Reading Plimer’s Heaven And Earth is at once an enlightening and terrifying experience. Enlightening because, after 500 pages of heavily annotated prose (the fruit of five years’ research), you are left in no doubt that man’s contribution to the thing they now call ‘climate change’ was, is and probably always will be negligible. Terrifying, because you cannot but be appalled by how much money has been wasted, how much unnecessary regulation drafted because of a ‘problem’ that doesn’t actually exist. (South Park, as so often, was probably the first to point this out in a memorable episode where Al Gore turns up to warn the school kids about a terrible beast, looking a bit like the Gruffalo, known as ManBearPig.)

Has it come in time to save the day, though? If there’s any justice, Heaven And Earth will do for the cause of climate change realism what Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did for climate change alarmism. But as Plimer well knows, there is now a powerful and very extensive body of vested interests up against him: governments like President Obama’s, which intend to use ‘global warming’ as an excuse for greater taxation, regulation and protectionism; energy companies and investors who stand to make a fortune from scams like carbon trading; charitable bodies like Greenpeace which depend for their funding on public anxiety; environmental correspondents who need constantly to talk up the threat to justify their jobs.

Does he really believe his message will ever get through? Plimer smiles. ‘If you’d asked any scientist or doctor 30 years ago where stomach ulcers come from, they would all have given the same answer: obviously it comes from the acid brought on by too much stress. All of them apart from two scientists who were pilloried for their crazy, whacko theory that it was caused by a bacteria. In 2005 they won the Nobel prize. The “consensus” was wrong.’

Ian Plimer’s Heaven And Earth: Global Warming — the Missing Science is published by Quartet (£25).

Eat that you pinko commie congressional asshats, we are going to rebuild the global economy all by ourselves by purchasing large amounts of weapons and ammunition. If you want to know why we need them look in a mirror. Btw, congress you suck.

I here by officially support the GRIP program (Get Rid of Incumbent Politicians). If one of you readers puts that on cafepress and you sell a few hats, t-shirts etc, slip me a few bucks. BTW, you people in congress suck. Did I mention congress sucks?

9 July 2009, NewsMax
GENEVA — American demand for handguns has fueled a 28 percent jump this decade in world exports of pistols, rifles, shotguns and other small arms, a global report said Thursday.
-Buy um boys and girls, get um while they are still warm.

The 2009 Small Arms Survey reported that the Untied States alone was responsible for about half of the worldwide increase in legal international gun sales between 2000 and 2006. The U.S. now accounts for over half of the world’s imports of pistols and revolvers and 45 percent of shotguns, it said.
-Yippie, we are number one, we are number one. Congress sucks (It sounds better if you sing it aloud)

“No other country imports more than 4 percent of the global total,” the 344-page report found.
-You foreigners are a buncha pansies (not you Gramfan, I still luv ya)

It illustrated how U.S. purchases of hand guns – which averaged $173 million annually – have driven a sharp rise in exports from a number of countries.

Austria remained the world’s largest seller of pistols and revolvers with a 25 percent jump since 2000. Seventy-five percent of its exports go to the United States. Croatian exports soared almost 24 times in value since the start of the decade. The U.S. accounted for 98 percent of its 2006 sales of $27 million.
-Ok, since you people are not Americans let me explain this to you. Build um bigger. The first country to build a pistol strong enough to break the shooters wrist when fired will sell everyone they can build.

Gunmakers in Brazil and Italy also have been helped by booming American demand for small arms.
-Tu nada amigo.

“A country can become a major global player just by developing an export market in the United States,” the report said.

The report, published by Geneva’s Graduate Institute, uses customs data and other information supplied by 53 nations. It estimated legal trade in firearms at nearly $1.6 billion in 2006, with the actual value of all small arms, light weapons, parts, accessories and ammunition exceeding $4 billion.
-A side note to all you unemployed American craftsmen. I know your factories closed and work is hard to find so make and sell guns, reload ammo or carve stocks. The market is hot, get in now. Pre made cache kits; no one is doing it (yet) start your own company, btw slip me a few bucks for thinking this up. Do your part to help our economy arm your neighbors.

“Current data shows that the global trade in small arms and light weapons is robust and even expanding, and handguns are driving it,” said Keith Krause, the survey’s director. “We don’t know whether these weapons are destined for civilians, police or military forces.”
-I am betting most were sold to the neighbors of American politicians. I am also betting the people down the street from Nancy Pelosi are packing some serious heat.

The report found that trade in light military weapons has decreased by almost 30 percent over the same period. In that category, the U.S. dominates as the world’s major supplier, with $228.5 million in exports. That amounts to 54 percent of the world total.
-Those little “O’s” on the Obama stickers look sort of like a bull’s-eye, just sayin is all…

The study also examined the lasting effects of weapons trade on countries, even after armed conflicts end. It said disarmament, demobilization and reintegration strategies in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere have met with mixed success.
-Lol, ya think? Do you really think anyone that has known war will give up firearms-are you that stupid?

For some countries, accurate export information was particularly hard to obtain. The report said Switzerland, Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Serbia and the United States were among the more transparent nations. Iran, North Korea, South Africa, Russia, Israel and Taiwan were cited as the least transparent.
-I am stoked, guns for all and all for guns.

Leatherneck clued us into the following article.  I have nothing against Free Speech, but theft and destruction of private property is against the law:

NYPD Probes Beheading of Statue of Liberty Replica Seen in YouTube Video
FOX News

Police in New York City are scrambling to locate the producers of a YouTube video that depicts a stolen replica of the Statue of Liberty blindfolded, beheaded and smashed into pieces — a display that one terror expert says is intended to “instill fear” in everyday Americans.

The 59-second video shows the 8-foot, 200-pound replica statue, which was stolen from a Brooklyn coffee shop last month, being decapitated and pulverized — accompanied by the words “We don’t want your freedom” and “Death to America.”

NYPD Det. Joseph Cavitolo told FOXNews.com that investigators are searching for whoever stole the statue. That individual or individuals could face charges of criminal possession of stolen property and grand larceny or petit larceny. Computer experts are also trying to determine who posted the video, Cavitolo said.

Professor Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism and Law at St. Mary’s University in Texas, said the clip is an obvious attempt to “instill fear.”

“That’s their purpose, to show their distaste to freedom and to also show that the movement of jihadists is alive and well,” Addicott told FOXNews.com.

“Part of terror is propaganda. They’re trying to instill fear. And it is a form of terrorism; it’s just not using violence, but fear, to instill doubt and worry in Americans.”

Addicott said the people behind the video would not likely be subject to hate crime charges since the clip is not directed toward a specific individual or group.

“But it certainly would ensure these individuals would get the maximum sentence,” he said. “But they’ve engaged in free speech. They’re not telling people to go out and kill people, they’re simply expressing their views that they hate America.

“They haven’t crossed a line, but they’re getting close.”

The video, which was dated July 4, was sent anonymously to the New York Daily News and to Debi Ryan, owner of Vox Pop, a coffee shop known for left-wing-leaning political debate and poetry readings. The clip had been viewed at least 2,500 times as of midday Thursday.

“I’m scared,” Ryan told the New York Post. “I’m hoping I don’t have to fear for my life, but I feel very nervous … This was clearly politically motivated. Whoever did this is trying to shut us up. They were targeting what we represent.”

A $250 reward has been offered for the statue’s return, the Post reported.

But, not to worry; the Dems are re-tooling it (i.e. – cramming more pork into it) to garner the votes they need to get it through the Senate in September…

Obama’s drive for climate change bill delayed

By Richard Cowan
Reuters – Washington Post
Thursday, July 9, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s push for quick action by Congress on climate change legislation suffered a setback on Thursday when the U.S. Senate committee leading the drive delayed work on the bill until September.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer said her self-imposed deadline of early August for finishing writing a bill to combat global warming has been put off until after Congress returns from a recess that ends in early September.

“We’ll do it as soon as we get back” from that break, Boxer told reporters. Asked if this delay jeopardizes chances the Senate will pass a bill this year, Boxer said, “Not a bit … we’ll be in (session) until Christmas, so I’m not worried about it.”

But Boxer did not guarantee Congress will be able to finish a bill and deliver it to Obama by December, when he plans to attend an international summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

“I want to take this as far as we can take it (before Copenhagen). The more we do the better,” Boxer said.

[...]

Gee, that makes me feel so much safer, now…

In case you didn’t know, that was sarcasm.

Miss Obama’s peacenik T-shirt sends a message to G8 leaders
By Charlotte Spratt – Daily Mail

Her father had just won agreement from the Russians to cut back on the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

And Barack Obama’s eldest daughter was obviously keen to make her own statement on the issue – even if it was merely a fashion statement.

Just 48 hours after the U.S. President signed agreements with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to reduce weapon stores, 11-year-old Malia Obama was spotted wearing not one, but two T-shirts with an anti-nuclear message.

She wore the tops emblazoned with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s famous logo as her father prepared for three days of G8 talks in Italy.

[Statement dresser:  Malia Obama in a T-shirt bearing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament symbol in Rome ahead of the G8 summit]

First there was a grey T-shirt bearing the CND logo to visit the Colosseum in Rome with her mother Michelle and seven-year-old sister Sasha. Then during the visit she swapped it for a mottled white and grey top also bearing the logo.

The symbol, designed for the CND in 1958, is now widely used to signify peace and is also an international sign for anti-war protesters.

Mr Obama spent two days in Moscow this week meeting president Dmitry Medvedev and prime minister and former president  Vladimir Putin.

There the American and Russian leaders agreed a landmark deal to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

[Making faces: Michelle Obama has fun with her daughter in the Italian capital]

In my best Yello voice:  Ooooh, Yeah!!!   Beautiful!!!

…I think I’ll celebrate:

Most certainly a must read for anyone who owns a home or is considering purchasing one:
If You Don’t Hate the Cap and Trade Bill, Let Me Show You Section 304

AmericanIssuesProject

I bet you thought that if you bought a house, you actually own it and can, with reasonable exceptions, do with it what you want. You probably think that if you want to live in a log cabin, with wood stoves that belch smoke into the air for heat, and an old washer and dryer that don’t have those little EnergyStar stickers on them you can because it’s your life and your property. You paid for it with money you earned with the sweat of your brow and what the heck is America anyhow if a body can’t live in the home they want furnished with the appliances they want?

Ah, silly you. You didn’t reckon on the Democratic Party’s desire to control every miniscule aspect of your life.

Let me introduce you to a little section of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill called the “Building Energy Performance Labeling Program”. It’s section 304 of the bill and it says, basically, that your house belongs to the state. See, the Federal Government really wants a country full of energy-efficient homes, so much so that the bill mandates that new homes be 30 percent more energy efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. That efficiency goes up to 50 percent by 2014 and only goes higher from there, all the way to 2030. That, by the way, is not merely a target but a requirement of the law. New homes must reach those efficiency targets no matter what.

[...]

CLICK HERE and read the rest of this eye-opener

Sounds like the Judge should stop by this blog then he would learn a few things about the cult called islam and the muslim agenda.

8 July 2009, News 24
Dusseldorf – A German judge voiced surprise on Wednesday that four young Muslims accused of a terrorist bomb plot have suddenly confessed in extraordinary detail.

Police arrested two German converts to Islam and a third man in 2007 to thwart car bomb attacks on US bases.
-You would think if they wanted to attack troops they would fight in Afghanistan but facing troops in battle requires bravery.

The accused only decided last month to tell police everything in a plea bargain.

“Their evidence is much more comprehensive than we expected at the start of the interrogations,” presiding judge Ottmar Breidling told the court as the four accused listened, visibly relaxed.
-They get partial jihadi credit for the plan.

Observers said the evidence is likely to keenly interest intelligence agencies seeking an insight into how Islamist groups based in Pakistan and Afghanistan mount attacks.
-More like how minions are recruited, conditioned and funded.

Allied to al-Qaeda

Fritz Gelowicz, Daniel Schneider, Adem Yilmaz and Attila Selek were allegedly members of the Islamic Jihad Union, a shadowy group believed to be allied to al-Qaeda.
-Islam is the problem al qaida is just a tool.

The compilation of testimony would be finished late this week, and was likely to extend to 1 000 pages, which will be read aloud to the court when it resumes hearings on August 10, Breidling said.

Breidling promised the men a month ago they would receive a “tangible reduction” in their jail terms as an incentive to confess to police investigators.

A federal prosecutor, Volker Brinkmann, confirmed the men had offered exhaustive details of the plot, calling it the most extensive confession he had seen in his career.
-Lol, couldn’t get um to shut up.

Wednesday’s courtroom atmosphere was almost harmonious, as defence lawyers withdrew most of a series of objections designed to hold up the trial and prepared for an agreed settlement of the terrorism charges.

However Breidling rebuked the accused once for switching into Arabic when they spoke to one another.

The accused will no longer have to sit in an armoured-glass cell inside the courtroom when the trial resumes next month, but will be allowed to sit with their lawyers like ordinary criminal defendants.
-May they make someone a nice little wife in prison.

Sheesh!  And Mrs. Bulldog couldn’t even get a pocket knife through our local Social Security office…

By the way, our sources are telling us that one of the buildings in which a bomb was smuggled through a security checkpoint was none other than the Department of Homeland Security!

Feeling any safer, now?

Report: Probe found weaknesses in federal security

By JIM ABRAMS
Associated Press Writer – OC Register

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal investigators had no trouble smuggling bomb-making materials past ill-trained and poorly supervised guards at federal buildings, senators were told at a hearing Wednesday.

“This is the broadest indictment of a federal agency I have ever heard,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said at a Homeland Security Committee hearing on the performance of the Federal Protective Service, the office responsible for the safety of some 9,000 federal facilities. “This is really serious stuff.”

The committee, chaired by Lieberman, heard how Government Accountability Office investigators on 10 occasions carried the components for an improvised explosive device through checkpoints monitored by FPS guards. In all 10 cases the bomb-making materials went undetected.

Mark Goldstein, the GAO’s director for physical infrastructure issues, said the investigators proceeded to assemble the material – made up of a liquid explosive and a low-yield detonator – in restrooms and walked freely around the facilities with the IED in a briefcase.

[...]

Lieberman said the committee had originally planned to go public with the findings after the GAO issues a second report later this summer, but the conclusions “were so disturbing that we decided to air them immediately to accelerate the critical work of turning the FPS around.” He said he planned to introduce legislation responding to the service’s shortcomings.