Some Special Hannukia....

In front of the Kotel, the Western Wall



In Modiin, Israel in Judea, near the site of the start of the Maccabee revolt against the Seleucids.


And of course, last but not least, in Sderot.




It's amazing how much light a candle or a small wick of oil can spread in the darkness.

Aside from commemorating the miracle, one thing those lights always signify to me is a collective 'screw you' by the Jews to their enemies.

Jabotinsky was right.

How the AP 'Reports' The News..An Interesting Example Of Blatant Media Bias

I believe most of us realize by now that a large part of the dinosaur media is corrupt and has lost all contact with even basic journalistic principles and integrity, but this particular example begs to be used as a prime example.

The headline, written by AP scribbler Geoff Mulvihill and redacted by the San Jose Mercury News reads: Many Muslims frustrated with Fort Dix verdict and is supposedly a report on the verdict in the trial of the Fort Dix jihadis.

Read this and remember the headline this was posted under and see what you think:

Five Muslim immigrants face possible life prison terms after being convicted of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers in a case that supporters called entrapment and prosecutors said was a pre-emptive strike against terrorism. {...}

The arrests in 2007 and subsequent trial tested the FBI's post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist plots in their earliest stages. Muslim leaders reacted with frustration after the verdict. "Many people in the Muslim community will see this as a case of entrapment," said Jim Sues, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who attended five days of trial testimony. "From what I saw, there was a significant role played by the government informant."
{...}

Sues said the case turned on the legal definition of conspiracy, which he said proved to be far broader than he thought.

"The evidence showed there was no real, honest-to-God planning for an attack on Fort Dix," he said. "The defendants were never all in a room at one time with a map of the fort, plotting what they were going to do."

James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, said the case was flimsy.

"All of this doesn't help build trust with the American Muslim community, and that is vital if our law enforcement is going to fight terrorism," said Yee, who was once charged with mishandling classified material in a suspected espionage ring. The charges were later dropped.

"If anyone can improve security, it's our community, but we need to be seen as trusted partners, not potential suspects."

Remember that headline..MANY Muslims frustrated with Fort Dix verdict. AP's evidence of this widespread 'frustration' of 'many Muslims' is an official of unidicted co-conspirators CAIR and a ex-Marine Muslim chaplain who was acquitted of pro-jihad espionage charges on a technicality! And it quotes him, of course, as a legal expert that the case against the Fort Dix conspirators was 'flimsy.'

And speaking about inadvertently tripping over one's own feet, the writer cites another Muslim, a member of the Albanian community who's views are 180 degrees in the opposite direction, saying "They were just out of their mind and they should be put away for life. The Albanian community is nothing like this."

Apparently he and most of the Albanian community don't work for CAIR or any other Islamist jihad-friendly group, so they aren't part of those many frustrated Muslims.

To cap things off, the article also refers to the five as 'Muslim immigrants' when three of them, the Albanians, were illegal aliens who got into the US via our porous southern border.

Like I said, it's not about actually reporting the news anymore for these people. It's about a political agenda.

Perhaps that's part of the reason their readership is in the toilet and they're going broke.

Gaza On The Potomac

Hamas has decided that the six month truce with Israel no longer serves a purpose,now that they feel they've built up their forces and missile arsenal sufficiently.

As I predicted, the hudna with Hamas turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, and was never a truce at all anyway, since the rockets and mortars shells kept coming at Southern Israel. In truth,it was just a respite to allow Hamas to train its forces, stock up on missiles and heavy weapons via Iran while Egypt turned a blind eye. and then continue the war of attrition at a time of its own choosing.They obviously feel they're ready now. Part of that of course is political. With Mahmoud Abbas' term in office due to expire January 10th, Hamas knows its audience and wants the political cachet of leading the War against the Jews.

Only the farcically weak Olmert/Livni/Barak triumvirate would have been stupid enough to allow Hamas to continue its military buildup while clinging to the fiction of an imaginary 'ceasefire'.

As always,I find most of what's written about Gaza as it heats up , especially in the dinosaur media to be factually challenged and deeply flawed.

A good example is from the Washington Post. Here's the opening bit:

"AFTER SIX months of relative calm, hostilities once again are escalating between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Between Friday and yesterday some 60 rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel, whose air force responded with strikes against the launchers. So far there have been no serious injuries on the Israeli side, and one Palestinian has been reported killed."

There are two outright lies here - one,that there has been 'relative calm' and second that there have been 'no serious injuries on the Israeli side.' I wonder how the WAPO editorial staff would call it 'relative calm' if they had to live under the same conditions the people of Sderot do,never knowing if their homes were going to be hit,and with enough evidence on the part of their neighbors that getting hit was far from impossible? Yesterday's barrage, for example, took out a home and moderately injured the woman living there, among other things.

A few days ago, Hamas mortared an Israeli military base and wounded eight soldiers,one of whom lost a leg,and there have been over 26 Israelis killed by the Hamas barrage on Southern Israel, along with thousands of dollars of property damage.


'Relative calm'? 'No serious injuries?' I could be wrong, but I have a feeling the WAPO editorial staff might look at things differently if Georgetown and Bethesda were under that kind of attack.

The editorial then goes on to actually equate the way Israel and Hamas have approached the ceasefire:

"...neither Israel nor Hamas has been satisfied with the informal cease-fire they reached in June with the help of Egypt. During the summer and fall, the rocket fire from Gaza diminished but never entirely stopped. Israel, in turn, allowed only a modest increase in the flow of goods into Gaza, which has been under virtual siege since last year, and frequently sealed off the strip entirely in response to fresh attacks. "

Same ol' cycle o' violence script beloved by the dinosaur media...of course, the fact that Hamas are a bunch of genocidal terrorists who have initiated almost every instance of violence goes unmentioned.Do the people who wrote this bilge expect Israel to just allow business as usual when they're being attacked? Obviously, as we will see.

Also unmentioned is the fact Israel is not completely in control of access to Gaza. The Egyptians have a border with Gaza as well, and one that they've walled off to normal traffic.You might recall the ruckus that occurred when Hamas blew a hole in it twice at the beginning of the year.Yet Egypt's part in isolating Gaza somehow doesn't fit the script,so it goes unsaid.

But never fear, the WAPO has the perfect solution to dealing with Hamas..Israel needs to sing kumbayah, open up the borders and wait for the love to flow:

But an increasing number of Israeli thinkers are pointing out that the prevailing strategy of trying to isolate and destroy Hamas while building up the rival Palestinian leadership in the West Bank hasn't worked. Some 200,000 Gazans recently turned out for a rally in support of Hamas; a war would only strengthen the movement's most radical factions{...}Israel would be better positioned to defeat Hamas politically and diplomatically if it allowed the full resumption of food, medicine and fuel deliveries to Gaza and made clear its willingness to end other restrictions on civilian trade in exchange for a full cessation of rocket attacks and other hostilities. If Hamas is to be toppled, it will have to be through a political process led by Palestinians.

I can just imagine the sort of 'Israeli thinkers' the WAPO has in mind..probably the same sort of people who thought Arafat could be trusted, totally retreating from Gaza was a great idea and that a six month respite for Hamas to build up its military was an even better one.

Another 'ceasefire' is going to bring Hamas around? Wasn't that the idea of the last one? Worked well, didn't it?

I've got a small bit of news for these people. An all out war against Hamas would not 'strengthen radical factions' it would kill and defeat them.But only if it were an all out war,that included shutting down the Israeli-supplied electricity and taking out the power plant and Gaza's infrastructure as well as targeting Hamas' military and its leadership for annihilation.

It won't easy or pleasant, but the longer Gaza festers the more costly it will get. The Palestinians will not do a damned thing to dismantle Hamas. Israel will have to do so itself.

And here's the vital part for anyone concerned about an exit strategy, a guerrilla war or an 'occupation' afterwards.You make sure it doesn't happen.



As part of the festivities, you blow the Egyptian border fence and facilitate as many of Gaza's inmates escaping the lunatic asylum into Egypt as you can,and then reseal it and refuse to allow them back in.Then you pack most of the rest off to the Palestinian occupied areas in Judea and Samaria ( AKA the West Bank). Then you annex Gaza to Israel permanently and move the Jews back in permanently. You don't hand it over to Fatah and Abbas 'for peace'.

The Jews once there will rebuild the greenhouses at Gush Katif and turn Gaza into a garden again, and the world will watch as Gaza City turns from a terrorist armpit swimming in its own sewage into a beach resort and high tech trade center.

Not only will the guys in the green hats have suffered a huge blow,but the threat on Israel's southern border will be substantially reduced...and like minded jihadist Palestinians in Judea and Samaria might just take a good look at what happened to Gaza and realize that launching attacks from there against Israel's civilians might just lead to the same thing happening to them.

Of course,the sort of folks who wrote this drivel for the WAPO would be absolutely horrified at the idea Israel actually removing a hostile population from within its borders in the interest of peace and security.Oddly enough , most of them fully supported doing exactly that to the Jews who used to live in Gaza on behalf of the Arabs, and support doing the same thing to those Jews who's crime is living in East Jerusalem or in Jewish communities in what the WAPO editorial staff would doubtless refer to as 'settlements in the West Bank.'

There's a word for that kind of selective bigotry,I think.

An Interview With Mohammed

Ehsan Jami is an apostate from Islam, and he came up with an absolutely brilliant idea for a short film...an 'interview' with the prophet of Islam.

It's definitely a worthy effort to reconcile the chief stumbling block to an Islam that plays nicely with others in a calm, understated way, and something you should see.

I hope Mr. Jami is taking adequate precautions.

hat tip to Debbie over at Right Truth

Fort Dix Jihadis Found Guilty

For those of you who have forgotten about thisone, the details are here....

This is definitely good news:

Five Muslim immigrants were convicted Monday of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at a New Jersey military base in a case the government said demonstrated its post-Sept. 11, 2001, determination to stop terrorist attacks in the planning stages.

The defendants were acquitted of attempted murder charges but face life in prison for conspiring to kill military personnel. The federal jury spent about 38 hours deliberating over the past six days.

The men lived in and around Philadelphia for years. The government said after their 2007 arrest that an attack had been imminent and that the case underscored the dangers of terrorist plots hatched on U.S. soil.{...}

Convicted were: Jordanian-born cab driver Mohamad Shnewer; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business.

A sixth man arrested and charged only with gun offenses pleaded guilty earlier.

What's ironic is that the Albanians are illegal aliens who came in via our porous southern border...and if they get life, they're here to stay.

Sarah Palin Named Conservative Of The Year

Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin received an award today as Conservative Of The Year by Human Events.

They have a very interesting interview with her in the magazine that bears reading. Here's a choice excerpt:

GIZZI: Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has spoken out against the bailout of states that [California] Gov. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger and other governors have called for. As a governor yourself and an active member of the National Governors Association, where do you stand on the bailout of states?

PALIN: Every state, like every community in the United States, comes to Congress with its list of infrastructure needs. Alaska is going to join every other state with a governor’s list. In fact, I’ve looked at every other governor’s list of infrastructure needs that’s presented to Congress. It’s up to Congress, because Congress holds the purse strings, to decide how some of those projects are going to be funded. Alaska’s projects are going to be in the nation’s best interests. They will be infrastructure that will build gas lines and build that infrastructure up that will lead to energy production to allow us to become energy independent. We aren’t asking for things like “Bridges to Nowhere.”

But, in speaking with Gov. Schwarzenegger about this, he has said it’s not his intention to ask for a bailout that is based on his state’s management decisions that have led to some problems in that state. In Alaska, we’re fortunate. We have a surplus. We have money put aside for the last few years, waiting for a ‘rainy day’ when the economy wasn’t as strong. We are in a good position, so we are not asking for, nor should we ask for, a bailout from the ‘feds.’ But we will, along with every other state, have our list of infrastructure projects and roads and very basic tools that will lead to energy production.

GIZZI: For my birthday this year, friends gave me the new biography of Andrew Jackson [American Lion, by Jon Meacham]. One of the passages that reminded me of you is when the author is explaining how vilified Jackson was and says, ‘He was the first President to come from the common people, not from an educated elite, and he never ceased to see himself as their champion.’ Is that something you can identify with and do you think the fact you had a similar background to Jackson’s was a reason for some of the criticism you received from some of the punditocracy and the media in general?

PALIN: Maybe initially it is a hindrance for someone starting out. But once the electorate knows what that candidate’s convictions are and positions are, I don’t think that matters. You just prefaced your question with the fact that I didn’t come from that ‘stock’. I got my education from the University of Idaho because that’s what I could afford. It was the least-expensive school that offered the programs I knew would benefit me in my future. My Dad was a school teacher and had four kids in college at about the same time. It didn’t occur to me to ask my parents to pay for my college education. We all worked through school and paid for schools that we could afford. I still got a great education. No, I don’t come from the self-proclaimed ‘movers and shakers’ group and that’s fine with me. It’s caused me, or rather, allowed me, to work harder and pulled myself up by my bootstraps without anyone else helping me. I think it allows me to be in touch with the vast majority of Americans who are in the same position that I am. That is desiring government to be on our side and not against us. And that means, in a lot of ways, for government to get out of the way to allow our families and our businesses to keep more of what they produce, to meet our own priorities.



My own upbringing and what I am today -- with my husband, in a blue-collar job that he has -- allow me a great connection with the vast majority of Americans who live and work and are trying to raise our families.

GIZZI: What was the biggest mistake made in the ’08 campaign?

PALIN: The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts.

But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that’s how you get your message out to the electorate.

GIZZI: And what was the most important lesson you learned from the campaign?

PALIN: The campaign was 99.9% amazing and invigorating and inspiring. But looking back, there were so many things that were outside of my control. I was in a campaign in which I did not know the people individually running the campaign. So I had to put my life, my career, my family, and my reputation in their hands. That’s kind of a scary thing to do when you don’t know the people you are working with.

Now I have all the faith in the world in Sen. McCain and his family. But some of the folks around him I did not know and so it was a kind of a risky thing for me to put my faith in the decisions they were making on my behalf.

As an administrator, as a chief executive of a state, I am not used to that. I am used to proving my abilities by calling the shots. Then I know the buck stops with me. I made the decisions, and I’m responsible. When others are making decisions for me, as they were in the campaign, and I am the one to live with the fallout from the decisions that were made on my behalf, that is something I am not very comfortable with.

Sarah Palin understands that the future of the Republican party - if it's to have a future - lies in the populist appeal of authentic conservative principles, as opposed to what went on over the last eight years.

She's an authentic throwback to the first principles of our Founding Fathers.

Moreover, she strikes me as a fairly competitive human being who just survived an organized attempt to destroy not only her political career but her and her family personally. And she did it with her head held high and her good humor intact. If I read her correctly, this didn't beat her into silence in the least...she wants back into the arena, with her calling the shots this time and taking no prisoners.

No wonder the Left is petrified of her.

Ann Coulter also has a few things to say on the matter...and as you know, she's always worth reading.

Cheney Slaps Biden Upside The Head.....

I absolutely loved this, on several levels.

With around a month to go until he retires, Vice President Dick Cheney decided it was time for a little payback to VP elect Joe Biden.

In a FOX news interview, VP Cheney was asked about Biden's oft quoted remark that "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history."

Cheney mockingly replied, "He also said that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution. Well, they're not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch."

"Joe's been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive. So I think I'd write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don't take it seriously."

"If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call," Cheney shrugged. "President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."

Cheney also defended what he called the Bush administration's aggressive prosecution of the War on Terror, which he claimed was a major reason the US hasn't been attacked since 9/11.I don't quite agree with him there, but I will say that as far as I'm concerned, if Cheney and Bush's positions had been reversed we'd be a lot closer to winning it.

I also like that Cheney made a special effort to defend ex SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, saying that he had tried hard to convince Bush not to fire him in 2006. "I did disagree with the decision," Cheney said. "The president doesn't always take my advice."

Most people aren't aware of it,but Rumsfeld and Cheney were against invading and occupying Iraq.

Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11, and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning, was quoted in an interview with Orin Kerr as having been told by Rumsfeld to plan for a war with Iraq, but not to bother planning for a long stay,but for a quick punitive strike. Rumsfeld was wary of the enormous cost of having to do 'nation building.'

Jed Babbin, ex-Undersecretary of State has also written on this topic.

Dick Cheney was likewise opposed to a ground invasion of Iraq, and a remarkable interview with him has surfaced that was done just after the first Gulf War where he accurately predicted every one of the problems we've encountered and gave them as good reasons why he advised the first President Bush not to invade and occupy Iraq.

The idea of invading and occupying Iraq and rebuilding it as a 'model for Arab democracy' came from Clinton holdover George Tenet, who George W. Bush kept on as head of the CIA and from none other than Bush's then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Guess which plan President Bush picked?

And then, to add insult to injury Dubya put Rumsfeld in charge of implementing it, with the troops and resources Bush allowed him.

That's the hidden meaning behind Rumsfeld's remark that you fight a war with the army you have,not the army you wish you had.

In short, Rumsfeld was a scapegoat who was fired as a sop to Bush's political enemies. It was the most disgraceful treatment of a dedicated public servant by a sitting president I can think of offhand.

Dick Cheney has been unjustly vilified in the press and by Democrats for eight years now,but he embodies one of my favorite saying by Ronald Reagan:"There's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care about who gets the credit."

He's always been about getting the job done.It's how he's operated during the decades he's spent in Washington during his distinguished career.

"We've been here for eight years now, eventually you wear out your welcome in this business but I'm very comfortable with where we are and what we've achieved substantively," he said. "And frankly I would not want to be one of those guys who spends all his times reading the polls. I think people like that shouldn't serve in these jobs."

Whenever George W. Bush had a particularly sensitive job that needed undertaking,his go-to guy was always Dick Cheney. It was Cheney who would fly to see Musharraf in Pakistan, the Sultan of Bahrein,the Israelis,the Saudis, Maliki in Iraq or Karzhai in Afghanistan to coordinate strategy and carry the word of the president to foreign leaders in a forceful, no nonsense manner.

Even more impressively, he apparently resolved to use his best abilities to make the Bush Administration's policies work and be a team player in bolstering the president - even when he strongly disagreed with him.

He survived at least two assassination attempts that I know of, and probably others I don't. And he did it all with a severe heart condition , which means that it probably took years off his life.

Cheney certainly didn't need the job and could very easily have retired a long time ago and spent the years fly fishing and hunting up in Wyoming...but he's made of very different stuff, and in his mind,the country came first.

He'll be missed, whether people realize it or not.

Carter Advising Hamas On Gilad Shalit's Ransom

I had thought that this slimy, senile waterhead had finally hit bottom, but it turns out that once again, Cwazie Unkie Jimmy redefines the cellar.

This isn't the first time Carter has thumbed his nose explicitly at US law by meeting with terrorists like his pals in Hamas,but now this Saudi-bought pimp weasel has gone beyond that.

Carter recently met in Damascus with his buddy Khalid Mashaal, head of the Hamas politburo for the express purpose of advising Mashaal on how high a ransom to ask for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit:

Former United States President Jimmy Carter reported that he advised Syrian-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on what price to demand from Israel for the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted more than two years ago. He said that Hamas is "relatively satisfied with the status quo."

Carter's visit to Lebanon and Syria earlier this month follows a trip to to Damascus several months ago in the face of American policy against establishing direct contact with the outlawed terrorist organization.

Carter admits on his website that he advised Mashaal about "formulas for prisoner exchange to obtain the release of Corporal Shalit..."

In fact,he's proud of it.

What Cwazy Unkie Jimmy is doing is offering material aid to terrorism. He's done so before, but this is the most blatant and shameless violation yet. There are people sitting in jail for this offense as I write this, there are clearly defined legal penalties for what Carter is doing,and there's absolutely no reason he should receive any special consideration.

If this truly is a country of laws, this foul embarrassment ought to be met at the airport by US marshals as soon as he returns, clapped into a cell and tried. Additionally, his passport ought to be lifted pending the outcome.

If he's found guilty, he should receive an appropriate sentence and spend a little quiet time in jail...although my idea of an appropriate sentence would involve putting him in a cage and carting him around the country so the American people could throw things at him and poke at him through the bars with sharp sticks.

Lebanon's Suleiman Signs Defense Pact With Iran

One of the most conspicuous failures of George W. Bush and Condi Rice's 'Arab Democracy' fetish has to be Lebanon.

The anti-Syrian March 14th movement was initially sold out at Annapolis, and recent events have made it pretty obvious that a free hand in Lebanon (among other things) for Syria and Iran's proxy Hezbollah was part of a clandestine deal for relative quiet in Iraq.

Part of that deal involved our agreement to the ascension of ex-Lebanese army chief and Hezbollah protege' Michel Suleiman to the presidency and the granting of tens of millions of dollars (on top of hundreds of millions over several years) worth of US military aid to Suleiman's Lebanese army - even though Suleiman had the Lebanese army collaborating with Hezbollah during the Israel-Hezbollah war and refused to allow it to fight against Hezbollah even when Hezbollah was killing Lebanese civilians during a series of attacks against the March 14 Lebanese government in May of 2008. Suleiman and the Lebanese Army also did absolutely nothing to respect or implement UN resolution 1701, stop Hezbollah from receiving new weaponry from Iran and Syria or moving back into its old positions in South Lebanon.

The strangest thing of all was Condi Rice,who I presume gets paid to know these things not only agreed to Suleiman being named to the presidency but praised it, and the Bush Administration actually increased our military aid to Lebanon.

Then,on top of all that it came out..surprise...that not only was the Lebanese Army already strongly infiltrated by Hezbollah but that Suleiman actually considers Hezbollah a legitimate part of Lebanon's defense arm!

Any reasonably astute observer could have seen this coming a long way off.

Suleiman is back in the news again today. He was in Tehran, palling around with Ahmadinejad,as he signed a five year defense pact between Iran and Lebanon that includes military aid to the Lebanese army,including what Ahmadinejad characterized as 'defensive weapons.'

According to Naharnet: “‘We are grateful that the Islamic Republic of Iran has always stood by the Lebanese people and government,’ IRNA [the Iranian News Agency] quoted Suleiman as saying.”

And Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was quoted as saying "Lebanese unity is the key to victory over Israel."

In other words, the rearmament of Hezbollah by Iran and Syria has lost even the pretense of illegality.

None of this was deemed worthy of major notice by the American news media of course. And the American taxpayer still continues to send what amounts to millions in military aid to Hezbollah.

What the Bush administration has accomplished in Lebanon is to set up another failed state that's a training ground and haven for Islamic terrorism, just like in Pakistan. But unlike Pakistan, this time we actually had a major role in setting it up and even paid part of the cost.

In the future we may find that the cost is a lot higher than we supposed.

Nicely done, Condi. Heckuva job, Bushie.

Shiny Happy Dhimmi #6 Is Up

Check out the latest edition of Shiny Happy Dhimmi #6, courtesy of Soccer Dad......

The Story Of Chanukah

Chanukah, the Festival of Lights begins this Sunday night. Several of the members of Joshua's Army have requested some background on the story of Chanukah. Here goes...

Chanukah celebrates one of the important miracles in Jewish history and reminds us of the triumph of faith. It takes place every year in mid to late December. While its date varies if you go by the western calendar, in the Hebrew calendar Chanukah always falls on the 25th day of Kislev.

Chanukah celebrates the Jewish war for independence in the second century B.C. E. The story is told in the First Book of Maccabees, and retold in the Second Book of Maccabees. A contemporary military history of the war can be found in Battles of the Bible, coauthored by Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon.

After his death, Alexander the Great's empire broke into several parts, and Israel was under the control of the Seleucid empire, based in Syria. Israel had lived peacefully under the Persian Empire and under the Ptolemic empire (of Egypt), both which tolerated Judaism; but the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes was an arrogant, bigoted Hellenizer, who attempted to force the Jews to abandon their religion and to adopt Greek customs and worship.

There were those Jews who considered themselves `modern' and `assimilated' who were willing to go along with this, even to the extent of having surgical operations to reverse circumcision.

Others did not, and they were prosecuted vigorously and brutalized by the Greeks.

The start of the Maccabean Revolt sprang from a single spontaneous act of resistance. In the foothills village of Modiin in 167BCE, a Greek army unit set up an altar, and ordered the local Jewish rabbi, Mattathias, to sacrifice a pig and eat it. He refused, as did his five sons. When a Jewish collaborator came forward to offer the sacrifice, a furious Mattathias "ran and killed him on the spot, killed the king's officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and tore down the altar" (1 Mac. 2:15-25).

Mattathias, his sons and their followers then headed for the Judean hills, to launch a guerilla war. They were farmers who had no military training, fighting a professional army. There had not been a Jewish army since Babylon had destroyed the Judean kingdom four centuries before. Their only weapons were farming tools and whatever simple weapons they could construct, such as maces, bows and arrows and slings. During this first year, Mattathias died, and his middle son Judah took over command as his successor.

Nicknamed "the hammer" ("Maccabee," in Hebrew), Judah constructed a guerilla army that staged daring nighttime raids on the Greek outposts, then melted back into the countryside. His successes attracted more supporters, and the revolt spread.

The war went on for 25 years, one of the most singular wars for independence in history. The miracle, perhaps is that it was fought at all, let alone won.

The Seleucids and Antiochus sent huge, well equipped armies into Israel to subdue the Jews. They were all defeated, at odds that seem miraculous even today. Judah Maccabee turned out to be a tactical genius, using unheard of tactics, leading the Greek phalanxes into the hills where they could not maneuver and destroying them.

In 164 BCE, the Jews defeated a force comanded by the Viceroy Lysias that outnumbered them two to one. That battle took place six miles north of Hebron, near the Jewish fortress of Beth-zur. The victory allowed Judah and his army to retake Jerusalem.

When they entered Jerusalem, Judah and his followers entered the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount. The Temple had been wrecked and horribly desecrated, with profanities scrawled on the walls and the Ark by the Seleucids.

The Maccabees built a new altar. When the time came to light the N'er Tamid, the Eternal Light of the Temple, the Jews could find only one sanctified jar of oil marked with the seal of the High Priest. It was only enough to last one evening. On the 25th of Kislev, in the year 164 BCE,the lamp was lit with this small jar of oil and, miraculously, stayed lit for eight days, until more oil suitable for the temple was made. The eight days of Hanukkah celebrate that miracle, as well as the divine intervention that had led the Jews to amazing victories over well-equipped professional armies far superior in numbers. "Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wants and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place" (2 Mac. 10:7).

The war itself continued. In 160 BCE, near modern-day Ramallah, Judah was killed, but Judah's brother Jonathan, and then his brother Simon took command of the Jewish army, finally winning complete independence in 142 BCE. At last, "All the people sat under their own vines and fig trees, and there was none to make them afraid" (1 Mac. 14:12.).

Towards the end of the war, Antiochus and the Seleucids became so obsessed with defeating the Jews that they sacked their own cities and sold their own citizens into slavery to get money to pursue the war against the Jews.

The War of the Maccabees was the first war ever fought for religious freedom. Somehow, a group of farmers with no military training who refused to bow to their oppressors defeated a mighty empire and its immense standing armies. There seems to be no plausible explanation for the victory of the Jews except that it was a miracle.

Chanukah reminds us that with G-d's help, victory over evil is assured and no miracle is impossible. Modern Israel and the survival of the Jewish people against all odds are proof of that.


Symbols in Chanukah

Aside from the Hanukkiah (candlesticks), the other great symbol of Chanukah are those small spinning tops known as dreidels.













The four letters which appear on the four corners of a dreidel allude to the miracle of Chanukah. They spell out: Nes (N-miracle), Gadol (G-great), Haya (H-happened) and Sham (S-there, meaning in Israel). Or, `a great miracle happened there.'

Indeed it did.

Chag Sameach! Happy Chanukah!

Bush Give Auto Makers $17 Billion Bailout

Just sign another IOU to the taxpayers, OK?

Bush said Friday the federal government would provide loans almost immediately to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler to prevent "an unacceptably painful blow" should the Detroit giants fail.

Bush said in normal economic circumstances he would not intervene to save the automakers but "in the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action."

Federal intervention is necessary, he said, to give auto buyers faith in their purchases of domestic vehicles.

The loans are designed to stabilize the two automakers through March, at which time they must show they are financially viable.

"If the firms have not attained viability by March 31, 2009, the loan will be called and all funds returned to the Treasury," a White House statement said.

(and uh...what if they're unable to pay the loans back, genius?)

In a statement after Bush's announcement, Obama said that allowing a collapse in the auto industry would have had "devastating consequences" for the economy.

"The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices and begin the long-term restructuring that is absolutely required to save this critical industry and the millions of American jobs that depend on it," Obama's statement said.

A senior Bush administration official briefing reporters said he expected that GM and Chrysler officials will be signing the loan papers to access the cash later Friday.

Ford Motor Co. is in a better financial position than GM and Chrysler and is not included in the loan plan.

An additional $4 billion may be available in February, the Bush administration said.

GM has warned it will fall below the minimum amount of cash it needs to continue to operate without $4 billion in federal loans before the end of the month. Privately held Chrysler said it will need $4 billion or it also will run out of cash early next year.

Financing will be drawn from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the fund set aside in October to bail out Wall Street firms and banks, according to the White House.

The president said Friday the plan will give the automakers a chance to show they can be viable outside a "disorderly bankruptcy," which he said would drive the U.S. into a deeper recession with effects "far beyond the auto industry."

As I've pointed out, Bush just agreed to loan $17.4 million for something that was only worth a mere $7 billion(the total valuation of all the stock of the Big Three) , and could likely have been purchased by the taxpayers outright for even less.Of course, that would have meant that the UAW would have had to renegotiate its contract more along the lines of what auto workers at Toyota, Honda and Mitsubishi are making.

It's fun to spend other people's money ain't it? Especially when you just just turn on the printing presses and make more of it.

Watcher's Council Results, 12/19/08

The Council has spoken! A complete rundown of the voting tallies is here.


Among the Council members, the winner this week was Bookworm Room for Selfish is as selfish does
In second place we had Mere Rhetoric with Obama: Since We All Know That Engagement With Iran Won’t Work, How About A US Nuclear Umbrella For Israel?

Also getting votes was The Glittering Eye for The Ministry of Silly Suggestions, Soccer Dad for Falk - moonbattery a feature not a bug , and Joshuapundit for Newsweak Shills For Same Sex Marriage - In It’s Religion Section!

Among the non-Council entries, the winner was the always interesting Fjordman in The Brussels Journal for On Deconstructing the Majority: Nothing To Do With Islam? Really?

In second place was my nominee, Council Alumnus ShrinkWrapped with Some Disparate Dots

As usual, congratulations not only to the winners, but to all the participants.

Climate Crisis = Logic Crisis

Blogpal Larrey Anderson over at American Thinker has a unique take on the global warming catfight that brings things very much into focus, especially when the country is experiencing record low temps...

Al Gore is right! Sort of. The current debate over climate change is over. At least, it is over in terms of a logical and unbiased inquiry.


The debate over "climate change" is no longer a matter of science. In the past forty years, the proponents of "climate change" have written and rewritten their hypotheses to fit the empirical facts. In logic this is sometimes called "The fallacy of saving the hypothesis." There is no honest discussion when the topic of a debate is constantly controlled, and occasionally altered, by the proponents of one side of the argument. Climate change proponents have been doing this for years.


I distinctly remember the first time I had an argument with someone about "climate change." It was a warm spring day in April of 1975. I was walking across the campus at Harvard headed for lunch. A fellow classmate (we were both juniors) ran up to me. He was really excited. He hollered out:


"Have you heard? The ice age is coming. They've proven it with computer studies at MIT."


"How did they prove that there is an ice age coming with computers?" I asked my friend.


"The planet is getting colder. They have the data. And it is going to keep getting colder. They have these computer models --"


I stopped him right there. I knew enough about computers to understand that they were not up to accurately predicting short-term weather patterns -- let alone an ice age.


"No way. Computers aren't that powerful. "


"But they have the data and they have computers!"


"I know they do. But computers spit out whatever they are programmed to spit out. Load a computer with the data that the world has been getting colder; ask it what the weather will be tomorrow, and what do you think the computer is going to tell you? The world is getting hotter? If it does you'd better get a better computer. You hungry?" I replied and I continued on my way to lunch.

Read it all here...

Obama's New Secretary of Education - Chicago Rools

Barack Obama named Arne Duncan as his pick for Secretary of Education today.Duncan's headed the Chicago School District since 2001.

His record, of couse, speaks for itself :

Duncan, hailed by Obama as a reformer, said he would like to take the lessons he learned in Chicago with him when he moves to Washington. “I'm also eager to apply some of the lessons we have learned here in Chicago to help school districts all across our country," Duncan said after Obama formally named him to the job in Chicago.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report for 2007, Chicago public schools have consistently performed below the national average during Duncan’s tenure.

The report measures students at the fourth and eighth grade levels in the subjects of reading, math, science, and writing, and ranks them at below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced levels.

Students in eighth grade are those most likely to have been in the Chicago system for a majority of Duncan’s tenure. CNSNews.com used the scores for these students to best determine the results of Duncan’s administration.

By 2007, only 17 percent of Chicago eighth graders were at or above grade level in reading. Thirteen percent scored at or above grade level in math. Twenty-three percent scored at or above grade level in writing.

By 2005, the only year Chicago participated in the NEAP assessment program, 16 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.

In 2007, 29 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above grade-level in reading, 31 percent in math, and 31 percent in writing. In 2005, 27 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.

Students in eighth grade are those most likely to have been in the Chicago system for a majority of Duncan’s tenure. CNSNews.com used the scores for these students to best determine the results of Duncan’s administration.

By 2007, only 17 percent of Chicago eighth graders were at or above grade level in reading. Thirteen percent scored at or above grade level in math. Twenty-three percent scored at or above grade level in writing.

By 2005, the only year Chicago participated in the NEAP assessment program, 16 percent of eighth grade students were at or above grade level in science.

That's some record of reform, Bubba!

Chicago has the third largest school district in the US, and they're well funded,with a budget for 2007-2008 was $4.6 billion. They're also near the top in money spent per pupil, at $10,555 per.

Incidentally, the school district that spends the most per pupil is Washington DC...who also have the lowest test scores in the country.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that Obama would name someone like Duncan to do to the nation's schools what he did so well in Chicago.

Not that the Obamas are going to be personally affected by any of that. Their kids went to exclusive private schools in Chicago, just as they will in DC.For that matter so do the vast majority of public school teachers and administrators do. And it's what I've done with my own children.

Of course,anyone truly interested in reforming education would provide vouchers so that working parents could abandon dysfunctional schools and take advantage of superior schools like the Obamas do. But we can't have that now,can we?

As long as the teacher's unions are appeased, that's all that matters..and if that means that the little buggers get an inferior education, tough tamales.

Simply shameless.

Throwing Stones - Rick Warren And The Inauguration

President-elect Barack Obama's choice for the inaugural invocation is none other than Saddleback Church's Pastor Rick Warren, an evangelical who is pro-life and opposes gay marriage.

As you can imagine, that announcement infuriated homosexual lobby groups throughout the country, who strongly supported the Chosen one during the campaign an dare now wailing about feeling abandoned:

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote to Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination. {...}

“It’s a huge mistake,” said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who chairs {California's} Courage Campaign. “He’s really the wrong person to lead the president into office.

Can you imagine if he had a man of God doing the invocation who had deliberately said that Jews are not going to be saved and therefore should be excluded from what’s going on in America? People would be up in arms,” he said.

(Having heard how evil the Jooos were from Reverend Wright for twenty years, Obama probably has had his fill of that particular message by now...ff)

The editor of the Washington Blade, Kevin Naff, called the choice “Obama’s first big mistake.”

“His presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him,” Naff wrote, referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. “This tone-deafness to our concerns must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”

Even more interesting to me was the opposition by a number of conservatives, some of whom felt it was hypocritical for a pro-Life Pastor to appear at the inauguration of a pro-abortion politician.

Given that Obama's stance on this issue is essentially infanticide on demand even if the kid manages to survive the attempt, I can certainly see their side of things.

HOWEVER....let's take a breath and calm down, shall we?

Obama made a commendable political decision to appear to reach out to Evangelicals. Notice I said 'appear to' as I doubt the Obama administration will actually do anything or pass any legislation along those lines...but it's nice that he decided to try a little fencemending. This may be a message to the gay lobby that a great many people don't hate you but are not at all happy with your agenda and endless self-victimization. Perhaps a little less stridency and a bit more listening might be beneficial.

And for the Right here's something .The inaugural invocation is a prayer for the well-being of the country and the success of the incoming president. For various reasons, I have very little respect for Obama the man, but a great deal of respect for Obama as president..and seriously, is there any one of you who doesn't hope he surprises all of us and does superbly well as president?

As they say in the military, you salute the uniform, not the man.

Take the inauguration for what it is... our four-year ritual that celebrates that once again in America, we have managed to survive as a democracy. That's all it is, so let Obama ask whomever he wants to his particular party.

The more important stuff will come afterwards.

Joe The Plumber's Ohio Government Snoopstress Resigns

Helen Jones-Kelley, Ohio's Director of Department of Job and Family Services, has quit, along with two others in her department who were involved in digging through Joe the Plumber's confidential information during the election.

I assume this was a resignation in lieu of termination...

Helen Jones-Kelley, the state official placed on unpaid leave for improperly accessing confidential information from state databases on “Joe the Plumber,” has resigned.

Two senior managers at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services who were involved in the incident also are being ousted, The Dispatch has learned.

In a four-paragraph statement, she said, "it is with sadness and clarity that I have decided to resign...This decision comes after having a time of pause, in which I realize that I continue to be used as a political postscript, providing a distraction from urgent state priorities.
"My professional career, and the legacy of service I have established, has been, and continues to be, far too important for me to allow my reputation and my commitment as a servant leader to be disparaged. I also remain concerned for the safety of my family and myself."

Always the victim, right? Too bad Jones-Kelly didn't show the same consideration or concern for Joe the Plumber's privacy and reputation.

I wouldn't be surprised one bit to see her wind up working in the Obama administration somewhere, loyal soldier that she is.

Bush , Condi And The UN Combine To Screw Israel One More Time

Not content with almost the entire Middle East being a Jew-free zone, the UN, with the connivance of the US and Russia have come out with a resolution designed to try to kick the Jews out of what's left.

The UN Security Council approved a resolution Tuesday that essentially endorsed the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum, called for a second Arab Palestinian state and attempted to cement that stance in stone. The vote was 14 to 0, with Libya abstaining because the resolution insufficiently condemned Israel.

Resolution 1850 notes positively the Annapolis gang rape of Israel, embraces the 'land for peace' formula and calls for 'irreversible progress' towards it goal where `two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders.'

Of course, no one at the UN would ever dare suggest that the Arabs give up so much as a square dunam of the vast lands they possess for a Palestinian state...even though they caused the refugee situation in the first place by attacking Israel in 1948, in violation of the UN charter.

It further calls for "that lasting peace can only be based on an enduring commitment to mutual recognition, freedom from violence, incitement, and terror, and the two-State solution, building upon previous agreements and obligations..."

Let's translate this from NewSpeak into plain English.

As far as violence, incitement and terrorist attacks go, the Palestinians have never stopped them since Oslo, and aren't going to stop them now. As recently as a month ago, Arafat II Abbas was saying that if the Palestinians didn't get absolutely everything they want, he was going to order a new jihad on Israel's civilians, with all those US arms Israeli Prime minister Olmert allowed the Bush Administration to supply Fatah with. And it's hardly the first time.

And for the Palestinian's attitude on incitement, all one needs to do is look at those famous Fatah summer camps that teach young children to hate and kill Jews, listen to the Fatah run media or look at what's being taught in Fatah's classrooms, with their maps of 'Palestine' that omit Israel. They have absolutely no intention of accepting Israel as a Jewish state, and they've made that crystal clear, ever since Arafat went on Jordanian TV after signing Oslo and famously said that either the Jews would push them into the sea or they would push the Jews into the sea.

In fact the Palestinians,like the other Arab states have made it clear that unless they get absolutely everything they want, there's no deal.

What they want is this, and it's not subject to negotiation; the Israelis give up all of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), including land legally purchased from the Arabs via the Jewish National Fund. The Israelis also give up half of Jerusalem, which means that Jews will be denied access to their holiest sites and will have to watch their religious shrines desecrated by the triumphant Arabs, just as they were prior to 1967.

Then, having made thousands of their own citizens homeless, given up half of their capitol and having retreated to indefensible borders, Israel allows itself to be flooded by thousands of genocidal Arab `refugees' and their descendants.In exchange for committing what amounts to national suicide, the Jews of Israel get nothing but an ill-defined guarantee of `recognition' and peace from the Arabs.

That 'recognition' will last for as long as a truncated weakenedIsrael manages to survive, and the `peace' will be the peace of the cemetery.That's the choice the Arabs are giving Israel, and that's what the UN just endorsed, with the willing help of George W. Bush and Condi Rice.

And, I might add, the willing help of Israeli quislings Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, both of whom welcomed the resolution.

In truth, there's not a whole lot they could have done practically anyway once Condi and Russian foreign minister Serge Lavrov got together in a back room and cooked this up. Like the Roadmap, the current Resolution was concocted with a great deal of Arab participation, but without any input from a Jew or an Israeli. Israel is the only UN member prohibited from being on the Security Council, even in one of the rotating seats.

But to welcome it?

The only saving grace of this foul sellout is that it's not a binding resolution, so a new Israeli government can toss this in the garbage where it belongs. But the message is quite clear. Israel is expendable, and they had better look for some new friends.

The question is...once the West accedes to giving the Arabs the Jews, who will be next?

US Nuclear Mole Who Stole Secrets For Iran Sentenced

Some of you may recall an article I wrote in 2007 about the arrest of Mohammed Reza Alavi, a naturalized US citizen from Iran who was a former engineer at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. He illegally took software codes, downloaded details of control rooms, reactors and designs of the nation's biggest nuclear plant on his personal laptop. Then he suddenly 'resigned' from his job at Palo Verde, returned to Iran and sold them to the Iranian government.

Apparently Alawi was planning to relocate permanently in Iran, where he's invested substantial money in an Iranian company and owns a house. And in Iran, that's a substantial investment, since the conceot of mortgages as we know them doesn't exist. He returned to the US to be with his wife who had just given birth, and according to the feds, this unemployed engineer deposited $98,000 into a U.S. bank account upon his return.

The good news is that he was caught. The bad, almost mind bogling news? He wasn't charged with espionage.

No, Alawi was convicted of violating the US/Iran trade embargo, which prohibits Americans from exporting goods and services to Iran. His sentences? Two terms of fifteen months each, which the judge is nice enough to let him serve concurrently.

No deportation, no long term incarceration, not even a fine to deprive him of the wealth he sold his adopted country for. He'll be out in a year with good behavior. And would you like to bet that he'll either run back to Iran or find new employment in America's nuclear industry?

Un-freaking-believable.

Watcher's Council Nominations, 12/17/08

The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.

So, let's see what we have this week....

COUNCIL

Joshuapundit - Newsweak Shills For Same Sex Marriage - In It’s Religion Section! - In the wake of several propositions passing by wide margins in favor of restricting marriage to one man and one woman, the gay lobby has intensified their pressure on the dinosaur media to come out of the closet for the cause. The entire latest issue of Newsweak has an interesting dichotomy - it literally drips with contempt for the sort of inbred hillbillies that take religion and scripture seriously, yet Newsweak made their cover story - written by Lisa Miller, their religion editor - a long essay on the Scriptural support for gay marriage.

It's one thing to simply say that the Bible is wrong, but to actually attempt to spin the argument using the Bible as a reference is simply a lie in print.

While I think there are very good societal and practical arguments against same-sex marriage, the people who run Newsweak decided to actually use a religious argument to shill for it, so I addressed it in those terms. And as I reveal, Ms. Miller has a rather interesting dichotomy in her personal life concerning this issue...which like Newsweak's reeks of hypocrisy.



The Provocateur - The Irony of Me, Barack Obama,Regulations, and Loan Modifications - Mike writes about his thoughts on loan modifications and government regulations. Ironically, the fed's policies on this item, combined with creating a new subprime loan class by shifting existing subprime to the FHA(AKA the taxpayers) by raising the loan limits is not only likely to create a huge crisis in loan defaults down the road, but will keep property values artificially high..and yes, Mike, we will unfortunately see no money down loans again in the future, I'm afraid.

Rhymes With Right - Sense At Daily Kos? - Greg is pleasantly surprised at a Daily Kos diary that criticizes Illinois AG Lisa Madigan for attempting to illegally oust Governor Blagojevitch..and then examines the state constitutional argument against what the AG attempted to do . Nicely done Greg, says I.

Bookworm Room - Selfish is as selfish does - Ms. Bookworm has a nifty, well written rant against what she terms the selfishness, inarticulateness and carelessness of the younger generation. Socrates felt exactly the same way.

My personal experience with my own children and their friends is very different, but that could very well be a product of their education in a religious Day School..that, and consciously choosing not having TV in the house when they were small( for that matter, we still don't). I certainly couldn't take credit for it myself.

The Razor - Bush’s Automaker Bailout - Scott writes about the ridiculous hypocrisy the Left is exhibiting by labeling the failed UAW bail out ' Bush's bailout' when a great many prominent Democrats voted against it as well.

The thing that has always intrigued me about the Left and the current occupant of the White House is that with all the legitimate reasons to criticize him, they consistently pick the most unfair and illogical.

The Colossus of Rhodey - How dumb was this? - Hube relates the sad tale of a new teacher who attempted to liven up a lesson on slavery by shackling a couple of black students in her class...and explains how he would have handled it.

A couple of very funny but 'insensitive' remarks occur to me, but I'll leave them to your imagination.

Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Dubai’s Lobbyist As Climate Czar? - Laer points out yet another instance of Change We Can Believe In...Obama's proposed appointment of Dubai lobbyist Carol Browner as climate Czarina, putting her in charge of further restricting American energy creation and the drilling of our own oil.

Both state and federal Big Government, of course, want $4.00 a gallon oil...because they need the tax money to fund further gimmees to the people that, y'know, matter. And that unfortunately doesn't include you and I. I'll have more of my own take on this later.

The Glittering Eye - The Ministry of Silly Suggestions - Dave Schuler shares my opinion of NYT columnist Nicholas Kristoff ; aside from never finding a terrorist he didn't have at least some apologetic excuse for, the man is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed by a large margin.

Here Dave takes apart his silly suggestion that we change the name of the Department of Agriculture to `The Department of Food', along with some equally idiotic suggestions by Kristoff regarding changes in its function.

Soccer Dad - Falk - moonbattery a feature not a bug - This week, Soccer Dad examines the case of one Richard Falk, the so-called "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967," who Soccer Dad quite accurately describes as `an anti-Israel crackpot' as well as a 9/11 'troother' conspiracy theorist.

The UN, of course, continues as one of the most anti-Semitic organizations on the planet and Falk is an appropriate representative. Small wonder Israel declared him persona non grata and booted him out of the country, and it surprises me that they don't extend that treatment to a number of other foreigners.

Right Truth - Death With Dignity - An interesting post from Debbie Hamilton, as she makes an argument for assisted suicide.

Mere Rhetoric - Obama: Since We All Know That Engagement With Iran Won’t Work, How About A US Nuclear Umbrella For Israel? - Omri doesn't think much of Obama's offer of a 'nuclear umbrella' for Israel.

I agree with him....although I'm hardly surprised this popped out of the woodwork, given whom Obama's national security team consists of..


NON COUNCIL


Submitted By: The Provocateur - Dick Morris - The Collapse of Our Enemies

Submitted By: Rhymes With Right - Althouse - AG Lisa Madigan’s argument to the Illinois Supreme Court about ousting Governor Blagojevich

Submitted By: Bookworm Room - Biz Lizards - American Special Forces in Afghanistan Accidentally Defend Themselves

Submitted By: Joshuapundit - ShrinkWrapped - Some Disparate Dots

Submitted By: The Razor - Real Physics - Power or Reason

Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - Yourish.com - Euphemism of the year: Suicide bombings are “Violent, politically motivated attacks”

Submitted By: Cheat-Seeking Missiles - The Brussels Journal - On Deconstructing the Majority: Nothing To Do With Islam? Really?

Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - Pundita - To the man who threw his shoes at President Bush and missed

Submitted By: Soccer Dad - Treppenwitz - Some points worth making

Submitted By: Right Truth - Fore-Left - Tamm Exposed

Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric - Danger Room - IRA Historian: Today’s Terrorists Are ‘Amateurs’ - and Still Deadly

Submitted by The Watcher - Wizbang - We’re Mad As Hell, And We’re Not Gonna Take It Anymore!