Reuters couldn’t wait to call Al Gore “Nobel Laureate Al Gore” is their story about his most recent manbearpig warning speech in Bali;
Nobel laureate Al Gore accused the United States on Thursday of blocking progress at the U.N. climate conference, and European nations threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington compromises on emissions reductions.
In this morning’s Washington Post is a must-read opinion piece by Henry Kissinger on last week’s release of the now-infamous NIE report;
Wall Street Journal’s Evan Perez, Jose De Cordoba and Matt Moffett report that the feds arrested four Venezuelan agents of the Chavez regime in Miami who were planning to silence the main witness in the Maleta-gate I case I mentioned briefly Tuesday and Kate kindly left a comment to Spanish language Noticias24 last night;
I was doing some research for something else and, as it often happens, I got sidetracked and ended up bumping into this story about a movie about the only 5 Cubans ever to be imprisoned apparently; (more…)
Back in August, the Venezuelan government was busted cold smuggling oil money to then-Argentinian-presidential candidate Christina Kirschner. (New York Times) (more…)
With todays obsession with never, ever offending anyone, our world gets worse. Political correctness has been around for years and all it has done is hide the truth and obfuscate facts.
DNC Chairman Howard ‘YEARRRRRRGH!’ Dean has pontificated that in the most recent debate, Republicans used “outrageous phrases like ‘illegal aliens.’ ” He urged the candidates to “have some morality and some humanity.”
Excuse me? Using the proper legal terminology is now outrageous? What is moral or humane about condoning crime? The democrats’ continued efforts to make illegal immigration flatly ignores several important facts:
The problem isn’t with Hispanics, it is with criminals.
Criminal is not now, nor has it ever been a race.
Not all Illegal Aliens are Hispanic, to suggest that they are, is racist.
The Republican presidential candidates should NEVER have participated in the Univision debate. There are far more people in this country who do not speak Spanish and to pander to those who do is an insult to the rest.
To claim that the term illegal alien is outrageous is so stupid as to be laughable.
Dictionary.com defines illegal as:
1. forbidden by law or statute.
2. contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, etc.:
and alien is defined:
1. a resident born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization (distinguished from citizen).
2. a foreigner.
3. a person who has been estranged or excluded.
4. residing under a government or in a country other than that of one’s birth without having or obtaining the status of citizenship there.
So, then an Illegal Alien would be properly defined as:
(My definition)A person residing in a country, not of their birth, in a manner contrary to or forbidden by law or statute
Dictionary.com’s definition:
1. a foreigner who has entered or resides in a country unlawfully or without the country’s authorization.
2. a foreigner who enters the U.S. without an entry or immigrant visa, esp. a person who crosses the border by avoiding inspection or who overstays the period of time allowed as a visitor, tourist, or businessperson.
That’s odd, I didn’t see anything in any of those definitions about Hispanics, or Mexicans, or about speaking Spanish… Why is it then that politicians are compelled to kiss up to the Hispanic population? Oh, I see, they do that because the single largest group of illegal aliens are Hispanics who happen to be from Mexico. That doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter a bit. Where they criminals were born or what language they speak doesn’t have anything to do with the crimes they commit, unless you are a racist…
So, while Congress acts as if it didn’t know about the destruction of certain torture tapes by the CIA, the CIA and Justice Department are starting their own “investigation” into the incident (Washington Examiner, Pamela Hess);
The Justice Department and the CIA’s internal watchdog announced Saturday a joint inquiry into the spy agency’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists as the latest scandal to rock U.S. intelligence gathered steam.
The review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.
“I welcome this inquiry and the CIA will cooperate fully,” CIA Director Mike Hayden said in a statement. “I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes.”
The House Intelligence Committee is launching its own inquiry next week. It will investigate not only why the tapes were destroyed and Congress was not notified, but also the interrogation methods that “if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America,” said Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, on Saturday.
“This administration cannot be trusted to police itself,” Reyes said.
What they’re investigating, I don’t have a clue – it’s well-known by now that the Democrats were told about the impending destruction years before it happened. SO what’s to investigate?
Well, maybe they can start by investigating the Democrats who gave their tacit approval of waterboarding and other information extraction techniques back in 2002 (Washington Post, Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen);
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of “all aspects of the detention and interrogation program.” (By Charles Dharapak — Associated Press)
“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Funny how there’s so much dirt to dig up relating to Democrat hypocrisy while this administration is said to be untrustworthy.
Other bloggers;
Ed Morrissey: If Congress couldn’t find it objectionable when waterboarding was employed, they have little to complain about years afterward.
Mad as Hell: Can we just jack up the Capitol dome and drive a new Congress underneath?Â
An awful lot of people in Washington think Americans are generally stupid – the same goes for an awful lot of people in other countries. So when the now-famous National Intelligence Estimate was released that claims Iran halted it’s nuclear weapons program four years ago, the wonks in Washington were sure Americans were going to swallow it hook-line-and-sinker. After all, it was released by those super-brainiacs at the State Department, right? Those guys with three first names who all graduated from Ivy-league schools.
Well, according to a Rasmusen poll (h/t Flopping Aces) they only suckered in 18%;
Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women.
I’m very happy that women are more skeptical than men -Â it means women are still thinking deeply about our national security instead of just going along with the herd of men who are trying to get in their pants.
In the meantime, the Islamic Republic is shocked (shocked, I tell you) the the US is spying on them. Gateway Pundit quotes a FARS news report in which a general does his best impression of Nancy Pelosi;
“The hypocritical and bullying face of Bush and the US neoconservative reactionaries was brought into light by this report,” Major General Hassan Firooz Abadi said in the wake of the latest report by 16 US intelligence agencies stressing that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Meantime, he called on Iran to maintain vigilance, reminding that the hawks are still in power in the US.
“We should be vigilant as the hawks are still in power in the US and the aggressive forces of the world arrogance are still occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and their oppression and cruelty against the Palestinian and Lebanese nations have not ended,” the commander said.
Meaning, I suppose, that the Islamic Republic’s military supports a Democrat candidate for President next Fall.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Gates took an opportunity to warn about Iran’s continued malfeasance in the Middle East (Washington Times’ Lolita C. Baldor);
Members of the audience challenged his rebukes of Tehran, evidence of the divide among Arab nations over the Bush administration’s tough stance. Asked if the U.S. would be willing to talk with Iran, Mr. Gates said the behavior of Iran’s current leadership “has not given one confidence that a dialogue would be productive.”
“Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents — Christians, Jews and Muslims alike,” Mr. Gates said in his address at the event organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
So, apparently, this administration’s policy reflects American public opinion more closely than the media and the three-first-named State Department wonks would care to admit.