Our Security Strategy

Right now the United States' strategy to protect itself against flying terrorists is to frisk every passenger who boards an airline. Since there are 300 million Americans, let's call this a 300 million suspects strategy. An alternative would be to weed the list down a bit. Children and the very old can obviously be excluded, so that gets us down to about 150 million. We also know that these terrorists are predominantly young males, so we can halve that number to 75 million. And not to be insensitive or anything, aren't most of these terrorists Muslims? Now we are down to about 3 million people. And finally, if we look only at Muslims with recent connections to foreign countries, we are down to something less than 35,000 people. That's about the size of a small town in America. A platoon of Barney Fife's might even be able to handle that number. Ought not our highly trained and educated members of Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, and the State Department be able to track this number of people, given the billions of dollars in resources we've made available to them? But instead, we get the 300 million suspect strategy, in which our best and brightest focus on people like this: I feel safer already. How about you?

Midnight Abortions - Stat!

Martha Coakley, the regrettable (for Democrats) candidate put forth by Massachusetts Dems to assume the legendary Senate seat of Teddy Kennedy, recently opined that Catholics ought not to work in hospital emergency rooms.  It seems Ms. Coakley frowns on Catholic concerns about dispensing emergency contraception.

Excuse me, "emergency contraception?" What on earth could this mean? In what sense is contraception administered on an emergency basis?  The very root meaning of contraception is "prevent inception." How many emergency care patients have a critical need to do that which might result in impregnation?

Well, I really don't know. Perhaps we can put up some stimulus funds to study the matter. I suppose that lying in those hospital beds, hooked up to resuscitators, heart monitors, and the like, can be a lonely business. A little loving on the side might very well be something people need.

But of course, this is not what Ms. Coakley envisions happening in emergency rooms. She sees rape victims, upon showing up at the emergency room, needing an abortion, and if Catholics are unwilling to dispense the little abortifascient pill, these emergency needs will go unmet. Someone needs to tell Ms. Coakley that abortion has been a legal right in this country since, oh, about 1972, a factoid that Ms. Coakley ought to be familiar with since she is the Attorney General of the State of Massachusetts. There is nothing that needs to be done at 2 am in an emergency room that cannot be done the next day, week, or month at the time and place of the victims own choosing.

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A Stinging Rebuke

Dressed up in muted legal language, the Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke yesterday to District Court Judge Vaughn Walker and Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski for their recent shenanigans in the Proposition 8 trial in California.

Proposition 8 is the recent referendum amendment to the California Constitution passed by a solid majority establishing marriage solely as that between a man and a woman. Upon the filing of a lawsuit by gay rights advocates to overturn Proposition 8, Judges Walker and Kozinski began working desperately to change the Rules so that the trial proceedings could be televised.

In the first place, the Supremes agreed to review a motion by proponents of Proposition 8 for an extraordinary intervention to prevent the televising of the proceedings. It's hard enough to get a complaint before the Supreme Court in the first place, but to ask the Court to intervene in a controversy which had not gone through the regular appeals process is nigh on impossible.  In this case, the Court not only agreed to intervene, but issued its ruling in a stunning three days! In the second place, the Court ruled against the District Court on all counts, with not the barest hint that there was anything at all proper about the District Court's conduct. The Per Curiam opinion concluded:

The District Court attempted to change its rules at the eleventh hour to treat this case differently than other trials in the district. Not only did it ignore the federal statute that establishes the procedures by which its rules may be amended, its express purpose was to broadcast a high-profile trial that would include witness testimony about a contentious issue.

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2010

Now THIS is rather chilling. The primary point:

... the national Democrats are unnaturally and mysteriously sanguine despite growing backlash by the American people. Why? One reason: The Dems don't believe they will ever have to face a real election again.

And then Professor Gaski goes on to make a quite compelling case. Read the whole Article.

The only weakness in the Article is that he left out discussion of the Soros-funded Secretary of State Project, which we recounted here. Unfortunately, including that information in the Article only makes his argument stronger: the 2010 elections may not be the slam dunk we're all thinking it will be.

The Secretary of State Project has been in the works for years. How many critical States are prepared, waiting for another election close enough for some Leftist drone to tilt to Democrats? We don't know, and what's more, we don't have any way of knowing, because Democrats control the levers of power right now. And they are stonewalling.

There is one solution to all of this: no close elections. If the electorate can be made aware of the Democrat's machinations and true purposes, then I think the public will turn out in numbers never before seen in an American off-year election.

And do that quintessentially American thing: throw the bums out.

Another Fatwa

Prepare yourself, America.  In the wake of the Christmas bomber arrest, a major organization of Islam has issued a new Fatwa.  This is not new, of course. Hundreds of Fatwa's seem to issue from Muslim Imams each year, all bearing the same tired template of hatred and bigotry against the West, ignorance and murderous malice. It is as if they are all cranked out on some old mimeograph machine in Osama bin Laden's cave.

However .... this one IS new.  On behalf of ten million Muslims, twenty Imams affiliated with the Supreme Council of Canada have issued a bold, unambiguous Fatwa AGAINST THE TERRORISTS:

In our view, these attacks are evil and Islam requires from Muslims to stand up against this evil ... It is a duty of every Canadian and American Muslim to safeguard Canada and the USA . They must expose any person, Muslim OR non-Muslim, who would cause harm to fellow Canadians OR Americans. We, Canadian and American Muslims, must condemn and stand up against these attacks on Canada and the United States.

Most inspiring is the rationale given by these Imams:

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Christmas Bomber? This Calls for a Conference!

Almost a week after the fact, and after two previous attempts, our President finally comes out with a definitive statement in response to the Christmas bomber:

"I anticipate receiving assessments from several agencies this evening and will review those tonight and over the course of the weekend. On Tuesday, in Washington, I will meet personally with relevant agency heads to discuss our ongoing reviews as well as security enhancements and intelligence-sharing improvements in our homeland security and counterterrorism operations."

So, here are the active verbs he used: "anticipate," "receiving," "will review," "will meet personally," and "discuss." Oh, and "ongoing reviews," "security enhancements," and "intelligence-sharing improvements" are verbs, kinda, but only as subjects of a "discussion," before they become, you know, post-verbally active.

200 plus American citizens were very nearly murdered, and this is the response of America's Commander in Chief?

I am afraid that our Leader is a pocket-protected policy wonk, out of his depth with a real world attack on America.  It seems the near mass slaughter of all those on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 is just another occasion for opening a file labeled "Detroit" for meaningless emails, memos, and notes from meetings with various other people who are opening files for meaningless emails, memos, and notes.

Sheesh!  Batten down the hatches, America, your gonna take a lot of artillery before our Leaders wake up to some semblance of reality.