Lions and Tigers and Bears.

The real enemy in the War on Terrorism, in the mind of the media, is the federal government. Why do I feel that if this were a Democrat administration, we wouldn't hear a breath of this stuff. Of course, with appointees like Judge Kollar-Kotelly and Jamie Gorelich, it would never have gone to this length to stop terrorists from completing more attacks.

The real scary scandal here is that this single judge would take it on herself to block the FISA court from functioning as it was designed.

She should be impeached. She serves "during good behavior," and this is not good behavior. It strikes me more as a judicial coup d'etat than anything else.

Bush acted with the advice and counsel of experts in counterterrorism and national security. Who advised Kollar-Kotelly? Half the Congress is conditioned to think that a warrant solves everything, but this judge has just provided proof that we can't always trust the courts to do what they're supposed to. Hence, the need for Roberts and Alito. Of course, judges are the elite of the elitists. Nobody is ever supposed to challenge their views, except higher courts.

Ouch!

Glenn Reynolds on the injection of partisan politics into Coretta Scott King's funeral:

The problem with today's Democrats is that they try to invest the naked hunger for power with the dignity of the civil rights movement, a dignity that they no longer possess because it was based on a self-discipline that they no longer possess.

There was a report on Fox News that the Democrats are recruiting Iraq War veterans to run for Congress. I wonder how well that will work.

I don't know if Iraq can break out of the Middle Eastern pattern, but I still feel that it was a worthwhile project. As a caller on Hugh Hewitt's show noted, the Democrats seem to hate George Bush more than they do bin Laden. I believe that anger is the reaction of a person who's losing the argument. I suppose that if my party had elected a president like Bill Clinton and nominated stiffs like Al Gore and John Kerry, I'd be worried too, but I'd have a hard time defending it. The pervasiveness of namecalling by liberals who no longer know how to defend their ideology with facts and logic is another symptom the left's intellectual bankruptcy.

Super-dud

The bad calls that took a touchdown away from the Seahawks and gave the Steelers a another ruined the Superbowl for me. I'm glad that Bettis got a championship, but I don't feel like the game was representative of the quality of both teams.

The pigs at the trough.

N. Z. Bear is keeping the heat on for eliminating earmarking. I don't like this practice or porkbarrel spending either, but if you want to real cut the waste in government, you're going to have to take on entitlements. Good luck with that.

While you're reforming . . .

how about having the Senate quit horsing around and confirm some judges! It's said that every Senator thinks of himself as a presidential candidate. They should stick to their knitting. If your only experience is as a legislator, you aren't qualified to be president. Just do the job you have now.

Isaiah 14:16

In the King James Version: "They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;"

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff of the German newspaper Die Zeit, explaining why his paper printed the cartoons of Mohammed:

But the criteria change when material that is seen as offensive becomes newsworthy. That's why we saw bodies falling out of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. That's why we saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. On such issues we print what we usually wouldn't. The very nature of the discourse is to find parameters of what is culturally acceptable. How many times have we seen Janet Jackson's breast in the course of a discussion of the limits of family entertainment? How many times have we printed material that Jews might consider offensive in an attempt to define the extent of anti-Semitism? It seems odd that most U.S. papers patronize their readers by withholding cartoons that the whole world talks about. To publish does not mean to endorse. Context matters.

It's worth remembering that the controversy started out as a well-meaning attempt to write a children's book about the life of the prophet Muhammad. The book was designed to promote religious tolerance. But the author encountered the consequences of religious hatred when he looked for an illustrator. He could not find one. Denmark's artists seemed to fear for their lives. In turning down the job they mentioned the fate of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist for harshly criticizing fundamentalism.

Jack Kelly has more on this.

What I think most non-Muslims see in these cartoons is pretty mild stuff, and the reaction of radical Muslim to it is mystifying. It further divides people from each other.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a Hugh Hewitt fan, but I'm not sure how to take his criticism of the Danes for publishing these cartoons. I wouldn't have published them because they didn't seem to have any point other than to poke all Muslims in the eye with an implication that the clerics who preach hatred and violence are right about what Mohammed taught. We ought to remember those Muslims who are moderate, modest and pious, and offer them respect. We need to separate them from the radicals and Wahhabists. There are people like Grand Ayatollah Sistani:

Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, condemned the publications as a "horrific action."

But in remarks posted on his Web site, al-Sistani referred to "misguided and oppressive" segments of the Muslim community whose actions "projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love and brotherhood."

Indeed.

If you want peace, prepare for war .

Jim Pinkerton:

Short of worldwide war, followed by occupation, there's not much the West can do about Muslim culture in Muslim lands. That's international multiculturalism, alas. But on the issue of intra-national multiculturalism, there's plenty we can do. We can monitor, we can insist upon political and cultural assimilation and we can impose strict controls on immigration and travel visas - down to zero if need be.

I agree that Muslims are pushing their luck by behaving so obnoxious to the societies who have received them. If they think the cartoons were awful, what will it be like when the people have had enough of them.

A riot is a terrible thing . . .

Abu Hamza al-Masri an apostate "cleric" in Britain, has been convicted of "soliciting murder and racial hatred by using his sermons to encourage followers to kill non-Muslims." He got seven years in prison. Too bad being in prison won't shut him up.

These people seem to be determined to turn the rest of the world against Islam. They have nothing to offer the world but subjugation. Ironic that this verdict should come out when his fellow clerics have been whipping up riots over cartoons.

If you've ever seen the cartoons that appear in Muslim newspapers, caricaturing leaders of democratic nations, the hypocrisy is pungent.