ABC:

U.S. forces have arrested the two leaders of the network believed responsible for the brazen raid in Karbala by terrorists disguised as Americans, in which five U.S. soldiers were kidnapped and later killed in January, U.S. military officials said today.

In operations over the past several days in Basra and Hillah, coalition forces captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network, a splinter faction of the Mahdi army.

Senior U.S. military sources tell ABC News that hard evidence linking the Khazalis to the Karbala raid, including the ID cards of several of the dead American soldiers, was recovered at the scene.

The coalition also found evidence linking the men to Iran and to an arms smuggling operation that included the high impact Explosively Formed Projectiles, or EFPs, according to U.S. officials.

The network’s connection to Iran raises the question of whether the Karbala raid was designed to exchange the captive American soldiers for the Iranian officers arrested by U.S. forces in Irbil in December — a plan that obviously went awry when the getaway vehicles were chased by Iraqi security, and the Americans were shot.

U.S. military also disclosed today that the leaders and members of the “Rusafa” car bomb network responsible for “some of the horrific bombings in eastern Baghdad in recent weeks” had also been arrested.

And it was also revealed that a “Saddam Fedayeen leader involved in setting up training camps in Syria for Iraqi and foreign fighters” was also arrested in Mosul. Officials declined to name the individual or describe the location of the camps in Syria.

Since 2003, there has been ample evidence that foreign terrorists were infiltrating across the Syrian border into Iraq, activities that both U.S. and Iraqi officials have repeatedly asked the Syrian government to stop.

Today’s arrest was the first official indication, however, that terrorist training camps were operating in Syria.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has consistently denied his government was knowingly permitting the flow of terrorists across the border into Iraq. Given the regime’s multiple security organizations, it may be harder to deny any knowledge of camps training foreign terrorists on Syrian soil.

Mohammed Overcome by the Fundamentalists
(Balloon:) “It’s a Drag Being Loved By Idiots”

Reporters Without Borders announced

a Paris criminal court’s decision today to clear Philippe Val, the editor of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion” by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed a year ago. The case was brought by the Paris Grand Mosque, the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) and the World Islamic League…

France22 March 2007

Charlie Hebdo editor’s acquittal in Mohammed cartoon case hailed as positive for French society

Reporters Without Borders hailed a Paris criminal court’s decision today to clear Philippe Val, the editor of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, of “publicly abusing a group of people because of their religion” by publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed a year ago. The case was brought by the Paris Grand Mosque, the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) and the World Islamic League.

“The court’s verdict accords with the French republic’s values and is good for French society as a whole,” the press freedom organisation said. “We hail the judges’ finding that the limits of free expression were not exceeded in this case. This ruling is a victory for press freedom and in no way is a defeat for a community. We hope it will set a judicial precedent.”

The UOIF announced that it would appeal, but the Paris Grand Mosque said it would not.

The outcome of this key trial for the defence of press freedom follows a similar decision by Danish judges acquitting the editors of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, the first newspaper to publish controversial cartoons of Mohammed.

In the French case, the three plaintiffs had demanded 30,000 euros in damages from Charlie Hebdo, while the French public prosecutor’s office had recommended acquittal. Val had additionally faced a possible sentence of six months in prison and a fine of 22,500 euros. As he left the court today, he expressed his satisfaction and confidence in the French judicial system, commenting: “We have been vindicated by the court.”

Val had received strong backing not only from French journalists but also many politicians, including UDF presidential candidate François Bayrou and French Socialist Party leader François Hollande, who voiced their support for the weekly during the two-day trial on 7 and 8 February. Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP presidential candidate, had also indicated his support, commenting that he preferred “an excess of cartoons to a lack of cartoons.”

The lawsuit concerned three of the six Mohammed cartoons which the weekly published on 8 February 2006. Two of the three had appeared in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. One of them showed Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb about to explode. The other showed him saying: “Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins.” The third, which was on the cover, was by French cartoonist Jean “Cabu” Cabut. It showed Mohammed with his head in his hands saying: “It is hard to be loved by idiots.”

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Assault Weapon Watch web site

This approach to gun violence makes sense to me. I’m planning to pitch in, and volunteer to help stop best-grade London shotgun violence, custom rifle violence, and custom revolver violence. If anyone has any of these gorgeous, expensive, and deadly arms lying around ready to run amok, just forward them to me and I promise to place them under my personal Expensive Firearms Watch Program.

Al Gore is not.

video

Hat tip to PJM Tel Aviv, aka Allison Kaplan Sommer.

The creator of the amusing anti-Hillary advertisement based on the 1984 Apple Superbowl Commercial has been identified as Philip de Vellis, an employee of Blue State Digital, an District of Columbia Internet consultancy founded by former Howard Dean campaign staffers and catering to democrats.

Blue State is working for the Obama Campaign, but Mr. de Vellis has been reported to have created the advertisement on his own initiative, and was promptly fired.

Thomas Gensemer, Managing Director of Blue State, has a
statement on the corporate web site:

This afternoon, an employee at our firm, Phillip de Vellis, received a call from Arianna Huffington of “The Huffington Post” regarding the “1984” video currently circulating online. Initially, de Vellis refused to respond to her requests. He has since acknowledged to Blue State Digital that he was the creator of the video.

Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise, Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effective immediately.

Blue State Digital is under contract with the Obama Campaign for technology pursuits including software development and hosting. Additionally, one of our founding partners is on leave from the company to work directly for the campaign at headquarters.

However, Blue State Digital is not currently engaged in any relationship with the Obama Campaign for creative or non-technical services.

Mr. de Vellis created this video on his own time. It was done without the knowledge of management, and was in no way tied to his work at the firm or our formal engagement [on technology pursuits] with the Obama campaign…

We wish Mr. de Vellis well in his future endeavors.

It turns out that the poor fellow was ratted out by none other than Ariana Huffington.

And Phil de Vellis says:

Hi. I’m Phil. I did it. And I’m proud of it.

I made the “Vote Different” ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process. There are thousands of other people who could have made this ad, and I guarantee that more ads like it–by people of all political persuasions–will follow.

This shows that the future of American politics rests in the hands of ordinary citizens.

The campaigns had no idea who made it–not the Obama campaign, not the Clinton campaign, nor any other campaign. I made the ad on a Sunday afternoon in my apartment using my personal equipment (a Mac and some software), uploaded it to YouTube, and sent links around to blogs.

Keep up the good work, Mr. de Vellis, is all I have to say.

The American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus), native to Southern Florida and the Keys, has multiplied sevenfold in the past few decades, and was yesterday removed from the Endangered Species list.

They are differentiable from alligators by their longer and narrower jaws, and by lower teeth which remain visible even the mouth is closed.

Clyde is clever and determined.

video

Hat tip to Dominique R. Poirier.

Blogger and independent video-maker Evan Coyne Maloney has produced a new documentary on the subjugation of the great majority of contemporary American universities by politically correct leftism.

Maloney spent two years traveling to campuses across the country, interviewing students, professors, and administrators to find out what life on campus is really like. Instead of the vibrant debate, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom we like to associate with universities, Maloney found violent protests at UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State, persecution of student members of a conservative club at Cal Poly and the University of Tennessee, divisive racial and ethnic politics at the University of Michigan and Yale, doctrinaire teaching at Duke and Columbia, and much more.

Far from functioning as bastions of serious thought and reasoned debate, Maloney found, campuses today operate as mental processing plants, doing more to tell students what to say and think than to teach them to think for themselves.

trailer

Hat tip to Scott Johnson.

Michelle Malkin has some fresh horror stories of outrageous hoplophobic activity by a Virginia newspaper and the current mayor of New York.

Two weeks ago, the Roanoke (Va.) Times published an online database of registered concealed handgun permit holders in the paper’s community under the sanctimonious guise of “Sunshine Week.” The database included both the names and street addresses of some 135,000 Virginians with permits to carry concealed weapons. Columnist Christian Trejbal patted himself on the back for making it easy to snoop on the neighbors: “I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It’s nobody’s business but mine if I want to pack heat. Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone’s business.”

Trejbal denied that compiling the concealed carry permit holders list was “about being for or against guns.” But he exposed his true agenda when he compared law-abiding gun owners to . . . sex offenders: “A state that eagerly puts sex offender data online complete with an interactive map could easily do the same with gun permits, but it does not.”

The Roanoke Times showed reckless disregard for the safety of the license holders and reckless disregard for accuracy. In his column, Trejbal admitted that he knew some of the information he had obtained was inaccurate — but published it anyway: “As a Sunshine Week gift, The Roanoke Times has placed the entire database, mistakes and all [emphasis added], online at www.roanoke.com/gunpermits. You can search to find out if neighbors, carpool partners, elected officials or anyone else has permission to carry a gun.”

After an uproar among gun-owners, including domestic violence victims licensed to carry, the Times finally decided to yank the database. Trejbal seems not to feel much remorse: “Did we make it easier [to obtain the information]? Yes. But it’s still a public record.” Let’s review: He published a list he knew contained inaccuracies. His paper admits the decision endangered gun owners. He compiled a convenient shopping list for criminals — and smacked law-abiding gun owners in the face with his comparison of their choice to exercise their rights with sex offenders.

Public disclosure of concealed carry licenses varies from state to state. Eighteen states protect permit holders’ privacy from public view. Virginia is one of 17 states that make licensee records public. If information is public, does it make it right for a newspaper to publish it? The media exercise discretion all the time in withholding the names of minors or rape victims. Why should the privacy of law-abiding concealed handgun permit holders be treated with any less concern?

While the Roanoake Times has retreated, the witch hunt against gun owners continues. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a “sting” operation targeting gun shops in five states for allegedly selling guns illegally. Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation report that Bloomberg sent unauthorized private investigators to conduct the operation — without notifying the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF):

“The odor ripened when Bloomberg filed civil lawsuits against these gun shops, rather than turn over evidence to the proper authorities for criminal prosecution. Bloomberg’s office refused to turn over that evidence, and instead the billionaire mayor launched a high-profile media campaign demonizing the targeted gun shop operators.”

Bloomberg has, of course, earned the praise of the anti-Second Amendment media for his security-undermining stunt. The unholy alliance between Big Nanny politicians and journalists threatens us all.

Dick Morris offers a little advice that George W. Bush, his White House team, and the Justice Department would be wise to take to to heart.

When will the Bush administration grow some guts? Except for its resolute — read: stubborn — position on Iraq, the White House seems incapable of standing up for itself and battling for its point of view. The Democratic assault on the administration over the dismissal of United States attorneys is the most fabricated and phony of scandals, but the Bush people offer only craven apologies, half-hearted defenses, and concessions. Instead, they should stand up to the Democrats and defend the conduct of their own Justice Department.

There is no question that the attorney general and the president can dismiss United States attorneys at any time and for any reason. We do not have civil servant U.S. attorneys but maintain the process of presidential appointment for a very good reason: We consider who prosecutes whom and for what to be a question of public policy that should reflect the president’s priorities and objectives. When a U.S. attorney chooses to go light in prosecuting voter fraud and political corruption, it is completely understandable and totally legitimate for a president and an attorney general to decide to fire him or her and appoint a replacement who will do so.

The Democratic attempt to attack Bush for exercising his presidential power to dismiss employees who serve at his pleasure smacks of nothing so much as the trumped-up grounds for the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Back then, radical Republicans tried to oust him for failing to obey the Tenure of Office Act, which they passed, barring him from firing members of his Cabinet (in this case, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton) without Senate approval. Soon after Johnson’s acquittal, the Supreme Court invalidated the Tenure of Office Act, in effect affirming Johnson’s position.

But instead of loudly asserting its view that voter fraud is, indeed, worthy of prosecution and that U.S. attorneys who treat such cases lightly need to go find new jobs, the Bush administration acts, for all the world, like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. All Republican supporters of the administration can do is to point to Bill Clinton’s replacement of U.S. attorneys when he took office. Because the president and the attorney general insist on acting guilty, the rest of the country has no difficulty in assuming that they are.

Bush, Rove, Gonzales and Co. should explain why the U.S. attorneys were dismissed by emphasizing the importance of the cases they were refusing to prosecute. By doing so, they can turn the Democratic attacks on them into demands to go easy on fraudulent voting. A good sense of public relations — and some courage — could turn this issue against the Democrats for blocking Bush’s efforts to crack down on the criminals he wanted prosecuted.

Read the whole thing.

This rant is taken from an email argument on a Conservative listserv.

I find New Yorkers in general a less than admirable lot.

They are members of a community which allowed the crooks and commies to take over their government; who tamely allowed themselves to be disarmed, and then simply cowered behind abundantly locked doors in fear of the criminal trash infesting their streets, while their judicial system turned violent criminals loose, but vigorously prosecuted anyone who ever defended himself; who selfishly pursued careers, personal gain, and private gratification, while all around them the normal processes of civilized life collapsed into disorder; and who then eagerly genuflected as to a savior before the strongman from Queens for providing a modicum of functioning government, after he ascended into office by a contemptible pattern of abuse of power and ersatz class warfare.

Kissing the boot of the lawless crossdresser, because before he came along you were afraid to cross the street, or because il Duce’s policies raised your property values, is far less than morally impressive. It’s really the same pattern of abdication of responsibility and gross personal selfishness typical of that loathesome city and its unmanly and basically worthless
population which caused New York’s problems in the first place.

New York succumbed to clueless liberalism because that was the fashion of the day, and because New York had no civic virtue, no integrity, and no standard of anything capable of resisting any current fashion. There was finally an inevitable political reaction to liberal goo-goo-ism, which allowed that two-bit man-on-horseback to climb into office. Because he finally told New York’s staggeringly enormous police force (larger than a lot of countries’ armies) to do a little work for a change and to actually do a little something about street crime, New Yorkers think he worked some kind of a miracle. All Giuliani’s vaunted reforms consisted of was a minor dose of erratic and unreliable law enforcement applied to the chaos which had been allowed to develop for decades.

The Amadou Diallo affair demonstrated quite accurately exactly how competent and elite New York City’s elite police task forces had become under your Fearless Leader: 4 armed men facing 1 unarmed man, complete panic, 41 shots, 19 hits. Just as the heroes of King Rudolph’s magnificent police & fire departments were busy looting $1.3 million dollars worth of watches out the WTC Tourneau store before the Towers fell, and one deceased engine company was excavated from the rubble with its truck cabs stuffed full of looted merchandise. The supreme authorities of the City, its safety departments, and its Port Authority stood by bloviating and posing for the cameras, having ruled out any attempts at helicopter rescues from the Tower roofs. Hey! someone might have been hurt.

Why not just start a movement to make Rudolfo the Magnificent permanent Generalissimo of Gotham, Sultan of Babylon-on-the-Hudson, Dictator of Dyckman Street, and keep him? The rest of us, residing in the real America, don’t want him, and wouldn’t take him if you tied a red ribbon with a hundred dollar bill around his narrow and greasy neck.

Sorry to break it to you, guys, but America is not in the habit of electing as president low-life, ethnic urban, cross-dressing grotesqueries like Giuliani. He cannot possibly be nominated. He cannot in the remotest realm of possibility be elected. As they say in New York: fuggedaboudit!

Thomas Cushman, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, has fun imagining what contemporary college students’ teaching evaluations of Socrates would look like.

This class on philosophy was really good, Professor Socrates is sooooo smart, I want to be just like him when I graduate (except not so short). I was amazed at how he could take just about any argument and prove it wrong.

I would advise him, though, that he doesn’t know everything, and one time he even said in class that the wise man is someone who knows that he knows little (Prof. Socrates, how about that sexist language!?). I don’t think he even realizes at times that he contradicts himself. But I see that he is just eager to share his vast knowledge with us, so I really think it is more a sin of enthusiasm than anything else.

I liked most of the meetings, except when Thrasymachus came. He was completely arrogant, and I really resented his male rage and his point of view. I guess I kind of liked him, though, because he stood up to Prof. Socrates, but I think he is against peace and justice and has no place in the modern university.

Also, the course could use more women (hint: Prof. Socrates, maybe next time you could have your wife Xanthippe come in and we can ask questions about your home life! Does she resent the fact that you spend so much time with your students?). All in all, though, I highly recommend both the course and the instructor.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen Myers.