In Manaia, New Zealand, when two ferocious pit bulls advanced menacingly toward a four year old in a group of five children, a Jack Russell Terrier named George gallantly launched a hopeless attack on the enormously larger dogs saving the children from being mauled.

Western Australian

The Left has been accusing the Bush Administration of trampling Americans’ Constitutional rights with little basis for some time. So, what do you know? Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General currently considerably under fire from the Left, really is trying an Constitutional endrun.

The Second Amendment Foundation yesterday issued this press release:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ troubling support of legislation that would allow him and future attorneys general the arbitrary power to block firearms purchases without due process is cause for him to step down as the nation’s highest ranking law enforcement officer, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

The bill, S. 1237, was introduced last week at the Justice Department’s request by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), one of the most extreme anti-gunners in Congress. Called the “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007,” this legislation would give the Attorney General discretionary authority to deny the purchase of a firearm or the issuance of a firearm license or permit because of some vague suspicion that an American citizen may be up to no good.

“This bill,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “raises serious concerns about how someone becomes a ‘suspected terrorist.’ Nobody has explained how one gets their name on such a list, and worse, nobody knows how to get one’s name off such a list.

“The process by which someone may appeal the Attorney General’s arbitrary denial seems weak at best,” Gottlieb suggested, “and there is a greater concern. When did we decide as a nation that it is a good idea to give a cabinet member the power to deny someone’s constitutional right simply on suspicion, without a trial or anything approaching due process?

“We’re not surprised that General Gonzales has found an agreeable sponsor in Frank Lautenberg,” Gottlieb observed. “The senator from New Jersey has never seen a restrictive gun control scheme he did not immediately embrace, and S. 1237 is loaded with red flags. It would allow an appointed bureaucrat the authority to suspend or cancel someone’s Second Amendment right without even being charged with a crime.

“Attorney General Gonzales has no business asking for that kind of power over any tenet in the Bill of Rights,” Gottlieb said. “He took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not trample it. Perhaps it is time for him to go.”

When you are being actively attacked by the Left, and you proceed to stab-in-the-back your own base on the Right which is defending you, I would call that “implicitly resigning.” Mr. Gonzalez might as well make the implicit explicit.

Lorie Bird at Wizbang reports that during his interview on 60 Minutes, George Tenet continued his attacks on the Bush Administration for ignoring the Intelligence Community and launching an unnecessary invasion of Iraq.

Dick Cheney and the Neocons were wrong, Tenet asserted. Wiser heads in the Intelligence Community had more correctly estimated that Saddam wouldn’t have nuclear weapons (he could make available to terrorists) until 2007 to 2009!

SCOTT PELLEY, CBS’ “60 MINUTES”: January ’03, the President, again: “imagine those 19 hijackers this time armed by Saddam’s Hussein,” is that what you’re telling the President?

GEORGE TENNET: No.

[narrating voice]

The Vice President up the anty, claiming Saddam had nuclear weapons when the CIA was saying he didn’t.

PELLEY: What’s happening here?

TENNET: I don’t know what’s happening here. The intelligence community’s judgement is he will not have nuclear weapons until the year 2007, 2009.

PELLEY: That’s not what the Vice President is saying.

TENNET: Well I can’t explain it.

video link

Replica Jamestown ships, The Susan Constant, center, Godspeed, right, and Discovery

We in Virginia this month are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the founding of America, at Jamestown on May 14, 1607.

AFP:

When 104 men and boys sailed across the Atlantic 400 years ago to become the first permanent English settlers in the New World, little did they know that their odyssey would give birth to history’s biggest superpower.

The small group of high-born, but ill-prepared colonists who set up camp along the James River on May 14, 1607 on a swampy, mosquito-infested swath of land in Jamestown, were seeking gold and a water route to the Orient.

Instead they found famine, disease, drought and hostile natives whose fate would forever be altered by the Jamestown settlement, the 400th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year.

“The settlement of Jamestown is a tremendous legacy,” Jeanne Zeidler, executive director of “Jamestown 2007,” the committee organizing the celebrations, told AFP. “This is the true story of America. …

The highlight of the quadricentennial celebrations will be a visit by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II on May 3 and 4, followed by three days of festivities on May 11-13 that will include stage productions, a ceremonial sailing by replicas of the three ships that transported the settlers and a concert by a 1,607-member choir and an orchestra of 400 musicians.

The queen, who will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, also attended the 350th anniversary events in 1957 which marked her first visit to the United States as a monarch.

US President George W. Bush is also due to attend the ceremonies which have been 10 years in the planning.

Ignore the PC-rubbish served up in the rest of the article by those idiot journalists.

Queen Elizabeth will also be attending the America’s Cup of Polo at Morven Park in Leesburg.

Paul M. Weyrich identifies another out-of-control federal agency pursuing its own left wing agenda despite the twice election of a theoretically-Republican president.

Just when you think you have heard it all, along comes a story that is almost too ridiculous to be true. But it is. The idiocy of federal bureaucracies apparently is never-ending. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which might easily be called the Department of Political Correctness, has decided to take on the Salvation Army. Yes, the Salvation Army, that phenomenally successful assistance organization which began in Great Britain over one hundred and forty-years ago. The Salvation Army, which has helped thousands of people in countries all over the world, is being sued by the EEOC.

As most people are aware, the Salvation Army is a Christian evangelical organization the mission of which is to help the downtrodden, blind, sick, addicted and anyone else in need. “Army” personnel stand on street corners during Christmastime, ringing a bell on behalf of the poor. One of their most important ways to raise money is through donations of old clothes and household goods, which they sell in their thrift stores. They also operate soup kitchens and hire people no one else would hire. Since 1865 the Salvation Army has lived by Christ’s admonition that as we do unto the least of our people we do unto the Lord. Now the organization is in trouble for insisting its employees learn to speak English.

It all started in a thrift store in Framingham, Massachusetts. Two Hispanic employees were given one year to learn English in order to speak the language of the country in which they live and the language spoken by other employees. They failed to do so; in turn the employees were fired. The EEOC filed a lawsuit against the Salvation Army claiming the employees had suffered “emotional pain, humiliation and embarrassment” as a result of the English-only policy.

First, the Salvation Army is a faith-based organization and is able to set rules for its employees that many public organization cannot. I am not a lawyer; however, I know that government should not be telling religious groups whom they can and cannot hire or fire. Specifically, when it comes to requiring English the courts have already ruled in the State of Massachusetts. In 2003 a federal judge in Boston upheld the Salvation Army policy requiring workers to “speak English to the best of their ability.” The EEOC didn’t like that ruling, so it is trying for one more favorable.

These are our tax dollars at work, yours and mine, paying the salaries of the EEOC lawyers who filed the lawsuit while the Salvation Army must use its own funds – funds that might be better used helping the poor – to hire attorneys to fight this case in court. What a waste of money on both accounts.

Hat tip to Scott Drum.