Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.

Michael Yon today provides symbolic evidence of progress in Iraq: a Christian church re-opens, the cross is restored to its dome with Muslim help.

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers.

What are the democrats doing with their Congressional majority? Are they modifying the tax system to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax trap which is soon going to be nailing middle-class Americans? No. Are they taking steps to prevent the impending bankruptcy of Social Security? No. Are they considering making individual health insurance policies tax deductable? No.

They’re too busy arguing about impeaching Dick Cheney and deciding on whether Rep. Barney Frank’s new Employment Non-Discrimination Act ought to include not only the homosexual but also the transgendered.

AJStrata watches the map of Virginia change from red to purple, and wonders when the GOP is going to wise up and realize that Nativism has always been a losing political strategy in the United States.

We have had GOP Congressman in my areas of Northern Virginia for as long as I can remember, and now we don’t. It is not just the Iraq war. Northern VA has an enormous (and sometimes troublesome) immigrant population from below our southern border. But the area has people from all over the world, given the work done in downtown DC. So immigration and diversity of cultures and traditions is the norm overall. Herndon, one of the most visible flash points in the illegal immigration issue, is now possibly a very democrat place.

So how is being hardlined on long term immigrants benefitting the GOP here? We all agree we need to boot the criminals ASAP, get the rest background checked and processed into the above-the-table economy, and restrict all future immigration to be truly temporary and enforceable. Conservatives implode (and get nasty and testy) when we discuss the option of having long term, crime free immigrants pay fines and stay. Seems to be some sort of emotional issue with some. But I can see the results. Democrats win.

Democrats just took away decades-long GOP seats in areas of VA rife with illegal immigrants. If the GOP hardline won’t work here it won’t work in a lot of places. Not all, but too many to consider a governing majority. The problem is the long term illegals are interwoven into our society. They are neighbors or friends and teammates of our kids. They sit next to us in Church (OK, they would if I attended church). They are not usually or obviously criminals.

The GOP is attacking and maligning friends and neighbors to too many people who will vote against such posturing and are in sufficient numbers to move 5-8% of the vote and tip seats into Democrat hands. 5-8% of the population is not a large number, but when they switch sides or are repulsed away from one side that shift in voting can be like a political earth quake.

The same lemming-like strategy of political self-destruction worked marvelously in California. In Ronald Reagan’s day, California was a Republican bastion. Today, the largest block of electoral votes in the country can be relied upon to belong to the democrats and California sends two democrat senators to Washington. All because the GOP chose to make illegal immigration its key issue, thoroughly alienating working-class Hispanic voters.

Valerie Plame’s pal Larry Johnson posts a letter from “a group of distinguished intelligence and military officers, diplomats, and law enforcement professionals” to the Senate Judiciary Committee “strongly urging that (they) not send Mukasey’s nomination to the full Senate before he makes clear his view on waterboarding.”

If anyone ever cared to investigate who was involved in leaking national security information to the New York Times and Washington Post, I’d suggest waterboarding some of the people on this list of signatories.

Brent Cavan
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Ray Close
Directorate of Operations, CIA for 26 years—22 of them overseas; former Chief of Station, Saudi Arabia

Ed Costello
Counter-espionage, FBI

Michael Dennehy
Supervisory Special Agent for 32 years, FBI; U.S. Marine Corps for three years

Rosemary Dew
Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI

Philip Giraldi
Operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist, Directorate of Operations, CIA

Michael Grimaldi
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Federal law enforcement officer

Mel Goodman
Division Chief, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Professor, National Defense University; Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy

Larry Johnson
Intelligence analysis and operations officer, CIA; Deputy Director, Office of Counter Terrorism, Department of State

Richard Kovar
Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA: Editor, Studies In Intelligence

Charlotte Lang
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

W. Patrick Lang
U.S. Army Colonel, Special Forces, Vietnam; Professor, U.S. Military Academy, West Point; Defense Intelligence Officer for Middle East, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); founding director, Defense HUMINT Service

Lynne Larkin
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA; counterintelligence; coordination among intelligence and crime prevention agencies; CIA policy coordination staff ensuring adherence to law in operations

Steve Lee
Intelligence Analyst for terrorism, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Jon S. Lipsky
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

David MacMichael
Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA; History professor; Veteran, U.S. Marines (Korea)

Tom Maertens
Foreign Service Officer and Intelligence Analyst, Department of State; Deputy Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Department of State; National Security Council (NSC) Director for Non-Proliferation

James Marcinkowski
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA by way of U.S. Navy

Mary McCarthy
National Intelligence Officer for Warning; Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council

Ray McGovern
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; morning briefer, The President’s Daily Brief; chair of National Intelligence Estimates; Co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Sam Provance
U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst, Germany and Iraq (Abu Ghraib); Whistleblower

Coleen Rowley
Special Agent and attorney, FBI; Whistleblower on the negligence that facilitated the attacks of 9/11.

Joseph Wilson
Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Ambassador and Director of Africa, National Security Council.

Valerie Plame Wilson
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations

BBC:

US scientists say an animal found in Texas is not the chupacabra – or goat-sucker – of American myth, but a coyote with a hair loss problem.
DNA tests on the carcass found at a ranch south-east of San Antonio yielded a virtually identical match to coyote DNA, biologist Mike Forstner said.

The coyote was one of three found dead by rancher Phylis Canion this summer.

Central American myth has long spoken of a vampire-like creature that slays livestock by sucking out their blood.

The chupacabra is said to attack its victims at night, leaving a trail of carcasses with their throats torn out.

Mr Forstner said that he himself had assumed the creature brought in for testing at Texas State University was a domestic dog but “the DNA sequence is a virtually identical match to DNA from the coyote”.

Ms Canion and some of her neighbours discovered the 40-pound (18-kg) carcasses of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 90 miles (145km) south-east of San Antonio.

She said she had saved the head of one of them to get it properly tested.

Additional hide samples have been taken to try to determine the cause of the animal’s hair loss, Mr Forstner said.

Original story.

Peggy Noonan rightly identifies the skepticism of ordinary Americans as a key obstacle to Hillary’s 2008 ambitions.

For a few years now I’ve thought the problem for the Democrats in general but for Mrs. Clinton in particular is not that America is against tax increases. They’ve seen eight years of big spending, of wars, of spiraling entitlements. They’ve driven by the mansions of the megarich and have no sympathy for hedge fund/movie producer/cosmetics empire heirs. They sense the system is rigged toward the heavily protected. They sense this because they’re not stupid.

The problem for Mrs. Clinton is not that people sense she will raise taxes. It’s that they don’t think she’ll raise them on the real and truly rich. The rich are her friends. They contribute to her, dine with her, have access to her. They have an army of accountants. They’re protected even from her.

But she can stick it to others, and in the way of modern liberalism for roughly half a century now, one suspects she’ll define affluence down. That she would hike taxes on people who make $150,000 a year.

But those “rich” — people who make $200,000 and have two kids and a mortgage and pay local and state taxes in, say, New Jersey — they don’t see themselves as rich. Because they’re not. They’re already carrying too much of the freight.

Followup: The Financial Times observes the even the democrats have begun to recognize the truth. Though democrats love class warfare, they’re really shooting at themselves.

A legislative proposal that was once on the fast track is suddenly dead. The Senate will not consider a plan to extract billions in extra taxes from megamillionaire hedge fund managers.

The decision by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, surprised many Washington insiders, who saw the plan as appealing to the spirit of class warfare that infuses the Democratic party. Liberal disappointment in Mr Reid was palpable at media outlets such as USA Today, where an editorial chastised: “The Democrats, who control Congress and claim to represent the middle and lower classes, ought to be embarrassed.”

Far from embarrassing, this episode may reflect a dawning Democratic awareness of whom they really represent. For the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic party is the new “party of the rich”. More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households. Using Internal Revenue Service data, the Heritage Foundation identified two categories of taxpayers – single filers with incomes of more than $100,000 and married filers with incomes of more than $200,000 – and combined them to discern where the wealthiest Americans live and who represents them.

Democrats now control the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats.

Acceptable in Fort Collins: A display called “Source of Life”

WorldNetDaily:

A special task force in a Colorado city has recommended banning red and green lights at the Christmas holiday because they fall among the items that are too religious for the city to sponsor.

“Some symbols, even though the Supreme Court has declared that in many contexts they are secular symbols, often still send a message to some members of the community that they and their traditions are not valued and not wanted. We don’t want to send that message,” Seth Anthony, a spokesman for the committee, told the Fort Collins, Colo., Coloradoan.

He said the recommended language does not specifically address Christmas trees by name, but the consensus was that they would not fall within acceptable decorations.

What will be allowed are white lights and “secular” symbols not associated “with any particular holiday” such as icicles, unadorned greenery and snowflakes, the task force said.

The group was made up of members of the city’s business and religious communities as well as representatives from some community groups. Members met for months to review the existing holiday display policy, which allowed white as well as multi-colored lights and wreaths and garlands.

In previous years, there also was a Christmas tree at the city’s Oak Street Plaza.

A vote on the proposal will be coming up before the city council on Nov. 20, officials said.

“As far as I’m concerned, the group ended up in a very fair place in which primarily secular symbols will be used on city property,” task force member Saul Hopper told the newspaper.

The existing holiday display rules were adopted in 2006 after a rabbi requested that the city display a menorah.

The only apparent exception to the completely secular rule would be at the Fort Collins Museum, where a “multicultural display” of symbols and objects would be collected to represent Diwali, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas among others.

“I expect criticism from people who feel like we are taking Christmas away. And I expect we will get criticism from people who think educational display endorses religions,” Anthony said. “(But) to the extent we can, recognizing that offending no one will be impossible, we want to be inclusive.”

City officials touted their own efforts.

“I am really delighted to see us taking this step,” Mayor Doug Hutchinson said when the task force was being assembled. “I think Fort Collins is a great city, and I think great cities are inclusionary.”

“Inclusionary” obviously means including Jewish holiday symbols, Hindu holiday symbols, and made-up holiday (Kwanzaa) symbols, but excluding traditional Christian holiday symbols.

Nick Rivera debunks Hizzoner’s campaign narrative.

It’s among the most well-known and often-implemented strategies in the universe of presidential politics: appeal to the party’s base during the primaries and tack back towards the center during the run-up to the general election. This process doesn’t necessarily dictate that the presidential candidate “flip-flop” on any of his or her positions. He or she merely emphasizes one set of policies for the partisans who will be voting in the presidential primaries and then, several months later, emphasizes a different set of policies for the American electorate at large.

However, in recent years, a somewhat different tactic has emerged as a favorite among presidential candidates: the art of flip-flopping by presidential candidates who staked out positions that were popular when running for statewide office but became politically inconvenient when faced with appealing to the party base in the run up to presidential primaries. …

In yet another example of a politician advocating one position while running for state or local office and a completely different one upon running for president, Rudy Giuliani has decided that he now supports a very strict interpretation of the Second Amendment. While Giuliani’s critics have been quick to point out Giuliani’s sudden change of heart with regards to gun control, Giuliani’s defenders have argued that Giuliani’s positions are consistent with the principle of federalism—arguing that while he may have supported strict gun control laws for New York City, he believes that individual states have the right to reject such gun control laws.

Unfortunately for Giuliani and his supporters, Giuliani’s current “federalist” interpretation of the Second Amendment directly contradicts his gun control record as mayor of New York…

Read the whole thing.

Reuters:

Saudi Arabia executed on Friday an Egyptian man convicted of “sorcery”, desecrating the Muslim holy book and adultery, the official news agency said.

The Saudi Press Agency said Mustafa Ibrahim was put to death in Riyadh in a controversial case which has drawn criticism from rights activists.

It said Ibrahim had been accused by another foreign resident of practicing magic in order to separate him from his wife and said evidence had been found in his home, including books on black magic, a candle with an incantation “to summon devils” and “foul-smelling herbs”.

“He confessed to adultery with a woman and desecrating the Koran by placing it in the bathroom,” the agency said.

Saudi media first reported the case in April, saying mosque worshippers had complained that a pharmacist in the northern desert town of Arar had placed copies of the Koran in washrooms. No accusation of adultery was mentioned at the time.

Clerics of Saudi Arabia’s austere form of Islam, known as Wahhabism, take accusations of sorcery seriously and recently held a conference in Riyadh on how to combat it.

J.R. Dunn, at American Thinker, discusses the Left’s successful propaganda campaign on so-called “Torture.” The Left controls the narrative in matters of this kind by using a combination of its domination of the MSM and emotionalism to shout down dissent.

Torture” is one of many current topics of significance that have been abandoned to the left. Leftist commentators have been allowed to set the terms, make the definitions, and generally run the argument without much in the way of serious opposition or debate.

No small number of elements of the War on Terror have suffered the same treatment. An offhand list would include profiling, wiretapping, border security, and rendition. All have been hijacked and turned into battering rams to support a particular left-wing interpretation of the War on Terror. The GOP has been unable to respond for a number of reasons: they’ve been blindsided, have been busy fending off corruption investigations, or simply couldn’t or wouldn’t defend certain obvious positions. As a result, the left has been able to peddle its version of events with near impunity.

“Torture” is probably the most egregious of these cases. That’s the explanation for the sneer quotes. Because, quite simply, in much of the debate over “torture”, we’re not talking about actual torture at all. We’re talking about rough treatment, harshness, or coercion.

The American left has defined these upward until they mean the same thing as torture, all as a part of their efforts to undermine the War on Terror in general. The core of this stance is the assertion that a slap on the head, several days without sleep, or hearing Rage Against the Machine played at full volume is fully the equivalent of torture in the classic sense. (Well… maybe we should reconsider that last….)

Of course, it’s no such thing. Torture is easily defined as physical assault carried out over a prolonged period against a victim under complete control and holding the possibility of permanent physical or psychic damage. Official legal terminology contains the proviso that torture consists of acts that “revolt the conscience” We can also add, by way of Dashiell Hammett, that such actions must have “threat of death behind them”. If they contain these elements, they are torture. If not, they’re something less. Not necessarily something justifiable or commendable, but not torture either. (Another method of judging these actions is to ask whether the activity would excite an individual like Mengele or Yezhov.)

The left has succeeded, through a relentless media campaign (is there any other kind?) in obscuring this distinction. According to the latest criteria, torture is anything unpleasant that occurs to a prisoner while in American custody. (Overseas it’s different. It’s very, very difficult — almost impossible, in fact — for any developing or left-of-center regime to commit torture, no matter what they do to their prisoners. Unless, as in the rendition uproar, the U.S. is somehow involved.)

Read the whole thing.

Joel Stein wrote up a pre-fabricated all-purpose Ann Coulter column, including parenthetical spaces where Ann Coulter herself could supply the necessary inflammatory mot juste. He then sent it to her, and –sure enough– Ann Coulter obligingly filled in the blanks.

Liberals Are Wusses

By Ann Coulter

Can liberals really be that easily offended? Are their beliefs so fragile, their emotions so unstable, their [body part, plural] EYELASHES so [adjective] PRETTY, that my offhand remarks threaten to destroy their entire belief system?

Maybe this is because liberals don’t have a solid belief system. They don’t believe in the Bible. They don’t believe in the Constitution (you know, that piece of paper that Bill Clinton thought was for cleaning up [something messy] DEMOCRATS’ POSITION ON NATIONAL SECURITY after he [verb, past tense] JITTERBUGGED. And they don’t believe in [book] “JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL.” So instead they believe in whatever feels good, whether that is engaging in [physical therapy] PILATES in the Oval Office, putting [noun] PUPPIES up their [body part] FINGERNAILS or spending [large sum of money] $1 ZILLION on [beauty regimen] FACE-WASHING like [lack of manliness] LIBERAL [male democrat] HILLARY CLINTON did when he visited [European city] LUXEMBOURG.

They may have no idea about good and evil — how could a group that hates [morally unimpeachable act] FEEDING THE POOR, thinks it’s a crime to place the Ten Commandments in [place] BOISE, IDAHO, and defines marriage as a union between two [noun, plural] BABY SEALS? — but they sure are good at telling people what you shouldn’t say. And what they don’t want said is anything that resembles truth. So they’re disgusted when I point out that the [Indian tribe] NAVAJO practice of celebrating [something gross] DEMOCRATS’ POSITION ON ABORTION is endangering our children, or the fact that [percentage] 20% of [immigrant group] LATVIANS commit [horrendous crime] INCOME TAX within [number] SEVEN days of coming to our country illegally by [mode of transportation] GULFSTREAM JET.

When I was on [obscure cable news show] ANYTHING ON MSNBC, I mentioned to fellow guest [grumpy old white man] WALTER CRONKITE that, scientifically, men are [any number] 47 times more likely to accomplish [an incredible feat] A LIBERAL LISTENING POLITELY TO AN OPPOSING POINT OF VIEW than women, who should stay at home and focus on [obsolete chore] BUTTER CHURNING. When [New York Times columnist] FRANK RICH heard this, he bored himself writing [large number] A KAZILLION words about it, referring to me as a skinny, blond [adjective] PEPPY [animal] BEAGLE. The point here is that he called me skinny and blond.

So let the Democrats be offended by me. I consider their every objection a testament to my righteousness. After all, this is a party that’s about to choose [democratic presidential candidate] B. HUSSEIN OBAMA as their nominee — a person whose chief of staff is [made-up name] JOHN DOE, who spoke at rallies cosponsored by the [radical liberal group] WEATHERMEN protesting the [beloved institution] FOX NEWS CHANNEL, in which members [violent action] THROAT-SLIT the [beloved symbol] AMERICAN FLAG and supported guilty [cop killer who’s first name is Mumia] MUMIA ABU JAMAL. So while my Godless, liberal detractors are in hell with the [non-Christian group] MASONS, [ethnic group] ALEUTS, [occupation, plural] DOCTORS and [deceased Democrat] MIKE GRAVEL, I’ll be in heaven dying my hair and not eating. Because the one person I haven’t offended is God. And [a conservative or book publisher] RUSH LIMBAUGH.

Kevin Drum mockingly proposes that readers pick the five “All-time Wingnuttiest” ( i.e. the worst from a leftist perspective) blog posts from his own list of fourteen nominees.

Inevitably, he includes some not-especially-interesting (Gotcha!) Iraq War posts:

Glenn Reynolds

and Steven Den Beste
(Cut and paste the link to read the post: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/03/Itsthewaiting.shtml),

some a bit too eccentric:

Pam Geller proving that she can’t sing –though she does dance well–,

Ann Althouse obsessing over Jessica Valenti’s breasts),

and a few not really here or there, but curiously enough he actually does nominate some real winners, some important conservative blog posts of unusual merit and long term interest:

Bill Whittle (after Katrina): “Tribes”
-Despite its embarrassing public display of warrior self-identification, Whittle’s Tribes is a truly classic post which says something fundamental, real, and important.

Lee Siegel: “The Origins of Blogofascism”
-This one is a landmark post in the history of the blogosphere, identifying a serious problem and pathology.

Ben Domenech: “Pachyderms in the Mist”
-Don’t listen to him at your peril, democrats.

Kim du Toit: “The Pussification of the Western Male”
-Sure it’s a rant, but it’s a fine rant.

Michelle Malkin: “The Defeatocrats Cheer”
-Michelle Malkin is very cute, and she can cheerlead.

But, in his effort to pick the all-time greats, Kevin Drum did manage to overlook the single most important blog post of all-time:

Charles Johnson: Bush Guard Documents: Forged

And, undeservedly I thought, he overlooked my own:
Gone to Live on a Farm