Prosecutors also say the three communicated by computer with an individual in the Middle East, passing information about potential attacks and terrorist training materials back and forth, as well as communication about potential weapons and targets.
The day the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber, we will be facing issues far more grave than funding levels for public education.
From the Vatican's statement on the Danish cartoon fallout: "The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
Really? What if you're an agnostic Inca who thinks the tossing of virgins into the mouth of a volcano won't produce a better crop? You shouldn't say anything for fear of offending the true believers? Where's the morality in that, particularly from the virgin's point of view?
Filthy sons and daughters of pigs. 
More photos of the moon have surfaced. As you may remember, the moon has been circling the Earth menacingly for billions of years, constantly shifting its position relative to the Earth. On occasion, it appears that there may be someone on the moon known as "The Man" who could be secretly spying on us from a distance.
Many U.S. media outlets refuse to print the latest batch of pictures out of sensitivity to people who consider the Moon sacred. Some religions explicitly prohibit depicting the Moon in any form.
Ron Antiamericus of the Communist News Network disagrees. "People have the right to know. This is new evidence that the moon exists. We need to show these pictures so that people realize that it's out there, it's big, and it never stops. One day, its impact with the Earth could mean the extinction of the endangered three-finned silverfish native to small rainpuddles on the edges of the Peruvian Rainforest ... oh, and mankind as well. While pictures of the moon have been published before, these new photos give further evidence of its existence and potential to wipe out life on Earth as we know it. "
While some of the photographs are similar to the images made public two years ago, the latest photographs apparently reveal further abuse including new incidents of killing, torture and sexual humiliation.Pretty clumsy, bumbling excuse for trying to make old news new news. Funny, it comes just as people are starting to realize that the Muslim reaction over the cartoons is actually backfiring on both the Muslim world and the press which refuses to publish them "in the name of decency and respect." Coincidence?
The most vivid example is the long delay in informing the country that Vice President Cheney had accidentally shot a man last Saturday while hunting in Texas.
But let us assume the obvious: It was an attempt to delay and perhaps suppress embarrassing news.
Nobody died at Armstrong Ranch, but this incident reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969.
In the rest of the article he goes on to repeat the littany of charges (far more serious than a hunting accident -- which, I remind you Ignatious says is the most vivid example) that we've heard ad nauseum in the MSM as if the leftist assessment is undeniably correct and the administration goes arrogantly on disagreeing with them. As do I. And a lot of lawyers.
People voted for Bush and Cheney because they seem like basically decent and responsible people. They still seem like basically decent and responsible people.
Deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has told a Baghdad court that he and his seven co-accused are on hunger strike in protest at their treatment.I don't think you have a lot of real sympathizers... although I'm sure the American Left will feign it. Still, I think even they don't really like you. They'll just use you to bash Bush.
It would be far better if the threat of force were credible enough that actual force would not have to be used. But divisive politics have undermined the credibility of any such threat. That can narrow the choices to killing people in Iran or leaving ourselves and our posterity at the mercy of hate-filled and suicidal fanatics with nukes.
See ladies and gentlemen, this is what's drawing this region backwards into the abyss of stupidity and irrationality. We invoke religion in everything. We see everything through the prism of religion. Our false religiosity that lacks the power of our God-given mind has crippled our ability to rationalize and make sound judgements and come up with reasonable conclusions. Katrina becomes God's judgement on America while Pakistan's earth quake had killed far more people. The Tsunami becomes God's punishment for the sex industry in Thailand while most of the dead were Muslim Indonesians. The US invasion of Iraq becomes America's war on Islam while the ones who are ramming suicide car bombs into Shia mosques are fellow Sunnis. And the list goes on and on.
Those cartoons are legitimate political (and social) questions. They are asking Muslims to explain the huge discrepency between their stated beliefs of their religion, and their actions. Those require explanation, so far, the Muslims refuse to engage in this dialogue.
You are accountable for what you do. Muslims are accountable for the violent attacks carried out by people, in the name of their religion. They have to explain, to us who are the recipients of these attacks - why they accept these actions. OR, OR, if they do not accept these actions, then, they have to loudly, very loudly, protest against those Muslims who are carrying out these actions. So far, - they are silent.
Respect? For what? For bombing commuter trains?
Respect? For what? For their vicious drawings of Jews and Christians?
Respect? For what? For their silence or their dancing in the streets when their suicide thugs bomb buses and trains and restaurants?Common sense? To be silent while a fundamentalist group terrorizes you to silence, terrorizes you to submission, such that you cannot question, cannot critique, cannot dissent. Is that common sense - to be silent while these fundamental rights are being terrorized away from us?
Are we supposed to end up like those people in Iran and Syria, terrified of saying anything other than permitted by the mullahs - and beheaded by them if we ask a question?
Posted by: ET 11-Feb-06 9:00:32 AM
What do Muslims say about the cartoons?
Islamic tradition explicitly prohibits images of Allah, Muhammad and all the major figures of the Christian and Jewish traditions.
Has Muslim reaction to the cartoons been uniform?
Not at all - some Muslims have accused protesters of overreacting.
A weekly newspaper in Jordan reprinted some of the cartoons and urged Muslims to "be reasonable".
Indeed it hasn't been. There are reasonable Muslims. Like the editor of that very newspaper in Jordan... Who was arrested over publishing some of the cartoons.
What FISA boils down to is an attempt to further put the executive under the thumb of the judiciary, and in unconstitutional fashion. The way FISA works is that it gives a single judge the ability to overrule the considered judgment of the entire executive branch. In the case of the NSA wiretaps, the Justice Department, NSA and White House are all involved in establishing and reviewing these wiretaps. Yet if a warrant were required, one judge would have the discretion to deny any request.
· Hypocrisy of the right-wing blogosphere. Remember the controversy over Newsweek and the Koran? Last year Newsweek printed an allegation about mistreatment of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base that -- although strikingly similar to interrogation techniques actually used to intimidate Muslims at Guantanamo -- was not substantiated by an official government investigation. It hardly mattered: Abroad, Muslim politicians and clerics promoted and exaggerated the Koran story, just as they are now promoting and exaggerating the Danish cartoon story. The result was rioting and violence on a scale similar to the rioting and violence of the past week.
But although that controversy was every bit as manipulated as this one, self-styled U.S. Conservativess" blamed not cynical politicians and clerics but Newsweek for (accidentally) inciting violence in the Muslim world: "Newsweek lied, people died." Worse, much of the commentary implied that Newsweek was not only wrong to make a mistake (which it was) but also that the magazine was wrong to investigate the alleged misconduct of U.S. soldiers. Logically, the bloggers should now be attacking the Danish newspaper for (less accidentally) inciting violence in the Muslim world. Oddly enough, though, I've heard no cries of "Jyllands-Posten insulted, people died." The moral is: We defend press freedom if it means Danish cartoonists' right to caricature Muhammad; we don't defend press freedom if it means the mainstream media's right to investigate the U.S. government.
An excellent domestic parallel is the fracas that followed the 1989 publication of "Piss Christ," a photograph of Christ on a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine. That picture -- a work of art that received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts -- led to congressional denunciations, protests and letter-writing campaigns.Excellent parallel of the offense, but the parallel falls apart when we get to the reaction. How many death threats were issued over Piss Christ? How many museums burned? Employees of newspapers who published it threatened? Again, people are missing the point completely. These people are demanding, on threat of violence and death and backed up by their actions, deference to their rules. This is terrorism. All of this introspection and subsequent capitulation means terrorism works.
“It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps.”
-- Jimmy Carter at Coretta King's funeral
In 1968. By Bobby Kennedy. Funny that wasn't mentioned.
Democrats are big on the "Unite, don't Divide" theme, but in lip service alone. At an event where there should have been nothing but uniting -- our current President gave a respectful tribute to her and to her husband and to the huge progress in human rights they contributed greatly to.
I don't know, it kind of looked to me like the Dems were pissed off that the President was even allowed to speak at the event (but imagine the howls of protest that would have come if he hadn't). I guess it was supposed to be their pulpit, so they ignored the standard of dignity the President had set and decided they needed to slap him down. This kind of thing leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of those of us who are conservative, but not racist. Which, contrary to popular Leftist belief, constitutes the strong majority. Think you're helping "the cause"? How?“We know there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, but Coretta knew and we knew there are weapons of misdirection right down here..."
But apparently Islam fosters mindset where this behavior can be said to be condoned, encouraged or even commanded (Whoever insults the prophet, kill him!)-- and it is proven by the widespread outbreaks of violence. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IT!!! If Islam gives you an excuse for it, then obviously your culture is incompatible with ours. We need to recognize it, and you do. If you insist on killing us when you disagree, we're going to have to send you home or kill you in self-defense. What other choice do we have -- besides converting to Islam????? Tolerance my keister!
"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?"
This religion is rapidly getting out of control. Muslims can murder 200 school children and their parents, shooting kids in the back, in Chechnya and the Muslim world hardly pauses a moment to notice. Let someone draw a cartoon of their so-called "prophet" and they start burning embassies and looking for Europeans to kidnap or murder. The more our Western leaders make excuses for their behavior, the bolder they become. These Muslims torching embassies and rioting around the world are not what we might consider highly educated. They have little or no understanding of Western culture and the concept of freedom of the press is entirely beyond the grasp of most of them. They believe that anything printed in any newspaper constitutes the official opinion of that country's government.
"It is unjustifiable under any kind of personal freedoms to allow a person or a group to insult the beliefs of millions of Muslims"
Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet—who was only another male mammal—is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.
I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice [...]
If we replaced the word "Muslim" with "Christian" or "Jew", and "Muhammad" with "Jesus" or "Yaweh"... would this issue be treated the same way? No it would not. It thus constitutes special treatment of one religion over another.The drawings were commissioned by the Jyllands-Posten (Jutland's Post) to accompany an article on self-censorship and freedom of speech after Danish writer Kare Bluitgen was unable failed to find artists willing to illustrate his children's book about Mohammed for fear of violent attacks by extremist Muslims.
Islamic teachings forbid pictorial depictions of Mohammed. The cartoons were published on September 30 with an explanatory article by the newspaper's culture editor, Flemming Rose.
The following is a translated summary of the article and explanation of the cartoons published in the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia.
"The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. "It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule.
"It is certainly not always equally attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is less important in this context. [...] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no one can tell how the self-censorship will end.
"That is why the Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Mohammed as they see him."
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.Hopefully Congress will remember this when calls to do just that come up. If "Piss Christ" is free speech, if "Cruci-fixin's" on Will and Grace is ok, then so by Jove is a picture of Muhammad in any context.