The offended vs. the offenders

The American Thinker has a must read piece on the offensiveness of taking offense.

Surely you've noticed how often the left is offended by this or that and then suddenly the so-called offender is coerced, at the very minimum, to apologize and, of course, stop the offensive behavior as if there was a God-given right to not be offended.

What a brilliant ploy to silence unpopular (politically incorrect) speech. It's been a most successful tactic, but it needs to be exposed for what it is. It's nothing more than a clever, if not diabolical, means to silence the opposition. Because those who would be silenced are generally polite and don't wish to offend, this ploy has been extremely successful.

It needn't be. People who are offended need to be dismissed, not coddled. They need to be told to get a life. They need to know that they have no right to not be offended and if, in fact, they are offended, they have empowered the offender by putting him in a controlling position over their life. They have given someone else power over their own life to put them in an offended frame of mind. They need to be told to get over it. The offended are the ones with the problem, not the so-called offenders.

Read the piece...it's good!

Are Muslims "about to take over Europe?"

Are Muslims about to take over Europe? The Jerusalem Post has an interesting piece that suggests just that:

The Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe," Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent's Jews, he responded, "The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim." Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe's future would be, "Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?" The growing sway of Islam in Europe was of particular concern given the rising support within the Islamic world for extremist and terrorist movements, said Lewis.

This has been happening for sometime but it's not politically correct to mention it.

"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism," said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.

Ya think this could ever happen in America?

Take The NRSC Pledge

Are you sick and tired of weak willed republicans who go along with the dems or are afraid to withdraw support from those who do? Then take the NRSC Pledge.

More than 27,000 frustrated folks have signed on in the last few days...me? I'm #1480. Let the politicians know for certain that any show of support for a damaging non-binding resolution will harm our troops and give aid and support to the enemies of this country.

Here's the pledge:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

If there is ever a time to be unified, it is when we are at war. Go there and sign it.

USA becoming too much like Europe?

John Reiniers, writing for the online edition of Hernando Today is rapidly becoming one of my favorite columnists. In his most recent piece he rightly laments that the United States is becoming too much like Europe.

What the average European doesn't realize is that Europe is on the verge of becoming an "authentic" historical Disney World which will be a vacation destination for all those employed in countries which have figured out how to benefit from technology and globalization. The rampant growth of social programs in Europe, such as health care and pensions, if left unchecked, will bankrupt Europe. This is where we are heading.

Reiniers points out that for the last 60 years Europe hasn't had to defend themselves because we've been spending gazillions doing that for them. Instead of having respectable defense budgets, they've funneled that money into socialistic giveaways which are now bankrupting them. Add to that weak willed leaders who are intimidated by demanding constituents and you soon have an untenable situation. The masses demand more freebies and the spineless politicians are afraid to tell them they can no longer afford them, lest they get booted out of office.

Mass opinion has acquired mounting power in this century. It has shown itself to be a dangerous master....Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate... or otherwise manage to manipulate...their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular."

Sadly, we are bereft of wise leaders and even more tragic is the possibility that Americans would reject them if we had them. Pity!

On the horizon is the seemingly inevitable nationalized health care which has proven to be sub-standard and cost-prohibitive wherever it's been tried. That doesn't seem to matter to insistent politicos who create problems in order to solve them. Unfortunately, whenever politicians enact solutions to problems they created, the unintended (or maybe even intended) consequences are always more severe than they were before they started jacking around with the status quo.

We shouldn't ever aspire to be like Europe. They are overtaxed, energy dependent, unproductive, decaying and representative of the past...proof that socialism doesn't ultimately work.

America doesn't need to go down that road, but it may take a national epiphany of some sort for us to realize otherwise. Who knows what it's going to take, but it probably won't be a pleasant epiphany.

Be sure to read the entire piece. Reiniers seems to have a pretty good handle on European and American trends.

Quote of the Day

By C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Hillary's Dilemma

Some might think this photo-shopped pic is disrespectful...how could that be? The Clintons are a package deal and if you elect one, then you get the other, right? I don't know who to give credit to for this brilliant photo, but I stole it from the good folks at Lucianne.com. It's a fitting and proper photo, whether photo shopped or not, because they (the Clintons) are a "two-fer." You elect one, you're gonna get the other, whether you like it or not.

So, what's Hillary's Dilemma? Hmmmm! Michael Medved lays it out pretty well in his most recent column. You best check it out!

By all means read it all the way to the end because you'll see that the worst thing that could ever happen to this country is if Bill ...well, you just need to read his column.

I don't always agree with Medved, but he's no dummy and this column pretty much sums up all of Hillary's options for her campaign.

Long live Bill Clinton...please, Lord!!!

"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together."

Joseph Pulitzer said it in 1947: "Our republic and its press will rise or fall together."

There's an excellent piece by John Reiniers in the Online Edition of Hernando Today which cites some well publicized, but quickly and conveniently forgotten incidents from the past when our enemies sidled up to Big Media. Our enemies knew full well they would have the support of leftist media as their best means of defeating us. Nothing has changed. Big Media (as well as leftist politicians) continues to side with those who oppose us.

This is an important piece. Please read it here in its entirety:

Nikita Khrushchev remarked to the New York Times on Sept. 29, 1957 that "The press is our chief ideological weapon." So it came as no surprise when North Vietnam's leader Ho Chi Minh echoed Mao Tse-tung's truism that by using the "media and elitist peace activists, an enemy of America could convince the American people" that they couldn't win a war. The trick was not to defeat the military - they knew they couldn't - but rather to use the media and activists to break the will of the American people.
And the beat goes on.
Pulitzer Prize winning liberal Arthur Schlesinger Jr. noted recently, referring to Vietnam, that "We suffered defeat in an unwinnable war... Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same folly 30 years later in Iraq is unforgivable."
Here we go again - breaking the will of the American people and our troops. Most military experts will point out that the Viet Cong were all but destroyed four years into the war when it went from insurgency to a more conventional war between the south and north. But the media convinced Americans that we had already lost. The most accurate similarity between the two wars is the manipulation of the public by the traditional media - from Walter Cronkite to Jon Stewart. (Yes, most 18- to 35-year-olds get their hard news from the Daily Show on Comedy Central.)
The high priest of the print media, Joseph Pulitzer, commenting on the power of the press in 1947, said "The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalism of future generations." How prescient. Coincidentally, another part of this quotation was used on the U.S. 3-cent stamp: "Our republic and its press will rise or fall together."
Given the media's bias, I have a sinking feeling. As Adlai Stevenson quipped in 1952, "We are developing a one-party press in a two-party country." And neither of these iconic men was aware of the oncoming juggernaut of the TV networks that would be in lockstep with the traditional print media.
And that towering figure in American journalism, E.W. Scripps, flatly said in 1951, "Few people...have any idea of the tremendous, the almost invincible power...of the daily press....the press rules the country, it rules its politics, it rules its religion, its social practice." (And this, too, was in the pre-network era). Nobody in the liberal mainstream media would have the courage to say this today because it's the truth. The president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association flatly stated in 1936, "The daily press has more power in the shaping of public opinion than any other force in America." (Jerome D. Barnum).
And the greatest ally of the media is not the truth - or the facts - but rather the perceptions they create. (Even John Stuart Mill noted way back in 1859 that "The mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries...Their thinking is done for them... through the newspapers.") These perceptions are often created by nuance - such as George Bush "misled" us about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) morphing into "he lied." Or Bush has no "gravitas" to morphing into just plain dumb (No matter that his grades and SAT score were slightly higher than John Kerry's at Yale, and he is our first MBA president).
Most people don't realize that, just as a good motivational speaker or preacher will gradually have an audience/congregation "eating out of their hand," the media, too, will create demons or heroes or ideas of myth-like proportions which become very real with the passage of time.
The venerable Atlantic Monthly has been in publication since the 19th century. The January/February edition has on its cover a picture of a grim George Bush and a headline, "Why Presidents lie," with a piece entitled "Untruth and Consequences" by Carl Cannon who tells us that Bush went "in the public eye from truth teller to prevaricator in chief." (How subtle.) He admits that because of "a heavy dose of anti-Bush feeling on the part of the networks, news outlets, and publishing houses, much of the American public has altered its opinion" of Bush. Really. Is that why opinions changed? He finesses the WMD issue because the entire civilized world thought they existed and then proceeds to list Bush's lies. One would assume the first untruth would be the mother of all whoppers. Yet he selects Bush's 2006 State of the Union address when he cited Afghanistan and Iraq as examples of the advance of freedom - that the number of democracies have "increased from about two dozen at the end of 1945 to 123," but he had the temerity, notes Cannon, not to "mention that neither country was counted...by the organization...he was touting." Wow! What a whopper of a lie! (For all we know, the list hadn't been updated. Who cares? The point was these are two fledgling democracies.) How nit-picking can you get?
Except for Bush's resolute attitude toward promoting democracy, I am not a fan. He has been a surprising disappointment. But his treatment by the media has been bizarre. As Pulitzer observed, the media has the "power to mold the future of the republic." Since the beginning of Bush's presidency, to paraphrase Cannon, its heavy dose of anti-Bush rhetoric has in fact caused the public to alter its opinion. This started before Afghanistan and Iraq. Now unfortunately the success of our troops, the will of the American people and the continued success of democracy is falling victim to the passion and anti-Bush emotion of the elite network television and print media opinion-makers. The public didn't stand a chance. As John Stuart Mill observed, their "thinking" has been done for them.

Most watched internet video?

If you haven't seen Chris Bliss do his unbelievable juggling performance, then you must. He's way more than a juggler. See for yourself. You'll want to watch it over and over...especially if you like the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers, Carry that Weight" medley from Abby Road, their last album. Awesome!

And here's an amazing challenger who does a similar gig with two more balls...

"Stuck in the Middle"

Seeing this Cox & Forkum 'toon reminds me of an old song by Stealers Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle." If you're a boomer, you'll probably remember the tune:

Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Well you started out with nothing,
And you're proud that you're a self made man,
And your friends, they all come crawlin,
Slap you on the back and say,
Please.... Please.....

Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see that it makes no sense at all,
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,
'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Well you started out with nothing,
And you're proud that you're a self made man,
And your friends, they all come crawlin,
Slap you on the back and say,
Please.... Please.....

Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you,
Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
Stuck in the middle with you.

Gore avoids the debate on global warming

Al Gore is jet-setting around the world (presumably in a fuel efficient private jet) warning anyone who will listen of the imminent dangers of global warming and virtually demanding the world do something now to curb it. But interestingly, he is avoiding any debate on the issue:

Al Gore is traveling around the world telling us how we must fundamentally change our civilization due to the threat of global warming. Last week he was in Denmark to disseminate this message. But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the best facts, not just the convenient ones. This was the background for the biggest Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore. And for this, the paper thought it would be obvious to team up with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," who has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore's tune.

Read the OpinionJournal piece. The more light that is being shed on this political hot potato is causing the vociferous left to become even more vociferous. They avoid substantive debate and attempt to marginalize the growing number of skeptics by casting aspersions on their character...a typical leftist ploy.

The Zeitgeist, it is a changin'

Just since the election it seems to me that the zeitgeist has been lowered a couple of levels deeper into the dark side. At the same time it seems to be energized...not in a positive way.

There have been a lot of indicators recently pointing to a marked cultural and political downward slide and I aim to list a few of them here. Many of these news makers are almost breath taking in light of our constitutional freedoms which we can no longer take for granted.

Some people are coming to the realization that something is going on. Things are changing in this country and around the world at breakneck speeds. Following are a list of recent mind boggling articles. Check them out...it's a growing list which will be updated.

Law would make Minutemen guilty of 'domestic terrorism'

The Equality Engineer

Congress preparing to criminalize critics?

10 most underreported stories of 2006

Border agents sent to prison

U.S., Mexico, Canada 'harmonizing' policies

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

Kucinich To Hold Fairness Doctrine Hearings

Democrats' New 'Fairness' Push May Silence Conservative Radio Hosts

Burma 'orders Christians to be wiped out'

Social Security for illegal aliens

Christian believers executed in North Korea

Burma 'orders Christians to be wiped out'

Bad news for Christians living in Burma:

The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been leaked from a government ministry. Entitled "Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma", the incendiary memo contains point by point instructions on how to drive Christians out of the state.

The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised," calls for anyone caught evangelising to be imprisoned. It advises:"The Christian religion is very gentle – identify and utilise its weakness."

Its discovery follows widespread reports of religious persecution, with churches burnt to the ground, Christians forced to convert to the state religion, Buddhism, and their children barred from school.

This is one of those stories that won't get much attention; not even among most Christians. Why? Because most people don't have a clue where Burma is, nor do they care. It's way far away and anything that happens there has no effect on our lives.

Or does it?

Maybe you haven't noticed but there's an international mood swing (to put it mildly) that is antithetical to all things Jewish and Christian. This isn't news to Jews, but Christians who haven't been watching may be wondering just what the hell is going on.

What is it about Jews and Christians that stirs up so much international and domestic hate and anxiety?

Quite simply, it's that dreaded reminder of God.

The Jews remind the world of God and the Old Testament; the God who gave us those "loathsome" 10 Commandments. The Christians, by virtue of their existence, remind the world of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That, in itself, is a capital offense to the secular progressives and intolerant radicals of other religions around the world. There are those who, like vampires recoiling at the sign of the cross, recoil at the very utterance of the name of Jesus Christ (unless spoken profanely).

It's those heinous grievances which cause so much hate.

When and where did Hillary tape her "I'm in" video?

Mark Finkelstein posted a fascinating observation of Hillary's "I'm In" video which was released today. Go to NewsBusters to see the video and pay special attention to the view outside the window. Curiously, all the plants and trees are lush with green leaves and there are even yellow flowers in bloom...in January? In Georgetown? In Chappaqua?

Surely there's a reasonable explanation. Maybe it's just that pesky global warming.

Dems Draw a Blank

Cox & Forkum illustrate the vacuous democrat plan on how to win the war against Islamo-fascism.

This appears to be the same plan the republicans have to defeat the leftist ideologues who are successfully steamrolling those on the right side of the isle.

Chi-coms Shoot down satellite...Thank you, President Clinton!

It wasn't all that long ago that the Chi-coms couldn't even launch a rocket (except for those neat little bottle rockets they've been making for thousands of years) but thanks to the Clintons they've mastered rocket science 101 and have moved on to shooting down satellites!

The more we find out about surviving ex-presidents, the uglier their legacies become.

Speaking of sorry ex-presidents...

Art Buchwald's last column

You just gotta love a man who takes death in stride and even has the courage to embrace it with a smile. Art Buchwald, who has been in the business of making us smile for the last 55 years, did just that. He died yesterday after a prolonged illness. But, he lived about a year longer than he was supposed to, according to his doctors.

In his final column he bids us farewell as only he could. Be sure to read it...it'll make you smile!

Criticize Congress while it's still legal

We're almost to the point where things like this no longer spawn outrage:.

"Congress is trying to blame the grassroots, which are American citizens engaging in their First Amendment rights, for Washington's internal corruption problems," he said.

Christian leader James Dobson -- along with Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and Don Wildmon -- spoke out about the provision on a recent "Focus on the Family" radio broadcast.

"The Democrats, and a few Republicans are trying now, very, very quickly, to insulate themselves from the public and to do it by muzzling people like us," Dobson said. "It's a complex piece of legislation and not everything in it is offensive. But the provision that we cannot accept would require organizations like Focus on the Family to report every contact with anyone in the executive or legislative branches and any effort to try to influence grassroots response, even if it doesn't include a call to action. In other words, they are trying to muzzle us and many other organizations."

Is Atlas shrugging? Are we beleaguered to the point of surrender in the fight against the evil forces who daily blast away at our once sacred constitution and rule of law?

If the Islamo-fascists don't get us, the (and here's the critical part...) despicable politicians will. I don't exclude the pusillanimous republicans here because it is they who have mostly bent over backwards and forwards in order to get along with insidious leftists. Shame on the entire body.

These are sad and dangerous times!

Under the considered legislation, if 500 or more people read this piece, I would be guilty under the law and subject to one year in jail. For what? For being critical of those arrogant "gentlemen and women" who are beyond criticism and above the law.

Negotiating with the Devil

There are two kinds of people: those who believe the way to peace can be achieved by appeasement and accommodation, that is, negotiation; and those who believe otherwise. I believe otherwise.

It's very possible that the world's most famous appeaser/accommodater is British Prime Minister Nevel Chamberlain who, in 1938, earnestly believed he could make nice with Adolph Hitler by chatting him up. Of course he was dead wrong, and even Nevel owned up to the fact that his errant belief of appeasement and accommodation was untenable. Too bad more post-modern politicos can't do the same.

Allow me to suggest that there are forces of evil and forces of good. I know that causes secular progressives to reel apopletically with great weeping and gnashing of teeth, but the fact remains; evil exists.

There are those who would have you think that President Bush and the United States of America are the embodiment of evil and I would remit that those who do are the very ones who deny that evil even exists.

Therefore it is incumbent upon people around the world to discern right from wrong and good from evil.

There's a 28 minute radio broadcast I highly recommend that you listen to which can be found here. Just click on "open" to hear the broadcast, "Negotiating with the Devil." It's an excellent and timely program which was done by Ron Dart in the last couple of weeks and won't be aired for another month or two on radio stations which carry the Born to Win program. This is somewhat of a sneak preview and it couldn't be more prescient.

By all means, listen to it! It's outstanding!

Quote of the Day

From Mark Twain:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Why Africa Suffers

The Reject The U.N site has an excellent expose' of how the Marxist thugs pillage and plunder their hapless countrymen when convening with various other thugs at fashionable United Nations affairs. The story over there is all about the nefarious "dictator for life or until he gets overthrown," Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, chairman of the African Union.

Get this:

IN two short visits to New York last year the leader of one of Africa’s poorest countries spent $400,000 (£207,000) on hotel bills as members of his entourage drank Cristal champagne and charged tens of thousands of dollars of room service to accounts paid by the Republic of Congo’s mission to the United Nations.
Detailed hotel bills obtained by The Sunday Times showed that a Waldorf Astoria suite occupied by Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, chairman of the African Union, recorded £12,000 of room service charges during a five-night stay last April that cost his country £73,000.

When he returned to the same hotel during the UN general assembly meeting last September, almost £14,000 of room service was added to his bill during another five-night stay. His entourage, including several members of his family, occupied 44 rooms which together ran up a bill of £130,000 — comfortably more than the £106,000 that Britain gave the country in humanitarian aid last year.

The latest revelations about Sassou-Nguesso’s lavish travel habits have appalled anti-corruption campaigners and embarrassed the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Last year they agreed to a large debt relief package on the grounds that the country — known as Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo — was too poor to meet its financial commitments.

I know, this is petty thievery but it's indicative of the dictator mentality of Marxist thugs who don't give a tinker's damn about their suffering subjects. All they care about is padding their own pockets and bank accounts.

Check out the piece and take a look around while you're there.

Jerome Corsi challenges Michael Medved to a debate

If you're familiar with the #1 most unreported story of 2006, then you'll need to read this very important and well documented piece by Jerome Corsi.

It's all about the so-called North American Union and if you're not familiar with this issue you need to be. It's below the radar right now but at some point it's going to be out there in all it's politically correct ugliness. Find out about it now so you'll know what's going on behind the scenes.

This is compelling stuff. I've generally been a pretty big fan of Michael Medved, but lately he's had some unconvincing ad homonym things to say about those of us who aren't quite right with our border policies.

Medved is a brilliant fellow, an excellent debater and it's troubling when his arguments degenerate into nasty name calling right off the bat. If you happen to believe there's some hanky panky going on between Mexico, Canada and the USA regarding our borders, then, according to Medved, you're nothing but a whacked out conspiratorial weirdo who probably thinks the UN is some globalist NGO who wants to do away with our national sovereignty (wait a minute...isn't that exactly what they are?).

Corsi's piece is timely, extraordinarily well executed and documented. It shuts down Medved's shallow ad homonym attack with factual aplomb.

This is must reading!

Top 10 Spiked Stories of '06

It shouldn't be a surprise that the Top Ten Spiked stories of 2006 are featured here at the often marginalized and always unmentioned by the MSM, WND website.. I could list them here, but you might as well go there to get the details.

Some of the most important stories of the year were spiked not only by the MSM, but by the so-called conservative media sites/networks as well.

Thank God for the Internet and Talk Radio!

More Child Raping by the UN

That's right! After decades of sexual abuse with children, the occupying "peacekeeping" (what a sick joke that is!) troops of the failed UN have been found to be guilty of sexual abuse of children once again. And once again, the UN is denying the reality of the abuse.

This isn't a "once in a while" occurrence, folks...this is an egregious problem that has been going on unpunished for decades. Yes decades!

It's a sick story and it's one that continues wherever the UN happens to impose itself, but it's a story with which we all need to be aware.

Find the story right here.

Congress is the body that decides how much of our hard earned tax dollars end up at the vaunted UN. Isn't it about time to let them know you are sick and tired of funding any and every part of this failed and utterly corrupt institution?

Write them, call them, email them right now to let them know you will not support a congressman who votes to fund the UN.

More here.

The President's Christmas Pardons (and who he didn't pardon)

You probably didn't see this anywhere unless you get Phyllis Schlafly's newsletter or checked out her website today. Here's the gist of the column:

President George W. Bush pardoned 16 criminals including five drug dealers at Christmastime, but so far has refused to pardon the two U.S. Border Patrol agents who were trying to defend Americans against drug smugglers. It makes us wonder which side the self-proclaimed "compassionate" President is on.
Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were guarding the Mexican border near El Paso on February 17, 2005 when they intercepted a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana. For what happened next, they were convicted and sentenced under a statute that was designed to impose heavy punishment on criminal drug smugglers caught in the commission of a crime.

The two agents are scheduled to start 11- and 12-year prison terms, respectively, on January 17, for the crime of putting one bullet in the buttocks of the admitted drug smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, and failing to report the discharge of their firearms. The non-fatal bullet didn't stop the smuggler from running to escape in a van waiting for him on the Mexican side of the border.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher called the two agents heroes. "Because of their actions, more than a million dollars in illegal drugs were stopped from being sold to our children. Bringing felony charges against them is a travesty of justice beyond description."

The White House and the U.S. Department of Justice are stonewalling requests for a presidential pardon from 55 Members of Congress and U.S. citizens who have sent at least 160,000 petitions and 15,000 faxes. When the Bush Administration deigns to respond at all, the official line is that the Border Patrol agents got a fair trial.

But that's not true; they didn't get a fair trial. They were convicted because the Justice Department sent investigators into Mexico, tracked down the drug smuggler, and gave him immunity from all prosecution for his drug smuggling crimes if he would please come back and testify against Ramos and Compean

Please be sure to read the entire piece. If any case is a travesty of justice, surely it is this one.

Incidents like this beg the question, just what the hell is going on at the border and why aren't the laws of the land being upheld and enforced?

Worse, when anyone raises hell about this they are marginalized and tossed into the "nutter" category. Even by some on the right side of the isle.

What's going on?

THIS is what's going on!

WorldNetDaily Celebrates its 10th Year

Joseph Farah and the good folks at WorldNetDaily are celebrating their 10th year of cutting edge online journalism beginning today. Sounds like they're planning for a year long party for news junkies. It'll be fun to see what's in store.