N.Y. teen Arvind Mahankali wins the national spelling bee with ‘knaidel’ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/30/spell-ebrities-take-stage-final-day-national-spell/ Maybe it’s the fourth time that’s the charm, perhaps it’s what 13-year-old Arvind Mahankali calls the “German blessing,” or it could just be that the eighth-grader just really knows how to spell. But whatever it was, late Thursday night the teen from Bayside […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/barack_obama_george_orwell_and_terror.html George Orwell would have disliked Barack Obama’s big speech on terror, because Orwell hated when politicians used words to hide ugly truths. In 1984, Orwell coined the term “double-speak.” He foresaw how men of state would misstate and mislead to stay in power, using words to distort more than to inform. Orwell knew politicians […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324412604578513610868984032.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond A terrorist attack that is thwarted is quickly overtaken in the news by other events, and that’s why the botched attempt to blow up John F. Kennedy airport in 2007 is barely remembered today. But a 500-page report filed by a diligent prosecutor in Buenos Aires on Wednesday may change that by providing solid […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323855804578511463018969112.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop The stock market is soaring. Yet real median income has fallen 5%, unheard of except during the Great Depression. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday that the Fed should not be asked to “accommodate misguided fiscal policies” and “will inevitably fall […]
Nasrallah’s harangue Hassan Nasrallah’s stirring and impassioned defense of Damascus despot Bashar Assad went far beyond the Hezbollah chief’s by-now expected bravado. This was something intrinsically different. Nasrallah is a proven master at toying with the emotions of both supporters and foes in Lebanon. This time, though, and perhaps for the first time, he displayed […]
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If you’re a movie buff of a certain age, you’ll remember a film called The Mouse That Roared, in which a tiny, debt-ridden country declares war against the United States in order to gain all the benefits that would be showered their way as the losers. It was a sharp little satire that unfortunately persists in ringing true to this day. It comes to mind not only with respect to foreign policy, but also with how we deal with criminals and terrorists. In today’s paper we learned that the state of New Jersey continued to pay 23 million dollars of entitlements and benefits to incarcerated people who were not entitled to any of it while in jail. This should aptly be considered “criminal negligence” and heads should roll all the way to the diminishing hulk of the governor. More disturbing in today’s news is the ongoing saga of Nidal Hasan, the Muslim army psychiatrist who shot 45 people at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 12 and severely injuring the rest. It is four years later and though Hasan is incarcerated, he has still not been tried for this heinous act of terrorism. During the past years of legal stalling, he has collected $280,000 of salary, because according to our American system of justice and the vagaries of military protocol, he is entitled to his money until proven guilty. No matter that there is no disputing who pulled the trigger each time during his rampage – the only thing to be determined at trial is what degree of murder this fits and what the appropriate sentence will be. If common sense prevailed, would a terrorist still get paid?
Further adding to the head-scratching wonder of this case, Hasan has won the right to grow and sport a bushy beard though that is against army regulations. Now a hemiplegic and wheelchair-bound, he has petitioned the court to allow him to represent himself in his upcoming trial in July. To determine whether he would be physically competent to handle this, the judge ordered a medical examination. In another questionable accommodation, the judge agreed to Hasan’s request to not be examined by the chief of medicine where he used to work. In short, Hasan first killed and maimed the soldiers of Fort Hood and now demands that his trial not be compromised by the judgment of the medical officer under whom he served. This used to be the classic definition of chutzpah – the murderer who shoots his parents and begs the mercy of the court because he is now an orphan. Does this make sense?
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3739/islamophobia-comes-to-canberra Are we to let our freedoms be shaped by the worst kind of intolerance found in the sharia badlands? How will discrimination among religions based on fear distort human rights? Like student magazines all over the world, Woroni, put out by students at the Australian National University, publishes satire. It did when I attended […]
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Drip, drip, drip. And then the deluge.
After that the roof falls in. The perfect storm dashing Barack Obama’s second term onto the rocks is not the consequence of a sudden squall. This storm has been a long time coming.
The White House still doesn’t get it. Sending the president out to make another speech won’t change anything. Calling in a favored few to listen to more bloviating won’t do it, either. Neither will sacking Eric Holder, which is an idea whose time has come, but that would only buy a little time, with the emphasis on little.
The president may be tempted to cast the perfect storm as a matter of national security. When his speech to the National Defense University, declaring that the war against the terrorists was over because he had vanquished all the bad guys, landed with the thud of a noisy dud, he invited a gaggle of media elites to the White House for a session of the familiar argle-bargle. That didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Mr. Obama’s administration is the enemy “foreign and domestic” the founding documents warned us about.
An invitation to the White House is ordinarily the invitation no good citizen declines without a very good reason. If a president, or one of his deputies, summons a citizen to come to the aid of the government, a good citizen catches the next streetcar to Pennsylvania Avenue, even if the streetcar is a bus. This time it’s fashionable to say thanks, but no thanks. Eric Holder’s invitation to media executives to “air concerns and exchange ideas” is not necessary because if he wants to hear the concerns he can read about them in the morning papers. Meetings to “ensure that First Amendment rights are respected by the Department of Justice” are not necessary, either, nor are conversations with news executives, lawyers and intelligence and investigative ‘experts’.”
The First Amendent needs no explanatory help from politicians, lawyers or anyone else. The language of the amendment, the cornerstone and guarantor of all the other rights of Americans, is as plain as the language of the Gospel, written so that the humblest among us can understand it. Presidents and their administrations have understood the words of the First Amendment for two centuries, with the further understanding that trifling with the words and meanings is always reckless and foolish.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/05/shielding_the_enemy.html One year ago, in June 2012, the “National Security Five” — five members of Congress led by Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — called attention to U.S. government infiltration by Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives. Based on disturbing information from court evidence and documents, correspondence, media reports, congressional briefings, and public statements, they found that individuals with […]
http://www.meforum.org/3519/islam-london-beheading Last week in London, two Muslim men shouting jihad’s ancient war-cry, “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a British soldier with a cleaver—in a busy intersection and in broad daylight. They boasted in front of passersby and asked to be videotaped. As surreal as this event may seem, Islamic beheadings are not uncommon in the West, including […]
