'Next Mission, We Shave'

A federal informant testifying in Camden, New Jersey Monday in the trial of the Fort Dix plotters described a “vacation” he took with three brothers, the Dukas, to the Poconos. Besnik Bakalli, a native Albanian in the U.S. illegally, was recruited by the FBI to make friends with the Dukas. His testimony about them is backed up by hours of tapes obtained through the wire Bakalli was wearing.

According to Bakalli, the Poconos vacation turned out to be a jihad training session. (Not the first time a romantic Poconos getaway turned out to be more than was expected).

He said the men talked constantly about Islam, war between the Muslim world and America, guns, and their respect for Osama bin Laden. They also shopped for guns, went to firing ranges and played paintball during the trip. (“Informant: Fort Dix suspects trained for 'jihad'”).

(DU is awaiting comment from Dawud Walid, spokesmen for all Muslims, (e.g., the Dukas), clarifying that the Dukas’ "respect for Osama bin Laden" does not extend to Zawahiri’s “house negro” crack about President-elect Obama, a remark the Dukas reportedly find “deeply disturbing.”)

Defense counsel are attacking the credibility of Bakalli and another paid informant because they’re receiving consideration in their own criminal cases in exchange for their cooperation. But the hours of tapes of the Dukas themselves confirms what Bakalli told the jury.

On the tapes, the men repeatedly discussed what they perceived as the oppression of Muslims around the globe - in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Palestinian territories and other locations. They talked about their own duties as Muslims to wage jihad and help their "brothers."

"The war with Islam has already started," Dritan Duka said on one of the tapes.

The men also talked extensively about where they could buy weapons and how much they cost. Dritan Duka said he had a source for guns in Camden but the source could not talk to him on the phone for fear of being overheard. "We don't want to get caught with guns," he said. "Especially that we have beards. They think we are terrorists." (“Fort Dix informant says he was scared”).

Notice just how deftly Dritan Duka has put his finger directly on what makes us think they’re terrorists.

Never mind the jihad talk and the guns and the laughing at the U.S. soldiers getting blown up. It’s their beards that make us think, “terrorist.”

Judge Wygonik Tells Arab Thought Cops, 'Case Dismissed'

Judge Wygonik, whose travails we noted in October, (“Dearborn Judge Runs Afoul of Thought Police”), has finally realized that negotiation has its limits. Not that he’s declaring war on Imad Hamad and Osama Siblani. He’s just saying, “so long.”

Hamad and Siblani are the two most prominent loudmouths in the Coalition of Arab American Organizations (CAAO), the gang that’s been persecuting Wygonik since July, demanding some suitable public penance from him for being insufficiently sensitive to Muslim feelings in his private conversations.

As Wygonik explains in his statement, (below), he’s met repeatedly with these guys, offering to issue a joint statement to clear the air. But CAAO preferred to remain offended. On Monday Wygonik issued a press release through his attorney saying he’s done talking to the CAAO, and he’s moving on.

Maybe Siblani, Hamad, and company stayed stubborn in hopes of breaking Wygonik down, Dog Whisperer-style, in hopes that he would accept the collar and leash. Who wants to settle for a fair judge when a terrified political lapdog on the bench is so much more useful?

Or maybe they only wanted to make a harsh example of him for the benefit of any other Dearborn officials who might get silly notions about speaking or thinking freely around this town.

Either way, Wygonik went above and beyond in his effort to smooth the waters. Now Wygonik is showing up his persecutors as the ones who aren’t serious about smoothing anything. (Dearborn Heights City Councilman Tom Berry doesn't come out looking so good, either).

I’m sure Wygonik will pay for this by losing re-election next time around. But he stood for principle, and refused to dhimmi his way out of it, for which we tip our cap to him.

* * *

For Immediate Release
Contact: Noel Saleh
Monday, December 1, 2008
(313) 967-0200

District Judge Richard Wygonik issues final statement on e-mail accusations

At a July fundraiser for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, I had a conversation with Dearborn Heights City Councilman Tom Berry, during which we discussed Talal Chahine, the former owner ofthe La Shish restaurant chain and current fugitive from justice.

I was pointed in my criticism of Chahine, whose irresponsible actions harmed our community and resulted in hundreds of local workers losing their jobs. After a lively discussion, Berry and I shook hands and parted ways.

The following day, it was brought to my attention that Councilman Berry had sent out an email claiming that both I and my wife made disparaging comments, not toward Chahine, but toward Dearborn’s entire Arab community and toward Fordson High School.

Despite (1) my long-standing ties to Dearborn’s Arab community, (2) the fact that I have a reputation of being fair and unbiased as both a judge and in private practice, (3) the fact that I am a graduate of Fordson High School, and (4) my continued assertion that my remarks about Talal Chahine were not in any way an indictment of an entire community, some people have been demanding an apology (for something I never said).

Since the email, I have issued three statements about that evening’s conversation. I have had my representative, respected local attorney Noel Saleh, meet with the Coalition of Arab American Organizations (CAAO) on two occasions. I have personally met with CAAO as a group on one occasion. I have also met with several of its members on an individual basis.

I offered to issue a joint statement with CAAO to clarify what was said and to reach a resolution of this email attack. Since our meeting, I have, in good faith, produced several drafts of a joint statement based upon what was said at our face to face meetings with CAAO representatives and during our conversations, only to have those joint statements rejected.

I have always believed that the CAAO is working for the betterment of our community. I support the organization, I respect its members, and I appreciate the support I have received from the organization and its members. However, the leaders who are speaking for the CAAO have prevented me from reaching a resolution by a joint statement. I am convinced, that after weeks of trying to issue a joint statement, there is no truthful statement I can make that will satisfy some ofthe leaders of the CAAO.

I appreciate the efforts of those members of the community who have devoted a significant amount of time and energy to trying to resolve the issue of this email, but I believe I have done all I can do, and it is time for me to put this email behind me and to continue to prove to the voters of Dearborn that, as my record shows, I am a fair judge, not affected by racial or ethnic bias in any way. I will continue to serve all the citizens of Dearborn with dedication.
# # #
Not Printed At Taxpayer Expense

Obama & the 57 Governors

Headline from the Los Angeles Times blog this evening:



Obama meets nation's govs for 57 minutes and so far so good

That makes one governor per minute. Two more minutes he'd have met all 59.




I know this joke is stale, but it’s that kind of night.

CAIR and Woe

Speaking of CAIR, Frank Gaffney Jr. at NRO has a few points to make about how bad things are going for that bunch right now:

The allegations about CAIR’s conduct in the Days’ affair and the guilty verdict rendered against its co-conspirators in the Holy Land case point up a central reality: In the words of a wise lawyer, shady organizations, even stealth ones, invariably engage in culpable conduct no matter how sophisticated they are because there are too many loose ends and you cannot control all of them. It appears that that is what happened with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood’s stealth jihad operatives at CAIR.

Read the rest of it here.

Obama's Attorney General Pick

I wasn’t sure at first what to think about President-elect Obama’s selection of Eric Holder as nominee for Attorney General of the United States. Frankly, I don’t remember him from the Clinton administration. But then I read Andrew McCarthy’s take on him at The Corner, (“Opposed to Holder without apology”), ripping Holder for his role in the Clinton PardonFest. I have tremendous admiration for McCarthy, and since he speaks as a former Justice Department insider (he prosecuted the Blind Sheikh and, atypically of DOJ terror prosecutions, won), I give his opinions that much more weight.

Now I see that the Arab American News likes Holder, and for all the wrong reasons. Speaking for Osama Siblani’s newspaper is up-and-coming jihadist mouthpiece, Tarek Baydoun, whom we’ve notice before calling for, among other things, the "national unity" of the Muslim nation. Baydoun sings Holder’s praises, cementing my negative view of Holder in the process. (“Obama's Attorney General pick encouraging to Arabs, Muslims and all Americans”).

Baydoun is an example of the heights that can be reached in opinion-writing when a writer is unfettered by either fact-checking or moderation. As an Osama Siblani disciple, Baydoun subscribes, or pretends to subscribe (sorry, I instinctively credit all law students with crass ambition), to the Muslim Gulag narrative, whereby, (goes the narrative), each morning every Arabic resident of East Dearborn wakes--on a good day--to face daily checkpoints, body searches, and harsh interrogation, and--on a bad day--a simple trip to the bakery is as likely as not to end in summary arrest, deportation, waterboarding, transport to Gitmo, or disappearance without a trace.

As I believe I may have mentioned before, as a West Dearborner who has to drive through East Dearborn to get to work, I have to allow myself extra time to plod through the countless black marias blocking traffic as they round up hapless Muslims innocently on their way to wire money to their freedom-loving relatives abroad.

As Baydoun tells it, this systematic destruction of the civil liberties of Arab Americans will be the worst stigma of all of the Bush administration, above and beyond, as he so temperately describes it, “the failures on all fronts of the Bush administration.”

Baydoun is heartened that Obama picked Holder who, in June, long before he knew he was going to have to have to face Senate confirmation for Attorney General, made a speech to the American Constitution Society, “a progressive organization of lawyers and law students,” where:

Holder blasted the Bush administration's policies as "immora[l]." Holder said the policies weakened the government's position at home and abroad in its fight against terrorism. Holder described the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II and the Supreme Court decision upholding it as "one of the darkest moments in American constitutional history." He said that although the government did not do the same to American Muslims after 9/11, much of the action it did take was "excessive and unlawful." Holder said "Our government authorized the use of torture, approved secret electronic surveillance of American citizens without due process of law, and denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of enemy combatants. I do not question the motives and patriotism of those responsible in implementing these policies. But this does nothing to mitigate the fact that these steps were wrong when they were initiated, and they are wrong now… We owe the American people a reckoning."

When you write like Baydoun, who actually was allowed to publish to readers
of the Arab American News that “hundreds of citizens” have been “arbitrarily and illegally detained without trial in prisons inside and outside of the United States” [and] “transferred abroad for torture” [!], you’re not going to be able to resist the boundless nonsense of Holder’s seamless non sequitur from the Japanese internment of WWII to the current domestic war on terror: “although the government did not do the same to American Muslims after 9/11, much of the action it did take was ‘excessive and unlawful.’”

I don’t expect a Democrat President to nominate an Attorney General of my exact liking. But at least he should know the law, (especially the Constitution, e.g., the legal history of habeas corpus being extended to enemy combatants), and have a decent measure of coolness in his thinking. Based on the excerpts of the speech he gave the ACS, Holder appears to lack all of these.

Personally, in view of the incoming Obama administration's sudden discovery of the lethal intentions of our jihadist enemies, I look forward to watching Holder try to explain to the Senate Judiciary Committee how he intends to keep Americans safe from domestic terrorist plots while intending to "reverse course" on effective methods, perfectly legal methods, that have been successful these last few years to thwart terrorism. Sure, it's fun to make gratuitious swipes at the Bush administration when you don't imagine you might be part of the next administration. Now Holder can try being the AG who suggests to President Obama, whose re-election campaign started November 6th, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed deserves release under habeas corpus.

Another Democrat Defends Bush

Speaking of malign comments about the Bush administration, one Democrat, and former Gore 2000, Kerry 2004 supporter, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, wrote a powerful piece that ran Election Day in the Wall Street Journal about the disgraceful mistreatment of the man who is, still, our President. Shapiro was in New York City on 9/11, and though he disliked Bush until then, found himself “inspired” by the President’s actions that day and thereafter.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Read the rest of Shapiro’s article here.

As the Table Turns

It’s been my view that the anti-anti-terrorist movement amongst liberals since 2001 had little to do with principled stands on civil liberty or pacifism, but was driven by sheer vindictiveness against George W. Bush for having the nerve to beat Al Gore in 2000. Ever since then, more important for Democrats than the security and success of the nation was preventing the success of the hated Bush.

I went so far as to believe that the Democrats were perfectly willing to see us lose a war, or lose American lives in a terror attack because intelligence operations were compromised or obstructed--or otherwise allow harm to the country, if those things contributed to sabotage the Bush administration. I believed it, in part, because I watched it happening in front of my very eyes.

It is probably the most cynical opinion I’ve ever held. And it’s turning out to be absolutely true.

The proof of it is demonstrated in the Left’s sudden discovery, since Election Day, that Islamic terrorists are a threat to the country. Of course, the only thing that’s changed in the Islamic war against the West since November 4th is who’s turn it is to lead the fight. It's not as if we've just had another 9/11-type attack (thanks to George W. Bush).

But until Obama was elected the Left consistently treated Islamic terrorism as, at best, a marginal criminal matter whose root causes can be blamed on American racism, imperialism, and unwillingness to adopt the Kyoto Treaty, or, at worst, something made up by Cheney-Bush at a barbecue in Crawford, Texas.

Regardless, at no time has it been taken seriously by liberals.

(Asking “Why haven’t we caught bin Laden yet?” is not taking it seriously. That was only meant as a jibe at Bush. They said the same thing until Bush caught Saddam, and when Bush did they promptly went about-face and said catching Saddam didn't make any difference. No one who understands this battle believes that bin Laden’s head on a pole on international TV will end global Islamic jihadist attacks. And if he’s captured alive, no one on the Left will let him face justice without whimpering that his rights are being violated.)

Anyway, I see where Michelle Malkin has tapped into some of this, too, in her recent comments about the incoming administration’s sudden maturity on the subject of Gitmo:

Playing Games at Gitmo
Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang.

By Michelle Malkin

The human-rights crowd is right: Life is hard for a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The deprivation is unspeakable. According to the facility’s “cultural adviser,” their brains have not been “stimulated” enough. So this Thanksgiving, America is drawing up plans to provide the 250 or so suspected jihadists at the “notoriously Spartan” detention camp with basic sustenance including, as reported by the Miami Herald, movie nights, art classes, English-language lessons, and “Game Boy-like” electronic devices.

Next up: Wii Fi, Guitar Hero, Sudoku, People magazine, and macrame. Anything less would be uncivilized.

On a deadly serious note, the detainees aren’t the only ones playing games at Gitmo. Some top legal advisers and supporters of Barack Obama, whose name detainees chanted on election night, are now rethinking the president-elect’s absolutist campaign position on shutting the center down and flooding our mainland courts with every last enemy combatant designee. Yes, reality bites. And Democrats must now grapple with the very real possibility that an Obama administration could potentially release a Gitmo denizen who would turn around and commit mass terrorist acts on American soil or abroad.

Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang. Never before have an administration and its followers matured so quickly in office — and they haven’t even taken office yet.

While Obama paid lip service to the “Close the Gitmo gulag!” agenda on 60 Minutes over the weekend, his kitchen cabinet is proceeding more pragmatically. Believe it or not, the Obama crowd is now contemplating a preventive detention law and an alternative judicial system for the most sensitive national security cases involving the most highly classified information — information that has no place being aired in the civilian courts for public consumption.

Listen to relentless Bush critic David Cole, who told the New York Times last week: “You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone.” Added Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution: “I’m afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things.”

Moreover, Obama transition team members have suggested to The Wall Street Journal that despite his campaign season CIA-bashing, “Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”

Next thing you know, they’ll start arguing that the world has been fooled by years of sob-story propaganda about the Gitmo detainees — funded by Kuwaiti government-subsidized lawyers who cast them all as innocent potato farmers and schmucks dazed and confused on battlefields.

Next thing you know, they’ll rediscover the facts that detainees have systematically lied and exaggerated stories about mistreatment at Gitmo, and that interrogators and military personnel have bent over backward to accommodate their personal and religious needs and wants.

Next thing you know, they’ll start reminding us that dozens of former Gitmo detainees have been released and recaptured on the battlefield while committing acts of terrorism.

Funny, when President Bush and his homeland-security team realized these very realities seven years ago, they were branded terrorists and hounded relentlessly by Congress, the media and the left. When Attorney General Michael Mukasey eloquently defended the administration’s counterterrorism policies at the Federalist Society before he collapsed, he was heckled as a “tyrant.” And when I wrote my second book expounding on this very thesis, I was labeled a racist and fascist whose ideas exploring the proper balance between security and civil liberties had no place in public discourse.

Now, at long last, some liberals have realized that the sacred goal of “regaining America’s moral stature in the world,” as Obama put it, may be less important than ensuring that al-Qaeda killers don’t strike on American ground again.

Viva la Hope and Change!
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Dawud Walid Deals His Own Race Card

Our favorite CAIR spokesman, Dawud Walid, has written a letter to the Detroit News explaining that Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s recent speech insulting Obama as a “house slave” doesn’t “speak for Muslims.” Rather, writes Walid, “From Senegal to Indonesia, Muslims have celebrated Obama’s victory,” and view his election “as a clear sign that America has taken a big step toward the fulfillment of its principle of racial equality.” (“Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader doesn't speak for Muslims”).

As Walid explains the feelings of the world’s Muslims--the majority of whom will not be eligible for Obama’s promised middle-class tax cuts nor his health care plan--the reason they’re all so geeked about Obama is that it proves America isn’t a “racist imperial power” after all. (In retrospect, that must explain what all those riots and beheadings were about!)

Now after days of holiday overeating I can’t see grabbing hold of that old tar baby about who does or doesn’t speak for Muslims, especially to take issue with Walid, who, to hear him tell it, does speak for all Muslims.

Frankly, I don’t really care if Zawahiri or bin Laden want to say our new president (by the way, Democrats, see how easy it is to say “our new president”?) is a house negro, or want to make any other provocative racial comments about Westerners they don’t like. It’s not these guys’ racial theories that earned them a spot on our Most Wanted List. What did that would be their religious theories, according to which murdering innocent Westerners gets them in really good with their deity.

And I’m pretty sure that the election of Obama notwithstanding, that religious point of view still is a big motivator for Muslims out there. Otherwise, to take a recent example (and when it comes to Islamic rerror, there is always a recent example), the Bombay jihadists would have been searching for tourists holding racist imperialist ideas, rather than only tourists with British and American passports. (“Terrorists said `Put your hand up if you're British or American'”)

Apparently, what’s been causing all the tension between the Islamic world and the rest of us all these centuries has been our stubborn refusal to embrace the enlightened racial teachings of Islam. Enlightened teachings that right now aren’t, curiously, offering much comfort to the millions of African Muslims in Sudan who are being systematically slaughtered by their Muslim Arab brothers in Darfur. “Darfur: the genocide is Islamic racism” ” Or the Jews who were specifically targeted, (again, to take only the most recent example) by the Bombay murderers simply because they were Jewish.

The overreaction to Zawahiri’s racial comments was ludicrous, as if a fugitive terrorist “playing the race card” somehow compounds the evil of using hijacked airliners to destroy American office towers and murder thousands of innocent people. Walid may think that he can use this phony race issue to distance CAIR and its radical Islamic mission from that of al Qaeda, and to falsely paint CAIR as a civil rights group when it actually is a jihadist front, but it won’t work.

Osama bin Laden declared religious war on the USA in 1996 because he saw us as infidel crusaders, who needed our civilization destroyed and replaced with Islam.

The Pew Poll in 2006 showed there was still huge support for that amongst the world’s Muslims.

Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come. (“[Pew Poll on] How Muslims Think”).

Dawud Walid's CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, (one and the same) have a mission in America, and it isn’t to foster our principle of racial equality. It is to further their anti-Western “’Civilization-Jihadist process... eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Since they share bin Laden's and Zawahiri's jihadist goals of destroying America and imposing Islam, what difference does it make if Walid tries to take the high ground over this silly race-card flap?

Health Care That's Truly Universal

From Ann Coulter's Thursday column:

Far from being sodomized and tortured by U.S. forces -- as Obama's base has wailed for the past seven years -- the innocent scholars and philanthropists being held at Guantanamo have been given expensive, high-tech medical procedures at taxpayer expense. If we're not careful, multitudes of Muslims will be going to fight Americans in Afghanistan just so they can go to Guantanamo and get proper treatment for attention deficit disorder and erectile dysfunction.

After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Massoud would now be able to park his car bomb in a handicapped parking space!

. . . .Upon his release in March 2004, Massoud hippity-hopped back to Afghanistan and quickly resumed his war against the U.S. Aided by his new artificial leg, just months later, in October 2004, Massoud masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan working on the Gomal Zam Dam project.

This proved, to me at least, that people with disabilities can do anything they put their minds to. Way to go, you plucky extremist!

Read the rest of "Terrorists' Restless Leg Syndrome".

U.S. Mint Announces Introduction of 'Obama Penny'

After thousands of articles comparing Barack Obama with Abraham Lincoln, and a reported outcry from working Americans everywhere demanding “change” from the haggard profile on the existing One Cent piece, the U.S. Mint has decided to introduce a new Obama Penny.

The new coin also serves as tie-in with President-Elect Obama’s economic stimulus package, so that, (over bankers' and retailers' objections), it will be worth $.02, though continuing to be denominated ONE CENT.

A spokesperson for the Mint says the new coin will bear the image of The One on the front side, with the old motto “IN GOD WE TRUST” being modernized to “WE ARE THE ONES.” The image of the Lincoln Memorial on the reverse side will be replaced by a dove perching atop two bumping fists. Rather than use the traditional copper, which comes from violently raping the Earth by mining, the new "green" penny will be cast from an alternative mixture of smelted firearms and recycled SUVs, and will in fact, be green.

Presidential Chief-of-Staff elect Rahm Emanuel, reached in Kentucky where he's busy overseeing construction of the log cabin where Obama was born, denies that any political pressure was applied to the Mint to make them come up with the new penny.

“Don’t blame me if Obama is the greatest president since Lincoln,” Emanuel said. “I think his record speaks for itself, don’t you? Now get outta here!”

Test Drive the New 2009 Barney!

One way or the other the Democrats in Congress are determined to put someone named Barney in charge of the Big Three. What with the Donkey Party’s unswerving sense of priority (e.g., automobiles are the root of all evil, the Planet is on fire), and the historical weakness of Democrats, when they're in a majority, for refusing to consider opposing views, the most Detroit can hope for is a compromise on exactly which Barney gets selected.

With that in mind, we thought we’d ask our readers which, of the three most prominent Barneys on the national scene today, is likely to do the least amount of damage to the auto industry?


Our early research indicated that a fourth prominent Barney was the hands-down favorite for being able to do a better job than either the Congressional Democrats or the current Big Three CEOs.

I’m referring of course to Barney Fife, who, unlike any of the auto companies’ current and recent executives, once enjoyed a reputation for not letting much get by him.

But we haven’t included him in this survey for technical reasons, including that a) the real Don Knotts only played someone named Barney Fife on TV, and b) he's dead.

Too bad. That leaves Detroit one Barney short of a savior, and the future of the automakers very likely in the hands of someone like this:

Holy Land Foundation Guilty on 3 Dozen Counts

From the Dallas Morning News Monday:

A jury on Monday determined that the Holy Land Foundation and five men who worked with the Muslim charity were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The unanimous verdicts are a complete victory for the government, which streamlined its case after a mistrial last year, and worked hard to carefully educate jurors on the complex evidence presented in the massive case. Guilty verdicts were read on 108 separate charges.

The prosecution victory is also a major one for the administration of President George Bush, whose efforts at fighting terrorism financing in court have been troubled, even though the flow of funds seems to be effectively shut down. . . .

Douglas Farah, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent who is now an author and terrorism consultant, said that the “trial provides an invaluable forum for publicly showing the true agenda of the international Muslim Brotherhood and its organizations in the United States — the abolition of the United States government as we know it and support for a designated terrorist organization.”

“Given this complete victory for the government … it is now incumbent on U.S. government agencies to stop dealing with them as if they were engaging in benign efforts to push an agenda of tolerance and civil rights.” (“Holy Land Foundation defendants guilty on all counts”)

Sic Semper Tyrannis, Eh!

Speaking of free speech, (see comments section here), Mark Steyn has a bit of a victory to celebrate over at The Corner at National Review Online:

Moonstruck [Mark Steyn]

On Friday I had the honor of addressing the Federalist Society in Washington on the matter of my free-speech travails up north. And, in response to a question on whether the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission were surprised that I'd pushed back against them, I quoted that great line from the Kevin Bacon film Tremors when the giant mutated killer worms attack Michael Gross and Reba McEntire's well-armed basement and wind up blasted to smithereens: "Looks like they picked the wrong rec room to break into."

The giant killer worms of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission picked the wrong rec room to break into. Ezra Levant and I and a few others went nuclear on the Dominion's thought police and gave them the worst year of publicity in their three-decade existence. The result is that, earlier this month, over 99 per cent of delegates to the Conservative Party convention voted to abolish Section 13 (the "hate speech" provision) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and a brave principled Liberal, Keith Martin, renewed his private member's motion in the House of Commons to do the same.

This morning, the CHRC issued the so-called Moon Report on free-speech issues. Most of us expected it to be a whitewash. Instead, Professor Moon says:

1. The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.

This is a great tribute to what Ezra calls his campaign of "denormalization" of Canada's Orwellian "human rights" racket. They're not yet ready to throw in the towel completely, but it's fluttering limply on the edge of the ring. Canada may be preparing to rejoin the ranks of free nations.

I'm especially grateful to the support I've received from Stanley Kurtz and other NR colleagues, and from many readers, who recognize that America's chances of remaining a beacon of liberty are greatly diminished if the lights go out over the rest of the western world.
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It's a Sign of the Times

Short and sweet.

Our friends at the United American Committee are taking the direct approach in getting their message out, hiring a billboard to raise awareness about the dangers of Sharia law. The billboard is on southbound I-75, between Monroe and the Ohio line.

The message is undeniable, and people can't be reminded enough. Thanks, you guys, for getting this done. We hope it keeps people talking.

Or maybe you don't think the message is undeniable. If you think Sharia is a good thing for America, we'd be interested in hearing your reasons.

Cheeks of Clay

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick won't reveal if she voted to oust fellow Congressman John Dingell from a key leadership post,despite claims she did so as payback for him calling on her son to resign as mayor.

Her offices were flooded Friday by upset callers accusing Kilpatrick of contributing to Dingell's removal as House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman. Detroit radio shows -- one of which called her "Delilah" --urged listeners to call the congresswoman's offices in protest. Dingell lost control over the committee that sets automobile policy by a secret 137-122 vote Thursday.

“Only the congresswoman knows how she voted,” said Keirana Barrett, a Kilpatrick aide. “We wanted people to understand the process. This is a secret process.” (“Cheeks Kilpatrick mum on Dingell vote”).

At least the Democrats have found some use for the secret ballot--they can use it to hide their vindictive political votes--even if they aim to deny secret ballots to American workers having union membership shoved down their throats. For more on this hypocrisy check this out.

Kilpatrick, by refusing to disclose whether she did or didn’t vote against her congressional colleague from Michigan, has given common-sense Michiganians like us all the reasons we need to believe she really did. (And Dingell even backed her in her recent re-election). Not only that, she voted against the interests of her own state and community. Whatever problems we’ve had with Dingell here, he at least looks out for the auto industry, and, given a choice between him and Waxman, there’s simply no way that Waxman is a better choice for Kilpatrick’s poorly served constituents than Dingell would have been.

The most her statement defending her secret vote would give away is that “As the only appropriator from the State of Michigan, I am committed to advocating for health care and environmental justice for all Americans.”

Inspiring, no? "Environmental justice," is meant to signal she voted for Waxman’s extremist, anti-auto industry approach. Why not just say so? Could political blather get any more cynical than that?

It's an understatement to say that Rep. Kilpatrick is not a class act. She made an embarrassing spectacle of herself during her son’s re-election, (“Don’t let nobody talk about y’all’s boy!”), playing the role of an outraged ghetto queen, trying to sell the image of her son as a racial champion entitled by racial justice to office By Any Means Necessary. Later, she vowed to appeal the whistleblower verdicts against Kwame "no matter how much it costs the city." And now, she's voted against the economic interests of her own city and state just to even the score with a supporter who dared to question her son's divine right to rule, and then hidden behind the secrecy of the "process" to hide her shameful action.

I don’t begrudge any mother sticking like glue to her offspring, no matter how bad he is, even after he’s been thrown out of office and gone to jail. But Cheeks Kilpatrick has always behaved as if everyone in Michigan owes this bum loyalty. I suppose teaching him that he deserved that when he was growing up helped make him who he is today. After it was evident Kwame wasn't going to survive in office, Dingell made a prudent request that he step down. And now, because Dingell talked about y'all's boy, Kilpatrick is now using her office to settle the score, and to hell with her voters and Michigan.

Why Intellectuals Went for Obama

While the Obama honeymoon continues, I expect the liberal commentators, especially the snarkier of them in the Washington-New York axis, to continue their self-congratulating essays on how, after eight years of troglodyte rule, healthy intellectualism is once again welcomed in the land.

That's because, as we never get to the end of hearing, liberals love learning, deep thinking, philosophy, nuance, while conservatives only use books as fuel for warming their hunting lodges, and don't believe in science. Most of all, liberals pride themselves on being well informed.

The video below I ran across on the Ms.Underestimated blog.

It's a bit lengthy, but worth following through. I was especially dismayed by the willingness of these folks to hate Sarah Palin, (to say nothing of their universal inability to distinguish her from Tina Fey), and their lists of who they turn to for information. There is one young lady who is refreshingly frank after realizing how uninformed she was, but that didn't affect her commitment to Obama in the least.

By the way, you'll be glad to know that the 52% of Americans who voted for Obama apparently believe that Republicans are running Congress.

Jack Bauer, Now More Than Ever

At least we can watch conservative values resurging in one place in America.

The Counter-Terrorism Unit’s most-fired employee, Jack Bauer, is returning this Sunday for a two-hour episode of 24. (“Jack's back: '24' returns with a two-hour, action-packed movie”).

As described by Detroit News reviewer, Mekeisha Madden Toby, Jack can’t be left in peace for all the well-intentioned idiots who keep dragging him back into a life of nonstop violence and use of his trademark counterterrorism skills.

His first battle is with bureaucrat Frank Trammell (Gil Bellows, "Ally McBeal"), who travels to the fictional African country of Sengala to tell Jack that he must return to the United States to answer for the inhumane torture techniques he used on terrorism suspects.

Disinterested in playing by rules he doesn't believe in, Jack has been running from people like Tramell for a year, we learn, but discovers he can't run forever. Despite such a revelation, Jack wastes no time physically and verbally attacking Tramell. In another scene, Jack does much of the same to a weak United Nations representative.

Ms. Toby’s snapshot is meant to capture the essential, violent Jack Bauer we all know and love. But it’s not just how Bauer pounds people that makes us love him, it’s who he pounds and why: A bureaucrat sent to hassle him because he tortured terrorists? (Pound him). One of Ally McBeal’s boytoy love interests? (Pound all of them ). A UN representative? (Pound, baby, pound!).

As show creator Joel Turnow said about Bauer’s appeal (and even prominent liberals admit loving this show),

in a world where there's so much noise about what we've done wrong, why we're such bad people, there's so little support for just the real common sense idea,which is: they're bad, we're good, we're going to get them. Jack Bauer represents that.

And he represents it, I might add, without ever having uttered a patriotic speech, nor asked one of his doomed girlfriends any rhetorical questions starting with, “You know what I love about this country. . . ?”

We know Jack loves his country, because he fights for it, and kills the guys who want to hurt his family and countrymen, even if those guys come dressed as bureaucrats or UN representatives.

Even liberals get that. And they know they need someone like that, even if they won't allow themselves to believe they can have it in the real world.

An Open Letter to Osama's Number 2 (With Apologies to Toilet-Training Toddlers Everywhere)

Look here, Mr. Zawahiri, a lot of us were able to overlook that whole 9/11 thing. That was probably understandable, what with us helping Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from being overrun by Saddam Hussein, and what with us being infidels and little Eichmans, not to mention all the rest of your group’s very valid criticisms of our nation.

But calling our new president a “house negro”? (“Al-Qaida's No. 2 insults Obama”). Saying our Messiah isn’t as cool as Malik al-Shabazz (Malcolm X)?

This is 2008 America, pal, and those are fighting words.

From here out there’ll be no more ineffective unilateral cowboy diplomacy. Now you're going to have a mess of groups mad at you, instead of only Dick Cheney and George Bush. To start with, Rev. Al Sharpton, who happens to have a worldwide copyright on the term “house negro”©, (along with such equally valuable expressions as “No Justice”© and “No Peace”©).



The intellectual property litigation alone is going to make your boss wished he's stayed in Saudi Arabia building 10-car garages .

My point is, if you thought Obama’s campaign threats to hunt you and Osama down were scary, just wait until the ACLU gets the case.

Trust me. If there’s anyone who can zero in on people with strong religious views and drop a bomb on them--no matter how well hidden you are--it’s those cats.

May Allah have mercy on you, 'cause I wouldn't give a potful of number 2 for your chances now.

'The Audacity of Victory'

Now that the war in Iraq is won, (though sensitivity for world feelings forbids us from ever declaring it), I wonder how long it will take before the media transmogrifies the universally-hated “Bush’s war” into “Obama’s victorious strategy in Iraq”?

Steve Schippert at The Tank at National Review Online (archived on November 14) has this to say about “The Audacity of Victory: How To End a War”:

Let's get right to the heart of the matter. Barack Obama said famously, "I am the only major candidate who has opposed this war from the beginning. And as president, I will end it." What he really meant was "I will disengage U.S. forces from it." An enemy not yet defeated will have decidedly chosen not to "end it," and therefore likely claimed an abandoned victory for their own.

In 2004, President Bush was the only major candidate who supported the war. And as president, he won it. He might get a footnote in the immediate contemporary history to be written in the coming months and years, while Obama will be awarded full credit for withdrawing U.S. forces — now that, as Michael Yon describes to Glenn Reynolds via phone from Iraq, in "the 10th Mountain Division . . . about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months."

Please read the rest of it here.

Michigan Governor Keeps 'Blown Away' Promise 2 Years Ahead of Schedule

Jennifer Granholm, Michigan's governor, an Obama economic adviser, and the longest-serving chief executive to never once have an unflattering photograph published in the Detroit News or Free Press, expects to exceed by at least two years her 2006 promise to “blow away” Michigan citizens with a transformed economy in five years:

Following a University of Michigan economic forecast that shows the state will continue to bleed jobs over the next two years, Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced Friday she will make state budget cuts within two weeks.

Economists predicted the reeling economy will cost the state 124,000 jobs in 2009, another 49,000 in 2010 and $500 million in anticipated tax receipts over the two years. The forecast for those job losses in Michigan into 2010 illustrates that the state is in for several more tough economic years. (“Gov to slash budget over forecast”)

You Michigan folks may remember the budget crisis of 2007, driven almost purely by a refusal by the governor and the Democrats in Lansing seriously to consider cutting government spending to make up for a projected budget shortfall.

Only now, with the state economy in free-fall and no choices available, does she take the bold step she needed to take last year--and before.

That's leadership. I guess.