Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, September 2007

1. Bio Fuels. From the Land of Be Careful What You Wish For, we have AJ Strata’s story on Sunday about the environmental effects of bio-fuels. To recap, we have a national push, unfortunately led by President Bush, toward bio fuels as a replacement for petroleum based vehicle fuels. One of the initiatives has been the push toward ethanol which is mostly produced from corn. This top-down directed action has artificially decreased the amount of corn available as animal feed, while spiking the overall costs of meat nationwide. There are other forms of bio-fuels, which are produced by breaking down organics – rapeseed and maize (corn) – via fermentation to make diesel. Recent investigation into this fermentation process has discovered that the process introduces different greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in quantities that may or may not be a problem. Both ethanol and bio-diesels do the same thing that gasoline and diesel do – burn and produce water vapor, carbon dioxide, and some smaller quantities of nitrous oxides and other gasses. All three previously named are greenhouse gasses. The cleaner the fuel burns, the more water vapor and carbon dioxide are produced and less nitrous oxides is produced. Well it turns out that the organic waste dumped into the fermentation process – stems, stalks, leaves, roots, etc. – are dirty and introduce nitrogen-rich fertilizers into the fermentation process. This in turn produces nitrogen rich bio-fuels, which are then converted into nitrous oxides and emitted into the atmosphere. Bottom line is that bio-fuels currently are producing 50-70% more nitrous oxides than petroleum produces, and injecting measurably more greenhouse gasses than gasoline or diesel produced from petroleum. This sort of outcome is not unexpected when we kowtow to greenie extremism and their junk science. There are some very good – even excellent – market based reasons to lessen our dependence on petroleum, but decreasing greenhouse gasses is not one of them. And when we st art chasing every whim of scientifically illiterate greens, we are bound to screw things up worse then they already are. Solution? As always it is to let the marketplace work and figure out the solution without the help of congress, the administration, the courts or the greens. I do believe that bio-fuels are in our future, if for no other reason that they will decrease the number of American dollars that are making their way into the treasuries of Wahhabi mosques and into the pockets of dictators like Hugo Chavez that do not like Americans a lot. Strata Sphere, Sun.

2. Pebble. A Republican member of the Alaska Legislature joined the anti-Pebble Mine fight in early September by sending a letter of concern to the State Attorney General’s Dep artment of Law Criminal Division accusing Northern Dynasty, the local company pursuing the Pebble Mine of bribing local native leaders with jobs, cash, and other inducements for their support of the mine. Rep. Jay Ramras (R – Fairbanks) apparently does not think that hiring locals to work in new projects is a good thing. Northern Dynasty has been out in the region, schmoozing the locals, promising jobs, hiring people, and doing the things necessary to get a multi-billion project off the ground, all in the face of withering, hysterical environmentalist and NIMBY opposition. None of this is against the law. Native leaders in the region immediately cried foul, accused Ramras of libel, and st arted threatening lawsuits. I expect a few to be filed. Ramras, who had a reasonable reputation as a conservative, apparently has become close to the chief anti-Pebble opponent Bob Gillam. Gillam donated a small amount to Ramras, well within the limit of current Alaska campaign finance laws. On the other hand, he also donated $10,000 to Ramras’ Jewish Temple in the Fairbanks area. The donation was discussed in excruciating detail on local Anchorage talk radio late last week. Ramras may have stepped in it big time regarding Pebble, as the Fairbanks area is pretty supportive of mining and development, and has long had its fill of anti-development greens, NIMBYs like Gillam and their enablers in both p arties. Apparently Ramras allowed himself to get schmoozed by Gillam into taking an anti-mining stance all under the guise of fighting corruption. There are primaries next August for the legislature. This includes the House of Representatives in the state legislature. I expect Ramras to have some opposition, as this thing to blow up nicely in his face. ADN, Fri.

3. Congress. Well, it only took the new congress a mere nine months to irritate the entire nation completely. The latest congressional approval polling out of Reuters – Zogby has congress at a record low 11% approval. I can think of no better opportunity for conservatives to retake control of congress. The bad news behind this polling is that democrat congressional fundraising far outstrips that of Stupid P arty (Republican) fundraising at this point in the election cycle. Still, if you have a boatload of money and 89% of your constituents hate you and what you have been doing for the last two years, your chances of reelection are pretty slim. I believe the 2008 elections will be most interesting.

4. Telecoms. One of the smarmy little tricks congressional leftists use to further their goals is to write nebulous laws with lots of high-minded words and phrases, and let the leftist special interest groups and their lawyers write the real legislation in the courts via tens of thousands of lawsuits. This is how the Endangered Species Act was turned into the property rights destroying vehicle for locking up vast swaths of the west. Today, anti-war democrats are using the lawsuit weapon against NSA intelligence surveillance program wiretaps, data gathering and analysis. The lawsuits have been filed by the ACLU and similar groups against the telecoms that are cooperating with the government. The leftists hope to use the courts via a few multi-billion dollar judgments against a couple of the big telecoms to force them all into dropping all cooperation with the government. The telecoms, the intelligence community, and Republicans in congress are aware of what is up and are pushing legislation to protect the telecoms from all those lawsuits. Democrat leadership in concert with both the anti-war crowd and the trial lawyers who have visions of another huge payday are fighting the effort. Last week, Captain Ed in Captain’s Qu arters reported a high-powered, bip artisan effort by the telecoms to lobby both sides of the aisle for the protection. He also reports that the intelligence community is in a state of near panic regarding the threat of lawsuits crippling their access to this sort of intelligence gathering. Here is yet another opportunity for the so-called new Blue Dog democrats to step up and do the right thing. I don’t expect them to do so, but remain hopeful that they are not completely brain dead. If not, they stand to be replaced next November.

5. Courts. A couple surprising opinions from leftist courts on the coasts last week. In the first, a Clinton judge threw out a California lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Jerry Brown accusing the auto manufacturers of knowingly making products that contribute to global warming. The Clinton Judge, whose nomination and appointment was obviously a mistake found that that sort of environmental policy was rightfully set by the legislative and executive branches of the federal government rather than by the courts. Perhaps he ought to pass that same message along to some of his other brethren on the Ninth Circus. This ruling was a very pleasant surprise indeed. The second ruling came out of the Maryland Supreme Court which tossed an attempt by homosexual activists to force same sex marriage on the citizens of Maryland via judicial fiat. This pleasant surprise has continued the losing streak of same sex marriage activists that have lost every single attempt in state courts since they won approval in Massachusetts in 2003. There is still a case pending before the California Supreme Court. Perhaps it is time for the homosexual activists to do it the old fashioned way – via the legislative process – rather than via the courts. Instapundit, Weds., Big Lizards, Weds.

1. Syria. Interesting news out of Syria last week: The Israelis conducted an air raid against a target deep inside Syria on or about the night of September 6. What did they hit? To date, nobody knows, though the speculation is running rampant, naming everything from nuclear materials from North Korea to Saddam’s WMD. Dr. Jack Wheeler, writing in To the Point on Weds concludes that what got hit is not nearly important as how it got hit, as the Syrian air defense system, which is much more concentrated and modern than Iran’s air defense system, went completely silent during the raid, meaning that the Syrians didn’t see a thing. If the Israelis, with a little help from their friends, can do this to the Syrians, insert a team on the ground with laser designators, and hit a target a long way from Israel with a formation of modified F-15’s (F-15I), they can do the same thing to Iran any time they feel like it. All of this worries the Mullahs in Iran a lot, and they have responded nicely with a wide ranging set of new bellicose threats against both the US and Israel in recent days. For the moment, just knowing they are worried is a very good thing indeed. As the week progressed, a number of blogs st arted picking up on the story, mostly via the nuke angle. The strike reportedly took place a few days after a North Korean ship docked in a Syrian port. AJ Strata of the Strata Sphere speculates that the strike was against NORK nuclear materials intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon. At this point, nobody is talking very loudly – which is interesting, as Syria has been very quiet about the strike, only complaining about Israeli jets overflying Syria. Nobody else in the Middle East has much of a problem with the strike either, as reaction from neighboring nations has been quiet. The Israelis did have to apologize to the Turks for dropping a fuel tank on Turkish soil. In a related story, there were also reports out of Syria of an accident at one of their WMD sites. Apparently the Syrians with Iranian assistance were trying to load a chemical weapon into the warhead of a SCUD sometime in the last couple of weeks. They screwed up and killed over 20 of the technicians working on the weapon. Perhaps they need to choose better toys next time.

2. Property Rights. The MatSu Borough 45 miles North of Anchorage has an election on Tuesday October 2. On the ballot is a property rights initiative modeled after Oregon’s property rights initiative of a few years ago. The MatSu Assembly has become increasingly green, and contemptuous of the property rights of citizens of the Valley. As a result, the locals gathered sufficient signatures to put the issue on the ballot and have the Borough st art reimbursing people for loss of the use of their property via ordinance, rule, regulation or other instrument of government passed by the borough Assembly. The opposition to the initiative has been hysterical by the greens. Campaign finances for the campaign has all of the pro-initiative money coming from in-state contributors and over 90% of the anti-initiative (pro-green) money coming from out of state greens, including a $12,000 contribution from a Seattle environmentalist. Anti-initiative yammering has been fascinating to watch, with literally nothing said by the opposition being true. The greens have lied about literally everything during this campaign. First, they attacked the initiative as an attempt to bring the liberal laws from Oregon into the conservative MatSu. They didn’t mention that the voters of Oregon, tired of creeping loss of their property rights via green government fiat banded together and passed their ballot initiative. When that didn’t work, they moved on to noting the 7,500 claims filed by property owners in Oregon against state and local governments stealing property rights from property owners since Measure 37 was passed down there. The claims number in the billions of dollars. Breathless greens and government officials in the MatSu claim they don’t have the money on hand to pay those sorts of claims, which is correct, as far as it goes. There aren’t nearly as many people in the MatSu as there in Oregon, so the total number of claims ought to be down. But the bottom line is that government officials ought not to be stealing property or the use of that property from their citizens. And should they persist in their thieving ways, they ought to have to pay through the nose or other suitable bodily orifice for the privilege of doing so. The elected officials of the MatSu borough have gotten way out of hand. We will see if the voters respond accordingly in a couple of weeks. URL for the MatSu Taxpayers Association is: http://www.taxcap.org/

3. Shell Oil. The Ninth Circus Court of Appeals upheld the previous injunction against Shell Oil’s oil exploration plans in the Beaufort Sea this summer. Shell was set to conduct several years of seismic surveys, exploratory wells, and had assembled a fleet of ships to get the job done. They had fully complied with very stringent new regulations out of the Bush administration governing oil exploration, but this wasn’t enough for the greens, natives in the North Slope Borough who have had their pockets lined via oil exploration for the last 40 years, or the black-robed fools sitting on the Ninth Circus. Shell announced they would not be doing any exploration this year, as they moved the fight up the various courts of appeals, laying off over 700 people, half of which were Alaskans. This little dance has not gone unnoticed among the politicians here in Alaska, with no small demand out of some of us for payback against the North Slope Borough. They are unincorporated, benefiting from a pretty nice flow of state money into the Borough for schools and education. Combine that money stream with what they have been getting from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, and they are living very well. There needs to be some political payback for this obstructionism. The Trans Alaska Pipeline System is now running as under half its capacity, moving less then one million barrels of oil every day. That flow decreases at an average of 6% every year. We must find something else to put in the pipeline – ANWR, NPR-A, Beaufort Sea oil, or even white crude via a gas to liquids plant on the oil patch. Unfortunately, with the obstructionism by our own neighbors, the greens and the C arter and Clinton appointees infesting the federal courts, things are looking pretty bleak right about now. Finally, our new Governor, Sarah Palin has not publicly come out and blasted the obstructionism or done anything very obvious in response to it. Nor has she made any attempt to “encourage” the North Slope Borough to get out of the way. In doing so, she is missing the opportunity to clearly confront the greens, NIMBYs and others in this state who are making a living stopping all development, all mines, all new roads, all new bridges, all new business expansions, all logging, and any other of a hundred things that we can do with the land of this great state to make a buck and create jobs for ourselves and our children. I hope she can figure this out in time.

4. Move on. The George Soros and Clinton front group Move On celebrated the briefing by the Commanding General in Iraq, General Petraeus by running a full page ad in the NYT calling him General Betray Us. The ad triggered instant condemnation from congressional Republicans, who appear to have regrown their spines after 11 months in the minority. It also infuriated the members of the active and retired military, and their families. President Bush immediately condemned it. Congressional Republicans moved a couple resolutions in both houses condemning the ad. These efforts did not get a lot of democrat support initially, as polling had not yet come in for the democrat leadership. The ad provides a superb way to tie the entire democrat p arty right up in a simple, easy to understand package with Move On, George Soros, and the Clinton machine. As such it represents an easily identifiable photo and sound bite. All democrat presidential candidates either embraced the ad or refused to condemn it. It took St. Hillary of Chappaqua over a week to st art very carefully weasel-wording a focus group tested response to questions. The democrats have gone a bit too far with this one, equating someone who is an honest broker, with a reputation for telling them the truth – which is not what they want to hear – with lying, treason and betrayal of both oath of office and the troops they lead. They are demonstrating that they want to lose this war, and they will not stop at anything to do so. They have just made themselves the issue. Too bad for them.

1. Doomed! The polar bears are doomed! Do you Hear? Doomed!!! The ice is melting, melting, melting, and the bears are apparently too stupid to make it to dry land to survive and bear their young – which may be evolution in action, and not necessarily a bad thing. Such was the subject of the latest round of scaremongering stories on global warming from the Anchorage Daily News last week. This one, printed Saturday quoted from a series of well-timed press releases from the US Geologic Survey (USGS) warning that the Arctic Ocean would lose significant sea ice over the next 40 years, with the Beaufort Sea – the area of interest to Shell Oil for a series of exploratory wells over the next three years – losing 40% of its summer sea ice cover by mid-century. At least, that is what their computer models are saying. Note that they are using no actual observational data about the sea ice in the Beaufort covering the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, or the 1930s, the decade of warmest measured temperatures in US history. And should the fabled Northwest Passage really open up, we here in Alaska could save a heck of a lot of pipeline money by building a port at Prudhoe Bay, a natural gas terminal, and welcome the natural gas tankers into Prudhoe Bay to st art carrying product to the Lower 48 or other places worldwide. The greens in pubic employ with the USGS breathlessly write that all the Alaskan and Russian polar bears will be gone by mid century, as they run out of food. Of course, when things are warmer up here, more animals survive the winter. More animals grow larger as the years go by. And there is more food for all the larger animals – including the polar bears - out in the Arctic during the summer. The press release and subsequent press briefings appear to be little more than an attempt to pressure the EPA to list polar bears in Alaska as an endangered species at a time when their numbers worldwide are growing. As we approach the elections next year, expect more of this, as embedded leftists, greens and other wannabee petty tyrants position themselves to take and exercise power in January of 2009. We are going to hear more from these clowns. We are going to be treated with more breathless, hysterical, semi-literate propaganda, bogus computer models, and other forms of arm waving masquerading as incisive reporting of scientific research and peer-reviewed studies over the next 14 months. It is going to get worse before it gets better.

2. Whales. Second big environmental scare story concerns overly thin gray whales swimming to calving grounds in Baja California. The reason for the thin whales is once again, global warming caused by mankind. This story in the ADN Weds, did not go quite so far as to say it was all Bush’s fault, but I expect that in the next installment. There are around 20,000 gray whales worldwide. They travel from their normal feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi Seas to calving grounds near Baja California. Females fast during the trip to and from and during the months while the young are getting large enough to make the trip to feeding grounds, so fat stored for the journey is relatively important. The greens have seized upon observations of what they claim are about 10% of what they are calling overly thin females arriving in the waters off the Baja as proof that global warming – all caused by man and our SUVs – is the reason the whales are not sufficiently ready for the journey. Interesting enough, this story did give some print space to the other side, which pointed out that there have not been more strandings of gray whales in recent years than normal. The story also pointed out that there was a crash in total numbers of the whales from around 26,000 to just over 19,000 in 2000 as the North Pacific Decadal Oscillation that we have been writing about in regard to belugas and stellar sea lions moved the food that the larger animals feed upon around to the extent that the larger animals have had to change their feeding locations and breeding grounds. Their numbers have also changed as a result. Is this any problem? So far, nobody knows, but you can bet your house that the greens on the public payroll will do everything humanly possible to blame any change in numbers on global warming, oil drilling, the Exxon Valdez accident, President Bush, or whatever their current demon is supposed to be.

3. Moderates. Two Republicans in the US Senate announced they were not going to run for reelection. John Warner (R, VA) and Chuck Hagel ( RINO, NE) announced they were not going to run for reelection. Warner has been a fairly decent conservative over the years, though he did allow himself to get caught up in the anti-torture argument a few years ago. Expect former VA Governor Mark Warner (D) (no relation) to run for the seat. Mark Warner was popular in VA, but was a tax and spend liberal. He is the anointed replacement for the incumbent, and democrats in the Beltway are already counting on his election to the US Senate as another democrat pickup in the Senate in 2008. It may be a bit early to count those chickens, as the primaries have not yet taken place. The bad news in VA is that there are several good Republicans interested in running for the Senate to replace the incumbent, and the primary campaign may be bloody. On the other hand, nobody is going to miss Hagel, who has consistently tried to out-maverick John McCain over the last decade or two. Hagel has made all the expected anti-war noises over the last several years. He was a member of McCain’s infamous Gang of 14 that allowed senate democrats to continue to obstruct Bush judicial appointees. Hagel was facing a stiff primary challenge from a principled conservative in Nebraska and decided not to fight. He will not be missed. Note that we do have a few bloggers on the right that are really beating up on conservatives for what they refer to as cleansing of moderates from the Republican P arty. As far as I am concerned, moderates cleanse themselves from elective office by running as conservatives and governing as moderates. Most notable is AJ Strata of the Strata Sphere, who does superb analysis of the war and related subjects. We are in a time of stark contrasts and choices to be made for our future. We are in a time when many of the so-called conservatives in office have not been acting p articularly conservative. This may be because the conservative movement has broken down and the nation is swinging left of center, which is what we have heard from Newt Gingrich and Dick Morris. Or we may simply be in need of some conservative candidates who are willing to do in office what they say they are going to do during a campaign. Republicans make really poor leftists, especially when you can vote for a democrat and get one that is full strength, unapologetic not vigorous. 2008 is going to be an interesting year, one that may not turn out as expected by the democrats or their willing accomplices in the drive-by media.

4. Hsu. Missing Hillary Clinton contributor Normal Hsu finally showed up late last week when he was pulled off Amtrak train and hospitalized in Colorado. Hsu is suspected of funneling millions of ChiCom dollars into Hillary’s and other democrat campaigns. At this time, it appears he got his money the old fashioned way, by stealing it from others in a series of fraudulent business transactions. There was $40 million reportedly stolen from one of the guys who put on the Woodstock music festival decades ago. Of course, Hillary claims to know nothing about the fraud or that Hsu was a convicted felon who jumped bail in CA 15 years ago. Her campaign claimed to give the $86,000 in direct donations from Hsu to charity, and has promised to return the remaining $1.9 million to its owners. Now that it is apparent the donations are the result of fraud and theft by Hsu, Hillary’s campaign has a little problem finding the rightful owners of the money, so I expect them to simply keep it. One would expect that the return of the Clinton fundraising scandals from the 1996 campaign to public scrutiny would give her opposition a rich set of targets for their fire. Sadly, they also took Hsu’s money in far smaller quantities and have been strangely quiet going after her on the subject. Still, I do expect the general public to notice: Another Clinton, another fundraising scandal. This one will get juicier, as Hsu left a suicide note when he disappeared a couple weeks ago. Unknown at this time whether this is a real suicide or yet another Arkanscide.

1. Correction: I made an error of omission in Item 1, Scandals, of last week’s edition (Items 8/27). There is a sentence toward the end that reads as follows: “The DWI charge released a week or so before the general election was almost sufficient to defeat President Bush in 2000. It was sufficient to turn him into the first presidential winner with fewer votes than the loser.” When I wrote it, I meant to go back after doing a bit of research and complete the sentence. Never did. It should have read: “It was sufficient to turn him into the first presidential winner with fewer popular votes than the loser since 1888 when Benjamin Harrison won the presidency via the Electoral College while losing the popular vote to Grover Cleveland.” There were two other elections in 1876 and 1824 where the winner of the popular vote was not elected president. Thank you to a Valued Reader for pointing out the incomplete thought. My apologies for the error.

2. Craig. We appear to have lost yet another staunch congressional conservative to a sex scandal that did not involve sex. Sometime last summer, US Senator Larry Craig (R, ID) was arrested on a misdemeanor at the Minneapolis – St. Paul airport by an undercover cop in a men’s room. The cop was in a men’s room notorious as a same-sex pickup and meeting location at the airport as p art of an effort to shut that activity down. Apparently Craig did some suggestive foot movements, reached around and under the bottom of the stall, placed his bags in a suggestive location – all signs that I had no idea existed. Craig may or may not know those signals exist either. The cop arrested him, was quite aggressive in the post-arrest questioning, and Craig pled guilty to a misdemeanor rather than go to trial. That pleading, rather than immediately demanding a lawyer, was sufficient to end his career in the US Senate. Homosexual activists, who have been after Craig for years, were ecstatic, describing Craig as both a closet homosexual and a hypocrite. There is a little cottage industry out there with leftist homosexual activists and their supporters in the drive-by media outing conservative gays and removing them from positions of power. This is probably fun for the leftists and activists, but counterproductive, as it tends to cleanse the conservative side of the discussion of homosexuals, polarizing the discussion a bit more, and hardening anti-gay attitudes on the right. “If the gays are this nasty to those they believe to be their own, why deal with them on any level?” is certainly a reasonable response from outside observers. I think the leftists and their mouthpieces in the drive-by media will enjoy this event a lot. I don’t think it is all that good of a deal for the homosexual community – whatever that is – as it will tend to harden attitudes against them – which is not good for any of us.

3. Bears. As I predicted earlier this summer, Anchorage residents are responding to the significant increase in local populations of brown and black bears the old fashioned way – by killing them on sight and dumping the bodies. For some reason, the Alaska Dep artment of Fish & Game (ADG&G) biologists that have stood by for years while this problem has gotten worse are upset about that outcome. Hunting regulations up here require anyone that kills a bear in defense of life and property to skin it, include the claws, take the skull, and deliver the entire mess to ADF&G for treatment and disposition. Perhaps it is time for the Alaska Legislature to step in and take appropriate action with legislation that will allow any Alaskan who sees a bear on their property to shoot it on sight. The legislation ought to also allow anyone out in the wild to do the same thing to a bear that gets too close. They can then notify ADF&G that they have shot a bear and ADF&G can notify a private organization to harvest the hide, skull and meat for sale. We have a couple organizations up here that harvest the meat of moose downed as a result of traffic accidents. The carcass is dress out, meat is cleaned up and given to the local homeless shelter. The organization maintains a list of volunteers who dress out the carcass and are available on call 24 -7. Should the legislature do this, I expect it will only take a couple of years to resolve our local bear problem. Should the legislature not do this or something similar, I expect the number of shot and dumped bears carcasses to increase over the next few years. ADN, Weds.

4. Iowa. Judge Robert Hansen, a county judge in Iowa put on his judicial activist mantle and threw out a nine year old Iowa law defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In doing so, he, like other judges at the state and federal level ignored the law as written, as debated, and as passed by the elected representatives of the people, while substituting his own view of reality for it. This stunning hubris and arrogance ought to be met with swift and harsh punishment from the Iowa legislature and governor by immediate impeachment and removal of the judge from office. Sadly, it will likely trigger a constitutional amendment rather than removal of the judge from office. The excuse for this outrageous opinion was that barring gays from marriage (they aren’t – as long as they marry people of the opposite sex) violated the equal protection and due process constitutional rights of gays. He was strangely silent about the notion of unelected, unaccountable, black-robed fools making up law because they feel sorry for a self-selected group of victims also being a violation of the same constitutional provisions. The ridiculous opinion was in effect for just over a day before the judge issued a stay on its execution. Interestingly, that was enough time for one pair of men to get their marriage license approved and tie the knot. There was no explanation as to why they were able to do something in 24 hours that opposite sex couples have to wait at least 72 hours to do (there is a three day waiting period in Iowa from the time you apply for a marriage license to the time that you receive one). Appears there are those in the state bureaucracy that are hell-bent on ramming homosexual marriage down the collective throats of an unwilling and unsupportive public that they grease the license approval flow to the extent that it works three times as fast for gays as it does for straights. Talk about double standards. Talk about equal protection and equal rights under the law. The voters of Iowa have a problem on their hands – an out of control judge and his supportive sycophants in the state bureaucracy. I hope they up to the task of fixing that problem. Big Lizards, Fri.

5. Islamists. There are a few short items of interest this week from or about our enemies the Islamists. First, Berkely Breathed, who wrote the Bloom County comic strip in the 1980s, now has a current strip that runs Sundays called Opus. One of the female characters showed up in a burka a couple weeks ago as she winds her way through a search for her spirituality. Breathed is committed lefty, who has been poking fun at conservatives for nearly 30 years. Unfortunately, the cowards at the Washington Post and a large number of other papers refused to run the strip because it made fun of Islamists. First South Park and now Opus, both of which have no trouble at all poking fun at Christians, are censored by the media editorial types who are afraid of the Islamists – which is what terror is all about. Cowards. Second item comes out of Little Green Footballs, which describes a conference co-sponsored by the Justice Dep artment in DC with the Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted co-conspirator in an ongoing terrorist funding case. Final short item is the Grand Jury investigation of a pair of young Muslim men who took pipe bombs from Florida to South Carolina where they were apprehended near a naval installation. They claimed to simply be carrying fireworks in their trunk. The drive-by media has refused to identify them as Muslims. Interestingly enough, they have some passing resemblance to the pair of wanted young Middle Eastern men casing sites on Seattle area ferries over the last few months. Malkin, Thurs.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

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and the home page: http://home.gci.net/~agimarc
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