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“Not for the politically correct.”

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DrudgeReport.com

• Virginia Makes Fraudulent Spam a Felony

• Iraqi Prostitutes Back on Streets After Fall of Saddam Regime

• Reporters Fired for Sharing Story With Tabloid

• Music Industry Threatens Individual Song Swappers With Lawsuits

• John Kerry Tries to Sanitize “Regime Change” Remark

• Supreme Court Rules Criminal Aliens Can be Held Without Bail

• Norman Mailer Rants Against Iraq Operation

• Texas Game Warden Kills Alligator By Dragging Behind Truck

• How Sean Penn Got a Gun Permit

• Slick Meets With Mexico’s Fox

• Curtailment of Bush’s Personal Appearances Means No Cinco de Mayo Celebration at White House

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INTERNET SPAMMERS RISK JAIL

In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law yesterday imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages to computer users through deceptive means.

Iraqi prostitutes back on the streets after Saddam...

Prostitution flourished in Iraq in the 1990s as U.N. sanctions, imposed after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990, brought economic hardship, forcing many women to offer their bodies for cash -- a trade abhorred by devout Muslims.

Reporters Fired Over Smart Case Story...

The Salt Lake Tribune said today that it fired two reporters who were paid $20,000 for collaborating with the National Enquirer on an Elizabeth Smart story because they misled their employer about the level of their involvement with the tabloid.

Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers...

The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties" for their actions.

About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and millions more will get notices in coming weeks, said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the music companies.

'Regime change' comment intended as a campaign quip...

“Regime change” is changing the form of government while “administration change” is changing who controls the executive branch.

In trying to turn a Bush phrase into a clever quip Kerry misspoke, and he doesn’t want to admit his mistake.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Tuesday that his controversial wartime comment saying the United States, like Iraq, needs a regime change was intended as a lighthearted remark.

''It was not about the president, and it was not about the war. It was about the election,'' Kerry said during a campaign stop in Alabama.

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS MANDATORY DETENTION OF IMMIGRANTS BEFORE DEPORTATION...

Note that this pertains to aliens who have committed crimes, not to all aliens.

Also note that this ruling is based on the distinction between citizens and non-citizens. The immigration advocates would like to eliminate this distinction.

This case is Delmore v Kim, docket number 02-69.

The Supreme Court ruled today, in a case with significant impact on the rights of noncitizens, that the federal government can detain legal immigrants without bail during their deportation proceedings.

The court upheld, 5 to 4, the strict rules of the 1996 immigration law, which mandates detention of immigrants who have committed certain crimes even as those immigrants challenge their deportation

Norman Mailer: We went to war just to boost the white male ego...

This is pure Leftist rubbish. The operation to depose Saddam was to bolster American security. Mailer conveniently forgets that Americans of all races and both genders were murdered on 9/11.

Mailer participated in at least one “anti-war” demonstration in the Vietnam Era and is thus a gulag denier.

With their dominance in sport, at work and at home eroded, Bush thought white American men needed to know they were still good at something. That's where Iraq came in...

Alligator Dragging Caught On Tape; Residents Angry...

If Texas has a cruelty to animals statute the warden should be prosecuted.

Witnesses recorded the gator's capture on videotape, in which the game warden was seen tying the animal to the back of his pickup, and then dragging it down the street while children and parents watched.

How Sean Penn got gun permit...

So why was actor Sean Penn toting a loaded 9mm Glock handgun and unloaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson in the trunk of a car that wound up being stolen?

Fear that an ex-employee of Penn's was stalking him, according to confidential documents he submitted to the Ross Police Department as part of his application for a concealed-weapons permit back in 2001.

The documents, released to us under a state Public Records Act request, also show that Penn underwent an extensive background check and firearms training before being issued the permit early last year.

CLINTON MEETS WITH FOX...

The United Nations weakened itself by refusing to enforce its own resolutions; by refusing to do so it made itself as irrelevant as the League of Nations did in the 1930s.

Again, what is a former president doing meeting heads of foreign governments? The Logan Act prohibits private diplomacy. According to the Constitution the president is solely responsible for conducting diplomacy.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Wednesday the United States needs to involve more countries in rebuilding Iraq and said the United Nations should not be weakened in the process.

Clinton's comments came at a political conference in Mexico City, where he earlier met with President Vicente Fox at the presidential residence.

White House says pass on Cinco de Mayo celebration not slap at Mexico...

The decision against holding a Cinco de Mayo celebration next week at the White House, after having such events the past two years, was not meant as a snub at Mexico for opposing the U.S.-led war with Iraq, a presidential spokesman said Wednesday.

The conflict has forced President Bush to curtail many public appearances, said deputy press secretary Scott McClellan. He cited the Easter egg roll earlier this month, which the president did not attend.

Cinco de Mayo--in English the fifth of May--celebrates the victory of Mexican soldiers over the French at the 1862 Battle of Puebla.

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 OpinionJournal.com

• Claudia Rosett: Peace in Korea Requires Regime Change

• Best of the Web Today

  • Kerry Didn’t Throw His Own Medals Over the White House Fence

  • Saddam Reduced to Sending Letters to Editor

  • 6 Al Qaeda Operatives Captured in Pakistan

  • Midlevel Terrorist Operative Captured Near Baghdad

  • New York Times Says They Don’t Watch FOX News in Kirkuk

  • Suicide Bombings Continue Under New “Moderate” Palestinian Prime Minister

  • Opponents of Nuclear Space Propulsion Miss Fact That Sun Is Nuclear Powered

  • Zero Tolerance Watch: Child Punished for Turning in Knife Too Late

  • LaGuardia Thieves Stole $1.5 Million of Mini-Bottles

  • Politically Correct Bake Sale at Webster University in St. Louis

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Congratulations of a macabre sort are due to North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Il. In the lineup of living tyrants, with Saddam Hussein now gone, Kim can surely lay uncontested claim to the title of No. 1 monster. Despite Kim's shaky start following the death of his father back in 1994, his regime has since overseen the state-enforced starvation of between one million and two million North Koreans, perpetuated a gulag of death camps in which hundreds of thousands more are presumed to have perished, and gobbled up vast shipments of foreign aid meant to help hungry civilians.

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FrontPageMag.com

• “Peace Studies” Movement Just Another Means to Promote Socialism

• Academics Who Thought Israel Would Expel Arabs During Iraq Campaign Proved Wrong

• Warner Brothers Called “War-mongers” for Denouncing Nazis in 1930s

• The Downside of Women in the Military

• Vietnam Era “Anti-war” Movement Wanted the Vietnamese Communists to Win

• Mocumentary A Mighty Wind Breaks With Hollywood Line

• Bush Administration Will “not reward North Korea for bad behavior.”

• Iraqi Officers Give Reasons for the Poor Performance of Saddam’s Military

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The totalitarian and expansionist (“world revolution”) nature of the Soviet Union was the cause of the Cold War. By ignoring this the “Peace Studies” movement was simply a gulag denial movement.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Peace Studies programs primarily focused on the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union, and the weapon that held the Soviets at bay, the nuclear warhead. Almost universally, academics in Peace Studies called for unilateral nuclear disarmament, leaving the Soviet Union as the only nation with nuclear weapons. (Presumably they would then feel compelled to do likewise, out of concerns for fairness and the goodness of their Communist hearts.) … However, Peace Studies was never truly focused towards the Soviet Union - in the 1980s Cox and Scruton analyzed Peace Studies curriculums and found them woefully lacking on all things Soviet. …

…

Some peace studies programs contain more intellectual rigor than others, drawing on the insights of business negotiation and social psychology, but even the most rigorous sounding programs on peace studies aim not just at peace, but a leftist vision of social transformation. …

One wonders if these people are devotees of the new anti-Semitism known as anti-Zionism.

Among the predictions about the war that didn't pan out, there is one that hasn't been subjected to post-war ridicule, but that very much deserves it. This is the December letter, signed by over 1,000 academics, predicting and warning against Israel's possible "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians in the "fog of war." The letter ended with this recommendation: "We urge our government to communicate clearly to the government of Israel that the expulsion of people according to race, religion or nationality would constitute crimes against humanity and will not be tolerated."

Tremoglie presupposes that the German National Socialists were the only totalitarian threat in the world and that the isolationists were indifferent to the evils of the Third Reich. This is overly simplistic. The isolationists recognized that the Soviet Union was another totalitarian threat.

It is important to remember that between September 23, 1939 (the day the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact was signed) and June 22, 1941 (the day Hitler invaded Russia) the Communists opposed American intervention.

World War II failed to bring about world peace because it failed to eliminate Communism as it did “fascism.”

Tremoglie, Michael P. “Victims of the Antiwar Movement.” FrontPageMagazine.com. April 30, 2003.

In 1939, just months before Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began, Warner Brothers released a film called "Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” starring Edward G. Robinson as an FBI director investigating a Nazi spy ring. This movie was a fictitious account of a real spy investigation and trial that occurred in 1937. The movie became a clarion call to many Americans of the Nazi threat to the United States.

…

The parallels between the Warner brothers being accused of warmongering are eerily similar to those who today accuse President Bush of warmongering or who want him impeached. The allegations made against the Warners dovetails well with the accusations by liberal politicians, the mainstream media, Hollywood liberals such as Tim Robbins, and activist groups like Peace Action. Their specious claims of warmongering, propagandizing, and censorship by the Baseball Hall of Fame, Fox News Channel, and Clear Channel Communications is nearly interchangeable with those who sought to persecute the Warners 60 years ago.

Schlafly, Phyllis. “Will the Military Celebrate Mother's Day?” FrontPageMagazine.com. April 30, 2003.

What is the matter with the men of this country - our political and military leaders - that they acquiesce to the policy of sending mothers of infants to fight Saddam Hussein? Are they the kinds of men who, on hearing a noise late at night, would send their wives or daughters to confront an intruder?

Three young women were part of the U.S. Army's 507th Maintenance Support Company that was ambushed March 23 near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. Fortunately, Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, has been rescued, thanks to an Iraqi who told U.S. soldiers where American POWs were being held.

In the joy of reconciliation, let us not forget the shame on our country that this single mother of a 2-year-old daughter was assigned to a position where she could be captured. Johnson, whose family immigrated to the United States from Panama when she was 6 years old, didn't volunteer to serve in combat. She volunteered to be a cook.

Outstanding!

This so-called Watergate Congress [elected in 1974] rode into town with an overriding mission that had become the rallying point of the American Left: to end all American assistance in any form to the besieged government of South Vietnam. …

For reasons that escape historical justification, even after America’s military withdrawal the Left continued to try to bring down the incipient South Vietnamese democracy. Future White House aide Harold Ickes and others at "Project Pursestrings"—assisted at one point by an ambitious young Bill Clinton—worked to cut off all congressional funding intended to help the South Vietnamese defend themselves. The Indochina Peace Coalition, run by David Dellinger and headlined by Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, coordinated closely with Hanoi throughout 1973 and 1974, and barnstormed across America’s campuses, rallying students to the supposed evils of the South Vietnamese government. Congressional allies repeatedly added amendments to spending bills to end U.S. support of Vietnamese anti-Communists, precluding even air strikes to help South Vietnamese soldiers under attack by North Vietnamese units that were assisted by Soviet-bloc forces.

Then in early 1975 the Watergate Congress dealt non-Communist Indochina the final blow. The new Congress icily resisted President Gerald Ford’s January request for additional military aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia.

The rhetoric of the antiwar Left during these debates was filled with condemnation of America’s war-torn allies, and promises of a better life for them under the Communism that was sure to follow. …

Best comment: “Folk musicians, with a very, very few exceptions, are a far-left bunch.”

But only Guest has a real following as a mockumentary maker. In its first two weeks, A Mighty Wind made almost $5 million (playing only in big cities), and had one of the best per-screen grosses of any movie playing on more than a handful of screens. This is pretty good for a movie that cost less than $5 million to make, didn’t buy and T.V. ads, and was marketed mostly on the Internet.

As a film, A Mighty Wind is only moderately amusing but it’s an interesting rejection of mainstream Hollywood nonetheless.

The United States dug in on Tuesday for a protracted diplomatic standoff with North Korea, refusing to "reward" Pyongyang with aid in exchange for a commitment to scrap its nuclear weapons.

Outstanding political analysis.

… But he was laid low and rendered vulnerable by four other factors:

1. Bush I faced an opponent who took away his best issues

2. Bush I screwed up his signature issue by raising taxes

3. The Gulf War War lost it’s relevance

4. Bush Sr. had no domestic policy issue with which to control events.

In the aftermath of defeat by a U.S. invasion force that took three weeks to capture the capital, it is evident that even senior Iraqi military leaders failed to grasp the technological prowess that they were up against.

U.S. air power, combined with the lack of any Iraqi air defense capability, proved devastating not only to military equipment, but to the will to fight of soldiers and officers alike.

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 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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• In the news

  • New Orleans Madame Pleads Guilty to Interstate Prostitution

  • Iraqi Who Helped Rescue Jessica Lynch Granted Asylum in US

• WHO Lifts Travel Warning on Toronto

• Congress Wants to Reduce Row Crop Subsidies

• Cincinnatti FOP Wants Out of Black–Police Pact

• Iraqi Marshes Devastated By Saddam’s Policies

• US Delegation Walks Out When UN Reelects Cuba to Human Rights Commission

• 18-Year-Old Gets Life Sentence for Murdering Pizza Delivery Man

• Consumer Confidence Soars After Victory Over Saddam

• Lead Editorial Against Proposed Downtown Baseball Park

• Paul Greenberg Argues That “The Truth Matters”

• Meredith Oakley Says Overhaul of Arkansas Taxation Is “Long Overdue”

• Letters

•  Jeanette Maier, a New Orleans madame, pled guilty to interstate prostitution charges.
• Mohammed al-Rehaief, the Iraqi who provided the information for the rescue of Jessica Lynch, was granted asylum in the U. S.

Link to CNN article

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ArkDemocrat

The World Health Organization lifted its warning against nonessential travel to Toronto and said Tuesday that it was satisfied with measures to stop the spread of the SARS virus in Canada’s largest city. Warnings still stand for Hong Kong, Beijing and two Chinese provinces as China’s premier admitted his government failed to act quickly against the disease.

Those who criticize the farm subsidies that go to Southern farmers haven’t stopped their efforts to change federal agricultural payments.

…

Arkansas congressional staff estimate the bill would cost their state $200 million a year in farm payments.

 The union blamed [Federal Judge Susan] Dlott for the decision, saying she believes police violate civil rights and engage in racial profiling.

Judges should be impartial and should rely on proven facts rather than their own prejudices.

In the purported Garden of Eden, lifeless trees stand amid trash, patches of dry grass and salt-encrusted mud — the remnants of once-lush marshlands.

For more than a decade, President Saddam Hussein systematically destroyed the vast wetlands of southern Iraq — building dams and canals to drain the swamps, setting fire to the sea of reeds, and arresting and killing residents.

Those left behind hope Saddam’s fall heralds restoration of the devastated land to the paradise they remember — the one many scholars believe was the biblical Garden of Eden.

People were living in these marshes in Biblical times; the Marsh Arabs may be their descendants.

Cuba won re-election to the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Tuesday despite its recent jailing and executions of political opponents, prompting the U.S. delegation to walk out of the U.N. session in protest.

Having a Stalinist state like Cuba on a human rights commission is absurd.

"I needed the money so I could buy clothes and stuff," Jordan told detectives Smith and Steve Moore in one of the taped interviews, "because my momma told me it was time to get out on my own."

This was in Judge John Langston’s court. The crime happened in Little Rock.

Consumer confidence in the U.S. economy this month jumped the most in 12 years as the fighting in Iraq ended, energy costs fell and stock prices rose.

The biggest damage done by the 9/11 terrorists was that to the economy. The elimination of a terror-sponsoring state has reduced uncertainty and thus has raised economic confidence.

It also was estimated that each man consumed nine pounds of meat per day. What the expedition consumed, they killed along the way. Several times the group faced starvation. At other times, the elk and bison were so plentiful the men had to toss sticks and stones at them to get the herds to move out of the way.

How appropriate. How American. How Ray Winder Field. —So why do some good suits in Our Town keep promoting the need for a new baseball stadium? …

The Democrat-Gazette is usually the mouthpiece for the real estate interests, so it’s surprising to see it coming out against the proposed downtown baseball park.

Dear David Kendall, It was wholly a pleasure, indeed a delight, to have Bill Clinton’s personal attorney in town to talk about the late unpleasantness over impeachment. And it was good to learn from your letter to the editor that you’d be happy to leave both your speech at UALR’s Clinton seminar and our editorial response to it to the judgment of history. …

…

The basic difference between us, I would submit, is that I think the truth matters, and therefore perjury is indeed among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" mentioned in the Constitution. You don’t. … And since he was acquitted by the U.S. Senate, your lower standard prevailed.

…

Because any system that tolerates perjury—even a little of it, and just in high office, and only when it’s not about a political matter—is chipping away at its own foundation. It’s inviting its eventual collapse just as the Dreyfus Affair eroded the foundation of France’s Third Republic.

Slick’s personal attorney

Nowadays the world “lawyer” is just a term for professional liar.

The worst part of the Dreyfus affair was that many Frenchmen wouldn’t believe the simple truth that Dreyfus was innocent and a Christian Frenchman was guilty.

A recent University of Arkansas study determined that every $1 the state spends on Medicaid brings $5 to the Arkansas economy, and every $1 million spent creates 65 jobs. But the state’s leaders are in an alarming position, not looking for ways to "grow" the economy, but to keep the bottom from dropping out of it.

…

An overhaul of the state’s entire structure of taxation is long overdue, because it is inequitable in all ways. Simply put, we rely too much on some types of taxation and not nearly enough on others.

The column is typical of the uninformed discussion of Arkansas taxation. It doesn’t mention that until 9/11 the growth of state spending was three times the rate of population growth. It also doesn’t mention that the brackets for the state income tax have never been adjusted for inflation.

Arkansas is displaying the classic argument against a democratic republic: the people will demand more public services than the state can afford.

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