I just found this story, courtesy of Glenn Beck's program:

At least three people were killed Thursday when a Jewish man dressed as a border guard opened fire on a bus in a northern Israeli village.

The shooter was killed when assaulted by a mob of bystanders on the bus in the town of Shfaram in the northern Galilee region. About a dozen people were hurt.

The shooter boards the bus, shoots the bus driver, and two girls, ages 20-something. A policeman attempts to get the situation back under control. The shooter stops shooting to reload his gun. He is then attacked by others on the bus, who started hurling objects at him and beating him up. Then more people who had been watching the proceedings as the bus passed boarded the bus, and proceeded to kill this terrorist.

The real kicker is that the police had been tipped off about this particular terrorist, 19-year-old Eden Tzuberi. Tzuberi had deserted his post in the military about a month previously.

Guess who tipped off the police that this guy was a threat?

His parents.

This is a sad story. It's sad that it's come to this--civilians getting shot in buses, and other civilians taking justice into their own hands.

Terrorists, be warned. Don't think we'll sit there and just take it...

UPDATE by Rusty: Omri, blogging from Thorley Hall if I'm correct, sums the episode up nicely (via Charles Johnson):

And of course, the biggest difference is that when a Jewish terrorist kills Arabs, Jews call him a terrorist. When an Arab terrorist kills Jews, he's something else.

Posted by: Suzanne at 12:33 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Still working out some bugs. Now is the time for any last minute suggestions.

UPDATE: Alternative background color available. Check out top link in right column.

Posted by: Rusty at 11:24 AM | Comments (44) | Add Comment
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I've been on vacation, so I don't know how the rest of the world is reacting to Bob Novak walking off of CNN, but my first reaction--before seeing the full video-- was that it just made him look like a whiny bitch. My second thought was that the ragin' cajun must have really said something outrageous to get Novak to say 'bullshit' on the air and walk off. Then I saw the video. It tuns out Novak is just a whiny bitch.

Transcripts here. Video here.

Posted by: Rusty at 10:37 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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See the video of George Galloway's descent into treason here. Note that at one point he mocks Sharon's Hebrew accent in one of the most blatant and mindless appeals to overt racism that I've ever seen outside the news footage of Neo Nazi retreats. If Blair is serious about expelling people who incite acts of terror it's time to either expel or jail this deranged fool. If the Brits fail to act this sort of thing will become entrenched, and ultimately nearly impossible to dislodge. (h/t: Totten)

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Posted by: Demosophist at 10:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And so we begin phase one of the world's march to nuclear terrorism, facilitated by a Europe too fearful of confrontation to have the fortitude to stand up against Iranian threats.

[(Nuclear power plant (UCF) 295 km from Tehran March 2005 (AFP/Henghameh Fahimi)]

By caving in now and "recognizing the Islamic Republic's right to peaceful nuclear energy but not to making atomic fuel with possible weapons use," the EU has set in place the fullfilment of certain forthcoming tension to develop nuclear weapons throughout the Middle East with Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Saudia Arabia - all scrambling to be the new kid on the block with the latest in nuke-em technologies. And along with these exercises in random acts of insanity, we can expect to experience random acts of nuclear terrorism by terrorists using weaponry acquired from Iran, it's agents, and Islamic terrorists facilitated by it's agents.

If there is a single leader in the free world that seriously believes Iran does not intend to develop atomic weapons - then they haven't been listening to the Islamic regime. They are living in a dream world so common to moonbats, and there will soon come a time when in the midst of "recognizing the Islamic Republic's right to peaceful nuclear energy" - nuclear weapons will rain down upon our cities and nuclear weapons will be the weapon of choice for Islamic terrorists who have no qualms about dying while destroying entire nations.

VIENNA (AFP) - The European Union offer submitted to Iran on Friday recognizes the Islamic Republic's right to peaceful nuclear energy but not to making atomic fuel with possible weapons use, diplomats said.

The EU says it "respects Iran's rights under the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty for the peaceful use of nuclear energy," a diplomat at the UN atomic agency in Vienna told AFP in summarizing the report.

If Iran does acquire atomic bombs, which it fully intends to do, it will most certainly put pressure on other countries in the region do the same, especially since many Arab countries believe it's unfair that Israel has nuclear weapons and they don't. If Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt and possibly Syria, found themselves caught between a nuclear-armed Israel and a nuclear-armed Iran, it would greatly increase pressures to pursue their own nuclear options - increasing the potential for terrorists to gain access to nuclear weapons. Such events can only result in not only a regional arms race in the Middle East which is extremely likely to be destabilizing, given the number and intensity of conflicts and instabilities in the region and rapidly spreading throughout the world. more...

Posted by: Richard@hyscience at 10:29 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I'm back, biyotches. Thank you to all the guest-bloggers for CMA (covering my arse). You guys rock. Let me extend an invitation to all of you to post at the Jawa whenever you want.

Big things afoot on my end. BIG THINGS. In my personal life, in my professional life, and in my blogging life. Thanks to all of my readers for helping make The Jawa Report a success. If you have any suggestions on how we can keep improving my little pet Jawa, please feel free to e-mail me at any time.

Apologies to all my friends and co-bloggers who have sent me articles/posts in the past few weeks that I wasn't able to link.

I'm back from vacation, and even though the semester doesn't start for another few weeks I still have some mucho grande responsibilities which may make it difficult to blog heavily in the near future.

UPDATE: Did I miss anything while I was gone?

Posted by: Rusty at 10:06 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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It's Friday, waste the rest of your day with this engaging game in which they provide a collage of images collected from a Google search and you have to guess the search term.

Posted by: Drew at 09:57 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Wednesday night I rode home listening to classical music it was a nice relaxing drive. Actually I like some of the more active classical better. Not saying IÂ’m a fan but as I age I have learned to appreciate a bit now and then. So then on Thursday I had grown tired of news and Morning Edition so I switched over to Rock & Roll. I mean loud smashing thrashing stuff. At the exact moment I switched a new song came on and inspired me. Then I got in and Saw Mad DogÂ’s post which inspired me even more.

I’ve been getting some comments like, are you schizophrenic? Well I guess perception is reality so I might as well go with it. As many of you out there know already out beloved Maries took it on the chin this week. These guys do the most dangerous, dirty, and difficult assignments of all our armed forces. There are some Special Forces exceptions but in general these grunts do what others can’t or won’t. Grandpa talks about being in the Pacific and how he spent an awful lot of time on a ship for “airborne”. When they would take an island the navy would pound the beach all night with artillery and then guess who got to establish a beachhead so the Army would have a place to land. You got it Marines.

Ok on to the point. The combination of Mad DogÂ’s post and the trip into work gave me an idea. IÂ’m not sure how it will be received as some days I find out after the post that it was a crappy idea. But the village idiot always imagines that which others deem impossible. IÂ’ve got a bunch of leftover farwurks from the fourth. My son and I picked out 21 m80Â’s and 21 whistling moon travelers last night. I canÂ’t decide which to go with but the plan is to fly our flag on Sunday. My flag is inherited from Aunt Joy who dropped dead at an American Legion dance a few years back. We have flown it till itÂ’s just about shot. IÂ’ve got to get a new one because this oneÂ’s special. The second part of the plan is at 9:00 pm CDT on Sunday 08/07/05 to let off those 21 firecrackers as a salute to all fighting men and women working for freedom around the globe but especially this week for our fine Marines. I donÂ’t know about where you live but at that time where I live it will be quiet except for hoot owls and whippoorwills. I extend my apologies in advance to my bats. So load up your cannon and fly your flag. Also let all keep safety in mind. Should you choose to use a firearm be careful. A trip to the ammo store for some blanks might be in order. LetÂ’s try and not go to jail for this. So caps, farwurks, firearms used carefully and in accordance with the law (yeah right), loud music whatever you have get it out. We plan to be finished by 9:15. While disturbing the peace in this case is for a good cause letÂ’s not be getting ourselves into too much trouble.

Sith apprentice beotch Howie

Also Rosemary calls our attention to Iran.

Here too.

Posted by: Howie at 09:47 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Check out this surreal Iranian press conference at LGF:

Reporter: What will the scope of the (UCF) activity in Esfahan be at the beginning? Will it have full or partial capacity?

Asefi: What do you care?

Oh, I like this guy. Are you guys going to have a ceremony to let the IAEA know when the Esfahan reactor's working?

Asefi: No. If by “special ceremony” you mean handing out cake and candy, then we have no such thing.

He's just so cheerfully belligerent about it, but still pretty smooth. Sort of Baghdad Bob meets Bob Novak. I assure you, I am interested in seeing more of this Asefi guy.

Asefi: No. I know it is of no interest to you.

UPDATED & BUMPED: I decided to try Asefi's masterful redirection technique with my wife--the results are detailed below the fold:

more...

Posted by: seedubya at 09:04 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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We all know Paul Krugman is a total freaking loon when talking about the economy. His complete and total lack of even the most fundamental understanding of how econmics works would keep him from getting any sort of job short of the one that he currently has, which is writing his flights of fancy for the New York Times. And if it weren't for the Slimes, I'm pretty sure no one else would allow him to babble on like he does.

However, Krugman has decided that showing his ignorance in the field of economics just hasn't been fulfilling lately. So, he decides to take on a whole new field. Now you might think that he would tackle something related to economics, or at the very least, politics. You'd be wrong. No, Krugman jumps ship and swims all the way out into the deep waters of creationism vs evolution. However, he laughingly attempts to relate the argument to both economics and politics, which simply makes for more entertaining reading.

Even though he is attempting to write an article on creationsim, Krugman just can't resist taking a poke at economics.

Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence.

And not only does he take a poke at economics, he shows us all that he is not living in the real world where we have job growth, economic growth, unemployment dropping, economists raving about how good the economy is going, and TAX CUTS. But I guess it's just random chance that they all happened at the same time, because you know it's never been proven that tax cuts can do any good.

You might wonder how a discussion about supply side economics can work its way into a discussion about creationism. Believe it or not, Krugman makes the leap. He attempts to show how the "Evil Republicans" led by the "Corporate Gestapo" have paid off the economists and researchers so that they will produce reports in their favor. In this way, Krugman speculates, they intend to discredit scientific theory.

The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.

So let me get this straight. Greenpeace and a few scientitsts say that the earth is steadily getting hotter based on evidence gathered over a few hundred years and this makes an "overwhelming scientific consensus?" What about the overwhelming number of realistic scientists who point to global weather trends that span over thousands, ten thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years? What about the fact that tons of the Greenpeace "evidence" has been debunked, and some of it found to be outright fradulant? How about the fact that no one has any real, hard, evidence of any one specific thing that we, the people of the workd, are doing to increase the temperature of the planet? But to Krugman, all the proof he needs is that some research was done by scientists funded by "Evil Corporations." That immediately makes the entire research fake and all its findings null and void.

Oddly enough, he then attempts to say the same thing about creationism v. evolution. Since the creationism argument has been brought up by a bunch of religious nutcases, then it is automatically null and void before any evidence is presented. He even admits this bias, if not in so many words.

Creationists failed when they pretended to be engaged in science, not religious indoctrination: "creation science" was too crude to fool anyone.

Since it comes from a creationist, it must have no scientific basis. Thus, it is invalid. What a convenient way of winning an argument. I think I'll try that next time. "Since I don't agree with you, you're an idiot. And since you're an idiot, I can't believe in or agree with anything you've said."

He then goes on to assume facts not in evidence.

The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory.

Now, I have no idea what evolutionary theory Krugman is referring to. If he's referring to the micro-evolution that happens around us all the time and creates small changes within a species to allow adaptation, then he's right. It's a solid, proven, scientific theory. However, if he's referring to macro-evolution, which says that we all sprang up from slime, then he is completly and totally dead wrong about there being no controversy. There is plenty of controversy. What there is an alarming lack of is evidence and proof that any such thing ever has or ever will happen. Now, does lack of evidence for evolution prove creation science? No. Just as lack of evidence for creation science does not prove evolution.

But again, I'm not here to argue creationism vs. evolution. I'm simply here to point out how much of an idiot Krugman is. He starts with a flawed theory, that anyone who says anything he disagrees with is just a corporate shill and must be immediately disbelieved. He then uses this theory and his opinion to attempt to prove that evolution is the be-all and end-all of science. Proof or evidence be damned, he's going to stick up for what he thinks. My advice, Paul, is find something you're good at. Because it's not economics, and it's certainly not science.

Posted by: Drew at 08:44 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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CNN this morning has an interesting article about a group of childrens' art that is on display in New York. But these aren't just any children. These children come from Dafur. And these aren't just any childrens' drawings. They depict the violence and hatred that they see on a daily basis in Dafur.

Human rights activists, seeing this display, see something else. They see representations of crimes and human rights violations.

"For the first time we have graphic representation of the crimes," said Olivier Bercault, a Human Rights Watch researcher.

But why are you so excited about having pictures of the human rights violations? After all, as recently as February 2005, the UN said that while there were bad things happening there, they weren't actually bad enough to do anything about. And Kofi Annan himself, when visiting the region in 2004, got firsthand evidence of the atrocities that were happening. And what did he do then? He smiled, made the people a few vague promises, got his picture taken and left.

I don't think there's any question in anyone's mind nowdays what is going on in Darfur. The question at this point should be what is going to be done about it? I feel like the ball is in the UN's court, but I'm certainly not holding my breath for them to actually step up and do the right thing. How many more children have to live with this sort of horror before you decide that it's enough?

Posted by: Drew at 07:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair today outlined new security measures that include deportation of persons involved in fostering "hatred":

10 Downing Street—The Home Secretary today publishes new grounds for deportation and exclusion. Deportation is a decision taken by the Home Secretary under statute. The new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs or justifying or validating such violence. These grounds will be subject to a short consultation period which will finish this month. Even under existing grounds, however, we are today signalling a new approach to deportation orders. Let no-one be in any doubt. The rules of the game are changing. [. . .]

"Should legal obstacles arise, we will legislate further, including, if necessary amending the Human Rights Act," the prime minister said.

The Brits are forging a bold new path and the free world should follow their lead.

Cross-posted at OpinionBug.com

Posted by: OpinionBug at 06:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Overshadowed by the high-profile cases of female sexual abuse by Sandra "Beth" Geisel, Debra Lafave, Dawn Reiser, and Sylvia "Cool Mom" Johnson are more than 70 others occurring within the past six months. When each was reported by the media, an entry was made at Interested-Participant to document the alleged cases of molestation, predation, assault, or abuse along with appropriate links to sources of information. Yesterday, a compilation was posted.

There are over 70 names on the list and, when coupled with the Women With Boys list posted in March, well over 100 females have been implicated in incidents of inappropriate sexual behavior with minors over a period of about nine months. Each is different and each is serious. Nonetheless, the prevalence of the predatory sexual behavior may be even higher than is reported in the news since I speculate many cases are hidden from the public. In any event, the frequency of the incidents seems to go unnoticed by the media.

Note that I didn't go searching for stories about women with boys. They popped up in general reading, usually while looking for something totally unrelated. All I did was document the occurrences with a post and then compile the list after a period of time. All the while, I tried to keep abreast of legal proceedings so the posts could be updated to reflect their ultimate disposition. I'm hoping to be able to collect enough data to support or dispute the contention that female predatory sexual behavior is treated less harshly by the judicial system than male predatory sexual behavior. Thus far, it's too early to tell.

There are, however, some preliminary observations that are worthy of noting. First, female sexual abuse of minors is generally viewed as less criminal than comparable male sexual abuse. This attitude seems to be based on the myth that youngsters being indoctrinated in sex by women is harmless and there are no victims. This attitude is false. In many of the cases, the female sexual abuser inflicts divisive and permanent harm on family, friends, and communities.

Second, the laws among the states are inconsistent with regard to defining what is criminal. For example, in North Carolina it's criminal for a female teacher to have a sexual relationship with a student from her school. In South Carolina, if the student is over 16, it's legal.

Thirdly, there appears to be no commonality whatsoever regarding the punishment meted out to convicted female sexual abusers. A female teacher prompting several male students to unleash the dragon could result in jail time, loss of teaching credentials, and registration as a sex offender in one case while another teacher gets only community service.

The More Women With Boys list is too long to cross-post. View it at Interested-Participant.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 05:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Due to harsh language, I'm not cross-posting this.

Posted by: Vinnie at 11:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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By Demosophist

George Galloway, as quoted byMEMRI:

"The real question is, after the evidence of Sykes-Picot 1, are you ready to accept Sykes-Picot 2? What does Sykes-Picot mean to the Arab world? Nothing except division, disunity, weakness, and failure. Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it. So this is what Sykes-Picot will do to the Arabs. Are you ready to have another hundred years like the hundred years you just had?"

Not only is this jaw-droppingly stupid, but there was a time when incitement against your own country, especially during a war, would have gotten you drawn and quartered. Not that a return to such barbarity is warranted, but there was a reason for it. Thomas Hobbes saw that the primal fear was the fear of violent death at the hands of one's fellow man, and that it is this fear which is the source of the "enlightened self interest" that motivates us to bond together to create and maintain civil order and to defend against external enemies. It is this that made treason the most heinous of all crimes. And he also rightly reasoned that the further we stray from a coherent connection to that primal fear, the more corrupt and vain we may become, and therefore the less likely to maintain those bonds that ensure security from the "state of nature." If Galloway and others are able to easily avoid the consequences of such "speech" (and if it's not seditious, I don't know what is) it will become an entrenched tradition among the disconnected and self-annihilating wishful thinkers of the West. But it still strikes us as more a matter of pathetic mental illness than corruption, because for most of us the assets of civilization are still more tangible than our fantasies.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia, Anticipatory Retaliation and The Jawa Report)

Posted by: Demosophist at 07:03 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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David Brooks, in his NYTimes column, deflates the myth of Islamic terrorists as being medieval creatures, noting that they are instead brimming with the worst ideas of modernity. Most of them are educated, and most of them have been to the West, and most weren't really even political before they took up jihad. (In this regard they follow the founder of modern Islamic terrorism, Sayyed Qutb, who came to America, was repelled by its decadance, and went home and started scheming about how to destroy it.)

But I have to stop here and ask, how could they have been political in their antidemocratic home nations? Politics as we understand it doesn't really exist in Arabia or Egypt or Syria--you don't have, say, opposition parties or the right to express yourself freely. There's the state, a big dangerous monolith that can kill you, and the best you can do (if you don't work for it) is to keep your mouth shut and stay out of its way. And then there's religion, which these you can't avoid at all. And then, from this perspective, there's America and the Zionists, which are the conspiratorial Emmanuel Goldstein scapegoats for everything that goes wrong with this wonderful system.

Now, a smidgen of political power is something that you and I take for granted--we can write our congressman letters and lead a campaign to oust him if he's a doofus, we can start a blog or write letters to the editor, or we can even run for local or state or national office if we can shake hands and smile and speak in coherent sentences. If he plays his cards right, a well-informed individual can actually have some effect on the way things are run.

But I think growing up in an authoritarian world leaves many people politically retarded. They are in the modern world, but not of it, to paraphrase St. Paul. So when this empowering jihadist ideology comes along that sells the notion that you, young shaheed, can make a difference and have some power over these strange forces that are screwing with your world, it's like a first glimpse of a nekkid woman. And you're willing to do a lot of stupid things to follow up on that glimpse, that image, that illusion.

Maybe American-style rights based, rule-of-law democracy is just an illusion, too. A lot of leftists think it is; I think they're ill-informed and ungrateful wretches. But even pretending that's true, what a wonderful form of self-deception it is compared to the perverted and violent illusion that the jihadists are selling. One is a dream and one is a nightmare. I don't see how even a complete nihilist could seriously equate the two.

Oh, I was talking about that David Brooks piece. One of his conclusions is that he doesn't think democratizing the ME is going to change things too much--but for the reasons I give above, I think it will help. Man is a political animal, said Aristotle, but in the Middle East the political animal is chained and starved and brought up mean. I think the notion of a government where you can speak freely and make a difference (and meet chicks, too) might actually channel some of this aggression and alienation into a useful direction.

I very much agree with Brooks' third conclusion, though:

Third, terrorism is an immigration problem. Terrorists are spawned when educated, successful Muslims still have trouble sinking roots into their adopted homelands. Countries that do not encourage assimilation are not only causing themselves trouble, but endangering others around the world as well.

You either assimilate people into the state, or you leave them chained and shivering in the cold, depending on you for the scraps you throw them. England has failed to do this, failed to emphasize the decency of its people and its amazing history. France has tried in a ham-handed way, banning the hijab along with any expression of faith in their schools, but largely warehouses an unassimilated tribe of foreigners within her capital who are modern, but not French. Germany is starting to see the light, and Holland may have learned this the hard way, but it may be too late to do anything.

This story's making the rounds, but I saw it first at Galley Slaves.

Posted by: seedubya at 06:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Vinnie, thanks for the help, but let's get on board and help out the Freedom Alliance. The money is going directly to funding scholarships for children of soldiers killed in action. We all need an edumatation you know.

I've tried to pimp out Jim's participation in the Blogathon before, bit it seems the donations he's received "are stagnant." The charity which Jim has chosen to give to is Freedom Alliance.

Go on and put a dollar or two into Jim's Blogathon tip jar. You know you want to.

And if you're looking for some fun, the Dirty Kafir has a nice little caption game with Ayman al-Zawahiri himself. I personally like the commented ones better than the suggested captions.

Hey, don't ever say I didn't try to entertain.

Posted by: Chad at 05:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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By Demosophist

It actually took me awhile to figure out that Juan Cole wasn't just the hispanicized identity of John Cole. (There are actually some authors who interchangeably use both forms.) Juan Cole is a highly educated and esteemed idiotarian who has more in common with George Galloway than with his namesake, while John Cole is a pro-war blogger with occasional misgivings about the "how." But they both seem to agree about one thing: our leaders are a little schizophrenic about whether we're at war, and with whom. Read the comments to Michael J. Totten's Fisking Juan Cole and you'll soon see that there isn't even agreement within the Right about who or what we're fighting, so it's not at all surprising that consensus and conviction about the "how" are frequently unimpressive. Are we at war with Islamism? Well, what about the popularly elected Islamist government of Turkey? They're certainly a troublesome ally, but in spite of their frequent obstinacy Turkey continues to have a robust trade and defense relationship with Israel. We aren't at war with them, are we? And the Ba'ath remnants that our media insists on calling "insurgents" in Iraq aren't Islamists, are they? It can get confusing.

more...

Posted by: Demosophist at 01:34 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Balloon Juice and Don Surber are pointing to articles in Yahoo and The Washington Times (free registration required) that tell of states who are battling against the recent Supreme Court Kelo decision. The Governer of Alabama has signed a bill that prohibits the state, cities and counties from taking private property for retail, office, commercial, industrial or residential development.

Delaware also has changed its law since the high court ruling on eminent domain. Legislatures in at least eight other states are weighing proposals this year. More may be coming. And Congress is considering action.

"When legislatures start new sessions in January, I expect the majority of states to take up bills that would restrict the use of eminent domain for economic development purposes," said Larry Morandi, environmental program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The issue has spawned an unusual alliance among conservatives opposed to the principle of government seizing private property and liberals worried that poor people would be the most likely victims.

I'm glad to see that at least some politicians haven't taken leave of their senses. I honestly thought that the underage death penalty was the worst Supreme Court ruling I had ever seen, but this one really takes the cake.

Don Surber reminds us that

Governments exist to protect the rights of individuals, not to seize the land of one person to gift to a rich corporation in the name of tax revenues.

I couldn't agree more. That is a fact that some of them seem to forget as they become more and more self-serving. I have to wonder, though, what will happen when someone challenges the constitutionality of these state laws?

Posted by: Drew at 10:27 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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I don't have a problem hosting images on my blog and hotlinking them here. So to help Chad out with his post below, here is an image of Ayman Al-Zawahiri from today's videotape: more...

Posted by: Vinnie at 10:27 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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