The Eighth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament begins with the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery.   Her accusers brought her to Christ and, noting that the law of Moses commanded a woman caught in the act of adultery be stoned, asked Christ what he believed should be done with her.    Christ's responded that, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." (John 8:7, NKJV)   Upon hearing this the accusers left, each being convicted, as the Bible notes, by his own conscience.   No one threw a single stone.   The woman was discharged, with Christ admonishing her to sin no more.

It was a lucky thing for the woman that none of her accusers were Democrats.    If their reaction to the conduct leading to the resignation of Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida is any indication,  the poor woman would have been buried under a veritable barrage of boulders.   Unlike the woman's accusers, the Democrats lack a conscience to restrain them from excess, and their zeal to use the Foley mess to destroy conservatives and Republicans has caused them to experience a collective amnesia about
their own past sins.   

During the 1980's Congressman Gary Stubbs, Democrat of Massachusetts, was censured by the then Democrat majority in the House of Representatives for a homosexual affair with a House page.   Unlike Foley, who appears to have limited his perversion to suggestive emails and disgusting instant text messages, Stubbs had an actual, physical affair with a teenage House page.   Yet Stubbs did not resign his office; nor was the least apologetic about the affair.    His censure by the House was the Democrats' way of sweeping the entire matter under the rug.   Stubbs has been re-elected by his Massachusetts constituents ever since.  

Also in the 1980's the lover of gay Congressman Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, operated a criminal enterprise out of Frank's office.   Frank claimed no knowledge of his lover's actions and continues to serve in the House.    

Hearing Christ's words, the woman's accusers recoiled from their hypocrisy.   Democrats find no such inhibition.   They are a party which rejects moral absolutes and standards.  They take great glee when a Republican or conservative is caught in scandal, particularly a scandal involving moral turpitude.   
Democrats seem to forget that the danger with mobs casting stones is that invariably some of the rocks rebound on the mob.  The  Democrats are unwittingly revealing to the public just how deep is the depth of their desperation to regain the majority in Congress,  how obsessesive their lust for power, and how contemptuous  their view of the voting public, whom they belief can be distracted and manipulated this close to an election.   The party without principle
reveals itself as a soulless predator, feeding off political roadkill, lacking conscience or conviction to temper its appetite for power.  

Mark Foley was right to resign from Congress and the House leadership is right to pursue an investigation into his conduct.  Whatever punishment Foley deserves under the law should be imposed.   That is the position of conservatives and Republicans, people who believe in moral standards and personal accountability.   However the Democrats, the party of Gary Stubbs and Barney Frank, have no right to cast any stones at Mark Foley, conservatives or Republicans.     

    

Former President James Earl Carter attacked President Bush on Wednesday during a campaign speech on behalf of his son, Jack, who is seeking the Nevada senate seat of Republican John Ensign.   His speech eerily echoed remarks made in the latest al Quida leadership video, and his opinions, as customary, lacked support in fact.  More on that below, but first, a little history. 

Carter was an utter failure as president.  He bears much of the blame for the rise of Islamic fascism, due to his weak-kneed response to the illegal seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran by "students."   His naivete of the threat of Soviet communism was staggering; his response to the Soviet invasion of Afganistan was to cancel American participation in the Summer Olympics held in Moscow in 1980.   Under the guise of "human rights," Carter actively undercut American allies around the world, apparently never considering that successor regimes might prove even more oppresive of the nature populations, with the added detriment of ideological opposition to American interests.  (For examples, see Iran and El Salvador.)  

As an ex-president Carter has sought to subvert his country's interests.   He has actively worked to undermine the foreign policy positions of every succeeding president, including Clinton, and has consistently denounced his own country overseas.   Carter actually lobbied members of the UN Security Council to reject the first President Bush's request for a resolution to authorize the United States and allies to eject Iraq from occupied Kuwait, an action which seems to have violated Federal law.  His meddling in Clinton's negotiations with North Korea on that country's nuclear weapons program  contributed to the appeasement policy Clinton employed in an attempt to persuade North Korea to drop the program, a complete and utter failure which we continue to grapple with today.   In 2002 Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize awarded principally as a slap against President Bush.   Any other American president would have declined the award under the circumstances, but as Carter shared the prize committee's feelings regarding American policy, he didn't hestitate to accept.

Carter embraced the PLO terrorist leader Yassar Arafat and the Arabist view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.   Indeed as time  passed it became hard to distinguish any difference Carter and Arafat's views toward Israel: both were invariably hostile.  When Israel was attacked by Hezbollah terrorists operating from southern Lebanon,  Carter predictably attacked the Israeli defensive response as disproportionate and essentially blamed Isreal for the whole mess, as if the Isrealis had fired rockets on their own cities.    He has been a reliable apologist for Jihadists, understandably since his presidential library and Peace Center depend on Saudi money to survive.

Carter has been referred to as one of the most intelligent men to have been president.   Perhaps he scores well on I.Q. tests, but his conduct in and out of office reflects a narrow, small mind and a meanness of spirit.   He submerged himself in minutiae, scheduling times for use of the White House tennis courts, while never articulating any governing philosphy (assuming he had one) or figuring out how to run the executive branch of the Federal government.  Carter has never seemed to have recovered from the fact that the American people judged him a miserable failure as president and replaced him with Ronald Reagan, a man whom Carter obviously held in contempt.   One senses in Carter a profound arrogance, coupled with an authoritarian strain, and it frustrates him mightily that those who succeeded him in office and the American people have not accorded him or his opinions the respect he believes his due.   In this respect he is a perfect specimen of today's Democrat party, which holds in contempt the traditions, faith and patriotism of the American people, and would like nothing better than to force on the American people by ukase the Democrats' concepts for government and a just society.

The above merely illustrates who the man is:  an egoist, a small minded control freak, clueless on the big issues, possesed of a mean streak, intolerant of contrary views, convinced of his mental superiority, carrying around a perpetual chip on his shoulder. 

Now, back to his remarks on Wednesday.

The former president stated that the Iraq war has divided the nation "almost as much as Vietnam."  Wrong, Mr. President.   The bitter divisions in American society existed long before the Iraq war, which is now another issue added to the list of issues (religion, culture, ideology) dividing the same people.   On virtually any other divisive issue, the people who oppose the Iraq war will be in opposition on all other issues dividing our society to the people who support the war.   If the Iraq war went away tomorrow the nation would continue to experience hyper-partisanship and division
over fundamental issues engendering bad feelings.      

Carter remarked that the "invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake" and that "no doubt our country is in much more danger now from terrorism than it would have been if we would have done what we should have done and stayed in Afganistan."   Oh really?  Perhaps President Carter could cite some evidence to support this charge.   Iraq a terrible mistake?   Certainly the 4000 foreign insurgents killed in Iraq probably would agree, if they could be pulled away from their virgins to comment.   As for Saddam's political prisoners and millions of Iraqis terrorized by his despotic regime the president might experience dispute.  Does the liberation of millions fail to impress the president famous for his emphasis on "human rights," the most fundamental of which would seem to be the right to life?   Exactly what about the Iraq war is a mistake?   Disposing a murderous dictator?   Freeing over 25 million people?   Fighting the jihadists over there rather than over here?   Iraq under Hussein subsized terrorist operations and provided safe haven for their organizations.   Despite the commonly accepted myth Hussein continued to have at the ready, in violation of the ceasefire terms of the first Gulf War and UN resolutions, programs to develop weapons of mass destruction, standing by for an order to kick into high gear processes which in short order would have yielded these weapons.   The invasion of Iraq was not a mistake.

Carter's contention that the United States is more at risk from terrorism because of the Iraq war is a non sequitur.    Absent surrender and the installation of a caliph in America,  the risk to our nation will increase porportionally to the pressure we bring to bear on the enemy.   A cornered, wounded animal is usually at its most dangerous and carrying the fight to the enemy's sanctuaries and bases of operation increases his desperation.  The concentration of jihadists in Iraq to fight our troops has diverted the terrorists from efforts to penetrate our country to perpetrate attacks.   It has allowed us to test and develop under battle conditions new techniques necessary to combat this enemy.   Far better to fight the terrorists overseas than in the streets of our cities.

The argument that the Iraq war has damaged our efforts in Afganistan, besides being false, also illustrates Liberal confusion about the nature of the war against Islamic fascism.   No signficant American forces were diverted from Afganistan to Iraq.   Therefore, our efforts in Afganistan were not affected by the Iraq war.   Liberals seem to believe that the September 11th attack is no reason for a systematic campaign to destroy the terrorist threat.   In their minds the murder of 3000 Americans justified a single attack against one strand of the enemy found in Afganistan, and was primarily justified because the Taliban were uncivilized enough not to respect an arrest warrant for Bin Laden issued by the US District Court.   The idea that we should engage these murderous barbarians and kill them whenever and wherever found is alien to Mr. Carter and to Liberal thought.   They do not understand that this is an enemy eager to repeat on an even larger scale the horrors of 9/11, and that a preemption strategy to find and destroy them in their havens is essential to protection of the American homeland.    Iraq is a compliment to the Afganistan operation, not a distraction.

Finally, Carter called Donald Rumsfeld "one of the worst secretaries of defense we've ever had."    This is rich indeed from a president whose first secretary of state,  Cyrus Vance, was a confirmed pacifist who resigned over the single military effort to rescue the American embassy hostages in Iran.    Carter's secretary of defense, Harold Brown, presided over the delay or cancellation of weapon systems such as the B-1 bomber and the neutron bomb.   Clinton's secretaries of defense went along with defense cuts which hollowed out the superb military force handled over
to Clinton by the first President Bush.    Donald Rumsfeld has been unafraid to challenge entrenched interests inside the military establishment in order to modernize and streamline the American military to better prepare it to meet the challenges of the 21st century.  Naturally, he has encountered resistance and created enemies; no one who seeks to overturn an existing order is welcomed.    Much of the criticism of Rumsfeld is generated within the Pentagon bureaucracy  and given voice by retired generals disgruntled with the reforms he has advanced; hence, a great deal of "office politics" is involved.   Imagine the same bunch weighing in on Eisenhower's tepid advance across North Africa or Bradley's troop dispositions in the Ardennes before the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two.   On second thought, don't imagine it because it would have never happened.    Only people who really don't believe we're in a war for survival have the mindset needed to nitpick and blather about this or that secretary of defense being the worst we've ever had.   Bashing Rumsfeld is simply one avenue liberals, whether an ex-president or retired general, use to undermine support for a war on terrorists which they don't support and don't believe is necessary. 

Of course, to be fair, there is one positive thing to be said about Carter:  there is no record he molested an intern in the Oval Office. 

Jimmy Carter was elected president because of the Watergate scandal and the desire of the American people for a fresh face.   He was unqualified for the office when elected and his experience in office demonstrated his unsuitability.   At the first opportunity the American people fired him.   The experience embittered him and ever since his bitterness has found expression in speech and acts which in an earlier, less forgiving time, may have landed him in the dock charged with sedition.   He has become a common scold, full of vinegar and speaking as if his talking points are written by al Quida.  

He's a complete disgrace. 

 

One may be forgiven if, after reviewing today’s headlines, he believes he has awoke in some sort of alternate reality in which history is discarded, logic and reason have no application, and a large section of the population confuses wishful thinking for fact.       What else can explain the spectacle of the United States Senate seriously debating, for days, the idea that murderers captured while engaged in or planning hostile acts against the people and military forces of the United States, should enjoy a court system with trials, appeals and even the right to habeus corpus to challenge their detention.   That this absurd situation came about because of an abominable decision of the liberal majority U.S. Supreme Court, in defiance of precedent and common sense, and the wrongheaded concerns of some Republican senators, makes it no less surreal.

That we are having a debate about the rights of terrorists in our custody is reflection of the moral confusion running rampant throughout our society.   The fault for this can be spread around but ultimately the responsible party is We, the people.    We have stood by while our public school system and institutions of higher learning have been hijacked by the unreconstructed relics of the 1960's, who have turned them into propaganda mills.    We have accepted judicial rulings from robed tyrants banishing from the public square references to our religious heritage and beliefs, effectively imposing the malcontent’s veto over the heartfelt sentiments of the vast majority of the people, in complete perversion of the First Amendment.    We have stood still for lectures from effete hacks without right or qualification who tell us no one has the right to judge what is right or wrong; that no culture is inferior to another; that the United States and the jihadists are morally equivalent.   The slow motion eviction of religion and moral precepts from the public square has created a vacuum,  and this being America, liberals, aided by ACLU lawyers (full disclosure - the writer is an attorney), have rushed to fill the vacuum with one tenet of their secular religion, an obsession with rights and legalisms.   Hence, the ridiculous debate about the rights of terrorists.    Primarily from our own indifference,  we have permitted the systematic hallowing out of our moral center, with predictable consequences.

A nation deprived of its moral center lacks the spiritual committment vital to successfully fight and win a war.    It will splinter and be divided against itself, with many of its people considering their fellow citizens greater threats than external enemies. Witness the fact that most of society’s elites, primarily but not exclusively on the left, profoundly distrust and disdain the instincts, beliefs and traditions of the American citizenry.   These elites believe our people to be as threatening to life and liberty as the jihadists.    What else can explain the hysterical equation by many liberals of Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, to radical Islamic fascists? (Quick, name the last Christian beheading of a nonbeliever.)    Such a comparison seems insane on its face yet it has been made far too many times by too many liberals to deny that it reflects their true feelings.

Lincoln famously remarked that " a house divided against itself can not stand."  He spoke when the nation was split over the moral issue of slavery.   At that time, fortunately, the nation did not face a serious external threat.   Today the United States is threatened as never before.   A foreign enemy considers the murder of our citizens and destruction of our nation a religious duty.   At home, a significant minority of the our population, educated into idiocy by the public school system, deeply mistrustful and contemptuous of the majority’s traditions and religious faith, and sustained by a 5^th column masquerading as the mainstream media, is blind to the grave external threat and focused intently on defeating its perceived true opponent, a group of fellow Americans called conservatives.    Liberals cannot acknowledge the jihaists as more threatening than domestic conservatives or Christians without violating one of the sacred tenets of liberalism, i.e., that all cultures are created equal and that all religions are equally threatening.

In sports there is a saying that "it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog."   The metaphor holds true in the contest with the Islamic fascists.   They have calculated that we will engage them half-heartedly, without the determination to force the issue through to a victorious decision.   Everything the jihadists see and hear coming from the United States supports this belief.    They believe Allah is on their side and invoke his name repeatedly.   Meanwhile Liberals work feverishly to banish God’s name from the public square and attack those who invoke His name in support of our cause.   They doubt the essential goodness of the American people and the superiority of our free society.

It cannot be said to often, too loudly or from too many venues, that the United States is the greatest force for good in the world today.    Our enemies are evil fanatics who use young children and women as human bombs to murder the children of those of other faiths.   They yearn for the opportunity to commit mass murder.    Any expression, implication or hint, from any person or group,  that there is a moral equivalence between our goals or means and that of the jihadists is not reflective of sophistication but of a moral confusion bordering on madness.  

Liberals believe that the conservatives and evangelical Christians represent as great a threat to the United States as Islamic fascists who have already murdered 3000 of our citizens on September 11, 2001.   People so profoundly wrong about the identity and nature of our enemy cannot be trusted by the American people with affairs of state.     Should they ever secure the reigns of power,  the collapse of our national will can only accelerate and we may succumb to the jihadlists with the same suddeness that the Soviet Union disintergrated.   It was another nation which assiduously denied God and rotted its moral core.  

 

 The media is making much of former President Clinton's outburst against correspondent Chris Wallace during an interview on Fox News.   Mr. Clinton took umbrage at being questioned concerning his efforts to capture Osama Bin Laden, and reacted by launching into a tirade against Wallace, Fox News, and Clinton's bete noir, the Republican "Right Wing."

No doubt the former president was feeling a bit defensive on the question of his efforts to fight the terrorist threat to the United States.   After all,a little more than two weeks ago, on the evenings of September 10th and 11th, and over the vociferous objections of Mr. Clinton and his minions, the ABC network broadcast the made for television drama, "The Path to 911," which demonstrated, pretty much beyond a reasonable doubt, just how half-hearted, freckless, and superficial were the Clinton administration's efforts against the international terrorist threat and al-Qaida.  It was predictable that Clinton would seize the first convenient opportunity to counterattack on television, which Chris Wallace and Fox News offered.

 Perhaps his outburst was a genuine expression of indignation.  However, as always with Clinton, there lingers the suspicion that the episode was, for the most part, an act, the anger and indignation feigned.    After all, this is a man who famously wagged his finger and furiously denied having sex with "that woman," and who instantly changed from laughter to tears at Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's funeral when he realized he was being videoed.   The former president needed a broadcast forum to pretend outrage, and what better one than Fox News, the favorite network of conservatives.    Mr. Wallace offered a convenient foil, being much too much the gentlemen to respond to Mr. Clinton's outburst. Perhaps after suffering the former president's rants that his administration's efforts to combat terrorism have been unfairly ignored,  Mr. Wallace might have asked Mr. Clinton why, in light of the former president's well known propensity to falsify facts and lie when convenient, should any thinking person believe for a second the self-serving hornswoggle escaping Mr. Clinton's mouth?  Of course, Mr. Wallace would never have done so, for unlike the liberal press, conservatives still have a respect and veneration for the office of the president, even when occupied by the likes of Bill Clinton, and Mr.  Clinton was well aware that this respect permitted him his tirade without fear of a response in kind.   Hence the venue was perfect for the former president to unencumber himself.  
 
No hissy fit on national television can change facts or permanently hide the truth.    At best, Clinton's public tantrum serves as a distraction from those facts, just another slight of hand from a master practitioner, always trying to keep the public attention focused away from his own failure and abdication of responsbilty.  The
act is not aging well, however, and the audience grows less appreciative each day. 

   

  The traveling road show that is Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez made its stop in New York Wednesday.

Booked initially to speak before the delegates of the United Nations General Assembly - a body famously compared by Rush Limbaugh to the bar room scene in the first Star Wars movie - Chavez did not disappoint. He found a receptive audience chuckling with amusement at his reference to the president of the United States as, among other things, the "devil," and comment that the "smell of sulfur" lingered in the chamber from the "devil’s" recent appearance. The captivated audience greeted the conclusion of his speech with loud applause.

This applause evidently still ringing in his ears, Mr. Chavez appeared today in Harlem, where he called Mr. Bush was an "ex-alcoholic," and a "cowboy," and acting like John Wayne.

Since a large percentage of the delegates of the United Nations General Assembly are representatives of dictatorial, thug regimes for which the smell of sulfur is the sweet aroma associated with killing the opposition, Chavez was largely preaching to the choir. Harlem, while officially American territory, is represented in Congress by that most liberal of Democrats, Charles Rangel, who has made plenty of his own incendiary remarks about President Bush. If the Harlem audience was not the "choir" the U.N. General Assembly represented, it certainly fit the description as a friendly "congregation." (In fairness, Representative Rangel has condemned Mr. Chavez’s statements.)

 What is striking is the comfort level of Mr. Chavez and others who vomit out these insults against President Bush.   Mr. Chavez has calculated that the United States is unable to inflict adverse consequences against him due to our dependence of Venezuelan oil; our preoccupation with Iraq and the threats posed by Iran and South Korea, and our domestic internal divisions. In this he seems entirely correct. The poisonous partisan domestic atmosphere which has grown in this nation since 2000 has witnessed the most vicious remarks against President Bush, and the collapse of any semblance of limits in the use of personal invective to attack the president has bled over into the international arena.   In 2006 it now seems to be acceptable (or at least tolerated) discourse in international and domestic debate to vilify the president of the United States in terms and adjectives which no one would dream of uttering across the backyard fence or in the neighborhood bar for fear of a quick, violent reaction.   Fortunately, however, this collapse of civility has not yet corrupted the feelings of average Americans, and perhaps this explains the dynamic difference in the reaction to Chavez’s remarks by the professional diplomats (even our own) and the average American.

Outside the confines of the east side of Manhattan, the San Francisco peninsula and the U.S. State Department, there is simmering and growing anger among the American people at the continuing calumny and vitriol directed against the American president and by extension, the United States. The vast majority of Americans do not see their country as evil or corrupt, as oppressive and imperialistic, or view the president as an agent for such purposes, nor do we believe we occupy territory stolen from Native Americans, Mexicans or anyone else.   We see an America which has extended vast sums of blood and treasure to assist the peoples of other lands better their lives and secure their freedom, asking for nothing return more than a small bit of land to bury our honored dead.   Our patience is at an end with ethical lectures from foreign leaders who hold power by terror and murder, stealing the freedom and property of their people for their own selfish ends.   Americans do not understand the reticence of our State Department in replying to bloodsuckers such as Hugo Chavez by branding them the bottom crawling despots and thugs that they are.    As it is our reluctance to verbally mix it up with Chavez and his ilk allows them to enhance their prestige at home and in many nations aboard after each outrageous insult ignored by us.    For John Bolton and the State Department to sniff that Chavez’s comments don’t merit a reply may please the striped pants crowd at tea time, but such a lack of reaction ignores the impact such comments have in audiences overseas, the very market that Chavez is playing to.

Dictators and bullies are not defeated by ignoring them or their insults. Words are said to have consequences - we must start ensuring that they do.

 

Each day the likelihood grows that the Congress will fail to pass the president's legislation addressing the treatment of captured enemy combatants before the mid-term elections. The principal roadblock is the United States Senate, where Majority Leader Bill Frist admits there is a majority in favor of the McCain/Democrat alternative to the president's approach. The McCain/Democrat Party alliance opposes defining our obligations under Common Article III of the Geneva Convention vis a vis the treatment of captured enemy combatant, i.e., terrorists. Since that approach is unacceptable to the President and a majority of the Republicans in the Senate, who support defining our treaty obligations and protecting legal cover for the men and women of our security services in interrogating the enemy, and less than the 60 senators necessary to break a filibuster back the RINO-Democrat approach, the Senate is deadlocked.

The absurdity and logical incoherence of the McCain/Democrat approach has been demonstrated each time McCain is challenged to explain his position and there is no purpose served in going over it again. What is inexcusable is that a majority of the U.S. Senate worry more about foreign opinion and silly hypotheticals about the possible mistreatment of captured American servicemen than ensuring our security services can effectively interrogate captured terrorists so as to prevent attacks against American cities and citizens. It is inexcusable that the Senate will leave Washington, D.C., without enacting legislation to clarify rules of treatment under Common Article III of the Geneva Contention to protect our operatives from legal jeopardy. It is inexcusable that a Senate majority considers the hypothetical effects on foreign opinion more important than the concrete danger to the American people.

Implicit in the view held by the Democrat senators and McCain is the calculation that the risk to the United States is not so great as to risk the U.S. being unpopular in certain foreign capitals. Only such a belief could sustain arguments that the tactics we employ to protect the national security should be circumscribed by the views of other nations or groups. On the other hand, if you believe, as does the president and a majority of Senate Republicans, that we face an implacable enemy unconcerned with the niceties of international law and the Geneva Convention, possessed of an ideology and corrupted religious faith which embraces the mass murder of innocents an article of faith, and who work assiduously to bring about our death by all means, including weapons of mass destruction, then the first priority is not the feelings of foreign countries about treatment of terrorists we capture but the prevention of mass murder of Americans by effective techniques to secure the information necessary to save lives. If that makes us less unpopular in France or Iran, so be it.

Members of Congress will soon leave Washington to campaign for re-election without acting to protect the American people.   Inexcusable.

 
The followers of Mohammed are in high dudgeon over remarks in a recent speech given by Pope Benedict.   The theme of the Pope's speech was a condemnation of the use of violence to spread religious faith.    He quoted remarks of the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologos II, which characterized some of teachings of Mohammed as "evil and "inhuman," particularly the prophet's command to spread by the sword the faith (Islam).

It is a historical fact that Islam was spread across North Africa and into southern Europe by military conquest.   The same can be said regarding the spread of Christianity in areas of the Americas and Africa colonized by European nations.   The Pope's speech deprecates force as a means of conversion, implicitly recognizing that forced conversion is in truth no conversion at all.    Perhaps inclusion of an obscure quote from a Byzantine emperor was unnecessary, but the Pontiff can be forgiven for not apprehending the reaction which it engendered.   

And what a reaction!   Riots, Christian churches burned, the Vatican threatened with suicide bombing - a reaction so disportionate to the alleged insult that one suspects an agenda at work for which the  Pope's remarks are not a provocation but an opportunity: the chance to humilate and censor the leading Christian figure on the planet.  

Make no mistake, the Moslem street believes the tide of history has shifted in its favor.   A few months ago the anger of Moslem rioters in Europe over cartoons alleged to insult the prophet Mohammed actually caused leading European politicians and press organs to advocate self censorship to avoid stirring up trouble.   Having demonstrated the power to intimidate European governments and the press, the Moslems now hope to humilate and gag the leader of the largest Christian domination on Earth.   If the followers of Mohammed, by violence and threats of violence, are successful in forcing an apology from the Pope over his remarks, which when read in context are innocuous and factual, the consequences will be devastating.  The prestige of the radical Islamists will be enhanced in Europe and throught the Middle East.   Having been personally humiliated, the Pope - as well as leaders of other religions who have absorbed the lesson - will think twice about uttering anything but vapid banalities as regards Islamic radicalism.  Who wants their churches burned and missionaries murdered?  

Yet as terrible a prospect that may be, even more terrible would be an acceptance that the followers of Mohammned have a veto over the speech and religious expression of other faiths.  If the Pope can be intimated into apologizing over the most innocuous of remarks, how long before the Islamic radicals use the same tactics to extract other concessions?  The appetities of bullies are not satiated by apologies.   No Christian, no Jew, no believer of any faith can accept a de facto Islamic veto over their freedom of expression, regardless of a threat of violence.  

Don't apologize Pope Benedict.   And don't be intimidated from continuing to speak out.

Senator John McCain is without question an authentic American hero.   After his Naval aircraft was shot down over North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, he was a prisoner of war and frequently tortured by his captors. He bears the scars of the torture this day.   The Senator has been a stalwart supporter of President Bush during the Iraqi conflict.  But (and all to often involving Senator McCain, there is a but), with regard to the question of clarifying the rights of enemy combatants captured by American forces vis a vis Common Article III of the Geneva Convention, the Senator is tragically wrong.

President Bush has proposed legislation to clarify the rules imposed by Common Article III concerning the treatment of enemy combatants.  The president believes that Congress must codify procedures as guidance for our operatives and to shield them from legal jeopardy.  Senator McCain, joined by Senators John Warner and Lindsay Graham, along with all Democrat senators,  object to the president's legislation.   Their objections appear to be based on two grounds: (1) they consider the legislation a unilateral amendent of the Geneva Contention by the United States, and (2) they fear that captured American servicemen will be mistreated by their captors if the United States fails to implement liberal procedures for treatment of enemy combatants.  Neither objection holds water.

The language of Common Article III is so general and vague as to be useless as any meaningful guide regarding the proper treatment of captives.   Distilled to the essence the Article proscribes degrading and abusive treatment of detainees.    What constitutes such treatment?   No specifics are offered.   Indeed, the broad generalities of the article dictate that each signatory will necessarily arrive at their own interpretion - purportedly  the vice that Senator McCain purports to object to.   Codifying the American interpretion of Common Article III will not send other signatory nations down the road to individual construction - they are already there.  On the contrary, articulating a more specific and defined interpretation will encourage other signatories to codify their own  approaches or adopt the American view.    In either event, nations will be pushed toward a shared understanding of the meaning of the Article, certainly a positive consequence.   

Senator McCain also objects to the president's proposal because he fears that captured American servicemen will be subjected to abusive treatment unless the Congress enacts the most liberal procedures for the treatment of enemy combants.    This objection is frankly incoherent.   The leaders of the foreseeable enemies of the United States, whether nation states, terrorist groups or criminal organizations, care not a wit about the views or enactments of the American Congress regarding the treatment of captured combatants.   The implicit assumption that they will be restrained in their treatment of captured American soldiers if we will treat their operatives in our custody with "kid gloves" contradicts experience.    Our adversaries and potential adversaries consider the use of women and children as suicide bombers to murder noncombatants as legitimate means of warfare.   It is fanciful to think that enactments of the American Congress ensuring liberal treatment of their captured operatives will affect their behavior. 

The treatment of American soldiers in captivity will be determined not by what the American Congress does or fails to do, but by whether their captors believe their superiors or (more likely) the American military will hold them accountable.   If the leaders of our adversaries belief that their country or organization, as well as themselves and their underlings will pay a stiff penalty for abusive treatment, that fear will be far more effective in protecting our soldiers than Congressional enactments. 

To the extent our enemies pay attention to the debate in Washington over the treatment of detainees, they view the debate as proof we are divided, weak and unserious about waging war.   No doubt they are contemptuous of the McCain-Warner-Grahm "Golden Rule" approach to treatment of enemy combatants.

Fundamentally, this debate is less about how we treat captured enemy combatants than how serious we are about the war against Islamic Fascists.   On that basis it is apparent that virtually all Democrats and too many Republicans still do not grasp the danger posed by the enemy confronting us.   We debate legalisms;our enemies debate more effective means to kill us. 

 

 Yesterday the House of Representatives once again passed legislation to construct a 700 mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.   Predictably liberals accused the Republican majority of political grandstanding.   Such criticism is accurate but not relevant.

The majority in the House should reaffirm, every day the House is in session, its determination that no immigration reform legislation omit a committment to secure the southern border by a bona fide physical barrier.    This daily affirmation should be co-joined with a similar declaration that no legislation including a "guest worker" provision will be acceptable, until the President certifies and the Congress agrees that the southern border has been made secure and that persons currently in this country unlawfully are deported. 

Not only is this good policy for the country,  it is good politics for the House Republicans.   The conservative base will rally to support and re-elect Republicans who demonstrate a firm committment to border security and respect and enforcement of the law.   This is a position which will attract support from moderates and even some Democrats in border states.

President Bush has been an excellent president on many issues.   Regrettably, immigration is not one of them.   On this issue leadership must be exercised by the Republican House, supported by the conservative base.