Right Wing Nation

McCain is in Iraq — for the eighth time. So when will Hillary and Obama go to Iraq, I wonder?

and neither is the fact that it’s not getting any MSM coverage:

Good news from the presidential campaign trail this afternoon, via Rob Bluey at RedState — Sen. John McCain has wholeheartedly endorsed an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jim DeMint that would impose a one-year moratorium on all pork-barrel earmarks:

“I absolutely would support such an amendment — and abolish [earmarks] altogether,” McCain told conservative bloggers on a conference call this afternoon. “As I’ve said, I will veto any earmark project that comes across my desk.”

This, on the other hand, is a bit beyond merely surprising:

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won’t explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?

What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance…

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

Oh. The beyond merely surprising part. That was Angelina Jolie.

High school honors fallen war hero.

Led by Jay Schools Superintendent, Dr. Timothy Long, the Portland schools joined with the community in honoring the heroic accomplishments of the late Sgt. Major Jeffery A. McLochlin. McLochlin was killed July 5, 2006, while serving in the war in Afghanistan.

A Portland native, McLochlin’s widow, Nicole, traveled to the ceremony from her home in Rochester, Ind., to receive the school corporation’s inaugural “Character in Motion” award on behalf of her late husband. She received the award from Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger. Umbarger is the Adjutant General of Indiana, whose primary focus is to lead the Indiana National Guard.

In addition to honoring McLochlin, Umbarger was in town to hand over the keys to the local National Guard Armory to the school corporation. Long says the plan is for the school corporation to move its administrative offices to the facility, which was built in 1976. The move will save the Corporation approximately $200,000.

Plenty of pics at the link. No moonbats perching in trees, riding naked on bicycles, waving giant puppet heads, worshiping Obama’s snot, singing kumbayah, or holding “teach-ins.”

“There will be no earmarks for teapot museums, First Lady Libraries and taxpayer-funded hippie flashbacks in a McCain administration.”

–Tom Coburn

Now that everything is calming down, let’s talk McCain, and why I’ll vote for him without holding my nose — and I’ll list the things that bother me first, just to be fair. But let me say first that I haven’t voted for an “ideal candidate” ever in my life, because no such animal has ever been on the ballot. And I’m paying no attention to what he says here, only to his record.

Government intrusion

You can’t make a case from his voting record that he’s a “compassionate conservative” (Bush.41, Bush.43), but he does tend to think government should stick its nose into places it shouldn’t. See the current Congressional fiasco about steroids, or the congressionally-mandated switch to HDTV (or the “conversion box” TV welfare program).

“Sin” taxes

He supports them. ‘Nuff said.

McCain-Feingold

Do I really need to explain? I wouldn’t think so. I will say, however, that I doubt very much that McCain’s intentions were malevolent. Road to hell, good intentions, etc.

Government regulation

He’s way too fond of it for my tastes. After all, if the legislature caps drug prices or allows Americans to import them at capped prices, who is going to pay for all the R&D to come up with new drugs? Similarly, thowing government money at R&D for stem-cell research is bullshit. Nearly all advances in medicine happen in the private sector. Fact. Why not give tax breaks to pharmaceutical companies for doing research on stem cells instead? And again, why is steroid use in sports any of the government’s business?

Enemy combatants

I strongly disagree with him here, but all of you who also disagree and have been screaming about it, stop and think. He was tortured by the North Vietnamese in a prison camp for six years. Don’t you think it’s understandable that this may have colored the way he sees this particular issue? And although I disagree with him, I do not, for even a second, believe that John McCain would do anything to endanger the security of the United States. Not for a second. In fact, of every elected politician, McCain is the least likely to do so (see below).

Now, here are his strengths.

Tax cuts

Yeah, yeah, he opposed the Bush tax cuts — because the bills contained no spending cuts or caps. Look at his record. He has supported every tax cut that came down the road otherwise. His record on cutting spending is also very good.

School choice

He’s a staunch school choice supporter.

Free trade

He gets a big A+ and a gold star for his record on free trade. And speaking of gold stars,

Pork

John McCain is the original anti-pork warrior. He’s been fighting earmarks as long as he’s been in Congress, from long before it became fashionable.

Entitlements

McCain is pretty good on entitlement reform, much better than one could reasonably expect from the current Republicans in power. And unlike nearly every other elected politican, McCain has the guts to tackle it.

Tort reform

Johnny Mac has a better record on tort reform than nearly any elected Republican, except for a few of the younger Congressmen. Nothing to complain about here at all. Okay, you could complain, but then you’d have to complain about every Republican in office.

A hawk’s hawk

His greatest strength is his stance on the war, the military, national security, and foreign policy — and for me, this alone would get him my vote. John McCain isn’t only the only hawk running, he’s a hawk’s hawk, much like Barry Goldwater, and much better than Bush. He won’t be singing kumbayah and smoking dope with every filthy dictator in the world like Obama wants to do, and I doubt very much that we’ll have to put up with a crippled, PC military under McCain’s tenure as Commander-in-Chief. He’s an old-fashioned warrior: kick ass and take names.

John McCain has constantly and strongly supported the war and the troops — even when nearly every other Republican kept his mouth shut, afraid that he wouldn’t get re-elected. He sharply criticized Rummy and his idiotic PC war effort, and Rummy deserved it. Had McCain been in the White House instead of Bush, we wouldn’t have had months of medicre results, because we would have surged from day one. Think about that.

As many have pointed out, McCain can be a real SOB (he can also be extremely charismatic, but that’s another issue). This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. After eight years of the Bush Administration, I’ve had it with nice. Every time the monkeys start throwing shit in the cage, the Bush Administration does exactly nothing, and the result has been more monkeys throwing more shit.

The first time some castrated weenie bureaucrat from the EU or the UN tries to tell McCain what the US should or should not be doing, I have no doubt that John McCain will tell him to go straight to hell, and in exactly those words. That’s exactly what I want in the White House, a man who will put up with no shit from anybody. I realize that’s going to upset liberals who have their tongues as far up the asses of Europeans as they can get them. I’m supposed to care?

Speaking of, those of you who are waiting for McCain to kiss your ass are wasting your time. He’s not going to do it. McCain does what he believes is right, and he doesn’t apologize unless he believes that he was wrong. That’s called character. Sorry, but even though I think he’s wrong sometimes, I’d rather have a President with character and a strong moral compass than somebody who panders to you, or me, or anybody else. Over the last twenty-odd years he’s been in office, he has done what he believes to be right, sometimes at great political cost to himself. Good for him — even though he isn’t always right.

And don’t even start on immigration. You immigration hawks have largely yourselves to blame for the problem. You refused to deal with reality, and instead, stamped your feet and screamed that you wanted it all right now. Do you see a fence being built? No? I thought you scored a big victory by getting funds appropriated for it. What happened? Wait. Do you suppose it didn’t happen because it’s never going to happen? Note that we have the status quo still, and the only change has happend as a result of local government actions. So maybe that should be a clue, eh? A federal mass deportation is never going to happen: Deal with it. Try working with your local and state governments if illegal immigration is a problem in your area. And what the hell are you calling yourselves conservatives for if you’re depending on the federal government to take care of your problems?

As for those of you who think eight years of Democrats running the government will somehow magically get us elected, put down the crack pipe and walk away. How many entitlement programs have been dismantled? None? So what are you going to do about the socialized medicine we’ll have, except whine about it? And I remember hearing that before. How did that work for you in 2006?

I’m voting for McCain, and quite happily. As far as his negatives go, I’d rather have him in the White House kicking ass than in the Senate where he can pass laws I don’t like. You people do understand the separation of powers, don’t you?

Compared to the war, national security, the military, and foreign policy — the President’s most important Constitutional duties — all other issues are, to me, way down on the priority list. Note that I’m also voting for the most conservative Congressional candidates on my ballot, to support McCain when he’s right, and rein him in when he’s wrong. It’s Congress, not the White House, that makes laws. In fact, McCain would have no power to directly affect any of the issues that conservatives are howling about if he’s in the White House, but he will in the Senate. Think about that, too.

Finally, say the following:

“Feel, don’t think.”
“It takes a village!”
“I’d rather lose an election than lose a war.”

Now say these three:

Barak Obama, Commander-in-Chief
Hillary Clinton, Commander-in-Chief
John McCain, Commander-in-Chief

Any questions?

Note: Comments are great, but keep it civil and factual. If you want to slobber and scream, do it on your own blog. Thanks.

You wouldn’t think the moonbats could go further off the rails, but then, you haven’t seen this:

For the record, assuming it’s true, I think it’s just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down’s women to perpetrate the bombings but I don’t see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that.

There are lots of adjectives to describe turning women with Down’s Syndrome into walking bombs and exploding them with remote controls, but “brilliant” isn’t one of them.

I didn’t TiVO Hannity and Colmes after the debate, and I’ve been looking for it. Finally found it, thanks to Blogs for Fred Thompson. Colmes finally shuts up around 3:37.

Operation Puppy Love.

Andrew Olmstead’s final post. He was killed in Iraq yesterday. More here.

I was somewhat mystified by the reaction to Bhutto’s assassination yesterday. Yes, it was disturbing, but I’m not sure why it was, as Ann Althouse put it, “terrible news,” and as much as I enjoy bashing the networks, I really don’t see why it should have been at the top of the priority list, as she seems to believe; after all, there was nothing surprising about it. It’s Pakistan. She was a woman, and a Marxist. Surely, nobody expected her not to get assassinated. Awful? yes. Surprising? No. An international disaster? Absolutely not.

But you can always count on the Democrats to push foreign poicy disasters, and Bill Richardson does not disappoint:

“A leader has died, but democracy must live. The United States government cannot stand by and allow Pakistan’s return to democracy to be derailed or delayed by violence,” Richardson said.

Captain Ed addresses Richardson’s idiocy well, but Andrew McCarthy lays it on the table, with no candy-coating, no moaning, no hand-wringing. It’s a bitter pill:

For the United States, the question is whether we learn nothing from repeated, inescapable lessons that placing democratization at the top of our foreign policy priorities is high-order folly.

[ . . . ]

The transformation from Islamic society to true democracy is a long-term project. It would take decades if it can happen at all. Meanwhile, our obsessive insistence on popular referenda is naturally strengthening — and legitimizing — the people who are popular: the jihadists. Popular elections have not reformed Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither will they reform a place where Osama bin Laden wins popular opinion polls and where the would-be reformers are bombed and shot at until they die.

[ . . . ]

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

It’s too bad President Bush hasn’t learned this lesson.

From Ace, “And forever started”:

GI saves Iraqi boy in long-shot adoption
By CARRIE ANTLFINGER, Associated Press Writer Sun Dec 23, 1:14 PM ET

MAUSTON, Wis. - Capt. Scott Southworth knew he’d face violence, political strife and blistering heat when he was deployed to one of Baghdad’s most dangerous areas. But he didn’t expect Ala’a Eddeen.

Ala’a was 9 years old, strong of will but weak of body — he suffered from cerebral palsy and weighed just 55 pounds. He lived among about 20 kids with physical or mental disabilities at the Mother Teresa orphanage, under the care of nuns who preserved this small oasis in a dangerous place.

On Sept. 6, 2003, halfway through his 13-month deployment, Southworth and his military police unit paid a visit to the orphanage. They played and chatted with the children; Southworth was talking with one little girl when Ala’a dragged his body to the soldier’s side.

Black haired and brown eyed, Ala’a spoke to the 31-year-old American in the limited English he had learned from the sisters. He recalled the bombs that struck government buildings across the Tigris River.

“Bomb-Bing! Bomb-Bing!” Ala’a said, raising and lowering his fist.

“I’m here now. You’re fine,” the captain said.

Over the next 10 months, the unit returned to the orphanage again and again. The soldiers would race kids in their wheelchairs, sit them in Humvees and help the sisters feed them.

To Southworth, Ala’a was like a little brother. But Ala’a — who had longed for a soldier to rescue him — secretly began referring to Southworth as “Baba,” Arabic for “Daddy.”

Then, around Christmas, a sister told Southworth that Ala’a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.

“Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life,” Southworth said.

To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that that would not happen.

“I’ll adopt him,” he said.

___

Before Southworth left for Iraq, he was chief of staff for a state representative. He was single, worked long days and squeezed in his service as a national guardsman — military service was a family tradition. His great-great-greatgrandfather served in the Civil War, his grandfather in World War II, his father in Vietnam.

The family had lived in the tiny central Wisconsin city of New Lisbon for 150 years. Scott was raised as an evangelical Christian; he attended law school with a goal of public service, running unsuccessfully for state Assembly at the age of 25.

There were so many reasons why he couldn’t bring a handicapped Iraqi boy into his world.

He had no wife or home; he knew nothing of raising a disabled child; he had little money and planned to run for district attorney in his home county.

Just as important, Iraqi law prohibits foreigners from adopting Iraqi children.

Southworth prayed and talked with family and friends.

His mother, who had cared for many disabled children, explained the difficulty. She also told him to take one step at a time and let God work.

Southworth’s decision was cemented in spring 2004, while he and his comrades watched Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ.” Jesus Christ’s sacrifice moved him. He imagined meeting Christ and Ala’a in heaven, where Ala’a asked: “Baba, why didn’t you ever come back to get me?”

“Everything that I came up with as a response I felt ashamed. I wouldn’t want to stand in the presence of Jesus and Ala’a and say those things to him.”

And so, in his last weeks in Iraq, Southworth got approval from Iraq’s Minister of Labor to take Ala’a to the United States for medical care.

___

His parents had filed signatures so he wouldn’t miss the cutoff to run for district attorney. He knocked on doors, telling people he wanted to be tough on criminals who committed injustices against children.

He never mentioned his intention to adopt Ala’a.

He won office — securing a job and an income.

Everything seemed to be in place. But when Southworth contacted an immigration attorney, he was told it would be nearly impossible to bring Ala’a to the United States.

Undaunted, Southworth and the attorney started the paperwork to bring Ala’a over on humanitarian parole, used for urgent reasons or significant public benefit.

A local doctor, a cerebral palsy expert, a Minneapolis hospital, all said they would provide Ala’a free care. Other letters of support came from a minister, the school district, the lieutenant governor, a congressman, chaplain, a sister at the orphanage and an Iraqi doctor.

“We crossed political boundaries. We crossed religious boundaries. There was just a massive effort — all on behalf of this little boy who desperately needed people to actually take some action and not just feel sorry for him,” Southworth says.

He mailed the packet on Dec. 16, 2004, to the Department of Homeland Security.

On New Year’s Eve, his cell phone rang. It was Ala’a.

“What are you doing?” Scott asked him.

“I was praying,’” Ala’a responded.

“Well, what were you praying for?”

“I prayed that you would come to take me to America,” Ala’a said.

Southworth almost dropped the phone. Ala’a knew nothing of his efforts, and he couldn’t tell him yet for fear that the boy might inadvertently tell the wrong person, upending the delicate process.

By mid-January, Homeland Security called Southworth’s attorney to say it had approved humanitarian parole. Within three hours, Southworth had plane tickets.

He hardly slept as he worked the phones to make arrangements, calling the American embassy, hotels and the orphanage. His Iraqi translator agreed to risk his life to get Ala’a to the embassy to obtain documentation. Like a dream, all the pieces fell into place.

Southworth returned to Iraq for the first time since a deployment that left him emotionally, physically and spiritually exhausted.

His unit had trained Iraqi police from sunup to sundown; he saw the devastation wrought by two car bombings, and counted dead bodies. Mortar and rocket attacks were routine. Some 20 in his unit were wounded, and one died. He knew that nothing could be taken for granted in Baghdad.

So when he saw Ala’a in the airport for the first time since leaving Iraq, he was relieved.

“He was in my custody then. I could hug him. I could hold him. I could protect him.

“And forever started.”

They made it to Wisconsin late Jan. 20, 2005. The next morning, Ala’a awoke to his first sight of snow.

He closed his eyes and grimaced.

“Baba! Baba! The water is getting all over me!”

“It’s not water, it’s snooooow,” Southworth told him.

___

Police found Ala’a abandoned on a Baghdad street at around 3 years old. No one knows where he came from.

In all his life in Iraq, Ala’a saw a doctor 10 times. He surpassed that in his first six months in the United States.

Ala’a’s cerebral palsy causes low muscle tone, spastic muscles in the legs, arms and face. It hinders him when he tries to crawl, walk or grasping objects. He needs a wheelchair to get around, often rests his head on his shoulder and can’t easily sit up.

Physical therapy has helped him control his head and other muscles. He can now maneuver his way out of his van seat and stabilize his legs on the ground.

“I’m not the same guy I used to be,” he says.

He clearly has thrived. At 13, he’s doubled his weight to 111 pounds.

Ala’a’s condition doesn’t affect his mind, although he’s still childlike — he wants to be a Spiderman when he grows up.

Ala’a’s English has improved and he loves music and school, math and reading especially. He gets mad when snow keeps him home, even though it’s his second favorite thing, after his father.

At first, he didn’t want to talk about Iraq; he would grow angry when someone tried to talk to him in Arabic. But in the fall of 2006, Scott showed Ala’a’s classmates an Arabic version of “Sesame Street” and boasted how Ala’a knew two languages and could teach them.

Soon he was teaching his aide and his grandmother, LaVone.

LaVone is a fixture in Ala’a’s life, supporting her son as he juggles his career and fatherhood. One day, she asked Ala’a if he missed his friends in Iraq.

Would he like to visit them?

Big tears filled his eyes.

“Well, honey, what’s the matter?” asked LaVone.

“Oh, no, Grandma. No. Baba says that I can come to live with him forever,” he pleaded.

“Oh, no, no,” he grandmother said, crying as well. “We would never take you back and leave you there forever. We want you to be Baba’s boy forever.”

___

Southworth knew once he got Ala’a out of Iraq, the hardest part would be over. Iraq had bigger problems to deal with than the whereabouts of a single orphan.

On June 4, Ala’a officially became Southworth’s son. Though he was born in the spring of 1994, they decided to celebrate his birthday as the day they met — Sept. 6.

Life has settled into a routine. Father and son have moved into a new house with an intercom system, a chair lift to the basement and toilet handles. Southworth showers him, brushes his teeth and washes his hands. He has traded in his Chrysler Concorde for a minivan — it was too hard to lift his son out of the car.

In October, the Wisconsin’s deputy adjunct general gave Southworth, now a major, permission to change units because of Ala’a. His former unit was going to Guantanamo Bay for a one-year deployment, and he didn’t want to leave his son behind, at least for now.

He hopes one day to marry to his longtime girlfriend and have more children. He may run for Congress or governor someday — he’s already won re-election once, and plans to run again next fall.

Not everything is perfect. Ala’a never encountered thunderstorms in Baghdad, and the flash-boom reminds him of bombs. He is starting to get over it, although he still weeps during violent storms.

But Ala’a — who picked out his own name, which means to be near God — knows he’s where he belongs. Southworth always says Ala’a picked him, not the other way around. They were brought together, Southworth believes, by a “web of miracles.”

Ala’a likes to sing Sarah McLachlan’s song, “Ordinary Miracle,” from “Charlotte’s Web,” one of his favorite movies. His head and body lean to one side as he sings off-key.

“It’s just another ordinary miracle today. Life is like a gift they say. Wrapped up for you everyday.”

Citizen Soldier:

Jules has more.

Six bogus stores in six weeks. Jounalism sinks deeper into the quagmire!

Very PI of me, but I’m with Ace and Rusty on this one (sorry, Don).

Brendan Miniter swings it at Hollywood — and hits a home run.

From Iraqpundit:

I know those who are wedded to the idea of a failed Iraq are calling me a deluded idiot and worse. But things are improving slowly. My relatives in Baghdad say there’s no comparison; things are much better than they were six months ago. They can visit friends in different areas and walk about the neighbourhood in the evening.

Frankly, I don’t understand why so many mock us for wanting a future for Iraq. Is your hatred for George Bush so great that you prefer to see millions of civilians suffer just to prove him wrong?

It really comes down to this: you are determined to see Iraq become a permanent hellhole because you hate Bush. And we are determined to see Iraq become a success, because we want to live.

Hat tip to Jules.

Decapigate recapitated, because, you know, those leftists just can’t resist maligning the military.

F*ck Dialog.

And it goes — surprise — to a Democrat, Tom Lantos, addressing a bunch of whiny, panty-waisted Europeons:

Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay

The neutron bomb. It was made to drop on western Europe.

This is hilarious. The flying imams class-action lawsuit:

The Ad Guys is pretty funny too:

Ovation is airing Die Entführung aus dem Serail today, certainly not the PC-est of Mozart’s operas, especially with all the idiots screaming “Islamophobia!” calling for fatwahs, and otherwise acting like savages.

By the way, somebody needs to shoot the tenor. He’s obviously in a great deal of pain — and so are my ears.

Pam has an account (with pics) of the Gathering of Eagles III posted. Michelle also has details, links, and pics.

Ted Nugent isn’t mincing words:

Hat tip: Ace.

General Patton on the GWOT (hat tip to Liberty Film Festival for the much appreciated clip):

Here.

Padilla guilty on all counts. No link, cause it’s on the TV right now. More later.

Ralph Peters published an interesting column today, Troops and Crimes: History’s Best-Behaved Military. He makes his case well, although just how law-abiding our troops are compared to the general population is somewhat muted by seeing numbers mixed into the paragraph. So let’s look at the data. Over the last 19 months, there have been 59 courts-martial. If we adjust that for a year, we have 37.26 courts-martial. And to compare it to, say, several different towns and cities in the US, we need to calculate a per capita crime rate, which comes out to 0.0266%.

Peters compared the commission of crimes in the military with Ann Arbor, Santa Cruz, and Lynchburg. For curiosity and additional comparison, I threw State College into the mix.

Let’s compare the crime rates of the military to the cities:

Of the cities, State College has the lowest crime rate, at 2.0815%. But that’s quite a bit larger than 0.0266%, the crime rate for the US military. How much larger is striking.

So State College’s crime rate is 78.20 times the crime rate of the US military. And the crime rate in Santa Cruz, where everybody is into peace and love and flowers and passing bongs and going to giant puppet head protests and screaming about the military being baby killers, is 250.36 times that of the US military.

Funny, that.

Of course, your garden-variety leftist would claim that the military doesn’t police itself, but that’s nonsense — particularly coming from liberals, who do not believe in punishing crime. Peters says:

If Santa Cruz were as serious about punishing its criminals as our military is . . .

The military doesn’t do warnings and probation. If a soldier does the crime, he or she will do the time or pay the other relevant penalty - court-martials directly reflect the number of crimes committed. That means that our troops in a combat zone have had less than 1 percent of the crime rate in Santa Cruz - whose City Council in 2003 was proud to be the first in the United States to adopt a resolution denouncing the war in Iraq.

And of course, every day in the news, we have example after example of liberals refusing to punish criminals or take crime seriously, patting murderers and rapists on the head and wringing their hands over what awful childhoods they had.

Perhaps when the leftists start screeching about crime, they should look in the mirror.

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1 through July 3, 1863, in the area of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In this one battle, 7,708 men were killed, 26,856 were wounded, and 10,800 were missing or captured. In this one battle, there were 45,364 casualties on both sides.

In one battle.

Smeatomania.

Reporters demonstrate again that they are blithering idiots.

I agree with Don. The greatest headline ever: I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST SO HARD IN BALLS THAT I TORE A TENDON.

Actually, it may be the best headline possible.

why Pence isn’t running for President? Pence can’t see continued U.S. support for ‘emerging terrorist Palestinian state’ (sneer quotes are not mine).

Hamas to Spiegel:

There are naturally very many weapons around now. Two years ago, one bullet in Gaza cost around €3.50 — now it would cost 35 cents. The American aid money has been translated into weapons. Thank you, America!

Hat tip to LGF.

Jules Crittenden is a poet!

Hitchens eviscerates a sniveling, terrorist-supporting leftist (hat tip to David Thompson):

Big MacFatwah!

Interview with Gene Simmons–it’s a must read.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Christian Golczynski receives his father’s flag (hat tip to Maggie’s Farm)

Robert Stokely remembers his son

Jules Crittenden’s Memorial Day Roundup

US White House Commission on Remembrance

US Memorial Day

Tim Blair: “The greatest con since France tricked everyone into believing it was a nation of intellectuals.”

Tim has more on the idiocy (the comments are hilarious), as does LGF. Also a write-up here.

Iraq the Model: Why are the Democrats doing this?

Yet another “victimized” Muslim cleric whining (video), this time because if Cho had been a Muslim, the media would be treating it differently–and Ace nails the answer:

Mabye here’s the difference: No Koreans are celebrating Cho’s murder. No Korean leaders are excusing it, citing a lack of economic opportunities or “grievances” about American troops in South Korea. No Koreans are justifying the attacks based upon “Korean culture” or religious rites.

And no prominent spokesmen for “Korean-American interests” have come forward to re-issue old Korean foreign policy demands in the aftermath of the shooting, with the implicit warning/threat “Do as we wish or we will keep on doing this.”

As red speck points out, Cho’s own grandfather stated that Cho deserved to die and the entire family is ashamed of him.

As far as I know, no members of Cho’s family are celebrating him as a “martyr” to some cause, and no Korean groups are paying the family $50,000 as a martyrdom benefit.

So indeed let’s imagine if Cho had been a Muslim. Would any of the foregoing have been true?