Leiberman Calls for a Truce

Here's a must-read plea in the Wall Street Journal from Senator Joe Lieberman, perhaps the only Democrat in the Senate with a sound understanding of what's at stake in Iraq. I've edited out some of the essay for the sake of brevity:

Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare--trapped in an escalating dynamic of division and confrontation that will neither resolve the tough challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation against its terrorist enemies around the world.

What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.

Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq--or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington? What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?

If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts. For the first time in the Iraqi capital, the focus of the U.S. military is not just training indigenous forces or chasing down insurgents, but ensuring basic security--meaning an end, at last, to the large-scale sectarian slaughter and ethnic cleansing that has paralyzed Iraq for the past year.

Tamping down this violence is more than a moral imperative. Al Qaeda's stated strategy in Iraq has been to provoke a Sunni-Shiite civil war, precisely because they recognize that it is their best chance to radicalize the country's politics, derail any hope of democracy in the Middle East, and drive the U.S. to despair and retreat. It also takes advantage of what has been the single greatest American weakness in Iraq: the absence of sufficient troops to protect ordinary Iraqis from violence and terrorism.

The new strategy at last begins to tackle these problems. Where previously there weren't enough soldiers to hold key neighborhoods after they had been cleared of extremists and militias, now more U.S. and Iraqi forces are either in place or on the way. Where previously American forces were based on the outskirts of Baghdad, unable to help secure the city, now they are living and working side-by-side with their Iraqi counterparts on small bases being set up throughout the capital.

But the fact is that we are in a different place in Iraq today from even just a month ago--with a new strategy, a new commander, and more troops on the ground. We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates; a stronger position to foster the economic activity that will drain the insurgency and militias of public support; and a stronger position to press the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that everyone acknowledges are necessary for progress.

Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.

There is of course a direct and straightforward way that Congress could end the war, consistent with its authority under the Constitution: by cutting off funds. Yet this option is not being proposed. Critics of the war instead are planning to constrain and squeeze the current strategy and troops by a thousand cuts and conditions.

Among the specific ideas under consideration are to tangle up the deployment of requested reinforcements by imposing certain "readiness" standards, and to redraft the congressional authorization for the war, apparently in such a way that Congress will assume the role of commander in chief and dictate when, where and against whom U.S. troops can fight.

But we must not make another terrible mistake now. Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake--assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.

In fact, halting the current security operation at midpoint, as virtually all of the congressional proposals seek to do, would have devastating consequences. It would put thousands of American troops already deployed in the heart of Baghdad in even greater danger--forced to choose between trying to hold their position without the required reinforcements or, more likely, abandoning them outright. A precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake, which terrorists, insurgents, militias and Iran would rush to fill--probably resulting in a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale as yet unseen in Iraq.

I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next. Instead of undermining Gen. Petraeus before he has been in Iraq for even a month, let us give him and his troops the time and support they need to succeed.

Gen. Petraeus says he will be able to see whether progress is occurring by the end of the summer, so let us declare a truce in the Washington political war over Iraq until then. Let us come together around a constructive legislative agenda for our security: authorizing an increase in the size of the Army and Marines, funding the equipment and protection our troops need, monitoring progress on the ground in Iraq ...

We are at a critical moment in Iraq--at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America's cause--the cause of freedom--which we abandon at our peril.

Senator Leiberman is absolutely right, and his Democratic colleagues know it. Perhaps that's why they've had second thoughts about trying to slow-bleed the troops to force a halt to our involvement.

RLC

Moral Authority

Alyaan Hirsi Ali, a woman who has been placed under a death fatwa by Islamic mullahs for her impertinence in telling the truth about Islam, instructs Bill Maher's audience, guests, and Maher himself on the nature of dhimmitude.

Maher's understanding of Christianity is regrettable, but the chance to hear Ali makes it worth putting up with his arrogance for a while. The movie critic spoof at the end is pretty funny, too.

If you're interested in learning about who Ali is check out at Slate by Anne Applebaum. RLC

Invested in Failure

Cooler heads seem to have prevailed in the Democratic caucus and the leadership is pulling the extremists, who are a substantial portion of the party, back from the brink of a debacle:

Democratic leaders backed away from aggressive plans to limit President Bush's war authority, the latest sign of divisions within their ranks over how to proceed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday he wanted to delay votes on a measure that would repeal the 2002 war authorization and narrow the mission in Iraq.

Senior Democrats who drafted the proposal, including Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, had sought swift action on it as early as this week, when the Senate takes up a measure to enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.

Reid, who will huddle with Democrats Tuesday to discuss whether to postpone the Iraq debate, cited pressure from victims' families for quick action on the Sept. 11 bill as the reason for doing so.

"Iraq is going to be there - it's just a question of when we get back to it," Reid said, predicting it would be "days, not weeks" before the Senate returned to the issue. The war reauthorization legislation also appears to lack the 60 votes it would need to pass the Senate.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meanwhile, said she doesn't support tying war funding to strict training and readiness targets for U.S. troops.

The comments distanced her from Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who has said he wants to use Congress' spending power to force a change in policy in Iraq, by setting strict conditions on war funding.

This is all so disingenuous. One minute they're telling us that the 2006 election was a mandate to end the war, which Congress could do by simply cutting off funding, the next minute they're trying to rationalize their refusal to do what's necessary to bring the war to a conclusion.

The leadership has come to realize, of course, that had they pushed the Murtha plan through the House and the Biden/Levin bill in the Senate they would have unintentionally placed themselves in a political no-win situation. If the U.S. were forced by the Murtha plan to withdraw from Iraq then the American people would have rightly blamed the humiliation on the Democrats. On the other hand, if, despite the Democrats' efforts to prevent it, we manage to achieve a noticeable measure of success in that miserable land, the credit will all go to George Bush and the Republicans. This would politically marginalize the Democrats for the next twenty years. It would've been a heads they win, tails we lose proposition for the Dems and luckily for them Pelosi and Reid recognized where they were headed in time to avert the catastrophe.

The Democrats' best strategy - for their party, not for the country - is to play along with Bush, to keep nipping at his heels, and hope that he fails to establish a stable and secure democracy in Iraq. If he does fail without the Democrats interfering with his policy then the Democrats will be well positioned to blame the defeat on the Republicans and reap the political harvest.

Even so, there's something very wrong with having half of our government heavily invested in the defeat of our forces and the failure of an attempt to bring some measure of peace and safety to millions of people.

RLC

Magic Wand

Uncommon Descent links to a couple of interesting videos which illustrate how the cellular machinery which produces proteins does what it does. Protein synthesis really is astonishing, all the more so if one believes that all the machinery and coordination of reactions just evolved by chance. After all, the DNA and RNA which code for proteins can only work when they're manipulated by proteins, but proteins did not become available until DNA and RNA were able to produce them. So which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids?

Never mind, we're told. Such conundrums are minor puzzles which will be solved eventually. Darwinism is like a magic wand. When we encounter problems like the above we simply wave the wand and solemnly recite the incantation "genetic mutation and natural selection plus time and chance" and, presto! the problem goes away.

RLC

Pass the Vitriol, Please

There was a time when conservatives were reviled everywhere for being "haters" and "mean-spirited." Then came Bill Buckley's magazine The National Review and a series of books by conservative authors the tone and quality of which gave the lie to the allegations of their opponents. It turned out that it was very difficult to find an actual conservative who fit the stereotype of a frothing Joe McCarthy out to lynch everyone to his ideological left.

Nevertheless, by the late 1960s the damage had been done. Conservatives, in the public's mind, had been stuck with a reputation for biliousness and the media was only too pleased to reinforce the image in whatever way they could. Conservative ideas had a hard time gaining a hearing because they'd been stereotyped as insensitive, fat cat businessmen who loathed both minorities and commies in equal measure.

In the 1980s, however, the emergence on the national scene of charismatic, irenic conservative personalities like Ronald Reagan made it even more difficult for liberals to sustain the specter of the fire-breathing conservative, and in the last twenty years that misconception has been greatly diminished.

The irony is that as the public has come to realize that conservatives are not the monsters they had been led to believe they were the left has ratcheted up the propaganda, trying to portray George Bush as a demoniac on the level of Adolf Hitler. In their desperation to show that conservatives really are the incarnation of Lucifer the left has infused our political rhetoric with far more hate, spite, cruelty and viciousness than anything their predecessors of a generation ago imputed to conservatives.

Nothing in our political past, for example, compares to the vituperation and sheer ugliness of the sort of thing that fills the left's blogs in the wake of the attempted assasination of Vice-president Cheney. Michelle documents some of the sick commentary here although I understand that some of the blogs she quotes from have now expunged the more disgusting comments.

There are several words that come to mind to describe people who think like these people do, but rather than indulge in trying to pin an appropriate adjective on them, as satisfying as such an exercise might be, I wish to simply wonder out loud if there isn't a connection between the ideology the secular left embraces and the kind of people that it seems to attract.

RLC

Busted Pervert

Federal agents in Virginia have arrested a man named Charles Rust-Tierney for possessing child pornography. Some of the material this man was viewing consisted of video of young, prepubescent girls screaming and crying as they were tied up and forcibly raped. What sort of man would want to watch this kind of thing?

Well, it turns out that Rust-Tierney is a past president of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU, not that that explains everything. He also coached youth sports in his Arlington neighborhood. In other words, he's a man of some means and accomplishment who could be anyone's neighbor. The fact that he rose to such prominence in the ACLU seems like it should be significant, perhaps because of facts like this:

In the past, Rust-Tierney had argued against restricting Internet access in public libraries in Virginia, writing, "Recognizing that individuals will continue to behave responsibly and appropriately while in the library, the default should be maximum, unrestricted access to the valuable resources of the Internet."

One wonders, in light of Mr. Rust-Tierney's arrest, if the ACLU's commitment to defending the pornography industry isn't at least partly due to self-interest.

Anyway, there's more on this sordid affair at the link and also some discussion on Bill O'Reilley's show, a video clip of which can be accessed at Hot Air.

It turns out that Rust-Tierney's wife is a leader in an organization which has fought to abolish the death penalty. We suspect that after this development she might be having second thoughts.

RLC

Knee-Slapper

More left-wing hilarity comes to our attention courtesy of Yahoo:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers got to kick President George W. Bush's butt on Thursday, sort of.

Performance artist Mark McGowan kicked off his bid to crawl for 72 hours across Manhattan dressed as the president, offering the opportunity to kick his backside. The controversial artist from London began his odyssey from New York's Lincoln Centre wearing a rubber George Bush mask, a business suit, knee pads, work gloves and a sign stuck to his cushioned posterior reading simply: "Kick My Ass".

Though few ordinary New Yorkers, other than fellow artists, cameramen and photographers, were present for the launch on a wet workday afternoon, some people gave him a kick.

"It felt real good to kick Bush," said Casmirr Sharp, 52, of New York's Queens borough. "He really deserves more than a kick."

McGowan told Reuters he hopes his performance proves therapeutic to the city's denizens. But he insisted his work was no publicity stunt but art: "It's definitely an art form. A lot of the things I do are a bit silly but they always have a political edge to them."

Ho, ho. Whether it's humor or art those lefties sure are a caution, aren't they? Their sense of the comic is so uproariously sophisticated, so endearing that it makes one want to be a liberal just for the laughs.

RLC

Life of the Cell

Those with a little background in cell biology might find this animation interesting.

Everyone else will find it stunning that so much coordinated, machine-like activity is going on in the tiny cells of our body all the time. How does brute matter produce such complex machinery and exquisite coordination?

RLC

It's All Too Beautiful

GilDodgen at Uncommon Descent has an interesting meditation triggered by a reading of Michael Denton's classic work titled Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe.

GilDodgen considers just one tiny aspect of the laws of physics, the physics of sound, and contemplates the amazing fact that the laws of physics are precisely suited to allowing us to experience music:

Isn't it also interesting that the physics of sound is just right to create scales, harmonies, consonance and dissonance, and that musical instruments can be made from common materials?

Music is based on the physics of sound - in particular, the overtone series which is produced when a string or column of air vibrates in integer multiples. The division of the octave into 12 semitones is not an accident or a matter of personal preference; this produces notes that coincide with the overtone series. This is the basis of melody and harmony, and why some sounds are dissonant and some sounds are consonant.

Imagine a world without music: no music accompanying the movies you watch, no music in your church services, no music on the radio or television, no violinists, no pianists, no guitarists, no singers, no songs - no music at all! Wouldn't your life be indescribably impoverished? Music is a totally abstract art form, but has tremendous power and meaning in our lives.

When I was in college I took a number of courses in music theory. I remember a chapter in a book about melody. All the technical elements of melodic composition were discussed but there was one final comment that struck me (I paraphrase): Most people associate "melody" with something that cannot be described, but they know it when they hear it, and there is no way to teach how to write a good melody. Each note seems to naturally flow from the preceding one.

The more we learn the more it becomes apparent that the universe was rigged for humans, from top to bottom, and in almost every way. Our universe is a very meaningful one.

Everything we learn about the world seems to confirm this assertion, which is why statements like that made by Steven Weinberg at the end of his book The First Three Minutes: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless," appear more and more ludicrous with every new discovery.

RLC

Triple Rings

One of the many beautiful photos taken by the Hubble telescope is this one of a triple-ringed supernova:

How these rings were formed has long puzzled scientists, but it seems now that a pair of astronomers at Oxford may have figured it out. See this article at New Scientist for the details.

RLC

Fitzfonged

The trial of Lewis Libby has been a farce from the beginning. A man's life is being devastated by a fanatical prosecutor who evidently shares some of the same genes as Mike Nifong, the contemporary Torquemada who prosecuted (persecuted?)the Duke lacrosse players who were accused of rape.

For a quick overview of the case and an indictment of the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, we recommend Mona Charen's column on the subject. It's brief and tells you everything you need to know to bring you up to speed in case, like most people, you haven't been paying much attention.

Viewpoint likes the word being bandied about to describe what happens to people who fall afoul of prosecutors like Nifong and Fitzgerald who mistake themselves for Medieval inquisitors. Such hapless souls are said to have been Fitzfonged. We think it'll stick.

RLC

Scott's Oriole

I invite those of you who appreciate beauty in nature to check out this visitor to a backyard near Mechanicsburg, PA this past week. It was captured on film by photographer Bob Moul.

The bird is a Scott's oriole, a species indigenous to the American southwest which usually winters in Mexico and Central America. Indeed, the Mechanicsburg bird, which I had the pleasure of viewing on Thursday, is the first one ever recorded in the northeastern U.S.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever" (John Keats).

RLC

Victory is Defeat, Success is Failure

Saner elements in the Democratic party seem to have prevailed over the Pelosi/Murtha wing, and the idea of slow-bleeding the troops in Iraq appears to have itself bled itself to death:

House Democrats have pulled back from efforts to link additional funding for the war to strict troop-readiness standards after the proposal came under withering fire from Republicans and from their party's own moderates. That strategy was championed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

"If you strictly limit a commander's ability to rotate troops in and out of Iraq, that kind of inflexibility could put some missions and some troops at risk," said Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who personally lodged his concerns with Murtha.

The anti-war Democrats, however, are nothing if not determined to achieve failure in Iraq, and thus a couple of leading Democratic lights in the Senate, Joseph Biden and Carl Levin, are crafting legislation that would:

essentially overturn the 2002 resolution granting Mr. Bush the authority to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and limit the military to combating Al Qaeda in Iraq, keeping Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists and training Iraqi forces. The proposal's goal, officials said, would be to allow combat forces not engaged in those duties to be removed from Iraq next year.

This is rich. Under the senators' proposal the American military will be limited to combat only against al Qaeda in Iraq. I wonder if the legislation will require the al Qaeda cadres to identify themselves to American troops so that our forces will know whether or not they can proceed to shoot them. I wonder, too, if august worthies like Joe "Obama's the cleanest black ever to run for president" Biden have considered that, in the unlikely event their legislation passes, al Qaeda will just change its name. What are our troops supposed to do then? I guess I'm too much of a worry wort. Surely Messers. Levin and Biden have it all figured out.

For the Democrats victory is defeat and success is failure. George Orwell must be smiling.

RLC

Fear Itself

Al Gore once famously accused President Bush of deceiving the American people by screaming these words: "He betrayed this country. He played on our fears."

Well, we are now well on our way to having a national panic attack over global warming due largely to the efforts of Mr. Gore and his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Even small children are reportedly being frightened into sleeplessness by fears of global warming and world-wide catastrophe.

One wonders whether Mr. Gore would agree that An Inconvenient Truth plays on our fears. Probably not. Only Republicans do that.

RLC

Behind the Contretemps

You've probably heard about the dust-up between the Clinton camp and the Obama people over remarks made by Hollywood producer David Geffen at a fund-raiser for Obama. What hasn't been speculated upon much in the media is why Geffen has turned away from the Clintons, with whom he was once very close, and thrown his Hollywood heft behind Obama.

Here's why:

One of Geffen's causes was the release of Leonard Peltier, a Native-American convicted of murdering two FBI agents back in the 80's. Geffen believes Peltier is innocent and had urged President Clinton to pardon him, but Clinton declined. Geffen, though disappointed, accepted this decision. Then came the last days of the Clinton presidency and a flurry of pardons were issued, among them were these:

Marc Rich was indicted on tax evasion, commodities fraud and other charges in 1983 and fled to Switzerland. After Clinton pardoned him, a House committee probing Clinton's pardons sought testimony from Rich's ex-wife Denise, who had been a major contributor to Democratic causes - including Hillary's Senate campaign and the Clinton Presidential Library. Denise Rich invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Almon Glenn Braswell was pardoned of his mail fraud and perjury convictions after paying about $200,000 to Hillary's brother, Hugh Rodham, to represent his case for clemency. He later returned the payments, but he too invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Congressional hearing.

In 2000, Clinton had pardoned Vonna Jo Gregory, owner of the carnival company United Shows International, and her husband Edgar for a 1982 bank fraud conviction. After the pardon, the company gave Hillary's brother Anthony Rodham $107,000 in "loans" that he has never repaid.

On his last day in office, Clinton pardoned his old friend Susan McDougal, who had already completed her sentence for her role in the Whitewater scandal.

Clinton also pardoned his brother Roger on drug charges, and former Housing secretary Henry Cisneros, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about payments to a mistress.

Clinton slashed the prison sentences of four men convicted of stealing millions in federal grants. The men were from a community of Hasidic Jews in New Square, N.Y., which voted 1,400 to 12 in favor of Hillary Clinton in her first Senate race.

Clinton also commuted the sentences - over the objections of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office - of 11 members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group that set off more than 100 bombs in the U.S. The large Puerto Rican community in New York City supports Democrats.

Geffen was apparently angered by the fact that a man he believed to be innocent of any crime was left unpardoned but this parade of corrupt and criminal cronies and others were released by the president. Especially galling was the pardon of Marc Rich whose beautiful wife apparently bought his release through political contributions of one sort or another. Geffen saw this as something of a betrayal by the Clintons and has consequently joined the swelling ranks of Democrats who've come to despise the Clintons for the cavalier way in which they use and discard people according to how useful they are to them.

It's beginning to look as though Hillary will have to fight hard for her party's nomination and, if she gets it, enthusiasm for her candidacy will be subdued among those Democrats who know her.

RLC

Unlocking the Mystery of Life

One of the finest videos on intelligent design is one titled Unlocking the Mystery of Life. It lays out some of the early history of the ID movement and addresses two major points of conflict with Darwinian naturalism: The origin of life and the origin of specified complexity. The theoretical stuff is interesting and the computer animations are breathtaking.

For a sample of the latter take a look at this clip which illustrates just a few of the processes involved in the cell's manufacture of proteins. It's nothing short of astounding.

RLC

Bribe Me Later

For those too young to remember the Abscam scandal that resulted in six Democrats and one Republican going to jail, Ann Coulter offers a quick summary. Her purpose, of course, is to highlight the venality of a young congressman named John Murtha, who was caught on tape discussing bribes with an undercover FBI agent.

This is the man who is leading the Democrats, and our nation, up Surrender Hill. It's ironic that the Democrats would feature a congressman with one of the most questionable ethical reputations in Washington as a key leader in what they purport to be a kind of moral quest, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

Read Coulter's piece to learn a little bit about the kind of man it is who is scheming to deny the president the ability to reinforce the troops in Iraq.

RLC

Evil America

Randall Hoven at The American Thinker offers a salutary, and fairly brief, history lesson for those who wonder about the claim that the United States is a dangerous, perhaps evil, force on the world stage. Hoven shows that such a claim can only be made by those who either have no idea what has transpired around the world in the last seventy years or who are being deliberately dishonest.

Students who sit in classrooms where this meme is regularly trotted out by leftist instructors will especially benefit from reading the piece.

RLC

Why We Must Win

This is yet another illustration of why we must win the war against Islamo-fascism. If we lose heart, as some already have, what happened to Zilla Usman will eventually happen to women throughout the West.

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a "fanatic", who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.

Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

The attack happened in Gujranwala, 120 miles southeast of Islamabad, where the minister's office is based. As Usman, 35, stepped out of her car - where she was greeted by her co-workers throwing rose petals - the attacker pulled out a pistol and fired a single shot at close range, hitting her in the head. She was airlifted to hospital in the provincial capital Lahore, but died soon afterwards.

The gunman, Mohammad Sarwar, was overpowered by the minister's driver and arrested by police. A stone mason in his mid 40s, he is not thought to belong to any radical group but is known for his fanaticism. He was previously held in 2002 in connection with the killing and mutilation of four prostitutes, but was never convicted due to lack of evidence.

Sarwar appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God's order to kill women who sinned. "I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah's commandment," he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. "I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again," he said.

"He is basically a fanatic," Raja Basharat, the Punjab Law Minister, said. "He is against the involvement of women in politics and government affairs." A police statement added: "He considers it contrary to the teachings of Allah for a woman to become a minister or a ruler. That's why he committed this action."

"He killed her because she was not observing the Islamic code of dress. She was also campaigning for emancipation of women," said Nazir Ahmad, a local officer.

Usman, a married mother of two sons, joined the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League after being elected in 2002. A strong supporter of the President's policy of "enlightened moderation" - designed to tackle extremism - she was appointed to her current post in December last year according to her government biography.

A culture which gives a slap on the wrist to rapists, which turns a blind eye to "honor" killings, which punishes children by driving automobiles over their arms,

which hangs teenagers for being homosexual,

and which produces people who believe they're doing God's will by killing women who don't "know their place", is not just retrograde and dysfunctional. It's diseased.

Yet it is just such a culture as this which the Islamo-fascists wish to impose on the whole world, and they are prepared to use whatever means necessary to do it.

RLC

Deep Impact

As if we didn't have enough to worry about:

An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.

If you like to worry about things you can do nothing about you can read the rest of the article here.

RLC