A New Twist to KSM and NYC

Much of the evidence obtained from KSM and his ilk comes from Germany.

Germany does not have a death penalty.

Germany does not feel comfortable sharing their evidence to those who do have a death penalty.

According to the current mutual legal assistance agreement between the two countries, should the information furnished by German investigators be used to impose the death penalty, Germany can insist that this evidence be considered inadmissible in court. This would not be the first time that the Germans have demanded such assurances for criminal proceedings.

Other evidence inadmissible will be anything received through coercion.

Read the link at Der Spiegel. It’s a whol new twist.

Democracy

I am not currently happy with our democracy, but I sure don’t understand the need to mutilate/kill members of another party as they go to sign up for elections.
In the Philippines:

The convoy was heading to a local elections office to file Mandundadatu’s candidacy for governorship of the predominantly Muslim Maguindanao province in the autonomous Mindanao region when they were abducted.

The convoy was of 21 people.

ps

I’ve just been asked, “what are you going to say about the bowing incident”.

Nada. Obama drives me crazy and I can’t keep up. Others have it covered.
Just an fyi to let you know that pretty much everything this President is doing makes my stomach ache. I have not passed to the dark side just because I don’t mention most things Obama.

Thank you Veterans

President Obama had a great line in the memorial service yesterday for the men and women who were killed at Ft. Hood.

“Neither this country, nor the values that we were founded upon, could exist without men and women like these 13 Americans.”

Amen.

May those who have died rest in peace and may those of you who live know that I am grateful every day for your service.

IP Address Request

IP address request, PLUS a gag order?!

Mr. Kranz is right, this IS creepy.

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

The day was June 25, 2008. ??

The subpoena has since been revoked and the attorney general’s office claims no knowledge of this meaning “U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the “express authorization of the attorney general” for media subpoenas”.
What the hell were they looking for and why this route??

Links

Kelo was for naught. New London gets to choke on all that non existent new tax revenue now.
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Losing Longmont candidate seems to think we voters are hos. Bought and paid for by Montana groups, yet forgetting the amounts of outside money spent in the last election to get the left elected.

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Sarah Palin deals with the fact that she’s attractive, while the attractive Huckabee just whines about it.
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Matt Lauer and Lech Walesa seem to think the US didn’t have much to do with the Berlin Wall going down. Lech gives credit to Gorbachev being so weak (without noting that a Reagan buildup might have had something to do with that weakness) Matt just thinks we think the world revolves around us and wants to deflect. Meanwhile, did you know Obama was black? Isn’t it amazing?
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David Brooks takes on the old Hasan needed therapy front notes in the news.

The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.

It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.

Amen.
And Ralph Peters answers the question I’ve been asking. How did Hasan get promoted?

A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.

ps – he was making 6 figures. Where is the money?

Ft. Hood

A couple things on this today.

One – George Bush quietly visited Ft. Hood on Friday along with Laura. I am certain those folks laid up in the hospital there relished that visit.

Two – the Telegraph reports that the nutbag shooter worshiped under an Iman who was a spiritual leader of some of the 9/11 terrorists!

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a “spiritual adviser” to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.

Was this missed during the FBI investigation, or just ignored for expedience??

Toyotas and Lexus’

Apparently they “suddenly accelerate” yet investigators are dismissing a lot of the cases, because…well, read this:

In reviewing consumer complaints during its investigations, the NHTSA relied on established “positions” that defined how the agency viewed the causes of sudden acceleration. Cases in which consumers alleged that the brakes did not stop a car were discarded, for example, because the agency’s official position was that a braking system would always overcome an engine and stop a car.

This reminded me of the Paul Krugman opinion on the British health care system. (repeated often by James Taranto of the WSJ)

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.

Ft. Hood

There is a story today in the NYTimes about Muslims voicing outrage at Hassan and his murder of those at Ft. Hood. I’m always happy to read genuine outrage from Muslims about Muslim violence and they did.

Then I got to this major twist from the Times:

It was Major Hasan, though, who increasingly felt let down by the military, and deeply conflicted by his religion, said those who knew him through the mosque. Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.

“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

Mr. Benjamin, who worked as a private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan after leaving the Army in 2000, said the military should have let Major Hassan resign. “They should take more consideration of the human beings in the uniform,” he said, “rather than simply say, ‘We invested our money in you and need to get our money’s worth.’ ”

Still, Mr. Benjamin added, Major Hassan had overlooked an important, and peaceable, tenet of Islam. “We do have the right to retaliate,” he said, “but he who does not is twice blessed.”

Major Hassan is a 39 year old doctor! He joined the military for whatever reasons and while I can’t find the story he MUST have re-upped during a time when we were fighting Islamic terrorism. The FBI had already been looking out for him and other psychiatrists did not feel comfortable sending patients to him yet he was promoted and never formerly investigated.

Why is that? Read the quote from the effing Times again.
Because of political correctness, this paper feels the need to say that the military let Hassan down. What job doesn’t? Somehow the stress of dealing with other people’s stresses of war caused Hassan to create war stress of his own so he doesn’t need to go to war and kill people of his faith. Bull shit.

Gateway Pundit and Hot Air have stories worth reading today and Ralph Peters gives his take too.

Ralph is right. In the name of political correctness, in order to appease noisy groups like CAIR, this Hassan, who seemed to have some serious problems and yet was allowed to council our military people was never investigated or talked to or sent to a psychiatrist of his own. He was ignored and 13 people are dead because of it. Whether Hassan did it because he’s a Muslim or because he’s a lonely antisocial douchebag doesn’t matter. He was ignored because of our wanting to be loved by everyone. (oh – except Hondurans and Israelis…we’re ok if they hate us)

Honduras

Al Jazeera has an inaccurate article out on Honduras that mentions the “military coup”, the big “movement” in Honduras against the “ruling elite”, but it has some interesting parts to it.

This quote for one.

He [Zelaya] had clearly come to confuse his personal drama with the fate of the country. Sounding like France’s 17th century monarch Louis XIV, Zelaya claimed that peace would be restored to Honduras once he was returned to power.

true, so true.

And some predictions:
The writer seems to think this whole thing is going to end up with a smoldering regional war between Colombia and Venezuela.

Another prediction:
The US administration’s reputation will gain another instance of “clumsiness”

and finally,
Boeing will lose out on a potential contract with Brazil.

Since Al Jazeera earlier told me that Micheletti was quitting and he hasn’t yet, I don’t hold a lot of stock in their predictions, but we’ll see.