The Patriot Post Digest 08-47

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 08-47
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION

"In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." --George Washington

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
Thoughtful Warriors

(Editor's Note: Mr. Alexander is on the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) this week, somewhere between Pearl Harbor and San Diego. In his absence, we offer this essay from conservative writer Mona Charen.)

Unlike some who shall, in the interests of comity, remain nameless -- conservatives do not cry foul when they lose elections. They do not whine that the election was stolen, or secured through dirty campaign tricks, or otherwise illegitimately won. Instead, they ask themselves where they went wrong.

The National Review Institute, a think tank founded by the late William F. Buckley and now headed by the dynamic and perspicacious Kate O'Beirne, hosted a daylong conference in Washington, D.C., to examine where conservatives need to go from here. It was a very clarifying day.

Yes, the Democrats got a big win on Nov. 4 and there is no gainsaying that Republicans and conservatives were rejected. Then again, it would have defied 200 years of American history if the party holding the White House for two terms and presiding over a huge financial panic should have been successful. Add to that the essentially content-free McCain campaign and you have yourself a drubbing.

But did liberal ideas win? Identification with the Republican Party is down. But the number of voters who identify themselves as liberal (22 percent) is nearly identical to the results four years ago (21 percent). Thirty-four percent, the same as in 2004, still identify as conservatives. And while slightly more voters expressed a desire for more government activism in 2008 than in 2004, the panting eagerness in the press for a reprise of the New Deal (note the cover of Time magazine) is not widely shared by the electorate.

Lacking political strength for the battles to come, conservatives will have to rely on the strength of their ideas. The most important battle, Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued, will be health care. If health care is successfully nationalized in America, the case for a smaller and less bureaucratic state becomes immeasurably more difficult. Throughout the developed world, in countries that have adopted socialized medicine, every call to limit the size and scope of government is instantly caricatured as an attempt to take medicine away from the weak and sick. People become awfully attached to "free" medical care even though it is emphatically not free (it is supported through higher taxes), even though it requires waiting periods for care (even in cases of cancer and other serious illnesses), and even though it deprives people of the latest technology (the city of Pittsburgh has more MRI scanners than the entire nation of Canada).

National Review's Jim Manzi stressed a theme that has been circulating in the works of Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru (both of whom spoke later in the day), David Frum, and others, namely that the Republican Party erred by failing to address concerns of the broad middle class. Republicans tended to talk only of income taxes, neglecting the FICA or payroll tax that all wage earners pay. Douthat, author (with Reihan Salam) of "Grand New Party," expanded on that theme. He outlined three traps facing the American right: 1) Demography. The groups that tend to vote Democrat -- single women, Hispanics and other minorities -- are expanding. The groups that vote for Republicans -- married women, white Christians -- are contracting. 2) Socio-economic. Middle-class wage stagnation over the past couple of decades has made the welfare state look better to more people (also, see single mothers above -- the collapse of the two-parent family is probably a greater threat to future Republican success than any other single factor). 3) Ideological. Douthat argues that conservatives have confused policy with principle and have become wedded to particular solutions (like school vouchers) instead of flexibly seeking conservative approaches to new challenges.

We will need that flexibility as well as a renewed commitment to conservative principles now more than ever as we face a charismatic new president and a Democratic Congress. Republicans have been (myopically) tax-focused, which is a diminishing asset now that fewer and fewer Americans pay income taxes.

Not all of the cultural indicators are negative. Abortion is down, as is the divorce rate (though more people are cohabiting, which is terrible for kids). Crime declined when no one predicted that it would. Conservatives have won tough domestic battles (welfare reform) before -- even with Democratic presidents. The next big battle is health care. After that, we shore up the traditional family. It won't be easy, but this is the land of opportunity -- and despair is a sin.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 08-47
From The Federalist Patriot
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GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
News from the Swamp: Filling the cabinet with old stuff

As the Obama administration begins to take shape, "change" has become little more than a bag of recyclables from the Clinton years. On a near-daily basis, it seems, Barack Obama has stocked his shelves with Clinton retreads or other longtime Swamp-dwellers. The next attorney general, for one, will be Eric Holder, Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general from 1997-2001. Holder was instrumental in returning young Elian Gonzales to Communist Cuba at gunpoint, and in processing that rogue's gallery of Clinton pardons in January 2001. Nothing like the smell of change...

The post that everyone is talking about, however, is that of secretary of state. Swamp gossip points to Hillary Clinton as the prime candidate, but despite some wishful thinking, it is not a done deal. History has proven that the best secretary of state is the one who acts as the mouthpiece of the president. Think Henry Kissinger or James Baker III. Those who do not promote the president's ideological stance tend to be failures, pushing America's foreign policy off the rails. Think Colin Powell. With that in mind, it's hard to picture Hillary Clinton as the person charged with acting as the international mouthpiece of President Obama.

On the campaign trail, these two held strongly opposing views on American foreign policy. It could be said that Obama wants Clinton on board precisely because she can make up for his own inadequacies in foreign policy. If that is the case, then what does one do about the elephant in the room -- i.e., Bill? As we all know, he has made a cottage industry of the ex-presidency, raking in millions of dollars from overseas speeches, consulting and philanthropy. As a private citizen, he's of course allowed to keep many of his dealings secret, but how many of those secret deals will run into direct conflict with the interests of the United States if his wife is secretary of state? Clintonistas say this is not an issue, which means it's a huge issue.

Furthermore, Hillary still has a future to consider. She has made a name for herself in the Senate, and another run for the White House isn't out of the question. However, if she is tied to Obama's administration and it falters, then she is likely to absorb a share of the blame. Perhaps the best advice came from former UN ambassador John Bolton: "Obama should remember the rule that you should never hire somebody you can't fire."

Meanwhile, what happened to John Kerry, who was openly vying the secretary of state post? He was recently named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- ironically, the very committee to which he testified in 1971 that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were committing war crimes. According to Kerry, our military personnel in Vietnam "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to ... the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country." Kerry then added, "There are all kinds of atrocities and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed." So now we have a confessed war criminal in charge of the Foreign Relations Committee. That's a change, all right.

A new endangered species: Republican electoral leads

When the pundits signed off on Election Night knowing that Barack Obama had won the White House, there were still four Senate races up in the air. Oregon's Gordon Smith later lost to Democrat challenger Jeff Merkley and Georgia's Saxby Chambliss faces a 2 December runoff against Democrat challenger Jim Martin. On election night in Minnesota, incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman led purported comedian Al Franken by only a few hundred votes. In Alaska, convicted felon Ted Stevens still held a lead of about 3,000 votes over Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich.

Oddly enough, Republican leads tended to vanish during post-election counting. When Alaska counted 60,000 of the 95,000 early voting, absentee and disputed ballots left after Election Day, Stevens' advantage disappeared, and Begich won by nearly 4,000 votes. The 85-year-old Stevens' 40-year Senate career is now over, though it would have been better for Republicans to run him out of town on a rail. He would then have been replaced by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

More mysterious, though, is the situation in Minnesota, where a recount is under way. Franken has steadily cut into Coleman's lead through oddities such as finding absentee ballots in the trunk of a car and "miscommunication" from election officials in two liberal strongholds which added more than 350 votes to Franken's count. Interestingly, the additional vote total for Franken from these sorts of "errors" is larger than the sum total of mistakes in all the other congressional and state legislative races combined, and the two Senate race miscommunications were the only ones from the local electoral boards in question -- all the other races were unchanged. Indeed, it's most curious that nearly every mistake has favored Franken.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 08-47
From The Federalist Patriot
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Franken's recount strategists are also calling on the state to do a complete recount and to re-evaluate ballots initially thrown out, including the assumption that any disputed vote for Obama would naturally indicate a Franken vote, despite the fact that Al trailed Barack statewide by double-digits. The question becomes whether Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (a Democrat and ACORN supporter) can prove his counting is honest.

If Coleman loses, the only obstacle remaining for a filibuster-proof 60-seat Democrat majority in the Senate is Saxby Chambliss. Democrats meanwhile ensured that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) stayed on the reservation by striking a bargain leaving him as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as head of the Armed Services subcommittee in exchange for sworn loyalty.

Updates on the liberal agenda

Plans for a second multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus package will have to wait until the new president takes office in January. Congressional Democrats admit that current White House opposition leaves the proposed package dead in the water. Of course, since the last economic stimulus package had no real impact on the economy, there is no reason to believe that this new package will have any effect either. But rather than accepting the futility of a "bail 'em all out" government, spendthrift liberals will simply wait for Barack's coronation before throwing billions more taxpayer dollars down the rabbit hole.

The plan to redistribute wealth will not stop at the gates of the "rich," a term that is being redefined downward with each passing week. Private retirement accounts are now in the crosshairs of liberal social engineers such as Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City, who proposed that the government confiscate 401(k)s, IRAs and other personal retirement accounts and convert them to so-called Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, which would supposedly earn a fixed three-percent annual rate of return. Ghilarducci admitted, though, that participants would not "earn a real three-percent return in perpetuity."

Furthermore, only half of the total value of the account could be passed on to a person's heirs. Presumably, the government would keep the other half. The outright taking of an individual's retirement money is inherently unfair (not to mention unconstitutional), but what's more important to Ghilarducci is eliminating the 401(k) tax breaks because, she says, they encourage wealthier people to save while providing no such assistance to the poor. What seems to escape Ghilarducci's notice is that people who are too poor to pay taxes don't need tax breaks. Now that Barack Obama is the president-elect, however, we can expect to see a lot more of this socialist kookery proposed and adopted.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) returned to work in grand fashion by announcing plans to submit a bill for universal health care early next year. No formal details on the plan were reported, but if the so-called Liberal Lion is true to form, rest assured that this bill will be heavy on taxation, heavy on bureaucracy, and light on quality.

Cheney and Gonzales indicted

We hate to admit it, but we really couldn't have said it better than The New York Times: "The longtime district attorney in Willacy County, Tex., is not retiring from public office quietly after a defeat at the polls this year. Instead he has issued a flurry of indictments against his local political enemies, and then for good measure filed charges against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales." That pretty much sums up the political gotcha in Texas, where Willacy County district attorney Juan Angel Guerra must have hit the Tequila hard before filing the charges.

First Gonzales: He is charged with using influence to try to stop an investigation into corruption during the construction of a federal jail, committing the "crime of neglect" because illegal aliens were allegedly mistreated there.

The charge against Vice President Cheney is even more bizarre. "Mr. Cheney was charged with 'engaging in an organized criminal activity' in connection with the 2001 beating death of an inmate by two fellow inmates at one of the privately run federal detention centers in the county, which is near the Mexican border," The Times explains. "The indictment ... asserts that Mr. Cheney has some culpability in what happened because he had invested in the GEO Corporation, a company in Florida that owns and operates the federal detention center in Raymondville where the death occurred." Talk about grasping at straws.

One might note that Guerra himself was under indictment for theft and tampering with records until a judge finally dismissed the charges. After his arrest in March 2007, he camped outside the county jail with a horse, three goats and a rooster, daring the sheriff to arrest him. Sounds like he should run for Congress.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 08-47
From The Federalist Patriot
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NATIONAL SECURITY
Warfront with Jihadistan: Withdrawal agreement reached

Last Sunday, after more than five years of war, Iraq's cabinet overwhelmingly approved a proposed security agreement calling for a full withdrawal of American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. The proposal must be approved by Iraq's full Parliament, with the vote scheduled for 24 November. Iraq's leaders expressed confidence that with most of the Shiites and Kurds on board, there was more than enough support to ensure its passage. However, there is widespread Sunni opposition to the pact, which could hamper its prospects even if passed, as it would call into question whether there was true national unity on the issue. Some Shiites are also opposed, as demonstrated Wednesday when lawmakers who were aligned with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr disrupted the parliamentary debate on the proposal. Most opposition stems from a desire to see the Americans leave Iraq much earlier than the end of 2011.

Sadly, those Iraqi opposition voices may find a friend in Barak Obama, who opposed the troop surge that made this security agreement, and victory, possible, and who consistently called for cutting and running before being forced to temper his defeatism in the general election. Oddly enough, if his advice had been followed two years earlier, it would have led to a U.S. defeat, slaughter in Iraq, and a victorious jihadi enemy looking for its next U.S. target. It may lead to that now, as well.

While Obama spokeswoman Brooke Anderson confirmed that Obama remains committed to withdrawing U.S. forces by mid-2010, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that any withdrawal should be driven solely by conditions on the ground. "I certainly understand there are other options, and it's something that we look at all the time," said Admiral Mullen. "But ... from the military's perspective, I think [a withdrawal is] best to be conditions-based." Of course, being the good soldier he is, the Admiral was also quick to say that he would carry out whatever orders the new president issued. Still, it's clear that Obama faces a Pentagon that strongly disagrees with one of his core military policies. The first few months of the Obama regime are shaping up to be, uh, interesting to say the least.

Profiles of valor: U.S. Army Sgt. James Brasher

United States Army Sgt. 1st Class James Brasher was serving as platoon sergeant for 2nd Platoon, Company A, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in December 2007. His company was part of Operation Mar Kararadad, a mission to clear the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qal'eh, Afghanistan. On the night of 7 December, the company flew by helicopter to a point just outside the city and occupied a hill overlooking it. At dawn, the company began taking enemy fire from a town at the bottom of the hill, so they moved to clear the town. At one point, Sgt. Brasher killed an attacking jihadi before he could injure or kill any U.S. soldiers, and Brasher also took out an enemy position with a fragmentation grenade.

Brasher then led his men against other enemy positions as they systematically cleared the town. Repeatedly exposing himself to enemy fire, Brasher continued to lead the Americans in pursuit of retreating insurgents, killing several more. The Taliban consolidated behind a defensible compound, but Brasher kept fighting even after he was hit in the right forearm and bicep by an enemy round. In fact, the medics had to force him to take medical care. On 9 October 2008, Brasher was presented the Silver Star for "daring acts of intrepidity and gallantry in the face of a numerically superior and determined force," according to the citation. "SFC Brasher's fearless actions and dedication to mission accomplishment enabled Second Platoon to destroy over 20 well trained Taliban fighters. His quick decisions and aggressive stance against the enemy saved the lives of his men."

The war next door

The same day that America was shell-shocked at the polls, Mexico was dealing with its own wakeup call, namely, the war on its doorstep. Why worry? Because our doorstep is next. Mexico's second-highest minister, Interior Secretary Juan Mourino, died in a helicopter fireball that killed 14. Causes behind the mishap are still under investigation, but many speculate that the crash was the work of drug cartels, as a way of announcing their intent to operate unfettered by Mexico's rule-of-law constraints. If true, this marks a substantial raising of the ante in Mexico's war against its drug lords.

This year alone, more than 4,400 Mexicans have been killed in the drug war -- more than the cumulative total of U.S. casualties since the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003. As another indicator of the looming threat, Mexico is also the kidnapping capital of the world. Evidence of this fact spilled over onto U.S. soil a few weeks ago with the kidnapping of an eight-year-old boy from Las Vegas who was held for ransom by drug lords for debts owed by a relative.

The U.S. is currently spending $400 million to train drug fighters in Mexico. This is not to say that throwing money at the problem is the answer. Neither, however, is the liberal "solution" of ignoring the problem in hopes that it will go away. The sooner the U.S. addresses the imminent threat posed by Mexico's drug war, the less costly the ultimate price paid by all.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 08-47
From The Federalist Patriot
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BUSINESS & ECONOMY
Income Redistribution: Lining up for a bailout

After years of railing against various "evil" corporate interests (e.g., Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Credit, et al.), Democrats have uncovered a corporate interest they do like: Big Auto, as in General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The House held hearings this week with the CEOs of each company, who rode their private jets to DC to beg for $25 billion in taxpayer money. Many Democrats are sympathetic. Notably, the Big Three's unionized workers constitute a major Democrat constituency.

The continuing saga of the government's misbegotten financial bailout program proves, if nothing else, that the more the government subsidizes a failed company, the more inclined those and other companies will be to race to the bottom to stake a claim to the cash handouts. Astoundingly, under the bailout program, many of the firms' bad assets remain in portfolios of the companies purportedly being bailed out, which prompted a parade of industries seeking no-strings-attached government giveaways. President Ronald Reagan once observed, "Government is like a baby -- an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." As if to prove that maxim, congressional Democrats are now seeking to give $25 billion to the auto industry without requiring the industry to fix what is wrong with it first. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) went to so far as to propose giving the Big Three $100 billion or more.

Nothing in the proposed auto bailout will reform the endemic problems of an American auto industry whose current business model was created during the FDR presidency, and which has reached the end of its model's life expectancy. But Democrats aren't worried about the health of the Big Three; they are concerned with the health of the United Auto Workers. Over three decades, the UAW managed (with a little help from corporate cowardice) to tie the Big Three to the most expensive and expansive union contracts in America, which were bound to lead to corporate bankruptcy. If the Democrats rescue the automakers, they do so not to get business back on its feet; they do it to get unions back on theirs. The Democrats are "buying" one industry at a time in their march to the workers' paradise.

Merely throwing money at GM without reforming the company for 21st century realities only wastes taxpayer funds while delaying GM's inevitable day of reckoning. There is only one solution that will allow GM to upgrade its business model to meet the 21st century: Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is the quickest and surest path for GM to shed its dead weight and regain the ability to sustain itself. Indeed, bankruptcy is the means by which bad companies are allowed to fix themselves. Bailout, on the other hand, is the means by which bad companies are allowed to remain so at taxpayer expense.
Other economic signs are mixed

In other economic news, oil prices dropped below $50 a barrel this week for the first time since January 2007. In July, prices peaked at about $145 a barrel, but analysts predict $30 to $40 a barrel before long, which would be the lowest since December 2003. That's great news as Americans fill up their gas tanks for holiday travel, but naturally, the Leftmedia is reporting only that it is a sign of how badly the economy is doing. They just can't be pleased.

Not that the economy is doing well. Obviously, the bailout is causing as much turmoil as it is purported to help. One sign of the turmoil is jobless claims, which last week rose to 542,000, the highest since July 1992. The October unemployment rate was 6.5 percent, up from 4.6 last year. Some economists predict seven or eight percent by the end of 2009.

Around the nation: States tighten belts

The federal government isn't the only one feeling the pinch of the economic crisis. The loss of revenue, coupled with a greater number of unemployment claims, has state officials scrambling for solutions to keep their economies afloat. In California, RINO Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing for a sales tax increase of 1.5 percent, while in New York, Democrat Gov. David Paterson is preparing billions in Medicaid and education cuts. Ohio, with its seven-percent unemployment rate, may, for the first time in 26 years, seek a loan from the federal government. How better do you describe "government out of control"?

Not surprisingly, the states faring the worst are those with the most subprime mortgages, such as Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada. Meanwhile, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Hawaii are also suffering from the loss of tourism and gambling revenues. In addition, the crisis in the financial markets, with its resulting loss of jobs, has cost the states much-needed revenue in the form of capital gains taxes and bonuses. The loss of jobs is putting further strain on affected states' unemployment funds.

Many states are considering using federal loans to finance construction projects and other infrastructure improvements. But this brings with it another problem: the credit crunch. Some experts are predicting that state and local governments with less than stellar credit may soon be cut off, resulting in more costly bond debt.

The only states that have weathered the storm so far are those rich with mineral and oil resources, though experts are now saying that the falling oil prices may, ironically, drag them into the crisis as well.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 08-47
From The Federalist Patriot
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Colombia to sign free trade agreement with Europe

Thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's foot dragging, U.S. ally Colombia will sign a free trade agreement with Europe ahead of the United States. Free trade with Europe will be good for Colombia, as it would have been with the U.S., but Pelosi and her fellow Democrats have been blocking the agreement for several months, citing violence against union workers in the Latin American country. Such violence has declined 87 percent since 2002, as has violence in general.

Ten years ago, Colombia was a land of drug trafficking and murder. Today, it is a safe country with appealing markets, thanks largely to U.S. investment. Since 1996, the U.S. has given $5.8 billion in military, police, economic and social aid to Colombia, laying the groundwork for good market conditions there. By comparison, Europe has given Colombia $91 million. While Europe will enjoy more than $3 billion a year in free trade with Colombia, the United States' $9 billion in annual exports there will be saddled with 35 percent tariffs. It's about time Congress opened its eyes to opportunity and passed the free trade agreement.

CULTURE & POLICY
From the 'Non Compos Mentis' File

Barack Obama's early association with two former members of the Weather Underground is no secret. Or is it? Apparently to many Obama voters it is, and it's not the only thing they don't know about their president-elect. According to a new Zogby survey, only two percent of Obama voters earned a perfect or near-perfect grade on a 12-question test that "gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign."

For example, 88 percent didn't know Barack Obama said his energy policies would probably bankrupt the coal industry; 83 percent were clueless that he had ousted all his opponents from the ballot in order to win his first election; 72 percent couldn't cite Joe Biden's 1988 plagiarism disgrace; and 47 percent couldn't identify Biden as the predictor that Obama would be "tested by an international crisis during his first six months as president."

Meanwhile, 94 percent pointed to Sarah Palin as the candidate with the pregnant teen daughter; 86 percent knew about her $150,000 wardrobe; 87 percent associated her with being able to "see Russia" from her house (although this was actually part of Tina Fey's "Saturday Night Live" parody); and 81 percent identified McCain as unable to count the homes he owns. Said poll commissioner John Ziegler: "[T]his poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace."

Naturally, the poll has generated outrage -- not against the media or uninformed voters, but against Zogby for asking the questions. It's typical of anti-gun liberals to want to shoot the messenger.

From the "Court Jesters" File: No suit for you

"Whether Jarek Molski is a crusader for the disabled or an extortionist who abused the law for personal gain, the vexatious litigant has filed his last lawsuit," reports the Los Angeles Times. Since becoming disabled in a motorcycle accident two decades ago, Molski has filed more than 400 suits against "restaurants, bowling alleys, wineries and other retail outlets for insufficient handicapped parking, misplaced handrails and other violations of the [Americans With Disabilities Act]," writes the Times. Molski made hundreds of thousands of dollars in less than two years, mostly from settlements out of court. However, a federal judge has now barred Molski from filing any further lawsuits, and not a moment too soon. In 2004, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie called Molski a "hit-and-run plaintiff," accusing him of systematic extortion of businesses across California. You don't say!
Climate change this week: I'm sorry, you have the wrong number

The UK Telegraph reports, "A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming." NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) recently announced that October was the warmest on record, despite colder temperatures and unusual snowstorms around the world. It turns out that GISS, headed by global warming alarmist James Hansen, used September's numbers to declare that October was warm. This would be funny were it not so sad. A spokesman tried to claim that the figures were obtained from another body and that GISS doesn't have the resources for quality control over supplied data. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on data from GISS to promote the case for global warming. It's just one more straw on the camel's back.

Then again, National Geographic News reports, "Emissions of greenhouse gases -- such as the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that comes from power plants and cars -- are heating the atmosphere to such an extent that the next ice age, predicted to be the deepest in millions of years, may be postponed indefinitely." So between 10,000 and 100,000 years from now, we might not experience another ice age. What a relief.

And last...

In case readers missed the celebration, Wednesday was World Toilet Day. According to Agence France-Presse, "The World Toilet Organisation, founded in 2001, aims to make sanitation a key global issue." The organization's Web site states, "Each year lack of toilets causes 200 million tons of human waste to go uncollected and untreated around the world, fouling the environment and exposing millions of people to diseases." On the other hand, one of the things to be aware of on Toilet Day is that so much drinking water is wasted because of toilets. Some are even calling for so-called flushless toilets. "This 'flush and forget' attitude creates a new problem which we have to revisit," said WTO founder Jack Sims. Making matters worse, we now have a smooth-talking liberal as president-elect and solid Demo majorities in both the House and Senate, which means there will be plenty of BS piling up in Washington, DC, in the days ahead. Flush and forget. Would that it could be that simple.

*****

Veritas vos Liberabit -- Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff.

(Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)