6 Minnesota Imams drop "John Doe" passengers from their lawsuit

We all remember the 6 Imams who were removed from a US Airways flight for "suspicious behavior" that included excessively loud praying, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah," and angry, muttered conversations. Well, they removed the "John Doe" passengers who reported their behavior as suspicious from their lawsuit. Normally I'd celebrate a victory of common sense over stupidy, but they still plan to move forward with the suit against US Airways and Minneapolis airport workers. You can't expect too much good news at once... Hat tip: LGF

Duke lacrosse players delcared innocent

Now all they've got to do is rebuilded their tattered lives, reconstruct their shredded reputations, and try to recoup some $5 million in legal costs. And they're not the only victims in this. There is this interesting little piece in the Charlotte Observer which notes that this may have unintended consequences: making it harder for true rape victims to come forward. The three young former Duke lacrosse players who were accused must rebuild their lives. The university they attended must buff the tarnish left on its reputation. North Carolina's criminal justice system has to heal a painful black eye. But there is also painful collateral damage. Rape victims may find it harder than ever to report and press charges. Law enforcement and district attorneys may be more reluctant to investigate and prosecute. And when charges are leveled, victims and prosecutors could face juries that are more skeptical because of the scam in Durham. [...] Why? Rape victims often face shame and blame. Sadly, the facts of the case in Durham -- an unstable victim, trumped-up charges, a district attorney who ignored inconsistencies and plunged ahead during a political campaign -- plays to wrong-headed public attitudes. DA Nifong was disgusting throughout this entire scandal. He saw a black victim, upper class white perps, and a pot of gold at the end: re-election. Disguting.

Aussie al Qaeda detained at Gitmo pleads guitly

Al Qaeda operative pleads guilty!! Too bad that will probably lead to a reduced sentence as opposed to death. [David] Hicks, a Muslim convert, allegedly attended al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, conducting surveillance on the British and American embassies as part of his training. But he remained on the margins once the U.S. invaded to oust the Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks. He eventually joined al-Qaida fighters hours before the front lines collapsed and was captured as he tried to flee, according to the U.S. military. The count he pleaded guilty to says he intentionally provided support to a terror organization involved in hostilities against the United States. He denied the charge that he supported for preparation, or in carrying out, an act of terrorism. The charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, but Davis has said he would seek a sentence of about 20 years. He said the five years Hicks has spent at Guantanamo could be considered in the ultimate sentence. Of course now the talk is that Hicks will be sent to Asustralia, and th anti-war left in Australia insist this military tribunal decision won't be upheld down under. I'm not sure they can overturn it legally... I know Howard would never allow it, but I'm sure the looney left and their lawyers will try to come up with something...

Bush fires 8 US Attorneys!! Oh the humanity!!

Apparently the Dems never got the memo that as Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on the planet, if someone under your employ doesn't perform up to expectations, you can fire them. As if these were the first US Attorneys a president had ever fired... The key here is "perform up to expectations" as opposed to "on a whim" or "to avoid your own criminal prosecution." But the Democratic Presidential candidates smelled blood and added to the MSM's feeding frenzy over this non-issue. But who would take the the 1st place for the "best shameless grandstanding", "beating a dead horse beyond recognition", and "wasting perfectly good airtime on a major news network for absolutely nothing" contest? Senator Barack Obama needs to fire his PR guy for not getting him more airtime on this exceedingly pointless issue as well as his speechwriter for not coming up with something with a bit more panache. Well maybe not fire... that's so Republican... I opposed Mr. Gonzalez's nomination, in part, because he had shown in his role as White House Counsel a penchant for subverting justice to serve the President's political goals, and I feared that in an Attorney General. Sadly, the latest revelations underscore my concern. Americans deserve to know who in the White House is pulling the strings at the Department of Justice, and why. Anyone involved should appear under oath and answer these questions. You opposed him from the beginning. Is that really the best you could come up with? Rookie... You get 3rd place. Senator John Edwards is outraged and takes 2nd place in our little contest for lumping the firing of US Attorneys to the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and Abu Ghraib. Kudos John! Today's news is only the latest and most disturbing sign of the politicization of justice under President Bush. From the abuse of investigative authority under the Patriot Act to the unconstitutional imprisonment of the Guantanamo Bay detainees and illegal torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base, this president has consistently shown contempt for the rule of law. But Senator Hillary Clinton takes the cake and is our grandprize winner due to her complete and total hypocrisy. "The buck should stop somewhere," Clinton told ABC News senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, "and the attorney general — who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country — should resign. "I'm deeply disturbed by what we have learned thus far," Clinton said, "and I join those who are calling for a full and thorough investigation to try to get to the bottom of these very political decisions that interfere with prosecutorial responsibility by U.S. attorneys, and I think that the attorney general should resign." But where's the hypocrisy you ask? When Clinton's husband took office in 1993, one of the first actions his attorney general took was to remove every U.S. attorney. Clinton was asked how this was different from the termination of eight U.S. attorneys last December. "There is a great difference," Clinton said. "When a new president comes in, a new president gets to clean house. It's not done on a case-by-case basis where you didn't do what some senator or member of Congress told you to do in terms of investigations into your opponents. It is 'Let's start afresh' and every president has done that." Oh Hillary! How soon we forget! Check out this great op-ed from the WSJ that explains a little better how unprecedented Clinton's firing of all 93 US Attonreys was and not only the Democratic buddies he helped, he quite possibly quashed the White Water scandal he and his wife were up to their necks in as well. Mega-sooper-dooper bonus points for using the executive powers to prevent investigation into your own shady dealings! At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: "All those people are routinely replaced," he told reporters, "and I have not done anything differently." In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition. Equally extraordinary were the politics at play in the firings. At the time, Jay Stephens, then U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was investigating then Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and was "within 30 days" of making a decision on an indictment. Mr. Rostenkowski, who was shepherding the Clinton's economic program through Congress, eventually went to jail on mail fraud charges and was later pardoned by Mr. Clinton. Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons' Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint "Friend of Bill" Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas elite including Mr. Clinton. When it comes to "politicizing" Justice, in short, the Bush White House is full of amateurs compared to the Clintons. This doesn't of course mean that Bush's firings weren't politically motivated. They were. They just weren't of the grotesquely criminal nature the Clintons' were. I mean really... has our society reached a point where it's criminal to fire someone for performing required tasks poorly or not performing them at all? The supposed scandal this week is that Mr. Bush had been informed last fall that some U.S. Attorneys had been less than vigorous in pursuing voter-fraud cases and that the President had made the point to Attorney General Albert Gonzales. Voter fraud strikes at the heart of democratic institutions, and it was entirely appropriate for Mr. Bush -- or any President -- to insist that his appointees act energetically against it. Take sacked U.S. Attorney John McKay from Washington state. In 2004, the Governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129-votes on a third recount. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other media outlets reported, some of the "voters" were deceased, others were registered in storage-rental facilities, and still others were convicted felons. More than 100 ballots were "discovered" in a Seattle warehouse. None of this constitutes proof that the election was stolen. But it should have been enough to prompt Mr. McKay, a Democrat, to investigate, something he declined to do, apparently on grounds that he had better things to do. In New Mexico, another state in which recent elections have been decided by razor thin margins, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias did establish a voter fraud task force in 2004. But it lasted all of 10 weeks before closing its doors, despite evidence of irregularities by the likes of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. As our John Fund reported at the time, Acorn's director Matt Henderson refused to answer questions in court about whether his group had illegally made copies of voter registration cards in the run-up to the 2004 election. As for some of the other fired Attorneys, at least one of their dismissals seemed to owe to differences with the Administration about the death penalty, another to questions about the Attorney's managerial skills. Not surprisingly, the dismissed Attorneys are insisting their dismissals were unfair, and perhaps in some cases they were. It would not be the first time in history that a dismissed employee did not take kindly to his firing, nor would it be the first in which an employer sacked the wrong person. So sure this could have been handled better. But once you actually start to look at facts as opposed to innuendo, you pretty quickly figure out just how liberally biased the MSM is and just how much hot air Democratic presidential candidates are full of.

Several Republicans begin to break ranks and join the Democrats

They're supporting the Democrats' non-binding resolution disapproving of the 20,000 troop surge. WASHINGTON — Breaking ranks, a small band of House Republicans declared their opposition to a troop buildup in Iraq on Wednesday, and President Bush appeared resigned to passage of a nonbinding measure disapproving of his decision. Whoopee. That dumb resolution is about as important as my opinion on who should advance on American Idol and who they should employ as a judge on the show. You know what, I'm going to write a non-binding resolution that says I do not support Simon Cowell's continued employment as a judge on American Idol. H. CON. RES. 63 Disapproving of the decision of the President American Idol producers and Fox Television announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq continue the employment of Simon Cowell as an American Idol judge. Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring) JWookie (the blogosphere concurring), That-- (1) Congress The blogosphere and the American people will continue to support and protect the members citizens of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq pursuing their dream to be the next American Idol; and (2) Congress The blogosphere and JWookie specifically disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush American Idol producers and Fox Television announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq employ Simon Cowell as a judge for American Idol. I bet it only takes hours for Fox to fire him... ... just you wait and see... ... any day now he's gone... ... fired... ... unemployed... ... don't blink you might miss it... ... there will be thousands of Idol contestants taking to the streets in joyous celebration... ... really... there will...

Doctor debunks the anti-smoking data and other legislative nonsense...

I heard Dennis mention this article yesterday and interview the doctor who wrote it today. Dr. Gio Batta Gori is a renown epidemiologist and toxicologist and for whatever reason, the WaPo decided to publish his piece. Here's a snippet... Lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases develop at advancing ages. Estimating the risk of those diseases posed by secondhand smoke requires knowing the sum of momentary secondhand smoke doses that nonsmokers have internalized over their lifetimes. Such lifetime summations of instant doses are obviously impossible, because concentrations of secondhand smoke in the air, individual rates of inhalation, and metabolic transformations vary from moment to moment, year after year, location to location. In an effort to circumvent this capital obstacle, all secondhand smoke studies have estimated risk using a misleading marker of "lifetime exposure." Yet, instant exposures also vary uncontrollably over time, so lifetime summations of exposure could not be, and were not, measured. Typically, the studies asked 60--70 year-old self-declared nonsmokers to recall how many cigarettes, cigars or pipes might have been smoked in their presence during their lifetimes, how thick the smoke might have been in the rooms, whether the windows were open, and similar vagaries. Obtained mostly during brief phone interviews, answers were then recorded as precise measures of lifetime individual exposures. In reality, it is impossible to summarize accurately from momentary and vague recalls, and with an absurd expectation of precision, the total exposure to secondhand smoke over more than a half-century of a person's lifetime. No measure of cumulative lifetime secondhand smoke exposure was ever possible, so the epidemiologic studies estimated risk based not only on an improper marker of exposure, but also on exposure data that are illusory. So we're basing scientific studies and are forming public policy on nothing more than anecdotal assumptions? Great. One thing to note here is that no one is saying second hand smoke isn't unhealthy, all we're questioning is how unhealthy. Is it worth the panic that the prohibitionist anti-smoking zealots have caused? The answer there is an emphatic no. The risk of cancer due to second hand smoke is largely exaggerated. There's no reason to ban smoking outdoors as several SoCal cities have done. There's no reason to force privately owned businesses to prohibit smoking. It kind of makes you wonder what else are scientists with agendas lying about... Global warming perhaps? Is global warming really humanity's fault? They talk all about CO2 emissions, but fail to note that over the last century as temperatures have increased, during that same period CO2 emissions have dropped. Maybe those scientists are using the same computer models that back in the 70's were predicting a global freeze or reports that had us running out of landfill space by 2000 due to the overwhelming amount of garbage we produce. That's the best part about liberal agendas... you can talk and talk and talk, throwing out opinions as if they were facts and never be held accountable to them by the MSM. It must be nice. And then in the name of energy conservation, California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine has introduced a bill that would ban incandescent light bulbs... You know up until now, I'd thought the banning trans fats in restaurants was the dumbest piece of legislation going. Levine's bill is completely f*cking retarded. If you want people to buy florescent bulbs because they're more energy effficient, you don't start by banning he competition, you make the alternative more attractive. Pass tax breaks for the manufacturers and tax incentives for the consumer. You don't make light bulbs illegal. It's like California (and the rest of the country for that matter now that the Dems are in charge) is being manhandled and driven right off a cliff by a bunch of 2 year olds in the Democratic party. And dumb 2 year olds at that! "We don't like this... ban it! This makes us feel bad... ban it! Personal responsibility and a free market system? Rubbish! We know what's best for everybody!" What a bunch of crap.

Michael Richards' to be sued for his slur and expletive laden tirade

Richards' little explosion was deplorable. He's a professional and should have been able to handle the situation. He's a comedian for crying out loud... I'm sure this wasn't the first time he got some flak from an audience member. But does this justify a lawsuit? Gloria Allred thinks it does, so Kyle Doss and Frank McBride are planning to sue. Watch the video interview of the two men from the club and Allred on the Today Show. There's obviously more than the video captured, and according to the two young men they came in in a group of 15-20 for a friend's birthday, they were late and trying to order drinks from their cocktial waitress which is what caused the original disturbance. Events spiraled downward from there. But if you listen to Gloria Allred here, you'd think Richards physically asssaulted these guys. She wants a sit down with him and a judge in some form of arbitration to determine monetary compensation so Richards can "listen to the pain he has inflicted on [her clients]." Is there a legal remedy here? What about freedom of speech? Matt Lauer asked the two men that and said they want Richards punished. I think the public flogging he's taken over the past few days ought to be enough and whatever "pain" they've felt ought to be cured with a couple aspirin or a couple drinks. Are we that pitiful a society that we can't take a joke? When black culture embraces "the n-word" by adoring rappers and comedians like Chris Rock, why is it OK for them and not for whites? When going to see comedians, often times we're paying to see jokes that push the envelope. Take Carlos Mencia. I saw his "Punisher" tour in LA, and he came right out and said, why can't whites say "the n-word"? He said it, as well as others like cracker and wetback, as part of his routine and challenged any white to say it. The room fell silent. No one would even laugh because they were too scared of being labeled a racist. Hell, I can't even type the word, and publish it on the internet even though I write under a pseudonym! Take the Tennie Pierce case, a recent lawsuit where a black fireman sued the city of LA when he was fed spaghetti with dog food as part of a firehouse prank. LA City Council awarded him $2.7 million in an 11-1 vote. NAACP amd NOW are calling for the fire chief to step down because he can't control this racist hazing. Nevermind that Pierce had taken an active role in previous pranks on other firefighters just as bad if not worse than the prank played on him. Here are the pictures to prove it. They came out after the settlement, and when a chance to review the settlement was brought before the city council in light of these pictures surfacing, they still voted to uphold the original settlement, the largest in the city's history. City mayor Villarigosa just overturned the settlement, forcing the city council to review the case again. Does that make him a racist? I bet if he was white it would. What about racial profiling? It's an effort to prevent terrorists from blowing innocent people up, but some argue it singles out Muslims. Until another group, ethnic, racial, or whatever, comes forward as the dominant perpetrator of terrorist attacks and plane hijackings, Muslims should expect to be watched more closely. If purple headed martians were the main terrorist threat, I'd say the same thing. So Muslims: deal with it. I JUST DON'T WANT MY PLANE TO EXPLODE. I don't care what color, religion, race, or sex you are, if it can help the government stop my plane from being used as a bomb and in the process keep my ass alive, I'm all for it. And I'm sure some loon out there is going to call me a racist for it. Does Richards saying "the n-word" make him a racist? No, it means he has poor judgement. It means he let his anger get the best of him. But one outburst said in anger doesn't a racist make. Has this happened before? Does he think minorities are second class citizens? Does he espouse policies that would segregate society? I don't know the answers to those, but I'm inclined to say no. Dennis tackled this subject this morning and had a caller that asked if Dennis thought he was a racist simply because he'd used "the n-word" in the past. Nevermind that the man had, as a senior electrician, personally trained hundreds of minorities as his apprentices over the years and treated each one fairly and helped them get into a profession where they could make good money. In private he had used "the n-word" and his wife said he was a racist because he'd used it. Dennis made the point that Truman, who'd been instrumental in the creation of the state of Israel and had a Jew as one of his best friends, often used the work "kike" in private. Does that make Truman a racist? Certainly not. So please, for the love of God, drop the stupid lawsuit Gloria. You're perpetuating the cycle, not solving anything.

War against subversive children's games: "Tag" gets the axe

Yep, two Massachusetts schools banned the game of "Tag" this week. Yes run around, tag, you're it is now no longer an acceptable recess game. When I read the headline, I figured it'd be because it would cause self-esteem issues with kids who couldn't run as fast as the others or perhaps because we can't allow boys to start tagging girls because we wouldn't want some second grader claiming she was sexually harassed when she was "it". The last one's close, but still not quite as lame an idea as the one actually given in the article... WASHINGTON (AFP) - Two Massachusetts primary schools this week joined a growing list of US schools that have banned the age-old game of tag for fear that children may get hurt and their parents will sue. Officials at McCarthy Elementary School in Framingham in the northeastern state, told local media that children have been ordered to invent a new no-contact version of the game for safety reasons. "If the hands come out to touch, then the supervisors ask them to stop," McCarthy principal Joan Vodoklys was quoted as saying in the Boston Herald on Friday. "What we require is that children do not touch each other." What would our kids do these days if not for the benevolent protection of the legal profession? I think the "heaven-forbid-the-kid-fall-down-and-skin-a-knee" excuse is probably the lamest excuse someone with a graduate degree could think of. But it does make the kids think... Like how to tag another player without actually touching them with your hands. Kicking perhaps? Pointing and laughing? Maybe spitting on them to designate tham as tagged? Throwing a rock? That's a good way to let someone know they're "it"... Or we could just send the kids to school everyday with their attorneys, and have the attorneys' perform all required actions, while the kids stay in their hermetically sealed bubbles protected from the dangers of a stiff breeze. The lawyers answer all questions posed in class, make sure nothing inappropriate like peanut butter is served in the cafeteria, and play all recess games so the kids don't get hurt. That way we can create an entire generation of kids who never actually do, learn, or accompish anything throughout their entire lives. It'd be just like Berkeley. UPDATE @ 4:11pm: Looks like Chad, the East coast rep for Cake or death posted this back on Wednesday... I just can't get a break...