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Mark Steyn reminds us there is another Iranian hostage crisis.
How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran?
No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now.
What? You haven’t heard about them?
Odd that, isn’t it? But they’re there. For example, for two months now, Haleh Esfandiari has been detained in Evin prison in Tehran. Esfandiari is a U.S. citizen and had traveled to Iran to visit her sick mother. She is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which is the kind of gig that would impress your fellow guests at a Washington dinner party. Unfortunately, the mullahs say it’s an obvious cover for a Bush spy.
Among the other Zionist-neocon agents currently held in Iranian jails are an American journalist, an American sociologist for a George Soros-funded leftie group, and an American peace activist from Irvine, Ali Shakeri, whose capture became known shortly after the United States and Iran held their first direct talks since the original hostage crisis.
Two months in an Iranian jail is no fun. Four years ago, a Montreal photo-journalist, Zahra Kazemi, was arrested by police in Tehran, taken to Evin prison, and wound up getting questioned to death. Upon her capture, the Canadian government had done as the State Department is apparently doing – kept things discreet, low-key, cards close to the chest, quiet word in the right ears. By the time Zahra Kazemi’s son, frustrated by his government’s ineffable equanimity, got the story out, it was too late for his mother. …
Hugh Hewitt with great post on Senate maneuvers.
A remarkable thing happened in the United States Senate earlier Thursday evening, and it occurred over a rather unremarkable piece of legislation that was being debated. Conservatives, frustrated at the lack of a genuine leader of their party, may have finally found one in Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.
After Democratic leader Harry Reid’s MoveOn.org all-night session Tuesday night, a move that resulted only in helping unify the weak-kneed Republicans who were peeling away from continued support of the Petraeus surge in Iraq, McConnell, the Republican leader, served notice to anyone watching C-SPAN that he now runs the Senate. …
Andy McCarthy says the Senate has killed the bill that would have protected innocent bystanders when they report suspicious behavior.
At least for now, the Democrats have killed Rep. Pete King’s amendment which would have provided protection from being sued for people who report suspicious behavior — like the Flying Imams’ simulated hijacking — in national security cases. Michelle Malkin has the details.
Maybe it’s me, but I just find this stunning. Asking whether, in this era (or, frankly, any era), you should be able to tell the police you saw something troubling without having to worry about it is like asking whether you should be able to breathe. It is common sense — if such a thing exists anymore in Reid/Pelosi America. …
… All Republicans in the Senate except Brownback voted for the measure. Hillary Clinton, who is running for president and obviously is not suicidal, broke with her party and voted with the Republicans. So did Senators Bayh, Conrad, Dorgan, Landrieu, Lieberman, Nelson (of Nebraska), and Schumer. The remaining 39 Democrats were all nays. Call them the “Death Wish Caucus,” doing the bidding of CAIR, which is backing the Flying Imams and their alleged right to sue Americans for reporting potential terrorist activity. …
Debra Burlingame, sister of one of the 9/11 pilots, reacts to the Senate move.
… Yesterday, members of Congress met in conference to finalize provisions of the 9/11 security bill, which implements the final recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. But as of press time, the Democratic majority was using a technicality to block the so-called John Doe amendment from being included in the bill.
The amendment, which protects citizen whistleblowers who report suspicious activity from being sued, was sponsored by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) after six imams who were removed from a U.S. Airways flight in November filed a lawsuit against the passengers who reported their behavior to flight crews. …
Marty Peretz touts a WSJ column by Michael Oren
JERUSALEM–Newspapers in Israel Tuesday were full of stories about President Bush’s call on Monday for the creation of a Palestinian state and an international peace conference. While Israeli officials were quoted expressing satisfaction with the fact that “there were no changes in Bush’s policies,” commentators questioned whether the Saudis would participate in such a gathering and whether Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with his single-digit approval ratings, could uproot Israeli settlers from the West Bank.
But all the focus on the conference misses the point. Mr. Bush has not backtracked an inch from his revolutionary Middle East policy. Never before has any American president placed the onus of demonstrating a commitment to peace so emphatically on Palestinian shoulders. Though Mr. Bush insisted that Israel refrain from further settlement expansion and remove unauthorized outposts, the bulk of his demands were directed at the Palestinians. …
The Australian has a great item on what it’s like to go against the global warming crowd.
WHEN I agreed to make The Great Global Warming Swindle, I was warned a middle-class fatwa would be placed on my head.
So I wasn’t shocked that the film was attacked on the same night it was broadcast on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) television last week, although I was impressed at the vehemence of the attack. I was more surprised, and delighted, by the response of the Australian public.
The ABC studio assault, led by Tony Jones, was so vitriolic it appears to have backfired. We have been inundated with messages of support, and the ABC, I am told, has been flooded with complaints. I have been trying to understand why.
First, the ferocity of the attack, I think, revealed the intolerance and defensiveness of the global warming camp. Why were Jones and co expending such energy and resources attacking one documentary? We are told the global warming theory is robust. They say you’d have to be off your chump to disagree. We have been assured for years, in countless news broadcasts and column inches, that it’s definitely true. So why bother to stamp so aggressively on the one foolish documentary-maker – who clearly must be as mad as a snake – who steps out of line?
I think viewers may also have wondered (reasonably) why the theory of global warming has not been subjected to this barrage of critical scrutiny by the media. After all, it’s the theory of global warming, not my foolish little film, that is turning public and corporate policy on its head.
The apparent unwillingness of Jones and others at the ABC to give airtime to a counterargument, the tactics used to minimise the ostensible damage done by the film, the evident animosity towards those who questioned global warming: all of this served to give viewers a glimpse of what it was like for scientists who dared to disagree with the hallowed doctrine.
Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with people about this, I am convinced that it’s because global warming is first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase “we consume too much”. I have also come to the conclusion that this is code for “they consume too much”. People who believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones from craftsmen, and so on. …
Speaking of global warming foolishness, WaPo says all the corn planting has the potential to harm the Chesapeake Bay. Knowledge Problem gives us a link.
Allen Barra in the Village Voice doesn’t like the rehabilitation of Barry Bonds.
It’s a sad situation when the tabloids are on higher moral ground than the mainstream press, but that’s what Barry Bonds has driven us to. Watching Fox’s coverage of the All-Star game in San Francisco with a smiling Bonds escorting his godfather, Willie Mays, around AT&T Park, and listening to Joe Buck chide Hank Aaron for not being in attendance while Tim McCarver hedged on the issue of Bonds and steroids . . . Well, one yearned for the overwrought but refreshingly uncompromised headlines in the New York Post last year, when Bonds tied Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time list at 714. The Post’s Sunday cover featured a series of needles arranged to form the number 714 under a headline that read “Hey, Babe: Move Over for the ‘Shambino.’” The inside was just as good, with stories headlined “Say it taint so!” and “Sultan of Syringe.” …
… Let’s also dispense with the idea that whatever Bonds used didn’t enhance his performance. In 1999, a 34-year-old Bonds, weighing around 200 pounds, hit .262 with 34 home runs. Then, in defiance of all known natural law, he put on about 25 pounds of rock-hard muscle and proceeded to become, over the next five years, arguably the greatest hitter in baseball history. No such late-career surge has ever been seen in baseball, or anywhere else in professional sports. …
… Barry Bonds, on the other hand, was a pampered middle-class brat who grew up in a world of privilege and was merely jealous of the attention accorded other home-run hitters. He has polluted the historical record for all time.
Planet Ark says Spanish scientist has solved the case of the missing bees.
The culprit is a microscopic parasite called nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain’s honey industry.
He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries. …