MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• No deal on settlement freeze extension. American officials: US dropped construction moratorium demand, will continue peace efforts.America losing its patience: Almost a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked his ministers to approve a settlement freeze extension in exchange for a US benefit package, American officials are saying that efforts to extend the moratorium have failed. Following the failure, American officials said that the US is mulling the possibility of resuming proximity talks between the sides. Meanwhile, Ynet learned that Israeli officials are looking into the possibility of offering another withdrawal to the Palestinians and handing over security powers to the Palestinian Authority.Two US officials familiar with months of failed efforts to get Israel to reinstate a freeze on some new construction said Tuesday the administration has concluded that is not the best way to restart the stalled talks.Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The officials stressed that the administration was not giving up in trying to broker a peace deal and noted that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will be visiting Washington next week for consultations. One official compared the situation to the indirect talks that existed before the face-to-face negotiations were launched in early September. "In the coming days and weeks we will engage with both sides on the core substantive issues as well as with Arab states and other international partners with the goal of working toward a framework on all permanent status issues," the first official said.Hmmmmm....i think pretty soon we'll see the "They don't trust me because of my middle name" impose a  peaceplan.Read the full story here.

• Developing story !Authorities Make Arrest in Alleged Plot to Blow Up Military Recruitment Center.Authorities say an individual has been arrested in the Baltimore area for plotting to blow up a military recruitment center.Antonio Martinez, a Muslim convert who called himself Muhammed Hussain, was arrested and will appear in federal court on Wednesday, Fox News confirms. An official told Fox News that the arrest was part of a sting operation and that there is no threat to the American public. The official said the suspect was given a phony bomb and was arrested after trying to detonate itThe law enforcement sources said the man was caught in an FBI sting operation similar to one in Portland, Oregon, which led to the arrest of 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali-born U.S. citizen. Mohamud is accused of plotting to drive a truck bomb into the city's Christmas tree-lighting ceremony..Hmmmm....Outrage by CAIR in 3....2...1.Read the full story here and here.

• HT:TheBlaze."The War On Christmas".PA Town Removes 57-Year-Old Nativity Scene From Gov’t Building: ‘Highly Disrespectful’.A small Pennsylvania town has removed a Nativity scene from its borough building after a resident complained that the creche is offensive to non-Christians. And while town leaders say they don’t like having to remove it, they are legally obligated.WPXI in Pittsburgh reports Canonsburg Borough and its Manager Terry Hazlett received a written complaint last week from resident Megan Hartley who said the creche was disrespectful to citizens who aren‘t Christian and that it shouldn’t be displayed at a government building.“I think that it is highly disrespectful to the citizens of this Borough that are not Christian to have Christian iconography displayed on government property,” she reportedly wrote, “a government that is supposed to represent all of the citizens, not just the majority.”In response to the complaint, Hazlett asked the local Knights of Columbus chapter, which owns the scene and has been displaying it at the borough buiding for 57 years, to remove it. The group obliged, and has since relocated the creche to a nearby business.That upset local Knights of Columbus member Robert Clark, who told the Observer-Reporter that the removal of the creche offends him.“I think that we have to show tolerance to one another,” Clark said. “It’s disrespectful to my rights, too.”According to the Canonsburg Borough website, a dozen people showed up at Monday night’s council meeting to protest the move. There, town Mayor David Rhome said he has received several calls questioning why the creche was moved, and asked the council to reconsider.Hmmm.....Pigs and dogs are offensive to me,lets remove them all?Article 18 0f the Human Rights states :"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."How disrespectful is this lady? Read the full story here.More here.

• HT:BigGoverment.Pigileaks: Documents Suggest Pigford Lawyer Sabotaged Mediation That Would Have Saved Tax Payers Billions.This is a copy of a three-page letter between Michael Sitcov, Chief of the DOJ Federal Programs Branch, who is defending the government against the Pigford suit, and class action Pigford lawyer Al Pires. This letter shows Sitcov’s obvious anger at the shenanigans of Pires, and the fact that a well-running mediation, that would have saved taxpayers billions, has been sabotaged.We also print the mediation letter dated a few months earlier that shows that Pires and the government were close to a relatively inexpensive solution to a large portion of the Pigford suit.Hmmmmm....Like the name "PigiLeaks" has a ring to it,sounds like more's to come.Read and see the full story here.

• HT:BigGoverment.Pigford Witness Report: Applicant Claimed Discrimination by Nonexistent Chicago USDA Office, Was Paid Anyway.The burden of proof in Pigford was basically on us, the USDA, to prove that we didn’t discriminate against someone. How do you prove a negative like that? It’s really impossible.I was assigned to Washington for a while to process Pigford claims. We saw claims come in from affluent areas. There were claims from Palm Beach and Palm Springs, and they said they were black farmers. One applicant said they were discriminated against by the Department of Agriculture’s Chicago office. There is no USDA office in Chicago. They got paid anyway. There was a lot of pressure from Washington, D.C. to approve claims they knew were fraudulent or false. All people basically had to do was fill out a form. In Washington, D.C. they didn’t want to to hear about anything other than getting claims processed. I personally witnessed cases where the person in charge, [name redacted], a deputy administrator for farm loans, told us to tweak applications to help them get through. If they were missing information or something, we were supposed to add it to help them be approved.Some employees at USDA turned to the other side and saw a way to make money. In Pine Bluff Arkansas there was an employee that would recruit people and help them fill out the paperwork. They would take 50% of the Pigford money that someone would collect.The purpose of Pigford was to garner the vote, to buy black votes. It’s dangerous because we are segmenting society, pitting blacks, Hispanics and others against each other, we are fragmenting society, chiseling society.Hmmm......"The purpose of Pigford was to garner the vote, to buy black votes"Hmmm...to put (finance?) a certain black Senator who proposed the bill in the White House?Read the full story here.

• HT:RightSideNews.After the Mosque: Jihad on the Home Front.2010 update on Islam in America and a must read for every American, excellent sourced material.We’re going to start with Robert Spencer. You have bios for all these people, at least short ones. So I’m not going to repeat them, except to say — Robert is a national treasure. His Jihad Watch is an indispensable resource for monitoring the sorts of things that we’re talking about today and that I know you’re all concerned about. His latest book — I think it’s the latest book, “Stealth Jihad” — not the latest book, I can’t keep up. One of his latest books, “Stealth Jihad,” is really an extraordinary prism through which to view all this, and I commend it to you.The Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was presented, the Ground Zero mosque imam, as a great moderate and as a leader of an initiative that was designed to sew goodwill and harmony after 9/11, and to reverse, in his own words, what happened on 9/11. And yet, the more we found out about him, it came out — one after the other — more and more revelations that he was pro-Sharia, that he had openly agitated for Sharia.He openly agitated for Sharia in his book. He called for restrictions on the freedom of speech. He refused to denounce Hamas as a terrorist group. He has ties to a foundation that funded Osama bin Laden. He has ties to a group that was responsible for the jihad flotilla against Israel that was sent from Turkey. And so all these things came out.Also, his fanatical and absolutely adamantine immovability about this issue was in itself revealing — that he was all about harmony and reconciliation, building bridges, peace and understanding; and yet, Donald Trump came and offered him something like twice the market value for the building — he wouldn’t move. The Russian — the leader of the Russian Chess Federation came and offered him some exorbitant amount for the building — he wouldn’t move.He was appealed to by the Archbishop of New York and by other leading authorities in the area to move, out of harmony and goodwill and building bridges and understanding, and everything he was supposed to be about, and he wouldn’t.And in that was revealed the stealth jihad agenda — that it is intransigent, uncompromising. It is always pushing for concessions on our part and never willing to give a thing on their part, while adopting a pose of let’s build bridges and have cooperation and interfaith harmony and understanding, but we’re the only ones that always have to be on the giving side.
  And now people are becoming aware of that.Hmmmm......Obama "Islam is a great religion". Read the full story here.

• HT:CPT12.Video - Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.With the departure of the Bush Administration and the arrival of an “era of transparency,” opportunities are arising for the ... [See more]disclosure of new information that may shed more light on the events that took place before and after 9/11/2001. This film takes viewers on a turbulent journey through several pivotal moments in history before delving into the most significant catastrophe in recent memory, 9/11. Loaded with powerful, new footage and in-depth interviews with the likes of Steven Earl Jones, an American physicist who has discovered undetonated explosive material in multiple samples of dust from the World Trade Center collapses, this documentary presents a wide array of evidence.Read and see the full story here.

• HT:CreepingSharia.Did New Zealand ban kosher slaughter fearing trade losses with Muslim nations?The effective banning of kosher slaughter, known as shechita, in New Zealand, has taken a new turn, with the New Zealand Herald reporting that Agriculture Minister David Carter, the architect of the ban, broke the rules governing his portfolio by considering trade implications when making the original decision.New Zealand newspaper, the Herald on Sunday, obtained a series of documents suggesting trade interests and a possible conflict of interest may have had a bearing on the decision, which were examined in a High Court judgement on whether or not to make the Minister available for cross-examination when the case comes to trial.Carter owns shares in one of New Zealand’s largest meat processors, Silver Fern Farms, and the Herald reports that the email correspondence it obtained suggests that he met with Silver Fern chairman Eoin Garden and chief executive Keith Cooper in March.In the meeting, according to an email from Ministerial private secretary Natalie Nesbitt, the two executives indicated that trade with Muslim countries might suffer if it emerged kosher meat was allowed to be produced in New Zealand, while restrictions were placed on halal slaughter.Hmmmm.....Lets sell our heritage?For the "Right' price off course.Read the full story here.

• PLO: US failed, we'll turn to UN. Palestinians enraged by announcement on failure of talks aimed at resuming settlement construction freeze, alongside promise to resume indirect negotiations. 'Instead of declaring Israel responsible, the Americans are giving the Israelis an opportunity to waste more time,' says Yasser Abed Rabbo. The senior PLO official, whose stand represents the official Palestinian leadership, said the US failure proved that the exclusive American efforts had been utilized to the fullest and that "we must turn to the broader framework of the international community" – referring to the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.Abed Rabbo expressed his wonder over the American administration's denouncement of Brazil and Argentina's decision to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. "It's unclear why instead of dealing with the Israeli policy thwarting the American effort, the US chooses to condemn Brazil and Argentina for recognizing an independent Palestinian state." Hmmmmm....This was to be expected lets go and whine at the UN.Read the full story here.

• HT:Antisemmitisme.org.Turkey – Antisemitic features in an interview of Bulent Yildirim, leader of the Turkish IHH.Turkish IHH leader, Bulent Yildirim, who played a key role in the last Flotilla to Gaza, gave an interview to the Islamic Turkish newspaper 'Star', which is closely associated to the Turkish authorities. The interview focused on the events that surrounded the 'Marmara' boat and the developments that followed.The interview had two parts:In the interview's first part, Bulent Yildirim referred at length to the proposal of the American Congress to announce that the IHH is a terrorist organization. He again and again used an anti Semitic motive, claiming that the 'Zionists' (the term that is now used instead of 'Jews') control the United States, including the president, the Congress, the government and the media. He also claimed that 'Zionism' controls the medicine, weapon and media industries all over the world.In the second part of the interview, Yildirim referred to the 'Marmara' events. He repeatedly accused Israel of intentionally 'massacring' innocent passengers who, according to him, didn't carry any weapons. He also defended the aid given by the IHH to the Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and he threatened that IHH will not leave Israel alone until it removes its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Yildirim brought up the false claim that Israel had carried out the 'massacre' on the 'Marmara' in order to signal to Turkey that it is the real owner of the Mediterranean oil and gas capital (according to Yildirim, the location of the 'Marmara' attack is the exact place in which Israel wants to produce underwater gas). He also came up with a grotesque argument that Israel planned to attack Gaza and Lebanon and carry out a massacre there, and only the humanitarian aid organizations who organized the flotilla took measures to prevent that.Hmmm....It's a Zionist plot,thought for a while i heard Ahmadinejad speaking.Read the full story here.

• Exchange student speaks out about classroom incident at Niceville High.When international exchange student Jawdat “J.D.” Kasab wrote “Death to America” on a board inside a Niceville High School classroom, he had no inkling of the havoc the phrase would cause.It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t a promise. It was just a joke, he said.Jawdat, a Muslim, was sent back to his home in Israel on Friday evening after officials in the exchange program he was enrolled in told him he had been dismissed over the incident, which occurred about a month earlier.“I’m sorry that I did that,” Jawdat said during a phone call Monday from Israel. “I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of terrorist because the people who know me, they know I’m not. I’d like for them to give me another chance to come back and show them that I’m not.”“It was our cultural way to denounce the violence by making jokes about it,” Jawdat wrote. “Those jokes made us feel that we fight the terrorism and the violence.”Attempts to contact AYUSA to sort out the issue haven’t been fruitful, Jawdat said.“My program failed to com-municate with me and they never called me back,” he said, “which made me sad.”He and his father, Khaled Kasab Mahameed, went to the U.S. Embassy in Israel on Monday, and were given an appointment to speak with someone next week.The two spent the rest of the afternoon educating Palestinians about the persecution of Jews during World War II. The often controversial work is part of their family’s mission to create peace in their country through educating Muslims and Arabs about Jews.It’s a lesson, Mahameed said, officials at AYUSA would do well to remember.“If you want to control the subject of terrorism, what does that mean? You have to talk about it,” Mahameed said he will sue AYUSA if it doesn’t reconsider its decision about his son. Both Jawdat and his father want him to finish out the school year at Niceville High.“AYUSA is failing,” Mahameed said. “They didn’t do their duty … to teach students about what freedom means … . This is not education; this is not American culture.”Hmmmmm...it's the fault of the Americans?Read the full story here.

• "The War on Christmas"Tulsa Council Votes on Parade.What’s in a name? Turns out, plenty of emotion. Last year, Tulsa’s Christmas Parade of Lights became the Holiday Parade of Lights, and controversy over the name change has not abated since. Today people who want the word Christmas restored to the name petitioned Tulsa City Council. Council members have the final say in the parade process. This morning, they were asked to approve the parade’s permit before the parade itself could go forward this Saturday. Councilors heard more than an hour of testimony, with seven people urging that the permit be denied, and five requesting that the parade be allowed to take place. but says parade applicants were sold a bill of goods. He claims the original parade applications he received were titled “Tulsa Christmas Parade of Lights.” Bowers said he didn’t know anything about the name change till recently. He told council members, “The parade organizers have offended us.” Bowers withdrew his alpacas from the parade. Senator James Inhofe is also sitting out the event. Parade organizer Larry Fox says 3 of the 65 to 70 parade participants have withdrawn because of the controversy.The application paperwork issue was just one of the issues mentioned during the council debate. Overall, opponents of the parade were incensed that Christmas would be taken from the name.the switch was made to be more inclusive and that anyone who wants to include Christmas on their floats or banners is free to do so. In the end, the majority of council voted to approve the parade permit-- with the Holiday name -- with a vote of 5-3.Hmmmmm....once you betray your ancestors and history ,you don't have much left to loose.Read the full story here.

• Civilians flee as Philippine troops engage Muslim rebels in south.Hundreds of families in North Cotabato, southern Philippines have left their homes as government troops and Muslim rebel groups belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) clash in the town of Pikit.The latest in the continuing fight between government troops and Muslim militants happened while government negotiators are finalizing the mechanics for the resumption of the stalled talks under the new administration of president Benigno Aquino III.Lt. Col. Domingo Gobway, a battalion commander, said militias and members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front clashed on Saturday afternoon in the town of Pikit in North Cotabato. The fierce gun battle lasted for five hours, prompting civilians, about 500 families, fled their homes in the village of Macabual for fear of their safety. Gobway said no one was reportedly hurt or killed on the government side.MILF is an Islamist group in southern Philippines whose original goal was to establish a separate state for Muslims in the predominantly Christian country in Southeast Asia.Recent developments of the southern Philippine insurgency indicate a softening of the hard line stance favoring the pursuit of a sub state likened to a U.S. State instead of independence from the Philippines. The Muslim sub state will not exercise power over national defense, foreign affairs, currency and coinage, and postal services, which the central government exercises. The proposed sub state will not have its own armed forces but instead will have troops for internal security. Preparations for the new rounds of talks with the Muslim rebel group are on-going under the new administration of president Aquino.
  Hmmm....."We don't want to take over your country,only a separate state? Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.GIMF Appeals for Donations for Jihadi Media: "Jihadi Media is No Less Important than Jihad on the Battlefield"Source.

• HT:WND.U.S. calls Islamic terrorists 'resistance'.Hezbollah 2nd only to al-Qaida in number of Americans killed.Pieces of U.S. State Department diplomatic correspondence have been referring to the Hezbollah terrorist organization as a "resistance" group, according to cables released by WikiLeaks and reviewed by WND.Outside of al-Qaida, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah has the distinction of having killed the most Americans in terror attacks. It is also responsible for scores of terrorist actions targeting Israelis, including rocket launchings against civilian population centers. Hezbollah's attacks against the Israeli north in 2006 killed 43 Israeli civilians and wounded more than 4,000. And the State Department officially designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Still, a State Department cable from the U.S. embassy in Damascus referred to Hezbollah's "armed resistance" against the Jewish state.The State Department correspondence is not the first time government officials referred to Hezbollah as a "resistance" organization. WND has reported multiple times how Condoleezza Rice, when she was secretary of state, publicly called both Hamas and Hezbollah "resistance" movements. WND also reported in a May 2008 interview with the New York Times, Obama stated both Hamas and Hezbollah have "legitimate claims" that are being "weakened" by the violence the terror groups carry out.Also, at a press conference in August at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Brennan declared, "Hezbollah started out as purely a terrorist organization back in the early '80s and has evolved significantly over time. And now it has members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization."Hmmmm......Somehow for no apparant reason the Israeli people don't agree with these delusional views.Read the full story here.

• Report: Israel agrees to offer ‘apology’ to Turkey.Israel has agreed in principle to offer an apology and pay compensation to Turkey for normalization of bilateral relations which have severely deteriorated since the killing of Turkish citizens in an Israeli raid on an aid flotilla in May, a leading Israeli daily reported on Tuesday. “Israel agreed in principle to apologize and pay compensation, and the Turks agreed that if these two aspects are adhered to they would ‘normalize’ relations with Israel and return their ambassador to Tel Aviv. Nonetheless, both the apology and compensation remain problematic from legal and political perspectives,” English-language daily newspaper Haaretz reported, referring to the content of talks held between senior Turkish and Israeli diplomats on Sunday and Monday in Geneva.Officials at the Turkish Foreign Ministry refused on Tuesday to comment on the content of talks held between Ambassador Feridun Sinirlioğlu, undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, and Yosef Ciechanover, the Israeli representative on the UN committee investigating the Gaza flotilla incident. The same officials also refused to make any comment on Haaretz’s report, without denying or confirming the report.The Geneva talks were initiated after Turkey last week, on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s orders, sent fire-fighting aircraft to assist in the battle against a devastating fire in Israel.Erdoğan reiterated on Tuesday that there can be no “new era” in ties with Israel until it apologizes and offers compensation for its deadly raid, while stating that Israel must also end its blockade of Gaza.Hmmmmm......"Apologise" for defending your own country doesn't sound right to me?Read the full story here.

• Bachmann, Kline: Obama’s not saying ‘God’ enough.Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline, as part of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, chastised President Obama for not portraying America as a more Christian-like nation to the rest of the world. In a letter on Monday, the caucus complained that Obama omitted the word “God” five times during his recent trip to Indonesia and called on him to correct the record. The caucus wrote that Obama used e pluribus unum (“out of many, one,” in Latin) as the motto of the United States instead of “In God We Trust.” While e pluribus unum is part of the nation’s seal and has been an unofficial motto since the country’s founding, the group was upset he didn’t use “In God we Trust” in its place.“Additionally,” the caucus wrote, “during three separate events this fall, when quoting from the Declaration of Independence, you mentioned that we have inalienable rights but you consistently failed to mention the source of those rights. The Declaration of Independence definitively recognizes God, our Creator, as the source of those rights.”The group said not mentioning God could have consequences for freedom.“By making these kinds of statements to the rest of the world, you are removing on the the cornerstones of our secure freedom,” the caucus wrote. “If we pull the thread of religious conviction out of the marketplace of ideas, we unravel the tapestry of freedom that birthed America.”Hmmmm.....finally thank God, someone speaks up!Read the full story here.

• HT:LisaGraas.Soros-Funded Group’s Political Director Calls for Subversive Activity During Christmas Masses.This verse from Scripture will be read at Midnight Mass, December 25, in Catholic churches across America. For radicals in the pews, however, the light focused on will be the light coming from their smartphone screens as they communicate with each other and report to Aniello Alioto, political director of the George Soros-funded Progress Now, any “hostile activity” in the form of priests explaining Catholic teaching on the family and marriage.George Soros’ Counterfeit Catholicism is decidedly no longer limited to public political discourse. Now reaching directly into Catholic parishes, the radical subversion of the Catholic Church holds nothing sacred. Not even Christmas Mass.Thomas Peters of Catholic Vote first reported about a letter sent by Aniello Alioto to members of Catholics for Equality, a group that seeks to cause division in the Catholic Church here in America on issues related to homosexuality and marriage.Let’s be clear what Alioto is saying: their organization plans to encourage its membership during Christmas to bring their phones to Church and to “report” from the pew whenever a priest or bishop dares to preach about the family or issues related to marriage, and to conduct fundraising in our sacred spaces.It’s hard to imagine a more intrusive attempt to undermine the freedom of Catholic parishes and pastors to preach what the Church teaches to Catholics who are already constantly maligned outside of Mass about their views. Catholics for Equality has decided to take their fight against the Church into the very heart of our sacred worship spaces.Besides announcing new smartphone apps designed to help with this subversion, Alioto’s letter claims that activists “don’t need the consent of our hierarchy” to behave in this manner at Mass. This could not be further from the truth. According to Canon Law, specifically Canon 528, Section 2, any priest, “under the authority of the diocesan Bishop” is within his rights to remove from the church building anyone who causes distraction from the “devout celebration of the sacraments.”Hmmmm.....Where are "the good old days" when you had a guard to keep the peace in the Church?Read the full story here.

• Indonesia: Sharia Police Forcing Women to Undergo “Virginity Tests”…Islamic sharia laws in Indonesia's Aceh province have been used by vigilante groups to harass and intimidate locals, a Human Rights Watch report says. The rights group has detailed evidence that the laws are often selectively enforced and rarely applied to wealthy or politically connected individuals.Its report says sharia police sometimes force women and girls to get "virginity tests".Christen Broecker from Human Rights Watch says in one extreme case a woman was raped by sharia police while in detention. "The Aceh authorities should be commended because they did apprehend two of the three sharia policemen accused of raping this woman," she told Radio Australia's Connect Asia."They prosecuted them and they sent them to prison.Ms Broecker says virginity tests are a gender-specific form of torture under international law and a practice that both the sharia police and the provincial government in Aceh have defended.She says women in Aceh can also be apprehended not just for failing to wear a veil but for wearing clothing sharia police consider tight."And there still does not seem to be a clear definition of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in their view," Ms Broecker said.Read the full story here.

• HT:RollingStones.Meet the Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace: The American Face of Wikileaks.American hacker Jacob Appelbaum fights repressive regimes around the world. Now he's on the run from his own government.On July 29th, returning from a trip to Europe, Jacob Appelbaum, a lanky, unassuming 27-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan "Be the trouble you want to see in the world," was detained at customs by a posse of federal agents. In an interrogation room at Newark Liberty airport, he was grilled about his role in Wikileaks, the whistle-blower group that has exposed the government's most closely guarded intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan. The agents photocopied his receipts, seized three of his cellphones — he owns more than a dozen — and confiscated his computer. They informed him that he was under government surveillance. They questioned him about the trove of 91,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks had released the week before, a leak that Vietnam-era activist Daniel Ellsberg called "the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers." They demanded to know where Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was hiding. They pressed him on his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Appelbaum refused to answer. Finally, after three hours, he was released.He beckons me over to one of his eight computers and presses several keys, activating Blockfinder. In less than 30 seconds, the program lists all of the Internet Protocol address allocations in the world — potentially giving him access to every computer connected to the Internet.Read the full story here.

• HT:HewittBlog.DeMint To Oppose "the Deal".Senator JimDeMint just announced on my program that he will oppose the deal as well as a vote for cloture on the deal. He is reluctant to criticize GOP Senate leadership, but believes the deal at a minimum has to be paid for, and that we need "a permanent economy" not a temporary one as well as permanent tax cuts, not temporary tax cuts.Senator DeMint also expressed disappointment with the House GOP's elevation of Hal Rodgers and Spencer Bachus to key committee chairmanships, noting that the revolution of 1994 failed in part when the old guard took control of committees despite the huge freshman class.Read the full story here.

• HT:AhmadiyyaTimes.Faith and Common Sense: The blasphemer must not be pardoned.Allah has very, very explicitly said in the very beginning of the Quran that whosoever kills one human being is guilty of killing the entire humanity. Thus, by wanting to kill humans in the name of the Prophet (PBUH), these mullahs, in letter and spirit, want to launch an insane jihad against AllahHundreds of mullahs have taken to the streets to warn against the possible pardon President Zardari might grant Aasia Bibi, who allegedly blasphemed against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). They say that if Aasia Bibi, the Christian blasphemer, is pardoned, they will launch a jihad against the government and the entire world and kill all the blasphemers. Aasia Bibi must not be pardoned. Otherwise, the lives of around five billion humans might be jeopardised. And now the Lahore High Court has also passed an order on the petition of a private citizen that the president cannot pardon Aasia Bibi because the case is sub judice. Why do mullahs so fanatically react to each case of perceived or alleged blasphemy?The logic is very simple. Non-Muslims have, roughly speaking, two views of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH): (1) they (for instance, Christians and Jews) do not consider him to be a prophet at all, and (2) they (Hindus, Buddhists, and the rest) are not bothered about the issue at all. Now this is not acceptable as far as our furious mullahs are concerned. They demand that the world positively accept him to be the last prophet. Which effectively means that non-Muslims either convert or be ready for the sword.Was Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) the last prophet of Islam or the world? This is a tricky issue, which the mullahs are not prepared to deal with. If he were the last prophet of Islam, then it would be unfair on our part to force non-Muslims to accept him as the last prophet of Islam. If prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was the last prophet of humankind, then we must look for guidance in the Holy Quran. And if the Holy Quran says that he was the last prophet of humanity, then we must seek guidance from the Book of Allah and see if Allah instructs us Muslims to wage a jihad against those who deny Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) prophetic finality. If Allah gives no such an instruction, then we Muslims must fear His wrath because Allah has very, very explicitly said in the very beginning of the Quran that whosoever kills one human being is guilt of killing the entire humanity. Thus, by wanting to kill humans in the name of the Prophet (PBUH), these mullahs, in letter and spirit, want to launch an insane jihad against Allah.But my plea that Aasia Bibi must not be pardoned is based upon a different logic. If Aasia Bibi is pardoned, it would establish her guilt. The president of Pakistan has a constitutional privilege to pardon anyone who has been punished for some offence. Now this implies that the person pardoned is indeed guilty. Thus, it would mean that Aasia Bibi did, in fact, commit a crime of immensely heinous nature, which resulted in the death penalty verdict against her.Hmmmm.....This is the first intelligent summary i've seen on this tragic story.Read the full story here.

• Secret GOP plan: Push states to declare bankruptcy and smash unions.Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011. In a recent issue of the The Weekly Standard, bankruptcy expert David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania walks through the implications:The bankruptcy law should give debtor states even more power to rewrite union contracts, if the court approves. Interestingly, it is easier to renegotiate a burdensome union contract in municipal bankruptcy than in a corporate bankruptcy. Vallejo has used this power in its bankruptcy case, which was filed in 2008. It is possible that a state could even renegotiate existing pension benefits in bankruptcy, although this is much less clear and less likely than the power to renegotiate an ongoing contract.Hmmmm.....Sounds very tempting to me.Read the full story here.

• HT:MichelleMalkin.So much for bipartisanship: Obama calls GOP “hostage-takers,” Boehner a “bomb-thrower;” attacks lib critics, too.President Obama looks haggard and peeved and petulant at his White House press briefing on the tax deal.Exuding his typical gracelessness, he pouted about being forced into negotiations, whined about “tax cuts for the wealthy” as the “Holy Grail” of the Republican Party, and yes, referred to the GOP as “hostage-takers.”“It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers, unless the hostage gets harmed…the hostage was the American people.”So much self-pitying stuff and nonsense packed into one plaintive wail.Have at it!More: Next up, Obama calls John Boehner a “bomb thrower” and preens that he’s “itching for a fight” with the incoming House GOP majority.Hmmmm.....The real Presidential "Christmas spirit"?Read and see the full story here.

• Parents Pull Son Out of New Hampshire School Over Assigned Book That Refers to Jesus as 'Wine-Guzzling Vagrant and Socialist'.A New Hampshire couple has pulled their son out of his local high school after the teen was assigned a book that refers to Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist."Aimee Taylor says her oldest son, 16-year-old Jordan Henderson, was required to read "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," this fall for Bedford High School's personal finance class.The book is a first-person account of author Barbara Ehrenreich's attempts to make ends meet while working minimum wage jobs in Florida, Maine and Minnesota.But in addition to taking aim at the idea of the American Dream, and arguing for a higher minimum wage, Taylor says Ehrenreich also takes aim at Christians and other groups in the book and uses foul language -- all of which made Jordan unhappy."He started making some comments about the book and I said, ‘Well, just read it. You know you have to read it for school,'" Taylor told FoxNews.com. "But finally he came home one day and said ‘I'm not reading this book, I'm done reading this book, I am not reading any more of this book,' and he slammed it down and said, ‘This is junk!'"Taylor asked her son to show her what was so bad about the book and after he pointed out a few controversial excerpts she decided to read it in full."I finished the book that night, I could not put it down because I was just mortified by the take on this book as well as the language, and the Jesus Christian bashing was unbelievable to me, and that it was in our school was just amazing to me," she said."We've eliminated Christmas, we've eliminated all these things because we don't want to step on anyone's toes but here we're going to hand out this book? … This is anti-God, anti-religion, it's racial, I mean it crosses a wide spectrum of very touchy and very insulting issues to most human beings and I think that even with a parental consent it's not enough. They need to boot that book out of there," Taylor said.Hmmmmm....I can't even imagine this qualifying as a schoolbook?This book got to be on the Vatican list of banned books ?Read the full story here.HT:TheJawaReport.

• Pakistan melting pot of terror: Sarkozy.Shedding the niceties of protocol, the president of France on Tuesday described terrorist groups like the Taliban and al-Qaida as savages who claim to serve the ideal of religion and nationhood. Calling Pakistan the melting pot of terror, Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly said it was unacceptable the way that country was subvertingf France on Tuesday described terrorist groups like the Taliban and al-Qaida as savages who claim to serve the ideal of religion and nationhood. Calling Pakistan the melting pot of terror, Nicolas Sarkozy repeatedly said it was unacceptable the way that country was subverting the security of India as well as Afghanistan.Speaking in French, which was translated for the media, Sarkozy thundered, "The Mumbai attack proved one more time that terrorism is nothing but criminal activity. It pretends to act for political or religious objectives, but it is just savagery. It pretends to serve ideals but it injures them through its acts." In his 20-minute speech, he said, "It is unacceptable that India's security can be threatened by terrorists acting from neighbouring countries. It is unacceptable for Afghanistan and for our troops that the Taliban and al-Qaida find safe haven in the border regions of Pakistan. We know the price that the Pakistani people are paying for terrorism, but it is unacceptable for the world that terrorist acts should be masterminded and carried out by terrorist groups in Pakistan... I call on all Pakistani authorities to step up their efforts and show that they are resolute in combating these criminals."What was expected to be a brief formal statement condemning the Mumbai attacks turned out to be an emotional show of solidarity with a martyred city that awaits justice. Unlike the tactful phrases employed by Obama, Sarkozy cut to the chase. Mincing no words, he likened 26/11 to America's 9/11 and berated Pakistan for continuing to remain a safe haven for the Taliban and al-Qaida.Hmmmm.....Le Petit Empereur s'en va-t-en guerre?Read the full story here.More here.