Where Are My Keys?

What the heck, bump him up to First Class..

 

Very cool..

Nine year old girl has just finished her fourth year rasing money for sick kids to get Christmas presents. 

Katie Greene has been raising money to buy Christmas presents for children in area hospitals for four years. In her first year, she raised $160. This year, she raised $15,000 through her organization, Katie’s Kidz.

Katie is delivering gifts like iPods, board games, craft sets and art supplies to patients at Levine Children’s Hospital, Presbyterian Hemby Children's Hospital and six other hospitals. She raises money through the organization’s website, raffles and speaking engagements.

Well done, Katie.

It occurs to me..

That if the Democrats had any real leadership (I'm looking at you, Nancy and Harry!), they could have gotten what they wanted in regards to the Bush Tax Cuts at any point up until November.  They easily could have extended the cuts on those folks making under $200k, and left the people earning over $200k alone.  We still would have come to this same point, except the Left would have the "glory" of helping the middle and lower class, while leaving the "rich" out of the equation.  Then the Republicans would have had the challenging position to try and keep the cuts for the "rich" (a fight I don't think they would have pressed on).

Pelosi and Reid (and Obama) missed an opportunity to walk away from this situation winners, instead they look like the losers.

They kept kicking the issue down the road, got their asses handed to them in November, then scrambled to pick up the pieces.  The writing was on the wall, they chose to ignore it, and hope for the best.  Didn't quite work out that way, did it? 

Looks like Grover Norquist agrees with me:

According to Norquist, this GOP victory is really a failure on the part of Democrats, who had every opportunity to extend most of the Bust tax rates (and to take the political credit). Their failure to do so not only exposes the party’s ideological commitment to higher taxes, but puts them on poor footing politically. “Look at the last four years,” he says. “They never intended to extend the rates for anyone, or they’d have done it by now.”

Score one for Karma..

From Legal Insurrection, we learn that what goes around, comes around:

A traditional method of sending a powerful message to those who seek to harm you is to use their own weapons against them.

The Israelis did this to great effect during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in which the Israelis captured an almost unimaginable quantity of Soviet weapons supplied to the PLO and other Palestinian groups.  Those captured weapons (particularly rocket launchers) were then used against the PLO in the seige of Beirut, and after the war recycled into efforts against the Soviets and their sponsored terrorists groups and governments.

Using weapons supplied by your enemy makes it harder assign public blame (since you would have to admit supplying the weapons in the first place).  But more important, it lets your enemy know that what goes around comes around.

Two senior Iranian nuclear scientists recently were attacked in Tehran by bombs attached by passing motorcyclists to their cars.  One of the scientists (who reportedly headed Iran's anti-stuxnet efforts) was killed, and the other seriously wounded.

Now, as reported by DEBKAFile, it turns out the "sticky bombs" were recycled from weapons provided by Iran to al-Qaeda in Iraq:

The sticky bombs used by the assassins were of Iranian manufacture. Al Qods Brigades arms designers had developed them for Al Qaeda's use in its terrorist attacks in Iraq. Bomb fragments found in the two cars led investigators to the discovery that the bombs Al Qods had smuggled into Iraq had been shipped back to Tehran in a clandestine "boomerang" operation set up by the party which orchestrated the attacks on the scientists.

Another of those "too good not to be true" moments.

Whoops.

Seems Harry Reid was for changes to the 14th Amendment, before he was against it.  I'm sure Sharron Angle will get this new information into an ad very quickly.

The bill appears to have gone nowhere, and it’s not clear whether it would have been effective or not.  If the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship no matter whether the parents are in the US legally, legislation won’t undo that.  It would take a constitutional amendment — which may be why S1351 never went anywhere in 1993 or 1994 in the 103rd Session of Congress.

On the other hand, the proviso of “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the language of the 14th Amendment leaves a good basis for courts to determine a meaning that requires one parent to either be a citizen or to have entered the country legally.  As far as I’ve seen, that argument hasn’t been tested in court to see whether a constitutional amendment is even required.  In that case, a bill passed by Congress like S1351 would at least give the courts a sense of Congress on the meaning of the 14th amendment, although a court wouldn’t be required to make that an overriding consideration.

In any case, this shows the utter hypocrisy of Harry Reid and Democrats in general in their effort to paint questions over birthright citizenship as somehow extreme.  Reid himself thought it important enough to draft and submit legislation to limit it to its common-sense application to those legally in the US.

What I find particularly interesting is the summary of the Reid bill:

"A bill to curb criminal activity by aliens, to defend against acts of international terrorism, to protect American workers from unfair labor competition, and to relieve pressure on public services by strengthening border security and stabilizing immigration into the United States."

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in Nevada.  It may not help Angle, but it will hurt Reid.  To what extent remains to be seen.

 

Mark Foley morphs into Charlie Rangel..

Just as Foley became the focal point of what was wrong with Republicans, Charles Rangel will be front and center for the Democrats in September:

The allegations — which include failure to report rental income from vacation property in the Dominican Republic and to report more than $600,000 in assets on his congressional financial disclosure statements — came as lawyers for Rangel and the House ethics committee worked on a plea deal.

One was struck, people familiar with the talks said, but Republicans indicated it was too late.

The deal between the lawyers will have little meaning if the committee members don't approve it, and Republicans said at the proceeding they were insisting on going forward with a trial. The panel is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

"Mr. Rangel was given multiple opportunities to settle this matter. Instead, he chose to move forward to the public trial phase," said Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama, the senior Republican on the ethics panel

Chairman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has made clear that she wants the committee to be unanimous — leaving little chance for agreement without Rangel capitulating on virtually all counts.

Many Democrats had urged Rangel to settle the case to avoid the prospect of televised hearings right before November congressional elections that will determine which party controls Congress next year.

However, as Thursday's public airing of the charges drew nearer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem resigned to the case proceeding.

"The chips will have to fall where they may politically," she told reporters. Pursuing ethics cases against House members is "a serious responsibility that we have," she said.

Too bad you didn't live up to your pledge of "draining the swamp", Ms. Pelosi.  If you would have, you wouldn't have this issue haunting you before the mid-term elections.

Justice is finally served..

Lawyer who abetted terrorists will likely live her last years behind bars:

After receiving a slap on the wrist four years ago for aiding and abetting Islamist terrorism, the bell is finally tolling for disbarred lawyer Lynne Stewart.

Stewart received a mere 28-month sentence in 2006 for passing on orders from her client, the so-called Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his Egyptian terrorist organization known as the Islamic Group. Abdel-Rahman, who is also spiritual leader of al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups, was convicted for orchestrating the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.

Abdel-Rahman also issued a religious edict condemning Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to death. Soon after, fundamentalists assassinated Sadat in 1981. Abdel-Rahman’s group also tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. To force the release of their leader, the group murdered 62 people in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997.

Stewart cheered on her client, hailing him as a freedom fighter. “Islamic revolution is the only hope” for the oppressed peoples of Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia, she told a Marxist magazine in 2002. “If their people see that they want to reinstate a system of law and government that was in existence for hundreds and hundreds of years, I’m not going to judge.”

Now the septuagenarian Stewart will have plenty of time to ruminate and reflect on revolution and oppression. She has just been re-sentenced, this time to a 10-year prison term.

It’s only one third of the 30-year term the U.S. government sought but it’s a vast improvement over the previous sentence handed down by Bill Clinton appointee Judge John G. Koeltl.

As I noted on the blog of Capital Research Center (my employer), some in the media and blogosphere keep describing Stewart, an avowed Maoist, as a terrorist sympathizer. While it is certainly true that Stewart sympathized with terrorists, such a description does not get to the heart of her misdeeds.

Stewart violated federal prison procedures for dangerous offenders such as her client and deliberately conveyed orders from the client to his murderous terrorist group in Egypt. In doing so she became a terrorist in her own right and back in the old days would have been put to death.

If there is any justice in this world Stewart will live out the rest of her natural life behind bars where she belongs.

Hard to disagree with that.

Poetic justice?

One of those stupid horns claims a victim.

Insurance saleswoman Yvonne Mayer, 29, was unable to speak or eat for two days after ripping her windpipe when she blew the three foot horn during a street party in Cape Town.

The next day shocked doctors diagnosed her with a ruptured throat and ordered her to rest it completely to allow it to heal.

The bizarre injury is the first known vuvuzela-related accident since the World Cup kicked off last week.

Yvonne, from Cape Town, said: 'I had never blown a vuvuzela before but was given one at work and was going to watch the first South Africa match so thought I'd take it along.

'I was walking towards the Fan Park in Cape Town and blowing it as hard as I could when suddenly my throat started to hurt.

'At first I thought I'd gone down with a bug but the next day it was worse.

'When I went to the doctor he took a look and then laughed.  

'He said I'd ruptured my throat by blowing too hard, and that perhaps I had been doing it all wrong.

Angry Mob 1, Purse Snatchers 0

Purse Thief Gets Attacked - Watch more Funny Videos

Nice guys do finish first sometimes..

Nice piece on Lefty.

It's not often women win the Masters, but they did Sunday.

Actually, Phil Mickelson won, but for millions of women around the country, it must feel like a lipstick-sized victory. Mickelson, in case you forgot, is the guy who stayed true to his wife. He's the guy who's been missing tournaments the last 11 months while he flies her back and forth to a breast cancer specialist in Houston. He's the guy who didn't need reminding that women are not disposable.

Mani-pedis for everybody!

Also winning Sunday: karma, which proved to be alive and well. And guys who never had a temper in the first place. And endings that make you wipe your tears on the couch pillows.

Mickelson is the guy whose heavy head on the bed pillow lately wasn't self-inflicted. Both his wife, Amy, and his mother, Mary, have breast cancer. Usually, those two are at every tournament he's in, but for the last year they've been fighting, resting, and fighting again at home. And Mickelson has gone back to his rented homes alone.