The Coffeespy

This is Dropkick Murphys version of No Man’s Land by Eric Bogle.  It’s a damn good song and you’re less of a person if you don’t buy it:

Oh how do you do, young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside,
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun?
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
when you joined the great fallen in Nineteen-Sixteen.
Well I hoped you died quick, and I hoped you died clean,
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play the last post in chorus,
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart, is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in Nineteen-Sixteen,
To that loyal heart you’re forever nineteen,
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane,
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame

Chorus

The sun’s shining down on these green fields of France,
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow,
No gas, no barbed wire; no guns firing now!
But here in this graveyard, that’s still no mans land,
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand,
To a man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation were butchered and damned

Chorus

And I can’t help but wonder oh Willie McBride,
Do all those that lie here know why they died,
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause,
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing and dying it was all done in vain.
Oh Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again and again and again!

Chorus

It’s from Dropkick Murphys’ “The Warrior’s Code.”

I didn’t have time to read and research anything.  But here’s Rosie O’Donnell explaining that you should get your news from foreign sources, Americans are brainwashed by the company that employs her, and Tower 7 was probably an inside job.  Via Instapundit and Hot Air:

A ROSIE O’DONNELL MELTDOWN: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the video against which all future Rosie clips will be compared.”

Is Rosie representative of the mainstream left?  Perhaps it’s just because I blog, read blogs, and read the news that I’m starting to think Rosie isn’t far left, but really a mainstream lefty.  It all just seems so ‘party-line’ anymore.  Everything’s a conspiracy or scandal.  Nobody is more corrupt than America.  Calling someone good or evil is wrong.

Yech.  What the hell’s going on?

There are a few blogs out there written by service members.  Acute Politics is one of them.  It is also one of the most thoughtful, worthwhile endeavors on the Internet.  This is a soldier on the ground, leaving the safety of a base camp on a regular basis.  This gives the blog content an eye on the Iraqi people from a soldier’s perspective.

A recent post, “FRAGO,” talks about the toll of war:

There was silence in the truck for an eternity, and then the driver whispered the thoughts of us all. In that moment, in the stillness, the profanity sounded strangely like a prayer:

“Fuck, man… just fuckin‘ kids”

No one else says anything- we all know what he means. People who weren’t involved in this war died today, and more may die yet. Kids paid the price for their parent’s fight. Children dying hits you in a way that other death doesn’t. You don’t feel the sharp sting of losing a friend. You don’t view their death with the casual indifference you might feel for adults. You feel the dull ache of lost innocence, of a lost future.

I was fortunate enough not to see any children harmed when I was in Iraq.  In Kosovo, however, my team had to respond twice in one week as a family slowly blew itself apart.  Swimming in a local river outside of Urosevac, the nephew of a man stepped on a Serbian anti-personnel land mine.  A couple days later, the uncle and another nephew attempted to retrieve their relative’s clothes and met the same fate.

That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Acute Politics gives the good and the bad.  His post today talks about some of the fighting going on in Iraq and what’s at its core.  In this post, free Iraqis are standing up to al-Qaeda and paying the price.  These are the Iraqis we’re supposed to walk away from according to our Congress.  From Acute Politics’ post, The Winds of Al-Anbar:

There are thirty-one major tribes int the Al-Anbar province. Of those thirty-one, twenty-five support the Anbar Awakening effort of the Anbar Salvation Council- the social and political gathering of sheiks and former insurgents who oppose terroism in Al-Anbar. Of the six remaining tribes, the Iraqi government, Coalition Forces and the Anbar Salvation Council are attempting to split two off from the Al-Qaeda umbrella organization Islamic State of Iraq. Those two tribes are the Al-bu Issa and the Al-Zuba’a. Both have started to fight against Al-Qaeda, and are beginning to pay for it dearly. One chlorine bomb detonated in the Al-bu Issa region of Falluja, as I wrote before, injuring 250 civilians.

It’s hard for me to read entries like that and not be disgusted by our Congress.  Imagine what happens at this delicate stage of the cultural battle described above if the United States sets a withdrawal date.  How many tribes that remain with the insurgents are likely to turn against them then?

Bah, better to ignore the situation on the ground and cite some poll numbers of how unpopular the war is, right?  After all, American politics is pretty much the same as electing your next prom queen.  Only the popular survive.

If liberty dies in Iraq, it’s on our hands.  We voted these political cannibals into office.  Our Congress is busy nibbling itself to death over retreat deadlines and spending threats.  That ’silent majority’ needed to speak up… they didn’t.  They remained quiet and now simply watch as the life is slowly choked out of Baghdad’s freedom.

Sean Penn’s underwear and Anna Nicoles maternity fraternity get more press than the war right now, because positive results mean trouble for Democrats in ‘08.  In true American Idol fashion, let’s get ready to vote for a rock star.

I don’t know your name, guy who writes Acute Politics, but thanks for doing what you do - both in Iraq and in your blog.

The “Potatoe” Phenomenon, named after Dan Quayle’s “potatoe” mispelling, has struck again.  This time John McCain is on the hotseat.  Why?  Because something he said turned out to be wrong, therefore, all the things he says from now on will be referred back to his error and declared invalid.  From the Left Coaster:

This morning, McCain once again babbled about how bad it was for Congress to vote for a timeline given how well things are going in Iraq, and then promptly ate his words from yesterday when challenged. CNN’s Michael Ware yesterday made McCain out to be a fool, and the sad thing is that Ware’s criticism could apply to any number of senators beyond McCain.

Look, McCain is a laughingstock, and the more he talks the sillier he looks. At this rate, McCain will be lucky to be at 20% in the polls by the end of this year.

What are they talking about?  From ThinkProgress, linked off Left Coaster’s site:

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told CNN that that President Bush’s escalation in Iraq is going so well, “General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee.” On Monday, he told radio host Bill Bennett that there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.”

This morning, during an interview with McCain, CNN’s John Roberts rebutted McCain’s assertions, stating, “I checked with General Petraeus’s people overnight and they said he never goes out in anything less than an up-armored humvee.” He added that a new report by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey “said no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat reporter could walk the streets of Baghdad without heavily armed protection.”

Meh.  You’ll remember Algore manifested the Potatoe Phenomenon with his infamous, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” for which he received much criticism and countless lefty apologist explanations.

I can forgive “potatoe.”  I can forgive the self-proclaimed creator of the Internet.  And I can forgive McCain saying something incorrectly off the cuff.  It’s truly a non-issue.

The ‘flying imams’ seek to sue those who warned the flight crew about their suspicious behavior.  Who are the flying imams?  From the Wall Street Journal op-ed that, I think, did a very good job describing the incident:

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Those are the words that started it all. Six bearded imams are said to have shouted them out while offering evening prayers as they and 141 other passengers waited at the gate for their flight out of Minneapolis International Airport. It was three days before Thanksgiving. Allahu Akbar: God is great.

Initial media reports of the incident did not include the disturbing details about what happened after they boarded US Airways flight 300, but the story quickly went national with provocative headlines: “Six Muslims Ejected from US Air Flight for Praying.” Yes, they were praying–but let’s be clear about this. The very last human sound on the cockpit voice recorder of United flight 93 before it screamed into the ground at 580 miles per hour is the sound of male voices shouting “Allahu Akbar” in a moment of religious ecstasy.

… 

“Allahu Akbar” was just the opening act. After boarding, they did not take their assigned seats but dispersed to seats in the first row of first class, in the midcabin exit rows and in the rear–the exact configuration of the 9/11 execution teams. The head of the group, seated closest to the cockpit, and two others asked for a seatbelt extension, kept on board for obese people. A heavy metal buckle at the end of a long strap, it can easily be used as a lethal weapon. The three men rolled them up and placed them on the floor under their seats. And lest this entire incident be written off as simple cultural ignorance, a frightened Arabic-speaking passenger pulled aside a crew member and translated the imams’ suspicious conversations, which included angry denunciations of Americans, furious grumblings about U.S. foreign policy, Osama Bin Laden and “killing Saddam.”

There’s your background.  Coincidentally, this occurred in the same city where taxi drivers are refusing to pick up fares possessing alcohol and check out clerks won’t scan pork products due to their adherence to shariah.

Anyway, while the Senate was busy plotting plodding pork, the House voted to deny the imams the ability to sue passengers for alerting the flight crew.  Seems the smart thing to do.  If the Department of Homeland Security tells the citizens to be alert and report any suspicious behavior, you can hardly have those acting suspiciously pursuing litigation.  Ah, but the bill was not without its critics.  From the Washington Times (h/t Donut):

Republicans said the lawsuit filed by six Muslim imams against US Airways and “John Does,” passengers who reported suspicious behavior, could have a “chilling effect” on passengers who may fear being sued for acting vigilant.

…

Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, opposed the motion over loud objections from colleagues on the House floor, forcing several calls to order from the chair. 

“Absolutely they should have the ability to seek redress in a court of law,” said Mr. Thompson, who suggested that protecting passengers from a lawsuit would encourage racial profiling.

Perhaps the representative from Mississippi has forgotten that in the United States a citizen can say what they wish and not be sued.  It’s called Free Speech, Mr. Thompson, and we hold it quite dear in this nation.  So dear, in fact, that we even allow neo-Nazi groups to march in our streets and gangsta rappers to get away with saying, “Kill the white people; we gonna make them hurt; kill the white people; but buy my record first.”

But Mr. Thompson wants to let the imams sue those civilian citizens who may have ‘racially profiled.’  What’s next?

After a heated debate and calls for order, the motion to recommit the Democrats’ Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007 back to committee with instructions to add the protective language passed on a vote of 304-121.

According to GovTrack, the vote was 299-124.  Also according to GovTrack, all 124 votes against were from Democrat(ic)s.  So much for ever appearing “strong on security issues.”

• Tammy Bruce notices where all the no-votes come from.  Hopefully the voters will, too, but then this didn’t get MSM coverage.  No shocker there.
• Protein Wisdom says the imams—like Jurassic Park Raptors systematically attacking an electrified fence—have found no weakness here.  Great imagery.
• Freedom’s Zone wonders why the imams get to decide a person’s intent.  Good point.  Looks like the imams have made assumptions about the assumptions people make.
• Betsy’s Page says it short and sweet: “Heaven knows, the fear of racial profiling should trump any concern about terrorism.”

 

Do people really not see what’s coming?  Instapundit gives it his short and sweet:

YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: “Spring Break may delay war funds.”

Well, Congress IS hard at work.  They want to make sure this thing takes long enough to get to the President for a veto that they can go on vacation and come back screaming that he kept the funds from the troops.  Look at the press it’s getting already.  From the Politico via Instapundit:

President Bush has repeatedly promised to veto the measure if it establishes a timetable for troop withdrawal or includes more than $20 billion in non-war funding — “pork,” to its critics — for spinach growers, dairy farmers and children without health insurance. On Tuesday, the White House reiterated Bush’s intention.

That’s right, the President will be vetoing health care for children.  Spin it a little more and we can drill through the mantle, into the core, and heat our homes geothermally.  The pork provisions were added to BUY VOTES.

Clever, really.  Buy votes so it’ll pass, add a provision to make sure it gets vetoed, then delay it long enough for the break.  Come back and declare, “the President kept needed funds from troops, denied the will of Congress, and won’t give money to the poor farmers and kids.”  Why not, the press won’t disagree, right?

No comment.

From NewsBusters, again:

Town hall or pep rally?  Hard to tell, judging from the first half-hour of Hillary’s appearance on Good Morning America today.  Host Robin Roberts lavished praise on Hillary, suggested there’s unanimous support for the Dem Iraq policy, and fielded only one audience question — which came from someone who worked on Hillarycare in 1993 and beseeched Clinton to try it again as president.

…

It wasn’t until the second half-hour that ABC disclosed that 45 members of the audience had been hand-picked by Hillary’s campaign.

Read the whole thing.

Seems my take on Chiara’s firing might apply to two other terminated attorneys as well.  Via NewsBusters:

Today the Los Angeles Times reported that 3 out of 8 fired U.S. attorneys were reluctant to push for the death penalty in capital cases.

The article goes on to explain that appointed attorneys may have a short tenure if they don’t work within their employer’s policy priorities.  I can only respond with a resounding “duh” and marvel at the Left’s need to have this explained.

But then, this is the same Left allegedly elected to ‘end the war’ but continues to push off their so-called mandate until election time in 2008.  So perhaps fulfilling the expectations of those who hired you simply isn’t in the Democratic platform.  Or perhaps the mandate isn’t so iron-clad after all.

Previous: Chiara Dismissal - No Mysteries Here

(h/t to the Donut) In the United States we have enclaves of religions that do not mainstream well.  They have, however, adapted and become Americans in the sense that there is an overall live-and-let-live attitudes.  The most obvious example would probably be the Amish in Pennsylvania.  Amish beliefs do not allow them to perform certain functions in society, yet there is no radical Amish group pushing their ’special needs’ upon mainstream America.  In return, America holds them as a cherished part of the diverse landscape.

Why, then, is America tolerating the rise of Shariah?  From the Wall Street Journal op-ed by Katherine Kersten:

Troubling incidents began several years ago, when taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport–about three-quarters of whom are Muslim–started refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol. One woman, returning from France with wine, was turned away by five cabs in succession. Refusals of service now number about 100 a month, and heated altercations have erupted.

In September 2006, the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) proposed a two color top-light pilot project to indicate which drivers would accept passengers with alcohol. The proposal, later dropped, would apparently have marked the first time that a government agency in the U.S. officially recognized Shariah law, and distinguished individuals who follow it from those who don’t.

Bad precedent narrowly avoided.  The United States has gotten in the habit of enacting laws catering to minorities (in this case, not as a racial term, simply any group that is not in the majority).  We started with ‘all men created equal;’ added freedom of religion; somewhere along the way morphed that into ‘gender, race, creed, or national origin;’ and just recently added ’sexual preference.’  Rather than moving ahead in a nation where many cultures blended into one, we’ve moved into a divided lunchtray mentality where the peas don’t touch the meat.

More from the WSJ op-ed:

Earlier this month, the six imams filed suit in U.S. district court in Minneapolis against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, claiming discrimination and defamation. Now some Muslim cashiers at Twin Cities Target stores have begun refusing to scan pork products, like bacon and pepperoni pizza, and insisting that other cashiers or the customers themselves do it.

I think we all know about the flying imams by now.  If you don’t, the op-ed explains it or you can head over to Michelle Malkin’s site, I think she has a shrine dedicated to them by now.

What do you do with taxi drivers who won’t transport people with alcohol, scan pork, or generally object to performing primary functions of their jobs due to religious reasons?  You fire them.  It’s that simple.  Terminate their employment. 

“But wait, that’s making a decision based on their religious beliefs,” you might say.  Nonsense.  They made a choice based on their religious beliefs, firing them is a choice made based on job performance.  And let’s be plain, the choice the taxi drivers and pork protesters made isn’t even based in deeply held beliefs - it’s from a fatwa issued by a local imam and contested by others practicing Islam as an attempt to ‘radicalize’ immigrating Somalis.

I don’t think I have a better way to sum up Ms. Kersten’s point:

The events here suggest a larger strategy: By piggy-backing on our civil rights laws, Islamist activists aim to equate airport security with racial bigotry and to move slowly toward a two-tier legal system. Intimidation is a crucial tool. The “flying imams” lawsuit ups the ante by indicating that passengers who alerted airport authorities will be included as defendants. Activists are also perfecting their skills at manipulating the media. After a “pray-in” at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., one credulous MSNBC anchor likened the flying imams to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

The Army had a clause under which it releases soldiers back to civilian life called ‘failure to adapt.’  Maybe it’s time the nation took a page from the warriors.

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo says:

The WaPo looks into why Margaret Chiara, the ousted U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, made the list of the Gonzales 8–and comes up with no compelling answers.

I guess the WaPo didn’t do a thorough job researching, then.  Typical.  From the WaPo article:

In the aftermath of the surprise firing of U.S. Attorney Margaret M. Chiara, questions outnumber answers. Was she dismissed for political reasons? For poor performance? To make way for someone else? Western Michigan’s legal community does not know what to think.

The Justice Department initially announced that the reasons were “performance-related,” an explanation at odds with the current consensus in Grand Rapids. The chief federal judge firmly disputed it, as did Chiara, who said she was told her resignation was needed to clear the way for a political favorite.

Some defense lawyers speculate that Chiara, who once trained to be a nun, fell out of favor with the Bush administration over her personal opposition to the death penalty. The administration has pursued capital punishment in several states, including Michigan, that have no state death penalty or rarely use it.

A prosecutor in any office around the nation that doesn’t utilize the laws as they were appointed to has failed to perform their duties.  If a death penalty state ends up with an anti-death penalty prosecutor who refuses to seek it, that prosecutor is not fulfilling their duties as required by the state.  While this may rub the anti-death penalty crowd the wrong way, those same people would scream to high heaven if a prosecutor in a non-death penalty state announced they would attempt to have a case moved to federal court so the death penalty would apply.  Either case is a betrayal of the people they work for.

So the question is: Did Chiara let her personal beliefs color how she prosecuted?

From the Detroit News:

She did not recommend the death penalty in a 2004 murder case involving Michael and Robert Ostrander but was overruled by the Justice Department, said Phelan, who represented one of the two accused killers. They would have been eligible for the death penalty because the charges involved firearm use and drug trafficking.

DoJ had to step in on one of her cases.  In the interest of full disclosure, it is important to note the jury did not grant the death request.  That’s actually the beauty of our system - you recommend what you’re supposed to and leave it up to the people to find mercy.  But this wasn’t the only time DoJ had to step in on Chiara.  Back to the WaPo article:

There has been some turmoil in the U.S. attorney’s office. A senior prosecutor, Phillip Green, was recently upbraided by the Justice Department for “poor judgment” on a sentencing matter after a colleague complained. The Justice Department has called the office “fractured” and reported that management experts were deployed to Grand Rapids.

Seems Chiara’s office had at least two problems with their sentencing recommendations.  Since DoJ thought it was serious enough to send a managment team to fix the office I’m betting there were more.  Oh wait, I don’t have to bet… back to the Detroit News:

Chiara was in office for the federal prosecution of Marvin Gabrion, the first Michigan case since 1938 in which a death penalty verdict was returned.

Although Michigan has no death penalty, Gabrion was eligible for the federal death penalty for a 1997 Michigan murder because the killing was in a national park.

But Mitchell said Chiara had not personally sought the death penalty for Gabrion, whose case has been appealed.

Again, Chiara refused to seek the death penalty and was overruled by DoJ.  In this case, the accused was sentenced to death.  Back to the WaPo story, a Clinton appointee who preceded Chiara in the same office finds no mystery with her dismissal:

“She parted ways on certain issues that they wanted pushed, the primary issue being the death penalty,” said Dettmer, a lawyer in Traverse City. “She’s anti-death penalty. It rubbed the [Justice Department's] death penalty committee in D.C. the wrong way. I know it for a fact.”

So what’s the mystery?  Chiara was appointed to represent the people in federal cases.  She was bound by federal laws.  By not seeking the death penalty where applicable she put herself in opposition to the current body of laws approved by the people and firmly against a President who was elected with the death penalty in his platform.  Opposing the man who appointed you can get you fired pretty quickly.

One thing that I find absolutely hilarious is how the lefty blogs are already picking up on this, playing up her opposition to the death penalty, and billing it as a ‘loyalty test’ (loyalty is considered a sin to the far Left, I think).  This is based on her religious views - Chiara once trained as a nun.  Those same views, I would opine, would set her firmly against gay marriage and abortion.  I wonder how loud the Left would be if she had let those views into her prosecutorial conduct.