Hot Air has a nice video to Jamal Miftah who was told to live his mosque after he wrote a scathing editorial about radical Islam.  Miftah is a man I’ve had the priviledge to correspond with previously, and he’s increcibly kind and sincere in his effort to expose what he believes are at least Al Qaida sympathisers in Tulsa, OK.

All right, this has become too odd not to comment on it. The Hill reported yesterday Congressman Keith Ellison called the Capital Hill Police on Congressman Tom Tancredo for smoking a cigar in his own office.

The police showed up and basically just said ‘hello’ since it wasn’t illegal, meaning the Longworth House Office Building is perhaps the last place in the United States where activists haven’t made private smoking illegal.

Tancredo was still stunned a day later. “It’s very bizarre,” said Tancredo, who has never met Ellison. “Seemed to me not a good way to say hello.”

This entire story is bizarre, but there’s a twist today. Ellison apologizes to Tancredo through a letter, meaning the freshman Congressman still has never met Tancredo, whose office is right next door.

Rick Jauert, a spokesman for Ellison, said he made the call to complain about the smoke last week. He said he didn’t think the complaint was worth the press it was getting.

“Good grief, we’re talking war and peace in a historic debate this week and people are talking about cigar smoke?” Jauert told FOX News.

Jauert also explained Ellison has asthma and those who work in Ellison’s office are “highly sensitive” to smoke. And so too is Tancredo highly sensitive about personal rights.

An Iranian diplomat was taken hostage in Baghdad by alleged Iraqis wearing official Iraqi military uniforms. A chase commenced, but the vehicle carrying the diplomat eluded both Iraqi and U.S. personnel.

The men captured in the chase by Iraqi forces on Sunday were Iraqis with Defense Ministry identification, Iraqi and American officials said, raising serious questions about whether government forces themselves were involved in the abduction.

A senior Iraqi official said that the credentials initially appeared to be genuine but that investigators later received conflicting information about whether the men had been dismissed from the ministry but somehow kept their identification.

Strange deal completely, and it will be interesting to find out if the credentials are in fact genuine or if they are forgeries. One thing is for sure. There’s little question in Tehran that Iran has officially blamed the Americans and Jews, but surely Israel would not have had a hand in this. Why would they want a diplomat when they could get a nuclear scientist?

The Telegraph notes the British government hasn’t been the scare-mongering police state critics allege, rather there have been “twice as many Islamist terror plots have been disrupted since the July 7 suicide bombings as has previously been made public.”

It is understood that details of the previously undisclosed plots have been kept secret because no arrests were made and many of those involved assumed that their plans had “ground to a halt” for “natural reasons”, such as a failure to acquire specific material. A Whitehall source said: “It has always been the case that much of MI5’s work is never made public and this is an example of that.”

Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, indicated last week’s foiled attempt was “far lower priority until that message from AQ in Pakistan in explicit terms, which activated this sleeper group into carrying out the attack.”

The Sunday Times reports at least four suspects traveled to Pakistan and met with Al Qaida leaders.

The “strategic” assassination instruction was issued by Al-Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan and Iraq to dozens of their followers in this country. It was uncovered by MI5 last autumn, senior security sources say.

As a result police are on standby for multiple attempts by terrorists to kidnap and then behead people across Britain. MI5 is conducting a counter-terrorism surveillance operation to prevent such an attack.

The alleged attempt to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier or soldiers in Birmingham was just the first of a series of planned attacks, security sources say.

The revelation explains the recent deployment of a permanent SAS unit to London. The unit has been placed on 24-hour standby to respond to a terrorist attack in the capital. It would aim to carry out a hostage rescue mission within minutes of being alerted.

We noted an SAS unit being deployed in England last week and I thought this was due to recent intelligence, but that it’s connected to the foiled plot to behead Brits is rather alarming because it shows how serious British intelligence believed the plot was.

News of the World notes the call from Pakistan urged the British cell to speed up the abduction and murder after growing impatient with the cell’s lack of action.

The source added: “They never got to the point of finding a specific Muslim target, though we spotlighted two most likely victims and gave them specific protection in case the gang made a kidnap bid.”

A Ministry of Defence source revealed: “Because they’d failed to target an individual Muslim, AQ back in Pakistan got impatient.

“Last weekend the security services discovered another message had been brought to Birmingham which ordered the suspects to strike immediately - and if they couldn’t find a Muslim squaddie, simply snatch any serviceman or woman off the street.

The message delivered from Pakistan was “if you can’t find a Muslim, any squaddie will do.”  So much for the thought the terrorist cell simply wanted to scare Muslims away from serving in the British military.

It’s snowing again in Dallas, and already there have been twenty or so hits to a previous post where I chided a Telegraph journalist for believing snow or ice is rare in Texas.

It must be all the result of those evil neo-Cons and their paymaster, Chimpy McBushitlerburton, who are intentionally trying to impose the ‘Artic Blast,’ the local news name for winter storms, on us by global warming.  Heh.

I haven’t been watching the state of the union speech, but I turned into it at a commercial break. I don’t mean to be rude, but what is wrong with Nancy Pelosi?

I have never, ever seen someone blink their eyes as much as she does nor move her mouth around as much as she is in such a short span of time. Either she’s chewing gum or she just recently got a toungue ring. Her eyelashes were sending signals to those in the crowd similar to how ships communicate without radio.

UPDATE: Through the number of visitors to this specific post looking up Pelosi and either blink or mouth, it seems we weren’t the only ones who noticed this rather strange habit.  And I assume it’s a habit rather than something actually wrong with her, otherwise I’ll feel like a jackass.

U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested top Muqtada al-Sadr aide Sheikh Abdul al-Hadi Darraji in a raid in a Baghdad mosque early this morning.

A U.S. military statement Friday did not name Darraji specifically but did announce U.S. and Iraqi forces had arrested a “high-level, illegal armed group leader” blamed for kidnapping, torturing and killing Iraqi civilians while heading an “illegal armed group punishment committee.”

In addition, the “armed group leader” is suspected of working with “death squad commanders” and armed group cells that practice sectarian revenge killings in Baghdad.

So when is Muqtada going to get cuffs placed on him for his role in the sectarian killings?  They’ve rounded up some of his Iranian backers and now a top aide to him, one would imagine his arrest is not far behind.

The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, stated yesterday in not so blunt terms ‘Israel exists.’  It certainly does, but that’s not precisely what Meshaal said, or at least in the way the news was carried out by many publications.  The full quote drawing up what is believed to be a first for Hamas is the following:

“There will remain a state called Israel, this is a matter of fact,” Meshaal said in an interview in the Syrian capital, where he lives in exile.

“The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel,” said Meshaal. “The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent.” (source)

Well, no kidding.  The state of Israel is a fact.  The quote comes from a Reuters interview with Meshaal in Damascus, where he is living in exile.  Hamas has refused to recognize Israel ever, but this statement by Meshaal is being spun into a sudden change by Hamas to finally recognize the state of Israel.

Not so quick.

Hamas denied Wednesday that its Damascus-based political leader Khaled Meshal told Reuters in an interview that his group would consider recognizing Israel once a Palestinian state is established.

One hour after the Reuters interview was published, the Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad told Haaretz that Meshal said, “Israel exists - and that’s a fact.”

However, Hamad maintained that Meshal did not say anything about recognizing Israel. “There was no change in our stance that Hamas does not recognize Israel,” he said.

Salah Bardawil, head of Hamas’s parliamentary faction, told Haaretz that after checking with Meshal, it seems to be that his words were twisted and distorted.

“He didn’t speak about any recognition of Israel, only a cease-fire with Israel,” Bardawil said.

Reuters twisting or distorting something?  Tell us it isn’t so!

The Scotsman notes Meshaal’s statement, or alleged statement that Hamas leadership in Palestine is saying was misquoted, notes Meshaal said Hamas says Israel exists yet also notes Hamas does not intend to re-write the group’s charter which calls for the destruction of Israel.

For the sake of argument, let us assume Meshaal was not misquoted and spoke of a fact, that Israel does indeed exist.  Can’t argue here, but the Scotsman notes something many well intentioned people seem to neglect every time there’s a discussion of the state of Israel.  The Hamas Charter is a living document, not an old piece of paper thrown in the closet never to be viewed or revised again.

Within the Hamas Charter is the following line: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

So of course Hamas recognizes there is a state of Israel, this has never been in question since the group’s inception.  What is called for is that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist, something it has never done and it is written as clear as glass in their charter they never intend to recognize.

Many well intentioned, I believe they are at least, people who blame Israel for the Israeli-Hamas conflict refuse to acknowledge this monumental point and fail to recognize the difference between acknowledging something exists verses acknowledging something should and can exist.  But this is the entire crux of the problem.

Meshaal can, by Hamas Charter standards, recognize Israel exists.  And he did.  By by the Hamas Charter, Meshaal cannot recognize Israel’s right to exist, which he didn’t by any means, before or after the Hamas government of Palestine’s retraction.

No2liberals has posted another story of his post-Vietnam days well worth the read, this time over at Nuke’s.

I’m weary about posting anything regarding the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Yes, I believe it was a good thing and yes, he deserved more than he got, but I long ago decided I’d try to keep this site from being just another snuff site on the Internet. Besides, who knows, maybe some children do access this site not named ‘Chad’ or ‘Debbie.’

Anyways, I have decided to post a video showing Saddam’s lifeless body because I think it’s important to see what should happen to brutal tyrants and because this is a glimpse of a historical event, for the world but more importantly for the new democratic state of Iraq.

As an opener, here’s a bit of comic relief. The ‘Dead Saddam Hussein’ video will be below the fold.

(more…)