Go to http://www.theartoftheblog.com for my new site.
ORLANDO, Fla. — A Florida judge ruled Friday that a Muslim woman cannot wear a veil in her driver's license photo, agreeing with state authorities that the practice could help terrorists conceal their identities.
posted by TAotB at 4:13:00 PM
George W. Bush would handily defeat Bill Clinton if they were the major party candidates in 2004. In a hypothetical matchup between the current president and his predecessor, 53 percent say they would vote for Bush while less than a third (32 percent) say they would vote for Clinton, with six percent saying “neither." Of course, these two candidates are only imaginary opponents as the U.S. Constitution restricts Clinton from running for a third term.
posted by TAotB at 3:52:00 PM
Good for him. I just hope he stands by this statement and doesn't change his mind if/when he is losing the campaign.
Wife's Fortune Out for Kerry's Campaign
John Kerry has concluded that federal law bars him from tapping any of his wife's vast Heinz investment fortune for his presidential campaign, removing an arsenal of cash that some Democrats hoped he could use to counter President Bush's fund-raising prowess.
Teresa Heinz Kerry's holdings have been estimated at $550 million or more, putting her among the 400 richest Americans on Forbes magazine's list last year.
posted by TAotB at 11:21:00 AM
New York Post Online Edition: postopinion
So what might have happened to the WMD that U.S. and British intelligence believed was in Iraq before the war? It could be pretty simple.
Hussein's henchmen may have believed that if they destroyed or buried the weapons deep underground just before inspectors arrived and kept the means of production (e.g., mobile bioweapons labs) out of sight, they could convince the international community that Saddam was a changed man.
Once the inspectors left, Hussein would simply have had to buy some of the readily available civilian materials used in the production of chemical and biological weapons, and he'd be back in the WMD business.
This scenario is certainly plausible. Here's why:
You'll have to read the column to find out why . . . . . .
posted by TAotB at 12:43:00 AM
The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's the wrong issue now. Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.
posted by TAotB at 11:00:00 AM
WMD multiple choice - The Washington Times: Commentary
We have been the occupying power in Iraq for about 10 weeks, and many of us thought we would have uncovered stockpiles of WMDs by now. But why are so many prepared, on this basis alone, to begin throwing around the accusation that the Bush administration lied to the world? At the very least, other explanations ought to be considered.
Let's start with the history. Saddam's nuclear ambitions go back at least to 1981, when Israel destroyed the (French-built) nuclear reactor at Osirak. Following the Gulf war, Iraq acknowledged it had resumed work on a nuclear bomb. As for chemical and biological weapons, the United Nations has confirmed Iraq's possession on multiple occasions.
The United Nations stated that "field tests of biological warfare agents started in late 1987/early 1988." In 1991, after surrendering to coalition forces, Iraq presented a list of its banned weapons to UNSCOM, the U.N. agency responsible for overseeing the cease-fire. Iraq then acknowledged some 10,000 nerve gas warheads, 1,500 chemical weapons, 412 tons of chemical weapons agents, 25 long-range missiles and more. Yet these proved to be understatements, as inspectors found more than these declared weapons.
posted by TAotB at 10:58:00 AM
David Limbaugh: WMDs: Don't Change the Ground Rules
Remember: The United States did not have the burden of proving Saddam Hussein was still manufacturing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction to justify attacking Iraq. There is no reason the ground rules should suddenly change now that the war is over.
We don't have the burden of finding WMDs now -- not because hindsight vindicates our action as a humane liberation of the Iraqi people, which it was -- but because we never had the burden in the first place.
Don't you recall U.N. Resolution 1441? It was not a unilateral edict of the United States but a unanimous corporate statement of the 15-member Security Council. It was passed Nov. 8, 2002, not at some distant point in the past. What did that multilateral resolution provide?
posted by TAotB at 10:57:00 AM
Tony Blankley: A leader in the White House
Let's be clear what the news media and political charge is against President Bush: He "hyped" the facts, he politicized classified intelligence, he misled the world, he stated facts he had reason to know weren't true. To have accomplished such a thing he didn't have to merely fool a gullible public. He also had to fool his own government bureaucracy, because in Washington a classified government secret is the common knowledge of every 27-year-old cable news producer by about 11 a.m.
posted by TAotB at 10:56:00 AM
OpinionJournal - Featured Article
Most Americans probably don't realize that it is possible to cut taxes beyond zero. But then they don't live in Washington, where politicians regularly demand that tax credits be made "refundable," which means that the government writes a check to people whose income after deductions is too low to owe any taxes. In more honest precincts, this might even be called "welfare."
But among tax cut opponents it is a political spinning opportunity. "Simply unconscionable," says Presidential hopeful John Kerry. The Democratic National Committee declares that "Bush tax scheme leaves millions of children out in the cold . . . one out every six children under the age of 17, families and children pushed aside to make room for the massive tax cuts to the wealthy."
posted by TAotB at 11:16:00 PM
Rich Lowry: The Democrats' WMD fraud
Who were the political leaders who, according to critics of the Iraq war, perpetrated this fraud on the American people by making overblown warnings about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Respectively, President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Sen. Tom Daschle and Sen. John Kerry.
They were all speaking in the late 1990s when Clinton bombed Iraq to "degrade" an Iraqi WMD capacity that we are supposed to believe disappeared in the inspection-free years that ensued, only to be resurrected as a false justification for war by the Bush administration.
The failure so far to find WMD in Iraq is a major embarrassment for President Bush, and congressional hearings into the intelligence prior to the Iraq War are welcome. But the post-Iraq debate shouldn't proceed on false pretenses: Everyone this side of famed Iraqi prevaricator Baghdad Bob believed that Iraq had WMD. In the run-up to the war, the United Nations, the "axis of weasel" (France and Germany) and high-profile Democrats all agreed about WMD.
posted by TAotB at 10:58:00 PM
If this is true, here's a place I disagree with Reps. I am in favor of medical marijuana.
But groups supporting reforms in the nation’s marijuana laws say the language that was slipped into the reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (search) budget would go far beyond allowing the White House to run anti-drug ads. It would get the office directly involved in campaigning against referenda and candidates who support medicinal marijuana or other decriminalization efforts.
posted by TAotB at 2:59:00 PM
I hope they retire with enough tme for Bush to find good replacements. Meanwhile, watch for the Dems to raise holy heck ove rthe idea of replacing a conservative justice with, gasp!, a conservative justice.
Rehnquist, O'Connor Mull Retirement (washingtonpost.com)
Senate Democrats have successfully held off a vote on two of Bush's nominees for lower federal courts this year, while allowing other nominations to go forward. Unless the Republican majority forces a change in Senate rules, the Democrats seem able to muster a similar filibuster over a Supreme Court nominee, lawyers say.
posted by TAotB at 2:50:00 PM
This is a woman who fell victim to the most heinous type of politics of personal destruction in 2000. she followed the law as it was written on the books. It took great courage to do that. Especially when the Left made slanderous comments abotu her. Run, Katherine, run!
OrlandoSentinel.com: OpinionFlorida's looming election season offers Republicans a chance to cement a slim majority in the U.S. Senate. But few candidates could attract as much national attention -- and money -- as Harris, the newly seated congresswoman from Sarasota, former secretary of state and heroine for some, devil for others, from the fabled 2000 election.
posted by TAotB at 2:47:00 PM
And to think, this happens in sucha virulently anti-muslim country like the US. Go figure. . . .
John Leo: Pushing the bias button
The Council on American-Islamic Relations and other lobbying groups are reporting a rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry and a massive increase in anti-Arab crime in America. Obvious questions: What rising tide? What massive increase?
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, in an article he cowrote, says the reason we haven't heard or read about an upsurge in the crimes is that "by and large, the big backlash never occurred." There are incidents, a few of them horrible, and there are breathtakingly nasty comments, like the ones delivered by a few prominent evangelical preachers in the wake of 9/11. But there is no tide of hate crimes or bigotry because America decisively refused to scapegoat its Muslim and Arab citizens after 9/11 and is refusing to do so now.
The FBI reported 481 anti-Muslim incidents of varying seriousness in all of 2001. The media spun that number as huge. But why? All such incidents are deplorable, but the total doesn't seem large for a nation with 2 million to 7 million Muslims. The FBI's total of anti-Jewish incidents that year was more than twice the Muslim total.
posted by TAotB at 2:37:00 PM
OpinionJournal - Featured Article
For these opponents of war, it isn't enough that a tyrant and his psychopath sons have been deposed. It doesn't count that mass graves have been uncovered, that torture chambers have been exposed, or that Saddam's victims can speak freely for the first time in 30 years. The critics are now claiming the war was illegitimate because no one has yet found a pile of anthrax in downtown Baghdad.
These rather selective moralists are leaping on a distorted report about comments by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on WMD. An advance press release from Vanity Fair magazine spun as news the fact that Mr. Wolfowitz had said the following during an interview in early May: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."
posted by TAotB at 2:34:00 PM
OrlandoSentinel.com: Orange County News
The exclusion of poorer families from the bill's benefits has touched off a political firestorm. One analysis suggests that lower-income families in Florida alone will lose out on credits for more than 500,000 children.
posted by TAotB at 2:33:00 PM
They claim that many people will be left out of the new tax cut that just passed. Somehow they forget to mention that those people DO NOT PAY TAXES. So, maybe, just maybe, there is a reason that they are not getting any "taxes" back.
Now, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a [hardcore LEft Wing Liberal] research group, Congress has excluded millions of families earning just above minimum wage from the increased child tax credit in the new $350 billion tax cut bill.
posted by TAotB at 2:31:00 PM
