U.S. Troops Deliver Backpacks to School Children

ADIL, Iraq, Dec. 26, 2007 – The troops who provide a security situation that allows Iraqi children to attend school are helping those same children here get the most of that experience.

"I have always been a believer that when you are in school the only thing you should worry about is learning, and all teachers should be worried about is teaching, and they should be at least afforded a good building and plenty of supplies so they can focus on learning and not worry that they will run out of notebooks and pencils and that their building is falling apart,”

With the army enjoying the trust of local citizens, the soldiers can continue to reach out and conduct their security mission joint operations.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48522

Triple Threat Pressures al Qaeda in Iraq, General Says

While al Qaeda scrambles to reorganize itself, the terrorist group is being pressured by a triple threat consisting of coalition and Iraqi security forces and local concerned citizens’ groups, Army Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, a spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, told reporters at a Baghdad news conference.

“We have to continue to pursue this enemy to prevent them from re-establishing themselves or creating new bases of operation,” Bergner said.

Meanwhile, the 70,000 members of Iraqi concerned citizens’ groups that have sworn to fight al Qaeda have proven to be powerful allies, Bergner said, as the capabilities and numbers of Iraqi soldiers and police continue to grow.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48528

Iran source of Afghan weapons: MacKay

Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan – Defence Minister Peter MacKay says weapons are flowing from Iran into the hands of Afghan insurgents. He says improvised explosive devices from Iran have been a particular concern for Canadians. Most of Canada's 73 combat deaths have been the result of IEDs. He says it's been difficult for Canada to address the issue though he has made his concerns known to the Iranian government.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/288640

West Ignoring 'Systematic Persecution' of Palestinian Christians

If Western governments do not address the Muslim persecution and economic plight of Palestinian Arab Christians, there won't be many Christians left in the Holy Land within 15 years, an Israeli scholar said here. Loss of employment, land seizures, attacks on churches, intimidation, torture, beatings, kidnappings, forced marriage and sexual harassment of Christian women are clear human rights violations ....

[shouldn't that read 'Western Media Ignoring...'? Or is there to be a public outcry against something we're not told about? Besides, we wouldn't want to be accused of religious jingoism defending Christian women when we obviously don't care about Muslim women... 'world opinion' and all that]

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/11560968/

New Peer-Reviewed Study Finds ‘Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence’

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is ‘unstoppable’ and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/908

Navy's new lethal subs

Australia will build the world's most lethal conventional submarine fleet, capable of carrying long-range cruise missiles and futuristic midget-subs, to combat an expected arms race in the region.* New Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has ordered planning to begin on the next generation of submarines to replace the Royal Australian Navy's Collins-class fleet (Snip) The 17-year project will be the largest, longest and most expensive defence acquisition since Federation, potentially costing up to $25 billion.

[*i.e., China]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22971955-601,00.html

NHS losing battle against superbug’

Nurses should take back responsibility for cooking and cleaning in hospitals instead of letting private contractors do the work, a medical expert says. Many doctors are afraid of being treated in their own hospitals, while a lack of support from the Government has left elderly patients at risk from hospital-acquired infections and malnourishment, (Snip) Recent attempts by ministers to lower rates of MRSA and Clostridium difficile infections through a ''deep clean'' of hospitals will not have any significant impact...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3095545.ece

Boy's kidnappers promise revenge if family cooperates with authorities

Human traffickers are threatening family members of a Houston boy who was kidnapped in an apparent Christmas Eve dispute over $4,000 owed for smuggling his sister from Mexico, the boy's mother said. Francisca Torres, 37, said Wednesday she has received three calls at her home from smugglers since her son Luis Antonio Gonzalez, 14, was freed by authorities in Austin and returned to Houston late Christmas Day.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5405697.html

Scientists fleeing border, smugglers

Biologist Karen Krebbs used to study bats in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Arizona-Mexico border. Then, she got tired of dodging drug smugglers all night. "I use night-vision goggles, and you could see them very clearly" - caravans of men with guns and huge backpacks full of drugs, trudging through the desert, Krebbs said. After her 10th or 11th time hiding in bushes and behind rocks, she abandoned her research.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1227narco-science.html

US Economy So Bad Illegal Aliens Heading Back to Mexico

Just how bad is the economy doing? Well, according to Reuters, it's so bad out there that illegal aliens are heading back to Mexico.

"The couple are among a growing number of illegal immigrants across the United States who are starting to pack their bags and move back to Mexico* as a crackdown on undocumented immigrants widens and the U.S. economy slows, turning a traditional Christmas trek home into a one-way trip."

What turndown in the U.S. economy? According to the Department of Labor's enterprise survey, employers have added 400,000 jobs since July, and 1.1 million so far this year. Furthermore, the broader household survey identified an astounding 1 million gain in workers since August. But there was more:

"Other returning immigrants cite a slowdown in the U.S. economy as a factor, and the falling value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies, which has eaten into the value of remittances sent to support families at home."

Despite the stupidity of this Reuters piece, the contract which trades pesos on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange closed last Friday at 9.18 cents. That's a better exchange rate than was 2006's 9.6 cents, so illegal immigrants sending money back to Mexico were benefiting from exchange rates NOT being penalized as this Reuters piece suggested.

Facts can be terrible things.

[* the critical point here is yet more objective evidence {i.e., their own words} that when we require illegal aliens to be documented to work, they self-deport - no 'rounding up of 20 million people' required.]

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/12/24/reuters-us-economy-so-bad-illegal-aliens-heading-back-mexico

Redefining 'Fiscal Responsibility' - At high cost

Congressional "Pay-As-You-Go" budgeting translates to perpetually bigger government

Want to ensure the growth of government? Forever?
[snip]
Pay-Go became law as a part of the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. (It went away in 2002, only to be reinstated in January of this year.) The problems with Pay-Go, however, became apparent immediately. It did nothing to reduce spending, and everything to prevent tax cuts.
[snip]
Before Pay-Go, "fiscal responsibility" meant limiting federal expenditure to what the government could reasonably afford. Under Pay-Go, spending hawks slowly went the way of the dodo, to be replaced by "deficit hawks". These creatures are first and foremost concerned with the Congressional bottom line, and are far more willing to raise taxes than reduce spending to maintain it.

Responsibility used to mean frugality; it now means tax hikes to pay for as much government as possible. Accordingly, you can be an Ear-Marxist and still be a "deficit hawk", so long as you raise taxes enough to foot the bills.

And despite replete examples throughout our history that reducing taxes actually increases the revenue Washington collects, under Pay-Go Congress can not decrease taxes a dollar here without raising taxes a dollar there or cutting spending a dollar somewhere.

And this is merely the tip of the Washington ice berg the media wishes to see.

Only in this press-induced haze can the federal government spend 1/5th of everything the nation creates and there be anyone calling it miserly.

Yet the media are doing exactly that. They are never ones to see any government program go without ever more, each and every year. Only they can call a program's increase of a lesser percentage than that it had grown the previous year a "cut."

And so Pay-Go goes. Were it rightly defined by the press, the mess in Washington would by now be a great deal less.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24059

Country-club Dems

Republicans are the party of the rich. Isn't that an immutable law of American politics? While certainly a popular truism for the past half-century, it's no longer supported by the numbers.
[snip]
A recent study by Mike Franc at the Heritage Foundation finds "the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic Party is the new 'party of the rich. "

[more accurately, it's the mega-rich {think 'tycoons' and 'stars'} that lean democratic... ]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071227/EDITORIAL08/509955919/1013&template=printart

Burping moose bad for the environment

Amidst all the talk about carbon dioxide emissions and global warming comes news that Norway's national mascot may be contributing to the destruction of the environment, through burping and other bodily functions. (Snip) But now some researchers linked to Norway's technical university (NTNU) in Trondheim contend that moose are responsible for tons of gas emissions a year through their frequent burping and, well, farting. ''Shoot a moose and save yourself a climate quota,'' joked moose researcher

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1949645.ece