"I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that." -- Stephen King

Young Patriot Receives Defense Medal for Public Service

A 13-year-old patriot from New Jersey received the Defense Department’s top award for public service at a Pentagon ceremony today.

Last year, Rizzolo organized the first Freedom Walk in his community and also wrote a book, titled “20 Steps to a Freedom Walk,” that urges students nationwide to stage their own walks.

Rizzolo is donating the proceeds from his book to his community’s ASY-affiliated project Operation Goody Bag, which sends goods and other gifts to first responders and overseas-deployed servicemembers.

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The Truth In Sadr City

The AP article as headlined in the Houston Chronicle:

"Militiamen ambush drives back US patrol in Sadr City"

Not exactly.

Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal gives us the important details. The title of his article?

"US troops kill 28 Mahdi fighters during Sadr City ambush"

His story reports:

...a US soldier was wounded by gunfire and US forces began to evacuate the soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, the chief Public Affairs Officer for Multinational Division Baghdad said. “The fire came from the portion of Sadr City we are not in – the northern neighborhoods – and militants fired at our patrol in the southern neighborhoods,” Stover said in an email to The Long War Journal.

During the evacuation, Mahdi Army fighters triggered three roadside bombs and fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at the US patrol. Five more soldiers were wounded in the attacks and two vehicles were damaged. None of the soldiers' injuries are reported as life-threatening.

In other words the title of the AP piece is completely wrong. The ambush did not "drive back" the US patrol. The ambush occurred while our forces were evacuating a wounded soldier. The US patrol counterattacked and killed 28 of Sadr's militiamen.

I wonder why it is that the AP finds it necessary to title pieces that put our soldier's in the worst possible light?

[A: Stephen King syndrome]

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Gates: U.S. Military Ready to Help, Ships, Air Support Staged

The Navy is dispatching helicopters from the USS Essex strike group to a staging area in Thailand, where they will be able to reach Burma with relief supplies “in a matter of hours,” Gates said. In addition, six C-130 aircraft also are available to provide humanitarian support and could airdrop food and water if granted position, he said.

Gates said the United States will work with other countries, if necessary, to help. "Our interest here is totally nonpolitical," he said. "It's to try to help the people of Myanmar,” he said.

[I assumed as much from our military - and isn't that a blessing...]

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'Willful Blindness' to the Jihad

You might expect the lead prosecutor against the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to tout the criminal justice system as the premier strategy to fight terrorism. If so, you're wrong.

It is precisely because of Andy McCarthy's experience in that capacity that he understands -- in a way others can't -- the crippling limitations of law enforcement and criminal prosecutions in combating global terrorism.

The entire orientation of the criminal justice system is to protect the rights of innocents, affording the accused due process and a litany of other constitutional protections. But we are at war with an enemy who doesn't fight wars according to conventional rules. If we continue to treat them as criminal suspects rather than enemy combatants, they'll always be many steps ahead of us in a war that only they are fighting.

While our government frets over their constitutional rights -- rights to which enemy combatants have never been historically entitled -- it abdicates its duty to protect American lives...

[Highly Recommended > ]

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Putin signals he intends to stay in charge of Russia

MOSCOW — When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia's new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him. Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that he intends to remain Russia's principal leader...

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London's American Mayor

The most momentous political story of the hour is not what you might think...whatever you might think. It has to do with an American politician now living in London. His name is Boris Johnson. He, an exemplary conservative, has just beaten one of the most rebarbative left-wing reactionaries in the United Kingdom, to become mayor of London. Johnson ran a very fine campaign, an amalgam of high intelligence, sound principle, rollicking good humor, and energy that could be branded New Tory. Mind you, New Toryism will arrive on these shores in due course... [snip]

It is now faintly circulating through American media that he gave up his citizenship in 2006 after encountering passport problems. The report is in error. I can now reveal that The American Spectator in another of its world exclusives has discovered (see the June issue) that the newly elected mayor of London never terminated his citizenship. He is as American as Barack Obama...

[neo-Tory - or neory for short. {love it}]

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Brits offer a taste of Kyoto

Great Britain is a decade ahead of Canada in the global warming debate and what's happening there today is instructive for us. [snip]

Further, the British pay substantially more for gasoline than we do and while road tolls are controversial in Canada, London, England, has had one since 2003. Anyone driving into central London pays a daily toll of eight pounds (about $15.85 Canadian). [snip]

However, when you examine the views of the British people today, the news isn't good for climate hysterics or Britain's Labour government, now led by Gordon Brown, which suffered heavy losses in recent local elections.

A survey last month of 2,002 British adults by the respected polling firm Opinium Research found:

- 72% are unwilling to pay higher taxes to fight climate change.

- 67% believe the government's green agenda is simply a ploy to raise taxes.

As Opinium's head of research, Mark Hodson, described the findings in the Daily Mail and Independent newspapers:

"Britain appears to be feeling increasingly negative about being more carbon neutral. We are questioning the truth behind being greener and many feel the government is creating a green fear for monetary gain."

[monetary gain, government? how typically cynical of the British]

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[glad to see you're waking up SD - between this and your new American London Mayor we'll have you patched up in no time... ...........{I'll likely pay for that}]

Climate models miss mark

Armed with newly synthesized logs of Antarctica's temperature over the last century, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research found that a computer simulation for the same time-period predicted a too-warm continent.

Monaghan found the models consistently predicted that the continent warmed more than it actually did. The tough part is dissecting the model to figure out why. The culprit this time? Water vapor...

[key phrase: 'the culprit this time'. We literally lack the computing power to fully model climate, even if we were smart enough to know how to set the parameters. The fact they learn something ever time they review the models is a) good in itself, that's how science is supposed to work, and b) proof that no one's any business 'predicting' future climate based upon them, to say nothing of spending trillions]

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Fact: Polar Bears are not going extinct because of the supposedly melting ice, according to a biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See here: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419
.

Polar Bear Politics

[meanwhile, the beat goes on...]

Talk about bad timing. Gas prices are spiking and U.S. energy policy is contributing to skyrocketing food costs, yet environmentalists apparently want to make it even more expensive to live in America. And they’re trying to use the polar bear to do it.

A federal judge in California ruled last week that the Bush administration must decide by May 15 whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act because of global warming. The upcoming deadline is fueling fears that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne could cave to left-wing environmentalists

Listing the polar bear as a threatened species would be a devastating blow for U.S. energy exploration and a boon to global-warming alarmists...

Bush > mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
YOUR Senator > http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
YOUR House Representative >
https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

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Wait times for chemo in Ontario unchanged despite more spending

Toronto - Wait times for chemotherapy in Ontario haven't improved even though the province has more than doubled its spending for the cancer treatment, according to a new report released Thursday. Chemotherapy wait times remained steady for the past four years, according to the report by Ontario's Cancer Quality Council. Its annual cancer system quality index found that median wait times for intravenous chemotherapy ranged from 25 to 38 days last year...

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Why business is fleeing the state

It's like watching a car wreck in slow motion. What the Democrats are doing to the state's economy, I mean. Pieces are flying off in all directions. In terms of taxes and regulation, New Jersey was once a relative haven, a cheap place to do business. (Snip) The primary source of job growth in recent years has been in government, not private industry. And that represents a death spiral. Public employment creates higher taxes, which in turn discourage private employers from locating or expanding in New Jersey...

[lesson will be repeated until learned]

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Jobless claims post sharp decline

WASHINGTON -- The number of newly laid off workers seeking unemployment benefits dropped much more than expected last week. The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for unemployment benefits fell to 365,000, a decline of 18,000 from the previous week. Economists has been looking for a much smaller decrease of around 5,000.

[thing are horrible. I mean, when even a recession can't show up on time - what the heck is the country coming to?]

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Islamic Divorce Ruled Not Valid in Maryland

After his wife of more than two decades filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court, Irfan Aleem responded in writing in 2003, and not just in court.

Aleem went to the Pakistani Embassy in the District, where he executed a written document that asserted he was divorcing Farah Aleem. He performed "talaq," exercising a provision of Islamic religious and Pakistani secular law that allows husbands to divorce their wives by declaring "I divorce thee" three times. In Muslim countries, men have used talaq to leave their wives for centuries.

But they can't use it in Maryland, the state's highest court decided this week. The state Court of Appeals issued a unanimous 21-page opinion Tuesday declaring that talaq is contrary to Maryland's constitutional provisions providing equal rights to men and women.

[praise Allah]

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[HT:GC]:

Thanks to the Italians!

A Greek and an Italian were sitting in a Starbuck's one day discussing who
had the superior culture.

Over triple lattes the Greek guy says, "Well, we have the Parthenon."
Arching his eyebrows, the Italian replies, "We have the Coliseum."

The Greek retorts, "We Greeks gave birth to advanced mathematics."
The Italian, nodding agreement, says, "But we built the Roman Empire."

And so on and so on until the Greek comes up with what he thinks will end
the discussion.

With a flourish of finality he says, "We invented sex!"
The Italian replies, "That is true, but it was the Italians who introduced
it to women."
.
[wasn't me... GC did it...]
.