Domestic Surveillance

With all the uproar among moonbats and the libs about Bush authorizing domestic surveillance, you would think it was the first time it ever happened. As Gomer used to say, "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!". Make no mistake, presidents have ALWAYS sought ways to circumvent the laws to gain information. I'm glad there are laws and safeguards to prevent the chief executive from gaining too much power through it's ability to spy on citizens but I'm also glad they strive to know what the enemies, foreign and domestic, of our great country are doing.

Clinton did it. Carter did it. Go here to read Clinton's order to bypass courts. Go here to read Carter's order to bypass courts.

However, the efforts by the left to vilify the President and somehow declare that he is exercising dictatorial powers by authorizing domestic surveillance irritates me to no end. It demonstrates the hypocrisy of the left and especially of the media. The decision by the New York Times the other day to release supposedly breaking news of President Bush's order to occasionally bypass a court order for surveillance was not news at all. They had been holding the story for almost a year and released it in time to squelch support for the continuation of the Patriot Act in the Senate as well as drum up sales for a book that the Times will profit from. The hypocrisy of the failed left knows no boundary. The left hates Bush so much and is so fearful of the country's political move to the right that they will say or do anything to hurt the country to gain political advantage. They do so even when it may get a citizen killed when they expose methods used to expose enemies trying to kill us. Shameful.

And the left thinks it is fooling the rest of the country...

Weapons & Tactics

Atlas Shrugs has a great post about weapons and tactics. Fascinating stuff and it shows the mettle of our fighting heroes. Check it out here.

Iran - The Nuclear Storm Continues To Gather II

Perhaps there are some cool heads in Iran. I really hope so. Charles Krauthammer today gives an account of the megalomaniac president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that is chilling in the least. Much like Hitler did, he either seems to be able to persuade more and more of his own people to believe his rhetoric or they already have embraced it and Ahmadinejad is the natural extension of their national aspirations. Either way, the following statements by Krauthammer about Ahmadinejad should send a disturbing and chilling message to everyone.

But it gets worse. The president of a country about to go nuclear is a confirmed believer in the coming apocalypse. Like Judaism and Christianity, Shiite Islam has its own version of the messianic return -- the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The more devout believers in Iran pray at the Jamkaran mosque, which houses a well from which, some believe, he will emerge.

When Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidential elections, he immediately gave $17 million of government funds to the shrine. Last month Ahmadinejad said publicly that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam.

And as in some versions of fundamentalist Christianity, the second coming will be accompanied by the usual trials and tribulations, death and destruction. Iranian journalist Hossein Bastani reported Ahmadinejad saying in official meetings that the hidden imam will reappear in two years.

It gets worse. After his U.N. speech in September, Ahmadinejad was caught on videotape telling a cleric that during the speech an aura, a halo, appeared around his head right on the podium of the General Assembly. "I felt the atmosphere suddenly change. And for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. . . . It seemed as if a hand was holding them there, and it opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic Republic."

Read the whole story here. It may sound alarmist but the real threat of nuclear war based on religious ideology is frightening. You cannot reason with that kind of logic.

The nuclear storm is coming folks. Even if there is no mushroom cloud, the spectre of having to deal with rogue nations that have nukes is real and the world becomes a much more dangerous place. Don't be surprised if North Korea tests one about the same time that Iran does in order to prove to the United States the will is there to use it.

Joe Wilson Makes Me Wanna Puke

The Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame story has always amazed me because it goes to the root of what the libs and moonbats believe in. It is also a long and complex story of which I am honestly too lazy to fully research and write about. Powerline, though, has done a great job with the details.

The Halls of Freedom II

The information is pouring in from the new media about the historic voting going on in Iraq. WOW! While there is still a long way to go, I am so proud of the Iraqi people standing up for their future and the opportunity it presents to their families to finally have a say so in their government. The long term ramifications are amazing not only for the future of the Middle East but a wonderful vindication of the foreign policy of George Bush. One day history will call him visionary in his pursuit of democracy as a way to perhaps finally bring peace to a troubled region.

And then again, you have someone like Sen. Joe Biden. A Senator that has been voracious in his criticism of the President and the policies of the administration. Go read the post at Gateway Pundit and see how Ol' Joe is basking in the Iraqi's expressions of freedom. What a hypocrite!

In spite of an unrelenting insurgency, defeatocrats in Congress and a hostile MSM that only wants to report doom and gloom, the Iraqi's have shown, as the people of Afghanistan did, that freedom marches on.

UPDATE 12/15/05 12:08 PM EST: Go to IRAQ THE MODEL and Pajamasmedia for up to the minute reporting from Iraq itself. You won't see this stuff on MSM. If MSM truly reported all of it they would have to admit that President Bush was right all along. BWAHAHAHA!

UPDATE 12/15/05 1:27 PM EST: Go read this at National Review Online, its a great post.

Freedom marches on.

Iran - The Storm Continues To Gather

About a year ago I told Hugh Hewitt that the real threat in the world very soon will be Iran. The GWOT is very real and is currently centered in Iraq. We have made tremendous strides in planting a real democracy there and allowing the people of Iraq to decide their own futures. Dealing with a nebulous but real network of jihadists bent on destroying us is a daunting task, one that President Bush and our military has performed with honor, in spite of all that MSM and the left has claimed. But kickin' butt against a loose network of jihadists trying to secure WMD's is nothing compared to a nation like Iran that actually builds them. On top of it that nation's stupid president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seems intent on confirming everyone's suspicions and fears about Iran's real intentions to become a nuclear power. Mix in his paranoia when denying the Holocaust, then demanding Europe set up a homeland for Israel in Europe, and you have a real mix for trouble. The storm's a' brewin' folks.

Mark Steyn, in his usual pointed manner, describes the brewing storm well.

There has always been a slightly post-modern quality to sovereignty in the transnational age: We pretend the Syrian foreign minister is no different from the New Zealand foreign minister, and in so doing we vastly inflate the status of the former at the expense of the latter. But with Ahmadinejad we're going way beyond that. If a genocidal fantasist is acceptable in polite society, we'll soon find ourselves dealing with a genocidal realist.

Go read the whole article here.