Thats right. Miami Police are going to deploy hovering UAVs a la Dark Angel and Minority Report. Finally, something I can shoot down with my shot gun that PETA wont give me grief over.
“[A] wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.†—Thomas Jefferson
British athletes have been asked to sign a contract stating they will not criticize the communist government if selected to go to the Olympics.
The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.
I couldn’t agree more. My only question is: Why was China selected to host at all?
From: Sonia Verma – Fox
Two weeks before Yara, an American businesswoman, was arrested by Saudi Arabia’s religious police for sitting with a male colleague at Starbucks, she said she strolled past the very same cafe with another businessman: Neil Bush.
Bush, President George W. Bush’s younger brother and CEO of the education software company Ignite!, was in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, speaking at an economic forum hosted by King Abdullah for hundreds of influential business leaders.
Yara, who does not want her last name revealed because of safety concerns, is a managing partner at a Saudi financial company. She went to hear Bush speak, and she said she invited him later to tour her company’s offices, to give him a sense of what life was really like for women living in the capital.
“I was boasting about Riyadh, telling him it doesn’t deserve its bad reputation,” she said. “I told him I never experienced any harassment. I’d had no trouble as a woman. It was business as usual.”
But on Monday, Yara learned that she had been wrong. She was thrown in jail, strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the kingdom’s “Mutaween” police.
“When I was arrested, it was like going through an avalanche,” she said. “All of my beliefs were completely destroyed.”
Yara’s crime: sitting with a male business partner in the “family-only” section of the Starbucks — the only area of the café where women and men can sit together. In Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.
From: Susan Dunn – Washington Post
Why political unity is not such a great idea.
 What Obama and others, captivated by the notion of unity, could reasonably promise is not national unity but simply unity within the Democratic Party or within the Republican Party. For Republicans and Democrats do not and should not agree. Different, competing visions of the public good are the lifeblood of a dynamic and open democracy. They strengthen our democracy, engage citizens in meaningful political debate and keep us awake.
When tumult is absent, when everyone in a state is tranquil, Machiavelli wrote, “we can be sure that it is not a republic.” Out of unity, Obama believes, change will somehow emerge. But only insignificant or incremental changes can come out of the compromises that are reached through consensus. Transformational change, on the other hand, is the product of conflict and polarization.
England has just installed several cameras in a park that have speakers connected to them, so that operators may tell off people who are behaving in an “anti-social” manner.
“We are not in a police state, we are in a democracy and people understand we are doing it for their safety. This will help make these places safe.â€
Sounds like the beginning of a police state to me. It is the responsibility of each individual in this world to make sure they survive and live until the next day. In the very rare case that a person is attacked they must be ready to defend themselves. If nothing else, run away.
By the way on the scale of democracies England falls below the United States and if we in the US are not careful this could happen here.
This is from my friend Daniel, artist, designer, evil picture maker.
“Sahih Bukhari is a collection of sayings and deeds of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), also known as the Sunnah. Contained in this revered Islamic scripture, the prophet Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic faith, was quoted saying, “The people who will receive the severest punishment from Allah will be the picture makers†(Sahih Bukhari, Book 024, Number 5270); “…the most grievously tormented people on the Day of Resurrection would be the painters of picturesâ€(Book 024, Number 5271).”
I think I’m in trouble…better hope they don’t take over the US – I’ll be one of the first herded onto the stainless steel boxcars.
Yeah, those picture makers, they are pure evil.
From: Neuros
“DRM Free” isn’t just a political statement, but a real consumer benefit: such files are compatible with virtually everything, any PC, Windows, Linux or Mac, and virtually any handheld, from iPods and iPhones to Sony PSPs and smartphones of all flavors. Suddenly the idea of branding those “unlocked” files started to make perfect sense.
From: washingtonpost.com
I’m Back Home, But Still in Iraq’s Grasp
By William Quinn
Sunday, November 11, 2007; Page B01
The only feeling I’ve ever had that was more surreal than arriving in a war zone was returning from one.
I came home on R&R in 2005 after eight months in Iraq. Heading for the baggage claim in Detroit, I watched travelers walking and talking on their cellphones, chatting with friends and acting just the way people had before I’d left for Baghdad. The war didn’t just seem to be taking place in another country; it seemed to be taking place in another universe. There I was, in desert camouflage, wondering how all the intensity, the violence, the tears and the killing of Iraq could really be happening at the same time that all these people were hurrying to catch their flights to Las Vegas or Los Angeles or wherever.
From the Republican Presidential Debate earlier this week.
“Hillary tried to get a million dollars for the Woodstock museum. I understand it was a major cultural and pharmaceutical event. I couldn’t attend. I was tied up at the time.†—John McCain
Here is a guy that doesn’t let his political point of view get in the way of his principles. My hat is off to you sir.
From: A liberal’s lament: The NRA might be right after all
By Jonathan Turley
None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that … here’s the really hard part … the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charlton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers and, while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it.
Here is a short but very good video of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, on the CBC. Pay attention to her last answer, it says it all about those who have never know real hardship or oppression.
Alternate video link: YouTube
From: Fox News
Democratic Rep (MN). Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, is defending himself Monday after comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler and leaving the impression the administration may have rigged the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Speaking to an atheist group on July 8, Ellison said that the president acted much the way Hitler did when the Reichstag, or German Parliament building, was burned in 1933 ahead of elections that pitted Hitler’s Nazi Party against others, including the Communists.
Hitler, who was suspected of ordering the fire, declared emergency powers that helped him launch his dictatorial and murderous reign.
“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Ellison told the group, according to The Minneapolis Star Tribune. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
Apparently we aren’t the only ones who think Commies aren’t cool. This from Uncle Ted (Nugent) writing for the Waco Tribune on the Culture War, Paul McCartney firing a roadie for eating a hamburger, and the death tax. Good old Uncle Ted.
One hears the words of Mao Tse-Tung come broiling out of the mouths of its heroes, when Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton et al unflinchingly push for “redistribution of wealth.”
Central Texas’ own Chet Edwards has the audacity to support taxing the after-tax life savings of American families following the death of a loved one.
The unfair, un-American, unconstitutional death tax literally destroys mom-and-pop businesses across the land. Think about it.
The wall that once symbolized communism is down, yet some still want to give it a shot. Dear God in heaven, help us.