I know, I know, it’s Al Jazeera, but you have to check out their analysis of Israel’s inexplicable decision to attack Gaza:

Some optimistic analysts described the withdrawal of 8000 Jewish settlers from the Strip as both a dramatic and important moment in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that can bring more hope that some kind of solution might be reached between the two warring sides. But few days ago, Israel made it clear that it might reoccupy Gaza simply because some rockets fired from there landed in the Israeli town of Sderot.

Why would the townsfolk of Sderot spend the night huddling terrified in bomb shelters while rockets delicately fell from the sky like the first snowflakes of early winter?

Stop the ACLU is starting a new Carnival of True Civil Liberties

Here’s the ground rules.

• #1. Post must be original material, no crosspost copy and paste stuff. It must be anti-ACLU in nature, or having to do with our civil liberties that are being stripped away via judicial activism.

• #2. All posts must be submitted. You submit the URL of your post, the trackback URL, the name of your blog, and the title of your post. You can submit them by emailing them to carnival.submissions@stoptheaclu.com or using Conservative Cat’s Submission Form.

• #3. All submissions will be due on Friday by 9 p.m. and the carnival will be hosted on Mondays each week.

• #4. The usual, no profanity or invocation of violence. All submissions will be subject to the discretion of the hosting blog.

• #5. It is highly encouraged for the blogs that participate to make a post pointing to the host of the carnival on the day of the carnival.

Submit something or just peruse…

E. J. Dionne is stratergizing about how the Dems can win. I think he inadvertantly went a little too far in revealing the media’s role in all of this, saying:

“The flow of negative news about the administration will do much of the Democrats’ work for them.”

Apparantly the MSM should keep up the bad press long enough to give the Dems time to solve the “party’s larger intellectual and tactical contradictions.” I wonder if E.J. knows that the media is the proverbial spoon that feeds these contradictions to the Dems?

Welcome PoliPundit, Two Minute Offense, Anchoress and Issac Schrodinger Readers! Please look around. Also on tap today: Kim helps take down the ACLU, a town named “Crosses” is sued for displaying crosses, and rockets gently fall in Israel.

There’s a town in New Mexico that has crosses in their logo. A federal lawsuit has been filed to get the crosses removed from the logo because, “The crosses serve no purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christian citizens.”

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Main Entry: dis·fran·chise
Pronunciation: (“)dis-‘fran-“chIz
Function: transitive verb
: to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote

Main Entry: ¹dis·cred·it
Pronunciation: (“)dis-‘kre-d&t
Function: transitive verb
1 : to refuse to accept as true or accurate : DISBELIEVE
2 : to cause disbelief in the accuracy or authority of
3 : to deprive of good repute : DISGRACE

Yep, those crosses serve no purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christians…

The lawsuit alleges city officials are violating the First Amendment by placing religious symbols on public property and by spending public money to promote religion.

The lawsuit also accuses the city of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by requiring prospective employees to sign job applications that include a religious symbol.

Weinbaum and Boyd accuse the city of invading the privacy of their homes with government-sponsored proselytizing.

Weinbaum and Boyd said they have been made to feel excluded from public participation in government activities.

“This symbol serves no governmental purpose other than to be divisive, to alienate, and disenfranchise Weinbaum, his minor daughter and Boyd,” the lawsuit says.

The name of the town is Las Cruces. The Crosses.

The city of Las Cruces is going to fight this, and rightly so.

Why is it that just the sight of a cross is so offensive to the non-religious? Non-religious is the right term here, not non-believers. I grew up in a town that was mostly Christian and Jewish. The Jews were not offended by any Christian religious symbols and the Christians were not offended by any Jewish religious symbols. In the public school system we all sang both Channukah and Christmas songs. That two week break encompassing Christmas and New Year’s was called Christmas break and there wasn’t any big to-do over changing it to Channukah break. The high school’s auditorium was often used to hold Yom Kippur and Rosh HaShanah services. Those days, the Jewish kids got off and the Christian kids didn’t. Oh well. Big deal.

People of faith, any faith, are secure in their faith. The sight of a religious symbol of another faith doesn’t cause them to lose their faith.

People of no faith, on the other hand, seem to be insecure in their non-faith. This makes every religious symbol (especially a Christian religious symbol) a threat to that non-faith.

Main Entry: pros·e·ly·tize
Pronunciation: ‘prä-s(&-)l&-“tIz
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -tized; -tiz·ing
intransitive senses
1 : to induce someone to convert to one’s faith
2 : to recruit someone to join one’s party, institution, or cause
transitive senses : to recruit or convert especially to a new faith, institution, or cause

Now, how exactly is a cross an inducement to convert to one’s faith? Only if you are so insecure in your non-faith that the presence of a relgious symbol poses a threat.

Welcome Carnival Readers. Please take a look around while you’re here.

when a Hurricane hits on your “big day”…

Angry has more today… Cindy Sheehan: Taken to the Woodshed.

Cindy’s been crying about the coverage of Hurricane Rita, seems it’s taking away her coverage…

And the Daily Kos’ers have been telling her off…

Check out Angry’s post about Moore et al’s Katrina “relief efforts”. Layer upon layer of hypocrisy, incompetence and perhaps some misappropriations, all in one post. I suggest you read it all.

Senators Kohl and Feingold of Wisconsin and Senator Leahy of Vermont joined all ten Republicans on the Judiciary Committee in recommending that Judge John Roberts be appointed to Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

On 1, Oct. 19, 1976 Congress passed an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which gave the Courts the power to award attorney’s fees in civil rights cases to the prevailing party. ‘The Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976’ was passed with high hopes, and the good intentions that it would help provide relief for individuals that might not otherwise be able to afford the expenses of defending their civil liberties if they were violated. The ACLU, and other judicial activitist have completely turned the intentions of this amendment on its head.

Whenever the ACLU fights voluntary prayer in school, a war memorial because it’s in the shape of a cross, ten commandment displays, or keeping the boyscouts from military sponsorship, and they win, you pay for their attorney’s fees.

What was intended to protect people from having their civil rights violated has been twisted by the ACLU to use as leverage when they threaten small schools and communities that can’t afford to defend themselves from the well funded, and well staffed ACLU bully. Yes, legislation intended to protect civil liberties is often used to supress religious expression by the likes of the ACLU.

There is currently legislation in the House introduced by Representive Hostettler that hopes to remedy its abuse. It is an amendment that limits the attorney fees in Establishment Clause cases to injuctive relief only. In other words, if the ACLU wants to pick a fight over someone praying in public, or a ten commandments display that offends one sensitive athiest, they’ll have to dig into their own deep pockets, and it will not come from yours.

We want your voice to be heard in D.C. supporting this legislation. It’s really simple, all we need is your autograph.

SIGN THE PETITION TO GET THE ACLU OFF THE TAXPAYER’S DOLE
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Crossposted at Stop the ACLU

Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post from Harry Reid (D):

Deference to the President

Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A24

The Post’s Sept. 21 editorial “Words That Will Haunt” made a fair point in criticizing one sentence of my floor statement on the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be chief justice of the United States. I said, “The president is not entitled to very much deference in staffing the third branch of government, the judiciary.”

What I should have said is that the president is entitled to less deference in staffing the judiciary than in staffing the executive branch.

Of course, I agree that the president is entitled to a measure of deference in judicial nominations. After all, the Senate has confirmed more than 200 of President Bush’s nominees to the bench, including many who have a judicial philosophy with which Democrats disagree. But when the president nominates someone to serve as chief justice, deference does not entitle the nominee to a free pass. Senators have a constitutional duty to subject a nomination with such far-reaching consequences to heightened scrutiny.

HARRY M. REID
Senate Minority Leader (D-Nev.)
Washington

I’m sure that Mr. Reid would concede a lot more deference in choosing members of the judiciary if said President had a (D) after his name…

Via Bench Memos

The Washington Post slams Harry Reid over a comment he made yesterday while announcing that he will not vote for Judge John Roberts.

The president is not entitled to very much deference in staffing the third branch of government, the judiciary.

Excuse me, but the Constitution itself confers that very deference upon the office of President of the United States.
The Post says:

Leave aside the merits of the Roberts nomination, which we support; if Mr. Reid regards Judge Roberts as unworthy, he is duty-bound to vote against him. But these are dangerous words that Democrats will come to regret.

Go read the rest.

Via Bench Memos