Matthew 28:6 (KJV)

He is not here: for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

John 3:16 (KJV)

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) has an article in the L.A.Times that must have been music to the ears of the Iranian leadership. After admitting that Iran should not be allowed to possess nuclear capabilities, she goes on to detail reasons why Iran should not be attacked militarily. The reasons being the “failure” of the Iraq mission. She says the “diplomatic” course is the way to go. Apparently the U.S. should “push for a complete halt to Iran’s enrichment activities.”

I guess up till now the U.S. hasn’t been formally “pushing”, but instead only nudging or perhaps prodding. A full push should do the trick.

Ms. Feinstein doesn’t refer to the fact that Iran has not only been ignoring the collective demands of the World’s leading powers to halt its enrichment, it’s been openly flaunting its enrichment successes, and threatening to destroy Israel in “one storm” to boot.

She doesn’t address what increasingly appears to be the most likely scenario – Iran continuing with its enrichment process. Of course, that would require some semblence of agreement with Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive military action. That would also require accepting some responsibility for the outcome of this impasse. Finally, and most importantly, that would entail favouring a responsible, united approach in combatting America’s enemies, over partisan politics.

But there’s nothing to suggest that’s about to happen any time soon. I know it. You know it. And you can bet the Iranian leadership knows it.

For each and every person that is, ever has been, and ever will be on this Earth.

Welcome PoliPundit readers! Happy Easter! Thanks Lorie.

related: He is risen

I don’t know what’s more shocking; that Iran’s president again vowed to destroy Israel, soon, in “one storm”,or CNN’s coverage of the story in which they omit reference to these horrific statements, and then characterize the speech as more moderate than previous speeches.

I guess the whole prospect of the Jewish state being wiped off the map is too much for us common folk to handle. Might as well give us the watered down, less scary version. The last thing we’d want is us little people going and supporting some sort of aggressive stance against the misunderstood mullahs.

I’ve been reading about increasing calls for a “creative solution” to the Iran crisis in editorials. Today the USA Today cites the Cuban missile crisis solution as an example. Earlier in the week the Washington Post also cited Kennedy’s actions towards Cuba as the type of “creative” conduct that the U.S. should be engaged in.

The problem is that the Iran crisis is the diametric opposite of the Cuban missile crisis.
With the Cuban crisis, the U.S. was faced with the prospect of dangerous rogue regime acquiring nuclear capabilities. What brought the world to the brink of WWIII was the fact that the missiles were being sent from the Soviets. Stopping a gathering threat had to be weighed against the possibility of the complete annihilation of the U.S. via a Soviet first strike. Consider that for a moment: the U.S. was seriously contemplating taking out the Cuban missiles, even in the face of a nuclear attack.

In order to draw an honest comparison with the Iran crisis, we need to imagine a Cuban missile crisis absent the prospect of the immediate annihilation of the U.S. Imagine Castro, as the leader of a rogue state, was not directly backed by the Soviets, but simply developed the missiles on his own. Is there any doubt the U.S. would have taken out the sites, and/or taken over Cuba entirely? In that scenario there would have been no “crisis” at all.

Here we are, five decades later, and a rogue regime which has repeatedly declared hostile intentions towards the U.S., actively supports terrorism, and has called for the destruction of Israel, is openly pursuing nuclear capabilities. In the 1960’s would this have been a “crisis”?

The paradigm pertaining to the use of the military in the face of gathering threats certainly has changed over the last half century. Are the risks of not taking military action are any different today?

Freedom of speech is at stake here, don’t you all see? If anything, we should all make cartoons of Mohammed and show the terrorists and the extremists that we are all united in the belief that every person has a right to say what they want. Look people, it’s been really easy for us to stand up for free speech lately. For the past few decades, we haven’t had to risk anything to defend it. One of those times is right now. And if we aren’t willing to risk what we have now, then we just believe in free speech, but won’t defend it.

That was from Part I.

In Part II the image of Mohammed was censored out by [tag]Comedy Central[/tag] (Spruiell, NRO Media Blog)

In Part II, what was not censored was an “Al-Qaeda” video showing two “Americans”, President Bush, and Jesus pooping over each other and the American Flag.

That was okay in Comedy Central’s books – but an image of Mohammed handing a football helmet with a salmon on top to Peter from Family Guy was not.

Vaughn Ververs over at Public Eye has more.

The Anchoress says this

I thought the Al Qaeda “retaliation” cartoon was effectively dumb but meaningful. In a perfect world, terrorists and extremists would respond to offensive cartoons with offensive cartoons. The point was made to America by SP putting up a cartoon bound to offend various Americans – and any American who would rather not see “pooping” on the flag. Once again, they put the question out there – “what will you allow and what will you ban? And are you willing to fight for the First Amendment or just pay lip service to it until one of your sacred cows-or-icons are insulted?”

I agree with her.

As usual Michelle Malkin is all over it. She also has another post with new Comedy Central Logos. This is Allah Pundit’s submission. I agree with Michelle that it is indeed the frontrunner.

Welcome Betsy’s Page readers! Please have a look around. (home)

[tags]cartoon wars[/tags]

We listen to Queen in the car all the time so I TiVo’d Idol last night so we could watch the Idol Kids do Queen.

Bucky was okay with Fat Bottomed Girls, but as Simon said, the song was a little too big for him.

Ace doing We Will Rock You – I wasn’t really awed – I didn’t like the way he did it, but the little guy liked it.

Kellie did Bohemian Rhapsody truncating the song as they do really didn’t do it justice. The song is 5 minutes and 54 seconds long and they cut it down to like 140 seconds. She did okay though. She can belt.

Chris doing Innuendo. I wasn’t really familiar with this song, but he did a really good job. That voice is something else.

Katherine Who Wants to Live Forever she was good. I liked it.

Elliott does Somebody to Love – he said he’d never heard the song before. His voice didn’t seem right for this song. Anne Hathaway did it wonderfully in Ella Enchanted.

Taylor does Crazy Little Thing Love I think his register was a little high for me. Simon said he thought “it was ridiculous”.

Paris. Brian May said “She’s damn good.” The Show Must Go On. I’m impressed. She has a very good voice and she can really belt.

This was the first time I’ve watched Idol. I’ve heard a lot about it and my Mom watches all the time. I was interested because of the Queen songs. Of course, Freddy’s shoes are really big ones to fill, and very hard to fill as well. If I was voting it would have been for either Paris or Chris.

One of the daffodils:

and some little blue and white flowers, I don’t know what they are but they are pretty.

This is one of Duncan’s favorite places to rest

Linked to the Friday Ark and Cat Lovers

Ace of Trump points us to a story from the Chicago Chronicle. Sun Times story here.

The Chicago City council has passed an ordinance that turns a 1989 Daley executive order into law. The executive order says:

No agent or agency shall request information about or otherwise investigate or assist in the investigation of citizenship or residency status of any person unless such an inquiry or investigation is required by statute, ordinance, federal regulation or court decision.

The Sun Times adds,

It further orders that city services, benefits and opportunities should not be “conditioned” on “matters related to citizenship or residency status” unless otherwise required by law.

The ordinance passed Wednesday “would say, ‘Look, when we provide city services, be it by police or any other city agency, our focus is not immigration status,'” said Ricardo Meza, regional counsel for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who testified in support of the law.

So the “sanctuary city” designation is now law, not just an executive order.

The last two paragraphs of the story read:

Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th), chairman of the City Council’s Human Relations Committee, noted that Wednesday’s vote could set the stage for a court challenge if the final federal law is close to the tough immigration bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). He said Sensenbrenner wants to supersede home rule.

“It gives us leverage if they pass the Sensenbrenner bill. … We need to send a clear message that we are not going to do this,” Ocasio said.

I don’t know if this gives you any leverage Mr. Ocasio – If you refuse to comply the feds can take all your federal funding away from you. Chicago gets a lot of federal funding…