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.