It’s the ka-ching! of property values in Saskatchewan rising.
Via Peaktalk.

Richard took offense at my “stern warning against dissenting opinion” – I just thought it was common decency I was asking for, but apparently that’s left-libbish. Whoda thunk it?
So, here’s a forum for venting on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of Christian Peacemaker Teams policies, beliefs, actions, whatever your heart desires.
I’ll start you off with an excerpt of Richard’s post (which turns out to be an excerpt of an earlier post):

“Are the … terrorists going to be true to their demands and give us some new beheading videos?(edited per requests in comments)
If this happens, what does it do to the morale of the MoonBat population? Surely having some of their own slaughtered like animals will give them a different perspective no? Will they ignore it and carry on with their anti-war efforts anyway? It would seem to me personally that having the terrorist sand-monkeys follow through on their promise would go a long way in uniting the resolve of North Americans to seeing this adventure through. But I’m not a moonbat who’s willing to ignore facts so I can’t say for sure.”

Have at ‘er
UPDATE: Link to CPT site provided.
UPDATE #2: Arabian Dissent has his say.

Less than 48 hours have passed; Bush has called, Rock’s days are numbered, McKenna makes way for Preston , and we’re already handing out guns!
Don’t choke on that latte.

Canadian media and aspiring journalists take note: this is what a good interview looks like.

Imagine for a moment, that George W. Bush had lost the election in 2004.
What are the chances, do you think, that he’d show up at, say – Free Republic*?
Yeah. I thought so.
From the comments, this striking bit of political insight;

“I’m impressed. �But it also shows that Kerry’s pretty serious about ’08, and more than ready to engage the base.”

May he win the nomination again.
h/t

A recent quote from Michael Moore, perhaps inspired by talk of Condi Rice as a future Presidential candidate;

The House “has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about. It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard.”

Oh. Did I say Michael Moore?
My bad.

CTV reported in late February 2005 on the original call for proposals that resulted in last week’s disclosure that a recommendation had been made to the Justice Department in favour of decriminalizing polygamy;

Tory Leader Stephen Harper, who opposes same-sex marriage legislation now being debated in the House of Commons, referred to the project in criticizing the governing Liberals. He was pilloried by Liberal politicians and others for making any link to polygamy.
The official call for research proposals posted on the Status of Women website makes no reference to the same-sex debate or other issues, such as pressure from some Muslim communities where polygamy is accepted.
But in justifying the need for research, Radulovic’s original proposal said that “although the current focus for the debate is in B.C., the fact that the issue has arisen as well in the context of the Canadian Muslim community, and in the public debate on same-sex marriage shows that the issue has a national relevance.”
A spokesperson for Cotler said the minister had not seen the document, and dismissed it as merely a warning that some Canadians might erroneously link the study to the same-sex debate.
“It’s certainly the job of public servants to flag issues, even though they’ve got nothing to do with what we’re looking at here,” said Denise Rudnicki.
An official with Status of Women Canada said the link to same-sex was made in a draft of the original research proposal, but was later deleted.
“It was in a draft in terms of when we were developing a research proposal, but it was not in the (final) research proposal,” said Nanci-Jean Waugh.
“We made the decision … there was not a connection.”

Somebody tell the good folks at Bountiful, BC.
It’s being reported that the polygamous community has begun marrying teenage girls to each other – after which the patriarchs join their “relationship”.
Is it just me, or have the “no slippery slope” people been rather quiet these days?
Via John Gormley Live

CBC (Tue, 17 May 2005);

The subcommittee of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs alleged last week that Galloway paid kickbacks to Saddam in exchange for the lucrative allocations. A similar claim has been made against a French senator and several top-ranking Russian politicians.
Galloway rejected the charges that he profited from the program and demanded an apology for what he called a “bizarre, grotesque” senate investigation process.

Ahem.

He purred and mewed, his greying whiskers giving his face the appearance of a Cheshire cat. Next, George Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, and scourge of Capitol Hill, got on all fours and pretended to lick milk from the cupped hands of the once-famous television actor Rula Lenska. She rubbed the “cream” from his “whiskers” and stroked his head and behind his ears.

Video

h/t Drudge.

“I, Flipper, take thee, Cindy”

Chicago Tribune – “Judging the case for war”;

Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.
On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration’s arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others. We predicted that this exercise would distress the smug and self-assured– those who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, this war.
The matrix below summarizes findings from the resulting nine editorials. We have tried to bring order to a national debate that has flared for almost three years. Our intent was to help Tribune readers judge the case for war– based not on who shouts loudest, but on what actually was said and what happened.

Via Instapundit.

When Michelle Malkin submits an award nomination she doesn’t fool around.

(quote courtesy Mickey Kaus)
Silent Running summarizes ;

Bush’s illegal wiretaps on totally innocent US citizens who might be calling Hamas, Hizbollah and Al Qaeda personnel because�er�.because�..well, it�s illegal, and wrong and against the constitution despite that fact that Bill Clinton did it�okay, where were we. John Hindraker at Powerline sits us all down and calmly explains why it’s important during wartime to find out what the enemy is planning, so we can try to stop them, and that in fact it�s completely legal and constitutional, and maybe some people might have forgotten about certain things such as skyscrapers collapsing and the Pentagon erupting in flames. He uses small words so Senator Kennedy can understand.

Against the backdrop of this manufactured New York Times controversy, Bush’s approval ratings have hit the 50% mark, the highest since the capture of Saddam Hussein.

In in Australia.

“The head of the Victoria Government’s Equal Opportunity Commission, Diane Sisely, hired Muslim investigators to assist the Commission in targeting people criticising Islam.
First stop for the Muslim investigators? A Pentacostal Church where two pastors were reading passages from the Koran and quotes from terrorists who used the Koran to justify violence…

From Simon Jenkins, columnist for London’s Sunday Times, this startling historical scoop;

That Blair and Bush should have discussed bombing the Al-Jazeera building in Qatar is hardly surprising. They agreed to bomb the headquarters of Serbian television during the Kosovo war.

Via Best Of The Web;

Well, color us impressed. Who knew President Bush was already conducting foreign policy back in 1999, when he was still governor of Texas?

h/t Instapundit.

Of the many things folks have to say about Warren Kinsella, “slow learner” isn’t generally one of them. Which makes this hard to explain.

Glenn Reynolds has little fun with a UFO nut.
Unfortunately, he’s a former Canadian Minister of Defence.

Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

I don’t know which is more unsettling – that a raving moonbat was once in charge of Canada’s defence, or that the audience at the University of Toronto responded to this total eclipse of sanity with a standing ovation.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
more*.

For all the condemnation of French interior minister Nicolas “the rioters are scum” Sarkozy for “inciting” the rioters to further violence, it appears the majority of Fench agree with his assessment.

[…]with 57% approving his hardline approach to the riots in the Parisian banlieue (and, by implication, his lively description of the rioters as “racaille” – scum). That was an important victory for him, as much in the context of his presidential ambitions as in the narrower arena of law and order.
Faced with that evidence of public support for the very person blamed by the have-nots for exacerbating the tensions, the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin had no option but to adopt the Sarkozy approach (without the insults) and spend most of his time on television on Sunday evening telling the nation of his initiatives for tougher policing and greater powers to impose curfews, with only a passing, vague summary of what the government intended to do about the huge underlying social problems. Sarkozy’s 57% will make it ever more difficult for President Chirac and De Villepin to sideline him, as they would dearly wish to do. At the same time the poll result will be treated (unfairly) as the French white majority’s rejection of the complaints of the disadvantaged and the discriminated against. More sinisterly, such public reaction to the riots and rioters has brought smiles to the faces of the far right.

Hey, it’s the Guardian – where they’re also unhappy that “Tony Blair and Charles Clarke were happily citing public opinion polls which suggested that more than 70% of interviewees supported the government’s 90-day detention proposals for suspected terrorists”.
In the wake of his bluntly worded speech last week, early signs that Bush isn’t going to let go just yet;

Bush is thumping Ted Kennedy for his irresponsible statements on the war. “It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein.”

Speaking of which, if you didn’t catch this German magazine interview with Donald Rumsfeld earlier, check it out.

In response to a lofty statement by Andrew Sullivan, The Corner’s Jonah Goldberg makes an observation that breaks out of the box, rips across the room and smashes through the wall of a oft-repeated argument against the use of “torture” during wartime. (I added scare quotes for a reason – the definition of torture has ballooned in the post-Abu Graihb debate so as to become virtually meaningless.) Nonetheless;

Can we stipulate that during the Civil War, the Spanish- American War, World War One, World War Two, Vietnam etc that Americans committed some truly horrible deeds in the process of fighting those wars? John McCain’s hero — Teddy Roosevelt — applauded tactics in the Phillipines that Andrew would no doubt condemn. Did we “destroy” our civilization then? Did we “lose our soul”?
The argument that using horrible tactics will cost us everything is predicated on the assumption that such tactics have never been used. For if torture costs us our soul and destroys our civilization, how is it that we have a soul or a civilization to lose at this late date to begin with? These tactics may cause individuals — like Andrew — to lose faith in our civilization or its soul, but it is not up to him to declare such things null and void if we go another way.

Discuss.
Heh.
update Read this, too.

Oh, for Chrissakes – just pick up the phone and call him.