Harold Evans;

Perhaps my beloved Britain has endured some of the worst excesses. When I spoke at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival a couple of years back and criticized newspapers that headlined suicide bombers as martyrs, I was told by two angry leading intellectuals that I had lived too long in America.
Something similar happened at this year’s Hay-on-Wye festival, sponsored by the Guardian, where a five-person panel discussed “Are there are any limits to free speech?” One of the Muslim panelists said if anyone offended his religion, he would strike him. A lawyer, Anthony Julius, responded that Jews had lived as minorities under two powerful hegemonies, Christian and Muslim, and had been obliged to learn how to deal nonviolently with offense caused to them by the sacred scriptures of both. He started by referring to an anti-Semitic passage in the New Testament — which passed without comment. But when he began to list the passages in the Koran that denigrate Jews, describing them as monkeys and pigs, the panelists went ballistic. One of them, Madeline Bunting of the Guardian, put her hand over the microphone and said words to the effect, “I am not going to sit here and listen to any criticisms of Muslims.” She was cheered, and not one of the journalists in the audience from right or left uttered a word about free speech — not hate speech, mind you, but free speech of a moderate nature.

Unrelated – A Saudi court has sentenced the victim of a gang rape to 90 lashes.
363 murders in a city, and the year’s not over. Time to redeploy to Okinawa!
“Self-discipline through shared responsibility”. Breaking old ground in curing antisocial tendencies in children.
Add your own in the comments.

Family Planning Advice
Population control ideas.
More gratitude in Indonesia.
Want support from the left [see update below] for the war on terror? Move Gitmo to China!.
[Update: Olaf protests that he’s no lefty.]
Busy morning. That’s all you get for a few hours, so add your own in the comments.

Kalashnikov Klass – The ultimate solution to school shootings!
Dumb and dumber.
Guardian;

Asked whether there was any doubt that al-Qaida was trying to gain the technology to attack the west, including the UK, with a nuclear weapon, a senior Foreign Office counter-terrorism official said: “No doubt at all.”
The official explained: “We know the aspiration is there, we know the attempt to get material is there, we know the attempt to get technology is there.”

Next up – inmates deprived of autos to steal sue for loss of livelihood.

But, I’m open to offers.

Late night, long drive. Until I’m back up to speed around here, it’s a reader tips morning.

I’m back at the dog shows this weekend, posting will be very light.
Share you readers tips here, and I’ll be back on Monday. In the meantime, check out the blogs on the sidebar – it always pays to expand your blog reading horizons!

My connection is a little shakey this morning – my guess is that the heavy snow we have is messing with the lines (I’m on dial-up).
So, for now, a readers tips, open thread post to keep you all amused.
A reminder – a few of you are crossing the line with profanity and slurs (“frogs” ???). Cut it out, or find yourself booted.

Greg Staples nterviews Paul Wells. (mp3).(Be sure to check out the full list of interviews at STI Media.)
Andrew Coyne;

I expect to see Judy Wasylyscia-Leis, Dawn Black, and the rest of the gang denouncing the Star in the strongest terms for splashing these hateful, sexist slurs — along with Lady Black’s sexual history, we are treated to leering remarks on the size of her breasts, her taste for shopping and other attacks on all women everywhere — across its front page.

More from Joan Tintor.
Newsweek comes out in favour of the death penalty!
Add your own in the comments.

An open thread for readers tips and related discussion.

I’ve had an avalanche of good stuff today.

More than 70 Muslim workers at France’s main airport have been stripped of their security clearance for allegedly posing a risk to passengers. The staff at Charles de Gaulle airport, including baggage handlers, are said to have visited terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

How Harper won the Press Gallery War – by the CBC’s Ira Basin, (who stubbornly clings to the notion that we still have “higher esteem” for Canadian political journalists than “the people they cover”.)
Canadian Muslims outraged over [fill in your blank]”
Peeve Farm;

Conservatives believe they are the ones who understand how human nature works, and liberals are well-meaning but naïve and counterproductive.
Whereas liberals believe they are the Good Guys and conservatives are the Forces of Darkness.

Heh.
Use the comments for your own.

Looks like I’m pulling an all-nighter. My belinda is having puppies.
Open thread, reader tips, Halloween-themed names suitable for Schnauzers.
11 am Update Just got home from the vet clinic – a few hundred dollars poorer, but 5 new healthy puppies richer. By 3 am it was apparent that things weren’t going as expected, and sure enough, one little prankster was preventing everyone’s escape by turning himself sideways and into a pretzel. Surgical intervention was required.
I haven’t settled on names but “Houdini” has been scratched off the list.

Taking “environmentalists to task for being unfair to Stephen Harper” – criticism from the left.
Advice for Rick Mercer.
Photojournalism in crisis – (from August 2006, but a worthwhile read).
Trick or treat!
Mark Collins;

Canadian “gotcha” journalism at its worst: David Akin of CTV typifies Canadian “reporters” by putting political spin on a defence story whilst not mentioning facts crucial to the matter (and at least some of which he full well knows).

Add your own in the comments.

“In other news: dogs are always thinking about food, leftist wackjobs are always thinking about getting Karl Rove, and Michael Moore is always thinking about staging a Twinkies® truck heist.”
Coming soon to your local mental health facility – Doctor Dominatrix!
Voter fraud in Missouri
One final note

— the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, even when my constant probing and poking and prodding and questioning invariably turns out to be a monumental waste of time because the work and wisdom has already been purified though layers and layers of The Times’ fail-safe editorial charcoal filtering system.

Mark Steyn;

In the new print edition of Maclean’s, I write about my experience at the hands of Canada’s monopoly bookstore chain. Notwithstanding Chapters-Indigo-Whatever, I’m duking it out with Dawkins back and forth for NUMBER ONE IN CANADA – which isn’t bad for a book entirely unavailable in Canadian bookstores.

Emphasis mine.
Add your own in the comments.

CJunk – defends the honour of knitters from the needling of heiress politicians.
“John Wright, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for Ipsos Reid stated, “All I can say is that this is the first time I can recall doing a poll like we did: The Montreal Gazette asked the polling firm Leger to poll Quebec on the topic…they wrote the questions and did the poll and then we received the exact translations from our client, CanWest, who asked to run them, as is, in the rest of Canada. So, we had no involvement and influence on them except the data collection itself and a corresponding write up.”
Media watching in Winnipeg;

The Free Press, with a straight face, declares that the existence of the alleged controversies shows that what wasn’t wrong, should be wrong, and therefore, Katz was wrong, even if he was right.

I know I’m off to a slow start today. It’s not entirely my fault. Yes, they drank me under the table. I admit it. On the other hand, at least I wasn’t seen swapping spit with the local barfly.

The new political clock – Mainstream Media Time vs Blog Time
The Sherwood Community Ass’n (RM of Sherwood) asked for a little publicity. You got it!
Islam tests secular medicine in France’s public hospitals.
Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions falls for a fuel-saving device scam.
Add your own in the comments.

My laptop has been giving me some difficulty this weekend – I think the thing is on its last legs. So, until I return home sometime Monday, this readers tips post will have to do. Sorry about that!
You know what to do.

My time is pretty much occupied at the Rushmore Civic Center in Rapid City, SD. (This afternoon we’re celebrating two new champions, so the trip is already a success. New Am.Can.Ch.Minuteman Fixation and new Am.Can.Ch.Minuteman Wild Imagine Nation).
You can use the comments for the tips or blog posts you’d like to share.
Later. As I said, we’re celebrating – rum and 10″ keyboards don’t mix.
(Uh Oh. I just looked out the window – it just started to snow.)

Why are we not surprised…

… that among the few times the elusive Maurice Strong raised his head after his alleged ties to the United Nations Oil-For-Food scandal became public, it was to rush to the defense of his one-time protege Eleanor Clitheroe?
Clitheroe, the former CEO of Hydro One, who spent $300,000 on limousine rides for her children’s nanny, holds top spot in Canada’s rogues’ gallery of rip-offs from the public purse.

“Prepare to live without trousers, Mr. Tipton!”
The Revolution that Never Came – by Shadi Hamid founding member of The Project on Middle East Democracy
The media double standard – Studds Vs Foley. Read Mark M, in the comments section.
Use the comments for your own tips.

Peaktalk;

So here is what I think. There is no problem in sacrificing a few Christian holidays at all, in fact this is one of the better ideas we’ve heard in a long time. But rather than replace them with Muslim holidays I would suggest replacing them with actual working days. Now that will run into some real and serious opposition in The Netherlands.

Captain Capitalism on the economies of dating “fat chicks”.
David Warren is a post-modern man, or so he claims.
“Free the innocents of Gitmo! Just don’t send them to us.”
Use the comments for your own and related commentary.

A few quick links for now – snow is on the way, and I’ve a lot of winterizing to get done around here today.
New generation recruitment ads – vote for your favourite.
BBC’s language guidelines for coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

FENCE
See Barrier.

Another chapter in the CBC’s never ending quest to scratch and claw their way to the bottom.
Gerry Nicholls on Election day freedom
Use the comments for your own finds, and related commentary.

You may share them here.