Martha, Martha, Martha

I'm not a big Martha Stewart fan and I've wished The Food Network would stop running her program before any of this ever happened because it doesn't quite fit in. But I have to agree with Joseph Farah on this one: Free Martha Stewart. There are far worse white collar criminals out there (and in the government) - free, fat and happy - get them first.

Outside the courtroom, U.S. Attorney David Kelley said all Americans were victims of Stewart because lies to investigators weaken the nation's law enforcement system.

I hope he was joking. We have judges in this country making up laws. We have judges enforcing unconstitutional orders. We have government officials breaking the law with impunity. Chaos is reigning in the streets of America because of government law-breaking, lies and deceit. So, to set an example, a government prosecutor pursues – at a cost of over $10 million to the taxpayers – this nothing case against Martha Stewart to plaudits of those who relish class warfare.

"When we first indicted this case, we said it was about lies, all about lies," Kelley said. "As you saw in the evidence, that's what it was."

Yes, that's all it was.

Now, I don't like liars, but let's face it: Nobody lies nearly as much as government officials. They lie. They steal. They defraud the American public on a daily basis. Lying to them shouldn't be a crime, it should be a constitutional requirement.

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager wrote San Francisco and the Islamists: Fighting the same enemy, in which he states that America is under attack from within (secular extremism) and from without (Islamic extremism). Very true. Different enemies, different tactics and different aims, ultimately, but both want to overthrow the Judeo-Christian culture.

He had to defend his position in a second column: Who supports same-sex marriage?. Both are worth a read.

"So, for the record, I consider the great majority of supporters of same-sex marriage to be thoroughly decent people, and the great majority of supporters of Islamic terror to be loathsome.

But the fact that most supporters of same-sex marriage are thoroughly decent people with loving intentions, as opposed to supporters of Islamic terror who are filled with hate and love death, in no way denies my premise that both are waging war against Judeo-Christian civilization. And that was the subject of my article.

Any further insinuation that I morally equate the people who support same-sex marriage with those who engage in or support Muslim terror is either deliberate distortion or an indication of an inability to think critically."

Fruitcakes

Here's a must-read article by Mark Steyn: Beware of the fruitcakes in government.

"Well, I'm a conservative, and I don't need any qualifying adjectives. My objection isn't to the deficit, it's to the big wasteful government programmes that lead to the deficit. If the Dems wanted to balance the budget by cutting the spending, I'd be the first to dance up and down shaking my pom-poms. But they don't. They want to balance the budget by raising taxes, which is no help either way. I think deficits are morally neutral. If I go to the bank and ask them for a loan to buy a house, they'll look kindly on me. If I ask for a loan because I fancy a three-in-a-bed sex romp with two high-class hookers, they'll suggest I wait till I get my Christmas bonus. The portion of the deficit caused by Iraqi reconstruction is analogous to the house loan. Most of the rest - Bush's prescription drug plan for pampered seniors, the mohair subsidy, funding for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland - is analogous to the hooker blow-out. This spending has no plausible claim on the Federal Treasury: it would be objectionable even if Bill Gates personally wrote a cheque to cover the entire deficit. It's the expansion of the state that's wrong. The funding of it is secondary.

Which brings us to foreign policy. This last week has offered studies in two approaches to nation building. In Iraq, an interim constitution was signed yesterday. It's not perfect, though it's a good deal less imperfect than the European constitution and for the Middle East it's a remarkable document. But it's amazing to me the way the western media interpret disagreements as a bad sign. Wouldn't it be a worse sign if there were no disagreements? If Bush just faxed over the final draft and everyone signed it? The haggling and the stalemates and the trade-offs are the healthy sign.

By comparison, consider Haiti. John Kerry, in quite the most stupid observation of his campaign, insisted that Bush should have sent in the troops to Haiti to prop up President Aristide - or "Father Aristide", as Kerry likes to call him, defrocking notwithstanding - because the Holy Father was "democratically elected". After a fashion. But so what? Charles Taylor, the recently retired head wacko of Liberia, was also democratically elected. The tinpot thugs of the world have got very good at being just democratic enough to pass muster: they kill a lot of people, they hold an election for the benefit of the IMF, and then, when the international observers are gone, they pick up the machetes and resume where they left off. The problem in Haiti is that the necessary conditions for civil society don't exist. Fetishising Aristide's "election" appeals to Kerry's reflexive belief that government is the be all and end all. But it isn't."

It was a pleasant surprise to run across this article.

Give Him What He Wants

Aristide Defiant, to Sue US, France, Over Kidnapping

Fly him back to Haiti, bring him to his office, get back on the plane and leave. No problem.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

Are U.S. senators real 'inside traders'? Study shows stock portfolios outperform market by 12%

"The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," said Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University, who wrote the report.

"The results suggest senators knew when to buy their common stocks and when to sell," concluded Ziobrowski.

A separate study in 2000, covering 66,465 U.S. households from 1991 to 1996 showed the average household's portfolio underperformed the market by 1.44 percent a year.

Corporate insiders (defined as senior executives) usually outperform by about 5 percent.

Thus, it would seem the real insiders are elected officials who not only have access to information that could impact companies, but also the ability to shape that information.

How do you like that? U.S. Senators outperform corporate insiders by more than double. But...

But don't try to emulate your senator's stock transactions for your own advantage. Under their own rules, they are not required to disclose their transactions until the middle of the following year. So, therefore, there's no way you can mimic what they're doing.

Take that, America.

This Is Outrageous

Women forced to have abortions?

According to RPI, William P. Egherman, who has performed more than 10,000 abortions and been addicted to alcohol and opiates, began the procedure by attempting to dilate the woman's cervix.

But the woman had a change of heart.

"My God, you're hurting me" the woman began to scream. "You're killing me, I'll never be able to have babies. ... Stop!"

But Egherman ignored the pleas and screams and called for assistance from clinic workers who held the woman down as he continued to dilate her cervix.

Then he entered the victim with a pair of forceps -- "the bear" Ehgerman called them -- and began probing and pulling. He mistakenly pulled out part of the woman's intestines.

Sapp, who represented the woman, said she described it as like being drawn and quartered.

When he realized what he had done, Egherman heavily sedated the woman then he called for an ambulance.

But he instructed the ambulance to come slowly, without lights or sirens, to give him "time to pack the woman with gauze."

Egherman said he also was worried his regular flow of business would be interrupted by "all the hoopla."

"Saturday's our big day," he explained, "and I didn't want to generate … any more confusion, any more panic than was already present at the time. She was loud, and as I said, she was shrill, and there were a lot of patients who were hearing what was going on, and the normal rhythm of the day was interrupted. The other patients must have been terrified, and I didn't want the ambulance showing up with all the lights and sirens. …"

I thought "no" meant "no."

In Conclusion

There were alot of interesting things in the news tonight. Things have been slow and boring (to me) lately. James was out playing in the dirt again Monday (don't tell Irma), it seems to be his favorite thing to do. He plays with his cars and plastic animals and stays there quietly for a long time. He left them out there and remembered when it was getting dark. I went out with him to pick them up and on the way back we heard the bulls bellowing. He went over to say good night to them with a little elephant in his hand (he also said he wanted to play with them - No cowboy, you're not playing with bulls) while I put the bag of animals in the house. I went back out to get him, he said good night and started running, but dropped the elephant in the grass. By this time it was too dark to see it, but he HAD to have that elephant tonight. I don't have any good flashlights because the kids always play with them and the batteries are dead. James has a little tiger flashlight with weak batteries so we used that and spent 5 or 10 minutes looking but with no luck. I had been telling him to wait until tomorrow so we can see but he insisted on getting it tonight. Just when I decided we would definitely wait until tomorrow, Irma came home. James told her what happened and she laughed at us (and me for not having a flashlight), but she remembered she had one in the car and two seconds later James had his elephant.