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MUSLIM parents have told how their children were also victims of abuse and bullying from other students as they fasted during the daylight hours of Ramadan. The families said yesterday some "Christian" children provoked Muslim students by thrusting food or drinks in their faces during observance of the sacred religious month. They were responding to a couple's claims that their son Antonios Grigorious, 11, was bullied by Muslim students because he ate a salami sandwich during Ramadan at Punchbowl Public School in Sydney's southwest. A Muslim mother-of-two, Lourenz Mahmoud, said yesterday she had complained to teachers at Punchbowl Public about...

NEW YORK (AP) - One of President Barack Obama's top aides says Fox News Channel acts like a wing of the Republican Party. White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday that Fox News operates "almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party." It's another sign of the White House's aggressively going after Fox.

Yes, the picture is real, nutroots By Michelle Malkin  •  September 12, 2009 10:51 PM I was offline for most of the afternoon and early evening — and just learned that the nutroots are claiming that the screenshot of the 9/12 march in D.C. that I posted — taken from a livecam of the event that I linked to here — is somehow “fake.”The claim is that the shot came from the Kennedy procession or a previous left-wing protest and that the flag at half-mast proves that it was “fake.”Newsflash for the clueless: Flags were still at half-mast earlier today in...

President Obama plans to argue Wednesday night in a high-stakes address to Congress that the country's health care system is at a "breaking point," as he urges lawmakers to stop "bickering" and pass comprehensive reform. "The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action," Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery before a joint session of Congress. "Now is the time to deliver on health care." Obama is stressing his resolve to bring lawmakers together and clear away hurdles to passing an overhaul package. "I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to roughly $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday. "The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year," said the official, who is familiar with the plans. "Our budget projections are now in line with the spring and summer projections that the Congressional Budget Office put out." The CBO said in June that deficits between 2010...

Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes its name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk. But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes -- and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. In McCarthy's day, it was anti-communism coupled with national security, and it hardly mattered that he frequently...

Talk about "manufactured outrage!" These people could give the right lessons in how to do it!Thanks "Missy" for passing this along: Now is our chance to make health care work. America’s health care system is broken. Health care costs are spiraling out of control, throwing families, businesses and government into financial crisis. Families are worried their health coverage won’t be there when they need it. Our country can’t afford to wait for health reform that keeps costs down and protects consumers. We can’t wait for affordable, dependable health care. We’re fighting for health care that will protect families’ financial health,...

Nancy Pelosi says townhall protestors carry swastikas. ...

I still remember the knot in my stomach upon seeing the sea of white faces from the window of our school bus. It was the first day of school 1961. We came from a neighboring black community, about a hundred or so of us, to the newly integrated white Jr/Sr high school with thousands of students. Everything intimidated me, the massive school building, being around whites for the first time, feeling small, seventh grade school work (would I measure up) and my stutter. The night before, I shared my fears with my preacher dad. Dad gave his typical answer, "Trust God". Someone...

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney's speech. Neurotic. Paranoid. False to fact and false to reason. Forever self-rationalizing. His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist.

ROSWELL, New Mexico, May 12 /Christian Newswire/ -- Alien Resistance, a Christian counter-cult outreach ministry, will hold an all-Christian-speaker Symposium on aliens during the annual Roswell UFO Festival July 3-5th, 2009. The 11 participants include 4 PhDs, 2 doctorates of ministry, 2 pastors, 2 ordained ministers, and several pastoral counselors, with 12 books written between them on the UFO/Alien topic. The Symposium will educate on the UFO/alien topic from a Biblical Christian perspective, with emphasis on counter-cult evangelism, creationism, and spiritual warfare. The event is free for the public to attend, and will be held at the Best Western Sally...

Why is it that in descriptions of the words and activities of Rush Limbaugh, it is not pointed out the obvious similarity of Limbaugh and Adolph Hitler. Rush knows exactly what he has started. Do you remember how overbearing, intimidating and feared Sen. Joseph McCarthy became before his crudities and chilling attacks on patriotic citizens was stopped? The rise of Hitler came about through use of the same strident, rancorous and dangerous appeal to a populace who had suffered military defeat and in times of embarrassment for their loss of economic power – how the Germans suffered because of inflation...

Memory eventually fails us all, but apparently the decline strikes one party far more than the other. In recent weeks, my friends across the aisle have expended a lot of breath proclaiming that the Democrats caused the present financial crisis by failing to pass legislation to regulate financial services companies in the years 1995 through 2006. There is only small one problem with this story -- throughout this entire period the Republicans were in complete charge of the House and for the most critical years they controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. In the House of Representatives, the...

The New Scientist had a story by their book editor Amanda Gefter called "How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda". Today, it was pulled from their web site; the explanation being that they "received a complaint about the contents of the story." You can still find a copy here, and we've copied the text until we find out what caused them to pull the story. Here's the opening: ---------------------------------------------------------------- As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to...

Artist Says Slain Animal Was Not Meant to Be Obama An editorial cartoon in Wednesday's New York Post that some say compares President Obama to a chimpanzee is being denounced as insensitive at best and racist at worst. The cartoonist denied he had Obama in mind. The cartoon, drawn for the Page Six section by Sean Delonas, who has been criticized for previous work, shows two policemen, one with a smoking gun, looking at a dead chimpanzee. One says, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." The chimpanzee reference is to a 200-pound chimp that...

On election night, hope was palpable. A sort of jittery excitement filled the air at the Catoosa Democratic Headquarters in Ringgold, Ga. A year ago, the local party was lucky to have 20 people at a breakfast meeting. Now, giddy Obama supporters edged past each other in the crowded banquet hall, sharing smiles and ogling the vast array of T-shirts and buttons. “Your grandparents were right,” read one sticker, “Vote Democratic.” For decades, this area has been Democratic. That’s the reason we are known for having some of the best public schools around. It’s the reason we have a fabulous...

“If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a ‘pre-emptive strike.’” The manual said this should be done by placing stories in mainstream and specialty press “in which minority leadership expresses concern about the threat of intimidation tactics” and “prime minority leadership to discuss the issue in the media; provide talking points.”

Source link If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed. A McCain "win" will not be illegitimate because I disagree with his policies, but because he himself has rendered it illegitimate. He and his campaign and allied supporters have sought to illegally remove hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, fraudulently registered...

TEN words keep ringing in my ears, long after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin supposedly redeemed herself and put to rest the nation's worst fears about the bottom of the Republican ticket. "How long have I been at this?" she asked during last week's high-stakes vice presidential debate. "Like, five weeks?" Say it ain't so, Joe, she's right. No question, Palin killed. She's great on television when she's got rehearsed lines to deliver and no follow-up questions to answer. She's brash and disarming, and she makes you want to send her to Washington and give those boys a big whack on...

BOSTON (AP) - Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated. The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country's mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act.

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama counterattacked on Sunday against a new Republican tactic by saying rival John McCain was more interested in a smear campaign than fixing the U.S. economy. The Obama campaign unveiled an ad hitting McCain as one of the "Keating Five" senators who met federal regulators on behalf of a California savings and loan institution that collapsed in 1989. The ad faults McCain as unwilling to regulate the financial industry. With McCain losing ground in opinion polls, a campaign strategist was quoted as saying the Republican presidential candidate needed to "turn the page" on...

The personality is familiar to us all: the sweet old aunt, the loving grandfather or the generous widow down the street, each of them unfailingly kind toward friends and family but given to flights of shocking prejudice when the conversation turns toward ethnic groups to which they don't belong. Often the response is a nervous laugh, a wan smile or a hasty effort to change the subject. We assume that old people are the products of less-enlightened times; they're unlikely to change; and their comments, however ugly, are largely innocuous. Now, though, in the midst of the nation's first presidential...

I spent the past week in New York, helping my mother recover from surgery. It was a new role for me, taking care of my mom. It must, I think, have been somewhat destabilizing. Perhaps when previously untapped wells of care-for-others are accessed, there’s no stopping the flow. Or perhaps it was just that, after five days locked in stare-downs with my mother’s cat, my eyes were playing tricks on me. This may explain why, on Tuesday afternoon when I went to The Times Web site and saw the photo of Sarah Palin with Henry Kissinger, a funny thing happened....

It sounds like the rabid rantings of some poor demented shlub posting at the Democratic Underground. Instead, it is Al Gore's former fashion adviser, Naomi Wolf, indulging in sanity-challenged fantasies on her Huffington Post blog. The target of Wolf's derangement is Sarah Palin and it is so over the top that one might suspect Wolf is an agent provocateur working for conservatives in order to discredit the left. Think I'm kidding? Check out this sampling of Wolf's plunge off the political deep end (emphasis mine): Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You...

The thought has occurred to me, as I'm sure it has to many of you, that the critics of our politics, our lifestyles (as imagined by them), and our values tend to be miserable creatures. It never fails that conservative Republicans are parodied as white suburban idiots, the two kid, two car, evangelical churchgoing families who are closet racists, prudes, and simpletons. Of course, I know plenty of conservatives who defy this description. What I've noticed over time is that way too many lefty types seem to hate themselves. They hate their lives. Perhaps its because their lives are screwed...

Monday, September 15th 2008, 9:52 AM Beck/Getty Gov. Sarah Palin The current lie of the presidential campaign, current but certainly not last, is that you are some kind of lousy, sexist bum if you question Sarah Palin's lightweight credentials to be vice president of the United States, or the judgment of the 72-year-old who put her on the ticket in the first place. It means you're supposed to do about as much vetting on her as John McCain. She's a spunky mom, she has a son who's a soldier, she loves guns and hates Roe vs. Wade, and don't worry...

Link to this to see what Obama supporters really think about the rest of the country.

Anyone else see this? This guy was attacking Sarah Palin as inexperienced and became frustrated when forced to compare hers to Obama's. He then SHOUTED: "Sarah Palin wants a free pass because she's a WOMAN!" LOL! Another gaffe, another news cycle devoted to Sarah Palin.

(IsraelNN.com) In recent weeks, Muslim leaders have been heavily focusing their efforts on inciting the their followers over alleged Jewish "threats" to the al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The incitement has come from the Palestinian Authority - both Fatah and Hamas - as well as from the Arab League, from within Israel's Arab minority, from Muslim organizations abroad, and from the al-Qaeda terrorist group. An Israeli Muslim radical has even taken the show on the virtual road, for consumption among English-speaking Muslim masses. In the past, Muslim incitement over fictional Jewish "attacks" on al-Aksa Mosque has been...

Sen. Barbara Boxer says Sarah Palin's acceptance speech for the Republican vice presidential nomination was "laced with ridicule" and calls the Alaska governor an extremist. At a Thursday meeting with transportation officials in Los Angeles, the Democratic senator told reporters that Palin's views are "way out of the mainstream." Boxer said Palin doesn't believe global warming is caused by human activities, is against abortion and opposed to stem cell research. Palin's speech Wednesday in St. Paul, Minn., combined some of her beliefs, jokes about being a hockey mom, and attacks against Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 18, 2008 12:52 AM No, really. The Obama camp and its media water-carriers are seriously accusing John McCain of “cheating” in his appearance over the weekend at Rick Warren’s Saddleback church forum because he was in his motorcade when the program started– and then escorted to an empty room without media hook-ups. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell spread the unsubstantiated rumor that somehow McCain heard Obama’s questions while on his drive. The nutroots went, well, nuts. The NYTimes piled on (“Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn’t In a ‘Cone of Silence’“). The McCain camp has protested. And now we have...

A unique feature of Freedom's Lighthouse is the "Average of Electoral Vote Projections," which you will see updated daily at the top of the left sidebar (see table below). The table shows the ten sites that are regularly updating their Electoral Vote Projection for the Presidential Race. At the bottom of the table are averages for all the sites. There is an average that includes "tossups" and an average of the sites that do not include "tossups." Right now, Obama leads handily in both averages. Come back and check the table on a regular basis. It will be updated at...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today pointed to President Bush’s unpopularity as an explanation for Congress’s single-digit approval rating. "Any time you have a president that is down so, so far in poll numbers, it drags down a city councilmember. It drags down any elected official, including us, and we recognize that," Reid said when asked about Congress’s rating. Rasmussen reported today that Congress’s approval rating has slipped to 9 percent—down two percentage points from last month, and the first-ever single-digit rating for Congress in Rasmussen’s history. Polls this month show Bush’s approval between 29 and 30 percent. But...

The swift boats are coming. They'll go by different names this year, but the largely unregulated interest groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - which in 2004 torpedoed Democrat John Kerry with allegations he'd inflated his war record - are gearing up for the 2008 White House race like never before. So far this year, so-called 527 groups - named for a section of the IRS tax code - have raised a staggering $210 million, up from $182 million at this point in 2004. But here's the ideological bottom line - roughly two-thirds of that $210 million has been...

Hollywood, CA (BANG) - Sharon Stone has been offered a free brain scan. Animal rights group PETA are determined to discover why Sharon "demonstrates a lack of empathy" towards animals by wearing fur, and so have written her a letter telling her they would be willing to pay for the scientific scan.The letter reads: "Scientific studies suggest that the prefrontal regions of the brains of people who lack empathy might be underdeveloped. Here's our offer - would you allow PETA to pay for a scan of the prefrontal region of your brain to determine if comments and actions that seem...

Here is the updated Electoral Vote Projection Scoreboard for today, June 15, 2008: Electoral Vote Projection ScoreboardUpdated: 6/15/08 – 3:40 PM EDT SITE McCAIN OBAMA TOSSUP Real Clear Politics 190 238 110 Real Clear Politics – No Tossups 266 272 -- Electoral-Vote 221 304 13 Election Projection 234 304 -- 270toWin.com 189 235 114 FiveThirtyEight 229.5 308.5 -- The Hedgehog Report 259 279 -- Obama has widened his lead over the last week on most sites, reflecting the bounce he received from Hillary Clinton dropping from the race. But that is deceiving right now. Many of the Battleground States are...

"The problem with the Republican Party is that they value ideology over what's good for the country," said Dean. "They haven't been willing to work with people to find reasonable middle ground. They've basically adopted a scorched earth policy." He said the GOP practice of ignoring Democrats has reached the White House, which has taken the same approach with foreign governments, a move he said has been "terrible for our national image." He also defended his previous "brain-dead" comments, joking that it was a "clinical diagnosis." Dean is a medical doctor. In assailing Republicans, especially conservatives, he said that there...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Sen. Barack Obama was criticized Friday by his two fellow presidential candidates for statements he made recently at a San Francisco fundraiser that could be viewed as derogatory toward rural America. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said Sunday, according to the Huffington Post web site. "And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate...

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy. "As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an...

The essence of Howard Fineman's Newsweek column about the demise of Mitt Romney's campaign is the glorification of authenticity, and Mitt's perceived lack of it. Ironic, then, that Fineman would resort to one of the oldest, and least authentic, journalistic dodges: suggest the worst about someone, then slyly slink away. To wit [emphasis added]: [M]aybe the campaign revealed what his closest friends never imagined him to be. They thought he was a decent classy guy. But maybe he really is a soulless throat-cutter who would do and say anything to win.

On Wednesday’s CBS "Early Show,"co-host Hannah Storm, who tvnewser.com reports will soon be leaving the show, teased an upcoming segment about the controversy over the atheist-inspired movie, "The Golden Compass": "And Nicole Kidman on why the Church doesn't want your children to see her new movie." Of course, the "Church" has said no such thing, but rather the Catholic League has called for a boycott of the movie. Later during the segment, Storm talked with Catholic League President, Bill Donohue, as well as Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists. To Storm’s credit, she challenged Johnson by quoting the atheist...

The cover story of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine pronounced the demise of the religious right in America. The ranks are demoralized, split, and liberal evangelicals are taking over with a new agenda for the environment and the poor. On the editorial page, the acerbic Frank Rich coordinated his column with the magazine, concluding, “Inauguration Day 2009 is at the very least Armageddon for the reigning ayatollahs of the American right.” Wow! Just three years ago the press touted conservative evangelicals as the most powerful voting block in America. What happened? Nothing. The press is up to its old tricks....

RICHMOND, Va.—There's no shortage of polls underscoring America's sour mood these days. Surveys generally show that 7 in 10 Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction and that most Americans believe their leaders in Washington are doing a poor job. U.S. News led the way in explaining this trend with a recent special report on why Americans think Washington is broken and what can be done about it. If anything, the warning signs are getting gloomier. A new focus group of Republican voters from the Richmond area, conducted last Thursday evening, was a case in point. All...

While announcing his Worst Person in the World awards for today, Olbermann named Limbaugh because he cited "the lunatic, fringe website FRee Republic.com" as confirming that Graham Frost, saved by S chip public health care was a recipient of public aid because he and his sister go to private school, when, according to Olbermann, they are there on scholarship.KO then said that the "group of sociopaths" at FRee Republic posted the home address of the Frost family , in what Olbermann presumed to be "in hopes that some psychotic will go there and attack them".

WASHINGTON (AP) - Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry's trade group says she knows why—and there's little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation. "The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: 'No, don't raise my taxes, no new taxes,'" Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. "It's pretty hard to write a book saying, 'No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes' on every page." Schroeder, who as a Colorado Democrat was once one of Congress'...

Democrats finally have a prophet who can lead them to the promised land of winning national elections. In one exceptionally clear 400-page volume, Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, lays out everything that Democrats have been doing wrong. He explains it in neuroscientific terms according to what regions of the brain control political decision-making, but it comes down to this: Democrats have been appealing to the dispassionate, rational, fact-sensitive voter, a being, apparently, who doesn't exist. According to Westen's The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, winning elections is all...

American politics is usually a zero-sum game: When one side gains, the other loses. An exception is the current battle to overhaul immigration laws. The bipartisan effort is led by the unlikely duo of President George W. Bush and Senator Edward Kennedy. The fate of the legislation, which would grant a pathway for citizenship to 12 million illegal aliens and toughen enforcement of the borders, will be decided by the U.S. Senate this week. If it passes, there is plenty of credit to share; if it fails both Bush and the Republicans and the Democratic-controlled Congress will be big losers....

Democrats are wielding a heavy hand on the House Rules Committee, committing many of the procedural sins for which they condemned Republicans during their 12 years in power. So far this year, Democrats have frequently prevented Republicans from offering amendments, limited debate in the committee and, just last week, maneuvered around chamber rules to protect a $23 million project for Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.). On Wednesday, Democrats suggested changing the House rules to limit the minority's right to offer motions to recommit bills back to committee -- violating a protection that has been in place since 1822. Much of...

Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . Actually, Bill Maher didn't add that Seinfeldesque qualifier when describing Republican affection for Ronald Reagan. Maher was a guest on this afternoon's "Hardball." In the course of taking a shot at Fred Thompson, this Cornell alum [what is it about my alma mater, which also churned out Keith Olbermann?] had this to say: BILL MAHER: It amuses me so much that the Republicans now are talking about the great charisma of Fred Thompson, basset-hound faced Fred Thompson. The Republican party has this campy fixation with Ronald Reagan. It is...

THERE is widespread global concern that the US cannot be trusted to act responsibly in the world, according to a multinational poll released today. But while there is broad international frustration with how the United States conducts its foreign policy, few people around the world wanted the US to completely back off its role as a global policeman, the poll found. "There's clearly a trend in terms of deepening negative attitudes to the US in how it executes foreign policy,'' said Christopher Whitney, executive director for studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs which helped co-ordinate the 18-country study....