By
What happens when Mid-Eastern, Islamist-style values dominate a city? They invade the courthouse and the rest of the legal system. Dearbornistan is the textbook example.
Check out the story of Judge William C. Hultgren, who was trying to help his Shi’ite friends from the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon (the Beydoun and Dabaja families are prominent Hezbollah supporters, and in Lebanon, they are Hezbollah operatives):

DEARBORN: Complaint says judge broke judicial standards

Judge William Hultgren

The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission filed a complaint Tuesday against a 19th District Court judge for interfering in a case last year already assigned to another judge in the same court.
According to the complaint, Judge William C. Hultgren met with an acquaintance, Ali Beydoun, in October 2006. Beydoun discussed a debt collection case involving Hussein Dabaja, the cousin of Beydoun’s business partner, Frank Dabaja.
The commission accuses Hultgren of several violations of judicial standards, including conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.
Hultgren must respond to the complaint within 14 days.

Religion of Justice-tampering.

By
“Oh, thank Heaven for 7-Eleven.”
That’s one of the many advertising slogans over the years for the great American company that turns 80, today. It’s a statement that surely epitomizes the feelings of many American–and worldwide–customers that patronize this retail giant and part of Americana.
It began in 1927 as Southland Ice Company in Oak Cliff, Texas, selling blocks of ice to refrigerate food. An enterprising ice dock employee began offering milk, bread and eggs on Sundays and evenings when grocery stores were closed, which increased sales. Convenience retailing was born. Its first convenience outlets were called “Tote’m” stores.

Although the company was taken private by Japanese investors in 2005, the company, headquartered outside of Dallas, still embodies everything that’s great about the American entrepreneurial spirit and capitalism at its best. 7-Eleven stores introduced convenience-revolutionizing innovations–like 24-hour stores and in-store ATMS–which, today, we take for granted. Others, like the Big Gulp, revolutionized the politically incorrect large-sized portions for the economically-challenged. And immigrants–mostly Indians–have used the stores as a gateway to prosperity. It’s a market giant
Best known for its flagship product, 7-Eleven’s Slurpee is much more than just another cold, slushy, mass-market beverage. For 7-Eleven franchisee Anil Kumar, it was the ticket to the great American life through hard work and a way to target an unusual niche market.
Like many 7-Eleven franchisees and Slurpee purveyors, he is an immigrant from India, as are several relatives who also own and operate 7-Eleven stores. But his Oak Park, Michigan store, near Detroit is different. It is the first and one of the few 7-Eleven stores in fourteen countries to feature all-kosher Slurpees.
Before buying his 7-Eleven franchise, Kumar sold high-priced gowns and didn’t do well. He sold a Michigan pageant winner thousands of dollars worth of gowns on credit. She paid him back months later, when she became Miss USA.
When Kumar purchased his 7-Eleven franchise several years ago, the store was not doing well, but he paid the Detroit area Council of Orthodox Rabbis to kosher his machines and regularly inspect them–one of the best investments he says he ever made. As a result, his store is a success, due to large purchases of kosher Slurpees by his largely Orthodox Jewish clientele.
Kumar says Slurpees not only put his children, Shawn and Sabrina, through college but also, respectively, through law and medical school. And, he says, it has educated him about Judaism. Because of kosher Slurpees, Kumar, a devout Hindu, has been invited to bar mitzvahs and weddings by rabbis at the nearby Yeshiva Beth Yehudah. Stories like Kumar’s are so common in contemporary 7-Eleven history that TV’s “The Simpsons” paid parody tribute with character “Apu,” an immigrant franchisee with an Indian accent.
And Mr. Kumar is very protective of the Slurpee, which he says can comprise up to 40% of sales at his store. When David Letterman and Rupert Jee, a deli owner who frequently appears on the late-night CBS show, discussed Jee’s new “Slurpee” machine. But Kumar, knowing that Slurpee is a registered trademark of 7-Eleven, was watching and reported them to his parent corporation franchisor. Kumar proudly recounts how, in late June, Letterman announced on his show that he and Jee could no longer refer to the new frozen drinks as “Slurpees.”
Kumar is not the only 7-Eleven franchise owner who owes much of his success to the Slurpee. His is one of several stores who make Detroit the Slurpee’s number one market in America (Winnipeg is tops world-wide). And in a tribute to America’s logic-defying consumer habits, Detroit 7-Elevens sell more Slurpees during their bitter winters than all of Florida’s 7-Elevens sell in the summer. Kumar says he sells well over 300 Slurpees per day on Detroit’s coldest days. He attributes his brisk Slurpee sales to the kosher aspect.
But while the Slurpee is well-known, many of 7-Eleven’s great entrepreneurial efforts are not.
While it’s hard to get in the door at most large chain stores if you aren’t one of the “big dogs,” 7-Eleven regularly invites average Joe entrepreneurs and little guys to introduce new products for consideration by top executives at “Product Innovation Days.” Events like these throughout the store’s history have changed the way American companies do business. 7-Eleven was the first to advertise in a national television commercial–in 1949. Before Starbucks was a glint in Howard Schulz’s eye, 7-Eleven was the first national chain to sell fresh-brewed coffee to go, the first to have a self-serve soda fountain (now also for Slurpees), the first to offer super-size drinks (making the chain a frequent target for the PC food police), the first to introduce 24-hour operations (thus, the store name), and the first to offer pre-paid phone cards. And while other stores are escaping the inner cities, 7-Eleven is profitably serving urban areas–some located in very dangerous neighborhoods and the targets of frequent late-night robberies.
Some of the store’s many other market innovations: 7-Eleven created the convenience retailing and “dashboard dining” we’re so used to, today. It was the first to sell gasoline at a convenience store and later to offer self-serve gasoline, the first convenience store chain to introduce 24-hour operations and introduce ATMs to make it easier to satisfy that craving for a hotdog in the middle of the night. It was the first national chain to offer “freedom of choice” at the soft drink fountain by offering all major soft drink brands, and the first to advertise in a national television commercial–in its 1949 “owl and rooster” ad. And the Slurpee, introduced in 1966, has been much imitated by others ever since.
7-Eleven continues to innovate, introducing financial service centers in some of its stores, and even developing products to make life easier for women on the go, with “Heaven Sent” hosiery, inexpensive pantyhose in a lipstick size container convenient for a woman’s purse.
7-11 gives millions to programs addressing issues such as literacy, reading, and crime prevention. It donates hundreds of thousands of pounds of food to local food banks through its Harvest program to help fight hunger and raised millions for the victims of September 11th.
Not everything 7-Eleven does is in the spirit of the free market. It provides money to programs addressing “multi-cultural understanding,” often a recipe for political correctness and intolerance of non-minority views. And it grants thousands of dollars in affirmative action scholarships and hiring programs for which non-minorities need not apply. The company also pays $5,000 for referrals of qualified minority franchisees, but not non-minority ones.
Still 7-Eleven, on balance, is a great American company that deserves its prominent place in American culture. Its commitment to the marketplace is the reason it has survived–albeit under different owners–for 80 years.
Like immigrant Anil Kumar said, “Slurpees and 7-Eleven helped me live the American dream.”

By
My favorite video-blogger, Ian Schwartz (who was really THE conservative pioneer in the medium), shows us video of Michael Moore admitting that he purposely took the worst examples in American health care and the best in others for “.”
Keep that in mind when it comes to any of Moore’s fake-umentaries.
Watch the video.

By
Bill Clinton’s new book, “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World,” hits bookstores in September.
It instructs Americans to “give” to society and “make a profoundly positive difference” (like Whitewater? Travelgate? Oslo Peace Accords? Lying under oath? Impeachment?).
One assumes that this book is not aimed at former girlfriend Monica Lewinsky, who already “gave” at the (Oval) Office.

By
One of my favorite American business icons (yes, owned by the Japanese, but still run by Americans and headquartered here) turns 80, today.
Happy Birthday, 7-Eleven!
Here’s hoping for many more years of modern convenience in America.

By
Just what kind of halal Kool-Aid did serve Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, ? In addition to Al-Husainy, Chertoff also met with and feted and assorted other extremist Muslims. (–a Bush Court of Appeals nominee–was also in fawning attendance for the jihad-butt-kissing party, as well.)

After that meeting, his speech to the NAACP national convention was a lecture to Black America urging them to “respect the rights of Muslim Americans.” Since he’d just arrived from meeting with and sanctioning a group of prominent American Muslims who openly support jihad, including HAMAS, Hezbollah, and sundry other terrorist groups, what Chertoff really meant was “respect the rights of Muslim Americans who support jihad.” He didn’t distinguish between them when he pandered to them, nor did he in his NAACP speech, right after.
Chertoff instructed Black Americans to “say no to tyranny, no to oppression, and no to slavery.” But, in fact, he’d just come from that meeting with the Muslim imams and other extremist leaders who openly endorse Iranian tyranny (two are agents of Iran), support Islamic oppression worldwide (including oppression of many Black women who are forced into genital mutilation and arranged marriages), and say “YES” to slavery, gang-rape, and torture of Black women in Sudan.
This is an incredible insult to Black America. They are already against tyranny, oppression, and slavery. And they don’t perpetrate any of these on Muslims. On the other hand, Muslims–with the support of the American Muslim leaders with whom Chertoff met–support tyranny, oppression, and slavery of Blacks and Whites all over the world. How can Chertoff lecture to Black Americans to denounce these things when he is silent on while those behaviors are espoused by American Muslims? Why didn’t he deliver his speech to the Muslims with whom he met?
In the same speech, while recounting the heroic efforts of Black Americans in the Coast Guard throughout U.S. history, he instructed Blacks not to “turn our backs on the rights of Muslim Americans” and compared the Black struggle with the Muslim struggle:

(We’ve) fought too long and too hard for the rights of African Americans to turn our backs on the rights of Muslim Americans.

To my many Black readers, please answer a few questions for me:

* Do you really believe that your struggle is the same as Muslims’ struggle? Do you compare slavery of Blacks with Muslims’ centuries-old and continued modern day enslavement of Blacks all over the world?
* Do you believe that oppression of Blacks in America was the same as trying to stop (which America, sadly, is not) Muslims who actively support jihad being able to do so, today, almost 6 years after their co-religionists murdered 3,000 Americans?
* Is your struggle the same as the Muslim imams that Chertoff met with who support Iran and Hezbollah’s murder of 300 American marines and civilians, Hezbollah’s bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and Hezbollah’s bomb-making for Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq to murder our troops?
* Is this your struggle? Do you really believe it is your specific duty as Black Americans to fight for the “rights” of these people to continue to help jihad on other–AND our own–shores?

Meanwhile, earlier in the day in Chicago, Chertoff predicted “dire consequences” unless border crossings are tightened with stricter document regulation.
Uh, who has been in charge of that for the last 2.5 years and done nothing about it? Looks like the person doing the “warning” needs to tell it to his mirror.
Maybe if Chertoff spent a little time focusing on tightening document regulation–instead of meeting extremist Muslims who help and support Hezbollah and the Government of Iran–we would get somewhere.
And, by the way, he can’t even get his stories straight. During his last trip to Detroit, Chertoff for trips between Canada and the U.S., decreeing that he would waive the passport rule for all of those aged 21 and below. So much for “tightening” border crossings with “stricter” document regulation.
“Chertoff, You’re Doin’ a Heckuva Job.”

Thanks to David Lunde/Lundesigns for Technical Assistance w/this image

By
Been meaning to get to this for some time. Would you give up $21 million dollars to attend to your daughter’s eyesight?
While many fathers love their daughters just as much, few will ever know if they would actually walk away. NBA star Derek Fisher does, and that’s why I think he’s the Father of the Year.
Fisher asked the Utah Jazz to release him from his NBA contract–with 3 years and $21 million in guaranteed salary remaining–so that he could concentrate on continued treatment of his 12-year-old daughter’s rare form of retinal eye cancer. The combination of specialists she needs are not available in Salt Lake City (home of the Jazz) and are only available in a few cities. (Read these two commentaries (here and here) on Fisher’s incredible moral character.)

Said Fisher:

Life for me has always outweighed the game of basketball.
I know it’s hard for people to imagine at this point what I’m giving up and what my family and I are giving up in terms of what we’ve established in my career and this contract that I worked my entire life to secure. It’s the risk that we have to take at this point.
There are just some decisions in life that you make, and they’re just the right decision to make, and you can’t worry about or be overly concerned with what’s to come after when you’re just doing it for the right reasons.

Yes, there are many loving fathers around America who cannot afford–unlike Fisher–to quit working. They have never made the multi-millions he has already earned in his NBA career.
Still, it’s doubtful that many have faced the incredible moral test that faced Fisher. And he stood up to the test, making the right decision. At age 32, he is in the twilight of most NBA careers and will likely never see this kind of money again. And remember, per NBA guaranteed contracts, the money was his, just for showing up . . . even if he endures a career-ending injury.
That’s what Fisher walked away from. And it’s a great lesson for all Americans, especially those who envy the conventional NBA life-style.
Derek Fisher–Hero, Loving Father, and the Anti-dote to the s of the world. This is the kind of role model we need more of in the NBA and all of the pro sports leagues.

By
. . . If we don’t even know where they are? From today’s Wall Street Journal front page, “As for Canada, Finding the Border is a Bit of a Trick“:

“They talk about securing the border, well, nobody ever came to talk to us,” Mr. Hipsley [Kyle Hipsley, deputy chief of the U.S. section of the International Boundary Commission, charged with keeping up the U.S. border with Canada] said. He circled around Lake Memphremagog, just west of Beebe Plain, turned north up a dirt road and stopped at a border gate with a rusty padlock on it. “That’s what we don’t understand. What could be the most basic thing you’d think of? How can you protect it if you can’t see it?”
Mr. Hipsley got out of the car and jumped the gate. “That’ll shake ’em up,” he said. “Border Patrol will be here in a minute.”

Where’s the Northern Border?

He knew the roadway had sensors buried in it, products of heightened post-9/11 vigilance. There were cameras in the trees, too. But where the road fell off into a gully running down to the lake, the undergrowth was 10 feet high. “If you have a camera up on a pole, nobody’s going to see you,” Mr. Hipsley said. “There’s no way. You just walk on through.”
Between 2001 and 2006, the Border Patrol caught 56,883 people sneaking into the U.S. from Canada. Most came from countries where a Canadian visa is easier to get than an American one. In this sector, a 295-mile stretch from New Hampshire to Ogdensburg, N.Y., the patrol caught 12,334. With instructions from a smuggler, the interlopers usually tramp through the brush to a waiting car. Once, Mr. Hipsley ran into a family of Russians at this very spot. They were looking for a bus ride to New York City.

So, how many didn’t the Border Patrol catch?

By
Three cheers to a federal jury in Washington, DC, which awarded $260,000 to one of two men who sued NBA star and , after they were beaten by his entourage at a nightclub in 2005.
(For those who think it’s a racist verdict, not so fast. Marlin Godfrey, Iverson’s victim, who received the jury award is also Black.)
Still, $260,000–$250,000 of which was punitive damages–is too small. It should have been ten times that. For the multi-gazillionaire Iverson, it has the impact of an ant urinating on the sidewalk. He barely notices. It’s well past time that America–not just juries–sent a loud message to pro athletes that their posse thug mentality and behavior will no longer be tolerated.

Said Jury foreman Dave Peterson: “there was no question” that Iverson was negligent in failing to control [bodyguard Jason] Kane that night.
For too long, pro athletes and their posses have gotten away with murder (in the case of NFL star Ray Lewis) and other sickening results of the thuggery of themselves and their “posse” entourages. NFL star “Pacman” Jones’ victim, Tom Urbanski, is permanently paralyzed and must go to the bathroom through a catheter for the rest of his life, all because Jones wanted to see what would happen at a strip club if he threw tens of thousands of dollars in cash on the floor. His friends fired shots when people ran to pick up the money. (Urbanski was moonlighting as a bouncer at the Vegas strip club, saving enough money to put his wife through law school.)
It’s time for America to say, “Enough Is Enough.” But since they won’t even say it to terrorists, I don’t hold my breath for them to send a similar message to the Iversons, Lewises, and Joneses of the sports world.
If Allen Iverson–who has a history of violence and crime–is really “the Answer,” I have to wonder what the heck the question was.
Read some of my previous work on .

By
Time flies. Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator captured by U.S. soldiers in 1989 and convicted of federal drug charges, is set to be released from a Florida prison on September 9th. He served 18 years of a 30-year sentence but is scheduled to get out because of parole and time off his sentence for good behavior.
I recall that to capture him, our soldiers initially played loud heavy metal music, which now qualifies as torture when it’s played for Islamic terrorists who prefer the “music” of gurgling from Nick Berg videos. And I wonder why the ACLU wasn’t screaming and yelling about the musical entertainment we provided for Noriega.
Will Noriega get out and go to a quiet retirement? Or will he be extradited to other countries to face more charges from foreign governments?

France reportedly plans to file an extradition request to force Noriega to serve time there for moving Colombian drug money through Panama to French banks. And Panama wants Noriega to serve multiple prison terms for killings of a criti and ten leaders of a failed coup.