By
Heard, this week, on the latest episode of NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” (in which attempted child molesters from the Internet get caught while trying to get at their prey):

I’m Egyptian. I’m Muslim. I don’t do this kind of stuff.

Blurted by a guy named Abdallah (which means, Slave of Allah) to NBC reporter Chris Hansen.
Uh-huh. Muslims never do this kind of stuff, right.
Meanwhile, in Muslim Pakistan, police are seeking 10 men, including tribal elders, who pressured a Pakistani woman, Nooran Umrani, to hand over her teenage daughter, Rasheeda, as payment for her late husband’s 16-year-old $165 poker debt.
Then, in Israel, there is this gang of Palestinian Muslim gang-rapists who raped Jewish women as young as 13 for “revenge”:

A gang of serial rapists has been prowling the North, raping Jewish women as revenge for IDF actions in the West Bank, police revealed Tuesday after arresting six suspects.
“We are raping Jews because of what the IDF is doing to the Palestinians in the territories,” one of the six suspects told investigators from the Northern District Central Investigative Unit (CIU) during questioning. During their questioning and their brief appearance at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court Tuesday, none of the four main suspects indicated that they felt remorse for their actions.
Police said they were aware of four attacks carried out by the gang, but they believed there were probably other incidents that had gone unreported by the victims. . . .
In all of the cases, the attackers forced their victim into a car and drove together with the victim to an isolated spot, where they raped her.
All of the suspects are from the Galilee town of Bir al-Maksur, a Beduin village near the Hamovil Junction. The last of the four known rapes was carried out in a forested area just outside of the village.
The first attack occurred in April 2005, when a 13-year-old girl was raped at the Zevulun Beach in Kiryat Yam. In December of that year, a 19-year-old soldier was kidnapped and raped just outside of Kiryat Ata.
According to police, the gang attacked again three days later. In that assault, the gang allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old girl who was standing with her friends at the Kiryon Junction in Kiryat Bialik. They allegedly took her to a grove near Tamra, where they raped her.
It was after the third attack, commander of the Northern District CIU Asst.-Cmdr. Menahem Haver said, that the police realized they were dealing with a serial rape gang. In that case, the teenage victim told investigators that one of her attackers told her the attack was in revenge for IDF operations in the Gaza Strip.

Yes, that’s what Israel gets for forcing Jews to give up their homes and property and giving Gaza to the Palestinian terrorists. Gang-rape. Thanks, Ariel Sharon.
Why rape and not murder? Well as one Muslim tells The Jerusalem Post:

For us, this is worse than a murder.

And FYI, the Muslim rapists are all from Bir al-Maksur, a city of 7,000 Muslims, where Hareb, manager of the Bir al-Maksur Education Department, claims his city is a model of “peaceful co-existence”:

Our village is a quiet place whose residents live in coexistence and friendship with all of its Israeli neighbors.

Uh-huh. That’s what “peaceful co-existence” with Muslims, when their population reaches critical mass, is all about.
And with peace like this, who needs enemies?
Carl in Jerusalem has more, in “Religion of Rape.”

By
Remember the stories claiming that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his Black slave, Sally Hemmings? Well, not exactly. DNA from her descendants matched Jefferson’s uncle, Field Jefferson, not necessarily proving that Jefferson, himself (as opposed to his uncle or another relative), fathered Hemmings offspring.
Now researchers say that same DNA from Field Jefferson shows that Jefferson possibly had one or more Jewish ancestors. In this case, the DNA discovery does apply to Thomas Jefferson, himself, as it runs in the males of the Jefferson family.
Researchers have found that Jefferson’s Y chromosome belongs to a lineage rare in Europe but common in Jews from the Middle East who came to Europe. This riases the possibility that our nation’s third President and one of its Founding Fathers had one or more Jewish ancestors, possibly a Sephardic Jew. From the New York Times:

Was Jefferson First Prez in a Yarmulke?

Was Thomas Jefferson the first Jewish president? Researchers studying Jefferson’s Y chromosome have found it belongs to a lineage that is rare in Europe but common in the Middle East, raising the possibility that the third president of the United States had a Jewish ancestor many generations ago.
No biological samples of Jefferson remain, but his Y chromosome, the genetic element that determines maleness, is assumed to be the same as that carried by living descendants of Field Jefferson, his paternal uncle. These relatives donated cells for an inquiry into whether Jefferson had fathered a hidden family with his slave Sally Hemings. . . .
Geneticists at the University of Leicester in England, led by Turi E. King and Mark A. Jobling, have now undertaken a survey of the branch or lineage to which Jefferson’s Y chromosome belongs. All Y chromosomes fall on branches of a single tree, descended from one man in the ancestral human population. The reason is that all the other potential Adams in this population had Y chromosomes that fell extinct when they had no children or only daughters.
Jefferson’s Y chromosome belongs to the branch designated K2, which is quite rare. It occurs in a few men in Spain and Portugal and is most common in the Middle East and eastern Africa, being carried by about 10 percent of men in Oman and Somalia, the geneticists report in the current issue of The American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Puzzled at the lack of K2 Y chromosomes in Britain given that Jefferson’s own family traced its origin to Wales, Dr. Jobling’s group decided to scan a special population most likely to carry K2 – that of men named Jefferson.
Of 85 British Jeffersons tested, just two proved to have Y chromosomes of the K2 lineage. The paternal grandfather of one was born in Yorkshire, that of the other in the West Midlands.
Discovery of these two English members of K2 supports the idea that Thomas Jefferson’s recent paternal ancestry is from Britain. Had they not been found, Dr. Jobling’s team writes, the geographic distribution of K2 would have made the Middle East seem the most likely origin of Jefferson’s family.
The fact that K2 is common in the Middle East, however, raises the possibility that Jefferson had a Jewish ancestor, Dr. Jobling said. Jewish Y chromosomes resemble those of Middle Eastern peoples, and the Jewish Diaspora is one way Middle Eastern chromosomes entered Europe. But because so little work has been done on the rare K2 lineage, “our research raises the possibility, but doesn’t help anyone to answer it either way,” Dr. Jobling said.
Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona, said he had compared the Jefferson Y chromosome with those in his database of Y chromosomes and found close matches with four other individuals. There was a perfect match to the Y chromosome of a Moroccan Jew, and matches that differed by two mutations from another Moroccan Jew, a Kurdish Jew and an Egyptian.
Dr. Hammer said he would “hazard a guess at Sephardic Jewish ancestry” for Jefferson, although any such interpretation was highly tentative. Sephardic Jews are descendants of those expelled from Spain and Portugal after 1492.
Bennett Greenspan, president of Family Tree DNA, a DNA-testing service, said that among the 90,000 Y chromosome samples contributed to his database, K2 occurred in 2 percent of Ashkenazim, Jews of Central or Northern European origin, and 3 percent of Sephardim.
Even if Thomas Jefferson had had a Sephardic Jew in his ancestry in the 15th century, very little of that ancestor’s genome would have come down to him along with the Y chromosome, given that in each generation a child inherits only half of each parent’s genes.

Gee, I wonder what David Duke and my Islamist friends think of this. Do they really want to remain in a country, one of whose founders might just have been an “Evil Zionist”?
Yes, under Jewish law, it is true that matrilineal descent determines one’s status as a Jew. If you’re mother was Jewish, so are you. If not, then you’re not. But this possible ancestry of Thomas Jefferson is still interesting.

By
Today’s Jerusalem Post features a column by its renowned investigative reporter, Michael Freund, regarding the lies about Israel and the Middle East–and the stale news coverage–of the mainstream, old media. Freund writes that the primary disseminators of actual truth and facts about what’s going on in the Middle East are blogs, like this one:

THE FACT IS that blogs are a vibrant source of energetic and independent thinking, often providing readers with a fresh way of looking at things that is unencumbered by bureaucratic blinders or organizational self-interest.

As a blogger myself, I often find better and more timely analysis on the Web than in the mainstream media. Indeed, some of Israel’s best friends and most articulate defenders can be found in the blogosphere, where sites such as Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Atlas Shrugs, Hugh Hewitt, and Instapundit all provide a refreshing alternative to the moral relativism and politically correct anti-Israel blather of the media.

Good company to be in. Thanks, Michael.
Read the whole column, “Right on: Circumvent Old Media–Go For the Blogosphere.” And visit Michael’s scoop-making investigative work and news analysis in the JPost and in his blog, “Fundamentally Freund.”

By

San Diego State University Professor Jean Twenge, in a study of 16,475 college students nationwide, found that today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than ever.

Surprise!: College Students More Narcissistic, Bad for America

Twenge, who utilized the Narcissistic Personality Inventory survey with the students, rightfully worries that this trend could be harmful to American society. I’d say “could be” is an understatement. We’re already there. And–surprise, surprise–this trend is a result of the absurd, liberal “self esteem” movement of the ’60s, ’70s, and beyond.

Says Twenge:

We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people “or auditioning on ‘American Idol.'” [DS: Yes, we need to be worried about not enough people auditioning for “American Idol.” That’s the ticket.]\

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the “self-esteem movement” that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.

As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of “Frere Jacques” in preschool: “I am special, I am special. Look at me.”

“Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism,” Twenge said. “By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.”

Some analysts have commended today’s young people for increased commitment to volunteer work. But Twenge viewed even this phenomenon skeptically, noting that many high schools require community service and many youths feel pressure to list such endeavors on college applications.

And by the way, there’s an interesting parallel trend that goes along with this narcissism: American college students are more liberal than they’ve been in decades. And more ignorant (study after study shows that increasing numbers of Ivy League students and others at top schools don’t know the most basic facts about American history and government). Maybe a college degree online would be a better option.

Hmmm . . . you think there’s a correlation? You don’t say.

Don’t forget, the ’60s and ’70s marching, protesting, Vietnam-protesting college students of America were among the most self-centered and selfish. And the most liberal.

In contrast, those who served in Vietnam were the ones who made sacrifices. They were the true anti-narcissists. And, in general, the better Americans.

By
Since I loved flying kites with my dad as a kid (I still have this cool, giant Chinese Dragon kite), this one is sad, but not surprising.
As you may know, kite flying–among adults–is big in Islamist Pakistan. While some Muslims protest kites (as a sign of secularism! huh?!), many eagerly embrace kite-flying, much like they vehemently embrace hatred of America, Christians, and Jews. And they display their anti-Western views, like that on the “Christians Are the Devil” kite, below.
My kites always ended up getting stuck in a tree. But Paki Muslims’ kites end up killing people. Deliberately. As you may also know, Pakistanis lace their strings with ground glass and metal. Silly me, I thought this was to make the string stronger (my kite string would often break, and I’d lose my kite, as a result).
But, in fact, the wire and glass are used to try and damage rivals’ kites, and they know it can–and does–kill fellow kite-fliers. And don’t care.

“Religion of Kites”: Muslims Display Anti-Christian Kite
Take this report from AP, about this past weekend’s deadly Muslim kite festival:

LAHORE, Pakistan — At least 11 people were killed and more than 100 people injured by sharpened kite strings, stray bullets and other accidents at an annual kite-flying festival in eastern Pakistan, officials said Monday.
The two-day Basant festival is regularly marred by casualties caused by sharpened kite strings or celebratory gunshots fired into the air. Kite flyers often use strings made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to damage a rival’s kite, often after betting on the outcome.
Authorities had banned kite flying following a string of deaths at the festival last year, but temporarily lifted it before this year’s event. Officials said the ban was re-imposed following the latest deaths.
Police arrested more than 700 people for using sharpened kite strings or firing guns, and seized nearly 300 illegal weapons during this year’s festival, said Aftab Cheema, a senior Lahore police officer.

It’s a Hijab . . . It’s a Kite . . . It’s Deadly

Five of those who died Sunday were hit by stray bullets, including a 6-year-old boy who was struck in the head, said Ruqia Bano, emergency services spokeswoman in Lahore.
A 16-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy died after their throats were slashed by metal kite strings in separate incidents. Two people were electrocuted as they tried to recover kites tangled in overhead power cables, and two people fell from roofs, Bano said.

Kite-flying . . . it’s not just for kids. It’s for violent jihadist Muslims, too.
Gives new (fatal) meaning to the insult, “Go fly a kite.”

Some Muslims Hold Kite-Burnings/Protests

By
Yesterday, President Bush honored retired Army helicopter pilot Bruce Crandall with the Medal of Honor.
It’s long past due. Crandall, a bonified American hero, repeatedly risked his life, leading a two-helicopter team into the “Valley of Death” in Vietnam to save American soldiers fighting for their lives. Of note is why Crandall did not get the honor until now. He withdrew his name from consideration so he wouldn’t get the award before his wingman, Ed Freeman.
Not just a great American and a hero, but a class act, as well. Here’s more on this courageous man, from today’s USA Today:

Bruce Crandall: A Great American Gets Medal of Honor

Crandall, 74, might have been eligible to receive the award – the nation’s highest military medal – years earlier. But he withdrew his name from consideration in the 1990s because he worried his quest for the medal might take precedence over that of his wingman and friend, Ed Freeman.
“If only one of them were to receive the Medal of Honor, he wanted it to be his wingman,” President Bush said in the East Room before placing the blue-ribboned medal around Crandall’s neck. “Today the story comes to its rightful conclusion: Bruce Crandall receives the honor he always deserved.”
Freeman received his medal in a 2001 ceremony at the White House. Crandall, of Manchester, Wash., attended the event. Freeman, 79, couldn’t attend Crandall’s ceremony because his flight from his hometown in Boise was snowed in.
The two have been friends since basic training. On Nov. 14, 1965, they teamed up during a vicious battle later memorialized in a book and the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers.
On that day, about 450 American troops had landed in a remote area of Vietnam near the Cambodian border. They were unaware that their landing in the Ia Drang Valley was amid a major sanctuary for the North Vietnamese Army.
The Americans were surrounded by about 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and came under intense attack. Crandall and Freeman flew the wounded out to a base and returned with troops and ammunition. They kept making trips back and forth even though they were being shot at by enemy fighters, sometimes only 30 yards away.
They flew through a cloud of smoke and a wave of bullets, Bush said. Ground commanders ordered a halt to the airlifts because of the danger, but Crandall kept going, and Freeman joined him.
“We knew that if we didn’t do it our guys would go down,” Crandall said in an interview last week.
The two men made 22 trips over 14 hours. Crandall switched helicopters three times after the aircraft were shot up.
The two men pulled more than 70 Americans out of the battle zone. The battalion lost 79 men, but the North Vietnamese were overcome.
“For the soldiers rescued, for the men who came home, for the children they had and the lives they made, America is in debt to Bruce Crandall,” Bush said. “It’s a debt our nation can never really fully repay, but today we recognize it as best as we’re able.”

Read this separate USA Today story on Crandall, who was portrayed by actor Greg Kinnear in “We Were Soldiers.” Even more on Crandall’s heroism.
Bruce Crandall, 74, Brave Man and American Hero.

By
Mistakes happen, but, when you’re final deathbed ends up being a trash dump, well, it’s literally “beyond fatal.”
Not sure why human remains were stored “in a bag.” Sad.
Of note, in traditional Judaism, someone is paid to watch the body until burial, so this would not happen.

By
The pan-amnestyist mainstream media is gushing.
The pro-illegal alien amnesty group, the Immigration Policy Center, released a study claiming to show that immigrants–both legal and illegal–do not caust or aggravate crime and have lower rates of incarceration among young men.
Well, not exactly. First, it’s nice that they conveniently lump legal and illegal immigrants together. But let’s just look at illegal aliens. The fact is ALL of them are criminals–because they are breaking the law, just being here. So, it’s hard to deny that they have a higher crime rate than the rest of Americans.

ICE’s Marcy Forman Ordered Non-Violent Illegals Released to Freedom
Then, there is the fact that these individuals are here illegally, often under assumed names and identities. They’re used to sneaking around and remaining under the radar of law enforcement. So, just because a smaller percentage of them have been CAUGHT and CONVICTED of crimes, doesn’t mean that a smaller percentage of them actually commit crime (and get away with it).
Then, there’s the issue of incarceration. Hello . . .? Many illegal aliens are simply deported unless they’ve committed very violent crimes like child molestation. I noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director of Investigations a/k/a “” wrote a .
If they’re released and never show up for trial, it’s hard to argue that figures on the ones that are caught and, indeed, incarcerated (or who bother to show up for trial) demonstrate the real picture.
But no biggie. The mainstream media doesn’t care about careful–or even cursory–analysis of phony studies like this. They’re happy to issue the kosher (or is that, halal?) seal of approval to illegal aliens in our midst and look the other way on their obvious contribution to the increase in crime all over America, despite that aliens ARE the problem. That’s especially the case in alien-heavy environs like places like Maricopa County, Arizona where chief prosecutor Andrew Thomas has documented this, irrefutably.
Don’t hold your breath for the Immigration Policy Center “study” about the illegal alien crime wave there.

By
If you are a hockey fan (the kind that used to have the fighting), as I am, you know that the second greatest hockey movie is “Slap Shot.” Sorry, Canadians, but the best hockey movie is “” (about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team).
And if you are a “Slap Shot” fan, you might feel old to reckon with the fact that “Slap Shot” turned 30 over the weekend. 30 years ago, in 1977, Reggie “Reg” Dunlop (Paul Newman), the Charlestown Chiefs, and the brawling Hanson brothers–actors Jeff and Steve Carlson and David Hanson–made their debut.
Though minor league hockey has changed a lot in those 30 years, as the NHL has expanded, the movie stands the test of time as one of the great sports comedies on the silver screen.

Of Interest:
* The Hanson Brothers Official Website
* Detroit Newsistan sports columnist John Niyo’s piece, today, “‘Slap Shot’: Now This is Hockey.”

By
While all of the press reports from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s “Final Call,” Sunday, emphatically stated that Farrakhan stayed away from anti-Semitic statements (that have been typical of his rhetoric), they were wrong.
Call it a whitewash of this Black separatist racist.
In fact, a tiny blurb at the end of today’s Detroit Free Press local politics column, notes that the ADL found otherwise:

A Jewish civil rights group slammed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on Monday for encouraging the reading of books it says promote anti-Semitism.

Extremist Love Gaze: Louis Farrakhan and

During his speech Sunday at Ford Field, Farrakhan urged the crowd to read certain books, including “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” and “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve.”
The former says the history of slavery in the New World was dominated by Jewish ship owners and merchants. The Anti-Defamation League says the book is based on fraudulent scholarship.
The ADL said the other book was written by an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.

This has been par for the Farrakhan course. He’s always blamed Jews for Black slavery in America. But in fact, it was Muslims–NOT Jews–who sold and traded Black slaves to North America. And, as far as Jewish slave owners go, there were very few Jewish slave owners. While slave-owning is abhorrent, those who did own slaves treated them no worse than other slave owners.
When I was an undergrad at The University of Michigan, I looked into these claims by Farrakhan, and found that the University of Michigan Graduate Library has one of the most extensive collections of documentation refuting Farrakhan’s claims about Jews and the slave trade, and that they are largely fictional.
No surprise there, especially given that the utterer of these anti-Semitic myths claims he was once taken into outer space by a spaceship and given his ideas by aliens.
Indeed.