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**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
There’s nothing wrong with compassion. But compassion for convicted murderers is misplaced.
Take Carla Ringleka. In 1999, she and her extramarital lover paid two hitmen $450.00 to murder her husband of 31 years, Howard. They axed him to death. Carla Ringleka was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Now, she has terminal breast cancer (she was diagnosed in 2001), and her doctors say she likely will die within weeks. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm wants the Michigan Parole Board to reconsider their recommendation against a medical commutation of Reingleka’s sentence and to grant an emergency hearing.

Carla Ringleka: Murderer Wants Medically Commuted Sentence
But Howard Ringleka didn’t get any kind of commutation of his brutal death sentence of being hacked to death by an axe. So why should his wife–who arranged his murder–get one? The purpose of sentences like hers–she got 20 years in prison–are to make people suffer for their crimes. Especially if they are murderers.
According to the Grand Rapids Press,

Howard Ringleka’s brother, Jerry, said he opposes the commutation and waiver of the 30-day waiting period. “She didn’t give my brother much of a chance,” he said, “so why should she get one? I’d let her rot in Hell.”

We agree. It may seem cold-hearted to say she should die in jail. But what she did to her husband was far more so. Do you agree?
****UPDATE: Convicted murderer Carol Ringleka died today. ****

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Finally. Today, marks the end to the annoying space newspapers across America have given to the self-absorbed and her self-absorbed ELEVEN(!)-part series on herself and how “heroic” she is.
In today’s last (thankfully) installment, she answers a few carefully-screened softball questions. We just love her answer to the one on Islam’s support for terrorism, which includes this absurd analogy:

I think we can no more say that Muslims are monsters because some people are murderers than you could say that all Americans are like Al Capone because Al Capone killed people.

Uh, Jill, how many Americans danced in the street when Al Capone murdered someone? Which American religion (besides Islam) includes the precept to kill the Infidels? Al Capone’s (Catholicism) certainly didn’t. How many Americans, how many Catholics cheered Al Capone’s activities on? 1.6 billion? Millions? Hardly. How many have posters of Al Capone up at their homes? How many watch Cosa Nostra recruitment videos? How many textbooks and church sermons urge mass murder of others based on religion?
And, Jill, how many buildings full of innocent people did Al Capone blow up? How many pizza shops? How many bars? How many restaurants? How many mosques? How many churches? Are all Americans members of the mob? No. But most of the population in the Arab Middle East are members of Islam and belong to mosques.
More:

Painting any group of people with a broad brush . . . is never accurate and is never helpful. I have had many friends who were Muslims who are angry, embarrassed, frightened and disgusted by the things they see other people doing in the name of their religion.

Really, Jill? Then, where are they? Why are there none denouncing Hezbollah, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad? Where are they in your writing, Jill? Because we certainly know they exist in your imagination and PR machine.
Then, there’s this constant elitist psychobabble:

It’s a complicated issue. It’s a complicated place. The only way to really address this, to understand better, is to be better informed citizens. Read the newspaper every day.

No, Jill, it isn’t complicated. It’s pretty simple, actually. They hate us, and we must stop them from destroying us. Nothing complicated about it. Unless you’re a far left reporter who wants to make it so and , when her PR minders from the lefty Christian Science Monitor aren’t around.
And by the way, reading newspapers? Uh-huh. Just like looking at photos (faux-tos) from Reuters. You can’t believe even half of what you read in newspapers. And apparently, none of the photos.
BTW, Jill Carroll is headed to a fellowship at a university, and we hear the university is Harvard Hates America. Where she’ll be right at home.
Some of our previous work on .

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Just wondering how actresses Calista Flockhart and Helen Mirren and CBS latenight host Craig Ferguson can get away with saying the word “t-t”, unbleeped, on live television–you know, one of the seven words you can’t say over the conventional broadcast airwaves–without NBC–AND THEM–getting fined by the FCC.
They and other celebs (including the actor who presented with her, who also said “t-t”) who uttered various obscenities on live TV, last night, went the way of Janet Jackson at the Superbowl. They got away with it.
Flockhart has a show debuting in the fall on ABC. Will the FCC do a thing to punish her? Not likely. Ditto for Ferguson and his CBS “Late Late Show.” And nothing for Mirren, either. Howard Stern does have a point about the FCC picking on him.

Calista Flockhart & Craig Ferguson: Said “Ass Over T-t” on Emmys

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***** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
With all the money going to Hezbollah, my “friends” in Dearbornistan have less to give to the Palestinian brothers and sisters in HAMAS. That was the lesson I got Friday evening, when I attended a fundraiser for Islamic Relief, a HAMAS “charity” (wink, wink) founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.
For those who know I observe the Jewish Sabbath, I had a team there with me to take over when I had to leave. We were “doing the work some Americans just won’t do.” In this case, those “Americans” are the FBI and ICE. (Maybe that’s why we always see Michigan FBI Special Agent in Charge at the gym after the bankers hours he keeps in the heart of Islamic America for a tax-paid salary and benefits exceeding $200K a year.)

Fortunately, this year’s Islamic Relief event wasn’t as scary as the one we attended in summer 2004, which featured little kids simulating beheadings of Jews, Americans, and Brits . . . as the evening’s entertainment. Nope, this time around, there simply wasn’t the crowd or the money to reprise that “dance” troop from Milwaukee. Instead, there were other expressions of hate over halal dinner and separate seating for men and women.
Most scary to us was that, while, in 2004, we only saw one woman in attendance who was wearing the niqab, this time around half of the women were donning them, which shows us that the extremism and increasing denigration of women is gaining even more momentum in Dearbornistan’s minority Sunni community than we had earlier diagnosed. (Photos of the face covering niqab, with just slits for eyes below–though the women at the event had even the bridges of their noses covered unlike the “immodest” women below, whose “sexy” nose bridges are exposed for all the men of the world to see and by which to be enticed.)

We asked the Palestinian woman sitting next to us how she could tell her various niqab-bearing jihadi girlie-buds apart. She told us that “sometimes it’s her shape beneath the thobe,sometimes it’s the way she walks, sometimes it’s the sparkle in her eye.” Whatever. That BS sounded like a bad Frank Sinatra imitation. And coming from a woman, it was just plain weird.
Then, there was the experience of watching the women in niqabs trying to eat. As you can imagine, it’s kinda difficult. Reminds us of this spaghetti video (a must-see; watch the guy reading the newspaper). Hilarious. And ludicrous.
So, it was yet another interesting few hours with our friends from Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen (“The Muslim Brotherhood”). And the Akhawati (“Sisterhood”), too.
The scary details on Islamic Relief and what we saw, coming late Tuesday/early Wednesday. Stay tuned.

**** UPDATE: Niqab Group Photo . . . .

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While it’s good that the FOX News crew was released, there are a few questions and points that need to be posited about FOX News reporter Steve Centanni and Cameraman Olaf Wiig:
1) They converted to Islam, so according to Islam they are considered Muslims forever. Even though they were forced to do so at gunpoint, the rule in Islam is not the circumstances of the conversion, but the fact that it took place. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim . . . or certain death. That’s a core tenet of Islam.
That they apparently said the Shehadah, the oath to Islam (also known as the oath of Martyrdom) means that if they ever publicly denounce or renounce Islam–as they appear to have done–that is a mortal sin. And they’re subject to a death sentence for it. Muslims can never leave the faith, no matter how they joined it. Good luck to them. Hope they have good security.

FOX News Cameraman Olaf Wiig & Reporter Steve Centanni
(Photo from SITE Institute)
2) Centanni is said to be very pro-Palestinian prior to his kidnapping, and his comments after his captivity don’t help:

I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it.
I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are very beautiful, kind-hearted, loving people who the world need to know more about and so do not be discouraged. Come and tell the story. It’s a wonderful story.

This completely absurd statement is already being met with cheers from the pro-terrorist Palestinian media, such as this headline from the “Palestine Chronicle”:

“Freed Reporters Plead for Gaza Coverage“

Ditto for Wiig’s comment:

That [scaring reporters from covering the Palestinians] would be a great tragedy for the people of Palestine and especially for the people of Gaza.

“Beautiful”? “Kind-hearted”? “Loving”? “Wonderful Story”? Hello? . . . These “beautiful, kind-hearted, loving” people support homicide bombings and mass murder of innocent civilians. They just elected HAMAS, a terrorist group, to run their “country.” What a “wonderful story.” Whatever. A reporter who truly believes this cannot accurately cover what’s really going on there. Which is anything but those adjectives.
Hopefully, these are things that were said because Centanni was still with the Palestinians in Gaza, in the presence of HAMAS Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and wanted to get out unscathed. But we shall see. Keep an eye on Centanni’s reporting from the region from hereon.
3) It needs to be repeated that so many Americans captured by Muslims–including Arab and Muslim Americans in Iraq–have met slaughter and beheading. And yet apparently pro-Islamist journalists, like and reportedly Steve Centanni, are released to freedom. It’s troubling that if you have a certain point of view AND job (ie., reporter) that will help support that point of view, only you get to live. The rest meet certain slaughter.
Why doesn’t that seem to upset anyone? It should upset us all.

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More proof that going to Harvard doesn’t make you a genius. This guy got two degrees from Harvard Hates America. And he still can’t get it right.
On Thursday, Homeland Security’s failed chieftain, Michael Chertoff a/k/a “Mr. Burns,” once again spouted his support for amnesty for illegal aliens a/k/a a “guest worker program.”
At the Harlingen, Texas border, he said that the Border Patrol will not be able to sutain progress in arresting aliens at the border unless Congress passes “broad” immigration reforms. You know what that means. “Broad” means stupid. As in, amnesty.

Chertoff & Look-Alike John Waters:
One is a Director in the World of Make Believe Movies;
The Other is a Director in the World of Make Believe Homeland Security.
According to USA Today, Chertoff said

DHS needs to focus on ‘the drug dealers, the criminals, even the terrorists’ trying to sneak across the southern border. It can only do that, he said, if the majority of migrants crossing to find work are allowed to do so through a ‘guest worker’ program.

Attention, 2-time Harvard grad Chertoff, how exactly will you stop terrorists–who usually have no previous criminal record of any sort–from crossing the border, if you open the border to them as “guest workers”?
None of the Nineteen 9/11 hijackers had criminal records. None would have been turned away from a guest worker program. None. None. None.
In fact, the database that DHS uses for background checks for those seekign citizenship–the same database they will use for a guest worker program–does not even access all the terrorist databases. It has access to only low-level databases, and will miss even many of those on various lists of terrorists.
And there have been many reports that Muslims are coming into the country through Mexico, where they’ve learned to speak Spanish and pose as Mexicans and other Latinos.
It figures a two-time Ivy Leaguer has no competence when it comes to the real world and good old common sense. They don’t teach you those things at Harvard Hates America. If you didn’t have them coming in, you don’t have then coming out.
And Chertoff is Exhibit A for that.

By Debbie Schlussel

The only movie worth seeing this weekend–and one of the few in that category this year–is “Invincible.” If you liked Disney’s “Miracle“–the true story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team’s victory over the Soviet Union–then you’ll also like “Invincible.” We loved both.

Set in 1975, it’s the true story of Vince Papale, a 30-year-old, down-on-his-luck part-time bartender. He tries out for the Philadelphia Eagles at an open tryout publicity stunt put on by the team. And, miraculously, this working class, partially-employed substitute teacher who never played college ball makes the Eagles. Papale played for three seasons with the Eagles.

The movie is uplifting, exciting, and something you AND your kids will enjoy (there’s no sex or violence). At the promotional screening we attended, people had tears in their eyes and applauded at the end of the movie. It’s that good.

We weren’t fans of former Calvin Klein underwear model Mark Wahlberg, but he is very convincing at Vince Papale. As we noted earlier this week, our one reservation with the film is that Greg Kinnear’s version of Eagles coach Dick Vermeil is much more of a mensch (yiddish for decent/good guy) than the real Dick Vermeil actually is. Papale’s girlfriend, played by the beautiful Elizabeth Banks, looks exactly like Elisabeth Shue back in the ’80s.

Also loved the ’70s hits soundtrack and fashions that were prominent in “Invincible.”

Go see this movie.

****

We saw “The Quiet,” or rather part of it. It was so awful, we walked out after 20 minutes. We doubt this cruel story of the horrid treatment of an adopted deaf girl in a messed up family redeemed itself thereafter. Strong proof that actress Elisha Cuthbert can’t act beyond her role as Agent Jack Bauer’s annoying daughter on “24.” Scratch that. She can’t act, period.

Avoid like the plague.

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Almost 5 years since 9/11, it was well past time for the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) to drop its dress code, requiring Air Marshals to wear suits at all times while traveling, etc.
Today, that finally happened and other changes for the better were also announced by the FAMS. ABC’s Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz report:

The elimination of the dress code is one of a number of significant operational changes announced in a message to air marshals today by the director of the Federal Air Marshal Service, Dana Brown. . . .
Effective Sept. l, air marshals will be allowed to “dress at your discretion, recognizing that the manner of dress should allow you to blend in and not direction attention to yourself,” according to Brown’s message.

Brown also said air marshals will be free to select their hotels. Under the previous policy, air marshals were required to stay at the same hotel, where their names were often kept on a roster visible to the public at the front desk.
Brown told the marshals the service is also considering changes in boarding policies, “which unfortunately do not lend themselves to simple solutions or immediate, unilateral decisions.”
Air marshals had complained passengers could easily spot them because they were required to show their badges publicly at the airline check-in counters and were forced to board in advance.
On recent flights out of Washington, D.C., air marshals have been permitted to board with passengers so that they blend in.

We know our friends in the FAMS will be happy about the good news. The dress code and the other conditions now being changed made them more obvious and visible to possible terrorists and others on planes.
Sounds like Dana Brown is a marked improvement over past FAMS leadership. The full Brown announcement/memo with details of all the changes is here.

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Earlier today, we wrote about , whom phony Michigan Republicans recruited to be their candidate for the Michigan Supreme Court . . . in exchange for a judicial appointment down the line. But we almost forgot the piece de la resistance: Trial lawyer Marc Shulman sued a hospital and an obstetrician for wrongful birth, claiming that his client, a mother of a disabled girl would have preferred an abortion, had she known of the resulting congenital anomalies.
Does Amber Jackson and Valerie Miller v. Bronson Methodist Hospital and Kathleen Gadwood, M.D. sound like the work of a professed pro-lifer to you? Didn’t think so. But then, Marc Shulman is also a trial lawyer who pretends to hate trial lawyers. P.T. Barnum was right about the birthrate of suckers. But he forgot that the 1 per minute rate apparently applies to Michigan Republicans. A brief written by Shulman in response to a motion to dismiss the case reads as if it were written by the National Abortion Rights Action League.

NOT PAID FOR BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE COMMITTEE.

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So several Indian (and probably Muslim) passengers on a Northwest flight have a large number of cellphones on the flight, won’t listen to the flight crew, and are disruptive. But yet, they are not suspicious at all.
And are released! Huh? At the very least, they should be charged with obstructing a flight crew or disorderly conduct . . . or something.
From AP:

Prosecutors said Thursday they found no evidence of a terrorist threat aboard a Northwest Airlines flight that was diverted to Amsterdam, and are releasing all 12 passengers arrested after the jetliner landed.
The men, all Indian nationals, had aroused suspicions on Flight NW0042 to Bombay because they had a large number of cell phones and other equipment, and refused to follow the crew’s instructions, prosecutors said.
Because of those actions by the passengers, the pilot of the DC-10 radioed for help shortly after takeoff Wednesday and the plane was escorted back to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport by two Dutch fighter jets. The 12 were arrested after the plane landed.
“A thorough investigation of the cell phones in the plane found that the phones were not manipulated and no explosives were found on board the plane,” said a statement from the prosecutor’s office in Haarlem, which has jurisdiction over the airport.
“From the statements of the suspects and the witnesses, no evidence could be brought forward that these men were about to commit an act of violence,” the statement said.

Sure sounds like a dry run for us. And a very successful one at that. The suspects managed to draw the captain out of the cockpit (not again?!). They used cell phones on the flight in violation of rules. And they saw what would happen to them for doing so and for disobeying the flight crew: NOTHING!
And they managed to get away with it, five years after 9/11.
Is there anyone who really believes it’s just a mere coincidence that there are so many seeming apparent dry runs in the few weeks since the British hijacking plot was foiled?