What would be the worst thing to happen if the government didn't subsidize people's insurance? You'll need to pick from these, and a few others:

1) Middle-class people would stay away from flood-prone areas. Rich people could afford private insurance, making their vacation spots even more-exclusive. Poor people could afford the land, balancing their risk with the opportunity for cheap accommodations. Like in Haiti, except by choice, with other opportunities.
2) Insurance rates for all homeowners would drop, because the rich would be paying their own way, and the poor wouldn't be expecting handouts.
3) Property values inland would rise, yet property on those tracts would be easier to insure, and at lower cost.
4) Fewer people would ultimately be affected by the floods. The middle class wouldn't be there in the first place, making voluntary evacuation (of the resultant smaller population) less problematic.
5) Rebuilding costs would be lower, as the rich would have enough insurance, and the low-cost housing would either not be rebuilt, or would be built in such a way that a catastrophe would not be as expensive the next time.
6) Local governments in flood-prone areas would have fewer obligations to the federal government. They would be able to govern in the way that best suited the citizens of the area. Paperwork and staff could be cut, freeing more people to do honest work. Government expenses would plummet.

A look back at some of the significant events and issues in 2005 reveals just how much farther the elite globalist police state has progressed in a short space of time.

This year, "history's actors" are going to be put on trial – while prosecutors and juries study what they have done. As the curtain rises on a new year, the whole history of their crimes stands to be revealed. There is a hush in the theater in the moment before the first act of this long-anticipated drama. If, by the end of it, the principals still believe they can create their own reality, they will likely get the chance to prove their point in prison – where the experimental conditions for a flight into complete fantasy are optimal.

"We're an empire now" – but is the transition complete? Methinks that anonymous neocon spoke too soon, mistaking a wish for a fact – a typical failing of the species, by the way. There is yet time to prevent the slide into imperial decadence. We have not yet slid all the way down the slippery slope that separates a "liberator" from a conqueror.

The peace movements of the entire world should be in crisis mode right now, working non-stop to prevent the U.S. and Israel from starting a war against Iran. (See the James Petras article in CounterPunch on December 24, 2005 titled Iran in the Crosshairs for the best summary of the present situation.) The reckless and unnecessary dangers arising from such a war are so obvious that one wonders why normal political forces in the two aggressor countries -- both of whom love to glorify themselves as democracies -- would not prevent such a war from happening.

This will be remembered as the year in which mass surveillance became normal, even popular.

Revelations about the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping rocked the civil liberties establishment, but the country as a whole didn't seem upset. Instead, the American people, mindful of the possible danger that we face, seem happy enough that Uncle Sam is taking steps to keep up with the challenges created by new technology.

When President Bush explained, over the course of three days, his administration's secret interception of communications involving American citizens without court approval, he repeatedly cited three authorities for such action. One of these was Article II of our Constitution, which provides authority for the president to serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Not relying on my memory — which has proved faulty from time to time (rarely, of course) — I reread Article II to determine if in fact there was language in it that I had missed previously, that when the president serves as commander in chief, he can order federal agencies to violate the law.

NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.

The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.

I wish to announce that I have taken actions that have saved hundreds of American lives.

What kinds of actions?

That's classified.

But since you write columns for a living, you must have dealt with some organizations. Who are they?

That's classified.

When did you take those actions?

That's classified. Listen, I'm not going to discuss intelligence matters except to say that I am simultaneously smiting the enemies of America and protecting Americans' civil liberties, obeying the law and saying my prayers every night.

With all due respect, sir, how do we know you're doing that if every aspect of it is classified?

Trust me.

We, the citizens of the United States of America, ARE the American government. This Constitutional fact has been forcibly and underhandedly stolen from the conscious understand of the citizenry. We do not understand our Constitution. Most American people have never read the document.

For decades, the public school system has steadily removed the reading and study of the Constitution, and we now have a citizenry that is ignorant of their rights and responsibilities as American people. Equally, American students have never been taught the true meaning and history of Socialism, Marxism, Fascism, and Communism.

Only one institution stands in the way of their hoped-for silent revolution. It is the Judeo-Christian ethic, that uniquely American Christianity which links itself with the Old Testament. From that Judeo-Christian ethic derive all of the historically conservative rules of economics, politics and the social order that have made America great. Through the notion of “man created in the image of God,” this ethic has infused the American individual with the virtues of self-reliance, accountability, individuality, risk-taking, heroism and courage, and idealism.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $685 million loan for Iraq on December 24. Now the country’s war torn economy will be fully integrated into the global economy—indefinitely. The reconstruction of Iraq will soon be open to even more industrialized nations and interests.

I fear that too many Americans have contempt for the principles of liberty and opt for solutions that employ the political arena to forcibly impose their wills on others. If that's the preferred game, then those Americans shouldn't whine when others employ the same tactic to impose their wills.

The American people will have to make that decision as to whether we want to be a free repub­lic or a superpower. That is a crossroads that we will come to just as the Romans did. They first attempted to govern their empire with this old constitution, and it simply did not work. It is, however, possible to adopt a constitution so that you preserve the essence of political liberty and, at the same time, develop the institutions that can govern such an empire and preserve and expand the position of a superpower that brings peace and prosperity to the world.

Libertarians, paleoconservatives, progressives and liberals alike are likely to be wasting their time fighting the Patriot Act considering the recent relevations that Bush blatantly acted outside of the Constitution (and even the questionable FISA) with respect to civil liberties issues.

Snoopgate

Was Illegal Spying Used To Get FISA Warrants?
Ex-NSA Intel AnalystTo Reveal Unlawful NSA Conduct
NSA Spying Broader Than Bush Admitted
NSA Snooping & Israeli Connection Questioned
SnoopGate Snared Thousands Of US Calls
Spy Court Judge QuitsTo Protest Civilian Spying
How Far Back Are WH Illegal Searches Sanctioned?
Bush Called NYT Editor & Publisher To Oval Office!
NYT Spiked Snoopgate Story Before Election To Help Bush
Newsweek - Bush Asked NYT To Spike Snoopgate Story
Bush Shows He Believes He Is Above The Law
Bush Used 911 To Elevate HImself To Dictator
No Doubt Rense & Jones On NSA Wiretap List

The Iraq War is an unconstitutional, unjustifiable conflict devouring innocent lives and abetting the growth of an increasingly lawless leviathan state. It must be ended -- now. [Click here to send online letter to Congress, "Bring Our Soldiers Home From Iraq -- Now!"]

Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Holley, born in Idaho and raised in Chula Vista, California, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on November 15. A three-time AAU Karate champion and accomplished artist, Holley followed in his father's footsteps by enlisting in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne. "It made me very proud that he actually wanted to be like his dad," recalled Holley's father, John, at the young soldier's December 2 funeral.

Summing up some major highlights as the year comes to a close:

- We're now a total of $8 trillion dollars in the hole at the federal level and President Bush can't find his veto pen;

- Medicare is going bankrupt and not a dime is being set aside to meet the gargantuan needs of the nation's retiring baby boomers;

- In Iraq, U.S. soldiers are fighting door-to-door, establishing what looks to be a Shiite theocracy, while Iran and North Korea, two of the craziest regimes on the planet, are developing nukes;

- And here at home our crack counterterrorism agents are spying on librarians and wiretapping vegetarians.

Ranked by the editors of Human Events.

1. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.)
2. Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine)
3. Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.)
4. Sen. Susan Collins (Maine)
5. Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.)
6. Gov. George Pataki (N.Y.)
7. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.)
8. Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.)
9. Rep. Michael Castle (Del.)
10. Rep. Jim Leach (Iowa)

The state is no friend of religion, and especially Christianity. Why do so many Christians defend, support, and make excuses for the state, its politicians, its legislation, and its wars? Why do they complain about the state allowing abortion, gay rights, and pornography, and then look to the state to enforce morality or fund faith-based initiatives? I suppose that only God himself knows.

As a Christian, I thank God for the courage of the wise men and the fact that Christmas was. Merry Christmas.

I wish to urge you to secede – not politically from the union, but from the culture, which is, after all, decadent and nutty.

Secularism, hedonism and nihilism, which characterize today's culture, spell the death of any civilization. It may well be that Western civilization has already committed suicide, as some have argued. That means it is all the more important for the remnants who still believe in ideals to preserve themselves and provide the seeds for a new and better civilization.

The story goes that when the nonviolent Jesus was born into abject poverty to homeless refugees on the outskirts of a brutal empire, angels appeared in the sky to impoverished shepherds singing, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth!” That child grew up to become, in Gandhi’s words, “the greatest nonviolent resister in the history of the world,” and was subsequently executed by the empire for his insistence on justice.

This weekend, as tens of millions of Christians across the country celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the U.S. wages war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia and elsewhere; crushes the hungry, homeless, elderly, imprisoned and refugee; and maintains the world’s ultimate terrorist threat--its nuclear arsenal.

How admired is President Bush? When he urged the Iranians to go to the polls and repudiate the mullahs, they responded by choosing as president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who makes Hashemi Rafsanjani look like Ramsey Clark. When Condi Rice stiffed the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a visit to Cairo, the Brotherhood soared in Egyptian eyes and swept to victory in 60 percent of the parliamentary races it contested.

Word of Eberle’s candidacy first broke on December 9 in the Big Tex Gossip, Rumors and B.S. section of the Austin-based Texas Insider:

Conservative activist and GOPUSA Chairman Bobby Eberle is expected to announce his candidacy for Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas at Saturday's State Republican Executive Committee Meeting in Austin. He has been lining up support across the state, and hopes to bring his vast experience in technology and issues advocacy to the state party.

After "Propagannon" erupted, many Texas Republicans claimed that they never heard of Bobby Eberle even though he had a long history of activism for the party and many GOP operatives worked (or volunteered) alongside him at GOPUSA.com.

For Whom the Bell Tolls . . . .

The brave soldiers who went against government orders and instead followed a much higher calling during the Christmas truce of 1914 have taught us that it is very possible to defeat the government. The government can’t take advantage of us if we ignore it. It’s kind of like a drug addiction. All you have to do to break a drug addiction is not take drugs. Likewise, all we have to do to break the government is not listen to it. Ignore it. When this first happens in mass, the government won’t know quite what to do. Then, when they fall back on using violence to keep their unnatural power over people, the only natural reaction from people is to respond in kind.

How will Republicans and Democrats fare in the 2006 Congressional Election?
Democrats will take control of the House 1.8%
Democrats will take control of the Senate 2.7%
Democrats will take control of both houses 3.5%
Republicans will retain control of both houses 92.0%
Total votes: 2244.

Where the old interventionists, motivated by clear national, economic, or political agendas, would have devoted their energies to building an indigenous movement that could take the reins of power after the war and keep order, the humanitarians, motivated by a preening desire to be seen as international do-gooders, give little consideration to such matters. In Iraq they have since attempted to insert a stable government, but it has little real legitimacy or grassroots connection with the people.

Iraq is a giant, messy albatross hanging from President George W Bush's neck. The faith-based American president believes "we are winning the war in Iraq". The reality-based global public opinion - not to mention 59% of Americans, and counting - know this is not true.

Bush has opened a Pandora's box with his shock and awe tactics. The ultimate quagmire will keep mutating and unleashing its deadly new powers for years on end. And there is nothing anyone - not even the "indispensable nation" - can do about it. We have all been, and will remain, shocked and awed.

Remember when Time magazine’s man of the year, apart from the parade of presidential feebes and felons, was some hero or villain you had to respect if not always admire? Among the heroes was the first recipient, Charles Lindbergh as well as Charles de Gaulle and Lech Walewsa. The villains included Hitler, Stalin, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Where to put Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King, I leave to you.

In recent years, Time has accelerated its search for the trendy or tear-jerking, naming the founder of Amazon in 1999, Rudy Giuliani in 2001, a set of Whistleblowers in 2002, the American Soldier in 2003. This year, however, Time climaxed its plunge into pop culture, naming as the “Good Samaritans” two mischief-making do-gooders, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Bono, self-appointed conscience of the chic and dumb.

Ideas move people to action, especially ideas that are grounded in moral principles. This is how people throughout history have risen above their ordinary daily affairs to achieve such monumental things as the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, habeas corpus, and due process of law. Achievements such as those don’t just happen. They are the result of people’s efforts to speak the truth and share ideas on freedom with others, who then think and reflect upon such truths and ideas and who are then motivated to share them with yet others.

Some 70% of the world's Christmas ornaments and other paraphernalia now originate in officially atheist mainland China. Tinsel, Santas, mistletoe and artificial trees of every shape and hue are churned out at a relentless pace by thousands of factory workers in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

According to the China General Administration of customs, Guangdong on its own exported more than US$620 million worth of Christmas products in 2004. For the country as a whole, the figure was over $1 billion.

"The only friends we have are evangelicals. Why can't they protest against watering down their religion? O' Reilly, Hannity, Coulter etc are friends of Israel." One person e-mailed me to say that "we Jews need to stop biting the hands that feed us. Let them have Christmas so long as they support Israel."

An aide to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told the Jewish Telegraph that Zionism was a religious issue and refused to take a position on "an Old Testament mandate".

The Israeli government hit back, comparing the Republic to the hardline Iranian regime.

"I am very sorry that Ireland takes this position because in doing that they support [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," blasted a senior aide to premier Ariel Sharon.

A list of the most common, and successful, propaganda techniques currently in use. If you spend any time at all consuming mass media, you will find these techniques familiar.

1. Guilt By Association:
2. Backstroke:
3. Misinformation:
4. Over Humanization:
5. Name Calling:
6. He Said, She Said:
7. Unproven "Facts"
8. Lying Sometimes complete lies are told
9. Telling the Truth, For a While
10. Not Talking at all about Something
11. Subtle Inaccuracies/Dismissive Tone Misstating a topic
12. A One One Punch pretending to represent two sides
13. Volume This is related to Coordination
14. Coordination
15. Fogging an Issue/Total Nonsense Sometimes
16. 2,3,4 Technique Mentioning
17. Preemptive Strike
18. Framing the Debate Setting
19. Token Equal Time Sometimes
20. "Interpreting"
21. Withholding Information
22. Distracting or Absurd Metrics

"As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," wrote Jones in his landmark 139-page decision.

"The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea and even to prevent criticism of Darwinian evolution through government-imposed censorship rather than open debate, and it won't work," said Dr. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Institute.

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday

Conservative intellectuals living in blue enclaves have had to develop the sensitivities and dual consciousness characteristic of many marginalized groups. It is not enough to speak what one thinks, one must also think ahead and anticipated the reactions of others who see things differently. This is a taxing discipline, intellectually and emotionally, but it also produces superior results in terms of winning over the undecided or the wavering.

The liberal bubble is a seductive delusion, one to which many liberal are addicted. Repeated failures to persuade the public to vote into power those politicians who agree with their political principles will not persuade many to venture outside the glossy confines. As result, expect the liberal spiral downward to increasingly resemble a vortex, leading to oblivion.

["There Goes Christmas?!" was first published in American Opinion magazine, the predecessor publication of The New American magazine, in May 1959. This article was an essential educational tool in the John Birch Society's successful letterwriting campaign in 1959 to prevent major department stores from replacing their Christmas decorations with UN-oriented decorations. The full text of this article is being posted online at this time to expose just how real, and just how subversive, the 'War on Christmas' had already become 46 years ago. Robert Welch, Founder of the John Birch Society, wrote the following progress report in the JBS Bulletin for January 1960: "Our campaign to keep department stores from substituting UN insignia, and other one-world propaganda pieces, for conventional Christmas decorations, spread into many groups and sparked many helping drives. And this total effort clearly put strong brakes on the Communist-backed movement to convert Christmas into some kind of atheistic, United Nations, 'one-world' celebration."]

The new presidential absolutism infuses not only Bush's foreign policy, which asserts the "right" of the White House to make war on anyone, anywhere, anytime, and for any reason, but also, increasingly, his domestic policies. The doctrine of wartime presidential supremacy has been dramatized, in recent days, in a series of disturbing developments on the home front: the utilization of "national security letters" by the FBI to snoop on thousands of U.S. citizens, the creation of a permanent database that amounts to an electronic "enemies list," and just this past week the revelation that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails originating in the U.S. – without going to the FISA court that normally oversees such activities.

Many Dems and a few Republicans are grousing that investigation is in order. As some despicable Dems tell it, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are bad people, but the gravest threat to America is posed by President Bush, a tyrant who deliberately deceived the America people (and plenty of goodhearted, gullible Dems) in order to attack Iraq and the Congressional Republicans who have made Congress more corrupt than ever.

If a Democrat was President, and took the same kind of action as President Bush did to protect America from another September 11 attack, or worse, he or she would be praised to the skies by his or her fellow Dems for doing the right thing.

Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.

A variety of foot apparel, e.g., stocking, socks, etc., had been affixed by and around the chimney in said House in the hope and/or belief that St. Nick AKA/St. Nicholas AKA/Santa Claus (hereinafter "Claus") would arrive at sometime thereafter.

We have placed ourselves in an "oil stranglehold" precisely because we have allowed radical environmentalists to win the "politically correct" argument nearly uncontested. Every effort we make to explore what are likely to be massive oil reserves throughout Alaska and offshore, both in the Atlantic and the Pacific, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, are predictably blocked by the radical environmentalists and their Democratic Party allies on the political left.

Once a people has repudiated its real and rooted faith, it has no other recourse but the false and meretricious ecstasy offered by cults. Man does not live, despite the claims of scientists and scientific socialists, by bread alone, and when the Word of God is taken from him, he must turn to whatever spirits present themselves—to Carl Sagan’s gods of space, to Santa Claus with his precious cargo, and—when he despairs—to the Father of Lies himself.

The analysis that follows from Bush's assertion of unlimited presidential powers and his deceptive explanations to the American people about Iraq suggests two alternative theories. Either Bush is increasingly unstable, incapable of discerning reality from his own propaganda, or he is concealing his real agenda with misleading arguments.

Put differently, either the United States is experiencing a kind of modern "madness of King George" - like what happened when King George III became unstable in the years after losing the Colonies - or the American people are living under a cunning Machiavelli with a calculated method to his apparent madness.

Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, and other countries. They have learned well. They will be the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified "security reasons."

Last week the New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly intercepting telephonic and email communications between U.S. citizens since 9/11. This systemic non-court-sanctioned domestic spying is, of course, strictly illegal but President Bush quickly and casually rationalized all of it in the name of "protecting us from terrorism." Almost immediately the usual outraged congressional suspects (Senators Kennedy, Schumer, Specter) admitted that they were shocked, yes shocked, by such a blatant abuse of governmental power and promised Capital Hill hearings to resolve the matter. Sure.

Perhaps pressures will be exerted on him that he will be unable to withstand. Perhaps the opposite will happen, and he will easily fend off the pressures. Perhaps he will take possession of the defeated Likud. Perhaps he will set up a coalition with Labor. The possibilities are almost endless.

The real danger lies in the setup of Sharon 's party itself. It has no ideology but Sharon . No program but Sharon . No plan but Sharon .

This is a party of one leader, committed to nothing. His word is its command. He alone will compose its list of candidates. He alone will draft the party program--which will be irrelevant anyhow, since Sharon alone will decide what to do at any time.

Clearly, a continued belief in the absolute truth of Darwinist evolution is but an act of faith that fulfills a psychological need of folks who have rejected God. That picture on the wall of the science class of apes on four legs, then apes on two legs, then homo erectus walking upright is as much an expression of faith as the picture of Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation. The statesman collects his information secretly and by secret means; he keeps back even the current intelligence of the day with ludicrous precautions The Press lives by disclosures For us, with whom publicity and truth are the air and light of existence, there can be no greater disgrace than to recoil from the frank and accurate disclosure of facts as they are. We are bound to tell the truth as we find it, without fear of consequences--to lend no convenient shelter to acts of injustice or oppression, but to consign them at once to the judgement of the world.

But the Patriot Act's critics got a boost from a New York Times report saying Bush authorised the National Security Agency to monitor the international phone calls and international emails of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States.

Previously, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations.

On the front page of today's NEW YORK TIMES, national security reporter James Risen claims that "months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States... without the court approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."

On the second page of a report which reveals the White House engaged in warrantless domestic spying, the New York Times reveals that it held the story for a full year at the request of the Bush Administration, RAW STORY can reveal.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to this country, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

As Iraq was not enough, the escalating rhetorical war between Iran and Israel may be leading to a "hellish military confrontation" for the whole Middle East, as a recent editorial of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi put it. As much as the paper emphasized that the "international community could not be allowed to be dragged by Israel into a new war in the Middle East, exacerbating violence and terrorism and threatening oil supplies", it seems Israeli hardliners are very much intent on proving that the Iranian desert in March can be as cold as Alaska.

We often think of large corporations as the embodiment of our system of free enterprise -- often they are, but increasingly they fall way short of the mark.

This annual list spotlights companies who have most egregiously abandoned their fiduciary and moral responsibilities to their shareholders and our free enterprise system, respectively, in favor of embracing the false and harmful social activist-promoted notion of “corporate social responsibility.”

In a story hidden behind the TimesSelect firewall, editorialist Adam Cohen again proves himself easily frightened, adding anti-Semitism to the list of charges against Christmas defenders (as well as his recent accusation that Christmas defenders are in fact pushing for a more theocratic America).

"The Christmas 'defense' movement is starting to be openly anti-Semitic. The two people [FOX talk-show host Bill] O'Reilly has demonized the most frequently on the issue are Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show,' and George Soros, the billionaire financier whom O'Reilly has called the 'moneyman' behind the anti-Christmas movement."

Dubithy:

Somewhere under the radar, way down low.
There's a land that I heard of once, where the oil still flows.
Somewhere under the radar, folks are screwed.
And the schemes that you dare to scheme really do come through.
One day I wrecked the family car, and daddy and my mummy Bar remind me,
Of my troubles taking acid drops, the night they had to call the cops,
And then they fined me.
Somewhere under the radar, I'll get high. Drink Rye under the radar,
Try, oh yes I'll still try
Why, why must I be dry?

You may object, "But liberals don't really believe in social tolerance, they believe in Political Correctness and intolerance of those who disagree with them!" Or, your protest may be, "But conservatives are really theocrats who want a police state at home and perpetual war abroad!" Why are both the Left and the Right so often, and so justly, depicted as not just wrong-headed, but evil?

The tendency of both the Left and the Right is to accuse the other of the very same charge. According to the Left, the defining characteristics of the Right are coercion and centralization; the Right supposedly wants to establish a fascist, imperial state with absolute executive power. But according to the Right, the Left is all about – you guessed it – coercion and centralization, with the goal of establishing a communist world government with unchecked judicial and bureaucratic power.

The ignorance is angering and frightening.

Watch as the reporter in this piece asks ridiculous questions about Iraq and gets back real Americans' opinions.

We "should kill as many Iraqi civilians as Americans died on 9/11 to even things out", "We should destroy the whole country, because we are the superpower", "We should nuke them to hell like we did the Japanese".

"Should Jewish children see this movie or read the books? I'm unsure. My personal jury is still out," said Dardik, the spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland, Calif. "I read them … clearly it didn't affect my personal theology."

He added, "I haven't seen the movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if they fleshed out the Christianity a bit more to be satisfying to the Christian audience. That's the part that's most disconcerting to me. I also have concerns about the marketing. Hollywood has a way of being very in-your-face."

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been thundering across the globe this year as if the end times were near. War, Famine, Plague, and Death have been reinforced by several of Death’s more effective assistants: Earthquake, Hurricane, Tornado, and Tsunami. If the Horsemen had better timing, they would have shown up five years ago when we were waiting for the Millennium Bug to destroy civilization as we know it.

The ever-widening scandal surrounding Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff threatens to take down at least a half-dozen Congressmen in 2006, more of their aides, Executive Branch employees, and untold numbers of other members of the Republican Beltway hierarchy. At least four dozen lawmakers from both parties are documented as having taken actions favorable to Abramoff clients around the time they received large donations from Abramoff and/or his clients. It's a sordid tale of Washington corruption, and of crony capitalism at its worst, and it is so dizzyingly complex that few media outlets and even fewer members of the public have yet appreciated just how thoroughly it indicts not just Republican leadership, but the entire bipartisan way of crafting public policy that masquerades as 21st century American democracy.

The December 15 elections will do little to halt the trend toward the regionalization, and potential fragmentation, of Iraq. The Kurdish north and religious Shi'a in the south seem inclined to force the disintegration of Iraq's central government by shifting power to the regions that they control. The constitution that the government will be based on was written in a way that will hasten this drift toward regionalism. Indeed, in the constitution there is very little to be said about how the central government should function, but much written about the powers accrued to the regional parliaments. Without significant changes made to the constitution, an unlikely prospect at this juncture, Iraq's central government will not have the power to hold the state together.

Most people come to conservatism as they mature, for it is the responsibility inherent in maturity that moderates the rampant and unreasonable emotionalism of their liberal youth and finds them adapting the conventions I have listed. They become theophiles, famulists and individualists, and all three work together to mirror the way they live. In short, they find out what life is really about: God, family, and freedom.

Election or no election, the ultimate blood-drenched quagmire will remain fully operational. Al-Qaeda will keep suicide bombing to death. Shi'ite death squads will keep executing Sunni Arabs. Shi'ite and Kurd politicians will keep squabbling - while Kurdistan and Shi'iteistan further ignore Baghdad. The Americans will keep controlling nothing - not even the road from the airport to the Green Zone. "Reconstruction" will remain non-existent - until the probably not-too-distant day when the Shi'ite signatories of the "pact of honor" - the probable election winners - will muster the will to tell the occupiers "you're out - and don't forget to pack your military bases as well".

There was a terrible cost to be paid for this hubris. None of the neighbours of Iraq, from Saudi Arabia to Iran, wanted the US to succeed in Iraq. This was hardly surprising. Washington had made clear that the Iraqi regime was only the first on its list of possible targets. The insurgents received vital if covert assistance from abroad.

But it would be a mistake to think that Iraqis could agree on the same strong leader. The Sunni would like a strong man to put the Shia in their place and the Shia feel likewise that the priority for a powerful leader would be dealing with the Sunni. Iraqis have great resilience. They are also cynical about their political leaders. The election results are likely to show that the great majority of Iraqis will vote along ethnic or religious lines as Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The country is turning from a unitary state into a confederation. There is no sign yet of the thousand-day war ending. Every month up to a thousand fresh corpses arrive at the mortuary in Baghdad. A new Iraq is emerging but it is already drenched in blood.

Israel is a scofflaw nation and should be treated as such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian misery, our president should suspend all aid until Israel ends its occupation of Arab land Israel seized in 1967. The suspension would force Sharon’s compliance or lead to his removal from office, as the Israeli electorate will not tolerate a prime minister who is at odds with the White House.

If Bush needs an additional reason for doing the right thing, he can justify the suspension as a matter of military necessity, an essential step in winning international support for his war on terrorism. He can cite a worthy precedent. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that freed only the slaves in states that were then in rebellion, he made the restriction because of "military necessity." If Bush suspends U.S. aid, he will liberate all Americans from long years of bondage to Israel’s misdeeds.

How could that have happened to liberal Democrat McCarthy, who helped lead Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to success after World War II, made a stirring nominating speech for Adlai Stevenson at the 1960 Democratic convention when it was clear John Kennedy would win the presidential nomination, and then earned a place in the history books with his showing in the presidential sweepstakes in 1968? The answer, as I see it, is that Eugene McCarthy was not the left-wing figure both followers and detractors made him out to be and, more significantly, his principles sometimes led him to rise above ideology.

Many regular Democrats never forgave him for embarrassing a sitting president in his own party, just as many regular Republicans never forgave Pat Buchanan for his strong New Hampshire primary challenge to the elder George Bush in 1992. Similarly, in defeating Robert Kennedy in the Oregon primary in 1968 -- in part through votes from Teamsters who hated RFK for his pursuit of their President Jimmy Hoffa -- he won the lasting enmity of the Kennedy family.

Represented by literally hundreds of small denominations and churches today, particularly in America, Christian Zionism is today a formidable force and a major actor in global politics. Christian Zionism comes in various shades, but the core of its message is total, unflinching support to the state of Israel and the Zionist imperialist project. Christian Zionists today exercise an enormous clout in the Bush administration. Bush, too, may himself be characterised in some sense as a Christian Zionist, for his policies in the Middle East and elsewhere clearly reflect or tally with the Christian Zionist agenda.

In addition to being a mystic, healer and teacher, Jesus Christ was a social prophet and movement initiator in the tradition of the social prophets of ancient Israel.1 These social prophets were noteworthy for their sacred or mystical experiences as well as their radical criticism of the existing social-political order. As Marcus Borg explains, they were spirit-fueled advocates of social justice. To understand this facet of Jesus’ mission, it is important to understand this and the historical context in which Jesus lived.

Thus, Jesus was killed because he stood against the Roman and Jewish authorities in favor of an alternate political and social order. He was indeed a political rebel with a cause – the liberation of his people from the Roman and Judean domination system of his day.

The mystery of Gene McCarthy was that before 1968 he had never been a maverick, a rebel or a peacenik. Throughout his career in the House and Senate before 1968, he had been a conventional cold war liberal, a fierce anti-Communist. His transformation into the standard-bearer of the liberal antiwar movement is one of the great stories in American politics.

He fought in the courts to get independent candidates on the ballot, and his success paved the way for Ross Perot and then Ralph Nader in 2000.

In New Hampshire in February 1968, he was more than a decent guy--he was a true hero of the antiwar movement. That's the Gene McCarthy I want to remember today.

And if Walt Whitman celebrated his own life as the great poem of America in its questing 19th century moment, then surely Gene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign was -- in its brief shining moment -- the great poem of the American political experience.

McCarthy's literary bent tended to put off fellow senators, who sometimes dismissed him as too prone to rumination and independent thinking for the game of politics. But it sat well with the ragtag band of political dreamers who dared believe they could defeat a sitting president, end a foolish war and set right a nation.

Their slogan was: "To begin anew... ."

To the economic patriots of the Old Republic, trade policy was to be designed to benefit, first, the American worker. They wanted American families to have the highest standard of living on earth and U.S. industry to be superior to that of any and all nations. If this meant favoring American manufacturers with privileged access to U.S. markets and keeping foreign goods out with high tariffs, so be it.

Fifty years ago, a trade deficit of 6 percent of GDP, a hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs and a growing dependence on foreign nations for the vital necessities of our national life would have been taken as signs of the decline and fall of a great nation.

Part of the problem, speakers suggested, is that conservatives have allowed their movement to converge too much with Bush and his Republican Party. Bush, after all, did not promise to govern as a small government conservative. He recognized that Ronald Reagan, who called government the problem, not the solution, was not able to cut back government much, and he promised instead to promote policies that increase choice, competition and accountability -- which he has mostly done. But it's not immediately obvious what other federal policies can advance those goals further. Hence, the feeling of a dead end.

Moreover, by preaching Darwinism, Krauthammer is courting the historical enemies of some of his own conservative causes. Krauthammer once argued that human beings should not be subjected to medical experimentation because of their inherent dignity: “Civilization hangs on the Kantian principle that human beings are to be treated as ends and not means.”

This view of “scientific humanism” implies that our alleged undirected evolutionary origin makes us fundamentally undifferentiated from animals. Thus Wilson elsewhere explains that under Neo-Darwinism, “[m]orality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. …

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

“If we opt for the military strike,” said a source, “it must be not less than 100% successful. It will resemble the destruction of the Egyptian air force in three hours in June 1967.”

In other words: Comply and submit, or die. If you happen to be the innocent victim of the mistaken application of federal “protocols,” you'll be used as an object lesson, while your murderers (no other word fits) are extolled as brave defenders of the public.

The slaughter of Mr. Alpizar offers a perfect illustration of Paul Craig Roberts' warning that modern America is divided between those whom the law cannot restrain, and those it doesn't protect.

Oh, one other thing: In an age when the president and his cohorts claim the right to stage "pre-emptive" invasions of foreign countries, should we really be surprised when innocent American citizens are "pre-emptively" murdered by federal law enforcement officials?

I contend that the support of the U.S. empire on the part of many conservatives is entirely arbitrary. If our average conservative happened to be an Iraqi, he would be a cheerleader for Saddam Hussein. If he had been born in the Soviet Union at the right time, he would have been a fanatical Stalinist. If in China, he would have lied and churned out propaganda for Mao. As things actually are, conservatives have ended up as apologists for the American leviathan. But it is merely an accident of birth, and it is because of them or rather their totalitarian counterparts that both socialism and fascism of the 20th century endured for as long as they did.

Did the White House slip Judy Miller money under the table to hype Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? I'm quite sure it didn't and the only money Miller took was her regular Times paycheck.

But this doesn't mean that We The Taxpayers weren't ultimately footing the bill for Miller's propaganda. We were, since Miller's stories mostly came from the defectors proffered her by Ahmad Chalabi's group, the Iraqi National Congress, which even as late as the spring of 2004 was getting $350,000 a month from the CIA, said payments made in part for the INC to produce "intelligence" from inside Iraq.

“Does anyone believe Miss Condoleezza Rice?” Germany’s leading news magazine Der Spiegel wrote after the U.S. Secretary of State’s visit to Berlin on Dec. 7. Revelations of illegal abductions, torture flights and secret U.S.-run gulags in Europe have been the front-page news around the world for weeks.

The fact that “the secretary of state had to deny that the president condones torture” to reliable European allies “was a sad enough measure of how badly the Bush administration has damaged its moral standing,” the paper’s lead editorial said.

Realistic antiwar activists understand that, regarding this war, the American people (and to some extent the Iraqis) have been and are being subjected to the most pervasive, intrusive, and massive marketing-propaganda campaign in the history of the world. Nothing which appears in the mainstream media about the war is worthy of belief. Some things reported may be true, but intelligent belief in such must be conditioned on independent verification.

Whichever party has power, all important public decisions are made in secret and public acquiescence is obtained by manipulation through the mainstream media by our national so-called representatives and other public and private officials chosen to have media access.

House conservatives today announced plans to amend a Republican-sponsored immigration reform bill with language calling for the construction of a 2,000-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and a provision that would deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. whose parents aren’t citizens.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) organized Thursday’s press conference featuring about 20 other conservative Republicans. Each complained about a particular area they want to see addressed (see full list below).

During Bradley A. Smith’s legendarily testy 2000 confirmation hearing for a slot on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), senators piled on the insults like pork for home-state contractors. None were more effusive in their outrage than the Glimmer Twins of campaign finance reform, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), whose eponymous legislation, also known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, has helped usher in a repressive age of limits on explicitly political speech.

The existence of this universal death squad -- and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents -- has not provoked so much as a crumb of controversy in the American establishment, although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in The Washington Post in October 2001. We first wrote of it here in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the edict also applied to U.S. citizens, as The Associated Press reported.

Not even now, when the U.S. people's growing revulsion at Bush's bloody handiwork has emboldened a few long-time enablers of atrocity to criticize the "excesses" of his gulag and his "mishandling" of the war in Iraq. A few nips at the flank of the beast have been permitted. But the corroded heart of Bush's system of state terror -- officially sanctioned murder by presidential fiat -- remains curiously sacrosanct.

McCain's record is so consistent on this point that it's hard to see how someone could miss it. He is not only fervent in his support for the war and massive intervention in the Middle East, but he supported each and every one of Bill Clinton's wars, back when Republican members of Congress were coming off like peaceniks. While the Republican caucus was overtly hostile to President Clinton's war aims in Kosovo and Bosnia, and tried to cut off the funds for that little expedition, McCain cheered and called for "more boots on the ground" as the Clintonites bombed some of the oldest cities in Europe.

There is no doubt that the Venezuelan right is incapable of replicating the CIA-Soros "color revolutions" in the Caucasus for several reasons. First the Chavez regime has a mass active and engaged popular base, which dominates the street action. Secondly there is no issue around which the right can mobilize and unify a popular movement. The vast welfare programs are popular, the economy is growing, living standards are rising, corruption is not out of control and there is complete freedom of assembly, press and speech.

Big-power summits have had little effect since the end of the cold war. But in Asia, where old rivalries are still tense, their potential is still huge. On Monday, 16 leaders hold the first Asia-wide summit. The results may be few, but note: The region's biggest military and economic player, the US, wasn't invited.

But the potential of these summits still poses a challenge to the US. They send a signal that America's Asian allies may no longer rely on it to be the regional broker and benign, big influence. The Bush administration, preoccupied with Iraq, has had a short attention span with Asia. It often avoids chances to boost ties, and focuses more on China's emerging military than its subtle diplomacy.

Mnookin paints a dark reportorial landscape where reporters from the Times were barred from speaking with top executives, or weren't allowed to speak with members of their own editorial board.

"She dated Steve Ratner, one of Sulzberger's best friends... and had even, for a time, shared a vacation home with Sulzberger. She had a reputation for sleeping with her sources (in the 1980s, she both lived with then congressman Les Aspin and quoted him in her dispatches); ... for raining torrents of abuse on clerks, travel agents, and drivers; for cutting down her colleagues."

Forthcoming next month is a film of THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, the first of C.S. Lewis's popular children's stories of the land of Narnia. Lewis, of course, was a noted Christian apologist, and these books are informed by religious allegory that drives liberals nuts.

So it's about time for a new attack on the man, and sure enough, it comes in THE NEW YORKER, where Adam Gopnik, often an interesting and intelligent writer, belittles Lewis's work in a way I can describe only as catty.

The battle to regain control of the borders is a cause that has won the support of a No-Longer-Silent Majority. The open-borders, Business Roundtable Republicans know it. On the run, they want to compromise. They will accept some border security, they say, if they can get in return an amnesty for their illegal workers and the legislated right of U.S. businesses to go overseas and hire foreigners to take American jobs.

Conservatives need to tell the White House: No deal, no amnesty, do your duty, defend the border, or we will find men and women to replace you who will enforce our laws and protect our country.

In this age of modernity and technology, where the television monitor has become the center of the average American household, from cradle to grave acting as surrogate parent, teacher, role model and as influencer of human thought, it should come as no surprise that entire populations can be controlled with such facility and efficiency, turning once thinking humans into grazing sheeple. For in today’s day and age, he who controls television controls the masses, and he who controls the masses controls the nation.

December 7th marks the 60th anniversary of Imperial Japan's 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which has often been likened to the 9/11 terrorist strikes. This past Sept. 11th was the fourth anniversary of Al-Qaeda's airborne assaults on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, which some have dubbed "the New Pearl Harbor." It's thought provoking to compare this four-year milepost to where America stood on Dec. 7, 1945, four years after what President Roosevelt called the "date which will live in infamy."

One of the fresh scoops in the piece, which is titled, "Unreliable Sources," concerns Sulzberger barring Times reporters from talking to Russell Lewis, the former president and CEO of The New York Times Co., when they were working on their extensive report on Miller going to jail and then testifying before the Plame grand jury.

I was recently invited to a “holiday party” by a local Republican group. I will not attend, on the grounds that they didn’t specify precisely what holiday they’re celebrating. Is it Christmas? Hannukah? St. Lucia’s Day? The Feast of St. Nicholas? Portugese Independence Day? Winter Solstice? A Week Before the End of the Year Day? Baby-Eating Day? (I’m sure the liberals would believe that.) I could get into a good old-fashioned Saturnalia, but I need time to get my tunic dry-cleaned. I don’t celebrate generic holidays. If they aren’t important enough for you to name them, they aren’t important enough for me to celebrate them with you.

But, unfortunately, silence will not cause the Christmases we remember to return, it will merely hasten the day when such Christmases become unimaginable.

Objecting to the continuing suppression of Christmas is the only way to bring back the spirited and joyous public celebration of Christmas—which is why, in their different ways, Michelle Goldberg and Adam Cohen are so angry with John Gibson.

The White House and the nominee refuse to denounce the homonymic school of interpretation regularly embraced by Justice O'Connor or to celebrate the original intent standard of Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

The homonymic school insists the Constitution sounds the same as the original document but means something different, i.e., whatever a majority of justices believe is socially or morally enlightened. The originalist school maintains the justices are confined to interpretations consistent with the intent and purposes of the Founding Fathers. Constitutional shortcomings or oversights are to be cured by amendments ratified by popular consensus, for example, the Bill of Rights, the Civil War Amendments, and the Women's Suffrage Amendment.

It is not mixing apples and oranges to note the vituperation of the Darwinists who cannot stand having a competing theory discussed. One professor at the University of Kansas called Intelligent Design “mythology.” The overheated reactions remind me of the slings and arrows faced by conservatives as we fought to have our ideas, the importance of traditional social values and a strong defense that included a space-based missile defense system, gain ascendancy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We prevailed in many cases based upon our persistence and the soundness of our ideas. Intelligent Design can stand on its merits despite the attempt by Darwin’s true believers to label it as sheer creationism. Many scientists who study the universe or cellular biology are increasingly intrigued by their complex processes. It takes more than chance to create such complex systems. Remember it was Einstein who said, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

The State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and "media ethics" (and that certainly is an oxymoron). One of the workshops in this training is titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Now I suppose that as taught by the State Department that role includes allowing the state to write, or otherwise choose the material.

When Democrats gibber about Republicans' writhing in a culture of corruption, they're on to something -- but not what they think. The Republican Party in Washington is in trouble not because it's overrun by crooks, but because it's packed with cowards -- and has degenerated into a caricature of the party that swept to power 11 years ago promising to take on the federal bureaucracy and liberate the creative genius of American society.

Part 1 of this article, "The Unholy Alliance: Christianity & The NWO" dealt generally with the relationship between this nations' leading evangelicals, Rev Sun Myung Moon, and the U.S. Intelligence community as strange bedfellows. This short follow up will attempt to go deeper into the makeup of these organizations, and how they work together. Every attempt to document the claims, statements and facts herein have been made so as not to unjustly accuse or impugn the integrity of those mentioned. But in the end, if such an unholy alliance exists, there are manifold truths which likely will never surface to the light of day for exposure and examination. We will deal with what can be verified be reasonable sources.

The Bilderbergs.
The Trilateral Commission.
The Council of Foreign Relations.
The Central Intelligence Agency.

Most everyone has heard of these groups and some of the conspiracy theories surrounding them regarding the development of the 'New World Order.'