Yes, it’s true. I promise! He’s urging DNC Chairman Terry McCAuliffe to shut up. How can anyone argue with that?

WOW. Hats off to this courageous woman:

I won’t be intimidated for expressing my views

Hirsi Ali has been moved to a safe house following new death threats and the publication of her private address on an Islamic website just four days after her controversial film ‘Submission’ was screened on Dutch TV.

Somali-born Hirsi Ali, 34, is herself a former Muslim and an outspoken critic of Islam’s treatment of women. Her film ‘Submission’ which depicts the text of the Koran on the naked flesh of Muslim women, is provoking a furore in the Netherlands.

With the assassination of right-wing political leader Pim Fortuyn in May 2002 still horribly fresh in people’s minds, the Dutch security services are clearly taking no chances and have mounted round-the-clock protection.

But Hirsi Ali is undaunted: “Reactions to my film have been varied and I accept some people are offended, that’s legitimate, but in a democracy it is not legitimate to intimidate and threaten someone for expressing her views. I made the film to publicise an injustice that is being ignored not only in Holland but throughout the world.”

Hirsi Ali reflects the spirit of today’s Dutch society with her conviction that ‘tolerance’ means Muslims in the Netherlands - almost one million in a total population of 16 million - must accept Western values.

“That means people from non-Western countries need to be educated about democratic values which include the freedom of expression,” said Hirsi Ali. If people feel she has gone too far with her film they must take her to court and not take the law into their own hands, she said defiantly. “Otherwise the rule of the jungle will prevail,” she added.

Brian Carnell is on the case re: a Washington Times snippet by John McCaslin that appears to have misquoted a 1997 Crossfire segment with John Kerry.

We already have enough problems with the liberal media out there distorting and misrepresenting what folks say without the conservative media adding to it

Russian general behind AK-47 now gives name to vodka with a bang

A new product introduced in London brings together two of Russia’s most famous exports: vodka and the AK-47 assault rifle.

What ties them together? Both are named after Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov. Kalashnikov, 84, who invented the AK-47, was in London Monday for the official release of Kalashnikov vodka, which is distilled in St. Petersburg, Russia, and imported to England. The vodka retails for about $24 US for a 22.5-fluid ounce bottle. It is available at several clubs throughout London with a U.S. release planned for next year.

Big bang indeed!

It goes without saying that this is a scary thought:

Neo-Nazi parties took seats in German legislatures this week for the first time in 36 years. The top-selling film in German movie theatres was a controversial new drama that portrays a sensitive, human Adolf Hitler. And protests from Jewish groups and German activists failed to stop the display of a collection allegedly assembled from the Nazi slave-labour fortunes.

It was a bizarre and disquieting week in Germany, full of dark echoes of the 1920s and featuring several bizarre spectacles. Whenever the newly elected fascists were asked questions on TV news shows, politicians from major parties got up, took off their microphones and stormed out of the studios. A 35-year-old woman cartwheeled across an art-gallery floor before kicking apart major works of modern art in a protest against owner Friedrich Christian Flick, grandson of a Nazi war criminal.

The week’s events left many Germans wondering if fascist extremism has made a return to mainstream credibility, after being nearly unmentionable in Germany since Hitler’s suicide nearly 60 years ago.

There have been chilling echoes of the circumstances that saw Hitler sweep to power in the late 1920s and early 1930s: a sustained period of growing unemployment and economic malaise; angry and jobless young men in the eastern provinces infuriated by the liberal, tolerant society of the west; a widespread distrust of “outsiders,” immigrants and perceived non-Germans.

David Broder in today’s Washington Post, discusses the demise of sensible, substantive journalism and wonders if the media will ever find its way back:

In a year when war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and looming problems with the federal budget and the nation’s health care system cry out for serious debate, the news organizations on which people should be able to depend have been diverted into chasing sham events: a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry and a forged document charging President Bush with disobeying an order for an Air National Guard physical.

With these events coming after the editors of two respected national newspapers, the New York Times and USA Today, were forced to resign because their organizations were duped by lying staff reporters, it is hard to overcome the sense that the professional practices and code of responsibility in journalism have suffered a body blow.

After almost a half-century in this business, I certainly feel a sense of shame and embarrassment at our performance. The feeling is not relieved by the awareness that others in journalism not only did fine work on other stories but took the lead in exposing these instances of gross malpractice.

The common feature — and the disturbing fact — is that none of these damaging failures would have occurred had senior journalists not been blind to the fact that the standards in their organizations were being fatally compromised.

Cavalier’s Guardian Watchblog compares the media’s fall to that of the Roman Empire. Not so sure I buy that argument, but he makes a compelling case.

As if Florida hasn’t been through enough this year I’m glad to hear my friends in FL made it through this one safely. Some weren’t so lucky. The latest projection on the path she’ll be taking is here. All of North Carolina is in that path. Update: WHOA - Jeanne Winds Blow Man Through Plate-Glass Window

… that one of your favorite bloggers is also a fan of your favorite NFL team?