I’ll be doing the Christmas shopping/decorating thing on Saturday . See ya’ll Sunday.

Scary situation:

ROCHESTER, N.H. - A man has taken people hostage at a New Hampshire campaign office for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, police said Friday.

The man claimed to have bomb strapped to him when he walked into the office in Rochester, WHDH-TV reported.

WMUR-TV quoted a woman, Lettie Tzizik, saying she spoke to someone who said she had just been released by the man.

“A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, ‘You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,’” Tzikik said, recalling the moment.

Police have surrounded the building, evacuated the immediate area and placed other buildings, including a nearby school, in lockdown.

Clinton, who was scheduled to campaign in Virginia on Friday, was not present at the office on Rochester’s Main Street.

WMUR has live coverage of this developing story. Let’s hope it ends peacefully.

Update I: Bryan at Hot Air is tracking the latest developments.

Update II: Thank goodness it’s over and everyone’s ok. The hostage taker - Leeland Eisenberg of Somersworth, NH - was arrested earlier this evening. Lots more updates here.

John Bresnahan at The Politico examines Murtha’s latest remarks on the surge and contrasts them with defeatist remarks he’s made about the surge in the past.

The money quote actually comes at the end, from a Democrat other than Murtha:

“This could be a real headache for us,” said one top House Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Pelosi is going to be furious.”

She won’t be the only furious Democrat.

In the meantime, the Congress’ failure to send a clean war funding bill to the President is already having a negative effect on our military which, I suspect, is exactly their intent.

This is “supporting the troops” - Democrat style.

I tell ya, the more news that comes out about the liberally biased questioners at CNN’s Republican YouTube debate, the worse they look. Malkin’s latest column addresses the number of questioners who have actually been found out to be Democrats, ‘unaffiliated’ supporters of Democrat policies, or at the very least people who have declared support for Democrat contenders.

Brian at Liberty Pundit makes a great point about the seriously foolish John Edwards’ attempt at a “gotcha” moment with his comment on Olby’s show last night about Republicans supposedly being “too afraid” to accept questions from Democrats:

And you know what the kicker is? That the Breck Girl (John Edwards) had the nerve to go on Keith Olberdork’s show last night and say that Republicans were afraid to be asked questions from Democrats. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they answered them, didn’t they? Unlike Silky and his comrades, who refuse to go on Fox, lest they be asked a serious question by a moderator. Hyprocrite, thy name is Edwards. Sit down, buy some conditioner, and shut up, pretty boy.

And let’s not forget that not only is Edwards part of the group of Democrats who have refused to go on Fox News, he was the one leading the way when it all started. The excuse was that Fox was supposedly ‘conservatively biased’ - indicating that he and other Democrats believed they’d be questioned by biased Republicans. But here we see again yet another instance of His Royal Phoniness (and other far left supporters who have made similar assertions the last couple of days) having the audacity to make a bogus complaint about Republicans allegedly not wanting to take questions from Democrats, when he and his fellow Democrats didn’t have the balls to appear on stage for Fox News-hosted debate out of fear of being asked questions by people they assume are Republicans. Now we just know that the Fox-loving KO called him on his blatant hypocrisy, right?

The whole point of having citizen questioners at Republican debates and Democrat debates is so Republican, Democrat, and undecided voters respectively can listen to what candidates from their party have to say, and question them for clarification, in order to be able to better decide who they are going to vote for in the primaries. It’s not a place for partisan audience hacks from either side of the aisle to get their digs in on their opponents. Once the two nominees have been decided, then we have the presidential debates, where people from all sides are going to be at the debates to ask questions prior to the general election. This isn’t exactly rocket science. But for clueless Democrats like John Edwards and other far left liberals who have echoed similar talking points about Republicans being “afraid” to take on Democrats, it’s all about destroying the fairness of pre-primary season debating in order to gain political traction.

Because, you see, “fairness” to them is having Democrats question Republicans at a Republican debate, and having Democrats questioning Democrats at a Democrat debate. And apparently, that’s what Clinton News Network believes, too.

Unfreakingbelievable.

Ah, ya gotta love the “class” on display here.

Just proves all over again that “art” is in the eye of the beholder.

I have no dog in this fight, but I know several ST readers and commenters who have been looking forward to this battle between the two 10-1 teams - so use this as an open thread for your comments on the game. And remember, no “unsportsmanlike conduct” allowed

Gametime is 8pm (or is it 8:15?), and it will be broadcast on the NFL Network. Note: Scroll down to read update 3 for how you can listen to the game on the radio.

Update I: I figured I’d give this thread a “football stadium feel” with this song, which we’ve all heard a time or two at various sports events

Update II: Here’s an interesting article regarding the NFL Network and its refusal to broadcast on cable:

The NFL Network owns the rights to broadcast next Thursday night’s game. It’s a channel currently unavailable to cable customers.

“We’ve gotten quite a few phone calls today; people wanting that NFL channel, which is only available on satellite, either through Dish Network or DirecTV,” said Tessy Manzanares, with Coronado TV & Satellite.

When they tune to channel 319, Time Warner digital cable subscribers currently see a message on the screen. It’s a message to Cowboys owner, and key NFL Network supporter, Jerry Jones. Time Warner wants to carry the NFL Network as a digital channel. However, the NFL says no. The league wants access to all cable subscribers, as well as a big chunk of change.

“Business is business, but I think the NFL is big enough where it makes enough money on the fans and the sponsors that pay into it, and I think that the game should be available for all parties to watch,” said Mike Gorman, of northeast El Paso.

Time Warner argues the NFL is holding fans hostage, demanding a ransom for a channel showing just eight late-season games. Some fans argue they pay enough already.

“Subscribers pay anywhere between $70 to a $100 right now to have cable or satellite. I don’t think they should have to pay to get eight additional games. I don’t think it’s right,” said Gorman.

The battle over giving customers what they want versus paying extra for what they used to get for free. In the end, for many, this dispute is all about the bottom line.

Yep. As always, follow da money …

Update III: ST reader and GB fan steveegg says that the game will be broadcast on radio via Westwood One. Go here, click on “NFL Thursday Night Football” and then your state to find out what station you can tune into in your city to listen to the game.

Update IV: The sports radio stations in my area aren’t broadcasting it. Here’s a station that is. Here’s the direct link to listen.

Update V: NFL has live feed of the game on its website (via Hot Air.com commenters). As you can imagine, the feed is a bit slow because there are probably a lot of people accessing it.

The AP reports:

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - A defense lawyer says a British teacher has been found guilty of inciting religious hatred and sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation from Sudan.

Gillian Gibbons went on trial earlier today for by letting her students name a teddy bear Muhammad, a crime punishable by up to 40 lashes and six months in jail.

Gibbons walked in without handcuffs, wearing a dark jacket and blue skirt, according to reporters in the courtroom before media were ordered out of the chamber. Riot police surrounded the courthouse.

Muhammad is a common name among Muslim men, but giving the name of Islam’s founder to an animal would be seen as insulting by many Muslims.

In a statement read to the court, Gibbons explained the incident and emphasized that her 7-year-old students picked the teddy bear’s name, British Embassy spokesman Omar Daair told The Associated Press. Gibbons’ lawyer said she would likely take the stand later.

Thoughts and prayers go out to his family. Via AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Rep. Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who steered the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton and championed government restrictions on the funding of abortions, has died. He was 83.

[…]

Hyde retired from Congress at the end of the last session. Days before leaving office, President Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The White House praised Hyde, a leading foe of abortion, as a “powerful defender of life” and an advocate for a strong national defense.

“Chairman Hyde was a pioneer in the effort to protect human life, and because of his tireless efforts, there are thousands of people living around the world today who remember his service to mankind,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee.

Here’s the Chicago Tribune’s write-up:

Former U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde, who led the impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton and also sponsored a high-profile anti-abortion amendment, died today.

The news was confirmed by the office of House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). Hyde, 83, had triple-bypass heart surgery in July and had been in failing health.

He was a 32-year veteran of the House and was known for his soaring speeches and high intellect. But he was also a tough Republican partisan who rose to lead two key House committees, Judiciary and International Relations.

Hyde represented a GOP district in suburban Chicago and cut his teeth on the rough-and-tumble politics of the city. He served in the state legislature before being elected to Congress in 1974. Not long after, he sponsored the Hyde Amendment, which essentially banned federally funded abortions. It passed in 1976.

During the impeachment of Clinton, Hyde pushed the charges against Clinton through his panel in a bitterly partisan fight. Even though the House approved the impeachment charges, the Senate later refused to remove Clinton from office.

Shortly before the 2006 elections that marked his chosen exit from political life, Hyde echoed Gen. Douglas MacArthur when he told a gathering of conservative friends and admirers, “When I cross the river for the last time, my thoughts will be of the House, the House, the House.”

Hyde loved a good cigar and good food — and his large bulk made him appear to be a cartoonist’s dream of a congressman. Earlier in life, he had been a stand-up comic, and he was known for his sharp wit.

We lost a good man today. May he RIP.

Awesome-as-always sports columnist Jason Whitlock, who was a lion amongst sheep with his outspoken and candid commentary on phoney race hustlers and the real problems facing the black community during the Don Imus controversy has penned another great column on race in response to what he sees as misplaced blame being thrown about by the “black media” and prominent sports figures regarding the murder of Redskins safety Sean Taylor:

There’s a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same.

Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you’re a black man living in America, you’ve been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.

The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.

No, we don’t know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor’s death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it’s no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You’d assume a heart attack, and you’d know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there’s every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That’s not some negative, unfair stereotype. It’s a reality we’ve been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.

Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How’s that working?

About as well as the attempt to shift attention away from this uniquely African-American crisis by focusing on an “injustice” the white media allegedly perpetrated against Sean Taylor.

Within hours of his death, there was a story circulating that members of the black press were complaining that news outlets were disrespecting Taylor’s victimhood by reporting on his troubled past

No disrespect to Taylor, but he controlled the way he would be remembered by the way he lived. His immature, undisciplined behavior with his employer, his run-ins with law enforcement, which included allegedly threatening a man with a loaded gun, and the fact a vehicle he owned was once sprayed with bullets are all pertinent details when you’ve been murdered.

Marcellus Wiley, a former NFL player, made the radio circuit Wednesday, singing the tune that athletes are targets. That was his explanation for the murders of Taylor and Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams and the armed robberies of NBA players Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry.

Really?

Read the whole thing.

In the meantime, a more “serious” racial issue is developing: A 9 year-old boy in Arizona was suspended from school earlier this month for three days for an alleged “hate crime” in which he is accused of using the term “brown people.” The Arizona Republic has the details:

Glendale elementary school principal has admitted to telling a 9-year old boy that it is OK to have racist feelings as long as you keep them to yourself.

“As we said to (the boy) when he was in here, in your heart you may have that feeling, and that is OK if that is your personal belief,” Abraham Lincoln Traditional School Principal Virginia Voinovich said in a tape-recorded parent-teacher conference.

The boy was suspended for three days this month for allegedly committing a “hate crime” by using the expression “brown people.”

In an interview Monday, Voinovich would not address her comments, first saying she didn’t remember the incident, then demanding a copy of the recording and finally insisting that she could not talk about a student’s discipline.

The circumstances of the boy’s suspension itself raise troubling questions about student discipline, interrogation and oversight at Abraham Lincoln.

According to school officials, the boy made a statement about “brown people” to another elementary student with whom he was having a conflict. They maintain it was his second offense using the phrase.

But the tape recording indicates this only came out after another parent was allowed to question the boy and elicited from him the statement that he “doesn’t cooperate with brown people.”

After that was reported to the boy’s teacher, he was made to stand in front of his class and publicly confess what he’d said.

The boy maintains that he never said it; that the words were put in his mouth by the parent who questioned him. That parent happens to be the mother of the student with whom he is having a conflict—and she happens to work for Abraham Lincoln as a detention-room officer.

The tape indicates that rather than just spouting off with racial invective, the boy was asked first why he didn’t want to cooperate with brown people by the parent/school official.

The mother of the accused child has pulled him out of the elementary school. Can’t say as I blame her.

Let’s assume for purposes of discussion that the boy did use the term “brown people” - what “crime” was committed? The “crime” of saying something offensive to someone else, or did this little boy’s words constitute a “racist threat”? Sounds to me like a prime example of the thought police in action. I also have to wonder if, had the situation been reversed and a black person or Hispanic called a white student a “cracker” or “white trash,” if his or her fate would have been the same.

Joseph Bottum writes a must-read piece today for the Wall Street Journal in which he discusses the breakthroughs we’ve seen recently on the non-embryonic stem cell research front, and how that could re-shape the secular left’s views on the importance of science in finding cures for diseases. In essence, he predicts, since we’re seeing so many positive results from scientists without having to use embryos, that the left’s arguments will shift to one of a more cautious nature on what scientists say about stem cell research.

Which reminds me: I got a big kick out of reading some of the comments from liberals in my prior thread on stem cell research. This one, by ST reader ibfamous, is a prime example of the sentiment I’ve seen expressed by the left not only here on the topic of non-embryonic stem cell breakthroughs, but at other blogs as well:

Jay K is right, no one on the left is distraught by scientific advancements that can lead to a higher quality of life (remember how you love to tell us that science is our god). This is even a wonderful thing for those who don’t believe in the science but who use it daily without ever noticing (best not look at those prescriptions too closely, it might interfere with your reality)…

It’s funny on several levels: First it wrongly assumes that conservatives are against scientific research for cures, which is just flat out silly. The truth is that conservatives have never been “anti-science” - they’re simply anti-embryonic stem cell research. That’s a big difference - but don’t expect the left to acknowledge that. It’s much easier to demagogue hell out of important moral issues for political gain rather than to directly address the fundamentals of the issue in question.

Secondly, I find it quite odd that the left, as exemplified by ibfamous’ comment, tries to claim everytime a non-embryonic stem cell breakthrough is announced that they’ve “never” been against those types of scientific research, because they “support cures.” This is something that the casual observer likely misses in the translation, because the left routinely frames the embryonic stem cell research issue in an “us versus them” light, with them being the only ones who “support cures” for the sick whereas conservatives “do not” - even though liberals know that conservatives support other types of stem cell research - like on bone marrow, peripheral blood, and umbilical cord research, for example. Not only that, but the left would give the casual observer the impression that the only way we are going to cure diseases is via embryonic stem cell research, which is why we must increase funding for it “NOW!!!” The sense of urgency the left always gives the issue leaves the average Joe with the impression that if he doesn’t support embryonic stem cell research, then people with Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s will never be cured.

To be sure, I don’t think the left hates the fact that non-embryonic stem cell research breakthroughs are happening, but I do believe they’re not happy about the fact that it lessens the urgency they’ve put on trying to advance embryonic stem cell research, because at some point it could very well likely become one less issue the left can demagogue the right about. This is why they are wary of stories that are reported about scientific breakthroughs that don’t involve embroyos, and quick to downplay their significance.

Also, from ibfamous:

The alchemist is also correct; you don’t drop one avenue just because you have another promising path. In science any path can dead-end without notice.

This is naive. If we were talking about finding different ways to fuel an automobile, it’d be one thing, but we’re not. In the case of embryonic stem-cell research, we are talking about the very integrity of human life in its earliest stages. There are ways to completely avoid compromising that integrity, ways that are coming to light more and more each day. Simply put: It shouldn’t take destroying a human life in order to save another. And we’re finding out, thank goodness, that that’s not necessary - as the left has tried to assert for years it is - after all.

Hat tip: ST reader Sev