More dog bites man news. Further evidence, if any is needed, of the fecklessness and stupidity of Bush's alleged immigration policy. Allowing this while sending troops to die in Iraq borders on the criminal.

From dailybulletin.com:

Links between illegal immigration, terrorism, drug trade worry U.S officials

By Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer

COLUMBUS, N.M. - On Sept. 5, a man calling himself Miguel Alfonso Salinas was apprehended off a deserted highway near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The tinted windows on Alfonso Salinas' vehicle aroused the suspicion of Border Patrol agents patrolling a dark and desolate stretch of Highway 9, which runs parallel to the border and is the site of large numbers of illegal crossings.

The agents discovered three Mexican migrants in the vehicle with Alfonso Salinas.

But what they discovered several days later made a far greater impression.

Alfonso Salinas was not who he seemed, according to U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security documents. He lied to the agents about who he was, where he came from and what he was doing.

It would take nearly a week of interviews with federal agents before Alfonso Salinas would give his real name: Ayman Sulmane Kamal, a Muslim born in Egypt - a country designated as "special-interest" by the United States for sponsoring terrorism.

Kamal's case is not an isolated one.

Evidence of "special-interest aliens" using the Mexican border to gain entry to the United States has been kept secret from the American public, according to federal law enforcement agents, terrorism experts and critics of U.S. foreign policy with Mexico.

In 2005, the Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. illegally. Of those, 165,000 were from countries other than Mexico, and roughly 650 were, like Kamal, from special-interest countries, according to the Border Patrol.

Those interviewed by the Daily Bulletin say agencies including the FBI and CIA are not using information from Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration agents to make connections between the drug trade, illegal immigration and terrorist organizations.

"For us to believe that Mexican smugglers will not assist, knowingly or unknowingly, foreign terrorists trying to enter the United States is incomprehensible," said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who, along with other congressional representatives, has pushed for stricter border security policies.

Whether Kamal had ties to a terrorist group is not known. No information about him, including his current whereabouts, is available aside from what is in Justice Department and Homeland Security documents.

But the links between illegal immigration, expanded trade, Mexican narcotics organizations and terrorist groups has already been assessed by U.S. federal law enforcement agencies, according to DEA documents obtained by the Daily Bulletin.

According to an intelligence report written by the DEA, "La Entrada al Pac fico (Gateway to the Pacific)" - also the name of a Texas-Mexico plan to expand border trade - Asian narcotics traffickers, in collusion with Mexican drug trafficking organizations and terrorist groups, could use expanded trade routes to bring contraband into the United States.

"The DEA has made a conscious effort to generate predictive intelligence so policy makers can be aware and plan ahead for significant changes in narcotics and smuggling operations," said a DEA official who asked to remain anonymous. "Any time you send in a predictive piece of intelligence that has merit and it's ignored, then the consequences of that can be devastating to national security."

According to DEA intelligence reports, the link between terrorism and narcotics has been well known since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

But federal agents say getting bureaucrats to understand the growing danger is difficult when most lawmakers won't even acknowledge many of the problems already happening along the U.S. border.

BORDER BATTLES

One of those problems was on full display in Texas earlier this year.

Sheriff Arvin West of Hudspeth County - a border area 50 miles east of El Paso - and other Texas border sheriffs had complained for more than a year that Mexican military personnel were helping cartels smuggle humans and contraband across the Rio Grande and into the U.S.

The Daily Bulletin first published Department of Homeland Security documents and maps from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy in January, showing 226 Mexican military incursions into the United States since 1996. That information led to a call for congressional investigations and hearings to determine the extent of the intrusions.

Shortly afterward, West was confronted with another incursion. This time, local law enforcement officials videotaped the event and went public with it.

"We had video and photographs," West said. "We went to Congress and testified before them with the evidence in hand. And we were told by Congressman (Silvestre) Reyes (D-El Paso) that we were either lying or mistaken."

Reyes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and U.S. and Mexican government officials tried to play down the documents and the incident in Hudspeth County. They stated publicly that the cartels were dressing like Mexican military to damage relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

Reyes, who recently was appointed chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

"The bureaucrats don't understand what a dangerous game they are playing with American lives if they don't do something to fix the situation at the border," said Michael Cutler, a former special agent with Immigration and Naturalization Services, who testified before the 9-11 Commission.

According to Border Patrol agents in Texas and Arizona, the Department of Homeland Security has stopped agents from filing full-disclosure incident reports if they see Mexican military involved in an alleged smuggling operation.

In some parts of Texas, if Mexican military personnel are suspected of assisting narcotics traffickers or smuggling humans, they are not processed, but instead are taken to a port of entry and released into Mexico.

An unnamed Border Patrol agent in Arizona said he witnessed a Mexican military helicopter shooting at a fellow agent in pursuit of a vehicle along the Arizona border with Mexico.

The supervisors would not let the agent put the Mexican military's involvement in the incident report, the agent said.

Michael Friel, a spokesman for the Border Patrol, said he had no knowledge of such an incident.

It's not just the cartels' connections to Mexican government officials and military that have U.S. intelligence officials and law enforcement worried. It's also the growing evidence that terrorist organizations have become increasingly dependent on narcotics and weapons sales to support their activities, and that they see the Southwest border as an incubator for their activities.

"Intelligence indicates that terrorist organizations are increasingly probing the U.S.-Mexico border," El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego told the House Judiciary Committee in August, during hearings about border security.

"The large international border creates tremendous smuggling opportunities for terrorists and is fertile ground for recruitment and development of support networks for terrorist organizations," Samaniego said. "The Mexican drug trafficking and human smuggling organizations use their knowledge of the border to assist terrorist cell members in their attempts to exploit the United States.

"The multicultural aspect of the border area also appeals to the terrorists. There are many nationalities, many of them transients, who live and interact in the border setting. This provides the terrorists the opportunity to blend into the community.

"The Southwest border may not be a priority target for a terrorist attack, but it is prime territory for the cultivation, recruitment, transportation and stashing of terrorist cell members," Samaniego concluded.

Samaniego and his colleagues aren't the only ones with such beliefs.

A DEA official said terrorist incidents such as the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 would be easy to duplicate in the United States, with the Southwest border as the best place to smuggle in those who would carry out such a plot.

In the train bombings, 10 synchronized explosions killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,700. An Islamic extremist group that funded the operation with narcotics sales was pinpointed as the perpetrator of the bombings.

"A former DEA director explained the problem best. During the cold war the threat was ABC: atomic, biological and chemical," said an intelligence official with the DEA, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If you apply that formula now to post 9/11 ... it becomes ABCD: atomic, biological, chemical and drugs. The drugs provide the funding for terrorism."

TERRORIST CULTURE

Additionally troubling to U.S. authorities are the growing cultural similarities between Mexican drug cartels and established terrorist groups.

Like Islamic extremists and other terrorist organizations that use suicide bombings or decapitations to strike fear into their enemies, drug-trafficking organizations have developed cultural associations with death over the past several years.

The Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Joaqu n "El Chapo" Guzm n, is now known by federal law enforcement officials as the "Federation" or "Golden Triangle." The long-running war between the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels for control of the Nuevo Laredo border forced Sinaloa to build alliances with numerous other drug trafficking organizations throughout Mexico, making the Sinaloa Cartel one of the most powerful in the country.

The Sinaloa Cartel, along with the help of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juarez Cartel, moves the majority of its narcotics through Ciudad Ju rez, which borders El Paso, Texas.

Along the streets of Ciudad Ju rez, Mexico, statues of La Santa Muerte - the saint of death - can be found at almost any local shop. The robed skeleton with a sickle clutched in its bony fingers is worshiped by many drug runners in Mexico and the United States.

The empty-eyed deity is particularly haunting in a city known for the brutal murders of nearly 500 women since 1995. Many Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials have attributed the murders to drug traffickers, some of whom have been arrested. But the murders continue, and women still live in fear.

"Women shouldn't be on the street after dark," said Lalo, 81, who sat with his wife at their empty shop in downtown Ciudad Ju rez.

Danger signs are everywhere. Billboards follow passers-by like shadows, warning women to be vigilant. Every man begins to look like a predator.

"There is so much death," Lalo sighed. "I'm beginning to think the saint is real."

The attitudes and actions represented by worship of La Santa Muerte culturally connect Mexico's drug cartels to terrorist groups, according to DEA officials.

Like Hezbollah and al-Qaida, which promise martyrs that their family members will be provided for after suicide bombings, Mexican drug trafficking organizations promise high-level members that if they die in the name of the cartel, their families will be provided for. Other similarities include the growing number of beheadings of Mexican police officials by the cartels to instill terror.

In cities all along the U.S.-Mexico border, the popularity of the death deity is growing. From Tijuana to Laredo's violent sister city Nuevo Laredo, La Santa Muerte is found in statues, stickers and trinkets.

"Widespread and unchecked violence creates a palpable sense of fear and tears at the social, cultural, and economic fabric of Nuevo Laredo," stated a June 2006 report, "State of Siege: Drug-Related Violence and Corruption in Mexico," written by the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit organization promoting human rights.

"As the war between cartels rages, no one - not police, not journalists, not ordinary citizens - knows whom they can trust, so they trust no one."

In Nuevo Laredo, the saint haunts cemeteries where worshippers have left offerings of food. The deity also is seen on the back of bulletproof SUVs driven by narco-traffickers who cruise through the city, and even in graffiti along the city's walls.

Now the saint is gaining popularity in Laredo. Eerie evidence of ritualistic ceremonies performed by illegal immigrants in stash houses was discovered by Webb County sheriff's deputies after one raid. Pictures of members of a Mexican military unit lay in a bowl of blood, sprinkled with herbs and roots.

"This really spooked us," said Webb County sheriff's spokesman Tom Sanchez as he sifted through the photographs taken by the deputies who conducted the raid. "I mean, there was an altar filled with everything you can imagine to this Santisima Muerte. It's a culture of death."

And it's something U.S lawmakers should pay attention to, DEA and Border Patrol field agents said: Drug traffickers accepting death as a glorious end to their violent lives.

"We pray for a good death," said Jose, 21, a young worshiper of La Santa Muerte in Tijuana. He stood stoic by his white-boned statue of the death saint, and pointed to his charm necklace, where a smaller version of the saint hung.

"I pray that I will die in a hail of bullets or fighting for my last breath against my enemy. I'm not afraid to die. I welcome death."

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

What we need in New Year is some resolution
BY MARK STEYN

December 31, 2006

My New Year's resolution is not to make any New Year predictions. I called last year pretty badly -- readers may remember my confident assertions every week or two that the Republicans would hold the House and Senate. War is a tough sell in a democracy, particularly the kind of war we face today. On the other hand, one should never underestimate the seductiveness of complacency. If you happened to catch John Edwards, the hair-today-gone-tomorrow pretty boy of the 2004 campaign, re-emerging in the artfully positioned debris of New Orleans last week, it was hard not to be impressed: An empty suit had somehow managed to get emptier. He's running for president on five big priorities: ''guaranteeing health care,'' ''leading the fight against global warming,'' ''strengthening our middle class and ending the shame of poverty,'' and by then my fingers were too comatose to write down the fifth theme but, if memory serves, it was guaranteeing to lead the fight to strengthen ending the shame of platitudinous campaign rhetoric.

Listening to Edwards, you get no sense that this man is in any way engaged with the times. He's not alone, of course. It's been striking to read accounts of the incoming House leadership (of both parties) unable to tell the difference between Sunni and Shia or name a single book they've read on the present conflict. We are in an era of fast-moving demographic and technological transformation, and lavishly remunerated national legislators (with huge numbers of staff to do all the research) have minimal curiosity about it.

Here's something else nobody's curious about: Sandy Berger. Consider this passage from the inspector general's official report on the Sandypants and his destruction of classified materials from the National Archives:

''Mr. Berger exited the Archives on to Pennsylvania Avenue, the north entrance. It was dark. He did not want to run the risk of bringing the documents back in the building risking the possibility [redacted] might notice something unusual. He headed towards a construction area on Ninth Street. Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the Archives and the DOJ, and did not see anyone. He removed the documents from his pockets, folded the notes in a 'V' shape and inserted the documents in the center. He walked inside the construction fence and slid the documents under a trailer.''

Why is this man getting his security clearance back in 2008?

Aw, who cares? The thousands of Americans who drive around with that ''9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB'' bumper sticker are positively blase when confronted with an actual verified documented instance of a former national security adviser carrying on like a Cold War double agent making a dead drop.

I mentioned the old New Year's resolution up above, but in fact that's what I wouldn't mind seeing in 2007: a bit of resolution. There wasn't much in evidence last year. Take another little vignette that'll look good in the movie version:

Mustaf Jama, a Somali ''asylum seeker'' in Britain wanted for the murder of a policewoman, fled the country by taking his sister's passport, wearing a niqab (the full Islamic head-to-toe get-up that covers everything but the eyes) and passing unhindered through the checkpoints at Heathrow.

How about that? It turns out we are profiling after all, but we're profiling everybody except Muslims. Your wizened l'il ol' gran'ma on a Yuletide break to London is bent double and out of breath struggling to take off her coat and shoes. The officials sternly scrutinize her passport to check that the picture matches her flustered and bewildered face. All around her hundreds of women are doing the same, mutely shuffling through the scanner in their stocking feet. But Britain's most wanted man is breezing through because he took the precaution of dressing as a Muslim woman. And it would be culturally insensitive to expose them to the same scrutiny as your gran'ma.

Many of us think about the long-term shifts necessary to win this struggle: euthanizing the United Nations and overhauling other malign and anachronistic institutions. Fat chance. Mustaf Jama's express check-out is the perfect parodic reductio of "security": The state is willing to inflict pointless bureaucratic discomfort and inconvenience on everyone else, but the demographic group with the most links to terrorism gets to go through the fast-track VIP channel.

The funniest line in the Jama story was Her Majesty's government's touching faith in the Horn of Africa's extradition procedures:

''He is thought to be hiding in Somalia where approaches have been made to the transitional federal government to return him to Britain.''

At the time, the "transitional federal government" barely controlled enough of Somalia to fit inside Jama's niqab. This summer the country fell to the Islamic Courts Union, a Talibanesque regime interested in turning another husk of a state into a jihad training camp. But in the last few days the Ethiopian military has swept through the country and the Islamist forces have crumbled before them. Both Somali troops and various foreign jihadists have thrown off their uniforms and melted into the general population. Granted, that's what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, too: They're shrewd enough to understand it's not worth engaging superior militaries on their terms; better to wait awhile and grind them down in a dirty messy insurgency.

Well, we'll see about that. One difference between the Ethiopians in Somalia and the Americans in Iraq is that the former aren't fighting with one hand behind their back just in case some EU ally or humanitarian lobby group or fictitious Associated Press source leaks some "war crime" or other to the media. In fact, the Ethiopians have the advantage of more or less total lack of interest from the Western media. So they're just getting on with it.

And, given the potential for Islamist destabilization of their own country, they were wise to do so. The "international community" has reacted in the usual ways: calls for immediate cease-fires so that an ineffectual U.N. force of peacekeepers can go in and enjoy their customary child sex with the locals while propping up the Islamists. The Ethiopians can't be blamed for not taking the U.N. seriously. To be sure, the alternative to the jihad boys is a bunch of thugs. But that's the reality of much of the map today: a choice between being an outpost of the global jihad, or a patchwork quilt of warlords, or a bit of both with some feeble, half-hearted multilateral force mediating between the two. I don't know whether the Ethiopian intervention will work in the long run, but, if it does, the best hope for squashing the jihad might be to outsource the fight to Third World regimes less squeamish about waging it.

Happy New Year.

From The New York Times:

David Lynch’s Shockingly Peaceful Inner Life
By ALEX WILLIAMS

Los Angeles

IF you were looking for a Tom Cruise to preach to a new generation the gospel of Transcendental Meditation, a hippie-era spiritual practice espousing inner harmony, David Lynch would be one of the least likely candidates.
As the director who conjured the reptilian mutant baby of “Eraserhead” and the dancing dwarf of “Twin Peaks,” Mr. Lynch has built his career by imposing his nightmares on the rest of us.
The idea of the inscrutable David Lynch, Hollywood’s leading surrealist and eccentric, reborn as the guru of bliss seems a little odd even to Mr. Lynch himself.
Now 60, he remembers how he recoiled from the concept when he heard about it in the late 1960s, when the movement — founded by the Indian spiritual leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — was experiencing its first wave of popularity among young people in the West thanks to proselytizing by pop stars like the Beatles and Donovan.
“The word ‘harmony’ would make me want to puke,” recalled Mr. Lynch, speaking on a clear, chilly afternoon in the glassed-in painting studio atop his Modernist concrete-walled house in the Hollywood Hills. Even as an Eagle Scout and a popular student at a public high school in Alexandria, Va., he composed paintings, influenced by the grotesqueries of Francis Bacon, in a studio with walls that he and a friend painted black.
“Meditation would be a sickening thing to consider, because you want that edge to create,” he said, wearing worn khaki trousers and a tattered black sports jacket with a hole in the right elbow the size of a saucer. “I don’t want to be a namby-pamby.”
Besides, he added, “you would get chicks when you’re angry.”
That all changed in 1973, when the future filmmaker discovered meditation, which he believes allowed him to quiet — and exploit — his inner demons. He said that he has not missed a day since.
And now, the low-key auteur is emerging as the most visible, even fiery, proponent of the resurgent practice, which is being used increasingly in schools and in the workplace, as well as by a new generation of stars, including Heather Graham, Laura Dern and the record executive Rick Rubin.
In July 2005, Mr. Lynch began the David Lynch Foundation, which finances Transcendental Meditation scholarships for students in middle schools and high schools to study the practice. Later that year, he embarked on a series of lectures on college campuses that attracted significant attention in the news media.
This winter, Mr. Lynch is taking the message to the masses. His autobiography-cum-self-help book, “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity” (Tarcher/Penguin), will be released this week. Next month, he will preside over a series of readings and discussions, in tandem with concerts by Donovan, at Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.
“It’s weird,” said Mr. Lynch, in the flat folksy accent of his native Missoula, Mont., speaking of his increasing involvement. “I guess it’s as simple as this: I wish I had heard it earlier.”
The idea of David Lynch serving as the spokesman for anything is a bit of a stretch. Mr. Lynch suffers from a lifelong fear of public speaking— “I still hate it,” he said — and will happily recount how he has tape-recorded speeches at home for awards ceremonies, then played them into the microphone at the podium.
“I call him ‘the reluctant yogi,’ ” said Robert Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation organization and the vice president of the foundation. It was Mr. Roth who initially nudged Mr. Lynch onto the college lecture circuit. He added: “If I didn’t say, ‘Please ask questions,’ David would just stand up there. He doesn’t care how awkward anyone else feels.”
Transcendental Meditation is a trademarked mental technique introduced by Maharishi in 1958 based on the proposition that a practitioner, by repeating a private mantra throughout two 20-minute sessions a day, can achieve a state of “restful alertness”— and, theoretically, tap into a “unified field” of energy. The training process involves working with personal instructors over five days at one of about 1,000 Transcendental Meditation centers worldwide, and it costs about $2,500.
In the ’60s, adherents posed Transcendental Meditation as a natural alternative to mind-expanding drugs like LSD. Now, proponents, including Mr. Lynch, argue that it can serve as an antidote to a stress-filled world, particularly for adolescents. Mr. Lynch cites his increasing concern for young people as the primary reason he launched his crusade.
“David has become a huge promoter of T.M.,” said Donovan, whose real name is Donovan Leitch. Mr. Leitch learned the practice from Maharishi himself, along with the Beatles, Mia Farrow and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, in Rishikesh, India, in 1968. Mr. Leitch added that Mr. Lynch has been able to “capitalize” on his fame and “redirect meditation back where it belongs, with the students.”
Transcendental Meditation faded from the pop culture landscape after the ’70s. Before Mr. Lynch, a marquee celebrity advocate was the illusionist Doug Henning, who died in 2000. But it hardly disappeared. Maharishi, now believed to be 90, still directs the movement, which claims more than 6 million adherents, from a log house on a 65-acre compound in the Dutch village of Vlodrop. The organization operates the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa; its own incorporated town, Vedic City (population 325), is nearby.
Over the years, the practice has been the subject of numerous scientific studies, including one by the University of Michigan Health System in 2003, which indicated that sixth graders who were practicing such meditation appeared to score significantly higher on tests of self-esteem and emotional competence.
But critics allege that it can inspire an unhealthy devotion. Rick A. Ross, who operates a nonprofit research organization in Jersey City called the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements, said that the evidence he has studied indicates that Transcendental Meditation can be relaxing when not practiced excessively. But the movement fits some criteria he uses to define cults. It is “a personality-driven group, with Maharishi as its totalitarian leader,” Mr. Ross said, which at its extremes “can be seen as one in which people lose much of their ability for critical thinking.”
But Mr. Lynch, who was raised Presbyterian, insisted that Transcendental Meditation is neither a cult nor a theology, but simply a practice one learns, then pursues in private.
As an artist, Mr. Lynch said, it has allowed him to unleash his imagination and be, in a word, weirder. He said that many of his ideas — the “big fish” of his book’s title — come to him during meditation. Among these big fish are the sitcom-starring rabbits and the Greek chorus of prostitutes in his fantastical three-hour new film, “Inland Empire,” now showing in limited release.
Of course, artists are allowed their quirks, and Mr. Lynch revels in his. Last month, to campaign for an Academy Award nomination for Laura Dern, the star of his new movie, Mr. Lynch sat on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea with a cow and a giant poster of Ms. Dern’s face.
Early in his career, while other Hollywood hopefuls were losing themselves to cocaine, Mr. Lynch got strung out on milkshakes, visiting a Los Angeles Bob’s Big Boy almost daily for seven years. Now more health conscious, he favors the veggie burgers at Astro Burger. “To be a grown-up and to do what you want to do is the most beautiful thing,” he said, his gray-flecked hair pomaded into what looked like a tangle of swaying prairie grass. “But this doesn’t happen for most people. Sadly, they have to make ends meet.”
For these people, Mr. Lynch argues in the book, meditation can be a way out. For example, an unhappy insurance salesman who learns to “dive within” will find his soul-crushing commutes and stale breakfasts enlivened by ideas. Little by little, Mr. Lynch said, the salesman will find his weekdays “becoming more like Saturday morning — the sun is coming out, this beautiful warmth, with his favorite breakfast, birds chirping.”
“If you were a burglar, you’d become a much better burglar,” he added. “But after a while, you would probably say, well, wait a minute. You would probably have compassion for people you were burglarizing. You might even bring some stuff back.”
The director’s goal is to raise $7 billion to help open seven “peace universities” around the world. He also endorses Maharishi’s belief that a mass demonstration of “yogic flying” — a so-called “advanced technique” in which meditators, seated in the lotus position, begin hopping in unison and theoretically start to hover — can radiate peaceful energy out to the world. (Asked if he had tried this, he responded: “Yes.” Did it work? “No.”)
Mr. Lynch writes in his book that he began meditating on the recommendation of his sister, Martha. At the time, Mr. Lynch was a year into a torturous five-year quest to complete his first feature film, “Eraserhead,” which was released in 1977, and was separating from his first of three wives, Peggy Lentz.
“There was a hollowness inside,” he recalled. “I thought, something is drastically wrong.”
He dropped in on a Transcendental Meditation center. After 20 minutes, he felt a weight lifted.
“The side effect of growing that consciousness,” he explained, “is, negative things start going away. Like fear. It’s like the suffocating rubber clown suit begins to dissolve.” Certainly, the teachings of gentle-voiced Maharishi never made Mr. Lynch go soft. “You don’t have to suffer to show suffering,” he said of the violence in his movies. The filmmaker sees no contradiction between inner harmony and external edginess.
“I heard Charles Bukowski started meditation late in his life,” Mr. Lynch said, referring to the poet laureate of Skid Row, who died in 1994. “He was an angry, angry guy, but he apparently loved meditation.”
Of course, just as meditation never got Mr. Lynch over a taste for the macabre, it never quenched Mr. Bukowski’s famous thirst for whiskey. “Well, maybe in time, it would have,” Mr. Lynch said with a smile. “In the meantime — just more enjoyment of the whiskey.”

From The Corner at NRO:
The Flying Imams Stoke Fear, So Naturally the Problem Is ...
Lack of Cultural Sensitivity at DHS

Posted by Andy McCarthy

This, from PR Newswire, will make your day:

CAIR Welcomes TSA Hajj Sensitivity Training

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 ... The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today welcomed an announcement by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that it has provided special training about Islamic traditions related to the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, to some 45,000 airport security officers. The TSA cultural sensitivity training includes details about the timing of Hajj travel, about items pilgrims may be carrying and about Islamic
prayers that may be observed by security personnel....

Earlier this month, CAIR advised those going on Hajj to be aware of their civil and legal rights as airline passengers. CAIR's "Your Rights and Responsibilities as an American Muslim" pocket guide states: "As an airline passenger, you are entitled to courteous, respectful and non-stigmatizing treatment by airline and security personnel. You have the right to complain about treatment that you believe is discriminatory."

"We welcome the fact that airport security officers nationwide will now be better informed about Islamic traditions relating to Hajj," said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. "This proactive effort on the part of the Transportation Security Administration demonstrates that there is no contradiction between the need to maintain airline safety and security and the duty to protect the religious and civil rights of airline passengers."

Hooper said representatives of CAIR chapters nationwide have met with TSA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials on issues related to cultural sensitivity and national security.

The State Department's site corroborates the report. (See here.) Worse, State confirms something even CAIR's commentary did not suggest but which should have been pluperfectly obvious to the rest of us: "The training comes just one month after Department of Homeland Security personnel came under criticism for removing six imams from a domestic flight for what one passenger considered suspicious behavior."

Great. A bunch of imams transparently set out to provoke an incident and incite understandable fears of passengers and crew stuck in the already anxiety-ridden nightmare that is post-9/11 American air travel, and the administration's responsive message is ... there must be something lacking in the sensitivity of our security officials.

(For contrasting views, see, e.g., the Opinion Journal account of the flying imams' behavior by Debra Burlingame (whose brother was the pilot killed in the suicide hijacking of Flight 77, which jihadists crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11), or this recent observation by Newt Gingrich: "Those six people [i.e., the imams] should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists. And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens." (Hat tip to Power Line)).

The sensitivity training order is, of course, is of a piece with the Danish cartoons fiasco in which, with the opportunity to take a stand in favor of the centrality of free expression in the democratic societies it purports to be cultivating, the State Department instead chose to putter about "press responsibility" and blast the cartoons (some of which depicted Mohammed, who was a warrior, as a warrior) as "indeed offensive to the beliefs of Muslims."

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

From Chronicles.org:

Faith, Logos, and Antichrist: A Post Scriptum on Regensburg

By Srdja Trifkovic

“God is not pleased by blood—and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature” is the essential statement in Emperor Manuel’s verbal duel with his Persian interlocutor, which Pope Benedict quoted in his now famous Regensburg lecture last September. “Faith is born of the soul, not the body.”

The world outlook based on this simple yet essential adage is light years away from the Verse of the Sword (9:5), the essential message of the Kuran. It is, in fact, so diametrically opposed to it that we may be forgiven for concluding that Muhammad’s “inspiration” was indeed supranatural, but not divine.

---

The timeless Kuranic dictum to all faithful, to fight the rest of us infidels until we pay the poll tax (Jizya) with the trembling hand of abject submission, has a whiff of sulphur to it. It conclusively denies the possibility of “peace” (short of Islam’s global triumph), or even of peaceful co-existence. “Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them” is an injunction both unambiguous and powerful.

Of course, Karen Armstrong, John Esposito et al. will reply with the verse “la ikraha fiddeen” (“no compulsion in religion”), but they will do so to deceive and misguide us. Verse 2:256 is not at all a proof that forced conversion is against Islam. Verse 2:256 does not leave non-Muslims free to make their religious choices unmolested and un-coerced, in accordance with their conscience and free will. As contemporary Islamic scholars explain, there is no compulsion in making the choice of whether you want to be a Muslim or not. Once that choice is made, however, your options are bleak—death or submission—if it is the wrong choice: “Faith and rejection, iman and kufr, cannot be forced upon one by others. So Islam does not say that others must be forced into Islam; that if they become Muslims, well and good, and if they do not, they are to be killed, that the choice is theirs.” (In the same spirit, there was no compulsion to accept Communism under the 1936 Soviet constitution, but its insufficiently enthusiastic embrace meant death in the Gulag.)

The difference among Islamic scholars on 2:256 is that of degree, not kind. Some assert that it has been abrogated not only by 9:5 but also by 9:73 (“O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites, and be thou harsh with them”). Other scholars—more “tolerant” ones, we might say—said 2:256 has not been abrogated, but it had a special application: it was revealed concerning the People of the Book (Jews & Christians), who should not be compelled to embrace Islam if they submit to the rule of Islam and pay the Jizya. It is only the idol worshippers who are compelled to embrace Islam and upon them 9:73 applies. As al-Nahas points out in An-Nasikh wal-Mansukh, “this is the opinion of Ibn ‘Abbas which is the best opinion due to the authenticity of its chain of authority.” In exempting the Jews and the Christians from 2:256, the ulema agree that pagans and atheists can and should be compelled to accept Islam by force.

The foremost Islamic scholar of all time, Ibn Khaldun, summed up the mainstream consensus—the consensus that is valid to this day—when he defined systemic violence as a religious duty based on the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert all men to Islam either by persuasion or by force. He readily concedes that “Islam is under obligation to gain power over all nations.”

The orthodox Islamic rationale for compulsion—e.g. that given by Ibn al-‘Arabi—is worthy of dialectical materialism’s somersaults; we find that “no compulsion” actually means compulsion, and that “freedom” is only the freedom to accept revealed truth:

The Prophet said: I have been ordered to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah. This Hadith is taken from the words of Allah, “Fight them on until there is no more tumult and religion becomes that of Allah” (2:193). If someone asks how can people be compelled in the truth when the mere fact of compelling indicates a violation of the will of the one compelled?—the first answer is that Allah sent Mohammad calling people to Him, showing the way to the truth, enduring much harm . . . until the evidence of Allah’s truth became manifest . . . and His apostle became strong, He ordered him to call people by the sword . . . hence there is no more an excuse after being warned. The second answer is that people first are taken and compelled, but when Islam becomes prevalent . . . their faith strengthens and finally becomes sincere.

Translated into the language of contemporary and equally mainstream Islamic discourse, with “reasonable” people there is no need for compulsion because “after all the clear proofs, the logical reasoning and the manifest miracles there is no need for force at all.” But with those who persist in their obstinate refusal to be reasonable and convert (or submit), coercion is both legitimate and necessary. After all is said and done, the authorities at al-Azhar hold, jihad is “a divine obligation: the Muslim is always mindful that his religion is a Qur’an and a sword . . . the Muslim is forever a warrior.”

It is therefore inevitable that imperialism is immanent to Islam, as Ephraim Karsch argues persuasively. The apologists assert that Muslims are called by the Kuran to strive for peace, but the “peace” is possible only under an all-pervasive Islamic rule. Such “peace” does not only have the negative meaning of the absence of war. It is a positive state of security, attainable once all infidels are killed, converted or subjugated.

Islam may use the rational form, but in substance it is implacable in the view that only Allah creates our acts and enables us to act, and we are but transmission belts with a preordained balance of debit or credit that determines our destiny in the hereafter. A Muslim’s prayer is not “communication,” and it is offered in the hope of placating a capricious and unpredictable Master. The Master, Allah, is so transcendent as to be devoid of personality.

As then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger wrote back in 1979, “the unrelated, unrelatable, absolutely one, could not be a person. There is no such thing as a person in the categorical singular.” In the end, Allah the unknowable and un-personable, is served out of fear, obedience, and hope of bountiful heavenly reward. Islam explicitly rejects the notion that “he who has my commandments and keeps them, he is it who loves me.” (John, 14:21) The Kuran states the opposite: “Say, If ye love Allah, follow me; Allah will love you and forgive you your sins.” (3:31) This “love” is a means of winning love and forgiveness. It is the “love” of the self, the very opposite of true love; pure sulphur yet again…


In lieu of the sordid “interfaith dialogue,” the lasting benefit of the Regensburg controversy is that it forced some of us to reconsider the claim that three “great monotheistic religions” share common roots and “believe in the same God.” But do Christians believe in the same God that Muslims say they worship?

Of course we do not.

The formal argument first. It is clear and fairly simple. The Christian God of the Creed is trinitarian: the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen; the Son, our Lord and Savior, eternally begotten of the Father; and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life. This is the orthodox faith, “which except a man shall have believed faithfully and firmly he cannot be in a state of salvation.”

The doctrine of the Deity of Christ is essential. Unless the Son is truly God and “one with the Father,” Christians would be idolaters. If He were but a prophet, Christians would be foolishly entrusting themselves to a created creature in the vain hope of salvation. Islam, on the other hand, violently and explicitly rejects and condemns the Christian doctrine of God (Kuran 4:171), the Trinity (5:37), and the deity of Christ (5:72, 5:17), and Allah unambiguously condemns Christians as disbelievers worthy of destruction (9:29-30). Muhammad’s insistence that there is a heavenly proto-Scripture and that previous “books” are merely distorted and tainted copies sent to previous nations or communities means that these scriptures are the “barbarous Kuran” as opposed to the true, Arabic one. (Let’s leave aside for a minute the puzzling question of how any degree of “distortion” of the Kuran could produce either an Old or a New Testament.) The Muslim Tradition also regards the non-canonical Gospel of Barnabas, and not the New Testament, as the one that Jesus taught. To cut the long story short, orthodox Islam teaches that it alone worships one true God that Judaism and Christianity tell lies about—lies for which Christians and Jews will be punished in hell.

“One God” cannot be trinitarian and infinitely transcendent. Christians and Muslims cannot be both right. Their convergent paths do not lead to the same hilltop.

Unlike the Christian faith in God revealing Himself through Christ, the Koran is not a revelation of Allah—a heretical concept in Islam—but the direct revelation of his commandments and the communication of his law. Christian God “comes down” and seeks man because of His fatherly love. The Fall cast a shadow, the Incarnation makes reconciliation possible. Allah, by contrast, is unknowable and so purely transcendent that no “relationship” is possible. He reveals only his will, not himself. Allah is “everywhere,” and therefore nowhere relevant to us. He is uninterested in making our acquaintance, let alone in being near to us because of love. We are still utterly unable to grasp his purposes and all we can do is what we have to do, to obey his command.

Allah’s absolute transcendence means that he cannot be fathomed, only worshipped. It is by virtue of being infinite, not loving, that he is inseparable from his creation. His absolute sovereignty means that his “closeness” to man is not a two-way relationship; man’s experience of Allah is impossible. Any such attempt would imply heretical encroachment on his absolute transcendence. Ultimately, Allah’s absolute transcendence means that he is everything and nothing. He cannot be grasped by the human mind and is greater than we can comprehend. Every thought about him is insufficient and false.

This is emphatically not the “same God” we believe in. Judging by Islam’s fruits through the ages, we’d be fully justified to conclude that “Allah” is His arch-enemy . . .

GERALD FORD, R.I.P.
By Mark Steyn
Gerald Ford was the right man at the right time - even if, come November 1976, a majority of the American electorate declined to acknowledge it. (I wonder how many voters from that long-ago election day would vote the same way today.) He was a modest man whom posterity remembers as physically clumsy - all those Bob Hope jokes about a large crowd turning up to see Gerry Ford playing golf because you know how people gather at the scene of an accident, etc. But he was graceful where it counted, in his stewardship of a divided nation. He wouldn't get anywhere in a Republican primary these days and he had difficulties even then. But, in America Alone, I quote the line he used to use to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences:

A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.

And as I go on to say:

That’s true. But there’s an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. That’s the position European governments find themselves in.

So much of what ails us dates from the Seventies: It was the decade when the Continent fully embraced the social-democratic cosseting that's enfeebled its citizenry and the mass immigration necessary to keep it affordable, the decade when the petro-dictatorships of the Middle East realized the west would do anything to keep the oil flowing, and the decade which gave us the twin templates through which the media, the academy and the other American elites fit all major events, domestic and foreign - Watergate and Vietnam. Though it was a war he inherited from his three predecessors, it fell to Gerald Ford to preside over the final retreat from Vietnam and to bequeath to history the great emblematic image of American weakness and failure: the scrambling choppers over the US embassy in Saigon. As was plain then and is plainer now, the left saw American defeat as its own great victory. They enjoyed the pain the "long national nightmare" inflicted on national self-confidence, which is one reason they love to revive it at every opportunity. (See Pinch Sulzberger's pathetic self-regarding commencement address from last year.) Understanding the enduring damage Vietnam and Watergate would do to the body politic, Ford attempted to lance the boils. He failed, but it was an honorable effort by an honorable man. Rest in peace.
STEYNONLINE, December 27th 2006

From The Wall Street Journal:
A Dirty Game
The Duke "rape" case unravels.

BY STUART TAYLOR JR. AND KC JOHNSON
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 1:00 p.m. EST

It's no secret that hugely disproportionate numbers of the innocent people oppressed by abusive prosecutors and police in this country are African-Americans. Now one of the most outrageous cases of law-enforcement abuse is unfolding in Durham, N.C., home of the Duke lacrosse case. And African-Americans are leading the cheers for the oppressors. Why? The poison of identity politics, plus class hatred of the prosecutor's three main victims, well-off white men falsely accused of rape by an unstable black "exotic dancer," and a deeply dishonest district attorney.

Last spring, Durham D.A. Michael Nifong, who is white, was facing a primary in a racially divided electorate. He was badly behind and out of campaign money, excepting almost $30,000 in loans from his personal funds. Then came the accuser's allegations. Mr. Nifong responded by assuming control of the police investigation and making racially inflammatory statements pronouncing the Duke lacrosse players guilty of rape. Even as evidence of their innocence accumulated, he brought rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges that fed the racial resentments he had stoked. The black vote put him over the top in both the May 2 primary and the Nov. 7 general election.

Black leaders--including Durham Mayor Bill Bell, the appallingly demagogic North Carolina NAACP and others--should know better. So should the powerful, identity-politics-obsessed hard left of Duke's own faculty, 88 of whom issued a statement in April saying "thank you" to protesters who had branded the players rapists. And so should the media, most of which gleefully joined the clamor last spring.

It has been clear for many months that the rape claim is almost surely a lie. But not until the DA's dramatic dismissal last Friday of the rape (but not the sexual assault and kidnapping) charges did Mr. Nifong enablers such as the New York Times and Duke President Richard Brodhead begin distancing themselves from his oppression of three innocent young men.

How can we be confident that the charges are false? Let us count the ways: The police who interviewed the accuser after she left the March 13-14 lacrosse team party where she and another woman had performed as strippers found her rape charge incredible, and for good reason. She said nothing about rape to three cops and two others during the first 90 minutes after the party. Only when being involuntarily confined in a mental health facility did she mention rape. This predictably got her released to the Duke emergency room for a rape workup, whereupon she recanted the rape charge.

Then she re-recanted, offering a ludicrous parade of wildly implausible and mutually contradictory stories of being gang-raped by 20, five, four, three or two lacrosse players, with the other stripper assisting the rapists in some versions. After settling on three rapists, the accuser gave police vague descriptions and could not identify as a rapist any of the 36 lacrosse players whose photos she viewed on March 16 and 21. These included two eventual defendants: Dave Evans, whom she did not recognize at all, and Reade Seligmann, whom she was "70%" sure she had seen at the party, but not as a rapist.

All of the 40-odd other people at the party have contradicted every important part of the accuser's various accounts. The second stripper called the rape claim a "crock" and said they had been apart less than five minutes. The accuser told doctors she was drunk and on the muscle relaxant Flexeril, whose side effects include badly impaired judgment when taken with alcohol. She has a history of narcotic abuse and bipolar disorder, a mental illness marked by wild mood swings from mania to depression, and spent a week in a mental hospital in 2005.

In court filings last week, even Mr. Nifong conceded that, contrary to his claims since March, medical records show no physical evidence of rape--let alone injuries consistent with the accuser's April claim of being beaten, kicked, strangled and raped anally, orally and vaginally by three men in a small bathroom for 30 minutes. Above all, DNA tests by state and private labs, which Mr. Nifong's office had said would "immediately rule out any innocent persons," did just that. They found no lacrosse player's DNA anywhere on or in the accuser and none of her DNA in the bathroom.

Yet two weeks ago we learned--only because dogged defense lawyers cracked a prosecutorial conspiracy to hide evidence of innocence--that the private lab did find the DNA of "multiple males" in swabs of the accuser's pubic hair, panties, and rear after the supposed rape. None of this DNA matched any lacrosse player.

After the first two photo sessions, it was clear that the accuser had no idea what her rapists (if any) looked like. By the end of March, it should have been clear to any prosecutor that there probably had been no rape at all. But Mr. Nifong had driven the black community into a rage with dozens of guilt-presuming, race-baiting attacks on the lacrosse players like this one, on March 27: "The contempt that was shown for the victim, based on her race, was totally abhorrent."

Such statements flagrantly violated North Carolina ethical rules requiring prosecutors to "refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." They also poured gasoline on the flames of racial rage.

Black leaders and voters made it clear that Mr. Nifong's only chance of winning the primary was to put his money where his mouth was by indicting the lacrosse players. He closed his door to defense lawyers offering evidence of innocence and rigged a multiple-choice test with no wrong answers. On March 31, he instructed police to conduct a third photo ID lineup, and to show the accuser (and tell her that she was being shown) photos of only the 46 white lacrosse players.

On April 4, when this third photo-ID process took place, the message to the accuser was, effectively: Pick three, any three. At random, if you like. You can't go wrong. This setup trashed the defendants' constitutional due process rights and specific Durham, state, and federal principles for identification procedures. To test the reliability of often-mistaken eyewitness ID's, these principles require showing at least five "fillers" (non-suspects) with each suspect and telling the witness that the lineup may or may not include a suspect. Mr. Nifong recently defended his procedure through word games, asking, "What is a lineup?"

The accuser's responses demonstrated her unreliability in ways too numerous to detail here. For one, she picked four as rapists. For another, the only player she twice identified with 100% certainty as attending the party could prove he was in Raleigh that night. But the accuser gave Mr. Nifong enough to obtain three indictments from a rubber-stamp grand jury. When he went to the grand jury, Mr. Nifong knew that the DNA results were inconsistent with the rape allegation. But he pressed ahead with the charge until the defense exposed his efforts to conceal the forensic evidence. Then he abruptly changed his theory of the crime.

The case is now unraveling so rapidly as to be ridiculed on "Saturday Night Live." Mr. Nifong is on his way to being disbarred, unless North Carolina's legal establishment wants to be held up to national scorn. He faces lawsuits and at least a remote risk of federal criminal investigation. As for Durham's black leaders, and many in the media, and much of Duke's faculty, history will mark them down as enablers of abusive, dishonest law enforcement tactics. They will share responsibility for the continued use of such tactics, mainly against black people, after the Duke lacrosse players' innocence has become manifest to all serious people and the spotlight has moved on.

Mr. Taylor, a National Journal columnist and Newsweek contributor, and Mr. Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, are writing a book about the Duke case.

From WasWatching.com:

Murcer To Have Brain Surgery

Posted by Steve Lombardi

From the AP -

Former New York Yankees star Bobby Murcer was set to have surgery Thursday to remove a brain tumor, the Daily News reported.

The 60-year-old Murcer, now a Yankees broadcaster, was scheduled to undergo surgery in Houston. He had been having headaches and feeling a loss of energy lately, and the tumor was discovered following an MRI on Christmas Eve, the newspaper reported Thursday.

"I'm feeling OK and we're just going to have to see what this surgery will bring," Murcer told the Daily News by phone Wednesday night. "I'm hopeful that everything will turn out OK and I'm thankful to have so many friends who are rooting for me."

Murcer was to be treated at the MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, one of the top cancer facilities in the nation, the newspaper said.

This is the type of news that I hate finding when I wake-up in the morning. In some ways, Bobby Murcer, in his retirement from active play, has become, to Yankees-baseball, what Tommy Lasorda is to the Dodgers and Ron Santo is to the Cubs. He's a guy who loves the organization, is proud to be a part of its history, is not shy to promote that love and pride.

I featured Bobby Murcer, the player, in my book - The Baseball Same Game - and here is part of what I wrote:

Murcer was an icon in the New York sports scene in the 1970’s. During this time he was also one of the best batters in the game. For the decade of the ‘70’s, Bobby Murcer is among the top ten (of all major leaguers) in Games Played, At Bats, Hits, Runs Scored, Total Bases, Walks and Runs Batted In. During his career, Bobby was selected to the All-Star team five times.

Despite all this, when I think of Bobby Murcer I think of “the trade.” On October 22, 1974, the Yankees traded Murcer to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for Bobby Bonds. It was reported as the first time that two players who made $100,000 a year were traded one-for-one for each other. In New York, Yankee fans were very upset that their favorite had been sent away. One of my best friends, who was 12-years-old at the time of the trade, has told me repeatedly of how he cried like a baby the day that he heard the news.

Furthermore, a few years ago, I heard another story that topped my friend’s reaction.

In 2002, a colleague at work came into my office for the first time and noticed some Yankee paraphernalia on my desk. He said to me “I hate the Yankees.” Not knowing what to say to such an out of the blue harsh comment, I asked “What team do you like?” He told me that he liked the New York Mets. To be polite, I asked why he liked the Mets. His answer was “When I was a kid, I loved the Yankees. But, when they traded away Bobby Murcer, they broke my heart. From that day, I decided that I would become a Mets fan and I’ve always hated the Yankees ever since.”

The Murcer-Bonds trade had that sort of impact on many Yankees fans. And, it probably was part of the reason why New York re-acquired Murcer less than five years after “the trade.”

Whether they remember Murcer as a great baseball player from the 1970's or as a current positive spokesperson for the Yankees organization, there are probably countless Bobby Murcer fans in Yankeeland today. I am one of them - and I can add that I've heard from people who have met Murcer that he's one of the nicest people that you can ever encounter.

Together, we need to marshal up our thoughts and hopes for positive results and sent them towards Bobby's way today, and in the days that follow.

Godspeed Lemon.

Knight's record-setter could have been much more
By Pat Forde

ESPN.com

Bob Knight is closing in on victories that will be historic in scope but pyrrhic in nature.

To understand the pyrrhic part, you need to know about "Project 880" at Texas Tech.

Knight, who is now tied with Dean Smith at 879 victories, likely will become the winningest coach in Division I men's college basketball annals during the Red Raiders' ongoing four-game home stand. In hope that people actually will show up to see Knight enter the record books, Tech has been offering $8.80 general admission seats to the four games at United Spirit Arena. And if you buy a lower-level ticket to those games, you can get one upper-level general admission seat for free.

	Bob Knight, shown in 1997, was 622-239 in 29 seasons at Indiana.

It's not an easy sell. Texas Tech averaged 6,707 fans in its 15,000-seat arena for four of its early home games this season (attendance for Sam Houston State was not listed) before pulling in 11,561 for the record-tying game against Bucknell this past Saturday.

This is the bed Bob Knight made for himself: He'll make history at an out-of-the-way school with no men's basketball heritage in a football state, in front of a house that very well could be less than full. He'll make history in exile, in effect.

Not exactly the moment of glory this could have been.

If it had happened at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Ind., there would be no need for sales promotions to fill seats. And it could have happened at Assembly Hall, if ...

This is what the story would be today if Knight had ever confronted and overcome his greatest flaw, uncontrollable anger:

The approaching milestone will be downplayed, as usual. Indiana University coach Bob Knight isn't about to make a big deal about this, his impending 1,000th career victory as a college basketball coach.

Knight blew away Dean Smith's record of 879 wins years ago, and he wouldn't cater to a coronation then. Putting the record out of sight now should produce a similar reaction.

The General saves most of his excitement for national titles.

Some people wondered whether Knight had lost it after he won his fourth national title in 1993, with Eric Montross and Calbert Cheaney forming an overpowering inside-outside combination for the Hoosiers. But after a few lean years, he signed Indianapolis point guard Jason Gardner and Indiana staged a revival.

	Knight is 114-66 at Texas Tech.

Behind Gardner and Jared Jeffries, the Hoosiers made the Final Four in 2001 and again in '02. Then Knight won his fifth title as coach at Indiana two years ago, riding second-generation Indiana star Sean May to a championship-game victory over North Carolina. (That gave the Hoosiers seven national titles and kept Carolina stuck at three, the last coming in 1982.)

After Knight passed Smith they named the Assembly Hall court in his honor. Now, he might have his best team since the unbeaten 1976 national champs.

With homegrown products Greg Oden, Josh McRoberts, Dominic James and Mike Conley Jr. leading the way, the No. 1 Hoosiers are heavy favorites to give The General championship No. 6 in Atlanta come April.

That would give Knight twice as many titles as his former protégé, Mike Krzyzewski, and would put him more than halfway to John Wooden. There's no way he coaches long enough to catch The Wizard, but you can argue that he's accomplished more at a time when the competition is greater.

Knight could walk away into the sunset after hitting 1,000 wins and capturing another national title, but he doesn't have to. The adoring people of Indiana will let BK stay as long as he wants.

It didn't always look like it would go this way.

There was a time when Knight backers feared his toxic temper would undermine his career and cut short his time at Indiana. Ever since he threw the chair across the court against Purdue and was confronted by his superiors, the controversies have disappeared. After receiving counseling for his anger problem some 20 years ago, Knight has been known for only one thing: incredible success.

The rage that once undercut his coaching brilliance, chased recruits away and threatened to divide an entire state is no longer evident. He's still an old-school tough guy, just not an abusive old-school tough guy.

As such, Knight has become the basketball version of Joe Paterno: a universally admired institution at his school. He's widely recognized as the game's greatest statesman  a guy who does things the right way, doesn't cut corners and keeps on winning.

Now he can finish his career in a perfect spot: in a state where basketball is a religion and Knight is its high priest.

… That's the way the story could have been written, the way the career could have gone. Bob Knight could have been a hero to a state that cares and to a sport that needs one.

Instead he'll set the record in exile and amid the usual conflicting emotions and opinions that swirl around the man. It will be a victorious moment, but a pyrrhic moment as well.

Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.

From Fetzer To Finley:
In The End, O'Reilly's Championship Was The Greatest Award Of All

Dec. 27, 2006

By Dave Lohse
Associate Athletic Communications Director
University of North Carolina

On the morning of the day before North Carolina and Notre Dame were to take the pitch to decide which was the best team in college soccer in 2006, a small group of people huddled in the media tent at SAS Soccer Stadium in Cary for the taped presentation of the 2006 Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy.

Awarded annually to the national player of the year as voted by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America, the historic Hermann Trophy is a coveted prize, usually awarded in January to the nation's top player. This year's voting was pushed forward a month and Notre Dame sophomore Kerri Hanks edged North Carolina's Heather O'Reilly by a single point in the voting. Given the result of the following day and the role O'Reilly played in the national championship game win, one has to wonder what the vote would have turned out like had the award been given as usually is done a month later.

The following day, O'Reilly proved that in her senior year she was the most influential player in college soccer as her drive, spirit and determination willed coach Anson Dorrance's youngest team in history to a 2-1 victory over the Fighting Irish, improving Carolina's record to 4-0 in NCAA championship matches against Notre Dame. In a year when she had to split time between a single-minded purpose of returning the national championship to Chapel Hill while at the same time attempting to win a starting forward slot for the U.S. Team that will play in the 2007 World Cup in China, O'Reilly's life was more than a bit complex.

O'Reilly ended up missing only one Tar Heel game all season, such was her commitment to returning the title to the Hill for the first time in three years. While her statistics were not overly gaudy - 12 goals and 16 assists - she was at her best in Carolina's most important games of the season. In a regular-season win over Florida State when the Seminoles came into Fetzer Field ranked No. 1 in the nation, O'Reilly had both UNC goals in a 2-1 win. When the Tar Heels were staring down a 1-0 deficit against Texas A&M in the NCAA quarterfinal, O'Reilly spurred the Heels' comeback with a goal less than a minute into the second half. In the NCAA semifinals against UCLA, O'Reilly's late goal on a breakaway was the insurance the Tar Heels needed to hold off the Bruins. And in the final game of the campaign, O'Reilly's world-class goal in the first half and her assist on an early goal in the second half were the difference in the match. In addition, she wreaked havoc all season on the defenses of opponents with her speed and skill. The constant pressure she put on opponents made her a marked quantity, but she turned into a brilliant feeder, compiling 16 assists. In addition, as UNC's sole senior captain she was the glue that held together a team that started seven freshmen in the second half of the national championship game.

When O'Reilly was named the offensive MVP of the 2003 NCAA championship after she scored eight goals in the six games of the tournament, she admitted she thought that 27-0 season would become de rigueur during her career. But after early NCAA exits by the Heels in 2004 and 2005, O'Reilly came back in '06 as a seasoned veteran possessed with the will to go out a winner.

In the weeks that followed the season, O'Reilly got her due. She was named National Player of the Year by Soccer America and won the prestigious Honda Soccer Award as the nation's best player in a vote of senior women's administrators from schools across the nation. She was named the NSCAA Scholar Athlete of the Year after earlier being named the ESPN The Magazine Women's Soccer Academic All-America of the Year.

O'Reilly, who as a sophomore won a gold medal in the 2004 Olympics, now turns her attention to winning a starting forward position on the World Cup Team. That pursuit will occupy much of her 2007. She is close to finishing her degree in education, sporting a 3.4 GPA. She has also found time to be one of the most active student-athletes at UNC in the community service area as she is involved in a myriad of humanitarian efforts. In a couple of weeks she will attend the NCAA Convention as the winner of one of the NCAA's coveted Top Eight Awards.

O'Reilly's career at Carolina has come to a near perfect ending. She ultimately won the accolades she so richly deserved. The university will soon retire her number.

But the ultimate moment for O'Reilly came around 3 p.m. on December 3 as the 90th minute counted off the scoreboard clock at SAS Soccer Park. When the referee whistled the match to a close, TV and still cameras caught O'Reilly's celebratory reactions for posterity. All the other honors she has won before and since pale in comparison to what O'Reilly became at that moment in time - the senior captain of Carolina's 19th national championship team in the last 26 years.

Winning that championship is what mattered most to O'Reilly and that fact alone places O'Reilly exactly where she belongs - as a Carolina legend, a player we were all lucky to watch for four fantastic years when she wore Carolina Blue. Those memories will not fade soon for those who have been witness to them.

Gerald Ford unquestionably seemed to be a decent man. However, it can be argued that his incompetence in both domestic and foreign affairs is what enabled many people wih conservative tendencies to fall for Jimmy Carter's fauz-conservative populism. A good perspective here from The New York Post.

THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT:
TWO GRIM YEARS
By JOHN PODHORETZ

December 28, 2006

In the hours since the passing of Gerald Ford, some wild claims have been offered in tribute to him. The wildest is that he basically saved the United States upon his ascension to the presidency in August 1974.

Ford was a fine man and a distinguished public servant, and he deserves to be remembered warmly. But the idea that his presidency saved America is ahistorical sentimentality.

Through no fault of Ford's, the man from Michigan presided over two of the worst years in American history. It would not be fair to call his presidency a failure, since he found himself in an impossible situation and managed as best he could. But there's no sense pretending that the 30 months between August 1974 and January 1977 were anything but dire.

The inflation rate skyrocketed. The nation's largest city, this one, went broke. The national crime wave continued to wreak havoc. In September 1975, Ford himself was the subject of two separate assassination attempts.

The most notable, and most awful, moment of the Ford years came on April 30, 1975, as the last American helicopter seemed to scurry into the sky off the roof of an apartment building in downtown Saigon days after the city fell to the Communists.

Ford made three key decisions on his own during his presidency: one that was necessary and historic; one, brave and tough - and one both weak and pusillanimous.

You probably think the necessary and historic decision was the pardon of Richard Nixon, who would've been subject to criminal charges following his resignation were it not for Ford's action. To my mind, that was the brave and tough call - brave because Ford knew he'd be raked over the coals for it, tough because he was willing to suffer the heat to move the country beyond an obsession with the petty crimes of the immediate past.

But I don't think that's the most important thing he did. The most important thing he did, only weeks after the fall of Saigon, was to send a message that the United States had not entirely lost its nerve.

Cambodia's Stalinist Khmer Rouge government seized the SS Mayaguez, a civilian freighter, in a shocking act of international piracy. Ford ordered the U.S. Marines into action - and the result was one of the most daring and inventive naval rescue missions of all time.

Ford made his point. America had not gone pacifist, and would not be attacked with impunity.

The worst mistake of the Ford presidency - both morally and politically - was his decision not to invite Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the White House after the Nobel Prize-winning dissident was thrown out of the Soviet Union. Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, fretted that an invitation would scuttle sensitive arms-control negotiations.

Morally, the snub was a black mark on a great nation. Politically, it ignited Ronald Reagan's insurgent bid to unseat Ford as the GOP nominee in 1976.

Reagan almost beat Ford, and the primary battle put Ford so far behind his rival, Jimmy Carter, that Ford's dramatic 30-point leap in the polls in the fall of 1976 couldn't put him over the top.

Ford was dealt a bum hand. He conducted himself admirably for the most part. But his presidency was overwhelmed by the disastrous national and international policies of the 1970s - which would only be undone when his rival, Ronald Reagan, did his heroic best to restore America to greatness in the 1980s.

jpodhoretz@gmail.com

From The New York Sun:
How The West Could Lose
By Daniel Pipes

Dec. 26, 2006

After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists?

On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag?

Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it's not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That's because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them – pacifism, self-hatred, complacency – deserve attention.

Pacifism: Among the educated, the conviction has widely taken hold that "there is no military solution" to current problems, a mantra applied in every Middle East problem – Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, the Kurds, terrorism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. But this pragmatic pacifism overlooks the fact that modern history abounds with military solutions. What were the defeats of the Axis, the United States in Vietnam, or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, if not military solutions?

Self-hatred: Significant elements in several Western countries – especially the United States, Great Britain, and Israel – believe their own governments to be repositories of evil, and see terrorism as just punishment for past sins. This "we have met the enemy and he is us" attitude replaces an effective response with appeasement, including a readiness to give up traditions and achievements. Osama bin Laden celebrates by name such leftists as Robert Fisk and William Blum. Self-hating Westerners have an out-sized importance due to their prominent role as shapers of opinion in universities, the media, religious institutions, and the arts. They serve as the Islamists' auxiliary mujahideen.

Complacency: The absence of an impressive Islamist military machine imbues many Westerners, especially on the left, with a feeling of disdain. Whereas conventional war – with its men in uniform, its ships, tanks, and planes, and its bloody battles for land and resources – is simple to comprehend, the asymmetric war with radical Islam is elusive. Box cutters and suicide belts make it difficult to perceive this enemy as a worthy opponent. With John Kerry, too many dismiss terrorism as a mere "nuisance."

Islamists deploy formidable capabilities, however, that go far beyond small-scale terrorism:

• A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.
• A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.
• An impressively conceptualized, funded, and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill, and electoral success.
• An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians. The movement almost defies sociological definition.
• A non-violent approach – what I call "lawful Islamism" – that pursues Islamification through educational, political, and religious means, without recourse to illegality or terrorism. Lawful Islamism is proving successful in Muslim-majority countries like Algeria and Muslim-minority ones like the United Kingdom.
• A huge number of committed cadres. If Islamists constitute 10% to 15% of the Muslim population worldwide, they number some 125 to 200 million persons, or a far greater total than all the fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived.

Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been.

Should Islamists get smart and avoid mass destruction, but instead stick to the lawful, political, non-violent route, and should their movement remain vital, it is difficult to see what will stop them.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).