The Archbishop of Canterbury (left) and Michael Moore (right) react to news of Osama bin Laden's death.

What do Michael Moore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and United Nations human rights officials have in common? They are upset over the latest reports that the United States shot Osama Bin Laden to death because the mass murderer, though stained with the blood of thousands of slain innocent Americans, was reportedly unarmed when justice was finally served.

Moore and his co-loonies have reinforced their well-deserved reputations for left-wing looniness by questioning the “legality” of Osama Bin Laden’s descent to Hell, courtesy of our Navy Seals. These bubbleheads, along with other hair-splitting Monday morning quarterbacks complaining that the killing of bin Laden may have violated international law, are completely unhinged from the real world.

Let’s start with Michael Moore, the multi-millionaire film writer and conspiracy theorist who thinks that “capitalism is a sin” while rolling in big bucks from his lie-filled film Fahrenheit 9/11.

With confidence that, in his words uttered thirteen months after al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack on our homeland, “there is no terrorist threat in this country,” Moore now feels sorry for what happened to Bin Laden. He told CNN:

They killed him not because there was a fire fight or something going on. They went there with the intention to kill him. That’s an execution or an assassination, whatever you want to call it.

Moore lamented that, in killing Bin Laden, America

lost something of [its] soul

The only thing we lost is an evil, soulless killer. We don’t need the kind of “soul” that Michael Moore is pitching, especially when Moore compared the insurgents in Iraq, who included al Qaeda terrorists aiming to kill our soldiers, to the Minutemen of the American Revolution.  And Moore once described the United States, which was fighting the terrorists, as

a nation that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves

I suppose that if Moore had his way, and could have fit into one of the Navy Seals’ helicopters without bringing it down, he would have enjoyed personally meeting Bin Laden and perhaps would have offered him a leading role as the hero in a Fahrenheit 9/11 sequel.

Meanwhile, across the pond in Merry England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rev. Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Church of England and of the 80-million strong worldwide Anglican Communion, has criticized the United States for shooting dead the reportedly unarmed Osama bin Laden:

The killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling because it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done

The circumstances of Bin Laden’s demise left the Archbishop of Canterbury  ”uncomfortable.” Poor thing. But before you feel too sorry for the Archbishop’s discomfort, don’t forget that this is the same Archbishop who, back in 2008, said that the United Kingdom will eventually have to get comfortable incorporating Islamic sharia law into the English legal system in order to help facilitate social cohesion.

At least the Archbishop of Canterbury should be comfortable with the fact that the Obama administration tried to follow sharia law by conducting a Muslim religious ceremony within 24 hours of Bin Laden’s death, before disposing of his cleansed body.

Finally, there are the transnationalists at the United Nations who want to usurp U.S. sovereignty by trying to get the final say over whether member states of the UN, including the United States, are conforming with international law.

In a statement released in Geneva, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, and the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, said the U.S.

should disclose the supporting facts to allow an assessment in terms of international human rights law standards…the norm should be that terrorists be dealt with as criminals, through legal processes of arrest, trial and judicially-decided punishment

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay also put out a statement requesting more details on what went down at Bin Laden’s lair:

The United Nations has consistently emphasized that all counter-terrorism acts must respect international law.

Unfortunately, after more than ten years of trying to even define what constitutes “terrorism,” the United Nations has come up empty. It’s kind of hard for any UN agency to determine whether a “counter-terrorism act” conforms with international law when the UN cannot even formulate a consensus on what “terrorism” even means.

More importantly, it’s none of the UN’s business how the United States chooses to defend itself against an organization and its leader who declared war on the United States, have continued to plot acts of terrorism against American civilians and have not followed the most elementary rules of law.

The Navy Seal commandos who located Bin Laden had only seconds during their time sensitive mission to make a judgment on whether bin Laden posed any possible danger.  They had just encountered some gunfire from Bin Laden’s courier.  The commandos reportedly also spotted   two guns, one of which was an AK-47 assault rifle, in the room where they encountered Bin Laden. Obviously, they couldn’t pat him down without running a risk of harm and lost time. With their own lives and the success of the mission on the line, the commandos made the only logical call under the circumstances.

Besides, the only valid reason to try and take Bin Laden alive in the face of such risks would have been to extract more information from him via the same enhanced interrogation techniques that helped provide the clues leading to Bin Laden’s door in the first place. But since the Obama administration doesn’t believe in enhanced interrogations and has ended them, Bin Laden served no useful purpose remaining on this earth.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

Your morning joe with a message of hope and change

For all the union members screaming “Fox lies” during the Wisconsin protests… for President Obama insisting that Fox News is “destructive” for our country’s growth, and his administration attempting to de-legitimize them as a news organization by barring them from news conferences… for every logic-impaired idiot who has never actually watched Fox News but KNOWS that they aren’t journalists… here’s the proof that you’re right: screenshots of the two main cable news sites taken virtually at the same time. If a picture tells a thousand words, these two pictures should speak volumes:

See? You were right! Fox News DOES suck, because – what real American journalists would concern themselves with devastating tornadoes in those yucky Bible belt states, when we can talk about a royal wedding on the other side of the world?

I have long suspected that a good part of the asinine “royal worship” in this country is frustrated leftists who desperately long to just pronounce themselves royalty, collect taxes from the rest of us, and wave regally from on high as we bow before them (*coughObamacough*). Leftists imagine themselves as part of the elite inner circle of the world, so it’s not at all surprising that their focus is on a pair of their own. (The groom’s daddy, by the way, is an enormous left-leaning tool.)

But I digress. Yeah. Fox News is so biased and if you watch it you’re a drooling moron and you’ll never understand How Things Really Are because Fox News lies? And did I mention, Fox lies?

At the site where this CNN/Fox comparison was displayed, there was a bracing discussion from a group of intellectual giants debating why Fox News, which is clearly not really a news organization, would have covered the tornadoes while CNN concentrated on inbred monarchy types. Allow me to share just a tiny nugget of this incisive analysis:

“(Fox is) not exercising journalistic professionalism; they’re showing a news story that they think more people will want to see. I’d imagine Fox’s target audience is more rural and midwestern on average, and this story probably hits closer to home for them. It’s all about the money, yo.”

This story hits closer to home for them? Where do YOU live, “yo”? Unless it’s in Wales or Scotland, I daresay this story should hit closer to your home, too. In fact, I kind of wish this story had actually hit your home. Oops! Violent rhetoric. Allow me to retract that statement. Although speaking of hateful rhetoric… I stand in awe of a true master of the art, writing in the same discussion thread (profanity is masked for your reading safety):

“Fox is still f***ing retarded. The devastation is known, and talking about it isn’t it going to change anything. They’re called acts of nature/god for a reason, and the bible-belt is getting hit by storms that wouldn’t be as bad if the imbeciles living there hadn’t fought so damned hard against preventing climate-change.Yeah, I said it. We all know it’s true, and the fact that people are dead shouldn’t dissuade anyone from holding this up as evidence of their stupidity and backwards thinking. What better time than now, when we can see that people are actually being killed by the extreme weather caused by global anthropogenic climate change? But Fox won’t cover that aspect of it, even though CNN has. Fox will, however, talk about all the prayer groups being held to ask a f***ing MYTHICAL SKY WIZARD to stop the tornadoes. In the BIBLE BELT. Where almost everyone is a Christian, even when they don’t believe it (because they get the s**t beat out of them if they don’t act like bible-thumpers). FoxNews: Negative Over 9000, CNN: 0, so it’s still better.”

People like this actually vote, which explains a lot, no? One doesn’t even know where to begin – the seething hatred for Christians (and their mythical sky wizard), the fact that in defiance of all scientific evidence this bitter little hater “knows it’s true” that climate change apparently parked itself over the southern states and let loose, or the journalistic genius of noting that since the tornadoes have already happened, “talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”

The mind boggles, no? If this doesn’t inspire you to pray (hard) for this country, I don’t know what would.

But I digress again. If any of these mental midgets could actually find the Fox News Channel on their remote, they could watch the only television news outlet where you are likely to hear a variety of views on virtually every topic. Yes, many of the commentators make their opinions clearly known. (As opposed to the Katie Courics and Dan Rathers of the world, who make their opinions clearly known while insisting that they’re objective and neutral.) But Fox News as a pure news organization is excelling, because they are not manipulating virtually all coverage to hew to the leftist party line. (For a concise example of how this type of manipulation works, see this brief deconstruction of a CNN story).

A picture tells a thousand words. Two pictures can speak volumes.

Last week Piers Morgan, who has replaced Larry King on CNN, interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. While it is good for Truth to speak to Power, it is always discouraging to listen to someone who is supposed to be informed display by his line of questioning that he has, at a minimum, been completely hoodwinked by the Palestinian Myth Machine which couches its narrative as a peaceful people wrongfully dispossessed of their historic birthright and shamefully treated by hostile occupiers.

This is the narrative that has gained currency in our State Department, in the chancelleries of Europe, and certainly throughout the Arab world. Nothing could be farther from the truth, yet it is passed around more frequently than the bong at Oliver Stone’s house. This is in spite of the identical al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Authority rhetoric of hatred and incitement to violence that is beamed toward Israel and the West on a weekly basis culminating in the sort of brutal murders of a peaceful and slumbering Jewish family as witnessed in Itamar last week. It is this kind of wanton butchery that over decades has come to define Palestinian society. Instead of demanding an end to it the international community, a rhetorical beguiler of one’s intelligence if ever there was one, gets excited about the future construction of 1,600 homes to be built on vacant land 1.2 miles from the Knesset.

Morgan made the point that Israel must make some significant “concession” in order to make peace, apparently unaware that the Palestinians have never responded to concessions. They simply pocketed them and increased the ante.

Morgan went on to say that Israel is one of the more “calm” places in the Middle East today but failed to relate this to the fact that it is a democracy with liberal democratic values extended to its Arab and Jewish citizens alike and not an oppressive theocratic state that subjugates women, hangs homosexuals and persecutes non-Muslim minorities.

He managed to bring up the “awful conditions” of the Palestinian refugees in Gaza and asked Netanyahu if he would like to live there. Morgan must have been very loosely educated. Everyone knows that 10 years after the worst war in history, with over 40 million deaths and millions of refugees, all of the refugee camps in Europe had been closed and everyone had been resettled. Why is this not the case 63 years after five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948 and what happened to almost 900,000 Jewish refugees who were kicked out of their homes in Arab countries in the years after the Arab armies were defeated? To answer the first question, it is obvious that the Palestinian refugees are kept in place by their cynical leaders to pull at the heart strings of the West and its “useful idiots” in order to generate money and sympathy for their fake cause. To answer the second question, the Jewish refugees were all absorbed by Israel and went on to lead active and productive lives. Persecuted, murdered, banished and robbed of their property, there wasn’t a suicide bomber amongst them!

Some of the questions Morgan should have asked, or at least wondered about out loud, was what exactly has happened to the billions of dollars in aid that has been sent to the Palestinians and why hasn’t that been used to help their own people? Why doesn’t the place look like Beverly Hills and why don’t most of their people have graduate degrees? Where has the money gone? What have they been doing with it? Why is it when their Arab brothers have access to billions and billions of petro-dollars they treat the so-called Palestinians as redheaded stepchildren? Why do they need money from the West?

Why do we get the sinking feeling that the Arab Palestinians are just used as tactical pawns in the strategic goal of annihilating Israel? Why is it that Israel, with no natural resources and surrounded for 63 years by genocidal enemies whose undiminished goal is her extinction, is now an economic and entrepreneurial powerhouse with arable land converted from pure desert? Sixty-five percent of the PA’s income is derived from international aid and when Yasser Arafat was around a good deal of that ended up in his own bank account. What does Mahmoud Abbas’s bank account look like these days?

As for Morgan’s question to Prime Minister Netanyahu about whether he would like to live in Gaza, why would he want to live in an area where Jews are prohibited and where the population voted to have Hamas, an internationally recognized group of terrorist killers, govern their affairs? Before the interview Piers should have read the Hamas Charter. He would have discovered that it is one of the most unambiguous documents of hatred ever produced. In it he would have read their boast that the destruction of Israel would be Hamas’ contribution to the eventual establishment of an Islamic caliphate. Why exactly would Netanyahu want to live there? Netanyahu should have asked if Piers would like to live in Sderot or Ashkelon where, until recently, he would have been treated to the daily arrival of rockets raining down on him from Gaza.

Behind each of Piers Morgan’s questions was the inference that there is a moral equivalency between those who wish to destroy the state of Israel and those who are determined to defend her. Thus he reveals that he has missed the point of this interminable conflict. The world’s industrialized nations pander to the Arabs in order to ensure an uninterrupted flow of oil upon which their economic lives depend and thereby Israel’s security and even her existence become subordinated to this consideration.

One hopes that Piers Morgan’s illusions are due to misinformation rather than the corrupt and pervasive bias against Israel with which the mainstream media is stained and infected, in which case Prime Minister Netanyahu should have taught him a much needed history lesson. Israel’s prime minister should not have answered each question as if its basic premise was valid; instead he should have dispelled the illusions of Piers Morgan while educating the audience who needed to hear the truth. Truth, of course, is a rare commodity in the Middle East and is only exceeded in its rarity by the absence of journalistic due diligence on the part of Piers Morgan when he prepared his questions for the prime minister.

The Islamophobia panic, heightened by Peter King’s congressional hearings on radicalization, has spilled over into Canada. Leftist media outlets like CNN have substantial influence on public discourse, and now, the publicly funded Canadian broadcaster CBC has decided to make the hearings a top item on its daily program “As it Happens.” The program’s approach seeks to undermine the credibility of the hearings and add to the Islamophobia hysteria spurred on by the Muslim Brotherhood.

First, the CBC omitted a statement from King’s opening words that:

“the overwhelming majority of Muslim-Americans are outstanding Americans and make enormous contributions to our country.”

It went on to promote CAIR, and featured one Muslim guest to give his ‘expert’ analysis:  Alejandro Beutel of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), which Steven Emerson has deemed an Islamist organization.

While CAIR officials have stated publicly that the group does not advocate Jihad by the sword, it uses something even more dangerous: Ideological Jihad which employs lies and deceptions (al-Tiqiyya) while strategically manipulating Western emotions.

Just look at Keith Ellison’s star performance at the King hearings where he practically wailed through his description of the anti-Muslim treatment of  Mohammed Hamdani, the young Pakistani-born American who perished during his rescue efforts on 9-11.

Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans.  His life should not be identified as just a member of an ethnic group or just a member of a religion but a fellow American who gave everything for his fellow Americans…..

CBC’s “As it Happens” featured Ellison’s crying testimony followed by Beutel’s commentary. While racism and stereotypes need to be addressed, the King hearings are not the place to do so.  But Islamists mix it in to form a poisonous brew that stirs emotions and stifles the issue of radicalism.

As a final blow, Ottawa lawyer and top security Intelligence Specialist David Harris –who had seen the program’s description on the CBC Facebook page–posted his fair assessment of the coverage, warning about the agendas of CAIR and the MPAC.  Within a couple of hours Harris’ post magically disappeared in what was a clear cut case of censorship.

In Canada citizens have been influenced by biased news coverage claiming the King hearings have promoted McCarthyism and Islamophobia. The hype has been fueled and fanned by Muslim Brotherhood offshoots like CAIR and the MPAC, hell-bent on undermining the serious problem the West has with creeping Islamization. What the King hearings have exposed is how much we need to push back. Pity the hearings excluded witnesses like Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who could have better dealt with the onslaught coming from the leftist media working in overdrive.

Note how the CNN reporter repeatedly interrupts Pamela with hostile questions, and then coos and fawns over this dishonest Islamic supremacist spokesman, allowing him to engage in the ad hominems so often favored by Islamic apologists when they cannot answer on the basis of the facts.

The criminal complaint discussed in this report also describes yet another connection to Anwar al-Awlaki. "N.J. men planned to 'wage violent jihad,' feds say," from CNN, June 6:

New York (CNN) -- Two New Jersey men arrested at a New York airport planned to travel to Somalia to "wage violent jihad," and also had expressed a willingness to commit violent acts in the United States, according to prosecutors and a federal criminal complaint.

Mohamed Mahmoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, New Jersey, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park, New Jersey, were taken into custody Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The two intended to take separate flights to Egypt on their way to Somalia "to join designated foreign terrorist organization al-Shabaab and wage violent jihad," federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The two are charged with conspiring to kill, maim and kidnap people outside the United States, according to court documents.

The FBI received a tip regarding the men's activities in October 2006, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey.

The tip, from someone who knew the men, said, "Every time they access the Internet all they look for is all those terrorist videos. ... They keep saying that Americans are their enemies, that everybody other than Islamic followers are their enemies ... and they all must be killed."

Qur'an 9:5.

As part of the investigation, an undercover officer with the New York Police Department's intelligence unit "recorded numerous meetings and conversation" with the two men, prosecutors said.

During those meetings, they discussed a plan under which they would save thousands of dollars and physically condition themselves through paintball and other training, then acquire military gear and apparel for use overseas, and buy plane tickets to Egypt with the intent to travel to Somalia.

"The defendants also discussed their obligation to wage violent jihad and at times expressed a willingness to commit acts of violence in the United States," prosecutors said.

On April 25, for instance, Almonte said "that there would soon only be American troops in Somalia, which was good because it would not be as gratifying to kill only Africans," according to prosecutors.

And in November 2009, Alessa said in part, "We'll start doing killing here, if I can't do it over there," according to the criminal complaint. In an apparent reference to Maj. Nidal Hasan, charged with the deaths of 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, Alessa said, "He's not better than me. I'll do twice what he did."

In January, the two lifted weights together, and Alessa stated in part "that stronger muscles means bigger muscles which means killing more non-Muslims," according to the complaint....

What details does Reuters think salient in this case? We learn that the people arrested are "men," and that they're "unmarried American citizens" and "residents of New Jersey." They were planning to join a "militant group" in Somalia -- one described here as a "youth movement." The arrests had something to do with the men's "social circle."

Two "militant groups" are named -- Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab. Most Americans have never heard of the latter, and Muslim spokesmen are working hard to make them think that the former has nothing to do with Islam, as a slick Islamic apologist insisted on CNN this morning in a discussion of the Ground Zero Mosque and our protest today. (Unfortunately for the credibility of his smooth deceptions, however, my colleague Pamela Geller was on the show as well, and she was telling the truth even amid a barrage of hostile questions. I'll post video if it becomes available.)

Yet Reuters itself suggests, at least to the informed reader, that these two "men" do have something to do with Islam, since they mention the Times Square attempted car bombing (in the passive voice, as if the car bomb just suddenly and inexplicably materialized) and the attempted Christmas underwear bombing on a plane in Detroit (carried out by a "Nigerian"). What do the Times Square and Christmas plots have in common with these two arrests? Why, nothing that is named in this article: Islam. The Islamic jihad doctrine. Islamic supremacism.

But even though Islam is the real motivator of these two unmarried male American citizens from New Jersey, and Reuters knows that full well or it wouldn't have tagged on mention of the Times Square and Christmas plots at the end of this article, Reuters doesn't see fit to mention Islam or jihad.

The absurdity of this is obvious, but we take it for granted, since it crops up again in every news story from every news agency about every Islamic jihad plot anywhere in the world. It's as if we were trying to fight World War II without ever mentioning Germans or Japanese. "Men with Militant Ties Bomb Pearl Harbor." "Residents of Auschwitz with Ties to Militant Group Murder Millions of Jews."

Do you think we would have won that war with coverage like that?

Pamela Geller satirized this kind of thinking, or absence of thought, here:

Imagine, if you will, during, say, World War II, if the Axis press accounts of Allied military operations refused to use the word America or United States.

For example, a D-Day report would go like this: On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Iowans, New Yorkers, Jerseyans, Alaskans, Texans, and some black and white folks landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified sandy coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft filled with all kinds of people supported the D-Day invasion, and by day's end, Floridians had gained a foothold in Normandy.

"Two Men With Militant Ties Arrested In NY - Report," from Reuters, June 6 (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two men were arrested late Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport where they were believed headed for meetings with militant groups in Somalia, The New Jersey Star Ledger reported.

The men were arrested as they tried to board flights to Egypt. They were charged with conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism through a group tied to al Qaeda, the newspaper said, citing officials familiar with the arrests.

Both in their twenties and both residents of New Jersey, the two men had been under investigation since October 2006, the Star Ledger said.

An unidentified official told the newspaper both men were unmarried American citizens....

Federal and local law enforcement officials searched the homes of both men where they conducted interviews and removed boxes of papers, a computer and other materials.

Authorities had infiltrated the men's social circle and said the suspects were not planning an imminent attack in the New York-New Jersey area but were believed to be intending to join with the Al Shabaab youth movement to fight against Americans in Somalia, the report said.

One official briefed on the case was hopeful it would lead to a "web of arrests," the newspaper said.

The arrests followed a failed attempt to explode a car bomb in New York's Times Square last month and an incident on Christmas Day in which a 23-year-old Nigerian tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner by setting off explosives hidden in his underwear.

(CNN) -- Local police along the southern U.S. border have been given a heads-up about the possible presence of a Somali with suspected ties to a notorious militant group, a law enforcement official told CNN on Friday.

A Department of Homeland Security notice, sent "out of an abundance of caution," alerted police about a man named Mohamed Ali who might be a member of Al-Shabaab, the Islamist militant group fighting the Somali government.

The official said that the notice was based on raw intelligence data gleaned from a variety of sources and that it was uncorroborated. It is not known when the alert was issued.

It isn't known if the man is trying to enter the United States from Mexico, the official said.

The federal law enforcement official said it is standard to send out an advisory to local police, even when the information may be uncorroborated, because the information could turn out to be true.

(CNN) -- The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral "pricking" procedure.

Harmless? Compared to infibulation or clitoridectomy, but what about the psychological impact of what remains a ritualized sexual assault at the hands of one's community -- and almost with the approval of the AAP?

And then there are the principles that are at stake: Equal protection under the law (where "culture" is not an excuse for trauma), and of course, that tenet of the Hippocratic Oath: "First do no harm." And cutting without a medical reason certainly constitutes "harm."

"We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world," said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey.

The contentious policy statement, issued in April, had condemned the practice of female genital cutting overall. But a small portion of statement suggesting the pricking procedure riled U.S. advocacy groups and survivors of female genital cutting.

In the April statement, the group raised the idea that some physicians should be able to prick or nick a girl's clitoral skin in order to "satisfy cultural requirements." The group likened the nick to an ear piercing.

So, if it's that much of a harmless non-event, did everyone at the AAP who thought that would be okay line up to get theirs done?

On Thursday the AAP stated the group will not condone doctors to provide any kind of "clitoral nick." The AAP also clarified nicking a girl or woman's genitals is forbidden under a 1996 federal law banning female genital mutilation.

"I cried and told them how grateful I am," said Soraya Mire, a Somali filmmaker and survivor of female genital cutting. "Thank you for understanding us survivors and hearing our voices."

Equality Now, an international advocacy group fighting to end female genital cutting, echoed a similarly appreciative response.

"We welcome the AAP's decision to withdraw its 2010 policy statement on FGM," said Lakshmi Anantnarayan, a spokeswoman at Equality Now. "This is a crucial step forward in the movement to raise awareness about female genital mutilation....

What's that? That's only for Western consumption, and actually the jihad imperative and Islamic supremacism worldwide are more confident and assertive now than they have been for centuries? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe? More on this story: "Texas jury convicts Pakistani man of conspiring to support Taliban," by Terry Frieden for CNN, May 28:

(CNN) -- A Pakistani man faces a lengthy prison sentence after a federal jury in Houston, Texas, found him guilty of conspiring to provide support and funds to the Taliban.

Adnan Mirza, 33, was also found guilty Thursday night of seven firearm counts relating to what U.S. Attorney Jose Moreno said was firearms training near Houston "to prepare for jihad."

The Justice Department said Mirza and was enrolled at a community college at the time of his offenses in 2005 and 2006.

"Mirza and others engaged in weekend camping/training and practice sessions with firearms on six different occasions beginning in May 2006, at a location on the north side of Houston to prepare for jihad," Moreno said....

New York (CNN) -- "Fatwa on your head?" a new series of provocative ads on New York City buses asks. "Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?"

The ads, sponsored by an organization called Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), direct viewers to refugefromislam.com, a website designed "for people who are thinking of leaving Islam or are leaving Islam and need resources" to protect them from harm.

Practicing Muslims who find the ads offensive should "ignore it," SIOA leader Pamela Geller told CNN. "It's not directed to them."

Speaking on conservative Sean Hannity's radio show recently, Geller said, "it's time for Americans to stand up against the evil of Islamic jihadi terrorism and Islamic supremacism." The SIOA, which is funded by its online readership, is currently lobbying to block a mosque proposed near the World Trade Center site.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations in New York says the ads are nothing more than "Islam bashing."

"Islamophobes are notorious for their cheap tactics that seek to marginalize American Muslims and divide communities," CAIR Community Affairs director Faiza Ali said in a statement.

"Pamela Geller uses the same tactics as tobacco companies, hiding the cancerous nature of her agenda behind a smokescreen of feigned concern. Geller is free to say what she likes, just as concerned community members are free to critique her tactics and motives," Ali said.

Speaking at a Tennessee "Tea Party" convention earlier this week, Geller called CAIR an "unindicted co-conspirator Muslim-brotherhood front Hamas-tied" organization.

That's not just Pamela Geller's opinion. The Justice Department designated CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case.

Although the same campaign caused controversy when SIOA bought ad space on public buses in Miami, New York Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan told CNN that no one has asked the MTA to remove the ads yet.

"We have not gotten complaints on it, to be honest," he said. Like most ads seen on MTA subway cars and buses, the campaign will run a month. Last April, Donovan remembered, the MTA ran ads for whyislam.org -- an organization which encourages visitors to explore the Quran and seeks to "challenge popular stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam" -- on the subway system....

Let’s pretend you’re a member of the mainstream media. Let’s also pretend you’re actually objective and willing to do your job to the best of your abilities. Finally, let’s pretend that the White House has declared on a woman who was governor of Alaska, but who’s currently nothing more than a TV commentator and FaceBook columnist. All she has to do to get their attention is to criticize them on national television, and before you know it they show true, sexist, face.

What would you do?

Well, the answer is, or should be, obvious: You ask the White House why they’re arguing so much with this former governor and you explain to your readers that, from the looks of it, she has the president and his advisers scared to death.

Luckily for President Obama and his friends, however, the American MSM is far from objective. They don’t care about reporting and about explaining to the audience – most of whom are also eligible to vote, let us not forget – that, whether you like it or not (and I’m neutral), Palin has become a force to be reckoned with.

Not so with your wonderful mainstream media, however. The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, all produce nothing but the sound of silence.

Can you imagine what they would’ve done if Palin had been a progressive and Obama a conservative president? They wouldn’t stop talking about her and her impact. But because she’s not, they’re giving her the usual (Alinsky) treatment: they ignore her as much as they can get away with and, when forced to spend some time and attention to her, they ridicule her as much as they possibly can.

It may be a millennia-old practice, but the fact remains that Islamic law embraced it, and that is the reason for its persistence -- it is not at all merely "cultural." From the Shafi manual of Islamic jurisprudence, Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveler), certified as "reliable" by the Misunderstanders of Islam Al-Azhar University in Egypt:

"Circumcision is obligatory (O: for both men and women. For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Ar. bazr) of the clitoris (n: not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert). (A: Hanbalis hold that circumcision of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere courtesy to the husband.)" -- 'Umdat al-Salik e4.3

Regional variances of the practice in Muslim communities depend just as much on the justification of the principle in Islamic law. Those who would defend "just a little" cutting as somehow more acceptable -- including the American Academy of Pediatrics, with their approval of a "ritualized nick" (background and commentary here and here)-- miss the point: Mutilation is mutilation, and must not be allowed to happen on U.S. soil. Period.

"Pressure for female genital cutting lingers in the U.S.," by Stephanie Chen for CNN, May 21:

(CNN) -- Fatima Mohamed, a 45-year-old Somali immigrant living in America, was faced with a question most parents will never worry about: Should my daughter be circumcised?

The United States has outlawed female genital cutting, but cultural and religious pressures to circumcise girls linger among some African and Muslim immigrant families. Mohamed says the decision was an easy one for her to make after going through the painful experience herself in Africa as a child. She strongly opposes the idea of cutting her 11-year-old daughter, an American-born Somali with long curly hair, who plays soccer and likes watching "American Idol."

But not every family in her African community in Massachusetts feels that way. Nor can they they swiftly make the decision to reject circumcising their daughters, because it's a cultural ritual integral a woman's identity, she says.

"They say they don't want to hear it," Mohamed says. "Some think I'm disrespecting my own culture. Some will say, 'You act like an American now. You forgot about who you are.' "

In the U.S., an estimated 228,000 women have been cut -- or are at risk of being cut -- because they come from an ethnic community that practices female genital cutting, according an analysis of 2000 Census data conducted by the African Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The Census reports there are roughly 150 million women living in the United States.

The World Health Organization estimates up to 140 million women and children worldwide have been affected by female genital cutting. The WHO defines female genital cutting as a process that alters or injures female genital organs for nonmedical purposes.

There are several types of female circumcision. The most severe types require the inner or outer labia to be sewn together, a procedure performed in parts of Somalia and Egypt. Other forms include excising the entire clitoris or part of the clitoris.

Genital cutting dates back at least 5,000 years, says Marianne Sarkis, a professor of international development at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Some women desire the procedure because they believe they are dirty or unmarriageable if they are not cut, she said. There are cultures that begin cutting women as early as infancy, while some wait until adolescence.

Communities divided

Not all families in communities where female genital cutting is commonplace will want to participate. In Mohamed's immigrant community in Massachusetts, families are divided, she says. Some refuse to allow the procedure, as she does. Others say they want it, and many remain silent.

Occurrences of the practice have been documented in the U.S. In March, a Georgia mother was charged with female genital mutilation after the father noticed an infant's genitals "appeared to be have been circumcised," according to the Troup County Sheriff's Office. Officers wouldn't comment further on the family.

Several advocacy workers say the more common scenario involves sending girls back to their home country to have the ritual performed. Over the past few years, Taina Bien-Aimé, president of the women's advocacy group Equality Now, has heard several anecdotal stories of girls being sent back to have the procedure.

With summer vacation approaching, one 34-year-old mother from Senegal, living in New York City, says she knows several African families in limbo about genital cutting. One of her female friends abandoned her husband earlier this year when he asked for their 6-year-old daughter to be cut in Africa this summer. The friend, who speaks little English and is jobless, fled to a shelter with her daughter....

Read it all.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Ryan Sorba, the young conservative who shows off his tough-guy masculinity by trying to make a career out of fighting against homosexuals and gay marriage. If you don’t remember, Sorba is the speaker with a massively inflated sense of self-importance that used his debut at CPAC to denounce the group for having GOProud, a gay Republican organization, as a sponsor.

Unfortunately, this didn’t end Sorba’s career, it just ended his credibility. I didn’t anticipate how some media outlets would love to give him a podium with which to embarrass conservatives and himself. According to Sorba’s Facebook, CNN is following his “conservative activism” (I put that in quotes because it makes it sound like he’s done something significant) for a one-hour documentary.

This made me ponder how the right-wing should handle Sorba. Do they distance themselves from him, but in their ridicule, actually elevate his meager stature? Or should he just be ignored, so he doesn’t get the attention he craves and the recognition he’ll surely interpret as a sign that he’s some kind of star?

The guy already thinks he’s important enough that he can scare people by saying “Guess what? You made an enemy out of me!” like he did at the CPAC podium and can challenge people like Andrew Sullivan and Tammy Bruce to debates.

Not surprisingly, according to the article, Sorba isn’t the only conservative in the documentary, so it definitely isn’t about him—although I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to change that if his behavior at CPAC is any indication. The point is that everyone that wants to tarnish conservatives will now be hard at work trying to bring Sorba to the forefront.

I am a registered Independent and am unsure of my views on most domestic issues, but I can tell what CNN is trying to do by promoting Sorba. You don’t need to identify as a conservative to want to blow the whistle.

So, NRB readers, how should he be handled? Should he be shunned or addressed?

For those that have forgotten Mr. Sorba’s look-how-bold-and-smart-I-am rant, watch the video below:

New York (CNN) -- The man accused of attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square considered other targets in and around New York before the failed attack, an investigator said.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, pondered attacks on Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal, the World Financial Center and Connecticut helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky, going so far as to case some of the targets, a senior counterterrorism official with oversight of the investigation said Tuesday.

Dressed in a gray sweatsuit, free of handcuffs, Shahzad appeared before a federal magistrate on Tuesday afternoon to hear the charges against him. As he walked into courtroom, Shahzad gave a slight smile to his public defender, Julia Gatto. At the end of the hearing, Gatto requested that Shahzad be served halal food -- prepared according to Islamic dietary laws -- while jailed.

That is: "Please go to extra trouble on the taxpayer dime to respectfully accommodate the belief system under whose orders (cf. Qur'an 9:5, for starters) my client tried to commit mass murder."

Of course, the politically correct dogma currently in force prevents most in the justice system from acknowledging that Islam has anything to do with jihadist terrorism. But, if for no other reason than fiscal responsibility: How about some Tofurky?

Or -- instead of waiting for more steaming piles of explanations from Honest Ibe about how Islam is Peace -- we could take sensible steps to defend Constitutionalism and genuine pluralism...Naaah! That would be "Islamophobic"!

"E-mails paint Times Square suspect as frustrated Muslim," by Susan Candiotti for CNN, May 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

New York (CNN) -- Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed car bombing in New York's Times Square, was frustrated with the state of the Muslim world and sought a way to "fight back."

Two e-mails obtained by CNN help piece together a portrait of the Pakistani-born naturalized U.S. citizen. They also may shed some light on what propelled his failed terror plot.

"Everyone knows the current situation of Muslim World," he wrote in an e-mail he sent to a large group of recipients in February 2006.

At the time, he had been in the United States for about six years, had earned his MBA and was working as a financial analyst in Connecticut.

"Everyone knows how the Muslim country bows down to pressure from the west. Everyone knows the kind of humiliation we are faced with around the globe."

The e-mail continues: "It is with no doubt that we today Muslim, followers of Islam are attacked and occupied by foreign infidel forces. The crusade has already started against Islam and Muslims with cartoons of our beloved Prophet PBUH (peace be upon him) as War drums."

Shahzad was referring to the 2005 controversy in which a Danish newspaper published satirical cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed that many Muslims found offensive.

"Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed," Shahzad asked. "And a way to fight back when rockets are fired at us and Muslim blood flows? In Palestine, Afghan, Iraq, Chechnya and elsewhere."

The second e-mail was sent in April 2009 to a smaller group of recipients. By then, Shahzad was an American citizen. In that e-mail, Shahzad ridicules an article written by a Muslim who took a more moderate view than him.

"If you don't have the right teacher, then Satan should become your sheikh," according to a translated portion of the e-mail.

"I bet when it comes to defending the lands, his opinion would be we should do dialogue, etc., which is not the proven way from history and has not worked in current time and will not work in the future because it simply wasn't the way of the Quran," he added....

Here's what's going on: Iran will continue as long as it can to make the bare minimum gestures it needs to in order to buy time, while continuing business as usual. "Iran to resume uranium enrichment despite Turkey deal," from CNN, May 17:

(CNN) -- Iran will continue to enrich uranium to 20 percent, it said Monday, despite agreeing hours earlier to ship its low-enriched uranium to Turkey.

Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the Islamic Republic News Agency shortly after the announcement of the deal with Turkey that Iran will not stop enriching its own uranium.

That deal had been designed to answer international concerns that Iran was secretly trying to build nuclear weapons -- a charge it has long denied.

"With this agreement there are no more excuses left for the other side to impose pressure and continue with hindering the whole process of fuel exchange for Iran," Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said Monday.

He said he hoped the deal would lead the United Nations nuclear energy watchdog to close its file on Iran "forever."

His speech was carried live by Iran's government-backed Press TV.

The offer -- announced in a joint statement Monday by Iran, Turkey and Brazil -- would have Iran send 1,200 kg (2,645 lbs) of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey within a month, and the international group monitoring Iran's nuclear activities send 120 kg (264 lbs) of high-enriched uranium to Iran within a year.

The group to whom Iran is making the offer -- the so-called Vienna Group of the United States, Russia, France, and the International Atomic Energy Agency -- did not respond immediately.

Iran, Turkey and Brazil said Iran would formally notify the IAEA of the proposal within a week.

If the deal is not accepted, Turkey will return Iran's low-enriched uranium, the joint statement said.

Turkey's indifference to the success or failure of this arrangement is telling:

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin said Iran had made a major concession. "Iran is ready to deliver," he said. "If the deal goes through that's fine. If it doesn't, then the 1,200 kilograms in Turkey will continue to belong to Iran and can be arranged for return."

It is not clear how Iran's insistence that it will continue to enrich uranium itself is related to its offer to send low-enriched uranium abroad....

(CNN) -- Raids by federal agents in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey on Thursday are focused on a system of "cash couriers" who bring money into the United States from overseas, a source close to the investigation said.

Three people were taken into custody, according to a U.S. official -- two in Massachusetts and a third in Maine. A statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that three people were taken into custody on alleged immigration violations, but provided no further details.

All three are from Pakistan, according to a U.S. official. One is a so-called "visa overstay." Another was in the process of being removed from the United States, but had not yet been ordered removed, as he was attempting to adjust his status so that he could stay in the country, the official said.

A federal law enforcement source said the initial two detained were connected to the case, but said they were "collateral" in the sense that they may not have had direct knowledge of or input into the Times Square plot.

Investigators searched locations in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and in New York and New Jersey, a federal law enforcement source said.

Two locations on Long Island were among the targets of the raids, a federal law enforcement source told CNN. The FBI executed search warrants at both locations in Suffolk County, New York, in eastern Long Island, the source said. Tim Motz, a Suffolk County Police spokesman, said officers from that department were assisting federal agents. No arrests had been made.

Some of the money allegedly ferried by the cash couriers is thought to have been made available to finance operations like the abortive Times Square attack. The source close to the investigation said two individuals have been under surveillance at least since Wednesday, but could not confirm that they were two of the three individuals arrested in the raids....

And we thought the president didn’t care about Nashville and the Middle Tennessee flood! That he didn’t call. He didn’t care about the people that died sitting in traffic, the people that drowned in their own homes, or the families looking for missing loved ones. He didn’t consider another billion dollars’ worth of damage to merit his time.

Well, it looks like we were all wrong. He called Brad Paisley. The president wanted us to know, that is was important to understand FEMA is here.

That’s how it should be. The people, churches, and charities working together in a community, showing this administration the American way, with the presence of the government as audible as an AT&T cellphone call.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper visited Nashville last week. He acknowledged that the media coverage was sparse at best, and marveled at the outpouring of volunteers and community support. In his interview with country singer Brad Paisley, he finds out the president did have a message for Tennessee after all.

Cooper:

“… There’s going to be need here for a long time to come, and these folks don’t have insurance.”

Paisley:

“There is and actually today, I got a call from President Obama, who called to say that…”

Anderson:

“He called you?”

Paisley:

“He called me. We played there last year, at the White House. The Opryland did a night there for country music and he wanted to see how the Opry was. And he wanted to say that it’s very important to realize that FEMA is here, if you need something…that you, basically, get in touch with them. They’re really ready to help. And also, I think the government…they understand what the heritage is in this town. This has to be the kind of place that we preserve here.”

I won’t discount the fact that some may need the assistance of FEMA, but that should be the last resort.

What Nashville has so aptly demonstrated is that we are recovering, in spite of the major media, and without waiting for someone to tell us what to do. In in the first week of the aftermath, our church alone, has repaired 288 homes,  and raised thousands of dollars for direct relief. Not just for our own members, but for the community. We are far from unique, there are hundreds of churches and charities doing the same.

As the mainstream media begins to wake up and realize that they, once again, missed a story that is relevant and important to mainstream America, I hope they along with the administration learned something.

I hope they learned that the core values of American life, faith, hard work, charity, and building something out of nothing, is alive and well here in the bible-belt.

Those things are worth preserving, but we don’t need government assistance to do it.

Flooded House from Pete Wilson on Vimeo.

An all too unsurprising update on this story. "U.S. military tries to reassure Pakistan amid Times Square probe," by Barbara Starr for CNN, May 11:

Washington (CNN) -- The top U.S. military officer is reassuring his Pakistani counterpart that the U.S. military is not pressuring the Pakistani army to increase its operations against the Taliban there, a senior U.S. military official said.

The message comes as the United States has turned up independent evidence that ties the suspect in the attempted bombing in New York's Times Square to the insurgent group. It stands in sharp contrast to tough talk from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who warned of "consequences" if the Times Square plot is linked to elements in Pakistan.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Pakistani army, to discuss the matter Sunday.

Mullen called to "reassure Kayani we are not trying to pressure him as a result of this case," a senior U.S. military official said. "Mullen didn't call to say, 'You gotta do more because this Pakistani-American was trained on your territory.' "

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, met with Kayani as well, and his spokesman denied McChrystal made any effort to pressure the Pakistani official.

Clinton publicly took a tougher line, saying on the CBS program "60 Minutes": "We've made it very clear that if -- heaven forbid -- an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."

Why wait for another massacre, national tragedy, and the ensuing economic and geopolitical fallout?

The senior U.S. military official was adamant in saying the U.S. military is not trying to make the Pakistanis accelerate their timetable to move against Taliban strongholds in North Waziristan, a border region long believed to be sheltering al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Kayani has repeatedly said his troops would not expand their operations into North Waziristan until they have finished operations in other areas.

"We are very comfortable with the work they have been doing and where they are at the moment," the senior official said...

I'm not.