07/24/2008 12:26 PM
Headlines (click here)

Killings Turn Focus on San Francisco Sanctuary Law
The deaths immediately drew public outrage, which intensified when authorities revealed that Ramos, 21, is an illegal immigrant who managed to avoid deportation despite previous brushes with the law.

McCain, Obama Trade Charges on Afghanistan
The McCain campaign released “a new comprehensive strategy for victory in Afghanistan” that applies “the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the Iraq surge.”

Heckler Confronts Obama at Western Wall
"Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale! Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!" was the mantra that greeted Barack Obama at Israel's Wailing Wall.

Democrats & Ethics: Swamp Not Drained Yet
House Democrats set some high expectations with their campaign promises to “drain the swamp” of political corruption and run an ethical Congress. Their performance, though, has been a mixed bag.

Cities to Get Fewer Anti-Terror Dollars
The grant list to be released Friday by the Homeland Security Department shows that 43 cities are in line for fewer dollars in the current budget year than they got a year earlier.

Panel Moves Bill on Electronic Health Records
The House Energy & Commerce Committee, racing a rapidly shrinking legislative calendar, approved legislation designed to promote faster adoption of electronic medical records.

China Pushes Hush Money on Parents of Dead
Local governments in southwest China’s quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake.

China: Terror Attack Planned for Olympics
Police in Shanghai have cracked a terrorist cell planning to attack an Olympic football venue in the Chinese financial hub, state media reported.

American Girl Held in Pakistani Madrassa
"Yes we have received the deportation orders but we will not hand her over...No one could dare come near a one mile radius of our compound."

Brazilian MP is Charged Leading Slum Militias
A Brazilian politician is in custody, accused of leading brutal militias that impose their rule over some of Rio's notoriously dangerous slums.

AU Urges UN to Take Over Somalia
The African Union said it was incapable of stabilizing the situation in Somalia and urged the United Nations take over peacekeeping operations in the lawless Horn of Africa country.

NPA Sparrow Units Back in Manila
Sparrow Units, the urban hit squads of the New People's Army, have returned to Metro Manila to target some government functionaries, including military and police officials.

Sharpton's Lawyers: Feds Dropped Tax Probe
Federal prosecutors have decided not to seek criminal charges against the Rev. Al Sharpton over his chronic tax problems, his lawyers said Tuesday.

07/24/2008 12:25 PM
NMJ Editorial (click here)
The Issue of Dual Citizenship in the US
Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor
There is an issue, rarely discussed in the news, which has critical implications for our national security and political sovereignty. The United States is one of the most permissive countries in the world with regard to dual citizenship. Our government recognizes dual citizenship and tolerates multiple citizenships. How did it come to this? According to the U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8, it is the job of the Legislative Branch to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.

It’s Official...James Baker Has Lost His Mind
Frank Salvato Managing Editor
Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group think” on the Commander-in-Chief, it is evidenced that the American Fifth Column is on the march.

07/24/2008 12:25 PM
NMJ Commentary (click here)

Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Entitlements
Ercille I. Christmas, The New Media Journal
President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, exhorted the nation: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” This rally to selflessness has been trampled upon by a new class that has sprung up over the past 20 years or so. We are all familiar with environmentalists, but their influence is in danger of being surpassed by the “entitlementalists,” the new breed of Americans who have made taking what their country can ill afford to offer and offering not half as much in return. I may need a mentalist to sort this all out.

We're Experiencing a Democratic Coup
Greg Lewis, GregLewis.org
What's happening in America right now is no longer an election, it's a coup d'état, and the degree to which we as free Americans let this happen through our not opposing Obama's candidacy and the candidacies of other Democrats who support the coup is the degree to which we guarantee that the hell that Democrats have in mind for us comes nearer to realization.

The Skeleton in Obama’s Money Closet
Judi McLeod, Canada Free Press
Robert Wolf, CEO of UBS Americas, who has bundled more than $370,850 for Barack Obama so far this year, is one of the most embarrassing skeletons in BO’s money closet, now that the financial institution Wolf heads up in America has been outed in The Nation’s Attack of the Global Pirate Bankers. 

McCain vs. Obama, Substance vs. Emptiness
Col. Bob Pappas, USMC (ret), Gulf1.com
John McCain may not be my favorite person for a variety of reasons which I will not spell out here, but John McCain is a giant of a man compared to his mental, psychological, moral, moron of an opponent. John McCain is a man of integrity, a man of valor, a man of experience, that his eloquent but infantile opponent cannot imagine much less emulate.

Samir Kuntar: A Convicted Killer, Not a Hero
Elias Bejjani, Family Security Matters
It is really sad, shocking and shameful when a convicted murderer is decorated as a hero. Shame on Lebanon's leaders, parties, dignitaries, politicians and officials for welcoming Samir Kuntar as a hero – in the process boldly and evilly distancing themselves from the hopes, aspirations, education, and culture of their own people. By doing so they have alienated themselves from the majority of the Lebanese people and negated the deeply Lebanese rooted standards and criteria for what is wrong and what is right, and for what is good and what is evil.

10 Reasons Barack Obama Should Not Be President
David Huntwork, PoliWatch.org
Democrats are increasingly experiencing buyer's remorse for anointing a puppet of the hard Left to be their presidential candidate. His inexperience, nanny state complex, and questionable views on a wide variety of issues should make all thinking and intelligent people take a long pause before voting for a person who is so stunningly unqualified, ill- suited and unready to be the next President of the United States.

The Cold Hard Facts About Lobbying Washington DC
JB Williams, The New Media Journal
The very first fact every American must reconcile with is the fact that “lobbying” elected representatives, like other forms of prostitution, is as old as the constitutional republic itself. Ever since the moment that our founding colonies ratified these words, “Governments instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and established that we the people were endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, namely “freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” Americans have been using a myriad of mechanisms by which to do just that - to “lobby” their elected representatives.

It Didn’t Take Long!
Howard Linett, The New Media Journal
“Get us as close as you can to the sight of the attack,” my wife yelled as she jumped into the front seat of our car and three other middle-aged female social workers piled into our car’s backseat. I live for such orders! So I did not waste time getting my blue-red flashing police dashboard light out of the trunk. I just hit the gas as my wife unfolded her Emergency Responder Social Worker vest. She waved it to the police as we raced through the roadblocks they had set up between City Hall and the King David Hotel. For my wife and I, racing to the scene of a terrorist attack in our own car, really is not quite as exciting as it sounds. Unfortunately it has become routine.

Earth to Nancy Pelosi
Raymond S. Kraft, The New Media Journal
Responding to the President's call on Congress to lift the bans on drilling for oil off both coasts, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded by calling Bush's move a "hoax," claiming, "It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence." The reason given for this is that there was a big oil spill from a ruptured well-head off Santa Barbara in 1969 that killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of birds, and covered the shoreline with oily goo for miles. This, as unemployment in her home state of California jumped from from 6.2% to 6.8% in the merry month of May, and the statewide average gas price hovered at $4.61 a gallon.

07/24/2008 12:24 PM
Articles (click here)
World
The Great Arctic Conqueror
Yulia Latynina, The Moscow Times

USA
Petrol Procrastination
Gordon Cucullu, FrontPage Magazine

Terrorism
'Compared to Us, Hamas Is Islamism Lite'
Ulrike Putz, Spiegel

Government
Senate Vote on More Money for UN
Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media

Politics
That Was Counterterrorism, Senator
ThreatsWatch.org

The Fifth Column
Jamie Gorelick's Ties to Fannie Mae
Jim Lindgren, The Volokh Conspiracy

Education
Change He Can't Believe In
Steve Chapman, RealClearPolitics

Culture War
[The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace
Daniel Pipes, EuropeanNews.dk

Media
The 'Fairness Doctrine' & Multiculturalism’s Monoculture
A.W.R. Hawkins, Human Events

Current Events
Inside the Taliban Jailbreak
Graeme Smith, The Globe & Mail

Religion
Religion Like Breath
Mujtaba Hamdi, AltMuslim.com

07/24/2008 12:23 PM
Polls

'08 Election
McCain: 41.3%
  Negatives: 34.1%
  *Delegates: 163

Obama: 46.1%
  Negatives: 33.0%
  *Delegates: 255

* - Projected

07/24/2008 12:23 PM
Quote of the Day & This Day in US History

"Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know....Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors."
-- Benjamin Franklin

1776 - In a letter to Major General Phillip Schuyler, Congressional President John Hancock accuses the officer of tolerating discord among soldiers from different states under his command.

1832 - Benjamin Bonneville, an inept fur trader who some speculate may have actually been a spy, leads the first wagon train to cross the Rocky Mountains at Wyoming's South Pass.

1847 - After 17 months and many miles of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Utah's Valley of the Great Salt Lake.

1864 - Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops under General George Crook to keep the Shenandoah Valley clear of Yankees.

1915 - On this day in 1915, the steamer Eastland overturns in the Chicago River, drowning between 800 and 850 of its passengers who were heading to a picnic.

1959 - During the grand opening ceremony of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev engage in a heated debate about capitalism and communism in the middle of a model kitchen set up for the fair. The so-called "kitchen debate" became one of the most famous episodes of the Cold War.

1969 - At 12:51 EDT, Apollo 11, the US spacecraft that had taken the first astronauts to the surface of the moon, safely returns to Earth.