Banning The Pledge Of Allegiance

By college "student trustees" at a California community college.

The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates — prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.

"America is the one thing I'm passionate about and I can't let them take that away from me," 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters.

"The fact that they have enough power to ban one of the most valued traditions in America is just horrible," Zoldos said, adding she would attend every board meeting to salute the flag.

The move was lead by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings.

One of the trustees describes himself as an atheist and a socialist.

About That Civility

It seems to me that Nancy Pelosi promised civility in government. One can see it already with Charlie Rangel, one of her incoming committee chairs. I noted his gracelessness civility yesterday, and he has decided to be even more civil now. This time toward the entire state of Mississippi.

JACKSON, Miss. - A Democratic congressman from New York says he wasn't trying to insult Mississippi in published remarks Thursday, but a Republican colleague from Mississippi says Rep. Charles Rangel should apologize to the state.

Rangel, D-N.Y., was quoted in a Thursday article in The New York Times, saying: "Mississippi gets more than their fair share back in federal money, but who the hell wants to live in Mississippi?"

Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., issued a news release criticizing Rangel's words.

"I hope his remarks are not the kind of insults, slander, and defamation that Mississippians will come to expect from the Democrat leadership in Washington, D.C.," Pickering said.

Elbert Garcia, Rangel's press secretary in New York, said Rangel had received calls Thursday about the Mississippi quote.

Garcia e-mailed The Associated Press a response from Rangel: "I certainly don't mean to offend anyone, I just love New York so much that I can't understand why everyone wouldn't want to live here."

Yep, off to a good start there, Nancy. Off to a good start.

Heroes Arrested!

Oh, the humanity! Someone finally fights back against the animal uprising and they throw them in jail! What is this world coming to? Two men kill an ostrich assassin and they get dragged to jail for it.

REDWOOD CITY — Two men face felony animal cruelty charges after they allegedly fatally shot an ostrich at a ranch near Half Moon Bay on Halloween.

Timothy McKevitt, 19, and Jonathan Porter, 20, both pleaded not guilty Wednesday to the animal cruelty charge and misdemeanor possession of a loaded firearm. Porter also is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, as he is currently on felony probation, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office.

The two men and some friends were reportedly drinking on Oct. 31 when they trespassed on the ranch. According to the district attorney's office, one of the ostriches attacked the group, injuring the suspects.

The suspects reportedly ran away, but later returned to the ranch with a rifle and shotgun, which they used to fatally shoot the ostrich.

Well, I suppose it is California, after all.

Massive Crime Wave Hits Hebrides

I posted yesterday about the Hebridean island of Canna and its global search to find two new families to come live on the island. It was reported to be one of the safest places in Britain and rat free to boot. But sadly, the innocence of the Hebrides has been shattered and its vaunted crime-free status ruined.

There was a burglary on the island of Colonsay.

The culprit, who was later caught, was fined 400 pounds and ordered to pay compensation to his victim, after snatching the cash on Colonsay, off the west coast, where there has been no crime at all since 2004.

The Hebridean isle — where locks are reportedly rusted through lack of use — is home to only 125 people and is seen as one of Britain's safest places.

Friday's Daily Telegraph reported that the island's part-time policeman Don McLeod swooped on thief James Harvey, 38, from Glasgow, who was stranded on Colonsay for several days while he waited for a ferry back to the mainland.

Harvey's victim, "Wee" (little) Davie Sutherland, 75, was quoted as saying: "I suppose it was only 60 pounds but it just doesn't happen here.

Wee Davie says he hasn't even got a lock on his door.

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht or the 'night of broken glass' occurred on the night of November 9-10, 1938. The pogrom was carried out all across Germany. Jews were beaten to death, stores and homes destroyed and Jewish men were rounded up with 30,000 of them sent to concentration camps. Almost 1,600 synagogues were damaged or destroyed. As bad as it was, it was only the beginning. Last night in Germany, community leaders and Jewish residents of the Eastern city of Frankfurt on Oder laid wreaths on the site of one of the destroyed synagogues.

And the neo-Nazis came to trample the wreaths and desecrate the site.

A police spokeswoman said the group had launched an attack on Thursday evening, shortly after a memorial service by community and Jewish leaders at a monument where a synagogue once stood.

She said the neo-Nazis trampled floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone to the synagogue in the Polish border city that was destroyed 68 years ago in the Nazis' Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass."

They threw away candles left at the memorial, which had been attended by about 200 people. When police arrived, some of the neo-Nazis shouted "Sieg Heil," police said. Authorities stayed on guard at the memorial site through the night.

"We are still investigating but at this stage I can say we will at a minimum be raising charges of using illegal symbols," state prosecutor Michael Neff told Reuters.

A total of 16 people, aged 16-24, were detained after the attack, police said.

Frankfurt on Oder is on the opposite side of the country's financial capital in Frankfurt on the Main river. There are about 200 Jews living in Frankfurt, a city of 63,000. There were about 800 in 1933.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Germany (and Europe in general) again. The entire structure of the West is under assault both from within and from without. Europe is further along the path than the US.

Germany's BKA federal police released figures last month showing attacks by far-right groups rose 20 percent to 8,000 in the first eight months of 2006 compared to the same 2005 period.

In July, far-rightists in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt burned the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, causing outrage among German politicians and anti-racist groups.

In another incident last month, teenagers in the same state forced a 16-year-old classmate to parade round school wearing a sign with an anti-Semitic Nazi-era slogan.

For all the good intentions of the West, Kristallnacht is coming again.

Post Mortem

One advantage Charles Krauthammer has in writing a weekly column that is published on Fridays is that he has a few days to sift through the events of Tuesday before he has to produce copy. A lot of what he has to say in this week's column has already been said. But the information has come out in various places and at varying depths of analysis. Krauthammer gets to pull it together and make a compelling omnibus of a case.

Because both houses have gone Democratic, the election is correctly seen as an expression of no confidence in the central issue of the campaign: Iraq. It was not so much the war itself as the perceived administration policy of "stay the course," which implied endless intervention with no victory in sight. The president got the message. Hence the summary resignation of the designated fall guy, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Nonetheless, the difference between taking one house vs. both — and thus between normal six-year incumbent-party losses and a major earthquake that shakes the presidency — was razor-thin in this election. A switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican.

A margin this close should no longer surprise us. For this entire decade the country has been evenly divided politically. The Republicans had control but by very small majorities. In 2000 the presidential election was settled by a ridiculously small margin. And the Senate ended up deadlocked 50-50. All the changes since then have been minor. Until now.

But the great Democratic wave of 2006 is nothing remotely like the great structural change some are trumpeting. It was an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other.

This is not realignment. As has been the case for decades, American politics continues to be fought between the 40-yard lines. The Europeans fight goal line to goal line, from socialist left to ultra-nationalist right. On the American political spectrum, these extremes are negligible. American elections are fought on much narrower ideological grounds. In this election the Democrats carried the ball from their own 45-yard line to the Republican 45-yard line.

Read the whole thing. Krauthammer makes one point that really should have been obvious to everyone who has been looking at this election the past few days. Both parties have moved to the right. The Democrats ran quite a few people who could very easily have run as Republicans on almost all of their positions. But the decimation in the Republican ranks was among its more moderate members.

One thing the Republicans have got to resist is doing what the Democrats did for a number of years while in the minority - swinging too hard toward the extreme. People really need to think about what the criticism of the Democrats had been earlier this year. For the most part it centered on the party being too far to the left. Except among the nutroots, of course. If the Republicans try to swing hard right, they can start planning their stay in the wilderness for a while.

As Krauthammer says, the game is fought between the 40-yard lines. This is not time to retreat to the end zone and yield the middle of the field.