The Aroma Of Burning Bridges

Cindy Sheehan got her attention-starved self arrested today. It even got the media, who cheerfully pushed her as the absolute moral authority on ending the war, upset enough to momentarily undo her unperson status.

WASHINGTON — Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Monday at the Capitol for disorderly conduct, shortly after saying she would run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the California Democrat's refusal to try to impeach President Bush.

Sheehan was taken into custody inside Rep. John Conyers' office, where she had spent an hour imploring him to launch impeachment proceedings against Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Conyers, D-Mich., chairs the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment effort would have to begin.

"The Democrats will not hold this administration accountable, so we have to hold the Democrats accountable," Sheehan said outside of Conyers' office after the meeting. "And I for one am going to step up to the plate and run against Nancy Pelosi."

Sheehan and about 200 other protesters had walked to Conyers' office from Arlington National Cemetery. She said Conyers told her there weren't enough votes for impeachment to move forward on the issue.

Forty-five of Sheehan's fellow protesters also were arrested……

The Democrats and the media (ok, that's basically redundant, I know) has ceaselessly hyped the likes of Sheehan. Now she is coming back around to haunt them. Call it Frankenstein with a bad hairdo. Sheehan is, frankly, an idiot if she thinks she can unseat Pelosi - Cindy will not be getting any good press from the media. How much have you actually heard about the attention-seeking march she just completed? (Hint: correct answer is nothing). The media have her pegged as an unperson. She will not get any headlines unless she acts like a psycho stalker. Oh, gee. That's what she did today, isn't it?

Say goodnight, Cindy.

Ferrari Ups The Ante On Accessories

If you thought Ferraris were well equipped before, you should see what they're accessorizing the cars with now.

Nude Blondes. In gold stilettos.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday — wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.

The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.

"I wasn't surprised because she's come in naked before — she's a very nice woman," Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers was bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.

It is not true, however, that she only had gold stilettos. She also had tattoos. Not that we searched for the Bild online to see for ourselves, of course.

WARNING: Link is NSFW. WARNING (It really doesn't show much of anything, so don't get your hopes up.)

Shock To The System

The recent special election in Georgia to fill the seat in the House of Representatives left vacant when Charlie Norwood died is the subject of John Fund's column this week in the Opinion Journal. Fund quotes Robert Novak's take on the results: The shocking upset victory of Paul Broun, Jr. "terrified those incumbent Republican House members who had thought themselves safe for re-election in 2008" primaries.

Special elections to fill vacant House seats are usually fought over local concerns, but often they have national overtones. The stunning result of a Georgia race last week is a case in point.

Because no Democrat finished among the top two candidates in last month's primary, the runoff pitted two Republicans against each other to succeed Rep. Charlie Norwood, who died in February. Poorly funded physician Paul Broun Jr. scored a shocking 50.4% victory over former state Sen. Jim Whitehead, the establishment's consensus favorite. Columnist Robert Novak says Dr. Broun's victory has "terrified those incumbent Republican House members who had thought themselves safe for re-election in 2008" primaries. The pro-free market Club for Growth, which helped knock off at least one pro-spending GOP House incumbent in a 2006 primary, should feel encouraged by Dr. Broun's victory.

In last month's primary, Mr. Whitehead won 44% of the vote, to just 21% for Dr. Broun. But the front-runner made stumble after stumble, allowing the 61-year-old Dr. Broun to assemble a coalition that included not only conservative Republicans but liberal Democrats from his hometown of Athens. Mr. Whitehead told a crowd in his own hometown of Augusta that he would focus mainly on that city's concerns as congressman, and he refused to attend campaign events in Athens. Worse, he jokingly suggested that liberals at the University of Georgia ought to be bombed.

As a result, Dr. Broun won 90% of the vote in the county that includes Athens, including the votes of some Democrats who fondly recalled his late father, who served as a Democrat in the state Senate from Athens for 38 years. Many voters were impressed that he appears to be the only physician in the state whose practice consists entirely of house calls.

This should actually send a message to all incumbents, I suspect. People who will actually stand for change are going to be able to knock off those that promised change but didn't deliver (*cough* Democrats *cough). Broun won by repeating a constant and consistent message:

……a pledge that, once in Congress, he would apply a four-way test before voting on any bill: Is it constitutional and a proper function of government? Is it morally correct? Is it something we really need? Is it something we can afford?

He closed nearly every speech with this line:

"Today's federal government is too big, too powerful, and too expensive because it is doing things beyond the scope of what our Founders envisioned the national government should be doing. This is foolish and it is dangerous."

Keep in mind that his opponent was favored by the establishment politicians. This is not a good sign for incumbents from either party. There is a "throw the bums out" mindset building as a direct consequence of the behavior of the Democratic leadership in Congress. This time, there are a lot of Democratic bums in the line of fire, too. Republicans or Democrats - both are looking at trouble in 2008.

Invasion Foiled

China narrowly averted an invasion by the reptile legions of the Animal Uprising™. The clever crocodiles, disguised as innocent looking sacks, attempted to cross into China from Vietnam with the assistance of human accomplices. Alert border guards caught wind of the plot and arrested the miscreants.

BEIJING - Chinese police tracking a suspicious vessel on a border river in southwest China got a shock when they found 270 crocodiles, a state news agency reported Monday.

Xinhua News Agency said the seizure was the largest this year in Guangxi region, where 25 illegally captured crocodiles were discovered in the first six months.

Border police noticed the boat trying to land on the Chinese side of the Beilun River, which marks the border with Vietnam, early on Sunday.

Xinhua said four people carried bags off the boat, but jumped into the river and swam away when they saw the police.

Yeah, sure. They report it as if it was a human operation. We know better of course. The good news for china is that the crocs don't seem to have the knack for disguising themselves as well as the alligators do. They can camouflage themselves as doormats, after all.

Bearing Up In Canada

Bears in Canada have found a new fast food - self-delivered, too. We're talking about mountain bikers, of course. One woman was apparently killed by a bear in British Columbia while two others managed to escape a grizzly bear attack.

INVERMERE, B.C. . (CP) - A woman was found dead Sunday on a ski hill in eastern British Columbia and conservation officials believe a black bear may have attacked her.

The bear was found near the 34-year-old woman's body on a trail near the Panorama Ski Resort near the Alberta-B.C. boundary.

"The bear was at the site right where the body was recovered, as though it was guarding the site, which would indicate to me that the bear had preyed upon this person or obviously was trying to claim ownership ," Paul Visentin, B.C. conservation officer, told Global TV Calgary.

The female mountain biker was reported missing on Saturday night.

RCMP shot the bear.

Also Sunday, two cyclists escaped with minor injuries after being charged by a grizzly bear protecting her cubs in Banff National Park.

The riders noticed the cubs on the trail near Lake Minnewanka on Sunday, but before they could react, the mother bear charged them.

The pair managed to pedal fast enough to outrun the enraged bear. Which again highlights our longstanding advice about grizzly bears. It is not necessary to outrun the bear, you only need to outrun your companion.

*Sigh* Another Day, Another UN Peacekeeper Sex Scandal

One cannot help but wonder how the "internationalist" supporters of the UN will creatively ignore this latest exposure. It seems that a large contingent of Moroccan troops attached to the UN peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast have been confined to their barracks while the UN investigates allegations of widespread sexual abuse of underage girls.

ABIDJAN, Cote d'Ivoire (Reuters) — The United Nations said on Saturday it had suspended a Moroccan military contingent from its peacekeeping mission in Cote d'Ivoire while it investigated allegations of widespread sexual abuse.

"It means they don't participate in our operations," said Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI). "Those who are found guilty will be sent back home."

The world body said the measure was in addition to a decision to confine the entire battalion of 734 soldiers to barracks.

U.N. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday the investigation involved Moroccan soldiers having sex with a large number of underage girls in the West African country's northern rebel stronghold of Bouake.

Toure said the allegations had come to light after the mission ran a campaign against sexual exploitation in which it asked local people to inform it about abuses. It then sent a team to carry out interviews and gather information.

It is to the UN's credit that they are actively investigating this and that Ban Ki Moon's stewardship of the UN is off to a much better start than the thoroughly corrupt Kofi Annan. But it still calls into question the entire UN structure, especially in the peacekeeping area.

The Next Offensive

I actually caught wind of this in the Washington Post this morning, then tripped over the Omaha World Herald story while working on the previous post. It seems that the next offensive by islamists against American values has begun. No, not the Minneapolis airport cab drivers or the flying imams. This is at a meat packing plant in Nebraska. And CAIR is in it up to their eyeballs. WaPo:

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say.

The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a complaint to be filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The petition compiles testimony from at least 44 workers who had planned to sign the complaint during a meeting Sunday. The signing was changed to a later date because of a logistical problem.

Jama Mohamed, 28, said he was fired in June for leaving a production line to pray. Supervisors would not allow him a break, he said.

The allegation is that Swift won't let them simply walk off the production line. Omaha paper:

"That is a significant number of employees, and there is not much of a way to accommodate that consistent with keeping the production online," Donald Selzer said.

The complaint reprises concerns that boiled over in May, when 120 Somali workers abruptly quit when they were not allowed to pray at sundown. About 70 of them returned to the plant a week later, but union officials worried the issue would resurface as sundown inched later each day through the spring.

Later sunsets run past evening breaks meant to keep workers from long stretches on production lines.

"For three days it was all good and we were praying — there was no hassle, no interference, nothing at all," Ali Schire said through an interpreter. Schire, 30, said he was among the 70 who quit and later returned.

"All of a sudden after three days . . . they were suspending people, they were firing people," Schire said. "Some of the people even had to give up praying at all for fear of being fired."

Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said: "They are treating (the Somalis) like criminals now — anyone who prays is a criminal."

Lovely name for an activist. The Swift people have a production facility to run. People walking off the line - for any reason - cause major disruption and can make the line shut down entirely. As far as I know, there is no requirement for employers to accommodate religion, merely not to discriminate against it. Certainly, this accommodating would give Muslims rights in the workplace that no other religion enjoys. I also understand that it is perfectly acceptable for a Muslim to say the prayer silently to himself when conditions dictate it. (I'll try to find a reference to that if I can).

Reid Works To “Reform” Senate

Robert Novak reports on a number of behind the scenes moves being made by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to "reform" the way the Senate handles earmarks. Yep, good old Harry and Nancy think the already murky and hidden process of earmarking is too open and should be further hidden from public scrutiny - or even scrutiny by Congressional opponents. (Mind you, there are some Republicans who are more than happy to go along with these rules changes.) But Reid and Pelosi promised a clean, transparent Congress - instead they are working to make it actually much worse than it was under Republican leadership.

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid picked up his ball and went home after his staged all-night session last week, he saved from possible embarrassment one of the least regular members of his Democratic caucus: Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Reform Republican Tom Coburn had ready an amendment to the defense authorization bill removing Nelson's earmark funding a Nebraska-based company whose officials include Nelson's son. Such an effort became impossible when Reid pulled the bill.

That Reid's action had this effect was mere coincidence. He knew that Sen. Carl Levin's amendment to the defense bill mandating a troop withdrawal from Iraq would fall short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, and Reid planned from the start to pull the bill after the all-night session, designed to satisfy antiwar zealots, was completed. But Reid is also working behind the scenes with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to undermine earmark transparency and prevent open debate on spending proposals such as Nelson's.

These antics fit the continuing decline of the Senate, including an unwritten rules change requiring 60 votes to pass any meaningful bill. When I arrived on Capitol Hill 50 years ago, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (like Reid today) had a slim Democratic majority and faced a Republican president, but he was not burdened with the 60-vote rule. While Johnson did use chicanery, Reid resorts to brute force that shatters the Senate's facade of civilized discourse. Reid is plotting to strip anti-earmark transparency from the final version of ethics legislation passed by the Senate and House, with tacit support from Republican senators and the GOP leadership.

Novak has a lot of dirt dug up for this column. Enough that we should consider renaming Harry Reid. Dirty Harry seems appropriate. I tried to find the Omaha World Herald article Novak quotes, but was not able to find it. Too bad, it sounds like Ben Nelson has some explaining to do. Reid and Pelosi promised a squeaky-clean Congress. Well, something is squeaking all right. Rats do that.