Warning:  Take this post with a big grain of salt.

I've avoided talking about the rumored Michelle Obama film which supposedly has Michelle Obama on a panel with Louis Farrakhan talking vicious racism about the "white man" and even using the word "whitey." Why? Because (1) I haven't had the time; and (2) I have a strong Christian resistance to reporting rumors and gossip.

However, an event happened this morning on Fox News when they interviewed longtime Clinton operative and friend, Bob Beckel. Beckel said that there would be a Michelle Obama bombshell dropped on Obama tomorrow that would be very, very damaging. Of course, he blames it on Republicans but one has to wonder why Hillary is not conceding tonight when all the facts tonight are pointing to an Obama win.

Remember, this is a high-ranking Democrat operative and Clinton friend talking on the record:

According to news reports, Hillary will admit that Obama has enough votes to secure the nomination but she will put her campaign on hold and not formally withdraw.

What does Hillary know that we don’t?

Oh, I expect Ahmadinejad to be vaporized before Bush leaves office, but I believe that Israel will do the job, with our secret help, and the US can claim plausible deniability. From the Jerusalem Post:

The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran’s push for a nuclear weapon “through peaceful diplomatic means.”

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who visited Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

The official reportedly went on to say that, for the time being, “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic.

Nice play on Bush’s part and the Israeli who leaked the story was no doubt in on the whole thing. First, it’s going to make Ahmadinejad more nervous; and second, Bush is preparing the 40% of the American public who haven’t been brainwashed for the inevitable,

Bush might trust McCain to do the job after he’s left office but there’s no way that he would leave a nuclear Iran intact if Obama wins. Leave the adult work to the adults, not the Petulant Pretty Boy.

Bush doesn’t give a rat’s rump what the current crop of limp-wristed historians think about him — he’s protecting our future.

Prayers for him and his family.

I've never been a John Hagee fan but I am encouraged to read this from the Wall Street Journal:

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical pastor who endorsed John McCain, will issue a letter of apology to Catholics today for inflammatory remarks he has made, including accusing the Roman Catholic Church of supporting Adolf Hitler and calling it "The Great Whore." (See a copy of the letter PDF.)

"Out of a desire to advance greater unity among Catholics and Evangelicals in promoting the common good, I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful," Hagee wrote, according to an advanced copy of the letter reviewed by Washington Wire. "After engaging in constructive dialogue with Catholic friends and leaders, I now have an improved understanding of the Catholic Church, its relation to the Jewish faith, and the history of anti-Catholicism."

In the letter, addressed to Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League and one of Hagee's biggest critics, Hagee pledges "a greater level of compassion and respect for my Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ."

Hagee met with 22 Catholic leaders in Washington on Friday to apologize for his comments, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Despite the McCain's condemnation of Hagee's anti-Catholic remarks, the campaign had no role in that meeting or Tuesday's apology, according to the source who said it was something Hagee did because he felt it was necessary.

Donohue is expected to release a letter in response today, accepting Hagee's apology. The Catholic leader slammed both Hagee and McCain in February, releasing a statement titled "McCain Embraces Bigot."

Do I disagree with some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic church? Yes, I do. However, I certainly consider them my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. I just finished a stint of attending weekly classes at a local Catholic church because my nephew was going through confirmation classes and my wife is his godmother. I can't tell you how many times I've attended Catholic mass in my life. And this weekend my wife and I are going to the home of a nun for dinner with a small group of people. I admire this nun as much as I do my own pastor and we've become close friends with her.

These are perilous times. Christians of all traditions need to unite.

Barack Obama is all over the map when it comes to Israel, just as he is with everything else. Obama wants to be all things to all people. Here is what he said about Israel to Jeffrey Golberg (JG below) of the Atlantic Monthly, as reported by Jim Geraghty at National Review Online. Emphasis is by Geraghty.

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I'm not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that's the safest ground politically.

To be fair, in the same piece, Obama says that "my commitment, our commitment, to Israel's security is non-negotiable." One could argue that Obama is referring to the problems between Israel and the Islamic countries, yet he seems to blame pro-Israel American Jews for the lack of a "resolution to this problem."

Has it ever occurred to Obama that the problem in the Middle East is not Israel, but those who wish to destroy her?

Mark my words:  a President Obama would negotiate away Israel's existence for the sake of peace, just as Neville Chamberlain negotiated away the Sudetenland for "peace in our time." Obama claims to want peace, but his actions would lead to a war the likes of which has never been seen.

Yes, the Hamas television arm claims that the Jews plotted the Holocaust to kill handicapped Jews. "It's all a joke," says one commentator.

If you thought that that American liberals and Truthers lived in La-La-Land, just take a gander at what the Palestinians and radical Islamists believe. They're enslaved to a giant lie. Pray for their souls.

Totally stolen from Allahpundit.

Wait a minute, there -- I thought that al-Qaeda only operated from Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. Those who get their news from the mainstream media and the Democrats are under the illusion that al-Qaeda is a local phenomenon, not a beast with tentacles running from Africa to Europe to the Phillippines.

Not only has the US liberated Iraq and Afghanistan but we are also liberating Somalia. Yes, there is work to be done, and we're fighting a tenacious enemy, but al-Qaeda is a world threat that is much greater than Osama bin Laden, who quite likely assumed room temperature several years ago at Tora Bora.

I'm sure that this news will be all over the front pages tomorrow -- when pigs fly.

Will Chrissy Matthews, who called Rush Limbaugh listeners "manipulable," talk about it? Don't hold your breath. Military success against radical Islam clashes with Prissy Chrissy's world view, so he sticks with his fantasy world rather than reality.

From UPI:

MOGADISHU, Somalia, May 1 (UPI) -- A U.S. air strike in Somalia Thursday killed an al-Qaida leader in East Africa who also was a leader in the Islamist revival in Somalia, Somali officials said.

The air strike targeted Aden Hashi Ayro, a leader of al-Shabab, an Islamist militia the United States considers a terrorist organization, CNN reported.

U.S. military officials said the Somali government permitted them to attack terrorist suspects on Somali soil, The New York Times reported. U.S. officials accused Ayro of protecting wanted al-Qaida members, including some thought to have planned the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

..

"This will definitely weaken the Shabab," said Mohamed Aden, consul at the Somali embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. "This will help with reconciliation. You can't imagine how many Somalis are saying yes, this is the one. The reaction is so good."

Technically speaking, the title is true. On a more realistic basis, Israel will take out anything of threat in Iran long before Iran has a bomb. From The Jerusalem Post:

Iran has taken command of its nuclear technology and could have an atomic bomb in a year, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz was quoted as saying Wednesday, citing Israeli intelligence.

In the past, the general consensus in the intelligence community has been that Iran had hit some technical difficulties with enrichment and that its attainment of nuclear capability was much further off.

…

“Teheran leads the axis of evil, poses a threat to the entire world, is up to its neck in the Middle East and is even trying to get a foothold in the West Bank,” he said.

Meanwhile, as a second US aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf, CBS reported Tuesday that the Pentagon had ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran.

According to the report, the planning was being driven by what one officer called the “increasingly hostile role” Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq, CBS reported.

This news is a little bit old, but it’s worth posting for:

1. Showing that Martha Raddatz is a moron with an agenda and no respect for the office of the president or the rules that everyone else follows at any presidential news conference
2. Bush’s eloquent — yes, eloquent — explanation of why we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Bush administration doesn’t repeat this 10 times a day. Yes, there are things Bush has done that I don’t like, but he’s dead right on the war and on many other issues.

Few Americans understand why we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan because the only news they get is from the idiots in the media who have a blatantly obvious agenda. It’s mostly too late now, but The Bush administration should have fought back against the Democrats and the media (yes, I repeat myself) every day since 9/11.

Enjoy.

The morons had all the information they needed to ascertain that Syria was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power — and a friggin’ 1 year away from building one or two nuclear bombs — yet they ignored it.

Why? Possibly because they were trying too hard to pretend that Iran is a not nuclear threat, which they reported in 2006. Here’s the very disturbing article from the World Tribune.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community, in an about-face from an assessment of less than a year ago, has concluded that Syria was close to becoming a nuclear power.

“In the course of a year after they got full up they would have produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons,” CIA director Michael Hayden said.

The new assessment was that Syria was weeks away from operating a North Korean-built plutonium production plant near the Turkish border. That facility, the intelligence community assessed, could have produced up to two bombs in the first year of operation.

…

“We’ve made it clear we did not have complete control over the totality of the information because obviously it was the result of a team effort, Hayden said. “One has to respect the origin of the information in terms of how it is used.”

Translation:  Our analysts, who are a bunch of chimpanzees that rode the short yellow bus to school, couldn’t find their bottoms with both hands. We have to respect that. See my new favorite home-made graphic.

Officials acknowledged that the U.S. assessment marked a near reversal of that in July 2007 when Israel provided aerial photographs of the plant and a video of the North Korean scientists inside. At the time, the officials said, the CIA and State Department said the North Korean facility — destroyed by the Israel Air Force in September 2007 — was years away from being completed and even tested.

“Much of the revision of the CIA assessment came after the Israeli bombing when evidence of nuclear material was found,” an official said. “We also learned a lot from the Syrian refusal to the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the site.”

Here’s a prediction: The CIA will determine that Iran is a nuclear power several months after a mushroom cloud appears over some city in the Middle East, Europe, or the US that is occupied, by pigs, apes, or infidels.

Note later on in the story that Condi Rice employed a team of analysts to downplay the evidence that North Korea had supplied Syria with the reactor and the nuclear material. My estimation of Rice is falling faster than Bill Clinton’s trousers at a sorority party.

CBS News seems pretty breathless about this development, titling the story "Hostile" Iran Sparks U.S. Attack Plan. Note two things about the title:

1. The word "Hostile" is in quotes, meaning that CBS doesn't think that Iran is hostile. Think of it like this: CBS "reporters" help make the upper half of the IQ Bell Curver possible.
2. The phrase Sparks U.S. Attack Plan implies that we have never before have had plans to attack Iran that that the Evil Genius Moron Bush wants to start another war. What CBS doesn't tell you is that the US already has plans to attack Iran as well as virtually every country and region in the world. I recently read that the US had plans in place to attack Great Britain until something like the late 1960s. I can't find it right now but it is on the internet.

The story later uses the phrase new options for attacking Iran, meaning that we probably already have 10-15 options already in place, ranging from limited border strikes to a support of Israel attacking Iran to total nuclear annihilation. The new options reported by CBS probably lean towards limited strikes against terrorist strongholds in Iran to keep them from supplying weapons to terrorists in Iraq.

My guess is that Israel will knock out Iran's entire military and its nuclear facilities before the end of the Bush administration and that the US will provide undercover support, just as we probably did with last September's attack on Syria's nuclear installation. Israel knows that if the Democrats win, the US will not provide them with any aid. Furthermore, the US may join the rest of the UN in condemning and possibly punishing Israel if Clinton is president and will most certainly do so if Obama is president. For that very same reason, Iran is waiting to provoke open regional hostilities until (presumably) a Democrat is elected president. Obama has openly anti-Israel advisors on his campaign staff who have blamed Jews and Christians for the course of events in Iraq:

"Let's say that one of your abiding concerns is the security of Israel as opposed to a purely American self-interest. Then it would make sense to build a dozen or so bases in Iraq," the general said.

"Let's say you are a born-again Christian and you think that Armageddon and the rapture are about to happen any minute, and what you want to do is retrace steps you think are laid out in Revelations, then it makes sense," he said.

Obviously, General McPeak has never read the book of "Revelations" (note the quotes, gentle reader).

Here's a snippet of the story from CBS:

(CBS) A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

"What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

U.S. officials are also concerned by Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf as well as Iran's still growing nuclear program. New pictures of Iran's uranium enrichment plant show the country's defense minister in the background, as if deliberately mocking a recent finding by U.S. intelligence that Iran had ceased work on a nuclear weapon.

UPDATE:  Well, almost. Hillary won with 54.3% of the votes compared to Obama's 45.7% of the votes. 8.6 percent to be precise. That's still a slam-dunk win. The New York Times mentions that this is Hillary's third win in a row of a big state. The Democrats need to win big states. Ergo, Hillary stays in the race.

==============================

Hillary wins Pennsylvania and that means she's still a viable candidate. Forget what John Dean says, forget what the pundits and Democratic leaders are saying:  Hillary is still in this race.

What does this mean? It may mean that the Democrat candidate won't be decided. It might even be a brokered convention and it will certainly be nasty behind the scenes. It means that Hillary and Obama (blessed is the Chosen One) will be duking it out for months while John McCain just has to stand by, watch, and add his two cents when appropriate.

A year ago I was resigned to a Hillary presidency. Two months ago I was resigned to an Obama presidency. It looks now like I may have to be resigned to a McCain presidency. That's by far the least worth of the 3 options.

What should McCain do in the meantime? He needs to give serious thought to a running mate. He should pick a decidedly conservative minority or a woman. I'm not in to racial profiling for politics, but by doing this, McCain takes the big issue off the table.

NiceDeb has done an amazing job in assembling quotes and websites from “radicals, terrorists, tyrants of the world” who suppport Obama. And why wouldn’t they? Obama has offerered to negotiate with terrorists which, in real-speak, means that he’s willing to give in to their demands and cross his fingers that they won’t attack us if he’s nice to them.

It didn’t work when Neville Chamberlain negotiated a “peace in our time” settlement with Hitler at the expense of the Sudetenland and it won’t work if Obama negotiates somer sort of truce with Iran, Venezuela, Hamas, or al-Qaeda at the expense of Isreal. Oh, we may have a couple of years of peace, but we will be attacked again within a few years. Then we face nuclear war.

Of course, Obama will blame Bush. Being a Democrat means never accepting responsibility.

I’m not even going to give you any tidbits. Be nice and visit NiceDeb yourself.

In the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, many state legislatures are taking measure to restrict abortions. From the inappropriately named blog Reality Check:

In its most direct effect, the Court’s decision to uphold the Federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 set a major precedent that state legislators seem to be following. Twenty-three bills banning “partial-birth” abortion have been introduced in 11 states so far this year. In four states (Alaska, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin), the measures have passed one house of the legislature and are pending in the second chamber. A fifth measure has been approved by the legislature in Arizona. (It was vetoed by Gov. Janet Napolitano [D] in April).

Almost all of the states in which legislation has been proposed already have adopted a ban that has been enjoined and so is not in effect (see Bans on “Partial-Birth” Abortion). Some of pending measures attempt to modify these enjoined laws while others seek to enact a whole new law; in either case, these bills are drawing upon language from the federal ban in hopes that that they will pass constitutional muster.

While this is very good news, the reality is that we need to change people’s hearts. Slavery was accepted by virtually every society on earth since human beginnings. No one ever imagined a world without slavery. Can you imagine a world without abortion? God worked through William Wilberforce to change people’s hearts in Great Britain. Parliament eliminated slavery not because of appointed judges or politicians going against the will of the people, but because the will of the people had changed due to Wilberforce and others. The people of Great Britain went from supporting slavery to finding it an abhorrent practice within a 30-year period.

Few people realize this, but slavery existed in the north until the end of the Civil War, though it was not nearly as common as it was in the south due to the differing economies. At that time, the north was the Bible belt. It was Christians changing the hearts of people who ended slavery. By the begining of the Civil War, slavery was on the wane and public opinion against it was growing in the upper south.

While it would be nice to have judges who would knock down the intellectual travesty that is Roe v. Wade, the only way that we’re ever going to end abortion or make it very rare is for us to change the hearts of people. Christ said that we are to be the salt and the light of the earth. Salt changes the flavor of food and light drives away the darkness. We need to change the world in which we live, not let it change us.

Here’s another good story out of Iraq that will be buried on the back pages — if it even makes it to the back pages at all. In the American media, good news is not fit to print.

When you read the snippet of this story, note three things:

1. When al-Qaeda moved in, they didn’t liberate the people, but tortured them, kept them from making a living, and killed many of them.
2. When the Americans and Iraqis began the surge, we bombed the smithereens out of al-Qaeda. We didn’t negotiate with them, we didn’t try to understand their belief system, we didn’t try to get Israel to give up more land for a peace that never comes, we killed them.
3. The Iraqis are happy about what the Americans did and one man is quoted as saying, “I hope the Americans stay here for a long, long time.”

You never hear these things from the Democrats or the mainstream media. All we hear is that the surge is failing, that we cannot win the war, and that the Iraqi people want us out.

Note also that the AFP asserts that progress was slow and casualty rates were high. One American soldier dying is one too many, but slightly over 4,000 American deaths are tiny for an operation of this scope and length. For example, during WWII, 749 troops were killed in a single training operation for D-Day. And I hardly call al-Qaeda fleeing within days of the air assault slow.

Color me picky, but even when reporting good news the American media still feels compelled to throw in some bad new, however tenuous.

From AFP:

Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.
 
Homes in the Sunni Arab rural patch about 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, meanwhile, are being rebuilt, schools reopened, roads repaired and irrigation pumps renewed, even as shopkeepers happily dust off their shelves.

“It’s the first time in three years I am able to work in my lands,” said Ammar Wadi, a 30-year-old vegetable farmer who also runs a small dairy herd.

His lands, on the banks of the Tigris, are thriving. Besides tomatoes, he also grows ochre and wheat, while some of his 30 acres is devoted to pastures.

“When Al-Qaeda was here it was impossible to farm,” said the jolly-faced farmer from under an orange cap while taking time out from his labours to visit his cousin’s newly-reopened grocery store on a dusty rural road.

“They cut the power so we couldn’t pump water,” said Wadi. “We couldn’t buy fuel. They would shoot at anyone they saw in the fields. They kidnapped and murdered many people. They destroyed life here.”

The last crops he planted — in 2005 — withered and died because he couldn’t irrigate them after Al-Qaeda arrived in force.

…

Progress was slow and casualty rates high — about 15 soldiers killed and as many wounded.

Eventually, according to Captain Neil Hollenback, commander of Alpha Company which was leading the charge, they decided to call in air support.

“We brought in the JDAMs,” he said referring to precision guided bombs packing 500 pounds of explosives.

US warplanes dropped 118,000 pounds (about 53,600 kilos) of bombs in two weeks of operations mostly aimed at roadside bombs and booby trapped buildings.

“Within days of our air assault Al-Qaeda had fled,” said Hollenback.

By February 11, the main roads had been cleared, US forces had hired hundreds of locals as members of their Sons of Iraq anti-Qaeda fronts they are setting up across Iraq, and residents started returning in droves.

The current pea-brained wisdom of the Democrats and their lackies in the mainstream media is that Iraq is still a hopeless quagmire because the Iraqi government can’t get its act together militarily and politically.

Hillary says that “we cannot win” the Iraq war. Obama (blessed be the Messiah) says that the Iraq picture is beginning to come into focus and that current events prove him right that we never should have gone to Iraq in the first place. Maybe Larry and Curly should read Sunday’s New York Times.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government’s monthlong military operation against the fighters.

By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.

Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr City Mosque, he threatened to declare “war until liberation” against the government if fighting against his militia forces continued.

But it was difficult to tell whether his words posed a real threat or were a desperate effort to prove that his group was still a feared force, especially given that his militia’s actions in Basra followed a pattern seen again and again: the Mahdi militia battles Iraqi government troops to a standstill and then retreats.

Why his fighters have clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown. But American military and civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that Mahdi Army units trained and equipped by Iran had played a major role in the unexpectedly strong resistance that government troops met in Basra.

Note that the brilliant New York Times reporter first quotes an Iraqi general as saying that Iraqi troops met with little resistance then goes on to say, without sourcing, that the Iraqi troops had met with “unexpectedly strong resistance” in Basra. Here’s a video of the “unexpectedly strong resistance” that our troops encountered.

Dumb New York Times reporter. Who you gonna’ believe — some leftwing reporter whose specialty is verb-subject agreement or your own lying eyes?

That would be Jimmy Carter, who might have redeemed his disastrous presidency if he had stuck to Habitats for Humanity, which has worked out pretty well. The beginning of the War Against Radical Islam -- really World War III -- began when Carter paved the way for deposing the Shah of Iran and allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran.

When the Iranians captured Americans in the embassy in Tehran he did absolutely nothing but continue to gut our military. I remember waking up on the morning of my birthday during my junior year in college hearing that a mission to rescue the hostages had gone terribly wrong. Being young and stupid myself, I still campaigned for Carter because I believed the media's nonsense that Reagan was a stupid, trigger-happy cowboy who would start World War III. Wait, don't they call Bush a stupid, trigger-happy cowboy? Some things about the left never change.

A few days ago ago we learned that Carter tried to set up a meeting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary General Dr. Ramadan Shallah. Shallah, for those of you don't know, is a murderer, a brutal thug, and is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Shallah refused the meeting, thank heavens. From Commentary Magazine:

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has announced that its leadership has refused former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's request for a meeting. According to PIJ's QudsNews website, Egyptian authorities contacted PIJ Secretary-General Dr. Ramadan Shallah on Carter's behalf earlier this week, inviting Shallah to meet with Carter in Cairo. Shallah is listed on the FBI's list of Most Wanted Terrorists, and the reward for information leading to his apprehension is $5 million. In turning down the request, Shallah declared that Carter is "carrying an American-Israeli agenda," while PIJ spokesman Daoud Shahab blasted Carter's criticism of Palestinian rocket attacks during the former president's visit to Sderot. E-mails and phone calls to the Carter Center press office seeking confirmation of Carter's outreach to PIJ have not been returned.

This news should finally shatter Carter's credibility as a peacemaker. Of course, Carter's decision to meet Hamas leader Khalid Meshal had already sullied his Nobel reputation, with his posse of former laureates canceling their plans to visit the Middle East with him in response. Earlier today, Carter's credibility sank even further, when CNN reported that Mahmoud al-Zahar and Said Seyam-two of Hamas' most radical leaders-would convene with Carter in Cairo.

Carter's credibility as a peacemaker? His efforts at peace-making have mostly involved giving in to the demands of terrorists. That, and fending off a killer rabbit. For those efforts (well, not the rabbit part), he won a Nobel Peace Prize. Considering that Yasser Arafat and the über-idiot Al Gore. also won the Nobel Peach Prize, he's in good company.

Just when you think things couldn’t get any sicker, an art student at Yale artificially inseminated herself as many times as possible, induced abortions, and saved the results of her abortions as her senior art project. From the Yale Daily News:

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts” project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock ” saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it”s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

…

Art major Juan Castillo “08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result.

“I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn”t,” Castillo said. “I think that most people were very resistant to thinking about what the project was really about. [The senior-art-project forum] stopped being a conversation on the work itself.”

Castillo, you’re a sick idiot.

“I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity,” Shvarts said. “I think that I”m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.”

No, you poor, misguided girl — you’ve lowered the standard of the definition of art to its lowest point in history. This is not art but is rather a perversion of the worst kind and a crime against humanity.

The display of Schvarts” project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts” self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

…

Shvarts emphasized that she is not ashamed of her exhibition, and she has become increasingly comfortable discussing her miscarriage experiences with her peers.

I think that the lack of Shvartzs’ shame is the most disturbing part of the story. I realize that shame can often be used inappropriately, like making fun of the schoolgirl who is 15 pounds overweight. However, the fact that personal and societal shame is sometimes abused doesn’t mean that there is no such as a shameful act. People without cancer have been treated for the condition but that does not mean that cancer does not exist. Shvartz and a disturbing number of her classmates and members of society thinks that what she did was okay. It wasn’t.

I am amazed when I walk through a great museum and see brilliant masterpieces from the past. Masterpieces have not been produced very often over the last 75 years. Our society has defined the meaning of so low that art no longer has any meaning. Lately art has been used to shock, like Serrano’s photos and his most famous work, Piss Christ.

I somehow doubt that any artist is brave enough to put a statue of Mohammed in urine and call it Piss Mohammed. They know that they risk nothing by offending Christians.

Ari Shvarts is the epitome of shame, perversion, and the degradation of society.

I’m a Protestant, and I have no beef with Catholicism, but I have problems with a few priests and lay ministers who will knowingly give Communion to pro-abortion lawmakers on Thursday. The Catholics had it right on abortion before almost all Protestants had any inkling that it would become as wholesale slaughter of innocents.

I like Pope Benedict and I wish that he would put out the word that any priest or lay ministers who knowingly give Communion to these barbarians should be relieved of their duties.

From The Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Catholic members of Congress who publicly support the right to abortion will trek to Nationals Park Thursday for a Mass celebrated by a pope who has said such lawmakers should not receive Communion.
 
Leading these lawmakers, some of whom have repeatedly complained about remarks by Pope Benedict XVI and a few bishops on the subject, will be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the government’s highest-ranking Catholic and a supporter of abortion rights. Nowhere in her remarks or her actions this week has she referred to strains with the new pontiff.

Instead, she bent to kiss his ring at the White House Wednesday as Benedict arrived in a blaze of pageantry, and later she spoke glowingly on the House floor about his commitment to truth, justice and freedom. A week before he arrived, the House passed a resolution welcoming him to Washington.

And yes, her spokesman said, she intends to receive Communion from one of the 300 priests and lay ministers who will offer it to the gathered flock of 45,000.

Benedict’s stance on abortion and Communion has been painful for elected officials who inhabit the troubled zone where Catholicism and their political beliefs intersect.

Pelosi was one of 48 Catholic lawmakers—some who support and some who oppose abortion rights—who signed a letter in 2004 complaining about statements by “some members of the Catholic hierarchy.”

“If Catholic legislators are scorned and held out for ridicule by Church leaders on the basis of a single issue, the Church will lose strong advocates on a wide range of issues that relate to the core of important Catholic social teaching,” they wrote. “Moreover, criticism of us on a matter that is essentially one of personal moralit