With the smug incomprehension in which it takes so much pride (can’t understand – won’t understand!), the BBC sets about the American Tea Party Movement as if it were a cross between the Klu Klux Klan and the German neo-fascist brigade. Not once in all the demonic depictions I have seen and heard (last week’s Newsnight package was particularly outrageous) have I heard a mention of what the TPM is actually about: taxation. (Note to BBC editors: the movement is named after the Boston Tea Party because it is protesting about the imposition of higher federal taxes and over-weening controls on citizens who believe their voices have been ignored.)

The British generally and the BBC in particular have a real problem understanding the obsessive suspicion in which the power of central government is held in the US. This is not some funny redneck eccentricity: it is fundamental to the Constitution which gives individual states much greater sovereignty than the countries of the European Union enjoy. The states have independent judicial systems (some states have capital punishment, others do not) and separate taxation systems (some have sales taxes, others do not). Only a Supreme Court ruling can over-turn state law by, for example, declaring something (such as abortion) to be a legal right which a state legislature may not deny.

Read the entire article at telegraph.co.uk

SILVER SPRING, MD (YBH) – Call it a testament to the era of the social networking sites. While environmental activist James Jay Lee (aka James Jae Lee) was holding three hostages at gunpoint at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, supporters of his radical agenda were setting up Facebook pages to applaud the leftist extremist.

James Lee in a mugshot from a previous arrest.

Lee ran the website savetheplanetprotest.com (which, at present, has crashed due to traffic volume). His radical environmental agenda was outlined in his rambling, Unabomber-reminiscent “manifesto.” Lee believes that the only long-term solution to global warming and other supposed risks to the environment is the eventual phasing out of the human race via a global commitment to decrease the human population. Lee advocates sterilization as a practical strategy to “end human procreation.” “Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive [sic] creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture,” he writes.

Lee also rages against the evils of war, claiming that gradually phasing out the human race is the best long-term solution to that problem as well, proclaiming “MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!”

Lee targeted the Discovery Channel because he felt they ran too many programs about human childbirth and babies. On his website, he demands: “All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions.”

By the time the hostage standoff was ended mid-afternoon on Wednesday (police snipers shot and killed Lee; no hostages were injured), like-minded environmentalists were sounding off in defense of Lee on Facebook. By 3:30pm Pacific Time, Lee’s Facebook “fan pages” had several hundred members (although some were people who joined the pages to condemn Lee).

Among the supportive comments:

From AJ Mattis:

Before you call this guy an idiot look at yourself in the mirror. As for what this guy is doing, aside from the violence part, he isn’t that far off with his beliefs. Humans are destroying the planet and we all know it. He just got pushed to the limits and today he had enough. Discovery Channel airs all the retarded f*****g shows about midgets and their families and people who have a million f*****g kids and nothing about the Earth.

I don’t care if the Discovery Channel plays commercials about energy efficient light bulbs. They don’t play anything worth watching on this channel anymore. Does that mean I or anyone else should march into the building strapped with a bomb? Probably not. I wouldn’t, but I can understand his frustration.

From Shenna Ferry:

Humans are destroying the planet and Discovery Channel is wasting air time by promoting trash and their trash families.

From Charlotte Laws (in response to other posters who called Lee crazy):

Calling someone crazy is a way to marginalize them.

From Damon Foster:

I support his message, though his method is drastic. But then, what’s also drastic is indeed mankind’s destruction of the earth. So his frustration strikes me as understandable.

From Jesus Ramirez (in response to other posters who condemned Lee for putting innocent lives in jeopardy):

Innocent people ??? What about all of the INNOCENT ANIMALS THAT HAVE DIED BY HUMAN HANDS ??????? He is opening peoples eyes MORE POWER TO Mr. Lee. I DO believe that there should be limitations of breading [sic] for ALL animals even US.

From Dynasty Palaganas:

I simply don’t approve of his method, but when no one listens people will go to extremes.

Needless to say, a good half or more of the Facebook posters are not only critical of Lee, but also of extremism within the environmentalist movement.

MORE UPDATES TO COME

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is opening a new round of Mideast peacemaking, bringing Israeli and Palestinian leaders together Wednesday for talks aimed at forging agreement within one year on a two-state solution: a sovereign Palestine and a secure Israel.

Expectations were low as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived Tuesday for preparatory talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has spent months coaxing the parties back to the bargaining table.

The talks will be the first face-to-face sessions between the Israelis and Palestinians since December 2008, but the two sides are far apart on all key issues, so major progress in the early going is seen as unlikely.

Pointing up the tensions that will probably test Obama’s diplomacy, a Palestinian gunman opened fire Tuesday on an Israeli vehicle traveling near the West Bank city of Hebron, killing four passengers. The militant Hamas movement, which rejects Israel’s right to exist and opposes peace talks, claimed responsibility. Israeli officials called the shooting an attempt to sabotage the discussions and the White House weighed in with its own condemnation.

Read the entire article at Yahoo! News.

WASHINGTON D.C. (YBH) – On Saturday, Mary C. Curtis, the national correspondent for AOL’s Politics Daily, posted a detailed article about TV and radio host Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally, which had wrapped earlier that day. Ms. Curtis hit all of the expected mainstream media “talking points.” Twice she pointed out the race of the rally’s attendees (they were “predominantly white” and not “diverse”), and she rigorously avoided quoting from the speech given by Dr. Alveda King, Martin Luther King’s niece (Ms. Curtis did use Dr. King’s presence at the rally to take another shot at the racial makeup of the crowd). Ms. Curtis claimed that the rally was packed with Tea Partiers, and she quoted the Reverend Al Sharpton on the reasons for his counter-rally.

All standard MSM stuff. But one line in her article stood out for its audaciously Beck-friendly assertion. Commenting on the size of the crowd, Ms. Curtis wrote:

“Organizers had a permit for a gathering of 300,000, the AP said, and it appeared that was close to the mark. But the National Park Service no longer provides estimates for the size of crowds at the many rallies on the Mall.”

Glenn Beck and Mary Curtis

“Close to the mark” of 300,000 attendees? Surely, many conservatives would have assumed that the MSM would do everything it could to give low-ball estimates for the crowd’s size. It’s a knee-jerk reaction by many on the right to automatically expect the MSM to disparage, downplay, and downsize any large conservative-tinted event.

But here was AOL’s high-profile news site giving a most definitely high-ball estimate. Perhaps conservatives need to rethink their assumptions about the MSM.

Or maybe not.

Because within hours, the “close to the mark” line had magically vanished from Ms. Curtis’ piece. The sentences now read, “Organizers had a permit for a gathering of 300,000, the AP said. But the National Park Service no longer provides estimates for the size of crowds at the many rallies on the Mall.” The removal of the “close to the mark” line renders the National Park Service reference clumsy and pointless.

Of course, maybe the person or persons who removed the line did so not because of anti-Beck bias, but out of a sincere desire to remove assertions that could not be definitively and objectively proved. Perhaps the late-night word-snatchers were motivated by a journalistic integrity so great, so vast, that they simply could not allow any wide-ranging, unsubstantiated, and unconfirmable claims about the attendees. Politics be damned…the article had to be cleansed of any impossible-to-prove statements!

Well, if that was their intention, they missed a spot.

Because in yet another swipe at the crowd’s “lack of diversity,” Ms. Curtis wrote,

“When the African American singers joined her in a snippet of ‘Lift every Voice and Sing’ – the James Weldon Johnson poem set to music and known as the black national anthem – few in the crowd knew any of the words.”

So in a crowd that she estimated to be nearly 300,000 strong, Ms. Curtis had the superhuman omnipresence to know that “few in the crowd” knew the words to the song, even though the crowd stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument (nearly one mile in length). Not only was she apparently able to be everywhere in the crowd at once, but she also had the omniscience to know that those who weren’t singing along were doing so not because they wanted to enjoy listening to the professional singers, but because they didn’t know the words.

If the editors at Politics Daily believe that Ms. Curtis has such extraordinary powers of observation, you’d think they’d have trusted her ability to estimate the size of the crowd.

Mr. Kringle “facebooked” about the appearance afterward:

Last Tuesday I was a guest on “Scoreboard”, on Fox Business. The show was live, hosted by David Asman  and the other guest was Andrew McCarthy.

The experience of walking into Fox on their own territory and engaging them in their own game was truly memorable and instructive. I was actually outnumbered, and the deck was stacked against me. These boys play rough and don’t fight fair! To top it off, I was fasting; and was not only a bit tired and hungry, but in observance of Ramadan, I had to control my reactions and make a beautiful presentation. Below is the transcript. You can make up your own mind.

Insha Allah, something good will come from this. I ask no reward for what I did.

Pass this on, if you like.

Ma’a Salaam,

Dawoud

Mr. Kringle doesn’t elaborate on what he means by “their” territory.  Some of the comments on Mr. Kringle’s page are illuminating.

One friend remarked “what is terrorism? is the state department in a position to tell who’s a terrorist and who’s not? the hypocrisy of these people is bottomless… nice job dawoud, especially for keeping your cool amidst such stupidity and arrogance.”  Another said that, “Fighting golieth is not an easy task!!!! but I do believe, and from what I’ve read and heard form this <sic> discoarse is that the real problem is fear and bigotry towards Muslims….notice they “fox (faux) news couldn’t stay on point…and didn’t distinguish a difference between a political organization and a religion….Dowoud..you brought to light their real agenda!!!! Great Job !!!!!”

Most shockingly, a third friend states that “First of all ( smile),The Muslims nor anyone else who practices Islam had anything to do with what happened on 911.”

Mr. Kringle in no way refutes any of the above remarks in subsequent posts.  He did however post some further thoughts about his appearance on Fox and his refusal to answer the Hamas question:

When they questioned me about Hamas, I knew they were throwing me a curve; but I wouldn’t play their game. There was a lot that I could have said, and it was an effort to restrain myself. My “evading” the Hamas question was nothing more than to show the spiritual dimensions of Islam, and how it is applied in a practical social situation. That was my agenda; and I wanted to bring this message into a place where there may have been no other possibility that it could be spoken.

And

But these guys are good at what they do; and they fight dirty. That’s probably what made me such an easy target for them: I fight fair.

Insha Allah, perhaps someone from a more reputable new agency or publication will give me a few minutes.

Fox is a whore house.

The “whore house” gave Mr. Kringle valuable air time.  He used it well, and in avoiding the Hamas terrorism question, he also gave himself a bigger name within the media.  Mr. Kringle states that Fox has already asked him back.  However, Mr. Kringle stated in the same Facebook thread that, “I have my doubts that I will accept any future offers”.

By Clifford D. May

Wow! The Washington Post has identified “rabble-rousing outsiders!” I don’t think I’ve heard language like that since Southern segregationists complained about young civil-rights activists descending on Mississippi. So who are these interlopers stirring up the unwashed masses? No need to guess: It’s anyone who dares criticize plans for an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. According to Jason Horowitz, the author of a story on the front page of the Post’s Style section, New Yorkers take a “dim view” of them.

Mr. Horowitz informs us that the planned Islamic center has become “the prime target of national conservatives who, after years of disparaging New York as a hotbed of liberal activity, are defending New York against a mosque that will rise two city blocks from Ground Zero.”

The hypocrisy! Have they no shame?

Mr. Horowitz was no doubt so busy reporting this big story that he missed the bulletins about Senate majority leader Harry Reid and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean — no nasty national conservatives, they — also opposing the Ground Zero Islamic project.

However, Mr. Horowitz did score an interview with Ali Mohammed, who sells “falafel over rice” in the besieged neighborhood and who has “reached his saturation point.” Opponents of the project, he says, “got nothing to do with New York and they don’t care about New York. They are trying to create propaganda.”

Yes, of course, this is a New York thing. Foreigners wouldn’t understand. The terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers had a bone to pick with the Big Apple. That explains why Mr. Horowitz doesn’t ask Mr. Mohammed who he thinks attacked us on 9/11, or what their ideology and goals were. Indeed, there is not a single sentence in his article relating to such matters.

Read the entire article at National Review.

Here is video of the whole incident (warning: foul language used):

Throughout the profanity laced tirade, the purported holocaust victim stays calm and relays to his accuser that the anti-Ground Zero mosque movement is non-violent.  The pro-mosque supporter seems to get even angrier then.

Following the  confrontation an unidentified cameraman briefly interviews the pro-mosque supporter who then launches into a second wave of cursing and recriminations against anti-mosque protesters.

The “Ground Zero” mosque story went national when President Obama weighed in on the controversy during an iftar diner at the White House to mark the beginning of the Muslim holy season of Ramadan.

John Romano contributed to this report.

The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was ready and waiting for something like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and seems to have made the most of it, a new scientific study suggests.

Petroleum-eating bacteria – which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the sea floor – proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.

The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing the amount of oil in the undersea “plume” by half about every three days, according to research published online Tuesday by the journal Science.

The findings, by a team of scientists led by Terry C. Hazen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laborator, in California, help explain one of the biggest mysteries of the disaster – where has all the oil gone?

Read the entire article at The Washington Post.

By John Romano

LOS ANGELES (YBH) -Many on the left are gleefully outraged (oddly, that isn’t “contradictio in terminis”, both sides revel in their political anger these days) over the results of a new Pew Research poll that indicates that 18% of Americans currently think that President Obama is actually a Muslim.

In reaction, Time magazine is running a piece today entitled, “Are One-Quarter of Americans Freakin’ Morons?” by writer Amy Sullivan.

To get a sense of where these “freakin’ morons” are coming from let’s look at some of the past coverage of the issue in the press.  Two articles from 2007, in what conservatives call the “mainstream press”, stand out.

The Washington Post wrote in 2007 (emphasis ours):

Obama’s mother, divorced from Obama’s father, married a man from Indonesia named Lolo Soetoro, and the family relocated to the country from 1967-71. At first, Obama attended the Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his stepfather. The document required that each student choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when registering _ Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant. [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said he wasn’t sure why the document had Obama listed as a Muslim.

Paul Watson wrote about the issue in the Los Angeles Times a few months later, select quotes from the piece:

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — As a boy in Indonesia, Barack Obama crisscrossed the religious divide. At the local primary school, he prayed in thanks to a Catholic saint. In the neighborhood mosque, he bowed to Allah.

His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama’s grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended.

That registration meant that during the third and fourth grades, Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in religion class.

The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque. “We prayed but not really seriously, just following actions done by older people in the mosque.

Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together, Adi said.

“His mother often went to the church, but Barry was Muslim. He went to the mosque,” Adi said. “I remember him wearing a sarong.”

“At that time, Barry was also praying in a Catholic way, but Barry was Muslim,” Dharmawan said in Obama’s old classroom, where she still teaches 39 years later. “He was registered as a Muslim because his father, Lolo Soetoro, was Muslim.”

Bugs have eaten Obama’s file in the school’s archive, said Vice Principal Hardi Priyono. But two of his teachers, former Vice Principal Tine Hahiyari and third-grade teacher Effendi, said they remember clearly that at this school too, he was registered as a Muslim, which determined what class he attended during weekly religion lessons.

Robert Gibbs is also quoted in the article, (emphasis ours):

“To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago,” Gibbs’ Jan. 24 statement said. In a statement to The Times on Wednesday, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: “Obama has never been a practicing Muslim.” The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood’s Islamic center.

Clearly, many political enemies of Mr. Obama are having a field day making hay of the President’s perceived religious leanings, but the above shows that their is plenty of evidence in the mainstream available to confuse the issue.  Add in Mr. Obama’s full name, which includes a middle name that is the last name of a Muslim leader whose country we invaded in the last ten years, and you have a recipe for confusion among people of goodwill.   To further confuse folks, simply refer to statements like the one Mr. Obama made during his famous speech to the Islamic world in Cairo last year.  The President stated that he considers it part of his “responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”  Why exactly it that the responsibility of the President of a secular country?

Ironically, as the President is truly bi-racial he may also be truly bi-religious in the best sense of the term.  His confessed faith is Christianity, but few if any people in positions of power have towed the line between two faiths as Mr. Obama has done. Inferring that anyone that thinks the President is a Muslim is a “moron” may make good political theater for Democrats (as the right-wing asserting the opposite also does), it fails to uncloud the issue.

Unfortunately, the President may have to deal with the private issue of his personal faith publicly at some point in the future, as Mr. Obama’s challenger in 2012 is sure to be emboldened by the uncertainty among the American public and from the figures above the “Muslim” perception is growing not declining.   If he does deal with the issue, the President will have to tread very carefully on how and why he rejected Islam in favor of Christianity.  A tightrope that Mr. Obama is capable of walking.  The real question is: Is he willing to do so?

Lastly, a credible poll of the Muslim world would be enlightening on the issue of the President’s perceived faith. Do Muslims the world over believe that Mr. Obama is a Muslim by birth?  And if so do they think that the current President is an apostate?  Answers to those questions would really force the issue publicly.  The tightrope would be even thinner for the President at that point.

Serious business indeed.

Thanks to Time Magazine blog commenter“jonatwork” for the idea for, and references in, this article.

LOS ANGELES (YBH) – The Drudge Report is running the following headline tonight:

SOURCES: NYT PLANS PAGE ONE EXCLUSIVE FRIDAY ON OBAMA'S CURRENT THINKING RE IRAN NUKE WEAPONS... DEVELOPING...

The Obama administration has yet to deal with the Iran nuke issue in any overt way.  So far, the President and the State Department have glossed over the issue.  Both have roundly criticized Iran in general terms, but the Obama administration has yet to talk specifics.

The President is in dire need of an issue where he is on the right side of public opinion.  Both his recent support of the Islamic center at Ground Zero, and his yet-to-be-implemented health care plan have polled poorly with a majority of Americans.  Employment and the economy have also pulled the President’s approval ratings down.

The Iranian nuke issue is one on which the country is much less divided than almost any other.  Nearly all Americans think a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Iranian government is a terrible idea.  A robust and clear policy toward Iran could provide the President with a much-needed boost in approval polls.

UPDATE: This “U.S. Is Said to Assure Israel a Nuclear Iran Isn’t Imminent” looks like the story.  Nothing in it is directly attributed to President Obama.  YBH! will be on top of this story tomorrow.