Reported on Michelle Malkin from KIRO TV:

National Guardsman Brutally Attacked In Pierce County

PARKLAND, Wash. -- The Pierce County Sheriff's Department is searching for five people who allegedly attacked a uniformed National Guardsmen walking along 138th Street in Parkland Tuesday afternoon.

The soldier was walking to a convenience store when a sport utility vehicle pulled up alongside him and the driver asked if he was in the military and if he had been in any action.

The driver then got out of the vehicle, displayed a gun and shouted insults at the victim. Four other suspects exited the vehicle and knocked the soldier down, punching and kicking him.

“And during the assault the suspects called him a baby killer. At that point they got into the car and drove off and left him on the side of the road,” Detective Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

The suspects were driving a black Chevy Suburban-type SUV.

“This is something new for us, we have not had military people assaulted because they were in the military or somebody's opposition to a war or whatever,” Troyer said.

The driver is described as a white male, 25-30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, heavy build, short blond hair, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, and armed with a handgun.

The vehicle's passengers are described as white males, 20-25 years old. Some of the suspects wore red baseball hats and red sweatshirts during the attack.

The Pierce County Sheriff's Department is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and charging of the individuals involved. Informants can call 253-591-5959, and callers will remain anonymous.

Filthy Bastards.  Period.  Dirty rotten filthy bastards.

The title is an homage to the stories of anti war activists who spit at Vietnam era soldiers, that has been casually dismissed as urban legand.

Anti war people don't do things like that we are told.

What they will do, apparently, is beat a soldier walking down the street?

Mark is a greast writer who I deeply respect.  I don't always agree with him, but in cases like this, he just nails it.

Enjoy.

Call me crazy. I blame terrorists.

How can 36 per cent of people polled think U.S. officials knew of or participated in 9/11?

MARK STEYN

Who is A. K. Dewdney? He's an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Western Ontario, and he has pieced together the truth about what happened on 9/11. You may be familiar with the official version: "To account for the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush White House has produced a scenario involving Arab hijackers flying large aircraft into American landmarks," writes the eminent Ontario academic. "We, like millions of other 9/11 skeptics, have found this explanation to be inconsistent with the facts of the matter."

Instead, he argues, a mid-air plane switch took place on three of the jets. "The passengers of one of the flights died in an aerial explosion over Shanksville, Pa.," he writes, "and the remaining passengers (and aircraft) were disposed of in the Atlantic Ocean." Most of us swallowed "the Bush-Cheney scenario" because we were unaware that, when two planes are less than half a kilometre apart, they appear as a single blip on the radar screen. Thus, the covert switch. Instead of crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the flights were diverted by FBI agents on board to Harrisburg, Pa., where the passengers from all three planes were herded onto UA Flight 175 and flown on to Cleveland Hopkins and their deaths. By then, unmanned Predator drones had been substituted for the passenger jets and directed into their high-profile targets. The original planes and their passengers were finished off over the Atlantic.

But what about all those phone calls, especially from Flight 93? Ha, scoffs Dewdney. "Cellphone calls made by passengers were highly unlikely to impossible. Flight UA93 was not in the air when most of the alleged calls were made. The calls themselves were all faked." Michel Chossudovsky, of Quebec's Centre for Research on Globalization, agrees: "It was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to place a wireless cell call from an aircraft travelling at high speed above 8,000 feet."

Sister Toldjah asks that question tonight:

John Hawkins notes that former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been getting some favorable attention from conservative corners recently and in response, writes a post in which he lays out his case against Rudy being the Republican nominee for president in 2008.

What do you think

While I am not willing to offer him an early endorsement, I think he is certainly a contender.  I would go as far as to say that there are many prominent Republicans I would not want to see on the ticket.

And there is a certain appeal to the scrappy New Yorker.

John makes his case that Rudy is not electable due to his moderate centrist stances, and that may be a good point.  But the fact is that Rudy is topping a lot of polls, so it makes you wonder whether the issues that John notes as being the crucial issues for conservatives are really all that critical to many Republicans.

Many of the issues John highlights are ones that I personally do not feel are stoppers, and many Republicans agree.

John summarizes with this:

Despite all of his charisma and the wonderful leadership he showed after 9/11, Rudy Giuliani is not a Reagan Republican. To the contrary, Giuliani is another Christie Todd Whitman, another Arlen Specter, another Olympia Snowe. He's a throwback to the "bad old days" before Reagan, when the GOP was run by moderate Country Club Republicans who considered conservatives to be extremists. Trying to revive that failed strategy again is likely to lead to a Democratic President in 2008 and numerous setbacks for the Republican Party.

Well that may or may not be true.  The "Reagan Conservative" label is not the only benchmark I see as necessary.

Matt at Sound Politics made the case for Rudy tonight:

Rudy For Prez

The battle has been shaping up between Maria and Mike.  In this exchange the issue is my favorite where she is concerned, the Trifecta tax Bill.

Mike in his ad says:

"Maria Cantwell voted with her party, against our deduction and against our families," 

...and notes that the deduction was worth $550 to Washington families.  It continues amd says:

"Sen. Cantwell said she voted 'no' because she disagreed with parts of the bill, yet when she was offered a compromise, she refused to talk,".

Both of these statements are true on their face, but like most political speech they do make a few liberties with semantics.  Maria and Sen Frist, it should be noted did meet, but where he claims he offered to ease her concerns, she claims he was not making an offer in good faith.

Cantwell responded in a press release that:

"Mike McGavick is running an ad on the air right now that he knows is ‘not an accurate reflection' of her views," said Cantwell campaign chief strategist Michael Meehan. "McGavick knows full well that Senator Cantwell supports the Cantwell sales tax deduction bill."

The truth is that the portion of the bill they are discussing, the sales tax deduction, is something Maria actually co-authored, so yes she obviously supports it.  But at the same time, the fact is also clear tat she did vote against a one year extension of it.  Sure she can claim to want it made permanent but one year is better then an expiration.

The benefit of this tax deduction is also under debate, since it is really only for people who itemize their deductions, so a lot of low income people never see any benefit.

But I have to say that while I fully sympathize with the plight of the poor, I don't see any reason to ignore the middle class who may actually need some tax relief too.  Let's not get so caught up in demagoguing this and making it all about the poor, that we forget everyone else.  So if the exemption was important enough for Maria to author it, then it is important enough to keep in play.

The Amazing part of this is that they continue to operate under a belief that this helps their case.  Apart of a childish "look what we did" feel good moment, a stunt like this serves no practical benefit, and only serves to ignite their opposition.

From Michelle Malkin:

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005818.htm

Here we go again.

This has gotten zero attention in the MSM. Over the weekend, militant illegal alien activists marched onto a post office station in Maywood, Calif., and replaced the American flag with a Mexican flag while chanting anti-American epithets. Yup, here we go again. Remember this spring?

Nice.

Video coverage here (starts at around 3:05), also courtesy of Michelle.

When you see reports that towns all over America are cracking down on illegal immigration, and you ask yourself what has spurred these laws, look at the picture above and ask yourself if that is a part of the reason why.

Immigration reform is necessary, most Americans support that.

Most Americans however do not support bullying tactics and Reconquista.

McGavick made the unprecedented move of disclosing his own political skeleton, that being a 1993 DUI.

My initial reaction was *YAWN*.

A DUI 13 years ago is not a show stopper in a political world such as ours, with "Checkpoint Cynthia" McKinney and Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy, or his son Pat "DUI" Kennedy.

Yes it is a matter of character, and is something that should be noted, but what is more important to me is patterns of behavior, not single events.

In his disclosure, Mike says:

Here it is: I have lots of faults, and I have made some mistakes that I deeply regret.

In my personal life I reflect on two great failures:

Most important, my first marriage ended in divorce, and as a result my eldest son, Jack, grew up with me as a “part-time” dad.

Well, here he gets a lot of resonance from me, as I understand this issue from both sides, as a child with a part time dad, and a divorced dad, who was for a while a single dad.

Maybe Mike does understand the pain of dealing with the complexities of a split family.  It is easy to spin platitudes and such, but the reality is ugly and dark, and if Mike has a personal sense of this, I respect that.

He continues:

The second terrible mistake, which was difficult to discuss with my teenage son, was that I was cited for DUI when I cut a yellow light too close in 1993. I was driving Gaelynn home from several celebrations honoring our new relationship and should not have gotten behind the wheel. Thankfully, there was no accident, but it still haunts me that I put other people at risk by driving while impaired. All in all, it was and remains a humbling and powerful event in my life.

What is notable here is that this is the kind of event that the opposition campaigns love to dig out and parade.  By controlling the disclosure, he now controls the event.  But notably, he makes no excuses, he accepts responsibility, which is refreshing.

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Here is Friday's link round up

Bush meets with fallen soldiers familes one of whom was anti war, but not psychotic ala Cindy Sheehan.

In a real UN shocker Russia rejects sanctions against Iran

The new season of TV's Survivor has the contestents starting the game in racially segretated tribes, prompting NYC Officials to demand that the "Race-Based" show be pulled

Da Vinci code fans wreck church window in Holy Grail hunt

Local News:

GOP Senate Candidate Mike McGavick discloses 1993 DUI, (prompting calls that he is really a Kennedy Democrat in GOP clothing)

Local Radio shows in flux, as KVI shuffles programming-  But my favorite host is now taking a prime time 3-6pm slot-  Congrats to Lt Bryan Suits

1Lt "Hell no I won't go" Watada Two-fer:

Japanese American Veteran's condemn him, even as an Army investigator recommends he be tried by a Court Martial.  More on him this weekend.

Racism is apparently not totally dead in Shreveport as a school bus driver rolls back the clock to an uglier time.

Black students ordered to give up seats to white children

Status of Red River Parish bus driver is unknown.

COUSHATTA -- Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.

The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.

And it is outrageous...the sheer stupidity of this amazes me. 

Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also is considering filing a formal charge with the U.S. Department of Justice. NAACP District Vice President James Panell, of Shreveport, said he would apprise Justice attorneys of the situation this week. He's considering asking for an investigation into the bus incident

Which is appropriate...

and other aspects of the school system's operations, including pupil-teacher ratio as it relates to the numbers of white and black children, along with a breakdown of the numbers of black and white teachers employed.

Err, well that may or may not be.  The implication here is that instead of an ignorant racist bus driver, we have a racist school system in general, and while that may or may not be true, we should focus first on the problem at hand, which is nine children who were treated very poorly.

"If the smoke is there, then there's probably fire somewhere else," Panell said in a phone interview from New Orleans. "At this point, it is extremely alarming. We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?"

Again, let's deal with the issue at it's source first.  I agree wholeheartedly that the bus driver acted outrageously, but I am not ready to light the fires of a race war over it and assume the whole school is the problem.

This caught my eye:

State Senate OKs bypassing Electoral College

Sacramento -- The state Senate on Tuesday approved an Assembly bill that seeks to bypass the Electoral College system and institute a national popular vote to elect the president of the United States.

AB2948, which received a 23-14 vote in the Senate, calls for an interstate compact where states would commit all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of which candidate wins in each state. The compact would kick in when enough states join that the sum of their electoral votes would represent at least 270. If the largest states join in the agreement, only 11 would be needed.

Proponents argue that such a plan would avoid instances such as the 2000 presidential election when George Bush was declared the winner despite garnering fewer popular votes than Al Gore.

The idea, which was first formulated by Stanford University Professor John Koza, is receiving serious consideration by lawmakers in other states, including New York, Colorado, Illinois and Missouri.

The California bill now heads back to the Assembly after a couple of minor tweaks in the language in the Senate. The Assembly is expected to pass the amended legislation.

I am unsure how this would work, but as the laws are written this would theoretically be legal and constitutional. 

Though I did not fully understand the necessity of the electoral system for years, I now do. And it troubles me that a system that allows for equal influence by small states is under attack by some of the big ones.

Consider this series of arguments, from Wikipedia:

Arguments against the current system

Unequal weight of voters

I don't support the constitutional amendment on flag burning, and agree that as distasteful of a practice I find it, it is still free speech, as the SCOTUS has ruled.

But in class?   People argue that porn is protected free speech, I hope the teacher does not try to show porn videos in class too.

Honestly, what is going on with the teachers and our public schools?

Teacher burns U.S. flags during class

A middle-school teacher in Kentucky who burned small U.S. flags in two classes during a discussion of free speech has been removed from teaching.

Lauren Roberts, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, said that at least one parent of a student at the Stuart Middle School had complained about Dan Holden's actions, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. 

Holden teaches seventh-grade social studies, but has been placed on non-teaching duties pending an investigation. 

Roberts said Holden's judgment was in question. She said the district had also notified fire officials. 

"Certainly we're concerned about the safety aspect," Roberts said

Safety?  I hope that is not the only concern.  How about the issue of whether it is appropriate?  How about making education actually teach the kids and not indoctrinate them?

Another article provides more information:

Teacher's flag burning inflames many

A Stuart Middle School teacher has been removed from the classroom after he burned two American flags in class Friday as part of a civics lesson, according to Jefferson County Public Schools officials.