Michelle Starts things off with the best headline (apart from mine of course)

Michelle Malkin: The flying extortionists

Audrey Hudson at the Washington Times has the latest on the grievance-mongering flying imams and their attempted extortion:

A group of Muslim imams is seeking an out-of-court settlement with US Airways, saying they should not have been removed from a Minnesota-to-Phoenix flight last month and were not behaving suspiciously.

Five of the six Islamic religious leaders have retained the Council on American-Islamic Relations for legal representation and are seeking a "mutually agreeable" resolution, said Nihad Awad, CAIR executive director.

Cha-Ching!!  I have said all along I thought the whole situation stunk, and I feel more justitified every day.  I am more and more convinced this was planned and now it is moving to it’s lucrative completion.

Denise at Townhall.com rants some good questions

Now we are at what may be stage two of the all too familiar, and Congressman elect Keith Ellison of the Minneapolis-centered Fifth District, and soon to be the first Moslem member of that body, has requested a meeting with top executives of the airline with himself and other legislative and community leaders of his choosing, as reported in the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune.

Recognize the pattern? Think Jesse Jackson, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and shakedowns of numerous corporations ranging from Viacom to Kentucky Fried Chicken! Properly executed, it is a funding gold mine, and Jackson most certainly has a polished template.

Oh, and Jesse Jackson and Keith Ellison have been friends and political associates for quite some time.

Deja vu, fits a pattern, or is ‘modus operandi’ the correct phrasing? Watch for more of the same, and if that happens, wonder where and to whom the inevitable loot is going and what it will be used for.

Debbie Schlussel implores US Air to resist the temptation to pay them off:

Tell USAIR to resist paying off the Six Flying Imams’ shakedown efforts. I received this e-mail from reader Dorothy Carter:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061213/D8LVTD7O0.html

Outside a meatpacking plant fence here, a frustrated Tony Garcia watched as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed inside.

"We need help," he yelled to them. "We need answers."

There were few of those Tuesday as agents began their initial sweep through Swift & Co. plants in six states, arresting illegal immigrants who had bought or stolen other people’s identities to help them get Swift jobs.

I don’t get it.  Why support and defend companies that violate the law and in effect enable identity theft.  I bet if his identity got stolen he might feel different.

Garcia, who said he has friends who work at the Greeley plant, was worried about the fate of schoolchildren whose parents were arrested. "Who is going to pick them up?" he asked.

Maybe their idiot parents should have considered that before involving themselves in activities they had to know were ilelgal.

I feel compassion for the kids, I really do, but no sympathy for the parents.  Period.  This is an issue all over the country where parents commit crimes and don’t think about the impact of their children until they get caught, and then suddenly the mean old police are the bad guys.  It’s completely twisted.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061213/D8M03JPG1.html

More than 1,200 people were arrested in meatpacking plants in six states during raids that federal officials said amounted to the largest-ever workplace crackdown on illegal immigration.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday the investigation uncovered a "disturbing front" in the war against illegal immigration, in which illegal immigrants are using the identities of U.S. citizens to obtain jobs.

"Violations of our immigration laws and privacy rights often go hand in hand," he said. "Enforcement actions like this one protect the privacy rights of innocent Americans while striking a blow against illegal immigration."

And about bloody time.

Advocates of stricter immigration control praised the raids, pointing out they targeted people suspected of committing other crimes in addition to entering the nation illegally.

The right wingers called this one perfectly and were scorned as being paranoid.

Congrats democrats, you got what you paid for.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061212-123555-4731r.htm

Democratic campaign operatives pushed newspapers to write about then-Rep. Mark Foley’s e-mails to teenage pages in the hope that a scandal would emerge before the midterm elections, according to a House ethics report.     

The findings were bolstered when an aide to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Democrat, said the congressman also knew about the e-mails, which were dubbed "inappropriate" by the ethics panel. Mr. Emanuel, who was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) when Mr. Foley’s sex scandal broke in late September, had denied knowledge of the Florida Republican’s e-mails.     

No no!  Say it aint so!  Only the evil republicans were lying right?

Nope.  The democrats spun this and then sat back under the cover of plausible deniability.

The House ethics panel, which is formally called the Standards of Official Conduct Committee, Friday released its final probe into Mr. Foley’s behavior, scolding Republicans for failing to act on years of troubling signs and naming Democrats who knew about the e-mails.

Both sides should feel shame.

The page, sponsored by Republican Rep. Rodney Alexander of Louisiana, said Mr. Foley was "starting to freak me out," the panel reported. The 16-year-old forwarded the Foley e-mails to fellow Alexander staffer Danielle Savoy, wondering whether he was just being "paranoid."

According to the panel, Miss Savoy forwarded the e-mails to a lobbyist friend, who forwarded them to her boyfriend, Justin Field, a staffer for the House Democratic Caucus. Mr. Field gave caucus press aide Matt Miller a copy of the e-mails. Mr. Miller testified he "feared nothing would come" of forwarding the messages to the ethics panel, which at the time was not even meeting because of partisan deadlock over other matters. 

Instead, Mr. Miller redacted the page’s name and faxed copies of the e-mails to reporters in Florida. Mr. Miller then alerted Mr. Burton, who worked for Mr. Emanuel at the DCCC, to see if his hunch was correct that a Foley story was brewing.

This MadTV parody of the Dixie Chicks is hilarious, but it is even funnier on the heels of this story in the Enquirer.

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63733

The Dixie Chicks are getting ready to fly the coop!

The controversial country superstars have secretly decided to split up after the Grammy Awards - because Emily Robison and Martie Maguire no longer want to share the nest with outspoken Natalie Maines, say sources.

Did the video inspire the story, or vice versa….