Spoiler Alert: Leo Frank made an admission during his trial that amounted to a murder confession.

On Monday morning April 28, 1913, Leo Frank was taken to the Atlanta Police Station for routine questioning during the critical first 48 hours of the Mary Phagan murder investigation. In an interrogation room, Leo Frank was flanked by his two elite lawyers, Luther Z. Rosser and Herbert Haas, and surrounded by a team of police, staff and detectives. Leo Frank made a deposition concerning his whereabouts during Confederate Memorial Day, Saturday, April 26, 1913, and about his “brief” encounter with Mary Phagan minutes after high noon.

Leo Frank’s statement was stenographed by a government magistrate named Mr. February, and the statement became part of the official record at the Leo Frank trial, registered as State’s Exhibit B (Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913). Leo Frank specifically stated that Mary Phagan entered his 2nd floor office on Saturday, April 26, 1913 between “12:05 pm and 12:10 pm, maybe 12:07 pm”. Leo Frank also repeatedly told the police and detectives that he never left his office on April 26, 1913 between twelve noon and 12:45 pm. However, Leo Frank’s timeline alibi would dramatically change at his trial (which took place from July 28 to August 21, 1913) on August 18, 1913, when he mounted the witness stand.

At the trial of Leo Frank (accused of murdering Mary Phagan), a young 14-year old girl named Monteen Stover who formerly worked at the National Pencil Company testified she went there to collect her pay envelope inside Leo Frank’s office on Saturday, April 26, 1913, at 12:05 p.m. and found Leo Frank’s office completely empty. Monteen Stover described waiting inside the office for five minutes until 12:10 pm and then left, because she thought the factory might have been deserted. If Monteen Stover was telling the truth, she had inadvertently broken Leo Frank’s alibi concerning his whereabouts on that fateful day. What was ironic about Monteen Stover is that she was a positive character defense witness for Leo Frank, unlike 19 of his other employees and associates whose testimony suggested Leo Frank was a lecherous, licentious, lascivious and libertine boss.

Leo Frank specifically answered on August 18, 1913, why Monteen Stover found his office empty on Saturday, April 26, 1913 between 12:05pm and 12:10pm, and in doing so, Leo Frank solved the Mary Phagan murder mystery.

Three weeks into the trial on August 18, 1913, Leo Frank mounted the witness stand at 2:15 pm to make an unsworn courtroom speech to the judge and jury on the record. During Leo Frank’s 4-hour trial statement, he refused to be examined or cross examined by defense and prosecution counselors, but he answered the question everyone wanted to know by directly responding to the testimony of Monteen Stover about why his office was empty on April 26, 1913 between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm. Leo Frank contradicted his earlier statement to the police and explained this five minute absence with a newfangled admission saying he might have “unconsciously” gone to the bathroom in the Metal Room!

It was an astonishing, jaw dropping, and spine-tingling admission by Leo M. Frank that left everyone in courtroom perplexed, because there was only one bathroom on the second floor and it was located inside the Metal Room – the real scene of the crime. Leo Frank not only put himself in the Metal Room where all the forensic evidence suggested Mary Phagan had been murdered, but he put himself in the specific location at which Jim Conley testified he found the dead body of Mary Phagan.

The newfangled explanation delivered by Leo Frank on August 18, 1913 at 2:45 pm to the judge and jury was considered the equivalent of a murder confession, because the state’s prosecution team spent the entire duration of the four week long trial proving Leo Frank murdered Mary Phagan in the metal room on April 26, 1913 between 12:05 pm and 12:10 pm.

The Metal Room was down the hall from Leo Frank’s office, and the place Mary Phagan had toiled for more than a year at a wage of 7 and 4/11th cents an hour. The Metal Room was where Leo Frank went to use the bathroom each and every day, as he worked down the hall in his second floor office at the front section of the National Pencil Company. When Leo Frank went to the bathroom each day between the year’s time during the Spring of 1912 and 1913 that Mary Phagan was employed, he had to immediately pass by her work station within a matter of feet, but Leo Frank denied knowing Mary Phagan even at the trial, and it became an incriminating point of contention against him.

At the trial Jim Conley reported that he discovered the dead body of Phagan in the metal department (Metal Room) bathroom at the behest of Leo Frank. Conley stated that Leo Frank asked him to move the cadaver of Mary Phagan to the basement furnace where garbage was normally placed before incinerated. In the fallout of Jim Conley refusing to complete the job of stuffing Mary Phagan into the furnace for $200 (and thereby destroying the evidence), Conley instead agreed to write the “death notes” pinning the bludgeoning, rape and strangulation of Mary Phagan on a tall, dark, and slim black man named Newt Lee, the factory nightwatchman and security guard recently employed at the factory for less than 3 weeks. The “death notes” were found next to the dead body of Mary Phagan and they describe her going to “make water” in the only place she could “make water”, which was the bathroom in the Metal Room on the second floor. There was no bathroom accessible on the first floor and the one in the dark dingy basement was for “Negroes Only.”

On Monday morning, April 28, 1913, a factory employee named Robert P. Barret discovered a bloody tress of hair tangled on the steel handle of his lathe in the metal room, and moments later a 5″ inch wide fan-shaped bloodstain on the floor of the Metal Room in front of the girls dressing room next to the bathroom. Barret testified about the forensic evidence he found and it pointed to the same conclusion about the Metal Room being the scene of a heinous crime of violence with a very poor clean-up job. All of the evidence presented at the trial pointed to the Metal Room as the real scene of the crime.

Jim Conley saying he found Mary Phagan dead in the Metal Room bathroom at the behest of Leo Frank and Leo Frank saying he might have “unconsciously” gone to the bathroom in the Metal Room at the same time he originally told the police that Mary Phagan was in his office (State’s Exhibit B), and at the same time Monteen Stover said Leo Frank’s office was empty, resulted in the case coming together at the murder trial with absolute precision.

Leo Frank entrapped himself beyond escape at his trial on August 18, 1913, at 2:45 pm.

Many have asked how many times in the annals of United States legal history has the accused made an admission that amounted to an unmistakable murder confession at their own trial?

If there are any doubts about Leo Frank’s August 18, 1913 murder trial confession, consider reading the March 9, 1914, Atlanta Constitution publishing a jailhouse interview of Leo Frank, in which he reconfirms his trial testimony about a Metal Room bathroom visit specifically responding to Monteen Stover’s testimony about his office being empty between 12:05 p.m. and 12:10 p.m. on Saturday, April 26, 1913.

The solving of the Mary Phagan murder mystery is found in the fact that Leo Frank made the equivalent of public murder confession at his trial on August 18, 1913, between 2:15 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. and it is documented in the official Leo Frank Trial Brief of Evidence, 1913, and the Georgia Supreme Court Case File on Leo Frank, 1913, 1914. Every appellate tribunal called to review the Leo Frank trial brief of evidence from 1913 to 1915, 1982 to 1986 did not disturb the unanimous verdict of the judge and jury originally made in August of 1913. One may also read between the lines of appeasement concerning the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sponsored Leo M. Frank posthumous pardon – without exoneration – issued on March 11, 1986.

Revisionist journalist-author Steve Oney weaves together a fantastic collage of unsubstantiated Leo Frank hoaxes throughout his entire book ‘And the Dead Shall Rise’ (2003), as part of his shameless efforts to re-write history, exonerate Leo Frank of the Mary Phagan murder, and ultimately rehabilitate the image of Leo Frank from a perverted and violent pedophile, rapist and strangler, toward a more kinder and gentler mythological stoic-martyr who was unjustly scapegoated in a vast conspiracy.

By cherry picking and misrepresenting enough parts of the case, the subtext of Oney’s book is that an innocent and well educated Ivy-League Jew named Leo Frank was ensnared by the real culprit, a semi-literate and drunken stumble bum, the African-American factory sweeper Jim Conley.

Oney downplays the fact that Leo Frank and Jim Conley had a personal relationship that was a bit too close for comfort. Leo Frank would often goose and jolly with James “Jim” Conley at the factory. Leo Frank also managed Jim’s contracts as Conley had a side business selling watches at the NPCo factory and even ripped off Mr. Arthur Pride who testified about it at the trial. In September 10, 1912, even though Jim Conley served a one month sentence for drunken disorderly behavior, Leo Frank took him back at the National Pencil Company in mid October.

Leo Frank knew for a fact Jim Conley could write, but kept this information in confidence until it was too late. Leo Frank never said a single word about Conley to the police during the early days of the Mary Phagan murder investigation, even though the “death notes” were clearly written in Ebonics, and there were only 8 African-American employees out of 170 employees in total working at the National Pencil Company factory. Jim Conley worked at the National Pencil Company in various capacities for 2 years and had even done some written inventory work for Leo Frank.

Steve Oney never addresses why Leo Frank knowingly refused to tell the police Jim Conley could write.

What Steve Oney fails to elaborate fully for the reader is the most grotesque subplot of the bludgeoning, rape and strangulation of Mary Phagan and its pinning on the African-American Nightwatchman Newton “Newt” Lee who was ordered by Leo Frank on Friday, April 25 to arrive at work an hour early, 4:00 pm on the infamous April 26, 1913 so Leo Frank could go to the ballgame with his brother-in-law Mr. Ursenbach.

Oney points out in his book that weeks after Leo Frank and Jim Conley were arrested, the police arranged for them to confront each other face to face over the murder. Jim agreed, but Leo refused. Oney never answers the question why an “innocent” white man would refuse to confront an African-American man, accusing him of strangling a 13-year old white girl in the context of the white racial separatist south of 1913, where the word of a black man would never be taken over the word of a white man.

Though Steve Oney claims he spent 17 years of his life traveling the country to research and write this colorful and thesaurus-enriched book, his analysis is mostly shallow and myopic at best. Steve Oney tends to wear horse blinders and drives with the emergency brakes on during his epic 700+ page journey, and as a result, he does not plumb the depths of the case, or soar above it’s centenarian heights like a lucid and dispassionate researcher, looking back on the case 9 decades later with new penetrating eyes. Oney never explores any of the permutations or possible real solutions to the crime, making his book a complete waste of time. Oney never answers the myriad of the case’s questions either, leaving the reader truly frustrated, unsatisfied and unfulfilled. No real modern forensic analysis is applied to this case by Oney despite the hundreds of pages surviving into the 21st century with crime scene and autopsy descriptions by police, detectives, undertakers and physicians, respectively, turning this book into nothing more than a long winded journalists diatribe that is lost in a labyrinth of Leo Frank partisanship.

As a tabloid style journalist-author who should be writing for the ‘National Enquirer’, Steve Oney fills his book with every erroneous “fact” and fabricated piece of “evidence” on behalf of Leo Frank’s defense, regardless of whether or not the inclusions stand up to even minimal scrutiny.

One of the biggest frauds Steve Oney perpetuates within his book, like many other Leo Frank partisan authors, was originally fabricated by the tabloid-style journalist Pierre van Paassen in his book, ‘To Number Our Days’, published in 1964. In this 404 page work, Pierre van Paassen spends less than 2 pages (p. 237-8) recalling 42 years earlier an incident that happened in 1922, at a time when he was in Atlanta, Georgia, working as a journalist for the Atlanta Constitution, and investigating the Leo Frank Case.

‘To Number Our Days’, by Pierre van Paassen, Chapter: Short Stand in Dixieland, Page 237, Line 27:

“The Jewish community of Atlanta at that time seemed to live under a cloud. Several years previously one of its members, Leo Frank, had been lynched as he was being transferred from the Fulton Tower Prison in Atlanta to Milledgeville for trial on a charge of having raped and murdered a little girl in his warehouse which stood right opposite the Constitution building. Many Jewish citizens who recalled the lynching were unanimous in assuring me that Frank was innocent of the crime.

I took reading all the evidence pro and con in the record department at the courthouse. Before long I came upon an envelope containing a sheaf of papers and a number of X-ray photographs showing teeth indentures. The murdered girl had been bitten on the left shoulder and neck before being strangled. But the X-ray photos of the teeth marks on her body did not correspond with Leo Frank’s set of teeth of which several photos were included. If those photos had been published at the time of the murder, as they should have been, the lynching would probably not have taken place.

Though, as I said, the man died several years before, it was too late, I thought, to rehabilitate his memory and perhaps restore the good name of his family. I showed Clark Howell the evidence establishing Frank’s innocence and asked permission to run a series of articles dealing with the case and especially with the evidence just uncovered. Mr. Howell immediately concurred, but the most prominent Jewish lawyer in the city, Mr. Harry Alexander, whom I consulted with a view to have him present the evidence to the grand jury, demurred. He said Frank had not even been tried. Hence no new trial could be requested. Moreover, the Jewish community in its entirety still felt nervous about the incident. If I wrote the articles, old resentments might be stirred up and, who knows some of the unknown lynchers might recognize themselves as participants in my description of the lynching. It was better, Mr. Alexander thought, to leave sleeping lions alone. Some local rabbis were drawn into the discussion and they actually pleaded with Clark Howell to stop me from reviving interest in the Frank case as this was bound to have evil repercussions on the Jewish community.

That someone had blabbed out of school became quite evident when I received a printed warning saying: “Lay off the Frank case if you want to keep healthy.” The unsigned warning was reinforced one night, or rather, early one morning when I was driving home. A large automobile drove up alongside of me and forced me into the track of a fast-moving streetcar coming from the opposite direction. My car was demolished, but I escaped without a scratch…. ”

Source: To Number Our Days (1964), By Pierre van Paassen. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 64-13633. 404 Pages, see p. 237/8.

A recollection about an event that happened more than 4 decades ago provides the first question concerning its veracity. Dental x-ray forensics were in their infancy in 1913, and never used in Georgia for any murder case until countless years after Leo Frank was hanged in Marietta, GA, and buried in Queens, NY, in 1915. Is it “Mr. Harry Alexander” or Henry Alexander? And why would the attorney who represented Leo Frank during his numerous appeals say Leo Frank didn’t have his murder trial yet? Leo Frank was not lynched on the way to Milledgeville for trial or prison in late June 1915, he was lynched 170 miles away in Marietta on August 17, 1915. Bite marks on Mary Phagan’s left shoulder and neck?! None of the numerous examinations or autopsies of Mary Phagan conducted by the undertaker, police, detectives and physicians reported in the official record and newspapers mention any bite marks on Mary Phagan’s shoulder, neck or anywhere else on her body. This journalist claims an attempted murder was made on his life while he was driving his car and forced into a head on collision and his car was demolished, but he escaped without a scratch in 1922 when there were virtually no safety features in a car by modern standards.

From beginning to end, Steve Oney’s tome about the Leo Frank case is filled with shameless misrepresentations, fabrications, half-truths, omissions and sloppy research. Oney isn’t fooling people who studied the Leo Frank case when he pretends to be neutral and unbiased in his book.

The definitive book on the Leo Frank case has not been written yet, we are all still waiting for someone to write and publish it. Perhaps it’s time for Steve Oney to re-read and carefully study the 1,800 page Georgia Supreme Court File on Leo M. Frank, and put out a new edition of his book without all the easily verified misrepresentations, fabrications, half-truths, omissions and sloppy research.

Alien Nation
By Peter Brimelow

E pluribus unum no more? Like most other recent immigrants, former Englishman Brimelow thinks U.S. immigration policy badly needs reforming. Immigration is too high to begin with, he says, but also too many unskilled workers are coming, legally as well as illegally, as are too many persons whose ethnicities differ from the U.S. norm of predominantly European extractions. Brimelow maintains that besides the ill effects present immigration has on law enforcement, social service provision, public health, and the environment, it is undermining the sense of the U.S. as a nation. But we’ve always been “a nation of immigrants,” you say? Brimelow documents that that is true only in that the American people, like the people of every other nation we know of, came from somewhere else. Moreover, throughout American history, immigration has occurred, not continuously, but in several waves that have alternated with long periods of assimilation– this is the pattern that built the nation and that the immigration tsunami touched off by the 1965 Immigration Act and complicated by the political resistance to assimilation known as multiculturalism has broken. The U.S. badly needs to drastically reduce immigration now, absorb the last 30 years’ worth of new Americans, and rethink its immigration policies, Brimelow concludes, or it may dissolve into a bunch of smaller countries, in some of which democracy as we enjoy it will not survive. Writing in the magnetically readable, “sledgehammer” (his term) style of his principal employer, Forbes, Brimelow is sure to fuel the debates on U.S. immigration policy in the months ahead.

“One of the most widely discussed books of the year.”
-Jerry Adler, Newsweek

“An indispensable book…. Either side may profitably imbibe this bottled brio. Makes a powerful-indeed,, nearly overwhelming-case against the status quo.”
- Jack Miles, Los Angeles Times, in Atlantic Monthly

“Raw meat that will offend politically correct members of the cultural elite. It may also strike a responsive chord with a great many ordinary Americans.”
-Stephan Thernstrom, Washington Post

“A brilliant book.”
- Edwin A. Roberts, Tampa Tribune
-
“I have also been an ‘open immigration’ advocate… [but] Alien Nation has persuaded me … to call for an immediate suspension of all immigration.”
-William B. Allen., former chairman. Commission on Civil Rights, in Detroit News and Free Press

“A book not to be missed…. Every American citizen owes a debt of gratitude to Peter Brimelow.”
-William A. Rusher, Washington Times

“Important…. Many of the facts given in this book will be surprising even to well-informed readers.”
-Nathan Glazer Harvard University

“Deserves praise for going to the heart of the immigration issue.”
-Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and The Last Man

“His fear is justified. We will bury him.”
-Lawrence Chua, Village Voice

Peter Brimelow is a senior editor at Forbes and National Review magazines in New York. He is the author of The Patriot Game: Canada and the Canadian Question Revisited.

http://www.archive.org/details/Alien_Nation

Yesterday, thousands of Texans, rallied to save the Nativity scene from the Wisconsin leftists.
Beliefnet reported, via Free Republic:

Thousands of Texans, including the state attorney general and the governor, have sent a clear message to Wisconsin atheists who enjoy intimidating small towns into removing nativity scenes.
At least 5,000 showed up at a rally supporting Henderson County officials who have refused to comply with the group’s demand that they remove a nativity scene from the Athens, Texas, courthouse lawn.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said that if the Wisconsin atheists sue as threatened, his office would come to the county’s defense.

Texas’ governor, Rick Perry, also said he would fight to support the county, noted the San Antonio Express-News.

The governor’s office “strongly supports the right of Henderson County to display a Christmas Nativity scene on public property,” said Lucy Nashed, deputy press secretary for Perry’s office. “We have fought the Freedom from Religion Foundation before and won. Our founding principles give citizens freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Faith and freedom helped build this nation, and faith cannot and should not be removed from public life.”

Last summer, the Wisconsin atheists attempted to block Perry from organizing a prayer rally at Reliant Stadium in Houston. That complaint filed in July alleging that Perry’s “initiation, organization, promotion and participation as governor in a prayer rally” violated the First Amendment was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Gray Miller.

Last week the group put up a banner next to the Henderson County nativity scene reading, according to the Express-News: “At the season of the Winter Solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

France 24 reported, via Free Republic:

An explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas Mass near Nigeria’s capital Sunday, killing at least 25 people, officials said. A radical Muslim sect claimed the attack and another bombing near a church in the restive city of Jos, as explosions also struck the nation’s northeast.

The Christmas Day attacks show the growing national ambition of the sect known as Boko Haram, which is responsible for at least 491 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The assaults come a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded.

The first explosion on Sunday struck St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, a town in Niger state close to the capital, Abuja, authorities said. Rescue workers recovered at least 25 bodies from the church and officials continued to tally those wounded in various hospitals, said Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency.

The criminal movement promises that America’s going to be shocked by not one but hundreds of wake-up calls in 2012.
No doubt the liberal media will be right there with them.
MSM reported:

Warning to America’s superrich: Think Occupy Wall Street disappeared in winter’s cold? Wrong: The 99% just declared a new aggressive, covert special-ops war strategy to take back our democracy in 2012.

No more peaceful tent encampments in parks. No more Mahatma Gandhi nice-guy stuff. Not enough. Escalation time. Wall Street, the superrich and their Washington lobbyists are tone deaf, blinded by greed, trapped in their post-2008 business-as-usual bubble.

Warning; OWS tells us America’s going to be shocked by not one but hundreds of wake-up calls in 2012.

How? In a recent Washington Post column, OWS leaders say they are accelerating their battle strategy in 2012. In what amounts to a new declaration of war that promises to electrify the 2012 elections, OWS will be using new asymmetrical warfare strategies, write two of the men who have been the driving force behind the movement since early this year: Kalle Lasn, the editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine, and senior editor Micah White.

Listen to some of the specific guerrilla tactics they warn will be used in their 2012 “American Spring” assault: A “marked escalation of surprise, playful, precision disruptions, rush-hour flash mobs, bank occupations, ‘occupy squads’ and edgy theatrics.” And in a New Yorker magazine interview shortly after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “military-style operation,” Lasn warned: “this means escalation, pushing us one step closer to a revolution.”

Merry Christmas 2011

Nuns pray before the start of the Christmas mass led by Pope Benedict XVI in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican December 24, 2011. (REUTERS/Max Rossi)

Once again, I am posting this beautiful arrangement of O Holy Night
It is Aled Jones the adult with the young Aled Jones.

Hat Tip to The Anchoress

My brother Joe hiked for over an hour to the Trappist Haven Monastery on Lantau Island near Hong Kong. Joe had this to say, “Catherine and I went for a Christmas morning walk only to arrive at the exact time Christmas Mass started. It was wonderful and a blessing to be there. Merry Christmas.”

He sent this photo from Hong Kong. The monks escaped the mainland years ago and set up their monastery on Lantau Island.

Jihad Watch has a more serious Christmas message.

Egyptian Islamists won two-thirds of the ballots in the second round voting for parliament this week.
Reuters reported:

Egypt’s two leading Islamist parties won about two-thirds of votes for party lists in the second round of polling for a parliament that will help draft a new constitution after decades of autocratic rule, the election committee said Saturday.

The party list led by the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 36.3 percent of the list vote, while the ultra-conservative Salafi al-Nour Party took 28.8 percent, pushing the liberal Wafd party into third place.

The vote, staged over six weeks, is the first free election Egypt has held after the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who routinely rigged polls before he was overthrown by a popular uprising in February.

The West long looked to Mubarak and other strongmen in the region to help combat Islamist militants, and has watched warily as Islamist parties have topped votes in Tunisia, Morocco and now Egypt.

Parliament’s prime job will be appointing a 100-strong assembly to write a new constitution which will define the president’s powers and parliament’s clout in the new Egypt.

Tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims flocked to Bethlehem today to celebrate the birth of Christ.
The UPI reported:

Tens of thousands of visitors were expected in the West Bank town of Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas in Jesus’ birthplace, officials said.

Tourists and pilgrims gathered around a 50-foot Christmas tree in Manger Square and sang carols, and Boy Scouts with drums and bagpipes were to participate in the traditional afternoon procession through the West Bank town, the BBC reported.

Visitors kept the cash registers ringing at restaurants and shops selling carved olive-wood religious statues.

Midnight Mass will be celebrated by the Holy Land’s top Roman Catholic cleric, Latin Patriarch Fuad Twal, in the 1,700-year-old Church of the Nativity, built on the spot where the faithful believe Mary gave birth to Jesus.

A German tourist told Voice of America what it meant to see Jesus’ birthplace with her family.

“It’s really special, I mean, it’s where the story began,” she said. “And for me it’s also kind of special for my family because my parents were here and my grandmother was here so it’s special to be here.”

Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh noted during this Christmas season Palestinians are moving forward with their bid for statehood.

“We are celebrating this Christmas hoping that in the near future we’ll get our right to self-determination, our right to establish our own democratic, secular, Palestinian state on the Palestinian land. That is why this Christmas is unique,” he said.

Two-thirds of the 50,000 residents of the once predominantly Christian Bethlehem are now Muslim.

After intervention by the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Defense Department reportedly decided it will now allow Muslim students participating in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to wear headscarves and turbans while in uniform.

The decision marks the latest influence by controversial Islamic groups on military affairs. .

WND previously broke the story that an Islamic group that has been closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas is the official endorsing agency for the U.S. Armed Forces Muslim chaplain program.

The Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, also runs regular events for the military’s Muslim chaplains.

WND also reported the Army’s Muslim chaplain program was founded by a terror-supporting convict while the Army’s first Islamic chaplain, who is still serving, has been associated with a charity widely accused of serving as an al-Qaida front.

On Thursday, CAIR announced its activism was responsible for the decision to allow Muslim garb in the JROTC.

What’s next, face veils?

Last week environmental groups hailed a decision from the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld a law prohibiting roads on nearly 50 million acres of national forest. Lawyers for the Colorado and Wyoming Mining Associations contend that the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule violated the law. Previous conflicting federal court rulings have both upheld and overturned the road-building ban.

Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Environmental Group’s U.S. public lands program acknowledges that the roadless rule blocks “logging, drilling and industrial development.”

Expressing disappointment with the decision, Stuart Sanderson, President of the Colorado Mining Association said, “The decision does not reflect a practical understanding of the impact that the rule will have upon mining jobs or access to needed minerals here in Colorado and the U.S. It is important to develop high quality coal and other mineral reserves, both to ensure our nation’s energy security and reduce our dependence on minerals produced in other countries.”

How does this roadless decision impact mining and jobs?

In Montana’s Finley Basin there are known tungsten deposits. An Australian company wanted to bring revenue and jobs to the state by developing the resource. While the property was successfully drilled and recognized by Union Carbide in the seventies, it is now about 200 yards inside a roadless study area. The Forest Service was willing to offer a conditional drilling permit. Among the conditions were these requirements:

•          The drill sites must be cleared using hand tools,
•          The drilling equipment and fuel must be transported to the site by a team of pack mules,
•          The mules must be fed certified weed-free hay, and
•          Drill site and trail reclamation must be done using hand tools.

The company gave up.

Let’s face it. Liberals hate this country and want you to live in mud huts.

The Iranian regime decided hold an Occupy Wall Street cartoon contest to assist the Obama-endorsed Occupy movement. The Iranians hope the contest will help bring down the US financial system.
Fars News reported:

Fars News Agency plans to hold an international cartoon festival on the Occupy Wall Street movement in a bid to help people in the United States take their message out to the world.

Despite the attempts made by the US media and statesmen to portray it as an unimportant development, the Anti-Capitalism Occupy Wall Street Movement has gradually grown so wide that it cannot be harnessed by the US administration any more. Now the US administration can suppress people by the help of its security forces, but it no doubt will be unable to root out this movement, and one day, the roots of this movement will grow so deep and so wide that it will topple the West’s and the United States’ capitalist system.

A way to help the Occupy Wall Street Protests stay alive is releasing artworks, specially cartoons and satirical works, around this movement. Cartoonists can portray their critical and vigilant views in one work through their artistic delicacy and present it to thousands, meaning that the message carried by hours of speech or lengthy pages of an article can be presented to people in one single picture.

‘The International Cartoon Festival of Wall Street Downfall’ is an opportunity for artists from around the world to display their works in support of the American and European protesters and all others who have been victimized by poverty, corruption and discrimination.

After blowing $10 million on vacations this year, Michelle Obama insisted the First Family take another $4 million trip to Hawaii. Michelle flew out early.
The Daily Mail reported:

Michelle Obama insisted on a pricey holiday to Hawaii when her husband would have rather gone to a presidential retreat, according to reports.

She allegedly wanted the taxpayer-funded $4million trip when Barack Obama sought instead to make the short trip to Camp David in Maryland.

Political sources told the National Enquirer that the 47-year-old’s spending is rocketing and she even went on a shopping spree before the Hawaii trip.

‘The President’s advisers have told him that Michelle’s spending has spiralled “completely out of control”,’ one source told the National Enquirer.

‘Barack read his wife the riot act, but his words fell on deaf ears. Michelle said there was “no way” she was going to disappoint her daughters.’

Then again, this should surprise no one. Michelle Obama told us her top priority is Michelle Obama.

Try to keep your gag reflex in check for this one, at least for a moment.

Yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune carried an op ed piece by Chris Cillizza, of the Washington Post, lavishing praise on the Secretary of State for a “gold” year of accomplishments.

Yes, a “gold” year. It seems Hillary traveled to a lot of places, talked to a lot of people, and even contributed to the downfall of Moammar Gadhafi along the way.

I feel so much safer now. Don’t you?

Of course, never mind that Putin and company continue to relieve themselves on Obama’s leg, or that the State Department reversed course around ten times before finally throwing Mubarak off the boat, or that the bugger running Syria continues to butcher his people with impunity, or that Iran continues to flip us the bird while having a good laugh at our expense. The list of overseas failures, setbacks and embarrassments could go on and on. And on.

Little to none of the stumbling was Hillary’s fault directly, but as Americans’ daily point person on the international front, she is in reality just about as impotent as her boss. Both get a lot of press and praise for next to no substance.

Cillizza, however, is blind to it all.  He gets so caught up in genuflection that he simply can’t contain his bottomless admiration for the entire Clinton clan.  Bill’s new book is nothing less than a blueprint for true economic recovery. And of course Chelsea’s debut on NBC news brands her as force unto herself.

Oh, and just for good measure: CNN gauged Americans’ approval of HIll at 69%, and Obama now seems to be tearing pages straight from Bubba’s 1990s political playbook.

So there you are: The Clinton dynasty stirs anew.

You can go ahead and puke now.

Some deep conversation from 2002, via our good friends at Ricochet.  Peter Robinson, former Reagan speechwriter (“Tear down this wall!”), emcees the event.  He himself is a serious thinker, but can be funny in an endearingly square way.  And it’s between two heavyweight intellects, no matter what you think about either one.  Grab your morning coffee and enjoy:

Uncommon Knowledge: Words of War

The Smart Grid in the United States is an ongoing collaboration between the Federal Government and the Power Companies.  As more and more people wake up to the threat to their privacy that the Smart Grid represents, people are doing the only thing they can and fighting it on a local level.

Earlier this week, I wrote an article describing how some PG&E customers, who removed their Smart Meter and replaced it with an analog by a liscensed professional electrician, have had their power shut off.

On December 13th in California, the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors grilled Wendy Sarsfield, a representative from the public utility PG&E, as to why they will not restore power to those customers who have had their PG&E Smart Meters replaced with an analog meter.

During the exchange, that resembled a combination of a dog chasing it’s tail and shooting fish in a barrel, Wendy kept insisting that saftey was the main issue for which power was not restored to the homeowners. Upon hearing this, Board Member after Board Member seemed to come up with a viable, workable solution, but it was always unacceptable to the PG&E Rep.  After several minutes where the PG&E Rep began sounding like a broken record while refusing to come to any reasonable solution about restoring power to people’s homes (One of which was just to add people to the delay list and reinstall an analog meter until the California Public Utilites Commission-CPUC- finished creating an opt out program), one Board Member cut to the chase (Begins around the 5:00 Mark):

Board Member:  “Are you telling us that house will be without electricity until the CPUC completes their opt out process?”

PG&E Rep: “That’s correct or if there is a Smart Meter that is replaced.”

Board Member: “And if the CPUC takes 6 months to complete their opt out process are you saying that PG&E is going to let that household go without power for 6 months?”

PG&E Rep: “It’s my understanding that we will not……..there needs to be a Smart Meter for us to reconnect the power.”

I suggest you watch the entire video and it will become all too clear that the issue isn’t about saftey as much as it’s about shoving Smart Meters down peoples’ throats.

Those of us that believe in small Constitutional Government understand that there is a time when local Governments are the only thing that stand between the destructive force to our Liberties that Big Government and Big Business sometimes represent.

Fighting the Smart Grid is one of those times.

!!UPDATE!!

Stop Smart Meters.org is now reporting that PG&E has returned power to the homes but not in the way you would think:

“Since PG&E has (falsely) claimed that they have no analog meters left, they were forced to save face by installing a device to bypass the meter – allowing unmetered electricity to flow to the homes. They plan to base their billing on last year’s usage.”

Here is a picture of the bypass that was installed where the meters go even though PG&E are removing analog meters from other homes everyday to replace them with Smart Meters and could easily use one of those instead of this bypass:

H/T Stopsmartmeters.org

H/T Gateway Pundit Readers

(Dave Carter is a contributor on Ricochet.com, a retired military veteran, and current long haul truck driver.)
This will be a little like eating ice cream too fast and suffering a brain freeze, but stay with me here, okay?  <deep breath>  According to Nancy Pelosi, an extension of unemployment insurance benefits will add 600,000 jobs.  How do we know, you ask?  Because, she answers, “The unemployment insurance extension is not only good for individuals. It has a macroeconomic impact. As macroeconomic advisers have stated, it would make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy.”  And just who are these “macroeconomic advisors,” you wonder?  Beats the stew beef out of me and Nancy didn’t say.  But that’s not important now.  What is important is what Nancy said, namely, “Again this is important because this is about the safety net not just for these individuals, but for our economic system that, in times of unemployment, we have a safety net and that is important.”  Got it?

So again, it is important to understand that when you pay unemployment benefits with money extracted from the productive sector and given to the unproductive sector, it creates jobs because the unemployed will buy stuff from businesses who had to lay employees off because they couldn’t pay them after having their money confiscated by the government so it could pay more money to formerly employed people to go out and buy stuff, see?  Now if only we could get enough people on unemployment, we could generate a real economic boom and lower unemployment by means of,….more unemployed people buying things with money extracted from employed people….  my head is hurting.  “Again,” saith Nancy, ” [not only] a safety net for individuals, but a safety net for the economy …and again this money when received is immediately spent, it’s urgently needed, and injects demand into the economy, creating jobs.”   On second thought, I think the only way unemployment will boost the economy is if it is people like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama who are unemployed.

During an interview with Uma Pemmaraju of Fox News, conservative columnist Ann Coulter claimed that the Tea Party has not lined up behind Mitt Romney because they’d prefer someone “who is going to go around bombastically demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate or calling him a Kenyan.” From Fox News via Mediaite:

Lately, Coulter seems to have become quite fond of using the term “bombastic”. A case of projection, perhaps?

Obama’s Christmas Vacation Tab…over $ 4,000,000.  Not exactly roughing it, are they?

The Hawaii Reporter is on the story as the buzz in Oahu is all about the big bucks the First Family will be dropping on the taxpayer funded vacation.

The total cost for the 17-day vacation to Hawaii for the President, his family and staff has climbed to more than $4 million. Here’s why.

TRAVEL: $3,651,626

HOUSING: $151,200

…about $21,600 per home for approximately 7 houses rented … for security.

HOTEL: $72,216

The President’s staff and White House Press Corps stay at one of Hawaii’s oldest and most elegant hotels, the Moana Surfrider.

LOCAL TAXPAYER COSTS: $260,000

Total cost…an estimated $4,135,038.

But awww, he needs this break. All that hard work in Washington, and it’s getting too cold to play golf anyway.

Isn’t everybody taking a Four Million Dollar vacation this Christmas?  No.  But we’re all paying for it!

Here’s some music for their trip -

According to an article on ABC News, the killing of Osama Bin Laden has been voted “Story of the Year”:

“The killing of Osama bin Laden during a raid by Navy SEALs on his hideout in Pakistan was the top news story of 2011, followed by Japan’s earthquake/tsunami/meltdown disaster, according to The Associated Press’ annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors.

The death of bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader who masterminded the Sept. 11 terror attacks, received 128 first-place votes out of 247 ballots cast for the top 10 stories. The Japan disaster was next, with 60 first-place votes. Placing third were the Arab Spring uprisings that rocked North Africa and the Middle East, while the European Union’s financial turmoil was No. 4.”

Progressive caucus member Mike Honda(D) admitted that Obama and the Democrats ‘Didn’t Know What The Hell Was Going On’ when passing the Obama Stimulus in 2009.

Honda then goes on to give an explanation that proves they still don’t know what the hell is going on.

HT Daily Caller via Breitbart TV

American Thinker has a lengthy and well documented report on the mysterious wholesale disappearance of online legal reference information involving case precedent for presidential eligibility based on U.S. citizenship.

Coding error or cover up? You be the judge.

From The Daily Caller:

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar’s office announced on Thursday morning that it has 75 cosponsors on its House of Representatives resolution of “no confidence” in Attorney General Eric Holder’s ability to serve.

Between the 59 congressmen demanding that Holder resign and those who have signed onto Gosar’s resolution, there are now a total of 85 members of Congress who don’t trust Holder in his office.

“Impeach Holder” movements are gaining momentum around the country.

The ever-widening tragic scandal of Fast and Furious continues to bring bad news about the flawed operation.  Was it to boost support for gun control? Did they help the cartels launder money in addition to selling them illegal arms? Are they covering up their complicity?  At what level of government were the decisions made or approved ?
The mainstream media have circled their wagons around the White House and the Department of Justice, but the disclosures and the emails just keep leaking out.
Will Holder listen?  Or will he stonewall while he continues to pack the DOJ with lefty lawyers that will take years to root out?

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.  Holder picks his nose.

h/t The Patriot Update

MSNBC star Al Sharpton owes the IRS $2.6 million… But he did finally pay the Peabody Hotel in Memphis $106,981 that he owed for a 2008 conference.
The New York Post reported:

The Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit paid him nearly $242,000 — even as it carried $1.6 million in debt, according to documents obtained by The Post.

In all, the controversial activist and his empire, including the National Action Network and two for-profit companies, were $5.3 million in the red, public records show.

Most of NAN’s money woes stemmed from more than $880,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes, interest and penalties. It also paid more than $100,000 to settle two lawsuits, byproducts of the unpaid bills.

And it still owed $206,252 in loans to Sharpton’s for-profit Bo-Spanky Consulting Inc. and Sharpton Media LLC, the records show.

Sharpton drew a $241,732 salary and perks that included first-class or charter air travel, tax filings show. He owes the IRS $2.6 million in income tax, and nearly $900,000 in state tax.

The defunct Rev-Al Communications Inc. owes the state almost $176,000, and Bo-Spanky is $3,500 behind on state-tax liens.

Sharpton has said he is on a repayment plan with state and federal-tax authorities.

NAN last year took in more than $3 million in donations, which allowed it to chip away at its tax burden. This year, its board of directors voted to resolve the tax issues and paid all back state taxes, said Executive Director Tamika Mallory.

The civil-rights group is also addressing the $883,503 it owes in federal payroll taxes, she added.

And it is close to finished repaying the Peabody Hotel in Memphis $106,981 owed since 2008, when NAN skipped out on its bill after its annual convention, according to its 2010 audited financial statements.

The Iranian regime announced today that they will build their own drones based on the RQ-170 Semtinel it captured this week.
Fars News reported:

A senior parliamentarian underlined Tehran’s advanced technological capabilities and possibilities, and said the Iranian Armed Forces intend to simulate the design and reproduce the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft that they downed in Eastern Iran last week.

“Relying on their scientific capabilities, the Armed Forces will be able to simulate the RQ-170 aircraft soon,” Vice-Chairman of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi told FNA on Sunday.

“Iran enjoys different possibilities and precious technologies that the enemies are not aware of,” he added.

Ebrahimi stressed the importance and preciousness of the drone for Iran, and said understanding and using the technology of the stealth drone and its systems is the best thing Iran can do at present.

On Saturday, another Iranian lawmaker said Tehran has the needed technology to decode the intelligence gathering systems of the drone.

“Since the hi-tech drone was downed, Americans have been seriously worried about the intelligence inside its systems, but they should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran will decode the intelligence and data existing in the drone systems by means of its highly-advanced technology,” member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Seyed Hossein Naqavi told FNA.

He reiterated that decoding the intelligence in the RQ-170 spy aircraft will provide the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Forces with vitally important information.

Barack Obama had an opportunity to recover or destroy the captured drone but he didn’t. Now the Iranian regime is already talking about using the technology against its enemies.
Another Obama failure.

Hat Tip Mara