Club for Growth defends involvement in NY – 23 race
Don’t call ‘Mighty Mouse’ a hero, hubby insists: Sgt. Kim Munley’s brave actions give ‘Hero’ reason
Sunday, November 8th 2009, 4:00 AM
Don’t call ‘Mighty Mouse’ a hero, hubby insists: Sgt. Kim Munley’s brave actions give ‘Hero’ reason
BY MATTHEW LYSIAK IN FORT HOOD, TEX., AND BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Kim Munley who shot alleged gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, at Fort Hood in Texas with her family.
Sgt. Kim Mulney’s husband said, ‘She’s going to get a good laugh out of all the hero talk.’ CLICK PHOTOS for more pictures of Fort Hood horror.
She stared death in the face, got hit by three bullets and took down a bloodthirsty gunman – saving countless lives.
Still, Sgt. Kim Munley would never want to be seen as a hero.
“She’s going to get a good laugh out of all the hero talk,” her husband, Staff Sgt. Matthew Munley, told relatives at the Metroplex Hospital where the diminutive dynamo is recovering.
The proud hubby, a soldier recently transferred from Fort Hood to Fort Bragg, N.C., came to visit his courageous wife yesterday for the first time since she was wounded in the bloodbath at the Army base in Texas.
Kim Munley, a civilian police officer, was shot in both legs and a wrist.
“I’m here to see my wife,” Matthew Munley told nurses as he entered the hospital’s fourth-floor intensive care unit while sporting a Philadelphia Phillies sweatshirt.
via Don’t call ‘Mighty Mouse’ a hero, hubby insists: Sgt. Kim Munley’s brave actions give ‘Hero’ reason .
11/08/2009
Big question mark: Fate of health care in Senate
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR (AP)
WASHINGTON — The glow from a health care triumph faded quickly for President Barack Obama on Sunday as Democrats realized the bill they fought so hard to pass in the House has nowhere to go in the Senate.
Speaking from the Rose Garden about 14 hours after the late Saturday vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”
The problem is that the Senate won’t run with it. The government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the Senate.
If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome GOP filibusters.
“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said dismissively.
Democrats did not line up to challenge him. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.
Nonetheless, the House vote provided an important lesson in how to succeed with less-than-perfect party unity, and one that Senate Democrats may be able to adapt. House Democrats overcame their own divisions and broke an impasse that threatened the bill after liberals grudgingly accepted tougher restrictions on abortion funding, as abortion opponents demanded.
via The Associated Press: Big question mark: Fate of health care in Senate.
Sunday, November 08, 2009
New York-Based Radical Muslim Hails Fort Hood Massacre
Yousef al-Khattab, formerly Joseph Cohen, is seen here in an undated photograph.
NEW YORK — A New York City bicycle cabbie who mocked the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl and posted a prayer on the Web calling for the murder of Jews is now sending a “Get Well Soon” message to the suspected Fort Hood gunman, the New York Post reported.
Yousef al-Khattab, 41, a radical Muslim in the borough of Queens who runs RevolutionMuslim.com, claims on the site that the soldiers massacred at the Texas base deserved to be massacred, and he insists the victims are in “eternal hellfire.” As for the suspected gunman — Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — Al-Khattab hails him as a hero.
“An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a pre-emptive attack,” al-Khattab wrote on the site. “Get well soon Major Nidal. We love you.”
Tue Nov 3, 2:43 pm ET
European court: No crucifixes in Italian schools
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer
ROME – The Vatican on Tuesday denounced a ruling by the European court of human rights that said the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms.
In a decision that could force a review of the use of religious symbols in government-run schools across Europe, the court ordered Italy to pay a euro5,000 ($7,390) fine to a mother in northern Italy who fought for eight years to have crucifixes removed from her children’s public school classrooms. The Italian government said it would appeal.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the crucifix was a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in Italian history and culture and was a symbol of unity and welcoming for all of humanity — not one of exclusion.
He said a European court had no right intervening in such a profoundly Italian matter and said “it seems as if the court wanted to ignore the role of Christianity in forming Europe’s identity, which was and remains essential.”
via European court: No crucifixes in Italian schools – Yahoo! News.
11/7/09 12:28 PM EST
Palin rallies thousands of abortion opponents
By JONATHAN MARTIN |
WEST ALLIS, Wisc. – Sarah Palin rallied thousands of abortion opponents Friday night with a a stark warning that the same philosophy that allows abortion rights could soon be invoked to allow the government to cut off health care for the elderly or children with special needs.
Speaking to a fund-raising banquet of Wisconsin Right to Life, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee asserted that if policy-makers don’t believe a child in the womb is valuable, then “perhaps the same mind-set applies to other persons.”
“What may they feel about an elderly person who doesn’t have a whole lot of productive years left,” she asked an audience of about 5,000 in an airplane hangar-like exhibition hall at the Wisconsin state fairgrounds just outside of Milwaukee. “In order to save government money, government health care has to be rationed… [so] than this elderly person that perhaps could be seen as costing taxpayers to pay for a non-productive life? Do you think our elderly will be first in line for limited health care?
“And what about the child who perhaps isn’t deemed normal or perfect per someone’s subjective measure of their use or questionable purpose in the eyes of a panel of bureaucrats making our healthcare decisions for us,” she continued.
Palin did not expressly raise the prospect of government-mandated “death panels” to determine who lives or dies – the incendiary and inaccurate charge she made over the summer about Democratic health care plans—but repeatedly suggested that liberal social policies could lead to de facto euthanasia.
via Palin rallies thousands of abortion opponents – Jonathan Martin – POLITICO.com.
November 06, 2009
Medical response to the Ft. Hood massacre
By John Dale Dunn, MD
Yesterday was beautiful warm blue, blue, make-you-happy, sky day in Texas. I was scheduled to work a shift at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, Texas, the busiest emergency department in the Army, at a base with always more than 50 thousand soldiers.
I have been a civilian contract emergency physician at Fort Hood since 2003. I teach Army Residents and students and mid level practitioners emergency medical practice, working alongside the main group of remarkable and able Army Physician Faculty, who do what I do, and are regularly deployed “down range” to support the Army mission in the field.
I was one of many physicians from the central Texas area who filled in during the hot war in Iraq, and I stayed on. I can’t think of a better job than caring for and thanking thousands of soldiers and their families and teaching some of the finest specimens of American youth extant — people who haven’t forgotten the virtues and the concepts of duty, honor and country and make their parents and families proud. Somedays I am overcome by the good I see in these students and physicians in training. I am one lucky old doc.
Tragedy struck Fort Hood today, sudden, violent. I write of the best damn mass casualty drill that could be imagined, made so by extraordinary efforts in the face of a mountain of awful human carnage. Dozens of ambulances from everywhere, helicopters in the sky, soldiers and Army medics and paramedics working the scene with efficiency and competence and cooperation among area hospitals that allowed remarkable and effective evacuation, triage, use of resources and superlative resuscitation. I couldn’t help but note and admire their performance — and be happy they are my colleagues and friends in many cases.
via American Thinker: Medical response to the Ft. Hood massacre.
Fri., Nov. 6, 2009, 2:50 PM
Fort Hood’s 9/11
By RALPH PETERS
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting “Allahu Akbar!” committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.
What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.
This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.
When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as “Palestinian” in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an “Islamist terrorist.”
But the president won’t. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as “Islamist terrorism” in ObamaWorld.
And the Army won’t. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America-haters is safer than calling terrorism “terrorism.”
And the media won’t. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops — despite their crocodile tears.
via Fort Hood’s 9/11.
NOVEMBER 5, 2009, 12:40 P.M. ET
The Madness of Queen Nancy
By JOHN FUND
It’s one thing to be serene under fire, it’s another to be delusional.
More than a few Democrats in Congress are perplexed and worried that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting on ramming through a 1,900-page health care bill on Saturday, just days after her party took heavy losses in Tuesday’s elections. “It reminds me of Major Nicholson, the obsessed British major in the film ‘Bridge on the River Kwai,’” one Democrat told me. “She is fixated on finishing her health care bridge even as she’s lost sight of where it’s going and what damage it could cause to her own troops.”
Indeed, the Speaker’s take on Tuesday’s off-year elections struck some of her own members as delusive “happy talk.” “From our perspective, we won last night,” a cheerful Ms. Pelosi told reporters, citing her party’s pick-up of a single House seat in a New York special election and retention of another strongly Democratic seat in California.
That’s not how many of her own troops see it. Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama told Politico.com that members are “very, very sensitive” to the fact that the agenda being pushed by party leaders has “the potential to cost some of our front-line members their seats”
On health care, added New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell: “People who had weak knees before are going to have weaker knees now.”
Ms. Pelosi, however, apparently thinks the moment is ripe to use sheer political muscle to pass legislation reordering one sixth of the economy, with zero Republican support. The right mixture of “incentives” and Rahm Emanuel-style pressure, she believes, will bring enough Democrats to heel to vote for the bill.
11/06/09 04:14 PM ET
Obama holds media power lunch
By Eric Zimmermann -
President Obama dined today with some of Washington’s most influential journalists.
Here’s the list of attendees, via ABC News:
-Mike Allen, Politico
-David Brooks, New York Times
-Chris Cillizzaa, Washington Post
-Gail Collins, New York Times
-Howard Fineman, Newsweek
-David Gergen, CNN
-Mara Liasson, NPR and Fox News Channel
-Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo.
-John Meacham, Newsweek
-Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
-Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times.
David Brooks is said to be courted regularly by the White House. The inclusion of Josh Marshall, meanwhile, represents the White House’s continued effort to reach out to the blogosphere.
via Obama holds media power lunch – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.
An undercover state investigator removes computers from the ACORN offices in New Orleans, Friday, Nov. 6, 2009. A warrant was obtained to seize computers, hard drives and other documents after ACORN attorneys said two unidentified former employees took computers and other items when they left the organization. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Nov 6, 9:39 PM EST
Computers, records seized at ACORN offices in La.
By CAIN BURDEAU – AP
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — State investigators raided ACORN offices on Friday, taking away computer hard drives and documents as part of a probe into alleged embezzlement and tax fraud when the organization’s national headquarters was based in New Orleans.
“This is an investigation of everything – ACORN, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities, specifically as it relates to any potential violations of Louisiana law,” Assistant Attorney General David Caldwell said.
ACORN staff on the scene declined to comment, but an attorney for the group said in a statement the raid was prompted by allegations that former ACORN employees had removed or altered electronic documents and may do so in the future.
Attorney Pamela Marple said ACORN was cooperating and called the raid exhaustive, saying investigators wanted “virtually every document in the possession of ACORN and any related entity.”
House Dems struggle for final votes on health care
By DAVID ESPO (AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — Amid intense lobbying by the Obama administration, House Democratic leaders struggled Friday for the final votes needed to pass sweeping health care legislation, offering fresh concessions to abortion opponents and working to ease concerns among Hispanic holdouts.
“We’re very close” to having enough votes to prevail, said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, although he added a scheduled Saturday vote could slip by a day or two and sought to pin the blame on possible Republican delaying tactics.
“Nice try, Rep. Hoyer, but you can’t blame Republicans when the fact is you just don’t have the votes,” shot back Antonia Ferrier, spokeswoman for the GOP leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio.
Hours later, Democrats were still trying to get them.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over meetings well after dark with Democratic abortion foes, whose votes were critical to the bill’s fate, then with supporters of abortion rights, who are among the health legislation’s biggest advocates in the House.
It was not clear precisely what concessions were under discussion. In general, the issue in dispute was the availability of abortion services in insurance policies to be sold in a proposed new federally run insurance exchange, and also in a new government coverage option included in the bill.
via The Associated Press: House Dems struggle for final votes on health care.
Updated 9:18 AM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting
A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama.
By ROBERT A. GEORGE
President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.” Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
via Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting | NBC Chicago .
