Jewish state on highest alert after assassination of most-wanted terrorist
By Aaron Klein
Imad Mughniyah
JERUSALEM – Israel is on high alert today for retaliatory attacks after Hezbollah deputy commander Imad Mughniyah, one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, was assassinated yesterday in a car bomb blast in Syria.
Mughniyah, responsible for infamous deadly attacks against the U.S. and Israel, including involvement in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, was No. 1 on Israel's most-wanted list of terrorists.
According to defense officials, Mughniyah was the most important Hezbollah operative, directly planning most of the terror group's major operations, including the 2006 raid of Israel's northern border in which two soldiers were kidnapped, promoting Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon that year. The officials said unlike many other terror leaders who could be easily replaced, Mughniyah's death was a major blow to Hezbollah, explaining it would take years to replace him.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office yesterday released a statement denying responsibility for the assassination. An Olmert spokesman today added the prime minister learned of Mughniyah's death through news reports.
Still, Hezbollah directly blamed Israel for the bombing and vowed retaliation. In a recorded speech ...   more »

Court hears challenge to Mexican truck program
Mexican rigs, sometimes with hundreds of safety violations, are headed your way, according to those who are challenging the legality of a Bush administration program to let those trucks, and their drivers, roam the U.S.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has heard arguments in a pair of lawsuits over the administration program that is supposed to be "testing" the procedures that eventually could be used to let thousands of Mexican rigs cruise U.S. roads.
The cases have been brought by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and a coalition of the Sierra Club, International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Public Citizen.
"It makes no sense that while safety and security laws are continually being ratcheted up on U.S.-based drivers and companies, the DOT wants to allow their Mexico-based counterparts to get by with lower standards," Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, said.
His organization is in court over the Bush program because it alleges the Mexican-based carriers are not meeting U.S. rules and regulations regarding safety.
"Ever since we filed our original legal challenge last September, our attorneys have been chomping at the bit for this day," he said. "We are confident ...   more »

Latvia sent Russians packing on British claims NATO secrets stolen
Vladimir Putin
LONDON – Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his attacks on Britain by accusing its foreign intelligence agency of feeding Latvia's secret intelligence chief with "bogus evidence" that has led to three Russian diplomats being expelled from the country. The former Soviet Republic now is part of NATO and the diplomats were accused of stealing sensitive military NATO secrets.
The Kremlin has ordered Russian newspapers to mount a media blitz on Latvia's spy agency, SAB, and its British-born director, the burly Janis Kazocins. His liking for English-cut country tweeds and a clipped accent marks him out as a graduate of Sandhurst, Britain's training academy for the army. The son of Latvian refugees to Britain in the post-World War II era, he had been born in the industrial town of Peterborough in the Midlands.
Kazocins had a distinguished career in the army, rising to become a full-blown general who served in Northern Ireland and was a key NATO planner for the first Gulf War. He went on to become military attache at the British Embassy in the Latvian capital, Riga.
In an unexpected move, he resigned his position ...   more »

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
The FBI said Thursday it has put its domestic terror squads on the alert for any threats against synagogues and other potential Jewish targets in the United States following the killing of a Hezbollah commander.
FBI spokesman Rich Kolko said there have been no specific threats so far against any Jewish centers after Tuesday's assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, which Hezbollah and its Iranian backers blamed on Israel.
Still, the FBI ordered its 101 nationwide Joint Terrorism Task Forces to contact community sources for any information signaling ramped-up Hezbollah activity over the next month. Such high-priority orders are not issued often, but they are not considered unusual.
"The FBI monitors world events and continues to maintain a strong posture through the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces for any and all threats emanating from any terrorist group," Kolko said in a statement. "Although we have no specific threat information at this time, we remind everyone to remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity to the appropriate authorities."
Intelligence officials said there are few, if any, Hezbollah guerrillas in the United States. However, the terrorist group has a fair number of fundraisers and sympathizers in the country. The U.S. ...   more »

Sunday, He Who Walks on Water, as I refer to our Illinois junior senator, Barack Obama, appeared with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week. Senator Obama said
'We need to recognize, because Judge Alito will be confirmed, that if we're going to oppose a nominee that we've got to persuade the American people that, in fact, their values are at stake. There is an over—reliance on the part of Democrats for procedural maneuvers.'
He added
'There's one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court are judges that reflect our values. And that's to win elections.'
As is usuallly the case when Sen. Obama speaks, people have been falling all over themselves today to swoon over the wisdom and eloquence of these remarks.
Once again, I find myself distressed and mystified by the cult of personality surrounding this guy. Not only does he display a profound grasp of the obvious, his reasonable words are rarely reflected in his extremist positions and votes. I can't take it anymore. I need someone smarter than me to answer a question I've had for nearly two years:
Why does he keep getting away with this routine?
This whole nauseating ...   more »

Makes case ideology is mental disorder
WASHINGTON – Just when liberals thought it was safe to start identifying themselves as such, an acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist is making the case that the ideology motivating them is actually a mental disorder.
"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded," says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."
While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy."
For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.
Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by the two major candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination can ...   more »

Family members dispute official death toll from tainted medications
PANAMA CITY, Panama - Panama’s government has vastly underestimated the number of people who died from taking medications tainted with a chemical commonly found in antifreeze and brake fluid, family members and a lawyer for the victims said.
The official death toll, set late last month in a report by the attorney general’s Legal Medicine and Forensic Science Institute, is 115. But victims’ families dispute the methodology used to produce that figure and estimate the number of poisoning deaths at up to 300.
“We do not agree with that investigation and we don’t share their methodology,” Gabriel Pascual, the leader of a committee representing victims’ families, told The Associated Press. Pascual says his grandmother died after taking poisoned cough syrup in October 2006.
In mid-2006, people in Panama began dying after using cough syrup, antihistamine tablets, calamine lotion and rash ointment made at a government laboratory. Investigations found that the medicines were contaminated with diethylene glycol, commonly used in brake fluid and antifreeze.
Seeking to determine the scope of the mass poisoning, the government’s forensic institute analyzed 763 potential cases, concluding that 174 of them were poisonings from diethylene glycol.
The ...   more »

By OMAR SACIRBEY
Muslim Americans and political observers heralded the 2006 elections as a sort of debutante's ball for the Muslim voter, when anger and organizational heft pushed unprecedented numbers of Muslim citizens to vote and get involved with U.S. politics.
The 2008 election cycle, however, isn't quite working out that way.
Many Muslim Americans sense that presidential candidates have, at worst, conflated their faith with terrorism, and, at best, treated them as a liability to be kept at arm's length.
They're especially disappointed that Sen. Barack Obama, in denying claims that he is a closeted Muslim, left it at that. They say he could have at least defended Muslims, or knocked down the notion that being a Muslim is somehow a negative.
"I think he knows Islam isn't a violent religion, but he certainly has some sort of hesitancy to talk about his experience with it because of a fear that this will damage his campaign," said Qasim Rashid, 25, who covered the issue on his weekly Muslim-themed online radio show.
It's almost as if Muslims are asking for an Obama version of the famous "we're-not-gay" denial from "Seinfeld": "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Many Muslims say ...   more »

U.S. group appeals to Saudi king to spare her life, prosecute religious police
President Bush with King Abdullah
A Saudi Arabian court's decision to execute a woman for witchcraft has drawn the protest of international human rights groups.
The trial and conviction of Fawza Falih is a "miscarriage of justice," said Human Rights Watch in an appeal to King Abdullah, the BBC reported.
Among Falih's accusers is a man who alleged she made him impotent.
The American rights group is asking the Saudi ruler to void the conviction and to bring charges against the country's religious police, who detained her in 2005 and allegedly beat her, the BBC said.
Saudi Arabia's religious police, or Mutaween, enforce Islamic law in accord with the government's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
The illiterate Falih allegedly was forced to fingerprint a confession she could not read.
Human Rights Watch argued Falih was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and convicted based on written statements of people who claimed she bewitched them.
Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings, Human Rights Watch pointed out, asserting the trial failed to meet the "safeguards" ...   more »