Officially opening institutions in Jewish state's capital city
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority, aided by international donors, will attempt to open official institutions in Jerusalem within weeks, WND has learned. 
While Israel has not officially approved the PA's presence in Jerusalem, Palestinian diplomatic sources said there is an unwritten agreement in which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office has agreed not to interrupt some PA activities in Jerusalem. 
Hatem Abdel Khader, a member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmad Abbas' Fatah party and a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, held a meeting today with Fatah activists in Jerusalem in which he declared the PA would start officially acting in Jerusalem. 
Official PA minutes of the meeting, obtained by WND, announced the launching of "practical PA activities in Jerusalem such as those that took place before the closing of Orient House in Jerusalem by Israeli Occupation Authorities." 
In line with previous Israeli-Palestinian accords, the PA has been barred from conducting political activity in Jerusalem, although it maintained an office, called Orient House, in an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood that previously functioned as a de facto PA headquarters. 
Orient House was closed down by Israel in 2001 following a series ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Muslims attacked the library of the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) in Gaza Friday in the latest move to drive Christians and Christianity out of the Islamist-controlled Strip.
According to a report in The Jerusalem Post Sunday, gunmen - some masked, others not - "stormed" the library, kidnapped two security guards, looted electronic equipment and stole a vehicle, then detonated a number of bombs inside the building, totally destroying the book collection.
Intent on making the area Islamically "pure," Muslim Arabs have looked for "reasons" to "justify" their targeting of the tiny Christian community - around 3000 strong - that lives in the midst of Gaza's 1.4 million Muslims.
The persecution has increased since Hamas violently took control of Gaza a year ago.
On October 6 last year, Muslims abducted Rami Ayyad, the manager of Gaza's only Christian bookstore that had been bombed by masked Muslims six months earlier.
Ayyad, 31, was the father of two small children; his wife was pregnant with their third. His shot and repeatedly stabbed body was found a day after he disappeared.
For Gaza's Muslims, ridding themselves of any active Christian presence would be cherry on top after successfully forcing Israel ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
Damascus and Tehran expect to soon be caught up in a military confrontation with Israel.
According to a report in Al-Ahkbar, a Lebanese newspaper said to be affiliated with Hizb'allah, the Syrian and Iranian-sponsored terrorist organization does not intend to let last week's execution of top terrorist Amad Mugniyah be left unanswered.
The concensus in the region is that Israel was behind the blowing up of Mugniyah's car, and Hizb'allah chief Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to make Israel pay in "open war."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the cabinet in Jerusalem Sunday he has put the Israeli Air Force on alert for a possible Hizb'allah attack against Jewish communities in the north.
Barak said Israel was prepared for the possibility that an explosives-laden pilotless drone could be sent to explode inside an Israeli community.
Original Source
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By Stan Goodenough
A Kassam rocket fired by Muslim Arabs in Gaza slammed into the ground not far from an Israeli kindergarten in Sderot Sunday.
Five residents of the Negev town - which has been pounded with thousands of missiles over the years as Israel-hating Arabs seek to kill Jewish civilians - were treated for shock following the attack.
While the Olmert government fumbles for a way to stop the rockets, and Gaza's Arabs proclaim their imminent victory over Sderot, the residents of that town have vowed not to leave.
Hundreds of Sderotians and citizens of other towns near Gaza, demonstrated outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem Sunday, calling for effective action against the terrorists and for steps to be taken to better defend the Israelis.
A special ministerial forum Sunday gave the green light for 8,000 homes in the Gaza area to be fortified against Kassam attack.
Israeli officials continue to debate the pros and cons of sending the IDF into Gaza in force.
Original Source
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And the Canaanites were then in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. (Genesis 12:6-7)
One of the arguments against the Jews’ right to sovereignty over their historical homeland, or conversely for the Palestinian Arabs’ right to a national homeland in these biblically Jewish lands, is that even though the Jews had a virtually unbroken presence here through the last 2000 years, in the centuries before 1948 it was the Arabs who comprised the overwhelming majority of the overall inhabitants, with the number of Jews almost marginal at one time.
Today this argument is applied to the “West Bank,” with some demographers pointing out that there are 2.5 million Arabs (90%) as compared to just 255,600 Jews (9.4%) in Samaria and Judea.
And since the “Disengagement” in 2005, the Gaza Strip is said to have 1.4 million Arabs, and not a single Jew.
No serious authority disputes that there were many more Arabs than Jews in Ottoman Empire Palestine at the end of the 18th century. According to respected historians like American Howard M. Sachar, ...   more »

The law does not attempt to see men as God sees them.
~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
Prologue
What happens to the efficacy of the law when a primary standard of constitutional review is undermined by the very law itself? Does it explode? Does it implode? ... or does the law just devolve into the abyss of the lowest common denominator?
What I am referring to is the reasonable man or reasonable person standard, which is a frequently used legal term that originated in the development of the common law. The "reasonable person" is a hypothetical character who is theoretically supposed to represent a sort of "average" citizen.
The capacity of this hypothetical person to understand matters is associated with the procedure of making sound legal decisions. The question "How would a reasonable person act under the same or similar circumstances" performs a critical role in legal reasoning in areas such as constitutional law, negligence (torts) and contract law.
The rationale for the reasonable person standard is that the law will promote the general welfare when it serves its reasonable members, and thus a practical function of the law is sought, along with planning, working, or getting along with others. ...   more »

Pity poor Hillary.
She worked so hard in New Left and Old Left causes in her youth only to be abandoned by the hard-line Communist Party establishment in favor of the fresh new face of Barack Hussein Obama, who seems to toe the party line without even trying – perhaps without even realizing he's doing it.
There are few things more undeniable in life than that the Communist Party USA has a party line. It has been this way since the days of Josef Stalin. With Hillary Rodham Clinton having paid her dues years ago, working with all the right people and all the right causes (or should that be all the left people and all the left causes), she might have assumed the support of this small, but highly organized and disciplined group.
If so, her assumptions have been proven wrong.
The CPUSA is going all the way with Barack Hussein Obama.
How do I know?
Sometimes you have to read between the lines. But let this Google search of the CPUSA website make your research a little easier.
It shows the People's Weekly World (it was the People's Daily World in the good old days before the fall ...   more »

Democrat sponsors act OK'd by Senate panel
that would cost 0.7% of gross national product
Barak Obam
Sen. Barack Obama, perhaps giving America a preview of priorities he would pursue if elected president, is rejoicing over the Senate committee passage of a plan that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars in an attempt to reduce poverty in other nations.
The bill, called the Global Poverty Act, is the type of legislation, "We can – and must – make … a priority," said Obama, a co-sponsor.
It would demand that the president develop "and implement" a policy to "cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt relief" and other programs.
When word about what appears to be a massive new spending program started getting out, the reaction was immediate.
"It's not our job to cut global poverty," said one commenter on a Yahoo news forum. "These people need to learn how to fish themselves. If we keep throwing them fish, the fish will rot."
Many Americans were alerted to the legislation by a report from Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media. He published a critique asserting that while the Global Poverty Act sounds nice, the ...   more »

Exclusive: Gangs Spreading In The Military
CBS News exclusive investigation: Gang activity is is known to be on the rise in the U.S. military, concerning civilian and military authorities alike. Thalia Assuras has the story.
Basic training to learn all about America's fighting force. 
(CBS) U.S. Army Sgt. Juwan Johnson got a hero's welcome while home on leave in June of 2004.
"Not only did I love my son - but my god - I liked the man he was becoming," his mother, Stephanie Cockrell, remembers.
But that trip home was the last time his family saw him alive.
When Johnson died, he wasn't in a war zone, he was in Germany.
"He had finished his term in Iraq," his mother said. "I talked to him the day before his death. He said, 'Mom, I'm in the process of discharging out. I'll be out in two weeks'."
On July 3, 2005, Sgt. Johnson went to a park not far from his base in Germany to be initiated into the 'Gangster Disciples,' a notorious Chicago-based street gang. He was beaten by eight other soldiers in a "jump-in" - an initiation rite common to many gangs.
"My son never spoke of joining ...   more »