Teenage Crime Fighters Thwart Robbery

They say boys can turn almost anything into a weapon. And a skateboard, when used to thrash someone repeatedly in the skull can make one hell of an excellent weapon:

Investigators said Richard Parris entered the Kangaroo convenience store located on A1A in Daytona and tried to grab cash out of a register Monday night.

Skateboarder Clinton Pomares and his friends said they took action, hitting the culprit several times in the head with the boards.“I raised my skateboard over my head and just came down on his head as hard as I possibly could,” Pomares said.”I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” skateboarder Michael Dodd said.Officers said the teens then cornered the injured culprit and held him until police arrived.Parris was transported to Halifax Medical Center at last check.

It’s all good because the robber’s criminal history spans three decades and he had just been released from prison before Monday night’s incident.

Video at the local 6 Orlando News site.

Hat tip: Crime Scene KC “Damn punk kids finally give something back to society”.

Islamic Prayer Tower Erected In South St. Louis

And damn, is it ugly!

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit was skeptical when he first heard about it on the blog, Republican Riot. So he went down there to take a look at it, himself. And yep…it was right where it was supposed to be in front of the Islamic Community Center, and from it’s loudspeakers the Islamic calls to prayer will be broadcast up to five times a day.
A naive commenter at Gateway pundit said, “Ok, I really don’t like this either but how is this different from a church steeple and the chiming of bells?
TwentyThousandTons (not PJ Momma) had this to say:

I see you have no experience with these “prayer towers”. Having spent quite a bit of time in the middle east, I know what these things sound like. And comparing them to church bells is just laughable. I could hear the damn thing IN my apartment shouting out the call to prayer several time a days, clear as anything. These things are LOUD. And the call is repetitive and never seems to end. It definitely got old, real real fast.

So what, you hear church bells once a week maybe, on Sunday? Get ready for up to FIVE TIMES A DAY, repeated over and over each time.

This is in a neighborhood where many Muslim Bosnians have relocated. Any non Muslims left in that area will probably be relocating in short order.

UPDATE:

As practically everyone in the right-wing blogosphere has seen by now, CAIR has put out a press release (sort of)* naming Little Green Footballs as a “Hate site”, and has asked the FBI To Investigate:

Hate Site Comments Suggest Violence Against Missouri Mosque.

The four comments in question (out of thousands) were in response to the LGF post about the St. Louis prayer tower, or minaret, and they’ve already been deleted.

Pat Dollard had some choice words for CAIR about the whole affair…(language warning)!

*… this CAIR press release is not a news story from the wires, although it’s not obvious at Yahoo News—it shows up in a news search for ‘CAIR’, for example. But it’s not from a news wire—it’s from a company called PRNewsWire, a very expensive paid press release service with wide distribution. That’s why CAIR always uses it for their smear jobs—and their Saudi funding pays for a lot of smear.

UPDATE 2:

Jim Hoft reports that the Imam says that there will be no loudspeakers on the minaret at this time.

UPDATE 3: 

No, wait…. a commenter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

 The city should never have issued a permit for a broadcast tower that wasn’t to be broadcasting. The notion is absurd, they will be broadcasting. And according to city officials at my last neighborhood meeting, the story has changed, they will be using the tower to call to prayer “on special occasions”. I asked if that’s weekly or what, they said it’s up to them. It’s not very nice for a religious organization to come into neighborhood and deceiving the community on their intentions. If it does become daily I’m sure it will get old quickly with the non Muslim community.

UPDATE 4: 

Great behind the scenes intrigue between LGF’s Charles Johnson, and (personal friend of CAIR rep. Khaled Hamid), Tim Townsend, the reporter for the Post-Dispatch who wrote the smear story about the blogs writing about the prayer tower.

They’re Both Copycats!

But I still think Obama’s a bigger one.

I don’t care if he is friends with the one he’s copying….using entire paragraphs word for word…from someone else’s speech is just not cool.  Hillary’s team thinks there’s a disturbing pattern emerging of Obama borrowing another person’s words, and  mean to make hay about it.

Meanwhile, Obama’s accusation that Hillary is stealing from him too, is just weak. “Fired up, ready to go” is a fairly common phrase.

“Sometimes the tendency in community organizing of the sort done by Alinsky was to downplay the power of words and of ideas when in fact ideas and words are pretty powerful. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.’ Those are just words. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words.”

is um…not.

Next he’ll accuse her of stealing the words, “hope”, and “change”.

Good One Mrs. McCain!

Mrs. Obama left her some low hanging fruit, and Mrs. McCain didn’t hesitate to pick it:

During her introduction of Sen. John McCain at a rally Tuesday, his wife Cindy interjected herself into the controversy surrounding comments another 2008 spouse made yesterday.

“I am proud of my country. I don’t know about you? If you heard those words earlier, I am very proud of my country,” Mrs. McCain said while revving up the crowd and introducing her husband.

When asked at a media availability afterward if they were responding to Michelle Obama’s comments that this election was the “first time” she was “really proud” of the U.S., Sen. McCain deferred to his wife–who reiterated her previous words.

“I just wanted to make the statement that I have and always will be proud of my country,” McCain said.

Well played.

Video at Fox News.com.

Another Reason To Be Proud…

William McGurn, who served as chief speech writer for President Bush from January 2005 until February 2008 has written an excellent article for the WSJ about the President.

It touches on all of the reasons I will forever admire the man…his honesty, resoluteness, good heart, and frankly…his tendency of being right:

When a man hangs up his byline to write for a president, he gets more than a new job. He gets to see how the press and pundit corps look from the other side of the notepad.

And over three years in the West Wing, you see a few things. You see who’s a straight shooter, and who’s full of snark. You see who’s smart, and whose outrageous behavior would have made its way to Drudge had it involved White House staffers instead of White House correspondents. Most of all, you see how conventional wisdom can keep otherwise talented reporters and commentators on the same stale storyline long after the facts on the ground have changed.

Let me put this in context with three contentious issues — one economic, one cultural, and one on foreign policy. In each case, President Bush took a clear stand. In each case, he was accused of stupidity or stubbornness and sometimes both. In each case, the facts on the ground increasingly bear the president out, sometimes dramatically. Yet the beat goes on — with no sense of the great irony that it may be our writers and pundits who are stubbornly clinging to old assumptions.

The three issues? Taxes, stem cells, and the surge. Three issues he was attacked relentlessly on, yet time would eventually prove him to be right. About the surge, McGurn writes:

Of course, if you are one of those experts who reassured us that a “well managed defeat” in Iraq was the way for America to go, you don’t like hearing the president use plain words like “win” and “victory.” Then again, you’re not the audience George W. Bush worries about.

Ears burning, Harry Reid?

During one of my first meetings in the Oval Office, the president told me and my fellow speechwriters that we must always be mindful of how his words would sound to the enemy — and how they would sound to the young Marine risking his life against that enemy in some dusty town in Afghanistan or Iraq.

That’s what I mean about his good heart.

McGurn finishes with:

President Bush hasn’t always been right. But he’s been right on the things that matter most, and he’s been willing to take the heat. I, for one, admire him for it.

My feelings, exactly.

Barack And Michelle Obama: The Most Pro-Abortion Couple In America

Michelle is getting some much deserved flack for her “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is making a comeback,” comment.

The sheer obtuseness and vanity of that statement is staggering. As others have pointed out……..nothing???

She was born in 1964, making her an adult for 26 years…and all this time she’s felt that there was no hope for our country?
What happens if Barry loses? Are we back to being ashamed?

VDH at the Corner:

I wrote not long ago that Michelle Obama is a loose cannon, and I fear that her latest is not her last. I would have thought that two Ivy-League degrees, a joint income of about a million dollars, exclusive private schools for the kids, and a nice home in the suburbs were not so bad and might suggest that hope had made a comeback well before Barack’s presidential run.

So what’s all this got to do with abortion, you ask? Nothing, really. But it led me to look into this “loose cannon”, Michelle Obama, (I mean where does this woman get off)?! And I discovered this fundraising letter for the 2004 Obama Senatorial campaign about the “so called” partial birth abortion ban:

Dear Friends:

We have all been concerned lately with the rise of conservatism in this country, (heh!) especially as it relates to women. You’ve read the alarming news about the Justice Department’s request for hospitals to turn over the private medical records of dozens of patients. This cynical ploy is designed to intimidate a group of physicians and force them to drop their lawsuit seeking to have the so-called partial birth abortion ban ruled unconstitutional.

(It should be mentioned here, that the “so called” partial birth abortion ban would have made sucking the brains out of half delivered babies illegal, and there is no health exception of the mother’s that could possibly justify this barbaric practice. - ed.)

The fact remains, with no provision to protect the health of the mother, this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional and must be overturned. Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush believe so zealously in their cause that the privacy rights of patients are under assault. They believe we have no federal right to privacy when it concerns our medical histories.

On March 16th, we have a chance to nominate a candidate who will be tireless in the fight to protect women. It isn’t simply about the right to choose, or privacy rights. It is about pay equity, about ending domestic violence, promoting health care around the world, and letting doctors decide treatment options, not federal judges.

It goes without saying that we must win back the U.S. Senate and hold our ground as a check against the right-wing executive branch. Illinois will be a key battleground and your vote is critical.

My husband has stood up for women time and again*, and I am proud of his record. He understands that casting a vote on the floor of the Senate takes greater courage than issuing a position paper. Oftentimes, a well intentioned law is in fact a flawed law. That’s why it is critical we nominate someone who has faced these tough choices. That’s why nominating an experienced legislator is so important in this race. It takes courage to cast a vote.

Who among the Democrats running has a proven record? Who among the candidates running for the Senate in Illinois has stood up to the right wing politicians and voted against their agenda? Who can we count on to keep the Bush/Ashcroft team from appointing the Supreme Court Justice that will vote against Roe v. Wade?

Please join me in sending a message of unity and strength by attending the Women for Obama Luncheon on February 23rd at the Hyatt Regency. Lunch costs $150 and includes remarks from our friends the Reverend Willie Barrow and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. To reserve your seat please call the campaign office headquarters at 312-427-6400 or log on to the Obama for Illinois Website.

I urge you to stand with me and support my husband at this event. You know the stakes have never been higher and we can’t depend on untested amateurs and administrators in this fight. Barack is a fighter and he will be a champion we can be proud of.

Thanks you so much for all of your support.

Signature: Michelle Obama

*Obama has stood up for very liberal and quite possibly insane women who believe that victims of botched abortions, (infants who have somehow survived the abortion procedure) should not receive life saving medical intervention. The accursed child’s last minutes, (hours?) on earth should thus be spent in agony, unheld, unsoothed, and unloved on a cold operating room table until he draws his last unwanted breath.

Thanks Obamas!

Even freakin’ NARAL was neutral on that one.

The Born Alive Infants Protection Act passed by unanimous consent in the U.S. Senate on July 18, 2002.

Yes, I know I’ve blogged about Obama’s profoundly pro-abortion voting record, before…and I will again and again all the way until November.

This shit makes me sick.

And I’m beginning to think that Michelle Obama has more in common with Madam Dufarge than she would like to admit.