John Kerry Insults the Troops, Again!

Oooops, Kerry shows his true colours…

President Bush disagrees and Michelle Malkin wades in with the REAL facts and commentary from US soldiers.

Abstinence – isn’t just for kids anymore!

The United States government is expanding its no sex before marriage program outside of its historical target group,

the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it’s a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

Naturally, there are a few people who are upset,

“They’ve stepped over the line of common sense,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. “To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.”

…

“We would oppose any program that stigmatizes unmarried people,” adds Nicky Grist, executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, N.Y., that advocates for the rights of unmarried people.

Strangely enough, there is a group that “[advocates] for equality and fairness for unmarried people, including people who choose not to marry, cannot marry, or live together before marriage.

Jim Dinning’s Halloween Costume

Jim Dinning’s campaign blog continues to impress:

We’re closing in on the final stretch and I can feel our team pulling ahead. It’s a great feeling!

Just pulling ahead, eh Jim? Is Dinning dressing up as an underdog for Halloween?

Stampede

The Weekly Standard’s cover this week made me laugh:

Islamism’s Nationalism and Family Values

Olivier Roy argues contemporary Islamist movements are more nationalistic than Westerners realize, and that they see Shari’a law as a matter of family law.

“An Alberta strong and free is the foundation of a Canada strong and free.”

The Calgary Herald has produced a major piece on PC leadership candidate Ted Morton. Check it out:

And it’s not the catered shrimp or pastry that’s brought them out on a wet night. They’re here to listen to a fair-haired academic whose media image is about as warm as a stack of textbooks on constitutional reform.

But when Ted Morton — perhaps the Tory leadership race’s most conservative Conservative finally takes the stage, the applause isn’t polite.

It’s thunderous…

Norman Spector on Belinda Stronach: “I think she’s a bitch.”

Sigh. Norm Spector to the rescue:

Brian Mulroney’s former chief of staff has called Belinda Stronach a “bitch.”

Speaking on a Vancouver radio station Monday afternoon, Norman Spector said “Bitch is a word I would use to describe someone like Belinda Stronach.”

At least MacKay’s comment had a semblance of wittiness to it.

Spector has chosen a peculiar hill to die on. He defended himself on the news this evening by saying, “I use that word all the time.”

First-Time and Repeat Offenders

Theodore Dalrymple eloquently makes a crucial distinction between first-time and repeat offenders, a distinction that the crime-fighters in our current government should take careful note of:

Here it is worth drawing a distinction between the primary prevention of crime (preventing people from becoming criminals in the first place) and the secondary prevention of crime (preventing criminals from re-offending)…

With regard to secondary prevention, we are often told that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the western world, and so it has, but imprisonment is used frivolously, if I may so put it. One sentence of four years has a very different effect from 16 sentences of three months, although the total amount of time spent in prison might be the same. One often finds in the most horrible cases in New Zealand that the culprit has been convicted scores, or even hundreds, of times…If a man has already been convicted 99 times, the problem is not obtaining a conviction the hundredth time, but taking his crime seriously once he has been convicted.

Bring on the Defense of Religion Act

It looks like the Defense of Religion Act floated a few weeks ago is on the right side of public opinion, if not that of the CBC and the Liberal Party:

The COMPAS poll suggested there would be significant public support for such a move, with 72% of those contacted for the survey saying that clergy should have the right not to marry a same-sex couple if it runs counter to their beliefs.

“Those numbers are at the level of overwhelming support,” said pollster Conrad Winn, the president of COMPAS. “I mean, you can’t get three-quarters of Canadians to agree on the weather.”
…
A COMPAS poll conducted last week found 57% of those surveyed said officials who conduct generally secular wedding ceremonies should be allowed to “not officiate at gay marriages,” provided there are enough marriage commissioners available for same-sex unions.

On the nightstand

Hitler’s Mufti

This unholy legacy of virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish terrorism has been an enduring one: In the sixty years since the Holocaust, Hajj Amin al-Husseini has become the hero of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, the founding father of the radical Palestine National Movement, and the inspiration of two generations of radical Islamic leaders to carry on Hitler’s war against the Jews.

David G. Dalin is a professor of history and political science at Ave Maria University. This article is adapted from his new book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope.

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