September 19, 2006

September:   Sept. 29, 2006   Sept. 28, 2006   Sept. 27, 2006   Sept. 26, 2006   Sept. 21, 2006   Sept. 20, 2006   Sept. 19, 2006   Sept. 14, 2006   Sept. 13, 2006   Sept. 12, 2006   Sept. 07, 2006   Sept. 06, 2006 JULY:   Jul. 28, 2006   Jul. 27, 2006   Jul. 26, 2006   Jul. 25, 2006   Jul. 24, 2006   Jul. 20, 2006   Jul. 19, 2006   Jul. 18, 2006   Jul. 17, 2006   Jul. 13, 2006   Jul. 12, 2006   Jul. 11, 2006   Jul. 10, 2006 JUNE:   Jun. 29, 2006   Jun. 28, 2006   Jun. 27, 2006   Jun. 26, 2006   Jun. 22, 2006   Jun. 21, 2006   Jun. 20, 2006   Jun. 19, 2006   Jun. 16, 2006   Jun. 15, 2006   Jun. 14, 2006   Jun. 13, 2006   Jun. 12, 2006   Jun. 9, 2006   Jun. 8, 2006   Jun. 7, 2006   Jun. 6, 2006 MAY:   May 25, 2006   May 24, 2006   May 23, 2006   May 22, 2006   May 19, 2006   May 18, 2006   May 17, 2006   May 11, 2006   May 10, 2006   May 4, 2006   May 3, 2006   May 2, 2006 APRIL:   Apr. 27, 2006   Apr. 26, 2006   Apr. 25, 2006   Apr. 6, 2006   Apr. 5, 2006   Apr. 4, 2006 MARCH:   Mar. 30, 2006   Mar. 29, 2006   Mar. 28, 2006   Mar. 16, 2006   Mar. 15, 2006   Mar. 14, 2006   Mar. 9, 2006   Mar. 8, 2006   Mar. 7, 2006   Mar. 2, 2006   Mar. 1, 2006 FEBRUARY:   Feb. 28, 2006   Feb. 16, 2006   Feb. 15, 2006   Feb. 14, 2006   Feb. 8, 2006   Feb. 1, 2006 JANUARY:   Jan. 31, 2006 DECEMBER:   Dec. 16, 2005   Dec. 15, 2005   Dec. 14, 2005   Dec. 13, 2005   Dec. 8, 2005   Dec. 7, 2005   Dec. 6, 2005 Archives

Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur –  Tuesday, September 19, 2006

1. Iran's prez skips chance to razz Bush - New York Daily News
There won't be a confrontation on the General Assembly lunch menu today because the Iranian president has decided to skip it - passing up his best shot at ambushing President Bush with an impromptu debate.

2. Enough Apologies - Washington Post Op-ed
Nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day.

3. Military Tribunals Will Bring Terrorists to Justice - Human Events
Military tribunals can play an important role in the Global War on Terror, and will serve as a crucial tool for helping to prevent future terrorist attacks. We are crafting a system that administers common sense justice to terrorists while protecting the American people and our men and women in uniform.

4. Prices at the pump keep tumbling - USA Today
Gasoline prices continue to tumble briskly, dropping Monday to a U.S. average of less than $2.50 a gallon. A hefty 42% of Americans polled over the weekend said they think fuel prices are being manipulated by the Bush administration to help Republicans in an election year, but petroleum analysts say the reasons are less Machiavellian.

5. Rosie's view of radicals - New York Post Op-ed
Since she apparently believes radical Islam and radical Christianity are equivalent, perhaps we could imagine what kind of life Rosie O'Donnell would be living in a country where radical Muslims, rather than "radical Christians," hold sway.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1. Iran's prez skips chance to razz Bush - New York Daily News

BY KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

There won't be a confrontation on the General Assembly lunch menu today because the Iranian president has decided to skip it - passing up his best shot at ambushing President Bush with an impromptu debate.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has challenged Bush to a debate, and when the U.S. President turned him down, he suggested he would dog Bush at this week's General Assembly.

Bush has made it clear that he does not want to run into Ahmadinejad at the UN General Assembly this week because of Iran's secretive nuclear program, its support for terror groups like Hezbollah and vile comments the Iranian leader made calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

It's not clear why Ahmadinejad is passing on the lunch, which Fidel Castro once successfully used to shake hands with former President Bill Clinton.

Chances that the two men will bump into each other in the halls of the UN have been lessened by the fact that they are speaking nearly eight hours apart.

Bush is scheduled to speak at 11:30 a.m. discussing the war on terror, Iraq and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The President is expected to single out Iran and Syria for trying to thwart democracy in the region.

"I think the President sees this ... as a struggle between the forces of extremism and the forces of moderation in the Middle East," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said, previewing Bush's speech. "And it's really a crucial time."

Ahmadinejad will address the gathering between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., according to the UN.

They are still expected to engage in a war of words, with Ahmadinejad given the advantage of being able to respond in his remarks to Bush's speech.

Bush, meanwhile, had a full schedule on his first day in the city, meeting yesterday with the leaders of Malaysia, El Salvador, Honduras and Tanzania and attending a private GOP fund-raiser at the Manhattan home of billionaire financier Henry Kravis expected to bring in $1.4 million.

Bush also joined First Lady Laura Bush; his mother, Barbara, and Secretary of State Rice at the New York Public Library for an event promoting literacy - one of his wife's pet projects.

Because of scheduling, it was becoming less likely, however, that Bush would join his wife and Clinton tomorrow at the Clinton Global Initiative conference that is going on at the same time as the General Assembly.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/453863p-381811c.html
 

2. Enough Apologies - Washington Post Op-ed

By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; A21

Already, angry Palestinian militants have assaulted seven West Bank and Gaza churches, destroying two of them. In Somalia, gunmen shot dead an elderly Italian nun. Radical clerics from Qatar to Qom have called, variously, for a "day of anger" or for worshipers to "hunt down" the pope and his followers. From Turkey to Malaysia, Muslim politicians have condemned the pope and called his apology "insufficient." And all of this because Benedict XVI, speaking at the University of Regensburg, quoted a Byzantine emperor who, more than 600 years ago, called Islam a faith "spread by the sword." We've been here before, of course. Similar protests were sparked last winter by cartoon portrayals of Muhammad in the Danish press. Similar apologies resulted, though Benedict's is more surprising than those of the Danish government. No one, apparently, can remember any pope, not even the media-friendly John Paul II, apologizing for anything in such specific terms: not for the Inquisition, not for the persecution of Galileo and certainly not for a single comment made to an academic audience in an unimportant German city.

But Western reactions to Muslim "days of anger" have followed a familiar pattern, too. Last winter, some Western newspapers defended their Danish colleagues, even going so far as to reprint the cartoons -- but others, including the Vatican, attacked the Danes for giving offense. Some leading Catholics have now defended the pope -- but others, no doubt including some Danes, have complained that his statement should have been better vetted, or never given at all. This isn't surprising: By definition, the West is not monolithic. Left-leaning journalists don't identify with right-leaning colleagues (or right-leaning Catholic colleagues), and vice versa. Not all Christians, let alone all Catholics -- even all German Catholics -- identify with the pope either, and certainly they don't want to defend his every scholarly quotation.

Unfortunately, these subtle distinctions are lost on the fanatics who torch embassies and churches. And they may also be preventing all of us from finding a useful response to the waves of anti-Western anger and violence that periodically engulf parts of the Muslim world. Clearly, a handful of apologies and some random public debate -- should the pope have said X, should the Danish prime minister have done Y -- are ineffective and irrelevant: None of the radical clerics accepts Western apologies, and none of their radical followers reads the Western press. Instead, Western politicians, writers, thinkers and speakers should stop apologizing -- and start uniting.

By this, I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it's time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn't the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain's chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Maybe it's a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800992.html

3. Military Tribunals Will Bring Terrorists to Justice - Human Events

by Rep. John Boehner
Posted Sep 18, 2006

This week, the House of Representatives will consider legislation authorizing military tribunals for suspected terrorists. This action was spurred by a Supreme Court decision issued in June in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan was an al Qaeda operative who had close personal contacts with Osama bin Laden. He was captured in Afghanistan fighting against American troops, detained, and transferred to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Hamdan -- a citizen of Yemen -- claimed that he deserved the due process privileges enjoyed by American citizens.

The Supreme Court stopped short of agreeing with Hamdan but ruled that -- without congressional authorization -- the federal government lacked the authority to bring him to justice through a military tribunal. This brings us to where we are today. Congress is faced with two choices: we can do nothing, and allow terrorists like Hamdan to either go free or go on trial in an American civilian court. Or we can authorize tribunals for terrorists. When it comes to administering common sense justice to terrorists, I believe terrorist tribunals are the answer.

By authorizing these military tribunals, Congress can draw the parameters for detaining and administering justice to terrorists like Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the driving force behind the terror attacks of September 11. We can deliver justice to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, one of al Qaeda's top lieutenants and one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists. He has already been indicted for his role in the East Africa Embassy bombings in August 1998.

The list goes on. Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi managed the funding for the 9/11 hijackings. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was the mastermind and local manager of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. And Ramzi Bin al-Shibh served as an intermediary between the September 11 hijackers in the U.S. and al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan. None of these terrorists are U.S. citizens. Each is in U.S. custody. And each has proven links to Osama bin Laden and his terror network.

Putting terrorists like these on trial in a civilian court would provide them with access to classified information. Such information -- if it fell into the wrong hands -- could be exploited on the battlefield to harm American troops.

So how would these tribunals work? The legislation we are considering is based on rules and procedures from previous military commissions, international tribunals, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It provides basic fairness for accused terrorists by allowing them the opportunity to mount a full defense. It excludes statements by terrorists obtained through torture. And it would provide defense counsel to accused terrorists with the necessary clearances to review classified information on the accused terrorist's behalf.

This legislation will also allow us to continue to gather important intelligence information from foreign terrorists caught in battle or while plotting attacks on America. As President Bush has said, the information we've learned from captured terrorists "has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they were able to kill."

Not only does this legislation enjoy bipartisan support, but it helps us meet a 9/11 Commission recommendation that America "develop a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists."

Authorizing terrorist tribunals is part of our broader effort to strengthen national security. We are crafting a system that administers common sense justice to terrorists while protecting the American people and our men and women in uniform. Military tribunals can play an important role in the Global War on Terror, and will serve as a crucial tool for helping to prevent future terrorist attacks.


http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17066

4. Prices at the pump keep tumbling - USA Today
 

Gasoline prices continue to tumble briskly, dropping Monday to a U.S. average of less than $2.50 a gallon for the first time since March.

Service stations even are beginning old-fashioned gas wars to avoid losing customers to price-cutting rivals.

"Traders were racing to see how high they could take it. Now, retailers are racing to see how low. It's crazy," says Mike O'Connor, president of the Virginia Petroleum, Convenience and Grocery Association.

A Wawa station in Gainesville, just off Interstate 66 in Northern Virginia, dropped to $1.999 Sunday, prompting competing 7-Eleven stations to match. That triggered lines and drained at least one station's tanks.

"We never have been that busy on a Sunday. I was supposed to leave at 5, but I stayed until 8," says Faisal Haq, assistant manager of a 7-Eleven about a quarter-mile from the Wawa. "We had about 600 customers. Other Sundays, maybe 300. We ran out of gas sometime after 7 p.m.," he says.

In Virginia Beach, half a dozen stations in one area that sell more-profitable items inside were selling gas for $1.999 Monday, to "get people onto the lot to make money off cigarettes, coffee, sandwiches. We haven't seen this kind of marketing in a while," says O'Connor.

Terrible's, a convenience store near Interstate 35 at Osceola, Iowa, was at $1.969 over the weekend to attract business to the affiliated casino next door. "Our intent is to be the cheapest fuel in our immediate area," manager Di Boone says.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Monday that the national average for regular grade is $2.497 a gallon, down 12.1 cents in a week. Travel organization AAA reported a U.S. average Monday of $2.495, down 1.6 cents overnight.

Last time gasoline was less than $2.50 was March 27 in EIA's survey, March 19 in AAA's.

A hefty 42% of Americans polled over the weekend said they think fuel prices are being manipulated by the Bush administration to help Republicans in an election year. The USA TODAY/Gallup Poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Petroleum analysts say the reasons are less Machiavellian: Supplies are above average, partly because summer's high prices attracted record imports. Hurricanes haven't knocked out Gulf of Mexico production. U.S. regulations permit a cheaper-to-make fuel blend in fall and winter.

"Without a shadow of a doubt, there is not any manipulation, and it has nothing to do with the approaching election," says Peter Beutel, head of energy-price consultant Cameron Hanover. The petroleum market is "too big a market to manipulate. The price just ... could not sustain itself."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2006-09-18-gas-prices-eia_x.htm

5. Rosie's view of radicals - New York Post Op-ed

By ARNOLD AHLERT

September 18, 2006 -- "Radical Christianity is as threatening as radical Islam"
Rosie O'Donnell on "The View" last week

ROSIE O'Donnell is a rich, self-proclaimed lesbian celebrity, who has been able to adopt four children in far less time than the usual rigmarole ordinary mortals undergo.

Since she apparently believes radical Islam and radical Christianity are equivalent, perhaps we could imagine what kind of life she would be living in a country where radical Muslims, rather than "radical Christians," hold sway.

Rich? Unlikely, since women are second-class citizens in such radical Muslim countries.

Self-proclaimed lesbian? At best, a social pariah.

Celebrity status? Certainly - in the sense that O.J. Simpson is a celebrity.

Gay adoption? Virtually unthinkable, much less doable.

Making a statement critical of Islam? A fatwa issued demanding her death.

On the plus side, forced to wear a head-to-toe burka. Praise Allah for that.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/rosies_view_of_radicals_opedcolumnists_arnold_ahlert.htm