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Ryne McClaren has a nice piece on the pork that Federal dollars purchased in Louisiana, when they could have been spent, say, strengthening levees. I especially liked this one:Remember when then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge recommended that people stockpile some...

Tom Oliphant writes in the Boston Globe:Roberts will have no trouble passing the litmus test. But his passing of it will mask the long record of his fealty to the true purpose of conservatism in civil rights for well over...

Here is some more truth that Chad Schudlt can?t handle: Kofi Annan is sitting there presiding over the absolute worst scandal in world history. The Volker Commission is pretty much establishing he was asleep at the wheel (story), and nobody,...

"Crescent of Embrace" Selected Design

Few would protest the appropriateness of a memorial at the site of the crash of United Flight 93 near Shanksville, PA on 9-11. More than a few are apparently appalled, as is the Chief, by the design that was selected:

What in the world possesses some of these people when they do something like this. Here's the group of people featured on this evening's TV special (Discovery ch.) THE FLIGHT THAT FOUGHT BACK, being supposedly honored by a design that effectively creates a large Islamic crescent on the landscape using red-leaved trees.

Are they REALLY so dense as to be oblivious to the reactions to this, or is there some other agenda of uber-political correctness? One has to wonder.

Michelle Malkin has about as complete a presentation on this as anywhere, with links to other explanatory sites.

Rocky Mountain News excerpt:Seven charges of possible research misconduct leveled against University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill are being forwarded for full investigation, a CU official announced Friday. The allegations, including charges of plagiarism, misuse of others' work, misrepresenting his...

This news, from Taking Back North Dakota.Patrick Springer, writing in Sunday's Fargo Forum, points out a poll that is pretty exciting. PMR. Inc. out of Davenport, Iowa conducted a poll in North Dakota and the results were pretty much exactly...

9/12/05 Mitchell Daily Republic:America is succeeding in the fight against terrorism, and South Dakotans have played a strong role in that fight, said U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., while speaking during Sunday?s Sept. 11 Memorial Service in Mitchell. The memorial...

A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

H/T to a former Navy shipmate for this article e-mailed to me. He offered it without comment, and if you check it out, you'll see that it speaks for itself. (by the way, he's in the Houston area, a lot closer to the action than the Chief is up in South Dakota.)

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists?myself included?did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

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