Mar 6, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
CNN reports: Ex-hostage disputes U.S. account of shooting.An Italian journalist shot by U.S. forces in Iraq shortly after being freed from her captors disputes a U.S. account of the incident in which she was wounded and a security agent protecting her was killed.
In an article published Sunday in her newspaper, Il Manifesto, Giuliana Sgrena wrote, "Our car was driving slowly," and "the Americans fired without motive." She described a "rain of fire and bullets" in the incident.
The U.S. military said Sgrena's car rapidly approached a checkpoint Friday night, and those inside ignored repeated warnings to stop. Troops used arm signals and flashing white lights, fired warning shots in front of the car, and shot into the engine block when the driver did not stop, the military said in a statement. ...
Saturday, the left-leaning Il Manifesto accused U.S. forces of "assassinating" Calipari.
Sgrena's partner, Pierre Scolari, also blamed the shooting on the U.S. government, suggesting the incident was intentional.
"I hope the Italian government does something because either this was an ambush, as I think, or we are dealing with imbeciles or terrorized kids who shoot at anyone," he said, according to Reuters. [Emphasis added]
Updates: Dave Dilegge at Small Wars Journal (see "7 March 2005") has commentary and a compilation of articles illustrating how this incident is being exploited by that "anti-war" left to smear America. Little Green Footballs is also following the story closely. InstaPundit has more.
CNN reports: White House: U.S. didn't target journalist.Responding to Sgrena's statement that the car may have been deliberately targeted, [White House press secretary Scott] McClellan said. "It's absurd to make any such suggestion, that our men and women in uniform would target individual citizens. "That's just absurd," McClellan repeated.
He said the airport road "has been a place where suicide car bombers have launched attacks. It's been a place where regime elements have fired upon coalition forces. It is a dangerous road, and it is a combat zone that our coalition forces are in. Oftentimes, they have to make split second decisions to protect their own security."
Michelle Malkin gets results regarding a contradiction in a CNN story on the Sgrena incident. Davids Medienkritik finds that previous Sgrena reports indicate she knew the dangers. And The Jawa Report has many related links.Mar 3, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Investor's Business Daily editorialized today under the title "Referendum Justice".Beneath the dust kicked up is the ugly fact that the ruling in Roper vs. Simmons wasn't based on the Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited not America's founding document and guiding law, but "national consensus" and "international opinion."
How is it that a majority of our Supreme Court justices, all with presumably first-rate intellects, can have such a fundamental misunderstanding of their duty?
That duty was made clear in Marbury vs. Madison more than 200 years ago, when Chief Justice John Marshall concluded that the court must rule on the constitutionality of legislated law.
In 2005, however, Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens use "national consensus" and "international opinion" to interpret what the Eighth Amendment means when it says "cruel and unusual punishments" are not to be inflicted. ...
Justices must decide what the framers meant by "cruel and unusual." Reading today's mood using the "evolving standards of decency" test cited by the Missouri court that initially ruled against executing juvenile offenders is like putting a finger to the wind. If they and the "living document" faction don't like what they read in the Constitution, they have to change it through the process provided.
Mar 2, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Conventionally, most people believe that morality can only be based in religious faith – that in a world without God no principles of right and wrong could exist. Related to this, philosophers have long held that no objective, fact-based, rational code of values is possible. Regarding both points, this talk shows that the exact opposite is true. The purpose of morality is to guide human life on earth – and religion is utterly incapable of it. Flourishing life requires a code of secularism, rationality, egoism and freedom. Religious faith clashes with every principle of a proper moral code, and, as such, has led, and can only lead to, hell on earth.
Details: Wednesday, March 2 at 8PM, SGM-123 (Seely G. Mudd), University of Southern California, 3667 Mc Clintock, Los Angeles CA 90089Mar 2, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From The Boston Globe (AP): Vatican decries 'religion of health'. (Hat tip Joe Wright via HBL email list)Vatican officials on Thursday [Feb. 17] held out Pope John Paul II's stoic suffering with Parkinson's disease as an antidote to the mentality that modern medicine must cure all, calling this a "religion of health" that is taking hold in affluent countries.
"While millions of people in the world struggle to survive hunger and disease, lacking even minimal health care, in rich countries the concept of health as well-being figures in creating unrealistic expectations about the possibility of medicine to respond to all needs and desires," said the Rev. Maurizio Faggioni, a theologian and morality expert on the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.
"The medicine of desires, egged on by the health care market, increases the request for pharmaceutical and medical-surgical services, soaks up public resources beyond all reasonableness," Faggioni said. ...
Psychiatrist Manfred Lutz, a Vatican academic, hailed John Paul, who for years has struggled with Parkinson's, as "the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness." ... "Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death one can, instead, perceive the truth of life in a clearer way," Lutz said. "The pope's message is 'suffering is part of life and has meaning," the doctor said.
Feb 28, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
CNN reports: Oscar ratings sink with Rock.Hollywood is now 0-3 in the world of major league awards shows. Following in the footsteps of both The Golden Globes and Grammy Awards, ratings for Sunday night's 77th Annual Academy Awards were down this year. ...
Oscar producers had high hopes that the comedian Chris Rock would, as the Oscar host, have a broad enough appeal to boost ratings. Based on the results, "I don't think (veteran Oscar hosts) Billy Crystal and Steve Martin have anything to fear," said Brad Adgate, the senior vice president of corporate research at Horizon Media, a New York marketing firm. Still, Adgate noted that Rock didn't exactly flop.
Charles Johnson made a good observation: Theo Van Gogh Forgotten on Oscar Night.Feb 28, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses
Reports Yahoo News:
With shouts of "Syria out!," more than 25,000 flag-waving protesters massed outside Parliament on Monday in a dramatic display of defiance that swept out Lebanon's pro-Syrian government two weeks after the assassination of a former prime minister. Cheering broke out among the demonstrators in Martyrs' Square when they heard Prime Minister Omar Karami's announcement on loudspeakers that the government was stepping down. Throughout the day, protesters handed out red roses to soldiers and police.
... Many in Lebanon accuse Syria and Karami's government of being behind the slayings of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 16 others in a huge Feb. 14 bombing, pressing hard in the two weeks since for the government to resign and for Syria to withdraw its roughly 15,000 troops positioned in Lebanon. [Lebanese Government Resigns Amid Protests]
CNN reports: Ex-hostage disputes U.S. account of shooting.
Investor's Business Daily editorialized today under the title "Referendum Justice".
From The Boston Globe (AP): 
CNN reports: