I have been watching the situation in France with a mixture of emotions ranging from sadness to fascination since I have a great deal French ancestry from both sides of the family tree.

In a lot of ways, I am very sad to see the condition of this once great Christian nation deteriorate and decline.  As we know, France is not Christian anymore.  It seems those that are religious are actually Moslem.

In true French fashion, the government tried to solve this Moslem time bomb by first denying it was a problem (everyone stick your fingers in your ears and sing), and then throwing money at it.  There is nothing like denial and money to make the problems go away. (Hey, didn’t New Orleans try that too?)

Today, one of my favorite blogs, The Anchoress, posted an email from one of her readers from Paris. Marianne writes a compelling account of how things are going on from the street level.

It isn’t pretty.

A shocking headline from the Detroit Free Press:

NAACP: Republican challengers intmidating [sic] Detroit voters, poll workers

The Detroit branch of the NAACP has received more than 100 complaints today…

Naturally, the Michigan Republicans are behind it all.

At the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church at Dexter and Davison, police were called three times — shortly before 9 a.m., at 11 a.m. and shortly before 1 p.m. - said Heaster Wheeler, executive director of the NAACP’s Detroit branch. Five people with GOP tags around their necks were standing within a foot to two feet of poll workers, Wheeler said.
“You could feel their breath,” Wheeler said.

The horror. In any event, lawyers showed up and everyone argued for a while.

After an hour, the challengers agreed to stay 10 feet away from the poll workers.
The sides also disputed the presence of five challengers when there were only two precincts at the church. State law says that only two challengers per precinct are allowed, Wheeler said.

That extra challenger makes all the difference when it comes to intimidation, but thank goodness Democrats are now free to vote without Republican breathing causing problems. Of course, there is more. Republican challengers argued with an election supervisor over voter identification, which resulted in this outrageous demand.

The challengers wanted certain ballots to be pushed aside until the voter produced identification or proof they could vote in that precinct, Wheeler said.

Obviously it is racist to demand that a voter provide identification proving his eligibility to vote. Then there is the question of electricity.

Complaints also poured in early this morning when people discovered the Messiah Baptist Church, a polling place in the Seven Mile and Roselawn area, was closed due to a power failure. The polling place later opened at 8:30 a.m., Wheeler said.

Apparently the implication is that Republicans control the power company in Detroit and cut off the church to prevent votes from being cast. In a gesture of reconciliation, however, the NAACP plans on extending the olive branch.

“What we’re most concerned with is racial and ethnic intimidation,” Wheeler said.
The NAACP plans to send challengers to Livonia, Sterling Heights and other heavily white communities. “We’re coming,” Wheeler said. “If white leadership continues to be silent then turnabout is fair play.”

Can’t we all just get along?

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From the "bringing you news you never would have figured out on your own" file:

During a tornado, a mobile home is worst place to be

Next thing you know they’ll say the beach is a bad place to ride out a hurricane.

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A protest group calling themselves "Breasts Not Bombs" um, "protested" today on the steps of the California Capital today.

I find it all very amusing.

First, could we all agree that these women need to keep their tops on, please?

Second, looking through the entire slide show linked to above, there seems to be A LOT of newspeople and general media at this event.  Way more media than protesters were in attendance.  Can you tell the "sweeps" have started?

Third, I would have loved to watch The Governator Arnold handle this in person…… wasn’t he accused of pinching women’s breasts during his campaign?

The riots in France that began October 27th continue, despite efforts at imposing curfews by French authorities. The Washington Times reports that violence has even spread to Belgium and Germany, though not in the same quantities.

[French] Authorities seemed unable to control the rioting, which reached a new peak on Sunday night and spread into neighboring Belgium and Germany. More than 1,400 vehicles were torched that night, and yesterday the rioting claimed its first fatality.

German officials reported five cars set on fire Sunday night in Berlin and six in the western city of Bremen. Belgian police said five cars were set on fire outside the main train station in Brussels.

While the French government is responding by calling in additional police and attempting to enforce currently ineffective curfews, the overall European rhetorical response is decidedly soft:

In Rome, opposition leader Romano Prodi called for urgent steps to improve the quality of life in immigrant neighborhoods to keep the trouble from spreading to Italy.

"These people seem to have no realization whatsoever of what the government has just announced," said Jean-Christophe Carme, head of a police union who had been calling for a curfew since the second day of rioting. "It’s obvious by these continuing acts of violence tonight that there is a total rupture between certain French youths and the state. There is no dialogue at all."

Why of course! The problem has been a lack of “dialogue.” In fact, the situation calls for meetings:

Cabinet ministers were to meet this morning to clear the way for local government officials, known as prefects, to impose the curfews.

Of course, if more curfews do not work, they will try to buy off the rioters:

He also announced that the government will accelerate by 18 months its plan to renovate poor urban areas and triple the number of scholarships granted to students in the most troubled neighborhoods.

And finally, official French surrender via the armed forces has been delayed:

Despite calls by police unions for army intervention, however, Mr. de Villepin ruled out bringing in the military, saying, "We have not reached that point."

Still think the “Islamic States of Europe” is a far-fetched idea?

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This story out of Washington D.C. is quite Kafakaesque, but sadly not altogether shocking:

Debra Bolton had a glass of red wine with dinner. That’s what she told the police officer who pulled her over. That’s what the Intoxilyzer 5000 breath test indicated — .03, comfortably below the legal limit.

She had been pulled over in Georgetown about 12:30 a.m. for driving without headlights. She apologized and explained that the parking attendant must have turned off her vehicle’s automatic-light feature.

Bolton thought she might get a ticket. Instead, she was handcuffed, searched, arrested, put in a jail cell until 4:30 a.m. and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

Bolton, 45, an energy lawyer and single mother of two who lives in Alexandria, had just run into a little-known piece of D.C. law: In the District, a driver can be arrested with as little as .01 blood-alcohol content.

I have a few random thoughts on this:

1) What is it with the law enforcement prioritization of poor, crime-ridden cities? Washington D.C. has one of the highest murder rates in the country, and yet they allow police to arrest people who had wine with dinner (not a crime). It reminds me of reading an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune a while back. In NO they can drag you in for a hearing if you put out your trash too early (even when there are no prior offenses). They’ll try and stick you with the court costs even if they have no solid evidence that the trash was even yours. Yet New Orleans has (well, had) the highest murder rate in the country. Why focus on such frivalous things?

2) Why are police and prosecutors often so hellbent on arresting people and hauling them before a judge when they know from the outset that no crime was committed? If you blow a .03 on a Breathalyzer more than once, you aren’t a DWI offender! It’s that simple. Compare that with self-defense — in most jurisdictions, there’s an automatic arrest policy when an intruder is attacked or killed by the victim, even though our laws clearly allow self-defense. And the state will generally try its hardest to bring a charge against the victim. What sense does that make?

3) Why don’t we require some solid evidence for these crimes? There’s actually a Texas case, I recall, where an officer pulled a woman over for pulling the wrong way onto a one-way street (a common offense). He gave her a field sobriety test and a Breathalyzer, which was inconclusive. At trial, the officer said he had no independent recollection of the field sobriety test, but that he still remembered that she appeared intoxicated. Based purely on the officer’s inspecific testimony that she appeared intoxicated — but having no evidence of intoxication other than his subjective recollection — her conviction was upheld on appeal. Considering that convictions are supposed to be “beyond a reasonable doubt,” is this really enough?

All right… These are my cursory, ham-fisted reactions. What are yours?

Tory Gattis has a post on the graffiti situation, with a recommendation for how to deal with it:

There have been reports lately about the worsening graffiti problem in Houston. Private property owners are legally required to clean it up, but there doesn’t seem to be much enforcement.

I think the secret to reducing graffiti is to undermine the motivation of the “tagger”. They’re trying to impress people and show off their tags. How can we demotivate them cost-effectively? Obviously, more enforcement and catching them is not very practical. The solution is to wipe out their tag immediately. As soon as it’s discovered, by a citizen or police on patrol, it should be called into 311 and a 24-hour response team should be sent out to paint over it with some neutral color. Ideally, it shouldn’t live more than a few hours before it’s wiped out.

The problem with this option is that it costs money, and as the folks over at BlogHouston have been pointing out, Mayor White just doesn’t care.

Also, I do believe that there is a legal requirement that the property owner be notified and given the chance to correct the problem himself (which is pretty reasonable, considering that slapping “neutral” paint on may increase the cost to get the surface to its pre-vandalism state). You could eliminate this requirement, but it would probably result in expensive litigation.

I interned at Crime Stoppers while I was at Rice, and we once did a public campaign against vandalism to try and increase awareness. It’s all well and good to catch these people in the act, but that’s pretty rare. What’s really needed is for neighborhoods with severe vandalism problems to be identified, and to have a greater police presence in those areas. The city needs to invest in enforcement, but Mayor White barely even speaks of the police shortage that drives these problems. Until White changes, the graffiti situation won’t.

Remember all those Hollywood crazies who threatened to move to Canada if Bush won re-election? Well, maybe they were on to something:

A psychiatric hospital in Quebec has initiated a program to facilitate patient’s sexual relations, by providing them with private rooms equipped with beds, television, and on-demand pornographic videos and magazines.

LifeSiteNews.com spoke with University of Laval-associated Centre Hospitalier Robert-Giffard’s director of communications, Catherine Lassard, who confirmed the program, emphasizing it was a hospital-initiated measure.

The trial run will allow 60 patients access to the program and if successful, be made available to all 700 residents in six months time.

Nicole-Gagnon, the hospital’s ombudswoman and the person responsible for the program, told the Toronto Sun that "By facilitating patients’ sexual relations, we want to make sex a positive rather than a negative experience."

Yeah, free on-demand porn and sex with fellow crazy people. That oughta cure ‘em.

[Hat-tip: Relapsed Catholic] 

A Cleveland Democrat, Representative Sherrod Brown, was busted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer for plagiarizing a liberal blogger in a letter about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Mr. Brown’s staff is taking the blame for lifting the text which the Representative signed and mailed off to Representative Mike DeWine and the media.

The evidence presented by the Plain Dealer:

Roughly 90 percent of what Brown, an Avon Democrat, wrote in his letter was lifted from an Internet posting by a blogger, as Brown’s office acknowledged Monday when The Plain Dealer presented the similarities.

For instance, [blogger] Newman, an attorney and labor and community activist, posted this on his blog Nov. 1: "What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, much less interpreting the law in their favor."

Brown’s letter merely changed the last clause so the sentence read, "What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, not to mention interpreting the law against them."

Brown’s letter cited details of 13 rulings by Alito, who in early 2006 will face confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The problem is, Brown’s descriptions in 12 of the cases were almost verbatim what Newman wrote on his blog.

Whoops. The representative’s staff has taken one for the team, and blamed Republicans in the process:

We should have cited it, and we didn’t," Kuebler said. "The Republicans were rushing to confirm Alito, and we wanted to collect as much accurate information as quickly as possible."

The “rush to confirmation,” just like the 18-month “rush to war” in Iraq. It’s all the fault of those eeeeeevil Republicans. Of course, we should be generous with our Democrat friends. They have shown so much compassion for Dan Quayle and George W. Bush over their linguistic troubles.

This is sickening:

A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced a Protestant minister, his wife and her brother to prison terms of up to three years for illegally printing Bibles and other Christian publications, one of their lawyers said.

The conviction of house church minister Cai Zhuohua, 34, and his family by the Beijing People’s Intermediate Court came days before U.S. President George W. Bush arrives for a state visit.

It’s sad what the Chinese government pushes people to:

A fourth defendant, Hu Jinyun, Xiao Gaowen’s wife, was exempted from criminal punishment on charges of "secretly storing illegal goods" because she made contributions by informing against her sister-in-law, the lawyer quoted the verdict as saying.

Here’s my favorite part, though:

The prosecutor, in the bill of indictment, accused the defendants of illegally printing 200,000 copies of the Bible which were found in Cai’s warehouse but the verdict did not mention a figure.

In July, Hong Kong’s Beijing-funded Ta Kung Pao newspaper quoted Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs, as saying Cai illegally printed 40 million copies of the Bible and other Christian publications.

So the guy was able to subvert the Chinese with 99.5% success. Sweet.

UPDATED 6:36 AM, 11/10/05– Votes are being tallied, with a winner to be announced soon; stay tuned!

UPDATED 10:15 PM, 11/8/05– The early returns are in, and so far LST readers are almost as convinced that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is the biggest RINO in Texas as they are certain that "marriage" is something that involves "one man and one woman"!

As of this writing, "Proposition 2"– an amendment to the Texas constitution designed to defend the traditional definition of marriage– was expected to pass by a 77% to 23% margin.

Meanwhile, in the race to crown LST’s first-ever "Golden RINO", David "Darth" Dewhurst has jumped to a startling 62% vs. 32% lead over Fred "Snake-Whackin’-Ho" Hill.

Political observers note with astonishment Dewhurst’s remarkable staying power [as an object of loathing by grassroots conservative activists].

Barring a substantial last-minute rally by loathers of Fred Hill, an official announcement of the final vote tally will be made pending the creation of a sufficiently vicious Photoshop of Dewhurst.

ORIGINAL POST– Inspired by the Texas Association of Counties– who recently honored State Representative Fred Hill (RINO-Richardson) with their "Legislative Watchdog" award– LoneStarTimes.com thought it would get into the electoral spirit of the day by announcing a "Golden RINO" competition.

Votes will be tallied using our "Poll" feature on the upper right-hand side of LST. The competition is open to all state-level elected officials with the partisan affiliation of "Republican".

Feel free to use the comments section of this post to argue for or against your preferred nominee.

The moment of truth has arrived– Who deserves to be named LST’s first-ever "Golden RINO"?

My wife and I had the fortune of seeing Dr. Laura’s show in Dallas this last weekend. At one point in the show she joked about how she bought an ad for it in the Dallas Morning News and it was placed in the bottom right-hand corner of an obituary page (she showed the page to the audience).

She made light of it, but I was simply appalled. This was the act of immature spoiled brats at DMN. But in the second half of the show, she answered pre-written questions from the audience. One card said they heard what DMN did and cancelled their subscription immediately (to the raging applause of the audience).

Now, all you newspaper elitists out there may scoff, "Eh, one subscription. What’s there to worry about?" But may I remind you of how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time.

And judging by the numbers, the elephant is disappearing quickly – very quickly. Is there any wonder why with childish stunts like this?

Evolution, Muslim riots, gay "marriage," City Council elections…plenty to talk about today. Fire away.