What kind of a site is Peter Daou running these days when one is obliged to sit through an online advertisement for THE HOT SEX HANDBOOK by Tracey Cox ( a purposeful double-entendre to be sure) to gain free access to the site? I’m a fairly regular reader and have had the good fortune to have Peter publish some of my posts from time to time. He’s a gentleman and has encouraged and supported this neophyte blogger, and for that I am in his debt.

But I’ve never encountered this sort of thing. The “Daou Report” provides an excellent compendium of compelling political writing from the Left and Right sides of the blogosphere. I’m a fan (albeit a cheap one). But I won’t be one for long if this is the drawbridge over which one must cross to gain free entry.

Oral sex guides and “sex toys tried and approved.” Approved by whom, Peter? And “foreplay ideas” to keep me “amused for months.” Goodness, Peter; I suppose you’ll next offer a forum for Bi-Polibloggers.

While I sat in front of my computer being assailed by Salon’s lack of discretion, it brought to mind those ubiquitous Adults Only XXX shops and the oversized billboards heralding their wares that line the interstates these days. I also thought for a moment that I had stumbled upon an online Democratic Party fundraiser promoting “Family Values.” I kept waiting to see Whoopie Goldberg’s and John Kerry’s mugs materialize and with one or the other winking at me.

POSTSCRIPT: I have exchanged emails with Peter Daou this evening. He assured me that he has no decision-making authority with respect to the advertisements Salon chooses to run on the “Daou Report” site. Peter, gentleman that he is, apologized if I was offended by this particular ad. I replied that I was more disappointed than offended and that, in my opinion, the ad was smptomatic of the coarsening of America. The “Daou Report” is an excellent site and I, for one, dislike seeing it compromised by these sorts of advertisements. It’s not enough to say that it is simply illustrative of the age in which we live. To me, it’s illustrative of too many people being accepting of the commercial crassness of the few. Remember, the age we live in is precisely what we make of it.

First Justice Souter; now Justice Breyer. Seems turnaround is fair play, and appropriately so, when five justices of the United States Supreme Court decide to stretch the concept of eminent domain to include local governments taking private property for the benefit of private commercial interests, rather than purely public interests. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see these activist judges get a taste of their own medicine for a change so they could better understand the impact of their decisions?

HAT TIP: “Stones Cry Out” and “Free Republic”

How many times have I written that the notion that most illegal aliens are simply desperate people searching for a better life in America is bogus? Don’t be deceived by the leftist, do-gooder propaganda. Illegal aliens fill our prison systems, clog our courts, and become lawbreakers the minute they breech our borders and the lawlessness oftentimes doesn’t end there. Did you know that 47.2% of the deportees in 2004 had criminal convictions?

This article by Jim Kouri, published in “The Conservative Voice,” is a must read. In it, Mr. Kouri points to the success to date of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Operation Predator campaign to round up illegal aliens who prey upon children — i.e., foreign national pedophiles.

Operation Predator is Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s comprehensive initiative to safeguard children from foreign national pedophiles, international sex tourists, Internet child pornographers and human traffickers. Operation Predator evolved out of ICE’s mission to find and deport illegal aliens, particularly those with criminal records. The majority of the arrests under Operation Predator - roughly 85% - have involved foreign nationals in this country whose child sex crimes make them removable from the United States. By matching immigration databases with state Megan’s law directories, ICE agents have arrested more than 1,800 registered sex offenders.

Operation Predator also has an important international component, as leads developed by domestic ICE offices are shared with ICE Attaché offices overseas and foreign law enforcement for action. To date, leads shared by ICE with foreign authorities have resulted in the arrest of roughly 1,000 individuals overseas.

If you want shocking examples, then please read the following!

Now, then, are you beginning to comprehend what Congress’ and the president’s gross indifference to our nation’s porous borders translate into apart from national security concerns? Do you see why amnesty legislation is not legitimate immigration reform and must be rejected?

Do read the entire article by Jim Kouri. Then write to your congressmen and the president and demand that our borders be sealed.

DO NOT PASS GO without reading this important post by Frank Laughter of “Common Sense Junction” on the illegal alien’s gambit of choice — having a baby (babies) in America. It may ruin your Sunday, but then again it may wake you up to the realities of the runaway illegal alien problem in this country!

Border security and immigration reform must become front burner issues! This is the kind of information that may arouse American voters.

Recall Jesse Jackson’s clarion call for a Black-Hispanic coalition? I wrote on this at length earlier in the month.

Well, to read this piece in the “Los Angeles Times,” you might conclude that ol’ Jesse doesn’t have his finger on the pulse of the black community any longer (if he ever did).

HAT TIP: “Lucianne”

FOLLOW-UP: More on this today (Sunday) from “Polipundit.”

I split from you, Senator Frist … permanently!

You join Senator John McCain as the second of two Republicans with 2008 presidential ambitions who I will do everything in my power to help defeat in the primaries.

SOURCE: This Fox News story.

POSTCRIPT: The following is from the “Eagle Forum” (316 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Suite 203, Washington D.C., 20003) …

FRIST SUPPORTS KILLING HUMAN EMBRYOS

Tell Senator Frist you can’t be pro-life and support killing embryos!
This morning, Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) revealed what many have speculated for several years — he supports using your taxpayer dollars to kill human embryos. He supports expanding President Bush’s policy which prohibits federal funding of embryonic stem cell research on embryos killed after August 9, 2001. Senator Frist supports allowing scientists to experiment on human embryos “leftover” at fertility clinics. For him, as long as parents sign a form, your tax dollars should be used to kill that embryo for scientific research.

After demurring for months, Senator Frist is now supporting the Castle/Specter bill which undermines President Bush’s policy on embryonic stem cell research.

“I am pro-life. I believe life begins at conception. An embryo is nascent human life. It’s genetically distinct. It’s living. This position is consistent with my faith. To me it isn’t just a matter of faith, it’s a matter of science. . . . We were all once human embryos. That human embryo has moral significance and worth. It deserves to be treated with utmost dignity and respect. I also believe embryonic stem cell research should be encouraged and supported.”
— Senator Bill Frist
July 29, 2005

Senator Frist cannot have it both ways. Saying you are pro-life, doesn’t make you pro-life. The pro-life position remains that human life should not be harmed, destroyed, or manipulated in any way. If taxpayer dollars are to be spent, they should be spent on non-embryonic stem cells (such as cord blood and bone marrow), where over 65 diseases have been successfully treated in humans. Even in the case of ethical research, experiments are never performed in humans before first proving successful in animals. Embryonic stem cell research has not treated even one sick rat!

Senator Frist should hear from every pro-lifer TODAY! Please call his Washington D.C. and district offices. He must know that his presidential hopes will never be realized as long as he supports killing human embryos for experimentation.

Take Action

Call Senator Frist and tell him his decision to support killing human embryos makes him clearly NOT pro-life. Be sure to call both DC and district offices.

Sen. Frist offices: Washington, D.C.: 202-224-3344; Nashville: 615-352-9411; Memphis: 901-683-1910; Knoxville: 865-637-4180; Chattanooga: 423-756-2757; Jackson: 731-424-9655; Kingsport: 423-323-1252.

Call President Bush and tell him we expect him to veto any legislation that supports federally funded killing of embryos!

White House Comment Line: 202-456-1111

“The Anchoress” defends our peripatetic president’s 50th trip to his Crawford, Texas ranch during the five years of his presidency in this post and I agree with her that it should be his or any president’s prerogative to escape the confines of the fish bowl existence in the White House and the politically-charged city that surrounds it.

However, I lament that President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch isn’t in one of the Texas counties contiguous to the Mexico border so that he and Laura could live the existence when at their ranch that Bush’s misguided immigration and border security policies have foisted upon Texas property owners who suffer the travail of being incessantly overrun and threatened by illegal aliens, many of them lawbreakers and gang members fleeing Mexico. Maybe then the president would get it through his head that not just the borders of Iraq need securing.

Case in point: read this story on MS-13 gang members human smuggling operations through Bee County, Texas, which is in the Rio Grande Valley Sector along the Texas-Mexico border! What if the Secret Service had to guard the president and First Lady against MS-13 intrusion when the nation’s First Family was staying at the ranch?

FOLLOW-UP: More on what Texas ranchers in the Rio Grande Valley are experiencing!

Samantha Levine of the “Houston Chronicle’s” Washington Bureau reported in the newspaper’s July 29th edition (registration required) that U.S. Representative John Culberson (R-TX) has introduced legislation — H.R. 3622 — that would permit border states (e.g., Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California) to “establish armed militias to catch people trying to illegally cross from Mexico and Canada.” These militias would be known as the “Border Protection Corps.”

As Ms. Levine writes:

The bill, which he called a “thunderclap,” is more than a solitary, symbolic gesture by the Republican lawmaker: It has 46 Republican co-sponsors.

It comes as the White House, Congress and local officials are becoming increasingly immersed in efforts to find the best way to secure the borders and perhaps also establish a “guest worker” program to let immigrants stay in the United States as temporary legal residents.

Gov. Rick Perry indicated he is open to Culberson’s idea.

“Illegal immigration has become a pervasive problem in this country, and it is a drain on our economy,” Perry said. “Regardless of the mechanism, the federal government must provide a stronger presence along the border and must provide substantially more funding for border protection.”

Then there is this piece in today’s “Houston Chronicle” by Jacques Billeaud, reporting that several law enforcement agencies in Arizona “have launched special units devoted to fighting human smuggling, an unusual move because immigration has long been the province of the federal government.”

Mr. Billeaud continues:

Local and state authorities have long pursued cases against immigrants who violate Arizona law, but they previously haven’t been able to arrest smugglers, unless they committed state crimes.

Political pressure has been mounting for the state to do more since the federal government tightened enforcement of the borders in Texas and California in the mid-1990s and a heavy flow of illegal immigrants began coming through Arizona.

Last year, Arizona voters approved a law that denied some government benefits to illegal border-crossers. State legislators then passed the law that would allow local and state police to arrest immigrant smugglers but didn’t provide any additional money for police. Some local officials have said it will be of limited use because they don’t have the time or money to build cases against smugglers.

Both initiatives suggest that the “Minuteman Project” is having its intended effect and this writer salutes that organization!

The Bush Administration (like the Clinton Administration before it) can continue to keep its head buried in the sand vis-a-vis this nation’s porous borders and the national security problems they pose, but, more and more, indications are that border security and immigration reform are moving to the front burner on the national political scene and something must be done and that something is not misguided (but deliberate) Kennedy-McCain authored amnesty for illegals.

What this writer would like to see is an end to the “Sanctuary City” laws that hamstring local police from questioning suspects with respect to their immigration status.

Much needs doing, but at least a seismic shift is occuring in Washington now from patent indifference to a reluctant admission that illegal immigration is out of control. The key is to keep the solution-making out of the hands of the liberals.

Matt Drudge links today to this “NewsMax.com” poll asking six (6) questions of its readers with respect to a John McCain candidacy for the presidency in 2008.

The only “stump-the-band” kind of question is whether or not one would vote for John McCain over Hillary Clinton, and as much as I dislike McCain’s political machinations, grandstanding, and singular RINO-credentials, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat over the quintessential Liberal in sheep’s clothing — Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To be clear, this blog is aligned with “Blogs For McCain’s Opponent” (see right sidebar), albeit with the one afore-mentioned caveat, and only if the veritable Sword of Damocles was hanging over my head in the voting booth would I vote for this turncoat.

McCain has become anathema to me and I have said so a number of times.

“Minivandad72″ thinks so and makes a convincing case in this post that ought to be read by concerned parents and grandparents, and particularly given this statistic (courtesy of CNN) on widespread teen use of the Internet.

As this concerned blogger writes:

While doing a little research about the Yahoo chatroom shutdown I ran a google search and found a forum full of individuals discussing the recent shutdown of the user-created chatrooms. While reading through the different posts I came across a link (which I will spell out, you’ll have to copy/paste it since I don’t want any tracking).

http://www.geocities.com/married1wannashare/

You’ll notice that this is a little “underground” movement that basically told all of the perverts where to go and hang out. Yes…if someone posted it on a forum then it’s not that “underground,” but it’s still there and it appears pretty dangerous.

Minivandad concludes:

This webpage is a geocities page…in other words…a Yahoo page. This person is blatently providing instruction to those seeking children for sexual purposes, and should be held accountable if anything should happen as a result of his directions.

Yahoo closing the chat rooms earlier this summer was only for monetary reasons…in other words, they didn’t want to lose their advertisement revenue. If you believe, for one second, that Yahoo has any sense of social obligation, then you are sadly mistaken.

You’ll find “Minivandad72″ and his better half — Minivanmom74″ — in my site’s Blogroll under the heading, Quid Pro Quo, and I heartily recommend both blogs to you.

Seems the U.S. Supreme Court managed to rankle conservatives and liberals alike when it conferred on local governments the right to seize private property on behalf of private commercial interests.

On June 23rd, I wrote:

This is a decision that should unite an otherwise divided, red state/blue state, country, as it confers on the government an overweening, virtually unlimited right under a re-written Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — one that the Founding Father’s never envisioned — to seize your home and property on the pretext that any city and its public officials know best what is best for the common good of the community. And that good is no longer necessarily a public highway, or a bridge, or tunnel, or a school, but now perhaps a privately-held shopping center or mall or industrial complex or office center.

Eminent domain has, in the process, become a virtually unchecked, unrestrained right of the government to seize private property and disrespect the private citizen.

If the notion of an out-of-control Federal judiciary has escaped the grasp of many citizens up until now, particularly Liberal Democrats, those folks ought to begin re-thinking their positions with this egregious decision by the black robes.

The “Fox News” story suggests this is precisely what has happened in the wake of SCOTUS’ blatant judicial activism.

Betsy Newmark of “Betsy’s Page” has written a well-thought post building on the observations of columnist David Broder and popular historian David McCullough about the dismal state of “history-teaching in our country.” Betsy cites the transcendence of social studies over history teaching, along with the advent of politically-correct revisionism, as among the trends in education that have relegated history teaching to the backwaters of public education.

While I do not disagree with Betsy’s observations (or those of Broder and McCullough), I would add to their respective theses the fact that far too many parents are dropping the ball by not reading history, being conversant in it, and keeping history books on the bookshelves in their homes and encouraging their children (and grandchildren) to develop a curiosity about the past and its influences on the present and the future.

Socrates said: Know thyself.

But how does one come to understand ones self absent understanding the context in which one lives and its historical underpinnings? Parents, not just professional teachers, must assume this obligation in their child’s development.

As Cicero wrote:

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history.

Rodger Morrow of “This isn’t writing, it’s typing” published this post on July 25th appropriately excoriating Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll’s bad form for crashing univited the funeral of Marine Staff Sergeant Joseph Goodrich, who died in Iraq on July 10th, and callously using his funeral as a platform for handing out her business card to the grieving family and denouncing the war in Iraq, while claiming erroneously that the Pennsylvania state government was officially against the war.

Rodger followed up by posting this piece yesterday in which he takes the “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette” to task for suggesting, and on the heels of the Lieutenant Governor’s apology to the family for her tasteless intrusion, that the Goodrich family’s complaint about Catherine Baker Knoll’s anti-Bush ploy may have been politically motivated. Seems the newspaper can’t bring itself to identify the real political player in this tawdry episode.

Rodger, to his credit, takes the gloves off:

For the media to reduce Ms. Goodrich’s anger to “politics” is to perform a kind of moral jiu-jitsu by which military people and their families are still to blame for their support of the war.

It’s Vietnam redux—but with the liberal fig leaf that “we support our warriors but not the war they’re being asked to fight.”

Which is to say that the left still spits on our soldiers (and their loved ones).

But only metaphorically—and from a politically correct distance.

Just another example, if you ask me, of the MSM coming to the aid and comfort of rank leftist cranks who grandstand their misguided causes at any opportunity.

POSTSCRIPT: Mark A. Kilmer provides some insight into how this brouhaha may play into the hands of the GOP in Pennsylvania’s next gubernatorial race. (HAT TIP: “Election Projection’s Daily Blog Roundup”).

Don’t neglect taking a gander at this banner of Hillary Clinton courtesy of John Hawkins at “Right Wing News.”

I’d like to frame this and hang it in my Study!

HAT TIP: “The Blue State Conservatives”

Ilona at “True Grit” (always a thoughtful writer) delivers this splendid post on the issue of Muslim accountability for expressing outrage and categorical disapproval of the excesses of its fringe groups — those who provoke senseless violence and the agents of terrorism who carry it out.

Writes Ilona:

First, let’s examine what we are looking at when we speak of the Muslim community exhibiting some internal control in the production of world violence and terrorism. We aren’t saying that the expectation is to control everyone’s mouth. The call to the Muslim community is to express rejection of those extreme elements, and to stop harboring and enabling the terrorists and their cells. To expose those who bankroll and encourage the slaughtering of people, the dissemination of terror for the sake of terror, and the intolerance of anyone unlike themselves. That is being asked, and it is a reasonable request. Stop supporting terrorists in your midst. Plain and simple.

I don’t believe Islam has the type of shunning and excommunication process of Christianity, but every religious and culture group has a peer system of pressure against those things which are taboo. We are saying to call outright unmerited murders of people taboo, and show in their actions and their statements that it is so. Stop enabling, stop excusing, stop winking your eyes at the evil in your midst, arising from your own.

There are ideologues of hatred corrupting Islam for their own sinister purposes and the Muslim community had better step up and in large numbers to both denounce and renounce terrorism, or Christians and Jews will soon not see the distinction between the religion and those who corrupt it.

In this age of self-centered, callous capriciousness, it comes as no shock that traditional marriage is being assailed on all fronts: by gay activists, politically-correct liberals, an MTV-generation that cut its teeth on instant and continuous gratification, and a nihilist, Euro-culture run amuck. If pre-borns can be aborted by the millions to suit the convenience of their mothers, than what chance does traditional marriage have? Bored with your spouse; attracted to another; marital problems got you down? Then just bail-out. Commitment to anyone and anything be damned.

Ed Morrissey weighs in on this ’til ennui do we part phenomenon in his excellent “Exit Strategies” column in “The Weekly Standard.”

HAT TIP: Frank Laughter of “Common Sense Junction,” who, thankfully, has resumed blogging after a hiatus owing to his wife’s serious health crisis. His is a blog deserving of being bookmarked and read regularly. I’ve missed Frank’s writing and I’m elated he’s back!