Trayvon Martin Case Threatens Race War in America

Well, I can't recall this much racial recrimination since the O.J. Simpson trial.

See Jason at The Western Experience, "The Trayvon Martin Narrative Changes Suddenly: Witnesses Say Martin Beat Up Zimmerman Before Being Shot."

And William Jacobson, "Spike Lee didn’t “Do the right thing”" (via Memeorandum). (And see my post from yesterday, "Progressives Tweet George Zimmerman's Address, Issue Death Threats.")

But progressives have their meme, and they're sticking with it. See The New Yorker, "Emmett Till in Sanford":

The killing of Trayvon Martin nearly went down the memory hole. He had just turned seventeen when he was shot dead late last month in Sanford, Florida. His killer, a neighborhood-watch volunteer named George Zimmerman, was not even arrested. Zimmerman told the police that he had fired his nine-millimetre handgun in self-defense. The police actually knew better. They knew that Trayvon Martin had been unarmed. They knew that Zimmerman, who is twenty-eight, outweighed Martin by more than a hundred pounds. They knew, because Zimmerman had called them when he spotted a “black male” in a gated townhouse community, that Martin had been on foot while Zimmerman tracked him in his S.U.V., and that Zimmerman had ignored the police dispatcher’s request that he stop following Martin. And yet self-defense is a potent claim under a 2005 Florida law known as “Stand Your Ground.” “If we arrest, we open ourselves to a lawsuit,” said Sergeant Dave Morgenstern, of the Sanford Police Department, presumably unaware of how pitiful (and pitiless) that sounded. Zimmerman wasn’t even tested for drugs or alcohol. Those tests were conducted on Trayvon Martin’s body, after he was sent to the medical examiner as a John Doe.

Keep reading.

And at Los Angeles Times, "Florida killing raises questions about 'stand your ground' laws."

More tomorrow, if I'm not too tired. This was a big weekend with my family as it is, but this story is literally dominating everything else in the news.

Ted Kennedy Haunts Mitt Romney’s Career

Twitchy has the headline I was looking for, "NYT: Mitt Romney haunted by flabby, inebriated ghost of Ted Kennedy."

And here's the article, "Kennedy Helped Shape Romney’s Career, and Still Haunts It":

BOSTON — When Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation in April 2006 requiring most Massachusetts residents to have health coverage, Senator Edward M. Kennedy stood by his side, beaming like a proud father. They were onstage at historic Faneuil Hall in Boston, a setting that had a special resonance for the two.

Twelve years earlier, they shared that stage as opponents in a bitter Senate race. Back then, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Kennedy of waging “untrue, unfair and sleazy” personal attacks. Now, the Republican governor was introducing the liberal Democratic senator as “my collaborator and friend.”

Mr. Romney’s complicated relationship with Mr. Kennedy, from campaign foe to health care partner, helped shape both his political career and his image. Today, as a Republican candidate for president, he is courting conservative voters, a constituency that does not look kindly upon Mr. Kennedy or the Romney approach to health care, which will come under scrutiny again this week when the Supreme Court takes up challenges to a similar measure championed by President Obama.

But try as he might to distance himself, Mr. Romney cannot escape Mr. Kennedy’s influence. On the campaign trail, he uses the senator, who died in 2009, as a foil, denouncing Mr. Kennedy’s “liberal welfare state” policies and boasting of how Mr. Kennedy “had to take out a mortgage on his house to make sure he could defeat me.”

He has said losing to Mr. Kennedy was “the best thing” that could have happened to him, “because it put me back in the private sector.”

Mr. Romney’s attempt in 1994 to “out-Kennedy Kennedy,” as people here say, led him to take stands on issues like abortion and gay rights that he has since backed away from, giving rise to accusations that he is a flip-flopper. Mr. Kennedy’s tough campaign advertisements, which portrayed Mr. Romney as a cold-hearted financier, rattled him, and his bruising loss in the race “viscerally pained” him, one friend said.

But he emerged tougher, convinced that it is better to punch first than to counterpunch later — lessons his campaign is putting to use today.

At Reason, Peter Suderman commented earlier on the video of Romney's bill-signing in 2004, "Watch GOP Frontrunner Mitt Romney Praise Liberal Lion Ted Kennedy For His Role In Passing RomneyCare":

Despite copious evidence to back up the connection, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney has yet to admit the link between the Massachusetts health care overhaul he signed into law as governor and the federal overhaul President Obama passed last year. You can understand why he's declined: Given that Romney is running as an establishment conservative for the Republican nomination, the friendly connection to the rival party's leader and his most prominent policy achievement would be, well, kind of awkward.

But when the Massachusetts law first took effect, Romney did praise a different prominent liberal collaborator as one of the law's "parents" whose work was "absolutely essential" to passage: former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, a longtime universal coverage advocate whose proposed 1975 health care overhaul was ditched after the Congressional Budget Office estimated that it would cost three times what Kennedy's staff had claimed.

Well, I like Romney --- and I have no confusion that he'd be light years better than Barack Obama as president --- but let's be honest: He's not conservative, or at least, his conversion to conservatism has been exceptionally recent. See Warner Todd Huston, "Dear Conservatives: Romney Isn’t One of Us But We Still Hold The Power If…":

Romney is not conservative. Anyone that says he’s conservative is only trying to convince themselves and is willfully ignoring not only Romney’s entire executive record when he was governor of Massachusetts, but ignoring all the tell-tale signs that his current conservative-tinged campaign rhetoric is just a show to get the nomination. Romney doesn’t mean a word of what he says. But we still hold the power to force him to stay on a more or less conservative path if he wins the White House.

Continue reading.

Los Angeles Times Poll: Mitt Romney With Double-Digit Lead in California

This is hardly surprising, but California's the biggest state, and the election could well go down to the wire.

See, "California Republicans get behind Mitt Romney":

Republican voters in California have swung behind Mitt Romney, with the national presidential front-runner crushing his rivals by double digits and substantially expanding his support in the state, a new poll has found.

Romney won 42% of registered Republican voters, with his closest rival, Rick Santorum, trailing by 19 points, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul were a distant third and fourth.

Romney's support has risen by 15 points since a November USC/Times poll, when Herman Cain was his closest competitor. (The former businessman has since dropped out.)

Yet there remains a palpable lack of enthusiasm for the Republican field. Half of GOP voters said they wished other candidates were running for president.

Barbara Foley, a 73-year-old Republican, said she would prefer former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. She decided to vote for Romney by process of elimination — she says Santorum is too socially conservative, Gingrich is smart but a "loose cannon," and Paul — "well, I just think he's nuttier than a fruitcake."

"I vote the lesser of two evils, unfortunately," said the Alpine retiree, who deeply disapproves of President Obama, notably his healthcare law, and fears the nation has grown increasingly socialist under his watch. "Mitt Romney is the lesser of the evils."

Continue reading.

That "lesser of two evils" sounds pretty disappointing, actually. But Republican enthusiasm will kick back up around the time of the GOP convention, and Mitt Romney can fire up the base with a shrewd pick for the V.P. slot. (And the emphasis there is on shrewd, not reckless --- see, "Raising the Bar for Vetting a No. 2.")

Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers Debunks Democrat Scare Tactics on Women's Health

Rep. McMorris-Rodgers exposes leftist lies on the so-called "Republican war on women":

She was also on "Hardball" this week, with video at the link.

And see the Weekly Standard, "By 21-Point Margin, Americans Oppose Birth Control Mandate," and at New York Times, "President Obama’s Approval Rating Drops."

And from Robert Robb, at the Arizona Republic, "'War on women' a Dem exaggeration":

The effort by Democrats to make the case that Republicans are waging a "war on women" has been interesting to watch. As often is the case in politics, the accusation reveals more about the accuser than the accused.

At the national level, that's been the spin to try to wrest control of the flap over the Obama administration not providing an exemption for religious-affiliated institutions -- principally Catholic schools, hospitals and charities -- from its mandate that all health- insurance plans include free contraceptives.

RTWT.

BONUS: At New York Times, "On the Right, Santorum Has Women’s Vote."

Dick Cheney Recovers After Heart Transplant Surgery

I'm glad he's okay.

See the New York Times, "For Cheney, 71, New Heart Ends 20-Month Wait."

In appearances since he left office in 2009, Mr. Cheney has appeared gaunt and increasingly frail. Last August, he published an autobiography, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,” written with his daughter Liz Cheney, in which he reported that a team of doctors assessed his heart condition before George W. Bush chose him as his vice-presidential running mate in 2000. He also described writing a letter of resignation shortly after taking office and giving it to his counsel, David S. Addington, to be delivered to President Bush if he were incapacitated.

In a government career with few parallels, Mr. Cheney, who was vice president for all eight years of Mr. Bush’s presidency, has been chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford, represented Wyoming in Congress and served as defense secretary under the first President George Bush.

He is widely considered to have been among the most powerful vice presidents in American history, working behind the scenes on policies as varied as energy and counterterrorism and advocating an aggressive assertion of presidential power.

He was a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration, and his influence as vice president during Mr. Bush’s second term was considerably diminished. But he remains revered on the political right and in the Republican Party and has been one of the Obama administration’s toughest critics, speaking out regularly despite his fragile health.

And see Lonely Conservative, "Dick Cheney Recovering from Heart Transplant, Liberals React as Expected – Updated with More Lefty Hate." And Memeorandum.

French Killer Mohamed Merah's Path to Jihadist Rampage

At the Wall Street Journal, "A French Killer's Path to Jihadist Rampage":

PARIS — The death of Mohamed Merah, the suspected French killer who met his end Thursday in a barrage of special-forces gunfire, left officials piecing together how he became the alleged homegrown terrorist behind the most violent attacks on French soil in almost two decades.

On Thursday, a more-complete picture emerged of Mr. Merah, who police say conducted seven point-blank killings in and around Toulouse over the previous 11 days.

Over recent years, according to the emerging accounts, the French citizen of Algerian descent appeared to be looking for a place to belong—seeking twice, without success, to join the French armed services.

He had also, according to his own account, sought to belong to al Qaeda. On Wednesday, as he was pinned inside a Toulouse apartment by special forces, he told a police negotiator he had trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani militant stronghold of Waziristan. Western intelligence agencies couldn't confirm his claims.

Controversy emerged Thursday over whether French authorities should have been watching Mr. Merah more closely. The U.S. put him on its no-fly list as a suspected terrorist, U.S. officials say, because in 2010 he had been in custody in Afghanistan and then sent back to France. France put him on a watch list of suspected Islamist militants, but stopped short of including him on a narrower surveillance list.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé on Thursday said authorities should investigate whether there was a failure by French intelligence gatherers. "I can't tell you what kind of failure, but we need to shed some light on that," he told French radio.

Continue reading.

Also, "French Shooting Suspect Was on U.S. No-Fly List."

New Black Panther Party Offers $10,000 Bounty for George Zimmerman, Dead or Alive

At Right Truth, "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

And Chicago Tribune, "Trayvon Martin case: New Black Panthers offer $10,000 bounty for capture of George Zimmerman."

And it was a Day of Rage yesterday at Memeorandum.

PREVIOUSLY: "Progressives Tweet George Zimmerman's Address, Issue Death Threats — 'Ima get a group of niggas to KILL George Zimmerman'."

Atheists Rally at the National Mall in Washington D.C.

At Washington Post, "Atheists rally on National Mall in show of political force."

And Reason Magazine declaims any organizational affiliations:

Reason.tv headed down to the National Mall for the Reason Rally (no affiliation!) in Washington, DC. The March 24 event was billed as the "largest gathering of the secular movement in world history" and drew a several thousand-strong crowd of damp, enthusiastic unbelievers (and a few protesting believers) to the National Mall.

Liberty and ObamaCare

More on the health care arguments coming up on Monday at the Supreme Court, from the Wall Street Journal, "The Affordable Care Act claims federal power is unlimited. Now the High Court must decide":

Few legal cases in the modern era are as consequential, or as defining, as the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court hears beginning Monday. The powers that the Obama Administration is claiming change the structure of the American government as it has existed for 225 years. Thus has the health-care law provoked an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional showdown that endangers individual liberty.

It is a remarkable moment. The High Court has scheduled the longest oral arguments in nearly a half-century: five and a half hours, spread over three days. Yet Democrats, the liberal legal establishment and the press corps spent most of 2010 and 2011 deriding the government of limited and enumerated powers of Article I as a quaint artifact of the 18th century. Now even President Obama and his staff seem to grasp their constitutional gamble.

Consider a White House strategy memo that leaked this month, revealing that senior Administration officials are coordinating with liberal advocacy groups to pressure the Court. "Frame the Supreme Court oral arguments in terms of real people and real benefits that would be lost if the law were overturned," the memo notes, rather than "the individual responsibility piece of the law and the legal precedence [sic]." Those nonpolitical details are merely what "lawyers will be talking about."

The White House is even organizing demonstrations during the proceedings, including a "'prayerful witness' encircling the Supreme Court." The executive branch is supposed to speak to the Court through the Solicitor General, not agitprop and crowds in the streets.

The Supreme Court will not be ruling about matters of partisan conviction, or the President's re-election campaign, or even about health care at all. The lawsuit filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business is about the outer boundaries of federal power and the architecture of the U.S. political system.

More at the link.

And at Reason, "$2 Trillion For a Decade of Expanded Health Coverage Under ObamaCare?"

Jihad in Toulouse

From the Wall Street Journal (via Google):

Mohamed Merah died Thursday morning in a hail of bullets as he leapt from the window of his Toulouse flat, firing on the way down. During the preceding 33-hour standoff, the 23-year-old Frenchman said he wanted to die "gun in hand." Nobody should feel sorry that the authorities obliged him.

Merah began his murder spree 12 days ago when he gunned down French paratrooper Sgt. Imad Ibn Ziaten in Toulouse. Four days later he killed two more uniformed paratroopers, Cpl. Abel Chennouf and Pte. Mohamed Legouad, in nearby Montauban. On Monday Merah attacked Toulouse's Ozar Hatorah Jewish school, killing Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two young sons Gabriel and Arieh, and seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego. What made the killings all the more grotesque was that Merah filmed them, a reminder that terrorism is, in some sense, also a form of pornography.

The reaction of the French has been commendable. Revulsion at the murder of Jewish children gives the lie to the notion that France is fundamentally anti-Semitic. Muslim leaders have lined up to condemn the killings. Security authorities have been criticized for not acting more effectively—Merah was already on a terrorist watch-list—but every free society will always be at an initial disadvantage against individual killers. "We have shown our sang-froid, our cool and our ability to overcome this kind of terrorist threat," President Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday. "We must be implacable in defending our values."

Well said. Less useful was initial speculation that the killer must have been a white supremacist since he seemed to target Jews and North Africans equally—a line of thinking that seems to have been inspired by the notion that Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik represented a larger underground movement...

Check that top link to continue reading.

And from Mark Steyn, at National Review, "Lather, Rinse, and Repeat." (Yeah, it's about Islam, despite the MFM accounts.)

And at Pamela's, "Toulouse Jihad: The Devout 'White Emir' Who May Have Inspired Jew-Killing Jihadist Mohamed Merah."

Rick Santorum Wins Louisiana Primary

At CNN, "Santorum takes Louisiana" (via Memeorandum).

And at New York Times, "Santorum Gets a Boost in Winning Louisiana":

Rick Santorum easily won the Louisiana Republican primary Saturday night, capturing a deeply conservative state with a hefty portion of the kind of evangelical Christian voters who have helped him claim victories in 10 other states.

The win gave Mr. Santorum a much-needed psychological boost but it will be unlikely to change the dynamics of the race. Only 20 delegates were up for grabs on Saturday, with 26 more to be allocated later. Even if Mr. Santorum were to claim most of them, he would still have only half the delegates that Mitt Romney, his chief rival, already has.

Mr. Romney’s win last week in Illinois, as well as his subsequent endorsement by Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, dimmed Mr. Santorum’s political prospects, although his victory in Louisiana showed how he could still complicate Mr. Romney’s efforts to capture the 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination.

In a fund-raising letter sent out Saturday night, Mr. Santorum said the results in Louisiana had sent “shock waves” through the political world.

“Tonight with our strong victory in Louisiana, our campaign has now won 11 states, tying a record and proving we can win in the West, South and Midwest,” the letter said. “Not since Ronald Reagan in 1976 has a conservative candidate won as many states as we have.”

More from Robert Stacy McCain, who's on the ground in Louisiana, "LOUISIANA PRIMARY RESULTS HQ: Santorum Wins by Wide Margin."

And at Washington Post, "Romney roundly defeated in Louisiana":

At the same time, this is likely one of the last times Romney will face such a difficult electorate.

Louisiana is the last state from the Deep South that will vote, bringing an end to what has been Romney’s most difficult region of the country.

Next month’s contests will take place almost totally in the Northeast — a region where Romney is thus far undefeated.

In addition, a few of those states award their delegates on a winner-take-all basis — something only two states have done so far — allowing Romney to expand his delegate lead more quickly than he has to this point.

I think from here on out we'll likely see Mitt Romney roll up the delegates on the way to the GOP nomination. It's been an extremely impressive run for Santorum, but polls in upcoming states indicate an uphill slog. See, for example, Los Angeles Times, "California Republicans get behind Romney."

More on that poll later...

Saturday Night Kelly Brook Rule 5

Dana Pico brings us more of the hot women in the military: "Rule 5 Blogging: Cover Girl Cosmetics Edition."

But I'll share some more Kelly Brook, who keeps getting loads of media coverage at London's Daily Mail.

See: "Don't know where to look! Kelly Brook goes for maximum exposure in see-through top and hot pink trousers."

PREVIOUSLY: "Thursday Night Kelly Brook Rule 5."

Plus, check the archives for some earlier Kelly Brook Rule 5.

More later.

Progressives Tweet George Zimmerman's Address, Issue Death Threats — 'Ima get a group of niggas to KILL George Zimmerman'

At Twitchy, "Spike Lee retweets George Zimmerman’s address."

And the now-deleted tweet from @Simply_Reiona:

"Ima get a group of niggas to KILL George Zimmerman ( the fat ass racist ass white man who killed Trayvon Martin ) ! He deserves to DIE !!!!— Couldnt Care Less (@Simply_Reiona) March 24, 2012"

She now whines about taking flak:

Right.

Why are they on his side? Well, most folks aren't down with black lynch mobs.

RELATED: From Doctor Zero at Human Events, "George Zimmerman: Wanted Dead or Alive," and at Weasel Zippers, "New Black Panther Party Circulating “Wanted Dead or Alive” Poster For George Zimmerman…"

ADDED: Linked at Instapundit. Thanks!

Witness Says Trayvon Martin Attacked George Zimmerman

Well, first I think folks should just keep checking the left's narrative a bit, no?

So here's Sandy Banks at the Los Angeles Times, "Anger over teen's shooting transcends race":

[George] Zimmerman hasn't been arrested, claiming self-defense under Florida's Stand Your Ground law. Now protests are spreading across the country, turning Trayvon's death into a national symbol of racial prejudice and violent bias.

But this is not just about the color of skin, but the color of authority.

It's about a neighborhood bully allowed to carry a gun, encouraged by a reckless law to wield it and absolved by local police, who had barely begun to investigate before declaring the killer "squeaky clean."

Does race play into it? Certainly. I have no doubt Trayvon would be behind bars if he'd been the shooter in that scenario.

But what is moving America now owes its resonance to a bag of Skittles, a can of iced tea and a hoodie pulled low against the cold.

And the heartbreaking photo we can't seem to avoid, of a bright-eyed kid in a Hollister shirt smiling broadly into the camera, who was shot to death walking to his dad's home by someone who felt he didn't belong.

Heartbreaking!!

Everyone wants to talk about that "Hollister" photo, right? But the hoodie is out of bounds, remember?

Fucking progressive hypocrites.

And here's this at Fox News Tampa Bay, "Witness: Martin attacked Zimmerman."

More at Weasel Zippers, "Race Pimp Jesse Jackson On Trayvon Martin Case: “Blacks Are Under Attack” … Obama’s Victory Has “Triggered Tremendous Backlash”…"

There's more at LAT and Memeorandum.

This is one of those cases where your natural sense of decency is to have due process afforded and justice prevail, but the left has cooked the narrative and now we've got this bogus national outcry over a fictitious "race war" against blacks. No wonder American politics is so polarized. That's the only way the Obama-Dems can gain any traction.

ADDED: At Raw Story, "Trayvon Martin case ‘not as conclusive as people think’, says legal expert."

MORE: From London's Daily Mail, "Now witness claims TRAYVON attacked Zimmerman: Anonymous onlooker told police neighbourhood watch captain was provoked... as friends insist teen was not violent and protests mount."

And at Riehl World View, "As Media Reports Conflict, Why Was Trayvon Martin Photo Altered?" (Via Memeorandum.)

STILL MORE: From the Orlando Sentinel, "George Zimmerman's father: My son is not racist, did not confront Trayvon Martin":

Police have released little information about what happened that night and no details about how Trayvon and Zimmerman came to be face to face.

No one disputes that Zimmerman called police from his SUV, then left it and encountered Trayvon on foot as the teenager returned from a 7-Eleven candy run.

Before an officer arrived, Trayvon and Zimmerman got into a fight, according to police, and witnesses heard one or both calling for help, and Zimmerman shot Trayvon once with a 9 mm handgun.

Zimmerman told police he acted in self-defense. Police found blood on his face and the back of his head as well as grass on the back of his shirt.

That jibes with what Cheryl Brown's teenage son witnessed while walking his dog that night. Thirteen-year-old Austin stepped out his front door and heard people fighting, he told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday.

"I heard screaming and crying for help," he said. "I heard, 'Help me.' "

It was dark, and the boy did not see how the fight started, in fact, he only saw one person, a man in a red shirt — Zimmerman — who was on the ground.

The boy said he is not sure who called for help. After a moment, his dog escaped, and he turned to catch it and a few seconds later heard a gunshot, he said.

"When I heard the shot, the screaming stopped," he said.

He then rushed inside and told his sister to call police.

And check the roundup at Instapundit, "NEW WITNESS IN THE TRAYVON MARTIN CASE..."

Plus, linked at Blazing Cat Fur: "Race Baiters Narrative Has Serious Flaw: Witness Says Trayvon Martin Attacked George Zimmerman." Thanks!

Rick Santorum in Louisiana: Looking to Expand Support Beyond Evangelicals and Tea Partiers

Rick Santorum is heading to victory in Louisiana, but the going will get tough after this last primary in the South.

See the Los Angeles Times, "Santorum, at home in Louisiana, tries to broaden his reach."

And the fallout continues over Santorum's comments on the choice for November:

“Republicans and conservatives who are so worried about, you know, getting control back — ‘We have to win and so we have to nominate someone who can appeal to more’ — no, you win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there. If you’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future.”

At the New York Times, "Santorum on Defensive Over Remark on Romney."

It's not that big of a deal, although some folks are having second thoughts about Santorum. See Yid With Lid, "Withdrawing My Endorsement of Rick Santorum." And the folks at Hot Air are all over this, Ed Morrissey, for example, "No, Senator Santorum, Obama and Romney aren’t the same," and "Santorum spokewoman says he’ll support Romney if nominee … Update: Santorum statement added."

I'll have more on Louisiana later today.

Meanwhile, at Los Angeles Times, "Louisiana primary: Conservatives remain skeptical of Mitt Romney."

And Robert Stacy McCain is on the ground for today's primary, "Neutral Objective Journalism."

Pope Benedict XVI Slams Communism: Marxist Ideology 'No Longer Corresponds to Reality'

You gotta love this.

At London's Daily Mail, "'Communism isn't working here': Pope's outspoken warning days before he is due to land in Cuba."

Pope Benedict XVI has said that Marxism has no place in the modern world and urged Cubans to find 'new models'.

Cuba has remained a communist country for more than 50 years and his comments will no doubt cause irritation, just days before he is due to visit.

He said: 'Today it is evident that Marxist ideology in the way it was conceived no longer corresponds to reality. In this way we can no longer respond and build a society. new models must be found with patience and in a constructive way.'

Mohamed Merah — Man of the West

From Caroline Glick:

The massacre of Jewish children at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish day school in Toulouse presents us with an appalling encapsulation of the depraved nature of our times - although at first glance, the opposite seems to be the case.

On the surface, the situation was cut and dry. A murderer drove up to a Jewish school and executed three children and a teacher.

Led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, all of France decried the massacre and announced its solidarity with the French Jewish community. World leaders condemned the crime. The killer died in a standoff with French security forces. Justice was served. Case closed.

But dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that justice has not been served.

Indeed, it hasn't even begun to be addressed. The killer, Mohamed Merah, was not a lone gunman. He wasn't even one of the lone jihadists we hear so much about.

He had plenty of accomplices. And not all of them were Muslims.

An analysis of the nature of his crime and the identity of his many accomplices must necessarily begin with a question. Why did Merah videotape his crime?

Why did take the trouble of strapping a video camera to his neck and filming himself chasing eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego through the school courtyard and shooting her three times in the head? Why did he document his execution of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and his two little boys, three-year-old Gavriel and six-year-old Aryeh?

The first answer is because Merah took pride in killing Jewish children. Beyond that, he was certain that millions of people would be heartened by his crime. By watching him shoot the life out of Jewish children, they would be inspired to repeat his actions elsewhere.

And he was surely correct.

Millions of people have watched the 2002 video of Daniel Pearl being decapitated. Similar decapitation videos of Western hostages in Iraq and elsewhere have also become runaway Internet sensations.

Led by Youssef Fofana, the Muslim gang in France that kidnapped and tortured Ilan Halimi to death in 2006 also took pictures of their handiwork. Their photographs were clearly imitations of the photos that Pearl's killers took of him before they chopped his head off.

The pride that jihadist murderers take in their crimes is not merely manifested in their camera work. US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who massacred 13 US servicemen at Fort Hood in 2009, showed obvious pride in his dedication to jihad. Hassan gave a presentation to his colleagues justifying jihad. He carried business cards in which he identified himself as an "SOA," a soldier of Allah.

Similarly, Naveed Haq, the American Muslim who carried out the attack at the Seattle Jewish Federation building in 2006, murdering one woman and wounding another five, bragged to his mother and friend about his crime in monitored telephone calls from jail. Haq boasted that he was "a jihadi" and that his victims deserved to die because they were "Israeli collaborators."

The exhibitionism common to all the men's behavior makes it obvious that that their attacks were not the random actions of isolated crazy people or lone extremists. All of these killers were certain that they were part of a global movement that seeks the annihilation of the Jews, the subjugation of the Western world and the supremacy of jihadist Islam. And they were convinced that their actions served the interests of this movement and that they would be viewed as heroes by millions of their fellow Muslims for their killing of innocents.

THIS SITUATION is bad enough on its own. But what make it truly dangerous are the West's responses to it...

Continue reading.

The Islamist Version of Anti-Semitism the Most Virulent and Lethal

At Jerusalem Post, "The Anti-Semitic Disease":

After an extended standoff, Mohamed Merah, the 24-year-old French-Algerian terrorist who murdered three Jewish children and a teacher in front of their school in Toulouse, is dead. Unfortunately, that inexplicable disease called anti-Semitism is very much alive.

The deadliest form of anti-Semitism today is the sort that inspired Merah, who, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), was indoctrinated in jihadi camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan and had ties to Fursan al-Izza (Knights of Glory), the French branch of al- Qaida.

Only the warped, anti-Semitic mind of a member of al- Qaida could justify the murder of Jews living in France, including a three-year-old child, to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children – as Merah did.

Unfortunately, however, Merah was not the only one to link the massacre in Toulouse with Israel’s war on terror in the Gaza Strip. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton also claimed that the murder of French Jews in Toulouse was somehow connected to “what is happening in Gaza.” She later repudiated her remark.

“When we think of what happened in Toulouse today.

When we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and Sderot and in different parts of the world – we remember young people and children who lose their lives,” she said.

Though it would be an exaggeration to call Ashton’s remarks, made in Brussels before a crowd of “Palestinian refugee representatives,” blatantly anti-Semitic, her failure to draw distinctions – a crucial fault shared by many on the progressive Left – helps to set the stage for men such as Merah to be seen not as cold-blooded murderers motivated by irrational anti-Semitism, but as militants engaged in warfare.

Exactly.

Continue reading at the link.

And see Blazing Cat Fur, "Teacher Suspended: Asks Class To Remember 'Victim' Mohammed Merah." That's just one example.

'Obamaville'

At The Hill, "New Santorum campaign ad warns of desolate ‘Obamaville’ towns in the future." And Politico, "Santorum spokesman denies Obama-Ahmadinejad conflation in new ad" (via Memeorandum).

RELATED: On the campaign controversy today, whether Santorum would support Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee, see The Other McCain, "Rick Santorum in Cavuto Interview: ‘This Is the Hatchet-Job of All Time’ (Video Added)," and "What Santorum Said, What He Meant, and What Romneybots Want You to Think."

And from Pundette, "Etch A Sketch, continued; Update: Santorum's remark misinterpreted?", and Sister Toldjah, "Temperature check: Is Barack Obama preferable to Mitt Romney?"(via Memeorandum).

Geraldo Rivera on Trayvon Martin Shooting: 'This Whole Stylizing Yourself As a Gangsta ... Well, People Are Going to Perceive You As a Menace'

Here's the video.

Geraldo's 100 percent correct. But the left doesn't want to deal with this, that it's possible that Treyvon Martin appeared threatening and his hoodie gangsta styling contributed to his death.

PREVIOUSLY: "Justice for Trayvon Martin! Racial Tensions (and Hypocrisies) Flare in Wake of Florida Teen Shooting," and "President Obama's Comments on Shooting Death of 17-Year-Old Trayvon Martin."