Titled:      The War on the Free Press

Michelle Malkin has been making a principled stand against the Cartoon Jihadists. The news though isn't good.

Malaysia:  Gov't shuts down newspaper the published cartoons.

Yemen: Gov't shuts down newspaper the published cartoons. Arrest warrant issued for Editor.

South Africa:  Johannesburg High Court which prevents the publishing of cartoons found offensive by the Muslim community.

Ukraine:  Editor-in-chief of popular Ukrainian newspaper "Today" apologizes before Muslims for publishing cartoons.

Poland:  Editor of Polish newspaper apologizes for reprinting cartoons.

Canada: Student newspaper that reprinted cartoons has issue destroyed.

Sweden:  "Sweden is reportedly shutting down websites that show the dread Mohammed cartoons."

U.N.:  Kofi Annan criticizes reprinting of controversial cartoons.

Europe:  The European Union may try to draw up a media code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furore.

Denmark:  At the Jyllands-Posten, Flemming Rose, the culture editor who commissioned the Muhammad cartoons, has been put on indefinite leave

France:  Well, maybe the less said, the better.

Yes folks, they're winning. Just the Great Satan left now to defend free speech and liberty.

Titled:      In wooing Cabela's, village suspends local gun rules

With no public discussion, the Hoffman Estates Village Board on Monday voted unanimously to eliminate parts of the village's local firearms ordinance.

The changes mean that gun purchases will not have to be reported to the Hoffman Estates Police Department. It also means that the police department will no longer run its own background checks on gun buyers and it will not issue permits.

Firearms retailers and consumers, however, must still comply with state and federal gun laws, which require buyers to obtain an Illinois Firearms Owner Identification (FOID) card, submit to a background check and comply with the standard 24- or 72-hour waiting period, depending on what type of gun is being bought.

The new ordinance was tailored on behalf of Cabela's, a national camping and hunting outfitter which is planning to open a 200,000-square-foot store in Hoffman Estates in 2007. Cabela's will sell shotguns, long rifles and handguns in addition to second-hand firearms. The retailer is expected to generate annual sales tax revenues of about $2 million.

I know that they sell a lot of goods besides guns, but I still don't understand why they choose to patronize states that chose to restrict the liberties of their customers. Cabela's is a major attraction to any area. Michigan's store has become the state's greatest tourist attraction. Customers come from hundreds of miles around. I can't see many of the longer distance customers willing to drive back to the store after a 24-hour or 72-hour wait to pick up a firearm they could buy locally without a wait. 

I would rather they set up in gun-friendly states and pull the customers, and the sales-tax, out of the more oppressive areas.

Still, its a minor victory for that one small town.

Titled:   Don't mention the walk

With Europe still trying to work out exactly what it believes in concerning when cartoons and Freedom of Speech collide, Germany is making restrictive policy of its own. English fans visiting Germany for the soccer World Cup are banned from certain traditional activities, namely walking in a funny way and making jokes about the war. Not the War on Terror, mind, but WWs I and II - yes, those of over 60 years ago.

The Sun Online reports:

GERMAN cops will use sweeping powers to collar England fans doing Basil Fawlty-style Hitler impressions at the World Cup.

Yobs will be instantly banged up for TWO WEEKS if they goose-step like John Cleese in his most famous Fawlty Towers scene.

And hard core louts who give Nazi salutes — like the one jokingly made by Michael Barrymore in Celebrity Big Brother — could be hauled before a judge within 24 hours.

If convicted of inciting hatred they will face jail terms of up to THREE YEARS.

Wearing joke German helmets or any offensive insignia will also result in a stretch behind bars.

Given the British penchant for anti-German humor, I would expect a large portion of the crowd to be herded off into pens to await the end of hostilities the competition.

I guess that imprisonment for alcohol-induced insensitivity is a step more civilized than burning down embassies, but it is time that the so-called developed countries decide that free speech, in all its forms, is worth protecting.

Titled:   Does the Census Bureau go too far?

SayUncle brings up the American Community Survey. Every year, one in forty households are asked to answer a long series of questions, concering a myriad of topics as diverse as "What time do you leave for work in the morning" to the amount you pay for your mortgage each month. 

You can see the 2005 survey here.

The law, Title 13, Sections 141, 193, and 221 of the U.S. Code, authorizing the American Community Survey, also provides that your answers are confidential. No one except Census Bureau employees may see your completed form and they can be fined and imprisoned for any disclosure of your answers.

The same law that protects the confidentiality of your answers requires that you provide the information asked in this survey to the best of your knowledge.

The GAO published a paper investigating the Legal Authority for the ACS and finds in the conclusion:

For the reasons set forth above, the Bureau has authority under 13 U.S.C. §§ 141 and 193 to conduct the American Community Survey.  The Bureau also has authority to require responses from the public to this survey.  

It does however note the following:

While Census clearly has authority to conduct the ACS, we found no public laws, committee reports, or other congressional actions in which Congress has required the Bureau to develop and implement the ACS. 

So this would seem to be an example of unneccesary prying, though legal, at the behest of unelected and unanswerable bureaucrats. Please note that refusing to answer carries a fine of $100 and that for pretending to be an Eskimo and other false information is $500.

Titled:   Bush urges end to cartoon violence

Titled:   Facial Armor Rears Its Ugly Head

DefenseTech.org is featuring a new tool to help protect our guys from injury.

The mask weighs 1.3 pounds, is compatible with ballistic eyewear, and will stop a bullet from a .44 magnum.

If you want to see video of it stopping that bullet, click here.

I'm not sure if it will help win the hearts and minds of the natives.

Titled:   Ithaca Gun is back in business

Ithaca Guns is back in business:

Ithaca Gun is back in business, but, for the first time since the company was founded in the 1880s, it is headquartered no where near Ithaca.

It is now Ithaca Guns USA, LLC, and headquarters is Upper Sandusky, Ohio, rather than Ithaca, King Ferry or Auburn. But they are making familiar Ithaca Gun models.

...Using their 30,000 square-foot CNC machinery-equipped plant and Ithaca Gun plans and specs, the new company is already turning out variations of the Model 37 pump that has been the flagship of the troubled Ithaca Gun name for nearly 70 years.

Their website, though still under construction, is up and running.

Titled:   After 150 yrs, Western Union ends telegram service

"Effective January 27, 2006," the company said in a note posted without ceremony on its Web site, "Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage."

James Lileks, as usual, has gathered some long lost art from the bygone days:

Happy Caucasian Patriarch Day! Here you see the variety of boilerplate available to the tongue-tied son. Note the art in the corner – either Dad has ascended in the Rapture, or was the victim of spontaneous human combustion. Note also that one could send a telegram from home and have it charged on your phone bill – something that must have seemed quite modern. Which, I suppose, it was.

Titled:   Think the police will protect you?

TriggerFinger brings us news of San Francisco's lack of success in solving homicides and the difficulties of working with the police department to protect citizens. The original article from December 2005 at sfgate.com reports that 80% of homicide cases from 2005 remain open.

San Francisco supervisors turned their attention to the city's surging homicide rate Monday, holding an inaugural meeting of a new committee on gun and gang violence and receiving a grim briefing on the scale of the mayhem and failure to hold perpetrators accountable.

Words such as "surging", "grim", "mayhem" and "failure" do suggest that all is not well in the pistol-free City of Peace and Love.

Part of the explanation, police said, for the low rate of arrests and prosecutions is the reluctance of witnesses to provide testimony given their exposure to retribution.

The people are scared and don't want to talk.

The 94 homicides so far for 2005 is a 10-year high...

..."I'm a little stunned," said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who represents District 5, which includes the Western Addition, a hot spot for the killings. "I'm just trying to figure out what the body count has to be in terms of what lessons are learned."

And the people in charge aren't sure what to do.

Mirkarimi said he wants to see a regular flow of reliable statistics on how San Francisco's Police Department is performing. Suggesting police officials are reluctant to submit to closer oversight, he characterized getting good information out of the department as a "cat-and-mouse game."

And don't seem willing to help...

Get out while you can.

Titled:   Glue gun will mean police can stick to fleeing drivers

The Times Online tells us of a new plan that will enable LA police to avoid chasing and catching criminals. The concept is to shoot a trackable GPS unit at the fleeing driver's car so that they can find it later. Assuming that word of this will spread around the criminal community, especially after the press coverage, this means that crimes that risk a police chase have now got much safer for the criminals.

“Rather than pushing them because they are going 70-80 mph and we are attempting to keep up with them, we will just basically monitor where they are going,” said William Bratton, the police commissioner.

“Let them run. We will just basically track them to where they dump the car. We do that now with helicopters.”

No more televised chases across town through traffic, ramming, shoot-outs and foot chases. Now the stolen getaway vehicle will be free to roll across town, drop off the crims at a convenient pick-up point near their other vehicles, with the police just having to pull up later and tow the original vehicle away.

“Banning pursuit is probably a good idea if all you care about is public safety, because if you ban pursuit there won’t be any chases or any risk to the public,” said Geoff Alpert, the head of the criminology department at the University of South Carolina, who has endorsed the new technology.

Way to go, LA! 

“This is incredible technology,” said Commissioner Bratton. “We are going to test it out. We are really optimistic that this may be one of the next big ideas in American policing.”

It will keep police in jobs forever, simply by letting criminals go free each time, free to steal another car and escape over and over. And the police will win too! Their record for recovery of stolen cars will skyrocket. Pity about their record of captured thieves.

Titled:      Going postal in gun-free zones

We'll start the new week with a well-put together piece on TownHall which describes the effect on mass murder suicides, which points out that the most popular places for multiple murders are places that ban concealed weapons and don't provide armed security. Schools, churches and postal depots are typical of this arrangement, unlike airports which at least have have uniformed armed security.

Suicidal murders may be deranged, but they are not dim-witted.

They do seem to actively seek out east targets.

Society needs to disregard the baseless calls for more restrictions on honest gun merchants and citizens. Their guns are not a significant source of criminal weapons.

Some will always have gun phobias, and this is unfortunate. Education helps. A personal encounter with an armed assailant helps even more.

Well worth the time to read.

Titled:    Downtown Detroit

Yesterday, I got to go wander about in downtown Detroit and take some photos, just as things are building up for the SuperBowl. One of the events underway was Winter Blast, a winter festival in Campus Martius, a new downtown park. The unseasonably good weather did put a bit of a crimp in proceedings, but people made the most of it, and seemed to be having fun. The winter storm warning for Detroit should make for an interesting game this weekend.

This is one of the sled-dogs, awaiting the return of the snow:

 

Keeping warm around the marshmallow roasters:



Ice skaters took to the rink:



Others had their fun in a different way:

Titled:      N. Zealand filmmaker arrested in drag in US prostitution sting

As Hollywood continues to sink to new depths of depravity, reflected in recent Oscar nominations, Lee Tamahori, who directed last year's action adventure "XXX: State of the Union", has been doing a little sinking of his own.

It seems he was arrested when he allegedly sought sex with an undercover policeman while clad in women's clothes.

These are turbulent times for the film industry. The recent moves to sell DVDs at the same time as their theatrical releases, the spread of piracy and the politicization of the industry are all putting pressure on Hollywood.

Other countries are finding their feet too - note Turkey, which is releasing anti-American movies to popular acclaim. 

In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.

They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison - where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

Hollywood has a huge influence overseas, providing an image of America to the World. It is a pity that its fixation with the seamier and depraved side of US culture has to be the dominant theme.

One recent opinion poll revealed the depth of the hostility in Turkey toward Americans: 53 percent of Turks who responded to the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey associated Americans with the word "rude"; 70 percent with "violent"; 68 percent with "greedy"; and 57 percent with "immoral."

I am sure this has not all been through meeting Americans in person.

Maybe I'm just being too predictable:

Cantcha just see red-staters licking their lips to give Hollywood a verbal ass whooping after looking at Tuesday’s Oscar nominations? “Boy hidey, those show-biz folk are just a homo-promotin’, liberal-media-embracin’, minority-lovin’, devil-worshippin’, pimp-hustlin’, terrorist-protectin’ bunch of pansies, commies and traitors.” Or hollering “We was robbed!” when Walk the Line was blown off as a Best Picture contender.

Titled:   U.S. clash with militia leaves Iraqi woman dead

According to CNN.com, US forces attacked a crowded civilian area and killed an Iraqi woman with rockets and gunfire from a helicopter.

The woman's death is likely to inflame anti-U.S. sentiment. She was killed when U.S. soldiers battled early Thursday in Sadr City with the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
...

Baghdad police said the woman was killed and five civilians were wounded during the fighting.

Another view of the incident is given by Middle East Online:

"Ater[sic] conducting the raid one of the helicopters of the coalition forces came under fire from some men on a nearby rooftop following which another helicopter of the coalition forces returned fire to eliminate the threat in which four individuals were killed."

He did not say whether the four were members of the Mehdi Army, though an interior ministry official said the fight was between US forces and the Mehdi Army.

The official added that a woman was killed in the fighting.

If you only follow CNN's story, it sounds like just another day of brutal imperial oppression resulting in the unneccesary death of an innocent civilian. If you read other sources, it becomes apparent that this was an unfortunate result of enemy forces fighting from civilian areas in which the US forces got their men. 

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if armed men climb onto your roof to take on helicopters armed to the teeth with modern ordinance, it may be a good time to go visit some relatives or go shopping for a few hours. The same goes for when that pick-up truck with the .50 cal mounted on the back parks outside your front door. You would think that they would have learned from the Afghans that inviting known terrorists to dinner might result in a significantly more exciting evening than you had otherwise planned.

Titled:   More cartoons and protests in Mohammad blasphemy row

The cartoon row mentioned in an earlier article continues to reveal the character of modern Europe.

The Danes and Norwegians rolled over pretty quickly in the face of Muslim complaining. Then France and Germany waded in, republishing the cartoons, followed by Spain and Italy. This was quite surprising for the French, especially after their talk of nuclear weapon use last week. It seemed for a moment that the French had found some backbone.

This morning we see that the French were merely dipping their toes in the water of controversy:

The owner of France Soir, a Paris daily that reprinted them on Wednesday along with one German and two Spanish papers, sacked its managing editor to show "a strong sign of respect for the beliefs and intimate convictions of every individual".

With France resuming its white flag-waving character, what of the rest of Europe?

Switzerland's Le Temps and La Tribune de Geneve ran some of them on Thursday, as did Magyar Hirlap in Budapest. Some European dailies ran cartoons making fun of the controversy.

I thought the Swiss were traditionally neutral? I mean, who would bother to invade a country where every household has to keep a military rifle and ammunition by law? Mind, for all their years of sitting on the sidelines watching the world fight around them, they don't have a lot to show for it. Money, maybe, but what have the Swiss done for you lately? Sure, they have made some fine watches, some lovely clocks and their chocolate is pretty tasty. But hardly world changing innovation and paradigm-busting thought.

Of course the Muslims continue to behave as stereotyped:

In Beirut, the leader of Lebanon's Shi'ite Hizbollah said the row would never had occurred if a 17-year-old death edict against British writer Salman Rushdie been carried out.

"Had a Muslim carried out Imam Khomeini's fatwa against the apostate Salman Rushdie, then those lowlifers would not have dared discredit the Prophet, not in Denmark, Norway or France," Hizbollah head Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday night.

Such nice people. So tolerant. So peaceful. Right...

Apparently, a crazy woman in the crowd was dragged away by security just before President Bush began his speech.

More photos at Wizbang. I think that about covers it.

Titled:     Shift on the Bench Has Already Begun

The failure of Democrats to appease their base and fillibuster Alito's appointment to the Supreme Court has resulted in a shift to the bench, but not in the way you may expect.

Alito is now on the extreme far right - of the bench, that is:

As the junior associate justice, Alito will occupy the end of the bench farthest to the courtroom audience's right during oral arguments. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who has sat there since October 1994, will move across to the audience's extreme left.

Alito also now gets to answer the door during the court's closed conferences, and report the justices' votes to the clerk of the court.

Breyer was the court's junior member for 11 years, 181 days, about a month shy of the record set by Joseph Story, who served during the 19th century.

That's a long time to be a noob.

This article was submitted to the Liberty1st site by Paul A. Ibbetson. He maintains a website devoted to researching the Patriot Act here. I am still on the fence when it comes to the Patriot Act and that is why I find articles like this fascinating and thought provoking.

The Patriot Act: Searching for Monsters in the Closet

When you were young, did you have a monster in your closet? Many a child has lost sleep to the monster that must certainly reside just inside the bedroom closet. If you think back on your monster, it probably was the end product of watching late night horror movies or creative tales spun with school buddies on sleepovers. Everything is fun and games until the monster actually comes to visit the next night when all your friends are long gone. Now the thing about the closet monster is that it’s crafty and clever. It won’t show itself when friends are around and never in the daylight. No, it waits until your head is turned or, worse, when you’re sound asleep. The closet monster has power, a power that can make you freeze for endless minutes fearing that any slight motion might cause it to burst from the closet, ending in your certain death. Thank goodness a magical thing happens somewhere along life’s path. We grow up. It does not happen all at once but step-by-step we gain perspective about what’s real and what’s not and the monster loses some of its power. Then on some special night this gained knowledge bolsters bravery to the point of a confrontation with the closet door and the monster is exposed for what he really is--nothing.

It would be nice to say that there are no monsters in real life, but that would not be true. As a nation, America has seen monsters in many forms. Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Hideki Tojo’s Japan are examples. America, though always diverse in thought and ideas, came together in a united effort to defeat those monsters at a time when indecision could have cost the world freedom as we know it. Our country is again at that crossroads. While it is reasonable and logical to draw distinctions from World War II and The War on Terror, there are chilling similarities.

Hitler wanted to eliminate all groups of people not fitting the mold of the master Arian race. Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups have an unholy mission to exterminate Israel and its ally, America, which both fall into the category of “the Zionist unbelievers.” Similarities are evident between the Japanese kamikazes of World War II and the terrorists of today are willing to fly passenger planes into buildings, or strap explosives to their own bodies. Yes, monsters existed in the past and they walk amongst us today.

Hitler walked across Europe, taking country after country, forging deadly alliances and double-crossing all those naïve to his deadly intentions. On December 7, 1941, America was struck with a devastating surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.Al-Qaeda, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, along with terrorist groups that share this warped mentality, have repeatedly attacked American interests (e.g., 1993 World Trade Center Bombing,1998 U.S.S. Cole Bombing, Embassy Bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania)  Osama Bin laden funneled money to terrorist cells around the world for the purpose of Jihad. In 2001, America was struck with a second devastating surprise attack, suffering a death toll that surpassed the number of deaths at Pearl Harbor. At both times in history this country faced a monster that wanted to destroy it. 

Unfortunately, America is not responding to today’s monsters the same way America responded in the past. Part of the problem is that many in the country have become terribly confused in what makes up a monster, and what does not. Some civil rights groups portray the Patriot Act as an uncontrollable monster that roams the streets gobbling up people’s rights. This fear maintains, even though after years of usage there have been no documented cases of abuse. In case that slipped by I’ll repeat it, NO CASES OF ABUSES! The Patriot Act has been audited for abuses by many organizations, including the ACLU. In fact, the Patriot Act has served to move national security forward by leaps and bounds by clarifying ambiguous laws, updating outdated laws, and, yes, strengthening some older laws to help in fighting a new type of war. Regardless of the obvious factual basis for the existence and usage of the Patriot Act, groups such as the ACLU maintain a constant search, with torches and pitchforks at the ready, for any reason to slay this law for protecting our national security. 

Others have identified the President George W. Bush as the monster for everything from the usage of National Security Letters (NSL’s) to when the wind blows the wrong way. Any attempt to challenge these naysayers with facts is met with the usual accusations that “fruitful debate” is being quashed. Meanwhile time passes and division, indecision, and, worst of all, inaction, is the order of the day. The failure of the Patriot Act to be renewed after the creation of a compromise package bill is a glaring example of the fact that many Democrats feel the war on terror should be prosecuted in a different manner.

Surpassing the issue of the Patriot Act renewal, Democrats have set a dangerous precedent in time of war by the actions of the “Coalition of Opposition.”  Our enemies are coordinated and motivated. Their agenda is clear--destroy America. The impression resulting from an inability of Congress to come together on legislation for fighting terrorism, and the willingness of some to kill the Patriot Act altogether, will be seen by our enemies as a sign of weakness. We know that Hitler advanced on those who appeared weak; we should expect no less from today’s fanatical terrorist groups. Democrats have failed to learn what all children come to terms with, that is, eventually you have to confront the monster.

Paul A. Ibbetson is a published author and lecturer on the Patriot Act. He is a former Chief of Police of Cherryvale, Kansas, and member of the Montgomery County Drug Task Force. Paul received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Criminal Justice at Wichita State University, and is currently completing his PhD. in sociology at Kansas State University. Author of the book “Living Under The Patriot Act: Educating A Society” coming out in early 2006, Paul welcomes questions or comments on this, or any other of his Patriot Act related articles at:  contact@patriotactresearch.com or visit the Patriot Act Research Website at: www.patriotactresearch.com

Titled:   Son says he used gun to break up family fight

This is a confusing story from Macomb county in Michigan. It seems that a teen intervened in a fight between his mother and his step-father with a .22 caliber rifle. After shooting his step-father in the leg, and a resulting tussle over control of the firearm, his mother was accidently shot in the toe. So far there doesn't seem to be anything too complicated there. It is not illegal for a 19 year old to own a rifle, and from the report it seems that the boy genuinely believed he was coming to the aid of his mother, saving her from serious injury.

He is, however, out on bail, facing charges of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, possession of a dangerous weapon and using a firearm during a felony.

Now, they did find a selection of firearms in his room - six rifles, two shotguns, a BB gun, 10 long knives, a cache of ammunition and a homemade pipe bomb. But that seems secondary to the event itself, and apart from the pipe-bomb would seem like a reasonable collection to a non-hoplophobe.

Without further information, I can't see why this isn't a case of a self-defense shooting, assuming that the step-father was able to cause serious bodily harm to the teen's mother or himself. I guess the upcoming court case might reveal further cause. The pipe-bomb alone is enough to get him into trouble, and he deserves what he gets for that.

At 19, it is hard to expect clear judgement as to how dangerous a new step-father can be, especially in the stress of the moment with a fight between adults in your own house. Police say three or four shots were fired, and this may even have involved a warning shot. By shooting his step-father in the leg with a .22 rifle, when he had easy access to a shotgun, I would think it would be hard to prove that he was doing anything other than trying to stop a felony in progress.

I'll try to follow up when the case comes around.

Titled:   Why Radical Muslims and the US Don't Mix

The first protected right of the people of the US is the Freedom of Speech.

US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in United States v. Schwimmer (1929):

"The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate."

When 12 cartoons - published last September by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and republished in a Norwegian paper this month - included an image of the muslim Prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, the reaction from the Religion of Peace was anything but peaceful.

The religion that thinks nothing of calling for the death of unbelievers, started a string of protests, flag burning and boycotts.

Things took a more sinister turn yesterday when 15 masked gunmen armed with hand grenades, automatic weapons and anti-tank launchers took over an EU office and demanded an apology. They behaved, ironically, much as the cartoon they were protesting against had depicted.

Pakistan's Daily Times reported that they left after half an hour, without an apology, but still angry:

 “We are calling on the citizens of the two countries to take this threat seriously because our cells are ready to implement this all over Gaza,” said one of the militants.

This morning, the UK's Gaudnian (yes, they are bad at spelling) reported a change of mind and a full apology, following further threats and attacks on Danish citizens as far away as Saudi Arabia. 

Denmark's largest selling broadsheet newspaper last night issued an apology to the "honourable citizens of the Muslim world" after publishing a series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked protests across the Middle East.

Just so you didn't miss it, those are the honorable citizens that threaten civilians with anti-tank missiles.

CNN.com reports that a Danish muslim group has accepted the apology:

A spokesman for Denmark's Islamic Faith Community, Kasem Ahmad, said on Danish radio Tuesday that "we will clearly and articulately thank the prime minister and Jyllands-Posten for what they have done."

But they await the reaction from muslims in other countires.

Can you imagine how this would play out in the US? An armed group of terrorists threatening an office of civilians not even connected with the publication of cartoons? Followed by apologies and retractions from the President and the press? Denmark is in the grip of dhimmitude.

We must ensure we protect the liberties we have before we end up like our European cousins.

Update:    France enters Muslim cartoon row

A French newspaper has reproduced a set of caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad that have caused outrage in the Muslim world.

France Soir said it had published the cartoons to show that "religious dogma" had no place in a secular society.

Under the headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", the paper ran a front page cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud.

It shows the Christian deity saying: "Don't complain, Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."

The full set of Danish drawings, some of which depict the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, were printed on the inside pages.