Jihadi Training Compounds, U.S.A.

by Ryan Mauro
http://www.frontpagemag.com
3 November 2009

A battle in the war against radical Islam in Detroit was briefly waged on October 28 when the FBI engaged in a deadly shootout with an extremist imam refusing to be arrested. The imam was a leader in “Ummah,” meaning “the brotherhood,” a group said to consist of mostly African-Americans, many of whom converted in prison. This group isn’t the only one trying to create an Islamic state within the borders of the U.S., and this shoot-out should be expected, unfortunately, to be a sign of more violent conflict coming down the line in this country with Islamic militant groups.

The gunfire began when the FBI tried to arrest Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, whose original name was Christopher Thomas, for his involvement in a crime ring along with followers of his. Abdullah violently resisted, and managed to shoot and kill one of the FBI’s dogs before falling to gunfire. The spiritual leader of Ummah is Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, a former Black Panther who is in jail for killing two police officers in Georgia that tried to arrest him. To Abdullah, he was just following in his leader’s footsteps and carrying out the “offensive jihad” against the U.S. government he had long preached about.

The government also indicted 11 of Abdullah’s followers on charges including illegal possession and sale of firearms, conspiracy and theft of interstate shipments, mail fraud to obtain the proceeds of arson, and tampering with vehicle identification numbers. Some fled to Canada, including Abdullah’s oldest son, who was arrested in Ontario. His son trained about 60 youth in martial arts at the mosque and was part of what was called the “Sura team,” a group that carried guns to protect the mosque.

Martial arts instruction isn’t the only form of paramilitary training that Ummah gave its members. The FBI affidavit said that “many” of the followers were armed and were encouraged to have guns. Some of the members were provided with firearms training.

The group is very similar to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a group led by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, a radical cleric based in Pakistan. The group has a branch in North America called “Muslims of the Americas” with dozens of sites and several closed-off communities in rural areas used as paramilitary training sites, some as large as 70 acres. Like Ummah, the group is almost entirely African-American, has many prison converts, many of its members engage in criminal activity, and is actively trying to create miniature Islamic states inside the U.S.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra seems to share everything in common with Ummah, although no reports have come out to show that Muslims of America-affiliated mosques and communities are explicitly calling for war against the U.S. government. However, few, if any reports came out before the Detroit shootout about the Ummah’s preaching of jihad, either. The close parallels warrant an investigation by the FBI into whether Ummah has ties to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, given their common objective, type of recruits, and desire for their followers to receive guerilla warfare training. “Muslims of America” compounds would seem to be the natural destination of Ummah members seeking such instruction and camaraderie.

There is no evidence out of a link yet, but at this early stage in the investigation into Ummah it should be noticed that Jamaat ul-Fuqra has an isolated community in Combermere in Ontario, Canada, the same province where Abdullah’s oldest son was arrested. And according to a federally-funded 2004 report by the National White Collar Crime Center, Jamaat ul-Fuqra had a training compound in Coldwater, M.I., about two hours from Detroit at the time of the report’s publication. The report also described Jamaat ul-Fuqra as having had “activity” in Detroit including murders and bombings, and having had operations elsewhere in the state.

The Ummah has also had friends in the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the prominent Muslim advocacy group that claims to be moderate but was formed originally as part of Muslim Brotherhood’s networks. The organization was also listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity found to have acted as a covert fundraiser for Hamas.

The American-Muslim Taskforce, an umbrella organization counts CAIR among its members, is demanding an investigation into the killing of Abdullah. One thousand people attended his funeral. The head of CAIR’s branch in Michigan, Dawud Walid, has also gone to bat for Abdullah, saying he was “chartiable.”

“He would open up the mosque to homeless people. He used to run a soup kitchen and feed indigent people…I knew nothing of him that as related to any nefarious or criminal behavior,” he said.

Internal CAIR documents show that CAIR helped fundraise for the legal appeal of Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. Imam Abdullah’s rage against the U.S. government was also triggered in part by CAIR’s campaign to paint the War on Terror as a War on Islam. The complaint against him quotes him as saying, “CAIR and everybody send me all of this stuff. I get sick…I got some soldiers with me. … Brothers that I know would, you know, if I say ‘Let’s go, we going to go and do something.’”

The threat from Ummah is not over. It is described by the FBI as a “nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group,” and the death of Abdullah will not end their spreading of radical Islam and the skills to turn that ideology into deadly action. With Jamaat ul-Fuqra potentially available to provide the training, a match between the two would create a force capable of waging guerilla war, inside or outside the U.S. as part of their goal to create a miniature Islamic state inside America. The FBI must make sure that such an alliance is not formed.

New York Yankees come up short in World Series Game 5, but deliver message to Philadelphia Phillies

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Tuesday, November 3rd 2009, 4:00 AM



Sipkin/News

From left, Nick Swisher, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter pull out the late-inning win in Game 5 of the World Series, but show champion Phillies that Yankees never die.


PHILADELPHIA - The Yankees aren't the champs of baseball again, again and at last, because the current champs got up Monday night at Citizens Bank Park, at least to one knee. They got up and came back, came back from Johnny Damon running at them the way he did and Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada hitting them the way they did in the ninth inning of Game 4. A.J. Burnett had nothing, Cliff Lee had just enough, Chase Utley hit two more. If the Yankees are going to win No. 27, they will do it at home. They will do it at the new Stadium, Wednesday night or Thursday night. Maybe that is the way it was supposed to be, the new Stadium getting to see it all.

The Yankees made a run at them, oh, you know they did. A-Rod doubled home a couple in the eighth, making it three RBI for the night, 18 for the postseason. Robinson Cano hit a sacrifice fly and A-Rod scored and it was 8-5 Phillies. The Yankees kept coming in the ninth, two on and nobody out. But Capt. Jeter hit into a double play against Ryan Madson - Monday night's Philadelphia closer - and Mark Teixeira struck out as the potential tying run and it ended 8-6 Phillies.

Johnny Damon was on first when Teixeira struck out, Damon having worked his way back from 0-2 against Madson the way he had against Brad Lidge the night before. Damon was asked in front of his locker if he thought the Yankees were coming back again, coming all the way back in Game 5, maybe all the way to the title.

"Absolutely," he said.

Damon smiled and said, "We always battle. We never give up. There's always that chance for us."

Then he said, "Unfortunately, we got behind 8-2."

The Yankees got too far behind for once. The Phillies' new closer did the job this time. The Phillies hung on at home in Game 5 the way the Angels did that at home in the American League Championship Series. The Yankees won the pennant at home. Now they will try to win it all for the first time in nine years, give the ball to Andy Pettitte and ask him to bring them all the way home. They will ask him to do that against Chase Utley, who looks like he wants to carry the Phillies the rest of the way.

Utley has now hit five home runs in this World Series in five games, tying him with Reggie Jackson in World Series history. The first one, in the bottom of the first, two on and nobody out against A.J. Burnett, was a no-doubter to right and made it 3-1. The next one, off Phil Coke in the bottom of the seventh, looked like it wanted to go find a space station. Then Raul Ibanez hit one even harder off Coke, off the facing of the second deck, off a Chrysler sign out there that reads, "Drive 'em outta here."

The Phillies suffered the worst kind of loss on Sunday night, when they had the chance to even the Series, even the Series and come back with Lee in Game 5. Then Damon ran himself into Yankee lore and A-Rod and Jorge Posada hit the champs into a 3-1 hole. They started to climb out of that hole last night. Barely. Because you knew they were ready to go until Jeter hit into that double play. You knew. Maybe Jeter should have gotten a save along with Madson.

One match point saved for the Phillies. Now they ask Pedro Martinez to save them another one at Yankee Stadium. The World Series goes back there and comes around to him again.


Newly-crowned Yankee killer No. 1 Chase Utley slugs one into the right-field seats.

Credits: Sipkin/News

There Pedro Martinez was in the Phillies clubhouse as the first wave of media people went looking for him at his locker. He started across the room and saw the crowd and then turned and walked in the other direction and made a motion like he wanted to shoo everybody away, like flies. Then he raised his arms over his head and smiled and crossed them, in what did not seem like a universal symbol of love and peace and brotherhood. Pedro with five days' rest, trying to go on memory again, against Pettitte on three days' rest. Pedro trying to shut down A-Rod the way Pettitte will have to find a way against Chase Utley.

In the interview room, Utley was asked about all the home runs against the Yankees.

"At some point I'll look back and see what a special moment it is," Utley said. "But right now our object is to win two more games."

Even with Lee pitching into the eighth, even though the Phillies seemed to have been winning this game forever, from the time Utley hit Burnett's fastball over the right-field wall, they saw the Yankees come at them.

"Thankfully we scored a lot of runs," Cliff Lee said.

They asked Lee if he could pitch again in this World Series if he had to.

"As far as my availability," he said, "I'm available."

First comes Pedro against the Yankees Wednesday night. It happened because the Phillies hit and kept hitting last night, two from Utley, a bomb from Ibanez, a ninth inning from Madson that was a save of the Phillies' whole season. The season comes back to Yankee Stadium now. The last time the Yankees won a World Series at home was 1999. Now they try to do it again. They try to close out the opening season at the new place in style, with No. 27.

Articles
Raissman: Fox banks in on extended Series
Two more Utley HRs tie Reggie
Yanks could be leery of Phils stealing signs
Utley's homer awakens Phils' bats
Hatman cap-italizing on Yankees' success
A.J. can't catch on, even with Jose

Gullible eager-beaver planet savers

‘The environment’ is the most ingenious cover story ever devised for Big Government

by Mark Steyn on Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:00pm
http://www2.macleans.ca/


I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”

Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? But in a good way! So no need to worry. After all, we all care about the environment, don’t we? So we ought to do something about it, right? And, since “the environment” isn’t just in your town or county but spreads across the entire planet, we can only really do something at the planetary level. But what to do? According to paragraph 38 on page 18 of the latest negotiating text, the convention will set up a “government” to manage the “new funds” and the “related facilitative processes.”

Tim Flannery’s disarmingly honest characterization passed almost without notice, reported as far as I can tell only by Brian Lilley of CFRB Toronto and CJAD Montreal. But professor Flannery has it right. Government transport policy is about transport, and government education policy is about education, but environmental policy is about everything, because everything’s part of “the environment”: your town, your county, your planet—and you. “We are the environment. There is no distinction,” declared another renowned expert, David Suzuki, last year. And just as the government now monitors air and water quality so it’s increasingly happy to regulate your quality.

In the name of “the environment,” the state gets to regulate everything you do. The cap-and-trade bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, is a bold assault on property rights: in order to sell your home—whether built in 2006 or 1772—you would have to bring it into compliance with whimsical, eternally evolving national “energy efficiency” standards, starting with a 50 per cent reduction in energy use by 2018. Fail to do so and it would be illegal for you to enter into a private contract with a willing buyer.

Hey, but who would ever find out?

Don’t be so sure. In 2006, to comply with the “European Landfill Directive,” various municipal councils in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland introduced “smart” trash cans—“wheelie bins” with a penny-sized electronic chip embedded within that helpfully monitors and records your garbage as it’s tossed into the truck. Once upon a time, you had to be a double-0 agent with Her Majesty’s Secret Service to be able to install that level of high-tech spy gadgetry. But now any old low-level apparatchik from the municipal council can do it, all in the cause of a sustainable planet. So where’s the harm?

And once Big Brother’s in your trash can, why stop there? Our wheelie-bin sensors are detecting an awful lot of junk-food packaging in your garbage. Maybe you should be eating healthier. In Tokyo, Matsushita engineers have created a “smart toilet”: you sit down, and the seat sends a mild electric charge through your bottom that calculates your body/fat ratio, and then transmits the information to your doctors. Japan has a fast-aging population imposing unsustainable costs on its health system, so the state has an interest in tracking your looming health problems, and nipping them in the butt. In England, meanwhile, Twyford’s, whose founder invented the modern ceramic toilet in the 19th century, has developed an advanced model—the VIP (Versatile Interactive Pan)—that examines your urine and stools for medical problems and dietary content: if you’re not getting enough roughage, it automatically sends a signal to the nearest supermarket requesting a delivery of beans. All you have to do is sit there as your VIP toilet orders à la carte and prescribes your medication.

But think of the environmental benefits: readers may recall Sheryl Crow’s brief campaign to get people to use only one sheet of toilet paper (I recommended an all-star consciousness-raising single—“All we are saying is give one piece a chance”). Last month, the Washington Post reported a new front in this war. Two-ply bathroom tissue, according to Allen Hershkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “is the Hummer of the paper industry.” Oh, and blame Canada, as that’s where most American two-ply comes from: this decadent Dominion is apparently the House of Saud of toilet paper. In Britain, where closed-circuit cameras monitor you to check you’re not eating a sandwich while driving, is it such a stretch to foresee those toilet sensors that wire your stool analysis to the government health centre also snitching on your two-ply Cottonelle? Or perhaps, if it’s a Matsushita toilet, a few extra volts from the buttock-zapper will be enough of a warning.

“The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You float a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you.

In 1785, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham began working on his famous “Pan-opticon”—a radial prison in which a central “inspector” could see all the prisoners, but they could never see him. In the computer age, we now have not merely panopticon buildings, but panopticon societies, like modern London—and soon perhaps, excepting a few redoubts such as Waziristan and the livelier precincts of the Horn of Africa, a panopticon planet.

Yet high-tech statism still needs an overarching narrative. In the new school of panoptic fiction—such as John Twelve Hawks’s recently completed Fourth Realm trilogy—the justification for round-the-clock surveillance is usually “security.” But the “security state” is a tough sell: if you tell people the government is compiling data on them for national security purposes, the left instinctively recoils. But, if you explain that you’re doing it to “lower emissions,” starry-eyed coeds across the land will coo their approval. And the middle-class masochists of the developed world will whimper in orgasmic ecstasy as you tighten the screws, pausing only to demand that you do it to them harder and faster.

Consider a recent British plan for each citizen to be given an official travel allowance. If you take one flight a year, you’ll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But, if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you’ll be subject to additional levies—all in the interest of saving the planet for Al Gore’s polar bear documentaries and that carbon-offset palace he lives in in Tennessee. The Soviets restricted freedom of movement through the bureaucratic apparatus of “exit visas.” The British favoured the bureaucratic apparatus of exit taxes: the movement’s still free; it’s just that there’ll be a government processing fee of £412.95. And, in a revealing glimpse of the universal belief in enviro-statism, this proposal came not from Gordon Brown’s Labour Party but from the allegedly Conservative Party.

At their Monday night poker game in hell, I’ll bet Stalin, Hitler and Mao are kicking themselves: “ ‘It’s about leaving a better planet to our children?’ Why didn’t I think of that?” This is Two-Ply Totalitarianism—no jackboots, no goose steps, just soft and gentle all the way. Nevertheless, occasionally the mask drops and the totalitarian underpinnings become explicit. Take Elizabeth May’s latest promotional poster: “Your parents f*cked up the planet. It’s time to do something about it. Live Green. Vote Green.” As Saskatchewan blogger Kate McMillan pointed out, the tactic of “convincing youth to reject their parents in favour of The Party” is a time-honoured tradition.

The problem, alas, is that, for the moment, there’s still more than one party. But why? Last year, David Suzuki suggested that denialist politicians should be thrown in jail. And only last month the New York Times’s Great Thinker Thomas Friedman channelled his inner Walter Duranty and decided that democracy has f*cked up the planet. Why, in Beijing, where they don’t have that disadvantage, they banned the environmentally destructive plastic bag! In one day! Just like that! “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” wrote Friedman. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

Forward to where?

Well, fortunately the Copenhagen convention’s embryo “government” appears immune to such outmoded concepts as democratic accountability.

Don’t take my word. Listen to what the activists are saying: it’s about every aspect of your life.

PS: Just to be safe, after reading this column, tear into pieces and flush down your toilet.

Oh, no, wait, don’t…

Yanks look smart in every gamble

By BOB KLAPISCH
BERGEN COUNTY RECORD COLUMNIST
http://www.northjersey.com
Monday, November 2, 2009

PHILADELPHIA - There were no words to properly capture what the Yankees had just done to the Phillies, which is why Charlie Manuel’s face resembled a clenched first. The manager could barely finish a coherent sentence, stumbling along for an explanation as to why the Yankees are on the verge of a world championship today.

Yankees' Johnny Damon rounds second and heads to third as Phillies' Pedro Feliz chases during the ninth inning of Game 4 in Philadelphia. The Yankees won 7-4 to take a 3-1 lead in the series. (AP)

He knew the impossible had just happened in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series, when the Yankees rallied for three runs. With two out, Johnny Damon singled off Brad Lidge, promptly stole second and never stopped – he stole third, too, when he realized the base was unprotected by the Phillies’ defense.

“That’s the first time that happened to us all year,” Manuel said numbly, as his world was about to collapse. Two pitches later, Alex Rodriguez punished a run-scoring double, the decisive blow in the Bombers’ 7-4 victory. Jorge Posada followed with a two-run single but by then the Phillies were already broken, beaten.

The nearly-riotous crowd at Citizens Bank Park went dead-cold silent. No one had come back on the Phillies like this, not this late in the season, not when the season was on the line.

Incredibly , the Yankees had blown a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the eighth, as Pedro Feliz beat Joba Chamberlain with a two-out home run over the wall in left-center. Chamberlain had teased the Yankees into thinking he was unhittable, pumping one 94-mph fastball after another while striking out Jayson Werth and Raul Ibanez. But the Phillies proved otherwise, poised to ruin the Yankees’ bullpen one more time.

But it was the Yankees who took apart Lidge, who hadn’t pitched in almost two weeks. With two out in the ninth, he and Damon went to war, battling each other for nine pitches before it ended with a single to left.

What happened next represented the turning point: the Phillies decided to play the shift on Mark Teixeira, pulling third baseman Pedro Feliz all the way towards second base. Damon knew he’d steal at some point during the at-bat, also realizing that Feliz would have to cover the bag in any such attempt.

Even before he took off, Damon had a premonition that third base would be unoccupied, inviting a follow-up theft. It all depended on the throw from Carlos Ruiz and how Feliz caught it.

“I had to see where the ball was, how Pedro caught it and whether it dragged him off the base,” Damon would later say. The Yankee hierarchy was obviously watching, too, and will digest the data as it decides this winter what to do about Damon’s free agency.

He wants to stay, his teammates are unanimous in petitioning for his return. After the way Damon caught the Phillies napping, it’s hard to make a case against him.

As Damon slid safely into second base, all the moving parts were now in his favor: the throw did force Feliz to stumble, third base was wide open and Damon knew there was no one who could beat him in a 90-foot race, least of all Feliz.

“I know I still have some decent speed in the tank, and I also knew Pedro’s speed,” he said. “If it was (Angels’ third baseman) Chone Figgins it might’ve been tough.”

The game wasn’t over yet, but the Phillies were already in a state of shock. Manuel said, “we’ve got to be heads up. Somebody has got to be covering third base. Usually, it’s the catcher (who) tries to get down there.”

Now on third, Damon was able to create a critical distraction for Lidge. The closer was less likely to throw his killer slider to A-Rod, fearing one might bounce in the dirt and whistle past Ruiz.

Instead, Lidge was forced to go war against Rodriguez with pure power; his fastball against A-Rod’s bat speed. Two pitches later, Rodriguez sent a heater screaming into the left field corner, scoring Damon and turning Citizens Bank Park into an open-air mausoleum.

Damon spoke for the entire franchise when he said, “without Alex, who knows where the road stops?”

One more win and the journey is complete. Suddenly, it’s the Phillies, not the Yankees who regret not gambling in Game 4. Joe Girardi ran the table, throwing CC Sabathia on three days’ rest, but Manuel wouldn’t stick his neck out like that. He insisted on starting Joe Blanton, who walked to the mound with a career 8.18 career ERA against the Bombers.

Manuel was repeatedly asked about the wisdom of leaving the game in Blanton’s hands because, after all, if Cliff Lee didn’t start Game 4, then he couldn’t start Game 7, either. So what was Manuel thinking, exactly? This was his logic: Lee is not Sabathia.

“You’re asking Cliff Lee to do something that he has never did before,” Manuel said. “But we’re also asking him to do it in a very big, important place, and that’s in the World Series. I didn’t have to think very long at all about that, and neither did (pitching coach Rich) Dubee.”

Lee didn’t exactly take his manager off the hook, saying he would’ve been more than happy to pitch Sunday night. The lefthander refused to push his point push too hard – it would’ve been disrespectful to Manuel to cross the line – but his message was nevertheless clear.

“Anything Charlie wants to me to do, that’s fine with me,” Lee told reporters before the game. Without saying another word, the Phillies’ ace underscored what it means to suck it up in late October: Sabathia did, and it’s the Yankees who found themselves nine innings from their season-long dream becoming a reality.

Clutch A-Rod carries New York Yankees to brink of 27th World Series title

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Monday, November 2nd 2009, 4:00 AM

PHILADELPHIA - The night started to come to Alex Rodriguez now, Game 4 started to come to him at Citizens Bank Park, Game 4 and the World Series and this chance for him to be Mr. November for the Yankees. October had ended for him with a home run against Cole Hamels in Game 3, and Game 4 was about to come down to him against Brad Lidge, another Series hero for the Phillies one year ago. That was against the Rays. This was the Yankees.


Keivom/News

Alex Rodriguez hits RBI double in ninth inning off Brad Lidge that gives Yankees the lead for good and leaves Bombers one victory from capturing their 27th world title.

But first Johnny Damon had to steal second with two outs, Damon had to get to second and then keep going to third when he saw no one was there because of the Phillies' shift against Mark Teixeira. That is how Damon started carrying the night to A-Rod, who has been carrying the Yankees for a month.

"What were you doing going to third?" Damon was asked in the Yankee clubhouse.

Johnny Damon smiled and said, "Trying to keep (Lidge) from throwing a slider."

He meant that he wanted fastballs for Teixeira and fastballs for A-Rod if it came to that. Damon has always played the game tough. But he has played it smart, too.

The Phillies had tied the Yankees 4-4 on a Pedro Feliz home run off Joba Chamberlain in the eighth. But that was the eighth. This was the ninth. The Yankees have had a lot of ninth inning in them all year long, as much ninth inning in them as a baseball team can have. Now they had one more in them, on the first of November, trying to get within a win of winning the World Series.

"We battle," Damon said.

He battled Lidge through a long at-bat and then ended up on third on a play that will go into Yankee legend with any baserunning play they've ever had if they win this World Series. Lidge hit Teixeira, even though Teixeira was hitting .071 for the Series. So Game 4 had come to Alex Rodriguez now, the World Series had come back to him. Damon knew what Lidge knew, that if Lidge threw one of his nasty sliders - one of his out-pitch sliders - in the dirt, Damon was coming home with the run that would put the Yankees back up by one in Game 4.

Lidge threw a fastball past Rodriguez for strike one.

"But then he threw him another," Damon said.

"I've never had a bigger hit," Rodriguez would say afterward.

Rodriguez knew what to do with it, hit it on a line toward the left-field corner, hit the Phillies again, hit them the way he had when he hit the two-run homer off Hamels the night before, hit the Phillies in the World Series the way he had hit the Twins and the Angels. Damon scored and Teixeira went to third and Rodriguez came flying into second. After the biggest October of his life, the first great October of his life, now he really was Mr. November.

Andy Pettitte's gritty outing for New York Yankees makes World of difference vs. Phillies in Game 3

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Sunday, November 1st 2009, 4:00 AM

PHILADELPHIA - The Yankees got ahead in the World Series last night, got ahead because Alex Rodriguez changed another game with a home run, not in the late innings this time, but in the fourth inning of a game the Yankees were losing 3-0. The Yankees won Game3 and got ahead of the Phillies because Andy Pettitte got an RBI single and Johnny Damon hit a double up the gap and Hideki Matsui, pinch-hitting this time, hit another one over the wall. The Yankees got ahead in the Series, beat the Phillies, 8-5, and beat them up a little bit, because on this night their bullpen was more than just Mo Rivera.


Phillip/AP

Andy Pettitte's performance on the mound for the Yankees over six innings gives Bombers opportunity to grab the World Series lead.

The Yankees came from behind again, kept hitting home runs - they have now 18 for the postseason, more for a single postseason than any Yankee team in history - and scored so many runs that they were able to practically give Rivera the night off. Not two innings last night. Just the last two outs.

All good. None of it happens if Andy Pettitte doesn't stand in there against the Phillies, like a hitter standing in against the curve. There have been what feel like a hundred October nights when he had more fastball and more stuff than he showed you against the Phillies in Game 3, those three runs in the first two innings, two home runs by Jayson Werth, the second one a monster shot that went off the facing of the upper deck at Citizens Bank Park.

He pitched six innings, gave up five hits, struck out seven, gave up the two home runs. It does not look like a lot. It was. On this night, the night when the Yankees were trying to get ahead and then give the ball to CC Sabathia, Pettitte was as much a champion Yankee as he has ever been. He needed 17 minutes and 24 pitches to get out of the bottom of the first. He threw over to first eight times after Jimmy Rollins singled. He saw Rollins steal second without even drawing a throw from Jorge Posada. It is supposed to be easier stealing from an armored car.

"He struggled with his command early," Joe Girardi said.

By the time Werth took him out to left and Pedro Feliz nearly did the same to right and the Phillies had hung those three on him in the second, Pettitte seemed to be fighting the Phillies, the crowd, his own lack of command. He had given up as many runs in two innings as Sabathia and A.J. Burnett - combined - had given up in Games 1 and 2.

"You make a couple of mistakes during the course of a (World Series) game ... you may get hung with a loss, you know?" he'd said on Friday.

Oh, he knows, all right. He knows because this is his eighth World Series, seventh with the Yankees, and he knows all about games like this, nights like this. And from the third through the sixth last night, the only guy who got him was Werth. Sometimes you can be great on a night like this by being just good enough and tough enough. Pettitte was more a champion here than he was last Sunday night closing out the Angels. Because he wasn't at his best in Philadelphia. This was the kind of game that makes you wonder why he ever thought he needed performance-enhancing drugs for one day of his career.

Pettitte struck out Utley, looking, to end the second. Pitched a 1-2-3 third. Got through the fourth after Rodriguez began that inning with a throwing error on a routine ground ball that Feliz hit. So Pettitte was still in there when A-Rod's first hit of the World Series turned out to be a huge two-run homer after the umps looked at the replay and saw that the ball had hit off a camera above the right field wall.

"Looked like the ball struck the camera, from what I saw," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said.

Pettitte was still around to make about the biggest swing he has ever made in the postseason, an RBI single on the first pitch he saw from Cole Hamels in the top of the fifth, a dinker to center that fell in front of Shane Victorino, scoring Nick Swisher. Pettitte eventually came around to score on Johnny Damon's double and now he wasn't in a hole, he was ahead 5-3. Not looking at a loss anymore. Just looking at the 17th postseason victory of his career.

"What can you say?" said Derek Jeter, who almost caught Pettitte on the basepaths on Damon's two-run double. "He pitched, he hit. He did everything today."

"We put a three-spot on him and then (Pettitte) shut us down," Manuel said. "He closed down our lefthanded hitters completely."

There were stars all around for the Yankees. A-Rod again. Damon. Matsui. Nick Swisher got a couple of hits. Joba Chamberlain in the seventh.
Damaso Marte, of all people, in the eighth, giving them the sure outs they thought they were getting when they got him from Pittsburgh. But the Yankees don't get ahead of the Phillies two games to one if Pettitte doesn't pitch the way he does from the third through the sixth.

"It was a battle tonight," Pettitte said.

He sure did shut down the Phillies' lefthanded hitters. He does not have the arm he used to have, the kind of stuff he used to have. He still knows how to win a game like this. As much a champ last night as he's ever been.

Related News
Articles
Victorino's at-bat a real Shane
Use of instant replay A-First
Swisher gives Philly fans his 2 cents' worth
Voice of the People for Nov. 1, 2009
Hughes saved by Rivera for final two outs
Pettitte strikes blow with his bat

Penn State ties Wooden's Bruins with 88th straight win

WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL

By Gordon Brunskill- gbrunski@centredaily.com
Centre Daily Times
October 31, 2009

UNIVERSITY PARK — When your team is now getting compared to the UCLA men's basketball squads of the early 1970s, you must be pretty good.


Penn State's Megan Wilson goes for a kill against Minnesota's Ariana Filho (11) and Mia Tabberson at Rec Hall on Friday, October 30, 2009. CDT/Christopher Weddle


The Penn State women’s volleyball team hit another major milestone Friday night at Rec Hall, even if it’s not an official record.

The two-time defending national champion Nittany Lions joined those John Wooden-coached Bruins with their 88th consecutive victory after sweeping No. 7 Minnesota 25-14, 25-16, 25-17.

“If you’re in coaching and your name is in a conversation, and John Wooden’s name is in the conversation,” head coach Russ Rose said, “you pinch yourself.”

The streak, which dates back to a five-set loss to Stanford on Sept. 15, 2007, matches the 1971-74 Bruins among the longest NCAA Division I runs. Within reach is the North Carolina women’s soccer team’s 92-game win streak from the Mia Hamm days in the 1990s. The best all-time stretch is the 137-match win streak by the Miami men’s tennis team.

The top-ranked Nittany Lions (24-0, 12- 0 Big Ten), however, have been paying little attention to these accomplishments. Junior libero Alyssa D’Errico was quizzed about it at a booster club get-together earlier in the day and she had no idea what the number was.

Advertisement
“I know we haven’t lost,” D’Errico said, with teammate Cathy Quillico knocking on the wooden table. “That’s the one thing that I do know. It’s match-to-match. I just know the next team that we play is the one that matters.”

The win featured standout performances above the net by Megan Hodge and in the back row by D’Errico and Quillico.

Hodge rocked in 19 kills — just five more than the entire Golden Gopher team.

“That pretty much says that she was the best player on the floor this evening,” Rose said of the three-time All-American, who was followed by eight kills each from Darcy Dorton and Blair Brown.

Hodge had an array of spikes down the line and cross-court, with soft tips, hard blasts and even a couple at tight angles well inside the 10-foot line, and registered just short of half of the team’s 40 kills and 35 of their 82 total swings to hit .429.

“I don’t like the idea of having to set her so much, for having one player to have almost 50 percent of our kills,” Rose said, “but she was by far the best player and she was playing very well. It made sense to set her. She was due.”

She was playing so well that at one point during the match, after Hodge had drilled the ball into the floor over a pair of Gopher blockers, D’Errico said to Quillico, “She makes it look easy.

“At some points in the game, it was just like, ‘Set Megan the ball,’” D’Errico said. “You know it’s going to be a kill. We have so much confidence, if we do our job in the back row, the ball gets set to her, we’re going to end up winning the game at some point.”

D’Errico and Quillico had their own contributions to the highlight reels, with each making several diving saves to set up the offense. Quillico led everyone with 12 digs and D’Errico added nine.

“Our coaches take a lot of credit for this,” D’Errico said. “They tell us where to go, they tell us what the tendencies are of the hitters and our block definitely does a great job of funneling the ball to Cathy and I.”

That defense, and a 9-7 advantage in blocks led by Arielle Wilson’s six, helped force Minnesota into 23 hitting errors and a .011 hitting night.

“We played really a scrappy defensive style that enabled us to keep some balls in play,” Rose said, “and I think maybe frustrated Minnesota a little bit. It transferred into we got a few runs, got some points and got some things going.”

Lauren Gibbemeyer’s six kills led the No. 7 Gophers (17-6, 8-3), who must finish the season without Brook Dieter. The second-team All-American, who was leading the team and third in the Big Ten at 3.94 kills per set, left the program about two weeks ago for personal reasons.

Notes: Along with 88 straight wins overall, Penn State has won 68 straight at home and 56 in a row in the Big Ten. During the 88-match run, the Nittany Lions have dropped just 14 sets, winning 94 percent of the frames. … Penn State hit .341 for the night. … The team has its first Saturday off all season and does not play again until traveling to Wisconsin next Friday. … With the match on Halloween weekend, many among the 3,512 in attendance showed up in costume.

Obama makes Bush his blame czar

It's now Obama's war, his jobless rate, his debt, etc.

By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion
Friday, October 30, 2009

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that "we're going to speak truth to power."

Who's Valerie Jarrett? She's "Senior Adviser" to the president of the United States – i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to "speak truth to power" to. But I suppose if you're as eager to do so as his Senior Adviser, there's always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Adviser has selected targets closer to home: "I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we're going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death."

Ah, right. People "putting up signs." Can't have that, can we? The most powerful woman in the inner circle of the most powerful man on Earth has decided to speak truth to powerful people standing in the street with handwritten placards saying "THIS GRAN'MA ISN'T SHOVEL READY." Was it only a week ago that I wrote about this administration's peculiar need for domestic enemies?

The Senior Adviser seems to have forgotten that she is the power. Admittedly, this is a recurring lapse on the part of the administration. There was Barack Obama only the other day, blaming everything on the president – no, no, silly, not him, the other fellow, the Designated Fall Guy who stepped down as head of state in January to accept the new constitutional position of Blame Czar. Musing on problems in Afghanistan, Obama blamed the "long years of drift" under his predecessor. The new president – OK, newish president – has been Drifter-in-Chief for almost a year but he's too busy speaking truth to the former power to get on top of the situation. It could be a while yet. In his more self-regarding moments, such as his speech to the United Nations, he gives the strong impression that the "long years of drift" began in 1776.

Rocco Landesman, head honcho at the National Endowment for the Arts, seems closer to the reality of the situation. In his keynote address to the 2009 "Grantmakers in the Arts" conference, Landesman hailed Obama as "the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar". He didn't mean a "powerful writer" as in a compelling voice, gripping narrative, vivid characterization, command of language, etc. He meant a "powerful writer" as in Caesar was king of the world, and now Obama is. He came, he saw, he stimulated: "If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists."

I suppose so. He could invade somewhere and force the natives to accept degrading roles in NEA-funded performance art. He could take out the Iranian nuclear program by carpet-bombing it with unreadable literary novels. That is, if you "accept the premise" that the United States is the most powerful country in the world. Rocco Landesman may, but it's not clear, from his actions (or inactions) in Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere, that the president does. But, even so, it seems an odd pitch to "American artists." Rocco Landesman, Speaking Goof to Power, isn't the first Obama groupie to enjoy the kinky frisson of groveling obsequiousness, but he's set an impressive new standard in public revelation thereof. Rocco's aunt, Fran Landesman, is the great lyricist of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" as well as "The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men." But surely there are few sadder middle-age men than her nephew, prostrating himself before his master as the most literate global colossus in two millennia.

Meanwhile, Larry David is now doing televised NEA exhibits on his HBO show "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Christians are said to be "angry" at him because of an episode in which, after he accidentally sprays his urine on a picture of Jesus, his assistant mistakes the droplets for tears and calls in her mother to witness the miracle of Christ weeping. Ha-ha! Oh, those brave transgressive artists! Of course, Christians aren't "angry" in the sense that two U.S. residents arrested last week are. The pair – one an American citizen, the other Canadian – were so "angry" about the Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that they hatched a plot to kill the artist and his editor. As many commentators pointed out, Mr. David's splashy stunt is a dreary provocation: It's easy to be provocative with people who can't be provoked. If he were to start urinating in a more Mecca-ly direction, he'd find an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for him at the stage door.

But I liked the point made by the Anchoress, a writer at the magazine First Things: Putting Muhammad, et al aside, if Larry David had a yen to urinate hither and yon, wouldn't it have been "braver" to have done it to the religious icon du jour? That's to say, Barack Obama. And then maybe Ashton Kutcher could have marveled at how even Obama's image was empathizing tearily with all 687 million Americans without health insurance. Or, alternatively, dribbling warm champagne from his Norwegian Nobel banquet toast. C'mon, Larry. Sure, you might not have a career afterward, but, unlike any Islamo-provocations, you're not gonna get killed. Just fired, and probably damned as a racist. But at least you wouldn't be a simpering suck-up to power like Rocco Landesman and the other creeps.

At some point the Caesar cult has to manifest itself in an achievement – I mean a real achievement, not merely some dud prize handed out by Norwegian Lefties. Afghanistan is his now: Notwithstanding "years of drift," whether it winds up as victory or defeat is his call. It's Obama's war. It's Obama's economy. The stimulus bill is his stimulus, and for $787 billion it created 30,000 new jobs (according to the government) or (according to the Associated Press) 25,000. Either way, you do the math. It's Obama's unemployment rate, Obama's dollar, Obama's debt. Pace Valerie Jarrett, the truth is you are the power. And those on the receiving end of it are going to be speaking a lot louder in the months ahead.

©MARK STEYN

The Obama White House: Bundlers' Paradise

By Michelle Malkin
http://www.vdare.com
October 29, 2009

Like Capt. Renault in "Casablanca," I am shocked, shocked to discover that access peddling is going on in the Obama White House. Perks for deep-pocketed donors? Presidential meetings for sale? The stale Chicago odor of pay-for-play wafting from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Knock me over with a feather.

Despite the president's claimed distaste for the campaign finance practice known as "bundling" (rounding up aggregate contributions from friends, business associates and employees), the House of Obama has been a campaign finance bundlers' paradise from Day One. A new report by Matthew Mosk of The Washington Times just confirms the gob-smackingly obvious: It's business as usual in the era of Hope and Change. O's wealthiest Democratic donors have received lavish receptions, golf outings, bowling dates and movie nights with Obama.

And internal Democratic National Committee documents acquired by the Times reveal that "high-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections." Yup, they're just haggling over the price.

Many Obama bundlers have secured slots on federal advisory panels and commissions. Still more have benefited from the time-honored patronage tradition of rewarding political benefactors with ambassadorships. Clinton did it. Bush did it. And despite all his fantastical, Balloon Boy-level rhetoric of bringing a "new politics" to Washington, Obama's done it, too.

His ambassador to London, Louis Susman, is a Chicago crony with no diplomatic experience who bundled between $200,000 and $500,000 for Team Obama and is known as "The Vacuum Cleaner" for his fundraising prowess. His ambassador to France, entertainment mogul Charlie Rivkin, headed up Obama's California fundraising operations, raking in $500,000 for the campaign and another $300,000 for the inaugural. His ambassador to Spain, Boston moneyman Alan Solomont, also bundled the same amounts for the campaign and inaugural.

In June 2008, candidate Obama railed: "We need a president who will look out for the interests of hardworking families, not just their big campaign donors and corporate allies." Immediately after the speech, he headed to a campaign fundraiser at the Manhattan headquarters of Credit Suisse, one of the major investment companies caught up in the subprime lending debacle. President Obama collected $3 million last week at another Manhattan fundraiser after carping about Wall Street's "self-interestedness." Audacity is his middle name.

When Obama inveighs against Wall Street greed and politicians beholden to Big Business, remember this: The Wall Street gamblers that Obama and his wife carped about on the campaign trail shoveled money to his campaign hand over fist. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, hedge funds and private equity firms donated $2,992,456 to the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle. No fewer than 100 Obama bundlers are investment CEOs and brokers: Nearly two dozen work for financial giants such as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs or Citigroup.

Obama happily accepted more than $200,000 in bundled contributions from billionaire hedge-fund manager James Torrey, more than $100,000 in bundled contributions from billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones and more than $50,000 in bundled contributions from billionaire hedge-fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin, chief executive officer of Citadel Investment Group in Chicago. Another notable: Chicago investment banker James Reynolds, who raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign while chief executive of Loop Capital Markets. The municipal bond specialist was a longtime friend of Obama's—feting the rising star in his Hyde Park home and convincing friends and associates to open up their wallets more than a decade ago.

In 2003, USA Today reported, Reynolds was caught on FBI wiretaps arranging what prosecutors called a "sham" consulting contract with a gal pal of a Philadelphia mayoral adviser. After the conversations, Reynolds snagged $300,000 in no-bid city contracts for Loop Capital Markets. City officials went to jail over the scam. Reynolds skated. The Obama campaign's only statement? "Jim Reynolds has admitted that he made mistakes, but he has not been charged with any wrongdoing."

Fortunately for Obama bundlers who may find themselves in legal trouble in the future, Clinton-era donor-maintenance fixer Eric Holder (who oversaw the pardon for fugitive financier Marc Rich) is guarding the henhouse at the Justice Department.

Every corner of the Obama administration is stuffed with crony moneybags. Take the first lady's social secretary, Desiree Rogers. More than a party planner, she's a fundraising machine in her own right.
According to left-wing watchdog Public Citizen, Rogers bundled more than $200,000 for Obama and contributed $28,500 to Democratic committees.
Rogers' ex-husband, John W. Rogers Jr., chief executive of multibillion-dollar Ariel Capital Management, played basketball with Michelle O's brother, Craig Robinson, at Princeton. Mr. Rogers also served as a campaign finance bundler for Team Obama—and hung with Obama in the White House on Super Bowl Sunday.

An indignant White House says this is about "friendship," not influence peddling. But as Obama himself noted in 2007: "It is no coincidence that the best bundlers are often granted the greatest access, and access is power in Washington."

Indeed, the Obama White House policy can be summed up in four words: No Bundler Left Behind.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild and the just-released Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies.

The Fruits of Intervention: Endless War In Iraq, Afghanistan—And Pakistan, Iran?

By Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.vdare.com
October 29, 2009

If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation?

Would we invade Iraq?

While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or we risk "mission failure" in Afghanistan. At present casualty rates —October was the worst month of the war—thousands more Americans will die before we see any light at the end of this tunnel, if ever we do.

Pakistan, which aided us in Afghanistan, now has a war of its own to fight. Its army is in a battle in South Waziristan, while the country is wracked by terror bombings, the latest in a Peshawar bazaar that specialized in women's clothing and jewelry and toys for kids. So horrific was the toll even the Taliban and al-Qaida denied any role in it.

The 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are, after almost seven years, to begin pulling out two months after January's election. But a hitch has developed.
Iraq's parliament missed the deadline for setting the rules. At issue: Will voters be allowed to choose individual candidates, or will they be allowed only to vote for slates of candidates?

Gen. Ray Odierno implies that postponement of the election may mean postponement of U.S. withdrawals.

Ominously, in August, terrorists bombed the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad, and last week blew up the Justice Ministry and Baghdad Provincial Governorate. And the Kurds are now claiming their control of oil-rich Kirkuk is non-negotiable, which crosses a red line in Baghdad.

Next door, a terror attack by Jundallah (God's Brigade) in Iran's southern province of Sistan-Baluchistan killed 40, including two senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.

An enraged Tehran pointed the finger at the United States, as there have been charges the CIA has been in contact with Jundallah as part of President Bush's destabilization program to effect "regime change."

But Barack Obama has been in office for nine months—and he would never authorize such an attack on the eve of a critical meeting on Iran's nuclear program. Moreover, the State Department condemned the Jundallah bombing as terrorism and offered public condolences to the families of the victims.

But if we didn't authorize this, who did?

Was the timing of this attack coincidental? Were these just freelance secessionists on an operation unrelated to the U.S.-Iran talks? Or is someone trying to torpedo the talks and push Iran and the United States into military collision?

For this was a provocation. And whoever carried it out and whoever authorized or abetted it wishes to dynamite the U.S.-Iran negotiations, abort a rapprochement and put us on a road to war.

Speculation is focusing on the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis, who have been accused, as has the United States, of aiding PJAK, a Kurdish faction that has conducted raids in northern Iran.

If we have any control of these organizations, we should shut them down. With U.S. armies tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America conducting Predator and cross-border attacks in Pakistan, provoking a war with Iran would be an act of madness.

Looking back, how has all this fighting advanced U.S. national interests?
We have a "democratic" Iraq that is Shia-dominated and tilting to Iran. We have an open-ended war in Afghanistan that will likely do for Obama what Iraq did for Bush. But we can't pull out, it is said, for if we do, Kabul falls and Afghanistan becomes the sanctuary for an Islamist war to take over Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.

And if that should happen, it would indeed be a crisis.

And so, how has all this intervention availed us?

We ran Saddam out of Kuwait and put U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia. And we got Osama bin Laden's 9-11. We responded by taking down the Taliban and taking over Afghanistan. And we got an eight-year war with no victory and no end in sight. Now Pakistan is burning. We took down Saddam and got a seven-year war and an ungrateful Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Turks, who shared a border with Saddam, have done no fighting. Iran has watched as we destroyed its two greatest enemies, the Taliban and Saddam. China, which has a border with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, has sat back. India, which has a border with Pakistan and fought three wars with that country, has stayed aloof.

The United States, on the other side of the world, plunged in. And now we face an elongated military presence in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan and potential disaster in Pakistan, and are being pushed from behind into a war with Iran.

"America rejects the false comfort of isolationism," said George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union. And we did reject that false comfort. And now we can enjoy the fruits of interventionism.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book is Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts.

Detroit Jihad

By Robert Spencer
http://www.frontpagemag.com
October 30, 2009

Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid Al-Haqq (Mosque of Truth), was killed Wednesday in a shootout with FBI agents. The agents were trying to arrest him on charges of conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods, firearms offenses and more. Agents also arrested eight mosque members; then Thursday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police caught Abdullah’s son, Mujahid Carswell. Two other accused jihadists also fled, and have not yet been found.

According to the indictment, in his mosque in Detroit Luqman Abdullah was preaching “offensive jihad” and the establishment of a Sharia state in North America. This sovereign Isamic state would be ruled by Islamic law – and by the apparent godfather of Abdullah’s movement, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. Al-Amin is the former Black Panther and convert to Islam who gained fame under the name H. Rap Brown. Al-Amin is now serving a life sentence for murdering two police officers, while his disciples, like Luqman Abdullah, carry on the message he articulated so memorably in the 1960s: “If America don’t come around, we’re gonna burn it down.”

In the spirit of his mentor, Abdullah has told his flock: “America must fall.” He has encouraged the Muslims in his mosque to support Hizballah, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. He exhorted them to bestir themselves to pious deeds: “We should be figuring out how to fight the Kuffar” – that is, unbelievers. “We got to take out the U.S. government. The U.S. government is nothing but Kuffars.” Among the unbelievers were FBI agents, about whom Abdullah declared: “Deal with them, deal with them the way, the way they supposed to be dealt with…. It’s not that complicated, man….If they are coming to get me I’ll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody.” A law enforcement official wrote in an affidavit that “Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting” – in accord with Abdullah’s dictum that every Muslim believer should “have a weapon and should not be scared to use their weapon when needed.”

Abdullah found justification for all this in the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, which he said “justified stealing, robbing and other illegal acts, as long as they profit Islam.”

One would think that Muslim spokesmen in America would be anxious to prove their moderate bona fides by repudiating Abdullah, praising the efforts of law enforcement officials, and announcing new measures to teach against the understanding of Islam that prevailed at the Masjid al-Haqq and to shore up the moderate Islam that politically correct orthodoxy insists prevails in all mosques in America in the first place. But no such luck. Instead, they praised Abdullah and excoriated law enforcement.

Dawud Walid of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reinforced CAIR’s image as an unsavory group with numerous ties to terror – an image newly reinforced by numerous revelations in the explosive new book Muslim Mafia — as he tried to paint a very different picture of Abdullah: “I know him as a respected imam in the Muslim community.” He emphasized the Masjid al-Haqq’s charitable activities, perhaps forgetting that Nazi Germany (and Hamas, and Hizballah) ran social programs as well, and thus their existence is no indication that the one operating them is in every sense benign.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Walid said that a group of imams were going to meet with the head of Detroit’s FBI office, Andrew Arena, to complain, about “linking the weapons and smuggling charges to the Muslim faith” – as if the FBI, rather than Luqman Abdullah, had done this. Arena probably won’t need much convincing: he has already asserted, without explanation, that Abdullah taught “a very hybrid radical ideology – one mainstream Muslims “would not recognize.” For his part, Walid also warned that the death of Abdullah and the arrests of other Masjid al-Haqq would anger Muslims and make them even more suspicious of law enforcement than they already are: “As much as our president says nice, flowery things about Muslims and Islam in Cairo or Istanbul, these types of stories just erode that.”

Meanwhile, the Muslim Alliance of North America, of which Abdullah was a member, complained about the shootout in a statement: “This tragic shooting raises deep concerns regarding the use of lethal force by law enforcement agents. We urge law enforcement and the media not to take undo advantage of this tragedy in order to demonize … African American Muslims in particular.”

These kinds of statements fall into a pattern that has played out many times before. An Islamic jihadist plots murder and mayhem, explicitly justifying it all by reference to Islamic texts and teachings. Then putatively moderate Muslims, instead of support law enforcement efforts, criticize them and complain about Muslims being victimized and Islam being unfairly linked to terrorism. Generally this is followed by the spectacle of media and law enforcement officials bending over backwards to make sure that no one gets the impression that Islam had anything to do with the bloody plots that the arrested parties were planning.

The problem with this pattern is that no one involved is doing anything to keep the story of Luqman Abdullah and the Masjid al-Haqq from being repeated in other mosques in the United States in the future. No one is challenging the Muslim community here to clean its own house and stop the dissembling and finger-pointing. No one is speaking openly and honestly about what the Qur’an really says, and what the implications are of that fact. No one, in short, is doing much of anything to ensure that Luqman Abdullah, one of the first clergymen in the United States to be killed in a shootout with the FBI, is not just the first of many.

Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter are key in double play that helps New York Yankees win Game 2

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Friday, October 30th 2009, 4:00 AM

Antonelli/News

Mariano Rivera on the mound and Derek Jeter (below) in the infield prove to be a winning combination in the eighth inning.


There was a moment, right before Mo Rivera had to make another pitch in the World Series, make a big pitch and get a big out, where there was a conference at the mound. Derek Jeter came in from shortstop and Jorge Posada came out from behind the plate and there the three of them were, in the middle of it all again at Yankee Stadium on a night like this. Rivera, Jeter, Posada. The Yankees were ahead, 3-1, in Game 2 and Rivera was already in there in the eighth, and now the Phillies had Jimmy Rollins on second and Shane Victorino on first, one out, Chase Utley at the plate. The Yankees needed a pitch from Rivera, an out, needed the game.

In the clubhouse later, Rivera was asked what the conversation was about at the mound and he said, "We just wanted to make sure we kept an eye on Rollins at second. The basics."

The basics. After all the winning he had done in games like this, the Yankees needed more winning from him. Rivera got behind Utley. If he walked him, the bases were loaded and it was him against Ryan Howard, a run-producing machine, now and always. It would have been Howard, the best money hitter of this baseball October, against the greatest money player of them all.

A.J. Burnett was gone by now, after pitching the kind of game he was hired to pitch, giving the Phillies just one run in seven innings. Pedro Martinez was gone, even if he had shown the Stadium and all the people yelling "Who's your daddy?" that he is still a great opponent for the New York Yankees, for any Yankee Stadium, even at 38, even without a fastball that can get to 90, even just going on guile and heart and memory. He had pitched into the seventh last night, left after six hits, finally ended up being charged with all three Yankee runs.

He was still something to see. He had talked on Wednesday, when he talked about everything except President Obama's health-care plan, about how Mo Rivera is the pitcher he has always admired the most.

Now that pitcher had to make a pitch in the eighth. The count went all the way to 3-2 on Utley. Charlie Manuel, the Phillies manager, elected not to send the runners, thinking Utley would never hit into a double play. Utley hit a hard ground ball to Robinson Cano's left. Cano got the ball away to Jeter for the force on Victorino, who came into the captain of the Yankees hard. Came in hard and got him good on the outfield side of second base.

"Shane got there fast," Jeter said.

Got there and tried to take out the captain of the Yankees with a clean hit. But Jeter got the ball off and made a perfect throw to Mark Teixeira, and Utley was out by a step. Or safe, if you're a Phillies fan. Rivera made the pitch and Jeter made the turn and the Yankees turned the double play. Rivera was out of the eighth. The lead stayed at 3-1. Howard walked back to the dugout. The Yankees were going to win Game 2, not go down to Philadelphia down two games in the Series.

"A tough double play to turn," Jeter said in front of his locker. "But a huge play at the time."

Not just a huge play. The real ending for Game 2. Rivera was asked about Jeter's play and said, "Not bad for an old man."

Somebody said, "You're just supposed to be the old man," and the great Rivera said, "Then he's the one who comes after me."

The Phillies got one more runner on in the ninth, a two-out double from Raul Ibañez. Then Rivera threw his 39th pitch of another two-inning save - and even with a day off that is an awful lot - and Matt Stairs struck out. But that wasn't Rivera's game. His game was the pitch to Utley. When he had to make that pitch, he did. When Jeter had to make that turn, he did. It is how they did all that winning together once, try to do that kind of winning again.

It doesn't happen this way without Burnett pitching the way he did, getting ahead of hitters all night long, not just a fastball on this night, a tight curveball, too, the kind Cliff Lee had in Game 1. Lee gave up one unearned run, went the distance, struck out 10, walked nobody. Burnett struck out nine, walked two, gave the Phillies just four hits, won the game he was hired to win. When it was over, they asked him what it was like to finally pitch in the World Series, and if the occasion was everything he always thought it would be.

"It was way more than I thought," Burnett said. "You try to prepare yourself for these games, this place, this crowd ..."

Big night at the place. Burnett pitched the way he did, Teixeira hit a home run to put the Yankees on the board, Hideki Matsui hit one off Pedro and got the Yankees ahead. Posada knocked in the kind of add-on run in the seventh that the Phillies had gotten in the eighth and ninth the night before.

So Thursday night Posada did something, too. After that came the double play in the top of the eighth. Rivera needed to make a pitch. Jeter needed to make a play. The Yankees got the game they needed. Game on in the Series.

Phillies befuddle Bombers in Game 1

By BOB KLAPISCH
BERGEN COUNTY RECORD COLUMNIST
http://www.northjersey.com/sports
October 29, 2009

NEW YORK – The ballpark couldn’t have emptied any faster, turning Sinatra’s lyrics into an eerie echo. “New York, New York” blasted away, full volume, but it couldn’t drown out the Yankees’ shock after Game 1 of the World Series.

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 28: Cliff Lee #34 of the Philadelphia Phillies throws a pitch against the New York Yankees in Game One of the 2009 MLB World Series at Yankee Stadium on October 28, 2009 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

The Bombers didn’t just lose to the Phillies, 6-1, Wednesday night, they were embarrassed by the Phillies in front a national television audience that was expecting a full-blown war. Instead, baseball’s most dominant offensive machine was shut down – no, obliterated – by Cliff Lee’s monster curveball, which accounted for 10 strikeouts and not a single earned run.

Say what you want about the Phillies – they’re loud, they talk too much, they ran through an inferior league – but they more than backed it up against the Yankees. Lee even managed to rub it in the Bombers’ face, tagging out Jorge Posada with a disdainful pat on the rump in the seventh inning, and catching Johnny Damon’s half pop-up to the mound near his hip in the sixth.

The left-hander insisted, “I try to not be cocky,” but eventually admitted, “after the first three or four innings, I knew it was going to be a good day. I knew I had my stuff.”

Lee’s complete-game performance was highlighted by three key factors: the Yankees were never comfortable with the huge, sweeping arc of his overhand curveball. He toyed with the middle of the lineup, striking out Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez five times.

Second, Lee never gave the Yankees a chance to exploit bad counts. Of his 122 pitches, 80 were strikes – he didn’t walk anyone.

And most importantly, Lee deflated the Yankees almost instantly, striking out four of the first six batters he faced. That left a dark imprint on the Bombers, so much that Joe Girardi was left grasping for a way to console his team, if not himself.

“One thing I know is that [Lee] can’t pitch every day,” the manager said, glossing over the possibility that Lee might otherwise start three times in this Series. That’s terrible news for the Yankees, who now face a must-win scenario against Pedro Martinez, who has the brains and the guts to take down the Bombers, if not the arm.

Suddenly it’ll be up to A.J. Burnett to shut down the Phillies, having watched CC Sabathia fail. That was the biggest shock of all for the Bombers, seeing their ace humbled not just once, but twice, by Chase Utley, who hit dramatic home runs in back to back at-bats in the third and sixth innings.

Utley turned around Sabathia’s heat with incredible ease – blistering a 95-mph fastball over the wall in right. The next time up, Sabathia ratcheted up the velocity, unleashing a 96-mph heater. Utley dented that one, too, launching it deep to right-center.

That gave the Phillies a 2-0 lead, but given how well Lee was throwing, the deficit might as well have been 20 runs. The team that had come back from behind 51 times in the regular season and five more times in the playoffs had no shot – none.

The pressing question is what this means to the Yankees’ presumed road to a world championship. They’d never expected to be beaten so easily be the Phillies. They never considered that, sooner or later, they’d run into a team that wouldn’t make foolish mistakes on the base paths or call on relievers (like Joe Nathan or Brian Fuentes) who were afraid of the pinstripes.

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 28: Chase Utley #26 of the Philadelphia Phillies hits a solo home run in the top of the sixth inning against C.C. Sabathia #52 of the New York Yankees in Game One of the 2009 MLB World Series at Yankee Stadium on October 28, 2009 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The Yankees found out there’s no Nick Punto or Vlad Guerrero in the World Series. They found out their own bullpen is less dependable than ever – and that’s especially true of Phil Hughes, who walked the only two batters he faced in the eighth inning and was booed thickly by the Stadium crowd.

The Yankees found out that the Phillies were capable of manufacturing four add-on runs in the eighth and ninth innings, which not only sealed Lee’s victory but demoralized the Yankees, who hadn’t lost a postseason game at home this month.

“We definitely don’t like this situation we’re in,” said Damon. “We can’t lose three more when we’re shooting to win four.”

Jorge Posada was even more candid.

“I can’t really live here [in the aftermath of the loss],” he said. “We have to move on.”

The Yankees have no choice, they’ll have to find a way to cope with Pedro’s change-up, his moxie, his obvious lack of fear. We’ll know soon enough if Burnett has the stomach for this fight.

But before they move on, the Yankees will have to purge themselves of the realization that Phillies were smarter than them, too, and that’s what really hurt. Even the cool, calculating Hideki Matsui was no match for the super-deke that Rollins pulled in the fifth inning.

It started when Matsui, who’d led off with a single to center, was fooled into thinking Rollins was turning a double play on a ball hit by Robinson Cano.

Lee made it all possible, blistering Cano over the inside corner with a power fastball. Cano lifted a benign flare towards short, where it appeared Rollins would field it on a short hop. Matsui, believing a double play was about to be launched by the Phillies’ defense, left the base and took two steps towards second.

But at the last moment, just as it appeared Rollins was going to let the ball drop in front of him, he caught it clean, a half-inch from the ground. Rollins pretended the ball had bounced, stepping on second and firing to first to complete the faux double play, which had Matsui so confused he stood frozen – two feet off the bag, doubled up as Rollins’ throw landed in Ryan Howard’s glove.

The umpires called everyone out after a brief conference, as Matsui, properly dazed, trudged off the field. Later, Charlie Manuel smiled and said, “that was a pretty good deke.”

The manager knew it was the perfect way to bookmark a nice night for the National League champs. Actually it was better than that for the Phillies: they’d made the Yankees blink first in this war of the worlds.

Losing Ground

Hispanic children fall behind their peers quickly, a study finds.

By Heather Mac Donald
http://www.nationalreview.com/
October 29, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

A forthcoming study on Hispanic children’s cognitive skills underlines the challenges the country faces in aspiring to close the achievement gap between these children and their white and Asian counterparts. Hispanic “children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older,” reports the New York Times. “The drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other [low-income] groups and could not be explained by economic status alone. . . . From 24 to 36 months, the Hispanic children fell about six months behind their white peers on measures like word comprehension, more complex speech and working with their mothers on simple tasks.”

This new study, from the University of California–Berkeley, may be unusually blunt in its assessment of Hispanic cognitive development, but it is hardly unprecedented. A 2004 study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found a similar decline in Hispanic students’ ability to keep up with their peers in learning English. Children from Mandarin- and Spanish-speaking households begin kindergarten with similar levels of English proficiency, but their paths quickly diverge. The Mandarin-speaking students make continuing progress in mastering English, while the Hispanic students’ advance stalls out in the second and third grades as the demands of California’s English-proficiency test grow more difficult. Mandarin kindergartners establish oral skills in English in one year, the legislative analyst found, and by the beginning of second grade, they have begun developing a mastery of reading and writing, unlike Hispanics. The widening English-proficiency gap between Asian and Hispanic students may reflect parental willingness to expose children to English at home, but the gap occurs in math as well.

This summer in Southern California, I observed Hispanic students who had been taught in English throughout their school careers, yet who possessed very weak formal language ability. An in-class reading assignment at Locke High School in Watts asked students to answer the question: “Why is it important to use all your skills during your teen years?” A ninth-grader wrote in response: “To make it better.” Another question, “What sudden insight came to the engineer?” elicited the answer: “How to put the little mirrors.” While diagnosing the student-written sentence, “The pigs squealed loudly because the’re [sic] bored at the barn,” a high-school English teacher in Santa Ana asked his class: “Why does the dependent clause need to be in the past tense?” A student answered: “Because you’re talking about a lot of people.”

The Berkeley researchers speculate that the early decline in Hispanic students’ language and reasoning skills may reflect inadequate maternal stimulation in the home. And indeed, a Santa Ana elementary-school principal recounted to me her largely unsuccessful efforts to get parents to teach their children such basic kindergarten-survival tools as cutting with scissors and the words for colors. “Kids come in not knowing the alphabet in Spanish or the sounds of Spanish,” she said. “They use three-word sentences; they come in without oral-language ability.”

The Berkeley study will inevitably be used to buttress the Obama administration’s plans to pour billions of federal taxpayer dollars into early-education programs. As a matter of education policy, such efforts represent wishful thinking. Head Start has been repeatedly shown to have no lasting effect on students’ academic performance. Even the most successful and lavishly-funded of such early-intervention programs — the iconic Perry Preschool Project from the early 1960s in Ypsilanti, Mich. — explained only 3 percent of the earnings of its participants at age 40, and about 4 percent of their educational-attainment levels, wrote John J. Miller in NR in 2007. Replicating the Perry Project’s services on a national scale for Hispanic children would be extraordinarily expensive and produce only modest results. Many children who receive early intervention provide inferior intellectual stimulation for their own children, whether for innate cognitive or for cultural reasons.

But the more interesting implications of the study and others like it are for immigration policy. Our de facto immigration policy is currently weighted to a population that appears to require massive additional government education spending — even before formal schooling begins — to be made academically competitive. This choice would not seem to be economically rational, at least so long as we aspire to universal college-going. If the country remains committed to sending a far greater number of students to college, as even many conservatives continue to be, we better get ourselves a different mix of immigrants if we don’t want to bankrupt our education budgets. Alternatively, if the open-borders lobby prevails and Latin American migration continues to dominate our immigration flows, it’s time to acknowledge that many students never will be college material, nor do they need to be to lead productive, fulfilling lives.

— Heather Mac Donald is the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of The Immigration Solution.