it's so nice to be back at school.
seriously, I really missed it over the summer.

Below is a copy of Newt Gingrich's weekly column. This week it was exceptionally good and I thought I would share it with you all:
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I have two grandchildren, ages 5 and 7. If you're a parent or grandparent yourself, I challenge you not to think about a child you love when you read what I'm about to tell you.

I challenge you not to share my disgust with the barbarians who use the blood of innocents to further their political agendas.

And I challenge you not to share my contempt for the bureaucrats who think they can appease them.

For the governments that think their actions don't have consequences.

For the politicians who think that something - anything - good can come from allowing the killers of children to walk free.

Smadar Haran, her husband Danny, and their two daughters, ages two and four, were at home in their apartment in northern Israel on the night of April 22, 1979. They were asleep in their beds around midnight when they awoke to gunfire and grenades exploding. Terrorists, sent by terrorist leader Abu Abbas to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty at Camp David the year before, were breaking into their building. Desperate to hide, Smadar carried her two-year-old into a crawl space above their bedroom. So terrified was she that her baby girl would cry out and alert the terrorists to their hiding place that Smadar held her hand tightly over the girl's mouth. Too tightly. By the time they were rescued hours later, the little girl was dead. Smadar had accidentally smothered her own child.

But the horror doesn't end there.

While Smadar and her child hid in the crawlspace, Danny and the four-year-old ran out of the apartment for the safety of an underground shelter. They didn't make it. The terrorists took Danny and the little girl down to the beach where one of them, Samir Kuntar, shot Danny in front of the girl. His goal, according to Smadar, was that the sight of her father being killed "would be the last sight she would ever see." Then Kuntar smashed the little girl's skull against a rock until she was dead. Last week, in a deal brokered by the Israeli government with the terrorist group Hezbollah, Samir Kuntar, a cowardly child killer, walked out of an Israeli prison.

The deal the Israeli government made with Hezbollah included the exchange of the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in return for five live terrorists in Israeli prisons, including Kuntar. And Kuntar was no ordinary terrorist prisoner. Abu Abbas was so impressed with Kuntar's savage child-killing tactics that Abbas masterminded the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 - including the killing and dumping into the ocean of the defenseless, elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer - to secure Kuntar's release.

Israel didn't cave into terrorists in 1985, but it did last week. And the deal it struck with Hezbollah will have disastrous consequences for Israel and the world. The concession, writes the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick "will cement Iran's control of Lebanon through Hizbullah. It also all but guarantees that any future Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hizbullah will be killed on the spot. Why care for hostages when you can murder them and expect to receive the same payoff you would get if you kept them alive?"

But possibly even more disappointing than the Israeli government's willingness to make deals with terrorists is the reception that greeted the release of Samir Kuntar in parts of the Middle East last week. Columnist Mona Charen reports that Kuntar literally received a red carpet reception in Beirut. Charen writes: The government closed all offices and declared a national day of celebration. Tens of thousands of Lebanese cheered, waved flags, threw confetti, and set off fireworks as Hezbollah staged a rally to celebrate their "victory" over Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, the "moderate" leader of the Palestinian Authority, sent "blessings to Samir Kuntar's family." PA spokesman Ahmad Abdul Rahman sent "warm blessings to Hezbollah . . . on the return of the heroes of freedom . . . headed by the great Samir Kuntar."

This barbaric display enrages me and it should enrage all Americans.

Both the Palestinian Authority and the Lebanese government are recipients of U.S. taxpayers' money through foreign assistance. Political leaders - and the people they lead - who cheer the release of despicable child murderers are unworthy recipients of our assistance. Congress should insist that the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority retract their support for Kuntar or it should cut off U.S. assistance to them.

As if the news from Israel weren't bad enough, the seemingly irresistible urge among some foreign policy elites to appease our worst enemies came home to America last week. The State Department sent its third most senior official to sit in on nuclear "negotiations" with Iran, even as Iran continues its relentless pursuit of a nuclear weapon. In the past, President Bush had a label for such a move. He called it "appeasement." Last week, his own State Department succeeded in taking the first steps in a futile attempt to appease a dictator who has called for the destruction of Israel and defeat of the West. His stated goal? A world without America.

And so I ask again: Have our leaders lost their minds?

As a historian, I look for clues for how to manage our present from how we've managed our past. One thing history shows is that some elites have a dangerous and unexplainable desire to lie to themselves. A case in point: In 1924, Adolph Hitler was released from a German prison after serving time for conspiracy to overthrow the German government. Nine years before he took power and led Germany on an irrevocable course toward world war and a campaign of systematic genocide against Jews, Gypsies, Catholics and others, the headline in the New York Times was:

"Hitler Tamed By Prison"

Read closely. The article concludes on this deluded note: "[Hitler's] behavior during imprisonment convinced the authorities that [he], like his political organization, known as the Volkischer, was no longer to be feared. It is believed he will return to private life and return to Austria, the country of his birth."

When the Negotiations Don't Work, What Are We Prepared to Do?

As America looks ahead to the swearing in of a new president next January, we need now, more than ever, leaders who resist the temptation to delude themselves about the nature of our enemies. As a young Senator with little foreign policy experience, Barack Obama faces a unique challenge. As I write this, Senator Obama is traveling abroad seeking to convince the American people that he has the leadership ability to be commander in chief. Senator Obama has also repeatedly assured us that he, too, will negotiate with regimes like Iran. But the question we owe to ourselves is to ask Senator Obama and our current State Department:

When negotiations don't work, what are you prepared to do? Talking isn't a policy, it's a process. And talking to people who have vowed your destruction is at best a futile and at worst a dangerous process.

Just ask the Israelis.

After having my mac book for over 24 hours now I can say that they do live up to the hype. I also am currently writing this from my iPod touch which is also very nice.


Apple is freaking amazing.

To most people, today will be just another friday.  To me, it's a day of rememberence.

June 6 1944, American and British forces storm the beaches of Normandy with Operation Neptune, the first part of the bigger Operation Overlord to defeat Hitler.  The men fought, and many of them died, for a cause they believed in, and one we seem to have forgotten.  Good should always triumph over evil.

I'm always reminded of a quote from Lord of the Rings in times like these.  I can't remember if it's in the books or not, but in The Two Towers movie, towards the end, Frodo and Sam have been captured by Faramir and taken to Osgiliath.  Frodo is loosing hope that he will eve be able to destroy the ring, as I image the men on the beaches were not thinking they'd never get off, and he tells Sam:

"I can't do this, Sam."
and Sam replies: "I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

The other day the History channel played my favorite mini series, Band of Brothers.  This is the end clip, and I think it brings the point home.

sorry pens, that's just the way it is.