Wonderful news!

Navy SEAL (Petty) Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe was found not guilty Thursday evening on charges of assaulting detained terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, dereliction of duty, and impeding an investigation based on a false statement.

A seven member military jury deliberated for an hour and forty minutes before reaching a verdict. For a verdict to be reached, two-thirds of the jury had to agree on each charge.

It is good that this hero was acquitted, but it is still a nauseating miscarriage of justice that charges were even brought. I am sick and tired of our best and bravest having to defend themselves against accusations made by our enemies. Especially when it comes to people our troops capture in the field, the presumption must always be that any accusation is a lie – only if evidence emerges which is not in any way connected to enemy sources should an investigation be launched.

We send these men in to harm’s way and they have a right to expect that we have their back – and its time we started doing that.

Got this from NRO’s The Corner:

Seat predictions:

Conservatives: 307

Labour: 255

Liberal Democrats: 59

Others: 29

This puts the Conservatives 19 short of an overall majority. The BBC’s presenter David Dimbleby is already casting doubt on the poll’s value because the Liberal Democrats have dropped three seats.

But Conservative Home says this:

Contrary to the exit poll which has the Tories 19 short we are expecting a good night for the Conservatives; probably a small working majority. David Cameron will become Prime Minister. The party will make deep inroads into Labour territory but will not do well against the Liberal Democrats. The LibDems may come third, winning 100 seats in total. The exit poll has the LibDems only on 59 seats.

We’ll see how it comes out.

UPDATE: Live coverage from the UK here. Rumors are flying, but it looks like the Tories just might eke out a majority. Which is, in my view, would be a bad thing – they won’t be able to make the necessary changes, but will get blamed for the double dip when it hits.

We have some video links to this over at Noonan for Nevada.

In a nutshell, the school authorities held that American kids wearing American flags at an American school in the United States of America would cause trouble because Mexicans take offense at Old Glory.

This may, after all is said and done, be true – but if anyone out there is offended by the American flag, then I suggest living some other place besides the United States of America.

UPDATE: More on this stunning, un-American news.

Mish has a good run down here and here.

No one really knows what is happening but I figure it can’t be good that we’ve shoved trillions in to the global economy while at the same time massively increasing government debt here and around the world.

We stand poised for another crash. Will it happen right now? I don’t know – but it is coming. We need to clear out the rot built up in 75 years of phony money and usurious finance. It won’t be pretty – it will, indeed, be very painful. But it has to happen – only by clearing all this garbage out can we really determine our level of wealth and only when that happens can we really start to rebuild.

Read it and weep, liberals:

While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama and members of Congress may have to answer for the millions in campaign contributions they’ve taken from the oil and gas giant over the years…

…During his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from the oil giant and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years, according to financial disclosure records.

Obama, in the hip pocket of Big Oil.

Because hitting our friends is easier – and safer – than confronting our enemies:

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council said they support a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, according to a unanimous statement circulated during a conference aimed at strengthening nonproliferation.

Without mentioning Israel by name, the group voiced support for the “full implementation” of a 1995 resolution intended to free the Middle East from nuclear arms. “We are committed to a full implemented of the 1995 NPT resolution on the Middle East and we support all ongoing efforts to this end,” the statement read. “We are ready to consider all relevant proposals in the course of the Review Conference in order to come to an agreed decision aimed at taking concrete steps in this direction.”

Neville Chamberlain had this problem, too. When confronted with the choice of either restraining an insane dictator or helping the dictator out, the decision always came out in a “help the dictator” manner. Fighting evil is hard and risky – conniving at it is easy and bears no apparent risk.

But as Churchill warned Chamberlain and would warn Obama, if he could, this is just feeding the crocodile and hoping he eats you last. If we press Israeli nuclear disarmament as part of a move to convince Iran to not build nukes, all we’ll do is lend legitimacy to Iran’s government, demoralize the Israelis, encourage the Islamo-fascists and allow time for Iran’s nuclear program to bear fruit.

Nuclear weapons are the only way Israel can assure itself of survival. It is because the Moslem world knows that an all-out attack on Israel is suicidal that we haven’t had a major Moslem effort to wipe Israel out since 1973. Without those weapons, then it would become just a matter of attrition and Israel would eventually be crushed – the Moslem world could afford to exchange 10 lives for 1, they so vastly outnumber the Israelis. Nuclear weapons redress the balance.

We don’t need a nuclear-free Middle East – in fact, there would be a million nuclear weapons in the Middle East with no risk at all if the Moslem world becomes free and under democratic governance. Weapons are never the problem – who has them, is. Israelis holding nuclear weapons is a good thing because they are free people – Iranian mullahs holding them is a bad thing because they are insane tyrants.

Obama and Co can’t wrap their minds around this – mostly because liberals have no understanding of the way things work. Israel will find itself under increasing pressure from the United States while our failure to act decisively increasingly risks war between Israel and Iran. Its a bad situation, and we’re making it worse.

Obey out:

Bone-tired and facing a tough political landscape at home, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey announced Wednesday that he won’t seek reelection, ending a 41-year House career stamped by his unique talent and tempestuousness.

Rarely does a committee chairman of such power just walk away, and Obey’s decision is a blow to Democrats and marks the passing of one of the last major leaders of the 1970’s reforms that reshaped the modern House.

With poll numbers consistently bad; with the economy still rocky; with financial turmoil pointing to another possible crash; with Democrat primary turnout in the dumpster, the writing is on the wall.

How will it all come out in the end? Still unknown – lots of time between now and November. But it is no longer in the Democrats hands – they really can’t shape events and only luck will prevent a wipe out in November.

Less and less like a random event:

U.S. and Pakistani investigators are giving increased credence to links between Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad and the Pakistan Taliban, with one senior Pakistani official saying Mr. Shahzad received instruction from the Islamist group’s suicide-bomb trainer.

If the links are verified, it would mark a stark shift in how the Pakistan Taliban—an affiliate of the Taliban in Afghanistan—and related jihadist groups in Pakistan pursue their goals. Until now, they have focused on attacks within Pakistan and in India, not the U.S.

Just showing, once again, that the war is between the United States and Islamo-fascism. They’ll attack others, but their ultimate goal is always to attack us. They don’t call us the “Great Satan” just for the heck of it. They really believe that – and believe that our destruction is a good thing.

As I’ve said, we’ve been lucky during Obama’s tenure – and our luck will not hold forever. We must not only strengthen our defensive measures, but must also toss aside all this politically correct nonsense (“man-caused disasters”, eg) as well as all efforts to “reach out” to people who see us as subhuman scum.

It isn’t a matter of peace or total war – its a matter of recognizing who we fight and why, and acting accordingly. This is not the time for liberal illusions – those illusions will be paid for in human blood, unless we drop them.

This time from Oakland, CA:

Oakland voters will likely be asked in November to approve higher taxes to halve a $42 million deficit, but even if they agree, the city will face an even deeper crisis within months.

Ballooning pension costs will push the city’s projected deficit to $58.7 million by July 2011.

The liberals who run Oakland have just spent and spent and spent the city in to oblivion. Every time the public sector unions made another pay and/or benefit demand, the city caved in. Every time some city politician got a bug in his ear and wanted some new spending, it was agree to.

The city has a Commission on Aging, a Children’s Fairyland Board, a Community Action Partnership Administrating Board, a Cultural Affairs Commission, an Inclusionary Housing Blue Ribbon Commission, a Paramount Theater of the Arts Board, a Department of Information Technology…and on and on.

A completely ruined city, run by liberals in to the ground.

There hasn’t been a Republican mayor of Oakland since 1966.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

From Politico:

The ferocious oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening President Barack Obama’s reputation for competence, just as surely as it endangers the Gulf ecosystem.

So White House aides are escalating their efforts to reassure Congress and the public in the face of a slow-motion catastrophe, even though it’s not clear they can bring it under control anytime soon.

“There is no good answer to this,” one senior administration official said. “There is no readily apparent solution besides one that could take three months. … If it doesn’t show the impotence of the government, it shows the limits of the government.”

Which is fair enough as far as it goes – but it rings hollow from the people who leaped all over President Bush for things he had no control over in the Katrina disaster. Now hoist upon their own petard, they are in a funk as to what to do about it.

It’d be nice to think that the lesson would sink in and in future Democrats would be more, well, decent and patriotic about things, but that won’t happen – when there’s a GOPer in the White House, they’ll fall right back in to their old, nauseating tricks.

Doing the right thing is, at times, difficult – but in the long run, it makes life a heck of a lot easier.