By Debbie Schlussel
I watched the entire video plea by 10-year-old aspiring reporter, Damon Weaver, asking the President-elect for a brief interview during Inauguration week.
And I’m surprised the Obama Administration made the boneheaded decision not to give press credentials to this cute, smart boy. That’s not to mention that this is a young Black kid, for whom Obama–we are told–is supposed to be a role model.
Yes, it’s hard to understand some of what he’s saying, but remember, he’s only ten.

If the Obama camp were smart, they would have granted young Weaver press credentials when he asked for them, and they would have publicized and promoted the heck out of it. Instead, Obama’s crew is looking like a bunch of grinches.
Remember, “Yes, We Can”? That was just a campaign slogan about opening up your wallets to pay for his stuff. For everything else, including Damon Weaver, it’s more like, “No, We Can’t.” Heartless. And more than that, just stupid.
Even Joe Biden was smarter on this. He gave an interview.
Bleeding Heart Liberals–they bleed for themselves, those who can help them, and those who hate America. But they don’t bleed for you (or this cute little kid who could have made for great press).
My guess is that the Obama gang will eventually back down . . . if they’re smart.

By Debbie Schlussel
Congratulations to the Detroit Free Press–and especially its incoming Editorial Page Editor, Stephen Henderson, for publishing (partially) my letter to the editor, today, exposing the Freep’s false report that Israeli soldiers shot a Michigan Palestinian Muslim legislator-elect’s grandfather in 1967. Henderson even put it under a separate headline, assuring readers would notice it. I appreciate his professionalism, fairness, and integrity in this matter.
Readers will remember that a week ago, I questioned this and the Free Press and its second-in-command, Senior Managing Editor Jeff Taylor, admitted the story was never verified, but refused to print a retraction/correction. Thank you readers for writing Freep chief Paul Anger and getting the paper to back down. As a result of your efforts, the Free Press published a correction.

Detroit Free Press: On Guard for Palestinian Muslims, Not You
Today, the Freep published my letter to the editor. It should be noted that the “reporter,” er . . . regurgitator, Niraj Warikoo is a Muslim with an agenda, and simply shouldn’t be trusted to cover this beat objectively. And he committed the grave sin of reporting as fact a tall tale he failed to verify, simply because it backed up his anti-Israel agenda. It is against Free Press editorial page policy to allow reporters’ names in the letters to the editor section, so that is why he is not named in my letter. I hope that policy changes, so that crappy reporters are held a tiny bit accountable for their actions, as Warikoo simply hasn’t been.
It should also be noted that while I reported on this and your letters helped make the correction, the Detroit Jewish Community Council missed this story entirely. And when I called them on it, they still did nothing. After the retraction was issued, Jewish Community Council Associate Director Allan Gale told me he was “still looking” into the issue. And O.J. is still looking for the real killers.
Thanks, readers, for a job well done. We must continue to hold the mainstream media accountable. Here’s my letter,below, but also go to the link above and read the responses of anti-Semites and Holocaust-deniers. These are the sad times in which we live.

Don’t trust all you hear, report
December 30, 2008
In its gushing, front-page puff piece on Rashida Tlaib, who will become the first Muslim woman in the Michigan Legislature in January, the Free Press did much worse than fail to do any real reporting (“Politicians’ disparate backgrounds source of bond,” Dec. 14).
The drooling was so thick that the Free Press twice reported as fact an unsubstantiated, unproved anti-Israel tale Tlaib has been telling, claiming her Palestinian Muslim grandfather was shot by an Israeli soldier for refusing to leave his house in 1967 and go to Jordan. Unlike the Free Press, I actually checked into this story, and there is absolutely no evidence to back up her claim.
That the Free Press took Tlaib at her word, without solidly substantiating the claim, is blatant evidence that the Free Press cannot be trusted to report accurately on issues relating to the Mideast or the Arab-Israeli conflict.
While Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust but verify,” a newspaper’s job is strictly to verify. By failing to do so, the Free Press simply doesn’t deserve our trust.
Debbie Schlussel

But, they didn’t publish the entire letter. Here’s the entire letter I sent them, which as you can see, was entirely edited with some of the most important points deleted.

To the Editor:
In its gushing, front-page puff-piece on Rashida Tlaib, the Free Press did much worse than fail to do any real reporting. The drooling was so thick that the Free Press twice reported as fact an unsubstantiated, unproven anti-Israel tale Ms. Tlaib has been telling, claiming her Palestinian Muslim grandfather was allegedly shot by an Israeli soldier for refusing to leave his house in 1967 and go to Jordan. Unlike the Free Press, I actually checked into this story, and there is absolutely no evidence to back up her claim.
Real reporting involves actual research and investigation, not regurgitation. Sadly, the Free Press did not want to let real reporting get in the way of a story that had an obvious agenda and should have been labeled commentary. But even commentary cannot claim as fact, what is merely an unsubstantiated allegation that should have been labeled as such. That the Free Press took Ms. Tlaib at her word, without solidly substantiating the claim, is blatant evidence that the Free Press cannot be trusted to report accurately on issues relating to the Mid-East or the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In fact, during both the 1948 and 1967 wars, Israel asked Palestinians to stay and not to go to Jordan. But each time, Jordan and other Arab nations told Palestinians to leave, assuring them they’d be able to come back after a swift Arab victory. Jordan lost each time, and Tlaib’s family tale is likely just a sour grapes story.
While Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust But Verify,” a newspaper’s job is strictly to verify. By failing to do so, the Free Press simply doesn’t deserve our trust.
Debbie Schlussel

By Debbie Schlussel
If there’s anything the bad economy brings, I hope it’s forcing universities to cut professors’ salaries and make them work more hours–and lay a lot of them off. And I hope it also results in colleges being forced to cut their sports-industrial complexes, which are tax-funded farm teams for billionaires and future millionaires. Here’s more evidence why colleges shouldn’t have sports teams.
File it under Notes From the “Duh!” Department.
Not sure why this should be news. It’s more like confirmation of age-old truth. What is news–and predictable–is that the liberal mainstream media claims this is evidence that college athletes are the “exploited,” rather than what they really are, “the exploiters.” Oh, and they’re claiming this is evidence of racism:

Football and men’s basketball players on the nation’s big-time college teams averaged hundreds of points lower on their SATs than their classmates, and some of the gaps are so large they call into question the lengths to which schools will go to win.
The biggest gap between football players and students as a whole occurred at the University of Florida, where players scored 346 points lower than the school’s overall student body. That’s larger than the difference in scores between typical students at the University of Georgia and Harvard University.
Nationwide, football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates – and men’s basketball players average seven points less than football players.
Those figures come from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of 54 public universities, including the members of the six major Bowl Championship Series conferences and other schools whose teams finished the 2007-08 season ranked among the football or men’s basketball top 25.
While it’s commonly known that admission standards are different for athletes, the AJC study quantifies how wide the gap is between athletes and the general student body at major universities.
Georgia Tech’s football players had the nation’s best average SAT score, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0 in the core curriculum. But Tech’s football players still scored 315 SAT points lower on average than their classmates.
At the University of Georgia, the average football SAT was 949, which is 239 points behind the average for an undergraduate student at Georgia – and 79 points behind Tech’s football average. The Bulldogs’ average high school GPA was 2.77, or 45th out of 53 teams for which football GPAs were available. Their SAT average ranked them 22nd.
Nationwide, coaches who would never offer a scholarship to a player who was 6 inches shorter or half a second slower than other prospects routinely recruit players whose standardized test scores suggest they’re at a competitive disadvantage in the classroom. . . .
“The problem is there’s a huge world of Mickey Mouse courses and special curriculums that athletes are steered into,” said Murray Sperber, a visiting professor in the University of California’s graduate school of education and the author of four books about college athletics and college life. “The problem is there are many athletes graduating from schools who are semiliterate.”
Who gets hurt? Former Princeton University President William Bowen points to the students the colleges would have admitted if they hadn’t enrolled less qualified athletes.
“There are grounds for concern,” Bowen said. “Places at a lot of these schools are precious things. To have them allocated this way raises troubling questions about fairness, about taking advantage of educational opportunity.”

Like I said, it’s not news. But in this new economy, I hope it will lead taxpayers to say no to continuing to fund this crap. It’s a myth that sports programs, or even the revenue producers in football and men’s basketball, make money for the schools. Most college football and basketball programs are in the red and spend way more than they take in with locker rooms that look like the spas of billionaires. That’s even when you subtract the Title IX boring sports for women, which men’s sports subsidize, from the equation.
Plus, college basketball and football players are six times more likely to commit violent crimes on campus (against students who actually deserved to get in). Is that really worth any extra money they might garner for the school, but usually don’t?
I’ve written about this more times than I can count. It reminds me of the Sports Illustrated story in which a professor recounted how he asked Voshon Lenard why George Washington was considered a founding father. “George Washington . . . Name sounds familiar. Can you give me a hint?” was Lenard’s response. You have to wonder what kind of college course even asks such a basic question I learned the answer to in elementary school (I think in first grade).
Read “The Real March Madness” for more scintillating such examples.
As a former tutor for the University of Wisconsin Athletics Department, I can tell you that the athletes I tutored were mostly dumber than rocks. This spanned the races, and the exceptions spanned the races, too: the four smartest athletes I tutored–all football players, two of whom went on to the NFL–were two White guys (Tarek Saleh and Pete Monty) and two Black guys (Azree Commander and Josh Dickerson). They were the exceptions to the rule of dumb athletes and didn’t really need my help.

By Debbie Schlussel
How’d you like a Christmas like the Ferrance Family had, with a guy living in their attic and invading their home when they weren’t a around? I’d say they should make a movie out of this, but I think I’ve seen like five movies with this exact plot:

Police said 21-year-old Stanley Carter had been living with Stacy Ferrance and her three children for a week, eating their food, stealing their cash and Christmas presents, even wearing their clothes.
“I heard noises, but I never suspected anything,” Ferrance’s son Cory told “Good Morning America.” “We have two cats, and I think, My mom could be getting a drink in the middle of the night.”

Creepy: He Lived Secretly in Their Attic

The Ferrance family was tipped off that something was seriously amiss when its belongings started to disappear.
“My daughter’s brand new iPod nano, that was missing,” Ferrance said. “Cash was missing from Christmas cards.”
According to Ferrance, the family was robbed twice on Christmas Day, once in the early afternoon and then again at night. When Ferrance discovered footprints leading to the attic the next day, she called the police.
“When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter’s pants and my sweat shirt and sneakers,” Ferrance told The Associated Press. “From what I gather, he was helping himself to my home, eating my food and stealing my clothes.”
The Ferrance home is a duplex with a shared attic, and Carter had been living with a friend’s family in the attached home, according to the Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pa.

Life imitates art, yet again.

By Debbie Schlussel
The Israeli Army now has its own YouTube Channel, so we can watch what’s really happening in the HAMAS-Israel war, unfiltered by the left-wing mainstream media.
But, now it’s being “filtered” and worse. YouTube is removing its videos. Carl in Jerusalem, citing Commentary’s Noah Pollck, has the details. Visit ’em both.
And take Carl’s advice on where to find the complete uncensored IDF videos.

By Debbie Schlussel
In this hilarious photo of the day from Pamela Geller/Atlas Shrugs, scroll down to the sign from New York’s Fifth Avenue, which tells us all we need to know about the apparently unintentional feelings of the Muslims toward the Heisman Trophy Winner, murderer who got away with it, and convicted armed robber.

By Debbie Schlussel
One of the human embodiments of why parents shouldn’t teach their kids two religions is Roseanne. It confuses the kids, and sometimes has long-term effects well into adulthood. The bizarre, has-been, unfunny comedienne was raised with both Mormon and Jewish upbringings and hates both religions as a result. And, also as a result, she’s, well . . . screwed up. And she also hates Israel and, apparently, herself. But she loves HAMAS and Jihad Cindy.
Now, she’s bragging that she was supposed to be on the HAMAS Love Boat with Jihad Cindy a/k/a loony Cynthia McKinney:

i was going to go too..cynthia is on this boat:

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage.

Oh, and here’s another pearl of wisdom from Roseanne, saying HAMAS is just a minor street gang, even though 300,000 Palestinians just marched in a rally marking this major Iran-backed terrorist group’s anniversary:

i told my friend [DS: Jihad Cindy] don’t go! . . .
Israel is a NAZI state. The Jewish Soul is being tortured in Israel. The destruction of the jews in Israel has been assured with this inhuman attack on civilians in gaza. Hamas is the street gangs—this is equivilent to los angeles attacking and launching war on the people of watts to attempt to kill the bloods and the crips.

Puh-leeze. The entire Muslim world supports HAMAS, and it has murdered many people, Jews and Christians AND Muslims. She apparently missed the HAMAS rallies around the world. While I don’t know what the populus of Watts thinks of the Crips and the Bloods, I know what the most of the population of Gaza thinks of HAMAS. Has she forgotten the elections, where the Palestinians picked them? Since when have the Crips and Bloods won elections overwhelmingly in Watts?
The pictures tell the story about how Gaza feels about HAMAS:
Roseanne’s “Crips & Bloods Street Gang”: Gazans Celebrate HAMAS’ Anniversary 2 Weeks Ago. . .

BTW, I was once on Roseanne’s radio show with a Palestinian woman. The biggest anti-Semite on the show was not the Palestinian Muslim. It was Roseanne (and her obnoxious boyfriend, Johnny). She said that because I’m blonde (which is from my hairdresser) and my eyes are blue (real), Jews have no right to be in Israel. HUH?! Hair and eye color aside–which is genetic bigotry a/k/a eugenics a la the Nazis, the majority of Israelis have dark hair and dark eyes and look like their Arab neighbors who kicked them out of their homes in Arab nations.
Oh, and as I pointed out, there are plenty of fair-haired, light-eyed Muslims, too. I wonder what Roseanne thinks about the rights of my Muslim hairdresser, a true blonde with blue eyes.
I vowed never again to be on Roseanne’s show. I’ve since been asked to be back on, but I declined. This woman is insane.

By Debbie Schlussel
Actually, I’m not wondering who threw a Molotov Cocktail at a Chicago Jewish temple. With a very large Palestinian Muslim population in that city, it’s hardly a mystery who would pick now–in the midst of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza terrorists–to attack a synagogue in America.
I think we know. We don’t have the name of the person, but here’s a name to blame: ISLAM. I mean, I think it’s safe to assume that the explosive hurler was not Samoan or Fijian and neither a Sikh nor a Wiccan.

A Molotov cocktail thrown early today against the wall of one of Chicago’s oldest synagogues caused minimal physical damage but worried local Jewish officials, who said the incident could be a response to the latest fighting in the Middle East.

“I can’t help but think there’s a relationship,” said Roger Rudich, president of Temple Sholom of Chicago, 3480 N. Lake Shore Drive.
No one was hurt in the arson that police are investigating as a hate crime. Bomb and arson detectives were at the scene Monday afternoon and the investigation was ongoing, said Chicago police officer Daniel O’Brien.
O’Brien said the fire “extinguished itself, nothing ever caught fire.” No suspect was in custody as of Monday afternoon, he said.
“The offender drove off and made a derogatory statement” to a witness, and police were working to obtain and review surveillance equipment in the area, said O’Brien.

If you are a Jew in America, don’t fool yourself. Your synagogue, school, or Jewish community center could be next. And you Christians, Hindus, etc., you’re next on the list.

By Debbie Schlussel
I have been writing about my favorite Congressional loon, Cynthia McKinney, for over a decade. Back in 2001, I was the one who dubbed her “Jihad Cindy.” (Cindy Sheehan is “Jihad Cindy #2.”) I also compared her to Hanoi Jane. (Now another prominent conservative blogger who read that column is using both of these without proper credit to me, unfortunately.)
I’ve written about her family’s tight attachment with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, how when she ran–in the mid-1990s–against my friend, Republican John Mitnick, and almost lost, she and her family attacked John for being a Jew in several vile anti-Semitic tirades.
THEN . . .

HAMAS’ Congresswomen, Cynthia McKinney a/k/a “Jihad Cindy”Hard At Work
I wrote about how after 9/11, Jihad Cindy wrote to Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and attacked America, essentially saying that the mass murder of nearly 3,000 Americans was no big deal because, she claimed, a Black baby born in Harlem has less of a chance of survival than a baby born in Bangladesh. HUH?!
And I wrote about how Jihad Cindy’s father attacked “the J-E-W-S” when he learned that his daughter was defeated in her Democratic primary re-election bid (she since regained her seat in Congress).
So, given all of that–and that’s the “Debbie’s Notes” version of a long career in lunacy for her–it’s no surprise that she’s now tried to travel to Gaza to help HAMASniks. And also no surprise that the Israelis told McKinney where to go:

A boat carrying international peace activists, including former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and medical supplies to the embattled Gaza Strip sailed back into a Lebanese port on Tuesday after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, organizers of the trip said.
The crowds on the docks in the Lebanese port city of Tyre were jubilant and cheering as they welcomed the vessel.

Yup, Hezbollah is cheering on their crazy American friend, er . . . useful idiot, Jihad Cindy.
NOW . . .

Jihad Cindy’s Yacht: The HAMAS Love Boat

The boat, which set off from Cyprus Monday wanted to make a statement and deliver medical supplies to embattled Gaza. The trip’s organizers said the boat was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza, at the time of its close encounter with the Israeli navy.
“Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side,” McKinney told CNN Tuesday morning.

So sad, too bad.

She denied that the incident was an accident, caused whent he captain of the Dignity tried to maneuver past the Israeli blockade. . . .
“I don’t know if she’ll get off the boat,” her father [Georgia Democrat State Rep. and vocal anti-Semite, Billy McKinney] said. “I hope she gets back safely.”

Well, that makes one of us. On the other hand, I’d miss out on the comedy she consistently provides.

By Debbie Schlussel
The incompetent ICE Princess, Julie L. Myers, has been gone from her hilarious perch atop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for over a month. But her legacy of incompetence and jeopardizing ICE agents’ lives lives on. More about that below.
But first, we interrupt this post to note that The ICE Princess made Cracked.com’s “Most Embarrassing Photos of 2008”. She’s #5. (Thanks to reader Ari for the tip. Warning: some of these photos are quite lewd and disgusting.)
Now, back to the ICE agents’ safety against illegal aliens they’re deporting.
It’s long been the policy of ICE to sedate some aliens–especially the ones who will likely be violent–when they are being deported. This is necessary. Imagine you are an agent on a plane with an illegal alien named Mahmoud–or more likely, Juan, since we barely deport any Muslims–and you are accompanying him back to his country of origin, where he belongs.

Sedate ‘Em!
The rest of the people on the plane aren’t likely your allies in the deportation, and even if they are, it’s hardly relevant if Mahmoud or Juan starts attacking you. More than likely Mahmoud or Juan has been convicted of a crime, perhaps a violent crime–since those seem to be the only ones ICE detains these days, if at all.
You are in mid-air, thousands of miles above civilization, and Mahmoud/Juan decides to start physically attacking you and grabs your gun. What do you do? Ask Julie Myers, since her new policy makes this almost possible.
You see, because of Julie Myers’ newly instituted policy, fewer and fewer such deportees are being sedated. And it jeopardizes agents’ live needlessly. These are dangerous people who scratch, bite, spit on, blow snot on, and otherwise try to harm and infect ICE Immigration enforcement Agents and Deportation Officers.
Myers required that agents get a court order to sedate a deportee. It further clogs the deportation system, and few agents are going to hold things up to get it. It’s simply absurd.
But Myers bought into the ACLU’s and other open borders advocates’ cries over this because she was more worried about her image with these groups than agents’ safety and lives. Here are the thrilling results, but you have to read beyond the agenda in this article, which seeks to portray ICE agents as Nurse Ratched.

Fewer deportees have been sedated with powerful medications during their removal from the country by federal immigration officials, according to a newspaper report.
Data obtained by The Dallas Morning News showed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sedated only 10 people in the past fiscal year, using the anti-psychotic drug Haldol in only three cases.
ICE was criticized and even sued over its practice in which most of those involuntarily sedated were given Haldol, a potent drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and hostility.
Immigration staff oversaw the sedation of 384 deportees over the past six fiscal years, through October. Haldol was used in 356 of the cases, the newspaper reported in Monday’s editions. . . .
Federal officials defended ICE’s sedation policy, pointing out that medical personnel must recommend the procedure before it’s used. A court order must now be obtained to drug a deportee. . . .
Haldol is sometimes used for acute agitation in hospital emergency rooms.
Critics applaud the newer requirement for a court order, a change that took effect in June 2007. The policy was enacted after then- assistant homeland security secretary Julie L. Myers learned about sedation cases and followed opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union. . . .
The ACLU sued the U.S. government last year on behalf of the two immigrants, one from Senegal and another from Indonesia [DS: both Muslims]. The case was settled for $55,000 to be split between the two men. The government admitted no wrongdoing or liability.
When former Dallas resident Stanley Ukeni of Nigeria was deported in October 2007, he said immigration officials gave him two choices: arrive sedated in Nigeria or remain unsedated so he could better protect himself. Ukeni, who feared torture in Nigeria because of his human rights work, opted to go peacefully so he could avoid sedation.
In November 2007, federal officials sought a court order to sedate an [DS: Muslim] Albanian political-asylum seeker who resisted deportation at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, wrote a private bill that halted the man’s deportation until early 2009.

The only reason agents sedate people is when they are violent and unruly and refuse to go or cause havoc in the deportation process, or when agents have good reason to believe they will be violent. The fact is that if these aliens left on their own when they received their deportation orders, none of this would happen. This is only a last resort. And now it is a difficult thing to do because of the additional bureaucracy Julie Myers put in place for her ACLU buddies.
Illegal aliens salute you, Congressman Gohmert and Julie. Real people of genius.
***
By the way, here’s a little appropriate musical accompaniment for Julie Myers’ dumb ACLU-pandering policy, which, sadly, lives on: