Bad Deeds for 10-12-2007

Ann Coulter says Jews need “to be perfected” and the nation would be better off if it were all-Christian – Appearing on “The Big Idea” with host Donny Deutsch on Monday, Ann Coulter said Christians were tolerant of racial diversity but that it “would be a lot easier” for Jews if they were to become Christians. Deutsch, who described himself as a practicing Jew on the show, was clearly dismayed by the remarks, which he called “hateful” and “anti-Semitic.” In her defense, Coulter apologized for the remarks and said they were misinterpreted. “I don’t think you should take it that way (as offensive), but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament,” she said.

CIA Chief Ordered Probe of Inspector General – The work of the CIA’s in-house investigator who found fault with the agency’s handling of the Sept. 11 attacks is being subjected to an internal review, published reports say. The move, which is highly unusual, has raised concerns that CIA Director Michael Hayden is trying to squelch the investigations of Inspector General John Helgerson.

Is the Department of Homeland Security Using Robot Insects to Spy on Protesters? – Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. “I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.” Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. “I’d never seen anything like it in my life,” the Washington lawyer said. “They were large for dragonflies. I thought, ‘Is that mechanical, or is that alive?’ ” That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insect-like drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Income Inequality Worst Since 1920s – The superrich are gobbling up an ever larger piece of the economic pie, and the poor are seeing their share of earnings shrink: new IRS data shows the top 1 percent of Americans are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time since before the Great Depression. The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent in 2004, according to new Internal Revenue Service data published in the Wall Street Journal Friday. Americans in the bottom 50 percent of wage earners saw their share of income shrink to 12.8 percent in 2005, down from 13.4 percent.

Rush Limbaugh: War is Peace, Black is White, and Up is Down – As for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh had a suggestion: “I call on Albert Arnold ‘Algore’ to redirect his Nobel Peace Prize to genuine agents of peace.” And who might that be? Army Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. troops in Iraq. “If there has ever been an engine of peace, it’s the United States military,” Limbaugh said.

Regards,

Jim