VIRGINIA DINERS PACKING HEAT

As the nine esteemed justices sitting on the United States Supreme Court wrestle with the legality of the DC Law banning all hand-guns, in a decision which will perhaps affect gun laws throughout the country, here is one working version of the Second Amendment from nearby Fairfax County in northern Virginia.

THE PATRONS AT CHAMPPS in Reston, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.

The armed customers stood up in unison, showing off holstered pistols. Mr. Jackson said a word or two about the rights of gun owners to carry firearms in Virginia, then thanked everyone for his or her attention and sat down. And the diners returned to their burgers and Budweisers.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) organized the dinner at Champps to prove a point: that the presence of armed customers in Northern Virginia restaurants would elicit little more than shrugs. The dinner—and several other restaurant visits throughout Northern Virginia last month—were a response to comments from the majority leader in the state Senate, Democrat Richard L. Saslaw, who said during a legislative debate that armed patrons would be unwelcome in Northern Virginia restaurants.

"In most urban areas, you walk into a restaurant with a gun on your hip, they're going to tell you to get out," Mr. Saslaw said.

In fact, with a few exceptions, the gun owners got their meals. The group went to eight different restaurants last month—at two of them, they were asked to leave. More often than not, though, their presence failed to generate a stir.

Read it all.

ISA CONTINUES TO CURRY FAVOR

WHO'S AWAKE NOW? More on the northern Virginia Saudi-backed Islamic school, which has been under fire of late for many unsavory reasons, the last being their intention to enlrage their premises. Here's some info by a reader of Jihad Watch.

As a lifelong resident of Northern Virginia and one who has worked for private schools throughout my teaching career, I can testify to how much difficulty the County typically gives to the zoning procedures for any private school, particularly toward private Christian schools.

But in the case of the ISA, the County is bending over backwards and evincing full dhimmitude. The contrast couldn't be more apparent! What should we conclude? Frankly, I suspect there is a money trail—possibly campaign donations to Board members or something similar.

When Fairfax Christian School sold to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia back in the 1980s, the financial offer was sky high—an offer not to be refused, really, Chesapeake Bay Watershed Act or no Chesapeake Bay Watershed Act.

To my knowledge, the Popes Head Road location of the ISA is now configured differently from when the site was the property of a Christian school. Last time I drove by, the place was similar to a walled compound. My memory could be faulty as I haven't been there in a while. I will check it out on my own soon. But I can say this FOR A FACT: When Fairfax Christian School was operating in that location, the site was not a walled compound.

Here's something else to note: in Fairfax County, the ISA has used or purchased sites previously used as schools, thereby passing the initial and grueling zoning procedure. There's a reason for that method: if starting from "scratch," the school and its primary officers/investors would have to produce proof of character and sign off on future intentions for the site. In addition, along the way during construction, inspections of all sorts would be conducted on a regular basis. Among those inspections would be a process of full financial disclosure, made public.

America. Home of the sellout.

CONGRESSMAN FRANK WOLF ON THE JOB

SEVEN ATTEMPTS BY U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10) to have the U.S. State Department initiate an investigation into controversial textbooks used at two Islamic schools in Northern Virginia have gone unanswered. In his seventh letter in less than a year to the department, Wolf calls continued inaction on the part of the department "inexcusable."

The Islamic Saudi Academy, or ISA, has close ties with the government of Saudi Arabia, which Wolf says charges the State Department with overseeing any investigation of it, under the Foreign Missions Act of 1982.

"The Saudi ambassador is the head of the school," said Wolf.

ISA has two campuses. One in Alexandria on Richmond Highway, and another in Fairfax on Pope's Head Road. Material in some textbooks used at both campuses has been called "intolerant" and "shocking" by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and by Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the The Institute for Gulf Affairs, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank.

According to Al-Ahmed, one example is a 10th-grade work that "indulges in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories." Wolf said, "Textbooks used in Saudi Arabia are very anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and pretty hate-filled." While some textbook material has reportedly been changed due to pressure from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Wolf says an independent investigation of the textbooks and their overarching use at the academy has yet to be initiated.

"We're just asking that there be an independent evaluation by someone that's not paid by the Saudi Academy," Wolf said.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on March 12, Wolf wrote: "According to AP, 'while the Islamic Saudi Academy deleted some of the most contentious passages from the texts, copies provided to the Associated Press show that enough sensitive material remains to fuel critics who claim the books show intolerance toward those who do not follow strict interpretations of Islam.'"

Read it all.

ICE HALTS DETENTIONS AT VA FACILITY

THE NOVEMBER DEATH of a Prince William County man in immigration custody at Piedmont Regional Jail has prompted Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend placing detainees at the facility, three hours south of the District near Farmville, Va.

In recent years, the rural county jail has contracted with ICE at rock-bottom rates to become a principal storehouse for non-citizen detainees from Northern Virginia and the District awaiting deportation. But since the November 28 death of detainee Guido Newbrough, ICE has launched an investigation into medical care at the facility, and its detainee population has fallen from 330 to 53 as of Wednesday. The jail laid off 50 of its 135 employees this week.

"There is no effort underway to cease utilizing Piedmont. However, we have stopped housing detainees at Piedmont while we continue to monitor current conditions at the facility," said Cori Bassett, an ICE spokeswoman.

The suspension comes at a particularly sensitive time for Piedmont and the town of Farmville, which has 7,000 residents. Piedmont had been earning $46.25 a day for each of the ICE detainees it housed in dormitory-style cells with triple bunk beds. Business was so robust that a group of investors announced a deal with Farmville officials last year to build a $21 million, 1,000-bed, privately run immigration detention facility there, pledging to convert the job-starved town into a hub for ICE operations in the mid-Atlantic.

Yeah, buddy. Hustling investors can always find the cash when it comes to making yet another quick buck. We at the Two-Fisted Quorum expressly approve of better, even strict enforcement of this nation's immigration laws, including the rounding up, penalizing and deportation of those who have skirted the system, and honest news about mismanagement of detainees is always disappointing and sad, but something is repugnant about how seamlessly a group of investors always manages to scramble into place to "fill a need" just in the nick of time to make some easy money, especially at the public trough.

Read it all.

GUNS IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL

RESIDENTS IN ONE of the District's most violence-ridden neighborhoods are mostly indifferent to the prospect that handguns could legally return to the city after a 32-year ban. After al, the city is perennially one of the most dangerous in the nation.

"It doesn't seem like it was doing anything anyway," said Norman Day, who lives on Orren Street Northeast in Trinidad. "People can bring [guns] in from anywhere. You can't put up checkpoints everywhere. It probably won't make any difference. If anything, it might save the District some money by not hauling off anybody with a gun."

Many residents in the Ward 5 neighborhood in Northeast—the site of one of the most violent crime sprees in recent city history—have been hardened to the frequent violence and responses by the Metropolitan Police Department.

Others saw the ban as the last remaining barrier between occasional violence and all-out chaos.

"That's the worst thing they could ever do," Daphne Potter said at the corner of Oates and Staples streets Northeast. "Most of that shootings come from the young kids. I hate to see what's gonna happen now."

Earlier in the day, gun advocates rejoiced outside of the Supreme Court building.

"I'm very pleased with the decision, but at the same time, I am a bit suspicious of the possible restrictions that could come down," said Craig Burgers, 25, a Michigan native now living in Arlington. "You shouldn't have to check your rights to enter the District. I have my gun in my house and I mostly use it for target practice but would definitely use it if someone tried to break in."

Ariel Sarousi, a 25-year-old gun owner who moved to Falls Church from his home in Boston a year ago, pointed out that the District has a much higher crime rate than Northern Virginia, which has no such ban.

"You can easily dispute the idea that the ban on guns has decreased crime in the District," he said. Mr. Sarousi said he is much more likely to consider moving into the District now that he is allowed to bring his gun with him.

Well, one thing is a proven fact DC's gun ban for the past 30 yrs has none nothing to stop the violent nature of DC's citizens. Guns by themselves are not the problem—the culture and violent nature of the people that live in DC are the problem. Change the culture and the violence will subside.

Americans can keep guns at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in the justices' first-ever pronouncement on the meaning of gun rights under the Second Amendment.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most federal firearms restrictions intact.

District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents of the nation's capital to register their handguns. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Fenty said.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.

Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police."

Scalia's opinion dealt almost exclusively with self-defense in the home, acknowledging only briefly in his lengthy historical analysis that early Americans also valued gun rights because of hunting.

The brevity of Scalia's treatment of gun ownership for hunting and sports-shooting is explained by the case before the court. The Washington law at issue, like many gun control laws around the country, concerns heavily populated areas, not hunting grounds.

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

Gun rights supporters hailed the decision. "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.

The NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several of its suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome.

Chicago mayor Richard Daley said he didn't know how the high court ruling would affect the city, but said that the ruling was "a very frightening decision." He predicted an end to Chicago's handgun ban would spark new violence and force the city to raise taxes to pay for new police.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress, criticized the ruling. "I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it," she said.

The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest. Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his Capitol Hill home a short distance from the Supreme Court.

"I'm thrilled I am now able to defend myself and my household in my home," Heller said shortly after the opinion was announced.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.

The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.

Thursday's decision was embraced by the president, said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "This has been the administration's long-held view," Perino said. "The president is also pleased that the court concluded that the D.C. firearm laws violate that right."

White House reaction was restrained. "We're pleased that the Supreme Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to keep and bear arms," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

The law adopted by Washington's city council in 1976 bars residents from owning handguns unless they had one before the law took effect. Shotguns and rifles may be kept in homes, if they are registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.

BATTLEFIELD

Once again for emphasis. Islam is not a race. Islam is a pernicious ideology, spoiling for global domination and the total submission of the world to its evil culture of death. Should I mention again its historical links to Old Joe Goebbels and Nazi Germany?

Warning from the homefront. A private Islamic school supported by the Saudi government (that and 1500 others scattered strategically across this sleeping nation) should be shut down until the U.S. government can ensure the school is not fostering radical Islam. This is not news, for anyone reading this blog knows that the particularly virilent strain of Wahabbism is the code of the road for these Saudi financeers, but what is indeed a bit of uplifting good news is that finally a federal panel has recommended such a closing. Amazing grace!

In a report released Thursday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom broadly criticized what it calls a lack of religious freedom in Saudi society and promotion of religious extremism at Saudi schools. Particular criticism is leveled at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school serving nearly 1,000 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in northern Virginia's Fairfax County.

The commission's report says the academy hews closely to the curriculum used at Saudi schools, which they criticize for promoting hatred of and intolerance against Jews, Christians and Shiite Muslims.

"Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States," the report states. Again, none of this is news, except perhaps to George Bush and his left-wing cronies, yes, you read this correctly. The Bushies have aided and abetted the vast left-wing conspiracy to deliver this nation unto the Saudi kingdom without even blinking.

Our national forebearance and patience can be noble and wonderful traits in a people, except when they are not. And this report has finally let the cat out of the bag. How long before the "official" denials start rolling heads?

Now imagine the exact inverse of this scenario—an Amero-fascist school set up in a Muslim dominion, Saudi Arabia for instance—financed by hidden sources answering the call to duty. Imagine the 'academy' is filled with over 1,000 transplanted Westerners, operatives and patsies who are flush with the most vicious hatred of any and all Muslims, operatives and patsies who are brainwashed with the official propaganda of hatred-spewing 'teachers' and 'religious high priests' aiming to annihilate that Muslim nation and subject that people to Amero-fascist domination and replace all Islamic laws with the US Constitution...

No, this is not happening, not even in hapless Iraq, no thanks to curious George and his black hand of eager beavers.

Imagine, if you can, the immediate consequences of such an operation by American forces. Not a single head would remain on a single set of shoulders. Tongues would have long ago been pulled from mouths with pliers. Eyes would have been gouged out. Genitals would have been mutilated and fed back to the 'students' and 'faculty' of this 'blasphemous' school.

As part of their plans for global takeover, the Saudis have done exactly this. The Saudis have installed not one, but virtually thousands of such academies in the West. In these madrassahs and schools and mosques they regularly enforce ideas of Islamic supremacy among their students, instilling a hatred and contempt for non-Islamic things right in the midst of the non-Islamic West. They teach their children to despise the West, its people, its culture, and to ponder ways to subvert us and our laws, to convert us to Islam, or to subjugate us under Islam. Failing that—to annihilate us in honor of Islam.

There is no moral equivalency here, folks. Don't even try it.

Now, the bad news. The Commission apparently has no official power, but merely advises the State Department and the President, essentially saying what the former are unable to say openly.

Their annual report is found here.

Saudi Arabia, was named as a CPC, country of particular concern, in 2004 and targeted by the State Department for action, but after a waiver of 180 days, the State Department continued the waiver explaining a dialogue on matters of concern was in play. The Commission, in its frustration, has issued a recommendation that the State Department report to Congress every 120 days on the progress of their discussions with the Saudis. Translation: Saudi cooperation is not forthcoming and the discussion is probably an exercise in futility.

The Commission's report is some 292 pages, but contains summaries on all countries of concern and is a good guide for understanding the intricacies of the religious makeup, differences and policies within countries.

Like I've written many times before in these pages, America is buckling at the knees, and has become the hireling, the paid mercenaries of the Saudi regime. We are owned by those who hold our debt. We have exported our hard industries, crippling our own middle class, and now we must kow tow to our enemies. This must stop. This is the fight we we must fight.

INFILTRATOR GETS PENTAGON BOOT

In a stunning turn of events, a high-level Muslim military aide blamed for costing an intelligence contractor his job will step down from his own Pentagon post. Three cheers for rational thought!

Meanwhile, his rival, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, a leading authority on Islamic war doctrine, may stay in the Pentagon, moving from the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the office of the secretary of defense. However, sources say a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey is trying to block his new contract.

The top Pentagon aide, Egyptian-born Hesham H. Islam, came under a cloud of suspicion after reports raised doubt about his resume and contacts he had made with radical Muslims. He is expected to leave the government next month, officials say.

Read it all.

Reality is peeking through the clouds. A senior U.S. official says the life story Islam presented now appears sketchy.

"His resume didn't add up, and he knows it," the official said. "He's voluntarily leaving the government in March."

At the same time, a report by terror expert Steven Emerson revealed that Islam, as special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, has scheduled at least two meetings in the Pentagon with Syrian-tied radicals – including a leading member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood – in direct violation of U.S. policy.

As previously reported, FBI officials believe Islam is involved with the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is helping its front groups run "influence operations" against the U.S. government.

"He's a Muslim brother," an FBI official told the press. "He's a bad actor, and he's made other unreported nefarious contacts."

In addition to his close encounters with Gordon England, his immediate supervisor at the Pentagon, Islam has worked closely in the Pentagon with Muslim chaplain Abuhena M. Saifulislam, who received his training at a radical Islamic school in Northern Virginia that was raided by federal authorities after 9/11.

Islam, whose son is active in the military, obtained one of the highest security clearances for classified information. Sources confirm he has sat in on Pentagon meetings in which intelligence clearance was restricted at the Top Secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) level.

The Pentagon had no comment. And Islam, who has not been accused of any crimes, has refused interviews.

Terrorism expert, Steve Emerson says Islam prescribed a steady diet of Muslim Brotherhood-connected outreach for his unwitting boss, deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. Pentagon insiders say Eric S. Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, has sought to stop the awarding of a new contract to Coughlin. Edelman served as ambassador to Turkey from 2003 to 2005.

Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., who co-chairs the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus, has been fighting to keep Coughlin in the Pentagon, where she says his blunt analysis of the Islamic enemy is sorely needed, "I know that some people will refuse to admit there is a subversive movement going on here, but let me remind you that we have underestimated the will and capability of our enemy for more than 30 years," she added. "They are patient and determined to achieve their radical agenda."