Oct. 25 - The news that 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers were waylaid and murdered is perhaps the grimmest in several acts of violence in Iraq yesterday which also saw the death of a U.S. diplomat, Edward Seitz, and has been more than adequately covered everywhere, but I wanted to bring attention to the death of a Bulgarian coalition soldier which may have been overlooked:

A Bulgarian soldier was killed and two others were injured in a car-bombing near Karbala, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry said. Karbala, a Shi'ite holy city south of Baghdad, had been quiet since U.S. troops routed Shi'ite militia there last spring.

11:56: 3 Australian diggers have been injured in the first ever attack on an Australian convoy:

The three-vehicle convoy, which protects Australia's diplomats, was hit when a bomber drove a car laden with explosives into it at about 8am Baghdad time, also killing several Iraqi civilians.

The attack happened 350m from the Australian embassy, which is outside the city's fortified Green Zone.

The convoy was believed to be on routine patrol or having returned from dropping off a diplomat. There were no diplomats with it at the time.

Defence Force spokesman Brigadier Mike Hannan said one of the soldiers was undergoing surgery last night for facial injuries, another was concussed and the third was treated for minor abrasions and released.

He said the injured were taken to a US medical facility and their families were being contacted.

The most arrogant aspect of the Kerry campaign has been his disregard for the real allies who are fighting and dying in Iraq in favour of promoting his phantom allies:

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

It's likely there will be a sustained campaign against American, Iraqi and coalition forces this coming week as the increase in violence is clearly intended to influence the U.S. elections, but it is my belief that knowing we are being manipulated will stiffen, not weaken, our spines.

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Oct. 25 - For some reason I am getting a large number of google searches on the draft, and although I don't recollect writing about it, I'll address the subject briefly.

Only Congress can pass legislatation to enact conscription, aka compulsory military service aka the draft. It would be political suicide for them to do so, and if there's one thing we can assume about the majority of politicians it is that they don't self-destruct (at least on purpose!)

The President has gained a great deal of political capital on the tremendous successes of our volunteer army. He certainly won't request such legislation because he too is a politician and why tamper with success?

The successes of our volunteer army has proven decisively that men and women who want to perform a task are far more effective than people who begrudgingly perform a task. The troops don't want the draft either because their lives depend on their fellow soldiers.

Today's military is composed of highly trained professionals and a great deal of money over a period of years is spent in that training. It would be wasteful and non-productive to train draftees only to release them from service before they are even capable of being utilized as warriors.

The email campaign that says President Bush plans to reinstate the draft is based on a lie and intended to alarm people, not alert them.

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Oct. 25 - More on UNSCAM: AP EXCLUSIVE: Iraqis reveal in secret interviews how Saddam manipulated oil-for-food program. In addition to the information already contained in the Duelfer Report about the use oil vouchers to enlist support for the lifting of sanctions, a Congressional committee has gathered evidence of further corruption:

One investigator described the exempt list as the equivalent of the list in Duelfer's report of oil voucher recipients, but in this case for goods imported under the U.N. program.

"Until now, it had been thought that only vouchers for oil were handed out, but due to disclosures by Iraqi officials from the Ministry of Trade, we now understand that the practice was spread even further," said the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Companies on Saddam's special lists got vouchers giving them priority for deals in humanitarian goods under oil-for-food, or to act as middlemen for companies providing goods.

Some Iraqi officials confirmed the lists were crafted to reward companies from countries supporting Iraqi political goals, especially the lifting of U.N. sanctions, investigators said.

"These lists illustrate how Saddam Hussein cynically manipulated and corrupted the oil-for-food program," said Hyde [Chair of the House International Relations Committee Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill.] "The fact, disclosed in the Duelfer report, that some countries based their Iraq policies on these corrupt practices is shameful."

The exempt list came from an official at the Iraqi Ministry of Trade and was authenticated separately by over a dozen current and former Iraqi officials, investigators said.

Over 250 companies appear on Saddam's blacklist, obtained from an Iraqi Health Ministry official, according to congressional investigators. The document also details reasons the companies lost favor with the Iraqi government. Dozens of the companies are blasted for "dealing with the Zionist entity," apparently referring to Israel.

One contract in English obtained by AP from investigators required companies given deals with the Iraqi government to sign a pledge that says, "We hereby confirm our commitment and pledge not to deal with Israel."

American companies Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard Co., and Eli Lilly and Co., make the list for this reason and Agilent Technologies Inc. -- which was spun off from Hewlett-Packard -- is accused by Vice President Ramadan of changing its name from Hewlett-Packard to "enter into Israel," according to the document.

Lukoil, which reportedly clashed with Baghdad after refusing to break sanctions to begin development of an Iraqi oil field, is the only company to make the oil voucher list, the exempt list and the blacklist. Its entry onto the blacklist is dated October 2002. In December 2002, Iraq announced the cancelation of a $3.7 billion contract with Lukoil to develop the oil field.

The AP story is also up at the ABC News website.

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Oct. 25 - Long but well worth the time to read and digest: Arthur Chrenkoff has written a comprehensive review of the good news from Iraq:

In truth, of course, there is only one Iraq. Even if we don't see it too often reflected in the news coverage, we instinctively know that Iraq of violence and Iraq of recovery can, and do, coexist with each other within the same physical borders. We know that there is nothing mutually exclusive about tragedy and hope, horror and promise, frustration and exuberance. This is true in our own lives; and so it is just as true in lives of whole nations.

I'm not going to comment further; I want to re-read the article.

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Oct. 24 - Jack should be recuperating, but you just can't keep a newshound down. Jack says "only one entry today" but that one entry is full of links and commentary.

Jack doesn't wish Arafat "well" and has an amusing recollection on the last sighting of "bin Elvis."

Welcome back, Jack. You've been missed.

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Oct. 24 - By now I guess everyone has read Charlie Brooker's column in the Guardian which he concludes by expressing his hope that someone would assassinate President Bush (or maybe you only heard about it, as the Guardian server was overwhelmed and knocked off line for a few hours yesterday.) The column has been pulled, and a disclaimer posted in it's place that the column was meant to be humourous although the disclaimer concedes it was "flippant and tasteless."

It shouldn't surprise anyone that the original column was preserved and can be here. (Link via Power Line, and, as does Hindrocket, I leave it to you to determine if it was meant to be humourous.)

Brooker is evidently being investigated by the Secret Service but so is Matt Drudge apparently for the way in which he publicized the column:

Citing federal statute 18 USC 879, Florida attorney John B. Thompson, called in the Secret Service Protective Intelligence Unit. "Please do whatever is necessary to punish the UK Guardian and to educate Matt Drudge on the meaning and scope of statute 18," Thompson wrote in a letter faxed to the SS on Saturday.

Thompson's letter indicates that not only was his complaint being taken seriously by the SS, but that it had already been tipped off about the Guardian story before receipt of his letter.

"I am relieved to find out that you were alerted to this danger last evening and are working on it."

Thompson's concern is that the combined circulations of the Guardian and Drudge Report manifest a siren call to whackos among the millions of readers reached by the publications.

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Oct. 24 - First Cher and now Rosie O'Donnell.

Probably most of you don't really care what Rosie had to say in support of Sen. Kerry, but the heart of this story is that evidently voters in Ft. Lauderdale don't care either, as only a few dozen people turned out to hear her (story via Drudge Report.)

I'll give Rosie points for being much more articulate than Cher but she too flunked history:

Rosie said the Bush Administration's actions go "against the foundation of what our country was built on," giving example of Administration telling the "United Nations we would ignore their doctrine and their resolutions."

The sad fact is that elites still govern much of Europe, and we are still in rebellion against them.

This was also disturbing:

At CLUB OVATION Rosie endorsed Kerry's assertion in debate that America needs to pass a "global test" before acting in the world.

"The best part to me in the entire debate was when John Kerry said we have to pass a global test before we enter into a war...

Aren't Democrats even interested in what the test questions would be, much less who would administer and grade it? There is a global test, of sorts, already: what else can we call nearly routine U.N. Security Council and U.N. National Assembly motions which condemn Israel for her acts of self-defense but which fail to condemn those attacking her?

Stick to comedy, Rosie, unless you are more interested in being comedy these days.

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Oct. 24 - Halliburton. That name has become a byword to invoke images of Evil Corporate America yet few actually know what it is and what function it performs.

I have come to learn one thing about Halliburton: When other agencies fled Iraq, Halliburton and its employees stayed and continued to perform their duties in the best tradition.

FoxNews looks at Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, which supplies food and supplies to US troops in Iraq, and calls those employees America's Unsung Heroes. It looks to me that the KBR employees have found a higher calling in Iraq other than the high pay, and it's time they were recognized and applauded.

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Oct. 24 - I've done some additions to the blogroll lately:

A while ago I added:
A Chick Named Marzi,
Musing,
Blog Iran,
Cicada,
Highway 99,
No Pasaran!,
Ubique Patriam Reminisci, and
Yankee from Mississippi.

Now I've added:
The Diplomad,
A Western Heart,
Where the Hell Was I?,
INDC Journal,
The Truth About York,
The Last Amazon,
The Red Granger,
Taylor & Co.,
Spiced Sass, and
The Sundries Shack

Also, (sound the trumpets) I finally got the script around the Shotgun button fixed so it actually links to the Shotgun blog.

Lastly, there's been some scuttlebutt that bloggers should identify party affiliation and how they intend to vote.

For the record, I am registered as an Independent voter in the State of Georgia, and I already voted for President Bush by absentee ballot.

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Oct. 23 - Canadians will be able to see Stolen Honor (or, in Canadian, Stolen Honour) the film that has stirred so much controversy because it brings back some history that many of us want to forget.

As I mentioned before, I remember Kerry's testimony before the Senate, and it was so shocking that I was skeptical as to its veracity, anti-war though I was.

It can be viewed here: Stolen Honor (The Video Kerry Doesn't Want You to See).

Link via a post at Ghost of a Flea, who also has links to two other sites here.

I am about to watch it, which should satisfy those family members who have implored me to continue not supporting the Red Sox as my vital contribution to a Boston long overdue World Series victory.

21:20: Stolen Honor was compelling, so much so that the baseball fans here used the mute button in order to first hear and then watch the documentary. Roger Simon says

While viewing this movie, I imagine most of my generation find themselves reviewing themselves and their actions at the time rather than the film.

When the prospect of the war in Iraq first loomed, I'm surely not the only person who thought long and hard about what we were asking of our military men and women and understood that, in return, the very least they should expect from me was to hold faith with them, to support them, and to be strong in the face of the anticipated pessimistic and alarmist reports filed by peace war correspondents.

To bolster our resolve, we had already been through the harsh Afghan winter and that action was hailed as a quagmire right before victory.

I want to believe that the American people learned a critical lesson from Vietnam: breaking faith with those who serve is a heinous, unforgiveable crime. The test will be how we vote on November 3. If Kerry wins, then those men and women who have served will be within their rights to spit on us.

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Oct. 23 - You know what's good about working the midnight shift? Not a damned thing. Well, the steady paycheck is a good thing, but trying to figure out what day it is and attempting to be, you know, sharp and focused are frustrating especially when I'm trying to write insightfull stuff.

I've determined that the source of my problem is that I stopped taking my multi-vitamin pills. I remembered reading that the red dye on the shell could cause insomnia, and I realized that my problems with getting sleep were probably due to that factor (I dismissed the foolish notion that the coffee I imbibe during the night might be contributing to the problem.)

Anyway, what is evening to you is morning to me, but at least we both know it's finally Saturday. (That last sentence is not intended for any Australian readers, who know that it's morning but also believe it's Sunday. Oh well, at least we can all agree on something.)

Another cause for lamentation is that I finally had to wear woolly gloves this morning. That acceptance of the approach of winter preceeds the next one, which will be to wear a neckscarf and then, alas, the winter boots that will replace my dearly beloved and incredibly comfortable running shoes. The tocque will be my final concession, and I won't wear one unless it's 20 below with 80 kph winds.

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1 Not the woolly gloves!

Posted by: Flea at October 23, 2004 09:27 PM (SAwQd)

2 Yes, alas. The woolly gloves. Sheesh, it's only October!

Posted by: Debbye at October 23, 2004 09:54 PM (j3B5T)

3 There's one thing worse than working 12 midnight to 8 a.m., and that's 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Talk about not knowing what day it is! And the worst part of that shift in a hospital ER was trying to do the charges on a patient who came in on one side of midnight and was released on the other. What a headache!

Posted by: Timbre at October 23, 2004 11:57 PM (uuKy2)

4 Hi Timbre - We seem to be almost on the same miserable schedule. I work from 10-6. I call it midnights because I shudder to call it by the more generic "graveyard shift." But I'd imagine the work life in an ER is much more hectic than mine!

Posted by: Debbye at October 25, 2004 12:35 AM (X2KiA)

5 No, Debbye, you have the difficult schedule. I was speaking of my hospital work in years gone by: 1979-1990. Presently I work 4 ten-hour days, rotating between 6 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. and 10:30 a.m. - 9 p.m.

Posted by: Timbre at October 25, 2004 10:46 PM (nt6ZO)

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Oct. 23 - Cher issued dire warnings at a Florida disco about the era of repression that will destroy our freedoms if the president is reelected.

People in Florida still go to discos? Only a few hundred, in this case, but then they also went to see Cher which is another head-scratcher.

"There were supposed to be thousands of people here tonight. I'm not sure why that didn't happen, obviously the people putting on this thing were just not very good at it," an embarrassed Cher explained to the crowd.

"Alright, but you guys are here, that's right. When I was coming down the steps I though 'Oh s**t, well I'll just go out there and give it my best.'"

Cher warned moveon.org clubgoers to fight Bush, before "it's too late":

"All the gay guys, all my friends, all my gay friends, you guys you have got to vote, alright? Because it would only be a matter of time before you guys would be so screwed, I cannot tell you. Because, you know, the people, like, in the very right wing of this party, of these Republicans, the very very right wing, the Jerry Falwell element, if they get any more power, you guys are going to be living in some state by yourselves. So, I hate scare tactics, but I really believe that that's true."

"I think that as Bush will, if Bush gets elected, he will put in new Superior Court judges, and these guys are not going to want to see gay pride week."

Cher declared that Abraham Lincoln "looks like Kerry on a crappy day."

In 1864, Lincoln was the war candidate and George McClellan was the appeaser.

Lincoln was often cartooned as a simian, and McClellan was depicted as the war hero.

McClellan was the darling of the news papers which regarded Lincoln's awkward speech and gawkish appearance embarassing. (Even back then the news media fretted about European perceptions of Americans.) Lincoln was savaged in the newspapers in ways that made the treatment accorded to Bush seem gentle.

Lincoln's decisive victory was due in part to the votes of those soldiers that McClellan pompously assumed would vote for him. Yes, the very same soldiers who were actually fighting and dying in the war to preserve the Union supported the war and their president.

Did I mention that Lincoln won and McClellan lost?

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Oct. 23 - Leader in today's Telegraph on the presidential election: If Bush loses, the winner won't be Kerry: it will be Zarqawi.

Charles Brooker, a writer for the Guardian, has gone off the deep end completely. After lamenting the failure to to influence voters in Clark County, Ohio, he seems to have accepted the inevitability of a Bush victory with less than grace:

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us.

M'kay. They managed to sneak in a disproof of God, which I'm sure is very clever and all, and the fact that they don't like our president is certainly stop the presses news, but the closing line is beyond punditry and strays dangerously close to hate speech:

John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

And he wonders why Americans don't value the advice of Guardian readers.

(Guardian link via Drudge Report.)

Update: Shannon makes a good point:

What I find incredibly odd - er, refreshing - is that the article's author seems to buy into the whole Bush-was-wired-during-the-debates conspiracy (which, it must be said, my friends of the left also do not buy into), yet he seems to actually think Oswald killed Kennedy. Apparently, he hasn't seen JFK.

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Oct. 22 - Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX,) the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter to President Chirac urging him to share any information from investigations into allegations of corruption by French businesses and politicians in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program which was detailed in the Duelfer Report.

From the letter:

The Report cites compelling documentary and testimonial evidence suggesting that France's policies toward the Program, and Iraq in general, may have been motivated by economic self-interest. According to documents obtained by Mr. Duelfer's team from Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization, several French politicians received allocations of Iraqi oil, including Charles Pasqua, France's former Interior Minister, and Jean-Bernard Mérimée, the former French ambassador to the United Nations. Moreover, Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz claimed to have personally awarded several French individuals substantial oil allotments, adding that these individuals "understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council." Finally, recovered Iraqi Intelligence Service ("IIS") documents reveal that Saddam's regime "targeted a number of French individuals that the Iraqi's [sic] thought had close relations to French President Chirac, including, according to the Iraqi assessment, the official spokesperson of President Chirac's re-election campaign, two reported 'counselors' of President Chirac, and two well-known French businessmen." These IIS documents also describe a May 2002 meeting between a representative of Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a French parliamentarian, during which, "The French politician assured the Iraqi that France would use its veto in the UNSC against any American decision to attack Iraq, according to the IIS memo."

This Committee also has concerns that French companies may have been selling weapons to Iraq during the sanctions period, in direct violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 661. According to the Report, Mr. Duelfer and his team found evidence that as early as 1998 French companies received "offers and contracts from Iraq for conventional weapons systems and [engaged in] negotiations for possible WMD-related mobile laboratories." For instance, recovered documents show that the French company Lura supplied a tank carrier to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in late 1998 or 1999 and that a French expert "arrived in Iraq in September 1999 to provide training and offer technical expertise on the carrier." Moreover, by 1999, "French firms displayed a willingness to supply parts for Iraqi conventional military items, mainly related to aircraft." IIS documents reveal that the Deputy General Manager of SOFEMA, a French company, planned to visit Iraq in January 2000 on behalf of a number of French military companies to "seek possible trading between the two countries" concerning Iraqi air defense capabilities. These efforts continued right up until Operation Iraqi Freedom ("OIF"). The Report notes that in late December 2002 Iraq "initiated efforts to acquire replacement parts for the Roland II Surface to air missile system, valves for Iraq's air defense system, and various other high technology items with military and battlefield applications" from the French Thompson Company and that Mr. Duelfer's team "found evidence of coordination on this procurement up until 23 days before OIF."

Speaking of being on the other side, the failure by much of the main stream media to report the facts contained in the Duelfer Report on UNSCAM couldn't be due to Kerry's pretense that the French and Germans are allies who would have joined us in Iraq had President Bush only been nicer, could it?

I'd love to link to what the Canadian mainstream media is saying about the ongoing revelations about Oil-for-Palaces, but I haven't seen any items.

Over at the Shotgun, Kate says of the failure of the media to cover the bigger issues uncovered by the report that It's Not Apathy, It's Malpractice. She's being much too generous; I'd call it malfeasance, which my dictionary defines as misconduct or wrongdoing; especially wrongdoing that is illegal or contrary to official obligations. Of course, my definition won't apply once the MSM types abandon their posture of being non-partisan.

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Oct. 22 -

American teens have spoken, and they want George W. Bush for president. Nearly 1.4 million teens voted in the nation's largest mock election, and the Republican incumbent wound up with 393 electoral votes and 55 percent of the total votes cast.

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Oct. 22 - There is often something horrible about how events can become predictable, and when I saw the following item on the CNN website I hated how unsurprised I was but I hated more how these monsters use our compassion against us. We understand the stakes, yet know we must remain stern and unflinching. And I feel rotten about it.

CARE worker pleads for her life:

In the video aired Friday by the Arabic-language TV channel, Hassan is speaking to the camera, sobbing and crying.

"Please help me, please help me, these might be my last hours.... Please help me, please British people ask Mr. (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair to pull the troops from Iraq and not bring them to Baghdad.

"Please, please I beg of you, the British people, to help me. I don't want to die like (Kenneth) Bigley. I beg of you, I beg of you."

Many of us were awestruck with the bravery of Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi, the man who defied his murderers and denied them the triumph of using his death to frighten and intimidate others, and I'm not the only person who thought of Fabrizio while we witnessed Ken Bigley's desperate pleas to Tony Blair.

As we feared, the Kenneth Bigley saga has resulted in an upping of the ante: they've kidnapped a woman.

It is a harsh and cruel thing to be held in captivity by people who have proven their capacity for brutality, and no one can pretend to know what Margaret Hassan has endured.

I pray her captors let her go. I hope she returns to her home and husband safely and will be able to reclaim her life and resume her humanitarian activities.

But make no mistake: Ms. Hassan's life is not in Tony Blair's hands, but in the hands of her captors.

And I hope she understands that the very barbarity of her captors is precisely why we cannot, must not, surrender to them even for her. Or me.

Update: A video was discovered which seemed to show Margaret Hassan's execution, mercifully (?) by a bullet to the head. Bastards.

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Oct. 21 - Opinion Journal argues that there has been substantial progress in Iraq, citing in particular in the latest offensive in Fallujah.

At the heart of this - and any - progress lies the single most important component: the will and determination of the Iraqi people:

Which brings us to another point that deserves more attention: the courage of the Iraqis. Young men continue to line up by the thousands outside the police and National Guard recruiting stations that have so often been targets of terrorist attack. On Tuesday a mortar struck the ING headquarters in Mushahidah, killing four. But recruit Qusay Hassan was quoted saying, "If I don't join the army, who is going to defend the country from the terrorists?"

Or the U.N., which arrogantly failed to acknowledge the dangers and, rather than admit to and rectify its error, fled?

Or maybe Western liberals, who should be thrilled at the blossoming of freedom in Iraq but who cannot abide the notion that the USA has done something right, thereby allowing their hatred for America overshadow their oft-proclaimed love for their fellow men and women?

The contempt I feel for those who would diminish people like Qusay Hassan cannot find words. We are witnessing mighty deeds and heroes from which songs are made, and even as I rejoice that there is still such in this world I am pained to see a portion of our civilization, aided and abetted by main stream media, try so hard to prove itself frivolous.

When our children and grandchildren ask about "our day," it won't be curiousity about Michael Jackson, Teresa Heinz-Kerry or even the curse of the Bambino: it will be about the struggle of freedom vs. tyranny in the Mid-east. However shall we answer them?

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Oct. 20 - The endorsements are coming in for Don Cherry, Greatest Canadian.

First mention goes to The Meatriarchy, who started this whole thing last Spring, and his posts here and here.

Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun weighs in his reasons to support Grapes.

The Monger is supporting Cherry and I find his rationale to be both witty and appealing.

I have to go to my "real job" so will continue to look for other supporters tomorrow.

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Oct. 20 - So raising children isn't a "real job"? Well, I guess that's true, in a sense.

Read jobs have fixed hours. Real jobs pay real money. Real jobs have real vacations and honour statutory holidays.

Even had Teresa H-K been correct and First Lady Laura Bush never held a job as a schoolteacher or, let's be honest, as First Lady, she would still be among the millions of mothers who are on duty 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, with no time off for our kids' good behaviours and even in the soundest sleep being alert for the kinds of sounds that mean "sickness" or "trouble" from the kids' rooms.

We do get statutory holidays and vacations, of course. It means spending more time (on the job) with our kids.

But not having a "real job" has one, unequalled perk: we love our not-real work, our very real and often rambunctious charges and, hopefully, our co-worker(!)

And maybe that's why Laura Bush is "calm" and has a "sparkle in her eye."

Note that Teresa H-K has retracted her comments, yet she still missed the point that Laura Bush's life and experience is much closer to the norm than that of a millionairess.

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Oct. 20 - The controversial ban of conspicuous religious symbols in public institutions has begun to produce questionable results: four girls have been expelled over their refusal to remove their headscarves and 3 boys (Sikhs) have been kept out of classes over refusal to remove their turbans.

Over 600 cases of "defiance of the law" have been reported since the beginning of the school year in France.

I still don't really understand the ban, as it seems to confuse "tolerance" with "pretending differences don't exist," but then I'm an American and we tend to frown upon the government prohibiting freedom of religious expression anyway.

Nevertheless, I was somewhat curious to see if the French government would back down after the two French reporters were kidnapped, and thus far they have been firm on upholding the ban.

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