GOP Vixen

Bridget on the radio!

Tune in to the Dave Francis show on WGNU AM 920 radio out of St. Louis tonight at 8 p.m. Central time (6 p.m. Pacific, you know the drill) or roundabout there to hear me share the tale of my Maywood protest crash! Listen live here at the WGNU Web site (click on the lil' jukebox)!

Bridget's photographic prowess on CNN

As everybody is still hoppin' mad over Saturday's immigration protests in Maywood, the Glenn Beck show on CNN/Headline News asked if they could use some of my photos on their show tonight. I'm told the segment will air around 7:34 p.m. Eastern time tonight. (And don't get too excited, Mr. Big, they're just using my pics and report, not me...)

Pinocchio converts to Islam

At least in Turkey:

"Pinocchio, Tom Sawyer and other characters have been converted to Islam in new versions of 100 classic stories on the Turkish school curriculum.

'Give me some bread, for Allah's sake,' Pinocchio says to Geppetto, his maker, in a book stamped with the crest of the ministry of education.

'Thanks be to Allah,' the puppet says later.

In The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan is told that he cannot visit Aramis. The reason would surprise the author, Alexandre Dumas.

An old woman explains: 'He is surrounded by men of religion. He converted to Islam after his illness.'

Tom Sawyer may always have shirked his homework, but he is more conscientious in learning his Islamic prayers. He is given a 'special treat' for learning the Arabic words.

Pollyanna, seen by some as the embodiment of Christian forgiveness, says that she believes in the end of the world as predicted in the Koran.

Heidi, the Swiss orphan girl in the tale by Johanna Spyri, is told that praying to Allah will help her to relax.

Several more books have been altered, including La Fontaine's fables and Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

The clumsy insertions by Islamic publishing houses have caused controversy in Turkey, which has been a strongly secular state since the 1920s. ..."

What a dark turn the revised book must take when Gepetto turns out to be an infidel, or when Pinocchio discovers the Sharia punishment for lying...

Any thoughts on how Mark Twain would feel about Tom converting to Islam? I'd like to see the Islamic radical versions of "Where the Wild Things Are" (set in the Gaza Strip) or a take on Dr. Seuss, "Oh the Places You'll Blow (Up)."

In fact, I'm looking forward to the Islamic versions of TV shows, like "Sex and the City" where Carrie hogs Manolo Blahnik burqas and Mr. Big lives in a cave on the Pakistan/Afghan border (no reference to my Mr. Big there).

Bridget on the radio!

I'll be on The Carl Wiglesworth Show on KAHL 1310 AM Radio in San Antonio at 4:30 p.m. Central time today to talk about my protest crashing Saturday in Maywood. Unfortunately, the station has not set up live streaming radio, so you gotta be in San Antonio to listen. But who says I didn't warn ya'll?

A day down in Maywood

On Sunday I posted several photos of Saturday's immigration protests -- "fiasco" is more like it -- down in Maywood, Calif., teasing at my L.A. Daily News column on the subject today. Since Sunday, the news of counterprotesters going postal and raising the Mexican flag over federal property has spread like wildfire across the Web, but I was lucky enough to have been in the middle of the whole reconquista-fest. Read on:

"The city of Maywood - a 1.2-square-mile town with an official population of just over 28,000 about eight miles south of downtown Los Angeles - is a pocket for illegal immigrants, lauded by immigrant advocates and decried by detractors. In this 96 percent Hispanic town, signs advising pedestrians to use crosswalks are printed in Spanish and English, and many storefronts' signs are in Spanish as well. The last census says 55 percent of residents are foreign-born, and 92 percent speak a language other than English at home.

Earlier this year, the Maywood City Council passed a resolution opposing the Sensenbrenner immigration bill after it passed in the House, and the town was designated the first 'sanctuary city' in the state. The city also nixed police checkpoints so as not to net illegal immigrants without driver's licenses, and disbanded its traffic division for the same reason.

On Saturday, Save Our State showed up to protest that policy in front of Maywood City Hall, numbering several dozen with 'Don't tread on me' and American flags. 'Not anti-Hispanic, anti-illegal alien,' read one sign; 'Maywood is part of the U.S. and its elected officials need to act accordingly,' read another. One man held a small sign that read 'traitors,' and the group was fronted by a banner championing Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo for president. ('Tancredo? Who's that?' a confused counter-demonstrator asked me.)

Police in riot gear manned a buffer zone on blocked-off Slauson Avenue, surrounding the anti-illegal-immigration demonstrators who were being faced down by a few hundred counter-protesters and neighboring residents who pulled out Mexican flags and joined the event. I had gotten wind of a socialist organization calling people out for the demonstration, hence showed up to find the counter-protest to be an eclectic mix of white guys in Che T-shirts and Latinos - wearing shirts ordering people to not call them Latino or Hispanic (too European), but Mexican - denouncing white people.

And if immigration proponents have been trying to pass off reconquista claims - the belief that immigrants want to take back 'Aztlan' - as paranoid, these protesters weren't helping. One sign proclaimed 'Stolen continent' - yet displayed two continents, North and South America. 'White racists this is our continent' read one sign. Another said, 'We will never live in peace until we get the European squatters off our lands.'"

Read the whole thing, and don't miss the stunning conclusion (actually, nothing stuns me anymore at these things). And here are some more pics I took that day:

Quote of the day

Journalist W.F. Deedes, in a series for the Daily Telegraph, on the partnership of Denis and Margaret Thatcher:

"... All meals with Denis were entertaining, not least because he was so particular about the way his food was cooked. 'Waiter,' he would say affably, handing him a plate of steak only faintly pink, 'will you very kindly take this back to the kitchen and ask them to cook it, because it is practically raw.' Which explains why, when she was secretary of education, Margaret was seen one evening by the permanent secretary leaving the office early. She was going out, she explained, to buy bacon for Denis’s breakfast. There were, the permanent secretary assured her, plenty of people in the department who would be glad to do that for her. No, the bacon had to be just as he liked it, and only she know what he liked. This was a partnership to remind the world what matchless gifts marriage can bring."

Creepy cult perv arrested

Because there always has to be a creepy perv in the news, and John Mark Karr's two weeks of fame have fizzled, we're happy to see that one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted (and they actually have evidence), Warren Jeffs, was busted during a routine traffic stop in Las Vegas. (Yes, the polygamist with a holier-than-thou complex was fittingly nabbed in Sin City.) From Reuters:

"... Jeffs, 50, considered a prophet by his estimated 10,000 followers, was jailed on warrants accusing him of sexual assault and other misconduct on minors in Arizona, and as an accomplice to rape in Utah, the FBI and state law enforcement officials said.

'Now he's going to be held accountable,' Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said of Jeffs' arrest. 'Nobody is above the law.'

Jeffs, feared as a tyrant by many former members of his sect, is accused of arranging marriages between older men and underage girls in a community that is closed to outsiders. Young men and boys are often forced out to ensure a supply of young brides for male elders.

The sect, long based in an enclave on the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the mainstream Mormon Church banned polygamy more than a century ago."

Not only is he a creepy cult perv on a power trip playing dice with people's lives, but he's been preying on children. I hope that in the course of this prosecution they'll be able to bust up the sect and battle the brainwashing to rescue the scores of women and children held in the grip of this cult so they can start new lives free of abuse and control. Until then, with their leader in custody, GOP Vixen would advise sect members to not drink the Kool-Aid.

Bob Dylan's back!

I haven't run down to Tower yet to snap this sucker up, but I'm getting more excited from the rave reviews that "Modern Times," released yesterday, is drawing. The genius who crafted two of my very favorite songs -- "Like a Rolling Stone" and "To Make You Feel My Love" (on 1997's "Time Out of Mind) -- is apparently confounding some critics, though, who were expecting grandiose social statements in the wake of "Love and Theft's" Sept. 11, 2001, release, but apparently Dylan favored more subtle allusions. Says USA Today critic Steve Jones of "Modern Times," "It takes about 30 seconds to figure out you're in the presence of greatness."

Don't call us, we'll call you

Here's what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday:

"Isn't it time that international relations are founded on democracy and equal rights of the nations? I suggest holding a live TV debate with Mr George W. Bush to talk about world affairs and the ways to solve those issues. The debate should be go uncensored in order for the American people to be able to listen to what we say and they should not restrict the American people from hearing the truth."

OK, Michael Moore, here's how the White House responded:

"Talk of a debate is just a diversion from the legitimate concerns that the international community, not just the U.S., has about Iran's behavior -- from support for terrorism to pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability."

I say, if George doesn't want to do this squirrelly debate, I would be more than happy to take on Ahmadinejad. Getting his tush kicked by a girl would definitely be must-see TV.

NRO: Karr none

Check out my National Review Online column today about the creepy perv that the Boulder D.A. fell for hook, line and sinker. (Note: Perhaps O.J. should check out John Mark Karr now to make sure he isn't the "real killer.")

"I have a confession to make: I am the Zodiac killer, that elusive serial murderer who haunted the Bay Area back in the days of peace, love, and dope. Granted, I wasn't yet born when the Zodiac was killing and sending creepy letters in the late 1960s, but the local authorities may be so overjoyed to put the cold case to bed that they may accept my confession anyway, perhaps arranging an extradition circus and booking a free trans-Pacific flight with jumbo prawns and bubbly if I first flee to Asia. Cross-checking the DNA from the backs of stamps and edges of envelopes on those old Zodiac letters? An afterthought.

I’m not very convincing, right? Such is the case with John Mark Karr, the creepy pervert who overnight became the elusive sensational killer of little beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey — even though his description of the crime didn’t match the forensic evidence; the guy who snuffed out her young life in the family's Boulder home — even though it wasn't substantiated whether he’d even set foot in the state of Colorado. After a ridiculous two-week-long media circus, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens is livid, the Boulder district attorney’s office is trying to backpedal at full speed, and the world — and Boulder D.A. Mary Lacy, apparently – knows more than it ever needed to about this voluntary false confessor.

False confessions are nothing new, and don’t have to arise from any sort of interrogation or even having been fingered as a suspect. After Charles Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped in 1932, more than 200 people 'confessed' to the crime. Before Karr, others had confessed to the Ramsey murder shortly after her 1996 death. The murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1994 brought their own flock of voluntary false confessors as O. J. continues to search for the 'real killers.' Even convicted killers may try to prove themselves the biggest, baddest, and most notorious by falsely beefing up their own resumes — one-eyed drifter Henry Lee Lucas (basis of the 1986 movie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) confessed to between 350 and 3,000 murders, depending on whom you talk to, and most were deemed to be baloney. ..."

Read the whole thing!