Den­mark Tight­ens Immi­gra­tion Rules. Par­lia­ment voted Fri­day to adopt a law to tight­ened Denmark’s immi­gra­tion and asy­lum rules, mak­ing it harder for for­eign­ers to seek asy­lum, get res­i­dence per­mits and wel­fare ben­e­fits. [AP World News]

This is inter­est­ing to read, because I have sev­eral rel­a­tives in Denmark–most of whom immi­grated there from the US and Chile. I won­der if they would have been allowed in under this new law?

3 teens killed at Ita­mar yeshiva. The yeshiva secu­rity guard Arieh Kleiman suc­ceeded in shoot­ing the ter­ror­ist and one of the student’s teach­ers Rabbi Nitzan Yamin shot and killed the infil­tra­tor as mem­bers of the community’s response team arrived. [Jerusalem Post]

The ter­ror­ist was stopped by two civil­ians, par­tic­u­larly by the teacher. This is much bet­ter than what would have hap­pened in America–here the ter­ror­ist would prob­a­bly have been able to kill dozens before the police finally showed up and stopped him.

FBI objects to the Con­sti­tu­tion. Boul­der Weekly -

FBI objects to the Con­sti­tu­tion — When a jury asked for copies of
the first and fourth amend­ments, the f.b.i.‘s att­tor­neys objected. The
judge over­ruled their objec­tion and read the text to the jury, but
would not give them a printed copy. [kaba]
bq.
“Their agents obvi­ously haven’t read the Con­sti­tu­tion, so why would
they want any­one else look­ing at it?” said Dar­ryl Cher­ney,
co-plaintiff in the civil rights law­suit, now in its sixth week.
[End the War on Free­dom]

The only sur­pris­ing part of this story is that the judge over­ruled the objec­tion. The courts gen­er­ally do their best to ensure that the Con­sti­tu­tion has no place in them.

Edi­to­r­ial: Are we too PC to live?. At one time, polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness was annoy­ing. Then it became a threat to our cul­ture. And now, it has become flat-out self-destructive insan­ity. Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness has become an actual men­tal ill­ness, caus­ing peo­ple to refuse to acknowl­edge the world around them, even if they risk dan­ger or death from their denial. And we can­not mount an effec­tive defense against the ter­ror­ist attack while deny­ing reality.

Is the Amer­i­can soci­ety now actu­ally too PC to live?

I’m afraid we might well find out. [FirearmNews.com]

Echelon’s Archi­tect. Meet Bruce McIn­doe. He has infor­ma­tion that the Dan­ish gov­ern­ment and sev­eral oth­ers around the globe, con­tin­u­ously pre­tends isn’t there. McIn­doe knows that Ech­e­lon is real. Because he helped to build it. “Yes, that’s right”, McIn­doe con­firms to the Dan­ish paper Ekstra Bladet today Bruce McIn­doe ded­i­cated more than ten years of his life to Ech­e­lon. He helped to final­ize the orig­i­nal Ech­e­lon sys­tem start­ing in 1987. After that, he started to design Ech­e­lon II, an enlarge­ment of the orig­i­nal sys­tem. [Cryp­tome]

An inter­view by two Dan­ish jour­nal­ists with one of the archi­tects of the Ech­e­lon system.

Act Would OK Snail Mail Searches. The House over­whelm­ingly approves the Cus­toms Bor­der Secu­rity Act, which says mail can be searched at the bor­der ‘with­out a search war­rant.’ Declan McCul­lagh reports from Wash­ing­ton. [Wired News]

This Act is a bla­tant vio­la­tion of the Fourth Amend­ment, but that’s never stopped Con­gress before. I rather doubt it will stop them now. Note that this Act refers to the US Postal Ser­vice, and doesn’t say any­thing about FedEx.

GM mos­qui­toes offer malaria hope. Genetic engi­neers take the first step towards dis­arm­ing mos­qui­toes
that carry malaria. [BBC News: sci/tech]

The arti­cle ends with the sen­tence, “Such moves may well be opposed by envi­ron­men­tal­ists.” In fact, the use of these mos­qui­toes would cer­tainly be opposed by ecof­reaks, just as they oppose the use of DDT. Ecof­reaks don’t mind at all if two mil­lion chil­dren die each year of malaria, so long as the genetic purity of insects is preserved.

Bill of Rights — Secu­rity Edi­tion.
Bill of Rights — Secu­rity Edi­tion — a great idea for air­plane
trav­el­ers. $4, 3 for $9.99, 5 for $15 post­paid. [smith2004]
bq.
The First Ten Amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion of the United States
printed on sturdy, pocket-sized, pieces of metal.

The next time you travel by air, take the Secu­rity Edi­tion of the Bill
of Rights along with you. When asked to empty your pock­ets, proudly
toss the Bill of Rights in the plas­tic bin.

You need to get used to offer­ing up the bill of rights for inspec­tion
and gov­ern­ment work­ers need to get used to decid­ing if you’ll be
allowed to keep the Bill of Rights with you when you travel.
[End the War on Free­dom]

I don’t think this is such a great idea unless you have lots of free time, although it is pretty amus­ing. How­ever, the FBI issued an advi­sory years ago that car­ry­ing a copy of the US Con­sti­tu­tion was a sign of a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist.” Expect to spend lots of time hav­ing your cav­i­ties if you actu­ally try this.

Just for the record, define ‘refugee camp’. Are these Pales­tini­ans con­sid­ered to be refugees from Jor­dan — which expelled them in 1972, killing 20,000 in the process? Are they refugees from Kuwait, which expelled all the Pales­tini­ans there after 1991, for tak­ing the wrong side in the Gulf War? And if so, why aren’t they blow­ing up buses — and demand­ing a “right of return” — in Jor­dan and Kuwait? [The Lib­er­tar­ian]

Some good com­ments on the Jenin “refugee camp.” This col­umn was writ­ten over a month ago, but I only just found it.

For­get Arafat. The Pales­tini­ans deserve democ­racy. [Opin­ion­Jour­nal]

Sounds of dis­con­tent are being heard from the sane Pales­tini­ans. I’ve been read­ing some edi­to­ri­als sug­gest­ing that Arafat will lose power, but I don’t think that will hap­pen. More likely if he believes he may lose power, he’ll sud­denly end his ter­ror­ist attacks on Israel. The Israelis will then have no choice but to agree to peace, and Arafat will then be free to once again plant his boot firmly on the neck of the Palestinians.