They Call That Scam "Sharia"

"I'll break your back, and make you humble!"

Tennessee state senator Bill Ketron insists that his proposed anti-Sharia measure (formally known as the "Material Support to Designated Entities Act") is not intended to criminalize the peaceful practice of the Muslim religion. Instead, it would permit the prosecution of those who offer tangible support to entities identified by the state attorney general as "Sharia organizations" devoted to promoting Islamic rule through violence. Such an act would be a felony punishable by a fine of unspecified size and a prison term of up to 15 years.


If enacted and applied with a degree of intellectual honesty, Ketron's measure would require Tennessee law enforcement to shut down every military base and recruiting office in the state, as well as rounding up all resident veterans of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Promoting Sharia law in Iraq through the use of criminal violence has been the official policy of the United States Government since the new Iraqi constitution was finished in late 2004. 

As U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Stephen Coughlin -- described as the Pentagon's leading expert on Sharia law -- pointed out in a recent deposition: "Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution states that `Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation.[...] No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.'" That constitution was not produced by Iraqis themselves; it was drafted by a committee created by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S-created cabal of social engineers and war profiteers that supervised the occupation and "reconstruction" of Iraq from 2003 until 2005. 

During the past decade, only one formerly secular country fell under the rule of sharia law: Iraq. This wasn't done by al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, or any of the other Islamist groups that torment the dreams of people suffering from toxic levels of exposure to the War Party's propaganda; it was done by the government afflicting the United States of America.

"Let's see: What freedoms can I trample today...?"

Though his qualifications as an imam are sketchy at best, Tennessee State Senator Ketron  presumes to define "Sharia" as "a legal-political-military doctrinal system combined with certain religious beliefs" that "requires all its adherents to actively and passively support the replacement of America's constitutional republic...." Jihad and sharia, Ketron insists, are "inextricably linked," and the "imposition of sharia on non-sharia adherent states is to be brought about both by criminal and violent means ... and by lawful and non-violent means...." 

This means that even those who peacefully and lawfully practice the tenets of sharia can be considered criminal subversives: 

 

"The knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities constitutes a conspiracy to further the legal, political, and military doctrine and system which embraces the law of jihad.... The knowing adherence to sharia and to foreign sharia authorities is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the United States government and the government of this state through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions by the likely use of imminent criminal violence...."

Once again, if applied with the kind of consistency required by the principle of equal justice under the law, Ketron's measure would dictate the prosecution of military personnel who participated in the patently unconstitutional Iraq war. In addition to deploying U.S. servicemen to kill and die on behalf of sharia, that war -- and the vile policies that sprouted from it -- fortified the "leader principle" at lethal expense to whatever was left of our republican institutions.

Every crime contains at least two components -- the malign intent (mens rea), and the guilty act (actus reus). Perhaps Ketron and his comrades will insist that Iraq war veterans are exempt from the anti-Sharia act because most of them didn't knowingly adhere to the doctrine they were propagating at gunpoint. This would mean that in their case mens rea was absent, despite the violent, criminal acts that were committed. However, in the case of peaceful Muslims, mere belief in their religious code would be construed as both criminal intent, and a guilty act.

Anti-Christian persecution rages in sharia-dominated Iraq

Tennessee's Muslim population, while quite small, is growing -- a trend that has been exploited by compulsive Mosque-baiters seeking to capitalize on fears of "creeping sharia." 

Most of the growth consists of refugees driven from their homes in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, and other countries that have experienced the healing touch of the Empire's armed benevolence. Ending armed entanglements in, and covert subversion of, Muslim countries would do a great deal to stop the exodus of refugees, and reduce the possibility of cultural conflicts here at home. Ketron doesn't appear interested in solutions that might actually work; like any aspiring Grand Inquisitor, he's much more interested in tearing windows into men's souls.


Among the onerous provisions of Sharia law are restrictions on the sale and consumption of wine and other alcoholic beverages. One possible reason why Sen. Ketron is so anxious to arrest the tide of Sharia-inspired fanaticism may be the difficulty he has experienced in trying to enact legislation permitting non-Muslim residents to purchase wine at grocery stores.
 
In a letter to a constituent, Ketron lamented that the influence of religious fanatics who consider wine to be haram (unclean) made it impossible for his measure to his measure to find traction: "I am currently trying to pass legislation that allows wine to be in the grocery stores again, and the liquor lobbyist has threatened ... to `unleash the preachers' across the state." In fact, at least one of Tennessee's subdivisions, Moore County, seems to be in danger of succumbing to sharia, insofar as alcohol prohibition is concerned.


Oh, wait -- the fanatics responsible for this are Baptist preachers, not Muslim imams, and the problem (as Ketron acknowledged) isn't that Tennessee has fallen under the shadow of the Crescent, but rather that it's being strangled by the "Bible Belt." That comparison, I must admit, is a little unfair, since in at least some Muslim countries Sharia-based restrictions on the sale and consumption of liquor don't apply to non-Muslims.


Within the constituency to which Ketron is pandering we almost certainly will find more than a few people who were thrilled to the marrow by the recent town meeting confrontation between Rep. Allen West (R. Florida) and Nezar Hamze, executive director for the South Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Rep. West, who was cashiered from the military for abusing a detainee in Iraq, presents himself as an authority on the iniquity of Muslims. The source of his expertise is the experience he obtained by killing so many of them who were defending their homes against a foreign army that had invaded their country.

Mr. Hamze, who -- unlike West -- has actually read the Koran, brought a copy of it to the town meeting and asked West to show him where that book sanctions violence against innocent people. Rather than offering an honest answer, West recited a litany of crimes committed by people professing the Muslim faith since the Seventh Century. 

Apparently, Hamze and those who share his religion -- whether or not they have ever committed or countenanced a crime as individuals -- are collectively guilty for the atrocities to which West alluded. However, we Christians bear no similar moral burden for criminal acts committed in the name of the Cross.

I suspect that West, his pose as a Christian statesman/warrior notwithstanding, knows as little about the Bible as he does about the Koran. At the very least, his copy of the Holy Book apparently doesn't contain the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, in which the Author informs us: "The soul who sins, he shall die: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be on him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be on him." 

Beneath the sanctimony and hypocrisy displayed by West in that exchange, we confront, once again, a dreadful irony: Unlike West the "war hero," CAIR representative Hamze has never shed blood on behalf of sharia. 

Allen West's pugnacious ignorance has made him a matinee idol to the same people who are being conditioned to view British welfare parasite Andy "Anjem" Choudary as the second coming of the Sudanese Mahdi. 

Choudary, who heads up a tiny knot of nitwits calling themselves "Islam4UK," is on the speed-dial of every cable TV producer looking for a savagely bearded Muslim caricature to spice up an otherwise drab interview segment. He has performed his Stone Age Muslim Barbarian shtick on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amapour, CNN's Parker/Spitzer program, and numerous other TV shows. 

This Thursday (March 3), Choudary is planning to hold a demonstration in Washington for the supposed purpose of inciting American Muslims to rise up on behalf of sharia.

Choudary touts himself as a voice of "authentic" Islam, and those who peddle anti-Muslim alarmism eagerly validate that title. Despite having no clerical credentials or any verifiable expertise in the tenets of his religion, Choudary claims to be a "sharia law judge."

No burqas here: Andy Choudary in party-animal mode.

While studying to become a lawyer, Andy (his real given name) Choudary was a boozing, porn-consuming party animal who somehow persuaded dozens of women to sleep with him -- offenses that, according to his own pronouncements, would earn him a "lashing."

Andy was expelled from the legal profession in 2002. He's been a failure as a husband and father, and at present he is a welfare-devouring loser. He has no standing as a cleric, and I doubt his influence extends far beyond his tax-fattened shadow. Yet somehow we're supposed to see him as a threat?

Choudary is a sideshow caricature right out of professional "wrestling"; he's like the Iron Sheik, minus the subtlety. Like any good "Heel," Andy the self-appointed imam knows how to work an interview to build "heat" for his chosen angle, which is why trend-sucking idiots like Sean Hannity insist on giving him exposure. But the inescapable fact is this: Choudary and the handful of subsidized mouth-breathers he gathers around him are about as representative of Islam as Fred Phelps and his little troupe of in-bred, hate-intoxicated losers are typical of Evangelical Christianity.

For some reason, I fail to be terrified.

  Unless somebody discovers how to weaponize stupidity, Andy Choudary will never pose a genuine threat to anybody. Yet the herd-poisoners who compose the War Party's media auxiliary are turning Choudary into the face of jihad. 

By the end of the week, millions of people will  know his name, execrate him on cue, and be satisfied that they're well-informed and commendably patriotic. Not even a bare handful of them are familiar with Mohammed Junaid Babar, an actual Muslim terrorist who helped plan and coordinate the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, in which four coordinated suicide bombings murdered scores of people, and mutilated hundreds more. Despite his crimes and his professed hatred for America, Babar has been freed from prison after serving no more than two years behind bars -- thanks to the intervention of the federal government.


Babar, who helped set up the camps in Pakistan where the 7/7 plot was organized, was imprisoned in June 2004. Final sentencing was deferred, however, because of what the Federal Government calls his "exceptional cooperation" with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Babar's "cooperation" began more than a year before London experienced a shock comparable to 9/11; according to the London Daily Mail, Babar had identified the ringleader of the 7/7 attacks no later than August 2004. Yet the massacre took place anyway -- and Babar was released from federal prison after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence.


"People get four and a half years for burglary," observes Graham Foulkes, a British magistrate judge whose 22-year-old son, David, was among the victims of the terrorist plot Babar helped organize. "They can get more for some road traffic offenses. So for an international terrorist who's directly linked to the death of my son and dozens and dozens of people to get that sentence is just outrageous." 

The outrage is compounded by the fact that Babar was actually behind bars for only a fraction of that time. At his parole hearing it was mentioned that Babar "has been out on bail for a considerable period of time, over the last year and a half or so...." In fact, as Foulkes points out, prior to being paroled, Babar was allowed to wander the streets of America for at least two years, during which time he married and began a family.

Not a "stealth jihadist": U.S.-supported terrorist Babar in Pakistan.

Babar, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, went to Pakistan following 9/11. His travels (including visits to London, where he communed with members of the radical al-Muhajiroun group) were carefully monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies. 

There is reason to believe that his "cooperation" actually began no later than 2003. This would mean that he was organizing Pakistani terrorist training camps under the supervision of U.S. intelligence -- and that his "arrest" was actually a case of an asset being "brought in from the cold."

In testimony before a British court in 2007, Babar described how he and his al-Muhajiroun comrades (who may have included fellow controlled asset Andy Choudary, who joined the group sometime after 2002) would repeatedly watch videos of the 9/11 attacks and how everyone present "was in praise of those who carried it out."



During Babar's parole hearing, federal officials blithely dismissed those utterances -- as well as Babar's central role in organizing and facilitating mass murder in London. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan McGuire, "the government draws a distinction between Mr. Babar's views [regarding terrorism as a "holy war" against America] and Mr. Babar's intent on acting on that view." 


This lenience is remarkable, considering the fact that the same U.S. Government just won a 25-year prison sentence against 21-year-old Virginia resident Zachary Chesser for offering "material support" for terrorism. Chesser, who converted to Islam in 2008, posted incendiary comments on Muslim-themed websites, including links to documents about jihad and what was described as a death threat directed at the creators of South Park in retaliation for depicting Mohammed. 


Chesser expressed remorse in a letter to the court. In announcing the sentence, however, District Judge Liam O'Grady was unimpressed by the young man's act of contrition, denouncing him as "an extraordinarily energized traitor to your country." This imprecation was hurled in the face of a foolish young man who had not actually done anything to harm anybody. 

Chesser's problem is that he never performed a patriotic service comparable to that offered by prized intelligence asset Babar, whose hands incarnadined with the blood of at least 52 innocent people, or the military heroes who brought the blessings of sharia rule to Iraq.


Video Extra: Babar trained terrorists "with the full knowledge of the American secret service":




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Of Motes, Beams, and Holy Wars

 In his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, James Madison famously denounced the proposal that Virginians -- or, for that matter, Americans anywhere else -- be compelled to pay so much as "three pence" to support the establishment of religion.

A lawsuit filed in late 2008 by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of Iraq War veteran Kevin J. Murray accuses the federal government (particularly Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors) of violating Madison's "three pence" standard by indirectly financing "Sharia-Compliant" investments by way of the American International Group (AIG).

By the time it was nationalized in September 2008, AIG was practically worthless, as its former CEO Maurice Greenberg admitted. It was useful only as a way to facilitate a "backdoor bailout" of Goldman Sachs. Once AIG was nationalized -- an action that was unconstitutional on its face, in addition to being a world-historic crime -- some of the wealth plundered from taxpayers ended up being used to fund and promote "Sharia-compliant" financial services in Muslim markets.

PBUH: Sharia's champion in Iraq.

"As a Christian, a federal taxpayer, and a former U.S. Marine veteran of the war against Islamic terrorism, Plaintiff objects to and is harmed by the appropriation of disbursement of public funds to AIG and being forced as a taxpayer to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law," insisted the original version of the lawsuit, which named former Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman CEO) Henry Paulson as a plaintiff.


Murray "objects to and is harmed by the United States government's policy and practice of approving, endorsing, promoting, funding, and supporting Sharia-compliant finance," asserts the lawsuit. "The government's endorsement of Islamic law sends a message to Plaintiff, who is a non-adherent to Islam, that he is an outsider, not a full member of the political community, and an accompanying message to those who are adherents to Islam that they are insiders, favored members of the political community," continues the brief, which was written by someone who is a stranger to concision.

The specific amount extorted from Murray to subsidize AIG's "Sharia-compliant" investments may be infinitesimal, but under Madison's "three pence" standard, it's the principle that matters, not the size of the injury.


 A demand for summary judgment filed by the More Center earlier this year invoked the Supreme Court's 1947 ruling in Everson v. Board of Education that "No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."

Warbots gag on these...

 Murray's contention that no American should be forced to subsidize Sharia in any form is incontestably correct, as is his objection to the utterly unconstitutional federal takeover of AIG. However, it's difficult to see how he has standing to sue, given that he volunteered his services to establish Sharia law in Iraq and Afghanistan -- a fact proudly detailed in his lawsuit.
 
"From March 2003 to October 2003, Plaintiff was deployed overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom," recounts the lawsuit. "During this time, Plaintiff served as a Marine infantryman and was tasked with providing security for vital refueling and arming points throughout the initial combat phase of the war. These duties consisted of countless and stressful hours devoted to convoy security, manning perimeter defensive positions, and conducting combat patrols in hostile enemy territory in numerous locations throughout southern Iraq." 

Thanks to Murray's efforts, and those offered by hundreds of thousands of other Americans in uniform -- not to mention an estimated $3 trillion stolen from American taxpayers -- Sharia law is now firmly established in Iraq and Afghanistan.


This fact is acknowledged by Stephen C. Coughlin, an attorney and Major in the U.S. Army Reserve who is, according to his bio, "often cited as the Pentagon's leading expert on the nexus between Islamic law and jihad."

"The direct subordination of the law of the land to Shari'ah is reflected in the national constitutions of many Islamic countries, including the Constitutions the United States Government had oversight in drafting -- both Afghanistan and Iraq," writes Maj. Coughlin:

"For example, Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution states that `Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation.[...] No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established.' The Constitution of Afghanistan makes the association as well in Article 2 [Religions] where it states (1) The religion of the State of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam (2) Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law" -- the latter qualification effectively defining out of existence the "free exercise" clause immediately preceding it.

... but swallow these in a single gulp.

Maj. Coughlin's analysis is devastating to Murray's argument, which rests on the idea that he suffers a tangible and continuing injury by being forced to subsidize, in minuscule amounts, some peripheral business dealings by AIG.


How can it be an unendurable affront to be forced to surrender "three pence" to promote Sharia-compliant investments, when the Regime ruling us has spent three trillion (and counting) to impose Sharia law at gunpoint?

Ironically, Coughlin's cogent summary of Washington's role in promoting Sharia comes in a statement he filed as an "expert witness" on behalf of Murray's lawsuit.

Those seeking to define, by illustration, the expression "testimony against interest" need look no further.

Just weeks ago, Wadea Al Handal, chairman of Iraq's Ashur International Bank,  announced that he was awaiting approval from the country's Central Bank to offer "Islamic banking services."

"There is certainly clear interest in the Islamic market in Iraq but it is still a new idea for many," Handal told Reuters. "It's an education process ... we didn't really have much Islamic banking before."

What he meant, of course, is that there wasn't much of an Iraqi market for Islamic banking "before" Kevin Murray and his colleagues were sent to inflict a Sharia-centered government on that long-suffering country. Now, however, Handal has new opportunities to offer "lending services on a Sharia-compliant basis in order to tap growing interest in the market."

Washington remains deeply involved in taxpayer-subsidized "reconstruction" projects in Iraq designed to entrench and strengthen a government rooted in Sharia law. Why isn't the Thomas More Center suing to end that ongoing outrage? Why doesn't it file a suit seeking redress of damages inflicted on Murray as a result of deceiving him into risking his life in order to promote Islamic rule?
 

Yerushalmi in Israel with the late Jack Kemp.

One possible answer is suggested by the fact that David Yerushalmi, the Arizona-based attorney acting as co-lead counsel in the AIG case, is General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a Pentagon front group headed by febrile neo-con war hyena Frank Gaffney. Both Gaffney and his group energetically supported the war in Iraq, in which thousands of Americans (and tens of thousands of Iraqis) died to create a political order ruled by Sharia law.

Yerushalmi is one of the War Party's most energetic social networkers. He is a co-founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an insta-demagogue group (just add flying spittle!)  working to drive the terminally credulous into a frenzy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. 

Yerushalmi considers it "morally reprehensible and intolerable" to forbid the torture of "terrorists," a term he uses as a functional synonym for "Muslim." He is the founder of a secretive vigilante group calling itself the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has set out to "map" every center of Islamic worship and culture in the United States on the assumption that each of them is involved in a plot to overthrow the government.

 The co-founder of SANE, which is headquartered in Yerushalmi's Arizona law office, is Dave Gaubatz, who served 12 years in the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Operations. Three years ago Gaubatz made the remarkable -- and completely unverified -- claim that he "discovered" Saddam's WMD bunkers, which (he insists) were vacant after the illicit weapons had been shipped to Syria, Iran, and other likely targets of armed "liberation" by Washington.

Shortly after its creation, SANE's leadership enacted a resolution calling on Congress to enact legislation making it "a felony punishable by 20 years in prison" knowingly to "act in furtherance of, or to support the adherence to, Shar'ia."

If Yerushalmi were serious about that proposal, wouldn't he have to seek the imprisonment of his client -- as well as the elected and appointed officials who dispatched him (and hundreds of thousands of other Americans) to promote Islamist rule in Iraq and Afghanistan?

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Behold a Palin Horse

Where do God and Family fit if "Country" -- meaning the Government -- comes first? Republican cultists perform on cue at the GOP convention.


"`We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.' I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind.... I grew up with those people. They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars."

From Sarah Palin's Vice Presidential Acceptance Speech

Which is the more significant defining fact about Sarah Palin's priorities: The fact that she carried to term and gave birth to a lovely child with Down's Syndrome; or the fact that she apparently encouraged her oldest son to enlist in the military to fight, and perhaps die, in an immoral war?

Why was a mother so devoted to protecting the life of a child with a challenging disability so eager to see her firstborn become an instrument of needless death -- including, perhaps, his own?

Sarah Palin is in many way the embodiment of the Evangelical conservative element of the Republican Party, and this includes its defining contradictions regarding the sanctity of life and the destructive nature of government power. To put the matter in unadorned terms: Most self-defined conservative Christians are as apathetic about the slaughter of innocents in foreign wars as they are agitated about the annihilation of the pre-born through abortion, and they are expansively suspicious of government except when it is engaged in mass-murder abroad.

Anyone who has spent much time in the company of people with Down's Syndrome probably realizes that they are very easy to love, without understanding how difficult it can be to care for them. Even before abortion became this country's most common elective surgical procedure, it was relatively common for "Mongoloids" to be killed in the womb, as if they were human weeds to be pulled and discarded.

He's "perfect": Newborn Trig Palin. There is nothing more beautiful than a baby.

Although Mrs. Palin's supporters may have cynical reasons for saying so, the fact that she gratefully bore a child diagnosed with Down's Syndrome is a fact of unalloyed loveliness. This remains true despite the calculated way the McCain campaign turned little Trig Palin into a fetish.

But I have to wonder why someone so devoted to protecting the right to life would take such conspicuous pride in sending her oldest son off to help kill the children of other mothers in a war that has nothing to do with defending our homes and communities. And this is made even odder by her insistence on referring to the foreign conflicts arranged by our rulers as "our wars."

In her acceptance speech -- which was completed, in all but a few perfunctory personalized details, by Republican campaign consultants before McCain had chosen a nominee -- Palin assailed the Democratic Party presidential candidate for cavilling about the Long War (Against Terrorism, Iraq, and Other Countries To Be Named Later): "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight. He [the Democratic nominee] wants to forfeit....Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions."

Of course, these digs infuriated those who end their prayers in the name of Barack Obama, and electrified those who see in Mr. Obama the figure Daniel referred to as the "King of Fierce Countenance." Whatever may or may not be Obama's eschatological role, in plain truth he is firmly in the Democratic Party's lamentable Wilsonian tradition.

Obama is reliably bellicose toward Iran; his critique of the Iraq war focuses on the Bush administration's ineptitude, rather than on the fundamental immorality of the enterprise itself; and his posture toward Russia is almost as needlessly provocative as that of John McCain.

For advice on international affairs Obama has surrounded himself with retread Clintonians such as the unspeakable Madeleine Albright, who defended an embargo that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, and then several years later helped arrange the 78-day terror bombing of Serbia by a U.S.-led coalition. And although Palin mocked Obama as unduly fastidious about the due process rights of accused terrorists, Obama himself has supported nearly the entire menu of dictatorial executive enhancements ordered by the Bush Regime.

Yes, the prospect of an Obama presidency is terrifying -- not necessarily because of the candidate himself, but because of the success the conservative movement has enjoyed in endowing the presidency with autocratic powers.

For entirely self-serving reasons, the Republican Party's base, which until recently treated Bush the Lesser with the same slack-jawed, glassy-eyed adoration rendered to Obama by his more devoted supporters, is just now awakening to the dangers of executive aggrandizement.

But such concerns will evaporate among the GOP faithful if McCain is victorious in November. Indeed, tumultuous applause greeted every derogatory allusion to the Bill of Rights offered by Palin and her warm-up act, the Polystyrene Panderer from Massachusetts. The salient fear displayed by the Republicans is that Obama will inherit a distended office and destroy what remains of our liberty before the Republicans have a chance to finish that job themselves.

Priorities: Is a home in the Naval Observatory worth missing a minute of this tiny boy's life?

Of Obama, Mrs. Palin said:

"Government is too big -- he wants to grow it. Congress spends too much -- he promises more. Taxes are too high -- he wants to raise them.... My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses. How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio, or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia, or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota. How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?"

If Palin had written those lines, it would be fair to ask her how her sister and brother-in-law, and the millions of other small businessmen she referred to, could survive the economic fallout from the anticipated, and entirely avoidable, war with Iran. It likewise would be useful to find out if she understands the economically ruinous consequences of the Iraq war, or has any inkling of the extent to which our economy has been militarized. And it would be immensely worthwhile to learn if she has any concern about the effect decades of war will have on the economy, liberties, and morals of our society, and its impact on the small-town "good people" invoked in her address.

But Palin wasn't the author of that address, which wasn't so much a speech as a collection of focus group-inspired Pavlovian cues.

Nope, it's not Sarah: When they make the movie-of-the-week, we can expect to see Tina Fey play the role of the first female Republican Vice Presidential candidate.

In fact, Sarah Palin(tm) -- the public figure, not the individual of the same name -- is a focus group-inspired creation, a cunning political hybrid intended to rivet the loyalty of the GOP's religious base while attracting a small but decisive population of disaffected Democrats.

Deploying that creation last Friday achieved the first objective: It captured the news cycle immediately following the grotesque apotheosis of Barack the Redeemer in Denver. And it gave James Dobson an excuse -- then again, practically any would do -- to capitulate and endorse the McCain ticket, thereby triggering similar endorsements from the Palace Prophets of the GOP-aligned Evangelical movement.

It's hardly a surprise that Dobson and his comrades endorsed Palin, given that she was their creation: The Council on National Policy, a secretive and sinister network of GOP kingmakers, essentially dictated to McCain the selection of Palin as a condition of earning Evangelical support.

That fact, coupled with McCain's precarious health, the GOP's insatiable militarism, and Palin's vaguely Armageddonite theological leanings, make me wonder if, under the right set of circumstances, she could morph into a distaff version of Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone.

Yes, such suspicions seem extravagant. But keep in mind that Mrs. Palin has urged fellow dispensational Christians to pray that the Iraq war will be a "task from God," and that she is willing to bear the sacrifice of her oldest son in that undertaking.* Although second on the ticket to arch-warmonger McCain, Palin is now the sentimental leader of a party that defines its priorites entirely in terms of winning one war of aggression, and carrying out several more. And the dim-witted incumbent of that party has very thoughtfully arranged the resumption of hostilities with Russia, the only nuclear-armed regime that presents a plausible threat to the security of the United States.

If she really were the cultural conservative she's advertised to be, Sarah Palin wouldn't have bought herself this package of trouble. She would have recognized that raising a family of five beautiful children -- soon to be expanded to include a grandchild -- is a worthier accomplishment than making "history" as a stalking horse for the Power Elite that is leading our country into permanent war and incurable ruin.

*Clarification, 9/5 --

The original version of this essay inaccurately characterized Mrs. Palin's comments as a statement that the war itself is a "task from God," which isn't a completely sound depiction. My thanks to Scott Watson and Nels Wilson for pointing this out, and keeping me honest by insisting on strict accuracy.

A reminder --

Tomorrow, for the fifth and final time this week, I'm filling in for Alan Stang on his Republic Broadcasting Network radio program. You're all invited to participate by calling 1-800-313-9443.

On sale now!

Dum spiro, pugno!