On the Israeli cabinet’s inclusion of the far right Israel Beiteinu Party in the ruling coalition (From XINHUA Online: Israeli parliament okays inclusion of extreme-right party)

…

Shortly after the cabinet’s approval of Israel Beiteinu’s entry into coalition, Israeli Science, Technology, Culture, and Sports Minister Ophir Pines-Paz announced his resignation from the government in protest of the decision.

Speaking at a press conference held on Monday, Pines-Paz said that there had been no other option left to him in the wake of the cabinet vote, adding that he had fought as hard as he could against Lieberman’s inclusion in the government and had resigned for reasons of conscience.

Pines-Paz, a member of the left-wing Labor Party, was the only cabinet member to vote against the inclusion of Lieberman. He also revealed at the conference that he would ran for the leadership of the Labor Party in later elections, adding that Labor’s leadership should be replaced.

…

Lieberman, 48, has long taken a tough line towards the Palestinians as well as Israel’s own Arab minority.

Lieberman’s hawkish policy can also be seen from his attitude towards Iran, an Islamic country that had sworn the wipe-off of Israel from Middle East map.

Last Monday, shortly after signing the entry agreement with Olmert, Lieberman said that “the big issue now is the Iranian threat, and I don’t want to think about what would happen in a year or two if we don’t deal with it now.”

Lieberman has also called for stripping Israeli Arabs of their citizenship, executing lawmakers for talking to Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and bombing Palestinian population centers, which made him one of Israel’s most divisive figures.

Let’s see, in Israel calling for the execution of lawmakers and the bombing of population centers makes you divisive. In other places I think it makes you criminally insane, a terrorist, or a mass murderer.

Sheik Al Hilaly comparing rape victims to abandoned meat:

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat

“The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

“She is the one who takes her clothes off, cuts them short, acts flirtatious, puts on makeup, shows off, and goes on the streets acting silly. She is the one wearing a short dress, lifting it up, lowering it down, then a look, then a smile, then a word, then a greeting, then a word, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay Jail, then comes a merciless judge who gives you 65 years,”

The idiot sheik spoke at the end of Ramadan and lamented the fact that Muslim men who perpetrated a series of vicious gang rapes against white women in Sydney, Australia were sent to prison. It’s the women’s fault you see.

NY State Controller Alan Hevesi during a debate with his opponent J. Christopher Callaghan:

“I have no reason to resign…”

“I make no apology for it…”

“That’s my family — and they come first…”

The idiot controller stated this when pressed about resigning based on a State Ethics Commission report noting that he used public employees for private errands, that he had no intention of repaying the State for that work, and that he had no basis for using public employees in that manner.

…and speaking of his family coming first, he was quick to detail his wife’s illnesses and maladies, including her attempts at suicide. She now rests in a nursing home, allegedly unable to communicate.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to critics of the ‘war in Iraq’

—Just back off—

—Relax—

“You’re looking for some sort of a guillotine to come falling down if some date isn’t met. That is not what this is about.”

Hey, idiot Defense Secretary, how about the U.S. back off and bring the troops home? How about telling the tens of thousands of maimed soldiers and the families of the dead, and the killed and maimed in Iraq to ‘relax’?

By the way, the date should have been met a couple years back —“ now what did that sign on the aircraft carrier say? The only effective guillotine left is impeachment.

…and what is it all about anyway?

• WMD —“ Nope, none there;
• Saddam —“ lunatic leader, but it is not like we don’t have one right in our back yard;
• Terrorist tie-in —“ hmmm, none there, but we’ve created plenty;
• Oil riches —“ nope, the Iraqi facilities are rusting into garbage heaps. They won’t be able to squeeze a barrel of oil out in a year or so.
• Domestic safety —“ nah. But hey, why not bring the troops home to protect us and our borders;
• Global domination —“ hehehe… like people with one track minds could understand the intricacies of the world. They couldn’t even put the right number of troops on the ground.

If anybody knows, hey, clue us in.

For those who follow my blog, you will know that I have been commenting on NY State Controller Alan Hevesi and his repeated use of a State employee as a personal servant. The NY State Ethics Commission has now cited him for illegal activities and has referred the matter to the Legislature. He may be impeached.

It appears that the panel raised many of the issues I previously raised, including the fact that the State employee he used was his aide when he was NY City Controller. The employee provided the same services for him when they both worked for the city.

It appears that the aide, Mr. Nicholas Acquafredda, and yet another unnamed State employee both provided personal services to Mr. Hevesi on State time. In addition, the investigation alleges that Mr. Acquafredda had someone else entering his time records, and couldn’t perform the job he was supposed to be doing, because he was too busy being an errand boy.

Here’s a snippet from the NY Times article: Ethics Panel Says N.Y. Comptroller’s Use of Drivers Broke the Law

ALBANY, Oct. 23 —” The State Ethics Commission accused Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi on Monday of breaking the law by using state employees to chauffeur his wife, and sharply disputed his contention that his wife needed a driver for security reasons.

The accusation against Mr. Hevesi, the state’s chief fiscal watchdog, marks the first time that the commission has ever charged a statewide official with wrongdoing, officials said. The commission’s referral of the case to the Legislature left lawmakers scrambling to figure out how to discipline the guardian of the state’s finances.

The Legislature has a range of options, from doing nothing to fining Mr. Hevesi to removing him from office, possibly by impeachment, an action that has not been taken in decades. But the law for what comes next is murky, so the official accusation had officials in the Legislature and the governor’s office rummaging through their law books to figure out what to do.

The commission’s 26-page report sent shock waves through state politics and dealt a serious blow to Mr. Hevesi, a Democrat who is running for re-election in two weeks…

Mr. Hevesi should resign.

The AP reports: Olmert Brings Hard-Liner Into Government

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday brought into his government a hard-liner who wants to rid Israel of Arabs – a move that would shore up his shaky coalition but could hinder efforts to renew peace talks with the Palestinians.

Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said he hoped the deal to join Olmert’s governing coalition would be signed by Tuesday.

Yisrael Beiteinu, or “Israel Our Home,” brings 11 lawmakers into the coalition, giving Olmert control of 78 of 120 seats in the Knesset, or parliament…

Lieberman, 48, has a long record of hawkish positions toward the Palestinians…

He has also taken a tough line toward Israel’s own Arab minority.

He advocates trading Israeli Arab towns for West Bank settlements – in effect stripping Israeli Arabs of citizenship – and recently called for the execution of Israeli Arab lawmakers who met with leaders of Hamas, the ruling Palestinian group sworn to Israel’s destruction. Such positions have drawn accusations of racism.

But with his coalition weakened by infighting and harsh criticism of his handling of the Lebanon war, Olmert had little choice…

I know, I know, what are a few Arabs (including many Christian Arabs) and a little racism in comparison to holding on to power? These folks are expert in turning politics into an immoral exercise.

Many of history’s most notorious mass murderers also said that they had little choice.

The AP reports on more union terrorism, and the requisite trouncing of the U.S. in front of the whole world. What Soviet and Chinese Communists couldn’t accomplish the homegrown ones are.

See: AFL-CIO files complaint with U.N. labor group: Protest is aimed at ruling on role of supervisors

WASHINGTON – Organized labor is filing an international protest about a federal decision redefining which workers are supervisors exempt from legal protection to join unions.

The AFL-CIO, a federation of about 50 labor unions with 9 million members, said it would file a complaint today with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations about a decision this month by the National Labor Relations Board.

The decision, covering a series of cases known as the Kentucky River cases, involved the role of a supervisor.

The board ruled that nurses who regularly run shifts at health care facilities should be considered supervisors and exempt from federal protections that cover union membership. The decision potentially has major implications for workers in other fields.

While the U.N. committee of labor law specialists from around the world has no enforcement power, the AFL-CIO is looking for support in efforts to restore the more traditional view of what makes a supervisor.

“This will demonstrate how far outside the mainstream of accepted international law the U.S. is moving,” said Craig Becker, a legal counsel to the AFL-CIO.

NLRB decisions cannot be directly appealed in the U.S. courts, although those issues might reappear in the courts in other labor cases, he said.

Workers classified as supervisors under the ruling would not be protected by the National Labor Relations Act. Dissenting members of the NLRB said the decision “threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.”