There is no excuse for this.

According to federal officials, the theft of 400 pounds of high-powered plastic explosives in New Mexico is one of the largest high explosives heists in recent history.

The material was taken from Cherry Engineering, a company owned by Chris Cherry, a scientist at Sandia National Labs. The site, located outside Albuquerque, had no guards and no surveillance cameras. It was the site’s second theft in the past two years.

No guards, no surveillance cameras.

Second theft in the past two years.

“We don’t have any suspect,” said Wayne Dixie of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “We don’t have any leads at this point.”

The stolen goods include 150 pounds of C-4 plastic explosive and 250 pounds of thin sheets of explosives that could be used in letter bombs. Also, 2,500 detonators were missing from a storage explosive container, or magazine, in a bunker owned by Cherry Engineering.

“Believe me, this can cause a catastrophic explosion of unbelievable proportions in the right configuration,” said Jack Cloonan, an ABC News consultant and former FBI agent. “So it’s very dangerous. We have to find this stuff and find it now.”

What’s wrong with this picture, aside from the fact that persons unknown, possibly terrorists, have made off with enough highly versatile(that’s right, because you can shape C-4 to meet the requirements of a given explosion), powerful explosives to bring down buildings and kill a lot of people?

Not only was this dumbfuck, Chris Cherry, inexcusably negligent by not properly securing the site, but just as irresponsible were whichever state or federal agencies that licensed him to store such quantities of explosives without first ascertaining that necessary security was in place. Especially given the fact that the site had been hit before.

Now, I’m the last person to endorse government micromanagement of private sector concerns, but that sentiment ends when materials or activities of a company are potentially dangerous to large numbers of people and property that have nothing to do with them.

Nuclear power plants, oil refineries, places where all manner of hazardous materials are stored in quantity and sites where explosives are stored should be held to high safety and security standards — I don’t mean that the agencies concerned should take the respective firms’ word for anything, I mean that they need to send people onsite to ascertain that all standards, and I mean strict standards, are met to the letter. All too often, bean counters are permitted to gamble with the lives of hundreds or even thousands of innocent people. If companies don’t want to comply because the expenses entailed cut into their profits, let them relocate their hazardous sites to remote, unpopulated areas.

As far as this bonehead Cherry is concerned, he should be barred forever from possessing so much as a firecracker.

This column by Mark Bazer is not only funny, but it also rings pretty true when you look at the average “running scared” corporate response to today’s rampant and ridiculous litigious environment.

The illustrious Jay, at Stop The ACLU, wishes the ACLU a merry Christmas with a post titled Operation Nativity.

If you take a look to the left and right on my blog, you will see that I have already started decorating for the Christmas season. We all know how the ACLU hates nativity scenes, so we thought we’d put one up. We also put up the Homeland Holiday Advisory System, so we can inform you with colorful alerts throughout the holidays. What got me in this festive mood? This article.

Dr. Charles Nestor, director of The Truth Matters, is announcing a project called “Operation Nativity” with the goal of having Christians across the country set up nativity scenes on their own property.

Nestor states, “It’s that time of year again. We’re not even out of October and already the forces are aligning to prohibit the public celebration of the birth of Jesus.

“December 25 is the day in our culture that is set aside to acknowledge and to celebrate that Jesus of Nazareth was born. For Christians it is more than a day of feasting and the exchange of gifts, it is a holy and solemn time to join our voices in unison as the angels proclaimed on the hillside to the shepherds, ‘Glory to God in the highest.’

“I am calling for Christians everywhere to join me in Operation Nativity. While we continue to support the public displays, let’s flood the country with nativity scenes on our own properties!

“Think with me what could happen if on lawns in every community, on business property, on church lawns, at Christian schools, on empty land, and literally everywhere you looked, there was the depiction of the scene that recognizes the birth of Jesus.

“Simple cutouts are available. Many already own lighted sets. It could be a family project, filled with opportunities to teach children about the events surrounding the birth of the Savior.Source

We are all for this, and encourage everyone to join in this expression of Christmas. And we want to take this idea and run with it! Decorate your blog for Christmas with a nativity scene, in support of religious expression, and as a sign of your support for stopping the ACLU. The ACLU will be busy this Christmas season, lets be prepared.

Please download the pics, and host them yourself…I can not afford the bandwidth of hotlinking. If you want to put the nativity scene pic in support of Stop The ACLU, and to decorate your blog for the Christmas season, copy the code below, and replace the URL of the pics with the downloaded pic that you host. Also, if you haven’t done so, add a link to our blog, or bookmark us for a daily read. Get involved with our grassroots movement. We need all the support we can get.

There’s more at the linked site(Stop The ACLU) than I’m able, via outsourced hotel Internet access, to publish, but it’s all available here

TO MY FELLOW JEWS,

HAPPY HANUKKAH

TO MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS,

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Hanukkah begins very late this year, commencing at sundown on Christmas.

Hanukkah, the “Festival of Lights,” starts on the 25th day of the Jewish calendar month of Kislev and lasts for eight days and nights. In 2005 Hanukkah begins at sundown on December 25. With blessings, games, and festive foods, Hanukkah celebrates the triumphs—both religious and military—of ancient Jewish heroes.
This year, tomorrow to be exact, the first day of Hannukah falls upon Christmas day, commencing at sundown.

Hanukkah is a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish year. In the United States, however, its closeness to Christmas has brought greater attention to Hanukkah and its gift-giving tradition. Amid the ever-growing flood of Christmas advertising, it may seem especially fitting that the Hanukkah story tells of Jewish culture surviving in a non-Jewish world.

This is The Hanukkah Story

Now here’s a woman with a voracious appetite for modern technology.

Newsmax has a list posted of the 22 congressman who believe Christmas should be banned as an official U.S. holiday.

On December 15 the House of Representatives passed a resolution “protecting the symbols and traditions of Christmas” by an overwhelming 401-22 vote.

Representative JoAnn Davis (R-VA), the resolution’s sponsor, said the resolution was necessary to counter “political correctness run amok.”

“No one,” she said, “should feel like they have done something wrong by wishing someone a Merry Christmas.”

Twenty-two Democrats played Scrooge and disagreed.

Perusing the list at the end of the article, one can’t help notice that all the anti-Christmas voters were Democrats. Amazing!

Davis lodged a preemptive response to critics who might question the constitutionality of her resolution.

“Celebrating Christmas is not a violation of separation of church and state,” she said. “The Framers intended that the First Amendment to the Constitution would prohibit the establishment of religion, not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialogue.”

The text of the resolution read as follows:

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States would prohibit the establishment of religion, not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore be it resolved, that the House of Representatives –

(1) Recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;
(2) Strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and
(3) Expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions, for those who celebrate Christmas.

If you ask any of them what they think about American Muslims observing Ramadan to the fullest, however, I’m sure the anti-God, PC, scum sucking, piece of shit leftists they would highly endorse it in order to demonstrate their solidarity with members of “The Religion of Peace.”

Theresa Heinz-Kerry has some things to say regarding the Bush response to the anti-Israel ravings of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Teresa Heinz Kerry says she is “outraged” that President Bush didn’t react more forcefully to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent recommendation that Israel be “wiped off the map,” saying that the way to deal with Iranian threats is by issuing “the strongest possible condemnations.”

Ain’t that the modern Democrat way, verbally condemn the SOBs, that’ll fix ‘em! It’ll show ‘em we mean business and they’ll humble themselves post-haste, prostrating themselves before the oracle of sheer goodness. Right.

“The only way to prevent the virus from surviving and spreading,” the former Mrs. Heinz advises, “is to attack, killing it with the strongest possible condemnations before it has a chance to mutate and spread.”

Take that - Ahmadinejad!

Sometimes, the only way to promote more peaceful output from people like Ahmadinejad is to go over there and kick their beheinz!

And now more stuff that should not go anywhere near a public forum makes the news.

A classified radiation monitoring program, conducted without warrants, has targeted private U.S. property in an effort to prevent an al-Qaida attack, federal law enforcement officials confirmed Friday.

While declining to provide details including the number of cities and sites monitored, the officials said the air monitoring took place since the Sept. 11 attacks and from publicly accessible areas — which they said made warrants and court orders unnecessary.

U.S. News and World Report first reported the program on Friday. The magazine said the monitoring was conducted at more than 100 Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C. area — including Maryland and Virginia suburbs — and at least five other cities when threat levels had risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York and Seattle.

The magazine said that at its peak, three vehicles in Washington monitored 120 sites a day, nearly all of them Muslim targets identified by the FBI. Targets included mosques, homes and businesses, the magazine said.

This is what I would most definitely call irresponsible journalism, just as I would the recent New York Times reporting on the monitoring of international telephone conversations by individuals suspected of al-Qaeda ties, which started a barrage of accusations from the left of George Bush and the NSA spying on the average American and likening the President to a dictator.

I blogged not long ago on the strong possibility that terrorists have already acquired such nasty items as suitcase nukes.

How is it a violation of anyone’s rights if the government runs radiation detection scans over their property, whether it is public or private?

How many normal, law abiding American households, places of worship or business are likely to emit sufficient radiation to warrant the FBI to believe they may possess quantities of HEU(highly enriched uranium) or perhaps even a suitcase nuke or dirty bomb?

Sure, we’ve had crazes over pet rocks and such, but since when have we come into a fad for “the family atomic bomb?”

This is insane! The Bush Administration is trying to protect our country and its citizens against horrors that are not only possible, but very likely to occur if we let our guard down, and the Mainstream Media, because they can sell newspapers to leftists by casting aspersions on Bush, pure and simple, are reporting programs that should remain secret(I’ll say it again, al-Qaeda reads the newspapers and watches CNN, just like a hundred million other people), in order that the programs’ effectiveness be maintained, in their continuing efforts to ignite dialogue against the President’s policies.

Okay, so we know where the MSM stands on patriotism, or better still, where they do not stand, and on common sense, again, where they do not stand.

Those insiders that leak this kind of information need to be found(even if irresponsible journalists protecting sources must set up housekeeping in the slammer for indefinite periods) and prosecuted for treason.

You cannot play politics with survival and expect to survive.

No matter what, point your sleigh over to Adam’s Blog for a gander at The Carnival Of Christmas.

Ho-Ho-Hat Tip to my friend Romeokat, of Cathouse Chat, for the heads up!