† Prediction: Christians Will Be “Extinct” In The Holy Land Within 60 Years: The New York Times reports that during his trip to the Holy Land, Pope Benedict XVI “ is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping”:

Since it was here that Jesus walked and Christianity was born, the papal visit highlights a prospect many consider deeply troubling for the globe’s largest faith, adhered to by a third of humanity — its most powerful and historic shrines could become museum relics with no connection to those who live among them.

“I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East,” the Rev. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, said in a comment echoed across the region. …

A century ago there were millions of Christians in what is today Turkey; now there are 150,000. There is a house in Turkey where the Virgin Mary is believed to have spent her last days, yet the country’s National Assembly and military have no Christian members or officers except temporary recruits doing mandatory service. Violence against Christians has risen.

Sarkis Naoum, a Christian columnist for Lebanese paper Al Nahar, tells The Times, “Unless there is a turn toward secularism in the Arab world, I don’t think there is a future for Christians here.”

† Media Irrelevancy – A Self-Inflicted Wound: The Washington Post’s Marie Cocco asks, “What Did the Media See in Edwards?”:

Edwards became a two-time presidential contender and the 2004 vice presidential nominee based on little but his own preening. …

Few dwelled on Edwards' decision to forgo a re-election campaign in North Carolina - where early polls suggested uncertain chances for victory. By the end of the 2004 Democratic primaries, Edwards had won just two contests, in South Carolina and in North Carolina, where his caucus victory came after he had formally dropped out. Still he was taken seriously enough to be pushed (by himself, the promoters of media conventional wisdom and other hangers-on) as Democratic nominee Kerry's running mate.

Edwards was a Southerner and a good campaigner, and Democrats needed to win a Southern state, the argument went. Overlooked was the fact that the party's presidential nominee in 2000 was Al Gore, a Southerner who struggled in the region, as have most contemporary Democrats.

When Edwards ran again in 2008, another point was too easily ignored: He'd failed to carry his home state for the Democrats in 2004, and in fact didn't come close. This used to be considered a sin of grand proportion, but somehow Edwards escaped blame. …

That Edwards was considered in the "top tier" of 2008 candidates was always a bad joke.

All campaigns are about imagery and manipulation. But stripping away this gloss is supposed to be one of the media's jobs, or at least it used to be. That we helped create Edwards as a national figure and now cover his wife's book promotion as a worthy story is a measure of not just what's gone wrong for them, but what's wrong with us.

† We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?: A jury convicted Lebanese-born Oussama Kassir of plotting to help al-Qaida recruit by trying to set up a training camp in Bly, OR, in 1999 and distributing terrorist training manuals over the Internet, reports The Associated Press:

It was one of two victories Tuesday for U.S. terrorism prosecutors. A federal jury in Miami convicted five men of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to topple Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices. A sixth man was acquitted in the case's third trial.

Prosecutors in the Kassir case portrayed him as a follower of militant clerics who wanted to take advantage of more relaxed gun laws to arrange training in the United States for European recruits to Islamic militancy. The government said Kassir distributed manuals over the Internet that taught militants how to make bombs, poison people and slit throats. …

During closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Bruce told the jury …"It cannot go unpunished that al-Qaida can recruit on U.S. soil."

The jury deliberated less than a day before finding Kassir guilty on all 12 counts; sentencing is set for September 2^nd.

† Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too: It’s been a year since the immigration raid at kosher meat processing plant Agriprocessors in Postville, IA, which netted 380 forged documented aliens and revealed a long-standing human smuggling and document forgery conspiracy, violations of workplace wage and safety regulations, and even allegations of an in-house meth factory. The Chicago Tribune reports on the fallout:

Since federal helicopters raced over cornfields May 12, 2008, en route to arresting 389 illegal workers at a sprawling kosher meatpacking plant, what was a center of commerce in northeastern Iowa teeters toward collapse as the plant sputters in bankruptcy, its managers face prison time and the town itself fights to stay solvent.

Since the landmark raid, an economic squeeze has destroyed several local businesses. Postville's population has shrunk by nearly half, to about 1,800 residents, and townsfolk say a resulting anxiety - felt from the deli to the schoolyard - has been relentless.

"It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, abruptly resigned earlier this year.

The impact of the Postville raid has rippled across the country - rupturing the nation's kosher meat supply and setting back Midwest livestock farmers who supplied the plant. …

A state trial against the plant managers is set for August, and their scheduled September federal trial includes charges of bank fraud and 9,311 labor violations.

Roy Beck, head of the Washington-based NumbersUSA group that advocates for reducing Immigration, argued that Postville had invited its problems by relying so heavily on a plant many suspected was violating labor and Immigration laws.

"The situation should have never gotten to that point," Beck said. "If you don't enforce the laws steadily, then when you suddenly enforce them, there is more collateral damage."

Penrod and the Postville city council had to have known - or at least suspected - that Agriprocessors was not on the up-and-up, yet they all looked the other way. Elected officials charged with upholding the law instead became complicit in a massive conspiracy to flout it, and are now whining about the consequences.  Boo freakin’ hoo.  

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Never Again Or Forgive And Forget?): Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk has spent his first day in a German prison was after being deported from the U.S. to face trial on charges that he helped murder 29,000 Jews and other prisoners during World War II, reports The Washington Post:

Demjanjuk, 89, was fed a lunch of Bavarian meatloaf and mashed potatoes shortly after he landed in Munich on a chartered medical flight from Cleveland. In legal proceedings held in the airport hangar, a German judge formally read the allegations against Demjanjuk, described in a 21-page arrest warrant and translated into Ukrainian, his native language.

The retired auto worker, who had lived outside Cleveland for a half-century after emigrating from Germany in 1952, was taken in an ambulance to Munich's Stadelheim prison, where he was due to spend the night in the medical wing, a spokesman for the Munich prosecutor's office said.

Demjanjuk is scheduled to undergo further medical tests to determine whether he is fit to stand trial. His family and attorneys have asserted that he is seriously ill with leukemia and other ailments. They had challenged his deportation to Germany on grounds that he might not survive the trip.

If Demjanjuk is put on trial, it could mark Germany's last major war-crimes case from World War II. Although prosecutors are pursuing other alleged former Nazis, most targets either vanished long ago or are now in their late 80s or 90s.

Demjanjuk was listed as the world's most wanted Nazi criminal by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human-rights group headquartered in Los Angeles.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) sponsored an amendment to a bill imposing restrictions on credit card companies that would nullify U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruling blocking a National Parks Service regulation allowing people to carry firearms in parks and wildlife refuges, as long as they are allowed by federal, state and local law, reports The Associated Press. The amendment was approved 67-29. Voting "yes" were 27 Democrats (including Arlen Specter), 39 Republicans and 1 independent. Click here for the roll call vote on the measure.