† King Of The Heels: The National Enquirer – which broke the story that former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) had fathered a love child with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter – reports “multiple sources confirm” that the commander-in-chief wanna be has “secretly undergone a DNA test” that “proves” his paternity (emphasis throughout in the original):

Rielle testified against Edwards before a federal grand jury that's probing whether he broke campaign finance laws by secretly funneling money to her - and her testimony could send the former North Carolina senator to jail!

The positive DNA test finally ends the elaborate cover-up that Edwards engineered to hide the fact that he fathered Rielle's 18-month-old daughter Frances.

As The ENQUIRER previously reported in a series of explosive investigative reports, the cover-up involved "hush money" paid to Rielle and Andrew Young, a once-loyal Edwards aide who claimed he'd fathered her child. The secret payments were made by the late Fred Baron, who was Edwards' national finance chairman.   

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Four young men entered Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corporation in Harlem, not to buy restaurant supplies, but to rob the joint – which, BTW, is around the corner from the 26th Precinct station house and has been robbed before. One of them brandished a Glock 9-mm pistol while two others tried to put plastic handcuffs on a male and female employee. During a struggle with the gunman, the male employee was bashed on the head with the pistol. At that point, the store’s proprietor, Charles Augusto Jr., 72, grabbed his “loaded Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a pistol-grip,” reports The New York Times, and “fired three blasts in rapid succession” killing two of the robbers, including the gunman, and wounded the other two:  

Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the Police Department, said that Mr. Augusto had not been arrested or charged. He was being treated like a witness and was being questioned Thursday night at the station house. It was unclear if the shotgun was registered, but Mr. Browne said, “There is a lower threshold for owning a shotgun in the city, a permit as opposed to a license.”

A law enforcement official said that the district attorney was considering a possible misdemeanor weapons charge against Mr. Augusto, indicating that he did not have a permit for the shotgun.

Under long-established New York law, a person is allowed to use deadly physical force when he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to meet the imminent use of deadly physical force and there is no reasonable chance of retreating from the danger.

As of this writing, The Stiletto is not aware that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg congratulated the elderly Augusto for possibly saving the lives of his employees with his quick action and accurate aim – oh, and for not having his firearm taken away and used against him by one of the thugs, which is what liberals always claim will happen if law-abiding citizens try to exercise their Second Amendment rights in a life-and-death situation.

Editorial Note: New York Times columnist Gail Collins – Bob Herbert’s colleague – was one of those The Stiletto had in mind when she noted that liberals have disordered thought processes on the subject of the Second Amendment. Just for fun, The Stiletto compared “City Crime Rankings 2008-2009: Crime in Metropolitan America” from CQ Press (formerly Morgan Quitno Press) against the membership of the Bloomberg-funded gun control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition. According to the annual ranking of the safest and the most dangerous U.S. cities with populations of 75,000+ (based on the rate of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts reported to the FBI):

New Orleans has the highest crime rate ranking, with 19,034 incidences of reported crime, 209 murders, and a percent change in violent crime rate of 199.1% across the past year. Behind New Orleans with the highest crime rate ranking are Camden, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; and Oakland, California.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Camden Mayor Gwendolyn Faison, Detroit  Mayor Dave Bing, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums have two things in common: They are all Dems, and they are all members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition.

† Obama Doctrine Taking Shape: In a devastating critique of President Barack Hussein Obama’s foreign policy approach, The Christian Science Monitor observes that while the president “may be willing to talk to America's adversaries abroad, but six months into his tenure hardly anyone is returning his call – a situation that is prompting restiveness in Congress and a round of "we told you so's" by diplomatic hawks.” CSM adds:

More than six months later, Obama can claim no breakthroughs or cite any obvious unclenched fists. Of the cases where the policy faces its biggest test – Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba – responses to Obama's outstretched hand range from a bite back on the nuclear front (North Korea) to silence (Iran) to modest movement (Syria and Cuba).

Administration officials have met with Syrian and Cuban officials, and the White House has said the US will return its ambassador to Damascus. But critics say the months since the extended hand of the inauguration have allowed adversaries time to further their own goals. …

"Both Germany and Italy remain firmly committed to huge levels of [economic] investment in Iran, so I'd say it's business as usual on the European front – no matter how much they profess to like the Obama approach," says Nile Gardiner, a foreign-policy expert at the Heritage Foundation.

As for Russia and China, both are permanent Security Council members and, as such, would have to sign on to tougher United Nations sanctions against Iran. "I've seen no commitment by either," he adds, "to follow a rebuffed diplomatic bid with really harsh and effective sanctions." …

"The 'softly, softly' approach adopted by Obama and Clinton is only encouraging America's adversaries to toughen their positions," he says. "It's a strategy that is undermining American power across the globe."

† The Uniter: Part II: During the general election campaign, Barack Hussein Obama’s candidacy turned spouses, neighbors and even feminists against each other. He’s still a polarizing figure, pitting brother against brother, reports The New York Times:

As a senior official at the Democratic National Committee, Brad Woodhouse is on the front lines when it comes to selling the Obama administration’s health care plan …

Dallas Woodhouse is the North Carolina state director for the conservative organization Americans for Prosperity and, as such, is a point man for the attack on the plan …

They are brothers. …

“You cannot have an honest debate with folks like my brother on this issue,” Brad, 41, told the CNN morning host John Roberts.

Dallas, 36, responded: “It’s simple that the president is losing this debate. You know he’s losing this debate when people like my brother and the White House start attacking hard-working, tax-paying citizens as mobsters.” …

[T]he Woodhouse brothers’ opposing roles at the highest levels of the fight make theirs one of the most unusual intrafamily rivalries in American politics, the likes of which have not been seen since Mary Matalin and James Carville emerged on the national political stage nearly two decades ago as high-profile spokesmen for their parties.

Ms. Matalin, a Republican, and her husband, Mr. Carville, a Democrat, have had their act out on the road for years, and at this point there is almost a detached professionalism to their frequently lighthearted jousting.

The Woodhouse brothers, on the other hand, are brand new to the cable news shout-fest circuit, and their sparring is rawer and more passionate. At times it is so personal that, says their mother, Joyce L. Woodhouse, she can barely stand to watch. …

 “I’d like for them to tone it down a little bit,” Mrs. Woodhouse said, “and I talk to them about it.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (Take The Veil Off, Or Go Home): Officials of a public pool in the Paris suburb of Emerainville banned a French-born convert to Islam from swimming while wearing a "burqini," a get-up not mentioned in any chapter or verse of the Koran, Agence France-Presse reports:

[T]hey let the woman swim in the pool in July wearing the "burqini," designed for Muslim women who want to swim without revealing their bodies. …

But when she returned in August they decided to apply hygiene rules and told her she could not swim if she insisted on wearing the garment, which resembles a wetsuit with built-in hood.

Pool staff "reminded her of the rules that apply in all (public) swimming pools which forbid swimming while clothed," said Daniel Guillaume, an official with the pool management. …

France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority, has set up a special panel of 32 lawmakers to consider whether a law should be enacted to bar Muslim women from wearing the full veil, known as a burqa or niqab.

The country has had a long-running debate on how far it is willing to go to accommodate Islam without undermining the tradition of separating church and state, enshrined in a flagship 1905 law.

The burqa debate in France has drawn chilling warnings from Al-Qaeda that it was ready to "take revenge for the honour of our daughters and sisters."