Tin Foil Chapeau Alert: The NY Times regales us with the story of Thierry Meyssan's book "L'Effroyable Imposture," or "The Horrifying Fraud" which challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He claims the Pentagon was not hit by a plane, but by a guided missile fired on orders of far right-wingers inside the United States government. Further, he says, the planes that struck the World Trade Center were not flown by associates of Osama bin Laden, but were programmed by the same government people to fly into the twin towers.

What really interests him, though, is what he sees as the conspiracy behind these actions. He contends that it was organized by right-wing elements inside the government who were planning a coup unless President Bush agreed to increase military spending and go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq to promote the conspirators' oil interests.

To achieve their goals, the theory goes, they blamed Osama bin Laden for Sept. 11 and later broadened their targets to include the "axis of evil," centered on Iraq.

The 235-page book has been universally ridiculed by the French news media, while its arguments have been dismantled point by point in "L'Effroyable Mensonge," or "The Horrifying Lie," a new book by two French journalists.

A Pentagon spokesman said, "There was no official reaction because we figured it was so stupid."

Yet in the past three months, Mr. Meyssan's book has sold more than 200,000 copies in France, placing it at the top of best-seller lists for several weeks. Foreign rights have also been sold in 16 countries (a Spanish version is already on sale), and Mr. Meyssan traveled to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in April to present his arguments at a local university.

I must not have been paying attention. Have IQ's dropped sharply recently?

More Bunkum From Buncombe. Andrew Buncombe emits a high pitched bleat in the Independent with sad news of the dreadful crushing of dissent amongst editorial cartoonists in the USA. His poster boy is the hapless

Mike Marland, who had drawn a cartoon for the Concord Patriot newspaper illustrating what he considered Mr Bush's attack on the social security system by showing the president flying a plane marked "Bush budget" into the twin towers marked "Social" and "Security".

If Mr. Buncombe's IQ pushes above room temperature, it will hopefully occur to him that Mr. Marland's problems (he got criticized and the newspaper apologized - woohoo!) had very little to do with dissent and quite a bit to do with cluelessness. Also, if Buncombe seriously believes that dissent amongst editorial cartoonists has been crushed in the USA, I wish he would explain the odious Ted Rall.

The New Client Class. Chicago has become the latest to join the parade of local governments approving the use of identification cards issued by the Mexican consulate for their "undocumented immigrants". "The cards allow bearers to open bank accounts, borrow library books and use other services."

The key thing about illegal immigration is that certain groups in the United States have a vested interest in a new client class. Since it's getting increasingly difficult to work up enthusiasm for those remaining citizens who are perpetually on welfare, they are doing their best to import some new recruits.

All the usual liberal suspects are involved and the worst of the crop of inner city politicians. The sooner the undocumented get citizenship amnesty and start voting, the better for these types. And some are voting already courtesy of Bubba's "motor voter" law.

Labor unions seem to be split, with some trying to protect the jobs of their citizen members and other relishing the opportunity to make up for declining membership with a whole new group of dues payers.

Even some of the largest US banks are involved. They see nice profits in catering to the illegal immigrant population. Er, excuse me, the "unbanked".

In the meantime, the benighted US taxpayer is supporting these "undocumented" and mostly untaxed immigrants in a variety of ways. And it isn't library books.

A modest proposal: why not haul in any business or local government administrator who directs that these counsular ID's be accepted and hit them with Federal charges of criminal conspiracy to aid and abet illegal immigration?

You aren't from around here? The Charlotte Observer reports that: Ending three days of deliberations, a federal jury in Charlotte on Friday convicted two Lebanese brothers of conspiring to aid Middle Eastern terrorists. Apparently, Mohamad Hammoud was a Hezbollah buttboy, and when he arrived in the USA he got his brother Chawki into an cigarette smuggling scheme in which at least some of the profits went to Hezbollah. Some of the more dramatic evidence:

• Investigators found anti-American and anti-Israel videos in Mohamad Hammoud's east Charlotte home. One shows a burning car with a crowd chanting "Death to America. Death to Israel."

• FBI wiretaps captured Mohamad Hammoud talking on the telephone with Sheik Abbas Harake, Hezbollah's military commander in Beirut.

• Federal investigators found a letter in Mohamad Hammoud's home urging him to donate money to the resistance in Lebanon and suggesting that he had raised money in the past for Hezbollah's military operations.

• Prosecutors showed jurors a photo of Mohamad Hammoud as a teen-ager at a Hezbollah Center in Lebanon. He was holding an AK-47.

And just for Mary Robinson, they were also charged and apparently convicted of immigration violations involving phony visas and sham marriages, but none of the US media cared to share those details.

Dog bites man! "All of a sudden everybody on death row is going to become retarded," said Mississippi Assistant Attorney General Marvin "Sonny" White, in an AP report on the consequences of the Supreme Court decision banning executions of the retarded. Prosecutors across the country are bracing for an expected flood of appeals from inmates on death row. The Supremes left it up to the states to define "mental retardation".

Pond Scum: Professional whiner Mary Robinson has her knickers in a twist. (That's not new of course, since she mostly always has her knickers in a twist.)

The top United Nations human rights official today called on European countries, meeting in Spain to discuss illegal immigration issues, to guarantee that asylum seekers and other migrants were portrayed fairly and without stereotypes.

In a message to the meeting of the European Council in Seville, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said countries should ensure that accurate information regarding migrants and migration issues was made available, including on the positive contribution that migrants make to the host society.

Mrs. Robinson also said that at last year’s World Conference against Racism, countries agreed that stereotyping in all its forms, in particular the promotion of false images of migrants by States and the media should be avoided, spokesman Jose Luis Diaz told a press briefing in Geneva.

Don't worry about the USA, Mary! Here you can't even get the media to call an illegal alien an illegal alien. If we're lucky, we may find out in a footnote that one of our foreign guests is "undocumented".

In related news, KOVR 13 reports that

Authorities in San Joaquin County have confiscated $1.8-million worth of marijuana after finding a man growing the plants inside a valley state park. The man says he was growing pot to help support his family in Mexico.

You can't make this stuff up. The United Nations, bereft of both ideas and dignity, has enlisted "celebrity ambassadors" and "messengers of peace" as is reported in WSJ.com's Opinion Journal. Some low lights:

Take actress Angelina Jolie, whose duties, like those of most goodwill ambassadors, consist mostly of touring some U.N. project while the TV cameras are on. An official U.N. press release describes the "Tomb Raider" star as having "said that despite the fact that she had not learned much in school about what was going on in the world, she had always thought the United Nations was a good institution." So much for the age of cynicism.

Singer Harry Belafonte, now serving in Unicef's ranks, thanked the U.N. for not allowing the world to be turned into a "great carbon mass" and spoke darkly of "immoral" forces "who would oppose us in what we do." In case that wasn't clear, Mr. Belafonte lamented how the "most powerful nation in the world" had yet to ratify the U.N.'s convention on children's rights.

Mr. Belafonte appears to be supported by an Irish politician named Mary Banotti, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Population Fund. She complained that her agency was under attack from a "bizarre international coalition" headed by (of course!) the Bush administration. Mercifully no one pressed Ms. Banotti to describe the coalition of goodwill ambassadors of which she is a part, a collection that includes a Jordanian princess, three former Miss Universes, an ex-Spice Girl, American actors and actresses, an Indian tennis star and Mr. Armani.

I'm thinking of establishing a BIC (Bizarre International Coalition) outpost here at the store. We'll all wear feed caps and talk about fishing. 'Course we mostly do that anyhow.

Pond Scum: Cherie Blair the suicide bomber from the Sun.

Danger! Senators at work. In the NY Post, Brian Riedl and Ronald Utt reveal the sorry story of what our Senators have done to the emergency funding bill for the war on terror. You'll be happy to know that fighting terrorists includes:

"... $700,000 for a "biomass" (human waste) project at Mississippi State University.

... $2 million to store the Smithsonian's collection of worms and other organisms in an alcohol solution

... $750,000 for the Smart Start Child Care Center and Expertise School in Las Vegas.

... $34 million to the United Nations population fund

... $412,000 to the Fish and Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Center

... $765,000 to the Clark R. Bavin National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Oregon

... $11 million to assist the New England fishing industry

... $2.5 million to map coral reefs off Hawaii

... $1 million to convert subsidized housing to student housing in Baltimore

... $3 million to drill five wells in Santa Fe, N.M.

... requiring the Agriculture Department to fully fund a "Dog Dealers Task Force" to report violations in puppy breeding and sustaining research on tracheal mites and honeybees

... $2 million for more research on mad-cow disease

... $3 million for cattle-genome sequencing

... $50 million to renovate the National Animal Disease Laboratory in Ames, Iowa

... $19 million for animal health surveillance

... $21.6 million for pest detection"

... and more

But don't worry, they weren't complete spendthrifts. The esteemed solons did pinch a few pennies by cutting "$12.5 million for a foreign-terrorist-tracking task force and $3.6 million to beef up the U.S. Capitol Police".

If this is what they do when they show up for work, maybe they should go back to making waitress sandwiches at D.C. restaurants.

Bogon Shield: All you need to know about the "Gun Show Loophole" courtesy of FlashBunny.org.