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A Tea Party favorite for the U.S. Senate in Ohio has just been indicted by a grand jury for unlawful conduct with a minor:

A New Lebanon man, running for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, has been indicted by a Montgomery County grand jury on sex charges.

Eric Deaton was indicted on one count of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. He is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 15-year-old girl between March 2006 and March 2007.

Perry Township police said Deaton met the victim at a church where Deaton served as an elder.

Deaton, who is due in court September 14, faces up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted.  This isn’t stopping Deaton though. He’s staying in the race and insisting that this is some big political setup:

“I think this is politically motivated,” said Deaton, blaming the indictment on his decision to run for political office.

“The powers that be don’t like that,” said Deaton, who said he intends to stay in the race.

Deaton has been pretty much an unknown in Ohio politics, well that is until now. He has only received a handful of endorsements, but one of those endorsements really sticks out:

Vote Family Values

Perhaps it’s just a day of major irony, but looking at the front page for Vote Family Values, I couldn’t help but notice one of their top news stories:

“Christian Teens and Hands-On Politics”? It sure sounds like Deaton took that way to literally.

recovering liberal
Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan, according to the latest survey from Pew Global Attitudes Project.

In the poll released last Thursday, about half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said that attacks against Americans and their allies are justified.

On a positive note, the poll also showed that confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him. Sadly, this is offset by Jordan and Pakistan, where more than 50% say they that have confidence in him.

Most importantly, in the nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam are tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, which most of those surveyed see as a bad thing.

In conclusion, while most of those polled in the United States and other Western Nations claim to have favorable views of Muslims, those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

Support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has dropped since 2002 by 34 percentage points in Lebanon, 12 points in Indonesia and 8 points in Pakistan, according to the latest survey from Pew Global Attitudes Project.

In the poll released last Thursday, about half of Muslims in Lebanon, Jordan and Morocco said that attacks against Americans and their allies are justified.

On a positive note, the poll also showed that confidence in bin Laden has fallen by double-digit margins in Indonesia, Morocco and Lebanon since 2003. In Lebanon, only 2% now express confidence in him. Sadly, this is offset by Jordan and Pakistan, where more than 50% say they that have confidence in him.

Most importantly, in the nine Western nations polled, fears about radical Islam are tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, which most of those surveyed see as a bad thing.

In conclusion, while most of those polled in the United States and other Western Nations claim to have favorable views of Muslims, those in predominantly Muslim countries had mixed views of Christians and very negative views of Jews.

As feared and expected, looks like Hezbollah is now attacking Israel from Lebanon:

Lebanese militants fired at least three rockets into Israel early Thursday, threatening to open a new front for the Jewish state as it pushed forward with a bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed nearly 700 people. Israel responded with mortar shells.

The rockets that exploded in Israel's north raised the specter of renewed hostilities with Hezbollah, just 2 1/2 years after Israel battled the guerrilla group to a 34-day stalemate. Hezbollah started the 2006 war as Israel was battling Palestinian militants in Gaza.

No group claimed responsibility and Lebanon's government, wary of conflict, quickly condemned the rocket fire, which lightly injured two Israelis.

For a second straight day, Israel said it suspended is Gaza military operation for three hours to allow in humanitarian supplies. Shortly before the pause took effect, however, the U.N. said one of its aid trucks came under Israeli fire, killing the driver.

U.N. spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said the U.N. coordinated the delivery with Israel, and the vehicle was marked with a U.N. flag and insignia when it was shot in northern Gaza. The Israeli army said it was investigating.

The allegation was sure to raise tensions with the United Nations, which has already demanded an investigation into Israel's shelling of a U.N. school in Gaza that killed nearly 40 people. At the time, Israel said it opened fire after militants hiding in the crowd shot mortar shells at Israeli troops.

Before the lull on Thursday, Israel killed at least 11 people in Gaza, including five militants, raising the death toll from its 13-day offensive to 699 people, according to Palestinian medical officials. The offensive is meant to halt years of Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, but with roughly half the dead believed to be civilians, international efforts to broker a cease-fire have been gaining steam.

[...] Israel has repeatedly said it was prepared for a possible attack on the north since it launched its bruising campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza on Dec. 27. Israel has mobilized thousands of reserve troops for such a scenario, and leaders have warned Hezbollah of dire consequences if it enters the fighting.

"We are following what is happening in the north. We are prepared and will respond as necessary," Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned both the attacks and Israel's retaliatory fire. The attacks are "the work of parties who stand to lose from the continued stability in Lebanon," Saniora said.

Just an example of how we're winning hearts and minds...

  The Daily Star (Lebanon):

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted on Friday that Washington is not preparing for war against Iran, but rather is pursuing "a diplomatic course," a policy that she claimed "is supported by all the members of [US President George W. Bush's] Cabinet and by the vice president." But Rice's reassurances do little to offset the bellicose words of the lunatics who are still working in the White House and still peddling the same confused analysis to support the same flawed doctrine of "pre-emptive war" that led to the current mess in Iraq.

Iran, too, has its share of irrationality in governance. On Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the clock was ticking toward the destruction of Israel, the same sort of refrain that has allowed the Western media to demonize the Islamic Republic and so to prepare the ground for possible assaults by the Americans and/or the Israelis.  Read full article

Anthony Bourdain is the kind of travel writer that Hunter S. Thompson would have been had he started up in the restaurant industry. He drinks too much, smokes too much and is unapologetic for his caustic nature. His non-fiction book, Kitchen Confidential, will forever change your notion of eating out (including ordering fish for Sunday brunch--just don't do it). His Gonzo style has morphed into testing culinary boundaries around the world. On his show "No Reservations" airing Mondays on the Travel Channel, Bourdain is more likely to eat the still-beating heart of a snake in Cambodia than to be found at any one of the hundreds of tourist traps masquerading as "authentic" along the Mekong Delta.

Continue reading »

QANA, Lebanon - At least 56 people, more than half children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that crushed a building, the deadliest attack of the campaign against Hezbollah....read on

Marshall: Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria...read on

Ezra says the press missed a golden opportunity to understand Bush's real position on this crisis.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (.42) This is the clip he is referring to..(The video is still loading on the server-give it 5 minutes)

Bush: What they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over...

Given the relative opacity of Bush's thoughts on the situation, the frank discussion offered a fair amount of insight and a couple nuggets of news, including that he was going to send Condi to the region (or possibly the UN -- but she's going somewhere to deal with this), that he blamed neither Israel nor Lebanon for the violence, and that "the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." That's a big deal: Bush believes it within the Syrian government's power to calm the conflict. Theoretically, that should have major implications for American diplomacy and, possibly, policy...read on

On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman has a discussion with As'ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese professor of political science at California State University and Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. You can listen to the audio here

Juan Cole: It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth. I come away from it shaken and trembling

WE ARE GETTING HIT ALL AROUND US THEY ARE SHOOTING MISSLES ONLY TO HIT CIVILIANS THE SIRENS HAVE BEEN GOING OFF ALL MORNING

Hezbollah, Allies Sweep Vote in Lebanon

Hezbollah, the armed group considered a terrorist organization by the United States, and its allies swept voting in southern Lebanon during the second round of nationwide parliamentary elections, the interior minister said Monday. Israel, which has long clashed with the group, expressed its concern...read on

What do the fighting 101st keyboards have to say?

Hugh Hewitt mis-represents a Jay Rosen article. LGF posts the article. Malkin-nothing. Roger L Simon-nothing.