Good News: ChiComs Hack Congressional Computers

The crack security team there in Congress must be using the same folks The Messiah has at his abominable website.

Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.

Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing's record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he'd been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.

Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf said four of his computers were compromised, beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of his computers were attacked, in December 2006 and March 2007.

Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.

They're laughing at us.

Alas, change shall soon arrive and they'll be nice to us as they plot our demise.

Calls to Close 'Terror High'

One of those rare occurrences where I find myself in agreement with Charles Schumer

The academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the spotlight until the Sept. 11 attacks. Criticisms were revived in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged with joining al-Qaida while attending college in Saudi Arabia. He was convicted on several charges, including plotting to assassinate President Bush, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Most recently, the religious freedom commission—an independent federal agency created by Congress—issued its report, saying it was rebuffed in its efforts to obtain textbooks to verify claims they had been reformed.

The commission recommended that the academy be shut down until it could review the textbooks to ensure they do not promote intolerance.

Since the commission's report, the academy has given copies of its books to the Saudi embassy, which then provided them to the State Department. The commission is waiting to get the books from the State Department.

On Nov. 15, a dozen U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote a letter to the State Department urging it to act on the commission's recommendations. And on Tuesday, Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to write the commission's recommendations regarding the academy into law.

Michael Cromartie, the commission's chairman, said he does not question the character of the student body or the faculty, most of whom are Christian. The commission is focused specifically on the textbooks, and has legitimate concerns given the problems that have been endemic in the Saudi curriculum, he said.

"It's not about whether the students are civil to their opponents on a ball field. It's about the textbooks," he said.

Of course, since it's a Saudi funded school, the kids are learning hatred of other religions, though they claim to have cleaned it up a bit.

But al-Shabnan said the school significantly modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. Among the changes, officials removed from teachers' versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt instructing teachers to explain "that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others."

Lame Excuses All Around

Way below the radar, there were three GOP Congressmen who visited Damascus several days before Nancy Pelosi and her feckless entourage did. Now they're trying to spin their way out of the mess and distance themselves from the Damascus Diva, according to Robert Novak.

Three Republican congressmen, who visited Damascus three days before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived, were eager to disassociate themselves from the Democratic leader and make clear they did not even know she was going to Syria.

When President Bush assailed Pelosi for her Syrian mission, she noted that Republican Reps. Frank Wolf of Virginia, Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania and Robert Aderholt of Alabama made the same journey. Some news reports gave the false impression that they all were on the same congressional delegation. While Wolf stressed that he and his two GOP colleagues support Bush's Iraq policy, their mission to Damascus violated the president's policy, as did Pelosi's.

Meanwhile, Pelosi and her crew are still working on damage control. Good luck with that.

Despite Pelosi's boasts of a successful summit with Assad, she botched big-time by delivering a peace message to the Syrian leader from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - prompting Israeli officials to issue a statement correcting her.

"You can imagine our surprise to hear from Mr. Olmert that that's not what he wanted at all," said Rochester Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter, who was traveling alongside Pelosi and asserted that Olmert gave Pelosi explicit instructions.

Slaughter blamed right-wing media outlets for fueling the political uproar over the congressional trip to Syria, though the left-leaning Washington Post ran a scathing editorial slamming their "foolish" renegade diplomatic excursion.

"We did not deviate a half an inch from the policy of the United States of America," said Slaughter, who along with Pelosi had ignored White House and State Department requests that they not go to Syria.

More from Jules Crittenden.

Previously: Pelosi: Syria Trip Strengthened Ties, Pathetic Pelosi