It was certainly no coincidence that on the 4th anniversary of 9/11 last Sunday, front page headlines appeared in the nation’s newspapers entitled Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan . It was a public shot across the Jihadi Terrorists’ bow, meant to make them and folks in Mecca nervous. You know why, since you read Mad in Mecca in To The Point back in October, 2004, and George Bush and the Sword of Damocles: Why There Hasn’t Been Another 9/11 last January. It’s the clearest sign yet that Mecca is being held as a nuclear hostage.

Now that Bush has utterly outfoxed the Dems on his first Supreme Court nomination - John Roberts is a done deal for Chief Justice - everyone inside the Beltway is handicapping his next choice. He has confided in no one, including me. Maybe Laura knows, but she’s only given hints. Those hints and everything else points to a feminine direction. The next nominee, replacing Sandra Day O’Connor, almost has to be a woman.It could be Priscilla Owen, it could be Edith Jones, but I am crossing my fingers for Janice Rogers Brown.

Chapter Eight: MalincheAguilar found Malinali cowering in the lee of large sand dune. Perspiration was pouring off her, her chest was heaving with rapid breaths, and her eyes were glazed with panic and terror. “Doña Marina!” he cried, “What is wrong?!” He got a wet cloth and patted her brow. Her eyes slowly focused on him. Finally, she stammered “I… must talk… to Captain Cortez…”Aguilar was startled. Nonetheless, he said he would relay her request. A few moments later he returned and beckoned, bringing her to the Captain’s tent. Cortez was sitting in his chair and looked up at her. Malinali stood still, legs quivering, desperately trying to subdue her breathing and her emotions. Cortez quickly saw the girl was abjectly terrified. He motioned for Aguilar to bring her a drink of water.“Doña Marina,” said Aguilar, “What is it that you wish to speak of to the Captain?”Malinali closed her eyes to listen to her father’s voice. “Ixkakuk!” she heard her father say, “a true queen is always in command of her feelings and fears!” As she opened her eyes, Cortez saw her transformed into a different person. Instead of a shaking slave girl scared out of her wits, suddenly standing before him was a regally erect woman of extraordinary beauty, poise, and calm. A woman who looked directly into his eyes as she said to Aguilar:“I must ask Captain Cortez if he is a man or a god.”

With apologies to John Fogerty and Credence Clearwater Revival: I see the bad Palestinian moon arising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightning. I see bad Gaza times today. Don't go around in Gaza tonight, Well, it's bound to take your life, There's a bad Palestinian moon on the rise.

With people dying from infected water in New Orleans, which won’t be drained for weeks, it is critically important to disinfect the flood water as quickly and efficiently as possible.The Army Corps of Engineers has many years of institutional experience at safely chlorinating sewer water. They can scale up that experience for the “Sewer City” that New Orleans has become.Chlorine is a standard treatment for disinfecting sewage. It would take a few railroad tank cars of liquid chlorine for the job.

What’s the difference between a disaster and an election in New Orleans?The buses run during an election.Why isn’t New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin worried about all the dead people being found in Katrina’s aftermath?Because they’ll keep right on voting anyway.Tasteless? Here’s what really tasteless: Cleaning up New Orleans physically without cleaning it up politically. Not draining New Orleans’ political cesspool of organized crime and corruption. Not evacuating Mayor Ray Nagin and every city official and police officer on the take before they get their greasy hands on all those billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild the place.

Chapter Seven: QUETZACOATLDon Alonso was unlike any of her previous masters. True she had never been abused or raped either by her Xicalanca captors or the rulers of Pontochan. But Don Alonso exhibited a courtesy to her, treated her with a dignity, that the others had not. Was it because he recognized her royal birth, or did he and the other Spaniards treat women differently in general?To her Pontochan masters, she didn’t really exist in a certain way. She had been invisible to them - an invisibility Malinali strove consciously to maintain. She did all she could to hide her beauty, for example. She didn’t walk straight, tall, and proudly - she compressed herself and slunk around the palace doing her chores.She decided to abandon this shrunken invisibility with the Spaniards. She no longer wore her cloak over her head. Her bountiful long black hair was now free to glisten in the sun. She carried herself as her father taught, tall and proud, head high. She was never insolent and obediently did as she was asked without resentment. She could do this because Don Alonso always made requests of her, not dismissive demands. He treated her as an individual person, not an invisible non-entity.Now being so clearly visible, Don Alonso could not help noticing Malinali’s beauty.

“My third set of masters,” Malinali thought to herself. These people, these “Spaniards” were different from any others she had known or even imagined. They seemed to her to almost be not of this earth. Perhaps they were from the stars, she thought.

“Are you afraid of them, Little Miss Dry Grass?” she asked herself, summoning her courage, her sense of humor, and the memory of her father all at once. Yes, a part of her was afraid, of course. Who wouldn’t be? Then she heard her father’s counsel: “What reason do you have to be afraid? Have these strangers shown themselves to be cruel and unmerciful, or kind and forgiving? They are impossibly fierce in battle, yet impossibly generous in victory. Use your intelligence, learn how to gain the respect of these Spaniards. Never forget, Malinali, you are a still a Queen! Never show any fear!”

Her thoughts were interrupted by the words of the stranger who spoke Mayan. He addressed them all assembled on the floor of this great floating home.

Out of the mouths of babes and crackpots� There's no doubt Pat Robertson has a penchant for saying manically crackpot things like warning the city of Orlando, Florida in 1998 that if it allowed a Gay Pride parade, God would punish the city by sending “earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.” The press has had a field day this week reciting past wacky Patisms in an attempt to deride his call for the assassination of Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. And yes, the point is well made that Christian ministers are not the sort of folks who should advocate such things. But what Pat said is nonetheless true. Of course, we or somebody, anybody, should knock off Chavez. Doing so would be one of the greatest contributions to peace and freedom in the world today.

The leader of the strangers stood underneath the big ceiba tree he had slashed with his sword. He addressed the sub-chiefs assembled in front of him through the stranger who spoke Maya.“I come to you from the greatest king in the world, His Majesty Don Carlos of Spain. The mighty country of Spain lies on the other side of the Great Ocean, and we have crossed it to trade peacefully with you and to instruct you in the religion of the One True God.“His Majesty Dos Carlos commands us to come in peace, yet you attacked us and tried to kill us for no reason. We do not understand why you attacked us, but you must understand that if you try to attack us again we will kill you. You saw yesterday the power of our lightning-bearers. The lightning-bearers are still angry with you, and it is hard for us to control the death-fire they carry in their bellies…”Without warning, one of the huge metal tubes lined up on the edge of the square went off with an enormous explosion and belch of fire. No one was hurt, but just the same, Malinali fell to the ground terrified like all the sub-chiefs, who proceeded to call out to the strangers’ leader asking his forgiveness for their aggression and disobedience.

You saw the above-the-fold front page headlines, saw the prime time television news stories late last week about Adam Kidan being arrested by federal agents for wire fraud, right? What’s that? You never heard of Adam Kidan? Of course you haven’t because he’s a nobody. That’s why the feds politely called his lawyer and asked he show up at their offices in Florida at a convenient time for him. The fellow you read about on the front page and saw getting busted on national TV was Kidan’s business partner - someone the Washington Post and the New York Times have spent years demonizing, the infamous Jack Abramoff.

And so Malinali trudged through the forest and swamps to Pontochan, where Forearms sold her to the King and she moved into the palace - living in a palace again, but now as a slave and not a princess.Malinali became very appreciative of Ciuacuatl’s lessons, for with her skills at sewing, cooking, and medicine, she was assigned to the household staff and not put out into the maize or cacao fields for manual drudgery.Five winters passed. She became fluent in Maya, and learned how to do her work well and quietly, so as to be noticed as little as possible. She listened attentively, however, and began hearing talk of mysterious strangers who lived in gigantic war canoes. No one knew where they came from. Their skin was light and they had hair on their faces. Some wore metal on their bodies. Their canoes had carried them across the salt water from the south. They stopped at the mouth of the Pontochan River and talked to a group of Mayas but no one could understand what they were saying. They continued across the water to the north and were never seen again.

One of the most frequently asked questions we get at To The Point is: Where’s Osama? Why haven’t we found and killed him?We’ve gotten another flurry because of the recent claims that “mercs” or mercenaries, “professional soldiers for paramilitary corporations that attend the annual Soldier of Fortune convention in Las Vegas” know where he is - a hidden valley called Dir in northwest Pakistan.I’ve known Col. Bob Brown, the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine for almost 30 years. We almost got ourselves blown up together in Afghanistan with the Mujahaddin back in the 1980s. I told Bob about this claim and he laughed his head off.“The last Soldier of Fortune convention we had was back in 2000,” he told me. “You should know, Wheeler, you were our keynote speaker! No one in the world is in touch with “mercs” more than me. They would have one simple word for these Elvis sightings of Osama: (expletive). The guy making this claim, Paul Williams, is an (expletive).” Bob doesn’t mince words.The claim that OBL has been in Dir “since he escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001” is laughable. Williams has, of course, never been remotely close to the place. I’ve been all over the area, from Peshawar through Dir to Chitral in the Hindu Kush, and know it would be easy to get him if he’s there. He’s not in Dir.Osama is in....

Chapter Three: SLAVE After Teteotcingo’s funeral, Queen Cimatl asked to see her daughter. “Malinali, there is something you must know,” the Queen said. “A kingdom requires a king - and now Paynala no longer has one. So I have decided to marry the brother of my sister’s husband, Cohuixin. I must, you realize, always put the interests of Paynala and its people first.” Malinali was so stunned she lost her composure and blurted, “The Lizard-Man? You are going to marry the Lizard-Man!? (Cohuixin meant “lizard” - obviously Malinali was not very fond of him.) Mother - how can you insult our people, insult me - insult yourself! - and insult the memory of King Teteotcingo this way?” Queen Cimatl insouciantly responded. “It will soon be King Cohuixin - and he will be your king, and your father. The decision is done.” Malinali exploded. “You are only fooling yourself, Mother, if you think I will ever regard the Lizard-Man as my King - much less my Father!” Suddenly, though, the young Princess saw the image of her father in her mind, and thought, “My father would not lose his temper in such a situation - calm down and think clearly, Malinali - right now!”

Up until recently, if you heard of the African country of Niger, you’d think of Yellowcake Joe Wilson and his CIA bimbo wife Valerie Plame with their phony scandal trying to get Karl Rove. By now, however, you may have heard that Niger faces famine after a prolonged drought and a locust plague of biblical proportions. In January 2003, I led a Trans-Sahara expedition across the entire length of Niger. I found it to be one of our world’s special places, of achingly lonely beauty, of fascinating and friendly peoples, and mysterious lost cities, hidden oases, and camel salt caravans.

Chapter Two: PRINCESS Malinali giggled. It was the kind of squeal and squeak that only a little girl who is deliriously happy can have. She was hiding behind a curtain in her father’s palace. “Ixkakuk! Ixkakuk!” her father called out, using his nickname for her, meaning Beautiful Goddess. “Where are you? I can’t find you!” He crept up to the curtain. “But when I do, I’m going to?” he grabbed the bulge in the curtain? “tickle you to death!” The little girl’s shrieks of mirth rang through the palace. King Teteotcingo released his grip, and Malinali raced away across the throne room laughing and yelling, her father chasing after her. The uproar reached the ears of Malinali’s mother, Queen Cimatl, in an adjoining chamber attended by her courtiers. She sighed disapprovingly. “You would think the King would have more important matters of state to attend to than to play with little girls.”

It’s a common debating trick to focus on one perceived error in your opponent’s argument, ignore all the other points, and pretend that if you can refute that one point every other point and therefore the entire argument is refuted. Thus I have gotten a lot of flack over my noting, in The Hiroshimic Imposture , that so-called Soviet suitcase nukes built in 1988 could not be set off with a cell phone as claimed because there were no cell phones back then. As Joe Farah kidded me in a Front Page interview, “The cell phone is 30 years old. I had a cell phone in 1988. Jack’s memory is a little faulty here.” I’m sure Joe is right - about his having a cell phone the size of a brick back then. The only guy I saw with one in those days was Ollie North. So yes, there were American cell phones. But Soviet cell phones? Nope, no such thing. The first cellular systems were introduced into Russia in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, using the analog NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) protocol.

We initiate this week a new feature in To The Point: the serialization of a novel I am writing entitled The Jade Steps. Every week from now on until completion, there will be a successive chapter. We begin today with Chapter One: Casa Colorada. This is a historical novel, the true story of one of history’s most remarkable and influential women. Her life sounds like a fairy tale, but it’s history, it actually happened. Her name was Malinali. The Jade Steps has a two-fold purpose. The first is to tell Malinali’s story, as fascinating as it is unknown. The second is to bring peace to the civil war raging in the soul of Mexico. I hope you all enjoy it. --- JW Chapter One: CASA COLORADA

Let’s say a young white fellow is caught entering a New York subway station by a watchful policeman, who discovers 50 pounds of high explosives in his backpack. Upon interrogation, the fellow explains he was instructed to blow up the station by the Holy Cheendon, whose voice he hears in his head, because for doing so the Cheendon will send him to Paradise located in the Andromeda Galaxy.Such a fellow would not be a Moslem crazy, just plain crazy. But what if there is something specifically screwed up in his brain that’s making him crazy - and it is this same something that turns some Moslems into suicidal terrorists?

Not quite two years ago, in Terrorism and Tiny Zibbs, I discussed why one of the principal causes of Moslem terrorism is that so many Moslem men are afraid of women. This was made quite evident in a London Daily Telegraph poll of British Moslems conducted last week that stunned the British. 24% of British Moslems, it turns out, are sympathetic with the feelings and motives of the suicide bombers attacking London, and almost one-third believe that: “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Moslems should seek to bring it to an end.” The outrage this provoked caused most folks to overlook the poll’s internals, which showed that the great majority of those alienated British Moslems are men. Very few British Moslem women want to bring Western society to an end, for that society respects them as full human beings and gives them freedom to act as such. So all this soul-searching navel-gazing blather in the British liberal press agonizing over the failure of British society to cure Moslem alienation utterly misses the point - as liberals almost unfailingly do. The fault, the blame, the cause of Moslem terrorism, hatred, and alienation lie not with us in the West, but with the cultural defects of Moslems themselves - and specifically of Moslem men.

Four months ago, on March 16, I told you about The Real Lockbox - a real fix of Social Security being devised by Republicans in Congress, superior to President Bush’s and designed to drive Democrats up a defensive tree. I then promised I would update you on its progress - and now I can report it is fast becoming legislative reality.

Let’s face the meaning of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Kelo vs. City of New London decision: We have a fascist judicial system in place of a Constitution. We no longer have a Constitution, it has ceased to exist. In justifying their abolition of private property rights, John Paul Stevens writing for the majority of Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and himself - the Fascist Five - pronounced that “Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community.”Taking him at his word, a New Hampshire businessman named Logan Darrow Clements sent a written request last week to city officials of the town of Weare, seeking their approval to build a hotel at 34 Cilley Hill Road. Such approval would entail eminent domain condemnation proceedings authorizing the seizure of the private home currently at this address. The owner of the home is Supreme Court Justice David Souter.