Free Republic

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is refusing to identify the "influential Muslim Americans" and "leading U.S.-based scholars and commentators on Islam" who met with Secretary Michael Chertoff in helping shape a softer approach to government lexicon about terrorists and their ideological motivations. "Our policy is we don't comment on the Secretary's private schedule," spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told the IPT. Nor would she identify any of the participants' organizational affiliation. DHS and the State Department's Counterterrorism Communications Center each issued reports urging government employees to avoid words like "jihad," "mujahedeen" or any reference to Islam or Muslims, especially in relation...

At last, something to unite American hard-liners and Iranian hard-liners! They both hate Oliver Stone. The American film director has suddenly turned up in Tehran, or may be about to. Read on: U.S. conservatives, of course, have long despised Stone for his politics, for his denunciation of the Iraq war, for his chumminess with Fidel Castro and for certain attributed quotes, like one calling President Bush "an ex-alcoholic who believes in Jesus--what could be more dangerous!" and another saying, "If I were George Bush, I would shoot myself." Now it turns out that Iranian hard-liners may revile Stone even more....