Former Catholic School Student Volunteers for Taliban

THE NEW YORK POST, Nov. 4 — Although his mother had been rescued from the World Trade Center Sept. 11, Mohammad Junaid left New York for Pakistan to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan, the daily reported.

“I'm willing to kill the Americans. I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan. And I'll kill every American soldier that I see in Pakistan,” Junaid told a British television correspondent.

The 26-year-old son of Pakistani immigrants said his anti-American anger began when he was the only Muslim child at the Catholic school he attended in New York. He said he always felt left out at the school and said his grandfather instilled in him the belief that “your loyalty is with Islam.”

Court Upholds Cross Burning as Free Speech

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 2 — The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on cross burning is unconstitutional, the news service reported.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court threw out convictions against three people in two cross-burning cases, the wire service reported.

“Under our system of government, people have the right to use symbols to communicate. They patriotically wave the flag or burn it in protest; they may reverently worship the cross or burn it as an expression of bigotry,” said the ruling written by Justice Donald W. Lemons.

Virginia Attorney General Randolph A. Beales, who plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, said, “Cross burning with the intent to intimidate is a form of domestic terrorism, which is intolerable in a free society.”

Bush and Putin Discussed Meaning of Cross

DRUDGE REPORT, Nov. 5 — President George W. Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the importance of a cross that Putin's mother had given him, the Internet news service reported.

In a meeting of the two men last summer, Putin described how a worker found the cross in the ruins of a house fire, even before Putin could ask him to look for it. “It was as if something meant for me to have the cross,” said Putin, who had the object blessed on a visit to the Holy Land and has taken to wearing it.

Putin “basically seemed he was saying there was a higher power,” Bush told Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. The president also told the Russian president, “I think you judge a person on something other than politics. I think it's important for me and you to look for the depth of a person's soul and character.”

Noonan relates the incident in her new book about the Reagan years, When Character Was King.

Lambs of Christ Priest Reports to Federal Prison

LIFESITE CANADA, Nov. 2 — Father Norman Weslin, founder of the pro-life group The Lambs of Christ, surrendered to McKean Federal Prison in Bradford, Penn., Nov. 5 to begin a five-month sentence.

The priest was sentenced for criminal contempt for violating an order to stay at least 60 feet away from an abortion clinic in Buffalo, N.Y.

The 71-year-old priest, a retired U.S. Army officer, had volunteered to serve as a chaplain to troops in Afghanistan, the pro-life Internet site noted.