Last week, when Sarah said, “You can say no, and I’ll understand completely” before asking for me to take Jake to his concert tonight, I figured, what the hey, all I have to do Tuesday is teach religious school. I can get out a half hour early and take Jake to his concert, eat a late dinner, then go home. I’m not working.

Well, got the call today that I’m needed up in D.C. tomorrow, so I’m writing this while washing the clothes I want to wear to work, and wondering if I need to bring my laptop (which is more accurately known as a portable desktop, as it has a 17-inch screen and is quite heavy), and trying to remember if I have directions to the place I’m going, or only directions written down from the hotel where I dropped off N.Z. Bear last week after having lunch with him and Citizen Smash. (And boy, that was a fun lunch. Those two are so much alike they should be related. They double-teamed me, and they’re both wiseasses.)

Ah, well. With the dulcet tones of fifth-grade choirs in my head, I’m rushing around trying to tie up all the loose ends and get some sleep tonight. At least I got gas tonight, so I won’t have to do it in the morning. Damn. I forgot to look for my EZ Pass. It’s in the car somewhere, because it activated the toll two days ago.

Posting will be light tomorrow, and with any luck, I’ll see Smash for dinner while waiting out the D.C. rush hour. But yay: Money coming in again.

Nothing has really changed since I last wrote about the effect the Mecca agreement will have on peace (that would be none) with Israel. No, wait, one thing has changed: The whines are getting louder.

Mahmoud Abbas says: Give us money, because we’ve brought a genocidal terrorist organization into the government, but you won’t be dealing with them, you’ll be dealing with me.

Jordan’s King Abdullah says: Give them money, because if Israel doesn’t move forward on peace, the Arabs will, you know, start killing Jews or something (like they’re not shooting missiles at the IDF or dropping rockets on Sderot and blowing up people and shooting and stoning and stabbing any Israeli they can already).

Sure. If Israel gives a group of genocidal terrorists the money they’ve been demanding, things will change. There will be more of the above.

And oh, yeah: That “blowing up people” link goes to a current high alert for a terrorist who may have infiltrated into Tel Aviv. Yes, indeed, give them more money, so they can kill more Jews.

Go take a flying leap, Abdullah.

In the worst example of Reuters bias I have ever seen, Mohammed Assadi makes it through an entire article about the Temple Mount dig without once mentioning the Temple Mount, save for a brief mention of a vague “religious compound.” If you read this story, you are left with the notion that there are nothing but Islamic holy sites under contention.

The Palestinian parliament urged Arab states on Tuesday to cut ties with Israel in protest at excavation work near Islam’s third holiest site which has triggered Muslim protests.

The Palestinian Legislative Council, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, also called on the United Nations Security Council to pressure Israel to safeguard Islamic and Christian sites in Jerusalem.

The council said Arab states should “sever diplomatic and economic ties (with Israel) and not establish new ones” in response to the excavation near al-Aqsa mosque.

Few Arab countries have formal ties with Israel. Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with the Jewish state and have diplomatic relations, while some Gulf Arab states have lower level contacts.

Israel says the work near al-Aqsa aims to salvage artifacts before construction of a pedestrian bridge leading up to a religious compound sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

But the work has angered Arabs and Muslims who fear it could damage foundations of the 1,300-year-old mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

“A religious compound sacred to both Muslims and Jews:” You could not get any more vague than that when referring to the site of the First and Second Temples, the holiest site in Judaism, the site where we anticipate the Messiah will build the Third Temple.

Notice the repeated mentions of Islamic holy sites, and their level of meaning, and almost no mention whatsoever of the importance of the Temple Mount to Jews. It is yet another way of minimizing the Jewish ties to the site, and delegitimizing the Jewish state in the world’s eyes. And Reuters is as the forefront of this bias.

Time for another letter.

What’s missing from this headline?

Thai Military Says 3 Held Over Violence

That would be the description of the “violence.”

It was 29 bombings in 45 minutes that murdered 8 and wounded more than 70 people in Southern Thailand, where the Islamist jihad has killed thousands in the last three years.

Three men who said they boosted their courage with narcotics and cough syrup were arrested and confessed to involvement in deadly bombings and other attacks in southern Thailand blamed on Muslim insurgents, an army officer said Tuesday.

The three were arrested Sunday shortly after the attacks that killed eight people and wounded nearly 70 in a 24-hour period beginning Sunday night, said Lt. Gen. Viroj Buajaroon, the regional commander for the south.

Sunday’s attacks took place simultaneously in all four southern provinces Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and Songkhla where the militants operate. About 2,000 people have been killed in the area in the separatist insurgency that flared up in January 2004.

Despite the arrests and increased security, suspected insurgents carried out more attacks Tuesday, including at least two bombings. No casualties were reported.

Viroj said it is still unclear which group carried out Sunday’s attacks which included 29 bombings within 45 minutes but the three arrested suspects had linked the violence to an Islamic militant group and given information about others involved.

Uh-huh. Let’s not be coy. It was the Religion of Peace that did it. And the media tries to downplay the Islamist war at every turn.