Who's Behind the Bombing?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is placing the blame for the Samarra mosque bombing at the feet of the U.S. and Israel. According to Reuters, the Iranian leader told a sympathetic crowd, "These heinous acts are committed by a group of Zionists and occupiers."

At a rally broadcast across the country, Ahmadinejad said U.S. forces, "invade the shrine and bomb there because they oppose God and justice." He then spoke directly to the United States, saying, "You have to know that such an act will not save you from the anger of Muslim nations,” words that were met with chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

Unrelated Evidence?

Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is balking at producing evidence to support his claim that former CIA operative Valerie Plame's job status was classified when administration official staffers mentioned her name to reporters in 2003.

The claim that Plame's job was classified was made in the indictment of former Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby. But Fitzgerald says that information doesn't relate to the perjury charges against Libby and therefore defense lawyers have no right to documents that would support it.

What's more, Fitzgerald won't say whether Plame's outing damaged national security and denies ever claiming any damage was done at all.

But as Byron York of National Review points out, Fitzgerald told reporters in presenting his charges against Libby, "Damage ... was done to all of us."

Demographic Switch?

Conservatives may soon be taking over the country... literally. That according to Foreign Policy magazine's Phillip Longman, who argues that a rise in birth rates in a small, culturally conservative segment of society could usher in a return of old-fashioned family values.

Longman writes that with more Americans choosing to have fewer children or none at all, those with conservative values are reproducing at a much higher rate than the rest of society and he says the "conservative baby boom" may have already begun.

Longman notes that fertility rates in states that voted for George Bush in 2004 are 12 percent higher than in those that voted for John Kerry.

Free Speech Faltering?

Free speech continues to take its lumps in Europe. First, British historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in an Austrian jail for denying that the Holocaust ever happened, a crime punishable by ten years in jail in the country that produced Adolf Hitler.

Irving's sentence is now under appeal by Austrian prosecutors, who say the judge was too lenient.

Illegal Insult

And a German man has narrowly escaped three years in prison for insulting Islam. He was sentenced instead to 300 hours of community service after sending sheets of toilet paper bearing the word "Koran" to local mosques and media outlets in the aftermath of last summer's terror bombings in London.

— FOX News' Aaron Bruns contributed to this report