Tennessee Rants

I'm Closing the Blog

2005-08-08T18:04:00.000-05:00

It's been fun. Too much fun. Distracts me from my family far too much. Not just the writing, but visiting other blogs, reading stories, leaving comments, haranguing lefties who tick me off...

It's kind of like an addiction, really.

Thank you, all you readers and fellow bloggers who have visited, read, left comments, linked to me, and generally made this so enjoyable and satisfying.

So, I wonder how long withdrawal will last?

The New York Times: Reprehensible?

2005-08-08T07:37:00.000-05:00

No, they just stink.

After being caught last week trying to gain access to the sealed adoption records of Judge John Roberts' children, they are both attempting to brazen it out and continuing to dig.

Texas Democratic Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is the one who actually called the NYT's actions "reprehensible". It may be the only time I've come close to agreeing with her.

Look: for all I or anybody else knows, Roberts might turn out to be the biggest closet liberal since David Souter. In fact, that's a big concern on my part. But adoption records, in this country, are considered to be sacrosanct. Even should there be some irregularity in the adoptions (which I doubt), the NYT can achieve no good and cause only misery by pursuing this matter. They can, in fact, hurt Roberts' family and especially his children badly.

And this just after NYT executive editor Bill Keller sent out a memo basically saying that the Grey Lady needed to clean up her act.

I believe, from the initial report last week, that senior editor Bill Borders is the guy behind this piece of investigative reporting. The from this week's report, the actual reporter poking around is a fellow named Glenn Justice. Do these two guys need to have a little conference with Bill Keller? Or was Keller just joking around?

Incidentally, Drudge has done a good job keeping up with all this. He runs the news site I'm picking most of this up from.

If the NYT really wants to turn a new leaf, then a good place to start would be to cease and desist messing with people's kids.

And maybe throw in a sincere apology for even thinking about it.

Dumb shoots Dumberer

2005-08-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know. It's a tragedy. But both the shooter and the shootee are still idiots.

Two buddies selling firearms at a flea market in Kentucky got into an argument over the Iraq War. Somehow, it turned into an old fashioned shootout. The details aren't clear yet, but it sounds like the peacenik-gun-nut drew on the war-hawk-gun-nut and got a big dose of rest-in-peacenik for it.

Guys: that might have been cool in Wyatt Earp's day; but this isn't Wyatt Earp's day.

I was commenting only a couple days ago at Tom Carter's Blog that the biggest threat to the Second Amendment might be handgun owners with legal permits acting like nitwits. Am I going to have to come over to Tom's viewpoint that handguns simply have to be banned completely outside the military and police forces? The incident above supports his argument perfectly.

Coulter commits plagiarism?

2005-08-04T13:43:00.000-05:00

Naaaaah.

The story... No... the accusations... are summarized here. But it isn't plagiarism.

Basically, a liberal internet journal called The Raw Story says that in Ann Coulter's recent column delivering a well deserved slap at the National Endowment for the Arts, she lifted all sorts of passages from other conservative publications which have catalogued various NEA abuses over the years.

Simple to do. She could have googled the NEA, read through the most likely articles to come up, and done some cut and paste.

And that's probably what she did do. But there are a few problems.

1. The wording is not the same. The wording is similar, but not the same. She might have done cut and paste, but having reworded the material, it only amounts to failing to attribute sources.

2. She is accused of stealing various individual phrases and sentences, not paragraphs or extended passages.

3. She did not steal anybody's entire article.

4. She did not steal any unique or catchy turns of phrase. Rather, she only took samples of information from the other stories. Coulter is known best for her ability to fire off remarkably nasty barbs wrapped in splendid wit. None of that is what she is accused of having taken.

5. She is an opinion writer, not a reporter. She never claimed to be making new revelations, only summarizing information which had been made available to the public already. (I remember reading her original column and already being familiar with about half the stuff she mentioned myself.) An opinion columnist working with documented facts is not generally required to practice attribution like an academic writer. It is, indeed, rare to see a footnote among op/ed pieces.

Summary: cutting and pasting small items of old news, rewording them, and stringing them together using Coulter's uniquely acerbic style is not plagiarism.

Ann Coulter is getting smeared. If I know her, she probably feels complemented.

Yeah, right

2005-08-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

The New York Times is looking for dirt on Supreme Court Nominee Judge John Roberts.

According to Drudge, they are looking into the adoption records for Roberts' children.

According to one of Drudge's sources (I know, I know. It might be one of the janitorial staff) at the Times, such inquiries are part of a "standard background check".

I'll bet they wish they were so thorough doing "standard background checks" with characters like Jayson Blair.

Albert Eisele gets it wrong in so Many Ways

2005-08-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

In case you don't know, Albert Eisele is the editor of the The Hill, the newspaper which recently quoted Helen Thomas claiming (in a fit of hyperbole) that she would kill herself if Dick Cheney ever ran for president.

Today, Eisele published an explanation which, like the original piece, was run on Drudge.

Though I found the piece informative; it was irritating in two different respects.

First:

"Little did I know, being a creature of the typewriter/telegraph era of journalism, that cybergossip Matt Drudge would pounce on the item and transmit it to the farthest regions of the Internet universe, along with an unflattering photograph of Ms. Thomas."

Come on, Eisele! Drudge has only been doing his thing for nearly a decade now. If I had a dollar for every supposedly professional journalist who wrote "I never expected Drudge to pick it up", I'd be able to pay for high speed internet access without messing with the family budget. If it never occurred to Eisele that somebody outside the beltway might pick up some story he posted on the internet, then he needs to retire. Yesterday.

Further, one might think a publisher would like having something he wrote transmitted "to the farthest regions of the Internet universe."

Second:

"That was all Drudge acolytes needed to unleash a flood of e-mails condemning her Â and me, as her unwitting accomplice."

No. No. No.

Nobody in the United States mistook Eisele for Helen Thomas' accomplice. Everybody reading the story knew quite well that Eisele's quote from Thomas was about as flattering as a pic of John Kerry in a bunny suit.

And nobody condemned Helen Thomas. People laughed at her, mocked her, giggled at her, made cracks about her. But nobody condemned her for her comments. Don't get me wrong. Helen Thomas has been frequently condemned. But it has been for all her biased reporting and antagonistic deportment towards Republican administration officials in the White House press room. The people who giggled at Thomas were certainly not the same folks who sent hate mail to Eisele for publishing the quote

The people who sent any hate mail to Eisele were the ones who liked Helen Thomas. They sent the mail because they felt Eisele had betrayed Thomas, not been her accomplice.

Furthermore, the Drudge acolytes, as Eisele calls them, were not the ones who sent the nasty-grams to Eisele. The Drudge acolytes (myself included) were the ones who loved the quote, and republished it, and satirized it. The reason is, most Drudge readers tend to lean conservative and know very well that Helen Thomas hasn't given a Republican President an even break in decades.

It's the libs who attacked Eisele, because he embarrassed one of their icons. And most of the people who did condemn Eisele almost certainly picked up the Thomas story fourth hand, from Eisele to Drudge to some smart aleck blogger like me and then to angry lib.

When Helen Thomas made her embarrassing quote the other day, she wasn't the only fool involved in that interview.

It's the "Morally Straight" Part that Drives 'em Nuts.

2005-08-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

That's actually part of the Boyscout Oath, you see.

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
to help other people at all times;
to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Oh, yeah. They (Scout bashers) probably hate that "duty to God and my country" part as well.

Bill Murchison just wrote a piece at Townhall covering President Bush's recent speech at the Boyscout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia. Murchison points out that the President's speach, in the long run, will likely call down more liberal thunder both on Bush and the Boy Scouts than will his recess appointment of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

For the record, the expression "morally straight" was part of the Boyscout Oath long before the words "gay" and "straight" had anything to do with a person's sexual preferences. And most intelligent Scout bashers (if there are such persons) understand that. However, the Boyscouts do specifically exclude atheists and homosexuals both from the ranks and from among the adult leaders. It's not like the Scouts have agents monitoring the entrances to gay bars to see if any of their people go there, but they make it clear that homosexuals and atheists aren't welcome, and that they don't think much of discretely avoiding the topic, either.

But "morally straight" irritates Scout bashers as much for what it really means as for what it accidentally says. What it really does mean is a commitment to an above-board sense of obedience to God-given moral absolutes: something which is anathema to moral relativists, secularists, hedonists, and liberals.

What's worse, a universal set of implications are specifically outlined in the Scout Law (Reference din the Scout Oath above).

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Horrors!

What's worse: Scout leaders do often remind the boys that the part of the law about being clean includes language, humor, and sexual behavior as well as hygiene.

And to add insult to injury, to those litanies of imperatives (the Scout Oath and Scout Law) recited by every single Boyscout at every single Scout Meeting across the country, they even add that classic in right-wing thought control: the Pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

It's enough to make a good, atheistic, America-hating, Streisand-loving, vegetable-oil-powered-bus-touring liberal throw-up.

Chutzpah

2005-08-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

My Yiddish isn't too good. But I think the guy who hurled this accusation at the president last week showed plenty of the quality named above.

Take that, Hippies!

2005-08-01T08:05:00.000-05:00

Bolton to be appointed today.

Bravo, Brits!

2005-08-01T07:48:00.000-05:00

It looks as if they have broken the back, maybe, of the terror cell which staged the attacks on 7/7 and 7/27. This is a big vindication for British police and security-- especially after the bungled, and fatal, misidentification of a Brazilian worker for a Moslem terrorist the day after the second bombing. It shows that despite the appearance of brutal heavy-handedness with their increase in security measures, the police in Britain knew, in general, what they were doing.

Does it justify shooting that poor Brazilian fellow? No, of course not.

Does it show that the British responded with something other than "death squads", as some folks have called them? Yes.

I hope the Italians cooperate on extradition. I also hope that if there is a link to an organization or to a government that somehow facilitated those attacks; that they, too, can be identified and dealt with in a decisive fashion.

Like the Taliban.

Or like the Iraqi Baath Party.

And I hope the Brits, with their "death squads", can stop these other guys, as well.

Why do they keep letting her in the White House?

2005-07-28T15:05:00.000-05:00

Helen Thomas says she'll "kill herself" if Dick Cheney runs for president.

It wasn't a serious threat. She was ranting.

I will not say "Run Dick! Run!" Wouldn't be nice. Wouldn't be Christian. Wouldn't be...

See Dick. See Dick run. See Helen. See Helen croak herself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Monday, 8/1/05, 8:10 AM)

Oooooh. Now Helen's really mad.

I've been discovered!

2005-07-28T12:57:00.000-05:00

I'm so happy (Sob!).

Michael Silence at the Knoxville News Sentinel, doing his "No Silence Here" feature on the newspaper's website, has been checking my site and has highlighted me two times in the last week: here and here. Thank you, Michael.

Which reminds me, I need to add a Knoxnews link to my sidebar to catch local news and writers more easily.

Am I the only one troubled by this?

2005-07-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

Federal District Judge John Coughenour in Los Angeles yesterday sentenced a would-be bomber to a twenty-two year sentence. The man could be free in fourteen years. After this, the Judge Coughenour proceeded to use the courtroom venue not as a place to consider the law, but to weigh in on security, military, and partisan political issues.

While sentencing the convicted bomber, Coughenour read (in his prepared statement): "We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel... The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."

The bomber was an Algerian national named Ahmed Ressam. He was trained in Afghanistan. He was a terrorist making war against our country in a conflict nobody wanted to acknowledge existed prior to 9/11.

Several points, therefore:

1. By handing down a sentence that allowed this guy an opportunity to do anything besides immediately meet his seventy virgins, Judge Coughenour established that perhaps the case would have been handled better by a military tribunal.

2. By offering political commentary from the bench, Judge Coughenour punctures any illusion of judicial objectivity. Federal prosecutors should object strenuously to having him handle any cases touching upon terrorism or national security in the future.

3. The Ressam case is different from that of the Gitmo vacationers. First, he was apprehended before 9/11. Second, he was captured in the United States, not in a foreign war zone.

4. The prosecutors wanted thirty-five years. That might have been the most they could ask for, considering the guy didn't succeed in killing anyone, bit it was still too easy. Terrorist activities should be a capital offense.

5. Prosecutors say that they tried to make a deal with Ressam so they could get information to extradite two other captured terrorists. Ressam quit cooperating and now prosecutors say they will have to drop extradition. Why didn't the judge hit Ressam with the maximum 35 years for that alone?

6. The message Judge Coughenour sends to the world is not: "...Our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart." Rather, the message he sends is: "Our courts oppose prudent national security measures and also are easy on convicted terrorists. Come make war on our nation!"

I guess she wants us to forget Hanoi...

2005-07-26T08:20:00.000-05:00

...By siding with our enemies in Iraq.

Jane Fonda is planning an anti-war tour. Better yet, she wants to do it in a bus fueled by vegetable oil.

If it wasn't on the AP wire, I'd swear that ScrappleFace was making this up.

Will John Kerry sit near her at rallies like in the old days?

Will Dennis Kucinich give her tips on how to do over-aged hippie buses?

Better yet, will he ride with her so he can have nostalgic flashbacks of the 2004 campaign?

Wait! They are both single again, aren't they? Maybe this is Fonda's way of saying: "Hey Dennis, I really dig skinny little guys who have forgotten what decade they live in."

We can't call her "Baghdad Jane" because she hasn't actually gone overseas and done publicity shots manning weapons intended to kill U.S. servicemen. Then again, nobody has given her an opportunity to pose with an RPG-7 labeled "Hit that Hummer!" yet.

But since she wants to use the vegetable oil bus, it's not too soon to call her "Crisco Jane".

Okay, NOW I'm worried about Roberts

2005-07-25T12:23:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton has endorsed him. Maybe Ann Coulter was right.

If that is so, then abortion, porn, flag burning, pledge mangling, gay marrying, prayer prohibiting, decalogue deconstruction, and all the rest will either stay legal or continue on their merry way to judicial recognition.

Right now, it's all a time-will-tell situation.

Ten years from now, I'll either remember the Roberts nomination as one of the high points of the W. Presidency, or as the biggest mistake he ever made.

Yes, I know it's a tragedy.

2005-07-24T20:52:00.000-05:00

But this quote from a story covering the aftermath of the killing of a Brazilian worker mistaken for a terror suspect is still priceless:

"On Sunday, ministers and senior police officers defended a policy of shooting dead individuals suspected of being suicide bombers..."

From now on, maybe they should shoot only live individuals.

Kerry wants documents on Judge Roberts

2005-07-24T19:31:00.000-05:00

And ScrappleFace covers it so well.

And as always: yes, it is satire.

Bobbies Packing Heat, Part II

2005-07-23T18:02:00.000-05:00

The dead guy was a Brazilian!

I had discussed the matter earlier, wondering whether the dead man was a bomber, a decoy, or an idiot. All due respect for the dead, I still think he was one of those three. Probably the last.

Why was he wearing a heavy coat in July?

Did the police identify themselves? If so, then why didn't the suspect stop when ordered?

What was he doing in a suspected terrorist hideout?

Unless we have Moslem extremists immigrating to Britain from Brazil (doubtful) we have a tragedy. At the same time, I am not ready to condemn the British police without knowing all the facts. Why? Because in a state of emergency, when these guys are putting their lives on the line for us, we do owe them the benefit of the doubt.

And maybe even a couple of doubts.

Why is this guy walking the streets?

2005-07-23T14:51:00.000-05:00

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the outspoken Moslem cleric who has simultaneously (1) supported the bombings in Britain but (2) condemned the killing of women and children and (3) blamed the attacks on every British subject who ever voted Labour while (4) calling for additional attacks around the world and (for good measure) (5) praises the 9/11 attacks in the United States-- has now announced his desire to see a Moslem flag waving over every capital in the world.

The man's lunacy speaks for itself, and I won't bother addressing it. But I do have some questions for authorities in Britain.

Why is he walking the streets?

What does he have to say to violate sedition laws?

Why wasn't he deported back to Syria long ago?

Does anybody watch him?

Or the people around him?

Or whatever mosque he hangs his shingle at?

And how many of the known bombers worshipped at the Mosque where he preaches?

And how many bombers have to have hung out there before that Mosque can be considered a terrorist headquarters?

And shouldn't the people who consent to listen to him when he preaches be considered likely terrorist material?

And might there not be probable cause to keep folks who listen to him under surveillance?

With phone wiretaps and house searches?

Or (to make it all easier) fly them all back to whatever God-forsaken/Allah-beloved country they came from?

Or (better yet) to club Gitmo?

To sum it up: when will the people of England (and America as well) realize they are in a war far bigger than the one in Iraq, which has been going on long before the Iraq War started, and in which the battlefield and the enemy are in England and the United States as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bobbies Packing Heat

2005-07-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

There was a shooting incident this morning on the London Underground. Police attempted to detain an Arab-looking person wearing an oddly heavy coat. The man ran; the police chased him down and; hesitating not a moment, used deadly force on him.

Obviously, they shot him to prevent his detonation of any bomb which he might have carried, concealed under his coat.

Of course, the Moslem community in Britain is howling.

Let them howl. Whether the dead man was carrying explosives under his coat or not, I think it was a good call by the police given the man's dress and his response to police attempts to detain him peacefully.

The police are doubly justified given the bombings yesterday and three weeks ago.

But, gosh: those mean police officers obviously had that poor guy racially profiled.

Sorry folks, but my patience has run out for Moslems who refuse to condemn terrorism but angrily oppose anything resembling prejudice against their religion. In my mind, a South Asian or Middle Eastern man who wears a heavy coat in July during a terror alert and then runs from police is probably a pretty good candidate for the Darwin Awards.

London Bombed Again

2005-07-21T11:57:00.000-05:00

Four bombs; coordinated, but smaller blasts; no deaths. Story here.

Looks like copy cats. Which means a whole, separate investigation.

Communities United Against Terror

2005-07-21T10:59:00.000-05:00

I came across a blog link to these guys while surfing on Blog Explosion. At first glance (and only a glance) the concept didn't seem too terribly impressive, and I left behind a comment saying so. This prompted one of those heated responses which challenged me to take a second look. They may have something.

Communities United Against Terror, according to Brit blogger John Holroyd, "Is an unapologetic stance against terror. We are not going to sit around and listen to those who tell us that somehow this is our own fault, that suicide murderers are really people we can negotiate with, it is about telling politicians that we don't want appeasement because we don't believe appeasement is possible... And that we won't accept our politicians removing our freedoms in the name of security."

From looking more closely at the site, and from the comments made by John H., it appears that CUAT is attempting to drum up an international grass roots response to terrorism; an effort to put some pressure on those democracies which are nominally opposed to terrorism but otherwise inactive; perhaps an effort to make the "Coalition of the Willing" a little more willing.

You might say they want to be like the International Red Cross or Amnesty International, only they won't be trying to help the enemy.

They have a petition on their front page with an attached list of signatories chiefly from the U.S. and the U.K., although I've seen Italians, Brazilians and others included as well.

It may be a worthwhile effort. I will subscribe to the weekly bulletins to this group and give my impression of them from time to time. I will also add a link to their organization on the sidebar.

And to John Holroyd at Towards a Free World: I apologize for my hasty judgment and thank you for challenging me to take a second look.

People of Germany:

2005-07-21T10:26:00.000-05:00

Hide your children.

Here is one man you don't want saying: "Ich bin ein Berliner."

HT: Drudge.

Cutting-Edge Artwork

2005-07-20T20:39:00.000-05:00

The California state attorney general has some interesting taste in the art he hangs in his offices. Here is a piece in the cafeteria.

No worries about political partisanship at the attorney general's office, are there?

Ann Coulter opposes Roberts

2005-07-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

Drudge has the news flash here.

As I write this, Coulter's website seems to be down, or crashed, or something.

And the Drudge flash will not presently link to the actual release, either.

According to Drudge, Coulter's argument seems to be that Roberts might be a Trojan Horse, or a Trojan Nominee, or a Trojan Conservative.

Per Drudge, Coulter says (at various points): "Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever... It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations... Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases... Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That's just unnatural."

That is: She thinks Roberts is a lib in conservative clothing.

Or a blue in red clothing?

Whatever the case is, it's darn weird that criticism of the president's choice should come from the right instead of the left, and that Coulter's site should be down right now, of all times.

Is Coulter serious? Or is she purposely trying to diffuse what promises to be a perfect liberal storm of opposition to this nomination?

Imaginary message from chubby evil genius Karl Rove to beautiful sinister accomplice Ann Coulter:

"Ann, pretend you hate John Roberts. If you hate him, the liberals will think he must be another Souter. If anyone asks, I never told you this. And by the way, thanks for making those calls about Plame for me."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ONE MORE THOUGHT (Wednesday, 7/20/05, 2:15 PM): I entertained the notion of Coulter's opposition-as- hoax because it occurred to me as a humorous, though highly unlikely, explanation for her comments. The more I think of it, however, the more unlikely it becomes. Probability would approach zero. Why? Because for her to perform a hoax of that nature would permanently end her career as a major opinion maker. Nobody-- conservative or liberal-- would ever take her opinion seriously again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALSO (2:40 PM): Here is the text of Coulter's column. Found it on Worldnet Daily.

It will be a tough fight

2005-07-20T08:24:00.000-05:00

I've got more on Judge John Roberts on my religion blog here. I put it over there because, I am quite certain, his Catholicism will become an issue.

People: the Senate fight over this nomination will make "The War of the Worlds" look like "The Care Bears Tea Party".

My favorite kind of enemy...

2005-07-20T07:20:00.000-05:00

...would be someone like the radical Moslem leaders in Britain, Omar Bakri Mohammed and Anjem Choudary, who weighed in with their opinions of the recent terrorist attacks on London by laying blame squarely at the feet of every British subject who voted Labour and kept Tony Blair in office.

I don't know about Brits, but in America, remarks like that would cause popular support for someone like Blair to be redoubled.

Assuming Mohammed and Choudary aren't themselves terrorists or material accessories to the terror attacks, they are exactly the sort of fellows who should be free to shoot off their mouths all they want.

Hot dog!

2005-07-19T19:46:00.000-05:00

Folks, we're going to have a fight, and I can't wait.

According to the Drudge Flash:

President Bush went to Denmark on July 5 with 11 names of top candidates under consideration. In the last few days, he interviewed five -- one on Thursday, two on Friday -- including Judge Roberts, who got a presidential tour of the residence, including the Lincoln Bedroom, during his one-hour visit -- and two on Saturday. Bush made his decision last night, finalizing it this morning. During lunch with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Bush stepped out the room and called Roberts. When he returned, he said to the group, which included the leaders' wives: "I just offered the job to a great, smart 50-year-old old lawyer who has agreed to serve on the bench." And despite the intense scrutiny at the White House, Judge Roberts and his wife came to the presidential residence for dinner tonight. At 7:30 tonight, Bush began notifying congressional leaders.

That would be John Roberts, fifty-years-old, staunch conservative, pro-life. He is on record saying: "We continue to believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

I wonder if John McCain will keep his pledge to support the president on this one? I'm quite certain the Dems have already decided these are the exact sort of circumstances justifying them breaking their pact and starting another filibuster.

It makes me glad I didn't get into speculating on the other two other rumored candidates today.

I suspect all the different names were not trial balloons, but very conscious and well orchestrated misdirection directed at the media so they wouldn't unleash a premature feeding frenzy on Judge Roberts.

And that means that the "d'Affair Plame" has not thrown Karl Rove off his stride.

Speaking of which, the nomination will likely end the Rove/Plame hysteria, at least for now. The libs will have bigger fish to fry. Or will they get fried?

Something else: the President has kept his promise to the pro-life community. He has also gone a long way toward mending fences with the conservative community with this move. I'm grateful. Triumphant, even.

This may be a turning point in the culture wars.

The battle begins.

More on Terrorism

2005-07-19T18:56:00.000-05:00

An interesting summary of an academic analysis of modern terrorism is found here. I found two very good points:

"...the willingness to sacrifice one's life in such a mission is not, in itself, irrational. In fact, suicide attackers are rarely subject to pathological or suicidal motivation."

That's good. It means we can exterminate these guys without any qualms about them being poor victims of mental illness.

"...in practice, the religious legitimacy of suicide now seems to be widely accepted, even if it remains controversial."

Translation: yes, there is something screwed up about Islam.

There were also a couple points I found highly suspect:

"Islam-inspired missions account for only 34.6% of attacks carried out between 1981 and September 2003."

I wonder whether they classify Chechen and Palestinian terrorism as "Islam-inspired" or politically motivated?

"More relevant, he argues, are feelings of inferiority and resentment."

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it sounds like the author is saying that the little darlings just have a self-esteem problem.

I do want to understand more about terrorists, especially if it helps in the task of annihilating them.

Speaking of Terrorists

2005-07-18T15:38:00.000-05:00

This guy is a terrorist, too. I don't care why he does it.

The Ends of Terror

2005-07-18T11:32:00.000-05:00

Some Shiite clerics in Iraq are threatening a generalized attack upon the Sunni's,who dominated the government under Saddam Hussein and who makeup the majority of the terrorists plaguing that country now.

If the Shiite fire eaters get their way, it would represent a victory for the terrorists.

Terrorists get to murder people-- which really turns them on-- but is not their objective.

Terrorists drain the resolve of those forces of law and order whom they oppose, which helps their cause, but still is not their objective.

The true objective of a terrorist is to cause a massive overreaction by state authorities which, they hope, will prompt civil war, anarchy, and a complete reorganization of the society they are terrorizing. In short: they hope to cause a revolution.

Abolitionist John Brown attempted to start a civil war in the 1850s by going on a murder rampage in Lawrence, Kansas. After failing there, he went after a more sensitive target: the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in Northern Virginia. Though he was captured and hung, the paranoia he provoked accelerated the rate of political disintegration in the Union and ultimately prompted a bloody, chaotic civil war and an achievement of his objectives: the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries plugged away at their little shootings and bombings until they finally hit a major nerve in Sarajevo in 1914. The resulting world war, prompted by the murder of Archduke Frederick Ferdinand, plunged Europe into chaos, caused the collapse of the German, Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, and created the power vacuum which resulted in the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, the projected misery of the Balkan Wars, the near victory of communists in Germany and, ultimately, the real victory of the Nazis in that same Germany.

The terrorists in Palestine are hoping, ultimately, that their continued murders will cause an Israeli Army offensive which will prompt an intervention by the other Arab states, the annihilation of Israel, and the reestablishment of the old, full sized Palestine upon the ashes and corpses of their enemies.

What do the terrorists want in Iraq? America pulling-out would be nice, but they wouldn't stop there. What they really hope for is civil war. That way, the former Baathists and their allies among a small portion of the Sunnis hope to get Syria's help to reinstall the Baath Party and, in their dreams, settle all scores and get back to business as usual.

The Shiite clerics wouldn't mind the civil war part. Only in their scenario, they get Iran's help to wipe out the Sunnis and establish an Islamic republic along the lines of Iran or the old, Taliban -dominated Afghanistan.

Either way, it depends on the U.S. pulling out or over-reacting, and the current, democratic government overreacting and being overthrown.

How could the U.S. overreact? By accelerating the war so far as to cause a backlash in the United States followed by the Democrats winning back congress and the presidency and the U.S. then pulling out of Iraq entirely.

I hear people like Michael Savage often call for the annihilation of a city or two in Iraq or elsewhere. While the idea of the Kabba in Mecca transformed into smoking ruins does give me a certain satisfaction (especially after some major terrorist attack), it would be a big mistake. If we did such a thing, some loser farther to the left than Dennis Kucinich would be our next president, and the entire Arab would soon be dominated by folks who make the Taliban look like Cub Scouts.

What do we do? Root them out, destroy their supply and manpower sources, empower the forces of law and order, wait for them to make mistakes and capitalize on those mistakes.

If we get vicious, it should be in security measures. The Israelis did the right thing with their security wall. If we pinpoint terrorist recruit or supply depots in Syria or Iran, we should hit them. Hard. If we pinpoint such bases in Pakistan, we should give the government there exactly one chance to cooperate with us in destroying those targets. Not just air strikes; but men with bayonets doing search and destroy.

But we should not nuke anybody. Nor should we hit any target which does not provide direct support for the terrorists.

More than anything, we need to show endurance as a society.

Unfortunately, that endurance is sapped by the lefties and antiwar activists who resemble hyperactive four-year-olds who can't stop talking. They go on and on with: "George Bush is an idiot and there were no WMDs and Karl Rove leaked on Valerie Plame and Gitmo is the new Gulag and Iraq is a quagmire and we support the troops even though they are in the wrong war at the wrong time and will never win and they are always committing atrocities and..."

We are the strongest country in the world. Nothing can defeat us but defeatism.

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ONE OTHER THING (Monday, 12:47 PM): Abolition was a very good thing. But John Brown was still a psychotic killer whose appointment with the hangman was long overdue.

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UPDATE (Monday1:53 PM): Speaking of nuking Mecca (bad idea) some Republican Congressman just had the same bad idea. Basic principle: never threaten an act you aren't willing to carry out. Bluffing with nukes is never a smart move.

A good man passes to his reward

2005-07-17T18:25:00.000-05:00

James Stockdale was a good American.

Patriot. Naval Officer. POW. Hero.

Lousy V.P. candidate.

In some ways, television proved more cruel than the Communists who held Stockdale prisoner for so many years.

I can't believe I scored as high as I did

2005-07-16T21:53:00.000-05:00

I found this test at Lex Communis which supposedly told me whether or not I was a hippie. Of course, I flunked the test, which means I'm not a hippie. But how did I get that 22%? It must have been that tie-die shirt I made as a second grade class project in 1968. See my results and link to the test below.

I am 22% Hippie.

You must be some sort of a Republican. Why did you even bother taking this test, you lousy ditto-head? Probably insecure about your orthodoxy. Just go back to your stinkin' George W. Bush fan club and tell them you wasted 10 minutes of your life. One consolation: at least you don’t smell bad.

Take the
Hippie Test
@ FualiDotCom

I expected this from China, but not so soon.

2005-07-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

A top Chinese general has warned that any effort by the U.S. to help Taiwan when China proceeds with its seizure of Taiwan will result in nuclear strikes by China against the U.S.

In short, the U.S. can't defend Taiwan unless it is willing to risk getting nuked.

It was supposed to be the general's personal opinion only. However, if it was only his opinion, he would be off either in retirement or getting himself "re-educated" right now. Also, the Chinese government would have denounced his words. This is clearly a threat by Peking for us to stand back as they take over the last bastion of free China.

I had expected this, and talked about it in earlier posts, but the Chinese seem to be moving faster than I thought they would. I didn't think they would go after Taiwan until a new president takes office here. Perhaps they believe they need to move before we are done with Iraq.

It may be that before the year is out we will all wake up to news reports of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Are we willing to risk everything for Taiwan? That can be avoided if we make it abundantly clear to the Chinese that they would, indeed, have to get through our fleet to get to Formosa.

And it might not hurt to formally withdraw our recognition of the PRC as the legitimate government of China and return that recognition to Taiwan, inasmuch as China is pursuing a policy of military aggression against it's neighbor states.

You know, this all started with President Carter formally recognizing the PRC in the first place. We are still paying for his presidency.

Limbaugh does a Flame on Plame

2005-07-15T08:26:00.000-05:00

Good article here on the D'affair Plame by David Limbaugh.

But really, I was just looking for a good excuse to say "Flame Plame".

Sometimes I wonder if the Patriot Act goes far enough

2005-07-15T04:45:00.000-05:00

Especially when I hear that some joker who goes by the handle "Arabic Terrorist" has made his living screening bags for the TSA for the last six months.

When I was a kid, my father always warned me never to make hijack or bomb jokes on an airplane or on airport property. I guess I would be fine cracking jokes in front of this fellow. My only fear is that I might inspire him to blow up the plane himself.

HT: Drudge.

Sometimes, the mask slips

2005-07-14T11:30:00.000-05:00

I wish I had a dime for every time I have heard some liberal say that "I support the troops but hate the war."

I know it is a lie, and every now and again evidence emerges about how great a lie it is.

This week in San Francisco, the city Board of Supervisors voted against receiving the retired battleship, USS Iowa, for permanent berthing in San Francisco Bay. Members of the board cited opposition to the war in Iraq and opposition to United States policy regarding homosexuals in the military.

Maybe the city supervisors never studied the history of the Iowa. Maybe they thought that Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa were all battles fought in Iraq. Maybe they got the impression that the pilots on all those kamikazes launched at the Iowa and other ships late in WWII were actually Moslem insurgents.

I'm surprised that nobody brought up the 1989 turret explosion on the Iowa, which killed 47 crewmen and was first blamed on a jilted homosexual sailor. Later, the incident was filed under "cause unknown" after numerous howls of protest by activists. My bet is that the Board of Supervisors knew too little of the Iowa's history even to remember that incident, so it never would have occurred to them that the ship might be a fitting device in San Francisco to raise consciousness regarding gays in the military.

Not that the use of the ship in that way wouldn't really tick me off, as well.

Bottom line: the liberal leaders in San Francisco are willing to insult the men who have served on that venerable old battleship for six decades just so they can launch an insult in President Bush's direction. They might hate the president and the war, but they also hate the military-- both past and present.

And they hate their country.

Bill Clinton says it perfectly

2005-07-14T06:18:00.000-05:00

I'll give the devil his due. While defending Hillary before a lefty student group for his wife's pretense at moderation on the abortion issue, the former president said:

"...if you're a Democrat and you have sort of normal impulses, you're a sellout..."

Why is it that a Dem with "sort of normal impulses" sounds like a rare bird indeed?

Karl Rove really IS an evil genius!

2005-07-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

So why doesn't that make me lose sleep at night?

The saga which has come to be known as the Valerie Plame Affair has all the makings of a great suspense story. Seriously. It includes international crisis, questions of war and peace, mysteries over atomic bomb materials, secret connections, secret leaks, spies, and new revelations every few months. To recap:

In the months leading up to the Iraq War, President Bush asserted during his annual State of the Union Address that British intelligence had told the U.S. that the Iraqis had been trying to buy weapons grade plutonium in Africa.

This bolstered his claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to build weapons of mass destruction which could be used to destabilize the Middle East more than it already was, to attack Israel, or even to arm terrorists on missions to the United States.

Former dipmlomat Joe Wilson loudly responded in the days following the State of the Union Address that he personally had investigated those claims at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and that no Iraqi agents had been trying to buy plutonium in Africa.

Journalists covering Wilson's claims, most notably Robert Novak, revealed in their investigations that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was actually a CIA employee and that it was she, and not the vice president, who had arranged his investigative trip. Furthermore, his trip was not so much an investigation into weapons trafficking as it was an opportunity to get a little vacation while networking and claiming to be on the scene of international events.

Because of the British intelligence connection, and a massive media over-reaction to those claims in Britain, civil servants started committing suicide and media execs began getting fired on the Sceptered Isle. As a result, the BBC received a black eye bigger than the one handed to CBS over the Dan Rather fiasco.

Wilson (still loud, still complaining) charged that Robert Novak had blown his wife's cover as a CIA operative, endangering her life, compromising United States Security, and breaking the law.

Federal investigators moved in. Novak cooperated with them, and never suffered any recriminations for his reporting. However, Reporters Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine refused on principle to reveal their sources, and were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Amid all this maneuvering, a successful war was prosecuted in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. However, no weapons of mass destruction were found, bolstering Democratic claims that the war was based on a lie. Meanwhile, an ongoing insurgency waged by ruthless terrorists was unleashed against American forces and Iraqi citizens attempting to facilitate the creation of a stable democracy in that troubled land. Despite this setback, the president was reelected, due in large part to the outstanding political strategizing of his trusted campaign manager, Karl Rove.

After a series of investigative and judicial maneuvers reminiscent of the television series "Law and Order", Federal investigators finally secured the information that at least some of the information which led to the possibly illegal exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative came from none other than the president's trusted advisor, Karl Rove.

Which brings us to this week.

What do we have?

Apparently, Rove revealed the existence of a CIA agent in the context of relating the circumstances of Joe Wilson's trip to Africa. However, he did not reveal the agent's name. If he revealed the existence of that agent with the purpose or expectation that his partial revelation would lead to a full identification, then what he did might, in fact, be illegal. If he did it, however, for the purpose of preventing a lie from being told against the administration, then he did nothing wrong. Whether a criminal intent can be established in court is a wholly separate question. I'm not sure it can be proven.

Wilson was using the United States intelligence services not to bolster the national security of the nation he serves, but to embarrass a president whose agenda he opposed. No Prince Valiant there.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame (does she have something against using her husband's last name?) was not so much a CIA agent as a diplomat's wife in a privileged, sinecured position. Her exposure did not endanger her, but did underline the need for a serious reform in that agency where much of the intelligence information accrued is not merely worthless, but is often used for partisan political purposes. When Robert Novak published Valerie Plame's identity, he did the nation a service. Wilson was no Prince Valiant, and his wife was no distressed damsel.

Reporters Judith Miller of the Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine where placed in the ironic position of protecting a source whose information helped a president opposed by their publications. That's what I see as the bizarre beauty of this whole thing. Rove manipulated his media contacts so that the opposition press actually helped the administration which they despised.

This is where the evil genius in the movies gets to cackle while rubbing his hands and monologing: "You fools! You played right into my hands from the beginning! Now, all that you love and cherish belongs to me! And you are in jail and I am free! Congratulations: I couldn't have done it without you! Now I'm off to complete my plan to conquer the universe!"

As an American, I suppose I should be outraged at this. But I'm not. First: I support the war effort. I support it whether there was uranium to be bought in Africa or not. I support it because Saddam Hussein was part of a Middle Eastern order which perpetually supported international terrorism, opposition to the United States, and undermined the American economy. This is not to mention that Hussein was a murderous dictator and enemy of democracy.

Second: and on a more puerile note, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Judith Miller, and Matthew Cooper are all smart-alecks of the leftist intelligentsia who have spent their entire careers cynically proclaiming their love of America while finding some reason to hurt their country just about every chance they get. I simply love the idea that they have all been out-maneuvered by those whom they look down upon as so many numbskulls.

Here is what would make the whole thing perfect. The president orders Rove to resign. On the eve of a Federal indictment being handed down, Rove receives a blanket pardon for anything he might have done in connection with the Plame affair. He takes a year or two off, and resurfaces in mid 2007 as Jeb Bush's campaign manager for the 2008 presidential election.

Why don't I feel guilty or ashamed? In all his manipulative cynicism, Rove is not one bit worse than Wilson, Plame, and company. Indeed, I think Rove is somewhat better than our former evil-genius-in-chief, Bill Clinton, and his old sidekick, James "Watch-Me-Sneer" Carville. At the same time, there are two major differences between Rove and his opponents. First: Rove is successful at what he does. He gets the president reelected, promotes his policies, and keeps him out of trouble. Not only does President Bush have "plausible deniability", but I really do think he stayed out of the infighting. Second: Rove is working to build the republic up, not tear it down.

Now that Rove has been exposed, can it hurt the Republicans? Possibly: in two ways. First, it can be used to further undercut the war on terror. Second, it can hurt any conservative presidential candidate who campaigns to follow in the footsteps of George W. Bush in 2008.

Both these contingencies, in my mind, would not only hurt the Republicans, but would hurt America as well.

And yet, the drama is fascinating.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update (Saturday, 7/16/05, 5:30 pm)

I just figured out that Joe Wilson was never a U.S. Senator, and have made appropriate editing changes above. It would be better if I used a strike-out wherever I wrote "Senator", but I haven't figured that little trick out, yet. Bad blogger. Bad, bad blogger.

On the London Bombings

2005-07-11T09:42:00.000-05:00

I followed the news of the terror attacks while at a family reunion in northern Ohio. I have no idea what the long term response of the English people will be. My hope is that these event will stiffen their resolve to stand firm against Islamic terrorism. There is one thing I am sure of, however, and that is that the English are very, very fortunate to have Tony Blair still running their government.

He packs far more backbone and is far more resourceful than people give him credit for, and I don't think he'll be out of office nearly as soon as anyone expects. Blair's enemies, I believe, perform the same exercise of "misunderestimating" him as the lefty Dems often do with George W. Bush in the United States.

Taking a Break

2005-07-01T06:32:00.000-05:00

I'll resume blogging on Monday, July 11.

It's not going to happen, folks.

2005-06-29T11:13:00.000-05:00

The idea has been bouncing around this week of filing an eminent domain suit to seize the property of Justice David Souter so that a development called the "The Lost Liberty Hotel" featuring the "Just Desserts Café" can be built.

The use of an eminent domain suit as a form of vengeance or demonstration against an individual might be called poetic justice by some of us, but in the legal terms, it might better be understood as "judicial harassment" or "frivolous lawsuit". Since the eminent domain suit purposely targets a single individual, and since the land would not be sought in the first place if that individual did not own it, the seizure of the land would clearly be discriminatory.

I don't like the Kelo Decision, but I like the idea of conservatives acting like spoil-sports and transforming liberal judges into victims of persecution even less.

Scary Rumor of the Day

2005-06-28T08:23:00.000-05:00

According to the well informed Robert Novak, the Whitehouse is considering Alberto Gonzales to replace either Sandra Day O'Connor or William H. Rehnquist at the Supreme Court. Gonzales, though a good law-and-order man who will likely uphold the President's position regarding the Patriot Act and the arrangements at Gitmo, is most definitely in the pro-abortion camp.

Some things don't add up, however. Gonzales is liked neither by anti-war Dems (they tried to blame him for Abu Ghraib) nor conservative Republicans (who tolerated Gonzales as Attorney General since he didn't have a major impact on the pro-life movement there). Therefore, a Gonzales nomination might prove to be a long shot, indeed.

Also, if President Bush nominates Gonzales, it would be a direct betrayal of the pro-life movement and the Republican Party base.

If Bush did nominate Gonzales, I can only think it is because he has decided to sacrifice the Pro-life movement for the War on Terror.

I don't think that will happen.

Should we give Obama a break on this one?

2005-06-27T20:55:00.000-05:00

Naaaaaaaaah!

In what was supposed to be a friendly profile piece, the A.P. quoted Illinois Senator Barack Obama with regard to Abraham Lincoln.

Of the 16th president, Obama said: "I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator... As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African-American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race. Anyone who actually reads the Emancipation Proclamation knows it was more a military document than a clarion call for justice."

In short, Obama doesn't think that black people owe their freedom to Lincoln.

The most charitable thing I can say is that Senator Obama needs to quit learning his history from those lousy revisionist texts. The Illinois Democrat does demonstrate a partial knowledge of the facts, but is totally clueless regarding the meaning of those facts.

Obama does get two things right:

First: clearly Lincoln's first priority was saving the Union. Early on in the Civil War, he wrote: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

Second: the Emancipation Proclamation was, indeed, a document created out of military expediency. The document specifically addressed itself only to slavery in those areas which were still separated from the Union. In the District of Columbia and the border states of West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, slavery remained intact. Also, in any other area where nominal Union control had been restored, slavery also remained intact. Indeed, the only slaves who were actually freed by the Emancipation Proclamation were those in areas which were in a state of rebellion but in which the anarchy created by the war itself permitted them to walk away from their captivity.

So: Why should Lincoln be called the "Great Emancipator?"

1. The Emancipation Proclamation, limited as it was, changed the whole meaning of the war. Union troops who once saw themselves fighting only for the preservation of the Union, now saw themselves fighting for freedom. England, which previously had sided diplomatically with the Confederacy in what they saw as a political conflict, reversed course and sided with the north in the name of emancipation. In short, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation let the genie of freedom out of the bottle.

2. Lincoln himself changed. Despite his very pragmatic sentiments quoted above ("If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it...") Lincoln found himself becoming a champion of a new concept of freedom. This is illustrated most poignantly in his Gettysburg Address of 1863, in which he stated: "...this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln wasn't talking about merely re-starting the republic as it was in 1860. He was re-defining the whole American concept of liberty, so that it would now include not merely national sovereignty and political rights for all white males, but a new concept of civil rights which would disregard economic class or racial caste.

Lincoln certainly did not understand his role in 1860 when he was elected. He may not have understood his role in 1862 when he published the Emancipation Proclamation. But by 1863, he knew what he needed to do. If he was going to save the Union, it would have to be an improved union; a union permanently free of the curse of slavery.

In short, Lincoln might not have first envisioned or finally completed the emancipation of the slaves, but he was the necessary ingredient without which slavery in America would not have ended for a long time to come. He was also the genius who oratorically gave America a new model of freedom with which slavery was incompatible.

Once upon a time, when every schoolchild was required to study and memorize the Gettysburg Address, we didn't have to debate points like this.

One other thing. If it wasn't for Lincoln, Barack Obama, half Kenyan and half African American, wouldn't even be here, let alone a senator.

You know, I was thinking of visiting Ontario this summer.

2005-06-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

After reading this, I think I'll wait a year or three.

HT: Relapsed Catholic.

Second thoughts on the Chinese Investment Threat

2005-06-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

I noticed some news stories and analyses this morning which, taken separately, don't mean much. Taken together, however, they put more meat on the bones of the idea that Chinese investment in the United States represents a sort of threat. Yesterday comparing current Chinese investments with former Japanese financial ventures in the United States, I took the view that alarm over Chinese interest in the American oil industry was a little bit silly. Now I am having second thoughts.

First, I should note that although Japanese society tends to be far more focused and unified than the United States, the Japanese do not tend to closely coordinate government propaganda organs with various military, economic and cultural entities. That is, they are not a totalitarian state.

The People's Republic of China is a totalitarian state; and that makes a big difference.

Combine their stated desire to re-absorb Taiwan, their continued pressure for foreign governments to end recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty, their combination of persecuting Christians and pressuring world religious bodies to cede religious authority to the Chinese government, and their strategic desire to control naval "choke points" along with non-Chinese oil companies: and it adds up to a coordinated plan to (1) achieve greater control over the collective conscience of the Chinese people along with (2) a military seizure of Taiwan and (3) gain the energy independence that would allow them to commit the first two acts with impunity.

Taken from a religious view, I discuss the topic of Chinese hegemony on my other site here.

Hidden text: Kerry's military records are finally public

2005-06-27T07:07:00.000-05:00

I had noticed the headlines last week in a few, select web sources, that according to their respective transcripts at Yale, George Bush was a slightly higher performing student than John Kerry.

I glanced at the headline and smiled to myself. "That figures," I thought. And then I passed on to the next story.

Last night I read through Larry Elder's take on the school transcript story and found there was an important detail that hadn't made the headlines: that Kerry's transcript was not acquired through Yale University, but through John Kerry's military records.

Which is to say, the records that were released through John Kerry's having finally signed the SF-180 form last month are now starting to be made public.

And that means I get to take down my counter. Somewhat mournfully, of course, since the point of the counter was that I really didn't think that we ever would have access to those records. The final count, as of today, was 148 days. The records probably started appearing around day 140. It's all academic now, anyway. Thank you, Senator Kerry, for keeping your promise (Drat!). And by the way, none of the records released indicate any obvious irregularities in Kerry's military service (Double Drat! Although that may yet change as more records come out).

So: why haven't the Senator's people been shouting this news from the rooftops? For one thing, the low college scores, especially compared to the scores of the future president whom Kerry referred to as an "idiot," are somewhat embarrassing.

Also: according to standardized testing administered by the military (analogous to an IQ test, though not exactly the same) George W. Bush scored higher than Kerry.

Therefore: according to the records of the school both men attended, and according to the intelligence test both men took, George W. Bush is smarter than John Kerry.

That Southern accent fools the coastal yokels every time.

Didn't the Japanese go through this phase?

2005-06-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

All sorts of alarmist news stories and editorials are being written about Chinese attempting to seize financial control of major American corporations.

For the record, if a potential military enemy (like the Chinese) gained control of a major corporation (like Chevron) in an industry of strategic importance to the United States (such as the petroleum industry), that would be a bad thing.

And I don't expect the government will permit it.

However, I do fully expect that over the next couple years we will see shocking headlines of the Chinese buying this and buying that; buying a major league baseball team, a Hollywood studio, a big bank, a tall building or a theme park. Everyone is going to be outraged and scared and wonder if we are going to be forced to read the Little Red Book and start taking Chinese in school. Bill Moyers is going to put on a television special called "If the Chinese can do it, Why Can't We." We will all be wandering around in a state of national depression over the inevitable Chinese eclipse of American civilization while Democratic leaders talk about how it is all Bush's fault and college lefties can talk about the genius of Mao again and media types from NPR can hint that it is all simply America's just deserts for our great national hubris.

And what everyone is forgetting is that this is exactly what happened with the Japanese back in the late eighties and early nineties. The Japanese economy experienced a big temporary surge at the same moment that the United States economy experienced a minor, temporary slowdown. This caused trade deficit to surge and the value of the American Dollar to drop against the Japanese Yen. Japanese investors with surplus cash went hunting for cheap investment in the United States and started scooping up nice buys, including the Sears Tower in Chicago, at least one major bank, and one major Hollywood studio. Americans went through a big angst period while some Japanese started fantasizing about finally achieving cultural dominance over the folks that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A new Japanese Godzilla movie was made in which the big guy goes back in time to smack the Marines at the Battle of Tarawa. I'm not kidding. Another movie was made in Japan about a theoretical future war in which the Japanese (again) get to avenge themselves on the Americans. An American movie was even made (Michael Keaton starring in "Gung Ho") about Americans learning to adjust to the new Japanese economic dominance.

Then the Japanese economy, badly overheated because they had nobody like Alan Greenspan to pull back on the reigns, bottomed out.

And everyone forgot about it.

The same thing, I believe, will happen with the Chinese. They will go hog wild on American financial purchases, partly because they will be cheap, attractive investments; and partly because it will make Chinese investors feel good to buy up American stuff. Then the Chinese economy, always volatile because centralized planning and sound investment go together like Army Rangers and Al Qaida, will take a big dip and all the big Chinese purchases will turn into bargain buys for American investors.

President Bush merely needs to watch, and prevent the Chinese from buying up any major, strategic industry champions, until this episode is over.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Monday, 6/27/05, 11:30 AM)

I'm having second thoughts. See story here.

Finding a pony in the manure

2005-06-25T17:36:00.000-05:00

Rick Moore at Holy Coast has a remarkably positive take on the Supreme Court's recent decisions against property rights.

I like his idea, but I still want my Fifth Amendment back.

Dean: Crazy Like a Fox?

2005-06-25T15:01:00.000-05:00

Something I try to do on this blog is not to point out some news event and merely say "how great" or "how awful", but to ask "Why did he do that apparently stupid thing?" or "Why are all these reports arriving?"

Lately, I've been wondering why the Democrats were ever crazy enough to make Howard Dean their party chairman and why they continue to tolerate him despite his remarkable propensity to say fooling things at the wrong moment.

It is tempting to say: "Because they are a pack of liberal idiots!" and leave it at that.

I can buy the liberal part; and although I often think the Dems do often fall into silly ideological traps, I don't think they are idiots.

Here is what I think is happening with Dean:

He represents the party base. He unabashedly celebrates every liberal ideal cherished by every campus lefty, overgrown hippy, blue-blooded easterner, Hollywood diva, and America-hater who ever took up a ballot to vote.

Thank God those people don't represent the majority of Americans.

But they do represent the voting base of the Democratic Party. They also represent the values the Democrats will promote if they ever get the Whitehouse and both sides of Congress under their control again. The only problem is that the majority of American voters will not vote for anyone who displays the sort of values which Dean celebrates.

So, the Dems put up candidates like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and (thirteen years ago) Bill Clinton, who make a point of not ranting and raving like Dean, and who are perfectly willing to throw bones to moderates and conservatives (See Hillary expressing sympathy for the Pro-lifers), and who sound perfectly moderate and reasonable standing next to that guy who occasionally erupts with a nice "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAA!"

Someone like Dean keeps the Democratic party faithful from getting disgusted with the capitalist bourgeois values apparently represented by the mainline Democratic candidates, and keeps the party base from giving up on the Dems and becoming Greens or Socialists or Independents or legal-hemp-libertarians.

And someone like Hillary can attract what may or may not be the future majority of Americans who are scared by Dean and ambivalent about the Republicans, but comforted by someone like Bill Clinton's wife who seems so prudent and moderate next to the party chairman with the head that always seems like it is about to explode.

But what most people don't realize is that folks like Hillary agree wholeheartedly with folks like Dean on just about every important issue the Dems deal with.

You might call it a good cop/bad cop act. Or, if you are a former hippie, you can call it a good pig/bad pig act.

Me: I call it the quiet liberal/crazed liberal act.

Let's see if it works.

The Italians betray the U.S. again

2005-06-24T21:34:00.000-05:00

A judge there has ordered the arrest of thirteen men believed to be CIA agents. They apparently were connected with the capture of a terrorist in Italy. The terrorist was then sent to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.

But I thought Gitmo was the only place in the world where people got tortured anymore.

A man's home is his castle...NOT

2005-06-23T12:23:00.000-05:00

In the second ruling in two days, the Supreme Court has taken a major chunk out of the 5th Amendment, which supposedly guaranteed the right to private property.

The first ruling, Monday, ruled that the Feds could not prevent local government from dictating how property is used. In the specific case, a San Francisco hotel owner sued the city under Federal law so that he could change the place into a tourist hotel rather than subsidized housing as required by the city. In doing so, the Supremes overturned an appeals court ruling by (of all people) Janice Rogers Brown.

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ASIDE:

In the appeals ruling which had been overturned, Judge Brown wrote: "Theft is theft even when the government approves of the thievery. Turning a democracy into a kleptocracy does not enhance the stature of the thieves, it only diminishes the legitimacy of the government"

That woman is great.

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In the second ruling, today, the Supremes said that the state could buy up private property for eminent domain purposes even when the intent was merely to resell the property to land developers so that the local tax base could be raised. In the specific case, the newly restored home of nurse Suzette Kelo and the homes of other residents of a middle class neighborhood, were purchased against the homeowners wishes.

Ruling like the above became a distinct possibility forty years ago, when the Feds started clearing out ghettos for urban renewal projects. Only people thought it was a good thing then, when it was only poor, black folks who were getting hustled out. Now it is middle class white people who are getting the treatment.

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ANOTHER ASIDE:

This all makes me think of Nikki Giovanni, a noted black poet and English professor at Virginia Tech with roots in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I live. The first time I came across her poetry, dating from the early 70's, I was disgusted at all the creative energy she expended while fantasizing about killing cops and white people. Later, I found an explanation she made for her early poetry in an interview. Apparently, her grandmother lived in a black neighborhood in east Knoxville. Grandma was forced to leave her home in an urban renewal project which eventually resulted in the building of the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and coliseum. Nikki was convinced that her removal from her home had hastened her grandmother's death, and she was quite bitter about it. Now, when I catch the ballet or a musical and the roof of the auditorium is leaking on my head while it is raining outside (that has happened), I wonder if Nikki's grandma is getting her revenge.

Incidentally, Giovanni's poetry has gotten better since the 1970s.

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First we started doing it to poor people. Now we are doing it to the middle class.

There is a silver lining. If we are lucky, we can continue the progression by convincing the city of Palm Beach to take Barbara Streisand's house to improve the beach scene.

I won't hold my breath.

Arabic Vocabulary: Taqiyya, Kitman, and Backsheesh

2005-06-22T13:59:00.000-05:00

I had heard of Kitman and Backsheesh at least thirty years ago on a "60 Minutes" episode back before it was a media sin to criticize Moslem culture. After 9/11, and while listening to all the disinformation which emanated from Al Jazeera, I was able to recall the second term but not the first. When I came across Taqiyya in the link above, I found it was a new one on me.

Together, Taqiyya and Kitman constitute the practice of withholding information or lying to non-Moslems to protect Islam.

After 9/11, I went searching on-line for the custom of precautionary lying by Moslems, knowing it existed and that there was a word for it, but could find it nowhere. I finally came across it today, by accident, while web surfing on Blog Explosion.

I did find Backsheesh fairly easily. As it happens, the word is in many on-line dictionaries with various spellings, but wherever I look, it is merely defined as a tip, gratuity, or fringe benefit. Only when you look at the actual usage of Backsheesh in literature and news reports do you realize that it actually means a culturally sanctioned custom of awarding kickbacks and bribes in Moslem countries which is normally considered unethical in western lands. See example here.

Because of the self concealing nature of Taqiyya and Kitman, few people outside of Islam know about any of these practices.

Of course, the Moslems really don't need these concepts. After all, we have the concept of political correctness to prevent us from learning such things.

HT: Princess Kimberley

Fair Play

2005-06-22T10:45:00.000-05:00

The Clinton photo did look damning. Here's the story behind it.

And credit to Drudge, who may have posted the photo on his website but also posted the explanation.

I still wouldn't leave Mr. I-Never-had-a-page-I-didn't-like in a room alone with a box of cigars.

For the Record

2005-06-22T08:59:00.000-05:00

Inasmuch as Israel is the only stable democracy in the Middle East, since their country has been targeted by waves of terrorist violence which Americans are all too quick to forget, since the Jewish people have taken more grief than any people should be allowed to put up with, and since I, like the late JPII, regard the Jewish people as my elder brothers in faith:

HT: Esther at Outside the Blogway

Democratic Apologies

2005-06-21T19:34:00.000-05:00

I walked in and saw a Drudge headline stating that Senator Dick Durbin had finally apologized for comparing our country and it's armed forces to the Nazi's, the Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge.

So I made a quick link to the story and scrawled out something smart-aleck asking whether we could "still skin the guy."

Then I envisioned a couple of humorless Federal investigators turning up at my doorway who would not understand "skin the guy" as a metaphor for "continue to relentlessly criticize him."

Besides, It's ungracious to make such a reply to a person who has just rendered a public apology. Especially since I hadn't bothered to actually read the text of his apology.

So: I deleted the post and actually read the story to which I have made a link at the top of this entry.

As it happens, I can still skin...er... relentlessly criticize the guy.

God bless him. Durbin gave us a "Bill Clinton apology." To quote the AP report:

"Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line," the Illinois Democrat said. "To them I extend my heartfelt apologies."

That is, he is only apologizing to those people so stupid as to actually be offended by what, in his opinion, were perfectly innocent remarks. It is a classic variation of the "I'm sorry if that offends you" apology. He has not actually acknowledged that his words were, in themselves, deceitful and libelous.

From the account I read, he was crying at the time. So, unless Durbin is one of those people who can cry on cue (like actors, liars, and crocodiles), he must really have been sincere and remorseful.

Either that, or he was humiliated to the point of tears.

In any event, he needs to learn how to render a real apology. Pending such a development, which I don't expect ever to take place, I will stop my gleeful little rant and drop the matter. I will now no longer heap any more scorn and disdain upon him than I do any other lefty, semi-socialist, liberal Democrat.

I forgive you, Dick Durban. I might even mean it in a day or two. And I thank you for exposing the anti-American fringe of you political party so spectacularly.

Interesting U.N. Piece

2005-06-21T08:34:00.000-05:00

Blogger Tom Carter describes himself as a moderate liberal, which he is... sort of. The first time I noticed his blog I actually mistook him for a conservative because of his unconditional support for the armed forces. He is definitely a true independent who talks straight on whatever issues he addresses, and frequently ticks-off members of the two extreme ends of the political spectrum. His affection for the United States is unquestioned. And the tone he establishes in his comment sections tends to promote dialogue rather than polemics.

He has some thoughts on U.N. reform here, written before the cloture vote, but still relevant. His basic premise is that dismantling, quitting, or removing the U.N. from N.Y.C. will be very bad for the United States inasmuch as it will further isolate us in world of diplomacy. Rather, we need to press for reforms and redouble efforts to work within the diplomatic universe of that community. Although I think his idea about Bill Clinton as Secretary General places entirely too much faith in the character of Mr. Unzip, I believe his other ideas on this matter are worth considering.

Bolton, Frist, Propaganda and Irony on NPR

2005-06-21T06:32:00.000-05:00

I awoke this morning to a news report on my radio/alarm clock. I set it to NPR because I do enjoy the classical music and because the local news/talk station does not come in well on the little device.

NPR was delivering a report on Senator Bill Frist's presidential ambitions: talking about how he has pledged that as a gentleman/politician, he will retire from the Senate at the end of this term; how he refuses to rule out a presidential run and that, although he will resume his surgical practice, he will also be making trips to South Carolina and other states important in the early 2008 presidential primary season.

The NPR report added how important it was for Frist to establish his credentials by demonstrating positive leadership in the senate.

Still half asleep, I didn't realize I was being set up.

I went off to church services and, as I returned, flicked on the radio and found NPR playing in the truck. I would have changed the station except they were discussing charges from the head of the Public Broadcasting Company that NPR had become a liberal propaganda service, a topic which I discussed a month ago on this blog. The two commentators discussing the topic so coolly with each other for the listener's benefit seemed wholly detached as they noted that a Democratic Senator had accused Public Broadcasting chief Kenneth Tomlinson of being a Whitehouse lackey, and discussed memos which seemed to indicate close coordination between CPB and the Whitehouse undermining Tomlinson's claims of merely seeking to restore political neutrality to NPR broadcasts.

As NPR changed the topic to a Judas Priest rock star who had announced his homosexual orientation, I finally turned the radio off.

I arrived home, fed the children, and turned my PC on. That's when I finally found the story of the failed cloture vote in the Senate. I knew the vote was coming up and that the chances for a Republican victory looked bleak. This confirmed it.

It put the earlier report on Frist in perspective. NPR would naturally discuss a conservative's presidential prospects at the moment that conservative was being humiliated. It puts a nice frame of perspective on the target/subject from a liberal standpoint.

It also put the liberal bias discussion on NPR in perspective. NPR is about as neutral as Tennessee Vol fan on the third weekend in October.

I'm just glad they were a little more subtle this morning. They will be more subtle until the PBC charges are resolved.

Funny

2005-06-20T12:22:00.000-05:00

In a nice piece of satire, Homo Insapiens imagines what the columns of an Islamic Dear Abby might look like.

Vladimir Putin

2005-06-20T11:47:00.000-05:00

I recently encountered a site called Russian Blog. Interesting stuff and (needless to say) very Russian. Looking at a post on President Vladimir Putin, I took the opportunity to ask a question about which I had wondered on this blog. Here is the exchange below:

John Walter said...
Sometimes Vladimir Putin seems to be remarkably ill informed. There were his comments in February when he criticized President Bush for "firing" Dan Rather, and his comments this week when he lectured reporters about African Cannibalism. Is he excessively isolated, poorly briefed, or what?

Anonymous said...
It is just a way to suppress an opponent with some contrargument [sic] that would get him/her (an opponent) confused and prevent him/her from continuing discussing an inconvenient subject.

Now, in American politics, that would seem like a seriously dumb idea-- spewing nonsensical nonsequitors in response to pointed criticism. So... are Putin's remarks a well-honored tactic in Russian political discourse, or is Mr. Anonymous full of borsch?

Note to self: check on Russian Blog from time to time to get a handle on how those guys work.

The Bolton Filibuster

2005-06-20T10:59:00.000-05:00

The cloture vote is scheduled this afternoon (Monday). According to Robert Novak, it will likely be another defeat for Republicans.

This, of course, is more evidence that the moderate Republican rebellion over the judicial nominees several weeks ago did serious damage to the Republican agenda, rendered Republican leadership in the Senate meaningless, and has made Bill Frist look very, very weak as a party leader.

Dang. I liked Frist.

The new Hillary book has an unexpected critic.

2005-06-20T10:06:00.000-05:00

Ankle Biting Pundits has panned Ed Klein's new book on Hillary Clinton. In doing so, they echoed some thoughts which have bounced around in the back of my mind but which I did not bother to verbalize. Next time, I should.

ABP's basic argument is that all the dirt on Bill Clinton the spousal rapist or Bill the continuing philanderer doesn't actually say anything against Hillary. Instead, the book may cast her in a more sympathetic light for her long suffering endurance of with Mr. I-never-had-sex-with-that-woman.

Some women's advocates may say that Hillary had a duty to dump her exploitative, adulterous, and possibly abusive husband. But they will say it privately, because Hillary is a potential first woman president committed to the pro-abortion cause.

Other women, especially those who have thought more than once about dumping their less-than-prince-charming husbands, will actually admire Hillary and identify more closely with her.

A few spin artists might even figure out a way to cite Hillary's tolerance of Bill as evidence of her commitment to the sanctity of marriage. Then, if she is elected president, she can demonstrate her support for marriage by nominating Federal judges who will allow homosexual marriage.

In the end, the impact of the book will have more to do with how Klein frames Hillary's response to Bill's misbehavior. If he paints her as a victim, it won't hurt her. If he portrays her as somebody who tolerated and facilitated her husband specifically to help herself into the oval office, then it may hurt her.

The book is not in the stores yet. We'll see what happens then it does.

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UPDATE (2:34 PM) : Drudge has posted an NRO interview with Ed Klein. Klein claims that Hillary has been trying to paint herself as a victim, and that he is trying to puncture that false image.

What contrition?

2005-06-20T09:16:00.000-05:00

The news this week has emphasized Senator Robert Byrd's latest attempt to deal with his KKK past. The article was written in connection with Byrd's newly published memoirs.

He has explained it, regretted it, lamented it, and confronted it.

An AOL poll attached to the story asks readers if they are satisfied with his contrition.

Shoot! He hasn't expressed any contrition. Contrition means that a person is sorry for having done something which they acknowledge as bad.

In connection with the his KKK background, Robert Byrd has never, to my knowledge, said the words "I am sorry" or "I apologize".

Over the last 24 hours, I have repeatedly done word searches trying to link "sorry", "apology", or "apologize" with "Byrd". Some people have attributed apologies to him for his KKK past, but they give no dates or references and I could find no quotes from himself. He did apologize for using the "N word" on a television interview in 2001 (a stunt which would have ended the career of a Republican Senator) but I could find nothing regarding the KKK.

He has said he was stupid and regrets what he characterizes as a mistake-- but that does not acknowledge that he made a choice (not a mistake) to do evil and that his choice may have directly or indirectly hurt people by strengthening an explicitly violent, racist organization in West Virginia in the early 1940s. Rather, it is a highly ambivalent statement which could merely mean that he should have been more discrete in expressing his support for racist organizations.

There is no apology there. The man just wants to sell a book.

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BY THE WAY:

If any readers can direct me to a real apology that Robert Byrd might ever have made for his leadership in the KKK, please send me a link. If it is legitimate, I will post it as an entry and apologize for libeling the senator.

Our new U.N. Ambassador?

2005-06-19T19:46:00.000-05:00

The Dems have been floating the idea of elder statesman Bill Clinton as an alternative to John Bolton in the U.N. Of course they aren't serious about Clinton as a Bush nominee. It's generally the custom for a U.N. ambassador to follow the same political philosophy as the president who nominates him.

But they have hinted at how wonderful it would be to have Hillary in the White House and Bill at the U.N.

At least they would be in separate cities.

Of course, after reading this, I should note that we would want someone at the U.N. who won't fall into a honey trap quicker than you can say "Isn't the Russian ambassador's aid a cutie?"

The House Takes Action Where the Whitehouse Fears to Tread

2005-06-17T21:40:00.000-05:00

In a bit of irony which I can't get over, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to cut U.S. dues payments to the United Nations until that body makes some basic reforms in the way it does business. The title of the bill is the United Nations Reform Act of 2005, introduced by Congressman Henry Hyde.

My favorite condition: that nations with representatives on any U.N. Human Rights Commission actually adhere to the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And the Whitehouse, which has battled for years with U.N. indifference to common sense and fair dealing, opposes the bill, largely because it interferes with Whitehouse initiatives regarding reform of the U.N.

In truth, this bill passed so easily and quietly that I am convinced that house Dems rolled-over in full confidence that the Senate Dems will kill it.

If only we could pass John Bolton and the U.N. reform bill.

But with the Senate the way it is, we may pass neither.

Jeb keeps the Shiavo case alive, though Terri is dead

2005-06-17T12:26:00.000-05:00

Governor Jeb Bush has asked a local investigator to start looking into some of the unanswered questions surrounding Terri Shiavo's original collapse some fifteen years ago.

I doubt anything will come of it. But if Florida authorities have any probable cause to pursue an investigation previously neglected, then by all means they should do it.

Such an investigation may have been short circuited earlier by the heavy handed judicial procedures which sent Terri to her undeserved, premature death by starvation and dehydration.

But I sure have to emphasize probable cause. This investigation should only take place if authorities have some evidence in their hands showing there should be an investigation or if they know for a fact that such an investigation was neglected earlier. If Jeb Bush is merely digging for dirt on Michael Shiavo because he's ticked over the autopsy results, then he is making a big mistake, because that would amount to government persecution. And even if Michael Shiavo is the heartless bum I sometimes suspect he is, that would still be a violation of his well-established rights.

Jeb Bush takes a risk here. Because even if there is probable cause to look into the case again, the governor will catch a world of grief if the investigation comes up empty.

I've vebalized my thoughts on the autopsy at my other site previously, here, here and here.

Senator Durbin's Remarks

2005-06-16T14:37:00.000-05:00

There is only one reason I don't believe the Senate should reprimand Illinois Senator Dick Durbin for his remarks equating his country with Nazi Germany, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, the Soviet Union of Stalin's day. That is because I think it is important to have Democrats like him speak his mind so that people can remember that the Democratic leadership really does hate America and feels we should not take reasonable means to protect our territory.

Would he make remarks like that if it was the Sears tower of Chicago that was leveled on September 11 instead of the WTC in New York?

And will it require a sharp decline in his poll numbers before he decides to "distance himself" from his remarks or apologize to anyone who might be offended by what he said?

I'll bet Howard Dean just put Durban on the short list to make the keynote address for the 2008 Democratic Convention.

A Colossal Miscalculation

2005-06-15T17:04:00.000-05:00

It looks like the electoral fallout from the recent Senate judicial nominee compromise has begun. Check VOLuntary Conservative's analysis here.

The "Seven Dwarves" of the Senate Republican contingent in Washington, DC, had hoped they would appear statesmanlike and appeal to a "moderate majority" of Americans. They might appeal to a moderate majority, but unless they also appeal to their party faithful, they will end up unemployed.

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AND ANOTHER THING: (8:15 pm, 6/15/05)

This electoral thrashing takes place just in time as an object lesson for any Republicans thinking of going wobbly again with regard to John Bolton.

A Good Book

2005-06-15T10:33:00.000-05:00

I've just finished Hell Riders: the True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade by Terry Brighton. Published in 2004, it is one of those military histories in which the professional historian who penned it realized that unless you have a trapped audience of college history majors, nobody is going to read your book if you publish it as a steaming mound of progressive/revisionist manure.

Brighton Tells the story of the disastrously magnificent cavalry action at the battle of Balaklava in 1854 by combining historical narrative with a critical analysis of every bit of written information by the survivors which he could lay hands on. After telling the complete story of the Light Brigade's involvement in the Crimean War, he devotes chapters to continuing questions such as "Who did goof up, anyway?"; "Could the charge be considered a success?" and "What was Florence Nightingale's real role in the Crimean War?"

Brighton does an excellent job of determining how the disastrous charge was ordered and which officers were responsible and to what degree. His conclusion, which is somewhat surprising, is that the British War Department got it exactly right when they ordered the overall cavalry commander (Lord Lucan, in charge of a division comprising the Heavy and Light Brigades) relieved of command.

Regarding the Charge itself, his conclusion, which is very surprising, is that the light cavalry did an outstanding job. By all rights, the five regiments making up the Light Brigade should have been wholly annihilated or forced to surrender. Despite heavy losses, they not only rode down and back under frontal, rear and enfilading fire, but broke an artillery battery and an enemy cavalry force at least four times their own strength. The Russians were left astounded not merely at the daring of the British horse soldiers, but at the fact that though badly chewed up, they refused to be defeated.

It was still a disaster, of course, and a horrid blunder. Although the Light Brigade bested the Russians whom they faced, the enemy horse and artillery remained intact, and the English force became combat ineffective for the remainder of the campaign. Further, no tactical gain resulted from the assault aside from a field littered with English and Russian corpses: sons, husbands, and fathers.

One wonders, however, what the esprit of the British Army would be today were it not for the tradition of courage under fire established and perpetuated by such outfits as the Eighth and Eleventh Hussars, the Fourth and Thirteenth Light Dragoons, and the Seventeenth Lancers? The attack they made, ill-conceived though it was, was the sort of thing of which national identities are made and preserved.

What's scary here is not the accusation...

2005-06-14T12:55:00.000-05:00

...but the fact that this crackpot ever got a job inside the Bush Administration.

Inside Putin's Brain

2005-06-14T08:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, for the second time this year, Vladimir Putin said something that was just plain stupid.

In February, he demonstrated a breath-taking ignorance of how things are done in America when he criticized President Bush for firing Dan Rather.

Yesterday, he effectively undermined any good-will gains he intended to achieve through sending food to Africa by criticizing that continent's supposed history of cannibalism.

I honestly don't know whether any African tribe ever actually practiced cannibalism or not. I'm no student of African history. I do know that no statesman in his right mind would verbalize such a thing publicly.

It would be right up there with the Pope apologizing to the Jews for the Inquisition by saying: "We're sorry we persecuted you, you Christ-killers." It just doesn't work. It's just plain stupid.

So, what is going on in Putin's brain?

Is he taking too much vodka with his tea?

Is he too isolated by the men who say things that he wants to hear?

Is he excessively conditioned by his tenure as KGB chief and Russian head of state to say whatever he feels like with total impunity?

I do know one thing. I'm kinda' nervous with a guy like that being in control of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

I'm still not going to let my kid sleep-over at Neverland

2005-06-14T06:49:00.000-05:00

As every cognizant person in the Western Hemisphere expected, Michael Jackson has been found not guilty. I have not followed the case closely. I have read those internet headlines which seemed most interesting and have listened to radio coverage, but that is about it.

Having said that, I knew that the star prosecution witness, the accuser's mother, did not appear credible; and that several prosecution witnesses did not testify in the fashion expected.

There is no excuse for a legal team, whether for the prosecution or the defense, to be caught by surprise by any findings of fact made by witnesses on the stand. A long-standing legal principle is that all prospective witnesses are required to answer questions beforehand at a deposition so that both sides can have a reasonable idea of what to expect.

Folks are calling this the battle of the "two moms"-- pointing out that Jackson's mother arrived at trial each day looking as if she had just come from church, while the accuser's mother seemed arrogant and low class, snapping her fingers at the jury.

That wasn't it.

This was the battle of the two legal teams: and the better paid legal team won.

In my opinion, it is always a battle of the legal teams.

I served as a juror once, about 19 years ago, and it was one of the more disillusioning experiences of my life. I was on a military jury at a special court-martial: a three man panel in which the verdict would be found by majority vote rather than unanimous vote. The defendant was accused of adultery (yes, it is still considered a crime in the Military Services to have sex with anyone who is another person's spouse) and despite overwhelming evidence to convict, the defendant was released.

Why? The defendant's lawyer was a seasoned captain of Marines while the prosecution was represented by a relatively green lieutenant. The defense could question witnesses, and submit motions and objections easily and confidently while the prosecution appeared tentative and hesitant. My two fellow jurors did not consider themselves convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, and the defendant walked.

As it happens, the military is a small world. I and my fellow jury members, the defendant and the cuckolded spouse all belonged to the same battalion. One of my fellow jury members ate lunch with me the next day and mentioned that he had gone to a bar the previous night and seen the newly acquitted defendant having a drink with the girl he could not be convicted of horsing around with.

The spouse, a good Marine, dumped his wife and quit after his enlistment was up.

The defendant later tried to kill himself just before local sheriff's authorities served a warrant on him for running a burglary ring out in town.

I, of all people, was ordered to conduct an investigation on the Marine's suicide attempt. An investigation of this type was really just a paperwork exercise in preparation for pressing charges.

I recommended he be prosecuted for conduct detrimental to good order and discipline, and for damaging government property.

The battalion commander grinned as he signed off on my report.

Then I was assigned as young Cassanova's company commander.

Lucky me. Before the report could be fully endorsed, the adulterer/burglar/attempted suicide Marine was discharged from service for an unspecified back injury. That is, he was also a malingerer.

Later on, I was asked to serve on the jury of a child molestation case. During the pre-trial screening, the defense lawyer asked me if I had any preconceived opinion regarding the case.

I did. I said we didn't need a trial; that the legal process would only gum things up; that the MPs wouldn't have busted the accused without just cause; and that we needed to send this new defendant to Leavenworth only long enough to put together a firing squad.

I was released from jury duty.

Dang! That was great.

2005-06-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a week in the woods with my son, Matthew, and the Boy Scouts of America. It wasn't annual summer camp, but a troop outing which combined three different activities.

On days one and two: we back-packed a short segment of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina, camping overnight on a mountain top and enjoying a thunderstorm unfold below us.

Day three: we did some whitewater rafting in one and two-man inflatable kayaks in the Nantahala River Gorge.

Days four through seven: we canoed the length of Fontana lake, camping on islands along the way.

Best moment: On the last night of the outing, our small group of campers were gathered around the campfire. Our party included an eleven-year-old South Korean boy working on his American citizenship and a thirteen-year-old Mexican boy here with papers.

Both boys are outstanding Scouts: never complaining, always carrying their load, always helpful and with a good attitude.

One of the American boys starts shooting off his mouth. "I'm glad I live here in the United States. You know why? 'Cause we're the greatest country in the world. After all, we've got all the nukes! If someone picks on us, we fire off our missiles and everyone gets blown-up but us."

Four different adult leaders are descending at the same moment to quietly take the young loudmouth aside for a talk when the Mexican boy calmly turns around and asks: "Just when do you plan to grow up a little, anyway?"

Priceless.

Takin' a Break

2005-06-05T23:00:00.000-05:00

I'll resume on Monday, June 13.

Howard Dean tries to be moderate

2005-06-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Curt Jester has a hilarious piece here. Make sure to check out the image. Can someone explain to me how the Dems can advocate gay marriage and unlimited abortions, and not be known as the party of gay marriage and abortion?

Okay, NOW they can riot and kill

2005-06-03T19:34:00.000-05:00

According to the AP, the Pentagon has now confirmed that on certain occasions, American guards at Gitmo have, in fact, done mean things to the Koran. One guard stomped on a Koran; another kicked one; somebody wrote naughty words inside the cover of one; an interrogator tossed one in a bag of laundry; and somebody urinated on one.

The story adds (in various places) that the book stomper was fired; the pee-pee guard got transferred to gate duty (He accidentally sprinkled the holy book while relieving himself in front of an air vent); and that there were fifteen confirmed cases of internees desecrating Korans.

Also, someone did try to flush a Koran down a toilet.

It was an internee.

I, for one, am outraged that the people in charge at Gitmo would allow these abuses. There is no excuse for a single Moslem holy book desecration taking place down there. If we seriously wanted to prevent Koran molestation from taking place at Gitmo, we need only remove all copies of the book from the base.

But then the Red Cross would climb all over us. After all, the internees wouldn't know what to use for toilet paper.

Found through Drudge.

Settling Marital Disputes in Iran

2005-06-03T14:28:00.000-05:00

Check out the eye opening story and photo here which I found by way of Mona Charen's excellent opinion piece at Townhall.com.

In all fairness, Iranian authorities seem to have been trying to change their image since that shot was taken in 1991. Let's hope the changes are real and not cosmetic.

Speaking of cosmetic, do read the Mona Charen article linked above and ask yourself "What were they thinking?" at the State Department.

HT: Relapsed Catholic.

John Kerry Flunks Reading Comprehension

2005-06-02T10:53:00.000-05:00

Or maybe he skipped Sunday School too often.

In Lakeland Park, Florida, last Friday, Kerry made the following statement while discussing healthcare and health insurance:

"I went back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all, ever, anywhere, in any way whatsover, that you ought to take the money from the poor, the opportunities from the poor and give them to the rich people."

That is, of course, if you skip the Parable of the Talents.

HT: Relapsed Catholic.

Illegal Immigration, Part 4

2005-06-02T09:35:00.000-05:00

And the last part, I hope. It's a topic that has me pretty conflicted.

In Part 1, I discussed my general stand on illegals. Most of them are good people, and I have little problem seeing them do well at jobs that most Americans either disdain or do poorly. In Part 2, I spoke of the importance of our relationship with Mexico, and what would happen to our economy if we ticked them off. In Part 3, I talked about crime issues, and ate some crow for having played those issues down earlier.

Now I'd like to talk about national security.

Michelle Malkin (follow me here) is my favorite blogger. And I'm glad she has a whole separate site devoted to her crusade against illegal immigration, because that is the one issue where I disagree with her. She expends most of her energy on this issue giving examples either of lax enforcement, facilitation of illegals by our government, or crimes committed by illegals. One question she doesn't address is why all this happens.

Why does President Bush, solidly conservative on most other issues, basically roll out the red carpet for Mexican Illegals? I keep waiting for Malkin to answer that question, but the most she or anybody else offer is that it is an attempt to pander either to small businesses who hire illegals as cheap labor or to secure the Hispanic vote in the southwestern states.

I don't believe either of those answers really explain it. How can the pacification of two voting blocks which are already solidly sympathetic (small business owners) or opposed (southwest Hispanics) to Republican candidates possibly compensate for the influx of a population which supposedly drives up American unemployment, crime, healthcare and education spending, and creates a major breach in national security?

But what if the national security breach didn't exist? In fact, what if the thing which looked like a breach was actually a strongpoint?

Consider this point: there is no rule against racial profiling in Mexico. Rules concerning probable cause searches, surveillance, and interrogation are also more lax.

Here is what I imagine. (Wild Speculation Alert: On!) I'll bet the NSA has agents coordinating with Mexican authorities at every single point of entry in Mexico. I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA has a regional headquarters at the American Embassy in Mexico City with the knowledge and consent of Vincente Fox's government. Finally, I'd wager that the NSA has a better handle on stopping terrorists in Mexico than they ever possibly could have had on the U.S./Mexican border.

Bottom line: If we ever really tried to close the border with Mexico, I suspect the number of international terrorists coming to the United States through Mexico would increase rather than decrease.

Jag and Land Rover: Gay Cars?

2005-06-02T08:11:00.000-05:00

See my piece in Tennessee Catholic.

J. Edgar Hoover's Legacy: Deep Throat

2005-06-01T12:24:00.000-05:00

Timothy Noah's story in Slate really did catch me off guard. Back when President Nixon was being ousted, I did not object because I believed what he did was illegal. I still believed, however, that the "Media" (as we called it then, rather than the MSM) was doing an unfair pile-on.

Despite my skepticism, I still assumed that "Deep Throat" leaked information out of genuine concern about corruption in the Oval Office.

According to Noah, it had nothing to do with honest government, and everything to do with keeping the clique of late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in charge at the Bureau by accelerating the scandal at the White House.

In the end, it wasn't whistle blowing, but power games.

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UPDATE (Thurs. 6/2/05):

Tom Carter has some good thoughts (similar to mine, discussed in greater depth) on the matter here.

Jeb!

2005-06-01T08:08:00.000-05:00

Despite all the weird things that take place in Florida politics, I repeatedly see Governor Jeb Bush successfully leading his state in initiatives that I wish his older brother would do nationally. I also wish I could see some of these things done in the supposedly more conservative state of Tennessee. Today, he signed a bill tightening down on abortion clinic abuses above and beyond the routine murder of the unborn. For other initiatives he has championed, see here.

Right now, if I could vote for Jeb in the Republican presidential primary, I would.

Courtesy the Curt Jester.

Bill Moyers and PBS

2005-05-31T11:13:00.000-05:00

Ann Coulter is sharp-witted as ever in her take on attempts by Bill Moyers and PBS to fight government efforts to end Federal subsidy of their liberal propaganda network. My favorite part:

"...as regular viewers of PBS know, in fact, we invaded Iraq for oil. Yes, precisely. That's why U.S. forces seized Iraq's oil fields right after Baghdad fell, confiscated their vast oil reserves, and now we can buy all the gasoline we want here at home for just pennies a gallon any time we want. Sorry, we what? Folks, my switchboard is completely lit up and this isn't even a radio show. "

If we had a barrel of oil for every time we've been accused of invading Iraq for the oil, the result would be the same.

McCain's Nuclear Option

2005-05-30T21:22:00.000-05:00

Apologies for not warning anybody that I wouldn't post this weekend. I've been pondering the home security implications of publicly advertising my absences, and will probably make adjustments to my blog profile for personal security purposes.

I've been in Mississippi, by the way, visiting in-laws for the Memorial Day weekend.

While down there, I've been pondering what in the world could have been going through John McCain's head last week as he very consciously betrayed his party over the judicial nominations. I will start with an assumption, and end with a speculation.

Assumption: McCain wants to become president. Every move he makes is calculated with that object in view. He and his staff are the only ones in North America who would deny that.

To become president, he believes he must appeal to the largest block of American voters. McCain banks on a backlash or at least a retreat from electoral conservatism after the American people have dealt with W. for president for eight years. Therefore, he must portray himself as plainly separated from the current administration. Hence, his conscious effort to move leftward of the president. The Dems love him. He is their version of Zell Miller.

But now all the solid Republicans-- the conservative base-- have gone beyond their perpetual irritation with McCain and simply detest the man. Right now, he couldn't be nominated for official Republican Party Crossing Guard, let alone president.

Now for the speculation. Right after the 2006 Senate race, as the various Democratic stars begin testing the waters for a 2008 candidacy, McCain will announce that the Republican Party's "right-wing extremism", the GOP's support for "a war based on a lie", and its desire to hijack the American judiciary, will have forced him out of the party.

He'll run for president as a Dem; and the Dems will go crazy for him.

New Blog

2005-05-25T23:30:00.000-05:00

Two areas I feel passionately about are conservative politics and my Catholic faith. And I have written quite a lot about both on this blog. However, most of the readers who come here because of the religion stories are indifferent at best to the political material. Similarly, most of the political junkies who visit this site could care less about the minutiae of Catholic Church business.

So, I've started a new blog site I call Tennessee Catholic.

From here on out, I will do news and politics here at Tennessee Rants, and religion and culture at Tennessee Catholic.

Enjoy.

Ringside Seats

2005-05-25T20:45:00.000-05:00

As rumors continue to swirl around the story of Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ currently being investigated for (or exonerated from?) sex abuse charges dating back to the 1950s, Amy Welborn published a post today which attracted one of those strings of comments which reveal more than the story itself. I came across the post by way of Vatican Watcher.

You have the camp of Maciel supporters, who aren't arguing so much on behalf of Fr. Maciel as they are for the orthodox Catholicism that he defends.

And you have the camp of accusers, aiming their guns not so much at Maciel as at the Legion, which they accuse of conspiracy and obstruction. But neither Maciel nor the Legion are the real targets. The accusers are invested in the notion that the sex scandal reaches all the way to the Vatican through Fr. Maciel, and that the shield provided by Catholic orthodoxy, and not the permissiveness of modern heterodoxy, is the real cause for the scandal.

I tend to suspect that Maciel has, in fact, been cleared. But I do wish people were honestly more interested in the facts of the case than the politics behind it, and I also wish the Vatican would clean up it's communication organs.

How to lose a coalition

2005-05-25T12:17:00.000-05:00

I'm not writing about the "Coalition of the Willing" in Iraq or the coalitions found in parliamentary democracies. Rather, I'm talking about the voter coalition required to gain a majority of electoral votes in an American presidential election.

George W. Bush and the Republicans control the White House and Congress because they have offered hope for progress on national security, empowering taxpayers, and reforming the judiciary. Americans voted Republican because of these issues and despite GOP abandonment of the concept of secure borders and shrinking the Federal government.

Some conservatives (Pat Buchanan types) voted Republican despite being isolationists because taxpayer empowerment and court reform compensated for the war. Other, libertarian conservatives (Boortz and Reynolds types) voted Republican despite placing little importance on judicial reform because they felt the empowerment of taxpayers was extremely important.

Now we have the Senate compromise on judicial appointments, in which the Republicans have basically abandoned the idea of judicial reform because they cannot muster enough loyalty in the ranks. We also have social security reform moving all too slowly, faith based social services a failed program, and Democratic obstructionism (actually, a darn good holding action) killing the prospect of any legislative victories at all.

And the Buchanan conservatives are asking: "I tolerated the Iraq war and the open borders for this?"

And the libertarian conservatives are asking: "I've put up with Republican moralizing and and continued bloated government for this?"

And when the Senate races come up in 2006 and the presidential race in 2008, many of these voters are going to ask: "Should I take time off work to vote for these guys again?"

Unless the GOP manages to makeup for the judiciary defeat disguised as a compromise, they will have grim prospects in the upcoming election cycles.

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UPDATE (Wed., 5/25/05, 7:58 PM)

Tom Carter puts things in a somewhat calmer perspective here; while Rob Huddleston has good takes on the situation here and here. I agree with him. Frist isn't the cause of this disappointment; McCain is. However, Frist was in charge of Senate Republicans and is going to take heat for not keeping his cohorts in line. This will hurt him in 2008.

Finally... Maybe

2005-05-24T09:30:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin reports that John Kerry claims to have finally kept his promise to sign the SF-180 to release his complete military records. However, in the highest traditions of Kerryesque politics, the situation tends to be somewhat confusing. See Michelle's take here.

In addition, if you look at the SF-180 here, you'll notice that the form will allow only for the release of records in the specific branches of the service requested. Therefore, Kerry can (in theory) release the forms on his service with the USN in Vietnam but hold the records on his service in the USNR, where rumor has it that he received something other than an honorable discharge because of going AWOL while hanging out with Jane Fonda, making happy with commies in Paris, and tossing other peoples' medals over the Whitehouse fence.

I'll believe that Kerry has provided complete disclosure when I see his complete disclosure.

This is bullying

2005-05-24T07:32:00.000-05:00

The Chinese have been doing this to Japan, and this to Taiwan. There have been rumblings of the PRC building up their amphibious capability to secure either Taiwan or the shipping lanes passing through Indonesia. They even played this game with the United States during the spring of 2001.

Just about the only folks in East Asia they haven't tried to push around are the North Koreans.

As the Chinese people grow more restless under the incongruity of a communist government presiding over a growing, free market economy; the more the government there relies on the public relations boost they get internally by treating their neighbors as enemies, and the more tempted they become to use war as a means of supercharging their economy.

It's a recipe for disaster.

Compromise in the Senate

2005-05-23T21:29:00.000-05:00

If not for some Republican wigglers, the judicial confirmations could have gone through with a complete victory instead of a this.
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AND ANOTHER THING (Monday, 5/23/05, 11:52 PM):

After glancing around the other conservative blogs, I've seen the message repeated several times that: "This is the death of John McCain's presidential ambitions!"

Shoot!

John McCain never did have a chance, because he has spent his entire career ignoring his party base. The guy who has had his ambitions hurt the most is Bill Frist. This is the biggest Senate battle he has ever fought and he ended it with a compromise. His heart might be in the right place, but this is a let-down that won't be forgotten anytime soon.

Fr. Maciel: Not so Strange Happenings

2005-05-23T20:37:00.000-05:00

As I mulled my previous post on the stories and counter stories regarding the supposed clearing of Fr. Marcial Maciel (What a name!) of sex abuse charges, it occurred to me that this isn't the first time that news from the Vatican has trickled out amid a cloud of rumor and contradiction.

When JPII lay dying, Italian news agencies jumped the gun and reported his death a day early. Fox News jumped on the band wagon and prompted some premature mourning here in America; which included yours-truly.

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to replace JPII, there was confusion over why smoke and no bells? Why weren't the basilica doors thrown open immediately? Just what color was that smoke? And didn't that happen when JPII was elected?

When B16 selected Archbishop William Levada to replace him at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: first he was selected, then it was only a rumor, then he was selected but there was a rumor that Fr. Joe Fessio would replace him in San Francisco.

And now we have Fr. Maciel. He was investigated in the 1950s, the 1990s, and again this last few months; all repeats of investigations of the same basic charges by the same alleged victims. First he was cleared; then the investigation reopened. Then he was cleared again, and then the clearance was reported as a hoax perpetrated by the Legion of Christ.

I doubt that. I suspect Fr. Maciel was, indeed, cleared. I believe that what is going on is not so much some war of whispers as a Vatican communications system which badly needs to streamline itself and join the new millennium. The habit of the sinecured clerics in Vatican City to use twentieth century (and earlier) techniques simply throws us Americans for a loop every time.

I recall reading an article by papal biographer George Weigel several years ago (I will attempt to locate it) in which he discussed how discouraged he was when he visited Vatican City in the midst of the sex scandal in 2001 and found several high ranking Cardinals who had only a passing knowledge of the scandal and tended to write it off as American newspaper sensationalism. He wondered about this attitude until he realized that not a single one of those clerics used e-mail, relied on Internet news, or was conditioned to instantaneous information processing in a fashion that even distantly approached what the average American assimilates on a daily basis.

We Americans like our information to be mainlined into our arteries. We are so conditioned (and addicted) to the "Information Superhighway" that when we come across a culture that doesn't yield volumes of data upon demand (like the Vatican) then we tend to rip it out of every source we can find connected to the group in question.

And what we get is not good information, but a jumble of rumors and counter rumors.

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UPDATE (Tuesday, 5/24/05, 7:53 AM):

The article mentioned above was not by George Weigel, but was by Terry Mattingly and discussed Weigel's impressions of the Vatican. Mattingly quotes:

"Suddenly it dawned on me that the Vatican is simply not, to this day, a part of the Internet culture," said Weigel. "There are a few people who take the trouble to go online every morning or evening. ... But in the main, what we have become used to and what frames our emotional responses to these questions, namely real-time information and a constant flow of chat, commentary, argument and so forth, ... none of this exists over there."

The complete article can be found here on Terry Mattingly's web site On Religion.

Fr. Maciel: Something Strange Happening

2005-05-23T15:02:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, a series of claims and counter-claims arose regarding the investigation of Father Marcial Maciel, Founder of the Legion of Christ, regarding sex abuse charges discussed at my old blog site a month ago.

The matter is discussed in detail at Open Book and Vatican Watch.

On Friday, the Catholic News Service (CNS) announced there would be "no canonical process" for Fr. Maciel, meaning no charges would be brought against him as a result of the investigation recently reopened by order of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger during the last days of JPII's pontificate. Essentially, the news meant that Fr. Maciel was cleared of any charges.

Today, a victim advocacy group called ReGAIN claimed that CNS had the story wrong: that CNS had credited the Vatican Press Office with the communique when, in fact, the announcement had been made by the Legionaries whom Fr. Maciel had founded. The implication, of course, is that the Legionaries are up to some monkey business to get their man off the hook.

So: are the Legionaries of Christ a pack of Machiavellian schemers who would have made the worst anti-Catholic fantasies about the Jesuits look like children's stories?

Or are the victim advocates merely stirring the brew to keep the controversy over Fr. Maciel alive?

Right now, I wouldn't hazard a guess.

The latest abortion case for the Supreme Court

2005-05-23T11:27:00.000-05:00

I found this through Drudge, although I suspect it will likely lead most MSM news headlines tonight and tomorrow. The case, discussed here, will test the right of New Hampshire to allow a girl less than eighteen-years-old to have an abortion without her parents' knowledge. Pro-aborts object to the law because it does not include the explicit "life and health" loophole that liberal courts have generally driven Mac trucks through. ("The girl might get depressed if she has a baby. Abort the little blob!") The state of New Hampshire contends that since state courts have automatically ruled that every piece of legislation governing abortions in New Hampshire are subject to the "life and health" exemption, then this law will automatically be limited on that account even though such an exception is not written in the actual text of the statute.

This smells fishy.

I believe that what New Hampshire wants is a court ruling that every law they pass now or in the future regarding abortion will automatically be limited by an unwritten "life and health" exception.

Depending on the will of the court, a ruling might even be handed down stating that any law nationwide which governs the the practice of abortion will be limited by a "life and health" exemption. If that happens, then there will exist no legal way to limit abortions outside of a reversal of Supreme Court opinion or, otherwise, the passage of a constitutional amendment. That is, I suspect that another fundamental right is about to be discovered in the "penumbra of the Constitution."

The only good outcome for Pro-lifers in this case would be for the Supremes to uphold the law and explicitly state that since no "Life and Health" clause is written in, then no such exemption is implied.

That is very, very unlikely.

Newsweek:Balkanization of the News

2005-05-23T07:22:00.000-05:00

This last week witnessed Newsweek along with several other opinion makers (Linda Foley of the Newspaper Guild, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo) asserting themselves in ways which have conclusively exploded any notion that they might possibly be objective in their take on current events. These examples of distorting the truth-- lefty propaganda rendered as news-- were the sort of things that landed the New York Times, Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather in hot water as recently as four months ago. So, why aren't Foley, Isikoff and Barry of Newsweek, and the rest out looking for new jobs right now?

I think there is a basic retrenchment of the MSM taking place. It is not a conscious or a coordinated decision being made. No conspiracy here. Rather, what the MSM is doing is almost entirely a market driven trend. Observing how bloggers, with no pretense of personal objectivity, are perfrectly capable of outing MSM outlets who mangle the news, media chiefs around the country have experienced an epiphany. Now, news executives such as Linda Foley; Michael Kinsley at the L.A. Times; Richard Smith (Editor-in-Chief) Mark Whitaker (Editor) and Jon Meacham (Managing Editor) of Newsweek; and others no longer bother worrying over any absurd assertion of fairness in their organizations, but instead can play proudly to their primary, liberal, readers.

This basic shift in MSM attitude took off in a big way during the horrible, three week period preceding the death of Terri Schiavo. The MSM's who covered the protests and the judicial appeals gambled that if they persevered in their efforts to portray the protesters as semi-terrorists and the Schindlers as bereaved buffoons, then the story would die about the same time that Terri did, and the alternate medias of talk radio and the blogosphere would do nothing about it.

Emboldened by this grim victory, and realizing that they really could (with only a little more chutzpah than previously used) just ignore the bloggers about the same way they ignored talk radio for 15 years, media execs and editorial staff have asked themselves something to the effect of "Why do we try to satisfy people who don't like us to begin with? Let's just concentrate on providing positive reinforcement to the folks who already read us."

Newsweek, the L.A. Times, and the NYT (which is consciously rethinking their whole editorial and marketing approach) have quietly decided to play exclusively to the ideology of the majority of their readership. And if, as a result, their subscribers decline by, say, 10% over the next year, they will be happy to accept that rather than have to worry over the absudity that they care one way or the other that they might be balanced.

Then again, if their readership declines by 25% instead of 10%, then execs will start getting fired and the media revolution will be on its way again.

Interesting times to come.

Putting things in Perspective

2005-05-22T20:04:00.000-05:00

I'm back from a weekend of camping and mountain biking with the Scouts. Terrific experience. We camped at a National Forest Service site between Lake Ocoee and the slopes of Chilhowee Mountain, about 45 minutes drive north of Chattanooga Tennessee. On Chilhowee Mountain, there is a network of about 26 miles of mountain bike trails with varying levels of difficulty and kept in outstanding condition by what has got to be some very hard working volunteers from the Chattanooga Bike Club. The views were gorgeous.

On Sunday mornings, the Scouts customarily do a non-denominational chapel service, the sort of thing that can't be offensive to anybody except a hard-line atheist with a very thin skin. The adult leaders leave it to the boys, and pray like crazy that nobody gets too sacrilegious in their presentation.

My thirteen-year-old son led the service and shocked me by giving everyone some food for thought. He held up a dime he had found that morning and asked what it was and what was written on it. He pointed-out the phrase "In God we Trust" and reminded us that even though many people either ignore that motto or wish it wasn't there; it had been placed on all our currency none-the-less. Then he noted that whatever else that motto might mean, it reminded him of where the money really comes from. My kid proceeded to remind us all that our wealth here in the U.S. and, indeed, all good things come from the Lord and that we, in turn, need to dedicate all things that we do to His name.

That alone, coming from my son, made the camping trip worth it.

Gone Camping

2005-05-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

I'll be with the Boy Scouts in the woods all weekend. No posts 'til Monday.

Attack of the Cloners

2005-05-19T22:28:00.000-05:00

According to this story I found through Drudge, South Koreans scientists have made a major breakthrough in "therapeutic" cloning.

So now we can make babies and reduce them to medical waste faster than ever.

Mating Call of the Moonbats

2005-05-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

It's spring, and in an attempt to attract mates, liberals have been going out of their way to establish that they really don't like the United States. It started with Newsweek publishing the bogus "Koran in the toilet" story that has conclusively ended any pretence of objectivity (or credibility)at that magazine.

Then, as if in response, lefty opinion makers across the country have tried hard to establish that each one of them hates America even worse.

There was the White House press corps going ape on Scott McClellan for suggesting that Newsweek really should try to be more responsible regarding the military.

There was PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi describing America to Columbia Business School graduates as a huge, obscene gesture directed at the rest of the world. (Memo to Nooyi: look forward to an emergency meeting of PepsiCo's board of directors soon.)

And now you have Linda Foley of the Newspaper Guild apparently trying to stage an historical reenactment of the Eason Jordan fiasco on C-span.

Today is a good day to be conservative.

Add to my "I'm glad Dean is DNC Chair" File

2005-05-19T10:51:00.000-05:00

Read this by Bob Novak.

Found on Drudge.

Blog Recommendation

2005-05-19T09:30:00.000-05:00

Tom Carter is a Texan who writes a good, conservative blog here that touches on most current issues. His comments, especially on military issues, are given greater authority because of his status as a retired Army colonel.

Well worth a daily visit.