Neo Warmonger

US Attorneys Politicised

2007-02-07T08:08:00.000-05:00

On NPR right now, my neighbour Chuck Schumer is waxing indignant about how in 20 years of oversight over the Justice Dept (he must be counting some of his time in the House, where he served from 1981 to 1999), he'd never seen anything like this.

It seems that over the past two years, more than a dozen US Attorneys were fired, because their jobs were required for other people. Gonzales says the firings weren't for "political" reasons; what I think he means by that is that "political reasons" means reasons of policy, whereas these actions were for "patronage reasons", or "partisan reasons". Whatever. US Attorneys always serve at the president's pleasure, and he is free to fire them whenever he chooses, for any reason or no reason at all, just like cabinet Secretaries, or the staff of the White House travel office. The AP article I linked above acknowledges this, and it ought to be uncontroversial.

But what floored me, and prompted this post, was Schumer claiming he'd never seen anything like this, i.e. that even though the president clearly has the power to do this it had never been done before, and shouldn't have been done now. Could he have forgotten that one of Janet Reno's first acts in office was to fire 92 of the 93 US Attorneys? That act was unprecedented, and was not repeated when Bush took over in 2001. I don't see how Schumer can possibly have forgotten it.

I Aten't Dead

2007-02-07T07:46:00.000-05:00

This is just a test post, sort of warming up the engine for a possible return to blogging.

On the side of caution?

2006-08-22T13:32:00.000-04:00

Eddie Compass, who was superintendent of the New Orleans police during Hurricane Katrina admits that he repeated unconfirmed reports of out-of-control crime, which turned out not to be true. The reports significantly hampered rescue efforts. Here's what struck me, though:

There was really no way for me to check definitively. So instead I erred on the side of caution. I didn't want people to think we were trying to cover anything up. So I repeated these things without being substantiated, and it caused a lot of problems.

Excuse me, how was the error on the side of caution? It seems to me like erring on the side of recklessness! If you're not sure whether a report is true, what good is done by repeating it? What harm would be done by keeping it quiet until it can be confirmed?

But then, I'm thinking of it from the perspective of minimising harm to the city's people, caught in the aftermath and desperately waiting for help. I suppose that's rather naïve. Compass's concern was that he not be accused afterwards of covering anything up; in other words, he was being cautious for his own political future, while reckless with the safety of the city. And apparently he's so unconscious of the distinction that he actually makes this point in his defense!

(H/T: The Anchoress by way of Instapundit)

That Wily Atta

2006-08-18T21:22:00.000-04:00

Here's something I learned a few days ago. In discussing Said Bahaji's possible involvement in the recent airline bombing plot, Captain Ed recounts his involvement in the 11-Sep-2001 plot, including this:

While Atta traveled to Afghanistan for training, Bahaji maintained a false front in Germany, covering their absence in order to throw off suspicion.

Now this got me thinking.

Cast your mind back to Atta's alleged Prague visit. The 11-Sep-2001 commission blithely dismissed it, on the bases of two pieces of evidence, one negative and one positive: 1) nobody flying under that name left the USA or entered it on the dates in question, and Atta had never been known to fly under a false name before; 2) his mobile phone was used while he was supposedly away. Now the flaw in this argument is obvious, and it was lampooned from the day the report was released. He'd never been known to fly under a different name, as far as these remarkably uncurious commissioners knew, and he might well have left his phone behind (especially if it wasn't a WorldPhone), and someone else may have used it.

Now follow the logic. Thecommissioners seem to have believed that Atta was something of a creature of habit, and that they could look to his known history to know what he was or wasn't likely to do when out of sight. He wasn't known to have flown under other names, so we can assume he didn't do it that day. But now I learn that he had a history of having someone lay a cover for him while he took a trip that he didn't want anyone to know about. And that the commissioners knew this.
Given that history, how could they have given any weight to the fact that his phone was used in America while he's alleged to have been in Prague? Wouldn't that be absolutely consistent with his MO? As for his not having flown under false names, if his Afghan trip was supposed to be so secret that he had Bahaji covering for him, are we really to believe that he used his own passport?

Terminological Inexactitude

2006-08-17T22:06:00.000-04:00

Once again the controversial NSA interception case is in the news, and all the bloggers are discussing it. Opinions differ widely on whether the program is legal, or even constitutional, but one thing is clear: the communications that are being intercepted are international, not domestic. There is no "NSA domestic surveillance program", or at least if there is one it hasn't yet come to light, and isn't at issue in this case. Most of the commentary at Volokh calls it the "NSA Eavesdropping Program", Instapundit calls it the "NSA communications intercept case", and the AP calls it a "President Bush's warrantless surveillance program"; even the NYT calls it "Warrantless Wiretapping" and "the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program". Whatever their opinion of it, they are calling it what it is.

Which is why I'm disappointed at Orin Kerr for repeatedly referring to it as a "domestic surveillance program". Ironically, he doesn't think much of the opinion that calls it illegal, so one would expect him to be more careful in defining what it is.

UPDATE: Dr Kerr defends his usage. According to him, while the calls were international, the surveillance itself was domestic, because physically it took place in the USA. I don't see how it matters where the wiretapping equipment was located; I can't believe that's what the fuss is about, or that many of the program's critics would change their mind if it was proven that the taps were outside the USA. But read the exchange and decide for yourself. I'm just honoured that he took notice of my comment...

Green Helmet Guy

2006-08-13T00:51:00.000-04:00

The blog.

Credit where it's due

2006-08-09T17:16:00.000-04:00

Over the years, and especially over the past week, many of us have come to expect little from the MSM but lies, disloyalty , and treason. Too often it has seemed that MSM journalists as a class were typefied by Mike Wallace, whose see reporting as a "higher duty" that comes before any obligations as either citizens or human beings.

When Brent Scrowcroft, the then-future National Security Adviser, argued that "you're Americans first, and you're journalists second," Wallace was mystified by the concept.

But we mustn't stereotype, and I was delighted to learn that among the ranks of the much-reviled MSM there remain some decent people, who not only put civic duty above disinterested "journalism", but actually use their professional skills to dig into a story, do their bit for the War on Islamic Terrorism, and put the government to shame at the same time.

Daniel Pipes reports that an NBC team helped expose a HizbAllah fundraising operation in the USA, and shut it down.

Maurice Iskandar, head of the Corporate Banking Division of the Lebanese-French Bank, informed NBC News on July 18 that the bank had closed the Hizbullah account. "Following the information in your e-mail, our Compliance Unit has closed the said account." NBC News then went to the Lebanese-French Bank's American partners, Citibank and the Bank of New York, and informed them of the situation. Both banks said they took the appropriate steps.

No doubt Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings are shocked. These guys are definitely not in the running for Pulitzers.

UPDATE: More honesty from NBC.

Give that man a Pulitzer

2006-08-08T17:12:00.000-04:00

It seems to me that if anyone deserves a Pulitzer it's Charles Johnson, who exposed Ra^ther 2 years ago, and now has done the same to Adnan Hajj and Reuters.

By the way, I've seen too many bloggers referring to this affair as Reutergate; if we must use that style of nomenclature, why not Reuterquiddick?

Speaking of staged and faked photos, remember that ambulance with the bulls-eye shot, allegedly by an Israeli missile? Read this.

As for the now infamous ~~wedding~~ photo shoot at Qana, if you haven't had the time to follow up all the links and discussion for the past two weeks, here's what must surely be the final word, all in one page.

PS: Let's not kid ourselves that the rot is confined to one photographer, or one news agency, or even one region.

A'hoy, hoy, all

2006-07-31T16:41:00.000-04:00

CM Burns here, back after an extended respite at Dr. Malcolm S. McAllisters Health Sanitarium for the Old. Abusive and Rich. It seems that Smithers had acidentally given me a bit too much ether and after giving that fool Simpson in Sector 7-G a raise and promotion to VP of Marketing, the Board of Directors had me committed. No worries, as they've all been fed to the hounds and I now own 97% of the stock in Springfield Nuclear.

Anyway, I just wanted to post to give some props to Andrew Sullivan for at least being intellectually and morally consistent by posting about how Hezbollah counts on civilian deaths in Lebanon to curry favor with the media. Also, Mel Gibson's bizzare anti-semetic rant from Friday night is not whitewashed by Sullivan either as it has been a bit by Katherine Jean Lopez at NRO. I didn't think "Passion of the Christ" was intended to be anti-Semetic when I saw it. I just thought people were projecting their own feelings into the film, and while part of that is probably the case, it seems that the boys from South Park had Mad Mel pinned two years ago, as did the indespensible Charles Krauthammer, and Sullivan. He's not always right, but when Sullivan is right, he's always dead on target.

Refugees

2006-07-29T23:45:00.000-04:00

Ira Sharkansky points out that

They are now saying that there are 800,000 Lebanese refugees caused by Israel's violence. They are not talking so much about the 1,000,000 Israeli refugees caused by Hezbollah rockets. They have been spending the last two weeks out of work, in shelters, have fled or sent their children to the center or south of the country, but not so far south where they would be vulnerable to the rockets coming out of Gaza.
One may quarrel about the relative suffering. Israel's refugees are complaining about the build-up of tension; a lack of air conditioning in some of the shelters; problems of keeping the children busy; the uncertainties of running out for food when the sirens may go off at any moment and most of the stores are closed; and the lack of clarity as to how much the government will compensate for damage and lost income. Lebanon's refugees may be suffering more, but that is due to their government not providing for them, having giving over much of their country to the Shiite fanatics, and Hezbollah's fighters not letting some people leave neighborhoods that serve as launching sites and storage places for their weaponry.

Acts of War

2006-07-28T19:23:00.000-04:00

The WaTimes reports on rumours that Nasrallah is hiding in a foreign embassy.

If confirmed, the reports could lead to an Israeli air strike on the embassy, possibly leading to a widening of the conflict, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Foreign embassies are sovereign territory and an attack on an embassy could be considered an act of war.

Yes, of course deliberately bombing an embassy would be an act of war. But so would be sheltering Nasrallah, or at least it would be if Israel demanded his surrender and his host government refused. If the Iranians have decided to commit such an overtly hostile act against Israel, it's because they're guessing that Israel won't escalate matters by retaliating; similarly, if the Israelis decide to bomb the embassy, it will be because they'll be guessing that Iran won't take it further, into open war.

(H/T: Instapundit)

UPDATE: This article (H/T once again Instapundit) makes an important point:

There are circumstances, long recognized in customary law of jus ad bellum, in which states will make incursions or aggressions of a limited nature against another party. [...] The law of belligerent reprisal allows a party that has been the subject of an armed provocation to retaliate, in order to make clear to the other party that it will defend its sovereignty, but to do so in a way that sends a legal signal that it will not escalate the conflict if the other party does not. It is a form of legal self-help - responding with force, but force that is proportionate to the immediate provocation and intended to close the circle of violence and cut it off with a single tit-for-tat, rather than see it spiral upwards into full conflict. [...]It is intended to stop short of full belligerency, in which the war aims shift, and proportionality is no longer measured by the immediate provocation, but by a state's assessment of the underlying threat.

It seems to me that and Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy, following a clear demand for Nasrallah's surrender and a clear Iranian refusal, would be just such an act of proportionate reprisal – an act of war indeed, but one intended to do no more than cure the immediate problem and so keep the conflict from turning into a full-scale war.

Another Rovian Conspiracy

2006-07-28T15:57:00.000-04:00

I saw this on LGF the other day regarding the founder of Air America :
Sheldon Drobny: Liberal/Progressive Anti-Semitism. (Hat tip: The American Thinker.)

“I came to the conclusion that the hostile comments about Israel on these liberal blogs are not coming from true liberals. Most of the anti-Semitism comes from racism and most of the racism I have experienced has come from the far right, not the left.

“So my conclusion is that the bloggers who violently hate Israel and see it in black and white terms are not really liberals. They may even be anti-Semites, but they are not representative of the liberal community that was so active in achieving racial and ethnic equality. It is a contradiction for a true liberal to be an anti-Semite.

Furthermore, I would not put it past the right wing to flood the liberal blogs with hateful criticisms of Israel to advance a perception that liberals are anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. And I see Karl Rove’s fingerprints all over this.”

Me: As things get uglier, they are getting clearer. You don't need a microscope to find anti-Semitism on the left. He cannot accept what he promulgates. He can't accept reality. Still, a Rovian Conspiracy seems so obviously far-fetched. One can actually imagine that the reality based community will have to deal with reality. Or am I dreaming?

Skimmed?

2006-07-28T02:28:00.000-04:00

Day By Day and the Captain both comment on this story. The Captain's heading is "Hamas Skims Off The Top", while Chris Muir more accurately points the finger at Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen). I'm sorry to disagree, but with all the ill will in the world towards both parties, I just can't see anything sinister here.

Let's recap: when Hamas got elected and formed a government, its people became civil servants on the PA's official payroll, and all foreign aid was cut off. Not only did the USA and EU stop giving them money, the USA informed all banks within their jurisdiction that if they were to transfer money to the PA with which to pay these salaries, they could be prosecuted for providing material support to terrorists. So 165 000 civil servants (about half of them armed ~~terrorists~~, er, "police officers") haven't been paid in months, and financial chaos has ensued. The USA's response has been that the matter is entirely in the PA's hands: as soon as it takes the terrorists off its payroll, it can have all the money it needs, but until then it can suffer. The Arab League – which doesn't share the USA's priorities, to say the least – has raised $100M to replace the missing aid; as far as it's concerned, the fact that much of the money will go to terrorists is a plus. But until now it hasn't been able to get the money to the PA, because of the USA sanctions.

Now the JPost reports that they have somehow managed to get the money through, and it has been used to make up some of the backlog in the payroll. All government employees have received a down payment on what they are owed. All government employees, including Hamas ministers and members of Parliament, because "there could be no discrimination in the payment of government workers".

Sounds fair enough to me. This is not skimming, this is what the money was donated for – paying salaries. The street cleaners have not been paid, and nor has the Prime Minister; when some money comes in, both get a little. I honestly don't see the problem with that. Yes, Abbas and Haniya and all his ministers should drop dead immediately. They're guilty of all sorts of horrible crimes. But as far as I can see, this isn't one of them. They're using the money for its intended purpose.

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

Dumb-As-A-Post Office

2006-07-26T00:53:00.000-04:00

On Sunday this puzzling story appeared. If your reaction is that you never heard of anything like this, you're right, you never have. The explanation, if you can call it that, came on Tuesday, in this follow-up. With maroons like this making policy decisions, I shudder to think what postal service in Westchester must be like.

Waitaminnit, Kodos, isn't that where you live? Got any more stories like this?

Idiot

2006-07-25T10:44:00.000-04:00

I'm half-listening to Brian Lehrer on WNYC (the local National Palestinian Radio affiliate), and he's talking to Colonel Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College - provides military analysis of Israel's attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I wasn't really paying attention, but my ears pricked up when he referred to the USA's previous experience with HizbAllah, and he said "what people forget is that we originally went in there in response to an Israeli massacre in a refugee camp". Say what? And this guy purports to comment intelligently on the situation?

He then started blathering about how Israel "must have known" that HizbAllah and Iran were planning to kidnap the soldiers; when Lehrer pressed him on whether he was saying that Israel deliberately allowed the soldiers to be kidnapped he wouldn't go that far, but sheesh...

Preaching and Practise

2006-07-24T01:22:00.000-04:00

Carl is impressed by Binyamin Netanyahu's article in the WSJ Opinion Journal.

When he writes things like this, it makes me think he ought to be Prime Minister.

Indeed, Bibi gives good OpEd. But then, Voldemort gives good speech, and when he says things like this it makes me think he ought to be Prime Minister (oh wait, he is).

There are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more! And I say to everyone: no more! Israel will not be held hostage - not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state.
[...]
we seek neither war nor direct confrontation, but we will not be deterred from them when the need arises. Only a nation that can defend its freedom truly deserves it. We are entitled to our freedom, and when necessary, we know how to fight for it and defend it.

That's inspiring stuff. (And it's an excellent translation, but if anything, it's even better in the original.) But it doesn't signify much if it doesn't reflect his core beliefs and attitudes, and I don't think it does. I applaud both the speech and the article, but I still don't think either of their authors are fit to be PM.

Of Bullies and Lessons

2006-07-23T18:58:00.000-04:00

Treppenwitz tells a story about his time in the Navy.

Falafel-Eating Surrender Monkeys

2006-07-22T22:23:00.000-04:00

At least they're showing their true colours.
(H/T: Jameel)

UPDATE: The usual suspects are at it again.

The Most Unkindest Cut

2006-07-18T18:13:00.000-04:00

Amid all the destruction in the north of Israel, Ya'aqov laments the Vered Hagalil chocolate factory, the latest casualty of this war.

Michael Totten is Right - Mostly

2006-07-18T02:47:00.000-04:00

Michael Totten has this to say:

There is no alternate universe where the Lebanese government could have disarmed an Iranian-trained terrorist/guerilla militia that even the Israelis could not defeat in years of grinding war. There is no alternate universe where it was in Lebanon's interest to restart the civil war on Israel's behalf, to burn down their country all over again right at the moment where they finally had hope after 30 years of convulsive conflict and Baath Party overlordship.

And he's right. The price Lebanon would have had to pay to keep her obligation to disarm Hizballah would have been massive. The price of ignoring her obligation seemed minor in comparison – the lion's share of that burden seemed to fall on the Israelis instead. It was clear where Lebanon's interests lay, and had I been the Lebanese PM I'd have done the same.

But that's part of the point of the current Israeli exercise – to raise the price to Lebanon of inaction, and thus to make it in Lebanon's interest to do the right thing. Because that was the deal under which the world demanded that Israel withdraw from Lebanon. Israel kept her side of the bargain, but Lebanon decided that it was just too hard to keep hers, and nobody was going to force her, so she just let it slide.

What should the Israelis have done instead? They should have treated Hezbollahland as a country, which it basically is, and attacked it. They should have treated Lebanon as a separate country, which it basically is, and left it alone. Mainstream Lebanese have no problem when Israel hammers Hezbollah in its little enclave. Somebody has to do it, and it cannot be them. If you want to embolden Lebanese to work with Israelis against Hezbollah, or at least move in to Hezbollah's bombed out positions, don't attack all of Lebanon.

That sounds like it would have been a good idea – provided that Lebanon agreed. If Lebanon was not able or willing to clean out the south, she could have washed her hands of it, and withdrawn her sovereignty. She could have placed her borders to the north of this area, and policed that border, and invited Israel to re-invade the newly created terra nullius, or to do whatever she wanted with it.

But Lebanon didn't do that. Instead, Hizballah remained in control of part of sovereign Lebanon, and a member of the Lebanese government. There was no border between "Hizballahland" and Lebanon, nothing preventing the flow of arms and men to and from the south, and Hizballah was allowed to import arms from Syria and Iran, and to maintain headquarters and operations not just in the south but in Beirut and throughout the country. That makes Lebanon responsible for its actions, and now she's paying the price.

Israel should not have bombed Central Beirut, which was almost monolithically anti-Hezbollah. They should not have bombed my old neighborhood, which was almost monolithically anti-Hezbollah. They should not have bombed the Maronite city of Jounieh, which was not merely anti-Hezbollah but also somewhat pro-Israel.

This makes perfect sense – if only its implication were true. The fact is that Israel has not bombed Lebanon indiscriminately. Its fire has been directed at Hizballah targets, and at facilities used by Hizballah to wage war against Israel. There may have been the occasional misfire, and the occasional collateral damage, but the vast majority of the casualties and the damage have been on target. If you live next door to a Hizballah facility, and you ignored the leaflets the IDF dropped, warning you to get out, then you can't blame Israel for what happens next.

Bag End

2006-07-18T02:25:00.000-04:00

As if the world weren't a crazy enough place, my old home state, Victoria, is planning to ban free plastic shopping bags.

With 1.1 billion bags still handed out in Victoria every year despite a voluntary national scheme to phase them out, the State Government now plans to introduce laws to come into force from January 1, 2009, meaning shoppers will pay a levy of at least 10 cents a bag.

Look, if you can persuade people not to want the bags, be my guest. I'm sure the shopkeepers would be glad to see the demand for bags go down, since they have to pay for them. But the campaign's obviously failed. People like plastic throw-away shopping bags, because they're much more convenient than any alternative. They're aware of the down side, they've considered it briefly, and they've rejected it. But instead of accepting that rejection and moving on, Bracks is going to impose his religious views on everybody by force.

Hmm, that's my second post today about a Lebanese Premier...

What the Lebanese Really Think?

2006-07-18T00:36:00.000-04:00

Ezzie, guest blogging at the Muqata, points to this report from rotter.net's "scoops" forum. I'm not familiar with that source, and the language doesn't make it sound very plausible to me, but Ezzie claims that "they've been right almost all the time since the war started...I put the link in though for people to read themselves". The link is in Hebrew; here's my translation:

SCOOP: G8 COUNTRIES SIDE WITH ISRAEL AT REQUEST OF LEBANESE PM
On the first day of the war, the president of France hurried to announce that Israel "longs to wipe Lebanon out". Other countries, among them even the USA, informed Israel that they were worried at the lack of proportionality between the kidnapping of soldiers and the war that Israel had declared on Lebanon. Yet today they all take the same line, and just as the demolition and destruction and fire grow ever greater, the leaders of the eight industrialised countries coordinate a position that sides with the Israeli approach and with the goals of the war. The reason? The Prime Minister of Lebanon asked them to allow Israel to erase Hizballah from the area for him. "Israel can do to Hizballah what I can't, let them finish the job", said Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora to all these antisemites in Europe.

UPDATE: Ezzie also reports this on his own blog.

Civilians?

2006-07-16T06:21:00.000-04:00

One claim from the "disproportionate" crowd is that Israel has suffered "only" ~~two~~ ~~four~~ twelve civilian deaths from the rocket barrage this week (and over 500 wounded), while Lebanon has supposedly lost over fifty. Well, one reason might be that Israel is indeed hitting back with more firepower than it's receiving. Is that meant to be wrong?

Another point that needs to be made over and over again is that there is a fundamental difference: the Arab fire is deliberately aimed at civilians, and killing civilians is its goal. Israeli fire, on the other hand, is always aimed at legitimate military targets, and any civilian that is killed is unfortunate collateral damage, the inevitable result of war. That bears repeating: the number of civilians deliberately killed by Israel, this week or this year or this decade, is zero.

Still, if Israel is not aiming at civilians, how can it be that it has accidentally killed so many, while the Arabs, who are aiming at civilians, have killed so few? Well, the answer is that it hasn't. Those >50 people in Lebanon includes people killed because they were hiding rockets in their homes. No doubt others included in the count were doing things like driving terrorists, or providing other logistical support. In my book, that makes them legitimate targets.

"We have no intention of hitting civilians, but those who live by the sword are bound to get hurt." Too right.

(H/T: Meryl Yourish)

Fasting

2006-07-16T06:07:00.000-04:00

Fasting isn't what it used to be. Michelle Malkin tries out a fast Cindy Sheehan style, and finds that it's not so bad. Hmm, I wonder whether my Rabbi will approve this for Tish'a B'av. (H/T Instapundit)

"Disproportionate"

2006-07-14T14:06:00.000-04:00

1942. Congolese President Jacques Chirac castigated the American offensive against Japan, calling it "totally disproportionate", while he and other African leaders expressed fears of a widening conflict that could get out of control. A U.N. humanitarian official condemned the attacks on Japan's transportation infrastructure, saying innocent civilians would suffer. "One could ask if today there is not a sort of will to destroy Japan, its equipment, its roads, its communication," Chirac said.

President Tree, in Zimbabwe for the G-11 summit, spoke by phone with Japanese Emperor Hirohito and promised to pressure America "to limit damage to Japan... and to spare civilians and innocent people from harm". Zimbabwean President Valdemar Takeout called on all sides to stand down, while Argentinian Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero warned America it was "making a mistake" to attack Japan. "One thing is defense, which is legitimate, and another is a counteroffensive of widespread attack," Zapatero told Punto Radio. "It won't bring anything other than an escalation of violence."

The Vatican echoed that remark. "In fact, the right to defense on the part of a country does not exempt it from respecting norms of international law above all for that which concerns the safety of the civilian population," said a statement by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's No. 2 official.

The fighting between America and Japan followed the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese pilots. Chirac, who called the Japanese attack "inadmissible, unacceptable and irresponsible," implied that China and Mongolia might be involved.

Jan Egeland, the top U.N. humanitarian official, said the American blockade of Japan's seaports, as well as the bombing of Tokyo's airport, was regrettable because it meant civilians and children "cannot receive goods ... cannot get their daily needs met." "It is in violation of international law, and it is also in violation of common sense," he said at the U.N.'s African headquarters in Kinshasa. "You are supposed to do something to the armed group. You are not supposed to hurt the children of people who have nothing to do with this."

Seriously, anyone who thinks what Israel is doing is "disproportionate", please explain exactly what you would consider "proportionate" and an appropriate response. What exactly should Israel do about being under constant artillery attack, and what it should be doing to rescue its kidnapped soldiers, and to prevent them from being transferred to Syria or Iran?

Animals

2006-07-14T03:54:00.000-04:00

From a mailing list I'm on:

Across from my backyard we see the PA Arab town of Nahalin a couple of hundred meters from our backyard and they've been celebrating and shooting off fireworks all afternoon and evening and generally celebrating.

UPDATE: This is not an isolated incident, It's happening all over. Joe Settler, westbankmama, and Yaakov all report the same thing. In 1991, when the Arabs danced on their roofs as Saddam fired his SCUDs at Israel, few people were on the internet, and it was quickly hushed up. When they celebrated on 11-Sep-2001, the PC crowd tried to claim that it was a tiny minority being blown out of proportion by the media. This time, there are blogs to record this, for future reference. This is how it always is: Jews die, Arabs celebrate.

Happy Blogaversary

2006-07-05T12:03:00.001-04:00

Over at the Muqata, Jameel is celebrating his first blogaversary. He also shows some discretion that the NYT and LAT could profitably learn from:

Just this morning, there were roadblocks all over the country, the police, IDF and MDA were all on high alert. The army's information about the terror threat was so precise, that I can't even blog about it — so as not to compromise their sources.

Of course, if he were to be indiscreet, he'd be risking arrest, and lose his access to such information; unlike the NYT and LAT, there aren't criminal moles in the IDF leaking to him.

And for all you soccer fans, there's this.

Seeing Red

2006-07-04T11:58:00.000-04:00

Israel to provide PA with ambulances

For 75 years, Magen David Adom has been trying to join the International Committee of the Red Cross, on the same terms as all the Red Crescent societies of the various Arab countries, and Iran's Red Sun and Lion. And for 75 years the ICRC has arbitrarily refused, claiming that for some reason three symbols are OK, but four would be too many. Unless the MDA started using a cross, a crescent, or a sun-and-lion, it would be denied protection – according to the Geneva Conventions, if on a battlefield Israel shoots at a vehicle bearing the Red Crescent it's a war crime, but if the Arabs shoot at a vehicle bearing the Red Magen David that's perfectly legal.

Recently a "compromise" was worked out. The Arabs still get to use the Red Crescent, the MDA still doesn't get to use its symbol, but a fourth symbol was added to the list, the "Red Crystal". Inside Israel MDA still uses its own symbol, just as it has for the past 75 years; big deal. Outside Israel, for "indicative purposes", i.e. just to show who they are, they may not use the MDA on its own, but must put it inside a Red Crystal. Of course, Red Crescent societies don't have to do that. But, get this: for "protective purposes", i.e. the real point of the Red Cross symbol, the fact that it gives legal protection against being shot at or bombed, MDA must use the unadorned Red Crystal. Putting a Magen David inside the crystal invalidates it, and makes the ambulance, hospital, etc., fair game for anyone to shoot at.

This much was widely reported a few weeks ago. Now here's part of the deal that isn't so widely known: In return for this huge favour that the ICRC has deigned to bestow, the MDA will be giving eight ambulances to the PA. Now the MDA raises funds in Jewish communities all over the world. Over the past few years, as the situation has strained its resources, it has had a special drive to get Jewish communities to buy ambulances for the MDA. Now it seems that it has at least 8 ambulances that are surplus to requirements, and are being donated to the enemy, in return for this grudging half-admission into the "big kids' club". Well, I know where my money won't be going any time soon.

Publish or...

2006-07-03T22:21:00.000-04:00

They've done it before. And they know what resulted, and yet they barely hesitated to do it again. And what excuse do they give? That if they're more careful with their duty to their country, they risk being scooped! As an example of this dreadful fate, they cite this cautionary tale, of a time when the WaPo did exercise some responsibility, and paid the price. From that moment they determined, Never Again! From now on, screw the national security, screw the troops, it's publish, even if they perish.

I see no reason
why media treason
should ever be forgot.

I See No Reason...

2006-07-03T19:51:00.000-04:00

This kind of says it all.

The Hitler v Coulter Quiz

2006-06-26T16:51:00.000-04:00

Xrlq points to this really dumb quiz, purporting to show that Ann Coulter's rhetoric is indistinguishable from Hitler's (suitably obfuscated), and thus that Coulter == Hitler. Dafydd claims that it's really a test of how familiar you are with each of their writing styles.

Well, I've read nothing by Hitler, and nearly nothing by Coulter, and I still got 14 out of 14. Just by knowing something about each of their ideologies, I was able to distinguish most of the quotes easily. Try it yourself, it's really not that hard.

An Inconvenient Truth?

2006-06-25T02:48:00.000-04:00

Here are 25 of them.

Who Heckler?

2006-06-23T14:48:00.000-04:00

The idiot subbie strikes again.

I've posted before about subeditors who don't bother to read an article before writing a headline for it. Here's another example: The AP reports:

Attorney: Bush Heckler Charges Won't Stand
Jun 21, 4:24 PM (ET)
By STEPHEN MANNING
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Falun Gong follower who heckled Chinese President Hu Jintao at a White House ceremony has reached a deal with prosecutors under which all charges against her will be dropped, her attorney announced Wednesday.

Read that again – she heckled Hu, not Bush. Also, to me, at least, the phrase "charges won't stand" implies that they won't bear weight, and are bound to be dismissed on their merits, not that the prosecutors have agreed to exercise their discretion and conditionally drop them.

But to a certain kind of person, a) if someone was heckling at a Bush press conference, Bush must have been the target; b) it's only natural that anyone heckling Bush would be facing charges, in an attempt to crush dissent; and c) when those charges prove "unable to stand" it's a victory for the justice system and the little guy. So, a quick skim over the article, and the headline must have seemed to write itself. Oops.

Is the Pope Catholic?

2006-05-30T12:41:00.000-04:00

Yes, he is. Eric Muller seems surprised.

How degrading it is, at Auschwitz, to speak of Judaism as "the taproot of Christianity" rather than as the faith of so many who perished there! How presumptuous, and unforgivable, to see behind the Nazis' annihilation of six million Jews an "ultimate" motive to strike at Christianity! Was an effort to eliminate Judaism from the world not a complete crime in itself?

I repeat, the Pope is a Roman Catholic, and therefore by definition believes that the Church is the true religion, established by God Himself. Other religions, which reject essential Christian teachings such as the divinity of Jesus, are false, and of necessity less important in the greater scheme of things than the True Faith. It is hardly surprising for someone who believes this to regard Judaism's main function in history as having brought forth Xianity. Seen through a Xian lens, which is the only lens he's got, the most important aspect of the Holocaust must be the implied attack on Xianity. As for the elimination of Judaism from the world, like every Xian, the Pope surely wishes for such an event – if all Jews accept the the truth of Xianity and convert, then there will be no more Jews, and from a Xian point of view that must seem like it would be a very good thing rather than a bad one.

Muller goes on to attack the Pope for singling out St Edith Stein, and saying that "she accepted death with her people and for them".

the face he sees is the face of a person who left Judaism behind to become a Catholic. So many Jewish authors, actors, scientists, lawyers, doctors, politicians, artists, and musicians were murdered there. And so many rabbis. And yet the face that makes the horror real to Josef Ratzinger is the face of a Jew who converted to Catholicism, and who died not only "with" the Jews, but somehow also "for" them. What does this mean, her dying "for" the Jewish victims of Auschwitz? Apparently when the death camp worker dropped in the Zyklon-B, and the Jews in the gas chamber began to asphyxiate, somehow Edith Stein died a more consequential death, a death not just "with" the others in that room, but "for" them.

Again, to a Catholic this must be not only unobjectionable, but the only possible way to see things. Edith Stein is a martyr and saint of the Roman Church; of course her death is more significant to a Catholic than those of others. And it is (I understand) an essential RC belief that saints can die for others, and can redeem others' sins, as Xians believe Jesus to have done for all humanity. (Any RCs reading this, please correct me if I've misunderstood.)

So it seems to me that Eric Muller's complaint boils down to the very fact that the Pope is a Christian, and a Catholic. I wonder, is he as offended by the toilet habits of bears?

Long Memories

2006-05-29T02:56:00.000-04:00

In a comment at Just One Minute Sara (the Squiggler) recalls the effect John Kerry's treasonous slanders had on her own family:

my son's second grade teacher told him (a 7 year old) to stop wasting his time saying his nightly prayers for his Daddy because "God doesn't listen to prayers for baby killers." When I went ballistic and demanded an explanation, she defended herself with the school principal and board with the defense that it must be true because she heard John Kerry swear to a Congressional Hearing that it was true. I will never forgive John Kerry, ever!

Words have consequences, and mothers have long memories. And of all the political donations I've ever made, the $50 I gave to the Swifties is still the one of which I'm proudest.

Codes

2006-05-19T17:20:00.000-04:00

Hard on the pierced heels of a current movie, come fresh revelations about The Galapagos Code.

2006-05-09T21:12:00.000-04:00

"Immigrants rights groups" are starting a voter registration drive:

Trying to turn street protests into political power, immigrants rights groups say they are gearing up for a campaign to register 1 million new voters this spring and summer.

What are the odds that they will even ask the people they help register whether they're citizens, or bother to inform them that only citizens are entitled to vote, and that an alien who signs a registration form is committing perjury and risks deportation? I hope somebody will be going through all these registrations carefully, and checking the bona fides of each one. I'm afraid that the GOP will wimp out on this important task, so as not to appear "racist". But someone's gotta do it.

Give Me a Break

2006-05-09T21:06:00.000-04:00

You know, it's hard to defend a pro-security position when stuff like this happens.

There's a real problem with terrorism. This ain't it. And when stupid blithering idiots cry wolf every time someone crosses them, we're likely to ignore the real wolf.

Anzac Day

2006-04-25T12:21:00.000-04:00

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

When is a War Over?

2006-04-21T03:25:00.000-04:00

Over the course of the current war, I've often come across "objections" of the sort expressed here:

if the AUMF is equivalent to a declaration of war, then how will we know when we are no longer at war? Previous declarations of war have typically ended in a peace treaty of some sort. I don't see that happening in this case. I imagine at some point in the future the US will pull its combat troops out of Iraq. However, I don't expect a formal peace treaty to be signed at that time.

I shouldn't need to point out that "typically" is not exactly a term of constitutional significance. What happens typically has nothing to do with what is required.

But let's set that aside. OK, a war is over when a formal peace treaty is signed. Now tell me, o Wise One, when WW2 ended. Do you see a problem with that? Does it make WW2 somehow less legitimate?

For that matter, wars sometimes do go on for many years or decades. Heard of the Hundred Years War? Is there some guarantee in the constitution that wars the USA enters into may not last more than a certain number of years? I've never come across one.

Intellectual "Property"

2006-04-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

There's no such thing.

Property is a product of scarcity. If there's only one of something, and we both want it, then we need a rule to determine whose it is. Air is readily abundant, and fungible (one bit of air is much the same as another), so nobody thinks of "owning" it; in a space colony this would not be the case. The common-law definition of "theft" is taking property with the intention of permanently depriving its owner of its use. If taking it does not deprive the owner of anything, then it cannot be theft.

If I write something, I own the piece of paper on which I wrote it. I may sell that piece of paper, or I may keep it locked away in a safe and not let anyone look at it, or I may destroy it. If you take it from me, then I no longer have it, and I can't do what I like with it, and so you are a thief. But if you make a copy of my work, on your own paper, that copy belongs to you. If I were to take it by force, I'd be a thief. As for me, the existence of your copy has not in any way deprived me of the use of mine, so nothing has been stolen from me.

What, then, is intellectual property? It's a metaphor. In the USA, as in most countries, the legislature has decided to grant to artists a limited-term monopoly on profiting from their creation. In principle this is no different than any other government-granted monopoly. If the city grants my company an exclusive license to run taxis, and lets me transfer that right to anyone I like, then I can metaphorically call that right my "property". After all, it behaves in many important ways just like property. But if someone defies my monopoly, and illegally drives a taxi in "my" town, may I properly call him a thief? Of course not. He may be earning fares that I ought to have earned, but the fact is that I did not earn them, and they are not mine. Until the passenger has been conveyed from A to B, the fare belongs to her, and afterwards it belongs to the person who took her there. I have a legitimate claim against the interloper, but theft isn't it, because he has taken no property of mine.

Now, what is the purpose of copyright? Why has the USAn congress chosen to grant it to authors? The constitution gives us the only possible answer. Congress is only authorised to grant copyrights for one purpose: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Patents and copyrights give inventors an incentive to invent, writers to write, and artists to art. Devote your time and energy to creating useful and interesting works, Congress says, and if it makes any money within so many years that money will be yours. It follows from this that when considering any possible infringement of copyright, the relevant question to ask is whether, had the artist known that this could legally happen, she might not have bothered to create her work.

In Europe, a new concept has lately become popular – that an artist has "moral rights" in her work. In France, for instance, if I buy a painting, and I decide to destroy it, the artist may prevent me from doing so. I may own the canvas, paint, and frame, but the artist, it is thought, "owns" the artistic way they are arranged. IMHO that is a perverse concept. I do not recognise any such moral principle, and, thankfully, in the USA not only does the law not recognise it, but the law can not recognise it, because the constitution precludes it from doing so.

And now we finally arrive at the Bill Hobbs cartoon reproduced below. Mr Hobbs has deleted it from his web site, and has protested at my putting it up here. I do not recognise the validity of this claim. Mr Hobbs, as the creator, is entitled to any income stream that comes from the cartoon (for the limited but absurdly long period provided by Congress). But he is not, IMHO, entitled to hide it from the world, and prevent anyone from seeing it. The copy that resides on my computer is mine, not his, and the copy that is displayed by your browser is yours, and we may do what we like with it. Since the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation and dissemination of works of art, using it to suppress a work and prevent its dissemination directly contradicts that purpose, and is therefore not a legitimate use of copyright.

I should also mention Fair Use, since that is an exception Congress has made, even to legitimate uses of copyright. Indeed, it had to make such an exception, since without one copyrights would be incompatible with the first amendment, which of course takes precedence over the original constitution. Fair Use is a fuzzy concept, but it seems to me that Mr Hobbs's cartoon is, in its entirety, an object of public interest and concern, since it's the centre of a news event that has attracted a fair amount of reportage over the past week or so. To understand the news event it's necessary to see the cartoon. My post comments on the cartoon, as well as on Mr Hobbs's attempt to withdraw it, and thus seeing it is essential to the substance of my comment. No mere excerpt or description would suffice. IANAL, but I think this satisfies the Two Live Crew criteria, and is thus legitimately covered by the Fair Use exception.

Mohammed Blows

2006-04-16T19:00:00.000-04:00

Having been off for the holiday, I missed the whole Bill Hobbs controversy, and am still reading up on it. However, it seems that Hobbs has lost his job for telling the truth. Oops, sorry, for being "insensitive" to Mohammed, and to the billion or so people who think he was a prophet. Well, tough. Hobbs has taken down the cartoon that started this, and I understand why, though I wish he hadn't. So I'm posting it here:
Not particularly artistic or skillful; pretty crude, in fact. But so was Mohammed. Amid all the Voltairian "I disagree with what you say, but defend your right to say it", I think it's appropriate to point out that portrayals of Mohammed like this are actually right. I don't think there's any doubt that if Mohammed were alive today, he'd get on fine with Osama bin Laden, and have contempt for those "moderate" Moslems who think there's something wrong with blowing people up. He was a slimeball, and it's appropriate not to let that be forgotten.

Detroit Emergency

2006-04-10T18:33:00.000-04:00

Thinking of moving to the Detroit area? This won't exactly fill you with confidence.

Actually, though, similar things happen elsewhere. I used to know someone who had a very similar experience in Melbourne, Australia. Her street address was the same as that of a major hospital, but in a different suburb, and when her mother collapsed the emergency dispatcher who took her call thought she was playing a prank.

Exact Change, Please

2006-04-10T17:53:00.000-04:00

Eugene Volokh comments on this story from AP, about a Malaysian man who got a phone bill for RM 806,400,000,000,000.01. Yes, that's eight hundred and six trillion and four hundred billion ringgit, and one sen. Or, in old money, eight hundred and six billion and four hundred thousand million ringgit, and one sen; that still sounds like quite a lot.

But I'd really like to know about that one sen. You'd think on a bill that size, they'd do the generous thing and round it down to a whole number of ringgit. But no, the greedy telco demands its pound of flesh, right down to the very last sen. And will no doubt be adding compound interest as the customer refuses to pay.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

2006-04-10T00:25:00.000-04:00

...and nobody hears it, did it really fall? These people learned the hard way that it does.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

2006-03-24T16:17:00.000-05:00

Noam Chomsky talks a good socialist game. But how does he act?

(H/T: Andrew Roth at the Club For Growth blog)

Residential Picketing

2006-03-24T13:22:00.000-05:00

The marriage of Sam and Sarah Rosenbloom has long been over. Seven years ago they got a civil divorce. But Sam, now living in Gaithersburg MD, refuses to give Sarah a Jewish divorce. Until he does so, Jewish law regards them as married, and neither of them can get involved with anyone else. The problem is that he's not nearly as observant as she is — he doesn't care about this law, and she does. She attempted to sue him before an ecclesiastical court in Baltimore, but he refused the summons, and the court held him in contempt.

Unlike a civil court, though, there's not much this court can do to enforce its orders, if someone chooses to defy them. Its only weapon is social pressure. The Orthodox Union, the largest Orthodox organisation in America, has officially promoted a boycott of his business. And in February, the WaPo reported:

A dozen people came out in the rain and began, as usual, with a prayer from the book of Psalms, asking God to hear their plea. "Sam Rosenbloom, give your wife a get ," they chanted. The protests started two years ago and have occurred almost weekly for the past month.

Naturally, the neighbours object to these goings on. Montgomery County has an ordinance against residential picketing, but it doesn't apply to cities within the county. So, as the Washington Jewish Week reports, the Gaithersburg City Council is about to pass an emergency ordinance.

Can they do this? Is it constitutional? Well, as it turns out, they can, at least under the current jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. By coincidence, Eugene Volokh touched on this issue just yesterday, and referred to Frisby v. Schultz (1989), which permits content-neutral bans on picketing private residences.

The type of focused picketing prohibited by the Brookfield ordinance is fundamentally different from more generally directed means of communication that may not be completely banned in residential areas. [..] In such cases "the flow of information [is not] into . . . household[s], but to the public." [..] Here, in contrast, the picketing is narrowly directed at the household, not the public. The type of picketers banned by the Brookfield ordinance generally do not seek to disseminate a message to the general public, but to intrude upon the targeted resident, and to do so in an especially offensive way. Moreover, even if some such picketers have a broader communicative purpose, their activity nonetheless inherently and offensively intrudes on residential privacy.

So as the law stands now, Gaithersburg can do this, and Sam Rosenbloom and his neighbours can resume the quiet enjoyment of their Sunday mornings. And Sarah Rosenbloom will remain in limbo, neither in a functioning marriage nor divorced, and there's very little that can be done about it.

Did he quit, or was he pushed?

2006-03-23T21:33:00.000-05:00

Xrlq links to this story, claiming that Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park of his own volition, and in fact was OK with the now-famous episode that poked fun at his religion.

Hayes: Well, I talked to Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] about that. They didn't let me know until it was done. I said, 'Guys, you have it all wrong. We're not like that. I know that's your thing, but get your information correct, because somebody might believe that [expletive], you know?' But I understand what they're doing. I told them to take a couple of Scientology courses and understand what we do. [Laughs.]

So did he change his mind and decide to take umbrage after all, or is the whole thing a hoax?

UPDATE: Oh my god, they killed Chef! The bastards.
That fruity little club has a lot to answer for.

Federal Immunity

2006-03-22T13:16:00.000-05:00

The Instapundit credits the Army of Davids phenomenon with this story from China:

China has ordered the armed forces to get permission from local government, and abide by environmental rules, when building new facilities, and holding training exercises. This is a major change, for in the past, the armed forces could do whatever it wanted, with no interference from local government authorities. The only one who had any control over these matters was the national government

The same is true in the USA, actually, as this story shows:

How could a 10,000 square feet complex disappear practically overnight, without municipal authorities, neighborhood organizations, conservancy groups, and local legislators knowing anything about it? No structure in the city can be demolished without a permit from the Department of Building and Safety, but an initial search by an official turned up no such permit. However, a second search by Bob Steinbach, the department’s spokesman, came up with a surprising find. The site had been leased by the United States government, he said, to construct a new Social Security office building.
[...]
A federal project is exempt from local regulations, and requires no demolition permit or notification to affected neighbors. Doctor and Green said that prior to razing the old building, they checked with the appropriate city departments and the district’s then councilman (and now mayor) Antonio Villaraigosa, and were told that no demolition permit or notification to neighbors were necessary.

Now I'm not sure whether this exemption is a good thing or a bad one. Taking into account the notorious difficulty of getting any construction done in California, I don't blame the feds for exempting themselves from local regulation. But the contrast is interesting.

TSA Incompetence

2006-03-13T15:16:00.000-05:00

But I repeat myself. For four years we've put up with this agency harassing us when we travel, adding thousands of people to the federal payroll and the federal employee union membership rolls, while doing nothing to actually make us any safer. Now the TSA appears to have blown the Moussaoui trial, through sheer incompetece.

Remind me, whose idea was it, exactly, to create the TSA?

Winter Sports

2006-03-12T19:24:00.000-05:00

Apparently Senator Biden thinks that soldiering should be a winter sport. At least, that was the first thought I had when I saw this headline...

Postrel, Kass, and Kidneys

2006-03-06T01:07:00.000-05:00

Instapundit notes that Virginia Postrel is giving a kidney to a friend, but quotes her to the effect that "unless people like Leon Kass get their way, this will be an obsolete procedure in the not too distant future".

And if people like Kass get their way, it may still be an obsolete procedure in the not too distant future, for the opposite reason. If Kass is as negative on the notion of extending life in general as Glenn says he is, then that negativity should apply not only to yet-to-be-developed technologies, but also to ones that we are already using, such as kidney transplants – or penicillin.

Grrrr..

2006-02-27T08:07:00.000-05:00

NPR just mentioned the NSA's "domestic spying program". For the I've-lost-count time: it's not domestic. It covers international calls only. How hard is this to understand?

Anticipatory Warrants, again

2006-02-24T15:43:00.000-05:00

Pretty much the same as last time. Orin Kerr once again called for comments, this time stating in his own voice:

Am I missing something, or does the text of the Fourth Amendment answer this question for us? The text says that no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause. In this context, it seems to me that "upon" means "following the establishment of" and "issue" means "signed by the judge." If that’s right, doesn’t the plain text of the Fourth Amendment prohibit anticipatory warrants?

. I replied in comments, much as I did then.

What makes you think that "upon", in this context, means "after", rather than "on the grounds of"?

Orin wrote:

If the constitution said, "no
warrants shall issue, but based on probable cause," or "no warrants
shall issue, but on the grounds of probable cause," doesn't that still
prohibit anticipatory warrants?

My answer: No, it doesn't. That's why you originally wrote: 'In this context, it seems to me that "upon" means "following the establishment of'; and if that's what "upon" means, then you're right.

But I don't think that is what it means. All it means, I think, is that the grounds for the warrant must add up to probable cause. So when the police tell the magistrate the facts as they know them, if he thinks they don't add up to probable cause, he must not issue the warrant, and if he does issue it then it's invalid. Similarly, if what the police told him turned out not to be facts after all, then his decision that they added up to probable cause is irrelevant, and the warrant is retroactively invalid.

But nowhere does it say that the magistrate's assesment of the facts, and decision that they constitute probable cause, and the consequent issue of the warrant, must occur after the facts themselves. All the magistrate is doing is issuing a legal opinion, based on a set of givens. If X and Y and Z are all true, then probable cause exists, otherwise it doesn't. He can do so when X and Y and Z are all true, or he can do so before they become true; if they never do, then his opinion, while still true, is irrelevant.

Ports

2006-02-23T18:03:00.000-05:00

I've got no particular opinion on the port issue. My gut feeling is that there's nothing to worry about. But this isn't about that, it's about this post from Instapundit yesterday, quoting email from reader Steve Soukup:

Drudge runs with the headline "Arab Co., White House had Secret Agreement..." Follow the link and you find an AP story detailing this "secret agreement." At the end of the third paragraph, is the following, "Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries." Really? So how, exactly, is this news? Does it really deserve to be fronted on Drudge?

Mr Soukup seems to have trouble reading. This is the news. If such obligations are routinely attached to approval in other industries, why weren't they attached here? That's what makes this agreement at least somewhat unusual. There may well be a good reason why the usual requirements were not made here, but in the absence of any obvious explanation it's a fair point to challenge.

Proxy For the People?

2006-02-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

NBC reporter David Gregory thinks the White House press corps is a "proxy for the American people". That's odd, I thought our proxies were these people, and this one. I don't recall seeing Mr Gregory's name on any ballot.

But somehow he's got this idea in his head, so just to make things clear: Mr Gregory, whatever proxy you think you hold for me, I hereby revoke it.

Peggy Noonan On Mrs. King's Funeral

2006-02-13T10:44:00.000-05:00

I agree with the positive, why's everyone (on the right) so outraged feelings about Coretta Scott King's funeral that Peggy Noonan writes about in her Friday WSJ column. Frankly, comparisons to the Wellstone rally were absurd, and all this huffing and puffing on the right just shows WHY the GOP can't pick up black votes.

Here's a funeral for the wife of the greatest black activist ever who was no slouch when it came to activism on her own part. So no one can say anything political? The woman's entire LIFE was political, and guess what, she probably never voted Republican after, say, Eisenhower(if she could even get to the polls back in he bad old days of Jim Crow and poll taxes, etc). Yes, it's all well and good to make fun of Jimmy Carter, and please, lets do it some more, but not for this. Republican's already have major problems getting African-American votes. So what's the solution? Why, complaining about a funeral for the matriarch of the Civil Rights movement! Not a good call, nor a particularly wise battle to wage. Especially after Ken Mehlman has apologized for the Southern Strategy that pushed blacks away from the party in the first place.

It's bad enough that Al Franken has been able to use the unfounded Criticism of this funeral to repost hisrather disingenuous take on the truly awkward and uncomfortable Wellstone event in 2002. And Al, Ventura left early BECAUSE of the booing and the rah-rah mentality. Yes, not everyone was booing, but your numbers are a little...low. The whole event, which can be found onlne, betrays Al's take, but because of Republican idiocy on King's funeral, Al comes off as "setting the record straight". Which is BS, but still, the GOP gave it to him.

Anyway, Noonan is very spritual, and her take on the funeral is the correct one, I think. The worst remarks were Carter's and they were hardly even cringeworthy. If that's the worst in a 6-hour event, I think that there's very little to complain about. Come on, the right isn't supposed to be overly sensitive, that's the left's job. The office of the President was not disparaged, and the President himself wasn't mentioned by name. Let this go, and fight real battles. This is a case of the GOP making political hay out of a fuenral, not Democrats. We should shut up and move on to real issues.

Amazon Recommendation

2006-02-12T00:52:00.000-05:00

Amazon does this thing where it looks at what you have bought, and what others who bought the same things have also bought, and guesses what else you might like to buy. Sometimes the results are useful, and sometimes...

Here's a f'rinstance. Today Amazon sent me a friendly note, recommending this book, by W. Leon Smith and everyone's favourite crazy woman, Cindy Sheehan. Why on earth did Amazon think I'd be interested? Because "We've noticed that customers who have purchased You Can't Say That! : The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws, by David E. Bernstein, also purchased books by W. Leon Smith". Now I've never heard of this W. Leon Smith fellow, but if he's co-writing books with Mother Cindy, then I don't think I'm interested in anything else he's written either, even if the people who buy them are also discriminating enough to buy Bernstein's book.

Those Wacky Danes

2006-02-08T17:14:00.000-05:00

Denmark seems to be flavour of the month in the blogosphere. Everyone's reprinting those cartoons, Murray over at Silent Running is running a Buy Danish campaign, people are once again raising the memory of Good King Christian, and everything's coming up Marguerite Daisies.

But there's another side to the Danes, and David Bernstein doesn't want it to be forgotten.

Figaro

2006-02-06T16:24:00.000-05:00

Yisrael Medad points out that the current cartoon brouhaha is merely the latest outbreak of a long-standing problem:

I cobble together a verse comedy about the customs of the harem, assuming that, as a Spanish writer, I can say what I like about Mohammed without drawing hostile fire. Next thing, some envoy from God knows where turns up and complains that in my play I have offended the Ottoman empire, Persia, a large slice of the Indian peninsula, the whole of Egypt, and the kingdoms of Barca, Tripoli, Tunisi, Algeria, and Morocco. And so my play sinks without trace, all to placate a bunch of Muslim princes, not one of whom, as far as I know, can read but who beat the living daylights out of us and say we are 'Christian dogs.' Since they can't stop a man thinking, they take it out on his hide instead..."
The Marriage of Figaro (1784), Act V, Scene 3

"We Stand On Guard For Thee"

2006-01-31T01:56:00.000-05:00

Or not. Here's Mark Steyn:

At the Washington state/British Columbia border last week, two guys on the lam were hightailing it through Blaine heading for the 49th parallel with the cops in hot pursuit. Alerted to what was coming their way, Canada's (unarmed) border guards walked off the job. For a country whose national anthem lyrics are mostly endless reprises of the line "we stand on guard for thee," we could at least stand on guard. A few years back, I was chatting with a border guard at the Derby Line, Vt./Rock Island, Quebec, crossing. A beat-up sedan came hurtling northward and we jumped out of the way. She sounded a klaxon. By then the driver was halfway up the Trans-Quebecoise autoroute and, if he ever heard her stern warning, he declined to brake and reverse back to the post to show his papers. "Oh, well," she said to me, "it's probably nothing."

(via Jim Lindgren)

The Problem With FISA

2006-01-29T17:10:00.000-05:00

Judge Richard Posner pins it down:

So the problem with FISA is that the surveillance it authorizes is unusable to discover who is a terrorist, as distinct from eavesdropping on known terrorists--yet the former is the more urgent task. Even to conduct FISA-compliant surveillance of non-U.S. persons, you have to know beforehand whether they are agents of a terrorist group, when what you really want to know is who those agents are.
FISA's limitations are borrowed from law enforcement. When crimes are committed, there are usually suspects, and electronic surveillance can be used to nail them. In counterterrorist intelligence, you don't know whom to suspect–you need surveillance to find out. The recent leaks from within the FBI, expressing skepticism about the NSA program, reflect the FBI's continuing inability to internalize intelligence values. Criminal investigations are narrowly focused and usually fruitful. Intelligence is a search for the needle in the haystack. FBI agents don't like being asked to chase down clues gleaned from the NSA's interceptions, because 99 out of 100 (maybe even a higher percentage) turn out to lead nowhere. The agents think there are better uses of their time. Maybe so. But maybe we simply don't have enough intelligence officers working on domestic threats.

(via Instapundit)

Quick Thought on Munich

2006-01-27T08:28:00.000-05:00

I have not seen "Munich" though I'm hardly boycotting the film. Frankly, after suffering through 3 hours of "King Kong", a movie that should not have been remade, especially twice, I don't have the stomach for three more hours anytime soon. What bothers me, and I think it's what bothers Milhouse, is that the film really ISN'T true. The book that was the primary source of the film has been discredited, and now two British documentaries have basically come out and said that Spielberg's film is mostly made up. Now, I can't comment on the moral equivalency aspects of the film because I haven't seen it. But I do remember that when "Hurricane" came out a few years ago, IT got hammered by the critics for taking some liberties with Rueben Carter's life. That torpedoed the films Oscar chances, and probably cost Denzel Washington an Oscar. Spielberg and Tony Kushner can talk about how the film is only "inspired" by true events, but it certainly wasn't sold that way. I'm not saying Munich doesn't deserve consideration as the Oscars, nor am I passing judgement on the film itself. I'm just wondering why playing fast and loose with the truth is OK in this film, but not OK in a "historical" film that dealt with much smaller a subject(though an important one, to be sure).

ETA: I have just read John O'Sullivan's excellent critique of Munich at National Review Online. It turns out that the book "Vengence" that the film is based on is not quite discredited, but is controversial in a way. He also lays out some strong arguments against Spielberg's take on the film. I'm going to see it and read the book, and O'Sullivan suggests. I recommend the article be read because it's one of the first ones I've seen that actually places the souce and themovie side by side.

Beds, and the people who lie in them

2006-01-26T19:34:00.000-05:00

Dhimmi Carter wants the international community to continue to fund the new "Palestinian" government, directly or indirectly:

He added that if international law barred donor countries from directly funding a Hamas-led government than the US and the EU should bypass the Palestinian Authority and provide the "much-needed" money to the Palestinians via non-governmental channels such as UN agencies.

"Regardless of the government, I would hope that potential donors find alternative means to be generous to the Palestinian people [even] if the donor decides to bypass the Palestinian government completely," Carter said, stressing that his main concern was to avert the "suffering" of the Palestinian people, which he said could lead to a new cycle of violence.

Um, these would be the same people who just chose to be represented by Hamas, right? Why exactly should any decent person care to avert their suffering? This is not a helpless population being controlled against its will by a criminal minority. By electing criminals and terrorists to represent them, the people of the territories have established that they are themselves criminals and terrorists, and should be treated as such. They have made their beds; now they should be made to lie in them.

More Munich

2006-01-26T17:30:00.000-05:00

An actual Mossad agent responds.

European intelligence agencies, angry at their own governments' temerity in the face of Arab intimidation, generally looked the other way when a Palestinian terrorist was eliminated on their soil [...]
I know of no case in which a Mossad operative had a crisis of conscience about these operations, which were understood to have the clear and immediate purpose of saving innocent lives. When I inquired, at an early stage, as to the nature of the quasi-judicial mechanism invoked back in Tel Aviv to determine the guilt of targets for assassination, I received a clear and convincing response. Needless to say, targets were determined and located through an extensive intelligence-gathering operation by Israelis, and not in the dubious way depicted in the film [...]
During the 1970s, none of us had qualms about "moral equivalency", an issue debated by the Israeli characters in Munich. Palestinian terrorists were killing innocent civilians; in response, Israel was targeting only terrorists and the terrorist infrastructure. When a single nonterrorist was killed by mistake [...], the entire operation was closed down.

The Truth About Munich

2006-01-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

From the Grauniad, of all places. Will wonders never cease?

"Stolen" land

2006-01-19T20:06:00.000-05:00

From time to time we hear about some Jewish community in Judea or Samaria or Benjamin (what the press like to call a "settlement"), that is alleged to have been established on land stolen from Arabs living nearby. Such claims should be treated with extreme skepticism. Here's an example of such a claim.

Rules

2006-01-18T15:17:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write something about lobbying and Abramoff and political donations and all the goo-goo outrage that we've been seeing. But I got lazy, and it paid off, sort of. Instapundit points to Andrew Ferguson, who wrote pretty much what I was going to. Except for the bit about the Swift Boat Vets, who are in no way corrupt. I don't know what he means by "ideological corruption", but I can't see how witnesses to an event exposing an unpleasant truth about someone can be called corrupt.

Shadegg Endorsement

2006-01-13T16:21:00.000-05:00

I can't speak for my fellow Neo Warmongers, but I'm happy to endorse John Shadegg for majority leader.

Danish Cartoons

2006-01-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

The Arab riots in Denmark a few months ago were supposedly over some cartoons published in a Danish newspaper. Now Moslems are boycotting Denmark, a reward has been offered in Pakistan for the cartoonists' deaths, and Louise Arbour is investigating. If you were wondering what the whole brouhaha was about, you can see the original cartoons here.

UPDATE 3-Feb-06: that site seems to have been taken down, so here's another link.

Did you hear the one...

2005-12-29T19:27:00.000-05:00

...about two Swedes, a Finn and a Somali, who ~~walked into a bar~~ raped a woman? Well, it's not very funny. And it's not really true. But it's how people talk when they're desperately trying to convince themselves that what they see happening before their eyes isn't really happening; or when they've got insane hate-speech laws that force them to pretend that what's happening isn't.

(H/T: Murray at Silent Running)

Finally, Some Sanity From the Courts

2005-12-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

The grinch hasn't got his claws in everywhere. A panel of the 6th circuit recently issued a decision in ACLU v Mercer County, including this:

the ACLU makes repeated reference to “the separation of church and state.” This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state. See Lynch, 465 U.S. at 673; Lemon, 403 U.S. at 614; Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 312 (1952); Brown v. Gilmore, 258 F.3d 265, 274 (4th Cir. 2001); Stark v. Indep. Sch. Dist., No. 640., 123 F.3d 1068, 1076 (8th Cir. 1997); see also Capitol Square, 243 F.3d at 300 (dismissing strict separatism as “a notion that simply perverts our history”). Our Nation’s history is replete with governmental acknowledgment and in some cases, accommodation of religion. See, e.g., Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) (upholding legislative prayer); McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961) (upholding Sunday closing laws); see also Lynch, 465 U.S. at 674 (“There is an unbroken history of official acknowledgment by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life from at least 1789.”); Capitol Square, 243 F.3d at 293-99 (describing historical examples of governmental involvement with religion). After all, “[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Zorach, 343 U.S. at 313. Thus, state recognition of religion that falls short of endorsement is constitutionally permissible.

For an organisation that claims to hold the first amendment dear, it would behoove the ACLU to stick to its actual language, rather than drag in a phrase like “separation of church and state” that is more at home in KKK propaganda than in the constitution.

(H/T: Major Scarlet at Silent Running)

do-mes-tic

2005-12-29T08:51:00.000-05:00

Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French domestique, from Latin domesticus, from domus
1: of or relating to the household or the family <domestic economy> <domestic violence>
2: of, relating to, or originating within a country and especially one's own country <domestic politics> <domestic wines> <domestic spying>
(slightly adapted from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

So how does spying on international calls and email come to be continually referred to as "domestic"? Heard it again on NPR this morning, hence this peeved post. Plus, I hadn't posted anything in a while...

How To Get Disbarred, In One Easy Lesson

2005-12-23T09:59:00.000-05:00

Patterico has this story of a criminal defense laywer who suborned perjury - in writing!

To compound the stupidity, wait for him to claim that the emails are privileged, and his client had no right to turn them over to the authorities...

Bill Bradford RIP

2005-12-15T04:47:00.000-05:00

I just learned that RW Bradford, founder and editor of Liberty magazine, died last week. I've been reading Liberty for about 15 years, and I've been a subscriber for nearly 12 years. I've found it mostly informative, somtimes infuriating, and nearly always interesting. I often found myself arguing with articles and editorials, and in fact when I started blogging here, I intended to write about each issue as it came out, especially the bits I strongly disagreed with (and every month there were always at least something in that category).

It was in Liberty that I read Ron Paul's justification, from a right-to-life perspective, of legalising RU428. And in Liberty I learned about what was going on inside the Libertarian Party in the late '90s and early '00s. Liberty taught me that there is no such species as the Northern Spotted Owl, that Rose Wilder Lane ghost-wrote The Little House on the Pairie for her mother, and how HL Mencken really felt about Jews.

Bradford took an extreme isolationist stand on foreign policy, opposing every USAn military action, it seemed, ever, but he also published pro-war articles and opinions, if they were well reasoned, and came from a libertarian perspective. And he published articles on the Israeli situation that took the side of the "Palestinians", including one by Dean Ahmad which almost led me to cancel my subscription, but I couldn't bring myself to do that.

For all that, thank you Mr Bradford, and wherever your new journey takes you, ride free!

Excuse me, I'm having a fanboy moment.

2005-12-14T22:37:00.000-05:00

One of the coolest people in the world has just started a blog. Here are his reasons for "finally getting around to starting a blog". The purpose is to get feedback on new ideas, which can help spot errors before too much gets built on them.

Neo Warmonger isn't the first blog to link to it (I learned about it from Gary McGath), but it's got to be one of the first.

How to destroy a police force

2005-12-14T13:22:00.000-05:00

Former NSW Police detective Tim Priest describes how to destroy a police force, and create a race riot.

This is interesting...

2005-12-13T11:56:00.000-05:00

Steven Hayes (via Instapundit):

Much of today's debate about the threat posed three years ago by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is based on past assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies that we now know had no real sources on the ground in Iraq. The Bush administration seems remarkably uninterested in discovering, now that we have reams of material from Saddam's regime, what the actual terror-related and WMD-related activities of that regime were. But as the political debate of recent weeks makes clear, answering these questions remains central to the debate over the war.

So let me get this straight. We thought we knew what was going on in there, but when we got there we found that everything we thought turned out to be wrong; black mark for us. But meanwhile we have also found out what really was going on, and that doesn't count for anything.

Time for the Airing of Grievances

2005-12-13T11:29:00.000-05:00

Everyone who reads this site knows how fed up I am with the Republicans' spending habits. And they also know that all of us support the Club for Growth. So here's a link to the Club's Festivus Airing of Grievances with the spend-happy Congress. Remember, Festivus isn't over until you pin an Economic RINO!

"The Panic Over Iraq"/Dongzhou

2005-12-11T06:54:00.000-05:00

Norman Podhoretz 's must read. The chutzbah of Zbigniew Brzezinski & Brent Scowcroft critiquing this adminstrations' foreign policy is jaw dropping. Even reliable 'wingers in my circle of aquantance have to critize Bush (Is that you Monty?). It's the CW, the zeitgeist. The post war planning, disbanding of the police, etc. etc . Prima facia incompetence by an president that can't find Iraq on a map.

The conventional wisdom on Iraq/Bush is not just wrong, but the spasm of a failed worldview. The Dongzhou massacre won't fire up any demonstrations on the left. Andrew Sullivan will say the right things but won't match his fury against water-boarding terrorists because this really isn't about human rights violations. It's anti-western/anti-Americanism/anti-semitism circa 1933. Some portion of the 'left' would make common cause with head-hackers, for the enemy is us.

This is a media war. (Is there any way to understand Sharon but through this prism?). I can thus understand the McCain amendment, but's it's wrong headed and weak where we should be strong. A healthy culture at war would not concede such moral culpability. We would be (will be) attacked by the 'left' notwithstanding. Better to win big and keep advancing:
Onward to Iran. Who's with me?

What do they teach them at these schools?

2005-12-10T20:39:00.000-05:00

Australian university students have finally been freed from compulsory union membership, with the help of independent senator Steve Fielding. The student unions, which for decades have been controlled by extreme leftist "activists", and supported by the compulsory "contributions" of students who have no interest either in politics or in anything else the union has to offer, are understandably not impressed. Shortly after the vote, Senator Fielding's office was vandalised:

Monash University Student Association president Nick Richardson [...] said he did not know anything about the vandalism of Senator Fielding's office, but believed it would have been the work of students. Robert Nicholas, education officer for the Queensland branch of the National Student Union, said the vandalism of Senator Fielding's office was a legitimate expression of students' anger at the bill. "He has made himself a political target by voting for the legislation so he'll have to live with the consequences," he said.

To quote Professor Digory Kirke, "Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?".

His Poor Mother

2005-12-09T09:19:00.000-05:00

Tzachi Hanegbi, who took over as temporary Likud leader two weeks ago, after Sharon turned his coat, has decided to follow him into his new party.

My first and only thought is: His poor mother.

Blanco fiddled...

2005-12-05T19:13:00.000-05:00

...while New Orleans drowned. The Junkyard Blogger hasn't forgotten about Katrina and its aftermath, even if the rest of the world has. He's still turning over rocks, and noting what scurries out.

The federal response wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a response to the actual storm that was killing and threatening others. Blanco’s response, at least as described in the internal communications, was primarily to the political storm that engulfed her personally. She put politics before responsibility; Bush put responsibility before politics.

Tell me again...

2005-12-05T18:35:00.000-05:00

...about how the anti-war left "supports the troops"

"Communications Breakdown"

2005-12-05T17:08:00.000-05:00

So Connecticut had a major bomb scare, and nobody bothered to tell Homeland Security, who had no clue it was happening until they saw it on the news. Just as the New Orleans city authorities started sending people to take shelter in the Convention Center, but didn't bother telling FEMA. Michael Brown was lambasted for not having known about the situation at the Convention Center before the networks reported it. Look, it's very simple. If you don't tell people, how are they supposed to know? And if they don't take control of a situation, because nobody bothered to tell them that it existed, whose fault is that? If your house is on fire and you don't call the fire brigade, don't blame them when they don't magically appear to put it out.

Omnibus Poll?

2005-12-04T03:37:00.000-05:00

Isn't that when you ask commuters for their opinions?

When It Comes to Spending, Most House Republicans are RINO'S

2005-12-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

Milhouse recently posted an item about how some RINO's and the Dems blocked an earmark-less Labor-HHS-Spending bill. He pointed it out as an example of why we need more Republicans in the House and that we need to clear out the RINO's. We do indeed need to clear out the fiscal RINO's, but unfortunately, they're the one's who would benefit from an increase in the Republican majority. They're the ones who run the House. And they have been spending like mad. Despite the occasional good move, such as the non-earmarked bill and the anger over the "Bridge to Nowhere", there is still little fiscal sanity in either House of Congress, and no true fiscal conservative seems to have any source of power. With domestic spending rising as it has over the last 10 years, a non-earmarked bill seems like a quaint, if rare, gesture. It certainly won't make me change my mind that the current Republican's need a shake up, and I won't lose much sleep if they lose control of either the Senate or the House. The President hasn't shown much leadership in the fiscal realm either, so it makes little difference who is running Congress. When all the Republican's are fiscal RINO's, are the even Republican's anymore? My crisis of conscience continues unabated.

Touché

2005-11-28T01:00:00.000-05:00

Eric Raymond on the mainstream media:

They’d rather cover fictional riots in New Orleans than factual ones in Orleans, if only because they can more easily blame George Bush for the former.

A Timely Reminder

2005-11-21T13:51:00.000-05:00

Just about when some of us were wondering just what the hell was the point of Republican control of Congress, if they kept behaving like Democrats, and even asking whether there was any longer a difference between the two, and whether it wasn't perhaps time for a change, comes this reminder:

Congressional negotiators for the House and Senate agreed on a $142 billion Labor-HHS-Education spending bill with no earmarks. [...] Anyway, things looked great until the House brought the conference report on the bill with no pork barrel earmarks to the floor for a vote. There were 209 votes for the conference report, every one of them cast by a Republican. But there were 224 votes against the conference report, including 201 Democrats, 22 moderate GOPers and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who votes with the Democrats.

Yes, this is bad news. A Republican-controlled House voted down the first serious attack on pork. But notice that 209 Republicans voted for the report, while only 22 voted against it; meanwhile, every single Democrat voted against. The lesson is clear - however bad things are now, a Democrat majority is sure to make them worse. What we need to do is not abandon the GOP, but increase its majority, while clearing out the RINOs.

Biden Lies Again

2005-11-21T10:32:00.000-05:00

I just heard a sound clip from Biden:

They said Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons; at that same time I said it had not
They said and implied the threat was imminent; I never said that
There was no "real or even serious link" (sic) between Saddam and al Qaeda

Oy vey. "Reconstituted weapons" - this comes from an interview in which Cheney kept talking about Saddam having reconstituted his nuclear weapons development program; at one point, he left out the words "development program". Impeach him!

Imminent threat? Please. The President explicitly said that the threat was not imminent, but that we couldn't wait for it to become imminent.

And yes, Senator, there was a confirmed relationship between them, even if no piece of paper was found with Saddam's and Osama's signatures on it. Even the now-discredited Commission agreed with that; all they said was that there was no evidence they'd worked together on that specific attack. And there isn't — even if Atta did go to Prague to meet an Iraqi intelligence officer, they might have been talking about some other attack that never happened; at the time, Czech intelligence thought they were planning an attack in Prague, and for all we know that may still be the case.

Bush Tones Down Attack?

2005-11-20T17:23:00.000-05:00

According to the AP,

After fiercely defending his Iraq policy across Asia, President Bush abruptly toned down his attack on war critics Sunday and said there was nothing unpatriotic about opposing his strategy. "People should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq," Bush said, three days after agreeing with Vice President Dick Cheney that the critics were "reprehensible." The president also praised Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., as "a fine man" and a strong supporter of the military despite the congressman's call for troop withdrawal as soon as possible.

Sorry, but I just don't see any toning down here. Of course people should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions — nobody I've seen on the right has suggested otherwise. But they should not feel comfortable expressing falsehoods in order to bolster their opinions, not when those falsehoods give aid and comfort to the enemy. And I'm sure Murtha is indeed a fine man, with a history of supporting the military in general, but he's wrong on this war, and he's been wrong on it since the beginning.

Last week, TigerHawk wrote a thoughtful piece on the tension between dissent and patriotism. See also Instapundit's take.

This has always been a contentious issue, going back to Burke's support for the American rebels, and Thoreau's condemnation of the USAn invasion of Mexico. Could they be described as unpatriotic, or even as traitors? FTR, I think Burke is best seen as having taken sides in a civil war, so the question of patriotism didn't arise. And Thoreau explicitly rejected patriotism, or any duty of loyalty to a country, so he wouldn't object to being so described.

Tearing the Transparent Tissue

2005-11-18T02:14:00.000-05:00

Murray at Silent Running reproduces the list of charges against the terrorist suspects recently arrested in Sydney. Tom Paine, however, is far too canny to be fooled by this "transparent tissue of a farrago of odious lies and half-truths designed to divert attention from the Great Iraqi Oil Grab". Read the whole thing. Really.

Thought For Two Days Ago

2005-11-17T20:08:00.000-05:00

Catching up on Silent Running, I see that back on Tuesday Murray had a thought. Good one, Murray. Let us know when you have another.

<subliminal>PS: Buy a gnome home.</subliminal>

Terminology Stupidity again

2005-11-15T17:29:00.000-05:00

Three months ago I posted this piece about the tendency to turn euphemisms into the thing they represent, and them use them inappropriately. Here's a fresh example. (HT: Patterico, whose heading is "And in Financial News, the Stock Market Had Its Worst Day Since African-American Monday".)

Bush/Rove Mind Control Forced Democrats to Vote for the War!

2005-11-15T14:36:00.000-05:00

The President has been hitting back pretty hard against just about all of his critics, from the media to the Dems and even at some fellow Republicans, crying foul that they've suddenly decided he "misled" the country into war even though they believed in the CIA's intelligence as much as he did. The standard response from the Democrats has been "Well, he manipulated the intelligence" or "we hadn't seend Joe Wilson's 'report' yet", or other such nonsense. It's BS, of course. Even the few who voted against the war, such as Ted Kennedy, have reframed their objections, now including what would seem to be great powers of perception. Tom Maguire is humiliating all of them, quote by quote. Check out his links to Captain Ed and his analysis of Howard "Tell the truth" Dean's frequent departures from said truth on Meet the Press. Then read EJ Dionne's colomun in the Washington Post and wonder no longer if the Democrats have any shame at all when in come to our efforts to secure a lasting peace with democracy in Iraq.

ETA: Historical context on Dionne revisionist history: QandO demolishes the entire premise of Dionne's column.

(hat tip-Instapundit)

Impeachment

2005-11-15T06:29:00.000-05:00

Charles Krauthammer suggested/predicted on Brit Hume's program that Democrats are setting the stage for Bush's impeachment on pre-war intelligence fixing should they gain majorities in 2006. Seems plausible. Even if it fails, it will do incredible damage to Republicans, but more especially to American interests.

Media & The War

2005-11-15T06:16:00.000-05:00

Stephen Green has an important post. Is the media the main battlefield of this conflict? If so, we are not doing well, with dim prospects. Steven Den Beste writes on how the terrorists are getting bad press. We cannot count on our enemy defeating itself and cannot currently wage the war Green's analysis requires.

Lest We Forget

2005-11-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

BUMP AND REPOST:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play

Read The Rest

Gee, what a nice man.

2005-11-08T14:48:00.000-05:00

Walter Murphy, Samuel Alito's jurisprudence professor back at Princeton, had this to say:

"Sam is his own man," Murphy said. "He'll never be 'Scalito.' And then it's a gross insult to say in the mold of [other conservative and constructionist justice] Clarence Thomas. Their IQs are so radically different ... We're not talking about someone in Sam's intellectual league."

Jerk, or racist jerk? You decide.

(Hat tip: Orin Kerr)

Land For Peace

2005-11-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it's time to emerge from the dark ages and finally embrace this concept.