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Saturday, February 11, 2006
Allen Wins CPAC Straw Poll
Posted by on 2.11.06 @ 7:15PM
In the Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates straw poll, here's how CPAC attendees came down on the question of who is most likely to be the Republican nominee:
George Allen - 22%
John McCain - 20%
Rudy Giuliani - 12%
Condoleezza Rice - 10%
Told ya so. By the way, I didn't go to CPAC today, but I gather Blogger's Row was cleared out before the results were announced, as I can't find them yet via Technorati; I had to go to the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which mischaracterizes the straw poll as a straight preference poll.
Dershowtiz Dems Warn the Clintons
Posted by on 2.11.06 @ 5:01PM
Talk cable provocateur Alan Dershowitz told me clearly while discussing his new book, Preemption, that he will not support Hillary Clinton unless and only if she supports preventive war aganst Iran when the time comes.
Dershowitz is adamant. He does not fudge this one. I heard a fury and impatience with the Democratic machinery that will not vanish in the fog of war. I speak routinely with Dems who have similar short, bilious tempers.
Significance to me is that the Clintons have no room to maneuver on the right. If the Clintons aim to veer leftish for early '08 primary season in Iowa and NH and New York, then the Dershowitz Dems will holler on air and damage the trust factor for the general campaign.
Underneath this game is the profound fact on the ground that Israel is in trouble, and that any signal from a Dem candidate that Iran and its pet Syria can be dealt with, or contained, or ignored, will put Israel on a last regimen of dialysis. The Clintons cannot both please their Netrooters and maintain a coherent war fighting policy. Are there enough Dem votes left in Michigan or Iowa or New Mexico or New Hampshire or Wisconsin or Minnesota to permit the Clintons to jettison Netroots as appeasers and still hold or win the states?
And Ohio is gone if the Clintons go left and abandon the Dershowitz Dems. Not even limitless face time for Clark will save the Ohio dream ship.
American Hero Vouches for Pillar
Posted by on 2.11.06 @ 4:34PM
CIA source is adamant that Pillar was not risk averse while at NIO: that when he ran the desk, he was aggressive, quick, demanding, tireless. "A fabulous officer," is the quote, and this is admiration from an American hero who jumped into the darkness of the ummah and directed deadly fire while under fire, a man who made history that will remain a thousand years. Am not qualifying: When a hero tells you that Pillar is first-rate, then Pillar is first-rate. Critical is that Pillar is an analyst, not operations. Said to be straitlaced, stern, most conservative, and this probably means politically as well as professionally. Pillar is an Army vet, Vietnam era. Have not read his book, Terrorism and Foreign Policy, but am sending for it and will interview Pillar soon enough. Pillar now at Georgetown.
Source says that Pillar does not overstate and is a cautious opiner.
Puzzle how he responds to his face on the front page above fold of the decidedly thrashing-about, slab-sided, pet-whining Gore-Kerry-Clinton-Dean broadsheet of the WaPo. Puzzle if Pillar can control how he is used by men and women who have never jumped into darkness or directed men who are in darkness and need eyes.
Also, the intel war for Afghan, Iq, Syr, Ir, has many versions now being told. Pillar's version fits some of the stories I hear. Something is profoundly disconnected between political apparatus and national security apparatus and war fighters. But then Pillar was an analyst at NIO Mideast during the moment in history that the ummah launched on New York. There was not and is not clarity on intel from ummah. All is shadows, a thousand years of shadows. War-fighting on the basis of probabilities of shadows' being real WMD machines is a sleepless endeavor.
Smile at wit of me writing for Nation. Katrina V is a long time friend, same for her husband Steve Cohen: I know them to be patriots and passionate political thinkers. I have never won an argument with either of them. I keep trying.
Pence in the Morning
Posted by on 2.11.06 @ 11:02AM
Somehow, Congressman Mike Pence was relegated to 8:30 Saturday morning at CPAC. What a cryin' shame. His address was a rousing call to action. He argued that not only is the Republican movement off course, but that wrong heading is accepted. The party in D.C. accepts more government as the accepted philosophy of government. "We control the spending and the process and we wonder how things got to such a state." Pence has posted his prepared remarks on his campaign website. Read it all. It's vastly different from the tunnel vision offered by so many of the party leaders these days, especially those in Washington.
Speaking of Washington, at a bloggers' reception hosted by Human Events after his address, a man from Washington State asked how he can get Rep. Pence to visit and rally the troops there. He answered that he just needed to be invited, but offered a few thoughts on the two Washingtons: "You're the Washington that I like. You're sitting in 30 square miles surrounded by a place called reality. That's a Washington where they produce things." Indeed.
This is a man who has fun discussing political philosophy at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. He's a man of ideas. He's friendly, genuine, humble, has gravitas, and loves his wife, Karen. When he entered the room, he made sure he located her and had her seated at his side before he began. This is a man who is still calling for the abolition of the Department of Education (remember that, Republicans?) and said that if U.N. reform fails, the U.S. "should seriously consider the formation of a new world body of free peoples." He's rightly suspicious of the establishment, joking that his daughter wasn't impressed by his award of Human Events Man of the Year. "If Dad's ever Time magazine Man of the Year, it's time to lock him up."
Even though Pence is a rising star among the conservative movement and, to a lesser extent, within the party, he's still underestimated. He's got the right stuff, and he's speaking at 8:30 Saturday morning.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Pillar a Trusted War-Fighter
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 8:24PM
Report from best CIA source that retired CIA analyst Paul Pillar featured in this morning's Washington Post was a candid, thorough, war-fighter trusted analyst who moved to the critical NIO post for the ME and South Asia just prior to the war. The politics of Pillar's knocking the White House are most intriguing. CIA in turmoil. But Pillar said to be a golden boy who got away.
Re: Steele
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 5:00PM
"Is the destruction of an embryo less horrific than the murder of an adult?" Yes, to me it is.
I don't expect to reconcile our moral assumptions here. But Steele was speaking before a Jewish group, where the horror of the Holocaust is viscerally felt and the primacy of life after birth, far from being a "current fad," is part of an ancient tradition (Jewish law requires abortion if necessary to save the life of the mother). He was right to apologize.
Turin Transportation
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 3:25PM
Have you ever had the pleasure of riding in a taxi in Rome? Or a bus along a mountain road in Italy? If so, you can imagine the impact of this report from the Daily Telegraph:
"More than 2,000 bus drivers from all over Italy have been drafted in to ferry athletes, officials and media personnel around the Olympic sites, and many of the drivers are unfamiliar with local roads, let alone local weather conditions."
Having done both the taxi and mountain bus routine, let me remind all who shall so venture forth that a coward dies a thousand deaths: the valiant taste of death but once.
Re: Steele
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 3:02PM
John, I wasn't looking for consensus on the moral status of an embryo. I'm sure Lt. Gov. Steele wasn't either when he made his remarks, because consensus does not determine the morality of an act. Truth exists independent of the current fad.
Speaking for myself, I'm appealing to morality, science, and common sense. An embryo is a human being, different only in size, not kind. The best guy to state this case, as always, is Robbie George, who wrote in the fall 2004/winter 2005 New Atlantis,
Indeed they are, and contemporary human embryology and developmental biology leave no significant room for doubt about it. The adult human being reading these words was, at an earlier stage of his or her life, an adolescent, and before that an infant. At still earlier stages he or she was a fetus and before that an embryo. In the infant, fetal, and embryonic stages, each of us was then what we are now, namely, a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens. Each of us developed by a gradual, unified, and self-directed process from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages of human development, and into adulthood, with his or her determinateness, unity, and identity fully intact. Although none of us was ever a sperm cell or an ovum-the sperm and ovum from whose union we emerged were genetically and functionally parts of other human beings-each of us was once an embryo, just as we were once infants, children, and adolescents. In referring to "the embryo," then, we are referring not to something distinct from the human being that each of us is, but rather to a certain stage in the development of each human being-like saying "the teenager" or "the five-year old."
So John, while I'm not sure what you mean by moral equivalence, I contend that each human being has equal moral dignity, unambiguously. Is the destruction of an embryo less horrific than the murder of an adult?
Re: Steele
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 2:43PM
I disagree, Dave. If you're going to make a Nazi comparison, the subject had better be legitimately and unambiguously genocidal. Few would object to comparing Pol Pot's killing fields to Auschwitz. It may annoy you, but there simply is no consensus that an embryo is the moral equivalent of a walking talking human being, and it's rhetorically foolish to pretend that there is.
Steele Shouldn't Apologize
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 2:24PM
Maryland Lt. Gov Michael Steele, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, has apologized for likening embryonic stem cell research to the Nazis' medical testing on Jews. Consider his remarks:
Look, you, of all folks, know what happens when people decide they want to experiment on human beings, when they want to take your life and use it as a tool.
Okay, fine. He's violated the unwritten rule of polite political discourse (the name of the rule escapes me): don't refer to Hitler or the Nazis. But really, in this case, what's Steele's offense? He supposedly trivialized "the pain and suffering of more than 6 million Jews." That's his language from his apology statement.
If anything, proponents of ESCR trivialize that pain and suffering by refusing to learn from it. Not only did Nazis treat humans as objects for medical experiments, but they targeted the weakest among us. Today, ESCR would be right up their alley.
In a superb column last year responding to similar comments by James Dobson, Hunter Baker wrote,
Take a second look, though, and things take on a different cast. If we broaden our inquiry just a little, we see that what the Nazis were engaged in philosophically and scientifically was not as fully distinguishable from our modern dance with bioethics as we like to think.
For example, the Nazis did not confine themselves to the extermination of Jews. They were also quite actively involved with ridding the world of the retarded and mentally disabled. They did not confine themselves to sterilization. In his powerful book The Pillar of Fire, the great Jewish psychiatrist and convert to Catholicism Karl Stern relates the story of a Lutheran pastor Bodelschwingh who saves his colony of "feeble-minded, epileptics, and idiots" from being killed only by protesting that he must be killed, too. His fame was sufficient to prevent the deaths. Stern indicates others were not so fortunate and that during the war "the Nazis carried out the slaughter of all mental patients."...
The point of this is simply to say that the Nazis didn't hate the mentally retarded and epileptics the way they did Jews. They thought they were building a better society and that if a price had to be paid in terms of innocent human life to achieve that, they were willing to pay it. That, too, was part of their great moral disaster. Our current regime of bioethics shares that same flaw. We are willing to destroy embryonic life in service of hopeful improvements and pay scarce attention to whether it may be a devil's bargain.
Cheney and Marriage
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 2:11PM
Rob Bluey seems to fault Vice President Cheney for not mentioning the Federal Marriage Amendment last night. But isn't there an obvious reason for that? Recall what Cheney said in the 2004 VP debate:
People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want. It's really no one else's business.Of course Cheney would avoid mentioning the FMA: It's pretty clear that he disagrees with the President about it.That's a separate question from the issue of whether or not government should sanction or approve or give some sort of authorization, if you will, to these relationships.
Traditionally, that's been an issue for the states. States have regulated marriage, if you will. That would be my preference.
In effect, what's happened is that in recent months, especially in Massachusetts, but also in California, but in Massachusetts we had the Massachusetts Supreme Court direct the state of -- the legislature of Massachusetts to modify their constitution to allow gay marriage.
And the fact is that the president felt that it was important to make it clear that that's the wrong way to go, as far as he's concerned.
Now, he sets the policy for this administration, and I support the president.
Bullets & Bombs & Kudlow & Co.
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 1:09PM
I'll be on CNBC around 5:30 eastern with Kudlow and Co. If I'm asked to be on, Larry must be in the mood to blow something up. It is, after all, the age of specialization. Hope you can catch it.
Noll to ND
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 12:27PM
Wheaton College's foremost scholar, historian Mark Noll (The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind), is headed to the University of Notre Dame in the fall, Christianity Today reports. As a little background, Wheaton is the evangelical Christian school that just okayed dancing among its students a couple years ago and recently fired a popular professor when he converted to Catholicism. So the irony is a little rich, even if Professor Noll is only swimming the Tiber in profession and not confession.
At Mirror of Justice, Rob Vischer reacts:
Professor Noll, I would guess, would not view his departure to Notre Dame as an abdication of the calling that kept him at Wheaton for so many years. The venue changes, as do particular priorities and opportunities in terms of scholarship, teaching, mentoring, etc. But the foundational academic mission of bringing Christ's light to the world of ideas remains, even in South Bend.
Today's Best Headlines
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 11:34AM
Are all for stories on a jury in Mineola, N.Y., rejecting a widow's claim in a civil suit that her husband's injuries suffered from ducking a piece of shrimp led to his death. (May the man rest in peace, but this is the kind of suit that gives torts a bad name.) Headline writers around the world had a great time with this:
The Wall Street Journal's headline first came to my attention: "Jury Rejects Claim Flying Shrimp Led to New York Man's Death."
L.A. Times: "Flying Shrimp Didn't Kill Man, Jury Decides."
New York Times: "Benihana Wins Flying Sizzling Shrimp Case."
And it goes downhill from there:
Newsday: "Flying Seafood a Prawn in Legal Game."
Daily Telegraph (Australia): "Flying Prawn Cleared of Killing."
And best of all, New York Daily News: "Jury Quickly Skewers Death-by-Shrimp Lawsuit."
Losing It
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 9:06AM
Anyone looking for a contrast to Wlady’s wise and sober column on our public mourning will hardly be able to improve upon Peggy Noonan’s daft piece in today’s Opinion Journal. Ms. Noonan loved the Coretta Scott King funeral so much, she claims to have watched all six hours. She thought: “This is how democracy ought to be, ought to look every day -- full of the joy of argument, and marked by the moral certainty that here you can say what you think.” It would be more accurate to say that the funeral was marked by the moral certainty of the decayed and obsolete civil rights establishment, but Noonan is just getting warmed up. She says the funeral “honored us,” which it didn't, and that it “said more about who we are than any number of decorous U.N. speeches and formal diplomatic declarations.” She might be right about that part.
But Ms. Noonan's admiration goes beyond that. She wants to kiss the hands of African Americans, she says, for forsaking the style of “20th century stoicism” in their mourning. You see, the last 40 years or so have “left an entire nation thinking it was in rather poor taste to cry aloud and sob.” I don’t know what nation, or planet, she has been living on during that time.
This is a country that almost lost its noodle mourning a British princess in 1997, and whose politicians must get in touch with their feminine, emotive side as a prerequisite for running for the highest office in the land. It’s a country that conducts daily emotional exorcisms on afternoon TV. It’s a country in which silence and a firm jaw are very rare sights anymore. It’s a country that is so overly in touch with its emotions that it over-mourns figures like Mrs. King or Rosa Parks, women who deserved tribute but hardly the nearly state-level ceremonies they were given.
How many of our military funerals do all the presidents attend? How many of our fallen troops get day-long tributes? The questions answer themselves.
Conservatives will most readily note Noonan’s valentine to the
Re: Allen's Speech
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 8:42AM
Dave, I agree that he could have done better; he seemed to only fall into a good rhythm about halfway in. But my point was that the crowd seemed to like him a lot.
(Unfortunately, my recording of the speech is too low-quality to post -- he spoke during dessert and there was lots of dish-shuffling near my recorder -- so readers will just have to take our word.)
Re: Allen's Speech
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 8:25AM
John, I'm sure his numbers will go up, but I'm not sure that reflects last night's speech as much as his general political fortunes. I favor him in spite of last night's speech.
Generally, he came across as affable and charming. But the content and delivery of his speech was largely rough and stumbling. He needs a speechwriter and a speech coach who will play to his folksy strengths (for example, the repeated "all y'all" seems like he's trying too hard -- "y'all" would do nicely).
Clearly, Sen. Allen's running for president. But the Senate campaign is a much needed warmup. Because if that's how he looks in two years' time, I seriously doubt he can beat Hillary.
George Allen at CPAC
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 2:00AM
After the reception he got for his speech, watch for Allen to improve on last year's numbers in the CPAC straw poll.
Bomb Iran soon enough
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 1:35AM
Source who is my new Dr. Strangelove argues effectively that strategic bombers with gravity bunker buster bombs can sufficiently damage Iran's nuclear weapons fuel cycle facilities in one night to end the program.
Argues that it is not necessary to destroy all the facilities, just key nodes.
When asked about the day after, source is matter of fact that the Iranians will respond in some of seventeen ways, including closing the Hormuz Strait, and that any one of the seventeen ways will be enough to paralyze worldwide energy markets.
I asked if the one night of bombing will begin several years of nightmares.
Source counters that the oil shock will be severe but not indefinite: that Western economies will recover; that Iran's economy will not recover and surrender will follow eventually.
In sum, bombing Iran to end the nuke program is not the end of the markets, but a shadow will fall over your kitchen table for a few quarters.
Source argues that the alternative, permitting Iran to produce and mount a nuclear weapon force in due time, will lead to much worse than an oil shock.
Okay. I begin to see the unseeable.
Third Intifada imminent
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 1:24AM
Spoke several excellent sources in re Israel and Palestinians, and all agree that a third intifada is imminent, though one did call it a war, not an intifada. Hamas will not relent on its position that it is committed to a violent defeat of Israel. The intifada will be run by Al Aqsa from the West Bank, especially the Balata refugee camp, and by Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and Gaza. The third intifada will include suicide belts as well as the first-ever rocket attacks from the West Bank into Israel.
Israel's response to the intifada is not predictable. Olmert is campaigning to the left to win as many peace-now seats as possible. Netanyahu will stay hard right and urge war and effective annexation of the territories.
Al Aqsa and Islamic Jihad gain with the new intifada by establishing credibility as the street fighters, while Hamas gains by assuming the role of diplomat to the Europeans: the Putin gesture to Hamas is the beginning of the reinvention of a terror gang into a freedom collective.
The profound loser is the United States, which is backing a false witness (Abbas) and an appeaser (Olmert) and a failed formula (the Road Map) and betraying allies (the Quartet). Grim weeks ahead, then it will get worse.
Double Standard
Posted by on 2.10.06 @ 12:30AM
It hasn't been a good week for the editorial brain trust at CNN. As widespread rioting and intimidation gripped the Islamic world following the publication, in a Danish newspaper, of cartoons depicting Muhammad as an enabler of terrorism, the network decided to run only blurred-out versions of the offending images -- out of respect, CNN explained, for Muslim sensibilities.
But then came yesterday's episode of The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer's risibly titled late afternoon round up of breaking news. During a segment on the cartoon controversy, Blitzer raised the question of whether Muslim outrage over insulting images of the Prophet might be a tad hypocritical, given that state-owned media throughout the Islamic world regularly run cartoons of greedy, hook-nosed Jews doing the devil's work. As Blitzer spoke, the screen was filled with one image after another of -- you guessed it -- greedy, hook-nosed Jews doing the devil's work... and, for a finale, a swastika embedded in a Star of David.
Not one of the images was blurred out.
Now here's the punch line. As the video was running, two words were emblazoned at the bottom of the screen: DOUBLE STANDARD?
Yeah, guys, it is.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Pro-Lifer Assaulted at William & Mary
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 10:55PM
Make no mistake about it. The so-called "choice" crowd doesn't favor choice. They favor abortion.
At a memorial for abortion victims Tuesday night, a female student was allegedly assaulted while passing out pro-life information.
Just imagine if pro-lifers assaulted a pro-abortion activist on a college campus. Why, if Katie Couric weren't in Turin, she'd be in Williamsburg for tomorrow's show. This incident will likely be met with total national media silence.
Planning the Cartoon Intifada
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 6:57PM
An editorial in the Saudi government daily "Arab News" today explained how representatives from 57 Muslim nations met in
Fortunately, the same substance is still published on the IHT website. Here's the money quote, from the communique that was published at the end of the conference:
As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad. The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions."
The manufactured indignation, and the protests and riots that it creates, were planned. This is an organized assault on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. And in
Barr vs. Dinh
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 5:08PM
Viet Dinh and our own Bob Barr had an interesting debate at CPAC this afternoon, moderated by RET. You can listen in over at my blog, where I've been podcasting.
Get Along Home, Cindy, Cindy
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 4:17PM
At long last, Cindy Sheehan, in declining a run for the Senate, has made a rationality-based statement:
"If I thought that running for Senate would bring our young people home more quickly I would do it in a minute, but I am not convinced that that would do so," she said.
What's next? Conceding that an all-volunteer military is comprised of individuals who have joined of their own free will?
CPAC Moments
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 4:01PM
After manning the AmSpec booth for a while and taking a spin around the Exhibit Hall at CPAC, I have a few thoughts. As with last year, it's amazing how big the "conservative" tent is. The ACLU's here, along with Conservatives for Peace, the Heritage Foundation, nativist groups, Americans for Tax Reform, and much more. If any group has ever been considered slightly conservative or Republican, they're here.
Best handout: Feminists are destroying the American family. Indeed.
Worst button: "Iraq" in a circle with an "x" through it. Fine. You're against the war. But against the country? Poorly worded.
Oh, and Sen. Rick Santorum's signing his ISI book. It appears as though he'll be there for a while, as there is a line of well-dressed young men and women (mostly guys in dark navy suits) earnestly waiting the senator's signature. He appears good natured about it.
Speaking of well-dressed young men and women, as soon as you board the red line on the Metro, there's no question that CPAC is along the route. Nice, polite young people attend this conference every year, and it's a pleasure to meet conservative college students excited to be in Washington.
Iran and Ashura and 1914
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 3:57PM
Spoke Tehran last eve re Ahmadinejad's standing among the poor and disenfranchised in Tehran and countryside. Ahmadinejad is considered a hero; he is most admired because he wears simple common clothes, is extremely pious, speaks flatly and to the prejudices of the mob. How popular? He is legendary box office popular. Ahmadinejad is front page news to the working man and his obedient wife and children. Ahmadinejad provokes expressions of chauvinism and defiance and bloodymindedness unto self-destruction.
Recognize that this is not on message with the Diaspora freedom fighters. However it is consistent with historical models. Nazis were never more powerful and popular than when they were under attack by UK and France before the war. During the war, the night and then day strategic bombing campaigns made Adolf a prince and god to the folk doing the dying in the cities. Suggest that the more Iran is isolated and under attack by West, by UN, by US, the more potent and aggressive Ahmadinejad and IRGC and mullahs can be at home and abroad.
Today is Ashura, the tenth day of holy month remembering seventh century battle of Karbala and death of Imam Hussein, Mohammed's grandson. The Shia remember it bitterly sadly defiantly every year: the Shia have a proveb: "Every day is Ashura and every land is Kerbala." This is the day of self-punishment and self-flagellation to identify with the losing side at Karbala. Am told that Iranian media and mullahs link Karbala loss fighting for Imam Hussein with present standoff with West re nukes and terror export. Iran feels surrounded. Iran likes to feel surrounded. Iran is comfortable for a thousand years feeling surrounded.
This is all a formula for the sort of paranoia and inherent sense of weakness that launched two world wars in 20th century, the first when in '14 the Kaiser's general staff felt that the army was losing the edge to the Triple Entente, so they launched war out of fear. In '39, Hitler preached same sense of persecution and victimization with regard France, UK and Russia. Launched '39 against Poland out of a sense of weakness, out of a mania that waiting any longer would only make matters worse. Not hard to link the '39 attack to the same sense of persecution and weakness of '14: the fear that the Germans could not scratch.
Iran feels a recognizably similar sense of persecution and weakness, from the '53 coup, from the '79 revolution, from the Iraq war massacres; and these are the condition that make for stunning, lunatic, mass-murdering aggression.
Picture Karbala in the 21st century, an apocalyptic and prophesized final battle, led by the Invisible Imam and his agent, the charismatic and hallucinatory and non-rational and driven Ahmadinejad.
Jaw and jaw, Foggy B, the battle comes. Is already here. Oil weapon first. Then WMDs. Then pistols. Then swords.
Well, well, well ...
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 3:15PM
AP is reporting that Sen. Harry Reid's staff is now confirming that it had contacts with the staff of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Reid's spokesman is denying that his boss, Sen. Harry Reid, of Nevada, Senate Minority Leader, and high priest of ethics (did we mention he was formerly seved on the Nevada Gaming Commission?) ever personally met with Abramoff.
Reid's spokeman might want to check with his boss about that denial to make sure it should be so definitive.
EUnuchs Unter Alles
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 2:58PM
They always find a way. The cartoon intifada hasn't even reached the Sudetenland yet, and they're already surrendering. This Reuters report describes the EU's plan to come up with a code of self-censorship to avoid further insults to religions. Franco Frattini, the EU minister for security and silly walks put it this way:
"The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression...We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right." Huh? Self regulation leaves the discretion to the person whose expression is being regulated. Frattini is talking about an EU law to limit free speech.
Can someone explain to me why supposedly free nations want to be part of this French bedroom comedy now that it is demonstrably unfunny?
This Just in ...
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 2:41PM
Sen. Harry Reid is a liar, or at least extremely unsure of what he believes in. We'll go with the former.
Sen. Harry Reid, said this morning that he doubted the Judiciary Committee should have had jurisdiction over the asbestor bill that is currently taking up the Senate's attention. "I think there should have been a joint referral to the … Environment and Public Works Committee," he said. "I haven't spoken to the chairman of that committee, Senator Inhofe. I've been chairman on two separate occasions, of that committee. I'll bet Senator Inhofe is wondering why his committee hasn't had something to do with it."
But wait, what was he thinking when the asbestos fight was ongoing 18 months ago? In April 2004: "The only way I will ever feel comfortable about legislation dealing with asbestos is if it goes through the channels it is supposed to go through: the Judiciary Committee. … In short, the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over this legislation, and this is from where the legislation should come that we deal with on the floor … It has to come out of the Judiciary Committee." (Congressional Record, 4/20/04)
Benedict's Door Prizes
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 12:24PM
The pope exchanged gifts with First Lady Laura Bush today: he received a silver bowl with the presidential seal, but Laura and daughter Barbara received rosaries from Benedict. Handing rosaries to Protestants is like handing a Tim LaHaye book to a Catholic: "Um, thanks!" Hilarious. Hopefully he gave them instructions.
Believing in God Doesn't Make You Smart
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 11:57AM
Iain Murray dismantles the evangelicals' silly jump onto the global warming bandwagon. They've botched the science altogether, Murray writes, from the existence of warming and its alleged human cause to the doomsday effects.
This time, they've bought the politically correct conventional wisdom hook, line, and sinker. Someone send them a copy of Michael Crichton's book. It's disappointing to see someone of Timothy George's stature and intelligence lending his name to such a document.
Other than him and Rick Warren (of Christian self-help fame... there, I said it, send angry emails to amspecblog -at- spectator.org), I don't recognize a soul on this list. Contrary to the New York Times touting "leaders" joining the global warming fight, the big names declined to sign.
Re: CPAC 33
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 10:43AM
Be sure to stop by the American Spectator's booth today and say hi. We'll be there through Saturday.
CPAC 33 -- Wheels Up!
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 10:25AM
Congratulations to David Keene, Stacie Rumenap and the good folks at the American Conservative Union Foundation on the opening of the 33rd Annual Conservative Political Action Conference just moments ago at the Omni Shoreham here in D.C. George Will is delivering the opening address as I write, and of course everyone is looking forward to what will be a barn burner of a debate at 12:30 when Bob Barr and Viet Dinh square off in a debate over civil liberties...RET is moderating. Cheney speaks tonight, tomorrow and Saturday's lineups are chock full of awesomeness. The whole thing wraps up on Saturday at 5 p.m. with a closing address by Newt Gingrich. See the full schedule here and if you are anywhere near D.C., for heaven's sake-get yourself over to the Omni!
Chafee by His Lonesome?
Posted by on 2.9.06 @ 8:20AM
Novak is now handicapping the Rhode Island Senate race in favor of Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey over incumbent Lincoln Chafee. Tim Chapman asks if Chafee will go independent.
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Re: WMD Search Continues 2006
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 11:02PM
The story of the American agent to which John refers is told in detail by the
Bush's 'Rebuke'
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 11:00PM
Pretty tame stuff from the leader of the war on terror in his first public comments on the nearly week-old cartoon furor. (In keeping with a career-long habit of being slow out of the blocks.) The cartoon situation, the president said, "requires a lot of discussion and a lot of sensitive thought." If we get any more sensitive, we'll all be dead.
WMD Search Continues 2006
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 9:54PM
Speaking to two critical players in the search for Iraq WMD and the mystery of the Iraq Survey Group's inability to find the weapons and systems in 2003-2004. The facts on the ground do not support the political rhetoric that there was no WMD. The facts on the ground support that Saddam Hussein and his ministers and their allies in more than one European state conspired to deny and deceive the UN, the U.S., and the post-war search teams. The facts on the ground support that there is a library of evidence to be identified, translated, and explained by ops, scholars, pols, and historians. Case in point this day is Nasariyah, summer 2003, where an American agent, with Arabic, met and developed Iraqi sources who led him to most-suspect sites. The sites are underground caves, then flooded, having thick concrete walls. The Iraqis said that the sites had been built and sealed over during six months in the middle of 2002. This anecdote suits exactly the untold story. This suits anyone who understands that the last laugh will be for those who find the biologicals, the chemicals, and the nuclear weapons plans that remain the threat until it is destroyed.
Time to Burn the Egyptian Embassy?
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 7:59PM
Cairo-based blogger "The Sandmonkey":
Freedom For Egyptians reminded me why the cartoons looked so familiar to me: they were actually printed in the Egyptian Newspaper Al Fagr back in October 2005. I repeat, October 2005, during Ramadan, for all the egyptian muslim population to see, and not a single squeak of outrage was present. Al Fagr isn't a small newspaper either: it has respectable circulation in Egypt, since it's helmed by known Journalist Adel Hamoudah. Looking around in my house I found the copy of the newspaper, so I decided to scan it and present to all of you to see.Be sure to read his comments about how Arab leaders have used the Inkifada to draw attention away from more important issues.
CAIRing for Cartoons?
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 2:42PM
Ibrahim Hooper -- spokesman for the Council of American Muslim Relations -- may have made a big blooper on the Laura Ingraham show today.
Hooper's blooper was in agreeing with me that there should be no law to prevent publication of cartoons such as those of Mohammed that have stirred Muslims in Europe to protest and in SW Asia to riots and death. How much trouble will he be in with the radical Muslims who insist that freedom of the press doesn't go as far as that, and shouldn't. Hooper tried to make amends by insisting that the Iranian paper about to publish its "Holocaust" cartoon contest wasn't following government orders. He said he didn't know enough about the Iranian press to know if it was free or not. He's the only person I have spoken to who has that doubt.
Meanwhile, it's good to know Condi Rice reads John Batchelor. She came out today blaming Iran and Syria for the cartoon intifada riots.
Re: King of Lear
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 2:35PM
I agree with Paul. We should have some sort of award for Wlady for coining the phrase.
Re: King of Leer
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 1:56PM
Wlady: I'm almost glad now that Clinton spoke (almost), just for the opportunity of hearing you use the term "unscotchable hankering."
Football, Shouted
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 1:09PM
Kornheiser is headed to Monday Night Football. Yes, yes, it's hard to argue with success, it's good work if you can get it. I'm sure Kornheiser will boost MNF, attracting those who like a constantly high level of shouting about sports. Kornheiser The Brand is great for radio, a short sound-bite show on ESPN (PTI), and even a corner on page 2 of the Post sports section. But let's hope that the bar-argument style of sports broadcasting is the exception rather than the rule.
King of Leer
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 12:48PM
Never fear, James. Bill Clinton stole the show, his nodding Hillary doll smirking with approval at his every word. Most incredible was the following passage, which not only doubled as a plug for his wife's candidacy but reminded everyone of his unscotchable hankering for women of all ages:
We're here to honor a person.Fifty-four years ago, her about-to-be husband said that he was looking for a woman with character, intelligence, personality and beauty, and she sure fit the bill.
(APPLAUSE)
And I have to say, when she was over 75, I thought she still fit the bill pretty good....
(Check his Oscar-worthy performance among the videos that accompany this Washington Post story.)
Carter, For The Record
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 11:30AM
Transcript courtesy of USA Today:
Years later in Oslo I said, The Nobel Prize profoundly magnified the inspiring global influence of Martin Luther King Jr., the greatest leader that my native state, and perhaps my native country, has ever produced.
(APPLAUSE)
And I was including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and the others.
(LAUGHTER)
On the Air
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 9:13AM
I'm on again this morning for Laura Ingraham. Tune in. We'll be talking to Laura in Baghdad, to Sen. John Kyl on the NSA surveillance program and about the Corretta Scott King funeral. Heavy news day. See ya on the radio.
Journalism Under Fire
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 9:11AM
The Washington Post today commends Middle Eastern newspapers for "bravely" republishing the offending Muhammad cartoons, yet chides European newspaper for doing the same in journalistic solidarity. (The Post still hasn't published the cartoons for its readers, as a letter writer points out -- fortunately, there's the Internet.) The Post's reasoning is a bit silly: the freedom of the press isn't threatened in Europe, so newspapers should restrict themselves. Further, the Danish prime minister should have met with Muslim ambassadors to defuse the controversy, when he has no control over these free newspapers. In other words, by the Post's understanding of freedom of the press, freedom isn't free.
Langley the Anti-24
Posted by on 2.8.06 @ 12:55AM
Report from most trusted intelligence source re the sudden removal, exit, hatcheting of veteran CIA officer Robert Grenier, chief of Clandestine Services the last year.
This is evidence of profound turmoil at a wounded enterprise. Grenier is said to be an accomplished secret war fighter, working in Pakistan in the early part of the war after 9-11, later working in the Iraq Issues Group. There is mention of poor relationship with superiors; there is mention of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center now rudderless, demoted, dejected.
Langley now qualifies as the Anti-24.
DCI Porter Goss is either cleaning house of institutional memory or is recruiting from an unknown deep bench that is not obvious. Morale, never strong since 9-11, since Tennant's unexplained departure, since the WMD story got lost in an Agency drawer, has now matched the ratings for the put-on-hiatus Commander-in-Chief.
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
Re: Lefties for Jesus
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 11:12PM
John: Thank you for the plug. Claiborne's book is better than you might be given to believe, though one's religious background will certainly come into play in forming conclusions. His commitment to service seems utterly genuine, whatever one thinks of his political conclusions, which do tend to be unswervingly left-wing. The world is a better place for having him.
And doesn't it tell us something about the times in which we live that "radical Christian" denotes a benevolent pacifist like Claiborne, and radical Islamist denotes.... well, something else.
Re: Political Funeral Watch
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 8:01PM
The political unseemliness was not restricted to Bush-bashing. Clinton, as usual, delivered the best lines from the highest heights of dizzying hypocrisy. Unreported has been Carter's promotion of MLK above every American leader to have ever existed. On the left there couldn't be a more noble gesture -- but Carter piled subterfuge on subterfuge with a well-placed, chickening-out "perhaps"...
Political Funeral Watch
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 6:01PM
Drudge is reporting that some phony whacko liberal preacher identified as former prez Carter and a real lib preacher, one Joe Lowery, seized the occasion of Coretta Scott King's funeral to bash W, who was dutifully in attendance. Shades of Wellstone?
The 2002 funeral of Paul Wellstone was a politcal circus that marked what most people of taste and discretion thought would be the low-water mark for liberalism. But, instead, it marked the beginning of a fashion trend. The libs' performance at the CSK funeral today is just another development in the fashion line. Will the next lib funeral be a dinner/fundraiser? Could this be their secret plan to evade the lobbying reforms sure to grow out of the Abramoff scandal?
Political funerals, we must admit, didn't begin with Wellstone. And they won't end with King. But we are permitted a small wish that the oratory be more to the standard of Marc Antony at Caesar's than Jimmuh at Coretta's.
Cartoon intifada hoaxers: squealing the facts
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 3:59PM
Speaking tonight with Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal, who published within the last hours a stunning account of how the cartoon intifada riots stem in part from a hoax authored by hothead Danish imams.
The original 12 cartoon drawings of Mohammed and Islamic topics were published last September in Denmark. Danish imams, lead by hottest head Ahmad Abu Ladan, boss of the Islamic Society of Denmark, demanded apologies and reparations of obedience from the newspaper, the media, the government, and various ugly ducklings flying by; when that didn't work, Team Danish Hothead took the show on the road. Faxing and distributing the cartoons around the ummah and outposts, the imams added three cartoons that had not been published. When challenged, Team Danish Hothead claimed the additions were Danish original cartoons that illustrated the sort of disrespect that jihad and its pals routinely suffer in Denmark and Europe. The road show turned into an intifada when Damascus and Tehran seized on the Danish teacup tempest and dramatized big in Damascus and Beirut, burning flags, buildings, Euro bridges, swans.
Meanwhle, the Danish imams were challenged by Brussels Journal and others about the three late additions. The imams would not provide proof the additions were Danish-created cartoons.
Now it is revealed at Neandernews and other sites that at least one of the additions, perhaps the most incendiary, supposedly of Mohammed with a pig's snout, is not even a cartoon. It is a badly reproduced fax from an AP photo taken last summer of a Frenchman, Jacques Barrot, in costume at the annual pig-squealing championship in Trie-sur-Baise, France.
The imams have hoaxed the Danes, the Euros, the ummah, and now the US State Department, which has contributed unoriginal appeasing words about how the Danish media should know better than to disrespect fuzzy, cuddly Islam. Balderdash, Foggy Bottom. The pig's snout is a lie; the cartoon intifada is built upon a lie; the comity of planet Earth now bows before lie upon lie, and you, Foggy, are run either by ignorant pedants in the hire of Saudi satraps or by feckless collabrators with the agitprop of the enemy camp.
The heroes here include Paul Belien and his people at Brussels Journal, who have been covering this story since last October, who will now add to the more than two dozen death threats they have received from Team Danish Hothead and their spamming interns.
(Alarm: Death Threat Gap at AmSpecBlog. Where is our Death Threat for printing the truth about the cartoon intifada?
(Make our day, wackjob jihad idolaters and your pay pals at Damascus and Tehran. Threaten us with Death. And I add, for the farm boys who know: real pigs are very, very smart animals, and squeal with some articulation, and would never burn a Danish flag, though they might eat one if it got into the mix.).
It's Different in Kosland
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 2:02PM
Michael Petrelis slams the New York Times for not publishing the cartoons at the center of the Inkifada story. Interestingly enough, he cross-posted this to a DailyKos diary -- and the Kos Kidz side overwhelmingly with the Times (except for the one guy who presumes that the Times must be bowing to Bush administration pressure).
What Double Standard?
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 1:52PM
The editors of Hamshari, the Iranian daily running a contest for the best Holocaust cartoon, seem to think that the Western free speech allows smearing Mohammed but would never stand for criticism of "Israel's Crimes." Jason Zengerle recalls a few cartoons in the Western media that the Iranians must have missed.
Lefties for Jesus
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 12:58PM
Over at OpinionJournal, our own Paul Beston reviews a book by "extremist for love" Shane Claiborne. Mr. Claiborne bears more than a passing resemblance to the sort of Marxist-pacifist you might see speaking to a gathering of old hippies in a college town somewhere. All that distinguishes him is his Christianity, and even that's not entirely unique; it echoes the Jim Wallis argument that a genuinely Christian politics amounts to almost unreconstructed leftism, tempered by a dash of abortion heterodoxy and animated by anti-war passions.
I'll leave it to Christians to debate the underlying theology. But the fact is that foreign policy, at least at the superficial level, has become in many ways a cultural issue turning on the relationship between support for the troops and support for their mission. As long as military culture and church-going remain as intertwined as they are now, it's hard to see the Christian Left becoming more than a bit player in American politics.
Digital-Age Dating
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 12:01PM
The America's Future Foundation is hosting a roundtable on the topic in D.C. tomorrow. Details here.
Lobbying Reform
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 11:33AM
We're hearing about a meeting that was held last Friday among a number of Republican/conservative staff from third party groups that lobby on Capitol Hill, everyone from the U.S. Chamber to the Family Research Council. The intent of the meeting was an update from the staff of Sen. John McCain and others on the Senate side about the lobbying reform effort.
The news from McCain's staff was to be expected: that the process was moving forward, there would most likely be legislation, but that the Senator preferred a tough, comprehensive look at the issue instead of window-dressing.
What was surprising, according to some attendees, was the blunt talk from Sen. Rick Santorum's aide, who essentially said that lobbying reform was inevitable and that everyone should just get in line and take it like a man.
Now, it's doubtful that Senator Santorum, who has been one of the most aggressive fundraisers in town over the past year (you may have heard, he has this little re-election thing going on), intended the message to be so, shall we say, graceless? But really. You don't bite the hands that are feeding you, and you certainly don't bite hands, such as FRC's and others, that spend comparatively little on lobbying in the manner of other firms.
Re: Nepal Falling In
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 11:15AM
That's awful. The so-called "People's War" has created nothing but a cycle of mysery for that poor country. My cousin Geoff goes to Nepal regularly for the Himalayan Cataract Project. Sanduk Ruit, his "stridently apolitical" partner, has good relations with both sides; they can generally move through the mountains without too much trouble. But the worsening situation won't make their amazing work, literally restoring sight to the blind and half-blind, any easier.
'Europe Won't Fight'
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 10:51AM
The prevailing wisdom, backed up at the United Nations, in the streets of Paris, and by popular perception, is that when push comes to shove in the clash of civilizations, Europe will not fight. And Europe will lose.
I have shared this fear -- fear because a weak Europe that allows itself to be overrun and brought to heel is a bad outcome for the United States and Western civilization. Not by a long shot am I adequately convinced that a round of terror bombings won't send Europe into a "we deserve it" spiral of preemptive surrender.
But we should recognize stiffness of spine when we see it, and ask ourselves just who we mean when we warn that "Europe won't fight." To wit: the Scandinavians, especially the Danes, appear largely impervious to the cartoon intifada. The Germans -- ruling pacifists of Europe -- have taken the lead on the continent in speaking up for free speech, in keeping with Merkel's strongest of stands on kidnapping blackmail in Iraq. One does not expect Central Europe, including Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, to go wobbly anytime soon. And Britain, of course, has made its position clear, despite its resident barbarist protesters. Finally, there's Turkey -- which wants earnestly to be counted in Europe, and here deserves to be. The Turks are being very interested and very quiet. The birth of the modern and quite successful Turkish nation was the repudiation of Islamism as the mode of government. We need not fear a popular explosion there, and this alone sets Turkey apart in its neighborhood.
So what Europe are we worried about? France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland: these are the real points of vulnerability. And, unfortunately, they are enough to throw the odds on any European fight.
Poor Parallel
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 10:45AM
An Iranian newspaper is planning a Holocaust newspaper contest in retaliation for the Danish Muhammad cartoons. Go for it. The contrast will be all too striking: while those with good taste (if not well-formed consciences) condemn them, they won't resort to burning Iranians in effigy or other acts of violence.
The Laura Ingraham Show
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 9:29AM
I've been drafted. Laura Ingraham is in Baghdad, doing radio interviews for her show, so I'm sitting in at the DC studio. Tune in this morning. We're hearing from Laura in Iraq and I'll be interviewing State Department spokesman Sean McCormack about the cartoon intifada later in the show. Lots from Laura. See ya on the radio.
Mohammed, the Man, the Cartoon
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 1:34AM
Report that it is nowhere written in the Koran that it is blasphemous or heretical or forbidden to draw or paint or represent an image of Mohammed. Also, it is impossible in Islam to misrepresent or distort a representation of God, because the Koran teaches that God is unseeable, unknowable, inconceivable in a human way.
More, Mohammed is human, a prophet, not divine or semi-divine in any fashion. To represent him is to represent a human being who was born of a woman, lived as a merchant and husband, died a mortal death in his day. This is not similar to provocative vulgarity about Jesus Christ, or about Yahweh or Jehovah or the Lord God Almighty. Mohammed was a man, two arms, two eyes, one brain. The only reluctance to be found in Islam about drawing Mohammed is the teaching of various characters that to picture Mohammed is to encourage idolatry. However, the rioting over Mohammed's image is a direct result of such dimwitted and proscribed idolatry.
The cartoon riots are driven by Syria and its pay pal Iran. The cartoon riots are not Koranic theology. They are jihad politics stoked by Iranian aggression.
Nepal Falling In
Posted by on 2.7.06 @ 12:08AM
Report from Kathmandu that the Maoist guerrillas grow bolder on the third day of the general strike they have called to last seven days. On the second day, two Maoist terrorists got into a taxi in greater Kathmandu, in front of a hospital, and shot to death the young driver because he was working on a general strike day. Clashes between Maoists and the police and army are now routine.
The complication in this tidy anti-terrorist scenario is that the government is a one-man tyranny: it is one year since Gyanendra seized total control of the capital city; since then he has become the mayor of the palace and a few streets of Kathmandu. He calls himself the king. The Chinese favor him; the Indians oppose him; the Nepalese favor money and services and tourists, all of which are now rare.
Nepal is the roof of the world, and the roof is falling in. China and India, giants of the 21st century, will battle ceaselessly on this surrogate battlefield. The U.S. position so far is to support India: watch for duplicity later in the decade.
Monday, February 6, 2006
Red Sea Titanic and the Moslem Brothers
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 10:47PM
Report from Cairo that the Mubarak regime has failed in the episode of the Red Sea Titanic so badly that there is no repair. Mubarak is hiding from the relatives; and Mubarak has not even sent his son and intended successor Gamal to meet with the families.
Who is looking to profit from the catastrophe is the Moslem Brothers in Cairo. The Moslem Brothers are not leading street protests; instead the Moslem Brothers are demanding a full explanation not only as to why the ferry sank (a most suspect craft) but also as to why there was no Egyptian rescue effort launched.
The Moslem Brothers are learning to build a popular base that is decidedly anti-regime. The future is the likelihood of a popularly elected jihad for the 75 millions of Egypt. Democracy, Ummah style.
Always a Starr
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 3:44PM
Let me associate myself with the earlier posts about Bart Starr. As it so happens, one of the several books I am reading right now is a biography of sorts about Bart Starr. It's called "When Leadership Mattered," or something like that. Anyway, it is great to see such a class act remembered and honored. Frankly, I wish Bart Starr had been open to what once were frequent entreaties for him to run for Senate from Alabama as a Republican. I think Starr is incorruptible, and he's clearly a very smart man with great values -- and a terrific leader. He is everything that is good about sports, and my hat is always off to him.
Update
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 3:17PM
Well, all seems to have blown over, with the inevitable misinformation: it didn't involve Grand Central, but only a suspicious package in one building that someone called in. Oh well ... better than the alternatives.
'Death to Traitors'
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 3:10PM
The Supreme Court Building is constructed on the very ground of the Old Capitol buidling that became the emegency Old Capitol Prison for traitors in the Spring of 1861.
For the next four years, Lincoln, Seward, Stanton and the Secret Service Chief Lafayette Baker grabbed whomever they wanted without a warrant, threw them into Old Capitol's dreary rooms, and forgot about habeas coprus, indictments, trials for as long as was useful.
Lafayette Baker's motto on his badge was "Death to Traitors."
When some several of those very same traitors conspired to murder Lincoln and Seward in April, 1865, Baker assigned his cousin to track them down and bring them to the noose. Booth likely shot himself, or was shot; but the Bakers bagged anyone they could argue was attached to the plot and threw them into a hastily constructed court in May, 1865, where the Attorney General and Provost Marshall General engineered a speedy conviction. Some few of the culprits were hanged at Old Capitol Prison.
Escaping the noose in 1865 were not a few former members of the U.S. Senate who authored and paid for the plot against the U.S. and Lincoln, includng the contemptible traitors ex-senators Davis, Stephens, Benjamin, Mason, Slidell.
Just mentioning on this the day the Bush Administration explains its decision to pursue enemies of the United States, including U.S. citizens who trade with the enemy, to members of the United States Senate -- one or more of whom is supect as betraying the NSA.
Quoting Lafayette Baker, "Death to Traitors."
NYC Scare?
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 3:00PM
The building in which one of my brothers works, across the street from Grand Central Station, has been evacuated, along with other buildings in the area. He says Park Avenue is snarled with people, and that an NYPD told him it was because of a bomb threat in Grand Central. Could be nothing, but he told me he hasn't seen this kind of muscle on the streets in a long while. We'll see .... is this the beginning of the cartoon's escalation to our shores, I wonder.
AG Gonzales
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 2:37PM
As expected, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and gave a rousing defense of the Administration's anti-terrorism program through the NSA.
One thing that is clear is that there is an orchestrated attempt on the part of some Democrat committee members to portray AG Gonzales as nothing more than a pawn for the Bush Administration. Earlier today, Newsweek magazine's Evan Thomas went on a national radio program and claimed that Gonzales was nothing more than a dupe for President Bush. We're seeing that strategy in the questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer.
What's also clear is that Gonzales isn't going to bite.
Cartoons and Tehran and Us
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 2:15PM
Report tonght from Druze leader Walid Jumblatt at Beirut that the cartoon rioting in Beirut that burned the Danish embassy and attacked a Marionite church and Lebanese Christians was led by Syrian agents.
This is a five week old story. Why now?
Study the correspondence between the cartoon riots in Europe and now the Ummah and the IAEA spanking of Tehran for its flagagrant nuclear weapons fuel cycle at the weekend.
Easy assumption at this point is that Iran has tasked its best slave state Syria to escalate attacks in Beirut while scaring the Scandinavians out of Damascus and Amman.
Iran is most confident; the IRGC laughs at Western appeasement; the Iranan agents in place in Western governments are busy and cash rich.
Watching for Washington and London and Paris and Berlin to retreat and appease.
The cartoon that makes sense is ancient Pogo wit: "The enemy is us."
Put the cartoons on the WSJ front page. Ask the question of the American public: Does this make sense? Burning for this? Now, ask yourself, who benefits from the riots?
The answer is Iran, Iran, Iran.
Today on the Hugh Hewitt Show
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 2:08PM
I'm subbing for Hugh again today, Salem Radio Net 6-9 EST. We'll be covering the day's news and starting with a bang. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) will be joining us at the top of the show. Don't miss this one.
Strange Image -- But Real
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 12:25PM
Reuters PR Manager Yasmeen Khan responds to my question about that picture that I highlighted yesterday:
Our Editorial policy does not allow us to alter photographs, (beyond standard techniques that may be used, for example, to tone pictures). We certainly do not alter photographs to any degree that would change the news value of the picture, and this would include translating any written words that appear on a photo - our standard Editorial policy is to present the facts without opinion, hence altering/tampering/translation is not allowed.Whatever made the words look crisper than the signs, it wasn't anything sinister.I've checked the photo on the link you sent against the original on our file and it seems to be the same, and I can verify that it was not altered - in fact we have many other pictures of the same demonstration and the signs the protestors are holding are exactly the same as in the picture you've highlighted, i.e they are in English.
That About Sums It Up
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 12:10PM
Sometimes Howard Kurtz hits the nail on the head, as in this question about why ABC News sent its top anchor into harm's way: "Was this some sort of grandstanding or ratings ploy?" To ask a question like that is to answer it.
UPDATE: A guest on Kurtz's Reliable Sources offers more tough talk: "So what do you do if you have a broadcast called 'World News Tonight'? You bring in an anchor who hop scotches like a pinball from place to place to place to place to place to give the illusion of covering the world." The illusion of covering the world -- again, that pretty much sums it up.
Super Ward
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 6:14AM
Wlady: Sorry I signed off early. Yes, Randel-el's pass was not only better than Portis's attempts, it was the play of the year. And better than Brunnell. Hurricane Sharon (as you know, another Indiana grad) was screaming when he threw it. Ward really did deserve the Cadillac. The touchdown pass he caught on the run, breaking stride and changing direction, was a thing of beauty. He's been super all season.
Ok, enough fun for one week. On to NSA and the hearings. The hearing will feature riveting testimony, deep-thinkers' questions and fair media coverage. Yeah, well, I don't believe that either.
Re: Hines vs. Heinz
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 1:56AM
Paul, I was a little embarrassed for Starr -- he should have been walking down a red-carpeted center aisle at Carnegie Hall as he approached the special post-game platform. Instead, he had to wend his way through fans, TV and other cameramen, earphoned producers, who knows who else. It was so unseemly. But he did look great, and he's probably still good enough to give Mark Brunnell a run for his salary-cap busting money.
By the way, where was Terry Bradshaw? He's the greatest Super Bowl Steeler of them all, but apparently he works for another network...
Re: Hines v. Heinz
Posted by on 2.6.06 @ 1:01AM
Wlady: I'd best get to sleep, but I am very happy for Pittsburgh and Cowher, for the reasons you cite and more besides. The Steelers were the great dynasty of my formative years, and I'm glad to see the title restored after so long. It was an odd game, unsatisfying in many ways, but I'm glad they prevailed. As for the postgame, there was at least one note of grace: the presence of Bart Starr to present the trophy. He's as fine a man and ambassador for any sport as we're likely to see, and having him there lent some class to the proceedings, which usually are in need of some.
Sunday, February 5, 2006
Hines vs. Heinz
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 11:31PM
Paul, Jed: I enjoyed your pre-game and first half bantering. Lots of keys to this game, and not just to the Escalade that went to MVP Hines Ward. But in retrospect the bogus offensive interference call that cost Seattle and early touchdown was the biggest key -- the receiver did nothing out of the ordinary, against a defender who was completely lost on the play. No way should the referee have given him the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, I do think Roethlisberger did score on that first Pittsburgh touchdown. Just for a split second the ball seemed to "touch" the plane of the goal line before not so gentle Ben tucked it back. That amounts to full penetration into the end zone, so far I know.
I paid next to no attention to ads and commentary, so I didn't notice the distinct lack of tribute to our soldiers in harm's way. But it also struck me that no one much mentioned Detroit either; not until the post-game trophy presentation (the worst choreographed annual event in sports -- why don't they just go back to the locker room for those made for TV moments?).
Jed, you think Brunnell's passes fall short -- what about Clinton Portis's option passes, which resemble falling skeet-clay after it's been shot. They came to mind after that beauty of an option toss thrown by Antwaan Randle El, a fellow Indiana alum. That was the play of the year, so far as I'm concerned. Big Ben played well regardless -- you have to remember his throwing thumb is all but disconnected from his right hand, and he's been forced to wear a glove to get any touch at all. Hasselbeck clearly played and looked better -- yet in the end his ability to "manage" the game was a distant second to Roethlisberger's, especially when it mattered most.
Finally, you've got to like Coach Cowher -- a real, mean football tough guy who's putty in the hands of his wife and many daughters. Finally-finally, you have to be happy for Pittsburgh, a real place, for one thing. Now who's done more for the city, the Pittsburgh Steelers or Mrs. John Kerry? Was she even at the game?
Fix?
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 9:51PM
I'm not sure I've seen a Super Bowl where one team has been such a one-sided beneficiary of the officals' calls as Pittsburgh has in this one. If Seattle doesn't get this fumble call review, in which Hasselbeck was clearly touched before he hit the ground, I'm going to start to wonder.
McGyver!!!
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 9:47PM
Ok, ok., it's only a MasterCard commercial. But any reappearance of McGyver is worth a lot. Well done, MC.
Re: Commericals
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 9:06PM
Jed: Yes, the airplane one was funnier, though this is supposedly a family audience, right? I guess I'm several years late with that concern, if not several decades.
Commercials
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 8:54PM
Paul: I think it's AmeriQuest that's doing the odd commercials your'e referring to. Tasteless? Maybe. Funny? Yeah, pretty much. Still better than that Burger King awfulness.
Re: Half Time Show(?)
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 8:43PM
Jed: Failing, that, he might at least spare us a look at his midriff. This is somebody's grandfather, I'm told.
Half Time Show(?)
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 8:29PM
At long last: I've found a sound that annoys me more than Hillary or Howlin' Howie. Can't we ever get Mick Jagger to just shut up? This is noise, not music.
But Speaking of Calls
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 8:25PM
The revoked touchdown against Seattle was atrocious. I believe I lip-read Holmgren saying to the official at the half, "We haven't gotten a call yet," and he's right.
The Call
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 8:08PM
Didn't look like a touchdown to me, but the official went with a strict constructionist reading of his duties, and refused to overturn in the absence of overwhelming evidence against the original call. Good for him.
Super Bowl Commercials Etc.
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:56PM
Paul: Fortunately there's only one Brunnell. And unfortunately he plays for the Redskins.
Pop-ups
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:50PM
Jed: The Washington Redskins, or the Washington Nationals? That was quite a fungo Big Ben just threw.
The First Note of Weirdness
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:46PM
Is the spots showing players in staged poses suggesting that they have won the Super Bowl, when they haven't yet, and talking about what that would feel like - if they won it - but they haven't yet.
Weird, very weird. Who is in charge of these things?
Super Bowl Commercials Part 3
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:46PM
Paul: You're entirely right. Some of them, like the Cadillac Escalade commercial, are going to the dark side. But I did like the Michelob Ultra Amber commercial. It's a guy thing.
As to Pitt, I love 'em, but they're playing like Washington. Why the *&^%^% aren't they pressuring Hasselbeck more? Roethlisberger is doing an imitation of Brunnel. Not good. (GO BIG BEN!).
Early SB Impressions
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:40PM
Jed: One ad you didn't mention was for a mortgage company whose name escapes me - it made a joke about a misunderstanding in a hospital involving the death of a patient. It was terrible.
Can anyone explain why Tom Brady, a contemporary with the players on the field, is selected for the coin toss, when a mob of MVPs from Super Bowls past is standing beside him? Who is in charge of these things?
And don't think I didn't notice the mentions of Coretta Scott King and the victims of Katrina, but no mention of our troops. I'm surprised the NFL didn't take a stand against offensive cartoons.
As for the game: so far my worst fears are being confirmed. But go Pitt.
Super Bowl Commercials; Pt 2
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:37PM
The Dove Self Esteem fund? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.
Super Bowl Commercials
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 7:07PM
Ok, we're about ten minutes into the first quarter and tho the game isn't really going yet, here's the early talley on the commercials:
Bud Light: 2 for 3; good grab on the grizzley bear;
Burger King: entirely awful with the Busby Berkely hamberger;
Fed Ex; A home run with the cavemen. Hilarious.
So far so good.
Unlikely Predictions
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 2:47PM
Rudy Giuliani will win the Super Bowl, unless George Allen really wows 'em.
The Pittsburgh Steelers will win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Brokeback Mountain will win the CPAC straw poll.
Strange Image, Continued
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 11:21AM
Glenn Reynolds emails:
Hard to say. I've noticed myself that when you compress photos, or use effects like Adobe "fill flash" it can make stuff look fake even when it's unaltered, by making the tonal balances unnatural. My guess is that that's what happened here, though I could be wrong.I'll see if I can get a comment from Reuters and report back.
Strange Image
Posted by on 2.5.06 @ 2:50AM
Is it just my imagination, or do the words on the signs in this picture look awfully Photoshopped? If the photo has been altered to translate the signs into English, shouldn't Reuters tell us that?
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