Flouting the rules=disenfranchisement?

Facing strong opposition, Florida Democrats abandoned plans to hold a do-over presidential primary with a mail-in vote and threw the delegate dispute into the lap of the national party.

(But wait a minute; why is there an issue here? The DNP already settled this question, before the primary!!)

Of course, is anybody surprised it's coming down to this? I know Hillary Clinton isn't. (Come to think of it, she probably is surprised, and steaming mad, that the whole primary hasn't been settled in her favor already.)
It's also no surprise that now when things become important, suddenly the democrats shouldn't have to follow the rules, not even their own!
According to the rules of the Democratic National Party, if Florida held their primary before a certain date, the DNP would not recognize it as a valid primary, and would not be counted toward choosing which candidate the democrats would put up for President. Florida, and Florida's democrat voters *knew* this. They defied the party anyway, and the DNC enforced their rules. Well, so far anyway...

So of course, what happens when things start getting a little rough in Democrat-Land? Here comes that word:

Michael Steinberg, a lawyer for Victor DiMaio, a Democratic Party activist from Tampa, said Florida's Democratic voters are being disenfranchised by not being permitted to have their say in choosing their party's nominee. The action violates DiMaio's constitutional right to equal protection, he argued.

So check me on this; The primary is a way for a certain group of voters to decide who they're going to back for office in a general election. This is a procedural vote for members of a subset of the american voting public. No office is being filled here. Where's the disenfranchisement? Not to mention, where were the state's democrats when the state decided to forge ahead with this defiance? Where were their voices then? (Same question to Florida Republicans actually).

Question: When a vote is called, and you flagrantly violate the procedures for how your vote is cast, are you disenfranchised? I say no. I say you played yourself. In fact, Florida knew this going into the vote. They didn't agree with the rules, didn't follow the rules, and did it hoping that something just such as this would occur. So arguably, Florida is getting exactly what it wants, at the expense of it's representation within the Democrat party.

Pardon me if I giggle. Would the word 'schadenfreude' be appropriate here? It is probably one of my very favorite words of all, and I very rarely get to use it (much less experience it). So permit me my moment... ah. Go Florida!!

In a very rare case for me, I find myself agreeing with the DNP:

"The citizens of the state of Florida are not being treated equally," Steinberg told the judges. But Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, said the party has the right to set its own ... rules and not seat delegates who refuse to follow them.

Actually Michael Steinberg, I daresay the (democrat voting) citizens are being treated exactly equal. Equal to any set of members within the DNP who violate the procedures of the party. Just ask Michigan. Hehe. (of course, we can already predict what's going to happen next in Michigan, can't we?) And, oddly enough, ask the members of the Republican Party in Florida and Michigan. Their primaries violated their party procedures as well, and they also are being treated according to their party's rules. Of course, on the Republican primary side, the question is settled already, without FL or MI.

(Of course, to a Democrat, equal means "I get it my way." Again, this time it's being used against other Democrats. Schadenfreude? Me? Hehe.)

...let me tell you what your tax dollars bought...

On one hand, it's great to hear that a soldier is proud of his equipment. On the other hand, he's kind of busy you know... fighting a war. Couldn't he be doing something better with his time then being made to defend his ride against his own government (the one that supplied him with it in the first place).
Anyway, I enjoyed reading this first-hand account of how the Stryker MGS [Mobile Gun System] is being used in the field. I didn't even know it (this variant of the Stryker) existed. Actually, I don't know too much about the Stryker at all except that everybody seems to badmouth it.
And as you read this, tell me that you never had some criticisms of your own when it came to *your* favorite ride. Nothing's perfect, eh? (Yeah, I know; your old Chevette can't truly be compared to a soldier's armored fighting vehicle, but hey.)

Hat tip: Instapundit

PS: I'm RadarRider's little brother. You can see me listed as a contributor to this blog. So perhaps I should contribute? My first post here at Flying Above the Radar. :-)

Fred bows out of the race

Fred Thompson has withdrawn his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination. I'm pretty disappointed at this news. I won't second-guess Fred's decision because I am not him, nor am I an expert at campaigning for President. However, I would have liked to see him stay in it and campaign in Florida, especially since only Republicans can vote in the Republican primary in that state. It's possible that Democrats voting in earlier Republican primaries (such as South Carolina) had an effect on the outcomes so Florida would have been a better indicator of true Republican sentiment.

Again, I am not an expert but I do think there are some things Fred could have done better. Jim Geraghty has some words on the subject that I agree with. And it's too bad that the opportunity to refuse to do a show of hands in a debate didn't come sooner. But what's really sad is that more people didn't see Fred for what kind of President he would have made, whether because of the distortions of the media or their perception that he was "lazy" or didn't have the required "fire in the belly." And now too many of use who did won't have the chance to demonstrate it.

Nevertheless, what's done is done. I know I speak for a lot of folks when I say I'm sorry to see you go, Fred. I was really looking forward to voting for you in the Washington State primary and now I won't be able to unless I write your name in. Thanks for trying, and I hope you don't give up on politics altogether. This country needs as many people as possible for whom Federalism is the central tenet of their political views.

And now I have to figure out who I'm going to vote for and, with Fred no longer in the race, it will be a difficult decision indeed.

Update: The ever-irascible Kim du Toit is not as charitable in his initial reaction. I know how he feels. I want to be mad at Fred for pulling out so soon but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and temper my response. Perhaps in the coming days his reaction will prove to be justified. Until and unless that happens, however, I stand by the above.

Dan Rather plays the victim

LGF points to an Associated Press article which explains that Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS for firing him may be allowed to proceed. As noted toward the end of the article:

Rather was removed from his "CBS Evening News" post in March 2005, six months after he narrated a report that said Bush disobeyed orders and shirked some of his duties during his National Guard service. The report also said a commander felt pressured to sugarcoat Bush's record.

As noted at LGF, the article makes no mention of the following facts:

• The story was based on documents which were later proven to be fraudulent. (They were not forgeries which would imply that they were copies of legitimate original documents.)
• Even after the documents' validity was disproven, Rather continued to assert that the story was true even though he had no real proof.

As these were germane to the case, the fact that the article omitted them is, well, not surprising at all. This is the AP after all.

So why is Rather suing CBS?

Rather, whose last months at CBS were clouded by a disputed story on President Bush's Vietnam-era military service, says his employers made him a "scapegoat" to placate the White House after questions arose about the story.

No, Dan. They let you go because you are a partisan idiot who wanted so badly for the story to be true that you kept saying it was so even though your evidence was shown to be false. You were sullying CBS's name every minute you kept it up and they decided they already had plenty of problems with their credibility without you making things worse.

You have freedom of speech. You have the right to speak your opinions. However, CBS is under no obligation to facilitate it. You work for them, you represent them and what you say reflects on them regardless of any disclaimers to the contrary. They had every right to let you go.

Why the media dislikes Fred

The Fred File blog at Fred Thompson's official web site linked to a post by Ron Winter addressing among other things the media's criticism of Fred on his "late" entry into the race and how he's running his campaign. He writes:

Thompson has been roundly criticized in the media for not entering the fray earlier, and for not making a big splash when he did formally declare. It should be noted that the media which is criticizing Thompson is the same media that decides whether or nor a candidate has made a "splash" - contingent entirely upon the level of play the media gives to the story.

Thompson has been slammed by the media because he isn't playing by the media's rules. Yet for all the criticism, Thompson is moving steadily upward. The truth is, Thompson is simply walking a different path to the same goal, and it may be a better route.

But Fred's sticking to his guns and doing it his way. This leads to the following comment of which the last paragraph is the money quote:

There is a tenet in public relations and political circles that you never argue with the media, not matter how badly they have misquoted you. I don't agree.

If the media is being partisan, and unprofessional, I believe you should grab the offender straight on and demand a correction. If the media outlet refuses to correct its mistakes, take out an ad pointing out the discrepancy, the refusal to tell the truth, and let the voters see what you really said. I also believe in bringing your own tape recorder or video camera to any interview so you have your own evidence of what was said.

The media is not sacrosanct and it is long past time to be treating irresponsible and unprofessional reporters as saints who can't be questioned or challenged.

Emphasis mine.

Read the other posts linked to at Fred File as well. It's clear that the media doesn't like Fred Thompson and they provide several good reasons for this. Yet I'm thinking that there is something more behind this.

I posit the following:

• The mainstream media is, in general, biased toward liberal views and thus, again in general, towards Democrat elected officials and candidates.
• The mainstream media is thus scared witless by the prospect of President Fred Thompson.
• The mainstream media fears that Thompson has a good chance of becoming president if nominated, regardless of who the Democrat nominee is.
• The mainstream media thinks that certain other Republican candidates can more easily be defeated by Hillary or Obama.
  

It therefore follows that the media would very much like someone other than Fred Thompson to be the Republican nominee, someone they feel has a good chance of losing to either of the two Democrat candidates most likely to be nominated. And thus we can conclude that the media will do what it can to drag Thompson down and elevate one or more other Republican candidates which is what appears to be happening.

Personal Privacy and False Familiarity

The ever-irascible Kim du Toit has some thoughtful words about the expectation of privacy in our personal lives and how we interact with people we don't know. He contrasts the culture here in the United States with that of his home country of South Africa:

We Americans are too quick to impose ourselves on other people, too quick to want to establish some kind of personal bond with total strangers.

”Hi; my name is George, and I’ll be your server tonight.”

1.) I don’t care who you are.
2.) Obviously you are my server, because you came up to my table carrying a menu.

It’s that kind of false familiarity which gets on my nerves, and makes me want to say something extremely rude back to the person—because assuming familiarity with me is horribly rude to start off with.

He also addresses the privacy of "public" people such as celebrities and those who have been caught up in important events.

Now I admit that I tend to be very friendly to the people who are providing me service. Part of the reason is that I'm a generally gregarious person, though I do have times when I just want to be left alone. Another part, however, is that I've done that type of job myself when I was in college and I've learned not to be a jerk. Of course, if service is poor or I have an issue with the establishment I'm not going to ignore it, but being friendly up front tends to result in better service. Imagine that.

Even so, I don't offer details of my private life nor solicit such details from them. I'm more than polite, which may push Kim's comfort boundaries, but I save the private stuff for if and when I get to know someone better.

Fred Thompson's problems

Paul Ibrahim compares and contrasts the Republican candidates. He begins:

Mitt Romney said it best in last week’s debate: “We're not going to get the White House nor strengthen America unless we can pull together the coalition of conservatives and conservative thought that has made us successful as a party. And that's social conservatives. It's also economic conservatives. And foreign policy and defense conservatives.”

After going through the issues he has with all of the others, he comes to Fred:

This leaves us with Fred Thompson, who, ironically, is the candidate best described by Romney’s words about the Republican tripod. In short, Thompson holds the same conservative positions of all the other candidates combined, and has none of their flaws. In fact, any close observer of the campaign season would tell you that Thompson has been on the receiving end of barely any substantive attacks on policy issues. This is no coincidence. And it is the reason he has had to bear the brunt of shallow attacks about his demeanor, campaigning style, and laziness (whatever that means).

Of course, Fred isn't without his issues either:

You know a candidate is solid when his biggest problem is his unwillingness to follow the pack on campaigning styles. You know you can trust a candidate when, unlike his opponents, he is regularly unmentioned by accuracy watchdogs like FactCheck.org following debates. And you know what you’re getting in a candidate whose campaign rhetoric so closely matches his legislative record.

I'm sure there are a lot of people in the media that are scared witless by the prospect of President Fred Thompson. So when you read opinions about how he's "lazy" or "doesn't seem to care" about his campaign, keep in mind the source. And then read the updates at Fred08, see just how busy he actually is, and note where he's making his appearances. From the reports it's clear that he's taking his message to the people where they live and work, eschewing such events as fancy campaign dinners at a thousand bucks a plate. Leave that to the Democrats.

Krauthammer on religion and politics

I think he pretty much nails it:

In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race -- changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next -- so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.

Now, there's nothing wrong with having a spirited debate on the place of religion in politics. But the candidates are confusing two arguments.

The first, which conservatives are winning, is defending the legitimacy of religion in the public square. The second, which conservatives are bound to lose, is proclaiming the privileged status of religion in political life.

There's nothing wrong with one's opinions and decisions being informed by one's religious beliefs. To ask someone to go against those beliefs simply because of how they are arrived at is asking him or her to violate their integrity.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with his statement that "Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet." Why this is so I leave as an exercise for the reader.

Don't forget Afghanistan

In case anyone is wondering if we're making any progress in Afghanistan, I present this:

Afghanistan's government flag was raised Wednesday on what had been one of the biggest strongholds of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and a leading world center of heroin production.

Coalition forces aren't messing around. When you're dealing with an enemy that respects only force, you use a lot of it:

Embedded with a team of British troops and a detachment/"A–team" of U.S. special forces, I watched the Taliban being pounded these last few days with overwhelming force -- vapor trails circled in the clear blue sky over the Helmand desert as B1 and B52 bombers backed by A10 tank busters, F16s, Apache helicopters and Specter gunships were used to kill hundreds of Taliban fighters.

As in Iraq, the enemy isn't just indigenous:

U.S. forces believe the Taliban were backed by a large strength of foreign fighters, including those linked to al Qaeda. Soldiers who I accompanied found one dead fighter whose notebook revealed he was from Pakistan.

It just further hammers home the point that Afghanistan and Iraq are two campaigns in a larger war. Iran is yet another, albeit one that hasn't escalated to the point where we take military action.

H/T Mike at Cold Fury.

Fred's the man

Yeah, I know I said I'd start posting again and I haven't. It'll probably take a while to get back in the habit of regular updates. For now, though, I have an announcement.

I hereby declare that I support Fred Thompson for President of the United States.

Having said that, should he not be the Republican nominee, next November I will vote for whoever is, and do so with a clear conscience.

Ascending back above the radar

As we move further into the 2008 political season, I've decided to start posting here once again. You will note that I'm using Blogger's hosting service now rather than contracting with a separate service. Blogspot has improved greatly since I first set up this blog so I'm comfortable using it now.

I'm still working out the site layout so some of the things that were here before are currently missing. Most will be added back in one form or another. Also, I'm going to try Blogger's comment system so all the old comments made with HaloScan won't be accessible unless I decide to switch back to it. As few comments were ever made, I don't think this will be an issue.

Another hiatus

This blog is being hosted on the Geekette's virtual server at her hosting service. She has switched hosting services and this domain will be going away at some point in the future. I don't know if I'm going to switch over to her new domain, set up one of my own, or just not do this anymore. For now, this will likely be the last post here unless and until I post the link to the new location. Until then, good luck to you all, and God bless America and those who fight to keep us free.

The video surfaces

In an earlier post, I speculated on why there hadn't been any video of the murder and desecration of two US soldiers by terrorist animals in Iraq. Yesterday, that video was made available. Warning: The images, should you choose to view them, are quite graphic.

In that earlier post, I wrote:

If no such video ever appears, one can only speculate why not but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because our men showed exceptional courage in the face of death and defiance of their killers.

Once the RCOB passes, it is interesting to note that, in this video, our soldiers are already dead. It shows the desecration of their bodies, but it does not show their murders. I maintain, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that our soldiers met their death bravely, so much so that our enemies dare not let us see it.

Hat tip Misha for the link.

Rest in Peace, Acidman

Rob Smith, aka Acidman, the author of the blog Gut Rumbles, has passed away. I used to read his blog regularly until the pressures of daily life forced me to cut back on my blog habit but I would still occasionally check in from time to time to see how he was doing.

He was crass, he was rude, and he called it like he saw it. His voice was a refreshing wind, sometimes gusty, sometimes gentle, but always interesting. Like he said in the quote on his side panel, "If my blog does not meet your standards, then LOWER YOUR STANDARDS. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?" If you didn't like what he had to write, you didn't have to read it.

His love for his son, and his hatred of the boy's mother, were equally on display for the world to see. One brought out the best in him, the other the worst, but it was all laid out on the screen right from his soul. His life wasn't easy, with more than its share of lows to go with the highs. But he made the best of it that he could.

Rest in Peace, Rob. I wish I'd had the chance to meet you. May the angels carry you gently to the peace you weren't able to find in life.

Remembrances by other bloggers:
Emperor Misha
Kim du Toit
Velociman
Boudicca
...and many more, I'm sure. Just click through Acidman's blogroll.

Perverse anti-Westernism

Back in February, The Sydney Line published this article by Keith Windschuttle titled "The Adversary Culture" and subtitled "The perverse anti-Westernism of the cultural elite." In it, he attempts to illustrate how certain groups have vilified Western culture while espousing multi-culturalism: the belief that all cultures are equal in value, with the exception of ours. This belief has led to some very interesting and, on the surface, non-intuitive results:

For instance, although Western feminists once found the overt misogyny of many tribal cultures distasteful, in recent years they have come to respect practices they once condemned. Feminist academics now deny that suttee, the incineration of widows, is barbaric. The Indian-American cultural studies theorist, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak gives suttee an honourable place in Indian culture by comparing it to the Christian tradition of martyrdom. Feminists once denounced the surgical removal of the clitoris of Muslim women as female genital mutilation. Lately, the procedure has been redefined as genital “cutting”, which the literary and art critic Germaine Greer now argues should be recognized as an authentic manifestation of the culture of the Muslim women concerned

.
He tackles the prevalent assumption in intellectual circles that Western culture is "inherently genocidal." One example oft cited is that of the aboriginal people of Tasmania.

In 2001 and 2002 I undertook the task of checking the footnotes of the major authors on Tasmania to verify their original sources, I found to my surprise that their interpretation of frontier warfare and genocide was based on invented incidents, concocted footnotes, altered documents and gross exaggeration of the Aboriginal death toll. I could find credible evidence that white settlers had killed a total of 121 Aborigines, mostly in self defence or in hot pursuit of Aborigines who had killed or assaulted white settlers. The rest of the population of about 2000 natives had died from diseases to which their long isolation on their island had given them no immunity, principally influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis. On top of this, venereal disease rendered most of the women infertile.

The Tasmanian colony had been founded in 1803 in the middle of the British campaign to end the slave trade. Its longest-serving governor was George Arthur, a supporter of William Wilberforce, and who in his previous post in British Honduras had set the colony's indigenous slaves free. His sensitivity to the native question, in fact, was what got him the job in Australia. He wanted to civilize and modernize the Aborigines, not exterminate them. His intentions were not to foster violence towards the Aborigines but to prevent it. The charge of genocide is not only wrong, it is maliciously wrong — the defamation of a good man and a wilful misrepresentation of the truth.

And then, of course, we come to Muslims. After providing examples of terrorism on a personal level, he addresses the reaction of the Muslim world to the publishing of certain cartoons in a Danish newspaper, ones which Muslims claimed mocked the prophet Mohammed and insulted Islam.

The truth is that the riots, the arson, the death threats were not spontaneous outbursts from passionate religious believers but were carefully stage-managed by Muslim leaders. The imams of the Danish Muslim community consciously ignited the response some four months after the cartoons were published. They travelled to the Middle East where they generated support for a campaign quite deliberately targeted at Western culture's principle of freedom of expression.

And why are they doing this?

Their real aim is not religious respect but cultural change in the West. They want to prevent criticism of its Muslim minority and accord that group special privilege not available to the faithful of other religions. Instead of them changing to integrate into our way of life, they want to force us to change to accept their way of life.

Muslim rage over the cartoons is not an isolated issue that would have been confined to Denmark and would have gone away if nobody had republished them. It is simply one more step in a campaign that has already included assassination, death threats and the curtailment of criticism. And our response, yet again, has been one more white flag in the surrender of Western cultural values that we have been making since Khomeini's fatwa against Rushdie in 1989.

Contrary to the opinions of these groups, Western culture has been responsible for much that is considered good in this world.

The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena. They were never produced by Confucian or Hindu culture. Under Islam, the idea of objective inquiry had a brief life in the fourteenth century but was never heard of again. In the twentieth century, the first thing that every single communist government in the world did was suppress it.

But without this concept, the world would not be as it is today. There would have been no Copernicus, Galileo, Newton or Darwin. All of these thinkers profoundly offended the conventional wisdom of their day, and at great personal risk, in some cases to their lives but in all cases to their reputations and careers. But because they inherited a culture that valued free inquiry and free expression, it gave them the strength to continue.

Just for the record, in case it wasn't obvious, I reject the tenets of multi-culturalism. I believe that some cultures are objectively superior to others. Western culture has its flaws and its low points in history, all cultures do. But I submit that it is responsible for more progress in this world than any other and we should not be ashamed of it.

Britain continues its descent beneath the waves

Theodore Dalrymple, writing at City Journal, notes that in Britain, "In a strange inversion of proper priorities, important matters are taken lightly and trivial ones taken seriously."

He provides tow examples of the former, two examples of the latter, and a further example of, as he says, "the soft and creeping totalitarianism that comes with unctuous offers of benefits and avowals of purity of intention, rather than the boot-in-the-face variety of Orwell’s description."

Unfortunately, Britain may be beyond hope, and it may take a true revolution for it to be put right. But there's certainly no guarantee. It's the frog in the pot on the stove and the water's already near the boiling point. We can only hope that enough Brits awaken to and understand the danger before it's too late.

And just because it's happening "over there" doesn't mean we're not in danger of the same thing happening here. We're well on the way, though we're still some distance back. We also have the advantage of having experienced a true revolution that birthed our nation, and the examples of Britain and others to observe and, hopefully, learn from. I fear less for this country than I do for Britain, but I fear nonetheless. But my voice is only one in a growing chorus, and that gives me hope.

Hat tip to unixronin, a British expat who will hopefully take the oath of citizenship soon.

Daily Kos apologizes, sort of

The author of the post that I linked to yesterday (I don't know if it was Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the founder of Daily Kos or another contributor) has modified the post to remove some of the more inflammatory language and offered an explnation and an apology of sorts:

My heart is broken by the brutal and senseless murder of these two young men. The fact that they were tortured makes the grief all the more grievous. I have not a shred of doubt that the barbarians who did this to them - who alone among all humans, are 100% responsible for their actions - will pay the price for their heinous acts, whether in this life or the next. In the meantime, I pray for the souls of those killed and for the comfort of those who loved them, and for all who care about their fate.

I wrote this diary because I was enraged that our government - my government - could have taken - and repeatedly defended - a position that the provisions of the Geneva Conventions - provisions written with the understanding that war is a brutal and savage activity at its core, and that humans engaged in war often are prone to brutal and savage behaviors - are merely "quaint" anachronisms, no longer applicable to our current world situation, and that torture is an acceptable practice for our society.

I respect him for recognizing that the terrorists are responsible for their actions. This is entirely correct. He is to be credited for recognizing that the language referring to the families of Rumsfeld, Yoo, and others was over the line and retracting it.

I understand that he was angry when he heard the news. I was, too. However our big difference is how we expressed that anger. I was angry with those who murdered our soldiers and my opinion is that they would have done what they did regardless of any actions or behavior on the part of the United States and its military. The post's author believes that it is in retaliation for what he perceives as violations of the Geneva Conventions by the United States and that such violations reduce us morally to the level of our enemy.

I would like to address his statement that the administration asserts that the Geneva Conventions are quaint. The memo from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to President Bush that he cites is located here. The Justice Department had determined that the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GPW) did not apply to al Qaeda and the Taliban. The President agreed with this assessment. The Secretary of State had asked the President to reconsider his decision and Attorney General Gonzales wrote this memo to support the DOJ's position. This is the relevant paragraph:

As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for GPW. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.

The word "quaint" here is applied to certain provisions, which he specifically names, and not the entire Convention. He does state that certain limitations on questioning prisoners are obsolete but he does not use the word "quaint" to describe them.

And of course, the last two paragraphs of the memo are overlooked:

• In the treatment of detainees, the U.S. will continue to be constrained by (i) its commitment to treat the detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of GPW, (ii) its applicable treaty obligations, (iii) minimum standards of treatment universally recognized by the nations of the world, and (iv) applicable military regulations regarding the treatment of detainees.


• Similarly, the argument based on military culture fails to recognize that our military remain bound to apply the principles of GPW because that is what you have directed them to do.

Emphasis mine -RR

Where's the video?

In the past, when terrorist thugs have beheaded or otherwise murdered people, they've recorded the act on video and released the footage. So where's the video of the two soldiers that were recently tortured and killed? Not that I wish to see such video, nor add to the grief and suffering of the families of these two men, but I can't help but wonder.

If no such video ever appears, one can only speculate why not but I wouldn't be surprised if it was because our men showed exceptional courage in the face of death and defiance of their killers. To allow Americans to see such bravery and spirit would only serve to embolden our troops and show the terrorists for what they truly are.

Human Rights Watch backs off blaming Israel

As a followup to my earlier post it appears that Human Rights Watch, which initially blamed the Israeli Defence Forces for the blast, is backing down somewhat:

On Monday, the Human Rights Watch, while sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, conceded for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF's exonerating findings.

On Monday, Maj.-Gen. Meir Klifi - head of the IDF inquiry commission that cleared the IDF of responsibility for the blast - met with Marc Garlasco, a military expert from the HRW who had last week claimed that the blast was caused by an IDF artillery shell. Following the three-hour meeting, described by both sides as cordial and pleasant, Garlasco praised the IDF's professional investigation into the blast, which he said was most likely caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance left laying on the beach, a possibility also raised by Klifi and his team.

Of course this will mean nothing to the Palestinians who bear absolutely no responsibility whatsoever for the conflict with Israel.

Hat tip to Dale at QandO who succinctly sums up the likelihood that the Palestinians will apologize to the IDF for falsely accusing them.

Radical left spits on corpses of US soldiers

Two soldiers were captured last Friday after an attack at a traffic checkpoint outside the city of Youssifiyah, located just south of Baghdad. Their names are Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. Our worst fears were realized when the bodies of the two were found and recovered:

The director of the Iraqi defense ministry's operation room, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, said the bodies showed signs of having been tortured. "They were killed in a barbaric way," he said.

They were probably tortured before being killed and I mean real torture, not the type of activities the media and the left call "torture" that happened at Abu Ghraib and are occurring at Guantanamo Bay during interrogations.

Predictably, the moonbat left blames Bush for this even though the terrorists would happily have killed these soldiers in this way regardless of our presence in Iraq. From this post at Daily Kos:

The bodies of the two captured U.S. soldiers were found in Iraq - bearing signs of "barbaric torture."

How quaint.

I hope Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo will sleep well tonight, with visions of those boys' bodies and the horrible barbarities inflicted upon them dancing in their heads. Perhaps Gonzales, and Yoo, and Rumsfeld and Bush will be able to envision the same inhumanities being visited upon their family members and loved ones as they drift off to peaceful slumber.

Read through the comments for more gems.

Naturally the Geneva Conventions are brought up. Here's the deal. The Geneva Conventions were created to deter torture, mistreatment of prisoners of war, etc. The way they do this is by essentially saying: "If you, as a signatory to these conventions, are in conflict with another signatory, and you violate the terms of these conventions, then your opponent is no longer obligated to observe the terms. They are then free under the conventions to commit similar acts against any of your soldiers or civilians that they capture." In other words, do it to them and expect them to do it back to you.

Our enemy in this conflict is not a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. They commit atrocities like the killings of these soldiers, the killings of the contractors in Fallujah, the beheadings of Nick Berg and others, as a matter of course. For them it is standard operating procedure. Yet we adhere to the terms of the conventions despite this, and we are blamed when our enemy does not. I do not think that we should start torturing and killing terrorist prisoners. I believe we should continue as we have. It proves that we are morally and ethically superior to our enemy. Even the aberrations such as Abu Ghraib and recent events in Haditha, assuming it is proven that the Marines are guilty as charged (and pre-convicted by ex-Marine John Murtha), do not approach the level of barbarity that our enemy commits on a daily basis.

Unfortunately the radical left is so blinded by hatred of Bush and Republicans that they will never see it. We can't make them shut up, nor should we try. We can only marginalize them and expose them for the barking moonbats that they are.

The latest from Bill Whittle

First, an update on what's going on in his world.

Second, the introduction to the new book he's working on.

Go forth all ye who read this and enjoy.

Airport security: Can the Isreali model work in the US?

Bruce Schneier links to a couple of articles by Patrick Smith regarding airline security. The first one addresses the Isreali method of securing their major airport, and their national airline. Mr. Smith believes, however, that the model won't work here, at least not without modification:

But it's not draconian strictness or bullying regulations that make Tel Aviv so impressive -- not on the surface, anyway. It's common sense and efficiency. The place isn't merely safeguarded; it's downright passenger friendly. So it would seem those letter writers are right. We could do worse than emulate our allies in the Middle East. Why can't we, or why don't we, have a system like theirs?

Unfortunately, that's a bit like asking why America's streets can't be as clean as Singapore's. Mostly it's a case of scale. The United States has dozens of mega-terminals, and hundreds more of varying sizes; the nation's top 25 airports each process more than 20 million people a year. Tel Aviv is Israel's sole major airport, handling 9 million passengers annually -- about the same as Raleigh-Durham, N.C. The ability to focus on this single, consolidated portal makes the job comparatively simple. There are aspects worth borrowing, for sure, but it's naive to think Israeli protocols can, in whole, be fitted to a nation that is 50 times more populous, and immeasurably more diverse and decentralized.

The same applies when talking about El Al, the Israeli national airline. No carrier has taken more care to protect its fleet against sabotage, it's true. Among other measures, every El Al jet is outfitted with an anti-missile system. Crews are trained in hand-to-hand combat, and a minimum of six armed marshals ride aboard every El Al flight. But in addition to being one-third owned and funded by the state, El Al is a relatively tiny airline. It operates fewer than 40 aircraft, all hubbed from a single city, and transports just over 3 million passengers yearly. Compare that with American, United or Delta, just to name three, each with more than 500 planes. American Airlines carries roughly 1.7 million passengers every week.

These are valid points and probably correct. As he says, there are aspects worth borrowing. Certainly we should be able to adapt them to our circumstances.

In a followup article he talks about racial profiling and how it won't work because not all terrorists fit a single racial profile:

The 19 skyjackers succeeded not because we failed to flag them -- in fact several of the cabal, including Mohammed Atta, were singled out by the CAPPS-1 (for computer-assisted passenger prescreening system) program then in place -- but because they knowingly anticipated what levels of resistance they would face, from previously gathered intelligence available to check-in staff, and, most important, physical resistance (or lack thereof) from passengers and crew aboard the four doomed Boeings. The attackers took advantage of the skyjack paradigm as it existed at the time. They did not exploit a loophole in airport security; they exploited a loophole in our mind-set and expectations. And whatever can be said of terrorists, they're generally not stupid; the more narrowly we profile, the easier the system becomes to skirt. Routine, as any security or antiterror expert will tell you, is weakness. The trouble with profiling isn't necessarily that it's racist or discriminatory. The trouble is that it doesn't work.

Later in the article, he refers to a different type of profiling, one which Isreal has been using to great effect for years and which I personally think we should adopt:

For more intelligent reading, I highly recommend Bruce Schneier's "Beyond Fear -- Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." Again, the title says it all. Among his many cogent arguments, Schneier smartly maintains that the most valuable front-line defense against terror is not a one-dimensional preoccupation with skin color. He advocates a mix of random screening and a cadre of well-trained, experienced professionals, skilled in the art of behavioral profiling.

Fortunately, as he notes later, the TSA has a program that it is testing where exactly that type of profiling is being applied. Hopefully it will be done right, succeed, and be adopted at all airports.

In the course if his article, he refers to a "quiz" that is meant to illustrate why we should profile Muslim males. Here's a sample:

• In 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Iran was taken over by:

a. Norwegians from Ballard
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40

Living as I do in the Puget Sound region, of which Ballard is a part, I immediately got the reference. After some discussion he suggests this alternate quiz of which this is one question:

• In 1994, who nearly succeeding in skyjacking a DC-10 and crashing it into the Federal Express Corp. headquarters?

a. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
b. Michelle Malkin
c. Charlie Rose
d. Auburn Calloway, an off-duty FedEx employee and resident of Memphis, Tenn.

Although he has a good point, I would note that this example is the most recent and it happened twelve years ago. Since then, the majority of international terrorism has been committed by Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40. So while we certainly shouldn't assume that all terrorists will be people that fall into that demographic, it's a pretty good bet that most will be. Certainly don't limit scrutiny to that group, but we should recognize that membership in that group does indicate an increased risk.

The Dixie Chicks ride again, down the same trail as before

The Dixie Chicks are back in the news now that they've released a new album and the first single, titled Not Ready to Make Nice, is climbing the charts. But the furor over what happened three years ago hasn't fully died down. First, the background: During a show in Germany in 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines said she was ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush. The result?

When Maines made her comment on March 10 2003, 10 days before Operation Iraqi Freedom unleashed "shock and awe" over Baghdad, the Dixie Chicks were probably the biggest act in country music. Yet within days, their music vanished from the charts and the airwaves, apoplectic rednecks crushed piles of their CDs with tractors, and the FBI was feverishly monitoring death threats against the trio. It was the most heinous pop-star outrage since Ozzy Osbourne urinated on the Alamo.

For me personally, it wasn't so much what she said, it was where she said it, and how they reacted to the response. Let me be clear: I do not condone threats of death, bodily harm, vandalism of property, or any other action that is against the law. If you disagree with something someone said, you have no right to threaten a crime, let alone commit one. However, much of the response was entirely legal. Many radio stations stopped playing their music. Sales of their records went down. People even destroyed Dixie Chick's CD's as a sign of protest. All of these acts are perfectly legal and legitimate reactions.

What got me was that the attitude of the Dixie Chicks was that these legal actions constituted censorship. At no point did any government entity do anything in response to Maines' statement so no censorship existed. Nobody is under any obligation to buy their albums. Radio stations are under no obligation to play their songs, unless they have a contract which says they are. The Dixie Chicks failed to realize that, even though you have freedom of speech, you do not have freedom from consequences. And the thing is, I think they still haven't learned.

The Chicks can't hide their disgust at the lack of support they received from other country performers. "A lot of artists cashed in on being against what we said or what we stood for because that was promoting their career, which was a horrible thing to do," says Robison.

The only country artist I know of who made his opinion public was Toby Keith. There may have been others, I don't know. And Natalie certainly didn't sit there and take it, wearing a shirt with the letters "FUTK" on it during the Dixie Chicks' performance at the Country Music Awards. Ultimately Toby decided he just didn't want to deal with it anymore and backed off. As for other artists not supporting them, well I guess that depends on your definition of support. If they disagreed with her statements, then they were certainly under no obligation to support her opinion. On the other hand, they certainly should have spoken out against the more extreme reactions that some people had, such as the death threats. Whether they did so I can't say; I don't remember one way or the other.

The next two paragraphs in the article are probably the most important in understanding just why things happened the way they did.

"A lot of pandering started going on, and you'd see soldiers and the American flag in every video. It became a sickening display of ultra-patriotism."

"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism," Maines resumes, through gritted teeth. "Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."

I need make no additional comment.

More MSM hypocrisy

Via Boortz comes further evidence of the mainstream media's double-standard. On June 9, Isreal was alleged to have fired a rocket onto a Gaza beach, resulting in the deaths of seven Palistinian civilians. The story was everywhere; the New York Times printed a picture of a young girl searching for her father, presumably one of those killed in the explosion.

Just another brutal attack on civilians by the Israel Defense Forces? So we are invited to conclude. But the IDF, after initially apologizing and offering assistance to the families of those killed, has now investigated and concluded that the explosion was not caused by an Israeli shell. Full stop.

The deaths were tragic, but the IDF was not at fault. Read the whole article as Ms. Charen presents considerable evidence of the mainstream media's selective reporting. In the end, she sums it up perfectly:

Two weeks ago, I was critical of those who leaped to conclusions about what happened at Haditha. It now looks as though news from Haditha may have been manipulated -- just as news from the Palestinian territories routinely is. The western press falls for these scams again and again. Their credulity betrays their partiality and it dishonors them.

By their lies shall they be known

I tried to post this yesterday but Blogger ate my post and I didn't have time to type it back in.

As a followup to my previous post, we have some commentary from someone on the other side of the debate, which comes near the end of this article:

Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose office unsuccessfully defended the law before Warren, said the city was mulling whether it was going to appeal.

"We're disappointed that the court has denied the right of voters to enact a reasonable, narrowly tailored restriction on handgun possession," Dorsey said. "San Francisco voters spoke loud and clear on the issue of gun violence."

This legislation was in no way reasonable, nor was it in any way narrowly tailored. It banned possession of handguns in the city, period. It banned the sale and manufacture of all firearms and ammunition within the city, period. No, it didn't ban the possession of rifles but, if I may be so bold, I'm willing to bet that such a ban was already in the planning stages.

I understand that the City Attorney is required to defend any legislation that is passed and then becomes the target of a lawsuit, regardless of the political views of the attorney and his staff. However, Mr. Dorsey is clearly a supporter of the legislation. Fortunately, it doesn't matter what he believes because he lost.

As a side note, while reading the article, this paragraph caught my particular attention:

The ordinance targeted only city residents, meaning nonresidents in the city or even tourists were not banned from possessing or selling guns here.

So it wasn't as complete a ban as I indicated above. It didn't apply to everyone in the city, just people who live there. Why this makes this legislation even more ridiculous I leave as an exercise for the reader.

Hat tip to The GeekWithA.45 for the link.

I wonder if Satan is skating to work this morning?

Once upon a time, the voters of the city of San Francisco passed an initiative:

Proposition H, which won a 58 percent majority, would have outlawed possession of handguns by all city residents except law enforcement officers and others who needed the guns for professional purposes. It also would have forbidden the manufacture, sale and distribution of all guns and ammunition in San Francisco.

However, there are some areas of the law that are outside the control of local governments regardless of how many people voted for a particular law. This is one of them:

The National Rifle Association sued on behalf of gun owners, advocates and dealers the day after the measure passed. The NRA argued that Prop. H overstepped local government authority and intruded into an area regulated by the state. The city agreed to delay enforcement of the measure while the suit was pending.

In today's ruling, Judge James Warren said California law, which authorizes police agencies to issue handgun permits, implicitly prohibits a city or county from banning handgun possession by law-abiding adults.

That law "demonstrates the Legislature's intent to occupy, on a statewide basis, the field of residential and commercial handgun possession to the exclusion of local government entities,'' Warren wrote in a 30-page decision.

The truth is that this is even outside the control of state governments. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution trumps all. Kim du Toit, who provided the link to this article, sums it up thusly:

I would, just once, like to hear a judge overturn one of these horrible gun ban laws with a simple, declarative sentence like: “This law is just flat-out un-Constitutional. What part of shall not be infringed was unclear to you when you formulated this nonsense?”

Words of wisdom

I'm going to include the entirety of this Usenet post(via Google Groups) since you really need to read it all, and I can't pick just a portion to excerpt.

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 16:52:18 +0000 (UTC), Randolph Fritz <rando...@panix.com> wrote:

>On 2006-06-12, David Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:

>> I have no idea how old you are, but when I was a college student in the
>> early sixties, the then dominant intellectual view was that conservative
>> views were held by people because they were ignorant or stupid, or
>> possibly crazy.

>And those were the sympathetic views. After 'nam, Iraq, Guantanamo,
>the national debt explosion, universal surveillance, I am much less
>sympathetic.

You have a strange definition of "sympathetic."

You know, Viet Nam was the brainchild of those famous
conservatives Lyndon Johnson and Robert MacNamara. You don't
have universal surveillance, not by a long shot, and you,
personally, are probably not even on anybody's radar screen, the
national debt first exploded under that famous conservative
Franklin Roosevelt, and did so again under Lyndon Johnson, before
moving on to Reagan's and Bush II's versions of explosion, and
all except Johnson had inherited a depression or recession. Given
the existence of Al Quaeda, something like Guantanamo was going
to have to exist _somewhere_ and turning over the inmates to the
tender mercies of say, Saudi Arabia, would not be an improvement
from the inmates' point of view.

You may have a point about Iraq, but it was the established
policy of the Clinton administration to bring down Saddam
Hussein. Bush II actually _did_ it. His only real mistake was
assuming he could keep the peace with the same number, or fewer
troops than necessary to defeat Saddam. And even _then_ he was
getting different answers, depending on whom he asked. Can you
blame him, really, when the "expert" opinions varied so widely
for choosing the one that most appealed to him?

The world is a bigger, more diverse, and more complex place than
you or I are capable of imagining. Where I'm starting to see a
difference between us, is that I _know_ I don't understand
things.

Those who disagree with you may or may not be mistaken. They may
or may not be misinformed. They are certainly _differently_
informed, and this comes of living different lives in different
places from you. I expect a Kansas wheat farmer has a lot better
understanding of what goes on in New York than a New Yorker has
of understanding what it's like trying to make a living raising
wheat for which the farmer is paid the same as he was in 1955,
while the price of bread keeps going up every year, and the only
way he can survive at all is to squeeze ever higher production
out of the same fields, while wondering where he's going to get
the money to plant next year's crop and in the meantime dodging
several tornadoes a season. The stupid don't succeed under those
conditions, they fail spectacularly. Only you don't see it
because it didn't get so much as a column half-inch in the New
York Times, only an auction announcement in the Manhattan
Mercury, because farmers going broke isn't news, even in Kansas
-- especially in Kansas.

He knows there's something wrong with his world, and he sees your
contempt for him, and he makes a link between your attitude and
some of his problems, and he votes his conscience, just like you
do yours. Only he has a religion he practices, and a God he
believes in, and because he does, you show even _more_ contempt
for the only stable part of his life, and you try to make him
accept things that he knows, down to the bottom of his soles and
his soul are _wrong_. And you do it while sneering at him. And
he sees you sneer. And he decides if that's liberalism, he wants
nothing to do with it or you, and you can by God grow your own
wheat before he'll ever listen to a thing you have to say, ever
again.

If you want to convince that Kansas wheat farmer of the
righteousness of your position, stop sneering at him and start
talking to him like he's a human being with dignity who disagrees
with you because he has a different point of view, not like he's
a village idiot who disagrees with you because he's ignorant or
just plain stupid. Because he's not ignorant, and he's not
stupid. But he sees a lot of ignorance and stupidity in that
sneer of yours.

Quotes of the day

Courtesy of the Patriot Post.

THE FOUNDATION
"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors." —Joseph Story

INSIGHT
"That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise." —John Stuart Mill

CULTURE
"So much of the language in the Constitution has been exaggerated from its initial meaning, or else reinterpreted with ideology in mind, that there is public mystification about what it is that is truly guaranteed, or truly prohibited. The question of interpretation came up early in after the FBI searched the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., finding evidence that the gentleman had been accepting and paying bribes and falsifying his tax returns... The issue was almost immediately raised that the FBI agents were exercising themselves outside their constitutional competence. This vague point has affected the thinking of those who are attracted to theoretical extrapolations on the Bill of Rights, taking its provisions to lengths that would surely have surprised the Founders. If the Constitution's rule separating church and state can be held to mean that a replica of the scene at Bethlehem cannot be constitutionally displayed on state property, then maybe Mr. Jefferson is indeed protected, giving credibility to the new Hastert-Pelosi exegesis of the Constitution. But stare down hard at the language. The Constitution holds that lawmakers are 'privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.'... This has nothing to do with Mr. Jefferson's case. Which means that those who say that the FBI should not have had access to the congressman's home or office are extending that constitutional provision to the point of immunity from search... What the defense will plead in the case of Rep. Jefferson we cannot know for certain. But to plead the procedural point—that the FBI had no business in his freezer—is cartoon constitutional reductionism." —William F. Buckley

LIBERTY
"[T]he threat to liberty in the 21st century is the same as it has been throughout mankind's history. That threat is use of the coercive powers of government, under the color of law, to take the rightful property of some people and give to others, and the forcible imposition of the will of one group of people on another group. Such acts, most often done in the name of good, explain the ugliest portions of human history. The question is whether America will degenerate into what has been mankind's standard fare throughout history. We have yet to see the kind of arbitrary control, abuse and violation of basic human rights seen elsewhere. But if we ask ourselves which way are we heading, tiny steps at a time: toward more personal liberty or toward greater government control over our lives, the answer would unambiguously be the latter. We Americans face an awesome challenge and responsibility because if liberty dies here, it's probably dead for all places and all times." —Walter Williams

THE GIPPER
"Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government. Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it." —Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF
"Without baby boomers, there is no global warming. Not because boomers are uniquely gaseous, but because they are uniquely egotistical. The notion that, as Al Gore put it on my radio station last week, humans are 'baking the planet to death' can only be swallowed whole by those whose appetite for self-importance has reached global proportions. For boomers like Al Gore, nothing ever happened in the world until it happened to them. The first president ever assassinated was JFK; no war had ever been protested or opposed before Vietnam; government corruption was invented by Nixon and Bill Clinton proved the boomers could all still get laid." —Michael Graham

GOVERNMENT
"Partisanship is fine when it's an expression of the high animal spirits produced by real political contention based on true political belief. But the current partisanship seems sour, not joyous. The partisanship has gotten deeper as less separates the governing parties in Washington. It is like what has been said of academic infighting: that it's so vicious because the stakes are so low. The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people—between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there." —Peggy Noonan

RE: THE LEFT
"The Marine incident, and its aftermath, at Haditha tells us much more about the media than it does about the Marines. And what it tells us ought to outrage us to the core. On every radio and television show I appeared on last week (and all I observed) in which this topic came up, without exception at least one of the media people immediately attempted to implicate not just the still-presumed-innocent Marines, but the American military's leadership and methods in general... The [media] has already started to report this story in a manner that is likely to do vast damage that may last for several years to the morale (and possibly recruitment) of our military. It will create a propaganda catastrophe of strategic proportions in our mortal struggle with radical Islam and its terrorist spear point. And all this is being done by journalists who are seemingly oblivious to the consequences of their acts... To see the gleam in the eyes of reporters happily cackling on about 'other possible incidents' —about which they know not whether they even exist—is to be filled with a fury that we have a system of journalism that permits people with such mentalities to poison the minds of the world with their malice... [I]n the lunatic asylum that is today's America-at-war journalism, one possibly unfortunate event opens a floodgate of over-reporting, misreporting and just plain lying. Nothing is too harsh or too untrue to say about our military by these (fill in the blank)... [T]he journalists today are too swept up in their own danse macabre to even notice the murderous consequences of their own malfeasance—or to hear the demands of simple decency." —Tony Blankley

POLITICAL FUTURES
"Reaganite conservatives have been the mainstay of the GOP for more than 20 years, and many of them are disgusted with the abandonment of Reaganite principles at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. If they had wanted skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security, they say, they would have voted for Democrats. Instead they voted for Republicans—and what did they get? Skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security. Though the conservatives' exasperation isn't new, it was muted after Sept. 11 to preserve a common front in the war on terrorism. But now the pot is boiling over. Conservatives are shifting into Howard Beale mode: They're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Many may simply sit out the election this November, even if that means letting Democrats take over Congress." —Jeff Jacoby

FOR THE RECORD
"Actually, My Lai was not evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the Vietnam War. It was exactly what America-haters here and abroad claimed it was not—an aberration. It is endlessly frustrating to see those who were so wrong about the Cold War, starting with Vietnam, invoke the memory of that conflict to stand for the opposite of what it should. The principal 'lesson' of Vietnam that our enemies learned was that America could be driven from the battlefield by psychological warfare aimed at the home front. They always flee, teaches Osama bin Laden. The lessons our liberal professors and editorialists learned was that the war was immoral. And no amount of experience—a million boat people, genocide in neighboring Cambodia, the collapse of Communism nearly everywhere—has been sufficient to alter their view." —Mona Charen

THE LAST WORD
"You're an enlightened world citizen. Your T-shirt says '9/11 was an inside job.' You're pretty sure we're living in a fascist state, that President Bush taps the Dixie Chicks' phones, Christian abortion clinic bombers outnumber jihadis, and the war on 'terror' is a distraction from the real threats: carbon emissions and Pat Robertson. Then you learn that 17 people were arrested in a terrorist bomb plot. How do you process the information?... Wait a minute: The 'terrorists' were Canadian? You can understand someone blowing up trains in Spain and London. They sent troops to an illegal war cooked up by neocons who want to kill brown people for Exxon and Jesus, or something. You can understand, reluctantly, blowing up teens in an Israeli pizza parlor, because the Jews took the West Bank from the sovereign, ancient nation of Palestine. But Canada? Isn't Michael Moore from Canada? You can get medical marijuana from married gay doctors in Canada, and no one has guns. You console yourself: Maybe they were really planning to attack the U.S. You realize the suspects were all Muslim, and you dread the inevitable pogroms. Haven't been any yet, but any day now. You read that a mosque was vandalized in Toronto after the arrest, and you feel a certain grim relief. Finally, racism!... You find yourself almost wishing there was another real attack, so people could see the logical consequences of 'fighting back' after 9/11. Yes, it would be bad, but sometimes you have to break an egg to show people the health impact of omelettes. Is it wrong to wish the Canadian terrorists might have succeeded? Shouldn't you know the answer to that question?" —James Lileks

Zarqawi and Watada

If you're reading this you doubtless already know that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's top man in Iraq, was taken out by a couple of 500-pound bombs the other day. So I'm a little slow, what're ya gonna do? This is a cause for celebration. However, I do not celebrate the death of a man (though assigning him the status of human being is being generous). Rather, I celebrate what that death represents, and the death of what his continued existence would have represented. No, it's not the end of the war. The power vacuum will be filled. But hopefully the organization will be that much less capable and, when we get the guy who takes Zarqawi's place, that cycle will continue until Al Qaeda is finally rendered impotent and irrelevant.

Still, I can't help but smile wickedly when I hear that, not only did Zarqawi know what hit him, his dying sight was of his enemy surrounding him. It is telling that, despite this man's horrific acts in life, the enemy he swore to destroy tried to save his life, and then cleaned his body after he died.

And perhaps as important as cutting off the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq is the treasure trove of intelligence we obtained from the target house. This war is about information as much as it is about people and we just scored a major victory on both fronts.

In slightly older news which pretty much got blown away metaphorically as Zarqawi did literally, 1st Lieutenant Ehren Watada is refusing his orders to deploy to Iraq stating that he believes the war to be illegal.

"I feel that we have been lied to and betrayed by this administration," Watada said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis. "It is the duty, the obligation of every soldier, and specifically the officers, to evaluate the legality, the truth behind every order — including the order to go to war."

Of course, he's not making his stand alone.

In making his decision, Watada has reached out to peace groups, including clergy, students, some veterans opposed to Iraq and others. Some war critics are raising money for his legal defense as they seek to galvanize broader opposition to Bush administration policy in Iraq.

"There has been an outpouring of support in the Puget Sound area," said David Solnit, who works with the anti-war group Courage to Resist. The group and others are helping organize a press conference today in Tacoma to launch the support campaign.

The press conference happened already, but Lt. Watada was ordered not to attend since it was during his duty hours. Instead, he provided a videotaped statement.

Here's what it comes down to. As an officer in the United States Military, you do not get to pick and choose where you go and what you do. You follows the orders of superior officers. If you believe an order to be illegal, you can refuse to obey it, but you invite a court martial to determine whether or not you were right to do so in that case. Unless he relents and obeys his order, I hope and expect that he will face a court martial. In any event, his career is effectively over.

I've heard the theory that this was his intention all along, that he enlisted in the Army, went through OCS, and became a 1st Lt. all for the purpose of pulling a political stunt. My tendency is to discount this theory because someone who would want to do that probably wouldn't have the right personality to endure basic training, OCS, etc. and be convincing enough to make it all the way through. I think it's more like a case of "buyer's remorse." He went in with good intentions but changed his mind along the way. Unfortunately for him, it's not like buying a car and then changing your mind.

In any case, he also made the choice to associate with individuals and groups opposed to the war effort and has allowed them to use him to advance their cause. I think that is the most telling fact of all. He's a godsend to them. After all, it's perfectly okay to criticize the opinions of a civilian who opposes the war effort. But when it's an officer in the armed forces, the perception is that he is somehow immune to criticism, just like people who lost loved ones in 9/11 or in combat (i.e. Cindy Sheehan). Well they're not. And I refuse to refrain from such criticism if I believe it to be warranted.

Lt. Watada has made his choice. Now he must face the consequences of that choice.

Some folks you just can't reach (or can you?)

Remember how, during the aftermath of last year's hurricanes in the Gulf, some citizens had their firearms confiscated by local law enforcement? The Second Amendment Foundation and the National Rifle Association filed a federal lawsuit that resulted in a restraining order and then an injunction. New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley apparently had forgotten about it already:

During a live interview with a New Orleans radio station, Riley acknowledged that citizens may, under state law, carry firearms. He said, however, that police will confiscate firearms, and may arrest people, arguing that "During an exigent circumstance like that, we cannot allow people to walk the street carrying guns.”

In response, the Second Amendment Foundation is calling on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate Riley.

"We believe Riley’s decision is a flagrant disregard of the federal court action, Louisiana state law and both the Louisiana and federal constitutional protections of the right to keep and bear arms,” [SAF Founder Alan] Gottlieb said in his letter to Gonzales.

"We’re writing to General Gonzales in an effort to prevent Riley and officers under his command from committing the same egregious civil rights violations they did last year,” Gottlieb explained. "It is outrageous that Riley would plan such actions when he knows they violate both state law and the state and federal constitutions. His claim that ‘exigent circumstances’ would allow such confiscations is preposterous.

"We are forced to address this issue to Attorney General Gonzales because we know that anti-gun Mayor Ray Nagin would never tell Riley to relay that order, nor would the mayor fire Riley for willfully violating the firearms civil rights of his constituents,” he said.

I said "had forgotten" because, while writing this post, I checked out the SAF website and found this press release:

Within two hours of an announcement that the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) was calling for a Justice Department investigation of New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley’s plan to confiscate guns again if a major storm hits the city this year, SAF learned that Riley has backed off.

“Somehow,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “I don’t believe this is a coincidence. Earlier this year, as our attorneys were about to enter a motion for contempt against Riley and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in federal court, the city finally admitted that it did have hundreds of seized firearms in its possession. That came after months of denial the city had taken guns from anybody.

“Now, days after Riley told a New Orleans radio station that he was planning another gun grab,” Gottlieb continued, “we have him suddenly back pedaling almost immediately after we announce our complaint to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Kudos to the Second Amendment Foundation and let this be a wakeup call to law enforcement officials everywhere.

Clarification

Just to be absolutely clear, lest anyone get the wrong impression from yesterday's post, I do not in any way condone the actions that the Marines are accused of doing. Should it be determined that they murdered those civilians, I expect them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of military law. Atrocities are not the norm, but that is certainly no excuse. Any such actions by our soldiers should not be tolerated.

But then, neither should we tolerate nor excuse such actions by our enemy.

The Double Standard

An investigation is ongoing regarding the deaths of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. Some, such as Representative John Murtha, have already condemned the Marines involved in this incident as cold-blooded murderers. This despite the fact that the investigation is ongoing and, given the potential volatility of the situation, the military doubtless wants to make sure it is conducted thoroughly and properly.

Is it possible that these Marines, distraught over the death of a colleague in the explosion of a roadside bomb, snapped and killed these people? Certainly. However, it is by no means certain that is what happened, the statements of John Murtha to the contrary notwithstanding. And lost in this debate is the double standard our military is subject to in the court of public opinion, as the words of Marine Captain Andrew Del Gaudio amply illustrate:

Del Gaudio said he made a tough call after a roadside bomb killed four of his men in April. While securing the scene, he was shot at by a machine gun in a follow-up attack. When he aimed his weapon to return fire, he saw that the gunmen had a line of children standing in front of them and two men filming with video cameras. He held fire until the children moved out of the way but was shot in his hand, which was only inches from his face.

"Restraint almost cost me my life," he said.

What it comes down to is that, with our troops, any atrocities that occur are aberrations. With our enemy, such actions are standard operating procedure. We're expected to be perfect in every way. Any slip, anything at all, is seized upon as prima facie evidence that our troops are nothing more than rapacious dogs and that we simply cannot continue in Iraq. All the while the actions of the terrorists are excused or glossed over. After all, it's not their fault that they are forced to commit these acts. It's all the fault of the US, Bushitler and, well you know the rest.

Hat tip to Sisu.

Walter Gaya, American

Walter Gaya is an immigrant from Argentina. He served as a sniper in Iraq where he was wounded and his good friend was killed. Michael Yon has a piece up about what Walter is up to these days. The ever-irascible Kim du Toit knows Walter as well and adds his comments.

Michael Moore is an <insert insult of choice here>

We don't need further proof that Michael Moore is a prevaricator of the first order. Nevertheless, here it is. From this article at FOX News:

A double-amputee Iraq-war vet is suing Michael Moore for $85 million, claiming he recycled an old interview and used it out of context to make him appear anti-war in "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Sgt. Peter Damon, 33, who strongly supports America's invasion of Iraq, said he never agreed to be in the 2004 movie, which trashes President Bush.

Given that the clip used in the movie is part of a longer interview that is on record, there really isn't any question about what Moore did. The case will decide whether or not Sgt. Damon and his wife are entitled to compensation. In any event, it just goes to show how low Moore was willing to stoop to advance his agenda and is yet another example of how his so-called "documentary" is really nothing of the kind.

Back in Black

Okay, I've been away from this blog for several months. It's been a pretty busy time, what with getting married and all, and I just haven't had the energy or the inclination to post for a while. I'm going to try to get back in the habit of regular posting though don't be surprised if a lot of my posts are merely pointers to articles or posts on other blogs that I find interesting rather than in-depth commentary. We'll see how this goes.

More government follies

Via Boortz comes this latest tale of a government project that didn't quite turn out the way it was intended:

At first glance, MARTA's new electronic train station gates seem more than up to the task of preventing fare evasion.

The gates stand nearly 6 feet tall and are made of stainless steel and a super-hard, virtually unbreakable form of plastic. It's a formidable barrier — especially compared with the creaky, thigh-high turnstiles they are replacing that were a breeze to hop over.

There's only one problem: The gates stop about 15 inches shy of the ground, making it far too easy for those seeking a free ride to scoot underneath, some MARTA board members say.

Did anyone actually take a look at the hardware before it was installed? No problem, you may think, just replace the doors with ones that are longer thereby reducing the gap. Well...

It might be difficult to revamp the gates to eliminate or reduce the gap, Thoms said, noting that the design limits how long the arms can be.

"We went as low as we possibly could with these gates," she said.

Looking at the picture of the gate included on the article page, the gap does appear to be big enough to crawl under, but you're really going to have to *crawl*, going flat on your belly or your back. So I will say that the new gates will probably reduce fare evasion noticeably. Also, upon further examination, it looks like it would not be a problem to mount some sort of extension to the bottom of the gate doors to cover most of the gap.

The job of the executive

When Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed by the State of California a couple of weeks ago there were the expected protests. One such came from the leadership of the city of Graz, Austria, hometown of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Politicians in the city who oppose the death penalty launched a petition drive to remove Schwarzenegger's name from the city's sports stadium. In response, the Governor sent a letter to the city's mayor, "telling him that he is rescinding the city's right to use his name, effective immediately." In addition, he is returning the city's ring of honor that he received in 1999.

This situation nicely illustrates a point which a lot of people don't understand about how the different branches of government work. To begin, here are a couple of excerpts of the above-linked article with additional emphasis added by yours truly:

Death penalty opponents argued the prisoner's authoring nine children's books detailing the dangers of gang life meant he deserved to have his sentence commuted to life in prison. Schwarzenegger said he found no legal grounds for changing the sentence, particularly since Williams did not show any remorse for the killings.

...

"I rejected the clemency plea of a rightfully condemned four-time murderer after thorough review and as a result, he was executed according to the laws of the state," Schwarzenegger wrote.

Article 5, Section 8, subsection a of the California State Constitution provides the Governor's power to affect criminal sentences:

Subject to application procedures provided by statute, the Governor, on conditions the Governor deems proper, may grant a reprieve, pardon, and commutation, after sentence, except in case of impeachment. The Governor shall report to the Legislature each reprieve, pardon, and commutation granted, stating the pertinent facts and the reasons for granting it. The Governor may not grant a pardon or commutation to a person twice convicted of a felony except on recommendation of the Supreme Court, 4 judges concurring.

Just as the President is the chief executive of the Federal Government, the Governor is the chief executive of the State Government. Their job is to implement the law, not create or negate it. The people of California, as represented by the state legislature, have decided that certain crimes merit the ultimate sanction. Williams was convicted of such a crime, the sentence was handed down, and it was carried out. People who oppose the death penalty doubtless want the Governor to commute every death sentence that comes to him for review. He theoretically has the power to do this, but from the quotes above it's clear that he understands that doing so would be defying the will of the people and an abuse of power. He understands that it would be de facto outlawing the death penalty and, regardless of his personal opinion of whether or not the death penalty should be legal, it is not his place to override the legislature.

Driving the economy into the ground

This chart shows just how disastrous the Bush tax policy over the last couple of years has been to the economy and to federal government tax revenue. (Hat tip Acidman.)

All sarcasm aside, this shows that you really can grow federal tax revenue with tax cuts, at least as long as they're the right ones and work to stimulate the economy. As Rob notes, however, there's still a problem with runaway federal spending. Note that I'm not talking about what we're spending on the war, which is one of the few things that the federal government is actually authorized to do under the Constitution. It's time for the President and the Republican Congress to remember what it's like to be fiscal conservatives.

On the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams

Early this morning, the execution of Stanley Williams, convicted of four counts of first-degree murder, was carried out by the State of California. I will not here argue for or against the use of the death penalty. Suffice it to say that it is legal in California and that the process was carried out according to the law.

When the state, through the instrument of the criminal justice system, determines that a human being has committed a crime which warrants the ultimate sanction, it is not a time to rejoice or celebrate. It is instead a most solemn occasion. It leads us to think about redemption, retribution, justice, and a host of other concepts that we often take for granted in our lives. It's one thing for a person to murder another. That person is acting on his own and must take responsibility for his actions. But when a criminal is executed, it is society as a whole that is taking this action. In a sense, we are all doing it since we live in a nation where the power ultimately resides in the people who directly through the initiative and referendum processes, or indirectly through electing legislators, determine the laws under which we live.

Many have said that Williams deserved to have his sentence commuted to life in prison because he had done positive works since his conviction. He had written children's books and written and spoke against the dangers of gangs and gang violence. However, one of the principles of our justice system, regardless of how consistently it is applied in practice, is that of equal justice under the law. If a person can avoid the death penalty through performing good works and/or showing believable remorse between the time of his conviction and the scheduled date of his execution, then it should be made a part of the law so that everyone who is sentenced to die can have this opportunity. It should be applied objectively not subjectively.

Ultimately it comes down to the difference between punishment/reformation and redemption. Rather than attempt to differentiate the two myself I will instead point you toward a very good essay over at From the Grand Stand contrasting the two and how they apply to death penalty cases. (Hat tip to Kim)

Building the HTPC, part IV

It's done. I actually stayed up until 4:00 am Saturday morning configuring it. I placed it on the rack and connected it to the tv and the amplifier and it just worked. At first I disconnected the coax that connects the wall socket and the cable tuner box and from the back of the box and connected it to the computer. This allowed the computer's tuner to receive channels up to 99 but none of the digital channels. Yesterday I put it back the way it was and then used three cables with RCA connectors to connect the left and right audio outputs and the composite video output on the cable box to the corresponding jacks on the computer's tuner card. The Media Center remote came with an IR emitter (what I earlier referred to as an IR Blaster) which allows the computer to control the cable box. I'll eventually end up splitting the coax from the wall so that one side will connect directly to the computer, thus allowing it to record two analog channels, or one analog and one digital, at the same time, or allow me to watch one while it records the other.

There was one other snag I encountered while setting up the system. Since I'm using SATA drives instead of IDE, the Windows installer wasn't able to work with those drives without using a separate driver. Fortunately, it has the ability to load such a driver during installation but it requires that the driver be on a floppy disk. I still have a floppy drive so I was able to get past it. Once Windows was installed, the floppy drive was no longer necessary.

I'm using a program called LCD Smartie to drive the VFD on the front of the case. It's amazingly flexible and I've just barely started playing with its capabilities. One thing it can do is interface with Motherboard Monitor which is what I'm using to monitor the temperature of the computer. So far it doesn't appear to be running much, if any, hotter than it was when I was using it as my desktop system.

There are a few more tweaks I'll probably perform but as of now the system is basically done and in place. It has replaced my DVD player which I'll probably move to the bedroom and connect to the tv there. I dunno how often we'll use it, though.

If anyone out there is planning on building their own home theater PC, especially if you are planning on using Windows Media Center Edition as your OS, a very good resource is The Green Button, named after the large green button on the Media Center remote control that launches the Media Center software.

Building the HTPC, part III

It's up and running, and I'm using it to make this post. Right now it's sitting on my dining room table with the mouse, keyboard, and monitor from my regular computer hooked up to it. The next step is to take it over to the rack by the tv and hook it up there. I may have to connect the monitor to it if the system doesn't automatically detect that it's connected via S-video to the television and automatically route the display accordingly. Either way I should be able to configure Windows and the Media Center software to use the tv for the primary display.

I did run into one snag while putting it all together. The power supply has two fans, one that sucks air into the power supply from within the case, and one that blows air out the back. Both fans have a grill over them, or at least they used to. The Zalman cpu cooler's heatsink was just wide enough that it was up against the internal fan grill and I couldn't mount it without seriously bending the fins. I figured I'd go ahead and put the old cooler back on, but then decided to see what happened if I removed that grill. Once it was removed, everything just barely fit. It shouldn't be a problem as long as I don't stick my fingers in the fan while it's running. Somehow, I don't foresee myself doing that.

Other than that, everything fit although it's pretty tight in a couple of places. I'll need to watch the system temperature to make sure that there's adequate airflow. The case has the capacity for an additional 80mm fan mounted on the bottom so I can put one there if I decide it needs additional air circulation.

The AP steps in it yet again

Via The GeekWithA.45, we see yet another example of a "reporter" writing a "story" that is nothing but falsifications and regurgitation of anti-gun propaganda. Under the pretense of researching a "business feature" on Barrett Rifles, Rose French came to the company and was able to interview Ronnie Barrett and others. However, if you read the article, you will see that it isn't remotely a "business feature." SayUncle posts, with permission, the content of an email sent to the AP's Nashville bureau by Dan Goodwin, Media Relations Manager for Barrett Rifles. He also links to a scathing response by Michael Marks of the Fifty Caliber Institute.

The AP has since published a "correction" which does admit and correct inaccuracies in the original article. However, nothing is said about Ms. French misrepresenting herself to Barrett Rifles.

Building the HTPC, part II

After a bit of a snafu, I picked up the case yesterday evening on the way home from work. I bought it from a local computer shop but, when I went in a few days ago, they didn't have any in the store. However, they did have a few in the warehouse so they said they'd have one sent to the store. The next day, which was the day before yesterday, I went in to pick it up but it turns out that it was the wrong one. The model I wanted comes in two variants. One has a vacuum flourescent display (VFD) while the other does not. Both come in the same box which has graphics and text for each on opposite sides. A sticker on the box denotes which one is actually inside. The folks at the warehouse apparently didn't realize this and sent the LC03 without the VFD.

Yesterday they got the correct unit in and I picked it up. I now have everything I need. I plan to assemble the machine this weekend.