I am reading Truman, David McCullough's biography of Harry S. Truman. This writer has the ability to make history live. His descriptions of people and events of the past have an air of humanity. History is about real people, it is not esoteric. We are all a product of what has come before. Life does not exist in a vacuum.
I was struck right away with the similarities between Bush and Truman. People have often tried to compare Bush and Lincoln but in many respects it seems to me that Truman and Bush have much in common. For one thing there is the complete refusal to govern by polls.
Truman was born in the 19th century, in fact his mother was a child during the Civil War and she never did forgive the Union for General Order 11. This infamous order left many Missouri civilians destitute. So perhaps it was the influence of that other century that guided Truman. I think there is something of that quality in Bush, it is what some people contemptuously refer to as cowboy. Please note, that in America, cowboy is not a negative, but a plus. We like cowboys, always have. Truman could be partisan and demagogic, but he said what he meant and he meant what he said and Bush is much the same way. Plain but complex. The two traits are not mutually exclusive.
Truman was often betrayed by his own party, just like George Bush. Lots of people questioned his fitness to govern, he was despised by the press, dismissed by the experts, his intellectual ability to do the job was in question, his loyalty to his staff was thought extreme, his foreign policy decisions horrified people on both sides of the aisle, his domestic proposals were considered radical. The Dixiecrats despised Truman and swore the south would rebel against him, with Strom Thurmond running against him on a seperate ticket in 1948. Today Bush has the paleoconservatives making the same kinds of threats.
The latest AP/Ipsos poll has Bush at 36% approval rating. Now of course it is true that the poll is full of loaded questions and bad demographics , it is also true that taking all that in consideration Bush's numbers are down. And Republicans are deserting his ship of state like rats. Excuse the hyperbole. But then again it is no more dramatic than a great deal of the rhetoric I see and hear from people on the right who have forgotten who the boss is. And Bush is the boss.
I never voted for a Republican for president before Bush and right now I am wondering if I will vote for one again. The best thing they have going for them is the sheer stupidity of the Democratic leadership, but I have to say I am disappointed, not in Bush, but in the political maneuvering of people who claim to be above all that.
On one hand we have the street theatre of the demonstrators, [fill in the blank as to what kind of demonstrators], together with a hostile press, and now it seems that pundits and pols who make their living provoking controversy and criticism have decided that their own interests are more important than what the boss says. I am not talking about mindless obedience, I am talking about outright assault on issues from immigration to the war and how to fight it. What have you done for me lately they ask... and the answer it seems, is not enough.
When Bush's numbers are in the 30's and the only thing his own party can do for him is run for the exits I would say that Bush will do what Truman did, he will stand his ground. I think he will do that because I think that Bush feels it his job to do what he thinks he should, not what the handlers tell him he should do.
I have to admire him for that.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Saddam and Terrorism
The Captain has new information on a translated Iraqi memo which raises questions about Saddam's regime and terror attacks against American interests:
Now that we have established the translation of the memo from the Iraqi Air Force general to all units requesting volunteers for suicide missions against American "interests", the timing of the memo appears to fit into a disturbing sequence in the months prior to 9/11. This memo is dated March 17, 2001, less than six months prior to the coordinated al-Qaeda attack on the US, at a time when the AQ plotters and pilots appeared to be in close proximity to Iraqi intelligence agents in Europe.
In a series of posts I wrote last year, I pointed out activity in Germany by the Iraqi Intelligence Service that the 9/11 Commission missed. Specifically, the Germans arrested two IIS agents in late February for their operation of an espionage ring in their country. Their intelligence estimate in 2002 would later claim that Iraq had reached out to extremists Islamist groups to coordinate attacks on American interests. In the winter of 2001, however, those agents had operated in Germany at the same time as Mohammed Atta met Ramzi Binalshibh in Berlin, the same time that German counterintelligence picked up the trail of the Iraqi spies. Ziad Jarrah, another of the 9/11 pilots, traveled through Germany at least twice during the same time frame. Pilot Marwan al-Shehhi disappeared in Casablanca and told people he was in Hamburg, which may or may not have been a dodge. The only pilot not in Germany during this time was Hani Hanjour, who plowed his plane into the Pentagon.
Notice how little attention all of this is getting in the press? Bushbashers and anti war folks will says these documents are not real and that they mean nothing but if some anonymous source came forward tomorrow with some unsubstantiated claim that Bush and Halliburton execs had planned 9/11..well now that they would talk about. Bias? What bias?
Now that we have established the translation of the memo from the Iraqi Air Force general to all units requesting volunteers for suicide missions against American "interests", the timing of the memo appears to fit into a disturbing sequence in the months prior to 9/11. This memo is dated March 17, 2001, less than six months prior to the coordinated al-Qaeda attack on the US, at a time when the AQ plotters and pilots appeared to be in close proximity to Iraqi intelligence agents in Europe.
In a series of posts I wrote last year, I pointed out activity in Germany by the Iraqi Intelligence Service that the 9/11 Commission missed. Specifically, the Germans arrested two IIS agents in late February for their operation of an espionage ring in their country. Their intelligence estimate in 2002 would later claim that Iraq had reached out to extremists Islamist groups to coordinate attacks on American interests. In the winter of 2001, however, those agents had operated in Germany at the same time as Mohammed Atta met Ramzi Binalshibh in Berlin, the same time that German counterintelligence picked up the trail of the Iraqi spies. Ziad Jarrah, another of the 9/11 pilots, traveled through Germany at least twice during the same time frame. Pilot Marwan al-Shehhi disappeared in Casablanca and told people he was in Hamburg, which may or may not have been a dodge. The only pilot not in Germany during this time was Hani Hanjour, who plowed his plane into the Pentagon.
Notice how little attention all of this is getting in the press? Bushbashers and anti war folks will says these documents are not real and that they mean nothing but if some anonymous source came forward tomorrow with some unsubstantiated claim that Bush and Halliburton execs had planned 9/11..well now that they would talk about. Bias? What bias?
Saturday, April 08, 2006
This guy is smart
Big Lizards has the immigration debate [or lack thereof] covered. He is smart and thoughtful and realistic.
I cannot, will not join in this Snoopy dance of glee at the complete inability of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to come to agreement on a very fair and reasonable immigration compromise. Every single substantive objection on either side can be fixed. The fixes are not difficult to find. There is only one objection that is insurmountable: liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans appear have allied to force the bill to collapse.
One of those two groups is rationally pursuing its own self interest; it will actually benefit at the ballot box if the effort collapses completely. Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) is not in that group. The reality is that if this bill ends up collapsing, it will cause Republicans to lose seats in the House and Senate in November... which hurts conservatives in Congress a heck of a lot more than it hurts Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) or Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas).
It's unfathomable to me that men and women who belong to the world's most exclusive club, what it pleases them to call "the greatest deliberative body in the world," are congenitally incapable of deliberating. Instead they posture, the proclaim, they throw hysterical tantrums. They act more like the Shia in the Iraqi National Assembly than like grown-up adults who actually care about America. Goodbye, D.C., and hello Baghdad.
I could not agree more. Dafydd talks about the real life consequences of playing politics with this issue as well as taking on the whole issue of amnesty, which he says is bandied about by conservatives the same way "civil war" is used by liberals. It is nice to read someone thoughtful who tries to find solutions to the questions after all the ranting and raving.
read it all.
I cannot, will not join in this Snoopy dance of glee at the complete inability of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to come to agreement on a very fair and reasonable immigration compromise. Every single substantive objection on either side can be fixed. The fixes are not difficult to find. There is only one objection that is insurmountable: liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans appear have allied to force the bill to collapse.
One of those two groups is rationally pursuing its own self interest; it will actually benefit at the ballot box if the effort collapses completely. Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) is not in that group. The reality is that if this bill ends up collapsing, it will cause Republicans to lose seats in the House and Senate in November... which hurts conservatives in Congress a heck of a lot more than it hurts Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) or Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas).
It's unfathomable to me that men and women who belong to the world's most exclusive club, what it pleases them to call "the greatest deliberative body in the world," are congenitally incapable of deliberating. Instead they posture, the proclaim, they throw hysterical tantrums. They act more like the Shia in the Iraqi National Assembly than like grown-up adults who actually care about America. Goodbye, D.C., and hello Baghdad.
I could not agree more. Dafydd talks about the real life consequences of playing politics with this issue as well as taking on the whole issue of amnesty, which he says is bandied about by conservatives the same way "civil war" is used by liberals. It is nice to read someone thoughtful who tries to find solutions to the questions after all the ranting and raving.
read it all.
Saturday Mini-Review: Macbeth
Posted by Loner.
------------------------------------------------
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
During the 25 years that followed the first movie adaptation of a William Shakespeare play which was both a critical and popular success, Laurence Olivier's Henry V (released in 1944), it was primarily he and Orson Welles who, if and when they were able to obtain the funds, brought Shakespeare adaptations to the big screen. Welles was able to film a version of Macbeth. Olivier unfortunately was not. Prior to 1971 and in the opinion of many another to this day the most successful movie adaptation of that tragedy is Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of his favorite among Shakespeare's plays, Throne of Blood
(released in Japan in 1957).
Like Kurosawa and no doubt a great many others, Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare play. In large part this is due to Macbeth being, as Harold Bloom puts it, "an uncanny unity of setting, plot, and characters fused together beyond comparison with any other play of Shakespeare's." I've always wondered, since learning that in all probability Macbeth was written after Hamlet, if Macbeth isn't an answer ("Yes, I can do that, too") to critics of the earlier play. For all its magnificence and length, there are a number of things in Hamlet which make no sense (see Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead) and my guess is that Shakespeare heard about them a lot at the time. Such are the unknowables with which I sometimes become obsessed.
Because of that unity and relative shortness (it is the shortest of the tragedies) one might think that Macbeth, should the cash to do so be available, would be popular as adaptation source material. The fact that it has a reputation as being the unlucky play may be a reason that until recently (?) it was not. In 1971, a major director who occasionally acts and who has been very unlucky (or cursed), with the financial backing of Hugh Hefner, created the film adaptation that, while by no means definitive, is a realization of Shakespeare's play. This effort is in my view as yet without equal among such filmed adaptations as do exist.
Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.
Roman Polanski had directed Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, The Fearless Vampire Killers and Rosemary's Baby when, while he was working on screenplay ideas and screwing around in London, his pregnant wife and everyone else at their home in the Hollywood Hills were slaughtered on August 8, 1969. In the months that followed that horrifying event, while Polanski coped in California and the murderers were unknown, the press speculated freely as to whether or not Polanski's previous work might not have had something to do with what had happened. When the murderers were caught and it turned out they had no clue or care regarding who had been in that house, Polanski picked himself up and went back to London where, at some point, he decided to adapt Shakespeare's contemplation (with character) on the horrors associated with murder and, with theater director and critic Kenneth Tynan as his collaborator, adapted and then filmed a version of Macbeth.
Was the resulting movie in any way a response to the murders and to the press coverage while the murderers were unknown? Polanski biographies suggest that, if anything, the graphic violence and the plot changes that make it an almost wholly unflattering portrait of the human character were in some sense aimed at the press. With regard to the murders, they say, he had already moved on.
Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
The movie begins with red sky at morning on a beach. The witches (real women here) do their thing and as they move away from the camera the fog comes in and under the credits there are the sounds of battle. When the credits are done, the fog clears, and we find ourselves on the same beach watching the living among the vanquished be, on camera, made dead. It ends, two hours and some minutes later, with a dark and more historically accurate ending than that with which the play concludes.
Between times, relatively young, though not all that inexperienced, actors play the roles. The lines assigned have been fairly uniformly reduced to dialogue that makes for more natural-sounding speech within the context of the plot. The soliloquies, such as they are, are done mostly in voiceover. Minor characters like Ross, Seyton and Donalbain are seen to do more, if not to be heard more, and the good in some of the characters is altogether dispensed with.
We still watch in rapt fascination as the warrior turned murderer of both benefactor and friend--because of an ambition fortified by an accurate prediction regarding his future, and the timely remonstrance and clarity-in-thinking of his helpmate--has his character gradually disintegrate--until a killing machine alone remains. His helpmate meanwhile goes "blood simple"--to borrow from Dashiell Hammett--and commits suicide. The aftermath, beyond provoking the most famous of all the soliloquies, results in nothing more than a tarp being thrown over the twisted corpse, which remains where it falls throughout the remainder of the action.
This is not a movie for the squeamish. It is not quite true that all the murders which take place on and off stage in the play take place on camera in the movie. The wounds, at least, are sometimes delivered off camera. There is nudity where there need not have been, but then this was released in 1971, and there had by then been one extremely successful post-code Shakespeare adaptation, Romeo and Juliet, so the nudity is not so surprising. It appears that Playboy's participation had nothing to do with any content decision. The lead actors, as ever seems to be the case*, do not give astonishing performances, though as with all Polanski movies they give the performances he wanted them to give.
It all plays out in Technicolor in widescreen on a DVD which, like the video version, has a picture of Banquo on the cover and little of interest besides the movie on the disc.
*The first stage production I saw featured Charlton Heston as Macbeth and Vanessa Redgrave as Lady Macbeth. It played to mixed reviews. I loved it.
------------------------------------------------
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
During the 25 years that followed the first movie adaptation of a William Shakespeare play which was both a critical and popular success, Laurence Olivier's Henry V (released in 1944), it was primarily he and Orson Welles who, if and when they were able to obtain the funds, brought Shakespeare adaptations to the big screen. Welles was able to film a version of Macbeth. Olivier unfortunately was not. Prior to 1971 and in the opinion of many another to this day the most successful movie adaptation of that tragedy is Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of his favorite among Shakespeare's plays, Throne of Blood
(released in Japan in 1957).
Like Kurosawa and no doubt a great many others, Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare play. In large part this is due to Macbeth being, as Harold Bloom puts it, "an uncanny unity of setting, plot, and characters fused together beyond comparison with any other play of Shakespeare's." I've always wondered, since learning that in all probability Macbeth was written after Hamlet, if Macbeth isn't an answer ("Yes, I can do that, too") to critics of the earlier play. For all its magnificence and length, there are a number of things in Hamlet which make no sense (see Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead) and my guess is that Shakespeare heard about them a lot at the time. Such are the unknowables with which I sometimes become obsessed.
Because of that unity and relative shortness (it is the shortest of the tragedies) one might think that Macbeth, should the cash to do so be available, would be popular as adaptation source material. The fact that it has a reputation as being the unlucky play may be a reason that until recently (?) it was not. In 1971, a major director who occasionally acts and who has been very unlucky (or cursed), with the financial backing of Hugh Hefner, created the film adaptation that, while by no means definitive, is a realization of Shakespeare's play. This effort is in my view as yet without equal among such filmed adaptations as do exist.
Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.
Roman Polanski had directed Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, The Fearless Vampire Killers and Rosemary's Baby when, while he was working on screenplay ideas and screwing around in London, his pregnant wife and everyone else at their home in the Hollywood Hills were slaughtered on August 8, 1969. In the months that followed that horrifying event, while Polanski coped in California and the murderers were unknown, the press speculated freely as to whether or not Polanski's previous work might not have had something to do with what had happened. When the murderers were caught and it turned out they had no clue or care regarding who had been in that house, Polanski picked himself up and went back to London where, at some point, he decided to adapt Shakespeare's contemplation (with character) on the horrors associated with murder and, with theater director and critic Kenneth Tynan as his collaborator, adapted and then filmed a version of Macbeth.
Was the resulting movie in any way a response to the murders and to the press coverage while the murderers were unknown? Polanski biographies suggest that, if anything, the graphic violence and the plot changes that make it an almost wholly unflattering portrait of the human character were in some sense aimed at the press. With regard to the murders, they say, he had already moved on.
Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
The movie begins with red sky at morning on a beach. The witches (real women here) do their thing and as they move away from the camera the fog comes in and under the credits there are the sounds of battle. When the credits are done, the fog clears, and we find ourselves on the same beach watching the living among the vanquished be, on camera, made dead. It ends, two hours and some minutes later, with a dark and more historically accurate ending than that with which the play concludes.
Between times, relatively young, though not all that inexperienced, actors play the roles. The lines assigned have been fairly uniformly reduced to dialogue that makes for more natural-sounding speech within the context of the plot. The soliloquies, such as they are, are done mostly in voiceover. Minor characters like Ross, Seyton and Donalbain are seen to do more, if not to be heard more, and the good in some of the characters is altogether dispensed with.
We still watch in rapt fascination as the warrior turned murderer of both benefactor and friend--because of an ambition fortified by an accurate prediction regarding his future, and the timely remonstrance and clarity-in-thinking of his helpmate--has his character gradually disintegrate--until a killing machine alone remains. His helpmate meanwhile goes "blood simple"--to borrow from Dashiell Hammett--and commits suicide. The aftermath, beyond provoking the most famous of all the soliloquies, results in nothing more than a tarp being thrown over the twisted corpse, which remains where it falls throughout the remainder of the action.
This is not a movie for the squeamish. It is not quite true that all the murders which take place on and off stage in the play take place on camera in the movie. The wounds, at least, are sometimes delivered off camera. There is nudity where there need not have been, but then this was released in 1971, and there had by then been one extremely successful post-code Shakespeare adaptation, Romeo and Juliet, so the nudity is not so surprising. It appears that Playboy's participation had nothing to do with any content decision. The lead actors, as ever seems to be the case*, do not give astonishing performances, though as with all Polanski movies they give the performances he wanted them to give.
It all plays out in Technicolor in widescreen on a DVD which, like the video version, has a picture of Banquo on the cover and little of interest besides the movie on the disc.
*The first stage production I saw featured Charlton Heston as Macbeth and Vanessa Redgrave as Lady Macbeth. It played to mixed reviews. I loved it.
Friday, April 07, 2006
I never knew this
My grandparents were Okies, they lost a farm in the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma and went to California to pick fruit. They lived in the camps for 2 years before returning to Oklahoma. I wonder if they were among the real Americans referred to here ?
During the Great Depression, anywhere from one to two million people were deported in an effort by the government to free up jobs for those who were considered “real Americans” and rid the county governments of “the problem.” The campaign, called the Mexican Reparation, was authorized by President Herbert Hoover. Although President Franklin Roosevelt ended federal support when he took office, many state and local governments continued with their efforts.
Estimates now indicate that approximately 60 percent of the people deported were children who were born in America and others who, while of Mexican descent, were legal citizens.
I wonder what the chances are today that people would load up a jalopy and travel hundreds of miles for the oppurtunity to work for poverty wages and live in a camp with no running water or indoor plumbing or dignity for that matter. But in the Great Depression beggars could not be choosers.
During the Great Depression, anywhere from one to two million people were deported in an effort by the government to free up jobs for those who were considered “real Americans” and rid the county governments of “the problem.” The campaign, called the Mexican Reparation, was authorized by President Herbert Hoover. Although President Franklin Roosevelt ended federal support when he took office, many state and local governments continued with their efforts.
Estimates now indicate that approximately 60 percent of the people deported were children who were born in America and others who, while of Mexican descent, were legal citizens.
I wonder what the chances are today that people would load up a jalopy and travel hundreds of miles for the oppurtunity to work for poverty wages and live in a camp with no running water or indoor plumbing or dignity for that matter. But in the Great Depression beggars could not be choosers.
A Good End to the Week
When last I wrote of freedom's arch-enemy in freefall, I mentioned that NYT had cracked through the $26 mark on its southern journey. Today, only 16 days later, it pleases me to report that NYT Class A shareholders have ceded another $180M to Pinch Sulzberger's business acumen.
Not only that but the stock closed at $24.92 which means that another technical barrier has been broken. There was heavy trading as the stock broke $25 - but not enough to provide a floor.
One might wonder a bit about any insider selling here. After all if
Bill Keller has a DoJ target letter in his inbox, he's going to have to raise some money.It's going to be an interesting spring and summer.
Who Did this Terrible Thing?
From Iraq the Model reports on the bombing in Baghdad today which claimed the lives of 79 people:
A new massacre has struck Baghdad when three suicide bombers attacked the Buratha mosque in Baghdad this afternoon. "More than 70 people were killed and more than 150 were injured" a doctor from Baghdad's medical city told me in a phone call.
A closer look at the targeted mosque makes me think that the ramifications of this massacre can possibly be much worse than the immediate death and pain this terror attack brought, the Buratha mosque is not an ordinary mosque, it has a special religious value for Shia Iraqis as it's thought to be one of the places where Imam Ali stayed and prayed. But that's not the most important thing because this mosque is of considerable political significance, the preacher in this mosque is Jalal Addin al-Sagheer, a cleric from the SCIRI who was the first SCIRI member to publicly urge Ibrahim al-Jafari to withdraw his nomination for office.
This mosque is one of the headquarters of the SCIRI and its clerical wing in Baghdad, even that Abdul Aziz al-Hakeem's son Ammar al-Hakkem preaches occasionally in this mosque when sheikh Jalal is not available.
A military confrontation between the Sadr militias and the American (and possibly Iraqi) army is imminent and it's the Sadrists themselves who are pushing in this direction and preparing their forces for a battle they want to have to disrupt the political process and drag Iraq into an irreversible state of civil war.
There are powers in the region that want this to happen, primarily Syria and Iran but I think they realized that a Sadr Vs. US battle is not enough and can only result in a big defeat for Sadr without reaching their desired objective of ruining Iraq.
So, it is logical to think that Iran and Syria would try to drag as many Iraqi parties as possible into this battle and the first candidate they would choose would be the SCIRI, the powerful Shia party that is not getting along well with Sadr and has recently sided with the Kurds, Sunni and secular powers in calling for Jafari to step away and even considering forming a united political front with them.
read it all.
I still maintain that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was not only justifiable it was in all likelihood inevitable. What will happen to Iraq now? I don't know, but this battle is for more than Iraq, it is a test for the Arab world.
There are times when I wish I had never heard of this place and its people. I grow weary of the violence and the seeming intransigence that has kept the Muslim world in the dark ages for all these years. But then I think, if Jimmy Carter had dealt with this years ago would the disease have spread so far and can we really walk away now, will AlQaida and its Jihadi warriors let us?
A new massacre has struck Baghdad when three suicide bombers attacked the Buratha mosque in Baghdad this afternoon. "More than 70 people were killed and more than 150 were injured" a doctor from Baghdad's medical city told me in a phone call.
A closer look at the targeted mosque makes me think that the ramifications of this massacre can possibly be much worse than the immediate death and pain this terror attack brought, the Buratha mosque is not an ordinary mosque, it has a special religious value for Shia Iraqis as it's thought to be one of the places where Imam Ali stayed and prayed. But that's not the most important thing because this mosque is of considerable political significance, the preacher in this mosque is Jalal Addin al-Sagheer, a cleric from the SCIRI who was the first SCIRI member to publicly urge Ibrahim al-Jafari to withdraw his nomination for office.
This mosque is one of the headquarters of the SCIRI and its clerical wing in Baghdad, even that Abdul Aziz al-Hakeem's son Ammar al-Hakkem preaches occasionally in this mosque when sheikh Jalal is not available.
A military confrontation between the Sadr militias and the American (and possibly Iraqi) army is imminent and it's the Sadrists themselves who are pushing in this direction and preparing their forces for a battle they want to have to disrupt the political process and drag Iraq into an irreversible state of civil war.
There are powers in the region that want this to happen, primarily Syria and Iran but I think they realized that a Sadr Vs. US battle is not enough and can only result in a big defeat for Sadr without reaching their desired objective of ruining Iraq.
So, it is logical to think that Iran and Syria would try to drag as many Iraqi parties as possible into this battle and the first candidate they would choose would be the SCIRI, the powerful Shia party that is not getting along well with Sadr and has recently sided with the Kurds, Sunni and secular powers in calling for Jafari to step away and even considering forming a united political front with them.
read it all.
I still maintain that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was not only justifiable it was in all likelihood inevitable. What will happen to Iraq now? I don't know, but this battle is for more than Iraq, it is a test for the Arab world.
There are times when I wish I had never heard of this place and its people. I grow weary of the violence and the seeming intransigence that has kept the Muslim world in the dark ages for all these years. But then I think, if Jimmy Carter had dealt with this years ago would the disease have spread so far and can we really walk away now, will AlQaida and its Jihadi warriors let us?
Conflicted
AJ posts about a new poll:
I think we can stick a fork in the idea of mass deportation of people in this country who are working, but simply lack the proper paperwork. Paperwork crimes do not carry punishments like being thrown out of your home, school, church and job and dumped unemployed and without housing in the street across our border. So this new poll is no real surprise:
By eight-to-one, Americans think it is unfair to grant rights to illegal immigrants while thousands of people wait each year to come to the United States legally. Fully 86 percent of Republicans think it is unfair, as do 77 percent of Democrats.
However, once illegal immigrants are across the border, Americans turn around a little. More than two-thirds (69 percent) favor allowing illegals who have jobs already to apply for legal, temporary-worker status, up from 62 percent last year (April 2005).
Yes, people are conflicted about this, but some people seem more interested in punishing people than they do in fixing the problem. Unemployment is down again, it is at 4.7%. Is it wise to deport millions of workers when we have a low unemployment rate? Is it right? People blame the amnesty of the 80's for the high rate of illegal immigration today, but if we had enforced our laws and secured our borders would we be dealing with this today, amnesty or no amnesty?
I think we can stick a fork in the idea of mass deportation of people in this country who are working, but simply lack the proper paperwork. Paperwork crimes do not carry punishments like being thrown out of your home, school, church and job and dumped unemployed and without housing in the street across our border. So this new poll is no real surprise:
By eight-to-one, Americans think it is unfair to grant rights to illegal immigrants while thousands of people wait each year to come to the United States legally. Fully 86 percent of Republicans think it is unfair, as do 77 percent of Democrats.
However, once illegal immigrants are across the border, Americans turn around a little. More than two-thirds (69 percent) favor allowing illegals who have jobs already to apply for legal, temporary-worker status, up from 62 percent last year (April 2005).
Yes, people are conflicted about this, but some people seem more interested in punishing people than they do in fixing the problem. Unemployment is down again, it is at 4.7%. Is it wise to deport millions of workers when we have a low unemployment rate? Is it right? People blame the amnesty of the 80's for the high rate of illegal immigration today, but if we had enforced our laws and secured our borders would we be dealing with this today, amnesty or no amnesty?
A new tort in California?
Should someone be held liable for negligent transmission of a sexually transmitted disease?
The California Supreme Court is considering this issue in a case titled John B. v. Superior Court (Bridget B.). Bridget B. claims that her husband, named only as John B., infected her with HIV soon after they married in July 2000.
The facts alleged in the case are odd because Bridget tested HIV positive four months after she discovered by accident that her husband had tested negative. Less than a year later, according to the complaint, John had developed full-blown AIDS and Bridget learned that before and during their marriage he had engaged in unprotected sex with several gay men.
Bridget then concluded that John had infected her. She sued for fraud and negligent infliction of emotional distress, claiming John knew or should have known that he had HIV, and she sought discovery into John's sexual history.
A decision in the case is expected within 90 days.
The California Supreme Court is considering this issue in a case titled John B. v. Superior Court (Bridget B.). Bridget B. claims that her husband, named only as John B., infected her with HIV soon after they married in July 2000.
The facts alleged in the case are odd because Bridget tested HIV positive four months after she discovered by accident that her husband had tested negative. Less than a year later, according to the complaint, John had developed full-blown AIDS and Bridget learned that before and during their marriage he had engaged in unprotected sex with several gay men.
Bridget then concluded that John had infected her. She sued for fraud and negligent infliction of emotional distress, claiming John knew or should have known that he had HIV, and she sought discovery into John's sexual history.
A decision in the case is expected within 90 days.
General Zinni turns into a far left politico
Jed Babbin writes in today's American Spectator about General Anthony Zinni's conversion to a far leftie, to stand alongside Wesley Clark and Eric Shinseki.
The Compromise
Bill Frist defends his compromise on his blog:
Border Enforcement Specifics:
* Add nearly 15,000 additional border protection agents to augment the 20,000 Customs and Border Protection agents already on the job
* Specifically authorize 1,250 border agents and 1,250 port-of entry inspection agents
* Require Defense Department cooperation on the border, e.g. unmanned drones
* Begin the process of securing every inch of our 1,951 mile border with Mexico by building walls and fences in high traffic areas and using sensors to let our Customs and Border Patrol Agents see and hear those who try and cross through low traffic areas
* Require fingerprint database connectivity between FBI and Border Patrol
Interior Enforcement specifics:
* Increase alien smuggling penalties with a mandatory minimum of 5 years
* Add criminal penalties for various immigration-related document fraud
* Mandate the use of expedited removal for aliens apprehended within 100 miles of the border and 14 days of entry
Employer Enforcement specifics:
* Establish nationwide, mandatory verification program for hiring workers
* Limit the number of acceptable hiring documents with REAL ID standards
* Authorize 2,000 new worksite enforcement agents and 1,000 anti-fraud agents
Critics will claim that is not tough enough, they will say it allows amnesty to people. Of course the people who pass these laws are actually responsible for them working, whereas critics are just responsible for criticizing. Everybody is an expert. Except me, I will admit that I don't have all the answers. Shocking, I know.
Border Enforcement Specifics:
* Add nearly 15,000 additional border protection agents to augment the 20,000 Customs and Border Protection agents already on the job
* Specifically authorize 1,250 border agents and 1,250 port-of entry inspection agents
* Require Defense Department cooperation on the border, e.g. unmanned drones
* Begin the process of securing every inch of our 1,951 mile border with Mexico by building walls and fences in high traffic areas and using sensors to let our Customs and Border Patrol Agents see and hear those who try and cross through low traffic areas
* Require fingerprint database connectivity between FBI and Border Patrol
Interior Enforcement specifics:
* Increase alien smuggling penalties with a mandatory minimum of 5 years
* Add criminal penalties for various immigration-related document fraud
* Mandate the use of expedited removal for aliens apprehended within 100 miles of the border and 14 days of entry
Employer Enforcement specifics:
* Establish nationwide, mandatory verification program for hiring workers
* Limit the number of acceptable hiring documents with REAL ID standards
* Authorize 2,000 new worksite enforcement agents and 1,000 anti-fraud agents
Critics will claim that is not tough enough, they will say it allows amnesty to people. Of course the people who pass these laws are actually responsible for them working, whereas critics are just responsible for criticizing. Everybody is an expert. Except me, I will admit that I don't have all the answers. Shocking, I know.
The thoughts of Mark Steyn...
From Hugh Hewitt: Steyn on immigration (& a fence), Cynthia McKinney's non-apology, and NBC's attempt to trap NASCAR.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
To No One's Surprise
I'm a Mandarin!
You're an intellectual, and you've worked hard to get where you are now. You're a strong believer in education, and you think many of the world's problems could be solved if people were more informed and more rational. You have no tolerance for sloppy or lazy thinking. It frustrates you when people who are ignorant or dishonest rise to positions of power. You believe that people can make a difference in the world, and you're determined to try.
Talent: 56%
Lifer: 13%
Mandarin: 69%
Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.
DT - This One's For You
via Roger L. Simon
Michael Ledeen eviscerates the idiots at Harvard's Kennedy School and the University of Chicago who wrote what Roger referred to as The Protocols of the Elders of Harvard.
As an unashamed evangelical Protestant I must applaud these two nice Jewish fellows for standing up, not for their religion, but for the idea that religion is not a criteria suitable for inclusion as a central focus when disagreeing about policy matters. The profs at Harvard and the University of Chicago who wrote this garbage are antisemites of a type that Goebbels would admire. Their disgusting tripe is publicized due to the tenured positions that they hold, certainly not to any originality of thought. This unctuous crap could have been published in Der Sturmer sixty years ago.
The Illiberal Arts departments of our "finest" universities deserve to be held up to ridicule until they rid themselves of these parasitical anti-religion troglodytes. Until then alumni should sit firmly upon their wallets and Americans in general should take up Mommas, Don't Let Your Sons Grow Up to Be Ivies as a national refrain.
Michael Ledeen eviscerates the idiots at Harvard's Kennedy School and the University of Chicago who wrote what Roger referred to as The Protocols of the Elders of Harvard.
As an unashamed evangelical Protestant I must applaud these two nice Jewish fellows for standing up, not for their religion, but for the idea that religion is not a criteria suitable for inclusion as a central focus when disagreeing about policy matters. The profs at Harvard and the University of Chicago who wrote this garbage are antisemites of a type that Goebbels would admire. Their disgusting tripe is publicized due to the tenured positions that they hold, certainly not to any originality of thought. This unctuous crap could have been published in Der Sturmer sixty years ago.
The Illiberal Arts departments of our "finest" universities deserve to be held up to ridicule until they rid themselves of these parasitical anti-religion troglodytes. Until then alumni should sit firmly upon their wallets and Americans in general should take up Mommas, Don't Let Your Sons Grow Up to Be Ivies as a national refrain.
Is Fitzgerald admitting that outing Plame was no crime?
The New York Sun revealed this morning that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's latest filing in the Lewis Libby case includes the statement:
"Defendant [Libby] testified that he was specially authorized in advance of the meeting [with NY Times reporter Judith Miller] to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out."
Fitzgerald's filing also states:
"Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized the defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE."
Under Executive Order 13292 issued by President Bush on March 25, 2003, the president and the vice president have the power to declassify intelligence information where the public interest in declassification outweighs the need for classification. A prior Executive Order issued by President Clinton, EO 12958, contains the same public interest standard for presidential declassification, but did not provide for vice presidential declassification powers.
Since Fitzgerald interviewed both the president and the vice president, it seems to me that by this filing Fitzgerald is admitting that it was not a crime to disclose the identity of Valerie Plame. Am I missing something?
UPDATE: Just One Minute has the Fitzgerald .pdf filing here.
"Defendant [Libby] testified that he was specially authorized in advance of the meeting [with NY Times reporter Judith Miller] to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out."
Fitzgerald's filing also states:
"Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized the defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE."
Under Executive Order 13292 issued by President Bush on March 25, 2003, the president and the vice president have the power to declassify intelligence information where the public interest in declassification outweighs the need for classification. A prior Executive Order issued by President Clinton, EO 12958, contains the same public interest standard for presidential declassification, but did not provide for vice presidential declassification powers.
Since Fitzgerald interviewed both the president and the vice president, it seems to me that by this filing Fitzgerald is admitting that it was not a crime to disclose the identity of Valerie Plame. Am I missing something?
UPDATE: Just One Minute has the Fitzgerald .pdf filing here.
"When I saw people falling..."
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani testified today in the death penalty phase of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial.
Giuliani said that when he arrived at the scene, his deputy told him how bad the situation was and people were jumping from the high floors of the towers. "I concluded or hoped he was wrong," he said.
But then he saw people falling and "I froze. I realized in that couple of seconds, it switched my thinking and emotions. I said, 'We're in uncharted territory.'"
Prosecutors also planned to summon family members to testify and they were poised to play phone calls from people trapped in the World Trade Center and speaking their last words to 911 operators.
"You cannot understand the magnitude of that day unless you hear it from the victims themselves," prosecutor Rob Spencer said.
Moussaoui smiled several times when the prosecution mentioned his enthusiasm for the attacks.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Here's an interesting tidbit
It may be hard to see (click the graphic to enlarge it), but the blue line is US military deaths due to hostile action; the red line, Iraqi military deaths due to hostile action; and the green line, total civilian deaths due to hostile action, by month, for the last six months.
Notice that US fatalities have been cut by nearly two thirds, but that Iraqi military fatalities are holding steady (in the face of their increasing exposure.) Notice in particular that if we plotted these as a percentage of the forces involved, then the Iraqi force numbers would be dropping dramatically.
Data from the Brookings Institution. Hints from Instapundit and My Election Analysis.
We're winning ... in Iraq.
Can someone explain this to me?
I saw this and had to ask, if the stores are high why is the price going up?
Oil prices rose Wednesday after a government report revealed a bigger-than-expected increase in crude stockpiles but a bigger-than-expected drop in inventories of gasoline and distillates used for heating oil.
U.S. light sweet crude for May delivery gained 84 cents to $67.07 a barrel after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its report.
Crude oil inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels for the week ended March 31, the government said, versus forecasts for a rise of 1.1 million barrels, according to a survey of analysts conducted by Reuters.
Crude oil inventories remain well above the upper end of the average range for this time of year, and are at the highest level since the week ending April 9, 1999.
"Refinery utilization was lower than everyone expected, which caused (gas and distillate) inventories to drop," Brian Kuzma, energy analyst at RBC told CNNMoney.com.
But Kuzma said he didn't expect the report to "have much impact on the future impact on crude or related products."
Several oil refineries are still not fully operational due to damage from last year's hurricanes, but other refineries are expected to be down for maintenance in April after running full throttle longer than normal to make up for petroleum product output disrupted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Oil prices rose Wednesday after a government report revealed a bigger-than-expected increase in crude stockpiles but a bigger-than-expected drop in inventories of gasoline and distillates used for heating oil.
U.S. light sweet crude for May delivery gained 84 cents to $67.07 a barrel after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its report.
Crude oil inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels for the week ended March 31, the government said, versus forecasts for a rise of 1.1 million barrels, according to a survey of analysts conducted by Reuters.
Crude oil inventories remain well above the upper end of the average range for this time of year, and are at the highest level since the week ending April 9, 1999.
"Refinery utilization was lower than everyone expected, which caused (gas and distillate) inventories to drop," Brian Kuzma, energy analyst at RBC told CNNMoney.com.
But Kuzma said he didn't expect the report to "have much impact on the future impact on crude or related products."
Several oil refineries are still not fully operational due to damage from last year's hurricanes, but other refineries are expected to be down for maintenance in April after running full throttle longer than normal to make up for petroleum product output disrupted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Judge's Order In Libby Case
Judge Walton today issued an order and memorandum opinion today respecting Libby's motion to prohibit the government from filing an ex parte submission of classified information to the court without first making a particularlized showing of exceptional circumstances. At first glance the memo and order seem to indicate that he views with a gimlet eye the notion that ex parte submissions claims and will entertain them only under circumstances where the dfendant's interests in a fair trial are protected as fully as possible. He also rejects the notion that Libby and his lawyers all of whom are cleared to handle classified information should be kept in the dark as if the defendant were a suspected spy and his counsel untrustworthy.
Clarice Feldman
Judge Walton's Order
Any Section 4 filings submitted by the govt must include a declaration, executed by an intelligence official with requisite classification review authority, which (1) describes the reasons for the classification of the information at issue,(2)sets forth the potential harm to national security that could result from its unauthorized disclosure; and (3)explains why the defense, based upon appropriate classification guidelines, does not have a "need to know" the information
Clarice Feldman
Judge Walton's Order
More On Immigration
The map above came from a site which Knuck pointed out yesterday. It shows the concentration of Hispanics throughout the US and it may explain the ambivalence felt by so many with regard to number of illegal entrants who have come up from Mexico. The actual percentage of Hispanics within the four border states and Colorado are:
California: 32.4%
Arizona: 25.3%
New Mexico: 42.1%
Texas: 32%
Colorado: 17.1%
In comparison, the percentage of Hispancis within the total US population is 12.5%. Those numbers may be the explanation as to why many Southwesterners aren't terribly upset with the illegal immigration issue. Having been born and raised with Hispanics and having a next door neighbor named Ruiz (which might as well be Reese, given the fact that I speak more Spanish than he does) plus an aunt named Jolanda (how I miss Aunt Yoli's enchiladas) may well have colored my thoughts on the issue.
I would applaud and offer a hand if the Border Patrol would do a sweep of the Mechistas in LA though.
I wonder what the sausage currently being in made in DC concerning this issue will taste like? I hope they make sure to include some chorizo.
"Sandy Burglar" works against Rep. Curt Weldon
Convicted criminal Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger is raising money for the Democrat candidate running against Rep. Curt Weldon (R - Pa.).Weldon is known as a vigorous defender of America against the threat of terrorism, and has been active in investigating Operation Able Danger, a Pentagon operation that identified 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and other al Qaeda operatives before the September 11th attacks on America.
More information on Able Danger can be found here.
Weldon also identified Dieter Snell, the lead staffer for Jamie Gorelick, as the individual who blocked the 9/11 Commission from hearing about Able Danger. Gorelick was a top Clinton administration Justice Department official who erected the "Gorelick Wall" prohibiting intelligence agencies from sharing information about terrorists. The Gorelick Wall was demolished by the Patriot Act.
Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor is also known as "Sandy Burglar" because of his guilty plea for stealing classified documents from the National Archives and destroying with scissors some of the material related to terror threats.Am I the only one that thinks there's more here than meets the eye?
UPDATE: Thanks to topdog08 for pointing out an error.
SECOND UPDATE: Courtesy of Chris Muir and Day By Day Cartoon:
The Potemkin Prosecution: Part Two
Prominent Washington attorney Clarice Feldman has written the second installment of The Potemkin Prosecution, the misguided Patrick Fitzgerald prosecution of Lewis Libby.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
McKinney losing Dem support in altercation with Capitol Police
Expose the Left has CNN video on the Cynthia McKinney altercation:House Minority Leader Pelosi: "Just because the Capitol Police didn't recognize you is no excuse to hit an officer, if that's what happened."
House Minority Whip Hoyer: "It is the responsibility of anyone who visits the Capitol whether they're Members of Congress or visitors to fully cooperate with the Capitol Police. You can't expect the Capitol Police to know every member."
Congressional Black Caucus: "No comment because the facts haven't been established, but praise for the Capitol Police."
But McKinney is still playing the race card: "It doesn't matter whether you're in the United States Capitol or the Georgia Capitol, the issue is racial profiling, and that's something we're going to have to deal with as a country."
Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein (bio) is reportedly still studying the matter.
Extortion
According to my ancient Webster's to extort is to get [money, etc.] by violence, threats, misuse of authority, etc.; exact or wrest [from]...and that is exactly what some socalled leaders in Congress and elsewhere are doing with their threats to launch a third party ticket in 2008 over the issue of illegal immigration. The my way or the highway club who feel that anything short of a prison term or mass deportation or both for illegal aliens [who are after all breaking the law] and stiff penalties for the treasonous scum who hire them [who are after all breaking the law] is just an invitation to an all out invasion of rapists, murderers and drug dealers. And of course there is the wall, it can not be virtual, it has to be real and it has to rival the Great Wall of China. After all, the only thing they were worried about was invading barbarian hordes. And they thought they had problems.
Debate? We don't need no stinkin debate.
Well this oped from Dick Morris makes an interesting point:
On July 2, the Mexican people will decide whether to elect ultra-leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) as their next president.
Rumors have abounded for months that Lopez Obrador's campaign is getting major funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And last month Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz)., a moderate Republican, told several Mexican legislators that he had intelligence reports detailing revealing support from Hugo Chavez to AMLO's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Chavez is a firm ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro. Lopez Obrador could be the final piece in their grand plan to bring the United States to its knees before the newly resurgent Latin left.
Needless to say the Mexican left is making much of the supposed racism of the American people.
When Ross Perot helped Clinton gain the White House with 43% of the vote I really thought the angry white male had learned his lesson. Maybe not. Maybe this time he will give us a Communist in Mexico and a Democratic President. Way to go Tancredo!
Between them, Venezuela and Mexico export about 4 million barrels of oil each day to the United States, more than one-third of our oil imports. With both countries in the hands of leftist leaders, the opportunity to hold the U.S. hostage will be extraordinary.
I hope that the House and the Senate can come up with a compromise bill and Bush signs it. And I hope that the right wing of the Republican party does not do its party what the left wing has done to the Democratic Party.
We need some good old fashioned common sense.
Debate? We don't need no stinkin debate.
Well this oped from Dick Morris makes an interesting point:
On July 2, the Mexican people will decide whether to elect ultra-leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (known as AMLO) as their next president.
Rumors have abounded for months that Lopez Obrador's campaign is getting major funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. And last month Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz)., a moderate Republican, told several Mexican legislators that he had intelligence reports detailing revealing support from Hugo Chavez to AMLO's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Chavez is a firm ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro. Lopez Obrador could be the final piece in their grand plan to bring the United States to its knees before the newly resurgent Latin left.
Needless to say the Mexican left is making much of the supposed racism of the American people.
When Ross Perot helped Clinton gain the White House with 43% of the vote I really thought the angry white male had learned his lesson. Maybe not. Maybe this time he will give us a Communist in Mexico and a Democratic President. Way to go Tancredo!
Between them, Venezuela and Mexico export about 4 million barrels of oil each day to the United States, more than one-third of our oil imports. With both countries in the hands of leftist leaders, the opportunity to hold the U.S. hostage will be extraordinary.
I hope that the House and the Senate can come up with a compromise bill and Bush signs it. And I hope that the right wing of the Republican party does not do its party what the left wing has done to the Democratic Party.
We need some good old fashioned common sense.
Query
I'm assembling data for a piece (or a series of pieces) on 'Death in the Big City' - or 'Why Do So Many People Drown in the Blue Castle Moats?'. I can't choose between them yet. I've done the crime stats already and I have the city list - what I'm looking for now is a little advice on which data points from this Census Page are of interest.
So far I have:
Population
Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000
Persons with a disability, age 5+, 2000
Homeownership rate, 2000
Per capita money income, 1999
Persons below poverty, percent, 1999
I'd like to keep it to 10 items so I need 3 more (violent crime rate isn't on the Census Report).
Suggestions?
So far I have:
Population
Population, percent change, 1990 to 2000
Persons with a disability, age 5+, 2000
Homeownership rate, 2000
Per capita money income, 1999
Persons below poverty, percent, 1999
I'd like to keep it to 10 items so I need 3 more (violent crime rate isn't on the Census Report).
Suggestions?
Dear Congressman Murtha...
An open letter to Congressman John Murtha (D - Pa.)
from John A. Lucas, a West Point graduate with four Bronze Stars.
Brit DefSec Demands Geneva Convention Changes
British Defence Secretary John Reid yesterday demanded changes to the Geneva conventions in the treatment of prisoners, pre-emptive strikes and intervention in humanitarian crises.Reid expressed his belief that the rules were out of date and inadequate to deal with what he called "barbaric terrorism."
The conventions, he said, were created more than half century ago "when the world was almost unrecognisable."
In what may relate to the question of Iran, he also spoke of the "concept of imminence" - the circumstances when a state could strike without waiting for an attack.
Tuesday Tech Digest
The model of the world we all learned in school, where everything is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, is not only wrong but is woefully incorrect. For example, the neutron is actually not a fundamental particle, but is a proton, neutron, and another little guy called a neutrino all stuck together. Neutrinos have no mass and no charge so they're darned near impossible to get ahold of and study--or so we believed. The proton itself isn't really fundamental but is comprised of three smaller particles called quarks. The theory says you can never pull them apart separately, so a proton is pretty close to being fundamental. We've all heard for years about other strange particles but they sounded too confused and abstruse to bother about. The "standard model", illustrated at the left, shows that the situation really isn't that bad. The main part is pretty simple really: there are only six quarks and three leptons that really matter (the electron, the muon, and the tau). Almost everything is made of these. Further, each of the main leptons has an associated neutrino, shown above it, and each the four fundamental types of force has its own particle to carry the force, these being shown on the right of the chart. Unfortunately, just when things started to settle down into something comprehensible, the standard model must now be rejiggered because it has been confirmed that--contrary to the standard model and nearly everyone's belief--the neutrino has mass after all(!).For this week's quantum weirdness discovery, it was found that "entanglement", the process by which one particle "knows" what another one is doing, even though they have absolutely no way of communicating with each other, can be transferred like momentum from one particle to another entirely different one.
In scam land, the latest thing to worry about is an email going around claiming that you're subject to a lawsuit. It looks real, but avoid it at all costs. The technique, called "phishing" in the hacker community, has been around for quite a while, but the lawsuit angle is new. This is very dangerous--a close relative got phished just a couple of weeks ago with an email which seemed to be from the bank. Once the credit card or bank account information is obtained, it is sold online. As an aside, this link, which goes to the NYT, is yet another example of a phenomenon I noted sometime back: the presse ancienne is continuing to work overtime to disparage the Internet in every way it can muster. Gee I wonder why.
Google still wasn't sitting on its thumbs this week. It released fantastic three-inch-resolution imagery. Just open up Google Earth and go to Las Vegas to check it out. There's an interesting background to this tale. More on that later.
A "live" CD is one which allows you to run the whole operating system from the CD. You just pop it into the CD drive and boot from there and the whole OS is loaded into memory. Your hard drive remains untouched. This is a great way to fix your system if broken or to try out a new OS with no fear of breaking your installed system. While this has been available literally for years in the Linux world, Windows users should be thrilled that a Windows bootable CD was released this week. You still have to have a legitimate license for Windows and can only be using your license on one machine at a time.
Apple meanwhile announced the latest free upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4, is working closely with Intel to develop the desktop world's best parallel computing algorithms, and sought to convince a court that blogging about Apple secrets should be illegal.
Apple is allegedly putting "virtualization" into Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X due out this Fall. This would allow users to run Windows as an application within their Macintoshes, so that all of the Windows software would now run on the Macintosh. The implications could be serious for Microsoft, or they could be minimal, depending on how people react. My guess is that it will help Apple somewhat but most people will still avoid Macintoshes like the plague. Microsoft is putting its own version of virtualization into the next version of Windows, Vista, due out next year. This will allow users to run Linux inside Windows. As usual, this technology is available in Linux today, so that Linux users can run Windows inside Linux right now if they so choose.
Speaking of Bill Gates, a test is now online which allows you to check whether you are autistic or just weird. But it turns out that autism may end up being an evolutionary advantage because a new study shows that the brains of very smart kids mature later. And a new device has been created to help autistic people determine when they are acting inappropriately in social situations--it warns you that you are boring or irritating the people around you. I've needed one of those for years.
Speaking of cool devices making life better, something promised in my childhood has now become reality. A new artificial eye has allowed a blind woman without eyes to see. We live in a miraculous age. We should be thankful.
More good news on the health front--researchers at the University of Texas shown in the photograph have found a possible amelioration or cure for Alzheimers disease. They use the immune system itself to remove the protein (amyloid-beta 42) known to be associated with Alzheimers from the brain. The new approach has been proven to work very well in rats so far.
Surgeons believe that they will now be able to fix hearts with closed-heart surgery, greatly enhancing the prospect of surviving a heart attack.
In other biology advances, cockroaches have been discovered to possess a form of democracy, bacteria apparently move around using a jet of slime, and Greens everywhere will be bitterly disappointed to learn that whale strandings are not the fault of the US Navy.
A very cool online simulation of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake is available here, courtesy of the US taxpayers.
In psychology, it has been discovered that people sometimes ignore the evidence of their own eyes, that the Dutch and the Germans have the highest IQ's in Europe, and that the scent of fear causes higher scores on standardized tests, rather vitiating the very idea of IQ to some extent. Psychiatrists are once again trying to treat depression with a more refined form of electroshock (this always gives me the willies); patients report that
"When we turn the current on, the emptiness disappears." On the bright side, a new study shows that "just the expectation of a mirthful laughter experience boosts endorphins 27 percent".
In a major blow to the world's culture, the great Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, arguably the greatest science fiction writer of all time, passed this week. He was the author of Solyaris (Solaris), where both the Russian movie and the book were infinitely superior to the American movie. If you haven't read it yet, put it on your list. It's one of the few science fiction books that deeply speaks to the human condition.Finally, this week's biggest endorphin booster: Japanese robot wrestling has arrived.
Update: The neutron is not quite what I said--I fudged a bit--see chuck's comment below for the full picture.
Update 2: Link to device fixed.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Jury finds Moussaoui eligible for execution
The jury has returned its unanimous verdict and concluded that admitted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty.Barring any legal maneuvers, the next phase of the trial will determine whether he actually receives the death penalty.
Testimony of relatives of the deceased and survivors of the September 11th attacks will be presented by the prosecution in this next phase.
McKinney arrest warrant sought by police
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that the Capitol Hill police have asked U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Kenneth Wainstein (bio), for approval of an arrest warrant for Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.). If Wainstein approves, the police will need the approval of a judge before the arrest warrant is issued.McKinney was stopped by a Capitol Hill police officer last Wednesday as she tried to go around a security checkpoint in a House office building. After calling to McKinney to stop, the officer touched her shoulder or arm. That prompted McKinney to spin around and the strike the officer. McKinney was not wearing a special lapel pin given to members of Congress for identification purposes.
McKinney has refused to apologize, and instead claims racism (her lawyer says she is a victim of "being in Congress while black"). Bob Weir at the American Thinker has a different view: "Walking While Arrogant."
UPI previously reported that this is the fifth altercation McKinney has had with the Capitol Hill police since 1993.
Frontpagemag.com has an interesting summary of Rep. McKinney, including her history and voting patterns.
2007 Grad School Rankings
The 2007 U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings are now available here.
Foxy Lady?
Terence Kealey of The Times of London speculates on why women have, on the average, smaller brains than men.Kealey writes about a 35-generation fox taming experiment, and duly notes that the domesticated animals have smaller brains.
He then asks: "[W]ould it be dangerous to suppose that women’s brains are smaller than men’s because, over the millennia, we men have been selecting friendly women with whom to breed?"
I think it would be VERY dangerous....
Supreme Court rejects hearing in Padilla case
Jose Padilla, who is also known as the dirty bomber, will not get a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court, at least not yet.The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court did not have sufficient votes to review the case, on appeal from the 4th Circuit.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote an opinion, joined in by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Stevens, saying that the case is hypothetical at this point, because Padilla is currently facing criminal charges.
Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter would have heard the case; four justices are required. (Ginsburg's dissent is here.)
Marty Lederman opines that the unusual concurrence by Stevens and Roberts reflects the wooing being done by liberals and conservatives for Kennedy's crucial fifth vote.
Blowin' in the wind
ChicagoBoyz brings us some Nantucket Nuggets. Some whistleblower turned the fundraising manual for fighting the Windmills What Wreck the View From Mansions and Yachts over to the Boston Globe.
Given the target audience for the fundraising efforts to fight this affront to the Go Green Somewhere Other Than Limo LiberalLand, items like this are no big surprise:
What I found most fun was:
How dare anyone turn over confidential information to those who oppose the Cape Cod Crusaders!
William I. Koch, the yachting enthusiast, donated $500,000. Paul Fireman, the former chief of Reebok, gave $250,000. Michael Egan, the son of the founder of
EMC Corp. , kicked in $150,000.Far from the humble world of $10 bills handed to door-knocking environmentalists, these wealthy benefactors have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the group trying to block construction of 130 wind turbines in the pristine waters off Cape Cod.
Given the target audience for the fundraising efforts to fight this affront to the Go Green Somewhere Other Than Limo LiberalLand, items like this are no big surprise:
- donations of $5,000 are frowned upon as ''token gifts" and fund-raisers are expected to net pledges of at least $250,000
- Since January 2004, the alliance has received 28 gifts of $100,000 or more
- After taking in $4.8 million in 2004, the alliance then added at least $3.7 million last year, smashing a two-year goal of $7.5 million
- 94 percent of the group's money came from 93 ''major gift" donors who gave $20,000 or more
What I found most fun was:
''The Alliance learned today that confidential internal documents belonging to one of their consultants were obtained and published on a website of a Cape Wind proponent," the statement said. ''This unethical distribution of confidential records reveals both a low standard of conduct and diversionary tactics often used to avoid talking about relevant issues. The documents made public belong to Community Counseling Service, and reflect their own interpretation and their strategy and much of it in draft form; all the facts were not correct."
How dare anyone turn over confidential information to those who oppose the Cape Cod Crusaders!
Anthony Kennedy's "evolving views"
Adam Cohen has an op-ed piece in today's New York Times touting Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy for his "evolving views," and predicting that he would join the four "moderate" justices in rejecting the Bush administration's position on a key aspect of its war-on-terror powers in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
More Presidential Abuse
"How can we reach our president with advice? He is ignorant, self-willed, and is surrounded by men, some of whom are almost as ignorant as himself.
"So we have the dilemma put to us. What to do when his power must continue for two years longer and when the existence of our country may be endangered before he can be replaced by a man of sense. How hard, in order to save the country, to sustain a man who is incompetent."
Written by a former Secretary of the Navy, no less. Will this ever stop?
Whodunnit?
From protein wisdom:
That major general Lambert doesn’t see the irony of his position is not surprising, as he seems to have quite strong political beliefs himself, the editorial’s title notwithstanding. But were I to address him personally on the matter, I’d ask him where he thinks the vandals got the idea that “oil” and a “Christian crusade” are the reasons we are in Iraq. And I’d further ask him if he feels that the 3-year long campaign to paint the war as “illegal” and based on “lies” has any bearing, in his mind, on how the soldiers might be treated upon their return.Because I can guarantee him one thing: it won’t be the “neocons” who will be vandalizing memorials to fallen soldiers, or spitting on his daughter when she returns from her service.
What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear
From the INS Annual Enforcement Report
The decline in apprehensions in 1986 is undestandable - the regularization measures passed that year. The '74 and '79-'80 downticks align with economic downturns - as does the '00 beginning to the slide that ended in '02-'03. The sharp angle of descent from '00-'02 may be the result of stiffer enforcement subsequent to 9/11 and the upturn in '03-04 may indicate a return to the steep ascent of the late '90's. It is totally unremarkable to assert that apprehensions appear to be a lagging indicator of the state of the economy.
What is rather curious is the relationship between the INS estimate of a total undocumented population of 7 million in 2000 and the media reported number of 12 million in 2006.
The last cited INS report has this to say about the press reports:
The INS reports that the average yearly number of those avoiding apprehension for the '90's was about 350,000 with a corresponding annual number of 1,450,000 apprehensions (and deportations) for a "successful evasion" ratio of 19.5%. Applying that ratio to the average deportations from '01-'05 yields a probable increase of 1.1 million for a 2006 total count of 8.1 million. Which means that the press is exagerating the problem by 50% - another totally unremarkable assertion.
Another interesting fact cited by the INS report is that 33% of those staying in the US illegally in 2000 were 'overstays' - people who entered the US on a legal visa and didn't go home when it expired.
If there is another source of reliable numbers concerning the scope of the immigration "crisis", I have been unable to find it. There is no doubt that a problem exists in certain areas - particularly the border states and most particularly Southern California and Tucson wrt high costs and negative impact but one must remember that it is official policy in many locales to actively thwart the INS in the performance of their duties.
How else are ya gonna refill the moats around the Blue Castles?
Southwest Border Apprehensions.
Apprehensions along the southwest border increased 26 percent to 1,139,282 in 2004 from 905,065 in 2003 (see Figure 1). This was the first annual increase follow-ing the record level of 1,643,679 set in 2000 and subsequent decline (to 1,235,718 in 2001, 929,809 in 2002, and 905,065 in 2003). In 2004, southwest border apprehensions accounted for 98 percent of all Border Patrol apprehensions.
In 2004, as in every year since 1997, the Tucson, AZ sector had the largest number of apprehensions. Tucson accounted for 491,771 or 43 percent of all southwest border apprehensions in 2004. The next leading sectors were San Diego, CA (138,608), El Paso, TX (104,399), Yuma, AZ (98,060), and McAllen, TX (92,947). These five sectors accounted for 81 percent of all southwest border apprehensions.
The decline in apprehensions in 1986 is undestandable - the regularization measures passed that year. The '74 and '79-'80 downticks align with economic downturns - as does the '00 beginning to the slide that ended in '02-'03. The sharp angle of descent from '00-'02 may be the result of stiffer enforcement subsequent to 9/11 and the upturn in '03-04 may indicate a return to the steep ascent of the late '90's. It is totally unremarkable to assert that apprehensions appear to be a lagging indicator of the state of the economy.
What is rather curious is the relationship between the INS estimate of a total undocumented population of 7 million in 2000 and the media reported number of 12 million in 2006.
The last cited INS report has this to say about the press reports:
Comparison with recent estimates
Although the estimates presented here are higher than INS’ previous estimates, they are lower than other estimates that were reported last year after the release of total U.S. population figures from the 2000 Census. A Washington Post article on March 18, 2001 reported a “growing consensus that the number could…range from 9 million to 11 million or higher.”19
The estimates presented here provide strong evidence that even the 9 million figure probably was 2 million too high. The basis for that assertion can be summarized as follows:
• About 13.5 million foreign-born persons moved to the United States in the 1990 to 1999 period (2000 Census count + INS estimate of undercount);
• Based on INS data, 8.0 million of the 13.5 million were lawful residents;
• That leaves about 5.5 million unauthorized residents who entered in the 1990s;
• An estimated 1.5 million who lived here illegally in 1990 were still living here illegally in 2000;
The INS reports that the average yearly number of those avoiding apprehension for the '90's was about 350,000 with a corresponding annual number of 1,450,000 apprehensions (and deportations) for a "successful evasion" ratio of 19.5%. Applying that ratio to the average deportations from '01-'05 yields a probable increase of 1.1 million for a 2006 total count of 8.1 million. Which means that the press is exagerating the problem by 50% - another totally unremarkable assertion.
Another interesting fact cited by the INS report is that 33% of those staying in the US illegally in 2000 were 'overstays' - people who entered the US on a legal visa and didn't go home when it expired.
If there is another source of reliable numbers concerning the scope of the immigration "crisis", I have been unable to find it. There is no doubt that a problem exists in certain areas - particularly the border states and most particularly Southern California and Tucson wrt high costs and negative impact but one must remember that it is official policy in many locales to actively thwart the INS in the performance of their duties.
How else are ya gonna refill the moats around the Blue Castles?
Multiculturalism and Carbon Footprints
No, no connection. Just a couple of thoughts.
(1)Multiculturalism. I saw an event on BookTV (which was actually quite good) wherein the speaker, at one point, decried the way Americans idolize their Founding Fathers. After all, George Washington did own slaves. 'But he freed them' is not enough because he owned them in the first place.
Multiculturalism attempts to give us awareness and tolerance of other cultures. Hasn't it ever occurred to the multiculturalists that 18th and 19th Century America were other cultures as well?
(2)Carbon Footprint. I've started hearing this bandied about in relation to gasoline/oil usage with the not-so-subtle implication that the release of carbon contributes to global warming.
Life itself is mostly carbon and water. The carbon in oil is from life that existed on this planet millions and millions of years ago. That carbon was taken from the atmosphere and the earth's surface and buried underground. We're just putting it back where it came from.
If you are really worried about releasing carbon to the atmosphere, be sure you don't allow yourself to be cremated. Have a proper burial instead so that eons from now you, too, may become an energy source.
(1)Multiculturalism. I saw an event on BookTV (which was actually quite good) wherein the speaker, at one point, decried the way Americans idolize their Founding Fathers. After all, George Washington did own slaves. 'But he freed them' is not enough because he owned them in the first place.
Multiculturalism attempts to give us awareness and tolerance of other cultures. Hasn't it ever occurred to the multiculturalists that 18th and 19th Century America were other cultures as well?
(2)Carbon Footprint. I've started hearing this bandied about in relation to gasoline/oil usage with the not-so-subtle implication that the release of carbon contributes to global warming.
Life itself is mostly carbon and water. The carbon in oil is from life that existed on this planet millions and millions of years ago. That carbon was taken from the atmosphere and the earth's surface and buried underground. We're just putting it back where it came from.
If you are really worried about releasing carbon to the atmosphere, be sure you don't allow yourself to be cremated. Have a proper burial instead so that eons from now you, too, may become an energy source.
50/50 In Iraq
From Iraq the Model :
There was another mosque bombing today, more the pity. One good thing? The Pilgrimage went off this year without the usual mayhem.
Read all of the above mentioned post and pay attention to his words about fanatics. This is so true. We are not dealing with rational people. I am reading Truman's biography by David McCullough right now and one of the reasons President Truman used the bomb was the fanatical nature of the enemy as evidenced by kamikaze attacks and the refusal to surrender even a single Japanese military unit. Sometimes there is no rational response.
Which way will Iraq go? Toward sanity or barbarism?
Today we witnessed the first public call from inside the UIA for Jafari to step down. Qassim Dawood from the independent bloc inside the UIA that has some 20 members urged Mr. Jafari to withdraw his nomination saying that "many f us in the UIA see that we must choose a prime minister for the country and not a prime minister for the UIA…". This call (which I expect will be followed by similar ones in the near future) shows a growing awareness among some politicians of the critical situation and dangers imposed by the hardliners.
The chances to see a solution are fluctuating up and down reflecting the daily map of events and the intra and inter partisan disputes and right now I see that chances split 50-50 between solution and a confrontation.
There was another mosque bombing today, more the pity. One good thing? The Pilgrimage went off this year without the usual mayhem.
Read all of the above mentioned post and pay attention to his words about fanatics. This is so true. We are not dealing with rational people. I am reading Truman's biography by David McCullough right now and one of the reasons President Truman used the bomb was the fanatical nature of the enemy as evidenced by kamikaze attacks and the refusal to surrender even a single Japanese military unit. Sometimes there is no rational response.
Which way will Iraq go? Toward sanity or barbarism?
This sounds about right
Jack Kelly sounds about right here:
Barriers work, especially when they are covered by fire, or in this case, by observation. The Israeli wall has sharply reduced terror attacks within Israel.
The nutty provision in the House bill is the one that would make just being an illegal immigrant a felony.
A sign carried by many demonstrators read: "somos illegales, no somos criminales" (we're illegals, not criminals). To many Americans, this is a distinction without a difference.
It isn't. The mere fact of being here means illegals have broken the law. But the vast majority are no more criminals than you are, just because you got a speeding ticket.
The overwhelming majority of illegals are decent, hardworking people. Though the importance of immigrant labor to our economy is exaggerated by advocates of guest worker programs, most contribute more than they take.
George Will noted it would take a line of buses stretching from San Diego to Alaska to deport 11 million people. To devote the resources required to round up all those who pick fruit and clean houses would be like telling the police to forget about murderers and rapists to crack down on overdue parking tickets. That would be insane.
And immoral, said the Web logger the Anchoress:
"We have to think long and hard about what it means to gather people at gunpoint and put them on trains to send them to a place they do not want to go," she said. "That cannot be America, if she is to survive."
The logical thing would be to combine the enforcement provisions of the House bill with the path to legalization provided by the Senate bill.
But logic is hard to come by in Washington these days, especially in an election year.
Logic is hard to come by and so is loyalty. I noticed on some of the blogs lately there has been talk of Republicans being under represented in polls and how that effects Bush's numbers. The truth is the demographics used by polsters do not do as much damage to Bush's poll numbers as people like William Buckley, Pat Buchanan and David Frum do. Over at Polipundit the question was asked if Bush works for Vincente Fox. Folks.... with friends like that Republicans do not need to go after enemies like Feingold. It should be remembered that George Bush is the Commander in Chief in a time of war and to be stabbed in the back by leaders of his own party for the sake of election year politics is a disservice not only to him, but to all of us. The stakes are too high for this nonsense.
It might be satisfying in a high school sort of way to see Bush punch Fox in the nose, but in the real world of policy making rather than flapping your gums and pounding on your keyboard there is such a thing as reality. The Mexicans are right next door, like it or not and if studying European history teaches us anything it should be that getting along with your neighbors is in your own best interests as much as theirs. Or we could follow Tancredo's advice and not only nuke Mecca, but start acting like a police state ourselves. Remember the scenes in black and white of German soldiers loading women and children into boxcars? Welcome to Tancredo's America. And that will be the end of the Republican majority.
Barriers work, especially when they are covered by fire, or in this case, by observation. The Israeli wall has sharply reduced terror attacks within Israel.
The nutty provision in the House bill is the one that would make just being an illegal immigrant a felony.
A sign carried by many demonstrators read: "somos illegales, no somos criminales" (we're illegals, not criminals). To many Americans, this is a distinction without a difference.
It isn't. The mere fact of being here means illegals have broken the law. But the vast majority are no more criminals than you are, just because you got a speeding ticket.
The overwhelming majority of illegals are decent, hardworking people. Though the importance of immigrant labor to our economy is exaggerated by advocates of guest worker programs, most contribute more than they take.
George Will noted it would take a line of buses stretching from San Diego to Alaska to deport 11 million people. To devote the resources required to round up all those who pick fruit and clean houses would be like telling the police to forget about murderers and rapists to crack down on overdue parking tickets. That would be insane.
And immoral, said the Web logger the Anchoress:
"We have to think long and hard about what it means to gather people at gunpoint and put them on trains to send them to a place they do not want to go," she said. "That cannot be America, if she is to survive."
The logical thing would be to combine the enforcement provisions of the House bill with the path to legalization provided by the Senate bill.
But logic is hard to come by in Washington these days, especially in an election year.
Logic is hard to come by and so is loyalty. I noticed on some of the blogs lately there has been talk of Republicans being under represented in polls and how that effects Bush's numbers. The truth is the demographics used by polsters do not do as much damage to Bush's poll numbers as people like William Buckley, Pat Buchanan and David Frum do. Over at Polipundit the question was asked if Bush works for Vincente Fox. Folks.... with friends like that Republicans do not need to go after enemies like Feingold. It should be remembered that George Bush is the Commander in Chief in a time of war and to be stabbed in the back by leaders of his own party for the sake of election year politics is a disservice not only to him, but to all of us. The stakes are too high for this nonsense.
It might be satisfying in a high school sort of way to see Bush punch Fox in the nose, but in the real world of policy making rather than flapping your gums and pounding on your keyboard there is such a thing as reality. The Mexicans are right next door, like it or not and if studying European history teaches us anything it should be that getting along with your neighbors is in your own best interests as much as theirs. Or we could follow Tancredo's advice and not only nuke Mecca, but start acting like a police state ourselves. Remember the scenes in black and white of German soldiers loading women and children into boxcars? Welcome to Tancredo's America. And that will be the end of the Republican majority.
Reagan's third choice
In 1987, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell retired.President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork to fill the seat. On October 23, 1987, the Democratic controlled Senate, led by Edward Kennedy's infamous character assassination, rejected his nomination 58-42.
Reagan then nominated Douglas Ginsburg, but he withdrew after questions were raised about his use of marijuana.
Reagan's third choice was Anthony Kennedy. He was unanimously confirmed on February 18, 1988.
What hath Reagan wrought on his third choice? Here's a thumbnail sketch of Kennedy's rulings:
Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Romer v. Evans (1996), invalidating a Colorado constitutional amendment that would have prohibited any municipality from taking any action to protect homosexuals from discrimination.
Kennedy dissented in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), the decision upholding partial birth abortions.
Kennedy voted with the 5-4 majority in Bush v. Gore (2000).
Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Ashcroft v. ACLU (2002), invalidating the Child Online Protection Act. COPA was Congress' second attempt to criminalize the distribution of certain information over the Internet by prohibiting child pornography, including simulated pornography and artwork.
He dissented in McConnell v. FEC (2003), the case upholding McCain-Feingold.
He dissented in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the decision upholding affirmative action.
Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), reversing Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), and invalidating a Texas statute making homosexual sodomy a crime.
Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Roper v. Simmons (2005), making it unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18.
Kennedy voted with the majority in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), holding that Congress may ban the use of marijuana even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes.
Kennedy voted with the majority in Kelo v. City of New London (2005), holding that the government may take private property under eminent domain powers for economic development purposes.
Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Gonzalez v. Oregon (2006), holding that the Attorney General could not enforce the Controlled Substances Act against physicians prescribing drugs for the assisted suicide of the terminally ill as permitted by an Oregon law.
But where is Kennedy in cases involving the war on terror?
Kennedy voted with the plurality in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), recognizing the power of the government to detain unlawful combatants, but ruling that detainees must have the ability to challenge their detention before an impartial judge.
Kennedy concurred in Rasul v. Bush (2004), holding that the U.S. court system has the authority to decide whether foreign nationals held in Guantanamo Bay were rightfully imprisoned.
Where will Kennedy go in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006)? The Court of Appeals ruled against Hamdan. But Kennedy is likely to be the deciding vote on appeal. Professor Orin Kerr, a former Kennedy clerk, thinks Kennedy will reverse.
What would President Reagan think of his third choice?
Combating "warming" is still up for debate
George Will writes that, contrary to Time magazine's pronouncement, the debate on global warming is not over.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Good (Tech) News
Dapper Drake, aka the long-awaited Ubuntu Flight 6 has been released. Download yourself a live CD from this page, burn it to CD, then reboot your machine for a risk-free test of the very best Linux available.
The problem isn't right or left ...
The real problem is idiots like Debbie Schlussel:
Or this aptly titled piece, from John Hinderocker:
[Update at 17:05 MDT: See also Joe Gandlesman and RightWingNutHouse.]
Don't expect "journalist" Jillie to "investigate" that one. But hey, she says her Islamic terrorist captors treated her "very well," and she talked about the nice shower and bathroom they gave her.Since things were so great in captivity, maybe she should have remained at Terrorist Day Spa. And maybe they should change the name from "Stockholm Syndrome" to "Baghdad Syndrome."
Or this aptly titled piece, from John Hinderocker:
A Moment of ChurlishnessNow, compare:
As you no doubt know, journalist Jill Carroll was released by her kidnappers in Baghdad last night. We are, of course, glad that she is alive, unlike so many others who have been taken hostage in Iraq.
No doubt her joy at being freed overwhelms all else, and it is probably churlish to critique her public comments. Nevertheless, I want to register a small protest against her statement, widely quoted in the press, that she was "well treated" by her captors. This is a sentiment that one often hears from people who have been released by kidnappers; one gets the sense that the victims are grateful--understandably, perhaps--to the terrorists for letting them go.
But the fact is that Ms. Carroll was not "well treated" by her captors. She says that they "never hit me. They never even threatened to hit me." Terrific. But they did threaten to cut off her head, and kept her in fear of her life for nearly three months. To anyone who saw the videos in which she pleaded for her life, her mental distress was obvious. And the kidnappers murdered Carroll's translator in the course of capturing her.
No doubt, in saying that she had been "well treated," Ms. Carroll was mostly trying to assure her friends and family that her physical condition was OK. That's obviously appropriate. But let's not encourage a lot of warm feelings toward the murderous thugs who kidnapped Carroll, shot her translator, and may well have received a ransom to let her go.
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AP) - Former hostage Jill Carroll strongly disavowed statements she had made during captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying Saturday she had been repeatedly threatened.In a video, recorded before she was freed and posted by her captors on an Islamist Web site, Carroll spoke out against the U.S. military presence. But Carroll said the recording was made under threat. Her editor has said three men were pointing guns at her at the time.
"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me I would be released if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. So I agreed," she said in a statement read by her editor in Boston.
"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not." ....
Carroll also disavowed an interview she gave to the party shortly after her release. She said the party had promised her the interview would not be aired "and broke their word."[Update: at 9:50PM, Paul Mirengoff of Powerline posted the following:"At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times," she said. "Also, at least two false statements about me have been widely aired: That I refused to travel and cooperate with the U.S. military and that I refused to discuss my captivity with U.S. officials. Again, neither is true."
She now says what was obvious (except to the American left) -- her captors did not treat her well. In fact, it turns out that she was confined to a small, soundproof room with frosted, opaque windows, and was "threatened many times." Carroll also explains that her statements while in captivity that expressed sympathetic to the insurgency and criticism of the U.S. were made under duress. Specifically, the terrorists were aiming guns at her head.I still think Hinderocker owes Carroll an apology.]As I said yesterday, Jill Carroll has an obvious excuse. What is the excuse of those on the American left who utter similar nonsense and who defended the substance of Carroll's original coerced drivel?
[Update at 17:05 MDT: See also Joe Gandlesman and RightWingNutHouse.]
The Next American Idol: Wanna Bet?
The Boston Globe reports on the latest craze in online betting: reality TV show outcomes:"Online casinos began noticing people betting with one another on who they thought would survive another week or go all the way, and they've been offering entertainment betting on their websites for the past couple of years.
"Though online gambling is against US law, casinos can set up websites anywhere in the world, and Americans are placing wagers on them regardless of legal issues. The casinos say the business is growing steadily.
"The US Justice Department considers it illegal for Americans to place bets on websites, even if they're sites based in other countries. Federal officials rarely go after individual bettors but focus on the sites themselves."
Paxon to White House?
L. William Paxon, former head of the House Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, and co-architect of the 1994 House Republican majority, may join the Bush Administration to beef up the congressional relations function.Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have raised his name in recent days.
In 1992 Paxon took over the chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (an organization with a $5 million deficit) when Rep. Guy Vander Jagt lost his primary election. By 1994, Paxon had restructured the RCCC and provided the funds for the Contract With America to put the House Republicans in the majority for the first time in 40 years. Paxon is well respected among members of both houses of Congress.
Paxon was originally elected to Congress from Western New York to succeed retiring Rep. Jack Kemp in 1988. Paxon retired from Congress in 1998 to join Akin Gump as a senior advisor. He married Rep. Susan Molinari in 1993 and the couple has two children.
Saturday Mini-Review: That Hamilton Woman
Posted by Loner.
------------------------------------------------------
Napoleon can never be master of the world until he has smashed us up—and believe me, gentlemen, he means to be master of the world. You cannot make peace with dictators, you have to destroy them.
Monday marks the 65th Anniversary of the premiere of That Hamilton Woman. It was, by all accounts, Winston Churchill's favorite movie. If the stories are to be believed, in addition to suggesting its subject to producer-director Alexander Korda, Churchill also wrote the speech (quoted above) that the film's hero, Lord Horatio Nelson, makes to the Lords of the Admiralty after the ratification of the Peace of Amiens in 1802.
That Hamilton Woman is, first and least, propaganda. It was the first non-Soviet movie to get general distribution in the Soviet Union. Alexander Korda was subpoenaed to appear before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by Gerald P. Nye because, in addition to producing and directing the industry movie that the isolationist Senator Nye came to focus on (he'd gained prominence by, among other things, repeatedly accusing Hollywood of peddling pro-war propaganda), Korda was providing cover to British intelligence operations within the United States. The date set for his appearance was December 12, 1941.
That's the way people look at these things. They do not believe in a friendship between a man and a woman.
Do you?
I think two things make That Hamilton Woman a movie worth seeking out. The first is its production history. It was shot in just six weeks at what are now known as the Hollywood Center Studios (imdb.com has this wrong). It was being written as it was being filmed. Korda had to film a scene (which he later removed) to get the censors to approve the finished movie for distribution. There is a story that on day one of shooting there was a delay while the cast and crew tried to find out which arm and eye Nelson had lost. While filming was going on the lead actor was preparing to return to England to join the war effort by learning to fly. Much like Casablanca, but on a more limited budget, out of chaos came, despite a few flaws mostly having to do with the scenes at sea, a classic.
The second and foremost thing that makes it worth seeking out is the actress who plays that Hamilton woman. Earlier in the same year in which the movie was shot, she won an Academy Award for playing Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind, appeared in Waterloo Bridge and 21 Days, and married her co-star. Vivien Leigh would appear in only six more movies during the next 27 years and in none of these would she again work with her new husband, Laurence Olivier. Her work here is even more accomplished than it is in her Academy Award-winning performances. While she and Olivier are well-matched as one of the more famous unmarried couples in history, it is she who is the movie star working at the top of her game while he is a talented actor creating a character. While he was creating Nelson he was also in the early stages of developing the movie (Henry V) that would make him a great movie actor-director, provide a morale-boost for an England still at war four years later and prove that Shakespeare's plays could be successfully adapted for the screen.
There is no then. There is no after.
There is apparently a new DVD version of That Hamilton Woman available in England though in a quick search I couldn't find it for sale by a reputable internet retailer. Netflix lists it and you can put it in your queue, but there is, as yet, no release date. My library has the Samuel Goldwyn Classic Collection video version in its catalogue. See it if you can find it and keep it in mind if you can't--because when it comes to That Hamilton Woman, there is still a then and there is still an after, 65 years after its premiere on April 3, 1941 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in the United States of America.
------------------------------------------------------
Napoleon can never be master of the world until he has smashed us up—and believe me, gentlemen, he means to be master of the world. You cannot make peace with dictators, you have to destroy them.
Monday marks the 65th Anniversary of the premiere of That Hamilton Woman. It was, by all accounts, Winston Churchill's favorite movie. If the stories are to be believed, in addition to suggesting its subject to producer-director Alexander Korda, Churchill also wrote the speech (quoted above) that the film's hero, Lord Horatio Nelson, makes to the Lords of the Admiralty after the ratification of the Peace of Amiens in 1802.
That Hamilton Woman is, first and least, propaganda. It was the first non-Soviet movie to get general distribution in the Soviet Union. Alexander Korda was subpoenaed to appear before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by Gerald P. Nye because, in addition to producing and directing the industry movie that the isolationist Senator Nye came to focus on (he'd gained prominence by, among other things, repeatedly accusing Hollywood of peddling pro-war propaganda), Korda was providing cover to British intelligence operations within the United States. The date set for his appearance was December 12, 1941.
That's the way people look at these things. They do not believe in a friendship between a man and a woman.
Do you?
I think two things make That Hamilton Woman a movie worth seeking out. The first is its production history. It was shot in just six weeks at what are now known as the Hollywood Center Studios (imdb.com has this wrong). It was being written as it was being filmed. Korda had to film a scene (which he later removed) to get the censors to approve the finished movie for distribution. There is a story that on day one of shooting there was a delay while the cast and crew tried to find out which arm and eye Nelson had lost. While filming was going on the lead actor was preparing to return to England to join the war effort by learning to fly. Much like Casablanca, but on a more limited budget, out of chaos came, despite a few flaws mostly having to do with the scenes at sea, a classic.
The second and foremost thing that makes it worth seeking out is the actress who plays that Hamilton woman. Earlier in the same year in which the movie was shot, she won an Academy Award for playing Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind, appeared in Waterloo Bridge and 21 Days, and married her co-star. Vivien Leigh would appear in only six more movies during the next 27 years and in none of these would she again work with her new husband, Laurence Olivier. Her work here is even more accomplished than it is in her Academy Award-winning performances. While she and Olivier are well-matched as one of the more famous unmarried couples in history, it is she who is the movie star working at the top of her game while he is a talented actor creating a character. While he was creating Nelson he was also in the early stages of developing the movie (Henry V) that would make him a great movie actor-director, provide a morale-boost for an England still at war four years later and prove that Shakespeare's plays could be successfully adapted for the screen.
There is no then. There is no after.
There is apparently a new DVD version of That Hamilton Woman available in England though in a quick search I couldn't find it for sale by a reputable internet retailer. Netflix lists it and you can put it in your queue, but there is, as yet, no release date. My library has the Samuel Goldwyn Classic Collection video version in its catalogue. See it if you can find it and keep it in mind if you can't--because when it comes to That Hamilton Woman, there is still a then and there is still an after, 65 years after its premiere on April 3, 1941 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in the United States of America.
Yrs Sincerely...
Look: if I answered every prayer, I'd never get anything done. And if you got everything you asked for, that would mean you were in some other realm of existence, not Life. You're not an angel, and I'm not Santa Claus. The things you ask me for will sometimes be granted, but for "reasons," if you want to call them that, and within chains of causation, extending far beyond your ability to see or comprehend.God
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