I just want to get the rules straight

I'm a big gamer and a fairly competitive person. I like playing card games, board games, computer games. Games of all sorts. I think one of the thinks I like about games is that they have rules. I like to understand the rules so that I can play the game.

So let me see if I have the rules on this straight.

Muslims can kidnap and behead infidels (their term, not mine) and then release the videos on the internet. They can riot and kill people because of an erroneous story about the abuse of the Koran. They can riot and attack foreign embassies and consulates. They can kill our soldiers and their own countrymen through the use of cowardly tactics such as the use of IEDs. They can execute police trainees. They can strap bombs to teenagers so that they can kill innocent victims in discos and shooping malls and on buses and themselves.

And we can be more sensitive to their concerns.

Is that about right?

This is base hypocrisy. The Muslim world insists that the rest of the world respect their religion while they respect no religion other than their own. Ever hear of a concept called dhimmitude? It's a concept whereby Islam relegates all non-Muslims (i.e., infidels) to second class status, including special taxes and abridged rights. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it is illegal to practice any religion other than Islam. Muslims demand tolerance from the West for their religion, but rarely grant it in their own countries.

And since the impetus for this post is the flap over the cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper (in September, mind you!), how can we overlook the anti-Semitism rampant in the Muslim media. Jews are regularly depicted in crude caricatures (hook-nosed, greedy, duplicitous). Egypt, for example, recently ran a forty-one part (!!) series based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". It purports to be the master plan by which Jews take over the world, but has long ago been proven to be a Russian czarist forgery. Except in the Muslim world, where they lap it up with a spoon.

Let me say this plainly: NOTHING TRUMPS FREE SPEECH. NOTHING! Not religious sensitivity (or over-sensitivity, as the case may be). Not gender issues. Not racial issues. Not sexual orientation issues. Nothing.

I could give a fig about Muslim sensitivities. And really that is what we are talking about. No-one is suggesting to the Muslims that they be sensitive to Jewish sensibilities. No-one is saying that the media in America should be sensitive to Christian sensibilities. Do you know why? Because when you print a cartoon that is offensive to Jews or Christians, they don't go on multinational rampages. I'm sorry but no citizenry has the right not to be offended.

I hope the delicious irony of this whole flap hasn't escaped anybody: Muslims are rioting, rampaging, and attacking embassies and businesses (a KFC in Pakistan - take that, Colonel Sanders!), burning Danish, French and American flags, calling for the deaths of the cartoonists - to protest a cartoon that suggested that Islam has been co-opted by violent factions!!

The protests in Pakistan and the Philippines are particularly risible since once the protests are over many of the same people will be standing in line for visas to Denmark, France and the US.

Finally, the kicker: THERE IS NO PROHIBITION ON THE DEPICTION OF MUHAMMED IN THE KORAN! It's a fact. You can look it up. In fact, there used to be a tradition of depicting the prophet and using satire as protest in the Muslim world. My, how far they have retreated.

Imagine the reaction if the opposite happened

Read the article that can be found at this link.

Now, I ask you to imagine the rhetoric that would be forthcoming from Mexican President Vicente Fox if armed U.S. soldiers or Border Patrol agents had crossed the U.S.-Mexican border illegally.

This seems like a pretty serious problem. As the article says, many corrupt Mexican authorities might be crossing our borders in the aid and abettance of alien and drug smuggling. Who knows when they might start accepting money to smuggle terrorists across our border?

I need to investigate this a little more. According to the article there have been many such incursions by Mexican authorities over the last ten years. Perhaps we do the same and the Mexicans turn a blind eye.

If I find that to be the case, I will post a retraction.

My Day with the Rwandan Genocide

Today I visited two sites that are memorials to the Rwandan genocide that took place between April 3 and July 4, 1994.

I hired a taxi driven by a delightful and friendly fellow named Valence (pronounced Va-lonce). He was recommended to me by the consular officer with whom we are working here in Kigali. Valence didn’t speak much English, so we conversed in French. I was pleased to find that my French isn’t as rusty as I thought. On the drive both to and from Nyamata we had quite a free ranging conversation. We talked of the genocide, the future of Rwanda, and the problems facing Rwanda, and Africa in general. We even talked about women and the virtues of marriage and family.

The first site I visited was a Catholic church in the town of Nyamata. Nyamata is southeast about an hour by car from Kigali. In 1994, about 10,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus took refuge in the church there. About another 10 – 15,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus took refuge in the grounds and environs of the church.

To put it simply, they were slaughtered there. Some were shot. Some were killed when grenades were lobbed into the church. Some were hacked to death with machetes. Some were clubbed to death. Most gruesomely, infants were killed by being flung against the walls of the church.

Inside the church, the first room you enter contains the clothing of many of the victims. It also contained large bags of bones. I noticed that some of these bones were contained in USAID food donation sacks.

In the nave of the church, there are a few coffins for the pitifully few victims that were able to be identified by surviving family members. Most of the victims are interred in mass graves beneath the church itself and in two mass graves constructed on the grounds behind the church. To put it mildly, to see graves like this is overwhelming.

After visiting Nyamata, we returned to Kigali and went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi. This is a memorial dedicated to both the Rwandan genocide and all genocides that have occurred in modern history. Its purpose is to document these atrocities and educate visitors on the various genocides. The memorial is quite well done and obviously very sobering. It’s also surprisingly high-tech with numerous touch screen LCDs. When you start the video clips on the LCDs, it shows video accounts of survivors from different genocides. The memorial was paid for with donations from numerous NGOs and humanitarian organizations, Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial in western Jerusalem), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International among them.

I learned quite a bit about the history of Rwanda and the ethnic strife that led to the genocide. For example, while I knew the Rwanda was a Belgian colony that gained its independence in 1962, I hadn’t known that from 1895 – 1923 Rwanda was a German colony. In the wake of Germany’s defeat in WWI, the Belgians were granted a mandate over Rwanda by the League of Nations.

I also learned quite a bit about the ethnic divisions which led to the genocide. For example, when the Germans colonized Rwanda there were basically eighteen clans in the colony. The three main ethnic groups that are commonly recognized today (Hutu, Tutsi and Twa) were imposed by the Belgians to denote socio-economic status. If you owned more than ten cows, you were a Tutsi.

So, strictly speaking Hutus and Tutsis aren’t really ethnic groups at all. This was something that my driver explained to me. The driver explained to me that it wasn’t like the difference between, say, Nigerians and Ethiopians, who are strikingly different in appearance. While there are some subtle differences in the physiognomies of Hutus and Tutsis, the differences aren’t as clear cut as in the example I gave earlier in the paragraph.

The designation of Hutu or Tutsi or Twa denoted how wealthy or influential you were in your clan - and social mobility was possible. In other words, if you somehow worked your way up to owning ten or more cows, you could go from being a Hutu to a Tutsi.

This was rare, however, and since allied clans would naturally work together and favor one another, the clan identity gradually gave way to the ethnic identities of Hutu and Tutsi. (Twas are the smallest group, and as near as I could tell didn’t figure in the genocide.) As the Tutsis were the wealthy, they were a minority. And since they were wealthy they were favored by the Belgians. Thus, they maintained their economic status and began to become more educated. Because they were more educated, they gradually came to dominate the civil service under colonization. This is what led to the Hutu resentment of the Tutsis.

The memorial went into great detail about how the timeline of the genocide but it’s much too detailed for me to go into here.

For me the most powerful and most disturbing portion of the exhibit was the one dedicated to the child victims of the Rwandan genocide. It featured pictures of a child killed during the genocide; some short facts about the child (favorite food, favorite subject in school); and how they were killed. Again, mere words can’t really capture the power of this portion of the memorial.

I’ve posted pictures of my visit to these memorials on Kodakgallery.com. Normally, I send out a mass e-mail to all my friends and family inviting them to view my photos. But due to the disturbing nature of the photos from Nyamata, I am not going to do that this time. Instead, I will send an e-mail to everyone. Anyone that wants to see this album can e-mail me back and I will send an invitation to view the album.

Consistency from the Left? Pt. 5

This has been a drum I've been beating particularly hard for the last couple of weeks because it really gets my goat.

In a speech at Princeton University, Senator Hillary Clinton said, “I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations.”

Now, this is really rich. When it came to Iraq, the President acted "unilaterally" (despite the fact that 30-some nations joined our coalition) and against the wishes of the UN (despite UN Security Council Resolution 1441) in his "rush to war" (despite the fact that the invasion of Iraq was the most telegraphed invasion since Desert Storm in 1991).

Yet, when it comes to the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program, she critcizes the President for acting with the EU-3 (France, Germany and the UK - which includes two of the three countries which did the most to obstruct a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq). I don't suppose that, since the nascent Iranian nuclear weapons program most directly threatens Israel, this has anything to do with the fact that Senator Clinton represents New York, a state with a large and influential Jewish population, does it?

Do I really need to write any more?

Just a few items from the New York Times

In the January 20th edition of The New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney makes at least one factual error and then quotes Howard Dean which for the 47th quintillionth time demonstrates the chutzpah of the American left.

First, Nagourney writes, "...and it came at a time that Mr. Rove himself is under investigation for his role in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer to reporters." This is an important factual error that Nagourney makes because it speaks as to whether or not a crime was even committed in the Valerie Plame kerfluffle.

Valerie Plame was not undercover when her identity was revelead. This is not "inside baseball". This is the crux of the matter. First of all, columnist Robert Novak did not reveal her name. He revealed that a CIA employee had a hand in getting Joseph Wilson the assignment to assess whether or not Iraq had tried to procure Nigerien "yellowcake" uranium. And, despite Wilson's denials, it has now been proven that his wife did, in fact, have a hand in his being selected for the mission.

Now, Valerie Plame had, at one time, been an undercover operative for the CIA. But, as Joseph Wilson's own book proves, she hadn't been in the field since 1997. In that case, there was no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

The chutzpah part comes when Nagourney quotes Howard Dean, "'The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong.'" I wonder if Howard Dean has ever heard of Sandy Berger.

Consistency from the Left, Pt. 4

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been raking the American political left over the coals for their lack of consistency. But, I've decided that I have been unfair. They are consistent in one aspect: their insistence on a double-standard for Republicans.

Take, for example, their high dudgeon over the NSA wire-tapping scandal, when it was Bill Clinton that authorized Echelon, the largest electronic surveillance program in history.

Or how about this from the great Power Line blog?

So, let me see if I get this straight: if you divulge information that is helpful to Democrats you are a "whistle-blower", a "patriot", and sometimes even a Person of the Year (as FBI Special Agent Colleen Rowley was in 2002, along with World Com Vice President Cynthia Cooper and Enron Vice President Sherron Watkins).

But if you divulge information harmful to the Democrats you are, at least according to the New York Times, "someone...who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known". In other words, as blogger John Hindraker from Power Line puts it, "just a partisan with an axe to grind".

Hindraker also notes that "after the Times has printed dozens (hundreds, probably) of stories critical of the Bush administration based on leaks by Democratic bureaucrats, we're still waiting for the paper to write: 'A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Democrats' position who wanted his criticism of the Bush administration to be known.'"

James Taranto: My hero!

Check out this item from Taranto's Best of the Web from January 5th, 2006:

From a Harris Poll on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court:

Opposition to the confirmation of Judge Alito would probably grow substantially if most people believed he would vote to make abortion illegal. A 69 to 31 percent majority of the public say they would oppose his confirmation if they thought he would vote to make abortion illegal. Majorities of Democrats (86%) and Independents (74%) feel this way. However, a majority of Republicans (56% vs. 44%) would support his confirmation if they believed he would vote to make abortion illegal.

Yeah, well, we would oppose Alito's confirmation if we believed he would vote to make abortion illegal--and we think Roe v. Wade is a monstrosity. Reversing Roe, however, would not make abortion illegal; it would merely make it possible for duly elected legislators to do so. The guys who write Harris polls know so little about constitutional law, they ought to be teaching it at the University of Virginia.

(I promise I did not read this before my post on liberals' misunderstanding of the principle of federalism.)

Chutzpah, they name is Ted Kennedy

I've been on record many times that Ted Kennedy is the most shameless and hypocritical politician in the United States.

Check out what Sen. Kennedy had to say about the current hearings on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court:

Mr. Kennedy said that the nomination process, and particularly the hearings, had "turned into a political campaign," and that the White House had proved increasingly skilled in turning that to its advantage.

"These issues are so sophisticated--half the Senate didn't know what the unitary presidency was, let alone the people of Boston," he said, referring to one of the legal theories that was a focus of the hearings. "I'm sure we could have done better."

"But what has happened is that this has turned into a political campaign," he said. "The whole process has become so politicized that I think the American people walk away more confused about the way these people stand."

Where to begin? First of all, a nomination of any kind is not a political campaign. Perhaps all Ted Kennedy's heavy drinking has so addled his brain that he has forgotten that it is the political campaign that leads to the nomination. In other words, you win an election and you get to nominate people you want for various positions.

Secondly, the nerve of such a statement from the man who turned the surname "Bork" into a verb is...stunning doesn't even begin to come close. I quite literally can't think of a way to characterize this strongly enough.

Consistency from the Left, pt. 3

It was Bill Clinton who signed the law authorizing the creation of special prosecutors. He then spent his entire presidency dodging and demonizing them. It was President Bush and the Republican Congress that allowed the law to sunset.

So, of course, Al Gore is now calling for a special prosecutor to investigate President Bush in the NSA wire-tapping scandal.

Hypocrite, thy name is Democrat.

Democrats display ignorance of federalism

With every judicial nomination, abortion is always one of the key questions: does the nominee support Roe v. Wade? With Supreme Court nominees, and the current Alito nomination is no exception, the Democrats inevitably home in on the question of whether the nominee would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?

Suggestions that the nominee would vote to overturn Roe, lead groups like NOW and NARAL to bloviate that overturning Roe would lead us to a return to the days of back-alley, coathanger abortions.

This demostrates a stunning, and in my opinion, willful misunderstanding of the principle of federalism. (Perhaps, I've written this before, so if I am repeating myself I apologize.) If Roe were overturned, abortion would not become illegal overnight. The reason? Each state could decide for itself whether to keep abortion illegal. Alabama and Georgia, for example, could say, no, we don't want doctors practicing abortion in our state. California, Massachussetts and New York, on the other hand, could say, yes, we think women should have the option to abort a pregnancy.

Try as you might to find it, and despite Justice Blackmum's "reasoning", there is no right to abortion in the Constitution. So, when presented with the argument that states could decide for themselves whether to keep abortion legal, groups in favor of abortion argue that making a woman travel to a neighboring state would create an undue hardship. And it would discriminate against the poor.

I reject such arguments on two grounds. One, transportation is cheap. You can buy a bus ticket to go from one state to another for a few hundred dollars. To me, this does not present an undue hardship.

The second reason is simple: personal responsibility. In this day and age, when every grammar school child knows what a condom is, there is no reason for unwanted pregnancies. If you want an abortion, it's because you don't want a baby. Well, if you don't want a baby, practice contraception. There are many options available and they are all fairly cost-effective.

If Democrats a feel like abortion is such a fundamental right, then why do they think, as Bill Clinton once said, it should be "safe, legal and rare". If there is nothing wrong morally with abortion, then why should it be rare?

Some thoughts on the insurgency

I received a CNN Alert yesterday about car bombing in Iraq and a thought occurred to me.

Think of the current insurgency in Iraq as an argument. One side would like to see some sort of federalist, republican government, while the other would like to see Islam and sharia as the basis for organizing and governing society.

One side is organizing into political parties so that they can persuade the rest of their countrymen to govern Iraq and spend Iraq's limited resources (remember your basic civics - every country has limited resources and politics is the non-violent method by which people decide to allocate those resources) the way their party would like. This is representative government.

The other side is sneaking about, planting bombs on roads and in public places and blowing up their countrymen so that they will be cowed into accepting Islam and sharia as the basis for organizing society.

Hasn't one side implicitly given up on persuasion and resorted to coercion? In other words, haven't the insurgents already lost this argument?

Who are the uniters and who are the dividers?

Democrats love to ridicule for George Bush for not being the "uniter" he promised to be during his campaign and upon taking office. So, let's examine the comments commemorating MLK Day by George Bush versus those of Hilary Clinton.

Here's what the president said at the "Let Freedom Ring" ceremony at the Kennedy Center on Monday:

At the dawn of this new century, America can be proud of the progress we have made toward equality, but we all must recognize we have more to do. The reason to honor Martin Luther King is to remember his strength of character and his leadership, but also to remember the remaining work. The reason to honor Mrs. Parks is not only to pay homage to her strength of character, but to remember the ideal of active citizenship. Active citizens in the 1960s struggled hard to convince Congress to pass civil rights legislation that ensured the rights of all, including the right to vote. And Congress must renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Now, let's compare that to some of the comments mady by Hillary Clinton in a speech she gave in Houston. She said the Bush administration was one of the worst "in history" (boy, she really has a short memory). She likened the House of Representatives to a plantation. The she apologized to a group of Hurricane Katrina surivors "on behalf of a government that left you behind, that turned its back on you". (I have serious questions about her competency. She obviously doesn't realize that the federal government isn't obligated to do anything to assist states that are victims of natural disasters.)

Now, I put it to you, dear reader. Just who is the uniter and who is the divider? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.)

Gorillas in the Mist

Today my teammates and I went up to northwestern Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas. We went to Virunga National Park where they have a population of about 350 gorillas. Between Rwanda and Uganda there are about 700 mountain gorillas still in the wild.

Prior to hiking up to the gorillas' nest, we listened to a briefing by our guide. It sounds like between the Rwandans and the Ugandans, both countries are really making an effort to preserve the gorillas in the wild. Nothing is done to detroy or even alter the gorillas' habitat.

While it's an admirable policy, it made for an arduous hike to the gorillas' nest. We started out at about 6500 feet and hiked up to about 9000 feet through the densest forest I've seen since I was a Boy Scout in Panama. And there is a reason they called the movie "Gorillas in the Mist". The weather was chilly and rainy which made for quite a bit of, you guessed it, mist. The trail (and I use that term loosely) was quite muddy and we were all pretty filthy by the time we reached the nest.

We spent an hour observing a group of 18 gorillas. A group of gorillas are called a band. A band is led by a single silverback. A silverback is a gorilla that is at least 12 years old. (Gorillas have a life span of about 45 years.) In addition to the silverback, there were several blackbacks (adolescent males), females and cubs. We reached the nest at about 10:00 am which is a normal resting time for the gorillas. So unfortunately, most of the gorillas just lay about, although a few were grooming one another. We were hoping to see the silverback display his dominance by beating his chest, but no such luck.

Flash photography is not allowed and my camera doesn't allow me to turn off the flash so I didn't get too many pictures. My colleagues and I are going to pool our pictures, so once that is done I will post the pictures on my Kodak Gallery.

Embedded Video of the Gorillas


This video or more for your site at Myzine.org


This video or more for your site at Myzine.org


This video or more for your site at Myzine.org

This would be funny....

....if it weren't a brilliant analysis by Heather Mac Donald. In that case, it moves from the realm of funny to scary.

Read this and despair for legal scholarship in this country.

Officer Stephanie Mohr

Outrage is a word that gets tossed around all too often these days. Yet, the word is truly apt in the case I am about to tell you about.

Thanks again to GOPUSA for letting me know about this case. I'm going to let Officer Mohr tell the story in her own words. (For those interested, you can make a donation to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund here.)

My name is Stephanie Mohr, and I used to be a police officer with the Prince George's County Police Department in Maryland. I am sitting in a jail cell. A jail cell where I've been sentenced to spend 10 years of my life for a crime I did not commit!

Please let me explain.

I received over 25 letters of commendation and two awards during my years on the police force. But to the bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Justice, that doesn't matter. To them, I'm just a white police officer whose police dog bit an illegal immigrant on the leg in 1995.

You may have heard about my case on TV. On the night of September 21, 1995, I was on patrol with my police dog, Valk. The area I patrolled, Takoma Park, had been suffering a rash of burglaries. My partner, Sgt. Anthony Delozier, and I got a call for backup from an officer who had spotted two men on the roof of a nearby store. We knew we had likely found the perpetrators.

When we arrived, the situation was tense. The suspects, Ricardo Mendez and Herrera Cruz, had been ordered down from the roof and told to face a wall. They were shouting back and forth to each other in a stream of Spanish.

And then it happened.

Mendez made a move as if to flee the scene. In accordance with my training, I released my dog, Valk, who was trained to perform the standard bite and hold move. He did so, biting Mendez on the leg and holding him until I and the other officers could handcuff him.

Both of the suspects were charged with 4th degree burglary. Cruz pled guilty and was deported to Mexico. Mendez was convicted of illegally entering the U.S. and selling crack cocaine and was deported to [El] Salvador. As for me, I was relieved to get two dangerous drug dealers off our streets.

So imagine my shock five years later when the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would indict me for violating Ricardo Mendez's civil rights by allowing my police dog to bite his leg!

Mendez, a criminal and an illegal alien, had been fleeing the scene of a crime, and it had been my duty to release Valk and apprehend him. But the bureaucrats in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice chose to ignore the facts; they were looking for cases of police brutality, and I was exactly what they wanted: a white officer whose police dog had bitten a minority.

My fellow officers and I testified in court that I had done my job by the book. And it was true: the P.G. County police training clearly states that if a felony suspect makes a move, we are authorized to release our police dogs.

The jury agreed and voted to acquit me 11-1. And that's when things really got ugly.

Civil rights groups were furious. Everyone from Amnesty International to the NAACP declared the arrest racist and demanded further investigation. The Justice Department insisted on a second trial because of the one lone juror who had sided with the prosecution. They got it.

The second trial was a circus. The government flew in Mendez from [El] Salvador and Cruz from Mexico at taxpayer expense to testify against me. They stacked the jury with minorities who would be sympathetic to illegal immigrants. They drummed up minority witnesses who accused me of using racial epithets against them without a shred of proof!

Their strategy worked. I was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison for apprehending a drug dealer!

Consistency from the Left? Pt. 2

A good friend of mine says that his father jokes that of the four Kennedy brothers, the worst possible one is the only remaining survivor. (Again, a sign that there is no cosmic justice.)

During the confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel Alito, Kennedy has tried to make much of the fact that Alito was a member of an exclusive, all-male club at Princeton.

I know I've mused on this many times, but either this man was born with no shame or has had it surgically removed. Check out this item from GOPUSA's The Loft blog:

However, this was not good enough for Kennedy who spent the bulk of his time on Wednesday hammering Alito about his membership in the group. But the Washington Times learned that Kennedy was a member of Harvard’s Owl Club, an “exclusive” all-male club which has been criticized in the past and which “was evicted from campus nearly 20 years ago after refusing to allow female members."

Consistency from the Left?

Perish the thought!

Take the recent "scandal" over President Bush's authorization of wire taps against Americans and foreigners suspected of having ties to terrorist groups. The usual suspects (The New York Times, the ACLU, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats) are up in arms over this egregious violation of civil rights.

I mean a Democratic president would never resort to such patently illegal and unconstitutional tactics, right?

Thanks to Lorie Byrd at PoliPundit.com for this link to this piece on The American Thinker website.

Have you ever heard of a surveillance program called Echelon? It's the Big Brother-ish program whereby the NSA could and did monitor all telephone calls and e-mails around the world. (Unknown to most, the British and several other key allies participate in Echelon.)

I'll give you three quesses who authorized Echelon, and the first two don't count.

James Jesus Angleton on Iran

Some of my favorite pieces on National Review Online are Michael Ledeen's "conversations" via a Ouija board with former CIA counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton.

This may be the best one yet. Sure it's outlandish, but as Ledeen writes at the end, "...it does somehow explain everything."

How's the war going? Ask the Iraqis

Byron York of National Review Online has this piece about the surprising results of a public opinion poll conducted in Iraq.

So, don't listen to the Democrat's newest "useful idiot", John Murtha, or - crikey, I can't even think of adjectives that quite convey what a moronic demagogue Howard Dean is (oh, wait, I think I just did) - Howard Dean about how the things are in Iraq. Let the Iraqis themselves tell you.

McCarthy vs. McCain

One of the contributors to National Review Online that I enjoy the most is Andrew McCarthy. I've mentioned him several times in previous posts. He has a new piece taking on John McCain's torture ban. Here's a link.

Quite simply it's devastating. Reading it, I am completely baffled as to why anyone would want to extend such magnanimity and mercy to our enemies. McCarthy goes one better and shows how such a ban would be unconstitutional and dangerous.

John McCain, of all people, who suffered genuine torture at the hands of his Vietnamese captors during his imprisonment at the Hanoi Hilton (reportedly he can't even comb his own hair since he can't raise his arms above his shoulders), knows what real torture is.

McCain, of all people, should know that the abuses which took place at Abu Ghraib hardly constitute torture. In fact, I would hazard a guess that given the choice between enduring the torture they did and enduring the "torture" of the sort seen at Abu Ghraib, the "guests" at the Hanoi Hilton would have jumped at the latter.

What's even worse is that McCarthy shows how the adoption of McCain's amendment (which was tacked on to a defense appropriations bill so that those opposing the amendment could be accused of not "supporting the troops") would lead to the extension of Miranda protections to terrorists. With the extension of Miranda rights to enemy combatants would come court-appointed attorneys, paid for by the American taxpayers. It would also mean the right against self-incrimination.

All this means that non-American enemy combatants, captured on the battlefield, outside the United States, would have the same rights as you or I if we were accused of a crime.

Indeed, McCarthy shows how this has already happened. In the case of one of the Nairobi embassy bombers, a judge ruled that the perpetrator's confession should be supressed on grounds that he wasn't Mirandized.

Wait, it gets worse. The terrorist in question wasn't even in the United States at the time. He was in Kenya. Nor was he in U.S. custody; he was in Kenyan custody. The Kenyans (in this instance, better allies than the French) had agreed to allow FBI investigators to interrogate him. The judge ruled that this was enough to guarantee him Miranda protections.

Those of you under the erroneous impression that perhaps the Founding Fathers intended for such protections to apply to our enemies, McCarthy demostrates how this is not the case. McCarthy writes that "the very purpose of forming government was to secure...[our] rights from such enemies. It is impossible to separate the substance of the Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment protections from the fact that those protections are designed to benefit only people who have joined the fabric of our society."

These are the likely results of the passing of the McCain amendment. I expect this kind of crap from Barbara Boxer or Diane Pelosi, but not McCain. (Although ever since the 2000 primary he has seemed to delight in his role as a gadfly.)

I can't believe that Bush can't even bring himself to veto this affront to our security. I despair that Bush will never learn this basic lesson: those on the Left don't hate him because they don't support his policies; they don't support his policies because they hate him.

Arab Hypocrisy

I know, I know. Where to begin?

How about with all the Arab high dudgeon over the Crusades? Osama Bin Laden has cited the Crusades as one of the reasons for his own jihad (really just an Arabic word for - wait for it - a crusade!)

Let's leave aside for a moment perhaps the most salient fact - namely that the Crusades happened ALMOST A THOUSAND YEARS AGO and were not launched by any entity even remotely resembling any of today's nation-states.

Instead, let's concentrate on the hypocrisy inherent in Arab protestations over the injustices suffered at the hands of the Crusaders. I say inherent because I want you to think about the answer to a simple question:

How do you think Islam spread from its beginnings on the Arabian peninsula?

That's right - it was a crusade. Mohammed didn't charge his followers with going out and spreading his word and convincing other peoples to follow those teachings. Nope, ole Mo' told his followers to put other peoples to the sword to convince them. Those who "chose" not to convert in this method faced two choices: death or permanent second-class status (dhimmitude).

Islam has never been spread by proselytization. It has always relied on force and coercion for its spread. This seems a strange way to spread the "word of God". I will grant you that Christianity has had its share of forced converts, but that was a perversion of Christ's true intent. Christ charged his disciples with spreading his teachings and setting an example. In fact, most religions rely on some form of proselytization. Mormonism is perhaps the most recent example of this phenomenon.

The Arab crusade was only halted by Charlemagne's grandfather, Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer - I love that name), at the Battle of Tours (also known as the Battle of Poitiers, but not to be confused with the 1356 battle of the same name, fought between the English and the French during the Hundred Years War) in 732 A.D. It was there near the French town of Tours that Martel defeated an army of Muslims and forever halted their northward advance up from the Iberian Peninsula. After that, the Moors were contained in Spain until they were driven out by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492.

In a sense, the European Crusades could be seen as a reaction to the Arabs' earlier one as well as a, well, crusade to retake the Holy Lands (i.e., Jerusalem) from the Saracens (Arabs).

Think about that the next time you hear someone getting their panties in a bunch about the Crusades.

European ingratitude

Something that I've come to realize is that genuine gratitude is in short supply in today's civilization. I guess it is human nature that breeds resentment in the heart of the benefactor. It seems that helping those less fortunate than ourselves causes them to face up to the hard truth that they were unable to help themselves.

However, I find this explanation less than satisfactory in the case of present-day Western Europe. It does nothing to explain why the Europeans seem determined to act the obstructor in our efforts to fight Islamist terrorists.

This really puzzles me since the Europeans have nearly as much to fear as we Americans do. While we may be "public enemy number one", they have much larger numbers of Muslim immigrants in their midst which makes them more vulnerable. You would think that after the terror attacks in Spain and England, wilding Muslim youths in France, and foiled terror plots in Denmark and Germany, that the Europeans would be more supportive of the War on Islam.

You would think that. But you would be wrong. Witness the latest brouhaha over the CIA's operation of secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Leave aside for a moment the fact that, given the European's vulnerability to terrorism, they should be with us. But aren't those countries which helped us to operate this network of prisons sovereign? Don't they have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to assist us in this endeavor?

I am convinced it is not a coincidence that those countries with the most recent experience under authoritarian governments are our most faithful allies in this effort.

The Europeans, on the other hand, spent nearly 50 years enjoying the aegis of American protection from the Soviet threat. I think this is the prime cause that has bred the resentment to the United States; the fact that they were unable to stand up to the gravest threat of the latter half of the 20th century.

The "demise" of Israel

Stratfor, the private intelligence report, had this item on their website:

Israel is a "cancer" in the Middle East and its peace deal with Egypt should be submitted to a referendum, the leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (MB) said in an interview published in Ahram weekly Dec. 15. Mohammed Mehdi Akef said the MB would not recognize Israel, and that he expected its demise soon. Akef stopped short of saying that the peace deal should be scrapped, but he did suggest it should be voted on.

I am most intrigued by Mr. Akef's assertion that he expected Israel's "demise soon". I find it intriguing since the Israelis have whipped the Arabs in every stand up fight they've had with their neighbors.

A chance to get involved

The advent of the Internet has made it much easier to stay in touch with family and friends. It has also made it much easier to contact your congressional representatives. I regularly write my Representative and Senators so that they know what positions I would like them to take. After all, if I don't tell them how I would like them to vote, then there is no countervailing influence to the lobbyists and special interests groups.

A new bill has been introduced in the House which all American should support. Rep. James Sensenbrenner has proposed the Border and Immigration Enforcement Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437). This proposed law is a long overdue change to our nation's immigrations law. Among its provisions the children of illegal immigrants and resident aliens born in the United States are no longer entitled to American citizenship.

I searched Google and couldn't find one example of a country with a similar policy. This policy used to have a purpose in the early years of the United States' founding, when we were encouraging unfettered immigration. But now that expansion of our country is settled and the nations of the world have recognized the value of regulating the process of immigration and citizenship, this provision is an outdated loophole that is being exploited by illegal immigrants and those who wish to abuse the privileges of citizenship.

Predictably, immigration rights groups, civil rights groups and unions are opposing the bill. They have taken to using the same hyperbolic language to urge opposition to it, calling the bill an "unprecendented attack" on the "rights of undocumented immigrants" (if you know anythin about the history of our country, you'll know it's not). The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, an offshoot of the AFL-CIO, says that "[i]t offers only harsh measures meant to punish immigrants". (Note how they omit the fact that the bill targets illegal aliens not legal residents.) Civilrights.org says that the bill "takes a harsh and unfair approach to reforming our nation's immigration policies".

I am continually mystified by people who don't seem to value their American citizenship and who wish to offer it to any illegal alien who manages to break our laws and sneak into the United States. After all, no-one would suggest that if I broke into your house, I would have any right to take up residence. Yet, that is the logic that is at work under the current policy.

I urge everyone to go to the www.house.gov and www.senate.gov web sites and write your congressional representatives and urge them to support this bill.

Is Hawaii still part of America?

Check out this item from the Honolulu Advertiser.

Apparently Hawaii is preparing to enforce a 12-year-old law that requires owners to pay all unpaid parking tickets before registering a car. In Hawaii, parking tickets are attached to a car, not a driver. Now, on the one hand, it's easy to see the logic in such a law. The state has a vested interest in trying to punish scofflaws.

That being said, it's absolutely ludicrous, and probably unconstitutional, to punish one person for the crimes of another. Let's take an extreme example. Suppose I legally buy a gun and later it's discovered that the previous owner had committed a murder with it. Would it be permissible for the state to punish me for that crime? Of course it's not. Most people would scoff at the idea. Yet, the rationale behind such an action is that same logic at work in the Hawaii case.

I can only hope that some outraged Hawaiian will challenge this ludicrous law. Of course, I don't have much faith in the Hawaiian courts. Hawaii is the same state that is trying to make native Hawaiians a protected group with special status and privileges under the law.

Logic not journalist's strong suit

The Arizona Daily Star columnist Ernesto Portillo, Jr., wrote the following passage in an opinion column about Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist's abortive Congressional campaign for the House seat vacated by Chris Cox (who took over the SEC):

"On Tuesday, in Southern California's Orange County, Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist lost his bid in a special congressional election. Gilchrist had widespread media attention for his hard-charging call to close the border. He had the backing of the Tombstone-based Minuteman group, which has created chapters and copycat groups across the country. And he had the support of national conservative commentators who dominate radio and cable television.

"Yet Gilchrist, a retired accountant from Orange County who made illegal immigration his only campaign issue, could not seal the deal in one of California's most conservative counties and the birthplace of the close-the-border movement. Gilchrist...placed third behind a Democrat, who had 28 percent, and the winner, a Republican state legislator who received nearly 45 percent of the votes. Gilchrist's supporters hailed his showing as a moral victory of sorts, but he didn't come close, despite all the fanfare over the Minutemen's supposed popular appeal."

This is what they call a logical fallacy. Portillo's reasoning goes like this: Gilchrist lost and his main issue was illegal immigration ergo Californians don't have any problem with illegal immigration.

They call it a fallacy for a reason: it's wrong. If you followed this race at all, you would know that Gilchrist didn't perform well in the debate, didn't heed his advisors in trying to get out the vote, and didn't heed his advisors in reaching out to absentee voters. Any of these reasons, and indeed all three of them taken together, offer a more likely reason as to why Gilchrist finished third in this race.

Try to guess which side of the illegal immigration issue Mr. Portillo falls on.

"Brokeback Mountain": This year's "Boys Don't Cry"

Are you ready for yet another movie that will be hailed by critics but that almost no-one will see? Then get ready for "Brokeback Mountain", the "gay cowboy movie".

This movie has a fair amount of starpower behind it. It's directed by Ang Lee, written by Larry McMurtry and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger and Randy Quaid. Critics are already falling all over themselves to praise it. It is the top Golden Globe nominee with seven nods. It was the big winner at the New York Film Critics Circle awards, nabbing awards for best picture, best director (Lee) and best actor (Ledger). It will certainly contend for many of the major Oscars.

I was struck by how delusional some of the breathless comments were from some critics about "Mountain". This one really jumped out at me:

"A lot of people among critics are responding to it because it is so daring," said Gene Seymour, chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Daring? A sympathetic treatment of gays by Hollywood is daring? Uh, in a word, no. "The Passion of the Christ", a production about the last hours of Christ's life in Aramaic and Latin, THAT was daring.

Now, compare the box office of the two.

Critics are a bunch of iconoclasts whose main function is to extol movies that most people either haven't seen, hate or can't relate to, in order to make themselves seem smarter and more sophisticated than Joe Six-Pack. Probably to compensate for the fact that they have no real creative talent of their own. Deep down they realize what a meager gift it is to be able to eloquently piss in someone else's corn flakes. (And yes I realize the inherent irony in making such a statement on a blog.)

This situation reminds me of 1999's "Boys Don't Cry" another critical darling that no-one saw. According to Box Office Mojo, "Boys Don't Cry" grossed $11 million dollars at the box office. Let's assume an average ticket price of $5. I know that is likely a fairly conservative estimate but I'm trying to factor in the variance in ticket prices (even though probably most of the people that saw "Boys" did so in major media markets like New York and Los Angeles) and matinee prices. At a ticket price of $5, that means just a little over 2 million people saw the movie. That's not very many in a country of almost 300 million people.

Let's be honest here. "Boys Don't Cry" is a film about a transsexual. Do you know a transsexual? Does anybody you know know a transsexual? Most Americans simply can't relate very well to the issues in "Boys Don't Cry". And yet it was a critical darling. I think one can detect a similar parochialism in last year's "Sideways". Most of Americans don't know "Merlot" from moonshine; most of us aren't frustrated novelists. And yet this movie was nominated for "Best Picture"! I think this will be the case with "Brokeback Mountain". Do you know [m]any cowboys? If you do know any cowboys, are any of them gay?

France: What a joke

Check out this news story courtesy of Stratfor:

France sent a resolution to the U.N. Security Council lateDec. 13 that would expand the scope of the investigation into the deathof former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to include terroristattacks in Lebanon since October 2004. The resolution, co-sponsored bythe United States and Britain, was requested by the Lebanese government,which is investigating a string of car bombings.

This is all well and good, but I just have one question: what are they going to do when they find out that some Syrian or Iranian-backed terrorist group is responsible? Pass another resolution? Goodness me, no! That would be too judgemental. Perhaps they'll threaten to pass another resolution. Or maybe they'll pass a resolution threatening to pass another resolution.

I got in an argument with an acquantaince of mine who is Dutch. Natch, he was against the war. I asked him, why, when every government of every power agreed that Saddam Hussein was a threat and a murdering tyrant? How many U.N. Security Council resolutions did he have to violate? You Europeans are the ones insisting that we get U.N. approval, I argued, so we sent Colin Powell and called your bluff.

His retort to most of my arguments was to ask why the U.S. couldn't have waited six months to invade. My reply to this was, how many people die at the hands of the Hussein regime in six months? He kept repeating, "Six months! Six months!" like this was some kind of argument instead of the nonsensical mantra he was turning it into.

This is why I think the U.N. should be scrapped: the dither while people die.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams

The state of California executed notorious murderer and co-founder of the "Crips" street gang, Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

In the last several years, Williams had become something of a cause celebre among Hollywood's elite. Luminaries such as Snoop Doggy Dogg, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Joan Baez and Bianca Jagger (do the last two really count as celebrities?) had embarked on a campaign to try and win clemency for Williams. They had even gone so far as to nominate Williams for Nobel Peace Prizes over the last several years. Now, I'll admit that with recent prizes having gone to Jimmy Carter and Mohamed El-Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize has lost some of its lustre. Luckily, however, the Nobel committee retained enough good sense to not award a prize to this monster.

The reason the illuminati cited for wanting Williams' sentence commuted was that he had been reformed. They cite as proof the work Williams had done and the books he had written trying to educate California's and America's youth on the dangers of gang membership.

Such arguments are laughably easy to refute.

First, for having murdered four people in cold blood and then having boasted of the murders and joked about the pain and cruelty he had inflicted, one could argue that trying to make a lesson of his own sorry example to succeeding generations was the very least Williams could do. But it hardly diminishes the monstrosity of his crimes, nor does it merit a reprieve.

Second, a cynical sort might argue that "Tookie's" conversion was calculated to save his own hide. How lucky we are that we have the Susan Sarandon's and Bianca Jagger's of the world to remind of us of the potential for redemption in us all!

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 1954-2005. Good riddance.

Orwell v. 2005

File this story right next to the one about the CIA selling crack in the ghetto,a missile striking the Pentagon, and Jews staying home from the World Trade Center on September 11:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10370145/

I can understand why some people would want to peddle a story like this. It gets them a microphone and a camera in their face; it gets their picture in the paper. The attempt is to portray one's own group as victims of a nefarious conspiracy. The effect is to cloud any honest investigation of what actually went wrong.

What I can't understand is why a supposedly reputable news organization like MSNBC would want to give a pulpit to such fringe groups as are peddling these fantasies. Likewise I can't understand why the United States Congress would want to humor such dangerous fantasies.

They do a grave disservice to many of those most harmed by Hurricane Katrina. It absolves those involved from any reflection on their own role during the disaster. It hurts precisely those victimized the most.

Take Spike Lee (please). “I don't find it too far-fetched,” Lee said in a recent television interview, “that they try to displace all the black people out of New Orleans.” Now were I the one interviewing Spike Lee my next question would be a simple one: why? Frankly, statements like these exaggerate the importance of race.

Of course, I haven't conducted in-depth research on the attitudes and motives of the white community of New Orleans. Nevertheless (as Katherine Hepburn tells Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen"), I feel confident in asserting that white people in New Orleans did not displace black people out of New Orleans. What possible motive would they have for doing so? It's absurd, plain and simple.

Madeleine Albright: Not the sharpest knife in the drawer

The Austin American Statesman has this story about a speech that the worst Secretary of State of the 20th century gave at St. Edward's University in Texas.

I thought the headline ("Albright criticizes war in Iraq but says U.S. must stay") was the typical, talking-out-of-both-sides-of-their-mouth carping that we hear from Democrats these days. However the real howler in this article was this line:

She said Clinton had so impressed the Arabs that he "could be elected president of any country" in the Middle East.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but there are only three countries in the Middle East to which Bill Clinton could be elected to the presidency - Israel, Turkey, and Iraq. And the third one only because of the determination of the man Albright was bitching about.

Now, why couldn't he be elected president of the rest of them again? Oh, that's right. NONE OF THE REST OF THEM HAVE ELECTIONS!

From the "It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy" file...

...comes this report:

Cuban President Fidel Castro is suffering from Parkinson's disease, according to a CIA
assessment issued Nov. 16. Cuban officials declined to comment on the assessment.

Bill Richardson - Yep, He's a Clintonite

I'm not sure exactly when this story broke but I am just learning about it today. It seems that the former New Mexico governor and UN Ambassador under Bill Clinton has been claiming for the last 20-odd years that he was drafted to play baseball by the then Kansas City Athletics in 1966.

A story from thanksgiving Day's Albuquerque Journal reports that, in fact, Richardson was not drafted by the A's.

Now, I am not going to waste a lot of words on why people embellish or flat-out lie on their resumes. What I am more interested in is how public figures, politicians especially, attempt to explain their actions when they are caught.

In this case, Richardson's admission is the usual incredible - as in hard to believe (mainly because it's not true) - mea culpa. Not only is it hard to believe; we all know that it is disingenuous and insincere. A six year-old could listen to it and tell you it's a lie. Here's what Richardson had to say:

"After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's," he said.

He had to research the matter to come to the conclusion that it wasn't true? Now, I willingly admit that I wasn't drafted by the A's - or anybody else for that matter - but I would have to believe that if I had been (in my late teens or early twenties), I have to believe that that would stand out a little. I have to believe this would stand out among the events of my life. I have to believe that it wouldn't require any "research" on my part to remember.

So, why do public figures go through the motions of pretending that they didn't know they were lying?

I can only believe it is because they think we, the public, are stupid and complacent.

They know that most of us have short memories and that we have more important things to do than wonder which politician is honest and which one is not. They count on it. So they go through the motions of pretending that the indiscretion in question was an honest mistake.

See, they also count on one other thing, and that's the weariness of the public. We have been so conditioned to believe that politicians are dishonest, that it doesn't surprise us when we are confronted with evidence of it. We shrug our shoulders and repeat the mantra, "They all do it."

Bill Clinton didn't invent this kind of behavior; he perfected it. Again and again he was caught out in scandal after scandal after scandal. And again and again he pretended to be contrite. He pretended these were honest mistakes. And we continued shrugging our shoulders. (Well, I didn't, but a lot of you did.)

So the next time a politician gets caught out on some howler, just remember we have only ourselves to blame. It's our complacency that lets them off the hook.

We should demand better. Unless, that is, you don't think we deserve it.

More on Immigrants

As I was trying to reduce the size of my e-mail backlog (thanks Nick!) today, I came across the below item in one of Chuck Muth's newsletters. You know you are on the right side of an argument when Teddy Roosevelt agrees with you.

"(I)f the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. . . . There can be no divided allegiances here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. . . . (W)e have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." - Teddy Roosevelt, 1907

Thanks again to James Taranto

The following two items were reported by my idol, James Taranto. The first definitely falls under the heading "slow news day", while the second makes me wonder what the heck they put in the water in Olympia.

The online news site SFGate.com has this hot item on the contents of (as Dave Barry says, "I'm not making this up") Karl Rove's garage:

Click here for story.

And the following letter to the editor appeared in the Olympia, Washington Olympian:

Martial law could follow plan to fight Asian bird flu

I read with trepidation the news article regarding Bush's plans to combat possible Asian bird flu by calling in the troops. His comments brought to mind 1930s Germany, with the Gestapo (Homeland Security) and storm troopers (Rumsfeld's Pentagon) in the wings.

I wonder, could a sitting president, twice elected, and supposedly the epitome of patriotic manhood, consider consolidating his ebbing power by bringing an epidemic to his own people?

Would he use this ploy to institute martial law?

If he would give funds to Halliburton to organize the hurricane recovery in the South -- the same Halliburton that scammed millions of dollars in Iraq -- then I suppose, with the enthusiastic support of his moneyed power base, he would.

The fact that Congress voted funds, not for public health but for Homeland Security, strengthens this suspicion.

This is a sad day for our United States of America.

Peg Davidson, Olympia

Yes, Peg. It is a sad day. But not for the reason you think. The fact that a reputable newspaper in the state capital of one of our fifty states would print such drivel is what's really sad.

The fallacy of minimum wage

I read an article recently discussing how the Food and Commercial Workers Union hired Paul Blank to spearhead their campaign against Wal-Mart. Until recently Mr. Blank had been the political director for Howard Dean's presidential campaign. We all know how that turned out. ("Yeeeeeaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!")

In reference to the anti-Wal-Mart campaign Mr. Blank said, "The average associate at Wal-Mart makes $8.23 an hour. That's not a job that can support a family."

Pardon me, but, Duuuh!

The point that I think advocates of so-called "living wages" and advocates of raising the minimum wage miss is this: not all jobs are meant to support a family. If you want to have a family, then you need to make sure that you have a job that pays considerably more than the minimum wage, ideally with benefits. If you can only earn the minimum wage, then you really have no business starting a family.

Such benighted advocates who ignore basic economics do a grave disservice to those people for whom a job at such wages would be ideal. Take a spouse who is the primary caregiver for his children but would like to earn some extra money while the children are at school. Or a retired senior who just wants to get off the couch and out of the house several days a week. By advocating a higher minimum wage or a "living wage" these so-called advocates (I think they are really suffering a bad case of white guilt and want to assuage their own consciences) depress the demand for labor.

This is simple economics, folks. And I think it's damned irresponsible for Mr. Blank to tell Wal-Mart how much they must pay their associates, and how much those associates should sell their labor for.

Reported without Comment

Check out this article in the British Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/17/wirq17.xml

If you can't chuckle over this, you just aren't trying.

Democrats: The Fourth-and-a-Half Column

What the heck is a “fourth-and-a-half” column, you ask? Well, Merriam-Webster Online defines a fifth column as “noun: a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engages in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders”. I deducted half-a-point from the Democrats because they don’t operate in secret. Quite the contrary, the publicly tout their sabotage of the war effort as something for which they should be lionized.

I got to thinking about this as I was reading Andrew McCarthy’s essay on the Senate’s deplorable decision to undermine the war effort by granting to federal judges the power to determine who is and who is not an “enemy combatant”. (See my last post for a link to Mr. McCarthy’s excellent essay.)

I started to think that the situation which obtains in Congress today bears almost no resemblance to our nation’s experience during WWII or Korea. I suspect the beginnings of the fourth-and-a-half column are to be found during the Vietnam War.

The actions of the so-called “loyal opposition” are beyond the pale. They constitute, in my opinion, a calculated effort to sabotage the war effort. And need I remind you that most of the Democrats voted to authorize this war. Plenty of columnists have written on the effort of weasel-like Democrats to lie about why they voted for the war. For good dissections of this behavior see Jonah Goldberg’s “Speak, (Selective) Memory” or Rich Lowry’s “The Gullible Party”.

What we see now are Democrats (and a few RINOs) who hate President Bush so much that they are willing to risk our security to discredit him and damage his effectiveness. How else to explain the efforts of Senators to tie the hands of intelligence operators trying to gain valuable information from captured enemy combatants (Sen. McCain’s anti-torture legislation)? Does Senator McCain think harsh language will do the trick? Is he that stupid or merely obtuse? Can he not see that without any coercive measures at interrogators’ disposal detainees will merely remain silent? How else to explain Senator Carl Levin’s efforts to extend to non-American enemy combatants the protections of our courts?

How else do you explain the phenomenon of hundreds of Left wing lawyers descending on Guantanamo Bay to represent people who would likely happily kill them if they had the chance? These parasites spend their [otherwise normally valuable] time filing nuisance lawsuits demanding high-speed internet access and DVDs among other spurious claims. No matter how ridiculous, such filings must be answered by the intelligence agencies. Time which, presumably, could be better spent interrogating the detainees so that our military can find their still at-large and still breathing comrades and, hopefully, kill them.

What about the behavior of the media? This has been so well-documented that I won’t take up too much space rehashing old news (pardon the pun). The media’s hostility to the conservative movement in general, President Bush in particular, and especially the War in Iraq is patent.

But, you know something? At least they are consistent. They’ve always been against conservatives, this President and the war. Democrat representatives and senators are the most reprehensible as they twist their words and logic trying to explain why they voted the way they did. To add to John Kerry’s ridiculous “I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” we can now add a new leader in the weasel sweepstakes.

I am referring here to Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat from West Virginia, who recently announced to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that he thought his vote in favor of the resolution authorizing the war meant that George Bush would try to gain the approval of the U.N. Security Council. Good Lord! Did he even read the resolution before he voted on it?

In addition, he revealed that he traveled to the Middle East in January of 2002. His purpose on this visit was to brief the leaders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia on what he was sure would be the upcoming war in Iraq. Am I the only one who gasped upon reading this revelation? This man is the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for Pete’s sake. I think one could easily make an argument that this behavior constitutes treason.

And, yet, Senate Democrats think that George Bush is the one who should be put on trial.

Insanity in the Senate

I know what you're thinking: could you be a little more specific? I mean, this is the chamber that brought us McCain-Feingold, after all.

I'm talking about Tuesday's decision by a margin of 84-14 to grant federal judges the authority to ultimately determine what constitutes an "enemy combatant".

Again, this seems like such a bad idea as to be axiomatic, but let me make a couple of points. First, is that judges are trained in civil and criminal procedure. I think they will likely attempt to hold the military to an unrealistic standard in the courtroom (where there is generally less lead flying about). Second is that most judges have little or no military expertise. So, just what the heck makes them qualified at all, much less more qualified than battlefield commanders, to make this determination?

Andrew McCarthy has a good essay on why this decision makes no sense. One of the points he makes in this essay with which I strongly agree is that this is another symptom of the disease of litigousness that is eating away at our society.

Mr. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Among other high-profile cases he has participated in, he helped to prosecute and convict the plotters in the first World Trade Center bombing case. If you are interested in the legal aspect of the Global War on Terror, I highly recommend his writings to you.

"Deadwood"

Here in Sofia I have come down with a mild case of strep throat so I have been staying in most nights. HBO here in Sofia has been showing the first season of "Deadwood". I just bought the first season on DVD not too long ago, but I have been re-watching the same episodes again.

If you aren't familiar with it, "Deadwood" is set in the 1870s in the camp of Deadwood, before it became part of the United States, in modern-day South Dakota. So, from that standpoint it is a Western but it is probably a Western unlike any you've seen before. "Deadwood" depicts frontier life in all its gritty detail.

One thing that distinguishes "Deadwood" from most other shows is the quality of the writing. While I am hardly an expert on this period in our history, the characters' dialogue has a ring of truth about it. For the most part these are hardy, uneducated people and their speech reflects this. The speech patterns are a curious mixture of formal, almost Victorian-sounding speech, and the most hair-curling profanity. In the interest of keeping this blog PG, I won't go into detail. Just remember this, if and when you decide to watch it. The language is very graphic. However, I am sure that it's not done gratuitously. I think this is just the way people in that part of the country at that time talked.

However, the real reason to watch "Deadwood" is the acting - and specifically that of English actor Ian McShane. McShane is not the protagonist of "Deadwood". To the extent that "Deadwood" has a protagonist, that role is ably filled by Timothy Olyphant. Olyphant plays Seth Bullock, a former lawman who comes to Deadwood to make his fortune.

Now, I like Olyphant as Bullock, but it's McShane as Al Swearengen that really makes "Deadwood" worth watching. At first, Swearengen, the proprietor of "The Gem", Deadwood's first saloon and brothel, seems like the antagonist - i.e., the bad guy. But as you get deeper into the show you start to realize that Swearengen is much more complex than that. Self-interested and greedy to be sure, but you also realize something surprising about Al - he's honest.

For McShane, who heretofore was not particularly well-known to American audiences, this has to be the role of a lifetime. Like Jack Nicholson's Melvin Udall in "As Good As It Gets", Al says what's on his mind and he doesn't care who may be offended. And the things he says will have you staring gape-jawed at your TV from time to time and, more often than not, chuckling if not laughing outright.

McShane was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He lost to "Boston Legal's" James Spader. Now, I am also a big Spader fan and his Alan Shore is a great character, but he really can't hold a candle to McShane's Al Swearengen. Lord only knows why awards show voters vote the way they do. If I knew that, then I'd know why "Titanic" won Best Picture in 1997.

The second season just finished and my roommate Pete and I are eagerly awaiting its release on DVD. The third season is in production now and it looks like other, high-caliber actors are jumping on board. I just read on IMDB that Brian Cox has joined the cast for the third season.

Do yourself a favor - watch "Deadwood".

What are the obligations of immigrants?

The recent violence in the banlieues outside Paris has generated a lot of dead trees and electrons about the condition of immigrants in France. Predictably many on the Left have chosen to blame liberal, Western society rather than the young hoodlums out torching cars.

This got me to thinking. What are the obligations, if any, of immigrants to their new country?

First, a disclaimer. I work in the field of immigration. I am a technical expert on the computer systems the U.S. Department of State uses to issue immigrant and non-immigrant visas. So, I have a vested interest in the U.S.' policy of controlled, legal immigration. That aside, however, I sincerely believe that immigration should be tightly controlled. First and foremost is that in a post-9/11 world, having secure borders is a matter of national security. Second, and I say this very tongue-in-cheek but with a kernel of truth at its heart, we want to keep out the riff-raff.

However, to return to the original question, once we decide to admit an immigrant, what duty does he or she have towards their chosed country?

I think it boils down to two obligations: language and loyalty.

Immigrants to another country must learn that country's language. This seems so axiomatic as to not require further elaboration, but I will anyway since there will be those who will disagree with me.

The United States is a very advanced, complex society. How can anyone expect to function (like being able to read road signs, maps, job applications or any other myriad examples) if one doesn't speak the local language? Such a person would be at the mercy of strangers (to paraphrase Blanche Dubois).

Functionality aside, how can one expect to prosper if one doesn't speak the local language? If an immigrant speaks no or just rudimentary English, he will likely have a hard time securing anything but the most menial employment. This doesn't bode well for his upward mobility.

Loyalty, in my opinion, boils down to one thing: the abolition of "dual citizenship". A legal resident (i.e., a "green card" holder) who chooses to become a citizen of the United States must take an oath to "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen". This, in and of itself, seems to render the entire concept of dual citizenship a moot point. How can one remain a citizen of Bolivia, say, when one has sworn an oath to forever renounce such ties? It is mutually exclusive.

As one who has worked in over 40 U.S. consulates and embassies, I have seen too many people who treat a U.S. passport as an accessory. To them, U.S. citizenship is merely an ace-in-the-hole so that they can send their children to U.S. universities, go to New York, Miami or Los Angeles to shop and to help them avoid civic obligations. Take the example of South Koreans for whom their children's U.S. citizenship is a tool to help them avoid compulsory military service. In their hypocritical opinion it is fine for U.S. soldiers to keep watch on the DMZ as human canaries in the coalmine of the Korean peninsula but certainly not their own children.

I think the question of language and loyalty are intertwined. For how can a person who can't fully function in American society, since they can't speak the language, feel much loyalty towards it? Without speaking the language how can anyone hope to get to know people of other cultures and ethnicities in the American melting pot? Without the binding element of language, that melting pot becomes a salad bowl of tossed together ingredients that remain separate.

And by allowing newly minted U.S. citizens to retain their original citizenship, should the going get rough, they can simply return home. I always liked the story of Cortez burning his ships upon arriving in the New World. Renouncing one's ties to one's birth country is the immigrant's equivalent of burning his ships. He is saying, "I chose this place to make my new life and I mean it."

Is this too much to ask? I don't think so. After all, by choosing to immigrate and then become a citizen, he is asking for all the rights and protections that native-born Americans enjoy. The new citizen is accepting a contract. The United States lives up to its end of the bargain, so I think it is only right that we ask immigrants to do the same.

Don't the NCAA and American Indian activists have anything better to do?

I mean, really. ESPN reports that the University of Illinois has lost its appeal on the ban on its mascot, Chief Illinwek.

First, the reason that Indian figures and tribes were chosen for team names and mascots is because our society generally admires and reveres their physical and martial virtues. Second, these are not "cigar-store" Indians or caricatures. These are faithful representations of American Indian figures. Calling them "hostile" and "abusive" is just untrue. Third, there are like 47 people of American Indian descent that object to these protrayals. Half of them are probably lawyers and the other half are probably school guidance counselors.

If they were really so concerned about the image of American Indians in our society then maybe they should try doing something about the real and serious problems American Indians face: low life expectancy, rampant alcoholism and drug abuse, domestic violence, and chronic unemployment. That's hostility and abuse.

It couldn't happen to a nicer country

Schadenfreude, that wonderful German word which means secret pleasure at the travails of others, isn't healthy.

That being said, how tickled am I at the almost two weeks of "Eurofada" in France?

For more than two decades the French have been bending over backwards to accommodate the growing population of mainly Muslim Arabs and Africans in France. France consciously courted the regimes of the Middle East with economic and military deals. In addition to MiGs, Saddam's air force flew Mirage fighters. The hope was that France would become the vital link between the Middle East and the West.

And what has it gotten them? Night after night of skirmishes with the police, stores and cars looted and burned. This is the proverbial being hoisted by one's own petard, n'est-ce pas?

Instead, France, with a Muslim population that resists assimilation and has a high birth-rate, is poised to become the first "Islamic Republic" in Europe. Is their room on the tri-color for a crescent, and maybe a scimitar (you know, to denote how "peaceful" Islam is)?

Hats off to Interior Minister Nikolas Sarkozy for calling the rioters what they are - scum. (The actual word he used - racaille - carries much more connotation that is hard to translate.) Sarkozy is an almost certain candidate for President in 2007. His opponent will almost certainly be Jacques Chirac protege, Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin. (I qualify these predictions since no-one knows what the fallout of this episode will be. After all, Bill Clinton was the one who cheated on his wife and lied, and yet it was Bob Livingston and Newt Gingrich who lost their jobs.)

While you can't call one liberal and one conservative, in this case, "Sarko" has been advocating a much tougher course of action, while De Villepin sounds like he has been given talking points by CAIR or the NAACP. You know, the usual crap about "understanding", "root causes", "discrimination".

What's worse is that le racialle are second- and third-generation French. These [mostly] young men are Frenchmen. If things are so awful in France, why are so many Arabs and Africans immigrating there, both legally and illegally?

When will the Left learn? Actually it's le racaille that has learned. They know that the liberal establishment is going to strain the bounds of reason to blame everybody but the rioters.

Every once in awhile, I think maybe, just maybe, there is such a thing as cosmic justice after all.

Price gouging by oil companies

Lately I've been reading that various Congressional committees are going to call oil company executives onto the carpet to explain why their companies are making so much money.

This is political farce. I mean, it's almost not even worth it to explain why this is unfair, un-American and a waste of legislators' time and our tax dollars, but here goes. (It's like Josh Mostel tells Billy Crystal in "City Slickers", "Scoop of chocolate, scoop of vanilla. Don't waste my time.")

First, do we hold hearings every January, after the Christmas shopping season, so that the CEOs of K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Macy's can explain just why it is that they make so much gosh-darned money every Christmas? Do we stigmatize umbrella salesmen as profiteers when it rains? Of course not.

Look this is simple: right now, the cost of oil is high. So gas costs more than normal. So oil companies make more money than normal. This is a good thing. This means they have more money to invest in their and others' businesses. They can pay larger dividends to their shareholders. Whatever. The point is companies exist to make money. That's what they do.

Second, and this is the ugly little secret that several columnists have pointed out - and this is really what makes the prospect of hearings so ridiculous, the government is making even more money (in the form of gas taxes) from the high price of oil and gas than the oil companies!

So, who is going to call them to the carpet?

All is right with the world!

You know how some days you wake up and you go through your day and you feel like you are living in Cloud Cuckooland?

Well, this morning I woke up and logged on to ESPN.com to find that all is right with the world. My number five-ranked Miami Hurricanes dismantled the previously unbeaten and third-ranked Virginia Tech Hokies - at Virginia Tech - 27-7! (And that 7 of Virginia Tech's was a garbage touchdown late in the fourth quarter.) So much for Tech's national title hopes. Now all I need is for the ground to open up and swallow either USC or Texas and we have a real shot at the Rose Bowl.

I'd like to have a shot at USC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They average 49 points a game - but they haven't seen a defense like ours (the number one-ranked defense in the country). And, on the flip side of those 49 points a game, their defense gives up a lot of points. They gave up 21 to Arizona, 28 to Arizona State, 31 to Notre Dame and 24 to Washington. The fewestnumber of points they've given up this season is 13. Take my word for it. The Trojans can be gotten to. Not by Texas, but by us!! I'm sure the Trojans are praying for Texas to win out. I know they don't want any part of us. I would bet any amount you care to name that Miami is the one team that no-one wants to play right about now.

And we're doing it the old-fashioned way - with defense. Our offense doesn't feature the deep threats we have in years past, but our defense will keep us in any game.

Go UCLA! Go Texas A&M!

And I can't wait for our rematch with FSU in the ACC title game on Dec. 3rd. Drew Weatherford is going to have nightmares about Javon Nanton, Baraka Atkins and Thomas Carroll for weeks!

HURRICANE WARNING!

The Disingenuousness of the Left on Leak-Gate

Syndicated columnist Brent Bozell makes an excellent point - namely that it takes a lot of gall for the Left to all of a sudden be concerned about protecting the identities of covert operatives.

Ever since the excesses of the Agency in 1960s and 1970s the Left in America have done every thing they can to hamstring the CIA. Take, for example, the investigations by the Pike and Church Committees, the investigative reporting of Seymour Hersh and Daniel Schorr, and the de-emphasis on human intelligence gathering by the CIA under Stansfield Turner.

When Congress was considering the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in 1982, many Democrats voted against it. Of course, now that Democrats think they have found a brickbat with which to beat the Bush administration, they are enamored of this little-known law (even though it doesn't apply in the Plame kerfluffle).

Even worse is the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Basically, Libby is being charged with perjury in a case of "he said-she said". Libby remembers his conversations with Time's Matthew Cooper and The New York Times' Judith Miller differently than they do. So, of course, Libby - who works for arch-villain Dick Cheney - must be lying. Never mind that he hasn't been charged with anything remotely resembling revealing Valerie Plame's name. The Left will point to his indictment (indictment - not conviction) as proof-positive that the Bush administration cooked the books on intelligence leading up to the Iraq War. (Never mind that it is mostly Joseph Wilson's claims regarding Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger that have remained unsubstanatiated.)

I am also curious about where the indignance has gone over out-of-control special prosecutors. During the investigation into the Paula Jones case the media demonized Kenneth Starr as some kind of closet pervert, while lionizing Bill Clinton as some kind of modern-day John of Arc.

And where is the Left's blase attitude about perjury? When Bill Clinton did it, we were told it was "no big deal" since it was about private (albeit reprehensible) behavior. Again, now that the Left thinks it has a "gotcha" on the Bush admininstration, perjury and making false statements are again cause for concern.

And people wonder how I can call myself a Republican. I am more mystified how anyone can align themselves with the likes of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry.

The Alito Confirmation

Ok. Ok. After a long absence, I have decided to start offering my unsolicited opinion of the news of the day once again.

During my absence I have failed to comment on what passed for news this summer: Hurricane Katrina, Leak-gate, the failed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Meiers. I, for one, am grateful. While I do have an opinion on all these topics, most of them bored me to tears.

So, let's skip all that crap and get to a really good story - the President's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O'Connor.

First, let me backtrack a bit and say that I was profoundly disappointed with President Bush's nomination of Ms. Meiers. As some pundit or other pointed out, I am sure she is an able attorney but was she really the best person the President could find? Not by a longshot. In fact when I first heard the name of the nominee my first reaction was, "Who?" (And being a political geek I knew many of the names on the so-called "short lists" - Lutig, McConnell, Wilkinson, Alito, and Garza, to name a few - and Meiers' name was nowhere to be found.)

I am much more enthusiastic about the nomination of Judge Alito (or "Scalito" as he has been dubbed for the resemblance his judicial philosophy shares with that of Antonin Scalia's - a facile comparison).

First, he possesses the sterling academic credentials we have come to expect of a Supreme Court justice (Princeton undergrad, Yale law, editor of the Yale Law Review). While earning a law degree from SMU is nothing to sneeze at, it hardly carries the same weight as a degree from a more prestigious institution.

Second, he has experience as a federal prosecutor. Alito served four years as the Assistant United States Attorney in New Jersey during which he prosecuted organized crime figures. He then spent four years as the assistant to the Solicitor General at the Department of Justice. Later, he returned to New Jersey as United States Attorney. Ms. Meiers had no such experience as a government lawyer. Outside of her experience as White Counsel, all Ms. Meiers' experience was in the private sector.

Third, he has 15 years experience as a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. This was probably the most damning criticism of Ms. Meiers. She had no experience as a judge at any level. Never having been a judge, Ms. Meiers had no "paper trail". Judge Alito, on the other hand, has written more than 700 opinions on many of the top issues of the day: abortion, federalism, sexual harassment, and discrimination to name a few. The left will not be able to criticize Alito for a lack of a paper trail.

Of course, criticize him the Left will. One argument is sure to be that he is more conservative than the Justice he is replacing. This is preposterous as if the ideological composition of the Supreme Court is some kind of zero-sum game. This argument is also baldly disingenuous since no Democrat proffered this as a reason for voting against Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is clearly more liberal than Justice Byron "Whizzer" White, whom she replaced.

The rest of the Left's criticisms will be of the pedestrian, "he's-an-extremist" variety which can (and should) be easily dismissed.

I have already written Sens. Allen and Warner urging them to vote to confirm Judge Alito. You should, too!