October 3, 2003
I have to admit, as an ex-pat Californian, even I was surprised by the success of the recall campaign. California politics has long been under thrall to a single party, and the budget meltdown over the past two years (as well as Gray Davis' lying about it during the last gubernatorial race) seemed heaven-sent for California Republicans. After all, California was the laboratory for the more radicalized elements of the Democrats, and it was turning into a quagmire. All that the Republicans had to do was to stay out of the way, and they were assured of significant gains in the next couple of election cycles. Well, as usual, California Republicans had to show that they are bested by no one in shooting themselves in the foot. After pushing through an almost-unprecedented recall of a governor, who incidentally is not accused of any special malfeasance except being an idiot and...
The fallout continues, or sort of. Arnold's back on the campaign trail, being greeted by cheering fans -- er, voters -- but after his apology and non-acknowledgement of the Hitler reference (from almost 30 years ago!), he's keeping his mouth shut. As a strategy, this is probably as much of a winner that he'll come up with at this point of the campaign. I wonder, though, if a third shoe is being prepared for the Sunday edition... Arnold may be under attack, but the LA Times appears to be suffering the damage . Susan Estrich gets her shots in from the editorial page of the LA Times itself: So this is the October surprise? The Los Angeles Times headline that Arnold Schwarzenegger groped and humiliated women? ... But none of these women, as The Times emphasizes, ever came forward to complain. The newspaper went looking for them, and then waited...
Here's another reason to hate the French, courtesy of Merde in France. Does anyone still think that if we had just tried harder to woo the French, we could have gotten their support?...
Power Line's Big Trunk has posted an e-mail he received from author Dr. Laurie Mylroie that explains more about the David Kay report. Go now and read the entire message, and while you're at it check out all of Power Line. It's a great blog. Also, they have an entry two posts below the Mylroie e-mail with a link to an article in the Sun, a British newspaper, on the Kay report....
Mickey Kaus continues to have fun with this story. Unfortunately, he's probably right about the transient nature of the bounce; it's likely a result of Ah-nold trying to "terminate" the scandal with a quick mea culpa, as well as the high level of disgust at the LA Times for spending several weeks specifically to dredge up this kind of crap. It's not that I don't think that the women are lying, although the fact that four of the six won't identify themselves, and all six never availed themselves of the legal system, does not give me confidence. Arnold himself acknowledged that he's done something, after all. And the incidents in the report are all ugly. But for crying out loud, after all the screeching the Times did over the Clinton sexual peccadiloes (that occured while he was in office, with staff underlings, on the public dime) being blown out of...
I can see PETA protesting this -- perhaps they'd prefer Cheney or Wolfowitz take a turn as a beefeater. Or, better yet, Bush could do the tasting to keep the mice safe....
October 4, 2003
President Bush surprises everyone with his deep, artistic side by writing poetry. This ought to silence those of his foes who dare to challenge his intellect, eh?...
Here's an AP update to all the Schwarzenonsense from the past 24 hours or so. According to an Austrian news source, California's leading candidate for Governer terminated a meeting of neo-Nazis when he was 17 years old, hunting them down and dispersing them. There's been five more women who've come forward with more groping stories, which Mickey Kaus covers in his latest entry....
Courtesy of Little Green Footballs -- today is the tenth anniversary of the battle in Mogadishu that became the focus of the film, Black Hawk Down. Particularly interesting are Osama bin Laden's comments from a 1997 interview with Robert Fisk....
Hindrocket blasts off at Minnesota Democrats on the Powerline blog. It certainly looks like Mike Hatch is flailing at anything to ruin Pawlenty. Maybe he's a protege of Gray Davis....
Once again, those darn Israelis have sabotaged peace again by having the arrogance to die in large numbers when a Palestinian freedom fighter blows herself up in a Haifa restaurant. You can check out the blogosphere reaction at Little Green Footballs (where it's about what you'd expect), Power Line, and Roger Simon....
A guest column by Andrew Apostalou puts it all into perspective. (Thanks to Roger Simon.) From what I see, we may be the first nation to have such poisonous debate over a war we won, with minimal losses on both sides, and that resulted in liberating over 20 million people (not to mention removing a dangerous regional threat). Does anyone else find this as silly as I do? We knew he was a brutal dictator; we know now that he was actively avoiding compliance with UN resolutions and the terms of the truce that left him in power. At the same time, a significant amount of our overseas military was pinned down enforcing the terms of that truce, and our presence in Saudi Arabia was not helping matters. Eventually we would have to have left, with Saddam in power, which would only embolden other dictators and bin Laden wanna-bes. The...
This is more good news, and a good indicator that our campaign is bearing fruit in other areas. The only way we will ever be safe is to transform dictatorships and creaky monarchies into liberal democracies......
Okay, this is just a bit grim, don't you think? I'd hate to think where all these parts eventually ended up. I do think it's interesting that this guy was sentenced to a lot more prison time for selling dead body parts than most drunk drivers get sentenced for vehicular homicide -- in fact, about six times more....
I'm not sure if Hindrocket over at Power Line has had a chance to read this Fred Barnes article at OpinionJournal, but maybe it would make him feel a little bit better. The impression I get so far is that the Democrats are doing all the talking, and that's accounting for the slipping numbers. As Barnes points out, that's natural; it's Presidential election season, with the first round of the primaries coming up in three or four months. When Dubya has a chance to focus on the election, the numbers will move back, probably significantly, unless something goes disastrously wrong in the war....
North Korea: a horror show. Read the whole thing. (via Instapundit)...
October 5, 2003
This ... is not good. No word on Syria's reaction yet, although I doubt it will be very friendly....
Damn ... I still don't agree with him on everything, but you have to admit, he makes a pretty good point here. I just wish the Times covered Gray Davis like they covered Arnold. Then I wouldn't have a gripe....
Yeah, I know that there would be a different reaction if this involved a female defendant and a male officer, but I still can't help but have some small part of me think that this kid really lucked out. He got dinner, booze, pot, and lucky, and now as a result, he will probably wind up having the charges against him dropped or at least a very lenient sentence....
Set your TiVos -- Mary Carey has an ad that will run on Monday night's "Tonight Show". Please submit any puns this inspires!!...
Frog eggs fall from the sky onto home in Berlin...
Idiots. Maybe the best course of action would be to cancel next year's homecoming. It's one thing (still bad) when economically and socially repressed groups riot; while you don't condone it in any way, and you prosecute those responsible, there's some understanding of the desperation involved. What do we have in Mankato? A bunch of spoiled, rich kids who decided to piss all over their surrounding neighborhoods, beat people up, and destroy property. Everyone involved should be expelled, tried, and thrown in jail for a few weeks. It's only at times like this that I wish we had a military draft....
Oh, man ... if you want to read why Gray is going down, just read this article from today's Times. Here's a great quote of the master at work: "We need immigrants to pick our food and put it on our tables," he said as the audience — middle-class Latinos, primarily — shifted uncomfortably. "We need immigrants to clean our hotels and office buildings and take care of the elderly." And: "That work is important.... Whether people are janitors or maids or busboys or cooks, it's all part of the experience we enjoy when we're at a restaurant or a hotel." If any of the Latinos in the studios of the Spanish-language station Univision felt patronized, they didn't say so. But the governor's words landed with a dull thud Monday night, creating one of many awkward moments as he fought for his political life in the final week of the...
Here's a great article by Daniel Weintraub about why the recall came to be, and why it will win. Money quote: Although Davis ridiculed the recall as sour grapes from sore losers and attacked it as a right-wing coup, he realized too late that it was much more than that. The movement might have begun on the far right, but it became a deep, almost cathartic expression of frustration on the part of voters who felt cheated in the 2002 election by the governor's meddling in the opposition party's primary, by two unsatisfactory candidates who ran uninspiring, negative campaigns, and by a political elite who seemed to relish leaving them out of the game. Couldn't have put it any better....
An interesting theory from Frater Libertas. Hmmmm .... Dittoheads should reserve judgment (not that I've ever been one; Rush irritates the snot out of me)....
October 6, 2003
Let's face it, Bud sucks anyway ... but I sure as hell won't be buying any of their beer now (third item). I wonder what all the anti-globalists and anti-corporate idiots who support Gray Davis, Algore, etc think about this corporate sponsorship. Could it be that, as opposed to Republicans who actively support businessmen and job creation, these guys spout off platitudes to hoodwink socialists while selling out to the corporate interests they supposedly oppose? True. True....
Jill Stewart, who wrote an article on Gray Davis that I linked a couple of days ago, puts the Times story in perspective at the LA Daily News. Main thrust: After my story ran, I waited for the Times to publish its story. It never did. When I spoke to a reporter involved, he said editors at the Times were against attacking a major political figure using anonymous sources. Just what they did last week to Schwarzenegger. Be sure to read the whole thing....
October 7, 2003
Bob Graham drops out of presidential race; polls show no one knew he was in it to begin with....
Daniel Weintraub has a hilarious bit on last minute campaigning by Gray Davis and his supporters. This, of course, could only take place in San Francisco: As [Mayor Willie] Brown spoke, a man with an oversized Arnold Schwarzenegger mask strapped to his face, money in his hands and a large blue E symbolizing Enron pursued a woman dressed in pink around the plaza, groping her between faux slaps in the face. And here's something that will make Davis sleep easier: Charles Duff, 24, a student at San Francisco State University, sat with his back to the rally. I asked him what he thought of the recall. “Crazy,” he said. “It’s crazy.” What’s crazy about it? I asked him. “The idea that you can take out a guy and have all these people running to replace him.” So you’re going to vote against the recall? “When’s the election?” he asked before...
If anything should finally underscore the fact that the LA Times has become a Democratic Party shill, this ought to do it. Bill Bradley at the LA Weekly (as mentioned before, no friend to conservatives) reveals a pre-publication leak of the Ah-nuld hit piece to the Davis campaign, who took the ball and ran with it with suspicious "alacrity". More: [T]he paper Monday backed off its previous contention that none of the women in subsequent stories came forward at the urging of Schwarzenegger’s opponents in the wake of the Weekly’s revelation that Jodie Evans, who pushed one of the women to come forward, is not merely the peace activist described by the Times but also a former close colleague of Governor Davis and longtime friend of chief Democratic hit man Bob Mulholland. This is, of course, what the LA Weekly has reported before, and is finally getting out to the...
Chris Muir captures my own ambivalence perfectly....
Here's where I part company with the Right, and my annoying libertarian streak comes out. AndrewSullivan covers this topic in great detail, as he should; he's got a much larger stake in this than I do. (Full disclosure: I'm hetero, married, Catholic, pro-life, anti-death penalty.) He covers a USA Today poll showing the public is evenly split over this topic. And here's my take on this. Marriage, in my faith, is considered a sacrament between a man and a woman which exists for the glory of God and the perpetuation of God's primary creation, etc etc etc. That is my faith, and I subscribe to that view. However, the Church is perfectly free to set those rules for itself and its members, and it's perfectly free to tell members who don't comply to take a hike. Most Christian denominations view marriage in a similar, but not exact, way. Civil marriages...
Here's a good interim report on Recall Day in California from the Post. The post I'm reading is from 2:30 PM, and it looks like a heavy turnout in California. Terry Neal points out that there's been some efforts to educate voters on the punch-card ballot process, but I voted in California for almost 20 years and I can tell you that every ballot I every used was punch-card, and most of those were of the notorious butterfly configuration. Californians aren't as stupid as Democrats would have you believe Floridians are. There's an interesting point in one of Neal's earlier dispatches (10/6 11:10 PM): Davis, the final speaker, was introduced by his wife, Sharon Davis, who alluded to the allegations against Schwarzenegger. "My husband has never been accused of anything worse than being dull," she said. Maybe Sharon hasn't read this yet....
No link -- I'm watching Fox News, and Brit Hume used the phrase "possible landslide" for the recall. Interesting. They're predicting Ah-nuld the winner, based on exit polling. 69% of voters opposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Oops!...
Maybe the ACLU can explain why this is undemocratic: The secretary of state said that turnout by late afternoon was running on target at about 60%, according to department official Terri Carbaugh. That turnout is consistent with earlier predictions that the rate would fall roughly between the 70.94% turnout in the last presidential election and the 50.6% turnout in the gubernatorial election last November. The high turnout indicates that "voters are highly attentive and highly engaged," Carbaugh said....
This didn't take long. Wesley Clark's presidential campaign is already in disarray: Wesley K. Clark's campaign manager quit yesterday in a dispute over the direction of the Democratic presidential bid, exposing a rift between the former general's Washington-based advisers and his three-week-old Arkansas campaign team. Donnie Fowler told associates he was leaving over widespread concerns that supporters who used the Internet to draft Clark into the race are not being taken seriously by top campaign advisers. Fowler also complained that the campaign's message and methods are focused too much on Washington, not key states and the burgeoning power of the Internet, said two associates who spoke on condition of anonymity. Keep in mind that this organization is only three weeks old, at least officially. If he can't avoid this kind of chaos in his own organization in that period of time, what does that say for his ability to manage...
With 13% of precincts reporting, CNN reports that the recall is winning by 12%, and Arnold leads Cruz Bustamante by a margin of almost 2-1. I wouldn't get too complacent yet, but this is looking pretty darn good for the Terminator -- excuse me, the Governator....
October 8, 2003
With 94% of all precincts reporting, the results are clear -- Californians spoke clearly for a sea change in state government. Recall: 54% Yes, 46% No Part B: Schwarzenegger 48%, Bustamante 33%, McClintock 14% This means that in a statewide election, where Democrats have a registration lead of at least 10 percentage points, 62% voted Republican and only a third voted for the only major Democratic choice. Granted, Republicans may have been more motivated to go to the polls, but that excuse only flies if the overall turnout was low; instead, it was a record high for a non-presidential election. The state Legislature has to be very, very nervous now. Wait for the elections next year -- we'll see how pissed off the electorate is and will remain....
... even if they couldn't leave with a vestige of class and grace. (via California Insider) This type of insult-based dirty campaigning explains why Gray Davis' approval ratings are below Richard Nixon's post-resignation ratings. Good riddance. Take Cruz with you....
Another good point made by Chris Muirabout the Big Lie of dissent-crushing in America these days. I get so tired of people screaming in the streets and all over television that the Bush administration is forcing them to stay silent, without any sense of irony whatsoever. Quick way to see if you live in a free society: If you call the leader of your country a Nazi, which happens in a fascist state? 1: You're arrested and spend 20 years in a prison or mental facility; 2. You get put on TV and Hollywood sends you cash. If you're too dense to pick Option 1, perhaps you aren't qualified to speak to any other issues....
It looks like a ten-point margin of victory for the recall, and Arnold took 46.4% of the second part, against 31% for Bustamante and 12.8% for McClintock (99% of all precincts reporting now). This means that slightly under 60% in a record turnout voted Republican against a lone Democrat. Also, since Proposition 54 went down in flames (64% no), you can't chalk it up to a conservative turnout. If anything, Prop 54 turns out to be the bellwether, the control group if you will, on who voted in this election. The 7.7 million people who voted were completely representative of Californians statewide, and they enthusiastically rejected Gray Davis and the Democrats. Unless Arnold [that's Governor Arnold to you, ex-pat boy!] screws up, this is trouble for the Democratic visegrip on California politics....
Roger Simon is right about this title and article; Steve Lopez takes a cheap shot (specifically about the Fuhrer part of it). Otherwise, bitter as it may be, it's still a pretty good article. I'm happier about the outcome than Lopez, but he is right in that the situation that created the recall in the first place -- gridlock, Gray Davis in office, mandated spending -- was created by California voters in the first place. Gray Davis only made it a hell of a lot worse than it had to be....
The Euro took another baby step towards oblivion by ignoring France's economic violations of its underlying agreements. Isn't this the same country that insisted that countries could not act unilaterally in defiance of the community of nations? Sweden's looking smarter and smarter every day....
Just three weeks into his campaign, and Wesley Clark is already self-destructing. First his campaign manager quits after three weeks on the job, and now it looks like the General is breaking federal election laws: Under the laws governing the financing of presidential campaigns, candidates cannot be paid by corporations, labor unions, individuals or even universities for campaign-related events. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) considers such paid political appearances akin to a financial contribution to a candidate. Clark is getting paid as much as $30,000 for speeches, according to people familiar with his arrangement. He has two more scheduled for next week. Clark, like any other candidate, would likely be permitted to deliver the paid speeches only if they did not "expressly" cover his campaign or his political opponents, the experts said. But in his speeches, Clark has talked about his campaign positions and criticized President Bush's policies. At DePauw,...
Comparing California voters to unruly toddlers, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune spouts off again on a subject about which they know little. Most parents have witnessed a version of the Toys "R" Us scene in which a child, caught up in the frenzy of toy overload, cries out, "Mommy, I want it, and I want it now!" California politics, always a raucous affair, has become over the last 30 years more shrill, impatient and petulant, more of a toy-store experience. This may be a funny metaphor but sells voters short. California didn't get rid of Gray because of shiny, cool Arnold: they got rid of Gray because Gray has repeatedly sold out Californians to his contributors, and Californians got tired of it. Or perhaps the Strib never bothered to research sweetheart deals like the Oracle contract. Voters in the largest state knew what they didn't want -- more Gray Davis, whom they...
October 9, 2003
California Democrats are mighty grouchy today. It's like waking up with a huge hangover, I guess. (via California Insider) Aides to Sen. John Vasconcellos confirmed the liberal San Jose Democrat called Republican Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger "a boob," said voters "made a mistake," and announced that when the Legislature reconvenes in January, "I'm not sure I'll go back... If people want this actor to govern ... they don't need or deserve me." Which just goes to show you that Arnold really does get results. Is this what the Democrats has picked as a new strategy? Picking up their ball and going home? Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he will introduce legislation he dubbed "Arnold's Law" to increase the penalty for sexual battery in the workplace. At least that has some wit to it. In what would be a pointed show of dissatisfaction, some Democrats may boycott Schwarzenegger's State of the...
Arnold the Governator has picked his transition team, and it's certainly unusual. There will be 65 people from such diverse viewpoints as Mayor Willie Brown, the former King of the Assembly (I'm not kidding about that), Bill Simon Jr, Susan Estrich, and Rep. David Dreier, a well-connected Republican with close ties to the Bush administration: Today, he characterized the transition team that he will head as widely varied, made up of people who are both "very liberal and very conservative." "I will tell you this will be a somewhat unusual group," Dreier said. "The reason I'm so convinced we can have a diverse group is the strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's in a position where he will get a wide range of recommendations from people throughout the state and from around the country." Arnold obviously wants to project an inclusive, healing image for his new administration, and I'm sure Willie...
Seldom do you see a major news outlet sell itself out so completely, but the recall seems to have unhinged the editors of the Los Angeles Times. I read the Times on the Internet, as you will see if you scroll through my archives, but I do so with the knowledge that this newspaper has almost no credibility in its news coverage. Consider the following: The Los Angeles Times said it "corroborated" its stories that Schwarzenegger groped or humiliated more than a dozen women over a nearly 30-year period. But in no case did an eyewitness substantiate for the Times any of the tales despite the fact that the alleged incidents took place while hundreds of crew members on movie sets were present. As for the important "second source" news organizations often require on sensitive stories, the Times usually used a friend or relative who heard about the incidents afterward...
October 10, 2003
Power Line features an excellent essay on
the history of the Liberty Bell, and how the historically ignorant are misrepresenting it in its new setting.
I'm more a fan of green, myself ......
Lawyers, as officers of the court, are expected to play by the rules. One or two slips is forgivable, but six times should have resulted in a contempt charge. Kobe's lawyers knew that they weren't supposed to identify the alleged victim by name during the hearing. It looks like this will be going to trial soon. Let's hope the judge gets more control over the court. Kobe's going to have enough problems as it is; if he's really innocent, he won't want a OJ-style circus that will undercut the validity of an acquittal with the general public....
Despite the results of the recall, letting foreign-born citizens run for President is a bad idea. As the descendent of immigrants -- I am third-generation on my mother's side -- I do not see the need or the benefit of a foreign-born citizen filling the role of head of state. The Washington Post editorializes: The nation has profited from the service of naturalized citizens in sensitive posts such as secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and American public life is rife with people whose commitment to this country is one of choice, rather than birth. In every other sphere, American law welcomes such citizens and acknowledges parity between them and the native-born. Yes, I agree, although Kissinger's loyalties were often questioned during and after his tenure. Look at the vitriol thrown at American-born Jews in the Bush administration, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle....
I have to admit, what Steve Wynn says about the tiger "attack" makes sense. It's a real shame that it happened, but it appears to be an outrageously unlikely fluke. One question, though: if your tiger is going to be distracted by "big hair", why would you use that tiger in Las Vegas? Have you ever seen the women in the audience for these shows?...
October 11, 2003
I understand the motivation behind dress codes such as this, but when they're implemented in an inflexible manner, it makes everyone look ridiculous. An 11-year-old Oklahoma girl has been suspended from a public school because officials said her Muslim head scarf violates dress code policies. Board officials met Friday to discuss the fate of suspended sixth-grader Nashala "Tallah" Hern, who was asked to leave school in the eastern Oklahoma town of Muskogee on October 1 because she refused to remove her head scarf, called a "hijab." "Zero tolerance" rules really mean "zero thinking", and this is a great example of it. Gang members do identify themselves through clothing, including headgear, usually with professional sports merchandise. Prohibiting such displays makes sense, and public schools should try to eliminate them. However, instead of exercising some judgment or making the effort to determine what is and is not acceptable to wear, administrators take...
I'm sorry that this little girl got paralyzed, but I fail to see how you can blame it on anyone but the drunk driver. The parents of a girl paralyzed in a car wreck caused by a drunken football fan have sued the National Football League, claiming it should be held responsible for the girl's injuries. The lawsuit, filed Thursday, contends the league promotes the type of behavior that led the fan to drink 14 beers at a New York Giants game in 1999 and then drive home. Why include the NFL? Because you won't get that much money out of a guy who's serving several years in prison for the crime. Tailgating is not inherently a bacchanalia; most people handle their alcohol respectably, and there's a lot of other things that go into tailgating, like grilling food, etc etc. It frustrates me when lawyers attempt to hold people responsible...
How the heck do you let a guy like this escape? A suspect in the murders of five people whose bodies were unearthed from his backyard escaped Friday night from the jail where he was awaiting trial, officials said. Hugo Selenski, who was charged Monday in two of the deaths, and another inmate used bedsheets to escape from the Luzerne County Correctional Facility around 9:30 p.m., officials said. I'm thinking about Ted Bundy, and what happened when he escaped ... I hope they catch this guy quick. I hope that the Luzerne County Correctional Facility changes its security procedures ASAP....
Here's an idea whose time, apparently, has not quite come -- an adult haunted house, complete with simulated genital mutilation and lesbian scenes: To open, a couple of exhibits had to be toned down, including a mock mutilation of male genitals, as well as a couple of women kissing. Says one performer, "They've completely violated our right to free expression." But due to the adult content, and the fact that many of the actors are minors, Wentzville city officials decided the haunted house needed an adult entertainment permit. I suspect it was the lesbian kissing scene (oh! I'm so shocked!) that really got panties in a twist, but the simulated male genital mutilation certainly seems beyond the pale and qualifies the exhibit as adult entertainment. I certainly can't imagine allowing kids to work there or go through the house, but not everyone agrees: A much different opinion comes from event...
If there was still any doubt at all, Pat Robertson has made it clear that he is a dangerous lunatic with no credibility at all to speak on issues. Last seen exhorting his mindless sheep to pray for the deaths of certain Supreme Court justices, now Robertson has decided that it's quicker to nuke the State Department rather than praying for the 10,000 or so heart attacks it would take: "I read your book," Robertson said, according to a transcript of the interview posted on his Christian Broadcasting Network's website (www.cbn.com). "When you get through, you say, 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that's the answer'," he said. "I mean, you get through this, and you say, 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" Robertson asked. The State Department, oddly, takes offense to suggestions...
October 12, 2003
Steve Lopez, in today's LA Times, nails the recall election in another funny column: Conservatives eagerly abandoned sacred covenants and joined moderates — and even some liberals, for God's sake — in voting for a serial groper who smoked dope, skipped elections and was a poster boy for Hollywood's gun violence and mayhem. Who would've thunk it? Lopez not only notes that, but actually understands what this means for the California electorate: We're politically polarized beyond caricature, undermining any useful problem-solving, and great hordes of people need to be locked in their rooms. But as far as anyone can tell so far, Arnold appears to be somewhere in the middle — a fiscal conservative and social moderate. If so, that would put him more in touch with California than Gray Davis, who pumped helium into the state budget, or any of the knuckle-draggers the GOP keeps sending into the game....
I'm surprised it took PETA this long to take a life-threatening tragedy and crassly use it for their own purposes. The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals held a rally Saturday outside the Mirage hotel-casino to urge entertainers Siegfried & Roy to retire their felines after Roy Horn was nearly killed by a tiger during a performance. Carrying signs reading, "The Strip Is No Place for Tigers" and "Big Cats Big Danger," about two dozen demonstrators gathered near the entrance to the resort's large Siegfried & Roy marquee. It's understood that PETA opposes animals in entertainment, or in almost any other contact with humans, so it's not surprising that they want Siegfried & Roy to eliminate the tigers from their act. In fact, I believe they've protested the act several times previously. But since it's pretty clear that the act will be off the stage for a long...
For those who may not know, the DLC is the centrist Democrat group that promoted Bill Clinton as a potential party leader as early as 1988. Now they're trying to keep California Democrats from going off the rails by giving them a major reality check. After acknowledging the right-wing origins of the recall, it tells them [I]t's clear the success of the recall effort was no mere right-wing conspiracy. Californians are deeply frustrated by what they perceive as a political establishment -- in both parties -- that's not listening to their concerns, acting on their needs, or paying much attention to anyone who does not belong to a bedrock partisan constituency group. Then they warn some of the radical elements of the party against following through on threats made on Election Night: There's already talk of Democrats going to the mattresses, denying cooperation to the Governor-elect, or even launching petitions...
October 13, 2003
Sen. Norm Coleman tries to eat his cake and have it too on the issue of school vouchers. He proposes putting a school voucher plan in place for Washington DC schoolchildren, but tries to claim he's not considering any application to any other state, including Minnesota: "I'm not going to push for vouchers for Minnesota kids," Coleman said in an interview. "I'm not going to push for a national program. But I will certainly support the local mayor in his effort to provide greater opportunity for his kids." Well, why not? I understand that DC schools are especially poor performers, but there are certainly schools like that in Minnesota, too, and elsewhere. Are those schoolchildren any less trapped by the educational monopoly? Why are DC schoolchildren special cases? I suspect it has a lot less to do with geography than with mollifying Education Minnesota, the state NEA outfit, who weighs...
Today's Strib features a column by Isaac Cheifetz titled "What would Winston do?" It doesn't give any answers to that specific question but instead talks about a little-discussed side of Winston Churchill: the accomplished manager. I found it interesting, since Churchill is one of my favorite historical figures, and I believe his life and philosophy are so applicable to today's global issues. Afterwards, check out the post that pointed me to it at Power Line....
No, this is not a David Letterman list, but it's really the most hazardous jobs in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The top 10 most dangerous jobs are: 10. Truck drivers 9. Construction workers 8. Farm occupations 7. Electrical "power installers" (as opposed to workers?) 6. Roofers 5. Drivers - Sales Workers (incl. pizza delivery, vending machine workers) 4. Structural metal workers 3. Pilots and navigators 2. Fishers And the most dangerous job in America is ... 1. Timber cutters!...
In a move that indicates the US is beginning to make a major impact on the Arab world, Saudi Arabia announced its first ever free elections: Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, announced Monday it would hold its first elections to vote for municipal councils, seen as the first concrete political reform in the Gulf Arab state. ... Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States -- in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis -- Riyadh has come under intense pressure by key ally Washington to implement social and political reform in the kingdom which is the cradle of Islam and the world's largest oil exporter. ... "The council of ministers decided to widen participation of citizens in running local affairs through elections by activating municipal councils, with half the members of each council being elected," the state news agency SPA said. It's not just the election,...
I don't know what's more disturbing about this story on Ed Asner: his predilection for mass-murdering tyrants, or his swollen ego regarding Rush Limbaugh, or just his entire, pathetic schtick ever since he started taking himself seriously after Lou Grant was canceled. I first read this story at Andrew Sullivan's site this morning, and it's been picked up by Instapundit (who discussed it in his MS-NBC column, too), but here's the original story, from Kevin McCullough at WorldNetDaily: "Mr. Asner, I do have a question ... if you had the chance to play the biographical story of a historical figure you respected most [emphasis mine] over your lifetime, who would it be?" "I think Joe Stalin was a guy that was hugely misunderstood," said Asner. "And to this day, I don't think I have ever seen an adequate job done of telling the story of Joe Stalin, so I guess...
I recall when this happened, and how the Dean campaign tried backing away from it at warp speed. Quite frankly, I just considered it to be a typical reaction from the no-war-for-any-reason set, and in that context it makes perfect sense: "Questioned about the deaths of Saddam's sons, Odai and Qusai, in Iraq, Dean dismissed suggestions that it was a victory for the Bush administration. `It's a victory for the Iraqi people . . . but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war,' Dean said. `I think in general the ends do not justify the means.' " Nevertheless, when challenged on this, Dean has gone on the attack rather than explain what he meant, or more likely, that he forgot he said it because he shot his mouth off without thinking about it at the time: "I never said that. I never...
I found an interesting article on the decades-long proxy game between Israel and Syria, and how Israel is looking to change the rules, with the first gambit being the attack on the terrorist training camp last week: No matter how much violence raged around it, the Israeli-Syrian border has been quiet since the armistice following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. If the bitter foes wanted to fight, they squared off on the battlefield called Lebanon, or deployed various proxy forces. The attack a week ago Sunday on what the Israelis said was a Palestinian terrorist training camp changed that formula, perhaps forever. This article gives a much clearer explanation of what the attack means to both Israel and Syria and what Israel hopes to gain from the escalation: The Syrians say they give no logistical support to the Palestinian groups, but cannot expel Palestinians who have lived legally here for decades....
Good luck on reading anything about this in the New York or LA Times, but Strange Women Lying in Ponds (a cool Monty Python reference, for those who don't know) picked up on a story in the Guardian which details the effects of banning all handguns: Handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on ownership of handguns introduced the year after Thomas Hamilton, an amateur shooting enthusiast, shot dead 16 schoolchildren, their teacher and himself in the Perthshire town. It was hoped the measure would reduce the number of handguns available to criminals. Now handgun crime is at its highest since 1993. SWLIP reacts: Let's see, when Britain passed the handgun ban, many pro-gun ownership types predicted that Britain would eventually see a rise in violent gun crimes as guns became readily available on the black market for criminals, and...
October 14, 2003
The Washington Post rails against the latest redistricting plan in Texas, but misses an important point. The current district plan was not implemented by the Texas Legislature but was imposed as a temporary plan by a federal court. Districting is a function of the Legislature and not the courts and it was entirely appropriate for Texas to redistrict, even if it was oustide the census cycle. That being said, the Post has a point about the results of the plan, and ultra-partisan districting plans in general: YOU MIGHT THINK America's rigged system of congressional elections couldn't get much worse. Self-serving redistricting schemes nationwide already have left an overwhelming number of seats in the House of Representatives so uncompetitive that election results are practically as preordained as in the old Soviet Union. In the last election, for example, 98 percent of incumbents were reelected, and the average winning candidate got more...
The Washington Post reports that President Bush will start bypassing the national, traditional media and start focusing on regional and non-traditional media in order to get his message out more clearly and with less editorial filtering. Power Line links the story in its essay on the decision and its possible impact. Read the entire essay; it's excellent, although I disagree with it in one respect: And he and other administration officials should criticize Democratic jounalists and news outlets by name. The Democratic news media have overplayed their hand, and everyone knows how biased they are. (I'll link to a recent Gallup poll on this issue later in the day.) Why should hacks like Dana Milbank get a free pass to attack the administration on behalf of the Democrats, in the guise of objective journalism? I'll have to disagree with Hindrocket on taking such a confrontational strategy. Bush and the senior...
I'm not shy in sharing my views on France, but this article in Reason gives hope that change may be coming in the person of Sabine Herold, a 22-year-old Opposition leader in Paris: Herold, the 22-year-old leader of Liberté, J’ecris Ton Nom (Freedom, I Write Your Name), has in the last few months emerged as the massively popular and highly photogenic leader of -- zut! -- a burgeoning pro-market, pro-American counterculture in France. Earning comparisons to Joan of Arc, Brigitte Bardot (!), and Margaret Thatcher in the panting British press, she represents something French politics hasn’t seen in years: a public figure eager to take on the country’s endlessly striking unions. Herold's youth, passion, and eloquence earned her enough of a following that she was able to draw 80,000 to a protest against union strikes early this summer in Paris. I've read about her before, mostly through Merde in France...
The Volokh Conspiracy has an excellent series of posts on this subject, starting (or ending, I suppose) with this one. I hadn't heard that Justice Scalia had recused himself, but considering his ill-advised commentary, it's probably for the best. It's not the content of the commentary that is a problem; he shouldn't have been commenting on the case at all, since it was always likely to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. It was a rare example of bad judgment on his part....
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has proposed making underage drivers licenses dependent on school attendance. Pawlenty describes the link between truancy and criminal behavior and says: "I have no hesitation linking expectations around school attendance and the privilege of driving," Pawlenty said. "We need to make sure we have the horse before the cart." "Students need to understand the importance of education and that there are consequences if they don't take it seriously," Pawlenty said in a statement. "Chronic absenteeism is one step away from crime and we need to do everything we can to stop it." Right now, the only consequences of truancy are borne by the parents; if the truancy becomes chronic, the parents can be taken to court to correct the situation. Truancy undoubtably underlies a significant part of teen crime, and the failure of the system to provide any significant consequences to the teens themselves doesn't do...
Speaking of Amygdala, I noticed that he has posted (way down the left column) Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging: If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub," chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. On the way home from work this afternoon, I listened to The Patriot, the conservative talk-radio outlet here in the Twin Cities. At my drive-time, Michael Medved is on the air, and I have enjoyed Medved from when he wrote The Golden Turkey Awards back in the 70s. It's out of print now, but it's hilarious. Anyway, unlike some of the other hosts on the Patriot, such as the screechy and utterly reactionary Michael Savage, Medved is thoughtful to his callers and encourages those who disagree with him to give him...
October 15, 2003
Jill Stewart has penned an extensive and detailed rebuttal to John Carroll's "explanation" of the groping stories at the LA Times and how they were nothing more than good journalism. (John Carroll's editorial had been listed in a featured position at the top of the Times' web site for several days; today is the first day it's gone.) Stewart writes: Carroll claims that the groping story was published as soon as it was done. In fact, in journalism, a story is done when the boss says turn it in. Carroll himself saw to it that the story was strung out until the last. That is why some staffers continue to insist to me that the story was sufficiently nailed and should have run two weeks beforehand. One of Carroll's major gripes with Stewart -- whom he never bothered to name -- was that she claimed he held the story back...
Who wants to keep tabs on this woman's baby for the next 18 years? A woman who chased a 4-year-old boy through a McDonald's restaurant in Montgomery County, pinned him in a headlock and screamed obscenities as she smeared his face with hot french fries was sentenced yesterday to four days in jail and ordered to attend anger management and parenting classes. Milikia Hayes, 18, of Gaithersburg was nearly nine months pregnant with her first child when the incident took place in May. The boy, whom Hayes did not know, accidentally smeared ice cream on her clothing at a McDonald's in Germantown, authorities said. She should be getting lots of follow-up visits from Children's Services as well....
I avoided commenting on the latest foolishness spewing forth from Michael Moore during an appearance on CNN's Crossfire, with Robert Novak and Julian Epstein, who sounds as if he couldn't suck up enough to the pseudodocumentarian. EPSTEIN: And, in your book -- I love you. I think you say a lot of useful, important things that need to be said to shake the system up. Yeah, well. Anyway, Moore said in the course of the interview: MOORE: I'd like to ask the question whether September 11 was a terrorist attack, or was it a military attack? We call it a terrorist attack. We keep calling it a terrorist attack. But it sure has the markings of a military attack. And I'd like to know whose military was involved in this precision, perfectly planned operation. I'm sorry, but my common sense has never allowed me to believe since that day that...
October 16, 2003
It's decisions like this that make an even bigger joke of scare stories like the one from CBS News that argues that home-schooling is dangerous because there is no government oversight: At the same time that Donald Leonard Keys was being investigated on suspicion of having an illegal sexual relationship with a 16-year-old Woodbury boy, he was granted a renewal of his social worker's license. The renewal was approved by the Minnesota Board of Social Work despite knowledge that the 58-year-old St. Paul man had convictions for attempted sodomy with a child in 1971 and for fraud, for bilking an elderly man in Hennepin County in 1996. But it's okay, really, he's had a criminal background check .... he's licensed ......
Man, I had a tough time trying to decide whether this White House leak qualified as Current Affairs or Humor: Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else. News of Bush's order leaked almost immediately. I feel bad for Bush, I really do. I can just imagine the scene in the Oval Office this evening: Bush has his staff gathered around him in the Oval Office, chewing them out for allowing this last leak to occur, and soon as he turns his back to face one person, all the others grab notepads and scribble furiously until he turns around again. Every modern President has had to deal with leaks,...
It looks like the jig is up for an ex-patriate German just trying to make ends meet on a German disability pension in Florida: Maybe it is the image of a German pensioner, deeply tanned and dipping his toes in the surf on Miami Beach, while retired people here trudge windswept streets in dismal German burgs. Or maybe it is the notion of a housekeeper, paid for by the German government, to keep the fellow's apartment tidy. Whatever the reason, the curious case of Rolf John, a 64-year-old former banker who is living a sun-dappled retirement in Florida on $2,200 a month in German welfare checks, has driven people here batty. Germany currently pays over $6 million a year in pensions and benefits to just over a thousand German citizens living abroad in 88 countries. Rolf John's monthly benefits include: * $1,023 for rent * $854 as a "living allowance"...
October 17, 2003
The Malaysian government, after being scolded for the remaks of its Prime Minister at the OIC the day before, tries a little bit of damage control: "I'm sorry that they have misunderstood the whole thing," Syed Hamid, the foreign minister, told The Associated Press. "The intention is not to create controversy. His intention is to show that if you ponder and sit down to think, you can be very powerful." If that was his intention, then I suppose he failed miserably, considering this: Mahathir said the world's "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews," but suggested the use of political and economic tactics, not violence, to achieve a "final victory." Final victory, final solution, Jews running the world ... they didn't ponder or sit down to think, they're just channeling the Nazis. "Please forget about anti-Semitism," Syed Hamid told reporters. No, we wish you Muslims would...
October 18, 2003
A journalistic kerfluffle of another sort has erupted in Minneapolis, as the man who has accused Minneapolis police officers of sodomizing him with a toilet plunger denies that he is a police informant: "I'm not an informant, never will be," Stephen C. Porter said, responding to a story in the Star Tribune that reported he'd worked for the police. He asked his friends to believe his word. "Stick with me, I need you," he said. He added that his friends no longer talk to him. Members of the community were outraged that the Star Tribune printed the story that Porter worked with police in the past, and questioned the motivation of both the newspaper and its sources: Spike Moss, vice president of The City Inc., lambasted the media for reporting that Porter was a confidential informant for Jindra. "Why would you participate in a setup to get him killed?" Moss...
This story underscores the difficulty in doing business with Mexico, a country that has never fully respected private property rights and whose law enforcement efforts have always been a bit questionable: Three U.S. citizens, including a man dying of cancer, have been jailed here and face up to 14 years in prison in a land dispute involving a member of President Vicente Fox's cabinet. ... Ames and his wife lived together on the land until Jean Ames died in 2000 at age 92. Then, in May of this year, Ames was served with an eviction notice by the university, giving him nine days to vacate the property and ordering him to pay nearly $40,000 in back rent -- $1,000 a month since the death of his wife. Ames said he was stunned and angry. In this case, a 92-year-old widower has been ordered off of his land by the Mexican...
October 19, 2003
Today's LA Times practices a bit of balanced editorializing regarding prospects for President Bush and the GOP: Like the Chicago Cubs, though, the Democrats may have peaked too soon. Bush's poll numbers have stabilized. Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory in the California gubernatorial recall election has sent a thrill through the Republican Party. In Iraq, the violence continues, but the lights are now on, kids are returning to school, Turkey has agreed to send troops to the most dangerous part of the country (Sunni Iraq) — and the Bush administration won unanimous support from the U.N. Security Council for its plan for Iraq. That's not to say that Bush & Co. can expect easy sailing, either, at home or abroad: The French, Germans and Russians still steam over the U.S.-led invasion. They remain worried that a new Iraqi government, with U.S. backing, may try to repudiate some of the debt Hussein contracted...
October 20, 2003
The Pentagon's investigation into Army war crimes in Vietnam in 1967 has apparently stalled out before it was made public: An elite unit of U.S. soldiers mutilated and killed hundreds of unarmed villagers over seven months in 1967 during the Vietnam War, and an Army investigation was closed with no charges filed, the Toledo Blade reported Sunday. ... The Army's 4 1/2-year investigation, never before made public, was initiated by a soldier outraged at the killings. The investigation substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 soldiers and reached the Pentagon and White House before it was closed in 1975, the Blade said. The Pentagon had a difficult task in trying to piece together a case from actions that took place 36 years ago, but the level of atrocity of which the volunteer Tiger Force is accused was disturbing: Soldiers of Tiger Force, a unit of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, dropped...
Another example of how well the Amber Alert system functions: A 16-year-old girl who was apparently abducted in Denver, Colorado, early Sunday was found alive and unhurt hours later, after police issued a statewide Amber Alert, police said. ... Police were still looking for a man in a white Honda who had apparently kidnapped Mitchell, she said. Investigators said the man was 25-30 years old, about 5-foot-4, with a pot belly. He was described as having short, thinning black hair, a thick mustache and thick eyebrows. When last seen, he was wearing a light black jacket, a white shirt with stripes and jeans. Police described the vehicle as a white, 4-door Honda with a gray interior and dark-tinted windows. It has a scorpion decal in the rear window. Let's hope they catch the man responsible before he tries this again....
Lieberman and Clark are bailing out of the Iowa caucus: Democratic presidential candidates Joe Lieberman and Wesley K. Clark have decided not to campaign in the initial caucus state of Iowa, gambling on winning the nomination with a later surge in the primary race. Lieberman and Clark have decided not to spend their money in a state they probably have no chance of winning. Their decisions allow them to shift money to New Hampshire and other states with later contests. This makes some sense for General Clark, who just started in the race (and just started being a Democrat) and may not have a strong enough organization yet to really work the caucus. Lieberman, on the other hand, has been running or threatening to run since Bush finished saying the oath of office. He doesn't want to go up against Dean in Iowa, but feels comfortable tilting at Dean in...
Merde in France asks a good question, in his inimitable style, in the wake of French President Jacques Chirac representing Germany and France simultaneously at the European Summit: Where certain numb minded brainwashed individuals, stuffed full of dogma through their every orifice like cheap streetwalkers, see an elegant gesture, we see further proof that the EU is nothing more than a complete con job whose purpose is to smelt national sovereignties into a bland rotten broth of concentrated non-thought served up as a snack to feed a political void. Who answers to the German people now? Schroeder or Chiraq? Did it occur to Germans when the EU was launched that their head of state would casually assign representation of their sovereignty to a French politician? It would be equivalent to George Bush telling Canada to sit in for the US at the next Security Council meeting. This was no low-level...
Mickey Kaus answers one of my questions regarding the Schwarzenegger transition team: Brown had been widely expected to run for the Bay Area Senate seat now held by powerful Senate President pro Tem John Burton, who will be termed out next year....But Schwarzenegger is wildly unpopular in this district--teaming up with the Governor-elect would seem suicidal for Brown. It makes sense only if you assume Brown has abandoned plans to run for the seat. Why might he do that? Perhaps because he's seen private polls like the one kausfiles just saw--showing him with an unfavorability rating in the district of 40 percent, way above that of potential rivals. Brown's no dummy, and he's not about to pick a fight he's likely to lose, but I can't help thinking that once he got serious about the race that he would win it anyway, despite the early polling numbers. This is the...
I've added an update to my earlier post on war crimes in Vietnam, in order to clarify the timeline. You may want to reread the entire post with the new information in mind. Why did this come out now? I assume that one of the veterans involved had either too much guilt or too much anger to keep quiet about it and talked to the Toledo Blade, who then checked it out and discovered the Army investigation in the 70s. Now that it's out, the question is what to do about it. I think staying silent is a poor choice. If we are to lead the world militarily, we must project complete professionalism and competence, and demonstrate that we will not tolerate war crimes on anyone's behalf....
Yet another reason not to trust the "traditional media" outlets. This was Howard Dean, according to the Washington Post, speaking to a group of Arab Americans on October 18th: "Because John Ashcroft touts the Patriot Act around the country does not mean John Ashcroft is a patriot," Dean said to rising cheers. "That American flag over there belongs to every American -- not only to John Ashcroft, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson." But according to Reuters, this is what Howard Dean said: "It does not belong to General Boykin, or John Ashcroft, or Rush Limbaugh or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson," the former Vermont governor said to cheers in the packed hotel conference room in the Detroit suburb which is home to one of the highest concentrations of Muslims and Arabs outside the Middle East. Bear in mind that the addition of Boykin is no small matter. When...
October 21, 2003
Malaysian PM Mahathir attempts to explain what he really meant in the Bangkok Post: "In my speech I condemned all violence, even the suicide bombings, and I told all Muslims it's about time we stopped all these things and paused to think and do something that is much more productive," Mahathir told the Bangkok Post. "That was the whole tone of my speech, but they picked up one sentence where I said the Jews control the world." But just in case no one misses the point, Mahathir helpfully added: "The reaction of the world shows that they [Jews] do control the world," he told the Post. Mahathir is often described by Western leaders as a "moderate" in the Muslim world. Isn't that just peachy?...
... only maybe not the ones they're hoping for: Patrons at Lucy's Saloon watched in amazement around 1 a.m. Sunday when the man they say started a bar-clearing brawl began barking orders at police officers who arrived to quell it — and the officers responded. The man turned out to be St. Paul police Sgt. Jon Loretz, the son of Police Chief William Finney. On Monday, the department referred an investigation into the fight to the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to avoid a conflict of interest, Finney said. For Sgt. Jon Loretz, "outreach" involves "scream[ing] slurs against homosexuals" and getting into a number of "scuffles", such as these: "This guy, this big guy — he was actually swinging on women," Hill said Monday. He was choking one woman when bar security stopped him, she said. Then he began to verbally attack Noble, who was trying to kick Loretz out...
October 22, 2003
Showing the wit and intelligence long associated with the white-supremacist movement, Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations founder, is running for mayor in Hayden , Idaho, where the organization used to have a large facility until they lost a $6 million lawsuit: "I'm not really anxious to become mayor," Butler, 85, said recently. ... Butler said his campaign is intended to restore Christian ideals, especially the Ten Commandments, to public life. But in truth, Butler admitted, Hayden is "running pretty well." Okay, Dick ... can I call you Dick? ... You don't want to become mayor, and Hayden's running all right without you at the helm, but you're running for mayor anyway. Do I have that right? Hmmm ... kind of plays hell with that whole "superior race" thing, doesn't it? White supremacists have not had good luck running for office in northern Idaho. Several years ago, Butler supporter Vincent Bertollini...
Senate Democrats are threatening yet another filibuster, this time to protect their trial lawyer constituency: Moving the cases to federal court would curb frivolous lawsuits and keep trial lawyers from getting millions of dollars in fees while their clients get little compensation, GOP senators say. Federal courts are assumed to be less likely to issue multimillion-dollar verdicts against big corporations. [In] both the House and Senate versions of the bill, class-action lawsuits in which the primary defendant and more than one-third of the plaintiffs are from the same state would still be heard in state courts. But if less than one-third of the plaintiffs are from the same state as the primary defendant, the case would go to federal court. Under the Constitution, anything affecting interstate commerce falls under the scope of the federal system, and most class-action suits have interstate impact, even if they're filed on a state-by-state basis....
Alan Dershowitz, noted appellant lawyer, Constitutional scholar, author, and a member of the OJ dream team, proposes that self-representation be banned in capital crime trials: Should a defendant facing the death penalty have the right to defend himself, even if his defense will be unprofessional and could result, potentially, in his own execution? That may be the question the U.S. Supreme Court eventually faces in the case of Virginia vs. John Allen Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of the D.C. sniper murders. Dershowitz discusses the cases of Colin Ferguson (the Subway Shooter) and Doctor Jack Kevorkian, who won in court three times while represented by counsel but lost when he chose to represent himself. There are success stories as well that Dershowitz only touches briefly on: Angela Davis and Clarence Darrow, but of course Darrow was a brilliant attorney. The only real strategic advantage of defending one's self is this: In...
According to the Star Tribune and the AP, John Allen Mohammed has ceased acting as his own attorney and rehired his "advisory" attorneys as his new counsel: Prosecutors complained about Muhammad's self-representation Tuesday and asked the judge to rescind it. They said Muhammad was receiving too much help from Shapiro and Greenspun, whose role as standby counsel was supposed to be limited. Fortunately for Mohammed, he had not had the opportunity to do too much damage to his case, and even at that point his rehired attorneys were able to reverse some of it: After today's announcement, Greenspun launched a series of objections during the testimony of Chris Okupski of Trenton, N.J., who sold Muhammad the Chevrolet Caprice prosecutors believe was the vehicle used in the sniper attacks. Greenspun won many of his objections, something that happened only rarely while Muhammad represented himself....
I believe Gelernter has it backwards. I believe that we became numb to the value of human life and so then supported widespread abortion, as well as capital punishment, assisted suicide, euthanasia, etc. That there are arguments, good arguments, to made on behalf of all of these to some extent is not in dispute. There are good arguments to be made for a lot of bad policy decisions based on honest and heartfelt beliefs and experience. It doesn't make the outcome any less wrong. The saying "Life is cheap" is so common and trite that is has become essentially meaningless, but was it always thus? I don't believe so, although capital punishment has certainly been around long enough. I think that in the post-Holocaust, post-nuclear world, we began to accept a fundamentally nihilistic and existential view of life. Nothing mattered when you could have 6 million people die in camps without even hearing about it until years later. Life meant nothing under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Once you accept these as everyday truths, then the litany of life-destroying policies makes sense and sounds perfectly reasonable.
October 23, 2003
Here's an update on our staunch British colleagues, winning hearts and minds in southern Iraq: Battersby's men here in the nation's second-largest city wear soft berets and patrol neighborhoods at a leisurely pace, enjoying a level of contact and trust with residents that still eludes many U.S. units in and around Baghdad. ... But unlike the areas west and north of Baghdad — heavily populated by minority Sunni Muslims, who dominated Iraq under Hussein — there is little public sympathy for the resistance here. Many of the city's residents are Shiite Muslims, who suffered under the former regime and say they are grateful that U.S. and British troops chased Hussein from power. "We don't say 'leave,' we say 'thank you,' " said Wael Abdulatif, governor of Basra province. Basra has always been a center of anti-Saddam sentiment, and of course Basra is also where an insurrection was attempted after the...
People for the American Way, a leftist group that is "fighting to maintain and expand 50 years of legal and social justice progress that right-wing leaders are trying to dismantle," weighs in against free speech in their campaign against Janice Rogers Brown, the latest Bush judiciary nominee. While there are reasonable limits to free speech in a workplace, it's up to the employer to set them, not the state, and I think Eugene Volokh is dead on with his excellent post today. Read through Justice Brown's opinion in the case PFAW cites and see what, if anything, you find "very disturbing". Remember this when you hear about PFAW and its allies screeching about the stifling of free speech in John Ashcroft's America....
Make sure you read this post from Power Line as soon as possible. Ask yourself if the cartoon used by the Black Commentator, the NAACP, and PFAW were used by conservatives to protest a Clinton judicial nominee (or hell, in any context) what the scope of outrage would be amongst the Left. Every physical stereotype of African-Americans are included in this depiction of Justice Janice Rogers Brown. It's crude, it's disgusting, and it should be unacceptable for anyone interested in fair-minded debate. I'm not saying it should be outlawed -- they have a right to create this -- but it should generate outrage from the same people who are using it to further their purported political goals of equality and fair treatment. I don't know what Justice Brown's credentials are for the position -- I haven't read enough yet to have a grasp -- but I do know that if...
October 24, 2003
Minneapolis's local NBC led its morning news with this story, but the Star Tribune, which strongly endorsed Senator Mark Dayton last election, buries this story deep within its web site: An office manager for Sen. Mark Dayton who says he was fired after developing a heart condition was found sleeping on the job and terminated for "exceptionally" poor job performance, according to new court filings. That account, provided by attorneys for Dayton's office, represents the Minnesota Democrat's most aggressive attempt yet to head off a lawsuit brought by Brad Hanson, his former state office manager. Hanson, giving his first extensive account of the case Thursday, called Dayton's assertions "blatantly false" and an attempt to smear him in the press. It would be an attempt to smear him in the press, if the press was interested in reporting bad news about Dayton. The story, which is fair and balanced, cannot be...
OxBlog's David Adesnik posts one of the clearest definitions of media bias: The implicit premise of Matt's statement is that any factually correct statement has a legitimate place in the news. Yet surely a professional journalist such as Matt knows that editorializing is not just a matter of expressing subjective opinions, but emphasizing certain facts at the expense of others. Check out the example that David uses, and how he rewrites it in a completely factual manner but changes the entire tenor of the piece. This should be required reading for any of us who express frustration at media bias and get challenged to define it....
'Tis a far, far, more biased headline the LA Times writes, than has been written before (otherwise known as It Was The Worst of Times, and the Even More Worst of Times): LA Times, 10/24/03: Immigrant Wal-Mart Janitors Arrested Reuters, 10/23/03: Feds Arrests 300 Wal-Mart Workers AP, 10/24/03: Sources: Wal-Mart Knew of Illegal Workers Aha! It took the AP to put the word "illegal" into the headline. The Times just uses the word "immigrant" as if there is no difference between legal and illegal immigration, like the government was rounding up janitors for no reason, and Reuters doesn't bother to note immigration as an issue at all in its headline. Federal agents investigating Wal-Mart seized documents from an executive's office Thursday and raided 61 stores across the country, arresting about 250 illegal immigrants working on cleaning crews, authorities said. The investigation grew out of two earlier probes into the use...
Michael Kantor over at The Calico Cat posts an intriguing and provocative question regarding the value of students loans to our society and their effect on tuition: The article mentioned how the cost of college education has been increasing faster than the rate of inflation, but the issue of why was never addressed. I believe student loans are part of the reason. By making more money available to students, this just gives the colleges the leeway to raise tuition even more. I know it's very anti-mainstream to question the value of a college education, but I'm going to go ahead and question it anyway. My experience is that the majority of college students are just in it for the piece of paper they get at the end which they think will be a ticket to a "good job." Yet we have so many college students graduating with no job awaiting...
October 25, 2003
He later claimed he was joking, and John McCain laughed it off, but this only makes Lieberman look more attractive than any of the other defeatist Democrats: Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman said Friday that if elected president, he would tap Republican Sen. John McCain as defense secretary. Doing little to dispel the criticism that he's a closet Republican, Lieberman told Don Imus' syndicated radio program that he would want the Arizona senator, a colleague and a friend, for the Pentagon post. Such a move would attract centrist voters who want to remain strong on defense but feel that the Bush Administration have gone off the rails on other issues. In fact, despite what the White House leaks about being "scared" of Gephardt, Lieberman is the only Democrat who could seriously challenge Bush for the centrists in 2004, and the center will be critical. What this announcement will repel are...
The LA Times revists another US military victory to question tactics, strategy, and necessity: As U.S. troops wrestle with an intervention in Iraq, the success of the Grenada invasion 20 years ago might be seen as inspiring evidence of long-term payoffs for determined campaigns to put a troubled world in order. But even here, where military action was a comparative cakewalk once troops got past 800 Cuban construction workers, deep divisions persist over the value of that Cold War-era intervention. Are we really going to argue over Grenada again? Wasn't that over in about 15 minutes? Although most Grenadians agree they are better off as a result of the American action, they tend to see the storming of their tropical shores not as a rescue mission to evacuate students from the U.S. medical school, as the Pentagon claimed, but as an aggressive strike to thwart the spread of communism in...
Being on the right side of history pays off for Spain (via Merde in France): All the same, until the Iraq war, Spain's notion of a New Europe - defined in cooperation rather than rivalry with the United States and reflecting loyalties, interests and instincts different from those of decades of postwar European habit - was largely talk. But in blocking, with the British and others, what it regarded as an attempt to turn the war into a European confrontation with America under a French and German banner, Spain achieved a new visibility in its effort to be seen be as a singular - even global - player. Spain has used Old World charm to vault itself into a leadership position by aligning itself as a medium between the Anglosphere on one hand and the emerging EU nations from the east, already inclined to support Anglo-American goals of democracy and...
Power Line has an impressive series of posts this morning on a number of issues. First, Big Trunk posts about appearing on a panel at the National Lawyers Guild convention this week in Minneapolis, and how far left this organization goes: Entering the convention precincts was a little shocking; the ambience, the displays, and the literature really marked the convention as hostile territory. Many handouts touted the cause of the only Cuban prisoners championed by the Guild -- "the Cuba five." The five, of course, are not any of Castro's prisoners, but rather are five Cuban men held in federal prison on conviction of offenses including espionage against the United States. The cause of the Cuba five is part of the Guild's old-time religion. The Guild's PATRIOT Act panel demonstrated how the Guild has moved seamlessly from defending America's Communist enemies to defending America's Islamofascist enemies. The common denominator between...
Ho hum, another day, another protest staged by the last organized apologists for Stalinism. The Belligerent Bunny Blog went out and visited the vast crowd at the Washington protest and brings back pictures of the International ANSWER event. Check out all of the pictures -- they'll make your day, trust me, especially Clowns for Saddam. No, I know it could describe everyone there, but I'm talking about actual clowns. Best quote in Anna's post, under a picture of a sign that uses a swastika in Bush's name: Honestly if you're going to introduce the National Socialist trope, you could pick a better venue than a rally organized by a national, Socialist organization. Oh the irony! Somehow, I am sure the irony was lost on all of the attendees. (via Instapundit)...
October 26, 2003
"Speak softly, and carry a big stick." That was Theodore Roosevelt's foreign-policy philosophy, and it's paying off for George Bush in North Korea, at least so far: In its first concession after months of hostility, North Korea on Saturday signaled that it would consider President Bush's offer of written security assurances in return for dismantling its nuclear program. The conciliatory statement, first reported by the North Korean news agency, marked an abrupt about-face for the government in Pyongyang, which days earlier had ridiculed Bush's offer as "laughable" and "not worth considering." ... Iran also bowed to international pressure several days ago, saying it would suspend its uranium enrichment program and sign an agreement permitting international inspections. China put more pressure on North Korea to consider the Bush Administration's offer of written security assurances in lieu of a formal non-agression pact (which would undermine the military alliance with South Korea). Iran...
In a common-sense way, we can view the 90% level to test its reliability. How often does a police officer pull abreast of you before pulling you over? In my experience, unfortunately in multiple experiences, never. At least half of all stops occur in night conditions, where it's impossible to see the skin color or race of a driver until you are already stopped or have lit up the interior of the vehicle with door-mounted spotlights, and that only happens when you've committed to stopping the vehicle.
According to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the INS and FBI are terrorist organizations for enforcing immigration laws: U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Friday police raids on dozens of U.S. Wal-Mart stores in the search for illegal immigrants this week amounted to "terrorizing" workers. "It instills a great deal of fear in people who are only trying to earn a living and put food on the table for their family," Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters on a Congressional visit to Mexico. I believe that we need to create a mechanism that will allow us to track migrant workers and still allow them to work in the US. Despite what reactionaries on the right proclaim, such workers fill a vital need in the agricultural industry, as well as some service industries. However, until Congress develops such a program, it's still illegal to come into the US without...
October 27, 2003
New Yorkers who had a great time poking fun at the California recall have discovered that direct democracy isn't even an option in their city: It started during the summer when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican in a heavily Democratic town, placed an initiative on the city's Nov. 4 ballot that would ban partisan local elections. The mayor has contributed $2 million of his own money to pass the measure, which would reduce the traditional clout of the Democratic Party in New York City politics. He also took steps to block voters from considering an initiative signed by 115,000 residents that would compel the city to form a commission on chronic overcrowding in public schools. Bloomberg, like other mayors before him, invoked a little-known state law that bars other initiatives from appearing on a municipal ballot once a charter-reform measure is placed on it. The Mayor of New York...
In the Autumn 2003 edition of City Journal, Brian Anderson asserts that the right is no longer losing the culture wars: The Left’s near monopoly over the institutions of opinion and information—which long allowed liberal opinion makers to sweep aside ideas and beliefs they disagreed with, as if they were beneath argument—is skidding to a startlingly swift halt. The transformation has gone far beyond the rise of conservative talk radio, that, ever since Rush Limbaugh’s debut 15 years ago, has chipped away at the power of the New York Times, the networks, and the rest of the elite media to set the terms of the nation’s political and cultural debate. Almost overnight, three huge changes in communications have injected conservative ideas right into the heart of that debate. Though commentators have noted each of these changes separately, they haven’t sufficiently grasped how, taken together, they add up to a revolution:...
Robert Bartley has written an excellent essay in today's OpinionJournal about instant cultural obsessions and the price paid for them: In an age of instant communications, we become members of a huge world-wide tribe, in constant contact with the thoughts and emotions of our fellow members everywhere. This carries many blessings, not least in undermining of local totalitarian regimes. But like tribal societies throughout the ages, it's vulnerable to sudden surges of emotions, to shared if unexamined assumptions that harden into instant fads. Bartley reviews two cases championed by the Wall Street Journal: the Amirault child-abuse conviction and the forced bankruptcy of Dow Corning caused by pseudoscientific hysteria about silicone breast implants. In the Amirault case, the best that Bartley can claim is a draw; Gerald Amirault is getting paroled without ever acknowledging any kind of confession in the supposed child-abuse cases for which he was convicted. Amirault and Bartley...
Bill Clinton's idea of helping Tony Blair with his heart problem doesn't ease the angina one bit: Downing Street says it is "mystified" by reports that Tony Blair discussed his health problems several years ago with Bill Clinton. Mr Blair's spokesman insisted that his irregular heart beat, which caused him to be hospitalised briefly last week, had never happened before. But ex-US President Clinton was quoted in the Sunday Mirror as saying: "I've known about this for a long time. He told me about it quite a few years ago. As soon as I heard what happened, I called to check he was OK. We had a talk and he sounded in good shape." Excuse me for having a memory and a brain, but if anyone remembers, Mr. Clinton has a reputation for being a bit loose with the truth, and while we're at it, does anyone think this sounds...
October 28, 2003
Either this is the meme of the moment, or we are truly seeing a striking social phenomenom. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: While the liberalism of young adults has long been taken for granted, there is accumulating evidence that conservatism is making inroads. Recent polls and election results show that, at the least, this group of potential voters is up for grabs, prompting Republican and Democratic strategists to scramble to win their loyalty. Apparently this has been the dirty secret of Academia, at least up to now. As I said yesterday, this threatens the leftist (as opposed to liberal) hegemony that currently exists on university campuses, as these students will eventually replace existing faculty and curriculum management. In fact, that's what they're specifically aiming to do. What reason do they give for this sea change? "As far as the baby boom generation is concerned, Vietnam demonstrated that the United States...
Oh so predictable: supposed White Knight General Wesley Clark is sliding in the polls, while support for liberal candidates is increasing: The small boom of support for retired Gen. Wesley Clark, which pushed him to the front of national polls in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, appears to be ebbing, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. ... Among registered Democrats queried about their 2004 choices, 15 percent chose Clark, down from 21 percent who expressed support for him in early October, when he led the field less than a month after joining the race. In the latest poll, Dean was in first place, with 16 percent support, just a whisker ahead of Clark and within the poll's margin of error. Clark, pushed into the race by the Clintons and staffed with a number of Clinton supporters, has been an embarrassment on the stump. Either he can't come up...
Despicable behavior by gangs is nothing new, but this has to be a new low: A shootout at a mausoleum during a funeral Monday sent hundreds of mourners and visitors at Inglewood Park Cemetery crouching or running for cover as bullets were fired by suspected gang members and police. At least two men were hit, but both appeared stable and conscious, paramedics said. Police, who were investigating the crime scene six hours later, said they had no information on the men's conditions and only sketchy details about what happened. ... The 27-year-old mourner said Bailey's chrome casket was being put into a wall in the mausoleum at the end of the burial service, and the words "ashes to ashes and dust to dust" were being recited when gunfire broke out and people began screaming. She ran outside and saw police firing their weapons, she said. Another witness, a 19-year-old man,...
How would you feel if the government-controlled medical care -- for which you've paid -- decides to deny you medicine based on where you live? If that sounds good, then by all means keep pushing for "universal" health coverage: The government has vowed to end so-called "postcode prescriptions" which result in some patients being denied potentially life-saving cancer drugs because of where they live. Health Secretary John Reid said on Monday he had ordered an inquiry into why some local health authorities are prescribing new drugs to combat cancer while others are not -- even though the drugs have been approved nationally. Yes, I know, the British government has vowed to end the practice of denying cancer medication based on patient location, but it's creepy that the practice exists in the first place....
DEBKAfile postulates that certain European government officials are considering sacrificing Israel to appease the Arabs: Nineteen days before the New York article appeared, a DEBKAfile informant dining at a Knightsbridge restaurant with a highly-placed British intelligence official heard him drop this remark: “Some people in the West have come to the conclusion that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was a mistake.” When asked to explain whether this meant that the Jews were to be evicted from the Middle East, he replied: “Certainly. Israel has a little more than 5 million Jews. If the United States and NATO were to finance their relocation in other countries, that would solve many Middle East problems.” ... In October 2003, the same British intelligence officer once again dropped a warning of schemes being spun in secret in Brussels to de-legitimize the Israeli democracy, whittle away its independence and eventually bring...
October 29, 2003
As part of a fortnight-long retrospective on Paul Wellstone's death, the Star Tribune today features a story about the controversial Wellstone memorial and its impact on state and national politics. Unfortunately, it's also the cause of some blame-shifting as well: In a gathering counterattack aimed at revising the conventional views of the memorial, liberal commentator and comedian Al Franken in his recent book castigates state and national conservatives for their take on the memorial. Franken blasts Republicans from Rush Limbaugh to Peggy Noonan to former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber for claiming that a Jumbotron screen prompted the audience (the words on the screen were closed captioning for the hearing impaired); claiming that "20,000 people" booed Majority Leader Trent Lott (only some jeered), and constantly alleging that the event was scripted. ... Nonsense, responds Weber, a key adviser to Coleman whose immediate denunciation of the event as a "complete, total, absolute...
Instapundit pointed out a new web site pushing Condoleeza Rice as Bush's running mate in 2004. In the Why Condi? page, the site explains its zeal to dump the current Vice President: Conventional wisdom has long held that the first woman, or first African-American in the White House, would be a Democrat. It would be the ultimate double-whammy to beat the Democrats at their own game. The beauty of it all is that she would not be not chosen because of her merely being a woman or an African-American, but rather because of her intelligence, qualifications, talents, experience and confidence of the president. I'm actually a fan of this idea, but this explanation sort of boggles the mind. On one hand, we want to "beat the Democrats at their own game", by electing a female African-American on a Presidential ticket, but, ah, not because she's a woman or an African-American....
After an attack by Al Sharpton, calling Dean's agenda 'anti-black', how can Dean respond affirmatively? Howard Dean's opposition to affirmative action, his current support for the death penalty and historic support of the NRA's [National Rifle Association's] agenda amounts to an anti-black agenda that will not sell in communities of color in this country," Sharpton said in a statement. Can this be a tripwire to the Dean campaign? After all: Until now, the Dean campaign's brushes with racial issues have been less vitriolic. Earlier this year, some critics, noting that Dean comes from a heavily white state and campaigns extensively via the Internet, questioned his ability to reach low-income and minority voters. Taking a page from my previous post, would the Dean campaign consider Carol Mosely-Braun as a potential VP choice? She's obviously not going to be a factor in the primaries and is running primarily to rebuild her reputation...
Governor Dean apparently struggles with some confusion issues: Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples. But then he waffled. "I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means." Okay, so what this supposedly razor-sharp genius says is that he hears words he doesn't understand and then likes to use them in campaign speeches to impress voters. People talk about Bushisms -- is anyone keeping track of Dean's hoof-in-mouth disease?...
Retiring Georgia Senator Zell Miller endorses George Bush for the presidential election in 2004: Miller said Bush is "the right man at the right time" to govern the country. The next five years "will determine the kind of world my children and grandchildren will live in," Miller said in an interview. And he wouldn't "trust" any of the nine Democratic presidential candidates with governing during "that crucial period," he said. "This Democrat will vote for President Bush in 2004." Fred Barnes writes about Miller's discontent with the Democrats, both in the Senate and as a national political party. Miller's dissatisfaction has been known for some time and was recently vented in his new book, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, in which, among other items, he dismisses Howard Dean as "shallow". Miller's endorsement is certain to cause problems for the eventual Democratic nominee, especially in...
Seems like a squabble has erupted between the Dean and Gephardt campaigns: The incident occurred during a Gephardt speech at a Des Moines, Iowa, senior center Tuesday. A Dean campaign worker got into an altercation with members of the Gephardt staff and was escorted from the event, according to Rod Boshart, a reporter for The Gazette, of Cedar Rapids. In a letter to the Gephardt campaign late Tuesday, Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said, "I urge you to find the staff member responsible and fire him, and send a strong signal to the rest of your staff that behavior of this kind will not be tolerated." Erik Smith, spokesman for the Gephardt campaign, said Wednesday, "this guy was belligerent and we escorted him out." He referred to the incident as political dirty tricks. Now, now, boys ... Late word out of the Dean camp says that the Gephardt people started...
October 30, 2003
The above headline is quite misleading; the US isn't pulling away from Israel, they're telling the Palestinians to start meeting their obligations before expecting anything else from us: Call us when you're serious about disarming militants — that's the message Palestinians are getting from U.S. mediators who have scaled back their presence in the region. The apparent disengagement comes amid a deadlock in the U.S.-led "road map" peace plan, Washington's growing troubles in Iraq, and the distractions of the U.S. presidential election campaign. Unless the AP defines Israel as inclusive of the West Bank an Gaza Strip. Now that would be news! Israeli and Palestinian critics warn that reduced U.S. involvement will likely lead to more bloodshed, further harm America's image in the Arab world, and in the end bring on another round of U.S. mediation. With the sides here so far apart on the issues, many previous peace moves...
The headline in today's Washington Post: Economy Grows at 7.2 Percent Rate in Third Quarter: The economy grew at a scorching 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter in the strongest pace in nearly two decades. Consumers spent with abandon and businesses ramped up investment, compelling new evidence of an economic resurgence. The increase in gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy's performance, in the July-September quarter was more than double the 3.3 percent rate registered in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The 7.2 percent pace marked the best showing since the first quarter of 1984. It exceeded analysts' forecasts for a 6 percent growth rate for third-quarter GDP, which measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States. Could it be that the tax cuts, designed to put more cash into the hands of middle-class consumers, may be working...
Quite frankly, I'm having a little trouble deciding for whom to root: James Nichols, the brother of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, says he was tricked into appearing in the documentary "Bowling for Columbine," according to a federal lawsuit filed against filmmaker Michael Moore. Nichols also alleges in the lawsuit, filed Monday in Detroit, that Moore libeled him by linking him to the terrorist act. Nichols accuses Moore of libel, defamation of character, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. His lawyer is asking for a jury trial and damages ranging from $10 million to $20 million on each of nine counts, the Detroit Free Press reported. It's sort of like trying to figure out, at a Oakland Raiders - St. Louis Rams game, who you want to see lose more: Al Davis or Georgia Frontiere....
October 31, 2003
Quite frankly, this issue never occurred to me until I read this article: It's a health club patron's nightmare: Someone surreptitiously snaps a digital photo of said patron in a shower or locker room, then shares the snapshot far and wide via e-mail or by posting the picture on a Web site. The likelihood of this happening has dramatically increased in the past year or two as digital cameras have shrunk in size and become inconspicuous parts of everyday devices such as mobile phones. Now, local health-club chains are scrambling to preempt such mischief. The latest is Eden Prairie-based Life Time Fitness, which has just banned any cell-phone use in locker room areas. Northwest Athletic Clubs and the YWCA of Minneapolis also have instituted similar bans, according to a check of area clubs by the Pioneer Press. Health clubs have banned film and video cameras in the past for these...
... is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result: Senate Democrats yesterday blocked President Bush's selection of Charles W. Pickering Sr. for a federal appeals court after a two-year struggle that evoked conflicting interpretations of the past, present and future of race relations in Mississippi and Pickering's role in them. It's far past the time that Senate Republicans should have forced the Democrats to really filibuster a nominee, instead of the Filibuster Lite that they've allowed so far. Force the Democrats to shut the Senate by continuous speechifying, all the while on C-SPAN, preferably with that political cartoon of Justice Brown on the dais behind them. If the Democrats choose obstructionism, force them to do it for real. Let the country see what they are. Either that, or dump the nominees and find new ones, because this process has been grossly unfair to them....
As Warren Brown says in this column, I'm a free-market kind of guy, but there are limits: Some Internet entrepreneurs, apparently more interested in cash than in road rage, or the possibility of a fatal crash, have been offering MIRT and MIRT knockoffs for $300. Their pitches are quite tempting: "Never wait for a red light again!" and "Tired of Waiting for Red Lights?" and "Changes Stop Lights From Red to Green in Seconds." Of course, there are buyers; and at the moment, the commerce is legal. MIRT transmits an infrared beam, instead of a radio wave. The Federal Communications Commission regulates the use of radio waves. Infrared transmission falls outside of the agency's purview. As a result, currently, there are no federal laws restricting civilian use of MIRT technology. Federal regulation would help keep these off the market, but individual states can and should make sale, possession, or use...
In keeping with Roger Simon's challenge, here's what North Korea's highest-ranking defector says: The only way to combat North Korea's dictator is for the world to unite against him as it has against terrorism, North Korean's top-ranking defector said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday. ... On his first trip to the United States, Hwang Jang Yop also said he believes North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is fully prepared to start a war and that there's no telling whether Kim will ever give up his nuclear program. "It's like ... asking whether a venomous snake will bite or not," Hwang said in the interview. Roger feels, and I agree, that the pledge made in 1945 -- never again -- has transformed definition from 'never allowing genocide to happen again' to 'never recognizing genocide again'. We missed it completely in Cambodia after the much-derided "domino theory" came...
November 1, 2003
In a unique and, shall we say, fantastic defense, a father on trial for the beating death of his infant daughter claims that the real cuplrit is his 2-year-old son: A jealous 2-year-old battered his infant sister so badly that it left her vulnerable to death when her father tripped in their St. Paul apartment and dropped her last November, Said Moussa Gouleed's lawyer said Friday, the first day of Gouleed's murder trial. Six-week-old Faduma Moussa Gouleed died from the accidental fall, not from a beating by her father, lawyer Eric Olson said. They're not called the "terrible twos" for nothing, I guess. Let's see what this brawny baby managed to inflict on Sis: An autopsy disclosed evidence that the baby had been repeatedly injured before her death, including several broken bones and a previous skull fracture. Olson said pre-existing injuries inflicted by her brother, coupled with the accidental fall...
Has anyone asked Ralph Nader how it feels to be potentially replaced by Jesse Ventura? Do you suppose Nader may be a bit reluctant to spend a year campaigning on behalf of a party of environmentalists who wanted to throw him overboard for a pro-hunting, pro-snowmobiling, pro-boating candidate?
The LA Times features an article today on how Fox News intentionally skews its news writing to support a conservative bias: A veteran producer this week alleged that Fox News executives issue a daily memorandum to staff on news coverage to bend the network's reporting into conformity with management's political views, refocusing attention on the partisan bias of America's most watched cable news operation. The charges by Charlie Reina, 55, whose six-year tenure at Fox ended April 9, first surfaced Wednesday in a letter he posted on an influential Web site maintained by Jim Romenesko for the Poynter Institute, an organization that promotes journalistic education and ethics. (Romanesko's site, BTW, is on my blogroll to the left.) Read on for a taste of delicious irony: The corporate boards and family investors who control most of the American news media generally feel obliged to maintain a wall of separation between news...
It's an old story for acclaimed "metrosexual" candidate Howard Dean -- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," the former Vermont governor was quoted as saying in Saturday's Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats." Say, Yankee boy, don't you know them's fightin' words, at least among the Northeastern-elite-style Democrats? "I don't want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," Gephardt said in a statement. "I will win the Democratic nomination because I will be the candidate for guys with American flags in their pickup trucks." Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts contended that Dean's "pandering" to the National Rifle Association gave him an inroad to "pander to lovers of the Confederate flag." Will the Democrats be as quick with the BUSH...
November 2, 2003
The Belgravia Dispatch posts a fisking, of sorts, on Maureen Dowd's latest column (via Instapundit): But here's the point. Bush, for a good while now--including back during his September speech to the United Nations--has increasingly made reference, not only to terrorists opposing the U.S. in Iraq, but also regime "holdouts." Put differently, he's been more frank about the somewhat variegated nature of the opposition in Iraq recently. So my concerns at least, as someone who has followed the issue pretty closely, have been allayed somewhat recently. But then MaDo comes in and ignores all the evidence to the contrary to facilitate her slanted, anti-Bush op-ed writing process. Gregory Djerejian then provides the specifics on various Bush speeches where he specifically speaks about the difference between terrorists in Iraq, who mostly come from somewhere else, and regime holdouts like the Saddam Fedayeen and ex-military officers. Djerejian lumps Dowd in with Stephen...
I don't know what breakfast cereal Thomas Friedman's been eating lately, but the man is on fire, this time asking if Europe has thrown in the towel, "Europe" mostly meaning France and Germany: At the Madrid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged zero new dollars. The bottom line is clear: Saudi Arabia cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France. Ah, you say, that’s unfair. Germany and France opposed the war, so why should they pay more than their share of the paltry EU contribution? Actually, it’s not unfair, when you remember that before the war France and Germany were obsessed with the lifting of UN sanctions on Saddam’s regime — in the name of easing the suffering of the Iraqi people. Friedman sheds quite a bit of light on the disconnect between the...
I normally like to finish on an up note, but that's not possible when you read something like this, which happened in North Carolina but involves a Minnesota teen: When Nolan Myers saw somebody was in need he was always willing to lend a helping hand, his family and friends said. ... He and three friends came upon the accident and stopped to be good samaritans. As Myers, 18, of Carver, Minn., reached one of the injured motorists, the driver of a speeding van plowed into the vehicles and the bystanders, killing five people, including Myers. A sixth person died en route to the hospital, authorities said. You may ask how someone driving by an accident could kill six people standing by the site. Take three guesses: The driver of the van, Larry Robert Veeder, 32, was charged Sunday with driving while impaired and with six counts of involuntary manslaughter,...
November 3, 2003
A group of centrist, concerned Democrats have published a manifesto that attempts to fight the McGovern tilt amongst the Presidential candidates: Last week, an impressive group of centrist Democratic foreign policy thinkers released a thoughtful document urging the party to adopt a "progressive internationalism" built around a strong defense, free trade and American leadership through international alliances "to shape a world in which the values of liberal democracy increasingly hold sway." ... Signed by prominent party thinkers like Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, and Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, the paper updates for a new century the vision advanced by Democratic presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. In that tradition, the authors envision an America that expands its own security by working with allies to encourage the spread of trade and freedom around the globe — but defends its interests with...
Another Democrat appears to be poised to defect in a major election, this time in the Louisiana gubernatorial race: Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, crossed party lines Monday to endorse Republican Bobby Jindal in the Nov. 15 runoff election for governor. Jindal faces Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco in the election. Perhaps the Democrats should call in the UN -- 2004 is looking more like a quagmire every day. But this news, combined with the Zell Miller bombshell a few days back, and the sudden retirement announcement of Bob Graham in Florida, and it's becoming clear that the Democrats are losing the South. Despite their recent decision to abandon gun control, the South isn't likely to trust that Dem policy to be permanent, and the screechiness of the anti-war themes at the Presidential debates may play well in Hollywood and San Francisco, but among the NASCAR dads and the Confederate flag...
November 4, 2003
... and I completely agree with Theresa Heinz Kerry: Heinz Kerry said debates have become about scoring a punch with quick soundbites. "It's just silly," she said. "I think those debates are really unproductive and they made it hard for all of them to (get their message across)." In fact, I would call them exceedingly silly, made so by live audiences who ooh, aah, gasp, titter, and applaud the most banal and trite comebacks. These debates embody the vacuity of modern hight-tech media sound bite-ism. The formats do not allow for thoughtful policy discourse, and in fact are designed to eliminate any hope of that. They are entertainment, at least in theory, a type of gladiator arena where the fight is not so much between the gladiators themselves as it is between the audience members to stay awake long enough to punctuate their champions' verbal jabs with the appropriate sound...
If intramural sports exist to build character for young adults, then one of the best success stories can be found in Nate Haasis, a Springfield, IL high-school quarterback: Nate Haasis dropped back for one more pass as the clock wound down on his high school football career. But this one was different: As he threw a 37-yard completion, his opponents just stood around and watched. With that, Haasis became the new all-time passing champion of the Central State Eight Conference, with a record 5,006 yards. But it turns out the two opposing coaches in the Oct. 25 game orchestrated the play to ensure Haasis' place in history. And now the 17-year-old senior wants to nullify the pass and give back the record in a dispute that has roiled this football-crazed city and led to a debate over honesty and fair play. Some in the community have made the coaches out...
November 5, 2003
The Democrat position in the South continued to erode, as the Republicans gained two governorships in elections yesterday: With a presidential campaign only months away, Republicans picked up two governorships in the South, ousting Mississippi's Democratic incumbent and seizing Kentucky's top job for the first time in 32 years. GOP Washington lobbyist Haley Barbour unseated one-term Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, while in Kentucky, three-term Republican Rep. Ernie Fletcher defeated Democratic Attorney General Ben Chandler. In an echo of the California recall, neither election was as close as pre-election polls indicated, especially in Mississippi, where newspapers had the race as a dead heat; Haley Barbour wound up winning by eight percentage points, far larger than the margin of error in the polls. Fletcher won by 10 points. Mississippi Democrats criticized Barbour for his connections and years spent in Washington as Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and other...
As expected, Barbra Streisand leaps to the defense of her husband and his movie: I am deeply disappointed that CBS, the network that in 1964 gave me complete artistic control in creating television specials, now caved in to right wing Republican pressure to cancel the network broadcast of the movie The Reagans. (And I say MOVIE - because this is NOT a documentary - it's a television drama.) She has a point -- this is a movie, after all, not like Michael Moore's supposed documentaries, although I doubt she'd hesitate to defend his intellectually dishonest works. All crying aside, the movie will still be broadcast, just on a different Viacom outlet. However, this part of her argument made my eyes roll back into my head: I don't believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this. Let's see ... it wasn't more than a few years...
Over the past few days, I have observed a fascinating phenomenon: my post on Howard Dean and his outreach to people who have a Confederate flag on their trucks gets over 10 hits an hour from various search engines, notably Google. Despite the fact that I post regularly on political topics and the War on Terror, this is by far and away the most-requested post from search engines. Granted that this is not a scientific sample, and the Internet is not necessarily representative of the nation as a whole (and some of these searches are originating internationally), but it appears that Dean's comments have inflamed a large number of people who are looking for something on the Internet. No one has posted any comments on my original post, so I can only guess as to what it specifically means, but in general, those comments have resonated to a greater degree...
My talented and very good-looking friend, Haddayr Copley-Woods, has a new column in the Minnesota Women's Press regarding society's obsession with weight: As a feminist, I am ambivalent about having lost weight at all. Fat is a feminist issue, and although my weight loss was well within the scientific standard for my height and frame, I feel in a way as if I have betrayed the sisterhood. We should love ourselves for who we are, I tell myself, and people should love us for what’s inside. We should not be afraid to take up space. Also, I used to look a little tougher. Quit laughing. I said “a little.” Make sure you read the whole thing, and check out her previous columns as well. Haddayr always delivers an intelligent and entertaining column, I suppose even when we disagree, although so far that hasn't happened....
Nothing that has happened in this tempest in a teacup is scarier than the DNC's statement. This isn't a fringe group, for crying out loud,
these people want to run our government! Either they're about to drive off a cliff in the next year, or centrist Democrats need to stage a palace coup and eject Terry McAuliffe. They have become delusional in their bitterness.
Howard Dean, a man reportedly so intelligent that he is allowed to prescribe medication for people, needs something for his chronic foot-in-mouth disease: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told a Tallahassee audience today that southerners have to quit basing their votes on "race, guns, God and gays." Is Dean trying to lose the nomination? He traveled all the way to Tennessee just to tell Southerners to their faces that they're idiots who only vote on the basis of bigotry, religious fanaticism, and homicidal rage. Oh, and please stop doing that. What's next on the Dean itinerary -- a stop at the Bar Association to tell a few bad lawyer jokes, followed by an appearance at the NEA to tell the teachers that they should learn how to read first before trying to teach kids? It's one thing to tell voters what they need to hear (for instance, on entitlements) when...
November 6, 2003
George Will writes an excellent column in today's Washington Post, one of three at least nominally about Howard Dean, but Will expands his review to the entire Democratic field of candidates: For Dean and Deanites, the idea of courting the Confederate-flag-and-pickups cohort gives them the frisson of walking on the wild side, the tingle of keeping bad company, like a professor in a biker bar. But Dean's statement, which dripped a kind of regional disdain, was a clumsy attempt to make a sensible point: Disdain no voters. The other candidates, instead of getting past the clumsiness (a Dean trademark), jumped all over Howard Dean to prove their own diversity chops, missing the point entirely. Dean sees that the South is about to depart from the Democrats for a generation, in part because the same disdain that dripped from Dean's statement has been part of the radical Left since the Civil...
It didn't take long for the left to spin the CBS decision to cancel the "Reagans" miniseries and shift it to Showtime instead. Now we are about to be bombarded with accusations that right-wing nutbars are insisting that Ronald Reagan be portrayed as a saint. Consider this from Timothy Noah in Slate: It isn't especially troubling that CBS would bow to angry protesters in canceling The Reagans, given that the miniseries itself, if at all typical of the genre, is likely a piece of hackwork. (Those who live by popular tastes, die by popular tastes.) But it is troubling that the public, or at least a highly influential segment of it, has apparently ruled any criticism of President Reagan out of bounds. When did the Gipper become St. Ronald? The answer is, of course, that he didn't, and no one is insisting that he was. What generated the vehement protests...
... at least amongst Democrats, as productivity continues to rise and jobless claims fell to their lowest rate in almost 3 years: Productivity — the amount an employee produces per hour of work — grew at an annual rate of 8.1 percent in the July-to-September quarter, the fastest pace since the first quarter of 2002. That was up from a 7 percent clip in the second quarter, the department reported. ... In a second report, new applications for jobless benefits last week plummeted by a seasonally adjusted 43,000 to 348,000. That marked the lowest level since the week ending Jan. 20, 2001, and was much better than the 380,000 level that economists forecast. The four-week moving average of new claims, which smooths out weekly fluctuations, dropped to 380,000 last week, the best showing since the week ending March 10, 2001. So now that the economy and the job market are...
November 7, 2003
Jesse Jackson runs off at the mouth again: Rev. Jesse Jackson on Friday said the U.S. occupation of Iraq was a "quagmire" similar to that seen in Vietnam and that the United States must form alliances through the United Nations if it is to withdraw from the country peacefully. ... While the United States is viewed as an occupying force, the United Nations could be seen as a liberating force, he said, adding that "the key to that is to really appeal to China, to France and to Germany to come in as partners under the umbrella of the U.N." Once again, we get the tired recitation of who needs to approve our foreign policy before the US can take any action in its own interest. This is the first time I've heard China trotted out; as far as I know, China wasn't threatening to veto the 17th resolution. France...
It loks like the "clubby" and "bipartisan" atmosphere of the House Appropriations Subcommittee may be a thing of the past -- and the winners will be American taxpayers: Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), who chairs the subcommittee that controls spending on education, health and jobs programs, recently stunned Democrats by announcing plans to reject every "earmarked" project they are seeking in the final, compromise version of the bill, which funds the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor. His reason: When the House passed the bill on July 10, all 198 Democrats present voted against it, several of them saying it shortchanged education programs. The bill passed, 215 to 208. So what happened was that the subcommittee loaded up the bill with both Republican and Democratic pork, and then the Democrats stiffed the Republicans when it came to voting on the bill in the House, including (apparently) Democrats who...
The Washington Post sends out a clear warning signal about the effects of radical gerrymandering on democratic processes: VIRGINIANS CAN FLATTER themselves that they held an election this week, and in some technical sense they did. Votes were cast, and by day's end candidates had won state offices. Yet there was one glaring problem, which should gnaw at everyone who left the polls with a cheery "I Voted" sticker: Most of the legislative races were hardly more competitive than elections in the old Soviet Union. And just as it is in non-democratic societies, this absence of meaningful competition was the product of deliberate manipulation -- in this case the gerrymandering of legislative districts by the politicians who then run for reelection from those districts. Most results were known before a single vote was cast. This problem occurs more frequently than ever in more and more states, and why this is...
Jon at QandO sheds a little light on the "bleak" job recovery progress. Job recovery to a 6.0% unemployment rate from past recessions took 57 months after the 1982 recession and 41 months after the 1991 recession. Recovery time for this recession? 23 months. Now, compare our previous post-recessionary periods with our current post-recessionary period and try to figure out why this unemployment rate is being called unusually bad. Oh. Right. Elections. My bad. When Jon observes, Jon gets it right. Check out the entire blog, if you appreciate rational and fact-based argument. (Hell, check it out even if you don't.)...
I know we're in a jobless recovery, because all of those truth-tellers like Al Sharpton keep telling us so, but shouldn't the primary characteristic of a jobless recovery be one that doesn't create jobs? The economy has created nearly 300,000 new jobs in the past three months after a half-year drought, pushing unemployment down to 6 percent in October and leaving little doubt that the jobs market is bouncing back. The Labor Department reported Friday that payrolls grew by 126,000 last month, many more than economists had predicted. That followed a revised 125,000 new jobs in September, more than double what initially was reported. U.S. companies added 35,000 to their payrolls in August. 250,000 jobs added in the last two months. At that rate, we'll add 1.75 million jobs by Election Day next year. We aren't out of the woods economically, though: The new jobs added last month mostly were...
I know boxers tend to get a little slow in their old age, but this is ridiculous: The boxer who was the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone (news)'s "Rocky" films plans to file a lawsuit against the actor for illegally using his name to promote the films and other merchandise, attorneys said Friday. Chuck Wepner, 65, is seeking $15 million in damages from the right of publicity claim, said his attorney Anthony Mango. The suit will be filed next week in New Jersey State Court. Uh, Chuck ... Rocky first came out 27 years ago, pal. Why the delay? Mango said Wepner waited almost 28 years before filing the suit because he always expected Stallone to compensate him. "Stallone said there was going to be something in this for Chuck. But he was giving him shallow promises to placate him. Chuck took him as a man of his word, but then...
Okay, maybe this is a sign of the impending Apocalypse, but even the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has figured out that the economy is improving: For the second time in two weeks, the economy has delivered terrific news for President Bush -- and all Americans. The employment report released Friday shows that the nation's long jobless recovery has come to an end, and that the recovery's job-creating phase probably started last summer, earlier than analysts thought. Coupled with a strong report on gross domestic product released last week, the data suggest that the economy finally is picking up steam after two years of lackadaisical expansion. But, being the Star-Tribune, it simply cannot allow that Bush's economic policies may have been correct all along: More worrisome are the long-term consequences of the president's budget policies. Rather than offer temporary stimulus -- the solution prescribed by a broad spectrum of economists -- the White...
November 8, 2003
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit discusses an apparently common experience in media -- reporters who go into an interview with a predetermined agenda. I won't excerpt it as Glenn mostly uses an article by Roger Ebert to illustrate his point. Glenn relates this to interviews specifically, but I suspect that this phenomenon is more widespread in journalism. I would guess that reporters already know what their approach to a story will be before they ever write a word or spend an hour investigating. Read Glenn's post; it's very illuminating....
As if we needed another reason to dislike Michael Moore, try reading this letter (3rd item): Recently, a co-worker asked me if I had seen the movie Bowling for Columbine yet, I told her absolutely not! My answer surprised her, given the fact my son, Matthew, was one of the 13 murdered during the deadliest school shooting in our country's history. I explained to her that prior to the public release of the movie the families of the injured and dead were invited by Michael Moore to attend a preview screening. How thoughtful. Our family and others considered attending because we were genuinely interested in his message to the public regarding gun control and school violence. However, once we discovered he was going to charge us admission we refrained from doing so. It's laughable that Moore attempts to portray himself as an anti-establishment liberal who is the voice of the...
Today's Washington Post offers hope to those Republicans who believe that the Senate has allowed the Democrats a pain-free filibuster option for too long on federal judiciary nominees: A brewing rebellion by conservative activists has prompted Senate Republican leaders to plan to devote at least 30 straight hours of debate next week to their bid to confirm a handful of judicial nominees being blocked by Democrats. The Republicans are bringing in food and cots for the "Justice for Judges Marathon," scheduled for Wednesday night through Friday morning. It seems like they may be starting to take the filibusters seriously. No one has ever filibustered federal judiciary nominees before (with the exception of Abe Fortas' Supreme Court nomination in the sixties), and the Democrats have done it four times this session. But their obstructionism hasn't gotten a lot of play because the Republicans have allowed them to filibuster without actually doing...
November 9, 2003
John Edwards is increasingly irrelevant, except as a Quayle-like VP candidate, but that doesn't stop Demosophia from one of the best political skewerings I've heard this election cycle: He's the kind of guy who would try to make a horse out of parts from a zebra, a hippo, and a giraffe, and then blame the resulting bloody mess on the poor quality of the animals. The actual post is not too much longer than that -- go read and enjoy....
The continuous front-loading and jockeying of state primaries has led several states to cancel presidential primaries as a waste of time and money: Several states have moved to drop their presidential primaries next year, worried about costs in still-tight financial times and wondering if the political exercise would serve any purpose. Some say they can't afford the millions of dollars it costs to put on an election. Others say the decisions reflect the lopsided nature of modern primaries: The front-runner gets anointed by the media and campaign donors after the first few state primaries and the rest of the primaries are formalities. Quite frankly, it's well past time for Congress to take a hand in this process. What happens now is that presidential campaigns start up to eighteen months prior to the election, a lot of money and time gets spent, only to have candidates fall by the wayside early...
Continue reading "The System is Broken" »
This one is all over the blogosphere today, and I hesitated to link to it, but it's just too outrageous to ignore: Gun-toting police burst into a South Carolina high school, ordering students to lie down in hall ways as they searched for drugs. The commando-style raid has parents questioning the wisdom of police tactics. The raid occurred Wednesday at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, S.C. Surveillance video obtained by CBS Affiliate WCSC in Charleston shows the police waving their guns and searching lockers as students lie flat on their stomachs or sides. Police officers burst in on a bunch of high-school kids, waving automatic weapons around and acting much like you'd expect from takeover-style bank robbers, and for what? "We received reports from staff members and students that there was a lot of drug activity. Recently we busted a student for having over 300 plus prescription pills. The...
November 10, 2003
It didn't take long to indoctrinate Governor-elect Schwarzenegger into backstabbing, Sacramento style: The mystery began a month ago, when Lockyer revealed to a crowd of consultants, political scientists and journalists that he had broken ranks with the Democratic Party and voted for Schwarzenegger in the Oct. 7 recall election. Lockyer also seemed to trivialize allegations that Schwarzenegger mistreated and groped women over the span of three decades, dismissing the conduct as "frat boy" antics. But last week, Lockyer said in a news conference that the allegations aren't about to fade and deserve to be investigated — and he shared a few nuggets from a conversation with Schwarzenegger on the topic the day before. That infuriated Schwarzenegger's transition team, whose spokesman a few hours later accused Lockyer of betraying a confidence, in violation of attorney-client privilege. The battle escalated the next day. Lockyer told San Francisco radio station KGO that he...
Not a great shock: CNN is reporting that Senator John Kerry has fired the manager of his struggling campaign: Democratic candidate John Kerry fired his campaign manager Sunday night in an attempt shake up his beleaguered presidential bid, The Associated Press learned. ... [Jim] Jordan will be replaced by longtime Democratic operative Mary Beth Cahill. Cahill has worked for Emily's List, a lobbying group on behalf of women's political issues and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kerry was supposed to be the front runner, but as events unfolded, it appears that both Kerry and Howard Dean have been surprised by Dean's pole vault to the front of the pack, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor. I think Dean expected to be able to sit around #2 or #3 until the primaries, snipe at Kerry and maybe Lieberman from behind and keep expectations low, and then claim momentum from a...
Andrew Sullivan hits Maureen Dowd with two blasts today from his blog. I won't excerpt; just go read both, especially the second, where Andrew discovers the source of the "imminent" claim that's been obsessing Maureen of late....
The Clark campaign took another broadside from a former senior military commander: Gen. Tommy Franks, who retired after leading the first stage of this year's war against Iraq, says in a new report that Wesley Clark, another former general, would make a lousy president. "Absolutely not," said Franks, when asked if Clark, who recently joined the pack of presidential wannabes, would make a good commander-in-chief. This follows the comments previously made made by General Hugh Shelton, which alluded to integrity and character issues. That two former senior military peers would openly disparage General Clark's presidential campaign is unprecedented; in the military, normally great care is taken to support former comrades-in-arms, at least in terms of their leadership and their service. Nor is this the only odd thing about the Post story. He insinuates that his termination as commander during the Kosovo conflict was engineered by Secretary of Defense William Cohen...
November 11, 2003
CNN reportedly wrote and distributed questions for the Rock the Vote debate and required audience members to ask them, according to an LA Times report: CNN, which has marketed itself as an outlet for serious news, planted a question about computer preferences at last week's debate of the Democratic presidential candidates, according to the student who posed the query and on Monday wrote about it in an online forum of Brown University's Daily Herald. During the debate, cosponsored by the nonprofit Rock the Vote organization, Alexandra Trustman asked the candidates whether they preferred the PC or Mac format for their computers. Despite uncertainty about the relevance of the question, Trustman was told that she could not ask her own question: But when she arrived in Boston for the debate, she wrote, she was "handed a note card" with the question and told she couldn't ask her alternative "because it wasn't...
The turmoil in the Kerry campaign deepened as two key officials quit in protest over Jim Jordan's firing: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites)'s press secretary and deputy finance director quit Tuesday, adding to the bitter turmoil on Kerry's team after the dismissal of his campaign manager. Robert Gibbs, chief spokesman for the Massachusetts lawmaker, and deputy finance director Carl Chidlow quit in reaction to the firing of Jim Jordan, abruptly let go by Kerry Sunday night. Both expressed dissatisfaction with the campaign, according to officials. Kerry initiated the shake-up by firing Jordan, his campaign manager, to demonstrate that he intended to reverse the poor showing of his campaign against Howard Dean. Some Democrats feel that Kerry was the problem more than the people in his campaign, acting as if the nomination was his "entitlement". and allowing Dean's energy to blow him off of the stage. But...
November 12, 2003
Syl Jones, a writer I don't normally recommend, has a good column in today's Strib about the growing sense of uncivility in today's society: At twilight a few weeks ago, on I-394 East, I witnessed yet another sign of our impending demise as a species. A young man held a "Howard Dean for President" sign on an overpass, waving at the passing cars. Directly in front of me, a bull-necked idiot driving a Jeep Wagoneer leaned out of his window and violently thrust his middle finger in the air, causing a temporary loss of vehicle stability that put me and several other drivers at risk of injury. To say that some people are angry these days is an understatement. The streets are boiling with unhappy, impatient and selfish people just spoiling for a fight. Sometimes, it's hard not to give them one. Jones presents a new theory of Divalution; if...