Last Chance at Weblog Awards

Kevin at Wizbang has relented to the hue and cry from all of us who have been left off of the lists of finalists in the 2003 Weblog Awards (can you imagine? Four million blogs and I didn't make the cut?)-- he will create a new category, Most Egregious Omission.

I would hardly describe overlooking CQ as egregious; there's a lot of really good blogs on Kevin's list. But if you feel like arguing my case, you can leave a comment on Kevin's post and see if it makes a difference. If not, just tell your friends about Captain's Quarters. I tooted my own horn -- sort of -- but I also put in a good word for QandO and Twilight Cafe, who has a subtle holiday change to her logo, if you can spot it.

In other awards news, Kevin's dealing with some people who just can't handle an honest contest. What a shame. There's no dishonor in losing, folks, but there is dishonor in cheating. Too bad some people never grow up.

Kerry Gets Really F***ing Desperate

As Senator John Kerry sinks slowly in the Northeast -- maybe not even that slowly -- his desperation level rises and his class seems to be deserting him, as the New York Post reports (via Instapundit):

Struggling 2004 Democratic wannabe John Kerry fires an X-rated attack at President Bush over Iraq and uses the f-word - highly unusual language for a presidential contender - in a stunning new interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Sen. Kerry (Mass.) used the undeleted expletive to express his frustration and anger over how the Iraq issue has hurt him because he voted for the war resolution while Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has soared by opposing it.

"I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f - - - it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did," Kerry told the youth-oriented magazine.

Nice mouth, John -- kiss your wife with that? Talk about pandering to an audience! Bill Clinton only discusssed his underwear preferences; Kerry needs his mouth washed out. I could just see Kerry in a debate with George Bush:

KERRY: George, you're simply no f***ing good at diplomacy!

Or, perhaps, a President Kerry meeting the Queen of England:

KERRY: Hey, Queen! How the f*** are ya?

I've got a better idea -- why doesn't John Kerry go back home and grow the f*** up?

UPDATE: Power Line adds its comments about this disgraceful conduct. Let me be clear about this: I don't have "virgin ears", but I expect presidential candidates to behave publicly with decorum and respect. I don't need to hear them talking as though they were in a locker room or hanging out at the bar. If that's what John Kerry thinks will make voters support him, then we know something about his contempt for the electorate.

UPDATE 2: ScrappleFace tracked back to this post, although he didn't link to me anywhere on his blog.

Just A Spoonful of Cinnamon Helps The Sugar Go Away

A big thank you to reader Tom Scott of Anchorage, who referred me to an article in New Scientist magazine that explains newly-discovered benefits of cinnamon for diabetics:

Just half a teaspoon of cinnamon a day significantly reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics, a new study has found. The effect, which can be produced even by soaking a cinnamon stick your tea, could also benefit millions of non-diabetics who have blood sugar problem but are unaware of it.

Like a lot of interesting scientific discoveries, this one was found by accident, originally by the Human Nutrition Research Center, a project in the US Dept. of Agriculture. They even know the molecular mechanism involved:

The active ingredient in cinnamon turned out to be a water-soluble polyphenol compound called MHCP. In test tube experiments, MHCP mimics insulin, activates its receptor, and works synergistically with insulin in cells.

My wife was surprised to hear this, although she's not a big fan of cinnamon. She eats oatmeal every morning, and sometimes I do as well. I always dump a big heap of cinnamon on it, but she says she just likes it plain, with some fruit on top. Maybe the cinnamon sticks in the tea would be a good idea instead. We'll try working it into her diet and see how it works out. She's been having some trouble controlling her glucose levels recently. Hopefully, this will make a difference.

Thanks again, Tom!

Patterico's Pontifications

I received a nice e-mail from Patterico's Pontifications, a fellow Marauding Marsupial, letting me know that he enjoys Captain's Quarters and has blogrolled me, so I'm returning the favor. Make sure you take a look at Patterico's Pomtifications!

Yo, Al -- Ed & Pete Wanna Have a Word Wit' Ya

I heard about this editorial in yesterday's New York Post and it certainly tells a different story about the Patriot Act than our erstwhile Democratic presidential candidates, and a certain ex-Vice President as well. Ed Koch, former Democratic mayor of New York City, and Rep. Peter King (R) of New York wrote:

THE brutal attacks of 9/11 brought home to the American people what should have been clear to our nation's leaders years before that fateful day: We are at war with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their radical Islamic terrorist allies throughout the world and within our borders. It is a war that threatens our national survival. Yet, listening to an increasingly shrill chorus of political voices, Americans could almost conclude that the real threat to our country comes not from bin Laden and al Qaeda but John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act.

It seems like a wide gulf has appeared between reality and candidates such as:

* Wesley Clark: The Patriot Act has "essentially suspended habeas corpus."
* Howard Dean: The Patriot Act is "shameful" and "unconstitutional".
* Dick Gephardt pledges to fire John Ashcroft in his "first five minutes as president."
* John Kerry also pledges that "There will be no John Ashcroft trampling on the Bill of Rights" in a Kerry administration.

However, none of these candidates discuss specifically what they find so objectionable to the Patriot Act, other than Ashcroft's presence in utilizing it. The only one talking specifics is Al Gore, who isn't running for anything -- for now, at least. Gore specifies these sections of the Act as egregious violations of civil liberties:

Gore accused the president and his attorney general of "constant violations of civil liberties," "putting our country in grave and unnecessary danger" and "using the war against terrorism for partisan advantage." His attacks centered on three parts of the Patriot Act: Sec. 214, which allows federal agents to delay giving suspects notice after a search has been carried out; Sec. 215, which allows searches of medical, business and library records of suspected terrorists; and Sec. 218, which allows surveillance of cell phones and Internet communications.

King and Koch take Gore's arguments and shred them:

* The delayed notification in Sec. 213 was already the law in cases involving organized crime, narcotics and pornography. It makes common sense because it would be absurd to inform a suspected mobster or a terrorist during the course of an investigation that a listening device had been installed in his home or office.

* Sec. 215 - the much-feared "assault against librarians" - has not been used even once. Nonetheless, we strongly believe this is a weapon that must remain in the prosecutor's arsenal. There could well be cases, for instance, when it would be critical to learn whether a suspected terrorist is reading books on explosives or the structural design of office buildings, landmark sites, bridges or tunnels. It should also be noted that library records were instrumental in tracking down such murderers as the Zodiac killer and the Unabomber.

* Sec. 218 merely gives federal agents authority to conduct surveillance of cell phones and the Internet to the same extent they can surveil rotary phones. It would be foolhardy to let terrorists use the technology of modern telecommunications without fear of being detected.

So really, the main thrust of the Patriot Act was to extend investigative tools already allowed into the realm of anti-terrorism investigations and new technologies. It is nowhere near as innovative as its critics have been claiming. Likely, this is why the Patriot Act overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress; in the Senate there was only one dissenting vote (Russ Feingold, D-WI).

Koch and King finish with this:

[W]e commend President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft for the superb job they have done over the past two years. Our liberties have been protected and our country has not been attacked. Unlike their critics, George W. Bush and John Ashcroft have had to face the hard choices and make the hard decisions. And they have made them well.

Well put.

Hello Kitty Communism

Oh, the Commissar will be most displeased with this display of decadence from CPUSA (via QandO). For instance, want to show your support for the proletariat? How about a Karl Marx Lunchbox?

Karl Marx wrote much food for thought. Here's a box to put your lunch in. Hungry for more? Click image.

No? A bit too childish? You could always buy a Commie Bear for your appropriately socialistic sweetheart:

Commie bear! It's the Communist Party USA logo on a teddy bear. Click image to shop for a variety of items sporting the CPUSA gear - hammer - sickle logo.

Have they figured out that they've lost the war, and now they're just cashing in on the wreckage of 90 years? Or are they so benighted that they have no idea how baldly ironic Communist merchandising rights are?

(Note: I would have posted the images of the merchandise here, but even though I would have appreciated the delicious irony of being sued by the Communist Party over property rights, I decided not to expose myself to the potential hassle.)

Another Argument for School Vouchers

I am not much of a fan of lawsuits. I tend to think that civil litigation has morphed into a version of Legal Lottery in too many cases, where people wildly exaggerate their damages in order to redistribute wealth, rather than recover reasonable damages. News stories about lawsuits raise my suspicion, for two reasons. First, I look at whether the alleged action actually caused damage and to what extent; second, why does a particular lawsuit get press coverage? In this case, the suit itself has some legal curiousity, but I suspect that the depth of reporting is intended to cast doubt on the idea of school vouchers. Otherwise, I'm not sure why this educational malpractice lawsuit, which has dubious odds of succeeding, would get so much attention from the Star Tribune:

But when one mom discovered a couple of years ago that her fifth-grade daughter at the school was doing math and reading at a third-grade level, she apparently thought the school wasn't doing its job.

Anna Bronson sued the school recently, claiming its "pedagogical negligence" was responsible for her daughter's inadequate progress. She is claiming breach of contract and seeking more than $33,000, saying she had to spend "considerable monies" on tutoring to bring her daughter up to grade level.

A good deal of the article details the "unconventional education" that the City of Lake Waldorf School provides, such as knitting, clowining, and fairy tales. Quite frankly, I think I'd find that a bit suspect. I don't know if I'd sue the school, however -- I'd be more likely to pull my child out and enroll her elsewhere if I felt the school was incompetent. If they were covering it up, then maybe. The amount in question seems reasonable for covering tuition paid and tutoring costs and other incidentals, like lost work time.

But the coverage bothers me. This should be an "Oddly Enough" story from Reuters, not 16 paragraphs in Saturday's edition. The Star Tribune has made no secret of its opposition to school vouchers, and I suspect that covering this story allows them to make the case later on that private school curricula are strange, unusual, and meet no reasonable standards.

However, this case proves the value of injecting competition into education. First, unusual though it may be, the City of Lakes Waldorf curriculum must have had some appeal to these parents. Second, the parents have the ultimate control; if the school isn't performing, take your child out and go elsewhere. How easy is it to do that in the public school system? A good friend recently found that out when he tried to transfer his son from one high school to another after becoming dissatisfied with the approach the administration took. He now has to send his son to a city over 30 miles away because the district wouldn't allow the transfer.

In this case, the parents are suing the private school, essentially for malpractice. Do you think that any such suit would survive, or could even be filed, against a public school?

But parents shelling out cash for a private education may have contract expectations, they said.

"When a parent sends a child to a private school, it does constitute a a contract," argues attorney Phil Villaume, who teaches education law at St. Thomas University.

So parents can only take positive action against a failing school is when the parents have a contractual relationship with the school. That relationship doesn't exist between parents and public schools, and that's the main reason why parents feel so powerless when dealing with the educational monopoly.

And of course, the obvious question: what do you suppose is the difference in the rate of educational malpractice between public schools and private schools? I suspect that we can read the test scores and make that determination quite easily.

Mutual Admiration Societies

I got a nice e-mail from the California Yankee for adding him to the blogroll, an act of politeness that I haven't yet seen, or even actually performed myself (blush blush). He even posted a nice comment on his blog today. Make sure you get a chance to take a good look at the California Yankee. (Maybe I should call myself the Minnesota Dodger ... yeah, I know, that's not the reference, but I sure do miss Dodger Stadium.)

It Must Be Official: Even the Strib Printed It

A new AP-Ipsos poll has Bush's numbers rebounding, significantly enough that even the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is carrying the report:

People are increasingly comfortable about job security for themselves and for those they know -- 44 percent now, compared with 35 percent in early October.

And more approve of the way Bush is handling the economy -- 50 percent compared with 45 percent earlier, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs. Support for his handling of other domestic issues such as education, health care and the economy, at 47 percent, has not shifted significantly.

However, the Strib being the Strib, it just can't print this story without this editorializing in the middle of it:

The economy is showing mixed signs of recovery: rapid growth that surprised most economists last quarter, indications the job market could be turning around, a rebound in the stock market over the past six months. But the nation has lost 2.3 million jobs, the turnaround in employment is uncertain and states hard hit by revenue losses are making cuts.

Allow me to make a few points here.

Indications that the job market could be turning around -- it's added over 300,000 jobs in the last quarter, and in fact has already turned around and is heading in the right direction. Unemployment dropped to 5.9%, according to an announcement today from the BLS. That, by the way, is the lowest rate in eight months. 865,000 jobs have been added since June But, uh, maybe it's turning around. Uh-huh.

The turnaround in employment is uncertain - A bit redundant, don't you think? But again, had the Strib bothered to read the report, they would have found that

the share of private industries adding jobs last month rose to 54.7 percent, which analysts said was evidence of the broadly based nature of the labor market gains.

So it's a broad-based uncertainty? Or is it just uncertain in a narrow way?

[S]tates hard hit by revenue losses are making cuts - That's because states spent like drunken sailors during the 90's bubble. Besides, it all depends on the definition of cuts. Here in Minnesota, it's defined as not getting the rate of increase we wanted. When Governor Pawlenty submitted his first budget, he was attacked for cutting the budget heartlessly; Pawlenty had to hold news conferences to get the press to report that his budget actually grew from the previous fiscal year. He had just held the increase to 4%:

The budget will increase state spending by one billion dollars, 3.8 percent, over the last biennium and is the largest budget in state history.

At the time, from the Strib's coverage, you would have thought Pawlenty to be Ebenezer Scrooge. They're still referring to Pawlenty's budget "cuts", in typical hysterical mode:

The wail in the vicinity of the State Capitol at midday Wednesday might have been the monthly emergency siren test. Then again, it could have been the sound of air being let out of hopes that the rebounding economy would yield enough state tax revenue to undo the most egregious cuts made by the 2003 Legislature.

As usual, the Strib editorializes throughout the news section. Ho hum.

Zero Tolerance = Zero Sense

Another bit of zero-tolerance nonsense, this time at a Louisiana high school:

A student expelled from Parkway High for a year for having Advil, an over-the-counter pain reliever, will not be allowed to return to the school.

Kelly Herpin and daughter Amanda Stiles, a sophomore, appealed the one-year expulsion to a Bossier Parish School Board committee Thursday night, spending about 10 minutes with the board's administrative committee behind closed doors. The committee and the full board voted unanimously to uphold an administrative decision that Stiles be expelled to the alternative school.

I understand the necessity of rules regarding medications for students on school grounds. The schools want to dispense the medications themselves so that they are not passed around. This makes perfect sense for prescription medication; it makes less sense for over-the-counter medication like Advil, which do not easily lend themselves to abuse. Even so, rules are rules, and Ms. Stiles should have followed them.

That being said, expelling an otherwise "average" student in discipline issues over having some Advil in her purse is a wild overreaction. Expelling students for possession of marijuana or other illegal substances may be a reasonable action to take. A week's detention, or even an in-school suspension, should have been more than sufficient. Why do school boards do this? Because they pass silly zero-tolerance rules that exempt them from rational thought, that's why.

Christopher Hitchens Scolds the Anti-War Left

Christopher Hitchens, a liberal in the classic sense, has been a supporter of the war on terror and the Iraq war all along. As he has done during the run-up and aftermath of the war, Hitchens takes the left to task for its obtuseness:

The truly annoying thing that I find when I am arguing with opponents of the regime-change policy in Iraq is their dogged literal-mindedness. "Your side said that coalition troops would be greeted with 'sweets and flowers!' " Well, I have seen them with my own eyes being ecstatically welcomed in several places. "But were there actual sweets and flowers?"

Literal interpretations of predictions seem to be a one-way street, as Hitchens notes in his closing:

There were predictions made by the peaceniks, too, that haven't come literally true, or true at all. There has been no refugee exodus, for example, of the kind they promised. No humanitarian meltdown, either. No mass civilian casualties. All of these things would of course come to pass, and right away, if the Iraqi "resistance" succeeded in sabotaging the coalition presence. But I refuse to believe that any antiwar person is so keen on vindication as to wish for anything like that.

Hitchens gives a couple of other instances of hair-splitting like these, and then delves into the meaning of the Iraq-North Korea connection that surfaced after American intelligence started reviewing computers captured in the Iraq war:

Now downloaded hard drives from Iraqi government computers, plus interviews with Iraq officials and scientists, have established that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy Rodong missiles from Pyongyang and was hoping to purchase the rights to the North Korean production line. The significance of this is obvious enough: The Rodong missile has a range much greater than that prohibited to Iraq by the U.N. resolutions. It also makes sense: North Korea is bankrupt and starving and exports only weapons and drugs while Saddam's Iraq had plenty of spare off-the-record cash in American dollars.

This clearly shows that Saddam Hussein had no intention of complying with UNSC resolutions and was busily violating them right up to the time we invaded. While his previous SCUD system could reach Israel, as we all saw in 1991, the Rodong would be able to reach American military bases throughout Asia Minor. Clearly, had we all sat on our hands and waited for the "inspections" regime to complete its task -- completion never being defined -- Saddam would have acquired missiles with enough range to seriously threaten our ability to contain him. Instead of 300 battle casualties and another 200 post-combat casualties, the first salvos of the war that would have inevitably followed would have likely killed several times that number, and possibly large parts of Israel at the same time, even if they were only armed with conventional warheads.

That difference is one of the very good reasons that we needed to resolve the considerable and gathering threat on our presence in the Middle East in order to fully prosecute the war on terror, even if you discount everything you read in the Feith memo. Waiting around for Saddam to completely rearm himself would have led to a repeat of 1939-41 Europe. Appeasing only emboldens dictators, and ignoring repeated treaty violations in order to have the madmen throw the first punch risks getting yourself knocked out -- especially with the chemical and biological weapons that Saddam had and used in the past. (Thanks to Hugh Hewitt.)

Power Line's Favorite Democrat

The Big Trunk at Power Line continues his series on Zell Miller, Power Line's favorite Democrat (and mine, too, as I keep reading these posts). Today he links to a speech Miller gave at an awards ceremony a few weeks ago, and quotes extensively. After reading some of the speech, I am regretting Senator Miller's decision to retire from politics at the end of his term. Democrat or Republican, our country needs people like Zell Miller involved:

"As Americans, as lovers of freedom, we must not allow that to happen. We owe it to those who bore the burden and paid the price before us, and we also owe it to those who will come after us. I believe that the next five years will determine the kind of country that my four grandchildren and four great grandchildren are going to live in, and I want a commander in chief who is a stand-up kind of person. I want the kind of commander-in-chief leading this country who can make a decision and who does not suffer from paralysis analysis. I want a commander in chief that can look out at the American people and say about Iraq, 'We're not leaving,' and you know he means it.

"God bless President Bush. God bless America. And thank you."

Senator Miller scolds those who do not understand that freedom in this world comes at a price, and the price gets steeper the longer you put off paying it:

"Someone once said that in the long course of world history, freedom has died in many ways. Freedom has died on the battlefield, freedom has died because of ignorance and greed, but the most ignoble death of all is when freedom dies in its sleep."

Don't put off reading this, if only to remember that there are patriots to be found in both parties, and that courage in defense of freedom and liberty is not dead, no matter how passé it may be thought in certain circles. Go through Power Line's archives and read more about Zell Miller. I'm thinking about writing him this weekend and asking him not to retire, but to run for one more term, even as a Democrat. He'd be one I would be delighted to support, although he represents another state.

More Bad News about Dru

Evidence of Alfonso Rodriguez' involvement in the Dru Sjodin case has, unfortunately, taken a grim turn:

Bloodstains matching Dru Sjodin's blood type were found in the car of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., the repeat sex offender charged with abducting her outside a Grand Forks mall, sources close to the investigation said Thursday.

That evidence is perhaps the most revealing detail in the case that North Dakota authorities are building against the 50-year-old Rodriguez, who has been charged with kidnapping in the University of North Dakota student's disappearance two weeks ago. Detectives have remained tight-lipped about their investigation, even having many of the facts in court records sealed from public view.

A blood type match is not the same as a DNA analysis; that will take much longer to determine. However, this explains why the police were eager to arrest Rodriguez.

I Am Angry

I'm not just angry; I am furious, disgusted, outraged, and most of all, saddened.

For the many people who are following the Dru Sjodin case, the more we find out about the suspect at the center of this controversy, the worse it gets. Today, in the Star Tribune, we get this lovely look back at Alfonso Rodriguez' early career:

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. got in and Iverson drove away. What happened next on that October 1974 day in Crookston was Rodriguez's first of several known attacks on women, according to court documents that lay out his history of abuse, sexual assaults and rapes committed between stays in prison. ...

Records on file in Polk County show that Rodriguez ordered Iverson to drive, then turned off the car when they stopped at a driveway. He grabbed her by the neck and forced her back into the car when she tried to escape. He demanded sex. She refused but submitted to sexual contact.

He later confessed to attempted aggravated rape and was released on $1,500 bail. He raped his second victim one month later.

In 1974, you have a man who sexually assaults a young woman, gets released on bail that amounts to less than the price of a VW at the time, and then rapes another young woman while out on bail. And yet he was out of prison after those two violent crimes in time to sexually assault and attempt to kidnap a Crookston woman in 1980.

What the hell was wrong with us that we would ever let this man out of prison? Three times he had sexually assaulted women, twice by kidnaping or attempting to kidnap them, and those are just the ones we know about. When he got released after 23 years in prison, the last 18 refusing psychiatric care, the Level 3 sex offender scored astronomically high on a pre-release evaluation (indicating a >80% chance of reoffending), and the state decided not to seek a civil commitment based on his age and his lack of "acting out sexually", even though one could presume that he had little opportunity to kidnap young women while in prison.

Today I had a conversation with an employee of mine who was attacked and strangled in her apartment by a deranged neighbor a couple of months ago, only alive today because her boyfriend came home and knocked the assailant out with a baseball bat. His court date is coming up next week, and I asked her how she was doing. She said that she was nervous about facing him in court again, and she told me that the DA informed her that this defendant had been a known Level 2 sex offender at the time of the assault.

On Tuesday night, I listened to NPR on my way home from an Irish-language conversation group and the topic of the day was sexual assaults and the release of sex offenders. As I predicted earlier this week, one of the featured guests went on for quite a while about what women should do to minimize their risk of being assaulted; the second part of the show was taken up with a few released sex offenders calling in and discussing the difficulties of being released. One of the complaints (from another Level 2 offender, and echoed by the moderator of the discussion) was that the state wasn't paying enough money for post-release counseling.

So let me get this straight. If women get assaulted, it's because they weren't being careful enough. And if sex offenders reoffend, it's because we don't give them enough money and resources.

I have a better idea of what's causing sexual assaults and released offenders to be recidivist: sex offenders!

My employee should be able to have dinner in her apartment without a known Level 2 sex offender breaking in and strangling her. Dru Sjodin should be able to walk outside, talking on her cell phone, without being abducted and probably worse. Women should not have to feel like assaults are their own fault for not living their lives frightened enough, and we sure as hell don't need to be told that they're our fault for not providing enough counseling for the poor dears who commit these crimes. They know they have a problem -- why aren't they getting their own damn counseling?

I look at my beautiful 18-month-old granddaughter, who has so much spirit and joy at life, and I am saddened to think that soon, I will have to say to her, Sweetheart, let me explain something to you. You are developing into God's most beautiful creation: a young woman. That means you will need to live the rest of your life in fear. Stop smiling, honey. Don't make eye contact with anyone. Stop walking through parks and admiring the flowers and the trees, or someone will grab you by your beautiful strawberry-blonde hair and do things to you that are unspeakable. And if you're lucky enough to survive, we'll all tell you what you did wrong to deserve it.

Or, perhaps, we will start acting to protect ourselves and lock up these sexual predators for life, before they kill another Dru Sjodin. Before they come after your daughters. Before they destroy my granddaughter.

A note, somewhat off-topic: Deacon at Power Line is taking a few days off, but he mentions that he sometimes listens to NPR just to see how long he can stand it. I wonder if he was listening to this exchange Tuesday night and if he lasted any longer than I did. I think I made it about 15 minutes before I finally switched to WMNN.

UPDATE: I'm linking back to Venomous Kate's generous offer to allow some of us to ride the tail end of an Instalanche. That's one thing about being angry; you want a lot of people to know about it. But while you're at Electric Venom (if you haven't been there before), make sure to take a long look around -- it's a great site. I don't link to it often enough.

Lileks Wonders About Dean

Okay, okay, I know that James Lileks isn't taking December off, no matter how much I libel him in verse. He doesn't have to keep proving it with excellent essays like this one on Howard Dean:

So it was an interesting moment on MSNBC's "Hardball" when Chris Matthews asked Gov. Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in the United States or by the World Court. For a presidential candidate, this is not a difficult question. It requires no long cogitation, no disquisitions about the role of international law from the Wilsonian perspective. It doesn't require any second-guessing. You say that bin Laden attacked America, and he deserves to be tried there by Americans.

That's what you say if you want to be president of the United States, anyway.

But as we all know, that's not what Governor Dean said, in his interview that included his contention that he would smash corporations that are doing no wrong and that a decade-dead political entity (The Soviet Union) is alive and well outside of the Politburo Diktat. Dean asserted -- twice -- that it made no material difference to Dean whether a captured bin Laden would be tried in America or in a world court, which Lileks points out is chaired by China.

In other words, union-supported Howard Dean doesn't want America to outsource customer-service jobs to India, but he has no problem outsourcing our justice jobs to China. Riiiiiiiight.

Lileks wonders what has become of the Democratic party when these responses seem mainstream:

What prompted this opinion? It's one thing to say that terrorists should be hunted down and cuffed, read their Miranda rights and put on trial -- as opposed to, say, having gigantic mountain-shearing bombs dropped on their mountainous headquarters. It's another thing to say that the World Court should have jurisdiction over the crimes of Sept. 11. And it's another thing entirely to say that it's six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Has ritual deferment to all manifestations of the "international community" become a requirement for a Democrat nowadays?

No, James, it's not merely a requirement; it's a tenet of faith, a dogma that must never be questioned. Thanks for a great column. (via Hugh Hewitt)

Fraters Libertas Weighs In on the "Liberal Radio Network"

Now that the Al Gore/Al Franken Liberal Radio Network has new investors with some experience in the entertainment world, the buzz has increased on a possible launch, including the news that the consortium may purchase five radio stations for their programming. The guys over at Fraters Libertas do an excellent job of deconstructing the various reports, referencing a Byron York column at NRO, but applying some local knowledge of the people involved:

Liberal radio hasn't been entertaining for a non partisan audience. But it's hard to appreciate Walsh's insight through his condescension. Notice how he's subtly blaming the listeners for not appreciating the substance of the “progressive side,” because it has an “air of education to it.” And in their minds that doesn't work with the talk radio crowd. (Which is why all I want for Christmas is a drool cup, for when I'm listening to the education-free mumblings of Prager, Medved, Hewitt, et al.).

It's this very contempt for the audience that threatens to doom their efforts to nothing more than an NPR sized niche audience.

Read through the entire piece; it's both enlightening and entertaining. Of course, having endorsed the guys at FL, I suspect that Hugh may make that mysterious third task much more difficult now ...

We're So Desperate We Make Stuff Up

Mike Allen at the Washington Post wrote an article questioning Bush's integrity, but wound up damaging his own (via Instapundit):

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey. ... But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.

...

Some of the reporters left behind at Crawford Middle School, where they work when Bush is staying at his Texas ranch, felt they had been deceived by White House accounts of what Bush would be doing on Thanksgiving. Correspondent Mark Knoller said Sunday on "CBS Evening News" that the misleading information and deception were understandable, but that he had been "filing radio reports that amounted to fiction."

Yes, boo hoo, we've already heard about how reporters are so hurt that they weren't included in a top-secret mission. But what about that turkey (not Mark Knoller, but the actual turkey)? The obvious implication from this story is that Bush didn't serve any food to the troops, and all he did was hold the bird for a few seconds to get the photo op, right?

Uh, yeah, Mike. Thanks for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you as you leave.

UPDATE: Dean Esmay has a similar post up, with lots of funny comments. Read them -- they're pretty entertaining! Also, I'm pinging this back to Electric Venom's LotD for P -- Post Pops Off, Proves Paper's Prejudice!

Gephardt Campaign Gets A Little Desperate

I've heard of playing hardball, but Gephardt's staff seems to be trying to win an award for it:

A top aide to Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri threatened political retaliation this week against union leaders in the home state of the Democratic presidential candidate if they aided Howard Dean, underscoring growing tensions in the 2004 race.

It's assumed that those groups who back the losing horse will lose some clout with the eventual winner; that much is true in any election, primary or general, presidential or local alderman race. Explicitly stating it is considered poor form. In this case, though, Gephardt's staff went even further, threatening to take specific legislative action to punish those who stray from the flock:

The letter said [Joyce] Aboussie also told the local union officials not to campaign for Dean in Missouri, which holds its primary on Feb. 3 and which Gephardt, as native son, is expected to win.

If the union leaders ignored the threat, the letter went on, Aboussie said she would gather signatures from state lawmakers seeking repeal of a collective bargaining right won 2 1/2 years ago by state employees.

Joyce Aboussie is Gephardt's national campaign vice chair, not just some precinct worker or even state-level functionary in his campaign. She explicitly told the unions that if they failed to support Gephardt over Dean, Gephardt would seek to roll back union protections. Whether or not that's a good idea, it's very disturbing that such a threat was made -- it certainly sounds like extortion to me.

Worse yet, it shows exactly how Democrats approach unions: by pandering and bribery. If Aboussie, at least, was a true believer in unions, such legislation would be anathema to her. One would assume that Aboussie closely reflects Gephardt's political views, or else she would not be his national campaign vice chair. Interestingly, Gephardt is reacting very reluctantly to this attempt at extortion:

Gephardt, who is running for president as a champion of organized labor, sought Wednesday to distance himself from the incident. Without denying that it occurred, aides to Gephardt said he did not condone the comments made by Joyce Aboussie, his national campaign vice chair, at a Monday meeting in St. Louis. The aides also said he was not aware of her statements until after the fact.

"The meeting was not authorized by Congressman Gephardt," said Kim Molstre, a campaign spokeswoman in Washington. "Joyce was not acting as a representative for him. He knew nothing about it."

Excuse me, but this simple, unadulterated crap. While this may not have been his idea or have been "authorized" by Gephardt, the obvious fact is that Aboussie does act as a representative for Gephardt in this campaign. That's the definition of a national campaign vice chair! Whether he knew about it before the meeting or not, he knows about it now; apparently he's not prepared to take action about it. The man who has always described himself as a champion of unionism is standing by a key aide who felt comfortable threatening legislative action to make unions unavilable to a large number of Missouri citizens.

Quite frankly, Dean's going to crucify him for this and deservedly so, unless he quickly fires Aboussie. In this case, the unions are right and they're trying to warn Gephardt of his own folly. Nixon stayed loyal to aides too long, and while this isn't Watergate, I'd say there's an argument that laws may have been broken here, and the more he sticks with Aboussie, that taint will stick with him.

UPDATE: I asked Eugene Volokh via e-mail if this constituted an extortion attempt in a criminal sense, and he was kind enough to respond that he wasn't sure, but he shared my misgivings. Check out the Volokh Conspiracy to see if he weighs in on the topic later on.

UPDATE 2: The Sophorist, who blogs from Missouri, also posted on this topic. One of his readers recommended this article for more background on Joyce Aboussie, and it is a fascinating, if lengthy, read.

New Diabetic Testing Technology Eliminates Blood Draws

This is outstanding news -- a new diabetes meter will be introduced in January which will eliminate the need for finger sticks and test strips, eliminated a major quality-of-life issue for diabetics. My wife, who has been diabetic for 40 years, told me about this a few minutes ago, and I found this incomplete site on the Internet:

The first TRULY Non-invasive Glucose Monitor.

* Pain Free
* Blood Free
* Strip Free

Easy to use, SugarTrac IX3000 is a glucose monitoring system that, with no discomfort and no sensation, uses light waves to measure glucose levels.

A one step process involves using a small, lightweight earpiece attached by a cord to a monitor. When the earpiece is simply placed on the earlobe, and the "TEST" button is pushed, the monitor screen displays the glucose result in 30 seconds or less... without blood or fluid of any kind.

Note that all links on this site are non-functional; the site will be made operational in January. However, the Fall 2003 edition of The Voice of the Diabetic, which my wife gets on tape, has this to say about the new meter:

In FDA Phase III clinicals, the device appeared acceptably accurate: 88 percent of standard (80 percent is required minimum accuracy), and the prototype has held up well in a hospital environment. ... Big news: LifeTrac intends to include speech capability in this meter. A company representative said the speech chip had already been chosen, and would be present in version 2 of the SugarTrac -- which would appear three to six months after the initial production. This machine will talk, they promise.

The speech function is very, very welcome (my wife is blind). Most meter manufacturers don't integrate voice capabilities into their meters; they rely on third-party technology to allow blind diabetics to self-test. This gets pretty expensive for everyone and never works very well. The First Mate's current meter system often has timing problems between the meter and the voice module. Beyond that, the issue of getting the blood properly on the strip will be eliminated by this system, which is another chronic issue for blind diabetics. Also, no more messy used blood strips to get all over the place!

Very exciting! We'll be looking for the meter next month, and we'll get the voice one later on and use the first as the "traveling" meter. (We do the same thing now.) I'll post later on as more news comes in.

And The Winner Is ... Me?

Hey, I won a contest! The Sophorist announced a little while ago that I won his latest photo-caption contest. Yay!! You can see the photo here, and the winning caption was:

"I'm NOT doing a Ross Perot imitation, dammit! You and you -- boost me up!"

The Sophorist was even kind enough to link back to my "epic" poem; aficianados of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series may detect a strong resemblance to Vogon poetry here ...

That Valerie Plame -- She Sure Knows How to Stay Concealed

This has been going around the blogosphere all day, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents, and then post a few links to other reactions. Here, from the original Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz, is the covert agent's current top-secret project:

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson has been quite protective of his wife, Valerie Plame, in the weeks since her cover as a CIA operative was blown. "My wife has made it very clear that -- she has authorized me to say this -- she would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press and she will not allow herself to be photographed," he declared in October on "Meet the Press."

Here's the woman who will not allow herself to be photographed in the Vanity Fair issue that went on sale today:

It's not that Plame has dropped out of sight. In October, as Vanity Fair notes, she was at the National Press Club -- wearing a "sharp cream pantsuit" -- while her husband received a truth-telling award. Wilson wept from the podium, saying, "If I could give you back your anonymity . . ." and then introduced Plame, who also teared up.

Plame also mingled unobtrusively last month at a party at the home of The Washington Post's Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn. But there has been an invisible bubble around her as reporters have respected the desire of "Jane Bond," as Wilson calls her, to remain in the Washington shadows.

Well, Lord knows, this is how covert operatives around the world keep their secret identities hidden -- by giving media interviews, attending parties at the home of one of the country's most influential journalists, and having splashy pictorials, Jackie-O style, in widely-read magazines. James Bond kept a lower profile than this, for Pete's sake. You can't tell me that the CIA would approve a splashy pictorial on one of its agents if they really were active and covert, as Wilson and Plame claim, despite Wilson's assertion that

"The pictures should not be able to identify her, or are not supposed to," Wilson said yesterday. "She's still not going to answer any questions and there will not be any pictures that compromise her." The reason, said Wilson, is that "she's still employed" by the CIA "and has obligations to her employer."

Nor is anyone else really buying Wilson's story any more. Slate's Timothy Noah took a week off from his weekly scheduled Bush-bashing to say this:

Chatterbox spares Plame Whopper status, possibly on grounds of misplaced gallantry. But Plame's extended striptease, enthusiastically barked by her husband, now has Chatterbox wondering how much of Wilson's story to believe. (It also has Chatterbox wondering when the couple will start renting themselves out for birthday parties.) Regardless of the merits, this photograph will surely give the Bush Justice Department whatever slim justification it seeks in dropping its Plamegate investigation.

Roger Simon wants a question answered now (via Instapundit):

Now that Instapundit and others have outed John C. Wilson and his spouse Valerie Plame as the media whores they are, posing in Vanity Fair of all places, we are back to square one with the real questions of this putative scandal...

Who sent John C. Wilson to Niger in the first place and why did he or she or they do it? Wilson, obviously, is no George Smiley--he's more of a "Smiley George." (The ex-ambassador himself admitted he was just going there to "drink tea" with various leaders to find out if they were selling "yellowcake" to Iraq... as if!)

Check out some of the comments on Roger's post, too; Glenn Reynolds notes that some fanatical Wilson supporters seem to be calling Roger a "chickendiplomat". It's odd that they consider a man who holds press conferences with a noose for a necktie and who shops his "covert" wife around for Vanity Fair pictorials to be more credible than British intelligence, but that's the lunacy of the Bush haters these days.

Jon at QandO gets the last word with this:

Do you get the impression that Wilson isn't really all that concerned about anonymity? Or that he's writing a book? You'd be right about the latter. And the former seems pretty obvious. That's not to say that something illegal/unethical didn't occur in outting Plame....but Wilson and Plame are acting a lot more like lottery winners than outted spies.

Mac Eye for the Windows Guy

I got this link from a friend of mine who apparently has heard one too many Mac jokes. She sent this to me today. I wonder if she's trying to tell me something.

I feel the need a latté and a manicure now, for some odd reason ...

QandO Firing on All Cylinders

I don't have a Blog of the Day type of category, but if I did, Jon at QandO would get the prize today. Check out his takes on the following:

* Washington, DC government offices are now installing dispensers for free condoms

* Jon gives the best explanation of rational libertarianism I've heard.

* The economy is expanding even faster than we thought -- it's looking like a boom.

* Jon doesn't believe that Hillary will run for president in '04. I'm not sure I agree, but he makes a good argument about her strategy of late.

If you haven't blogrolled QandO, be sure to do so now!

The Midnight Blog Court: An Epic Poem

As part of my trial for acceptance into the Society of the Minnesota Master of the Horse, the second task given by Hugh Hewitt was to write an epic poem, mentioning at least ten blogs, including that of the Lord High Commissioner himself, as well as taking swipes at FratersLibertas and the Elder, and one at James Lileks, too.

I decided to proceed, despite the inherent dangers of taking on so many veteran bloggers, by writing an epic poem based on the Gaelic poem Cúirt an Mheán-Oíche (The Midnight Court). This poem can be found in both English and Irish here, for those who want to see how poorly I satirize fine literature. The poem is a great example of an aisling, a dream-vision poem, and in fact is one of the classics in Irish literature.

For my purposes here, I took out most of the 1000 lines or so, the sex, the humor, and the talent, and what's left is below. Just click on the link below to read Cúirt-Blog an Mheán-Oíche, or the Midnight Blog-Court.

UPDATE: The Elder reacts: "If there were still any questions about the disastrous consequences of drinking Hugh's Kool Aid, they should be addressed by this "Epic" poem." Is that what I was drinking? No wonder ...

Also, Atomizer has a new action figure for sale, although what it has to do with Hugh Hewitt, I have no idea.

Cúirt Blog an Mheán-Oíche, or The Midnight Blog-Court
(with apologies to a long-dead Brian Merriman)

As I surfed the Blogosphere, wandering far and near
I spied a restful site ahead.
The Twilight Café, where I got drunk,
and dreamt this dream, where thoughts are thunk.

A dazzling court, with loud report,
My weary eyes and ears beheld.
“Lord High Commissioner Presides,
Hugh Hewitt,”
with other weblogs at his sides.

On his right, to my delight,
sat The Sophorist and Power Line,
The Volokhs too, and the RantingProf,
(but Lileks took December off).

But my hopes were cleft, for on his left,
were Gary Farber and Mickey Kaus,
Romanesko, and the Commissar’s site
(who sat left but leaned oddly right).

No friends behind did I find,
not DC, Jon, nor Brant,
But only the bailiffs, FratersLibertas,
with the Elder on the sidelines in a cast.

[oops – wrong epic poem! Apologies to Don McLean.]

I cried out, “What’s this about?
What crime has been accused?”
Lord Hewitt’s eyes flashed with rage,
“You write too little to fill a page!”

“If you start a site, you are cursed to write
Posts from dawn to midnight,
A roundup there and a blogroll here
Does not serve the blogosphere!

“Captain’s Quarters has new orders,
Your keyboard will know no rest,
These orders given you must obey:
Your postings must fill your day.”

“I have a job!” I began to sob,
“A family to support.
A constant blog, I cannot fund it,
Do you think that I am Instapundit?”

Gasps were heard at these fell words,
From friends and foes alike.
Hewitt intoned, “You have no shame
For mentioning the forbidden name!”

“You shall be cursed, in prose and verse,
Blogs will purge you from their rolls!
Your name is mud, it shall be last,
Lower than … FratersLibertas!!”

I flew awake, my hands aquake,
Had I escaped this fate?
I ran straight home and without delay
Began to post throughout the day!

Hoagland Crystallizes the Iraqi 'Insurgency'

Jim Hoagland, in today's Washington Post, deflates the myth of popular insurgency in Iraq with the reality of the motives of this gang of thugs, using an entertaining metaphor:

Think of the worst divorce case you have ever heard about, and then imagine the embittered ex-spouses armed with Kalashnikovs and bombs instead of legal motions over alimony and property, and you get some sense of what Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are going through right now.

Other motives are also involved. Those so inclined can emphasize the religious fanaticism of the jihadists who have taken the battlefield in Iraq or the Arab fervor stirred by foreign occupation. I grant that both exist, and come back to the fundamental force of this counterrevolution: The warring Arab Sunnis of Iraq want the money. And they want to regain the privilege of dominating the country's other population groups.

Hoagland underscores the mercenary/power motivation by emphasizing that the convoy attacked in Samarra, which resulted in 54 dead 'insurgents' and 0 dead Americans, was transporting new Iraqi currency to banks, a fact that has been overlooked or at least underplayed by the media here. These insurgents are nothing more than bank robbers, or worse, Mafia-style gangsters who are fighting to win back control over their now-broken criminal enterprise. They are the equivalent of Capones or Gambinos, and they don't want liberation for liberation's sake; they're fighting for the freedom to oppress and terrorize and slaughter the majority of Iraqis in order to maintain their opulent, criminal lifestyles.

Read the whole piece; it's definitely worth your time.

LA Faces An Election Scandal

The LA Times breaks a story today about alleged election fraud in mayoral and City Council elections:

[John] Archibald and 13 of the Casden firm's subcontractors were indicted last month on charges of conspiring to illegally funnel more than $200,000 in campaign contributions during 2000 and 2001 to Los Angeles City Council members Jack Weiss and Wendy Greuel, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Kathleen Connell, who was a candidate for mayor. Archibald and the subcontractors have pleaded not guilty to the felony charges and are free on their own recognizance.

Prosecutors said the Casden firm, which has a $100-million Westwood development pending before the city, had sought to buy influence with the contributions. Larry J. Higgins, owner of a Sun Valley termite-control company, testified that he had the impression that he needed to make the political donations as a condition for getting a contract from the Casden firm. He has been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.

This appears to be a tgypical shell-game conspiracy, where wealthy political contributors attempt to launder large political donations through their employees, except in this case, subcontractors were also pressured into laundering the donations. It's hard to judge how strong the case is until it goes to trial. But Angelenos aren't accustomed to election scandals in their city politics; LA has been relatively clean up until now, or at least LA politicians have been good at keeping up a clean appearance. Whether than image survives depends if elected officials are pulled into the case.

Jeff Jarvis and Hugh Hewitt React to Dean's Hardball Interview

Jeff Jarvis isn't pleased with Howard Dean, by any stretch of the imagination:

Howard Dean says he'd "break up" media companies. This is the worst of political pandering: Big media companies have been made into the boogeymen du jour and so he announces he'll go after them. No legal basis. No constitutional justification. Just because they're there.

Jarvis quotes the same part of the transcript that I posted earlier, and reaches much the same conclusion I did, although he puts it more directly:

Translation: He's going to meddle in news. He's going to decree who can and can't own media outlets. He's going to break up companies for sport and political pandering. He's not concerned with the First Amendment. He's not concerned with the realities of the media business today (if you don't allow some level of consolidation, then weak outlets will die).

Yes, I work in big media. But I don't own it. I just work in it because I love news and media and I cherish the lack of government involvement in media in this country; I cherish our freedom of speech; I am a First Amendment absolutist. I do not want to see government meddling in our free speech.

This isn't Europe, Howard. Not yet, anyway.

Ouch. Hugh Hewitt expands on his earlier comments in a brief Weekly Standard column posted tonight, focused on Dean's indifference to where bin Laden may be tried, if captured:

Incredibly, most Tuesday morning papers ignored this exchange, and the Boston Globe's Susan Schweitzer reported it this way: "Asked whether Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein should be tried in the United States or the Hague should they be captured, Dean responded that the issue was premature for discussion because the "the president can't find either one of them." ... Dean's ignorance on the matter isn't the major point of the exchange. His indifference to the idea of bin Laden being brought to America is a stunning display of his detachment from the war on terror. Republicans hope that Dean doesn't self-destruct before he gets the nomination, but the country ought to be getting all of Dean's quotes, not just those the reporters think make good copy.

Once again, the major media want to ignore Dean's foot-in-mouthism, even when he directly threatens their interests. One wonders how much longer this will go on. One thing is for sure -- the Bush campaign isn't ignoring it, not by a long shot.

Marching Orders

I had the audacity to ask Hugh Hewitt, the Lord High Commissioner of the Blogosphere, to induct me into the Society of the Minnesota Master of the Horse (seeing as I'm in Minnesota, and I've been compared to at least one end of the horse on many occasions). Hugh kindly wrote me back and explained that there are three tests a blogger must pass in order to be inducted into Society, the first of which is to denounce the folks at FratersLibertas in a particularly shameful way. The first step I could take in that regard would be to blogroll them here. I should have done it earlier, of course, but I've been hitting their site through Power Line, being the lazy Captain that I am. But now I've added them to the Northern Fleet, and you can almost hear the lustre fading away from them. Besides, as Tim Robbins' favorite blog, FratersLibertas should be accustomed to scorn. (Of course, karma being what it is, I have no doubt that I'll find out Barbra Streisand has started to link here sometime soon, and what little credibility I have will be out the window.)

Not long after I got the e-mail from Hugh, I received a cautionary message from The Elder at FraterLibertas, warning me of losing my soul by giving into the Lord High Commissioner, telling me I would be nothing but his vassal, and imploring me to resist his siren's song. But his voice, Elder ... it calls to me ... resistance is futile ...

Of course, I had no idea that it was The Elder's birthday today until I read in today's Star Tribune ... which as anyone from the Twin Cities knows, is the absolute authority on truth in the Upper Midwest.

10,000 Visitors -- Thank You!

I noticed that I've crossed the 10,000-visit threshold today on the Sitemeter, thanks to a big assist from Power Line and Steven den Beste. A big thank you to everyone who's stopped by Captain's Quarters over the past two months!

Howard Dean: All Hat, No Cattle, Take 2

After visiting Hugh Hewitt, Mickey Kaus and Best of the Web, I've discovered that the Hardball interview had a lot more landmines for Howard Dean than I first saw. First off, he seems to be flunking post-Cold War geography:

The key, I believe, to Iran, is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran I believe mostly likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union, and it may require us buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The Soviet Union, you may recall, disappeared in the early 90s. Dr. Dean may have been in surgery that day -- who knows? -- but if George Bush had made a reference to "East Germany" in the present tense, I think that would be making headlines. I seem to recall a media kerfluffle when he couldn't come up with the name of Pakistan's current leader during the last election. So far, I don't see the media rushing to publicize Dr. Dean's faux pas.

However, it may just be because there's an embarrassment of riches in the Matthews interview. Take, for instance, this exchange:

CHRIS MATTHEWS (host) : Who should try Osama bin Laden if we catch him? We or the World Court?

DEAN: I don't think it makes a lot of difference. I'm happy...

MATTHEWS: But who would you like to, if you were president of the United States, would you insist on us trying him, since he was involved in blowing up the World Trade Center, or would you let The Hague do it?

DEAN: You know, the truth is it doesn't make a lot of difference to me as long as he is brought to justice. I think that's the critical part of that. [Emphasis added.]

So the man who wants to lead the American people doesn't really care if OBL is brought to American justice? Just where does he think 9/11 happened, anyway? Perhaps he'd feel differently if terrorists had struck Montpelier; lucky for him no one can find Montpelier. As Hugh Hewitt notes, in several posts on this subject:

My colleague from Chapman University Law School, Professor John Eastman, speculates that an international tribunal charged with prosecuting bin Laden would probably be constituted without the authority to impose the death penalty, so Howard Dean must either be ignorant of that issue or indifferent to bin Laden's trial before a tribunal that can sentence him to death in the U.S., and one in the Hague which might be obliged to send him off to plot new strikes from a cell. Dean didn't even know enough to ask Chris Matthews what Matthews meant by a the "World Court." ...

In Howard Dean's world, bin Laden gets 30 years to life. And a fine.

This position is the equivalent to saying that, if Dean were running for President in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, that he wouldn't care who defeated the Japanese, just as long as someone did it. Osama bin Laden masterminded the worst attack on the American mainland since our Civil War, and to be so nonchalant about his fate speaks volumes about the character of the man whose primary mission as President would be the security of the nation and its citizens.

If Dean really does get the nomination, after building up a drawerful of statements like these, he will be lucky to carry his home state and DC. Someone will need to rescue the Democrats from their own folly; I predict that Hillary may be drafted in the latter part of the primary season to wrest the nomination from Dean, or the Democratic Sanity Brigade will elevate Gephardt or Lieberman -- if such a brigade even exists these days.

Howard Dean: All Hat, No Cattle

You have to love Chris Matthews; even though his loud and brash approach can wear on me after a while, it's that attitude that really exposes pretenders such as Howard Dean. Matt Drudge has posted an excerpt from the Hardball installment with Dean, where Dean announced that he would "break up giant media enterprises" out of a concern "how deeply media companies can penetrate every single community" in America. Not surprisingly, since Matthews works for one of those "giant media enterprises" (GE), Matthews attempted to pin Dean down on specifics:

MATTHEWS: Well, would you break up GE?

DEAN: I can`t -- you...

MATTHEWS: GE just buys Universal. Would you do something there about that? Would you stop that from happening?

DEAN: You can`t say -- you can`t ask me right now and get an answer, would I break up X corp...

MATTHEWS: We`ve got to do it now, because now is the only chance we can ask you, because, once you are in, we have got to live with you.

Matthews goes on to ask about Fox, and gets the same non-answer. He didn't ask about Disney or any other corporation, but Dean insisted on keeping as vague as possible:

MATTHEWS: Well, how about large media enterprises?

DEAN: Let me -- yes, let me get...

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: The answer to that is yes.

I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country. We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP.

MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You`re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?

DEAN: What I`m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.

So what we have here is a candidate exercising his mouth without having a clue as to how to back up what he's saying -- which is nothing new for Howard Dean. Having the intent of nominating FCC commissioners who are inclined to block mergers is a reasonable policy goal. Announcing that, if elected, you will break up major corporations without so much as an outline of a plan to accomplish it is much, much different, and extremely scary, especially for the many investors in these corporations.

Can somebody please remind me why Howard Dean is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination?

UPDATE: Jon at QandO has, as always, an excellent take on this. He points out that the mergers resulted from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was not on Bush's watch. Plus, he explodes the fallacy of "concentrated ownership" in the Internet era.

Gun Control: A Consistent Failure

According to the Fraser Institute, restrictive firearms laws and gun confiscation programs have been expensive failures in various Commonwealth countries (via Instapundit).

In England and Wales:

Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced restrictive firearms laws over the past 20 years; all handguns were banned in 1997.

Yet in the 1990s alone, the homicide rate jumped 50 percent, going from 10 per million in 1990 to 15 per million in 2000. While not yet as high as the US, in 2002 gun crime in England and Wales increased by 35 percent. This is the fourth consecutive year that gun crime has increased.

In Australia:

While violent crime is decreasing in the United States, it is increasing in Australia. Over the past six years, the overall rate of violent crime in Australia has been on the rise – for example, armed robberies have jumped 166 percent nationwide.

The confiscation and destruction of legally owned firearms has cost Australian taxpayers at least $500 million. The cost of the police services bureaucracy, including the costly infrastructure of the gun registration system, has increased by $200 million since 1997.

In Canada:

Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted. The homicide rate is dropping faster in the US than in Canada.

The Canadian experiment with firearm registration is becoming a farce says Mauser. The effort to register all firearms, which was originally claimed to cost only $2 million, has now been estimated by the Auditor General to top $1 billion. The final costs are unknown but, if the costs of enforcement are included, the total could easily reach $3 billion.

In order to really parse the data, you will need to download the complete study, which is available here in PDF format. There are a number of graphs demonstrating that highly restrictive gun-control policies have failed to lower crime rates in these countries; indeed, in comparison to the US, these rates have grown enormously, during a period where the US has liberalized concealed-carry laws in 35 states.

Especially striking is the drastic increase in violent crime rates in England and Wales. Prior to enacting the restrictive firearms bans, the violent crime rate had met the US rate at slightly above 600 per 100,000 (the US had been declining, while English/Welsh rates had been slightly increasing, for the previous decade). After 1997, the rate more than doubles in two years, without any other economic or social explanation. The English/Welsh rate is now 1,400 per 100,000, while the US rate has declined to around 500 per 100,000.

What other explanation can there be except that disarming law-abiding citizens makes them open targets to criminals, who are highly unlikely to comply with firearms bans in the first place? This dovetails with the report from the Guardian, as posted by Strange Women Lying in Ponds:

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.

When do we finally get some recognition that disarming law-abiding citizens is bad policy and should be stopped?

When Ideology Trumps Common Sense

You can file this one under "What Are These People Smoking?" In fact, that would make a good category here:

Fired for walking into his office drunk, toting a loaded, sawed-off shotgun and saying he was looking for his bosses, a Canadian man wants his union to help him get his job back. ... The city of Moncton dismissed him, but a week later Pavlovsky went to his union to protest the firing and members agreed the union should help him try to get his job back once he finishes his prison term [emphasis mine].

Someone tell me this is satire, because this is something I'd expect in a fevered-nightmare hypothetical from the fringe right wing. The union is going to fight to get this guy back in the office, after showing up for work with a loaded illegal weapon, intending to kill people? Cases like these are why non-idiotarians have such an issue with organized labor. Far too often it's not about building better work conditions for its members -- it's about protecting the idiots from the normal consequences of their own actions.

USS Clueless Captures the Philosophy of America at War

Steven den Beste at USS Clueless captures my thinking exactly, in explaining to an Iranian about why and how America goes to war:

It's not a question of my nation making a decision whether people will die. Islamic militants made that decision. America's only decision now is who will die, and where and when. If we stand by idly and passively, then it will be Americans who die, whenever and wherever the Islamic extremists choose to kill them, probably in huge numbers.

We don't consider that acceptable. That's surrender. That's not going to happen.

Instead, we're attempting to take control of events, in hopes that we can minimize the total number of deaths caused by this war. That's why we've embarked on the highly risky and unprecedented strategy we're following. If we were only concerned with minimizing American casualties and if we didn't care about anyone else, then every major Muslim city on the planet would have been vaporized by September 15, 2001, and the war would have ended in a week.

Well put, and be sure to read the entire post; it's extensive and thoughtful, just what you'd expect from den Beste (and I've added USS Clueless to the blogroll, too). I only disagree with one part of his post, and that takes my response to the Iranian in a different direction.

Steven claims that the Islamofascist war started on 9/11, and that's only true if you count from the time most Americans realized that they were at war. Our war with Islamofascism started in Teheran in 1979, and has continued off and on ever since. Our feckless response to the sacking of our embassy -- which is an internationally recognized casus belli -- encouraged various radical Islamist groups to take ever-bolder actions against American interests.

You ask what actions we take make us feel contradictory to our purposes and our principles. I reply to you that you are facing the diminishing options that Islamofascists have left us. Your country sacked our embassy and held diplomats hostage for 444 days, and we negotiated. We went to Lebanon to maintain peace and Hezb' Allah (financed, again, by your country) killed 243 of our troops; we pulled out. Islamic Jihad and Hezb' Allah (financed, again, by your country) kidnapped American citizens who were trying to educate Muslims and report fairly on their difficulties and held them hostage for years; we negotiated directly with your country and released financial assets held in dispute since 1979, as well as sold them military hardware. Muslims were threatened in Somalia with starvation; we fed them, and when the aid was held up by warlords, we attempted to stop the warlords from starving Muslims. When we were attacked, we left Somalia.

When Islamofascists bombed our World Trade Center in 1993, we treated it as a law-enforcement problem, and tried and convicted those who conspired to kill the six people who died in the attacks. When Muslims were threatened in the Balkans, we committed our troops to protect them from the Serbs, and they are there to this day, protecting them throughout the Balkans. When our embassies in Africa were bombed and hundreds of people were killed, we treated it as a law-enforcement problem, and again when our Navy was attacked in Yemen by the same Islamofascists, we sent the FBI to search for them.

After all of that, when Islamofascists funded by the various kleptocracies finally and inevitably struck catastrophically in our own country, killing 3,000 civilians, do you really expect us to repeat the same, failed strategies, or try something new, in the hope that the message might start to get through the thick skulls over there that we were finished with those approaches? We have decided that after 24 years of retreating and, negotiating, Middle Eastern extremists were not going to respond to a 25th year of it. America gave up on your ability to police your own house, and now we are going to police it for you. If you don't like it, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

And Steve is correct -- you had better pray that the Islamofascists don't pull something really spectacular here in the US, like a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack. So far, we're trying very hard to only target those government structures that directly support terrorism or are defying international agreements. If something very ugly happens here, you can bet we will not be anywhere near that particular about our targets or our enemies, and every one of the nations that support terrorism will feel the blowback. Most likely, starting with yours.

If your government wants to avoid that outcome, then it had better stop supporting and sheltering terrorists who attack Americans. Period. We've waited 24 years for the mullahs to grow the f**k up. Our patience has run out.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

Every time this idiot involves himself in international politics, I thank God he only served as President for four years.

While appearing in Geneva, Jimmy Carter managed to blame Bush for Mideast violence, blame Jews for their own destruction, and argue for rewarding terrorism with territory, all in one speech (from the Jerusalem Post, via Power Line):

Former US President Jimmy Carter unleashed a fierce attack against the Israeli and American governments in his speech at the Geneva Initiative's ceremony in Switzerland. ... In Geneva, Carter said Israel's settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the security fence are the main obstacles to peace. He called repeatedly for the return of Palestinian refugees to the territories, beyond what is called for in the Geneva Initiative. ... Carter said that is of equal importance that Palestinians renounce violence against Israeli citizens, but he said this must happen in exchange for commitment to the Geneva Initiative.

You'll have to read through the whole thing to get the true flavor of Carter's continuing idiocy. Just to recap Carter's bona fides as a statesman-at-large:

* Carter undercut Clinton in Haiti, arranging a peace deal that eventually collapsed of its own weight
* Carter undercut Clinton again with North Korea, arranging a deal that allowed Kim Jong-Il to easily mask its nuclear program and stopped Clinton from preventing North Korea from arming itself with WMDs
* Carter excoriated Bush for his policy on Afghanistan and Iraq while accepting a Nobel Peace Prize, which its sponsors admitted was awarded to Carter to rebuke Bush and America

Jimmy Carter, who can do so much good when he's not meddling in foreign policy, has been an absolute disaster as an ex-President. After the debacles of his presidency -- Teheran and Afghanistan, among others -- it's hard to believe that he could do more damage to Western security out of office than in, but he's sure trying his best. As Power Line states:

It used to be the case that politics stopped at the water's edge. It used to be the case that American politicians refrained from criticism of the president of the United States on foreign soil. It used to be the case that former presidents exercised self-restraint in commenting on the performance of their successors in office. Mister Peanut has inadvertently offered powerful evidence of the wisdom of these traditions.

It must be irrefutable proof of the existence of God and of His providential design that the United States of America survived the presidency of this cretin.

Dru Sjodin Breaking News

This wasn't the kind of news we were hoping was coming when the media announced a break in the Dru Sjodin case:

A Crookston, Minn., man has been arrested and is facing a kidnapping charge in the disappearance of Dru Sjodin, police said. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., 50, was arrested on Monday at 7:20 p.m. in Crookston, Grand Forks police said.

What's most disturbing is the last paragraph in the necessarily terse statement:

Police said a search for Sjodin is ongoing. Police said no further information will be released until a press briefing on Tuesday morning.

Unfortunately for the Sjodin family, an arrest without recovering Dru alive looks like we're not going to get good news in tomorrow's briefing. I'm trying to keep my hopes up, but this is tough to hear.

I'm not sure why this case resonates with me so much. I suppose it could be that Dru is close to the same age as my son and daughter-in-law, and they're both students, too. I think it's more about the circumstances of Dru's disappearance; one moment she's talking with her boyfriend on her cell phone, and then he hears, "Oh, my God," and that's the last anyone has heard from her. It doesn't help that three scumwads tried to adbuct a 17-year-old girl last Friday in Hermantown.

In the next few days, we'll be hearing more about how young women can protect themselves from abduction attempts like these, and that will be good information for their security, but you know what else it is? It's bull****. It insinuates, oh so subtly, that somehow Dru and that 17-year-old in Hermantown were just a little bit complicit in these attacks. They didn't do something right; they didn't "check their six"; they dressed too flashy, or made too much eye contact, or blah blah blah. It's wrong. Dru didn't disappear because she was foolish -- she disappeared because some scumwad decided that his urges outweighed her right to live her life, and that's all.

Let's continue praying that Dru will be found alive and unharmed; in fact, let's pray for all of those who have been abducted and held against their will. God willing, maybe tomorrow will bring good news.

UPDATE: I've posted more on the story here, and heard some bad news here.

2003 Weblog Awards at Wizbang

Wizbang has announced the nomination process for the 2003 Weblog Awards, which I found via Power Line this morning. Wizbang has done a nice job in setting up categories and processing nominations. Take a look and add those blogs you think deserve some recognition.

In my case, I've nominated Power Line for both Best Overall Blog and Best Group Blog. Not only does Power Line consistently deliver thoughtful and timely commentary (even on rare occasions where I disagree), but they also maintain a unified voice, which is difficult to do when group blogging. Also, for complete disclosure, Power Line has linked to CQ on a number of occasions, even if I have been a bit of an e-mail pest from time to time, and have been very encouraging to me as I've started blogging.

I also took the initiative to nominate myself in the Best New Blog category. I don't know who started when, so I can't say if I deserve even the nomination, but what the heck. When the nominations are closed, I will post my votes for the categories, and we can debate all we want at that point. I'm hoping to use the nomination process as a means of discovering some really good blogs that may have escaped my notice so far.

Please also note that I'm adding Wizbang to the blogroll; it's an excellent blog, and volunteering for this duty (especially after all the shenanigans at the TTLB Ecosystem) shows a great commitment to the blogosphere.

UPDATE: I corrected my brain fade and actually linked to the nominations post at Wizbang. Durrrrrrr ...

We Told You So, Part 47-B

Glenn at Instapundit directed readers to this extremely interesting story at the New York Times:

For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Hussein's sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials.

The officials now say they believe that those negotiations — mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government — were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles. Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials.

So much for Saddam not being a threat to America and its interests! And would we have found out about this without first capturing Baghdad, Iraq's military and intelligence officials, and its records?

Investigators said information downloaded from Iraqi computer hard drives, at least one of which was obtained before the invasion of Iraq, allowed them to more specifically interrogate detained members of Mr. Hussein's inner circle. They, in turn, guided investigators deeper into the mountain of official documents seized during the war.

"You do that, sort of a back-and-forth process," said one American official. "You find something on a computer disk or in the pile of documents slowly being translated. That makes you ask questions of the detainees. Then you bounce back to the documents and so forth. That's how you get the bigger picture."

In other words, no. We would likely have remained in the dark regarding Saddam's efforts to produce (not just purchase) missile technology that clearly violated UN resolutions and the terms of the 1991 cease-fire. Not that we need any further justification for our actions -- if the mass graves and the reneging of 16 UNSC resolutions doesn't convince you, nothing will -- but this is indicative of the type of information that will be coming to light now that we have removed the Ba'athists from power. We'll also see how much of this gets covered by the national news media, although it's certainly encouraging to see this in the New York Times.

Note also that Syria played the role of broker in this illegal arms deal, putting themselves in the middleman role while voting on Security Council resolutions that denied this technology to Iraq:

It also establishes that Syria was a major arms-trading bazaar for the Hussein government, in this case hiding an Iraqi effort to obtain missiles, they say. Investigators say Syria had probably offered its ports and territory as the surreptitious transit route for the North Korea-Iraq missile deal, although it remains unclear what demands the government in Damascus might have made in return. Further, according to United States government officials and international investigators, the Iraqi official who brokered the deal, Munir Awad, is now in Syria, apparently living under government protection.

If it served as a middleman in this deal, as the documents suggest, Syria was acting in violation of Security Council resolutions even as it served on the Council and voted with the United States on the most important resolution before the war.

This points up the absolute folly of demanding UN or UNSC approval for any actions taken in defense of American security. If the UN were a collection of liberal democracies, we would have no problem in negotiating issues in good faith (in fact, we would likely have no problems requiring the use of force anyway). As it is, the UN mostly consists of dictators and kleptocracies, most of whom are not friendly to the US or the West in particular or towards democracy and human rights in general. Any politician who demands UN approval for our foreign policy is effectively placing our security into the hands of people most likely to violate it in the first place.

UPDATE: Power Line looks at this story a bit more critically than I did at first; while I applaud the Times for publishing the story, I would have to agree with Hindrocket that the article tends to paint the Bush administration poorly:

Of course, the Times being the Times, it can't just admit that the attempted missile deal demonstrates that Saddam was a danger to the region, as the administration has consistently said. Rather than saying, "the administration has been proved right," the Times says: "Bush administration officials have seized on the attempted purchase of the missiles, known as the Rodong, and a missile assembly line to buttress their case that Mr. Hussein was violating United Nations resolutions, which clearly prohibited missiles of the range of the Rodong."

I guess the Times just can't stop being the Times, even when it gets something right.

Players Are Haters

According to Matt Drudge, a group of Hollywood elite will be meeting tomorrow night in an event titled "Hate Bush":

Top Hollywood activists and intellectuals are planning to gather this week in Beverly Hills for an event billed as 'Hate Bush,' the DRUDGE REPORT has learned!

Laurie David [wife of SEINFELD creator Larry David] has sent out invites to the planned Tuesday evening meeting at the Hilton with the bold heading: 'Hate Bush 12/2 - Event'

The event is being chaired by Harold Ickes, a former Clinton chief of staff, and Ellen Malcolm, who founded Emily's List. Among the intellectual luminaries invited are: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, whose career stalled out after "Seinfeld" went off the air; Lyn Lear, Norman's wife; actor Daniel Stern; Marge Tabankin, described by Drudge as "Barbara Streisand's philanthropic and political guru"; and Heather Thomas, best known as a pin-up model in the 1980s. Also on the list are a number of agents and producers, all of whom are assumably big donors to the Democratic party. The main connecting thread between all of the Hollywood contingent appears to be that none of them have been professionally successful in the past 10 years, which explains why they're all haters.

Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, these people have every right to get together for their little hate-in. In fact, I hope that develops as the dominant theme for the next election. "Vote for [insert generic Democrat here], because we really hate George Bush!!" If this puerile, middle-school effort is the best this crowd can generate as a rallying cry, it explains why their professional product stinks and their political product is doomed. Look for the knee-jerk Hollywood reaction of "McCarthyism!!" when this effort gets criticized, as we must remember that free speech is reserved for big movie stars and the sycophants that support/feed off them.

Gollum: What I Really Want to Do is Direct

The New Zealand Herald manages to scoop the rest of the world media in its exclusive interview with the ever-reclusive, ever-controversial Gollum:

The first thing you notice when meeting Gollum in the flesh (so to speak) is how much shorter he is in real life than he even appears on screen. Hobbits must tower over him. We're talking Kylie Minogue short. I reach down, we shake hands. The second thing you notice about Gollum is the smell of fish.

James Griffin manages to get past the fish aroma to press Gollum on the rumors that he and Rings director Peter Jackson have not always seen eye-to-bugeye on artistic issues. Gollum feels that Jackson has been too much in thrall to the JRR Tolkien books:

"We sees things differently, the Master and Gollum. Sometimes the way he treats us."

He trails off into a moody silence, looks away, eats a handful of sushi, sips his Mai Tai. I ask him what he means. He turns back, suddenly bug-eyed and venomous.

"He treats us like we not real, yes, like we are one of his precious special effects. But Gollum has feelings, Gollum hurts, but does the Master care? No, no he cares only for the Books. His precious precious."

Lest you think that Gollum is only interesting in his contribution to the Rings trilogy, Griffin discovers that Gollum has plans for his career after the release of the last Rings movie, The Return of the King. Gollum is apparently negotiating for the lead in a Don Knotts biopic, which sets off a case of the giggles for Griffin. This results in the following reaction from the 500-year-old entertainer:

"You think Gollum is only about the Rings? Like the rest, you think Gollum has no career after the Rings is dust? They all think that, laugh at us, hurt us with cruel words. But Gollum does not laugh, Gollum knows this is the beginning, yes. And his agent knows this too, yes, he says we are the new Yoda, the next Steve Buscemi, yes. You are like the Master, with your cruel laughter. Sting us, it does."

Speaking of Steve Buscemi, isn't it strange that you never see him and Gollum together? It's almost as if ... well, never mind. But the notion of Gollum playing Knotts isn't bad at all. I'd especially love to see him playing Ralph Furley from Three's Company:

JANET: What are you doing in my bedroom, Mr. Furley?

FURLEY: Must have the Precious ... Nasty, swishy Jack Tripper wants the Precious all to himself ... [grabs lingerie from doorknob] Give me the Precioussssss...

Well, maybe not. But read the rest of the interview so that you can get a good look at the mutant behind that evil screen persona. Heck, even Gandalf thought that Gollum would have a role to play later on.

Obituary of a Madman

As part of my new commitment to Blog-Iran, I was directed to this notable obituary of a key figure in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution -- and an indication of the tender mercy we can expect from Islamofascists if they are allowed to expand their power:

After the establishment in 1979 of a fundamentalist Islamic republic in Iran under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian army occupied three Kurdish-Iranian towns for supporting the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, condemned by Khomeini as "un- Islamic". The hardline cleric Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali set up his Islamic revolutionary court to weed out "counter-revolutionaries" in the town of Saghez.

Learning that a Kurdish defendant who was born in Orumiyeh had lost a hand to a grenade explosion during the Tehran uprising, Khalkhali asked what he was doing in Saghez.

"I am a guest at a social get- together, your honour," replied the defendant.

"That fits together very well," Khalkhali said candidly, "Born in Orumiyeh, participated in the Tehran uprising, executed in Saghez. Kill him! Next!"

The next defendant was charged with being the son of a usurer.

"What does my father's crime have to do with me?" protested the defendant.

"Usury is haram - sin," thundered Khalkhali, "and so is the seed of usury. Kill him! Next."

Twenty-four other Kurds were tried that day by Khalkhali. All were executed.

Khalkhali should be a name we recognize, according to the Independent:

Television footage taken in 1980 showed Khalkhali prodding the burnt corpses of US soldiers killed in an unsuccessful mission to rescue American hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran.

Khalkhali died unrepentant on November 27th:

Twenty years on, he remained unrepentant. "I would do exactly the same again," he said, when reminded how defendants had been given little chance to speak or get a lawyer to challenge evidence, if any were presented. "If they were guilty, they will go to hell and if they were innocent, they will go to heaven."

Bear in mind that the people of Iran have been under the thumb of people such as Khalkhali for twenty-four years. People such as Khalkhali have been exporting Islamofascism for all that time, notably but not exclusively through Hezb' Allah, and now are reportedly sheltering al-Qaeda leaders. After Iraq is secure, Iran should be our next focus for change -- not military action, but through diplomatic, economic, and covert means, we need to defeat this threat to the region and the world.

The Patriette Quails at the Cold

A big thank-you to the Patriette, who recently included me in her blogroll, but she seems to have an issue with Minnesota. She's applying for doctoral programs and one of her choices is, or was, the University of Minnesota, which is near where I live. (The Patriette adding to the collection of Northern bloggers? How cool would that be?) Inexplicably, this picture may have dissuaded her:

I just have to say that as someone looking into their programs and currently living in Texas, THAT PHOTO DOES NOT MAKE ME WANT TO ATTEND THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA! It makes every person who's told me that I am insane for wanting to move north because it gets so cold up there seem correct.

Kelly, don't worry about this picture. It's designed to keep out all of the riff-raff from the Paradise that is the Upper Midwest. Just because you can drive pick-ups across our lakes in the wintertime does not mean that Minnesota is unfit for human habitation. I moved from Southern California to live here six years ago, and I've only lost two fingers since then. No, just kidding! Fortunately for my vocabulary, I still have all of my fingers.

Doesn't the sun shine there from time to time?

Yes, we have lovely sunshine all twelve months of the year. However, as we discovered shortly after moving here, a bright sunny day in the middle of winter is not a good sign. In fact, it means that it's colder than Ba'athist compassion -- I mean, it's like tongues-freezing-to-flagpoles, tears-freezing-to-cheeks cold. That's when we all go to the Mall of America, or our favorite pub, or just stay the hell indoors.

Anyway, don't let that little picture throw you too much. As you can plainly see, the weather wasn't bad enough to discourage scores of people from riding their bicycles! And when you do get up here, make sure you let us all know so that we can show you where the frozen lakes are at.

Perhaps They Could Call Him "Dances With Weasels"

It's a story straight out of Hollywood, and may wind up there:

A 59-year-old retired builder from Yorkshire, northern England, was shocked to discover he is in fact a tribal chief with a claim to thousands of acres of land in Canada, British newspapers reported on Friday.

Mick Henry, the son of an English mother and a Canadian soldier over in Britain during World War II, was recently tracked down via the Internet by his long-lost Native Canadian relatives from the Ojibway tribe in the province of Manitoba.

Until recently, Henry hasn't bothered to learn much about the people he's destined to lead; he thought that they still lived in teepees until he was told about his inheritance. However, Henry is determined to bring Western values to his tribe, even though he still lacks a ceremonial name:

Henry is also apparently hoping to cash-in on his new-found heritage and sudden celebrity status. When contacted by telephone by Reuters, a Henry family spokeswoman said: "He is not speaking to the media about his story any more without a fee."

Apparently, it's not enough for Henry to have thousands of acres of Canadian land to fall into his lap. They should take this capitalist theme into account when they come up with his ceremonial name. I'm thinking something along these lines: Sells Out to Strangers, or perhaps Greedy Horse.

When Irish Eyes are Smiling

No, this is not a reference to Notre Dame's spanking of Stanford yesterday. Power Line posts about the poetry and beauty of Ireland, a subject which always has my interest, as you well know. And in this instance, Hindrocket has plenty of evidence of both!

Still A Distraction?

It amazes me, but some people insist that military action in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. News stories like this tend to disprove it:

American forces have captured three members of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorist network in northern Iraq (news - web sites), a U.S. military commander told The Associated Press on Sunday. If confirmed, it would be the first disclosed detention of al-Qaida militants in Iraq.

About 10 members of Ansar al-Islam — an Islamic group U.S. officials believe has al-Qaida links in northern Iraq — also have been arrested by U.S. troops in the past seven months, said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.

There are two explanations for al-Qaeda to be in Iraq. One: they were there all along, as our intelligence indicated, or they are coming to Iraq to fight American soldiers, instead of coming to America to kill civilians. Either way, it would appear that the battle for Iraq is, as many of us have maintained all along, a key piece of the war on terror in general and on al-Qaeda in particular.

500th Post: The Dark Side of Blogging

Last night, after we got home, I fired up the laptop and took a quick look around some of my favorite blogs before hitting the sack. I was hoping to come up with a blogosphere theme for my 500th post, and the Commissar at the Politburo Diktat did not disappoint -- although certainly other bloggers have been behaving in a most disappointing manner:

The Politburo authorizes me to extend its congratulations to the LOL on its highly successful advancement of Party members within the TTLB Ecosystem, maintained by the "Dumber Than the Average Bear" NZ Bear.

With your commendable and Revolutionary use of two tactics, you have propelled many LOL members to high ranking in the Ecosystem rankings, even while the Ecosystem is maintained by that reactionary wingnut, NZ Bear.

The Commissar discovered that some League of Liberals bloggers have been using two different methods of artificially inflating their stats in order to move up the TTLB Ecosystem: multilinking posts and multiple sitemeter accounts. The first isn't necessarily abusive, unless all you're doing is publishing posts with so many links that it's obvious that the whole purpose is to pump up your alliance's stats. (The Commissar includes an example in the comments over at NZ Bear's post on this subject.) The second, though, is plainly intended to deceive the Ecosystem programming in order to boost the standing of LoL bloggers. This has caused NZ Bear to suspend a number of LoL blogs and invalidate their links for the Ecosystem:

If you're wondering just how badly these blogs distorted the League's rankings, I'll draw your attention to the League's total inbound unique statistics from this morning, before I suspended these blogs: 8597 unique inbound links across all the League's blogs. With the removal of the duplicate blogs, the League now totals 5641 unique inbound links. That's right: 34% of the League's total unique links were due to these duplicate blogs. To League members, I ask you: is that really the way you want to advance?

I have trouble trying to decide what is most disturbing about this scandal. The LoL logs involved (a minority of them) purposely abused NZ Bear's hospitality by corrupting his Ecosystem. There's a masturbatory element in all of this, too; I mean, what's the point to all of this if all you wind up doing is running your stats up with a bunch of your own links? And what does that say about the credibility of LoL blogs, that they go out of their way to falsify their records? Would you trust anything written by a blogger that feels free to corrupt someone else's blog system?

That's not the worst of it, though. If you read through the comments for NZ Bear's initial post on the subject, you'll find some of the LoL trying to make the case that conservative blogs play games with their stats, too. I am sure that's true. However, before the LoL came along, there were two alliances, and neither of them were partisan; they were formed around tongue-in-cheek opposition to or support of Instapundit. While their blogs may or may not be politically oriented, their alliances were not. This political finger-pointing is ludicrous and embarrassing, especially since it's coming from the only politically-oriented alliance in the Ecosystem and the only alliance that's been caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

This is what happens when one loses sight of their reasons for blogging. If the only reason you blog is to become a Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem, what do you think that gets you? Validation of your political beliefs, or some sort of affirmation as a human being? It's an odd way to think, and it results in twisted escapades like this. It's hardly a Watergate event, but it's still a good lesson in corruption.