This, Too, Could Be Yours

Source

Now, does any one need to be reminded why mass immigration without assimilation a bad idea?

Small gangs of youths pelted riot police with rocks and set cars and garbage bins ablaze late Tuesday in a second night of unrest in the Paris suburbs, raising fears of a return of the disturbances that inflamed 300 French towns and suburbs last fall.

The violence of the last two nights -- in which youths attacked police cars, government buildings and riot police -- was sparked in part by mounting resentment toward the mayor of the northeastern Paris suburb of Montfermeil, who in recent weeks imposed a law prohibiting 15- to 18-year-olds from gathering in groups of more than three and requiring anyone under 16 to be accompanied by an adult on city streets after 8 p.m.

The French government last fall promised to improve living conditions and job opportunities in suburbs heavily populated by immigrant families and where unemployment is rampant, but little has been done and the government's main initiative -- a youth jobs bill -- ended with this spring's politically disastrous student demonstrations.

This is Paris, France, but it could just as easily be Paris, Texas.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again and again: importing poverty is never going to solve a nation's problems and instead, can only add to them.

If you think nearly unchecked immigration is a problem now, wait until 40 million more arrive with little or no education, little or no job skills, and little or no English language skills.

Lefties: We Did Get Fooled Again

This has all the making of a spectacular implosion:

A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

The article -- headlined on the cover as "Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" -- has been several months in development and will contend that a concerted effort was undertaken by high-level Republican officials to steal the Election in Ohio -- and thus the country -- in 2004!

Kennedy told The BRAD BLOG this morning that "the best evidence says the Republicans succeeded" in their plan.

He writes in the 10-page long article, and confirmed to us today, that evidence shows Ohio Sec. of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was "certainly in on" the scheme, and there are indications that the effort went all the way up to the White House.

Kennedy, who is co-host of Ring of Fire, a weekend show on Air America Radio, is an environmental attorney and the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy. This is his first public foray into the realm of Election Fraud, Election Integrity, Electronic Voting and, in particular, the questionable results of Election 2004.

It will be very interesting to see what "evidence" RFK, Jr. will present. Despite the claims made above, I suspect the content of the article will provide bold headline-inducing accusations, weave nebulous connections and schemes, and in the end, fail to provide any sort of evidence that can be considered solid, or bring forth witnesses that won't almost immediately be found to have credibility problems.

Even the flimsiest of evidence will be enough for the more excitable types on the far left, but barring something truly explosive and concrete (which is something that has been sorely lacking in every Democratic “bombshell” of the past six years), I imagine this will be grist for the Democratic Underground types for months to come, and largely forgotten within the next week by everyone else.

John Murtha: My Lai-r

Perhaps it is simply my perception, but it seems to me that the intent of some to turn the killing of approximately 24 Iraqi civilians by Marines into this war's My Lai has failed thus far, and I somewhat doubt that meme will have chance of growing beyond the far left. The differences between the incidents far outweigh the similarities.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, My Lai (note: the following is summarized from the Wikipedia entry on the subject) was a massacre of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians by a Charlie Company, 11th Brigade, Americal Division of the U. S. Army. Ostensibly, U.S. intelligence pinpointed the 48th Battalion of the Vietcong as hiding in Son My village, specifically in areas labeled My Lai 1-4. Lt. William Calley led a platoon into the area, and after finding no Vietcong, they killed between 347-504 civilians, some after being raped or tortured. The date was March 16, 1968.

A cover-up of the incident was almost immediate, with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade's Commanding Officer, Colonel Oran Henderson running a cursory investigation that found just 22 civilians had died inadvertently while 128 Vietcong had been killed. Letters from several soldiers finally got the attention of Congress approximately a year later. They story broke publicly in November of 1969, and some reports indicate that thoughts of a cover-up (read the Wikipedia entry, take it for what it is worth) ran through many levels of the Army Officer Corps, all the way to the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of Defense.

The incident is major note not only for the brutality and scale of the massacre, but for the light punishment given to those who perpetrated it (Calley served just 3 1/2 years years as the only conviction), and the huge shift in perception it brought, bolstering and providing fuel for the anti-war movement.

But Haditha is not My Lai.

I will tread very carefully in discussing the Haditha incident as it is still under investigation, but we do know certain things that are beyond doubt. We know that on November 19, 2005, one Marine was killed and two more were injured when an IED went off near a convoy from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. We know that immediately after the event other Marines in the convoy dismounted and approximately 24 Iraqis were killed, some of them women and children. Everything else at this point is speculation.

My Lai started without any recognizable provocation, and seems to be a blatant small-scale genocide. Haditha had a real and quantifiable trigger; the death of one Marine and the injury of two others by an IED detonation. Right or wrong, Haitha had a discernible triggering event.

Unlike My Lai, there is no evidence of an attempt at a high level cover-up whatsoever with Haditha. Three officers—two Captains and a Lt. Colonel have been relieved of command, and at least two separate and apparently quite thorough investigations by the NCIS were launched months ago.

The Haditha investigations will also be far more thorough and accurate than the investigations at My Lai for several reasons.

First, the investigation in the Haditha has same-day evidence collection, including digital photos obtained by another Marine unit that responded to the area. It may also have some real-time evidence collected, as there is some indication that drone surveillance aircraft and radio communications may have also captured details of the events of that day. Forensic science has also progressed phenomenally in the near 40 years since My Lai, and the likelihood of investigations obtaining a far more detailed forensic record of events is all but assured. It seems most of these events happened indoors where evidence such as bullet holes in walls, fragmentation patterns, and firing lanes are precisely known.

No, Haditha is not like My Lai, but that has not stopped some from trying to inflate it to that level.

Chief among them is ex-Marine and current Democratic congressman John Murtha, who has alleged that the Haditha incident was cold-blooded murder, that this incident is indicative of the policy of our troops and now, that the incident is being covered up by the highest authority in the Marine Corps, citing Marine Corps General and Joint Chief of Staff Peter Pace by position, if not by name.

All of these charges by Murtha are unproven hyperbole, set forth with but one goal in mind: "redeploying" all American soldiers out of Iraq. The Haditha incident may be Murtha's last, best hope of purposefully losing a war he first began trying to undermine in 2004. John Murtha is willfully attempting to smear the entire Marine Corps chain of command (and by the extension, the Corps itself) down the river to advance his political agenda.

Always Faithful?

Hardly.

Time for a Refill

It sounds like Al Gore's out again:

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

I wish.

Letter From a Wannabe God

This morning I got email from Jesus himself. Actually, I got email from a liberal blogger who styles himself "Gen. JC Christian, patriot." The email, addressed to others and myself, ran as follows:

Hugh Hewitt, Hugh Hewitt Show
Bob Owens, Confederate Yankee
Gary Gross, California Conservative
Biggus Dickus, Blue Crab Boulevard

Dear Mr. Hewitt, Mr Owens, Mr. Gross, and Mr. Dickus,

About a week and a half ago, each of you published scathing posts attacking Rep. John Murtha for his comments about war crimes at Al Haditha, Iraq. Mr Owens called for Murtha's censure; Mr. Dickus demanded his resignation; Mr. Gross wants him frog marched off the Hill.

What seemed to enrage you the most about Murtha's comments was that he had made them before it has been established by the Marine Corps that a crime had been committed. I couldn't agree more. I mean we aren't talking about a goatherd at Gitmo here, we can't jump to any conclusions until Our Leader and Sean Hannity tell us it's acceptable to do so.

Maybe it wasn't a war crime at all. The final report might show that the victims were all terrorists. Who knows? Perhaps the 6 year old was shouldering an RPG and the 3 and 4 year olds were manning a .50 cal machine gun. We won't know until the final report is issued.

But as much grief as you gave Murtha for his remarks, you haven't written a word about remarks attributed to Rep. John Kline:

"I was saddened, surprised and outraged that this could happen," Kline said. He said he thought the incident would be regarded as "a horrific aberration" for the Marines.
Why have you been silent? Isn't he jumping to the same conclusion as Murtha? An official report hasn't been issued. He can't be certain that a war crime was committed, can he.

Worse yet, like Murtha, Kline is a retired Marine. Why is it that these ex-leathernecks seem to be the angriest about what happened at Haditha? Does leaving the Marine Corps cause you to hate America? Maybe you should look into that.

Oh wait. I just realized that Kline is a Republican and one of Our Leader's most loyal servants.

Never mind.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

While the others will presumably ignore this email (not the least reason of which is that he didn't bother to send it to everyone he addressed) and with good reason, I personally have no problem at all answering "General Christian."

It is a fair question to ask why I chose to call for Murtha's censure, while ignoring Kline's comments thus far, though I thought the answer would be quite obvious to any reasonable person, much less our Lord and Savior.

Kline, himself a former Marine, stated in the Washington Post (side note to General Christian: a link to a quote is good email etiquette, which is something even a false deity should know):

"I was saddened, surprised and outraged that this could happen," Kline said. He said he thought the incident would be regarded as "a horrific aberration" for the Marines.

He was further quoted three days later in the NY Times, "This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them," adding "This is going to be an ugly story."

Does anyone have a difficulty spotting the difference between Kline's comments about the deaths in Haditha, and these from Murtha?

Rep. John Murtha, an influential Pennsylvania lawmaker and outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, said today Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush that killed a Marine during a patrol in Haditha, Iraq, Nov. 19.

[snip]

Murtha said combat stress prompted the Marines' alleged rampage.
“It's a very serious incident, unfortunately. It shows the tremendous pressure that these guys are under every day when they're out in combat,” he said. “One man was killed with an [improvised explosive device] and after that they actually went into the houses and killed women and children.”

Kline notes the undisputed facts that the killing of 24 civilians was conducted by Marines, that this was going to be an "ugly story" and that in his opinion, such killing by Marines were "an aberration." At no point in his commentary did he attempt to assign motive, nor guilt, nor innocence. He merely commented on what most of us already knew from the Times and ABC News follow-up reports in mid-March.

John Murtha, however, has apparently declared himself prosecutor, judge and jury in this case. He pointedly accuses the Marines of killing civilians "in cold blood," and even attempts to ascribe a motive and a mindset, more than six weeks before the report of the investigation is even ready for release.

Perhaps in his omnipotence General JC Christian can look into the hearts of men and know what is in their souls, but John Murtha does not have that capability, nor do other mortal men.

It is for that very reason we have a criminal justice system, so on this mortal plane we can attempt to determine (as best we can) guilt or innocence by collecting evidence of a crime, filing charges against the accused, holding a trial where evidence is shown by both sides, prosecution and defense, before finally rendering a verdict of guilt or innocence.

I called for Murtha's censure because he attempted to short circuit the military criminal justice system, prejudging these Marines guilty without the benefit of due process, and potentially compromising the integrity of the criminal proceedings. I made no complaint against Kline, because Kline never even approached improperly interfering in this case.

A deity, particularly an omnipotent one, would presumably know such things. But as well all know, "General JC Christian, patriot" isn't a deity, but merely another poor player as the Bard noted, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage before he, too, will be heard from no more.

I wish the good General all the best in his blogging endeavors, and hope that the real Jesus is as amused by his antics as I have been.

The Wall

The monuments in Washington all seemed false in the cool morning mist. They were big and white and extravagant, yet the tourists cheapened them somehow as they gawked, took photos, an scurried to the next place on their list of things to see. Their attention seemed to focus on what things were rather than why they were. The scene was a poor sample of Americana. Even Honest Abe seemed to frown from his throne. Of all the walls of stone only on seemed real.

This wall's long black marbles slices into the ground. On it are engraved fifty-eight thousand American names from an undeclared war that no one wants to remember in the jungles of a country half a globe away. There are no ornate scrolls or stenciled directions, no fancy faded pieces of parchment, no self-serving sentiments, just names.

There's also a statue some distance away. Three bronze soldiers stare into the wall, waiting for word of their fellow soldiers or perhaps mourning their loss. The soldier's don't talk; they simply stare. They were all just boys, most only six years than I was then: nineteen.

Under the statue-soldier's gaze, and elderly man lagged behind a tour group at the wall. He caressed it and knelt to leave a single rose at the base. He sobbed. He had difficulty standing up. A nearby park attendant helped him up and asked, "One of yours, sir?" The man shook his head and replied, "Not one of them. All of them."

Memorial Day Weekend, 2006

Memorial Day
As we stand here looking
At the flags upon these graves
Know these flags represent
A few of the true American brave

They fought for their Country
As man has through all of time
Except that these soldiers lying here
Fought for your country and mine

As we all are gathered here
To pay them our respect
Let's pass this word to others
It's what they would expect

I'm sure that they would do it
If it were me or you
To show we did not die in vein
But for the red, white and blue.

Let's pass on to our children
And to those who never knew
What these soldiers died for
It's the least we can do

Let's not forget their families
Great pain they had to bear
Losing a son, father or husband
They need to know we still care

No matter which war was fought
On the day that they died
I stand here looking at these flags
Filled with American pride.

So as the bugler plays out Taps
With its sweet and eerie sound
Pray for these soldiers lying here
In this sacred, hallowed ground.

Take home with you a sense of pride
You were here Memorial Day.
Celebrating the way Americans should
On this solemnest of days.

Michelle R. Christman
USMC 1987 - 1991
Desert Storm Veteran

Update: Bumped to top

Geography Doesn't Lie

It seems like John Kerry is trying to keep the myth of the Magic hat alive:

John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia."

He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares.

"They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat."

He may have the hat, but what he needed was a map.

I cannot speak with authority about the charges brought by the SBVFT, but I can say one thing with absolute certainty:

John Kerry did not take anyone into Cambodia from his swift boat based at Ha Tien. The navigable Giang Thanh River runs near the Cambodian border, but at no point does it ever cross.

Map from Ha Tien
Entrance to the Giang Thanh River
Gulf of Siam East of An Thoi

If Kerry said he took forces up the Giang Thanh and dropped Spec-Ops soldiers off so that they could walk into Cambodia, I could believe him, but geography does not lie.

John Kerry never took his swift boat from Ha Tien, Vietnam up the Giang Thanh River into Cambodia, and if he insists that he did, he is either delusional, or guilty of telling a lie.

Indefensible Acts

When the story first broke in March that on November 19, 2005, a Marine unit in the Iraqi city of Haditha may have killed nearby civilians after an IED killed one Marine and injured two others, I made a simple statement.

Someone who truly supports the troops, even if they do not support the war, would want this incident fully investigated to uncover the truth. They would want to know the facts.

They would want to know if the Marines fired out of blind rage at the loss of their friends, and they would be equally interested in finding out if the Marines assaulted that location because someone inside fired upon them, as they claimed. Was it a slaughter of innocents, or were insurgents firing from within civilian homes? Were those that triggered the IED among the dead? We do not yet know, and some are already passing judgment.

If a just-published New York Times article on the investigation is true, then the incident was far worse than we dared suspect:

A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Two lawyers involved in discussions about individual marines' defenses said they thought the investigation could result in charges of murder, a capital offense. That possibility and the emerging details of the killings have raised fears that the incident could be the gravest case involving misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq.

[snip]

Evidence indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said.

That evidence, described by Congressional, Pentagon and military officials briefed on the inquiry, suggested to one Congressional official that the killings were "methodical in nature."

Congressional and military officials say the Naval Criminal Investigative Service inquiry is focusing on the actions of a Marine Corps staff sergeant serving as squad leader at the time, but that Marine officials have told members of Congress that up to a dozen other marines in the unit are also under investigation. Officials briefed on the inquiry said that most of the bullets that killed the civilians were now thought to have been "fired by a couple of rifles," as one of them put it.

I'm not sure how to address this. I'd braced myself for the worst from the very first reporting of this story, steeling myself to the possibility that U. S. Marines, distraught over the death of one of their own, went on an anguished, emotional rampage in the immediate wake of the event, lashing out in a blind rage against the first possible targets that crossed their paths. This, of course, would still be a crime, but one that could be understood, if not tolerated.

But if sometimes truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, sometimes reality is worse than our darkest nightmares. If the Times article is correct, a staff sergeant led a squad on a methodical, multi-hour killing spree.

Why was this allowed to occur? Why was this sergeant not relieved of his command, and this unit immediately forced to stand down by other Marines? This event could not have occurred in a vacuum, and other Marines watched these murders occur, presumably without making any serious attempts to intervene.

I grew up on Guadalcanal Diary and the Sands of Iwo Jima, and have always had a fondness in my heart for the Marines that I saw from nearby MCAS Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune. The apparent fact that Marines stood by and let one or more of their brethren massacre civilians, and then apparently tried to cover up the crime (which will be the target of a separate investigation) are black stains on the long and storied honor of the Corps, and that sickens my heart.

If the Times reporting of this incident is correct, there does seem to be the possibility of capital crimes. Let the investigation proceed, let the trial be fair and unambiguous, and let justice be swift.

* * *

Eight days ago, before the joint NCIS/Multi-National Forces investigation had been completed on the case, before so much as one charge had been filed, ex-Marine John Murtha made the extraordinarily inflammatory and provocative statement that the Marines in this horrific incident "killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

I said then and maintain now that:

…it is unconscionable for any legislator to accuse U.S. military personnel of multiple counts of premeditated murder before an investigation into these charges is complete. Prosecutions must proceed at their own logical pace as evidence in the case dictates. Premature accusations by a public figure in such a case imposes an artificial timeline, endangering the accuracy and thoroughness of an investigation.

At the same time, such heated rhetoric as charges of murder of "innocent civilians in cold blood" is prejudicial against the defendants, poisoning public opinion against them. This would be an explosive charge in a civilian court, but to make such charges against members of the U.S. Military when they are engaged in military operations in that country is absolutely fissionable.

Even if these accusations are proven true—once charges are finally brought and duly prosecuted—Murtha's grandstanding is still a reprehensible act, trading upon horrible (alledged) murders for temporary political gain.

Sickening souls on the far left are already gloating that Murtha's premature pronouncements may turn out to be accurate, without considering for a second that it was not his place to make those accusations. He could have endangered the investigation and prosecution of these apparent crimes. Of course, due process doesn't much matter to these folks. Making charges, whether they can be proven or supported, is part of their stock in trade.

I find I am able to feel disgust for all the black hearts involved; those that could perpetrate such horrific acts, those that could cover it up, and those who would try to profit from it.

May justice find them all.

Note: It is important to remember that the investigation is still on-going and that the final NCIS report is not expected for another 30 days. No Marines have yet been officially charged.

Hubris, Interrupted

I first saw this story break yesterday:

President Bush ordered the Justice Department yesterday to seal records seized from the Capitol Hill office of a Democratic congressman, representing a remarkable intervention by the nation's chief executive into an ongoing criminal probe of alleged corruption.

The order was aimed at quelling an escalating constitutional confrontation between the Justice Department and the House, where Republican and Democratic leaders have demanded that the FBI return documents and copies of computer files seized from the office of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.).

In a six-paragraph statement, Bush cast the dispute in historic terms and said he issued the order to give Justice Department officials and lawmakers more time to negotiate a compromise. "Our government has not faced such a dilemma in more than two centuries," Bush said. "Yet after days of discussions, it is clear these differences will require more time to be worked out."

The order capped five days of tumultuous negotiations involving the White House, the Justice Department and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who denounced the Saturday-night raid as an infringement on the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches and had joined Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in demanding that the seized documents be returned.

I resisted the urge to make an immediate comment on this, and instead decided to sleep on it and mull things over. Now that I have, think I like the President's intervention even less.

I first noted on Wednesday and much more qualified experts have confirmed, there is no apparent validity at all to the argument by legislators that they have some sort of Constitutional protection from their offices being searched.

Congressional offices have no special protections under the Fourth Amendment compared to other offices, and the FBI did get a duly sworn search warrant from a federal judge. Nor does the Speech or Debate clause seem to be even an plausible impediment to the execution of a search warrant.

No, the more I look at the President's decision to intercede in this case by impounding the seized documents for a 45-day period, the more I dislike his decision.

There was no compelling legal reason that I can ascertain for the President to intercede in this matter, even though he has the apparent power to do so. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the Justice Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation went well beyond the legal standard in their search of Jefferson's Congressional office, perhaps to the point of showing too much deference to his status as a congressman.

No, the "reasoning" here is purely political in nature, as Bush as paused (but not stopped) the investigation so that Denny Hastert and the rest of the Republican leadership can pull their heads out of their collective… well you know.

From this perspective, President Bush overreached, using the power of the Executive to interrupt the Legislative branch's constitutional right to make complete fools of themselves by continuing to exhibit such constitutionally ignorant, publically repellant and arrogant behavior.

The great casualty in Bush's intercession is some much-needed congressional hubris.

Ignoring the Rule of Holes

You've got to hand it to House Speaker Denny Hastert: he's all about novel interpretations:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused the Justice Department Thursday of trying to intimidate him in retaliation for criticizing the FBI's weekend raid on a congressman's office, escalating a searing battle between the executive and legislative branches of government.

"This is one of the leaks that come out to try to, you know, intimidate people," Hastert said on WGN radio Thursday morning. "We're just not going to be intimidated on it."

Asked later Thursday whether he thought he Justice Department retaliated against him with the leak, Hastert replied: "All I'm saying is, here are the dots. People can connect any dots they want to."

[snip]

Within minutes of that report late Wednesday, the department issued the first of two denials that it was investigating Hastert. The speaker demanded a retraction from ABC News, which stood by its story. Hastert on Thursday threatened to sue the network and reporters and executives for libel and defamation.

So Hastert believes that the Justice Department is trying to "you know, intimidate people," by first leaking false information about him to an ABC reporter, and then almost immediately and officially contradicting the false information in the strongest of terms. One would think if the Department of Justice was truly out to stain the Speaker as he maintains, they'd let the stain "set," and not issue a near immediate denial of the charge against him.

Of course, logic hasn't factored into much of what the Speaker of the House has uttered in the past week, so perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised at his foolish consistency.

Poisoned by (not so Il)legals

Via the Raleigh, NC, News and Observer:

Sixty or more schoolchildren might have been exposed to mercury in a series of incidents that led Wednesday to the closing of a Durham elementary school and the evacuation of a church and seven homes.

Oak Grove Elementary School on Wake Forest Road was closed early Wednesday, a day after four students brought unknown quantities of the hazardous substance there. A Durham man who police think gave them the mercury was arrested Wednesday.

[snip]

State and county officials on Wednesday pieced together a sequence of events that they say they think began Friday night when Carlos Guerra, 21, who works for an air-conditioning company, went to an East Ramseur Street church and gave an unknown amount of mercury to four youngsters.

Garner police charged Guerra, of 311 LaSalle St., No. 3001H, with stealing the mercury from a Garner job site Friday.

"I don't think he knew what he was dealing with," said Lt. Don Paschall of the Durham County Sheriff's Office, which is investigating. "He was referring to it as 'magic water.' "

Health officials say Guerra gave the mercury in cups to four children at Iglesias De Restauracion, a storefront church east of downtown. On Tuesday, the officials say, the four children brought the mercury to school, wiped it on others and sprayed it from spray bottles on three school buses and in at least one classroom.

This is the story currently being reported by the media, but that may not be the entire story.

There are questions about the citizenship status of Guerra, as well as some of his victims. I have attempted to contact the Durham County Sheriff's Department and three reporters at local news organizations for comment, and hope to have confirmation of his status later this afternoon.

Roughly 65 percent of North Carolina's Latino population —more than 300,000—are illegal immigrants.

Update: I just got confirmation that Guerra is here legally.

He's just an idiot.

Seeing Yellow

ABC's Brian Ross is reporting on his blog The Blotter that Speaker of the House Denny Hastert is the target of an on-going FBI corruption investigation:

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

There's just one problem with that theory: The FBI denies the story, and Hastert himself is demanding a full retraction.

Despite the denials and request for a retraction, Ross is sticking to his story… sort of:

ABC's law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal “target” or “subject” of the investigation. "Whether they like it or not, members of Congress, including Hastert, are under investigation," one federal official said tonight. The investigation of Hastert's relationship with Abramoff is in the early stages, according to these officials, and could eventually conclude that Abramoff's information was unfounded.

Gentlemen, start your parsing.

In the original article, Ross was quite careful to only say that Hastert was “in the mix,” a vague, rather nebulous statement that most readers would interpret to mean that Hastert was most likely the target of a criminal investigation. Indeed, the Reality-Based Community (an oxymoron if there ever was one) seems to be exactly under that impression in their update, and the ambiguous wording is also apparently interpreted in a similar fashion at Booman Tribune, The Carpetbagger Report, and Washington Monthly, all leading liberal political blogs.

But these blogs were hardly alone. Mainstream news sources such as Bloomberg were also taken in by Ross's too-perfect parsing, declaring:

U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert is under investigation by the FBI in the corruption scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, ABC News reported. ABC News, citing unidentified Justice Department officials, said the information involving Hastert was provided by lobbyists who are now cooperating with the investigation.

Reuters and even local ABC stations were also apparently taken in.

Ross provided an initial report with carefully constructed sentences that are phrased in such a way that even the best of minds inferred that Hastert is most likely the target of the investigation.

Bravo, Mr. Ross. Very well played.

So what is occurring here? Are professional journalists (Richard Esposito and Rhonda Schwartz also contributed to the ABC reports) ginning up excitable bloggers and less careful fellow journalists to establish smears they can then plausibly deny as being mere misinterpretations?

Ross's own sources seem to think so:

You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said.

Hastert may be a number of things, but he is not the focus of a Congressional corruption probe.

Ross's purposefully misleading, barely justifiable reporting seems to be a classic case of sensationalism, and would appear to cross into the ethically-challenged world of yellow journalism.

Denny Hastert may or may not be found to be of interest in Congressional corruption investigations, but one thing we now know to be true: the reporting of Brian Ross, "ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent" is not to be taken at face value.

Oh, Deer

Ladies and Gentlemen, your tax dollars at work:

According to an AP story, the National Park Service needs to thin the elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park. Officials estimate that it will cost $18 million to accomplish this.

The New Editor has other, more rational ideas.

The Nerve of This Guy

Would somebody have the decency to tell this man that he is losing the war?

Iraqi troops will be able to handle security in all 18 of the country's provinces by the end of 2007 with additional training and equipment, the country's new prime minister said Wednesday.

[snip]

It is the second time in a week that al-Maliki has discussed a timeline for the handover of security responsibilities to Iraqi troops -- a development that President Bush has said would enable U.S. troops to leave.

With more training and better equipment, "Our security forces will be capable of taking over the security portfolio in all Iraqi provinces within one year and a half,"...

[snip]

During a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday, al-Maliki said his government could take over security for 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces by the end of this year.

Obviously, Prime Minister al-Maliki has not asked permission to win the war from "liberal hawk" John Murtha, who said Iraq was unwinnable. He has not heeded the common wisdom of the New York Times, that Iraq was, is, and always will be a quagmire.

This Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki ignores the pundits and the fatalists that long ago consigned his nation to the status of a lost cause.

Just who does he think he is to win?

And Now For Something Completely Different

Any custom bike fans out there?

My brother-in-law made a sweet-looking custom chopper, one built at some of the most famous chopper shops in the United States. Fabrication and paint came at Orange County Choppers and J.B. Grafix of American Chopper fame in New York, and it was completed in West Palm Beach at Eddie Trotta's Thunder Cycles.

Believe it or not, he's selling it on eBay, so if you want it, go get it.

Alternately, if you happen to be one of my visitors for the left side of the tracks and you'd really like to see me offline, raise $20K or so and put it in my Paypal tipjar to the right, and I'll take it.

Think of it as your chance to "stick it to the Man."

Donations for my expected medical bills would be nice, too.

Arrogance

This past Saturday, FBI agents bearing a signed search warrant signed by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan entered the Congressional Offices of Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana in pursuit of evidence in a felony bribery case. The warrant was granted after an affidavit was filed that stated agents recovered $90,000 in bribery payments from a freezer in his home, and in light of the fact that Jefferson refused to comply with a subpoena for documents last year.

Showing abject ignorance of the applicable law and more than a little arrogance, Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert demanded that the document seized in the raid should be returned, and the FBI agents involved in the raid, "ought to be frozen out of that (case) for the sake of the Constitution."

As you might expect, the NY Times is having a field day:

After years of quietly acceding to the Bush administration's assertions of executive power, the Republican-led Congress hit a limit this weekend.

Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files.

The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert raised the issue personally with President Bush on Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee is examining the episode.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, predicted that the separation-of-powers conflict would go to the Supreme Court. "I have to believe at the end of the day it is going to end up across the street," Mr. Boehner told reporters gathered in his conference room, which looks out on the Capitol plaza and the court building.

A court challenge would place all three branches of government in the fray over whether the obscure "speech and debate" clause of the Constitution, which offers some legal immunity for lawmakers in the conduct of their official duties, could be interpreted to prohibit a search by the executive branch on Congressional property.

A "separation of powers" conflict? Do either Hastert or Boehner or anyone else protesting the execution of this search warrant, have even the slightest reading comprehension? Folks, it isn't that hard.

Congressional office have any special protections from search warrants, as noted by White Collar Crime Prof Blog:

The Fourth Amendment does not afford any specific protection to legislative offices so long as there is probable cause to believe that there is evidence of criminal activity at the location specified, and the House of Representatives would not have standing to raise a Fourth Amendment claim on its own.

Thus, Jefferson's Office has no special immunity, or "specific protection," and the FBI had enough evidence to obtain a search warrant from District Court Judge Hogan.

Hastert seems to base his claims on his understanding of the Constitution—proving for once and for all that he understands it about has much as you might expect a former high school wrestling coach would.

Section Six of Article I of the U.S. Constitution clearly and unambiguously states:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

One does not need to graduate from a top flight law school to easily discern in the passage above that the commission of a felony is specifically cited as one of three exemptions from the privilege from arrest. The charges being pursued against Jefferson are indeed felony charges.

The "speech and debate" clause only applies to a Congressman's official duties, and if Hastert, Boehner and other congressmen think that accepting bribes is part of their official duties, then perhaps we need more search warrants executed on Congressional offices, not fewer.

A "culture of corruption" indeed exists in Washington, and this corruption manifests itself in the very souls of Congressmen who are so arrogant as to believe their offices are some sort of sanctuary from the law.

November.

Faster, please.

Disaster Plan (Bumped)

According to Fox News, New Orleans has begun a hurricane evacuation drill.

So far, I'm not that impressed.

4/24 Update (via Drudge): and it seems that things are even worst than first thought. A mock evacuation was cancelled because no one could figure out who was responsible for evacuating FEMA's largest trailer park in Louisiana.

And here's the really bad news (my bold):

Last year, as Hurricane Katrina approached, thousands of New Orleans' poor were left behind because they had no transportation, could not afford to leave or did not know where to go. The Louisiana Superdome and the convention center became shelters of last resort where thousands sweltered for days, suffering through shortages of food and water.

Mayor Ray Nagin has said there will be no shelters in the city this time.

The authorities can't figure out how to evacuate you, and there will be no central shelters to retreat to.

Sleep tight, New Orleans.

Over the Top

It seems that at least a few blogs on the left side of the blogosphere have taken offense to Mort Kondrake's recent editorial in the Pasadena Star-News.

Mort, it seems, has had it with those on the political left that he feels have taken partisanship to the extreme:

ENOUGH already! It's harmful enough that ideological conflict and partisan politics are preventing this country from solving its long-term challenges on health care, fiscal policy and energy. Now it's threatening our national survival.

Liberal State of the Day doesn't quite agree trying to make a parallel between the presidential administrations of WWII and the War on Terror:

… back then the US attempted to strictly adhere to the Geneva Convention. The US populace was not concerned that "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" was torturing its enemies. We weren't trying to form opinion and policy based on the latest episode of '24'. Now we have a Torture Veep; back then we had a something completely different - a reasonable and honest human being.

State's Jeff doesn't quite seem to grasp that his hyperbole would seem to bear out Kondrake's point about extreme partisanship to the letter, but let's focus merely on what he understands to be facts.

Did the United States "strictly adhere" to the Geneva Convention in World War Two? We would certainly like to think so and indeed in the vast majority of cases we did, but as Victor David Hanson notes:

We know about the horrific German massacres of American prisoners, but little about instances of Americans' shooting German captives well before the Battle of the Bulge. Such murdering was neither sanctioned by American generals nor routine — but nevertheless it was not uncommon in the heat of battle and the stress of war. No inquiry cited Generals Hodges, Patton, or Bradley as responsible for rogue soldiers shooting unarmed prisoners.

Biscari. Dachau. Chenogne. Very un-Geneva massacres did occur, and those involved, when tried, suffered few lasting penalties. We occasionally murdered, and we did in dire situations torture our enemies if we thought it could save American lives. The U.S population, at the time, certainly wouldn't have blamed Presidents Roosevelt or Truman for that if they knew the details, if it meant Johnny would come marching home instead of being unloaded from a train's baggage car.

Then, at least, partisanship has its limits.

Kondrake was imperfect in his arguments, as Bill Quick notes, but his overall argument remains:

…the fundamental problem infecting much of Congress, the media and the political class - especially those left of center - is that they are consumed with loathing for President Bush and all his works and are prepared to do anything to undermine him, even if it makes the country less safe.

I await a point-by-point rebuttal from the media, the Congress, and political liberals of these basic charges. It should be easy to prove that these claims are false… shouldn't it?

Guns & Poseurs: Use Your Delusion, Too

Yesterday, our favorite internet deity Allah dug up a story about a supposed Army Ranger by the name of Jesse MacBeth who claims in a series of videos that he witnessed and even participated in officially-sanctioned atrocities while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq, such as:

• He and other U.S. Army Rangers were ordered "...do whatever it takes...to strike fear in the hearts of the Iraqis..." (1:07);
• He and other Rangers routinely executed children as part of the interrogations of their parents (6:15);
• He personally killed almost 200 men, women, and children, many at close range, and most or all noncombatants (7:30);
• He and other Rangers infiltrated a mosque, waited for about 200 worshipers to arrive and pray, slaughtered them with guns, ignited the bodies, hung them from the rafters, wrote anti-muslim graffiti on the walls, and left bodies in the streets (9:30);
• He and other Rangers shot and killed unarmed protesters and children who threw rocks (12:20);
• He personally killed a mother pleading for mercy, and her three children, including an infant, because he "had to."(16:05)

This willingness to call American soldiers murderers made him immediately popular on the fringe left, where he spoke at antiwar rallies and found himself the darling of the leftwing alternative media.

The problem was, Jesse MacBeth was never a Ranger.

Jesse MacBeth was never in any branch of the military, and his lies are almost too numerous to mention... except for those for which he garnered convictions, perhaps. MacBeth is currently wanted on bench warrant issued today for "violation of a court order" and "assault in the fourth degree" in Washington State and probation violations in Arizona.

I guess sooner or later, this fraud will get to wear a uniform after all.

Blegging the Taxman

I know I have a few regular readers at the Internal Revenue Service, and I'd like to ask for your help if at all possible.

I'm trying to obtain a 2005 W-2 from a former employer, but I've been unable to contact them so far. I know that I can request a 2005 tax return transcript, but I was told on the phone that for whatever reason, these are going to be unavailable for several months. I need it this week.

If you can provide any help in getting this, please shoot an email to the email address listed on the right column.

Thanks!

Is Hezbollah's Preemptive Surrender a Tip-Off?

It looks liked Iran's hoped for "second front" in the event of U.S. military intervention into the future of its nuclear program development has just signaled a preemptive surrender:

Lebanon's Hizbollah, a close ally of Iran, would not jump to Tehran's defence if the U.S. launched a strike against its nuclear programme but would step in if the conflict spread to Lebanon, its deputy chief said on Monday.

Sheikh Naim Kassem told Reuters that the guerrilla group, which was established by Iran in the early 1980s but has since grown into a political party with 14 seats in parliament, had no plans to get involved in regional battles.

"Hizbollah is not a tool of Iran, it is a Lebanese project that implements the demands of Lebanese," Kassem said in an interview in the Hizbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.

"Iran is a big country with real capabilities and can defend itself if it is exposed to American danger."

Kassem's message is more circumstantial evidence for those of us who feel that Iran is likely to be a nuclear provocateur if allowed to continue uranium enrichment unmolested. His statement of Hezbollah's military neutrality and defensive posture in the event of an Israel-Iran conflagration would seem to indicate that:

1. Hezbollah has reason to believe that a conflict between Iran and Israel is a near term possibility.
2. Hezbollah believes that the conflict will be of sufficient magnitude that a potentially debilitating counterstrike would pose a serious threat to their operations.

But what magnitude or retaliation could be so sufficient as to threaten a decentralized organization such as Hezbollah? The final graph of the article seems to indicate the expected conflict could be a region killer:

"If we assume the worst possible scenario, that Iran was completely cut off, Hizbollah would continue because it is based on faith. We are a political, ideological and jihadist party...," Kassem said. "This is a religion we believe in whether Iran is there or not."

Sheikh Naim Kassem, friend of Iran, speaks of a worst possible scenario that envisions his ally no longer existing.

Determing why he might feel this way, and why he might feel this way now is of the utmost importance.

Completing the Circle

Update: Claims that religious minorities inside Iran would be forced to wear identifying colored badges are now being challenged and appear to be false.

Source

Something old is new again:

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims. "This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Au contraire, my good Rabbi. Iranians are not acting like Nazis. As Michael Rubin
points out, they simply are acting more like Iranians:

The Nazi practice of forcing Jews to wear a yellow star had its origins in what is now Iran and Iraq when a ninth century caliph forced his Jewish subjects to wear yellow patches. From time to time, subsequent rulers revived the practice. Shiite clerics long deemed any food touched by Jews to be unclean. While blood libel only took root in Iranian society after the sixteenth-century arrival of European ambassadors, as Iranian society wrestled with modernity, violent anti-Semitism grew. Pogroms wiped out the Jewish community in some towns and villages in Iranian Azerbaijan in the mid-nineteenth century, and serious pogroms also swept through Mashhad, a Shiite shrine city in northeastern Iran in which the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was born and raised. It was also in Mashhad that, despite the oft-cited mantra that there is no compulsion in Islam, Shiite clerics forcibly converted the remaining Jews to Islam under threat of death.

Hitler's SS learned much from Iran, as Rubin notes above. It is reasonable, based upon history, to assume that Iranian President Ahmadinejad is once again moving his country in the direction of another pogrom, another Holocaust, though one created not by sword and fire, but fission.

As Jeff Goldstein noted yesterday, Ahmadinejad has taken steps that a pious member of his sect would before unleashing war, including the issuing of a da'wa:

In last week's post, "An Islamic Declaration of War?", I (and a number of other bedwetters and paste-eaters) tried to divine (sorry) the intent behind Iranian President Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush—a letter that Robert Spencer noted at the time was curiously like a da'waan Mohammedan mandate required before waging war against unbelievers.

Today, we're again confronted with the prospects of a letter from Ahmadinejad, this one to be addressed to the Pope...

Jeff then links to Hot Air's Bryan Preston, who reminds us:

These letters are hardly unprecedented, as al-Reuters says. Their origins go all the way back to Mohammed, who often issued letters to the kings of lands he was about to attack to invite them to accept Islam before Mohammed would invade to convert them by the sword. Thus, the religion of peace spread far and wide. This, now second letter from the hand of Ahmadinejad is a da'wa—a call to Islam. It follows Mohammed's traditional letters. Implicit in such letters is the threat that if the recipient doesn't accept Islam voluntarily, he and his land will accept it by force. Or die resisting.

In Crazy Mahmoud's mind, he has now written to the chief of the world's top secular superpower and is writing to the chief of the world's unbelieving (vis a vis Islam) religious superpower (there being no equivalent of the pope in Islam). He is inviting them both to accept Islam, both personally and on behalf of their nation and church. Unless I miss my guess, in the letter to Benedict he will be, in essence, calling upon the Catholic Church to accept Islam–or die.

These letters are not well-wishes for the holidays or get-to-know-you cultural exchanges. They are threats. Mahmoud has something planned, and it would seem to me to be in the latter stages of finalization before it goes forward.

While I must admit that I'd earlier missed the significance of the da'wa letters, their historical precedence cannot be ignored. Every note played by Ahmadinejad so far has been played before, if via a different instrument, and this time, the Iranian instrument of choice is all but certain to be a MIRV.

Where would that lead?

I wrote two weeks ago in "Recalling the Twelfth Imam:

Recently, Iranian government officials went far enough to state that they could destroy Israel with nuclear weapons and absorb an expected Israeli nuclear counterstrike.

Tens of millions of people throughout southwest Asia would be likely to die in such an exchange.

[snip]

Israel would be gone. The Palestinians would be gone. Iran would be gone. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would suffer millions of casualties from the blast and intense fallout from the Iranian strike, and the Israeli counterstrike would likely blanket most of the "–stans," as well as China and India with a plume of radioactive fallout, exposing close to a billion people both indirectly and directly to airborne fallout and food-borne consumption of the same for many years to come.

As you may expect, a glowing Middle East wasteland would destroy the global energy market, collapsing economies around the world, including our own. No human on this planet would be untouched by the effects, which could take decades to recover from, if ever. It would also make Muslims hunted around the globe, setting the stage for a crusade the likes of which the world has never imagined. Islam, and what remains of 1 billion Muslims, would be targets for an entirely different kind of genocide born of fear.

Wow.
Yeah, "wow."

Most of the punditry that has discussed the building nuclear crisis with Iran has discussed it in terms of asking when would we attack them, but as these da'wa letters indicate, it seems like it is Iran that is preparing to take the offensive. Considering that some think that Iran may already have nuclear weapons and that traces of uranium have been discovered in Iran that are close to or above the level used to make nuclear warheads, this seems like it should be a contingency we should be preparing for.

Indeed, it may very well be something we are planning for, as strategic planning contractors working for the Pentagon have already delivered presentations predicting an Iranian offensive.

VII, Inc is one of these contractors with apparently deep ties in the Gulf Region. They compiled a 42-page presention in January titled "Iranian President-Islamic Eschatology Near Term Implications" which was presented to the U.S. military.

Eschatology is defined in the presentation as "a part of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or the ultimate destiny of human kind, commonly phrased as the end of the world or end of the age." The document explored the religious psychology of Iranian President Ahmadinejad and the Iranian mullahcracy, as well as historical, political, economic, and military influences.

VII saw just two possible scenarios as a result of their studies if Iran is left to function unimpeded, and both of those involve preemptive Iranian military strikes. One of these saw the possibility of the possible use of nuclear weapons in an Israeli response to a massive Iranian/Syrian rocket attack supported by Russia. This use of nuclear weapons was predicted well before recent developments that suggest the possibility that the Iranian nuclear program may be much more advanced than we first thought. It seems quite probable that Iran will use any nuclear weapons it may acquire or develop preemptively in an attack against Israel.

Should we wait, and allow them to make that rash choice instead of taking that option away from them, we will have but little choice in response.

Hitler's maniacal vision of how to unite the world under his power on the mid-twentieth century cost roughly 62 million lives before it was snuffed out in 1945. I'd prefer to see us act preemptively before things really do come full circle again.

A Dim Bulb In Searchlight

Via the Washington Times:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called a proposal to make English the official language "racist" on the Senate floor yesterday.

"This amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish," the Democrat said during the already tense debate over immigration reform.

So, asking people to speak English is a nation that speaks predominately English, is not only wrong, but racist?

Somebody better tell these folks.

Even though these people can tie their ethnic origins to Mexico, Africa, Korea and India, they all speak English here, even though at least two are fluent in other languages.

I work with people from Spain, Sierra Leone, and Germany as well as the United States, and they all speak English in addition to their native languages of Spanish, French, and German. Why? Because we are predominately an English-speaking country, and to integrate into American society and get all of it that it has to offer economically and culturally, you need to learn English.

Perhaps it is because I work with immigrants that I understand this basic fact that seems lost on the good Senator from Searchlight.

If anything, encouraging people to keep to their native tongues after they immigrate to another culture is to invite isolationism and advocate resisting assimilation. Of course this amendment is directed to people who speak Spanish, as they are our largest immigrant group at the present time. If people are going to legally immigrate to this country, we want them to be able to take advantage of all America has to offer. So much of that opportunity can be crippled by a language barrier, and therefore it is vital they learn English. To encourage people to remain illiterate in a nation's primary language is to isolate them and leave them as second-class citizens Balkanized from the rest of society.

To pander to people in such a way as to isolate them, to try to convince them that their language barrier—which robs them of so many opportunities—is a source of pride, well, that is a racist sentiment, Harry.

Got that?

Good.

The Elephant

A thoughtful letter about "seeing the elephant" from a 101st Airborne Division soldier in Iraq to his blogger dad, at Blue Crab Boulevard.

Dishonorable John

Ex-Marine John Murtha has taken the extraordinary step of accusing U.S. Marines of war crimes before a joint NCIS/Multi-National Forces investigation has been completed of an incident that occurred on November 19, 2005.

On that date, a U.S. Marine convoy in Haditha, Iraq was hit by an IED, killing Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas and wounding two others. After the explosion, the Marines stormed nearby building and killed 15 people inside, three of them children.

Army Times provides Murtha's exact charges:

Rep. John Murtha, an influential Pennsylvania lawmaker and outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, said today Marines had “killed innocent civilians in cold blood” after allegedly responding to a roadside bomb ambush that killed a Marine during a patrol in Haditha, Iraq, Nov. 19.

[snip]

“It's much worse than was reported in Time magazine,” Murtha, a Democrat, former Marine colonel and Vietnam war veteran, told reporters on Capitol Hill.

“There was no firefight. There was no [bomb] that killed those innocent people,” Murtha explained, adding there were “about twice as many” Iraqis killed than Time had reported.

No official investigation report has been released by the Pentagon and a spokesman for Murtha was unable to add to the congressman's remarks.

[snip]

Murtha said combat stress prompted the Marines' alleged rampage.

“It's a very serious incident, unfortunately. It shows the tremendous pressure that these guys are under every day when they're out in combat,” he said. “One man was killed with an [improvised explosive device] and after that they actually went into the houses and killed women and children.”

Let's take a step back for a second, and take a deep breath before we proceed.

. . .

First off, it is unconscionable for any legislator to accuse U.S. military personnel of multiple counts of premeditated murder before an investigation into these charges is complete. Prosecutions must proceed at their own logical pace as evidence in the case dictates. Premature accusations by a public figure in such a case imposes an artificial timeline, endangering the accuracy and thoroughness of an investigation.

At the same time, such heated rhetoric as charges of murder of "innocent civilians in cold blood" is prejudicial against the defendants, poisoning public opinion against them. This would be an explosive charge in a civilian court, but to make such charges against members of the U.S. Military when they are engaged in military operations in that country is absolutely fissionable.

To make such strong charges while our soldiers are in that combat theater of operations is to unnecessarily inflame Iraqi public opinion against our soldiers and place the lives of U.S. servicemen and women in danger of reprisal attacks based upon Murtha's claims, which to date, are unsupported.

John Murtha makes claims that the civilians were killed by the Marines "in cold blood." This is an inflammatory charge that does not seem in the least possible by the undisputed events of the case.

"In cold blood" is defined as "Deliberately, coldly, and dispassionately." It is also generally referred to in legal terms as premeditated murder whereby the accused is said to have planned out his homicide beforehand. In this event, an IED killed an American Marine and injured two others, at which point the surviving Marines stormed a nearby house and killed the occupants. Whether or not these deaths were justified or not is for the investigation to determine, but no credible individual could ever make the claim that these deaths were preordained.

Murtha also makes a claim that I've heard nowhere else, where he alleges that "about twice as many" people died in that house that day, putting the number of civilians killed at or near 30. This claim is not supported by the original Time article, nor can I find support for anything approaching this number from any other sources. Murtha does not even even attempt to provide support for these extra charges, he simple ascribes roughly 30 premeditated murders to U.S. Marines as casually as if he was ordering a cappuccino.

He does so before they have even been so much as charged with a crime. Murtha seeks to leave no doubt that this was anything other than a massacre of innocents. But is that actually what occurred?

I first came across this story on March 20th of this year, and at the time I wrote:

There is the possibility that the Marines did gun down innocent civilians as local Iraqis claim. But it is equally as possible that one or more people inside the house opened fire upon the Marines in an ambush after the IED went off. It has happened that way frequently, and that exact scenario left ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt seriously wounded, when the IED attack that wounded them was followed by small arms fire from nearby buildings. The attack was broken when coalition forces counterattacked.

Someone who truly supports the troops, even if they do not support the war, would want this incident fully investigated to uncover the truth. They would want to know the facts.

They would want to know if the Marines fired out of blind rage at the loss of their friends, and they would be equally interested in finding out if the Marines assaulted that location because someone inside fired upon them, as they claimed. Was it a slaughter of innocents, or were insurgents firing from within civilian homes? Were those that triggered the IED among the dead? We do not yet know, and some are already passing judgment.

"We do not yet know, and some are already passing judgment."

I had no idea just how accurate those words would prove to be. Congressman John Murtha has now gone so far as to accuse American Marines of cold-blooded murder before an investigation has been completed, and roughly doubled the number of dead without any support for his charges, with the sole apparent goal of inflaming outrage at the expense of our military's safety.

It would seem appropriate that the United States House of Representatives should at the very least censure Congressman Murtha, who has gone so far out of his way to initiate such inflammatory and potentially dangerous rhetoric. He has dishonored his seat, the military criminal justice system, the Marine Corps and the United States of America.

How a man can make such vicious, unsupported claims and still claim to love the Marine Corps and America is beyond my understanding.

10 Un-Angry Men

I had something that might be an epiphany, or not, when arguing with the Daou Report crowd that came by to visit my FISA judges post earlier today.

The left is still screaming that without a case being brought before the judiciary for review, that various top secret National Security Agency programs just must be illegal. The fact that this program has been reviewed by the NSA Inspector General's office, the NSA General Counsel's office, and a bevy of career Department of Justice lawyers is irrelevant. In their minds, all Executive Branch employees are automatically Bush Administration frontmen. Apparently, when George W. was inaugurated, they all went Agent Smith, and could no longer be trusted to have any sense of professionalism, integrity, or patriotism.

Since the 42-page document supporting the Administration position comes from the Department of Justice, an executive branch agency, then they are automatically to be dismissed according to the prevailing leftist eschatology. Those of us who actually think that the President and career government employees actually care about this country would seem to be effectively disarmed by what they would disallow.

But are we?

Much has been made about the fact that the legality of the NSA program has not gone through the FISA Court challenge of some sort. I'd make the argument that while it has not gone through the traditional route, all ten active FISA judges were briefed on the program January 9, 2006, four months and eight days ago. While sworn to secrecy and unable to discuss the case with the public, any of these ten judges could have resigned from the FISA court in the past four months, and that resignation would have been unmistakably read as a sign of protest against the NSA surveillance program.

As of today, all ten of these FISA judges are still on bench.

It could mean absolutely nothing, but one would hope that if FISA judge was seriously opposed to the program in any way, that he would resign. As these judges would not have to resign their federal district judgeships along with their FISA roles, the effect on a concerned judge would seem to be a fairly low burden. If they were in fact exposing what some pundits have described as "a major illegal act" by a sitting President, one that some are certain is a step towards totalitarianism, wouldn't they act? Certainly, giving up whatever minor perks that come from being on largely-unknown court would be worth saving the Constitution wouldn't it?

And yet, knowing what they know, all ten of these FISA judges have failed to resign in protest.

I wonder why that is.

A Border Wall that Works

Whether you are for or against illegal immigration, we can all agree on one simple fact: a continuous border barrier is far more effective than the current erratic use of border barriers, which tend to merely direct illegal immigrants and smugglers into more remote and dangerous areas.

A key gripe against building a continuous border barrier is one of construction and maintenance costs. Another complaint is that the barrier would not be effective. I think I can prove both of these theories incorrect. By using existing prefabricated construction materials, we can build a barrier system that is all but impervious to illegal immigrants that has low maintenance costs.

I propose a relatively simple system, composed of:

• a vehicle barrier.
• a primary wall-type barrier
• two rows of fencing

It would look in profile something like this:

It would use very simple components starting with a vehicle barrier system. For that, we look to history.

Dragon's teeth were used in World War II as fortifications to stop tanks. While specialty vehicles and combat engineers combined with flanking maneuvers limited their wartime impact, these structures are extremely durable, and many can be seen in Europe to this day. Made of reinforced concrete, they get harder over time and they can be mass-produced in forms and transported to their installment sites. These "teeth" would be very difficult for civilian vehicles to penetrate, and the point of their use would be to force would-be illegal immigrants to approach the primary barrier system on foot.

The primary wall-type barrier would serve two purposes. First, it provides an imposing physical barrier that will slow or stop illegal immigrants. It will also screen the American side of the border from view, making it difficult for illegals to judge the location of Border Patrol agents on the American side.

The wall itself only needs to be 15'-20' tall, and can be made of post-and-cap prefabricated systems. I-beam posts are driven into the ground, and cranes lower pre-cast interlocking concrete slabs into place to the desired height. This system is very common, and is often used to create sound barriers on U.S. highways. The walls would be armed with sensors to detect anyone attempting to chisel through, tunnel under, or scale over them, and those scaling the walls would encounter electrified concertina wire at the wall's top.

The current through the wire would not be lethal, but it would be very uncomfortable for those attempting to enter the country illegally.

Concertina wire, a type of coiled razor wire, is effective when combined in layers and in conjunction with other barriers, such as fencing.

Any illegals that successfully bypassed the primary wall barrier would then face two rows of chain-link fencing, faced with multiple rolls of concertina wire and topped with another.

Prefabricated guard towers placed at key vantage points, when combined with sensors, would be used to direct border patrol agents to vector in on those who would attempt to enter the country illegally.

A typical intercept of illegal aliens might work something like this.

Illegals approach the U.S. Mexican border from the Mexican side. Cameras and other sensors would detect the presence of movement day or night when the illegals are still hundreds of yards away from the wall. The dragons' teeth would assure that the illegals cannot rely on vehicles to make the crossing, forcing them to proceed on foot.

As the pedestrian illegals approach the primary wall on foot, alerts are already being sent to the border patrol via sensors so that U.S. Border Patrol agents can begin to deploy to the area. Many illegals may not have the capability to easily surpass the primary wall. They many not have access to a ladder of sufficient length, or they may not wish to challenge the electrified concertina, which while not lethal, is painful and startling. Those who do decide to proceed will be slowed by the concertina, which will snag on clothing and flesh if the person navigating it is not very careful.

In many instaces, once an illegal tops the wall he may find himself facing Border Patrol agents staring back at them, after the agents have been tipped off by sensors.

If agents haven't yet arrived, the illegal still faces a 15-20' drop onto hard ground, and two tall chain-link fences faced and topped with more layers of concertina wire. A smart illegal will bring wire cutters with him, but it would still take precious minutes to cut through or try to crawl over and through the concertina, at which time the U.S. Border Patrol would be able to close in and affect an arrest. any damged concertina could be easily be replaced at a rate of up to a kilometer an hour.

Will this barrier system completely stop the flow of illegal aliens? Of course it will not, but it is vastly superior to the current system, where a simple post fence only serves as a visual reminder of the border in some areas. This barrier will create a “catch zone,” and should significantly hamper the flow of illegal aliens and complicate the lives of drug smugglers.

Of course, this barrier is only part of a working system. The other major component must be removing the motivation to attempt to enter the country illegally, and that is generally an issue of economics, a subject I'll tackle at another time.

Update: The Senate has voted for a triple-layer barrier 370 miles long, and 500 miles of vehicle barriers. Think there is any shot they'll use these ideas?

FISA Judges Were In The Loop

I can only imagine how the Left will try to spin the revelation that FISA judges were briefed about the NSA's controversial surveillance programs the entire time:

Two judges on the secretive court that approves warrants for intelligence surveillance were told of the broad monitoring programs that have raised recent controversy, a Republican senator said Tuesday, connecting a court to knowledge of the collecting of millions of phone records for the first time.

[snip]

Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that at least two of the chief judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been informed since 2001 of White House-approved National Security Agency monitoring operations.

"None raised any objections, as far as I know," said Hatch, a member of a special Intelligence Committee panel appointed to oversee the NSA's work.

Hatch made the comment in answering a question in an interview about recent reports of the government compiling lists of Americans' phone calls. When pressed later, Hatch suggested he was also speaking broadly of the administration's terror-related monitoring.

Asked if the judges somehow approved the operations, Hatch said, "That is not their position, but they were informed."

If Hatch's comments are correct, it would seem to throw a considerably large wrench in the theories of those who are calling these programs an illegal conspiracy by the Bush Adminstration. It seems rather difficult to have a "conspiracy" if everyone was in on it.

The White House Counsel cleared these programs. The National Security Agency's lawyers—who specialize in this area of law—cleared these programs. The programs were also cleared by not one, but two Attorneys General and a cadre of lawyers from the Justice Department, as well.

We also know that members of the House and Senate from both parties were in the loop since 2001 and apparently not one ever batted and eyelash until the NY Times went public with information about the programs with information gathered from anonymous sources, including one who has been diagnosed with psychotic paranoia.

If two FISA judges were also in the loop about these programs, it won't keep conspiracy theorists like Glenn Greenwald quiet, but it might just make their shrill cries a bit easier to ignore.

Other "Jobs Americans Won't Do"

Though looking at his poll numbers, I think the President is doing the best he can to mimic the effect politically.

Shots Fired in the Immigration War

Via Drudge, it looks like the immigration debate is heating up:

A parting gunshot from a vehicle leaving Waffle House in West Asheville shattered a window and caused a minor injury, police said.

The shooting happened around 3:00 a.m. Saturday after a group of whites argued with a group of Hispanics at the 24-hour restaurant on Smokey Park Highway, Asheville police Lt. Wallace Welch said.

“The two groups were jawing back and forth with each other over citizenship issues and whatnot,” Welch said.

As the Hispanic group drove off, someone in the vehicle fired at least once into a large window near the front door, he said.

Whether from a ricocheted bullet or flying glass, Welch said, one man's arm was bleeding when police arrived. He declined medical treatment.

Police were looking for a white Dodge Intrepid that left the restaurant going west.

Most of the legal immigrants I've heard from in North Carolina (via my own conversations and local talk radio) are very strongly against illegal immigration, usually even more than native-born Americans. I'm be willing to go out on a limb and make the assumption that the shooter in this case was one of the millions of illegal aliens that this and previous administrations have allowed to come into this country. Asheville, by the way, is one of the most liberal cities in North Carolina.

This is not the first time shots have been fired over this contentious issue, and I fear that it will not be the last. It could get much worse. As the Heritage Foundation notes it almost certainly will get worse:

An immigration plan proposed by Senators Mel Martinez (R-FL) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) would provide amnesty to 9 to 10 million illegal immigrants and put them on a path to citizenship. Once these individuals become citizens, the net additional cost to the federal government of benefits for these individuals will be around $16 billion per year. Further, once an illegal immigrant becomes a citizen, he has the right to bring his parents to live in the U.S. The parents, in turn, may become citizens. The long-term cost of government benefits to the parents of 10 million recipients of amnesty could be $30 billion per year or more. In the long run, the Hagel/Martinez bill, if enacted, would be the largest expansion of the welfare state in 35 years.

The vast majority of these immigrants will be low-skilled workers without even basic English language skills. It is nothing less than the mass importation of poverty from a foreign culture.

Have we learned nothing from the riots in Europe? Unskilled, uneducated immigrants will cluster in ghettos, become understandably outraged at their inability to have what they see others having. We will run the distinct risk of having riots in New York and Los Angeles on par with what we saw in Paris.

I cannot support a Republican Party or a Republican candidate that seeks to ensure the Balkanization of America, and frankly, few of the front-runners in either party are offering me much in '06. Sitting out '06 is a growing possibility.

For '08, give me a Tom Tancredo or based upon this article, a candidate like John Cox.

If the Republican Party won't do it, I'm sure we can create a conservative third party that will.

Live-blogging Jorge's Immigration Speech

I'll be live-blogging President Bush's immigration speech tonight here at 8:00 PM (Eastern). Quite frankly, I'm prepared to be disappointed.

Michelle Malkin has deconstructed the speech preview. N.Z. Bear is compiling a list of others live-blogging the speech at The Truth Laid Bear.

I'll be watching this on Fox News, and will be primarily concerned with his delivery and reaction.

And so it begins...

Going pretty much by the playbook several minutes in. No surprises yet, he's keeping to the script... Keeps talking about high technology security… don't we just need good masons?... Confirms 6,000 National Guard soldiers will play support role only, for one year, and the will start standing down as new border patrol agencies and technologies come online... Playing up role of state and local law enforcement, but I don't hear a pledge of monies. Can you say "un-funded mandate?"... Pledges to end catch-and-release, and just when he starts to win me back a little, he starts in on his temporary worker program, pushing his "doing the jobs Americans won't" angle. Don't make me laugh…

I do agree that we do need biometric ID cards to cut down on document fraud, and Bush scores points. AND THEN... he says deportation is "unrealistic" losing those points and more... Oh, no, he really is trying to convince us his amnesty plan is not an amnesty plan.

Bush seems completely unwilling or unable to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration...

Delivery-wise, this was a good effort, and I spotted no flubs of note...

Jorge was sharp, but I don't think he was able to change anyone's mind, especially the conservative base. He might have assuaged moderates with this speech, but Bush lost the base. I think he is now quite possibly a lame duck.

Fox News is reporting mixed reviews from conservative Senators.

Give me a few minutes to digest this, and I'll be back, but my initial reaction is that Bush just split the Republican Party.

He's "The Divider."

* * *

Glenn Reynolds posts the full text of the speech.

Ian Schwartz at Expose the Left has the video.

* * *

I've watched a few minutes of commentary from the television pundits, did a quick tour of some of the top blogs, and now I've had a while to think about it, I think I'll stick with with my original statement that Bush has split the Republican Party. But now a new question arises: is it a permanent split in the party, and if not, how long with it last?

I'm guessing it won't be a permanent split, and that most Republicans will "come home" by the '06 elections, but given this administration's near-Palestinian capability to make the wrong choices at the wrong time, I don't know that anyone can say that such a reconciliation is by any means automatic.

Update: The first blogospheric immigration split has occured, as Lorie Byrd has parted ways from Polipundit.

Hunting Anonymous

Isn't this interesting:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

The far left, of course, has started hyperventilating about this, even though the story has just a single anonymous source. It apparently doesn't pass the credibility threshold needed to be published as a news story.

But let us assume for the sake of argument that the information above is true, and that Brian Ross and Richard Esposito are having their phone records tracked. We should then ask ourselves the following questions:

• What exactly do they mean by "tracking" in the paragraphs above? Do they mean wiretapping?
  
• Who are they tracking, or trying to track, and why?
  
• Is it legal and ethical?

What exactly do they mean by “tracking” in the paragraphs above? Do they mean wiretapping?
In this instance, tracking means that the government was looking at which phone numbers were called by these reporters. They were not listening to the actual content of the calls, which is called wiretapping.

Who are they tracking, or trying to track, and why?
The goal in such an effort would be to see if U.S. government employees were illegally leaking classified information to the press. If a government employee thinks that a crime is being committed, they are protected by legal processes on both the State and Federal level as long as they follow rules in reporting alleged infractions to higher officials via an accepted and well-defined process. If these employees instead leak these charges to the press or other outside agencies, they may guilty of serious crimes themselves.

Is it legal and ethical?
It would seem that this is legal, as this seems to be the point of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA) under President Clinton.

From the standpoint of ethics, I can come up with very little justification for employees to leak to the press. Well-defined procedures are in place to deal with illegal and unethical behaviors that they may uncover, and the government has every right—indeed, they have a duty—to enforce the law.

In short, based upon what little information contained in this ABC News blog post, it appears that the reporters are very upset that their access to leakers inside the government might be at risk. I will assume that they'll only be more disturbed if these leakers are prosecuted for the crimes they've apparently committed, and finding a willing source becomes that much more difficult for the reporters.

Problems of Addiction

If you've ever seen a chronic addict, one thing you'll almost always notice is their inability to accept blame for their problems. They blame it on others in their family, the police—anyone and anything but themselves. They cannot accept responsibility for their actions, and always search for excuses instead of a cure.

The people who do recover from additions don't succeed because of gimmicky cures or 12-step programs. They succeed or fail based upon the strength of their will. All too often, though, their will is weak, and their families are crushed and ripped apart as the addict slowly implodes.

I've seen it before, and I fear I'm about to watch it again.

Tonight at 8:00 PM President Bush will deliver a speech on immigration that cynically uses National Guard troops as a prop, promises to crack down on employers with more “catch and release” raids, and push for his “amnesty by any other name” guest worker proposals. A junkie looking for his fix, an alcoholic reaching for one more glass, President George Bush simply can't seem to help himself.

Accidentally On Purpose

So tell us CBS News, do you have any particular concerns or fears that you would like to express about President Bush's plan to send the National Guard to the border?

Border speech. Soldier firing. Bush = Hitler.

Got it.

Almost There

If you've been following Confederate Yankee for a while, you might be familiar with a project called Operation Enduring Service that I got quite interested in after my brother introduced me to it back in early November.

The concept is one of those beautiful synergies where someone combines existing and emerging technologies in new and unexpected ways. The idea was simple: take mothballed ships from the U.S. Navy's reserve fleets, and upgrade them to provide support in the wake of disasters.

USNS San Diego (T-AFS-6), an O.E.S. candidate

What kind of support could just one of these ships provide?

They could:

• Service a disaster area of thousands of square miles (up to 100 miles inland) with minimal (if any) outside support.
• Provide complete berthing facilities for hundreds of emergency responders "on scene" at a disaster site.
• Fully integrated communications system serving all local, state, and federal agencies, as well as cell phone coverage and military band frequencies--allowing for seamless communications between all disaster scene personnel, no matter what radio frequency or cell phone is being used.
• Daily provide over 100 tons of bagged and palletized ice to the disaster region.
• Daily generate, bottle, and palletize up to tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water.
• Provide refueling station and loading platform for helicopters operating in the disaster area.
• Carry thousands of tons of food and supplies for a disaster area.

As simple and important as this idea is, the project has faced an uphill battle against governmental red tape and congressional inertia (as Newton noted, a body at rest tends to stay at rest) from the very beginning.

That battle could end as early as today.

Stay tuned for details…

Too Little, Too Late

A picture is worth a thousand words. Look closely:

I don't know who Georgia Retos is, but if the crowd on the right is in Peabody, Massachusetts, President Bush's call to put the National Guard on the border (left) is far too late.*

* the "Peabody" picture is a mistake from the Fox News web team. It actually belongs to the Brazilian gang story (bottom left).

The Speech Bush Should Give, But Won't

John Derbyshire was hallucinating at NRO's The Corner this morning when he wrote about what President Bush could say in his immigration speech on Monday night. It won't happen of course, because President Bush doesn't give a damn about border security and I don't trust him to change. Love him or hate him for it, the President sticks to his convictions.

All the same, Derb's vison of the speech Bush could deliver is a beautiful dream.

"My fellow Americans: Our nation's lawmakers are currently debating issues of immigration reform. The House of Representatives has passed a bill to deal with the problem of illegal immigration. The Senate is crafting somewhat more general proposals, including a 'guest worker' program of the type that we tried out, with unhappy results, in the post-WW2 period, the type that has caused grave problems in Germany, and that in any case vastly expands the responsibilities of a federal government department utterly unable to cope with its current tasks. Agreement on a suitable compromise between House and Senate is not in sight, and may not be possible. Any legislation that emerges from current proposals would, it seems to me, neither address our main problems in this area, nor answer the question so often asked about immigration reform: Why pass new legislation when existing legislation is not being, and in some cases cannot be, enforced?

"To offer a way forward on this issue, I am going to propose the following. One: That all legal immigration into the U.S.A., excepting only cases crucial to our national security, be halted forthwith. Two: That Congress authorize the federal government, as a matter of the highest priority, to construct high walls along our entire northern and southern borders, supplemented by electronic monitoring devices and manned patrols in much greater numbers than at present; and that Congress designate all necessary funds for this effort. Three: That by widespread and rigorous enforcement of employer sanctions, and greatly increased sweeps of suspect workplaces, and by responding with dispatch to citizen reports, the enforcement arm of our immigration services begin the human but speedy removal of illegal immigrants from our nation, by attrition and deportation; and that Congress designate all necessary funds for this purpose..

"My fellow Americans: Since the passing of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments, our nation has engaged in the greatest act of generosity in human history, opening our country to tens of millions of people from all regions of the world, sharing our wonderful American dream in a way unprecedented in all the chronicles of humanity, and unequalled in the world of our time. Generosity, however, must have a limit. It is time now to take a pause: to cease the inflow for a while, in order that those who have come, and their children, can be fully, happily, and successfully absorbed into our nation's fabric. This is how the previous great wave of immigrants, the wave that ended in 1924, was assimilated.

"We are a large-hearted and generous nation, and may we always remain so. We cannot, however, take in all three or four billion of the world's poor and striving. There are limits even to our hospitality, and I believe it is the general sense of the American people today that those limits have been reached....."

As I said: nice fantasy.

Want my Vote? Earn It

Anyone who happened to drop by earlier in the week probably noticed I'm just a bit unhappy with the White House right now over it's permissiveness regarding illegal immigration. Like many conservatives, that is just one of many issues that is causing Republican credibility to plummet, as this D.C. Examiner editorial noticed:

Bush's refusal to veto pork-barrel spending has compromised the efficacy of his tax cuts. Indeed, “limited government” never looked so big. Adding to Bush's problem is the stench of scandal stinking up Capitol Hill on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives look at 12 years of GOP control of Congress and wonder why they don't have much more to show for it.

On foreign policy, conservatives have admired Bush's steadfast pursuit of the war on terror, but they are puzzled and frustrated that he so resolutely refuses to take concrete, credible actions to secure our borders. When they learn the U.S. Border Patrol is alerting Mexican authorities of Minutemen locations, many conservatives call it the last straw.

Karl Rove reportedly has a plan to “stir up” the base to again save the Republicans' electoral bacon, but conservatives won't be satisfied this time around with more token efforts on issues like marriage and dire warnings that “the Democrats would be far worse.” Conservatives have heard that song before and know it never has a second verse.

For all the reasons above and more, I'm at a point where I'm ready to consider disassociating myself from the Republican Party, and from the grumbling I've heard, I am far from alone. What would bring me back?

National Defense.
Our active duty military deserves flexible, lightweight body armor. Our duty military deserves more modern small arms that are more rugged and offer better stopping power. We need faster, lighter, reliable and more survivable mechanized transport and combat vehicles on land, and in our near-shore and riverine “brown water” navy.

Our active duty, retired, and disabled veterans deserve far better benefits than those they currently subsist on. I'm specifically focusing on medical care for disabled and retired veterans and their survivors. The brave men and women of the United States military put their lives on the line for this nation, and it seems that the very least we should do in return is treat those lives with the proper respect and humility their sacrifice warrants.

Educate government employees as to the proper legal channels for whistle-blowing. Heavily investigate leaks, and pass a law mandating a minimum of five years in prison for those that do not follow this procedure (i.e. leak to the press).

And while I realize this is very controversial position and not one most other conservatives accept, I think “don't ask, don't tell” is a foolish position, barring thousands of patriotic Americans from serving their country for reasons that have little to do with their ability to serve or fight.

We need to do a lot more for our military, but this is probably as much as we can handle in one or two election cycles.

Smaller, smarter government.
We cannot cut taxes and raise spending and expect anything good to come from it. We can keep the tax cuts, but we have to dramatically lower spending. The best way to do this is by substantially reducing the ability to introduce and increasing the ability to strike congressional earmarks.

Disband the Department of Homeland Security. Like the plague, it seems to kill everything it touches, from FEMA to the Border Patrol. We do not need another layer of red tape slowing things down at the very moments that real homeland security depends on speed and decisive action.

Election reform.
Reverse McCain-Feingold, as this infringement on free speech leads to a less-informed American voter at the period in time they are most interested in listening. Introduce federal standards for a secure photo ID for American voters. America has sacrificed far too much blood for the freedom of self-governance, and each individual's precious vote must be protected. A secure photo ID for voters is a step in that direction long overdue. A return to paper ballots, while cumbersome and slower than modern technologies, is also a step in the direction of securing the integrity of the voting process. “Old tech” paper ballots are much more difficult to destroy or illegally modify than other ways of registering votes.

Embrace Diversity
Yes, just repeating this empty liberal talking point gives you a vaguely disgusting feeling like wet grass clippings clinging to your skin, but we should own this. Most core conservative values are common across racial and economic lines. Most communities want lower taxes, smaller, smarter government, and broad support for their families. We need to undo the damage Johnson's “Great Society” did to minority communities, and try to reverse the current trend of too many single-parent families and too many of their men underemployed or in prison. They deserve better lives, and we should be able to find a way to help them accomplish that. Right now, we're doing them no more favors than Democrats are. That needs to change.

Protect Your Own.
Sick to death of wasting billion to prop-up corrupt governments overseas while our citizens are missing the basics that they should have for being an American, we should embrace “screw you” foreign policy. There are many governments in the world taking billions of dollars of our money that are actively working against us. That has to stop. Throw the United Nations out of New York, and stop subsidizing it. It has never done anything for us of note, and all too often sympathizes with nations that do not have humanity's best interests at heart. Let John Bolton's final gesture to this den of thieves be with a raised finger. Let NATO handle their own problems, as they certainly don't support ours. Make a new alliance with the Anglosphere and other like-minded nations.

Stop supporting the importation of poverty into America. A border fence like none other should seal off the border with Mexico entirely. Call National Guard units to the border until the fence is completed. Deport all illegals, for any infraction at all. Heavily fine any employer who hires illegals, and split that fine in half, dedicating ½ to social programs to help the assimilation of legal immigrants, and ½ to whistleblowers who report illegals and those who hire them. Call it deportation an assimilation through capitalism.

Take some of those trillions of dollars saved by no longer supporting petty tyrants and invest them in the United States. Develop our own domestic energy resources to be self-sufficient. Technologies exist to extract energy from our oil, coal and gas reserves that are far cleaner and safe that once existed, and with our vast economic resources, we should be able to rapidly develop now energy sources so that we are an energy exporter instead of importer.

Create a healthcare system that provides an publicly-acceptable level of coverage and care to all citizens and legal aliens.

De-fund the albatross that is Social Security, and instead, create a working, sustainable retirement system that allows people to invest in privatized accounts.

Encourage the return to nuclear families, and support community-based initiatives.

* * *

That is the dream platform to re-capture my vote. I wonder if anyone will come close to providing it.

A Jibe Called Quest

Matt Stoller makes the argument that Quest Communications should be rewarded for refusing to provide non-personal "outside" call data to the National Security Agency. This leaves a significant hole in the NSA database that they are trying to use to help catch al Qaeda terrorists that are trying to kill folks like you and me.

I thought about what Matt had to say, and decided he was right, so I decided to help Quest work on their branding with a snazzy new ad campaign featuring one of their old slogans for that hip "retro" feel.

I think it captures their corporate spirit quite well, don't you?

And?

USA Today has packaged a story today about a massive National Security Agency call database in such a way as to make it sound quite sinister, but isn't this what we pay them to do?

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

Read those two key sentence again:

. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

The headline is somewhat—and likely purposefully—misleading. Nobody is recording your phone calls as USA Today would have you infer from the headline. No, they simply keep records that note that 202-555-5555 made a 4 minute call to 919-555-5555 on May 11 at 3:30 PM. In other words, this NSA program collects nothing more than the phone companies already do for billing purposes, it simply consolidates various phone company databases to paint a picture of communications patterns within the United States.

Why this is even considered a secret is somewhat puzzling. I always assumed such a program had existed for years. I would have thought that something similar to this database would have already existed at the Federal Communications Commission, various internet governing and other federal and private organizations interested in communications trends and forecastings.

Leslie Cauley tries to make the program sound sinister by saying it doesn't go though a FISA judge. I fail to find that intimidating. I get the exact same level of detail every month in from Verizon. Is Cauley suggesting I need a FISA court judge to approve my phone bill?

The meat of the article is simply this:

The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

The NSA is consolidating and analyzing already collected data to try to stop terrorist attacks before they happen.

What exactly is the legitimate complaint against this program?

Update John at Stop the ACLU has a roundup underway, as does Pajamas Media, Michelle, etc...

This is shaping up to be quite an opinion war.

OPR Drops NSA Probe That Wasn't

I'm sure this will inflame a lot of people who won't bother to read it closely, but it was a rather stupid idea to begin with:

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax Wednesday to Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York saying it was closing its inquiry because without clearance it could not examine department lawyers' role in the program.

What you might miss in a quick read (and perhaps what CNN is hoping you will do) is that this story has nothing to do with the legality of the NSA program itself.

No, OPR has a different charter entirely:

[Justice Department spokesman Brian] Roehrkasse noted the OPR's mission is not to investigate possible wrongdoing in other agencies, but to determine if Justice Department lawyers violated any ethical rules.

In short, this was a political jab, and the fact that my opportunistic former congressman Maurice Hinchey was right there with another clichéd soundbite simply confirms it.

"This administration thinks they can just violate any law they want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with that. It's up to us to stand up to them," Hinchey said.

How annoying DoJ lawyers is an example of "standing up" against the evil forces of BushCo, Hinchey doesn't quite explain.

Boilerplate Special

Considering how fast the blogosphere and media can get out a story, you've probably already heard this:

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson was back home in Dallas on April 28 giving a speech to minority real estate folks and offering a most interesting take on how business is done in Washington.

Jackson, former head of the Dallas Housing Authority, recounted a conversation he had in the nation's capital with a minority publisher.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the bidder, according to an account of the speech in the Dallas Business Journal. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the GSA [General Services Administration] list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him.

"Then he said something. . . . He said, 'I have a problem with your president.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush. ' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.' "He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

While the same article says that Jackson's contract denial violates "the Constitution's prohibitions on government retaliation for speech" and perhaps federal procurement law, a government contracts specialist that I interviewed says that may not be true.

An agency may be able to drop a contract for any reason, or none at all, depending on how the specific contract is written. Many of the state and federal government contracts he has worked on have a clause in the boilerplate (legal fine print) that stipulates that the government can terminate the contract for any reason or none at all with a 30-day notice. He said he sees contracts terminated for political reasons "all the time."

Let me be very clear in saying that I think it is morally shameful for Jackson to fire a qualified vendor over political differences. A federal agency works for all Americans regardless of political stripes, not just Democrats or Republicans.

Alphonso Jackson should certainly step down for his behavior, but it doesn't appear that he'll fact criminal charges for a practice that seems something less than rare.

Paging Jamie McIntyre

Dear Jamie,

That "heavy" machine gun we discussed in your al-Zarqawi lovefest has surfaced again. Several can be found here, being fired by Salvadorian paratroopers roughly the same size as Oompa-Loompas. My, that sure looks tough.

BTW, I'll let you know when I find an article talking about the M249's unbearably hard trigger pull. Surprisingly, I haven't found one yet.

White House Travel Docs Revealed

Via WUSA9.com:

How much do you think Osama bin Laden would pay to know exactly when and where the President was traveling, and who was with him? Turns out, he wouldn't have had to pay a dime. All he had to do was go through the trash early Tuesday morning.

It appears to be a White House staff schedule for the President's trip to Florida Tuesday. And a sanitation worker was alarmed to find in the trash long hours before Mr. Bush left for his trip.

It's the kind of thing you would expect would be shredded or burned, not thrown in the garbage.
Randy Hopkins could not believe what he was seeing.

There on the floor next to a big trash truck was a thick sheaf of papers with nearly every detail of the President's voyage.

“I saw locations and names and places where the President was going to be. I knew it was important. And it shouldn't have been in a trash hole like this,” he said.

Darn right they shouldn't be in the trash. They should have been at the Mexican consulate, waiting for approval.

Angry? Nah, not me.. Derb neither.

Palace Revolt

Almost since he was elected in 2000, liberals have been calling for the impeachment of President Bush. The vast majority of the "impeachable offenses" they cite—intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war, claims of torture at Guantanamo Bay, the targeted NSA surveillance of suspected terrorist communications intercepted as they enter or leave the United States, etc—have been groundless.

The Administration's on-going failure to ensure American sovereignty and secure America's borders, however, has raised the specter of impeachment from an unlikely source: conservatives.

News yesterday that the U.S. Border Patrol was spying on the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and reporting their findings to the Mexican government was the last straw for many conservatives who had been, until this point, Bush Administration defenders.

Not only was the Border Patrol alerting the Mexican government of the location of Minutemen on the border to apparently thwart their attempts to slow illegal immigration and drug smuggling; they were also providing information upon individual chapters of the Minutemen in the Midwest. A spokesperson for the Minuteman Corps stated speculated that this information could only have been collected by the Department of Homeland Security. The fact that DHS does not even make serious attempt to rebut the charges, quite frankly, leaves me stunned. If this can be believed, Americans are spying on Americans to benefit a foreign power with the blessing of the White House.

La Shawn Barber brings forth something I never though I'd find myself seriously contemplating: a draft of possible Articles of Impeachment for President George W. Bush.

RESOLVED that George Walker Bush, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Article I: Abuse of Power: Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, George Walker Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, failing to impart the due and proper administration of justice by protecting citizens against foreign invasions, contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch (Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Internal Revenue Service, for example) and the purposes of these agencies. This conduct has included one or more of the following:

(1) Complicit with foreign governments in breaching U.S. sovereignty. America's founders codified the notion that “We the People” would govern the country by a representative democracy. The government remains legitimate only through consent of the governed, and “We the People” retain the inalienable right to alter the government, abolish it, or amend the Constitution.

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I've supported the Administration on most issues, but as far back as the second week of this blog in November of 2004, I've been warning Bush about his approach to illegal immigration and border security. I wrote then, "Bush's current lackadaisical attitude on the subject may have fatal consequences that could not only cripple his second term, but replicate or exceed the human tragedy of that day in September three years ago."

Now that I find that the Bush Administration is not just lackadaisical, but apparently engaged in the active and deliberate undermining of efforts by civilians groups to do the job he refuses to do, I think I may have reached my limit. If President Bush cannot see fit to uphold his oath of office, perhaps it is time to give that opportunity to President Cheney.

Seeing Red

The Real Ugly American has a nice review up of Hugh Hewitt's Painting the Map Red.

Just What We Needed

Zombie. Robot. Terrorists. Thanks, Brendan.

Tancredo Rips DHS Spying for Mexico

Tancredo press release, courtesy of Minuteman Blog Central:

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-CO) decried a recently-disclosed U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) practice of tipping off the Mexican military to the location of Minutemen volunteers. According to a story in this morning's Inland Daily Bulletin, CBP notifies the Mexican government of when and where the Minutemen are planning to monitor the border and if violence is used by the Minutemen against illegal aliens. There has not been one verified instance of Minutemen volunteers using violence against illegal aliens.

"The Mexican military doesn't exactly have a 'good government' reputation. The Border Patrol has documented more than two hundred incursions into the U.S by the Mexican military, and Texas sheriffs even apprehended Mexican government vehicles that were used to ferry drug runners across the border. By tipping off Mexico's military to the Minutemen's location, the U.S. government is asking for trouble," said Tancredo.

"Heavily-armed military officials stationed only yards from civilians are at least intimidating. I can only surmise that the Border Patrol bureaucrats' spying is meant to have a chilling effect on the Minutemen's recruitment of more volunteers," said Tancredo.

"The Minutemen haven't been accused of breaking the law. Quite the contrary-they have gone out of their way to aid law enforcement and ensure the safety of our border. The U.S. government has no grounds upon which to stifle the Minutemen's constitutional right to organize," Tancredo concluded. "I want to know the legal basis for CBP informing a foreign government of the activities of private citizens who are obeying the law."

I'm going to take a "time out" before I say anything else on the subject, or I might start questioning the paternity of certain people.

Combating CADS

Poor Richard Cohen. He seems to be the target of those with advanced cases of CADS—Colbert-Assurance Derangement Syndrome.

He made the mistake of pointing out five days ago that Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert wasn't very funny at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. The audience, many on the center right and even Colbert himself seem to remember it that same way.

Left wing bloggers, however, howled that Colbert was speaking "truth to power" and took great offense when Cohen showed that Colbert was something other than a hero:

…Colbert… is representative of what too often passes for political courage, not to mention wit, in this country. His defenders -- and they are all over the blogosphere -- will tell you he spoke truth to power. This is a tired phrase, as we all know, but when it was fresh and meaningful it suggested repercussions, consequences -- maybe even death in some countries. When you spoke truth to power you took the distinct chance that power would smite you, toss you into a dungeon or -- if you're at work -- take away your office.

But in this country, anyone can insult the president of the United States. Colbert just did it, and he will not suffer any consequence at all. He knew that going in. He also knew that Bush would have to sit there and pretend to laugh at Colbert's lame and insulting jokes. Bush himself plays off his reputation as a dunce and his penchant for mangling English. Self-mockery can be funny. Mockery that is insulting is not. The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar can be said on a dais with impunity. This is why Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

For raining on their juvenile parade with very adult reasoning, Cohen has been bombarded by vicious, hate-filled emails—3,506 at last count over four days—that stem from the angst of liberal bloggers that somehow feel Cohen betrayed them. Hateful bile is no stranger to the blogosphere—it exists on both the right and the left—but Cohen is quick to recognize the disproportionate seething on the leftward fringe of American politics, and fears what the left's "digital lynch mob" might portend:

The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

And yet, incredible as it may seem, the left wing that spewed forth such hatred at Cohen insists—while calling him clueless—that somehow, Cohen owes them:

The 'angry' bloggers, the so-called Bush-haters, have played a pivotal and (dare I say) historic role during the Bush presidency. They've fought tooth and nail to protect the Constitution from an unprecedented power grab and they've stepped in and spoken the truth while so many in the media and the political establishment have abandoned any semblance of integrity and rolled over for the White House…

[snip]

Maintaining a healthy conscience, allowing ourselves to react with appropriate emotion (whether anger or frustration or relief) is an essential trait in the face of the apathy we've seen the past six years. With all their dripping disdain for bloggers, folks like Richard Cohen and his ilk owe the netroots a debt of gratitude for helping to preserve some shred of the America we all love -- their children and grandchildren will certainly appreciate it.

Sadly, Peter Daou was captured in an airmobile assault on his hidden Huffington Post bunker by agents of the FBI/NSA anti-Free Speech Strike Force just seconds after sending these revolutionary comments. It is rumored that he will be transported him to a "reeducation camp" outside Dallas and forced to watch team sports and drink domestic beer.

Oh wait, he won't.

Daou proves Cohen's original statement correct; the liberal speaking "truth to power" isn't, and their frustration often morphs into a self-implosive, ulcer-inducing rage. Cohen sees this rage immolating Democratic moderates, ruining the Democratic Party's chance to win, time and again. He is right, and we are all much worse off for it.

There needs to be balance ,or at the threat of balance to keep politicians "honest"... well, at least as far as that is possible. Without the threat of political consequences via electoral defeat, politicians, whether left and right, will seek to run roughshod over their adversaries, which is not often beneficial in a nation often best served by compromise.

Sadly, some Republicans apparently feel unthreatened because of the implosive tendencies of the Democratic Party in recent history, and now feel they are almost untouchable. The conventional wisdom in so much of the Republican Party seems to be that liberals will either defeat or so wound moderate or conservative Democrats (and there was once such a beast; I think I saw it in a museum) that they are at a distinct disadvantage when the general election comes around. To date, over the past several election cycles, they seem to be right.

God help us all.

Mexican Handoff

Someone remind me: which country is the Border Patrol charged with protecting?

DailyBulletin.com:

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen -- and telling the Mexican government where they are.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants -- and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed.
"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Mario Martinez said Monday.

"This ... simply makes two basic statements -- that we will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will allow that government to interview the person."

Minuteman members were not so sanguine about the arrangement, however, saying that reporting their location to Mexican officials nullifies their effectiveness along the border and could endanger their lives.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

"They just basically endangered the lives of American people."

I'll never support impeachment proceedings brought against President for going to war with Iraq based on flawed intelligence, not will I fault him overmuch for an executive order that authorized the NSA to try to close intelligence gaps using targeted intercepts of suspected terrorist communications. In both instances, a plausible, if not strong case could be made that he was trying to act in this nation's best interests.

His resistance to protecting this nation's borders, however is another matter entirely. Bush refuses to protect the territorial integrity of the United States, leaving us exposed to an importation of poverty that strains our social welfare system and artificially depresses wages. At least as important is the fact that President Bush's border policies leave us naked to the threat of terrorist infiltration.

Surely an al Qaeda terrorist who grew up in the shifting sands of the Arabian Peninsula or the rugged mountains of Afghanistan could easily walk across an unattended border to cut America from her soft underbelly.

Bush's border policies? Those are what I consider impeachable offenses.

Update: Via Michelle Malkin, Minuteman Blog Central shows that the story just gets worse:

This article does not report information told to the MCDC media offices that the Border Patrol chiefs have also been passing along intelligence reports to the government of Mexico on the activities of Minutemen not only at the borders, but in locations such as Utah, Nevada, Illinois, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Perhaps a follow-up story is coming tomorrow or an over zealous editor took the info out?

Part of a report distributed last August to the Mexican government from Border Patrol bureaucrats read over the phone to the MCDC media offices contained not only numbers (estimated chapter membership) of Minutemen in Illinois, but a statement on their activities and that they didn't seem to know any politicians there, indicating that the Illinois Minutemen didn't yet have any political clout.

That is not a report on the location of Minutemen at the border, but political intelligence from our government to a foreign nation about the activities of American citizens petitioning our own government for redress of grievances.

God and Man at Krispy Kreme

When I was a kid we went to Sunday School. Often as not, we'd learn something about the Bible or being a Christian through a story pulled from the Bible, and other times, we learned from parables made up to teach Christian moral ideals. I'm old enough now to read things of my own choosing and have done so for many years, but the power to teach contained in a simple parable still never ceases to amaze me.

I was sent the following parable in an email from my father this morning. If you are a Christian this is something you might want to pass along to others. If you aren't a Christian, and are of another faith, perhaps you might find this disturbing, and find yourself asking how your "donut" is paid for.

If you are one think who thinks the very concept of religion is stupid... well, this was written for you, most of all.

There was a certain Professor of Religion named Dr. Christianson, a studious man who taught at a small college in the western United States. Dr. Christianson taught the required survey course in Christianity at this particular institution. Every student was required to take this course his or her freshman year, regardless of his or her major. Although Dr. Christianson tried hard to communicate the essence of the gospel in his class, he found that most of his students looked upon the course as nothing but required drudgery. Despite his best efforts, most students refused to take Christianity seriously.

This year, Dr. Christianson had a special student named Steve. Steve was only a freshman, but was studying with the intent of going onto seminary for the ministry. Steve was popular, he was well liked, and he was an imposing physical specimen. He was now the starting center on the school football team, and was the best student in the professor's class.

One day, Dr. Christianson asked Steve to stay after class so he could talk with him.

"How many push-ups can you do?"

Steve said, "I do about 200 every night."

"200? That's pretty good, Steve," Dr. Christianson said. "Do you think you could do 300?"

Steve replied, "I don't know... I've never done 300 at a time."

"Do you think you could?" again asked Dr. Christianson.

"Well, I can try," said Steve.

"Can you do 300 in sets of 10? I have a class project in mind and I need you to do about 300 push-ups in sets of ten for this to work. Can you do it? I need you to tell me you can do it," said the professor.

Steve said, "Well... I think I can...yeah, I can do it."

Dr. Christianson said, "Good. I need you to do this on Friday. Let me explain what I have in mind."

Friday came and Steve got to class early and sat in the front of the room. When class started, the professor pulled out a big box of donuts. No, these weren't the normal kinds of donuts, they were the extra fancy BIG kind, with cream centers and frosting swirls. Everyone was pretty excited it was Friday, the last class of the day, and they were going to get an early start on the weekend with a party in Dr. Christianson's class.

Dr. Christianson went to the first girl in the first row and asked, "Cynthia, do you want to have one of these donuts?"

Cynthia said, "Yes."

Dr. Christianson then turned to Steve and asked, "Steve, would you do ten push-ups so that Cynthia can have a donut?"

"Sure." Steve jumped down from his desk to do a quick ten. Then Steve again sat in his desk. Dr. Christianson put a donut on Cynthia's desk.

Dr. Christianson then went to Joe, the next person, and asked, "Joe, do you want a donut?"

Joe said, "Yes." Dr. Christianson asked, "Steve would you do ten push-ups so Joe can have a donut?"

Steve did ten push-ups, Joe got a donut. And so it went, down the first aisle, Steve did ten pushups for every person before they got their donut.

Walking down the second aisle, Dr. Christianson came to Scott. Scott was on the basketball team, and in as good condition as Steve. He was very popular and never lacking for female companionship.

When the professor asked, "Scott do you want a donut?"

Scott's reply was, "Well, can I do my own pushups?"

Dr. Christianson said, "No, Steve has to do them."

Then Scott said, "Well, I don't want one then."

Dr. Christianson shrugged and then turned to Steve and asked, "Steve, would you do ten pushups so Scott can have a donut he doesn't want?"

With perfect obedience Steve started to do ten pushups.

Scott said, "Hey, I said I didn't want one."

Dr. Christianson said, "Look, this is my classroom, my class, my desks, and these are my donuts. Just leave it on the desk if you don't want it." And he put a donut on Scott's desk.

Now by this time, Steve had begun to slow down a little. He just stayed on the floor between sets because it took too much effort to be getting up and down. You could start to see a little perspiration coming out around his brow.

Dr. Christianson started down the third row. Now the students were beginning to get a little angry. Dr. Christianson asked Jenny, "Jenny, do you want a donut?"

Sternly, Jenny said, "No."

Then Dr. Christianson asked Steve, "Steve, would you do ten more push-ups so Jenny can have a donut that she doesn't want?" Steve did ten....Jenny got a donut.

By now, a growing sense of uneasiness filled the room. The students were beginning to say "No" and there were all these uneaten donuts on the desks. Steve also had to really put forth a lot of extra effort to get these pushups done for each donut. There began to be a small pool of sweat on the floor beneath his face, his arms and brow were beginning to get red because of the physical effort involved.

Dr. Christianson asked Robert, who was the most vocal unbeliever in the class, to watch Steve do each push up to make sure he did the full ten pushups in a set because he couldn't bear to watch all of Steve's work for all of those uneaten donuts. He sent Robert over to where Steve was so Robert could count the set and watch Steve closely.

Dr. Christianson started down the fourth row. During his class, however, some students from other classes had wandered in and sat down on the steps along the radiators that ran down the sides of the room.

When the professor realized this, he did a quick count and saw that now there were 34 students in the room. He started to worry if Steve would be able to make it.

Dr. Christianson went on to the next person and the next and the next. Near the end of that row, Steve was really having a rough time. He was taking a lot more time to complete each set.

Steve asked Dr. Christianson, "Do I have to make my nose touch on each one?"

Dr. Christianson thought for a moment, "Well, they're your pushups. You are in charge now. You can do them any way that you want." And Dr. Christianson went on.

A few moments later, Jason, a recent transfer student, came to the room and was about to come in when all the students yelled in one voice, "NO, don't come in Stay out!"

Jason didn't know what was going on. Steve picked up his head and said, "No, let him come."

Professor Christianson said, "You realize that if Jason comes in you will have to do ten pushups for him?"

Steve said, "Yes, let him come in. Give him a donut."

Dr. Christianson said, "Okay, Steve, I'll let you get Jason's out of the way right now. Jason, do you want a donut?"

Jason, new to the room, hardly knew what was going on. "Yes," he said, "give me a donut."

"Steve, will you do ten push-ups so that Jason can have a donut?" Steve did ten pushups very slowly and with great effort. Jason, bewildered, was handed a donut and sat down.

Dr. Christianson finished the fourth row, and then started on those visitors seated by the heaters. Steve's arms were now shaking with each push-up in a struggle to lift himself against the force of gravity. By this time sweat was profusely dropping off of his face, there was no sound except his heavy breathing; there was not a dry eye in the room.

The very last two students in the room were two young women, both cheerleaders, and very popular. Dr. Christianson went to Linda, the second to last, and asked, "Linda, do you want a doughnut?"

Linda said, very sadly, "No, thank you."

Professor Christianson quietly asked, "Steve, would you do ten push-ups so that Linda can have a donut she doesn't want?" Grunting from the effort, Steve did ten very slow pushups for Linda.

Then Dr. Christianson turned to the last girl, Susan. "Susan, do you want a donut?"

Susan, with tears flowing down her face, began to cry. "Dr. Christianson, why can't I help him?"

Dr. Christianson, with tears of his own, said, "No, Steve has to do it alone, I have given him this task and he is in charge of seeing that everyone has an opportunity for a donut whether they want it or not. When I decided to have a party this last day of class, I looked my grade book. Steve here is the only student with a perfect grade. Everyone else has failed a test, skipped class, or offered me inferior work. Steve told me that in football practice, when a player messes up he must do push-ups. I told Steve that none of you could come to my party unless he paid the price by doing your push ups. He and I made a deal for your sakes."

"Steve, would you do ten push-ups so Susan can have a donut?" As Steve very slowly finished his last pushup, with the understanding that he had accomplished all that was required of him, having done 350 pushups, his arms buckled beneath him and he fell to the floor.

Dr. Christianson turned to the room and said. "And so it was, that our Savior, Jesus Christ, on the cross, plead to the Father, 'into thy hands I commend my spirit.' With the understanding that He had done everything that was required of Him, He yielded up His life. And like some of those in this room, many of us leave the gift on the desk, uneaten."

Two students helped Steve up off the floor and to a seat, physically exhausted, but wearing a thin smile.

"Well done, good and faithful servant," said the professor, adding, "Not all sermons are preached in words."

Turning to his class, the professor said, "My wish is that you might understand and fully comprehend all the riches of grace and mercy that have been given to you through the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He spared not only His Begotten Son, but gave Him up for us all, for the whole Church, now and forever. Whether or not we choose to accept His gift to us, the price has been paid."

"Wouldn't you be foolish and ungrateful to leave it lying on the desk?"

I'm not (overtly) trying to convert anyone, but this is a pretty good parable of Jesus Christ's sacrifice, and it might strike a cord with those who have become immune to a message that is told often, but told often badly. I think of this parable and what I picked up in the fast-paced novella Dinner With a Perfect Stranger and it makes me sad to see the 1,400 years fighting and dying going on around the world in the name of a certain other prophet and his god.

Steve in the story above paid for your donut whether you wanted it or not, and while he would offer it to you, it was never forced upon you.

That other prophet operates quite differently, doesn't he?

Dinky Links

Within hours of General Michael V. Hayden being nominated for the Director's position at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Left has already staked out their conspiracy theory of choice. Sadly, they have very little to go on.

The best they could do was this sad, underdeveloped theory from TPM Muckraker:

While director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden contracted the services of a top executive at the company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal, according to two former employees of the company.

Hayden, President Bush's pick to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA, contracted with MZM Inc. for the services of Lt. Gen. James C. King, then a senior vice president of the company, the sources say. MZM was owned and operated by Mitchell Wade, who has admitted to bribing former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham with $1.4 million in money and gifts. Wade has also reportedly told investigators he helped arrange for prostitutes to entertain the disgraced lawmaker, and he continues to cooperate with a federal inquiry into the matter.

King has not been implicated in the growing scandal around Wade's illegal activities. However, federal records show he contributed to some of Wade's favored lawmakers, including $6000 to Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and $4000 to Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL).

Before joining MZM in December 2001, King served under Hayden as the NSA's associate deputy director for operations, and as head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

So here we go:

King worked under Hayden at the NSA. King left the NSA to work at MZM, and Hayden brought him back to the NSA as a contractor.

MZM was owned and operated by a guy named Mitchell Wade. Wade admitted paying bribes to disgraced Congressman "Duke" Cunningham. There are no allegations whatsoever that King did or was even aware of anything illegal or unethical going on during his employment at MZM, and King's above-board position as a contractor is the only tenuous connection between Hayden and the criminals Wade and Cunningham.

Don't you see the obvious conspiracy?

Hayden knew a guy who knew a guy who did something wrong with another guy.

I have a line to the White House more direct than that. I guess this was the best they could do on short notice.

Spies Like Us

Last Friday afternoon CIA director Porter Goss stepped down from his position—unexpectedly, at least to the media—and blogs on the let and less responsible mainstream media outlets were quick to surmise an embarrassing scandal must be the proximate cause of his departure. We now know that Goss stepped down because he butted heads with National Director of Intelligence John Negroponte over the future direction of the CIA.

Later that same afternoon, Negroponte's deputy, Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, was put forth as the probable successor to Goss. Within minutes, people seized upon the fact that Hayden was the General in charge of the NSA when a program was put in place by an executive order of President Bush. The program conducted surveillance of specific communications of suspected al Qaeda agents, where one end of the communications was based inside the United States and the other was in a foreign country.

A media-driven controversy has raged since that time, as opponents of the program have called it illegal and some have even pushed for censure or impeachment of the President for issuing the executive order, when in fact, not one of them knows what the order entails.

This morning, President Bush made his nomination of General Hayden official, and thus the controversial NSA intelligence program will be a central point of contention in his confirmation hearings. The fact that Hayden is a military officer being picked to run a civilian agency alarmed some of the more excitable and inept members of Congress, but that sentiment is quickly being dismissed rather quickly, especially in light of the fact that so many military men have run the CIA in the past.

Anonymous blogger and former intelligence officer Spook86 at In From The Cold provided unequivocal support:

"Mike Hayden is supremely qualified for this position," said Mr. Bush in making the announcement. "He knows intelligence community from the ground up...he has been both a producer and consumer of intelligence." Hayden, the nation's highest-ranking military intelligence officer, appeared with President Bush in the Oval Office, where the nomination was announced.

We agree with the President. Hayden is a superb choice, an exceptionally effective intelligence leader who--if confirmed--can continue needed reforms at the CIA.

[snip]

If American is serious about reforming the CIA, then General Hayden should have confirmation hearings that focus on genuine intelligence issues, not ill-founded concerns about what uniform he wears to the office. At this juncture in the War on Terror, General Hayden (and the agency) deserve a speedy confirmation process, and a quick up-or-down vote. Hayden is hardly an unknown commodity on Capitol Hill and in the intelligence community; his outstanding record speaks for itself.

Over the weekend and before the nomination was official, I queried a former intelligence officer that worked at the NSA, and asked him several questions about General Hayden.

I asked what he thought of Hayden in general, if there would be friction from within the CIA from having the director of another intelligence agency named to run their organization, and how Hayden would handle the obvious focus of some during the hearings on his implementation of Bush's executive order.

When asked about how the CIA would response to the former NSA Chief, he answered:

I think there will be problems inside CIA with the long-time spooks and Intelligence analysts. [General] Mike [Hayden]'s experience has all been in military Intelligence as a collector of information. NSA and the Central Security Service for the military Intelligence collection operations do not issue Intelligence reports. That is the realm of CIA and DIA. The CIA, for example, has always been in charge of the National Intelligence Estimates. Other agencies and the military NIE reps are there to keep CIA honest, and that has sometimes been difficult...

[snip]

...[But] we got things done. For just that reason there will be some of the so-called 'elite' in the ranks of the CIA employees who will balk a bit. He should be able to hold his own. Porter Goss surely did.

In regards to the expected questions about the NSA program authorized by President Bush's executive order:

...I know that Bush thinks very highly of him [Hayden], but there are some in Congress who have not been briefed on collection and operations programs - Feingold and Specter - who can give him some problems in hearings. He can handle those little pissants though. Hayden will be grilled by the Intelligence Committee. Not too many pissants there.

Hayden reminds me a lot of another former Director of the NSA, Admiral Noel Gayler. Gayler went on to become a full Admiral and Commander of the Pacific Fleet...

[snip]

I do hope Hayden gets the nod, and I will be right there for the confirmation hearings, just to see some of the loony Senators make complete fools of themselves - particularly Rockefeller.

While the opinions of two former purported spies are hardly enough to say this is a widespread, consensus viewpoint, it does seem to suggest that Hayden brings with him a reputation that indicates he has the ability to get the tough jobs done, and reforming a bumbling, politically-driven organization back into the nation's premiere civilian intelligence agency might just take a military commander's discipline to accomplish.

It is also very interesting that neither of these intelligence officers thought that the Senate confirmation hearings are going to be too tough for the General, and that the officer I interviewed felt that any Senators questioning Hayden on the NSA case would, "make complete fools of themselves."

This is going to be one interesting confirmation hearing, and if these sources and others can be trusted, Senators looking to attack General Hayden for their own personal gain might very quickly find themselves in well over their heads.

A Stringer of Large-Mouthed Asses

Several of my distant brethren on the far left of blogosphere this morning have gone out of their way to prove that the “reality-based community” is leaking reality at an every increasing rate, as they went postal over a flippant comment President Bush made about—wait for it—fishing.

Yes, while being interviewed for the German magazine Bild, the interviewer asked about his best and worst moments as President.

Bush gave the rather obvious answer that the 9/11/01 terrorist attack was his worst, while his best moment was:

"I would say the best moment was when I caught a 7 1/2-pound largemouth bass on my lake," Bush said, laughing.

Believe it or not, the Party of the Perpetually Peeved found a way to have a complete hissy fit over this, as well.

Firedoglake:

So, let me get this straight. The man has been President for five freaking years. And the thing that he thinks is his best moment in office as President of the US of A is catching a big fish in his lake.

Americablog

Most Americans couldn't name a best moment for Bush either. But he's been President for over five years and his best moment was catching a fish? That says a lot. He really is the WORST PRESIDENT EVER…

And the geniuses over at Hullabaloo, well, they smell conspiracy:

With all the daily opportunities available to do such good for your fellow country-folk, and the world, the only thing Bush specifically mentioned that made him happy is catching a big fish. In his own lake. Which could very well be deliberately stocked with big fish.

Mercy (or as they say mercí).

I'm certain they'll soon be petitioning Russ Feingold to try to impeach Bush, claiming no doubt, that using a Tiny Torpedo without Congressional authorization is an illegal act of war.

As nutty as these folks get over a joke Bush made about fishing, it's no wonder the American voter won't trust them with football.

(h/t : Memeorandum)

Praying for a Cinderella Man

So let me see if I understand the defense here.

Patrick Kennedy, son of famed Oldsmobile yachtsman Ted, and grandson of Prohibition bootlegger Joe, used the alibi that it wasn't alcohol that caused him to crash his car at 2:45 AM Thursday morning, it was drugs.

That's a pathetic excuse, even by Kennedy family standards.

But it turns out that even that ignoble defense fell apart, as a D.C-area bar employee reports that she saw him drinking in the bar shortly before the crash, and the Capitol Police listed him as being under the influence of alcohol in their traffic report.

While some disingenuously try to play it off as just an accidental drug interaction issue—oh, he was just sleep-driving, explains away Talk Left—as if that is a normal, everyday occurrence like sneezing—the very real fact is that Kennedy was a threat to others when he is behind the wheel. This was his second suspicious wreck in just two weeks. Kennedy's penmanship in the earlier accident report was so discombobulated that it is very hard to believe that he wasn't under the influence then, as well.

Patrick Kennedy now states will be entering a rehabilitation program at the Mayo Clinic for an addiction to prescription drugs. He states that he has "no recollection" of the events of Late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, and yet, he provided a full explanation of the wreck and a denial that he was drinking, despite eyewitness testimony to the contrary, and then provides a description of the police's treatment of him.

Now I see via Michelle Malkin that some posters at the Daily Kos want him gone, tossed out of Congress—though not because they care about Kennedy :

Here's the problem folks: most Americans who aren't partisans truly believe the democrats and The Republicans are "all the same" and that the power-elite takes care of its own.

Democrats can talk about Abramoff and Cunningham and the Republicans' toothless ethics bill, but so long as the People see us as just the "other side of the coin", they have little reason to go to the polls to vote for Dems.

Now we've got Congressman William Jefferson who despite allegations of bribery won't resign, and Patrick Kennedy who announces he's "going to vote" and so dodges a Breathalyzer test, and now will go into rehab rather than resign.

This gives all the justification in the world to independents who will say that the Dems are "just as bad" and that "all of them are corrupt."

It isn't Kennedy they care about, but how he might affect upcoming elections. Nice.

My personal feeling on the subject (speaking as someone who drank like Hemingway while in college) was that Kennedy should keep his job while he gets some help... idle hands being the devil's playthings and all that. My thought that was that once he got out of Mayo, he could immerse himself in his work, which could keep him too busy to get bogged down thinking about his addictions.

At least, that is what my position was.

Dan Riehl, recovering himself, had different thoughts on Kennedy's best way back to sobriety, and he's none to happy with the way things are progressing thus far:

Unfortunately, it looks as though the same enablers, including the media, will likely prop him up once again, perhaps long enough to at least survive until some day when he really falls down. Let's hope he doesn't kill someone else in the process. I came too close to doing that myself while behind the wheel of a car more times than I'd care to share. Certainly, anyone who can take advantage of a good hospital, especially with Kennedy's additional mental illness, should do so. But the notion that he will be anything like fit to perform in government for at least a couple of years is simply a myth.

[snip]

If Rep. Patrick Kennedy gave a damn about addiction recovery as a whole and knew anything about how to bring it about, he'd quit the House, admit what an abject failure he's been, then get some genuine humility and real help and not look back.

That he likely won't do so tells you how ready to simply go on lying and using he is, as opposed to taking a break so he can come back re-invigorated and continue the good fight as regards addiction recovery, or anything else. Hell, Oprah will probably have the still sick man on as cured within 3-6 months. What a pathetic joke and complete insult to addiction recovery that will be.

When looking at it from Dan's perspective (and I do encourage you to read the whole thing), I can see his point as well. It isn't "just an addiction"—as if that wasn't bad enough—but a serious mental illness (bi-polar disorder) and a family history of addiction that are compounding the issue.

I think Dan is right. Patrick Kennedy should make facing down his demons his full-time job for now. He can always return to Congress once he's clean and sober. Americans love an underdog fighting back from adversity, and he'd certainly be a far better Congressman with a clearer head. Let's pray he can get there.

Feed the Filthy Zionist

It's pledge week at Protein Wisdom.

Recalling the Twelfth Imam

Unless you have been under a rock or in New York City public schools, you are probably aware that Iran has engaged in the development of a nuclear program.

Iran has publicly stated that this is so that Iran can create nuclear power plants, a claim viewed with great suspicion by most of the world, as Iran sits upon vast petroleum reserves that will meets the nation's energy needs far into the future. Iran's parallel development of indigenous long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles and purchase of similar systems, as well as their claims of developing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) that are used only to deliver nuclear warheads, show that Iran's uranium enrichment program has the ultimate goal of obtaining multiple nuclear weapons.

Why do we care?
Consider that Iran is a major state-sponsor of Islamic terrorism, and successive Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened to exterminate Israel. Recently, Iranian government officials went far enough to state that they could destroy Israel with nuclear weapons and absorb an expected Israeli nuclear counterstrike.

Tens of millions of people throughout southwest Asia would be likely to die in such an exchange.

No, why do WE care?
Other than being philosophically opposed to genocide and nuclear war on a scale never before imagined?

Try:

• years of nuclear fallout carried around the world on prevailing winds;
• a nearly complete an long-term disruption in international oil supplies, resulting in major economic upheaval;
• increasing the possibility of international conflicts over reduced oil supplies;
• the dehumanization of all Muslims as a result of this mass genocide, perhaps leading to retaliatory strikes, mass internment, and deportation campaigns to eradicate the religion, particularly in western Europe and China.

There is also the possibility that Iran may even provide nuclear weapons to a terrorist group, such as the Iranian-funded Hezbollah.

Don't they know if they use nukes, they might get nuked back?
"Might" doesn't come into the picture. They will be nuked back if they launch a first strike. Iran's population is concentrated very heavily (60%) in urban areas (Tehran: 7.1 M, Mashad: 2.8M, Tabriz: 1.5 M, Karaj: 1.4 M, Shiraz: 1.3, etc), and even a partial nuclear response by either Israel or the United States would cause Iran to cease to exist.

It would be incredibly stupid for them to launch a nuclear attack, then.
You're thinking like a westerner. In many Islamic countries, there is no separation of church and state. Church is state to varying degrees, with Islamic theology making laws and defining policy, again, to varying degrees. A sub-sect of Shia Islam rules the Islamic Republic of Iran, and this sect's eschatology believes that the near-term messianic return of the 12th Imam can be brought about by an apocalyptic event.

What is more apocalyptic than a nuclear war?

So they think that by getting nuked, they'll go to heaven?
You might call it nuts, and I might agree, but good prosecutor would call it "motive."

So when would they attack?
Based upon their eschatology and public pronouncements thus far, one would be wise to assume that they would launch a nuclear attack just as soon as they had enough warheads to provide a good probability of success. Their definition of "success" is probably somewhere between annihilating Israel and making sure they get struck back with apocalyptic force in return. Two thermonuclear warheads would probably be enough to guarantee that result.

That's nuts.
You ain't just whistling "Dixie," Sparky, but that's what their top leaders believe.

Well, they better not get nukes then.
I thought you'd see it that way.

So how do we do that?
Remove their ability to enrich uranium.

You're talking political and economic sanctions right?
Yeah, they worked so well on Saddam, and we had them on Iraq for a dozen years before they almost completely fell apart. Some experts say Iran needs only about two years to build nuclear bombs. No expert thinks it will take longer than ten.

Besides, explain to me what kind of threat economic sanctions are to leaders hoping to trigger a thermonuclear Armageddon.

Uh, not much?
Right you are.

So that leaves...
Destabilizing the Iranian government and hope it will be deposed by another Iranian group that are more earthly-focused and less enthralled with continuing down the path of uranium enrichment. At least that's the best option. The other option is the use of military force to terminate the Iranian nuclear program.

So how do we start destabilizing the Iranian government?
Supply dissident groups within Iran with monies and if necessary, munitions. Find ways to place pressure on the Iranian government, and exploit dissatisfaction within the Iranian population to engineer a coup.

How long would that take?
Years, if it ever worked at all.

So our remaining options are?
Doing nothing, and taking the huge risk that they won't do what they've been promising for years, out of a sense of preservation they don't have, or we take steps to reduce their nuclear program.

You mean using military force?
Unless you've got a better idea.

But how can we fight Iran when we're already bogged down in Iraq? Won't we have to start a draft?
While we can debate the whole question of whether we are "bogged down in Iraq" or not, the short answer is no, we won't need a draft, not in the least.

Why not? I've read on several web sites we'd have to have a draft because we don't have enough soldiers in the military to invade Iran, unless we draft them first.
You want the long answer, or the short answer?

Uh, the short one?
Good choice.

Our current fight in Iraq and the kind of conflict we'd engage in with Iran are two completely different kinds of warfare. Our goal in Iraq was to depose a tyrant, uncover and dispose of WMDs, and then help install a democratic government.

To do so, we had to defeat their military, topple their government, establish security and rebuild their government. Because we had this particular set of goals, we had to stage a land invasion using (over time) hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines to hold physical land in Iraq for long periods of time.

A use of military force on Iran has a different set of goals entirely.

What do you mean?
In Iran, we are not seeking to control territory or (directly) overthrow a government. What we're doing is eliminating materials at approximately 400 fixed locations as our primary mission, while at the same time making sure we are in a position to fight a defensive war against a country that has a large but mostly one-dimensional conventional military (no real modern navy or air force to speak of), and a significant asymmetrical warfare capability via the use of Hezbollah terrorists and al Quds Special Forces units.

In English, please?
Sorry.

We're going to bomb them. We don't need to invade, because we aren't trying to control land, just break things.

Oh.
We will be using a U.S. Air Force that isn't doing too much right now, as well as U.S Navy carrier airwings, submarine and ship-launched cruise missiles. The United States has the most advanced bombers and weapons in the world, including more conventional dumb and smart bombs, and exotic but still conventional ground-penetrating "bunker buster" bombs that would take out about 99% of Iran's nuclear sites. Israel has been building the IDF Air Force for this exact mission for over a decade, and I'd be quite surprised if they passed up the chance to use the aircraft and weapons systems they've acquired, especially when it is their very survival that is on the line. A handful of the most important sites, however, are buried so deeply that it might take a far more risky special forces insertion to damage the sites, or as the possibility has been mentioned before, a small thermonuclear ground-penetrating bomb.

Whoa, cowboy. You're talking about nuking Iran? That's evil, unconscionable and un-American.
What is evil, unconscionable and un-American is listening to Iran say time and again that they intend to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, and then acting that they won't carry out their threat. When we said "never again" after the Holocaust, I hope we meant that. An Iran-Israel nuclear war would wipe out close to 100 million people in hours.

Israel would be gone. The Palestinians would be gone. Iran would be gone. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon would suffer millions of casualties from the blast and intense fallout from the Iranian strike, and the Israeli counterstrike would likely blanket most of the 'stans, as well as China and India with a plume of radioactive fallout, exposing close to a billion people both indirectly and directly to fallout to airborne fallout and food-borne consumption of the same for many years to come.

As you may expect, a glowing Middle East wasteland would destroy the global energy market, collapsing economies around the world, including our own. No human on this planet would be untouched by the effects, which could take decades to recover from, if ever. It would also make Muslims hunted around the globe, setting the stage for a crusade the likes of which the world has never imagined. Islam, and what remains of 1 billion Muslims, would be targets for an entirely different kind of genocide born of fear.

Wow.
Yeah, "wow."

So what can we do to stop it from happening?
Well we could start by hoping that the Iranian leadership would back away from this game of nuclear chicken, but considering their espoused hatred of Israel and open threats against it, along with their particular religious doctrine actually encouraging them towards Armageddon to call forth the 12th Imam as their Messiah, that possibility doesn't seem to be a rational one. They don't seem to want to stop on their own, and so we must make them.

So you're saying we need to launch a preemptive regional war to stop a genocidal world war?
I guess so, though it won't be a "regional war" as we've come to define them.

What do you mean?
We tend to picture regional wars as something like Korea, or Vietnam, or more recently, the Iraq War. We're thinking boots-on-the-ground, long-term and rather conventional ground campaigns. A war with Iran won't be like that.

Part of a war with Iran with likely occur in a set region, with coalition air power taking the fight to Iran. Within a few days, perhaps several weeks, the 400 sites would be destroyed, severely damaging the Iranian nuclear program.

The Iranian air force, low on spare parts with few operational modern aircraft and woefully under-trained by our standards, would offer little credible resistance. Iranian air-defense missile systems including the newly purchased Soviet TOR-1 faces the same training and equipment problems. Our anti-missile and anti-radar systems have a longer range than does their Iranian adversaries, allowing American HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles) armed aircraft to knock-out Iranian air defense units before the aircraft come into range. The Iranian Navy has been reduced to a fleet of small craft and aging ships that poses no real threat to U.S. warships, and should be able to be neutralized within days.

The greatest potential conventional threat would be from Iran's Army, which on paper, is 350,000 men strong. The majority of those however, are conscripts, with little training or discipline. Some of the best units would be keep near the Iranian government to protect it from potential coups, and so the Iranian soldiers, while outnumbering their American counterparts, would come in with far less experience, far less capable commanders, and outmoded equipment and tactics.

Factor in U.S air superiority and the Iranian practice of massing for attacks, and you have very inviting targets for American air support to operate against, choosing massed targets to destroy at will in a very lopsided, bug vs. windshield campaign between the world's most advanced and experienced combined arms military, against an enemy with World War II tactics and only slightly more advanced weapons systems.

So the ground war in Iran/Iraq won't be pretty is what you are saying.
Neither there, nor on border between Israel and Lebanon. Or at home.

Say what?
Iran will also fight a proxy war against Israel, and we can expect substantial rocket attacks and perhaps other terror attacks against northern Israel from Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and perhaps even in Syria. The IDF will be able to handle it, as will the Israeli people. They've had a bit of practice in their short history.

No, the "at home" part.
Iran promises that Hezbollah is more powerful and better organized to carry out attack on the United States than al Qaeda was. I wouldn't completely discount that possibility, but it is a risk we still must take.

We simply can't take the chance of Iran going nuclear. Charles Krauthammer writes about the clearly impending Holocaust today in Never Again?.

We can't let another 1938 pass unchallenged.

Friendly Fire

While looking for more out-take video to analyze of Musab al-Zarqawi's shooting session for my Blooper Troopers post, I ran across a video report on the new Zarqawi footage by CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

It runs 3:07, and Ian has made it available as either a .WMV or .MP4 at Expose the Left.

As stated in my previous post, Zarqawi is shown to be less than impressive with the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) he is shown firing in this video. He is unfamiliar with the weapon's operation, bracing for heavy recoil before firing, and then...

Pop... pop... pop.

Zarqawi can't get the machine gun to fire as a machine gun, in fully-automatic mode. It then seems to seize completely, and Zarqawi looks befuddled. While the footage is too grainy to tell for certain, it appears that the gun suffers a probable "stovepipe" malfunction, where a cartridge casing fails to eject completely and is caught by the bolt, resulting in a weapon stoppage. An associate happens to be nearby who has at least rudimentary experience with firearms, and he grabs the bolt handle and cycles the action to release the stovepiped round.

And as you watch the terrorist and his henchmen wrestle with the malfunctioning M249, the damnedest thing happens: CNN's Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre starts making excuses for al-Zarqawi's performance.

From 0:48-1:07 to on the clip:

"This weapon is an American weapon. It's called a SAW, or Squad Automatic Weapon, a very heavy machine gun which has a very heavy trigger; it's not easy to fire, and in fact it might be quite understandable that anyone--even somebody with weapon's experience, wasn't familiar with this particular weapon might have trouble firing off more than a single shot at a time...

It is bad enough that a U.S. journalist is seemingly making excuses for an al Qaeda terrorist, but not only is McIntyre making excuses, he is making demonstrably false excuses.

The M249 is light machine gun, the lightest dedicated machine gun in the U.S. Military. It fires the lightweight 5.56 NATO round, a cartridge developed from the .223 Remington, a cartridge designed to kill woodchucks and other small game. Most states will not allow hunters to use such a lightweight cartridge for medium and large game because it is so underpowered.

Nor is the M249 plausibly a "heavy" machine gun as far as weight goes. The M249 in the configuration shown weighs approximately 15 lbs, with the 200-round box magazine adding another 7 lbs when full. By way of comparison, the M2 .50 Caliber Browning, a real heavy machine gun, weighs 84 lbs without its 44 lbs tripod and ammunition.

McIntyre also claims that Zarqawi was having problems because of the M249's trigger. It would be interesting for Mr. McIntyre to reveal his source for his claim that the M249 "has a very heavy trigger." I have been unable to find so much as a single source that describes the standard trigger pull of the M249 as being "heavy." It is such a minor factor in the weapon's operation that I cannot find it mentioned at all.

Even the fact that the M249 is a fully-automatic weapon doesn't keep McIntyre from trying to float the excuse that some who, "wasn't familiar with this particular weapon might have trouble firing off more than a single shot at a time." Even General Lynch notes at 2:06 that "it's supposed to be automatic fire, he's shooting single shots, one at a time...something's wrong with his machine gun."

But it isn't just that Jamie McIntyre floated one lame excuse for the ineptitude of a terrorist that was so astounding, it is that he did so more than once.

After General Lynch makes his comments on Zarqawi's problems with his machine gun, McIntyre states from 2:50-3:50 into the clip:

...it's not clear at all that it really shows much about Zarqawi's military abilities with the weapon, because as I said, the Squad Automatic Weapon, a very heavy trigger, hard to fire unless you've had specific training on it, and one would imagine he hasn't had a lot of specific training on American weapons."

I can understand that as CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent for well over a decade McIntyre might have developed a certain degree of respect for this nation's enemies, but that doesn't mean he should go out of his way to fabricate excuses for them.

Update: I've now talked to several SAW gunners, including one who was a trainer, and the consensus viewpoint among them is that the terrorists have not cleaned this particular weapon, which caused cycling problems leading to the embarrassing jam. Jason at milblog Countercolumn has a post that compliments this one any goes into further details about the M249.

Sadly,as pathetic as McIntyre's video segment was, that bastion of liberalism, the NY Times is always ready to go that extra mile:

An effort by the American military to discredit the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by showing video outtakes of him fumbling with a machine gun — suggesting that he lacks real fighting skill — was questioned yesterday by retired and active American military officers.

The video clips, released on Thursday to news organizations in Baghdad, show the terrorist leader confused about how to handle an M-249 squad automatic weapon, known as an S.A.W., which is part of the American inventory of infantry weapons.

[snip]

The weapon in question is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in Mr. Zarqawi's hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said Mr. Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it.

Now, who do you chose to believe?

In one corner, we have the New York Times, who cites two officers and a couple of professors (one of whom is a veteran) in their article, without stating if any of these four men have any knowledge of the M249. They do not profess any specific knowledge of the weapon in question at all, and the Times does not provide one fact in this story. It's all opinion. Also in this corner, CNN's Jamie McIntyre who cites completely erroneous information to make excuses for a terrorist.

In the other corner, you have a couple of bloggers who did what the professionals should have, and "Googled" facts about the M249 and similar weapons. The bloggers were in contact with and verified facts through current and former SAW gunners from two countries (United States and Canada).

One side has facts, the other opinion. You choose who you want to believe.

At Least The Car Stayed Dry

Drudge is running a flash that Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), son of Sen. Ted Kennedy, make be part of a suspected drunk-driving crash and cover-up involving the Capital Police:

Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), son of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

ROLL CALL [note: my link-ed.] reports: According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy's car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade at First and C streets Southeast.

“The driver exited the vehicle and he was observed to be staggering,” Baird's letter states. Officers approached the driver, who “declared to them he was a Congressman and was late to a vote. The House had adjourned nearly three hours before this incident. It was Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy from Rhode Island.”

Baird wrote that Capitol Police Patrol Division units, who are trained in driving under the influence cases, were not allowed to perform basic field sobriety tests on the Congressman. Instead, two sergeants, who also responded to the accident, proceeded to confer with the Capitol Police watch commander on duty and then “ordered all of the Patrol Division Units to leave the scene and that they were taking over.”

A source tells the DRUDGE REPORT: It was apparent that the driver was intoxicated (stumbling) and claimed he was in a hurry to make a vote. When it became apparent who it was instead of processing a normal DWI the watch commander had the Patrol units clear the scene and allowed the other building officials drive Kennedy home.

This morning's incident comes just over two weeks after Kennedy was involved in a car accident in Rhode Island.

Developing...

Unlike some Drudge stories, this might have some meat to it, as MSM sources are corroborating that Kennedy was involved in a 3:00 am wreck, and that the responding officers were not allowed to perform field sobriety tests. WUSA9.com has more details:

9 News has learned U.S. Capitol police officers are concerned about the handling of an accident involving Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island) about 3 a.m. this morning.

Rep. Kennedy was reportedly behind the wheel of a green Ford Mustang when it crashed into a security barrier at 1st and "C" streets Southeast.

No one was hurt, but there are reports that the car nearly struck a Capitol police cruiser and that it had been swerving, as if trying to make a U-turn.

So far, Kennedy HAS NOT been charged. The congressman released a statement Thursday night saying alcohol was NOT involved.

"I was involved in a traffic accident last night at ... the U.S. Capitol. I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident and I will fully cooperate with Capitol Police in whatever investigation they choose to undertake," he said.

The Capitol Hill Fraternal Order of Police is calling for higher-ups in the department to allow patrol officers to complete their investigation.

The head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1, Lou Cannon, told 9 News that he's concerned that Kennedy may have received special treatment and this could be a case where “rank has its privilege.”

Capitol police Officer Greg Baird wrote a letter to acting Chief Christopher McGaffin saying how the investigation was handled calls the department's integrity into question.

According to Rollcall.com, Baird -- acting chairman of the Capitol Police Fraternal Order of Police –- said Kennedy's Mustang had its lights off when it narrowly missed crashing into a police cruiser and smashed into a security barrier at 1st and C streets Southeast about 2:45 a.m.

According to sources, Kennedy told police that he was late for a Congressional vote. But the House had adjourned more than three hours earlier, sources said.

According to Roll Call, Baird wrote in his letter that the driver got out and “was observed to be staggering.” He told officers he was a congressman late for a vote. Baird wrote that patrol officers at the scene were prohibited from performing field sobriety tests. Then two sergeants arrived, conferred with a watch commander and “ordered all of the patrol division units to leave the scene … that they were taking over.”

Congressman Patrick Kennedy is Ted Kennedy's son. He is currently serving his sixth term as the Democratic Congressman from Rhode Island. He sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

First off, and very seriously, I'm glad no one was hurt. A late model (2005) Ford Mustang weighs 3,351 lbs, and traveling through the dark with its lights off in the dark is a recipe for disaster. My second thought was, of course, thankfulness that Kennedy wasn't near the Inlet Bridge over the Tidal Basin, or things could have ended far more tragically.

This case could bode very poorly for the Kennedy clan and the Capital Police as well if there is any evidence at all of a cover-up. Odds are than any questionable involvement by either Patrick Kennedy or his father Ted—if indeed there was any—can and probably would disappear faster than a bottle of Maker's Mark down Ted's fleshy gullet. The Capitol Police watch commander and other senior officers seem somewhat more likely to take any fall here.

Capitol Police Officer Greg Baird seems to be a good cop trying to shine light on a shady situation. He felt strongly enough about the interference in his investigation that he went against his superiors when he felt they were wrong. That takes guts, and integrity.

It will be very interesting to see how—and if—this case proceeds.

Blooper Troopers

It appears the video released of al Qaeda action hero Musab al-Zarqawi left quite a bit on the cutting room floor, including footage edited out from his "Rambo" scene, where Zarqawi is seen in firing long bursts from a 5.56mm light machine gun used by the U.S. military.

What the version of the video posted to the internet does not show says quite a lot. The unedited footage was captured near Youssifiyah, presumably by Task Force 145, shows that al Zarqawi is unable to clear a simple "stovepipe" jam from the M249 squad automatic weapon he uses. He requires the assistance of a follower, who with one deft motion of his hand, racked the bolt to clear the malfunction.

Just seconds after Zarqawi fired dozens of rounds through the gun, he puts one of his men at extreme risk as he sweeps the machine gun's barrel around, momentarily pointing at the terrorist's chest without apparently activating the weapon's safety, or even taking his finger off the trigger. Shortly after that display of stupidity, another terrorist is shown grabbing the machine gun by the still-smoking barrel, burning his hand.

The unintentionally comic elements of this footage does not, of course, minimize the lethal threat Zarqawi and his minions pose to the Iraqi people, but it does humanize him and diffuse a bit of the mythology surrounding him. He is not invincible, and at moments, he is all but helpless.

Update: As I noted in a comment at Hot Air:

If he [Zarqawi] is that unfamiliar with a common weapons malfunction, I wonder just how many combat actions he has actually participated in.

Is Musab al-Zarqawi a paper tiger? We don't have enough data to answer that question, but with this film, we now have enough to bring it up.

Howard Dean Screws Gay Outreach Coordinator, Advocate at DNC

Via Drudge:

Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean on May 2 fired the party's gay outreach advisor Donald Hitchcock less than a week after Hitchcock's domestic partner, Paul Yandura, a longtime party activist, accused Dean of failing to take stronger action to defend gays.

Dean immediately hired gay former Democratic Party operative Brian Bond to replace Hitchcock, according to DNC spokesperson Karen Finney, who called Bond a "proven leader."

Bond served from 1996 to 2003 as executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a bipartisan national group that raises money and provides training to help elect openly gay candidates to public office.
"It was not retaliation," Finney said of Hitchcock's dismissal. "It was decided we needed a change. We decided to hire a proven leader."

Hitchcock declined comment Tuesday night except to confirm that Dean informed him May 2 through a surrogate that he had been terminated. He said he was considering consulting an attorney to decide whether to contest the firing.

Regardless of how you feel about gay couples, this stinks to high heaven for the DNC. If a female activist had made charges that Dean wasn't doing enough for rape victims and Dean fired her husband, who was in charge of a related outreach effort, it would almost certainly and immediate be condemned as a retaliatory act that was certainly tasteless, unethical, and depending on the jurisdiction, may be legally actionable as well.

The Democratic Party claims to have big tent, but Howard Dean seems to take a dim view of the rights of those who enter through the back door.

We can only hope that if they do decide to follow with legal action for this apparently retaliatory firing by Screamin' Howard, that Hitchcock and Yandura get justice in the end.

Bird Flu Review: Nix this Sick Chick Schtick

Major Chaz is not impressed with what he sees coming from ABC's pending made-for-television bird flu movie:

How many people will now base their knowledge on the Bird Flu from a television movie written by a guy who also wrote the previous TV blockbusters as "Atomic Twister", "Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back", and "Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story".

Hey, it has to be more realistic than Commander in Cheif.

Savage Realizations

You've got to hand it to the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage; if he doesn't like how the facts are arranged, he's more than willing to arrange them on his own. Such was the case in his article Hearing vowed on Bush's powers.

The main focus of the article was President Bush's decision to use Presidential signing statements to bypass provisions of 750 bills that the President thinks may conflict with the Constitution. According to the definition provided by Savage in his article, signing statements are:

…official documents in which a president lays out his interpretation of a bill for the executive branch, creating guidelines to follow when it implements the law. The statements are filed without fanfare in the federal record, often following ceremonies in which the president made no mention of the objections he was about to raise in the bill, even as he signed it into law.

That's what Charlie wants you to see. How about another perspective?

Walter Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General under President Clinton, wrote to Bernard Nussbaum, Counsel to President Clinton, in 1993, The Legal Significance of Signing Statements:

To begin with, it appears to be an uncontroversial use of signing statements to explain to the public, and more particularly to interested constituencies, what the President understands to be the likely effects of the bill, and how it coheres or fails to cohere with the Administration's views or programs.

A second, and also generally uncontroversial, function of Presidential signing statements is to guide and direct Executive officials in interpreting or administering a statute. The President has the constitutional authority to supervise and control the activity of subordinate officials within the Executive Branch…

[snip]

A third function, more controversial than either of the two considered above, is the use of signing statements to announce the President's view of the constitutionality of the legislation he is signing. This category embraces at least three species: statements that declare that the legislation (or relevant provisions) would be unconstitutional in certain applications; statements that purport to construe the legislation in a manner that would "save" it from unconstitutionality; and statements that state flatly that the legislation is unconstitutional on its face. Each of these species of statement may include a declaration as to how -- or whether -- the legislation will be enforced.

Thus, the President may use a signing statement to announce that, although the legislation is constitutional on its face, it would be unconstitutional in various applications, and that in such applications he will refuse to execute it. Such a Presidential statement could be analogized to a Supreme Court opinion that upheld legislation against a facial constitutional challenge, but warned at the same time that certain applications of the act would be unconstitutional.

[snip]

In each of the last three Administrations, the Department of Justice has advised the President that the Constitution provides him with the authority to decline to enforce a clearly unconstitutional law. This advice is, we believe, consistent with the views of the Framers. Moreover, four sitting Justices of the Supreme Court have joined in the opinion that the President may resist laws that encroach upon his powers by "disregard[ing] them when they are unconstitutional."

(note: footnote numbers stripped for readability)

The four justices? Scalia, O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter. One might have reason to believe that Justice Alito and/or Chief Justice Roberts would make a similar judgment, rendering a majority decision of 5-4 or 6-3 in the President's favor on the modern Court, though Savage couldn't be troubled to go through the "extensive research" once could do in several minutes on Google that led to this potentially important information.

In other words, despite Specter's incessant grandstanding, John Dean's whining and Savage's perhaps intentionally leading framing, it appears that while Bush's frequency in using signing statements is unusual, it does have both precedent and the apparent support of the Supreme Court.

Of course, Charlie Savage isn't quite done there. Why stop with a little misdirection, when you can try adding to The Big Lie?

Speaking of the President executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct targeted intercepts of suspected terrorist communications where at least one end was on foreign soil, Savage wrote:

Feingold is an outspoken critic of Bush's assertion that his wartime powers give him the authority to set aside laws. The senator has proposed censuring Bush over his domestic spying program, in which the president secretly authorized the military to wiretap Americans' phones without a warrant, bypassing a 1978 surveillance law.

But Savage's assertion as to the nature of the program is is false, and demonstrably so. Not one single claim has ever been made that shows this was a domestic spying program. In all instances, from the original article written in the NY Times, to specific comments made about the program by former NSA director General Michael V. Hayden, to comments made by the White House itself, it has been emphatically stated that the program is not domestic, but international in nature. International means more than one country, which was a primary criteria for all of these intercepts. My six-year-old can understand that oft-repeated concept, so why is it so difficult for Savage to understand? The intercepts were also not a wiretapping of Americans' phones, another "fact" Mr. Savage conveniently cannot support.

Once you have the real facts and misrepresentations of this Globe article laid out in front of you, it is hardly surprising that a recent Reuters poll found that 69% of Americans don't trust the media. With reporters like Charlie Savage more interested in manufacturing news than reporting it, why should they?

Moussaoui Gets Life... Or Does He?

Part of me thinks Rusty is probably right: if Zacarias Moussaoui gets life in prison for his part in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, how can we really justify putting to death any other terrorists we may capture? That is a rather disturbing question.

At the same time, life is prison, even in what is likely to be solitary confinement, is perhaps more likely to result in his dying within this next decade. Jeffrey Dahmer, a cannibalistic serial killer of 17 men, was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences in February of 2002, but was murdered by another inmate in 2004. Child molester John Geoghan was also sentenced to life in 2002 and murdered by another inmate two years later.

It is quite possible that Moussaoui will create enough hatred among the inmate population that his life sentence will end up being a very short stay.

What Amnesty Brings

Welcome to the new look of illegal immigration.

Source.

Via the L.A. Times:

Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic sold by the same Mexican cartels he's vowed to fight during his five years in office, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The list of illegal drugs approved for personal consumption by Mexico's Congress last week is enough to make one dizzy — or worse.

Cocaine. Heroin. LSD. Marijuana. PCP. Opium. Synthetic opiates. Mescaline. Peyote. Psilocybin mushrooms. Amphetamines. Methamphetamines.

And the per-person amounts approved for possession by anyone 18 or older could easily turn any college party into an all-nighter: half a gram of coke, a couple of Ecstasy pills, several doses of LSD, a few marijuana joints, a spoonful of heroin, 5 grams of opium and more than 2 pounds of peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus.

The law would be among the most permissive in the world, putting Mexico in the company of the Netherlands. Critics, including U.S. drug policy officials, already are worrying that it will spur a domestic addiction problem and make Mexico a narco-tourism destination.

So not only are we facing an ever-increasing number of illegal aliens leaching funds and services that were created to help America's legal residents, we're now facing the distinct possibility that these illegals will be junkies and addicts desperate for a fix as well.

Remember to "thank" your Republican senators pushing for the amnesty bill by voting them out of office in November.

McCain's Missing Merchandise

David Ignatius has a WaPo Op-ed up to day called, A Man who won't Sell his Soul.

Interestingly enough, it is about John McCain, one of the most calculating, cynical, triangulating Senators in office, and one who made the frightening admission just last week that he won't let a little thing like the Constitution get in his way:

"He [Michael Graham] also mentioned my abridgement of First Amendment rights, i.e. talking about campaign finance reform... I know that money corrupts... I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government."

McCain sold out the most important part of the First Amendment by heavily infringing on the right to free political speech with McCain-Feingold, and now he appears ready to dump the Amendment altogether. John McCain can't sell his political soul.

You can't sell what you don't possess.

Cato the Blunder?

I've just completed the 22.5-page Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush (31-page PDF), authored by Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch of the libertarian CATO Institute.

The executive summary should be compelling to everyone, regardless of political orientation.

It begins:

In recent judicial confirmation battles, President Bush has repeatedly—and correctly—stressed fidelity to the Constitution as the key qualification for service as a judge. It is also the key qualification for service as the nation's chief executive. On January 20, 2005, for the second time, Mr. Bush took the presidential oath of office set out in the Constitution, swearing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." With five years of the Bush administration behind us, we have more than enough evidence to make an assessment about the president's commitment to our fundamental legal charter Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

• a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;
• a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;
• a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and
• a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

President Bush's constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

The CATO authors make the charge that a sitting president is violating his oath of office and the Constitution he has sworn to protect on multiple occasions, and these are charges not to be dismissed lightly. I had to read this document.

After reading it all and taking it in, I sit here with mixed emotions.

The authors make a strong case in each instance, and the way they frame the issues, there seems little practical doubt as to whether or not the President is guilty of some of the things that Healy and Lynch charge. But is little doubt the same as no doubt, and how do we judge?

Example #1 was the infamous McCain-Feingold bill (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or BCRA).

Bush did sign McCain-Feingold into law after objecting to it on Constitutional grounds. It which seems to be a direct assault upon the most important core principle of the First Amendment, free political speech. But Healy and Lynch then make this comment on page 5 (as the page is numbered, may vary in your PDF viewer):

…when the president abdicates his constitutional responsibility, as President Bush did when he signed a bill he knew to be unconstitutional, there is no guarantee that the courts will act to uphold theirs.

In fact, the Supreme Court did not accept President Bush's invitation to strike down the offending portions of the BCRA. In 2003, in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, the court upheld all the major provisions of the BCRA.

To me, this seems perplexing. If the President thinks a congressional bill is unconstitutional and signs it into law thinking it is unconstitutional, should he face impeachment when the Supreme Court upholds all the major provisions of the law?

If he should then be impeached, what of the members of Congress who voted to pass the bill in the first place? Do they not violate their oaths as well? And what do we do with a Supreme Court that upholds what many lay people consider a clear violation of the very essence of the First Amendment? Should we toss them all, executive, legislative, and judicial, and appoint President Antonin Scalia for filing a dissent that upheld the Constitution?

From McCain-Feingold, to "free speech" zones, the so-called "torture memos," and questions about apparently expanding powers to arrest and seize property, Healy and Lynch take aim at the President but find themselves hitting other targets with virtually every shot.

For example:

• The "free speech" zones are enforced by the Secret Service or local police at Secret Service behest, and the authors cannot even provide evidence that Bush ha any part in these decisions;
• the "torture memos" debate is carried forward upon opinions put forth by the Justice Department and the Department of Defense, as well as the White House;
• the "war powers" argument put forth by the authors would seem to implicate almost every president back to Truman (with the apparent exception of Bush 41) for using police actions instead of congressional declarations as their method to go to war, while at the same time noting the current President Bush seized upon Congressional use of force still in effect from the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and got a congressional use of force authorization of his own as well;
• The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies are indicted along with the President under a charge of overly expanded arrest and seizure powers;
• an alleged expansion of surveillance powers would condemn the NSA as well (note: I think the authors are fundamentally wrong in their assertions made in this section, and they should admit this is blind speculation on their part based upon unsupportable assumptions, which they don't);
• and on and on…

It would appear at the end of the article that all branches of the federal government, and indeed most individual departments of these branches, must bear at least some responsibility for the current wretched state of affairs the authors state this nation is currently in, or may find itself in at some point in the future.

The often compelling—and occasionally self-defeating—arguments made by Healy and Lynch would seem to indicate an entire federal system that has become corrupted to the point that we as a nation should consider a wholesale scrapping of all three branches of government and start them afresh—OR—it suggest that the authors may over-reaching to support a hypothesis that may have been pre-determined, and in doing so, tarred everyone with the same brush.

I'll be very interested to see other impressions of this document.

Wind

I don't much care for the over-saturated Plame case and have refused to cover it for the most part, but the latest round of over-the-top assertions are really too much.

Over at Donkelephant, Justin Gardener is in over his head regarding a Raw Story claim that Valerie Plame was working on Iran when she was exposed. Setting aside for now the fact that whoever leaked to MSNBC correspondent David Shuster is also a leaker worth firing and perhaps prosecuting, we catch Gardener hyperventilating:

To all of those who said she wasn't really a covert agent, that she wasn't really doing anything of importance…well, you're wrong. She was working on Iran. In fact, she was tracking the ins and outs of their attempts to acquire WMDs. And the Bush administration's actions most likely harmed that intelligence gathering.

[snip]

Should Rove go to jail for leaking her name to Novak? Who friggin knows at this point. But should he be ashamed because his brand of dirty politics could have cost us something in the Iran intelligence shell game? You're damn right he should.

Back up a second, Justin.

Plame was a WMD analyst, based out of CIA headquarters since 1997 because her cover was likely exposed in the Adlrich Ames affair. Others sources say her cover was blown as far back as the mid-1990s in separate events by a spy in Russia and diplomatic incompetence in Cuba.

Her exact position was classified, but to argue that anyone who drove through the main gates of the CIA in Langley every day for work is somehow covert is asinine. Joe Wilson himself said she wasn't covert (his exact word was "clandestine") in a July 14, 2005 interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN. As her husband, he just might know a bit more about that than does Justin and his compatriots.

As for Rove, it remains to be seen if he will even be charged. Shouldn't we wait to have a trial and then see if he is convicted before he is sent to jail, or is that whole "due process thing" superfluous?

As for what revealing Plame's name did or didn't do to her section in the CIA, I think Gardener and his friends at Raw Story are making assumptions they cannot possibly support without a much higher security clearance than they presently have at CIA HQ (which I think is "none," but feel free to correct me). Plame is hardly the only WMD analyst in the CIA, and is quite likely to be one of many working on Iran. I find it highly unlikely that an intelligence agency infamous for so many layers of bureaucracy would have just one analyst working on a country that most have targeted as one of our main proliferation threats since before President Clinton was in office.

Did the disclosure of Plame's identity have an impact on investigating Iran's WMDs? I'm sure it could have, but to what degree we may not know for some time (if ever), as that information is almost certainly classified. It would stand to reason that anytime you lose a person with experience it decreases the overall knowledge base to a certain degree. But Plame was not the only CIA analyst working on Iranian WMD programs, and I've seen no one able to cite evidence she was even one of the more important analysts in this area.

Her exposure was certainly unfortunate, but I don't think anyone can make the statement that it was highly detrimental to the overall work, and it certainly wasn't terminal to the Agency at large.

Jeep Jihadi Charged

Mohammed Taheri-Azar, the Iranian-American jihadi wannabe that tried to run down UNC-Chapel Hill students, was charged with nine counts of attempted murder. In addition:

Mohammed Taheri-Azar, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, also was indicted on four counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury.

Taheri-Azar is accused of driving through the gathering spot, known as the Pit, on March 3, hitting nine people. He has said his actions were in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims throughout the world caused by the United States.

I can only wonder if Chapel Hill (motto: "Left of Center, Right at Home") will raise monies for his defense fund. Some people have already thought about doing just that.

Other Iranian-Americans (or more accurately, Iranian-North Americans) aren't among them.

A Day Without A Difference

Today was the much-touted Day Without Immigrants, code for a day where illegal aliens and their supporters across the United States weren't supposed to work, or shop, or do much of anything other than protest. In short, they were supposed to act French.

Even though North Carolina has a substantial Hispanic population (45% of which are illegal. Thank you, Mike Easley), I must confess I didn't notice any significant difference in my daily routine.

Traffic flowed (or didn't) about the same. Taco Bell, staffed by Pakistanis, was still open, and Wendy's, staffed by Mexicans, was as well.

It might have been a Day Without Immigrants in some parts of the country, but here in Raleigh, North Carolina, as I experienced it. this seemed to be just another Monday.

It was a Day Without a Difference.

"The Dumbest Man in the U.S. Senate"

When I lived in New York, I used to drive home from my job in Westchester listening to Mark Levin, who often referred to Democratic Senator Joe Biden (Del.) as "the dumbest man in the U.S. Senate."

It appears now that Biden's intelligence was overestimated:

The senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed Monday that Iraq be divided into three separate regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad.

In an op-ed essay in Monday's edition of The New York Times, Sen. Joseph Biden D-Del., wrote that the idea "is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."

The new Iraqi constitution allows for establishment of self-governing regions. But that was one of the reasons the Sunnis opposed the constitution and why they demanded and won an agreement to review it this year.

Biden and co-writer Leslie H. Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged the opposition, and said the Sunnis "have to be given money to make their oil-poor region viable. The Constitution must be amended to guarantee Sunni areas 20 percent (approximately their proportion of the population) of all revenues."

Biden and Gelb also wrote that President Bush "must direct the military to design a plan for withdrawing and redeploying our troops from Iraq by 2008 (while providing for a small but effective residual force to combat terrorists and keep the neighbors honest)."

How are Biden and Gelb, two reputed political experts, so blatantly incompetent that they don't realize that a divided Iraq would create far more problems than what we see in the current situation?

At the very least, partitioning off the nation along ethnic lines would encourage even more balkanization, and the attendant Sunni vs. Shia fighting would almost certainly intensify instead of abating. This of course would trigger an almost certain exodus of refugees of minority populations from one region into another. Choas is the best result we could hope for in such a fouled design.

In addition, neither Biden nor Gelb touch upon the fact that such a division is likely to inflame an already tense situation between Turkey and the Kurdish-controlled areas in the west, and Iran and the Kurdish region in the east. Both nations fear that a partitioned Kurdish region would be the trigger for Turkish and Iranian Kurds to fight to bring their regions in to a larger Kurdistan based in Iraq. Turkey has already made clear that they view an independent Kurdistan as a threat, and they have already made cross-border attacks, as have the Iranians.

Joseph Biden's idiotic attempt at ethnic segregation would expand Iraq's current sectarian violence into an almost certain regional conflict, encouraging both Turkey and Iran to invade. An invasion by either of these countries would almost certainly create situations where American military forces in the area might be forced into tense situations and possible open combat, either against our NATO ally which s bad enough, or potentially more seriously, a conflict that could easily flash into an ever-expanding, full-on conventional war with Iran.

Such a conflict could see thousands of U.S casualties and perhaps hundreds of U.S dead, but that isn't the worst of it. Coalition forces, with unquestionable air superiority, would send tens of thousands of Iranian conscripts to their graves in such a conflict as well. Through sheer stupidity, Joe Biden would create a situation potentially more deadly than all of the battles of the Iraq and Afghan wars so far, combined.

Is Joe Biden the dumbest man in the United States Senate as Levin contends?

I'd hate to see who could top him.

Day of the Lamprey

In the United States today, organizers are touting what they call a "Day Without Immigrants." I'm sure real Americans such as Squanto, Manteo, Crazy Horse and Geronimo would support such a cause if they alive, but that is not what today is really about. No, this May Day—a communist/socialist holiday—is about something completely different.

This May Day protest is a celebration of the illegal importation of poverty, and an attempt to legitimize the violation of this nation's sovereignty. It is a blight on this nation's long history of accepting immigrants legally from other nations with open arms, by those who seek to latch onto this nation's economy like a lamprey, sucking dry social services meant for this nation's legitimate unfortunates, and artificially lowering wages so that legal Americans on the lower end of the economic scale cannot afford to live on what they bring home from work.

I spoke to a homebuilder yesterday who told me that without illegal labor, his cost per square foot for framing a home would nearly double. In other words, that means that because of an artificial depression of labor costs, legal Americans in this trade are getting far less in wages than they should. Want to take a guess who hurts the most in this arrangement?

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were busy this past weekend protesting the War in Iraq, but where have they been for poor blacks and other minorities that are seeing their wages undercut by illegal labor? For that matter, how many poor blacks and other minorities, including legal immigrants, would stay poor if entry level and trade-skill labor rates were what they should be?

So have a soft spot in your heart if you must for those illegals who overcrowd our schools, close our hospitals and fill our prisons. If you can read this, they are probably just a sympathetic cause you can choose to agree or disagree with without much of an impact to your daily life, and you can hardly blame them for wanting something better than they have in their own countries.

But that is not a legitimate excuse for the poverty they bring to this nation and perpetuate, adding 12 million poor and destitute to an overtaxed social support system, making it impossible for the system to raise up those who are here legitimately.

Chris Muir's Day-by-Day said of the illegals protesting “We demand the American Dream!! Without the American part” and he was mostly right:

What Muir can't address in two panels is what these illegals are doing to the American Dream for hard-working legal residents of this nation. Who cares about their needs and dreams? Apparently, they'll just fall through the cracks in Hell's Kitchen and Davenport and Bethlehem and Princeville, remaining at the bottom, never allowed a leg up, as we allow the poor of other nations to bury them alive.

* * *

I've often heard Republicans using analogy of fishing to describe the difference between them and Democrats.

Democrats, it is said, will give a hungry man a fish. That is great for today, but tomorrow, than man will be hungry again, and no closer to providing a meal for himself. Democrats will give him another fish, courtesy of the government, who took that fish from someone else. It is a vicious, unending cycle.

Republicans, instead, say they want to teach the man to fish, to be self-sufficient so that he can feed himself and his family not just that day, but in days to come.

But something falls apart when the lake or river all these people depend on is overrun with parasites that suck the life out of the fish...

Eventually, everybody starves.