PressThink: "'CNN is so empty-handed in documenting how it knew the men were alive that the producers resort to playing audio tapes of a dispatcher's voice at some unidentified ambulance service, and someone named 'caller' is saying... that's what we heard, yeah, 12 alive.'"

Jay has more facts and quotes on how a responsible paper avoided the mistake -- showing up the media hot dogs.

Eve at normblogwhy Kuper singles Israel out for criticism: "an implication of his view is that we should cut much more slack to countries which are unashamedly oppressive and tyrannical, and be far harsher to countries which explicitly endorse liberal values. (And indeed quite a few of those who think it's OK to single out Israel for criticism do appear to be acting on that principle.) This is a quite astonishing prioritization of the vice of hypocrisy (which Israel is supposed to possess above all others - itself a highly dubious claim which Kuper makes no attempt to support) at the expense of ignoring the rather more terrible vices of tyranny and mass murder."

The Left is fighting a Moral Superiority war -- so any who disagree MUST have their morality impinged. Israel ca NOT be allowed any moral high ground -- by the goose-stepping PC critics.

David Corn is critical of Dems: "S/he predicted there would be no Democratic filibuster against Alito, that Alito will handily win approval on the Senate floor, and that Alito will go on to become a justice as conservative as Antonin Scalia. Unfortunately, these are not daring predictions. I still don't know what the Democrats were thinking. It seems to me they had one strategy--the gotcha strategy."

Pump up the volume, Pump up the volume -- hate Bush hate, hate Bush hate. Go hate win. (win??? ha!)

neo-neocon: "That's the difference between states that act as terrorists and those that sometimes have to cause loss of life with deep regret. The former, such as Iran, not only sponsor outright terrorism of various kinds, but deliberately expose their civilian populations to harm, counting on the reluctance of countries such as the US or Israel to harm innocent civilians. All the while, Iran continues to castigate those states for being bloodthirsty villains. Clearly, the mullahs don't believe their own rhetoric."

Hopefully the US bombing will target top military and gov't officials -- regime change as the goal, more than just the nuke sites. Unconditional surrender.

Marc Cooper on the Mexican border: "The jokes around the border this morning have changed: 'Hear abut the new jobs for us?' asks one Mexicn ditty, 'who do u thin’s gonna wind up building that wall?' Another story now circulating: 'New Wall 50Ft, New Ladders for Sale 51ft.'"

Gotta increase the number of legal guest workers, increase the fines for employers of illegal ones, and push immigrants to learn English.

normblog on International Law & Iraq War: "If this is indeed the state of international law, if a regime which murders hundreds of thousands of its own people (to say nothing of the other cruelties the Baathist dictatorship was responsible for) may not be overthrown by outside intervention, then that is a law that needs to be opposed and changed - just like legal hangings, or amputations, for petty theft. From the very first time I publicly opened my mouth on this subject (see old normblog site, The War in Iraq, July 29 2003), I have maintained the same thing. I'm proud not to defend a law accommodating genocide and other massive human rights violations. I think that those who defend such law are in more of an oops-ish situation, if I may put it like that.

Finally, whether the Iraq war was illegal or not is not a fact of nature. It is, in a sense, a decision to be made."

Right. I think Bush should be rubbing the UN's nose in the on-going slo-mo genocide of Darfur -- and claiming that's the kind of genocide which passes, or it fails, the Dem's "Global Test." The world doesn't need such an impotent International Law.

Grim's Hall - perhaps the only interesting post on Alito: "Biden apparently asked if the President 'can just go ahead and violate international law ('that's the administration's position,' said Biden).'

The answer to that question, as I understand it, is that it depends on what is meant by 'international law.' If it refers to anything informal, or treaties we haven't ratified but which have been ratified by lots of other countries (e.g., the ban on cluster bombs), or the fact that lots of allied countries have similar laws 'so we should have one too,' etc., then neither the President nor Congress is the least bit bound by 'international law.'

If it means 'formal treaties which the United States has signed and ratified,' then the US is bound by them unless -- I would argue, and support any President or Congressman who acted on this understanding -- that treaty violated one of the protections of the US Constitution, such as freedom of speech. "

It's a longer, thoughtful post about rights of people and power of gov't

Media Lies - NYT Hypocrites -: "Meanwhile, responsible news organizations might also want to consider explicitly endorsing a joint congressional investigative committee's call for the extension of such surveillance to U.S.-based targets. 'The CIA and the National Security Agency, which does electronic eavesdropping, will also have to devote more of their efforts to analyzing international terrorist threats inside the United States,' the New York Times announced in July 2003."

The Times is helping the terrorists, and thus helping to kill Americans. There should be a boycott of NY Times advertisers.

Now, over two years later, the Times has decided to reveal that on the very day its editorial page offered this suggestion, just such an NSA domestic surveillance effort was already underway, on orders from the president. And all of a sudden, responsible news organizations everywhere are loudly warning that the End of Democracy is nigh."

Media Lies -The first traitor comes forward -: "
Russell Tice, a former NSA employee, as publicly admitted to being one of the sources for the Times' NSA revelations."

I hope he gets jail time real soon.

neo-neocon on Haj and other Stampeded: "It seems to be an almost inevitable part of the ritual of the Haj, despite all the efforts (and they've been considerable) of the Saudi government to prevent it: a stampede that kills large numbers of pilgrims.

I wrote this post back in September on the subject of stampedes. The following words are as relevant today as they were then"

Go read it.

neo-neocon on Iran: "Recently the situation there has been escalating, both in pronouncements (see this and this, as well as this), and now, of course, in action: Iran's bold and brazen breaking of the nuclear seals.

I wrote back here that I hoped Europe was at least beginning to awaken to the danger. And now someone who knows far more about Iran than I, Dr. Zin of the blog Regime Change Iran, seems to share that opinion."

Neo's post has lots of links, and good comments. I think Bush is getting ready to stop Iran from getting nukes -- because if they're not stopped from getting them (a), there's no way to stop them from using them (b) -- without trying to stop their use when they have them.

AIDS and HIV -- the establishment might be wrong.

Dean's World - -: "If the papers that Duesberg cites are not misrepresented — and it is difficult to see how hundreds of papers could be misrepresented without the AIDS establishment coming down mercilessly on his misrepresentations — then his points are indeed compelling. For example: Why is the amount of HIV present in most AIDS patients so small that PCR amplification is required to demonstrate its presence? Why is AIDS in the US and Europe not random as it is in other viral epidemics? Why would HIV take 10 – 15 years from infection to AIDS? Why is the mortality of HIV-antibody positives treated with anti-HIV drugs higher than the untreated group? These and other troubling questions are answered with impeccable logic and abundant references. Of course, the literature could have been abused to make a point, and I’m impressed that the full text of most of the papers cited in Duesberg’s 1992 review are now available though a hyperlink (http://www.rethinkaids.info/body.cfm?id=58). Anyone interested can make judgment."

Austin Bay Blog » Iran’s Uranium Mullahs, Again: " On returning to Iran from New York, Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his UN speech:

One of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink… And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic."

The man is “mahdi” mad. Pipes explains:"

Yes; it's not that Iran is getting a bomb, it's that mad Iranian leaders are getting one.

The question is simple: does America act pre-emptively or wait for Iran to a) get a bomb, and b) use it?
It should be pretty obvious that letting them get a bomb and THEN attacking them, after they have it but before they misuse it -- that has to be so stupid as to be ruled out in advance.

La Shawn Barber’s Corner against Black Thug Culture: "If American blacks, as a group, don’t start: 1) marrying before they have children, 2) stigmatizing illegitimacy as they once did, 3) ostracizing immorality and decadency, 4) holding themselves accountable for their children’s low educational achievement, 5) shunning criminality, and 6) resisting the “racism” hustle — moral decay, social pathologies, underachievement, and other ills will define the “black community.”"

The Anchoress on Teddy: "Even when I was a Democrat, I didn’t much like Ted Kennedy, but I’ve always kind of felt bad for him. He may have power and money but the rest of the picture is pretty grim. I don’t believe he has any business sitting in judgement of Sam Alito or John Roberts or Clarence Thomas or any other public figure, for that matter (my whole turn rightward can be traced to the Clarence Thomas debacle, and the sight of Kennedy sitting there pretending outrage over the possibility that Thomas may have told a naughty joke, or asked a woman for a date) but on the other hand it cannot be easy to have spent so much of one’s life identifying the bodies of your dead siblings, nephews and nieces. It cannot be easy to know that the most promising lives were cut short, while he, the lesser and least of the clan, remains, with not much of a legacy.

The old saying is, you’re born with the face God gave you, you go out with the one you’ve earned. I find it almost unbearable, anymore, to look at Ted Kennedy"

Teddy is pathetic; and the Anchoress has pity. I read her partly to help turn my rage into a more merciful direction.

The Anchoress quotes Pope Benedict XVI: "“Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as though they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen - at least by some people - as a liability rather than as a source of hope. Here it is obligatory to compare today’s situation with the decline of the Roman Empire.”

Possibly the Culture of Death has something to do with it."

I think so too. My wife just read that German men were happier if they were fathers; and more happy with more kids. Me too!

neo-neocon thinks about bloggers when reading: "Creative and manic thinking are both distinguished by fluidity and by the capacity to combine ideas in ways that form new and original connections. Thinking in both tends to be divergent in nature, less goal-bound, and more likely to leap about or wander in a variety of directions. Diffuse, diverse, and leapfrogging ideas were first noted thousands of years ago as one of the hallmarks of manic thought. More recently, the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler observed: 'The thinking of the manic is flighty. He jumps by by-paths from one subject to another...With this the ideas run along very easily...Because of the more rapid flow of ideas, and especially because of the falling-off of inhibitions, artistic activities are facilitated even though something worthwhile is produced only in very mild cases and when the patient is otherwise talented in this direction.'..."

Media Lies - Journalists must testify -: "Justice Byron White’s opinion for the five-to-four majority began, “The issue in these cases is whether requiring newsmen to appear and testify before state or federal grand juries abridges the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment. We hold that it does not.” White’s opinion was a scathing dismissal of the journalists’ position. “The preference for anonymity of those confidential informants involved in actual criminal conduct is presumably a desire to escape criminal prosecution, and this preference, while understandable, is hardly deserving of constitutional protection,” he wrote. In short, he held for the Court that the First Amendment provides no “exemption from the ordinary duty of all other citizens to furnish relevant information to a grand jury performing an important public function.”"

Journalists are not "above the law," nor outside it. No Shield Law.

On Objectivism.
who was Ayn Rand? - a biography, Playboy interview, 1964: "RAND: It begins with the axiom that existence exists, which means that an objective reality exists independent of any perceiver or of the perceiver's emotions, feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Objectivism holds that reason is man's only means of perceiving reality and his only guide to action. By reason, I mean the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses."

Lots of truth here -- but every individual includes relations to other people, and those relationships have a certain reality, too. Randroids miss the reality of too many interpersonal relationships.

normblog- reviews Richard Dawkins : "I have to say, despite my periodic criticism of his one-sided anti-religious tirades, most of what he said about the importance of reason, evidence, the need to test ideas and so forth, didn't come amiss. The value of these things was brought out by the character of most of those he was interviewing, who were their living negation."

I don't think most anti-religious are willing to test their theory of "better living" w/o religion. One measure would be, for instance, do convicted criminals more often go to church, less often, or about the same? If more often, that is evidence for a "better life" with more atheism; if less often, opposite evidence.

I understand that Christians suffer about the same divorce rate as public average. This is strong evidence that current religion is not, in average practice, helping men and women stay happily married. This is the biggest failing of the Christian Church today.

Ann Arbor bank creates subsidiary for Muslims: "Among the laws of Shariah is a ban against paying or receiving interest.

The bank's Islamic deposit accounts allow Muslims to open accounts where any profits are shared rather than paid as interest.
(Via Michelle)
University Bank also offers a mortgage alternative loan transaction program - or MALT - which replaces a traditional home loan with a redeemable lease.

The bank holds the home in trust, and a home buyer makes monthly payments to that trust. Each rent payment includes a set amount of savings, which builds the buyer's equity in the home. When the savings account equals the home's original purchase price, the buyer owns it."

GM's Corner on Abramhoff: "This isn't to say we agree with the media hype that the Abramoff scandal is of 'historic proportions.' That's true only if your 'history' starts around 1994, after Jim Wright sold his 'book' in bulk to the Teamsters, after Tony Coelho of 'Honest Graft' fame, after Abscam, the Keating Five, Clark Clifford and BCCI, and any number of other famous episodes of Capitol Hill sleaze. Mr. Abramoff and his pals are stock Beltway characters."

Good to remember how, under Clinton, graft was NOT much prosecuted, but it IS under Bush.

The US Military is hostile to Christianity
GM's Corner on a Chaplain's Hunger Strike: "he said if the Navy would allow him to wear his uniform in public and pray in Jesus' name he would end his fast. Klingenschmitt told WND this evening he has received a letter from his commanding officer giving him permission to do so."

The Belmont Club on the World's Reaction to Sharon: "Are we talking about the same man who Belgium wanted to try for war crimes? The same Ariel Sharon who Amnesty International wanted investigated for crimes against humanity? Their absolution should be as worthless as their condemnation. And if so, what yardstick of opprobrium or praise can a man bear with him to eternity if he wants more than the judgment of the UN Secretary General?"

Can't miss any opportunity to laugh at Pat Robertson David Corn: "I will say this about Pat Robertson: he doesn't let profit get in the way of religious kookery. Two postings below, I commented on the recent news that Israel was cutting a deal with Robertson to create a fundamentalist Christian theme park by the Sea of Galilee. Now as his business partner Ariel Sharon may be nearing death, Robertson is pissing all over the Israeli prime minister."

Robertson was talking nonsense about God giving Sharon his stroke becuase he's dividing Israel. Robertson is pathetic in this; Corn thus becomes half-pathetic.

Austin Bay Blog: "I heard several rumors in Iraq, from friends of mine, about the quantity of intelligence material we captured. (See the quote below from the Weekly Standard Stephen Hayes’ article, referencing “two million” items.) Here is the essence of a memorable if short conversation I had with a young intelligence officer in June 2004: “Colonel Bay, we have so much stuff we can’t even store it, much less start to process it.”"

I really don't know why the USA isn't scanning it into digital forms, sending it to the USA, and farming out smart OCR programs to convert images to text.

Then have automatic Arabic > English translation programs, to get initial translations of the text.

A million bucks or so should be enough to do most of this.

neo-neocon Lies and the lying liars who hear them: "In truth, the hallmark of a lie is that its locus is in the speaker. To be lying, the speaker must be aware of the falsehood of the utterances. So whether or not something is a lie has nothing to do with the listener, and everything to do with the teller.

But many listeners in our day and age have lost sight--not just of truth vs. relative truth, or objective vs. subjective truth--but of any truth-falsehood distinction outside of their own perceptions. So the new definition of a lie has become: something that fooled me. Something that I heard and thought was true, and then discovered wasn't true. It made me angry to be jerked around like that. So it's a lie.

Such a listener lacks awareness of any need to ascertain the state of mind of the speaker in order to define an utterance as a lie--it is simply irrelevant; it does not compute in the equation. "

Yes -- the narcissist self-absorbtion of the PC Left. Like my little children; like spoiled children, often only children. Now I wonder how many Leftists have no brothers or sisters.

neo-neocon A New Leak -- Iran shopping for nukes: "The leak consists of a report that has amassed evidence that Iran is planning a nuclear future that includes nuclear weapons, and not just a peaceful reactor. Is there anyone naive enough to have doubted that, even before this report? Well, my guess is the answer is 'yes;'probably much of the Guardian's readership would have fallen into that camp, which is why the publication of this leak in that particular venue is quite stunning:

The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes."

Neo thinks the Guardian is waking up -- I'm afraid they're just covering their bases.

neo-neocon on the Miners: "So, what happened? It seems that 'sources' said the miners were alive, but who those sources were and what information they were relying on is still unclear. One thing is clear: there was no official announcement by those in charge of rescue operations, and the AP was heavily involved in pushing the premature story into many newspapers via the wire service."

Neo then remembers Munich, 72, when terrorists murdered athletes:
"Initial news reports, published all over the world, indicated that all the hostages were alive, and that all the terrorists had been killed. Only later did a representative for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suggest that "initial reports were overly optimistic."

In her post above Remembering Munich, Neo describes the correct MSM attitude of those who got it right:
"Roone Arledge was correct, although I wonder how often his words are heeded today: better right than first."

Marc Cooper skewers a WaPo PC whitewash of the crooked Indians who paid Abramoff: "No question that the Louisiana-based Coushattas – who Casino Jack referred to in e-mails as “monkeys,” “troglodytes,” and “morons” — got sleazed by Abramoff. But let’s slow down for a moment.

The 837 member tribe was perfectly willing to hand over a barge load of cash to Abramoff –$32 million to be precise—in hopes that he could achieve their primary goal: to block a nearby tribe of equally deserving (or undeserving) Native Americans from having a casino just like the Coushattas have. A casino, by the way, that generates a mammoth $300 million a year profit for this band of less than a 1,000 people."

Marc Cooper refers to ex-Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda's Newsweek piece: "Jorge argues that with most Latin American nations now under left-of-center government, it’s a primitive notion to lump all the new leaders together into one, single species of 'lefist.' There’s one 'left,' he points out that comes out of a Marxist past and, therefore, has successfully assimilated the failures of the Soviet model, including variations like Cuba. This reformed left (as found in Chile, Brazil and Uruguay), is committed not only to social justice but also to the expansion of democracy. It acts as a counter-weight to U.S. dominance, but understands that in a meshed global economy, some realistic accomodation with El Grande Del Norte must be reached.

Then there’s the 'other' left, Castaneda posits. More old-style demagogic populists than reformed Marxists, they show little concern for democracy and are a bit too ready to pick dramatic fights with Uncle Sam for the sake of short-term domestic popularity(or in the case of Castro, extremely long-term). In this latter category, Castaneda disdainfully places Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez ('Peron with oil') and newly elected Bolivian President Evo Morales ( 'a skillful and irresponsible populist')."

Jorge actually describes the "bad, populist Left" better: "For all these leaders, economic performance, democratic values, programmatic achievements and getting along with Washington are not imperatives; they are bothersome constraints that miss the point. The point is to exhibit rhetorical incontinence, to maintain popularity at any cost, to pick as many fights as possible with Washington and to exercise as much control as possible over sources of revenue, including oil, gas and foreign-debt payments. This left is disastrous: its rule will, as in the past, lead to inflation, greater poverty and inequality, confrontation with Washington and the gradual dismantling of the region's most important achievement of recent years: democratic rule and respect for human rights."

Venezuela is about to successfully seduce Bolivia.
Plan Colombia and Beyond: Where is Washington's counter-offer?: "In a signed agreement, Chávez committed Venezuela to providing Bolivia with the following:

* An immediate $30 million donation to pay for social programs.
* According to Bolivia’s La Razón newspaper, “Venezuela will supply all of the fuel that the Bolivian population consumes, which has an approximate cost of $150 million per year, in exchange for food produced in Bolivia.”
* Technical assistance for gas and oil exploration, and assistance in overhauling Bolivia’s energy sector.
* A commitment to help Bolivia build highways, both within the country and between Bolivia and its neighbors.
* Educational assistance to Bolivia, including a literacy program with the goal of eradicating illiteracy within thirty months.
* Venezuelan assistance with land reform, agriculture and healthcare."

The US counter offer noted is pretty weak. Prolly by design to cut losses, not get into an aid-bidding war; wait for the mistakes of the policy to be more clear.

It seems like a Public Relations mistake by Bush, at least.

Marc Cooper on Arnie:
"So, about 60 seconds after Schwarzie got his ham-sized glutes handed to him in his disastrous special election two months ago, he radically shifted course. With a shit-eating grin on his face, the Gov quickly scurried back to the center. Since then, it’s been all Goodness and Light he’s been beaming from Sacramento: apologizing to voters for not understanding their issues, playing patty-cake with the same unions he had been villainizing, appointing same-sex enthusiasts to his staff and promising to institute an FDR-like infrastructure building program."

Marc Cooper: "I’m republishing the excellent chart on the Abramoff graft flow from the Washington Post. Click on the image to get a zoom, detalied view."

Outrage at genetic monopoly

Marc Cooper: "you could argue that the lobbying/legislative-bang-for-the-buck generated by tribal funds is of a rather spectacular level. A few tens of millions handed out to primarily Democratic officials has created, and protects, a booming and lightly-regulated $20 billion a year industry –an industry that is legally sanctioned, no less, as a genetic monopoly. That’s one helluva of a payoff for some campaign contributions, no?
The mushrooming Indian casinos, however, benefit barely 10% of Native Americans while creating veritable new mafias that regularly disenroll tribal members who are disqualified from sharing in the gambling profits."

La Shawn Barber’s Corner on Philly: "The only bright spot was clerking during the summers for a hilariously nasty, old-school, prosecution-leaning criminal court judge. I loved when he’d yell at grown men who dared enter his courtroom wearing a hat, with his booming voice ricocheting against the walls. I don’t care how “street” or sophisticated the men were. They were all humbly embarrassed."

Media Lies - Two Polls -: (Via Dayfdd) " 'Another point the 'two' polls share: they both wildly overpolled Democrats — 52% of the respondents were Democrats, 40% were Republicans, and 8% were independents; that is, they polled almost a third more Democrats than Republicans.'

It's obvious that the AP wasn't attempting to accurately gauge public opinion, or they would have done a better job of getting a representative sample."

Use of polls as an attempt to push public opinion, not measure it.

Are you a Vet??? Michael Yon wants YOU "Call for Volunteers: Any retired military personnel interested in the Frontline Forum, please email to michaelyonmagazine@hotmail.com, and put “Volunteer” in the subject heading. Please describe briefly your military experience and an estimate to the number of hours per week you can spend reading stories from troops. If you have skills that are in some way related to this project, please include a description of those skills in your email. Let us know what you can do and how much of it you are willing and able to do. Someone will get back to you soon. While the Volunteers organize, we’ll build the forum, network with others who are in touch with our troops, and when all is ready, we can turn on the faucets and open the flow of frontline news." (via Media Lies)

Media Lies -Saddam trained terrorists -: "THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials." (via Powerline)

Those who claimed "Saddam had no connection to terrorists" were LIARS.

Media Lies -Ignoring stories -: "There is a major story around the world that is being reported by many other countries. This story is not in the MSM and there has been no mention of the story though it is about America and involves our safety. Italy has broken a terror plot aimed at the United States. Here are headlines that appeared everywhere but the USA:

* “U.S. terror attacks foiled,” read the headline in England’s Sunday Times
* In France, a headline from Agence France Presse proclaimed, “Three Algerians arrested in Italy over plot targeting U.S.”

One has to ask why this story, which was ignored by every American outlet except the AP (and they left out the terrorist plot information) and why the AP story ran in the middle of only one paper as far as anyone can tell (the headline: Italy Charges Three Algerians. Maybe it lost something in translation). Perhaps it is because the MSM is hell-bent on assisting in trying to get Bush impeached for the electronic surveillance. You see, the Italians used electronic surveillance to intercept the communications of three Algerians. They talked about attacks in many places and wanted the devastation to dwarf that seen on 9/11."

The press is failing to inform the US public.

Media Lies -Dem Politics over truth -: "Jane Harmon, who was a strong supporter of the NSA program as little as three weeks ago, has now announced that, in her opinion, the program was illegal. You can read the legal discussion at Michelle's blog. Be sure to follow the link to JunkYardBlog's 'Who Got to Rep. Jane Harman?' for an interesting take on what's going on.

It's clear to me that Democrats have now chosen political oneupmanship over national security. If it's clear to most Americans as well, they will pay a price at the polls this year."

Anti-media continues with the Director of NSA writing a memo claiming it IS legal.

Her son was killed today.
Grim's Hall on Murtha-Moran: (via Greyhawk) General Wagner: "And I'll tell you the reason I came at 7:30 is because I want an answer to a letter, to a friend of ours. She wrote this letter to Mr. Murtha, where she pointed out to him that he was causing the insurgents to bring more activity against the soldiers in Iraq, just as the traitors did during the Vietnam war. I was fighting in 1972 with the Vietnamese when people were cavorting with the North Vietnamese.

Her son was killed today."

The Free Press of anti-Bush propaganda helped to kill this woman's son. I hope she starts a boycott of NYT advertisers to protest their support for terrorists.

Grim's Hall on Immigration & Julie Myers: "Mr. Lieberman said Congress had intended the position to be held by someone with at least five years' management experience.

'In my opinion, she lacks the management background,' he said. 'And one of her key responsibilities is to enforce immigration laws, and she has virtually no immigration experience.'"

Later Grim points out the White House talks about "Julie" -- the kind of familiarity that indicates too much nepotism.

Grim's Hall comments on Steyn: Doc Russia responds "Actually, in a lot of the world, I think we have more in common with Muslims than we do with anyone else. The Muslims of Xinjiang province, China, for example -- they're about as happy with Communist China as we are. I read Malaysian and Philippine newspapers regularly as part of my job (and so can you, if you want; Bernama, the state news wire, is on Google News, as is the Star of Malaysia and several others). I can't help but recognize a lot of North Georgia in the whole attitude expressed by a lot of Muslim provinces: 'We're who we are, and we don't want your meddling in the way we do things, so leave us alone if you know what's good for you.' "

Live and let live is incompatible with "Universal Human Rights", or anything universal. I mostly like live and let live, better -- the UN should be mostly concerned with monitoring, evaluating, and trying to change the bad behavior of goverments. Not people. National governments, too, should be more concerned with local governments, rather than what local people do.

Norm interviews Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution Tyler likes to read Brad DeLong, among other blogs.


Then Norm highlights how the Islamofascists we're fighting murder teachers.
normblog: "Armed men burst into the home of Malim Abdul Habib in Qalat, the capital of restive Zabul province, on Tuesday night. They dragged him into a courtyard and forced his family to watch as they cut off his head, said Ali Khel, a local government spokesman.

Mr Habib was head of Shaikh Mathi Baba, a coeducational secondary school with 1,300 pupils. Threatening notices calling for an end to the education of girls had been pinned to shop walls in the town in recent months but Mr Habib was not thought to have been directly targeted."

Norm highlights a silly Mary Robinson in support of doing nothing against genocide (implicitly).
normblog:
Sackur: "One fascinating insight into human rights attitudes round the world I had in recent weeks was chatting to Mary Robinson who till very recently was the UN chief running the Human Rights Commission. She said the problem is that, because of what has happened, post-Iraq in particular, with Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, a whole host of other things she listed, it is impossible now for countries like America which basically are democracies, which many people around the world have always looked up to - the problem is now they cannot take the moral high ground and lecture other countries on how they should impose human rights values. It doesn't work any more...

Webb: That's absolutely ludicrous, though, isn't it?"

No, it's pathetic. Because America is not perfect, it has no moral authority to say anybody else's human rights abuses are terrible. Mary Robinson, after Clinton lied about "no genocide" in Rwanda -- thinks the US still has moral authority. After Abu Ghraib, an almost inevitable kind of minor problem of actually doing something, all moral authority is lost.

UN hypocrites make me sick.

Norm refers to the Lebanon Daily Star on the Egyptian elections, and the lie about favoring democracy.
normblog: "During the final round of elections in early December, and facing gains by its foes, the Egyptian regime gave up all pretenses of openness and resorted to brute force. Some towns, particularly Muslim Brotherhood strongholds, were placed under virtual occupation. Everywhere, Egyptians were barred from voting. In Baltim, fisherman Gomaa al-Zeftawi, who had been waiting more than three hours to enter the polling station, vented to reporters: 'They have been talking about democracy and the importance of fair elections, and we believed them, only to find out today that it was all lies.' Thirty minutes later Zeftawi was killed, as police shot into the crowd with live bullets."

Bush should ask Congress to suspend any aid to the Egyptian governement, and offer direct aid to the Egyptian poor, administered by American hired Egyptians. US built schools and hospitals and maybe even Habitat for Humanity type housing -- better than giving cash to kleptocrat Mubarak.

Norm supports Dawkins and secularism against a reasonably good attack.
normblog: "Madeleine Bunting is having a go at Richard Dawkins today and for once I've got to hand it to her, she makes some valid points against him. So let me begin with those, as summarized by me: first, any serious approach to religion has to start from its centrality throughout history and try to make some sociological sense of that; second, if religion and religious identity have often been the source of horrible violence, it has had no monopoly there - ethnic and other identities, other types of belief system, have played a very full part; third, parents do shape children, 'for both good and ill', but they do so in many ways and not only through religious education.

This is all 'fair dos' in my book. But, referring to an 'increasingly shrill chorus of atheist humanists', to their 'unsubstantiated assertions', 'sweeping generalisations' and even 'straw men', Bunting rather errs in this regard herself - only, with her, it's in the characterization of atheist humanism rather than of religion."

Norm has more, but I think Norm is being intellectually lazy in not trying to define measures for each position.

Norm on a Leftist and PC Heresy
normblog: "Joanathan Freedland, not noted for being a fan of George W. Bush, poses a heretical question:

For a left liberal like me, it is not easy to commit heresy. After all, we are meant to be open-minded free thinkers, unshackled by taboos. Nevertheless there is one thought so heretical, merely to utter it would ensure instant excommunication. I hesitate even to pose it as a question. But here goes. What if George W Bush was to prove to be one of the great American presidents?...

There has been a chain reaction of a different kind, too. Lebanon is the clearest example, with its Cedar Revolution leading to an outburst of people power on the streets of Beirut – and the ejection of the Syrian occupier. Tentative moves toward electoral democracy have followed in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Bahrain. Even Syria seems, grudgingly, to understand that it lives in a changed region and that it too will have to adapt."

Dean's World -P11 and Depression -: "This is interesting: a gene called P11 and its related proteins may play a role in chronic depression. Those of us who have problems with this particular malady are always on the lookout for stuff like that.

There's an old question when it comes to the brain: if you see differences in brain construction associated with a behavior or malady, does that mean the oddity you see caused the problem, or did the brain difference you see simply come about due to the problem?"

This implies that constant and active rage against Bush, Bush Derangement Symptom, might well be changing the brains of those who indulge.