Are You Free?

21 Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not (A) listen to the law?

22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, (B) one by the bondwoman and (C) one by the free woman.

23 But (D) the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and (E) the son by the free woman through the promise.

24 (F) This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from (G) Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be (H) slaves; she is Hagar.

25 Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.

26 But (I) the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother.

27 For it is written, "(J) Rejlice, barren woman who does not bear; breaker forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the desoltate than of the one who has a husband."

28 And you brethren, (K) like Isaac, are (L) children of promise.

29 But as at that time (M) he who was born according to the flesh (N) persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, (O) so it is now also.

30 But what does the Scripture say? "(P) Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for (Q) the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman."

31 So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman.

-Galatians 4:21-31

State of the Union Post-Game

I didn't consider live-blogging the President's speech, and by the time I reconsidered it was already underway.

Without getting into much detail, I thought it was a standard Bush speech. Optimistic, forward-looking, overly conciliatory, getting the big things right (the GWOT, which includes Iraq - though it was flaccid on the ultimatum that needs to be given to Iran - giving shout-outs to Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito and declaring that the Senate can expect more nominees just like them, banning human cloning, making the tax cuts permanent) and the "little" things wrong (weak on immigration, statist on energy policy - c'mon, nothing on expanding domestic energy exploration? - a mixed bag at best on health care, and punting not just Social Security but reform of Medicare and Medicaid as well to yet another "blue ribbon commission" - though I did like his rebuking line following the Democrats' boorish cheering about not doing anything about SS that, "This problem will not go away," which elicited a raucous GOP counter-cheer. Me thinks he and his speechwriters were anticipating the Donk response...).

But what can you say? Bush is a "big-government conservative," always has been, always will be. Never met a spending bill he wouldn't sign and never will. Open borders uber alles. No Reagan is he, but he's the best we're going to do for the foreseeable future.

Besides, always remember the alternative....

Moonbats Get Crazier!

Read this thread from the Democratic Underground, courtesy of Ankle Biting Pundits. Just to make sure you never forget who pulls the strings in the Democratic Party.

JASmius adds: Since I can't beat Jen's title, I'll just post this as an appendix.

Had Hugh Hewitt on just now, and heard that Donk Representative Lynn Woolsey (how appropriate that her surname so closely describes her mental condition) invited The Next Senator From California (or the would-be Evita Peron of Venezuela), Cindy Sheehan, to sit in the House gallery for the State of the Union show.

Reportedly Cindy agreed to behave herself, but Hugh wasn't buying it and neither was I. He and his callers engaged in feverish speculation as to what the President should do if she interrupted his speech with her bellicose neoBolshevik boilerplate. The consensus was it had all the "earmarks" of a PR disaster in the making no matter what Bush did.

I didn't think it would be quite that bad - remember the leftish protestors that tried to crash his GOP convention acceptance speech? - and figured that Bush would either keep right on speaking or pause to allow the Capitol Police to remove her. Yeah, the Extreme Media would try to spin it against him, but it seems to me that the image such hooliganism would have sent would have reflected so poorly on the Left with mainstream America that it would have been another nail in their political coffin.

At any rate, we'll never know now, because the dumb broad pre-empted her intentions by bringing a seditious banner with her like she was at a pro wrestling event, and the Capitol cops took her in to custody before the SOTUA could even begin.

What a dingbat. And how exquisitely symbolic of how grievously the Left has deteriorated, across the board.

But they're still going to pick up seats next November!

UPDATE: Gotta love this Rich Lowry line on the Democrats' cognitive dissonance vis-a-vie the NSA terrorist surveillance program:

Democrats are the first party ever to talk of impeaching a president for creating a program they themselves seem to support.

Congressional 'Pubbies ought to do like they did with Charlie Rangel's draft bill and John Murtha's cut-and-run-from-Iraq resolution and put a resolution on the NSA program to a vote. If you think the lib nutters are blithering NOW....

Congratulations, Justice Alito

It's official, by a vote of 58-42. He's already been sworn in, and will be in robes with his new colleagues tonight at the State of the Union show.

One Republican (Lincoln Chaffee) and four Democrats (Sheets Byrd, Kent Conrad, Tim Johnson, Ben Nelson) switched sides to provide a satisfyingly symbolic mirror reversal of the margin by which Robert Bork was rejected almost nineteen years ago.

Ed Whelan has a good summary of what the Bay State Road Block accomplished. To summarize:

1) Without a filibuster attempt, the left could argue that the confirmation vote margin leaves filibustering as a viable option; now that bar has been set above seventy votes and associated with a Justice that the Dems tried to depict as a monster, but which nobody outside the fever swamps believed.

2) Without a filibuster attempt, open intra-partisan war would not now be raging within the Democrat party between the kook-fringe base and the twenty Donk senators who refused to drink the Kool Aid.

And still I read predictions that Dems are going to pick up seats next November....

Revenge of the Demented

According to the American Spectator's Washington Prowler, DNC Chairman Howard Dean's seeming gaffe the other day about "Abramoff Democrats," of which Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is public enemy #1, was not an accident:

According to knowledgeable DNC sources, Dean about ten days ago was shown opposition research documents generated by the Republican National Committee more than three years ago, which laid out facts regarding Reid and his family's lobbying and ethical conflicts.

Dean, according to the sources, was fascinated by the details, and asked that his staff research and independently confirm everything on the documents. "Basically he oppo'd a member of his own party," says a DNC source loyal to Dean.

"Basically, we were looking at three- or four-page documents that made Jack Abramoff's lobbying work look like that of a rank amateur," says the DNC source. "Between the minority leader's past in Nevada and here in Washington, and the activities of his sons and son-in-law, there probably isn't anyone in this town with more conflicts. The Reid family is the symbol of what's wrong with Washington; it's their behavior that enabled the culture that spawned people like Abramoff."

Dean then went public over the weekend, saying that Democrats with an Abramoff problem would be in trouble, not only with voters, but with the Democrat Party. But why attack a senior member of his own party?

According to Democrat Party watchers and DNC staff, Dean has grown increasingly frustrated at how he is treated by the likes of Reid, Senator Dick Durbin, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Representative Rahm Emanuel, who leads the House Democrat candidate recruitment effort. "They treat him like a lackey, not as an equal," says another DNC employee. "...What this comes down to a fight for the soul of our party, and if the chairman has to draw a long knife on a few of his colleagues, he's more than willing to do so."

Y'know how Rush Limbaugh is always going on and on about how the Democrats are "imploding"? Ordinarily I just relegate that to the realm of hyperbole, but combine this with the intra-Donk fallout from their Alamo-like last stand on Justice Alito's nomination, and it starts looking like El Rushbo is on to something yet again....

Lame Democrats

I wish I were as good at titling these things as Jim is! Fortunately, he comes in and rescues me sometimes. :-)

Anyway, after seeing the cloture vote yesterday I was happy and relieved. I expected it, of course, but you never know what kind of dirty trick the Democrats may come up with, and you never know about the RINOs. I know one thing...I'm writing to the RNC and telling them that as long as they see fit to support Chafee this year, the money I usually send to them will be going directly to Steve Laffey. Plus...Barak Obama's attempt at sounding reasonable while voting otherwise is laughable. Mr. Rising Star decries the Democrats' futile gestures and obstruction, then votes with them on cloture. Jerk. Plus...my Senator, Evan Bayh, is a real disappointment. When he was governor here in Indiana, he at least seemed to have some common sense and was a Democrat that I could live with. Not any more. Didn't take them long to bend him to their will there in Washington. I was also surprised when Lieberman announced his intention to vote against Alito. Talk about a mixed bag.

I can't wait to watch the President introduce new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito! God bless him for all he has had to put up with.

The Lost Library

6 A voice says, "Call out." Then he answered, "What shall I call out?" (A) All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.

7 The (B) grass withers, the flower fades, when the (C) breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass.

8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but (D) the word of our God stands forever.

-Isaiah 40:6-8

Impatient or Just Bored?

Hillary Clinton says, "Americans are growing 'impatient' as they wait for a woman to be elected president."

Meanwhile, ABC has "temporarily" pulled the plug on the program supposedly stoking this "impatience":

US presidential drama Commander In Chief has been temporarily pulled from the ABC-TV schedule because network executives are unhappy with the show's low ratings. [emphasis added]

Maybe viewers were less than thrilled with beholding President McKenzie Allen blundering into a nuclear disaster in North Korea and are projecting President Hillary Rodham doing it for real. And Geena Davis is easy on the eyes, too; can you imagine Medusa in your living room for eight years?

Mrs. Clinton is far less hostile to Hamas than she's trying to claim, BTW. Are Americans "impatient" to elect a terror-symp as their next president?

Sheesh, even President Allen hasn't done that yet.

It Sucks To Be Them

The vast, vaunted, and mighty obstructionist uprising hailed and led by the Massachusetts Manatee and the Boston Balker was unmercifully crushed this afternoon in the U.S. Senate by a vote of 72-25.

Voting to screw Justice Alito were: Bayh, Biden, Boxer, Clinton, Dayton, Dodd, Durbin, Feingold, Feinstein, Jeffords, Kennedy, Kerry, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Menendez, Mikulski, Murray, Obama, Reed, Reid, Sarbanes, Schumer, Stabenow, Wyden.

Interesting, huh? Only two of the Donks are from "red" states (Bayh, Reid) and neither of them are up for re-election next fall. Two more are retiring (Dayton, Sarbanes) and will likely be succeeded by Republicans. And Robert Menendez is keeping Jon Korzine's old New Jersey seat warm for Tom Keane, Jr.

Yeah, Hillary's on the list, but she's in fence-mending mode with her fellow neoBolsheviks. And this vote would only have haunted her 2008 plans if it had actually been instrumental in sustaining an anti-Alito filibuster.

Those of the "gang of 25" who thought they were scoring points with their crazy base by making a symbolic gesture should surf on over to the Dark Side to find out just how wrong they were:

What I want is a complete list of every scumsucking fuckstick Democratic asshole senator who voted for cloture. That's what I want.

I don't know what to DO with that list, not yet - but I know for GODDAMNED sure I won't be VOTING for any of them, let alone sending them any goddamned MONEY.

Frankly, right now I'd like nothing better than to torpedo the entire lot of them. Just dump them like so much worthless, leaden, VICHY MOTHERFUCKING BALLAST.

I got nothin', folks. Don't look over here if you want comfort or a nice, uplifting LIVE TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY speech.

I'M DONE WITH THEM. They are DEAD to me.

Yeah. CANTWELL and BYRD and LANDRIEU and BINGAMAN and every last motherfucking one of them, I'm DONE with them.

I'm registering Independent tomorrow. You're welcome to join me.

They thought Alito could be stopped, ladies and gentlemen. They thought the Dems could block Alito, block the Republicans from banning confirmation filibusters. They really believed it.

But then they think they won the last three election cycles, too. They think Al Gore is the REAL president of the United States. They think 45 out of 100 makes a majority. They think that the American people agree with them. And they are blind to the fact that they are the reason their numbers in Congress are steadily eroding.

Profanity Man above doesn't realize what a favor he's doing for the party with which he purports to be "done."

BTW, support for Justice Alito's confirmation was comprehensive and overwhelming. And, oh yes, President Bush's approval number is back to 50%. And he will get the privilege tomorrow night of introducing and congratulating Justice Alito at tomorrow's State of the Union Address. Look for a sequel to last year's rude, boorish Donk SOTUA behavior.

Yep, today is a very good day. And tomorrow will be even better.

The Price of Delay

It has been common knowledge for at least the past two years that the six-month delay the Bush Administration gifted to Saddam Hussein by going through the motion of the UN weapons inspections regime instead of just invading Iraq in the summer of 2002 was put to good use by the cheeto-loving megalomaniac evacuating his WMD stockpiles to Syria for safekeeping against his anticipated return to power after the Americans had been "Vietnamized."

Last week a former Iraqi Air Force general provided further confirmation:

Best source confirms the intelligence of Iraqi wmd moved to Syria in 2002 provided by Iraqi Air Force general Sada in his new book, Saddam's Secrets.

Writing in [last Thurs]day's New York Sun, editor Ira Stoll, after a meeting with Sada at the Sun's offices, summarizes Sada's evidence. In June 2002, Chemical Ali supervised the transfer of wmd chemical stocks from Baghdad to Damascus by loading the cargo onto Iraqi Airlines 747s with seats stripped out. There were fifty six flights in all, with the cover story that Iraq was aiding Syria after disastrous flooding. Name of Syrian general receiving wmd not confirmed by best source, pending.

This is consistent with intelligence developed over many years that Iraq developed a multiple layered CBRN program.

Sada, fearing for his life, and the lives of his sources the pilots who flew some of the aircraft, also makes mention of civilian truck convoys transfering wmd to Syaria prior to the war. This connects with multiple reports from IDF general officers, active and retired, that convoys were observed travelling from Baghdad to Damascus and then onto Lebanon in late 2002.

This also connects with developing story of DOCEX, the program to translate and analyze two million documents captured in Baghdad that contain the pattern and practice of terror and wmd in Iraq 1999-2002.

This also connects to report of a CD (about to surface in the news) containing the voices of Saddam Hussein and staff planning to conceal wmd from UN and others, recorded in staff meetings from 1988 to late 2000.

I never have much understood why the Bushies have always been so reluctant to cite such evidence against the endless slanders of "misleading the country into war" the the DisLoyal Opposition hurled at them after no WMD arsenal was found. The only explanation I've conceived of is that if they did so, the Democrats would immediately start accusing the White House of plotting an invasion of Syria, either generating more bad PR they figured they didn't need or perhaps complicating the case-making for an invasion (or blowing the cover off any covert ops we have going on inside Syria). And since they survived all the "BUSH LIED!!!!!" crud to get re-elected anyway, why wake up sleeping dogs nobody knows about.

But with this further development in the story today, another, less savory possibility comes to mind:

A former senior military advisor to Saddam Hussein is warning that the chemical weapons used by top al-Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi in a foiled 2004 plot to attack Amman, Jordan were the same weapons Saddam Hussein transported to Syria before the U.S. invasion.

General Georges Sada offered the stunning revelation Saturday while explaining why he didn't decide to go public about Saddam's hidden WMD stockpile until recently.

"As a general, you see, we should keep our secrets," General Sada told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley. But when news broke of the foiled WMD attack on Amman, he changed his mind.

"I understood that the terrorists were going to make an explosion in Amman in Jordan . . . . and they were targeting the prime minister of Jordan, the intelligence [headquarters] of Jordan, and maybe the American embassy in Jordan - and they were going to use the same chemical weapons which we had in Iraq," he told WABC.

This actually isn't news per se, at least not to anybody who pays close attention to this subject, though as you might suspect it hasn't exactly received a lot of Extreme Media coverage. But it does suggest an additional reason why the Bush Administration hasn't been very eager to draw attention to the pre-war evacuation of Saddam's WMDs. If they got distributed to terrorist networks, most especially al Qaeda, that would throw a very uncomfortable spotlight back upon the decision to indulge the "multilateralist" crowd in the hopes of gaining international approval for toppling Saddam Hussein that was never, ever going to be forthcoming, and how it facilitated the Iraqi dictator's WMD falling into the hands of Islamist berserkers.

Sure, it would require the Left to perform yet another logic backflip (akin to the "Bush didn't connect the dots on 9/11"/Bush is the new Big Brother" media contortion) by leaping from excoriating Operation Iraqi Freedom to flaying the President alive for not bypassing Turtle Bay altogether and invading six months earlier, but "any port in a storm" has been their SOP for years now. The point is the Bushies would have no answer for this criticism, and that really could erode Dubya's credibility on the war and national security in general.

Hey, the Dems are rattling phony sabres against Iran while slamming Bush for following their own appeasenik advice in allowing the Euros to diplodiddle themselves endlessly while the mullahs nuclearize themselves beyond any hope of Saddam-like removal - an even more egregious repetition of that same mistake. Is a CYA suspicion really such a stretch to harbor?

The Greatness of Gratitude

11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.

12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy [a] met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

14 When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed.

15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.

16 He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?

18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"

19 Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

-Luke 17:11-19

Mrs. Sheehan Goes To Washington?

Seems like whenever I post about this crazy shrew I start the same way: you just can't make this stuff up. Fresh off her summit meeting with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, the neoBolshevik Mother Teresa has decided that somebody has to take out that warmongering Bush toady Dianne Feinstein:

Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who set up camp near President Bush's Texas ranch last summer, said Saturday she is considering running against Senator Dianne Feinstein to protest what she called the California lawmaker's support for the war in Iraq.

"She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops," Sheehan told The Associated Press in an interview while attending the World Social Forum in Venezuela along with thousands of other anti-war and anti-globalization activists.

"I think our senator needs to be held accountable for her support of George Bush and his war policies," said Sheehan, whose 24-year-old soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.

I'm not surprised that the Extreme Media continues to cultivate this Moore-on. They're always on the lookout for fresh Bushophobic copy, and she's as reliable a source of it as they'll ever have, even though her PR-useful shelf life expired months ago. What does surprise me - nay, astonish me - is that Senator Feinstein actually felt compelled to issue a defensive public response:

Feinstein's campaign manager, Kam Kuwata, said the senator "doesn't support George Bush and his war policies."

"She has stated publicly on numerous occasions that she felt she was misled by the Administration at the time of the vote," Kuwata said by phone from California.

But with troops committed, Feinstein believes immediate withdrawal is not a responsible option, Kuwata said.

"Senator Feinstein's position is, let's work toward quickly turning over the defense of Iraq to Iraqis so that we can bring the troops home as soon as possible," he said.

Cindy Sheehan isn't a pimple on Dianne Feinstein's ass. Why should she give a frog's fat leg what "Traitor Mom" says? Or that she's contemplating a primary challenge? That's akin to somebody taking on a Borg cubeship with a rowboat.

The answer lays bare the ideological contagion racking the Democrat party these days: Because its inmates are running their asylum, and they are where all the party's money and energy is. So much so that even a senator-for-life like DiFi has to pay them at least lip-service homage.

And to think I'm still reading how the "experts" keep predicting that Dems are going to regain seats in Congress next November. But I actually wouldn't mind a Sheehan upset; it's an unattainable seat for the GOP anyway, and that way Babs Boxer would actually have some competition for the title of Senate mental case.

She might even have to surrender her rubber-walled office....

There Goes The Neighborhood

Well, the "peace process" has finally produced its inevitable conclusion: Hamas (which I've always thought should be named "Natas," since an annagram of "Satan" seems so much more appropriate) is now the ruler of the Palestinians and Israel's new "partner in peace" (via CQ):

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei has announced his resignation, saying Hamas must form the next government following the parliamentary elections....

Hours before official results were due to be released, Fatah officials privately admitted that Hamas had won.

Hamas claimed it had won at least 70 seats in the 132-member parliament, while EU election observer Richard Howitt told the BBC he had been informed that Hamas could have won up to 80 seats....

Another Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, warned that Hamas would not hold peace talks with Israel. "Negotiations with Israel is not on our agenda," he said. "Recognising Israel is not on the agenda either now."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but recognizing Isreael was never on Fatah's agenda, either. They just told European and American diplomats what they wanted to hear for the past fifteen years in order to keep the foreign aid gravy trains rolling and the propaganda pressure on Israel to keep making concessions. It was a tremendously successful scam, too; if Yassir Arafat hadn't gotten greedy back in September of 2000, when then-Prime Minister Ehuk Barak offered him Gaza and 95% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as his capital, Isreal would probably have already been overrun by now, "Palestine" established in its place, and the Holocaust resumed.

As it is, despite Arafat's foolish resumption of the terror war, Ariel Sharon of all people rescued Fatah from its consequences by retreating from Gaza last year - a factor, along with Arafat's death a year ago, cited by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post as key in bringing about Hamas' rise to power.

And so the Palestinian people, weaned for two generations on the notion of religioethnic hatred and permanent war with "the people of the book," have (not unlike American Democrats) decided to throw aside Machievellian scheming and drop the pretense of negotiation and "compromise" (even though all the compromising came from the other side). The result is that they have traded corrupt secular nationalist terrorist rulers for crazy Islamist genocidal terrorist rulers.

In case you have any doubts, take a gander at Hamas' political manifesto:

"Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious...The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realized...

"The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews. When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him...'

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

"The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers, and fuel for its fire that will burn the enemies...

"The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion... It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups.

"We should not forget to remind every Muslim that when the Jews conquered the Holy City in 1967, they stood on the threshold of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and proclaimed that 'Mohammed is dead, and his descendants are all women.'

"Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people. 'May the cowards never sleep.'"

Gee, there's no tension there, is there?

U.S. officials made a show of being "shocked" at the Pal election results and vowing that unless Hamas "lays down its arms and renounces violence," Washington will withdraw all support from the Palestinian Authority. But I recall a time, about fifteen or so years ago, when U.S. officials said the same thing about Yassir Arafat and the PLO, and we know what happened since. And the EUnuchs have never gone even that far, indulging instead their Arabist, quasi-anti-Semitic leanings for decades.

Rest assured I share the sentiments of Cap'n Ed...

The first item on our list should be an absolute end to all aid to the Palestinian territories and government. The US should not subsidize Hamas, nor should it give money to a people whose only aim appears to be genocide. Second, the US should allow Israel to respond militarily to any and all provocations - no more pressure from Washington on [Jersualem] to moderate their responses to suicide bombings and missile attacks. And if Hamas and the Palestinians still want to wage war after that, then let the IDF roll across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and push the whole lot of them right into the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. That's what total war means, and as soon as the world stops preventing the Palestinians from the risks of their own choices, the sooner they will conclude that war is the worst possible choice for them.

...but I do not share his expectation that they have a chance in hell of being realized. The reason why is as sublimely simple as it is patently obvious: Israel no longer controls its own fate. In truth, they haven't for years. Morrissey himself inadvertently concedes that when he says, "the US should allow Isreal to respond militarily to any and all provocations." The fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter how grievous the provocation offered up by the Palestinians, no matter which terrorist gang is ruling them; as soon as the Jews "respond militarily" to any degree and in whatever form, international condemnation will fall upon them. Israel's designated role is to is to bleed eternally and bottomlessly at the alter of Palestinian victimology. And it is a role they cannot escape.

Consequently, it really doesn't matter who the Israelis elect or what decisions those leaders make. Maybe "Israel won't get fooled into thinking that Hamas spent its election cycle joking around." Perhaps "[t]oo many of the Israelis will see the same kind of denial that took place among Western leaders when Adolf Hitler came to power, after having written Mein Kampf, which outlined all his political goals." Possibly they might even restore Binyamin Netanyahu on the platform of rebuilding Israel's deterrent:

Israel's deterrent powers can only be rehabilitated by a stubborn, uncompromising campaign against Palestinian terror infrastructures and chains of command. Such a continuous campaign is the only way to make the Palestinians realize that they have nothing to gain by continuing their war against Israel. The Palestinians' internalization of the understanding that pursuing their war against Israel will bring them no advantage is the necessary precondition for any future peace.

But it will avail them nothing because they are as powerless to prevent their own national dismemberment as Czechoslovakia was sixty-eight years ago. It's all right here in this AP blurb (h/t CQ):

Following their resounding election victory, the Islamic militants of Hamas met the question of whether they will change their stripes with a loud "no": no recognition of Israel, no negotiations, no renunciation of terror.

But the world holds out hope that international pressure can make them more moderate. At stake is the future of Mideast peacemaking, billions of dollars in aid and the Palestinians' relationship with Israel, the United States and Europe. [emphasis added]

There it is. That's what "the world" considers to be important. The "peace process," the indulgence of the Pals as permanent welfare clientele, but no mention, not even a hint, of the one glaring omission: Israel's right to survival as a national entity.

It's as I said when Bibi ascended to the Israeli premiership a decade ago: he's won the deed to a house that has already been condemned. And Hamas is revving up the bulldozers.

Harry Reid Has A Screw Loose

That title sounds a bit caustic, doesn't it? Like I'm seated before my keyboard after an excessively aggravating afternoon puncuated by a particularly restlessly nap that has left me more tired and groggy than I was before it and consequently feel more like unloading indiscriminately than I do putting forth the effort to produce something to my usual high standards of cleverness and rapier wit.

Except that I really believe it. Oh, it's not a clinical diagnosis by any means, but alternative explanations for Dirty Harry's roaring hypocrisies of late are highly elusive.

Try this one on for size:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid urged President Bush Tuesday to "come clean" in next week's State of the Union speech and acknowledge "the costs of Republican corruption."

"In his 2000 campaign, George Bush promised to bring 'dignity' to the White House, but we've since found that he brought Jack Abramoff instead," said Reid, D-NV. He spoke at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, in remarks previewing Democratic criticism of the presidential speech on January 31st.

"President Bush needs to quit stonewalling about his White House's connection to corruption, and finally tell us how he's going to reform Washington," Reid said.

This from the man who is titular head of a party that spent the entire decade of the 1990s defending Bill Clinton. This from the man who is the #1 target of the Justice Department's Abramoff investigation. This from the man who responded to questions of his own Abramoff connections with a brusque, heatedly furtive, and Bart Simpsonesque, "Don’t try to say I received money from Abramoff. I’ve never met the man, don’t know anything.” And this about a man of whom there is not a single molecule of evidence ever took anything from Jack Abramoff or provided any access or favors to "the man" whatsoever.

Reid's crazy allegations have all the seriousness of, "Oh, yeah? Well I'm rubber, you're glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you." Which is also pretty descriptive of them as well.

Incidentally, "the costs of Republican corruption" have counted one of Reid's Donk colleagues, Pat "Leaky" Leahy, as a prime beneficiary of thousands of smackers in contributions from Abramoffic law firms according to the Vermont Guardian, earning a suitably "caught red-handed-with-hand-in-cookie-jar-and-deer-in-the-headlights" denial from Leaky's spokesman. It's clear that this Abramoff stuff is bipartisan to a fault, public polling numbers prove that general perception, and yet Democrats continue to pathetically try and pigeonhole blame on their foes. Even "pathological" strains to encapsulate it.

And as if anticipating this very criticism, Senator Pencil-Neck attempted on Friday, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, to "speak up and remove all doubt":

Cities are at risk because the Bush Administration is too preoccupied with its political problems to properly prepare for another natural disaster or terrorist attack, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told mayors from around the country Friday....

Reid said the poor choices of the Administration and Republicans in Congress are also evident in steps securing the nation after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Efforts to spend more money for emergency workers in cities were rejected as well as efforts to restore money for extra police, he said....

Reid also said many steps recommended by a commission examining national security after the terror attacks have not been taken, such as strengthening security for ports and rail transportation. He questioned spending billions on Iraq and tax breaks for the wealthy rather than for security improvements in cities.

"If we can spend $2 billion every week to protect the Iraqi people, we can do more to protect our people at home," Reid said.

This from the man who bragged to a rabid Dem throng last month, "We've killed the Patriot Act!"

It's as I predicted years ago: the party of Bill Clinton has all of his integrity and not the first smidgeon of talent at effectively using it. The true "felon-in-chief" was a pathological liar, but he was a good at it - indeed, arguably the best ever. Harry Reid, by contrast of the aforementioned, is like the hapless fat guy in the Capitol One commercials whom David Spayed can't train to consistently tell customers "no!". Reid lies, but they're such obvious whoppers that have not the slightest chance of convincing anybody beyond the fifth or so of the public that already hates Bush as insanely as Reid does - or is compelled by partisan necessity to pretend that he does.

Ironically, it's that last act, if act it truly is, that alone is convincing - and is more than sufficient to keep Reid's party securely in the minority for years to come.

Talk about a walking, living, breathing Peter Principle. Pity for his sake that he's a talking one as well.

Howard Does It Again!

Poor Howard Dean...he just can't stop himself from chewing on his shoes:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday that Democrats who took money from Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff and who did something on behalf of those tribes have "a big problem."

Dean made the statement apparently unaware that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly done exactly that.

Remember how in his last couple of interviews he has adamantly stated that no Democrat ever got anything from Jack Abramoff? How misinformed can one person be...? And this is the head of the DNC? Talk about laughable.

Under questioning by "Fox News Sunday's" Chris Wallace, Dean claimed that Democrats did no favors for Abramoff's Indian tribe clients:

"Nobody got anything out of the Democrats from Jack Abramoff," the top Democrat insisted. "No Democrat delivered anything and there's no accusation and no investigation that any Democrat ever delivered anything to Jack Abramoff. And that's not true of the Republicans."

And then the kicker:

But Wallace countered: "So if we find that there were some Democrats who wrote letters on behalf of some of the Indian tribes that Abramoff represented, then what do you say, sir?"

Dean's response: "That's a big problem. And those Democrats are in trouble. And they should be in trouble."

Well Howard, here ya go:

In November 2005 the Associated Press reported that Senate Minority Leader Reid had accepted tens of thousands of dollars from an Abramoff client, the Coushatta Indian tribe, after interceding with Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton over a casino dispute with a rival tribe.

Reid "sent a letter to Norton on March 5, 2002," the AP said. "The next day, the Coushattas issued a $5,000 check to Reid's tax-exempt political group, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. A second tribe represented by Abramoff sent an additional $5,000 to Reid's group. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000 in Abramoff-related donations between 2001 and 2004."

It'll be interesting to watch him wheedle his way out of this one. Oh, he'll try. And it'll be good for a few more laughs.

Nephew Back From Iraq

Whew! Sorry for the absence for a couple of days. I have picked up a couple of new offices in my transcription business and they're keeping me hopping!

Had a family reception and dinner for my nephew, Sgt. Nathan Baldwin of the 80th Airborne Division. What a fine young man! He is back from his 2nd tour in Iraq, stationed in Fort Bragg now and taking leadership training. They let him come home for a few days and we all got together to see him before he goes back. I was just in awe of him, listening to the stories of securing the areas around the election sites, finding cars with the trunks taken out and filled with explosives (he and his team diffused two of those headed for one of the election sites in December). He said there were enough explosives in those cars to take out the entire polling site. They were tipped off to one of them by an Iraqi man. He told of the U.S. securing the area around schools and hospitals so that contractors could go in and repair and rebuild. He said the civilians always wanted to come up and talk to them, smiling and saying "Hey, American!" in their thick accents. Quite a different story than you hear in the mainstream press most of the time.

One thing that struck me is he didn't complain about *anything*. Not the conditions there, not the 100 lbs. of gear he had to carry around all the time, not the time away from home, nothing. He very firmly believes in what we are doing over there, and is quite willing to go to Iraq as many times as they send him. As I said before, he is a fine young man.

Which makes me even more furious at treasonous Democrats like Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry, to name a few. The things they say and do make things harder for soldiers like Nathan, and I believe more dangerous. They embolden the enemy by making them think that if they just keep it up a little longer, more and more people will come to agree with the lunatics on the Left and we will give up and go home. All they have to do is listen to John Murtha to believe they can win if they just hold on and kill a few more Americans. It's hard to believe that these dumb Democrats don't realize that...which makes it worse that they go ahead and do it anyway. Power and personal gain, that's all they care about. They make me sick.

The Choice Is Ours

1 Therefore if you have been (A) raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, (B) seated at the right hand of God.

2 (C) Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth.

3 For you have (D) died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

4 When Christ, (E) who is our life, is revealed, (F) then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

5 (G) Therefore consider (H) the members of your earthly body as dead to (I) immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

6 For it is because of these things that (J) the wrath of God will come [a] upon the sons of disobedience, 7 and (K) in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.

8 But now you also, (L) put them all aside: (M) anger, wrath, malice, slander, and (N) abusive speech from your mouth.

9 (O) Do not lie to one another, since you (P) laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
10 and have (Q) put on the new self who is being (R) renewed to a true knowledge (S) according to the image of the One who (T) created him - 11 a renewal in which (U) there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, (V) circumcised and uncircumcised, [b](W) barbarian, Scythian, (X) slave and freeman, but (Y) Christ is all, and in all.

12 So, as those who have been (Z) chosen of God, holy and beloved, (AA) put on a (AB) heart of compassion, kindness, (AC) humility, gentleness and (AD) patience; 13 (AE) bearing with one another, and (AF) forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; (AG) just as the LORD forgave you, so also should you.

14 Beyond all these things put on love, which is (AH) the perfect bond of (AI) unity.

15 Let (AJ) the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in (AK) one body; and be thankful.

16 Let (AL) the word of [c] Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom (AM) teaching and admonishing one another (AN) with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, (AO) singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

17 (AP) Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the LORD Jesus, (AQ) giving thanks through Him to God the Father.

-Colossians 3:1-17

Homeland Security Roundup

Here are some of the week's headlines in this area:

FISA Fears Shielded 9/11 Plotters

Contrary to the claims of Bush Administration critics, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has seriously hampered U.S. counterterrorism efforts - and actually helped to shield at least two key 9/11 plotters from detection by U.S. law enforcement....

[Reagan-era Justice Department official Victoria] Toensing notes that the vaunted FISA law became the basis for former [Clinton] Deputy Attorney General Jamie
Gorelick's notorious wall of separation in 1995 - which prohibited intelligence agencies from sharing information on terrorists with U.S. law enforcement....

Toensing said that if intelligence agencies had been able to wiretap terrorists operating inside the U.S. as they do under the Bush program, "we could have detected the presence of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego, more than a year before they crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon."

Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush decisively reiterated this point in speeches this week as well as establishing beyond any argument the legality of the NSA's terrorist surveillance program.

That isn't slowing down the DisLoyal Opposition from dishonestly screeching otherwise, of course (though none of them has actually come out and called for the eavesdropping to be shut down, which the logic of their so-called argument would seem to demand), or agitating for another acts of suicidal insanity:

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down a provision of the Patriot Act that prevents foreigners who endorse terrorism from entering the U.S.

The details are almost irrelevant, aren't they?

Thank goodness there are some Republicans actively defending the Patriot Act, and the RNC is doing its part as well. Perhaps that's why even a typically skewed CBS/New York Times poll shows majority support for the NSA program and Patriot Act renewal.

And if all of the above wasn't sufficient, this story would seem to be the clincher (via CQ):

Colombia has dismantled a false passport ring with links to al-Qaida and Hamas militants, the acting attorney general said Thursday after authorities led dozens of simultaneous raids across five cities.

The gang allegedly supplied an unknown number of citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries with false passports and Colombian nationality without them ever stepping foot in the country.

An undisclosed number of those arrested are wanted for working with the al-Qaida terror network and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, said acting Attorney General Jorge Armando Otalora.

The counterfeit Colombian, Spanish, Portugese and German passports were used to enter the United States and Europe, he said.

Ed adds that three Iraqis traveled to Columbia in 2002 for the purpose of infiltrating the U.S. on Israeli passports supplied by Hamas and al Qaeda via this false passport ring.

Wanna connect the dots now? Between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? Between al Qaeda and Hamas, the latter of whom is now Israel's new "partner in peace"? How about the most important connection of all:

The NSA program just went from an academic exercise to a practical application. The Colombians know that at least eight people snuck through on faked passports and are now in the United States. Do you suppose that an NSA program designed to check international calls might help locate these suspects - and perhaps help stop a planned attack on an American target?...

How does everyone feel about that international surveillance now? Sounds like a pretty damned good idea, doesn't it?

Indeed.

But please, do keep flogging this issue, my good Donk friends. Which is another way of saying, "Please, do keep slamming your collective ballsack repeatedly in a pneumatic press." Feel free to do so all the way through next November and beyond.

Please. I'm begging you.

Operation Iraqi Freedom A Bargain

Here's a little note to one of our commenters who claimed that the "trillion dollar" war in Iraq is bankrupting the country. Turns out it ain't so.

Turns out the cost to date of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as a percentage of GDP, is on a par with the Mexican War, Spanish-American War, and the 1991 Gulf War - a cumulative total of about 2% of a single year's GDP, or about $250 billion in today's dollars. This is in contrast to the War of 1812, Korea, and Vietnam (~10% of GDP), World War I (~25%), the Revolutionary War (~65%), the Civil War (~105%), or World War II (~130%).

And, of course, World War II needn't have been a global conflict if the aggressors - Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan - had been confronted pre-emptively in the 1930s. A lesson we applied to Iraq that we are, foolishly, failing to apply to Iran.

The cost of that error could cost a helluva lot more than just dollars and cents. But it's a "buck" that you know tinfoil hat-wearers like the aforementioned commentor will always pass no matter how much they own it.

Threat Of The Pink Panther

My first reaction to this comment from French President Black Jacques Chirac was uncontrollable laughter:

French president Jacques Chirac said [last] Thursday that he would use nuclear weapons against any state that served as a base for terrorists who attacked his country or even considered using weapons of mass destruction.

"The leaders of states who use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would consider using, in one way or another, weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part,” Chirac said, in quotes picked up by London's Financial Times.

"This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind,” he added ominously.

Hee hee. That Jacques, what a josher. He has a second career waiting for him in Vegas after he leaves office.

C'mon, this is the president of France we're discussing. King of the EUnuchs (in his own mind, anyway). The top cheese-eating surrender monkey. Chief fellator of Middle East dictators. The anti-cowboy. Black Jacques Chirac rattling the nuclear sabre is like...well, like Jimmy Carter doing it. Whenever I think of this comment I can't help seeing Steve Martin trying to say the word "hamburger." Does anybody really take President Clouseau's bluster seriously?

Allan Topol considers it in the Washington Times this week:

So, what happened? There are two contributing factors. The first is the civil unrest in France several months ago, which involved nightly riots and a myriad of car burnings in many areas of the country. This violence had the same kind of impact upon Mr. Chirac and the French government that September 11 had upon the United States.

In his speech, Mr. Chirac bluntly declared, "In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilizations." Mr. Chirac now understands the problem. The jihadists are attempting to capture town by town, areas within Western Europe. As one French government official put it, "This is more than a clash of civilizations. It is a cancer within our country that if unchecked will destroy all of France."

With his statements, Mr. Chirac is warning Iran and the Arab countries to desist in supporting and encouraging residents of France who launched last year's attacks and are undoubtedly planning to do far worse. His approach is to cut off terror at the source. This resembles the policy being pursued by the U.S. government, although it is hard to imagine how great the public outcry would be if President Bush threatened to use nuclear weapons.

Indeed. And why is this? Because, despite what the Democrats endlessly claim, George Bush is honest as the day is long. His words have credibility. He doesn't make empty threats (about the war, at least). That's why people believe what he says. If he made the same threat Chirac did, it would be taken seriously.

This makes all the more ironic Bush's Kerryesque deference to the Euros' ridiculous diplomatic forays against Iran's nuclear weapons program. As though, just as with his pre-Iraq war indulgence of the UN, he feels the duty to demonstrate the futility of the domestic (and international) political opposition's policy demands before pressing ahead to actually deal with the threat at hand.

And press ahead we will. The precious-time-wasting diddling of the Brits, French, and Germans has made war with Iran inevitable. And when that war begins, you can count on Black Jacques Chirac to be leading the pretentious howls of international outrage at the latest act of "American neocon imperialist aggression."

Those words won't be serious either. But they will be believable, considering the source.

Fellow Workers

1 Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of (A) Sin, according to the command of the LORD, and camped at (B) Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink.

2 Therefore the people (C) quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water that we may drink " And Moses said to them, "(D) Why do you quarrel with me? (E) Why do you test the LORD?"

3 But the people thirsted there for water; and they (F) grumbled against Moses and said, "Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and (G) our livestock with thirst?"

4 So Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, "What shall I do to this people? A (H) little more and they will stone me."

5 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Pass before the people and take with you some of (I) the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which (J) you struck the Nile, and go.

6 "Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at (K) Horeb; and (L) you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink." And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

-Exodus 17:1-6

Message From The Future

Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed, and other days there's not time for anything else.

Plus, after a, shall we say, "full day," I decided to stuff my face over a good book (To Reign In Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh) and, as is my want, proceeded to devour the book in similar fashion. This time I managed to get to bed relatively early - about 3:15 AM as opposed to 4:45 AM the last time. Of course, I'm now two reviews behind on Battlestar Galactica, so the five-hour nap I took this afternoon has crowded me on blogging yet again. Unless, of course, I stay up half the night again, which won't happen if wifey is either frisky or "cooperative," which most times is a far more descriptive term.

All of which is far more than any of you are probably either interested in or ever wanted to know. But sometimes even I need a break now and then, and with a lineup of contributors only one of whom ever actually contributes, which was not my original intention, it scratches the accountability itch.

It also proves that, contrary to the stubborn insistance of the Vulcan Science Directorate, time travel is, indeed, possible.

Magnifying Our Master

23 Are they (A) servants of Christ? - I speak as if insane - I more so; in (B) far more labors, in (C) far more imprisonments, (D) beaten times without number, often in (E) danger of death.

24 Five times I received from the Jews (F) thirty-nine lashes.

25 Three times I was (G) beaten with rods, once I was (H) stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep.

26 I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my (I) countrymen, dangers from the (J) Gentiles, dangers in the (K) city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among (L) false brethren; 27 I have been in (M) labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in (N) hunger and thirst, often (O) without food, in cold and (P) exposure.

28 Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for (Q) all the churches.

-II Corinthians 11:23-28

Futile Gestures

Ah, what it must be like to be a Democrat these days. Trapped between an extremist, parsecs-out-of-the-mainstream base and the majority of the electorate that base demands they alienate, like the, well, donkey that starved to death between the two bales of hay, Senate Donks are coping with the inevitable confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court by scattering to the four winds in a rousing rendition of "every man for himself" helter-skelter.

Ken Salazar of Colorado was a one-man scattering all by himself, unable to bring himself to back a filibuster (which wouldn't exactly be the platform on which he ran in 2004) and unwilling to disclose how he'll vote (though that seems somewhat less than difficult to deduce), and trying to cover both by sliming Justice Clarence Thomas as an "abomination." Which, of course, will please nobody, not the lib crazoids who would only be interested in impeaching Thomas, and only after Judge Alito was stuffed, and not the rest of us normal people who already have written off Salazar as Kerry with a twang.

Speaking of Mr. French, he advocated, er, "nuking" Alito in a frothing, raaaaahbid floor speech yesterday that was so commital (as in the opposite of non-commital) that you just knew the other shoe would drop post-haste:

From a Senate source: Kerry's call for a filibuster comes after his leadership, that is, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, decided there won't be one. In other words, Kerry was making a brave, Kos-friendly pronouncement in the total confidence that a filibuster will never happen. And now, word is, he is off to Davos to continue what some Republicans are calling a "filibluster."

And to think this man wanted to be president of the United States. And came within eighteen Electoral Votes of succeeding. Brrrrrrr.

Florida's Bill Nelson, not only from a "red" state but up for re-election this fall, couldn't even risk the floor-joist level of candor Senator Salazar mustered, and hence justified his anti-Alito vote by questioning the liklihood of the incoming Justice's voting to overturn the Kelo decision:

I explained how a recent Supreme Court decision has frightened many of our constituents who fear that their homes can now be seized by the government to make way for a private developer's project. And while he expressed sympathy for the parties whose homes had been seized in this personal meeting with him he offered no misgivings about the legal reasoning that led to that outcome.

I'm sure Floridians will be flattered at the level of collective intelligence their senior senator accords to them. As if they're unaware that it was the oligarchist bloc on the SCOTUS that voted for Kelo's rank evisceration of private property rights, and that it was Senator Nelson and his minority party colleagues who depicted Judge Alito as, among other things, a "tool of big business." If you've ever wondered what rigor mortic straw-grasping looks like, Bill Nelson just gave you an el primo demonstration.

Hillary Clinton, tacking toward the neoBolsheviks this week, indulged in the cheeky, ironic projection for which she is infamous in what might be dubbed her "Alito is a radical ideologue" speech. Ed Whelan of Bench Memos has the analysis of it if you're interested. My take is that she's trying to get her estranged left-wingnut groupies, with their utter obtuseness to subtlety, off her back and doesn't have to triangulate to hold on to her senate seat. All of which makes another fine contribution to the PR ammunition dump for 2008. Can't get too much of that, after all, and we're going to need every last round before it's over.

Meanwhile, on the side of sanity emerged South Dakota's Tim Johnson (who looks to have learned from Tom Daschle's debacle) and Robert "Sheets" Byrd, who obviously wants to die in office. Byron Dorgan, another exposed "red"-stater, is also expected to make the right choice.

Byrd seems to have conveniently developed a conscience in his old age:

Many people and including foremost, as I say, the people of West Virginia in most uncertain terms, were, frankly, appalled by the Alito hearings. I don't want to say it but I must. They were appalled. In the reams of correspondence that I received during the Alito hearings, West Virginians — the people I represent — West Virginians who wrote to criticize the way in which the hearings were conducted used the same two words. People with no connection to one another, people of different faiths, different views, different opinions, independently and respectively used the same two words to describe the hearings. They called them an “outrage” and a “disgrace.” . . .

It is especially telling that many who objected to the way in which the Alito hearings were conducted do not support Judge Alito. In fact, it is sorely apparent that even many who oppose Judge Alito's nomination also oppose the seemingly made-for-TV antics that accompanied the hearings. . . .

And then there were the media and the media's contribution to the deterioration of this very important constitutional process. Mr. President, was it really necessary to subject Mrs. Alito to the harsh glare of the television klieg lights as she fled the hearing room in tears? Fighting to maintain her dignity in response to others, with precious little of their own?

Indeed, Byrd may even have started reading that pocket Constitution he's always waving around:

I regret that we have come to a place in our history when both political parties, both political parties exhibit such a take-no prisoners attitude. All sides seek to use the debate over a Supreme Court nominee to air their particular wish list for or against abortion, euthanasia, executive authority, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, corporate greed, and dozens of other subjects.

All of these issues should be debated but the battle line should not be drawn on the Judiciary. It should be debated by the peoples' representatives right here in the legislative branch. However, too many Americans apparently believe that if they cannot get Congress to address an issue then they must take it to the Court. As the saying goes: "if you can't change the law, change the judge."

This kind of thinking represents a gross misinterpretation of the separation of powers. It is the role of the Congress, the role of the legislative branch to make and change the laws. Supreme Court justices exist to interpret laws and be sure that they square with the Constitution and with law. [emphasis added]

Wow. Does Senator Kleagle really believe that? And either way, does this mean that Barack Obama won't be stumping for him on the campaign trail anymore?

Assuming all 55 Republicans vote "yea" (only Snowe, Chaffee, and Stevens haven't publicly committed), Ben Nelson, Johnson, Byrd, and Dorgan would bring Alito's total up to 59, and the anti-filibuster total easily clears the 60 mark. With today's cloture filing by Majority Leader Frist for a cloture vote Monday afternoon and a final floor vote Tuesday morning, it is, quite literally, all over but the shouting.

Never Mind With The ABP

Swamped yesterday. Got lazy last night. Feel asleep at 8:30PM. Swamped again today. Won't get lazy tonight. I'd never catch up with all the crapola of the last two days if I did.

Actually, I probably won't anyway, but it won't be for lack of trying.

Unless wifey gets frisky.

Stay tuned.

Wrong Again

I was reading this this morning, and it occured to me that isn't it sad that the Secretary of Defense has to spend his time rebutting Democrat attempts at undermining our military's mission and morale?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday disputed reports suggesting that the U.S. military is stretched thin and close to a snapping point from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, asserting "the force is not broken."

"This armed force is enormously capable," Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "In addition, it's battle hardened. It's not a peacetime force that has been in barracks or garrisons."

Of course it is enormously capable. Look at what they've accomplished. You'll have to look, as the MSM has chosen not to publish any reports that might be construed as positive for our American military.

Rumsfeld spoke a day after The Associated Press reported that an unreleased study conducted for the Pentagon said the Army is being overextended, thanks to the two wars, and may not be able to retain and recruit enough troops to defeat the insurgency in Iraq.

Congressional Democrats released a report Wednesday that also concluded the U.S. military is under severe stress.

Reports suggesting that the U.S. military is close to the breaking point "is just not consistent with the facts," he said.

And who are these "experts" who keep telling us that our military is not capable?

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, both members of the Clinton administration, were credited among the authors of the study that congressional Democrats released.

Clinton people. Those awe-inspiring heroes of foreign policy. It still baffles me how anyone could think that Madeleine Albright was qualified for that position. But I digress.

Rumsfeld said that "retention is up" and that recruitment levels must meet higher goals, ones raised because of the operations on the ground.

At the same time, Rumsfeld added: "There is no question if a country is in a conflict and we are in the global war on terror, it requires our forces to do something other than what they do in peacetime."

"The force is not broken," Rumsfeld said, suggesting such an implication was "almost backward."

"The world saw the United States military go halfway around the world in a matter of weeks, throw the Al Qaida and Taliban out of Afghanistan, in a landlocked country thousands and thousands of miles away. They saw what the United States military did in Iraq.

"And the message from that is not that this armed force is broken, but that this armed force is enormously capable," Rumsfeld said.

Amen. Too bad our Democrats cannot understand that...or worse, that they DO understand that and want to downplay it as much as possible. But...they support the troops, right?

And It Was So

1 (A) In the beginning (B) God (C) created the heavens and Earth.

2 The earth was [a](D) formless and void, and (E) darkness was over the surface of the deep, and (F) the Spirit of God (G) was [b] moving over the surface of the waters.

3 Then (H) God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

4 God saw that the light was (I) good; and God (J) separated the light from the darkness.

5 (K) God called the light day, and the darkness He called night And (L) there was evening and there was morning, one day.

6 Then God said, "Let there be an (M) expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."

7 God made the [c] expanse, and separated (N) the waters which were below the expanse from the waters (O) which were above the expanse; and it was so.

8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

9 Then God said, "(P) Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let (Q) the dry land appear"; and it was so.

10 God called the dry land earth, and the (R) gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, "Let Earth sprout (S) vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on Earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so.

12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.

13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

-Genesis 1:1-13

President Hillary Is Inevitable

I borrowed that line from Terminator III, substituting "President Hillary" for "Judgment Day." Fits that meme quite nicely, doesn't it?

The New York Sun reports today that Democrats around the country are getting increasingly "nervous" about Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential candidacy and its ostensible foregone-conclusion status because {chuckle} they don't think she can win:

Senator Clinton's emergence as the early and perhaps prohibitive favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 is fueling anxiety among Democratic strategists and operatives who are worried she would lose to a Republican in the general election.

Recent polling underscores some of those worries. In a CNN/USA Today/ Gallup poll made public yesterday, 51% of voters said they would definitely not vote for Mrs. Clinton if she chooses to run for president in 2008. In a separate nationwide poll conducted this month for a spirits company, Diageo, and a political newsletter, the Hotline, 44% of all voters and 19% of self-described Democrats said they viewed the New York senator unfavorably.

According to Democratic Party insiders, such numbers are adding to skittishness about Mrs. Clinton's potential candidacy. ... A former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Richard Harpootlian, is among those who will own up to such misgivings. "Mrs. Clinton, because of some positions she has taken over the years, gets a visceral reaction to her here, both negative and positive. I'm afraid around the South and Midwest the visceral reaction is not good," he told the New York Sun.

First of all, this is January 2006. The 2008 cycle doesn't begin for another year, and not in earnest until a year after that. Polls taken now are worse than useless as indicators of national or political trends.

Second, remember the #1 lesson of the 1990s: The Clintons always win. They're death to the rest of their party, but the Clinton machine is invincible.

And third, keep this in mind: the key to Bill Clinton's two election triumphs had a name - Ross Perot. Without a significant third candidate in the race to split the center-right vote, Mr. Bill never becomes president to begin with, and "the li'l general" provided the same insurance buffer against Bob Dole four years later.

Now let me throw out another name, and one that Republicans should all know all too well: John McCain. The conventional wisdom, which is always wrong, has "Sailor" cruising to the '08 GOP nomination. But I can and will guarantee that that will never happen because when all's said and done few in the GOP nominating electorate really, truly trust the man. And why should they? He's pro-Kyoto, anti-tax cut, waffling on abortion, and is undermining the GWOT effort with his recent "anti-torture" legislation. He's a Rockefeller Republican in every sense of the term. And the Extreme Media love him. The latter is disqualifying all by itself, it seems to me.

Knowing what we know about McCain's petulant reaction to losing the 2000 nomination race to George W. Bush, when he's denied again in 2008, how do you think he'll take that decisive rebuff?

Do the words "third party" ring a bell?

It doesn't matter what the "visceral reaction" to Mrs. Clinton will be in the South and Midwest. With Darth Queeg as her wedge, she will part the "Red" Sea twenty-two months from now and make the Clinton restoration a reality.

And then the nightmare will truly begin.

[HT: CQ]

2,000th Post!

I know, I know, you probably thought that number is missing an extra zero (at least)....

Bad News From Ford

Neil Boortz has a great column up regarding the bad news for Ford workers that came out yesterday. He lists several reasons, but to me the most obvious is this:

Have you been around a major union auto plant lately? Look at the bumper stickers on the cars. You'll see many more bumper stickers that say "UAW" than you will that say "Ford." Watch the workers as they arrive or leave on a chilly day. They're wearing UAW jackets, not Ford or Chevy jackets. Many of these people have far more loyalty to their union than they do to the company that is actually writing their paychecks. The financial burden that has been on these automakers by inflated union contracts has been crippling. Many years ago the UAW developed a game plan for bleeding the automakers dry. They would pick one of the big-three, either Ford, Chrysler or General Motors. They would then hit the target automaker with a demand for huge pay and benefit increases. That automaker would balk, and the UAW would go out on strike. Finally, after huge loses, the automaker would cave. A new contract would be signed, and the unions would then force that contract on the other automakers. Over the years these contracts created a burden on the automakers that could not be sustained. In some cases these automakers can't even lay off employees without having to continue their paychecks years into the future.

Another big reason is the terrible tax bite that corporations must absorb. Read the whole article, it's a good one.

A Bad Day?

15 The sound of (A) joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous; the (B) right hand of the LORD does valiantly.

16 The (C) right hand of the LORD is exalted; the right hand of the LORD does valiantly.

17 I (D) will not die, but live, And (E) tell of the works of the LORD.

18 The LORD has (F) disciplined me severely, but He has (G) not given me over to death.

19 (H) Open to me the gates of righteousness; I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the LORD.

20 This is the gate of the LORD; the (I) righteous will enter through it.

21 I shall give thanks to You, for You have (J) answered me, and You have (K) become my salvation.

22 The (L) stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone.

23 This is [a] the LORD'S doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

24 This is the day which the LORD has made; let us (M) rejoice and be glad in it.

-Psalm 118:15-24

A Big "F.U." to Joel Stein

I have a question: if the above-referenced Los Angeles Times "humor columnist" isn't pulling our legs with his execrable "Warriors and Wusses" pile today, then wouldn't an equivalent retort be to equally as publicly wish that Stein gets either blown up, nerve-gassed, or beheaded with an olive fork by the very jihadis that he obviously considers to be morally superior to the men and women in uniform who, despite his extremist ingratitude, continue to protect his worthless ass?

Double-H publicly humiliated Stein on his radio show this afternoon. I'd say I was sorry I missed it, except that I'm still in Seahawks Super Bowl euphoria and will be exclusively hooked on the local sportsradio station for the next two weeks.

If you, too, missed Hugh undress yet another lib pencil-dick, the transcript is here.

UPDATE: J-Ger sez, "It was like watching an autopsy done on a guy who's still breathing, live, on the air." Heh.

Persian Storm Rising

One of the profound shames about my grandparents all being deceased is that I am unable to ask any of them what it was like to live through the run-up to the outbreak of World War II in Europe. In particular the year from the Munich Accords of September 1938 to the German invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939. I find myself pondering that question with increasing frequency these days as we drift inexorably toward all-out war with Islamic and proto-nuclear Iran. In the hindsight of history it seems obvious that Hitler's Germany and the West were on a collision course, just as it's obvious now that unless the leadership in Tehran changes suddenly and drastically, a clash between the U.S. and Israel (at minimum) and Iran is inevitable. How did people with the hardheaded mental acumen to see the handwriting that American isolationism and Anglo-French appeasment had inscribed on the proverbial wall cope with that knowledge?

I'm assuming not like Hillary Clinton (h/t And Another Thing):

Senator Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush Administration for "downplaying" the threat. In an address Wednesday evening at Princeton University, Clinton, D-NY, said it was a mistake for the U.S. to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years.

I will readily concede that the Bushies' handling of Iran has been as flaccidly feckless as its handling of Saddam Hussein and Iraq has been bold, visionary, and decisive. But Mrs. Clinton's criticism of the White House is silly and, above all else, appallingly cynical. Why? Because Bush has followed in dealing with Iran the very liberal "multi-lateralist," EUro-centric template they've spent the past three years ripping him for not applying to Iraq. All the elements are present - diplomacy-only, going through the UN, deferring to our "European allies" (in this case, Britain, Germany, and France). Indeed, this approach was even more doomed to failure vis-a-vie Iran than Iraq because in the latter instance there were already multiple Security Council Resolutions on the books, and the question was getting the SC to simply enforce them. With Iran, there are no SCRs, and cash-starved Russia and oil-starved Red China will never allow even one to be passed against their favored client state for fear of what the mullahs will do in retaliation.

If Hillary is advocating anything, it's probably John Kerry's one-step-further idea of not only negotiating directly with a regime with which we have not had diplomatic relations since I was in the ninth grade (which would mean reopening them, natch) but offering the mullahs the same sort of plumb deal that Bill Clinton gave to the Kim dynasty in 1994, which did more than anything else to pave the way for North Korea's entrance into the nuclear club. Otherwise it's difficult to see what our direct presence at the proverbial table would make.

But Mrs. Clinton holds no candle to the New York Times, which, via a David Sanger piece, is pretending to be the paper of born-again unilateralist cowboys (via CQ):

If diplomacy fails, does America have a military option? And what if it doesn't?

"It's a kind of nonsense statement to say there is no military solution to this," said W. Patrick Lang, the former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "It may not be a desirable solution, but there is a military solution."

Mr. Lang was piercing to the heart of a conundrum the Bush Administration recognizes: Iran could become a case study for pre-emptive military action against a gathering threat, under a policy Mr. Bush promulgated in 2002. But even if taking out Iran's facilities delay the day the country goes nuclear, it would alienate allies and probably make firm enemies out of many Iranians who have come to dislike their theocratic government. And Iran simply has too many ways of striking back, in the oil markets, in the Persian Gulf, through Hezbollah.

"Could we do it?" one Administration official who was deeply involved in planning the Iraq invasion said recently. "Sure. Could we manage the aftermath? I doubt it."

Similar fears, he said, gave President Bill Clinton pause about launching a strike on North Korea in 1994. Later that year he reached an accord for a freeze on the North's nuclear production facilities. But in 2003 everything unfroze, and now the North, by C.I.A. estimates, has enough fuel for at least half a dozen bombs.

The Iranians took careful notes then, and here in Washington today the Korean experience underlies diplomacy-versus-force arguments that rarely take place on the record.

Aside from the fact that the NoKo nuke program was never "frozen" to begin with - they simply publicly confirmed that fact in late 2002 - can anybody in possession of all their faculties, physical and mental, take Sanger's pretending to take the Bush Doctrine seriously....well, seriously? Sure, a lot of what he writes in this article makes sense - Clinton's "Agreed Upon Framework" is a case study in how not to prevent an outlaw regime from getting the Bomb - but that feigned stance would last only to rattling of the first White House sabre at Tehran, and then the Times would be right back to its "warmonger Bush lying us into another quagmire" template. One might say that the Left is trying to bait the President into a military solution as eagerly as that crazy Hitlerian nutter Ahmadinejad is.

And that may be something that even his co-nutters are becoming decisively afraid of:

On December 16, gunmen opened fire on the motorcade of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he toured the southeastern province of Sistan, along Iran's border with Pakistan.

According to news reports, Ahmadinejad's personal bodyguard and driver were killed in the ambush, although the president was unhurt. The government-controlled media in Tehran attributed the attack to "bandits," a term used to denote a wide range of armed groups, from drug dealers to opposition guerrillas.

But in this case, the attack may have been part of a plot to remove the Iranian president by a faction within the ruling clergy. At least, so believes a Western source who has just returned from talks with top officials in Tehran.

The faction seeking to remove Ahmadinejad does not object to the substance of the Iranian president's repeated vows to "wipe Israel from the map" and destroy America. Nor do they believe Iran should abandon its secret nuclear weapons program, top Iranian government officials said, according to the source.

Rather, they object to the fact that he has made such comments openly and without ambiguity. They believe that his frankness dangerously exposes them to attack from the United States, Israel or both.

Ah, self-preservation, the great equalizer. Kinda hard to reign over a new Caliphate if it's a radioactive slagheap and you're part of the slag. The idea is not to back off from the goal of destroying the "Satans," great and small, but to do so without leaving any mullahgarchical fingerprints on the twitching Crusader and Jewish corpses. Hence Iran being Terror Central for the past quarter century-plus. Being a strutting meglomaniacal narcissist with a compulsion for kicking Uncle Sam in the nuts is a gimmick that didn't work too well for Mussolini or Hitler or even the mullahs' old enemy next door, Saddam. Throw nuclear brinksmanship into the equation and far more will pay the price than just Ahmadinejad. Small wonder, then, that....

American Enterprise Institute scholar and former CIA operations officer Reuel Marc Gerecht agrees that the new president could be a blessing in disguise for those who would support regime change in Iran.

"The only way Iran is going to get better is for it to get a lot worse - and Ahmadinejad may just possibly be the man to galvanize a broad-based opposition to the regime," he wrote recently.

In other words, the Ledeen approach - which I support, and would favor as the lead strategy against the spectre of a nuclear Iran, but for its imminence - according to one Iranian dissident group, the first nuclear test will occur before March 20. Remember as well that one of the core reasons why Ahmadinejad was elevated to the figureheadship was to crush any and all dissent against and opposition to the Islamic regime, something at which he has been ferociously effective. We can't rattle our sabres just in the hope that that will spur a popular uprising. Not only may it never come, but the mullahs might succeed in using that to rally popular support against us, not unlike the way Josef Stalin became a born-again Russian patriot when the Wermacht was tearing toward the gates of Moscow in 1941. The Soviet communists didn't dub that conflict "the Great Patriotic War" for nothing.

No, war with Iran is coming, one way or the other, either at the time of our choosing or theirs. Whether you think their motivation is mystical, anti-Semitic, or old-style imperialistic, the consensus is growing and solidifying that a nuclear mullahgarchy cannot be allowed and can only be stopped one way:

Washington will initiate military action against Iran only with extreme reluctance, but it will do so nonetheless, except in the extremely unlikely event that Ahmedinejad were to stand down. Rather than a legacy of prosperity and democracy in the Middle East, the Administration of US President George W. Bush will exit with an economy weakened by higher oil prices and chaos on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere. But it really has no other options, except to let a nuclear-armed spoiler loose in the oil corridor. We have begun the third act of the tragedy that started on September 11, 2001, and I see no way to prevent it from proceeding.

Some even consider an escalation to a regional nuclear exchange as unavoidable:

STEP 1: Presume Iran completes a nuclear weapon, or reaches the point where they are extraordinarily close to completing one.

STEP 2: ...Israel [and/or the U.S.] will hit Iran with everything it has, short of nukes, to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons. Because the Iranian nuclear program is dispersed, this probably means a lot of bombing runs over a lot of targets, with many casualties. I’m sure you can imagine the Al-Jazeera coverage.

STEP 3: ...the Iranians would hit Israel [and U.S. forces in Iraq] with everything they have, including every long-range missile....

[STEP 4:] If Israel [and/or the U.S.] did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capability in the first punch, does it seem all that unlikely that the Iranians would then use their remaining nukes [assuming that they already have some warheads - say, purchased from North Korea...] on Tel Aviv and/or Haifa?...

Under this bad scenario, the world has just witnessed at best a serious military strike and at worst the nuclear incineration of a major city, a Second Holocaust. At that point, the Israeli response is likely to be to hit Tehran with at least one of their remaining nukes and who knows where else. They’ll also be likely to hit any remaining potential Iranian nuclear facilities with their remaining nukes....

I’m not one to throw around doomsday scenarios. But looking at what we know, a nuclear exchange seems more likely than not.

Mr. "Some," aka TKS's Jim Geraghty, put a happier face on the coming confrontation today, or tried to, but as the old saying goes, just because the worst may not happen doesn't mean it won't. And there's plenty of bad things that can happen in this crisis short of a fresh crop of Middle East "mushrooms."

But Jed Babbin may have the high-tech answer that at the same time bows to the inevitability of war with Iran and does the most to ensure that we win it at a stroke before the mullahs even know what's hit them:

The war with Iran will have to be fought and we will, of course, defend Israel as best we can. But much bloodshed can be avoided, and Iran's nuclear objective put out of reach if we seize the advantage we gave up to Saddam in the UN. Surprise is a strategic advantage we must retain.

The alternative to a large war, which no one speaks about, is a surprise attack against Iran mounted before Israel acts, and before the predicted Iranian nuclear test happens. Such an attack would employ several unconventional weapons at once and could - if managed properly - be over before Iran knows it has begun. The world must know that we have done it. But after, not before....

It could, and should, be made one dark night. B-2 stealth bombers, each carrying twenty ground-penetrating guided munitions, can destroy much of Iran's nuclear facilities and government centers. Some might carry reported electro-magnetic pulse weapons that can destroy all the electronic circuits that comprise Iranian missiles, key military communications and computer facilities. And it may be that we have the ability to attack Iran's military and financial computer networks with computer viruses and "Trojan horses" that will make it impossible for Iran to function militarily and economically.

Our strategy must be implemented before Ahmadinejad can test his nukes. Whether that test can happen next month or next year is immaterial. The time for us to act is now.

Now, as in at the time, and by the means, of our choosing, not the mullahs'. Now, as in avoiding the Geraghty doomsday scenario. Now, as in, "Faster, please."

By my equivalent calendar, it's July 7, 1939. Time is a slip-slidin' away.

Wish I could talk to Grandma & Grandpa about it.

10-8, As Expected

Samuel Alito is out of committee on the expected 10-8 party line vote. I listened to as much of the Democrat garbage as I could stand. His judicial knowledge is impeccable, as is his character and qualifications. For all 8 Democrats to vote against his nomination is an abomination. Not even they could question his qualification to sit on the Court. Their lame excuses for voting no on ideological and political grounds, grounds which they are not even sure of regarding his opinions, were painful to listen to. None of them deserve the distinction of being a part of the committee who determines a judge's qualifications for the Supreme Court. They are nothing but political hacks, and they are a disgrace to the Senate.

JASmius adds: Reportedly (sorry, I lost the link - oh, good, there it is) the Democrats will attempt a "non-filibuster filibuster" during the floor debate, bloviating at unbearable length into the wee hours without committing to formally blocking cloture. What the point of this will be when nothing less than a filibuster-filibuster will satisfy their neoBolshevik supporters frankly escapes me, but unless Harry Reid knows something about the GOP headcount that Bill Frist doesn't (always a possibility), Judge Alito, as a GOP staffer flatly declared, will be Justice Alito by the State of the Union Address - one way or the other.

UPDATE 1/25: One other thing, regarding Senator Kyl's lamentation of the partisan precedent the straight party-line vote on Judge Alito's nomination may have set - personally, I don't have a problem with it. I never understood why Republicans voted overwhelmingly for left-wing extremist oligarchs like Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer; both were (and are) judicial supremacists with utter contempt for the original text of the Constitution who had no business being put on the Supreme Court. There's no way that either of them should have received a single iota of GOP support, something Bill Clinton's election most definitely did not entitle them to.

That's why I found Senator Feinstein's equivalent stance against Alito that she declared yesterday to be so refreshing. I disagree with it completely, but I can understand it equally as well.

I just draw the line at minority filibusters. If Donks want a say in what kind of judges end up on the federal bench, and most especially the SCOTUS, let them re-take the Senate, and then they can bork to their heart's content.

Which is a big reason why that won't happen again any time soon. But then you knew that.

Unless you're a Democrat, I suppose.

Liberal Tantrum

The petulant children over at Daily Kos and some other liberal web sites have engaged in a smear campaign at Amazon.com regarding Kate O'Beirne's bestseller Women Who Make The World Worse and now Fred Barnes' new book, Rebel in Chief. Unable to debate ideas or engage in any meaningful dialogue, they are encouraging each other to give one star reviews and write putrid reviews of the books...without, of course, ever having read them. Good coverage in the Corner regarding this stupidity.

I know what I'm gonna do. I'm going to buy another copy of both books, and I would encourage anyone else who is able to do so to do it. They make great gifts.

JASmius adds: Don't forget the hacking that produced the "revised" cover of Rebel entitled Felon In Chief with the President in handcuffs. I'm sure they pissed themselves giggling at that one.

I don't consider that sort of electronic vandalism to be "stupidity"; I call it intellectual violence. It's substantively no different from throwing rocks through bookstore windows, seizing all the conservative books, throwing them in a pile, and burning them.

Cap'n Ed calls these left-wing graffiti-ists "ill-educated, ill-mannered children." Maybe some of them are, but as my deliberately chosen metaphor ought to get across, the remainder are something, in my opinion, a lot more sinister.

Lead Them To Jesus

4 For when (A) one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not mere (B) men?

5 What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? (C) Servants through whom you believed, even (D) as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.

6 (E) I planted, (F) Apollos watered, but (G) God was causing the growth.

7 So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

8 Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will (H) receive his own reward according to his own labor.

-I Corinthians 3:4-8

The Left's Last Redoubt Is About To Fall

If all goes as expected in the Canadian elections today, the Liberal "Grits"' thirteen year reign of error will end, Stephen Harper's Conservatives will finally reap the whirlwind of the Libs' arrogance, anti-Americanism, and rampant corruption, and our northern neighbors will depart the "EUrosphere" and resume their honored place in the Anglosphere.

And the gravy part of the equation? Fat bastard quislings like Michael Moore will no longer have anyplace to flee the inexorably expanding "Bushosphere."

At least that doesn't involve tipping the Concorde, anyway.

UPDATE: All did, indeed, go as expected.

In Defense of Life

10 By this the (A) children of God and the (B) children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who (C) does not love his (D) brother.

11 (E) For this is the message (F) which you have heard from the beginning, (G) that we should love one another; 12 not as (H) Cain, who was of (I) the evil one and slew his brother And for what reason did he slay him? Because (J) his deeds were evil, and his brother's were righteous.

13 Do not be surprised, brethren, if (K) the world hates you.

14 We know that we have (L) passed out of death into life, (M) because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.

15 Everyone who (N) hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that (O) no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

16 We know love by this, that (P) He laid down His life for us; and (Q) we ought to lay down our lives for the (R) brethren.

17 But (S) whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and (T) closes his heart against him, (U) how does the love of God abide in him?

18 (V) Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and (W) truth.

19 We will know by this that we are (X) of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him 20 in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

21 (Y) Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have (Z) confidence before God; 22 and (AA) whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we (AB) keep His commandments and do (AC) the things that are pleasing in His sight.

23 This is His commandment, that we (AD) believe in (AE) the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as (AF) He commanded us.

-I John 3:10-23

Chutzpah

"Utter nerve; effrontery"

That's the definition for "chutzpah" according to dictionary.com. But I think they're going to have to amend that entry with two additional words: Harry Reid.

Dirty Harry, just to briefly review, is at the top of the FBI's Jack Abramoff most-wanted list, and with good reason:

[A] November Associated Press article revealed that Reid had accepted money from the Coushatta Indian tribe, an Abramoff client, just one day after interceding with Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton over a casino dispute with another tribe.

Reid reportedly sent a letter to Norton on March 5, 2002. "The next day,” according to the AP, "the Coushattas issued a $5,000 check to Reid tax-exempt political group, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. A second tribe represented by Abramoff sent an additional $5,000 to Reid’s group. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000 in Abramoff-related donations between 2001 and 2004.”

You would think, in light of the above, that the Senate Minority Leader would be adopting a lower profile about this topic. But no. Not only did his office release the following statements....

"These kinds of wild and baseless rumors smack of desperation and is simply a desperate attempt by Republicans to drag Democrats into a scandal they own lock, stock and barrel," [Reid spokesman Jim] Manley said....Mr. Reid has acknowledged receiving contributions from Abramoff's clients, but has said he does not intend to return the money because it represented legal donations...."Senator Reid has done nothing wrong, and he doesn't see any reason why he would need to return the money," spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said last week.

....but put out a 27-page hit piece entitled Republican Abuse of Power which sought to promote the flagrant lie that the Abramoff business is a "Republican scandal."

South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint was having none of it:

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) chastized Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) Wednesday for Reid’s hypocritical sermonizing on congressional ethics.

"The idea that Senator Reid would attack other senators for taking Abramoff-related donations is laughable,” DeMint said, noting Reid is "among the top recipients of these funds in Congress, and still refuses to return or donate the money.”

"And now,” DeMint continued, "he is using his taxpayer funded office to put out what amounts to campaign attacks. Senator Reid should clean up his own act before lecturing the rest of Congress on ethics.”...

And what was Dirty Harry's reaction to DeMint metaphorically ripping his head off? A meek apology:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday apologized to 33 Republican senators singled out for ethics criticism in a report from his office titled Republican Abuse of Power.

"The document released by my office yesterday went too far and I want to convey to you my personal regrets," Reid said in a letter. "I am writing to apologize for the tone of this document and the decision to single out individual senators for criticism in it."

Reid came under attack Wednesday over the report, which was issued by his staff on Senate letterhead, even as he and fellow Democrats released ethics overhaul proposals.

"Researching, compiling and distributing what amounts to nothing more than a campaign ad on the taxpayers dime raises serious ethical questions," said Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), one of the lawmakers named.

To borrow an Ivinism, "WHO ARE [REPUBLICANS] AFRAID OF?" Barney Fife? Look how easily they slapped him down. Hell, look how easily Arlen Specter bitch-slapped the Massachusetts Manatee when he tried to bulldoze the Judiciary Committee Chairman during the Alito hearings. There's no reason this Donk bully-boy arrogance has to go unchallenged, to say nothing of turned against them. And what do you imagine the tinfoil hat crowd typified by Molly Ivins thinks of Senator Reid's docile apology?

Bottom line is, the 2006 midterms are ON. And if the Dems keep up this mindless partisan idiocy, breaking even in either house of Congress may become awfully optimistic.

The Wisdom of Karl The Great

This is representative of the mentality of the Democrat Party on national security:

Former President Jimmy Carter expressed optimism Friday over Hamas' participation in next week's Palestinian parliamentary elections, saying that while the group may be terrorists, at least they're not corrupt.

Interviewed Friday, Carter said that although Hamas were "so-called terrorists," so far "there have been no complaints of corruption against [their] elected officials."

In quotes reported by the Jerusalem Post, Carter did concede that "there is an element within Hamas who deny Israel's right to exist."

Citing his own negotiations with Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yassir Arafat, however, Carter said sometimes you have to learn to work with terrorists.

This is representative of the attitude of the Democrat Party base:

"I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.”

With that pronouncement, liberal syndicated columnist Molly Ivins begins a blistering column that castigates Hillary and the Democratic Party for failing to take a strong stand on a variety of issues important to liberals like her....

"Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone,” Ivins writes in her column on CNN.com....

Ivins says the majority of Americans believe the war in Iraq is a mistake and the U.S. should get out, and a majority are also in favor of raising the minimum wage, repealing President Bush’s tax cuts, imposing a windfall profits tax on big oil companies and reducing the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

"That is the center, you fools,” Ivins tells Hillary and the Democrats. "WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?”

And this is the GOP strategy that Karl Rove has come up with for 2006 (h/t CQ):

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove offered a biting preview of the 2006 midterm elections yesterday, drawing sharp distinctions with the Democrats over the campaign against terrorism, tax cuts and judicial philosophy, and describing the opposition party as backward-looking and bereft of ideas.

"At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security," Rove said. "Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic - not at all. But it does make them wrong - deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."...

Actually, it does make them unpatriotic. You can only be wrong on something this important and this obvious so many times before you forfeit the right to any benefit of the doubt. And I think that, based upon poll results like these, this is becoming the consensus view of the American people. Which is why the Republicans don't have to go out of their way to overtly say it. The Democrats are doing it for them.

Are there still "experts" who are predicting Donk gains next November? I'd wager their sports counterparts were on the Carolina Panther bandwagon this week....

UPDATE 1/23: If you think I'm exaggerating in the slightest, just get a load of this quote from Paul Hackett, one of Senator Mike DeWine's Donk challengers in Ohio:

The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren’t a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of the other religious nuts around the world.

Hackett was even given the chance to laugh off his slur as a "joke" or a "misquote." He didn't take it:

"I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it. Equal justice under the law for all regardless of who they are and how they were born is fundamental to our American spirit and our American freedoms. Any person or group that argues that the law should not apply equally to all Americans is, frankly, un-American.”

So according to a Democrat senatorial candidate, if you don't support the homosexual drive to eviscerate the institution of marriage, you're unpatriotic.

I have been including DeWine in the "vulnerable" category next fall. If Hackett wins the Dem primary - and this is just the kind of insanely extremist rhetoric the Donk base is demanding to hear from its candidates - the McCain mutineer can stamp his ticket for another six years in Washington, D.C.

[HT: B4B]

FURTHER UPDATE: The best retort the Dems can come up with is Dr. Demented whining that Karl Rove should be fired over Plamegate? Man, it's like the true Skulker underneath that huge battle suit.

Oh, yes, and Howie called Rove "unpatriotic," too.

I think overconfidence should be the GOP's primary concern this year. The Democrats themselves are barely in the equation.

STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Really, I could go on indefinitely with this stuff, but this is just too choice.

-Harry Belefonte, the newly minted Democrat Party ideologist, insists that the same Department of Homeland Security that people like him were castigating as supposedly "incompetent" in responding to Hurricane Katrina is a super-efficient "Gestapo."

-Senator John Finger Kerry went on ABC's This Week yesterday and claimed that the reason al Qaeda hasn't attacked us again here since 9/11 is because they're kicking our asses all over Iraq.

-Cindy Sheehan - remember her? - has discovered an original gambit for extending her fifteen minutes of infamy: teaming up with Castroite dictator Hugo Chavez to commit overseas sedition at the 6th World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela.

Maybe "Bush Derangement Syndrome" should be renamed "Rove Derangement Syndrome." If the above is any indication, the DisLoyal Opposition's partisan psyche is still Pavlovian where Karl The Great is concerned.

Seattle 34, Carolina 14

It was one win away. Now it's one win to go.

And the "experts" - the ones who called Steve Smith "the Michael Jordan of the NFL," the ones who put over Nick f'ing Goings as the new Jim Taylor, the ones who totally ignored Matt Hasselbeck, the ones who spent all week dismissing Shaun Alexander as a pussy (Which back was knocked out of the game early with a concussion, hmmmm?) - can line up to take turns kissing my ass.

And now the oddsmakers have already installed the Pittsburgh Steelers as four point favorites in Super Bowl XL.

Well....

....naw, there's two weeks to fight that battle. For now, I'm just gonna enjoy the ride.

UPDATE 1/23: Looks like for the next two weeks, Hard Starboard and Captain's Quarters are at war.

Ed's going to regret abandoning twenty-fourth century technology for eighteenth century clipper ships - an apt analogy for Shaun Alexander and Jerome Bettis, respectively.

The World Without

13 "(A) But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, (B) because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

14 ["[a] Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because (C) you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation.]

15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one (D) proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of (E) hell as yourselves.

16 "Woe to you, (F) blind guides, who say, '(G) Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.'

17 "You fools and blind men! (H) Which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold?

18 "And, 'Whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated.'

19 "You blind men, (I)which is more important, the offering, or the altar that sanctifies the offering?

20 "Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears both by the altar and by everything on it.

21 "And whoever swears by the temple, swears both by the temple and by Him who (J) dwells within it.

22 "And whoever swears by heaven, (K) swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it.

23 "(L) Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

-Matthew 23:13-23

This Week in the Fifth Column

The DisLoyal Opposition's post-Alito hearing hangover didn't last long. Rather than sag into a pit of demoralization, the lefty denizens indulged in a little primal scream therapy (okay, a lot of primal scream therapy), and on their favorite topic, the GWOT.

It began with Walter Cronkite (The Most Distrusted Man In America) channeling Jack Murtha:

"It's my belief that we should get out [of Iraq] now," Mr. Cronkite told reporters Sunday, echoing his 1968 plea for withdrawal from Vietnam. Difficulties on the ground in Vietnam led Mr. Cronkite, who, as the face and voice of the CBS Evening News, took too seriously the notion that he was "the most trusted man in America," into the swamp of defeatism. Others, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, bought the hype, too: "If I've lost Cronkite," LBJ is said to have said, "I've lost Middle America."

This time it's not difficulties on the ground, but a hurricane. "We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves missing the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation and rebuild some of our most important cities in the United States," he said. "Therefore, we are going to have to bring our troops home." And what should we tell the Iraqis, who believed us when we said we would not abandon them? Mr. Cronkite, now 89 and retired, suggests we tell them: "Our hearts are with you."

Oh, that's convincing. A national valentine will be of tremendous use by the fledgling Iraqi government against the Syrians, Iranians, and their terrorist proxies, the latter of whom are going down for the third time and sure could use a lifeline such as Uncle Walter is urging. He certainly is brimming over with confidence in his own country's capabilities too, isn't he? A hurricane or two comes ashore and we have to abruptly abandon all our overseas commitments to handle the reconstruction - which of course has to be entirely nationalized instead of allowing the private sector to do the job quicker, better, and cheaper. Perhaps that's why "Middle America" is with George W. Bush and the GOP these days.

They sure as hell aren't with this crackpot:

In an alternate universe, coverage of Al Gore's speech in Washington Monday might begin with the former vice president's ringing defense of the virtually unlimited exercise of presidential power in times of emergency. "The threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the executive branch with swiftness and agility," Gore told the audience at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall. "Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the president to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not."

An alternate-universe report might note that Gore's position — stated by the man formerly a heartbeat away from being commander-in-chief — boldly contradicted the claims of Democrats who argue that, in the NSA-al Qaeda surveillance matter, the president's authority to order warrantless surveillance of possible terror suspects is tightly bound by the limits imposed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Gore's speech might then set off an intense debate among Democrats about the extent of presidential authority.

But that's the alternate-universe version. While Gore actually did say the words quoted above, that soundbite was just one small part of a long speech in which Gore argued just the opposite, that President Bush not only does not have the authority to conduct the war on terror as he has been doing but that his policies have crossed the line into criminal acts. The President has been "breaking the law repeatedly and persistently," Gore said, and his war on terror has "brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution." Gore stopped short of calling for Bush's impeachment, but he seemed to be suggesting it — and the crowd certainly seemed to be thinking about it — when he said that Congress should hold hearings into "serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President, and they should follow the evidence wherever it leads."

The spectacle of the man who was Bill Clinton's most strident and fanatical defender (and bagman) throughout all his boss' various and sundry scandals (but especially his impeachment) putting himself over as a born-again believer in the "rule of law" is just too adorable for words. But as Byron York goes on to examine at great length, Fat Albert's address was as incoherent as it was caustically partisan. While recommending the appointment of another independent counsel to investigate "Spygate," (and citing the "Plamegate" investigation as a precedent - which, as memory serves, was a probe into....an allegedly illegal leak of allegedly classified information - ooops....) and demanding the establishment of "new whistleblower protections" to guard "anonymous sources" who illegally leak critical national security secrets (so much for "restoring the rule of law"), in other passages he "uttered those few words about the President's 'inherent power' to take 'unilateral action' during an emergency.

Could that possibly be because of other words uttered by him and the administration of which he was a member back when he was "a heartbeat (or a cheeseburger and a hummer) away from the Big Chair?

In 1999, Vice President Gore Declared: "Hear Me Well - We Will Fight The Reckless Violence Of Terrorism And We Will Never Yield To Terrorism, Ever." (Joe Carroll, "Clinton Exhorts Parties to Surmount Last Hurdle," The Irish Times, 3/18/99)

At A 1996 Counter-Terrorism Event Gore Said: "The Bottom Line Is That President Clinton And I And The Members Of This Commission Have Pledged To The Families Of The Victims Of Terrorism That We're Going To Take The Strongest Measures Possible To Reduce The Risk Of Another Tragedy In The Future." (Al Gore, White House Briefing, 9/5/96)

Clinton administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick: "(T)he Department Of Justice Believes, And The Case Law Supports, That The President Has Inherent Authority To Conduct Warrantless Physical Searches For Foreign Intelligence Purposes And That The President May, As Has Been Done, Delegate This Authority To The Attorney General." (Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, U.S. House Of Representatives, Testimony, 7/14/94)

In 1994, President Clinton Expanded The Use Of Warrantless Searches To Entirely Domestic Situations With No Foreign Intelligence Value Whatsoever. In A Radio Address Promoting A Crime-Fighting Bill, Mr. Clinton Discussed A New Policy To Conduct Warrantless Searches In Highly Violent Public Housing Projects." (Charles Hurt, "'Warrantless' Searches Not Unprecedented," The Washington Times, 12/22/05)

"One Of The Most Famous Examples Of Warrantless Searches In Recent Years Was The Investigation Of CIA Official Aldrich H. Ames, Who Ultimately Pleaded Guilty To Spying For The Former Soviet Union. That Case Was Largely Built Upon Secret Searches Of Ames' Home And Office In 1993, Conducted Without Federal Warrants." (Charles Hurt, "'Warrantless' Searches Not Unprecedented," The Washington Times, 12/22/05)

President Bill Clinton: "(T)he Attorney General Is Authorized To Approve Physical Searches, Without A Court Order, To Acquire Foreign Intelligence Information For Periods Of Up To One Year ..." (President Bill Clinton, Executive Order 12949, "Foreign Intelligence Physical Searches," 2/9/95)

Apparently Al Gore doesn't believe that ALL presidents do not have the authority to order warrantless surveillance for national security purposes; just REPUBLICAN presidents. And his far-from-SRO crowd of rabid quisling zealots ate it up like cats in a tuna vat.

The ACLU, however, doesn't even recognize that paper-thin a distinction in its determination to facilitate the nation's destruction:

A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking to block President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, which the group calls unconstitutional electronic surveillance of American citizens.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit against the National Security Agency. The ACLU, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and several individuals, seeks a court order that declares the program illegal. [emphasis added]

Well, well, well. Why am I not surprised to see the ACLU joining forces with an Islamic front organization. Powerline has more:

The asserted interest of the ACLU, its Michigan affiliate and the individual board member plaintiffs of the ACLU Michigan affiliate appears to derive from their representation of terrorist detainees and their communication with others of a similar bent. ACLU Michigan board member Noel Salah, for example, complains that the NSA program has caused him to curtail his communications with "Palestinians under Israeli occupation" and inhibited his "efforts to promote peace and justice in this country."

The "Center for Constitutional Rights," an ACLU ally, raises a similar objection:

CCR complains that the NSA surveillance program has compromised its representation of terrorist detainees and others. The CCR plaintiffs complain, for example, that their representation of terrorist clients has been inconvenienced by the NSA program in that the attorneys are now "compelled to undertake international travel to avoid the risk of jeopardizing the confidentiality of privileged communications."

So, in essence, the plaintiffs' ostensible complaint is that al Qaeda is being "inconvenienced" more in their attempts to commit mass murder against American civilians than the ACLU and CCR are in their attempts to defend al Qaeda and other jihadi operatives. Oh, how our hearts ought to bleed for them.

It comes as no surprise that, just as the ACLU was founded by communists, the CCR has similar radical left origins:

CCR was founded in 1966 by William Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy and Morton Stavvis, attorneys who...were either members of the Communist Party or politically allied with the radical agendas of the new left....One of its primary missions now is the representation of terrorist detainees at Guantanamo.

And, sure enough....

Among the individual plaintiffs in the CCR lawsuit is Rachel Meeropol, a CCR attorney better known as the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, both executed as Communist spies.

Brother Trunk's conclusion?:

The ACLU and CCR lawsuits appear to be part of a closely coordinated legal attack on measures and means that have proved instrumental to the defense of the United States. The lawsuits also appear to represent the distilled essence of the merger between radical Islam and the radical left that has taken place in the conduct of hostilities against the United States.

That would make the American Left traitors, wouldn't it? And you know what? A majority of Americans agree:

Americans overwhelmingly support President Bush's decision to wiretap suspected terrorists operating inside the U.S. without first obtaining a court order - and a solid plurality believe those who leaked news of the secret operation are "traitors," a Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll has found....

In another stunning finding, the Fox poll found by that a margin of nearly 2 to 1, the American public believes that those responsible for exposing the super secret surveillance program have betrayed the country.

Fifty percent of those surveyed called those responsible for blowing the NSA's cover "traitors," while just 27 percent agreed with media claims that the leakers were "whistleblowers."

By a margin of 42% to 34%, even Democrats agreed with the "traitor" label. [emphasis added]

I used to think that another mass terrorist attack would be damaging to the Bush Administration because, unlike 9/11 which was building all through his predecessor's second term, this one would be entirely on his watch. But no longer. With each successive fit of seditious rhetorical excess, the Democrats have climbed further out on a really rickety limb. The NSA leak has them hanging from it by their fingernails. If al Qaeda pulls off another major strike here after that deliberate national security breach and the Donks' attempts to politicize it in the teeth of overwhelming public support for the wiretap program and the Patriot Act, woe be unto anybody on any ballot in '06 and beyond who has a "D" after their name. Truly I say unto you, it will be better for the Whigs on the day of political judgment than it will be for them.

The Difference Faith Makes

1 The fool has (A) said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is (B) no one who does good.

2 The LORD has (C) looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who (D) understand, who (E) seek after God.

3 They have all (F) turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is (G) no one who does good, not even one.

4 Do all the workers of wickedness (H) not know, who (I) eat up my people as they eat bread, and (J) do not call upon the LORD?

5 There they are in great dread, for God is with the (K) righteous generation.

6 You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, but the LORD is his (L) refuge.

7 Oh, that (M) the salvation of Israel would come out of Zion! When the LORD [a](N) restores His captive people, Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.

-Psalm 14

The Beautiful Swann Passes the Edly Duckling

Might this Rasmussen poll not ultimately qualify as the political answer to the Immaculate Reception?

Our latest poll of the race for Pennsylvania governor shows Republican Lynn Swann, the former receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, narrowly leading Democratic Governor Ed Rendell 45% to 43%.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters view Swann favorably; 47% view Rendell favorably.

Swann formally declared his candidacy just two weeks ago, on January 4. But he has enjoyed early success in securing endorsements from two of six regional caucuses in his quest for the party nomination. The Republican state Committee will endorse a candidate on February 11....

Although Swann has just announced his candidacy in a formal sense, he has been visibly preparing for a run for close to a year. If elected, he would be the first black to serve as Pennsylvania's governor.

Governor Rendell has often been regarded as a potential candidate for president. Many believe his popularity helped John Kerry win the state in 2004.

Many believe in error. It was Rendell's Philadelphia fixers who diddled George Bush out of the Keystone state's 21 Electoral Votes. That came on the heels of Rendell doing everything he could to get out-of-state military voters disenfranchised. The idea of that rumpled, mafiosoesque crook running for president is bad comedy. He doesn't hide those traits nearly well enough. No wonder Lynn Swann makes for such an unfavorable side-by-side comparison.

And how. Swann would have Western Pennsylvania nailed flat just on his "Super Steelers" legend. He's young, articulate, optimistic, intelligent, telegenic. Worst of all from the Dems' perspective is that he's all these things and African-American as well, just like GOP senate candidate Michael Steele in neighboring Maryland. It's a trend that they can ill-afford and are, frankly, helpless to withstand indefinitely. Let those two men break through, and the metaphorical dam will burst on "black America's" mindless, monolothic, self-defeating allegience to the Democrat Party.

And the whipped cream atop the sundae? As Cap'n Ed points out, a Swann victory in November could tow embattled Senator Rick Santorum to a comeback win as well.

Just two months ago hypothetical polling matchups showed Rendell leading Swann by double-digits. At this rate - and the rate that Steele is also rising (he now leads both Qwese Mfumi and Ben Cardin by mid-single-digits) - the Donks' perpetual, chimerical dream of retaking Congress is inexorably morphing into yet another nightmare.

[PS: Go Steelers! Unlike the Broncos, they'd make a worthy SuperBowl opponent for your Seattle Seahawks.]

Saving the Mullahs the Trouble

The State Department sure has brought the Bush White House to heel, hasn't it? Deference to the idiot Euros on what to do about Iran's nuclear weapons program, a policy indistinguishable from what John Kerry would have pursued (other than that he'd have been elbowing the Brits, Frogs, and Krauts out of the way to appease Adolph Ahmedinejad directly), and flying in the face of the Bush Doctrine in Israel:

To his great credit, George W. Bush remainded on the sidelines in the 2001 and 2003 [Israeli] elections [rather than meddling in Israeli internal affairs to push ppeasenik candidates], both won by Ariel Sharon. But now, says Glick, Bush and Secretary of State Rice are prepared to back soft-liner Ehud Olmert. Olmert, who lacks Sharon's track record of fighting terrorism, is committed to transferring more occupied land to the Palestinians, which means that terrorists will have additional territory in which to set up shop unopposed....this policy stands in complete contradiction to Bush's policy for waging the US-led war on international terrorism, which - except in Israel - works to deny bases to terrorists and to undermine regimes that sponsor and support terrorism.

The Pals, as you probably expected, are taking full advantage:

Al Aqsa Brigade, the military elite of the Fatah Party, is responsible for the training and deploying of the 20 year old suicide bomber who just destroyed a sandwich shop in Tel Aviv.

Islamic Jihad claims credit, because the 20 year old, now indicated as Sami Antar, was an IJ recruit from the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank. However the bomber was entirely handled by Al Aqsa, lead by the cadres out of Jenin.

The bombing is said to be the first of waves of bombings directed at testing and weakening new acting Prime Minister Olmert as he demonstrates his Sharonist prowess in the campaign for voting in March....

What this means for the Bush Administration is that Olmert will be boxed in by terror bombs and will struggle mightily to prove that unilateral concessions to murder gangs is effective state policy. The Gaza withdrawal last summer was a failure and is now the crux of the imminent triumph of Hamas in the rogue state of Gaza.

[John Batchelor] routinely speak[s] with the terror gangs. They do not fear Olmert or Bush or the UN; they are cocky and well financed and aggressive; they mean to grab Gaza, then the West Bank, then Egypt after Mubarak, then the whole of the crescent from Damascus to Cairo. Not apocalyptic thinking, rather tactical and scheduled.

Appeasement from Olmert, appeasement from Bush, appeasement from the EU or the UN or anyone who shows up with an acronym, will fail....And you are right this is on the table in Tehran: where do you think Damascus gets the money to feed the gangs?

Appeasers never learn. They just sell out everybody else to be killed until there's nobody else to be gassed (or shot, or suicide bombed, or rocketed, or nuked....). They even get the order backwards....

But Dubya being a party to this travesty? That clinches the intractibility of the diplodelusionists. They are bureaucratically invincible, and will serve us all up on a platter to al Qaeda and the mullahs for enslavement and/or butchering at the latter's leisure. And to the last they will think they're serving the cause of "peace."

But not before the Jews. It is the order of things, after all.

One Win Away

I have been an avid NFL fan for thirty-two years, and a Seattle Seahawk fan for almost as long. I am also an accountant. Those two factoids should provide all the background you need to know as to the perspective from which I'm coming with this post and the "x's & o's" level my analysis is going to attain. Suffice it to say, while I know football superficially, this isn't going to be impenetrable, geek-level "hardcore football" talk.

I'm simply a fan trying to establish a feel for the likely outcome of Sunday's NFC Championship Game at Qwest Field between the hated Carolina Panthers and America's Team (if they knew better), the Seattle Seahawks.

Hey, I never said I was objective.

Let's start with the betting line, which has Seattle favored by four points. Then let's take my numerical formula, which is based on my own power rankings adjusted throughout the season (and which has produced a 72% accuracy rate picking straight-up winners), which favors the Seahawks by 2.5 points. Then compare respective league rankings for their total offense versus our total defense and vice versa - that favors Seattle. Then compare the same thing for scoring offense/scoring defense - that's Seahawks as well. Actually points for/points against - Seattle again.

NFL.com has a matchup breakdown page that projects a final score based upon the previous five games' results and cumulative statistical breakdowns. Making some adjustments (for DeShaun Foster being out and Steve Smith playing at the level he's been playing the past two weeks), the result I come up with is Seattle 29, Carolina 21.

So by all these aggregate measures, the Seahawks should win on Sunday and advance to their first SuperBowl. But, of course, football games aren't played on a spreadsheet, but on the "gridiron." Play by play. Assignment by assignment. By real, fallible human beings. As Chris Berman gets such a kick out of saying, "That's why they play the games."

So the question becomes, "Why will the Seahawks win?"

This is where a Hugh Millen would descend into a blizzard of incomprehensible jargon that really doesn't mean a whole lot to anybody, like me, who didn't play the game beyond the seventh grade level. Instead, I'll do a little trend analysis, and regurgitate an X/O factor that has persuaded me later.

Here's a little historical perspective: In the twenty-eight seasons that the NFL has had a three-round playoff format, only one team - the 1985 Patriots - has ever won three consecutive road playoff games to get to the SuperBowl. And Carolina will be playing its third consecutive road playoff game on Sunday.

But wait - there's more!

Those '85 Patriots had their final regular season game at home. Why does that matter? Because the '05 Panthers didn't. They were at Atlanta in Week 17, and had to win that game just to get into the playoffs. Which means that, in reality, they've already won three consecutive road playoff games and are going for a fourth. And even the '85 Pats didn't pull that off, getting flattened by the Bears in SuperBowl XX (which was in all practical respects another road playoff game).

It is difficult to win on the road in the NFL. Not as much as in the NBA, but difficult nonetheless. What makes this task prohibitively daunting for Carolina isn't so much the Seahawks' homefield advantage - which is formidable - but the sheer magnitude of trying to win a fourth road game in a row. NFL regular season schedules rarely deal any team more than a two-game road trip, and never more than three. Four-game trips are unheard of.

There is some parallel to be made with the NBA on this score. Not entirely, since NBA games can be played on consecutive nights, but in the more general sense of even the best teams wearing down at the end of a long road swing. Guys get tired, accumulate nicks and dings and aches and pains. You get heavy-legged, half a step slow. Plays you might have made in more favorable circumstances fall half a step short. "A game of inches" is one of the oldest sports clichés, and is universally applicable to all of them, but it really does apply to even the stoutest "road warriors."

Now look at the Panthers' last three games. They blew out the Falcons at the Georgia Dome by 33 points. Then they handled the Giants at the Meadowlands in the Wild Card round by 23. And last week they got by the Bears in Chicago by 8. Anybody notice a trend? Also take note of how the nondescript Bears offense succeeded in hanging three touchdowns on the third-ranked defense in the NFL this year. And how in the second half last Sunday it seemed like one Panther after another was being helped or carted off the field. Coach John Fox may have instilled a "road warrior" mentality in his team, and there is nothing about it that isn't impressive and commendable, but sooner or later something has to give. And recall, just in passing, that the last time Carolina played three road playoff games in a row was two years ago, and they lost the third one (SuperBowl XXXVIII).

But what about Steve Smith, I can hear the naysayers saying. Okay, let's talk about the hottest receiver in the NFL right now.

Let's get back to the Panthers' divisional round win over Chicago for a moment. A whole lot has been written this week about how the Bears inexplicably left Smith in single-coverage for the entire game. This was done in order to bring a safety down to help stop DeShaun Foster and the Panther running game. So what happened? The Panthers piled up 125 rushing yards anyway and Smith caught two long TD passes on which he was embarrassingly wide open and made a tremendous catch in double-coverage to set up a field goal.

Well, I'm an accountant, and I have several ten-key adding machines, so I can therefore do arithmetic. If you change those three plays to double-coverage, I figure the 58-yard score doesn't happen and the 37-yard strike becomes a field goal instead. Now, suddenly, a 29-21 Carolina lead becomes a 21-19 Carolina deficit. Would it have been that linear? Not necessarily. The different game situation might well have led to different plays that would have given the Panthers the win anyway. But would it? DeShaun Foster was out of the game by that point (i.e. fourth quarter), rendering Carolina essentially one-dimensional. With Smith contained (nobody can really stop him), could Jake Delhomme have won the game Joe Montana-like?

Here's where the aforementioned Hugh Millen comes in. Millen, a former Washington Husky and NFL quarterback, is the king of "breaking things down," a huge x's & o's dork. Co-hosting on KJR with Dave "Softy" Mahler this morning, he shared something that he discovered after reviewing the tapes of the Bear-Panther game: when the Bears sent a safety to crowd the line of scrimmage against the run and left Steve Smith in double-coverage, Jake Delhomme's quarterback rating was (rounding off) 125; when the Bears went with their front seven and left the safety back to help in coverage, his quarterback rating was 65. Not only that, but the Panthers' average yardage per rush was nearly twice as much in the former instance as in the latter.

The bottom line on last Sunday is that da Bears were beaten by three big pass plays to Steve Smith that accounted for more than half of his 214 receiving yards, which in turn accounted for nearly half of Carolina's total offense. And the case can be made that Smith, for all the hype that's following him around this week, was as much the beneficiary of the Bears' head-scratching defensive scheme and their defensive staff's failure to make any adjustments as he was the stud that he most definitely is. I find it impossible to believe that Ray Rhodes and John Marshall, the 'hawks' defensive braintrust, will repeat those same mistakes.

Besides, with DeShaun Foster out, there'll be no need to cheat a safety down "into the box." No disrespect toward Nick Goings, but he's a glorified fullback, and Seattle has given up exactly one hundred-yard game to an opposing back all year long (Tiki Barber's 151). And Nick Goings ain't no Tiki Barber. Or Clinton Portis, either, who was held to under fifty yards rushing by the 'hawks a week ago.

So, with no real running game to speak of, and Steve Smith harder to find, Jake Delhomme is taken out of his comfort zone, returns to the ranks of the ordinary, and the Panthers' offense is reduced to the same scuffling Mark Brunell and the Redskins were last Saturday. And on the other side of the ball? Well, Shawn Alexander is good to go by all reports, and I'm not buying the "he wasn't concussed, he's just a pussy" trash talk floating around the past couple of days. I have no doubt that the Panther D will try to intimidate him the way the 'Skins did, but all it'll take is one of his patented breakaway runs to put that strategy to rest. And if you'll recall, whenever the 'Skins blitzed, Matt Hasselbeck made them pay with big pass completions virtually every single time.

The one Achilles heel I can see for the Seahawks is turnovers, especially on special teams. Five fumbles against Washington, three of them lost, two of them on punt returns, did much to keep the Redskins in the game. And let's not forget the three balls Hasselbeck threw up for grabs, including one that should have been a Washington touchdown. If the 'hawks had taken care of the ball, that game would have been the blowout that my gut instinct had me expecting.

Will they do so on Sunday? Well, they have all season, as you might expect of a team that won thirteen games, including eleven in a row. The track record argues in favor of a resumption, as well as Carolina perhaps succumbing to the turnover bug, always more likely on the road and especially after this long away from home.

But if there's one thing that the Seattle Seahawks are known for above all else, it is their propensity for coughing up big leads. So here's what my gut, which has been conflicted this week, has finally told me:

Seattle scores first (a hallmark for them this season) and then again off a turnover. Shawn Alexander is pushing a hundred yards by the second quarter. They're up at halftime something like 21-7. But the Panthers make adjustments that take him out of the game (in terms of effectiveness, not injury). Carolina gets a long TD drive. But at the end of three it's still a solid Seahawk lead, say 24-14.

Then comes a big play for the Panthers - say a long bomb to Steve Smith. Bammo, 24-21. The Seahawks, as has also been their penchant this year, answer with a long march of their own that stalls inside the red zone when the injured but heroic Julius Peppers stops Shawn Alexander on third and short. A Josh Brown field goal pushes the lead to six.

Back come the Panthers right down the field, into the red zone, where their own drive stalls (a common outcome against the 'hawks). One John Kasay kick later, the lead is three again.

Needing just a couple of first downs to run out the clock, the Seattle special teams strike again and get surprised by an onside kick that the Panthers recover. After incompletions on first and second down, and a sack on third down that takes Carolina out of field goal range, they go for the jugular on fourth down - Steve Smith going long. And - take your pick, Marcus Trufant, Jordan Babineaux - knocks the Delhomme pass away at the last possible moment before Smith can get his powerful hands on it.

Qwest Field erupts. The Seattle Seahawks are NFC champions by the score of 27-24 and bound for SuperBowl XL.

Yeah, it's a homer pick. But it's an honest one. And at least it isn't fueled by nothing but unbalanced hype.

And if I'm right, I'll have the greatest challenge of all: trying to get my mind around the Seattle f'ing Seahawks playing in the f'ing SuperBowl. I'll have to tape the game just to prove to myself that it really happened.

And my pick? As Ted Kennedy once said, "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it..."

Castaway

What puts Schwarzenegger's re-election in real jeopardy, though, is precisely that he is morphing into just another politician who values staying in office above whatever philosophical reasons he originally had for seeking it. After all, what made his candidacy so attractive in the first place was that he was a man already rich and famous who didn't need politics as a career or a permanent source of ego-stroking, who wanted to go to Sacramento to do away with "business as usual" and do battle with the status quo practitioners of that corrupt, incompetent mentality (i.e. the Democrats). In other words, he was that rare pol who truly was an "outsider" and could truly be a populist because he had nothing to lose by fighting all-out and to the end for the true "interests of the people."

But not anymore. Having been dealt a serious setback by the Democrat establishment, rather than continue the fight and let the voters decide whether they truly want change or the equivalent of a Gray Davis restoration, Ah-nuld is assimilating into that establishment instead. He's becoming the gelded poodle of Gollyfornia Donks. He's becoming one of the very "girly-men" he once rightfully and hilariously lampooned.

As John Connor's designated protector in Terminator II, Schwarzenegger's terminator character was programmed to carry out his mission at all costs until he either succeeded or was destroyed. In the role of the Governator, it's like he threw Connor into the T-1000's waiting arms and then threw himself at its feet and begged sobbingly for mercy and forgiveness.

To borrow a line from an unforgettable villain of another movie franchise, "So, he is a coward after all...."

-Me, two weeks ago

Guess what? The Gollyfornia GOP isn't standing for it. So much so that they might just boot Ah-nuld out of the party altogether:

Republicans in California are threatening to withhold the party’s endorsement of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger unless he fires his new chief of staff, Susan P. Kennedy.

GOP activists disenchanted with Schwarzenegger are planning to rally conservatives behind a resolution – to be offered at the state Republican Party convention in February – that may give the governor an ultimatum: Get rid of Kennedy, a leading liberal activist and former aide to Democratic Governor Gray Davis, or the GOP will withdraw its support in his re-election race.

"We're to the point where we’ve just had it with the guy,” attorney Michael Schroeder, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, told the Los Angeles Times.

"It’s become clear that he’s no longer pursuing a Republican agenda.”

Ladies and gents, if the moribund, scarcely-any-less-gelded Golden State Republicans have "had it with the guy" and are willing to heave him overboard, that ought to be a clear "message" to the Governator from the opposite direction on a par with November's ballot initiative results that he should have no difficulty "receiving."

Double-H synopsizes Ah-nuld's imperative well:

Arnold has very little time to recognize the huge error that he made was not in trying for reform and losing, but in quitting. He's got to get off the canvas, get rid of Susan Kennedy, and shake off the fog he's in. [emphasis added]

If he doesn't, he'll be a man without a party - and, quite possibly, a job beyond November that doesn't involve a scrawny guy sitting in a chair yelling "action!"

Reprehensible Skunk

While that name could apply to many members of the Democratic Party, today it is reserved for Ted Kennedy. From Bench Memos:

Ted Kennedy's apologia this afternoon for his upcoming vote against Judge Alito should be welcomed — yes, embraced — by Republicans, moderate Democrats, proponents of self-government, and all fair-minded Americans because it crystallizes the choice Senators now face.

It's always a welcome day when the American people are presented with clear choices. Senator Kennedy's announcement today demonstrates once again the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the opposition to Judge Alito. The character assassins of the Left have the perfect spokesman in Senator Kennedy. Not content with his embarrassing display of intemperance, ignorance and generally boorish behavior during hearing week, Senator Kennedy summarized his opposition to Judge Alito by claiming Judge Alito was not “committed to equal justice under law.”

This is a despicable charge to level at a sitting federal judge. And it's obvious to anyone who watched the hearings that in the case of Judge Alito, nothing could be more false. But that is what America has come to expect from Senator Kennedy. That is why we should welcome his announced opposition. The choice is clear.

The ABA - no conservative organization - and his fellow judges and former law clerks, including many Democrats, all sing the highest praises for this good man and his decision making as a judge. Most major newspapers around the country, even liberal ones, have endorsed Judge Alito. It is only the Ted Kennedy-ACLU wing of the Democratic Party that persists in opposing him. Senator Kennedy's Democrat colleagues now need to make their choice.

Kennedy's ability to be a butthole seems to know no bounds. His nearly incoherent blather during the hearings and statements such as the above have proven his ability to be slicker than Bill Clinton. Who else but a Kennedy could do the things he has done and say the things he has said and still be a United States Senator? He doesn't deserve to be cleaning the toilets, much less "serving" the people.

JASmius adds: Uncle Teddy is about as slick as a tarpit. The pickled old bastard has never fooled anybody. He couldn't even win his party's presidential nomination with Jimmy Carter (aka the worst president in American history) as his lone opponent. The only reason he's still in the Senate is that that seat was a family holding and he's somehow managed not to drop dead in all the years since. He gets re-elected to it for the same reason that Mt. Rushmore is still where it's always been: he's too damned heavy to move.

Which does raise the prospect of his successor having to sit atop his fermenting corpse after he drives off that big bridge in the sky. On the other hand, if Arlington National Cemetary wants to save on fuel costs, they can always put Teddy in the same coffin as his brother. His remains would keep the eternal flame burning all by themselves.

Learn to Teach

1 (A) Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.

2 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it."

3 The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still (B) holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause."

4 Satan answered the LORD and said, "Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.

5 "(C) However, put forth Your hand now, and (D) touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face."

6 So the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life."

7 Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and smote Job with (E) sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

8 And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while (F) he was sitting among the ashes.

9 Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!"

10 But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. (G) Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" (H) In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

-Job 2:1-10

Fighting the "Insurgency" In the New Iraq

This story courtesy of George Meredith:

A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Basra when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist, badly injured and unconscious. On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in similar but less serious state. The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.

The Marine reported, "I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road. "I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein is a miserable, lowlife, scum bag,and he yelled back that Senator Ted Kennedy is a good-for-nothing, fat, left wing liberal drunk. So I said that Osama Bin Laden dresses and acts like a frigid, mean spirited woman! "He retaliated by yelling, "Oh yeah? Well so does Hillary Clinton!"

"And, there we were, standing in the middle of the road, shaking hands, when a truck hit us."

"Bin Laden" Surfaces

Allegedly Osama Bin Laden has allegedly made another blustering audiotape that allegedly was sent to al-Jazeera which broadcast the portions it considered "newsworthy."

Maybe this means that he's still alive. Maybe it means that al Qaeda has an inexhaustible supply of OBL impersonators. Maybe it means he recorded a big pile of tapes before he croaked. And maybe it means that we got Ayman al-Zawahri last Friday after all.

Whatever the truth is, there is one aspect of it that is telling to me:

On January 19, 2006, Al-Jazeera TV broadcast excerpts from a new audiocassette by Osama bin Laden, in which the Al-Qaeda leader threatens further attacks on the U.S., "immediately with the completion of the preparations.”

At the same time, bin Laden makes a plea to accept and uphold a long term truce under fair conditions [if America offers it to him], which will provide security and stability to both sides and will make it possible to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are a nation forbidden by Allah to betray and lie," promises bin Laden.

Contrary to mistranslations in the media, from Al-Jazeera for example,(1) bin Laden did not offer a truce, but made a plea to genuinely uphold one if America offers it to him. [emphasis added]

Would al-Qaeda be begging for a truce if they thought they had the upper hand on us in the GWOT? And notice that "bin Laden" didn't offer one, because AQ knows damn well that we wouldn't accept it, and that offering one would make them look weak, a huge no-no in Islamic culture. Finally, consider the timing of this audio tape coming less than a week after the Damadola Predator strike that wiped out five more members of the AQ palace guard, including their top WMD expert.

Now could they be "finishing preparations" for another attack here? Well, sure; but isn't that pretty much a given? How is that "newsworthy"? Were there any high-profile OBL audio or video tapes heralding the 9/11 attacks? I don't recall any.

People who can "walk the talk" generally don't make a practice of talking a whole lot. This audiotape suggests to me that after al Qaeda's latest setback, "talking" is pretty much all they've got left.

[HT: the Corner]

HS Endorses John Shadegg

Yeah, that's right, our support is going to put the Arizona Republican over the top for the honor of succeeding Tom "the Hammer" DeLay as House Majority Leader. You read it here first....

Well, heck, he made a real good case in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. And he is free, by all accounts, of any Abramoff stink.

A Majority Leader Shadegg would be the icing on a cake that is already looking better than the perpetually skewed "conventional wisdom" suggests:

So how is the lobbying scandal that’s obsessing the nation’s capital playing in Peoria? It’s barely on the radar screen.

In early January, the Pew Research Center updated its news interest index. Washington, D.C., stories weren’t generating as much interest as other stories were. Forty-seven percent said they were following very closely news stories about the deaths of miners in West Virginia, and 40% said so about news from Iraq.

But among Washington-based news stories, the highest attention being paid was the 32% who were following the wiretaps authorized by President Bush. Just 18% were following stories about former lobbyist Jack Abramoff bribing Members of Congress, and 14% said they were tracking the Judge Samuel Alito Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Digging further on the Congressional ethics scandal, 81% of respondents to the poll said recent reports of lobbyists bribing Members were examples of common behavior in Congress. Just 11% said they were isolated incidents. Perhaps the belief that this kind of behavior is common may explain why 34% in the news interest index question said they weren’t following the stories about Abramoff at all.

Ah, the instinctive wisdom of the American people. They figure this is a bipartisan scandal that is the function not of any "culture of corruption" (imagine the fanatical defenders of Bill Clinton making such a charge) but of the sheer size and unconstitutionally arrogated power of the federal government. And whaddaya know, that's exactly what it, in fact, is.

In fact, I'll do RCP's John McIntyre a favor and raise his estimated Republican losses of 5-7 House seats and 2-3 Senate seats to a true "status quo" election next November: no House losses and a net 1-seat pickup in the Senate (GOP gains Mark Kennedy in Minnesota, Tom Kean in New Jersey, and Michael Steele in Maryland, loses Rick Santorum and Linc Chaffee). If Chaffee pulls a Specter, you can (sort of) make it a two-seat gain.

And then, picture a Shadegg-John Kyl leadership duo. Under that regime, Republicans might actually be able to run the country, and shrink its government at the same time.

A Deadly Tradeoff

Is Captain Chirps swapping reduced lethality for greater communicability?

Remember the particulars of the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic:

Estimates vary from 20 to 50 million deaths, but most searchers agree on a total number of victims of about 30 million. This was a far larger death toll than the 11 million deaths caused by the war. Beyond Europe, this epidemic caused a hecatomb. In India there were 21 million patients of which 6 million died, in Japan 246,000 deaths, in Canada 43,000 deaths, in Great Britain 250,000 deaths, and in the United States there were 550,000 deaths. Of a world population of 1.9 billion inhabitants, 950 million people were sickened.

If H5N1 avian influenza were "only" as virulent as its Spanish cousin, multiply all those figures by a factor of three. Then assume that its lethality rate drops from 52% (not a statistically credible percentage because the sample population is far too small) to, say, 10%. Take your product from above and multiply it by three again. Now we arrive at around 300 million deaths worldwide, and five million fatalities in the United States.

Yes, I know, a lot of scoffers are calling Captain Chirps another SARS or Legionnaire's Disease. Our society has become so crisis-happy that the public stopped listening to the ubiquitous chicken littles a long time ago, and not without good reason.

But remember the end of the story of the boy who cried wolf. What if, just suppose, that the wolf has taken the form of a chicken? Isn't it better to be as prepared as possible?

Better, in this case, to be a live worrywart than a dead skeptic, it seems to me.

"The End of the Digital Age & The Start of the Dark Age"

The blogospheric chatter on Iran and its looming nuclear weapons capability is rising to a high-rolling boil of late.

NRO:

President Bush has said repeatedly that the United States will accept no such thing. We take him at his word. For Iran — the world’s most incorrigible state sponsor of Islamic terrorism — to acquire nuclear weapons not only would increase the mullah’s nefarious sway in the region, but would also expose America and her allies to a potentially mortal danger. Iran quite simply must be stopped. That Europe appears to have moved toward this conclusion is cause for limited optimism. But it should in no way attenuate the sense of urgency we feel — or our will to act.

Anne Bayefsky reports that far from helping to retard the mullahgarchy's drive for nukes, "top U.N. officials responsible for nuclear nonproliferation are in the business of facilitating Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons." This should settle any question of referring Tehran to the UN Security Council for sanctions that will never happen and would only harm the Iranian people if they did. Heck, our twelve-year experience with Saddam Hussein next door should have settled that a long time ago.

While Charles Krauthammer eviscerates the EUnuchs for their fantasist unwillingness to take steps against Iran that could actually slow down their nuclear development precisely because of their utter risk aversity, a left-wing pointy-head actually said this:

But at a minimum the West is counting on a political and diplomatic embarrassment for Tehran, which this month removed U.N. inspection seals on uranium enrichment equipment, deepening suspicions it is seeking nuclear arms.

Otherwise Tehran would not be fighting a referral, diplomats and other experts say.

"Iranians are very proud and don't want to become a pariah state like North Korea," said Edward Luck, a Columbia University professor specializing in U.N. affairs. "I think they would find it very unattractive."

Shame as a WMD. Peer pressure to bring to heel a regime that has no peers this side of Nazi Germany, that insists the Holocaust never happened yet wants to pick it up where Hitler left off, and believes that the Shia Muslim messiah will come if an apocalypse is unleashed. Yeah, let's try that. It's bound to work.

Where such idiocy leaves us is the contemplation of two scenarios: what must happen, and what will happen.

TKS' Jim Geraghty summed it up well:

So, what’s the best-case scenario – that Iranians who don’t buy into Ahmadinejad’s Mahdi prophecies (in other words, those with a survival instinct) remove him from power? For that to happen, they would have to see the pain of internal strife associated with a coup to be less than the pain of going along with Ahmadinejad and hoping for the best. We’re not there yet....

If we stand at an intractable point, that the Iranians will not be deterred from obtaining nuclear weapons, that they have every intention of using them on Israel, and a terrible war is inevitable… is it in our best interest to start that terrible war on our terms?

It’s tough to even write those words.

But we may be looking at the nightmare scenario – Ahmadinejad may not merely be saber-rattling. He has given every indication that he wants not merely to possess a nuclear weapon, but to use it on Israel - and who’s to say he would stop after fulfilling his dream of wiping the Jewish state off the map?

So what’s worse – a messy war, with inevitable bloodshed and likely terrorist responses by Iranian agents, or a nuclear blast over Tel Aviv or Haifa?

Or an EMP attack on our own homeland?

It's a bad choice versus a worse choice - the choice that "diplomacy" always leaves us. Which means there is no choice.

Will George Bush make it or duck it? The answer will determine whether or not the bumpy ride that's coming will be our last.

UPDATE 1/20: The "what must happen vs. what will happen" meme continues today at Winds of Change. Both are must-reads. Don't miss them.

Get The Point

11 But when (A) Cephas came to (B) Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

12 For prior to the coming of certain men from (C) James, he used to (D) eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, (E) fearing the party of the circumcision.

13 The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even (F) Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

14 But when I saw that they (G) were not straightforward about (H) the truth of the gospel, I said to (I) Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, (J) live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

15 "We are (K) Jews by nature and not (L) sinners from among the Gentiles; 16 nevertheless knowing that (M) a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by (N) faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since (O) by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.

17 "But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found (P) sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? (Q) May it never be!

18 "For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I (R) prove myself to be a transgressor.

19 "For through the Law I (S) died to the Law, so that I might live to God.

20 "I have been (T) crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but (U) Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in (V) the Son of God, who (W) loved me and (X) gave Himself up for me.

21 "I do not nullify the grace of God, for (Y) if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly."

-Galatians 2:11-21

Donkeys & Sharks

Here is another sign that the contemporary Democrat party has jumped the shark:

Normally I'm not a big fan of Jon Stewart, but I left the Daily Show on tonight while I worked on a couple of other tasks. Stewart reviewed the pandering done by Hillary Clinton and Ray Nagin yesterday, as well as the shoutdown Nancy Pelosi received on Saturday when she (rationally) suggested to her constituency that their concerns on the war would best be addressed electorally in 2006 during a visit to San Francisco.

At the end of the segment, titled "Donkey Show", Stewart noted this:

So the Democratic platform appears to be ... Democrats are our government's slaves [Hillary added to graphic] ... New Orleans can't be rebuilt without Willy Wonka [Nagin added to graphic] ... and voting is for pussies [Pelosi added to graphic].

Good luck in 2006, everybody!

When a generally Bushophobic dick like Jon Stewart starts lampooning the DisLoyal Opposition, you can safely conclude that the proverbial trap door is opening.

And here's one Donk whose neck is far from the noose:

I have decided to vote in favor of Judge Samuel Alito to serve as the 110th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. I came to this decision after careful consideration of his impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association's strong recommendation and his pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the Court.

"I" in this case is Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who is facing re-election in his scarlet "red" state in November and doesn't need any extra reminders of what party he belongs to like a vote against Judge Alito, or support for a suicidal filibuster, would bring.

Quite a contrast, isn't it? Maybe he can still be persuaded to turn from the Dark Side. At the rate his party is deteriorating, there may ultimately be no place else for genuinely centrist Democrats to go.

Flaunt the Sin, Expose the Contrition

Looky what Uncle Teddy is saying now [HT: Double-H]:

U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women "as fast as I can."

Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership.

In an interview with WHDH Channel 7's Andy Hiller that aired last night, Kennedy said, "I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club, which was basically a fraternal organization."

Asked by Hiller whether he is still a member, Kennedy said, "I'm not a member; I continue to pay about $100."

He then said of being a member in a club that discriminates against women, "I shouldn't be and I'm going to get out of it as fast as I can."

The Harvard Crimson reports that, in 1984, the university severed ties with clubs like the Owl, citing a federal law championed by Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Kennedy admitted to Hiller that he himself probably couldn't pass Judiciary Committee muster. "Probably not . . . probably not," Kennedy said.

I just love the new media. But even the Extreme Media has its occasional charms (via LevinBlog):

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

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

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

Translation: "Oh, bleep, borking doesn't work anymore, what the hell are we gonna do now?!?"

This is where I would ordinarly say something pithy like "Physician, heal thyself," except that inebriation and even the metaphorical practice of medicine are not things that should ever be mixed....

Damadola Strike Not A Total Washout

The U.S. Predator airstrike against an al Qaeda safehouse in western Pakistan last Friday appears not to have bagged the terror group's acting head, Ayman al-Zawahri, but it was not completely unsuccessful:

At least four foreign terrorists died in the U.S. airstrike purportedly aimed at al-Qaeda's #2 leader, the provincial government said Tuesday.

Pakistani intelligence officials have said Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, had been invited to a dinner in the targeted village of Damadola to mark an Islamic holiday but did not show up and sent some aides instead.

"Four or five foreign terrorists have been killed in this missile attack whose dead bodies have been taken away by their companions to hide the real reason of the attack," the statement said, citing the chief official in the Bajur region where Damadola is located.

"It is regrettable that 18 local people lost their lives in the attack, but this fact also cannot be denied, that 10-12 foreign extremists had been invited on a dinner," it said.

Interesting that the provincial government made this announcement after Pakistani "senior intelligence officials" spent all weekend condemning and ridiculing the attack. It seems to be yet another instance of George Bush's enemies, both foreign and domestic, leaping to conclusions before all the facts are gathered.

Even if we didn't get Zawahiri, the fact that this strike was based on "humint" has to give the suriviving jihadis pause as to what extent their network has been penetrated. Anything that slows them down, to say nothing of killing them, is a very good thing indeed.

UPDATE 1/19: Looks like some of the "fish" we fileted were heap big ones after all.

Is He Out Of His Mind?

Behold the subheadline to this Christian Science Monitor article:

To shore up political capital, Bush reaches out to Democrats; but critics insist that recent bipartisan consultations on the Iraq war are for show. [link added]

Looking for political capital by reaching out to your avowed enemies is like looking for peace in Afghan caves. What's next for the "New Tone"-addled Dubya? Convening a summit meeting with Osama bin Laden and/or Ayman al-Zawahri? When will this man learn that any remote hope of genuine "bipartisan consensus" on anything died in the Florida 2K insurrection?

Apparently, never.

A Turn For The Worse

A year ago Cap'n Ed's wife, the First Mate, needed and miraculously received a pancreas transplant. But recently, due to a viral infection, she now finds herself in need of a new kidney as well.

She can survive on her current anti-viral medication regimen and, if need be, a resumption of dialysis, but with the average wait for a transplant being four to five years, well, that's a miserable proposition to contemplate. Frankly, I don't know how Ed manages to keep blogging. In his place I'd be too distracted to write anything. Guess that says something for his inner strength, and hers as well.

Hold them both in your prayers, that another miracle will soon descend from the Great Healer above.

Loving the Unloveable

1 He (A) entered Jericho and was passing through.

2 And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich.

3 Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature.

4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a (B) sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.

5 When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, "Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house."

6 And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly.

7 When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, "He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner."

8 Zaccheus stopped and said to (C) the LORD, "Behold, LORD, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have (D) defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back (E) four times as much."

9 And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is (F) a son of Abraham.

10 "For (G) the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."

-Luke 19:1-10

"Is She Out Of Her Mind?"

If there was any Democrat who I thought would be immune to the lure of the neoBolshevik fever swamps - at least in the sense of public identification with them - it would be Hillary Clinton. This is supposed to be the "smartest woman in the world," a supreme political tactician who watched her husband cloak himself in the illusion of centrism so effectively that he was able to run an ongoing, organized criminal enterprise from within the White House itself for nearly a decade without breaking a sweat or ever coming close to getting caught (Monica Lewinsky not withstanding). He was the ultimate Gingerbread Man, and you would think she would have been taking notes.

Amazingly, she appears to be ignoring those lessons, chief among them the imperative of getting elected first. After flirting with triangulation off and on last year, Mrs. Clinton has charted a course at maximum warp toward the looniest quadrant of the loony left, on the likely assumption that, in the new media era of blogs and talk radio, she can do so without the electorate remembering or even noticing.

Just last week the thick-legged New York senator hung indiscretely with extreme left-wing Chavista Harry Belefonte. Now, over the weekend, she not only publicly embraced Black Klansman Al Sharpton, but actually said this (h/t RCP):

When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I'm talking about...

In once sentence Hillary manages to be incoherent and vituperative at the same time. Logic would seem to assert that Democrats are "slaves" because they're in the indefinite minority in both houses of Congress. Which is, of course, nobody's fault but their own for their inability to win elections. And that inability stems from repulsive rhetoric like the aforequoted.

But given that Mrs. Clinton was addressing a black audience at a Martin Luther King day event, it was obviously also intended to both stir up the same old racial animosities that, of course, Dr. King sought to ameliorate and reconcile, and exploit them by purporting to identify with the supposed "enslavement" of black Americans at the hands of GOP "plantation owners." As such it was the worst sort of pandering, an astonishingly patronizing and insulting load of twaddle that ought to have outraged every African-American listener for what it reveals about Hillary's low opinion of their collective intelligence.

It is also a double-extended middle finger to Republicans as well, as New York Representative Peter King was quick to point out:

House Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King accused Senator Hillary Clinton on Monday of playing "cheap racial politics" when she said at a Martin Luther King Day tribute that the GOP-controlled House of Representatives was run like a "plantation."

"It's wrong to use the word 'plantation' in any political context because it's cheap racial politics," Representative King told WMAL Washington, D.C. radio host Steve Malzberg. "But to do it on Martin Luther King Day is really disgraceful."

King said the former first lady was clearly trying to paint the GOP as "slaveowners." "It's a cheap way to throw race in and to somehow call Republicans racist and then be able to duck it later on if people call her on it," he told Malzberg.

The New York Republican accused Mrs. Clinton of trivializing the King Day commemoration, saying, "there are certain things that go beyond the pale and you know they're wrong and it speaks for itself and this is one of those cases."

Evidently Mrs. Clinton didn't think it went beyond the pale. Or that she would get caught saying such a contemptible thing.

Then, as though this gaffe had triggered a karma storm, ol' Rev'rund Al jumped into the fray in characteristically double-footed fashion and mounted a full-throated defense of the Queen of Mean:

Radical firebrand Rev. Al Sharpton is defending Senator Hillary Clinton after she blasted GOP leaders on Capitol Hill for playing what she called "plantation" politics, with Sharpton saying he's happy to see that the former first lady is adopting his views.

"I absolutely defend her saying it because I said it all through the '04 elections," Sharpton told the New York Daily News on Tuesday.

The undisputed king of New York City racial politics praised Clinton for calling it like she sees it.

"Any time you have a situation where, because of seniority and cloakroom politics, the bosses make the decisions - that's tatamount to [a] plantation," he insisted. [emphasis added]

I know that it's a year until the 2008 election cycle begins, and two until the first primary contests. And it's true that that much time is an eternity in politics. But is this really the sort of sound byte that Hillary wants floating around to be harvested and stored away by the RNC? Al Sharpton crowing that she has "adopted his [racist] views"? Praising Belefonte for his virulent and poisonous anti-Americanism? How can even so supposedly skillful a pol as she triangulate against herself and still sell it in enough "red" states to "go where no woman has gone before" outside of the fiction of ABC television?

Rest assured she is a Clinton, and things like this, that would destroy any other Dem, don't usually affect them. But the caveat was and is that that imperviousness develops after the election is won, not before.

Maybe she'll tack back from the edge of the Sorosian/Mooreonic/Kos-hackian abyss, but even going that close at all is an indication either of the accelerating deterioration of her party's national viability, or her own burgeoning overratedness as a national candidate.

UPDATE 1/18: Michael Goodwin's prognosis: panic and confusion....

UPDATE 1/19: Looks like Barack Obama is playing the role of loyal veep already....

UPDATE III: When Laura Bush starts firing broadsides, you know you've stepped in the proverbial deep doo-doo.

More Ignorant Torture Slander

Here is an excerpt that needs no elaboration or analysis:

Yesterday Chris Matthews interviewed Tony Lagouranis, a former U.S. army interrogator in Iraq. Lagouranis has been making the rounds on all the left-wing media outlets peddling his story of the U.S. military as out of control torturers.

In the interview, Lagouranis smears the 24th Marines and its commanding officer, Colonel Ron Johnson, saying the Marines were “consistently” punching, kicking, and breaking subdued prisoners’ bones. He goes on to say he knows this to be true from talking with the prisoners and from his own observations, though he concedes “I never saw this.” [emphasis added]

And we all know how scrupulously honest our bloodthirsty Islamist enemies are, don't we?

Has Lagouranis signed his deal as al Jazeera's U.S. correspendent yet? Must be only a matter of time....

What the N.Y. Times Hath Wrought

Anybody think this is a coincidence?:

Federal agents have launched an investigation into a surge in the purchase of large quantities of disposable cell phones by individuals from the Middle East and Pakistan, ABC News has learned.

The phones — which do not require purchasers to sign a contract or have a credit card — have many legitimate uses, and are popular with people who have bad credit or for use as emergency phones tucked away in glove compartments or tackle boxes. But since they can be difficult or impossible to track, law enforcement officials say the phones are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists.

“There’s very little audit trail assigned to this phone. One can walk in, purchase it in cash, you don’t have to put down a credit card, buy any amount of minutes to it, and you don’t, frankly, know who bought this,” said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI official who is now an ABC News consultant.…

The FBI is closely monitoring the potentially dangerous development, which came to light following recent large-quantity purchases in California and Texas, officials confirmed.

In one New Year’s Eve transaction at a Target store in Hemet, California, 150 disposable tracfones were purchased. Suspicious store employees notified police, who called in the FBI, law enforcement sources said.

In an earlier incident, at a Wal-mart store in Midland, Texas, on December 18, six individuals attempted to buy about 60 of the phones until store clerks became suspicious and notified the police. A Wal-mart spokesperson confirmed the incident.

All those who think that the Risen piece on the NSA foreign intelligence surveillance program had nothing whatsoever to do with what Virginia Senator George Allen called "adjustments in communications" by our enemies, stand on your head - while it's still attached to your body, that is.

But boy, the Times sure did stick it to Bush though...wait...{Bob Newhart on the phone impression begins} what? Pardon me, can you repeat...yes...yes...oh, you say the President hasn't been damaged by the leak about the NSA's eavesdropping? Americans support him on that by better than two to one? Oh {snicker}...No, no, I didn't {snerk} know that. Boy, I'll have to dig out my drinking glass and put it against the hotel room more often, huh?

If it'll help contain the damage the turncoat Times has caused, you're damn right.

[HT: AJ Strata]

The Slope Gets Slipperier

They said that Roe v. Wade would not lead to abortion on demand - they were wrong. They said that no-fault divorce wouldn't lead to higher divorce rates, rampant "co-habitation" outside of marriage, and illegitimacy - they were wrong. They said that rampant "co-habitation" wouldn't lead to legal recognition of homosexual "marriage" - they were wrong.

Yeah, that's former Senator Zell Miller's rhetorical gimmick. Hope he doesn't mind my borrowing it. But never let it be said that I don't borrow from the best.

Now, then, it is true that sodomarriage hasn't yet been widely established here in America, but it has north of the border. Logically you would predict that the next step would be a movement to extend legal recognition to bigamists and polygamists, right? "Don't be ridiculous," they say, "that will never happen."

Wanna bet?

A new study for the federal Justice Department says Canada should get rid of its law banning polygamy, and change other legislation to help women and children living in such multiple-spouse relationships.

“Criminalization does not address the harms associated with valid foreign polygamous marriages and plural unions, in particular the harms to women,” says the report, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. “The report therefore recommends that this provision be repealed.”...

Canadian laws should be changed to better accommodate the problems of women in polygamous marriages, providing them clearer spousal support and inheritance rights.

It was, to use a word that makes "them" cringe, inevitable. Just look at the arguments Canadian polygamist "activists" use, and see if they don't sound eerily familiar:

Already, Canadian polygamist activists have taken up the same arguments as gay-marriage advocates did. “Why criminalize the behaviour?” [the study's lead author] said in an interview. “We don't criminalize adultery. In light of the fact that we have a fairly permissive society ... why are we singling out that particular form of behaviour for criminalization?”

This ought also highlight the flaw in "socially moderate" arguments like that advanced by the Cap'n:

It would seem that the most prudent option would be the use of domestic partnerships using contract law instead of redefining marriage for the whole of society just to satisfy a fringe element. At least the contracts then govern the outcomes of the failed partnerships, and we don't have to chuck out two millenia of Western culture as our touchstone for human progress.

Perhaps that could work if "paleolibertarians" ("pagans" or "heathen" for short) were reasonable people truly interested in merely carving out their own legal niche and otherwise wanting to be left alone. But "chucking out two [it's actually five, and yes, I'm counting] millenia of Western culture" is precisely what these people want. They seek through political agitation, lawsuits, and civil disobedience an end not dissimilar from what Islamist terrorist networks like al Qaeda pursue via assymetrical warfare, and terrorist regimes like Iran's chase via the acquisition of nuclear weapons: the annihilation of Western culture and its replacement by their own "touchstones for human progress," even though those touchstones spell unequivocal disaster for that purported end.

It is little wonder that our LORD referred to our time as being "like the days of Noah," where, like then, "the wickedness of man was great on Earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." The true wonder will be not even whether we can reascend the slope down which we've slipped so far already, but if we can resist sliding the rest of the way toward the civilizational abyss, and the new dark age that lies beyond.

They Know Not What They Do

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. "

-II Timothy 4:3-4

Kinda makes one look at the Olivet Discourse with a bit more alacrity, doesn't it?

Doing Justice

1 "(A) You shall not bear a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a (B) malicious witness.

2 "You shall not follow the masses in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after a multitude in order to (C) pervert justice; 3 (D) nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his dispute.

4 "(E) If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him.

5 "(F) If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him.

6 "(G) You shall not pervert the justice due to your needy brother in his dispute.

7 "(H) Keep far from a false charge, and (I) do not kill the innocent or the righteous, for (J) I will not acquit the guilty.

8 "(K) You shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of the just.

9 "(L) You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.

-Exodus 23:1-9

Bolton Blasts UN Anti-Semitism

John Bolton just never stops providing vindicatory reasons for why President Bush's appointment of him as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations was such a damn good idea:

American ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has sent a sharply worded letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, threatening to cut U.S. funding to the U.N. if the world body continues to promote anti-Israel events.

Bolton's January 3 letter came in response to an event at the U.N. celebrating the annual "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People." At the event, which was attended by Annan and other top diplomats, speakers stood before a map of the Middle East that did not show the state of Israel.

"Given that we now have a world leader pursuing nuclear weapons who is calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map, the issue has even greater salience," Mr. Bolton wrote, referring to Iranian President Mamoud Ahmadinejad’s statement to that effect in October....

"Who is the high-level official within the secretariat who approved use of the map for the event? Does the United Nations intend to use the map in future U.N.-sponsored functions and events?

"In light of prohibition under U.S. law to fund events such as this one, do you consider it appropriate for the United Nations to advertise and promote the event on its general Web site and other venues, which do in fact benefit from U.S. funds?"

The threat to cut U.S. support for U.N. general advertising budgets "is a matter of serious concern to Mr. Annan's aides, who have been under intense pressure to reform the United Nations in the wake of last year's scandals,” according to the [New York] Sun.

I don't think Ambassador Bolton's letter was "sharply worded" at all. It's straight-talking common sense. The original raison d'etere of the U.N. was collective global security by providing an alternative means of settling international disputes. Outlaw aggressor regimes like the mullahgarchy in Iran - or thuggish quasi-regimes like the so-called "Palestinian Authority" - should, like North Korea was in 1950, be the target of collective international sanctions or military action as a threat to both global security and the survival of a member UN state. Not indulged, coddled, and in the case of "the Division for Palestinian Rights," subsidized to the tune of nearly $5.5 million.

John Bolton's ostensible mission at Turtle Bay is to haul the "world body" back toward its founding ideals. What I believe he will ultimately accomplish is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt why the United States and any other democracy worthy of that classificiation should jettison and defund the UN as the ongoing international criminal conspiracy it's been for a generation and remains to this day.

Oh, yes, and let's make sure that Democrat senators have to explain again and again why they were so adamantly opposed to a straight-talking Ambassador to the UN. Let them defend its open and enthusiastic embrace of another Holocaust, and Mr. Bolton's calling Kofi on it, or get on with confirming his appointment to ensure an additional two years of one sane voice in the gangster fugue.

The New York Al-Jazeera Strikes Again

Hugh Hewitt calls "unbelievable" this New York Times photo purporting to show an unexploded U.S. hellfire air-to-ground missile after last Friday's strike against an al Qaeda safehouse in Pakistan, but which is clearly an old Soviet artillery shell used as a crude prop, along with the sad-looking little boy, to make the United States, which is to say George Bush, look bad.

Now what could possibly be "unbelievable" about that?

The POST Gets It Right

Hard to believe this was part of the Washington Post's editorial urging the confirmation of Samuel Alito, but it was:

"A Supreme Court nomination isn't a forum to refight a presidential election. The President's choice is due deference — the same deference that Democratic senators would expect a Republican Senate to accord the well-qualified nominee of a Democratic president."

Exactly right.

Saddam's Replacement in the Axis of Evil

Let's put this in the form of a rhetorical question:

Hugo Chavez, Castroite dictator of Venezuela, is an arch-enemy of the United States; the "Islamic Republic" of Iran is an arch-enemy of the United States, helmed by a Hitlerian maniac whose flaming anti-semitism HC emulates, on a crash course for nuclear weapons, and has become as close an ally of Chavez as Fidel Castro.

Is there any doubt whatsoever that once the mullahs have nukes, they'll share - or, in line with their "business" relationship, sell - nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Chavez?

Can anybody still wonder why Michael Ledeen keeps cawing, "Faster, please" like a parrot with a nervous tic?

Making The Going A Little Less Tough

Who knew that "Madris Gras" meant, "Don't sweat holding it" in French? Ken Ortmann, that's who:

Ken Ortmann, an alderman who owns a local [St. Louis] tavern wants to lower the penalties for public urination before the February 25 Mardi Gras Parade.

Aha! He has a conflict of interest! Did Jack Abramoff represent that Public Urination Lobby (PUL) as well? Quick, call the Justice Department!

Ortmann said his bill would allow police to issue different citations for public urinators who try to be discreet than they might for those who are more open about it.

"There's a difference between going in the middle of the street, in front of God and country, and somebody who is behind a Dumpster," Ortmann said.

Not according to local residents, some of whom turn on their sprinkers to avoid having their lawns "moistened" the other way.

You could even say that they're getting all pissy about the Ortmann bill. But rest assured I certainly won't....

Patrick Henry In A Red Dress

Ann Coulter has a great column up regarding the Alito hearings and the Democrats' fecklessness:

With all their hysteria about Valerie Plame, I had nearly forgotten what the Democratic Party stands for. It's good to be reminded that the sole item on the Democrats' agenda is abortion.

According to Dianne Feinstein, Roe v. Wade is critically important because "women all over America have come to depend on it." At its most majestic, this precious right that women "have come to depend on" is the right to have sex with men they don't want to have children with.

That last line is one of the best summaries I've ever seen regarding the abortion issue and its chokehold on the Democratic Party. They are fighting for the right for women to "have sex with men they don't want to have children with." Pretty good description, don't you think?

There's a stirring principle! Leave aside the part of this precious constitutional right that involves (1) not allowing Americans to vote on the matter, and (2) suctioning brains out of half-born babies. The right to have sex with men you don't want to have children with is not exactly "Give me liberty, or give me death."

Indeed, to normal people it is not. To the Democrats, though, whose very existence depends on the money they can raise from their kook fringe, this "right" of women is more important than those quaint old words, "Give me liberty, or give me death."

In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today's Democrats. It's as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc.

Another perfect description. Here's some interesting history for you:

The Federalists drafted the greatest political philosophy ever written by man and created the first constitutional republic. The anti-Federalists – or "pre-Democrats, as I call them – were formed to oppose the Constitution, which, to a great extent, remains their position today.

It certainly seems to be their position today. What they can't get at the ballot box "from the people," they'll get in the courts. This is, of course, the source of their hysteria nowadays. They're about to lose their last bastion of power, the judicial system. They certainly aren't going to give THAT up without a fight, no matter how ugly and distorted they have to make that fight.

DUmmies

I admit it. I, too, have waded into the cesspool that is the Democratic Underground (via DUmmie FUnnies/Free Republic) and read some of the psychotic ranting going on there vis-a-vis the Alito nomination, Mrs. Alito's tears, etc. Other than their juvenile huffing and puffing and apparent inability to construct a sentence without profanity, the main thing is their blatant HYPOCRISY. As Jim mentioned, they talk about Mrs. Alito as a "Stepford wife" who has never wanted for anything, while they shamelessly defend John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, and Ted Kennedy, among others, men who have never worked a day in the real world in their lives. They have the audacity to call Samuel Alito a liar...these people who defended and still defend Bill Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the professional liars in the Democratic Party. Why, even now, Reid and Leahy are talking about going back on their agreement they made with Senator Specter about having the committee vote on Alito on Tuesday. Now, this is no surprise to you and I, but do you think the inmates of the kook fringe of the Democratic Party will EVER get a clue? Rhetorical question, of course. We know the answer.

No Grudges After Sunset

1 (A) Answer me when (B) I call, O God of my righteousness! You have (C) relieved me in my distress; be (D) gracious to me and (E) hear my prayer.

2 O sons of men, how long will (F) my honor become (G) a reproach? How long will you love (H) what is worthless and aim at (I) deception?

3 But know that the LORD has (J) set apart the (K) godly man for Himself; the LORD (L) hears when I call to Him.

4 (M) Tremble, (N) and do not sin; (O) Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still.

5 Offer the (P) sacrifices of righteousness, and (Q) trust in the LORD.

-Psalm 4:1-5

The Democrats "Whig" Out: Epilogue

Again, in no particular order....

~ ~ ~

The Donk grassroots reacted to Mrs. Alito's emotional distress at the verbal gang beating of her husband as you might have expected:

Speaking of endless smears, reader David A. points to the Daily Kos miscreants accusing Mrs. Alito of "staging" her tears.

But of course - because that's something they would have done. A psychological projection as loathsome as ever.

And equally as profane:

Says one commenter: "She should go fuck herself."

Here's some more projection:

Says another: "I'm GLAD she was reduced to tears. These hyper-pampered Stepford wives have never endured anything more stressful than making it to Saks Fifth Avenue before it closes. If seeing her poor widdle hubby getting caught in an avalanche of lies about his not-exactly-concealed racism triggers the weeping-willow response, I'd venture to say Martha needs to get out a little more. Maybe visit a black neighborhood or two and get acquainted with a few strong women who DON'T burst into tears while DAILY dealing with hardships that Martha's fragile, feeble mind could not even conceive of. What a phony, fraudulent, sheltered twit."

And maybe Mrs. Alito should have gotten enraged instead, charged the podium, and throttled Ted Kennedy until his eyeballs turned inside out. Sure would have been satisfying to witness. But what did happen was so much more effective in exposing him and his other seven colleagues for the disgusting pricks they are.

Still, you have to love the "Stepford wives" crack for its stratospheric irony. John Podhoretz appreciated the real contrast:

A Kennedy who has never known a moment's worry about money is now grilling a lifelong middle-class public servant with no family fortune from New Jersey about the public servant's mutual fund - which, if memory serves, was and is the world's most popular mutual fund, currently serving more than 18 million investors. Teddy Kennedy, by contrast, is showered with money from his family trust. Have you no shame, Senator, at long last?

If the Massachusetts Manatee had any shame, his surname wouldn't be "Kennedy".

Another delightful contrast was the testimony of a sizeable group of witnesses who testified on Judge Alito's behalf: his fellow Third Circuit appellate court judges, including the ones the Dems cited as disagreeing with some of his written opinions:

It was powerful stuff. First, this group is extremely well situated to know what kind of Justice the nominee would be. The Senate Dems never tired of pointing to cases where other Third Circuit judges had disagreed with Alito's opinions. But if his colleagues nonetheless hold him in high regard, the fact that they sometimes disagree with him is irrelevant. Second, some of the judges who testified were female or African-American. The Dems had tried to paint Alito as anti-black and anti-female, or at least as unsympathetic to members of these groups. Judges Lewis and Barry helped refute that notion.

And brother, did they ever:

One of the witnesses is Judge Timothy Lewis, an African-American, "pro-choice" judge appointed by President Clinton. Judge Lewis testified about Judge Alito's “intellectual honesty,” stating “I cannot recall one instance when Judge Alito displayed anything remotely approaching an ideological bent.” Senator Coburn asked Judge Lewis and his colleague Judge Marianne Trump Barry (also a Clinton appointee) if they had ever seen anything that would lead them to believe Alito would be hostile to the rights of women or minorities. Both testified that they would not even be in this hearing room if they had.

But it was another Alito colleague, Judge Ruggeri Aldisert, gave Uncle Teddy particular reason to cringe:

When I first testified before this committee in 1968, I was seeking confirmation of my own nomination to the federal circuit court. I speak now as the I speak now as the most senior judge on the 3rd circuit.

And I begin my brief testimony with some personal background.

In May 1960, I campaigned with John F. Kennedy in the critical presidential primaries of West Virginia. The next year, I ran for judge, as was indicated, and I was on the Democratic ticket, and I served eight years as a state trial judge. And as the chairman indicated, Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania was my chief sponsor when President Lyndon Johnson nominated me to the Court of Appeals, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy from New York was one of my key supporters.

Now, why do I say this? I make this as a point that political loyalties become irrelevant when I became a judge. The same has been true in the case of Judge Alito, who served honorably in two Republican administrations before he was appointed to our court.

Judicial independence is simply incompatible with political loyalties, and Judge Alito's judicial record on our court bears witness to this fundamental truth.

I have been a judge for 45 of my 86 years. And based on my experience, I can represent to this committee that Judge Alito has to be included among the first rank of the 44 judges with whom I have served on the 3rd Circuit, and including another 50 judges on five other courts of appeals on which I have sat since taking senior status. [emphasis added]

I'm sure the official Senate wino would have been cringing too - if he or the remainder of his cowardly cohorts, with the exception of Dianne Feinstein, had remained in the hearing room to face Judge Aldisert and the rest of Judge Alito's bench colleagues. What a, well, "profile in courage."

Not that they didn't put their collective absence to diligently detestable use. Added Brother Meringoff:

Senators Leahy and Feingold went so far as to suggest that the Third Circuit judges were acting unethically by testifying. They argued that, since Alito might review their decisions as a Supreme Court Justice, the judges could be seen as currying favor through their testimony.

Whereas if even one of the Third Circuit judges had testified that Judge Alito molests little boys on alternate Tuesdays, that person would have been, as Brother Hinderaker observed, "a 'whistle blower.' A[nd] a 'whistle blower' is anyone who says something that Democrats want to hear."

Something the Democrats did not want to hear is that the Republicans are ready, willing, and eager to trigger the ban on confirmation filibusters should Harry Reid be so foolish as to "go nuclear":

Sources tell us that Senator Harry Reid is being heavily pressured by Senators Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy to do everything in his power to help them delay the final vote on Judge Alito to the Supreme Court into early February. Reid and Frist discussed such an option yesterday, or should we say that Reid mentioned the idea and Frist told him to go pound sand.

Senior Republican Senate aides expect that Reid will once again approach the GOP leadership with the same proposal today. We are told that Senator Frist before Christmas asked his senior staff to prepare for use of the "Constitutional Option" in the Alito vote. They are ready to go, have a war room prepared and we wouldn't be surprised if they have a big red button for Frist to push at the moment that he wants to launch his first salvo in the fight to put Alito on the bench.

One Judiciary Committee Donk is reading the handwriting on the wall from which Dirty Harry, Leaky, Chucky, and Uncle Teddy are petulantly averting their bloodshot eyes:

A Democrat who plans to vote against Samuel Alito sided on Sunday with a Republican colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee in cautioning against a filibuster of the Supreme Court nominee.

"I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA "This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."

She said she will not vote to confirm the appeals court judge, based on his conservative record. But she acknowledged that nothing emerged during last
week's hearings to justify any organized action by Democrats to stall the nomination.

"If there's a filibuster of this man based on his qualifications, there would be a huge backlash in this country," said Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC.

Even the Washington Post, which has been at the forefront of media attempts to destroy the Alito nomination with one vicious mendacity after another, pulled back from the "nuclear" brink this morning:

The Washington Post, in an editorial Sunday, said Alito is "undeniably a conservative" but that nominees should not be opposed on ideology alone.

"To go down that road is to believe that there exists a Democratic law and a Republican law _ which is repugnant to the ideal of the rule of law," the newspaper said. "While we harbor some anxiety about the direction he may push the court, we would be more alarmed at the long-term implications of denying him a seat."

Yeah - like losing the filibuster option for when Justice Stevens or Justice Ginsberg call it quits, or losing more senate seats next fall to where the Dems won't even have the numbers to mount filibusters anymore.

It's like I reasoned clear back last summer when Justice O'Connor announced her retirement: the worst that could happen for the Left is that the SCOTUS alignment of 4 oligarchists, 3 constitutionalists, and 2 "moderates" would become four, four, and one, and more than likely push Jusice Kennedy to make his turn to the Dark Side complete, preserving a 5-4 lib majority on the High Court.

Pulling the trigger on an unwinnable, unsustainable filibuster of Judge Alito would endanger that precarious balance more assuredly than anything else the Democrats could do. But it remains to be seen whether even the reason of clear-eyed self-interest still exists in that party, or if that last fraying strand of political sanity will snap for good.

UPDATE 1/16: The Los Angeles Times makes a visit to the reality-based community as well....(h/t CQ)

Seattle 20, Washington 10

The road to SuperBowl XL from the NFC will, indeed, go through Ecotopia....

What Makes God Laugh? (aside from Shirley McLaine)

1 Why are (A) the nations in an uproar and the peoples (B) devising a vain thing?

2 The (C) kings of Earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together (D) against the LORD and against His [a] (E) Anointed, saying, 3 "Let us (F) tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!"

4 He who [b] sits in the heavens (G) laughs, the LORD (H) scoffs at them.

5 Then He will speak to them in His (I) anger and (J) terrify them in His fury, saying, 6 "But as for Me, I have installed (K) My King upon Zion, (L) My holy mountain."

7 "I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, 'You are (M) My Son, today I have begotten You.

8 'Ask of Me, and (N) I will surely give (O) the nations as Your inheritance, and the very (P) ends of Earth as Your possession.

9 'You shall [c](Q) break them with a rod of iron, You shall (R) shatter them like earthenware.'"

10 Now therefore, O kings, (S) show discernment; take warning, O [d] judges of Earth.

11 Worship the LORD with (T) reverence and rejoice with (U) trembling.

12 Do homage to (V) the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for (W) His wrath may [e] soon be kindled - how blessed are all who (X) take refuge in Him!

-Psalm 2

Three Small Fry & Two Big Fish

It appears that the bullet in Senator Fife's pocket wasn't silver because he spent his off-duty time hunting werewolves:

A Justice Department investigation into influence-peddling on Capitol Hill is focusing on a "first tier" of lawmakers and staffers, both Republicans and Democrats, say sources close to the probe that has netted guilty pleas from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Law-enforcement authorities and others said the investigation's opening phase is scrutinizing Senators Conrad Burns, Montana Republican; Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat; and Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, along with Representatives J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican, and Bob Ney, Ohio Republican.

Logic suggests that these five were not selected at random, but represent the most egregious examples of Abramoff's influence-peddling and therefore the easiest cases to prove in court.

As you might esxpect, all five lawmakers say that they have not done anything illegal and that all their dealings with Abramoff and his clients were legitimate. The investigation will prove or disprove that in due course. What I find intriguing are the actions that each legislator is taking to back up the verbal protestations of innocence.

Senator Burns, Senator Dorgan, Congressman Hayworth, and Congressman Ney have all returned or donated to charity the Abramoff or Abramoff-related contributions they have received in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Public relations ass-covering? Sure. But it's still a prudent step to take, even if the contrition ends up being cynical.

But not Dirty Harry - he's not only keeping his Abramoff boodle, but is damn proud of it - and sounds in as much Deaniacal denial:

"These kinds of wild and baseless rumors smack of desperation and is simply a desperate attempt by Republicans to drag Democrats into a scandal they own lock, stock and barrel," [Reid spokesman Jim] Manley said....Mr. Reid has acknowledged receiving contributions from Abramoff's clients, but has said he does not intend to return the money because it represented legal donations. The sources said Mr. Reid is thought to have collected as much as $61,000 in donations from Abramoff clients, including Indian tribes. "Senator Reid has done nothing wrong, and he doesn't see any reason why he would need to return the money," spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said last week.

What's that old adage? "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Kinda dovetails with, "Pride goeth before a fall," if you ask me.

Pakistanis Covering Up Zawahiri's Death?

That's at least one possible explanation for their "senior intelligence official's" denial that the new al Qaeda kingpin was anywhere near Damadola village yesterday, where a U.S. Predator drone is thought to have sent him to his fiery reward:

A U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeted al Qaeda's number two, U.S. sources said, but Ayman al-Zawahri was away at the time, according to a senior Pakistani official on Saturday.

The strike on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed in a village near the Afghan border, residents said.

Pakistan condemned the airstrike and regretted the loss of civilian lives, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said, adding "we will not allow such an incident to reoccur."

Actually, there's not a whole lot the Pakistanis can do to prevent it. Our GWOT policy is that we're going to seek out, hunt down, and capture or eradicate the Islazis wherever they are, period. Certainly we will strive to limit collateral damage as much as possible - more difficult to do with unmanned aircraft to be sure - but given the stakes of a war of annihilation, with such an operation conceivably standing in the way of the dusting of a shopping mall, major bridge, sports stadium, or even an entire city, frankly, thems the breaks.

As with last night, what interests me is what lies between the lines of the Pakistanis' public statements. Either the attack got Zawahiri and the Pakistanis are disseminating disinformation to conceal the fact, or we didn't get him and some of their intel officials - who, after all, did establish the Taliban in next-door Afghanistan - leaked news of the attack, its tactical failure, and the civilian casualties to embarrass us. And there is a third possibility - that, whether or not we bagged bin Laden's former lieutenant, the Musharraf government, always treading a fine and narrow line with the more radicalized portion of its populace, is attempting to save face.

The forensic analysis is supposed to be completed tomorrow. Hopefully it will confirm that another jihadi bigwig has bitten the dust. But either way, the war will continue.

Amen

From the invitation to The Heritage Foundation's salute to the 25th anniversary of the inauguration of Ronald Reagan:

Ronald Reagan championed “a great new beginning” for America – one grounded upon our Founding Principles, unlimited by burdensome government, and sustained by the belief that, no matter how arduous or complex the challenge, America’s best days always lay ahead. When he was inaugurated the 40th President of the United States 25 years ago, few doubted his political beliefs and personal optimism. Many questioned his ability and depth. Yet, eight years later, his Presidency, that sought to change a nation, had changed a world. Join us as our guests reflect on this historic occasion and the revolution in American politics that can now be called “the Age of Reagan.”

Amen. What a great man.

The Greatest Honor

10 Then Esther spoke to Hathach and ordered him to reply to Mordecai: 11 "All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that for any man or woman who (A) comes to the king to the inner court who is not summoned, (B) he has but one law, that he be put to death, unless the king holds out (C) to him the golden scepter so that he may live. And I have not been summoned to come to the king for these thirty days."

12 They related Esther's words to Mordecai.

13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, "Do not imagine that you in the king's palace can escape any more than all the Jews.

14 "For if you remain silent at this time, relief and (D) deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?"

15Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16 "Go, assemble all the Jews who are found in Susa, and fast for me; (E) do not eat or drink for (F) three days, night or day. I and my maidens also will fast in the same way. And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish."

17 So Mordecai went away and did just as Esther had commanded him.

-Esther 4:10-17

Is Zawahiri Gettin' Jiggy Wit' bin Laden's Virgins?

According to some reliable reports, Osama bin Laden went home to Allah a month ago in a way not exactly befitting an Islamic warrior of his imagined calibre. Part of the grounds for this allegation's credibility is that OBL hasn't been seen or heard from for over a year, and his XO, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been the propaganda face of al Qaeda ever since.

If this story is correct, the alleged new al Qaeda chieftain may have learned too late the value of obscurity:

An airstrike in a remote Pakistani tribal area killed at least 17 people, and a senior Pakistani official said Saturday the target was a suspected al-Qaida hideout that may have been frequented by high-level operatives, possibly the #2 leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. networks reported that it was a CIA strike and that al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, could have been at a targeted compound in the Bajur area or about to arrive.

There was no confirmation from either the Pakistani or U.S. government, but a senior Pakistani government official told The Associated Press that "there is 50-50 chance that some al-Qaida personality was at the home" that was hit early Friday in the border village of Damadola, about 125 miles northwest of the capital Islamabad.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Saturday that he had heard that the al-Qaida figure may have been al-Zawahiri and that the information would be clearer later Saturday.

"A senior Pakistani intelligence official" told the AP that bodies were removed from the rubble in order to perform DNA tests that would presumably determine whether one of them was Zawahiri. This is assuming that we have DNA samples from the Z-man with which to draw comparisons. So it shouldn't be long before it is known one way or another whether bin Laden will have to put a glass to the stall of his golden shower to hear his former underling enjoying the seventy-two virgins of which his faulty kidneys robbed him.

Of course, from this blurblet one gets the impression that nobody was supposed to know at all:

The [senior Pakistani intelligence] official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

Another leak of classified information. Now our intel bureaucracy has our allies doing it. Perhaps this "senior Pakistani" etc., is an al Qaeda plant? Perhaps to cover a(nother) Zawahiri getaway by letting slip "without authorization" that he "may have been killed"?

Hey, if this was a CIA operation, can it really ever be ruled out? Given who the CIA establishment considers to be its true "enemy," can we ever take public disclosures like this one at anything remotely close to face value?

Hopefully Zawahiri is mountain goat chow. But either way I'd keep a look out for predator drones if I were running the Secret Service. As the possibly not-so-dearly departed may now attest, if he could, you never know when, or where, one of those things is going to strike.

The Democrats "Whig" Out: Tail-gunner Teddy

"Mirror, mirror in the wall, who's the most loathsome Dem of all?"

There would be a helluva lot of competition for that "honor" just on the Senate Judiciary Committee alone. But as far as this week's Samuel Alito hearings are concerned, Senator Edward M. Kennedy carries that title in a route.

Uncle Teddy, even more than Chucky Schumer, was the Donks' designated hit man. After sliming Judge Alito in a Washington Post article last weekend and in his opening statement on everything from Vanguard to being a "cheerleader for an imperial presidency" to "never having ruled in favor of a minority, not one" to butchering the nominee's surname seven different ways, the lies and slanders were so thick you could walk on them, even if Teddy couldn't.

But the attack nearest and dearest to the Dems' flinty black hearts was what they considered to be their ace-in-the-hole, pubic-hair-on-a-Coke-can secret weapon: a now-defunct conservative group to which Judge Alito belonged at one time called the Concerned Alumni for Princeton, on which Teddy focused (to the degree that he's capable of focusing anything) like a laser beam on Wednesday.

There's really no way to adequately describe this exchange other than to reproduce it in its entirety:

KENNEDY: So, I want to ask a few things that I hope can clear this up. You have no memory of being a member. You graduated from Princeton in 1972, the same year CAP was founded. You called CAP a conservative alumni group. It also published a publication called Prospect, which includes articles by CAP members about the policies that the organization promoted. You're familiar with that?

ALITO: I don't recall seeing the magazine. I might have seen...

KENNEDY: Did you know that they had a magazine?

ALITO: I've learned of that in recent weeks.

KENNEDY: So a 1983 Prospect essay titled "In Defense of Elitism," stated, quote, "People nowadays just don't seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns, blacks and Hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and Hispanic. The physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports. And homosexuals are demanding the government vouchsafe them the right to bear children. Did you read that article?....

ALITO: I feel confident that I didn't. I'm not familiar with the article, and I don't know the context in which those things were said. But they are antithetical...

KENNEDY: Well, could you think of any context that they could be...

ALITO: Hard to imagine. If that's what anybody was endorsing, I disagree with all of that. I would never endorse it. I never have endorsed it. Had I thought that that's what this organization stood for I would never associate myself with it in any way.

KENNEDY: The June '84 edition of Prospect magazine contains a short article on AIDS. I know that we've come a long way since then in our understanding of the disease, but even for that time the insensitivity of statements in this article are breathtaking. It announces that a team of doctors has found the AIDS virus in the rhesus monkeys was similar to the virus occurring in human beings. And the article then goes on with this terrible statement: Now that the scientists must find humans, or rather homosexuals, to submit themselves to experimental treatment. Perhaps Princeton's Gay Alliance may want to hold an election. You didn't read that article?

ALITO: I feel confident that I didn't, Senator, because I would not have anything to do with statements of that nature.

KENNEDY: In 1973, a year after you graduated, and during your first year at Yale Law School, former Senator Bill Bradley very publicly disassociated himself with CAP because of its right-wing views and unsupported allegations about the university. His letter of resignation was published in the Prospect; garnered much attention on campus and among the alumni. Were you aware of that at the time that you listed the organization in your application?

ALITO: I don't think I was aware of that until recent weeks when I was informed of it.

KENNEDY: And in 1974, an alumni panel including now-Senator Frist unanimously concluded that CAP had presented a distorted, narrow, hostile view of the university. Were you aware of that at the time of the job application?

ALITO: I was not aware of that until very recently.

KENNEDY: In 1980, the New York Times article about the coeducation of Princeton, CAP is described as an organization against the admittance of women. In 1980, you were working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Trenton, New Jersey. Did you read the New York Times? Did you see this article?

ALITO: I don't believe that I saw the article.

KENNEDY: And did you read a letter from CAP mailed in 1984 - this is the year before you put CAP on your application - to every living alumni - to every living alumni, so I assume you received it - which declared: Princeton is no longer the university you knew it to be. As evidence, among other reasons, it cited the fact that admission rates for African-Americans and Hispanics were on the rise, while those of alumni children were failing and Princeton's president at a time urged that the then all-male eating clubs to admit females. And in December 1984, President William Bowen responded by sending his own letter. This is the president of Princeton responded by sending his own letter to all of the alumni in which he called CAP's letter callous and outrageous. This letter was the subject of a January 1985 Wall Street Journal editorial congratulating President Bowen for engaging his critics in a free and open debate. This would be right about the time that you told Senator Kyl you probably joined the organization. Did you receive the Bowen letter or did you read the Wall Street Journal, which was pretty familiar reading for certainly a lot of people that were in the Reagan Administration?

ALITO: Senator, I've testified to everything that I can recall relating to this, and I do not recall knowing any of these things about the organization. And many of the things that you've mentioned are things that I have always stood against. In your description of the letter that prompted President Bowen's letter, there's talk about returning the Princeton that used to be. There's talk about eating clubs, about all-male eating clubs. There's talk about the admission of alumni children. There's opposition to opening up the admissions process. None of that is something that I would identify with. I was not the son of an alumnus. I was not a member of an eating club. I was not a member of an eating facility that was selective. I was not a member of an all-male eating facility. And I would not have identified with any of that. If I had received any information at any point regarding any of the matters that you have referred to in relation to this organization, I would never have had
anything to do with it.

KENNEDY: You think these are conservative views?

ALITO: Senator, whatever I knew about this organization in 1985, I identified as conservative. I don't identify those views as conservative. What I do recall as an issue that bothered me in relation to the Princeton administration as an undergraduate and continuing into the 1980s was their treatment of the ROTC unit and their general attitude toward the military, which they did not treat with the respect that I thought was deserving. The idea of that it was beneath Princeton to have an ROTC unit on campus was an offensive idea to me.

KENNEDY: Just moving on, you mentioned - and I only have a few minutes left - you joined CAP because of your concern about keeping ROTC on campus. ROTC was a fairly contentious issue on Princeton campus in the early 1970s. The program was slated to be terminated in 1970, when you were an undergraduate. By 1973, one year after you graduated, ROTC had returned to campus and was no longer a source of debate. And from what I can tell, by 1985, it was basically a dead issue. In fact, my staff reviewed the editions of Prospects from 1983 to 1985 and can only find one mention of ROTC. And it appears in a 1985 issue released for homecoming that year that says: ROTC is popular once again. Here's the Prospect, 1985: ROTC is popular again. This is just about the time that you were submitting this organization in your job application....

ALITO: It's my recollection that this was a continuing source of controversy. There were people on the campus - members of the faculty, as I recall - who wanted the unit removed from the campus. There was certainly controversy about whether students could get credit for courses, which I believe was a military requirement for the maintenance of the unit. There was controversy, as I recall, about the status of the instructors; whether they could be given any kind of a status in relation to the faculty. I don't know the exact dates, but it's my recollection that this was a continuing source of controversy.

KENNEDY: Well, Mr. Chairman, my time is running out. I had wanted to just wind up on a few more brief questions on this. But I have to say that Judge Alito - that his explanations about the membership in this, sort of, radical group, and why you listed it on your job application, are extremely troubling. And, in fact, I don't think that they add up.

What all of the above distills down to is that Kennedy is smearing CAP as being racist and sexist and then trying to smear Judge Alito by association. Teddy, being a left-winger, considers CAP to have been racist and sexist because it was conservative. Ipso facto, if Judge Alito was once a member and listed it on his 1985 civil service application, he must know everything about the organization, agree with everything that every member of it ever said, wrote, or thought, and have read, and now eidetically recall, every word ever published in its publication. Because of course ALL conservatives are racists and sexists (among other unforgiveable sins).

But there are some problems with this line of "argument." For one, CAP's co-editors-in-chief at the time of the "In Defense of Elitism" piece, Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza, are, to the best available knowledge, a woman and a minority. Which both helps debunk the "anti-woman" and "anti-minority" slurs and clarifies that what CAP opposed was forcible gender integration and racial enrollment quotas (as well as chasing away the ROTC), all perfectly legitimate stances on perfectly debatable issues lodged perfectly in the middle of the center-right mainstream. But none of which liberals consider open for debate, their ideological dogma already establishing the countervailing lib position like a religious doctrine, transgression of which is to be summarily and witheringly punished.

Only a mind hopelessly in the iron grip of such amoral self-righteous absolutism could possibly have cited "In Defense of Elitism" and failed to realize that it was a parody:

The essay may not have been funny, D'Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.

"I think left-wing groups have been feeding Senator Kennedy snippets and he has been mindlessly reciting them," D'Souza said. "It was a satire."

But don't take his D'Souza's word for it - judge for yourself. Ask yourself how many quadrapelegic quarterbacks are playing in the NFL these days, or how many "children" Elton John has pooped, or how many quadruple amputees are employed taking the rectal temperatures of hospital patients. Then ponder how anybody with half a thimbleful of common sense could possibly cite such an article as CAP's political manifesto.

When you pick up on the implication of that last sentence, you'll begin to recognize the effects of senile dementia and a lifetime of intemperate living.

Aside from base stupidity, there's Teddy's hypocrisy to consider:

If Mr. Kennedy were the nominee, perhaps a muckracker would happen upon his onetime membership in the Fox Club, one of Harvard's so-called "final clubs," which in the 1950s were havens for white, wealthy sons of privilege like Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy's name was scrubbed years ago from the alumni list, according to club members. Perhaps that's because at least a few racists or sexists must have been members - it was an old boys' club in the 1950s.

That's hypocrisy of the "do as I say, not as I do" variety. So it figures that the Massachusetts Manatee can't even get the "say" part right, either:

Judge Stephen Breyer faced much more serious complaints in his confirmation hearings about his involvement as a judge in more than half a dozen cases that involved insurance underwritten by Lloyd's of London, an insurance syndicate in which he was an investor. As an investor in Lloyd's, Judge Breyer faced potentially unlimited liability for the losses covered by its policies, and many investors were bankrupted by their participation in Lloyd's syndicates. The New York Times labeled Judge Breyer's alleged conflict as "troubling" and a "cloud....hanging over his nomination," but guess who was his most ardent defender?

Yes, the same Teddy Kennedy, who even got into a heated argument with one of his Democratic colleagues on the committee:

"You've asked for my opinion whether Judge Breyer's committed a violation of judicial ethics in investing in Lloyds name and insurance underwriting while being a federal judge. In my opinion, there was no violation of judicial ethics."

Okay, that ties back to the Vanguard attack, but the immediate point is made: EMK's one-way street is amply lit. It's where it led in this instance that went even further beyond the pale.

Ed Whelan at Bench Memos gave the first inkling of what was to come:

With no plausible factual basis bearing any connection to the hearing, Senator Kennedy wants the Judiciary Committee to issue a subpoena for the private papers of [among other things, CAP-founder and long-time National Review stalwart] William Rusher. Although those papers are currently in the custody of the Library of Congress, they remain Rusher's papers. There is zero chance that Specter will let Kennedy pursue his silly game, but it's telling that Kennedy is so eager to invade a private citizen's right of privacy in his private papers in his attack on Alito. [emphasis added]

This is the same man of the same party that is outraged - OUTRAGED! - at President Bush's mythical "domestic spying" and adamant about protecting "the right to privacy" when it involves "choosing" fetuscide and infanticide. I guess that's a hypocrisy hat trick.

But Uncle Teddy was no less adamant about getting hold of the Rusher papers, which he just KNEW would be the smoking gun tying Judge Alito to the "radical" CAP, and therefore the final torpedo to sink his SCOTUS nomination. He demanded that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session so that they could vote on issuing a subpeona to seize the documents in question, and provoked a pissing match with Chairman Arlen Specter over the petty detail of whether or not Kennedy sent Specter a letter to this same effect three weeks ago. When Specter got pissed, Kennedy threatened to tie up the committee in "vote after vote after vote" appealing the ruling of the chair that Specter, as he repeatedly pointed out, hadn't issued yet, until Kennedy got what he wanted. Finally, "Snarlin' Arlen" had enough, gaveled Kennedy down, told him that, "I am the chairman of this committee" and would not stand for the Chappequiddick Kid's belligerent bullying.

Still, even this was