The Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

There is an old Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian/who-knows-anymore saying that goes, "Vuk dlaku mjenja, ali ćud, nikada."

Literally translated, it says that a wolf sheds his fur, but never his true character (hey, once upon a time, sheep and shepherds were the shit in the old country...).

Figuratively translated, it says that Alito may be twenty years older, but he is none the wiser. And all his rhetoric about "oh, I was seeking a job [when I supported an overturn of Roe v. Wade], but now I'm a judge so my moral values are completely different" is complete bullshit.

So Fond of Benedict Now?

The Conservatives' Poster Pope has yet another radical statement to make. This one should invert things a little.

"Dear friends," the Holy Father said, "your presence in such large numbers gives me the opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation for the courageous and generous activity you carry out in support of the families of people hit by the deplorable social plague of usury."

Interest loans as a "social plague!" Actually, I'm sure this won't outrage Conservatives at all, because most of them will simply ignore it and go back to cherry-picking Benedict's points that they like. But seriously, this is another example of retrenching recent church doctrine and reverting to older more stringent doctrines. (Hat tip, Sullivan). Sure, he's not advocating policy of it, and the church hasn't put documents forth, but these are still dramatic statements. Perhaps bankers should be refused communion too.

Am I Pro-Torture?

If I say that I agree with Krauthammer's views to a large extent, then maybe the answer is 'Yes'. I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a bit of my soul if it will save one or more human lives. Funny how an article Sully directed me to basically turned me against his blanket opposition to torture. Unfortunately, the world we live in isn't as black and white as most absolutists make it out to be. The most important section of this piece closes out Krauthammer's argument, which basically points out everyone's favorite Arizona senator's 'inconsistencies' in the torture debate:

"...I have just made what will be characterized as the pro-torture case contra McCain by proposing two major exceptions carved out of any no-torture rule: the ticking time bomb and the slow-fuse high-value terrorist. McCain supposedly is being hailed for defending all that is good and right and just in America by standing foursquare against any inhuman treatment. Or is he?

According to Newsweek, in the ticking time bomb case McCain says that the president should disobey the very law that McCain seeks to pass--under the justification that "you do what you have to do. But you take responsibility for it." But if torturing the ticking time bomb suspect is "what you have to do," then why has McCain been going around arguing that such things must never be done?

As for exception number two, the high-level terrorist with slow-fuse information, Stuart Taylor, the superb legal correspondent for National Journal, argues that with appropriate legal interpretation, the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" standard, "though vague, is said by experts to codify . . . the commonsense principle that the toughness of interrogation techniques should be calibrated to the importance and urgency of the information likely to be obtained." That would permit "some very aggressive techniques . . . on that small percentage of detainees who seem especially likely to have potentially life-saving information." Or as Evan Thomas and Michael Hirsh put it in the Newsweek report on McCain and torture, the McCain standard would "presumably allow for a sliding scale" of torture or torture-lite or other coercive techniques, thus permitting "for a very small percentage--those High Value Targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--some pretty rough treatment."

But if that is the case, then McCain embraces the same exceptions I do, but prefers to pretend he does not. If that is the case, then his much-touted and endlessly repeated absolutism on inhumane treatment is merely for show. If that is the case, then the moral preening and the phony arguments can stop now, and we can all agree that in this real world of astonishingly murderous enemies, in two very circumscribed circumstances, we must all be prepared to torture. Having established that, we can then begin to work together to codify rules of interrogation for the two very unpleasant but very real cases in which we are morally permitted--indeed morally compelled--to do terrible things."

Too Important for the Comments

I feel the need to write a full post about MrP’s earlier post. A blog that MrP brought to our attention says that because McCain himself broke under torture, it proves that torture works – and therefore McCain is wrong to say torture doesn’t yield good intelligence. I don’t feel right leaving my opinion on this hidden in the comments section.

McCain doesn't say that torture never gives valuable information - which is why he is in favor of it being used in extreme situations (by knowingly breaking the law and accepting that responsibility) like an impending attack.

But he does argue that on the whole, it doesn't provide useful intelligence. He openly admits that prisoners break - but breaking doesn't always mean telling the truth, it can also mean telling the interrogators exactly what they want to hear. For example, if your interrogators believe you were seeking nuclear weapons, they might torture you until you admit to it. And people will admit to it even if it is false, because they will do anything to stop the torture. Another good example comes from McCain’s own experience: when asked to give the names of his flight squadron, he gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line instead.

Yes, torture will eventually lead to information. Sometimes that information is true and useful, and other times it isn’t. The problem is that it is next to impossible to know when a prisoner is telling you what you want to hear, or when they are giving you accurate information. And the information isn’t useful if you can’t verify its accuracy.

On a Roll

Sharon's gambit in leaving the Likud party and forming his own appears to be paying big. Many on the left are already signaling that they wish to join his centrist enterprise, with Sharon ready to steal just about everyone's thunder in a political manuever of almost Bismarckian magnitude.

Peres, who lost the Labor leadership vote earlier this month, was traveling in Spain on Tuesday and did not comment specifically about his plans. Sharon left the Likud Party last week to form the new movement, known as Kadima.

Peres's ally, Dalia Itzik, a member of Labor's 21-person parliamentary bloc, announced that she would join Sharon. She is the second Labor member of parliament to do so after Haim Ramon, who announced his decision last week.

"It looks like a package deal," Eitan Cabel, the Labor Party's secretary general, told Israel's Army Radio. "We spoke about their remaining and not defecting to another party. But apparently things were already sealed, and the talks with us were nothing but a smoke screen."

Sharon, first a prime architect of the settler movement and then later a prime demolition artist, calls for the following very specific things as part of his party:

The newly drafted party platform explicitly calls for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, a goal of the U.S.-backed plan known as the "road map," which Sharon has said he would follow in seeking to revive a dormant peace process. The platform also calls for Israel to keep its major West Bank settlement blocs and East Jerusalem in any final peace agreement.

It's comforting that Sharon is truly hell-bent on this outcome and peace just as an individual and was fully prepared to torpedo the Likud party and go it alone to accomplish it. Its guts you almost never see from a politician, but does jive with the fact that Sharon was a former General. The comparison between Bismarck and Sharon is an interesting one, as Sharon is a sort of anti-Bismarck who is using power politics and careful diplomacy to bring about the fragmentation, not unification, of Israel into two states.

Update: It's official, the defections are underway!

Moonbat Assassin

To those of you who stay out of certain crazy places, you may not be aware that there was a recent Newsmax piece that really sets the bar for hyperbolic partisan insanity. Newsmax, of course, is very often good for providing us with such absurd benchmarks. In this piece, the author asserts that because John McCain "broke" under torture in North Vietnam, that tortue is in fact effective. This is a real zinger:

That McCain broke under torture doesn't make him any less of an American hero. But it does prove he's wrong to claim that harsh interrogation techniques simply don't work.

Many blogs on the right are trumpeting this piece of shit like it's the second coming of Christ. As always, you can rely on John Cole to pull their shirt over their head and beat the ever-living shit out of them:

The problem is not that I doubt people will ‘break,’ it is that I doubt torture will ‘work.’ I simply disagree that beating McCain until he signs a random ‘confession’ in a language he does not understand somehow proves that doing the same to others will provide us with necessary intel. Further, I do not trust the government with the death penalty, and amd not inclined to trust the government with torture. Furthermore, I do not like the idea of having foreign governments and despotic regimes to similarly be allowed to torture, because it will be, in many cases, our guys they are now LEGALLY torturing. And spare me the ‘they are going to abuse and our torture our guys anyway, if they want to.’ Again, no shit.

That is why we rightly view them as EVIL, and why we are fighting them in the first place.

Read them both.

I know I've not blogged much of late...

...so I'll give you a dose of what my tired, sleep-deprived, mind thinks is funny in IM conversation. Keep in mind too this was in a conversation with a former girlfriend who never really got my humor anyway:

me:	oh man, crazy times
me:	the girl at the coffee shop tonight, at caribou coffee
me:	gave me $0.10 off my coffee, although I got the trivia question wrong
me:	so I tipped well
me:	then I went too far and opened up my trenchcoat
me:	scalding hot coffee really really hurts on the crotch, lemme tell you

Anyway, that's some filler stuff which nonetheless is a window into my soul for our average reader.. I do hope to blog more substantively in the near future, perhaps on my thoughts on the renewed "war over Christmas" we've seen lately by activists fighting back against the generic "Happy Holidays" crap we see in politically-correct retail America.

Even the Speaker of the House has joined the fight, renaming the Capitol HolidayTree to its traditional moniker, the Capitol Christmas Tree, which, of course, I'm fine with, mind you.

But I do think this is on some level a silly, silly political fight to wage, and it's totally ginned up to milking special interest end-of-year donations to political campaigns. To that cynical angle of the Christmas/holiday moniker wars, I say bah humbug, particularly since as far back as I can remember corporate America has been PC with the Christmas season and no one has heretofore waged anything like the all-out war that some in the punditocracy are calling for. It's just kinda lame.

Well, whattayaknow? My sleep deprived mind pulls through in the clutch, I did put something substantive in here after all.

The Liberal Wish List

For Christmas, of course! (Or Winter Solstice, if you are a hippy atheist communist. Just kidding. Kinda.) Mr. Sun has all the hot gifts! Here's a sample:

Tattleship. Joe Wilson and Richard Clarke present this exciting new game of international warfare and incomprehensible disloyalty. Don't be fainthearted about turning your back on the people you swore to fight alongside. Just remember: Loose Lips - Book Ships! Simply yell out accusations about your former colleagues and current officeholders and they'll respond with a pouty, "You sunk my policy initiative!" Loyalty not included.

Strateg-0. The goal of Strateg-0 is to win an election with absolutely zero (0) strategies for solving public problems. How do you do it? By blaming the opposition for everything and hoping a senile Larry King or partisan Dan Rather moderates your debate.

Collect them all!

The Inquisition, Take 2

How does the Catholic Church get away with this ignorant, intolerant and hateful crap in this day and age?

TimesSelect - Probably Not Going Away

Ever since the New York Times started TimesSelect, I have been waiting for the moment when they abandon the project and go back to giving us their opinion pieces and other articles for free. Although Mickey Kaus on Slate has a post about why this won’t succeed, I find his argument weak. Kaus’ argument is limited to whether TimesSelect will be profitable on its own. In reality though, TimesSelect is only a small part of the NY Times revenue sources, and the decision to keep it or dump it depends on how this project affects their overall revenue. Previously, when they were giving everything away for free on the web, there was less of an incentive to buy the print version of the paper. Granted, most of their revenue comes from advertising, but some of it comes from sales. TimesSelect will not only generate revenue from people who prefer the online version, it will likely encourage more people to get a subscription to the print version. The only potential downside to this venture will be if readership declines so much on the website, that their internet advertising revenue declines substantially. I don’t think this is going to be the case.

But while I understand their decision from a business perspective, I have a problem with the lack of access bloggers have to link to some of their columns and articles, thereby preventing serious debate about the issues. I can no longer link and write about a Thomas Friedman or Nicholas Kristof column, and I can no longer rip into Maureen Dowd’s constant anti-Bush diatribes. So while I understood their desire to encourage people to pay for their paper – especially the content stuff we can’t get anywhere else (which is why the basic news articles are still free), I had always hoped that they would leave their content free on the web to encourage debate and discussion. I thought a liberal paper like the New York Times would value that over increasing their profits. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. And despite what Mickey Kaus has to say, I don’t think this is going away anytime soon.

Economics For Everyone

In case you are a huge dork like me, I will point out two economics blogs that are understandable to the non-economics student. Dear Economist is a Dear Abbey type blog with a twist. The blog answers the readers questions using economics. The writing is pretty witty, although the solutions to the problems are sometimes not very realistic. The Freakonomics blog is written by the authors of the popular book by the same name. It often links to other interesting economics papers and topics, as well as responding to criticisms of their book and papers.

Vive La Revolucion!

Paul Martin's corrupt cabal has been taken down!

A corruption scandal forced a vote of no-confidence Monday that toppled Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government, triggering an unusual election campaign during the holidays.

Canada's three opposition parties, which control a majority in Parliament, voted against Martin's government, claiming his Liberal Party no longer has the moral authority to lead the nation.

The loss means an election for all 308 seats in the House of Commons, likely on Jan. 23. Martin and his Cabinet would continue to govern until then.

Opposition leaders last week called for the no-confidence vote after Martin rejected their demands to dissolve Parliament in January and hold early elections in February. Monday's vote follows a flurry of spending announcements in Ottawa last week, with the government trying to advance its agenda ahead of its demise.

The liberals had a complete dominance over Canadian government for a long time, and though they still have a plurality in polls, it looks like their monopoly over Canadian politics is over. Likely there will be an odd sort of coalition government to arise out of this that will be centrist in nature by incorporating the conservatives (which are not so conservative in Canada) and another group.

Captain Obvious to the Rescue

Oh, if I didn't have El Wapo to explain this stuff to me! Beltway bandits and their tactics are soooo confusing!

In any given week, a million or more WTOP radio listeners might hear a rich baritone voice advertise Lockheed Martin Corp. as the "right choice" to build a $10 billion federal law enforcement communications system because "the bad guys aren't going to take a break while we fix it."

But Lockheed Martin's marketing advisers don't care about the vast majority of that audience. They aren't selling beer or soda pop. Rather, in a peculiarly Washington form of advertising, their hope is that the radio spot might reach the ears of the 50 or so employees at the Treasury, Justice and Homeland Security departments who are going to decide which company should get the communications contract.

If it reaches those people -- or their bosses -- the ad is a success, Lockheed spokesman Scott Lusk said. Limited by federal law in how the company can interact with procurement officials, blanketing the entire region with sometimes jargon-filled ads is one of the ways contractors such as Lockheed try to build momentum for their latest contract proposal among the few federal officials who have authority over it.

Obviously the target of this marketing is me!! Of course, I would also ascertain that from the 5 or 6 cold calls I get a day from tiny companies wanting me to steer business their way.

One Question

Why isn't this on Cunningham's (R-CA) website?

Iran Implosion Watch

Ahmadinejad, aside from calling for the complete destruction of both the U.S. and Israel so that he can start an Islamic future for the world based on his own vision and the hidden Imam, (this man is President of a country that is about to have nuclear weapons), has been very busy alienating just about every in his own country as well.

Even extremists within the hardline camp want Ahmadinejad to be more responsive to their advice, experts say.

"If he doesn't want to hear no for a fourth time, he has to consult with people outside his circle of friends," said Mohammad Nabi Habibi, leader of the Islamic Coalition Society.

Since taking office in August, Ahmadinejad has jettisoned Iran's moderation in foreign policy and pursued a purge in the government, replacing pragmatic veterans with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hardliners.

[snip]

Iranian moderates say the president has harmed his country by isolating it internationally, and now Ahmadinejad's friends are lining up against him. He suffered a humiliating defeat last week when his choice for oil minister was rejected for a third time, an unprecedented failure for an Iranian president.

While parliament is dominated by Ahmadinejad's conservative allies, the president's isolationist stance and his failure to consult on cabinet appointments have annoyed legislators. They warn they will not approve any future nominee unless Ahmadinejad first consults parliament.

If you thought Iran's old guard was bad, Ahmadinejad plans to do them one better and replace them with a newer and even crazier cadre of nutcases. This is highlighted most by his recent pick for President of Tehran University, an "Islamic law teacher" with no formal education. The pick met with massive student protests. Hopefully the pragmatists and even hard-liners will form an alliance to get rid of Ahmadinejad soon, or else he will continue to be the best thing to happen for Islamofacism since the Taliban. Then there's what this psycho would do with a nuclear weapon. Maybe Jon Stewart was right when he told McCain on Wednesday that we missed the country we should've invaded by one letter.

In additional Iran news, check out Regime Change Iran which has a piece about Iran's involvements with Chechen terrorism. Maybe this is a good development in a way because it might break off Putin's love affair with Iran and his efforts to supply them with nuclear technology.

In His Own Words

We have been talking a lot about Senator McCain’s anti-torture legislation on this blog. Recently, Newsweek allowed McCain to write an article about his stance on torture. We all know his position is principled and borne of experience in one of the infamously cruel POW camps in Vietnam. But his article shows he has more than principle. He attacks the issue from all angles in a way that leaves you wondering how anyone could disagree. In fact, one of the biggest strengths of the article is how it actually deals with security concerns of the right.

McCain starts off his piece by acknowledging that the Bush administration has a responsibility to protect the people of this country that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Their decision to condone harsh interrogation practices are meant to make us more secure. Where liberals might attack Bush and Cheney from the beginning, thereby losing any chance of influencing conservatives, McCain acknowledges their honorable intentions while still disagreeing with them. He also makes it clear that our decision to allow torture (or torture light) will have little impact on the terrorists’ decision to torture Americans. This enemy is unfazed by international condemnation or public opinion. But our enemies in the future could be different. And if we have a reputation of condoning torture or harsh interrogation tactics, that enemy may be more willing to do the same to our troops.

He also acknowledges the possibility that harsh interrogation might be necessary if there is an impending attack against the US. And his answer to this is simple, but brilliant. In that case, he believes harsh interrogation might be necessary. And in that situation, the President should be willing to break the law and be truthful after the fact about it. He argues that it would be better to break the law in the rare circumstances when there is an impending attack, instead of creating loopholes allowing for torture in these situations – loopholes that could easily become often used exceptions.

If that was all McCain wrote, it would be enough to convince most people. His argument is logical and will protect American interests in the long-term. But he is also able to talk about the effect of torture on the person, and the reality about the usefulness of the intelligence that is gathered from the victim. Through his own experience he is able to show that a victim will say anything he or she thinks the captors want to hear to stop the torture. In his case it meant lying about the names of his flight squadron (giving the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line). But in other cases it could mean lying about the terrorists’ intentions or activities just to get the pain to stop.

And finally, McCain attacks some of the harsh interrogation methods, sometimes called torture light. Although some of these methods, like water boarding, don’t cause physical harm to the victim, he argues that some of these methods are worse than a beating. Water boarding makes the victim believe he or she is drowning, leaving them to believe they are going to die. McCain said that as a POW he would much rather have been beaten than have to face a mock execution. Wounds from a beating heal, the psychological effects of facing death through water boarding or pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun at your head stay with you forever. Those of us that have never faced any situation like this can sit back and believe that water boarding is okay because it causes no physical harm. But I would rather take the word of someone who has been through similar situations about the real harm of torture light.

In the end, McCain demonstrates that we as a nation can choose not to torture without losing our security. And he brings it back down to earth by saying (again, he draws this from his own experience) that soldiers need to feel that they are fighting for something – that they are better than their enemy. They need to believe that they are fighting to protect the grand idea that this country was founded on, democracy and liberty. When we torture, we show that we are as cruel as our enemy. And that is what hurts troop morale.

Grave Gets Deeper

The DeLay-Abramoff fiasco has an embarassing new chapter.

Michael Scanlon, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to bribe public officials, a charge growing out of the government investigation of attempts to defraud Indian tribes and corrupt a member of Congress.

Scanlon, a former partner to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle and agreed to pay restitution totaling more than $19 million to the tribes.

Scanlon, who is expected to cooperate in the investigation of Abramoff and members of Congress, could face up to five years in prison.

Outside the courthouse, Scanlon attorney Plato Cacheris said his client “is regretful for what happened to the tribes” and is trying to do what is right by cooperating with the investigation.

The charge was in a criminal information filed Friday accusing Scanlon of conspiring with Abramoff to defraud Indian tribes and engage in a corrupt scheme that lavished trips, sports tickets and campaign donations on a member of Congress, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio.

Abramoff was indicted on fraud charges in August related to a $23 million purchase of casino fleet boats.

DeLay is among those facing scrutiny for his associations with Abramoff, including a trip to Scotland and use of Abramoff's skybox at a Washington sports arena.

Smells like pooh-gas!

2-0, Baby!

Camden, NJ takes home the prize for the second year in a row.

Take Note, Lunchbox

Splinter Cell

Israel's PM Sharon has been facing a lot of criticism from the more hawkish members of his own party in recent years for the Gaza withdrawal and more efforts to reach out and work with the Palestinian Authority. Many have even threatened his budget votes and many of his other legislative initiatives. So now he's come up with a novel answer: he's going to make his own party. Sharon has proved that he's not just a deft General but a political genius when it comes to recent moves. He dealt with the settlers well during the withdrawal, has done a decent job selling the withdrawal to his own people, and in the process has managed to get some work done actually with the Palestinian Authority and even opening up diplomatic relations with Pakistan! Who'd a thunk it? I guess while he was accomplishing more towards a solution to the Palestinian and Israeli debacle than any Prime Minister before him and in the face of mutinous fellow Likud members he simply decided "who needs them anyway?" This will most likely serve as a death-blow to Likud, as most will migrate to Sharon's new centrist party along with many from the more liberal parties, leaving only fringe dissenters behind. And it's probably all for the better to, allowing Sharon to negotiate and achieve more with less political baggage.

The New Sheriff In Town

The new Director of the Office of Women's Health has her work cut out for her, but her credentials are essentially perfect. From personal experience, HHS is a difficult agency. While Clinton and Bush both managed to heavily consolidate what were a bunch of disparate programs and also to resolve a lot of the turf wars, it's still a formidable alphabet soup. Many agencies have what sound like simple missions, but not much in the way of authority or budget to carry them out. Uhl, the new Director, has a lot of experience in the Public Health Service, HHS' general service-delivery arm, and has a lot of experience with the military and its health system and needs, which are often extremely complex. However, also from personal experience she's going to have a lot of problems to deal with. The resignation of their last director in protest over the FDA's ridiculous Plan B fiasco and a history of budget cuts has left the division demoralized and skeletal. It would take a real master of federal bureaucracy to accomplish anything.

Guess She Doesn't Believe In "Live and Let Die"

And now in a new annual "celebrity activist preaches about animal cruelty and vegetarianism in time for Thanksgiving" tradition, I present you Heather Mills McCartney.

PSA: Heather Mills McCartney Says 'Stop Amputating Turkeys' Toes'

11/21/2005 7:30:00 AM

---

To: National Desk

Contact: Lauren Ornelas, 530-848-4021

DAVIS, Calif. Nov. 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Speaking out for turkeys this holiday season, Heather Mills McCartney has recorded a PSA for the animal group Viva!USA. It focuses on the amputation of turkeys' toes by farmers and implores the public to forgo eating turkeys this holiday season.

"When I found out from my friends at Viva!USA that turkeys have their toes cut off or microwaved, I was shocked. Amputation causes the birds great pain and many can barely walk. The procedure should be banned immediately.

"I speak out about all suffering, whether it is a result of landmines or factory farming. It's the holiday season, a time for giving thanks, and I feel it's time to give the animals something to be thankful for. For me, that means eating vegetarian -- for the holidays and every day."

Approximately 45 million turkeys are killed every year in the U.S. just for the holidays. In addition to having their toes cut off, they also have the tips of their beaks painfully cut. They are bred to grow so quickly that many have difficulty walking due to their size and inability to balance without their full toes.

Overcrowding causes aggression in which animals may claw each other. The industry responds by cramming thousands of birds into sheds and cutting off body parts rather than giving them more room.

"Most people oppose cruelty to animals, but they just have no idea about what takes place in factory farms. Paul and I are 100 percent committed to Viva!’s campaign to end the suffering."

Heather closes the new PSA by saying: "Go on, celebrate life -– and save one!"

To view the PSA and for more information about turkeys and meal ideas go to: http://www.vivaturkeys.com.

----

Viva!USA conducts investigations of factory farms and its national headquarters are in Davis, Calif. Viva!USA ( http://www.vivausa.org ) is part of an international animal protection organization based in England.

Playing Chicken

Bush blinked. It's just as well. When your war effort is becoming more and more unpopular you don't get points by demonizing the opposition, you get points by making a more positive case. Bush is signaling that he's ready to have a more substantive debate now, and that's probably because his negative-on-negative attacks weren't working.

As I looked through the mass e-mails I receive from the Left Wing Conspiracy over the past week, they all decry that Murtha was being "swift-boated." While that's a bit of an exaggeration, it does signal a new and more sophisticated tactic of the Democrats. Even in Virginia, with the victory of David Englin for a Delegate seat, the strategy is to use veterans, especially young veterans who fought in Iraq as a vehicle for criticism. Murtha is another example of that. Kerry, as he suffered from chronic verbal diarrhea, was easily defeated this way. Some of the new spokesmen aren't. And as the public has grown more skeptical about Iraq, it's going to take more than bashing your attackers' credibility to win. It's going to take actually responding and rebutting their criticisms with real arguments, and those arguments can't just be "stay the course."

Hokies Destroy Cavaliers

At least in the win column:

"Under the cloak of a bitterly cold autumn night, an unknown number of presumably Virginia Tech football fans jumped the fence surrounding Virginia's Scott Stadium sometime early Saturday morning, avoiding the not-so-watchful eyes of security personnel, and then spray-painted a maroon "T" next to the Cavaliers' white "V" logo at midfield."

Blacksburg can hold its head high for yet another year. But they routinely fall short where it really counts.

Gut Check

A little something to put the whole Intelligent Design debate in perspective. Those Saudis, so progressive! When are we just going to admit to ourselves that Saudi Arabia is just another Taliban?

All His Hopes and Dreams

Future Combat Systems may be on its deathbed! This is a catastrophic blow to Rumsfeld but basically good news to the taxpayers. Rumsfeld's dream of a fast, light, and small army was your classic top-down theory, an abstract idea imposed on conditions that didn't want it and rejected it. Rumsfeld wanted it to be the case, therefore despite all evidence to the contrary that it was a good idea he pushed it. Future Combat Systems was, in many ways, a typical DoD weapons system program: Ill thought-out, too vague, constantly changed, constantly overbudget, and constantly behind. The price tag has been upgraded to $161 Billion according to a new procurement forecast, and while that's astonishing enough, what's more astonishing is that it's only for about a third of the army's troops. Yikes.

More and more we're engaged in a low-tech war, an old-fashioned guerilla struggle that involves a struggle to have more boots and more human intelligence. All the high tech toys in the world won't change that. Rumsfeld has built his whole career on his ideas of dramtically downsizing the U.S. Army and dramatically upgrading its field technology, but what good is speed when the job is basically standing still and guarding things? That's what we're looking at in the GWOT/GSAVE. It's time for Rummy to abandon his dreams, and I'm sure Congress will force him to, before all of us pay for them for years to come.

Mos Eisley Hall of Fame

Courtesy of $teve-O. "We must be cautious".

Inherit The Wind

Will and Krauthammer versus the Kansas State Board of Education.

What Is Wrong With The Stork?

My knee-jerk reaction to the story that many parents are teaching sex-education at age five or even earlier was that it was ludicrous - another example of liberals going too far to make a point. But after reading the whole story, I realize it isn't as crazy as it sounds.

"If you're talking about how babies are made, there's no age at which it is harmful to learn that the penis goes into the vagina," [Dr. Justin Richardson] said. "Yes, it's true that exposing a child to sexual stimulation is harmful. But telling a kid how babies are made is very different."

The general cultural environment has become so vulgar, the early-approach advocates say, that sex education has become a race: parents must reach children before other forces - from misinformed playground confidantes to pubescent-looking models posed in their skivvies - do. "We need to get there first," said Deborah M. Roffman, a sex educator and the author of "But How'd I Get in There in the First Place? Talking to Your Young Child About Sex."

If not, these advocates warn, children will gather their impressions anywhere and everywhere: from prime-time television jokes about threesomes, Internet pop-up ads for penis enlargement pills or even more explicit Web sites.

To be clear, I am not saying I buy into this mentality. I definitely don't know enough about early childhood development to form my own conclusion yet. But some of what they are talking about isn't too crazy. Teaching kids to call their sexual body parts by clinical names seems normal enough. And as the article demonstrates, there are some compelling reasons to consider real sexual education at early ages.

Cold War II Watch

As if Islamofascism and Iran aren't troubling and demanding enough, there's this:

In a surprisingly short time, China has accomplished two feats. One, it has focused its energy and wealth on creating an army within an army. It has devoted huge amounts of capital to create a small high-tech army within its old 2.2 million-member rifle and shoe-leather force.

The specialty of this modern force, about 15 percent of the PLA, is to conduct lightning attacks on smaller foes, using an all-out missile attack designed to paralyze, and a modern sea and air attack coordinated by high-tech communications. In other words, this new modern force is designed to attack Taiwan.

Second, China has taken painful but successful steps to create a "defense industrial base," or weapons-building capability. The PLA has improved its factory quality control and its ability to adapt foreign technology. It is bringing an indigenous small-wing F-10 fighter off the production line, and it is moving rapidly toward a "blue water" Navy with ships built in China.

For the longest time we didn't have to worry a lot about China, except their nuclear capabilities, because there army was composed of low-tech and high-numbers. Sure we could never fight a ground war with them, but the air and the sea were clearly the U.S.'s advantage. Now? Not so much. China is changing the game fast, and now has a force that could be used to cripple Taiwan fast. The U.S. pledges to defend Taiwan, but then there's this little gem too:

This summer, Gen. Zhu Chenghu, dean of China's National Defense University, raised the subject of weapons of mass destruction, which China rarely mentions, in connection with Taiwan. Should US forces aid Taiwan in a war, he told bewildered US visitors, "Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by Chinese" nuclear weapons.

As much as Bush wants to visit China and talk up Taiwan, things aren't rosy and defending Taiwan could turn into a bloodbath. It's not guaranteed, and the U.S. could pay a severe price for it. Letting China steamroll Taiwan and invade it is an even steeper price and blow to world democracy. What to do, what to do? If we had a properly funded DoD (not one logjammed and hijacked by Congressmen and their ridiculous pet projects and insane weapons systems no one in DoD or the President wants) we could better deal with the situation. Sadly, we don't. But the important lesson is that unless China falls apart from its own internal contradictions of being a capitalist and communist country at the same time (always a possibility), real hostilities could be in the near future.

Corruption Roundup

Balloon Juice has all the news about crooked GOP superstar Abramoff and all the people he has tainted along the way for your daily smearing needs. Also, there's more on David Safavian, who continues to be a source of befuddlement for all of us in the Procurement community (because he was our boss, and apparently a criminal the whole time he was our boss).

Nowhere Men

As I mentioned before, Obsidian Wings has been on a roll when it comes to the whole detainee issue and the significance of Habeas Corpus in it. Well, they've done it again. This is a morbidly chilling little tale, and it really shows what's at stake when it comes to our detention policies. The innocent are subjected to so much, without any rights and any review, and even AFTER they're cleared of all wrongdoing they end up unable to get release from their non-existence in Guatanamo. As Obsidian Wings states, this is WITH Habeas, and the Senate has just weakened that considerably.

I think what we're doing should bother everyone, and it is why Scalia slammed the Administration in several of the Supreme Court's detainee cases. Without a judicial review of the executive branch's actions, and without a judicial review of the charges against the detainees, we've lost all checks and balances. These detainees have no hope, even if they are innocent, of being released from their hell. Their hope only lies with the sole discretion of their captors, with no possibility for anyone to hold their captors accountable.

Dubya's Officially Lost It

Oh my:

"

Here's Drudge: "The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions.""

(Tip o' the Hat, TMV)

What A Tangled Web We Weave...

So Cheney and the oil execs did meet before we went to fight that non-oil-related war overseas!

Somehow, Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police springs to mind...

Never In A Thousand Years

I don't normally go cuckoo over op-ed pieces by Bob Samuelson. But his El Wapo diatribe regarding the evil AARP hits the nail square on the head:

"...I won't be joining, because AARP has become America's most dangerous lobby. If left unchecked, its agenda will plunder our children and grandchildren. Massive outlays for the elderly threaten huge tax increases and other government spending. Both may weaken the economy and the social fabric. No thanks."

Alito and MCPS

With news about the Montgomery County Public Schools deliberating over a progressive sexual education curriculum, and Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, my thoughts on these issues and how they relate are long overdue.

There is little doubt in my mind that it is in our best interest to do what is reasonable to prevent unwanted pregnancies and births. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s book Freakonomics claims that the legalization of abortion had the biggest impact on the rapid decline of violent crime in the early 1990s. Their statistics seem to back up their claim, but the reasoning also seems intuitive – children born to parents who did not want them or were not ready for them are more likely to have troublesome lives and commit crimes.

A scary conclusion to draw from this finding is that there should be easier access to abortion*. That doesn’t sit very well with me though. Instead, I think we need to do much more to prevent the pregnancies in the first place. This is where sexual education comes in. It is completely naive and unrealistic to think that we can convince any sizeable segment of the population to abstain from sex until marriage or until ready to conceive. It is more unrealistic even than asking all Americans to give up their guns. Instead, we need to teach everyone how to be as safe as possible if they do have sex and how to prevent pregnancies.

What I do want to stress though is that any good sexual education class should stress this one thing first – the only form of truly safe sex is abstinence. In everything else there is some chance of pregnancy or transmission of STI's (I certainly don’t think we should scare anyone by over-hyping the dangers of STI’s, but people need to know the effectiveness of the preventative measures they are using).

Unfortunately, it seems like the left is only interested in protecting unrestricted access to abortions. This leaves even those in the middle a bit disturbed. Although I am pro-choice – mostly because I don’t hold to the dogmatic notion that life begins at conception – something troubles me about abortions, especially the further into the pregnancy. The left seems unwilling to concede that we should be doing all we can to decrease the number of abortions, afraid maybe that giving any ground will start a slippery slope towards the full abolition of abortions.

But the far right can be equally rigid in their belief in protecting life. Refusal to allow for an abortion when the mother’s life is in danger is absolutely absurd to me. In that situation, one life is likely to be lost and it becomes a choice over who should be saved. A decision that serious shouldn’t be outlined in a law, but flexible depending on the situation and choice of the family.

The point is that there can be middle ground on the issue of abortion and realistic approaches can be found - despite what the two extremes are saying. We can work to make abortions rare if we are committed to preventing unwanted pregnancies. And we can also limit abortions later in the term when babies begin to develop neurological functions and have the capacity to live outside the womb. But we can also allow the possibility of late term abortions to protect the mother. Conceding the middle ground should never be interpreted as losing the battle.


*Another conclusion to draw from that finding could be that more resources need to go to social programs to help children most at risk - but apparently the far right wants to protect life without trying to improve it.

Settle Down, Beavis (Red Gold III)

Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere has been nixed. Yay! Actually, wait a minute. For reasons why the Alaskan Congressional delegation is still screwing the rest of the country and why this is only a partial victory, check