More on Oregon's Physician Assisted Suicide

The law is actually called the Death with Dignity Act. I've read this before, but since so much discussion around the topic has shown a great lack of research as to what the law states, I'll post some of the specifics.

The law is pretty clear. It's not Euthanasia, but suicide. The doctor only prescribes the lethal dose, and it's up to the patient to use it. The law does not allow the doctor to apply the lethal dosage.

Q: Must a physician be present at the time the medications are taken?

A: The law does not require the presence of a physician when a patient takes lethal medication. A physician may be present if a patient wishes it, as long as the physician does not administer the medication him/herself.

Even further on this, the patient can withdraw and must be offered the opportunity to rescind the request.

Q: Can a patient rescind a request for physician-assisted suicide?

A: Yes, a patient can rescind a request at any time and in any manner. The attending physician will also offer the patient an opportunity to rescind his/her request at the end of the 15-day waiting period following the initial request to participate.

There is also prohibition of anyone requesting the assistance from anyone but the patient.

Q: Can a patient's family members request physician-assisted suicide on behalf of the patient (for example, in cases where the patient is comatose)?
A: No. The law requires that the patient ask to participate voluntarily on his or her own behalf.

There is also the opinion question to the Dept of Human Services:

Q: What is the Department of Human Services' opinion of physician-assisted suicide? Does it encourage people to hasten their deaths? Should this law have been passed? What are the pros and cons of physician-assisted suicide?
A: The Death with Dignity Act was a citizen's initiative, enacted because a majority of voting Oregonians believed that persons afflicted with certain terminal illnesses should have the legal right to hasten death. The role of the Department of Human Services is to collect and analyze data annually on physician-assisted suicide participation in Oregon. These data are important to parties on both sides of the issue. Our position is a neutral one, and we offer no subjective opinions about these questions.

The law is responsibly enacted and is the desire of the majority of citizens of that state. It doesn't allow euthanasia for any reason. This must be clearly the patients desire. There is no slippery slope and no pandora's box. Can there be abuse? No doubt. As much as killing the person with their own hand gun. The difference would be that there is documentation, by a responsible individual, stating that the patient wishes to end their life.

You don't have to like it. I don't like lots of things others do. But I'm willing to allow people the control of their destiny irrespective of my personal views.

More Coyote Coddling in the People's Republic of Massachusetts

mASS BACKWARDS has an entry on a coyote attack on a 4 year old that was prevented by a grandfather.

Kudos to this heroic grandfather, whose quick thinking, and physical strength, saved his grandson from a coyote attack yesterday. I cant help but think, "Gee, a gun might have come in handy there." Think of how much more effectively this child's life could have been protected and the threst eliminated.

Astute observation, but then again, it did occur in Massachusetts.

Then there is the actions of Animal Control Officers to another coyote problem.

Quincy's animal control officer responded to Haigh's call quickly, she said. He handed her a "living with wildlife" brochure. And, as he told her, "his hands were tied."

I can't actually find the "brochure" but I did find this from the Mass Audubon on coyotes. And this from the Mass Fish & Game. This bit I find especially funny:

Don't let coyotes intimidate you! Don't hesitate to scare or threaten coyotes with loud noises, bright lights, or water.

Those all work for the minute, but high velocity lead is much more permanent.

EU/US Internet Wrangling

I've spoken on this before. Though mostly in relation to the UN getting control of the management of the internet. I do think that the US having sole control is probably something that will have to be rethought soon.

The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance. A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.

There is a lot of problems with the committee model that they appear to be proposing. Changes in how Domain Names and IP Addresses are utilized could have a serious impact on how the present Internet works. Not to mention uses of non-arabic text for domain names, could be a difficult change to overcome.

Government involvements is also a major quandary. Some governments have shown that they won't allow the use of the internet freely. (China, Iran, etc.) I'm reticent on allowing them a say in overall policy which could obviously have detrimental affects to the resources of the Internet overall.

Suicide Bomber at University of Oklahoma

From the Jawa Report.

How did this not come into the MSM? I'm not that out of touch with the news.

Why Miers? I Just Don't Get It

The title link is a George Will column, and this one is David Frum.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

This is my chief qualm regarding Miers. Finding a person with good, or even great, judicial credentials I think is very important. Someone with history arguing before the SCOTUS or any level of arguing constitutional law would have been better.

Frum puts it a bit more harshly.

Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. They object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.

The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job.

And she will remain not good enough even if she votes the right way on the court, or anyway starts out voting the right way. A Supreme Court justice is more than just a vote. A justice is also a voice.

This obviously has nothing to do with collegiate credentials. I keep hearing that and it just doesn't make any sense to me. Though I will say, from appearances, most constitutional lawyers come from mostly Ivy League schools.

When they called Roberts a 'stealth nominee' it was just funny. He had opinions and writings that were open to the public. He also stuck strictly to the rules of what is appropriate to answer that Schumer and his ilk laid down during the Ginsburg nomination. Miers on the other hand is really a stealth candidate. I have heard nothing of any case where she has argued constitutional law at an level.

I'd say having a candidate that isn't in the main-stream of constitutional law could be helpful in making the court more diverse. But, I don't think that is the case here. I wince at the thought of another mistake like Souter, or worse a silent member.

Religion and Societal Dysfunctionality

Here's an interesting little article/study. I saw a brief and largely unfair grilling of the author on FoxNews.

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

Their discussion of the conclusions:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developing democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so.

I at first had some real issues with this until they also popped out this:

There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).

Now I'm a bit baffled. Obviously they took into account the regional variations. Or at least addressed them. The only thing I really can fault this study with is that it uses a very narrow focus on causality. I don't believe that religiosity alone can be solely related for an explanation of the findings. Things never are that simple.

The study appears to have some validity if only at the level of a talking point.

Give That Marine a Medal

Just go and read it. The picture truly says 1000 words.
I'm not saying give him a medal for his job (though I'd say he probably deserves something more than a purple heart), but just for being such an AMERICAN.

1918 Influenza Pandemic Agent Reproduced

Looks like the 1918 Flu pandemic at the end of WWI was of an avian variety.

Like the 1918 virus, the current avian flu in Southeast Asia occurs naturally in birds. In 1918, the virus mutated, infected people and then spread among them. So far, the current Asian virus has killed at least 65 people but has rarely spread person-to-person.

But viruses mutate rapidly and it could soon develop infectious properties like those seen in the 1918 bug, said Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

And

The Spanish flu of 1918 was a terrible pandemic. In a few months, it killed more people than any other illness in recorded world history -- an estimated 20 million to 50 million worldwide, including roughly 550,000 in the United States.

In severe cases, victims' lungs filled with fluid and they essentially drowned in a disease process that took less than a week. It was known for being particularly dangerous to young adults, a group usually less susceptible to flu complications than younger and older people.

Lovely. Preparedness in the US is probably heavily lacking.

President Bush suggests using the US military for quarantine purposes, but I don't see any other suggestions on preparations needed.

I have found several reports stating that the flu shot shortage shouldn't be a problem this year, but does it address the avian flu that seems to be the worry?

I really really don't want to see a pandemic like in 1918.

SCOTUS Hearing Assisted Suicide Act

From what I've been reading it looks like the division in the court really appears to split on who has the final say on what is the proper use of a drug. Does the DEA determine the valid uses or is it up to the state who regulates medicine locally? And does the Attorney General have the authority to stop doctors from applying state approved uses of drugs?

This one is very difficult. There are valid arguments either way.
The Controlled Substances Act per the DEA:

The CSA places all substances that are regulated under existing federal law into one of five schedules. This placement is based upon the substance's medicinal value, harmfulness, and potential for abuse or addiction. Schedule I is reserved for the most dangerous drugs that have no recognized medical use, while ScheduleV is the classification used for the least dangerous drugs. The act also provides a mechanism for substances to be controlled, added to a schedule, decontrolled, removed from control, rescheduled, or transferred from one schedule to another.

Proceedings to add, delete, or change the schedule of a drug or other substance may be initiated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or by petition from any interested party, including the manufacturer of a drug, a medical society or association, a pharmacy association, a public interest group concerned with drug abuse, a state or local government agency, or an individual citizen. When a petition is received by the DEA, the agency begins its own investigation of the drug.

The DEA also may begin an investigation of a drug at any time based upon information received from law enforcement laboratories, state and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies, or other sources of information.

Once the DEA has collected the necessary data, the DEA Administrator, by authority of the Attorney General, requests from the HHS a scientific and medical evaluation and recommendation as to whether the drug or other substance should be controlled or removed from control. This request is sent to the Assistant Secretary of Health of the HHS. Then, the HHS solicits information from the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and evaluations and recommendations from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and on occasion, from the scientific and medical community at large. The Assistant Secretary, by authority of the Secretary, compiles the information and transmits back to the DEA a medical and scientific evaluation regarding the drug or other substance, a recommendation as to whether the drug should be controlled, and in what schedule it should be placed.

The medical and scientific evaluations are binding to the DEA with respect to scientific and medical matters. The recommendation on scheduling is binding only to the extent that if HHS recommends that the substance not be controlled, the DEA may not control the substance.

The question really comes down to, is use of a controlled drug for assisted suicide an invalid use. That isn't addressed here. Most drugs used in assisted suicide have other legitimate uses. From what I see, the state defines legitimate uses as well.

Lastly, is the Attorney General qualified to determine what is a legitimate use? I think not.

Maybe the end topic is more complex. Though it really shouldn't be.

Pro-Lifer Complains about Miers

If the hard-right conservatives and the pro-lifers are complaining about this woman, it's probably safe to assume she's a moderate.

Well, now we know: Roe v. Wade is unlikely to be overturned any time soon.

Which is just fine by me.

Banned Book Meme

Found this originally discussed at Hold The Mayo, but the track is all over the place.

The list of books originated here apparently.

Interesting list, but I think they are missing a lot of books. I noted that there isn't a single book by William S. Burroughs on the list. But maybe he was only censored, and not completely banned. The list probably would be more interesting if it included more books that were censored.

Bold what you've read completely.
Italilc for partial reads.
Continue to ignore the rest. (Some are ignored for a good reason too I think.)

Here's the list:
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights (I have them all, but 13 volumes was too much for me.)
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo ( I read the unabridged version - big mistake)
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce (Yuck)
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabinthia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Deception by Omission: MSM on Iraq

Sadly, this type of analysis won't ever hit a broad scope of OpEd in the MSM.

What is happening in Iraq is a failure by the media to give the American people relevant information. This has probably colored public opinion on the liberation of Iraq. The mediaÂ’s failure has come in two areas. First, it has failed to provide the news in context, often focusing on negatives. Second, it has not brought evidence to the American people that would place the initial decision to go in into context. Both of these failures have occurred often enough that one cannot be blamed for wondering if a pattern of deception, by omission, is not occurring.

It doesn't take a genius to understand that this is accurate, just someone willing to look at the daily reporting. They go on to describe the reporting methods as police blotter style. I'd say that is completely accurate. Only thing ever reported is deaths, destruction and how the military is screwing up.

The term “deception by omission” might sound harsh, but it is accurate. Deception does not need the active misrepresentation of facts, it can occur when someone fails to reveal something relevant to the situation – particularly when the people leaving out some of the facts are advocating a specific course of action (such as withdrawal from Iraq ).

For instance, the media has often failed to report many of the successes. This was a major complaint voiced by at least two columnists who have served in Iraq. In the first case, the complaint is about the lack of good news ( schools opened, rehabilitation of infrastructure neglected by Saddam Hussein, and other news items that don’t have the suddenness and shock value of a car bombing). The second complaint is that the “police blotter” coverage often obscures the “big picture” of what is going on. This is quite important as well. The insurgents offer little more beyond murder, mayhem, and terror.

Context is very important to reporting. I just don't see the vast majority of the MSM taking any time to show anything but car bombs and the aftermath. This one-sided reporting ensures that the US public, not to mention the rest of the world, never sees the stable and peaceful regions of Iraq, nor the good work that the US has done.

I'll be harshly honest, I don't believe that the general public in the US care to take any efforts to actually understand what is happening. They just see the deaths and the screeching of the anti-war groups and assume that they are getting the complete truth. This complacency, or laziness, has more to do with the anti-war sentiment than anything else.

Open Source Terrorism

Global Guerillas looks at a new form of terrorism that looks very much like open source code development.

• Release early and often. Try new forms of attacks against different types of targets early and often. DonÂ’t wait for a perfect plan.
  
• Given a large enough pool of co-developers, any difficult problem will be seen as obvious by someone, and solved. Eventually some participant of the bazaar will find a way to disrupt a particularly difficult target. All you need to do is copy the process they used.
  
• Your co-developers (beta-testers) are your most valuable resource. The other guerrilla networks in the bazaar are your most valuable allies. They will innovate on your plans, swarm on weaknesses you identify, and protect you by creating system noise.
  
• Recognize good ideas from your co-developers. Simple attacks that have immediate and far-reaching impact should be adopted.
  
• Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away (simplicity). The easier the attack is, the more easily it will be adopted. Complexity prevents swarming that both amplifies and protects.
  
• Tools are often used in unexpected ways. An attack method can often find reuse in unexpected ways.

Question is, how do you counteract this style of interaction? I guess this leads to 4GW (see below).

Then there is this article that describes Al-Qaeda's Grand Strategy. Disturbingly, it's a strategy developed by an American, Col. John Boyd. (Some very interesting military links at this link.)

There is also an interesting piece on fourth generation warfare that I found quite interesting.

4GW can be defined as a method of warfare that uses the following to achieve a moral victory:

• Undermines enemy strengths (this may seem obvious, but most of modern warfare has involved direct attacks on enemy strengths -- find the enemy army and destroy it).
• Exploits enemy weaknesses.
• Uses asymmetric operations (weapons and techniques that differ substantially from opponents).

All this makes it so clear about how little I know about war.

Terrorist Catch and Release Program

Hmm. I think I like this idea.

Brady Bunch Scare Tactics: Humor

This is pretty funny. Alphecca has a bit on an alternate to the Brady bunch's scare tactic posters.

The alternate poster is not quite as humorous once you think about it. Though they should have used Washington D.C. instead of Chicago.

Beretta v. District of Columbia Allowed to Move Ahead

Not sure why none of the gun-nut blogs have addressed this yet. Kind of odd.

The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a lawsuit against gun manufacturers accused of negligence for firearms violence in the nation's capital.

An appeals court had said that the District of Columbia government and individual gun victims, including a man who was left a quadriplegic after being shot in 1997, could sue under a D.C. law that says gun manufacturers can be held accountable for violence from assault weapons.

The high court had been asked over the summer to use the case to strike down the statute, which gun makers said interfered with their right to sell lawful products.

The lawsuit could still be voided by a new federal law, however. The Senate voted in July to shield firearms manufacturers, dealers and importers from lawsuits brought by victims of gun crimes. Action is pending in the House.

I still don't see how this makes any sense. [H/T HowAppealing]

Fever Swamp Left and the Anti-War Movement

Bit of a scary article. Especially that it tells you quite a lot about the major movers in the Anti-War movement. They quote extensively from this Hitchens' article at Slate. You probably can just skip to the Hitchens' link, it's pretty much the sole source of the title linked article.

The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the genocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper to mention only two radical left journalists —who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.

Nice company to keep. He goes further on the UFPJ, but you can read that yourself.

I suppose that many in the anti-war movement don't know who they have chosen to stand sholder to sholder with, but they may wish to see who history will associate them with. These aren't institutions I'd be named as supporting for any reason.

Don't miss the links at the bottom of the Hitchens' article to other Slate articles that he's published. I've read some and they're quite interesting.

China and the Future

Max Boot article on China. A bit long, but quite infinitive on a topic I think is being much overlooked at the present.

Here's an article by Niall Ferguson on China, but discussing the money over Democracy points.

Charlie Rangel's Big Mouth

I've been looking for these quotes for a week. Seems that the MSM just can't report any real quotes from demosprats being out of control.

ast Thursday, at a New York town-hall meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, Representative Charles Rangel took the stage vacated minutes earlier by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and declared, "George Bush is our Bull Connor." This comment is preposterous enough on its own--Bull Connor, the Birmingham police chief who turned hoses and dogs on civil rights marchers in 1963 and became a symbol of Southern racism, would never have had a black secretary of state. To equate Bush's faltering attitude toward blacks during

Katrina with Connor's brazen, unrelenting bigotry is an insult to those activists who endured Connor's persecutions. But, incredibly, instead of repudiating Rangel, various black leaders have opined that his comparison is insulting--to Bull Connor. "I think that's an insult to Connor," New York City Councilman Charles Barron told The New York Sun. "What [Bush] did in New Orleans [is] worse than what Bull Connor did in his entire career as a racist in the South." Others agreed, dragging the conversation down to breathtaking lows: Al Sharpton remarked, "We've gone from fire hoses to levees," and Representative Major Owens pointed out that "Bull Connor didn't even pretend that he cared about African Americans. You have to give it to George Bush for being even more diabolical."

There is a rich and horrible irony here: Martin Luther King Jr. once said of Bull Connor that he "didn't know history." But today it is Rangel and his defenders--who lay claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement--who don't know history. Or, rather, they believe bad history makes for good politics. It doesn't. It makes for demagoguery. King would have known the difference. [emphasis mine]

Now there is a truly indicative set of quotes by those who wish to be public leaders in this country. They do have that right of free speech. But this just proves that freedom of speech is also the freedom to make a complete and utter jack-ass out of ones self.

Rangel gets beaten in the blogsphere this weekend as well. Captain's Quarters has an entry that points to a couple of articles showing Rangel's inability to have facts on hand when opening his mouth and someone holding his feet to the fire on statements about Dick Cheney being to old for VP.

Ginsburg Comments at Wake Forest

Heh.

"Judge Roberts was unquestionably right," Ginsburg said. "My rule was I will not answer a question that attempts to project how I will rule in a case that might come before the court."

and

"A judge on a collegial court should never forecast how he or she would vote on particular issues" because during the decision-making process a justice is exposed to briefs, lawyers' arguments and discussions with other justices, she said.

I still find her a touch flaky (and very far left), but most of what is reported of her talk is reasonable. Though these exact comments were hard to find in print.

Blanco's Testimony - or Lack Thereof

What am I missing here? The only news I see on Blanco's testimony is that she didn't wish to respond to criticism. Good for her, but doesn't this really place some context on the whole Brown inquisition?

This pretty much is final proof of what a waste of time this whole thing is. The politicians strap Brown to the wrack, and Blanco gets the comfy chair. Did anything of any value come out of either testimony? Well, other than showing politicians are completely incompetent at fact finding.

Brown obviously did himself no favors. I suppose I could understand his answers, since sitting there being lambasted by a bunch of politicians looking to score points with the public couldn't have been pleasant. But then just blaming everyone else makes him look foolish. Not that the assessment may not be accurate with regard to the details of the faults of others.

Brown defended his handling of Hurricane Katrina. And he laid blame for what went wrong on Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and even the White House.

Blanco took strong exception to a charge by Brown that she waited until the eve of the storm to order an evacuation of New Orleans.

Brown's comment clearly demonstrates what, she says, is the "appalling degree" to which he's "out of touch with the truth or reality."

It's too early to get into, "name-blame" but Nagin said "a FEMA director in Washington trying to deflect attention is unbelievable."

He may have been out of touch, but Blanco isn't even in the same galaxy. His statement is factually correct. No compulsory evacuation was called for until Sunday. I'd love to know when she believes she called for the evacuation.

Nothing of any use will come out of this circus. But then again I can complain about it.

WTC Memorial Ousts the International Freedom Center

Well, finally.

Bowing to pressure from Sept. 11 families, Gov. George Pataki on Wednesday removed a proposed freedom center from the space reserved for it near the planned World Trade Center memorial, saying the museum project had aroused "too much opposition, too much controversy."

Pataki initially said the state would help the International Freedom Center find another home, but center officials said they weren't interested and considered the project dead.

And

The decision followed months of acrimony, with some Sept. 11 families and politicians saying the freedom center would overshadow and take space from the separate memorial devoted to the 2,749 World Trade Center dead and would dishonor them by fostering debate about the attacks and other world events.

"Freedom should unify us. This center has not," Pataki said. "Today there remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the IFC. … We must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world."

Controversy? It was just bloody stupid. You give the WTC memorial a postage stamp and this farce of a museum the lion's share of space and think this is fair to the memory of that event? I won't even go into the discussions on why such a "museum" would dishonor the victims. That has been gone through plenty already.

Pataki is such a politician. (Say that last word like something really loathesome that you have just found stuck to the bottom of your shoe.)

Brown's Beating as told by Salon

Now I understand Granted reads this rag, but articles like this one sour my stomach. Is this a news organization of just unadulterated editorializing?

Find any relevant information in this lead in:

The official inquisition of former FEMA director Michael Brown began just as Democrats had predicted -- with a whitewash. Clearly mistakes had been made after Hurricane Katrina. Thousands had suffered. Others died. But the Republican leadership was not going to place all the blame on one man and his agency of 2,500 employees.

"This is not the movies," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., who chairs the House committee investigating the Katrina response. "There is no Tommy Lee Jones character who comes in and takes charge of everything."

But no one at the hearing seemed to mistake Brown for a tough-guy taskmaster. Sitting Tuesday before the committee in a powder-blue tie, Brown looked more like an overdressed shipping clerk. He had an earnest voice and a plain face. When he became emotional his cheeks flushed and his eyes widened.

Well I suppose the fashion statement and the number of employees is information, but otherwise crap. Inquisition is accurate if for no other reason than that is how all goverment investigations by politicians go.

Let's be honest. The only reason they brought in Brown was to put him on the rack and publicly humiliate him. Does anyone honestly believe the hearing was trying to find information. The sections I saw were definitely speeches of derision and nothing more.

Then there is this:

In other words, Brown's only regrets appeared to be the behavior of others. "I don't want to make this partisan," Brown said, delivering the day's most disingenuous line. "I can't help it if Alabama and Mississippi are governed by Republican governors, and Louisiana is governed by a Democratic governor."

Stupid statement, yes. Disingenuous, I don't think so. Strikes me as his candid assessment if not completely and rudely stated. If he is such a political crony as they keep yelping, I would be he is fully informed on those personnel that he speaks too.

Personally, this article is a waste of pixels and the whole set of hearings a waste of oxygen. Leaving the investigation to a politician, of any affiliation, is a complete disservice to the public in general. I once believed that politicians weren't 90% mouth and 5% brain, but this is the end proof that they are. (The last 5% is unmentionables.)

Journalistic Low in NOLA

I've seen a couple very poor reports on the idiot box about the reporting of rumors and the like by the MSM during Katrina. (The report on the Abrams Report was pathetic. Abrams spent more time patting the press on the back than actually looking at reports based on nothing but rumors. The transcript isn't out at this time but I'll link it up when it's out.)

Following days of internationally reported murders, rapes and gang violence inside the stadium, the doctor from FEMA — Beron doesn't remember his name came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying.

The real total?

Six, Beron said.

AND

The vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees mass murders, rapes and beatings— have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law-enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

The MSM as expected are defending their reporting as appropriate. Personally, I didn't see any news agency that didn't have some reporter flipping out over the situation. Aren't journalists supposed to report on the facts? Maybe I'm holding the bar too high?

Of course there is the other side with the Talk Show Queen reporting on her show.

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members killing and raping people" inside the Dome. Other unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, overwhelmingly African-American masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. The mayor told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

But at least here position is defensable. She was interviewing people, some of whom should have known better. Compass is one of them. Probably fortunate for the city, he resigned yesterday. If you're the local police authority, you shouldn't be putting out rumors as fact. That makes you look stupid, not to mention makes the citizens of your area look like animals.

Which gets me to this point:

"I think 99 percent of it is [expletive]," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong bad things happened. But I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything ... 99 percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

The vast majority of people were well-behaved. But would you have gotten that from the reports at the time? I don't think so. And the rest of the world now only knows rumors that were reported as truth and have made a judgement on the US overall based on those rumors. Unfortunately now the poor of NOLA are branded unjustly with being "animalistic" because the mayor and his ilk couldn't keep their mouths shut.

But then, the crowds screaming and wailing at the cameras didn't help their case either. To some extent I can understand them being anxious to get assistance, but they were no where near starvation, and the only real threat was that of disease. I just don't understand the atraction to play for the camera, though this seems to be the reality of existance whether here or in NOLA or Iraq.

Oh, and back to the Abrams Report, here is a bit of mighty whining from his "blawg about justice" on scapegoating the media. Get this:

The latest so-called controversy comes now that the superdome and convention center have finally been cleared out. Officials say only 10 bodies were found— far fewer than many expected. This after the total death toll in New Orleans was far lower than the 10,000 some had predicted.

Rather than celebrating the news, some officials are trying to justify their inaction by pinning the blame on the never quite defined "media." It is particularly ironic when some of the same people who should have acted earlier - response teams, local and federal officials — are saying, "They reported rumors and exaggeration," "They failed to confirm reports etc."

The pictures speak for themselves. Are they suggesting this was somehow not a humanitarian disaster? The FEMA director found out about the lack of food and water from the media! But for the media and the public outcry, those numbers would have been higher. Without broadcasting those devastating photos from the superdome and the convention center, it's unclear how long it would have taken before someone in a position of authority actually responded. Yet today I heard one Congressman complain about the "hysteria of the media coverage"”?

This is laughable at best. Is he actually trying to tell us that FEMA wasn't doing anything and that they only began to react due to the media? What?! Now he's posturing the MSM as the heros of the disaster. As to the histeria of the media coverage, I saw any reporter on the scene flipping out. Some making blatant political rants against the present administration. You don't call that hysteria?

He also seems to miss that by reporting rumors that some agencies did react to those reports and sent resources to places that had no problems. His report last night even pointed to police resources being sent to areas where reported (aka rumored) viloence was going on.

You can read the rest. This his stance is just laughable.

Intelligent Design as High School Science

Well, far be it for me to criticize a really poor decision, but get this,

In a crucial test case, education officials in rural Pennsylvania have defended their decision to require students to learn about an alternative theory to evolution to explain the origin of life.

Lawyers for the Dover area school board argued yesterday that the decision to teach intelligent design - a theory condemned by a majority of scientists as little more than "creationism-lite" - was not an attempt to force a religious agenda but a desire for pupils to keep an open mind.

"This case is about free inquiry in education, not about a religious agenda," argued Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Centre, a non-profit Christian law firm which is representing the board.

You know, I might accept that this isn't trying to force religion into schools. You can easily de-emphasize any direct link to any specific religion. But, this still isn't science. Calling ID and alternative theory to evolutionary theory is preposterous. ID carries just about all of Evolutionary theory and just replaces the random chance causation with a theistic causation.

Eighty 80 years after the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee - when a teacher, John Scopes, was convicted for teaching evolution - polls show that at least 45 per cent of Americans believe God made man in his current form. Only 26 per cent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor, and 65 per cent believe schools should teach creationism as well as evolution.

Those are some disturbing figures.

Mostly, I just fail to see the need for ID. I would even state that it fails to reach the level of a theory. The theistic causation hypothesis is in no way even vaguely demonstrable. Which puts a dent in scientific methodology as applied to ID.

Keyboard Hacking

They claim that they can steal your password by using a microphone and some software to analyze the sound that the keys make when you type. Of course, they can also use it to monitor what you type as well.

Their research is based on the fact that each key makes a slightly different sound when struck, thanks to the angle at which it's pressed and its location above the keyboard supporting plate.

Once the different sounds had been recorded, Tygar and his associates separated them into classes, then mapped them to the most likely keystrokes based on the English language's constraints, including the limited number of key combinations to make words and the limited number of words because of its grammar. Finally, they used spelling and grammar checking software to refine the transcriptions.

"The key insight in our work is that the typed text is often not random," said Tygar.

I don't know about you, but I think I'd notice the microphone or at least it's cable. I'm not totally unobservant. They would probably find it interesting as to what I do with that microphone when I found it as well.

Nice new thing to be paranoid about at a job near you. Nothing like big companies to use such things to monitor the worker.

Subway Profiling: Computer Nerds

Found this one at Schneier. Pretty weird. The guy was acting like your usual technology/computer geek and got pinched in the Tube under the Terrorism Act.

I am told that I am being stopped and searched because:

· they found my behaviour suspicious from direct observation and then from watching me on the CCTV system;

· I went into the station without looking at the police officers at the entrance or by the gates;

· two other men entered the station at about the same time as me;

· I am wearing a jacket "too warm for the season";

· I am carrying a bulky rucksack, and kept my rucksack with me at all times;

· I looked at people coming on the platform;

· I played with my phone and then took a paper from inside my jacket.

Now that is just pathetic. Read the whole article. The US may be more open and less secure, but I'd prefer that to being trodden on by the government for thin excuses.

Congressional Watch Dog Group Reports

This smells odd.

"They all violated ethics rules," Melanie Sloan, the watchdog group's executive director, said of the 13 members of Congress on its list. She criticized both political parties for what she said was a failure to police ethics.

James Pendleton, a spokesman for Burns, dismissed the group's report as "pure politics." Ney's press secretary, Brian Walsh, said: "We don't give Melanie Sloan and her liberal organization an ounce of credibility."

Its report, titled "Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress," is based on news articles and other documents, the watchdog group said. It made the report available to the Los Angeles Times.

I found the report and here is what they call their methodology.

To create this report, CREW reviewed articles, Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports and audits, sworn testimony, emails, and personal financial and travel disclosure forms. We then analyzed that information to determine whether the information discovered suggested that a Member of Congress'’s conduct violated any federal laws, regulations or congressional ethics rules.

Vague? Yup.
I have an issue with using reports from the MSM though. This makes the assumption that the information is accurate and without bias. I just can't see that as a viable resource. It could very well be used as an indication of where and what should be checked, but it really needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Emails?

If you look at the list, interestingly, eleven of the thirteen are republicans. Now can I honestly say that this report isn't a partisan act?

Certainly someone in the House and Senate should be looking at these accusations. And then they should use the same ruler to investigate everyone. Sounds like something good for the GAO to be doing.

Bloody HYPOCRITES

Saw this linked at Say Uncle.

Get this article that lists some of the major Gun Carrying Hypocrites.

Not only does Schumer carry a handgun, the New York City Police Department also provides armed escorts for the good senator. In fact, the Government Accounting Office -- the investigative arm of the US Congress -- slammed Schumer's use of police resources for personal protection. It's clear that Schumer believes he's special. He wishes to ban private citizens' ownership of firearms, while he enjoys layers of protection.

Also, a check of Pistol License records shows that Senator Schumer possesses an "unrestricted" pistol permit, a rarity in New York City. Licenses are distributed in different categories in the Big Apple: Target Permits allow only use of a firearm at a licensed firing range; Premises Permits allow weapons to be kept in a home or apartment; Restricted Permits allow the gunowner to carry their firearms concealed but only within the purview of their job (security, jewelers, armored car guards, etc.). So it's evident that Senator Schumer has two sets of rules -- one for Americans and one for himself.

And then we have Senator Diane Feinstein on the Left Coast who possesses something more rare than a conservative Republican in San Francisco -- an unrestricted concealed weapons permit. Apparently without shame, she participated in a citywide gun turn-in program that was intended to create some kind of statue from the donated guns that were to be melted down. One of her police body guards let it slip that she contributed a cheap model for the meltdown, while retaining her .357 magnum revolver for her own personal self-defense.[Emphasis Mine]

So these two get both a police body guard, but they also get unusual level of concealed carry permit from where they live.

Get this from Answer.com:

Feinstein is a strong proponent of gun control, yet is known to have carried concealed handguns herself with a normally nearly impossible to obtain California carry permit - few people, other than politicians and celebrities, are able to obtain California CCW permits. At one time, she was the only person in San Francisco to possess a concealed carry permit.

The reason is stated at usliberals.about.com:

Senator Feinstein is a staunch gun control advocate. Despite her stance, in the 1970s, she obtained a concealed firearms carry permit, and carried a handgun with her. A CCW permit was then rare in California, and was the only such permit in San Francisco. At the time, she was the target of a terrorist group that had shot out all the windows in her home. She no longer carries a gun. [Emphasis Mine]

Hmm. Funny that she needs that permit, but those poor proles of the general public shouldn't be allowed to own, let alone carry, a gun.

There are a couple of other names listed of interest, but not many. Would be really interesting to get that NRA black list and find out how many of those people have armed body guards or who have concealed carry permits.

This Annoys Me

Preparing for the Supreme Court fight, pro-lifers were told by White House surrogates to stay out of the light and out of the newspapers, to be quiet so as not to scare the horses. Even before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement this summer, while liberal reporters worked to connect conservative concern over the Supreme Court with the abortion issue, pro-lifers were measuring their words, beating each other up, and trying not to appear too demanding of the president that, in the small margins that matter, they had elected.

Well, maybe. But maybe he was elected by those people in the middle who sometimes vote Democrat, and I suspect many of those people are pro-choice. After all, what choice does the far right and the strongly pro-life voter have? Those people are NEVER going to go for the Democrat. I believe Bush's reelection had far more to do with people agreeing with his handling on the war on terror, and not much do with people supporting the right's "official" stance on Roe v. Wade.

Ever so smoothly, pro-lifers were corralled and managed, so that if the president appointed yet another Republican disappointment to the Supreme Court, it would be too late after the fact to do anything about it.

If that happened, why would it need to happen unless the majority of Americans are pro-choice?

I resent that Miranda is to be calling for a SCOTUS nominee with a right-wing idealogical agenda, which is no more acceptable to me than a judge with a left-wing idealogical agenda. I want a judge who will fairly and impartially determine the law, regardless of personal opinion, which is what we're getting with Judge Roberts, I believe. Miranda and Senator Kennedy are two sides of the same flawed coin - trying to influence the courts with their personal beliefs.

Single Moms and the Link to Violence

John Leo on studies released by Institute for Marriage and Public Policy last week, that find, among other things, that adolescents in single-parent families are more likely to be involved in violent crime and gangs.

You'd think this information would just be obvious, common-sense stuff to people. And it is for some of us. The troubling question is, how do we change the inner city culture that deems it acceptable, even desirable to make babies without marriage or cohabitating? Bill Cosby can't do it alone. What will happen if it doesn't change?

Brady Bunch Scare Tactics

Found this on Alphecca. Article from the Miami Herald. No it's not an editorial.

Enter Florida at your own risk. That's the message supporters of gun control are sending in an ad campaign designed to warn visitors about Florida's new law allowing victims to shoot first in self-defense without fear of prosecution.

The law, passed by the Florida Legislature in the spring and signed by Gov. Jeb Bush, takes effect Oct. 1. That's the day the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence will start its newspaper ad campaign in London, Chicago, Boston and Detroit and hand out fliers to arriving passengers at Miami International Airport.

The new law ''may lead to the reckless use of guns on the streets of Florida cities,'' the one-page flier reads. The ads will warn that after Oct. 1, visitors ''face a greater risk of bodily harm in Florida,'' said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Washington-based advocacy group.

The fliers urge tourists to take precautions, such as: ''Do not argue unnecessarily with local people,'' and ''keep your hands in plain sight'' if you are involved in a traffic accident or a near-miss.

And seeing how reasonable the Brandy Bunch is:

''We are not trying to scare people, the Florida Legislature scared people,'' Hamm said.

The Brady Coalition is urging the Legislature to repeal the law, but short of that, ''we think people need to be aware of this new law,'' Hamm said. "They need to act accordingly and they need to make their decision to come to Florida accordingly.''

What?!

I went to the Brady Bunch web-site (ugh) but they didn't appear to have anything on topic. I did find their protest over the NRA list of groups and individuals with anti-gun policies. I'm still trying to figure out their outrage over this. I just don't buy their claim of intimidation. Most of the people listed are extremely wealthy and the organizations chose their standing. Why is it intimidation to point out what an organization stands for?

I would conjecture that the list has more people on it that can afford private security, and likely use that security, than the vast majority of NRA members. But, hey, why should people be able to protect themselves? Especially when they have the need.

Canadian Corruption: Gunscam

There also is a piece at Captain's Quarter on this. He also goes into a bit on the "checks and balances" that don't exist in the Canadian government. (I found that bit fascinating.)

Originally expected to be self-financing by 1999-2000, Fraser and her auditors discovered the target for the firearms program to break even was pushed back to 2013 -- an assumption it would collect $419 million in fees in 2002-03 and $828 million by 2007-08.

Now that is an expensive and useless tool. Wonder where all that money is going.

This Editorial goes into the failings.

And as we've all seen - and as the critics predicted - the registry has failed as an effective tool in combating urban street crime, which was how the Liberals sold it to Canadians.

Why? Two reasons.

First, the main purpose of Bill C-68 was to extend gun registration to so-called "long guns" for the first time - rifles and shotguns. Unfortunately, grandpa's gopher gun is not the weapon of choice for violent, urban gangsters.

Their preferred weapons are handguns, which law-abiding Canadians have been required to register since 1934. Yet criminals still manage to get their hands on them, despite the registry. That should have been a big clue for the Liberals 10 years ago about how well the long-gun registry would work.

Which brings us to the second big (and obvious) problem with the registry, which is, as virtually every critic has pointed out over the years, that criminals don't register their guns.

Of course, the Liberals will never admit to this blunder.

I'm still trying to figure out why all the Bush haters keep braying about going to Canada. Putting together very costly useless systems isn't helping with crime and the corruption being shown in the government is appalling, yet they are still viewed as better off than under the present administration.

Go figure.

Hillary and the Freedom Center

Well, she's got this right.

"While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in Lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns that family members and first responders have expressed to me," Mrs. Clinton said in a statement released to The New York Post on Friday in response to an inquiry.

We've spoken on this before. I wonder if there will ever be enough momentum to get these jerks to make an appropriate memorial.

You can see additional info at Take Back The Memorial.

Iraq = Vietnam At Least the MSM is Still Trying to Make That Point

Must be a slow news day if this is what I'm talking about.

But here is another proud press moment for the MSM. Comparing political speeches of Bush and LBJ.

Of course, the Anti-War Protestors aren't that much different either.

Let's not mention that there are any successes out there.

Though there is some humor on the topic.

Testing the Waters

Nuclear Power Plants. (H/T QandO)

At least eight utilities, including all the major operators of nuclear power plants, have been testing the regulatory environment to determine how fast a new reactor might get approved by the NRC. Though no final decision on a project has been announced, several companies have indicated they would like to build a new reactor by 2010.

Three reactor vendors — Westinghouse, General Electric, and the French company AREVA — are competing with different new reactor designs.

Under the Nustart plan, the reactor at Grand Gulf would be a GE designed reactor, while the one in Alabama would use a Westinghouse design.

Makes one hope that they are looking at something more innovative than the usual BWR.

Judiciary Vote on Roberts

Got the link from SCOTUS blog.

Yes: Specter (R), Hatch (R), Grassley (R), Kyl (R), DeWine (R), Sessions (R), Leahy (D), Kohl (D), Feingold (D), Graham (R), Cornyn (R), Brownback (R) Coburn (R)

No: (All Democrats) Kennedy, Biden, Feinstein, Schumer, Durbin.

Not really a surprise. Look at the comments. There are some pretty interesting points.

I also wonder if this will set a new manner which republicans will vote with respect to future democratic nominees. This bit of data from a comment:

Rehnquist - nominated by Nixon - approved 68-26
Stevens - Ford - 99-0
O' Conner - Reagan - 99-0
Scalia - Reagan - 98-0
Kennedy - Reagan - 97-0
Souter - Bush - 90-9
Thomas - Bush - 52-48
Ginsburg - Clinton - 96-3
Breyer - Clinton - 87-9

Funny looking votes though. And I'm not saying that it's because democrats nominate more reasonable judges either.

"Stuck on Stupid" Kerfuffle

Let's just start with the quote.

CNN: press conference on Hurricane Rita. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin & Gen. Russel Honore.

Honore: And Mr. Mayor, let's go back, because I can see right now, we're setting this up as he said, he said, we said. All right? We are not going to go, by order of the mayor and the governor, and open the convention center for people to come in. There are buses there. Is that clear to you? Buses parked. There are 4,000 troops there. People come, they get on a bus, they get on a truck, they move on. Is that clear? Is that clear to the public?

Female reporter: Where do they move on...

Honore: That's not your business.

Male reporter: But General, that didn't work the first time...

Honore: Wait a minute. It didn't work the first time. This ain't the first time. Okay? If...we don't control Rita, you understand? So there are a lot of pieces of it that's going to be worked out. You got good public servants working through it. Let's get a little trust here, because you're starting to act like this is your problem. You are carrying the message, okay? What we're going to do is have the buses staged.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

Now I've seen several write ups of this, and they all crow that the "right" is getting there jollies out of this. Though I haven't run across any as of yet stating that. But it's early and I'll keep looking. I honestly think that there will be some giggling over this.

But for those links that popped up on a Google news search I got one calling the remark "false candor," another stating the general is just calling anyone stupid that asks a question, and how the statement was "not too brite."

I suppose they have some point, though it isn't the sharpest. I think those that read here know I pretty much deride the thought that generals have to be politicians. I much prefer a general who is a soldier. Meaning being honest and thrustworthy in this context. Personally I'd prefer more candor from our politicians as well. You can't get a politician to take a firm stand on the color of the sky on a clear day.

You have to see the video clip though. The exchange obviously got under the general's skin. The whole context of the conference was to get out information on what to do in NOLA if the hurricane came in there causing another mess. The reporters just couldn't let go of the blame game questions. I don't know if I'd have gone where the general did, but I would have probably been close to saying similar things.

And let's be honest, the questions were stupid.

UPDATE:
Found some of those perverted conservative types liking the comment. Ok wait, one of them is moderate. Oh, wait, they're also Libertarian.

Pork Near You

Interesting site on pork. You can look up what fat there is by state.

Some of it looks baconish to me, but I've looked at some of the listings and I'm not really certain why they would be listed.

More Excellent Media Coverage From Iraq

Now I love timely news, but I'd like some facts about the case not just screaming. I saw the title linked article yesterday and thought it sounded a bit odd. Mind you this is an ABC report.

Iraq denounced British forces on Tuesday over a dramatic rescue of two undercover soldiers that could stoke hostility to the army in increasingly volatile southern Iraq.

British troops used an armored fighting vehicle on Monday to burst into an Iraqi jail in search of soldiers held by police in Basra. The British commander said he learned they had been handed to militia and ordered their rescue from a nearby house.

Nearby house? Why would the Iraqi police have prisoners in a nearby house?

Then there is all the wonderful quotes.

"It is unappropriate for any Iraqi to be insulted by a British or an American or any other occupier, we reject the occupying forces," said Abbas Jassim.

"The British violated the government, police and the sons of this country, which we all reject."

and

"This is terrorism. All we had was rifles."

and

Reid said it was not clear whether the Iraqi police were under threat themselves or colluding with local militia.

Lorimer said troops had been sent to the police station where the two men had been detained to help ensure their safety.

All wonderful, especially the last, considering the news this morning on the topic.

The Ministry of the Interior is looking into what led to UK armoured fighting vehicles bulldozing the wall of a Basra police station jail in a bid to free the Special Forces soldiers.

Inside, troops discovered that the two men had been handed over to the militia by Iraqi police and freed them later from a house in the southern city.

Oh, so they were handed over to the militia. Or maybe they were just handed over to the insurgents.

Iraq's government has admitted insurgents have infiltrated its security forces.

The admission comes as an inquiry continues into events surrounding British troops' controversial rescue of two kidnapped SAS men.

Sigh, makes you wonder. Especially when you find articles like this on the web as "news." Read it. It came up under a search of new on the topic. Here's a taste.

A car driving through the outskirts of a besieged city opens fire on a police checkpoint, killing one. In pursuit, the police surround and detain the drivers and find the vehicle packed with explosives – perhaps part of an insurgent's plan to destroy lives and cripple property. If that isn't enough, when the suspects are thrown in prison their allies drive right up to the walls of the jail, break through them and brave petroleum bombs and burning clothes to rescue their comrades. 150 other prisoners break free in the ensuing melee.

Incredible, no? Yet this story took place in the southern Iraqi city of Basra recently. Violence continues to escalate in the breakout's aftermath... just not for the reasons you think.

You see, the drivers of the explosive-laden car were not members of an insurgency group – they were British Special Forces. Their rescuers? British soldiers driving British tanks.

That's right – two members of the British Armed forces disguised as Arab civilians killed a member of the Iraqi police while evading capture. When the people of Basra rightfully refused to turn the murderers over to the British government, per Coalition "mandate," they sent their own men in and released over 100 prisoners in the process.

Winning the hearts and minds, aren't we?

The conclusion of this all is that the US and coalition forces are responsible for the faked terrorist attacks in order to prompt religious war. Brilliant bit of logic there. I'm betting on my Alcoa stock jumping a few notches today.

Pork Busters

Instapundit link brought me here.

I'll be interested to see who/what will actually make some move to try and be responsible.

I won't hold my breath.

Clueless Gun Op-Ed

You can read the fisking of this article at Ravenwood's Universe.

This guy is a complete moron.

Reading the gun's specs proved to be more than intimidating; it was downright scary. According to the product's website, the M82A1 "easily fires the largest commercially available cartridge in the world, the .50 caliber." The weapon doesn't just fire .50 caliber cartridges like a few other weapons, but does so with ease. What sets it apart from other .50 caliber rifles is the fact that it is not bolt action, but semiautomatic with a ten round clip. Instead of having to manually discharge the empty cartridge then load the next, you can snap off ten shots as fast as you can pull the trigger. Ten rounds at a buck from any .50 caliber rifle will leave hunters with very little to mount. I also learned that the gun has an effective range of over 2,000 yards. Hunters generally shoot at targets 150-200 yards away, so accuracy over ten times that distance is understandable, right? No, it really isn't, especially with a weapon so powerful. Unless the gun was designed for hunters planning on shooting game from over a mile away and then walking 15 minutes to go retrieve it, this weapon could not have been made for hunting.

Beyond the wetting his pants because the gun is "scary," I just find it hard to believe that he would even remotely try to logic the Barrett as a hunting rifle. I'd think that the 33.8 pound weight would make it clear that this isn't a hunting rifle for anyone but the most monstrous of individuals. Why he goes toward that discussion is pretty telling. (sarcasm)Obviously no one could have any other reason to own a gun than for hunting. (/sarcasm)

Nothing like having someone who thinks one should only own something if the need it. Don't need lots of things in life, but that doesn't mean I can't own and use them.